Happy Old Year!

Why is everyone always so eager to say good-bye to the old year? So many things I’ve seen, read, heard lately all indicate how bad 2011 was and this is no different than any other year. Every year everyone talks about being glad to be done with the year just ending. People have lost loved ones or jobs. Friendships have broken, marriages have fallen apart. Yes, those things happened in 2011. They happen every year.

But good things happened too. They did. I’ve often been accused of being overly optimistic or toting around more than my share of joy but I like that.

In 2011 I started a new job which I still enjoy even after a very busy and sometimes stressful first year. I was able to recruit a dear friend to join me at the new job. I bought a new car…for my husband to drive! It’s the first real “family” car I’ve ever owned, something nice for a change that I’m not embarrassed to valet park at a nice restaurant. I think the leak in our back room has finally been fixed (this may not seem like a big deal to YOU but it sure is to ME).

A close friend embarked on a new relationship and with that change in her life there was room for us to be closer friends again (AWESOME). A beautiful new dance studio opened around the corner and I started taking ballet again, along with two nights of barre method classes, through this I’ve made new friends and lost two pounds and toned up a bit.

My husband lost more than 20 pounds and looks and feels GREAT! We cut red meat out of our diets (again). The local animal shelter came very close to reaching their goal of saving the lives of 5,000 domestic pets (GREAT NEWS).

We had a snowy and pretty beginning of 2011. I took back my yellow bicycle from the consignment shop. I rode my bicycle a lot this past summer.

I was told by someone who knew me 30 years ago that she always looked up to me. She’s had a tough life since then; hopefully I can ease her burden just a tad.

My fence fell down but the power of friendship put it back up again before any of the dogs got out.

US Soldiers really did leave Iraq. Osama Bin Laden was finally taken down.

I know there was more, that’s just what came to mind so far.

Of course it wasn’t all hats and horns in 2011…it never is and it won’t be in 2012, no matter how hard we wish it on ourselves and each other there will still be tears and fears, dreams dashed and plans re-directed. There will be sadness and loss I’m sure of it. I wish it weren’t so but it seems that life just works  that way; the best we can do is hope for good things and work our hardest to make good things happen for ourselves and those we love.

Yeah, we sure do need some good changes here and everywhere. We need to bridge the ever-widening political divide in America. People seem far too polarized, I find it hard to believe that everyone’s ideas are so extreme there must be some common ground, right? We need to put religion back into the church’s, temple’s , synagogue’s and other houses of worship and keep them out of our political halls and venues. We need to be kinder to each other, to the environment and to the animals we share the planet with. We need to eat more fiber and not drink and drive. We need to remember to stop for pedestrians in the crosswalk. We need to shed our sense of entitlement. We need jobs. We need to MAKE THINGS again in the USA and they need to be good quality and affordable. We need to say please and most importantly THANK YOU more often and with feeling. We need to smile more because it’s contagious. We need to make time for our significant others and not take them for granted. We need to take the time to give our pets a tummy rub more often (or a scratch behind the ears or an extra toss or ten of the Frisbee). We need to respect our elders…we need to respect OURSELVES.

Well, here’s to 2011, wacky weather, endlessly leaking roofs, long bike rides and good times! Happy Old Year.

Pathetic (Non)-Reasons

Pathetic reasons why I don’t blog as much as I’d like to:

1.       I have too many topics in my head at once, would take too long to get them all down so instead none get written down.

2.       I don’t want to post anything without posting a picture with it and I don’t always have a good picture to post and I’m too lazy to go out and gather enough decent pix to keep the flow going.

3.       To feed my blog needs I send 3,000+ word e-mails to my friend because it’s faster and easier…and I don’t need to send her a picture with each e-mail.

It’s 9/11/2011

Just like any American who was alive and older than an infant I know where I was and what I was doing when I first heard about the terrorist attacks. Let me correct that, when I first heard what happened it wasn’t yet a terrorist attack, it was a plane hitting one of the World Trade Towers.

I was driving along the access road to my job in New Jersey. A job I had started on January 3, 2001, a whole new career path with exciting opportunities. I loved it (I kinda hated my boss but I loved the job.) I was on the phone with my best friend, she was still self-employed then (now she’s an incredibly well-respected pre-K art teacher making an amazing impact in one of the worst inner city school districts in the country). We were doing our usual gossiping and such while she put off starting her day a little bit longer. She had the TV on while we chatted.

Suddenly she gasped and said something like, “oh my God a plane just hit one of the World Trade Towers”. My first reaction was, “a commuter plane? What a weird accident.” Her response, “no, I think it was a big plane, they’re saying it was a big plane, its chaos”. I was at work by then and said that I had to go but we’d talk as more news was available.

By the time I got to my office the second plane had hit the second tower. No one was working everyone was desperately searching the internet for answers to questions we hadn’t even asked yet. The US sites like CNN and MSNBC were unreachable too many people were all looking for the same answers to the same unasked questions.

Despite our New Jersey location in the US, we were a company headquartered in Northern Europe with several ex-pat employees who were able to access news sites in their native country (and in their native language) so we got our news from northern Europe about what was going on less than 50 miles northeast from where we sat.

The company I worked for made two drugs that may be needed in a time of emergency, this was that time. All employees onsite that day were called together in the largest available conference area, the number of employees wasn’t as large as normal because it was September and September was the time for big sales meetings. Many of the executive team members as well as other staff were off in Kansas City (I think it was KC) some should have been flying back. I realized I didn’t know when my friend Michele, one of the meeting attendees, would be flying back. We stood together now in that conference room while the VP of Regulatory Affairs addressed us; he was the highest ranking Executive Team member onsite that day. He told us to go home to our families, only essential personnel should stay, those would be the people who might have to get needed drugs to the victims, I was in marketing, I was definitely not essential.

I left work. I wasn’t sure what to do or where to go. I was single at the time, the cell phone lines were jammed, and really, was my call that important considering all the people just wanting to make sure that their loved one WASN’T on one of those planes or maybe was late to work that day.

My friend Michele ended up sharing a rental vehicle with some people she didn’t even know. It was important to get home and it was important to get home, wherever home might be.

In the days and weeks following the attacks the country came together like never before, we were wounded and we needed each other. We had learned that even these hallowed shores weren’t safe from extremism but it doesn’t seem we took that lesson to heart.

Here we are ten years later. Ten long years where the market has fallen apart and we’ve realized that America isn’t as perfect as we once thought. We are still struggling to come back. We’ve weathered situations like Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme which bilked millions and millions of dollars from people just trying to save enough to have a better life.

We’ve seen a new subset of the Republican Party rise to prominence, the Tea Party.

Many of the Tea Party candidates lean on religion as their guide to their ability to govern. Have we learned nothing from religious extremism? I support each person’s right to seek whatever comfort they may find from believing in a deity of some sort as long as that deity is a kind and benevolent one. I don’t support the right to worship any deity that takes a life for any reason, a human life or an animal life. A kind and loving deity doesn’t take life because life is precious to a deity who gives life.

On this 10th anniversary of this tragedy it should be a time to reflect on what is right and good in this world and in life. We are heading towards another US presidential election and things are already heating up to be a crazy race. There are people who believe that being gay is a disease that can be “cured” and people who believe that they will rule with the aid of their God.

Instead of learning from the mistakes of others we are building our lives on their mistakes. It’s my understanding that the terrorist plot was formed to bring down the horrible American infidels; we were considered a Godless people because we didn’t worship the deity of the terrorists. Now it seems we are expected to worship the deity of the Tea Party candidates.

Today, 9/11/11, America feels more divided than ever. Republicans don’t want what they call “Obamacare”, people shouldn’t be “forced” to carry health insurance. That’s an interesting concept considering that I’m forced to carry home and auto insurance, insurance for objects; but I’m not required to have insurance for my health without which no objects would have any value anyway.

There are studies stating that health care costs are the single most common reason for Americans to declare bankruptcy and to lose those objects they are required to insure.

September 11, 2001 was said to remind us of the value of every life but we have forgotten that message just ten years later.

We are so divided now that it seems as though I live in two or more separate countries with very different beliefs. People seem less and less likely to allow people to pursue their individual lives as they see fit.

I want to live in a UNITED States of America, I want to be united by our common belief that there are no true common beliefs and we, as Americans RESPECT that. I respect every person’s right to go to church, temple, mosque or nowhere, I want my rights to be preserved. I don’t just want freedom OF religion, I want freedom FROM religion if that is what comforts me.

We make strong statements that the terrorists will never win but in many ways they have won. We are divided as a people, we are haters. It hurts my soul the way things are now. Sadly, September 12, 2001 was in some strange way a better day than September 12, 2011 will be.

