Clickety Click

The bingo call for 66 in 50's London used to be clickety click, and that's the new number assigned to my time thus far on this old earth. More like rickety chick if you ask me. To mark this passage, I asked my grownup children to join me at a demonstration of Japanese flower arranging and lunch last week, in place of receiving a wrapped birthday present from them. Mostly because I value their presence over anything else but partly because there's nothing I want that could fit into a box that a person could carry. What I sometimes wish I still had is my own house, one that's all paid up and decorated to reflect the complicated but artistically inclined me and keeps itself clean and tidy. The stores are a bit short on those this year, so I settled for ikebana and a salad. My children will never appreciate how hard I try to make things easy for them.

But yesterday was the real birthday and I hogged it mostly to myself. I drove the pretty forty minutes backroads route to the coast, walked on a glassy smooth beach in my tall wellie boots, overtipped the handsome but offhand waiter at lunch, forcing myself to be forgiving and less critical of others, just for practice, bought a few small luxuries for special Christmas stockings and took a nap in my car in a parking lot.

I also went to a hardware store, a secret guilty pleasure of mine, and bought a smoke detector, wire cutters, solar powered flashlight and insulating strips for the front door. Although I've been desperately trying to simplify my life, by the time I got home, an octopus would have come in handy to help bring in all the stuff. I'd taken along a bag of chips and a flask of apple juice as my drive time snack, so the sticky bottle and ripped apart plastic bag had to be juggled in with hat, keys, gloves, sunglasses, used up tissues for the perennial runny nose, windbreaker jacket, long scarf, and shopping bags.

I try my best to bring things in from the car in one trip, because I'm lazy to begin with but also, when I get home, usually the first thing I have to do is run to the loo. Somehow, struggling out of sandy wellies at the door with hands clawed around bags, shoulders draped in excess gear, seems to exert acute pressure on my bladder, obliterating the benefits of a lovely outing surer than gritty sand (oops)wiches at the beach. In hindsight, I now realize I could have just worn everything and jammed excess stuff into my pockets but I was too tired to think of that at the time. I'm afraid I can only expect more of the same at my new age: naps in parking lots, the need for spare arms and brain parts, pre-emptive visits to the loo.

I'm taking more short cuts when I can, too: for instance, I'm wondering if the new smoke alarm will work just as well if I don't actually wrestle it out of the welded plastic package and just leave it propped on a shelf someplace. Due to my decreased strength, I'm not sure I'll stick the self adhesive weather stripping on properly and I imagine it will end up dangling in the doorway like some newfangled fly trap. Larry's not the type to notice things like that, bless him. I've already figured out I'll need to use two hands to operate the scissor shaped wire cutters, not that I'm dealing with barbed wire fences around an old folks' funny farm. At least not yet. I bought them for the chicken wire I sometimes use in flower arrangements, unlikely but true story. I can barely lift the arranged vases onto the tall pedestals at church these days and wonder how much longer I'll be able to keep it up. When I noticed that the elderly Japanese lady giving the flower demonstration last week had her son and daughter plus three others helping out, I knew my flower power days were numbered.

When I first read about 15 years ago that old age wasn't for sissies, I hadn't thought it through carefully enough. I always thought it applied to everyone else. Like death. Somehow I'd have a free pass. I suppose it isn't too late to rebuild lost muscle but I'm not so sure about the brain part. Results on test games and exercises for the brain are inconclusive as they say. I hope I read and write well, but I did that in elementary school, so that's hardly a comfort. Does it count if you're still aware that you actually are breathing even if you are in fact slower and weaker?

I thought I was being pretty damned smart yesterday by avoiding a Denny's birthday freebie grand slam heart attack breakfast, before walking on a deserted beach out of cell phone range. In fact I forgot about it altogether and opted instead for seafood stew in a garlic broth, served by a waiter far easier on my old lady eye than Denny's in tennies. Oh, and I'm embarrassed to admit, that's another thing: I've started noticing the strong muscled bodies of younger men, something I never thought about before, honestly. But what earthly good is that to me these days? Is that just God's way of helping women forgive the roving eye of their menfolk? Well just shut up God.

So here's what I am looking forward to. The little luxuries I bought in the overpriced heavenly designed boutique are stocking stuffers for the team of lovely young women who assist my desperately adorable daughter as she staggers unpredictably through her day, trying to make sense of her body and mind's unreliable reactions (rather like myself). I'm planning a modest Christmas gathering for them, a thank you for the gift of peace of mind they give me and the fantasy of hope that when I'm gone, my son and one of them will eventually fall madly in love and they'll all live happily ever after. Now that's what I'd really like for all birthdays and Christmases from now until the date of my final departure. But that doesn't fit into a box any more than my dream house. So meanwhile, I'll have to settle for little gatherings and small celebrations for as long as I can, making them loving and beautiful and say thank you and I love you a million times. As my body seems to weaken and my logic becomes more eccentric, my heart seems to want to fatten up with gratitude and sentiment and I think I'll just let that happen.

Poor Dad is Dead

Just found out my father died seven months ago in London and his wife didn't bother to let us know. I know ! Horrible isn't it? I'm numb, which happens to me when I'm too angry to handle it all at once, or too anything really. Others are speaking for me though: whaaat? how could anyone be so cruel? I can't imagine where her mind must be to do such a thing? The focus mostly on the wicked step mother, which technically she is. Kinder people have suggested forgiveness for she knows not what she did, or excuses due to possible dementia or grief on her part.
I'm just trying to come to grips with the loss part. It's easy to get to the mad part, and I don't want to go the the sad place, but that's where I need to be.
But the tears flowed when someone asked me to describe one fond memory of him: he used to bring us breakfast in bed on a tray on Sundays around noon when my sister and I were teens and sleeping late. I wondered at the time why he did it because it was so unusual for him to do anything for anyone else. Another memory, affectionate and odd: when we went to lunch a few years ago and I ordered for us both, telling the waiter I'd have this and my father would have that. He got teary eyed, telling me that he was very touched by my telling the waiting that "my father will have..." somehow that phrase punctured whatever armour he wore around his heart.
My cousin "Egg" tells me that my father loved me very much, thought the world of me. She also knew him as self-centered, which he was and which I don't really want to probe, as it meant many painful experiences, not worth reviewing here.
So last night when I found out via a friends email, when she discovered the news via my father's neighbour, I sent emails to family, friends and acquaintances, for the sake of Old Lang Syne, and to know that there are people in the world who are not cruel, who don't wish me harm and who have responded to the news with sadness and shock and loving concern.

