Valentine's Day is Over. Time for the Antidote.

http://www.zwani.com/graphics/antivalentines_day/ By the way, this site has tons of most excellent anti-Valentine’s Day cards. February 15^th is the perfect day for checking it out.

As an antidote to Valentine’s Day this blog posting is meant to clear away any VD hangover symptoms you may be experiencing. Such symptoms may include but are definitely not limited to the following:

• ·         Although you got in the spirit of the thing yesterday by hauling out your one pink or red sweater, black is the only color that seems appropriate for February 15.
• ·         You’re suffering delusions of winged, hot pink hearts dive-bombing you and sucking your blood.
• ·         You’re sure Cupid’s arrow either missed you altogether (sob!) or sank a little too deeply into a vital organ and you’re feeling like you’re down a pint. Or maybe it was just those pesky vampire hearts.
• ·         The thought of chocolate and bubbly makes you nauseous and gassy—as if you were expecting anything else.
• ·         You dreamt your colored candy hearts had mean messages on them like “Give it up already” and “There’s someone for everyone—EXCEPT you” and “Good Christ. Are you still here?” and “How can I miss you if you won’t go away?”
• ·         You can’t stop thinking of that Willie Nelson quote, “Ninety-nine percent of the world’s lovers are not with their first choice. That’s what makes the jukebox play.” You think he was really on to something.  
  

The remedy I’m suggesting is this: Just go with it. Dive down, go deep, and inhale fully. Let your lungs fill with melancholy and allow despair to course through your veins. Let your arteries stiffen as they clog with gloom and heartache. Envision your blood going blue from lack of oxygen and your broken heart pausing, wondering if you’re planning to live or die. For one day, immerse yourself in the pain because, let’s face it, there is beauty in misery. Don’t be so afraid of it that you miss the sad splendor altogether.

And how do I get there? — you ask. How do I achieve such a level of wretched depression?

It’s easy. In fact, it’s super simple. I suggest listening to sad songs. 

I adore sad songs. They’re beautiful and gloomy at the same time. Most of us do like them—and please, you Pollyanna’s out there, don’t bother denying it. It’s evident every day at any time if you tune in the radio. If we didn’t love sad songs, those bluesy, wrist-slitting lyrics wouldn’t be sliding down the radio waves the way they always, always do. 

In fact, the most recent piece of evidence of love for sad songs just transpired this past weekend after I had the idea to write on this topic. Lady Antebellum won the Grammy in the best song and best record categories for their heartache song, “Need You Now.” It’s all about that person who’s not there anymore: “And I wonder if I ever cross your mind. For me it happens all the time. It’s a quarter after one, I’m a little drunk and I need you now.” The guy sings, the girl sings. On they go—yearning, bleeding out and not getting what they want—each other.  Classic heartbreak. What’s not to love?

To help you in this post-Valentine’s quest of morose inundation, I’ve compiled a list of sad songs. It is not exhaustive, in fact, it’s grossly incomplete. I am not putting myself forward as an expert. This is my personal list with help and add-ins from the Huzby who is also a big fan of sad songs.

And I’m asking for your help. Yes, audience participation is what I’m hoping for. After looking at this list, see what I’ve missed and add it into the ranks. Let’s see if we can shake the Valentine’s saccharine-sickness and get our big bad blues on.  I challenge you: How low can we go?

• In no particular order I give you:
• ·         Crazy—Willie Nelson
• ·         Wichita Lineman—Jimmy Webb
• ·         By the Time I Get to Phoenix—Jimmy Webb
• ·         Bobby McGee—Kris Kristofferson
• ·         Hot Burrito #1—Gram Parsons
• ·         Love Will Come to You–Indigo Girls
• ·         River—Joni Mitchell
• ·         Little Green—Joni Mitchell (Very sad once you find out it’s about the daughter she gave up for adoption—get’s me every time.)
• ·         Blue Bayou—Roy Orbison
• ·         Love Has No Pride—Libby Titus and Eric Katz
• ·         Someone to Lay Down Beside Me—Karla Bonoff
• ·         Suzanne—Leonard Cohen
• ·         So Long Marianne—Leonard Cohen (Apparently Marianne really put a big hurt on LC.)
• ·         That’s No Way to Say Goodbye—Leonard Cohen
• ·         Diamonds and Rust—Joan Baez
• ·         Romeo and Juliet—Mark Knopfler
• ·         Another Grey Morning— James Taylor
• ·         Fire and Rain—James Taylor
• ·         Goodnight Elizabeth—Counting Crows
• ·         A Long December—Counting Crows
• ·         White Flag—Dido (Apparently she wrote this based on letters she found in her father’s stash after he died. Until then she’d never known there was a threat to her parents’ marriage.)
• ·         I Can’t Make You Love Me—Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin
• ·         Dimming of the Day—Richard Thompson
• ·         Angel From Montgomery—John Prine (The line about how a man can go to work all day then come home and have nothing to say reminds me of my first marriage. Nothing lonelier than a bad marriage.)
• ·         Candy’s Room—Bruce Springsteen
• ·         A whole slew of songs by Lucinda Williams (But I like ‘em better when someone else sings ‘em.)
• ·         Last Kiss—Everly Brothers
• ·         You don’t Know Me—Cindy Walker and Eddy Arnold
• ·         Do I Ever Cross Your Mind—Dolly Parton (Yes. I think of you and the twins every time I’m near the cantaloupe bin, Dolly.)
• ·         Killing Me Softly—Roberta Flack
• ·         Jagged Little Pill—Alannis Morrisette (True, she’s pissed but she’s also bleeding out.)
• ·         Blowin’ In the Wind—Bob Dylan
• ·         Don’t Think Twice It’s Alright—Bob Dylan(“You kinda wasted all my precious time…” I know just what you mean, Bob.)
• ·         Cat’s In the Cradle—Harry Chapin
• ·         Taxi—Harry Chapin
• ·         If You Could Read My Mind—Gordon Lightfoot
• ·         Leavin’ On a Jet Plane—Peter, Paul and Mary (I used to play this on guitar until my son, at seven, begged me to stop. It got him misty every time. I assume it was the lyrics and not my performance of them but I could be wrong on that.)
• ·         If We Meet in Heaven—Eric Clapton (This song about his dead son is wrenching.)
• ·         I Can’t Tell You Why--Eagles
• ·         Desperado—Eagles
• ·         Best of My Love—Eagles
• ·         Please Come Home for Christmas—Eagles
• ·         It’s Too Late—Carole King
• ·         Father and Son—Cat Stevens
• ·         Wild World –Cat Stevens
• ·         I Am A Rock—Simon and Garfunkle (And a rock feels no pain. And an island never cries.)
• ·         The Boxer—Simon and Garfunkle
• ·         Wild Horses—Rolling Stones (Huzby informs me this is about Keith Richards’ son.)
• ·         She’s Leaving Home—The Beatles
• ·         Cowboys and Angels—George Michael
• ·         The Sound of White—Missy Higgins
• ·         Red Dirt Girl—Emmylou Harris (Poor Lillian!)
• ·         My Antonia—Emmylou Harris and Dave Matthews (Died of a fever, wouldn’t you know?)
• ·         Just about every song by David Gates from Bread—Diary et. al. (Please pass the tissues.)
• ·         Hello It’s Me—Todd Rundgren
• ·         Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference—Todd Rundgren
• ·         Need You Now—Lady Antebellum

