It's Saturday afternoon, an absolutely gorgeous day, and yet, it's happened again: I got absolutely nothing of consequence done around the house.
It never seems to fail. I get to the end of the week and part-way through Friday, I make note of all the cleaning I want to get done around the house over the weekend. This usually starts on Friday, since that's when I try to clean the bathroom, change sheets, do a ton of laundry, and by the time I get that much done, it's like Okay, I might as well get a start on cleaning.
Realistically, there are two problems with this whole cleaning-the-house-on-Friday-and-Saturday train of thought: my organizational skills, and getting overwhelmed.
First off, I'm not exactly organized. Disorganized would be a more appropriate assessment of my skills. Granted, I'm nowhere near being in the running to end up on A&E's Hoarders, and I'm more organized than I used to be. Most of the dining room table top can be seen and used (it's brown; just push those two or three books over there), no one is going to trip over stuff on the way from the front door through the house (don't look over into that corner, though), and the kitchen floor and counters are scrubbed on a semi-regular basis. But let's just say that I'm as organized as I am graceful.
Quick anecdote: When Paul was alive - a man who'd been a Marine, and was organized enough to prove it - we were the perfect Odd Couple: We may not have been as far apart as Felix and Oscar, but those who saw us in action, especially at home, were sometimes willing to point out that if ever someone did a remake of Neil Simon's comedy with a male and female couple, we might have a shot. I'd come home, place something on the table.
"Is that where that goes?" Paul would ask.
"No," I'd answer. "I'll put it away later." Then I'd get ready to fix both of us some ice tea.
"How about putting it away now," he'd insist. At this point, I'd sigh, roll my eyes ("Oh, can it!" he'd tell me) and head back to the dining room table to put whatever away. We were definitely yin and yang.
Then there's the whole getting overwhelmed aspect of this plan. The house needs to be tidied. So, I'm make a list, which invariably will read, "1. Clean Table. 2. Living/dining room. 3. kitchen..." and so on throughout the house. Nothing specific, such as thinking, "This weekend, I'll tackle the living room, next weekend, the kitchen..." and then breaking it down to manageable tasks: Vacuum. Dust. Organize bookshelves. Nope, gonna clean that sucker stem-to-stern,-top-to-bottom...
By now, it's time to fix another cup of coffee and read the paper while getting myself psyched up. After all, I'll have to put the paper in the recycling bin while cleaning...And the next thing I know, it's Saturday afternoon.
I do have a perfectly good reason for not getting everything done today. M. and J. both decided to get either a touch of the flu or a very bad cold. J. got it first, and for a day or two, sounded like he was going to hock up a lung. Then M. got it. I should be thankful that they didn't sound like Harvey Fierstein this time. Last year, they both ended up with whatever they're getting over, but with a touch of laryngitis that caused them both to sound like the actor/playwright. Especially M. One evening, I came down the hall to start dinner, and could have sworn they were listening to Mrs. Doubtfire: he kept repeating one of Fierstein's lines when he's talking on the phone with his mother ("B*!%h. Not you, Ma, the dog.") and sounding exactly like him. It was funny the first couple of times. Let's just say that I was glad when his voice went back to normal.
But this time, they managed to spread the joy and germs to me. While they'd been walking around feeling pretty stinky and thinking (at least the first day) that the ER might not be bad, then starting to recover, I spiked a fever and got hit harder. Yes, I know, I'm years and years older than they are, and the older we get, the harder it hits us, the longer it takes, et cetera. But considering that I was taking antibiotics for a bacterial ear infection while fighting off this nasty virus (which, of course, as a virus sits there and laughs long and loud at antibiotics) left me feeling like doo-doo. I spent two days napping more than not before pulling a Lazarus and starting to walk around and doing things - like washing the dishes.
Today, my daughter M.H. stopped by, dropped off a couple of things, then headed home to get ready for work. I put the stuff away, ate the second container of soup she'd dropped off a couple of days ago, looked through an Avon book that my rep had dropped off (if anyone in mid-county needs Avon, let me know; I'll pass your number along to her), and basically vegged out.
Now, as I wait for M. to get home from work with a bottle of ginger ale that he's picked up, I can look around at the house and know a few things: There's always next weekend. I needed the recovery day. I managed to update my blog. And much as I love a certain actor/playwright, I don't sound like Harvey Fierstein; his voice sounds much better on him than it would on a middle-aged woman.
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Monday, January 21, 2013
Inauguration repost
I originally posted this in my Journalistic Writings blog on January 26, 2009; it deals with Barack Obama's first inauguration. I plan to write something later this week about today's second inauguration.
"I watched last Tuesday's historic inauguration of Barack Obama during a Visual Communications class. About ten minutes into class, the instructor asked if there were any questions.
"Yeah, can we watch the inauguration?" someone asked. It was the question on everyone's minds.
A computer hooked up to a projector came on so we could watch.
I've watched my share of inaugurations on television, been aware of others. When one has lived over five decades, one does notice a few things.
There were many historic aspects to this inauguration, though. Of course, there's the obvious: the first African-American to become elected president. Backing up to the election, it became clear early on that the Democratic nominee would be a first: either the first African-American or woman as a major party's nominee. That alone seemed to get many people's attention.
Then there is the number of people who flocked to Washington, D.C. to watch Obama's inauguration in person. According to The New York Times, "An estimated 1.8 million people watched the inauguration of Barack Obama in person, the most for any inauguration. At least that is what the mayor of Washington said; the Park Service, no longer in the head-counting business, won't contest that number."(1) (Referrenced footnotes at end of today's blog.)
According to The New York Times' article's multimedia segment, 44,000,000 people watched on their computers using live streaming web videos. This broke down to 26.9 million watching CNN, 9.1 million on MSNBC and 8.0 million on AP. (2)
These are record breaking numbers. This alone would indicate interest. I do know that those around me were excited. Almost everyone I spoke with over the days surrounding the 20th mentioned excitement, hope, a sense that our collective lives had taken a turn for the better. Yes, there are nay-sayers, but they seem to be in the minority.
When Obama was sworn in, those in the class room cheered. We watched President Obama's speech in its entirety. I mention this because the speech ended at 12:30, fifteen minutes after the class ended. Only one or two students left at the end of the class period; the rest of us watched, enraptured, at history taking place.
My oldest son, Jason, lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee. He does phone tech support. He told me that an older African-American lady named Anne works there. Everyone calls her Ms. Annie. She works part-time; as a part-timer, she doesn't always get to sit in the same place. But she usually tries to sit next to Jason.
Tuesday morning, Jason managed to save a place for Ms. Annie so she could sit next to him. Just before the inauguration was to take place, Jason and Ms. Annie left their phones, along with several other employees, so they could watch Barack Obama sworn in.
"Tears just rolled down Ms. Annie's face," Jason later said. Ms. Annie told the small group watching the inauguration that her father had been beaten up years ago for not crossing the street fast enough to let several whites pass, that he'd been hurt several times because of his skin color. "She told us, 'And now, we have an African-American president.' I wish my daddy were alive to see this."
So do I, Ms. Annie. So do I.
(1) "Streaming Onto the Mall, and Into Laptops," by Brian Stelter and Noam Cohen, January 24, 2009; Week In Review; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/weekinreview/25stelter.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=inauguration,%202009&st=cse
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/01/25/weekinreview/20090125-stelter-graphic.html
"I watched last Tuesday's historic inauguration of Barack Obama during a Visual Communications class. About ten minutes into class, the instructor asked if there were any questions.
"Yeah, can we watch the inauguration?" someone asked. It was the question on everyone's minds.
A computer hooked up to a projector came on so we could watch.
I've watched my share of inaugurations on television, been aware of others. When one has lived over five decades, one does notice a few things.
There were many historic aspects to this inauguration, though. Of course, there's the obvious: the first African-American to become elected president. Backing up to the election, it became clear early on that the Democratic nominee would be a first: either the first African-American or woman as a major party's nominee. That alone seemed to get many people's attention.
Then there is the number of people who flocked to Washington, D.C. to watch Obama's inauguration in person. According to The New York Times, "An estimated 1.8 million people watched the inauguration of Barack Obama in person, the most for any inauguration. At least that is what the mayor of Washington said; the Park Service, no longer in the head-counting business, won't contest that number."(1) (Referrenced footnotes at end of today's blog.)
According to The New York Times' article's multimedia segment, 44,000,000 people watched on their computers using live streaming web videos. This broke down to 26.9 million watching CNN, 9.1 million on MSNBC and 8.0 million on AP. (2)
These are record breaking numbers. This alone would indicate interest. I do know that those around me were excited. Almost everyone I spoke with over the days surrounding the 20th mentioned excitement, hope, a sense that our collective lives had taken a turn for the better. Yes, there are nay-sayers, but they seem to be in the minority.
