Happy Anticlimactic New Year

Here it comes, the champion of all anticlimactic moments: 12:01 a.m. January 1st. Think about it. How many weeks have you been planning or wondering what you will be doing on New Year’s Eve: a club; a party; which party; should I go out at all; will it snow; it snowed; will they plow? I’m not a big planner so I generally wait until someone makes a suggestion. And those suggestions usually consist of whose house we should all hunker down in, avoiding drunks on the road or, worse, police checkpoints looking for drunks on the road and harassing everybody! Overpriced bars and prix fixe dinners that are only marginally more expensive than the same meal on any other day but include a glass of cheap champagne… My husband has to work so I’ll go to one of several friends’ houses, eat and drink more than I should, and at midnight everyone will yell and hug and kiss then…what? Ever notice how awkward New Years Eve parties get after midnight? No one quite knows what to do, when to leave. It’s as if you went to a play and the curtain came down in scene 2. Is it over? Should I…mosey…up the …aisle now? Because climactic moments in life are not as definitive as those in the movies. Your life doesn’t fade to black, role credits, fade out. It keeps going. Scarlet O’Hara actually gets up the next morning to discover that tomorrow is not another day but is actually today… again. The Terminator; where does he go between saying he’ll be back and actually coming back? This is why I don’t want another dog even though my heart just melted at the new ASPCA commercial that knotted my gut in guilt. But I know that right after we ooh and ahh over the new puppy, the Kodak moment will end and the fight will begin: “You take the dog out.” “No, you take the dog out.” “I took the dog out yesterday.” “We didn’t have a dog yesterday”. “I was practicing.” This is why I think cooking is a waste of time. It doesn’t matter if you have spent six hours basting a turkey or three minutes nuking a pizza: dinner lasts ten to twenty minutes. And what about weddings? You plan those for YEARS and they are over in a few short hours. If I ruled the world there would be a law that an event needs to last at least 1/4th as long as it took to plan it. Clearly New Years Eve will never measure up to this standard. The entire event hinges on one second! That magical moment when we yell “One”! The two or three seconds that follow are filled with hugs and kisses, swills of champagne and then… well, it’s nothing but awkward. Still, I’ve always nursed a mild superstition that how you spend your New Years Eve influences how you will spend your year. Clearly, sitting in my house alone is not how I want this to go. So I will hop into the shower, do something with these nails, and get myself over to our friends’ house. And at a few minutes to midnight I will call my husband at work and thank him for giving up his holiday in favor of his paycheck, hoping that this is the year sacrifices like this no longer need to be made. And I’ll wish him a happy new year because, without optimism, there is no point. Happy New Year, everybody. Ten, nine, eight, seven, six….

Merry Chhhhhristmas

A few years ago, Eric Cartman and the other South Parkers sang “It’s hard to be a Jew on Christmas”. Well apparently, it’s not so hard anymore. The other night, when I asked my son if he’d be joining us at our traditional Christmas Eve Chinese dinner, he hesitated and asked what time we’ll be going. He wanted to be back in new Haven in time for “The Matzo Ball”. I’d never heard of it; the price of being of this now “older” generation. He said it included lots of Jews, a few clubs and lots of drinking. I could see why a 22 year old guy wouldn’t want to miss that and was secretly pleased that all the girls there would be Jewish. (It’s an old habit.)
This morning, my subscription to the NY Times on line delivered this missive explaining all the events for those of us who will not be sitting around trees, opening presents or still waiting for Santa, gorging on seafood (love that Italian feast!) or whatever traditional suppers your denomination indulges in.

Young Jews will be amassing at such parties as “The Matzah Bowl” featuring music from such groups as “Bands of the Tribe”, “Days Like Months” (Are there 40 of them? Did they ‘literally’ create the band in 6 days and rest on the 7th?). There’s “Jewcy” at Jewltide 7 and the “swankier” annual “Matzo Ball” with a pre-dance sushi dinner! Could you imagine my Bubby at a sushi dinner? Boy, have things changed.

When I was a little girl I worried that I would be too old to enjoy New Years Eve at the turn of the century. It seems my worries were prescient after all, only it is Christmas Eve that I’ve missed. I love sushi! We’ll probably have it tonight. But wouldn’t I love to be out there partying with all those young people, dancing to Dan Saks and the Funkadeli All-Stars at Jewltide 7? I’m sure my handsome, ready-to-party son would cringe if I showed up at Matzo Ball New Haven. I’d probably only last an hour. Still, I love that it is happening. Gone are the days when we would hide out in our houses waiting for the inevitable pogrom. Going are the days when you can accidentally run into all the other Jews in town at the one Chinese restaurant in the neighborhood; we have seven now and they are Asian Fusion. We’re here and we are noisy! Merry Chhhhhristmas everybody! (You have to get that “chhhh” in the back of the throat, like a cat coughing up a fur ball.)

Snoring

I awaken in the middle of the night to make one of several trips to the bathroom and find that I am unable to go back to sleep. I was actually tired at bedtime so I figured I wouldn’t need a little helper like Ambien or Lunesta. We have both brands and switch off occasionally, perhaps fooling ourselves that we are not becoming dependent. My husband took his. It is now three a.m. and he is snoring as if he had swallowed a bear. If I take a pill now I will be out until late morning, at least, and that is unacceptable since I want to make a 10 a.m. body sculpting class. I have a sufficient amount of flab now to think I can actually mold it into something, but that’s another story. So I get back into bed and try to incorporate the sounds – the hawks and snorts and gurgles and growls- into a meditation that will lull me to sleep. It doesn’t work.

I am not complaining. My husband has been exhausted lately having spent a month with some cruddy upper respiratory disease; three rounds of different antibiotics, steroids... the works. More often than not lately, it is I who is snoring and my husband is the one escaping the room in search of some quiet corner of the house. My sinuses have been horrible and the sounds I have been producing, well, let’s just say that I saw a moose in the woods outside looking lovingly toward my window. I know my snoring is terrible because, even unconscious, I can sometimes hear it. Have you ever been awakened by your own noise? I have been aware of strange, guttural lowing emanating from my head.

I am concerned because, as I have mentioned, we are going to spend a few days at my Mom’s house with the whole family. Now my Mom is a snorer. She won’t admit it but I have shared her room when visiting on occasion and she can get quite a buzz going. My brother is the champion snorer. The first time I heard him was one night when I was home from college. I heard a horrible crunching, grating as if something was chewing the walls and jumped into the hallway that separated our rooms fully expecting to see some large animal gnawing at his bones. But it was just him. So, with the four of us in one house I’m thinking I’d better alert the neighborhood watch… and bring the Lunesta.

Scapegoats and magic

I just got an email forwarded and it scared the pants off me! It began: “This belongs in the "Email Hall of Fame." How's this for apocalyptic literature. This was written by a pastor's wife in biblical prose as a commentary of current events. It is brilliant.” And then it proceeds to vilify Barak Obama, casting him as a blaspheming maniac who thinks he is God. It blames him for the shit this country is in while the very people who elected him to fix the mess he inherited are doing everything they can to prevent him from getting it done. “This is broken; fix it! Oh wait, we’re going to have to buy glue? Oh, I don’t know.” We are a two-faced nation. We will smile at you while fingering the knife pointed at your throat. We elect our officials to move us forward and they spend every ounce of energy they have to prevent any progress from being made. But a pastor’s wife can cleverly spew her venom and we applaud her backward glance at the last ten years because we are scared. I am offended by the hysterical literature that continually casts Obama as some sort of Godless spawn of Satan. I am sick of insidious, paranoid suggestions about his birth certificate. I am even sicker of being told what is right or wrong by people who believe the world was created in six consecutive twenty-four hour days!
If I have been more an “historic” Jew than a religious one it is because I have always identified with that survivor part of being Jewish more than the part that believes, word for word, in laws and documents that are man-made, have evolved or not evolved willy-nilly over the centuries, have spawned factions and hatred and mass murder and terrorism and fanaticism and the horrible situation the world finds itself in today. Time and again throughout history, people and ideas have risen up to move past these antiquated and superstitious notions. The Greeks, the Communists, Socialists… The problem is that they found such violent, self-serving, horrible ways to deliver their progressive messages; that they were conceived by brilliant minds and executed by less than brilliant PEOPLE! Greedy, arrogant, ignorant PEOPLE! So we fought back. Self- defense I understand. But clinging to a mythology that has two people magically created in a garden somewhere and never explains where their sons mysteriously found wives… did they procreate with the sheep; that turns wine into blood and matzoh into flesh; that pits one man against another in the name of “the One True God”. If there is only one, then what are we all fighting about? His name?
I don’t even know if this is making sense anymore. I’m just so angry at how easily people are distracted from what is really wrong with the world by the creation of a new scapegoat, in this case Barak Obama, the man who dared to step forward at this point in the world’s evolution. This needs to stop!

First Snow

First snow of the season and we go outside to clean off the driveway. We got about four inches so my husband goes for the gas-powered, self-propelled snow-blower that was a hand-me-down from my father-in-law who smartened up and bought a plow. My father-in-law will be 90 in a few weeks; I think this plow was his first toy. My husband hands me the better of two shovels we have in the garage. He revs up the engine, throws the snow-blower into drive and follows the self-propelling monster down the driveway. I start shoveling the steps. The snow-blower cuts a neat footpath down the length of our driveway and stalls at the bottom. My husband tries to fix it. I keep shoveling. Fifteen minutes later I have cleared the steps and have started on the driveway; my husband is still puttering with the dead snow-blower. He gives up, leaves it in the road and TAKES MY SHOVEL! I get the old rickety one and we work side by side for a while. He continually instructs me on the proper way to push the snow. After a few passes across the top of the driveway he goes back to the snow-blower. Instead of giving it to me, he puts the good shovel down like it is on reserve. The snow-blower starts! I put down the rickety shovel and take up the one that can actually lift the snow as he follows after the put-put-putterer. Halfway up the driveway the snow-blower stalls again. The snow is too wet and heavy and it keeps clogging the ancient machine. He TAKES MY SHOVEL AGAIN! We do this routine for a while. Every time the snow-blower stalls he TAKES MY SHOVEL as if he has dibs on it; as if it is beneath him to use anything but the best working equipment we have. I am not surprised by this behavior. He does it in the fall too, or at least he used to do it. Back in the day when leaf removal was a family activity, he & my son would fight over the good leaf-blower and I’d rake while they argued. Now that we have a great leaf-blower neither one of them lifts a finger; they just let me do the whole thing. I didn’t really mind this year. It was a warm autumn and it is a great leaf-blower. I would get into these almost Zen states with the heavy contraption strapped to my back and the vibration coursing through my body that would last for hours after I stopped. But the snow is another matter. That snow-blower scares me, with those powerful blades churning and getting stuck and threatening to cut off your hands if you try to clear out the clogs. I started it by myself once and thought I’d be sucked under its thick, squat wheels. And when it stalls (notice I don’t say “if”) there is no way to move that thing! So it looks like the snow-blower will remain my husband’s vehicle of choice and I will invest in a second “good” shovel. I just hope it doesn’t snow a lot!

