Thoughts on What May Eventually Become of A Holiday Houseguest

Having had him as a house guest for the holiday weekend, I have to say in all fairness that it wasn’t a chore having him around and I enjoyed the very few minutes he calmed down long enough to sit beside me on the couch and enjoy whichever movie I happened to be watching. In short, he wasn’t at all hard to live with and I’m not completely understanding his owner’s general lack of enthusiasm about his existence.

For a dog, I said, he’s not all bad.

I’m often corrected by Owen when referring to Spam as a dog, and this was no exception. “That,” he’ll say, pointing to the guinea-pig sized, inevitably shivering mass of fur huddled against the sofa, “is not a dog.” Looking at Spam I have to agree, much as I’d like to say something in his favor because if for no other reason, going on looks alone he hasn’t got much going for him to begin with and once you move onto other areas like practicality, companionability and basic dog skills such as property protection, he’s got even less.

To begin with, Spam is a Yorkie. Sadly, a Yorkie is not a Chihuahua and not a poodle but something sadly stuck between the two before being run over by a Shiz-Tsu. The result is an animal roughly the size of a guinea pig or an overfed hamster with fur that, if left un-groomed, will convince you George Lucas was thinking “Yorkie” when he created the “Wookie”, he just made it much, much larger to have the correct presence on the screen. Spam is not a dog you cuddle with on the couch. He’s a dog you worry you might accidentally sit on and crush when you flop down on the couch. His social skills extend to yipping hysterically for no other reason than that he can at moments when you least expect it and careening through the yard barking at absolutely nothing. When not sleeping in Parker’s bed, Spam sleeps in a dog kennel the size of my purse and has room left over. This is not a dog you take proudly to the dog park. This is a dog you walk on a leash the consistency of a five year old shoe string and hope nobody you know is watching.

Spam is a dog not well matched to his people and would probably be far better off with a dedicated dog lover who would dress him in little sweaters and carry him around in a purse. In short, someone like me. He does not belong with Owen and his teenaged son, two guys who spend any free time to be found on the racquetball court, on the golf course, or on the ski slopes, not home with a dog on their lap.

“That,” Owen says often, gesturing to Basil, who is generally in the process of ‘killing’ one or another of Spam’s toys, stuffed animals in various states of disrepair, “is a dog.” Granted I’m biased in her favor, but I can’t disagree. Basil is small enough to be portable, not so small you’re going to miss her when you flop down on the couch. She’s perfectly companionable but like her owner appreciates her own ‘space’ from time to time so doesn’t overwhelm your attention. She barks but not without reason and even when she’s overgrown and under-groomed she’s got a certain attractiveness that’s undeniable. Finally and importantly, she is not a wuss. If Basil is shivering it’s because she’s cold. If Spam is shivering it’s because he’s a nervous little Yorkie and that’s what they do.

He’s a dog I have to love, I think, because I get the feeling not too many people do, although Parker is more attached than he’ll admit, having had him for so many years. He’d been a gift from his aunt to his mother and when his mother died he officially became Parker’s dog. Which is good because never having had a ‘real’ dog, i.e. one more like Basil than like your basic hamster, Parker’s less apt to make comparisons. He probably doesn’t remember Roby, the Golden Retriever Owen had in his single days, who finally passed away of old age when Parker was in kindergarten. Roby was a real dog and I know Owen misses him. Much as he talks about how when Parker moves out Spam is going with him and how great it will be not to have a dog, Owen is not one to be dog-less for long. The empty nest syndrome will hit and it won’t take too many weeks or even days for him to realize having your place all to yourself to do whatever you want with isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Not when you could be sharing your space with a dog who weighs more than your average library book.

When I mention this to Owen, he disagrees and lets me know once Parker is gone, he’s sending Spam out the door with him and he’s ‘done with dogs’. I generally don’t pursue the argument because I see the way he is with Basil and how happy he looked in pictures with Roby and I know he’s not done at all. No more than I was in 2005, when I moved out and was animal-less for the first time in my life, vowing to stay that way because, ‘it’s easier and I don’t have time for an animal’.

That lasted a little over six months and four months into it I was determined that if a stray didn’t come into my life soon (all my dogs have been rescues. I’m superstitious about ‘choosing’ a dog because of this, as they’ve all apparently chosen me and been such wonderful companions I don’t want to break my ‘streak’) I’d do something drastic like adopt a cat (Note: as it turned out I later adopted a cat to keep Basil company but that’s another story and sad example of how, when it comes to animals, I have all the resolve of melted butter).

I have never regretted Basil’s companionship or begrudged Gus one moment of his time in my home. There’s something necessary about animal companionship and much as he pretends to the contrary, Owen knows this, too. He might claim to be counting down the very few years until he’s come full circle and is once again the bachelor man in his bachelor house, but I know better. Golf clubs may well be able to ‘sit’ and ‘stay’, but I’ve never known one to greet you at the door at the end of a long day and that’s something I think we all enjoy having. He’ll have another dog, maybe even another Golden Retriever, but definitely there will be a dog in residence.

If for no other reason, I’m thinking, than that Parker’s going to have a heck of a time managing college courses, chasing women and finding time for the golf course, so there’s no way he’d want the added responsibility of a nervous little dog like Spam. Something tells me he’ll be ‘accidentally or not forgotten’ on moving day, left behind with a few dozen pair of dirty socks and a stuffed animal or two from ‘way back when he was a kid’. So Owen’s dreams of completely solo living are, for the most part, destined not to come true.

Unless, of course, Parker falls for a woman who can’t resist yippy little nervous dogs who can be carried in her purse.

The Best Christmas Ever...2009

I suppose if I had to pick the best Christmas ever, I'd pick this one.

I can't really say exactly why that was, because it wasn't any one thing, or any one event, but rather the culmination of so many of them and maybe I'll write more later and explain how they all came together, but right now I just have to say this has been the best Christmas I've had in years.

It was the year I went into Christmas with no expectations and wound up with so many surprises. Some good, some not so good. I never expected, for example, that my dad would lose the use of one side of his body and nothing I could have done, three days before Christmas, could have prepared me for that. Or likewise for the pure happiness of talking with him, every day, and hearing his coherent speech and knowing we really couldn't do anything until the MRI on the 29th. This was the year of every single day, for the last week plus, coming home to a different surprise on the doorstep. So many neighbors, and friends, leaving anonymous 'neighbor gifts' to the point that I told Alexi, at work, "maybe I've been nicer than I thought I was, last year", and the irony is, that was the year that Lainie moved and I'd vowed rather foolishly not to get to meet any of my neighbors at all.

