Adventures in the Happiest Place on Earth: How to Lose Your Magic Band and Still Feel Like a Winner

Only my son could create his own attraction at Disney.

It was 100 degrees and 100% humidity at 9:00 a.m., and we were in Animal Kingdom. Our sights were set on a show and we were running late, so we were moving fast (and sweating). Not that the show is all that compelling, but it’s air-conditioned and we had a Fast Pass we didn’t want to lose.

As we crossed a bridge near the theater, my daughter asked to stop for a picture. Knowing that it could potentially turn into an extended photo shoot, followed by an Instagram Posting Fest, my husband gave her an exasperated look, and she said “Never mind,” and started walking again. My son hung back a second looking dazed and slightly stricken, and muttered something under his breath.

“What?”

“I might have lost my . . .”

“What?”

“I might have lost my Magic Band.”

“WHEN? WHERE?”

“Over the bridge.”

“Oh my god, seriously? How?”

“It must have been loose, and I put my arm on the railing, and now it’s gone.”

We all peered over the bridge, expecting to see it about 20 feet below on the ground or in the water. But it was lodged in the bridge’s trestle (I’m not sure that’s what it’s called, but I’m going with it), about 10 feet below us. No way to reach it.

“We need one of those grabber thingies,” my husband declared, and darted off to find the nearest Cast Member. Lo and behold, he only had to travel about 10 feet, and she had a grabber thingie! Apparently that’s part of their uniform.

About 15 minutes went by, and it was clear that we were not going to be able to reach the Magic Band with the grabber thingie no matter what angle we tried (including climbing the fence and dangling over, which the cast member definitely didn’t recommend).

Additional cast members arrived, each of them trying different angles. At one point our original cast member was actually ON THE GROUND–lying on 100-degree asphalt–trying to get the grabber as far down as possible. Hang on, I have photos:

A curious crowd was beginning to gather. They seemed to think a child had fallen overboard, or an alligator had been spotted in the river.

The bridge was getting crowded, so I started telling people (as quietly as possible) “Nothing to see here folks, no one fell over the railing. It’s just my son. I mean, my SON didn’t fall over the railing, but his Magic Band did. We’re trying to grab it. Anyway, move it along, please.”

Eventually the big guns had to be called in: The Cast Member with the Really Long Grabber Thingie. Ok, that sounded wrong. But you know what I mean. The problem was, the grabber was so long that to get it at the right angle, the part you had to squeeze with your hand was too far away. So they rigged up a second, shorter grabber to act as the “squeezer.” It was really quite amazing:

Just as things were looking up, two cast members who had started out on the bridge threw a kink into the plan. They had gone down to the ground to see if there was any way to reach it from there, and they started shouting and waving. Here they are shouting and waving:

“Knock it down!” they kept saying. “Knock it into the water and the boat will get it!”

What boat?

THAT boat. Which appeared to be decorative, not really serving any purpose other than making you feel like you’re in Africa/Asia/Avatar Land, and the captain just looked confused by all the shouting and waving.

“I don’t think knocking it into the water would be a good idea,” I said. “How would the guy on the boat be able to reach it? He would also need a long grabber to get it off the bottom of the river.”

“I’ll tell you a little secret,” one of the cast members said. “It looks deep, but it’s only a few inches of water.” Gasp. Disney, you never cease to amaze me with your witchery!

It didn’t matter anyway, as that ship had sailed. But wait, there was another one right behind it!

The captain of this one was also confused by the shouting coming from the land and above his head, so that opportunity also passed. Fortunately the crew on the bridge had largely ignored Chip and Dale down below, and the Man with the Longest Grabber Thingie triumphantly produced the wayward Magic Band.

HOORAY! A cheer went up from the crowd. Actually the crowd was just me, my husband, my daughter, the cast members involved and a photographer who was stationed on the bridge and had been watching the melee when he wasn’t ambushing happy families for unexpected photos.

And boy was magically (and sheepishly) reunited with Magic Band.

Do you see the nice man with the white shirt and the tablet? At the end of it all, he pulled us over to a shady spot and gave us three fast passes for our “trouble.” Seriously? We were the ones causing the trouble!

And THIS is why Disney World is, indeed, the Happiest Place on Earth.

Not all who wander are lost: Or, maybe they are?! My latest crazy dream, which ends with an interrobang.

Ok all you psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, mind readers, tarot card readers and fortune cookie makers, here’s a doozy for you. Please let me know what you think my latest crazy dream means. And no, I’m not going to accept “you’re insane” as the answer. Here goes:

I was still in school, either high school or college, or I was an adult going back to school. I was in a class that was culminating in some kind of performance later that evening. I wasn’t in the performance, but I had an important behind-the-scenes role, like maybe stage manager or AV or cue cards, so I was nervous. We were getting ready to switch classes and then . . .

I was somewhere else, very far away, in a busy city. I didn’t recognize it, so it probably wasn’t New York, but I felt like all I needed to do was get over a bridge and I would be able to figure out which way to go to get back to Cranford. (Why Cranford? I don’t live in Cranford.) I struck out towards a nearby bridge (I have no idea how I knew the bridge was there, or whether it was the right bridge), and started running.

Except that I couldn’t run. Something was keeping my legs from stretching very far, so I had to kind of hop and jump. Then suddenly there were people all around me, all running to get to the bridge, and I panicked because I was hobbled and everyone was passing me. Then I realized that I was wearing a jeans skirt that had slipped down so far that it was squeezing my legs. So I yanked it up and was very relieved to be able to run, then thought “Shit, my skirt was so far down that I’ve been mooning everyone behind me this whole time. Oh well, never mind, at least I’m running now.”

Then I wasn’t on the bridge. Instead, I was in a dark room with lots of fabric on the wall and there was a man relaxing on the floor, or maybe a bed, and he was eating some kind of huge souffle or bread. He looked a little like Harry Belafonte. A woman came out of nowhere and told me he’s a bike messenger and can take me where I need to go. But first, he needed to finish his breakfast. There was kind of a pimp/prostitute vibe to it that made me uncomfortable, so I told her I was in too much of a hurry and I wasn’t sure I had money anyway, and I ran off . . .

. . . into a place that was like a combination between a mall (what’s with malls in my dreams?), a game show set and a circus. I kept trying to get people’s attention to ask them which direction to go, but they were all too busy either running a game show, or a three-ring circus, or working at the stores. There were no spectators or shoppers, just people running things. I kept trying to find a path through the chairs and set elements to get their attention, but I was on the outside of everything and there was no way inside. I wondered how everyone on the inside had gotten there, and then I was . . .

. . . in an airport. Yes! I could get a flight! Except that I couldn’t figure out where the terminals were, or what the Departing and Arriving boards said, or where to buy tickets. And I realized that I also didn’t have my purse. However, there was a little wristlet dangling from my right arm (I took a moment to thank myself for preparing this life-saving wristlet before the dream began), so I checked inside and found my passport and some cash. Nothing else. No driver’s license, no credit cards, no phone. Knowing that I didn’t have enough cash to get a flight, I started running out of the airport.

Then bike messenger guy/Harry Belafonte showed up, and he had a second seat on his bike. How many tandem messenger bikes have you seen? I’m guessing none. I’ve now seen one. “Do you know how to get to Cranford?” I asked. “Follow me,” he said. Which seems kind of silly now that I think about it, since getting on the bike seat behind him would kind of require that I follow directly behind him at all times.

