When In Doubt, Order Schnitzel

After traveling around Europe a bit this summer, I brought some random observations home in my luggage…mostly because I couldn’t afford anything else.

There are some things the Europeans definitely do better than Americans.  There are also ways in which they are seriously lacking.  Allow me to illustrate:

Dear Lufthansa, when you offer an overnight flight on which parents are hoping their kids will sleep, please don’t provide a free showing of the tween movie “Prom!”  As much as my daughter insists she can sleep with one eye open, we all know she can’t.  You only master that trick once you’ve become a mother.

In Germany, no one got the memo that the mullet is OVER. The only thing we found more amusing than a unisex mullet was the fact that the word for “Exit” in German is Ausfahrt.   More mature people may not find this humorous, but we got hours of entertainment shouting “Ausfahrt” every time we passed an exit sign.  And it wasn’t always the nine year old who started it.

The German language is something else that intrigues me.  No matter what someone says to me in German, I feel like I’m getting yelled at.  And to add insult to injury, a nice German woman at the Farmer’s Market in Heppenheim described the language of American tourists as “chewing gum English”.  She must be referring to all the New Yorkers and Southerners she’s encountered because I’m sure she couldn’t be describing the melodic sounds of a good, strong Boston accent. Which I do not have. Ask anyone.

On the more positive side, there was also a lot to love about Germany. You can buy fresh Haribo Gummy Bears everywhere!  And if you’re a Type A person who is incapable of being late for an appointment even if you tried, well then Germany is the place for you.  Everything runs on schedule and everyone seems to pride himself on being neat and orderly.  I could practically cry it made me so happy.

If you want to hear about my husband’s favorite thing about Germany, start a conversation about driving.  German cars are exceptionally well made and it seems like every person in the country actually knows how to drive properly.  Trucks are restricted from driving in the left lane and guess what?  They follow the rules and stay in the right lane!  After years of getting boxed out by 18 wheelers careening by me in Boston, I felt completely at ease flying down the Autobahn at 110 mph knowing that I wasn’t going to get cut off.

The surface of the Autobahn is an amazingly smooth ride too. I ran into an expat American living in Germany and he described it perfectly.  He said, “On the Autobahn, I could drive my junky, old Honda Odyssey over a dime at 90 mph and tell you if it was heads or tails.”  I’m almost inclined to believe him.

One final thing about driving in Germany that we loved was the stoplights (or lack thereof).  You almost never have to come to a complete stop because the smart urban planners put roundabouts (we call ‘em rotaries over here, same thing) everywhere you’d expect a stoplight.  It’s a beautiful thing.  On the rare occasion when you do come to a stoplight, we discovered yet another great feature.  Before the light changes from red back to green, it gives you a yellow warning light which lets you put your car into gear and get ready to haul ass from a dead stop.  In Boston, I have a bad habit of yelling at the car in front of me, “It doesn’t get any GREENER THAN THAT, FOLKS!!”  No need for that nonsense over there.  By the time the light turns green, even the putt-putt little Opels and Smart Cars take off like a shot.  And that’s all I have to say about that.

As we leave Germany and pass through Switzerland, I can recap our culinary options in one simple statement.  When in doubt, order the schnitzel. Virtually any other menu item is a complete crapshoot and could involve sausages of an unknown origin.

And then we arrive in Italy….(sigh)… where the t.v. news broadcasters look like they came straight out of a Tom Ford casting call.  And in Florence, it was nearly 95 scorching degrees, but businessmen strolled down the street wearing perfectly cut skinny suits and ties without breaking a sweat.  I don’t know how they do it, but I think must be genetics. The same genetics that allow them to eat pasta every day and not have to wear sweat pants to work, perhaps.  Even the police academy cadets looked stunning in their purple, navy and white ensembles all wrinkle and sweat free as they marched across the piazza with matching black attaché cases in hand.  Maybe that’s where they keep their guns, in beautiful leather 

man-purses. Okay, maybe not. 

I’m still not really sure what everyone does for a living outside the big cities in Italy, but they’re pretty darn chill about it, whatever it is.  Everything essentially shuts down from 1pm-6pm for a nice 2-hour lunch followed by a long nap. When you’re a tourist trying to shop at 4pm, it can be frustrating.  But don’t we all wish we could do the same.

As for the food, I could write sonnets and odes to the magic known as Italian cuisine, but I won’t.  I’ll only say this:

Fresh figs with prosciutto

A glass of Campari & Prosecco with a slice of fresh orange

Bruscetta with fresh tomatoes

Bistecca alla Fiorentina

Fresh pasta, fresh pasta, fresh pasta.

Local wine by the pitcher or carafe. No sulfites, no hangover.

Tuna, olive oil, capers, anchovies. Repeat.

My only food disappointment in Tuscany was the bread. Tuscans don’t bake with salt in their bread and this made it surprisingly easy for me to say “no thank you”. Otherwise, I mostly just said, “Yes, please. More please”.  And this is why I travel with an elastic waistband wardrobe.

I realize it’s unlikely that I’ll ever look as effortlessly glamorous as the locals in Florence and that’s okay.  I was quite content to simply drink wine, eat food and in the spirit of our surroundings…take a nice long nap.

