To all of my dear fellow bloggers,
Just a note to let you know that I haven't fallen off the face of the earth.
This has been a whirlwind of a week, and I have barely had time to catch a breath, let alone have some quiet time to sit and write the post that's been in my head for several weeks.
I usually go through a very mild "depression" after Christmas is over...I am one of those people who gets a real kick out of decorating, visiting, driving around looking at Christmas lights, listening to Christmas music 24/7...well, you get the idea. I do go a little overboard. I am fortunate enough to still have the ability to feel that "Christmas spirit" the way I did as a child. No, not all day, every day...but every once in a while, it sneaks up on me, and I feel such joy. It's almost addicting.
So here I am, on New Year's Eve, feeling the "blues" once again. It's as though one of my very dearest friends has come to visit for a month, and warmed my heart during their whole stay. This friend brought light into my life, gave me moments of peaceful pleasure, and brought melancholy tears to my face as well. But now my dear friend has to pack up and leave, not to be seen again until after Thanksgiving, 2007. And I will miss this friend dearly. Tomorrow I will help my friend start packing, and I will remind them how very much their visit has meant to me, this year and every year.
I will be back tomorrow with a post about another very dear person who touched my life...my dad.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
The Best Memory
Ten Christmases ago, I spent my first holiday season as a single mom in my new home. It was small and charming, but just perfect for me and my two kids, who were 8 and 5 at the time.
I know that the lie of “Santa Claus” is something that can make certain people cringe, but I admit it…I had my kids reeled in hook, line and sinker that the old, chubby guy came down the fireplace chimney every year. He was a great bargaining tool once Labor Day was over: “You’re gonna get coal in your stocking from Santa if you continue to fight like that!!!” Or, “You’d better do your homework, or Santa’s gonna tell Rudolph not to slow down when he flies over our house!” Thankfully, I didn’t have to use these threats often, as the sheer joy of the season would usually promote a sense of compliance and an attitude of easy-going-ness within my kids that was unexplainable.
That year I went a little overboard with my credit card. I was feeling a little displaced, and I wanted to make sure that my kids had a wonderful holiday despite our family circumstances. Once I put my kids to bed on Christmas Eve and was sure that they were asleep, I began to take out the gifts I had bought them “from Santa”, and place them under the tree. There was barely one inch of our tiny living room that wasn’t covered with presents! What couldn’t fit under the tree ended up on the couch or leaning against the wall. Presents were everywhere, and I began to get depressed thinking about the bills that would show up in January.
Since we had gone to bed late the night before, my kids slept in on Christmas morning. By about 10am, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I called upstairs with enthusiasm to tell them that Santa had been there while they slept! I heard their little feet hit the floor as both of them jumped out of bed and came running down the staircase, which ran along the side of the living room. About halfway down the steps, where the living room first came into full view, they stopped dead in their tracks and gasped; their mouths hung wide open.
“DYLAN!! WE MUST’VE BEEN REALLY GOOD THIS YEAR!!!” my daughter excitedly exclaimed.
Yes, my sweet angels, you were.
May you all have the healthiest and happiest of holidays, and may God bless you and yours in the coming new year.
I know that the lie of “Santa Claus” is something that can make certain people cringe, but I admit it…I had my kids reeled in hook, line and sinker that the old, chubby guy came down the fireplace chimney every year. He was a great bargaining tool once Labor Day was over: “You’re gonna get coal in your stocking from Santa if you continue to fight like that!!!” Or, “You’d better do your homework, or Santa’s gonna tell Rudolph not to slow down when he flies over our house!” Thankfully, I didn’t have to use these threats often, as the sheer joy of the season would usually promote a sense of compliance and an attitude of easy-going-ness within my kids that was unexplainable.
That year I went a little overboard with my credit card. I was feeling a little displaced, and I wanted to make sure that my kids had a wonderful holiday despite our family circumstances. Once I put my kids to bed on Christmas Eve and was sure that they were asleep, I began to take out the gifts I had bought them “from Santa”, and place them under the tree. There was barely one inch of our tiny living room that wasn’t covered with presents! What couldn’t fit under the tree ended up on the couch or leaning against the wall. Presents were everywhere, and I began to get depressed thinking about the bills that would show up in January.
Since we had gone to bed late the night before, my kids slept in on Christmas morning. By about 10am, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I called upstairs with enthusiasm to tell them that Santa had been there while they slept! I heard their little feet hit the floor as both of them jumped out of bed and came running down the staircase, which ran along the side of the living room. About halfway down the steps, where the living room first came into full view, they stopped dead in their tracks and gasped; their mouths hung wide open.
“DYLAN!! WE MUST’VE BEEN REALLY GOOD THIS YEAR!!!” my daughter excitedly exclaimed.
Yes, my sweet angels, you were.
May you all have the healthiest and happiest of holidays, and may God bless you and yours in the coming new year.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Of Honesty and Integrity
As we all try to traverse through this journey called life, we invariably come to crossroads in our path where we have to make decisions. Sometimes these decisions seem small and insignificant, such as “Should I go for the caffeine, or stick with the decaf?” As unimportant as that choice may seem, choosing the caffeine could have serious consequences such as heart palpitations or an inability to fall asleep. However, a decision such as this rarely affects anyone else other than the person making it. It is the larger, more significant choices in life that usually create a ripple effect, the choices that may impinge on other people…and as I age, I find that selfish decision-making, unfortunately, has become an acceptable part of society. It seems as if people are no longer concerned with how other people are going to react to their decisions, as long as they themselves are getting what they want—quite possibly at the expense of someone else’s feelings or even the quality of their life. It also seems that people have forgotten what the word “integrity” means: the quality of possessing and steadfastly adhering to high moral principles or professional standard. Sadly, integrity has become nothing more than a dinosaur facing extinction: an Ice Age of narcissism covering it and leaving nothing behind but the fossilized remains of a more innocent, honest generation gone by.
One public example of this was the recent fiasco involving OJ Simpson, and the release of his book called, “If I Did It”—and the subsequent TV special that was to coincide with this release. When I first heard of this implausible concept, my mouth fell open, and I was certain that this was the end of humanity as we knew it. I couldn’t conceive that any human being with a soul could make a decision to pay this man even one dollar to write a book so repulsive and offensive. Everyone involved with this debacle made unbelievably narcissistic, self-serving decisions—all for the sake of the almighty dollar. Where was the concern for the Brown family? Hadn’t they been through enough? And most importantly…where was this man’s concern for his own children? Irregardless of how he felt about Nicole Brown Simpson, she was their mother. It wasn’t enough that he made a horrific, irreversible decision that ruined his children’s lives years ago…now, because of his lust for money, he decided to rub salt on their wounds as well. I personally signed petitions and wrote to whomever I could to put a stop to this horrifying event—and the thousands of us who made the decision to take the time to voice our opinions about it thankfully won. It made me feel as if all of humanity was not “lost”; that there was still some power in making the “right” choices.
Over the last few years, I have had to deal with certain individuals who have put so much emphasis on power and money, that they have forgotten how to deal with living, breathing human beings. They have no respect for others’ feelings; they trample whomever “gets in their way” with nary a thought or a concern for the outcome of their actions. They honestly don’t care what other people think—as long as they are instantly gratified and feel that they have gotten what they believe that they wanted. They lie, they cheat, they steal…it doesn’t matter, because the only thing that’s important to them is what they think they need at that moment. The sad part about all of this is that these certain individuals are still not happy. They constantly strive for the ultimate prize: the gold ring of endless elation that they believe will only be attained by fulfilling their every desire and whim immediately, if not sooner. They’re on the "Train to Nowhere", thinking that each new station is where they want to get off until they actually get to that destination. At that point, they realize that they’re still not satisfied, so they stay on the train, thinking that the next station is going to be the one that fulfills all their dreams and they can finally attain what they’re searching for. Sadly, these people will probably spend their whole lives on this train. They’re still riding the tracks as I write this. They will always be looking for “something better”, and will never be grateful for what they are blessed with right now. I actually don’t feel anger at these people; I feel pity.
I don’t always make the right decisions, and I’m sure that we all, at one time or another, have greatly regretted some that we’ve made. However, I would like to believe that most of us genuinely care about how our decisions affect those around us—that we would honestly be hurt if a choice we made hurt someone we loved or cared about, or that guilt would overwhelm us if we tried to be dishonest at our place of business. It’s not always easy or convenient to make the decisions that we know are “right”. I truly believe, though, that holding onto our integrity reaps the ultimate reward of self-respect and the trust of others—two of the most important qualities one can possess.
One public example of this was the recent fiasco involving OJ Simpson, and the release of his book called, “If I Did It”—and the subsequent TV special that was to coincide with this release. When I first heard of this implausible concept, my mouth fell open, and I was certain that this was the end of humanity as we knew it. I couldn’t conceive that any human being with a soul could make a decision to pay this man even one dollar to write a book so repulsive and offensive. Everyone involved with this debacle made unbelievably narcissistic, self-serving decisions—all for the sake of the almighty dollar. Where was the concern for the Brown family? Hadn’t they been through enough? And most importantly…where was this man’s concern for his own children? Irregardless of how he felt about Nicole Brown Simpson, she was their mother. It wasn’t enough that he made a horrific, irreversible decision that ruined his children’s lives years ago…now, because of his lust for money, he decided to rub salt on their wounds as well. I personally signed petitions and wrote to whomever I could to put a stop to this horrifying event—and the thousands of us who made the decision to take the time to voice our opinions about it thankfully won. It made me feel as if all of humanity was not “lost”; that there was still some power in making the “right” choices.
Over the last few years, I have had to deal with certain individuals who have put so much emphasis on power and money, that they have forgotten how to deal with living, breathing human beings. They have no respect for others’ feelings; they trample whomever “gets in their way” with nary a thought or a concern for the outcome of their actions. They honestly don’t care what other people think—as long as they are instantly gratified and feel that they have gotten what they believe that they wanted. They lie, they cheat, they steal…it doesn’t matter, because the only thing that’s important to them is what they think they need at that moment. The sad part about all of this is that these certain individuals are still not happy. They constantly strive for the ultimate prize: the gold ring of endless elation that they believe will only be attained by fulfilling their every desire and whim immediately, if not sooner. They’re on the "Train to Nowhere", thinking that each new station is where they want to get off until they actually get to that destination. At that point, they realize that they’re still not satisfied, so they stay on the train, thinking that the next station is going to be the one that fulfills all their dreams and they can finally attain what they’re searching for. Sadly, these people will probably spend their whole lives on this train. They’re still riding the tracks as I write this. They will always be looking for “something better”, and will never be grateful for what they are blessed with right now. I actually don’t feel anger at these people; I feel pity.
I don’t always make the right decisions, and I’m sure that we all, at one time or another, have greatly regretted some that we’ve made. However, I would like to believe that most of us genuinely care about how our decisions affect those around us—that we would honestly be hurt if a choice we made hurt someone we loved or cared about, or that guilt would overwhelm us if we tried to be dishonest at our place of business. It’s not always easy or convenient to make the decisions that we know are “right”. I truly believe, though, that holding onto our integrity reaps the ultimate reward of self-respect and the trust of others—two of the most important qualities one can possess.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
I am a Yearly Decorator
(The following is an essay that I wrote November 16, 1978 for English class. I was 15 and in 10th grade. I have always stressed that everything that I’ve posted on my blog is the truth. Ironically, one of the first “A-plusses” that I received in high school—this essay—is completely made up and a total lie! I don’t think there is one shred of truth in there. I didn’t even use my real first name! I hope that you enjoy my very first fictitious post! )
Well, it’s that time of year again, the time of cheer and goodwill towards men, love, joy, peace, snow—and decorating. Yes, it’s that time when our living room becomes a cheerful victim of my annual decorating job. Scattered all around it are seasonal trinkets of tiny angels, trees, snowmen and Santa’s, with candles gleaming in the windows, wall-to-wall- wreaths, and of course, a giant, jovial tree in the corner that is fat and plump and seems to say, “Everyone is welcome in this home as long as they have love in their hearts” to every person who walks in the front door. ...Can we say "run-on" sentence?
I always try to make everything look as seasonal as possible, even the piano and television, who both get equal amounts of tinsel and false snow. Spelled out across the mirrored wall are the sparkling words, “Merry Christmas”, and songbook after songbook piled on carol books and what-not are on the piano bench, just sitting there patiently waiting to be played. Beneath the twinkling lights in the big front window are three well-carved candles: One red and one green each on the outside, and in the middle a sweet, white angel, all three flickering in the small breeze my father makes as he walks past. I don't think I ever saw my mom light a candle in my whole entire life, unless she was at church. And tinsel and false snow? Not in the "White Glove's" house. It was waaay too messy.
Last but not least, of course, is the beautiful Christmas tree resting in its corner that it will stay in for a few more spirited weeks. A bit modern, it has blinking lights all around, silver garland, and a beautiful lit-up star that sends little butterflies down in your stomach fluttering away. But mostly the tree is antique-looking with balls and bells and angels and stars dating back over forty years. Underneath the tree are presents from each member of the family and for each one. Okay, some of that's true...we did have some real old ornaments, but they were actually bunches of grapes. At least I didn't write about our previous aluminum tree.
I am sad the day I have to see all my treasures going back to the cellar, but I am glad I made so many people smile when they walked into the room.
By,
Lee Scarnato ...I think I was right on schedule for the "I hate my name so let me use a cool nickname" phase.
Well, it’s that time of year again, the time of cheer and goodwill towards men, love, joy, peace, snow—and decorating. Yes, it’s that time when our living room becomes a cheerful victim of my annual decorating job. Scattered all around it are seasonal trinkets of tiny angels, trees, snowmen and Santa’s, with candles gleaming in the windows, wall-to-wall- wreaths, and of course, a giant, jovial tree in the corner that is fat and plump and seems to say, “Everyone is welcome in this home as long as they have love in their hearts” to every person who walks in the front door. ...Can we say "run-on" sentence?
I always try to make everything look as seasonal as possible, even the piano and television, who both get equal amounts of tinsel and false snow. Spelled out across the mirrored wall are the sparkling words, “Merry Christmas”, and songbook after songbook piled on carol books and what-not are on the piano bench, just sitting there patiently waiting to be played. Beneath the twinkling lights in the big front window are three well-carved candles: One red and one green each on the outside, and in the middle a sweet, white angel, all three flickering in the small breeze my father makes as he walks past. I don't think I ever saw my mom light a candle in my whole entire life, unless she was at church. And tinsel and false snow? Not in the "White Glove's" house. It was waaay too messy.
Last but not least, of course, is the beautiful Christmas tree resting in its corner that it will stay in for a few more spirited weeks. A bit modern, it has blinking lights all around, silver garland, and a beautiful lit-up star that sends little butterflies down in your stomach fluttering away. But mostly the tree is antique-looking with balls and bells and angels and stars dating back over forty years. Underneath the tree are presents from each member of the family and for each one. Okay, some of that's true...we did have some real old ornaments, but they were actually bunches of grapes. At least I didn't write about our previous aluminum tree.
I am sad the day I have to see all my treasures going back to the cellar, but I am glad I made so many people smile when they walked into the room.
By,
Lee Scarnato ...I think I was right on schedule for the "I hate my name so let me use a cool nickname" phase.
Thursday, November 30, 2006
Santa and Bruno
Every family has its holiday traditions, and ours is no exception. We are Italian, so therefore our big night is Christmas Eve. We serve several courses of various kinds of fish: fried calamari and shrimp cocktail for appetizers; mussels marinara and baccala balls as a first course; and a delicious red clam sauce with aldente linguini for a main course that only my aunt and my cousin can create in their special way every year. There is red wine aplenty, and after dinner we serve whole nuts with a nutcracker and fruit to pick on such as tangerines, pears and grapes. Dessert consists of the usual Italian fare of cannolis, Sfogliatelle , Napoleons and rum cakes, and of course, my famous varied-flavor-of-the-month-brownies made from scratch. Christmas music by Frank Sinatra is a given.
In between courses, we pause for a game of “Initials”…for example, we’ll write “Merry Christmas” down one side of a piece of paper, and right next to it, we’ll write it again, but going upwards (that would make the first two initials “MS”). We place an egg timer on the table and set it for 5 minutes, and begin to find celebrities, athletes and even cartoon characters that match the initials (for instance, “MS” could be Mark Spitz, the Olympic swimming champion who won seven gold medals in 1972). The person who has the most “for real” names when the timer goes off wins! What they win, we still don’t know.
Sometimes we’ll place a sticker on everyone’s backs when they arrive with the name of someone famous written on it. The point of that icebreaker game is to ask other people yes or no questions about who “you” are and figure out what person is stuck on your back (for example, one year my then-58-year-old, rap-hating brother “J” had “Eminem” stuck on his back…it took him all night to ask the right questions before he guessed who he was, and once he did, we all fell on the floor laughing at the expression on his face)!
In years past, we had a wonderful tradition of singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, assigning each of the twelve days to different people who would sing their part of the song on cue. My dear, departed Uncle Murray was always the “Five Golden Rings”, and he sang it in his best baritone to all of our enjoyment. Sadly, as our parents passed on, the tradition of this fun song seemed to pass on with them. However, the young people decided that it was time to build some traditions of their own, and one Christmas about 15 years ago, Santa and Bruno were born.
Santa and Bruno are sorry-looking Christmas creatures played by my two nephews, Chris and Chris (thankfully, they aren’t brothers!). Santa has a cotton ball beard taped onto his chin, each puff hanging single-file down to the end of his neck. His hat is a classic Claus cap, but his pants vary every year from disco pants to ripped jeans to green tights. Bruno, his red-dot-cheeked-sidekick, always wears an elf cap and elf ears, even if he has to create them himself out of various household items. They arrive sometime around 11pm and hand out personally crafted presents to everyone in attendance. However, these are not your usual handmade gifts. These are very, very special Santa and Bruno gifts.
