Split Personality

     I am my own shrink.  It saves a lot of money and the necessary introspection usually produces insight and answers.  At a recent check-up, the nurse asked are you bi-polar or schizophrenic?  What?  I said I don't think so.  You tell me!  Since half of America lives in a state of mild depression and/or anxiety, wouldn't do you have any depression or anxiety problems be a better question? If I had said yes I am schizophrenic, would I have walked out with a big gun prescription?  Would they have helped me? Seems like they are crazy not me.
     Anyway, I know I have some problems, some quirks, so I decided to look inward at one in particular. When people ask me where are you from I always answer I live in Minnesota but I'm really from New Jersey, somehow implying that thirty-seven years in Minnesota has been an illusion. What am I really saying here?
     My inner analyst tells me I am actually saying I am not a Midwesterner so don't expect me to act like one. Don't expect "Minnesota nice" all the time and don't expect one word answers. Don't expect me to run out and catch an autumn leaf as it falls from the tree so it doesn't land on the neighbor's yard. Also,deal with the fact that I use a naughty word every now and then and that I don't read Christian fiction. 
     In other words, just like I said.  I live in Minnesota but I'm really from New Jersey. I'm not schizophrenic but I definitely have a split personality.
   

Halloween Heaven

   Pumpkin patches pop out all over Minnesota every October.  And intricate mazes carved out of cornfields entertain with the scary prospect of getting lost forever in a quarter mile square that makes you feel like you are roaming around a whole county. The rusty ashes and elms, though, are only so-so pretty compared to knock-out New England foliage. Even with a "Haunted Places in Minnesota" book in hand the state comes no where close to the flavor of , say, a Salem, Massachusetts and its witch lore.
   But while deciding that Halloween is whatever you make of it, all of a sudden it occurred to me that I actually used to live in THE perfect Halloween place.  I was only one year old and wish I could remember more of my Halloween in Tarrytown, NY where I lived for a year or so..
   Tarrytown, of course, is the setting for the 1820 short story "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" by Washington Irving.  Irving lived in Tarrytown in a wonderful Dutch mansion called Sunnyside perched high above the gorgeous Hudson River and was inspired by a part of town called Sleepy Hollow and all the witch tales of the nearby Catskill Mountain region.
   Tarrytown, now in view of the Tappan Zee Bridge, is all about Sleepy Hollow every day of the year.  There is Washington Irving High School and Sleepy Hollow Middle School, Van Tassle this and Brom Bones that.  It is a delight any time of year but especially at Halloween.  Some day, I vow, I will  spend another Halloween in Tarrytown. Until then I can't wait to savor the spooky opportunity to get back to these  nearly forgotten roots and a chance to cringe at the conjured up vision of Ichabod Crane in hysterical flight from the headless horseman.  Oh what a delicious Halloween that will be!
  

Top 5 Scenes I've Seen (so far)

1.  The Grand Canyon

2.  The Alps

3.  The Headwaters of the Mississippi River - (really!)

4.  Icebergs in the North Atlantic

5.  Niagara Falls

More Soon!

     I miss blogging - a lot!  So many activities recently and then there is SUMMER. So many excuses. I promise to get down to business and soon produce a gem. ( I would like to say "another gem" but...)

