Jeez Louise

I always thought if you skidded you went sideways, but I didn’t go sideways on that horrible day of icy roads and freezing rain that we had last month in northern New England.On that day, with conditions so treacherous the state ran out of tow trucks, my car didn’t go the way I asked at all but jackrabbited instead , straight into a tree.Never mind that I was turning the wheel.Never mind that I had braked with extra care.But if the car didn't go sideways over the last two months, just about everything else around here did – even before we got to the seven feet of snow.For one thing, everyone in my family got sick and some of us got Technicolor sick.I was one of the lucky ones: My kind of sick just had me laid out like Lenin in his tomb for most of our family vacation, aware only dimly of various kind family members circling through to bring me food I could not eat.Then, for the week following, I couldn’t sleep, because my air passages were so packed with what felt like concrete.Then, for two weeks after that, I couldn’t wake up.Also, for most of those weeks, I couldn't read.I couldn't iron, though ironing has always helped me calm myself in the midst of every kind of personal shipwreck. I would LOOK at the iron propped on the windowsill and sink, ‘How do you suppose that thing works?’ I would LOOK at the TVs darkened screen and think, “Weren't there some sort of beguiling images or something that used to emit from there? ‘And there is more: My little grandson broke his leg badly enough that he’ll be in walkin' like Captain Ahab ‘til the tulips come up. My sister fell and broke her pelvis.And I caught two toes on a piece of medical equipment at the doctor’s office – in the doctor’s very office! – painfully spraining them both.Someplace in there, chiefly out of a sense of compassion for my salt-and-sand encrusted vehicle, I pulled into our local carwash, but did so such a way that the two guys manning the place began yelling and waving their soapy long-handled brushes around wildly.Why? Why were they yelling? They were yelling because though I had glided nicely into place, settling my wheels just so in those two wheel-receiving troughs they have, I had then proceeded to throw the car smartly into Reverse and step on the accelerator.Then, in the ensuing panic, I stepped on the brake and leaned on the set of four buttons that open all the windows.So now every time I go to the car wash, the guys there take one look at my approaching vehicle and start yelling right away. “Neutral!” they go, waving their funny brushes. “Put it in Neutral!” They get so worked up every single time jeez Louise.But me, I just look at it like this: At least I didn’t try going in sideways.

The Best Laugh I've Had in a Month

The best laugh I've had in a month came to me yesterday when I came across this video, brought to my attention by Dave Hunter who  has a blog called Reaching Utopia that you can see here.  I should say that what you’ll see below is from the "funny" category on his site.  There are many other, more serious sections too.)Now kick back and relax and think on the times when you too were this young, and limber, and crazy :-)  (God I love watching people fall to be funny! I used to do that. I did just about anything to get a laugh.)[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=KNXXC1tDJQE]

Scattered

Sunday morning I sat with a group of people at a round table as we talked about the wise and foolish decisions we have made in our lives; how you don’t always know at the time which kind you are making. (This was at church and we were parsing the parable about the builder who builds upon rock as against the builder who builds upon sand.)Because we didn’t all know each other some small talk entered into our discussion and it was revealed that one of our number had moved here recently from the south. Somebody asked him if people in New England where we all live really are standoffish.I can’t tell because I was born here. Also I’m pretty sure I am not standoffish myself.But most of the people at the table were not New England born and they said right away that we were prickly – prickly! - but once you got to know us we would be your friend for life. Your real friend, they said, not a surface friend, which I took to mean a friend you can relax around; a friend to whom you can admit how sad and screwed up you sometimes feel.I know I love people who freely admit they don’t have it all together. The effort of presenting that perfect façade otherwise is so, so…. immense, you know? Think of how you agonized as a teen about whether you fell within the bounds of normal. Think how you worried about your clothes. I had only one pair of hosiery the fall of my 10th grade year and along about October they got a run in them. I stopped it run with clear nail polish but you could still see it when I sat down and my skirt rode up, so I spent the two months - from October until Christmas vacation - pointing to the run and saying "Darn! Look at this run! My desk must have done it when I went to get up!” Exhausting stuff all that subterfuge!Maybe all this is just my way of saying to you guys that I'm sorry for all the mistakes in my copy last Friday (since corrected.)  I must have been in one of those waking sleeps when I posted that flawed version for a better edited version. It’s like I was in one of those Ambien trances you hear about where people get up and mow the lawn at 3 in the morning and remember nothing about it the next day. Anyhow my blogger pal Brian let me know right away with his signature “Dude! Typos!” alert in the subject line of his email. What I would do without Brian I do not know.I accomplish a lot in the course of a day but I’m often sort of scattered. As I looked at picture of Inaugural gowns for yesterday’s post I had to smile at this one below, showing the wardrobe of Frances Cleveland, old Grover's wife: One full gown and then two gowns that are only half gowns. That'll be me any day now: stepping out into the thoroughfare minus my skirt.

