About a question...

"What? No cabbage? I guess I'll just suffer."

I work in a senior community. I love it, I truly do, and the biggest reason is the residents. That's not to say that it's always fun. Our community has resident councils that are supposed to serve as a vehicle to give the residents a voice and a way of communicating and working with the staff. Note the term "supposed to." The monthly meetings often turn into a forum for complaints. Not that all of these are unwarranted, but especially with a certain type of individual who always looks for something to be wrong, these meetings can quickly turn into a laundry list of everything that makes these people unhappy. And unfortunately, with their generation, it's deemed rude or bad manners to express yourself and do things like send your meal back if it's unsatisfactory. As much as we encourage people to immediately contact their server and send their meal back for a replacement if their food is cold or the wrong item or not to their liking, few often do.

They prefer, instead, to save up their complaints for the monthly council meetings. Now, part of this is attention-getting tactics, no doubt. Why quietly mention your displeasure to your server when you could get up in front of a crowd and talk about what you don't like? WITH A MICROPHONE!! We had one woman who actually had a list, written on the back of an envelope, of everything that had displeased her that month, including other residents. She did not bring any of these issues to staff's attention prior to this, so we weren't able to address or take action on any of these items until they were already well into the past. Fortunately, after we pointed out to her that the problems could be solved much faster if she'd let us know about them as they happened, she has become much better about not stockpiling her grievances.

"I disapprove of you. In general."

Now, please don't think that our dining or food in this community is terrible. It's very good, actually. It's just that food is an easy thing to complain about. The vast majority (about 75%) of our population is women, and in between cooking for their families and/or careers in restaurants, they all have some experience with food, as opposed to maintaining fire doors or air conditioning.

Anyway, you can see that these monthly council meetings are a LAFF RIOT and we all look forward to them. Not. Some days, with the hearing difficulties, participants falling asleep, and the slight decline in mental faculties, the meetings can take on an Abbott and Costello-type comedy routine flavor. Take, for example, this exchange from a council meeting a few months ago:

Nurse: So if anyone has any other questions about medication disposal, please let me know. Okay?
sees resident in front row with hand in air

Nurse: Yes, Rose*? You have a question?

Rose: Spanish rice should have green peppers.

Nurse: Okay, Rose, that is a question for dining, and Boris will be taking any food or dining questions next after I'm finished. So, you may also have noticed that we have a new policy regarding visitors signing in. Please make sure anyone who visits you signs in on the guestbook at the table near the RA office. Any questions?
sees resident with her hand in air

Nurse: Yes, Rose?

Rose: Rolls should be soft, not hard.

"Hey, Lou, orange ya glad I didn't say banana?"

Nurse: Okay, Rose, let's save our food concerns for dining, okay? Now, one last thing. We've been noticing people out for walks without the proper clothing. Even though it's spring, it's still chilly, so be sure to wear your jacket if you're going out for a stroll. Okay, does anyone have anything else for me?
sighs

Nurse: Yes, Rose?

Rose: Potato soup should be creamy, not watery.

Nurse: (in defeat) Boris, why don't you go now and talk about dining?

Boris gets up and announces the new menus, talks about the issue with the AC in the dining room, asks for any questions. Rose keeps her hand down.

*names have been changed to protect the inattentive

In which I have the bravest aunt in the world

My cousin John passed away a week ago.  It was sudden, expected someday but someday was too soon. He was too young; he'd fought diabetes since he was a small child. The news arrived in the way you always worry about; I woke up on a Sunday morning thinking I’d heard my phone buzz. There was a missed call and voice mail from my dad and a text from my mom that just said, “Call me.”

I was just in shock afterwards. I did what I always do when I’m upset- I cleaned. I dusted the kitchen shelves, I washed windows. I guess that’s why I hate housekeeping; it’s hard to enjoy something that you revert to when you’re feeling bad. I took a bath and cried. Crying comes easier in the tub; I wonder if it’s the presence of other water that makes tears finally come. My sister was out of town but came straight over to my house when she returned. We watched tv to distract ourselves: a Titanic documentary, the movie about the guy who muppets Elmo, Wet Hot American Summer. We tried to drink coffee but it didn’t taste right. We didn’t want a beer. She went back to her apartment and came back with a change of clothes to spend the night. I made salmon and spinach for dinner. We watched more tv. I didn’t know what to think or how I should feel, except that I was sad.