Black Holes

Shopping lists are a great thing.  Write down what you need. Buy it. Leave. If only it were that easy.

I remember going into CVS frequently back in high school to buy a bottle of shampoo or something (remember Body on Tap shampoo that was made with beer? Or that brand called Gee Your Hair Smells Terrific which really did make your hair smell terrific?  I wish that stuff was still around.) 

Anyway, I’d go in for the shampoo and somehow I’d walk out after having spent $20 of my hard earned money on random things I thought I needed but probably didn’t.  It became a running joke with my friends. Set one foot into CVS and you can kiss your $20 bill goodbye.

Many years later, Costco took the lead as my shopping black hole.  Bulk paper products are pretty much all I need at Costco.  Well, that and the five-pound tub of guacamole, thank you very much.  Yet somehow, I’d walk out of Costco $250 poorer and the proud new owner of a giant container of snick-snacky delicious granola that I’m convinced is laced with Ecstasy.

I would also try to steer myself away from the Costco candy aisle but when someone is selling a big, red bucket of individually wrapped Twizzlers, I’m buying.  The whole premise of this product packaging is lost on me anyway.  I'm still going to eat an entire fistful of Twizzlers, it's just going to take me longer to individually unwrap each one as I inhale it.

Today, it dawned on me that my newest black hole is Whole Foods.  Perhaps I am naive (even at this advanced age) to think I can walk in there with my organized, little shopping list. The fruit is so pretty. The butcher department is full of hormone-free, grass-fed, pre-marinated meats that I can just throw on the grill.  They have mini-speakers in the meat case serenading the steaks with classical music so the meat doesn’t get stressed out.  Well, not really.  But the cheese department is to die for and just one pass through the aromatherapy aisle and I’m so Zen’d out that I don’t even realize that I’m putting a six-pack of apricot nectar and imported Adriatic fig spread in my cart.

I think I need professional help.

The Patron Saint of Parking Spaces

Legend has it that my Grandpa Jack scored a really good parking space at the 1964 New York World's Fair.  To put this in perspective, the New York World's Fair occupied nearly a square mile and welcomed about 51 million visitors.  So getting a good parking space was quite a feat.  However that day,  Jack had a feeling he could find an even better spot, a a bold thought that was bordering on lunacy.  But he found one.  And when I heard that story years ago, I dubbed my Grandpa Jack the Patron Saint of Parking Spaces.

Many decades later, long after my Grandpa had passed away, I took a trip to Disney World with my husband and some friends.  As we pulled into the massively crowded parking lot at Downtown Disney, I said "C'mon Grandpa Jack, help us out" and lo and behold, a car pulled out in the front row.  We could not have gotten any closer to the entrance if we tried.  The couple who was with us has since adopted Grandpa Jack and has been politely asking him for parking spaces in the greater NY area ever since.

Jack's own daughter, (my wonderful and wise Aunt) finally decided to give it a try a few years ago. The Tall Ships were due to sail down the Hudson River and everyone in NY was trying to park close enough to walk over to the Henry Hudson Parkway for a glimpse.   So my Aunt said aloud, "Ok Dad, I need a parking space" and just then, a car toots its horn at her.  She sticks her head out the window and the guy in the car said "Do you need a space?  I'm pulling out in a minute.  Go around the block and I'll wait for you.". So she did.  And she got the perfect parking spot thanks to her Dad, Grandpa Jack, Patron Saint of Parking Spaces.

Just last week, I went out for some drinks with the girls.  We went to a place on the water where there are very few parking spaces.  My friends said we'd never get a space.  I told them to just wait a second, as I pulled the car over in the packed lot.  Not 5 seconds later, two ladies hopped in their VW Beetle right in front of me and pulled away.  Later that evening, we decided to head over to one last spot for a little nightcap.  This place is in a historic downtown area with tiny one-way streets and virtually no on-street parking except for a few meters.  There waiting for me right in front of the restaurant door, was a nice, empty parking space, big enough for me to glide my truck right into.  Coincidence? Um, no.  Grandpa Jack just being one step ahead of me.

  I don't know what folks do up in heaven, but there's a good chance that my  Grandpa Jack is getting annoyed that so many people are now disturbing his regular poker game with God or whatever he's doing.  Maybe I shouldn't even be writing about this.  I like to think that I'm a generous person and willing to share whatever I have. Except when it comes to parking spaces.

Formula One

Fernando Alonso. Felipe Massa. Kimi Raikkonen.  These men are taking my husband hostage this weekend. 

On Friday, the 2010 Formula One season will commence with the Bahrain Grand Prix and my husband may actually cry tears of joy.  He will also be crying real tears of pain and suffering if he wakes me up as he scrambles to the television for the 6:00 a.m. start of the Qualifying round to determine which driver will be on pole. Not that kind of pole.  It means who’ll be in the #1 position for the start of the race.  Formula One has sucked me in, but only a little.

Only true diehards wake up at o’dark thirty to watch petite men with big paychecks race around a twisty track in a far off land.  In some sense, I do understand the appeal now that I recognize how hard it is to steer an ultralight beast with a tiny steering wheel full of gizmo and wangdoodle buttons.  The amount of G-force these guys encounter is enough to scramble their brains.  And I guess that’s why they get the big bucks and the superstar status.

