Shea Collins is a receptionist by day, but writes a true crime cold case blog by night. Her interest in true crime stems in part from the fact that she was kidnapped as a small child by a pedophile, but she escaped. The man went on that same night to rape and murder another small child. Shea lives with guilt.

Shea is surprised when Beth Greer contacts her and asks to be interviewed for her blog. Back in 1977, two seemingly unrelated men were murdered, and Beth was identified as the one walking away from the murder scene. She was tried and found innocent. People in their small town, however, were never convinced of her innocence.

Why is Beth emerging from her private life now, and why did she choose Shea to be her messenger?

The Book of Cold Cases by Simone St. John combines crime with a splashing of a ghost story to make for a great read. I enjoyed the characters, and found the story to be interesting and compelling. The ending wasn’t particularly a surprise to this reader, yet I found it to be satisfying and believable. Well, if you believe in ghosts, that is.

Here is a link to the book.

Fly the Friendly Skies
Bill and I are back once again in Mesa, where Bill will be having oral surgery this morning. We have been back and forth so much that I feel like a yoyo. I’m not kidding when I tell you that when I wake up in the morning, before I open my eyes, I try to remember in which of my two houses I am currently residing. As long as I can find my way to the bathroom, I’m satisfied. Once I am up and at ’em, I can generally figure it out. As for Bill, he will simply be happy when he has some more teeth with which to chew. We have been looking forward to this day for four months now.

For Crying Out Loud
Yesterday our airline of choice was Southwest. At the end of the day, it is my favorite airline. I cherish my little cup of Diet Coke and my bag of snack mix, stale as it may be. Yesterday’s flight was quite nice, without a single bump in the sky, thanks to good weather on both ends of the trip. Unfortunately, the last 20 minutes of the flight was rather unpleasant because a young toddler decided he was unhappy. He screamed without taking a break for the entire last quarter of our flight. I wasn’t upset with the baby; instead, I just felt sorry for the parents. There is absolutely nothing a mother or father can do if a child decides to scream on an airplane. It’s not like you can take him out of the room. It reminded me about the time I flew to Alabama to visit my sister with Court when he was eight months old. He was very good on the trip there. The trip home was another story altogether. He screamed the entire trip. That was back in the days when they served food on flights. At one point, Court grabbed a handful of mashed potatoes and tossed them onto the man sitting next to us. I thought I would die of embarrassment. Fortunately, the man was the father of small children, and he couldn’t have been nicer.

Uber
Our granddaughter Adelaide was nice enough to give us a ride to the airport yesterday morning. Her kindness meant that she had to wake up at 7 o’clock on one of her few mornings between finals week and beginning her summer job. It was a fun trip despite the rush hour traffic. We were able to catch up on her life, which is very busy and very exciting. Oh, to be a college student once again. This summer she will be a camp counselor at the camp where she and her siblings spent many weeks during their formative years. Addie is a good girl. And I’m not just prejudiced.

Weather Shock
Denver weather is slowly, but surely, getting more typical for spring. Nevertheless, when we left the house yesterday morning, it was in the neighborhood of 45 degrees outside. When we landed in Phoenix a few hours later, it was 100 degrees. I was cold in my short sleeves on one end of the trip and comfortable on the other end. Bill was comfortable in his long sleeves and jacket on one end of the trip, and couldn’t get his coat off quickly enough on the other.

Ciao.

I’m a terrible photographer. I’m not being modest; I just don’t have the imagination or the patience to take amazing photos.

I know people who are good photographers and who aren’t professionals. Bill is a very good photographer, for example. When we took our three-month European trip in 2008, he was the primary photographer. That was before phones became cameras. But he didn’t use a fancy-dancy camera. He had a simple point-and-shoot camera. But when he pointed and shot, he created great memories. Bill has an eye for what makes a good photo, what to include in photo, and how to frame the shot.