We got going pretty fast and I was feeling better about things, but suddenly we were back outside, in the same city where we started, and it was cold out. Mr. Belafonte stopped and made us get off because the sidewalks were icy and it was too dangerous to ride. I say “us” because there was now another person with us, a younger girl, maybe a teenager, very thin and pale. She started complaining that we weren’t riding, and I thought “Who are YOU to complain? This is MY ride! And wait a minute, why am I planning to pay this guy for the ride when all he’s doing is walking his bike beside us?”

I looked at my watch (suddenly I had a watch), and it was 1:00 p.m. I was so relieved. Even though I had missed the rest of my classes for the day, I could possibly make it back in time for the performance. Which I assume was in Cranford.

And then . . . I was in bed, the crazy dream was dissolving, and I heard someone splashing in the bath. Whoever it was came out of the bathroom and walked toward me, and I was embarrassed because I had a huge chunk of cheddar cheese in my hand and was about to cram it in my mouth.

Thankfully that whole last part was also in the dream, including the cheese. I woke up sweaty and panicked, my neck so stiff I could barely get out of bed, my jaws aching from (I guess) grinding my teeth.

I never found out if I made it to my destination . . . Probably because I haven’t made it there yet in real life.

Ok, never mind all you psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, mind readers, tarot card readers and fortune cookie makers, I think I just figured out the meaning of this dream and so many others before it. The question is, how many more of these awful dreams will I need to have?????!!!!!!

By the way, I learned this from a recent episode of the show “Explained”: A question mark and an exclamation point together are called an “interrobang.” I’m happy to have provided this explanation/exclamation for anyone who has always been wondering.

A very long and rambling thought about short-term memory loss: Or, as I also like to call it . . . Saturday.

Don’t you hate it when you’re standing in line at the grocery store having a conversation with your son about Bai water, or something else for sale at the checkout, and you think of something clever and funny, like melding two words together into a new one, and it’s so good you have to pull out your phone to make a note of it, but it’s time to pay so you have to put your phone away, and then when you get home you remember that you had this really clever thought but you can’t remember what it was, so you ask your son, “Hey, do you remember that really clever word I came up with in line at the grocery store?” and he responds “You didn’t say a clever word at the grocery store,” so I rephrase it: “Do you remember something funny I said while in line at the grocery store?” and he responds “No, you didn’t say anything funny either. Can I have dinner now?” and you still can’t remember it but you know you will at some point if you just start writing, and it turns into this ridiculously long sentence on your blog that you haven’t touched in months, but you STILL can’t remember it?

I sure do.

P.S. I’ll remember at 3:38 tomorrow morning, I guarantee. Please feel free to check back then. I just know it’s going to blow your socks off.

Dreamscapes: The Whole Foods Mall of Japaris

Feel free to make what you will out of THIS crazy dream!

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I was in a huge, cavernous shopping mall of some type with some of my friends (I couldn’t tell which ones). I didn’t know exactly where the mall is, but somehow it was a cross between Japan and Paris.

The mall was an odd shape, with a narrow stairwell (it reminded me of being in Notre Dame, with the steep concrete stairs and little windows looking out on the world) that would wind its way up to the next floor. Along each stairwell there were open buckets of all kinds of goodies—candy, toys, small fun items (like the bulk section of Whole Foods), and I understood that you were supposed to take what you wanted and bring it to the nearest register. But it was so tempting to just take a few small things and stick them in your coat pocket. I didn’t . . . at least not yet.

Even though it was indoors, everyone was wearing coats. It was so tight in that stairwell, people were jammed together in two lines, like going up the escalator from the train to the main floor in Penn Station. When you reached each floor, the space was wide open and there were vendors everywhere. No actual stores, just people at kiosks or just standing there selling their wares. It reminded me of the artists lined up along the streets and bridges in Paris.

Each main floor of the mall was so huge, it echoed. At each floor there was some kind of performance, and the point of each performance seemed to be to scare people into thinking they were going to run into you. One group of performers was dressed up like huge robots or transformers, all in black and on stilts. They were terrifying.

At the next stairwell, I couldn’t help myself and I took a handful of Swedish Fish, but for some reason each one was on a stick. Swedish Fish Skewers. I kept trying to get them in my pocket, but the stick was in the way and the crowd kept shoving me. I dropped two, and held onto one, hoping there were no hidden cameras.

At the next open level, one of my friends wanted to go look at something and I tried to follow her but instead I went looking for a trash can to throw away the Swedish Fish so I wouldn’t get in trouble. A group of performers on bicycles appeared, careening all around me, and one came to a skidding halt right in front of me.

I ran, but realized that I dropped the Swedish Fish. I looked back and saw it on the floor, and for some reason I was so sad, but I kept running.

And that was it.

Dreamscapes: Applying for a Job

I’ve been feeling a little stagnant on my blog. For some reason I’m not feeling that creative lately. But my brain has been very creative, delivering vivid, complex and bizarre stories every night that I remember in detail the next day.

I figure my brain is trying to tell me something. I have tons of great stories in me, they are just having trouble coming together cohesively. So my brain is giving me bits and pieces, little puzzles that, when I figure them out, will be the start of some really interesting stories.

This is one of many from last night. I can only guess what the imagery and recurring themes are telling me about myself. I don’t want to put too much thought into it right now, though. I’ll just blurt out everything I remember and later, maybe the stories will start knitting themselves together.

Applying for a Job

There was an open job at the school, and I went for an interview. I brought a little pamphlet with me that described the job. I was met by a guy (no one who works at the school in real life) who took me to a kind of dusty attic atmosphere place in the school with an old, beat up wooden desk. Nothing else around. I was wearing an old-fashioned dress.

He asked if my test was scantron. I looked down and it was now a tri-folded test with the little dots. Apparently I was supposed to fill it out for him to know whether I was a good fit for the job. I felt so unprepared and embarrassed.

He asked why I thought I would be good at the job, and I forgot what the job was, except that it had something to do with surveying, and I was good at doing surveys. Plus, I have an advanced degree so I could probably adapt quickly. I tried to cheat and look at the title of the job on the other side of the paper, but I could only see part of it, and it didn’t make any sense.

Suddenly I had a couple of those round thin chocolates (the kind that would normally be covered in foil, but these weren’t), and they were melting in my hand. I tried to get rid of them but one fell out of my hand and rolled under his desk. I tried to look and see if it had touched his shoe. I couldn’t tell, but he didn’t seem to notice.

I shoved the other chocolate in my mouth and tried to swallow it but it was all over my face, and it got worse when I wiped my face with the hand with the melted chocolate. I was trying to keep my composure while he talked, but I couldn’t hear anything he was saying.

Finally we sat there in silence for awhile.

He walked me out, and it was the exit to a different school I had seen in other dreams, similar to my own elementary school but I had only been able to see the exit in previous dreams.

Then I was in my house, but it wasn’t my house. It was a huge, grand room, all wooden from top to bottom, like an attic, with slanted ceilings and nice furniture, leather chairs. No other furniture around that I could see, it was like there was a spotlight on the center of the room.

For some reason I was thinking “If only the interviewer could see this beautiful room, and my beautiful house, he would have a much better impression of me!”

Then I thought “I should have talked to him about the job, admitted that I knew nothing but was confident that I could handle it, show him that I have previous business experience, get him talking and show him that I’m not just a mute dummy covered in chocolate.”

The room narrowed and turned into more of a crawlspace, and I had to wriggle my way through. That’s all I remember.

Not a resolution. An evolution.

