Red and Yellow and Pink and Green

When I found out my 28 year-old daughter had morphed into an avid NPR-listener, just like me (she even quotes from it in casual conversation), I decided it was time for me to morph into her by turning back into a Fiestaware user, because ooh, la la, [they come] in colors everywhere…they’re like a rainbow.

What? You don’t know what Fiestaware is? Then, it’s time to check it out. We’re talking color here, from cinnabar to the newest hue, lemongrass. Today I restarted my collection with unmatched dinner plates, so I can pretend I’m on an LSD trip as I chow down my oatmeal in a plum bowl, lunch leftovers on a sunflower plate, and dinner on lemongrass and scarlet. If it sounds like I’m now channeling the game of Clue, I’m not. Instead, I’m honoring the brilliance of my daughter’s choice of mixing good, old (but new) colorful dinnerware, started by two strangely-named brothers (Homer and Shakespeare) from Ohio, back in 1871.

This morning I drove to Macy’s, where they were having a buy-one-get-one-free Fiesta sale, with an extra $10 off if I bought everything before 1 p.m. Since I was the only one buying, I had plenty of time to choose my 6 new dinner plates in 6 different colors. This was definitely a radical departure for me.

Travel back in time with me for a second, and meet me, a dyed-in-the-wool white-color lover when it comes to décor (all our walls are painted white, much to the chagrin of one of my color-loving friends). It’s 1984, and I want to replace our set of plastic Heller dishes with something more grown up. I have come late to appreciating the art and design of Fiestaware, but I am a scaredy-cat, so I only have the nerve to buy white, even though I know from a friend across the street who collects the original colors like green and pink, that there are better choices to be made. Since the originals are more expensive than my new lead-free replacements (remember, I’m a cheapskate), I don’t listen to her and scout out oldies but goodies. I do, on the other hand, become an instant convert, even though my new conversion is actually considered a bit tame by New England standards.

Jump ahead a bunch of years and meet my now grown-up daughter, also a convert (she quickly rejects my safe, white color choices, though). She asks me for my original, scratched white set, which I’ve replaced with a new all-white set of dishes from Williams Sonoma (yeah, I’m still a tighty whitey). She, on the other hand, psychedelically leaps and bounds ahead and replaces my original white dishes with a bouquet of colors (old and new, because she didn't inherit the cheap gene). They quickly take over her kitchen shelves, and alienate her future husband, who doesn’t understand Fiestaware obsessions. (But, wait - he’s no stranger to Chicago basketball and baseball obsessions – are you, T?)

After visiting my daughter in Seattle and eating off a different colored plate each meal, I decide to rekindle my Fiestaware obsession, replace white with color and morph into my daughter. Yeah, I’m a copycat, but so what?

From now on in, as I eat on my new plates and listen to NPR (Car Talk, Fresh Air, The Food Schmooze, Colin McEnroe, All Things Considered, or Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me), let it be known that I’m proud to share her obsession, act the part of her East Coast twin, and [eat] a rainbow.

White on (or should I say, white out?)!

Lovely Rita

Since I don’t celebrate Christmas, the way I’ve learned to deal with feeling left out and lonely is to play as many Beatles albums as I can from the minute I wake up on Christmas day till about 9 p.m. I crank up the volume and blast their music, singing along throughout the day and night until I’m so hoarse I can barely talk. Playing Beatles albums is my one and only Christmas ritual, and listening to them helps me forget about not getting presents, being apart from my kids, and not eating the yummy food that I imagine the rest of our Christmas-celebrating world is pigging out on (and I’m not).

This morning I sang along as I cooked breakfast, stopping to cha-cha and twist when the music moved me. I harmonized along with John and Paul as I segued into baking sugary desserts, mashing avocados for guacamole, and getting ready to take the food and myself to our early afternoon eat-a-thon at our friends’ house. This means I had to cut my Beatles-playing a bit short, but I didn’t mind, because I got to spend the rest of the day with my pseudo-grandkids, T and R, their aunt M, and both devoted (but exhausted) parents. I sat on the floor and played dinosaurs with T, kissed and hugged R so she’d sing and smile, and I swear, being with the smartest and most adorable pseudo-grandkids in the world made me one happy little non-Christmas-celebrating clam.

Speaking of clams, our friends cooked up a huge pot of paella, packed to the gills with fresh cherrystones. I’ve never had the nerve to make it from scratch, myself, but maybe it’s time to reverse that fear, because I’m a paella-lover from way back. I first tasted it when I was a student hitching through Europe in 1968, and I ended up in Madrid, because a friend of mine was an exchange student there for the year. I ate paella every, single afternoon at a tiny restaurant that made it to order. Since it took a loooooong time to cook, we’d drink sangria to fill the time, which means I was always more than tipsy by the end of the meal. After we’d finished stuffing ourselves, we’d stagger out and spend the rest of the afternoon lying around the swimming pool at the University of Madrid. I was usually so looped I can now barely remember whether I was sober enough to swim. But, my taste memory of that paella is still with me, thank you very much.

It’s past 9:30, I’m done singing and digesting my paella, and John, Paul, George, and Ringo are officially silenced for another eight-days-a-week year. To all you reminiscers out there - have a happy, healthy and merry.

