My sister, speaker of the truth

Posted on February 2, 2010 by 40andover

I bumped into my sister at the gym. She said very excitedly and pleased, “you don’t look horrible!” I looked at her. “Well you started a new job and you don’t look bad. . . ” in a voice that suggested that “not bad” is the new “fabulous”.

Ok, so in the “new normal” of our lives, I am striving for looking “not bad.” Good thing the floors and walls in the gym are padded.

I made sure to re-apply my lipstick often today. “Not bad” is just not good enough.

But, seeing my new company ID picture, I know that my sister was just telling me the truth. So, I realized that not looking horrible is now a goal and “not bad” a compliment.

Sunday was a great day

Posted on February 2, 2010 by 40andover

Sunday was my free day before my new job.

POB (partner of blogger) excused me from the otherwise obligatory lunch with her father and a children’s Hebrew music concert at our synagogue. POB is TOO good to me. I don’t deserve her but let’s keep that quiet (she hardly ever reads my blog often so I am not giving the secret away).

So, I watched cartoons with our son, went to the gym for a long, long time (I am still hurting Monday night), got a manicure, bought food for dinner with the extended family (my side) and started preparing it. POB — G-d bless her — likes having my extended family over, even when I have slacked off ALL day. And they love her (what’s not to love?)

As an aside, it is a little bit of heaven to go to the gym without the stresses of having only 45 minutes to sweat, stretch, and be grossed out by those in the locker room.

The family came over and we started to reminisce about seminal moments of our clan gatherings at our aunt’s and uncle’s house in New Rochelle. And how we all thought we should have been consulted when they sold that house. That house was special because of the wonderful memories created there when the older generation was young and tall (and, yep, alive). Younger than their children are now. It was a great fun to remember and laugh.

After everyone left, we cleaned up and my son was all ready for bed, he said, “Good luck tomorrow, E-Mom, I hope you make new friends and have someone to eat lunch with.”

I didn’t have time to get nervous about going to a new job the next day (ok, I didn’t get nervous until it was time to go to bed).

It was a great day.

Ping Pong

Posted on January 28, 2010 by 40andover

Tonight, I am going out with colleagues to a hip and groovy place. Which means that the people who go to this place could easily be my children.

It is part-owned by Susan Sarandon (as a gift to her new arm candy). Susan is the only non-vampire that is ageless and gorgeous at 60+ years old.

Apparently, there are ping pong tables there. Like in a fraternity basement. Further indicium that I have aged out of this place.

Last time I played “pong” was beer pong in my sorority basement. Actually it was slam pong. My foot slipped on the mung beer stinking up the floor and I pulled my hamstring. The campus police had to drive me to my various classes for two weeks because I kept slipping on the ice and re-injuring my muscle. Imagine trying to go out frat-hoping and asking the campus police to drive you.

Ok, 25 years later, I am going to a place — where the bouncers will probably keep me out because of my gray hair — to play pong. I wonder if I will be able to finish that slam pong game that got interrupted by my fall so many years ago. . . .

More tomorrow, if I survive.

Fantasy Football and Real Life

Posted on January 22, 2010 by 40andover

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.

The hardest part about having kids? Living through their childhoods.

Posted on January 21, 2010 by 40andover

So this weekend, we went to the birthday party of our son’s betrothed (she turned 8, he is 7.5). He asked her to marry him at summer camp and she said, “sure!” We adore her and her parents so life is good so far. And both children attend the same school (but different classes, thank G-d).

Her parents (machertunim in Yiddish) and we went out recently and, among the stories, there was one in which the husband, a gentle giant (did I mention giant?) went — in his own words — ape-shit on someone. He was justified in his reaction but, still, I thought, I am not sure that I want to tell him about an “oops” that could occur in adolescence if our children are still betrothed. So, I am thinking about a chastity belt for boys. All this going through my mind as we listen to jazz at a club and eat great food and wine. I then start thinking about body armor for my son AND me.

My son is a gentlemen and a hyper-heterosexual young man. Oxymoronic in the truest sense. I guess being raised by lesbians will do that. I am afraid, like any sane parent, about adolescence and what kids can watch on TV and then do in the instant that a parent is not watching. Case in point: we are watching the Jets game on Sunday and a Viagara commercial comes on. Try to explain erectile dysfunction to your 7.5 year-old to whom, at age 3, we had to plead “point it down” (so the pee would go in the overnight diaper) after “exploring”.

