Category Archives: Cyber-life

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

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Long time passing.  Long time ago.

On our way to the beach last week, we listened to 70s music on Sirius radio.  “Afternoon Delight”, “Handy Man”, “Monster Mash”, “Young Hearts, Run Free” and all those other long ago summer time songs had POB (partner of blogger) and me screaming the words as our son looked on in horror and embarrassment.  (He also said, “E-mom, you should blog about this.”  I love my son.)

At camp, we used to sing “Anticipation”, “Circle Game” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” and “Cruel War” at Saturday night campfires.  These and other songs made us both melancholy and grateful for each other in ways I didn’t understand then.

Since those days, we have all lived with not knowing about the days to come, the (stupid, stinking) painted ponies going ’round and ’round the carousel of time, and war and its cruel endings.  Life has, as it inevitably does, lifted us up, let us down and gave us a few battle scars along the way.  And, sometimes, songs sung when I was so young resonate with me now as, with each passing year, I spend more and more on an ounce of (alleged) skin rejuvenation cream.

I firmly believe that, if I slathered olive oil all over my body (instead of throwing gobs of money away on creams and potions), it would give me a more youthful (and, ok, smarmy) glow.  People might also like to brush up against me with chunks of bread.  Maybe if I used extra, extra, virgin (as in the driven snow) olive oil, I would look even younger.  I would do it, but for fear of the inevitable question from a colleague, “did you have salad for breakfast?” or, after a meeting, someone sitting next to me saying, “you know, I have a strange hankering for Greek food.”

Oops, there I go digressing again.  About camp.  Sometimes those memories make me laugh out loud or just give me a wonderful feeling and a lift to my step.  And it has been a gift to reconnect with old friends on Facebook about batik, peach pit rings, the Leoj, Plaque Night, etc.

Make new friends, but keep the old.  One is silver and the other’s gold.  Ok, campers, repeat in rounds (with Lodges 1 and 2 starting, followed by Lodges 4 and 5) and Lodge 3 please add the harmony.

Better than gold.  Really.

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A Note to My Sister

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Dear SOB (sister of blogger):

I really appreciated your notes of appreciation (“you’re a saint” — but we are Jews, for G-d’s sake) and helpful hints (“take care of [my husband] while I am gone”) this week.

It was epic to set up Dad’s computer and bring him into the 21st century, especially when he was so comfy in the 19th.  He still can’t access email even though I made it as simple as possible.  (I think the double-click is the problem.  He remembers to click once but not twice.  How do you teach a 90 year-old reflexes of the computer age?)  I guess sainthood — or beatification at least — is indeed warranted.

I am sorry you missed Sunday night dinner, but HOSOB (husband of SOB) carried on valiantly.  I appreciated your email reminding me (threatening me?) that HOSOB could only have one dessert serving.  Good thing we had a big enough plate:

 

Just kidding.  He had a small piece and some fruit to amortize the artery-occluding stuff in the chocolate cake:

 

ReeeLAXX, will you?

HOSOB and Cousin Gentle played with SOPOBAB (son of partner of blogger and blogger) and we all learned a lot of things about playing together.  Don’t worry, it was SOPOBAB that did most of the learning.  HOSOB and Cousin Gentle offered helpful hints, like “incorporate everyone’s imaginative story lines” and “don’t drop your pants until you’re in the bathroom, the light is on and the door is closed”.  These are important things that the bigger guys need to say to littler guy.  Lesbian moms just don’t have that authenticity when it comes to bathroom and trouser-dropping etiquette.

FOB (father of blogger) had a little too much wine, but what the heck, at 90, he can live a little.

He is coming over to my office tomorrow so we can go over “some papers”.  Um, BOB (brother of blogger), aren’t you a lawyer, too?  I think I may have to conference you on the phone so you can share these tender moments of wrapping up Mom’s estate and dealing with FOB’s talking about the end of his life.  [Imagine my putting my hands over my ears and making crazy noises to block out the conversation.] Ok, here is the deal:  I may be strong enough to put FOB on the internet, but I am wholly too young and immature for the rest of it.

FOPOB (father of POB) also came.  I think he had a good time, even with a large complement from our side of the family.

Cousin Gentle recounted his tour yesterday of Revolutionary War-era New York.  SOPOBAB was quite taken with the subject and Cousin Gentle needed to make up stuff to satisfy the boy’s endless curiosity.  I had to throw some curves into the conversation to give Cousin Gentle some time to come up with a plausible story line about the slave trade during that time and other assorted information that SOPOBAB needed to know.  FOB was so taken with SOPOBAB’s curious mind that, together with the extra wine, he was pronouncing our child Einsteinian.  Ok, I have to say that SOPOBAB’s questions were impressive in that they were probing and based on some knowledge he has gleaned from videos and books — more than I will ever know about that historical period, I assure you.

