Unexpected Redemption

I'm a fairly adventurous eater, as has been established in these posts.  But I do have to "draw the line" when it comes to food in a few places.  If you can draw a line in multiple places and still retain the analogy.  Anyway, one of those places is green gelatin.  And banana-flavored popsicles.  I won't touch them.  I was traumatized as a child by green Jell-O and banana popsicles.  "Oh, do tell," I hear you say.  And thus the woeful tale . . .

I was barely seven years old and visiting my biological father two or more thousand miles away from my home over the summer.  I got a huge pain in my stomach while hanging out with another family at a pool.  It was really hot.  And it hurt a lot.  And then I was in a hospital on the nearby military base.  And then I was stranded there for a week recovering from an emergency appendectomy.

I was a skinny kid, which would come as a shock to anyone who has known me lately.  I ate like a fiend nearly anything put in front of me, other than an odd aversion to creamy things like salad dressing, sour cream, whipped cream, and mayonnaise.  This was in part because my father never liked salad dressing and I mistakenly put all of those foods into one category and marked a large red slash through them until I was in college, when I got over it.  I also wouldn't eat olives.  I never had them as a child because my mother didn't care for them so they were strange to me.  I'm cautious of them to this day.

So picture skinny little seven-year-old me in a hospital bed far from home and on a liquid diet.  Broth.  Ew.   Tea.  Ew.  And green Jell-O and banana-flavored popsicles.  For a week that was all I ate--green Jell-O and banana popsicles.  And when I escaped, I vowed never again would I have to eat either one. 

And I kept that vow.  With a religious fervor.  Until yesterday.

My youngest, the bonus baby, Peter Parker, offered me a taste of the green Jell-O she had made and I couldn't bring myself to disappoint her and not taste it.  So I did.  And it was delicious.  And then she showed me that she had substituted organic limeade for water in the recipe.  Brilliant.  I'm over the aversion. 

Don't try me on the banana popsicles.  That's just not going to happen.

I Love New York

Today I got to go to the top of a tall building in midtown Manhattan from which I could see my street corner across the river; eat a delightful lunch under an umbrella with Clark Kent (see previous post if you're confused by the reference); talk about the US Open (tennis, people--I don't understand golf) with the random guy from Arizona who is a security specialist sitting next to us on the sidewalk; never run out of things to talk about with Clark so that I always want to delay parting company even though I've known her all her life; listen to witty podcasts on my commute (on the way in it was Greg Proops doing "The Smartest Man" and on the way home it was this past weekend's episode of "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" with Henry Winkler as the guest for those of you who are curious as to what's on my iPod these days); form a bond with a new colleague (now making it maybe nine people out of the company of 250,000 where I currently work that I truly like and would hang out with by choice and invite over to my house and I have to say here that I'm not sure I'm ready to do the math on having been there for 14 months and being only on person #9 especially since I'm something of an extrovert and perpetually talk to strangers in elevators and on lines and in the grocery store and on public transit); make it home effortlessly, stopping for just a moment to look back at the building where I had been from my street corner (see above); wake up my middle child (let's just call him Bruce Wayne) who had fallen asleep already, to scratch his back and ask about his day and find out it had gone beautifully which is a lot to say for a high school junior; catch up on a few episodes of "The Daily Show" on the DVR with my husband (Sandman) for whom I still have the hots after a lot of years, although admittedly he does occasionally get on my nerves, but lately it's been a lot more hots than nerves; catch a few rounds of Snood; help my little tiny baby girl, Peter Parker, who just turned 14 last week to set up a blog of her own; pet my cat and both dogs and ignore the hamster; think about how to do more writing and less work; plan for tomorrow which might involve meeting 3 of the 9 of the 250,000 (see above--and are you not paying attention?) after work for some socializing mayhaps; all of which can be done within walking distance with a little help from a subway or a bus or a light rail at one of a hundred of my favorite places to go in town or ten thousand others I can try if I want to be adventurous.

Was that a run-on sentence?