I woke up that day to find American flags proudly displayed everywhere from the gas station up the street to the highway overpasses I drove under to the window of nearly every car. People were nicer, smiles were kinder and words and actions were respectful.

I never want to go back to the actions of 9/11/2001 but I do want to go back to the actions of 9/12/2001. I want to be kinder and more respectful of each other, I want to celebrate our similarities and respect our differences.

Don’t ever forget the events of 9/11/2001, they changed us forever…but tomorrow, 9/12/2011 take time to look back and remember THAT DAY, remember the feeling of not caring if someone was a Republican or Democrat, a Christian, a Jew, an agnostic or an atheist. On 9/12/2001 we all woke up as Americans of the UNITED States of America.

NEVER FORGET.

PUKERS!

WTF? I know I’ve complained quite recently about the books I’ve been reading so I should just shut up but I can’t so suck it.

Where is all this PUKING coming from? In almost every book I read a woman pukes when faced with some sort of S.H.O.C.K.I.N.G! news or some harsh reality. She generally turns some interesting greenish hue then vomits.

I’m an adult, I’ve RARELY vomited as an adult and when I have it’s been for very specific reasons; (a) I have the flu and I have it BAD and (b) I drank too much. That’s it and both of those are extremely rare. In my memory I’ve had the flu bad enough to vomit just once as an adult (last February) and I haven’t drunk enough to vomit since the ‘80s.

I just started to read a new book; mere moments ago and the lead character vomited in the PROLOGUE! Kid you not.

I’ve been faced with shocking, bad and disturbing news on many occasions as an adult. All of us have. It’s run the gamut from an ex-boyfriend slipping an engagement ring on a close friend’s finger (they never married, still very close with my friend and still talk to the ex, both of us do), to someone dying suddenly and finding out about it as I’m walking into work to start the day.

I have not been driven to worship at the porcelain alter for these or any of the many other shocking incidents adulthood has flung my way.

I get it; at least I think I do. The author is trying to convey just HOW SHOCKING it is. It’s shocking enough to evoke a physical act of revulsion; food and bile are forced up and out burning a path through the shocked person’s esophagus. But it’s stupid.

It is. Please stop it. Express the shock in a way that makes sense for the average adult and that is NOT by puking up their lunch.

Most people suppress the puking reflex sometime around their ‘tween years (except those who are entering into a bulimic phase in which case they’re actually honing their gag reflex to produce vomit, but that’s a whole other illness not to be addressed here). Think back, little kids seem to be able to vomit with no warning then go right back to enjoying their day. Too much soda and candy can bring on a big pile of vomit. The kid immediately feels better and is begging to go in the bouncy house while the parents are left swimming through a sea of grossness.

As the years march on you just naturally figure out that vomiting is no fun and you don’t wanna do it. Apparently the exception to this is if you are a female character in a work of fiction.

I can understand vomiting if faced with a truly gross image and smell. Walking into a shack filled with death (if that happens to be a plot line in your particular story) could easily make folks of both genders toss their cookies, yeah, I’m on board with that line of puking. I am not on board with puking because you found out that an old friend was marrying some unsavory character from your past or puking because of a bad memory. No, just no.

Stop it now.

Look I know it’s fiction and in fiction you, the writer, are the creator of the known universe but it seems that a lot of creators aren’t very original with their creation if they’ve all created a genre of the female puker.

Blue

We watched Avatar last night. Well, hubby watched Avatar and I uploaded photos to Facebook and read news stories on line and did stuff like that.

It was the first time we’d seen Avatar, we don’t see a lot of movies because of me. I can’t sit through them. I couldn’t sit through Avatar either.

Here’s the thing, and yeah, this could be a “spoiler alert” but frankly if you haven’t seen the movie yet then you’re enough like me to not really care if someone “spoils” it for you. The movie was simple and predictable. I remember when it came out there were people who no longer wanted to live if they couldn’t live as an Avatar on Pandora. Really?

And here it is, Americans (i.e. humans) want a precious natural mineral in abundance on this other planet (Pandora) which is a lovely, mostly peaceful (but fierce) bunch of elongated blue beings who got a few fashion tips from bad ‘80s videos (crop tops to be specific). Of course one of the humans gets to be made whole again both through being able to shed his broken body and also through finding love in an effort to infiltrate the peaceful blue critters.

To be honest, the flick kinda made my flesh crawl. It’s a message that has been put out there time and again in books and films. The message of, we’re kinda stupid and evil and want what isn’t ours to take and, hey, look at those cool, gentle peaceful people over there…let’s fuck THEM UP.

If we can put that message out there time and again then why oh why can’t we actually give it a go in real life?

I have a close friend who is not a John Hughes fan. I am. She takes issue with The Breakfast Club and other John Hughes flicks because of their predictability. She’s my friend, I love her, we can amicably disagree.

Because she’s smart (and my friend) I do give her the courtesy of considering her opinion on these things even if the results are the same. She’s mentioned that The Breakfast Club is rather predictable and the questions of what happens the following Monday are left unanswered but one can guess that since it’s high school those enlightened kids will slip quickly back into their comfort zone roles on Monday morning…or not, we’ll never really know. Yeah, I get that. But even the characters in the movie acknowledge that things will quite possibly be different on Monday when peer pressure hits.

Is Avatar any more or less predictable than The Breakfast Club? No.

The special effects in Avatar were all the rage when the movie hit the big screen. We have a 52” HD TV so we weren’t exactly watching it on 1960’s console TV with the tubes glowing in the cabinet, we had the home theater system blasting, it was loud. I wasn’t impressed.

The Breakfast Club’s special effects were…oh wait, there were no special effects in The Breakfast Club. It took place in a school library over the course of one day. Huh, no need to tell the story of elongated blue high school kids, I guess.

I admit that I went to bed before Avatar was over. I was sleepy and I couldn’t really do anything fun on the computer (like this) because it would’ve ruined the experience for my husband.

When he came to bed he said how much he loved the movie. I thought he was joking. I did. Hubby is usually rather cynical about most things. Not the type to be moved by elongated blue creatures (or so one would’ve thought).

I must’ve asked him four times before he fell asleep if he was joking about the movie and he assured me he thought it was brilliant. He mentioned the special effects and it made me wonder how much of that is what made the movie appeal to some people.

The New Yorker of a week or two ago had a piece about the final Harry Potter movie and how much the writer’s young son (8? 10? I could find this out easy enough by going upstairs and actually GETTING that issue of The New Yorker…but I’m lazy and this is no research paper, if the actual age of said child is bugging you find the damn article yourself) enjoyed it but he went on to speculate if children today would be able to enjoy a movie in the future if it didn’t have a lot of special effects. Clearly my husband has a bit of that in him even now.

In many ways the Harry Potter movies and books tell a similar story to that in Avatar, good vs. evil and some romance tossed into the mix. Unreal and unbelievable events happen in both movies because they are make-believe situations in parallel universes. In the case of Harry Potter the universe is so parallel as to be happening right here but in a magical realm, in Avatar the world itself is a different sphere somewhere else.

The Breakfast Club doesn’t exist in a parallel universe even though almost anyone who lived through high school in America might wish that it did. Most of us would fit into one or a hybrid of a few of the stereotypes sitting in that day-long detention; we were a brain, a jock, a princess, etc.

I’m doubting I’ll ever be an elongated blue critter in an ‘80s crop top…possible, yet highly unlikely. I’m doubting that I’ll ever wave a magic wand to fight evil, but I know for a FACT that I made it through high school and lived to tell about it.

Learning to drive

Riding my bicycle is making me a better driver. I no longer roll through stop signs because I’m too used to being on the OTHER side of that.

As I’ve mentioned I live in a resort-y area. I was on my bike today and an out-of-state driver on a “mission” to get to the beach barely slowed down at the very obvious stop sign. I try to live and let live because let’s face it one never knows when someone is packing a weapon of some variety but this time I couldn’t go quietly, well, for one thing, I almost couldn’t go at all because he came within inches of running me down. I turned around and shouted at him, “yo, JACKASS, in this state STOP means STOP not, “I’m gonna kinda roll through here so lookout’”. His lovely black Escalade was full of his very beautiful wife or girlfriend and two kids watching DVD’s in the backseat.

When I shouted at the guy two bicycle cops suddenly jumped to attention and pedaled over. Enough people had seen the incident and the two bike cops pulled the guy over and wrote a ticket for running a stop sign. The two bike cops must’ve realized it could be a banner day for them.

When I got to the next corner I looked back and they were pulling over every third car or so. The people weren’t even bright enough to pay attention to what was going on two or three cars in front of them, they just kept on running that stop sign.

