Tag Archives: Life

Dinner on a Saturday night in the big city.

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It is Saturday night and POB (partner of blogger) and I have a babysitter, so we can have dinner out.

We take a long walk and happen upon a new-ish Italian place.  It is a double store-front sized space, with tables too close together to meet fire safety standards.  We know it will get crowded at prime time which is within the half hour.  But we are in the patch on the West Side that is a restaurant wasteland.

So we squeeze in between two tables and are close enough to share their food and, unfortunately, their conversations.

POB and I focus on each other and our conversation but the random bits and pieces of the surrounding conversations threaten to enthrall me in the way that bad movies are so horrible that they become intriguing.  Just a flavor of the conversations:

The guy at the table to my right, who cannot afford school or dinner (prior soupçon), says to his date, “I am trying to diversify myself,” in trying to explain why he can’t finish any particular course of study.  (I, of course, want to suggest remedial English because using big words in the wrong way is not really a career advancement technique.)  He goes on to talk about how netting $1million after taxes each year is barely enough to cover living expenses and school for your kids.  Hence his self-diversification because he is thinking really, really, really big.  Makes me wonder whether dinner will stay in my tummy.  But enough scatological musings.

A woman to my left is discussing a terrible tragedy about a family.  However, her point is that she is so personally affected by it (and so her friend should soothe her) because her cousin’s best friend’s sister lives in the same town.  Ok, somehow the tragedy is all about her.  I am staring at this woman a little too long with this gobsmacked look on my face, so much so that POB has to say, “Eyes on me.  Bring the focus back.”  In this instance, she is not out of line.

But, I digress . . . .

Back to the freakish restaurant. The food is quite tasty and the service staff is earnestly incompetent.  So earnest, in fact, that you think they are trying to get everything wrong. For comparison purposes, service staff needs more experience to reach the level of practiced, aggressive incompetence that would qualify for a job at Duane Reade, Rite Aid or CVS.

Luckily we are not in a hurry.  In fact we are taking our time because we need to make sure our son is in bed and falling asleep before we come home, or we lose one of the perks of a night out — no bedtime drama, etc. So, the earliest we can get home is 9:30.  If the service were not so head-shakingly bad, we might have stayed for dessert.

When we try to ask for the check, we end up pleading for someone to ring up our bill.  We couldn’t get anyone’s attention for twelve or so minutes.  I am handed someone else’s bill, for about 1/3 of what our bill ought to be.  It takes me another seven or so minutes to get someone’s attention to get me the right bill.  After ten minutes, I am given the right bill.  I pay cash but I need some change.  We wait, and wait and wait and wait — ten minutes.  I cannot imagine that in their earnest incompetence, any of them expected a 25% tip (if I didn’t get change).

I am finally able to flag down someone in this small (did I mention tiny?) restaurant to ask for my change.  The service person nods, and five minutes pass, and — viola! — I am handed the first bill again.  AAAAAaaargh.  The service person tries to dash away.  At this point, I yell in an annoyed, commanding tone, “WAIT!! STOP!! COME BACK!! I want my change.  I do not want another person’s bill AGAIN!!”

Then three people come over, each wanting to handle the problem.  All of sudden, everyone wants to pay attention.  I tell everyone to go away and designate someone to bring the change.  Finally, the change comes.  Another five or so minutes have passed.

Then I start to calm down and feel bad that they are so inexperienced at their incompetence that maybe they need the bigger tip to take some classes to perfect their art.  Really, I feel bad.  I turn to POB and ask, should I leave 20%?  She laughs at me.  She wonders if I have reached the tipping point of dementia.  She reminds me that we have spent more time waiting for and paying the bill than ordering and eating.  I remind her that we couldn’t go home anyway because our son is not yet asleep. So, they did us a favor by forcing us to stay and giving us a bloggable moment.

I still say the bigger tip was in order.

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The Tipping Point

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Over the past 15 years, I have, sadly, observed at close range the effects of disease on those I love.

There seems to be a tipping point at which the disease starts to win.  It can’t be determined purely as a medical, or scientific, matter.  It is an internal psycho-social-spiritual moment in which that person stops living with, say, cancer, and starts dying from it.  From the outside, that formerly healthy-person-fighting-a-deadly-invasion starts looking and behaving like a sick person who is defined and constrained by the disease.

Even mental disease is that way, in some senses.  For a while, you see your aging loved one as a capable person with some lapses and then, one day, the lapses define the person.  But the psycho-social-spiritual moment doesn’t come from within the sick person.  It comes for the family.  We must determine the tipping point because our loved one cannot.

Worse yet, our loved one doesn’t understand that the tipping point came yesterday, and with it, soon-to-be imposed constraints on our loved one’s autonomy but not, I hope, on his dignity.

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Captive audience

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We all have experienced the hassles and indignities of air travel these days.  And, of course, the screaming babies, the smelly row mates, the loud talkers and the drunks have also challenged our coping mechanisms.