Poetry in Motion

Reading your poems

filled me up

like a soda-shop milkshake

made from scratch,

with vanilla ice cream,

and chocolate syrup,

in its own silver

ice-cold

metal container.

It’s 1964.

The jukebox

is playing 45’s

in the background.

The booths are filled with

Haverford high schoolers.

Watch me delight

in my happiness

as I sip my frothy, cold drink

through a paper straw,

whose wrapping I’ve removed

and blown into the air,

so it can hit the friend

sitting across from me

square on the nose.

I duck

to avoid

her retaliatory missile,

so it lands

in my water,

and sends us

into loose-lipped

paroxysms of giggles.

Oh, oh, oh,

it seemed

easier

back then,

to slurp up

life’s

every, last

drop,

didn't it?

Talkin' 'Bout My Generation

One of my first memories is standing next to a large, boxy record player and watching a huge, red, vinyl Babar The King record spin round and round, filling the room with gloomy hunter-killing-Babar’s-mother music. I grew up listening to my music on a different record player, a clunky, wooden Telefunken radio, and later, when I was about 7, a tiny transistor radio with one earplug. By high school I’d graduated to a white, plastic hi-fi/stereo, but today, I listen on my iPod Nano, Bose Wave radio, Sirius/XM radio (in my car), my computer, or. sometimes still, our old turntable.

I guess this makes me a tech-lover, but the problem with all this tech-loving is my 1948-engineered brain. The poor thing gets easily overwhelmed and challenged by the daily struggles I torture myself with as I try to master each new device I buy, thanks to planned obsolescence. Lately, I feel like I’m drowning in technology overload as I’m pulled under after each laboriously self-taught failure at instant mastery. This weekend I spent way too much of my time trying to tread water as I tried and retried to upgrade and re-configure.

I’m exhausted from this latest dive into the vast sea of gadget obsolescence after buying both a new Apple Airport Express base station (don’t even ask me to figure out how to get iTunes to come out of it) and a new point-and-shoot digital camera (I broke my old one last week). I had to re-learn all the ins and outs of pointing and shooting and reconfiguring Internet and printing preferences (tech support wasn’t answering the phone). Let’s just say I fumbled and bumbled my way through.

What upsets me is how big my learning curve grows, how much older I get, and how much vaster my gaps of ignorance are. My brain is packed to the gills with passwords and preferences, so I shouldn’t be surprised when I cannot, for the life of me, remember whether or not I turned off the water to the outside faucet so it doesn’t freeze and burst our pipes. There’s no more room at this inn, is there?

Today my daughter emailed me using her new Google phone. She said she wasn’t sure how to use it, yet, because there was so much new information to download into her formerly cellphone-based (with texting thrown in) storage depot brain. If she’s only 28 and she’s experiencing tech-brain drain, what are my chances of surviving?

Oh, all you Holiday celebrators out there – just make me an angel that flies to Montgomery and we’ll call it a day.

I'm Stuck on U-2

Last weekend my husband and I flew to Seattle for a short-but-sweet visit with the newlyweds and our granddog. In my opinion, flying across the country is not for sissies or people like me with migraine and hunger issues. If you don’t come prepared, you’re doomed, which explains why I brought enough food to keep me alive for an entire weekend (or in case the plane was grounded), earplugs to block out the loud plane noises and the screamers in the seat behind me, books and two weeks-worth of New Yorkers to take my mind off the fact that I wasn’t on a train, but high above the clouds in a sardine-can state of discomfort, and gum to keep my Eustachian tubes from clogging. We had a good time hanging out with our newly married kids, and I did my best to be happy about getting dog hair all over my clothes and up my nose. As usual, I cried when we had to leave.

On our way back to Hartford, we met up at the Sea-Tac airport with my pseudo-daughter from Canada and my year-old pseudo-granddaughter, who were coming back to CT to visit sisters, aunts, and friends and help put her mom’s house in order so it can be sold. We sat in the same row of 3 seats, talking and paying attention to the baby – and for the first time in my short flying history, I didn’t notice that I was in the air. Instead, I was in the moment– connecting with my adopted family – so the flight flew by so fast that I didn’t experience my usual panic at taking off, circling, and landing. Instead, I talked, cooed, and marveled at the baby’s genius at figuring out how to do things like close the window shade and then force her mom to open it so she could close it over and over again. (You get the picture, I know you do!)

I’ve been back a week but I haven’t been able to do much, because I have had a series of skull-crushing migraines that keep me so down I am stuck in a moment [I] can’t get out of. No matter how many Relpax I pop, how much yoga relaxation breathing I do, or how often I smoosh ice packs on my head and neck, my migraines continue to come, one after the other. They are either triggered by smells, weather, food, or nothing at all, but whatever it is that got this round started, I was rendered useless by an iron grip so strong it was impossible for me to function like the human bean I am – the one who loves to read, write, talk, eat, exercise, watch UConn basketball. This week I hung out in bed and tried not to obsess about how much pain I was in.