About a mile up the ocean front on a 25mph piece of roadway that is nearly solely populated by bike riders, dog walkers and runners a young babe in a convertible BMW and yakking on her cell phone didn’t even bother slowing down, nor, it seems did she bother looking to see if she was at risk of hitting anyone. Okay, that one REALLY pissed me off. I punched the hood of her swanky car (because she came even closer to hitting me that the previous guy). She was rattled and actually apologetic but c’mon, a little courtesy on the road there babe.

Anyway, now I’m the one that diligently stops, FULLY STOPS, at every stop sign and checks carefully before pulling out into traffic.

Look, folks, imagine how you’d feel if you hit someone, a pedestrian, a bicyclist, someone walking their dog (and their dog). You’re entrusted with wielding a big hunk of metal (that’d be your car lunkhead), be careful and be respectful of the PRIVILEGE (driving IS privilege NOT a right) of driving; of being able to take road trips and get yourself to work.

And look out for me…on my bright green bicycle and don’t run me down, thank you for your consideration of my safety.

Oh just me bitchin' again...

I’ve been told there are only something like seven stories to be told in fiction. That sure as shit seems about right. I’ve been reading a lot this summer. Just fun stuff, summer reads. Frankly, I’m bored. There’s romance and deceit, mystery, intrigue and murder, cheating and stealing, and let’s never forget our good buddy redemption. There are historic novels that incorporate facts into fiction; but really isn’t that the case no matter what? There’s always some pseudo-factual part of any piece of fiction unless it’s written solely about Middle Earth.

I’m big fan of J.K. Rowling and the Harry Potter series. One thing I like about the Potter books is how she incorporated the current “real” world into her world of witches and wizards. When Harry, Ron and Hermione aren’t decked out in their Hogwarts attire they’re wearing jeans and sweaters, just like any other teen-ager. The witches and wizards are careful to keep their lives and activities separate from that of the muggle world (if this doesn’t make sense to you, tough shit, go read the books or stop by mugglenet.com).

When you write fiction you can write whatever you want…because IT’S FICTION! None of it is REAL. It’s all made up stories, every last bit of it. You can write about a big red dog (really BIG) or about vampires or witches or about not being an asshole in a relationship.

I know there needs to be plot devices otherwise there’s no story to read but books deemed to be “summer reads” seem to have similar plot devices. Woman is (a) suddenly single, (b) a beautiful young widow, (c) a beautiful middle-aged widow, (d) a hard-ass young woman who can’t keep a man. Said (beautiful) woman meets a handsome (a) recently widowed, (b) from her past who just lumbered back into town, (c) tough and solitary guy and they do the mating dance. They each send mixed signals to the other one. Some ancillary characters get involved who mess things up, then fix those things, then get caught up in their own troubles, then jump back in to help the couple.

Toss into the mix some pushy parents who are urging one or the other (or both) to get hitched and have babies. Add in the woman (or man) yearning to be a parent but not having the right partner yet. There are the few failed dates with “that other person” who just isn’t right because of (a) he/she is married, (b) he/she is just plain evil, (c) he/she is really in love with someone else and trying to get over them.

Maybe there’s a parent diagnosed with cancer (usually a mom with breast cancer), perhaps there’s a belligerent younger sibling that throws the whole family into a tizzy when they waltz out of town with a dangerous stranger.

I’m bored by it all. Truly, hopelessly bored.

Here’s the thing. Let me remind you again in case you forgot…IT’S FICTION. You can live out your wildest fantasies in it. You don’t have to tow the straight and narrow and yearn for babies and a settled life. You can tell everyone to fuck off when they ask when you’re gonna (a) settle down, (b) have a baby, (c) get a job or whatever. You can make every single character a different facet of yourself, even the ugly underside you never would dare show the world.

I know, I know, if I’m taking the time to write this blog post why not take the time and just write something I’d like to read, right? (WRITE?) Yeah, I know I don’t have many readers here (I can check these things, hence, I know) but even if I did…you’d notice that I haven’t posted much lately and why is that? Because it’s summer and all I really wanna do is go out and play. I’m only writing this because I’m sitting outside by the pool right now and it’s rather breezy so I’m not actually IN the pool where I normally would be…or on my bike going for a ride…or at the gym or who knows where else but not sitting at my computer writing.

A few years ago there was a series of books by the author Shanna Swendson (http://www.shannaswendson.com/index.html) , I love these books. They’re silly and magical and creative. I couldn’t wait to read the next one. The characters were lovable and annoying and kinda real in a very fanciful way. She apparently has a fifth book ready to go but no-dice on that…why? Because her third book didn’t sell well enough. So that makes me wonder if I have any clue at all what people want to read. Maybe people do want to read the same ol’ same ol’.

Alice Hoffman (http://www.alicehoffman.com/) is another author that incorporates a lot into her books…she uses magic that is just on the fringe of MAGIC. You’re almost not quite certain it’s really there…but it is. Most of you are probably most familiar with her witty and quirky title, “Practical Magic” because it was made into a movie with Nicole Kidman and Sandra Bullock and has become a rom-com fave around Halloween. That’s the stuff I love. Alice Hoffman’s books and characters. It’s not all hearts and romance but there’s a magic that prevails.

I think that’s what’s missing for me, magic. Reading lately has been to “real”. If I wanted “real” I’d watch “jersey Shore” or the Kardashians (kidding, I know that shit ain’t real, silly). To be honest most days I think that my life is more magical than most of those summer reads I’ve dug my sandy toes into this summer (well, not quite as magical as all those books that let the heroine be blissfully un or under-employed but still have plenty of cash to live on, I do have to work for a living).

I want a heroine who truly doesn’t like babies and isn’t suddenly swayed when someone strolls by her with a little one swaddled to her chest. I want a hero who doesn’t mess around and send mixed signals, he may not be Mr. Romance but he could certainly be Mr. Reality (oh they were a WONDERFUL band in the late ‘80’s early ‘90’s…loved them, my friends and talented musicians…you can still find them on MySpace…remember MySpace? http://www.myspace.com/mrrealitynj, but I digress…). He could just tell the flighty chick that he likes her, would like to know her better and give it a go. Good Lord people; I don’t know a single person in real life that did as much “dancing” around someone as most of the morons in the books I’ve read.

I want an adult heroine’s mom to NOT be struggling with breast cancer but instead a strong, independent person who rolls her eyes at all of her needy friends begging for grandkids. Where ARE these characters? These books?

Just when you stop looking

Two days ago I was intent on finding an awesome new place for breakfast; not “NEW-NEW” but new to ME. After all, I’m on staycation and the weather has been dicey at best so I’ve had to do something other than ride my bicycle obscenely long distances or lounge by the pool with the dogs.

Searching online landed me at a place that was highly recommended. It was just “meh”. It wasn’t bad but I didn’t leave there feeling the need to rave about it online. The atmosphere was a very reliable luncheonette look/feel. When I got there I was the only female diner and also the only diner under 65 years old, when I left there was one other female diner…NOT under 65 years old.

I’m now convinced that the proprietor of said luncheonette had his friends and family go online and rave about the place so that people like me would find it online based on awesome reviews and would give it a try. Hey, it worked and was certainly cheaper for him than actually doing any real marketing.

Yesterday the weather held up well enough for me to head out on my bike knowing that the clouds could gather in a heartbeat and the rain and wind could drive me to safety (hey, look, it’s doing it again right now).

Since Tuesday was my day to head south I decided to head north yesterday. A few miles into my trek I realized that it might be a good idea to head inland a bit and weave my way back home rather than risk getting caught too far away. I turned into the little town just north of mine and wandered the streets looking at the gorgeous homes (and giving a nod to my first-ever apartment down here). I got into the center of town, tiny and cute, dotted with some CPA and lawyer offices and some little joints for coffee and chocolates, booze and light groceries. There was one place that I’d heard about but kept forgetting was there. I’d heard about it from people more than halfway across the state it was supposed to be so yummy.

There it was, right in front of me, not crowded…AND they had an outdoor seating area which would be perfect for me with my bike in tow and no bike rack to lock up at. I was about to settle in at an outside table when one of the staff said, “oh honey, it’s way too hot to sit outside today, bring your bike into the lobby and enjoy the AC”. She had me at “oh honey”. See, most of the time I get the “you can’t leave your bike THERE” greeting but not at this place…oh no, they were MORE than happy to take care of me and my two-wheeled transportation.

Once inside I realized I was in the place I wish I’d found the previous day. The décor was adorable, cuter than cute but not annoying. The clientele was a mixed-bag of late-lunching office people, trendy college kids, middle-aged moms chased off the beach by the bad weather and a few random folks that were grabbing some takeout.