Headache

I have a headache.  I have had a headache almost continuously for over a month now and I'm beginning to lose hope.  I've tried switching from contact lenses to glasses and from one strength of reading glasses to another, to say nothing of moving my computer screen both closer and further away, and to a different angle.  I've taken vitamins and blood pressure medicine; I've not taken vitamins and blood pressure medicine.  I've eaten carbs, sweets, salad, apples, grapes, pasta, grains, and cheese.  I've avoided dairy, raw vegetables, fruits, meat, and carbs.  I've hydrated, dehydrated, had caffeine, had no caffeine, had carbonated beverages, had no carbonated beverages, had vodka, had no vodka, had beer, had no beer.  I even had some Captain Morgan for the first time in case that might be the magic cure.  Tasty, but I digress.

Suddenly it occurs to me that cause and effect are not what they used to be.

I once learned a lesson about how limited human perspective is when it comes to cause and effect.  If there is a line of fifty people I can see from end to end and I shove the guy on one end and all the people fall over like dominoes, I can safely assume that the cause is me.  I can also assume that all fifty of those people are going to come after me and beat me up for being an ass. 

And the corollary is that if the line of fifty people winds around the hallway and into the room where I stand and I'm looking at only the last ten people in the line, and suddenly they all fall over like dominoes, I know that I don't know what caused the fall.  And I know it's definitely not my fault this time.  I'm just watching.

But the headache.  Is it sinuses?  Allergies?  An injury?  Stress?  A response to noise?  The arrival of the tenth anniversary of 9/11?  My youngest daughter's birthday?  A natural reaction to life?  A spiritual breakthrough?  A brain tumor?  TMJ?  Too much computer?  Too little breathing?  Urban life?  Paranoia?  Political ennui?  Hopelessness?  Not enough tennis to watch?  Anxiety about the NFL strike?  Inorganic matter in my drinking water?  Lack of time to read good books?  Separation from my favorite past-times?  Money concerns?  Career misery?  Fluorescent lighting?  Fear?  Exhaustion?  All of the above?  None of the above? 

Trying to figure out what causes stuff is what keeps me from sleeping.  Or is it?

Lost In . . . Where Am I?

I sit at the computer to do something.  I notice something else to do.  I do that.  I see something else I could do.  I do that.  And then another thing.  And yet something else.  And pretty soon it's an hour or three later and I'm no closer to doing whatever I was meaning to do than I was before I thought of it.  I'm lost in the computer.  Which is not a place.  The internet is not a place.  A web site is not a place.  A blog, whether it's my blog or someone else's blog, is not a place either.  And Snood is definitely not a place.

There was a time that I remember when I would go places.  Places with names.  Streets.  Numbers.  Highways.  Roads.  Walks.  Mountains.  Rivers.  Hills.  States.  Countries.  Museums.  Zoos.  Parks.  Tours.  And everything was different.  Even from one state to the next, things were different--brands and styles and what you call a carbonated beverage and what you call a sandwich on a long roll.  And Canada was foreign and Mexico was very foreign and London and Paris and Prague and Budapest were all really really foreign.

Once upon a time it was brave and challenging and adventurous to go places.  Now it's all the same.  Malls and standardization of signage and currency and everyone speaks English everywhere and somehow a Mercedes looks like a Toyota and it's all the same.  Somebody must have realized that people like comfort and familiarity and promptly took all the adventure out of life.  I even know how many calories something has before I eat it.  And all the ingredients.  In case of an allergy, I have to read all the labels.  And take medicine to prevent the allergy.  And take another medicine to lower blood pressure.  And another to reduce anxiety.  And there's something to stabilize your mood and something else to lift your mood.  And something to help you sleep and something to help you wake up.

What happened?  I don't want to leave my computer where I can safely wander from screen to screen and site to site and never hear music I don't choose for myself and never see a picture of anything unfamiliar or uncomfortable and never click on the link if I'm not sure I want to know what's happening.

The U.S. Open is going on, which is one of my favorite things . . . tennis . . . I love to watch tennis . . . I live about as close as is possible to the tournament without moving to Queens and I have been watching the Open all my life.  But I've only been there once.  In prior years I watched all the coverage I could on television.  ESPN2 or whatever.  This year, I'm watching coverage on a web site from my desk at work or my desk at home.  I'm watching scores mount by looking at a screen every now and again.  What is going on?  Perhaps I'm exercising my imagination . . . I read the score; I picture the point; I see the players; I know the strategies.  Maybe this is a higher level of tennis involvement.