There are some events in life which one shouldn't suffer alone, births and deaths are two. I've been through both, alone and not alone. Alone was unspeakably painful. This time, the pain is speakable and I claim it for a wee while. Tears have flowed only when talking about the fond memories, and I'm glad for that. I don't want bitterness to creep in, and actually feel none.

Thanks Dad for your gifts of music, humour, wit, super sensitivity (not sure about this one) powers of observation, loving me the best you could, for finding a woman who loved you enough to take care of you at the end, doing grunt work I couldn't provide or share. May your spirit rise high and free. Thank you for getting a posthumous message through to me to google you and snap up the one available copy of your vinyl lp David Mack's New Directions for Jazz Orchestra. I sent you a cd of this with your birthday card this year for my friend Barbara to deliver by hand as you weren't receiving other gifts or mail since you became bedridden. I had suspicions that letters and gifts from America were being diverted somehow, but chose to blame the erratic postal service instead of anyone close to you, telling myself to be generous kind and loving in my thoughts and deeds. Well screw that idea for today at least.

I will regret forever that we did not have a proper goodbye. Thanks for the genes, good bad and ugly, thanks for all of it and blessings on your journey old man. I loved you dearly.

Crashing Bores

The social climbing couple who crashed the White House banquet for the Indian president last week accomplished their goal, no doubt, but oooh bad news for Michaele's stylist. Honey, the sari was draped BACKWARDS fergoodness gracious sake, and that's not all. I was relieved, frankly, to learn that her bill with her stylist has been unpaid for years because I wouldn't pay for that shaggy 'do either. Looked like it'd been styled by a shredder !! And did you notice in the CNN loop that when they were holding hands striding across the screen, she dragged her husband backwards in order to hold what she might have thought a coquette's pose, legs astride by the way (well she's a horsewoman, makes sense) while he just hung there limply at the end of her hand - and I'm not talking about their bedroom action here, how would I know, ahem - as the cameras clicked?
The stylist might also have pointed out to Ms. Crash that there's not much you can do about saggy upper arms when shaking hands with the Prez and Mrs. Prez except cover them decently WITH THE SHAWL END OF YOUR SARI DARLING assuming of course that you are actually willing to take an honest look in the mirror past your chin and realize age is revealed by other parts of your overexposed body. When I met the Prez ( at a book signing) I know for a fact that when we shook hands, other parts of me were moving in sync, but I had them encased in long garments to protect the sensibilities of all parties present.
I felt sorry for her actually, well him too. The only way they could improve their shoddy image would be if they offered to donate proceeds from selling their sari-ass story to charity, preferably one that performs plastic surgery to impoverished children who were born with defects or were accident victims, including war tragedies. If you're going to make a public nuisance of yourself, at least be a generous one, that's all I'm saying. Otherwise darlings, you're just boooring.

PS the good news is Mr and Mrs. Crashing Bores showed up the weaknesses in security in the Big House, very important that, so well done, I think.

Grannies

Thanksgiving Day minus two. Shopping at the local Trader Joe's is crowded, parking lot offering valet service. Holiday business looking brisk. Pushing the cart and then I hear a child calling "Grandma" and I catch myself tearing up. The little girl's clear voice, a bell on a freeway, cutting through the rumble. Something in me went limp and I had to pause for a moment and remember I had serious ginger cookie hunting on hand and look smart about it. Grabbed the last bag on the shelf, and ready to try out a new ginger cookie crust pumpkin tart recipe. When you can't have a granny at your holiday table, at least you can try a new dish- I try to comfort myself with this thought.

Later at the checkout, perhaps it was the same grandma and little girl, I don't know, but a melodious grandma's voice behind me was telling a little girl how everyone would think she was just the most precious and beautiful thing they had ever seen. I turned to look at them, the grandma in velvet sweats, short neat hair, nice makeup, slender and spry, the little girl about four years old, beaming, mesmerized by her grandma's words. My immediate thought: I want that grannie for my kids, even if they are approaching middle age. And, I wanted to start an agency, Rent-a-Gran and have her be the first one to sign up. Then, I thought of my own granny, the one who owned a sweetie shop in Glasgow and left me in charge at the age of seven while she went to the pub on the corner "for a wee while". Customers complained about the wrong change I gave them, she complained to my mother, my mother blamed the inferior English education system, and I was fired by my own grannie. I've never been the same since, of course. I could tell you all sorts of stories. But I'm grateful for the spine it gave me, in the end, because that's what I think happened. Steel magnolia and all that.

But still I began to yearn for a granny like the one in the line at T.J's, just for a few hours on the holidays, you know, to give the extra dimension to the family that seems to be missing, the gaping Granny Corner. I'm in line for Grannyship but nobody is doing much about it and it's not as if I can do an invitro job on my daughter when she's not looking or demand that my son settle for Miss Right Now. So I just have to enjoy the secretly snatched granny moments, as if I'm walking past a bakery and smelling a pie I can't eat because I'm allergic to the gluten in the flour, which actually does happen. I'm glad at least someone's enjoying what I can't have and now I have to buy a new lipstick for my very stiff upper lip. Happy Thanksgiving.

Words

The old sticks and stones line about how words can't hurt us has been coming to mind. Eleanor Roosevelt's statement along the lines of nobody can make us feel unworthy without our permission is another drop in my reflecting pool today.

