Category Archives: Life

Blogcation Year 2, Day 2 — The Shopping Expedition

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We actually shopped on the first day out.  The King Kullen which is sooooo big (by NYC standards) that it could be its own Congressional voting district.  I have this image of someone being interviewed on CNN with the caption, “Representative [John Q. Public] [(D)/(R)] — King Kullen, NY”. But I digress, clearly.

POB (partner of blogger) determined that I should be in charge of stupid purchases, since she had the master list of all that we needed. How does one live up to that standard?  How many stupid purchases could there be in a supermarket.  Ok, let’s assume that I am not going to buy pet food for a non-existent pet.  Let’s assume that I am only looking for comestibles, as one would generally find in a supermarket.

Still, I was overwhelmed by the choices for stupid purchases:

Here is the cheesoid (the cheese equivalent of a factoid), complete with aerosol canister that is bad for the environment.

Then there is the life time supply of cheese balls (really? really), that contains no natural anything so it can survive any number of natural and unnatural disasters.

Then there is enough Reddi-Whip for dessert for the entire world.  (This is actually a red herring.  I have seen more in my sister’s fridge.)

In POB’s defense, I went in search of insane food stuffs (or quasi-food stuffs) to purchase.  Some were more gross than these, but I think the managers of the King Kullen thought I was taking pictures for the competition and I had to stop.

I was especially taken with the colors of frosting on the “home-made” cupcakes.  Those colors require lab scientists to intervene in the natural order and produce them.  So, I guess the quotes around “home made” are meant to tell us that these are home made only if you live in a lab.

So, what food stuff was my “stupid purchase”?  I am not telling.  All I know is that there is no expiration date on it.

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The Clan

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POB (partner of blogger) thinks that my extended family is more properly called a “clan”.  She means that in the best of ways, I am sure.  [Pause.] My family is an odd bunch.  POB didn’t meet many of the older generation, but she feels as if she did because of the way we imitate them.  Memory is very important in Jewish tradition.  And, well, how best to evoke memories than by imitating the idiosyncrasies that made each of them — as shall we say — “special.”

My father was one of five boys and they all had children and most of them had children (and so on).  But we are still not the close-knit, ever-fighting group as existed when all the brothers were alive.  That is probably because in their early years, their survivals were all interdependent.  They were the generation of firsts:  first to go to college, graduate school, move to the suburbs, Florida, buy a Cadillac.  They survived poverty, the Depression, the War and immigrant parents who knew even less than they about their adopted homeland.

There was a family barbeque today that we, the Blogger family pod, had to miss because we are at the beach.  SOB (sister of blogger) sent pictures that captured some of the clan members perfectly.  One picture captures a cousin, the member of our generation who most holds to the standards of conspicuous consumption aspired to by his parents, eating a doughnut while holding forth on an issue.  His father  — my uncle — looms large in my memory and in my imitations.  “Uncle of Blogger” is not descriptive enough.  Hmmm.  Uncle Loud. Yes that is it.  Uncle Loud had a pinky ring that shimmered when he waved his hand.  He had a pencil mustache hidden under a huge nose.  I have a image of Uncle Loud eating a plum, with the juice dripping down to his chin, making politically incorrect pronouncements about everything and anything, mostly about things for which he had no basis or fact.  He also described everything about his life as if we were visiting from a remote island and had never experienced modern conveniences.  In order to evoke the memories of Uncle Loud, I wave my hand with the imaginary pinky ring talking about something (it could be mundane or indeed a previously unknown wonderment), adding, “the likes of which you HAVE NEVEH seen.”  Yes, “neveh”.  The use of Rs in spoken English was an evolutionary advance seen only in my generation — the second generation of Americans (and not all of us received this species-enhancing genetic mutation).

We remain a clan for so long as we, in my generation, retain the vivid memories of the Five Brothers in their primes.  After us, the clan ends because the ensuing generations are scattered and never saw the small apartment on Pelham Parkway where Grandma and Grandpa raised five boys in a two bedroom apartment with one bathroom. Or heard the raised voices that were inevitable when everyone got together for family occasions or religious holidays.  Sometimes it was so loud that more distantly related people would run for cover.

On Sunday nights, at dinner, we try to share these memories with our younger cousins so the bonds stay tight.  But it is a haphazard and ultimately fruitless effort because, like all formerly immigrant families, my children and my cousin’s children and grandchildren are Americans, not children or grandchildren of immigrants.  And, over time, the tie that binds gets frayed and loosens too much.

