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.

Shower The People You Love With Love…

My bloodhound nose caught a familiar smell while it was walking outside with me this morning. I pointed it high up in the air, sniffing, sniffing, sniffing that yummy smell, just like a pointer puppy, and was instantly transported back in time to a place I’m way too old for and will never go back to again: camp. Camp was my home away from home for part of each summer in the 1950’s and 1960’s, my safe haven. Pretend to breathe in that campish smell with me as I return, like I often do in my imagination whenever I need to feel better (which I do, oh I do do do).

            Look, my dad’s car is inching its way down camp’s narrow, dusty, woodsy road. As it pulls into the parking lot, watch me dive out the door like I’m entering a swimming pool filled with warm water. Feel that welcoming We-Love-You-Sharron, Oh-Yes-We-Do atmosphere suck us up like a powerful vacuum cleaner. Can you hear it announcing with its smells that we’ve returned to that magical world of woods, water, mosquitoes, campfires, songs, camp friends and adoring counselors?

            Walk with me to the MOP, the Make Out Place, where I once dragged poor Peter Linton, who wasn’t ready to make out, let alone be alone with me. The MOP, that supposedly secret place where you could hunker down among the bushes and kiss each other a few times before being spied on. Watch the kids standing on the roof of the youngest kids’ bunk as they watch the kissers. Laugh as I crawl out to the cheers of all the little girls from my sister’s cabin, who call out my name like I am a conquering hero, emerging from the trenches.

            Wake up with me to either a loud, gonging bell or reveille played on a trumpet. Watch me reach for my glasses, which lie on top of my wooden orange crate, then cover your ears as I start talking a mile a minute. Empathize with me about the time I wet my bed, when I was much too old to be doing such a thing, and was so afraid of being found out that I told my counselor I wanted to go home. Hear her tell me that Alison Lee wet hers, too, and watch us become instant pee-pals. Check out my impetigo that was once so bad I had to visit the scary crone, Helen the Nurse, who held me down so she could scrub off my scabs. That she thought this would make me get better is still a mystery to me, but bear with me as I put up a screaming fight each time she scrapes my arms and back with her nail brush.

            Watch me canoe, swim, water ski and then swim some more. Run around with me as I play Capture the Flag with flour bombs that I love to throw at the opposing team. Be my partner at the square dance and enjoy that ancient record player scratching out those old timey tunes. Can you see me in the dark? I’m flirting with the boys as they bow to their partners, dosey-doe and allemande left. You know, we had real callers, sometimes, along with a tall microphone that stood outside, connected to speakers. A thin man and a short, square-dance-skirt-wearing woman stood beside him, calling out each dance move.

            Sign up with me for the Ping Pong ladder, which I always wanted to climb to the top of, but never did. Play tennis with me on the terrible, rutted courts and cheer me on as I win the girls’ doubles tournament, my first time playing for real.

            Sit outside on KP duty and peel potatoes with me in front of the screened-in kitchen. Help with Set Up and Clean Up duties, even though I remember washing the dishes more clearly than I do setting the tables. 

            Join me in singing songs throughout the meal, like, “Here’s to the cook, the cook, the cook. Here’s to the cook, the best of them all. She’s merry, she’s jolly, we like her by golly” or “Oh the Lord is good to me, and so I thank the Lord, for giving me the things I need, the sun and the rain and the apple seed, the Lord is good to me.” Scream out, “Here’s to Sharon and the way she does the hula hop. Here’s to Sharon and the way she does the hula hop. Here’s to Sharon and the hula ho-op. Sharon is a social flop, she can’t do the hula hop” and wait for me to get up and gyrate wildly in front of everyone. Notice how there’s only one “r” in my name, because I didn’t add the second one until I was much older. Or better yet, shout, “Happy Birthday, hunh. Happy Birthday, hunh. There is sorrow in the air, people dying everywhere; but Happy Birthday, hunh. Happy Birthday, hunh” as we celebrate someone’s birthday.

            Stand in line with me at the One Utensil meal, where we will pick one out from a big box as we enter the dining room and eat with it, even if it is a potato masher or a rolling pin. Celebrate Backwards Day, when we wake up to taps, wear our clothes inside out, walk backwards and eat dinner for breakfast. On rainy days slosh through the puddles with me in bare feet, with a poncho slung over us to keep us dry.