'Tis the Season

I’ve never been much for Christmas music but I gotta tell you it’s been making me feel pretty good lately. Not the sappy stuff; that still makes me want to crawl under the table. But the cheery stuff; the stuff that says the year is almost over and a fresh start looms ahead; that stuff has been bringing a smile and a song to my lips. There is something so promising about the prospect of a new year. Never mind that it is really just “the next day”. It has a new title. You have to make a conscious effort to remember how to write out a check. You have to say to yourself, “It is 2010 now.” Anything can happen. Out with the old; in with the new. Nothing could be worse than this year I tell myself. It has to get better. I say that every year! So am I am optimist or an asshole?

I had exciting news today. My whole family is going on vacation together! The trip was on, then off, then on, then off and today it all just fell into place. We all said yes to the dates, the airline agreed, our calendars were clear and I pressed the enter button on the keyboard. Fifteen minutes later I got an offer for work... the day before I’m due to come home! It’s not a total disaster; just a one day overlap of the first vacation I’ve ever taken with my whole family – husband, kids, grandchild, mother, brother – with a little acting job. But still, come on! It’s Murphy’s Law, right? Or that other phrase I so love: “Man plans and God laughs”. Does everything good in life have to come with a sacrifice? I know there are people out there who are able to plan one thing and not have anything else fall apart. Maybe it’s coming. I hope so. And maybe this year. Meanwhile, I’m taking a vacation!

Another Day

Tiger Woods drove his car into a tree sparking lead stories on the news for over a week. Well, my husband once drove into a concrete barrier and I’ll bet this is the first you heard of it. Are we insane? Who cares? “Stop the presses; he’s getting a ticket!” My husband broke his hand! Top that, Tiger! Why is this news? Surely there must be something more important going on in the world? “He cheated on his wife.” Now there’s an original infraction. France’s Mitterand had both his wife and mistress at his funeral. (This tidbit ended up as a question on Trivial Pursuit! At least they acknowledge it is trivial.)

Angelina is having hot screen sex with Johnny Depp! Folks, wake up! This is their job! It shouldn’t be news to anyone that some people have better jobs than other people. This is one of those jobs! But don’t envy them yet. How do you know they don’t have bad breath? They’re both so skinny, surely their bodies are decomposing in some way and maybe they simply taste of decomposing flesh. You don’t know. Perhaps it is the worst job in the world! Perhaps they are secretly envying the guy who flips those burgers and has all-you-can-eat-french-fries-and-milkshake privileges.

And speaking of flip, I would like to flip off Brazil for even contemplating a lawsuit against Robin Williams for a bad joke on Letterman. It was a joke! You don’t like it? Don’t laugh.

Today was our 25th Wedding Anniversary. Now that’s important! We spent most of the day in bed…sleeping. My poor husband is in week three of the bug-that-just-won’t-die. We got wonderful cards and calls from immediate family members; well, all but one, over whose head I will hold this for a while and then let him off the hook as I usually do. Best laugh of the day came from my dear friend Davia who told me she and her husband were going to drink a toast in our honor as soon as they could liquefy the toast. It’s 12:04 a.m. and the big day has past. I’m tired again. (Still?) I check my email and the headlines that let me know the world is still as stupid a place as it was this morning only now it is raining and 60 degrees. Is it really December? I met a man the other day who thought it was silly that the Jewish New Year takes place in the 7th month of the Jewish year. Makes sense to me. I get older in June. My marriage gets older in December. Every day is important. The markers only help us appreciate the passage of time. I have to sleep now which will be difficult as poor husband is next to me hacking up a lung. It’s okay. I have it on good authority that I now snore. I hope he feels better tomorrow. Another day…

I Figured it Out

54. I Figured It Out
I woke up this morning and I had it all figured out: what I wanted to do today, what movies I wanted to see, who I want my husband to marry when I die… I’m not dying, but if I do I know exactly who he should marry. I won’t tell you because you’ll think I’m insane. He thought I was insane when I told him but I could tell by the smile on his face that not only did he think I am insane but that it’s a good idea. And then he went back to sleep.

I am taking a break from cleaning. I awoke refreshed at 9 a.m. after getting to bed at 3:00 with half of an Ambien in my system and thought about rushing off to the gym for a one-hour body sculpting class; one with weights and aerobics and the promise of absolute exhaustion at the end. Then I smelled my house and decided to put this energy into cleaning it; something that wouldn’t happen if I left it at the gym. I had a cup of real coffee instead of my usual decaf and tackled the loft/den first, washing upholstery, dusting, polishing but holding off on the vacuuming until the sleepy men in my life catch up. Whoo! I am charged. Next was the kitchen. What was that smell under the sink? It’s gone now. The scents of Pledge, Endust, Lysol, Febreze, Oxi-clean, Cheer and Snuggle are tickling my senses; lemon and vanilla, yum.

I can’t write for long. There are other rooms to conquer, dust mites to vanquish, odors to obliterate. I will not allow myself to think of the futility of it all; that no matter how clean I get everything right now it will be dirty again within a few days. Nothing matters except right now. Clean, clean, clean, go to a feel good movie and then maybe turn my attention to world peace. I can do it. Today I can do anything.

Thanksgiving-2009

My husband and I are about to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary, no easy task when you consider that no spring chickens walked down our aisle. He had been divorced and I had been conscientiously seeking out only men who would rather have nails driven into the soles of their feet than commit to a lifelong relationship. I had Chronic Rejection Syndrome, a condition in which the surest way to my heart was to tell me you were leaving. So it was odd when this terrific guy actually stayed. It was odder that I wanted him to. And here he is today, coughing and complaining in the throes of an upper respiratory event that has laid waste to his energy, his mood and our bank account for over two weeks; kicking me out of the room we shared until the plague sent me to sleep in my son’s abandoned room so I wouldn’t get it. But my son came home last night for Thanksgiving and asked for his bed back so I returned to my own bed along with Camille (Camillo?); surely he’s not still contagious! But he just kicked me out of there because my typing is bothering him. Swine flu? Who knows? It looks like we will toast our anniversary with chicken soup unless we kill each other first.

I just opened an email from Susan Bysiewicz, paid for by Friends of Susan 2010, which tells me she is running for something bigger than what she has now; perhaps Governor. It also tells me that she has much better friends than I do because they paid for her to send me this letter. Why this was necessary I don’t quite understand. To my knowledge email is free so where was the cost? Did she pay to have someone else write it? I don’t think so because she talks about her family, what they will be eating for Thanksgiving, and how frickin’ lucky she is compared to a whole bunch of us. Did she pay someone to send it for her? Because that is hard work: writing the letter, inputting the mailing list and pressing “Send.” Perhaps her friends are paying for Constant Comment, that service that keeps that junk mail coming on a more personal level.

In the letter she quotes “our dear friend Ted Kennedy” who quoted the biblical passage that inspired much of his great work: “To whom much is given, much is expected.” Her immediate actions on behalf of those less fortunate than she is will be to pray for the soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan and to light a candle for people like me; the unemployed and economically thunderstruck residents of CT who are watching our futures circle the drain and are wondering which welfare hotel we will retire to, assuming there will be any welfare left.

I want to make it clear that I kind of like Susan. (That’s how she signed the letter so I feel like I know her well enough to call her that.) I’m a registered Democrat and really believe I have a better chance of living somewhere other than a park bench if Democrats are in control, assuming they get off their asses and TAKE control. If the letter had been from anyone else, say a republican or a certain recently turned independent, I probably wouldn’t have even read their bullshit. But I have to say that the image of the Bysiewicz family gorging on “the turkey and stuffing, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, plus great dishes like kapusta and spanakopita from both the Greek and Polish sides” of her family while she is “thinking about the work that lies ahead to bring economic prosperity back to Connecticut” made me a little… sick. It made me think of all the families that will be wondering how they can stretch the leftovers to last for a week until the thought of reheated turkey, turkey sandwiches, turkey Tetrazzini, turkey hash and turkey surprise causes Junior to threaten Mom with bodily harm if she even uses the word “turkey” again!

She did utter (print?) a prayer “that all families can celebrate at this time in 2010 without the anxiety that has marked so much of the past year.” If I had any belief left in the power of prayer, I would say the same thing.

“From (Susan’s) family to yours”, and from me and mine, “have a happy and safe Thanksgiving.”

Plans

Congratulations to fan Ellie on the upcoming December wedding of her daughter. I too opted for a December wedding and our 25th anniversary is coming up in a few weeks. We have no plans.

My husband swears he proposed to me and I accepted. As I recall it, I was in the bathroom in a hotel room in the Catskills when I overheard him talking to my mother and telling her we were getting married. (He also swears that we planned to have a baby a couple of years later while I am sure it was an accident after a Christmas party. Plan a child? I can’t plan a vacation!) But back to the wedding and my fear of plans…

Faced with the prospect of a deadline, I opted for one that would require immediate decisions, quick action and not a lot of room for discussion. I gave my mother six weeks. December, I thought; very atypical. No blushing June bride will I be. My mother almost fainted at the suggestion. A December wedding? It would snow. Her own November 30th wedding years ago with a tasteful reception a few weeks later covered Brooklyn in a blanket of white that would conceal the streets until spring. But I envisioned annual excuses to get away to a tropical island to celebrate one anniversary after another. (Yeah, that happened.)