All the cousins of my generation, save a few, are gathering together for my dad’s 90th birthday in October.  In New York City.  Alert the police and the media.  The Clan of the (Mostly) Civilized Cave Bear will celebrate the Five Brothers and the one who remains and the tie that still binds us (if not our children).

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Blogcation Year 2, Day 1

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We are at the beach and it is raining.  Happily, POB (partner of blogger) and SOPOBAB (son of POB and blogger) are readers and can relax doing indoor activities.  I can always nap and blog.

POB and I read the Times.  Predictably, the news of the world’s ills twists me in knots but it is harder to stay angry and frustrated when you see and hear the ocean and feel the cool breeze through the house on a rainy summer’s day.

Just one thing, does the Ground Zero Mosque make you think of the Holy Roman Empire?  (Hint: HRE was not holy, not Roman and not an empire.  GZM is neither at Ground Zero nor a mosque.)  DISCUSS.

So, this is all we have done today.  When the rain abated a little, SOPOBAB jumped into the pool until the rains came again.

And I am good with this.  Really.

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Who needs Kevin Bacon?

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DFOB (dear college friend of blogger) and I were talking not long ago and discovered that our family members know each other without relying on our 30-year connection.

Here is how it works:

SOB (sister of blogger) treated DFOB’s brother (BODFOB) when he was hospitalized a few years ago.  I went to visit with the parents at the hospital while DFOB was flying in from California and SOB walked into the room.  Crazy, huh?

It also turns out that DFOB’s cousin trained SOB early in her medical career.

BODFOB’s girlfriend is someone with whom SOB and I both went to high school; her mother was our English teacher (the latter is the reason that this sentence has a semi-colon and is grammatically correct even though it doesn’t flow so well).

But wait, there is more:  POB (partner of the blogger) worked with the girlfriend on her book years ago (POB is in the publishing industry).

So, who needs Kevin Bacon any more?  Ok, maybe if I want to be connected to Barbra Streisand or Alec Baldwin, I need Kevin Bacon.  But G-d help me if I care about making those connections.

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Really? Are ya kiddin’ me?

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New York City is my home town.

Native New Yorkers (and those nearly native because they’ve lived here so long) abide by some neighborly rules.  For example:

  • Help tourists with directions.
  • Ask a blind person if he or she would like assistance (but never ask if he or she “needs” assistance).
  • Look the other way when your neighbor is sneaking a cigarette around the corner.
  • Always go to the green grocer on your own block because that is the store that stays open and keeps the neighborhood buzzing and safe at late hours.

New York City is ruined by those who come here thinking that New York is so anonymous that they can give way to their worst or selfish impulses with impunity.

Yep, you guessed it.  I had a run-in or two today.

Some guy sees me waiting for a hypothetical cab that might be free at 6:20pm on a weekday in midtown [hint: chances are better that you won the mega-millions lottery].  I know he sees me.  We make eye contact.

What does he do?  He walks down the block to try beat me out of the still hypothetical, available cab.  Since he is being rude with me, he goes for double and cuts another woman.  The woman then walks further down the block to cut him.  As you can probably tell, in order to get to win this way, one has to be moving further in the exact opposite direction of one’s intended destination.  We are on Sixth Avenue (or the “Avenue of the Americas” to those who arrived in the Big Apple after 1970) which goes north.  These two people are walking further south to get a cab ahead of each other.

I have my righteous indignation going.  Not at the woman; she did not see me.  The guy is the target of my wrath.

Of course, I have to walk a block out of my way (the man and woman were leap-frogging each other for the still hypothetical, available cab).

I catch up to the guy and call him out on his behavior.

He responds in a are-you-for-real look, “it’s New York” with a twang in his accent and a “f”-you shrug.

He did whaaaaaaat? He told ME, ME, a New Yorker for 46 years, what IS and IS NOT New York?  Is he kidding me?

Ok, I lose it.

I say, “Don’t you tell me about the rules of this town. I was born here. Did you ever hear of manners?”  (Actually, the “did you” came out like “didja” and the “ever” came out like “eveh”.  When I am angry, I lose “oo”s and my “r”s.)

The guy shows me the universal hand signal for displeasure.