A friend called yesterday to tell me about a new book by a migraine-sufferer that she read about in the Wall Street Journal, A Brain Wider Than the Sky by Andrew Levy. I can’t tell you how happy it made me to know that my friend was looking out for my best interests, since I’m definitely unable to, what with feeling vulnerable and incapacitated. Therefore, I didn’t run out and buy myself a copy, but I did put an online reserve on it at my library so I can read it when my head stops hurting. And I thank you, J…

Before I wind up this brief howdy-do, I’d like to shout out to all you music-lovers out there in Bloggersville to remind you that Elvis Costello re-started the second season of his fantastic show on the Sundance channel, Spectacle: Elvis Costello With…, which I faithfully watch and listen to. This week he interviewed and sang with Bono and The Edge (honestly, how can they keep straight faces with those silly names?). Next week will showcase Cheryl Crow, Neko Case (I saw her a few weeks ago at the Calvin Theater in Northampton), Ron Sexsmith, and Jesse Winchester. Later on Costello will interview Levon Helm – later still, Bruce Springsteen. Don’t miss this gem-of-a-show, because the interviews are fascinating and probing – and the music is outstanding. Plus, Costello wears weird hats and socks, which are fun to giggle about.

FYI: in case you didn’t know this little factoid, a fellow blogger taught me how to insert hyperlinks into my blogs. I don’t know if you ever click on those links, but in case you don’t, try ‘em, so you can peel back one more layer of my migraine brain to discover what’s going on inside my head, where songs are my helpmates who greet me each morning and get me through my live-long day. They’re my constant companions, therapists, friends, reminders, eye-openers, and headache-helpers. They are one reason I’m still ah – ah – ah – ah stayin’ alive.

Oh, Brother - Where Art Thou?

    My brother, who is turning 65 tomorrow, deserves a sincere and heartfelt apology from me, because I inadvertently left him him off my What-I'm-Thankful-For list. He should now, in turn, be thankful for his younger sister, who clued me in  this afternoon. (Sigh! I need to be kept on on my toes, oh yes I do-oooh...)

    Happy 65th Birthday, Big Brother. May it now, officially, be known to all who read this blog: I AM MORE THAN THANKFUL for having such a sweet, kind, 3 years and 8+ months-older only brother to look up to these past 61 years. 

   Wait just a moment, please - there's more. Not only am I thankful for him - I'm also thankful for my sister-in-law and brother-in-law.

     I hope that just about covers my multitude of sins for the day.

And I Thank You...

And I Thank You...

(don't forget to click above to hear one of my all-time favorite songs)

When I was a little kid in Philly I had to say what I was thankful for before digging into my plate of Turkey Day food. Since I’m not having Thanksgiving with my family this year, I’ve cooked up a list of things I’m thankful for.

Before I drag myself downstairs to the kitchen to make the cranberry sauce and sweet potato casserole I’m bringing to a friend’s house in a few hours, here’s who and what I appreciate this year:

My husband, who sticks around (even though I snore louder than a leaf blower each and every night) and reads aloud to me, even though at first he thought House of Mirth was terrible (he cried at the end!)

My daughter, who calls me on her way to work, Skypes me when I ask, iChats when she has a free moment, and stays connected - even though she lives far, far away in that alternate universe known as Seattle, and her husband, my new son-in-law, even though it’s his fault she moved so far away

My son, for fathering my first granddaughter

My Miami Beach aunt, who talks to me on the phone each week and tells it like it is

My sister, who calls me on her cellphone when she’s in an airport, a car, or upstairs in her attic office (typing on the computer – which she thinks I can’t hear, but, hellooooo, I can)

My friend, Janet Rose, who provided me with friendship, support, and love for 24 years (and continues to, in absentia, since she died an untimely death this past September)

My friends (old and new), who listen to me rant and rave, but don’t hang up, keep emailing, Facebooking, and loving me 

My adopted pseudo-daughters and grandchildren

Yoga, stretch and tone, and spinning classes

My Philadelphia and California family (they’re really my husband’s family, but they’ve been kind enough to adopt me into the fold for the past 40 years)

All the stupid, addictive TV I refuse to stop DVRing, watching, and fast forwarding past the commercials: Glee, 30 Rock, Brothers and Sisters, Modern Family, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Private Practice, The Big Bang Theory, The Geno Auriemma Show, Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, Bored to Death, and UConn basketball (there, are you happy, now that you officially know some of my dirty, little secrets?)

The brothers across the street who agreed to once again snowblow our sidewalks and driveway

My tinnitus, deafness, migraines, sprained left foot, high cholesterol, fat stomach, psoriasis, poor vision, tight hamstrings, creaky back, drooping jowls, and scarred lips, because they make me what I yam (minus the marshmallows on top)

Stop, Children. What's That Sound?

     This morning I forced myself to go to my first, official ENT appointment in years, in order to consult with a highly recommended professional. I was urged to make an appointment with him after I told my friend about my hearing loss and tinnitus, which I have refused to deal with because my last ENT visit (which took place so many years ago I can’t remember) upset me so thoroughly I blocked out both it and the name of the doctor who claimed I needed to embrace my hearing loss, love my tinnitus, and not worry my pretty little head about things out of my control. I hated being patronized and treated like a moron, but I did what he said, didn’t I? Instead of facing up to the fact that I have hearing problems, then finding a different doctor who would treat me like an adult, I put up and shut up. What a poor, pitiful Pearl am I.

      My friend said it was time for me to face up to my hearing problems, which might be why I told him the ringing had reached such a high pitch that it was no longer easy to ignore or love. I called his beloved Dr. Tinnitus for an appointment, back in September, but I was told I’d have to wait till today to see him. I didn’t tell my friend this, but I temporarily returned to pretending not to have a hearing problem, even though I do (just ask my husband, who yells at me that he’s not mumbling, even though I yell back at him that he is), until this morning, when I reality reared its ugly head and made me push a red button whenever I heard a sound, or didn’t, more often than not.