 

I was at the gym the other day, slogging along on the Precor without much enthusiasm, and noticed that World’s Toughest Mudder was on one of the TVs. As I watched the elite women and men making their way through the course, mile after mile, hour after hour (and day after day!), hurting but still going strong, I started getting motivated and pedaled faster.

One by one they crossed the finish line and I cheered for them. By the time I finished my workout, I had actually gotten a workout, instead of just going through the motions.

A moment of inspiration struck: I will do a Tough Mudder this year!

WAIT. I have already done a Tough Mudder. Two, in fact. So I know that I CAN do it. In some ways just committing to do one is harder than actually completing the course. And to be fair, it’s been five years since my last one. At a certain age, five years makes a difference. (Sigh . . . knees.)

No matter. I will do what it takes to make sure I’m in the best possible shape by October. I might not be able to make it up that damn half pipe at the end (WHY do they put it at the end????), and I know I won’t be able to jump into the dumpster of ice water. I have too many emotional and spiritual scars from the first time.

I know my limits, but I also know that they don’t need to hold me back. Just like an obstacle I know I can’t conquer, I can walk around things I know I can’t do (even if there are people on the sidelines booing you), and go on to conquer something different. Like jumping from the platform into the lake. I couldn’t do it the first year, and it took many false starts the second year, but I eventually did it.

This is not a resolution for 2018, it’s a commitment to keep evolving. Keep trying new things (or old things I haven’t mastered), keep learning, keep going.

Whatever you are working on this year, just keep going! Wishing everyone a happy, healthy and rewarding 2018.

Be careful what you say, Echo is listening

Not long ago we bought an Amazon Echo (some opt to call it Alexa, which I voted for but my husband wasn’t comfortable giving stern commands to an inanimate object with a human’s name), mainly to listen to live radio and podcasts in the kitchen while we’re cooking. It didn’t take long for us to realize that it’s not necessarily a one-way communication device. Or inanimate.

Not that Echo moves, but it does sometimes seem to have a mind of its own. Either that, or we have ghosts.

Working from home, I hear everything that happens in the house during the day. The wind travels around the house and makes it creak from one room to the next, the front door makes cracking noises when it’s not locked, car doors slam, kids at the school across the street scream like feeding hyenas during gym and recess, the heat thumps on and off, ice cubes plunk in the freezer, and the cats click throughout the house on overgrown nails I really need to cut. That’s about it.

Except, every once in awhile I hear a soft, warm, concerned, almost maternal voice say something like “I’m sorry, I can’t find what you’re looking for.” Or, “Would you like me to add alt country as a station on your Pandora account?” Or even “I can order a multipack of toilet tissues for you on Amazon, using your Prime account.”

Every time I hear that voice I freeze, thinking “Oh my god. I didn’t talk to Echo. No one talked to Echo. WHO IS ECHO RESPONDING TO?”

Cautiously–but casually (as if someone is watching and judging me for being afraid of a small electrical device)–I’ll walk into the kitchen to see what Echo is talking about. By then she is silent, but the cats are usually sitting on the kitchen floor, looking at her on top of the fridge, the blue swirling light that means she has been alerted to conversation now turned off. I never know if they are watching the conversation, or instigating it. I’m guessing they are spectators, as they would be ordering something more cat-friendly than toilet paper.

More recently, Echo has gotten a little mischievous. Maybe we’re not talking to her enough and she’s lonely, bored, and starting to lash out.

One day I was getting something out of the fridge for my son, and he was right next to me. I don’t remember why; it’s not like I need help getting anything out of the fridge. He looked up at Echo and said “Remember when Dad said ‘Echo, volume 10,’ and it was SO loud?”

I looked at him in horror and suddenly everything went into slow motion, like that final, horrible scene in Platoon, and before I could say “NOOOOOOOOOOOO!” (which I would have said in slow motion while tackling him to the ground, if we were in a movie instead of in our kitchen), Echo went to volume 10. The jazz station was on, which could have been a good thing, except that at that moment, it was a raucous drum solo complete with mirambas. It was deafening.

Ok, I thought, I’ll just tell Echo to turn the volume down. With my hands over my ears, I yelled “Echo!” The blue light didn’t come on. “Echo! Volume down!” Still no blue light. That bitch was purposely ignoring me. Then my son got into the act, screaming “Echo, volume down!” at the top of his lungs, which only made it more chaotic.

“Pull the plug! Pull the plug!” he yelled. I could reach Echo, but only with one arm, and couldn’t pull the plug out with only one hand. Paralyzed, I held the cylindrical device close to my face and continued hollering. Finally, the blue light came on and Echo heeded my command. Traumatized, I told her to turn the music off completely.

In the welcome silence of the kitchen, my son said “Whew,” holding his hand to his heart and repeating “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry. I’ll never do that again.”

I don’t know if he was apologizing to me, or to Echo.

An ode to crazy hair and Hormel turkey pepperoni

My daughter has a nest of baby hair that hovers at the top of her head. No matter how much she brushes, smooths, or sprays, that collection of shorter hairs gradually stands up to form a breezy little dirty blonde halo.

I call it her nimbus.

One day in the car she told me that she could feel the baby hairs moving when she turned her head, like they were a separate entity. I told her to think of them as pilot fish. They are a colorful, happy little tribe of fish that follow her around as if she were a benevolent girl shark.

In fact, they are also her biggest fans. They don’t just follow her because they need her for sustenance, they actually adore her! Can’t you hear them all cheering as they dart back and forth, I told her, keeping up with your every move! Go, go, go! We love you!

That gave us a good laugh. At least she has a sense of humor about her appearance, which is unusual for a 15-year old.

It also gave me an idea for a children’s book about a little girl who hates her unruly hair. Her mother tells her about the pilot fish, and also suggests that her crazy hair could be a special halo of flowers that she takes with her everywhere, or butterflies. Many scenarios about what her hair could actually be ensue, and the little girl eventually decides that it’s more fun to be special. Of course it has a happy ending, it’s a children’s book.

This is one of many children’s books I think about . . . Another one stars Pepper Lonely, a girl who loves Hormel turkey pepperoni and the Beatles in a time (the present) when neither one is in fashion. I personally think both are always in fashion, but in the book, we would be in some faraway land where neither thing exists. Maybe a kingdom of some kind. She would be Princess Pepperlonely. Listening to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band over and over.

The lessons would be (1) Hormel turkey pepperoni is very, very good. And so versatile. (2) The Beatles are cool, even if you live in a faraway land and have never heard of them. (3) It’s ok to be different. Be like Princess Pepperlonely.

And Hormel would pay to sponsor the book, which would result in a happy ($$) ending for me as well.

One of the days, I will actually write these stories. Now I just need a good illustrator.

 

 

 

What I Gained by Giving up Weekday Drinking

Here’s my second finalist article for the Parent.co monthly writing contest. I don’t think either of them won, but it was fun to enter–and always nice to see something you wrote published!

https://www.parent.com/what-i-gained-by-giving-up-weeknight-drinking/

 

I bought a $12 container of popcorn because I was afraid of a Boy Scout

Yes, it’s true. But there’s more to it than that. I’m not scared of all Boy Scouts. Just this one. And I’m not convinced that he was a Boy Scout at all. More like a Man Walkabout, without a uniform.

It wasn’t Halloween yet, so I wasn’t expecting anyone in a costume when the doorbell rang. Strange timing, I thought. About 8 pm, not terribly late but later than UPS usually delivers and it was already pitch dark.