This weekend I'm going to see a live college football game.  I can't remember the last time I did that.  I may have actually been in college at the time (Hint: Reagan was in his first term when I graduated).  I will let you know if it's in a place.

Morose and Taciturn

I'm getting morose and taciturn.  Look it up if you have to.  And if the phrase sounds familiar, and you don't know my family story, you can check the literary origin.  But trust me when I say, if ever I've said that I'm morose and taciturn, it was always a joke.

The joke started when my eldest--who is okay, by the way, that I mention her in my writing so long as I don't reveal her true identity, so we'll just call her Clark Kent for our purposes--anyway, Clark was a wee tot when her father began to say to her, when accused of being a silly dad, that he was not silly but "morose and taciturn."  I'm not sure where he picked up the phrase, although perhaps I'll reveal its roots in English literature later in this post, depending on my mood.

Well, back to Clark.  When she made her way, as we all do, to kindergarten, she participated in an exercise of writing her own stories.  She was too little to actually write an entire story by hand, but the parent volunteers would swing through and take dictation for the kids, who then would illustrate the stories.  At parent-teacher conferences, the story books would be trotted out (an apt phrase in this case as I may or may not later reveal) as evidence of the brilliance of the beloved child and the dedication of the clever instructor to guide them through this task at such an early age.  When it was our turn, the teacher looked at us suspiciously, and asked Clark's father to perform a dramatic reading of Clark's composition.  It went something like this: I like to play horsie with my Dad.  I ride on his back.  He says the horse's name is Old Glue.  I tell him he is silly, but he says he's morose and taciturn.  The illustrations were not spectacular.  Clark would not have a future in oil painting.  But the teacher was very unhappy that she had to look up words that her kindergarten pupil had written.  A new experience for her clearly.  Clark was nothing if not precocious.

But to my point . . . in my family, being morose and taciturn* was so far from any of our natures that it was always used as a joke.  So imagine my surprise when it was the phrase that popped into my head to describe how I'm doing when queried by an old friend.  I didn't say it out loud.  It's a little pretentious for common conversation (I used to be precocious when I was younger, but at my present age, the best I can hope for is pretentious).  I said something like, "okay" and then burst into tears, which may have given my old friend a bit of a shock.  I found myself being myself and then being overtaken by moroseness and taciturnity.  I may have just made up those words, but I have a masters degree that allows me some leeway in this regard.

Well, that's my point.  I am morose and taciturn.  Really and actually.  And I totally meant for this blogging thing to be comedic.  Sorry.

*Re-read Animal Farm for the quote regarding Benjamin's mood following the death of Boxer.  Re-read it anyway.  It's pretty amazing.  And it will only take you a few hours.  While you're at it, hit up To Kill a Mockingbird and Huck Finn.  A lot of the stuff they forced us to read when we were teenagers was actually good stuff.  Even The Outsiders is a pretty finely crafted tight little story, if a little simple in its approach to morality.

Judgment or Judgmental

So this morning I was making my way to the office from public transit and I was startled by a small very blond boy of about three years dashing past me on the sidewalk about twenty feet ahead, jumping in the air and simultaneously making a neat 180 degree turn, landing on the sidewalk with his arms and legs taking up as much space as possible, and shouting "Hah!" at me.  I smiled and walked around him a little sheepishly.  I didn't want to ruin his little play.  Seconds later a slightly older boy of maybe five years, also blond, but not quite as blond, made an identical move dashing past me and then blocking my way.  "Hah!"  I was totally charmed and turned to smile at whomever might be accompanying the boys and saw a handsome couple in their thirties with a very nice stroller, presumably for the younger, blonder boy.  A nice family out for a stroll.  Nothing alarming about that, is there?

The couple was chatting and the boys continued taking turns running out ahead and blocking my way.  And then I slowed a little and let the couple catch up.  I meant to say something about how adorable the boys were, but before I could express myself I realized they were speaking German, which doesn't make the boys any the less adorable, does it?

But it kind of did.  And I feel a little silly thinking about it, but what with all the talk of the end of the world and the wild ride on the stock markets and babies appearing and people dying who aren't old enough for such things and unemployment and my house kind of falling apart in little bits--the door knob, the cabinetry, the big air conditioner in the living room, the sink stopper in the bathroom--its all got me a little on edge.  More than a little.  Really tense.  Stressed.  In a knot.  Grinding my teeth even when I'm awake.

