Thinking Back ...

It's July 16, 2009.

48 years ago -- hard to believe it's that long -- my Grandma Sadie died. I was eight years old. I loved and adored her, and had been sad that she didn't choose to live with us after we moved into our house just months earlier. In fact, she had told my parents that she was going to live with us so that they would take the money she offered to help them buy the house, and she did move with us, and stayed a little less than a month, and then basically said "Ha ha just kidding" and moved back in with my aunt, to the town in Massachusetts she had lived in for over forty years.

I didn't go to the funeral with my parents and sister, and I was angry at them for years for leaving me behind, but when I was older, they told me that I had been afraid to go, and they reluctantly left me with family friends. It was probably a good choice, if I was scared. Not ready to deal with it, I guess. I remember that one morning (they were gone for several days), the mom in the family I stayed with let us sit on the floor and eat our breakfast off of trays, still in our pajamas, because there was a rocket launch on TV. (It was a Mercury flight, the Liberty Bell 7, commanded by Gus Grissom.) It was very exciting, as I remember now. I don't regret not going with my family, because I don't have that memory of Grandma like that (not that the casket would have been open; that's not a Jewish thing.) I remember her smile and her holding me on her lap and her voice and the magic things that came out of her kitchen.

In 1969 -- forty years ago on this day -- they launched the first rocket to carry men to the moon. We watched on TV days later as they prepared to step out of the lunar module and onto the surface. If you didn't live before then, and men on the moon has always been a given to you, you can't imagine what it was like. The TV picture was poor, although now they always show it enhanced and clear, not the way we saw it that night. It was a hot summer night, and everybody everywhere was inside in front of a TV. We had just started using the air conditioner that summer, and it was a big one, so we all sat and froze, in the dark living room with the glowing TV on its portable stand in front of us. We didn't have a color TV then, but the moon pictures were in black and white anyway. (How would I know?) We watched, and we grinned, and couldn't believe it, and took tremendous pride that night not in being Americans, I think, but in being human beings.

And ... 32 years ago today, the Hubs and I said "Live long and prosper," among other things, and poof, married. 32 years. It's a long time, man.




watching THE FAMILY GUY :: ENTRY #2088
READING: The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa

A Visit From Grandma

I'm feeling pretty good today, btw, and thanks to those who commented yesterday. I mean, I could still use a vacation at the Mayo Clinic, but that's pretty much every day. I had a wonderful therapeutic mini-massage this morning, and the basement sink is clogged, but generally okay.

On the way home from the massage, I had a little visit with my Grandma Ida. Okay, let's say I enjoyed a little fantasy visit from Grandma. Because a real one would be scary, since she'd be about 117 years old and a zombie and all that. But the fantasy visit went like this:

The doorbell rings and I answer, and Grandma Ida is standing on my front porch. She looks pretty much like this:



except not fancy. (This was their 50th anniversary photo.) Grandma Ida was basically good peasant stock, never wore make-up that I can remember, styled her hair with a man's pocket comb. She was very pretty, as I have mentioned, but generally wore simple dresses with sturdy shoes. Which is how she would be dressed on my front porch. She would also be carrying a black purse draped over her arm -- the kind that snaps closed with a clasp at the top -- and would be carrying two shopping bags, one in each hand.

"Grandma!" hug hug hug "Come in! Let me show you my house!" She puts down her shopping bags in the living room, but holds onto her purse as I show her around. She is nodding and smiling. My house is small, which suits her fine. All she ever wanted was to live in a nice small house.

(Come to think of it, Grandma liked small things, as I do. I think she was so used to moving from one place to another at the drop of a hat that it made more sense to her to have small things. Why have an 8 x 10 of your grandchildren when a 5 x 7 will do? Who needs a hairbrush when you can have a pocket comb?)

We sit at my kitchen table and have some tea. She has hers in a tall glass, with the sugar in cubes and a lot of milk. (Skim milk? Never heard of it.) She does dissolve the sugar in the tea, though; she doesn't hold the cube between her teeth and drink the tea through it, although it wasn't uncommon among her generation. She'll have a nice little piece cake with it, too. When we're done, she'll take the dishes to the sink and wash them, despite my protest of "Grandma, I'll wash the dishes!" And then she looks at the sink. She leans down, opens the cabinet door underneath and peers in at my cleaning supplies and says "Where is the Ajax?" (I wish I could convey her inflection to you.) Hmm.

Next thing I know, Grandma is scrubbing my sink and countertop, and then my stove, inside and out, and then the refrigerator. And then she says "Is there a pail someplace, maybe, and a brush?"