When Obama was sworn in, those in the class room cheered. We watched President Obama's speech in its entirety. I mention this because the speech ended at 12:30, fifteen minutes after the class ended. Only one or two students left at the end of the class period; the rest of us watched, enraptured, at history taking place.
My oldest son, Jason, lives and works in Knoxville, Tennessee. He does phone tech support. He told me that an older African-American lady named Anne works there. Everyone calls her Ms. Annie. She works part-time; as a part-timer, she doesn't always get to sit in the same place. But she usually tries to sit next to Jason.
Tuesday morning, Jason managed to save a place for Ms. Annie so she could sit next to him. Just before the inauguration was to take place, Jason and Ms. Annie left their phones, along with several other employees, so they could watch Barack Obama sworn in.
"Tears just rolled down Ms. Annie's face," Jason later said. Ms. Annie told the small group watching the inauguration that her father had been beaten up years ago for not crossing the street fast enough to let several whites pass, that he'd been hurt several times because of his skin color. "She told us, 'And now, we have an African-American president.' I wish my daddy were alive to see this."
So do I, Ms. Annie. So do I.
(1) "Streaming Onto the Mall, and Into Laptops," by Brian Stelter and Noam Cohen, January 24, 2009; Week In Review; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/25/weekinreview/25stelter.html?_r=1&scp=8&sq=inauguration,%202009&st=cse
(2) http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/01/25/weekinreview/20090125-stelter-graphic.html
Monday, January 14, 2013
Scammers, or Didn't I have that tattoo that said "Gullible" removed?
I just love people who try to scam others.
Please reread that last line with the touch of sarcasm that I wrote it with. Heck, forget the touch of sarcasm; try a smack upside the head of it.
The Idiot squad is at it again. They called me this morning.
Note: Be forewarned, and don't be taken in by these, ah-hem, jerks, idiots, etc. If Microsoft, Apple, or any other computer-related group needs to touch base with you, I can assure you, it won't be because they detect a virus on your computer from a remote location. True, there is a way for a legitimate technician (such as someone really, really, really with Microsoft or Apple) to trouble-shoot from a remote location. But that comes only after you have called them with a problem, not the other way around.
These particular scammers are the phone equivalent to seeing two or three people walking down the street, looking like they've just crawled out of the sewer system. As one person walks up your driveway to knock on your door, the other one or two are knocking on your neighbors' doors. You open the door to hear, "Hello, Ma'am (or Sir), I'm the head of Ford Motor Company and I'm here to tell you that your Crown Vic has a major problem. The driveshaft is about to fall out, as is the engine." Meanwhile, his cohorts are telling your neighbors that they're with Toyota and Chevy; when they get down the street, they'll be with VW, Cadillac, and...Well, you get the idea. You wouldn't fall for the scam that way, and you shouldn't fall for it if someone calls saying that they've detected a virus on your PC. (Memorize this and the previous paragraph; if you fall for it, don't say I didn't warn you!) End of Note
Anyway, my phone rang and when I picked up, I had to say "hi" twice (the second time in my I'm-really-not-in-the-mood-for-B.S. voice).
"Yes," said a heavily accented voice, "this is the Windows computer company. Is this the owner/operator for the computer system?"
Hmmm...my scam detection alert system started buzzing, along my resident inner super-hero; I've dubbed her Her Royal Snarkiness.
"Yes," I answer in my most insincere sweet voice. "What do you want?"
"I am here calling you to..."
"Wait, wait, where, exactly, is here?"
"Excuse me?"
"Yes, you said you are here calling me. Where, exactly, is here?"
"Oh, yes. I am on the phone calling you from Microsoft computer company to tell you that our operating systems have detected a virus on your computer."
"Okay, so if your system is that intelligent that it can tell you that, it can also tell you where I am and who I am, right?"
A pause, before he goes on with, "You are there, and you are the owner/operator of that computer system." Oooh, what a quick learner! But not quick enough. He goes on, "So, your computer has a virus on it..."
"Which computer would that be?" I ask, in all my sweet snarkiness.
"Your computer!" comes the gleeful reply.
"My computer? Why, sir, I have five computers! Which one is the virus on?" This was a blatant exaggeration, since I have a laptop and a couple of desk tops.
I hear a gasp before he recovers. "Why, it looks like all of them have viruses!"
"Really? I wasn't aware that you would be so concerned with a virus on my five Macs!"
Now there's a longer pause before he asks, "Macs?"
"Yes, you know. Macs. They're made by Apple."
Dang, I hate when the line goes dead. Must've been a virus...
Please reread that last line with the touch of sarcasm that I wrote it with. Heck, forget the touch of sarcasm; try a smack upside the head of it.
The Idiot squad is at it again. They called me this morning.
Note: Be forewarned, and don't be taken in by these, ah-hem, jerks, idiots, etc. If Microsoft, Apple, or any other computer-related group needs to touch base with you, I can assure you, it won't be because they detect a virus on your computer from a remote location. True, there is a way for a legitimate technician (such as someone really, really, really with Microsoft or Apple) to trouble-shoot from a remote location. But that comes only after you have called them with a problem, not the other way around.
These particular scammers are the phone equivalent to seeing two or three people walking down the street, looking like they've just crawled out of the sewer system. As one person walks up your driveway to knock on your door, the other one or two are knocking on your neighbors' doors. You open the door to hear, "Hello, Ma'am (or Sir), I'm the head of Ford Motor Company and I'm here to tell you that your Crown Vic has a major problem. The driveshaft is about to fall out, as is the engine." Meanwhile, his cohorts are telling your neighbors that they're with Toyota and Chevy; when they get down the street, they'll be with VW, Cadillac, and...Well, you get the idea. You wouldn't fall for the scam that way, and you shouldn't fall for it if someone calls saying that they've detected a virus on your PC. (Memorize this and the previous paragraph; if you fall for it, don't say I didn't warn you!) End of Note
Anyway, my phone rang and when I picked up, I had to say "hi" twice (the second time in my I'm-really-not-in-the-mood-for-B.S. voice).
"Yes," said a heavily accented voice, "this is the Windows computer company. Is this the owner/operator for the computer system?"
Hmmm...my scam detection alert system started buzzing, along my resident inner super-hero; I've dubbed her Her Royal Snarkiness.
"Yes," I answer in my most insincere sweet voice. "What do you want?"
"I am here calling you to..."
"Wait, wait, where, exactly, is here?"
"Excuse me?"
"Yes, you said you are here calling me. Where, exactly, is here?"
"Oh, yes. I am on the phone calling you from Microsoft computer company to tell you that our operating systems have detected a virus on your computer."
"Okay, so if your system is that intelligent that it can tell you that, it can also tell you where I am and who I am, right?"
A pause, before he goes on with, "You are there, and you are the owner/operator of that computer system." Oooh, what a quick learner! But not quick enough. He goes on, "So, your computer has a virus on it..."
"Which computer would that be?" I ask, in all my sweet snarkiness.
"Your computer!" comes the gleeful reply.
"My computer? Why, sir, I have five computers! Which one is the virus on?" This was a blatant exaggeration, since I have a laptop and a couple of desk tops.
I hear a gasp before he recovers. "Why, it looks like all of them have viruses!"
"Really? I wasn't aware that you would be so concerned with a virus on my five Macs!"
Now there's a longer pause before he asks, "Macs?"
"Yes, you know. Macs. They're made by Apple."
Dang, I hate when the line goes dead. Must've been a virus...
Thursday, January 10, 2013
It's a good thing Mom didn't name me Grace...
I took our Christmas decorations down on New Year's Day. I try to do that every year. Most years, I manage within a day or two. But there was a particular October...
When I drove cab, there were times when things got a little hectic. One of my regular customers, N., used to call for rides. After a while, he realized that time is not one of my strong suits. This led to the following type of phone conversation:
N.: "So, I'm at work, I'm ready to head home, but first, I want to swing by the store and my brother's place. How soon can you be here to pick me up?"
Me: "Hmmm...ten minutes."
N.: "Ten minutes your time, or ten minutes real time?"
I finally was able to respond with, "Ten minutes my time, fifteen minutes real time."
So, October arrived and I realized that the outside lights I'd tacked to the front of the house the previous December were definitely worse for wear; they would not last through the upcoming holiday season. The lights really needed to come down.
I grabbed our ladder, put it up, then started taking the lights down.
Within minutes, M. came outside with my cell phone. "N.'s on the phone," M. told me.
I leaned down and took the phone. "Hey, N., what's up?"
"So, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights," I said, juggling phone and light strand.
There was a long pause, then, "No, really, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights!" Geez, wasn't he listening?
"Look, it's October. Do you really think I'm going to believe that? Seriously, if you don't want to tell me what you're doing..."