The white gown was out. I’d been to a wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral where the bride wore a gown that rivaled Princess Di’s even though the happy couple had been living together for seven years. You needed a vacuum cleaner to get rid of the dirt that was dished in those pews. I vowed I would never set myself up for that ridicule. So we opted (I opted; I don’t recall my darling husband ever doing anything but smiling and agreeing in those days) for a small, funky wedding. I wore a dress with fringes and a tiny hat with veil that recalled bygone days. Mom took Don to Orchard Street to help him find a suit. We hired a jazz pianist to play at the reception in a trendy Park Slope restaurant and asked him to serenade us down the aisle at the Garfield Synagogue nearby. I don’t believe the man had ever been in a synagogue. Since I hadn’t planned anything special, he was left to his own devices on what to play. Given the fact that it was December he figured seasonal music was appropriate. My guests were seated to “Silent Night”. I don’t remember what we walked down the aisle to; there was an incessant pulsating in my ears at the time. I should look at the video! Since I was gaining a seven year old son in the arrangement, we invited all our cousins’ children, but I didn’t plan for anyone to watch them. Hence, they got bombed on sugary Shirley Temples and trashed the bathroom.

All this is to say that I am not a good planner. I can throw a dinner together in 15 minutes and a banquet if I have the time but I can’t choose the date for the banquet so my parties are all fairly spontaneous. I’d love to take a vacation but know that as soon as I commit to being somewhere else, the phone will ring with work I can’t accept because I planned a trip. Financial planning? Forget about it! You can’t make something out of nothing. Funeral planning? My take on that is about to come out in video. It’s called “Planning Ahead” and I’ll let you know where to find it. I planned to get up and go to the gym this morning but it is now 1:30 and I have to go to NYC.

If I have learned anything about plans it is that “Life is what happens to you when you plan something else.” I also like “Man plans and God laughs.” So go with the flow and keep your snow shoes by the door.

P.S.- Yes, it did snow on our wedding day.

Frustrated

The other night I spent two and a half excruciating hours watching bad high school theater and I can’t get a job!
I watched a school with money and resources and at least 40 kids deeply involved in a drama program that taught them nothing over the course of an entire semester and I can’t get a job!
I saw teenagers performing material that they did not understand, directed by a teacher who clearly does not have the capacity to help them understand and I can’t get a job!
I live in a state where the criterion for teaching drama in schools seems to be possession of a Master’s Degree regardless of any ability on the part of that teacher to actually teach something, and I can’t get a job! Would you permit a dance teacher to teach math; an art teacher to teach chemistry? Why is just any teacher permitted to teach drama? Certification in English does NOT mean you are qualified to teach drama.
There is currently no teacher certification in drama which may partially explain why so many of these school programs are such a disaster, but I can’t get a job! Wake up folks! Theatre is not math or science. It is an art. It requires an understanding that goes beyond the written page. It requires talent. It is a communications medium and any teacher who is not qualified to impart the basics of communication to their students should not be teaching drama! But I can’t get a job!
Regardless of whether or not a student ever sets foot upon a professional stage, the advantages to be gained from learning how to speak, to empathize, to translate a playwright’s words into action, to understand something of the human condition, are immeasurable. These skills make better lawyers, doctors, and even teachers. You are shortchanging the students by not insisting on quality education in this communications medium. You are wasting their time and opportunity.
Admittedly, even certification in theatre would not necessarily mean one is qualified to teach theatre. It’s clear if a dancer can dance or if an art teacher can draw or paint. It is not so clear in theatre. But, to begin, a certification process should include directing and acting courses, theatre history, script interpretation, development of a vocabulary and a review process that tests potential teachers to see if they can communicate what they have learned.
And I can’t get a job! Frustrated!

Superstition

I’m not superstitious, generally speaking. I don’t’ really believe the team I root for will start to lose just because I turned on the game. I may think it but I don’t really believe it!

I don’t believe that anyone cares what shade of pale nail polish I wear but when I have an interview coming up, I generally opt for “In the Bag” over “Fed Up”, both colors on my manicurist’s rack. Obviously, this practice doesn’t work; I’m still unemployed.

My mother once called me when I was at college. She had run into a friend and spent several minutes singing my praises. She now said she wanted me to tie a piece of red thread – a red “bendel” – around my bra strap. She was afraid she’d given me a kenehurah: Yiddish for the evil eye, sort of. I think it’s worse in Yiddish. I can recall laughing at her request. I can’t recall if I did it. But I remember feeling very nervous as I walked to class.

I have a friend who goes ballistic whenever anyone sends him a chain letter that promises either good luck or extreme misfortune if you don’t forward it to at least X number of people. Now this one worked! But the reply I received from him was so scathing that it soaked up all the other bad luck that might have been waiting for me. I now make it a policy to delete without reading any email I get that even looks like it might be a chain letter. So, if you’ve tried to reach me later and I haven’t responded, try again, but only if didn’t involve a mandatory forward or not-so-veiled threat.

So I don’t really believe our meaningless actions spell dire consequences for things we can’t control. My mother’s back is fine although I step on cracks routinely. In fact, if I step on a crack with my left foot, I usually adjust my stride to step on another with my right as soon as possible. If I spill some salt, I refuse to toss some more over my shoulder because that would just mean one more mess to clean up and I don’t like to clean.

I don’t believe that if you drink and drive, the accident you have is bad luck. However, if a deer commits suicide by fender, your luck stinks regardless of your level of sobriety. So it is that I believe you can contribute to your luck by positive acts.

I just don’t know what they are anymore. Hmmmm…..

Uh Oh

Uh oh, things are going wrong; strange things; unimportant things; the trivial things I’ve come to rely on as markers of the passage of time.

They changed the clocks. Well, some of them changed themselves thanks to this world of connectivity we live in. But some need to be changed manually and it’s disconcerting when none of the clocks match because no matter how hard you try or how fast you run you can’t change them all with any accuracy. My alarm clock says wake-up. My wristwatch says I have an hour. Which to believe? They tell you to change your clocks at 2 a.m. which is a cruel thing to do. The VTR is now an hour and five minutes behind the TiVo which is 30 seconds behind the cable box because of the delay. I don’t know where those five minutes came from but they appeared some time ago, after a power outage I think.

It is one or two a.m. and all my points have mysteriously disappeared at my favorite game site. They’ll come back I hope; I worked very hard and wasted a lot of hours getting them.

I’ve been forgetting things, like what I did yesterday or five minutes ago. I forgot Monday.

And, of course, baseball season is over so there are no games to help me mark the passage of time. I am adrift.

All around me seem to be struggling through bouts of flu and sore throats and although my sinuses have been sloshing around for weeks I seem to be muddling through. I’m the only one in my immediate family who doesn’t have much to do but I’m the only one still capable of doing it. The others are in bed. So I blew and raked a half acre of leaves and discovered a muscle in my left arm that I swear wasn’t there before but now it hurts all the time.

I’m tired just about all day long until it’s time to go to sleep and then I wake up. Yesterday I drove my car up on to the curb in front of St. Stephen’s and I wasn’t trying to go to church. Luckily I didn’t kill anyone including myself and teetered back on to the pavement, the act of which produced enough adrenalin to get me home.
I made soup! My husband was home sick and I needed to make soup for him. This did not go wrong, exactly. Every once in a while I get a hankering for some taste and manage to put it together perfectly. In this case it was split pea soup. I learned there is no difference between a ham hock and a pork hock. I made the stock and tended the pot for almost hours. I brought him a bowl believing he would be instantly cured. He announced that split pea was not his favorite. I’d made the wrong soup! I glared at him. He ate two bowls. I don’t really know if he ate them because he liked it after all or if he was afraid I’d hit him.

Someone once told me that that there is great power in “I don’t know”; that in admitting and embracing the fact that you don’t know what’s coming you open yourself up to great possibilities. Someone else recently wrote “the years teach us much that the days will never know”. I try to look ahead as if I am looking back; as if the hard times are behind us and everything worked out well. There’s a family of woodpeckers, a squirrel and a chipmunk outside my window all playing some natural game of dodge near the base of the tree and the stone ledge outside my window. It’s a simple game of survival.

Bah Humbug

At the risk of inviting three ghosts to visit me tonight I have to say that I am already sick of Christmas. It is November 2nd and I stopped at Walmart to pick up some air-freshener. I found a very helpful employee who immediately stopped her conversation with another employee to assist me in my search. Where are the air fresheners,” I asked. “Let me show you”, she volunteered, and proceeded to lead me across the entire store. “I’ll show you the Christmas scents first,” she chirped, looking back at me and smiling like a tour guide. Not wanting to be rude, I smiled and followed, figuring we’d visit the other scents soon enough. Several blocks later we came to a display featuring scented candles in red and green promising all the smells of the Holiday season. But I didn’t want a candle; I wanted air freshener. So we set off again, eventually coming to an entire aisle filled with Glade and Airwick and Febreze products; just what I was looking for. She recommended the Febreze plug-ins and they were even on sale! ( The exclamation point represents her enthusiasm.) So I started looking at the boxes: Caramel Apple, Holiday Harvest, Cinnamon Spice, Pine… wait a minute! All the scents were for Christmas. “Is this it,” I asked. “Do you have anything for normal people?” The crack was out of my mouth before I could stop it. Luckily, the nice lady laughed. “Normal people,” she repeated, still laughing. I hadn’t meant to be rude but surely there are other people who don’t need the house to smell like trees or baking; other people who aren’t obsessed with Christmas cheer. Seriously! The Christmas season is almost as long as baseball season and that goes on forever!

Please note: I don’t hate “Christmas”. I hate the commercialism of Christmas. I hate the pressure to spend. I hate the need to spend! I hate that the entire economy is threatened with collapse if people don’t spend at Christmas. I hate that people will spend money they don’t have rather than show up empty-handed on Christmas. I hate that I am one of those people. I’d love to say, “Let’s not do Christmas” but for half my family, this is a big deal! If I play the Jewish card, it means ostracizing myself from the entire part of the family that is not Jewish. It means not seeing them when everybody else is bustling from house to house to pick up and deliver presents. And if I do manage to see them during the hustle and bustle of Christmas cheer, how can I do so with empty hands?

Can I give them air freshener?

The Calorie Corridor

I have to go out and buy some candy for Halloween. I do this every year. Now most of you are probably saying “Big deal, we all do that!” The difference is, in the 14 years I’ve lived here, no one has ever come Trick or Treating at my door. I live on a dark country road in an area known as “The Park”. There are only a few houses on my street and the wooded road is so steep even goats avoid it. But every year I worry: maybe this time.

