Bruce & Me & Wrigley Field

I'm in! My friend Mindy got us tickets. Not nosebleed,  but not on the field, either. But that's OK. There will be jumbotron screens. And The Boss, God bless him, is not my knight, and therefore some expense must be spared. So in all, this is good news. Very good news.

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: 'Til I Hear It From You

1. If someone, that you trusted, told you that your lover was cheating, would you believe them or not? There are so many variables here! I have been involved with a man I'd never believe it of, no matter who told me, and a man I'd know it was true about, no matter who told me.

2. What is something that you are disappointed about right now? Myself. I can be very lazy.

3. Jonathan Frid, who was the original Barnabas Collins on Dark Shadows from 1967-1971, passed away in Canada at the age of 87. Who is your favorite vampire? Barnabas, of course! I ran home from school every day to catch up with him. The Dark Shadows/Where the Action Is combo was the best hour of TV EVER! (BTW, Where the Action Is was a Dick Clark show, and we just lost him this week. Coincidence? Not with Barnabas involved!)

4. Should there be age limits on social networking sites such as facebook? Are you implying I'm too old for Facebook?

5. Tell us about your pets. Do you have one that you wish would run away? Three cats: Joey is a big old loving tub of guts. Charlotte is a lively and feminine little lady. And then there's Reynaldo -- the worst cat ever. I don't wish he would run away. I do wish he'd finally, FINALLY chill out.

6. Do you ever have a hard time with morals? I think at times, every one does.

7. Did you make 'a plan' the first time you made love or did it just happen? A certain amount of planning went into it -- I mean, contraception and privacy weren't standard issue in those days.

8. Do you agree that fame is lousy or would you love to give it a try? Why? I'd rather be rich. I can't imagine having my every move scrutinized, published and judged. I remember a most unflattering photo of Maria Shriver picking her teeth in her rearview mirror when she clearly thought she was alone. I thought, "God, how can anyone live that way?"

9. Do you believe in forever, as in 'love forever'? Yes. I still love every man I've ever loved. Relationships become untenable, but love doesn't die.

Trifecta

This weekend's challenge: A re-telling of the classic Goldilocks and the Three Bears story.

With Apologies to Robert and Danny and Gary

Oh, he was messed up all right. Here he was, predawn, wandering through Beverly Hills, and he had no idea why. Or how he got the beer in his hand. He remembered puffing some white widow before going to the club. Then he had a Courvoisier courtesy of his favorite bartender. A fan who remembered him from The Fillmore Family palmed him a pill of some sort, which he downed with Schnapps’. He needed a smoke and went outside. He bummed a cig from a stranger who knew him as “Buddy” and … somehow ended up on Burton Way with a light beer in his hand. He took a swig and wondered how people drank this shit.

Years ago, when he still had a career, he lived on Burton. Maybe that’s why he’s here. Maybe it’s time to go home and get some sleep.

When he lived here with his mom, he was the most popular child in America. TV Guide called him, “The Kid Who Saved NBC.” Tow-headed, smart aleck Buddy Fillmore, the precocious middle son of The Fillmore Family. Then his voice changed, his hair got darker and he sprouted up like a weed. He was 16 when the show was cancelled. Drinking went from his hobby to his avocation.

Somehow it didn’t make sense to finish high school. Not when you can have a gig with an entertainment news show, interviewing celebs at red carpet events. But that ended when leered down a starlet’s dress and copped an on-camera feel.

Then he did midmornings on local radio for a while. He liked that. Cigarettes and puberty gave his voice a great sound. But there was that controversy when he made fun of a sponsor during a live read and she sued. Hey! Who knew that Lebanese pastry chefs, not to mention the GLBT community, would be so sensitive?

So right now he was, as they say, “between engagements.” He felt sick. It would be nice to lie down. Good thing he was nearly home in his luxury apartment on Burton Way.

What they hey … Why doesn’t the key work in the front door? Oh, looks like he needs a key card of some sort now. Wonder when that changed. Was it like this in the morning? He couldn’t remember this morning. He really needed to lie down.

Fortunately he knew how to get in without a key. When his mother tried to get him to rehab the first time, she used “tough love” and locked him out of their Beverly Hills apartment. The one he paid for with the $100,000 per episode he made as that rascal, Buddy.