**************************************************************************************************************

So, next I go down to the hotter-than-hell subway station, where everyone is letting loose.

And it doesn’t stop even when we are packed on the subway like sardines.

A woman with FABULOUS hair is flipping it all over everyone and my scalp immediately starts to itch from the contact.  No, no lice, but, hey, you never know.

There is a woman who looks TWELVE MONTHS pregnant standing while young people are sitting.

There is the guy who sits “wide” and takes up one and one-half seats and is also hunched forward so that he takes up the standing space in front of him.

A woman is screaming that some man is sweating in her personal space.

I turn to the incredibly pregnant woman and ask in an ordinary subway voice (i.e., yelling) if she would like me to find a seat for her.  She says she is ok in a way that suggests “I can take care of myself and who are you?” but she decides I mean well and smiles.

Someone gets up to get off at the next stop and then people insist that the pregnant woman sit down.

It was just the neighborly thing to do.

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Same Time this Year — Urban Jungle

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Dejá vu all over again, as a famous ball player (not known for his grammar) once said.

Last year (http://40andoverblog.com/?p=1085), we had a run-in with urban wildlife in our home.  Since it is happening again this year, I believe it now qualifies as an annual event.

Over the weekend, we heard what we thought was chirping and we surmised it had to be coming from our stove’s exhaust vent (it vents outside).  Maybe there was a nest there.  We did not want to disturb the nest, but we did want the birds to know that there is only room for one family in our home, so we put the vent on, which would not hurt them, but make our vent less of a sanctuary.  Maybe they would move on, we thought.  I also called the Bird Nerd, husband of SOB (sister of blogger), who did not understand the urgency of our concern that others lived among us.  You might think he would remember the hysteria of last year.  But noooooooooooooo.  I digress.

The next day, POB (partner of blogger) had a brilliant, yet frightening, realization.  There had to be family of  mice behind our washer/dryer and the babies (as in many) are making that noise.  This all sounded plausible since there is an empty space behind those appliances that our contractors ASSURED us was closed and sealed, but there I go again, digressing.  Birds, I can deal with.  My son likes birds.  SOB married a bird nerd.  A MOUSE — worse, MICE — this I could not handle.

We left for a day out of the city, with the mouse family not far from my thoughts.  We arrived home late so we had a quick dinner at a local restaurant.  I go into the kitchen later for something and there is a teeny, tiny mouse.  I scream, POB screams because I am screaming and our son asks why we are screaming.  “Nothing, sweetie.  Nothing wrong.”  Ok, our son is a smart guy.  If NOTHING were wrong, why exactly would his two moms be shrieking??

As our luck would have it, our superintendent is in Europe for another two weeks (note to self: consider a career change), and the exterminators come at the beginning of each month.  So, if you are going to have problems, have them then.  This tough love approach is designed to compel those of us who live in the urban jungle to train our varmints better so as not to upset the schedule of the exterminators or the management company.

Monday morning, the handyman lays down the sticky traps.  These are inhumane and make me sick, but this is the urban jungle and this is my home.  I am frankly terrorized by the potential painful deaths of baby mice, but I keep repeating “the strong eat the weak” as if to make me feel more callous than I am.  Also, I am comforted by the knowledge from experience that mice are too smart to fall for that old peanut butter on the glue trick.

Except later that night, two baby mice do fall for the peanut butter on the glue trick.  (Another got away.) I hear about this when I come home to a dark home and find POB and our son in his room with the door closed, the air conditioning on.

POB very calmly (and without looking up from her magazine) tells me that the two baby mice are on the Glue of Death and that she is perfectly happy never to go to that part of the house again until the handyman comes the next morning to take the “glue-kill” away.

Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok.  Worse than having live mice is having dead mice.  I go down to the doorman who cannot leave the door because there are no maintenance people on duty after 6pm.  He gives me a broom and a dust pan.  He wishes me good luck.  His expression shows he knows that I am a freaked-out pampered urbanite who never thought she would be doing this — mixture of sympathy and smugness that is sooooooo unattractive in the younger generation.

Up I go in the elevator.  I come into the house.  I walk over the radiator.  I use the brush to sliiiiiiiiide the Glue of Death over to the dustpan.  The broom bristles get stuck in the glue.  The glue is eating the broom.  The glue is getting stronger, rendering my ammunition useless.  I step on the edge to hold back the Glue of Death and retrieve the broom, but the Glue of Death has taken my sneaker hostage.  I am desperate to shake off the Glue of Death as the dead and dying mice bob up and down like pawns in a cruel game.