But here’s a question that’s been nagging me – since Formula One exists, why does anyone watch NASCAR? Side by side, I just don’t see the appeal of watching Jimmy, Jeff and Kyle drive in a circle at Talladega in their Cheerios & Betty Crocker cars when you could watch Fernando and Felipe go 200 miles an hour through the streets of Monaco or around the course in Monza, Italy.  I’m just saying. I don’t get it.

And why am I even writing about this?   It may be a case of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.  For the next several months, the sounds of every Grand Prix race will be booming from my husband’s office/man cave.  Packages from mysterious overseas vendors will continue to arrive on my doorstep containing weird looking parts from old F1 cars.  Apparently, they’re quite collectible.  But I will tell you this – if I walk into my husband’s cave one day and find a fully built Formula One car, I’m going to be pissed.

Gratitude

I’m one of those people who stops what I’m doing at least once a day with an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for one thing or another.  Sometimes I recognize it silently in my head, other times I actually say “Thank You” out loud to no one in particular.  Yes, I am that lady in the passing car that looks like she’s talking to herself.

Last weekend, I had a bit of luck at the casino, so I thanked my friendly slot machine and walked away knowing that lightening probably wouldn’t strike twice.  I was grateful for my little windfall.

Most days as I drive around this beautiful little town that I live in, I say thank you out loud because I still can’t believe that I ended up here.  This is a house that’s been in my family for about 50 years.  I’d fantasized as a kid about living here some day, but never actually thought I’d be able to. Even though virtually every inch of this house was renovated and feels brand new, it’ll always be my grandmother’s house to me.  The view from the kitchen sink window is the same one I’ve looked at since I was a kid washing dishes after a holiday meal.  As I sit here at my desk, I’m sitting in my grandmother’s former bedroom. And there isn’t a morning that I don’t wake up and say “Thank You” before my feet ever hit the floor.  Over the years, gratitude has become a daily thing for me.

The other night, my parents were in a taxicab in San Francisco on their way to a fabulous restaurant when some chick in a huge SUV ran a stop sign and broadsided them.  My parents are OK, but they were REALLY lucky and I am incredibly grateful.  The EMTs hustled them off in an ambulance to San Francisco County Hospital. They were processed through the trauma center with the local gun shot victims and I’m pretty sure that my mother was the only one in there wearing a St. John knit suit.  Knowing her, she probably tried to borrow someone’s cell phone as they wheeled her in so she could call the restaurant to cancel their reservation.   My Dad has bumps and bruises and luckily, that’s all.  My Mom had 2 vertebrae that got thrown out of joint. The amazing doctors were able to work a little magic using about 12 millimeters of titanium and somehow she’s going to walk away with zero neurological damage. From what they tell us, this is very rare.  Turns out that my mother has an exceptionally impressive spinal canal and for that I am very, very grateful.   Some people are born with superhuman mathematical abilities. My mother was born with tremendous knitting skills and apparently a world-class spine.  She just never knew it until now.  

If you added up my daily gratitude, multiply it by a million and then add Infinity,  that’s how grateful I feel this week. 

Fashion Statement

Fashion Statement

In a world with no hoodies

In a world with no clogs

In a world with no Levis

I’d have no reason to blog

About my love for these articles

Of clothing so dear

I’d be naked without them

And let’s make one thing clear

I know I’m not stylish

And I’m unwilling to wear

3- inch heels to the playground

Or pay $300 a pair

For blue jeans designed for

Some hipless toothpicks

Who don’t seem to mind

The pain fashion inflicts

I like to be comfy

In my jeans and my clogs

And my boots and my gym clothes

So I dedicate this blog

To Levi’s and Dansko

And Nike and Uggs

I’d like to visit your factories

And give you all hugs.

True Romance

Nothing has inspired me to blog in recent weeks, so I thought I’d share this sweet tale of  true love. It’s a true story of what happened to a friend of mine a few days ago.  Although she gave me permission to share it, I’m going to use fictional names.  Not that you’d know these people…  So here it is:

For the first 7 years of her life, Gianna grew up in Italy, in a small village.  For as long as she could remember, a boy named Dante was her closest friend. They did everything together.  At age 7, she moved to the United States with her family, but Gianna and Dante stayed in touch through letters.  For 3 months every summer, she went back to Italy and they were inseparable.   At age 11, Gianna and her family moved back to Italy and to the hometown she shared with Dante.  From ages 11 to 17, Gianna and Dante were a couple, totally in love, best friends.  At age 17, she had to move back to the U.S. with her family again and settled in the Boston area. 

She’s 27 now and for the past 10 years, she has returned to Italy and every summer and reconnected with Dante, but it was no longer possible to maintain such a long distance relationship as adults.  Their love never wavered, but they knew that they wanted the other to be happy in life and that might mean a spouse in the country where each lived.  Dante always said he wanted to come to America for Gianna, but he could never make it happen due to family and work obligations in Italy. 