The menu was eclectic without being unfamiliar, in other words, the foods were identifiable but unique. Despite the fact that it was 1PM the breakfast menu drew me in. I ordered their version of eggs benedict, two poached eggs on toasted olive bread coated with a lemony artichoke tapenade and fresh/spicy arugula; it was perfect. It was flavorful and comforting and a reasonable portion instead of a big hunk of too much food.

It left me with the feeling I wanted the day before, it left me wanting to tell people about it. It made me want to flail my arms while describing it to hubby. It left me planning my next trip there (today for lunch, maybe?).

Might I just point out that this little joint is probably no more than 3 miles from my house and has been there for the past 7 years and I’ve lived in this house for nearly 10 years! THAT my friends is one reason I love my staycations, I get the chance to check out things I should probably already know about right in my own backyard.

When you go on vacation you get the chance to do a bit of exploring and find some places to shop or eat or hike or whatever; you can’t wait to rave to friends back home about the great little breakfast joint you found…I get to do that raving AND go back any ol’ time instead of waiting for the next time I get to visit that vacation spot.

Gotta go, I’ve got breakfast to go eat now (or maybe lunch, I hope they have the lobster salad again today).

To sleep, perchance to dream

I tried it, I didn’t like it. I tried that whole, sleep for 10 hours or so thing and I can officially state it is NOT my thing. My normal routine involves waking between 5:15 and 5:45AM, taking care of the dogs then getting ready for work and hitting the road.

At night I hit the bed somewhere between 10:30 and 11:30PM. Sure there are mornings when getting up in the 5AM hour is tough and I want to just fall back on my pillow for another hour or two but now I know that falling back on the bed for another three or so hours is just not for me.

Hubby loves to sleep. LOVES IT. It may just qualify as a hobby for him. He needs to clock in a solid ten hours of sleep to consider it a good night. Being staycation week for me I figured I’d give it a try. I hit the pillow around 12:15 last night, got up with the dogs around 5:30 and instead of staying up and enjoying this wonderful summer day I went back to bed. My intention was to get up no later than 7:30ish but there was a certain allure to being in a cold, dark room so I did nothing to jolt myself out of the sack at 7:30 as intended.

‘Round about 9:30 or so I toddled out of bed. I felt like crap, I was cranky and a tad disoriented. Truth be told I almost felt hungover (for no discernable reason). I didn’t like the feeling at all and felt even worse when I saw the great day I had been sleeping away.

Sleep is something our bodies need to regenerate and keep us alive but too much sleep just makes me feel dead. Was it Warren Zevon who proclaimed “I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead” (which, sadly, he now is)? There are only so many glorious summer days to enjoy and sleeping it away seems like just wasting a really awesome gift.

Hubby, who had hit the hay about half an hour before I did last night, rolled out of bed just past 10AM stretching and yawning and scratching his belly while proclaiming how great it was to have slept so much. Being still cranky from, well, sleeping to damn much I snarled at him. He asked if maybe I needed a tad MORE sleep! I told him that no, that was exactly what I did NOT need. What I needed was to get back those two hours between 7:30 and 9:30AM when I should’ve been up and cruising the beach on my bicycle.

I don’t understand it, I really don’t. I see no joy in sleeping in even on a shitty day. On a shitty day in a season other than summer I could be cleaning my house so it feels homey, I could be reading or writing or learning some new thing. If the weather is cooler I could have the dogs running and playing at a park, I could be embarking on a home project too laborious to be worth attempting in summer.

This isn’t to say I’m encouraging people to get to bed early either, heavens no, stay up late and enjoy the nightlife, we did last night. Go out with friends, sit up late on the deck and look at the stars, go for a midnight dip in the pool but for heaven’s sake get the hell out of bed the next day at a reasonable hour.

I thought that maybe by whiling away the hours under the covers I could discover some secret that hubby was already privy to since he seems so adept at sleeping. I figured maybe we could develop some special bond under behind the shroud of sleep…nope, sleep is his to keep. Whatever he finds there isn’t there for me and I don’t want it. I want to be awake and living life AWAKE. Life is short, why sleep it away. I’m more disgusted with sleep now than before this little experiment in sleep that I conducted this morning.

WAKE UP PEOPLE, JUST WAKE UP...DO SOMETHING WITH THE LIFE YOU’VE BEEN GIVEN…

I gotta go, sat around too long, need to get on my bicycle and ride with the wind!

Those girls in their summer clothes…

I have too many summer clothes. I’m pretty certain that I could make it through the entire summer without repeating an outfit and that’s including changing clothes twice a day in some cases. I like summer clothes better than the rest-of-year stuff. It’s softer, prettier, easier to wear; it looks more playful and sexy and all that other fun stuff.

Rest-of-year clothes can be tight or itchy or just plain unappealing. Other than in summer one of my primary concerns is staying warm which means I’ll compromise being pretty and sexy (indulge me here, I realize that at my age those two things may be a tad out of range on the average day but let’s pretend for my sake that they aren’t) in the interest of being warm and that’s just no fun.

I have boxes and piles and tubs of summer shoes. Platforms, wedges, flip-flops, sandals, sneakers, you name it I have it in every color in every height from strappy to subdued. In winter I wear boots. Just the thought of it makes me cringe. I don’t like “shoe-shoes” they don’t feel like “me” so it’s either boots or sneakers to battle the three seasons that aren’t my beloved summer.

In anything but summer I rarely wear dresses. To be exact I wear a dress approximately every seven weeks for opening night where my husband works, that’s it. That’s the ONLY time I get dressed up once the long, heady days of summer have faded to fall.

I admit that I miss wearing dresses once summer’s gone but that doesn’t mean I’ll go out of my way to wear one in the non-summer seasons. I don’t want to have to mess with tights or pantyhose or goosebumpy bare legs. I don’t like the need for sleeves and coats with a pretty dress. It’s all too much bother except in summer when the easiest thing to toss on is a simple summer dress and flip-flops.

This morning I took myself out for breakfast (my summer staycation week is here) and tossed on a plain little tank dress and was fine but in a few short weeks that won’t be an option and dammit I’ll miss that.

Of course it’s summer sale time right now and guess what I want…more summer clothes! The only thing keeping me (and my bank account) safe right now is the weather is just too damn nice to waste time shopping in stores.

One might wonder why I live in the northeastern part of the US if I love summer so much, I was born here. My friends are here. That’s why. Would I rather be in Florida or some other southern state? Oh yeah, the thought of a brief and vaguely chilly “winter” is ever so alluring to me and yet I don’t see me leaving here anytime soon. DAMMIT.

Well, it’s off to the great outdoors for the day in “outfit #1”, that will be followed by a bathing suit which will be followed (most likely) by a summer dress and sandals. Oh summer and all that you bring (like summer clothes) I love you best of all.

Gone before ya know it

Check the date, it’s July 4th. The summer isn’t even a month old yet. Summer is barely a toddler right now. There’s all those chances over the next several weeks to need a new pool float or a sexy new summery dress, I sure hope you can find those things.

On Thursday morning I had to stop by my local grocery store just before noon. That would be this past Thursday…JUNE 30TH, not quite yet July. It was a quick pit stop and I cut through the “seasonal” aisle on my way to the registers. I was pretty focused on my task (I had to be somewhere quickly) but even my intent-of-purpose could be broken by what I saw.

All around me the summery items I love so much were being relegated to sale tables and being replaced by backpacks and school supplies! What? Wait? Hey, it’s not even July 4th yet, what’s goin’ on here?

This is just friggin’ painful. The bigger question though is who BUYS THIS SHIT? If I bought something for September today I can guarantee I wouldn’t be able to find it come September. My house isn’t especially cluttered or messy and that may be the point, I’d buy it and need to put away so that my house WOULDN’T be cluttered or messy and then I’d forget where it was.

And what if I needed something for summer next week? Could I find it? We’ve been going through an alarming number of pool floats lately. We’ve had them a year or two, they’re cheap and, well, they just kinda wear out and are beyond repair and not worth repairing anyway, in a week or two will I even be able to replace them?

We were with friends last night enjoying a local fireworks display, one of the women has three young children and she was saying that everything is currently on sale which is kinda great but she also said that the sales woman at one of the stores told her that the entire Fall line would be on the racks by next week. FOR KIDS. Now look, I don’t HAVE kids but you don’t need to be the damn Duggars to figure out that kids grow out of stuff nearly weekly and you never know when that next growth spurt will shoot them two sizes in two weeks. Kids and their sizes are just plain unpredictable so please tell me how in the world you can reasonably expect to buy something next week for a kid to wear in October? Really?

I just HATE THIS. I do. I don’t want to see knapsacks and bookbags. I want to see backyard gear and special contraptions to make s’mores. I don’t want the retail gods to hurry me any further towards my ultimate demise than the world already does for me.