Ahhh. She'll tell me to do the laundry, maybe, or vacuum, while she scrubs the kitchen and bathroom floors on her hands and knees, because how else would you clean a floor? I don't think she dusts or sweeps, her thing is to have her hands in soapy water and scrub. And when she's done ...

She folds the laundry out of the dryer. No one folds laundry like Grandma. She uses her water-worn hands to fold, and smooth out every crease. When she's done, your underwear and socks look like they've been ironed.

She'll stay for dinner, but I put my foot down when she wants to help cook because you never really wanted to eat her cooking. (Although I alone loved her lamb stew.) She'll do the dishes when we're finished eating, and dry them, and put everything away where she thinks it should go so that I'll be calling her for the next three weeks every day to ask where missing stuff is.

She'll smile and thank me for letting her do all that scrubbing today -- and she'll mean it -- and then she'll loop her purse over her arm and pick up her shopping bags -- I have no idea what was ever in the shopping bags that she needed to carry around with her -- and kiss me goodbye at the door and walk down to the corner to wait for the bus. I'll watch from my front porch until I see that she's gotten on.

*sigh* Where's a holodeck when you really need one?




watching HOME IMPROVEMENT :: ENTRY #2084
READING: ----- by -----

More Ida, Less Sam

I didn't fall asleep last night until about 1:00, since the Hubs had been out teaching and got home close to midnight. I wasn't worried about him, but I would doze off and a little noise would wake me up (thinking it was the door opening or something) and then once he did get home I was too awake. Bummer. So I'm working on about four and half hours of sleep today, which is hardly my optimum. The SCM is out, but my favorite sub of all time (other than K, who is in for someone else) is here.

So while I was trying to fall asleep, I was thinking about the story I posted yesterday, and that I wanted to show you this picture of Grandma and Grandpa:


This was taken on their 50th anniversary, so that would have been New Year's Day, 1966. So I thought you might like to hear another story or two, although not in the same vein as yesterday's. (Thanks for the lovely comments, btw.)

This was during the time they lived in Florida, which was Grandpa's dream, but not Grandma's. She did make the move with him, although they moved back a couple of years later. My mother flew down there to celebrate their anniversary with them; they had a big party, as they had many, many friends (but no family) who had either moved to Florida too, or who became their friends there. They were incredibly social people, btw, which is interesting, considering that my sister and I could live happily as hermits. But I digress. My mother took this picture; her brother did not make the trip from California. The rest of us didn't go because it was too expensive to fly.

Anyway, the following spring, so I was 13, Grandma flew up alone for a visit. I actually still have a letter from Grandpa to my mother in which he says he wishes he could come too, but a $98 plane ticket is just too expensive. (He had some sort of job down there too, folding newspapers or something, for pocket money. Other than that, they lived on Social Security.) I went to the airport with my parents to pick her up.

Oh, the hugga-mugga. Grandma without Grandpa was generally a high-drama sort of person. And of course she arrived with a number of bags, suitcases and parcels, as well as the obligatory black patent leather purse over her arm. I was wearing a new dress that I loved; it was sleeveless, which was unusual for me because I rarely wore, or wear, sleeveless, but this was real Carnaby Street and I adored it. I thought I looked very grown up. I sat in the back seat of the car with Grandma, who chattered away in a combination of English and Yiddish, and then suddenly looked at me and saw what I was wearing, and grabbed my arm and pulled it up, and looked.

Shocked, she said to me in a loud whisper "Did you shave under your arm?" I wish I could reproduce her accent for you; arm was a two-syllable word. I grinned and nodded. This was part of the excitement of the sleeveless dress for me; I had finally been allowed to shave under my arms when I got it. Grandma made a face, and then followed perhaps the most memorable thing she ever said to me:

"I shaved under my arms once and it never grew back." Clearly, this had been some kind of disapointment for her.

Now the story on this, I may have written before, was that only a few years earlier, she was going to a family wedding or Bar Mitzvah or something, and had gotten a dressy sleeveless dress, and my mother refused to allow her to go unless she shaved under her arms. In which case she was probably the only one of her sisters, or of any of the women her generation, at the event whose armpits were naked ("like a little girl") and trust me, they were all wearing sleeveless. Whether or not they shaved their legs, I don't know, but I doubt it. Grandma and her sisters were all very fair and blonde, and by the time they were old, there probably wasn't much there anyway. Which is why it never grew back, I guess. Anyway, she shrugged, as if to tell me that shaving under my arms was a choice I was going to have to live with, and we rode home in chatty fun.

