hold on to your friends

Morrissey – hold on to your friends

I don’t have one best friend. Before you start to feel sad for me, hear me out. I have a group of about 8 people who I love most dearly and will be life-long friends, I guess you can call them my best friends. They are the people that I send an e-mail to when I have news to share or need advice. Sadly only my friend Josh lives in New York, and happily my friend Alison is most likely moving here when she sells the monstrosity/ball and chain of a house she lives in in Chicago.  My friends, no matter how much distance lies between us, are not needy or demanding. We respect that we have busy lives and if it is a few months or longer before we talk, nothing is ever mentioned of it. We just pick up where we left off and catch up when we can. My friends are so diverse but all share a common thread. They love me. And it would be hard not to notice that they are often eccentric, intense people with big hearts. Just the way I like them. My 8 friends are Alison, Josh, Suzy, Stephanie, Jayne, Nadja, Melissa and Akimi. Tom is my absolute best friend but thats different because he is so much more. All of these people I have known for between 12 and 20 years. Some jackass once told me that I only have short-term music industry friends. Nope, I have had p-lenty of music industry friends alright, but work is work. I have beautiful friends that I can count on to be there for me that I would trust with my life. Outside of the inner circle there are a lot of people I would call close friends that I love dearly: Michelle, Elea, Diane, Mimi, Cammy, Lisa, Posey, Bethanne, Leisa, Paul, Lizzy, Jeff, Jim, Tim, Bob, and Alf (i have known all from between 5 and 25 years, only one in the music biz) …not to put them on the B-list…but they are people who I would drop anything for and think about and miss. The difference between them and my best friends is that I have been with my best friends through hell (theirs or mine) and back and somehow that changed things and we are now family. No best friend broken heart necklaces hang from our necks, nor do we have a secret handshake, but it is more something we all just know. I am blessed with good people in my life. I am amazed that I have had such good fortune to have ever met them and am so glad that efforts were made not to loose touch by either myself or them.

So I find myself getting a little sentimental when it starts to get cold. I don’t know what it is but I start to have a longing to go see my friends and spend time with them. I would like there to be a “friend pass” similar to a Euro-rail Pass were I can list 10 destinations and need to complete my trip within 3 months. I would go to Beijing, Sydney, Portland, Sand Pointe Idaho, Chicago, Indianapolis, Oakland, Brisbane, Byron Bay, and Berlin. I feel the need to check in with everyone and make sure they are OK and have their nuts stored and wood chopped for the winter. I would want to help them with any last minute winterizing (or in Alison’s case de-icing and air conditioner removal) that needed to be done. When my friend Brian died last week, I began to feel rushed to check in with all of those people I had let too much time pass between the last contact and now. I felt that I have been asleep at the wheel and needed to make the effort to check in, make plans with, and for some, even locate. Time goes by so quickly. I know that my friends know that I love them and know they are in my heart and in my thoughts. But my New Years resolution is to reach out (music biz term) and reconnect. I won’t be able to see everyone in this new year but hopefully a few. Chicago, Sand Pointe Idaho and Berlin in 08′! Oz and CA in ‘09! That would be fantastic. Won’t they be so happy when I show up with my two toddlers and disgruntled teenager in tow? When I was married previously, I lost touch with a lot of people. I was too embarrassed at where I found myself, and more embarrassed at not leaving. So the fact that I am wanting to talk to everyone and show up with my family makes me happy at how far I have come. Don’t worry, we will bring a tent. 

Divorce was a monkey wrench thrown in there too as it took me awhile to find my feet again and reconnect with people. Only two people were mutual friends with myself and my ex. After a 2 year silence and their siding with my ex, we are friendly again, but thats it. Its tough for most people to choose and without making the effort to fully understand both sides (in my case no effort was made), most people err on the side of smiling bystander. If they had been long-term friends I would have been shaken up about it, but it suits me fine now. It doesn’t feel like I lost friends there, I see it that i just didn’t know what kind of a friendship I had with them until then.

I recently joined MySpace to try and find someone I had lost touch with. MySpace seems to be mostly for bands and I have like 3 friends form my long ago rock scene days…I am just not a big scenester anymore. But when I look through the lists of some mutual friends it brings me back to a time long ago and reminds me of all the people I knew from those days. But I don’t ask to be their friend. What is done is done, and I can look at their sites and smile and be happy to see they are still around on this planet and hope they are doing well. But I really don’t want any mySpace friends that I don’t know. I am not a Friendster. Nor do I join any groups of like-interested people on Facebook. An old co-worker (and friend) DB once asked me (over inter-office IM) why I wasn’t a part of a mySpace group of tattooed New Yorkers. And I said that I wasn’t a joiner and quoted Marilyn Manson when he was talking about the Polyphonic Spree “…they represent everything I despise…happiness, friendship, fellowship and bright clothing.” to which he replied. “Interesting. Well I think its fun.” Which left me stunned, scratching my head thinking that…well,  I suppose it is, ill never know. They will have to mark “does not play well with others” on my report card again this year I guess.