The first year of Santa and Bruno, I got a piece of sidewalk chalk with a face drawn on it and a pushpin nose. This has become my signature gift every year since, although some years it varies by color or even theme (I believe one year the chalk was dressed in Barbie clothes, and another year the pushpin had a propeller on it). There have been gifts such as my husband’s “Health Food Starter Kit” which consisted of a dried-up baby carrot inside of a round film case. Or the time my cousin got a “Diet Utensil Set” that contained a spoon with three holes drilled into it and a fork with no prongs. My sister-in-law got a thong made out of duct tape once. But our favorite gifts seem to be the ones that they bestow onto my brother (of the afore-mentioned “Eminem” fame).
Knowing the borderline hypochondriac that he is, Santa and Bruno are always careful to create just the right item to pack in their sack for “J”. Three years ago, “J” got a fortune cookie that was configured out of some unidentifiable food. When he opened it up, his fortune read, “You have 20 minutes left to live.” Okay, so it wasn’t funny to my brother. But it had the rest of us rolling because we understand his death paranoia so well. One year he got a membership to the OJ Simpson Fan Club. One of the best gifts that “J” ever got was labeled “My First Pool Toy” and was made out of a wooden handle, two feet of rope and a 10 lb. round weight. After that, he wondered if someone was trying to tell him something.
The funny thing is, every year Chris and Chris seem to miss Santa and Bruno’s visit, and only show up after they’ve left. What’s even funnier is that the whole family goes along with it every single time; we all put on our sad faces and whine that if only they arrived 5 minutes earlier, they finally would’ve met Santa and Bruno!
Okay, I have a weird family, it’s true. However, our love of laughter keeps us going even through the worst of times…and trust me, we’ve seen our share. But I find that it’s traditions such as these that make for the wonderful memories that we have that bring out our Christmas spirit every year. Our Christmas Eve celebration has always been exceptional in days gone by, and will continue to be special in the years to come. With Santa and Bruno, how could it not be?
Happy Holidays!!
In between courses, we pause for a game of “Initials”…for example, we’ll write “Merry Christmas” down one side of a piece of paper, and right next to it, we’ll write it again, but going upwards (that would make the first two initials “MS”). We place an egg timer on the table and set it for 5 minutes, and begin to find celebrities, athletes and even cartoon characters that match the initials (for instance, “MS” could be Mark Spitz, the Olympic swimming champion who won seven gold medals in 1972). The person who has the most “for real” names when the timer goes off wins! What they win, we still don’t know.
Sometimes we’ll place a sticker on everyone’s backs when they arrive with the name of someone famous written on it. The point of that icebreaker game is to ask other people yes or no questions about who “you” are and figure out what person is stuck on your back (for example, one year my then-58-year-old, rap-hating brother “J” had “Eminem” stuck on his back…it took him all night to ask the right questions before he guessed who he was, and once he did, we all fell on the floor laughing at the expression on his face)!
In years past, we had a wonderful tradition of singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas”, assigning each of the twelve days to different people who would sing their part of the song on cue. My dear, departed Uncle Murray was always the “Five Golden Rings”, and he sang it in his best baritone to all of our enjoyment. Sadly, as our parents passed on, the tradition of this fun song seemed to pass on with them. However, the young people decided that it was time to build some traditions of their own, and one Christmas about 15 years ago, Santa and Bruno were born.
Santa and Bruno are sorry-looking Christmas creatures played by my two nephews, Chris and Chris (thankfully, they aren’t brothers!). Santa has a cotton ball beard taped onto his chin, each puff hanging single-file down to the end of his neck. His hat is a classic Claus cap, but his pants vary every year from disco pants to ripped jeans to green tights. Bruno, his red-dot-cheeked-sidekick, always wears an elf cap and elf ears, even if he has to create them himself out of various household items. They arrive sometime around 11pm and hand out personally crafted presents to everyone in attendance. However, these are not your usual handmade gifts. These are very, very special Santa and Bruno gifts.
The first year of Santa and Bruno, I got a piece of sidewalk chalk with a face drawn on it and a pushpin nose. This has become my signature gift every year since, although some years it varies by color or even theme (I believe one year the chalk was dressed in Barbie clothes, and another year the pushpin had a propeller on it). There have been gifts such as my husband’s “Health Food Starter Kit” which consisted of a dried-up baby carrot inside of a round film case. Or the time my cousin got a “Diet Utensil Set” that contained a spoon with three holes drilled into it and a fork with no prongs. My sister-in-law got a thong made out of duct tape once. But our favorite gifts seem to be the ones that they bestow onto my brother (of the afore-mentioned “Eminem” fame).
Knowing the borderline hypochondriac that he is, Santa and Bruno are always careful to create just the right item to pack in their sack for “J”. Three years ago, “J” got a fortune cookie that was configured out of some unidentifiable food. When he opened it up, his fortune read, “You have 20 minutes left to live.” Okay, so it wasn’t funny to my brother. But it had the rest of us rolling because we understand his death paranoia so well. One year he got a membership to the OJ Simpson Fan Club. One of the best gifts that “J” ever got was labeled “My First Pool Toy” and was made out of a wooden handle, two feet of rope and a 10 lb. round weight. After that, he wondered if someone was trying to tell him something.
The funny thing is, every year Chris and Chris seem to miss Santa and Bruno’s visit, and only show up after they’ve left. What’s even funnier is that the whole family goes along with it every single time; we all put on our sad faces and whine that if only they arrived 5 minutes earlier, they finally would’ve met Santa and Bruno!
Okay, I have a weird family, it’s true. However, our love of laughter keeps us going even through the worst of times…and trust me, we’ve seen our share. But I find that it’s traditions such as these that make for the wonderful memories that we have that bring out our Christmas spirit every year. Our Christmas Eve celebration has always been exceptional in days gone by, and will continue to be special in the years to come. With Santa and Bruno, how could it not be?
Happy Holidays!!
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Thanksgiving Day Debacles
During my first marriage, Thanksgiving was always at my house every year. I preferred it this way because I could have both of our respective families over at the same time, and there was none of that “who’s-turn-is-it-weren’t-we-at-your-mom’s-last-year” nonsense going on. I certainly had enough room, and everyone was always willing to come. For the most part, our families got along, even if it was a contest between the two as to who was the loudest.
My Turkey Day feasts eventually went off without a hitch, but this was not so in the beginning. The first Thanksgiving that I ever hosted was in 1988. I invited both families over, and my brother-in-law S, who was still single at the time, decided to spend the night before at my house and help us out in the morning with the preparations. I had never cooked a turkey before, nor had I cooked much of anything prior to that day, but I figured that it couldn’t be very hard…all I had to do was put it in the oven with some butter, salt and pepper. Heck, I could handle that.
I got up that Thanksgiving morning about 6am in order to go to the turkey farm that was ½ hour away and pick up my fresh turkey. I got back some time after 7, and came back to find S and my husband, D, awake and hanging out. I took the turkey out of the packaging, and placed it on my table. Something didn’t look right; the turkey looked closed. Wasn’t it supposed to be hollow? I called D and S in to see what they thought. At the time, S was in medical equipment sales, and after viewing the solid turkey, he got a brainstorm to take a laser machine out of his trunk and try to laser open the poor bird.
I can not even begin to explain what the scent of raw turkey flesh smells like when it’s being burned open by a ray of red light. All of the wonderful holiday essences that should have been wafting through my house that morning turned into a smoky, dead-skin odor that even made the dog want to stay outside. I finally couldn’t take it any more, and decided to call up my cousin, T (who graciously taught me how to cook after my mom died, and who was coming over later that day for dinner), and ask her for her advice.
“I’ve never in my life heard of a “closed” turkey…are you sure it’s solid??” she queried.
“Yes, there’s just a tiny hole, but it’s solid inside of the hole!” I answered back in a panic.
“…Are you telling me that when you spread the legs open, that there’s no cavity there?”
“…Ummm…when I spread the legs open…??”
Embarrassingly enough, it was at this moment that I realized that the three of us had just spent the last half hour trying to burn a hole into the turkey where its head should’ve been! We also realized that we were supposed to untie the legs…and once we did, lo and behold, there was the cavity. We had a great laugh, and went on to have a really fun Thanksgiving, especially when that story went around the table!
My next turkey fiasco came nine years later. I was newly divorced, and it was the very first Thanksgiving that I was spending in my new home. Although my cousin T volunteered to have dinner at her house, I insisted that it was my holiday and my marital status was not going to stop me from cooking a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.
The only problem was that my brain was not functioning at full capacity yet since the demise of the marriage. I purchased a frozen turkey for the first time and didn’t realize how long it would take to defrost. It was also the year that T insisted that I stuff the turkey, something I had never done before (I always cooked the stuffing on the side). That morning, the turkey seemed to be pliable, and I cooked my stuffing and shoved it inside of the bird at 11am. It was a large bird, and was supposed to take over 6 hours to cook. This meant that we could have feasibly begun eating at about 6pm…so I told everyone to come at 5. My sister-in-law, J, was in charge of the vegetable platter for an appetizer. I put out some chips and dip, and left it at that…none of us wanted to fill up on junk before the hefty dinner that we would eat.
Mostly everyone showed up at 5:30, technically a half-hour after the turkey was to be done. For some reason, however, it just wasn’t cooking. We decided to take out the stuffing and place it in a separate dish…but when we did, it was soggy and covered in bloody liquid—and worse yet, it was cold.
“Lisa…did you defrost the turkey all the way??” T asked.
“Uhh…yeah, I thought so…I mean, the inside was a little frozen, but I figured it would cook.”
“You can’t cook a frozen turkey, you turkey!! And you especially can’t stuff it!!”
Now it was closing in on 6:30, and the turkey was still nowhere near done. The vegetables had long been devoured, as well as the chips and dip, and now everyone was famished. We held on for another hour, served some more drinks and then checked the turkey again. To our disbelief, there was still pink juice flowing out of it, so we placed it back into the oven again. To make a long story short, we finally took that bird out of the oven about 8:15pm! We put my cousin’s husband, R, in charge of the slicing. All of the women were running around the dining room trying to place the rest of the food on the table, refill wine, etc…when all of a sudden, we hear, “T?? Ummm…Can you come into the kitchen for a minute?? I don’t know what this is.” My cousin left to go see what the matter was, and we began to hear loud laughter coming from the kitchen. We ran in to see R holding up the package of giblets that he had just pulled out of the cooked turkey! It seems that in my haste, or rather, in my state of first-time singleness, I had completely forgotten to take out the giblets packed in paper. J started to laugh so hard that she actually wet her pants. To this day, she retells this story to everyone she meets…and it is definitely one for our family history books!!
(My family has since outgrown this house as far as having any holidays here…and I actually HAVE to do the “Whose year is it?” routine now…but at least I don’t have to risk having any more kitchen flops. Then again, they do make for good storytelling!)
My Turkey Day feasts eventually went off without a hitch, but this was not so in the beginning. The first Thanksgiving that I ever hosted was in 1988. I invited both families over, and my brother-in-law S, who was still single at the time, decided to spend the night before at my house and help us out in the morning with the preparations. I had never cooked a turkey before, nor had I cooked much of anything prior to that day, but I figured that it couldn’t be very hard…all I had to do was put it in the oven with some butter, salt and pepper. Heck, I could handle that.
I got up that Thanksgiving morning about 6am in order to go to the turkey farm that was ½ hour away and pick up my fresh turkey. I got back some time after 7, and came back to find S and my husband, D, awake and hanging out. I took the turkey out of the packaging, and placed it on my table. Something didn’t look right; the turkey looked closed. Wasn’t it supposed to be hollow? I called D and S in to see what they thought. At the time, S was in medical equipment sales, and after viewing the solid turkey, he got a brainstorm to take a laser machine out of his trunk and try to laser open the poor bird.
I can not even begin to explain what the scent of raw turkey flesh smells like when it’s being burned open by a ray of red light. All of the wonderful holiday essences that should have been wafting through my house that morning turned into a smoky, dead-skin odor that even made the dog want to stay outside. I finally couldn’t take it any more, and decided to call up my cousin, T (who graciously taught me how to cook after my mom died, and who was coming over later that day for dinner), and ask her for her advice.
“I’ve never in my life heard of a “closed” turkey…are you sure it’s solid??” she queried.
“Yes, there’s just a tiny hole, but it’s solid inside of the hole!” I answered back in a panic.
“…Are you telling me that when you spread the legs open, that there’s no cavity there?”
“…Ummm…when I spread the legs open…??”
Embarrassingly enough, it was at this moment that I realized that the three of us had just spent the last half hour trying to burn a hole into the turkey where its head should’ve been! We also realized that we were supposed to untie the legs…and once we did, lo and behold, there was the cavity. We had a great laugh, and went on to have a really fun Thanksgiving, especially when that story went around the table!
My next turkey fiasco came nine years later. I was newly divorced, and it was the very first Thanksgiving that I was spending in my new home. Although my cousin T volunteered to have dinner at her house, I insisted that it was my holiday and my marital status was not going to stop me from cooking a delicious Thanksgiving dinner.
The only problem was that my brain was not functioning at full capacity yet since the demise of the marriage. I purchased a frozen turkey for the first time and didn’t realize how long it would take to defrost. It was also the year that T insisted that I stuff the turkey, something I had never done before (I always cooked the stuffing on the side). That morning, the turkey seemed to be pliable, and I cooked my stuffing and shoved it inside of the bird at 11am. It was a large bird, and was supposed to take over 6 hours to cook. This meant that we could have feasibly begun eating at about 6pm…so I told everyone to come at 5. My sister-in-law, J, was in charge of the vegetable platter for an appetizer. I put out some chips and dip, and left it at that…none of us wanted to fill up on junk before the hefty dinner that we would eat.
Mostly everyone showed up at 5:30, technically a half-hour after the turkey was to be done. For some reason, however, it just wasn’t cooking. We decided to take out the stuffing and place it in a separate dish…but when we did, it was soggy and covered in bloody liquid—and worse yet, it was cold.
“Lisa…did you defrost the turkey all the way??” T asked.
“Uhh…yeah, I thought so…I mean, the inside was a little frozen, but I figured it would cook.”
“You can’t cook a frozen turkey, you turkey!! And you especially can’t stuff it!!”
Now it was closing in on 6:30, and the turkey was still nowhere near done. The vegetables had long been devoured, as well as the chips and dip, and now everyone was famished. We held on for another hour, served some more drinks and then checked the turkey again. To our disbelief, there was still pink juice flowing out of it, so we placed it back into the oven again. To make a long story short, we finally took that bird out of the oven about 8:15pm! We put my cousin’s husband, R, in charge of the slicing. All of the women were running around the dining room trying to place the rest of the food on the table, refill wine, etc…when all of a sudden, we hear, “T?? Ummm…Can you come into the kitchen for a minute?? I don’t know what this is.” My cousin left to go see what the matter was, and we began to hear loud laughter coming from the kitchen. We ran in to see R holding up the package of giblets that he had just pulled out of the cooked turkey! It seems that in my haste, or rather, in my state of first-time singleness, I had completely forgotten to take out the giblets packed in paper. J started to laugh so hard that she actually wet her pants. To this day, she retells this story to everyone she meets…and it is definitely one for our family history books!!
(My family has since outgrown this house as far as having any holidays here…and I actually HAVE to do the “Whose year is it?” routine now…but at least I don’t have to risk having any more kitchen flops. Then again, they do make for good storytelling!)
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
25 Things I Realized Today
1. That teenagers are the most difficult people to deal with
2. That my superiors at work are not always the smartest people
3. That I will always be tired at 3pm no matter what I do
4. That I spend at least 75% of my life waiting for my kids, picking up my kids, driving around my kids and arguing with my kids
5. That steak in a stir fry can not overcook or it gets tough
6. That I appreciate my house, after watching my neighbor’s burn down today
7. That firemen are underrated
8. That I don’t care for teenagers
9. That yoga is really hard
10. That I like yoga anyway
11. That even after taking a yoga class, if I have PMS, my family can still push my buttons enough to make me start throwing pots and pans
12. That my ex-husband can make nasty comments to me and still hurt my feelings
13. That I have my ex-husband on the same list as teenagers
14. That my present husband, as perfect as he is, can still argue with me over something as mundane as tuna fish
15. That teenagers are really selfish
16. That one of my dogs smells really bad
17. That I have fear deep down inside that my dreams will never come true
18. That I like to type
19. That wine can really help PMS
20. That it’s really hard to lose weight
21. That the media has turned Christmas into the equivalent of having sex with a prostitute—trashy teasing leading to the big climax, and BOOM! It’s all over, and there’s not even any afterglow. And all your money’s gone.
22. That some parents raise kids that would damage or steal another kid’s cell phone
23. That someone can have no job and no kids, and still have to see if they can squeeze you into their schedule
24. That I can’t live without chocolate
25. That God blessed me with a beautiful life…but did I mention that I’m not crazy about teenagers?
2. That my superiors at work are not always the smartest people
3. That I will always be tired at 3pm no matter what I do
4. That I spend at least 75% of my life waiting for my kids, picking up my kids, driving around my kids and arguing with my kids
5. That steak in a stir fry can not overcook or it gets tough
6. That I appreciate my house, after watching my neighbor’s burn down today
7. That firemen are underrated
8. That I don’t care for teenagers
9. That yoga is really hard
10. That I like yoga anyway
11. That even after taking a yoga class, if I have PMS, my family can still push my buttons enough to make me start throwing pots and pans
12. That my ex-husband can make nasty comments to me and still hurt my feelings
13. That I have my ex-husband on the same list as teenagers
14. That my present husband, as perfect as he is, can still argue with me over something as mundane as tuna fish
15. That teenagers are really selfish
16. That one of my dogs smells really bad
17. That I have fear deep down inside that my dreams will never come true
18. That I like to type
19. That wine can really help PMS
20. That it’s really hard to lose weight
21. That the media has turned Christmas into the equivalent of having sex with a prostitute—trashy teasing leading to the big climax, and BOOM! It’s all over, and there’s not even any afterglow. And all your money’s gone.