Once she was settled into my room, she called me in and asked me, again in a loud whisper, "So, are you a lady now?" A tough question here, because as I grinned and said yes, I also backed out of her reach. These old ladies from "the other side," as we said, had some funny ideas.

They did not tell their children about sex, certainly, and not about puberty and what went with it either. I guess this was supposed to be something you learned by observation, I don't know, since Grandma herself was one of twelve children or so. So my mother knew nothing except what her older brother, the Authority on Everything, had told her about getting her period. (He had probably read about it in the encyclopedia, which he read cover to cover, as well as the dictionary.) So when her time came, she knew what it was, and then her mother came home and she told her she was bleeding. At which point, Grandma took a swing and gave Shirl a zets -- a smack -- that knocked her onto the floor. Because getting your period was a sign of womanhood, a good thing, which meant that the Evil Eye might notice you and try to steal your happiness, so you had to look as if you were being punished. So naturally, when she asked me, I didn't want to be within arm's reach.

But she hadn't knocked any of her other granddaughters to the floor, and I was the youngest, so I guess somewhere along the line my mother must have said to her "DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE!!" She didn't, but she was delighted that I was now "a lady" too.



WATCHING TWO AND A HALF MEN :: ENTRY #1959
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Who's Your Patronus?

It's not a meme, but I'll get to that in a minute.

This is how strange it was here today:



I don't know if you can tell from the picture, but it's snowing and the sky is blue. For most of the day today, we had snow squalls and bright sunshine. It was very weird.

Okay, so here's the thing. If you know Harry Potter (or if you don't, I'm going to explain it), but I figure that if I had a Patronus, it would probably be a little old man in an overcoat and a fedora.

This isn't exactly a meme, just a question I asked myself, and answered. Feel free to give it a shot.

In Peter Pan, the children must "think lovely thoughts" to make themselves fly. Harry Potter must think of his best possible memory in order to create his Patronus, a powerful protective charm that takes the form of an animal or creature of some kind.

So here's the question: which memory of yours would make you fly, or let you summon a Patronus?


I am anywhere between eight and fifteen years old. It's a Friday afternoon, after school but before dark. It's a scene that takes place once a month or so. Grandma and Grandpa are coming for the weekend.

They're coming from the city, by bus. If I'm younger, they're coming from the Bronx, a 45 minute trip. If I'm older, it's a two hour ordeal from Brooklyn.

I know they're coming, and I can't sit still; ultimately I can't stay in the house at all.

I wiggle my way onto the sidewalk in front of my house, waiting and watching. Our street is three blocks long and we live near the end of the second block. At the far end of the first block, where the street starts, is the highway, and the bus stop. That's where they'll be coming from. There's a slight rise in the street, so the first thing I will see will be the top of Grandpa's hat as they come over the crest towards me.

I am too little to cross the street, too little to run up to the end of the block so I can wait for them to cross from the first block to the second. But I edge my way, first past the house to our left, then to the house to the left of that. I will usually stop before I get to the Krugs' house, because they have a mean, scary, barking dog. I dance my way back and forth, not too far for Mom to yell at me, far enough to see. At last!

I see Grandpa's hat, and then Grandma's, and I can see them coming! He is carrying two suitcases and anything else she could hang on him; she has her purse and a couple of shopping bags. I race past the barking dog and stand on the corner, hopping from one foot to another. (If I am older, I have already been waiting on the corner, and race carefully across the street to meet them as they make their way down the first block.)

We are walking towards the house now, I am hopping all around them, and perhaps have been allowed to take a shopping bag to carry. No hugs yet, just smiles. When we get to our house, the front door open and waiting, I have only to open the storm door and hold it for them and then they are inside!

Before we can blink, Grandma has put down her bags (but not her purse) and with her coat and hat still on, she will grab either my sister or me, whoever is closer to her, and begin to dance. She sings the same tune each time: ta YA TA! ta ya ta! ta yatatatataTA! as she dances us around the living room, one at a time. When she's finished, Grandpa has put down the suitcases and hung up his overcoat and hat in the closet and we get to hug him, one at a time, always standing in the little entry area of the living room in front of the mirror. When I am older, we are on eye level; I have been five foot two since I was twelve, and he has been five foot three since about 1910. It is the best hug ever.

By the time we have hugged Grandpa and danced with Grandma, her coat is hung up too, and we are helping them carry their things upstairs. They sleep in my room when they are here, and I happily take the extra bed in my sister's room. I would share a room with my sister forever if only they would come and live with us, the most wonderful thing I can imagine.