But on my flight this morning, I think I witnessed a new high in lows.  Two young women friends are seated in the same row (behind me), one on the aisle, and the other by the window.  A stranger is sitting between them.  The two friends are chatting loud enough so they can hear each other, and as a result, as can everyone seated in nearby rows.

The young woman on the aisle said to the stranger, apparently pointing to her friend by the window, “we’re friends, so we’re just going to talk over you.”  STOP THE MUSIC.  Whaaaat?  As if what is good for her is good for a stranger?

The stranger offers to switch seats and the young woman says, “No, I need an aisle seat and my friend needs to be by the window.”  So, what you are really going to talk over this poor woman?  As it turned out, yes, yes, they were.

I thought to say something but then decided that it is not my job (although it is my secret thrill) to correct every display of atrocious manners.  Some wrongs will have to sort themselves out without my uninvited intervention.  The real reason is that I am not sure whether reprimanding another passenger for crimes against civility would cause the TSA to take me forcibly from the plane.  And I really wanted to get to the office, get some things done and get home to my family at a reasonable hour.

So, I put in my ear plugs and fell asleep.

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A true 40andover moment

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I was having dinner with a friend and we were talking about early days of our relationships with our spouses.

She reminded me that there was a time when we had to wait until after 11pm for the phone rates to go down to call our friends/boyfriends/girlfriends because phone calls were expensive during the day and in the evenings.  This would be like explaining LPs to an MP3 generation.

And calling your parents “collect” on Sunday night from the payphone on the hallway of your college dorm because few people had phones in their rooms and you didn’t always have enough change to drop into the payphone??  And how you couldn’t talk for long because people were waiting to make calls and the collect call was three times as expensive as a regular call?  Try explaining this concept to someone with unlimited rollover minutes and texts who often considers the potential benefits of having the hands-free ear pieces surgically attached.

We have come so far and gone nowhere at the same time.

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I still don’t get ending Daylight Savings Time

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POB (partner of blogger) is an early riser.  She LOVES the end of Daylight Savings Time because now a few rays that illuminate an otherwise dark sky in her mornings.  

Except it is still dark when she gets up to go to the gym.  So dark in fact that when, on Monday night/early Tuesday morning, she gets up and goes into the bathroom and starts brushing her teeth, etc.,  I could not imagine what she is doing.  I hear her moving around our room.  Drawers opening and closing.  I sit up and see a fully clothed POB in gym gear.  I turn on the light and look at the clock and look at her.  She looks at me and then looks at the clock.  It is 12:17am.  I look at her.  She looks at me.  We look at the clock.  We take turns looking at each of the three clocks in the room, all of which miraculously show the same time.  This continues for what seems like hours but was in fact only seconds or nanoseconds (because everyone was back in jammies by 12:20am). 

Finally, POB says, “Ok, I did just get ready for the gym in the middle of the night.  But it IS usually dark out when I get dressed.”  (As a post-script, she got up and went to the gym on Tuesday morning — she is truly amazing.)

Then, on Wednesday I have to leave the house by 6:30am for a flight to Chicago.  It is barely dawn.  I spend the day in Chicago, which is an hour earlier, but still it gets dark at 4:30pm (not that that is relevant).  This morning I have to leave the hotel at 6:30am in Chicago for my flight back to New York and yes, you guessed it, dawn was just breaking.

My son gets up at 6:30am for school.  It is dark.  Most people I know get up around that time for work (I, however, do NOT). 

So, remind me again, how many more people benefit from the early morning daylight that justifies the sad feelings when twilight comes at 4:30pm?

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Unintentionally keeping up with the Kardashians

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I went into the local General Nutrition Store to look for topical remedies for peeling cuticles. (Already TOOOOO much information.)

Like most consumers, I left the store with many things — none of them was the purpose of the visit.

Not only did I buy skin emollients which promise youthful transformation in minutes, but I bought whitening stuff for my teeth.  I picked it out and then saw that it was the kind that the Kardashians use.  I paused.  As a point of principal, I should put it back.  But, it is the only non-gunky kind of teeth-whitening I have found in a while.

So, add me — age 46 — to those, reluctantly, keeping up with the Kardashians.  Just the thought alone will make me seek therapy for years.

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Reading the fine print

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POB (partner of blogger) and I have barely enough time in a day to do anything for us — you all know the drill.  It is a typical day in the life of two working parents.  So we buy everything we can online, at the craziest hours.  POB needed sports bra and I needed underwear.  So, we bought the necessaries on http://www.jockey.com.

All was good.  We received the package with a lovely envelope . . .

that opened to reveal a discount certificate:

But it also revealed that our underwear was packet with extra care by Bob:

EEEEEEEEEEwwwwww.  Bob packed our underwear with EXTRA CARE?  Somethings you just don’t need to know.

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Veterans Day

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Yesterday was Veteran’s Day.