            Hear me tell ghost stories at night. Watch me practice kissing with my pillow, write letters home at rest period, get mail from family and friends, read with my flashlight after lights out, then sneak over to the boys’ side to shortsheet their beds. Adore each cookout, canoe trip, Color War, Carnival and Last Dance, where we will wear dresses and make finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Sing with me around campfires and on the steps of my bunk. Watch me learn to play the guitar by practicing the strum to Jamaica Farewell on my counselor’s back. Allow me to include you in the camp skits that I wrote the words to. Play the guitar with me some more and cheer me on as I learn new finger pickings. Memorize all the words with me to every Joan Baez album.

            Rip open a Care Package filled with food I am never allowed to eat at home, like Kosher Salami, Cheez Whiz, Cow Cheese, Peanut Butter and Ritz Crackers, which I love to eat late at night, while my counselors are out (until a skunk finds our food and ruins that secret pleasure forever). Watch me shriek with delight the day my brother’s best friend sent me that gigantic envelope filled with gum that we aren’t supposed to have, but somehow, no one notices. Hoard it with me for the rest of the summer, and make gum wrapper chains out of the empties, like I do. Admire them hanging on the wall next to my bed.

           Weave zillions of lanyards, as if you had repetition compulsion. Work on a new creation each day, attaching one end of it with a pin onto a shoe or the end of cut-off jeans to finish as we sit around, talking, waiting for dinner or lunch to start or free period to be over. Learn the box stitch and use as many different colors of gimp as you can to make each and every lanyard stand out.

           Quick. Whoosh back to reality with me, because that’s it for today. 

           I want to thank you for returning with me to that safe, loving place where people loved me, they really loved me (yeah, I’m channeling Sally Field) and I wasn’t unlovable, like I often felt (and still sometimes feel) at home.

           I know, I agree with you – it was awfully brief, but that’s all camp memories are – quick trips. Ahh. Things are gonna be much better, right, James Taylor?

Thirty Days Hath September...

              Today’s the last day of September, so I’ve decided to say my official goodbyes to summer and force myself to accept it’s over. But, let me warn you - I’m not happy about it. That's right - I'm downright droopy. Please, fear not, I’m not dense. I knew it was coming, since it magically happens every damn year. It's just that I'm afflicted with a serious case of magical thinking when it comes to summer, so I cling to it when it’s here and imagine that if I hold on to it hard enough it won't go.

So, now that I've seen the light (well - more like lack of it), I've been able to appreciate the swarms of pine cones covering my driveway (seriously - you can't miss 'em). They've been yelling at me with their Christmas-scented breath that it’s time for me to accept that fall is not going to turn back into summer, no matter how much I pretend it will. One out and out bonked me on the head the other day when I was walking down the street, I guess to remind me it was about time I gave up all my wishin’ and hopin’.

What worries me is that those stupid pine cones might be portending a cold, cold, cold and dark-as-a-dungeon winter. I'm shivering just writing down the word cold, because it makes me think about the possibility of one more New England winter (my 30^th!). Hmmm, the very thought of it launched me out of my chair towards the thermostat. I turned it on, oh yes I did, and let it warm up my purple-with-fall-cold toes. What a difference a few degrees of Fahrenheit make.

Once I warmed up, I was seized with a case of fall fever, so I ran around the house like a squirrel on speed, zipping up the screens and yanking down the storm windows, then closing up all the open air conditioning vents (with a few quick curses thrown out, because of all the damage that stupid air conditioning unleashed in August).

I know I sound like a Scrooge (bah, autumn), but it’s because I'm a summer gal from head to toe. I'm not a pumpkin patch picking, leaf-peeping, cider-mulling, football-game-going rooter tooter. I mean, all of those things are terrific...for the fall guys. I'm a California girl - a Beach Boys-er. A sun shining through my dirty (never been cleaned) upstairs windows at 5 a.m.-er. 

Sigh. Bye.

