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.