Everything's Coming Up Roses

The other day I was unable to stop and smell the roses (don’t worry, I’m not referring to Ringo Starr’s album) popping up like popcorn in Elizabeth Park, because I’m so industrially allergic to them. I’m also highly allergic to most other flowers, dust, pollen, yeast, pine trees, perfume, cigarette smoke, anything and everything scented (think shampoo, sunblock, lotions and emollients, makeup, and, oh Lordy, a list so long I’ve only just begun to describe it), as well as, in the past few months, alcohol, of all things (it triggers an instant migraine so painful that if I described it, you’d get one, too).

I tried to imagine myself smelling them while wearing my old, rubber nose plugs, which rest in peace in my underwear drawer in their little plastic container (since 1964!) to block out their luscious (yet sadly toxic-to-me) odor, but I couldn’t, because I was too busy sneezing and itching my eyes out. I had to race home like Atalanta and swallow a Claritan (which I forgot to take before heading outside). It’s a good thing I didn’t actually try out the nose plug thing, though, because if I had, I’d probably have been arrested for insane, rather than indecent, exposure.

Since I am no longer able to literally smell things like roses, I started thinking about metaphorically smelling them, especially after my husband challenged me to say and do (he left off think, thank god) only “positive” things for the upcoming month of June. I’m not used to channeling my Pollyannaish, positive side, but since I have 4 cheeks to turn, I chose one and accepted his challenge.

I will be spending the next thirty days burying my Scrooge-like, bah humbug-ness, and channeling my inner Mama Rose. As I aim for hitting the heights, keep your fingers crossed for me as I skip the light fandango, turn cartwheels across the floor, and turn an even lighter shade of pale. I'll keep you posted as I keep myself from going postal.

Let the wild rumpus start.

Take My Hand...

Recently, I started thinking that you might think I’m strange because of my need to obsessively hyperlink the music that swirls inside my head with my tip-tappingly typed-up bloggerly-written content. If you do, I’d rather you thought of me as Michel Gondry-ish strange, even though, unlike Gondry, who holds nothing back, I hold myself back from all-out exposing you to the full range of debris circulating inside my aging head (like my 62 year-old treasure trove of stranger than fiction book and movie references, as well as 58 years worth of stronger than dirt T.V. shows and commercials).

What I think is strange is that when I listened to Mick Jagger (my favorite after John Lennon when I was in high school in the 60’s) being interviewed the other day on NPR, I was shocked that he sounded like a veddy upper class twit Brit. He’s a good enunciator, as is Bob Dylan when he hosts his radio show on XM/Sirius radio, but I always thought of him as a street-talking kind of guy. When he was asked about the re-release of the Stones’ remastered 1972 album, Exile on Main Street, he must’ve thought it was strange that he had to offer up serious answers to what I thought of as strangely zip-a-dee-doo-dah questions. I have no idea how he managed to keep himself from hooting and hollering after he was asked if he wrote his new lyrics for the new album’s unpublished outtakes the same way he did forty years ago.

I wonder what the interviewer (Renee Montagne) was thinking when she asked this strangely inane question, because who doesn’t write (and think) differently, forty years down the pike (unless they’re stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues again)? Jim Morrison was right – people are strange, especially when they’re strangers.

Take my hand, and become a stranger in paradise with me, as forty plus years later I explain how I think differently, now that I’m one month into being a senior citizen. I now think people act strangely in stores, especially when they bump into me, try to pretend they’ve done nothing wrong (even though they have), and then glare at me like I’m strange when I refuse to apologize for their mistakes. The other day I was in Whole Foods, minding my own business, methodically sorting through the sell-dates on all the Fage yogurts so I could snatch up the newest batch. Suddenly, this insane woman smashed her cart into my leg, loudly yelled at me to watch where I was going, then stood there tapping her foot impatiently as she waited for me to apologize. Since I had done nothing to apologize for (I was the one standing still, right?), I refused. Instead of giving her the satisfaction of speaking, I stared straight into her eyes, gritted my teeth (in pain), rubbed my now-bruised leg, and wiggled my nostrils in and out like a rabbit. Strange, but true.

