Oh, Blackberry

Posted on January 20, 2011 by 40andover

This weekend, I read about a mother unplugging her kids from their various anti-social devices — smart phones, laptops and TVs — so they couldn’t engage in anti-social-yet-social activities like texting and Facebooking (is that a word?).

I had a smug moment about how we carefully monitor our son’s time on these devices — ok, he is only 8.5 years old so he doesn’t have an email address or a Facebook account. And, thank G-d, his fine motor skills are not the best, because that will delay texting (and therefore sexting, G-d help me). Bottom line: I have nothing to be smug about because I don’t have these issues YET. But let me enjoy the moment however ill-deserved.

The very next day the “ALT’ and “a” keys on my blackberry stopped working. I was frantic. Karma is SUCH a brutal boomerang. The blackberry provider which shall remain nameless (Verizon) wouldn’t honor the warranty without some trouble-shooting, even though I explained that it was a mechanical and not a software problem.

Trouble-shooting? Was a technician going to reach through the phone or computer and unstick my keys or relieve their key fatigue?

So, I am on the phone with a technician and she says, “type the word, ‘blackberry’.” Ok ok ok ok ok ok ok. I CALMLY say “I can’t.” She asks, “why?” WHY????? WHY???? WHY???? I CALMLY tell her, “it will come out ‘blckberry’ because the ‘a’ doesn’t work”. Ahhh, now she understands. She is no longer puzzled and frustrated. How NICE for her. She determines I need a new device. Brilliant.

Now, you think I am over-reacting. I am. I am hooked on my blackberry (karma being a brutal boomerang after my smug thoughts). But there were 36 hours between the initial SOS to service provider which shall remain nameless (Verizon) and the actual trouble-shooting call. And then 24 hours after that. So, for 60 hours, I was typing emails that looked like “ttched is drft of the lon greement” (not really, because, G-d bless spell check). All I can say is that it is hard to think of words that don’t have “a”s in them. Try it. And when you are typing messages that look nonsensical without the “a”s, you feel like you are either drunk or using someone else’s glasses.

But I did have fun torturing my assistant with “a”-less emails, like “plese mke reservtion for three t [name] resturnt” or constantly resending of “I cn’t use the LT or _ button”. As if she didn’t know. But you can’t spell TEAM without an A and so she needed to live this crisis with me. And well I am better for it. She, she, had to leave early with a migraine.

My new blackberry is synching now and I am humming right along with it.

Why I love the gym

Posted on January 11, 2011 by 40andover

I was feeling blue and out-of-sorts these past days. I know that a work-out, even a short one, lifts my mood, so I made sure to pack the necessaries and dash there right after work.

I saw SOB (sister of blogger) there, which is always a treat.

So, there we are — SOB is reading and I am sweating on elliptical machines next to each other. Very companionable but not necessarily chatty. I see SOB wipe her face with a towel, but she is just seeing if I am paying attention. SOB does the least she can do at the gym and therefore not enough to work up anything resembling perspiration.

A man comes up to our machines and starts sniffing. I think, uh oh, there’s a blog entry coming. . . .

I am watching him and I start to sniff, too. Does someone or something stink? Do I stink? He starts talking to me. OF COURSE, he starts talking to me, because of the S-shaped magnet (S for schmuck) embedded in my forehead that always draws these people to me.

He says that he is allergic to perfume and is relieved that we don’t wear perfume. In fact, he says, he could tell before he came over because we didn’t look like people who would wear perfume. I think, is that good or bad? Is that a compliment or a swipe? Do SOB and I look too low-maintenance to wear perfume? Do we look like we don’t take care of our appearance? Could it be our effortlessly dorky gym attire?

Then the Sniffer tells me that there are men in the locker room who put on cologne before working out. He believes they read some propaganda about how our natural odors are not good for us. Now, he is talking crazy talk but I think he is trying to strike up an acquaintance. Oy.

In deference to SOB, I do not encourage further conversation because he could have been scary crazy (rather than slightly off and socially incompetent) and I want to protect my sister. Had I been alone, I would have NEEDED to probe more deeply to make a diagnosis.

I have a feeling there will be other opportunities at the gym to talk to the Sniffer.

A Quiet Morning

Posted on January 8, 2011 by 40andover

I can’t wait until our son becomes a sleep-until-noon teenager. Until then, as part of our Saturday ritual, he comes barreling in at the crack of 9am to watch cartoons.