Special note: I’d like to include Jackson Browne’s songs but beating up your girlfriend gets you an automatic expulsion from my list. Shame on you, JB.

From the wayback machine:

• ·         Streets of Laredo— Frank H. Maynard
• ·         Tom Dooley—Frank Warner
• ·         Red River Valley—Harlan and Nemha
• ·         My Darlin’ Clementine—Percy Montrose of Barker Bradford

Sad songs that are over the top, pathetic or creepy:

• ·         MacArthur Park (The Cake in the Rain Song)—Jimmy Webb (Man, and it looked good, too!)
• ·         Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me—Elton John (It’s gonna be OK, Elton. Just keep taking your Prozac.)
• ·         Most of Us are Sad—Eagles (The tune is entirely too dreary for my taste which puts it in the over the top category.)
• ·         Claire—Gilbert O’Sullivan (Yikes! Dude, she’s a little girl and you’re her babysitter. Can you say chemical castration? Won’t hurt a bit.)

That’s all I’ve got at the moment. I know I’ve left out a bunch of really good, really suicide-inspiring songs. That’s why I’m asking you to contribute in the comments section.  I’ll edit the list to reflect your suggestions as they’re made.  Please, don’t be shy. Step right up, and suggest away.

It’s the perfect time of year for sad song day. In fact I propose that February, 15 become an official day of sad songs. Songs to cry with, song to lament over, songs to open up the oven and turn on the gas to. No, no. I’m kidding.  Don’t take it that far.  Just wallow for a while and let the Valentine’s sugar coating dissolve.  Woebegone songs can set you free.

Of Life Insurance and Future Scenarios

Am I the only one who starts thinking morbid thoughts when the subject of life insurance arises?

If you have life insurance it has to cross your mind. You pay the bill every month so it cannot have escaped your notice that you're paying a premium on your own and your spouse's lives. Because chances are one of you goes before the other.

Maybe I'm giving this more thought because I just turned fifty or maybe because I've got a kick-ass cold at the moment, or maybe it's merely the obvious, that I'm strange. In those moments when the Huzby brings it up-- "I got a gazillion dollar policy on you and a  gazillion one on me. That way if one of us dies..." (Allright. I'm exaggerating. It's not a gazillion.)--in my twisted, morbid way, I cannot help but play the thing out to it's natural conclusion.

Me:  I just request that when you decide it's my time, I don't have to suffer too much or too long. Make sure whatever it is you have cooked up for me is merciful and quick. I hope that'll be enough for you and Candace to buy that second home in Cabo and you'll be very happy together.

This is all hallucinatory, of course. In the first place, I have never suspected  my husband of wanting to kill me--at least not for a sustained period of time. (Who can say what horrid notion flashes through his brain in a heated argument? Only he knows for sure...) And secondly, as much as I would want my husband to be happy and well should I pass first I don't want him living the high life with that bimbo, Candace, in Cabo. Does this make me selfish?

To my knowledge, there is no Candace (bimbo or not) in our lives but regardless of the facts, I imagine Huzby hooking up with some large-breasted, wasp-waisted, thirty-something-year-old who can't keep her feet on the floor. She looks like a Candace to me. I can't help it. Really. What am I supposed to say? I just start to internally squirm. It feels crunchy talking about it and yet it doesn't seem to stop the conversation from rolling right along.

Him (understanding that I'm being sarcarstic and yet kindly trying to reassure me): It's just so if something happens to either of us we can--you know--afford to stay where we are or at least be able to sell and find something smaller. You'd probably want to find something smaller, right?

Me (hating to picture the scenario but doing it anyway):  Yeah. This house is too big for me by myself. I guess you'd stay here, though, right?

Him: Yeah. I'd stay here.

End of conversation except for the fact that it plays on in my head.

Me: Right. There'll be plenty of room for you and Candy and all of her lonely, commiserating girlfriends who feel sorry for you and want to make you feel better because you just lost your wife.