I tried to stiffle a laugh. "N., this is me. You know, as in Ten minutes your time or ten minutes real time..." Now we were both laughing.
That was the last time I waited past the first week in January to take down the lights. But I no longer use a ladder to put up or take down the lights. I sold our ladder at a yard sale. None of my neighbors will let me borrow theirs'. There's a reason for this...
Halloween, 2010, I decided to clear some branches and leaves off the roof. Simple enough. Set up the ladder on the cement driveway, grab the broom, tell M. he had to hold the ladder...At one point, with my knees against the edge of the roof, I leaned waaay to the right to move a branch off the roof...and the ladder started to fall. I fell eight to ten feet onto the cement driveway. Several neighbors rushed over to make sure I didn't move, as M. dialed 911. After an ambulance ride to the one hospital in the county with a trauma center, I spent five hours in the emergency room; an hour of this was spent in radiology for half-a-zillion X-rays. Amazingly, nothing was broken. It might be because, as a major klutz (think Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford, times ten), I'd learned how to fall, or maybe because I've got half-a-dozen Guardian Angels. Maybe I was just lucky.
I've been a klutz most of my life. True klutzy story: When I was a kid, I was always tripping over my feet. I've never been graceful. You want to see graceful, my sister was (and I'm guessing still is) graceful. I never was.
One day, when I was in first grade, the school nurse called my mother to inform her that she was sure I had a mild case of cerebral palsy. (This was back in the day when every school had a full-time school nurse; it was good for the kids, and gave any nurses who had school-aged kids a job that coincided with their kids' schedule. Hello, school administrators - anybody listening???)
Since I was the oldest of three kids, and therefore, the experiemtal model, every pronouncement, scratch, scrape - EVERYTHING - set off bells and whistles. Mom rushed me to the pediatrician's office, a man who knew just about every family in our neighborhood, made housecalls, and had a very warped sense of humor. (Trust me, that warped sense of humor should be required of pediatricians; the best ones seem to have it!) He checked me out, had me stand on one foot, hop, skip, and generally ran me through my paces. Finally, he sat my mother down and told her, in his stern doctor voice, "I'm afraid I know what's wrong with Robin. She has (dramatic pause here) a terminal case (another pause) of the congenital klutzies."
Up until that last word, my mother was dying inside; then, she was tempted to make sure that the doctor was dying.
Side note: This same doctor had to pull a decorative stone from my sister's nose. When A. was two, most of the women in our neighborhood had large decorative indoor plants with decorative rocks around the base. A. picked up a pale blue one from our plant and shoved it too far for Mom to reach. Off to the doctor's, where this warped man managed to get the rock out, then looked at it before telling my mother, "I always thought people in your neighborhood had rocks in their heads - and now I have proof!"
Another klutzy story: M. has inherited my lack-of-grace. He's been known to take a tumble over a 4-foot-high bright orange traffic cone. Granted, it was dark out and I'd been walking just ahead of him...He also has a good-sized scar on his hand from a box cutter; he was aiming for a box and missed...
Another story: I'd considered trying out for cheer-leading as a high school freshman. My uncooridnation kept me off the squard. That's okay, I ended up playing basketball, which I found enjoyable. (You're also allowed to occasionally fall while shooting hoops without it being considered strange.)
Will I ever be graceful? Probably not.
At least when my parents went looking through family names to give me, they didn't name me Grace...
When I drove cab, there were times when things got a little hectic. One of my regular customers, N., used to call for rides. After a while, he realized that time is not one of my strong suits. This led to the following type of phone conversation:
N.: "So, I'm at work, I'm ready to head home, but first, I want to swing by the store and my brother's place. How soon can you be here to pick me up?"
Me: "Hmmm...ten minutes."
N.: "Ten minutes your time, or ten minutes real time?"
I finally was able to respond with, "Ten minutes my time, fifteen minutes real time."
So, October arrived and I realized that the outside lights I'd tacked to the front of the house the previous December were definitely worse for wear; they would not last through the upcoming holiday season. The lights really needed to come down.
I grabbed our ladder, put it up, then started taking the lights down.
Within minutes, M. came outside with my cell phone. "N.'s on the phone," M. told me.
I leaned down and took the phone. "Hey, N., what's up?"
"So, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights," I said, juggling phone and light strand.
There was a long pause, then, "No, really, what are you doing?"
"Taking down the Christmas lights!" Geez, wasn't he listening?
"Look, it's October. Do you really think I'm going to believe that? Seriously, if you don't want to tell me what you're doing..."
I tried to stiffle a laugh. "N., this is me. You know, as in Ten minutes your time or ten minutes real time..." Now we were both laughing.
That was the last time I waited past the first week in January to take down the lights. But I no longer use a ladder to put up or take down the lights. I sold our ladder at a yard sale. None of my neighbors will let me borrow theirs'. There's a reason for this...
Halloween, 2010, I decided to clear some branches and leaves off the roof. Simple enough. Set up the ladder on the cement driveway, grab the broom, tell M. he had to hold the ladder...At one point, with my knees against the edge of the roof, I leaned waaay to the right to move a branch off the roof...and the ladder started to fall. I fell eight to ten feet onto the cement driveway. Several neighbors rushed over to make sure I didn't move, as M. dialed 911. After an ambulance ride to the one hospital in the county with a trauma center, I spent five hours in the emergency room; an hour of this was spent in radiology for half-a-zillion X-rays. Amazingly, nothing was broken. It might be because, as a major klutz (think Chevy Chase and Gerald Ford, times ten), I'd learned how to fall, or maybe because I've got half-a-dozen Guardian Angels. Maybe I was just lucky.
I've been a klutz most of my life. True klutzy story: When I was a kid, I was always tripping over my feet. I've never been graceful. You want to see graceful, my sister was (and I'm guessing still is) graceful. I never was.
One day, when I was in first grade, the school nurse called my mother to inform her that she was sure I had a mild case of cerebral palsy. (This was back in the day when every school had a full-time school nurse; it was good for the kids, and gave any nurses who had school-aged kids a job that coincided with their kids' schedule. Hello, school administrators - anybody listening???)
Since I was the oldest of three kids, and therefore, the experiemtal model, every pronouncement, scratch, scrape - EVERYTHING - set off bells and whistles. Mom rushed me to the pediatrician's office, a man who knew just about every family in our neighborhood, made housecalls, and had a very warped sense of humor. (Trust me, that warped sense of humor should be required of pediatricians; the best ones seem to have it!) He checked me out, had me stand on one foot, hop, skip, and generally ran me through my paces. Finally, he sat my mother down and told her, in his stern doctor voice, "I'm afraid I know what's wrong with Robin. She has (dramatic pause here) a terminal case (another pause) of the congenital klutzies."
Up until that last word, my mother was dying inside; then, she was tempted to make sure that the doctor was dying.
Side note: This same doctor had to pull a decorative stone from my sister's nose. When A. was two, most of the women in our neighborhood had large decorative indoor plants with decorative rocks around the base. A. picked up a pale blue one from our plant and shoved it too far for Mom to reach. Off to the doctor's, where this warped man managed to get the rock out, then looked at it before telling my mother, "I always thought people in your neighborhood had rocks in their heads - and now I have proof!"
Another klutzy story: M. has inherited my lack-of-grace. He's been known to take a tumble over a 4-foot-high bright orange traffic cone. Granted, it was dark out and I'd been walking just ahead of him...He also has a good-sized scar on his hand from a box cutter; he was aiming for a box and missed...
Another story: I'd considered trying out for cheer-leading as a high school freshman. My uncooridnation kept me off the squard. That's okay, I ended up playing basketball, which I found enjoyable. (You're also allowed to occasionally fall while shooting hoops without it being considered strange.)
Will I ever be graceful? Probably not.
At least when my parents went looking through family names to give me, they didn't name me Grace...
Monday, December 31, 2012
Coffee, Tea, and Other Strange Tales
I knew it was going to be one of those days.
When I wandered down the hall this morning, still half-asleep, my plan was to start the coffee maker, hit the bathroom, then have a large cup of coffee while watching/listening to The Today Show. Simple enough, right?
My daughter, M.H., had bought me a new coffee maker for my birthday. It was greatly needed and appreciated, as the old coffee maker was nearing the end of a messy death. Let's just say that boiling water in a tea kettle, then slowly pouring it through the coffee filter and hoping that the heating element under the coffee pot just doesn't quite cut it. The old coffee maker was six years old, quite a bit longer than most of my previous ones had lasted.
The new one is bright red and works well...as long as I remember to do things correctly.
This morning, I got up, filled the pot up in the sink, poured water into the maker, put the pot in the dish drain (The dish drain? you ask; yes, the dish drain; I'd wanted to dry off the bottom of the glass pot before putting onto the heating element, and didn't have a dry towel around.), then ground the coffee beans, put them in the filter, plugged in the maker, turned it on, and headed down the hall. (I hear what you're thinking: You didn't say anything about getting the pot out of the dish drain. Yeah, I know.)
