And isn't this one the cutest? For someone who grew up in the city, where in hell did I learn to love the lamb? I dunno. Only thing I can figure out is that there was a TV show in black & white (that's how freakin' old I am!) at some godawful hour of the morning when I was around two. It was broadcast by the local agricultural school, and the opening shot was of goats and sheep running down this ramp thingy. The rest, as they say, is therapy. Go figure.Friday, August 31, 2007
I've always been the...
And isn't this one the cutest? For someone who grew up in the city, where in hell did I learn to love the lamb? I dunno. Only thing I can figure out is that there was a TV show in black & white (that's how freakin' old I am!) at some godawful hour of the morning when I was around two. It was broadcast by the local agricultural school, and the opening shot was of goats and sheep running down this ramp thingy. The rest, as they say, is therapy. Go figure.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
And speaking of husbands...
Mine didn't particularly care for being called a technogeek. Why the hell not? I bow to his technological expertise. There IS such a thing as geek chic. When I met him, he was wearing a Beavis & Butthead t-shirt, postal shorts, long white tube socks and sandals and a baseball cap over his long hair. What would you call that?!! I didn't fall in love with him for his wonderful taste in clothing. But the more I talked to him, the more I liked him.
My mom always said "don't marry for looks, because eventually everyone loses their looks and then what have you got? marry for heart and it will always be there". So I did. And he's actually kinda cute when you dress him up. He'll hate that.
My mom always said "don't marry for looks, because eventually everyone loses their looks and then what have you got? marry for heart and it will always be there". So I did. And he's actually kinda cute when you dress him up. He'll hate that.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Oops!
If you're reading this blog, (and if you're not, I guess I'm not actually talking to you, so there's a bit of an existential crisis right there) you may have been interested in some of my favorite sites, lazily clicked the connection that was supposed to take you to the link I was talking about, and then nothing happened. Oops!
Fortunately for me, my technogeek husband is a genius at fixing this sort of thing, so I've got everything running smoothly once again.
I happen to be rather stubborn and like to learn how to do things without any help (read: interference) and find my own answers in my own way. It takes longer sometimes, but I enjoy doing it like that. When I bought my used car, the manual with the instructions for setting the radio stations was AWOL, so I monkeyed around, randomly pushing buttons, until my favorite stations had somehow achieved "pre-set" status. Yay! Of course, if I take the car to the mechanic and lose my pre-sets, I have to fumble around again in much the same manner to get them back, since I have no idea which set of fumblings led to success the first time. You may be comparing me to monkeys with shakespeare at this point, but that's OK with me.
Hubby, on the other hand, gets annoyed and jumps in to help me, in the process, destroying my fun. He doesn't mean to, he only wants to help.
I know there are other people like me, and I hope the rest of them know how ass-backward they are too. I just don't care.
Either way, the links have now been fixed, and the bruises will heal, but there's a mouse-shaped one on his arm and one of the coffee mugs will never be the same.
Fortunately for me, my technogeek husband is a genius at fixing this sort of thing, so I've got everything running smoothly once again.
I happen to be rather stubborn and like to learn how to do things without any help (read: interference) and find my own answers in my own way. It takes longer sometimes, but I enjoy doing it like that. When I bought my used car, the manual with the instructions for setting the radio stations was AWOL, so I monkeyed around, randomly pushing buttons, until my favorite stations had somehow achieved "pre-set" status. Yay! Of course, if I take the car to the mechanic and lose my pre-sets, I have to fumble around again in much the same manner to get them back, since I have no idea which set of fumblings led to success the first time. You may be comparing me to monkeys with shakespeare at this point, but that's OK with me.
Hubby, on the other hand, gets annoyed and jumps in to help me, in the process, destroying my fun. He doesn't mean to, he only wants to help.
I know there are other people like me, and I hope the rest of them know how ass-backward they are too. I just don't care.
Either way, the links have now been fixed, and the bruises will heal, but there's a mouse-shaped one on his arm and one of the coffee mugs will never be the same.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
friendship
funny thing about friends. your relatives are stuck with you, and if you're lucky, you get along with them all right. there's no doubt in my mind that i'm pretty lucky on that score. if you're really lucky, you might have one or two people you can call a close friend. for some people, that's a lot. i can't think for the life of me how i got so damned lucky, but there's a big bunch of people i can call close friends. i don't even know WHAT you'd call that. i think i'll have to invent a new term for that kind of luck. flucky? i don't know. douglas adams could probably come up with a good term for it. i'll have to think about it some more.
we used to rent this amazing house in the adirondacks on a small lake with about 14 of my friends. the house was built in the 1900's by a family from my area. their grandfather had designed and built this log house, a great camp as they call them in that neck of the woods. most of the windows were floor to ceiling and the walls were made of bark in one bedroom. it was like being inside out in a tree. the windows on one side reflected the light glinting on the lake and you could hear the loons calling sometimes. on the other side, the coolness of the woods surrounding the house cast shadows and brought a cool breeze to blow the curtains. at night, we'd all bundle up and gather on the dock to watch the stars. one year there were meteor showers. they looked so close that you could swear you could touch them.
all the furniture was real, original adirondack style furniture. even the chandelier in the living room was made out of birch bark. there was an ancient moosehead over a huge stone fireplace and squirrels ran across the rafters in the living room. all the doors looked more like barn doors and either had big latches like that or deer hooves. if you're a PETA member, you're probably cringing, but you'd never last on a real farm, so go somewhere else.
the adirondacks are beautiful to begin with, and the house is truly unique, but i could never figure out whether it was the place or the people i liked best. i had met this particular bunch of characters at a new year's party someone brought me to. turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. somehow, i had managed to get plonked down on a whole herd of bright, funny interesting people.
after i had infiltrated this bunch, i kept hearing about this magical place, spoken of in reverent whispers, usually followed by groans of ecstasy. i couldn't imagine how this place could be real. then, one day at a party, someone asked me if i wanted to go too. i looked around to see if they meant someone else. i felt like i was about to be initiated into some secret club. hell yeah, i'll be there! i was so excited.
when i got there, i saw why my friends spoke like that about the place. but there was so much more to it than that. i ended up in the bedroom right above the kitchen, so the first thing i heard in the mornings was the sound of laughter. is there any more beautiful sound? i can't think of any. i was an only child, so our house was always fairly quiet growing up.
each night two of us would cook dinner for the rest of us. they'd choose the wine or beer to accompany the dinner and decide what to make. we never had a bad meal. it was fun to be the evening's orchestrator of dinner, and you'd think the best part of being the one to make dinner was that you were exempt from doing dishes for the evening. but it was more fun to do the dishes, because everyone else crowded into the kitchen, put some kind of lively music on, and danced around the kitchen while they washed, dried, and put away. i hate doing dishes, but it was so much fun like that that i never seemed to mind.
each summer we spent the week together was different. people who were single got married, people who'd been married got divorced, people had kids, kids got too big, each time was a different permutation, but they were all good ones.
one year, we were living in an area almost as pretty, in a wooded area in the country, and i thought that it wouldn't be such a big deal to go, but we went anyway. i had lost my mom a couple of months before, and sad just doesn't seem to cover it. but when we pulled up the road to the house, there was my friend al smiling at us, and the world got just a little sunnier all of a sudden.
a long time ago, trust exercises were big in acting classes and some forms of therapy. you fall backwards and trust that someone will catch you before you land on your ass and bust yourself up. risky business, that. well, my friends and i have all been through all sorts of things, but the nice thing is that i'm pretty sure that if any of us fall, and we have from time to time, the others will be there to catch us. it's a nice feeling.
so i saw some friends from this bunch tonight where i work. they came looking for me, to tell me that they had just moved back to the area. i felt like a puppy wagging its tail. you don't have to talk to people every day to feel close to them sometimes, but it sure is nice to have them close by. people get so damned busy these days, it's a wonder you see them at all. but when you do, it's like you were holding your breath for ages, and all of a sudden you can breathe again and feel the blood pumping in your veins.
that's the wonder of friendship.
we used to rent this amazing house in the adirondacks on a small lake with about 14 of my friends. the house was built in the 1900's by a family from my area. their grandfather had designed and built this log house, a great camp as they call them in that neck of the woods. most of the windows were floor to ceiling and the walls were made of bark in one bedroom. it was like being inside out in a tree. the windows on one side reflected the light glinting on the lake and you could hear the loons calling sometimes. on the other side, the coolness of the woods surrounding the house cast shadows and brought a cool breeze to blow the curtains. at night, we'd all bundle up and gather on the dock to watch the stars. one year there were meteor showers. they looked so close that you could swear you could touch them.
all the furniture was real, original adirondack style furniture. even the chandelier in the living room was made out of birch bark. there was an ancient moosehead over a huge stone fireplace and squirrels ran across the rafters in the living room. all the doors looked more like barn doors and either had big latches like that or deer hooves. if you're a PETA member, you're probably cringing, but you'd never last on a real farm, so go somewhere else.
the adirondacks are beautiful to begin with, and the house is truly unique, but i could never figure out whether it was the place or the people i liked best. i had met this particular bunch of characters at a new year's party someone brought me to. turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me. somehow, i had managed to get plonked down on a whole herd of bright, funny interesting people.
after i had infiltrated this bunch, i kept hearing about this magical place, spoken of in reverent whispers, usually followed by groans of ecstasy. i couldn't imagine how this place could be real. then, one day at a party, someone asked me if i wanted to go too. i looked around to see if they meant someone else. i felt like i was about to be initiated into some secret club. hell yeah, i'll be there! i was so excited.