I have to admit that having all of my closest friends so far away can be very isolating. As if having two infants isn’t isolating itself. I belong to a twins group that meets every friday at a play space. But Mom groups tend to bore me after awhile as it gets a little repetitive. Zzzzz…huh, what’s that? Oh yeah I am really interested in the cute thing your kid did today…zzzz. Its nice, I shouldn’t complain. Having twins is really tough sometimes and its nice to have people to vent to who are likewise as sleepless, and who’s shirts are smeared with carrots and spit-up and whose life has been overtaken by babies such as myself. But it is hard to make friends when you are in your thirties. For the most part people are done shopping and stay pretty much on the surface. I tend to make friends with people who are not afraid to dig a little deeper and most people can’t go there. There has been a couple of people over the last five years I have made some effort to befriend but for whatever reason, most likely our overwhelming lives, we just didn’t get it together to spend the time to make a closer connection. 

I know someone who always says “oh, I have a friend who lives there…or I have a friend who works there or knows so and so… ” I don’t do that. I don’t brag about my friends, their lives are personal and it is rare that I share any details of a friends life to another person. It usually takes me a long long time before I call someone a friend, even if I feel instinctively that I will be fast friends with someone. It takes me some time to trust I suppose. I can be as self effacing and revealing about myself in conversation, but there are only a handful that I count on because I know that I can. I am not opposed to making new friends, I am just not looking for them. I figure it is something that happens naturally or it doesn’t. I have met some new people through blogging but that is very new to me and for now I am just enjoying what they have to say, they aren’t ring your bell out of the blue or lets go grab a drink type of friends anyway. But may end up being something very important in time. I have those lets grab a drink and catch up friends and I don’t even have enough time for them lately.  

So this week I am going to start writing the first annual holiday letter to send (e-mail) to my friends. This is a tradition I am copying from my friend Suzy. I look forward to her report every year. Because god knows I don’t have the time to write everyone the same damn thing. And then I will gather my miles and get my ass on a plane and see the people I love as soon as possible. I don’t ever have to threaten that someone is going to be kicked off my Christmas card list, those people on it know that I love them no matter what. And hopefully ill get a chance to see their faces sometime soon.

keep passing the VW bug

If any one of my friends and family are stumped as to what to get me for Christmas, your problems are solved. Ford just came out with a re-issue of the Mustang driven by Steve Mc Queen in the movie Bullitt. Brushed chrome dashboard and although the engine sound used in the movie wasn’t the sound of the actual car (they used a racecar, not a Mustang), they have re-created this model with this engine sound. It starts at a mere $31k, which I understand you can give in installments. It comes in green or black, either one would be fine. Although I love vintage cars, this is one exception I would be willing to make.If anyone hasn’t seen the 9 minute car chase scene in the San Francisco streets yet, rent Bullitt. It puts any Bourne movie scene to shame. The Mustang keeps passing the same Volkswagon bug over and over. It was a prop car but it made it look like they were driving in circles.

weekly tid-bits #4 (where we wear matching sweaters and look at happy little trees)

1. I am a bad blogger. I took 2 weeks off. Probably because I have been busy generating enough snot in my head to put Elmer’s out of business. The little ones are snotty too and that makes for lots of happy snot sucking with an infant snot sucker. Jack’s least favorite thing on the planet. Thanksgiving dinner I hear was very tasty, but to me the potatoes tasted like the green beens that tasted like the cranberry sauce which all tasted pretty much like cardboard. Tom has been sick too and it has moved to our chests and we now sound like we are bad smokers and gin drinkers. Coughing in mid sentence with a dry “hoiiii!” as we speak in raspy voices and address each other as “dahlink”. Marlowe had a rash, a reaction to a new mystery food and now she has a rash from the Benedryl, great. Getting them to sleep has been such an huge amount of effort this week that they are considering making it an Olympic event in Beijing next year. Tom and I need a vacation we think, and not just from blogging.

2. Despite our “creeping crud” as my mother would say, Tom has been such a sweetheart. He jumped in the bath with Jack tonight and together they splashed enough water to put the dog to shame. I walked in the living room the other day and he was holding two big foam letters, an “A” and an “O” singing..”A…O…let’s go!, A…O…let’s go!” I wish the Ramones had done that song on Sesame Street.

3. We went to the Brooklyn Museum last weekend with the babies. Always a good place to go on a cold and rainy day. There was a children’s book fair with a bunch of authors you could meet and ask to autograph your copy of their book if you bought it. We were there for about an hour chatting with people while the babies slept in their strollers. We bought lots of Christmas presents for the kids in our extended family and got to feel good supporting some authors and illustrators at the same time. We went into the watercolor exhibit. It was an hour before closing time so we had the whole long space to ourselves with a few passers through. We let the babies crawl all over the floor and cruise the benches. We picked them up to see a John Singer Sargent and John Wenger’s Coney Island and many more with bolder colors or contrasts. Who knows what they were thinking? I held Marlowe up and for some she yelled at the paintings and others she babbled in baby to them or just stared quietly. They loved crawling around yelling at each other hearing the echo of their voices in the room. I wouldn’t have gone to see the watercolor exhibit on my own, I would have assumed it a little dull, but I was surprised that there were so many different ways of using the medium. It all wasn’t Bob Ross’ sunsets and happy little trees. Tom’s Mother is a professional painter and she uses watercolors mostly. She is amazingly talented and is usually backed up this time of year doing portraits of people’s houses on order from her for Christmas gifts. Tom and I bought a print of a painting we liked by Francis Guy. It is a winter scene in Brooklyn in 1760 thereabouts. We had seen it before in one of Tom’s books on the history of New York and both really liked it. Amazing how when you get older the things on your walls change. Posters turn into cheap art that turn into better art and photos of your family. I never understood the whole Ikea and West Elm framed generic art on the walls. If you completely love it …well, I guess great, but it seems to shout “I have no identity of my own!” There is plenty of way cooler and cheap stuff out there. The print we bought perhaps is a part of our esthetic of random strange and cool old things. We may hang it next to the framed Gene Vincent record or the carved Japanese sign for a pharmacy. No, this one goes in the bathroom where you have time to sit and look at the details and think how much that corner of Flatbush and Atlantic has changed. Ok, maybe the print wasn’t edgy or punk rock in any way, but it was way cooler and more interesting than a big print of an f’ing poppy flower. But maybe I should stock up on no-brainer art…when Jack and Marlowe are in their 40’s that shit is going to be collectible.