POB (partner of blogger) gives him the paper to bring in, and she follows with coffee (and yes, I am spoiled and I am grateful every day). Our son does remember to give me a kiss before he says “controls” with his hand held out expectantly, like a Grey’s Anatomy surgeon says “Metzenbaum scissors”.

Every other Saturday, POB and our son trek off to Hebrew School downtown and leave me to putter or go to the gym or read the paper with more leisure than usual.

As much as I love my family, I am reveling in the quiet. I am focused on not letting the political mayhem, global suffering and warring intrude on these moments of personal calm.

I wish everyone, everywhere, could have a moment of calm and recalibration of priorities. It won’t turn Ahmadinejad or other tyrant into a dove, but it might ratchet down the fervor of his followers. It might even act like a balm over the “Progressives” (on my side of the political spectrum) whose high-pitched whining is indistinguishable from their counterparts on the right.

Ok, maybe those people — the mean, the evil, the obstructionists, the liars and the screamers of every nation and political viewpoint — need a month-long medically-induced coma. Then everyone else could spring into action: air-lift food and medicine and doctors and teachers to areas in need. And, we can show them that we achieved more for humanity while they were asleep than in all the years they were awake.

A month is not long enough. Maybe the calm of this morning is sending my brain into “kumbaya” mode with psychedelic rhythms.

Still, everything good starts with a dream and ends with a “kumbaya”.

Oh, The Rapture

Posted on January 5, 2011 by 40andover

Ok, according to ebiblefellowship.com, “we’re almost there!!”

Almost where? Almost to the Day of Rapture when G-d’s Elect will ascend to Heaven. (I tried to use a Heavenly color.)

May 21, 2011, to be exact.

Then, a great fire will consume the rest of the earth, in October. I guess it is too much of a transportation headache to transport everyone (down?) to Hell, so G-d is just going to throw lighter fluid on an out-of-control oil well or something.

I know this is terrible, but I keep singing Blondie’s song “Rapture” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnhKPw2NXIw (with a little Jim Morrison mixed in for a full apocalyptic/conspiracy theory montage).

SO, I don’t get what happens on the day that the Rapture begins.

G-d will rule the Earth and G-d’s followers will abide by those rules.

Ok, according to the Christian theology, G-d already rules and these believers follow the rules.

Will G-d reward them with “life”?

They are already alive. Eternal life? As long as you stay young, because aging is not for the faint of heart.

Is it just that G-d will rid the universe of the rest of us?

The Christian thing to do would be just to ignore us.

To be honest, I would like to have that strength of faith. I would like to believe in a Great Benevolence that will save us. Because I do believe that this world could be destroyed, except I think the end will come because of human action.

I guess if Hell will be a place on Earth (in either scenario — theirs or mine), I should cancel that airport limousine I reserved for the End of Days. Because Hell is coming soon to a place near you — check newspapers for times and listings.

The Day That Was and Is (Happily) Almost Over

Posted on January 4, 2011 by 40andover

Today was a bad day. I think it is because we are so close to my mother’s yahrzeit.

Even SOB (sister of blogger), who is an uncommonly happy and cheerful person, had a hard day. And I was too angst-ridden to lift her mood. And that only added to my sadness. So, we discussed whether to visit our mother’s grave THIS weekend or NEXT weekend. [Don’t worry, no bringing in the Joni [Mitchell] until her actual yahrzeit.] You get the mood.

Post-holiday blues set in and all the promises of deal flow in the new year now have to happen. STRESS. The usual complement of day-to-day life. But somehow today’s sturm und drang was harder. And if you look at the paper, well, you start to believe that sect that thinks the world is ending on May 11, 2011.

I was surprisingly productive (angst and the fear of homelessness –inherited from your Depression-Era/children-of-immigrants parents — will do that), but I needed the stress-relief that either a bath-tub size martini or a good work-out would give.

In a fit of self-preservation, I chose the latter. When I got to the gym, I looked around at all these calm, self-absorbed people who obviously didn’t know that the end of the world is near (whether because of some religious group’s prophecy or based on today’s world news). By the way, I reserved one of those huge airport limousines for the End of Days, in case anyone needs a comfy lift to Hell. But there I go, on a digression, AGAIN.

So, I decided that I would see what it felt like if I acted like them and just let go of the angst and the fears (with some medicinal assistance).