Dear Blogreaders,
     I've been laid low by a massive 5-day migraine, which explains why I'm not writing (or talking or doing much more than curling up in our bed in a fetal position). 
     Stay tuned, though, because I plan to jump back in the saddle and pick up the mighty pen (tee hee - I mean, type on my lovely laptop) once the pain recedes. 

Movie Madness

How’s this for surreal? Drive to a park, walk down a path to a former dog “beach,” listen to some moving speeches from family, relatives, and friends, watch someone dig a hole in the ground to receive cremains, empty three baggy’s-full of ashes into the hole, and mound the dirt back on top.

Find a nice pile of stones to put over the mounded spot, talk for a few minutes, walk back down the path to the car, drive back to the house, drive like the wind to pick up Harry’s pizza and salad, then race back to feast on it.

Drive to a neighborhood church, walk in and wander around its empty rooms, watch as so many people arrive they fill up the room. Hold up a teeny, tiny Flip video camera to capture the cast of hundreds who have crowded in to honor Janet with speeches and piano playing. Step up to the podium and read some words on a page that try to capture what it’s like to be a best friend among a sea of best friends. Meet and greet once all the talking and piano playing end. Go home and toss and turn – then have nightmares.

Luis Bunuel, where’s your film crew when I need it? Don’t you know that I feel like I’ve been cast in one of your movies?

Yep. My life has become a foreign film. What’s odd is how incredibly real it now seems. Sure, on a day-to-day basis, my old life was real, too, but in a different way - painful, annoying, upsetting, fun, agonizing, delightful, and scary, all at the same time. I took that old reality for granted, though. These days surreal is my new reality (sort of like how 60 is the new 50).

Since I started living on Planet Janet, I feel surreally disconnected from planet Earth. I used to think reality equaled down-to-earth activities like hanging out with my husband, reading, running errands, going to the library, knitting, cleaning the house, cooking yummy dinners, emailing, talking on the phone to the usual suspects, shopping, thinking clearly, watching Netflix videos, going to the movies, exercising regularly, or enjoying Connecticut’s amazingly beautiful fall weather.

These days reality makes me feel like I'm living inside a giant kaleidoscope. I turn in one direction and I’m hanging out with a 10 month old and 3 year-old. Turn again, and I’m interacting with a changing cast of adult mourners. Keep turning, and I’m helping to organize bills and receipts, obituary editing, or memorial-service planning. Turn once more, and I’m exploring the rocky terrains of sadness. The weird part is, living in this new amorphously psychedelic reality makes me feel useful – and alive. Yeah - achingly alive. But blurred around the edges.

It produces bad dreams, too, when I fall asleep. In one dream a very dangerous person was on the loose. He wanted to kill someone I was close to. I tried to protect this person (I can’t remember whether it was a male or female) from the killer, but it wasn’t possible, because the killer had amazing super powers and could track my every move. I tried to think of ways to hide, but I couldn’t figure out how to avoid being found.

After I woke up, I realized that it's impossible to avoid death, because it’s inevitable. And omnipresent. Yeah, it’s merely waiting in the wings to swoop down and snatch me up. Like it snatched up Janet.

Move over, Carl Jung.

Shake It Like A Polaroid Picture

Someone asked me the other day what all the brouhaha was about Zumba. What, you’ve never heard of it? You have no idea what this marbles-in-the-mouth-sounding exercise class is all about? Here’s what you’re missing: loud Latin-beat music, constantly-moving legs, lots of open-mouth panting, buckets of sweat, easy-to-follow steps, and a mumble-jumble whirlwind of arm movements.

Why go to a class like this? To shake yourself silly, that’s why. To dance the blues away. For a change of pace. To move like crazy to songs that make you want to clap and stomp your feet. To race over to your water bottle and glug down a gulp or two to revive yourself before you hop, skip, and jump back to your spot. To move and groove like there’s no tomorrow.

No, don’t shake your head and say Zumba’s not for you. Try it. I promise, it’s not hard to follow the teacher’s moves. As soon as the music starts, you’ll find yourself shimmying, jerking-ing, salsa-ing, and cha-cha-ing up a storm. You’ll be instantly gratified.

Does this old body of mine sometimes balk? Sure, but when it does, I just slow it down and go through the motions. When it doesn’t, I find myself Zumba-ing with the best of them.