So, I'm down the hall, getting ready to brush my teeth (morning breath; yuck!), when I hear my youngest utter an expletive, followed by, "Hey, Mom, the coffee!"
I hurried out to find coffee all over the place. The filter had filled to the top, then overflowed. (The top of the pot presses against the bottom of the filter area, which releases the coffee into the pot. But one must remember to put the pot where it belongs - which is not necessarily in the dish drain.)
Good thing I'd planned to do some laundry today, since I used up a few dish towels cleaning up. The second pot went a little smoother...
My family has a few coffee stories, as well as stories dealing with being a little klutzy. So, here goes.
M.H., B. and G. moved here from Rhode Island, where coffee is the state drink. In most places, schools offer kids a choice of regular or chocolate milk (or have in the past); Rhode Island kids get a third choice: coffee flavored. Even M.H. says I drink too much coffee.
True coffee story: My dad loved coffee every bit as much as I do, which is no doubt where I picked up my love of it. Mom was (and still is) more of a tea drinker, and I tend to drink a lot of that, too. But Dad and coffee...
Whenever Mom's parents came to visit for the weekend, there was usually one night reserved for hitting up a nice restaurant. Sometimes they'd bring us kids along, other times, it was just the adults. But the complaint was always the same: "John and the coffee."
See, it went like this: After being seated and handed menus, the waiter or waitress would ask what everyone was drinking. Dad, Mom, and Grandparents would all get coffee. Mom and her parents would nurse that one lone coffee through much of dinner, with occasional sips of water. That one coffee a piece created all sorts of havoc: Mom, Grandma and Grandpa all knew that sleep would be evasive that evening.
Dad, on the other hand, had a cup of coffee with the menu, another helping with the appetizer, a third and forth with dinner, another with dessert, and, finally, a last one after dessert. Wired for sound, right? Wrong! When everyone got home from the restaurant, Dad would sit, yawning, in the living room with everyone else, trying to make small talk. Invariably, though, within half an hour, he'd be upstairs, sound asleep, the coffee having had no effect on him. Mom and her parents, though, would be awake until at least 1 or 2 a.m. from their one cup of coffee!
Note: Anyone having been in the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Florida Studies program knows that no matter how many words are added to the phrase True Story know where the phrase comes from. I hope Gary Mormino is enjoying his retirement!
Another true coffee story: When I was still driving cabs, I got a call to take someone to Tampa International Airport. Before picking the person up, I grabbed a large coffee and Boston cream donut from a nearby Dunkin' Donuts. After dropping the man off at T.I.A., I decided to swing through the Ybor City section of Tampa, since I had a friend who lived there.
I drove along the main thoroughfare (7th Avenue), but didn't see her. So, I stopped at the coffee place that was on 7th Avenue, went inside and got a large hot mochacchino. According to the person serving this up, it was an espresso, dumped into a large cup (so there were maybe several servings of espresso in there), with chocolate added to the mix, and topped with whipped cream. I'll go with that description. Drank it down, then got a large iced mochacchino to go. Got to the cab, started to leave, and Voila!, saw my friend. I honked, she waved, I did a U-turn and chug-a-lugged my iced caffeine rush before getting out of the car.
We hugged, then went back into the same coffee place to talk over - you guessed it - large hot mochacchinos. The server raised an eyebrow as he served us, no doubt wondering how sleep deprived I'd been - or would be. This time, we each added a large brownie (one for friend, one for me). The things had to be 2 inches on each side and 2 inches high, then topped with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, a scoop of ice cream, more chocolate syrup, and topped with a cherry. (As Paula Deen might admonish, we have to get our fruits and veggies in somewhere!)
Then, as we got ready to leave, I grabbed another large iced mochacchino to go. Fortunately, there'd been a shift change, so it was a different person handing it over.
By the time I got back to the Pinellas side of the Howard Franklin Bridge (a.k.a. the Frankenstein), I decided I'd best get a plain old large coffee from Dunkin' Donuts before pulling onto the nearest cab stand, where two other drivers were sitting, talking, while waiting for calls. (One of the two was my friend Kevin.)
"Hey, Robin, how's it going?" the other driver asked. And I was off and speed-talking.
"Well, seeIgotthiscallthatwenttoTIAandthenIwenttoYborandIgotsomecoffeeand..."
Kevin and the other driver's eye kind-of widened. About the time one of them got a call, though, I'd hit the caffeine wall. Anyone familiar with vinyl might know about 33s and 45s; there are those of us who remember seeing 78s and 16s. Let's just say that at first, I must've sounded like a 33 being played at the speed 45 or 78 (think Alvin and the Chipmunks), then, after hitting the wall, sounding more like a 78 played at 33 or 16...
"Wow, I think you'd better steer away from the coffee for a day or two," Kevin offered as he drove off for his next call. He might've been right.
Another coffee story: By the time Dad had married my step-mom, I'd started sending pans of fudge as one of my Christmas presents to Dad and P. They both kept an eye out for the package: Dad was ready, willing and able to finish most of the pan of fudge with a pot of coffee, while P. was prone to dole the fudge out a piece or two at a time. (Does that coffee-and-chocolate thing sound familiar?) I'd inevitably get a call from Dad the day the package came, when I'd hear which way it had gone.
True (tea) story: My mother, whose maternal grandparents immigrated from England, was more of a tea person than Dad was. If there was cause for celebration, fix tea; if someone needed cheering up, fix tea; if someone felt a little under the weather, fix tea; if...well, you get the idea. I can't begin to count the number of times I'd be home sick and would be given a cup of tea and toast.
One rainy afternoon, Mom's mom came to visit. She lived maybe a fifteen minute ride from us and would frequently bring homemade oatmeal or peanut butter cookies.
This particular rainy day, I was home sick; I was definitely on the mend, but, since it was rainy, Mom had decided to keep me home, while sending my sister A. to school.
While Mom stood watching out the door for A. to get home, Grandma poured both of us another cup of tea, pushed the plate of cookies toward me, and told me about her one brush with fame:
When she was eight years old, she and her parents lived in Denver. Half-way through the school year, Grandma's teacher informed the class that the following week, she'd bring a friend of her's to class; her friend was none other than Buffalo Bill Cody.
The day before Buffalo Bill was to come to class, Grandma stayed after school to tell her teacher the news: she had found out that morning that her parents were moving the family back to New York; they were leaving by train the next morning. Grandma was heart-broken: she loved her teacher, who apparently very caring with the children, and she was going to miss meeting Buffalo Bill Cody.
At 6 the next morning, Grandma sat on the train as her parents handed the porter their luggage. She was lost in her thoughts when she heard a familiar voice say her name as a hand touched her shoulder.
"Lillian," her teacher said. "I have a very special person who said he wanted to meet my student who was leaving for New York."
Grandma turned to see her teacher, who had gotten up extra early to see her on the train. Beside her teacher was none other than Buffalo Bill Cody himself!
I went back to school the next day. And while I've met many people over the years, some famous, some almost famous, most just ordinary people, I still feel that tea will cure an upset stomach (especially if it's with toast or cookies), that coffee is wonderful, and that both are tied to an occasional quirky story.
At 2 in the afternoon, I wonder if it's okay to put on another pot of coffee...
When I wandered down the hall this morning, still half-asleep, my plan was to start the coffee maker, hit the bathroom, then have a large cup of coffee while watching/listening to The Today Show. Simple enough, right?
My daughter, M.H., had bought me a new coffee maker for my birthday. It was greatly needed and appreciated, as the old coffee maker was nearing the end of a messy death. Let's just say that boiling water in a tea kettle, then slowly pouring it through the coffee filter and hoping that the heating element under the coffee pot just doesn't quite cut it. The old coffee maker was six years old, quite a bit longer than most of my previous ones had lasted.
The new one is bright red and works well...as long as I remember to do things correctly.
This morning, I got up, filled the pot up in the sink, poured water into the maker, put the pot in the dish drain (The dish drain? you ask; yes, the dish drain; I'd wanted to dry off the bottom of the glass pot before putting onto the heating element, and didn't have a dry towel around.), then ground the coffee beans, put them in the filter, plugged in the maker, turned it on, and headed down the hall. (I hear what you're thinking: You didn't say anything about getting the pot out of the dish drain. Yeah, I know.)
So, I'm down the hall, getting ready to brush my teeth (morning breath; yuck!), when I hear my youngest utter an expletive, followed by, "Hey, Mom, the coffee!"
I hurried out to find coffee all over the place. The filter had filled to the top, then overflowed. (The top of the pot presses against the bottom of the filter area, which releases the coffee into the pot. But one must remember to put the pot where it belongs - which is not necessarily in the dish drain.)