      I hated failing those tests, so maybe that’s why I argued with the audiologist after I was through flunking myself. I told her that the test couldn’t have been conclusive, since the room I was sitting in wasn’t soundproof. I told her it had been hard for me to concentrate on the sounds she was supposedly making in my ear, because the loud voices from the women shouting and laughing in the room across from my testing room mixed with the high-pitched ringing in my ears from my tinnitus, and masked sounds I might’ve gotten right. She said it didn’t really matter – that my hearing loss was what it was, so I continued to try to convince her that the results would’ve been different had the conditions been more optimal. She pooh-poohed me, then attempted to read the results to me, but since I was too upset to comprehend what she was talking about, I stopped listening.

      She handed me a pink copy of my test, which was a waste of time, because I couldn’t decipher it on my own, and told me to return to the waiting room to wait for Dr. Tinnitus, the expert. He turned out to be nice, but his lilty Irish-accented voice lulled me away from paying attention to his long, involved explanations comparing the hairs inside my ears to broken piano strings. Even though I was unable to absorb his technical explanations, I was able to understand that he has tinnitus, but that he’s a lucky duck, because it doesn’t interfere with his life one iota. Well, bully for him. It’s making mine a living hell.

      He must’ve sensed he was losing me, so he launched into another long story about the time he got progressive lenses, and they made him so dizzy he reeled all over the place until he got used to wearing them. Obviously, he thought sharing his personal stories would make me feel better about how noisy and upsetting it was going to be to wear hearing aids, so I interrupted him and said that I never had trouble wearing my progressive lenses. He kept talking, instead of changing his tune because, after all, he wasn’t all that interested in me – only himself.

      He ended up offering me a few alternative therapies if I didn’t want to wear hearing aids – but one I refused outright was Zoloft. I told him strong drugs and I don’t mix, and that I wasn’t even going to think about trying Zoloft, an antidepressant, as an off-label tinnitus inhibitor. He went on and on, extolling it, but I blocked him out until he wound down, and launched into a different riff on how wearing hearing aids will make it possible for me to hear so well I’ll hear myself crunch on things (he mentioned apples) when I eat, and when I’m done crunching, they’ll mask my tinnitus. He told me that like progressive lenses, I’d need to wear the hearing aids at all times in order to get used to them. But, if I’m hearing myself crunch, how can he expect me to want to wear them? Crunching drives me crazy, I told him – but he just Kanga and Baby Roo-ed me (maybe because he ran out of stories about himself) and told me to make a hearing aid appointment at the front desk.

      Here’s the very best news of the day about those two hearing aids he said I will need. I have to pay for them out of pocket, since insurance doesn’t cover them. Boy, oh boy, I can’t wait to fork over $6-8,000 so I can hear myself crunch and think, but I’m worth it, right? Please, tell me what the upside of this bargain will be, because I have two weeks to chicken out of returning to the very same audiologist I most probably alienated (after questioning her testing conditions), who’ll probably sell me two left hearing aids as payback.

     I’ve become that deaf, dumb, blind kid, minus the mean game of pinball.

       Ding.

      What? Didn’t hear the sound of one hand clapping when my striped ball went through the flipper? Chalk it up to celestial interference, that damned tree falling in the forest, or my husband, who whispers and sometimes lip syncs – I swear he does.

Food, Glorious Food

            Did you know that I’m so food obsessed I read cookbooks like they’re novels, and obsessively trawl Chowhound and Yelp before, during and after traveling in order to discover the best of the best while I’m away from home?

Did you know that I’m considered unnecessarily food crazed, here in West Hartford, CT, where palates are more Puritan-centric than not?

Or that eating at nearby restaurants turns me more cold than hot (except for Bricco’s, the only place I return to over and over)?

Or that I feel the need to stand at the stove and stir up my Jane Brody-influenced 10-minute oatmeal with milk (and a half an apple, later sprinkled with roasted, unsalted sunflower seeds and a splash of agave syrup), while also cooking up what to make for dinner?

Or that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, probably because it’s the only holiday my secular, Jewish family celebrated?

Or that its menu sounded like the lyrics of a song, at least to me?

Roast turkey with Pepperidge Farm stuffing

Giblet gravy made from scratch

Homemade cranberry sauce from the recipe on the back of the Ocean Spray bag 
Southern sweet potato pudding baked with marshmallows on top

Tossed salad with homemade Italian dressing

Fresh, steamed green beans

A small bowl of Jumbo canned, pitted black olives

Apple crisp from the Settlement Cookbook

And a big Panama with a purple hatband.

Over the years, I’ve tinkered (Brussel sprouts, creamed baby onions and peas, sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie, lemon squares, mashed potatoes, and one year lasagna instead of turkey – which my son still hasn’t forgiven me for), but there’s no need, because my family’s old timey, totally American-centric menu is so solidly engraved inside me that it’s a relief to let down my foodie guard and stir up the past. 
       I know they say you can’t go home again, but I do, every November 26^th (except for the year my husband and I went to St. Thomas to follow the UConn Huskies’ Thanksgiving Tournament, leaving our adult kids to fend for themselves).