when i got there, i saw why my friends spoke like that about the place. but there was so much more to it than that. i ended up in the bedroom right above the kitchen, so the first thing i heard in the mornings was the sound of laughter. is there any more beautiful sound? i can't think of any. i was an only child, so our house was always fairly quiet growing up.
each night two of us would cook dinner for the rest of us. they'd choose the wine or beer to accompany the dinner and decide what to make. we never had a bad meal. it was fun to be the evening's orchestrator of dinner, and you'd think the best part of being the one to make dinner was that you were exempt from doing dishes for the evening. but it was more fun to do the dishes, because everyone else crowded into the kitchen, put some kind of lively music on, and danced around the kitchen while they washed, dried, and put away. i hate doing dishes, but it was so much fun like that that i never seemed to mind.
each summer we spent the week together was different. people who were single got married, people who'd been married got divorced, people had kids, kids got too big, each time was a different permutation, but they were all good ones.
one year, we were living in an area almost as pretty, in a wooded area in the country, and i thought that it wouldn't be such a big deal to go, but we went anyway. i had lost my mom a couple of months before, and sad just doesn't seem to cover it. but when we pulled up the road to the house, there was my friend al smiling at us, and the world got just a little sunnier all of a sudden.
a long time ago, trust exercises were big in acting classes and some forms of therapy. you fall backwards and trust that someone will catch you before you land on your ass and bust yourself up. risky business, that. well, my friends and i have all been through all sorts of things, but the nice thing is that i'm pretty sure that if any of us fall, and we have from time to time, the others will be there to catch us. it's a nice feeling.
so i saw some friends from this bunch tonight where i work. they came looking for me, to tell me that they had just moved back to the area. i felt like a puppy wagging its tail. you don't have to talk to people every day to feel close to them sometimes, but it sure is nice to have them close by. people get so damned busy these days, it's a wonder you see them at all. but when you do, it's like you were holding your breath for ages, and all of a sudden you can breathe again and feel the blood pumping in your veins.
that's the wonder of friendship.
Friday, August 24, 2007
what's next, j.k.?
so if you've read my husband's blog, eponym, you know we've both been reading harry potter. ok, harry potter, harry potter, harry potter. got it out of your system now? good. i read them, i liked them, they were fun, fast reads and had lots of plot holes and character mistakes. but i liked them. i'm an infuriatingly fast reader, or so my husband tells me, so when i like something i devour it in no time at all. then i'm on the hunt for my next fix. hubby says books are like crack for me. maybe so. they're brain candy when well-written. there's an unfortunate dearth of those. entertain me, enlighten me, make me laugh, make me cry, make me think and do it with clear, beautiful language, preferably with subtle nuances, and i'll read anything you've got. give it to me!
so my question for j.k. is "what's next?". she's the biggest rags-to-riches story since oprah. unless contractually obligated to do so, she need never do another bloody thing again. and, like oprah, she worked hard, found a niche and went full throttle. good on ya, mate.
it seems to me that her writing got a little better as she continued to plow through book after book. so i wonder if the potter books have been permanently laid to rest, or will a hungry public try to exhume the bodies and demand another? and if so, will she accept? i actually hope not. everyone liked "rocky", and maybe even "rocky 2". but would anyone go to see "rocky 27: the wheelchair years"? gosh, i hope not.
it will be interesting to see what j.k. rowling does next. i hope it's something completely different from harry potter, maybe even another medium altogether. bath products? cologne? who knows.
By the way, have you seen JKR's site? It's one of the neatest I've ever seen.
so my question for j.k. is "what's next?". she's the biggest rags-to-riches story since oprah. unless contractually obligated to do so, she need never do another bloody thing again. and, like oprah, she worked hard, found a niche and went full throttle. good on ya, mate.
it seems to me that her writing got a little better as she continued to plow through book after book. so i wonder if the potter books have been permanently laid to rest, or will a hungry public try to exhume the bodies and demand another? and if so, will she accept? i actually hope not. everyone liked "rocky", and maybe even "rocky 2". but would anyone go to see "rocky 27: the wheelchair years"? gosh, i hope not.
it will be interesting to see what j.k. rowling does next. i hope it's something completely different from harry potter, maybe even another medium altogether. bath products? cologne? who knows.
By the way, have you seen JKR's site? It's one of the neatest I've ever seen.
new list: music we like
so we've got kinda weird taste in music. here are the reasons i've selected these:
butterfly: because it's one of malcolm mclaren's least remembered attempts. i bought this album when it came out way too many years ago and liked the mix of funk and opera. it's definitely dopey, but i still like it.
kew.rhone.: so old that the album is in a wheelchair on life support, but blegvad is highly intelligent and frequently funny, especially here. carla bley (who also worked with zappa), as well as other highly respected musicians like john greaves, joins blegvad for some seriously complicated music which is accompanied by lyrics so densely referenced that there's a flow chart to keep track of it all. not for the stupid.
i'm not in love: ok, so i was an 80s club bunny, but if you can get a better copy than the crappy one on amazon, this was 120 tracks of 2 guys, a piano, and a secretary they pulled out of the office for the whisper thingy at the last minute. i used to listen to this in a recording studio booth at school, where it became this wall of sound- sheer heaven, at least for me. a brilliant piece of studio engineering.
one nation: george clinton, parliament, funkadelic, bootsy collins, bernie worrell, big complicated music to groove to, musicians who were amazing, all kinds of genres brought together in a danceable mode. if you have any rhythm or joie devivre, preferably both, this is it.
space is the place: another complicated, genre-crossing group, sun ra and his arkestra- you can't really even classify it- it's closest to both jazz and classical music, but other influences can frequently be heard. a crazy guy who insisted his musicians conform to sun ra's way of living, kind of like a dojo of music. the guy was apparently hard to live with but light years ahead of his time.
butterfly: because it's one of malcolm mclaren's least remembered attempts. i bought this album when it came out way too many years ago and liked the mix of funk and opera. it's definitely dopey, but i still like it.
kew.rhone.: so old that the album is in a wheelchair on life support, but blegvad is highly intelligent and frequently funny, especially here. carla bley (who also worked with zappa), as well as other highly respected musicians like john greaves, joins blegvad for some seriously complicated music which is accompanied by lyrics so densely referenced that there's a flow chart to keep track of it all. not for the stupid.
i'm not in love: ok, so i was an 80s club bunny, but if you can get a better copy than the crappy one on amazon, this was 120 tracks of 2 guys, a piano, and a secretary they pulled out of the office for the whisper thingy at the last minute. i used to listen to this in a recording studio booth at school, where it became this wall of sound- sheer heaven, at least for me. a brilliant piece of studio engineering.
one nation: george clinton, parliament, funkadelic, bootsy collins, bernie worrell, big complicated music to groove to, musicians who were amazing, all kinds of genres brought together in a danceable mode. if you have any rhythm or joie devivre, preferably both, this is it.
space is the place: another complicated, genre-crossing group, sun ra and his arkestra- you can't really even classify it- it's closest to both jazz and classical music, but other influences can frequently be heard. a crazy guy who insisted his musicians conform to sun ra's way of living, kind of like a dojo of music. the guy was apparently hard to live with but light years ahead of his time.
it's lambie friday
it's mutton, honey. in the interest of all things lambie, i give you shari lewis, who seemed to be a real lamb. that's lambchop, if you've never seen either of them. she had a tv show and lived nearby.then again...
Monday, August 20, 2007
Friday, August 17, 2007
lambie of the week
black-faced sheep are my favorite. nice & fluffy. ok, kitties are fluffy too, but they can get squooshed if you accidentally step on one. sheep? harder to get under foot. and sheep won't scratch up all your nice furniture. you don't even have to let them into your house. and there's no litter box to clean. and if you're really ambitious, you can give your sheep a haircut (shearing) and knit a sweater with the wool. anyone would be glad to wear it. ever knit a kitty fur sweater? people would just look at you funny and back away slowly.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
party on, dad
here's the birthday song for you, dad, and anyone else born on 8/16. it's done in what can only be called a unique presentation. i'm not paying for the therapist.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
it's birthday season
if anyone who knows me wonders why i'm the big goofball i am, it's probably a toss-up between environment and heredity. i can't tell which is which, because both of my parents are/were goofy, but in very different ways.
there are several things you should definitely experience at least once in your lifetime. i highly recommend a hot air balloon ride, hitchhiking around a foreign country, kinky sex, a really bad hangover, the perfect romance, and bob newhart's old comedy routines. especially his " the button-down mind of bob newhart".
my dad is kind of like if you took the looks of walter matthau and the comedy stylings of bob newhart. my husband says he reminds him of alan greenspan, but i don't see it.
one of dad's bits of goofy-ness is that we have certain rituals. first of all, his mother taught him to celebrate anything & everything as much as possible, to counterbalance the crappier moments of life. great philosophy, right? sure. there's no such thing as too many parties.
in our family, you don't have a birthday, rather it's the opening of "birthday season", kind of like wabbit season/duck season.
birthday season starts officially on the first day of your birth month and extends past the actual date of your birth to the end of the month. my dad is so expert at this that he can fill the entire month and slop into the next month for those who couldn't manage an appointment to celebrate during birthday season. you get extra points for this.
lest you think it's one-sided, dad is just as exuberant for everyone else's birthdays and can't understand people who only celebrate the one day, or even worse, not at all. he just shakes his head with bewilderment.
now, dad isn't some celebrity, was never featured in lifestyles of the rich and famous or architectural digest. he spent his working life in a three-piece suit as a financial veep. he's got a great sense of humor, he's as smart as alan greenspan, gives great financial and life advice and loves chocolate eclairs and his family, not necessarily in that order.