Can’t we enjoy the “NOW” for a few minutes?

My other question though is do retailers EXPECT to sell things on sale rather than at regular prices? I can tell you that if I went into a store today and saw something I wanted to wear…TODAY and it was regular price I might be tempted to buy it but that won’t be the case. If I were to stop by one of my favorite retailers today I can guarantee that any item of clothing I’d want to wear today or in the next few weeks would be marked down significantly and that lovely sweater that I might want towards the end of September would be full price.

We need a new grill and hubby said this one will make it through this season. I suggested that we should buy a new one at an end-of-season sale…and then I realized those were going on right now. We grill well into October these past few years since the weather seems to actually get nicer and nicer in September and October but by then those grills will be long gone replaced with Christmas and New Year’s items so it looks like our end-of-season grill may just be our most-of-season grill.

All so confusing!

Well, time to hit the road on this July 4th and enjoy some end-of-season somethings.

Happy 4th, Happy Independence Day, Kiss a serviceman or woman, wave your flags and enjoy this great American life for all its warts and burps and beauty.

School Dayz

I have no friends from school. A collective “awwwwwwwwwww” is NOT in order here. I don’t really want any friends from my school days. I did okay in school on the popularity scale. I was attractive enough to do okay, I was loud enough and funny enough to attract attention, I had my various cliques of people to hang with. And then I grew up.

School is odd. We think we’ve met our lifelong buds there on the first day of kindergarten when in fact we become stuck with these people based on our geographic proximity based on school district maps (or busing maps). So there ya go off to your first day of school.

Nowadays school starts much younger, in PRE-school but I’m not talking about starting school now, being childfree I’ve never had to deal with the whole PRE-school thing. I’m talking about ME and what I remember.

Anyway, off to that first day of school, thirty or so fidgeting five year olds gather together for the first time and are assigned seats in alphabetical order so now your “friends-for-life” fate is sealed by the first letter of your last name, if you don’t like the kid to your left maybe the one to your right will be more to your liking.

You wander through school trips together and teasing and taunting and crushes and all that happy horseshit and 12 or so years later you find yourself sobbing and hugging people and signing yearbooks with words like “never forget…”

But some of us do forget, we really do.

I left my hometown a year or two after graduation to move with a boyfriend about an hour away. Admittedly an hour doesn’t seem like much, I currently drive that far each day, one way to my job, but when you’re 19 or 20 years old an hour may as well be halfway across the country.

That boyfriend and I have long parted romantic ways (but remain friends all these years later) but one thing he did for me was introduce me to the people that would basically become my long-term friends. Thirty years later they’re still here (except, it seems, for the ones who have been passing away at an alarming rate of late).

How did this happen? We came together because of common interests, we bonded over things that were important to us then and remain important to us now. We get angry, we get over it, we hang out together every single night then not for two months. We roll our eyes and accuse someone of being nuts, we have our version of the nutty uncle and the too-loud aunt (sometimes I’m afraid that might be me). We’ve grown up and changed just as we’ve stayed the same and are still pretty damn childish.

Some people have moved away and some moved away…and then moved back. There are a lot of us. We can always find someone to do something with.

The other night I was enjoying the fact that I’m on my usual Summer vacation and was staying up too late. Hubby was in bed and even the dogs had (more or less) settled down. I was bored (and should have been blogging) and doing that stupid thing people do on facebook, I was looking up names I could barely remember to see if they were there (and maybe had a public profile).

I looked up one person’s name and saw that she was friends with a bunch of other familiar names so I clicked on them which led me to others. I didn’t send any friend requests because, well, I was only looking out of odd curiosity and boredom.

I was fascinated that so many people from high school were friends with OTHER people from high school. I was AMAZED. I admit I was thrilled to see that the one person who was a majorette or some rah-rah thing was still married to the football star, it’s true and she looked GREAT! She was always very nice as was her hubby and it made me happy to see that she’s now a grandma (a damn good looking one). Another friend also looked great, much better than when we were in high school together, I knew she had become a Weight Watchers devotee and it showed.

Some people had interesting lives and careers and others not so much. One person was living the good life in Hawaii but most seemed to still be living in or within a few miles of the town we grew up in.

I admit that I poked and prodded my psyche for a second or two to find out if there was some part of me that wanted to send out a friend request with the thought that it would probably snowball from there; I decided against it. I realized that despite the fact they were still just an hour or so away from me I knew I wouldn’t do anything to meet up with them or see them or do anything with them. If I didn’t have much in common with them thirty years ago I’m pretty sure I’d have even less in common with them today.

So that’s it I guess, I still won’t be going to any class reunions (I think this year would be the 35th) or reaching out across the years and miles, oddly enough, even if I live another forty years right where I am I probably will never actually see or speak to any of those people, I haven’t in the past thirty years.

How do I feel about that? Pretty good. My advice (as if you asked)? Find the people in this world that make your soul sing and make those your peeps, if you found them on that first day of kindergarten then those are them, if not, keep looking they’re out there, don’t settle.

Sit, STAY…

Dogs are funny, aren’t they? We, as humans, are expected to train these mammals to obey certain basic commands so that they become upstanding members of society. They should be able to “sit” and “stay” and do a few other things of that nature.

But what really happens after years of sharing your life with an animal (or three)? What do they know or hear or understand? Most mornings when they wake me it really is time to start my day. It’s up and at ‘em time but not on weekends. In most cases I can go back to bed.

This morning was one such example. I could go back to bed. We went through the usual “go out, get fed” ritual but then when my boy was ready to jump back into the sack for some extra shut-eye with his daddy (yeah, we’re mommy and daddy, make something of it, I dare you; we’re mammals, they’re mammals, and they were adopted, so there). I let him in the bedroom so I could take care of some (ahem) personal things before returning to bed. When I walked into the bedroom there was my boy, comfortable with his body where mine should be and his head on my pillow. Cute, sweet, but in my way because I could actually lie down again and dammit, that was my goal. .

I took one look at him, rolled my eyes and said, “Tugg, really? Move somewhere out of MY WAY.” Sure ‘nuff, he scooched over so I could snuggle in without disturbing his post-breakfast nap. .

How do they know? Does he understand my words, my eye-rolling, can he read my mind? .

Dogs know more than they’re sayin’, because they aren’t (technically) saying anything. Just today I read (actually watched) about the find of more than $2 million US dollars in some phone cable headed to Venezuela, who found it? A dog. Dogs can find cancer, detect a seizure, sniff out drugs and diabetes but we treat them like they’re some kind of idiots simply because they can’t say, “yo, you shouldn’t eat that, you’re on track for some serious Type 2 diabetes by next year this time.” Would we listen to them as attentively if they COULD say that? I think not. I think they know better which is why they have their own sneaky way of communicating with us. .

If they just blurted things out like we humans do they wouldn’t be taken as seriously as they are for their more covert communication style. .

Pay attention folks, that dog is talkin’ to YOU!

Shop like ya mean it….

People don’t go to Costco to shop. They THINK they go to Costco to shop but they are really going there for an afternoon of free food and socializing. It’s true. You go to Costco with the intention of buying 3 lbs. of bananas, 5 pounds of chicken wings and 3 dozen eggs and you leave with a $100 pool float.

I’d like to go on the record that I DID NOT leave with that $100 pool float (I really didn’t) but I’ll bet that a lot of other folks did.

Costco’s marketing department is BRILLIANT. For a nominal fee you get to be a member of this private little club where they sell stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. The trick is to get out of the store with ONLY WHAT YOU NEED. Is a 5 pound bag of wings a good idea? Sure, they do okay in the freezer for a while and if you’ve got teen-agers you can blow through that in one busy weekend, yes they qualify as a good purchase.

The hot tub I bought at Costco, EXCELLENT PURCHASE. Yuppers, that one was a bargain and the customer service was amazing, delivered it right up to where it was supposed to go, quick and easy. Oh and that was a PLANNED purchase we were actually LOOKING for a new hot tub it wasn’t an impulse purchase in the warehouse.

That’s the danger zone…the store itself. The pretty, shiny new objects all over the place, they drag you down quickly and completely.

It’s easy to get sucked into the spirit of the whole retail event as they stuff you every few feet with some other delectable treat, some new way to serve up salad dressing or salsa. It’s just like being at the county fair or your town’s founders’ day. You eat and run into people you know. Every time I’ve been in Costco all of the display seating for whichever season of the year is currently being pitched is full of people chatting each other up. Currently there are some lovely sets of outdoor furniture gracing the warehouse floor and each one was a living vignette showing happy people chowing down and catching up with each other.