Not knowing whether I wanted to answer, I peered through the living room window, where I could see the profile of a person standing on the front steps. Not a neighbor, not one of my kids’ friends, but also not someone with a clipboard or a stack of pamphlets. So I flicked on the overhead light and opened the door a few inches.

“Hello ma’am, I’m with the Boy Scouts,” this obviously grown man person without a costume or a Boy Scout-related chaperone said. Come to think of it, I didn’t even see a car, or bike, or any other mode of transportation. Did he walk here? And if so, from where?

“I visited yesterday and your husband said he was interested in buying popcorn, but he didn’t have the cash at the time.”

Then I saw the container of popcorn he was holding up. Yes, it had a picture of a Boy Scout on it. Ok, that’s promising. But wait. He walked here from wherever he came from, carrying only this one order for a single customer? That didn’t seem right.

“Um, ok.” I said. “How much is it?”

“Twelve dollars, ma’am.” Shut the front door! I mean, I didn’t actually shut the front door. At least not yet. Twelve dollars for what would cost a couple bucks at the grocery store? That’s crazy talk.

“Just a second,” I said. And then I did shut the front door, long enough to yell up the stairs to my husband:

“Hey, did you agree to pay twelve dollars for Boy Scout popcorn?”

A moment of silence.

“Oh yeah, but I didn’t have enough money.” Some rummaging ensued, and my husband came down the stairs with his wallet.

“Oh, I still only have two dollars. Do you have ten?”

“Hang on another second,” I told the Man Cub waiting on our steps, and got my wallet. Thank god, I had a ten dollar bill.

“Here you go!” I said cheerfully, shoving the money out the front door and grabbing the popcorn.

He said thank you very much, and I watched him walk away to . . . wherever he had come from. I almost expected him to disappear into the evening mist.

On one hand, I wanted to be annoyed that my husband had summoned this person back to our house with the sole intent to take my money. But then I remembered the time I ordered four years’ worth of magazines from an adorable young woman with a very sad back story and photos to prove it, only to find out a year later that I only had a year’s subscription.

Gullible, much? Or just afraid to say no? A little of both, I think.

It’s probably best if we just stop answering the door.

I wonder if the popcorn is any good?

Sometimes you just can’t explain human behavior

It’s my favorite time of year: Cooler days, falling leaves, pumpkin picking, apple cider donuts . . . and people acting really, really weird.

I was recently at a friend’s house for a casual get together, and I brought my 15-year old daughter. She had nothing else to do that day and wanted to see how my friend had redecorated her house, so why not?

There were a few people I knew there, many that I didn’t, and everyone was wrapped up in conversation, so my daughter (let’s call her Joy) and I hung out in the kitchen, munching on snacks. I spotted someone I know (let’s call her Gerty) in the living room talking to a group of people and gave her a polite wave.

Gerty was dressed for this festive occasion in head-to-toe black, her slight frame barely solid enough to hold her steady on impossibly tall black boots, hair characteristically pin-straight, her mouth a bright red gash. She can be a little severe, our Gerty.

Suddenly she was right in front of me. How did she cross the room so fast? Did she glide? Not possible in those boots, I would have heard her clumping toward me.

“Hi there,” she said. “Hi!” I responded, then gestured to Joy, who I don’t think she had ever met. “This is my daughter, Joy.”

If things didn’t already seem a little off, they were about to get weird.

Gerty turned toward me, eyes wide, moved in so close I thought she was preparing to lick my face, and said with a tight grin, barely moving her lips:

“You brought . . . CHILDREN?”

I really had to think about my response. Mentally I looked around the room to make sure I hadn’t misjudged the audience. There was food, there was wine, there were lots of people about my age engaged in loud, happy conversation. There were no strippers, no gimps, no one was cursing, no one was naked. Why not bring a child?

My next thought was: Technically Joy isn’t a child. She’s close to 16 and could pass for 18. In fact, one of the guests had previously (jokingly) recommended she have a shot since we lived close and could walk home. He had no idea she wasn’t even old enough to drive.

I opened my mouth to say . . . I’m not sure what . . . Probably “Uh?” and Gerty, who was sandwiched between me and Joy, turned her back on Joy, effectively pinning her against the stove. Joy looked over Gerty’s shoulder at me with a slightly panicked expression. I shrugged, as if to say “She’ll move along soon, I’m sure she’s not aware that she is suffocating you with her black turtleneck.”

Then Gerty spotted someone she knew on the other side of the kitchen, and although the distance was only about 8 feet, she started bellowing to get their attention. Meanwhile, she hadn’t moved. Joy was still pinned, holding a cookie up in the air, unable to get it to her mouth since Gerty was leaning against her.

That’s when I went from puzzled to angry. When you introduce someone, the absolute minimum response required in a civilized society is to say hello and make eye contact. Ignoring the introduction and then turning your back on the person you’ve just been introduced to is beyond rude. But then preventing them from moving while shouting to someone else? To me, that’s baboon behavior.

Thankfully Gerty tottered away before I could smack the physically passive aggressive personality right out of her body. I considered tackling her but there wasn’t much room and I would most likely take other people down at the same time.

Instead, I told Joy “She’s just . . . a little unusual. You know some people, not aware of their surroundings. Loud talker. Close talker. Socially tone deaf.  I’m sure it was nothing personal.”

For all I know, that’s true. But it doesn’t excuse the behavior. And it made me wonder: Are some people just hard wired without basic human empathy, or the skills needed to analyze a situation and behave accordingly? If so, is the ability to act like a social animal something that can be learned through intense training? Or are people like this just destined to go through life offending everyone, yet fortunate enough to be oblivious to the negative effect they have on others?

So many questions. But I don’t want to spend too much time pondering them. If my observations are accurate, at least one out of 5 people seem to have the makings of a true sociopath. From now on, I’ll trust my gut and walk away instead of waving at them.

Why do I save spiders?

Ok, I really thought I had gotten over my fear of spiders. At least to the point where I could remove them from my kids’ rooms when needed. You always know when it’s needed. There is no shriek quite as piercing as a child spotting a spider in his/her room, or–even worse–in the shower.

My newfound confidence went right out the window this morning when I was sitting in bed, working on my laptop, and saw movement along the baseboards out of the corner of my eye. Maybe it’s just a cricket, I thought.

Why would a cricket be any better than a spider? Actually, it would be worse. You can’t catch those things, and they JUMP! At least spiders don’t jump. Not spiders this big. Dear god . . . That IS a spider, right?

I crept out of bed and put on my flip flops, then decided to take one off in case it decided to attack. Then I put it back on, because . . . that thing was huge. I didn’t trust my aim with a tiny flip flop against a behemoth arachnid. Smacking at it might just make it mad.

I ran (as quietly as possible) to the kitchen to get a large plastic cup, heart pounding. What if it wasn’t there when I got back? What then? It could be ANYWHERE! Oh my god. The cats were perched on the dining room table as usual, but looking concerned. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s just an enormous spider. You would be helpless against it. Besides, it looks poisonous.”

Back into the bedroom. It was still there. Thank god. I crept closer, and closer, trying to get the cup in position before it spotted me. How do spider eyes work, anyway? Do they have more than two? Can they see in all directions? I feel like I really should know this before trying to sneak up on one.

No matter. The cup is all I’ve got. I brought it down slowly, slowly. It didn’t move. Plunk. Got it! Too late, I realized that the cup wasn’t flat on the floor. It was propped up on the–what do you call that thing at the bottom of the baseboard? A kickplate? My years of binge-watching HGVT failed me. In horror, I watched it go scampering under the door of the closet.