When I was in journalism school at the University of Colorado, we were required to take a photography class. We were taught how to do all of the things I mentioned above. But good photography isn’t something you learn in a book. Sure, you can learn the principles of taking pictures, but if you don’t have the patience and imagination that I mentioned above, your pictures are going to be ordinary. Perhaps good enough to accompany a news story, and that’s when I still intended to be a news reporter.

Having said that, some of the most memorable photos I’ve ever seen came from photojournalists. When you think of the Kent State shootings, I know you are picturing the photo taken by John Filo of the girl kneeling by the student who had just been shot dead by a police officer. An iconic photo taken of a little naked Vietnamese girl running from Napalm bombing, her clothes ripped off in an unsuccess attempt to cool down, transformed many people’s minds about the controversial war.

In my short-lived years as a news reporter, I had a number of occasions to use my photographic skills (as they were) and the Canon camera I had purchased, thanks to my then-husband selling his guitar so that we would have enough money to purchase it. You don’t remember seeing any iconic photos from moi, though, do you?

One of the skills I learned in my photography class was how to develop photos. I used that knowledge, both in my news reporting job, and also in the job at which I spent most of my professional life. Developing film was undoubtedly my favorite part of photography. I loved the smell of the chemicals and the red safe light in the darkroom that allowed me to work without bumping into tables holding the trays of chemicals. But most of all, I loved putting the photo paper into the tray, and watching an image magically appear. Of course, I know it isn’t magic, but it seems like it.

Nowadays, photographers — whether artists or journalists — mostly use digital cameras. Just like I never understood why music aficionados prefer plastic records over CDs or digital sound, I don’t understand why digital photography is any better or worse than using a regular, old-school camera. What I do know, however, is that the experience of watching a photo appear on paper is one of many things the younger generation won’t experience, Polaroid instant cameras notwithstanding.

Add that to receiving a letter and talking on a telephone with a 10-food curly cord.

The springtime rule of thumb in Colorado is you don’t plant anything before Mother’s Day. I have learned the hard way to follow this rule. Literally hundreds of my hard-earned dollars have been thrown away on a couple of occasions because the sunny days and my eagerness to be One With My Garden gave me false hope. The seedlings were barely in the ground when the temperature dropped below zero and the seedlings took a deep seedling breath and died.

Not this year, I promised myself. I won’t plant until after Mother’s Day, I assured myself. In fact, I said, patting myself on the back, I won’t even be fooled by the fact that Mother’s Day was early this year. I will wait an additional few days just to be safe.

And so I waited. Of course, waiting didn’t suggest that I couldn’t shop for my plants. I made my way to my favorite garden center where I bought gerbera daisies to plant in my front flower box under our mailbox. I bought herbs that I put in a pot. I I bought two tomato plants to grow in my Earthbox. And then I sat back and waited until the Friday after Mother’s Day. I set out to plant.

Unfortunately, in the midst of planting, personal issues required me to drop what I was doing and fly to AZ for a few days. Bill and I returned the next Thursday. The sun was shining and the temperature was in the mid-80s. Despite the warm temperatures, weather forecasters had dire warnings: the temperatures would drop below freezing and the metro area would get three to six inches of snow the next day.

COVER YOUR PLANTS, they told us.

I did, in fact, immediately go out and put plastic over what I had already planted when I learned I needed to leave town. I gently placed a plastic baggie over my frail basil plant, and put a sturdier bag over my gerbera daisies. I brought my herb pot into the house, along with the tomatoes which I am happy to say I hadn’t yet planted.

All this is to say that the temperature warmed up enough yesterday that I was able to finish my planting. My tomatoes are tucked into their spring/summer home, where I hope they will grow and bear yummy fruit in late summer. I uncovered my daisies, which look a little worse for wear, but I believe they will rally. My basil might not make it, but I will give it a chance before I put in another plant.

Later this week, I plan on putting petunias in the garden space that borders our patio, as I usually do. I think I’m safe in assuming that freezing temperatures are in our rear view mirror.