Him: Sure. A bedroom each for the other three while I share the master bedroom with whoever it is who's keeping me warm and drying my tears that night.

Me: Wait a second. How come we never talk about me hooking up with someone else? It's always you who gets to be the swinging widower.

Him: OK. Your turn to be the wild, winsome widow. Who would you go for? Some twenty-five year old stud?

Me: Ugh. No. Twenty-five? Get outta here. That's way too young. He'd have to be somewhere in the neighborhood of my age. Otherwise, I'd feel too old. And I don't want to be someone's mother's age. Ick!

Him: So...who then?

Me:  Silence

I have no answer. I am totally stumped.

How can it be that even in a fantasy I can 't come up with my dreamboat replacement for the Huzby? Am I lacking in imagination? This is not usually a problem for me. Is the Huzby (aka Mr. Grumpy) just so perfect in every way that he cannot possibly be improved upon? Hmm...This is a tempting out but in fantasies, anything is possible, so I can envision a slightly sunnier Mr. G (Mr. Not Quite So Grumpy), but he's still the self same Huzby. I am unable to conjure up a novel stand-in. I think it comes down to so dreading the vision of finding someone else, I honestly cannot come up with a surrogate because I don't want to.

What this means, I suppose, is that I truly am the one who should go first and that way I'll never be confronted with the problem. Still, thinking of the Huzby and Candace and her three friends enjoying the pay out from my life insurance policy at their Cabo condo is certainly motivating. It motivates me to take my vitamins and supplements, go to the gym, get enough sleep, eat well and take good care of myself.

Sorry Candy, but by the time you get your chance, your boobs will be sagging down to your widening waist and your feet won't be quite as prone to flight as they once were. Let's face it woman, by then Huzby's taste in women will have probably not have changed. So prepare yourself. I foresee a Veronica, Serena, Raquel, Alicia, Cherie, Romy or Babette on the horizon who's not so long in the tooth. So sad. Too bad.

Sheesh. Life insurance. What a buzz kill.



We may be getting older but we're not dead yet.



Bouncing Between the Blankets with Tigger



Who? Me? Tigger?

 You certainly can't tell by looking. By observation alone I bet you'd think my husband, Tim, is a serious sleeper. I mean, just take a gander--handsome as hell with resolute stamped all over him like a very serious USDA prime cut of beef. He's serious about so many things, surely he'd be serious about sleeping, right? Truly, it often happens that he does sleep like a normal, serious, sleep-loving person. However, on a somewhat regular basis, he turns into a night time Tigger.

You remember Tigger. From Winnie-the-Pooh? Striped, stuffed, sprightly, supple? He came spring-loaded onto the scene a little bit later (Chapter 2 of  House at Pooh Corner) than the regular cast of characters. He spelled his name T-I-double guh-err. And do you remember what Tiggers love to do and do best? Ding, ding, ding! You are correct. Tiggers love to BOUNCE.

I know, I know. Hard to believe isn't it? Anyone who knows Tim even a little bit can't imagine him bouncing. "Tim" and "bounce" go together like "Santa" and "pirouette". Or maybe I should say "Tim" is to "bouncy" as "Charles Bronson" is to "fluffy". It just doesn't follow. In fact, if Tim were an actual tiger, most of us in the know would think of him like this:


"Your answer was not well constructed and does not please me in the least."


And not like this:

Boing! Boing! Boing!

Nevertheless, the fact remains:  On occasional nights of torment, a rash of restless bounciness sets in.  Tim's inner Tigger gets triggered.

Bounce-inducing sleep scenarios:

1) Vampire dreams. In Tim's fantasy-driven psyche, vampires can assume nearly any form. So far I've experienced by proxy cat vampires, zombie vampires, and porno-babe vampires. True, I thought the porno-babe vampires were pretty funny. Ooooo! So scary!  But, hey, I get it. A vampire of any sort is horrifying even if she is hot and horny. Most of us don't want to die by exsanguination. Although surely there are some who'd volunteer if the love bites were given by Jenna Jameson with fangs. (Any takers?)

2) Alien dreams. Sometimes it's the Predator alien, sometimes it's the Alien alien, sometimes it's a robot alien but often it's left to my own imagination because the Huzby doesn't enlighten me with the details. Sometimes the generic "alien" is as good a description as I receive.

3) Ghost dreams. Details of such are vague or nonexistent which is fitting for ghosts, I suppose. Apparently a ghost is a ghost is a ghost.

4) My wife's being mean to me dreams. I'm not sure why, but I seem to be a recurring incubus in my husband's nocturnal story lines. Kind of makes me wonder what I'm doing that feeds this iniquitous hallucination. These occur about once a month if not more. In these nightmares I'm mean to my husband in a variety of ways and differing scenarios and always for no reason at all. They tend to be somewhat infuriating for me also. When I hear of my fictional infractions in the morning, I too, am shocked at the atrocities I commit in these after dark dramas. I wish I could behave myself better, but apparently no matter what I do during real life I'm destined to remain a she-devil from purgatory in my honey's dream life.

5) Dreams about missing planes and forgetting where the car is parked. A common plague for my poor Tigger who has an anal side that more than occasionally rears its ugly rear.

6) Dreams combining any of the above, i.e.,
     ~My wife, the alien, is being mean to me and forgot where she parked the car so we miss the plane.
     ~Ghosts and aliens are colluding with my wife and being mean to everyone by moving their parked cars. Everyone misses their planes.
     ~Aliens, ghosts and my vampire wife are all making a porno in the back of parked cars. Planes take off with no one inside.

7) The room is too hot.

8) Indigestion--food too spicy, food too gassy, food too mucho, drinks over poured.

9) The catch-all category: Anything else that's aggravating his overactive animus.