POB gets paper towel and tosses it on the floor.  I think, this is not a game of rock, paper, scissors.  This is a death match with mice, the Glue of Death and me.  But I use the paper towel to extricate my sneaker.

I bring the whole mess down to the doorman and, with the privileges of age, ask him to make this go away.

I come back upstairs, pronounce myself a hero to my family but a serial killer to the mouse community.  I take to my bed without food or drink until POB generously braves the particularly treacherous epicenter of our urban jungle to get fruit and chocolate for us.  She screams, but happily it was only a water bug. (Oy, we are soooooo careful and clean, why is this happening to us?)

I am ready to move to a hermetically sealed compound.

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The Apple Fell Not Far From the Tree

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I think about my mother, z”l [may her memory be for a blessing] every day.  I always draw strength from those thoughts, although they are sometimes tinged with humor or sadness, but always with gratitude for her life among us.

I reminisced about her with colleagues.  It wasn’t maudlin; it was apropos of the conversation and we laughed at her antics.

My mother was the epitome of discretion and a vault when it came to secrets.  However, if you asked her a question or her opinion, be ready for her whole truth and nothing but her whole truth.  Mom never thought she cornered the market on “Truth”, but she did believe everyone was entitled to hear her version of the truth.

A number of weeks ago, during a conversation with my sister, I stopped mid-sentence and said, “you’re thinking what life will be like when I lose my already limited ability to censor my thoughts, right?”  She nodded heavily, somewhat overwhelmed by what the future held in store for us.  My sister is the epitome of discretion and the vault for secrets.  While I dabble in discretion (and must be a vault as a lawyer), she inherited the qualities that allowed Mom to opine with impunity.  I just opine with impunity.  Look, Mom’s genes were allocated to three children.  Together we make a clone of Mom.  Separately, we struggle a little.  So, let’s accept that stuff that comes out of my mouth sometimes must be followed by a whisper (from a sympathetic witness), “she means well.”

It is hard to generalize about Mom’s more emphatic ways, so here are some specifics.  When Mom was well into her 60s, she joined an abortion rights picket of then Cardinal O’Connor (now deceased).  My mother started the chant, “keep your rosaries out of my ovaries!!”  Ok, it isn’t always easy to have a Mom who says things like that, but it certainly awesome.  Or, the time, she got up from her seat on the bus and move over to a young man who seemed foreign-born.  She put her hand on his forearm and said, “You’re such a good-looking man.  Why must you pick your nose in public?”  It turned out the guy ran the newspaper stand near where my parents lived and, whenever Mom passed, he would run out with a free magazine.  Mom always declined, with “You have rent to pay!!  Stop it!!”

My mother always believed that you opened your home to those in need or without family.  Needless to say, since Mom’s death, I have discovered that some of my “cousins” are related only by love and not by blood.  Mom taught us that love makes a family — nothing more, nothing less.

Mom believed that each person should leave the world a little better for that person’s having lived on earth.  She helped found New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, an organization that thrives today.  She helped plan the silent marches on Albany, NY, and Washington, DC, because people needed to visualize the empty shoes representing all who died from gun violence on the streets of America.  She loved America and only wanted it to be an ever-shining beacon of hope.

So, in the end, I only got her directness and inhibition about saying her truth.   My sister has her discretion.  My brother has some of her activism (ok, before he moved to the Republic of Texas and had a family but at least he is a Democrat).   My sister was right to shake her head, wearily.

SOB (sister of blogger), it is just going downhill from here.  Be afraid.

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Just because he’s crazy, does that invalidate his compliment?

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Maybe at 46 years-old, I am scraping the barrel for any compliment that comes my way.  I need my blog community to rule on whether a compliment received this morning can be counted as such. 

(I wish WordPress had those voting buttons so you can click “yes” “no” or “maybe“.)

I have a lunch meeting later with a client, so I am wearing make-up, earrings and a necklace.  No, that is not all.  I am wearing clothes.  (Nice) t-shirt under a bespoke blazer (so it really fits well) and bespoke pants (which would fit better had I not gotten the peri-menopause tummy paunch).  Shoes and bag work with the ensemble.  A true outfit. 