When my son was younger, we used to leave a bowl outside our door with a note, “Help yourself! Happy Halloween” and we’d get in the car and drive around to an actual neighborhood. The neighborhood is on the fringe of “The Park”, accessible if we were to walk across the woods but who wants to do that at night on Halloween? So we’d drive down to the bottom of our hill, around the turn and up the next winding road to the neighborhood behind our house where quarter acre zoning and modest houses produced a bonanza for costumed kiddies and their goodie-bags. These people really knew how to throw a Halloween party! Every house would be decorated; cemeteries, ghouls, music, sounds… We stopped at a house the first year that had four ghouls seated at a card table, locked in an eternal game of poker. The hostess told us to check out the hand one of the ghouls was playing; a sort of in-joke for the adults. My husband walked over to the table and looked at the hand. My husband has glaucoma and doesn’t see anything to his side so he didn’t notice when the ghoul started to rise… and rise… and rise. He turned in time to see this apparition towering over him and he screamed so loud I think the entire neighborhood turned to look before breaking into hysterical laughter. That’s how we met Bruce; 6’5” in his stocking feet but, on this night, augmented by small stilts, he dwarfed my almost 6 foot husband. Bruce loved Halloween and would create a new display every year to keep us all guessing.

We’d return to our own home hours later to find our own bowl untouched; another bonanza. And I’d start eating.

The two months from Halloween to New Years are fraught with excuses to abandon all semblance of self-control. I call them “The Calorie Corridor”. Candy, turkey, sweet potato mousse, pumpkin pie, leftovers, and just as you’re getting the refrigerator back to normal, here come the potato pancakes and brisket for Chanukah followed by Christmas with the in-laws.

The kids are grown and gone now and the granddaughter is too young to appreciate Halloween yet, although my son and daughter-in-law did have her photographed in a pink bunny suit with both the ears and the puffy white tail on her head so it looks at one time like she had been swallowed by the rabbit and was being extruded, smiling and happy, out the other end of the alimentary canal. I will still put out the candy, just in case. Then I’ll turn out the lights and hide in a back room with the TV. The Yanks are in Phillie for game three. Baseball in November? Did I miss something?

Nothing to Say

Well, that was depressing. 6-1 against the team from the City whose biggest contribution of the last hundred years has been the cheesesteak, the very thought of which turns my stomach. I’m borrowing from David Ives who sums up Philadelphia in a brilliant one-act play called, oddly enough, “The Philadelphia”. It is not a good place to be. I have to remind myself that even when these guys lose, they are making more money than I have ever seen. So take a pill, go to sleep and remember, tomorrow is another day. And please don’t call to commiserate! I have nothing to say.

My favorite thing about the internet and email and this whole new way we have of communicating with each other is that you don’t have to talk to anyone when you don’t want to. When we have something to say we can say it at any hour of the day or night. Press a button and the message goes out to be received by recipients who will open the message when they want to. It is a non-invasive means of communication. It does not interrupt you with insistent ringing when you’re watching a movie. It does not want to make you beat out your brains over the same mind-numbing dialogue: How are you? I’m fine, how are you? I’m fine, how’s everybody else? They’re fine… and so on and so on and so on…

I am a graduate of the “No News Is Good News” School of Thought. But I come from a family who was only able to move off the same block because the telephone was invented. Then they called each other every day; actually, several times every day! What are you doing? Nothing. What are you doing? I’m going out. Call me when you get back. I just called to say I’m back… and so on and so on and so on…

And what’s up with “the call to say hello?” Did you ever get one of those? “Hello. I just called to say hello.” Does that mean the conversation is over? My Dad was great. I don’t think he ever had a phone conversation that lasted more than 15 seconds. If you wanted to speak to him you sort of had to be in the same room, and even then, you were competing with the NY Times Crossword Puzzle or a deck of cards for his attention. If you wanted his attention, you had to be interesting. He required constant mental stimulation so these asinine non-conversations were simply beyond his ability to cope. I admired his candor. Nothing to say? Okay, goodbye. Simple. Clean. I am cursed with his low tolerance for boredom but not blessed with his forthrightness. Seriously, if there is nothing interesting to report, let's make stuff up! Guess what happened to me; I robbed a bank! I drove through a plate glass window! I bungee jumped off the George Washington Bridge! I won the Nobel Prize; yeah, I was surprised too! When you start a conversation with, "I haven't spoken to you in days" and then go on to inform me that you have nothing to say, understand that perhaps THAT is the reason we haven't spoken. Since I didn't initiate the call, it stands to reason that nothing has happened to me either so there is nothing to talk about. Trust me, when I have great news, I will call! Until then, I will email. And I will know you are all right because I will continue to receive the forwarded jokes, solicitations, video clips, and old news in my inbox.

I know I am probably condemning myself with this post to a lonely life where no one ever calls me again. But the good news is we’re all on Facebook now! And there’s nothing mind-numbing there…right?

Tiny's Halloween

A few weeks ago I received an email from a young man, Doug, whose big sister used to babysit for my son when he was 5 years old. He had come across our short video, “A Nice Drive”, on You Tube and said “I know those people!” So he contacted me. He’s all grown up now and his passion is making short, scary videos for a website he started called “Scared Stiff”. Whore that I am, I immediately asked for work and, last night, drove into the woods of North Stamford to shoot a Halloween mini-special. The directions were vague but I plugged the address into Mapquest and was on my way. For those who don’t know the southwestern tip of Connecticut, it is an odd combination of major cities and dense forests with houses tucked among very old trees and narrow, winding roads. It is amazing how quickly you can drive from a bustling highway to a dark, lonely, haunted looking landscape with gnarly tree limbs hovering over slim slips of blacktop bound by New England’s famous handmade stone walls. There are few, if any, lights.
I zipped off the highway and headed north away from the city. Moments later I edged my car on to a narrower road, passing the Bartlett Arboretum, a museum of trees where we used to take our son for Halloween Festivals. Spectacular in the daytime, especially in the fall, it is just a dark forest at night. I drove slowly, reading the street signs. A line of cars followed closely, annoyed at my slow pace on what was to me unfamiliar territory. I found my street and turned left on to an even narrower road. None of the cars turned with me. The road snaked through the forest. It was a while before I saw the first mailbox: old, rusty, pitched to the side as if it were too tired to stand up. I read the number and realized I had a way to go. I drove slowly, reading the numbers on sporadically placed passing mailboxes. Bright lights came toward me as a faster car approached. I swerved to avoid him on a curve, blinded by his high beams. Alone again, I put on my own brights. That was better. The numbers continued to climb: 233, 357, 425… I was looking for 441. There was a stop sign ahead and another sign that said “Dead End”. Did I miss it? No. There was a smaller sign telling me to turn right to stay on this road. I did. An old mailbox with faded numbers told me I had reached my destination. But it was dark.
The director had told me to look for the blue night lights they would use to film outdoors. I saw none. I pulled into the tree-canopied driveway and looked toward the house, almost invisible from the road. I saw a man inside through the windows. I got out of the car and started across the lawn to ask if I was in the right place. The lawn was wet and muddy and my high heeled shoes sank into the ground. I couldn’t see where I was going and the man inside disappeared into another room. I thought, “What the hell am I doing?” and got back into the car. I pulled out of the driveway and rode a little further, looking for the blue lights. I tried calling the director but the call went right to voice mail. I checked my instructions; that was the address. I drove back to the house, pulled into the driveway again and noticed the driveway went around to the back of the house. Doors locked, I followed the path. Around the back I saw the lights. Relief swept over me and I felt a little foolish at my anxiety. I approached the house.
The door was unlocked and I let myself in. It was an old door, with latches instead of doorknobs. This house had to be 200 years old! The ceilings were low with wooden beams that were dark and rough hewn as if they had been hand-cut. “Hello?” No answer. I entered a sparsely furnished, small, dark kitchen. The smell of cat hit my nostrils. Beyond the kitchen was a tiny dining room. There was plaster on the floor and a portion of the ceiling revealed the wooden supports above. Everything was old, dark, creepy. “Hello? Anybody here?” Okay, I thought, this is really stupid. If this were a movie, this would be the part where I start screaming to the girl to get out of there. Could this be an elaborate prank? Could the little boy I knew, and whose whole family I knew… Could he have turned out to be an axe murdered? There was an indoor porch beyond the dining room and beautiful beveled glass doors revealed a living room beyond them where the man from the window sat watching TV. I knocked. “Hello?” He got up and walked past me to another door. I knocked again. “No, over here.” “What am I doing,” I thought. I just walked into a stranger’s home. It’s just him and me and THIS IS NOT DOUG!” How did I know this was not the person I was looking for? I hadn’t seen him in almost 17 years. I knew because Doug was white and the man on the other side of the glass door was black. He looked at me and smiled. “Am I in the right place,” I asked, trying to sound …not stupid. “Yes.”
I’m writing this, so obviously you know I’m okay. I was in the right place. This was not “Scream 80” or “Saw 253”. The guy in the house was the house-sitter and was playing the lunatic in the script. Everybody else was late. Doug, I learned, was always late. He showed up about fifteen minutes later and we shot the video. Check it out on www.scaredstiff.tv starting next week. It’s called “Tiny’s Halloween”, about a trick-or-treating psychopath. Great neighborhood for it. Great house for a horror story. Just don’t ever ask me to spend a night there.

Good Morrrrninng

Good morrrrninng! The cable guy rang the doorbell at 8:15 a.m. for an appointment that was supposed to take place between 9 and 11. Is that a first? Under their old policy, the guy called on the way to the house; if you didn’t pick up the phone, he assumed you weren’t home and cancelled the appointment. The last time he came I had been in the bathroom when the phone rang and missed the call. By the time I got a customer service rep. on the phone they had cancelled my appointment. So this time, I made sure the phone was right next to me, like an alarm clock! But today, no warning, 45 minutes early and the two of us, me and my husband, in a dead sleep, he rings the bell. “Sorry I’m early.”