Of course, the vampires, aliens, ghosts, missed planes, misplaced cars, witchy wife, hot room, indigestion and suffering subconscious are Tim's first-person persecutions. I'd like to help, but there's not much I can do beyond waking him up when things get not only bouncy, but loud. The problem for me is that he does not suffer in first person, alone. When he has a bouncy night, I have a bouncy night.

We have a tempurpedic mattress which allows decent shock absorption and affords a muted experience if you have a restless sleep partner. Still, on a bouncy, trouncy night, while Tim-turned-Tigger is energetically, and athletically plopping the hours away, I'm experiencing our form fitting foam mattress as class II rapids river rafting expedition. And I'm not strapped in. It's a real life demonstration of Newton's law of motion: For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Tigger crashes down into the mattress and I am launched upwards. He flips; I flop. He clips; I clop. Good Sir Isaac, your law remains intact and in regular use at Tigger's house of bounce.

It's true, I could get up and go sleep in the other room leaving Tigger to his tough out his tortuous terrors on his own--but I don't. I can never seem to snap to full consciousness and make the move. Instead, I burrow down, hug my pillow tight and grab the covers with all my half-asleep might trying to hold down all the slumberland real estate I started with--not an easy task. I grumble, groan and huff  but never manage to remove myself from our tumultuous nocturnal tango to the quietude of the foldout couch. I suppose you could say that in response to Tim turning Tigger, I turn tick. You know how ticks are, the harder you try to get them out, they more tightly they hold on.

Uh, oh. I think I see the seed of a new nightmare.

Hello? Fifty's Here

Today I am 50. Five decades. Half a century. Two score and ten. No matter what you call it or how you slice it, 50 is, well...let’s say it’s substantial. It's got some heft. It packs a punch and cannot be sidestepped. It means business. Fifty knocks on your door bold and brash as life itself, because that’s of course what it is, and you have no choice to but to answer it.

I propose that turning 50 is like a knock, knock joke.

“Knock, knock.”
“Who’s there?”
“Fifty.”
Your head rushes as your heart gives a funky double beat. Holy shit! Fifty?! How did this happen? you wonder. You try to gather yourself and hesitate before responding with your gut reaction.
“The person you’re looking for is not here.”
“Oh, please! Don’t be coy. YOU are the person I’m meeting today.”
“Uh…Could you come back some other time? I’m really not ready for you today.”
“Sorry, ma'am. Today is the day, YOUR day, the day you turn officially middle-aged.”
“I, uh…could you just give me a little time to spruce up and get myself together? How about tomorrow? I could meet you tomorrow.”
“Today is YOUR day. Don’t worry. I know what you look like and how together you are and are not. Just open up. I promise not to hurt you.”

You gasp. Is it possible you heard a garbled “much” at the end of that last sentence? You fear this is the case. You calm yourself by taking deep breaths and consider logically what to do. After some reflection, and seeing no escape, as much as you really don’t want to, you determine that you will meet Fifty on your own terms. You decide if you have to do this—and apparently, you do—you will do it graciously. You have your shoulders back and head held high when you open the door and look Fifty straight in the eye.

The big Five-Oh looks decidedly older than the less significant Four-Oh and somewhat more fragile and out of shape. Five-Times-Ten doesn’t seem to be bothered by the thickening of her waist or embarrassed by the dark splotches that have begun to show on her face, although you find these changes rather disconcerting. It's been a while since Ms. Fifty has been to the hair dresser. You can tell because the gray and mousy brown is showing in her part and at her exposed temple. You notice Ms. Half-Century has brought you a copy of AARP magazine, the publication which will from now on grace your mail box every month; it’s there in her jacket pocket. And by the way, that jacket—oof! Fifty needs to get a better stylist because plaid corduroy wasn’t a good look even fifty years ago. You think you might do her a favor by mentioning this and suggesting a nice medium weight charcoal gray wool blazer instead, but you’re distracted from saying anything because you’re not sure but you think you can hear Fifty’s joints creaking just a teeny bit as she shifts from foot to foot. Her sensible shoes—Naturalizers—make you blink, trying to clear the vision. At best, the footwear can only be described as beige, frumpy and cankle-inducing. There is a definite whiff of cantankerousness emanating from the enlarged pores of her slightly sagging skin and you wonder if she’s noticed the faint budding of jowls on either side of her once charmingly dimpled chin. The chin cleft doesn’t reach the alluring depths it used to because it's been filled in with a substantial layer of subcutaneous fat. Whatever sex appeal Fifty may have possessed hit the skids at least a year or more ago. You hold back a shudder, not wanting to hurt her feelings.

She looks at you triumphantly with a certain tinge of smugness thrown in that you suppose is meant to keep you humble. You shake off your dread, tell yourself  that despite any appearances to the contrary, you are an adult and will act accordingly. With a deep breath of resolve you try to make the best of the situation by smiling, extending your hand and saying,
 “Thank you. Thanks so much for coming, Fifty. You’ve brought a lot of changes with you. I want you to know I appreciate the wisdom you’ve shown me in the last decade. You've offered me a deeper perspective and broader understanding of life and how it works. I have more tolerance, am less judgemental and am trying to keep an open, questing mind. There is still so much I need to learn. I want you to know I am truly grateful for your time.”

Instead of shaking your optimistically offered hand, Madam Fifty deposits the wretched AARP magazine into your proffered palm and says,
“You’re supposed to say, ‘Fifty who?’”
“What?!” You’re confused. Here you are trying to be a good sport about all this and Two-Times-Twenty-five is ignoring your good intentions. What in the hell is she talking about?
“You’re supposed to ask me ‘Fifty who?’ That’s how the joke goes. Remember? Knock, knock?”
“Oh. Right.” You want to show Fifty that despite her disenchanting presence you are still in possession of your well developed sense of humor. You play along. “OK. Fifty who?”
“Fifty, your new decade. Geeze, woman! Pay attention. Have you gone senile already?”