I paused outside the door, cup in hand, for a very long time. Damn it. What now? I can’t start poking around in the closet, it’s sure to drop on me from whatever it’s attached to. I opened the doors and just stared. Eventually I worked up the nerve to slowly push aside a 4-pack of paper towels, expecting it to come charging at me from the other side of the package. Nothing.

I stepped back and noticed the flashlights on an upper shelf. That’s it. I’ll be able to see it better without having to physically enter the closet, and maybe I could paralyze it with the light. I didn’t know if that was possible, but I really, really hoped so. It happens with deer, right? Spider in the headlights?

Just then Betty (cat #1) entered the room. She loves chasing lights. I trained the light on the closet floor, and she ran right in after it. “No, Betty! Don’t scare the spider!” I turned off the light. But before I did, I saw something right there on the floor, in the open, that looked a lot like the spider. I turned the flashlight on again and kept Betty at bay with my foot. I think that’s the spider! Just sitting there! Why is it doing that? Oh my god, it’s actually paralyzed by the light! It was like I had discovered fire.

I brought the flashlight closer and closer, testing the light paralysis theory. It didn’t move. PLUNK. Just like that, he was trapped. Hooray!

Now, how to get him outside? The old “slide paper under cup” trick worked, but I couldn’t pick it up because the paper was flimsy. One wrong move and he would make a break for it–probably down my arm. I had to slide him across the floor, inch by inch, trying not to jump out of my skin listening to him skittering around in there. Six agonizing feet later, I remembered that there was a rug between me and the screen door.

What would McGuyver do? Duct tape. We have duct tape. Feeling accomplished, I ripped up what little duct tape was left on the roll into small strips, and started folding the paper up the side of the glass and taping it in place. Almost done . . . and then the tape ran out. One section of paper was going to be loose when I picked up the cup.

Sigh.

Holding that section tight against the cup with my hand, I maneuvered the screen door open. Carefully, gingerly, I walked him (or her) to the very far end of the yard and put the cup down. It ran around the inside of the cup, but didn’t find the loose section in the paper. Dear lord.

I untaped a few sections and put the cup back down. Thankfully he/she/it found its way out this time.

Hopefully it will not find its way back in the house! Because I’m all out of duct tape.

I don’t believe in ghosts. But I believe in ghost cats.

There are certain places that my departed cats seem to like hanging around. They’re basically the same places they liked to be when they actually walked on four legs–any place where they might get fed, or could play with water.

Often I’ll be standing at the kitchen sink, or at one of the bathroom sinks, and I’ll feel that familiar delicate brushing of the back of my leg with their whiskers or the side of their face, inquiring if dinner is going to be soon. Or the slight flick of their tail as they circle me, winding between my legs and making it impossible for me to take a step for fear of squashing them. Sometimes I’ll feel the cool, “bop bop bop” of a tiny nose tapping against my leg, sniffing for who knows what.

I’ll turn around, and sometimes it’s my actual, living cats. But sometimes there is nothing there.

I’ll look around to see if maybe one of them brushed past me and quickly left the room, but usually I’ll see them both snoozing on their cat beds on the dining room table. Beds that, inexplicably, they refused to get inside, but will make biscuits on the top until they flatten out and become mattresses instead of hidey caves.

They don’t just make themselves known by touch. I’ll also hear them going down the stairs. Always down, never up. I’m not sure why. I’ll be sitting on the couch, right next to the stairs, and hear the unmistakable padding of paws down the stairs, each one followed by the slight click of their toenails. I would like to say that sometimes it’s my actual cats, but there’s never a cat there. Our floors are creaky, but they don’t mimic the sound of a cat walking down the stairs.

But most unsettling is seeing them. I mean, I don’t see them. But my two cats do. Always in our bedroom or closet, and always on the ceiling. They will both pause, look up at the same spot on the ceiling, and then their eyes will dart back and forth, back and forth, always looking at exactly the same spot. I have followed their gaze many times, looking for a bug, or a spider, or a swaying spider web, or a shadow, or a flash of light from outside. There is never anything there. I think, maybe it’s a sound coming from the HVAC system, or a bird or squirrel on the roof, but I never hear anything.

This mostly happens in our walk-in closet, where we have one of our cats’ ashes.

If I thought there were a ghost of a person in my house, I would move the hell out. Even if it was someone I knew and loved. That’s just too creepy. But the cats? I don’t know, it’s kind of reassuring. Like they’re just visiting to make sure everything is ok, maybe giving our cats some pointers about getting at the hidden snacks, sniffing the different foods they’re eating, sniffing their butts.

Our cats don’t seem too concerned about it, so I guess it’s ok with me.

Sometimes you just have to quit: How I prepared in advance for my own mental breakdown

I’ve always been an independent person. I don’t like to ask for help. I’m slightly on the introverted side, so I prefer to work by myself. Or with one or two people I really like. But most of all, I like to be creative. This was a good place to be, more than 20 years ago, when I started my career in corporate communications and was in a small team, managing a small publication on my own.

Then things started getting uncomfortable. There were promotions, there were children, there were projects and people to manage. All normal milestones in life, and of course there were many aspects of these changes that I enjoyed. And I was good at it. I could work 12 hours a day, take care of the kids, pay the bills, and all with a sunny disposition.

On one hand, I was proud of being able to accomplish so many things at once. But being good at getting things done is exhausting when the things you’re getting done are not ones you want to be doing. I’m talking about the work side of things, not kids or my home life. Those areas of my life I always cherished, but I never had enough time to really pay attention to them. To just enjoy them.

A slight buzzing had started in my head, a kind of background noise that crept in during times of stress and faded when things got quiet. Things were never quiet for long, and the moments of peace got to be few and far between.

The moment I knew I was in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing, was when I was at home, giving a presentation to our CEO on the phone, with my boss on the line to assess my performance, while holding a squirming, sick, screaming toddler. I thought: Ok, now is the time to start hatching my escape plan.

You would think that planning ahead to leave something you don’t enjoy would make “that thing” easier to deal with. It didn’t. It made it worse. Watching my nest egg grow much too slowly, doing the calculations to determine when it was “safe” to leave . . . And the guilt of knowing that I was making a conscious decision to go from supporting my family to potentially making no money for a long time. It was suffocating.

The buzzing got worse.

I was anxious all the time. My heart raced, my blood pressure rose. I sweated even when I was cold.  In quiet moments I would sit and listen to my pulse pounding in my ears, and I could feel it in my nose. Sometimes I would get nosebleeds.

Eventually I got depressed. Nothing could make me happy. I withdrew from friends, family, activities, everything. I just wanted to be left alone.

One morning I found myself in my hotel room, pacing up and down the floor in my towel, gasping for breath. The reason? An event I was running later that day, one that I had run for 5 years in a row. In fact, one of many events and large meetings I ran throughout the year. Nothing major had ever gone wrong at any of them, and there was nothing special about this one.

But as I was getting ready to dry my hair and get dressed, I had a horrible thought: I couldn’t imagine the event happening. Usually before an event, I run through it in my mind, and I can see everything happening the way it should. That always gave me peace of mind, like I was just following a script that was already written. In this case, however, I couldn’t “see” the event. I took it as an omen that something was going to go terribly wrong, and my brain was protecting me by not letting me see it.