to say dad has a lot of friends doesn't even begin to cover it. have you ever played six degrees from kevin bacon? well, we play 2 degrees from dad, because it generally doesn't take that many. chances are, if you live in my city, one of the larger metropolitan areas in the country, if you don't know my dad, you probably know someone who knows him, or vice versa. not kidding.
so when dad turned 70, ahem, not that long ago, his girlfriend and i threw him a surprise party and had to weed it down to 70 of his closest family members and friends. seriously. dad knows how to party.
so when we celebrate his actual birthday, there's another ritual: the ritual of the cards. i'm one of those crazy people you see in card stores laughing to themselves. i have to read every one until just the right balance is struck and it sounds genuinely like what i want to say. it's a painstaking process. when i was an angry adolescent and post-adolescent ( i got over it a couple of days ago), some of the cards were, well, reflective of that a little. ok, maybe a lot. but those days are long gone.
dad's about as sentimental as anyone could get. maybe that's why he saved the entire billing cycle from 1955. nah. just a really big pack rat.
anyway, these days i try to find the mushiest card possible while still remaining true to the feel of our relationship. for instance, i don't buy dad cards about guys who fix plumbing or play golf or drink too much. just not him. but the ones about dads who give great advice, always listen to what you say, help you with generosity whenever you need it, have a great laugh, those i get. buckets of them.
see, the ritual of the card goes like this: we gather together, usually at a meal, and i slip him a card. it's usually not my "A" material, might even be a throw-off card. i wait long enough to make him think that's it, then materialize another one (he's a lot smarter than that, but we all pretend). this one might be the "A" material or not. this goes on many, many times. or maybe around six. everyone in my family now does this. dad started the ritual, but we've all joined in. i highly recommend the practice. it leads to lots of giggles even though we all know the ritual. and besides, my hallmark stock is doing really well. just kidding.
dad's birthday is on thursday, august 16th, in case you want to send him a card. happy birthday, dad.
there are several things you should definitely experience at least once in your lifetime. i highly recommend a hot air balloon ride, hitchhiking around a foreign country, kinky sex, a really bad hangover, the perfect romance, and bob newhart's old comedy routines. especially his " the button-down mind of bob newhart".
my dad is kind of like if you took the looks of walter matthau and the comedy stylings of bob newhart. my husband says he reminds him of alan greenspan, but i don't see it.
one of dad's bits of goofy-ness is that we have certain rituals. first of all, his mother taught him to celebrate anything & everything as much as possible, to counterbalance the crappier moments of life. great philosophy, right? sure. there's no such thing as too many parties.
in our family, you don't have a birthday, rather it's the opening of "birthday season", kind of like wabbit season/duck season.
birthday season starts officially on the first day of your birth month and extends past the actual date of your birth to the end of the month. my dad is so expert at this that he can fill the entire month and slop into the next month for those who couldn't manage an appointment to celebrate during birthday season. you get extra points for this.
lest you think it's one-sided, dad is just as exuberant for everyone else's birthdays and can't understand people who only celebrate the one day, or even worse, not at all. he just shakes his head with bewilderment.
now, dad isn't some celebrity, was never featured in lifestyles of the rich and famous or architectural digest. he spent his working life in a three-piece suit as a financial veep. he's got a great sense of humor, he's as smart as alan greenspan, gives great financial and life advice and loves chocolate eclairs and his family, not necessarily in that order.
to say dad has a lot of friends doesn't even begin to cover it. have you ever played six degrees from kevin bacon? well, we play 2 degrees from dad, because it generally doesn't take that many. chances are, if you live in my city, one of the larger metropolitan areas in the country, if you don't know my dad, you probably know someone who knows him, or vice versa. not kidding.
so when dad turned 70, ahem, not that long ago, his girlfriend and i threw him a surprise party and had to weed it down to 70 of his closest family members and friends. seriously. dad knows how to party.
so when we celebrate his actual birthday, there's another ritual: the ritual of the cards. i'm one of those crazy people you see in card stores laughing to themselves. i have to read every one until just the right balance is struck and it sounds genuinely like what i want to say. it's a painstaking process. when i was an angry adolescent and post-adolescent ( i got over it a couple of days ago), some of the cards were, well, reflective of that a little. ok, maybe a lot. but those days are long gone.
dad's about as sentimental as anyone could get. maybe that's why he saved the entire billing cycle from 1955. nah. just a really big pack rat.
anyway, these days i try to find the mushiest card possible while still remaining true to the feel of our relationship. for instance, i don't buy dad cards about guys who fix plumbing or play golf or drink too much. just not him. but the ones about dads who give great advice, always listen to what you say, help you with generosity whenever you need it, have a great laugh, those i get. buckets of them.
see, the ritual of the card goes like this: we gather together, usually at a meal, and i slip him a card. it's usually not my "A" material, might even be a throw-off card. i wait long enough to make him think that's it, then materialize another one (he's a lot smarter than that, but we all pretend). this one might be the "A" material or not. this goes on many, many times. or maybe around six. everyone in my family now does this. dad started the ritual, but we've all joined in. i highly recommend the practice. it leads to lots of giggles even though we all know the ritual. and besides, my hallmark stock is doing really well. just kidding.
dad's birthday is on thursday, august 16th, in case you want to send him a card. happy birthday, dad.
memorial service
i am sad to inform you that one of my favorite websites, www.deifyme.com, is now or is about to be deceased. it was run by the divine frenchy, who i have quoted below. she has what i consider to be the proper attitude about politics, religion, and life in general- always irreverent, frequently outraged and well-informed about current events. she's also excruciatingly funny. it's a can't miss combo. frenchy had a do-it-yourself deity kit on her site where you could proclaim yourself god or goddess of anything you wanted. i was lot, god of parking. i had already had accolytes since college. if you chanted the official lot, god of parking chant (which i made up) in the area where you desired the spot, it usually worked. the reason i had accolytes in the first place was that my parkma was so good that people wanted to know how i always seemed to manage to get a parking space in an overcrowded major city right in front of wherever i needed to be. if you're interested, here's the official lot, god of parking chant. feel free to try it if your other god or gods don't mind. mine doesn't :
o mighty god of parking spots, cut us a break, have mercy on us
this is to be said, preferably all in one breath, over and over again until the perfect parking spot has been reached. don't start too early or you'll get one further away than you want.
there were some 250 or so in frenchy's pantheon, most of which were also quite funny. some were in desperate need of a spell-check option and some grammar rules. e.b. white would have been turning over in his grave. he didn't just write charlotte's web.
anyway, getting back to frenchy's website, i am going to miss that little bit of zany commentary on an equally zany planet. but there's good news: she told me that she's writing a novel and that it should be coming out within the next year. if it's anywhere near as funny as her site was, it'll definitely be worth the read. when i hear what the title is, i know i'll be running out to get it and showing my support of this wonderfully creative and insightful woman. i'll be sure to make reference to it here, too, so you can enjoy her wit as much as i do.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
abbie hoffman-part 2
i just realized this morning that i never told you why it was a "steal this book" tour.
after our adventures in brussels, we went to paris. in brussels, we learned that you could sneak onto the buses from a native. the ticket taker machine being in the back, you could come in the front. on the subway you could bypass the turnstile thingy, so we did it the native way. we paid our train ride to paris, but when we got there, we found that on the metro, there was a way to get through the swinging door thing to the trains- it was a two man system. then we jumped the turnstiles right in front of the gendarmes. they were unimpressed.
i ended up sneaking aboard the vaporetto in venice, the buses and subways in amsterdam...well you get the picture. pretty much everywhere in cities, we found ways to sneak onto public transportation.
if you read my brief bio, you know that i'm a middle-aged housewfe. you might be too young to remember abbie hoffman. he wrote a book called steal this book, which i stole. i had also been reading jack kerouac's satori in paris while in paris, which i found pretty amusing. i had similar experiences and went to some of the same places. it was pretty cool.
i also saw the home of colette, another writer i admire, in paris, and paid homage to the great sarah bernhardt,one of the stars of the comedie francaise, at pere lachaise cemetary, another paris landmark. she was what some people call a polymath, and a real character. she wore pants before most women, was a sculptor, a writer, an actress, etc. even after she had a leg amputated, she still continued acting. if you're looking for an image of a strong woman, this is one of them. of course, she lied so much about her past that no one really knew what her true background was, but isn't that fabulous? reinvent yourself if you don't like your life!
after our adventures in brussels, we went to paris. in brussels, we learned that you could sneak onto the buses from a native. the ticket taker machine being in the back, you could come in the front. on the subway you could bypass the turnstile thingy, so we did it the native way. we paid our train ride to paris, but when we got there, we found that on the metro, there was a way to get through the swinging door thing to the trains- it was a two man system. then we jumped the turnstiles right in front of the gendarmes. they were unimpressed.
i ended up sneaking aboard the vaporetto in venice, the buses and subways in amsterdam...well you get the picture. pretty much everywhere in cities, we found ways to sneak onto public transportation.
if you read my brief bio, you know that i'm a middle-aged housewfe. you might be too young to remember abbie hoffman. he wrote a book called steal this book, which i stole. i had also been reading jack kerouac's satori in paris while in paris, which i found pretty amusing. i had similar experiences and went to some of the same places. it was pretty cool.
i also saw the home of colette, another writer i admire, in paris, and paid homage to the great sarah bernhardt,one of the stars of the comedie francaise, at pere lachaise cemetary, another paris landmark. she was what some people call a polymath, and a real character. she wore pants before most women, was a sculptor, a writer, an actress, etc. even after she had a leg amputated, she still continued acting. if you're looking for an image of a strong woman, this is one of them. of course, she lied so much about her past that no one really knew what her true background was, but isn't that fabulous? reinvent yourself if you don't like your life!