I've experienced enough grief and sadness that I don't want to stay in it for very long and have a tendency to "make light" of things and to laugh it off as soon as possible. It's my way of coping with something too painful. Not new, not unique.

But I decided today to ask one of my friends something directly. In person, we smile and hug and listen lovingly to one another, but she's moved away and we only chat by phone once a week nowadays. What I've noticed is the tone of her voice is so seriously sad and mournful. I ask her how things are going and she insists everything's going well and goes into detail. But she just has that heavy minor key in her voice. Finally I asked her if she was aware she sounded very sad, at least to me, no matter how things seemed to be going with her, and well, frankly, what's up with that?

She laughed and said as a child she'd been very attracted to the mournful poets and thought melancholia was a great mood to wallow in. It was so great that she went on to try and treat her condition with lots of various mind altering substances - and admits that was kinda f-cked up.

She's a great pal and we love each other dearly and she said how grateful she was for my speaking up because she had no idea she was sounding so mournful. I told her sometimes it's a little offputting and confusing, but that was MY problem, not HERS. We just decided that it's time we got out of our old Beatnik notion of looking at life through dark lenses and thinking we were cool. Time to let the sunshine in sweetie pie we said to one another ! I love it that we can just tell it like it is to some people - it just brings us closer, and I like that. I love too that she didn't get offended when I asked my question and realized I hold no malice whatever towards her. I wish it were that easy with everyone. Some people's toes are so sensitive, if they catch you even glancing in their direction they act as if you just jack hammered them. We have to admit that we did glance however, and allow that they are sensitive and be tolerant, right?

Excuse me while I go ponder the deeper meaning of this and stare out a window at some distant mountain, wearing my dark glasses perhaps. I gave up on the French tobacco years ago but I think my beret is still around somewhere.

Antsy

I'm not crazy about admitting this, and you'd be justified in thinking there's something crazy here. I just spent a hour spackling the perimeter of an electrical outlet plate with green Japanese horse radish aka wasabi. It took an hour because the paste kept crumbling and falling away and was probably too thin to begin with. I used a soft edged baby spoon as a tool because that seemed to hold the paste more easily. ( I hope I remember to dispose of the excess paste plus spoon before any real babies drop in. Unlikely, but you never know around here.) And why was I doing this in the first place? Because I've run out of Mongolian hot chili oil, the one I blend into a paste with Hungarian hot paprika to paint around areas where the seasonal ant invasions occur. It's wintery cold and the wee buggers are on the move.

So today I'm down to wasabi. It looks as if a baby (the one that doesn't live here but might have visited) spewed pureed peas over the blender plug which seems to be the current immigration check point to the kitchen counter. And I'm happy to report that wasabi is every bit as effective an ant deterrent as the Mongolian/Hungarian formula which is actually a little expensive and leaves a slight orange tinge to the grout, making extra work in the cleanup. As it is, I'm busy enough with the soapy sponge wipe-up of the 6 ant-wide trail running across the sink and down the disposal. I'm trying to think what tender morsel might have survived the ferocious maw of the disposal's latest feeding frenzy that would be attractive enough to rally such an army. It was supremely satisfying as well as efficient to activate the spray option on the detachable faucet head and swirl away a few hundred bugs down a homemade ant sized version of a hot water slide.

I'm doing my best to be organic and humane about their repatriation as I like to think of it, much preferring aversion to outright murder, except for the soapy sponge part. I also apologize to them and ask their little ant spirits' forgiveness for my actions. I'm not sure this has been entirely effective however as I recently discovered an ant had actually crawled into my pyjamas and was testing the citrus scented bodywash residue I must have overlooked in my toilette activities earlier. Well that was his excuse, but I knew he was really after revenge. It gave me no pleasure to retrieve a tiny creature from a private body part of mine, roll it between my thumb and forefinger and wonder if I was merely maiming it by crushing its legs or if it was actually dead. I enshrouded the remains in a tissue, wet it under the faucet and tossed it in the trash. Elaborate but somehow the ritual relieved my guilt.

I guess it's only a matter of time before the colony that is surely established at the very core of the kitchen's inner workings decides to either move out or launch another assault through a different electrical outlet. With my luck it'll be the one in the bedroom as they go after the apple scented lotion on my nightstand. Well I'm ready for 'em. Got my dish of water to put the bottle of lotion in and then we'll see who's boss ! But last year this didn't work so well when I tried the moat method on a jar of honey, which ended up in the fridge. We found thousands of shriveled carcasses in the freezer the next morning and callously laughed our asses off. But it was after all a non-toxic death, come on.

PS. If your baby likes pureed peas, please don't visit us during ant season, even if you've noticed a bowl and baby spoon smeared with green stuff on our kitchen counter: it is not an invitation.

Split Timing

It finally happened, that moment so many of us dread, the one where your former hairstylist, the one from two stylists ago, sees you at the grocery store, with a new snappy 'do, that s/he didn't do. And you feel as if you've been caught in flagrante delicto. You'd think they'd have figured out by now that you're officially divorced since you haven't returned for the freebie bang trim in a couple of years. It must be a little hard on them I suppose, as they haven't been able to prove anything exactly; for all they know, you could be running around town looking like a Shetland pony from the forehead up. That is until years later, in some cases, when your eyes unexpectedly lock across the freezers at Trader Joe's and suddenly your tofutti isn't the only thing that's chilly. So when that very thing happened to me today, I did what anybody else would do in the circumstances, looked straight through his steely blues, made a u-turn and hid behind the cereal.

Divorcing one's hair stylist is never an easy decision. I'm terribly forgiving of them until I just can't take any more lying about how great the cut looks then skulking out to my car, putting my head down and ruffling the hell out of the latest disaster with all ten fingers. I've broken up with them for reasons other than wonky cuts too. One brought her cute toddler to work and that was charming for a while but I got sick of pretending to eat plastic egg sandwiches on playdough. Then there was the depressed Algerian who whined about the lack of cultural diversity in the area, even though his cuts weren't that bad. I just dreaded the bitching.