Once they are settled in my room, Grandpa comes out into the hallway for a low-voice conversation with both of us, with my sister and me. He reaches into his deep pants pockets and starts to apologize, because they are not wealthy people and he cannot give us more. We are already saying "No, Grandpa, don't give us anything! We're happy that you're here!" because we are and because we know that they are poor. He forces us each to take a dollar from him, and then we ask if he has gum, because he always has a flat yellow box of Chiclets in his left front pants pocket. He does, and gives us each a piece, and we chew, happy and contented. Grandma and Grandpa are here for the weekend.



WATCHING WIFE SWAP :: ENTRY #1958
READING: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norell by Susanna Clarke

Taking a Walk

So. I took my car for the new radio this morning, and while it was being done, I took a walk.

I am fairly certain that I did not recently write about one of my happiest childhood memories, although I was thinking about it recently. If I Peter Pan were to sprinkle fairy dust on me, this is the thought that would make me fly. If I were at Hogwarts, this is what would conjure me a Patronus.

I grew up on a street that was three blocks long; we lived near the end of the middle block. The first block rose up a little towards the highway that is one of the main roads through Bizarro Town. The bus from New York City uses this highway as its major route through town. When I was small, I was not permitted to go off of the second block, and certainly not up to the highway.

But if I knew that my grandparents were coming to visit, I roamed the limits of my block, looking hopefully up towards the highway. I knew that after they stepped down off the bus, they would appear at the crest of the street, at which point I would be free to run up to them, taking a package from one, perhaps, as I danced excitedly beside them while they walked wearily towards my house. They were always burdened with bags and packages and suitcases; it was Grandma Ida's way of life. My happy moment would be the instant I saw their recognizable figures come into view.

So the car audio place I went to was on the highway, where it intersects with the street of my childhood home. I put on my headphones, turned on my iPod, and turned right out of their parking lot, which put me at the crest of the hill, suddenly a player on the other side in my childhood memory.

I walked down the street, all the way down to the third block. Once I hit the second, though, I could look at each house and remember the people who lived there long ago. The names did not always come to me, but the faces did. My parents' best friends lived near the end of the third block; they had helped my parents find the house to buy. I spent a lot of time here.

At the end of the third block, I looked across the street and saw an empty lot -- still empty; there's a huge drainage ditch here -- where we played all the freaking time as we got older. I took a left, and came up the last two blocks of the street next to mine. I passed the house where my third grade teacher lived. I passed the house where I babysat when I was a teenager.

Before I came up the third block, though, I turned right, passed one house, and saw this before me:



So, they finally put a cut-through in the fence. I always just climbed over it.



Trees? Why would you put trees right in the middle of the playground? Hey, when I was a kid, this school was jammed; we would have run headlong into trees in the middle of the playground for sure. I guess the population's a little thinner now.



This is just a piss-poor imitation of the backstop I used to climb. For one thing, there's no actual ball field anymore; it's mostly overgrown, so I guess they're not expecting much ball playing here. The town leagues don't use this field to play on. And is it just me, or is the backstop a lot shorter than it used to be?



The building to the right is the new addition. It used to be one big open field, but now, this building breaks it up. There's still a little playground on the other side of it.



The two story building on the left is the original school, built in 1923. Not only did I go to elementary school here, the MIL is a graduate as well.



You're wondering what this is. It's the faint outline of a white dodgeball circle that's been painted over. I don't know that dodgeball has been banned here in Bizarro Town as it has in many other places, but I guess it's not encouraged. They used to paint these circles on the ground so that a class could come outside for recess or phys. ed. and have a specific place to play.

What makes this dodgeball circle special? In fact, it's the specific spot in the circle I was standing on to take the picture that rang the bell of my memory. This is the spot I was standing on when our fifth grade teacher told us that President Kennedy had been shot.

I moved on. I hit the Dunkin Donuts, and then went back to the car shop, where the guy had finished early (!) and my car was ready. Nice little radio, not too expensive. Too many buttons, though.

And I finally got the new car inspected this afternoon, the bastards. There was NO LINE, but it still took a half hour for a five minute inspection, because the line my car was on just stopped dead with no one working it for about twenty minutes. On the other lines, five people who came in after me left before I did.

It was an interesting day.

WATCHING DR. PHIL :: ENTRY #1580

Things

Last night, the Hubs was making his dinner in the kitchen and I heard a hearty "SHIT!" which could mean anything, so I hesitantly asked "What happened?" and he came to the doorway between the family room and kitchen holding up a 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup in one hand and its handle in the other. I said "Well, we've had it for 30 years. I guess a replacement is due." So now I'm thinking: what else do we have that's been here -- well, with us, if not in this physical location -- for 30 years?