However, you never really know with Springtime in the Rockies.

The other day, something was fed to me by one social medium or another in that way that social media feeds us what they think interests us. In my case, that is often food. What’s more, they are correct. I’m interested in cooking, dining out, shopping for food in interesting places. It was a list of some sort that dealt with restaurants in each state. The name that caught my attention was Saigon Bistro and Pho.

I didn’t even bother to look up the restaurant’s website because the name annoyed me so thoroughly that I vowed I would never, ever eat at a restaurant that had both of the words Saigon and Bistro in its name. For a restaurant to have the name bistro in it, the other word should be Francais or Château or d’Armor. Yes, I recall the ties between France and Vietnam, but still, a Pho bistro?

Perhaps I’m too sensitive. Back in the early 1990s, the business for which I worked moved its offices to the downtown area. It was the lower downtown area, to be exact — the area where there were railroad tracks and homeless people who jumped the trains. It was rundown and sad. The only two restaurants in the vicinity were a Mexican bar and a diner that served cheap breakfast and lunch, with offerings like tuna salad sandwiches and biscuits and gravy, with a choice of a watered-down soda or bad coffee.

Things changed, however. It wasn’t much later that Coors Field was constructed in lower downtown to house the Colorado Rockies baseball team. And it wasn’t much longer after the field was built that people started calling the lower downtown area Lodo.

All of that was actually a welcome change, because women employees no longer had to be escorted to their cars after work. More restaurants began springing up, offering more options.

Interstate 25 sort of slices the Denver metro area in half. This was certainly true for years. West of downtown — on the other side of I-25 — was referred to as North Denver. For many years, North Denver was where the Italian population huddled. Every other block offered a Mom-and-Pop Italian restaurant, serving spaghetti and meatballs, cannoli, and hand-tossed pizza. The restaurants were casual and had loyal customers who maybe went out every Saturday with their families to give Grandma a break from making her own red gravy.

At some point, Mexican immigrants began moving into that area. That was fine, though, because they brought with them delicious smothered burritos and fiery enchiladas. The customers were much like those of the Italian restaurants — families with kids.

And then came progress. North Denver is gone. The area is now called Highlands, or Lohi, or Rino, or any other combination of names to satisfy all of the urban dwellers who tore down small bungalows and put up enormous homes that look like something Mussolini would have approved. Any open space was filled with those same Mussolini-looking apartment buildings. Bike shops and clothing stores took over the tortilla shops and Italian markets.

I don’t hate progress; I really don’t. But I will admit to being sad that cities like Denver are becoming so homogenized. Maybe I’m just disappointed, because it used to be so much fun to park our car on a neighborhood street to walk to Patsy’s or Pagliacci’s, and see kids playing in the front yard and people sitting on their porches.

Having said all of the above, I have to admit something. I finally broke down and googled Saigon Bistro. Much to my surprise, the restaurant is located not in Lodo or downtown anywhere. Instead, it is located in a part of Aurora (a suburb east and south of Denver) in a fairly plain-looking strip mall that includes an assortment of mostly Asian restaurants. The menu is legit Vietnamese. The dishes are written first in Vietnamese and, reluctantly, in English down below. I’m going to visit that restaurant as soon as I can. I will forgive the use of Bistro.

And I won’t order a martini.

I’m not sure this is really anything to smile about, but I admit to being amused by Colorado’s unpredictable weather. It was 90 degrees and sunny on Thursday. Yesterday, it was below freezing, and snow fell. Summer solstice is a mere month away. I’m enjoying it, however, because when we return to AZ on Wednesday for Bill’s oral surgery, it will be in the low 100s.

I’m dreaming of a White Memorial Day…..

Have a good weekend.