Good thing I'd planned to do some laundry today, since I used up a few dish towels cleaning up. The second pot went a little smoother...
My family has a few coffee stories, as well as stories dealing with being a little klutzy. So, here goes.
M.H., B. and G. moved here from Rhode Island, where coffee is the state drink. In most places, schools offer kids a choice of regular or chocolate milk (or have in the past); Rhode Island kids get a third choice: coffee flavored. Even M.H. says I drink too much coffee.
True coffee story: My dad loved coffee every bit as much as I do, which is no doubt where I picked up my love of it. Mom was (and still is) more of a tea drinker, and I tend to drink a lot of that, too. But Dad and coffee...
Whenever Mom's parents came to visit for the weekend, there was usually one night reserved for hitting up a nice restaurant. Sometimes they'd bring us kids along, other times, it was just the adults. But the complaint was always the same: "John and the coffee."
See, it went like this: After being seated and handed menus, the waiter or waitress would ask what everyone was drinking. Dad, Mom, and Grandparents would all get coffee. Mom and her parents would nurse that one lone coffee through much of dinner, with occasional sips of water. That one coffee a piece created all sorts of havoc: Mom, Grandma and Grandpa all knew that sleep would be evasive that evening.
Dad, on the other hand, had a cup of coffee with the menu, another helping with the appetizer, a third and forth with dinner, another with dessert, and, finally, a last one after dessert. Wired for sound, right? Wrong! When everyone got home from the restaurant, Dad would sit, yawning, in the living room with everyone else, trying to make small talk. Invariably, though, within half an hour, he'd be upstairs, sound asleep, the coffee having had no effect on him. Mom and her parents, though, would be awake until at least 1 or 2 a.m. from their one cup of coffee!
Note: Anyone having been in the University of South Florida St. Petersburg's Florida Studies program knows that no matter how many words are added to the phrase True Story know where the phrase comes from. I hope Gary Mormino is enjoying his retirement!
Another true coffee story: When I was still driving cabs, I got a call to take someone to Tampa International Airport. Before picking the person up, I grabbed a large coffee and Boston cream donut from a nearby Dunkin' Donuts. After dropping the man off at T.I.A., I decided to swing through the Ybor City section of Tampa, since I had a friend who lived there.
I drove along the main thoroughfare (7th Avenue), but didn't see her. So, I stopped at the coffee place that was on 7th Avenue, went inside and got a large hot mochacchino. According to the person serving this up, it was an espresso, dumped into a large cup (so there were maybe several servings of espresso in there), with chocolate added to the mix, and topped with whipped cream. I'll go with that description. Drank it down, then got a large iced mochacchino to go. Got to the cab, started to leave, and Voila!, saw my friend. I honked, she waved, I did a U-turn and chug-a-lugged my iced caffeine rush before getting out of the car.
We hugged, then went back into the same coffee place to talk over - you guessed it - large hot mochacchinos. The server raised an eyebrow as he served us, no doubt wondering how sleep deprived I'd been - or would be. This time, we each added a large brownie (one for friend, one for me). The things had to be 2 inches on each side and 2 inches high, then topped with chocolate syrup, whipped cream, a scoop of ice cream, more chocolate syrup, and topped with a cherry. (As Paula Deen might admonish, we have to get our fruits and veggies in somewhere!)
Then, as we got ready to leave, I grabbed another large iced mochacchino to go. Fortunately, there'd been a shift change, so it was a different person handing it over.
By the time I got back to the Pinellas side of the Howard Franklin Bridge (a.k.a. the Frankenstein), I decided I'd best get a plain old large coffee from Dunkin' Donuts before pulling onto the nearest cab stand, where two other drivers were sitting, talking, while waiting for calls. (One of the two was my friend Kevin.)
"Hey, Robin, how's it going?" the other driver asked. And I was off and speed-talking.
"Well, seeIgotthiscallthatwenttoTIAandthenIwenttoYborandIgotsomecoffeeand..."
Kevin and the other driver's eye kind-of widened. About the time one of them got a call, though, I'd hit the caffeine wall. Anyone familiar with vinyl might know about 33s and 45s; there are those of us who remember seeing 78s and 16s. Let's just say that at first, I must've sounded like a 33 being played at the speed 45 or 78 (think Alvin and the Chipmunks), then, after hitting the wall, sounding more like a 78 played at 33 or 16...
"Wow, I think you'd better steer away from the coffee for a day or two," Kevin offered as he drove off for his next call. He might've been right.
Another coffee story: By the time Dad had married my step-mom, I'd started sending pans of fudge as one of my Christmas presents to Dad and P. They both kept an eye out for the package: Dad was ready, willing and able to finish most of the pan of fudge with a pot of coffee, while P. was prone to dole the fudge out a piece or two at a time. (Does that coffee-and-chocolate thing sound familiar?) I'd inevitably get a call from Dad the day the package came, when I'd hear which way it had gone.
True (tea) story: My mother, whose maternal grandparents immigrated from England, was more of a tea person than Dad was. If there was cause for celebration, fix tea; if someone needed cheering up, fix tea; if someone felt a little under the weather, fix tea; if...well, you get the idea. I can't begin to count the number of times I'd be home sick and would be given a cup of tea and toast.
One rainy afternoon, Mom's mom came to visit. She lived maybe a fifteen minute ride from us and would frequently bring homemade oatmeal or peanut butter cookies.
This particular rainy day, I was home sick; I was definitely on the mend, but, since it was rainy, Mom had decided to keep me home, while sending my sister A. to school.
While Mom stood watching out the door for A. to get home, Grandma poured both of us another cup of tea, pushed the plate of cookies toward me, and told me about her one brush with fame:
When she was eight years old, she and her parents lived in Denver. Half-way through the school year, Grandma's teacher informed the class that the following week, she'd bring a friend of her's to class; her friend was none other than Buffalo Bill Cody.
The day before Buffalo Bill was to come to class, Grandma stayed after school to tell her teacher the news: she had found out that morning that her parents were moving the family back to New York; they were leaving by train the next morning. Grandma was heart-broken: she loved her teacher, who apparently very caring with the children, and she was going to miss meeting Buffalo Bill Cody.
At 6 the next morning, Grandma sat on the train as her parents handed the porter their luggage. She was lost in her thoughts when she heard a familiar voice say her name as a hand touched her shoulder.
"Lillian," her teacher said. "I have a very special person who said he wanted to meet my student who was leaving for New York."
Grandma turned to see her teacher, who had gotten up extra early to see her on the train. Beside her teacher was none other than Buffalo Bill Cody himself!
I went back to school the next day. And while I've met many people over the years, some famous, some almost famous, most just ordinary people, I still feel that tea will cure an upset stomach (especially if it's with toast or cookies), that coffee is wonderful, and that both are tied to an occasional quirky story.
At 2 in the afternoon, I wonder if it's okay to put on another pot of coffee...
Saturday, December 29, 2012
Reading
I love to read. Always have. I blame my parents, in a good way. Between bedtime stories, watching both Mom and Dad reading a wide variety of books in their spare time, and receiving books for birthdays, Christmases, and just because, I learned that books were to be explored and enjoyed. A person can learn a lot from books.
It was on one website that I frequent that I learned about another cool site called Goodreads . Maybe you've heard of it. Or not. But on Goodreads, a reader can keep track of books she or he has read, is currently reading, wants to read (oops, must add the Narnia series!), learn about what others are reading, what others feel are must reads and what can be passed on. One can connect with friends on the site and get emails when books (and comments on these books) are added to friends' lists.
At the moment, I'm reading several books, a habit I got into as a kid during summer vacation. Getting home after the last day of school, I'd grab a stack of five books, read the first chapter of the first book, stick in on the bottom of the stack, read the next book's first chapter, then the next book...You get the idea. When I'd finish one book, it would go back on the bookshelf, another stuck into its place, and the reading would go on. By mid-summer, I might be on chapter one in one book, chapter ten in another, five in the third...Drove my mother crazy.
"How do you keep all the stories separate?" she'd ask. Just do, I'd tell her. She'd wander off, sighing, happy, I'm sure, that at least I was reading.
"I wouldn't worry about it," my grandmother told her when she relayed it during one of Grandma's visits. "I used to that all the time." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "I still do." If it was good enough for Grandma...
Two of the books I'm currently working on are Seasons of Real Florida, by Jeff Klinkenberg, and Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen. Both are interesting reads, similar in some ways, way different in others
Klinkenberg's Seasons..., as with his other books, is a collection of his columns first published in the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). He introduces the reader to all sorts of interesting characters and Florida locales. His writing makes the reader think that Klink has the perfect job: wander the state, meet cool people, see cool places, and then write about them. Jeff, if you ever decide to retire, please put in a good word for me at the Times!