I now think people are stranger, yet, on trains, especially in the newly created quiet car, which didn’t exist when I first started taking Amtrak in 1958. Today they often refuse to be quiet – even after being called out for rude, annoying, inappropriate, uber loud cell phone talking. I love how they pretend to ignore the Ssh! This is The Quiet Car sign, my (and other passengers’) repeated requests to shut up, and often even the conductor when we rat them out (which always makes me feel like I’m complaining to my mom that my younger sister is bothering me). I’m now amazed how people who break the rules act shocked and surprised when they’re being confronted, then look around in wonder at us, their accusers (strangers, all), as if the theme from Twilight Zone was suddenly leaking its way through the train’s loudspeakers, proving that we’re the strange ones, not them.

After practicing yoga for the past 36 years, I more often than not believe that yoga classes have turned into refuges for strange, odd duck acolytes. My favorite yoga class is often invaded by a loud-breather guy whose noises make it impossible for me to keep a straight face as he turns what are usually quiet downward facing dog and warrior posing moments into high comedy. Instead of in-through-the-nostrils, out-through-pursed-lips breaths, he produces loud piggy snorts, gurgling, or deep-voiced groans, making it hard for me to focus on anyone or anything but him. His obvious-to-me strangeness doesn’t seem to bother the others, but unbalances me so much I have to om shanty om up a storm inside my head so I won’t fall off my tree pose and dissolve into hysterical giggles.

I can’t help but feel like a stranger in a strange land these days - maybe because I’m getting older, maybe because I’m not working full time and I have more time to think about strange things (don’t get me started on those Tea Party poopers) – or maybe because my past is butting up against me, laying waste my powers. Never fear - faces aren’t coming out of the rain – but I’m pretty sure something equally bizarre will emerge next on my middle-aged strange-o-meter, proving to me that I am, in fact, not morphing into old and intolerant, but merely experiencing strange days, indeed.

Count on Me

I told the head of group exercise at my gym that she could count on me to wear an AARP-sponsored pedometer for 10 weeks, with the goal of taking at least 10,000 steps a day. Unfortunately, I’m not even close to meeting this goal, so my failure has turned me into a petulant pedometer pooper (which every party has, all alliteration aside).

I mean – how on earth is it possible that I, Ms. Flibber-de-Gibbet, the Original Restless Leg Swinger, am only averaging 5,000 steps a day, considering all I do is walk, exercise, then walk some more? Explain why no matter how I try to up my step quotient, I remain lower than low on the totem pole. I’m all ears, since these feet don’t seem to be doing enough walkin’.

My newest illogical answer is that I must be moving my legs and size 7 feet too fast for the pedometer to accurately measure my steps; therefore, it’s the pedometer’s fault, not mine.

As if.

Seriously, though – how can it be my fault, when I rarely sit still (even when I’m typing on the computer or checking email)? How come I, uber diligent student and slave that I am to this stupid, frickin’ black and white plastic clip-on box, am not in the top 50,000 step range, considering that I even clip the thing on my underpants when I get up, so that (God forbid) I won’t miss counting a step before I get my pants on? How come, now that I go out of my way to run up and down the stairs even more now than I did before I had to count my steps, they don’t add up?

I’ve decided that it’s your turn to explain, because this morning when I went to yoga, which was taught by a new instructor whose voice was pitched so low and New Age water-dripping-down-the-stones music was so droningly and ear-splittingly loud I couldn’t hear most of what she was telling us to do, I barely moved, let alone took steps. But, when I got home and checked my pedometer, it said I was up to 7,221.

I am no longer holding myself accountable, even though I try so hard. Maybe I do not understand, because something is happening here, but I don’t know what it is. Do you? 

Where The He(art) Is

I can’t make art, so I compensate for it by decorating the walls of my house with as much of it as I can. My newest acquisition, titled Tableau, is a Michelle Weinstein dipping-pen-and-ink-on-paper original, hot off the walls of her Smack Mellon Brooklyn, N.Y. exhibit. It arrived from Los Angeles (where she lives and paints), wrapped in so many layers of bubble wrap that it took me nearly twenty minutes to cut it free from its shackles.

