Saturday, October 19, 2013

Sunday Stealing

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1) What room are you in? The parlor. (I usually say "living room," and I felt like mixing it up a little.)

2) Can you solve a Rubik's cube? No.

3) Are you psychic in any way? No.

4) What star sign are you? I'm on the Scorpio/Sagittarius cusp. My birthday is 11/22 (in case you want to make a note of it and then send gifts and good wishes)

5) What's your favorite color? Blue. I wear a lot of blue.

6) What's your lucky number? 7

7) Do you have any chores that should be done now? HA! Just dirty dishes, a ton of paperwork to go through and three loads of laundry. I'm told some people wash floors, too.

8) Did you have a cherished childhood teddy bear or other toy? I had a Lassie dog who went with me everywhere.

9) What was the last thing you bought from a vending machine? 


10) What shoe size are you? 6.5 or 7, depending on the pair.


11) How many pairs of shoes do you own? Nine that I can see from here.

12) If you were prime minister/ruler of the world what laws would you make? No one can take up more space than they deserve/pay for. That means you can't take up the bench in the ladies' locker room with your mp3 player and water bottle when I need it for my ass, and you can't take occupy two seats on the train because your backpack likes to sit by itself. Do any of this shit again and you'll do time.

13) If you were a super hero what powers would you have? I'd like to slide up banisters, fly at the end of my umbrella, jump in and out of chalk drawings and attend tea parties on the ceiling.
She so is a super hero!

14) and what would your hero name be? Mary Poppins

15) and what outfit would you wear? Hat, jacket, skirt, sunny disposition

16) What was your last dream about? A Boston terrier. I think it was symbolic, as I am cheering for the Boston Red Sox in post-season play.

17) What would you do if you won the lottery? Move into a motel while my whole place is renovated. I want exposed brick in the dining room and hardwood floor in the living room and the hall and a whole new bathroom and a whole new kitchen. Then it would be spring, and I'd buy season tickets at Wrigley Field. My nephew would be able to go on his 8th grade class trip to Washington DC and my niece would never again have to worry about how she'll pay for her her college textbooks. Then we'll see what's left. There are some charities that could really use help and my friends in the Keys would be very happy to receive a check, too. (I have given this considerable thought.)

18) Would you like to build/design your own house? I'd be satisfied to just fix up this one.


19) Which form of public transport do you prefer? The train.

21) Can you juggle? I am the least physically coordinated person you will ever meet. So the answer is no.




Sending it out, not getting it back

I'm feeling a isolated these days because both my Best Friend and my Oldest Friend are going through their own stuff and don't have the resources to be there for me.

They don't know each other, have never met, so this is just some sort of unfortunate convergence.

He's been out of work for a year, with few prospects. Part of the problem is that his background is in financial marketing and he's relocated to a city that doesn't have a big financial marketing community. It's as though he decided he wanted to teach surfing on the Great Lakes. It's not impossible for him to find a high-paying job in his wheelhouse in the community where he now lives, but it's unlikely. And at his age, in this economy, making a switch is hard. He's also dealing with problems with his own family and with his in-laws.

She's made some bad choices made way worse by bad luck. She's on her third job since moving to SoCal and she's making considerably less now than she was when she first arrived out west. Her kids have taken turns giving her (big) problems. Her health has been difficult. The cousin she moved 2000 miles to be near has been maddeningly unavailable to help and support her.

I am not unsympathetic to their plights. I just wish they wouldn't ask me how I'm doing, how I'm feeling, what's up with me. Because it's embarrassing to answer those questions honestly and get nothing back.

So for the foreseeable future, it's going to be, "How are you?" and my response will be, "Fine!"

This Halloween, Tails Are Key

My village sponsored a "Green Halloween" (healthy and environmentally friendly) event for the kids in town. I spotted plenty of dragons (tails) and cats (tails) and devils (tails). The most popular non-tail costume seems to be ninja. The well dressed mom wore a cat's ear headband as they accompanied her little trick or treater.

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: Come to My Window
 

Melissa Etheridge is a breast cancer survivor and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please spread the word about early detection.

1) This song is about a woman passionate about love and willing to pursue it, no matter what "they say." Are you fearless when it comes to public opinion? Or do you worry about what "they" think of you? The older I get, the less I care.

2) Melissa's father was a high school teacher. Tell us about a teacher who had an impact on you.
I had an American History teacher in high school who made the past feel relevant. Very theatrical, to keep us all interested. Ahead of the curve in introducing other media (movies like The Candidate). I remember being shocked to learn that he sold ties at Marshall Field's over Christmas break. He worked so hard in his classes! He should make a living wage teaching.

3) Melissa won a Grammy for this song. If you won a major award, where would you display it? My office.

4) Which TV game show do you think you'd do better on -- The Price Is Right or Wheel of Fortune? Wheel of Fortune

5) Are you neat and organized? Ha!