This was the year I came home and tried to adjust the sound on my television...only to open the armoire and find out that my television was gone, and had been replaced by a 32" flat screen, HDTV, and I knew who'd done it and all they would say was, "Well, I've always really wanted a 1997 27" TV so I bought you a new one and traded you." This was the year of an incredible Christmas dinner with my Secret Santa family, and watching their kids having an incredible Christmas, never knowing (as they shouldn't) that dad is still laid off. This was an incredible Christmas, up to and including yesterday, when I slept late and got up and opened gifts over a pot of Earl Grey Tea, and loved everything.

This was the holiday that culminated tonight, in another dinner with friends. In a house where I don't live, per se, but where I've always felt so at home. And one of their house guests bid me adieu very europeonly and nobody has ever done that before, by kissing me on both cheeks. Oh, My (as Susan Sarandon said in Bull Durham, the movie). As if the night couldn't get any better, a little boy shouted out, "I love you!!! I love you!!!" as I left, and really, how much better does life get? My friend throughout the evening kept saying, "English, in English" because the entirety of conversation was in German. "Isn't that funny," observed He Who Kissed My Cheeks, "We all speak German except you. Usually we are the minority." And yet, throwing Frisbee (and very carefully, so as not to hit the tree, and loving every minute of it because playing with those kids is a highlight of any moment) with those kids, and just being there, in the midst of that family and with a wonderful friend, they could all have been speaking Icelandic and I'd still have felt as much at home.

This has been a fantastic Christmas.

So many things brought it to that point. I'm not sure which, if I had to point to any one, would have been 'it'. Maybe it was seeing Lainie, today. Or maybe it was the picture of her and her boys she gave me. Or maybe it was Holly, and Emannuel, and Sebastian. Or her cat, or my own animals, or the bottle of 'Poof!' "Animal Freshener: For the Very Coolest of Dogs" that Owen gifted Basil with. Or the innumerable plates of cookies, and candles, and neighbor gifts, that came my way. I'm not sure.

I just know it's been a very incredible holiday, and as I settle in tonight in front of my new, unexpected 'ginormous flat screen TV', in my zebra print 'blanket with sleeves' (see previous blogs re: white elephants), I just know that I feel very blessed to be just where I am, surrounded by the friends I have, and the place I live, and the animals who live with me, and the life I'm living.

It is not at all where I anticipated I would be, at this stage of my life.
But I would not trade it for anything in the world.

Cancelling Christmas: (Not So Great) News From Home

When I was a kid (Note: as I am still a kid, what I mean to refer to is that time when I was still wearing tights and those abominable holdovers from the 1950’s, white leather saddle shoes my dad insisted were more durable, attractive, and cost-effective than the canvas tennis shoes it seemed everyone else wore), I was convinced my dad was undefeatable and could do anything and I was convinced of this for very good reasons, not the least of which being any of the following Amazing Accomplishments Only He Could Do:

· Only my dad would bring home a garbage can full of gigantic toads he and my uncle had captured when they took a load of miscellaneous junk to the dump and turn them loose in our backyard ‘just for the hell or it’ and to ‘see what would happen’. That was one evening of toad-chasing, no-cost entertainment I’ll personally never forget;
· Only my dad would think of building his daughters a play house suspended from the rafters of the garage and accessible only by a narrow ladder staircase sans safety rail daunting enough in appearance that local mothers banned all but one of the neighbor kids from using it, thus ensuring my sister and I the most elite playhouse in the neighborhood as no one but us really knew what it looked like on the interior;
· Only my dad would think of attaching a tow rope to the back of his Schwinn bicycle and entertaining my cousin, my sister and I for hours by letting us ‘water ski’ behind him on a skateboard;
· Only my dad would conquer my fear of the dark finally and forever by asking me what I saw when the light went out (“Nothing”) what I saw when I closed my eyes (“Nothing”) and asking me what the difference was and hence what was the big deal to be afraid of (“Nothing”);
· Only my dad would likewise conquer my fear of the deep end of a pool by unceremoniously tossing me into it one Saturday afternoon, demonstrating once and for all that if you could keep yourself afloat, it didn’t matter if you were in 4’ or water or 9’ you still couldn’t touch bottom;
· Only my dad, after politely echoing Mom’s warnings on the evils of R-rated movies and ‘that awful ‘Saturday Night Fever in particular’ would the next weekend (with a stealthy, “Don’t tell Mom,”) hike up to the local theater and take us to see it, seemingly as happy as we were to get away with something so blatantly verboten.

Dad has always been a thirty-something kid in my mind and over the years if I occasionally noticed some sign of aging (the hearing aid, the retirement from his job, the ‘Thanks for calling’ when he was the one who’d called me) it was easy to disregard.

Until today.

I was stepping into the coffee shop with a lunch date when Mom’s cell number flashed across my Blackberry’s screen. It’s not unusual for her to call during the day and after a brief hello I asked if I could call back, as I was just stepping out to lunch.

“If you’ll call right back,” she said and I’m no clairvoyant but I knew something wasn’t right.

“Is everything OK? Are you OK?”

“I’m OK,” she said. “It’s your dad. (Insert far too long a pause here) He’s not doing very well.”

So there you go, I thought, and I suppose that conversation, which took place in the hall outside the coffee shop after I’d left my date to be seated without me, was one of those moments which drive home very concretely the fact that no matter how young you perceive them to be, your parents do tend to age when you yourself are no longer thirty-something. They’re not indestructible and they’re not infallible and they’re not invulnerable to getting older. It was also one of those moments in which you understand the truism that eventually the parent becomes the child and the child becomes the parent, the parent bestowing calm and inserting logic and more than anything, really, steering the conversation into the realm of, ‘let’s just take this one thing at a time and not jump ahead of ourselves, OK?’. All of that came rushing down like a springtime downpour as I listened to Mom explain the situation, telling me what the doctors had said, what they hadn’t said, what they might find out after more tests and then, bizzarely, her tears came when she ended with telling me she and Dad had ‘called off Christmas, told all the kids to stay home, your dad just doesn’t want anyone to see him like this,’ and she didn’t know ‘what in the world’ she’d do with all the cookies she’d been baking for weeks. She was terribly upset about the cookies.