Let's see. My parents gave us a set of Farberware pots and pans as our engagement gift. Still there, still using them every day. (Well ... I don't use them every day, but someone does.) I still have several pieces of Tupperware from the first year we were married because that stuff pretty much lasts forever, and if it doesn't, they're supposed to replace it. Unless you microwave the old stuff, which we have, so that warranty's pretty much voided. But the bowls are still good anyway.

I've got the brandy snifters, or whatever they are, that Edith gave us as an engagement gift, because really, what house is complete without such things?



(and as you can see, they're still in the carton in which I tried unsuccessfully to unload them at numerous garage sales over the years.)

When we got married, we bought two things: a good Sony TV, and a queen-sized bed. Both gone, both replaced, although the bed only a few years ago. All the rest of our furniture was hand-me-down, mostly from my 92 year old Uncle Joe (Edith's father, btw), who had recently passed away. All that's gone now, too.

I have a step-stool that an elderly neighbor gave me once, around the time I was engaged, probably Depression-era. Funny what you keep and still use.



The good dishes are still around, somewhere, but never used. I never got silver, and I liked the crystal we got, although it wasn't expensive; that's somewhere, too.

I have LOTS of stuff older than 30 years, of course, but those things came to us later, long after we were married, like my parents' furniture, and their piano and stuff.

Today I decided that, life being short and all, I would try to see if I could make this a part of my regular daily wardrobe:


It was my grandmother's, although my mother had it re-set somewhere in the seventies. (Or let us say that Shirl convinced her mother, who was still among the living at that time, to have it re-set. I don't think grandma particularly cared, though; she wasn't going to wear it anymore.) I've never been the kind of person who could get away with wearing a diamond ring every day, although lots and lots of people I know do that. My own engagement ring is an antique, not especially valuable but very pretty, but a bit too fragile for everyday wear, so I've never really gotten into the habit. Anyway, as long as I'm talking about old stuff, here's the story of grandma's ring.

When she and grandpa got married, which was New Year's Day, 1916, they were two immigrants who still lived with one relative or another, worked hard in the glove factories in upstate New York, and who, let me tell you, had no money for diamond rings, let alone anything else. They worked hard, had a baby a year later (Uncle Sol), moved to New York City (but never the Lower East Side, only the Bronx), had another baby (Shirl) and, what else? Worked hard. I've written before about Grandpa Sam's saintlike character and miserable business sense. He was never more than a worker, albeit a skilled one when the glove business was good (he was a cutter), but it wasn't always. Ida was an incredible household manager, and did a little of this, a little of that, to bring in extra money. Sometimes she took in foster children, not through the state or city, but to help out someone out who needed to park a kid someplace for a while and pay for his upkeep. When her own kids were grown, she would go work as what you might call a mother's helper, to stay at someone's home when they'd just had a baby and help out for a couple of weeks.

But once her children were grown and the Depression was over, she made the extra money to buy extra things, since Sam's work was stable, and one of the things she wanted was a diamond engagement ring. So she worked, and she saved the money, and she bought it for herself, I believe in 1946, for ... funny. She bought it for her 30th anniversary. I hadn't even made the connection until just this minute.

So I think I should wear it now. Feels right.

WATCHING THE GOLDEN GIRLS :: ENTRY #1541

Done. Aaand ..... Done.

I got a lot done in the last hour for someone who's too exhausted to be upright, let alone standing on a stepladder and putting things away on the top shelf of my closet. But I did all my evening chores: put out clothes for tomorrow, set up the coffee for the morning, made tomorrow's lunch. I made today's lunch today, and I left my apple home, so clearly, the evening before is the way to go.

So once again I had trouble falling asleep, although I slept once I did, no nasty esophogeal illness to deal with. I was totally moving in a fog this morning, though, and most of the day. I believe I did doze off while I was having my nails done. I am developing the family ability to sleep sitting up, which could come in handy, I guess.

Funny, I can't sleep in my own bed at night, but I can now take brief naps sitting up in a chair. My Grandma Ida was The Pro at this; if she felt she needed a ten minute refresher, she would just say "I'm going to sleep for a few minutes" and close her eyes, sitting up, sleep for ten minutes and wake up fresh as a daisy. My Cousin can do this, too, and it's a gift. I, of course, do not wake up refreshed, but I wake up less non-functional than I was, so that's something. Gotta work on it.