So suddenly I was thinking it was the 30's and I was a nice Jewish girl in Berlin or somewhere artsy like that and it was so okay to be anti-Semitic that even little boys could stop me on the street to keep me from getting where I wanted to go.  As I'm walking to work in 2011.

But here's the thing.  I feel like that myself these days.  I look at a member of another political party on television and I don't know whether I hate them more for their stupidity or their aggressiveness or their stubbornness or for ruining the economy or the environment or WHAT.  So what does that make me?  Am I passing judgment or being judgmental?

I remember in my younger days teaching rhetoric and composition at a respected university that part of the curriculum was to teach classical rhetoric and modern rhetoric.  The difference was that in the modern world, where it is so easy to destroy huge numbers of people at a swipe, we can no longer argue using old techniques of calling our opponent an idiot or a liar or saying any of those things that would, in Greek times, lead to war.  Now our goal is to remain at the table with our enemy.  To use language that is not inflammatory or accusatory.  To be gentle, civilized, fair-minded, collaborative, understanding, even complimentary.

Boy those Tea Party ladies sure do dress nicely.

I'm trying.

ACK

Sometimes everything looks sad to me.  I watch a favorite television sitcom and notice the obstacles to the happiness of my favorite characters.  I don't laugh at the jokes.  I wish my life were perfectly aligned to achieve the goals I have.  But it's not.  

And I'm not extravagant about my goals--I just want a few things in life: dinner out whenever I don't feel like cooking; nice ingredients to cook with when I do; movie and theatre and dance and music and sports tickets now and then; lots of books and enough bookshelves to keep them organized; a visit to Italy; a really nice pair of walking shoes; the ability to fix a hole in the wall of my house; friends I can lean on.  

I don't need a private jet at my disposal or a swimming pool in my backyard.  I don't need a butler or a collection of fur coats or a hundred pairs of expensive shoes.  I don't need to have a summer place in the mountains or a winter place on an island.  I don't need fame or recognition or uncountable gold pieces or a car collection.  

I would like to achieve only one thing in my life.  I would like to beat the snot out of my husband at Snood.  Is that so much to ask of the universe?  Huh?

What Do I Know?

So I'm middle-aged (whatever that means--in the middle--between birth and death?) and have noticed that there are a lot of us out there and that most of us are complaining fairly loudly and somewhat bitterly about the low-level brain damage that goes inevitably with aging.  I've heard quite a few comedians reference it lately and they get me right where I live.

It's the little things I forget.  Mostly short-term memory problems that crop up.  I walk into the bathroom and forget why I'm there.  I'm asked a question at work about something I was just talking about to my boss, and I forget what we decided.  I come up with an idea about a blog and by the time I log in I forget the idea.  I start a sentence and I forget the key word.  I describe a movie and I forget the name of the actor I want to talk about.  I go to the grocery store and forget the key ingredient I need.

I'm not forgetting my address or how to drive or anything truly significant.  Just little things.  A lot of little things.  And when I was younger, maybe until I turned forty, I had a mind like a steel trap.  I remembered everything I ever heard or read or saw.  No longer.

I certainly buy into the premise that I'm not doing a very good job exercising my brain to keep it in shape--I don't do crossword puzzles anymore, I rarely play trivia games now, and I will quickly give up and Google a question that I once might have struggled to answer on my own.  That probably doesn't help me any in the long run.  But the conversations are very entertaining . . . you know, the thing, at the place, with the guy, and the stuff . . .

But along with forgetting what everything is called, I know much more than I ever did before.  So when my friend at work says, "You know that painting in Washington . . . the really famous one . . . " I know exactly which painting he means . . . Ginevra de'Benci's portrait is the only Da Vinci that lives in the United States.  And he says, " . . . and do you know why the back of it is in a glass case?" and I reply instantly, "Of course, that's his emblematic portrait of Ginevra on the back of the poplar panel with a painting of a laurel branch . . . "

On the elevator at work, I overhear three young women laughing about this funny old-fashioned expression that their boss used and I know what it means and its literary origin.  I know all of the musical theatre references on the television shows my kids watch.  I know that William Frawley was funny and had impeccable timing because he was a vaudeville star before playing Lucy's neighbor.  I know what the connection is between Brecht and Shakespeare, to say nothing of why he went to East Germany when he did.  I know how to write a joke and why Vivaldi wrote so many fabulous pieces for bassoon.  I know how to cook and sew and do basic carpentry and plumbing and why the sky is blue and why sourdough is associated with San Francisco.