A few years ago, Gianna got serious with a boyfriend here in the U.S. She accepted his marriage proposal.  But in the middle of the engagement, she broke it off because she knew she didn’t love him the way she loved Dante, even though she and Dante couldn’t be together.  They were supposed to be married this past October.  Since then, Gianna has been pretty down in the dumps.  She knew she made the right decision not to get married.  But throughout her relationship and engagement to the ex-fiance, she hadn’t returned to Italy at all.  Now it’s been 2 years since she’s been back there and hasn’t seen Dante in all that time.  She’s single now, and trying to make a nice life for herself here.  She moved out of a place that she shared with a crummy roommate.  She got a promotion at work.  She’s getting her brand new apartment ready to move into this weekend, a fresh start.

Gianna has a set of godparents that have known her all her life.  They emigrated with Gianna’s parents from Italy to the Boston area 10 years ago.  They live in the same town as her parents do and Gianna sees them almost every weekend.  Every year at Christmas, her godfather surprises her with some kind of fabulous gift.  The other night, her godparents showed up at her job.  Her godfather gave her a huge hug as usual, but he put her in such a headlock that she couldn’t see anything.  

He said, “You know how I always give you a great gift for Christmas? Well, I don’t know how I’m going to top this gift next time…”  

He covered her eyes tightly and Gianna got all excited, saying “it’s a 52” HD TV right?! It’s the t.v., right?!!!”.

Then he switches hands but keeps her eyes tightly covered.  Except the 2^nd hand that now covers her eyes isn’t his and Gianna realizes it immediately.  She knows this hand, she can smell the skin of this hand .  It’s Dante’s hand.  Dante flew to the U.S. for the first time that day from Italy and Gianna’s godparents brought him to her.  They haven’t seen each other for 2 years.  Once Gianna realizes it, she literally drops to the floor and Dante tries to hold her up.  And her godparents got it all on film.

Dante has a 1 month visa that can keep him here through January, but he can extend it to 3 months I think.  They want to finally be together forever and he has left everything in Italy to be with her. Dante speaks no English (Gianna is bilingual of course).  I have never seen a girl so happy in her life.  Is that not a great story, or what?! 

Common Sense

Someone recently asked me if I’d ever want a “do-over” of my teens or 20’s.   I said yes, but only if I could do it knowing what I know today.  There are things in life that now seem pretty obvious. Common sense.   Something I apparently lacked in my formative years. I’m not dumb enough to share with the world any of the rather unflattering (and perhaps illegal) folly of my youth.  But I’d be happy to share a few more harmless examples:

Fried Mozzarella

Deep fried mozzarella is not a suitable lunch entrée.  So when your college dining hall offers you a platter of fried mozzarella patties, do not hold out your plate and say “yes, please”.  It is very possible that the weekly ingestion of this big, fried wad of cheese will contribute to the gaining of the freshman 15.  In my own defense, it is also possible that I was blinded by the health benefits of the lycopene in the marinara sauce.  Not that I knew what lycopene was in college.   

Chicken pox

Whatever you do, don’t scratch. Whatever you do, don’t scratch. You’ll get scars!  Scars!  I scratched.  Hence the large crater-like scar in the middle of my forehead.  To make myself feel better, I like to think of it as my Third Eye and that’s why I’m such an Enlightened individual.

Baby Oil

Baby oil is not a suitable way to achieve a golden tan for the prom.  Crispy skin is only acceptable on Peking Duck.

Hair dye

Letting someone apply Eggplant colored henna to your hair may not achieve a natural looking result. This can be confirmed when you step into the sunshine and your mother tells you that your entire head is now dark purple. You know, like an EGGPLANT. 

Tattoos

As much as you think you are always going to want that tattoo because it, like, totally represents who you are and it’s, like, so meaningful… it’s not. At some point in the distant future, your child will announce that she wants to open a lemonade stand to raise money to pay for the laser treatment that will make Mommy’s tattoo go away.  The silver lining is that it is now the world’s most effective tool for insuring that the daughter will never get a tattoo.

I could ramble on and on about my former lack of common sense, but I won’t.  As Shakespeare once said, “Brevity is the soul of wit”.  Then again, Dorothy Parker once said “Brevity is the soul of lingerie”, so I’m not sure whom to believe.

No Toys For This Tot

It’s the holiday shopping season.  Toy catalogs arrive in the mail by the dozens, but I just toss them in the trash.  My 7-year-old daughter doesn’t play with toys anymore.  I don’t know why.  In the past year, she hardly glanced at a board game.  Occasionally I’d see some Barbie dolls strewn around the house but I’m pretty sure they were just feeling unloved and trying to escape.  I’m happy that my daughter has found creative, homemade ways to entertain herself.  I just wish I’d known last year that all I really needed was:

1.  A king-sized bed sheet and chip clips -- Or in my daughter’s world, the building materials one needs to construct a decent fort.

2. A big box -- The bigger the better. Preferably the kind you can climb into and use as a clubhouse. Which is another name for…. a fort.

3.  A huge dry erase board and markers -- It’s mostly used to play school.  We don’t want to GO to school.  We just want to PLAY school.