6) When was the last time you went more than a day without washing your hair? When I was in the hospital two years ago. I'm not kidding. It takes losing an internal organ or two to keep me from the shampoo.

7) When you eat Chinese food, do you use chopsticks or

a fork? Fork. I'm hopeless with chopsticks.
 

8) Are you a good cook? Well, I'm a better cook than housekeeper, which is sooooo not saying much.

9) We're having a party in your honor! Would you prefer a costume party, a bowling party or a pool party? Halloween is almost upon us, so I'll go with costume party.



Friday, October 18, 2013

At least he's good looking

I found out Thursday that I will cost me an estimated $670 to repair the damage to the walls in my living room (courtesy of a leaky air conditioner and my cat Reynaldo, who repeatedly pulled down the curtain rods) and my bathroom (shower head replacement gone wrong).

Looking for the bright side here, coming in the front door to see new window treatments will raise my spirits. The curtains that are up there now are old and dirty, but I can't replace or even wash them now because so much damage has been done to the rod I'd never get them back up again. And I can't tell you how icky it is to start the day looking up at a barely functioning shower head surrounded by a white plastic trash bag.

Oh yeah, and my handyman is cute in a scruffy way.


Wednesday, October 16, 2013

WWW.WEDNESDAY

To play along, just answer the following three questions ...

• What are you currently reading? W Is for Wasted by Sue Grafton. In previous "letters," we met orphaned Kinsey's relatives on her mother's side. This time around, we're introduced to the Milhones, dad's side of the family. I'm about 1/3 of the way through, and there's a pervasive sense of melancholy and danger throughout this book. Very little violence but a lot of tension. And a new character, Henry's cat Ed, is a welcome addition to the series.

Taylor snaps Burton in Mexico (1964)
• What did you recently finish reading? Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and The Marriage of the Century. I read this book when it first came out (2010) and stumbled upon it again this week, letting it distract me from all those books in the TBR pile.

Forget Brangelina and Rob/KStew! I grew up on these two larger-than-life characters and their love story continues to fascinate me. Burton was a voracious reader with a photographic memory, a master story teller and an avid journal writer. He was enormously proud when a scholarly magazine asked him to write a book review. Throughout the book, Taylor is shown reading only scripts and the occasional poem given to her by Burton. (Often embarrassed by her lack of formal education, she is charmingly self deprecating when the gaps in her knowledge are exposed, tossing her head back and chirping, "But I'm a STAR!") The irony is that literary Burton died before he could fulfill his dream of writing his autobiography, whereas Taylor published four lightweight tomes in her lifetime, beginning with Nibbles and Me (1946), about her pet chipmunk.

• What do you think you’ll read next? Five Days at Memorial about the Memorial Medical Center in New Orleans and how they coped during the crisis of Katrina. I meant to be read this now, and did in fact start it, but it was too intense for my state of mind just now. I'll return to it in a few weeks.

To see how others responded, click here.



Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Missing You

The government is still in shut down. The House Republicans have allowed a hand full of Tea Partiers to march them into a box canyon and it's hard to feel sorry for them as their poll numbers plummet to historic lows.

As appalling as the GOP's behavior has been, I'm not loving President Obama so much right now, either. He's distant, aloof, seemingly almost disengaged as the Republicans wage war on one another. It's as though it's not enough for Obama to win this round. The Tea Party has to suffer a humiliating loss, as well.

Which is why I'm thinking longingly of JFK.

As JBKO recounted in Historic Conversations with John F. Kennedy, he never lost his empathy. No matter how angry he became with an opponent, he always kept his adversary's situation top of mind. During political negotiations and fights, he kept his public and private faces separate. He could cajole and threaten and berate in private, but in public he was always respectful (if, at times, frosty) so that his enemy could make a graceful exit.

The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved peacefully, without a shot being fired and with nuclear war averted, because while he played hardball with the Soviet leader and gave up nothing behind the scenes, JFK was willing to let the world believe that Krushchev had won an important concession from the mighty US. He knew how important it was for the Kremlin to tell the Russian people that America removed missiles from Turkey as part of a negotiation with Krushchev, even though they were obsolete and would doubtless have been removed that fall anyway.

War hero, Lothario, intellectual ... Kennedy was supremely confident in his masculinity and his abilities, which made games of "¿quien es mas macho?" irrelevant. Those qualities helped the world avoid tragedy.

I hope President Obama puts the full faith and credit of the United States ahead of his own political victory. I worry about another Recession. And while it will undoubtedly be the Tea Party's fault, the President won't be blameless.

My mother's legacy

I've been worried lately. Because worrying about situations upon which I can have no impact is what I do best.