You muster a wan smile, shake your head and roll your eyes. Along with being a supremely snappy dresser, Fifty is clearly one bitch of a laugh riot.

My birthday was a lovely evening of family, friends, paella, German chocolate cake and a flow of wine that's fine and sanguine.

Thanks to Mr. Grumpy for a near decade of fun and happiness. I guess when the wife turns 50 it necessitates more drinking .

Happy New Year and See You at the Gym!

It may be bad karma to do this at the start of the year and I may set my self akilter by giving in to a crotchety moment of pet-peevishness. But this is the time of year it all goes down. And because it is what it is, I'm embarking on my once a year tirade. So please excuse me while I mount my soap box and hold forth. You fitness wanna-bees who swarm the gym for the first six weeks after the start of the new year drive me crazy.

Let's get this straight: I want you to be healthy. I want you to be fit. I want you to avoid all the dreadful health issues associated with obesity like diabetes, arthritis, high blood pressure, and a myriad of other cardiovascular complications. These are all the things that did in my mother--a major motivating factor for me and why I strive to stay somewhere in the realm of "in shape." I do not and never will be an advocate for "letting yourself go" or embracing your zaftig side. I watched my mother's not so slow slide into morbidity from overeating and under exercising and it was ugly, sad and horrible. I don't wish her fate on anyone. At all times, under any conditions, I urge you to make time for fitness in your life.

I know you want to be healthy and stay committed to a regular exercise regimen. Great. So do it. I'm not being a smart ass. I'm not being smug. I mean no disrespect. And if it makes you feel any better, I confess that I too, have motivation issues that sometimes keep me from doing what's best for myself. Nevertheless, I implore you to be healthy and get moving. 

Exercise. Work out. Run. Walk. Swim. Spin. Ride. Glide. Dance. Prance. Trot. Pilate. Sweat. Get wet. Huff and puff. Jump and pump. Vault. Sommersault. Shake your groove thang, money maker, booty, keister, toosh, derriere, or whatever it is you want to call that junk in your trunk that keeps you glued to your couch. Do not fall victim to inertia of the gluteus maximus. This disease will kill you in the long run or possibly even the short run. Fight it. Beat it. Win.

I write this for you if you're the person who starts the year out with all kinds of good but weak intentions and half-resolved New Year's resolutions. It's meant for you if you're one of the many who gets in everyone's way at the gym for the first 4-6 weeks of the year and then finds you're too busy, tired or bored to come back. I'm talking to you if you and your desire to stay in shape part ways around mid-February, just when your body has come to terms with the fact that you mean it when you get your heart rate up. This is not the time to throw in the towel. It's the time to congratulate yourself on making it through the first grueling six weeks and start reaping the rewards of the sweat and sore muscles you've endured. You've hit the sweet spot so pick that towel back up, wipe the sweat off your brow and keep going.

What I'm suggesting is that this year you do something different. Don't just jump on the exercise bike from January to February and then slack off. Don't imagine we won't notice your absence in conditioning class. Don't let yourself off the hook now that you feel slightly more toned. Don't fall prey to gravity. Go, go, go! Do it! Keep doing it! Do it even when you're not in the mood. I'm convinced it counts even more when you do it when you're not in the mood. Yes. Extra credit for that.

Because if you do it long enough and regularly enough here is what will happen: You'll LIKE it. You may even learn to LOVE it. Your body will start to crave the release of sweat and endorphins. Your spouse, sweetie or self-image (or perhaps all three) will thrill at what happens to your body. You will sleep better. You may want to eat less. You may be able to eat more. You will stand taller. You will walk straighter. You will feel stronger. You may find yourself smiling more, laughing more, feeling sexier, funnier, smarter, faster, lighter. You may find you can leap small fire hydrants in a single bound. You will slouch less, hurt less, stumble less, lean less, and all the while you will breath better and feel tighter--in a good way. If you stick it out and get to three months you may find exercise becomes embedded in your neural nets.

Think of it: Exercise will become less like work and more like enjoyment.

My message to you is this: Regardless of your bad knees, bad back, bad shoulder, bad hip, bad day, bad headache, bad mood, bad hair day, bad fill-in-the-blank, get yourself moving and keep it up. You've got nothing to lose except those lumps, bumps and possible stow-away pounds while you gain muscle, give your heart something to pump about and get healthier.

So YAY, TEAM! YOU CAN DO IT! KEEP GOING! BE GOOD TO YOUR BODY AND IT'LL BE GOOD TO YOU!

As Gerry, one of a few fitness gurus I know says, "Take care of your body. If you don't, who will?" In my mom's case, for the last three months of her life, the answer to that question was the caretakers at Pine Ridge Care Center--a nursing home. She had recently turned 70.


Here's to a fit and healthy 2011. I'm off to do some sit-ups.

Remembering Mom’s Cooking—A Holiday Reverie

I'd just been sifting through the New Yorker—the Thanksgiving food issue had been adorning our kitchen counter for a while. Finished with E.L Doctrow's fiction "Assimilation", I read some of the food stories Thanksgiving morning. First, I consumed Allegra Goodman’s story about trying to reproduce her mother's “elegiac” Linzer torte. Next, I digested Jane Kramer’s homage to root vegetables. And lastly, I partook of David Bezmozgis’ sentimental how-to piece on pickled cabbage featuring his deceased grandfather. The pieces were poignant and evoked a sense of "Gosh, that’s interesting.” and "Gee, I can really relate to that." and “I may need a tissue."