4. Ruby told me that she would like to speak to her conscience. She said that some people tell her to listen to her gut and others say listen to her heart and others say to listen to her head. She said that on TV she often sees a character that will hear a voice out loud that says “This is your conscience speaking”, and she would like to hear that and have a conversation with hers. Man, being a teenager must be so confusing.

5. People often misuse the word “ironic”. To be ironic something must contain irony right? It should indicate somehow a contrary or opposite view of something…be incongruous in such an extreme as to be witty. But I suppose not all irony is funny. I think we are a bit lazy with this, we use the word ironic when it is just strange or coincidental. Alanis Morrisette’s song Isn’t it Ironic states “…well I’ve got one hand in my pocket, and the other one is givin’ a high five”, (well thats not ironic at all! Although can be referring to the opposite direction of her hands but that isn’t really showing a real opposite as they are both hands doing something.) It also says: “Its like rain on your wedding day” (thats not ironic, thats just unfortunate), “or a free ride when you have already paid” (not ironic, you obviously weren’t paying attention), “…its a black fly in your chardonnay” (again, just a bummer), “it’s a death row pardon two minutes too late…”(um, not ironic, just sad). Will someone please explain irony? The other day on Brownstoner, a blog about Brooklyn real estate, someone wrote in the comments “Isn’t it ironic?” and someone commented under it…”no its not, its just strange”. So I am not the only one who notices this stuff. Maybe through time it has evolved in modern literature to refer to something sardonic or sarcastic or just random. Like for example “the elephant was afraid of the tic tic bird” may have been what was ironic at one point, but now “the elephant was friends with a german shepherd” would be considered ironic nowadays. Go figure. As Holden Caulfield would say “Its ironical. It really is.”

6. I think that iTunes should start iByte. It would be downloadable clips of every movie and television show. Of course the icon would be a tiny silhouette of a dog with its mouth open (iByte…get it?) and you could add little clips to your e-mails and blogs or your text messages. Forget emoticons, just click on it to hear a sound byte of Joe Pesci saying “Do you think I’m funny?” or Tom from Tom and Jerry’s amazing howl when his tail gets flattened by an anvil. Who wouldn’t want the sound the 6 million dollar man made when he leapt off of buildings as their cell phone ring? Or William Shatner saying “Scotty! Beam! Me! Up! at Once! prepare to! leave! orbit!” Or who wouldn’t want to wake up to their iPod alarm clock saying “I love the smell of napalm in the morning!”? I would make blog reading all that more interesting, if you can interject images and video, why not just sound? See. I am a marketing genius. Tom thought he was smart with square bottom taco shells, but this is better.

7. I think part of why I didn’t post this week, other than being at my in-laws for a few days and far far away from my beloved iMac, was that at the beginning of the week my friend Brian died. I had been working on a post about drinking that I want to finish. But my funny spin on the subject became a bit tasteless after my friend died from liver failure from too much drinking at the age of 42. It is too soon to laugh about it and I have been welling up with tears for many days. My friend Steve from Alice Donut let me know, we had both known Brian from when he lived in New York about 15 -ish years ago. Its funny, I had been thinking about him a lot lately and had tried to find him again through mutual friends and sent some unanswered mySpace messages. I tend to think about people a lot if they are having something intense going on in their lives. Ever since I was little this has been true. Coincidence maybe. But maybe not. My friend Alf from Berlin also has this happen to him and had just told a friend last week about how when I first met him I asked him to go over to Brian and say “hey fuckface”. Alf is so sweet and it was obvious he didn’t know much English so his nose was spared. Brian was one of these people who made an impression. He was huge in so many ways, he was just a big hearted guy with a great sense of humor. It is such a shame that he is gone. One old friend of his wrote “why didn’t we see the signs?”, but they were as big as the Marlboro man once was when you drove don I-95 through North Philadelphia. It was practically tattooed on his forehead. But there wasn’t anything I felt I could do about it, and when I was hanging out with him, drinking a lot was my agenda as well and we woke up many times like Mickey Rourke and Fay Dunaway only to start it all over again a little past noon. It would have taken all of his friends and family to get him to stop, and even then he would have isolated himself as he ultimately chose to do. One reason I loved Brian was because he was able to be my friend without the fact that I was female (and he wasn’t) getting in the way of that. Not many men were able to do that, just be friends with a woman other than having it have to be someone in the mommy role. I also saw a lot of what he struggled with in myself too. But ultimately I didn’t have raging alcoholism and my path lead me to healthier places after finally getting healthy people in my life. But many, many good people drink. Often the ones that feel so much and burn so bright do. This was Brian. He spent 6 months volunteering in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina hit. A strong man with a weakness. We ALL are fragile. I don’t want to get all AA on you here, its a little too “let go and let god” for me, but I have seen the strongest people in my life at AA meetings and know it is incredibly hard to stop a pattern that has been handed down through generations and face all that you left behind for your addiction. When I spoke to Brian a several years ago he sounded pretty good, he was on the up and was in love and adjusting to the new role of being a step father. Then when I spoke to him a year later he had moved to DC and sounded irrational and dark. I lost touch again and that would be it. I hope to finish my post on drinking, and I hope there is a memorial service where we can swap Brian stories and share photos and celebrate his life. He was so much more than its end. But not yet, some grace period to hopefully find some resolve and feel I have given a moment of mourning must pass first before I can laugh and toast again.