When Things Go Wrong

When things go wrong, they really go wrong. Or maybe this is just a bad time for me.First, I lost my Nikon Cool Pix camera, a silvery little thing, skinny as an angel fish and slippery as a palmful of mercury.  It just slipped into another dimension is all I can say.This happened in August and I whined about it here a week or so ago. Then this past weekend when I posted some photos here, a few especially alert readers commented, "Ah you found your camera!"But I didn't find my camera. I used my phone to take those pictures.So finally, after I had wrestled with my conscience and argued with my pocketbook, I counted up all my coupons from Staples and went to that store and bought a new camera, a fancier one and, more importantly, one that bulges out on one side. Harder to lose, I figured.Then today since I was at the Mall anyway I ducked into RadioShack  to look for a case for it,  which I found. And the salesman was lovely so while I was there I also bought a bigger media card and a battery for the remote control of my Bose radio. I paid,  pulled out my car keys, tossed ‘em in the RadioShack bag and started for my car. But then at the last minute I thought I might just run into that rest room outside Nordstrom’s - oh and maybe grab a coffee at the coffee bar they have just to the right of the entrance.Then suddenly I was inside Nordstrom's.  It happens but my excuse was a good one: we have a family wedding on the beach at 11am this Sunday for which I foolishly thought I would wear this gorgeous spun-sugar dress, a gossamer dream of swoops and scallops, the kind of thing Tinkerbell would wear if they ever let her out of those green cutoffs. Only now it  looks now like it’s not going to BE warm and sunny on the beach at 11am. It's going to be 56° with temperatures climbing to the 60s if we’re lucky and a fair amount of overcast.I do have another get-up I can wear but no shoes to go with it, which is why I went into Nordstrom's, after hitting the bathroom and before hitting the EBar where they make such awesome coffee.Somehow, in one of those three places, I set down the RadioShack bag, which, remember, had my car keys in it.I got out to the car and immediately got that awful feeling you get when you realize you can't get into your vehicle.I had to call my friend Mary let herself into my house with the extra key she keeps for us, went up to old Dave's bureau, found his key to my car and drove all the way to the mall to rescue me.I kept thinking as I waited for her that surely I would find the keys inside the car. After all I had made two trips to the car earlier because I’d had my laptop with me and that was too heavy to lug around shopping . Then I bought two skirts and I didn't want to be carrying them. Thus I had made at least two offloading trips to the car.Or was it three? Surely the Radio Shack back and the keys were in there too?Only they weren't. The RadioShack bag is gone, along with that brand-new camera, a media card, a camera case, the battery for the remote for my Bose radio - AND ALSO my car keys, my house keys, the key to my Post Office box, and the special skinny key chain cards that in my case get me the good deals at CVS,  at Mahoney's Rocky Ledge Nursery and at Rite Aid. Oh and the one I need to gain entrance to the Y every day.All this bad luck broke on me at 4pm yesterday and I feel just sick about it.I called Nordstrom's and RadioShack and the Mall Office but no one had seen any such bag. I left my name and number.You don't think about people stealing stuff but maybe if you’re such a fool as to set down a bag from RadioShack so as to paw through the tumble of discounted shoes, this kind of thing will happen.I wonder if that happened. Nobody has stolen from me since 1980, when a couple of second-story men shimmied up the columns to our porch, pushed up the window to my study, and relieved us of all our wedding gifts. And my mother's ring from the Boston Latin school. And my own National Honor Society pin. And the charm bracelet my high school boyfriends kept adding to, wee silver trinket by wee silver trinket until it jingled on my wrist like the ankle bracelet on a gypsy queen.All gone now, along with this latest list of things, like that new camera that I didn’t get to use even once.It's a lesson for me all right and not an easy one.  I'm just hoping for a better day today.

