Tag Archives: Personal Moments in the Big City

Holding fast to the old and ringing in the new

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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.

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Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland

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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:

One person’s winter’s wonderland is another person’s proof that Hell DOES freeze over.

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That magnetic, NEON, S on my forehead

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I am on a crowded subway.  I am seated at the end of a row and a huge woman tries to wedge herself between me and the person a few inches away from me.  On the aisle side, there is a couple — er — um — attempting to couple, and jabbing me with elbows and bags.  Reminds me of that song, “I’ve got clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right . . . “ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8StG4fFWHqg

The couplers take a break and the over-sized  woman gets up and I think all is going to be okay.  But I should have remembered the magnet in my forehead in the shape of an S.  S is for SCHMUCK.

In Seinfeld Show’s Kramer-like fashion, a woman nearly dives for the seat next to me.  I look up, startled.  She is a little freaked out.   She tells me in a breathless voice that she had to change seats because the woman next to her was invading her space tooo much.  (You didn’t see what I just went through, I think.)

Perhaps seeing the skepticism in my eyes (or was it that “I don’t give a sh@t” look?), the woman continues, “when I told [the offending woman] that she needed to sit up, she said, “I have a disability, I LEAN“.

“I have a disability, I LEAN“? REALLY?

Crazy, but great line.

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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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A Morning at the Museum

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Yesterday, POB (partner of blogger), SOPOBAB (son of POB and blogger) and I joined HOSOB (husband of sister of blogger) and FOB (father of blogger) went to the Met to look at the Kubla Khan exhibit (everyone now spells Kubla in a more authentic way, but it was 10am on a Saturday and that kind of information will not get absorbed into my brain).

SOPOBAB is studying Chinese and the information on a significant dynasty was appealing to him.  Also POB talked up the portraiture galleries which had pictures of Revolutionary heroes, etc.  SOPOBAB has read a lot about that, too, and seemed interested.

Great, I think, ancient Chinese dynasties and portrait galleries, could there be anything else I would want to see LESS on a Saturday morning at 10am?  Arms and Armor.  Ok, I am lucky I think.  At least no trifecta.

As a child I hated going to the Met.  It was an overwhelming place with furniture exhibits, armory and ancient Greek statues.  None of it mattered to me.  As an adult, I enjoy the Modern Wing and some of the African art, probably because I have studied some about the art in these areas.

I actually enjoyed the Kubla Khan show, most especially because I watched SOPOBAB find things of interest and talk to FOB and HOSOB about portions of the exhibit.  SOPOBAB, at 8 years old, is a young man who can navigate an exhibit at a museum.

The American Wing was closed for renovation.  The gods were smiling on me.  No portraits of American heroes.  Phew.  Waaaaaitt!!! Where are we going now?  Not to the diner for lunch?  no?  Arms and Armory?  Really?

Ok, so I walk through the exhibit that totally freaked me out when I was a kid.  All of this body armor.  I am a sport and try to focus and learn something.

I look at the body armor and read about the history.  And then, in a moment, the one sight that compelled a blog entry:

It is hard to see, but Kind Ferdinand of Spain needed a lot of extra space for his genitals.  No other body armor has this.  I think this was a message to his adversaries.

So, I learned that in every exhibit, there is something for everyone.

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This Atonement Day and Beyond

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Yom Kippur started Friday at sundown.  We have our services at the Jacob Javits Convention Center.  It is a free service — no one is turned away.  Keeping an open door policy is part of who were are as a community because the synagogue was started nearly 40 years ago by gay Jews who were not welcomed anywhere as gays, as Jews or as gay Jews.  Now our synagogue welcomes people of all sexual orientation (including straight) and all gender orientations (I only know the two main ones, but I am told that there are as many points on that spectrum as, let’s say, colors in the rainbow).  Almost 4,000 people attended Kol Nidre on Friday night.