Brian and Barbara in Berlin.

8. Speaking of old friends and their livers that I need to make more of an effort to go visit, I am seeing my friend Bob in Pennsylvania tomorrow with my friend Akimi. We are all paying a visit to our friend Furry’s garage sale. Furry is a tattoo artist and a collector of strange stuff, so this ought to be good. At night we were invited to Tom’s friend Jim and his girlfriend’s party. You are supposed to bring wine and some good cheese. Tom replied to all on the e-vite saying that we were going to bring the dog and Ruby didn’t want to stay home with the babysitter so she was going to bring a few friends from school and that I had invited some people I had met at the drum circle in Prospect Park and that we had this great Dave Matthews CD with a 4 hour jam session that we would bring and our hackey-sac. And should we bring our joy-sticks so we could play his X-box? Anyone that knows us knows that this was a joke, but some work friends of Jim’s girlfriend didn’t…I am sure they were like, holy crap, who is this guy? I wanted to show up with matching Christmas sweaters with Pictionary under one arm and Scattergories under the other and a brick of Velveeta and a carton of Firenze or jug of Paul Masson. We would answer cheerfully together “Happy Holidays!” when they answered the door. Tempting.

weekly tid-bits #3 (where i yell at strangers running in the street and offer to poison middle-schoolers)

1. So after I dropped my daughter off at vocal lessons on the lower east side…a stone’s through from the Pyramid Club where I put on shows when I was 19 years old (Flipper!, Helmet!, Babes in Toyland!, The Young Gods!, Laughing Hyenas! Unsane!) there was no parking near by because the streets were hogged with movie production trailers (cute if you are from out of town). So Tom and I and the babies went to the Trader Joe’s wine store on 14th Street. It is nearly impossible to leave there without 5 or more bottles (stuffed into the bottom baskets of the strollers after purchase), you can get a bottle of Trader Joe’s Brand for $2.99! Why there is a line of yuppies at the check-out and not a line of staggering good ol’ lower east side wine-o’s is beyond me. When I picked up Ruby after her lesson, she told me how her teacher’s boyfriend on assignment for National Geographic had picked up a sling-shot in Guatemala. At 4am they were sick of the flood lights and new PA (a.k.a parking attendant) walkie-talkie banter and sling-shot grapes at the production crew from behind their curtains. I guess they were a grape’s throw away. The Pyramid is now a successful hip-hop club. But I can still see Natz from the band Cop Shoot Cop working the door for me, letting all his friends in for free. I wasn’t even old enough to get in. I never thought I would be delivering my little girl to this neighborhood. I had a month and a half’s worth of booking when the owner sold the place and the new owner put in a pool table and said no more shows. I walked to CB’s and had a drink to lament my efforts. I ran into the Lunachicks who were leaving for tour in two days and needed a tour manager. I took the job and stayed on the road for about 7 years…it was 1989. Blink…its 19 years later.

2. I dressed my son up in a polar fleece jester hat with ear-flaps and navy booties today. What is it that happens to you when you become a parent and somehow the cute factor overrules the cool factor?