22. That some parents raise kids that would damage or steal another kid’s cell phone
23. That someone can have no job and no kids, and still have to see if they can squeeze you into their schedule
24. That I can’t live without chocolate
25. That God blessed me with a beautiful life…but did I mention that I’m not crazy about teenagers?
Friday, November 17, 2006
Tales from the Basement, Conclusion
Al sure was sneaky. He told me to invite our families over for my 39th birthday, when what he was really doing was arranging our engagement party…a surprise to not only me, but to everyone else as well! Just several hours after he placed that beautiful ring on my finger, we were announcing our engagement in my living room to a dozen or so stunned relatives. Everyone was thrilled, and to our happiness, so were our children. Life was just wonderful, and I wasn’t even aware that it was about to get better.
We decided to get married as quickly and as reasonably as possible, and began our search for a place to do so immediately. Although I had had the whole nine yards for my first wedding, Al was married at his parents' house by a justice of the peace, and they all went to a local restaurant afterward. This time he wanted a big shebang, complete with tuxedoes, gowns, a great reception hall and a DJ and dancing! After visiting a few unexciting halls and outrageously-priced caterers, we visited a local catering facility on the recommendation of Al’s mom. When we sat down to talk to the manager, he snapped his fingers and a waiter brought us a fine array of Italian fare from appetizers to desserts. All this, and he poured us a huge glass of wine each! He sat with us for quite some time, speaking to us as if he’d known us for years. The price fit our budget, and we signed on the dotted line for September 1, 2002.
In the interim, I felt strongly about having a spiritual ceremony and being married by someone religious, so I went to my Catholic parish and met with a deacon who performs marriages outside of the church (a deacon is sort of like a priest who’s able to get married and have a family). We clicked with him immediately, and he was going to be able to incorporate some of Al’s Jewish traditions (Al was raised in a Jewish/Catholic home). We had to do some research first, as Catholic rules state that on my original baptismal certificate, there had to be no mention of my first marriage. Since I was originally married by a rabbi with just a priest present to say a prayer, I was hoping that this wouldn’t be a problem…and when I went to the parish of my childhood, not only did the baptismal certificate make no mention of my previous union, but neither did the church’s official “marriage book”. We were in the clear!
Those eight months were the fastest of my life, and before I knew it, we were arriving at the church rectory for our final meeting with the deacon to tie up any loose ends concerning the ceremony and to confirm our Scripture quotes. I knew something was wrong the minute the deacon came down to greet us. His face was ashen, and he could barely lift the corners of his mouth to form a smile. When we got into the office, he sat us down and told us that somewhere, somehow…even though he didn’t mention it to my original parish…the priest who came to my first wedding went right to the Diocese (the big cheese of churches in our area to which whom all other churches report to) and recorded my first wedding there. The deacon sadly said that he even got into a fight with the secretaries at the Diocese because it stated in the record book that I married someone with a different first name than my ex-husband. But it was to no avail. He looked as if he was going to cry when he told us that he couldn’t marry us unless we got an annulment…something that was going to take a year to process and had a price tag of several thousand dollars. I did not share their belief that the only way I could be forgiven by God was to “buy” my forgiveness. That night, 3 days before my wedding, I walked out of the Catholic church forever.
It was the Friday before our Sunday wedding. Al and I were frantically searching through the yellow pages for someone who could marry us—who just happened to be available in 48 hours. We finally found a woman who was free at 12 noon on Sunday…she was half-preacher/half-justice of the peace. She convinced us that she could perform an interfaith wedding just fine, so we held our breath and jumped. She would just have to do.
Before we knew it, the big day arrived…pouring rain and all. I was so happy that morning; I wouldn’t have cared if there was a tornado! We tried to stick to tradition as best as we could, given our very untraditional circumstances, so Al, his son and my son slept at his parents’ house the night before and got ready there; the two girls and I stayed at my place. I had splurged on a hair stylist to come to the house and make us gawgeeous, and she did a wonderful job on all three of us. We were supposed to be picked up by my cousin and her family in their caravan at 11:00, but due to unforeseen, “too many people trying to use one bathroom” circumstances over at her house, they didn’t pick us up until 11:30. I was just a little panicked, as we still had to take pictures and the ceremony was supposed to start at 12, but I kept my composure. I knew they must’ve felt bad enough, and to tell the truth, I don’t think that there was anything that could have gotten me down that day, I was so elated. Our photographer, thankfully, was way more organized and had taken pictures of all of the groom’s family before we got there (it actually was amazing that the groom’s family was even there first, as they are usually running more on Pacific time)! We took some more pictures and then headed towards the ceremony room where we would meet the preacher/justice of the peace for the first time.
The first thing I noticed was her hair. It was blazing red, shoulder length and halfway between curly and frizzy (again, it had been pouring, so I chalked it up to the poor thing having a really bad hair day). Her makeup was garishly done as well; she was a cross between Lucy Ricardo and Mimi from the Drew Carey show. She was very serious, but also very animated; it was strange, because every time you thought she would at least crack a smile, she didn’t…like maybe she couldn’t, because of too many Botox injections, although she didn’t strike me as the Botox type. Miss NoSmile told us in a very bossy way what we were to do and when…and all I could think of was that I couldn’t think of anything and my mind was going blank…how was I going to remember all of her instructions? She said good-bye, and that she’d see us at the altar. The time had come. I just hoped I didn’t make a fool out of myself.
Our kids walked down the aisle to the beginning strains of “From This Moment” by Shania Twain. Shania had started singing by the time my brother walked me down the aisle, and the words from the song fit the moment beautifully. Al looked so handsome in his tuxedo; I locked into his gaze and strayed only for short moments that required me to light a candle or place a ring on his finger. Before we knew it, Miss NoSmile had married us and we were walking back up the aisle with people clapping and cheering!
I don’t think I ever smiled so wide in my whole life.
The reception afterward was so much fun that it completely flew by; five hours seemed like five minutes, and everyone had a wonderful time. The highlights of the wedding were my now-stepson making a tearful, heartfelt toast to us; and my then-12 year old daughter and her cousins singing beautiful three part harmony acapella to “Longer” by Dan Fogleberg. I remember looking around at one point and reminding myself to appreciate everything that was going on…to really acknowledge that my two cousins from California were here and having a fantastic, if not inebriated time…that my mom’s sister and her family were there, people whom I love dearly but never see because of the distance factor. I truly never felt so happy in my whole life. And I was about to get happier!
My now-in-laws set up an amazing “after-party” at their house, so my new husband, our kids and me loaded our bodies into our mini-van and left the catering facility to head over there, along with about 25 other people. I almost think the after-party was more fun than the reception! There was impromptu dancing, singing, lots of drinking and just a plain, old great time being had by all. My cousins from California were bonding over the bar with my husband’s brother. My predominantly anti-social brother was smiling most of the time and actually chatting it up with people that he most likely would never have talked to on any other day. My cousin T, who’s like a sister to me, was actually doing shots for the first time in about 10 years, which was a hoot to watch! At one point, my brother and my cousin S from California were talking for about an hour straight…really a rare sight, because my brother is the oldest cousin in the family, S is the youngest, they live 3,000 miles apart and hadn't seen each other since my first wedding! The party continued until the very wee hours of the morning, and everyone reluctantly said their good-byes and went their separate ways.
Al and I climbed into bed together as husband and wife for the very first time, and well, I don’t remember much after that. I do remember the next morning, however. Our kids came into the room and jumped on our bed, everyone laughing and just feeling indescribable joy. I also remember thinking how lucky I was to be blessed with this loving new husband, this amazing new family and to be living in this incredible new moment—I truly felt as if I had it all. And it’s been a wonderful, interesting journey ever since.
(Postscript: Al's "cave" downstairs in the basement is now being occupied by his son, who just turned 20. Although we miss our little "escapes" down there, nothing beats having your partner to keep you warm every night and to make you smile every morning when you wake up to their sweet face.)
We decided to get married as quickly and as reasonably as possible, and began our search for a place to do so immediately. Although I had had the whole nine yards for my first wedding, Al was married at his parents' house by a justice of the peace, and they all went to a local restaurant afterward. This time he wanted a big shebang, complete with tuxedoes, gowns, a great reception hall and a DJ and dancing! After visiting a few unexciting halls and outrageously-priced caterers, we visited a local catering facility on the recommendation of Al’s mom. When we sat down to talk to the manager, he snapped his fingers and a waiter brought us a fine array of Italian fare from appetizers to desserts. All this, and he poured us a huge glass of wine each! He sat with us for quite some time, speaking to us as if he’d known us for years. The price fit our budget, and we signed on the dotted line for September 1, 2002.
In the interim, I felt strongly about having a spiritual ceremony and being married by someone religious, so I went to my Catholic parish and met with a deacon who performs marriages outside of the church (a deacon is sort of like a priest who’s able to get married and have a family). We clicked with him immediately, and he was going to be able to incorporate some of Al’s Jewish traditions (Al was raised in a Jewish/Catholic home). We had to do some research first, as Catholic rules state that on my original baptismal certificate, there had to be no mention of my first marriage. Since I was originally married by a rabbi with just a priest present to say a prayer, I was hoping that this wouldn’t be a problem…and when I went to the parish of my childhood, not only did the baptismal certificate make no mention of my previous union, but neither did the church’s official “marriage book”. We were in the clear!
Those eight months were the fastest of my life, and before I knew it, we were arriving at the church rectory for our final meeting with the deacon to tie up any loose ends concerning the ceremony and to confirm our Scripture quotes. I knew something was wrong the minute the deacon came down to greet us. His face was ashen, and he could barely lift the corners of his mouth to form a smile. When we got into the office, he sat us down and told us that somewhere, somehow…even though he didn’t mention it to my original parish…the priest who came to my first wedding went right to the Diocese (the big cheese of churches in our area to which whom all other churches report to) and recorded my first wedding there. The deacon sadly said that he even got into a fight with the secretaries at the Diocese because it stated in the record book that I married someone with a different first name than my ex-husband. But it was to no avail. He looked as if he was going to cry when he told us that he couldn’t marry us unless we got an annulment…something that was going to take a year to process and had a price tag of several thousand dollars. I did not share their belief that the only way I could be forgiven by God was to “buy” my forgiveness. That night, 3 days before my wedding, I walked out of the Catholic church forever.
It was the Friday before our Sunday wedding. Al and I were frantically searching through the yellow pages for someone who could marry us—who just happened to be available in 48 hours. We finally found a woman who was free at 12 noon on Sunday…she was half-preacher/half-justice of the peace. She convinced us that she could perform an interfaith wedding just fine, so we held our breath and jumped. She would just have to do.
Before we knew it, the big day arrived…pouring rain and all. I was so happy that morning; I wouldn’t have cared if there was a tornado! We tried to stick to tradition as best as we could, given our very untraditional circumstances, so Al, his son and my son slept at his parents’ house the night before and got ready there; the two girls and I stayed at my place. I had splurged on a hair stylist to come to the house and make us gawgeeous, and she did a wonderful job on all three of us. We were supposed to be picked up by my cousin and her family in their caravan at 11:00, but due to unforeseen, “too many people trying to use one bathroom” circumstances over at her house, they didn’t pick us up until 11:30. I was just a little panicked, as we still had to take pictures and the ceremony was supposed to start at 12, but I kept my composure. I knew they must’ve felt bad enough, and to tell the truth, I don’t think that there was anything that could have gotten me down that day, I was so elated. Our photographer, thankfully, was way more organized and had taken pictures of all of the groom’s family before we got there (it actually was amazing that the groom’s family was even there first, as they are usually running more on Pacific time)! We took some more pictures and then headed towards the ceremony room where we would meet the preacher/justice of the peace for the first time.
The first thing I noticed was her hair. It was blazing red, shoulder length and halfway between curly and frizzy (again, it had been pouring, so I chalked it up to the poor thing having a really bad hair day). Her makeup was garishly done as well; she was a cross between Lucy Ricardo and Mimi from the Drew Carey show. She was very serious, but also very animated; it was strange, because every time you thought she would at least crack a smile, she didn’t…like maybe she couldn’t, because of too many Botox injections, although she didn’t strike me as the Botox type. Miss NoSmile told us in a very bossy way what we were to do and when…and all I could think of was that I couldn’t think of anything and my mind was going blank…how was I going to remember all of her instructions? She said good-bye, and that she’d see us at the altar. The time had come. I just hoped I didn’t make a fool out of myself.
Our kids walked down the aisle to the beginning strains of “From This Moment” by Shania Twain. Shania had started singing by the time my brother walked me down the aisle, and the words from the song fit the moment beautifully. Al looked so handsome in his tuxedo; I locked into his gaze and strayed only for short moments that required me to light a candle or place a ring on his finger. Before we knew it, Miss NoSmile had married us and we were walking back up the aisle with people clapping and cheering!
I don’t think I ever smiled so wide in my whole life.
The reception afterward was so much fun that it completely flew by; five hours seemed like five minutes, and everyone had a wonderful time. The highlights of the wedding were my now-stepson making a tearful, heartfelt toast to us; and my then-12 year old daughter and her cousins singing beautiful three part harmony acapella to “Longer” by Dan Fogleberg. I remember looking around at one point and reminding myself to appreciate everything that was going on…to really acknowledge that my two cousins from California were here and having a fantastic, if not inebriated time…that my mom’s sister and her family were there, people whom I love dearly but never see because of the distance factor. I truly never felt so happy in my whole life. And I was about to get happier!
My now-in-laws set up an amazing “after-party” at their house, so my new husband, our kids and me loaded our bodies into our mini-van and left the catering facility to head over there, along with about 25 other people. I almost think the after-party was more fun than the reception! There was impromptu dancing, singing, lots of drinking and just a plain, old great time being had by all. My cousins from California were bonding over the bar with my husband’s brother. My predominantly anti-social brother was smiling most of the time and actually chatting it up with people that he most likely would never have talked to on any other day. My cousin T, who’s like a sister to me, was actually doing shots for the first time in about 10 years, which was a hoot to watch! At one point, my brother and my cousin S from California were talking for about an hour straight…really a rare sight, because my brother is the oldest cousin in the family, S is the youngest, they live 3,000 miles apart and hadn't seen each other since my first wedding! The party continued until the very wee hours of the morning, and everyone reluctantly said their good-byes and went their separate ways.
Al and I climbed into bed together as husband and wife for the very first time, and well, I don’t remember much after that. I do remember the next morning, however. Our kids came into the room and jumped on our bed, everyone laughing and just feeling indescribable joy. I also remember thinking how lucky I was to be blessed with this loving new husband, this amazing new family and to be living in this incredible new moment—I truly felt as if I had it all. And it’s been a wonderful, interesting journey ever since.
(Postscript: Al's "cave" downstairs in the basement is now being occupied by his son, who just turned 20. Although we miss our little "escapes" down there, nothing beats having your partner to keep you warm every night and to make you smile every morning when you wake up to their sweet face.)
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Friday, November 10, 2006
Tales from the Basement, Part 2
(Okay, I must be honest. I’ve been writing a post all week that I couldn’t get quite right until tonight, when I just deleted the whole thing. I finally realized that I did not want to relive a lot of what I went through during my courtship with Al—there are just some things that don’t need to be repeated and put out to the whole world, such as my former tumultuous relationship with his ex-wife. Although in retrospect, some of the stories are quite comical, there are some that are very heartbreaking. I have come such a long way with her and understand her so well now, that to repeat any of these stories almost feels like a betrayal. So we’ll just have to fast-forward a little into the relationship…)
When I met Al, he was renting a room from his friend, a divorced chiropractor who rented out 3 bedrooms in his large home to other single/divorced men. Al had been living there ever since his separation three years prior to our meeting, and was the only one renting at the time that we began dating. He had one room to himself and was in the process of fixing up another room for his kids, but his chiropractor friend made the decision to turn that section of the house into a large apartment for a family.
I was in the throes of single, working motherhood and messy-kid-syndrome: my kids had nowhere to have play dates save for their bedrooms. By the time the respective parent came by to pick up their child, the bedroom would look like an explosion at the Toys R Us warehouse. I would then muster a phony, “Oh, that’s okay, don’t worry, we’ll clean it up after you leave!” when the parent expressed concern about their child helping to clean up. Most days, I found it overwhelming to deal with my own kids, so I was usually willing to compromise and clean everything myself if it meant getting all the extra kids floating around the house to go home in a timely fashion so I could have some peace and quiet.
My unfinished basement was being rented out pro-bono to a family of unwelcome tenants—I believe their name was “Rodent”—and I had a brainstorm that it would be a great idea to build a playroom, laundry room and studio apartment down there and kick these freeloaders out once and for all. Al and I were dating over a year at this point, and after some lengthy discussions, we decided that he could move into the studio apartment and pay me rent, which would basically cover any raise in my mortgage from refinancing the house to pay for the work.
The construction was done beautifully by my cousin’s husband, and Al moved into his “cave”—one bedroom with a small living area, and a tiny bathroom with a stall shower. Although there was a separate entrance—just in case things didn’t work out with Al, and I had to rent to someone else—he used the front door to come and go, and I eventually caught on that the neighbors thought that he had moved in. But not into my basement. Into my bed.
Anytime that I would mention that Al lived in a studio apartment in my basement, I was met with expressions of disbelief. “OH, come on!! You know he doesn’t live down there.” Or, “Yeah, right…and he puts up with that nonsense, going down to the basement every night without complaining.” And my all-time favorite: “Lisa, I’m sorry…but that’s…weird.”
Weird?!? We weren’t married. Neither of our divorces was final yet, even after all that time. We had kids… impressionable kids, for crying out loud! The very last thing that I wanted was for my daughter to witness her mom sleeping with a man in her bed every night that she wasn’t married to…and then, God forbid, having it not work out. So why was that…weird?
We continued our “weird” living arrangements for several years. My divorce became final; he was having difficulty coming to agreeable terms with his ex, even after 7 years. Once his divorce became official, I made the request that we become “legitimate”. Yes, I enjoyed our little “rendezvous” in his cave once I put the kids to bed—no one could hear us down there, that’s for sure—and I know he liked to have his own place to “escape” now and then. But it was becoming increasingly important to me to build a relationship based on the real commitment of marriage; not only to set an example to our children, but for our own emotional investment into our futures. I wanted someone to share my life with as a full-fledged, committed partner; it didn’t work out the first time, but I believed that Al and I had what it took to be there for each other through anything.
