pomegranatesandpaper

Happy New Year

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my blogging friends. With the unprecedented suffering that we are bearing witness to this week, please  remember that the human spirit is strong and resilient and is buoyed by the outpouring of love and support that the world is giving to our suffering neighbors. Even Bush finally got off the stick!

I hope that you have had a chance to donate to some care providers and a moment to pray for all that lost their lives and those that lost their loved ones, their homes, businesses, and belongings. Imagine beginning a new year bereft of even the land that held my home. Imagine, knowing that "home" does not exist for you anywhere anymore. How do you begin to build anew when you are alone and living in a field while waiting for someone to come to your aid and all around you there is death, bodies, dysentery, no drinking water, no sanitation facilities, and chaos?

As for simpler and sillier matters, please know that you  have a home here with me on pomegranatesandpaper. There's always a comfortable chair here for you to sit in, and a table on which to rest your cup of coffee. Stop by whenever you can during the year. I intend to make it quite a scintillating year of prose and art. There will usually be something interesting to read about, a couple of jokes, a large dose of sarcasm, and I promise to hold down usual whining breast beating, and gnashing of teeth.

May your year be blessed with good health, love, joy, prosperity,contentment, paintings on the walls, books on your shelves and fire in your belly!

I'm still loafing around and have little energy to do more than eat chocolate and surf the net. That's what vacations are for, I finally figured out last night when I was overcome with guilt that I wasn't:

writing
making art
going to the city
making dinners for the college kids (yeah, they look like they're starving)
freshening up the blog, especially the three months old books link
etcetera -throw in any guilt connected with Being A Good Wife (hah!)

But tonight we're going to see The Life Aquatic because we'll see anything with Bill Murray in it.

In the meantime, please check out Pamela Barsky's blog for an 800 number to send donations for Indonesia and a long list of charities to which you can donate.

I'm relaxing around the house and doing lots of chores, like the mountain of laundry that built up while the dryer was broken - the Princess wants me to tell you that she did half the chores including most of the laundry. Mystery Man slept until 3:00 and managed to take the garbage out when I stood next to it and called for him for about five minutes.

Other than that, it's freezing here and I just can't get motivated to do much. I should go into the city, or take a drive, but it's cold and gloomy. But I am drawing, doing a sketch a day and I'll scan them in over the weekend.

Early winter with nothing much to do but read and eat.  Everyone have fun doing the same.

On the Second Day of Christmas...

I am bored.

You have permission to smack me upside the head for this remark. Yes, I am the same person who has been crying and weeping over never having anytime to do anything but work and run around and buy gifts and take care of her husband and buy groceries, blah, blah, blah.

And now I am bored.

We've cleaned up the wrapping paper, ribbons, tags, cellophane, Styrofoam, paper plates, napkins, plastic cups, and foil from chocolates that littered the living room and  trailed into the kitchen like Hansel and Gretel on steroids.

We've crushed all the boxes and carefully separated paper from plastic cause otherwise the big bad garbage truck won't take the Christmas empties (boxes, not beers). We washed the china, put away the silver plate, took the boards out of the dining room table, and put all the leftovers in plastic tubs.

The mean ol' husband, who is like the whirling tornado when he feels well, made me clean up the bedroom, and somehow I got sucked into filing the enormous basket of paperwork that's been accumulating since August. By then I was exhausted and pissed off to discover that the cashmere sweater he gave me is "too clingy", i.e. it makes all my rolls show. But since it is the only thing that has to be returned, I can live with it.

After a rest fueled by a piece of yule log, a cannoli, some provolone and pepperoni slices, olives, and pickles (and no, I am not pregnant), I decide to hmmm, maybe Do Some Artwork! The thought of what to make exhausts me, so I have several pieces of Lindt chocolate with raspberry filling (I ate the one with orange filling on Christmas Eve).

Journal cards! Simple, fast, totally right brained. But then on the trips in and out of the art room, I decide to play with my new easel and the tubes of quinacridone acrylics that Maria gave me. An hour later, I am remember that my painting skills are akin to my drawing skills of five years past, and that I must never paint again. Or at least take some lessons.

