I'm an heiress, who are you?

My fellow Downton Abbey devotees . . . take this quiz to find out which character you're most like. I'm Matthew Crawley, heir to Downton Abbey.

I Heart Candy

The best part about Valentine's Day is the seasonal candy. Why on earth don't they sell cherry ju-ju hearts year-round? I have to stockpile them for that inevitable hankering that comes along in July. And the closest thing I've found to cinnamon bears in the South (they don't exist here, it's a travesty!) is the cinnamon hearts sold at Valentine's. They're more like cinnamon gum drops than cinnamon bears, but they do the trick in a pinch. I never realized how seasonal - and regional - candy could be. . . and how that could really mess with my sugar addictions.

Racquet-ow!

I have a heating pad on my shoulder and my calves are on fire (no heating pad necessary for them).

Yesterday I played racquetball for the first time since, oh, I don't know . . . maybe it was that Racquetball, Bowling and Tennis class I took senior year of high school?

Despite the 20-year gap in play, I wasn't half bad yesterday, much to my pleasant surprise . . . and rather unfortunately for my friend who worked up a sweat chasing my wild swings.

The thing I love about racquetball is that - unlike tennis - you can be pretty terrible, but get lucky and keep a volley going. You never have to chase the ball down in the neighboring court or over the fence. The key to racquetball is knowing how to duck quickly!

Born to be wild

During my class at the gym this morning I was really hurting when we "Born to Be Wild" came on. The pain evaporated and I was smiling like an idiot through the entire track because the following image was running through my mind.

My hilarious 4-year-old nephew got a cardboard guitar that plays "Born to Be Wild" for Christmas and he's already got the moves down. Notice the knee slide and head banging and occasional lyrics he tosses out. At one point someone asks him why he has his eyes closed.

"That's what rock-and-rollers do!" he says, and keeps right on with the song.

My sister swears she doesn't leave the kid sitting in front of MTV for hours at a time, but I don't know where else he'd have learned these moves.

Maybe he really was just born to be wild.

Tied through time

People don't wear pocketwatches anymore. It's a shame. I looked high and low to find a chain that was the right length and weight for this beautiful watch with special history. The front and back are engraved with delicate flowers and the initials J.E.W.

Julia Etta (Saal) Wallace was my great, great, great grandmother - born in August 1857. Our names are similar, so are our birth months. And we sorta look alike:


Okay, maybe not. But the watch is lovely. The inscription inside says "JEW to MEW."

At some point, Julia Etta Wallace gave the watch to her daughter Mary Elizabeth Wallace (born 1884). That's my grandpa's maternal grandmother.

My mother had the watch but didn't wear it, so I asked if I could. The hands are slender, the tick-tick-tick hypnotic and the connection to women who came long before me is priceless.

Do my nephews have great taste, or what?

My sister says these awesome knee socks were my 9-year-old nephew's pick. Colby knows a good pair of toe-warmers when he sees one! I'm always in need of long socks to wear to bed in the winter - and around the house and under boots. I also got some psychedlic ones with flourescent skulls. They put a spring in my step.

Water torture

I was minding my own business Sunday afternoon, watching a funny new British TV show I discovered on Hulu when I heard the sound of water dripping aggressively onto metal. The good thing about living in a shoebox is it doesn’t take long to notice strange noises and locate them. Water was pouring out of the light fixture in my tiny washer/dryer closet. I grabbed a plastic bowl to catch the flow and ran upstairs to warn the guy who’s been remodeling my neighbor’s bathroom. (You’ve heard me talk about the elephant who lives upstairs. Well this past year she’s been living somewhere else so I’ve had a blissful reprieve from upstairs noises, until now.)

The contractor quickly shut the upstairs apartment’s water off and that solved the problem. He and his two sketchy plumber friends spent the next hour traipsing back and forth between my condo and the one upstairs, scratching their heads (and bellies) in consternation.

“We ain’t done nothing to cause this. All we done was change out one little drain and move the pipes over a bit.”

“I got no earthly idea-r why the water’d be coming down clear over here across the hall from the bathroom.”

They cut a hole in my bathroom ceiling. They found nothing.

The main plumber’s sidekick (possibly his son?) was clearly lacking a few marbles and had an impressive smoker’s hack that left me reaching for the Clorox wipes.

My neighbor’s contractor is apparently just a weekend remodeler because he can’t come back until Friday to fix the hole in my ceiling . . . and cut a much larger one above my washer/dryer so he can poke his head up in the rafters and try to figure out where the water’s coming from.

Adventures in home ownership. Tell me, why did I buy this shoebox again?

You can see the hole in the ceiling - I taped a plastic bag over it this morning because dust and insulation would fall out of it every time I opened the bathroom door.

P.S. You should check out "Spy" on Hulu.com. It's a much better version of the "Chuck" concept on American TV. Fun watching!