So with a jaunty wave at the lobby security camera, he went around to the back of the building. Since this would require both hands, he finished the light beer in greedy gulps, belched, and proceeded to remove the slats of one of the laundry room’s louver windows. He climbed in, bounced off a dryer and landed on the cement floor. He couldn’t stop laughing. Until he threw up in the wastebasket. Or maybe near the wastebasket.

Now how to get into his apartment? He stumbled into the hall and pressed his cheek against the cool wood of the first door he came upon. He knocked but there was no answer. Maybe Mom isn’t home. He tried his key and it didn’t work! Shit, he really needed to lie down. He went back to the laundry room, opened a supply cabinet and got out the janitor’s toolbox. You’d think the old fool would have moved it after the stink his mom made about him using the flat blade screwdriver. “Breaking and entering,” she called it. His mom always made such a big hairy deal out of everything.

It was so easy to get in with the screwdriver. “Mommy?” he whispered in to the darkness. He didn’t want to startle her. He’d just lie down on the sofa and catch a few winks. Except the sofa was different somehow. So soft! So many stupid pillows! What was his mother thinking, changing the sofa like this?

He stumbled up the short hall and hung a right. The master bedroom. His bedroom. Only fitting because he got the big bucks. He threw himself across the bed and lay face down a moment but the mattress was uncomfortably firm. What all had his mom changed since this morning?

He felt his way down the hall to the smaller bedroom. He burrowed under the comforter and pulled the pillow to him. Ah, just right! The last thought before he closed his eyes: Why does my mom have a Kung Fu Panda pillowcase?

The next day the grainy security camera footage and his mug shot made their way across the Internet and cable news: “Former sitcom star found unconscious in child’s bedroom.”

Forlorn

Both my best friend and I are thinking about changing jobs. And this makes me sad because if I make the move I'm considering it will be hard to ever see him again. If he makes the one he's considering it will be impossible.

We each have to do what we have to do. I understand all of it.

But the thing of it is, some of my most relaxed and genuine moments have been with him. It makes me sad to think they may be coming to an end.

THURSDAY THIRTEEN #167

THIRTEEN QUOTES FROM MARILYN MONROE

I have been watching Smash, the NBC show about the launch of a Broadway musical about Marilyn. One of the things that fascinates me about it is how it seems Marilyn -- a woman who died 50 years ago -- has never really left us. So this week's TT is a tribute to that beloved doomed icon. Her voice is so familiar to me, I can almost hear her say some of these things.

1)  “Ever notice how 'What the hell' is always the right answer?”

2)  “Give a girl the right shoes, and she can conquer the world.”

3) “A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left.”
 
4) “I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”

5)  “I am good, but not an angel. I do sin, but I am not the devil. I am just a small girl in a big world trying to find someone to love.”

6)  “If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything.”

7)  “If you're gonna be two-faced at least make one of them pretty.”
 
8) “Beneath the makeup and behind the smile I am just a girl who wishes for the world.”

9)  “I don't mind living in a man's world, as long as I can be a woman in it.”

10)  “Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

11) “We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”

12)  “It's often just enough to be with someone. I don't need to touch them. Not even talk. A feeling passes between you both. You're not alone.”

13)  “Success makes so many people hate you. I wish it wasn't that way. It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.”

Thanks to Good Reads for the quotes.

For more information about the Thursday Thirteen,

or to play yourself, click here.

WWW.WEDNESDAY

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading? Mrs. Kennedy and Me by Clint Hill. You have seen Mr. Hill. He's the Secret Service agent who climbed on the back of the Presidential limo after the President was shot in Dallas. Now 80, he has finally written his memoir of four years on the Kennedy detail. While he enjoyed traveling to Europe and the Cape with Jackie, there's a pervasive sadness to his story because he so clearly feels he let her, the President and the nation down by not reaching the car a second or two earlier and taking that last bullet himself. His heroism is poignant and his service is important to remember now, when misdeeds by today's Secret Service are under so much scrutiny and receiving so much bad press.

 
• What did you recently finish reading? When I went on vacation, I brought along The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz. It's Book #1 in a detective series narrated by Isabel Spellman, the middle daughter in a delightfully dysfunctional family of San Francisco PIs. I picked it up because Kwizgiver
is such a fan, and she didn't steer me wrong. It's low on violence and actually there's not much real sleuthing that goes on (the nearest thing to a real mystery isn't even introduced until past the halfway mark), but it's charming and very, very funny.