John’s death was the first for me of someone close to my age that I had known my whole life. I’d known other people my age who had passed away, including a former classmate earlier this year, but none of them had been people I’d been close to. I’d known John since I was a baby. All my cousins are unusually close. They were always more like big brothers and sisters to me; granted, brothers and sisters you didn’t see everyday.

John and I were the history buffs in the family. When he lived in Ithaca for a short time, we went out to dinner then back to my apartment for beers. We talked about all the sights he’d seen when he’d been to Ireland back in the 80s and all the things my husband and I had seen when we’d gone just a few years ago. We talked about all the things we’d wanted to see that we didn’t, and how much of the family history we didn’t know and wished we did.

It was hard seeing my cousins at the funeral home Friday night. There was the usual elation we get from seeing each other, tampered by the reason we were gathered together this time. John had a lot of friends; Brett and I drove over after work and by the time we arrived at the funeral home, the line was almost out the door. After being greeted by my cousin Matt’s daughter Kieran (who had touchingly waited by the door to watch for us, because, as she said, “No one should have to walk into a funeral home alone”) we stepped out of the line and went to the main room to say hello to my father, brother and sister and the assorted relatives sitting on chairs in the middle of the room. Then we got back in line. I’m not a fan of open caskets; the body never looks like the person to me, and I’d rather remember them the way I’d seen them in life before, not laid out, dressed up and perfect. They always seem to me like a mannequin made in the image of the deceased whose purpose is to stand in for the person who’s gone. My aunt Mary Margaret, John’s mother, was first in line. I hugged her and told her I had something I’d like to put in the casket with John: a piece of stone I took out of the lake in the Killarney National Forest from our Ireland trip. She nodded, smiled, and said that Andrew, John’s brother, had done the same thing. I held out the piece of stone to her and asked her if there was somewhere that she’d like for it to go. She suggested I put it in myself, and I think she saw something in my eyes that made her walk with me over to the casket, her arm around me while she suggested I tuck the stone in next to his arm.

That moment, with my aunt gently guiding me in making my little tribute to my cousin, reminded me of my aunt’s great strength, and the way that she has always looked out for me. I felt like a little girl at that moment and it took me back to another time when she had taken a bewildered and upset little girl by the hand.

We had a house fire when I was ten, the particulars of which I won’t get into here, but it happened in the middle of the night while my parents were out and we had a babysitter, and involved me having to get past the stultifying fear of fire that I had harbored obsessively for at least a year prior so that I could wrestle my siblings out of their warm beds and outside to safety in the record-cold February weather.

I must confess, what I’m about to describe aren’t first-hand memories. I blocked out everything after we arrived at our babysitter’s house and were reunited with my parents. My aunt Mary Margaret and my grandmother drove hours in the middle of the night to come get my brother and sister and me and bring us to my grandmother’s house. (My mother and father were staying with friends.) Apparently when we arrived at my grandmother’s, as the sun was still rising in the sky, we were helped out of the car and tucked into beds… and all three of us kids began throwing up. Whether it was from smoke inhalation or the cumulative effects of so much trauma, all three of us were vomiting and crying like a bunch of baby chicks with a nasty stomach virus. 

After we were cleaned up, put back to bed, and had slept for awhile, my aunt decided we needed to go to the Laundromat. We had a sad little pile of clothes my mom had managed to snatch from the remains of our house so we’d have something to wear (we left with only the pajamas on our backs, not even slippers on our feet) and they stunk horribly of smoke, filthy with soot. Mary Margaret decided the best shot we had at making these garments wearable was to put them through the industrial-strength machines in the Laundromat the next town over. She wanted me to come with her. I refused.

This wasn’t a petulant, truculent refusal, both she and my grandmother could see that. And I was normally a cooperative kid, especially when I was being asked to help. But I said no. I refused to go. My grandmother exchanged a glance with my aunt, leaned over, looked me in the eye and said, “I’ll watch them for you.” She knew I had, albeit wordlessly, taken upon myself the complete and total responsibility for five year old Katie and eight year old Kevin. I had been the one that night to get them out of their beds and out of the house. I believed that it now fell to me to protect them. They were my obligation. This was my job from now on.