One wintry Saturday afternoon right before my 39th birthday, I was outside in the dog run picking up dog poop with a plastic bag on my hand, as my pooper-scooper had broken and had yet to be replaced. Al came to the back door and told me that he absolutely needed me to come inside right that minute, as he wanted to show me something. I came inside with bag still on hand, a little annoyed that he interrupted my wonderful hour of crap-slapping. He chided me to come into the living room, and I relented, still with the bag on my hand, so as not to lose any time in my race to get back out into the field of land mines. To my complete and total surprise, all of a sudden he dropped to his knees and popped out a small, square box. I sat there in disbelief, subconsciously thanking the heavens above that I was right-handed. He looked at me with the most loving, sincere face and…well…you know the rest. I of course started to cry, and we hugged for what seemed like an hour. There I stood; no makeup, a winter hat on my head, a bag for a pooper-scooper on my right hand, and the most beautiful solitaire diamond on my left. I never felt more loved in my whole life.
(Next installment…our wedding day. Absolutely the most wonderful day of my life.)
When I met Al, he was renting a room from his friend, a divorced chiropractor who rented out 3 bedrooms in his large home to other single/divorced men. Al had been living there ever since his separation three years prior to our meeting, and was the only one renting at the time that we began dating. He had one room to himself and was in the process of fixing up another room for his kids, but his chiropractor friend made the decision to turn that section of the house into a large apartment for a family.
I was in the throes of single, working motherhood and messy-kid-syndrome: my kids had nowhere to have play dates save for their bedrooms. By the time the respective parent came by to pick up their child, the bedroom would look like an explosion at the Toys R Us warehouse. I would then muster a phony, “Oh, that’s okay, don’t worry, we’ll clean it up after you leave!” when the parent expressed concern about their child helping to clean up. Most days, I found it overwhelming to deal with my own kids, so I was usually willing to compromise and clean everything myself if it meant getting all the extra kids floating around the house to go home in a timely fashion so I could have some peace and quiet.
My unfinished basement was being rented out pro-bono to a family of unwelcome tenants—I believe their name was “Rodent”—and I had a brainstorm that it would be a great idea to build a playroom, laundry room and studio apartment down there and kick these freeloaders out once and for all. Al and I were dating over a year at this point, and after some lengthy discussions, we decided that he could move into the studio apartment and pay me rent, which would basically cover any raise in my mortgage from refinancing the house to pay for the work.
The construction was done beautifully by my cousin’s husband, and Al moved into his “cave”—one bedroom with a small living area, and a tiny bathroom with a stall shower. Although there was a separate entrance—just in case things didn’t work out with Al, and I had to rent to someone else—he used the front door to come and go, and I eventually caught on that the neighbors thought that he had moved in. But not into my basement. Into my bed.
Anytime that I would mention that Al lived in a studio apartment in my basement, I was met with expressions of disbelief. “OH, come on!! You know he doesn’t live down there.” Or, “Yeah, right…and he puts up with that nonsense, going down to the basement every night without complaining.” And my all-time favorite: “Lisa, I’m sorry…but that’s…weird.”
Weird?!? We weren’t married. Neither of our divorces was final yet, even after all that time. We had kids… impressionable kids, for crying out loud! The very last thing that I wanted was for my daughter to witness her mom sleeping with a man in her bed every night that she wasn’t married to…and then, God forbid, having it not work out. So why was that…weird?
We continued our “weird” living arrangements for several years. My divorce became final; he was having difficulty coming to agreeable terms with his ex, even after 7 years. Once his divorce became official, I made the request that we become “legitimate”. Yes, I enjoyed our little “rendezvous” in his cave once I put the kids to bed—no one could hear us down there, that’s for sure—and I know he liked to have his own place to “escape” now and then. But it was becoming increasingly important to me to build a relationship based on the real commitment of marriage; not only to set an example to our children, but for our own emotional investment into our futures. I wanted someone to share my life with as a full-fledged, committed partner; it didn’t work out the first time, but I believed that Al and I had what it took to be there for each other through anything.
One wintry Saturday afternoon right before my 39th birthday, I was outside in the dog run picking up dog poop with a plastic bag on my hand, as my pooper-scooper had broken and had yet to be replaced. Al came to the back door and told me that he absolutely needed me to come inside right that minute, as he wanted to show me something. I came inside with bag still on hand, a little annoyed that he interrupted my wonderful hour of crap-slapping. He chided me to come into the living room, and I relented, still with the bag on my hand, so as not to lose any time in my race to get back out into the field of land mines. To my complete and total surprise, all of a sudden he dropped to his knees and popped out a small, square box. I sat there in disbelief, subconsciously thanking the heavens above that I was right-handed. He looked at me with the most loving, sincere face and…well…you know the rest. I of course started to cry, and we hugged for what seemed like an hour. There I stood; no makeup, a winter hat on my head, a bag for a pooper-scooper on my right hand, and the most beautiful solitaire diamond on my left. I never felt more loved in my whole life.
(Next installment…our wedding day. Absolutely the most wonderful day of my life.)
Friday, November 03, 2006
Tales from the Basement, Part 1
(As many of you may know, I was remarried several years ago to a man with two children. I thought it might be time to share the story of our, well, “different” courtship!)
I tucked my kids into bed, kissed them goodnight and stood there for a moment, staring at the adorable yet anomalous sight of my two little ones sharing the same queen-size bed. Not my bed, mind you…but the bed of my estranged husband which resided in his brand-new, single-guy apartment. The large house we had once owned together was now occupied by a new, hopeful family; my children and I were going to be homeless for a couple of weeks until we were able to move into our tiny new abode. D, my almost-ex, was kind enough to stay with his girlfriend for awhile and loan us this one-bedroom bachelor pad. I walked out of the bedroom and took a good look at my surroundings, searching fruitlessly for a morsel of our life together. Nothing here but masculine towels and dinnerware, drawers full of bland, stainless-steel cutlery and such novel items as “gas passes” and ticket stubs for concerts we had never gone to.
I wondered how this could be happening. The past year had been such a blur, and now that I had time to just sit and think, I couldn’t believe how surreal my life had become. This was it. If I previously wasn’t sure that our life together was completely over, I sat within the confines of proof so solid, it hit me in the head like Babe Ruth’s baseball bat. I suspected it before, but now the truth was staring me down between the eyes: It was time to move on.
I called my friend C and told her that I was finally ready to meet her friend Al, after she had tried unsuccessfully for the last five months to get us together. Al. What kind of name was that, anyway? Albert, Alfred, Alan? I imagined him saying, “You can call me Al”. I had visions of a combination of Chevy Chase and Paul Simon running through my head, no matter what kind of “killer smile” C said that he had. I gave her the phone number to D’s apartment, and figured I’d just try to get through my days of traipsing my kids back and forth to day camp and trying to concentrate on my job.
I had been through my share of rotten blind dates, perhaps set up by unsatisfied wives who had fantasies about men that they themselves would never get to sleep with. One of D’s cousins had previously set me up with her “tree guy”; a tall, fair-haired handsome man that had a personality to match his profession—he was nothing more than an empty stump with no personality. When he asked me how long I would have to date somebody before I slept with them—“…six days, six weeks, six months?”—I promptly excused myself and said that I was late to pick up my kids from the babysitter. My next blind date, another friend's "deck guy", had a much better personality but insisted that we meet at a nightclub, which should’ve been my first red flag. He brought his “best” female friend with him to our blind date, which should’ve been red flag number two. When he told me that there was always surgery to correct the fact that my breasts were not the size of Pam Anderson’s, the third red flag was shoved down my throat so far that it rendered me speechless. I meekly squeaked out that I had to use the ladies room, and snuck out of the club. I raced back to the angelic, sleeping faces of my beautiful children, excused the babysitter and cried my eyes out. Is this what dating in my 30’s was going to be like?
Al called within a few days after C gave him the phone number. His voice was deep and smooth; his tone was kind and gentle. He had an explosive laugh that was childlike and almost innocent; I knew in my heart that this man was never going to ask me ridiculous questions that had no answers, nor expect anything from me that wasn’t natural and real. We agreed to meet the next night at a small pub in my new town. He told me that he’d be wearing a black tee shirt with blue jeans, and that he had a white van. C had told me that he was about 5’ 10”—a little tall for me, since I don’t like to crick my neck to kiss someone—and she said that he was really cute, reminding me of that “killer smile” once more (she couldn’t help herself, being a dental hygienist).
I was so nervous that I failed to notice any white vans in the parking lot. I checked my make up in the rear view mirror, and slowly took a deep breath while stepping out of my car. In front of the bar stood a man in a black tee shirt and blue jeans; however, this man was clearly about 6’ 2”. I stared at him for a minute from a distance as he spoke in a very animated way to another gentleman outside of the pub. He didn’t look anything like what C had described, and his active expressions had me confused. This man just didn’t seem like the calm, relaxed man that I had spoken to. I took another deep breath and told myself that I needed to give him a chance, that someone who seemed that nice on the phone had to be at least half as decent in person.
All of a sudden, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw someone coming towards me. He gently spoke my name, and I turned around to see an amazingly handsome man slowly walking toward me from a white van. His eyes lit up as he flashed his pearly whites, and my heart stopped. As corny as it sounds, I felt like a princess watching her prince step off of his white steed. I stopped gawking long enough to remember that we hadn’t gone in the pub yet…there was still time for this guy to ask me a dumb question or make a rude comment. There was still a chance that he could turn out to be a total idiot once he was face to face with me. I smiled at him, said hello, and we walked into the pub.
We sat down at the bar and looked at each other. He smiled at me again and asked me if I wanted to see a picture of his kids. A picture of his kids?!? Can he be that wonderful?
I thought to myself…here’s a man who knows who he is, and what he’s about…and he’s not ashamed by it. He’s not trying to cover it up or hide it until he has no choice but to expose it. He’s a dad, he loves his kids, and they’re the biggest part of his life. And he wanted to share that with me first and foremost.
We exchanged pictures back and forth, laughing and sharing stories of children’s antics that a tree stump just couldn’t appreciate. After a wonderful evening, he walked me out to my car and kissed me on my cheek. I noticed when he hugged me good-bye that he was no more than 5’ 8”, and our bodies were a perfect fit. I went back to D’s apartment where my niece was babysitting. She asked me how my date went, and I told her the truth: that I had just met the man of my dreams.
(Stay tuned next week for part two of “Tales from the Basement”, which will give a glimpse into the very crazy world of two parents dating!)
I tucked my kids into bed, kissed them goodnight and stood there for a moment, staring at the adorable yet anomalous sight of my two little ones sharing the same queen-size bed. Not my bed, mind you…but the bed of my estranged husband which resided in his brand-new, single-guy apartment. The large house we had once owned together was now occupied by a new, hopeful family; my children and I were going to be homeless for a couple of weeks until we were able to move into our tiny new abode. D, my almost-ex, was kind enough to stay with his girlfriend for awhile and loan us this one-bedroom bachelor pad. I walked out of the bedroom and took a good look at my surroundings, searching fruitlessly for a morsel of our life together. Nothing here but masculine towels and dinnerware, drawers full of bland, stainless-steel cutlery and such novel items as “gas passes” and ticket stubs for concerts we had never gone to.
I wondered how this could be happening. The past year had been such a blur, and now that I had time to just sit and think, I couldn’t believe how surreal my life had become. This was it. If I previously wasn’t sure that our life together was completely over, I sat within the confines of proof so solid, it hit me in the head like Babe Ruth’s baseball bat. I suspected it before, but now the truth was staring me down between the eyes: It was time to move on.
I called my friend C and told her that I was finally ready to meet her friend Al, after she had tried unsuccessfully for the last five months to get us together. Al. What kind of name was that, anyway? Albert, Alfred, Alan? I imagined him saying, “You can call me Al”. I had visions of a combination of Chevy Chase and Paul Simon running through my head, no matter what kind of “killer smile” C said that he had. I gave her the phone number to D’s apartment, and figured I’d just try to get through my days of traipsing my kids back and forth to day camp and trying to concentrate on my job.
I had been through my share of rotten blind dates, perhaps set up by unsatisfied wives who had fantasies about men that they themselves would never get to sleep with. One of D’s cousins had previously set me up with her “tree guy”; a tall, fair-haired handsome man that had a personality to match his profession—he was nothing more than an empty stump with no personality. When he asked me how long I would have to date somebody before I slept with them—“…six days, six weeks, six months?”—I promptly excused myself and said that I was late to pick up my kids from the babysitter. My next blind date, another friend's "deck guy", had a much better personality but insisted that we meet at a nightclub, which should’ve been my first red flag. He brought his “best” female friend with him to our blind date, which should’ve been red flag number two. When he told me that there was always surgery to correct the fact that my breasts were not the size of Pam Anderson’s, the third red flag was shoved down my throat so far that it rendered me speechless. I meekly squeaked out that I had to use the ladies room, and snuck out of the club. I raced back to the angelic, sleeping faces of my beautiful children, excused the babysitter and cried my eyes out. Is this what dating in my 30’s was going to be like?
Al called within a few days after C gave him the phone number. His voice was deep and smooth; his tone was kind and gentle. He had an explosive laugh that was childlike and almost innocent; I knew in my heart that this man was never going to ask me ridiculous questions that had no answers, nor expect anything from me that wasn’t natural and real. We agreed to meet the next night at a small pub in my new town. He told me that he’d be wearing a black tee shirt with blue jeans, and that he had a white van. C had told me that he was about 5’ 10”—a little tall for me, since I don’t like to crick my neck to kiss someone—and she said that he was really cute, reminding me of that “killer smile” once more (she couldn’t help herself, being a dental hygienist).
I was so nervous that I failed to notice any white vans in the parking lot. I checked my make up in the rear view mirror, and slowly took a deep breath while stepping out of my car. In front of the bar stood a man in a black tee shirt and blue jeans; however, this man was clearly about 6’ 2”. I stared at him for a minute from a distance as he spoke in a very animated way to another gentleman outside of the pub. He didn’t look anything like what C had described, and his active expressions had me confused. This man just didn’t seem like the calm, relaxed man that I had spoken to. I took another deep breath and told myself that I needed to give him a chance, that someone who seemed that nice on the phone had to be at least half as decent in person.
All of a sudden, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw someone coming towards me. He gently spoke my name, and I turned around to see an amazingly handsome man slowly walking toward me from a white van. His eyes lit up as he flashed his pearly whites, and my heart stopped. As corny as it sounds, I felt like a princess watching her prince step off of his white steed. I stopped gawking long enough to remember that we hadn’t gone in the pub yet…there was still time for this guy to ask me a dumb question or make a rude comment. There was still a chance that he could turn out to be a total idiot once he was face to face with me. I smiled at him, said hello, and we walked into the pub.
We sat down at the bar and looked at each other. He smiled at me again and asked me if I wanted to see a picture of his kids. A picture of his kids?!? Can he be that wonderful?
I thought to myself…here’s a man who knows who he is, and what he’s about…and he’s not ashamed by it. He’s not trying to cover it up or hide it until he has no choice but to expose it. He’s a dad, he loves his kids, and they’re the biggest part of his life. And he wanted to share that with me first and foremost.
We exchanged pictures back and forth, laughing and sharing stories of children’s antics that a tree stump just couldn’t appreciate. After a wonderful evening, he walked me out to my car and kissed me on my cheek. I noticed when he hugged me good-bye that he was no more than 5’ 8”, and our bodies were a perfect fit. I went back to D’s apartment where my niece was babysitting. She asked me how my date went, and I told her the truth: that I had just met the man of my dreams.
(Stay tuned next week for part two of “Tales from the Basement”, which will give a glimpse into the very crazy world of two parents dating!)
Saturday, October 28, 2006
It's a Small "World" After All
(In my last post, I mentioned that I had another "coincidence" tale regarding my sister-in-law. The following is also a true story!)
A fellow blogger, whose writing I respect and admire, told the story recently of a friend being “outed” about her daily habit of tuning into “All My Children” for the last couple of decades. I guess we have all been guilty of watching the soaps at one time or another, and many of us probably chose to “out” ourselves in the hope that the person we were talking to would be just as enthusiastic about their daily dose of unreality as we were.
My grandmother had gotten me into “Days of Our Lives” when I was ten. I know, I know…I was a little young to be quite so interested in the drama of the soap world, but back then you didn’t need an “M” rating to watch the passion between Doug and Julie. Dare I say that it was…wholesome?
Eventually, I became addicted to “Another World”, which followed “Days”. I was pregnant with my second child at the time, and I spent a lot of hours alone and longing for adult interaction. Watching the soaps, I found that I could transport myself into “another world”, even if it was only for an hour. I lived vicariously through the passion, love and emotion of the characters on the show. I fell in love with a rogue character (whose name I will keep anonymous out of respect for the gentleman who portrayed him), and couldn’t wait to tune in every afternoon to see what trouble he was cooking up that day. A few years later, after my marriage had ended, I was presented with the opportunity to attend an "Another World" luncheon. When I met this gentleman in person, I thought that he was just as charming and adorable as he was on the show. So about a month later, I decided to write to him and send him my picture and my phone number.
Less than a week later, I received a phone call from a man stating to be this actor. At first, I didn’t believe that it was him…and then I gained my composure and enjoyed a 30 minute-long conversation with the most smooth-talking Romeo that you could imagine. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. He called the next day, and told me that his house on Long Island was “under construction”, so how would I like to meet up with him at his hotel in Manhattan for lunch? Then we could pay a visit to Victoria’s Secret, so he could "buy me whatever I wanted” and, according to him, we could go back to his hotel where I could “model” all of the outfits for him!
Okay, I admit…I was feeling a little desperate after my husband left me for someone else, but thank God I wasn’t stupid. I politely told him that I would consider it (I already knew the answer was no, but I will admit...if I were a different kind of person...say, to the tune of Paris Hilton...it could have been fun). He told me to think it over and that he would call me the next day.