I suppose it was the cookies that put me into parent mode and I assured her everything would be fine, she should just put the cookies in the freezer, they’d keep forever, and did she want me to come home? What could I do? I could, she said, just call. Every day. But no, don’t come home. Your dad, she said, doesn’t want anybody to come. Let’s just wait and see but would I call that night?

Of course I would. And every day, and I guess at this point I suppose it’s pointless to note that when I returned to the booth and the waitress appeared I ordered three different things and changed my mind on all of them, finally settling on a fruit plate that for the most part I just cut up into smaller pieces and pushed around on my plate until I’d constructed a semi-modernistic artistic creation of skewered pineapple and various melon punctuated by blackberries and framed in cottage cheese that was attractive, if unconsumed in the end.

I can’t remember any difficult time in my life in which my dad didn’t, at some point, affectionately refer to me as ‘a real trooper’ because I managed to get through it without crying, not the least of which being every time he’d hauled me to the doctor’s office for stitches and/or a tetanus shot because I’d: a) fallen off the deck and neatly onto my head and a rock, b) decided to pick up broken glass with my bare hands, c) stepped on a nail or five, or d) otherwise been injured or hurt or frightened, and I suppose I really was a trooper through today’s lunch and right up until the moment I returned to the office where I did the completely human and sometimes necessary thing by bursting into tears. But only for a few minutes and then I got busy with what was on my desk because…well, just because it was there, and it was on my desk and crying didn’t fix anything and somehow, being busy did.

Two things happened later that really helped. The first being, I ran into Holly in the lobby and let her know what was going on. She listened as she always does, then said only one thing (Holly’s that way. She’ll say one thing and it’s always what I need to hear). “What,” she asked, “would you tell me to do in this situation?”

“I’d tell you,” I said after a moment, “to take the emotion out and try to see all sides of it.”

“So do that,” she said, “and we’ll wait and see how it all comes out.”

The second thing happened about an hour later when Mom’s cell number once more flashed across my Blackberry except this time, it was Dad on the other end. “There’s something going on with me,” he said, “that I need to tell you about.” And he did, not aware that I’d gotten a call earlier.

Listening to him I felt it again, that odd sense of the tables having been turned, the child becoming the parent because if I’d ever felt the desire to call someone ‘a trooper’ that’s what I would have called my dad as he ran through the gamut of the situation, what the doctors had said, what might be coming, how he felt about how things were now, and whether or not they’d change or not. It would be redundant to note how much I loved him in that moment because even with all the uncertainty and all the unknown I still heard undeniably that spark of the undefeatable, of that little mischievous kid who somehow wound up in the body of a 69 year old man. A man who was happy to have brought home that can full of toads ‘just for the hell of it’ and would probably do it again if he had the chance and even if he didn’t, was so damnably grateful that he’d gotten to do it once because in the end, it was a whole lot of fun.

I wanted, right then, to get on a plane, get a rental car, go to his house and hug him and yet I understood when he explained the whole canceling Christmas thing and just wanting to be home ‘without the chaos of a full house and all the damned grandkids running around’ and even as he said that last you could hear that he loved them, he just needed…a Christmas without all that.

So we’ll wait and see what happens. And we’ll wait to hear what the doctors have to say. And I’ll do the only thing I can do right now, which is to call tonight as I said I would, and somehow conjure up the right words to assure Mom that those cookies will be OK in the freezer.

I think we’ll both know we’re not really talking about cookies, but we don’t necessarily have to think about that.

Just In Case I Need To Hear It Again: Letter to Lainie

With the new year approaching I’m reminded of my parent’s collective advice over the years, which has basically been the repetitive mantra: “Be prepared.” Prepared for what exactly, they were never terribly specific but you could guess your bases were covered so long as you regularly ‘put a little something in savings’ and without exception (this from my mom) ensured you had clean underwear on at all times ‘just in case something happens, you could be in an accident.’ Honestly? I’ve never known anyone involved in an accident and worried about their underwear with the exception of Brent. Shortly after we were married he was hospitalized and the first thing he asked when he regained consciousness in the ICU was would I please bring him ‘better underwear’ because he was wearing a pair from his bachelor days I’d always thought would make a better dust rag than anything else.

As I generally do at the end of a year, I spent some time recently reflecting back over the past twelve months and giving thought to what I’d like to do in 2010. Without, it should be noted, making this a terribly complicated or detailed process as it’s been my experience that the creation of a detailed ‘Goals and Objectives’ list with requisite foot-noted timeline for completion produces nothing more than a detailed ‘Goals and Objectives’ list with requisite foot-noted timeline for completion that looks ridiculous there on the fridge, secured by a magnet and covered by HOA bulletins and store coupons. Going into the new year, I thought if nothing else I’d like to be---well, as prepared as I can be for, if nothing else, anything I can hedge a guess will be inevitable.

It’s a fact that income is down, at least over previous years. 2010 is looking much better but it made sense to increase savings and cut spending. That alone made me feel as if I’d already accomplished something, and we’re still weeks away from midnight on New Year’s Eve. I donated some clothing, gave away some furniture and miscellaneous (having finally realized my condo is not going to expand to fit the contents input, like a cell on an Excel spreadsheet), and with that felt—well, prepared.

It wasn’t until I got an email from Lainie this morning that I realized I’d forgotten one other measure I might consider putting into place, and that measure explains this particular post. Because this morning I got an email from my very dear friend who is still, weeks after the departure of Blake, holed up in the donut-consuming, romance movie watching (Never mind my advice to watch only, “He’s Just Not That Into You” and make notes on what the guy bartender says in the beginning until you get the lesson), tear shedding, not sleeping, Pure Hell (pardon my French but there is no other word for it) of ending a relationship with someone you love. She asked me what I thought and I told her what I thought, not realizing until after I sent what I thought and re-read it that maybe my own advice was something I should put into my preparedness repertoire because, discomfiting as it may be to admit, the odds are good, statistically, that at some point next year I’m going to need to hear exactly what I said to her in my reply.