“Walk like they walk; do like they do” became my mantra. I got a towel and stripped down. As I noticed, the women don’t use the towels to cover their bodies, so I wrapped the towel around my dry hair and contemplated the cuticles on my toes. Just like they did. Then I stretched, making sure that my breasts got in the way of traffic flow in and out of the locker room, all the while yawning. Just like they did.

I walked over to the mirror and patted my tummy as I sucked it in and the open my eyes wide to reduce the more obvious wrinkles. I applied moisturizer, just like they did. Then, I took off my towel, bent over at the waist and shook out my dry hair. I lifted my the upper half of my body in a whoooooosh and sucked in my cheeks (facial cheeks) like a deranged model on the catwalk. I guess you do that to see what you would look like if you had as much plastic surgery as Joan Rivers has had.

Then I moisturized my whole body and looked in various mirrors. I used the mouthwash. As I spat in the sink, still buck naked, I felt liberated.

If you believe anything I wrote after “[w]hen I got the gym,” then you don’t know me at all. I worked out, lifting weights and successfully doing (ok, only two) unassisted military pull-ups, among other stress-reducing and pain-inducing exercises. And afterward, I changed in the most unobtrusive way possible and did so quickly so I could get home to my family before my son went to sleep.

But every now and again, it would be fun to pretend . . . .

Holding fast to the old and ringing in the new

Posted on January 2, 2011 by 40andover

Over New Year’s, my worlds collided in the most spectacular way.

We hosted our group of friends who have rung in the New Year together (in various iterations) for the past 8 years. Our god-daughter (at whose wedding I will officiate this year) joined us this year and made a DELICIOUS confection that made me wonder anew why she is a lawyer and not a baker. So, our nuclear family was complete (except for her partner who was stuck in THE HEARTLAND).

So, it would seem that it couldn’t get better than this. And you’re right. Except people from those dear, sweet (and sometimes naughty) childhood summers also guest starred.

First, a day before New Year’s. This person is a dear friend (her handle is Janet2) whom I never see and yet to whom I feel bound in this deep abiding way, so much so that if she showed up on my doorstep, penniless, I would take her in, without a question. Maybe because she and her three sisters (one of blessed memory) and my sister and I shared summers — among us all — for maybe 18 years. Maybe also because her father and my uncle served and were scarred in the War together and her parents (now her mother) have been a part of my extended family all my life. Maybe it is just, that deep down, there is just a connection that doesn’t need to be explained.

So, my friend is now a really big-deal in the music industry (and if she isn’t, I don’t care, because she is to me) and under the guise of a “family that plays music together, stays together” sent us the hugest package I have ever seen, with two Wii guitars, microphone and drum set. Now I know she thinks I am this really successful lawyer, but it was hell to find a storage space for all of this because we live in a lovely box in New York City — but a box, nevertheless. (We don’t have a suburban den, Janet2.) We will discuss this more in depth as the story progresses. (We do have storage for it, thank G-d.)

Then, because there are only two degrees of separation among Jewish lesbians, a friend called to say that they were coming with one more person for New Year’s and that person knows me from Camp Wingate!!! Another person from camp in two days? The circles of life about which we sang around the Saturday night camp fire are now creeping me out.

Of course, I remember this person, who shows up at my door essentially 30 years later and who looks EXACTLY the same (except, sweetie, the gray roots were showing and only someone-who-know-you-when can tell you this). Almost exactly, except that she wasn’t wearing the Gilligan-like hat that she wore every day one summer as she walked around making wry and far-too-insightful-for-a-ten-year-old comments about the life unfolding before her eyes. It also turns out we both had strangely close, yet chaste, relationships with the same women. But that will be for another blog entry.

So we rang in the New Year, with family and old friends and even older friends (I include the box of Wii stuff as a stand-in for Janet2). But not before I shilled for HOSOB. He is a painter and we are determined that his fame not be posthumous. So, I had him prepare cards with his watercolor of SOPOBAB with an indricotherium (sp?) (from the Extreme(ly Ugly) Mammals show at the Natural History Museum) as a sample of what he could do for those of our party with children. No studio pictures, please. Instead, watercolors courtesy of HOSOB. I really put on the hard sell. I poured it on thick. My house, my Tupperware party. So, eat our delicious food (courtesy of POB) and drink our wine but listen to my shpiel.