• What do you think you’ll read next? I don't know for sure, but maybe Found by Tatum O'Neal. She's been through so much, and so publicly. I'm curious about how she's doing -- as an actress, as a daughter and as a mother.

I Want Wednesday

I want LUNCH! Back-to-back meetings have left me starving!

Fascination Films

I got this idea from The Girl with the White Parasol. She brought up the topic of Fascination Films, defined as "films I don't consider great, hell maybe I don't even like them all that much, but they fascinate me."

Shenandoah (1965). James Stewart stars as Charlie Anderson, widower and patriarch of a Virginia family, dedicated to keeping his clan out of the Civil War.

I don't like Westerns as a rule. But every time this one turns up, I watch it. I have seen it so many times, in fact, that no matter what scene I find on TV, I can pick up the movie immediately and follow it through to the end. Yet I'm not sure I like Shenandoah.

As Charlie Anderson, Stewart is completely authentic. He's so good at being the center of this family that it takes you a while to realize what a hollow moral center the movie has. We're talking about the Civil War here: slavery and secession. How is a man heroic for not taking a stand on that?

Since the movie was made in the mid 1960s, I am guessing that it may have been crafted as a well-meaning argument for ending our involvement in Vietnam. But viewed on its own merits, listening to Charlie Anderson discussing the war with his family, we don't hear him speak against it because violence is wrong. We hear him rail against it because "it doesn't concern us." That may be a viable argument if you're discussing whether America should be trying to impose our way of life on an unwilling foreign land. It's not if the question on the table is whether your own neighbors, in your own country, should be allowed to buy and sell fellow human beings. The more often I see the movie, the more this isolation disturbs me.

And while the women (Katharine Ross and Rosemary Forsyth) in the cast are almost as genuine as Stewart and can be quite moving, the men are almost painful to watch. Doug McClure, Patrick Wayne, Denver Pyle ... They seem to have wandered over from the set of McClure's TV show, The Virginian. The Technicolor sets are definitely TV soundstage quality, as well.

And yet, and yet ... if Shenandoah came on right now, I'd watch it again. Stewart/Charlie has a scene at the end where he talks to his late wife, Martha, at her grave. He brings her up to date regarding their kids and their daughter-in-law, Ann ("You didn't know Ann, did you? Well, you'd like her, Martha.") and their grandchild and I mist up a bit. Maybe because the dialog is so sincere when he rails that only ones benefiting from the war are the undertakers, I can willfully ignore that he's talking about a sad but necessary conflict that brought about the emancipation of slaves and instead pretend he was talking about Vietnam or Iraq.

Now go visit The Girl with the White Parasol and read her take on Fascination Films.

A new photo!

I love it when I discover a photo of my idol, JBKO, that I've never seen before. Judging by her hair and the print of her dress, by the fact that she doesn't seem very pregnant, and that she's not yet the center of everyone's attention, I'd put this at late 1959/early 1960. My guess is that it's fall/winter in Palm Beach, FL, and everyone is assembled at the Kennedy Palm Beach home listening to her then-Senator husband.

I keep hoping if I look hard enough and often enough, I'll unlock her secret and be able to be more like her. I especially like shots like this when she doesn't seem to know she's being observed. I know that's kinda creepy when you remember this woman -- unlike, say, Madonna -- never courted the spotlight. But there you go.

Four stores!

All I needed was a simple silver chain. Just something to hang the new charms -- Bruton Parish church and a tag for Colonial Williamsburg. I figured I'd just buy a necklace, slip off the existing pendant and replace it with mine.

Claire's Boutique -- The clasp fell apart in my hand as I tried to remove the pendant

Old Navy -- Balls on the clasp make it impossible to remove the store-bought pendant

Sears -- The line at checkout was so long I thought I'd scream and so I left the one I'd chosen behind

Nordstrom Rack -- At last! (Cue the heavenly choir.) I had to break the crappy CZ pendant to replace it with my sweet old church, but that's ok because I had no intention of wearing it, anyway. (It was a gaudy little star.) Don't let the Nordstrom name mislead you. It was just over $21 with tax, more expensive certainly than Claire's but on par with Sears. And nicer. And I got out of the store before my hair went gray and my teeth fell out. (Geez, Sears! I tried to support you because you're an iconic American retailer, but yesterday sucked.)