The experience has depressed me and I find that some Prosecco helps me calm down. I decide I need real food, not party food, and make a big pot of lentil soup, adding tomato sauce, olive oil, garlic cloves, fresh rosemary, kosher salt, ground pepper, and strips of ham. I nobly avoid the marzipan on the side table in the dining room and assist the husband in taking the leaves out of the dining room table and bringing the cloth soaked with lobster juice down to the basement. (I can really loaf a lot more when he doesn't feel well....)

By now it is pitch dark outside but only 5:15 and I am Really Bored. I convince Stan, who is a mere shadow of himself after a New York Giants crushing defeat, to go to Blockbusters (and get a Good Movie this time - what this mean, we both have no idea), and to swing past Starbucks (three miles on the other side of town but he is such a good man).

Gentle readers, expect a lot more posts this week as I am home until New Year's Eve (ran out of days off) and the weather is supposed to remain cold and dark. I suspect we'll make a trip or two into NYC, and spend some afternoons with the teapot and leftover cakes with the sisters, but for the most part, I am free to blog, write, draw, etc.

Or just lie in bed and read People's Ten Most Arrogant Men Brought Down by Their Penises.

Really. What a story!

This is a photo of the tree at my grandmother's house, probably 40 years ago. I know it was a very long time ago, because this is a real tree, and for most of my life, I remember them having a very Charlie Brown fake tree that they put away in the attic, decorations and all, under a plastic bag each year.

People get in trouble with depression on Christmas because they think back to their early childhood years with nostalgia and long for the simple joys of being a kid going to Grandma's house on Christmas Day.  Who wouldn't want to be a kid on Christmas again, and know that each house you visit has gifts waiting for you, bowls of candy, platters of cookies, and the smell of tomato gravy simmering on the stove.

Well, hold up here now. Who do you think was buying all those gifts, baking the cookies, and making that elaborate dinner that begun with chicken soup, progressed to pasta, morphed into roast beef, was graced with artichokes and salad, segued to fruits and nuts, and then was deliciously ended by more sweets and baked goods than could ever be imagined?

I remind myself that I am on the other side of the fantasy now and I strive to create some of the family magic that I remember and long for. I conveniently forget the fights between my sisters and I, my father's short temper because money is tight,  my mother and grandmother and aunt made at us because we wouldn't help with the dishes, and my mother's headaches when she took to her bed the next day.

But that's what life is about. One day you're yelling at your kids like a crazy woman because everyone is watching TV and you're running around like a nut cleaning and cooking, and the next day you're all in a big group hug on the couch with wrapping paper piled up around your feet and presents on your lap.

And that's what being a family is all about. When I am in the kitchen about to cry because there are 7 fish dishes to get on the table to feed 14 people, my sister comes in and takes the skillet away from me and starts sauteing the shrimp herself. When I am lying in bed at 4:00 a.m. with exhaustion induced indigestion, my husband gets up and makes me an alka seltzer. When my mother in law calls and says she fell in her apartment and won't come out for Christmas dinner, my husband, son, and daughter pack up all her gifts and go there for the morning so she can watch DVDs on the player we bought her.

There's really nothing more to  life than this.  I am extraordinarily grateful for so many things this year and I treasure each one that managed to fall into my lap amidst the bumps and detours of ill health, job troubles, sick relatives, and money issues.  So here is my own list of gratitude for this year, and in no particular order of importance:

1. It is Christmas morning, the sun is shining, everyone is happy with their gifts, and my husband is up and walking, and only in moderate pain!

2. My husband and kids. I've been with my husband since I was 16 years old. We are the quintessential old married couple who bark and scrape and yet love each other deeply. I hope that this year brings him more healthy days than not,  but regardless of it all, we'd never part because losing him would be losing over half my life, and the best part of it.

3.My Mom. She will be 80 in August and shows few signs of slowing down. She's had a few, small health issues, but she's mainly healthy, independent, outspoken, and dresses better than anyone in the family.

4. My sisters. I have a different relationship with each of my four sisters, but regardless, we are all friends and are there for each other in times of need, whether on the phone or in real time, whether for trips to the hospital, or trips to the diner, or trips anywhere to get away from our families on rainy weekends. They are  my best friends and as much as I'd love to move away from here yet again, I'd never leave them.