This is inarguable considering that: a) I am single, and b) Although not listed on any dating site or Facebook or Twitter or anything else, occasionally the universe decides to mess with me and I find myself dating someone. Which means there is a 50% chance that I will Meet Someone Wonderful And Just Settle Down Forever (this is my dad’s favorite subject to discourse upon, ad nauseum, on the bi-weekly phone call) but there is also a 50% chance that I will Meet Someone Wonderful And It Will Be Great But It Just Won’t Work Out And We Won’t Try To Fix It. Knowing there’s a better than 50% chance, working with the public as I do, that I could get the flu this season, I wash my hands a lot. So considering the whole percentage thing and my ability to, if not keep my heart unbroken, step away from the Kleenex and the romance movies sooner rather than later when it is broken, I’m reprinting (with my own permission, and hers as well) my response to Lainie, in the spirit of Emergency Preparedness:

To: Northernhorse112557@gmmails.net
From: MadBeringer96555222555@earthlink.net
Re: Hello – Can I Vent?

Hi Sweetie,

Of course you may vent. You may vent any time and for as long as you want. I love you to pieces and I'm always here for you, you know that. I'm doing well -- keeping the holiday extremely LOW KEY, and I like it that way. There's just too much hype that goes into it, it's gotten too commercial, and let's face it -- it's an emotional time for single people in general, so I find the more I keep it to the basics, the better time I have with it.

First of all, quit beating yourself up over Blake. It was, for all intents and purposes, a long term relationship, even if he was never really one to use the 'R' word and call it that and hurting when it ends is completely human and understandable. I know exactly what you're going through. Sweetie, I went through the same thing after You Know Who I Mean, and I still do catch myself, that is, thinking back on it. Wondering where it went wrong, how it could have been fixed, etc. But here's the bottom line. It all comes down to the truth someone told me years ago, and it was only in really accepting this that I was able to stop crying myself and move on, even if it was at first half-heartedly and definitely haltingly: If you're supposed to be with someone, there's nothing you can do to change that, and not be with them. If you're not supposed to be with someone, there's nothing you can do to change that, and be with them. In other words, while we do make choices on who we're with and how we spend our time, when it comes down to it we're not the ones in charge of how life works out, especially not in the romance department. Another thing I believe is that everyone comes into your life for a reason. Think about what you learned from Blake. Or think about a few good memories you had with him. Either one could have been the reason. So be grateful for the experience -- but don't let it stop you from enjoying what you have today.

Before Blake came along, you were a beautiful, intelligent, loved, respected, awesome woman. While you were with Blake you were a beautiful, intelligent, loved, respected, awesome woman. Without Blake you are a beautiful, intelligent, loved, respected, awesome woman. He made a decision, and that decision does not diminish who or what you are or change what you have to offer. You can offer someone a Mercedes, in other words, and they'll opt for a skateboard or decide to just walk. Doesn't make the Mercedes any less of a prize (Think about that one).

I remember doing nothing but crying (well, that and smoking, and not eating, and crying some more, and developing a ridiculous affinity for cinnamon Pop Tarts which were the only thing I would eat when I did) when I left Brent in 2005. One day I found a bookmarker in an Oprah magazine so I cut it out, and kept it in front of me for the next several years. Today it's framed, in my living room, and it literally got my b*tt going again, just because I said it to myself several times a day. I have no idea who Yehuda Amachi is, but bless him or her for saying what’s on that bookmark: "Behind all this, some great happiness is hiding...". You don't have to believe it. Just say it. Repeatedly. What happens will surprise the heck out of you, I promise.

And honey, you have a lot, today. I've found that at the times when I feel I have the least, that's when I am reminded I have the most. What I do when I get really in a funk is, I have to write down everything in my life I'm grateful for. What to do if you can't think of anything? If you think there's nothing to be grateful for? That's easy. Take a look around you and think of what you'd be sad NOT to have. I'm not writing your list, but I'd start with, 'your kids, your home, the fact that you have a car, and a job, and friends, and your mental faculties, and food in the cupboard, and shoes on your feet, and a great sense of humor, and a beautiful appearance, and a great personality, and.....' See where I'm going with that? Sometimes we don't know what we have because we forget to envision how we'd feel if we didn't have what we take for granted.

I am sending you huge hugs, and please know that I'm always here for you, and I'm around and about this week (working all week) but of course I would come by any time you wanted me to. In the interim, try something. Try this. Sounds dumb, but it works. So your brain doesn't want to let go of Blake and I understand that....I still, from time to time (and sometimes all the time) think about You Know Who I Mean. And romanticize the whole thing. And feel like cr*p about it. And forget (how conveniently we do this) that it's not really HIM that I miss, it's what I thought we were (which we weren’t, or we would be). So in short, I'm tearing myself up over a myth (Great. And until I realized that, I'd thought I was a little intelligent, then realized I was in the end only human, which isn't so bad, either :)). Change your routine. Drive to work a different route. Move a piece of furniture, or better yet -- your entire room. Sleep on the OTHER side of the bed. Sounds ridiculous but it's really, really helpful. Because when you walk into new surroundings, or take different paths -- you're no longer in the same space and on the same paths you shared with HIM (yes, that mythical version of who you thought the two of you were) and this is very healing.

Not automatically, of course. Nothing in life is automatic except sleep after an ambien, but it's a huge step in the right direction, and any kind of step is a very good thing.

As for what you should do, be with your crazy aunts for lunch this week or not? Sweetie, I can't tell you that. You will know for yourself. Again, I'm pretty black and white on it, so if it was me, I'd take a sheet of paper, and put three columns on it: "Pros", "Cons" and "Rathers". List the pros of going, the cons of going, and in the final column, what you'd rather be doing instead and if there's nothing you'd rather be doing, leave it blank. If you'd rather be eating a bon bon and watching an old movie, put that down. Pretty easy to tally them all off when you're done, and the right reason in any column is going to be the one you go with.

I love you hugely. I'm here for you. Remember what I said, fellow Gemini -- we're not truly "Twins" as our symbol says, but cats. Cats sometimes have a rough go, but they always, always, always land on their feet and even with the occasional low spot, manage to cram all the fun and experience of nine lives into one.

That in mind, Blake and You Know Who I Mean are maybe just blips (and not terribly huge ones) on the big screen of life. Be glad for the moments of happy static they brought, wish them the best, and leave the rest.

Behind all this, I promise you (well, me and Yehuda promise you), some great happiness IS hiding.