I had taken a half an Ambien when sleep seemed like a foreign concept at 11:30 p.m. and my head felt like it was in a diving bell at the bottom of the ocean. I took the Ambien because I had had two cups of regular coffee the previous morning to get me ready to corral my five nine-year-old students at Hebrew School and that’s enough real coffee to keep me awake for several days. I use the word “students” lightly. The dictionary describes a student as “a person formally engaged in learning; any person who studies, investigates, or examines thoughtfully.” So, by definition, these are not students. They are more like rabid kittens. Child A was absent; child B had something up his nostril that was infinitely more fascinating to him than anything I was saying; child C contemplated her cookie as if the Hebrew letters were somehow encoded into the chocolate chips; child D used every question as a prompt for a lengthy story that was in no way related to the topic; and child E, bless his bright little face, was with me every step of the way. I love that child. Anyway, the reason I needed the coffee in the morning that led to needing the Ambien that night was that, on the previous night, I stayed up to watch the Yankees beat the Angels in the bottom of the 13th inning and was so engrossed in the game that it was 1 a.m. when I suddenly looked up, inquired “What day is it?” and realized I had to teach in the morning. So, from 1:30 – 2:00 a.m. and again from 7:00-8:00 a.m., I sweated over ways to relate the Israelites receiving the Ten Commandments to the lives of these sleepy, disheveled urchins before me. I asked a simple question: what activities to you engage in that have rules? I figured they’d come back at me with the rules of the sports they played; soccer, softball; the things my kids had done when they were this age. None of them plays an organized sport! Come on Moms and Dads! Get these kids moving! No wonder they’re nuts! Child E thoughtfully offered “Track”. Are there rules in track? I don’t know them. They say “Go” and you run, right? Is “run around the circle” a rule? Child C immediately thought of the school cafeteria and the life altering mandate, “No food fights”. This prompted child D to launch into a lengthy description of his lunch while child B picked his nose.

But I digress. My husband handled the cable guy who “fixed” the problem for the fourth time while I put my two-ton head back on the pillow. At 8:30, with the TV working, he sat down to watch. I slogged through a deep-dream in which I crawled out on a ledge to watch a high school presentation of a scene from “Two for the Seesaw” which was then mis-explained by a white-haired pedant who knew nothing about Gittel, or Gibson or women in general, causing me to raise my hand to challenge his assumptions and thus losing my balance to that I started to tumble off my ledge which woke me up. My husband was by now returning to bed. It was now 10:30 and my head was almost light enough to pick up. I lurched downstairs to the kitchen for a cup of decaf, and opened my computer.

Many thoughts swim through my head. “They call baseball ‘the game of inches’ but isn’t all of life that way? It doesn’t take much to tip a scale one way or the other.” “Find some time to go to Florida”. “Pay that stack of bills on the table.” The leaves outside my window are starting to turn. Life is slipping by. This can’t be what all that studying was about. And yet it is. This is my life.

Surprise

My in-laws‘ priest called during dinner. As soon as I saw the caller ID I was on alert. When he told me who he was I was sure someone was dead. But it was good news; an invitation to a surprise party being given by the Holy Name Society in honor of my father-in-law’s 90th birthday. (It’s safe to write that here. Neither of my in-laws has any access to nor interest in computers.) Why anybody would surprise a 90 year old man is beyond me but it’s a really nice gesture. I just hope the shock doesn’t kill him!

I’ve always loved surprises but have never been the victim of a successful one. I gave my husband a surprise party once and managed to get him to the restaurant without arousing the least bit of suspicion… until we pulled in to the parking lot and grabbed a spot next to his parents’ car, identifiable because they placed an orange ping pong ball on their antenna so they would always be able to find their car in a parking lot. Still, he seemed genuinely surprised. His parents never went anywhere so he figured some other nut must drive the same car with the same ball. It’s amazing what the mind can ignore.

My husband tried to surprise me for one of my birthdays and it was an unmitigated disaster. It started when he drove me into NYC and delivered me to a beautiful room on a high floor of the Marriott Hotel overlooking Times Square where he informed me that he was only keeping me company for a while because my mother’s plane was late. I looked at him. “We’re in this hotel room and you’re not staying but my mother is on her way?” Okay…. Mom’s excitement about surprising me in NY had collided with her anxiety about traveling and she fainted on the plane causing the airline to re-rout the flight to Baltimore for her medical emergency. Convincing them that she was all right and needed to get to New York, she arrived in time for us to race to the five-star restaurant she’d chosen for my birthday, scarf down a hasty gourmet dinner with a side of indigestion, and grab a cab to the theatre to see the hottest show in town. She had paid a scalper $500 for two tickets. I thought she was nuts. The cab got stuck in traffic and we had to run the last two blocks to the theatre. The lights were dimming as we ran up the stairs to the next to last row of the balcony. My Mom had just turned 72 and I would turn 50 the next day if I survived the climb. We collapsed in our seats as the overture began. Had the show not been hilarious, we probably would have gotten thrown out because, finally seated, we got hysterical. The insanity of our marathon hit us and we got hysterical. Luckily, it was “The Producers”, so our hysteria was masked by genuine hilarity. But, in truth, we would have laughed as hard if the play had been “Death of a Salesman”. The disaster continued the next day when my brother picked us up in NY for the drive back to CT and the surprise party. His car overheated in Harlem, we had to find a gas station. We got back on the road and the engine light came on again. His AAA card had lapsed. His EZ Pass expired so we got pulled over at the bridge. My cell phone did work so we called my husband to explain why we were several hours late. Now he was hysterical because the house was full of people missing their “surprisee”: me. No one yelled anything when I finally pulled into the driveway. Some of them were leaving when I arrived; others would drift in and out over the next several hours; he’d planned an open house! How can you have a surprise open house?

I do remember a great surprise party that my cousin’s wife gave for him. He opened the front door to his house and was literally blown backward on to his ass and his doorstep when everybody yelled. He was just 35 and he spent most of the night trying to recover. Dad’s going to be 90! Is this really a good idea? Time will tell. I’d put an orange ball on my antenna but they don’t make cars with antennas anymore. If he doesn’t make it, at least we won’t have to look for a priest. He’ll be right there… looking very guilty.

By the way, if you speak to Dad, DON"T SAY ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!

Stuck

I’m stumped, stymied, stuck in the muck of my mind and I can’t get out! Days have gone by. I have started several posts and have been so bored by them all that I have refused to publish them. I apologize, faithful readers. My Mom has now called twice to see if “everything is all right”. I’m fine; I’m just not very interesting these days. Perhaps someone should invent one of those pendants they advertise, only instead of calling for help when you’ve fallen or are ill, you could press the button for inspiration. Someone will come on the line and in a voice filled with objectivity will ask if you have an emergency and you will cry from the depths of your soul, “Yes! I am boring!” And minutes later, something interesting will be delivered to your door.

Okay, a funny thing. Because we live in a society where famous people who can’t speak their native language very well (that being English) are constantly called upon to comment on the TV or radio, I get at least a daily chuckle. Today’s chuckle came courtesy of the coach of the NY Jets, a stupid thing in and of itself since the Jets play in New Jersey. Anyway, he was talking about the recent lapse in the defense, and said they failed to “go for the juggler.” Now I am a sports geek; Ill watch any spectator sport, especially if there’s nothing else on, and I watched the Jets vs. Miami Dolphins on Sunday. I did not see a juggler! Was there a giant Dolphin Mascot that juggles balls on the sidelines that Gang-Green failed to take-out, thus demoralizing the team Miami offense so they would collapse? Or could he have meant they failed to “go for the jugular”? Nah, too simple.

My Dad, God bless him, taught me to speak English by the constant-correction-at –dinner-time-mode. It was annoying and frustrating as I had a lot to say and he was always interrupting, but I learned a lot and was ultimately grateful. I do not keep my jewlery in a safe in case of a nucular attack. A split infinitive sets my teeth on edge. And no one will ever go with him and I anywhere!

Kids today seem to be taught to write without regard to spelling or grammar, encouraged just to get their thoughts down on paper. Perhaps that’s my problem. I shud just rite wat I feeeel and stop wurying about the detales.

Game 2

I have created a monster. First let me tell you that my body hurts from head to toe. No, it is not the result of exercise or injury. It is the result of single-handedly willing the NY Yankees to win this second game of the ALDS. Or so I thought. As Mark Teixeira cruised into the waiting arms of his teammates at home plate, my husband emitted the first sound he had made in well over two hours. I thought he was mad. I thought he was bored. But in true fanatic fashion, he had struck a bargain with the forces of fate; if he didn’t talk, they would win. They won, and he cracked up.

I know we’re not the only ones who think our behavior has any influence on the outcome of a game. Sure, we’re told “change one thing and you change the world”. But not really! There is no rational explanation for a ‘rally cap’. And yet millions of people turn their hats inside out in the hopes that looking stupid will somehow lead to a victory. But is that so stupid after all? Laughter releases tension. So perhaps an athlete, walking to the plate with the game on the line, looks up at the spectators looking so dopey with hats turned every way but right, realizes how silly it is to be nervous, relaxes and hits it out of the park. But that doesn’t explain the rest of us idiots at home. “They’ll win if I don’t look.” “They’ll win if I leave the room.” “They’ll win if I keep my glasses on top of my head.”

I’m not insane. I know I don’t have anything to do with it. I know that a Yankee victory will not change my life although it might make me feel better for a while. I know they can’t hear me when I tell them that a strikeout and a doubleplay will get them out of bases loaded and nobody out but it feels SO good when they get it! I know the energy I expend is wasted energy. But I have to go now. Boston is at bat and the Angels need me.

Headlines

An alarm clock is an unnecessary item for the chronically unemployed. I wake up every hour or so throughout the night anyway, look over at the bright red digital read-out (Have you ever noticed how that LCD can light up an entire room? I cover mine with unfiled papers so that looking at the time requires effort) and calculate how many times I will have to turn over to make it to the morning. Turning over also requires effort because I sleep with a pillow at my side to keep me from hurting my lower back so that every time I want to roll over I have to move the pillow. I have a stupid pillow: one of those memory foam things that weighs 10 pounds and when I flip it to the other side I knock everything off my nightstand, causing my husband, in his own semi-sleepless state, to yell "Jesus Christ!" when everything on the nightstand crashes to the floor. Then I try to lie there without moving at all so I don't disturb him again and my back starts to hurt. When morning does come, exhausted by the lack of sleep, I calculate how much longer I can lay there before anyone will miss me. I pick up a mental machete to cut through the fog that keeps coherent thought at a distance, and try to remember what day of the week it is. Today is Wednesday. I have to get up tomorrow for a doctor’s appointment. Roll over.