My niece is so happy away at college in Michigan. She's escaped the ties that bound her to family in Chicagoland and has come into her own. Blossomed. She's so proud of the home she shares with her boyfriend, of her job at Culver's, of her good grades and new circle of friends.

The only dark cloud on the horizon is that she feels so limited in her options after graduation. Not because of student debt or the job market. Because of her mother, my kid sister. My niece worries that she has to live somewhere where her parents can find employment.

My niece was very close to her grandmother, my mother. She never went more than a week without visiting Grandma's house. She saw how close her mother and grandmother were, how interdependent. Similarly, my mother and her own mother were very close and both lived their entire lives in the same suburb, just blocks from one another. When I was a toddler, my parents bought my mother's girlhood home from her parents, and that's where my mom was living when she died last year.  My grandmother died without ever having boarded a plane.

But my niece is a more independent, ambitious, and curious soul than her mother, grandmother or greatgrandmother. I'm not sure that consciously choosing a constricted life would make her happy. Instead, it might leave her resentful.

And if she marries her boyfriend, which is her current plan, there's another wrinkle. Unlike her father, whose family is small, scattered and a bit estranged, her boyfriend's family is vast and loving. And nearby where they live now. It's possible -- even likely -- that he will want to be near his own parents, aunts and uncles. So what will they do? Find a city equidistant between families and hope they can find jobs?

I fear that my mother's legacy to her beloved granddaughter is a life full of "what if's." I hope I'm wrong. I'd love to be wrong.



Teaser Tuesday

Here's how to play this meme.

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

From Furious Love: Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and the Marriage of the Century, by Sam Kashner and Nancy Schoenberger. Page 6:

[Mike] Todd lived on chutzpah and hype and bought Elizabeth magnificent gifts, including a blinding 27-carat diamond. He dazzled her with attention.

Missing the best friend I never knew

From Katie, 10/14/2013
"I stood in the storm. When the wind did not blow my way — and it certainly has not I adjusted my sails."

Elizabeth Edwards

I DVR Katie every day and watch it in the evening. Mostly because I like seeing what Katie Couric wears. I can't get over how good she always looks!

Today one of her guests was Cate Edwards, daughter of Elizabeth Edwards, a woman whose life touched mine in profound ways. Cate was on to promote her work during October, Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and her focus on women, like her mother, who live out their lives with incurable breast cancer. And how Elizabeth lived! She was a wonderful writer, a trait that naturally I admire. But even more than her words, her indomitable spirit touched me. Elizabeth was a truth teller. She examined her life and exposed her foibles to the light.

Cate talked about her dad and his fall from grace, about her five year old half sister, about her husband. I was pleased that she seems to be doing so well. I was moved by how affectionately she remembered her mother -- as a whip smart woman that you just couldn't win an argument with. Couric shared the quote that opened this post, and Cate said that is what she will tell her own children (not yet born) about their grandmother.

It made me happy to think of Elizabeth again. If my TBR pile wasn't so deep, I'd revisit her books. I hope the gallant lady is resting in peace.



BTW, I met John Edwards at a fundraiser in 2007. He remains the best looking person I have ever seen in real life. Perfect, virtually unlined skin, blue eyes (and a tie that matched the blue perfectly), hair that you just know smells good. And yet his behavior reveals a soul that's pretty empty. Go figure.

Saturday, October 12, 2013

Sunday Stealing


My Random Randomness Meme, part 2 


What was your first alcoholic drink? A Singapore Sling. We celebrated my 21st at a Polynesian restaurant.


What was your first job? After school, my first job was as a secretary. Back when Gregg shorthand mattered.


What was your first car? My one and only car was a Chevy Impala.


What was your first mobile phone? A horrible black thing that didn't hold a charge.


What is your first proper memory? I remember pressing my hand flat on an ottoman and raising myself up. According to my mom, who remembered that footstool, I must have been about 2.


Who was your first teacher? Mrs. Erler. She had a bouffant and wore pearls! Glamour!


Which fictional character do you wish was real? So many! I'd love to actually know Jo March from Little Women, Kinsey from Sue Grafton's alphabet mysteries, Rae Spellman from the Spellman Files, Melanie from Gone with the Wind ...


Where did you go on your first ride on an airplane? Fort Lauderdale, FL.


Who was your first best friend? The woman who appears often on my blog as My Oldest Friend. We met in Kindergarten (I don't recall but she has a photo to prove it) but really bonded in first grade. Friends to this day. I'm very proud of that.


What was your first detention for? I don't recall my first one. But I did receive a detention for lying about having my period to get out of PE. I had to serve it swimming laps after school. It was a dumb punishment because I really enjoyed having the pool almost to myself and I didn't have to hurry to dress to make my next class. It felt more like a reward, actually.


What’s your strongest sense? Righteous indignation.


Who was your first kiss? David. Sigh. I was so scared that my braces would ruin it for him, but I guess it was fine. He voiced no complaints.