Also, Cousin Gentle bought Reddi-Whip after having it at your house.  He served it to a guest at his house.  He said it wasn’t as good as your supply.  Do you have private label Reddi-Whip because you buy it in bulk?  That was also a conversation topic.

Now you are caught up.

I leave on Thursday for my 25th college reunion.  I will blog from there — it will be like Anderson Cooper reporting from the field.

~ Blogger

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I get it, no one wants to comment on my blog

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Why? because everyone is traceable these days.  Hey if Israeli operative can be photographed prior to an assassination, then our lives are open to the world.

The truth is I am too stupid and I have too much to say that no one would voluntarily listen to, so I need a blog.  Maybe I should call it my Blab or my Blah-Blah.

An option.

Hmmmm.

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Look away

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I have been pretty good about a new gym regimen since I started my new job.  (My 2010 horoscope said that I should keep up an exercise schedule, and that is as good a reason as any.)

Since the global economic melt-down, I have taken to drinking wine.  One glass goes straight to my inner thighs.  No joke.  I feel it the next day.  So, I need to work out just to maintain the usual mid-40s spread.

Since going to the gym, I have been feeling much better about myself and my degeneration into older age (in our family we call it “decrepitude” because we are — er — so gentle).  And I have noticed that, in the afternoons on the weekends, men have been looking twice at me at the gym (and not because I have stains on my t-shirts or my outfits are disastrous).  Most people would feel good about that.  But I have to tell you who is looking.

Imagine we are in the early 1980s when the Olivia Newton-John exercise outfits were popular.  Imagine your relatives who were moving down to Florida around that time.  Remember how they couldn’t pronounce “condominium” and kept saying “condominian” (which now sounds like a group of ten prophylactic devices)?  Remember the men who wore short-shorts with dark shoes and dark socks, dyed their hair and uber-cool sunglasses?  You know, the ones who drove Cadillac El Dorados.

Imagine now it is 2010, and these men have aged 30 years and wear white free spirits and white socks and they dye their hair an odd shade of red.  Apparently, mid-afternoon on the weekends, the older set comes to the gym.  The upside is that they wipe down the machines and don’t do many reps.  The bad news is that the men think I am old enough to be interested in them.

I wear bi-focals, but generally my eye sight is good.  I am graying, but I have few wrinkles.  I have a little extra thickness around the middle but I still have muscle tone in my arms and my breasts still hang comfortable above my waist.  Also, I am a lesbian for Goodness sake.  Ok, they don’t know that last fact.

I just wish I weren’t so attractive to the 85+ crowd.  Maybe once, just once, a young, beautiful woman would give me a second glance that doesn’t telegraph, “oh, you really should have taken better care of yourself when you were young. . . .”  Oh, well, that isn’t what I need.  I need the old men to look at me and think, “she is way too young for me.”

So, my cousin just called and I told him about this blog entry.  He lamented that only really older women check him out on the street.  We were laughing/crying to each other and he mentioned that this could be a schtick for http://oldjewstellingjokes.com/.  I checked out this site and there are videos of old Jews telling jokes.

The internet is worthwhile if only for bringing us this website and keeping the tradition available for the younger generations.  Also, if there could be a registry for “I’m too young for octagenarians”, that would be awesome.

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Fantasy Football Undone

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Remember the intro to “ABC’s Wide World of Sports”?  The announcer gravely intoned, “the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.”

Fast-forward 30 years, as I sit with my young son after an awesome first half of the Jets-Colts game.  Awesome because the Jets were ahead and it was his team!!  He does like Peyton Manning, the Colts QB, but my son IS a New Yorker, after all.

Then came the frustrating second half in which the Colts players showed themselves to be too much for our Jets.  Aggravation, disappointment and helplessness in a sports game generally means that older boys (as in 20s and up) drink away their sorrows.  Not so for a 7.5 year-old.  He has to have a tantrum the old fashion way — whining, being obstreperous, fresh and generally miserable company.  At some point, he pushed enough of my buttons — some I didn’t know I had.  I maxed out on the tantrum and matched his yelling with my yelling.  At this point, POB (partner of blogger)  — G-d bless her — ushered our son out of the room and said, “I have to separate you, two.”

So, there it was.  POB actually has two children but only one is really able to use age as an excuse (hint: not me).  Ok, so my homework is to figure out how to help my son channel his agony of defeat in a way that works better for him (and me) and how to stand tough when my son can’t.