According to flightarrivals.com, the Hubs is in Chicago, and will take to the air once more in ... about an hour and 15 minutes. It is weird when he's not here. I mean, duh, but he keeps to himself so much, you'd think it wouldn't make that much difference. I picked up some veggie lo mein before for him to eat when he gets home; I'm always afraid that when he travels, he won't have anything to eat the whole time he's gone (but I suppose you can get lo mein in Chicago, too, although this is what he asked me to pick up for him.) I know that the first night, they were all going to a steak house, so they were probably all pretty uncomfortable when he sat there and didn't eat a thing. People generally are, I've noticed, although I don't care anymore. (Or do I?)

The Powers That Be have decided that my library is a lovely venue for them to have all their Board of Ed. and other various night meetings. While I understand that it's certainly their library, and that this is common practice in many places (and was in my district in the early years), it means that I'm uncomfortable leaving anything personal out on my desk, and I've always had a bounty of things: pictures, quotations, the Thomas Jefferson bobble-head, Jefferson the book-reading gargoyle, and so forth. So it's all put away for tonight, in locked drawers, and I'll start taking things home, I guess. Yet another notch in the belt of the slow decline towards burnout, which unfortunately generally comes way before one can afford to retire. Every day it's something else, and I think you have to numb yourself to it to keep going, which only leaves you numb. It ain't good. There was more shit yesterday, but I don't even want to go into it. The Colleage and I bitched to each other over the phone about it last night. (We really can't talk there at all.) It's sad, really.

Well, everything is done. I'm going to hit the couch now.

watching The Simpsons :: entry #1472

I Think I've Got It

This is more or less my first actual post on this site, for what that's worth. I think I've gotten everything moved over that I want, although I'm still working on getting the number of the entry up in a way that shows and doesn't look stupid. But I'll see how that looks in a minute.

Oh, I wanted to see how I could put a picture in here:

la de la de la de dah




So is that it? Are you seeing me with Grandma Ida?

In other news, I got up bright and early again this morning -- why do I keep waking up at 5 on the weekends? And I read my newspaper circulars and headed out to ... shh ... Target to get those things over which I obsess: Bounty towels, Charmin toilet paper, and liquid Tide. I get antsy if I think I don't have enough of any of those in the house. Especially the toilet paper. Ahem.

Okay, I've still got bugs to work out, and possibly another trip to Target later, if the girls want to go, since I went secretly without them this morning so I could stock up before the crowds cleaned them out. There are lots of people in the market for good toilet paper, you know.

watching I Love Lucy :: entry #001

Random Sunday, and Today's Report

Sunday, later

I just remembered this conversation I had the other day with the SCM. I was telling him that I was hoping to buy a pair of rubber gardening boots after school, for working in the wet basement. I told him that I had planned to wear the Hubs' boots, but realized at once that that would be absurd, as I wouldn't be able to walk in them and would probably kill myself just going down the basement stairs. He says:

"You and [Hubs' name] don't wear the same size shoes?"

I swear, I did not know what to say at first. Finally, I said the only thing that really you possibly could say: "No-o-o!" with that tone in my voice that says "Of course not! What's wrong with you?" And he says, after a minute,

"Oh." I just looked at him.

"[Wife's name] and I wear about the same size. We can wear each other's shoes." Now I didn't know where to look. And he continues!

"I have really small feet and hands."

I said, looking at all the important papers on my desk, "Uh ... oh. Okay."

Seriously. What man will say that to anyone?

---

Here's a bit more on the Yiddish glossary. The syllable in caps is the syllable that is stressed. Any time you see "kh", it means the guttural "ch" sound, which you may know from the Yiddish word "chutzpah", often seen in English.

Okay, little bird is faigeleh. That's FAY-gu-luh.
Farblunget, for mixed up, is fah-BLUNGE-it.
Farcokte, full of shit, is fah-COCK-tuh.
Farbissiner punim, two words for a bitter face, would be fah-BIS-sin-ner POO-nim.
Farmisht, bewildered, is fah-MISHT.

It's not knowing where to put the accent, really. Because the words were not originally written in the English alphabet, all English spellings are more or less just the way the word sounds. (Real Yiddish, the way all my grandparents wrote it, is written in Hebrew script, which means there are no vowels used. Don't ask.)

---

So the Hubs finishes all his garden work on Sunday and comes in to take a shower, and comes out of the bathroom, all dressed and squeaky clean, and stands before us at the family room doorway, and K lets out a shriek. I look up and his beard is gone. His beard is gone! He has had a full beard and mustache for about 20 years; K barely remembers him without it. (Or with black hair, for that matter.) He had told us on Easter during the ride down to his parents that he was toying with the idea of shaving it off. And he did. He left the mustache. How does he look now? Like every picture of his grandfather I have ever seen. Like every old Italian man. That's the neatly trimmed little mustache he has. If it were up to me, I'd say grow the beard back or shave off the mustache, or grow the mustache long like Mark Twain. He didn't look like everyone else before, and now he does. It's very weird.