I am happy. I love my souvenir. My talisman! When I finger it, I'll go back to the happy place.

Trifecta

This week's challenge: Check out the third definition of observe (below), and use the word exactly as it appears, in no less than 33 and no more than 333 words.

3: to celebrate or solemnize (as a ceremony or festival) in a customary or accepted way

The old man kissed her mother’s cheek and murmured something. Then he turned to Sherry, who stepped back and laced her fingers behind her back to discourage his touch.

“Sherry!” He said loudly, looking just past her as if making sure the whole family could see him and his adult granddaughter finally speak again. “Why is it we only see one another at times like this?”

She nearly snapped, “Because I hate you,” but one look at her mother’s red-rimmed eyes and Sherry chose the path of least resistance and said nothing.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said absurdly, as though he was somehow the host of this funeral and had invited her. “It’s important to observe events like Ted’s passing with the proper respect.”

She stomped on her own foot to help her hold her tongue and managed a slight nod. Why was it that, when surrounded by family, she had to fight reverting to her rebellious teenage self?

Satisfied that everyone had seen the patriarch enjoy a respectful moment with his troubled and troublesome granddaughter, the old man finally moved on, and Sherry could finally exhale.

Her husband appeared beside her and touched her shoulder. “You handled that like a champ,” he said, steering her away from the family’s earshot.

“That twisted old fuck!” she hissed, unable to hold back any longer. “So it’s ‘important to observe events like Ted’s passing,’ is it? I think it would have been nice for him to show affection for Ted in life, when it mattered. I know no one likes to be reminded of their mortality, and it was hard to see Ted at the end. But Ted was his son! How dare he play  powerful head of the family when he didn’t even have the guts to come to the hospice to say goodbye to his own child? I was there. Every damn day.”

“That’s why you were such a spectacular niece,” her husband said, stroking her hair.

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing: The TV Show Meme

Before reading the questions: Pick 5 TV Shows you like. They can be past or present. Hint: pick shows that you are REALLY into. Hey! no peaking at the questions! List them:

1. Mad Men

2. That Girl!

3. Moonlighting

4. Kate & Allie

5. Sex and the City


1. Who is your favorite character in 2? Ann Marie, our heroine

2. Who is your least favorite character in 1? Horrible Harry Crane, the media buyer

3. What’s your favorite episode of 4? The one where Kate sticks up for Allie at the risk of losing her job. At first Allie appreciates it, but as she endures hearing Kate tell the story over and over again, she resents it and loses patience. This resonates with me because I suffer from a bit of "Kate-itis."

4. What is your favorite season of 5? The ones where Miranda is falling in love with Steve the Bartender.

5. What’s your favorite relationship in 3? Dave (sigh) and Maddie

6. Who is your anti-relationship in 2? I don't understand the question, but I guess Don's relationship with Ann crusty old father would count as an "anti-relationship."

7. How long have you watched 1? Since the beginning

8. How did you become interested in 3? I fell madly in love with David Addison/Bruce Willis. (And remain so.)

9. Who is your favorite actor in 4? Susan St. James as Kate

10. Which show do you prefer 1, 2, or 5? #1

11. Which show have you seen more episodes of 1 or 3? Wow, I don't know. Both shows have/had snakebit production schedules and took/take unexpected hiatuses.

12. If you could be anyone from 4, who would you be? Kate

13. How would you kill off any character in 5? I'd let Steve's mother die a peaceful, natural death. She is suffering from dementia and I think it would be a blessing. 

 

14. Would a 3/4 crossover work? It would be hard, because the Blue Moon Detective Agency is in LA and Kate and Allie are New Yorkers.
 
15. Pair two characters in 1 that would make an unlikely, but strangely okay couple. Peggy and the new copywriter, Michael Ginsburg. (I'm betting this happens before the season is out.)
 

16. Overall, which show has the better cast, 3 or 5? I'd have to say 3 because of Agnes DiPesto, the receptionist who answers the phone in rhymes.