Happily, we were all of an age where we struggle to stay awake until midnight and everyone wants to get home almost immediately afterward. We had dear friends and their kids sleep over that night (who can find a sitter on New Year’s Eve?). One of our friends is very technically adept so when the kids woke up at 7am, she got to work on setting up the Wii extravaganza courtesy of Janet2. By noon, SOS was mastering the drums, our friends had a guitar each and I was on vocals.

What I didn’t know is that after the song (from the Beatles greatest hits), the Wii grades your performance. I figured that, not wanting to alienate users, Wii might stop with “Don’t quit your day job.” But no, my vocals were such that I got “human? If so, an abomination.” Don’t worry, Janet2, if you appear on my doorstep, I will take you in AND I will not sing to you because you don’t need to go even lower emotionally. But since you seem happy now, I may send you a tape of my performance. I am way worse than Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello, but their voices also suck. And, I can do a mean impression of both especially Elvis Costello when he looks like he has to pee and is holding it in.

So, let’s sing together the old camp fire song, “make new friends, but the old, one is silver and the other’s gold.” (http://kids.niehs.nih.gov/lyrics/makenew.htm). And those of our childhood are like priceless gems.

Pearl Wolfson, thanks is not enough.

iFamily

Posted on December 29, 2010 by 40andover

For my 40th birthday (just about 7 years ago), POB (partner of blogger) gave me an iPod. There is new, souped of version of this dinosaur called “iPod Classic”. Just like those “classic” Chryslers with all the conveniences of modern technology but with the fins and the chrome edges. It was amazing in its time and, just seven years later, its limitations are quaint — in that way that a lop-sided homemade cake is really so, so, so, “homey”.

Then, it wore out as iThings are designed to do after 360 charges. So, it stays planted in its iPlayer for music when we are in the house.

Then, we got something for the gym.

And this doesn’t really hold a charge anymore. And so I get iRate at the gym when the battery idies on me and all I have to watch is the 24-hour-news-recycle to pass the tortuous 30 minutes on a constant-sweat machine of choice that day.

Ok, so then we got one that had more “juice” for the family. But we didn’t know about the iDeath that happens after 360 charges (don’t leave an iPod in a charger or re-charge willy-nilly). So this iDevice splits its time between two places: the kitchen, and, after hours, in SOPOBAB’s (son of POB and blogger’s) room so he can listen to audio books and then go to sleep to the music of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong (yes, SOPOBAB is an old soul). This requires TWO iBose systems for its two iHomes.

Ok, that was not enough, so we got two, TWO, iTouches. Two iTouches. SOPOBAB has dinosaur, bird, football, baseball and hockey apps so he can play, too. (Our child cannot conceive of a world with typewriters, dial-up connections, Basic 8 computer languages. Thank G-d, he loves real, honest-to-goodness books.)

The batteries are draining too quickly. So we are probably going to get another one. Oy.

Then we got an iMac. [picture not included because of iMalfunction] [imagine iPicture here].

THEN, a MacBook Pro.

Now, an iPhone. Not for me. For POB. Cool and groovy.

But I am a little iParanoid that our dependence on Steve Jobs is getting addictive. But I really hate PCs since Microsoft Vista came out and ground our PC to a halt even for simple tasks, like say, logging on.

There was a time when there was no “I” in “team” (but there IS an I in family, which stinks for the metaphor). Apple will get rid of that problem by creating the iTeam (who knows if that is true, but one has to believe that something like that has to come out in order to continue the mind control and advance the global domination).

In life, you pick your battles. Steve Jobs, you win. iLove you and so does this iFamily.

New Year’s Resolutions

Posted on December 28, 2010 by 40andover

I am feeling pressure to make New Year’s resolutions.

In order to meet with social approval, they must be lofty, require some form of ascetism (as in, give up chocolate), be kumbaya in nature (donate more time and money) and not be too challenging to those in ear shot.

But I am not so generous, socially conscious or loving. I am in my ME moment.