Mary Poppins' pre-dawn London
What was the first film you remember seeing at the cinema? Mary Poppins. I can still remember those big red drapes opening and, amazingly, I saw the rooftops of London. I've been in love with going to the movies ever since.


What’s the largest amount of money you’ve ever won? $2,500 (after taxes) in the Illinois State Lottery


What’s the largest amount of money you’ve spent in one spree? I wouldn't call it a "spree," but I spent $12,000 in a matter of hours planning my mom's funeral last year. It was scary because my mom didn't have life insurance. In retrospect, though, I think it was a blessing in disguise. That bone-chilling terror about the expense distracted me from the horrible reality that she was gone.


If you had a warning label, what would yours say?  This End Up


Have you ever got sweet revenge on anyone? I let God handle that
 

Have you ever been to a live concert? Bruce Springsteen, Barbra Streisand, and (best of all!) Sir Paul McCartney. Some of my happiest hours have been spent at concerts.


Have you ever been to see stand up comedy? Yes. The last one I saw was Kathy Griffin. She was fabulous!


Have you ever needed stitches? Lots of times. Most recently was when I had a pair of moles removed as part of a cancer screening.




Incremental

I really hate my life these days. It occurs to me that I'm the only one who can do anything about this sad state of affairs. And so it's time I got off my fat ass and got started!

My problem -- the reason why I get stuck -- is that I focus so much on the final destination that I forget the journey. I want to redo everything (finances, wardrobe, body, home) so completely that I lose sight of how happy small changes may make me, and that every journey has to begin with a first step.

Look! No blue in sight!
So far: New microwave and new cardigans (that aren't blue; I just recently realized how much blue I wear). It's not a renovated kitchen or a new wardrobe, but it's a start.

The handyman is coming over Thursday morning to talk about repairing my shower and then hanging new curtains for me. I mean, why not? The living room still needs a paint job and I'd love to swap the carpeting for hardwood floors, but I can't afford to do all that right now. Still, I think walking in the front door and seeing new window treatments will make me happy.

I embrace the happy.




Saturday 9


Olivia Newton-John is a breast cancer survivor and October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Please spread the word about early detection.

1) This is a sad song about unrequited love. What's your favorite love song, and is it happy or sad? "You Don't Know Me." It's an incredibly sad song, but I love it. As do many others. It's been sung by everyone from Elvis to Meryl Streep.





2) This song is from the Grease soundtrack. When that movie came out in 1978, the price of a postage stamp was just 15¢. When's the last time you visited the post office? I mailed a package about a week/10 days ago. I love the APC machine because I can do just about everything there without dealing with the uniformly rude postal workers. (I know it's a cliche, but they really are reliably the most unpleasant people!)

3) Not many people know that Olivia's maternal grandfather, Max Born, won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1954. Share something about yourself that we might not have known before this morning. I was a unibrow in high school and spent hours and hours tweezing and plucking. This amazes me now because with time my brows have become sparse and pale.

4) Olivia's father was an officer in MI5, the UK's secret service. Sam's most recent run-in with the authorities had less intrigue or glamor, as it included a policeman pointing out the stop sign she'd somehow missed. Tell us about your most recent encounter with law enforcement. A local cop tucked his business card into the mail slot of one of my neighbors. "Call me right away!!" Yes, he wrote two exclamation marks. I wish I knew what it was about.

5) Olivia is part owner of an exclusive, luxury retreat called Gaia. If you had a day of free access to a heated pool, golf course, tennis court, gym, and day spa, but could only use one, which one would you choose? Spa. Facial, massage, pedi. Makeup tips would be nice, too.

 
6) Are you flirtatious? Yes, it's true. There are men out there with whom I have flirted.

7) Do you more often wear silver, gold, or platinum? Silver. And my birthday is next month, in case you were wondering what to get me ...

8) When you're on the phone, do you usually make the first move toward ending the call? Or do you find it hard to say goodbye? Usually I hate hanging up. Unless it's with my friend from the Keys. He only has a cell, not a landline, and it's kind of shitty and cuts out or drops the call completely and I get frustrated. We call each other back, we get busy signals, we call each other back again ... I'm always tempted to just call it quits when that happens.

9) Would you rather be smarter, richer, or more attractive than you are right now? Richer




Friday, October 11, 2013

It was one of those very good days

Yesterday I skipped my trip to the health club and took a walk at lunchtime. It was 72º in the sun, and I wanted to take in the flowers and leaves and fountains again while I still can. So I walked up Michigan Avenue and then cut through Millennium Park on the way back.

I dearly love this city.

It's pretty over the holidays, with snow and ice on the branches and lots of lights and happy people carrying shopping bags. I look forward to that. But this is good, too, and it won't be with us much longer.

By the way, I realize I haven't seen Puppet Bike once this year! Damn!