Now that I'm middle-aged, I know a lot of stuff about this guy and that guy and the place and the thing and the other thing.

Katz's Deli

I've been making a serious effort to do Weight Watchers for the last few weeks.  I have failed at doing Weight Watchers at least once a day.  Which amounts to succeeding maybe 90% of the time.  But I prefer to see myself as a consistent daily failure.  Success breeds contentment.  Contentment breeds laziness.  Laziness breeds boredom.  Boredom freaks me out.

By the way, I am a little plump; most of my clothes are a smidge slimmer than I or a tad blousey.  I think that's the word I'm looking for.  Maybe "tent-like" would be more accurate.  So either I'm hiding in a big bag of clothes or I'm bursting from my clothing like I'm a well-stuffed sausage casing.  I would rather fit in my clothes.  Hence Weight Watchers.

But I really truly love food.  I love to cook.  I love to eat.  I love restaurants.  I love friends and a meal.  I love food blogs and food shows and food books and feeding people and food.  Really I do.  I have very good taste--I can taste things really well--I can tell what I'm tasting with great sophistication.  And I live about ten feet outside of Manhattan.  A few "blocks" to be exact, west of midtown Manhattan.  Across the Hudson.  So one of the great food meccas in the universe is within sight of my home, and my work, and my commute, and it's really hard to resist when I am meeting someone in a particular neighborhood in "The City" not to arrive a little early and meet them for a meal at my favorite place or their favorite place or the place that someone told us was their favorite place of a particular type.  I'm pretty discerning about restaurants in Manhattan.  I have a favorite burger joint, a favorite Chinese place, a favorite Tex-Mex place, a favorite authentic Mexican place, a favorite Ethiopian place, a favorite pub, a favorite Greek place, a favorite Greek pastry place, a favorite little Italian place, a favorite big Italian place, a favorite frozen yogurt place, a favorite Druze place, a favorite Indian vegetarian place, a favorite kosher Chinese place, a favorite ice cream place, a favorite Chinese ice cream place, a favorite chocolate place, a favorite Thai place, a favorite Brazilian rice and beans kind of place, a favorite Brazilian meat kind of place, a favorite coffee place, a favorite diner, a favorite Japanese place when I'm in a hurry, a favorite Japanese place when I have time, a favorite Japanese place when I'm with other foodies, a favorite Japanese place when I'm with tourists, a favorite place to take kids, a favorite place to get a smoothie, a favorite Cuban place, a favorite Spanish place, a favorite French place that isn't there anymore which is okay because I can't afford it anymore, and . . . a favorite Jewish deli.  Katz's.  I know Carnegie, Stage Door, whatever whatever.  I'm a Katz's girl.

So whenever I'm down on the Lower East Side like last night, for a music thing, like last night, or for any reason, I have to eat at Katz's.  I have to have corned beef.  I don't need it to be extra lean because it's already extra lean.  I have to have stuffed derma, or kishka, as some folks call it, with the gravy on the side. And if there are friends to share, I might go with an appetizer portion of chopped liver, always served with a side of divine rye bread.  And sometimes there's a knish.  ROUND.  Those square things are fakes.  There is the perfect half-sour pickle or three to start off (everyone who is my friend is allowed to be my friend because they don't like half-sours, leaving more for me); the pastrami is also divine, as is the salami; the mustard, perfectly flavored and textured, even though I generally don't like mustard all that much on a sandwich but here, at Katz's, we go with the old-school approach.

Here is an occasion when I will trade my beloved nectar of the gods, DDP, for a Dr. Brown's Diet Cream soda.  Or if I'm feeling really frisky, a chocolate egg cream.  Don't let anybody tell you that chocolate soda doesn't go with corned beef.  It's perfect.

So the pound or two up on my WW week was utterly totally one hundred per cent worthwhile.  When I eat at Katz's, I go for it.  I don't go every day or even every month.  But when I go, I go all the way.