Hugs, Hollyberries, Gaudy Christmas Wreaths, Overcooked Turkey, all that other Holiday Nonsense and Lots of Love,
M

I’m hopeful I won’t need that advice in the new year, but just in case, there it is.

This Year Santa Brought The Sham Wows: White Elephants Conquered

I last left off my struggle with White Elephants by noting I had in my possession, in a translucent plastic Walgreens bag on my kitchen counter, a 20 pack of Sham Wows, the As Seen On TV wonder towels with a life expectancy equal to roughly three of my own and reputed to be able to absorb the contents of an Olympic grade swimming pool. These were to be my contribution to our office White Elephant Exchange and Hopefully (if we all remember to bring something) Potluck Luncheon in our boardroom on December 22nd.

I had these on my counter because every other White Elephant I purchased wound up as a gift to myself, my having no willpower whatsoever, a ridiculous affinity for semi-useless items advertised on television, a penchant for believing all the advertising I read, or (most likely) all of the above. In short, the ‘Amazing Blanket with Sleeves’ in a zebra print? Something I had to keep for those chillier evenings when I’m deeply involved in a Lifetime Television for Women movie and too lazy to go get an actual blanket to wrap up in. The ‘Amazing Blanket With Sleeves For Dogs: Keeps your Body Warm And Your Paws Free!’? It’s Basil’s. At least we match when we’re watching that movie. The ‘Incredibly Soft and Luxurious Throw Blanket’? Thrown luxuriously over the back of my favorite reading chair. You begin to see the problem. The 20 pack of Sham Wows were intended to be the one gift I absolutely wouldn’t want to keep for myself.

Since that posting the situation has changed. It changed because I spilled coffee on a cashmere blend sweater while paying more attention to conversation than to my beverage at a luncheon last week, and I hand-washed the resultant stain from the sweater that evening. I was finishing up the rinse when I remembered one of the photos from the box of Amazing Sham Wows, namely, the photo of a wet sweater being laid on a large Sham Wow and then rolled into a tube. Something short of five minutes or so later, the sweater was almost completely dry. I’m sure you can see where this story is going, so I won’t give you too many details except to say in something short of five minutes my sweater was as close to dry as anything put in a dryer for a full cycle and I was not only a Sham Wow convert but the proud owner of 20 of them.

Which left nothing for the White Elephant exchange but at the time, I was so excited about this wonder towel I didn’t care. I didn’t care even more when, the next morning, I realized I could continue my old folly of ‘towel-drying’ my hair before using the blow dryer, a process that left my hair as damp and unruly as the towel I’d wrapped it in, or I could dry it with a Super Sized Sham Wow. For anyone who’s never tried this, I can only say that Sham Wow is this close to making the blow dryer obsolete and I’m amazed every time I dry my hair. All that water, somehow absorbed by this astounding orange towel made somewhere in Germany (which begs the question, why are all the really good products made in Germany? Why did it take Germany to make Sham Wows, when the best we Americans seem to come up with are ‘Quicker Picker Uppers’ like Bounty? For the record, it would take two rolls of Bounty to dry just one section of my hair. Just once, I’d like to be in the “As Seen On TV” aisle and find something truly awesome with a label that read, ‘made in Cleveland’) that still didn’t need wringing out. I don’t know where the water goes once it’s absorbed, I really don’t. All I know is, I hang the Sham Wow on the towel rack and it dries itself as if by some miracle or something, in a matter of minutes.

I’ve become a Sham Wow devotee and stand completely ready to put them to all kinds of uses, now that I’ve seen for myself how truly amazing they really are. Possibilities abound. Maintenance fee (passed into my HOA fee) for draining and cleaning the pools? That’s going by the wayside, just as soon as I drop a super-sized Sham Wow in each one, is what I’m thinking.

I felt ridiculous enough being so pleased by a zebra print blanket with sleeves, so pardon me while I confess to being more ecstatic over these Sham Wows than I’ve been over anything in my life, with the possible exception of the day I adopted Basil. After washing the dishes, I lay them out on a medium sized blue Sham Wow and again, I don’t know where the water goes, but minutes later I put the clean dishes away and the towel is as dry and ready for the next project as it was when it hit the counter. For whatever reason, this is fascinating to me.

Lest I get booted form the White Elephant luncheon for arriving gift-less this year, I rectified the gift problem finally and completely over the weekend and had to go no farther than a Barnes and Noble’s entry foyer to do it. There, displayed in nice even piles, were ‘Humorous Holiday Kits – The Perfect Gift!’s. Reluctantly bypassing the foam fruitcake (‘The Perfect Re-Gift! Includes copy of 50 Uses For A Fruitcake’) I selected ‘The Zen Dog”, a box including a plastic curry comb, CD of soothing meditation music, instructional booklet on dog massage, instructional booklet of dog meditations to read to your pet while you play the accompanying DVD of relaxing images for your dog, and also “The Complete Kazooist”, which included a CD of favorite Kazoo songs, DVD of proper Kazoo handling techniques, and of course, a silver plated Kazoo. Once home, I wrapped them both, firmly taping the Kazoo kit on top of the Zen Dog box. In retrospect I think I’ve spent too much time in the “As Seen On TV” aisle lately because instead of a label I applied stick on letters to both boxes. On the Zen Dog, the letters spelled out “Best Gift Ever!” and on the Kazoo kit, “But Wait, There’s More!”. I put both in a bag, and considered my White Elephant Drama over.

And it is over, but only because I took the bag to my office the very next morning, deciding to store it on my credenza rather than in my eye line at home. I did this for no other reason than that Basil seems a bit stressed lately and I can’t afford to consider the possibility that she might enjoy a plastic curry comb, DVD of relaxing images or CD of soothing meditation music. If there’s one thing I don’t need for Christmas, it’s yet another White Elephant from myself.

The Importance of Zipping Up…and Down

There is nothing more unnerving for an independent, stubborn, single female such as myself to admit to than that I’ve run across a situation I can’t handle alone. This is why, after independently and effectively dealing with realtors, veterinarians, moving companies, challenging clients and the occasional bothersome neighbors, it was so distressing to find myself nearly vanquished completely by something as ubiquitous as a zipper.