She almost had me, but I still wavered. “And I won’t turn on the stove while you’re gone.” My grandmother knew I had always been wary of her gas stove with that visible blue flame, and that now, I was terrified of anything that had the remotest chance of starting a fire. She was the only one who was not surprised when later I began my habit of creeping around the house after everyone had gone to bed and unplugging everything in sight, as well as touching electrical cords, things near heating ducts, and patting down the walls in general to see if they had grown dangerously warm.

With that reassurance, I left for the Laundromat with Aunt Mary Margaret and our pathetic pile of smoke stained clothes. I don’t remember being there; I don’t remember anything of our conversation. But apparently I told her everything that had happened that night, the all of it, as they say. My anger, my fear, the sadness that I couldn’t yet completely articulate that my childhood was now over. We returned to my grandmother’s house, only mildly successful in our mission to resurrect the clothes. I overheard my aunt on the phone with my mother, telling her, “We talked. She’s going to be fine.”

It was that memory of my aunt shepherding me and shielding me that I was reminded of as she helped me put my piece of stone in the casket with her son, as she jokingly told the funeral director who was standing behind us to look away while we tucked my offering in amongst the silk. She’s one of the strongest people I know, one of the people I’ve always felt safest around, and I wish I could give some of that back to her now. 

In which I tell a story

So there's this fabulous new restaurant & lounge in town called Lot 10. My friend Dan is the chef. If you're not squeamish, you should check out his surreal behind-the-scenes-sort-of blog at Eat Me. The Lounge has been doing a really awesome series called Trampoline with our independent bookstore co-op, Buffalo Street Books. It's a storytelling competition. The first one was last month, and I went and it seemed like a lot of fun. The theme of that one was "In the Beginning." I watched my friends Eric & Dan and my husband get up and tell five minute stories, pretty much off the top of their heads. The theme for April's Trampoline was "The Ex Files." And I thought of a story the minute I heard it. So I thought, I should try this. I'll write my story, practice it (you can't use notes) and get up and tell it. Just to say that I did. I think it's good to challenge yourself every once in awhile, to do something that you normally wouldn't do, or that others wouldn't expect of you.

Now, I'm not a fan of attention- I far prefer to be behind the scenes pulling strings- but I'm no stranger to public speaking. I have to do tours of our facility for my job, as well as getting up and speaking to the resident councils every month. (Trust me, there is no tougher audience than a crowd full of senior citizens who really just want to complain about food.) I've had to do presentations and talks for almost every job I've ever had. It's kind of ironic that someone who's such an introvert has made a career in public relations.  We also had a public speaking/ speech writing component to the English program in my high school, where every year from 8th grade on, you had to write and give a speech. They would pick people from each grade (or class? I don't remember all the details) and have a school-wide competition in the auditorium, then the winners from certain categories would compete regionally. I went to the regionals once. It may have been more than once and I've just blocked it out.

Just because you're familiar with public speaking and not necessarily afraid, it doesn't mean your nerves don't try to get the best of you. And in spite of the fact that I was pleased with my story and well-prepared, once we got to Lot 10 and I threw my figurative hat in the ring, I had to work very hard to keep from becoming a nervous wreck. Several Jameson's & ginger ales helped. What did not help? BEING THE VERY LAST ONE TO GO.

Felt like it looked like this. Could've been the whiskey.

I tried to focus on what exactly I was nervous about- and I realized I was most afraid that I would forget what I was going to say. By the time it was FINALLY my turn, I had convinced myself that once I got into the flow of it, each part would come to me just fine. I had some nervous laughter and for a bit at the very beginning, I panicked that I wasn't going to remember it all. But once I slowed myself down, it all was there.

To be perfectly honest, I didn't give a flying fig how anyone else thought I did. I mean, it was nice to get compliments from my friends in the audience and good marks from the judges (one of which was my husband, who gave me a 9 out of 10 because he didn't want to show favoritism but the crowd convinced him to change his score. So he made it 19 out of 10.) but it didn't matter to me. If I got through it without forgetting any of it, didn't botch up my delivery, and I did pretty much what I set out to do, I was happy. I honestly can't remember the audience's reaction at all. It's funny- it was never the crowd that made me nervous. It was my own memory failing me that gave me the quakes.