Money in the Family

     Who other than PBS could interest me in a subject up until now I have avoided like the plague?  A week or so ago I saw a program on economics.  It was fascinating!.  I especially liked the part that said the X factor in economics is the human element. (That seems obvious but geniuses came up with the notion so what can you say?) And I love the term rational economics,  partly because it began, so to speak, at the University of Chicago and I love the University of Chicago, and partly because it makes sense..  Anyway, I got to thinking about people and their money styles, then about my family and THEIR money styles.  Needless to say, there are tales to tell.
     Besides the brilliant teaching and advice of their parents my childrens financial philosophy background on the Mom side came from Pop-Pop who paid off all bills every month, bought cars with cash, and had two mortgages but no other loans his whole life,  and Nana who learned to write a check when she was 32 and never though she had enough money.  Paternal people consisted of two frugal to a fault farmers who were embarrassed by the slightest hint of "wealth." For instance, Grandma was humiliated by her working adult daughter's trip to Europe.  "Where will people think you got the money?," she lamented. Thank God the kids did not inherit this assinine attitude.
    We'll briefly analyse four sibling financial styles. Little Ingrid always seemed to forget her wallet on shopping excursions. We, of course, would lend her the money for her purchases but Ingrid was highly insulted at the notion that she should pay us back. Of course, these days she realizes having a wallet at hand is a very smart move.
     Young Jamie's first shopping expedition was a revelation to him. He chose a toy in the local 5 & 10, asked how much it cost, then went up to the checkout counter and stood there.  It became apparent that Jamie thought the cashier would give HIM $5.99 as well as the toy.  He was stunned to discover it was he who had to fork over the dough!  To this day James is very careful about his purchases and enjoys a bulging wallet rather than a big bag of stuff.
     Kit, perhaps, has the most "normal" attitude towards financial matters.  He spends when he wants to with neither anxiety nor regret.  After making a purchase as a little boy, Christian was usually thrilled and had no lamentations about the depletion of his fortune.
     Alex, I would say, loves spending money the most.  Usually it is because he wants the item ever so badly and is very excited when it becomes his.  Lilttle Alex would be the first to ask to go shopping after a birthday or Christmas windfall and the expression about money burning a hole in one's pocket was a phrase Alex would never have to consider.  Getting rid of money as fast as he could would avert this potential disaster.
     So my hope is that after all this financial training everyone now  has lots of plain old common sense.  It should serve them well.


    
    
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If You're Ever on the Witness Stand....Re-.Remembering the Bunny

   If you are ever called as a witness in a trial, think twice about your memory.  What you think you remember may not be the truth! Think about that.  What you plain old say under oath might not be the truth.  That's scary.  I wrote the story about my Easter Bunny Experience Gone Bad and truly believed my memory produced an accurate account of the infamous encounter with no revisionist history.. I mean, how much worse could it have been?  I am remembering the words "damn Easter Bunny."  It happened that way, right?  Not according to my son.  He says the truth is worse, much worse.  He says I said "damn" in my dreams but the real honest to goodness expletive was "I don't care what the f$%king Easter Bunny is doing."  Oops!  On second thought, I am thinking he is probably right.  I am glad I did not have to appear on the witness stand, though, as that Big Bunny who just meant well did not sue me.  Actually, come to think of it, I HAVE been on the witness stand and hopefully told the truth, although, to tell you the truth, who knows for sure?! (I was acquitted so whatever I said worked in my favor.) Anyway, I am now super SUPER sorry for my  behavior to the Bunny so please remember this, your memory can and does and WILL play tricks on you.  I think it usually tries to make the situation better than it was. The bunny probably was a damn bunny but he wasn't quite a f$%king bunny. My apologies.

Morristown Memory

   I can't remember why I was thinking of Morristown the other day.  I think I had read something about the public library there, which, by the way is infamous for having been the first homeless- man-decides-to-live-in-a-library case in America..
   I had a relationship with this1715 northern New Jersey town for over thirty years and remember its pre- Interstate 287 days when it was a picture perfect Colonial town with a charming 1700s  town square and really good shopping.
   We actually lived in Whippany about five miles north of Morristown on a road  that George Washington and his army had marched along on their way to Morristown where he spent the winter of 1779-80. He in a mansion and the troops out in the cold in the woods.
   At the age of 10 I rode the DeCamp lines New York bus to its last stop in front of the movie theater on the square in Morristown before it went back into the city.  Then I would walk ten minutes or so to St. Margaret School located in the Italian section of  town while passing two or three parmesan perfumed Italian groceries. I loved the smell of parmesan in the morning!
   But back to Whippany for a moment.  Whippany was a small village on a Whippanong Indian site before Bell Labs came to town and precipitated the building of several hundred '50's ranch and split level homes. Years later, thanks to Google, I discovered that the Labs had been working on, among other projects, SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) behind its secured gates.  How exciting it would have been to have known that at the time!
   Anyway, one of Whippany's early residents was The Seeing Eye, housed on a former estate.  The Seeing Eye, still in operation but now located in the beautiful hills just outside Morristown, trained dogs for the blind.  In fact, they trained guide dogs for about 300 blind persons a year. The dogs used to do their on-the-job-training  on the streets of Morristown with their trainers or with trainers and their new proud owners.
   The citizenry of the area needed training, too, and we all learned fast.  We learned not to stop and pet the dogs, just to let them do their thing alerting the blind to stop or start at crosswalks, etc.  It was a beautiful sight that we took for granted as on any one day there were many dogs getting their education, on the Green and in the restaurants and shops of the town.
   I think now what a unique experience it was to be part of this training, even in a very passive way and the people of Morristown are still enjoying this opportunity to serve.