I was thinking a lot about war and life yesterday.  When I became a mother and god-mother, I understood that if my son (or god-daughters) went to war, I would have to go as well, because anything that is worth my child’s life, is worth my life.  (And the corollary: if you mess with my children, you mess with me.)  Of course, I think it would be hard to take your mom into battle.  But if you know me, you know that the enemy should be really, really, scared.

So, I am grateful to the young men and women who routinely put their lives at risk for the high stakes political chess that our world leaders play with way too much glee and ooky blood lust.

And I am grateful to the veterans of prior wars for their sacrifices.  It is hard to imagine old men and women in their prime, as spies (www.dailymail.co.uk/…/Tragedy-WWII-spy-Eileen-Nearne-escaped-Gestapo-died-alone.html) and soldiers and nurses on the front.  They look so old and enfeebled now.

Today, as I was leaving my office, I saw two old men in wheel chairs.  Using “old” is somewhat euphemistic.  “Ancient” is more appropriate.  Incapacitated and dependent.  When I see random ancient people on the street (as opposed to family), I cannot think of them as once young and vibrant.  I just see strangers with no past and probably not much of a future.

Except the two old men in their wheelchairs with their attendants were wearing war medals and insignias of their military service.  All of a sudden, they were not inconvenient and uncomfortable reminders of my future decrepitude.  I know that when they were young, they were warriors.  Given the number of medals, they were brave warriors.   And they have stories, of war and peace, love and hate, passion and indifference.  Maybe these were good, generous, upright men.  Maybe they weren’t.  Probably, like all of us, they fell somewhere in between.

Two of my uncles were reluctant warriors in WWII.  One was captured and imprisoned.  I know his story, which is powerful (www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/Shapiro.html).  It was hard to know these things about my uncle.  I know it was hard for my uncle to remember, transcend the evil, and have his story known.

It wasn’t until my other uncle, Uncle Al, died about 9 years ago that I learned he fought in the Pacific in WWII.  He never talked about it (or maybe we just didn’t see enough of him to draw him out).  My father thinks he was at Guadalcanal.  Of course, that generation never talked about the war, even when the effects of the war crippled, or at least altered, the trajectories of their post-war lives.

Truth is that I didn’t know this uncle very well.  He was the third of five sons and got short shrift by three generations of our family.  He was a quiet man with great artist skill.  I wonder if I would have interacted with him differently if, while he was alive, I knew to look at his life through the prism of the bloodshed he must have witnessed and (possibly) perpetrated in some of the most grisly fighting of WWII.

Today, we have veterans who need our support.  Whether or not we agree with the politics, their mere willingness to go to war to protect and defend us is heroic.  We owe it to these young men and women to learn their stories, help them re-acclimate to post-war lives, and protect them from their deepest, darkest memories of combat and, yes, deal with the bad things they did “over there”.

It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families have not yet been granted US citizenship.  It is hard to imagine that some of our warriors and their families are treated like second class citizens because of sexual orientation.  It is hard to believe that anyone thinks our returning veterans don’t deserve the very best in medical care and social services.

I just hope that no one has to wonder, when the veterans of our generation are in wheelchairs with attendants, if they will be remembered and honored.  I hope the next generations remember that they once were warriors, protecting and defending us.

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Art

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My son really wants to go back to the Met this weekend.  If I know my son, it is because of all of the pictures and sculptures of naked women.  I thought about that last night as I was attending an art gallery benefit and auction.

I don’t get art.  But I did see a picture of a nude, so, thanks to my son, I knew it was worth seeing and, well, art.  But most of the stuff I didn’t get. A mixed media work was a paint-on-your-wall with hooks from which dried tea bags were hung.  I couldn’t get past what the art would do to my skim-coated walls.

The auctioneer was a poet, so the auction was led in verse.  The artists were young and funky cool (also funky as in smelly).  One artist wore a crazy snow hat and jeans.

People said things like “[the artist] innovated a new figurative realism and invigorated it against abstractionism”.

I bought something anyway because I liked it, not because I understood it.

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Angst

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Everyone has “angst” these days.  It is almost as common as indigestion. 

But does everyone really have angst?  Angst is not the same as anxiety or shpilkes or nerves. 

Angst is an existential dilemma — (i) is there a road I must follow to understand who and why I exist in the world and (ii) am I on that right road or the wrong road? 

Of course, you could have a nihilist existential dilemma of (i) how can I prove that there is no road to true understanding and (ii) if there is a such a road, how can I make sure I am another one — the one that leads me irreversibly into an abyss?

Or you could have angst with a side of fries.  It can even sound Jungian if you order it this way: “angst mit fries, bitte”.

But still the word, angst, is overused.  I have anxiety about the world, stress about work, worry about my son and shpilkes when I have to concentrate for 10 or more minutes.  And I can have all of these in one day, or even in one hour, and, still, it doesn’t add up to angst.

It does, however, make me crazy as a loon.

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