Anyway, so next month's theme is "The Greatest." If you're in the Ithaca area, I highly recommend you come out for it. It's Thursday, May 3rd at 7pm. I don't think I'll be doing a story for this one. It will be nice just to sit back and enjoy instead.

For those of you who don't feel you've already wasted enough time reading this entry, I'm putting the text of my story below. Please keep in mind that there is a minor amount of poetic license involved, either for effect or to supplement holes in my memory.

So, my dad was a Navy SEAL.

For the most part, it was pretty cool. But there was one area where it honestly, sincerely, genuinely sucked to be the daughter of a Navy SEAL- and that was dating. Now, I did not head into the courtship arena particularly well equipped to begin with. I possessed plenty of other handicaps besides having a trained assassin for a parent. When I entered seventh grade, I was four feet six inches tall, and I weighed 66 pounds, about three-quarters of which was hair and teeth. But eventually I got a little bit taller, got contact lenses (so I could ditch those Kathy-with-a-k dewdrop glasses with the pink frames- you know the ones), and I finally got my braces off, which meant I didn’t have to wear headgear anymore, which was a very good thing because I’d had the unfortunate habit of wearing my Walkman along with my headgear, so I spent most of junior high tooling around looking like a switchboard operator from the 60s.

But with these crucial changes made, by high school, boys started talking to me. And not just to ask for help with their homework. And after numerous conversations with one in particular, we made plans to watch a movie over at my house one night. So I made popcorn, he brought over some shitty action movie on VHS, and I went down to the fridge in the basement to get us a couple of Cokes. When I returned to the rec room, he was staring at this picture on the wall.

 “Hey, who’s this?” he asked me.

Okay, I made up the machete part.

“That? Oh, that’s my dad.”

“That’s your dad? THAT'S your dad? The guy with the two bandoliers of ammo strapped across his chest and the machete in his teeth? That’s your father?”

“Yeah. He was a Navy SEAL. That’s from when he was in combat in Vietnam.”

Hey, Che!

Now, even though we lived in a very small town, my dad’s service wasn’t really common knowledge at that point. For one thing, my dad didn’t like to brag about it; SEALS are trained to keep a low profile, and like most people who’d served in Vietnam, he was apprehensive about how some people might respond.  And quite frankly, you never would’ve guessed by looking at him. He may have been the spitting image of Che Guevara in his SEAL days, but by the 90s he was looking like a cross between Flip Wilson and Billy Joel.

So, as I confirmed the identity of the man in the picture for my friend, you could see the color drain out of his face, and he started stammering.

“Oh my god! I am such an idiot! I can’t believe I forgot! Listen, I am so sorry, but I just remembered this assignment that I have to do for tomorrow. Wow, I can’t believe I forgot all about it till now.”

“For what class?”

“Uh, English.”

“I’m in your English class. We didn’t have an assignment.”

“Uh, it’s extra credit. Special credit. Extra special credit. I need it to graduate on time. Listen, I’m really sorry. Hey, see you around!”

Thanks, Dad.

I eventually found other less easily intimidated boys and even married one with a minimal amount of bloodshed. But my dad, realizing he had a powerful tool at his disposal, had upped the ante. Framed photos of him in Vietnam started multiplying on the walls of the rec room. Somehow, inexplicably, when I was had a boy over, the photo album from his SEAL training in Coronado would appear on the coffee table in front of the couch, perhaps opened to shots of Hell Week training with green-suited men struggling to run in the surf with a telephone pole hoisted on their shoulders, or maybe my dad’s personal favorite, the one of him posing with the shark he had caught with only his hands and a k-bar knife. But I could tell I had a keeper when I pulled him aside early on & said, “Hey, just so you know, my dad was a Navy SEAL,” and he responded with, “Really? Cool! Does he have any pictures I could see?”