4. My job - crazy no, since I've bitched and moaned about it repeatedly this past 6 months. My job is changing and my workplace has morphed into a nasty place, but essentially, I love the immediate people I work with and my soon to be ex-boss has been a very kind and gentle person to work with. Most of all, this job has given me back the skills that had turned rusty from 7 years off work raising kids. It put me back into the fray and I am grateful for surviving it because when my husband is lying in the bed with his back, I know that I least make enough to pay for a roof (not this roof, but a roof) over our heads.

5. This year I finally achieved something I've wanted to do for most of my adult life: writing a column about creativity. For that I have to especially thank my editor and publisher (how cool is that!), Leslie Riley and Patricia Boulton. The latest issue of Cloth, Paper, Scissor just came out and I still can't believe it's my art and writing on the inside back cover!

6. Cape Cod. Yes, I am grateful for the whole tourist, overgrown, crazy place. 17 years ago, my husband insisted that we go to Cape Cod for a vacation. I hated to go there, thinking it just a giant tourist trap of baked beans and t-shirts. Instead, I found a soul place by the ocean and fell in love with the waves, the sand, the trails, and the light.
It's become a sacred place for our family, the place that I pray we can return to year after year, and the place I hope my children bring their children to. In addition, it's become a gathering place for my extended family, a chance for us all to be together as girls with my mother, as cousins and friends, and to sit, draw, eat, watch bad movies, burn at the beach, watch the kids boogie board, and shop till we drop. It's expensive and every year we say we can't afford it, but somehow we scrape the  money together and know that it is worth every cent.

7. Starbucks. Now that surprised you! I am grateful for Starbucks. Why? I love their coffee and I love having a place to go where I can sit down and write, knit, draw, or just watch the people go by.  It represents a freedom to me, a little bit of the day that is just mine, whether I squeeze in a trip on the way back from court, or after work on the way home, or on the weekend. It's a little slice of the real me, the person who would like to spend her days in a slower, more contemplative and sensual way. And hey, I just love lattes, okay?

8. My laptop. If I didn't have this laptop, you'd be getting posts from me about once a week when I had the energy and compunction to drag myself into the cold art room and fire up the ancient desk top. Along wit that, I'd like to thank Optimum on line and Firefox for making blogging so fast and easy. And as long as I'm on the subject, thank you, Amazon.com, for selling used books as I've managed to cut the cost of my book-buying habit by 75% by only buy  used books.

9. My cousin Alison. She came to Cape Cod with her three funny, sweet little kids, and she spent the whole time knitting. Really! The woman walked on the beach carrying her three year old and knitting at the same time. What a woman! She made us all scarves while she was there for five days, and she infected me with the bug. From September till today, I've knitted ten scarves and have found a way to spend the money I'm saving on books (sigh).

10. Books. Under this category I put every book I've ever read since I learned to read. A large category and I wish I'd kept track, but more and more I see the differences in people who are Readers and people who are not. Books really did save my life by saving me from the boring sameness of what life could have been, by giving me imagination, inspiration, and pushing me to think that maybe I could do some of those things to. With reading came writing, and with writing, well, my life would be a little plain, brown paper package tied up in string of work and family. Writing takes me away from the stress of Stan's back, my kids' problems, my own problems, my need to control everyone and everything. I love to read, I love to write, I love to draw, I love to paint.

With that I end this long-winded post if you've made it this far. I have to get dressed and go to my sister's to eat more food and she is a fabulous cook. I'm looking forward to having the next 5 days off and I plan to spend it either in the city or in my art room.

Advent IV - The Light Returns

Yes, I am here, slowly surfacing after gruelish work weeks and very busy weekends filled with family celebrations. We had a lovely party for The Little One's 13th birthday, and we ate our fill of the cupcakes and all sang Christmas songs while we decorated the gingerbread cookies.

At work today, we met with our new boss, and learned of more and more changes in the company, most of them portents for more work, more hours, same pay. Enough said in that regard!

Now I am home until New Year's Eve. Tonight I finally had time to open all the packages that we ordered on line as gifts. Everything is here and in one piece, so tomorrow I'll begin wrapping presents. But first I'm taking most of the day for myself. I don't know what I'll be doing but it will involve some window shopping, at least one latte, some knitting, maybe even a trip to the yarn store.