Big Bunny Blues

   He was about seven feet tall from the tip of his ears to the bottom of his fur clad silly feet.  You knew, of course,  that the someone inside the suit was looking at you from somewhere on the thing's chest but you just naturally looked into his glassy pink eyes and felt a little ridiculous doing so.
   We met the big rabbit in the lobby of the Radisson Hotel restaurant.  It was Easter Sunday and we naively thought our party of six could march in and have brunch without a reservation. We had spent the day before blissfully perched on a hillside in great weather watching a college baseball game.  So the rest of the weekend should be perfect, too. This was an incorrect assumption, to say the least. The hostess at the hotel told us we could not have brunch and I was very upset.  Couldn't she just squeeze us in for half an hour?  We would hurry. Pleeze! While we dealt with another negative answer to our pleadings,  the Easter Bunny started jumping up and down around us.  I guess his job was to smooth the waters, make funny, so we would laugh and leave, politely taking our disappointment over the failed brunch in stride.
   But I was inordinately annoyed by the cavorting beast.  The big darn bunny was in my face, so to speak, and I did not like it one bit.  My polite children said "but Mommy, the Easter Bunny is just trying to be nice to you."  Really?  And then it happened.  I looked up into the big darn bunny's eyes and said the fatal and memorable words: "I don't care what the damn Easter Bunny is doing.  I just want brunch."
   I stormed out of the hotel.  Everyone was mortified.  But the kids left with a memory they'll never forget. Isn't that what's important? Making special memories? Don't worry. They have not forgotten. . They remind me of this special occasion every chance they get.

Easter

   I've cooked up over 30 Easters.  In general, the recipe includes gallons of food coloring, dozens of hard-boiled eggs, scores of plastic eggs, many pounds of chocolate and millions of jelly beans.  Let's not forget all the Easter baskets and miles of that cellophane grass that lurks around for months afterwards like needles found from old Christmas trees in July.
   Several Easters were quite memorable, like the 90 degree April egg hunt one day before Easter and three days before little Alex was born in 1987.  Jamie was at the egg hunt, hunting for REAL eggs, no less, which is now, of course, a huge sanitary no-no.  He found the golden egg and won the grand prize which was a cute mechanical chicken toy.  The man presenting the prize to him dropped the box on the hard street and the chicken never walked or peeped again.  The look on poor Jamie's face was one of sheer shock as it was a miracle he had won the prize at all due to the fact that we were overly polite and passive egg hunters compared to the other piranha-like competitive parents who hunted for the eggs with their kids like a sport - passionately pouncing on each egg from yards away, grabbing them as their kid's trophy.
   The piranha parents would knock little kids off their tiny sneakers just to claim another egg and would leave their tot rivals crying in the mud on their little tiny bums.  The bums!
   But, alas, the most memorable occasion (unfortunately) was the infamous Minneapolis Easter bunny incident.  I will save this story for the next installment. It is a short story. It is a sad story. It will be worth the wait.

Numbers - I Hate Them (A Lot)