The Abbie Hoffman "Steal This Book" Tour of Europe, circa 1985
OK, that's enough pontificating.
so when other kids were going to the new jersey shore for the summer in the 80's, i figured out that for the same price, i could go to europe for a month or so. let's see... atlantic city or paris? hmmmm, that's a toughie. uh, PARIS!!!!!
my mom had won an all-expenses-paid trip to jamaica for two and she took me with her. turned out to be the only trip we took together before she had a stroke at 53, so i can't tell you how glad i am that we got the chance. had a great time, then got home and was planning to go back to work, which i think was as an assistant manager for a video store. lots of working, making good money and no time to spend it.
i got a call from my best friend the week i got home. she wanted to know if i wanted to go to europe with her. i did a quick calculation in my head of how much i had left in the bank, and said sure. by the end of the day, if not the afternoon, after many phone calls, we had booked tickets on what turned out to be THE last flights of people's express airlines for the paltry sum of $150 USD each way from newark, nj to brussels, belgium. yes, $150! who wouldn't go?!
i have a theory, The Idiot Principle: if you have no idea how difficult or dangerous somthing is, you dive in, blissfully ignorant, and have the time of your life.
so once upon a time, when the dollar was much stronger and so was I, I took what I now fondly recall as the Abbie Hoffman Steal This book Tour. Oooh, look him up.
i gathered every cent I had in the world, which might have been about $1000, and found my way to brussels with my best friend.
What was in Belgium? I had no idea, but I knew I could get to the rest of Europe from there pretty easily, and that suited me just fine.
I had actually been on the continent before, wandering around London, Bath, Brighton, bits of Scotland and Germany with friends from home, but there were plenty of places i hadn't seen yet.
I packed one small carry-on for what turned out to be a month long tour and off we went. We got to the youth hostel in Brussels on the Chausee de Wavre.The highlights of Brussels? Well, there's a museum containing a whole wall of outfits for the famous statue, Manneken Pis. This is the statue of the little boy taking a wizz. There are many legends about why this small statue was erected, erect being the key word.
The statue has become so well known, that visiting dignitaries, and there are many, bring gifts of outfits for him when they visit, so he's amassed quite a wardrobe, and every outfit has a special hole cut out for his uh, instrument of choice. OK, that's funny right there. But my favorite one was the reproduction of one of Elvis Presley's white and gold lame jumpsuit and cape thingys from his bloated years in Vegas. That cracked me up.
Then I found out that NATO is headquartered in Brussels, and I'll be damned if I didn't see Corazon Aquino in a Ford going across the GrotMarkt one day not long after she was elected. The Grote Markt itself was pretty interesting. Imagine this ancient main square, empty, then bustling with a lovely fresh market- fruit, vegetables, etc. in booths all over the square.There's people and produce everywhere, and that can get pretty dirty pretty quickly. I was astonished to see the square immaculate no more than an hour after the market closed, like no one had ever been there.
I didn't know what else there was, but I found out some fun things about Belgians. They were always nice to Americans, as they said we saved them in the last world war and they were very grateful. In the Reagan years, that was not the case in most European countries, so it made me grateful too. I had a friend from Belgium back home, and he had clued me in as to why he had left, so it was no surprise that Brussels is not known for its many sunny, warm and dry days. Think dank. But, as a dyed in the wool chocoholic, I had no idea I had reached heaven. I'm sure many people will argue about the merits of Swiss, Dutch, French, German and other chocolates, but from that point on, the Belgians and I have always had an understanding. They reign supreme in the field of chocolate.
And then there was the bar incident. My friend and I went with some other Americans we had met on the plane into the heart of the town, which is filled with narrow stone alleys with the usual stuff in stone alleys in Europe. Next thing we know, this guy is hanging out of the doors to a bar and making "psssst" noises at us. We look at each other like the RCA Victor dog, look at him and shrug. OK, we're game.
We go into the bar. It has the usual dark wood, looks like they decorated last in 1930, and there are some people there. On the counter, there's a little suitcase phonograph and some kind of weird, vaguely French music with accordion playing. They buy us drinks, give the girls in our bunch some flowers and then everyone gets in a circle and they do this dance around the circle, which turns out to be a sort of G-rated spin the bottle game where one of us, the girl or the guy (hey, it's been a long time!), gets down on bended knee and the girls give a little kiss and someone else goes next. All very harmless. We were dazed and confused, but that could have been the free drinks too. Another thing Belgians are very good at: they make about 120 different kinds of beer and all the ones I tried were delicious.
So we had a good time and went back to the hostel. We went back a couple of days later, and it was just like the produce market at the Grote Markt- like we had never been there, no one paid for our drinks, no one remembered us. We were kind of disappointed. Years later, someone told me about a wedding in France and mentioned a traditional dance they do at weddings there and suddenly a lightbulb went on. Mars needed women! Another mystery solved.
Next, we went to Paris, which is about a six hour train ride. My French was very good after three years of high school lessons (all you poor, frustrated french teachers,take heart!) so I spent pretty much the whole ride trying to teach my dear friend, who is very bright but had more experience with Spanish, the french r.
By the end of the trip, we were laughing hysterically, or maybe we were just hysterical, but she got it. Meanwhile, I had started out with Belgian French, which is slightly different than French in France. It's actually more logical with the numbers (closer to the latin root, I believe), so you don't have to be as good at math, and belgian french is much slower than france's french , which in Paris is lightning speed, so belgians are much easier to understand.we were seated in the train next to a guy who said he was a DJ in Paris, so he was probably speaking at hyperspeed.
when we got on, i couldn't understand him. by the end of the trip, i had acclimated enough to rattle things back at him, which might or might not have made sense. i had trouble enough with that in english. some things never change...
so when other kids were going to the new jersey shore for the summer in the 80's, i figured out that for the same price, i could go to europe for a month or so. let's see... atlantic city or paris? hmmmm, that's a toughie. uh, PARIS!!!!!
my mom had won an all-expenses-paid trip to jamaica for two and she took me with her. turned out to be the only trip we took together before she had a stroke at 53, so i can't tell you how glad i am that we got the chance. had a great time, then got home and was planning to go back to work, which i think was as an assistant manager for a video store. lots of working, making good money and no time to spend it.
i got a call from my best friend the week i got home. she wanted to know if i wanted to go to europe with her. i did a quick calculation in my head of how much i had left in the bank, and said sure. by the end of the day, if not the afternoon, after many phone calls, we had booked tickets on what turned out to be THE last flights of people's express airlines for the paltry sum of $150 USD each way from newark, nj to brussels, belgium. yes, $150! who wouldn't go?!
i have a theory, The Idiot Principle: if you have no idea how difficult or dangerous somthing is, you dive in, blissfully ignorant, and have the time of your life.
so once upon a time, when the dollar was much stronger and so was I, I took what I now fondly recall as the Abbie Hoffman Steal This book Tour. Oooh, look him up.
i gathered every cent I had in the world, which might have been about $1000, and found my way to brussels with my best friend.
What was in Belgium? I had no idea, but I knew I could get to the rest of Europe from there pretty easily, and that suited me just fine.
I had actually been on the continent before, wandering around London, Bath, Brighton, bits of Scotland and Germany with friends from home, but there were plenty of places i hadn't seen yet.
I packed one small carry-on for what turned out to be a month long tour and off we went. We got to the youth hostel in Brussels on the Chausee de Wavre.The highlights of Brussels? Well, there's a museum containing a whole wall of outfits for the famous statue, Manneken Pis. This is the statue of the little boy taking a wizz. There are many legends about why this small statue was erected, erect being the key word.
The statue has become so well known, that visiting dignitaries, and there are many, bring gifts of outfits for him when they visit, so he's amassed quite a wardrobe, and every outfit has a special hole cut out for his uh, instrument of choice. OK, that's funny right there. But my favorite one was the reproduction of one of Elvis Presley's white and gold lame jumpsuit and cape thingys from his bloated years in Vegas. That cracked me up.
Then I found out that NATO is headquartered in Brussels, and I'll be damned if I didn't see Corazon Aquino in a Ford going across the GrotMarkt one day not long after she was elected. The Grote Markt itself was pretty interesting. Imagine this ancient main square, empty, then bustling with a lovely fresh market- fruit, vegetables, etc. in booths all over the square.There's people and produce everywhere, and that can get pretty dirty pretty quickly. I was astonished to see the square immaculate no more than an hour after the market closed, like no one had ever been there.
I didn't know what else there was, but I found out some fun things about Belgians. They were always nice to Americans, as they said we saved them in the last world war and they were very grateful. In the Reagan years, that was not the case in most European countries, so it made me grateful too. I had a friend from Belgium back home, and he had clued me in as to why he had left, so it was no surprise that Brussels is not known for its many sunny, warm and dry days. Think dank. But, as a dyed in the wool chocoholic, I had no idea I had reached heaven. I'm sure many people will argue about the merits of Swiss, Dutch, French, German and other chocolates, but from that point on, the Belgians and I have always had an understanding. They reign supreme in the field of chocolate.
And then there was the bar incident. My friend and I went with some other Americans we had met on the plane into the heart of the town, which is filled with narrow stone alleys with the usual stuff in stone alleys in Europe. Next thing we know, this guy is hanging out of the doors to a bar and making "psssst" noises at us. We look at each other like the RCA Victor dog, look at him and shrug. OK, we're game.
We go into the bar. It has the usual dark wood, looks like they decorated last in 1930, and there are some people there. On the counter, there's a little suitcase phonograph and some kind of weird, vaguely French music with accordion playing. They buy us drinks, give the girls in our bunch some flowers and then everyone gets in a circle and they do this dance around the circle, which turns out to be a sort of G-rated spin the bottle game where one of us, the girl or the guy (hey, it's been a long time!), gets down on bended knee and the girls give a little kiss and someone else goes next. All very harmless. We were dazed and confused, but that could have been the free drinks too. Another thing Belgians are very good at: they make about 120 different kinds of beer and all the ones I tried were delicious.