Keys like the ones here - only my key ring holds a good 15 keys plus the 4 mini-cards

On Staying Dressed

I taped a TV show yesterday and managed to stay dressed the whole time, which was a great relief to me. I went through a period where there was nothing I liked better than getting the cameramen on the set to laugh right out loud. In a spot I did once on a noontime magazine show, I stood up at the climax of my story and whipped off my suit-jacket to reveal the fact that I had my blouse on inside-out, something that was immediately evident in that great age of shoulder pads. It was a story my sister Nan had told me, from the hard first year of her untimely widowhood.It seems that at long last she had been able to drag herself to a social event  and found herself actually chatting with a very nice man - only her teenage daughter kept darting by to say she needed to talk to her."Later!" Nan hissed to her. "In a minute!" she said a second time and yet the girl kept swooping in to say "Mom I need to talk to you!"Finally Nan made her apologies to the nice man and stepped aside with her daughter.  “This better be good!” she said.“It's good all right. You have your dress on inside-out.”  She looked down and sure enough: here were the little foam epaulets of the shoulder pads, the exposed seams, the pockets like little dead fish dangling down from the waistband.... That's all I was doing that time: showing everyone in TV-land how funny she must have looked. And sure enough the cameramen chortled audibly.So I guess it was a victory all right. Back then I would do just about anything to get a laugh. Probably the only reason I’m not like that now is that half the time I really do have my clothes on inside-out. Or backwards. Or else my earrings don’t match.So I was dignified yesterday instead of fearless. Maybe fearlessness is behind me for good now (but gosh I sure hope not!) 

Snowed In

It was like a snowstorm from the distant past, starting as thick white flakes, then, as the temperatures dropped, becoming like grains of icy sand in a blinding sandstorm.Either way it sealed us in. It sat on our chests and stopped up our mouths.Anyway it stopped up mine.Every day of my life I get up at 5 and write 'til my back hurts. Not yesterday. Yesterday I woke at 7, took this picture, and got back into bed where I basically spent the whole day reading and dreaming. No TV.  No phone. No internet.David stayed home too but he shoveled four times, then cleaned out all the kitchen drawers and by  noon was seated at the dining room table getting a head start on the taxes.“TT!” he would yell cheerily every time he came into the bedroom. “Lazy old TT!” he would say. But I just looked up from my pillow and smiled a guilt-free smile.  Finally at 5, I lit this candle and watched the night come on. I knew we could lose power any minute with the high winds but I figured by then he'd be in the bed too and it would be like my favorite fantasy. “Pretend we’re in a boat on a tossing ocean,” I say when we curl up together. “Old Mr. and Mrs. Astor going down with the Titanic,” he often says back.We were sealed in all day and night and it was loveliness itself.

Crazytown

Got up at 4:30 this morning and staggered to the bathroom to stop up the sink and open the taps for our old cat Abe who works up a powerful thirst doing nothing all night. Left the water on to form a nice pool for him since he has trouble twisting and lowering his head enough to get that little Velcro tongue under the faucet these days. Wandered into the guest bathroom to make the coffee, and, while waiting for it to brew, lurched over into my writing room  where I opened the package from Macy’s that came last night to see that I’ve managed to order only HALF a bathing suit, just a cute pair of ruffly bottoms.  “Oh well,” I thought and sat down to finish a letter of recommendation for a friend, not remembering anything about a faucet left on all this time – until I remembered about it. I TORE back into our bathroom to find the place flooded and everything in the cabinets below the sink swimming in three inches of water, fish-oil capsules orbiting like tiny canoes. I spent 40 minutes swabbing, sponging and bailing and I know have to go downstairs now and see if the rooms below have become a rain forest, my big potted palms all happy under the lushly dripping canopy that is the kitchen ceiling. “Jeez T!” I said to myself and looked in the mirror – and saw that my fine silk nightie is not even on my body but is sort of dripping out of one arm of this ratty old bathrobe. Should I go back to bed now and pull the covers over my head or should I simply welcome a day rife with comic possibility?