It is 8 a.m. and my husband is already on the couch in the den with his laptop. I think he is playing Solitaire but he could be trying to put himself back to sleep with Facebook. Not to be outdone, I get back into bed with my own laptop. I figure one game of solitaire will put me back to sleep; I am already bleary-eyed. It doesn’t work. Two hours and 10,000 Pogo points later (courtesy of McDonald’s McCafe Express Wednesdays) I am bored to death with games. I start looking at the headlines on my home page:

“Roman Polanski loses first round in extradition battle”. Many thoughts spring to mind; things like “Enough already” and “Run, Roman, Run”. Now I don’t believe he can run; he’s locked up, right? But wasn’t there already talk, years ago, about getting him back to the states to get rid of these charges once and for all? There’s a documentary out there that lays all the groundwork for dismissal. Of course no one is in favor of pedophilia… except perhaps pedophiles… but really, what kind of mother brings her nubile daughter to the home of a famous director, leaves her there unattended, and doesn’t know what she’s putting into motion? Did she think they’d have Ovaltine and a nice chat? Puh-leeze!

"Big Japanese brands readying 3-D flat-screen TVs". Just what we need. As if HD weren’t enough, now the images have to jump right out at you. I turned on our 47” LCD-display-monster the other day and the colors were so vibrant it took me fifteen minutes to realize I was watching an actual football game instead of my son’s X-box. I kept wondering why the game console wasn’t working. He recently moved in with a friend near school whose living room is about the size of a master bathroom. In it they have a TV so large and bright you can watch it from the yard more comfortably that from the sofa. Make that 3-D and, if a linebacker comes at you, you will actually bleed.

“What would Jesus do…on Facebook?” Okay, I have nothing. I’m actually speechless.

"ML Baseball post-season: Follow the action online." Why would I do that? I still can’t figure that out. If I have access to a television and can watch it for free, why would I want to follow the action online. I’m already getting the action. I have, on occasion, tried to get the action when I was away from a TV but in possession of a computer. It costs money! Once again, why would I want to pay for something when I can get it for free? So I listen to the game on the radio and still have my computer available for, say… work! And the beauty part of that model is that I get to use a part of my brain that would be otherwise dormant: my imagination. Like reading a book, listening to the radio conjures up visions and images that sometimes even more incredilble than the real thing. Case in point: sports moderators on TV are forty time more boring than those on radio! Still, the Yankees start the playoffs tonight against a hopefully exhausted Minnesota Twins. I’ll be watching… on TV… on my 47” LCD-display-monster… Is there time to get that in 3-D?

Life Expectancy

My mother thought it was a good idea to forward an email to me containing a “Human Life Expectancy” chart. You simply plug in your biological age and it tells you when you are going to die. The subject line of the email says “Not Humor” in case you are one of those who automatically delete the thousands of jokes that circulate cyberspace, landing on your screen so many times you’d swear they were written by Henny Youngman. There is nothing funny about this chart. It is simple. It is cold. I have 20 years and that’s it. My husband has 18 years but, since he is three years older than I am, that means I only have two years without him to look forward to. Not that I am looking forward to being without him, but if it happened when I was younger, then maybe there’d be some fun in my future. As it stands, I see a vista of lonely evenings, watching TV (Thank God for TiVo), waiting for children and grandchildren to call… Oh, God! I’m turning into my Bubby!

This chart pissed me off! 20 years? Why, I have a good mind to kill myself right now just to prove it wrong!

Life is so short! I’m just starting to get the hang of it. My 20/20 hindsight has kicked in and I see every mistake I ever made so clearly! Perhaps the approaching end is a good thing. Only 20 more years until I get to start over, reincarnated as someone who gets their shit together at an early age. Or I could come back as a slug. I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be an animal, with no concerns other than finding food, birthing babies and dodging predators.

20 years, hmmm… That’s 20 Christmas dinners:
1. Ham
2. Turkey
3. Chinese food
4. Maybe a goose
Repeat above list 4 more times.
20 birthdays
20 times to say “I don’t want a party”
20 times to say “I don’t need anything”
20 bad gifts
20 anniversaries (Oops, 18. See above.)

Perhaps knowing your expiration date is a good thing because you can plan. For example, Mom’s expiration is in 7 years. I will make sure nor to leave the country. I will not need life insurance until 2028. Think of the fortune I’ll save in premiums! I’ll take out a billion dollar policy on my husband in 2026. Who cares if it costs $10,000 a month? It’s a short-term investment! Perhaps someone will email me a chart that tells me what month we will all die! Then I can further focus my investment on that season, knowing that these things can’t be all that specific. If I make enough on him I won’t even need insurance of my own to leave an inheritance for my kids. Or better yet, I’ll insure myself for their inheritance and spend all the money I get from my husband on travel and fancy restaurants for me and my aide!

It’s liberating to know exactly when you will shuffle off to Buffalo or whatever it is one does to that mortal coil! To know that I won’t have to eat cat food well into my 90s. It’s liberating, I tell you… and it’s bullshit.

Letting Go

I spent the day painting. No, don’t get all excited. I didn’t suddenly develop an new artistic skill. I have trouble drawing a line. No, my son is moving into his friend’s apartment and I painted his room. Isn’t that what all good Moms do? He’s busy going to grad school and getting his life together and I’m doing not much so it just made sense. This way he gets to move into the apartment sooner and I get to clean his room. It’s not that I want him to move out. Well, I do and I don’t. He’s a man now and that fact gets in the way of another fact: that he is and always will be ‘my baby’. He’s reading this now and groaning. I get it. Mothers are supposed to stand back and let their kids go off into the world. We trained them for it and there comes a time when we need to see if the training took. It isn’t always easy to tell. No matter how many time you tell your kids about the stupid mistakes you made when you were their age, kids need to make mistakes of their own. In fact, if you tell them too specifically about some of the stupid things you did they’ll use the information as a primer and do the same stupid things. “Hey, that sounds cool; I think I will jump off that bridge! My Mom survived.” Sounds reasonable. Trust me: never admit to your child that you ever tried drugs! Any drug! You never took so much as an aspirin for pain! Your very survival is an enticement. Never tell them about the tenement apartment building with the bathtub in the kitchen and the rats in the corner dumpster because they will interpret that as permission to live in the dumpiest apartment in the worst neighborhood. “My Mom survived.” Never tell your kids that you lived on bologna sandwiches & coleslaw for a semester because they will not hear the part about how sick that made you. Don’t tell them how you hitchhiked to classes because they will only laugh at the story of the guy with his open fly and visible parts. Never tell them how you neglected to study for your finals freshman year and were about to freak out when the National Guard opened fire at Kent State half a country away and your exams were cancelled because they WILL NOT STUDY! Just tell them you love them and, if they aren’t already grimacing, tell them you want them to be happy. And paint their room so they know you mean it… even if it kills you.

Superwomen

What is it about being a woman that forces us to believe we could or should “tote that barge and lift that bale”? Are we stupid? Guilty? Superhuman? All of the above? That case of water, the economy-sized jug of laundry detergent, the 36-pack of sodas or beer; why don’t we just leave them in the car until someone stronger comes along? Well, you can’t leave the milk; it’ll spoil, as will the gallons of ice-cream that were on sale, the 24 pound turkey or roast… Can’t leave the water in the car because it’s in plastic and if the plastic gets heated up then the water will give you cancer. (I left a case of water in the car not too long ago, waiting for ‘someone’ to bring it inside. After a month, I gave up and returned it to the store so I wouldn’t get cancer. And yes, I carried it in myself.) Can’t leave the soda or beer cans; they’ll explode! And that’s just the big stuff. If you have an assortment of items, it means rifling though the bags to find the perishables and by that time it just isn’t worth the effort so you just take everything. Even if you just have bread and eggs and other staples, it starts to add up! Put enough plastic bags on your arms at one time and they will cut into your flesh like you wrapped them in barbed wire.

It stands to reason that we should make several trips from the car to the kitchen, so why don’t we? If you’ve been reading my posts you know that my mother turned 80 this year. She lives in a one story house and parks the car about ten feet from her front door. You would think that making several trips to unload groceries would not require a lightning bolt to the brain. And yet she persists in loading up her arms with as much as she can carry in a single trip. Do we consider it a challenge? A waste of time? A waste of energy? I chose to live in a house on a hill where it is one full flight of steps just to get to the front door. One trip up those stairs is enough to make my heart thump. Several trips in a row make it feel like it is trying to crawl out of my body through my throat on a cushion of battery acid! So minimizing the number of trips is a desirable thing, right? But not when you are laden with the groceries!

Then there are the other things we do that are just plain stupid. A friend of mine is nearly crippled because she thought it was a good idea to help her husband load his keyboards and amps into and out of vans and performance venues. There is a reason that the word “roadie” is different than the word “wife”. And yet I’ve done it too. I’ve schlepped a keyboard that weighs as much as I do from one job to another and I don’t even play! I once bought an exercise bike and inched the box out of the back of my car, lowered it to the driveway, walked it corner to corner across the path and then tilted it end over end over end up two flights of stairs to the den so I could exercise before anyone else came home! By the time anyone else came home, I had done enough exercise for a week and I hadn’t even opened the box!

And here comes winter. Ask a man to shovel the driveway and he will buy a snow blower or a truck and a plow. Ask a woman and she will break her back with the shovel. (I would love to use the snow blower but I don’t have the strength to get it out of the garage.)

So what’s wrong with us? Aside from the threat of spoiled groceries, why do women routinely overexert themselves to get things done? Perhaps it is because we can’t stand having to rely on anyone else. Perhaps it is because we don’t believe we should have to rely on anyone else. Perhaps, as physically impossible as it is to accomplish certain tasks, it is easier than waiting for someone else to do it. Perhaps it is because we can’t stand the thought of being dependent or weak. Perhaps it is because we just don’t believe that we are not invincible. We’re not, you know. I have the scars to prove it.

I hear my husband vacuuming in the other room as I write this. I feel guilty that he is cleaning while I write. I should go help him. He won’t move the sofa by himself.

Snob

Two people called me yesterday to ask if I was all right. It had been five days since my last blog post and they were concerned. Thank you! I am not dead or wounded. I am just boring. I couldn’t think of anything.

The truth is I’m a snob. There. I said it. Tomorrow is Yom Kippur so you can consider this my apology to the world. I’m a snob. I have no tolerance for mediocrity and since mediocrity is what most people are content with, I simply can’t cope.