    The form says "actual" or "estimate."  I always pick "estimate."  Actually, it should say "rough estimate."  That would relieve a lot of tension.
     The instructions state "must file by April 1."  I pressed the submit button reluctantly on March 22, earlier than usual, held my breath and hoped for the best. My hope is that the state of Minnesota thinks the numbers on this report I have to do for my library job are OK.  You see, numberphobes are never quite sure.  If the numbers look too nice and tidy, the person who reads the report might think you cheated or lied or made them all up.  And, ironically enough, we phobes also worry that if the numbers are too quirky, they will think the same thing.
     It's a nightmare.  All those numbers. Those damn numbers! They all have to make sense!  If the computer thinks they don't make sense,  little red flags come up all over the place.
     The little red flags fly in your face when the computer thinks the number is too big or, for heavens sake, too small.  Can you believe this?  Then, adding insult to injury, little green boxes come out of the blue and you have to explain WHY the number was too big or too small. ( This is compared to last year's number, of course.)  The computer just wants to see some words of explanation in the little green box.  Any gibberish would satisfy it, but since I have been called on the phone about this report by an actual human being several times in the past, I suspect a real person actually looks at it.  So, you have to compose a real explanation like " more books were checked out last year than the year before because more people checked out books last year" and that's that.
     In college I avoided anything to do with economics or accounting but years later I took a college accounting course.  I completed part 1 attending the classes at the university.  And I did OK. Then I attempted part 2 on my own.  I had seven, yes seven, years to complete the course but I did not.  I paid tuition year after frustrating year and the "incomplete" cost me a fortune.  Accounting seemed all  backwards to me anyway and I would never attempt it again.
     My number-filled  numbing annual report is now in cyberspace and I haven't heard any complaints about it, yet.  I am happy for the time being..  Now I have to get busy before the IRS deadline is here. And I pray that those numbers make sense and flags don't fly in my face and, and - oh the anxiety!

Book Visions

     I just finished reading "Juliet, Naked" by Nick Hornby.  It wasn't flat out marvelous like "The Elegance of the Hedgehog" but it was light and fun and it was about music and aging, two of my interests at the moment.  (The latter, reluctantly.)
     And I'm reading it, to borrow a phrase, because he had me at Minneapolis.  I live in Minnesota, you see, and the book begins in the past when Tucker Crowe, a famous, Dylanesque, singer-songwriter, goes to the men's room during a gig at a Minneapolis club, has some epiphany, comes out, ditches the show and the band and becomes a recluse in Pennsylvania.
     "Juliet, Naked" refers to the naked as in unplugged version of the Tucker Crowe album called "Juliet."  And Juliet was the love of his life, an actress/muse person who lived in San Francisco.
     Nick Hornby is also the author of "High Fidelity" and "About a Boy."  Both of these books became movies and this one's gonna be a movie, too, and that's what drove me crazy the whole time I was reading it. I couldn't read a word without thinking of the book as a movie and my mind wandered on every sentence as I tried to cast the characters.  
     Who would play Tucker Crowe, the aging, reclusive ex-folk/rock star? I'm seeing Jeff Bridges fresh off another music character in "Crazy Heart." And who's going to play Duncan, the tiny town Brit obsessed with webbing and blogging to keep the flame lit for an addicted world wide group of Crowe fans?  He, of course, will be played by Hugh Grant.  Who else? Grant stared out at me from every page and it was most disconcerting.
     That leaves Annie.  Who will play Duncan's girl friend who becomes Tucker's girl across the pond friend? It could be Renee Zellweger as in Bridget Jones since Hollywood will probably choose an American who has to do a British accent the whole movie .But it probably won't be Julia Roberts since that would be too much like "Notting Hill," wouldn't it? I think Kate Winslet or Minnie Driver would do a great job but maybe Andie MacDowell will get the part and  have to do the accent so at least it would not be exactly the same as "Four Weddings and a Funeral."
     God!  Do you see what I mean?  This book was so good and so frustrating all at the same time but the good news is I've already seen the movie!
     

Ohno Oops?

   I had to laugh last week after NBC's coverage of Shaun White's snowboarding competition.  I clearly heard the excited exchange between White and one of his coaches after his gold medal was a done deal but before his second run which was going to be essentially a victory lap.
   The next day I read that NBC was apologizing for obscene content that should not have been heard on the air.  I thought darn I must have missed that.  So I read the transcript.  It was the same conversation I had witnessed.  Yes, the S word was uttered.  Obscene?  I don't think so.  Even at the time it seemed normal. And it certainly seemed very normal snowboard speak to be sure, and even super normal what did you expect half pipe talk.  C'mon people!
   All I do know is that if any of my family ever wins an Olympic gold medal NBC had better kill the mic because one of us will no doubt use the F bomb on the air 'cause winning a gold medal is f---ing fantastic!