So we had a good time and went back to the hostel. We went back a couple of days later, and it was just like the produce market at the Grote Markt- like we had never been there, no one paid for our drinks, no one remembered us. We were kind of disappointed. Years later, someone told me about a wedding in France and mentioned a traditional dance they do at weddings there and suddenly a lightbulb went on. Mars needed women! Another mystery solved.
Next, we went to Paris, which is about a six hour train ride. My French was very good after three years of high school lessons (all you poor, frustrated french teachers,take heart!) so I spent pretty much the whole ride trying to teach my dear friend, who is very bright but had more experience with Spanish, the french r.
By the end of the trip, we were laughing hysterically, or maybe we were just hysterical, but she got it. Meanwhile, I had started out with Belgian French, which is slightly different than French in France. It's actually more logical with the numbers (closer to the latin root, I believe), so you don't have to be as good at math, and belgian french is much slower than france's french , which in Paris is lightning speed, so belgians are much easier to understand.we were seated in the train next to a guy who said he was a DJ in Paris, so he was probably speaking at hyperspeed.
when we got on, i couldn't understand him. by the end of the trip, i had acclimated enough to rattle things back at him, which might or might not have made sense. i had trouble enough with that in english. some things never change...
Saturday, August 11, 2007
cigarettes
dear everyone i know-
i absolutely hate that many of you are young and smoke like chimneys. you are bright, funny, articulate people who i hate to see buying into the horrible sneakiness of the cigarette industry. never mind that you're wasting your money on this multimillion dollar industry which knew as early as the 1950's the harm they were causing people by denying that cigarettes were harmful.
never mind the fact that this industry found lots of nasty ingredients like concentrated tobacco juice, formaldehyde and other horrid things to make sure that you got addicted to this filthy habit.
never mind that smoking these things will make your skin age faster.
or that you may be smoking because you thought it made you look cool (you already were!), or were trying to use them as an appetite suppressant, or to take a break from the action, or thought they calmed you down when you were nervous (actually, they're a stimulant- it's an illusion).
can i tell you that i used to be able to find my husband in any store by the sound of his hacking cough? it's become a heart cough, in part, no doubt, from his long habit of smoking a pack or two a day.
i don't need to tell you about increased likelihood of emphysema, which makes it increasingly hard to breathe till you feel like you're strangling, or lung cancer or asthma. how about your immune system's natural ability to fight off disease in general. and if diabetes or heart problems run in your family, it's more likely if you smoke.
come on, people. when i see you all out there smoking, it breaks my heart. you could take the money you'd save by quitting and go on a fabulous vacation. i'm talking exotic location, money for the flight and great meals. that's how much you waste on this stuff. i calculated about 5 years ago, when it was cheaper, that 1 1/2 - 2 packs a day was about $1500 a year. it's got to be even more now. imagine where you could go with that kind of money! talk about relaxed. a week in tahiti or paris or the himalayas. wow.
i know it's hard to quit, but after about 2 weeks of misery, it gets easier. can't we put these creepy tobacco industry bastards out of business and give the poor tobacco farmers being robbed by them something else they can grow? there has to be some cash crop they could replace tobacco with. these guys laugh at you while they come to work in helicopters with the money you gave them. wipe the smile off their faces, will ya?
i absolutely hate that many of you are young and smoke like chimneys. you are bright, funny, articulate people who i hate to see buying into the horrible sneakiness of the cigarette industry. never mind that you're wasting your money on this multimillion dollar industry which knew as early as the 1950's the harm they were causing people by denying that cigarettes were harmful.
never mind the fact that this industry found lots of nasty ingredients like concentrated tobacco juice, formaldehyde and other horrid things to make sure that you got addicted to this filthy habit.
never mind that smoking these things will make your skin age faster.
or that you may be smoking because you thought it made you look cool (you already were!), or were trying to use them as an appetite suppressant, or to take a break from the action, or thought they calmed you down when you were nervous (actually, they're a stimulant- it's an illusion).
can i tell you that i used to be able to find my husband in any store by the sound of his hacking cough? it's become a heart cough, in part, no doubt, from his long habit of smoking a pack or two a day.
i don't need to tell you about increased likelihood of emphysema, which makes it increasingly hard to breathe till you feel like you're strangling, or lung cancer or asthma. how about your immune system's natural ability to fight off disease in general. and if diabetes or heart problems run in your family, it's more likely if you smoke.
come on, people. when i see you all out there smoking, it breaks my heart. you could take the money you'd save by quitting and go on a fabulous vacation. i'm talking exotic location, money for the flight and great meals. that's how much you waste on this stuff. i calculated about 5 years ago, when it was cheaper, that 1 1/2 - 2 packs a day was about $1500 a year. it's got to be even more now. imagine where you could go with that kind of money! talk about relaxed. a week in tahiti or paris or the himalayas. wow.
i know it's hard to quit, but after about 2 weeks of misery, it gets easier. can't we put these creepy tobacco industry bastards out of business and give the poor tobacco farmers being robbed by them something else they can grow? there has to be some cash crop they could replace tobacco with. these guys laugh at you while they come to work in helicopters with the money you gave them. wipe the smile off their faces, will ya?
almost friday lambie
i love sheep. not in the biblical sense. i just think they're cute. yeah, it's silly. so what?
this one is my wallpaper on my computer. it's a romney lamb. no relation to mitt romney or george romney.
if you've got a cute picture of a sheep or a lamb, let me know. maybe it will be the next lamb of the week.
they're better than kitties. who wants to milk a cat? and would you eat kitty cheese? really!!!
and i've already heard all the really perverted, disgusting shepherd jokes. must be reallllly lonely in some parts of new zealand.or yorkshire. or pittsburgh. and who would know where to get those special boots? yuk.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
code monkey
hey, i've got one of these at home. i married him. what about you? i think this sums up those of his ilk nicely. you could do worse than finding one for yourself. i've owned mine for over ten years, god/dess help me. he's over here.
Favorite Quote on Religion
This is by the divine Frenchy, formerly of Deify Me :
"Every religion is a weird religion. I mean, think about it: whatever your worldview is, whether you believe in God or not, an afterlife or not, that's kind of weird. We have no proof whatsoever that there are any kind of benevolent deities in existence ("imaginary superfriends" as some have put it) concerned with our welfare, yet the world's religions tell us there are, and countless people have benefited from a belief in them. (So if it's all superstition, it's a pretty powerful one, huh?) What I found, after leaving the Christian Church and embarking on a search for truth, was that just about all religions have something important to teach us, and they're almost all a little bit screwed up in one way or another. Learn from them all, follow one if it really turns you on, or follow none if you feel no need for it. But never make the mistake that many make of blaming the religious originator for all the problems caused by religious belief. Jesus never said it was okay to burn witches or torture heretics, and Mohammed never said it was okay to kill Jews or harass white people. Regardless of whether you're a "true believer" or a non-believer, remember always to question everything, employ your skeptical and critical skills, and never, ever let the enemies of the intellect and self-determination keep you in bondage by invoking superstitious threats of divine punishment if you don't believe in their particular deities. God/dess or evolution gave you an incredible brain, and you're meant to use it."
my sentiments, exactly.
Monday, August 6, 2007
where' s mine?!! (419 Scam Deficit)
i kept hearing about nigerian e-mail scams. everyone was getting these things. where was mine? wasn't i, too, a rich american waiting to be fleeced by much cleverer nigerians? what was wrong with my money? wasn’t i good enough for a proper nigerian fleecing?
i waited and waited. meanwhile, all my friends were complaining about receiving these e-mails over and over from all different places and with different names attached. where was my poorly spelled european lottery winner letter? or maybe they could send me one of those “i have a great investment for you and it will cost you nothing”. where was mine?
finally, i received my very own nigerian scam letter. i was so excited! now, what to do? should i send them my own scam letter in return? alert the nigerian police? i think they might have been the ones to send the letters, or they were at least getting a cut. should I alert my own beloved government? could they do anything more to thwart these crazy nigerians. maybe they’re in on the scam too. the nigerians might be offering uncle sam a cut of all this loot poor dumb americans are sending them.
there only seem to be a couple of different types of nigerian e-mail scam letters. i wonder if there is a store, like staples or office max, where, along with forms for basic wills, divorces, pre-nuptial agreements and sales contracts, there’s a special section with the 3 different scam forms you can fill in. maybe there’s a software program which will automatically convert your perfect english into a horrid mangling of barely recognizable english which assures your potential victim that you are the real deal nigerian scam artist, not some rank amateur johnny-come-lately.
419. where did they get that term anyway? is there a certification program? maybe there’s a school where you bring your scam forms, list of potential names to use, and software to mess up your english and they make you buy a list of e-mail addresses at the school. then the teacher looks over your choices and makes comments, like “clyde ndgebele, I like the dr. lawrence bariga letter you chose, but really, make sure you mangle your english better. you want these stupid americans to think you don’t need their cash? and make sure you remember to pay the school for the addresses. you’ll receive your official 419 certificate in the mail after you have sufficiently bribed the postal worker in your neighborhood.”
if you want to see the list of current scam letters being sent, i highly recommend going here
i also recommend that while you’re there, you check out their brad christensen exhibit. make sure you’ve got your handkerchief ready, because you’ll be in tears in no time at all.