The senior rabbi is a woman in her late forties but she looks like a pre-pubescent, book-ish boy.  She is a thoughtful and insightful speaker.  And, she does have moments of levity, as when she announced that she would like to be known now as “Lady Syna-Gaga“.  Ok, there is a reason why our synagogue can never really go mainstream.

We ended around 10pm last night and started up again this morning.

This morning, we all went to the children’s service which had a fair amount of substance.  The rabbis talked about seeking forgiveness, saying, “I’m sorry,” etc., and otherwise tried to distill the elements of the Holy Day without dumbing it down too much.

Then we came home and I fixed our son a sandwich for lunch.  He is 8 years old, so he does not fast but we do put techno-toys away for the day.

I was about to sit down at the table to keep him company while he ate, but he said, “E-Mom, I would like to eat alone so I can think about all of the things I need to say sorry for and all the things I need to do better.”

Ok, my son is wonderful and all, but this is out of hand.  Reflexively, I asked, “Really?”

Right after blurting that out, I thought “I need work on not being so cynical and more trusting of my son’s motives, because we were at this substantive kids’ service and maybe something spoke to him —-”

My thoughts were interrupted by my son — ever the honest little boy, “Nah, I just want to play with the iTouch and I didn’t want you to see.”

At least he is honest.

We returned to synagogue for the late afternoon service through to the end of Ne’ila, the last service of Yom Kippur.  After services were over, as we poured into the street to find our ways home, two attendees who were, just minutes before, wrapped in prayer shawls, stole cabs from us. I started screaming at one in the cab that was then stopped for the light, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”

Then, I realized that my son was watching me and I thought to myself, “Yom Kippur is just over and this, this, is how you act?”  So, I stopped.

We hailed another cab and we went home, a tired but happy family.

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Pre-High Holy Days Mayhem

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So, because POB (partner of blogger) reminds me that in “good homes” the carpets and the furniture are cleaned annually, and the windows are cleaned twice, before Passover and before Rosh Ha-Shanah, we have been in a cleaning frenzy.  Also the mice episodes gave the cleaning rituals a bit more fevered pitch this year.  Also the bed bug scare in New York had us getting new mattresses, etc.   In short, we are doing what we can to raise the retail sales numbers nationally.  Now, that is patriotism.

Our housekeeper comes on Fridays.  Our housekeeper is a wonderful and robust woman in her 60s who comes from Poland and, as she says, “knows hard vork”.   But since she is in her 60s we try to get others to the hard vork.  In this case, POB and I wanted to lay the cleaned rug down in the dining room (we had already done the heavy lifting in the living room).  This endeavor also involved cutting the mat underneath so that the rug laid properly. 

Here are the many dramas that came into play:  Our housekeeper said, “[Blogger], you are educated; I know hard vork.  Step avay from the mat and I vill cut!”  Ok, POB and I were raised to respect our elders and never to let someone older do work we could do ourselves.  We are also the “employers”, adding another level.  Also, POB is strong like you-can’t-imagine strong. 

So we are all on the floor playing out our social, economic and cultural dynamics.  The window cleaner walks in (we had left the door open for him after the doorman announced him) and sees three woman on the floor with scissors and box cutters arguing over who is cutting the mat that goes under the rug.  He asks, “where do I start?”  Really?  Really?  Is this a usual scene for the window cleaner?

We all stop.  I agree to cede the fight to POB and our housekeeper in order to get the window cleaner guy started as long as I get to move the dining room table.  Pause.  I seeing nodding and I retreat.  A little victory of sorts.

Of course, I should have known that even though I was allowed to move the dining room table, everyone would have an opinion on its precise location.  POB was the most forceful in her opinions.  “A little to the right.”  “Closer to the windows.”  “No, too much.” 

“Are you listening??” 

NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, I scream in my head, but all that comes out is “Yes, dear.” 

Back in my head, I am thinking you thought we should get our windows cleaned before a hurricane.  This is not like wearing good underwear in case you are taken to an emergency room.  The hurricane won’t treat us any better.  But then the hurricane passes us and POB is right — again.