4. Kitchen utensils and ingredients -- This is what we call potions or concoctions. The other week I bought my daughter some seasonal Pumpkin Spice mix and she practically did cartwheels of joy.  We have an entire kitchen cabinet solely dedicated to concoctions.  There may be a few bottles of wine in there too, but those are Mommy’s.

So this holiday season, I’m going to wise up. Under the tree, there will be no Barbie toys that take 2 adults and industrial strength pliers to remove from the box.  There will be no stuffed animals (i.e., dust collectors).  There will be no cute dresses or other clothing.  Apparently, the days when my daughter will wear what I’ve chosen for her have come and gone. 

So, what will be under the tree this year? Maybe something small. After all, it’s the little things that often make us truly happy. I’m talking about iTunes gift cards.  But I’ll put them in a REALLY big box. 

Musicland

Musicland was the name of a store in the mall where I worked as a teenager.  As you can imagine, they always had great music blaring out into the rest of the mall. Although that place went out of business a long time ago, I remember it well because sometimes it feels like I’m living at my own version of Musicland.  

Back when I was single, I wasn’t really someone who needed to have tunes cranking all the time.  I enjoyed a little silence.  Flash forward to today, where my house is so wired for sound that I half expect the whole place to elevate off its foundation from the sheer decibel level (i.e. it gets REALLY LOUD).  As the resident killjoy in the family, I’ve also become like Pavlov’s dog.  When my husband starts cranking the tunes, I instinctively start running around the house closing windows, concerned that the neighbors are going to revolt.  My husband finds this both amusing and annoying.

Over a decade has passed since I married The Music Man. I still have no idea what woofers or tweeters are other than the fact that they’re not pets. I’ve also given up trying to ditch the giant speakers that are taller than my 7 year old.  I lovingly recognize that my husband has a nostalgic soft spot for all things stereophonic.

A couple of years ago, he went to our local Goodwill store to make a donation.  Somehow, he came home with 4 boxes of record albums.  They’ve hibernated in our basement until recently when a turntable magically appeared.  The silver lining is that my kid now knows what a record is and how to play it.   Most of the time however, we play our music through a device that I like to refer to as “The World’s Greatest Invention” – the Logitech Squeezebox.  It connects to your home’s WiFi network and essentially puts the whole world of music in your hands.  For a minor monthly fee, we’ve added Rhapsody, a digital music service.  It’s a great thing, except that it makes you realize your entire CD collection that took years to accumulate is now basically worthless. I don’t think anyone’s going to cherish CDs the way people like my husband cherish record albums.  However, we still can’t bring ourselves to throw them out.  What got me hooked on the whole Squeezebox system is the Internet Radio access. Anytime I want, I can tune in live to radio stations around the globe.  My current favorite is London-based 95.8 Capital FM.  But if I’m really bored, I’ve been known to switch over to whatever’s playing on the air in Reykjavik, Iceland or some other far flung place for no other reason than “because I can”.

When it comes to music, I can look back and honestly say that my husband was right. He taught me that music does make your day better.  When Dad’s playing air guitar, Mom’s dancing around the house and the child is actually joining in rather than trying to get away from us, it’s a good day.  

Music also brings back good memories.  Whenever we hear Vince Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy” theme, we remember our wedding and how everyone loved the fact that we chose this iconic but silly piece of music as our ceremony recessional.  When I hear Eric Clapton’s “Change the World” or Sting’s entire “Mercury Falling” album, it reminds me of when we first started dating.  


All of us in my little three-person family are in agreement about one thing.  Life is better with a horn section.  I challenge anyone to turn on some Earth, Wind & Fire, Chicago or Stevie Wonder’s “Sir Duke” and not start playing their imaginary trumpet when the horn section kicks in.

As Stevie sang in “Sir Duke”:

Music is a world within itself

With a language we all understand

With an equal opportunity

For all to sing, dance and clap their hands

How can anyone argue with that?

My Nemesis… Dinner

I have a love/hate relationship with dinner.  The part I love is where my husband, daughter and I sit at the dinner table and catch up on the day.  The part I don’t love is, well, the rest of it. 

Rachel Ray can chirp all day about “30 Minute Meals” but she’s not counting the time involved in the weekly grocery shopping, menu planning and clean up.  It doesn’t feel worth it when you’re doing all this prep work and it takes us 3 minutes to eat.  Maybe 4.  I’m thinking my family should get into the whole “raw food” diet.  Then I could just toss some nuts & berries and a carrot on a plate and call it a day.

As I recall, I survived my 20’s eating a nice bowl of Captain Crunch every night and I turned out just fine.  Sometimes I’d change it up and have some pasta, but that was pretty much the extent of my cooking repertoire.  To be completely honest, many of my dinners occurred at a place that no longer exists.  It was a magical place called Happy Hour.  Oh, the joy of free chicken wings. Even if my friends and I only ordered a single cocktail each, our friendly bartender would reward us with free chicken wings and nachos.

Back then, I couldn’t afford much for dinner anyway.  I was spending all my money on rent. One friend offered her solution that she fondly referred to as  “The Poor Man’s Roast Beef Dinner”. Take a bag of microwave popcorn and a can of soda.  Ingest.  You’ll be so full that you feel like you ate a whole roast beef dinner.  Nutritious, no. Handy and cheap, you bet.