3. Sunday was Veterans Day. We observe it on the following Monday though, at least some of us are off of work and Ruby is off of school and the mail and garbage is not brought or taken away. I would like to go to the parade but it isn’t something I can motivate a pre-teen to be enthusiastic about so I don’t even try. I am a mess at parades and would be so at this one if I went. I cry at bagpipers in the St. Patty’s Day Parade and would probably cry at the Elmo balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I used to be stoic, was raised to be tough by my father who worked for the military most of his life. But after I had Ruby, the hard shell cracked and I became a big softy. On Sunday morning the babies were playing quietly in their room so I thought I would drink some tea and see what was on TV. I turned on a program about a battlefield hospital somewhere in the Middle East. The helicopter unloaded a moaning man on a stretcher. His leg was gory. In the hospital the doctor said “Your leg has to come off. I am sorry.” and the soldier said “ok” as if he were just told by a waiter that they were out of today’s special. In that moment, he had no choice and was so amazingly brave as he heard the words that would change his life forever. How he managed to respond at all was amazing in itself. I cried and cried. I held Jack for awhile and cried, hoping that he would never have to fight in a war. I am not squeamish with seeing blood and am really good with taking on a leadership role in a crisis. But at his word “ok”, I fell apart.
I would like to start observing Veterans Day from now on. I grew up on a Military base in Germany and feel a connection to the culture but was too busy rebelling to take that path myself. My father was a WWII history buff so I was dragged to every battle memorial in Europe as a kid. It instilled a sense of duty and humility in me that would sometimes save me and sometimes make me stay longer than I should have. I would like to teach my daughter about why it is important that we observe this day. She likes history so maybe I should start there and talk about it more with her. This year my tears were a start of my observance, next year Ill do it in public. And all year and every year ill teach my children to be grateful.

4. So whilst many bloggers of the mom variety were participating in NaBloPoMo (a challenge to write every day for thirty days) I took a break from blogging (and my readership doubled, go figure). I usually post two or three times a week, but spent the week instead wrestling my hormones, and giving my head a rest. I’ve been a bit sick from weaning, but it has waned and I am seeing the sun through the clouds again. Who knew I would get hot flashes and morning-sickness like waves of nausea? Perhaps any male reader would like to rub some Ben-gay on their testicles in sympathy? …chirp, chirp…thought not.

5. Tom went to work the other day picking up a boat leaving from Yonkers sugar dock. What comes to mind is a dock made of sugar like we all lived in Candy-land. But it is a regular receiving dock where a ship is parked that is carrying about ten-thousand tons of sugar ladled into a funnel on shore by the massive scoopful. The bucket is not closed and heaps of it pour out the sides as it makes the trip. To get to the wheelhouse, Tom is able to walk up the gangplank but to get to it he had to walk under the path of the crane and bucket. The bucket being the size of a small truck. He thought he timed it right, but the crane operator was faster than he thought and Tom had to run. He heard the sound of pouring sugar getting closer and closer behind him. He is in a suit and tie and was skidding in his leather dress shoes. sshhhhhhhhsssssssssssSSSSSSSS. He outran the spill and the bucket dumped its load about 10 feet away leaving a cloud of sugar dust filling the air to inhale. That would have been a way to go. Death by sugar. The dock workers sweep the excess fallen sugar at the end of the transfer like downtrodden umpa-lumpas. In the summer there will be bees and rats to navigate past.

6. Our friend Scott Wegner’s comic book Atomic Robo came out this week and it sold out already!

7. I realised this week that I never say “FYI”. There is just no way for it not to sound snotty. Even in business, where you would most likely be exchanging information would it call for you to preface the information you are giving as being information for someone. If it wasn’t information you were giving would you then say “for your misinformation” or “this is not your information”. Maybe the accent is on the “your”. Would you also then make the distinction to say “for several of your information” or “for a select few of your information”? What comes to mind when I hear people use this is Pee-Wee Herman in the movie Pee-Wees Big Adventure saying snottily “F-Y-I Fran-cis, my bithycle is not for sale!”.

8. Tom and I met some friends down on 4th Avenue to watch the NYC Marathon. I look forward to it every year. As has already been determined I am a softy for people working together or separately toward a common goal in the middle of the street and I got teary eyed at the first wheelchair racers. I usually go without make up for this reason and wear sunglasses hangover or not. I love to yell people’s names and countries they have written on their chests. I love cheering for the old couples running together and the groups of people running for a cause. It is so moving to be surrounded by that much support from strangers. It really goes to show that you do not have to be any specific body type or age to run a marathon, every possible one is represented. Your head is swimming with how many their actually are. It is inspirational. I didn’t want to go buy a pair of running shoes, but it reminded me that almost anything is possible if you put your mind to it. I could have cared less that celebrities were running, the only thing that mattered was getting to the finish. Some people dress up in costumes, god knows they must be peeling it off by the time they get to the 59th Street Bridge. The Hash House Harriers always make me laugh, they wear beer stein hats. Their running club sets up weekly runs where the end-point is a pub. Anyone that can combine athletics and drinking is a rare breed. Last year I went by myself because Tom was on a ship. I was 6 months pregnant but I leaned up against a light-post and yelled with the best of them. I hope to go every year.

9. Marlowe is now waving. She waved at everyone at Lowes Hardware today.

10. Ruby is on a trip to Medieval Times a theme restaurant with a show, no doubt where the Renaissance Faire folk work in the off-season. This was a school trip and they are not even learning about this period in history. We live in a city with some of the greatest museums and theater in the world, and she’s on a bus to Lyndhurst, New Jersey. Ah well, something fun for a change.