Yet that’s exactly what happened yesterday morning although it truly started on Sunday, when I ventured out in a beautiful storm of heavy, wet and much-anticipated snow to do my part in stimulating the economy by finishing my holiday shopping and indulging in my own semi-traditional year end ‘picking up a few things’ for myself. Four pairs of shoes, one set of wall sconces, all new bathroom towels, a new shower curtain and shower curtain liner, new bath mat, kitchen rug, three blouses and two black and white dresses I succumbed to at the last minute because 70% off is something I’m convinced no woman with more than $20 in her wallet and full control of her mental faculties would walk away from. The breezy black and white dress would be perfect for the Business After Hours event on Thursday, paired with a black belt, short jacket, and one of the four pair of shoes. The cap-sleeved, scoop neck, black bodice dress with the hounds tooth, A-line, belted skirt would be just the thing for Monday morning, paired with the right jacket, which I quickly hung with the dress once I got home, setting the new shoes and black and silver jewelry out to go with it and thereby becoming all set for the next morning.

That is where my demise began. I got up after only slightly assaulting the snooze alarm, took Basil out for her walk, returned her home to The Today Show (She watches, I swear. If the TV is off, she will sit on the couch and stare at me. If the TV is on, she will disregard me completely and stare at the TV. She likes keeping up on what’s going on in the world and I appreciate that as I often get too busy to keep up with it and need to consult her for the occasional crucial update, like how many women has Tiger Woods been with as of now and are you serious, where did he find the time?), retrieved Bloss from his kennel, taking him for a walk and returning him home, hit the shower, tackled my hair and, as we females say, “put my face on”, managed to don nylons without a snag (always a small victory) and stepped into the dress. Proceeded to zip it, realizing as the zipper was approximately in the middle of my shoulder blades that basically, well: Houston, We Have A Problem.

Struggling at that point to reach over my own shoulder to re-grasp the zipper and coerce it upward, it dawned on me that I had not, apparently, worn a dress with a back zipper at any point in the past five years that I’ve lived alone. I’d somehow managed in that time to forget the simple reality that back-zip dresses are best left to those with another human being in residence who can assist with them. Realizing this did not, however, deter me from continuing to struggle valiantly and while I managed to move the zipper maybe one tiny centimeter upward it crossed my mind I may have to accept defeat, and for perhaps the thousandth time since she moved, I wished Lainie was across the hall once more. I needed a rescue.

That really bothered me.

I couldn’t believe and wouldn’t accept that after everything I’d successfully gone through in five years, I was about to be defeated by a dress. This explained why at that point, I resorted to semi-drastic measures and spent close to ten minutes
nearly dislocating my shoulder and I’m convinced putting a kink in my neck by twisting myself into the contortions necessary to finally grasp the zipper and force it upward, battling against defeat and absolutely refusing to go into the office and ask one of my girlfriends there to ‘zip me the rest of the way up’. That, for some reason only an overly-stubborn, independent, absolutely bull-headed, single female such as myself would perhaps understand, was not an option.

I’m inordinately proud to admit the zipper zipped, and the moment it did I truly felt to be champagne worthy, if only it hadn’t been only slightly shy of eight in the morning. What a feeling to have come so close to defeat, and sidestepped it. To be able to say I’ve successfully weathered not only divorce, relocation, and the perils of the single world and innumerable depressing blind dates but by gosh, I could zip my own dresses, too. It was empowering, more so than a particularly punchy Suze Orman column in Oprah Magazine and that moment, coupled with the moment that evening when, with surprisingly less contortions I was able to unzip the dress myself, completely and totally made my day.

And, oddly enough, gave me just that much more hope for the future.

The Importance of Being Brandied

When your day starts off with your waking well before the snooze alarm, warm and comfortable beneath two comforters with a snoring dog beside you and seven pillows surrounding you, it’s a good thing. Looking at the gray/gold tint to the early morning sky, you know it’s snowed overnight and even better, you’re awake in plenty of time to manage a commute that’s guaranteed to be made longer by those other drivers on the road who completely forget the basic rudiments of driving a vehicle simply because there is residual white stuff on the road that recently fell from the sky. It’s a great frame of mind to wake up in and it’s exactly where I was this morning well before six a.m.

Until, that is, the phone rang. “You have got,” I actually said out loud, waking the snoring Basil beside me, “to be kidding.”

The caller was not. It was my current meeting planner client, calling me frantically from one of our ballrooms, absolutely beside herself because my set-up manager was nowhere to be found and the meeting tables were not yet fully set. There were maybe a half dozen unskirted and this, I knew, would take the set up crew roughly ten minutes to accomplish. Her general session began in roughly two hours.

“Can you light a fire under someone?” she asked, “because I’m really, really not feeling comfortable here.”

I assured her our set up manager would ‘be right on it’, as I’d call him right away. Maybe, I thought, the six-thirty a.m. meeting I’d arranged between them before leaving work the night before had been rescheduled – for more than an hour earlier. The peaceful glow of the morning rapidly fading, I reached him on his cell phone and alerted him to the situation. “I know,” he said. “I’m two minutes away. Don’t worry about anything. We’ll take care of it.”

I knew he would. He always did. I thanked him, and called her back to assure her the situation was under control. Which it was because at that time, he was in the ballroom with her and already at work with his team. I pulled the comforter over both myself and Basil and tried to return to early morning peacefulness, but it was not to be found. So I got up, got dressed, and took Basil out for her morning jaunt, accomplishing it in half the usual time because as I’ve mentioned before, she doesn’t do cold, and she doesn’t do snow, and basically she took care of business faster than I’d ever experienced because all she really wanted to do was return to the warmth of my apartment and get started with her usual morning routine of watching the daily news and then the Today Show.

I wish I could say the rest of my day went well, and in some respects, it did. I had a great meeting with a group of clients doing a program with us next summer, and if you minus out an extended lunch in our restaurant (during which you never really do anything with the food on your plate except push it around with one of your forks because to actually take a bite of something would mean you wouldn’t be able to rapidly answer one of their inquiries about space, rate, mushroom bisque vs. butternut risotto, or audio visual until you’d finished chewing), a two hour walking tour I had absolutely the wrong shoes for, and no less than seven phone calls from my in-house planner before I’d even reached my office, it wasn’t bad. Actually, the phone calls were probably the worst of it, coming as they did when I was driving to work – or attempting to drive to work – at exactly 5mph because the road was completely covered with snow and every time I moved forward more than two feet the car in front of me hit their brakes.