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Blogcation Year 2, Day 3 (or 4?) — The rain has gone

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The sun came out today — first as a faint orb in the gray sky and then in all its sunburning glory.  Now, all of us summer people can go back to our pools and the beach and not swarm the already overwhelmed (and wildly expensive) sea-side towns.

One thing I did learn was that when booking a house, one has to parse every single word of the ad.  For example if it says, “ocean view”, that could mean that one bathroom in the house has a slight view of the water.  In our case, there is some water on the horizon out of our second floor bedroom.  If the add says, “water view”, it could mean the pool or your neighbor’s pool.  Or for those really wanting to stretch (and break) the bounds of truth in advertising, water view can mean this:

A view of the Montauk water tower.  Yes, we have a lovely view of the water tower from almost every window.  But no matter.  We are close enough to the beach and we have a pool and the sun — hooray, the sun — is out today.  But really, the water tower?

The other excitement of the day concerned our rental car.  I got this huge, gas guzzling Mercedes.  Why?  The rental place had no Volvos (the safest family car) and no Mercedes had ever been recalled (and the rental place didn’t have just a family sedan) but it had more Toyotas than you might think possible in such a small rental place in a small (geographically speaking) city like Manhattan.  Toyotas — cars with brakes that don’t work; accelerators that have minds of their own?  Are you kidding me?  Nope. nope, nope.  No hybrids available either.  The place did have Chryslers and GMs but until ones come are assembled by non-disgruntled workers, I will take the car with the track record and pay through the nose for it.

The problem with the mammoth Mercedes is that I can’t tell my car from the other mammoth Mercedes (plural) in any parking lot out here.  Also, the air in tires needed rebalancing and the low beam light was weak, so I had to get it fixed.  As I rolled into the mechanic’s place with my mammoth car and asked about a light change and a rebalance of the air of my tires, there were enough smirks to go around that I figured, “this is going to be expensive.”  I know, I know.  It’s a rental car.  But having a blown left low beam can be dangerous as can unbalanced air pressure in the tires (I read that this “safe” care has a roll-over risk — awesome).

I hang out and talk to the guys while they are fixing it.  It takes a lot of unscrewing parts to get to the headlights.  Maybe easier in the assembly line, but not so much when trying to change a light bulb in the left low beam.  They keep teasing me about the cost.  And I tell them it is a rental car, to boot.  They look at me as if I am on drugs. I say, “I am not asking you to fix my cruise control or stereo system!  These are matters of safety for my family and others!”  One guy says he is impressed that I am not freaking out and calling my boyfriend.  If he only knew. We continue talking about life, what matters, and what Montauk is like when the summer people aren’t here, etc.  He is married (I tell him I am, too, which I am in spirit if not in paper) and I could tell he is flirting with me.  But it was a sweet flirting, in the way that someone appreciates that you are passing the time while he is at work and not talking on the phone while you wait for a “service person” to handle your problem.  He shows me pictures of old Montauk and it was a perfectly lovely way to pass an hour (plus he only charged me for 30 minutes).  And he did a great job and now I know that I have taken all precautions to be a safe driver and that lets me sleep at night.  (And, I am going to present the receipt to the car rental place.)

Anyway, all is good and I am slowing disengaging from my Blackberry.

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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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There is a new normal for everything these days

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I was sitting on the train and I heard this annoying clicking noise.  I thought someone was cracking chewing gum.  I looked to my immediate left and saw that the woman next to me was clipping her figure nails on top of her backpack so the clippings would fall into the front pocket.  Before I could think to shut my mouth, I gasped a disbelieving “noooooooo!!!”  She looked at me, put her clipper away and took out her file, all the while making sure that everything fell into the front pocket.

So if she cleans up after herself, does it make it ok?  Is this the new normal for behavior in the subway?

Hmmmmmmmm.

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