11. I went to a meeting at Ruby’s middle school yesterday and like most meetings of this sort the word “fundraiser” was repeated often which is common as all of the costs for extra curricular and classroom supplies fall on the PTA and the parents. I figured that it might be a fun project for Ruby and I to make a big batch of cookies to sell at a holiday show next month. But what do you know? City-wide regulations only allow store-bought pre-packaged bake goods to be sold in schools. No more lemon-bars? …no more freezer box cookies? …no more of grandma’s bourbon balls? Now its Entenmann’s and Little Debbie. I wager to doubt that the cookie factories are cleaner than my kitchen, and I would know for sure if any nuts crept in there. (Ask anyone who carries an epi-pin, the label isn’t always everything.) I agree only in that I wouldn’t want Susie PTA to bake her special Salmonella Snickerdoodles or her famous Botchalism Brownies. Well, that kinda squeezes the grassroots feel out of a girl. I was shopping for cookies just the other night and purchased some Archway brand apple-oatmeal cookies. On the package it says “Just Like Homemade”. Well I don’t know about you, but when I am in the kitchen up to my elbows in flour and sugar making batches of goodies for my loved ones…I always am sure to include the sodium alganate and maltodextrin, and a dash of sodium propionate and a little pinch of malic acid for that extra flavor. Yummy.

12. Speaking of things you can buy that have me scratching my head. Here are a few things I don’t understand:

* short-sleeve sweaters (if its cold enough to wear a sweater, chances are your arms will need to be kept warm too)

* disposable Tupperware (how is it disposable? isn’t everything then disposable? should we have the word disposable on the packaging of furniture or clothing or pots and pans? Are they suggesting that it is cheap enough so that you can just buy more?…isn’t that assuming people have the money to do that? …or do they mean “don’t worry the earth can take it”? if it was recyclable that would be a different story but it isn’t, I guess since plastics in food storage has only been around for less than 100 years…who are we to know how long it takes to decompose?)

* low-fat half and half (the other half is CREAM folks!)

* things that say “easy” in the product name. Like EZ Cheese What is so easy about it? I guess they aren’t saying its easy, only “EZ” right?, Easy Off oven cleaner…now how did that product get away with calling itself “easy”? Easier than what? Not using cleanser? Nothin’ easy about it. And Pampers’ version of Huggies’ Pull-ups are called Easy-ups. These must have been tested on sedated monkeys because trying to dress a toddler is like wrestling. I do like Happy Baby baby food’s Easy being green beans, now that’s cute. Evian’s Easy-to-carry (gallon of) spring water? Well if it was so easy to carry than why weren’t all the marathoner’s carrying one of those? And today I used trash bags that had easy flaps Is there a difficult version? What is so easy about the flaps? If I ever become a truck driver, that will be my handle. Easy Flaps.