Still, not a bad day, and as it drew to a close I reminded myself, as I often do when I have a higher maintenance program in house, that we were past the midway point, and I had exactly one more dinner event to get through that night, one more day of meetings the next day, and then I could actually not log 7 – 10 walking miles from the time I got to my desk in the morning until the time I returned to the parking garage at night. Better still, there’d be no phone calls after hours as I received last night when I finally got home, a semi-frantic request for additional sliced fruit on the dessert station. Which, ridiculous as it seems, was actually something to get concerned about and cause me to call my banquet captain not once but eight times consecutively on his cell phone until he picked up.

Having checked the dinner room and the reception set up, I assured my planner I would be happy to stay throughout the dinner service (yes, sometimes and often we lie in the hospitality world) but if she felt comfortable with her banquet captain (she did) I would simply watch the plate-up in the banquet kitchen and go home for the night. Sounded simple enough. The entrees were beautifully done, and absolutely matched the event order prepared. Feeling entirely confident of the evening’s success (note: this should always be your first clue to be wary of having overlooked a detail), I detoured through the pastry kitchen and asked to see the trifles being served for dessert. The chef happily removed one from the freezer and presented it for my approval.

It was, I have to say, absolutely perfect and beautiful in it’s chilled flute, except for one small detail I knew with absolute certainty would send my planner over the edge and guarantee another after hours call.

“That won’t work,” I said.

He hooked at me blankly and all I could do was gesture at the glass again. “That,” I said, pointing to the top of the trifle, “is a maraschino cherry. The event order calls for brandied cherries.”

“You want me to soak them in brandy?” he asked, and I then explained that they had to go completely. There couldn’t be a maraschino cherry within six feet of that dinner and certainly not my planner because while it had been the first choice arrived at, she’d later decided the dessert absolutely needed brandied cherries.

“That one thing,” I said, “will be the one thing that gets her upset, and complaining.”

The assistant pastry chef quickly produced a bucket of dark cherries, which were perfect, and doused them in a soaking solution, following that with a half bottle of brandy. Now we were in full resolution mode, and I felt somewhat relieved, especially when he left the pastry shop in search of another bottle of brandy, to really give the dessert the ‘punch’ the planner had requested. I offered to stay and pluck marashinos from the glasses, knowing there were only two of them in the shop and roughly 160 desserts to re-garnish, but they assured me they were on top of it, and not to worry. As by this time the entire shop was starting to smell like brandy, the assistant having returned with another bottle and duly soaked the cherries once more, I took their word for it.

With all resolved, I decided not to worry, that everything would go well, and I could go home and relax, even be so bold as to leave the Blackberry in another room while I watched TV, sure it wouldn’t ring. As it often does, it crossed my mind that somewhere in the world surgeons were performing medical miracles, scientists were evolving life-changing cures, and novelists were producing tremendous works of literature, while I was considering the day well spent because I’d averted a near-disaster with a cherry. That seemed ridiculous but in the often unusual world I live in for a living, it’s important to appreciate the importance of being brandied.

I’ll leave the life-changing cures and the medical miracles to those much better suited.

My Struggle With White Elephants

It being that time of year again, we’ve just scheduled our annual office white elephant gift exchange. The guidelines remain very simple. You go out and buy something for $25 or less and it should ideally be something humorous, something you’d not ordinarily give as a gift, and something that has some purpose other than serving merely as a ridiculous gift nobody would ever really want. You wrap them up, leave no “To” or “From” on the card, and we take them all to our boardroom where, with any luck, we’re also having a potluck lunch because we all collectively remembered to bring something.

We draw numbers from a small planter (we’re not big on hats and don’t tend to keep them around). The gifts are drawn for in order, i.e., person number one chooses the first gift. Then person number two, etc. Beginning with person number two, they can either select an unwrapped gift, or ‘steal’ a gift from someone who’s already opened theirs, in which case the person stolen from gets to choose a new one. This can be good, or it can be disappointing. Last year Diane chose to ‘steal’ the t-shirt I’d been gifted with, an XXL that would have made a great nightgown and I appreciated the sentiment it expressed that, “Due to the Economy, all I got for Christmas Was This T-shirt” emblazoned across its front. I wound up drawing the last package available, which was bubble bath, and unless I’m mistaken I’m still working on the bubble bath from the previous year and haven’t even opened it yet, an entire year later. So for me, last year was not as good as previous years, in particular the year I separated and happened to select the “Prince Charming Kit” (I still have it) which was a life-size rubber toad wearing a tuxedo with a bright red lipstick tucked into his collar and “Prince Charming Kit” on a tag around his neck. Or the year I got the “Cafeteria Lady” ‘action figure’ because Liz had heard enough of my mocking someone in our employee cafeteria I referred to as ‘the soup Nazi’ because she refused to let me have extra vegetables with a cold sandwich, saying I could only have rice, which made no sense to me then or now.

Liz doesn’t frequent the best place to find white elephant gifts, the “As Seen on TV” section of Walgreen’s, but lucky for her, I do. So when I stopped in there on Friday night and found myself in that particular aisle (I always find myself in that particular aisle, as if it’s a requisite for any visit to Walgreen’s to leave the store not just with what I came in for but with something ridiculous I’d seen on TV that I’d probably never use but suddenly felt almost insanely compelled to possess), standing in front of “The Snuggie: The Blanket With Sleeves!” I hurriedly dialed Liz, and she said of course, pick one up for her and she’d give it as her gift. It came in a leopard print or a zebra print, and she had no preference. So I selected the leopard print, then thought about how much the temperatures were dropping and how truly cozy and comfortable that lady on the box looked, and how truly awesome it would be to go home, turn on the fireplace….and watch TV in a blanket with sleeves.

So the zebra print went into the cart as well, and by the time I found the toothpaste I’d come in for the cart also contained “The Snuggie for Dogs: Keeps your Body Warm And Your Paws Free!” and knowing how important it was for Basil to keep her paws free, felt it was $9.99 well spent and would also, alternatively, make a nice white elephant gift. Another $9.99 went on an “Unbelievably soft and luxurious throw blanket!” because in all honesty, who can have too many of those? What a great white elephant gift!

Herein lies the problem.