I heard an ad on the radio… (I do that a lot and report it to you as if it were a revelation; the voice of God giving me ideas. It is not. It is WCBS radio which I put on in the car primarily to make sure I’m not heading into any traffic jams but which gives me the opportunity to hear the same news over and over again several hundred times depending on the length of the trip. I would listen to music but once again, I can’t stand mediocrity and have you listened to a music station on the radio? You’d think nothing new had been written since 1965. Anyway, yesterday’s news was the Town of Bedford is suing Donald Trump and Bellweather Estates because they erected a tent without permission; twice!; it had NOTHING to do with Kaddafi! Cough, cough… and the Yankees face the Red Sox, pre-game at 6:30, the Yanks magic number down to five but it would be tough because Joba was on the mound and hadn’t won since August 6th while John Lester would pitch for the Sox and he was 11 and 2; Post mortem: Joba was great; Lester sucked, nyah nyah nyah, raspberry… and Iran has more nukes than they admitted …Really?... etc. etc. etc. There was more but I forget. They rarely ever report anything very important. There’s an entire world out there and they bring it all to you within 22 minutes including ads so they have to be leaving something out, right?)

Anyway, the ad I heard was an intensely serious, romantic, passionate deep voice introducing the latest book by Nicholas Sparks which was already “soon to be a movie” so why anyone would buy the book is beyond me except if you take the bus or the train and so desperately need to escape from those dismal surroundings that you’d stoop to disappearing into mindless drivel.

I don’t mean to single out Mr. Sparks. I’m a little envious that he can turn out a bestseller a little faster than I can bake a cake. I started one of his books once. I had seen “The Notebook” and liked Ryan Gosseling so much I figured I’d try a book. Hello? Is there a connection here? The thing that makes decent movies out of books like that is that you can cut out all the words! (I screamed that.)

There are some books that, when you turn them into movies you have to lose some of the beauty, many of the ideas, sometimes whole characters and storylines. Corelli’s Mandolin, Exodus, The French Lieutenant’s Woman, etc. I just read Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific; you almost have to use a magnifying glass to figure how they got “South Pacific” out of these pages. Not with these cotton-candy books. The story is a one-page outline and the rest is blah blah blah. They are accessible! Their vocabulary would not challenge a fourth grader. I read a magnificent book by deBernieres (the name escapes me right now; sorry) that did and did not require me to have a dictionary on hand at all times. It did in the sense that I didn’t know at least 25% of the words he used. It didn’t in the sense that each word was so well chosen for its sound and placement as well as its meaning that you really didn’t need to stop reading and look it up to know exactly what he was talking about. It was brilliant! I can’t do that!

So, at the crux of my snobbery is a conundrum: If I can’t write as well as the greatest writers in all mediums, then I can’t write at all. And that is why I disappeared for five days. I was reading.

Attack of Angry Forest

The land around our house was carved out of the forest almost 25 years ago and ever since then the forest has been trying to take it back. For the last month it has pelted the house with acorns and branches. The barrage goes on all day and all night, peppering the roof, the deck, banging against the grill and the wheelbarrow, and God forbid there’s a wind, you’d think the trees were simply coming after you! I have not set foot in the backyard in over a month. It is too dangerous. Remember that scene in ‘The Wizard of Oz” when they get the trees to throw the apples? It feels like that but there are about a hundred acorns for every apple and they really hurt! When we first moved in 13 years ago, we got sunlight on the lawn until the late hours of a summer afternoon. Now, we’re lucky if we get a single shaft of light after 1 p.m. According to the satellite photos of the area, we are not here. There were two massive trees with bases that are at least 6 feet in diameter, with trunks that split into huge trunks sharing a common base: Siamese Trees! Now there is one, cabled at the top to keep it from falling on the house that it dwarfs. We had to put the other one to sleep after an 85 foot limb broke off, crashed across our lawn, killed the basketball hoop and attacked the Prius. As if the trees aren’t enough, the previous owner of the house was a landscape architect and planted perennials everywhere. This was a recurring treat at first; all through the spring plants and flowers would sprout and surprise us with colors we never had in Brooklyn! And they would grow, and grow, and flop over, and the weeds would come, and we would pull them, and pull them, and they would keep coming. And then the leaves would fall, and fall, and fall, and we would rake and blow them back and I would pack boxes and boxes of autumn leaves and ship them off to a nursery school in Florida so children who didn’t know what a season was could experience the joys of playing in autumn leaves and pulling ticks off their skin and flirting with Lyme Disease. The leaves we didn’t ship away were blown into the forest until the perimeter was so high we couldn’t blow them anymore so our plot of land would get a little smaller every year. But now it seems the forest is no longer content with the slow reclamation of the property via weeds and leaves. The trees are attacking us with everything they have. An acorn, falling from a hundred-foot tree is a deadly missile. When a branch falls, the earth moves. We have been lucky so far. The branches that have done the most damage have fallen the days following social gatherings, as if to say they will tolerate us on their property but no one else. They just don’t like parties! And so we hunker down in the house and wait for the trees to exhaust their supply of projectiles. It will be winter soon and the leaves and acorns will be gone and it will be safe to venture outside again… to shovel the snow. Remind me why I moved to New England.

Burn Baby Burn

My husband is looking at his stomach and wondering where all that hair came from. I’m looking at my stomach and wondering where all this stomach came from. We joined a gym. Lesson one about gym memberships: weight loss and beauty do not occur because you have paid the initiation fee. I’ve been working out like a demon although how an actual demon works out is anyone’s guess. But I can tell you, it does hurt like hell.

It is hard to reconcile how good I feel after working out – lithe, strong, relaxed- with the person who hobbles to the bathroom the next morning, my muscles shrunk to the size and elasticity of those blue rubber bands that keep lobsters from being able to open their claws. Who knew the spaces between the bones in my hands and feet could be filled with so much pain! Now if I could just stop eating!

I come home after 30 minutes on the elliptical trainer, 30 more on the treadmill, an animated ride on the stationary or recumbent bike through any one of ten virtual locations, and a circuit of machines designed to work every muscle in your body until it cries, and I am ravenous! I immediately start to prepare the healthy, low fat dinner I dreamed up while dripping so much sweat over the machines that I feared sparks would fly and the machine would explode. And while I wait, I nibble on cake and nuts and whatever is handy or at least not nailed down. But this is okay because by the time the healthy meal is ready I’m sort of full so it all evens out, right? No?

Seriously, it amazes me how easy it is to ingest 200 calories and how frigging hard it is to burn them off! There is no justice is this phenomenon. We are taught that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Where is the equality in having to kill yourself for three hours over one moment of culinary bliss?

Rosh Hashonah

It’s Rosh Hashonah and I know I should go over to the synagogue but I’m having a little trouble with my relationship to God this year and I can’t seem to get moving. I know some of my more spiritual friends will read this and give me a lecture on faith but let me tell you something: I perform an act of faith every day. I get up.

Rosh Hashonah is traditionally fraught with superstition for me. “The Gates are open!” “The Gates are closing!” God is listening! Repent! Apologize! I’ve gone to temple with the idea that if I just showed up and prayed hard enough, if I was a good person and made sincere attempts to treat people well and apologize to those I had wronged, if I just tried to let go and lighten up, God would hear my prayers and send me financial security. If there is a God, that is. Well, isn’t God supposed to be listening every day? My hairdresser only works two days a week. My doctor is out of the office on Thursdays and weekends. But God? Where does God go when it isn’t Rosh Hashonah?

Why is there this mass panic to get to synagogue during this Holiday? Have you ever tried to get online during peak hours? Perhaps God is overwhelmed during the Holidays with all these prayers and people who He/She hasn’t heard from since last year crowding into the synagogues. Perhaps it would be better to stay in this nice cozy bed until Monday and pray then.

No. I throw myself into the bathroom, dress quickly; grab a cup of coffee and a piece of toast because I know that even though I am already late, this service is going to go on for a lonnnnng time. My husband looks handsome in his suit and I put on the dress I planned to wear when I thought it would be 70 degrees. It is 50. My son couldn’t be pried into the synagogue but that’s okay. Like crutches, perhaps he doesn’t need it. Perhaps he’ll return when he has a child. I did. And now that he’s grown, it seems less pressing.

I spend 20 minutes looking for the tickets that I know we received in the mail but which have vanished into thin air. We go without them. We argue for a good part of the drive; it is stress that is becoming hard to ignore. Both parking lots are full so we drive down the road to park. I notice that, even though we are late, we don’t have to park as far away as last year and I wonder where everybody else is. As we start walking, half a dozen cars dash into spots beyond ours. Maybe they couldn’t find their tickets either. This is only the second year that our country synagogue has bothered with tickets and people don’t quite know what to do with them. Since we don’t have to buy them in the first place, I guess their value is in question. We take out our tallits that have been in the drawer since last year and notice their mildew scent. Do these get washed or dry cleaned? I have two: one was my father’s and one belonged to my grandfather. I don’t know which is which but I always debate which one to bring with me as if I’m bringing the person. I say the quick prayer for donning the tallit which, fortuitously, is written on the edge because, simple as it is, I never remember it, and I step in to the synagogue. I hear the song “b’rosh hashonah tikatevun, u’vyom tzom kippur, u’vyom tzom kippur, yehatevun…” and I am in tears. Why? I have no idea! I want to run away but I want to find a seat. I want to feel enveloped but I feel disenfranchised. If God is everywhere then why am I in this building? If God hasn’t heard my prayers or, if He has and has simply decided to ignore them, or if He isn’t ignoring them but has placed them low on the list of priorities that need to be attended to, things like Global warming, genocide, terrorism, etc. then why am I bothering? The walls and ceiling feel like hindrances to true communication with a divine force. And I suddenly think of cyberspace and frequencies and wonder if this is what they mean when they say God is everywhere and in everything. Is God the Internet? Is the internet God? I think of that ad for a home security system, wrapping the house in endless streams of zeroes and ones. Is cyberspace the what we mean by an infinite Universe? I cannot fathom limitlessness.
Back on earth, the Torah portion is about Sarah and how she gets Abraham to evict Hagar and Ishmael once Isaac is born and this infuriates me! I have a stepson. I love him! I love his mother! Sure she’s my husband’s ex-wife but that doesn’t make her evil! She’s a great gal! How different would this world be today if Sarah had embraced those two people and made them part of their family? Would there be an Arab-Israeli conflict? Would we have found something else to argue about?

I spend the day upset. I am tired of struggling. Too many foolish, selfish people get to make the rules and I cannot admire them. I cannot pray about them. I cannot place my future in their hands. I cannot see that I have any choice.