wordy

Radiohead – Myxomatosis

I can not be called “wordy”, pretty funny for someone who writes many of them. The words I choose to use however get to the point pretty well I think, it is not often that I sit and look up to the right or left and and say “hmmmmm” trying to think of the perfect word for something. Or dig through a thesaurus trying to find an alternative. I have always been drawn to writers who write simply. Or maybe more so I am not drawn to writers who use a lot of flowery, fanciful, ornamented, embellished and aureate adjectives. I was taught to show, not tell by an english teacher in the 11th grade and I have stuck to that rule ever since. I still stop myself when I end up getting a little lost in the descriptive, but it is usually a side tangent off the subject that gets me in trouble. I have had many college english teachers draw a big red sharpie circle around my sentences (with a drawn sad face) and tell me to expand on something. And when I did I did not reach for the thick, dusty, venerable thesaurus that was chockablock, plethoric and brimming with words! Ive always hated poetry too, always. But loved music and lyrics and how words can fit perfectly like they are a sound from an instrument within a song. I have found some poetry that I like honestly, but it took me a long time to come to it and I did so kicking and screaming. Haiku poetry is exempt from my aversion, it doesn’t get any simpler and to the point then a haiku. My friend Josh and I will e-mail only in haiku for a time here and there throughout the years. I would imagine that a class in poetry would be as agonizing as the figure drawing class I took once. A room of students were asked to describe a piece of art, their critique sounded like fingernails on a chalkboard to me. Please don’t try and have intelligence about something you know nothing about! Its a good rule really. I see that the artist was feeling some conflict with the femininity of the person’s left calf muscle and used negative space to portray society’s degeneration. Aaaagh! I guess I want to write as straight to the point as possible, it suits my style and the forum (its always casual friday in blog-land). Give me a paper to write and that is a different story. I know that there are words out there that are perfect for what one is trying to convey. Words that are neither too tight or too loose and hit the nail smack on the head. I am not annoyed by those, and when you hear them used correctly it draws no attention to itself as it fits perfectly without being showy.
That brings me to why it bothers me when people misuse words. Maybe it is because of my Mother. Growing up she would often use larger vocabulary words in strange and awkward contexts. The circumference of the road is very flat. She never went to college but read a lot and was a head secretary at a big hospital and could type medical jargon faster than anyone I have ever seen all while having a calm conversation. I always thought of her as smart, because she really is. But she used words bigger than was needed and as a kid it made me cringe. I felt the same way when she would sing in her churchy soprano in the supermarket, uptown girl, she was living in a high class world…whoo hoo, nobody knows it, when I was down, I was your clown, nobody knows it…so don’t go breakin’ my heart… I would duck behind the stack of melons and whisper loudly with my teeth clenched Will you friggin’ STOP!?. So perhaps I decided that I wasn’t going to do that too and just stayed away from them for fear of sounding like my mother. But maybe it isn’t all her fault and maybe I just really hate it when people try too hard to sound intelligent. For many people it comes off as pretentious and just sounds fake as if one’s britches were a tad snug.
Don’t get me wrong, I commend people who want to expand their vocabulary. Nina at Willowthewisp Blog recently posted about how people do not take time to learn sign language. And I thought to myself that however true, I don’t even take the time to learn my own language let alone how to sign. Maybe I am just lazy and should once again set my Google homepage to give me the word-a-day vocabulary builder. I tried that for about a week and made an idiot out of myself. I recall one word was “vitriol” which is a great word. But I struggled for a week to try and figure out where to stick it in conversation that didn’t make me sound as out of place as Ralph Wigham on the playground. My cat’s breath smells like cat food. I recently had a meeting with someone who used the word “vitriol” and I nearly fell off my seat in hysterics. THERE it was! And was used to describe an e-mail I had sent, oh the irony abounds. So I realized that I was only going to absorb words by osmosis and continued to read hoping they would make the jump in my brain from comprehension to communication. I read a lot, always have. Not light summer reads, I read some heavy stuff. And most of the time when I read a 3 syllable word that is a perfect SAT study word, I almost always know what it means. I often take the time to look up words I don’t know so it is not that I just grock the language and that is well enough. But if a writer or person speaking (to use my friend Akimi’s idiom) “blows a lot of smoke” in the form of adjectives and adverbs “up my ass”…my eyeballs glaze over and I loose interest. I can’t tell you how many times I have interviewed people for a job and when there is misuse of a word, in my mind the record scratches to silence and everyone in the coffee shop stops what they were doing and stares as if E.F. Hutton had spoke. Maybe I should get some bumper stickers made that say “why blather?” or “I’d rather it be snowy than long windy” or “babbleing brooks are better than babbleing books” or “wax on? please wax off!”
On the way to shop at Target today Tom and I were listening to National Public Radio as we often do but only in the car for some reason. We listened to a re-hashed story from earlier in the week about a study on good posture and its effects on confidence in men and women. The woman giving the report took long pauses between words and spoke using perfectly annunciated words, but then she used the word “surreptitiously” when she really didn’t need to. I told Tom that I wanted to try and use the word “surreptitiously” more-often. So all around Target we explained to each other that we “Surreptitiously went through the ladies brassier section to get to the juniors department” and that “I was going to look at the toys but would be surreptitiously eyeballing the big screen televisions.” Tom said that “he had gone into the mens changing area with a suit but surreptitiously tried on some christmas tree boxers” and that he “also had surreptitiously on his waffles this morning.” it was all a laugh until I told an old lady to mind her own business and Tom told the taxi stand monitor to go fuck himself. Ah Brooklyn.
NPR and WNYC are great places to find people who are wordy. Some of the broadcast journalists seem to speak only to listen to the sound of their own voice. Like Jonathan Schwarz, he can wax on like time is of no issue, no rush to get to the music, just sit back and enjoy the nouns and verbs rolling off his tongue. On the Brian Lehrer Show the other day they were taking calls from people who wished to comment on his program. A woman called up and did what I think a lot of people do. They have a statement they have written down while on hold, and blurt it out when on the air. But when Brian asks them to elaborate, they flub and fumble over their words. Perhaps it is some stage fright but the original language often comes across as artificial if one is revealed not to be able to think on their feet. I love public radio, and prefer my news a little wordy truth-be-told because I don’t want anyone skimping on the details and dumbing down the news to a 4th grade level. I would interpret this as sugar-coating, and so for this reason I tend to watch international news programs. Yesterday morning on my drive home from dropping Ruby off at school I was listening to the radio and someone used the words “it was moving at an Iceberg like clip”, I liked that and am going to add that to my repertoir. There are a lot of good small words that can be wordy too…not just the ones with longer syllables; “clip” would be one of them, and “apt” and “irk”. I will do my best this week to use all three of those in one sentence. Strategic placement of smaller less flowery words can make one seem more intelligent than someone who uses the “fancier” ones. You and yer fancy words and city-slicker outfit. I can listen to Joe Frank for hours completely sober and straight and not be bothered by his descriptions at all. Maybe because he picks his words carefully and precisely and speaks about the agonizingly mundane details of the world without a speck of irony in his voice. And will choose the most direct path from A to B using only perfect words, long or short common or unusual. So maybe it is “windy” I have a problem with, not “wordy” because really… I like words. I just hate when they are used to make one seem intelligent and/or are used badly. Please stop dancing around what you are trying to say and just say it already!
At the moment I am nearly done reading Truck: a Love Story by Michael Perry. I can see how his writing would appeal to a female audience as girls can go for a sensitive guy in rob-roy who is good with words. But not many of them would pick up a book called “Truck” with a photo of an International pick-up truck on the front of it, even if is was claiming to be a love story. Besides myself of course, I am a sucker for an old truck, and have loved them. But his book has many many words in it that were on a couple of occasions “a little much” as my Mother would say…as in “your make-up is a little mutch”. But for the most part, he managed not to insult his audience (of at least 1) but rather bring them up to a level of vocabulary with him, throwing a well read woman a monkey wrench in here and there making her care enough to grab the dictionary. Look Ma, I cifered it! New York City’ s genius Board of Ed has in their English Language Arts curriculum the idea that there are “Just Right Books” for kids. The walls are decorated with posters encouraging Just Right Books and for students not to succumb to book choice peer pressure. Truck: a Love Story would be my just right book. A little bit of a challenge but not over my head. My daughter has read 8 books since the school year started. Thankfully I have a kid who loves books. And if book choice peer pressure is the worst of her problems in middle school, we are doing great.
Okay, another long (but not windy or wordy) post. Maybe I should get myself a thesaurus after all, and try and expand my vocabulary if not only for the sake of making my writing and speech more interesting. Instead of “obsequious” I can use the words “apple-polishing” or “boot licking”, and instead of “innocuous” I can use the words “sapless” or “namby-pamby”, and instead of “disorderly” I can use “heterogeneous” or “topsy-turvy”…the possibilities are amaranthine.