                Oooh, oooh, oooh, oooh.

What Am I Living For?

FYI: the title of this blog entry comes from a song, because I'm a song-lover who likes to use lyrics to speak for me, now and then (mostly now, though)


This morning I asked myself what, exactly, was the point of spending so much time obsessing about things that are wrong with my rather ordinary life.  Come on, I told myself, isn’t it about time to be thankful for having two grown, healthy, employed children and an adorable granddaughter? I chose not to answer back with my usual zap of negativity.

Instead, I talked myself into facing up to the fact that since I stopped teaching freshman composition, I’ve turned my paper-marking, curriculum-developing, too-busy-to think-about-you-or-me self towards the dark side, filling up too many now-empty teaching spaces in that migraine-y head of mine with full-to-bursting closets-full of obsessing, kvetching, and moaning.

Come on, I urged myself, turn over a new leaf (after all, there are so many to choose from in both front and back yards). Let yourself fast-forward and fill each day with joy, instead of spending so much time dancing like a dervish at all those pity party orgies you seem overly addicted to.

What this means is that this heavy hitter has officially declared today, November 12, 2009, her first day of uncontested peace. That’s right - I’m going to open myself up to experiencing more love supreme and fewer I’m-gonna-get-you-sucka moments.

I’m tired of being overdue, in a rabbit stew.  

I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter

Dear Sharron,

     So, how was your 3-day visit to Philadelphia? Did you totally relax in the quiet car on the train from Hartford to Philadelphia’s 30^th Street Station? Did you have fun schmoozing with your husband’s Philadelphia and California relatives, eating each and every meal at a different restaurant or relative’s apartment, taking the cousins for a stroll through Center City, and being ignored by your mother-in-law? Did you enjoy using your friend Janet’s FLIP camera to record as many relative events as you could, even though people gave you a hard time for videotaping them by snapping at you and yelling things like, “O.K., stop! That’s enough?” even though they continued to mug for the camera? 

     How was that subsequent trip to New York City? Did you enjoy taking your husband’s cousins for a long, wet, soggy walk through Central Park, in the rain? Did you pat yourself on the back for scoring discount tickets to Brighton Beach Memoirs, which you thought was excellent (even though the next day the New York Times reported that it was going to close), Finian’s Rainbow (which you loved, maybe because you were named after the main character by your mom, who saw the play a few days before giving birth to you), and Fela, which was funky, loud (I heard you wore ear plugs during some of it), dance-centric, and Afro-beatish? I know you were disappointed in The God of Carnage, which everyone you’ve every talked to or read raved about, because the actors weren’t up to snuff, your hearing device didn’t work, and you had to pay full price for the tickets. I hope you didn’t complain too much about it, because it wasn’t worth either the money or after-play analysis. 

    I bet you loved winding your way through the Kandinsky exhibit at the Guggenheim (and melting in awe over his later work and his work on paper), tromping on the hard floors of the Met to ogle the Oceania and Robert Frank exhibits, standing in front of Klimt’s glittering, glorious Adele Bloch-Bauer 1907 oil (in silver and gold) at the Neue Gallery, and strolling through MOMA twice to revisit all your favorites. What I don’t understand is how you could eat the same lunch at MOMA both times you visited. What happened to your adventurous foodie spirit? 

     I’m going to bet you that you didn’t tell your husband how much you spent at Babette for the hip, edgy, unusual black skirt and white top you bought (after trying on at least 20 different articles of clothing), or about the brunch of Eggs Benedict you inhaled at Balthazar, where you opted to sit at the bar instead of waiting for an hour for a table for one, because the place was overrun with young couples and their children (and their strollers). I won’t tell anyone you ate the potatoes that came with the eggs, because I know you claim you aren’t eating potatoes, white rice (which is part of the sushi you ate for dinner one night) or any other “bad” carbs, even though you do when you think no one is looking. 

     Did you enjoy eating dinner with your husband at a different restaurant each night? I hear you had Vietnamese banh mi @ Xie Xie, Middle Eastern/Mediterranean @ Taboon, Thai @ Wondee Siam, Japanese @ Gari Sushi 46, and New American @ Dovetail. I bet you also enjoyed eating macarons from Bouchon Bakery, and bread, pastry, and brioche from Sullivan Street Bakery. Again – I won’t tell anyone about the carbs you snuck into your supposedly carb-free body. I bet your scale will know, though, once you step on it after you’re back home. 

     I’m sorry to hear that you fell off your left Dansko clog on your last night in the city, right in the middle of the street, also scraping your right knee (aren’t you glad you wore that old pair of pants instead of the new ones you were thinking of wearing). I heard you twisted your left foot so severely that you could barely walk, so you decided to take a cab to the restaurant. But, it turns out you had to get out of the cab you hailed, because the New York Marathon let out and all cars were at a standstill. How did you manage to walk 23 more blocks without giving up and lying down on the sidewalk like a ragdoll? Wasn’t it nice of the restaurant manager to bring you a huge bag of ice, and let you use the staff bathroom, so you wouldn’t have to hop down 3 flights of stairs to the customer bathroom? Who’d have thought a restaurant manager and waiter could be so caring and solicitous? 