I panicked. I thought about packing my bag and running away. But I didn’t. I got through the event, it went well, and I got on the train and was happy to see my family when I got home. Fortunately that was only a few weeks before I walked out the door of my building for the last time, because I don’t think I would have survived another challenge.

I’ve been “free” for 9 months. Quitting wasn’t easy. I felt like . . . a quitter. And I still do.

If I had been a stronger person, I could have gone to therapy, taken antidepressants and continued on in my job for another 20 years. But even the thought of that depressed me. I don’t want to look back on my life and think “wow, I really hung in there, didn’t I?” There are no medals or rewards for suffering in silence.

So here I am, hustling to get freelance writing work every day, getting some here and there, writing personal things for my own amusement, and slowly adjusting to a life without constant stress. It sounds easy, but ironically, it’s a little . . . um, stressful. But there’s negative stress that eats at your mind and body, and then there’s constructive stress, which drives you to work hard at doing something you enjoy.

I can deal with constructive stress. So . . . Here I am. And here I go!

“Someone threw a HERB at me!”

My son has always had a strained relationship with nature. He doesn’t like to go outside if it’s hot or sunny, because he gets sweaty very easily. If he is forced to go outside, he first puts on his sun hat and then inspects his surroundings to make sure there aren’t any bugs in the vicinity. If a bug is sighted, he immediately heads indoors.

A couple of greenery-related experiences could have contributed to his distrust of the outdoors. Or if not, they’re still amusing to me.

He couldn’t have been more than 3 years old, going somewhere with my husband in the car. They stopped for gas and the attendant, after peering in the window at my son in his car seat, declared “What a handsome little fella, he looks like a Bush!” Meaning the former president, which of course went right over my son’s head. He was quiet for awhile, then as they pulled away, my husband heard him say softly, as if to himself, “That man called me a bush!” I still wonder what he really thought that meant. And for the record, he does not look like he’s related to anyone in the Bush family. Or would that be the bush species? He also doesn’t look like any type of shrubbery.

Fast forward about 7 years. I love gardening, and I often force my son outside to help me transplant and water plants. He’s familiar with most varieties of the herbs and vegetables growing in our garden. One day the kids were getting in the car, and as usual they argued about who was going to get the front seat. Being smaller and faster, he got to it first.

As she got in the car, my daughter grabbed a leaf from a nearby basil plant and threw it over the front seat in retaliation. There was a moment of silence, followed by a loud exclamation: “Someone threw a HERB at me!” This made us cackle for so many reasons. Mostly because he pronounced it with the “H.” As if someone had physically thrown a man named Herb over the front seat of the car. Also, he was aware that “someone” had thrown it, but didn’t know who. My daughter was the only one in the back seat. Who on earth could it have been, if not her? And then there’s the formal (if incorrect) way he identified the basil leaf. He knew it was an herb, but didn’t know which type. Not wanting to dumb things down by simply calling it a leaf, he called it A HERB. So now, when I go outside to water anything, I’m going to water my Herbs.

He hates when I tell both these stories, so of course I have to publish them so I will never forget how to tell them.

 

Mediterranean Mashup: A Delicious Disaster

I made up a recipe awhile back for pizza with a Mediterranean theme—spinach, artichoke hearts, kalamata olives, feta cheese, etc. I painstakingly took photos of each step as I made it, intending to post the recipe here. Then I looked at the photos: The pizza itself, with each topping added one by one. It was essentially the same photo over and over. That’s not how this works! That’s not how any of this works!

I never said I was especially bright.

So, I invited my friend Karen over one night, and we re-enacted the making of the pizza, with “action shots” instead of pizza shots. Ok, there are a few pizza shots too.

Let’s start with the first photo, above. This shows you everything you will need to make the pizza—except the fresh oregano and basil. I thought of those after I took the photo.

ARGH! I mentioned artichoke hearts, but I didn’t use them this time, so they are not pictured above. But really, wouldn’t artichokes be overkill at this point? Use them if you like, though. They are good. Use the softest parts, chop them into small chunks and add them with the rest of the toppings in Step 8.

Here’s a complete list of ingredients (minus the artichokes):

Pizza dough (or premade pizza crust)
Ricotta cheese (low fat)
Mozzarella cheese (part skim)
Feta cheese (fat free)
Frozen spinach
Fresh oregano and basil (or dried)
Sundried tomatoes
Garlic (any kind—fresh/chopped, jar/minced, or pre-roasted cloves like I used here)
Kalamata olives
Seasonings—salt, pepper, red pepper flakes

Step 1:

Preheat oven to 375. I put it on convection bake. If you have a pizza stone, even better! Let it sit in the oven to heat up.

Step 2:

Microwave the frozen spinach until thawed, dump in a strainer (I sometimes call it a colander, what do you call it?) and press it down to get as much liquid out as possible. I used a paper towel to absorb some of the liquid. Watch out, that spinach can be very hot. Let it sit there and cool.

I didn’t take a photo of that part. I got distracted by something shiny.

Step 3:

Roll out the dough.

This turned out to be more challenging than we thought. Sometimes I’ll get a premade, already baked crust, so you can dive right in with adding the toppings. This time I got a fresh ball of pizza dough, thinking that the texture would be better. That was true, but it took some wrestling and a lot of flour to get the dough rolled out. Make sure to leave the dough in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Once it warms up, it’s harder to work with.

We put a light layer of flour on a piece of parchment paper (the pizza will stay on this during cooking) and used a rolling pin to roll the dough out as thin as possible.

Oops, I lied. Sorry. We didn’t put the dough on the parchment paper, and it was hard to pull it off the countertop. Put the parchment paper down first, then a layer of flour, then the dough.

I would like to say that we ended up with a perfect circle, but it was more like a lopsided square. Someday I’m going to learn how to throw a pizza to make it round.

Before adding any toppings, brush the whole surface of the dough with olive oil (all the way to the edge).

Step 4:

Cheese!

Spread a thin layer of ricotta cheese on the dough, stopping at about an inch from the edge. I think we used most of the container. Add some salt and pepper, and red pepper flakes if you like it a little spicy. I like it a LOT spicy.

Step 5:

Add the spinach.

It’s easiest to use your fingers to drop pinches of the spinach all over the pizza.

Step 6:

Sprinkle on the entire bag (yes, the entire bag) of mozzarella cheese.

Finally, add the feta cheese. Just use as much as you like. We used the whole container.

Step 7:

Fresh oregano . . . and fresh basil.

Chop about a tablespoon of oregano (or dried), and as much basil as you like. We used about a quarter cup. Sprinkle these all over the pizza. I put these on now instead of the very end, so they wouldn’t get dried out while cooking.

Ok, I lied again. I made the mistake of putting them on at the end, and they got crispy. Don’t do that. Put them on now.

Step 8:

The rest of the toppings. Chop your sundried tomatoes, olives and garlic, and add those in any order you like.

We only took a photo of chopping our pre-roasted garlic, but we really did also chop the olives and sundried tomatoes. In any amount that you like. I used roughly a small handful of each.

This is where you can add chopped artichoke hearts if your heart (get it?) desires. I’m picky about mine: Even though everything in the can is edible, I usually strip off the outer layer of the artichoke heart before chopping because it’s a little stringy/chewy.

Man, I really need to get new knives.

Here’s roughly what the pizza will look like before it bakes. I hope for your sake that yours is round.

Step 9:

Into the oven!

Transfer the pizza, still on the parchment paper, to your preheated pizza stone. If you don’t have a pizza stone, you can place it directly on the center rack.