tooncie

catskills, baby foose-ball and a land yacht

Tom & I took off to the Catskills for a few days for a change in scenery. We stayed outside of Phoenicia at Kate’s Lazy Meadow Motel (owned by Kate Pierson of the B-52’s). They were pet friendly so we took Izzy the fur ball & chain with us too. The camera bit the dust finally shortly after we got there so most of our photos were taken with the video camera. The inside of the motel room was done in late 50’s through early 70’s decor. It had a kitchen and two bedrooms and when we got there we took the comforters off the beds and put them on the floor and dumped the bin of toys on it and set the babies free to play. They were in their car seats for three hours but were so good and barely complained. Tom and I marveled at the ridiculous lamp collection when chrome was all the rage and the Star Trek pillows on the mod red leather couch and a boomerang shaped coffee table. In the bedroom hung those creepy long paintings of kids with huge eyes and porcelain kittens and a framed photo of Karen Black sat on the dresser. After we got the babies to sleep we had our favorite dinner of cheese, bread and local brew (too tired to find a wine shop). It wasn’t that we were staying somewhere luxurious, it was that we didn’t have to look around our house and think of all the things we weren’t getting done. The air smelled of wood burning stoves. Unfortunately we didn’t bring the pack n’ plays so Jack & Marlowe woke up a lot and by the next morning we had gotten about 2 hours of sleep. The dog may have sprained something getting out of the car the night before so she was limping the next morning so we left her behind. When we returned from our hike she was running around so we were pretty sure she was faking it to get out of the hike. The last time we hiked with her in the Catskills we had to carry her over a mile to the car. She is the most unathletic dog, her breed is supposed to heard sheep…she can’t even walk to the local park without lying down.
We walked all around North-South Lake. Tom and I are both tall and have a similar gate so hiking together is easy. My father is nearly 7′ tall and I remember trying to keep up with him on our hikes in Europe when I was a kid, old ladies, who had been hiking since they were little, leaving us both in the dust. This day was beautiful out and the air was cool but the sun was warm. Jack and Marlowe looked all around at the leaves and the trees and talked to each other from their backpacks. I had used this backpack a lot with Ruby when she was little and it was cute to see Marlowe in it now. Jack fell asleep in his somehow when we were doing the most climbing on the trail.

At the end of the trail we sat in the grass and looked at the lake. Tom and I played soccer with the babies using them like live foose-ball players. We had Jack and Marlowe kick the ball back and forth to each other. We held them under their arms and swung their whole bodies to kick the ball. They laughed so hard and would shriek with excitement when it was their turn to kick the ball. Tom and I were laughing so hard we could barely run with them.

When we got back to the motel we walked over to where the motel rents out Airstream trailers. They park them by Esopus Creek which is really a river. There was 4 of them and two being refurbished. Each had a different theme, bubbles, tiki, tinkerbell…and Kate’s Hairstream.

yes, that says “Land Yacht”

Inside the Hairstream, its all B 52’s stuff.

Tiki was open and we shot some video in it for our family as a goof, showing a tour of our new piece of real estate we bought. The babies played in the leaves and the pine needles. By the creek there were smooth black stones and we found some lambs ear growing in them for them to touch. We would love to come back in the summer with some friends and the kids and rent a couple of the Airstreams, it would be a blast.
In the evening we went up to visit our friends Tony & Posey. They have recently built their house and were starting to be able to enjoy it and be proud of it after having gone through the huge stress of getting it built. They had a party a few days earlier and had a ceremony to try and cleanse the place of any negative vibes. These friends are not of the Catskill type you see that wear polar fleece and have a dream catcher in their Subaru, but are ex-Brooklynites and smart and creative people. So it made perfect sense and didn’t sound hokey that they needed to move forward with a fresh start. The house was a modular home and neither Tom nor I had any idea you could get such a nice one. The views were incredible and they made as many green choices as cost would allow. In time it will settle into the landscape and it will become a home as the positive memories accumulate. We will have to come up and sit under the stars around their fire pit before it gets too nippy.
Even with a few nights of sleep deprivation the whole trip was rejuvenating. No cell phone service and no computer was nice and they were not missed. A walk in the woods is always where my head goes to think of a safe and calm place. It was probably some of my favorite days with my husband since we got married last July, although we had the babies with us and it was mid-week, it felt like a romantic weekend away. I need more of these.