He did call the next day, and the next day after that. The clincher was when he called one afternoon right after my kids came home from school, and they started to have a rip-roaring fight over a toy. They ran through the house like Tom and Jerry and finally ended up between my legs, crying and whining while I embarrassingly stood there on the phone and exclaimed “What can I say?!? This is my life!!” He politely told me that he had to go, and would call me again tomorrow.
I never heard from him again.
Well, life goes on. Several years later, I remarried and became very close with my new sister-in-law. One day, while we were having a ladies night at her house, she started to tell the story of when she dated “this guy from Another World”, and she went into detail about how all he seemed to care about was getting into her pants! I stood there in amazement, and said, “Hey, wait a minute!! That’s my story!!” She looked confused, as did all of the other women in the room. It turned out that she actually dated this very same soap star for a few weeks and came to realize, as I did, that although he was a really nice guy, he was definitely a player and not worth investing any emotion into. We laughed over the similar stories and pointed out how small the world actually was that the two of us were “involved” in some way with the same male star of a soap opera.
I no longer watch the soaps, and haven’t for about 9 years. I found that once I met my present husband, my life became a soap opera of its own with ex-wives, ex-husbands, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, his kids, my kids, our families, our friends…who needed to watch it when I could live it every single day?!? Although I admit...I could use the commercial break now and then.
A fellow blogger, whose writing I respect and admire, told the story recently of a friend being “outed” about her daily habit of tuning into “All My Children” for the last couple of decades. I guess we have all been guilty of watching the soaps at one time or another, and many of us probably chose to “out” ourselves in the hope that the person we were talking to would be just as enthusiastic about their daily dose of unreality as we were.
My grandmother had gotten me into “Days of Our Lives” when I was ten. I know, I know…I was a little young to be quite so interested in the drama of the soap world, but back then you didn’t need an “M” rating to watch the passion between Doug and Julie. Dare I say that it was…wholesome?
Eventually, I became addicted to “Another World”, which followed “Days”. I was pregnant with my second child at the time, and I spent a lot of hours alone and longing for adult interaction. Watching the soaps, I found that I could transport myself into “another world”, even if it was only for an hour. I lived vicariously through the passion, love and emotion of the characters on the show. I fell in love with a rogue character (whose name I will keep anonymous out of respect for the gentleman who portrayed him), and couldn’t wait to tune in every afternoon to see what trouble he was cooking up that day. A few years later, after my marriage had ended, I was presented with the opportunity to attend an "Another World" luncheon. When I met this gentleman in person, I thought that he was just as charming and adorable as he was on the show. So about a month later, I decided to write to him and send him my picture and my phone number.
Less than a week later, I received a phone call from a man stating to be this actor. At first, I didn’t believe that it was him…and then I gained my composure and enjoyed a 30 minute-long conversation with the most smooth-talking Romeo that you could imagine. Little did I know what I was getting myself into. He called the next day, and told me that his house on Long Island was “under construction”, so how would I like to meet up with him at his hotel in Manhattan for lunch? Then we could pay a visit to Victoria’s Secret, so he could "buy me whatever I wanted” and, according to him, we could go back to his hotel where I could “model” all of the outfits for him!
Okay, I admit…I was feeling a little desperate after my husband left me for someone else, but thank God I wasn’t stupid. I politely told him that I would consider it (I already knew the answer was no, but I will admit...if I were a different kind of person...say, to the tune of Paris Hilton...it could have been fun). He told me to think it over and that he would call me the next day.
He did call the next day, and the next day after that. The clincher was when he called one afternoon right after my kids came home from school, and they started to have a rip-roaring fight over a toy. They ran through the house like Tom and Jerry and finally ended up between my legs, crying and whining while I embarrassingly stood there on the phone and exclaimed “What can I say?!? This is my life!!” He politely told me that he had to go, and would call me again tomorrow.
I never heard from him again.
Well, life goes on. Several years later, I remarried and became very close with my new sister-in-law. One day, while we were having a ladies night at her house, she started to tell the story of when she dated “this guy from Another World”, and she went into detail about how all he seemed to care about was getting into her pants! I stood there in amazement, and said, “Hey, wait a minute!! That’s my story!!” She looked confused, as did all of the other women in the room. It turned out that she actually dated this very same soap star for a few weeks and came to realize, as I did, that although he was a really nice guy, he was definitely a player and not worth investing any emotion into. We laughed over the similar stories and pointed out how small the world actually was that the two of us were “involved” in some way with the same male star of a soap opera.
I no longer watch the soaps, and haven’t for about 9 years. I found that once I met my present husband, my life became a soap opera of its own with ex-wives, ex-husbands, ex-girlfriends, ex-boyfriends, his kids, my kids, our families, our friends…who needed to watch it when I could live it every single day?!? Although I admit...I could use the commercial break now and then.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Strange but True
Years ago, when I was married to my first husband, my in-laws were trying to rent out their house in Florida. They were living down there for a couple of years, but decided to come back to New York when they discovered that they missed their children and grandchildren too much. The process of trying to rent out the house became cumbersome; they had to keep flying back and forth between the states to interview prospective renters, and they weren’t happy with anyone that they met. Finally, they found a young couple with a small child who were moving down to Florida from NY. They presented themselves to be responsible, and seemed to have the financial clout to faithfully make their rental payments every month.
One day my mother-in-law decided to share with me the specifics of the couple who had now been renting the house for a few months. She spoke of the wife, and what a good mother she seemed to be to her little son. She told me that she was pregnant with her second child, and that she seemed like a lovely person. The only thing that bothered her was that this girl’s husband seemed too young to be making the salary that he did. She said that she didn’t trust him, but what could she do? They were making the payments and keeping the house up. I assured her that everything was probably fine, and chalked her mistrust up to her feeling out of control all the way up in NY, and her tendency to judge everyone and everything that she couldn't understand.
I had nice memories of the Florida house. It had a huge, unfurnished living room, a Florida-white kitchen, a cozy den with a small couch off of the kitchen and a screened-in pool to match the dozens of other screened-in pools that surrounded the man-made lake in back of their home. My kids spent many hours in that pool when they were little, and would spend way too much time chasing the lizards that would speedily crawl across the patio during the day.
A couple of years later, the couple decided to move, and my in-laws knew it was time to sell the house, as they were getting too old to continue the draining process of trying to rent it out. Right about this time, their son and I began to go through our divorce. I began to slip away from his family as well, and pretty soon I was on my own raising my two children. I only had contact with my ex-husband for child support purposes.
Eventually, I started dating a man who would later turn out to be my next husband. During the first month that we were dating, he showed me various pictures of himself and his family. One picture in particular caught my eye; he was in a pool, and it looked somewhat tropical and familiar.
“Oh, that was my sister’s house in Florida,” he said when I asked him where he was.
“Did she live in Boca Raton?” I queried, “Because that looks like the same neighborhood that my ex-in-laws lived in.”
He said that he thought so, and we decided that it would be quite funny indeed if it was the same neighborhood, and they in fact knew each other. He went on to show me some more pictures, and I forgot about it.
Several months later we were at his parent’s house to celebrate his dad’s holiday of Passover. His sister was there, and we started to chat about nothing in particular . She asked me where my kids were. Coincidentally, I told her, they were also celebrating Passover with their dad at their grandparents' house, right around the corner at the local senior citizen complex. She asked if I was talking about the senior complex that was a stone’s throw away—I answered “Yes…we can literally walk there!” She then asked me what my kids’ grandparents’ last name was. When I told her, her face dropped.
“Anita and Jack????” she answered in amazement.
“Yes, that’s them! Why?”
She answered, “...Because I rented their house in Florida!!”
There was a moment of silence in our state of sheer disbelief. Imagine that! When I looked at the pictures of my boyfriend at his “sister’s house in Florida”, and said that it resembled my ex-mother-in-law’s house, it actually WAS my ex-mother-in-law’s house! He and I got a kick out of the fact that we swam in the same pool with our kids, albeit at different points in time. We laughed at how there seemed to be an over-abundance of lizards at that house, and how all of the kids spent lots of time unsuccessfully trying to catch one. We all wondered what the chances were that the world could be so very small.
I eventually got married again, and my husband’s sister and I remained close. One unfortunate footnote: My ex-mother-in-law was right. The husband did make his money too fast, and didn’t do it in the right way. Now he's "away", and she and her kids are the ones paying the price.
...I guess sometimes mother-in-laws are smarter than we think, as much as we hate to admit it.
(this wasn't the only coincidence that my sister-in-law and I shared. Next time I'll tell our other small "world" story!)
One day my mother-in-law decided to share with me the specifics of the couple who had now been renting the house for a few months. She spoke of the wife, and what a good mother she seemed to be to her little son. She told me that she was pregnant with her second child, and that she seemed like a lovely person. The only thing that bothered her was that this girl’s husband seemed too young to be making the salary that he did. She said that she didn’t trust him, but what could she do? They were making the payments and keeping the house up. I assured her that everything was probably fine, and chalked her mistrust up to her feeling out of control all the way up in NY, and her tendency to judge everyone and everything that she couldn't understand.
I had nice memories of the Florida house. It had a huge, unfurnished living room, a Florida-white kitchen, a cozy den with a small couch off of the kitchen and a screened-in pool to match the dozens of other screened-in pools that surrounded the man-made lake in back of their home. My kids spent many hours in that pool when they were little, and would spend way too much time chasing the lizards that would speedily crawl across the patio during the day.
A couple of years later, the couple decided to move, and my in-laws knew it was time to sell the house, as they were getting too old to continue the draining process of trying to rent it out. Right about this time, their son and I began to go through our divorce. I began to slip away from his family as well, and pretty soon I was on my own raising my two children. I only had contact with my ex-husband for child support purposes.
Eventually, I started dating a man who would later turn out to be my next husband. During the first month that we were dating, he showed me various pictures of himself and his family. One picture in particular caught my eye; he was in a pool, and it looked somewhat tropical and familiar.
“Oh, that was my sister’s house in Florida,” he said when I asked him where he was.
“Did she live in Boca Raton?” I queried, “Because that looks like the same neighborhood that my ex-in-laws lived in.”
He said that he thought so, and we decided that it would be quite funny indeed if it was the same neighborhood, and they in fact knew each other. He went on to show me some more pictures, and I forgot about it.
Several months later we were at his parent’s house to celebrate his dad’s holiday of Passover. His sister was there, and we started to chat about nothing in particular . She asked me where my kids were. Coincidentally, I told her, they were also celebrating Passover with their dad at their grandparents' house, right around the corner at the local senior citizen complex. She asked if I was talking about the senior complex that was a stone’s throw away—I answered “Yes…we can literally walk there!” She then asked me what my kids’ grandparents’ last name was. When I told her, her face dropped.
“Anita and Jack????” she answered in amazement.
“Yes, that’s them! Why?”
She answered, “...Because I rented their house in Florida!!”
There was a moment of silence in our state of sheer disbelief. Imagine that! When I looked at the pictures of my boyfriend at his “sister’s house in Florida”, and said that it resembled my ex-mother-in-law’s house, it actually WAS my ex-mother-in-law’s house! He and I got a kick out of the fact that we swam in the same pool with our kids, albeit at different points in time. We laughed at how there seemed to be an over-abundance of lizards at that house, and how all of the kids spent lots of time unsuccessfully trying to catch one. We all wondered what the chances were that the world could be so very small.
I eventually got married again, and my husband’s sister and I remained close. One unfortunate footnote: My ex-mother-in-law was right. The husband did make his money too fast, and didn’t do it in the right way. Now he's "away", and she and her kids are the ones paying the price.
...I guess sometimes mother-in-laws are smarter than we think, as much as we hate to admit it.
(this wasn't the only coincidence that my sister-in-law and I shared. Next time I'll tell our other small "world" story!)
Sunday, October 15, 2006
The Early Bird is a Partridge
I knew it was bound to happen, but I admit, I forgot. Unfortunately, it happens every year, and every year I forget just the same.
I promised myself I would not go to the mall until at least November, so as not to see anything that would remotely remind me of Christmas…but apparently, I’m only good at keeping my promises to other people, and I’m very disloyal to myself.
Our girls needed winter clothes, and my husband said that we should go to the mall and get them some. Yes, my husband. I don’t know about anyone else, but the shock of hearing those words come out of his mouth made all rational thought leave my brain. I was too busy getting him out the door and into the car before he changed his mind to remind myself that the mall was off limits until the week before Thanksgiving.
No, I’m not the Grinch. I’m not uttering “Bah, Humbug” under my breath at the sight of a department store gone Christmas wild. The fact is, I absolutely LOVE Christmas…it happens to be the most wonderful time of the year (to me and Andy Williams). But the problem I find is that every year the decorations come earlier and earlier, doing nothing but numbing us all to the joys of the season and the thrill of finding the perfect, meaningful gift while listening to your favorite holiday songs piped over the store speakers. Instead, we all go about the season fretfully trying to find outrageously priced items in exclusive stores for people who put more emphasis on the gift-giving aspect of the holidays than actually enjoying them for what they stand for. We buy right into the marketing world’s ploy to get us to spend more money sooner by “getting us into the Christmas spirit” with decorations and lights, only to have the stores pull them right out from under our feet on December 26th , when we can finally relax and enjoy them.
When I was little, the stores didn’t decorate for the holidays until the day after Thanksgiving. Somewhere along the line, it became the day after Halloween. Now, it’s October 15th, more than 2 months away from Christmas, and there are trees and lights throughout the mall. Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing Christmas trees on top of the sunscreen display after the Fourth of July (actually, this may have already happened in a few places).
The other aspect of the pre-holiday season that gets to me is the once-novel “24 Hours of Christmas” music played by select radio stations. I thought it was great when one of the stations in our area decided to expand their Christmas music play list to the week before the actual holiday. Another radio station joined in the next year, and for the week before Christmas you were actually able to flip to another holiday station if you couldn’t stand to hear one more “Pah-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum” on the one you were currently listening to. Flash forward to last year: Now there are at least four stations playing Christmas music 24/7, and one of them actually had the nerve to start the Monday before Thanksgiving! The ironic thing is that all of these stations will stop playing Christmas music completely at 12 midnight December 25th, which for some of us is right in the middle of our celebration. Talk about post-holiday depression…our gathering hasn’t even ended yet, and the media has already moved on to the Super bowl.
In my family, Christmas week was always considered the week after the holiday, and it wasn’t unusual to still be listening to Nat King Cole right up to New Year’s Eve. Friends and relatives were still stopping by to visit throughout the week, and it was still as festive a time as the previous seven days. Now, Christmas is run by the supreme evildoer of all time—money. Christmas becomes as disposable as a toddler’s dirty diaper on December 26th. It has no use anymore, and no one wants to look at it because it makes them sick.
I long for the days when the holidays still had meaning; meaning other than end-of-year corporate financial statements. When taking a stroll or a drive on a peaceful night to view decorated houses brought more joy than an iPod Nano. When a cup of homemade eggnog could warm your heart better than any outfit from Abercrombie and Fitch. When gathering with friends by the fireplace to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” was more desirable than running serpentine through the mall, rushing from crowded store to crowded store while people sneezed on you, cut you in line and stepped on your toes without even so much as a “Pardon me.”
My son actually asked me today, in all seriousness, when we were going to put up the tree. When I reminded him that we do it the day after Thanksgiving, he replied that it’s almost Halloween, and Thanksgiving is “only, like, three weeks later”. My point is valid…he has fallen prey to the early signs of the season, and his internal clock is off-kilter. He should be having visions of candy-corns and caramel apples, but instead he’s seeing sugarplums.
Dear God, give me the resources to help my children learn to savor the Christmas spirit in the season that it belongs in. I don't want to spend the next two months falling prey to the media and the mall. I want to relax and enjoy the gatherings at my friends' houses during the month of December. I want to bake sugar cookies from scratch while Frank Sinatra croons about those J-I-N-G-L-E Bells the night before Christmas Eve. I want to sit in the living room where the only light comes from my tree and the fireplace, while getting chills up my spine as Celine Dion sings "Oh, Holy Night". You just can't enjoy these things in October.
At this rate, it might be over before it even begins. As long as I never hear one of my kids say, "Mom, when are you taking down the tree already?", I guess I'll be fine.
I promised myself I would not go to the mall until at least November, so as not to see anything that would remotely remind me of Christmas…but apparently, I’m only good at keeping my promises to other people, and I’m very disloyal to myself.
Our girls needed winter clothes, and my husband said that we should go to the mall and get them some. Yes, my husband. I don’t know about anyone else, but the shock of hearing those words come out of his mouth made all rational thought leave my brain. I was too busy getting him out the door and into the car before he changed his mind to remind myself that the mall was off limits until the week before Thanksgiving.
No, I’m not the Grinch. I’m not uttering “Bah, Humbug” under my breath at the sight of a department store gone Christmas wild. The fact is, I absolutely LOVE Christmas…it happens to be the most wonderful time of the year (to me and Andy Williams). But the problem I find is that every year the decorations come earlier and earlier, doing nothing but numbing us all to the joys of the season and the thrill of finding the perfect, meaningful gift while listening to your favorite holiday songs piped over the store speakers. Instead, we all go about the season fretfully trying to find outrageously priced items in exclusive stores for people who put more emphasis on the gift-giving aspect of the holidays than actually enjoying them for what they stand for. We buy right into the marketing world’s ploy to get us to spend more money sooner by “getting us into the Christmas spirit” with decorations and lights, only to have the stores pull them right out from under our feet on December 26th , when we can finally relax and enjoy them.
When I was little, the stores didn’t decorate for the holidays until the day after Thanksgiving. Somewhere along the line, it became the day after Halloween. Now, it’s October 15th, more than 2 months away from Christmas, and there are trees and lights throughout the mall. Pretty soon, we’ll be seeing Christmas trees on top of the sunscreen display after the Fourth of July (actually, this may have already happened in a few places).