Many of you may be shocked; as sometimes I wear nice clothes but ruin the look with a pair of clogs.  But, I digress (comme d’habitude).

A man, who was dressed well enough not to be homeless, entered the subway car with a cart.  I know what you are thinking.  But, really, the cart had perfectly reasonable looking things in it.  Not like he was carrying his worldly possessions or anything.  Look, he didn’t SMELL.  And some homeless people are down on their luck.  Not all of them are crazy.  And we should help them off the streets because it is as good a litmus test as any for how civilized is our society really.  But, I digress (comme d’habitude).

The train clears out at the next stop.  It is an express station — not because he smelled.  I sit down in a seat next to the doors.  Then I realize I could move down and he could sit in that seat and be closer to his stuff.  So I offer to move down. 

He thanked me but declined.  Then, he said that I looked beautiful and my outfit was just right.  I thanked him.

Then he started talking to himself and doing a little tap-dance, foot shuffle, whatever.  This continued until he got off the train.

Valid compliment or no?  That is the question.

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Post-Script to The Kids Are All Right

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I recently ranted (what else is new) about the movie, “The Kids Are All Right,” the first film about a lesbian family to come out of a major movie producer (http://40andoverblog.com/?p=2559).

Apparently, for the under-30 crowd (and maybe my own age-group), the lesbian sex scene is not so bizarre.

Ok.  I get it, in every marriage, sometimes you need to change things up to keep it interesting, but I still stand by my lament: for the first major motion picture about lesbians and their kids, there couldn’t be a little romance?  It IS Hollywood, after all.  And it isn’t like the movie didn’t push the outer edge of the believability envelope in other ways.

How about throwing a bone to the hopeless romantics in the crowd who still love and adore their spouses?

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Sunday night dinner with the family

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As usual, SOB (sister of blogger), HOSOB (husband of blogger), DOB (dad of blogger), COB (cousin of blogger), POB (partner of blogger), Blogger and our son have dinner together at our house on Sunday nights.  Our son calls the crowd, the “Regulars” (as in, “[Blogger], are the Regulars coming over this weekend?”).  Often, after a funny story told by one of the assembled family, our son sometimes says to me, “[Blogger], why don’t you blog about that?” (Put that under the category of “Kids Say the Darndest Things”.)

Fresh Direct was scheduled to deliver groceries between 4pm and 6pm.  DOB came at 4pm; Fresh Direct came at 6pm.  In fact, as DOB ages, he is coming earlier and earlier.  I think that is why restaurants offer early bird specials — the elderly set factor in so much time to get where they are going that, even though they intend to eat dinner at 6:30pm, they arrive at the restaurant at 4:30pm.  So, if my rough calculations are correct, in just five short years, when DOB is 95, he will be showing up at brunch time.  So we will have to have new menu options by then.  Fair warning.

As I said, the Fresh Direct delivery came at 6pm.  In our house, we play FDF (Fresh Direct football), which means that I throw non-glass groceries to our son, who runs it into the kitchen where POB puts them away.  Sometimes, I follow in pursuit for a two-hand touch tackle.  For glass (and milk), I do a pass off and our son runs it in.  Less yardage but the quarterback can’t always pass.  Sometimes, the vegetables look a little mangled and bruised if the pass is incomplete, but it still tastes fine.  POB is unconvinced but keeps her opinions in the “if looks could kill” category.  That works because I just look away.

SOB and HOSOB were at the house while we were playing FDF and SOB was a guest quarterback for a few clutch plays.  I could tell she was a bit overwhelmed by the number of boxes and volume of foodstuffs that required cooking and preparing.  SOB and HOSOB have been married for only a few years and, before that, SOB mostly lived alone and out of prepared food cartons.  Even now, their refrigerator is a little post-apocalyptic (see http://40andoverblog.com/?p=2355 for pictures).

The expression on her face as she looked at the Fresh Direct boxes suggested that she found this somewhat foreign cultural activity charming and said to HOSOB pointing to the now empty boxes, “Groceries. [pause.]  Groceries.  We should have groceries, too!”  (Dear SOB, most people buy groceries.) 

HOSOB, looking a little scared, said “What would we do with them?”  Oh, sweet, HOSOB, you and SOB can do nothing with groceries.  You need to stick with what works — take-out.

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