Since then I’ve been thinking about my own culinary upbringing and what I would write should I ever evolve the talent to join the ranks of esteemed contributors to The New Yorker. I’m sorry to say “elegiac” is not a word that sprang to mind as I accessed the memory banks of my childhood food experiences. Aside from my sister, Beth, I doubt there are very many folks out there who can relate. And while I’m quite certain no tissues will be required unless a cold has grabbed hold, I thought I’d give it a go anyway.


Mom was all about teaching her daughters to cook. Partially, her motive was normal mothering instinct, but I’m pretty sure her prime objective was to get her two daughters cook-capable in order to pick up some of the work load. She worked full time and as a result, for our ages, we were charged with some fairly hefty responsibilities. By the time I was in 5^th grade, and my sister in 7^th, we were each cooking dinner two nights a week. Beth, a natural-born homemaker, was much more game for the idea than I. She would spend time, follow recipes, take pride, and put something together that could generally qualify as cuisine. Her chicken and rice casserole was everybody’s favorite. I, on the other hand, had no designs on mastering the domestic arts, and tended to fall back on box meals, mac and cheese and tuna casserole. I viewed cooking as just one more chore on the list. Scrub toilet—check. Vacuum carpet—done. Make dinner—well, if I must. Ho hum—the drudgery!

As a thrift measure, we’d buy half a side of beef at a time and when the huge freezer truck pulled up in front of the house, my sister, mom and I would form a sort of bucket brigade with meat so the butcher-paper parcels could be loaded quickly into the garage freezer. The white wrapped packages would sit dutifully on the shelves, like nutritive soldiers, awaiting their fate in the oven or fry pan. The steaks and more interesting cuts would always be consumed first. By the time we’d get to the last of the packages—ranks of ground beef—many months or perhaps a year later, the remaining militia would have succumbed to some fairly serious freezer burn. We’d amputate the frost-bitten appendages and put the aged recruits out of their misery in the form of spaghetti sauce, meat loaf or if I was cooking, ‘70s-innovation-run-amok, Hamburger Helper. To my childish palate, Hamburger Helper tasted just dandy, but in my adulthood, I’d never touch the stuff. In fact, as a direct result of eating so much ground beef, I've developed a lifetime aversion to hamburger. Time will tell what such meaty consumption has done to my veins and arteries.

Vegetables were tricky. Salad was a rare treat and fresh vegetables were not done for the most part. This would have involved too much reliance on timely shopping. Frozen was the vegetable method of choice. Little wonder that my sister despised vegetables for the most part. Beth had a very short list of acceptable veggies that didn’t result in tears when Mom insisted we eat everything on our plates. Born in the 1933 depression years, Mom would turn harpy if your plate wasn’t clean. For me, as long as it wasn’t Brussels sprouts or lima beans, I’d eat it. I may not have liked it but I’d do just about anything to avoid a set to.

Mom’s method to get the frozen bricks thawed and cooked as quickly as possible was to put the burner on high, dump the ice-blocked vegetables in the pan, add a little water and walk away to do something else. Usually this included refreshing her 16 ounce screwdriver with a shockingly high ratio of vodka to OJ—the seed of another story all together. A good percentage of the time this would result not only in burned vegetables, but a saucepan that required SOS soap pads, overnight soaking, and plenty of elbow grease to remove the charring. We had blackened pan scouring down to a science. If Mom was cooking, you had an 80-20 chance of being required to expunge the cremated remains of some unsuspecting food item off the cookware.

Indeed, high heat and carbonized food was a recurring theme. Steaks at our house were regularly cooked flambé. I believe this was unintentional but I could be wrong. Mom would set the oven rack so close to the broiler coil the grease would catch fire. It apparently never occurred to her that lowering the rack might avoid this issue. Steak night almost always erupted into a flaming circus act with fire licking the upper cupboard and flour flying in order smother the flames. I was never sure if it was better to be in the kitchen nervously watching the pyrotechnics or hiding in my room and waiting to hear “Hey, the meat’s on fire!” from down the hall. It’s true we never had to call the fire department, but when I was younger, I found these burnt offerings more than a little disturbing. I silently vowed never to cook steaks in my own house when I grew up—far too dangerous. It wasn’t until I got out more that I realized ours was the only family to cook their prime cuts by immolation.

For company and holidays Mom’s traditional, East Coast, Welsh/German sensibilities would momentarily prevail and we’d dispense with combustible comestibles—except by design. A roast of some sort—beef, lamb, pork or turkey—was always in the offing and, amazingly enough, was always cooked to perfection. On these special occasions, salad and fresh, unscorched vegetables would grace the table having been purchased with the fest in mind. Mashed potatoes and gravy prepared in a conventional manner were welcome additions to the main course which was served with pomp and circumstance on china, accompanied by silver and proper linens in the dining room.

Dessert for these formals affairs was usually a Mrs. Smith’s pie of some sort. You could almost pretend you made it yourself since it had to be baked in the oven. (An aside: My sister managed to master pies in her late teens, whereas I am still in awe and want of pie-making skills. I trust Whole Foods or Costco for pie unless it’s pecan. Pecan, I can manage with the aid of a store-prepped shell. Pastry seriously intimidates me.) In the event of Christmas, persimmon pudding was our traditional dessert and because old habits die hard, the brown mound was treated to a dousing of flaming brandy. The display was always impressive but nerve-wracking. I’d hold my breath and try to decide if water or napkins might be best in case I had to spring into fire-fighting mode. Looking back, it’s surprising I hadn’t become somewhat inured to the idea of blazing food. To Mom’s credit, the pudding always burned itself out without emergency intervention and the delicious, raisiny cake was devoured with hard sauce. Right-o. The alcohol was never forgotten.