The other aspect of the pre-holiday season that gets to me is the once-novel “24 Hours of Christmas” music played by select radio stations. I thought it was great when one of the stations in our area decided to expand their Christmas music play list to the week before the actual holiday. Another radio station joined in the next year, and for the week before Christmas you were actually able to flip to another holiday station if you couldn’t stand to hear one more “Pah-Rum-Pum-Pum-Pum” on the one you were currently listening to. Flash forward to last year: Now there are at least four stations playing Christmas music 24/7, and one of them actually had the nerve to start the Monday before Thanksgiving! The ironic thing is that all of these stations will stop playing Christmas music completely at 12 midnight December 25th, which for some of us is right in the middle of our celebration. Talk about post-holiday depression…our gathering hasn’t even ended yet, and the media has already moved on to the Super bowl.
In my family, Christmas week was always considered the week after the holiday, and it wasn’t unusual to still be listening to Nat King Cole right up to New Year’s Eve. Friends and relatives were still stopping by to visit throughout the week, and it was still as festive a time as the previous seven days. Now, Christmas is run by the supreme evildoer of all time—money. Christmas becomes as disposable as a toddler’s dirty diaper on December 26th. It has no use anymore, and no one wants to look at it because it makes them sick.
I long for the days when the holidays still had meaning; meaning other than end-of-year corporate financial statements. When taking a stroll or a drive on a peaceful night to view decorated houses brought more joy than an iPod Nano. When a cup of homemade eggnog could warm your heart better than any outfit from Abercrombie and Fitch. When gathering with friends by the fireplace to watch “It’s a Wonderful Life” was more desirable than running serpentine through the mall, rushing from crowded store to crowded store while people sneezed on you, cut you in line and stepped on your toes without even so much as a “Pardon me.”
My son actually asked me today, in all seriousness, when we were going to put up the tree. When I reminded him that we do it the day after Thanksgiving, he replied that it’s almost Halloween, and Thanksgiving is “only, like, three weeks later”. My point is valid…he has fallen prey to the early signs of the season, and his internal clock is off-kilter. He should be having visions of candy-corns and caramel apples, but instead he’s seeing sugarplums.
Dear God, give me the resources to help my children learn to savor the Christmas spirit in the season that it belongs in. I don't want to spend the next two months falling prey to the media and the mall. I want to relax and enjoy the gatherings at my friends' houses during the month of December. I want to bake sugar cookies from scratch while Frank Sinatra croons about those J-I-N-G-L-E Bells the night before Christmas Eve. I want to sit in the living room where the only light comes from my tree and the fireplace, while getting chills up my spine as Celine Dion sings "Oh, Holy Night". You just can't enjoy these things in October.
At this rate, it might be over before it even begins. As long as I never hear one of my kids say, "Mom, when are you taking down the tree already?", I guess I'll be fine.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
Coming to Terms with Present-Day Life
(I realize that this article should've been posted a month ago, but I didn't think to write about it until this week. My apologies for the untimeliness.)
Nine years ago, I moved to a small town on Long Island that is presently my home. I was newly divorced, and the small Cape Cod-style house that I purchased was just perfect for a single mother and her two small children. The large front yard was ideal for impromptu soccer and football games, not to mention tag and whiffle ball. The cozy backyard had a deck off of the dining room where I would spend many a Saturday morning sipping tea in an Adirondack chair under the trees that hung over from my neighbor’s property. The inside was small, but charming; the living room had wood floors and a wonderful brick fireplace, and the kitchen was done in a warm and comforting oak. My bedroom was on the first floor; each one of my kids had a small bedroom upstairs. I couldn’t be more grateful for my adorable little home, or more thankful for where it was located.
As the years rolled on, I eventually couldn’t go to the local supermarket without seeing someone I knew. I belonged to the Catholic Church, and apparently, so did most of the town. No matter where you went—dentist, doctor, dry cleaner—you were bound to see someone familiar. And I loved every second of it! I took great pleasure in waving to people I knew while strolling down the main street and admiring all of the beautiful homes, most of them older and some even designated landmarks. This street would be the sight of our yearly Little League Parade on opening day. I would walk along the sidewalk as my son and his friends strutted proudly down the street displaying their team banners. I remember thinking back then that life doesn’t get any better in a place like this, and I would be happy to live here for the rest of my life. I was content, and I was safe. That is, until 9/11/01.
I realize that no matter where you were on that day, be it as close as Pennsylvania or as far away as Hawaii, 9/11 gave you a new reality. I left work after the first tower fell, and raced to my cousin’s house several blocks away from my own. Together we went to our children’s schools to see if they were letting them out, which they weren’t. We decided to go to our local supermarket and stock up on canned goods and water. We perused the aisles for anything that we could store in our basements, God forbid we had to hide out below ground for any reason. When we left the store and drove down our main street on that beautiful day, all I can remember thinking was how insecure and uneasy I felt. I wondered if I would ever feel safe again.
Being so close to the events of that day changed my mentality in a way that I can not even describe. As the days went on, there was a strange stench in the air as ashes and small, feather-light particles fell sporadically from the sky. Then the funerals started…all day events for dozens of people around the area who perished in the towers. Some were from Cantor-Fitzgerald; countless others were firefighters and police officers who worked in the city but lived in and around our town. Everyone knew somebody who died in the tragedy, myself included. It was a sad, surreal time and it will be with me for as long as I live.
As it stands now, you can’t go over a bridge or through a tunnel without reading several signs describing what “strange activity” would look like, and “If you see something, say something.” I can’t help but feel that we are a giant "bulls-eye", and the scariest thing of all is that if the bridges and the tunnels are destroyed, we are stuck here on the island without a way off. My once-perfect Shangri-La has become nothing more than a prison to me, and there’s not one thing I can do about it. If my husband and I did not have ex-spouses to worry about and our kids were little, we would’ve been out of here a long time ago. Add to everything the outrageous cost of living on this island and my dream has become my nightmare. My house is worth three times what I paid for it, but the taxes in this area went up as well and have earned the honor of being the highest taxes in the nation. Don’t let me forget to mention that there are now six people living here instead of three. And we have new neighbors that moved in next door from Queens, who decided to cut down every beautiful tree in their backyard, leaving my deck the heat equivalent of Death Valley. This same neighbor actually asked us to remove a very old, large maple that’s justthisclose to his property, to which of course, we said “No way!!” (I’ve always wondered about this, anyway: Don’t people come to this area for the trees and for the fact that they don’t want to live in a cement jungle anymore? Why does everyone from the city always cut the trees down, and try to make this town look like where they came from?). Sometimes, I just want to scream in frustration. Other times, I just feel helpless and hopeless.
My husband and I have made a pact that we will move away from here when our youngest graduates high school in 4 ½ years, God willing. Whether we do it or not, we need the dream to get us through each day. Neither one of us has ever been very good at living in the matrix, which a lot of people do around here; floating around almost as if 9/11 never happened or was a dream, and that nothing horrible like that could ever happen again. My own physician told me that most of us don’t even realize the stress we’re under just existing in a post-9/11 world (for example, I never used to think about anything while crossing the previously-mentioned bridges except the upstate destination that I was headed towards. Now my whole thought pattern changes when I read the safety signs, because I’m reminded of the reality of living in NY). Our dream home will most likely be a log cabin up in the mountains with enough room for our kids and their families for generations to come. Yes, this is our vision…and as the bible says, “A man without vision shall perish.” Or in other words, as I mentioned in a previous post, “If you give up your dreams, you die.” We’re not ready for that yet, so we will keep on “keepin’ on”. It’s a matter of our sanity—and our survival.
Nine years ago, I moved to a small town on Long Island that is presently my home. I was newly divorced, and the small Cape Cod-style house that I purchased was just perfect for a single mother and her two small children. The large front yard was ideal for impromptu soccer and football games, not to mention tag and whiffle ball. The cozy backyard had a deck off of the dining room where I would spend many a Saturday morning sipping tea in an Adirondack chair under the trees that hung over from my neighbor’s property. The inside was small, but charming; the living room had wood floors and a wonderful brick fireplace, and the kitchen was done in a warm and comforting oak. My bedroom was on the first floor; each one of my kids had a small bedroom upstairs. I couldn’t be more grateful for my adorable little home, or more thankful for where it was located.
As the years rolled on, I eventually couldn’t go to the local supermarket without seeing someone I knew. I belonged to the Catholic Church, and apparently, so did most of the town. No matter where you went—dentist, doctor, dry cleaner—you were bound to see someone familiar. And I loved every second of it! I took great pleasure in waving to people I knew while strolling down the main street and admiring all of the beautiful homes, most of them older and some even designated landmarks. This street would be the sight of our yearly Little League Parade on opening day. I would walk along the sidewalk as my son and his friends strutted proudly down the street displaying their team banners. I remember thinking back then that life doesn’t get any better in a place like this, and I would be happy to live here for the rest of my life. I was content, and I was safe. That is, until 9/11/01.
I realize that no matter where you were on that day, be it as close as Pennsylvania or as far away as Hawaii, 9/11 gave you a new reality. I left work after the first tower fell, and raced to my cousin’s house several blocks away from my own. Together we went to our children’s schools to see if they were letting them out, which they weren’t. We decided to go to our local supermarket and stock up on canned goods and water. We perused the aisles for anything that we could store in our basements, God forbid we had to hide out below ground for any reason. When we left the store and drove down our main street on that beautiful day, all I can remember thinking was how insecure and uneasy I felt. I wondered if I would ever feel safe again.
Being so close to the events of that day changed my mentality in a way that I can not even describe. As the days went on, there was a strange stench in the air as ashes and small, feather-light particles fell sporadically from the sky. Then the funerals started…all day events for dozens of people around the area who perished in the towers. Some were from Cantor-Fitzgerald; countless others were firefighters and police officers who worked in the city but lived in and around our town. Everyone knew somebody who died in the tragedy, myself included. It was a sad, surreal time and it will be with me for as long as I live.
As it stands now, you can’t go over a bridge or through a tunnel without reading several signs describing what “strange activity” would look like, and “If you see something, say something.” I can’t help but feel that we are a giant "bulls-eye", and the scariest thing of all is that if the bridges and the tunnels are destroyed, we are stuck here on the island without a way off. My once-perfect Shangri-La has become nothing more than a prison to me, and there’s not one thing I can do about it. If my husband and I did not have ex-spouses to worry about and our kids were little, we would’ve been out of here a long time ago. Add to everything the outrageous cost of living on this island and my dream has become my nightmare. My house is worth three times what I paid for it, but the taxes in this area went up as well and have earned the honor of being the highest taxes in the nation. Don’t let me forget to mention that there are now six people living here instead of three. And we have new neighbors that moved in next door from Queens, who decided to cut down every beautiful tree in their backyard, leaving my deck the heat equivalent of Death Valley. This same neighbor actually asked us to remove a very old, large maple that’s justthisclose to his property, to which of course, we said “No way!!” (I’ve always wondered about this, anyway: Don’t people come to this area for the trees and for the fact that they don’t want to live in a cement jungle anymore? Why does everyone from the city always cut the trees down, and try to make this town look like where they came from?). Sometimes, I just want to scream in frustration. Other times, I just feel helpless and hopeless.
My husband and I have made a pact that we will move away from here when our youngest graduates high school in 4 ½ years, God willing. Whether we do it or not, we need the dream to get us through each day. Neither one of us has ever been very good at living in the matrix, which a lot of people do around here; floating around almost as if 9/11 never happened or was a dream, and that nothing horrible like that could ever happen again. My own physician told me that most of us don’t even realize the stress we’re under just existing in a post-9/11 world (for example, I never used to think about anything while crossing the previously-mentioned bridges except the upstate destination that I was headed towards. Now my whole thought pattern changes when I read the safety signs, because I’m reminded of the reality of living in NY). Our dream home will most likely be a log cabin up in the mountains with enough room for our kids and their families for generations to come. Yes, this is our vision…and as the bible says, “A man without vision shall perish.” Or in other words, as I mentioned in a previous post, “If you give up your dreams, you die.” We’re not ready for that yet, so we will keep on “keepin’ on”. It’s a matter of our sanity—and our survival.
Friday, October 06, 2006
A Day in the Life
I noticed that several people mentioned the infrequency of my posts, and it got me to thinking about the reason for my tardiness. Procrastination definitely plays a role, this I know. However, I have a very crazy life. As I sit here in my basement to type even these few words, upstairs Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra are singing “The Lady is a Tramp”, my husband is running the bathtub faucet and traipsing up and down the stairs next to me with huge buckets as he changes the water of our 90-gallon fish tank, and my stepson is in the next room playing a new rap song that he wrote and recorded. All this, and the dryer is running as well. Who can concentrate?
I knew deep in the recesses of my Word program, I had typed a description of one particular day this year because it just seemed incredibly hectic...so I decided to share it with you (…please bear in mind that this was not written for a post, only for my need to vent, so the grammar may not be perfect). For those of you who ever wondered…
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Wake up, start getting ready for work. My daughter says she’s ready, but takes another 3 minutes after I’ve gotten into car to actually come out, now wearing a different outfit than 5 minutes ago. We drive to the high school, she’s early for once. Go home to pick up other two kids, get my lunch, kiss husband good-bye and apologize for not being passionate the night before and falling asleep in 30 seconds flat. Inform him that I am not a man, and I need more preparation than climbing into bed to get my engine humming. Get kids off to middle school, give my son the daily lecture about not being ready on time and does he think he’ll be able to follow this rule since it’s already May and I’ve been repeating it daily since September? Ask him to please get out of the car and go around the back of it like my stepdaughter does so I can bolt to work, since he once again made me late. He argues that I will only save a few seconds than if he walks in front of my car, and although he’s probably right, I just need to feel that I’m at least that much closer to work by peeling out of the parking lot and having the kids breathe my burning rubber. Race to work, make it there with 3 minutes to spare. Get participants off of buses; copies of bus lists have everyone’s name cut off, so I try to make new ones while at least 20 out of 35 people vie for my attention about such things as runny noses, last night’s function, someone said something mean about someone else, someone’s going to a bowling dinner tonight, etc. Try very hard to validate everyone’s conversation without screaming and running for the hills. After about 20 minutes, I’m instructed to take 6 participants to another day hab site so they can spend some time there while we entertain some new kids at our site who are ready to graduate high school and move on to the “Next Step” (our program). I take them; one girl starts complaining, ready to cry, that it’s too squishy in the back seat of the van, her ankle hurts, why does she have to go to the other site, it’s not fair…within 5 minutes, someone says something that cracks her up, and she continues to laugh uncontrollably for the next 10 minutes. Drop off these 6 participants and return back to my site to pick up 4 other participants that will come to a job at a senior center in Pt. Washington. We have to leave early because of the impending HS group that’s coming, so I decide to kill time and go to WalMart to see Marie Osmond, who’s signing autographs for a new book or something. She’s supposed to be there at 11am, so I figure if we leave WalMart at 11:10, we’ll still make it to Pt. Washington Senior Center by 11:45. After listening to much griping from my guys about waiting around for someone they’ve never even heard of, we leave after realizing that it’s 11:10 and she will be late. We get into the van and head off to Port Washington. My daughter calls me on my cell phone and tells me that she doesn’t feel well, can I come and get her (no). I tell her to call back at 1:00, and I’ll see what I can do. All 4 participants fall asleep in the van; one boy is talking and snoring at the same time, if that’s possible. We finally get to Pt. Washington, and go in our usual entrance. We’re informed by some strange lady that we have to go “under the church” for the senior lunch people that we’re supposed to serve, due to the fact that the regular lunch room is decorated for someone’s anniversary party. We start wandering around all of the buildings, and end up down cement basement stairs that have no railing (she did say, “under the church”). I have two very unsteady participants, and I try to help them down the creepy steps. We get to the door at the bottom and there’s no handle, no one answering our knocks, and an extremely dark, gloomy room on the other side of the door glass. One of the senior citizens is wandering around as well; he can’t find his way either, so he tells us that he’ll go look while we try to make our way up from bottom of the stairs. He finds the location across the parking lot in the actual church (..and on the main floor, besides). We go in, and everyone has already begun eating lunch (we’re supposed to serve them). We sit down to eat our lunch; I shove my pb&j down my throat and get up to collect everyone’s garbage. One of the seniors chews food, puts it in a napkin and hands it to me. We then get up and leave, 20 minutes later. We get back to the site, and I’m rushed out to go to a “company picnic” meeting at the Plainview office that I stupidly volunteered to be a committee leader for in our site. My daughter texts me on the way there: “Can u come get me” (no). I apologize, tell her I love her and to hang in there. We discuss different things in the meeting. It ends at 2:00; the leader of meeting says, “Don’t worry, you can go home and still get paid for 2:30.” Yes, but I have my site’s van (my coordinator’s suggestion), and I only get paid until 2:15. So I race back to the site, and realize once there that I still have 5 of the participant’s books to write up. I’ll have to do them tomorrow, I figure, and I better leave to get my daughter, since it’s now 2:20. Get my daughter who is miraculously better, and now wants to drive the car. We go to nail salon to pick up her books that she left there last Friday. We go home, she immediately goes on computer, I go upstairs and eat ¼ box of cereal while picking through mail…tax return checks are in there, but not what I hoped they would be. I leave to go pick up my son. He gets into car and immediately starts asking if I can take him to the game store because he has early birthday money, it’s burning a hole in his wallet and he needs to spend it NOW (he didn’t actually say that, but he may as well have). I say no, not until his tutor leaves later on. He sighs and says that I would always do this for my daughter and starts with the guilt crap. I dismiss him, and he immediately forgets about it to tell me to look at a video on his phone, which I can’t do because I’m actually driving. So I pull over, look at a video of something that only he understands, and say, “Oh, that’s nice!” Suddenly, someone with a gas scooter goes flying past the open passenger window, scaring the pants off of both of us. My son laughs for 5 minutes, because he thought it was a lawnmower doing 50mph. We go home. I decide to start paying some bills and figure I’d better get the charities out of the way because I’ve been using their address labels for about 8 months and never sent them any money. I realize after a while that my dog, Freedom, has an appointment for a lump on his leg in 15 minutes, so I rush him out of the door while my other dog starts barking and running around like crazy because it’s not him going out. We get to the vet, and Freedom immediately pees like a racehorse onto the floor and the entry mat. They have to call someone in to clean it, while I stand there embarrassed because every person in the waiting room has obviously never seen a dog pee before, judging from the horrified looks on their faces. In the waiting room there is a cat in a basket (yes he’s real, and he just sits in a basket), guinea pigs, hamsters, an iguana and a very friendly, loose parrot that Freedom decided he wanted to taste—so they put us in a room by ourselves to wait for the vet. At this point, Free gets so nervous, he pees and starts to crouch for a poop, to which I screamed, “NO!!” and one little piece fell out. I scrounged around for paper towels, picked it up and wrapped it tightly. He paced and paced, all the while shedding hair like ticker-tape confetti, most of it landing on my clothes (why am I wearing black sweatpants?). I realize he probably has to go badly, so I take him outside where he makes such a mushy poop that I can’t even pick it up with the paper towel I brought out. Not to mention the 5 minute pee he took on a tree…I think he was a camel in another life, he holds a lot of water. We finally go back in and see the doctor, who loves Free but thinks he has a bad cancer from oldness…$200 later, we leave with antibiotics, powder, and the knowledge that he needs surgery for another $500. And if they find the bad cancer, he’ll need chemo. I go home to find my son with the tutor, who sympathizes with Freedom’s fate. My husband is there, getting angry at the cost of the vet and the unnecessary comment that we should put an old dog through chemo. My stepdaughter’s mother keeps calling and wondering where she is (we are too; we just figured that her gymnastics practice went on long because of a meet tomorrow). And my daughter surfaces to tell me she’s going out with my favorite person, KS (a boy she’s liked since she’s 12 who constantly leads her on). And, can she have money? I give her $3 and my son throws a fit that see, he’s right, I only give to his sister. The house is a mess, I’m trying to heat up leftovers, and all of a sudden I feel goo on my bare foot and realize that one of the dogs just threw up in the kitchen and I stepped in it. To which the tutor gets hysterical laughing. We eat, and I tell my son I can take him now. We go….