Shopping in Ye Olde Colonial Williamsburg

Oh, I spent too much on stuff while vacationing! But the bills haven't arrived yet, so why let it bring me down? Instead, let's enjoy a review:

• Peacock pearl earrings for my niece. Purchased at The Golden Ball, the Colonial Williamsburg Silversmith. She just got her ears pierced, and I think she'll appreciate the delicate blue/purple color.


• Dried lavender for my mom from The Colonial Garden. It was hard to get the stalks home and in tact, but my checked bag smells lovely!


• The official compilation of "scary tales from Colonial Williamsburg" for my nephew.

• Spiced chocolate sticks for my coworkers. Everyone on my team gets one, even the chocolate-covered spider. (Maybe it will sweeten her up!)

Oh, and I got more gifties for friends but enough of that yammering. Let's look at what I got ME!

Terrific little black clogs from a store called Shoester. I had just noticed at dinner the night before that I'd worn down the heels on my black/white mary janes and the very next day I fell in love with these. They're built like Birkenstocks, so they will be good for my feet, but let's face it, they're more attractive. The manufacturer is called Think! I found I could have gotten them for less from their website but you know, when I wouldn't have. I never, ever would have spent this much on a pair of shoes without trying them on first. The staff at Shoester understood this and was very helpful.

A charm representing my favorite Colonial Williamsburg building, Bruton Parish. This Episcopal church is a very serene old girl, surrounded by gardens and their own little cemetery. They have been holding services for more than 300 years. When I wear this on a chain around my neck, it will help me send my mind back to this specific happy place.

I learned something new ... or, perhaps, old

Behold the Colonial Williamsburg Printing Office and Post Office. Watching all the work that went into printing a newspaper back in the olden days was fascinating. Those dark round balls are rocks, wrapped in cloth and covered in leather. Mr. Printer Man dips them in ink and then rubs them evenly over the plates. Then he presses the paper onto the plate.

He told us that no one threw a newspaper out in those days, and certainly didn't share them. If you were lucky enough or wealthy enough to get a paper in the old days, you saved it and kept in your own archive. Books were even more labor intensive and therefore more rare.

Thomas Jefferson was a great lover of books and collected as many as he could find. When his family home burned down in the 1770s, it was the loss of books that upset him most. He set about amassing a new collection of books and was so proud of them, attached so much value to them, that he took the unusual step of getting two separate insurance policies -- one for Monticello and its contents, one solely for his personal library.

Saturday 9

Saturday 9: Ain't Too Proud to Beg

1. What was the last thing that you begged for? For my cat Reynaldo to knock it off, to quit with the meowing and the destruction. To just please, be a little human and give me a break. Then I realized a new that he's not human, governed only by feline logic, and know resistance is futile.

2. Have you ever lost a best friend after a fight? It wasn't a "fight," really. But in mid-February, after knowing one another for decades, Kathy's transgressions finally reached critical mass.

3. When was the last time you just wanted to be invisible? On a plane, soon after the New Year 2012 dawned. I was awakened by the incredibly loud snores of a fellow traveler. Then I realized, that noisy snorer was me.

4. Which room of your home tends to be the messiest? Right now, every room but the den. Because the door is closed and I never go in it. The rest of the place is an explosion of shoes and laundry and souvenirs (I just got back from vacation).

5. You are to be locked in a room forever with a celebrity. You get to choose. Who do you pick? I have two different choices, depending on my mood. For passion, Bruce. The Boss. A fine figure of an AARP member and a sensitive and smart artist/social commentator. For fun, Bill Clinton. I have always been impressed by his expansive intellect and amused by his joie de vivre. One thing for sure, no matter which "roomie" I got, I wouldn't be bored. (Here's something to tip the scales in Bill's favor -- at some point the Secret Service would come looking for him and get us out of that locked room.)

6. Has someone ever left another person to be with you? No.

7. What’s been kind of a drag for you lately? Family. My kid sister is playing up the martyrdom thing again and it makes me tired. (What? You haven't heard of my kid sister? She's a lunch mom who works two hours/day, nine months/year and has only one child -- a 12 year old -- at home, yet she's without a doubt the busiest, most beleaguered woman in the United States!)

8. How are you different from your (current or most recent) significant other? He smoked and was, at his most open spiritually, agnostic.

9. What is the most perverted thing someone has ever said to you? "Do you ever wonder how it feels to have a man's tongue in your ear?" I was a school girl and he was a relative. It was only the sad beginning of his decades-long harassment.