SO, back to the party. The birthday girl’s mother says that the leader of their play group, an experienced child expert in something (vays nischt, as they say in Yiddish), thinks they are like brother-sister and not boyfriend-girlfriend. I am relieved only to the extent that I don’t have to worry about plastic surgery after the gentle giant is finished with me if, G-d forbid, I had to explain about crazy adolescence and hormones (think, military school). The grandmother overhears this and says, “the way they touch each other and interact, it is DEFINITELY boyfriend/girlfriend”. Mothers know these things and I am scared once again and thinking about multi-generational living as a consequence of my son’s future indiscretion. Until POB (partner of blogger) tells me that I am over-reacting. Then I remember that she thought that the “bad girls” in hebrew school (yes, we’ve known each other since age 10) were still virgins. I sink into despair. I check my investments. I move money to a separate account for contingencies. I rest easy while searching the internet for his and her matching chastity belts.

This parent thing could kill a person. I KNOW I was easier on my parents. Or maybe they were not as crazy as I am. Maybe they should have been because I did some crazy things. Ok, I am stopping this loop because only bad things can come of it.

G-d bless books and smart phones

Posted on January 8, 2010 by 40andover

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.

Only in America and only in New York

Posted on January 4, 2010 by 40andover

POST-SCRIPT: The part about the beer is my imagination running away with me.

I get out of the 96th Street subway station at 94th Street (if you live outside NY, just trust me on this) when I go to the gym. Invariably, I pass the same panhandler asking for change. He is not earnest in his request (“spare change?”) because he sits on a standpipe in front of the storefronts and doesn’t really work the crowd. I feel guilty not giving him something but I rationalize my hard-heartedness by concluding that if I were a beggar I would be the best damn beggar on the street and this guy is so mediocre at his job that he doesn’t deserve spare change. And this beggar is rather, well, blasé about the whole begging thing. You see why New Yorkers are a breed unto themselves; we even have jaded beggars.

So far, for a New Yorker, nothing new in this story. YET.

As I pass him, and he is saying a half-hearted “spare change?”, his cell phone rings and he answers, “hey, where you at? I’ve been waiting for you.”

What, to go out for a beer? Or does he meet his friend every night and while he is waiting, begs for change? A kind of “fringe benefit” or “value added” for his wait time?

I couldn’t make this stuff up and I am really sure I wouldn’t want to.

2010

Posted on January 3, 2010 by 40andover

Happy 2010!! Is it “twenty-ten” or “two thousand ten”?

My favorite non-starter was “O10” (as in “O9”, even though letters have no place in these numbers). I think most people have realized that “O10” is non-sensical. It would have been ok had we referred 2009 as “OO9”. Then we could pretend that it was the year of international people of mystery and be relieved that that movie has ended. Anyway, I am going off on a scary tangent that will reveal just how odd I really am.

So my first neurotic moment of 2010 happened even before midnight:

We had friends over for New Year’s. Many were parents of kids about our son’s age. So, I asked a burning question: have you told your child(ren) about the danger of electricity and water? A few nights before I had asked POB (partner of blogger) if she knew whether our son knew about this danger. She didn’t know and immediately I had visions of our son waking from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, finding an electrical appliance, running a bath and electrocuting himself. POB promised me, PROMISED me, that she would talk to our son about this. (Sometimes, my son likes to test me and push back on my warnings and this was one I didn’t want risk.) POB also assured me that she would call a psycho-pharmacologist the next business day so that I could get the help I needed.

Epilogue: POB kept forgetting to tell our son. So I had to tell him and I told him that he couldn’t test my authority on this one. (Luckily, POB did call the psycho-pharmacologist for me, as one of HER New Year’s resolutions: for both of us to have a happy, healthier year.)

The World’s Best Chewing Gum

Posted on December 21, 2009 by 40andover

I was on the subway, minding my own business. I was reading a book on my iPod. A woman standing next to me asks her boyfriend (it is obvious by the end of this anecdote) whether he wants some really great chewing gum. He asks, “how good can chewing gum be?” She says, “it makes you want to stick your tongue down someone’s throat.” I had to look up. I said, “really?” She nodded. I looked at the boyfriend questioningly. He was too embarrassed to answer. I mentioned that it was too important a secret not to share with fellow strangers on a train. In fact, it would be downright cruel to tantalize and not deliver.

The woman told me what kind and what flavor (I won’t tell you until I confirm this urban legend).

Life altering experiences on the subway.

40 — oh wait, yikes!! 50 — andoverblog

Aging and living in urban US

Category Archives: Urban Life