Quindlen's Lots of Candles... is also a collection of short essays. (She wrote for the New York Times for several years; several of her non-fiction books are collections of some of these essays.) Her essays tend toward her observations on life.
In one of the essays in Lots of Candles..., she mentions being a control freak, to the point of having a local anesthetic when having a hysterectomy. The surgeon, knowing a control freak when she saw one, told Quindlen that she would not be allowed to talk while the surgery was going on. I really had to laugh while reading Quinlen's description of being a control freak, as I've been there. I, too, tend to be a bit of a control freak, as well as a bit of a slob.
An aside: When Paul was alive, he played Felix Unger to my Oscar Madison; we used to joke that if anyone ever did a remake of The Odd Couple using a married couple, we'd be perfect. While I'm not enough of a slob to be on an episode of Hoarders, it's only because I am a control freak. And maybe the two apparent opposites feed into each other: I can never keep my home as neat as my mom used to, or as neat as I'd love to, so why bother? But then the control-freak-ness kicks in and...
There have been times when I've been in my friend Kevin's cab and told him that I wanted to go somewhere, then proceeded to tell him exactly how to get there. Kev will usually give me a look and ask who I think is doing the driving. If I mention wanting to be in control, he'll tell me that I'm simply neurotic. Nothing like having someone know you too well...
Kevin reads a lot, too; over the years, I've noticed numerous books in his cab. (Cab driving does give one down time between calls.) He's recommended several books, and I've told him about several, even handing him a copy of Elie Wiesel's Night, a book he devoured in a day or two before passing it on. (It was an extra copy and I'd told him to pass it along.)
Paul was a reader, too, liking a variety of books from Tom Clancy and mysteries to short stories. But there were several times when I'd buy a book for myself, put it on the table, then not be able to find it later. "Oh, I started reading it," Paul would say. "You really need to read this: it's great!"
We'd discuss books, what we were reading, what stood out in the book, what inspired us for a variety of reasons...
It's a rainy Saturday, the last weekend in the out-going year. I intend to do some house-cleaning (it's that control-freak thing), but I also intend to get royally lost in a couple of books. Will I read about more quirky Floridians? More Quindlen musings? AWOL on the Appalachian Trail on my Kindle? Who knows...maybe all three. It'll drive Mom nuts, but at least she'll take comfort knowing I'm reading!
It was on one website that I frequent that I learned about another cool site called Goodreads . Maybe you've heard of it. Or not. But on Goodreads, a reader can keep track of books she or he has read, is currently reading, wants to read (oops, must add the Narnia series!), learn about what others are reading, what others feel are must reads and what can be passed on. One can connect with friends on the site and get emails when books (and comments on these books) are added to friends' lists.
At the moment, I'm reading several books, a habit I got into as a kid during summer vacation. Getting home after the last day of school, I'd grab a stack of five books, read the first chapter of the first book, stick in on the bottom of the stack, read the next book's first chapter, then the next book...You get the idea. When I'd finish one book, it would go back on the bookshelf, another stuck into its place, and the reading would go on. By mid-summer, I might be on chapter one in one book, chapter ten in another, five in the third...Drove my mother crazy.
"How do you keep all the stories separate?" she'd ask. Just do, I'd tell her. She'd wander off, sighing, happy, I'm sure, that at least I was reading.
"I wouldn't worry about it," my grandmother told her when she relayed it during one of Grandma's visits. "I used to that all the time." Then, as an afterthought, she added, "I still do." If it was good enough for Grandma...
Two of the books I'm currently working on are Seasons of Real Florida, by Jeff Klinkenberg, and Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake, by Anna Quindlen. Both are interesting reads, similar in some ways, way different in others
Klinkenberg's Seasons..., as with his other books, is a collection of his columns first published in the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times). He introduces the reader to all sorts of interesting characters and Florida locales. His writing makes the reader think that Klink has the perfect job: wander the state, meet cool people, see cool places, and then write about them. Jeff, if you ever decide to retire, please put in a good word for me at the Times!
Quindlen's Lots of Candles... is also a collection of short essays. (She wrote for the New York Times for several years; several of her non-fiction books are collections of some of these essays.) Her essays tend toward her observations on life.
In one of the essays in Lots of Candles..., she mentions being a control freak, to the point of having a local anesthetic when having a hysterectomy. The surgeon, knowing a control freak when she saw one, told Quindlen that she would not be allowed to talk while the surgery was going on. I really had to laugh while reading Quinlen's description of being a control freak, as I've been there. I, too, tend to be a bit of a control freak, as well as a bit of a slob.
An aside: When Paul was alive, he played Felix Unger to my Oscar Madison; we used to joke that if anyone ever did a remake of The Odd Couple using a married couple, we'd be perfect. While I'm not enough of a slob to be on an episode of Hoarders, it's only because I am a control freak. And maybe the two apparent opposites feed into each other: I can never keep my home as neat as my mom used to, or as neat as I'd love to, so why bother? But then the control-freak-ness kicks in and...
There have been times when I've been in my friend Kevin's cab and told him that I wanted to go somewhere, then proceeded to tell him exactly how to get there. Kev will usually give me a look and ask who I think is doing the driving. If I mention wanting to be in control, he'll tell me that I'm simply neurotic. Nothing like having someone know you too well...
Kevin reads a lot, too; over the years, I've noticed numerous books in his cab. (Cab driving does give one down time between calls.) He's recommended several books, and I've told him about several, even handing him a copy of Elie Wiesel's Night, a book he devoured in a day or two before passing it on. (It was an extra copy and I'd told him to pass it along.)
Paul was a reader, too, liking a variety of books from Tom Clancy and mysteries to short stories. But there were several times when I'd buy a book for myself, put it on the table, then not be able to find it later. "Oh, I started reading it," Paul would say. "You really need to read this: it's great!"
We'd discuss books, what we were reading, what stood out in the book, what inspired us for a variety of reasons...
It's a rainy Saturday, the last weekend in the out-going year. I intend to do some house-cleaning (it's that control-freak thing), but I also intend to get royally lost in a couple of books. Will I read about more quirky Floridians? More Quindlen musings? AWOL on the Appalachian Trail on my Kindle? Who knows...maybe all three. It'll drive Mom nuts, but at least she'll take comfort knowing I'm reading!
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Christmas Day
Yesterday was Christmas, and I'm okay with that. That might seem like a strange thing to say; how could anyone not be okay with Christmas? (If you've spent your life celebrating Hanukkah instead, or any other winter holidays, I'm not trying to disrespect you; I'm simply writing where I'm coming from and my point of reference. I'd love to read your writings on the subject.)
But being okay with Christmas: You have no idea how long it took me to be able to say that. Sure, as a kid, especially if you've grown up in a middle-class family, as I did, Christmas was great. What wasn't there to love: First off, there were the presents, the extended family, the food, the lights, the whole ambience of Christmas. We may have had two trees, since I do remember seeing a decorated tree in a corner of the living room by our corner windows, and the big tree - the one where we'd find the presents - downstairs in the playroom.
Most years, it seems, we'd go to both sets of grandparents' places, usually one a day or two before Christmas, the other either on Christmas Day for dinner, or a set would come over for Christmas. Both of my parents had one sibling who lived in close proximity so that whichever set didn't have Christmas dinner with us would have a place to go. All very good.
Of course, these days, with family frequently spread across the country, this is a little more difficult. Thank goodness for phones, though it's still not quite the same. Maybe in some respects, that's not always a bad thing; we all have our weird holiday stories.
But then, life changed, evolved. When we moved to Connecticut, it seemed that one year, both sets of grandparents came one year for Christmas, along with my mom's father's brother and his wife. Uncle George and Aunt Elsie were what could be classified as characters, a nice way of saying eccentric, or at least on friendly terms with it. Of course, I'm not really sure if both sets of grandparents came at once, or if my memory is simply condensing several holidays together. Either way, it wouldn't have been more than one Christmas. I do remember standing around the piano in what my mother called the music room, my mother playing Christmas tunes and hymns Christmas Eve and Christmas night, Broadway show tunes the next evening, while everyone stood around, singing.
(An aside that has nothing to do with Christmas: Off the music room was the downstairs bathroom; that almost deserves its own post: the previous owners painted the entire room in various shades of purple and lavender, including a purple sink and toilet. My mother named the room the purple potty, and the name stuck; forty-plus years later, the term still resonates.)
There were more moves: From Thompson to Woodstock, Connecticut, to Pittsford, New York just outside Rochester, and finally to Florida. There are plenty more holiday memories, mostly good.
When I married my ex, my parents weren't exactly thrilled; somehow, I doubt that it was simply his blue-collar roots. But that's neither here nor there. We did have some pleasant memories, interspersed among the rough spots, and we did have four offspring who I'm proud of more often then not; they're finally at that age when we can have semi-intelligent conversations. My second husband was also a blue-collar man with middle-class roots and enough patience to put up with an out-spoken extravert. He and I had good memories, including holidays.