As I sat down on the kitchen floor to look over Moo’s magnificent gift, my heart swelled with pride at her depiction of wintery trees, spine-like in their bareness. I spent so much time kvelling that I left myself less than five minutes to drive like the wind to the library for my last day of volunteering at its community knitting program (say that fast three times - and I can guarantee that the skin around your mouth will tighten and tone). It was my last volunteer hour there until the program starts back up in the fall, so I didn’t want to be late.

For our last day together, our library leader decided to reward our knitters by introducing a simple take-home art project: decorating cheap tchotchke pendants with bottles of glitter glue. Our young knitters instantly turned themselves into mini-Picassos and Pollocks, while I cheered them on, oohing and aahing like the true art lover that I am. Each kid’s creation-in-the-making looked really and truly terrific (unlike their knitting projects, which often looked mostly not-so-terrific). Watching them effortlessly work like busy bees, I was reminded yet again how I tank at creating art (even though I rule at teaching knitting).

I didn’t want to admit up front to them that I’m art-impaired, so I plopped myself down at the “adult” table and attempted to imitate them. I started with silver (oh-so-sparkly and tiara-ish), quickly switched to pink, green (a disaster – I smeared it all over the letter i), purple, gold, and last but not least, blue, which was the only color not being used. Soon the other adults joined me in decorating (and appropriating glitter glue squeeze bottles from the kids).

As I dabbed dots of colors along my pendant’s letters (f-r-i-e-n-d), I found myself muttering that I was not doing a very good job, was I. One mom across the table from me was painting a magnificently colorful pendant, as was the one across from her. My friend L, on the other hand, seemed to be having almost as much trouble as I was. We whispered to each other that we were not only far from terrific, but missing the “art gene,” too.

The kids had finished with their decorating by then, so they gathered around me, the person who always gathers around them to cheer them on with their knitting. They weren’t cheering, though, when they saw the disaster I’d produced. Instead they shouted things like, “Oh. You’re not very good at art, are you?” “Do you want me to do this over for you?” “I can make this look better, if you’ll stop ruining it.” “Were you the worst student in art when you were younger?” “You should wash off all the glitter or you’ll never fix this mess.” “You might be ‘the ripper’ when you help us knit – but you’re the dripper today, because look at you - you’ve smeared glitter glue all over yourself.”

Oh, were they ever happy correcting me, their weekly corrector. Laughter and joy literally dripped out of their mouths, along with the pink-iced cupcake, hummingbird cake, and snickerdoodle crumbs they were chowing down on. I can tell you that they loved “fixing” my mistakes for once, instead of me fixing theirs, and that I loved that they offered to fix L’s, as well (it made me feel a little misery-loves-company better).

Once they were all done, they happily grabbed their artwork, and L and I graciously donated our made-over pendants to the girls who labored over remaking them. I thanked the librarian for my thank-you gift (a sampler box of Whitman’s Dark Chocolates), we all hugged each other, and then waved good-bye with our glitter-covered fingers.

And, oh, was I ever happy, because I’d never to have to see that pendant again. Smiling like the Cheshire cat at my hour of artlessness, I couldn’t wait to get in my car and drive myself home, where the art is.

Cat and Mouse

My migraine brain has been trying to kill me. It misunderstands me, and thinks I’m happy living with it, but I’m not. Today it’s playing mouse, so I’m playing cat as I lay in wait for this brief, pain-free interval to stop sticking like a perfect Olympic landing.

As I wait, I’ve been entertaining myself by sorting through my blockbuster laundry list of movies-in-the-making events. My first feature, Oh My God, Our Passports Have Been Stolen, stars me as a frantic, drawer-ripping-apart lunatic and my husband as a calm, naysayer who exclaims, over and over, “You always do this. You swear something’s been stolen and it never is. Remember your “stolen” earrings? Hidden in your sock drawer. Remember your “stolen” heart necklace? Hidden in a different sock drawer.”