It was a good thing Karen was there, as the pizza transfer takes at least 3 hands. We had 4 hands, and still almost dropped it.

Bake for 15-20 minutes, checking often once you hit 15 minutes. If the cheese is melted and the crust is just slightly brown, it’s done.

Step 10:

Eat! Here’s the finished product.

It was delicious. Enjoy!

Is it Wrong to Want to Escape?

Planning a fantasy life on the road, someday

When I was a child, maybe 7 or 8 years old, I fantasized about having a “house within a house” that snaked its way through the hallways and living spaces of my home. Only I would have access to this house, but since it was located inside my real house, I could easily visit my parents and pets.

I would draw pictures of how this house could look—kind of a cross between a child-sized doll house and a hamster habitrail. I would draw it as if a house had been sliced in half, kind of like they do on that HGTV show I’ve forgotten the name of, where they show how the layout could look for the owner’s space and the renter’s space. This sliced cake house would be fully furnished, with family rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, closets and furniture. I never put any people in the drawings, because I would be the only one living there.

In this house within a house, I could have solitude, but still feel safe. Which made no sense, as I was an only child. All spaces were my solitary space!

I had forgotten all about my strange fantasy until a few years ago when Tiny Houses became the biggest thing since everything bagels. And there it was! An adult escape pod on wheels. I couldn’t stop thinking about the appeal of a Tiny House. But, you know, I’m a grownup. With the usual assortment of responsibilities and things that keep you in one spot.

If I were just starting out in life, I would surely be one half of a hipster couple, shopping for a tiny house with all the money I had saved since college, planning a mortgage-free life traveling all over the country, pulling up in camp sites and any open space we could find and calling it home for however long we wanted to stay. I’m not sure what all those hipster couples with tiny dogs do for a living that they can live on the road, but they sure do look happy.

Obviously that wasn’t going to be my story. But what if I flipped the timeline, and a tiny house isn’t the beginning of a lifelong adventure, but the end of one? I mean, in a happy way, not a depressing way. That’s when the cogs in my head started cranking.

I’m a planner. Not just a day-to-day planner. Yes, I keep a “to do” list that accounts for nearly every hour of the day. It makes me feel accomplished to see everything crossed of the list at the end of the day. Except most days there are a few things that have to be carried over, which drives me crazy.

I’m also a long-range planner. Even when I had a steady job and a salary, and I knew exactly how much my 401K and pension were going to pay out each month based on the year I decided to retire, I would run different scenarios in my head to see how my life might turn out if I were to make a small tweak here, a big change there. I would make calculations while driving, running errands, in the shower. Sometimes I would have to break out the calculator. (Not in the shower.)

“Running Scenarios” is what I call it. Is it weird that I have a name for it? Imagine one of those “If yes, then move here, if no then move here, if neither then go back to the beginning” charts. That’s the way my mind works. If I don’t like the outcome, I can go back and rearrange the blocks and arrows.

Whatever you call it, the process of running scenarios is calming. Kind of like telling myself that however this kooky life goes, it’s all going to work out in the end.

So back to the Tiny House Project. This appealed to my Running Scenarios mentality, so I started going through all the possibilities. Such as: If the value of the house were $X by the year I turn 60, and the cost of a tricked-out tiny house and the truck and all other accoutrements needed to pull it were $X, then the money leftover after the sale of our house would cover our monthly cost of living (including gas) for 20 years without having to touch our savings.

It sounded pretty damn good!

Of course there are few things to consider. Such as: Would we have a home base, or would we just travel all the time? I decided that would should have a home base either somewhere warm (with a tiny house, you would probably want or need to spend some time outside) or somewhere near wherever the kids end up. So factor the cost of a small plot of land into the scenario and recalculate.

Also: Where would we put all the stuff from our house that we couldn’t let go? That’s easy. Get a rental container near home base and store everything there. We could always go “visit” our stuff whenever needed. Factor monthly rental of container into the scenario.

There are other, more mundane things to sort through. Like, would I still be able to have a garden? At home base, sure. But on the road? I went back to my mental blueprint of the tiny house and added window boxes for flowers, and some larger boxes attached to the back of the house for herbs and vegetables—all of which would need to have a storage container inside the house for when we’re on the road.

Then there is the bathroom issue. Do I want to have to be hooked up to a water source, or could I live with a “mulching” toilet? I mean, a mulching toilet? Gross.

At that point I ran out of things to add to my mental schematic, so I decided that spending my older years traveling and writing from a tiny house was actually a viable option.

Except . . . my husband might not agree. I neglected to work him into the scenario. Damn it.  Now I have to start over.

Cat of a Thousand Names

It all started with a case of gender confusion. One of our “twin” cats, Baxter (sister and brother, actually, but they were practically identical), had just passed away after a fairly long and ugly battle with stomach cancer. I wasn’t ready for another cat, but my family had other ideas.

I left for a trip just before the 4th of July, and my parting instructions were: “Don’t get another cat while I’m gone. But if you do, make sure it’s a girl. We don’t want another boy cat beating up poor Betty.” We loved Baxter more than anything, but he really could be an asshole when he wanted to be. Which was any time (1) Betty was anywhere near, (2) he spied something on a surface that should be knocked off–preferably glass and breakable–and (3), breakfast time, which could start as early as 4am with insistent yowling. So, basically most of the time.

There’s Betty. A softy at heart, but always ready with a few claws if necessary.

I wasn’t surprised when I started getting texts with photos of an adorable orange and white kitten.

Enter Waldo.

He was the cutest little thing, athletic and possessing an impressive alley cat swagger at only 3 months. We decided to keep the name Waldo, thinking how fun it would be ask “Where’s Waldo?” every time we were looking for him. There’s no way that would get old, right?

The time came to have Waldo neutered. I took him to the home of the woman his foster mom recommended for his last distemper shot, and she offered to make the appointment through the vet she works with. She flipped him around to have a look at his rear end, and said “Uh . . . I think you mean spayed. This one is a girl!”

Enter Wilma.

We didn’t want to change his–er, her name too drastically, and Wilma was a good fit with Betty, if you’re a fan of the Flintstones. Their coloring even matched their names: Betty has black hair, and Wilma is mostly orange. Cute, right?

Except that somehow the gender switch activated a naming switch, and we started calling her everything under the sun. Wilmer, Wilderama, Wilmy, Wilma Lou, Wilma Lou Hoo, Willy Wonka, Little Willy Willy Won’t . . . Go Home, Silly Willy, Little Willy, Willy Loman, Willy Willy Oxenfree. And probably more that I can’t think of now.

Every morning when it’s time for breakfast, I’ll start calling all of her names (and a few for Betty, just to make sure she doesn’t feel left out), and by the time I finish running through them all, they have both finished eating and are settling down for their morning nap.

Next, I suppose we’ll have to round out the family with a Fred, Barney, Pebbles, Bam-Bam and Dino. I can only imagine how long breakfast will take.

 

 

Looking at life from behind: In no particular order

I have an empty photo frame that has been hanging on our stairway wall for three years. Every now and then, my daughter will ask why I haven’t put any photos in it. Until now, I could honestly say “I have no idea!”

It’s not like we don’t have photos in frames all over the house. We have tons of them. All happy, smiling faces of our family at different points in our lives—soon after J. was born, at the beach, us beaming and her peering out from her Baby Bjorn with an expression both concerned and nearsighted. A posed family Christmas photo when J. was about 6 and S. was a toddler, where only I noticed the slight yellowish bruise on her cheek from the latest episode of S.’s “enthusiastically throwing board books” phase. In front of the Eiffel Tower, the week after Princess Diana died, long before we had any idea how full and chaotic the next 20 years would be.