---

All over our neighborhood, and in various parts of town, it looks like the houses have been turned inside out. It looks like there are more possessions out on the curb for trash pick-up tomorrow -- all water-damaged, I presume -- than what could possibly be left inside. Hmm. Our curb is only about half-full, that is, only about half the width of the house. Hmm.

---

Monday, almost 6.00 pm

I have had me quite the day. Grandma Ida would be bursting with pride. (Except she would be kvelling.) I have worked my ass off. My back is very sore (as would be anyone's without an ass to hold it up), but not spasming, as my back is wont to do, just sore and achy from bending and lifting all day. To whit:

I was at Target by 8.15 to buy more shelves (I had bought some nice big ones yesterday, which the Hubs had brought downstairs, but I was getting some smaller ones), and then to the supermarket for a few things, my first trip of the day to the recycling center (with empty cardboard boxes), and then ... home, I guess. I started working downstairs a little after 9.00.

All I can tell you is that over the course of the next five hours, I only stopped to go back to recycling twice, and followed up one of those trips with a short break on the phone with my sister while I sipped a Dunkin Donuts iced latte. Other than that, I worked continuously, assembling shelves, shifting stuff around, taking out more garbage. I filled the curb. I had gotten the latte on my way back from recycling trip #2, and on my way out to #3, I decided that what I wanted more than anything else -- for lunch; I hadn't eaten -- was to fulfill my recent longing for coffee ice cream, so I did that, had an ice cream cone for lunch. I had already worked it off, in spades.

One itty bitty tiny glitch for the day. Trip #3 included an old printer that was down in the basement, never to be used again. After the nice man at recycling took it out of the car for me, I saw ... an ink stain on the front passenger seat. A good inch by two inches maybe. Ink. On the front passenger seat.

Of R's car.

That was the closest I came to breaking down and crying all day. I have her car for two days so that the Hubs' and mine can be serviced. After trip #3, all I had to do was eat my ice cream and drive home. But no. I ate the ice cream (of course), but once I was home, I had to go to work on that stain. I got most of it, but some remains. Now, there's some other kind of stain -- coffee, probably -- only an inch or two away, and much bigger, but you know how bad you feel if you borrow something and can't return it in the same condition. I don't think she'll care since it's not actually a big wet inkblot at this point, but I feel bad about it. I'm also over it.

As you may have gathered, I've had very little to eat today. It seems that the secret to weight loss for me is to keep busy and for it to be hot. I can't eat when it's too hot, and it's 85 degrees now, at 6.10. So here's another year when we went from winter directly to summer, without stopping for spring. I guess when I go back to school next week, I'll find out if the a/c in the new library works.

And now I must eat, because I'm having a whole low blood sugar experience. I was going to cook something -- really, I was! -- but I think something quick in the microwave is a better plan. But of course, first I must post this! I have priorities!


watching Reba :: entry #1440

Uh .. I .. Wait a Minute

Not only am I unable to think of a word to describe to you how I'm feeling, I can't even think of a word to describe my degree of .. vocabulary .. ineptitude. Okay, that sounds like a start. Maybe by the time I'm done, I'll have a word for my condition of the moment. I'm sure it will be in Yiddish.

There is just stuff everywhere. Everywhere I look. My desk has random papers and bank cards and flash drives and cleaner's tickets all over it. The shelf that sticks out of my desk -- I don't know what that's called, either, but it's where I live my life -- has four Kurt Vonnegut novels, a copy of my teaching contract, a stack of bills that need to be paid, my keys, my Palm, my iPod shuffle and its huge headphones, and ... my wallet, I think, all on it, on a shelf that measures about 12 by 15 inches. So it's all piled high.

My laundry basket in the bedroom is so full that stuff is piled about two feet over the top of it. Q's carrying basket is still sitting in the living room, even though she went to the vet for claw clipping on Tuesday. There is a pile of about six pairs of shoes -- all K's -- sitting on the family room floor in front of the television. And the piece of furniture that we call a coffee table -- it's really more like a trunk, or a cabinet -- is just too much to be described. Magazines. Dish towels. More magazines. I see a rolled up sock. K's work schedules for the last few weeks.

Oy.

It's not unusual for me to let things go a bit before vacation, because I know that on the first day, I'll get everything squared away. But I don't feel that way at the moment. There is just too much to put away, and not enough places to put it in.