I've never fully recovered from the loss of my favorite flamboyant genius stylist who decorated his salon with silk parachutes and who died unexpectedly of a ghastly illness leaving several hundred of us hair widows. We grieved in our different ways, some of us moving on quicker than others. My process involved just letting the old style grow itself out into pony tail length that usually got stuffed into a baseball cap until everyone else got sick of it and wondered if I was hiding a medical condition.

I landed my latest stylist through one of those happy accidents of odd timing. I found a parking spot right in front of her salon on the very day I had decided to bring my locks out of mourning and without a second toss of my split ends, I marched in and she took me right away. It's been a happy match thus far. She's says she adores my humor and I adore her shapely scissor work as we sip tea and exchange whacky family stories. Bliss all round really.

As for the freezer encounter this afternoon, I must confess, it's a great relief to have things out in the open, sans chapeau. My Algerian ex is a big boy; he'll get over it eventually.

Exposed in public

So how come so many new restaurants think it's hip to have their whole kitchen on display to the customers? Kitchens are NOISY what with constant clanging and chinking, yelling, chopping, sizzling, banging. How does this cacophony enhance the diner's experience in any way? When first seen years ago, it was a novel idea to have curious customers shimmy up to the window for a little wok watching, grant you that one, but behind soundproof glass if you please ! And it's not much better when there's a lull in the cooking action because then the cooks get sorta sociable with one another, which is natural, though it's not exactly the sort of background murmur of other diners, more like guys "chatting" in a factory with the machinery still running. It's just as well I can't understand the various languages because then I'd get caught up in whatever they're going on about, especially if I'm eating alone and don't have anything to read.

There's a restaurant review system that rates decibels and I'm coming to see the real value in it, because rather than thinking of noisy nosh spots as places to avoid, I can see where some people might actually enjoy them: it can get the old adrenaline rushing around and gives one a false sense of being at a party, or at least something involving a group. This also works quite well if you're having dinner with someone who's sort of ho-hum company but you've been friends for so long you hate to break it off just because the conversations are going through a dry spell. You keep chugging along, making little dates, hoping the rain gods will eventually bless your dialogue desert with a flowering cactus now and again. So, yeah, I can see that you'd want a nice noisy place to cover up the bald spots in the friendship, a sort of conversational combover.

So, if your friend suggests a new place to eat that's especially noisy, you might want to take the pulse of your witty repartee, but then again, maybe your friend's life is just boring and she's pretending you're both at a lavishly attended house party. We just survived lunch at one of our favorite cafes and the kitchen was especially tuneful today and as you can tell, I wasn't really in the mood. Sunday nap time methinks.

Dish It Up

As a young teen, visiting Germany for a summer, I discovered just how much I really loved to cook and eat once I'd escaped my parents' sparse, ration-couponed vegetarian Presbyterian pantry. Pantry is an exaggeration. More like a shelf in a funky kitchen cabinet where cheese and margarine (kosher for some reason) took up half the space for half the week. Vegetarian tinned goods from a Seventh Day Adventist company in America were stored separately in the hall closet where we kept a jumble of everyone's shoes.And on a similar note (food + apparel) our clean, but unironed laundry, blouses and shirts mainly, was kept in the living room sideboard. Just to give you an idea how food and food related furniture was viewed in our household. You can tell I'm looking for pity here. Anyhow, Frau Strudel (not her real name) cooked two hearty meals a day for a family of six, using lard and sugar in amounts that would cheerfully choke a yak. My food reformist Papa would have had me sent home had he known, bless his little lentil loving heart. Not to prove a point about diet or anything, I'm glad my Dad is still around in his 90's of course, but I'm going to give genes more credit than lentils, so there !

Frau S's menus of mostly pork, potato, apple and whipped cream delicacies turned my tummy and tastebuds on to an elevated level of textures, flavors, aromas and the whole sensual array of gustatory pleasures. Luckily, thanks to a mild thyroid condition, I've never really packed on the pounds as I should have. The only positive side effect of medical malady that one could claim to be happy about I suppose. So if I can't cook for some reason, like being bedridden or traveling, I cook vicariously by watching tv cook shows or lick my thumb through the pages of foody magazines and books. This is where the beef comes in.

The cooking show I'm REALLY waiting for, is the one that has the guts to show viewers the dirty piles of used bowls and utensils the cook really has to use. You know the ones, heaped off to the side, out of camera view, so that you have no bloody idea of the real work you're in for. My kitchen is so small that unless I clean as I go, I'm likely to have to store dirty dishes pots and bowls in the dryer and washer - and don't think I haven't done that ! I just want the tv shows to be a little more honest, don't you? You never see what happens to the washing up before you eat dinner and who chopped up all those tiny dishes of ingredients so deftly tossed into the mix, what about them, eh? Usually the dirty and emptied bowl is just whisked off the counter to a culinary Bermuda triangle, where there are NO cameras. Same with pots - and by the way, what about pots and pans too hot to store safely anywhere other than the oven or stovetop? Notice how the camera craftily pans away from the ghastly to the glorious, focusing instead of the fancy finished platter. Nobody holds them accountable for this gross gap in reality, we are just so dazzled by the thought of guzzling our way through the end results and the praise of our family and friends who wonder just how we did it all.

In our household, my sweetie (and darling I DO appreciate everything you do in the kitchen, especially when you wait till the tv commercial breaks are on before running the water at full force and crashing lid pots about, please know that) thinks he's helping by rinsing off a few plates and stacking them in the dishwasher, but has NO IDEA that I've already broken the back of the beast by cleaning as I go: chopping boards, knives, measuring bowls and spoon, mixing bowls and so on, not to mention scrubbing out last night's rice and cooking pots that he just had to leave soaking in the sink... Once, I had such a frenzied day of cooking that I hit on the brilliant idea of just tossing all the dirty stuff into a cardboard box or two and lugging them out to the garage. It was wonderful and made the post dinner cleanup a breeze. Mostly because I forgot all about the bloody boxes of stuff in the garage until a couple of weeks later. Oh well.