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Fantasy Football and Real Life

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My son’s best friend is wild about football.  So, my son is now, too.  This is an awesome event because my son has had trouble connecting to peers in the past.

So, football.  Ok, two women raising a boy and he wants to watch football.  My son, who learns through reading — books, websites, whatever — said to me, “E-Mom, we need to fire up the iPod with serious football apps!!”  Ok, how did he know there were football apps?  So now we have THREE football apps on two iPods but because they are not iPhones we cannot play together.  Uh-oh.  I am feeling an upgrade on the horizon.

When kids want the next new gadget (or at least the gadget they’ve recently discovered) and are feeling extra deprived (as only spoiled children can feel), they no longer make references to the Stone Age or pre-WWII Europe, like we did or our parents did.  My parents would quote their parents, as in, “when we were starving in Europe, we only asked for food and water” to which I remember responding, “gee, sorry, can I get Frye boots anyway?”

No, our kids say things like, “we’re being raised like the Aaaa-mishhhhh!!”  As I remember, Kelly McGillis was very hot in that movie with Harrison Ford, “Witness,” about an Amish boy who witnessed a murder in Port Authority or Penn Station.  Ok, so I am missing the point of the intended scathing analysis of our child-rearing techniques.  Never mind.

It is important to listen to kids because they are experts in being children and being childish.  If they are happy all of the time, then you are a push-over, the moral equivalent of a chump, and, ultimately, a bad parent.  I hear tell of a magical zone where good parenting meets the right level of whining for proper childhood development.  This may be a myth (actually, I know it is because I just made it up). But there are books written about errogenous zones that exist only on runway models and elixirs of youth, so maybe I have found my way out of the daily grind by discovery a new theory.  Hmmm. 

What does this have to do with fantasy football?  Work with me here.  My son is into football and I have a fantasy that he and I will both survive his childhood and adolescence as high-functioning individuals in environs more luxurious than Amish.   Also, part of my fantasy involves my brother-in-law watching the football games with my son.  Here the reason why it is a fantasy: he is an artist and in touch with his animus and anima (I think these are Jungian terms) — that is to say, he is too evolved for football and in touch with his feminine side as well as his masculine side.  Bottom line — he is not a chest beater or head-butter.   Which makes him wonderful in general but useless at football.  Maybe he is a closet alpha male.  (Don’t tell SOB — sister of blogger — because she will un-alpha him in a NY minute.  She IS tough but gentle and uses her powers for good.)

I am rambling because my mind goes to crazy places on Friday nights as the work week winds downs and cartoons cometh in the morning.  I feel a good kind of tired — the kind that comes from playing with my son — tackle football, of course, and “keep away” and monkey-in-the-middle with POB.  Then as we wind down to bed time, we have pretend adventures — because my son has an incredible imagination — I am a British tourist to Oregon (who would not set foot in the former colonies) and only goes to place that revolted against the French, Spanish and Dutch and my son is my uncle George.  Then I am a Kenyan who travels to Jamaica in hurricane season (because the airfare was cheap).  Where does he get this stuff?.  Soon to be followed in a slightly altered Fred Flintstone voice as I reprise my “Big Tuna” role in an undersea world where I have a talk show and he is my little ramora whom POB, as Secret Agent Swordfish (don’t ask), saved on her nose as he fell off a whale.   I am exhausted to my core.

Now, my son who is my joy is in his jammies and reading an encyclopedia of something.  Because that is the way he is.  And I love him because he is kooky and loving and kind and imaginative.  And I can take no credit — I am genetically irrelevant to him.  He is like the most fabulous gift that keeps changing and challenging the recipient.  Sometimes, like tonight, I max out from his intensity.  But no worries, he will come charging at full volume into my bedroom tomorrow to wake me up.  Thank G-d POB is following with hot coffee.

I love my family.  I am blessed.  I am tired.

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G-d bless books and smart phones

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I am a prisoner of my blackberry(ies).  I read books on my iPod.  I am gidiot (idiot for gadgets). 

They prevented bad things from happening one night on the subway.

A few nights ago, I was on a stalled train for 25 minutes.  There was more than one would-be rabble-rouser in my car.  But so many people had gadgets or books, that no one took the bait.  I ended up having to walk through four or so cars to get to the front of the train in order to exit at my station.  In each of those cars, the would-be rabble-rousers were unsuccessful in provoking any meaningful disturbance.  People were reading or playing electronic games.

There is hope for our civilization.  How ironic that, in this case, it comes packaged in electronics that in a larger sense rob of us of our identities and anonymity.

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Just the G-d-Awful Flu

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Since Friday, I have been felled by the flu.  I don’t have mad sow flu, or H1N1, as it is supposedly called.