No good deed goes unpunished

I tried to get a little bit of incremental cardio in each day of my vacation. Two days I spent some time on the exercise cycle, but it occurred to me that I can see the inside of a health club every day. So then I took a long stroll on the hiking trail and, on my last day, I swam laps in the indoor pool.

And got an itchy chlorine rash on my legs for the trouble. Spa time is supposed to leave my skin looking happy, not angry and red!

I should have stayed on the trail! It was so green and pretty. Or maybe I should have just skipped the exercise altogether and had a cocktail. I'm still such a big, fat moo-cow that I get discouraged about the exercise, anyway.

My home away from home

I stayed in one of the rooms in the Chiswell-Bucktrout House. Upstairs, far right. It was charming! And much quieter than I thought it would be. After all, at least three of the nine rooms had tenants. We each had our own bathroom and our own TV, so I expected to hear my neighbors. Except for the whirr someone's hairdryer while I was on our shared staircase, I didn't hear a thing.

There were things about staying in a Colonial House that remind you that you're roughing it a bit, at least compared to the luxe accommodations at the Williamsburg Inn. It was rather dark in the shower, but that's because indoor plumbing was placed where a walk-in closest once was and the shape of the room made illuminating both the area over the sink and in the tub difficult. The dramatic pitch of the roof made me knock my head a couple of times. But for me, this all reinforced the atmosphere.

I did have to call the front desk once about the thermostat. First we couldn't get the ac to work in my room (it was in the mid 70s during the day on Monday and Tuesday so the room got warm), then we couldn't regulate it when the mercury outside dropped into the 40ºs overnight on Wednesday. You might assume this was because the building is so old, but that wasn't it. It was a brand-new Trane thermostat -- just installed -- and no one in maintenance had yet been shown how to use it! Oh well, it was nothing that couldn't be remedied by either opening the window or adding a blanket, as the case may be. You know, old school.

How cool is this?

The performers are doing the "Pyramus and Thisbe" thing from Midsummer's Night Dream on a very important spot in American theatrical history.

Trifecta

For this weekend's challenge, write a letter of apology in exactly 33 words. Addresses, salutations, closings, etc., do not count in the 33 words. 

Dear Beth,

I’m sorry I played with Daddy’s softball bat when I know I’m not allowed to. I’m also sorry I hit you in the head. I was aiming for your stomach, but you ducked.

Your sister,

Tess

The part of vacation I don't like

My living room is an explosion of stuff -- a week's worth of newspapers,* laundry, souvenirs, suitcases ... I'd much rather download my photos and share tales of my trip back to the 1770s, but I think I'm going to be a grown up and do a little housework first.

*Thank you, Chicago Tribune, for ignoring my vacation stop request.

Must. Stop. Eating.

Arrived here in Williamsburg a little before noon, just in time to check in to my perfectly adorable little room, and then go to lunch. I had chicken pot pye (as they spelled it back in the day) and this absolutely terrific peanut soup and a frosty lime rum punch. Then I toured one of the old buildings -- an 18th century coffee house (as opposed to tavern) which once played host to George Washington -- and got my gorgeous new spring pedicure (OPI La-Paz-itively Hot). I did 25 minutes of cardio before going to change for dinner.

And, God help me, did I ever have dinner! Scallops wrapped in bacon, sorbet to cleanse my pallet, followed by seared sea bass and a praline/cinnamon concoction for dessert. The meal was really too expensive and I should be ashamed of myself, but I'm not. I even enjoyed listening to the easy-listening tinkling of the ivories that accompanied my meal in The Regency Room, the resort's high-end restaurant. I don't think I can do much more tonight than collapse on my adorable little four-poster canopy dead and sink into a food coma.

Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. But you know what? If it's not, I won't be too blue. After all, this ol' Gal is on vacation!

Her new young man

Met my niece's boyfriend! Jason is a townie, 26 or 27 to her 20, and an employee of the railroad. He's chatty, once you get him talking, and very good to my niece. It was cute, the way she hung on to his fingers.

My mom looks very good! She didn't join us for brunch, but I guess that would be a lot to expect from an old girl who very nearly died just three weeks ago. She gets dressed, moves around her house (a 4BR ranch), takes care of her cat, does her dishes. I don't believe she's been downstairs to do laundry yet, but you know what? So what!