Look, where's there's a good dinner there's a good bet some poor bugger is stuck with the cleanup before and after the gluttony begins, and I think it's only fair that all foodie shows give them due credit with a little footage before and after and their names just as big as the chef's on the rolling credits. All recipes should include washing up time before and after consumption, and the number of dirty utensils entailed. I just watched a tv show that used only five ingredients per recipe. Great, or so I thought. The husky-voiced brunette chef smiled us through three dishes for a complete Thanksgiving dinner, true enough, but I lost count of the bowls and pans she used, because I finally noticed how many she was going through. Yes, I know it's just a tv show, but that's not the same as saying it's just entertainment when people complain about misleading special effects in action films on the big screen. In cooking you're SUPPOSED to try this at home !! So cook with caution, is all I'm saying here. Oh, and let's bring back a unionized group of scullery maids of any gender, a lost and underappreciated labor force. Although these days they're probably only to be found in restaurant kitchens and might not be registered to vote. Well, they still get my vote.

Stamping it Out

One of my hobbies is calligraphy. It doesn't often get remembered when I have to fill out online profiles because "hobbies" aren't really chic any more. Maybe hobbies like stamp collecting,model building or train sets for grownups and quilting just aren't the sort of things that appeal to the hip slick and cool virtual communities. The hobby shop in cable tv's series Crash is about to go under unless they start stocking something called Transformers (which I always thought meant the heavy black box we had to plug into the electrical outlet in our London flat in order to use our American made record player, but I digress as usual.) Instead we are invited to list interests which I don't consider the same as hobbies. Calligraphy is not an interest, like theatre, or an activity like mountain biking, so I'm not sure where to put it other than here where I can explain things, sort of.
It started with my scribbling imaginary married names on my mother's blue enamel stovetop using dead matchsticks dipped in dirty stove grease. Carol Smith, Carol Jones. I graduated to stealing my father's music manuscript pens with sharp wide nibs dipped in glass bottles of black ink. I used these when writing love letters, some of which were instrumental in one mistake/marriage. So, for obvious reasons I am careful who I "use" on.
My favorite calligraphy teacher is a sister Scot who has plied me with tea and shortbread and earned my devotion because she is just so incredibly talented and modest and hella funny. That's a package I can't resist. She got me started on the idea of having envelopes, ink, lettering and stamp all coordinated, the bitch. It's completely inhibited me from just tossing off greeting cards in any old scrawl using whatever latest ghastly Forever stamp the USPO is foisting on us and not minding it. Now each card has to be a work of art. So in my usual lazy fashion, I send cards in batches. I buy 'em in batches either at Kinko's or Trader Joe's cos the prices and selection fit my tight little Scottish art budget. Then I write 'em in batches, just to random friends with soppy sentiments, but with oh such lovely lettering, I secretly hope they will save the envelope with the card and treasure it for the hours of loving labour lavished thereon.

The coordinating thing has hit a nasty snag though. When last I went to the post office in person, the only "art" stamp was the Homer Simpson collection. I know !! Well of course it might not matter to the PG&E or cable company, and if the card is a funny one, all the better. But recently I had to send a sympathy card and I just COULD NOT bring myself to stick Bart Simpson on the envelope. The least worst might have been Marge Simpson, but somehow that didn't seem right either. So, anyway, I'm just saying, when you go to the post office and there's a nice stamp you don't need today, stock up for special occasions cos I had to make a special trip to the post office for something appropriate, and well, it just pissed me off. Then I felt guilty because after all, my "annoying" trip to the post office for a pretty stamp for a sympathy card is no match for what the recipient of the card must be going through. Some days I just need a reminder to get a better grip.

Project Funway

Sometimes I just can't stand it. The esp thing between my daughter and me is downright weird.
I used to pick her up for church and discovered we had chosen almost identical outfits: if I wore shirt and skirt, so did she; if I wore a frock, so did she and so on. It's been years now since that happened, but it happened again today.
I had a yearning to give a final outing of the season to my favorite little jersey number, a Costco bargain, which doubles as either a loose summer dress or fall tunic with tights and a sweater underneath. The fabric's a little thin for the insulation I need on my bony old bod and the color scheme of black and white is completely wrong for my color type according to a Dress For Your Color Palette advice I was given years ago. (I'm supposed to be all springy, pastels in shades of violet and yellow - Easter eggs theme will give you the gist of it). But not being one for following advice to begin with, I just wear whatever I fancy and today it was zebra. Knock at my door this morning, and daughter standing there, ALSO IN ZEBRA !! Ta da ! We just love it when that happens !! .
So, big question: what does it all mean? Either we're shopping too close to one another, or that we're wired to respond the same way to the subtleties of mood and light, like gerbera daisies and chameleons. Possibly a bit of each or non of the above. And what does it really matter? Why is fashion such a big deal anyway? I've no real clue why there are times when I want to be seen and other times when I'd rather not and other times when I just don't give a shit. Today I think I just took pity on the poor little jersey number who wasn't too thrilled about impending hibernation.