I am now recovering from the usual, seasonal, G-d-awful flu.  It happens.  The non-designer, non-pandemic one.  I even had a flu shot which I have to say probably made it less horrendous than it could have been.

My sister the doctor was concerned that I was dying of the plague because I didn’t blog for days.  Yes, I had to have been pretty hard hit not to blog, or, for that matter, to pay a shiva call to my friend whose mother’s funeral I attended last week (see prior blog entry).

The flu, once medicated, is the moral equivalent of a stubbed toe.  Yet, I longed to hear my mother say, “my poor tsakele, if I could have it for you I would,” as she looked into my eyes and caressed my cheek in that way that mothers do that make you feel better just by having them there.

POB, partner of blogger, has been in the trenches with our son, getting him from place to place, while I lied in bed doing the least I could do.  Really, the least I could do.  And she is a trooper (who is now coughing, because I share too much).

I took a walk yesterday because I was becoming self-radicalized watching CNN and MSNBC in between naps over the last few days.  I was woozy and thought it would be a great idea to go to the gym.  (I need a personal attendant.)  I went to the gym and did nothing except watch the people who are able to go to the gym on a Monday at 3:30pm, while I scrubbed with Purell.  Luckily the medication dried me out so much that I neither blew my nose or coughed much.  One general observation:  the beautiful, the buff and the young don’t go to the gym in the afternoon.  The older, schleppier and grayer do.

I left the gym having not sweat or done anything to shore up my sagging self and walked south for no reason (ok, no sane reason).  I went into PC Richards and Sons and looked at Plasma TVs.  I thought maybe if I bought a big plasma TV, I could tell POB that it was the delirium that did it.  Even in my delirium I knew that was stupid, yet wishful, thinking.

Friends tried to make me feel better by emailing me stories of the weird and blog-worthy.   My old friend started out his email by writing: “My dear son didn’t really do anything wrong (that’s what every parent says).”  Followed by, wait for it . . .

“Gotcha!!!”

Walk-weary, I took to my bed and resumed doing the least I could do.

Dr. SOB (Sister of Blogger), are you satisfied that I am on the road to recovery?

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The Blogger in my midst

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So, after the funeral, I decide to work from home since most banks are closed (and my clients are banks).  I return the rental car and make the mistake of hearkening back — with no one else in room — to the earlier conversation about menopause that I had with the same rental car sales assistant.   She was not pleased.  She had mentioned earlier that she has mood swings.  I notice as I stand over the counter that she still hadn’t taken her vitamins.  I decided not to mention that the name of the GPS NeverLost is a misnomer.  And, I assume I am going to get a schmuck tax on top of the usual rental car costs.  I am fine with all of it because, well, it is what it is.

I go to grab lunch and there is a woman sitting opposite me at the communal table in Le Pain Quotidienne.  She looks at me as if she recognizes me.  We hold a gaze for an extra second. I know that I don’t know her so I assume that she asked me a question and is waiting for a response.  So, I say, “excuse me?” as if she said something.  She didn’t.  I apologize.  I go back to my various devices of connectivity.

She types furiously on her laptop.  I think she is a blogger.  I wanted to say, “Hi, I’m 40andoverblog.  Who are you?” But that would have sounded like the ookiest come-on line and that was not my intention.

I surreptitiously glance over at her from time to time, trying to see what she is typing.  She catches me a few times.  I have to leave now lest she think I have any interest other than uncovering a blogger and responds with interest or revulsion, neither of which I could handle.

I inhale my food and pay my bill.

I imagine that she is thinking, “wow, she reminds me of my mother”.  I catch a cab and take to my bed.

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Credit Card Companies Charge More and Are Meaner, to boot

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I was just on the phone FOR THE SECOND TIME questioning some stupid fee charged by a credit card company. The first time I had to endure a surly response from my customer service representative — customer service in the credit card industry being the definition of oxymoron. 

This time, I was greeted with serieuse attitude coming from the Mr. Customer Service who is not the mere definition of oxymoron but is the true personification of oxymoron.

Definitely a call center in the US because no one can fake that decidedly American accent. So, there’s a silver lining — the abusive person was a fellow American and his job was not outsourced. I don’t know if I would have remained as calm (a stretch) if an American job was lost so I could be berated in this manner.

The oxyMORON reminded me that the call was being recorded as was the call from my prior excellent customer service experience. I said that I was glad it was being recorded because I would love everyone and anyone to hear the tone and manner of the customer service representatives. We concluded our business and we ended the phone call. 

I did not break the phone, which I consider a tribute to my self control.

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