Olympic Observation

      Plushenko and Lysacek were brilliant in the men's figure skating short program with Lysacek winning the fashion week who are you wearing question answering Vera Wang.  But the Most Entertaining gold is a tie and goes to Johnny Weir - outrageously exciting AND he's good - and Takahiko Kozuka for the best music - Jimi Hendrix's "Bold as Love." (Stravinsky is magnificent, of course, but an electric guitar is just more fun.)

Positive Potatoes

   Last week I had supper with my friend Bo.  We were due at a meeting at 6:30 and she got home at 6 o'clock.  So we had about fifteen minutes to eat a meal.  We poured a glass of wine but instead of cheese and crackers or a quick sandwich, she decided to cook.
   Bo became my friend because she is from Connecticut.  Finding someone from Connecticut in a small Midwestern town is like discovering diamonds in a corn field.  We both may be from The East (Big Bad East to the Midwesterners) but our worlds weren't exactly adjacent.  She is a frugal Scottish Connecticut Yankee and I am from New Jersey.  She lived outside the gravitational pull of NYC while I was in the thick of it but still, yes loyal Midwesterners, out in "the country."  Midwesterners know intellectually that there are rural parts of the East but in their hearts they want to believe it's one big piece of asphalt. But back to the supper.
   Bo decided to cook a farmer's omelet.  She peeled and sliced potatoes and chopped a Vidalia onion. (She lives alone but buys them in bulk from Georgia. Some kind of a fundraiser.) The veggies went into the cast iron frying pan with a little olive oil and started to cook, fast she hoped, on high heat.  But the onions were caramelizing way too fast (in other words they were burning) and we had to slow it down.
   She chopped some ham and beat a few eggs and the omelet was on its way.  The meal needed to be done in five minutes but that wasn't going to happen. Bo said we have to eat now.  I said but Bo the potatoes aren't cooked yet (one of those Emperor's New Clothes moments.) Bo said that's OK, we'll eat them al dente.
   Al dente.  Brilliant! Now THAT is a true positive attitude.   I can learn so much from Bo.  She has turned many a lemon into lemonade and now her raw potatoes are a gourmet treat. The potatoes were a little crunchy but the omelet was delicious.  And, oh yes, we got to our meeting on time.

Complicated Cohen

   I was excited when they gave a Lifetime Achievement Award to Leonard Cohen at the Grammys last week.  I have loved this Quebecois since Judy Collins sang his "Suzanne" way back when, although I didn't know too much about him.
   About fifteen years later in an old gym in southwest Minnesota I was watching a performance of a group of Norwegian gymnasts.  They were not doing gymnastics as we know it but some sort of group exercise invented by the Chinese (probably) and it was done to music.  One of the songs was beautiful.  I had no clue what it was but the tune became etched into my brain.  And in those pre-Internet times it was not as easy as it is today to track things down.  In fact, it was almost impossible.
   But several years later, I was watching  figure skating on TV. Canadians were skating. In fact, I think it was ice dancing and they were skating to none other than The Song!  The commentators mentioned its name.  It was "Take This Waltz" and it was by Leonard Cohen, the famous Canadian recluse who spent years in a Zen Buddhist monastery near LA.
   Cohen and Bob Dylan are probably the greatest songwriters ever.  They are poets to be sure.  But sometimes, I think Cohen is, well, misunderstood.
   For instance, his "Hallelujah" has been used on hundreds of TV shows.  They usually  play it in some sad situation or when the character has just seen the light. I think it often comes in times of "redemption."  But have you ever read the words?  OK "Your faith was strong but you needed proof, You saw her bathing on the roof, Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair, she broke your throne and she cut your hair..." Huh? And it gets "better."  
   I think the situation is this. The music is so damn pretty and moving that nobody cares what the words are.  I mean the words are fine poetry and and a lot of metaphor, religious references, etc. But in many instances but they just don't always fit the scene, if you know what I mean.
  For example, "Take This Waltz."  The ice skaters were dancing to these words.  "Oh I want you I want you I want you, On a chair with a dead magazine."  It continues with "This waltz this waltz this waltz, with its very own breath of brandy and death, dragging its tail in the sea."
   It's OK with me 'cause I love art but some of these lyrics could make children run screaming.  Advice to teachers out there.  Don't put Cohen music behind the kindergarten video. You might be in for a law suit.
   The man is great but he takes me out of my comfort zone time and time again.  Let's face it. There's only so much I want to know about what went on with him (and Janis Joplin, they say) in the Chelsea Hotel. But you have to love a guy whose first band was called The Buckskin Boys.
  