This year, things have been tight, financially. We'd hoped that, since M.H., B., and G. now live nearby, we'd be able to see them for Christmas, as they'd had holidays for the past 15 or so years with family in Rhode Island. But life happens: their car died an unhappy death after they'd moved into their apartment nearby (but still requiring two bus routes, which, on the holiday schedule, is interesting, meaning a much shorter day), they now have a scooter to get around on (really pretty much a one-person deal, even if it does have pegs for a second person to put his or her feet), and M.H. had to work yesterday from shortly after noon until a little after 6. Finances didn't include cab fare to and from either way. You know the old joke that goes "How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans"? That's what happened to our first extended family Christmas in years. I could have copped an attitude, but it wouldn't have helped any.
Added to the fun was that our toilet, which has been acting up - but doing better the past few weeks - decided to act up on Christmas Eve day. This year, of course, it fell on a Monday, which means that a lot of places were giving workers a rare four-day weekend. I hated having to call the landlord about it, but also didn't relish the thought of a holiday with a backed-up commode. I'm funny about stuff like that. (And I'm sure you've already inserted something else into that stuff spot.)
The people coming out to fix it arrived just as I was heading out to meet M. at the bus; he had gone out to pick up last minute stuff from the store that we really needed for Christmas dinner and needed help carrying it all home from the bus stop. But J. was here, so that was cool; he could keep Drexie and Karma from making a break for it whenever the door was open.
As M. and I figured out who would carry what from the bus stop, we heard someone shout, "Hey, Robin!" I looked around in time to see Sandy V., J.'s day care lady from years ago. She lives within a mile or two from our place, but somehow, our lives have gotten so crazy that only occasionally see each other, and almost exclusively when we bump into each other. Usually, it's at the nearby Publix when we're shopping.
But she was out for a run in the misty weather. We quickly got caught up on each others' lives. She's married, has three kids, her daughters are now older than she was when we first met, her son older than most of my kids were when we met. Is it really possible that that much time has passed?
After we said our good-byes, Sandy off toward home, M. and I toward our place, I called J. and told him who we'd seen. Then I asked if the people working on the toilet were still there. No, he informed me; they'd plunged it, got it flushing, and left.
It worked fine the rest of the day. Good enough. Then, yesterday morning, I got up, went into the bathroom before starting the coffee and getting to work cooking, and sure enough, the toilet backed up. I plunged it once or twice, but wasn't thrilled.
Several hours later, after I did one load of laundry (when I'm baking and making holiday meals, I go through a ton of dish towels), I heard M. yell that he needed some bath towels NOW from the bathroom. Yup, you guessed it: there was a definite over-flow problem.
After we cleaned up a little and I started another load of laundry (thank goodness for the extra-hot setting on the washer), I called the landlord. When the property manager called back, she sounded as unhappy to be talking to me as I was. Don't get me wrong, she's a nice enough person, and I'm sure that if we were to meet under other circumstances, there's a chance we might talk over coffee. It's doubtful we'd ever be close best buddies - no BFFs here - but she's a nice enough person. But who wants to have to make or receive a call like that on Christmas? If there's one time of year when most of us want our family time, our please leave me alone unless you're calling to wish me a happy holiday time, it's Christmas.
She said it would be taken care of today, not to flush the commode, etc. This was the scenario we'd both hoped to avoid.
(For the record, she's already mentioned this morning that it will be taken care of today. We both were a little more, well, not okay with the situation, but at least not growling over it; at this point, that's an improvement.)
I finished the preliminary baking - two loaves of pumpkin bread, two pumpkin pies, and a cranberry-raisin pie - before starting the stuffing and turkey. Usually, I bake an apple pie, pouring apple cider into it for extra yumminess (yes, that's the technical term: yumminess), but we were a little short on cash this year. But M. and I decided that a cranberry-raisin pie would be a suitable stand-in. Twice in the past, I tried baking all three kinds of pie for holidays, but have since decided that that was a little much. Once I got the turkey into the oven, I washed a few dishes, had a cup of hot tea, then put my shoes on.
Years ago, when I'd already quit driving cab, and Paul was driving for what he knew was his last holiday season driving cab, I'd taken a walk through the nearby park. This particular park is less than a block away; I can see the back entrance to it from my front porch. It has a playground, horse trails through the woods (there are plenty of stables in close proximity), rings for horse shows, and a rec center which doubles as a local voting precinct. Usually, through most of the year, I walk along one of the horse paths along the edge of the park on my way to other paths during my morning walks/runs. But the Thanksgiving before Paul retired, I'd put the turkey in the oven, watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV (something my maternal grandmother got me into the habit of doing; it still somehow connects me to her), then went through a walk on the horse trails through the woods. It took close to an hour to walk to the end of the trail and back (or, at least, as far as I'd planned to go). I loved taking the walk enough that I did it again on Christmas. (I've been known to walk it on Easter Sunday, too.)
Since then, I've missed a couple of holidays; Christmas, 2004, it rained; Thanksgiving, 2010, I was still sore and nowhere near up for a walk after a fall from a ladder at roof level onto a cement driveway (something like that takes a bit of a recovery, trust me on that), this past Thanksgiving, M. and I went to M.H., B. and G.'s apartment, and so on. Occasionally, I think, This'll probably be the last time I do this for whatever reason; but almost without fail, the next holiday, I'm back out there. It gives me an excuse to walk a different trail, to see the changes since the last time I walked it, and to just let my mind wander along with my feet. One year, I saw a peacock walking parallel to the path. Several years, M. and J. joined me for the walk.
Quick story: the city put lights along the horse path. The path tends to get dark by late afternoon; the lights turn on automatically, making it easier to see the path. They're tall, with an opaque orb at the top. They remind M. of C. S. Lewis's Narnia series. One year, M. walked with me on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the following Easter; each time, he'd spend the entire walk telling me about Narnia, discussing whether I should read the books in chronological order or in the order that Lewis had written them. Narnia and the lights in the park are now one of M.'s and my inside jokes. Every holiday, I remind myself that I really want to read the Narnia series - it's one of those books or series I've told myself everyone needs to read, or, at least, I need/want to. And then life gets busy, crazily busy, and Narnia slips my mind, at least until the next holiday walk.
Yesterday, I walked the trail alone, noticing changes: how a stand of trees that I'd enjoyed was slowly disappearing - a stand of off-white trees with slightly peeling bark, trees that stood huddled together like a lost tribe; the newer houses near the park and how the older new houses - ones that were built in the past six or seven years but are older than the newer new houses; the changes to the stable next to the park; in general, letting my mind wander.
Heading back down the trail, a woman riding a horse approached. Usually, by this point in my holiday walk, I've seen maybe half-a-dozen horse-and-riders in several groups; this time, I was beginning to think I wouldn't see any.
"Beautiful day, isn't it?" the rider called, and I agreed. We both wish each other Merry Christmas. Then, as if on cue, the horse nodded, whinnied, and veered a few steps toward me. I'd been around horses as a kid, so it didn't startle me. The woman steered the horse back to its original course.
"Sorry," she told me. "He's just looking for treats." I smiled, and made a mental note to bring carrot pieces on my next holiday walk - after which, I'll start the Narnia series.
By the time I got home, I was in a better mood, one where I could handle stinky bathrooms.
And, in spite of having to work, M.H. apparently had a decent enough Christmas, too.
We still have next year to look forward to.
Note: The path below used to walk through the stand of trees mentioned near the end of this post; enough of the trees have either died or been cleared by the city that the path is no longer there.
But being okay with Christmas: You have no idea how long it took me to be able to say that. Sure, as a kid, especially if you've grown up in a middle-class family, as I did, Christmas was great. What wasn't there to love: First off, there were the presents, the extended family, the food, the lights, the whole ambience of Christmas. We may have had two trees, since I do remember seeing a decorated tree in a corner of the living room by our corner windows, and the big tree - the one where we'd find the presents - downstairs in the playroom.
Most years, it seems, we'd go to both sets of grandparents' places, usually one a day or two before Christmas, the other either on Christmas Day for dinner, or a set would come over for Christmas. Both of my parents had one sibling who lived in close proximity so that whichever set didn't have Christmas dinner with us would have a place to go. All very good.
Of course, these days, with family frequently spread across the country, this is a little more difficult. Thank goodness for phones, though it's still not quite the same. Maybe in some respects, that's not always a bad thing; we all have our weird holiday stories.