Of hot dogs and hissing

We went to visit our friends Anne & Cristi this weekend. We got to know them when we lived in Bowling Green, Ohio while Brett was getting his graduate degree. They lived briefly in Ithaca before moving back to Ohio, where Anne is originally from. It was a hella long car ride- 8 hours- and even though it was almost 50 degrees when we left Ithaca with nary a snowflake on the ground, by the time we hit Western New York, we saw this:

We saw lots of interesting sights on our way into Columbus, like this charter school in an old shopping plaza called "God'z Kidz." Not kidding.

Anne & Cristi took us out to a place called Dirty Franks where we proceeded to stuff ourselves. I got the Classy Lady- a hot dog covered in cheese sauce and crumbled potato chips, and the Octodog- a cup of macaroni and cheese with a split hot dog served over it. It was a lot tastier- and less creepy- than this picture looks.

Anne & Cristi's cat is the most adorable thing in the world- big yearning eyes, cute little face- but she hisses at you like a roomful of first graders missing their front teeth. I don't have a picture of her but I wanted to explain the other part of the title of this post.

As we were in town to celebrate Anne's birthday, we took her suggestion and had lunch the next day at The Tip Top, where Anne & I had the pot roast sandwich. I am not kidding you when I say this sandwich is magical. Did I mention it was served on a PRETZEL ROLL?? Here's Cristi & Anne looking all cute 'n shit.

Naturally, the Uggly Wugglies came along and were sufficiently frightened of Anne's Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man hat.

We went to the Columbus Museum of Art for the Caravaggio exhibit. Knowing how I love street art and smart-ass graffiti, I was in heaven when I discovered interactive parts of the exhibit. One was called "Continue the Conversation" and had you write on little post-its shaped like speech balloons what you thought the people in this Caravaggio painting were saying. I just have to go on the record- I love a wise guy, especially one with an eight year old's sense of humor.

Another interactive exhibit involved a Caravaggio painting of Cupid. Someone wrote on a post-it questioning if Cupid was represented by a small child, how did he get so muscular and buff in the painting? This two word answer was my favorite thing about the entire day:

In an exhibit about the American West, the question was posed, "What's your favorite thing about the Wild West?"

The lower level had exhibits on food. I truly don't remember the context of this one, just that I liked this person's imagination:

"What's your favorite thing to eat?"

And this one... this one. It was an activity to design a kind of Rube Goldberg-type contraption to move this fellow's pants from his person across the room. Someone protested:

Then Anne took us to Thurber House, where she works. Upstairs, in what was James Thurber's childhood bedroom, all the visiting writers sign the wall in the closet. Looking at names like Stewart O'Nan, Alan Zweibel, and Bailey White scrawled in the wall in Sharpie is humbling and inspiring.

HIS OLD TYPEWRITER. GASP.

Brett and I (and the Uggly Wugglies) posed for pictures in the Thurber Dog Statue garden outside the house.

The Unicorn in the Garden is a humorous fable written by Thurber, and there's a statue of a unicorn in the yard across the way from the house. Depending on the angle, she's a saucy little thing.

That's Thurber House in the background.

 And, of course, what would a birthday be without twenty pounds of ice cream cake?

I miss them already.

And the cake.

Burn this, mofos

Okay, I've been sorely lax in blogging lately. I'm trying to be responsible in implementing my New Year's resolutions and the first has been to write every day. I signed up for a challenge to write 750 words a day in January, and so far I've held to my streak. (The site is 750words.com. There are lots of badges you can earn and stats which I love.) It's mostly drivel I'm doing- just 750 words that come out of my head, sometimes with the help of a writing prompt. But the point is to develop a daily writing habit and bulk up that muscle, so to speak. I have to add working out next week, glorioso mergatroid, it won't be pretty.

Anyway, in the meantime, I leave you with my new obsession (besides Pinterest): Suri's Burn Book. It's a Tumblr someone created with Suri Cruise's imagined snarky comments about other celebrity children's fashion. Catty, surprisingly touching, and always sharp. I highly recommend it, if only for Suri's battle with Harper Beckham and her reserved yet genuine respect and admiration for Louis Bullock.

http://surisburnbook.tumblr.com/

EXAMPLE:

Britney Spears posted this photo of her son on her blog, saying, 

“Jayden is having some hair raising fun on the trampoline!”

Two things I hate: static and redneck backyards.