So here are my unsociable New Year’s resolutions:

I will make sure every sweating person at the gym wipes off the machine after use or I will call out that person.
I will eat chocolate once a day — and not that healthy dark chocolate stuff, but the milk chocolate with some hazelnut goo inside.
I will spend money on “glam” things — going gray naturally requires more accessories than one might think.
If you ask my opinion, I will give it to you. So, chances are, if you are asking my opinion, I am going to tell you not to do what you want to do.
If you look like hell, I will tell you. Even if you don’t ask. Let’s call that “my idiosyncratic charm”.
I will try to do a head stand. No world peace. Just something manageable with six spotters and a personal trainer.
I will drive into the countryside to reaffirm my disdain for bugs and other things “natural”. I will come home to NYC and kiss the dirty pavement.
I will love my family — the ganza mishpocheh — and friends more and deeper than last year.
I will do something totally cool and groovy. (Stay tuned.)

Happy New Year everyone. Be careful what you say to me or ask me in 2011.

~ Blogger

um, I guess I wasn’t what you expected

Posted on December 27, 2010 by 40andover

When you have a blog, you can see the searches that people do that get them to your site. Well, one person searched “what do i need for a vaginal steam bath” and got my blog. Whoever you are, I am really sorry, but I DID post the article.

I hope the putrid concoction of herbs works for you.

~ Blogger

Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland

Posted on December 27, 2010 by 40andover

Today was the truest snow day ever. 18 inches of snow in New York City. Stalled car and buses every where. Blizzard-scale winds that made me believe in Mary Poppins. Law firm offices closed. Let me say that again. LAW FIRM OFFICES CLOSED EVEN AS THEY TRY TO MAKE BUDGET FOR 2010. Now, that, THAT, is saying something. I live in the City and there was no way I was going to make it to the office except by walking, and the blizzard-scale winds would have taken me way off-course. The Upper West Side of Manhattan is not even plowed 12 hours after the last snowflake fell (don’t they realize that we vote with our ballots and pocketbooks? Has anyone noticed the UWS demographic has changed????)

POB (partner of blogger) was supposed to go east to the beach with our son (SOPOBAB) and his cousin, our nephew. Oh, I think Mother Nature is a teeny tiny bit stronger than the sheer will of POB. Although Mother Nature won, she was bruised and hospitalized. Anyway, my beautiful prizefighter POB thought that we needed to go sledding. I thought we needed to drug the boys (just kidding, for all the Child Protective Services personnel who read this). How else do you keep two rambunctious 8 year-old in check?

So, a-sledding we went. A winter wonderland. Sheer, treacherous beauty on West 108th Street.

As I was fretting about the absence of protective gear while trying not to fall down the hill at scary velocity (I remember all too well flying down the hill with SOPOBAB when he was a littler kid. I also remember buying another life insurance policy the following day, because SOPOBAB would bounce, as children do; I would not have survived another run.)

But, then, life has a way of keeping it all real. A child, whose family apparently fell on hard times (they must have been slumming by spending year-end at home), stated with disgust, “There isn’t even a hot chocolate shack!” If that were my child, he would be enrolled at military school tomorrow. Yes, I am passing judgment (and also stating a fact).

Toto, I have a feeling we are not in Aspen anymore. It was so pathetic and sad at the same time that I couldn’t, simply couldn’t, take a picture of the spoiled brat who uttered that line. Ok, I almost did, but G-d intervened and the battery of my camera failed. Lucky kid, but karma, as we know, is a boomerang.

BUT, THE BATTERY DID NOT DIE BEFORE I GOT A PICTURE OF A SARTORIAL/PSYCHO-SOCIAL TRAGEDY. Before I share this vignette, I will note that my own outfit could remind a person of Pippy Longstocking — everything was mismatched in that way that you wear whatever will keep you warm. In fact, I was wearing a serial-killer hat (depicted in every artist sketch in an all-points bulletin) that made me look particularly deranged and very much like a predicate felon. But that isn’t what I am talking about.

I am talking about an outfit that could scar a child for life.

A MOTHER IN A SUMMER’S PEASANT SKIRT, WINTER JACKET WITH FUR LINING, CARRYING A BRUSHED COPPER COLORED PURSE, TOTALLY IGNORANT OF THE GRAVE EMBARRASSMENT AND LIFETIME TRAUMA SHE WAS CAUSING HER LITTLE SON:

Later she yelled at her son who is out of control as he sled down the hill, “watch your kepilah [head]!!!” as if summoning G-d to deliver her from this pagan ritual that assimilation has thrust upon them. The only saving Grace is that this the Upper West Side of New York, with a Jewish population larger than the whole of Israel. So, we understand. Because was heard these humiliating stories from our parents as part of their own, very personal, Exodus stories.

A bastardized adage still holds true:

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

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