In the middle of this social experiment are strategically placed items like that aforementioned $100 pool float. I was drawn to it. The box was lovely; it showed a young woman drifting on this item surrounded by a clear blue sea. The thing itself is about the size of one of Costco’s much loved dog beds (they really are a good purchase there, inexpensive, pretty and good quality) and it claims to be like floating on a cloud. That’s all well and good but it also costs $94.99 plus tax. I have a few pool floats that I bought over the past few years at the Five and Below store that work pretty well and if I only get one season out of it, well, it was $5 (or below).

The more I fixated on the $100 pool float the more I realized the beauty of Costco’s marketing. Here was this thing that did not fold up and store easily but cost $100. Let’s do the math on this little item. In the Northeast it is often said that Summer lasts approximately from Memorial Day to Labor Day weekend which, depending on the calendar that year, is roughly 100 days. Do you really go in your pool all 100 of those days? Nope. Some days are too cold, some days it rains and other days you’re just too busy. Hell fifty days is even a long shot but if we go with that number it comes down to costing you two dollars a day for this pool float. It just doesn’t add up for me. And here’s what’s gonna happen with said pool float. Summer will end and you’ll pack away all the Summer stuff; you’ll do your best to make sure everything is dry and packed up nicely. Those $5 pool floats will be deflated, dried up and rolled into a nice little, easy-to-store ball. Simple. But that $100 float that’s not gonna store so well is it? You’re gonna toss it in the shed or garage or basement and over the course of the long, cold winter things will happen to it. It’ll grow a little mold, it’ll stiffen up a bit (losing it’s “cloudlike feel”), it’ll just become dingy and next Spring as Memorial Day looms large in the future you’ll unpack it, shake your head at it and toss it to the curb.

Then you’ll head over to Costco to buy 5 pounds of chicken wings and 3 dozen eggs and you’ll be sucked into the next best $100 thing that you have no use for.
It’s brilliant, it really is.

I can think of a whole bunch of stuff that are smart things to buy at Costco but that isn’t why people go there, they think they are going there to “shop smart” but they’re really going there to be lured into consumer bliss.

I’ve gotten better of late. Much better. I don’t buy 5 pounds of grapes for a family of two, I go to a regular ol’ grocery store and buy 1 or 2 pounds of grapes so that we can enjoy them before they become unidentifiable mush in the fridge. I make a list now when I go to Costco and I try REALLY, REALLY hard not to be swayed. But I see it all around me, people slurping down free food, socializing and buying $100 pool floats.

Oh retail bliss, what suckers we are.

One plaintive bark

I woke up on Friday morning to one plaintive bark. Not a frantic bark or frantic barking. Not a whine. It was just one bark, in the hallway outside our bedroom.

We have three rescued Australian Cattledogs. The third one, like in so many families, was an “accident”. She was supposed to be a foster and she WAS a foster. We adopted her out once but she got returned to us ten days later and she’s been ours for keeps for nearly two years now. She’s a bit jittery sometimes. She’s more hyper than the other two and she’s still pretty young. Hubby won’t let her sleep in the bedroom, he says she twitches; she kinda does twitch.

She’s definitely the one I wanted to be ambivalent about; I didn’t want to love her, she was just “the third dog”. That plan failed.

She tries harder, I swear she does. She’s funnier, sillier and more sincere than the other two.

That one plaintive bark said, “mom, I want you to get up. The sun is up, I’m a cattledog and get up with the sun…and I probably have to go potty; so mom, will you please get up?” It was such an honest communication. No human has ever communicated as simply and sincerely as my little girl did at 5:34 Friday morning.

Maybe we’re learning though. Just maybe us humans are figuring out who our teachers are. This story in USA Today says that there are now more households with dogs than with kids. I’m one of them. I was shocked to find out that there were more like me. Wow, what does it all mean?

Who cares? I love it.

I don’t love 5:34AM so much but when it comes with that sweet little “WOOF” I guess it sounds a bit like a love song. Secretly I’m looking forward to that next little morning “WOOF”, it reminds me of how good life is. Smart dog.

Summertime and the livin’ is easy

Try some of these…

This first one might sound odd but trust me, okay? It’s an awesome Summer dessert and if you’re having company this one is super sophisticated sounding, looking, smelling, all those things…

• Buy a store bought angel food cake (it’s Summer dude, don’t bake it, BUY IT, don’t be a hero)
• In a bowl put a wedge of the angel food cake.
• Pile on some fresh blackberries and sliced strawberries
• Drizzle some black cherry balsamic vinegar over this. You can buy this awesomely divine vinegar here: http://carterandcavero.com/vinegars/balsamic-vinegars (I tried to make this a live link but blogger didn't seem to like it very much so you'll have to copy/paste the link)
• Top with some whipped cream (this you can make fresh if you’re so inclined)
• Then top the whipped cream with some coarse ground walnuts.

Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean REALLY amazing. It’s also really easy to make and sounds like something a swanky restaurant would serve with some amazing marketing copy on the menu to sell it.

What kind of drink are ya gonna serve with this awesomeness? A coffee drink, natch!

Make a big ol’ jug of iced coffee well in advance (I always have this on hand).

• Put a lot of ice in a blender
• Put in two shots of vanilla vodka
• Dump in two shots of Bailey’s caramel Irish crème liquor
• Dump in 4 shots of that iced coffee
• Blend that whole thing up and serve in frosty cold stemmed glasses.

If something creamy isn’t your thing here’s a lighter alternative…

• For this one put ice in a shaker (bartending supplies, it’s that big silver cup)
• Put in that vanilla vodka (one or two shots, to taste)
• Two or four shots of that iced coffee (see above)
• Shake up the coffee and vanilla vodka until FROSTY cold then strain into a martini glass ALMOST to the top.
• Top off the glass with some vanilla seltzer (Polar makes this, good luck finding it if you’re not near a Wegman’s)

This drink is light and refreshing and you can stay awake AND get drunk, note that you may need to add your sweetener of choice to this one since there really is nothing very sweet in it but if you’re into coffee au naturel then don’t mess with the sweetener of choice.

If you’d like something fruity, frozen and fun here’s one of those…

• Put a pile of ice in your blender
• Toss in two shots of (Absolut) Mango (or Peach) vodka
• Four shots of Trop 50 orange juice (I say Trop 50 because really, you want to save those calories for the good stuff)
• A shot of peach schnapps
• Blend this up until it’s the consistency of a smoothie and serve in stemmed glasses

This one is dangerous, it tastes yummy good and is frosty cold, they go down the gullet smooth as silk and POOF you’re DRUNK! Plan to NOT drive when drinking these. Hell, plan to not do much of anything except perhaps have fun.

So those are my early-Summer dining suggestions, notice there’s no “real” food in these suggestions; if you can’t figure out how to toss a burger and/or a hot dog on your grill and make yourself a salad then you’ve got bigger problems than I can cure here.

Go forth this weekend and make merry, it’s FINALLY SUMMER.

Power Play

Gov. Christie, NJ, I’m not a fan. If you’ve seen the recent news he’s big (well, if you’ve seen his BUTT he’s BIG) in the minds of the Republican Party as a potential presidential candidate and also for his helicopter rides to his son’s little league games.

Here’s the problem. His response embodies the typical parent move these days. He’s just trying to do BOTH his jobs. Look, it was HIS CHOICE to run for governor AND it was his choice to be a dad so if you can’t juggle those two things without the assistance of a taxpayer funded helicopter then you aren’t doing a very good job at BOTH of your jobs.

Us Childfree by Choice people often feel ourselves getting’ a tad riled when a co-worker uses their children as excuses to get special privileges. The governor of NJ isn’t the only one cashing in on his “parent” status to get some extra perqs. It happens all the time when someone leaves early from work to pick up a sick child or brings their sick child to the office. There’s an expectation that those of us without kids will pick up the slack or be understanding of their special needs. I’m not. Not often anyway.

Christie just happens to be a public worse-case scenario. If he feels the need to use a state helicopter to get to a little league game then he may need to give up one job to attend to the other. I can’t stand Sarah Palin either (oh can I NOT stand that woman) but at least she had the good common sense to quit her job as governor to go after her own self-serving needs instead of cashing in on the taxpayer’s dime(s).

That leads me to another thought altogether. Why in the WORLD would anyone want to seek political office? My BA is in psychology but Oooooo how I’d love to pursue a PhD in psych and specialize in the political mind (if there actually IS one). What is it in a person that makes them want to run for office? Do they have some sort of savior complex? Do they actually believe that they’ll be the one to save the day? No politician, no matter how well he (or she) does is ever lauded as great, especially not during their time in office (sometimes not even while they’re alive). Who wants that type of job?