I go to the gym and sweat until my limbs feel like jello. I follow the pacer on the computer screen of my exercise bike, tuning out all thoughts except “keep up!” I hurt all over but I keep going. I just keep going.

L'shanah tovah tikatevu. May you have a good year.

The 'Free' World

Thought for the day: What do they mean, “The free world”? You can’t go anywhere for free!

When you’re income is down to zip it is important to find things to do that don’t cost money. So, when I got the invitation to my friend’s book signing party at a gallery on NYC’s Upper West Side, I put it in my datebook; it was the only entry for the week. My husband had a training session for the job he’s been doing for almost 20 years so we drove in together. This enabled me to put the car in his employee parking lot. I dropped off my new headshots at my agent’s office and she liked them. She stated that the ones I’d been using for the last two years didn’t have much personality. (Thanks for the timely notice!) I called the only two people I can ever think of to call at the very last minute to see if either of them wanted to join me at the gallery or for a drink. The one who lives around the corner from the gallery was in Pennsylvania. The other decided to leave her sick boyfriend at home and meet me for coffee. In the meantime, I stopped up at the hairdresser to get my bangs trimmed; Rossi on West 57th. Marie Rossi is my regular stylist although I think of her more like a therapist for how much better I feel about myself after a session in her chair. But Marie is not there today so Tony will squeeze me in. Tony is Marie’s husband, the star of their salon and, in his ‘spare time’, a working actor. Tony is the quintessential Goombah; a guy as likely to be a hairdresser as Hulk Hogan is to be a ballerina. You may have seen him in such gentle vehicles as “The Sopranos” and “Donnie Brasco”. As gentle and patient as Marie is, that’s how powerful and wild Tony is. If Marie were George Serat Tony would be Jackson Pollack. If Marie were Tinkerbell, Tony wound be Sasquatch. He treats my head like one of those bouncing toys that when you push them down they bounce back up. Grab, cut, push, comb, push… If it weren’t firmly attached I believe it would fly off my shoulders and roll around the floor to be swept up with the fallen hair. Now, given the recent decline in my fortunes and current stress level, my head sits atop my neck like a skull on a stick so I have to concentrate on keeping my neck loose so it doesn’t break. I try to pretend I am a bobble-head doll; boyng, boyng…. It doesn’t break or even hurt really; in fact, the whole process makes me laugh. Wouldn’t you laugh if Attila the Hun was trimming your hair and making you look beautiful? I walked back across town talking to the friend in Pennsylvania, feeling very much a part of the NY scene with my chic bangs and my cell phone glued to my ear, talking out loud to someone 100 miles away. I manage to get to the coffee shop first so I call my friend to make sure I’m in the right place and she asks is I would prefer the coffee or a Margarita. I answer so fast she laughs. Who would pay $4 for a cup of coffee when you can have a Margarita for $5? We meet at the bar next to the coffee shop. In less than an hour my husband calls. His training session is over and he’s on his way. He gets the car and we meet on the corner to head uptown. Only two circles around the neighborhood and we get a spot on the street. The gallery is packed and the friend I haven’t seen in 20 years looks radiant. (Since I seem to be plugging in this post, the book is “The Shiksa Syndrome” by Laurie Graff and I’m having one of those “why didn’t I think of that” moments.) We buy the book and she autographs it for us with a great personal note. We have some wine and delicious lox on pumpernickel. They give out free raffle tickets and the prize is a lipstick and a copy of the book and I wonder what I will do if I win. My husband says, “Yeah, but it comes with a lipstick!” I look at him and wonder.

On the way home he is proud that we spent an evening in NYC and didn’t spend any money. I remind him that the free evening cost gas to and from Connecticut, $10 to park in the employee lot, $7 including tip at the Happy Hour bar and we BOUGHT THE BOOK! Passing through the toll at the Henry Hudson Bridge I think, “How can they call this ‘the free world’? You can’t go anywhere for free!” Still, a cool September evening in NYC… priceless.

Computer Hell

I’m sorry but every new software application should come with someone who was born after 1980 to help you understand it. My eyes are bleary, I have a crick in my neck, my stomach is in a knot and my fingers hurt. But I did manage to put a fan page on Facebook. If you’re laughing in recognition then you too were probably born before anyone thought of these things: computers.

If you are reading this, perhaps you’ve seen the fan page. If you’ve seen it then please, do me a favor and go directly to http://straykats.blogspot.com because I don’t think I will remember to update the fan page very often. Sure, it’s okay now that I have nothing better to do with my life than to write the blog, post the link on Twitter, post the link on Facebook , go to the fan page, post the link there, go to the oldest post, delete that because on my very first day (today!) I exhausted the allotted space, crashed the site, had to exit, reboot, reload and delete over half of what I put on there in the first place because it was so slow that turtles have a better chance of getting back to the sea than you had of opening the page! But someday, I would like to have something better to do and all this will seem... burdensome.

I know my mother is looking at this and saying “What the hell is she talking about” and I really get that! It’s a new world. My dad and mom were 25 years apart in age; a true May-December romance. Years ago, my dad insisted my mom learn how to use a computer. He refused to touch it himself. The man who read vociferously, even using a magnifying glass when he was almost totally blind; who did the NY Times crossword puzzle every day of his life without ever having to cheat; this man just didn’t want to be bothered. And I get that too! This is exhausting! Just when you start to feel comfortable at your keyboard they “update”. Update! Upgrade! Up yours! It’s the revenge of the nerds! “Oh yeah? Well figure THIS out!”

I want to thank my cousin Blake who suggested I beef up the fan page and then told me how. It would have saved me some time if he’d mentioned that there were limits but perhaps, at his age, limits aren’t worth mentioning. Juuuuust wait! Somewhere there’s a three year old who’s cooking up something that will leave him dazed and confused. By then, I won’t even want to be bothered.

September 14- Addendum

I’m a spectator-sports junkie. And with the exception of the New York Yankees and any home teams that may be in the playoffs of any given sport at any given time (hasn't happened in a while but one could always hope), I root for the underdog. So it is that I find myself watching the US Open and rooting with all my might for a guy I never heard of before this week. Juan Martin Del Potro is going to a fifth set against the widely acknowledged best player of the generation, Roger Federer. This is a symbolic moment. Del Potro is playing for me and for every person who can’t seem to catch a break against the “big guys”. Playing Federer, to me, is like playing the computer in a video game. It doesn’t matter how good you are, he’s going to find a way. I’ve heard he has lost matches before. I have never personally seen it. But he’s dropped two sets in tie-breakers and is down two-love in the final set. Underdog-rooter that I am, I’m almost starting to feel sorry for him. But that would be like feeling sorry for Bernie Madoff because he’s in jail or the Republicans for losing the last election: a complete misplacement of pity. It’s now three-love, Del Potro. If Del Potro wins it means we all stand a chance! If Del Potro wins it means good things can happen to any underdog. If Del Potro wins then my phone can ring tomorrow with a job offer. It means hard work can be rewarded even when everything seems weighted the other way. My heart is pounding but it is not fibrillation; it is need: the need to be vindicated, to win against the odds, to see David bring down Goliath with my own eyes.
Three-one. Hold! Hold! Four-one. Four-two. Five-two! Break! Can he break? He did! He did it! He won! I can’t wait for tomorrow!

The Fox in the Henhouse

My Mom just sent me a link to a YouTube site: the CUFI (Christians United for Israel) Singers singing Hava Nagila Texas style. The other day as I was walking up Fifth Avenue in New York, I encountered a group of Hasidic Jews who were protesting the State of Israel. Their signs were vile, saying things like “True Jews will never recognize Israel” and other far-less-nice sentiments. Is anyone else confused? As a Jewess, I love the State of Israel. As the granddaughter of a man whose brother, sister-in-law and four babies boarded a ship bound for Havana only to be turned back to Europe where they were killed, I love the State of Israel. Not only is it a beautiful country, reclaimed from the desert by people who were committed to their personal survival as well as that of the land, a country that produced some of the greatest minds and inventions of the last century, a country that says “Don’t fuck with us; we have had it with being fucked!”, but a country where I felt for the first time in my life that it was not only okay to be a Jew, it was wonderful. So why does it scare me that other Jews so vehemently oppose this beautiful State while Evangelical Christian support it? Why do I feel like I’ve heard this story before and it is called “The Fox and the Henhouse”.

Mystery

I got an email last night from a couple thanking me for the great time they had with me “yesterday” working with me on training someone I’ll call “B”. I’m assuming “B” is their son. I don’t know who they are but apparently they’ve “been working on some of the stuff we started yesterday”. I don’t know what I did! I don’t remember training anyone for anything and they say they’re looking forward to seeing me on Saturday! Is there someplace I’m supposed to go? It’s not in my book and if it isn’t in my book, there’s a good chance I won’t be there!

Yesterday? I did this “Yesterday”? I’m wracking my brain! I went to New Rochelle to perform for a room full of financial divorce planners, then to an audition in NY. Did I inadvertently help someone? I’m stumped.

I have been lax of late, too lazy to go downstairs and find my book when a new appointment needs to be written down. That’s because a) I’m tired and b) most of the things I have to write down aren’t terribly important to me. If something is important, I can generally get off my ass and find a pencil. But this other stuff – someone else’s stuff – if I remember, okay. If I forget, a simple “oops, I forgot” usually assuages any guilt I might feel for missing it.

This business of writing things down is further complicated by the fact that next year’s datebook is already in my possession. I have a doctor’s appointment in March. I will bet you dollars to donuts that a day before that appointment I will get an audition and have to change it but, at the time, with the eager receptionist wanting to codify that the office would indeed still be open and his job necessary in six months, it seemed a good idea to choose a date for a check-up. I love check-ups. For six months you store up a list of things you think you should ask or tell the doctor but when the appointment rolls around and he says “You’re fine” with such conviction that it seems petty to complain you suddenly can’t remember that you had a question or a symptom at all because you didn’t write them down! (See above paragraph for reference to what I think is important enough to get me off the couch in search of a pencil. Scary, isn’t it?)

I’m thinking I may remember who this person is who wrote me the very friendly “Thank you” email and it isn’t a prospective student or loving family that I might have helped and then blacked out for some reason. I think it’s that crazy financial planner I told you about a few weeks ago (the one who talked so fast the window blinds actually fluttered) and the would-be son is his acolyte who found my name on my poster at the supermarket and duped me into attending that training session after which I told them they were scary, slick and about as trustworthy as snakes. Maybe I helped them after all!