Yes, yes, sometimes it’s a struggle for my 61 year-old body to gyrate and wave its arms around like a June Taylor dancer, but since I’m far, far from one, who cares. Sure, I look kind of crazy in the mirror, but that’s the beauty of Zumba: it doesn’t matter.

No, I’m not being paid by the Zumba people to hype it. I just wanted to let you know what’s available, in case you’re as stubborn as I am and don’t like to try new things. Or you're sad because your best friend died and all you want to do is hibernate. Zumba-ing helped me pack up my sorrows, lace up my dancing sneakers, and celebrate living like it was 1999.

Going in Style

I will probably get in a lot of trouble with someone, somewhere for putting an obit in my blog that identifies my friend and uses her real name. But, I'm doing it anyway, consequences be damned, because I want everyone to roar with laughter and cry along with me (and all her other gazillion best friends) as I celebrate her life. 

She would've been on the phone with me this morning, cackling with laughter at the irreverence and length. She also would've noticed that the obit on the following page was twice as long (but three times as unexciting). I wonder what she'd have said if she'd known how much these suckers cost...$4.00 a line. Count 'em up, folks - we're talking one expensive send-off.

Enough about money - click on the title of this blog entry and you'll be brought right to her Hartford Courant obituary.

Stopping to Smell the Rose(s)

My best friend, who died with her family at her side on 9/11/09, used to tell me I was her best friend. What amazes skeptical old me is that I believed her. In fact, her endorsement made me feel so loved and special that sometimes my little old ego got way, way too big for its britches, causing me to pat, pat, pat myself on my back. I also got so full of myself that sometimes I’d even strut around my house after I’d talked to her, because she made me feel so popular. I liked imagining that I was more loved and special than any of her other regular friends, the ones who populated what I have recently found out is a gargantuan, multi-peopled, best friend planet.

Well, get ready for some even more amazing news. There are now (and this is only based on yesterday’s count) 3, 479 other people who claim that she told them they were her best friends. The craziest thing is – we all are. I know you might have a hard time believing me, but let me tell you a few details, and you'll become her best friend, too.

I’m not sure how one short, Canadian-American, maple-syrup-guzzling piano teacher was capable of pulling off convincing so many best-friend-needing people that she loved them the most, but isn’t it downright delightful that she did? She was a brilliant con artist who somehow connected us to her like she was a gigantic surge protector. That’s right - she out and out plugged us all in to her love – maybe so she could keep us from finding out about the gigantic best friend Ponzi scheme she was clandestinely operating.

Yesterday, both the mailman who stopped by and the CVS pharmacist I spoke with on the phone to cancel her pre-ordered prescriptions told me they were her best friends. A few days before, nurses and doctors at the ICU said they were her best friends, even though she never gained consciousness, so we’re talking ESP here. Each and every piano student and their parents who called or stopped by said they were her favorite. Her three daughters individually confessed to me that they were her favorite, as well as absolutely  and positively her best friend. Her granddaughter, who can’t speak yet, made it clear to me that she was her Bubbie’s best friend. Her grandson, who can talk, announced he was her best friend (and also her favorite). Each of her dogs yippingly communicated to me that they were her best friends. I know – it’s amazing and wonderful, isn’t it?

Her house has been crawling with people who’ve been coming over and leaving off food and goodies. The phone has been ringing off the hook with calls from people who emphatically assure the machine that they’re her best friends. Aren’t those people lucky, though, to be able to hear her voice again on her answering machine?

Love just keeps on pouring out of all these best friends, like she poured hers all over each and every one of us, each and every day she was alive. She truly was everyone’s best friend, our own, gooey, 100% pure Canadian maple syrup (which you now know she was addicted to) that streamed over, under, around and through us, her endless batch of luscious, best friend pancakes. 

Ahh, how good she was to the very last drop.

I’m Going Down, Down, Down…(thanks Bruce S.)

I’ve been so busy trying to keep up a good front, act like an adult, do the right thing, and stay focused on being useful that I haven’t allowed myself to feel down about the fact that my friend is almost done dying.

I have decided to let down what little hair I have left on my head and face up to my sadness, with the help of idioms, similes and metaphors, since they have officially become my new best friends. Bear with me as I try to describe what it’s been like for me to lose my old one.