Now that I have responsibility for providing relatively healthy meals to my family, I realize that I need to stop complaining about making dinner.  I’ll never be that person who cooks all day Sunday in preparation for the week.  My Sunday has better things to do.  Realistically, I will continue to overuse my Plan B menu or as I like to call it “Breakfast for Dinner”.   Eggs, wheat toast, fresh fruit and bacon - a fairly balanced meal.  You could put bacon on shredded cardboard and it would probably taste good.  And where there is bacon, all is well in the world.

Mail...Why do I love thee?

It starts with the sound of the mailman’s truck.  I hear it the same way that kids hear the ice cream man’s jingle from 2 blocks away.  My mailman’s name is Dave.  I think it’s always wise to know your mail carrier’s name.  When it’s pouring out, I know that Dave will have my back.  Nary a drop of rain touches my Amazon packages.

I’m often home when the mail arrives.  Like a stalker, I wait until Dave has disappeared a respectable distance down the street before I slide outside and quietly lift the lid of my mailbox.  It’s a pretty mailbox too.  I looked high and low for something that would look good on the outside of my house and I knew I wasn’t going to find it at Home Depot.  I ended up on a website called www.budgetmailboxes.com and chose a classy little copper Craftsman style that has plenty of room for all of the magazines and catalogs we get. We get a lot.

My husband is a car guy and his drugs of choice are Automobile Magazine, Car & Driver, AutoWeek, RaceTech, F1 and Popular Science. I went on a subscription diet and cut myself back to Vanity Fair, Real Simple, Cooking Light (not that I cook or do it lightly) and More Magazine (because now that I’m over 40, I’m in the “club” and it’s actually a great magazine).  I also subscribe to The Week which is a less known news weekly but a great little magazine that summarizes what’s happened in the world that week in a completely objective way. They print articles and editorials from all sides of the argument (www.theweek.com).

And then, there are the catalogs.  Generations of trees have died to print the sea of catalogs that find their way to my mailbox.

It was a dark day when we received our first (unsolicited) American Girl catalog.  For at least a year, I was able to toss them out before my daughter ever had a chance to ask, “Ooooh Mommy, what is THAT?!! Eventually, some innocent kid at school introduced her to the world of American Girl and I’ve been paying for it ever since.  Literally.  $90 for a doll, really?  Is their hair woven from strands of gold?  Do they spit up gold coins and poop sapphires?  The lady who invented them in 1986 is named Pleasant Rowland.  Don’t even get me started….

On a more upbeat note, I’d like to pay tribute to the Holy Grail, also known as the Sears Wish Book (cue the angels singing).  When we were kids, we couldn’t wait for it to arrive in the mail.  When it did, it was all out war among my 3 siblings and I to see who could lock their hands on it first.  Eventually, my parents would let us take turns marking what we liked.  We didn’t get everything we wanted, but the act of burying our noses in the Wish Book for hours at a time was its own kind of gift.  It was a sad day when Sears killed the Wish Book.  I don’t know whose brilliant idea it was, but I’m pretty sure his middle name was Grinch.

Remember when we used to get letters in the mail?  As kids, we’d turn into pen pals if one of us went away over the summer. Even if nothing much happened, we had no problem writing letters so long that we could barely fold up them up small enough to stuff in an envelope.  When was the last time you got a letter in the mail where you had to flip it over to read the rest?  A long time, right?  There was something about seeing a friends’ thoughts in their own handwriting.  It’s not the same as email.  That said, I have to admit that I always preferred to type my letters rather than write long hand. But I had a good reason.  My letters were definitely funnier when I typed them. I don't know why, but it was true.

I will conclude with the best piece of mail I ever got.  It was a check from Sallie Mae, the Guaranteed Student Loan people.  Yes, they sent ME a check with a lovely note.  Because I had overpaid my student loan. Who does that? After 10 years of sending them money, I never thought about the day that I’d be done. That letter is in my scrapbook.  I think it’s a one-of-a-kind.  In the history of the world.

Greeting Cards

It’s that time… time to start asking yourself, “Do I REALLY want to send out holiday cards this year?” It’s a lot of work. First, you have to find a decent picture.  This could take weeks. I become obsessed with grabbing the camera at random moments and forcing innocent bystanders to snap a photo of my family on the outside chance that it’ll be a keeper - especially if I’m having a good hair day.  Thank goodness some guy named Steven Sasson invented the digital camera (it’s true, look it up on Wikipedia).  Otherwise I’d be wasting rolls and rolls of film, trying to get a shot that my husband and I can agree on.

Secondly, do you use a photo of the whole family or just the cute kids?  Here’s what I think – if all of your loved ones are people you see frequently, then just use the shot of the kids.  If your friends & family are all over the map, go with the family photo.  Then again, now that everyone is on Facebook, are we all just bored and tired of looking at each other yet?  Do we even need to send cards in the mail?

I say yes.  Yes we do.  I have a weird love affair with getting mail, but that’s another quirk of mine that can be addressed some other time.  As for holiday cards, I think its swell to get something in the mail other than bills in December.  Or January, if you’re like some people I know who send a New Year’s card under the guise of being “original” when it’s really all about the fact that they NEVER GOT AROUND to sending it before Christmas and this is their excuse.  Happy New Year!  Hang me on your mantel for the month of January! All alone! 