Same daughter just showed up for our weekly mother-daughter dinner and she'd retired her zebra outfit for the day, now sporting snazzy new jeans FINALLY after two days, three stores and trying on at least 50 different pairs. Seriously. Almost as complicated as finding the correct pantyhose or bra, but worse because you have to undergo the tug and pull routine which always makes me hot and cranky and feel I have to fall into See's for a comforting sample, and if you're dealing with the dressing room limited garment policy of only 6 things at a time in your cubicle, you either have to have a shopping buddy to act as runner and hand things over the dressing room door, or get all dressed again to swap out the next 6 garments. And if you're wearing laceup tennies, add that to the list of complications. And I usually am, of course.
Today I was "being seen" so dressed accordingly. But tonight I'll be blending into the shadowy flicker of a candle lit setting and could wear a sack and still be ok. Even when I'm having one of those days when I don't want to be seen or don't give a shit what you think of me, it's the old baseball cap and sunglasses routine, me pretending to be Diane Keaton incognito, just picking up milk at the store, I've come to realize I'm still actually costuming. When I was in theatre and flouncing around as Hamlet's mum or Miss Prism, my favorite costumer's motto was Life's Too Short Not To Dress Up. I write today in loving memory of Denise, who left us her lace hanky collection.

Rock Me pt 2

I wrote a piece for today, November 10th but it's been posted as if I wrote it back on November 5 because that's when I actually started it. I'm at the mercy of my own ignorance about how to change the dates. So if you are determined to read today's new post, called Well Rock Me, please scroll down to Nov 5th. Thanks for your patience and support. CK

White Rabbit Day

I'm late late late. I have not posted my blog at the time I promised myself I would. I am the White Rabbit today, wearing a blue robe and slippers still dizzy from scrabbling through the warren of my life for today. But there's still hope for it is not yet dinner time, in fact it is still tea time and thereby hangs redemption.
I have stopped For Tea. The Holy Hour before the happy hour. Everything stops for it, so said someone. Tea I mean. Not just a beverage but an occasion, a punctuation on the clock. It is anywhere from 3-5pm and I am just safe by a good half hour. Saved by some inner clock that Brits carry around wherever they are even those of us hiding out in Northern California. It's an odd feeling, that teatime prompt. It's sort of like suddenly coming to on the bus as you commute to the office because your feet are sending silent signals that you have put on shoes that are not actually a matching pair. It's a subtle thing, but clear too. Mind you, it's a rare Brit that looks at the clock and says something like "oh shit I missed teatime". But most of us have this little something that goes off and when it does, we HAVE to fall into the nearest Peet's or PUT ON THE KETTLE. If you'll notice, whenever people drop in on one another, or there's a crisis in British tv soaps, someone always says "I'll just put the kettle on" and that's supposed to fix everything. As in "They've just bombed the house next door, I wonder if I could just pop in for a minute..." "Of course, come in. I'll just put the kettle on..." If your host is a smoker this is their big chance to light up as well. And I do think actually that these frequent pauses actually support mental health. Come in, have a cuppa and a moan and you'll feel better. I know I always did. Nowadays people don't pop in any more, but at 4pm thereabouts I start hearing the kettle prompt and off I go. My most frequent teatime visitor is Oprah Winfrey, though she doesn't actually know that. Before I go all Andy Rooney on everyone, I'm not going to ask why we don't do this or that any more, as in the good old days, but I will say that sharing a cup of tea is a sort of social sacrament that I can't NOT remember. My bladder is doing a fine job keeping up too. (And mindful of the Old Folks Home thing I mentioned a few blogs ago, I am Kegeling frequently by the way). And now I must say the warren is making a little more sense than 30 minutes ago.

I must go down to the sea today...

First line of a favorite poem, Dylan Thomas I think.
A seafaring nation, the British, although our family simply visited the windy shale beaches on the chilly southeast coast a couple of times. My grandmother claimed the cold water and wind "makes ye hardy". We wore thin cotton short summer frocks regardless of the weather. We dressed by the calendar.
But today the late fall Northern California afternoon sun is baking the dregs in my portable tea mug left in the car overnight and all I can think is that I must must must go down to the sea. I've never lived more than 30 miles from a coast in my life and when I catch a whiff of the glorious sea and lick the salt from my lips, eyes squinched against the wind, hair streaming behind me, treading the very edge of the land I am living in at that particular time, well, something grand seems to rise up in me. I look to the horizon and my inner cabin girl kicks in. I want to leap free of this earth, skim the foaming tips of waves... I am going... now. And did I mention, I hate to swim?

Roll It Over

I live in a small space with too much stuff. My son will attest to that, Mr. Minimalist Incarnate. This leads to creative uses for some of the stuff because there's not enough storage space for more than a mouse's valise (valises are grander and take up more room than a regular old suitcase fyi). We all know the storage box disguised by seasonal themed fabric to look like a nice little side table or whatever. But I've finally found the solution to the storage of my pesky foam back roller. It's about a yard long and 5 inches in diameter and just gets in my bloody way. It's white so I don't always notice it that much, but it's THERE like a nagging physical therapist's stand-in. Well to tell the truth, I just haven't been bothered to do my Shoulder and Back exercises. I know. It serves me right if my neck goes wonky and I can't turn to my blindspot while driving and sideswipe someone's brand new Prius and my insurance premiums to into orbit. It's a risk I'm willing to take, apparently. Anyhow, my back and neck behave very nicely thankyou if I just take them out for a nice little walkie every day. My virtual doggie walk you might say. So the roller is there and I'm not using it and it got stuck next to the armchair where I like to do my Morning Reading. I can't think why I the idea never occured to me before, but yesterday I was desperate for a perch for my mug of tea and by golly, there stood Mr. Trusty White Physical Therapist (retired). The height and width are just within comfy arm's reach. Two problems solved. Except we have to disguise the thing. So I've decided I could decorate it to resemble a Greek Column, or for Christmas, a candy cane (careful not to make it look like a barber pole though) and so on. I think I'm onto something here, so you'll excuse me if I don my thinking cap and see how to tie in Thanksgiving - yes I can see it now, vines with grapes would be a good start...