I’ve can’t think up much of anything positive to say about watching someone I just spoke with on Sunday afternoon suddenly stop existing as I knew her on Monday morning. Watching her die has been painful, like pulling teeth without Novocain, frustrating, like trying to find a needle in a haystack, and pointless, like beating a dead horse with a stick. Dying, after all, is not as easy as pie. It’s as hard as nails. And it’s not for sissies.

For watchers like me who aren’t doing the dying, it isn’t easy to face the fact that all you can do is watch someone else do the work while you just stand around, staying alive.

I mean, watching has been comforting, that it has - but boy has it also been scary. It’s left me with a lot of down time to feel sad, guilty, angry, bitter, superfluous, and impotent. It’s also made me feel so jealous that part of me has wanted to climb into that hospital bed, next to my friend, and join her.

Watching a friend die has been a roller coaster ride – but without that cloyingly delicious cotton candy smell wafting up, or those happy-scared-ecstatic shrieks echoing through the air. It’s been a horrific house of horrors trip, full of sad good-byes, tearful embraces, and bewildered why-you’s.


This is one trip I’d rather not be watching you take – but I have no choice. So, here I stay, waving goodbye, crying out how much I’ll miss you leave on your final gut-wrenching, headache-inducing, sob-producing, if-only-I’d…, what-if-we’d..., why-didn’t-you…oh-what-will-I-do-without-you journey.  

Bad Things Happen to Good People

I know, I know, I know. I am going to sound incredibly trite and stupid – but I want to know why bad things happen to good people. I don’t want to know why good things happen to bad people, because I could care less about them. All I want to know is why the good ones, the very ones who don’t deserve to suffer, end up doing just that. I never actually ask this question out loud, but I've been silently thinking about it all week. 

Right now a good one (good, better, best), my dearest, sweetest, most generous, long-timiest West Hartford friend, was silenced when she stopped breathing before the EMT’s arrived. She’s now lying unconscious in the ICU, plugged in to what appear to me to be an incredible array of machines – but they are keeping her alive, so I’m grateful for their intrusive existence.

But, oh, oh, oh – how she’s suffered (often in silence) these past few years, from terribly debilitating problems like GERD, asthma, non-stop sinus infections, and diabetes (brought on by all the prednisone she has taken to control her freaking sinus infections). She has been so sick that she has no longer been able to breath easily, teach without struggling, take her dogs for long walks, travel, go out on the town, or talk as much as she used to.

She’s undergone so many invasive tests, procedures and treatments that it’s amazing to me how positive and upbeat she’s continued to be. We often compare and contrast her breathing problems and my migraines, but usually end up laughing hysterically at ourselves for generating so much kvetching and moaning. 

I’ve been visiting her in the ICU, where she’s still unconscious, paralyzed (by drugs) and unresponsive. Even though I’ve never talked to anyone who’s unconscious, it’s not as scary or bad as I thought it’d be. I merely lean over and let my spontaneous babbling loudly fill her ears with details about the nurses, her friends who have visited, her daughters, various doctors’ explanations, and the highs and lows of her blood pressure.

As I talk, I pretend to myself that we’re talking on the phone, which makes it easier for me to talk up a storm to the one person I’ve talked to almost every single day for the past 24 years. I blab on and on, saying anything that comes to mind, because talking helps me (Ms. Glass-is-Half-Empty) believe she (Ms. Glass-is-Half-Full) will recover. 

According to one nurse I spoke with, “…hearing is the last thing to go.” I want to believe she’s right, so I keep filling up the silence with my words. In my humble opinion, at this point in time, silence is the farthest thing from golden, "hope is the thing with feathers..." and talk is anything but cheap. 

What Happens If You Blog and No One Comments?

I remember my first day of Philosophy 101, when my professor earnestly asked our class, “If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” I didn’t have the answer I was sure he wanted, so I kept quiet. I wanted to give him the right answer, but my answer didn’t feel right enough. Or, I might not have answered because I’m such a concrete a thinker I only like answering answer yes or no instead of conjuring up original responses to abstract philosophic musings. Did my not commenting that day invalidate his question?