My nephew was a little weird, a little distant with me. But he's 12, and very devoted to his mom, my kid sister, who remains mad at me for some reason. So I suspect he felt he was being loyal to his mother. Only I don't know what sin I committed this time. Perhaps my sister is upset that the unseasonable spring heat wave is over and she blames me. At any rate, I wasn't even invited to this little soiree until 10:00 this morning.

Oh well, I'm glad I got to see everyone. Even my sister. I insist on being classy because my mother deserves that at this stage.

Now, on to preparing for my trip tomorrow!

It's Easter!

Enjoy this moment of spiritual rebirth. No matter what has come before, let's concentrate on the possibilities that are in front of us.

Remember, God promises that the rest of your life can be the best of your life!

Sunday Stealing

Sunday Stealing: The OC 25 Meme

1. What is your origin of your first name? What about any nicknames? Since my name is The Gal Herself, "the" is an article that denotes specificity. For example, I am The Gal Herself, not A Gal Herself. While I believe there is a similar article in most languages, "the" is English.
 
2. Have you any claims to fame? Not really. And after watching the pain and adversity suffered so publicly by Whitney Houston, Amy Winehouse, etc., I'm not sorry I'm just an average, anonymous ol' gal.

3. If you were famous, how would you introduce yourself to someone who had never heard of you? "Hello, I'm The Gal Herself."

4. Which of your country's achievements do you hold in highest regard? Our judicial system. Yeah, I know. We can look at well-known cases like Casey Anthony, OJ Simpson and, right now, Trayvon Martin and feel outrage and heartbreak. But we do see them, while in other countries they might never see the light of day. And we do have checks and balances. It's a very wise system we have been given.

5. As a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? A teacher or a nurse.

6. What was your most prized possession as a child? Do you still have it? My Lassie Dog. And yes, I still have her up in my closet.

7. What would you change about yourself, if you could? My weight!

8. What are you obsessed with? The 1960s. You know, the Beatles, the Kennedys, Mad Men ...

9. What is your greatest achievement so far, or the high point of your career? I have won some awards.

10. When/where were you happiest? In my mid 30s. I was in great shape, hitting my stride professionally, and in love.

11. And the lowest point in your life thus far? Oh, my. There have been a few. Since it's Easter Sunday, I'd rather focus on the fact that I came out of those bad times.
12. What was the best decision you ever made? Taking money out of my 401(k) to buy this condo. While property values have plummeted, at least I get a nice tax refund. I suspect if I'd let it all ride in the stock market I'd be very blue.

13. If you have any body modifications, which was most painful, or which do you regret the most? If you haven't got any, do you have any planned, or would you ever consider getting any? Huh?

14. What is the most idiotic thing you have ever done while intoxicated? Oh, good goobies! We could take a tour through Lincoln Park and visit all the public places where I threw up. Fortunately I've learned when to say when.

15. What is your favorite joke? I picked this up from another meme-r last time this question came up. Sorry I don't remember which one, because this is a great joke and I'd love to give credit where credit is so richly deserved: A woman races into the dry cleaner shop, breathlessly places a blouse on the counter and says, "I need this in an hour." The startled cleaner asks, "Come again?" "No, just gravy."
16. What is the coolest/most impressive thing you own? Oh, hell, I don't know.

17. When did you last cry, and why? I don't remember. I'm sorry. I feel like I'm being a dreadful disappointment, answer-wise, this morning.

18. What's the best piece of advice you've ever had? "When dealing with bosses, don't listen to what they say, watch what they do."

19. Similarly, what's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for you? I really appreciated how attentive people were when I was recuperating from surgery last fall.

20. Have you any vices? Do carbs count?

21. Do you regret anything? Regrets? I've had a few. But then again, too few to mention.

22. What is the best invention ever? The wheel.

23. How would you describe your relationship with your family? I have a strong relationship with the family I chose. The one I was born into? Eh.

24. Who is your biggest inspiration? I have many heroes and heroines. Not the least of whom is my big old cat, Joey. He is unfailingly gentle and loving, and consequently, generally pretty happy. I wish I could be more like him!

25. What are you going to do when you've finished Sunday Stealing? Maybe church. Definitely going to visit my mom.