Magic
I know I complain a lot about technology. It’s true that it often kicks my butt. Passwords allude me. Updates confuse me. Hackers alarm me. But, all in all, technology has improved my life. My technology gratitude stems completely from an experience this past Sunday. Our grandson Micah has taken piano lessons for a number of years. When we are together, he has demonstrated to Papa and me his musical skills. However, we haven’t ever seen him perform in a recital. Not surprising as he lives nearly 2,000 miles away in Montpelier, Vermont. His most recent recital was Sunday, and thanks to Zoom, Bill and I were able to watch him perform. He was, simply put, magnificent. He is 9 years old, and his name isn’t John Legend, so he wasn’t performing Beethoven or Mozart. In fact, I don’t know the name of the tune he played. I know two things: 1) He played the song flawlessly and with much confidence; and 2) He had the deepest and most professional bow of all of the recital participants. Thank you Micah and thank you Zoom inventors.

Passing in the Night
Jen arrived yesterday for an Arizona visit with her daughter and her grands, just a day before Bill and I leave to go back to Denver this morning. We had a chance to say hello last night at dinner. Similarly, Bill and I will return to AZ on Wednesday for his next mouth surgery, a day after Jen returns to Colorado. Like two thieves passing in the night.

Say Ah
As I mentioned above, Bill has his implant surgery in Mesa on May 26, so we will return to AZ on May 25. For two people who don’t love plane travel, we sure have, and are going to, spent(d) a lot of time commuting between Denver and Mesa these few weeks. After his surgery, he will have his next surgery sometime in September. We will get a bit of a travel break.

Grateful
Thank you for the patience of my readers as I stumbled through the past week. Bill and I encountered some life difficulties which we have managed to survive, and, yes, learn from. Nana and her whimsies are back once again, and I appreciate your support. Oh, and your prayers.

I have a very clear memory of the morning that our son Court’s father left for work following our baby’s birth. It was the first time I was left alone with my baby child. I remember the sound of the front door closing, and I recall that I looked down at Court’s sleeping face. As I gazed at him, I remember thinking, “What in the hell am I supposed to do now?” I had never been trained to be a mother. There were no lessons in caring for a newborn on television. The internet was 15 years away. Unlike adoptive parents — who go through a thorough and difficult vetting process before they are given adoptive rights — I plopped a human being out of my body into this world without any vetting at all. A hospital nurse wheeled Court and me out of the door, likely thinking you poor unsuspecting sucker, you have no idea what lies ahead.

And I really didn’t. My mother and father had spent a day with us, admiring their fourth grandchild, but left to go back home to Summit County that evening. I assume Mom figured I would be able to keep the child alive. After all, she had kept four children alive, and raised them to be pretty decent human beings. My babysitting experience wasn’t even with little babies. The youngest child I had ever taken care of was around 18 months. Shortly after that particular child’s parents walked out the door, leaving Little Richie with a 12-year-old neophyte, the baby pooped his pants. I am ashamed to say that Little Richie stayed in his poopy pants until the parents arrived home. Yes, following what was likely a romantic date night, Mommy and Daddy had to clean what was by then petrified poop from the baby’s butt.

And I’m in charge of a tiny baby boy. Go figure.

I think I can say I have similar feelings about growing old. No one is really prepared for all of the issues that come with aging. When you get married, you have a preconceived idea of how your life is going to unfold. There are lots of love and kisses and flowers and candy. Of course, there are lots of disagreements and life issues like overdrawn checkbooks or fender benders. But mostly, life is pretty simple.

What you don’t really prepare for, however, are the wrinkles in your face and forgetting where you put your keys that come as the years pass. And you certainly don’t prepare for things like bowel obstructions and Parkinson’s Disease.

Just like 42 years ago, when I looked down at Court’s beautiful face and wondered if I’m going to be able to keep him alive, I now look at Bill, and he looks at me, and we wonder if we are going to be able to care for one another as we grow old together.

Our marriage vows were to love one another for better and for worse, and we are both committed to keeping those vows. It’s not always easy, but it’s always worth it.

Nana’s Whimsies is taking a break for a few days. I will be back next mid-week.

Have a great weekend.