I know what's causing all this: the basement anxiety. I need that space down there to work with, but I don't have it now, and I have to work on that space as well. I don't wanna go down there, not even to do laundry. I want to wake up tomorrow morning and have everything cleaned up and put away. All I want to do now is read.

I told you: if I start a book, I won't want to do anything until I finish it. And I started it. Go me.

I still don't have my word. The only one that keeps popping into my head is farblunget, which really just means lost, confused. I am mixed up, but that's not the essence of what this is. Neither is farkokte, which actually means full of shit. But it's a good word. (Neither of the "r" sounds in these words is actually heard, but they're there, for some reason. Just thought I'd mention it. Or maybe my mother just didn't say it because she was from New Yawk.) But it's got to be one of those far words. Far is the Yiddish prefix for full of. Full of confusion. Full of shit. Farbissener, which means embittered, or, full of bitterness. (Someone with a twisted up, sour look, is described as a farbissener punim, a bitter face.) There's farmisht, emphasis on the -misht, which means more lost in an emotional sense, bewildered. Now I'm getting closer.

But I looked through the Yiddish dictionary, and couldn't find anything else. I miss my grandmother. Not only would she have known the word, she would have my basement sorted out in an hour and a half, everything re-packed and dry, and it would have been like Christmas morning to her. She loved doing that kind of thing, and having been raised in relative poverty on, as they used to say, The Other Side, she wasn't afraid of working like a dog; she was used to it and expected it and was good at it. Unlike her faigeleh granddaughter.

Oy.


watching nothing :: entry #1438

Jewish Food Night

[copied from dland]

We are currently in the midst of a weeklong religious holiday, A Really Big One, and one that is unnaturally focused on food, and the preparation and eating thereof. Even so, I do not celebrate or observe the rituals of oranized religion, although I respect and honor the history and meaning of such events.

In other words, Passover is upon us, along with its strict rules about what one can and cannot eat during this time, and although I have never observed those rules in my life, I like the food. So I gathered my wits about me and made and/or ate some Jewish food tonight. Not all of it Kosher for Passover (or any of it Kosher at all), but I cooked, and I ate, and let me tell you ...

It was really good.

The most traditional food I make, and one of the very few things that Grandma Ida made well, is matzo kugel. Kugel means pudding, like a bread pudding (not like chocolate or butterscotch pudding.) But since I'm eating all healthy-like, I actually found a lower fat and other bad stuff recipe, and made that instead of Ida's, and it had the same comfort food effect on me. I also had a couple pieces gefilte fish, but K doesn't care for that, so I also made some latkes. Latkes are not only not Passover food, they are prohibited on Passover, I believe -- they are Chanukah food, potato pancakes -- but since I don't care, that's what we had.

This is the best meal I've had in weeks. Oh, okay, the lobster a week or so back was plenty good. But this was my soul food. And I didn't even go over my points for the day; I'm not sure how that happened.

And that's the story of my day and my food, which is pretty much the Passover thing anyway. It would seem to be all about the food, but it's not. Passover is nothing more than the story of Exodus, the second book of the Bible, and of how God miraculously brought the Hebrew people out of slavery. It's all about the event in history that codified the Jewish religion and solidified the Hebrew people into a single unified group. Which we celebrate with food. Okay, done with that now.

In other news, our weather continues to be atrocious: rainy, cold, damp. Okay, it rains in April, we all know that. The cold has got to go, though. And my feet are getting wet through the vent holes in my crocs.

Had a relatively good day at school, which you know I don't get to say often. It looks like we'll definitely be getting the upgraded library software, which should be lots of fun to play with as well as a real improvement over our current version (which is also pretty good.) Also, it appears that we -- the library -- are finally coming out of the year-long slump that began when we closed down the old library just about a year ago now. We've been very busy lately, often with a class in the computer lab and maybe 20 or 30 kids from various other classes in and out with passes to do this or that. It's as if everyone has finally woken up and remembered that we're there. So this is very nice. We still have a lot of bugs to work out, especially in getting people to tell us things that are going on. We found out today quite by accident that research papers are now mandatory in the 10th and 11th grade, as well as the 9th, with which we have always worked closely. Well, we're delighted, but it would be nice if we had known. I don't even know if there's enough time left in the school year to get all those classes in for research. But I guess it'll be fun to try.

Don't know how I'll be able to stay up for Lost tonight. It's almost 8.00 now, and I'm going to get my jammies on.

WATCHING RAYMOND :: ENTRY #1421