Sunday, August 5, 2007
disappointment
we've had the TIVO thingy for a little while now, and i have to admit i'm enjoying it. the other day, i quickly checked the current list of favorite programs we recorded and did a double take.
hmm, i thought. yeah, i guess that could be a new twist on an old classic. must be jamaican: "the Postman always rings twice mon". then i realized it must have been recorded on monday. got to admit, i was a little disappointed.
hmm, i thought. yeah, i guess that could be a new twist on an old classic. must be jamaican: "the Postman always rings twice mon". then i realized it must have been recorded on monday. got to admit, i was a little disappointed.
stupid nephews
expanding upon the stupid nephew theory...here's how it works. in any business, especially family-owned businesses, there is always a stupid nephew: restaurants, retail establishments, utility companies, pick any one of these. they aren't all nephews, of course, but they can be husbands, wives, children, brother-in-laws, etc.
the only parameters are that the stupid nephew has to be irredeemably untalented, and/or unutterably spoiled/arrogant, and they must be so integral to the owner's family's happiness that the person is completely unfireable. the stupid nephew is completely aware of this and banks on it, riding the edge of it gleefully.
the stupid nephew is the one who gets the big parties when they wait on tables in restaurants, can screw up the cash register in a retail establishment without consequence, can always be late or leave early without being yelled at, can say rude things to customers or co-workers freely. the key words here are "without consequence". a shrewd and especially evil stupid nephew will flaunt this and this is quite common. sometimes they are blissfully unaware, but don't count on it. if they happen to take a disliking to you, they can even have you fired. talk about power in the wrong hands!
there used to be a job called "elevator pointer" in my city, that was a stupid nephew job. it was always a patronage position. the job was very complicated and payed extremely well. this person's sole task was to point to the elevator coming to the lobby in city hall. no kidding.
the only parameters are that the stupid nephew has to be irredeemably untalented, and/or unutterably spoiled/arrogant, and they must be so integral to the owner's family's happiness that the person is completely unfireable. the stupid nephew is completely aware of this and banks on it, riding the edge of it gleefully.
the stupid nephew is the one who gets the big parties when they wait on tables in restaurants, can screw up the cash register in a retail establishment without consequence, can always be late or leave early without being yelled at, can say rude things to customers or co-workers freely. the key words here are "without consequence". a shrewd and especially evil stupid nephew will flaunt this and this is quite common. sometimes they are blissfully unaware, but don't count on it. if they happen to take a disliking to you, they can even have you fired. talk about power in the wrong hands!
there used to be a job called "elevator pointer" in my city, that was a stupid nephew job. it was always a patronage position. the job was very complicated and payed extremely well. this person's sole task was to point to the elevator coming to the lobby in city hall. no kidding.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
today's special
so i submitted a sample of my writing to a new comedy/satire magazine. since they weren't offering anything by way of monetary compensation, i figured neither of us had anything to lose. they asked me to answer the question "why are manholes round?" and i gave them a couple of reasons.
1.Because the guy whose stupid nephew designed the things (everyone has a stupid nephew) told him to get around to it. Now the nephew wants to know what a tuit is and how to get one.
2.Because they tried using square ones, but none of the guys going in fit right. There was a chunky gal named Peg who tried once, but as you know, you can’t fit a round Peg into a square hole.
3.There was a meeting to determine the very first design for a manhole cover many long years ago. Perhaps it was in
When the little man woke up several days later in a hospital with bandages everywhere and a cast on both his legs, he was very confused. “What happened? The last thing I remember is some jerk swiping my sandwich!” The nurse helped him piece together what happened from the police report: it seems that the larger man stomped down hard on one of his feet and used his other foot as the point on a rather crude protractor and used the blood issuing from the poor little man’s foot to draw a circle on the floor before beating him up some more and finishing the sandwich.
No one knows why exactly, but the circle was a big hit and the rest, as they say, is history. Not to mention a little pastrami on rye.
since then, i haven't heard a peep out of them.
Friday, August 3, 2007
How I Survive Retail Sales: confessions of a demo diva
You know that motto: "you don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps"? well, welcome to my world. being a little crazy to start with definitely helps. this way, you don't have far to fall when you truly do go crazy.
personally, i see myself as a sort of margaret mead of retail. i pretend that i'm a social anthropologist studying some strange and exotic culture or sub-culture by infiltrating the system and blending in as much as possible.
that is not to say that it's my only viewpoint while i work. on the contrary! my primary motivation is usually boredom or sometimes sheer wicked sense of humor. in short, i entertain myself much like a cat entertains itself by torturing mice.
for instance, one night i entertained myself for an entire shift by trying to convince people that kerfluffle was a potentially dangerous ingredient in food products. once i had the customer convinced that kerfluffle was a bad thing, i proceeded to reassure them that our products were 100% kerfluffle free and always had been. i gave myself a points system and i won the game if i could get some customers, or at least one, to go to the customer service desk and ask concerned questions about kerfluffle.
i even announced on the PA system that our products were always kerfluffle free.
to my consternation (and semi-delight), i found the word suddenly appearing more frequently in more news articles and literature. now that game can't be repeated. damn! the few people who actually knew what kerfuffle meant laughed and i joined in.
i find that observing large numbers of people clues me in to general human behavior. generally, it's pretty disgusting. if you are ever unsure that man is descended from the apes, try giving out free food to people who may not even be hungry. you'll definitely change your tune. keep in mind that for the most part, the people in my store are highly affluent, well-educated people. some are quite intelligent but they run the gamut from an IQ roughly equivalent to a gym sock to possible nobel peace prize for physics. and, to be fair, there are some who are truly delightful, polite, sweet people whom i look forward to talking to. they are, sad to say, in the minority.
people break down into categories which i have made up, again for my own entertainment. this is not very scientific, but sheer numbers carry their own weight and i find other people in retail, both in my particular store & in other stores in general, agree with my assessment.
there are people who eat first, ask questions later, then complain that they're allergic or not allowed to eat what they just consumed. what do you call that?!
there are people who find it necessary to tell you the whole sad story about why they can't eat what i have on offer, but want to know why i'm not demonstrating something they can have. a simple "no thank you" works very well for me. your personal information about food preferences, allergies, religious convictions regarding food, philosophical ideas about food and its origins are irrelevant to me. the question to ask yourself if you are one of these is: does this afffect in any way what the demo kitchen is offering that day? the answer is : generally, no. i find this works best on a need to care basis. perhaps if i worked on commission based on sales resulting from tasting a product this would be relevant information. i don't and it isn't. sorry. "no thank you"- the perfect phrase. then keep moving.
there are people who act as if they have never seen food before. you can tell that this isn't true because they are never cadaverously thin due to a longterm fast or recent wasting illness, they are simply greedy.
other customers labor under the misconception that i am operating a cafe and try to order what they want as if they are at a restaurant. this is forgiveable if they have never been to my store before, but usually they are regulars whom i see every day or close to it.
some customers will not even say hello, ignore me standing there and proceed to take as many samples as are in front of them. i have a sneeze guard in front of me with a counter that runs along the front side of it for samples. when i first started,i foolishly put out between 5 and 20 samples. people in this category will unashamedly put out their paw and take all of the samples or nearly all. or they will return repeatedly until they achieve the same result.the repeat offender, as i call them, thinks that because they didn't take everything all at once, i don't recognize them. this move is similar to the classic donut commercial where the round man with the little hitler mustache uses obvious attempts to disguise himself to get more donuts. it's just as pathetic & desperate, only it's real life and they really think they're being clever. scary. if they can't get at more than 1 or 2 samples (i've gotten smarter), they will not hesitate to put their paws behind the sneeze guard and proceed to take my back-up units ready to replace the samples. when there is a spoon or other utensil inserted in a help-yourself sample tray(we've learned by now just how crazy we were to put a help-yourself tray out at all), they seem to be under the impression that they are there for decorative purposes only and use their fingers and touch all the samples, touch some and then put it back, or worse things you don't even want to imagine- unfortunately, i don't have to. i have seen the same behaviors from bears and raccoons when i camped out in the wilderness and forgot to put food high up in trees. the bears tend to be more polite. raccoons could go either way, depending on the raccoon.
the above types of customers have led me to the name i secretly give to my job: Rich People's Soup Kitchen, or my other favorite: Feeding time at Sea World. Well, at least otters do tricks for it. Is it any wonder i have to find ways to entertain myself?
Here's another secret i have discovered in retail: no matter how big the sign, no matter how directly you place it next to something, people rarely draw any conclusions and correlate the sign with the object. this i liken to the old adage about training dogs: if you don't punish the dog for undesirable behavior immediately, they don't associate it with the undesirable action and they can't figure out what they've done wrong. people are much harder to train. there are people who are in my store literally every day, and no matter how many times they visit my demo station, it never occurs to them that whatever we are demonstrating is ALWAYS displayed in front of my station and that there is a huge sign indicating the items and their prices. ever see the movie "40 first dates"? or how about dorie in "finding nemo"? this many people can't ALL have short-term memory loss! what are the odds that they all shop in one place?
sometimes i have experimented with visual space. after watching many people and where their eyes tend to go, as well as what seems to be ignored, which is quite a lot ( i call this blind space), i have placed things on my demo table such that people go back and forth from one end of my table to another. reminds me of caged animals at the zoo. very amusing.
the blind space is fascinating to me. a colleague at work with a divinely devilish sense of humor took glass bottles displayed at eye level in the middle of the counter and upended the top layer of bottles.the bottles were slim at the top tapering to a larger base, so they were rather delicately but expertly balanced.i found this funny to begin with, but when i watched people who came to the demo station, i noticed that not one of them noticed anything unusual. their eyes didn't even flicker over them. maybe it's just me. i dunno.
i must sound fairly cynical, but it is hard for people who do my job to remain hopeful about the future of mankind after witnessing the behaviors i have mentioned above. people have even deposited their children in front of my stand and gone on shopping. please do not confuse me with your babysitter!