Great Dr. Seuss Quote

Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

Blond Ambition

   My mother thought that everyone looks better with blond hair.  I'm not kidding. She really believed this and it was pointless to argue with her. My rational (I thought) response, "But Mom, I really don't think Japanese women look better as blonds," fell like a ton of cement in front of an open door when she said "Yes they do."
   My blond journey started early.  My mother was thrilled that her little girl had golden tresses and during those blissful blond times she was determined to keep it that way.  She'd mix a potion called Blondex and rinse my hair with it after every shampoo.  The product was supposed to brighten and preserve blond locks and it did for a while.
   But when I was ten or so my blond started browning and to my mother  it seemed like a terrible downhill spiral.  The color slid from golden blond to dirty blond to dishwater blond to light brown, ending in a miserable mousy brown.  The semantics suggest that  blond is beautiful and brown is quite second rate.
   Five plain brown years later my mother insisted on Clairol as she had insisted on Revlon and I was on the road to being first rate again.  
   I was in high school at the time and my hair was getting lighter and lighter.  Sister Elizabeth mentioned it and I said I had been out in the sun a lot.  Then the principal said I was a bad influence on the other girls.  I told Sister Irene it was my mother's doing but nobody ever took her to task.  We got away with it and by the time I graduated my hair was really, really blond.
   I went to college and hit the harder stuff right away.  Two process at home (or in the dorm smoker) lightening is time consuming not to mention very tricky.  One time my platinum was decidedly green and another time it was blue.  Not old lady bluish but a rather impressive steel blue, if you can picture it.  I had a beautiful blue suit which matched my hair until I corrected the situation.
   Blisters on my scalp from pros in New Jersey and burning white hot breakage from pros in Europe had me recuperating in brunette for years but the blond urge has returned even without my mother's influence.  We're doing blond again and doing fine. We're on our way to platinum, in fact! After all, aren't blonds supposed to have more fun?

Make-up Tricks

   I love makeup. In fact, I adore make-up. But it was not always so. It all started in the eighth grade when I became  the envy of every girl in Sister Ursulina's class.  Their mothers had you-can't-wear-makeup laws that they enforced like police while my mother chased me around the house chanting "a little lipstick will do the trick!" The implication that I needed a "trick" was mildly insulting but I soon realized it was easier to make-up than fight.

   I started my aversion to addiction journey with a smear of Revlon Love That Pink. By my Sophomore year in high school I had advanced to the daily ritual of heeding home room teacher Mrs. McGuire's request to "please wash off that eyeshadow."  It was cream Revlon in a little lipstick-like tube and it matched my green uniform perfectly. Darn Mrs.McGuire!
   I like the idea of a signature look but I've never had one. For years and years I've tried scores  of products and hoped that the next lipstick or eyeshadow would do the trick. But it hasn't happened yet and it probably never will.  In fact, thanks to a fabulous gift, at this moment I am wearing the latest Chanel Eye Gloss and my entire eye lid looks like black patent leather.  It is very au courant and edgy but I do not think it's doing the trick.
   I didn't think, though, that opening another great gift, a Rouge Dior Serum de Rouge #760 Rose Figue/Raspberry (don't you just love the names?) would be so educational.  I was a cereal box reader as a child so I can't resist scanning all the small print that comes with the make-up.  Can you believe that Luminous Color Lip Treatment has fifty ingredients in its 2 gram, 0.07 ounce tube, including trimethylolpropane trisostearate and octinoxate iethylhexyl methoxycinnamate? What?
   The real fun for me, though, was the info/warning sheet.  Praise for the lip treatment's "unparalled formula" and  how it "instantly delivers a sumptuous glow to your face" appears in no less than fourteen languages!  That is amazing and you feel so ooh-la-la internationale. It's like a trip around the world in a tiny tube and that more than justifies its exorbitant price, of course.
   I have to admit, too, that the stuff does give "unique pleasure when applied" but I regret it isn't life-changing. Damn, though, if it doesn't  look darn good!  Thank you, Dior, for the education and especially for at least  trying to do the trick.