     What I’d like to know is why you decided to walk back to your hotel (Ink48 – where they changed your room so you didn’t have to hear those loud people next door’s every, single word), after dinner, instead of taking a cab, like any other normal injured person would think to do. I know you stopped at CVS to buy an ace bandage, which didn’t do a thing to stop the pain, but why you soldiered on and kept walking is a mystery to me. You must be a glutton for punishment. 

     I hear you walked (Again, walking? What is wrong with you?) to Penn station, dragging your luggage behind, limping up a storm, because it was your last day in the city and you wanted to get in one more hour of walking in before the long train ride home. I didn’t realize you were such a city-loving kind of gal. 

     I’m glad you got your own seat on the train trip back to Hartford, even though your husband’s seat didn’t have a working light, and the man sitting in front of you screamed on his cellphone for 45 minutes. (Weren’t you lucky that those earplugs you wore to Fela were still in your backpack?) How serendipitous was it that when you changed trains in New Haven that you sat down next to a neighbor and old friend’s daughter, who used to be friends with your son – and that since her dad was picking her up in Hartford and there would be room in his van for you, you didn’t have to pay for a cab? There is sometimes such a thing as a free ride, isn’t there? 

     I hear you and your husband had a lot of luck finding pennies and dimes on the streets of Philadelphia and New York City, and that you made a lot of wishes on those random coins. I hope your wishes come true – and that you don’t contract any serious, lingering diseases from handling such filthy things. 

    Welcome home. I suggest that you prop up your bad foot and watch all those DVR’d programs that are taking up all the space on your TV’s hard drive. I also suggest that you pack up your sorrows, because in a few days you are going to have another opportunity to turn back into your old self – Ms. Happy Husky Fan. Your UConn basketball-watching mania is going to quickly take up so much space in your migraine-prone head that it will displace all your negative, obsessive thoughts, making you forget you ever had them in the first place. That’s right. Help is on its merry way. 

      Goooooo Huskies!

And Away We Go

Hey there blogreaders,

     Wondering why I haven't been writing anything new and exciting for your reading entertainment? Wondering what is going on to keep my fingers from tapping out a new blog? Wondering what the heck I'm alluding to? 
    The answer: I've been off and running - first to Philly and then to NYC, visiting friends, family, and foes. I'm sitting in my hotel room as I type these words, trying to ignore the deep, coughing voice of the guy in the next room, who seems to need to shout into his cellphone for at least thirty minutes each morning and evening. I've considered asking for a different room, but since I'm sure the insulation is terrible in all of them, I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it for the second day in a row.

    Wait. I just had a great idea. I'll plug my iPod into the iHome sitting next to the wall, and blast ABBA until he shuts up. I hope he enjoys listening to ABBA'S Greatest Hits as much as I am. 
     Hee haw. Oh my, this act of retaliation was an original stroke of genius, was it not? I'll let you know.

Freeze Frame

Two years ago I had trouble sleeping at night, because I was more often than not overstimulated by the intensity of my day-to-day teacher-student involvement. I was exhausted and crazed from paper-marking and curriculum creating, and cross-eyed from emailing drafts back and forth with demanding students who believed that if they attached a paper to my email I would remain online 24 hours a day to help them revise it. I chose to be at their beck and call, maybe because they begged me to be or probably because I was as needy as they were. I liked making myself available to help them perfect their writing, but I didn’t like how I turned myself into an editing machine who marked up their narrative drafts, paragraph by paragraph (and sometimes word by word). Back then I believed that was the only way I could meticulously guide them through the writing process, kick them up a level, turn them into more polished college-level writers. I have no idea what they believed (except that they all deserved A’s). I used to believe that spinning wheel would never stop. 

Fast forward.

I retire from teaching, but I’m still exhausted and crazed. I continue to get so revved up I have trouble calming down enough to easily fall asleep. The spinning wheel slows down, but lately it speeds up again as I spend time thinking about my two closest West Hartford friends, whose wheels no longer turn. Thinking about them makes me feel future phobic, but I try to project myself forward, even though merely thinking about my future freezes me in the present, just like back in 1978, when I tried to read Gail Sheehy’s Passages past the chapter chronicling my age group (I was 30 when the book came out), and I was unable turn the page, because I was too afraid to read her predictions of what future me might become.

I know - I should be thrilled to be present me, but lately I’m not as thrilled as I could be. Yesterday I imagined I'd feel better if I could see my future projected above me on a huge movie screen, right before the final credits begin to roll – encapsulating my progress before the house lights turn back on. Today I’m not so sure.

I wish I could feel less frozen, but it's hard to thaw unless I am looking back at what now appears to me to be my brighter past. In 1978 I was one year away from moving from Philly to relocate in West Hartford, CT, three years from having my daughter, and four years from starting my children’s bookstore, Kidlit. A few years later, I'd written a few novels and published some articles (I never published the novels, though). I taught part-time, and sat, sat, sat through youth soccer, baseball, and basketball games (and even wrestling matches). I walked an hour a day for exercise with my friend until we couldn't walk together anymore because she died from cancer (1995). I lifted weights to keep my arm flab from turning into Grandmom Rose danglers. I took up spinning to keep my heart healthy. I talked on the phone to my friend, who died the next morning. (9/7/09 - If only I could turn back time.) A few weeks ago I became a grandmother, and I read aloud to my husband (who always reads aloud to me) from the two detailed journals I kept of my son and daughter’s first year of life.