I kind of felt like, “been there, done that” in the hanging photos department. But the stairway wall was bare, and needed something. So up went the photo frame, and there it sat. Somehow filling it with more of the same types of photos didn’t seem right. This frame should have its own special type of photos.

But what?

Recently I was transferring photos from an old hard drive to my laptop, and it struck me: The photos that I found most poignant were the ones taken from the back. Photos that spoke to me not through the expressions on the subjects’ faces, but their poses, their posture, their surroundings. The photos where no one felt obligated to create a “hey we’re having fun” face, but were simply going about their business, thinking who knows what.

Here’s one of my favorites: A perfect late spring day, after coming home from a joint birthday party for both kids. He was three, she was seven. We had to explain to S. what a pinwheel was, but he was fascinated. He didn’t let go of that pinwheel the rest of the afternoon. Here he’s taking a breather and watching the rest of the kids running and doing cartwheels in the yard. Who knows what was going through his head? Not knowing, I’m free to make up stories about what could have been happening in the photo.

Here’s another one–walking to our first ride on the Tower of Terror (and many more to come):

And there are more:

Even though I know the back story (sorry, pun really wasn’t intended but I like it so I’m keeping it) for all these photos—after all, I was always the photographer—it makes me happy to think that they could have been telling any number of stories. I can make up new ones to match them if I want. There are no faces or expressions to prove me wrong.

Which reminds me of something I sometimes think about: What are the stories of the people who randomly appear in your family photos? What were they doing at that moment? I know what we were doing, but their narrative was completely different that day. And come to think of it, wouldn’t it be cool to be able to locate all the family photos that YOU have randomly appeared in? Those photos alone could tell the entire story of your life, in no particular order.

But that’s a whole separate line of musing that I’ll get into later.

J. and I finally took that empty photo frame off the wall and filled it with a crooked collage of our favorite photos. It took some wrestling (“Aw man, now there’s a HAIR between the two pieces of glass! Ok, take it apart again.”), but now it accurately represents us: Not perfect, a little askew, slightly messy, memories overlapping, mostly happy.

Mad Hats and Teapots

Sometimes the theme of the day just presents itself. This morning J. walked downstairs wearing her Alice in Wonderland long-sleeved t-shirt from our last trip to Disney, holding the Alice in Wonderland collection of stories I gave her almost exactly a year ago (which she had just rediscovered while cleaning her room), and sat down at the dining room table with her Alice in Wonderland tea cup to drink (coffee) and read before school. As we chatted, she showed me some of the vaguely creepy illustrations in the book, and I opened Facebook to see the prompt from this day last year, which was a quote from the Mad Hatter.

Well, duh. Today I’m going to be thinking about tea. But also Disney. Which reminded me that I need to arrange her flights to visit a friend in Florida this summer. But I’ll do that later. Now, for the tea.

It just happens that a couple weeks ago, we visited a tea house for an afternoon lunch/brunch. The Mulberry House in Westfield, a cute little place that, like so many of the businesses and doctor’s offices in the area, used to be an actual house. It still feels like you’re eating in someone’s front room, shoulder to shoulder with strangers who are, like you, pretending to be civilized and pick at their very small plates of food.

Upstairs where the bedrooms must have been, they host bridal showers, baby showers and other events that are primarily attended by women. Believe it or not, those events can get rowdy. Who would have thought that miniature cucumber sandwiches and scones would bring out the crazy? More likely it’s the BYO wine, which I wished I had thought to bring.

Downstairs in the main dining room, we choose our tea for the meal (passionfruit rose) and our food. None of the traditional teeny tea food for us. We’re ordering like we’re at the diner—an omelette and salad for me,  an omelette, hash browns and a plate of bacon for her. At least the pink teapot makes us feel somewhat dainty.

It’s part 1 of a belated Mother’s Day “girls’ outing”, which ends with an evening trip to a nearby spa. The teen facial for her (75 minutes of scrubbing, masking, and extractions, ouch!) and a scalp/neck/shoulders/upper back massage for me. It was the only thing on the menu that I could handle. I won’t get any facial treatments because my skin is so sensitive and it’s embarrassing to leave the place with a face that resembles a ripe tomato. And I can’t book a massage because the thought of getting completely naked in front of a stranger makes me break out in hives. So, a neck massage it was.

We have a history of mother/daughter tea time. When she was little, like most little girls, she had several tea sets and I we would have mock tea dates. About that time, it became popular for girls to have actual tea parties for their birthdays, so we attended a few of those. We had our first very fancy tea at the American Girl store/restaurant in New York. At some point, going to tea became our mother/daughter bonding activity.

To be honest, looking back on the day, I’m not sure that we really enjoyed the tea, or the meal, or the spa, as much as we would have enjoyed anything else. But we had a wonderful day nonetheless.

There’s something about the ceremony of drinking tea in a place that’s dedicated only to the appreciation of tea that makes it a special experience. Like wandering around a museum, or sweating in identical short robes in the spa’s completely silent sauna, it forces you to focus on the thing that you are doing together at that very moment.  Nothing else matters, and for that brief time, only the two of you exist.

So although I don’t especially love tea, we have an entire shelf full of exotic and store-bought tea at home. Here’s the shelf.

Choosing the tea, boiling the water, steeping the leaves, pouring the tea into our special mugs, drinking it together . . . It’s not really about the tea, it’s about quiet time spent together enjoying one, singular, solitary (yet bonding) thing.

Time for tea!

How did I get here?

Well, that’s hard to answer. I guess I could start from one of  two perspectives–where I started, or where I’m going. But either way, that would be kind of a long and boring story. The photo sums it up, though: Either you’re looking for someone or something to tell you what comes next, or you’re focusing on what you decide will come next.  In this case, Betty was locked on a bird, which was a totally unattainable goal. I didn’t tell her that, though . . . I didn’t want to crush her hunter’s spirit. My goals are a little closer to reality: More time with family, more time to enjoy new experiences, and more time to write about them!

Don’t worry, this won’t get too deep. I’m more Captain Obvious (or maybe Jack Handey) than Oscar Wilde.  Maybe there will be some generally motivational thoughts embedded in my random musings. Or maybe not. But there will be kids, cats, recipes, and adventures in freelancing. I’m still new at that part. Advice is welcome.

My thought for today started taking shape at 5 a.m., when my son decided it was time to wake up. Why? Because he got a simple digital watch in his Easter basket, and he had set it so he could wake up on his own. At 7:30. He hasn’t yet learned the meaning of irony.

First I heard him thumping against the wall, which he does when he can’t sleep and rolls back and forth. Then I heard indistinct one-sided conversation, which reminded me of the scene in Finding Dory when she was dreaming.

“No, that was my fault, sorry . . .”

“Where did you find that doggo?”

“That’s my chocolate . . . mmmmm . . .”

“Doggo?”

And suddenly he was in front of me, brandishing his new watch and demanding to go downstairs and read the instructions for how to turn off the hourly alarm. And it made me think: What am I excited about when I get up in the morning? Besides coffee? Sometimes it’s hard to think of something I would jump out of bed for.

So that was my challenge for the day: Come up with something I’m looking forward to about each day. Ok, I’m still thinking about it. So far coffee was the winner for the day. But at least it got me thinking. And hopefully I’ll come up with something new every day.