That’s how it ended, most likely because something ELSE came up that night to interrupt my writing! However, we did find my stepdaughter, my son did get his video game, my dog is still alive (so is the parrot), and we all lived happily ever after.
I knew deep in the recesses of my Word program, I had typed a description of one particular day this year because it just seemed incredibly hectic...so I decided to share it with you (…please bear in mind that this was not written for a post, only for my need to vent, so the grammar may not be perfect). For those of you who ever wondered…
A DAY IN THE LIFE
Wake up, start getting ready for work. My daughter says she’s ready, but takes another 3 minutes after I’ve gotten into car to actually come out, now wearing a different outfit than 5 minutes ago. We drive to the high school, she’s early for once. Go home to pick up other two kids, get my lunch, kiss husband good-bye and apologize for not being passionate the night before and falling asleep in 30 seconds flat. Inform him that I am not a man, and I need more preparation than climbing into bed to get my engine humming. Get kids off to middle school, give my son the daily lecture about not being ready on time and does he think he’ll be able to follow this rule since it’s already May and I’ve been repeating it daily since September? Ask him to please get out of the car and go around the back of it like my stepdaughter does so I can bolt to work, since he once again made me late. He argues that I will only save a few seconds than if he walks in front of my car, and although he’s probably right, I just need to feel that I’m at least that much closer to work by peeling out of the parking lot and having the kids breathe my burning rubber. Race to work, make it there with 3 minutes to spare. Get participants off of buses; copies of bus lists have everyone’s name cut off, so I try to make new ones while at least 20 out of 35 people vie for my attention about such things as runny noses, last night’s function, someone said something mean about someone else, someone’s going to a bowling dinner tonight, etc. Try very hard to validate everyone’s conversation without screaming and running for the hills. After about 20 minutes, I’m instructed to take 6 participants to another day hab site so they can spend some time there while we entertain some new kids at our site who are ready to graduate high school and move on to the “Next Step” (our program). I take them; one girl starts complaining, ready to cry, that it’s too squishy in the back seat of the van, her ankle hurts, why does she have to go to the other site, it’s not fair…within 5 minutes, someone says something that cracks her up, and she continues to laugh uncontrollably for the next 10 minutes. Drop off these 6 participants and return back to my site to pick up 4 other participants that will come to a job at a senior center in Pt. Washington. We have to leave early because of the impending HS group that’s coming, so I decide to kill time and go to WalMart to see Marie Osmond, who’s signing autographs for a new book or something. She’s supposed to be there at 11am, so I figure if we leave WalMart at 11:10, we’ll still make it to Pt. Washington Senior Center by 11:45. After listening to much griping from my guys about waiting around for someone they’ve never even heard of, we leave after realizing that it’s 11:10 and she will be late. We get into the van and head off to Port Washington. My daughter calls me on my cell phone and tells me that she doesn’t feel well, can I come and get her (no). I tell her to call back at 1:00, and I’ll see what I can do. All 4 participants fall asleep in the van; one boy is talking and snoring at the same time, if that’s possible. We finally get to Pt. Washington, and go in our usual entrance. We’re informed by some strange lady that we have to go “under the church” for the senior lunch people that we’re supposed to serve, due to the fact that the regular lunch room is decorated for someone’s anniversary party. We start wandering around all of the buildings, and end up down cement basement stairs that have no railing (she did say, “under the church”). I have two very unsteady participants, and I try to help them down the creepy steps. We get to the door at the bottom and there’s no handle, no one answering our knocks, and an extremely dark, gloomy room on the other side of the door glass. One of the senior citizens is wandering around as well; he can’t find his way either, so he tells us that he’ll go look while we try to make our way up from bottom of the stairs. He finds the location across the parking lot in the actual church (..and on the main floor, besides). We go in, and everyone has already begun eating lunch (we’re supposed to serve them). We sit down to eat our lunch; I shove my pb&j down my throat and get up to collect everyone’s garbage. One of the seniors chews food, puts it in a napkin and hands it to me. We then get up and leave, 20 minutes later. We get back to the site, and I’m rushed out to go to a “company picnic” meeting at the Plainview office that I stupidly volunteered to be a committee leader for in our site. My daughter texts me on the way there: “Can u come get me” (no). I apologize, tell her I love her and to hang in there. We discuss different things in the meeting. It ends at 2:00; the leader of meeting says, “Don’t worry, you can go home and still get paid for 2:30.” Yes, but I have my site’s van (my coordinator’s suggestion), and I only get paid until 2:15. So I race back to the site, and realize once there that I still have 5 of the participant’s books to write up. I’ll have to do them tomorrow, I figure, and I better leave to get my daughter, since it’s now 2:20. Get my daughter who is miraculously better, and now wants to drive the car. We go to nail salon to pick up her books that she left there last Friday. We go home, she immediately goes on computer, I go upstairs and eat ¼ box of cereal while picking through mail…tax return checks are in there, but not what I hoped they would be. I leave to go pick up my son. He gets into car and immediately starts asking if I can take him to the game store because he has early birthday money, it’s burning a hole in his wallet and he needs to spend it NOW (he didn’t actually say that, but he may as well have). I say no, not until his tutor leaves later on. He sighs and says that I would always do this for my daughter and starts with the guilt crap. I dismiss him, and he immediately forgets about it to tell me to look at a video on his phone, which I can’t do because I’m actually driving. So I pull over, look at a video of something that only he understands, and say, “Oh, that’s nice!” Suddenly, someone with a gas scooter goes flying past the open passenger window, scaring the pants off of both of us. My son laughs for 5 minutes, because he thought it was a lawnmower doing 50mph. We go home. I decide to start paying some bills and figure I’d better get the charities out of the way because I’ve been using their address labels for about 8 months and never sent them any money. I realize after a while that my dog, Freedom, has an appointment for a lump on his leg in 15 minutes, so I rush him out of the door while my other dog starts barking and running around like crazy because it’s not him going out. We get to the vet, and Freedom immediately pees like a racehorse onto the floor and the entry mat. They have to call someone in to clean it, while I stand there embarrassed because every person in the waiting room has obviously never seen a dog pee before, judging from the horrified looks on their faces. In the waiting room there is a cat in a basket (yes he’s real, and he just sits in a basket), guinea pigs, hamsters, an iguana and a very friendly, loose parrot that Freedom decided he wanted to taste—so they put us in a room by ourselves to wait for the vet. At this point, Free gets so nervous, he pees and starts to crouch for a poop, to which I screamed, “NO!!” and one little piece fell out. I scrounged around for paper towels, picked it up and wrapped it tightly. He paced and paced, all the while shedding hair like ticker-tape confetti, most of it landing on my clothes (why am I wearing black sweatpants?). I realize he probably has to go badly, so I take him outside where he makes such a mushy poop that I can’t even pick it up with the paper towel I brought out. Not to mention the 5 minute pee he took on a tree…I think he was a camel in another life, he holds a lot of water. We finally go back in and see the doctor, who loves Free but thinks he has a bad cancer from oldness…$200 later, we leave with antibiotics, powder, and the knowledge that he needs surgery for another $500. And if they find the bad cancer, he’ll need chemo. I go home to find my son with the tutor, who sympathizes with Freedom’s fate. My husband is there, getting angry at the cost of the vet and the unnecessary comment that we should put an old dog through chemo. My stepdaughter’s mother keeps calling and wondering where she is (we are too; we just figured that her gymnastics practice went on long because of a meet tomorrow). And my daughter surfaces to tell me she’s going out with my favorite person, KS (a boy she’s liked since she’s 12 who constantly leads her on). And, can she have money? I give her $3 and my son throws a fit that see, he’s right, I only give to his sister. The house is a mess, I’m trying to heat up leftovers, and all of a sudden I feel goo on my bare foot and realize that one of the dogs just threw up in the kitchen and I stepped in it. To which the tutor gets hysterical laughing. We eat, and I tell my son I can take him now. We go….
That’s how it ended, most likely because something ELSE came up that night to interrupt my writing! However, we did find my stepdaughter, my son did get his video game, my dog is still alive (so is the parrot), and we all lived happily ever after.
Monday, October 02, 2006
A First (And Last) Time For Everything
I usually consider myself a fairly “earthy” sort of person. I really enjoy nature; so much so that I drive my kids and friends crazy just admiring something as minute as a late October bloom on a fading rosebush, or a floating autumn leaf with blazing reds and oranges covering it’s delicate skin. I was absolutely thrilled this past June when a family of Baltimore orioles decided to build a nest on a tree branch in my front yard! Never having seen them in this area before, I relished watching all of their activity early in the morning while sitting on a bench, relaxing with a hot cup of tea. For the last 17 years, our annual family vacation has taken place in Lake George, NY, in a modest cabin amongst the fragrant, tall evergreens with a wonderful view of the crystal-blue lake. Yes, nature is something that usually brings me peace of mind, and a feeling of spirituality, a connection to the earth that I can’t explain.
Because of my love of the great outdoors, I thought that it would be no problem to go camping with my husband, something that I had never done before in my entire life—strange, because I really do appreciate all that this wonderful earth has to offer. What I didn’t realize is that most of what nature has to offer is better off being admired from a distance—a very sizeable distance.
At some point in what I’m convinced was a very inebriated conversation, my husband and his brother decided that they should take their camping-virgin wives to a remote spot that they had accidentally found earlier this year in upstate NY for a weekend of rugged camping. I was very wary at first, as I usually prefer to wash my pots and pans in filtered running water, not a protozoan-filled lake. And of course, there’s nothing like using an actual toilet with tissue paper as opposed to squatting by the base of a tree and using leaves. As the official camping day approached, I began to have feelings of dread. How am I going to handle not being able to shower or wash my face for two days? I guess this means no makeup…that’s a scary thought. So, with baby wipes in tow and a few of my daughter’s Pond’s facial wipes on hand, we packed up our small bags and closed up the house.
We decided to leave at 6:30 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. so as not to get stuck in major NY traffic. We went to my brother- and sister-in-law’s house to pick them up, and once he was finished packing everything except his After Nine tuxedo, we left. After doling out walkie-talkies, my brother-in-law, R., drove my husband in his car, and I drove my car with my sister-in-law, E. We had lots of catching up to do, and the ride seemed to be going pretty quick to me, since we were going towards Lake George and I’ve made that trip so many times. We stopped once to get gas and use the restroom, and once to relax and eat dinner. By the time we drove through Lake George, it was 12:15 a.m.…a little late, but we purposely did take our time.
We drove along the road that was supposed to lead us to our destination for about 20 minutes until my husband walkie-talkied me and said that nothing looked familiar. We all pulled over into a parking lot, and R. called up OnStar to help out (not my mode of choice; I prefer a good, old fashioned map myself, but since my husband and R. had no idea where they were going, it wouldn’t matter if we had NASA guiding our course). OnStar said we were going in the wrong direction, so we backtracked and went down another road. Word to the wise: Don’t trust OnStar. Especially if they sound confused, and take over 15 minutes to give you some sort of idea of where to go. We were led up a mountain road that became more desolate and dark with every passing minute. When we finally passed a sign for a town that I knew was about 30 miles east of the area that my husband said the campground was in, we decided to turn around.
On our way back down the mountain, we encountered a state trouper and asked him for some help. He took out a pen and drew on the map that we had in the back of the car, telling us “exactly” where to go. Hallelujah! It was now closing in on 2:15 a.m., and we were ready to crash. How we were going to set up camp at this late hour was beyond us, but we looked at it as some sort of “Little Rascals” adventure, and figured we’d wing it as long as the turtles didn’t march into the lake with our lanterns.
Caution to every tourist visiting the Adirondack region: Don’t trust the State Troupers. They’re bored. There’s not much going on up there, so they need to create their own excitement. As we drove down yet another road with no lights, no cars and nowhere to pull over for what seemed to be an hour (hey wait…it’s 3:15 a.m.…it WAS an hour!), we realized again that we were not headed anywhere near where our destination was, and that the State Trouper was probably laughing his fool head off by this time, knowing that he sent us to North Deliverance, USA. E. started feeling very uncomfortable stomach-wise from eating at the afore-mentioned rest stop, and was starting to get upset. She walkie-talkied R. and started yelling at him about his lack of a sense of direction, his lack of consideration, her horrendous stomach ache and something regarding the heads of turtles. He proceeded to beep back and a lovely fight ensued for about 5 minutes until we happened upon a mirage in the middle of all that darkness.
I guess mountain people need to relax and have fun just as much as the next person, but we found it awfully strange that there was a bar in the middle of nowhere and we hadn’t passed a gas station for 45 minutes. E. was happy that she could finally use a bathroom, but when she viewed the patrons leaning on each other to keep each other standing upright and the grand total of 12 teeth in the entire room, she decided to just let loose right there in the parking lot. She wiped with some Dunkin’ Donuts napkins left over from the onset of our trip, and ran back into the car. We concluded that there was no one in that bar sober enough to wonder who the stool-dropper was; they’d probably all be worried that it was one of them, and they just didn’t remember. Since there was no Dunkin’ Donuts within 50 or so miles of this town, we figured the added element of the commercial napkins would throw their brains into a tizzy.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, it started to pour, and at one point we had to swerve our cars so as not to hit what R. thought was a baby bear, and I thought was an alien. At 4 a.m., we passed by a popular ski slope and happened upon a small Alpine-themed motel. There was no one in the office, so my husband switched spots with E., and we all curled up as best as we could in our car seats to sleep. At about 7 a.m., I awoke to a tattooed, Harley-Davidson tough guy staring into our windshield. I nudged my husband in a panic, and he opened the window. This mean-looking thug actually turned out to be the owner of the motel, and in his very Long Island accent (thank God!), he empathetically asked what time we got in. He apologized for sleeping in his house next to the motel and not above the office as he usually does, but he said he couldn’t imagine anyone coming to this area on an “off” weekend, in the rain, after 1am. Ha. For $30, he let us stay in a room with 3 queen sized beds until we were ready to start our trek to find a campsite that E. and I now figured was a figment of our husbands’ over-active or liquor-induced imaginations.
After catching a quick nap and freshening up a bit, we hit the road again at about 9:30 a.m. to a camping destination that the Harley guy said we’d really like, since E. and I had had our fill of trying to find some delusional fantasyland that may not even exist. As we approached the area, ominously called “Thirteenth Lake”, our husbands realized with glee that this was actually the campsite tha
t they had been looking for all along! After conversing about the chances of us ending up there after all we went through, and how the men could even forget the name of that lake, we pulled into a gravel parking lot with about 3 other cars. We started to unpack in the rain, which thankfully subsided to just a sprinkle here and there as we took almost 3 hours to set up camp. E. reminded me that we needed to sign our names into a journal-type book that was housed in a compartment on a small, wooden stand that was put there for our own safety in case we got lost in the woods. I was a little put off when I saw that Mike Meyers had signed in, but I assured myself that we were probably amongst hikers with a good sense of humor.
There was no denying the beauty of Thirteenth Lake. The mountains were breathtaking and covered with evergreens mixed with trees whose leaves had begun to change. The lake was peaceful and quiet, save for the sound of faint cricket chirps and the occasional call of a loon or a
hawk. There was a beaver dam and felled trees that they had excavated all on their own. Since this was state land and not an “official” campground, throughout the day we would see scattered hikers and fishermen coming through the small trail next our setup.
After a deliciously campy lunch of hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on the campfire, we took turns on a raft and rowed out into the lake. We hiked just a little to sense our surroundings, and conversed with a couple in their 50’s that were backpacking their way up the mountain to camp out, a first for the woman as well. As evening approached, E. and I popped open some wine, and the boys got out their martini-shaker (what camping trip would be complete without one?) for their mixed vodka drinks. We cooked filet mignon
steaks and some more hot dogs for dinner, and wondered how our digestive systems would hold up for the remainder of the trip. We hauled any food remains and garbage to the car, against the advice of one hiker who suggested that we hang our food from a tree to discourage the bears, as they’ve been known to actually break into cars when they’re hungry enough. We all decided that we’d rather have the bear destroy our vehicles than to have him sit with us staring at a bag of scraps hanging in the air, waiting for us to lower it down so he can have a midnight snack. After all, he might get impatient and decide that one of us will suffice.