Remember remember the 5th of November

Today is Fireworks' Day in England. In the 50's London of my childhood I remember building an effigy of Guy Fawkes, who tried to overthrow Parliament some hundreds of years ago (history buffs please forgive the vagueness and google him yourselves), parking it on the front steps and asking for donations of pennies for my fireworks fund. "Penny for the old Guy ?" we'd weasel to our neighbours. Mine was crafted from an old pair of pyjamas stuffed with newspaper and a face drawn on a bit of old tea towel for the head and wasn't very handsome. I had no plans to burn it either, the way you were supposed to. Too big for our fireplace and no local bonfire that I knew about.
Sometimes kids and teens would randomly build a bonfire in the middle of the road and it would last for a couple of hours before the fire brigade (yes," brigade" my American friends, is what we call it, for soldiers of safety they are) hosed them away. One year my father agreed to take me on a tour of the neighbourhood and ogle whatever fires we could find. The night would be rife with smoke in what was usually a foggy and cold night anyhow and the primitive thrill of being out in the cold and dark, celebrating the death of some old geezer from history, whose effigy was often propped on a chair and stuck in the middle of the bonfires, appealed to my inner savage. Young boys were eager to toss lit "bangers" (not the sausage kind) at anyone's feet and watch out ! The sparks had a nasty sting. I came home that night with my black stockings riddled with so many tiny holes you'd have though I was wearing expensive crocheted lace jobs.
My mother wasn't very keen on firework night and sometimes tried to pretend she'd forgotten because after all she was a Scot and Guy Fawkes was not. I wasn't buying it though. How could she not see the kids and their stuffed Guys in pushchairs or broken down prams parked at tube stations and in shop doorways begging for pennies? I can imagine her puffing on her cigarette, head down, sprinting past the poor mites and being determinedly Scottish about it all.
She conceded to sparklers though and allowed these in the kitchen where we whirled them around in the dark oohing at the illusions of lighted circles hanging in the air, next to Mum's lighted cigarette,just sort of hanging there on its own.

Last time I visited London on November 5th, there were kids in Hallowe'en costumes and pumpkins carved into jack o' lanterns for God's sake watching parent-controlled orderly firework displays from a safe distance and bangers were banned. Not much thrill for the inner savage any more. The American Empire has its revenge in subtle ways, infiltrating the local customs, or so I thought. "Dinna be so daft, lassie. Hallowe'en started in Scotland", scorned my mother as she blew out smoke through her nostrils with contempt.

Oh yeah and did you also know that one of my ancestors invented the bicycle too? Look it up for yourself.

Well, Rock Me !

At the Burlington Grammar School (founded in 1699 for the Daughters of Impoverished Nobility, and a Church of England establishment) we started each day with Assembly in a large hall. The head mistress, a spinster like most of the teachers, came on stage in her black academic gown over a grey suit, white blouse buttoned at the throat, shorted permed hair the same colour as the suit, her legs a little heavy and not very shapely, though organ pipes come to mind. She would read something that was supposed to be inspirational either from the bible or Pilgrim's Progress while some of us dozed or fidgeted, sitting cross-legged on the polished parquet floor. Then we would all stand and blare the words to a standard hymn Rock of Ages, being one. Then announcements, then saying (not actually praying, at least I wasn't) the Our Father on our knees, then filing out of the hall and past the gym teacher who conducted a uniform check: demerits for wearing seamless stockings, because they made our legs look bare naked. Gasp !

In my second year at this illustrious establishment, an imported phenomenon exploded and spread like a virus. It was called American Rock Music and once you had been exposed to it you were permanently infected and became a teenager ! Bill Haley and his Comets' hit, Rock Around the Clock sent us reeling, followed by Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Buddy Holly whose twanging and howling had us twirling and jiving with each other in the playground, in the hallways and in the gym at break times. And the spinsters Did Not Approve of this any more than seamless stockings, which of course made it even more fun for us, especially those of us from the working class and definitely not Daughters of Impoverished Nobility.

The very few married teachers were often more lighthearted than the Spinsters, and one who was a math teacher allowed us to giggle and sing a few bars of Rock Around the Clock when we were struggling with a geometry lesson in which we counted and calculated degrees as one o'clock, two o'clock and so on. "I must say it IS rather catchy" she said, dusting chalk from her teacher's smock, and tapping her feet. Math and music are supposedly scientifically connected somehow, both involve counting at least. My love of rock music did nothing for my grades and I fell behind miserably. Having a great sense of rhythm and solving math problems never quite meshed in the form of equal talent for me. I got the drummer's end of the stick I'm afraid and college admissions don't give a toss about that.

Which makes me think in my usual non-linear fashion about what are called rocks in America and rocks in England. Completely different beast. A rock to Brits is large, something you'd move with a crane, otherwise it's just a stone. But then stones are also a measure of weight (14 pounds) and also the name for the thing found in the centre of plums and peaches. The pit is what is inside the stone. In America the stone is called a pit. Perhaps by now you might wonder if I'm stoned as I muddle my way through here. (Honestly I only inhaled a couple of times decades ago and threw up instantly, so no, not a fan actually). Anyway I was recently handed a little smooth black stone jobbie, which the American presenter called a rock, and which I was supposed to carry around for a while as a reminder of something. I hated to be disagreeable with this truly kind and lovely person by pointing out that one could never actually fit a proper rock into anything like a pocket. I've simply given up on the language barrier and just trudge along being as forgiving as I can.

But long, long ago, children, in a land far, far away and even before Elvis and Little Richard were born, good little girls and boys were given thick and long sticks of pink and white peppermint rock candy. You could only buy them at holiday resorts whose names would be printed in red through the entire centre and no matter how far down you sucked and licked, the name was always there. Brighton. Blackpool. Margate. But I was a naughty little girl who was never good at licking her stick of rock nice and slowly to make it last days and days as one of my coolly controlled (and no doubt true descendant of Impoverished Nobility) school friends was able to. She also managed to actually save her pocket money and I'm sure today she is a great success based on a strong ethic of personal discipline in all areas of her life. At best, my rock was mercilessly crunched to death in about ten minutes. Not surprisingly I had the most rotten teeth as a child and if I have to blame anything, I'll pin it happily on the rock.