If I write a blog and no one comments, are my words worth writing? Are they invalid?

Are my words invalid if you don’t talk back to me when you read my musings on daughter-missing, air conditioning leaks, migraines, dieting, or petty hatreds? If I expect a response, am I asking more of you than I was able to give forty-two years ago?

Are you asking the computer screen (if you like talking to it like I do) why I continue to publicly philosophize about these rather random thoughts? Are you wondering why I keep exposing my words to what I like to think of as you, my amorphous, blogospheric audience – even after you remain silent? Can my blog be considered worthy if almost no one comments?

Oh dear. I’ve gone and replicated my professor’s class, filled with a sea of invisible, silent me’s, haven’t I? By trying to answer these new-age questions, I’ve turned myself back into that nineteen year-old college student self, that stranger in a strange land. Yep. I have officially morphed out of myself, back into someone who continues to have trouble re-imagining the bigger picture (the forest for the trees).

Therefore, I’ve decided to change course and answer my questions.

Yes, writing my blog is a worthwhile activity, even if no one responds. Maybe because these days I’ve become somewhat deaf, I am no longer able to hear trees falling in either forests or my back yard (let alone actors talking in movies or on TV shows, like Mad Men, my current favorite).

Now that I’ve finally opened my mouth and talked…or, to be more accurate, written back, I would like to imagine that my uber-edited, unresponded-to paragraphs are ultimately making a teeny, tiny bit of difference, responded to or not.

Class – what do you think?

They Say That "[Hate] is Just a Four-Letter Word" (Thanks, Bob Dylan)

Sunday was my husband’s 62^nd birthday, which means he can now buy cheaper movie tickets, instead of paying full price. He is also able to pay less for each golf game, so we’ll be about $20 richer this year, considering how much golf he plays. I think that’s about it for perks, though. He says he hates getting old, but the alternative is worse.

I’ve hate things, too. Like golf, for instance, which I claim I hate so much I refuse to even try playing. I have convinced myself that I hate standing outside on chemically manicured grass, hitting a little ball into a hole I can’t see. My husband claims that I have chosen this hatred. I told him that I hate golf because I once had a boyfriend who was such a fanatic that when we went anywhere in his car, he had to make sure he’d put his clubs in the trunk, in case he suddenly needed to stop paying attention to me and practice putting. I bet I chose to hate this great love of his because it meant I wasn’t.

What I have come to realize is that these so-called hatreds of mine have so totally invaded me that they’re hard to let go of.

Like my hatred of eating pickled herring, which my husband loves, but which I refuse to eat, because once my brother (an early herring lover) threw it up all over me and the back of the car after eating some. The smell was so bad that I got sick, too. Or my hatred of frogs’ legs, which I developed after my mom tricked me by claiming they were a new chicken dish. When she revealed the truth, I immediately started gagging and crying, because I started visualizing those poor sacrificed frogs. (I visualize rabbits, too, which is why I hate it when they’re on restaurant menus.)

Then there’s my hatred of tapioca pudding, which I once puked up after eating it at my cousin’s. (Those lumps – oh, lord, those gloppy lumps.) I learned to hate cigarette smoke, which I used to love, after I gave up smoking in 1969. I now hate smelling perfume, which I wore for years, because it gives me migraines. I hate people who crack gum, especially when they’re sitting next to me in the movies, even though I spent an entire afternoon at a friend’s house when I was fifteen, practicing and practicing until I mastered it. I hate loud (or any) music played in restaurants. I hate using Porta Potties. I hate the sound of leaf blowers, especially my next-door neighbor’s (he is the king of leaf blowing). I hate water leaks inside my house (I found two new ones from the air conditioning leak). I hate winter in Connecticut (I believe no explanation is necessary).

I know, I know. I should not hate. Hate is a four-letter word. It’s better to love than hate, a mantra I repeated to my daughter when she was growing up.  But, my propensity to hate things keeps multiplying. Lately, I’ve started hating thin, beautiful, athletic, younger women. I catch myself staring at them with pure, green-monsterish envy. I hate them because I’m fatter, droopier, stiffer, and older – which is not something I want to hate (but I do, oh I do).

Yikes.