Anyone who knows me, knows that my card is probably going to be the first one you get.  I am an early bird. Perpetually punctual. Or as my friends and husband call it – Really Annoying.  In all matters relative to the clock, I will be right on time or 10 minutes early.  If I’m late, call the FBI because something sinister must have happened to me. Again, another topic for another day.  Back to the cards.

I truly love getting holiday cards every year.  The more the merrier.  I hang every single one up – including the boring ones with no photos from my accountant.  When I used to get home delivery of the newspaper, I’d even hang up the card from the guy with the loud muffler who idled in my driveway at 5:00 a.m. and threw my paper in the snow bank every day.  I realize that his card was really just a plea for a juicy tip, but I hung it up anyway. And yes, in the spirit of the holiday, I gave him a tip without ever complaining about the service.  Anyone who is doing their job at 5:00 a.m. every day is A-OK in my book.

When the holidays are over (also known as January 2^nd), I put all of the photo holiday cards in my photo album.  I think it’s nice to have a record of how your friends and their kids have changed year to year.  I do it and it makes me happy.  Because I’m an organizational freakazoid  (as my loving husband calls it), you could bet good cash money that those cards will be IN the album on January 2^nd. I don’t care who makes fun of me.

So charge up those digital cameras and get going.  Your friends at Snapfish.com, Shutterfly.com, KodakGallery.com and Minted.com (a great one) are waiting for your business.  And if you’re an early bird like me, you’ll get a sweet discount.  You’ll get called all kinds of names for being too organized, but you’ll get a discount….

Cash Cab

New York City in the autumn is just one of the all time great places to be.  Each time we go as a family, I enjoy watching how my daughter interacts with the city as compared to previous years.  She's seven now, but she thinks she's fifteen.  She also thinks she's Eloise (or at least, Eloise-like and she's already stayed in more hotels and ordered more room service than I ever did in my entire youth.


The other day, we were somewhere in the city and she was scanning the streets. She had a very serious, intent look on her face and she had completely tuned us out.  Finally, I asked her "WHAT are you looking at??".  She replied "I'm looking for Cash Cab."  


I admit it,  I let my daughter watch television shows that aren't on the Disney-Nick Jr-PBS grid.  Sometimes she'll turn on the t.v. and go straight for the Food Network.  She's particularly fond of the Barefoot Contessa and likes to imitate Paula Deen.


"First, we're a-gonna start with a little BUTTER..", my daughter drawls in her best South Carolina accent.  She finds this particularly hysterical.


Anyway, sometimes we watch this show called Cash Cab on the Discovery Channel.  How we came across it, I can't recall.  The host is Ben Bailey and he drives a New York City taxi cab.  He'll pick up anyone who is hailing a cab. Once they're seated, a fury of lights and bells go off in the cab and he tells them "You're on Cash Cab, a game show that takes place right here inside my taxi cab!  Do you want to play?!!"  Of course, everyone says yes.  Who doesn't want to win some money while you're getting from point A to point B - even if you might end up looking like an idiot for not knowing the easy questions.  By the time you've reached your destination, you could win upwards of $1500 (but three strikes and you're out.... and he literally will kick you out of the cab.).  At the end, you can also risk it all (!!) and go double or nothing on a Video Challenge.  We've already decided that we wouldn't take the risk.


Well, my daughter and I are desperate to get on Cash Cab.  We think we're so smart.  We even have our "Shout Outs" all planned out.  A Shout Out is someone you're allowed to call one time if you don't know the answer.  We think that GrandBob would know the answer to anything.  However, I just remembered that GrandBob never keeps his cell phone on and this could pose a problem when we're speeding down 7th Avenue and need to know who the Father of the Atomic Bomb was  (I know, it's Oppenheimer.  That was just an example.  I told you we're wicked smart).


Needless to say, we did not find Cash Cab this past weekend.  In a sea of 13,000 taxi cabs in New York City, we felt pretty certain that we'd find Ben Bailey.  Oh well.  It just means that there are bigger & better prizes on our horizon. In fact, I'm feeling pretty confident that we're going to win the lottery this week.  Of course, this would involve actually buying a ticket.  I'll only buy one (because that's all it takes to win) and I'll only use coins I find at the bottom of my purse.  These are my rules and I'm sticking with 'em.

Man Shops Globe

Ok, this is just a shout out for a television show I just saw on the Sundance Channel.  It's called "Man Shops World" and it basically follows a guy whose job it is to go shopping around the world on behalf of the store Anthropologie (120 stores worldwide).  He buys "found objects" large and small to be sold and/or used as store setting & decor.  The first episode I saw took him through the flea markets of Paris and Provence.  Watching the show, you can learn a bit about different periods and styles of furniture, art and decor.  I, on my couch, enjoyed every minute of living vicariously through him. This is a guy who loves his job and I can't wait to see where he heads off to next.  I think it's on Wednesday nights, 10 p.m. EST.