Of birthdays, baba ghanouj, and bibs

So yesterday was my birthday, but technically I celebrated it on Thursday. I knew we would be traveling (and packing) the day of my birthday to go to my parents' for the holiday and I wanted the entire day to myself.

Ornament= shitty gift

My birthday has traditionally been kind of sucky- two days before Christmas, everybody's busy with their holiday preparations and people try to cheat and give you Christmas-themed gifts. (Let me state for the record that the worst present you can give a small child is an ornament that goes straight to the tree and gets put away for the year once the tree comes down.)

I've only ever had one birthday party, the year I turned seven, and even that was fraught with mishaps. The week before my birthday, I'd been playing out in the back yard, climbed up a tree after my hat that had been tossed up in the branches, and fell. A branch tore a jagged cut in my upper thigh. Never tore my corduroy pants and never bled. I only knew that my leg hurt and when I went inside and went to go to the bathroom, I saw the gaping wound in my leg and started screaming. So I went to the ER and got a bunch of invisible stitches, as well as seven that would need to be removed. So, get this: 7 days before my 7th birthday, on a day where the temperature was about 7 degrees, I cut my leg, needed 7 stitches, which were removed 7 days later and left me with a scar 7cm long. Spooky!

Anyway, so that particular year, when I finally had a birthday party, I was laid up with stitches in my leg and couldn't really move around much. So much for fun.

So since then, I take it upon myself to have an adventure day for my birthday. In years past, I've gone for massages, pedicures, outings to places only I'd like to visit to take photos. It's always a solo excursion- I like to have the time to myself and more often than not, no one is free to go with me anyway. My favorite book when I was real little was by the author of Good Night, Moon called Mister Dog which was about a dog named Crispin's Crispian who belonged to himself. It pretty much explains just about everything about me, especially my adventure days.

This year, I went to the Division of Rare Books & Manuscripts at Cornell University and faked a research project to look at E.B. White's first draft of Charlotte's Web, one of my very favorite books.

1st page of 1st draft. Note picture of Charlotte in corner.

I spent about two hours with the manuscript, which was just awe-inspiring- written on plain unlined yellow paper in pencil, with all his scratchings and notes. My favorite was where he drew a bracket around a small paragraph and in the margins wrote, "Fix. Make better."

After I was done there, I went to Collegetown for a much-needed hair cut, then I took myself out to lunch at a middle eastern/mediterranean restaurant called Aladdin's. (Unfortunately, they were out of tabbouleh, which is my very favorite, but the baba ghanouj, hummus, felafel and spanakopita were delicious.)

Still giggling because I spent the day at the Kroch Library,
followed by the Johnson Museum. Say it out loud. You'll get it.

After that, I went back to campus and visited the Johnson Museum of Art. Besides this really cool and incredibly old cuneiform tablet that was found sealed in a terra cotta envelope, I was mostly impressed with the view from the 5th floor. I swear I could almost see my house.

Love to eat those little claws ...

And then later, the coup de grace- lobsters at the Antlers! Always fun to dine with friends when you're all wearing bibs.

So, now I'm back in my hometown, at my parents' house,  the dogs anxious that this is where we live now (Frances will not let me get two feet away from her) with Christmas almost upon us. But I'm more excited for New Year's, not necessarily for the party we're planning on having, but for the start of resolutions. I love the fresh start of a new year, even though New Year's Day is almost always written off as a day to rehydrate and laze off a hangover.

My resolution for the coming year is to write every day. Hopefully, through this I will finally finish the book I have been working on FOREVER, but also to become more disciplined at this game. I've signed up for a 750 Words A Day challenge, which shouldn't be too bad, considering it's about half the daily word count that NaNoWriMo was. I'm also going to try posting on here everyday. May not be good, but hopefully it will be consistent.

So happy holidays to you and yours (unless you're one of those people who get pissed off at folks for saying something other than Merry Christmas, even though these same people's idea of "keeping Christ in Christmas" is to buy a 500-inch television at WalMart on Black Friday and litter their lawn with plastic reindeer).

And now for Frances!

Part two of our story:
http://www.fromalonetohome.com/2011/11/mr-minchy-spampobello-and-frances_29.html?spref=fb