Aside from formal meals, Mom’s other culinary forte was weekend breakfast. During the week cold cereal was de rigueur. But on weekends Mom would sometimes pull out the stops and make French toast or pancakes and bacon. Reliably, these would be mornings when Beth or I would have had friends sleep over. I think it was mom’s way of waking us up and getting us going on the weekend so there weren’t two or three teenage girls sprawled over the living room fold-out until 11 or noon. She’d also take the opportunity to hang out and get whatever info she could from our friends about her daughters' for the most part unexciting “private lives”.

These special mornings, much to our annoyance, Mom would start making a ruckus in the kitchen around 9. As soon as the bacon aroma teased our olfactory bulbs, we’d give up our futile attempts at sleep and stumble into the kitchen. It’s true, sometimes the pancakes were a bit darker and oil-smoked than ideal but we weren’t picky. I never told my friends this was not typical weekend treatment. I think they thought every weekend was one, long morning pancake party. Good thing they didn't stick around for steak night.

The antithesis to formal meals and morning pancakes was Mom's most creative and least delectable contribution to our nutritional history—homemade TV dinners. You remember TV dinners—right? When you’re a kid, they actually seem exotic or exciting in spite of what they actually are—an entire meal frozen in a sectioned-off aluminum tray. Mom would save the trays and when we had leftovers, we’d segregate the food—meat in the middle, veggies on the sides—wrap the tray in foil and freeze it. Weeks or months later the food would be resurrected in the oven.

Not surprisingly, these were not appetizing meals. My sister was fairly certain we’d die young because of them. The food didn’t survive the storage well and upon the great foil unveiling you’d find desiccated meat and overcooked veggies. Reconstituted freezer burn reigned supreme. To avoid the dryness we tried adding a bit of water to the sections before heating which only succeeded making a runny mess of everything that nothing could possibly help anyway—unless it was the miraculous appearance of Meals on Wheels.

Maybe it was mom’s way of assuring us these were “real” TV dinners, because more often than not we’d eat them in front of the TV when usually we ate at the kitchen table. My sister, older and wiser, had the good sense to merely pretend to eat—choking down a few bites and pushing the vitiated vittles around with her fork. Younger and hungrier, I ate the ersatz TV dinners despite their unappetizing essence. I don’t think it ever resulted in actual illness, but the thought of this desecration to leftovers does arouse a certain, vague nausea to this day.

In spite of the burnt offerings, TV dinners gone wrong, and over indulgence in beef, Beth and I grew up healthy. I have not retained many of Mom’s lessons in haute cuisine although it’s widely agreed that my mac and cheese—a noodle or two short of being elegiac—is the bomb. I’ve modified the recipe significantly since my girlhood and my half-Italian husband informs me it’s more akin to baked ziti. Beth has cleaved to her homemaker roots and continues to carry on and improve many of Mom’s food traditions. She is the only person I know who makes Yorkshire pudding for the holidays, a carryover from Mom’s Welsh side of the family.

Mom passed nearly six years ago. We never really spoke of it, but I assume she was happy in the knowledge that her oldest daughter was and is doing much improved and less flammable versions of many of her recipes. And her youngest daughter, never big on domesticity, has not set anything in the kitchen on fire for at least a decade, and has become a respectable cook herself. Even her discriminating, foodie husband agrees.

Mom, I applaud you on  job well done. I do hope at some point you gave yourself a pat on the back. It's a shame I never did. Now I wish I had. On second thought, maybe I’ll need that tissue after all.

Frisee: Salad's most obnoxious ingredient

Lettuce gone haywire.

You know what frisee is, right? That ridiculous excuse for lettuce that has some sort of bizarre, genetic afro? The leafy green that got its fronds stuck in an electric socket? The salad component most likely to tickle your nostrils, and embarrass you by behaving badly in a fine dining establishment?  The tumbleweed of the tossed? The beasty boy of the bowl? Yeah. Come on. You know the buggary bush I'm talking about.

Show of hands. How many of you out there like frisee? And when I say "like," I mean you really think it brings something to the salad bowl that would otherwise be missing, i.e., the salad would not be a "real" salad without frisee. Any hands? Any at all? Yeah. I didn't think so.

So why do they put it in salad mix as if it's something that really needs to be there? Would we miss it if they left it out? No. And when did this weed become proper salad form? Growing up, I don't remember receiving regular assaults from frisee.  These days, for whatever reason, it's a regular component of the melee. And to iceberg lettuce, R.I.P., I can only say as boring and hum-drum as it is, at least it takes its job seriously and doesn't try to fight you on the way down. Frisee could take a lesson or two from iceberg or butter or romaine or mesclun or mache or arugula for that matter.

I used to think it was just me. But I brought it up at dinner one night and my son emphatically agreed.
"I hate frisee. What good is this stuff? It's completely obnoxious."
While Theo munched his frisee as a cow would a cud, he concurred.
"Yeah. It's no good. Who needs it? They should take it out."
My husband, however, acted as if we'd both gone loopy.

Some months passed and a work friend, Natasha, brought it up during lunch.
With a faintly concealed look of disgust she asked,
"What do you think about frisee?"
"I hate the stuff. It's annoying as hell."
"Me too. What's the point?"
"Hey! I totally agree with you and so does Theo. But, Tim thinks we're crazy."

A few months went by and Tim and I were preparing salad. The frisee subject once again reared its ugly, frizzy head. Only this time, the conversation was more specific.
Tim:  "I just don't like that it's so springy. It's hard to get into your mouth."
Me:  "Right. I agree. That's exactly the problem!"
Tim:  "Oh. I thought you were saying you didn't like the flavor."
Me:  "It's not the flavor, it's the obnoxiousness I don't like."
Tim:  "Oh. Well in that case, yes I agree. It's a pain."
Ah. Someone please call NATO. We have detent.