Great Quote from Great Book

Art is life, playing to other rhythms.

                                   from  "The Elegance of the Hedgehog"
                                               by   Muriel Barbery

Alliteration Write or Wrong??

   What's wrong with alliteration?  Why does it get such a bad rap?  My son and I were discussing it just the other day.  He is a blogger and Journalism major and believes that alliteration is never a good thing. My take is that it can be fine, fun and fabulous if not contrived, and in moderation, of course.
   I think Alex's anti-alliteration attitude comes from a professor he had in college. He taught that your future would be full of failure if you embraced the horrible habit.  In fact, after I wrote the man a one sentence e-mail about an article he had written online, he told my son I must be the reason for his "problem."  The professor said that alliteration must be hereditary!
   Even after that rehab class, Alex is still tempted to use the A word once in a while but he takes it one temptation at a time.  Dr. Drew would be thrilled.
   One of our friends who blogs almost daily actually confesses her addiction to alliteration on Facebook.  She has guilt about using it as if it were a crime. Alliteration is NOT an illegal drug, for God's sake.

   I have no qualms about breaking the A law.  I mean, if you see a resplendent red rooster why can't you write "I saw a respendent red rooster?"  Why should you have to change it to, say, a showy red rooster or a beautiful red rooster just to avoid committing what's almost become the eighth deadly sin? Hmm?
   Sometimes you just want your words to be fun.  That's why I love a little lovely alliteration on my plate every now and again. But I vow to curb over-indulging in the future.

   

  
  

The Big Fs - Ranked

   Fitness (read Health) probably should be first on any resolution list but in these unstable times we're all consumed by $$$ concerns. So first on the list is -
   1.  Fortune - Finding Funds is a priority.
   2.  Future - What to do to get the funds?  It's never too late but the best blessing in the world is knowing what you want to do with your life. Never knowing is a curse!  There was a book a while back - "Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow." It would be wonderful if this turns out to be true. It takes some guts to apply this theory, though. Also, one can enhance the future by doing something fulfilling that helps other people or the earth.

 3 and 4.  Face and Figure -  There's a dilemma in ranking Face and Figure besides an admission of vanity. When you reach a certain age, (although the truth is that some people go to pot at 26) they say you have to choose between your face or your fanny.  (My daughter hates the expression "they." Who ARE "they?") This is not as hard a decision as in, perhaps, "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", (I was a drama major and you know Brecht) but stressful nonetheless.  In general terms, when you're older and your face looks good your body is probably too plump and when your body is trim your trim face looks, drawn, old and gaunt, even if you're sweet sixteen.  So you have to go Zen and balance it out - somehow. And usually, a few pounds on the hips is worth the effect on the face. Men now are going Huh? but women understand. (And considering all the problems in the world right now, I feel like a fool for worrying about this!)
   5.  Fashion - always Fun. A quick tour through the pages of Vogue or Harper's Bazaar once a month is a fine activity.

   6.  Fitness. Face it, you'll never be happy if you don't have good health. So fitness should be the overall goal.  And, yes, it would be #1 if we weren't so darn worried about the $$$.

  

The 5 Fs - Found Again

     When suffering through the annual New Year ritual of throwing out the old and making room for the new last week, I found a decades old list of resolutions.  It was my famous (to me) list of Fs.  The 6 Fs were Face, Figure, Fashion, Fitness, Future and Fortune. I know, this must sound hilarious to you.  And you're singing "You're So Vain," but yes, without a doubt, I was super serious about working on these categories. (And still am, I must confess.)  But the game now is for me to rank their urgency from 1 to 6 and report my findings.  In other words, time marches on but times change, as well. So should my face be priority #1 in 2010 as it was in 1990?

A Short Treatise on Lady Gaga

   Thank the gods for KKCK FM in Marshall, MN.  If it were not for this radio station no child in southwest Minnesota would ever have heard music.  Pardon just a little hyperbole but gol dern it's prit near totally true.

   And if KKCK were not on the air it never would have had the power to enlighten an old mother like me.  (And I mean mothers as in moms and not mother you-know-whaters.)