Once home, I promptly opened the zebra Snuggie, found it every bit as comfortable as the box promised and decided I’d give the dog Snuggie as a white elephant. Until, that is, about five minutes later when I decided the dog on the box looked an awful lot like Basil, which was probably a sign it should go to her. We’d been cuddled up in our Snuggies, an episode of “Entourage” on the DVR for maybe ten minutes, when I decided that “Unbelievably soft and luxurious throw blanket!” would really go well with the couch pillows in the living room, so that was opened, too (and really did look good). So you clearly understand my dilemma. Having purchased three possible white elephant gifts to give away, I was now down about $34 and didn’t have anything at all to give away.

This was completely unacceptable.

So Saturday night after work I found myself in Walgreen’s again, deliberating in the “As Seen On TV” aisle, concluding there were really only two products left that: a) I hadn’t already bought for myself, and b) someone might get some use out of. One was a knock off of ‘Yoga Toes’, but in thinking about it, they were outdated. I’d bought a pair last year, Casey had bought a pair, and Diane had, too. That left the enormous box of “Sham Wow”s, the yellow towels that are purported to absorb the contents of a small swimming pool and last approximately forever, at a bargain price of only $20. So I bought them, vowing not to keep them for myself. Honestly, what in the world would I do with a Sham Wow, no matter how amazing? Surely it would be more prudent to just gift them and move on with life (not to mention a different aisle in the store).

The problem is, the gift exchange isn’t for two more weeks. That’s a very long time to keep a box of Sham Wows on my kitchen counter, even though it is in one of those translucent bags from Walgreen’s. I can still see the pictures on the outside of the box, and the one that jumps out at me the most is the wringing wet dog, the dog who looks not happy, not thrilled, but positively blissful to find himself being dried by a Sham Wow after being unceremoniously dumped in the tub and scrubbed with stinky people shampoo. Every time I look at it, I recall Basil’s dislike of bathing and it feels like a right move to me to make it up to her by opening that box of Sham Wows and giving her one of her very own. Maybe two. She’s kind of that special and that spoiled.

The problem being, that would leave me completely without a white elephant gift, and also with no further options on coming up with one. I’d be down, literally, to the Pedi Egg and gag gift or not, the ladies would disown me if I gave them something to shave dead skin off their feet. So I’m vowing to stay strong, and not open the box. It’s only a couple of weeks away, I’m thinking.

The dog on the box was probably staring at a rib eye when they took the picture anyway, explaining that look of absolute bliss. That’s my story and unless I want to be kicked out of an annual potluck for being gift-less, I’m sticking to it.

Evergreens and Baby Roses: On Visiting a Cemetery

Certain things in life I have no real point of reference for, the top of that list being cemeteries.
This is because everyone in my life I once loved and thereafter lost (in chronological order: Grandpa Cees, Aunt Jaqueline, my mother, Grandpa D, and Grandma Mad) have never really had a gravesite.

Long story short:

Grandpa Cees went to a mortuary…where he, after being cremated, was mixed in with the ashes of his mother, my great grandmother Em (whom I never knew) and resides then as now on a third shelf, southwest corner, of a mortuary in El Cerrito, California. Granted, I walked past said mortuary every day on my way home from school, but still, never went inside. There’s a certain feeling, I guess, to be gotten from visiting a gravesite, and I have to imagine it’s not the same at all as what you get in visiting a bookshelf. About all I remember from that is the funeral, when we were seated in the back and the casket was in front and it was beautiful. Sea green and covered in flowers and my mom whispering to five year old me that Grandpa wasn’t really inside because he’d been cremated, whatever that meant…and the casket was ‘just for show’, kind of like my Barbie Dream House at home that Barbie could never stand upright in because the whole thing was too small but still looked stellar and sold well. Aunt Jaqueline, my mom, and Grandpa D and Grandma Mad…same scenario.

I threw my mom’s ashes (p.s., don’t be fooled. They’re not the fine-grained powder thin stuff you see in movies, in reality. It was more like post mix, like what you’d set a fence with) off a hiking trail above Half Moon Bay in 1992. Completely and totally illegally, in the company of her last husband, her twin sister, and my ex-husband. Given the wind force factor that day, should I ever really want ‘a place’ to go say hello to Mom, I’d have to cover everything from Monterey to Marin County. I’ve never had the energy or wherewithal for that so content myself with every visit to a Northern California beach I make, sure every seashell I find is one she tossed me. Grandpa D and Grandma Mad were both equally cremated, as was Aunt J, and buried on private property which has since been sold and nobody is saying anything to anybody about where that was because again, that’s highly illegal stuff.

So it was highly irregular and out of character for me, this past Saturday, to find myself actually finding the gravesite of one Mr. HGF, and leaving three corsages I’d collected at work the night before, comprised of (ironically) the evergreen boughs he apparently had an affinity for, and the baby roses I just found appropriate. I did this because I was, and will remain, probably and ridiculously forever, enamored of and in love with his oldest son. Talk about your pointless errands…but as I reminded myself that morning, sometimes it’s not about the point, anyway.

So I left them and that’s that and it was odd to be in a cemetery.

It was odd to have an actual place that you could point to, and say, “this is where they are,” when thinking about those you no longer have.

I talked with his son later, and he said he didn’t go, regularly.

I think I’d be the same way…if I knew that I had that place, and could go. But with Grandpa Mad’s place selling, and therefore her final resting place being private property and therefore impenetrable, and given the fact that there are a whole lot of beaches between Salt Lake City and Monterey…just going there felt more like something nice for me than something nice for someone else.

Call me stupid (you won’t be the first).

I’d do it again.

He must have been a heck of a guy. To have produced such a heck of an oldest son. And whether things turned out well or not (and I think we all know the answer there), no regrets. I’d lay baby roses and evergreens on his grave any day of the week. Whether he felt it was necessary or not. Reminded me, really, of the story my dad told, of how he and my mom were leaving the crematoriam and he’d tossed Grandpa’s Cee’s ashes, in the urn, into the trunk of the Jaguar he’d gifted him with. My mom, having scarcely met the man but loved him (because she loved his son) made him stop the car on the side of the 580 (no mean feat, as all native Californians know) so she could retrieve the urn, place it in her lap, and announce, “He wants sunshine! How could you put him in the trunk?”

OK, so Dad probably, at that point, deduced she was a nut job.

Oh, well.

Somehow, I don’t think she was so crazy.

Maybe it’s just me, but whether his son was home or not, HGF deserved a few roses, and I for one, weird as it was, am glad to have been the one to bring them.

And I would do it again.