...and speaking of babysitting, there are the poor lonely souls who stand at my station for hours (or maybe it just seems like hours), who seem to have confused me with either a psychotherapist or a non-alcoholic bartender without the fun of liquor, good wages and generous tips. don't get me wrong: there are many people who are delightful to talk to and i consider them good company, looking forward to their visits. then there are people who just won't leave and aren't particularly interesting. these people will ignore normal social signals when a number of people have started to gather at my station and i really need to be able to hand out samples so that people will move on without creating a bottleneck in the aisles. pubs in england handle this situation brilliantly by proclaiming shortly before the pub closes for the afternoon "time, gentleman! we've all got homes to go to!" and everyone immediately understands and goes home. aahhh, if only...dare to dream.
getting back to the subject of children, it is unwise to let your children loose upon the demo station for many reasons. young children should never be left unsupervised in a retail establishment to begin with, because they can do dangerous things and we cannot legally be held responsible if an injury occurs as a result, which i have seen happen. they may also have some food allergy and be too young to remember to ask if the sample contains an allergen. believe it or not, demo divas don't generally receive EMT or heimlich maneuver training. we understand that it's never easy to shop with a young child, so we try to give you samples with which to appease them (rather like appeasing an angry volcano god) so that they can be coralled successfully by you for their safety.
we do all we can to keep your child reasonably happy while you shop, but in the end it is up to you, and this may come as a shock to some of you, to keep them behaving reasonably well while in a public space. not an easy task at best, but consider this as an acid test of your parenting skills. the mere act of reproduction by itself does not in any way guarantee that you possess the skills, intelligence or common sense necessary to be a good parent.
if you are not up to the task, admit defeat quickly and call in an expert or three: babysitters, nannies, grandma- anyone you can either pay or can be enlisted from friends or family. this list of potential combatants should never include retail salespeople. not part of the job description, i can guarantee you. we either have our own to contend with, or kids like your little beasts have served admirably as birth control devices for us. i now know why some animals eat their young.
another reason for not leaving your children unsupervised at the demo station is that young children (and sometimes older ones!) don't always know, care or understand what allergies, religious traditions or other dietary restraints you have placed on them and we don't have any way of knowing these without you telling us. this applies to adults as well, but you are able to tell us before we give you something that will make you sick or break your diet. ask questions! the last thing we want to do is to give you a negative experience while at our store. most demo station workers will ask children if their parent or accompanying adult has given them permission to try samples before giving them anything. please explain to your child that this is just a sample and not lunch or dinner. then explain it tu yourself! it's a great way to find out if a picky eater will like what you're considering buying to make at home and if the product is prepared, we will even open something for you or them to try before you buy it, but this is up to our discretion and not required by our employers. they have been kind enough to give us special permission to do this, though.
that brings me to another point. there are some customers who think it must be very amusing to tell us that "now i won't have to eat lunch/dinner". yes, what a wonderfully amusing joke. no matter how many thousands of times i hear that during the course of each and every day, i never fail to be amused by your little joke. have you ever thought about how it reflects on you? mostly, we think "what a loser! i guess you can't afford to eat on your own dime. what a shame!" probably not the effect you were going for, i suspect. or maybe you think that i think how clever you must be to discover this new way to eat without paying for it. no, not really. you're just cheap. again, doesn't reflect well on you, especially if you're sporting a prada bag worth more than 4 of my paychecks, or a fur coat worth more than 6 months of my salary. yeah, great joke. while most of my colleagues have to live piled in like sardines in some cheap apartment because the wage we're paid isn't enough to possibly afford a place by yourself.
no one puts a gun to our heads to work here, but it pays better than other jobs we could get. Many of us are artists, musicians, students, retirees or it's a second job because the first one doesn't pay enough to keep body and soul together.
Demo is a great way to try new foods, new combinations of foods, get some cooking tips, or test drive a new food for a picky eater in the family. And sometimes, we can brighten each other's day. But that's really all you should expect.
personally, i see myself as a sort of margaret mead of retail. i pretend that i'm a social anthropologist studying some strange and exotic culture or sub-culture by infiltrating the system and blending in as much as possible.
that is not to say that it's my only viewpoint while i work. on the contrary! my primary motivation is usually boredom or sometimes sheer wicked sense of humor. in short, i entertain myself much like a cat entertains itself by torturing mice.
for instance, one night i entertained myself for an entire shift by trying to convince people that kerfluffle was a potentially dangerous ingredient in food products. once i had the customer convinced that kerfluffle was a bad thing, i proceeded to reassure them that our products were 100% kerfluffle free and always had been. i gave myself a points system and i won the game if i could get some customers, or at least one, to go to the customer service desk and ask concerned questions about kerfluffle.
i even announced on the PA system that our products were always kerfluffle free.
to my consternation (and semi-delight), i found the word suddenly appearing more frequently in more news articles and literature. now that game can't be repeated. damn! the few people who actually knew what kerfuffle meant laughed and i joined in.
i find that observing large numbers of people clues me in to general human behavior. generally, it's pretty disgusting. if you are ever unsure that man is descended from the apes, try giving out free food to people who may not even be hungry. you'll definitely change your tune. keep in mind that for the most part, the people in my store are highly affluent, well-educated people. some are quite intelligent but they run the gamut from an IQ roughly equivalent to a gym sock to possible nobel peace prize for physics. and, to be fair, there are some who are truly delightful, polite, sweet people whom i look forward to talking to. they are, sad to say, in the minority.
people break down into categories which i have made up, again for my own entertainment. this is not very scientific, but sheer numbers carry their own weight and i find other people in retail, both in my particular store & in other stores in general, agree with my assessment.
there are people who eat first, ask questions later, then complain that they're allergic or not allowed to eat what they just consumed. what do you call that?!
there are people who find it necessary to tell you the whole sad story about why they can't eat what i have on offer, but want to know why i'm not demonstrating something they can have. a simple "no thank you" works very well for me. your personal information about food preferences, allergies, religious convictions regarding food, philosophical ideas about food and its origins are irrelevant to me. the question to ask yourself if you are one of these is: does this afffect in any way what the demo kitchen is offering that day? the answer is : generally, no. i find this works best on a need to care basis. perhaps if i worked on commission based on sales resulting from tasting a product this would be relevant information. i don't and it isn't. sorry. "no thank you"- the perfect phrase. then keep moving.
there are people who act as if they have never seen food before. you can tell that this isn't true because they are never cadaverously thin due to a longterm fast or recent wasting illness, they are simply greedy.
other customers labor under the misconception that i am operating a cafe and try to order what they want as if they are at a restaurant. this is forgiveable if they have never been to my store before, but usually they are regulars whom i see every day or close to it.
some customers will not even say hello, ignore me standing there and proceed to take as many samples as are in front of them. i have a sneeze guard in front of me with a counter that runs along the front side of it for samples. when i first started,i foolishly put out between 5 and 20 samples. people in this category will unashamedly put out their paw and take all of the samples or nearly all. or they will return repeatedly until they achieve the same result.the repeat offender, as i call them, thinks that because they didn't take everything all at once, i don't recognize them. this move is similar to the classic donut commercial where the round man with the little hitler mustache uses obvious attempts to disguise himself to get more donuts. it's just as pathetic & desperate, only it's real life and they really think they're being clever. scary. if they can't get at more than 1 or 2 samples (i've gotten smarter), they will not hesitate to put their paws behind the sneeze guard and proceed to take my back-up units ready to replace the samples. when there is a spoon or other utensil inserted in a help-yourself sample tray(we've learned by now just how crazy we were to put a help-yourself tray out at all), they seem to be under the impression that they are there for decorative purposes only and use their fingers and touch all the samples, touch some and then put it back, or worse things you don't even want to imagine- unfortunately, i don't have to. i have seen the same behaviors from bears and raccoons when i camped out in the wilderness and forgot to put food high up in trees. the bears tend to be more polite. raccoons could go either way, depending on the raccoon.
the above types of customers have led me to the name i secretly give to my job: Rich People's Soup Kitchen, or my other favorite: Feeding time at Sea World. Well, at least otters do tricks for it. Is it any wonder i have to find ways to entertain myself?
Here's another secret i have discovered in retail: no matter how big the sign, no matter how directly you place it next to something, people rarely draw any conclusions and correlate the sign with the object. this i liken to the old adage about training dogs: if you don't punish the dog for undesirable behavior immediately, they don't associate it with the undesirable action and they can't figure out what they've done wrong. people are much harder to train. there are people who are in my store literally every day, and no matter how many times they visit my demo station, it never occurs to them that whatever we are demonstrating is ALWAYS displayed in front of my station and that there is a huge sign indicating the items and their prices. ever see the movie "40 first dates"? or how about dorie in "finding nemo"? this many people can't ALL have short-term memory loss! what are the odds that they all shop in one place?
sometimes i have experimented with visual space. after watching many people and where their eyes tend to go, as well as what seems to be ignored, which is quite a lot ( i call this blind space), i have placed things on my demo table such that people go back and forth from one end of my table to another. reminds me of caged animals at the zoo. very amusing.
the blind space is fascinating to me. a colleague at work with a divinely devilish sense of humor took glass bottles displayed at eye level in the middle of the counter and upended the top layer of bottles.the bottles were slim at the top tapering to a larger base, so they were rather delicately but expertly balanced.i found this funny to begin with, but when i watched people who came to the demo station, i noticed that not one of them noticed anything unusual. their eyes didn't even flicker over them. maybe it's just me. i dunno.
i must sound fairly cynical, but it is hard for people who do my job to remain hopeful about the future of mankind after witnessing the behaviors i have mentioned above. people have even deposited their children in front of my stand and gone on shopping. please do not confuse me with your babysitter!