I really want to know the answer to this. I want some politician to dig deep down into their soul and tell me the truth. Tell me why they wanna be president or governor or even mayor but I guess the first thing they need to do is tell themselves that answer. Is anyone honest with themselves? Do they know in the pit of their soul somewhere that they’re pursuing this because of the power of the position? Are they honest enough to know that they’d enjoy the public aspect of it all?

What the fuck? Candidates, why you doin’ it? No one really makes a difference in office, you’re all tied to the system you want to change. As soon as you get into office you realizes you’re faced with insurmountable obstacles you can’t change for all the purported power in the world.

I’m not sayin’ no one should go into politics, I guess if that happened our political system would implode into itself and I’m not sure quite how I feel about that but I think all of us need to get a little more honest about those politicians we’re electing. They aren’t saints. They do dumb shit. They exploit the power of their office, they don’t have all the answers, they have their own agendas, basically it’s a hot mess that we just have to hope can be mitigated a little tiny bit with good luck and good intentions.

I still don’t like Governor Christie and Sarah Palin leaves my mouth agape but could we ALL admit that those assholes running for office will never be perfect…just like the rest of us fuck-ups?

Thanks and have a good night.

Honey or Vinegar

I honestly wasn’t going for that 20% discount. I swear I wasn’t.

I live in a rather resort-y area so the first long weekend of the pseudo-Summer (because Summer doesn’t start until late June which makes Memorial Day weekend “pseudo Summer”) is a BIG DEAL where I live. Roads are congested, bars are packed, and forget about eating in a restaurant.

Hubby and I were doing the usual early-Summer stuff of deciding what we needed, what was broken, etc. I decided to take a trip to K-mart which is pretty close-by. Sure, they must have a hammock or two and some fans and one of those glass sun tea jugs, right?

Why? Why did I think that K-mart was the answer to my needs? No hammocks, the selection of fans left much to be desired and the sun tea jugs were some hideous plastic that I couldn’t imagine drinking something from. Bad move.

I bought a few fans and some sunscreen, spent way too long in line and headed to Bed, Bath and Beyond which should’ve been my first choice anyway.

I can actually get to the Bed, Bath by me without getting onto a highway which should’ve been my first clue to why this would’ve been a better choice but I was thinking “discount store” not “pretty comforter store”.

Bed, Bath was a like a consumer’s dream date on a holiday weekend. They had a ton of staff on and each and every one of those staff members was polite, helpful and attentive without being obnoxious. It was amazing.

I buzzed through the store, I found the hammocks. They had a wide selection, hmmm. After some thought I chose the striped fabric one. I looked at their fans and immediately had buyer’s remorse about the crappy ones I just bought at K-mart but decided to soldier on. I couldn’t find any sun tea jugs so I asked an employee who, I admit, looked like he wasn’t gonna be all that helpful but to my surprise he led me directly to my desired item. AMEN!

I got to the front of the store and someone asked if I was ready to checkout and led me to a register where she cheerfully checked me out and wished me well. Truth be told the whole front-end was littered with helpful employees moving people quickly through the checkout process.

I normally go to Bed, Bath when I have one of their many, many, many 20% off coupons. They seem to send them out weekly and will honor them FOREVER (go ahead and try it, they never care if it’s expired). I had no coupons which broke my cheap little heart.

I got home and tried to put up the new hammock only to discover that the fabric seemed a bit flimsy and it was too short for our hammock frame. After a quickie beachfront bike ride I made a return trip to Bed, Bath. It was creeping up on 7PM by then and the area seemed to have slowed down to a peaceful simmer. Everyone that was on their way had arrived at their destination. The roads were passable, the stores were empty, it was delightful.

I went to the courtesy desk in Bed, Bath with my recently purchased hammock and explained that I needed to return it and why. The young man behind the counter (though quite dorky, a toast to dorks everywhere) was very pleasant and helpful. I promised him I’d be right back with my alternate hammock purchase.

On my way back a female employee asked if I needed help or was ready to checkout, I thanked her but explained I was exchanging an item. She joined the young man behind he courtesy desk and started to do some retail-ish tasks.

I asked if either of them was the store manager, the female employee said that she was the front-end manager in charge and asked if there was anything she could do for me. She did NOT ask if there was a problem which was really nice of her to not assume that everything equals a problem. I told her that all I wanted to do was let a manager know what an absolutely pleasant experience I’d had shopping in that store TWICE today. I told her that my K-mart experience was less than desirable but that my experience in that particular Bed, Bath store had been truly lovely.

During this little discourse the young man was doing my exchange, he asked if I had any coupons and I told him that, sadly, no, I had no coupons today. The manager leaned over and swiped something and punched in something and PRESTO…I had 20% off my purchase just as though I’d trotted in with one of those blue and white coupons many of us are so used to.

What was today’s lesson? That just like momma always said, “ya get more with honey than you do with vinegar”.

Happy Memorial Day Weekend and remember the people who serve this wonderful country this weekend as you enjoy your hot dogs and beer!

Shake yo’ groove thang, babeeee

I think the thing about inertia is that you don’t realize you’ve actually become inert. It’s true. When you’re in it you’re just too close to it. When you get out of it you can’t believe you didn’t notice sooner.

I just shook loose of a ten year bout of inertia. I suppose the inertia wasn’t the full ten years. The first few years I’m sure I wasn’t actually inert; you tend to achieve that state over time, it doesn’t just happen at the outset of something.

There I was plodding through the days at the same company year after year. It didn’t really hold much meaning for me. Over some time I stopped having to engage my brain each day for my job. It was just there.

Actually the only activity the job provided me was finding new and better ways to avoid it. I sought ever more creative ways to avoid going there each day. I’d look for reasons to be out of the office, sick, vacation, personal, business travel, offsite meetings, you name it I’d find it. I also noticed I’d developed a creative edge at shortening my work days, I’d come in later, leave earlier. My focus wasn’t on work but on getting out of that office as much as possible.

Coupled with that was this feeling that I couldn’t get out of that job. That I’d be left stranded, unemployed and unemployable if I left. I had this feeling that it was the last job on earth. I couldn’t leave it no matter how much I dreaded it.

Previously this was NEVER me. I would change jobs every four years or so. I was on the move, ever onward and upward but once that solid brick of inertia landed in my lap I was immobile.

I’ve officially been at a new job for just four days. It’s been nice. It really has. The benefits aren’t as good, some of the “policies” are better; there are distinct differences to be sure. One thing I need to do to complete the disconnect; I need to stop making those comparisons. It’s not the same, plain and simple. I’ve moved on. Certainly if you take into account my title and salary I’ve moved onward AND UPWARD but the most important thing right now, right this minute, is that I’ve moved ON.

What I feel more than anything else is freedom. I actually feel like I have options. It’s an odd feeling to have just started a new job but to also feel like I could move on if I had to. Right now I don’t want to but I like…no wait, I LOVE the feeling of freedom again; the feeling of being accountable to ME. My inertia at my previous job tipped the balance of power over my life away from me and onto the inertia (not really onto my previous company), I felt that I couldn’t move on, I was out of the game.

Now I feel like I’m back in the game and it feels GOOD.

I had to clean out ten years of crap from my old office. I loaded up box after box and dumped them in my car. My initial intention was to just transfer those boxes from my car to my new office but the fact was that I had no room for groceries in my car so I brought the boxes into the basement where they remain. I brought nothing into my new office from my previous life! Even that felt refreshing and new. I plan to go through the boxes and bring in select items that are useful to me. I plan to print out all new pix of the dogs to put in my office. It’s a new beginning for me.

I’m not going to claim that this is going to be perfect from a job perspective, but for right now, I feel like a new person in so many ways.

I feel like I’m shakin’ my groove thang, and I think I like it.

Random thoughts about celebrity…

I saw Ron Howard on the Today show. Ron Howard is certainly no looker but he came off as very smart and funny and kind. He clearly knows his craft on both sides of the camera. As a kid he was in everyone’s home first as that kid with the weird name, Opie, on the Andy Griffith show and then Mayberry, RFD. He went on to be everyone’s favorite nerdy teenager Richie Cunningham.

Throughout all of that he managed to learn everything about the business of making TV and movies. He married very young, by any standards but even more surprising he remains married to that same woman all these years later.

Paparazzi don’t seem to chase the Howard family around. I would imagine they could go to Target without being hassled. It would seem that they could have a carefree family dinner at the corner diner without anyone batting an eye.

He’s a hardworking man with a family. He could be any man in America with any family of many decades. One thing, though, he’s most likely really, REALLY RICH! We’re talkin’ megabucks here.

Now let’s flip this over. Brangelina. WTF? Really. I’d have to bet that Ron Howard has more financial assets than those two and yet I don’t hear about them jetsetting to a castle in France for any reason.