About the time that we realized that we couldn’t see 5 feet past the campfire and the lake had completely been engulfed by the darkness, we heard our first coyote howl. E. became
paralyzed with fear, holding a flashlight in each hand, and I started to chop some wood with an axe to get my mind off of the impending night that I would have to spend with nothing separating me from the wildlife except the thin nylon of my tent. The guys, of course, loved every minute of this adventure, although I tend to think that vodka can give one a false sense of security, not to mention a real sense of stupidity. After a few hours of playing “Guess the Noise Coming from the Woods”, we decided that the fastest way to daylight was through a good night’s sleep, and we retreated as couples into two tents.
I was feeling a little jumpy at first, but the continuing strains of “Ghetto Superstar” coming from my brother-in-law’s cell phone ringtone library next door helped to drown out the lonely coyotes and put my mind at ease. I had just fallen asleep when I heard a faint scratching at the tent next to my head. Since we had kept the campfire on for light, the shadow on the tent wall exposed a leaf that was slowly drifting down the outside of the tent. I decided to help it along, and flicked it with my thumb and forefinger. The wind started to pick up, and the rain started to fall again. I heard R. (or was it E.?) snoring, and there was finally enough background noise to lull me to sleep again.
I again awakened to another leaf skimming the side of the tent, and as I turned over to flick it off, I realized that the shadow of this leaf was heading upwards, and had four legs and a tail. I screamed and my husband woke abruptly, looking bewildered and reaching for his Machete next to the blow-up mattress.
“It’s just a lizard, what’s wrong with you?! Go back to sleep!”
“I can’t sleep! Whose idea was this?! I can’t stand this anymore! Please tell me it’s after 5 a.m., so I know that this night is almost over!”
He lit up his watch, and I saw 2:45. Oh well, I thought to myself. It’s not 5 a.m., but at least I must’ve slept a little.
“It’s 12:45.”
“No it’s not, it says 2:45!!”
“Well, you must’ve missed the ‘1’, look.”
All I could think was, how can this be? It’s only 12:45, and daylight won’t peek through this pitch dark for at least another 5 hours. How am I ever going to fall back asleep??
We lay there quietly, trying to ignore the fact that now that the wind died down and the rain stopped, we can hear the coyotes loud and clear. They’ve been calling each other all night. Haven’t they found each other yet? Apparently, it’s so dark that they can’t even see each other, and they have to play a game of howling Marco Polo until they do. The minutes rolled slowly by, and I wondered why I didn’t hit any of my friends up for a Valium before I left.
Just when I finally started to relax and drift off into a not-so-peaceful slumber, I heard the footsteps. What was even scarier was that my husband heard them, too, and sat straight up.
“What is that?!?!?” I inquired in a panicked whisper.
“SSHHHH!!!! Don’t SAY anything!!!” He anxiously whispered back.
“OH MY GOSH…IT’S MIKE MEYERS!!!!!”
I felt as if I were going to faint…give me a bear, give me Bigfoot for crying out loud, but don’t let there be some deranged nut walking around in that darkness looking for unsuspecting campers to dismember!!
“Stop it!!! It’s not Mike Meyers!!! It’s probably a bear, just BE QUIET!!!”
Whatever this creature was, it began sniffing between the tents, which actually put me in a panic that we really were dealing with a large mammal of some sort. Hopefully one that already ate dinner, I thought to myself. We waited for what seemed an eternity even though it was only about 5 minutes, and finally, the footsteps headed towards the woods and out of our camp. My husband and I tried to convince each other that a bear wouldn’t just scratch open our tent for no reason and eat us (even though he told me to get my head away from the side of the tent), and that they really didn’t like to eat people anyway, only berries and fish. Yes, that sounds good! Berries and fish, not humans! Okay, let’s huddle real close and pray with all of our might that we will fall asleep and wake to a glorious, sunny, critter-free morning.
We finally woke up around 7:30 a.m.…but not to glorious sun, only more ominous clouds and occasional sprinkles. The rain held off long enough for us to cook a delicious breakfast of eggs and bacon on the campfire, but as we were packing up to leave, the skies opened up and drenched not only all of our belongings, but us as well. Even the men were exhausted and anxious to get on the road, so after about 2 hours of soggy, muddy packing, we headed down the mountain. Good bye, Thirteenth Lake. It was quite an experience, but I will never visit your human-void, critter-laden shores ever again.
As we made our way back towards Lake George, the skies started to clear up as if to say that our nightmar
e was truly over. We decided to spend the day in town, and after some light shopping, a nice lunch and a great game of laser tag, we started on our journey back to Long Island. As we were driving, my husband asked me to tell him honestly how I felt about my first camping experience. Although I don’t think he was completely surprised, I know that he was slightly disappointed when I told him that it was probably my last. I assured him that although I enjoy sharing new adventures with him, to me this was the equivalent of dragging him to the mall at 6:00 a.m. for Macy’s One-Day sale, trying on 12 different outfits, 24 pairs of shoes and finally ending up at the Estee Lauder counter for a total makeover, complete with full facial hair removal.
Some things in life are strictly there for men to enjoy and I believe that camping is one of them--along with the Ultimate Fighting championship, Jackass movies and AC/DC. Other things, such as Glamour magazine, Victoria’s Secret and Nora Ephron movies are best enjoyed by women (alright, maybe with the exception of Victoria’s Secret). On the slim chance that I become melancholy for sleeping in the great outdoors, I’ll stick to pitching a tent in my own backyard, where I only have to worry about the opossums under my shed. On second thought…
Because of my love of the great outdoors, I thought that it would be no problem to go camping with my husband, something that I had never done before in my entire life—strange, because I really do appreciate all that this wonderful earth has to offer. What I didn’t realize is that most of what nature has to offer is better off being admired from a distance—a very sizeable distance.
At some point in what I’m convinced was a very inebriated conversation, my husband and his brother decided that they should take their camping-virgin wives to a remote spot that they had accidentally found earlier this year in upstate NY for a weekend of rugged camping. I was very wary at first, as I usually prefer to wash my pots and pans in filtered running water, not a protozoan-filled lake. And of course, there’s nothing like using an actual toilet with tissue paper as opposed to squatting by the base of a tree and using leaves. As the official camping day approached, I began to have feelings of dread. How am I going to handle not being able to shower or wash my face for two days? I guess this means no makeup…that’s a scary thought. So, with baby wipes in tow and a few of my daughter’s Pond’s facial wipes on hand, we packed up our small bags and closed up the house.
We decided to leave at 6:30 p.m. instead of 4 p.m. so as not to get stuck in major NY traffic. We went to my brother- and sister-in-law’s house to pick them up, and once he was finished packing everything except his After Nine tuxedo, we left. After doling out walkie-talkies, my brother-in-law, R., drove my husband in his car, and I drove my car with my sister-in-law, E. We had lots of catching up to do, and the ride seemed to be going pretty quick to me, since we were going towards Lake George and I’ve made that trip so many times. We stopped once to get gas and use the restroom, and once to relax and eat dinner. By the time we drove through Lake George, it was 12:15 a.m.…a little late, but we purposely did take our time.
We drove along the road that was supposed to lead us to our destination for about 20 minutes until my husband walkie-talkied me and said that nothing looked familiar. We all pulled over into a parking lot, and R. called up OnStar to help out (not my mode of choice; I prefer a good, old fashioned map myself, but since my husband and R. had no idea where they were going, it wouldn’t matter if we had NASA guiding our course). OnStar said we were going in the wrong direction, so we backtracked and went down another road. Word to the wise: Don’t trust OnStar. Especially if they sound confused, and take over 15 minutes to give you some sort of idea of where to go. We were led up a mountain road that became more desolate and dark with every passing minute. When we finally passed a sign for a town that I knew was about 30 miles east of the area that my husband said the campground was in, we decided to turn around.
On our way back down the mountain, we encountered a state trouper and asked him for some help. He took out a pen and drew on the map that we had in the back of the car, telling us “exactly” where to go. Hallelujah! It was now closing in on 2:15 a.m., and we were ready to crash. How we were going to set up camp at this late hour was beyond us, but we looked at it as some sort of “Little Rascals” adventure, and figured we’d wing it as long as the turtles didn’t march into the lake with our lanterns.
Caution to every tourist visiting the Adirondack region: Don’t trust the State Troupers. They’re bored. There’s not much going on up there, so they need to create their own excitement. As we drove down yet another road with no lights, no cars and nowhere to pull over for what seemed to be an hour (hey wait…it’s 3:15 a.m.…it WAS an hour!), we realized again that we were not headed anywhere near where our destination was, and that the State Trouper was probably laughing his fool head off by this time, knowing that he sent us to North Deliverance, USA. E. started feeling very uncomfortable stomach-wise from eating at the afore-mentioned rest stop, and was starting to get upset. She walkie-talkied R. and started yelling at him about his lack of a sense of direction, his lack of consideration, her horrendous stomach ache and something regarding the heads of turtles. He proceeded to beep back and a lovely fight ensued for about 5 minutes until we happened upon a mirage in the middle of all that darkness.
I guess mountain people need to relax and have fun just as much as the next person, but we found it awfully strange that there was a bar in the middle of nowhere and we hadn’t passed a gas station for 45 minutes. E. was happy that she could finally use a bathroom, but when she viewed the patrons leaning on each other to keep each other standing upright and the grand total of 12 teeth in the entire room, she decided to just let loose right there in the parking lot. She wiped with some Dunkin’ Donuts napkins left over from the onset of our trip, and ran back into the car. We concluded that there was no one in that bar sober enough to wonder who the stool-dropper was; they’d probably all be worried that it was one of them, and they just didn’t remember. Since there was no Dunkin’ Donuts within 50 or so miles of this town, we figured the added element of the commercial napkins would throw their brains into a tizzy.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, it started to pour, and at one point we had to swerve our cars so as not to hit what R. thought was a baby bear, and I thought was an alien. At 4 a.m., we passed by a popular ski slope and happened upon a small Alpine-themed motel. There was no one in the office, so my husband switched spots with E., and we all curled up as best as we could in our car seats to sleep. At about 7 a.m., I awoke to a tattooed, Harley-Davidson tough guy staring into our windshield. I nudged my husband in a panic, and he opened the window. This mean-looking thug actually turned out to be the owner of the motel, and in his very Long Island accent (thank God!), he empathetically asked what time we got in. He apologized for sleeping in his house next to the motel and not above the office as he usually does, but he said he couldn’t imagine anyone coming to this area on an “off” weekend, in the rain, after 1am. Ha. For $30, he let us stay in a room with 3 queen sized beds until we were ready to start our trek to find a campsite that E. and I now figured was a figment of our husbands’ over-active or liquor-induced imaginations.
After catching a quick nap and freshening up a bit, we hit the road again at about 9:30 a.m. to a camping destination that the Harley guy said we’d really like, since E. and I had had our fill of trying to find some delusional fantasyland that may not even exist. As we approached the area, ominously called “Thirteenth Lake”, our husbands realized with glee that this was actually the campsite tha
t they had been looking for all along! After conversing about the chances of us ending up there after all we went through, and how the men could even forget the name of that lake, we pulled into a gravel parking lot with about 3 other cars. We started to unpack in the rain, which thankfully subsided to just a sprinkle here and there as we took almost 3 hours to set up camp. E. reminded me that we needed to sign our names into a journal-type book that was housed in a compartment on a small, wooden stand that was put there for our own safety in case we got lost in the woods. I was a little put off when I saw that Mike Meyers had signed in, but I assured myself that we were probably amongst hikers with a good sense of humor.There was no denying the beauty of Thirteenth Lake. The mountains were breathtaking and covered with evergreens mixed with trees whose leaves had begun to change. The lake was peaceful and quiet, save for the sound of faint cricket chirps and the occasional call of a loon or a
hawk. There was a beaver dam and felled trees that they had excavated all on their own. Since this was state land and not an “official” campground, throughout the day we would see scattered hikers and fishermen coming through the small trail next our setup.After a deliciously campy lunch of hot dogs and hamburgers cooked on the campfire, we took turns on a raft and rowed out into the lake. We hiked just a little to sense our surroundings, and conversed with a couple in their 50’s that were backpacking their way up the mountain to camp out, a first for the woman as well. As evening approached, E. and I popped open some wine, and the boys got out their martini-shaker (what camping trip would be complete without one?) for their mixed vodka drinks. We cooked filet mignon
steaks and some more hot dogs for dinner, and wondered how our digestive systems would hold up for the remainder of the trip. We hauled any food remains and garbage to the car, against the advice of one hiker who suggested that we hang our food from a tree to discourage the bears, as they’ve been known to actually break into cars when they’re hungry enough. We all decided that we’d rather have the bear destroy our vehicles than to have him sit with us staring at a bag of scraps hanging in the air, waiting for us to lower it down so he can have a midnight snack. After all, he might get impatient and decide that one of us will suffice.About the time that we realized that we couldn’t see 5 feet past the campfire and the lake had completely been engulfed by the darkness, we heard our first coyote howl. E. became
paralyzed with fear, holding a flashlight in each hand, and I started to chop some wood with an axe to get my mind off of the impending night that I would have to spend with nothing separating me from the wildlife except the thin nylon of my tent. The guys, of course, loved every minute of this adventure, although I tend to think that vodka can give one a false sense of security, not to mention a real sense of stupidity. After a few hours of playing “Guess the Noise Coming from the Woods”, we decided that the fastest way to daylight was through a good night’s sleep, and we retreated as couples into two tents.I was feeling a little jumpy at first, but the continuing strains of “Ghetto Superstar” coming from my brother-in-law’s cell phone ringtone library next door helped to drown out the lonely coyotes and put my mind at ease. I had just fallen asleep when I heard a faint scratching at the tent next to my head. Since we had kept the campfire on for light, the shadow on the tent wall exposed a leaf that was slowly drifting down the outside of the tent. I decided to help it along, and flicked it with my thumb and forefinger. The wind started to pick up, and the rain started to fall again. I heard R. (or was it E.?) snoring, and there was finally enough background noise to lull me to sleep again.
I again awakened to another leaf skimming the side of the tent, and as I turned over to flick it off, I realized that the shadow of this leaf was heading upwards, and had four legs and a tail. I screamed and my husband woke abruptly, looking bewildered and reaching for his Machete next to the blow-up mattress.
“It’s just a lizard, what’s wrong with you?! Go back to sleep!”
“I can’t sleep! Whose idea was this?! I can’t stand this anymore! Please tell me it’s after 5 a.m., so I know that this night is almost over!”
He lit up his watch, and I saw 2:45. Oh well, I thought to myself. It’s not 5 a.m., but at least I must’ve slept a little.
“It’s 12:45.”
“No it’s not, it says 2:45!!”
“Well, you must’ve missed the ‘1’, look.”
All I could think was, how can this be? It’s only 12:45, and daylight won’t peek through this pitch dark for at least another 5 hours. How am I ever going to fall back asleep??
We lay there quietly, trying to ignore the fact that now that the wind died down and the rain stopped, we can hear the coyotes loud and clear. They’ve been calling each other all night. Haven’t they found each other yet? Apparently, it’s so dark that they can’t even see each other, and they have to play a game of howling Marco Polo until they do. The minutes rolled slowly by, and I wondered why I didn’t hit any of my friends up for a Valium before I left.
Just when I finally started to relax and drift off into a not-so-peaceful slumber, I heard the footsteps. What was even scarier was that my husband heard them, too, and sat straight up.
“What is that?!?!?” I inquired in a panicked whisper.
“SSHHHH!!!! Don’t SAY anything!!!” He anxiously whispered back.
“OH MY GOSH…IT’S MIKE MEYERS!!!!!”
I felt as if I were going to faint…give me a bear, give me Bigfoot for crying out loud, but don’t let there be some deranged nut walking around in that darkness looking for unsuspecting campers to dismember!!
“Stop it!!! It’s not Mike Meyers!!! It’s probably a bear, just BE QUIET!!!”
Whatever this creature was, it began sniffing between the tents, which actually put me in a panic that we really were dealing with a large mammal of some sort. Hopefully one that already ate dinner, I thought to myself. We waited for what seemed an eternity even though it was only about 5 minutes, and finally, the footsteps headed towards the woods and out of our camp. My husband and I tried to convince each other that a bear wouldn’t just scratch open our tent for no reason and eat us (even though he told me to get my head away from the side of the tent), and that they really didn’t like to eat people anyway, only berries and fish. Yes, that sounds good! Berries and fish, not humans! Okay, let’s huddle real close and pray with all of our might that we will fall asleep and wake to a glorious, sunny, critter-free morning.
We finally woke up around 7:30 a.m.…but not to glorious sun, only more ominous clouds and occasional sprinkles. The rain held off long enough for us to cook a delicious breakfast of eggs and bacon on the campfire, but as we were packing up to leave, the skies opened up and drenched not only all of our belongings, but us as well. Even the men were exhausted and anxious to get on the road, so after about 2 hours of soggy, muddy packing, we headed down the mountain. Good bye, Thirteenth Lake. It was quite an experience, but I will never visit your human-void, critter-laden shores ever again.
As we made our way back towards Lake George, the skies started to clear up as if to say that our nightmar
e was truly over. We decided to spend the day in town, and after some light shopping, a nice lunch and a great game of laser tag, we started on our journey back to Long Island. As we were driving, my husband asked me to tell him honestly how I felt about my first camping experience. Although I don’t think he was completely surprised, I know that he was slightly disappointed when I told him that it was probably my last. I assured him that although I enjoy sharing new adventures with him, to me this was the equivalent of dragging him to the mall at 6:00 a.m. for Macy’s One-Day sale, trying on 12 different outfits, 24 pairs of shoes and finally ending up at the Estee Lauder counter for a total makeover, complete with full facial hair removal.Some things in life are strictly there for men to enjoy and I believe that camping is one of them--along with the Ultimate Fighting championship, Jackass movies and AC/DC. Other things, such as Glamour magazine, Victoria’s Secret and Nora Ephron movies are best enjoyed by women (alright, maybe with the exception of Victoria’s Secret). On the slim chance that I become melancholy for sleeping in the great outdoors, I’ll stick to pitching a tent in my own backyard, where I only have to worry about the opossums under my shed. On second thought…
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