Here is what having frisee in your salad accomplishes: In addition to fighting you on the way in and down you get dressing splattered--

1. over your face.
2. onto your shirt.
3. across the table.
4. into your eye.
5. into someone else's eye,

In order to avoid the splattering issue, one must hack the SOB (salad of belligerence) into submission. My approach of late has been to remove the springy pieces from the salad mix, place them gently on the cutting board and slash them into submission with a sharp knife. This, I've decided, is the only way the two of us can get along. Oh, yes, you kinky kook of salad infamy. You WILL be assimilated.

What it boils down to is that frisee, leaf of hostility, is high maintenance. In order to properly choke it down it must be cleaved, mutilated and properly subjugated by blade. Unless your name is Attila, who wants to have such acts of violence as part of their salad making ritual? Certainly not I.

OK. Show of hands. How many out there would like it if they took frisee out of the line-up of usual salad suspects? Thank you. Just as I thought. It's unanimous.

A Less White Christmas--Integrating the Nutcracker Corps





Leopold holds down the fort on the floor while his shorter brethren keep things in order on the mantle.



We have what could easily be called nutcracker obsession at our house. I take the blame for its inception, but having two male household members has certainly resulted in a bolstering of the militia. What started as a sentimental legacy of one wooden, nut cracking soldier has blossomed into a growing army of Christmas cadets seizing the mantles and guarding our two fireplaces. Our seasonal deer décor and one token Santa icon have all taken a back seat to the many bellicose figures derived from Hoffman's "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King."  Nutcrackers dominate our domicile during the holidays—a childhood affection gone grown-up and passed on to both my men.

When I was a little, my Grandma Val would put out a nutcracker—the Nutcracker—during the holidays. I was beyond smitten with him. He stood tall and proud with soft, white, rabbit fur hair and beard, safeguarding a bowl of nuts in a corner of her dining room. After securing the proper permission, I'd spend at least an hour or two with my ligneous beau, petting his hair, cracking nuts (yes, he was useful that way), and either eating them myself or passing them off to other guests so I could operate his jaw over and over, allowing him to disgorge more and more nut meats. He was mesmerizing. He was stoic. He was weirdly, woodenly romantic in a way that still makes sense to me today but is hard to explain. I never named him but as I write this, I believe his name is Yuri—the Dr. Zhivago of nutcrackers.

Yuri presides over a bowl of ornaments, his nutcracking days long gone, as Vladimir looks on.

For many years Yuri was my one and only nutcracker, always a lone soldier, perhaps his job to remind us that even though it’s Christmas there’s a war going on somewhere. Then I had a son. Selfishly, I suppose, I wouldn’t let Theo crack nuts with Yuri. Too many years had passed and I worried Yuri’s overused jaw couldn’t stand the strain of another childish onslaught of abuse. Theo loved Yuri even though he couldn’t enjoy his full talents. When Theo was about two and a half, he saw a large display of nutcrackers at Macy’s and went gaga. That next year he got his own nutcracker and we advanced the troops to a duet. In a couple more years our situation changed. When I divorced, Yuri and his underling were two of the very few Christmas decorations I took with me.

A few years after that, Tim entered the scene. In the beginning he was all blustery bah-humbug about Christmas. Years later he still has some remnants of that but for my sake he manages to keep the volume down on his inner, ever-shrinking Grinch. The things he likes best about our holiday decorations are the nutcrackers.

His fetish began on a small scale. From a post-Christmas sale he brought home a set of four short, fat nutcracker ornaments. For the next season I got him another set of six miniature men with movable mandibles to hang on the tree.

The mania heightened after we married. A few years ago a shop downtown closed its doors and offered steals on holiday décor. We bought a three-foot nutcracker with a tall black fur hat and cape and named him Leopold. Another after-Christmas sale a year or two later produced Vladimir—as large as Leo but with auburn curls, a crown and a scepter—nutcracker nobility, apparently. This year Tim came home with a mouth-moving, timbered trooper of the drum-playing variety. “We didn’t have one that was playing a drum.” he told me. Now we do.

I hadn't noticed what a biased sampling of the population is represented by nutcrackers. I guess generally they’re supposed to be from Teutonic or Slavic stock. Being your average variety, U.S.-born, European mutt , it never struck me as odd that all the nutcrackers you usually see are white—until yesterday. Yesterday I found a dark-skinned nutcracker. He has what appears to be sun-bleached hair and rides a trusty white rocking horse. Without hesitation I scooped him into my cart, whisked him through the checkout line, brought him home and presented him to the troops.

My new dusky hero now flanks the living room mantle with Vladimir and Santa while Yuri keeps his prime location on the coffee table. I’m still working on a name for the dark prince. I haven’t heard any mumbling from the rest of the corps about the difference of his skin color which leads me to believe that either nutcrackers are colorblind or they just don’t care. Isn’t that refreshing?


Yuri, Vladimir, Santa and the newest corps member.

Now I’m keeping my eye out for more ethnically diverse nutcrackers because I think it’s well past time to integrate the battalion. And if ever I see a female nutcracker, she’s coming home too. Oh, I know, and I agree—there are plenty of female nutcrackers out there (perhaps you’ve even dated one or God forbid, married one) but those are all walking, talking human beings.

So in the face of this change I can’t help but wonder: What do nutcrackers think about “Don’t ask, don’t tell”? What will the brigade say should I ever bring home a nutcracker dressed in a pink tutu? Because believe me, I’m looking. I’m looking.



Any suggestions for a name?