Singles Ads….and Jimmy Buffett

So here’s a job most people never had.  I was in charge of co-managing the Personal ads at a major city magazine many years ago.  You know, “SJF seeking SJM for true love, 2.5 kids and a house in the suburbs”, etc… 

There was no email, no eHarmony, no Match.com back then, so there was no instant gratification. Singles had to wait for the magazine to hit the newsstands. Then they had to wait for people to mail a response c/o the magazine’s offices where our beloved, unpaid interns sorted and forwarded them along to the SJF (single Jewish female) or DWM (divorced white male) or MGPTBS (Married Guy Pretending To Be Single, a.k.a. Idiot).

Sometimes, a few of the really bold guys would come into our offices to personally pick up their mail and then try to ask us out.  That’s what my grandmother would have called CHUTZPAH. But let the record show that I never accepted a date from any of them.  That would’ve been the equivalent of someone working at Ticketmaster and grabbing the best seats for themselves first, right?  Not that I’ve ever seen anyone get a good seat through Ticketmaster.  Except for that time I scored awesome U2 tickets by being first in line at the Ticketmaster booth inside a Kmart in Florida.  I pissed off all the Jimmy Buffett fans waiting behind me because you know that if you don’t get your Jimmy Parrot-Head Buffett tickets within the first 3 minutes of them going on sale, they will be SOLD OUT. Why does that guy sell out so many gigs?  Who are these people buying the tickets?  Oh wait a second, I don’t care. 

Hollywood East

The other night, a friend told me about a major new film production studio being slated for our area.  They're calling it "Hollywood East".  This friend is convinced that I need to grab this opportunity to get back into the entertainment industry.  Tempting.... but let's recall a few of the unglamorous aspects of working for high profile directors, screenwriters, producers and stars, shall we?
1.  Back in the day, we were regularly summoned by pagers and we never took them off.  One night I was startled awake by a rumbling, thinking we were having an earthquake (this being L.A.).  I quickly realized it was just the waistband of my pajamas vibrating. Of course these days we use cell phones, but it would still make my pj's vibrate. And not in a good way.

2.  Being someone's verbal punching bag takes a kind of restraint I no longer possess.  When you're a lowly assistant, sometimes you just have to smile and "fall on your sword" as they say. But really, who wants to be yelled at for offering someone a cup of coffee?  One well known female director whipped open her trailer door just so she could scream, "I'm making a goddamn $40 million movie! Don't you think I know when I want a cup of coffee?".  In response, I made the rookie mistake of giggling at the absurdity of the situation. Probably shouldn't have done that.

3.  One day during post production, I was asked to provide voice-overs of a gasp, a shriek and an exclamation because someone was too chicken to ask the woman who was making $20 million per movie to make her own noises.  Doesn't a gasp, a shriek and an exclamation get me a SAG card? Although I wasn't paid for my voice overs, I'm pretty sure the actress still got her $20 million.

Don't get me wrong, I loved the process of making movies and t.v.  It was exhausting but exhilarating and 80% of the time, I worked for talented, kind people.  It's the other 20% that I could tell unflattering stories about. But I won't. Because of my good manners.

Rewind.

One day in and I'm already changing my whole blog.  A trusted "writer" friend told me that my original blog name sounded wishy-washy.  Well, that's no good.
So it's no longer called "Not That You Asked Me, But..."


Of course, all the good blog names are taken. The URL for my new blog (4corners2home) references the fact that I've lived in all 4 corners of the U.S. and finally moved back home to New England.  But I wanted to call it "Been There, Done That" so that's what I'm putting as my title.


I can already tell that blogging is an EXCELLENT distraction.  I'm self-employed and right now, I should be working.  As soon as I pry my hands off this keyboard, the employer side of me will call the employee side of me into my own office and have a little talk about goofing off. I will remind myself that I work on 100% commission.  No phone calls, no $$.  Now there's some motivation for you.  


I'm an executive recruiter, also known as a headhunter.  When I'm working at full throttle (or when I set my dial to 11, for all of you Spinal Tap fans), I'm really good at it.


Ok, back to work... just as soon as I go see if anyone is hanging out in the break room. Oh wait a minute, that's my kitchen and there's no one there except me and a bag of chocolate covered espresso beans.   

Self indulgence 101

Yes, I realize that blogging about my random thoughts is an act of extreme self indulgence, but everyone else is doing it, so there.  That's not to say that other bloggers don't have something important and vital to say.  I'm just saying that I unequivocally do not. 


Having said that, I will readily admit to avidly following the entertainment industry (my former professional home) and reluctantly following the world of politics and business.  I don't enjoy following politics but I feel I must.  I have parents who are quite Liberal and a husband who is whole-heartedly a Conservative.  So, I can either read up and speak up when the dinner table conversation turns to politics, or I can just sit there silently while the debates volley over my head like a tennis match.  And anyone who knows me knows that I hate to sit idly by when there's a raging debate.


So, I'll blog because I can.  Je pense donc je suis.  I know that this translates into "I think, therefore I am".  But I just like to write it down because it's one of the only things I remember from 5 years of French class and 1 fascinating year of college Philosophy class with the only good looking professor on campus.  Not that this is relevant to what I was saying.