Brangelina often acts like it’s a hassle to be them, to have to dodge through airports with a staff to protect them; to be photographed on every family outing; all that happy horseshit.

But the reality here is that they have to love it, they must crave the attention. Neither of them have the broad range of talents that Ron Howard has (or if they do, they’re awfully good at hiding them somewhere out of view) yet their every move, their every career decision is news fodder.

If I were given the opportunity to meet one of those two famous couples and share a meal with them where we could talk about anything I would choose Mr. and Mrs. Ron Howard in a heartbeat. I’ll bet he’s got some great tales to tell and a very genuine way of telling them.

You can keep Brangelina for the headlines, that’s all they’ve got.

One Hour Photo

It’s cold here. Oh is it cold here. It’s a Friday night and I could’ve easily gone out with the girls but, frankly, just too damn cold.

Now that the C’mas holidays have come and gone we’re onto the next phase of movies to be shown on non-network channels. It appears to be the ramp-up to Valentine’s Day. It’s rom-com time on cable TV. So, trapped inside on a freezing cold Friday night with sole control of the remote I found myself watching a Sandra Bullock flick from 1998; Hope Floats.

1998 doesn’t seem all that long ago. I mean I remember this movie (as much as I remember any movie, not really being a movie person and all that). But there’s this scene in the movie when Sandra Bullock is looking for a job in her old hometown and she ends up working at a one hour photo lab. My first job was working at a similar type of photo lab, it was years ago and I thought it was the greatest job…it was the greatest job for a 16 year old. I made a lot of money for a kid and it seemed like exciting, important work. I was printing out people’s wedding photos and graduation photos and holiday photos, I had a hand in making the memories of strangers. I was 16 quite a long time ago now.

But 1998, that doesn’t seem that long ago to me. Yet there was Sandra Bullock struggling at the helm of a one hour photo shop’s printing machine.

Now this may seem like a random connection but times change. That machine was relevant just 12 years ago. Not long at all really, right?

I just read an article in The New Yorker about the US Constitution. It was eye-opening not least because it spoke to change, just like that obsolete machine in “Hope Floats”. The article talked about how few people actually know what’s in the Constitution and I realized that I was one of them. We think we know what it says but we don’t.

Even more interesting than pointing out our collective ignorance was pointing out our collective resistance to change. The Tea Party movement claims to be there to support the US Constitution and some have even offered up their own plain English interpretations of it. But what does this get us? What does it prove? I respect the founding fathers. I love that I live in America; that I grew up here. I really do love being American. Ben Franklin is mentioned in The New Yorker article delicately pointing out that what they drafted may or may not be the most perfect foundation for the new country.

It’s more than 200 years since that document started its journey. Times have changed. There have been big changes and little changes but there have been changes. I’m sure that those founding fathers really did have the best intentions at heart but even that thought gave me pause; founding fathers. Would we have that today? Women are captains of industry all over the place I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be the just men at that table if it were happening today.

When that document, the US Constitution, was drafted boy oh boy were things different. Women weren’t CEO’s and African-Americans weren’t called that and they sure as shit weren’t President of the United States of America. But times change. Thank the heavens up above…times do change. The Tea Party doesn’t want to embrace these many and varied changes, some good, some not so good and many that the jury is still out on…but they’re happening anyway.

When this group of people want their constitution back I’m not so sure they even know what their asking for and if they do, well, does it really fit into a vastly different society? I believe that the people brave enough to form this new country were just that, brave, but brave people embrace change, they know that nothing stays the same and they work at making the changes that are inevitable be good and valuable changes.

So, I don’t miss one hour photo shops. I love digital cameras, love the freedom to snap pictures whenever I want on my phone, that phone that goes everywhere with me instead of a phone tethered to a wall in my house. Taking pictures, making those memories, used to require remembering to buy film and batteries, remembering to bring the camera along and then after all was said and done, remembering to drop that film off at the one hour shop and hoping that you got a few good shots on that roll of film.

Not anymore, just click away as long as you’ve got battery power on your droid or iPhone you’ve got the chance to capture a memory. I love it; change that makes me happy.

I want to read the Constitution now, I hear it’s just 4,400 words, I typed almost that much in an e-mail last week. I want all of the tea partiers to read it too. Then I want them to think about all the changes they’ve seen in their years on the earth. Some good, some not so good and some, well, who knows just yet, but the point is that those men who wrote that document more than 200 years ago couldn’t even imagine a one hour photo shop no less the disappearance of them all in one lifetime (mine).

SMILE, SAY CHEESE!

Why we stay

A widely circulated Gallup poll shows that people leave their jobs because of bad bosses. Bad bosses seem to be bad for business, well if you want to keep your employees and not deal with turnover and all that goes with it.

But why do people STAY at a job? I just left a company I was at for TEN YEARS. Yes, TEN YEARS. Why did I leave? Yuppers, I’m not all that original, I left because of a bad boss (or two).

I knew that I was interviewing for jobs because I had to get away from a management situation I felt was toxic to me. But there was hesitation on my part. I would get called about a job but hesitate to interview and I decided to examine why I did that.

I figured out that the main reason I was sticking around that joint was for a bunch of perks completely unrelated to the actual job. I was getting zero job satisfaction, coupled with a boss that I couldn’t stand but I was sticking around for reasons that didn’t relate to the job or my boss at all.

I was even sticking around for things I didn’t use, I just liked knowing they were THERE.

What did we get? Oh we’ve gotten things like George Forman Grills (my husband called that “small appliance Wednesday”), more fleece jackets (of increasingly fabulous quality) than I’ll ever wear, from October through the end of last year they had special events every Friday including free lunch and snacks every single Friday, stuff like designer cupcakes and three different types of brownies, chair massages and a free gift wrapping service. We were awarded points like S&H green stamps that we could use to “buy” things like jewelry and Coach bags.

The list goes on and on…

Of those things I can say that we do use the grill, I wear the fleeces, but those Friday things? Nah. I’m always watching my weight so those Friday indulgences were more of an annoyance to me, who the hell wants to wander through the pantry area and see box after box of assorted designer cupcakes? Yes, I admit I did get one of those chair massages on a Friday afternoon…but it was kinda weird to be getting a massage at 3 in the afternoon at work, I get regular massages on my own and I think I’ll keep it that way.

The reason I was staying was for silly little things, little bribes the company put out there for just that reason, to get people to stay. When I thought about it I felt sad because it hinted that maybe, just maybe they actually know that there are serious management issues and instead of fixing those it’s easier to toss another shiny gift on the heap. I felt like a little kid that was easily duped into eating their veggies in exchange for a useless plastic toy. I didn’t need another fleece jacket or even a Forman Grill. I can buy those things but my inherent human greed kept me hanging on for the next little trinket. Ooooh, shiny things…I want them.

Even as I was closing in on a real job offer, something that sounded good, a good fit for me, a step up the food chain, a challenge and all that other happy horseshit, I was still hesitating. I had to make it through the holidays, I had to see what our holiday gift would be…it’s always something fab like an iPod or iTouch so I couldn’t miss out on that could I? I strung along my new job so I could milk every last shiny treat out of them before the end of 2010. Just so ya know, the gift wasn’t even worth it in the end.

And the time off…oh the time off, I think when all was said and done I came in at nearly 8 weeks off a year and no, I’m NOT a school teacher. It was hard to cut that back to just 6 weeks or thereabouts…but maybe if I don’t hate the job as much it won’t be as painful to be there…had I even considered that? Probably not and why not? Most likely because after ten years of mostly dreading going to work it’s hard to imagine that maybe, just maybe I won’t dread the next job quite as much which will certainly make it a bit easier to NOT have to pray for the next time I can take a day or ten off.

Now that it’s over, now that I’ll be starting a new job in a few short days, I realize how stupid I’ve been. I’ve been struggling against management decisions that I’ve questioned for quite some time but like a small child I was far too enamored by the dangling treat than by the rational knowledge that I needed to get the fuck out of there.

Will my new job be perfect? Who knows? I’m sure I’ll find stuff there that I don’t’ like, I hope that doesn’t happen for a few years at the very least but whenever it happens, if its stuff that I just can’t live with, well, I hope that I don’t linger past my time just because of some fancy shiny objects dangling in my face.

Those of you in jobs you hate, suffering with a boss that is mean, stupid, unbearable or any combination of those things, ask yourselves why the hell you’re staying. If you’re there because you really can’t find something else, I’m genuinely sorry for you, I really am and I know this economy sucks but if you started to sound like me and said you were there because you got a lot of vacation time you’d accrued and you couldn’t walk away from it or you got all kinds of fancy treats then it’s time to reconsider.