Children are Everywhere

I've figured something out.  Actually, to be honest, I've just articulated in my mind something that I've probably always known.  Here it is: most everyone is stuck at some point in their lives prior to now.  We have all been traumatized to one extent or another by some event in our past which has anchored us in an endless loop of recreating our traumatic moment until it magically gets better.  Kind of a personal "Groundhog's Day" on some unconscious level, of the thing that didn't work and we can't get over.

For some people there's an awful touchstone of some sort in our past--potty training that didn't go so well, a birthday party where a humiliating moment took place, someone forgot to lock a door and we saw something we shouldn't have, or an admired adult said or did something that we later discovered was false or misleading or just a lie.

What's so funny about that?

It's really funny when you think about people in positions of power--wealth, fame, authority--who are actually just acting out over and over again, the moment when they were a disappointment to their parent, wanting to prove themselves.  I didn't fit in so I always want to fit in so I always gather those around me who make me feel like I fit in.  I was left alone so I always shape my world to maximize company on a constant basis--never sleep alone, never work alone, develop skills that bring people to me.  I was touched inappropriately as a child so I keep a distance from anyone who might do the same.  I  was laughed at as a child so I laugh at myself before anyone else has a chance to humiliate me.  My father only told me he loved me when something terrible had happened in the family so I am constantly searching for trauma that will remind him of my importance.

So it's an exercise . . . instead of picturing your audience in their underwear so they don't intimidate you, picture the childhood trauma that inspires your colleague to be such a douche.  Imagine the fear of clowns provoked by a bad circus experience that causes your boss to be obsessed with being prepared--he just can't stand surprises.  Imagine the way in which you and I inflict trauma on our children by honestly showing our frustration or delight or surprise or joy in their company.

"Mom.  Please don't ever wear that hat in public again."  How my oldest was traumatized by my utter lack of fashion sensibility as I wore the HeadSox during the snowstorm.  All I did was walk her to the school bus.  How will she be forced to forever compensate in her life for that humiliation?  Perhaps she will be driven to uncompromising success in the hope that she will never have to undergo that level of misery again.  Actually, as trauma goes, I'd like to wish her that one.

DDP Goes with Everything

If you know me, you know that I have a drinking problem.  If you just pictured the guy from "Airplane" throwing a glass of water in his own face, stick with me.  You're my kind of . . . whatever you are.

I'm addicted to Diet Dr. Pepper.  No, I don't mind the artificial sweetener, in fact, at this point in my life, I think it keeps my blood properly thinned.  I prefer DDP on the rocks, and please don't sully it with any wedges of lemon or twists of lime.  I'll drink it from a can or a bottle or a glass or, in a perfect world, in a mason jar, so the top closes in a bit on the glass and fewer bubbles escape.  In a pinch, I'll drink it warm and/or flat.  If I must, I'll drink Diet Coke or Coke Zero, and if I'm in the desert and nothing else is available, okay, Diet Pepsi.  I used to drink DDP all hours of day or night and wonder why I had insomnia.  Now I quit by four o'clock if I'm getting up the next morning.  In the evenings I'm usually dehydrated.  Old age is not for the faint of heart.

I've been thinking about blogging since the seventies, when our only options were those puke green steno pads and those little pale "blue books" that seemed omnipresent to me, perhaps because I grew up  on college campuses.  The technology having improved to my liking, here we are.

Everyone who knows me admits, when pressed, that I talk too much.  Most wouldn't say it's a fault, but perhaps a "feature."  I'm hoping by purging some of my thoughts into blogging, I'll become more tolerable to my friends, if I have any remaining, and especially to my husband, who is quick to remind me I'm rambling by rolling his eyes or playing with his smart phone or falling into a deep and snoring sleep.

About the blog's title, I recall Julia Child, when asked what wine goes with a particular dish, replied incredulously, "whatever kind you like."  I'm not really concerned if I've attributed the quote properly or even quoted it properly.  I like it this way.  I have to say, my preference is to drink Diet Dr. Pepper with everything.  On some occasions I will certainly try to blend in with my surroundings politely and have a cocktail or a glass of wine or a glass of port with dinner.  Now and again, ice water is fine.  But if you ask me privately, I would rather be having a Diet Dr. Pepper, poured gently on the rocks.  It goes with everything.

Today, one of my colleagues said I should start a blog, and this time, I'm listening.