This drama-packed film is full of insane dialogue (“Of course I didn’t move the damn passports. Don’t you know I never move things from their spots – especially this spot, which is 26 years old? Trust me. I know they were stolen.”), live action strewing of desk drawer contents, kangaroo-like jumps up and down stairs, and madcap rifling through random rooms and sock drawers.

The final scene slowly lingers on me, exhausted from searching for and shrieking about “stolen” passports, not listening to my husband first threatening to call the police to report our cleaning people and ruin their lives, and then repeating over and over, “I told you so.” Spoiler Alert: The passports were not stolen. I can’t be trusted. I move things, and forget I moved them. Yes, I moved the freaking passports inside a fireproof safe given to me by my pseudo-daughters, which they no longer needed after they emptied out their mom’s estate. Satisfied?

My second feature, Let’s Itch Again, Like We Did Last Summer, stars me (yes, again!) and my husband. The camera lovingly lingers on a silver BMW sports car, its top down. and on two grumpy middle-aged people (yeah – us again) squeezed into a pint-sized death trap, getting ready to zoom (“Too fast,” the wife screams, “You’re driving way too fast.”) to Tulmeadow Farms in West Simsbury, CT to treat themselves to their first favorite ice cream of the newly sprung spring season.

As they drive along in the husband’s midlife crisis convertible (or as the wife calls it, the penis), it’s clear that it’s a warm spring afternoon, because the car’s outdoor thermometer says 83 degrees. The wife has forgotten that the air is full of pollen and allergens. She has also forgotten to bring her antihistamines. (Yes – I admit it! I forget things. So sue me and get it over with, already!) The wife does remember to wear her (stupid) UConn basketball-insignia-ed baseball cap to ward off scalp cancer, though, so all is not lost.

When they arrive, there is a long line of people dying to eat delicious, creamy, Voted Connecticut’s Number One ice cream. Husband and wife stand behind some young, vital, sports-loving dads and their daughters, whom the wife takes an instant dislike to because she’ll never be young like them again. She tries not to drool as she waits for her small (2 scoops) red raspberry, chocolate chip regular not sugar cone. As she sucks saliva back into her mouth, she spies gorilla-sized bees flying above her head, foreshadowing something ominous. (You’ll have to keep reading to find out what, though.) They dive-bomb, so she keeps cringing and pointing at them, as if that’s going to stop them from scaring the living beejesus out of her or those damned adorable young dads.

Finally, the exhausted kid behind the window hands the couple their ice cream in both cone and cup (the husband always orders his ice cream in a cup, because he believes doing so will cut down his caloric intake, even though this ice cream is so chock full of fat and calories that one tiny cone is a drop in the proverbial bucket). Pan in on the wife grabbing a too-big pile of paper napkins, which she starts pointing at the damn bees, because they’re getting a little too close for comfort, for goodness sake.

The camera pans away as the two grumpuses slowly march away from the killer bees, into the woods, where they walk, slurp, and wipe. Suddenly, the wife’s left eye becomes wildly inflamed. She experiences an itching so strong that she screams, “I’m going to scratch this eye out, and I don’t care if it makes me go blind.” Zoom in on the swelling, red, allergic, pollen-filled left eye, which instantly swells up into a carbon copy of those damn killer bees’ bodies. Aah. Foreshadowing explained at last. Happy?

I’m sorry, but there’s not going to be a third feature, because I’m too old to sit through three movies in one day, let alone write about them. I’ll leave you with a brief synopsis-like trailer of the third (and last) movie, though, because I’m a nice person and I don’t want to leave anyone hanging. (Get it? Trailer? Hanging? Foreshadowing? Knick knack paddywack, give the dog a bone?) 


With a roar sounding nowhere near as scary as the opening-credits MGM lion, this fake filmmaker (Yes, me again! It’s my blog and I’ll appear if I want to) must now slowly lower the curtain on yet another beautiful day in the neighborhood, because it’s time for her to work on keeping that mouse at bay, so that please, oh please, she will not have to experience another migraine before the day is done.