Stan ordered the seafood for Christmas Eve, and I have some grocery shopping to do tomorrow because some lame teacher decided that Thursday, the day before Christmas Eve you insufferable pedantic, would be a good time for the kids to have a cultural celebration for which they must make an ethnic dish. My darling signed up for lasagna, so add that to the ever-growing to-do list (and no, she informed me, it can't be Stouffers, to which I replied via a Bronx cheer.)

My, I am a whiny bitch tonight, no? That brings me to my fourth Advent essay, which has appropriately enough, the shortest essay, since it is the shortest day of the year, and the return tomorrow to the light. I can see the light at the end of this long tunnel of a year. The husband is slowly getting better. He's had some excellent days and some lousy days (like today), but so far the progression has been more good days than bad. All the kids are home from college and all appear to be in good spirits and have decent grades. I have learned to view my life in these small increments,  to respect the tenor of the day and not try to will it away, and to relax into the flow. I've realized over the last two weeks that I am profoundly affected by the stress of work and family and that I need to put away the laptop, shut the TV, hang up the phone, even put down the books, and draw. Yes, simply draw. I can feel the tightness in my chest running out through my hand as I pick up the pen and concentrate on the object or person before me.

So for the next week that I have off, I am making it my intention to draw each day and to get art work scanned in so this blog can resume its proper place as an "illustrated blog" and the emphasis on creativity in all manners of things can resume its rightful place.

Thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me when it seemed all I had to offer was tears and pleas for prayers. Thank you for all your posts and comments and shared experiences and funny jokes and for making me laugh and even pointing out the sisterly jibs and jabs in the comments sections.

I promise that pomegranatesandpaper will remain for another year, that it will return to featuring art work and celebrate the creative, and that I will offer you my own peculiar and pretty myopic view of life in the middle aged, over worked, overweight fast lane.

Maybe the worst week of my working life is over. I can't even go into all the crap that is going on in my office except to say that a large number of attorneys decided to take an early retirement buy out, we are being reorganized, I am losing my boss of 2 1/2 year and getting an off-site boss, and the work load is about to double as they are not replacing the people who left (who were all our most experienced trial attorneys.)

But it's Saturday, and the last weekend before Christmas, and I have calmed down enough to get revved up for the holidays.

Besides the regular Christmas chores, we are celebrating Julia's 13th birthday tomorrow with a family party (she graciously agreed to postpone the friends' party until January). I was only going to have a cake, but then I felt badly that her birthday gets short shrift - after all, she was due on the 27th and it's not her fault she came a week early.

 

She requested cup cakes because she doesn't like cake, so I made about 50 cupcakes: 1/3 devil's food; 1/3 white with confetti in the batter; and 1/3 yellow. The devil's food will get 7 minute frosting tomorrow; the yellow will get mocha buttercream, and the confetti will get plain butter cream with sprinkles. Then i made about 10 pounds of breaded chicken cutlets which I am serving along with penne with vodka sauce and salad. Lastly, I made the dough for two batches of gingerbread cookies. It is my dear aunt's recipe and she used to make probably twenty batches at Christmas and give us all our fill for at least the last 30 years of her life. The kids really miss it (and the grown ups too). I'm too tired to roll, cut, and bake tonight, so I just decided to roll them out and bake tomorrow, then have the kids decorate them at the party.

 

We were going to drive into NYC and see the lights and the tree, but saner and tireder heads prevailed and we ordered sushi. Now I am going to read my new book, PD James, The Murder Room, and collapse on my bed with a cup of tea.

 

I hope you are all relaxing with your feet up or dancing at a party, your choice!

And You Thought It Was All Knitting and Journaling

Thanks for all the suggestions for getting the cat to the vet. I especially like Karen's suggestion about putting his pillow in the bottom of the basket and gently lowering him into it before he pops his head up....

I gently remind readers that this is the cat that took down Thumper The Baby Rabbit under my dining room table. The cat who will snuggle in your lap for ten minutes as you gently stroke his head, then turn and take a quick bite out of you hand before stalking off. Picture the Tasmanian devil. 