I know, my roll-back-the-sands-of-time self needs to stop living in the past. It's just that I feel safer when I spend time there looking at old photographs, reading old journals, hearing old stories or jokes, and reconnecting with old friends. As long as I scroll backwards, time becomes neat and tidy. One and done. Not scary. Predictable. 

I am trying to move ahead,  I am, but it's hard, because whenever I do, I swear, my soul becomes psychedelicized. 

There's A Hole In The Bottom Of The Sea

Monday was a holiday, but the geriatric painter guy came anyway, and scraped, sanded, destroyed, and hummed from 8-4. When he first arrived, I tried to explain to him how I needed him to put up plastic to seal off the rooms from the paint dust, which he half-heartedly attempted to do. Only he didn’t tape the plastic down, and it billowed each time he moved around the hallway, which spread the dust even more thoroughly throughout the house. He doesn’t speak much English, so I stopped trying to communicate my anti-schmutz ideas and gave in to the paint dust falling where it may (which happens to be everywhere). I have to say this is the worst house painting experience I’ve had since the mentally ill painter guy painted my kitchen 12 years ago and refused to finish the job until I lied and discreetly told him I was having my own mental health issues.  He finished up in no time.

The word “discreet” brings me back in time. I’m 10 years old, and visiting my aunt and uncle in Manhattan. They run a ticket agency, which I don’t really know much about (but I met Ed Sullivan there, and he shook my hand). What I understand is that they have access to free tickets to musicals and movies. I get to see Oh, Captain, which bores me, but stars Tony Randall, who is very funny; a few years later I see Oliver, which is loud, boisterous, and veddy British. I miss out on seeing Oklahoma and West Side Story, but get to spend one afternoon by myself in a theater watching the movie Indiscreet, starring Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. I mistakenly think it is titled In the Street, and I am unable to follow the plot or figure out what the heck is wrong with the characters. I have no idea what the word means, but 51 years later I finally do.

I have been ordered not be indiscreet or write about what’s really eating a hole in my heart, stopping it from calmly going on. I’ve been warned that if I disclose what’s tearing at my heart, I’ll either be sued or shunned like an Amish defector (or West Point cadet). Therefore, I force my fingers to type fluffy stuff, like how oil paint fumes give me migraines. (Yes, I have one now.)

You should know that I hate being hogtied by my fear of indiscretion repercussions. I wish I could blow the real stuff inside me in the wind. Unfortunately, my marred and scarred by mole removal lips must remain sealed. For a blabbermouth emoter like me, my gag order is hard to swallow. The quieter I have to stay, the more my issues try to reclaim a space in my leaky heart, where they have trouble sticking like glue, like birds of a feather that stick together. 

So, because I can’t write what I also love to refer to as the truth, I have to write fluff, which spills out of my keyboard like a tipped over bag of goose feathers. My resentment and upset at having to remain permanently discreet have driven me so crazy I convinced myself I could somehow disguise the truth by hiding it between the lines Yeah, I know that’s as insane as thinking that walking between raindrops keeps us dry. But I am no longer lying, like I did with the psycho painter guy – I have issues, and bottling them up is making me fester.

I know that “loose lips sink ships,” which is why I can’t open up the floodgates and spill any more beans. If I do, I’ll turn into the original human Titanic. Splish fricking splash.

Ain't No Sunshine When She's Gone

One of my pseudo daughters called yesterday to say she was feeling sad, so I agreed to run over and commiserate, even though that meant leaving the painter guy alone in the house to snoop, steal, or turn on the heat gun and burn the house down.

As I drove through the sunless drizzle, I let my sadness wash over me like the rain washing over my windshield. It was A’s first day by herself since her mom died. She told me that she stood outside on the deck and cried for about ten minutes, shouting out her mom’s name and yelling as loudly as she could that she missed her and wished she would come back. I know I’m only a mom substitute, but I since didn’t want her to keep feeling like a motherless child, I offered to play the piano while she played along on her violin. We slowly limped through a Schumann song together, even though I haven’t played the piano in over fifteen years. Afterwards, she played me some Bach on her violin, while I closed my eyes and luxuriated in the melody. When she was done, we went into the kitchen, leaned over the counter and tore apart a pomegranate. Since I haven’t eaten one in ages, it was a new and exciting experience for me. As we picked out crimson seeds, sucked off the juice and spit out the remains, we traded stories, exchanged a few tears, and soon came to realize we both felt a little better.

I felt so useful and productive that I offered to load up the trunk with the six bags of food A no longer wanted in her mom’s pantry, so I could drop them off at the town food bank. The woman at the desk was delighted at my generosity, until I told her why I had so much food to donate. Why do people say, “I’m sure she’s in a better place, now” when I tell them my friend is no longer alive? How is death a “better place”? I think of it as emptiness, a black hole of nothingness. I didn’t say this to the well-meaning woman, but I wanted to shout it at her. Where’s that death manual when I need it?

I had to force myself to return to Disasterville, my paint dust-covered hellhole. When I opened the back door, loud music hit my ears. It was blaring from the painter guy’s boom box, which he must’ve brought in when I left. He was humming along as he expanded his path of destruction. He only works until 4:30, so I had exactly six more minutes of loud music and humming to put up with. You can’t imagine how happy I was to stop hearing Don McLean belting out Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, one of my least favorite songs of all time.