But then, life changed, evolved. When we moved to Connecticut, it seemed that one year, both sets of grandparents came one year for Christmas, along with my mom's father's brother and his wife. Uncle George and Aunt Elsie were what could be classified as characters, a nice way of saying eccentric, or at least on friendly terms with it. Of course, I'm not really sure if both sets of grandparents came at once, or if my memory is simply condensing several holidays together. Either way, it wouldn't have been more than one Christmas. I do remember standing around the piano in what my mother called the music room, my mother playing Christmas tunes and hymns Christmas Eve and Christmas night, Broadway show tunes the next evening, while everyone stood around, singing.
(An aside that has nothing to do with Christmas: Off the music room was the downstairs bathroom; that almost deserves its own post: the previous owners painted the entire room in various shades of purple and lavender, including a purple sink and toilet. My mother named the room the purple potty, and the name stuck; forty-plus years later, the term still resonates.)
There were more moves: From Thompson to Woodstock, Connecticut, to Pittsford, New York just outside Rochester, and finally to Florida. There are plenty more holiday memories, mostly good.
When I married my ex, my parents weren't exactly thrilled; somehow, I doubt that it was simply his blue-collar roots. But that's neither here nor there. We did have some pleasant memories, interspersed among the rough spots, and we did have four offspring who I'm proud of more often then not; they're finally at that age when we can have semi-intelligent conversations. My second husband was also a blue-collar man with middle-class roots and enough patience to put up with an out-spoken extravert. He and I had good memories, including holidays.
This year, things have been tight, financially. We'd hoped that, since M.H., B., and G. now live nearby, we'd be able to see them for Christmas, as they'd had holidays for the past 15 or so years with family in Rhode Island. But life happens: their car died an unhappy death after they'd moved into their apartment nearby (but still requiring two bus routes, which, on the holiday schedule, is interesting, meaning a much shorter day), they now have a scooter to get around on (really pretty much a one-person deal, even if it does have pegs for a second person to put his or her feet), and M.H. had to work yesterday from shortly after noon until a little after 6. Finances didn't include cab fare to and from either way. You know the old joke that goes "How do you make God laugh? Tell Him your plans"? That's what happened to our first extended family Christmas in years. I could have copped an attitude, but it wouldn't have helped any.
Added to the fun was that our toilet, which has been acting up - but doing better the past few weeks - decided to act up on Christmas Eve day. This year, of course, it fell on a Monday, which means that a lot of places were giving workers a rare four-day weekend. I hated having to call the landlord about it, but also didn't relish the thought of a holiday with a backed-up commode. I'm funny about stuff like that. (And I'm sure you've already inserted something else into that stuff spot.)
The people coming out to fix it arrived just as I was heading out to meet M. at the bus; he had gone out to pick up last minute stuff from the store that we really needed for Christmas dinner and needed help carrying it all home from the bus stop. But J. was here, so that was cool; he could keep Drexie and Karma from making a break for it whenever the door was open.
As M. and I figured out who would carry what from the bus stop, we heard someone shout, "Hey, Robin!" I looked around in time to see Sandy V., J.'s day care lady from years ago. She lives within a mile or two from our place, but somehow, our lives have gotten so crazy that only occasionally see each other, and almost exclusively when we bump into each other. Usually, it's at the nearby Publix when we're shopping.
But she was out for a run in the misty weather. We quickly got caught up on each others' lives. She's married, has three kids, her daughters are now older than she was when we first met, her son older than most of my kids were when we met. Is it really possible that that much time has passed?
After we said our good-byes, Sandy off toward home, M. and I toward our place, I called J. and told him who we'd seen. Then I asked if the people working on the toilet were still there. No, he informed me; they'd plunged it, got it flushing, and left.
It worked fine the rest of the day. Good enough. Then, yesterday morning, I got up, went into the bathroom before starting the coffee and getting to work cooking, and sure enough, the toilet backed up. I plunged it once or twice, but wasn't thrilled.
Several hours later, after I did one load of laundry (when I'm baking and making holiday meals, I go through a ton of dish towels), I heard M. yell that he needed some bath towels NOW from the bathroom. Yup, you guessed it: there was a definite over-flow problem.
After we cleaned up a little and I started another load of laundry (thank goodness for the extra-hot setting on the washer), I called the landlord. When the property manager called back, she sounded as unhappy to be talking to me as I was. Don't get me wrong, she's a nice enough person, and I'm sure that if we were to meet under other circumstances, there's a chance we might talk over coffee. It's doubtful we'd ever be close best buddies - no BFFs here - but she's a nice enough person. But who wants to have to make or receive a call like that on Christmas? If there's one time of year when most of us want our family time, our please leave me alone unless you're calling to wish me a happy holiday time, it's Christmas.
She said it would be taken care of today, not to flush the commode, etc. This was the scenario we'd both hoped to avoid.
(For the record, she's already mentioned this morning that it will be taken care of today. We both were a little more, well, not okay with the situation, but at least not growling over it; at this point, that's an improvement.)
I finished the preliminary baking - two loaves of pumpkin bread, two pumpkin pies, and a cranberry-raisin pie - before starting the stuffing and turkey. Usually, I bake an apple pie, pouring apple cider into it for extra yumminess (yes, that's the technical term: yumminess), but we were a little short on cash this year. But M. and I decided that a cranberry-raisin pie would be a suitable stand-in. Twice in the past, I tried baking all three kinds of pie for holidays, but have since decided that that was a little much. Once I got the turkey into the oven, I washed a few dishes, had a cup of hot tea, then put my shoes on.
Years ago, when I'd already quit driving cab, and Paul was driving for what he knew was his last holiday season driving cab, I'd taken a walk through the nearby park. This particular park is less than a block away; I can see the back entrance to it from my front porch. It has a playground, horse trails through the woods (there are plenty of stables in close proximity), rings for horse shows, and a rec center which doubles as a local voting precinct. Usually, through most of the year, I walk along one of the horse paths along the edge of the park on my way to other paths during my morning walks/runs. But the Thanksgiving before Paul retired, I'd put the turkey in the oven, watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade on TV (something my maternal grandmother got me into the habit of doing; it still somehow connects me to her), then went through a walk on the horse trails through the woods. It took close to an hour to walk to the end of the trail and back (or, at least, as far as I'd planned to go). I loved taking the walk enough that I did it again on Christmas. (I've been known to walk it on Easter Sunday, too.)
Since then, I've missed a couple of holidays; Christmas, 2004, it rained; Thanksgiving, 2010, I was still sore and nowhere near up for a walk after a fall from a ladder at roof level onto a cement driveway (something like that takes a bit of a recovery, trust me on that), this past Thanksgiving, M. and I went to M.H., B. and G.'s apartment, and so on. Occasionally, I think, This'll probably be the last time I do this for whatever reason; but almost without fail, the next holiday, I'm back out there. It gives me an excuse to walk a different trail, to see the changes since the last time I walked it, and to just let my mind wander along with my feet. One year, I saw a peacock walking parallel to the path. Several years, M. and J. joined me for the walk.
Quick story: the city put lights along the horse path. The path tends to get dark by late afternoon; the lights turn on automatically, making it easier to see the path. They're tall, with an opaque orb at the top. They remind M. of C. S. Lewis's Narnia series. One year, M. walked with me on Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the following Easter; each time, he'd spend the entire walk telling me about Narnia, discussing whether I should read the books in chronological order or in the order that Lewis had written them. Narnia and the lights in the park are now one of M.'s and my inside jokes. Every holiday, I remind myself that I really want to read the Narnia series - it's one of those books or series I've told myself everyone needs to read, or, at least, I need/want to. And then life gets busy, crazily busy, and Narnia slips my mind, at least until the next holiday walk.
Yesterday, I walked the trail alone, noticing changes: how a stand of trees that I'd enjoyed was slowly disappearing - a stand of off-white trees with slightly peeling bark, trees that stood huddled together like a lost tribe; the newer houses near the park and how the older new houses - ones that were built in the past six or seven years but are older than the newer new houses; the changes to the stable next to the park; in general, letting my mind wander.
Heading back down the trail, a woman riding a horse approached. Usually, by this point in my holiday walk, I've seen maybe half-a-dozen horse-and-riders in several groups; this time, I was beginning to think I wouldn't see any.
"Beautiful day, isn't it?" the rider called, and I agreed. We both wish each other Merry Christmas. Then, as if on cue, the horse nodded, whinnied, and veered a few steps toward me. I'd been around horses as a kid, so it didn't startle me. The woman steered the horse back to its original course.
"Sorry," she told me. "He's just looking for treats." I smiled, and made a mental note to bring carrot pieces on my next holiday walk - after which, I'll start the Narnia series.
By the time I got home, I was in a better mood, one where I could handle stinky bathrooms.
And, in spite of having to work, M.H. apparently had a decent enough Christmas, too.
We still have next year to look forward to.
Note: The path below used to walk through the stand of trees mentioned near the end of this post; enough of the trees have either died or been cleared by the city that the path is no longer there.
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