...and speaking of babysitting, there are the poor lonely souls who stand at my station for hours (or maybe it just seems like hours), who seem to have confused me with either a psychotherapist or a non-alcoholic bartender without the fun of liquor, good wages and generous tips. don't get me wrong: there are many people who are delightful to talk to and i consider them good company, looking forward to their visits. then there are people who just won't leave and aren't particularly interesting. these people will ignore normal social signals when a number of people have started to gather at my station and i really need to be able to hand out samples so that people will move on without creating a bottleneck in the aisles. pubs in england handle this situation brilliantly by proclaiming shortly before the pub closes for the afternoon "time, gentleman! we've all got homes to go to!" and everyone immediately understands and goes home. aahhh, if only...dare to dream.
getting back to the subject of children, it is unwise to let your children loose upon the demo station for many reasons. young children should never be left unsupervised in a retail establishment to begin with, because they can do dangerous things and we cannot legally be held responsible if an injury occurs as a result, which i have seen happen. they may also have some food allergy and be too young to remember to ask if the sample contains an allergen. believe it or not, demo divas don't generally receive EMT or heimlich maneuver training. we understand that it's never easy to shop with a young child, so we try to give you samples with which to appease them (rather like appeasing an angry volcano god) so that they can be coralled successfully by you for their safety.
we do all we can to keep your child reasonably happy while you shop, but in the end it is up to you, and this may come as a shock to some of you, to keep them behaving reasonably well while in a public space. not an easy task at best, but consider this as an acid test of your parenting skills. the mere act of reproduction by itself does not in any way guarantee that you possess the skills, intelligence or common sense necessary to be a good parent.
if you are not up to the task, admit defeat quickly and call in an expert or three: babysitters, nannies, grandma- anyone you can either pay or can be enlisted from friends or family. this list of potential combatants should never include retail salespeople. not part of the job description, i can guarantee you. we either have our own to contend with, or kids like your little beasts have served admirably as birth control devices for us. i now know why some animals eat their young.
another reason for not leaving your children unsupervised at the demo station is that young children (and sometimes older ones!) don't always know, care or understand what allergies, religious traditions or other dietary restraints you have placed on them and we don't have any way of knowing these without you telling us. this applies to adults as well, but you are able to tell us before we give you something that will make you sick or break your diet. ask questions! the last thing we want to do is to give you a negative experience while at our store. most demo station workers will ask children if their parent or accompanying adult has given them permission to try samples before giving them anything. please explain to your child that this is just a sample and not lunch or dinner. then explain it tu yourself! it's a great way to find out if a picky eater will like what you're considering buying to make at home and if the product is prepared, we will even open something for you or them to try before you buy it, but this is up to our discretion and not required by our employers. they have been kind enough to give us special permission to do this, though.
that brings me to another point. there are some customers who think it must be very amusing to tell us that "now i won't have to eat lunch/dinner". yes, what a wonderfully amusing joke. no matter how many thousands of times i hear that during the course of each and every day, i never fail to be amused by your little joke. have you ever thought about how it reflects on you? mostly, we think "what a loser! i guess you can't afford to eat on your own dime. what a shame!" probably not the effect you were going for, i suspect. or maybe you think that i think how clever you must be to discover this new way to eat without paying for it. no, not really. you're just cheap. again, doesn't reflect well on you, especially if you're sporting a prada bag worth more than 4 of my paychecks, or a fur coat worth more than 6 months of my salary. yeah, great joke. while most of my colleagues have to live piled in like sardines in some cheap apartment because the wage we're paid isn't enough to possibly afford a place by yourself.
no one puts a gun to our heads to work here, but it pays better than other jobs we could get. Many of us are artists, musicians, students, retirees or it's a second job because the first one doesn't pay enough to keep body and soul together.
Demo is a great way to try new foods, new combinations of foods, get some cooking tips, or test drive a new food for a picky eater in the family. And sometimes, we can brighten each other's day. But that's really all you should expect.
To my dad, with love
From the moment I appeared on a November afternoon, we fell in love with each other. For quite a while, you were the only man in my life, and for some time after that, you were the only sensible man in my life.
I still remember listening for your car up the driveway and waiting to throw my arms around your neck from the living room stairs. I remember falling asleep to a back scratch- I still do! I remember doing Mills Brothers imitations together in the den.
I remember more recently going together to get your colonoscopy and trying to help you get less nervous and cheering you on. You saw me through the usual coughs & colds (Nurse Daddy!), broken hearts, skinned knees ( I was always falling, wasn't I? But you always picked me up), triumphs and tragedies; hormonal hell, hard times, bailed me out when I was sick, broke, or both.
If something was wrong, if I needed a hug, if I needed cash, if I needed advice, if life had let me down, if someone else had let me down, if I let myself down, I always knew I could call you and you would do what you could to help, or just be a listening ear. I guess some people don't have that. But it's comforting to know, even when I don't need anything, that if I did, there's always a dad to come to the rescue.
And if I needed someone to go to bat for me, I knew my dad would be the first in line and no one would try harder to help me reach that goal, whether it was to avenge a wrong or get me the best deal or secure the wedding site I had my heart set on. If anyone could do it, my dad could do it.
It has to feel good to know that someone believes that you could do anything, doesn't it Dad? I know because I think we believe that about each other. Maybe in different ways, but the feeling is still the same.
Has any of that changed? Not a whit. I'm still the little girl reaching up on tippy toes, standing on the toilet seat because the only thing in the world I want right now is to shave my Daddy. She's still in there. But now she's got another guy to go to bat for her. Lucky me, I've got two!
I count myself so fortunate to have a great dad and a great husband who get along so well. You may not have thought so for a long time, but now I can finally say that I have great taste in men- I picked you to be my dad and Jeff to be my husband.
I don't think there's anyone who would fault me on my taste. My hand hasn't slipped away from yours at all, I've got one for you and one for Jeff- just the right amount, we just have to stretch a little more to make them reach. I love you, Dad. MDLM
For my mother 1933-2001
A life is like a pebble thrown into a stream. It doesn’t matter if it’s small or big, they all make ripples in the water, then they gradually fade away & there is no trace of where the pebble dropped. It’s as if it was never there. Some make larger ripples and the circles last a little longer, but in the end, the memory fades & disappears, for most pebbles & most people.
So maybe even I underestimated how powerful and strong my mother was, but she taught me to make the best of things when it seems impossible to do so, and to remember to laugh and be silly. Most of all, she taught me to love without reservation, wholeheartedly. Mom had to figure out how to do that without a role model for it in her own life, and I think she could only manage to do that with me. But she did it every waking moment of her life until her very last breath, and I carry that with me. So this is for you, mom.
My mother was a small pebble in the stream of life. She wasn’t rich or famous. You wouldn’t know her name or what she was like. Maybe the fact that I don’t have any children to pass the memories of her to drives me to want to leave something of her character and stories behind, so that when my ripples stop, someone will still remember her in the world and some measure of immortality will be her due.
I think it’s the duty of every daughter to carry the story of her mother into the world, so I guess you’re the one I tell the story to. That kind of makes you my child, at least for a little while. When I was little, my mother would rock me in this big overstuffed rocking chair that creaked, and I would sit in her lap as she read me a story. So if you were my child, I imagine sitting in that rocker with you now. I still have it, you know. On days when I miss her too much to bear, I sit on that rocker in the dark & imagine that she’s there again, waiting for me to sit on her lap so she can read me a story. Maybe she is.
I always assumed that everyone loved their mother & that they loved them as much as my mother and I did. When I grew up and started to hear people’s stories of their families, I was shocked and appalled at some of the things I heard. Stories of anger, violence, apathy, and abuse that made my blood run cold. One woman my age told me her mother had hanged herself and she was the one who found her. A young girl told me that her mother had produced a great number of children, and that when she was 13, her mother threw her out of the house for no apparent reason. And the mother was a nurse, someone who was supposed to revere and care for people! Someone else told me that his mother had never read him a bedtime story. I couldn’t imagine it. Perhaps I was naïve, but I had had the luxury of being naïve where many people weren’t so fortunate.
After hearing so many stories of what other mothers were like, I realized just how special mine was. If I could have one wish, it would be for all those unfortunate souls who grew up motherless or worse, with a mother who was like the evil stepmother in fairy tales, to share my mother, so they could feel as deeply loved and cherished as I do still, years after she left this world.
What does it take to be a good mother? Do you need to have one yourself to be one? I don’t think so, because there’s just no way my grandmother qualified. She was a selfish, nasty woman whose husband deserted her and her small children, my mother and her two older brothers, during World War II. Mom said she always wanted to be like her own grandmother, who she adored. But relatives tell me that Grandma Fanny wasn’t any great shakes either. As far as Mom was concerned, though, she was the penultimate. Maybe it doesn’t matter what her grandma was really like. My mom grew up in the Depression, when people had “bread sandwiches”, really just bread with mustard, so they wouldn’t starve. Life was hard for most then, and for a deserted wife with three small children, it was probably even worse. Perhaps that’s when my grandmother became the bitter, hostile, selfish woman that I grew up with. Perhaps she was just always that way, I don’t know.
So maybe even I underestimated how powerful and strong my mother was, but she taught me to make the best of things when it seems impossible to do so, and to remember to laugh and be silly. Most of all, she taught me to love without reservation, wholeheartedly. Mom had to figure out how to do that without a role model for it in her own life, and I think she could only manage to do that with me. But she did it every waking moment of her life until her very last breath, and I carry that with me. So this is for you, mom.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