Flora

Flora means many things to me. It was the name of one of my mother's best friends when I was a young teen in London.
Flora, like my mother, was a Scot and still spoke with her lilting burr. She lived in what we called a bed-sit, short for bed-sitting room. She shared a bathroom with others in the building, and had a small kitchen corner for simple cooking. She worked for an airline as a ticketing clerk and I thought her very glamorous. She was the first woman I knew who was glamorous and attractive though not in any way beautiful. In fact her skin had large pores and she nearly always had a pimple or two, one coming in and one fading. Her eyes popped a bit, she had an underbite and her nose was what is called aristocratic, in polite company, but we just called it big. Flora's hands were ivory smooth, white, long fingers and painted nails which were never chipped. Her hair, worn shoulder length in the style of Bette Davis was auburn and always shiny. She smelled of cigarettes, garlic and perfume and I loved it. Her voice was sweet and girlish and she sang soprano for amateur operatic productions. We went to see her in one where she played the ingenue and her leading man had halitosis, a trial for her, as one would imagine.

What I loved about visits with Flora were the conversations she had with my mother about her boyfriends. It was the only time I wasn't bored and wanting to be away from my mother and off doing my own teen thing. This was my introduction to Chick Chat, that exclusive female form of bonding, where we Get Down To It. I was being the fly on the wall but I was the fly like a sponge. I absorbed so much juicy stuff it's a miracle I didn't just plop off that wall and make a nasty stain on Flora's threadbare carpet.

She was the friend who ran behind my mother imploring her to calm down when I informed my mother I wanted to become Jewish. My mother, to give her her due (groan) had tried hard to be open about religion, and as a knuckle-rapped exCatholic turned Communist had decided against raising my sister and me with any religion. She told us to choose whatever we liked. And I chose Jewish. I was at the age when I wanted to be like my group in high school and my group happened to be Jewish. This did not sit well with my mother and shocked me. She grabbed my Girl Scout uniform brown leather belt and chased after me, flailing at my bare legs as I ran for cover. "Life is hard enough. If you're a Jew it's even harder"she screamed. I know she meant well, but it didn't feel that way at the time. What I remember most, apart from the facet that I probably needed to watch my mouth around my mother more, was that her glamorous airline ticket clerk friend, Flora, who wasn't even related to me, was trying to protect me. And that's worth a helluva lot, especially to a child about to be brutalized. (I blame the nuns by the way for the brutality thing, because I know my mother loved me...).

So this week, Flora means going to the local flower market early in the morning and gathering blooms and branches for some arrangements this weekend. The market is in a very seedy part of town and the hour is early enough that I can expect to pass a number of floppy unwashed people who haven't quite finished the night's escapades. Especially with mind-altering substances, whether in bottle or other form.

The word Flora, whether a woman's name or flower has become for me a symbol of (bear with me now) redemption, a force of balance amid the darker expressions of life. And for some reason today, despite the lovely sunshine striping my already yellow sofa, there is a tiny shadow. It might be the darker afternoons now the clocks have been turned back. Something creeps into the air around this time and I remember that a woman who didn't love me particularly, protected me, and that when I drive through the downtown dirty streets with a car loaded with flowers, I am lifted through what would otherwise be great sadness seeing so many apparently suffering souls. Here's to Flora, with great gratitude today.

Skin Like a Sausage

They say beauty is only skin deep. Bastards, whoever said that. These days my formerly translucent"lovely complexion" has worn itself down to the transparency of sausage skin, without the essential properties of tension, shall we say. Every single vein and its offspring, those tiny purple frizzy things like mooshed up cobwebs, miles of them, has decided its moment to shine has arrived. So there they are the little buggers, in full blue bloom. On my temples, throat, arms, legs, wrists, ankles. The tops of my feet and the backs of my hands are particularly resplendant. Worthy of a seasonal "color viewing" tour by visiting alien observers of human anatomy. Add to that the fact that I have the Celtic aversion to suntan, born actually of a genetic flaw, carrot top that I am, my legs now have the marbled attraction of sculpted Danish blue cheese. It's just not fair. Well, it only happens if you ARE fair, fair-skinned at least.
The skin on the back of my hands was the first to go, at least that I noticed because of being plainly visible on the steering wheel one day decades ago, riding with my former landlady, a Persian beauty and cosmetologist who actually shrieked when she saw them. "But darling, you HAVE to use your hand cream. Let me give you something special". She was always palming off something special and laughably expensive, made in exotic places like the Dead Sea. You'd think the word Dead would be offputting for skin products, but apparently not enough. Anyhow, I'd apply the latest lotions and potions that immediately washed off the next time I did dishes or cooked which I dutifully did, actually, three times a day. She admonished me to wear rubber gloves but they always got too sweaty inside or were leaky from knife nicks so I gave them up years ago.
Last night I was reading innocently in bed and moved my bare arm up and behind my head for a moment to adjust my pillow. That's when I noticed the lines. I blinked hard, thinking it couldn't be possible that skin on the inside of my forearms had turned into the flabby consistency of too-soft pastry dough and was draped neatly in delicate diagonal furrows. This might be viewed as artistically interesting if the fabric were georgette silk rather than human flesh. I experimented with the different angles of furrows, turning my hands and arms this and that way.
"What are you doing?" grunted Larry. "It's 11:30". "Sorry sweetie" I whispered and stuck my hand behind my head, guiltily. "Just finishing this chapter," and rustled the pages of my paperback to distract him.
I must say I'm disappointed. My mother's skin didn't turn on her like that. Mind you, I'm not sure one's eyes view mother and self through the same lens, so that's not a reliable observation perhaps.
So, ok, these days, the backs of my hands resemble relief maps of hilly regions snaked with rivers, blue rivers. The only consolation to me at this stage if that this proves something I've always suspected. I have done more cooking and dishes than my mother ever did ! And if it's also true that you are what you eat, then ok, I regret eating so many sausages(with skin) and blue cheese.