   So recently during my morning ablutions I was listening to the aforementioned KKCK and Lady Gaga's  "Bad Romance" caught my attention and, with toothbrush in mouth, I had a proverbially light bulb moment.  I said, you know, I'll bet many mothers think this is garbage and that Lady Gaga is nothing more than Lady Gagag. ( People in these parts have an affinity to the gag reflex when they are disgusted by something.  The finger stuck in mouth gag gig.  You can picture it, yes?)  But I think she is ever so talented.  
   Why, I mused, do I think this? I promptly came up with eight reasons.  And here they are:
1.  Gaga is different. When was the last time you heard such sounds from a human voice?

2.  Gaga is exotic.  You hear the song and are transported to a bar in Istanbul or a cafe in Cairo (minus the incessant car horn blowing.)
3.  Gaga is talented. Maybe even super-talented. Read a short bio (Wikipedia will do) and be very impressed with this Italian New Yorker. 
4.  Gaga has a great voice. (Part of the talent, obviously.) Especially the almost a growl range.
5.  Gaga is deliciously decadent. (But this is pretty much an illusion.)
6.  Gaga makes you want to dance: the darn song is energizing.

7.  Unplugged people as well as metal boys and girls can appreciate some techno now and then.
8.  For old people, it brings back good memories of bad disco.

   And some sound (yes, a pun) advice for all the faint of heart  moms out there.  No need to read the lyrics to "Bad Romance." OK? Just listen to the music. 
   P.S. Oh yes, and Moms, don't watch the music video either. 

The Christmas That Wouldn't Let Go

   When my son was nine, Christmas took hold of him and would not let go.  He had had a great Christmas, and maybe that was the problem because when all that was left of it were cracked walnut shells we thought his heart would break, too.

   Days were kind to him but at night in bed he cried.  I thought maybe music therapy was the answer but "Silent Night" only triggered more nostalgia.  The opposite end of the spectrum failed miserably, too.  Neither "Frosty the Snowman" nor "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" turned his gloom to glee.

   Next, I tried decorations.  All the remnants of the holiday had been put away in an out-of-sight-out-of-mind attempt; now we put them up again.  Tons of silver tinsel hung like vines in a jungle over his head in bed but they seemed only to take root on the hold he had on the holiday.

   Once again, down came the reminders.  Hopefully a clean slate would do the trick, but this did not work either.  "Get over it" was a last resort suggestion I knew would fail (and was cruel), while "Cheer up, it's only ten and a half short months until Christmas comes around again!" fell on a deaf soul.


   So it seemed his soul was just slow and time was the only prescription left as it often is in cases like this.  And after a few more sad weeks he was looking up and forward to Easter.

Hefty Bag Horrors

     In 1986 I put a big wrinkle in the wrapping world the day Santa decided to use simple unadorned sacks. OK they were black plastic garbage bags - so what? And they were tied with big red bows.  So there.

     My excuse for the unfortunate choice in wrapping?  I was expecting a baby in April (that was you Alex, ahhhhh) and was very tired (ok, lazy) and facing me was a mountain of extremely odd shaped toys ripe for wrapping. Have you ever tried to wrap a football?  Peyton Manning made it look so easy on his cute commercial this year but, now this gets technical, even if the ball is in a box, there is always a portion of the ball popping out of the box - why on earth they do this I'll never know but it makes for one very awkward wrap experience.


     Then there was the issue of Optimus Prime.  Can you really picture OP in all his glory wrapped in adorable Santa paper?  It would be criminal.  Would Jamie have thought that was respectful of the big guy?  Isn't there more poetic justice in having that bad ass (as my daughter would say, I disclaim) lifted triumphantly out of an earthy, raw black bad ass bag?  Of course there is. But Jamie saw it the other way. " Why are all my toys in a garbage bag?" was the bewildered message on his face.


     The gifts were a hit but the bags struck out.  Now, twenty years later, there ARE plastic Christmas bags - for everything.  But they are red or printed prettily instead of down-the chimney-soot-black.  There are even bags for bikes and cars, for heaven's sake!  And just like the new Windows 7 commercials, think of me next year when you see a great gift wrapped in a super Santa Sack.  Plastic Christmas bags were MY idea!