Exit Only

“Because once you depart from this one-way road of life, there is just no getting back on.”

humor Terrry Marotta humor Terrry Marotta

Back to The Kale and the Tofu!

It's back to the kale and the tofu for me, but boy did we eat great on that riverboat cruise!Here's the menu for the Captain's Dinner on the second-to-last night of our trip - and, as was true every night, the wine was not only free but it kept on coming:captain's dinner Viking 077Since we got back  I've purged my kitchen of all cookies and crackers and the fridge of that lovely thick cream, a teaspoon of which I often blopped into my coffee mornings.Still though, STILL I have that Homer Simpson tummy. Paying the piper even these three weeks later.Here I am on the third floor of our house back home, looking out the window and envying the sparrows their svelte little bodes. (Gad, my bikini undies are even tight! May have to go to a thong til the weight comes off. ;-) homer in skivvies 

Read More
humor Terrry Marotta humor Terrry Marotta

How We Look to Others

The late Caroline Knapp wrote once that all her adult life she knew she seemed very ‘smooth and ordered’ on the outside but in fact was ‘roiling and chaotic' underneath, and boy did that ever strike a chord for me because I am told I seem pretty ‘smooth and ordered’  too.Once, when I brought a teen to look at a boarding school to which he was hoping to win a scholarship, the young woman who interviewed him asked to speak to me separately afterward. We chatted about things generally and about this young man too, and at the end she said, “I just feel as if I could talk to you all day! You’re so CALM!”She evidently couldn’t hear the yips and barks and funhouse shrieks going on inside me.You just don’t know what the inner reality of another person is; that’s why you can never judge.Another interpretation of myself that I've sometimes been treated to involves the fact that I tend to walk around with a smile on my face.“You’re always smiling at people! Why are you always SMILING?" near strangers have said to me in random settings.Out of the blue like that. Not during any kind of conservation. Just in this pointed, halfway-nasty way as if what they were really saying was, “How about I punch you in the face right now?”I've also noticed over the years that people who know you only a little often don’t like you that much, especially if you seem happy. It’s as if they think you stole their portion of happiness; that they could be a whole lot happier if YOU weren’t so darn happy.When I was as a high school teacher, students who knew me only from seeing me in the corridors sometimes disliked me.  I know because they would tell me as much, after they had become my students. But by then they were in my class, and wrapped in that warm blanket of niceness, the one that all teachers are meant to wrap their pupils in, and their dark assessments had melted away.Here's one thing I know to be true: If I find someone hard to like,  it's almost always because there's something about them I'm not quite ‘getting’ yet. I just need to pay closer attention and try to know them better.As to the always-smiling-at-people part, I smile that way because the aunt who raised me smiled that way -  throughout a life that was far from easy. I used to love walking down the street just behind her, to see the effect she had on the people in her path. By the time she had passed them, they were smiling too.So you can roil all you want on the inside or be baffled or gibbering like a chimp and nobody will necessarily know it. That’s one more nice thing the sainted Fred Rogers told his television audience of little ones: Other people really CAN’T read your thoughts and thank Heaven for that!

Read More
dieting, fashions Terrry Marotta dieting, fashions Terrry Marotta

Topless!

Coupla days ago someone left a giant Homer Simpson doll on my steps with an anonymous note reading “Has anyone seen my underwear?” I guess because when not going on and on about Ted Kennedy here last week I also wrote about how I had to cheat and lie my way back into Weight Watcher’s because I was starting to look like Simpson in my underpants.

This week my column is on Fall Fashions and Shopping and all, a rich vein for satire if ever there was one and between the  fun I had researching that and playing with my new doll I got the idea to dig out the ugliest pair of panties I own Victoria Secret or not, and put them on old Homer. Then too the guy at the hardware store and I were talking bras the other day and he asked me what they cost. “I grit my teeth and lay down 80 bucks a pop, “ I told him. “If you need a bra you need a good bra."Now I don’t know if you’d say Homer needs a BRA exactly... Anyway here he is, my alter ego pal a few hours ago, braless still but otherwise armed with his Vicki-Secret bikinis and ready take on the day!

homer in skivvies

Read More