At 4:30 on the dot, he turned off the radio and started taking his supplies outside to his car. As soon as he was gone, baby, gone, I swooped down and cleaned up his mess. I cleaned until the cows came home, because there was paint dust on every surface imaginable (and even some that were unimaginable).

Just think, I get to do this all over again on Monday, Tuesday and forevermore. I’ll keep you posted on my lead paint absorption rates and doorknob hunting adventures. 

Joy to the fishes in the big blue sea.

She's Come Undone...

The painters are here, scraping and making a mess out of the water-damaged closet in my former computer room. Tomorrow they’re going to sand the ruined downstairs hall and get it ready for painting. That means I’ll be dealing with even more mess and stress. Joy.

Oh, no, no, no. I don’t do well with strange painters, intrusive home repairs, mistakes, strong smells, or disruptions. I become anxious and out of breath. Hyper alert. Fearful. Distrustful. Schmutz-crazed. Undone

The painter marched in early this morning, filthy shoes on his feet, paint cans swinging from his arms. The cans were filled with paint I’d told him to buy, but I’d told him to buy the wrong color. He and his dirty shoes had to stomp back outside and drive to the paint store to replace it. Damn.

Before he left, he told me that whoever painted the room used the wrong type of paint (latex vs. oil). I got so overheated and upset about both my color mistake and past poor choice of a housepainter that I had to strip off my fleece in front of him. Yep, I’ve turned into the New England Stripper. Ta da.

One of his painter guys unhinged the damaged closet door and leaned it against one improperly painted wall, but didn’t put anything between the door and the wall to protect it from being scratched. I inwardly screamed, and outwardly ran out of the room. Aargh.

I noticed that the so-called drop cloth he’d put down under the wall-scratching door and over the rug to catch the sanded paint flecks was the size of a washcloth. This means that paint flecks will cover my previously clean rug. Teeth gnashing ensued. Gasp.

Another painter arrived, reeking of stinky deodorant, making my upstairs smell like him. I can’t breathe in without smelling his damn scent. Migraine time, buggedy buggedy buggedy shoot. Ouch.

I know they’re going to make mistakes (because, hey, I made one already today), but I’m not looking forward to cleaning ‘em up. I hate feeling out of control, imposed upon and worried, as well as at their mercy, but them’s the breaks. Sigh.

I’ve lost the sun, haven’t I? Bazinga.

Help, I Need Somebody...

My computer mail program has been acting up for the last three days, which means I haven’t been able to send or receive email. Since I’m never going to give up email and turn into a Luddite, my latest computer malfunction has unhinged me. What has made me the craziest is watching that annoying little ball endlessly spinning, spinning, spinning next to my gmail mailbox, signaling that all’s not right in MacMail Land. I tried to fix it on my own, but failed each and every time. This meant that I had no choice but to call and try to understand those dreaded voices at…dah dah dum dum…tech support.

I realize there are far more upsetting things going on in the world right now that trump my blip-on-the-radar email glitch, but my blip is what I’ve chosen to obsess about today. Why? Because as long as I stay focused on it I can stop myself from thinking about all the other upsetting things that are going on in my life. Fair trade, wouldn’t you agree?

This morning I sacrificed my abs and gluts, as well as my inner peace, and instead parked myself on my tushie, the portable phone jammed up against my deaf ears. For over three hours. I talked, talked, talked to a variety of tech support people from all over the globe. One tried to fix the problem, but he gave up and handed me off to a different one. That one couldn’t fix things, so she transferred me to another one. That didn’t work, so I ended up calling back the first number. Then I got cut off and had to call again. By the time I was done, I’d talked to more than five different people.

Because I never crossed the same person twice, I had to calm myself down over and over in order to rationally re-articulate what my problem was. My brain kept threatening to seize up and short-circuit, but I forced it to keep it spinning like my defective Mac icon.

Why does talking with tech support turn me into such a crazy wackadoodle? Is it because I have to work so hard to interpret what the various and sundry techies are saying? Is it because I have to make multiple phone calls to solve each problem? Is because having to interact with faceless support people makes me shake with pure and utter fear that I’m never going to get no satisfaction? Is it because their fix-it solutions sometimes crash my computer and I’m convinced it’ll never work again? Is it because merely talking about my blips makes me hold my breath and forget to breathe?

I wish there was a computer Mommy out there who’d rush to my side, wrap me in her expertise, and offer more than a tech supported carrot-on-a-stick Mac-band aid fix. Or a computer wizard best friend who’d intuitively know all the right buttons to push, the right cache files to trash, the right something-or-other to tweak to get me up and running in no time.

Oh, Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds! (I’ve been asked to stop cursing, now that I’m a grandmother.)

Baby, Baby, Sweet Baby...

I know I’m not the first 61 year-old woman in the universe to become a grandmother, since there have actually been a zillion, bazillion moms who’ve turned into them throughout civilization. But at 10:30 this morning, when I was elevated to that new parallel universe, the one where my granddaughter officially lives, I believed, I truly believed, that I was the only grandma in the entire history of the world to ever feel such joy.

I would like to believe that turning into a grandmother - a delirious, delightful, happy, peppy and bursting with love event, if there ever was one - is so special that nothing bad will touch me today. Take that, M.C. Hammer.