We have searched the linen closet and discovered a bath sheet as big as a bed and as strong as linen. Volunteers are lined up, one for each corner, and we are planning an early morning intervention, as soon as he comes in for breakfast and his day long nap on one of our beds.

After delivering the suffocated swaddled cat to the vet, we will then take the tub o' hamsters to the pet store, where we will leave all the babies and the mother because my daughter is tired of being a baby nurse to her slutty hamster. However, we now know what business we are good at for our golden years: hamster wet nurses.

And lest those of you think that all my fun hijinks occur only at home, let me give you a glimpse into my high-powered law career:

Yesterday, after a full morning in court, followed by hanging around bitching and moaning with my friends about our horrible life, followed by a committee meeting where we hung around with colleagues bitching and moaning about our horrible life, I got back to my office around 2:30 with my bag lunch and tried to choke down a roast beef sandwich while I shoved onto the floor surveyed the piles of files left for me. I  discovered that I was given a trial for today, a petition that had to be filed within three days, and the usual residual paperwork that breeds at night  on my desk. I started getting that jaw-tightening headache and rapid breathing. I ransacked my desk - no chocolate.

My friend called to chat and I had to tell her I had to call her back tomorrow because I was so swamped. I convened my crisis unit - a fellow attorney, a para, (none of whom had any chocolate so who needs them!) and had a claim rep on the speaker phone,  and we began going through the evidence for the trial. One person researched the law and the rest of us plowed through the paperwork, and within minutes we discovered a major evidentiary problem. After further discussion in which I sat grabbing at my hair and trying to modulate my voice below a scream, the claim rep said she'd call us back in a few minutes after she did further investigation. We then tried to call the other claim rep on the file and were put into voice mail hell as the message told us the office was closed despite the fact that it was only 4:05 and we sat there and pressed phone buttons for five minutes until I smashed the receiver back down.

Then we started to smell smoke

Then the computers crashed.

Then the phones crashed.

The Fire alarm went off.

We were told to evaculate and huddled outside in the freezing cold, where we all bitched and moaned about our horrible lives.

Now it was 4:15.

After ten freaking minutes, the firemen arrived with adorned with helmets and axes and stormed our office to find a bag of Halloween caramel popcorn smoldering in the microwave.

My boss's face is pinched and harried. No one will admit to the craving for a later afternoon sugary carb.

We all troop back in. Somehow the servers are up again and we can go back on line. (Did I mention that when the computers crash we can't even make a phone call, let alone work?)

First claim rep calls back: settle, she says. Seconed claim rep is still incommunicado - settle we say.

Another para pops her head above her cubicle: your petition is busting, the other insurance company is insolvent.

Suddenly it is 4:30 and I can clear my desk.

I call my friend back. We bitch and moan about our  horrible lives for for 15 minutes.

I pack up my briefcase to leave. Before I walk out the door, I turn to my staff and thank them for their assistance, especially the anonymous person who burned the popcorn and filled the office with smoke, giving me a giant head ache and causing my daughter when I get home to ask what was burning. But before I leave, just before I get past our office's Target special fake Christmas tree, one of the para's calls out, "wait there's another trial on for tomorrow...." I toss my head sassily and in my best Scarlett O'Hara mode, I say, I'm going home -  "Tamarra is anothu day".

Advent III - Singing In the Car

December 15th - we are more than halfway to Christmas. I am beginning to feel that holiday anxiety of too many obligations, too many lists, and no cessation in the demands of work and usual family needs. In the space of five days, we'll need to get the tree up without Mystery Man to help; finish decorating the house; do loads of laundry; and have a party for the Little One who turns 13, which involves shopping and a lot of cooking. In the midst of it, the big cat has to be cornered and tackled into a carrier to get his shots and the hamster babies have to be dropped off at the pet store. Stan already tried to get the big cat into his carrier for another appointment while I wasn't home and had to give up when the cat got nasty. Last night in bed, I realized that I could stick the cat into a big picnic hamper and secure the lid for the short ride to the vet. We'll certainly get look delivering a cat in a wicker basket, but it's better than getting our hands bitten up or face clawed. (Why do we have this cat??)

In the midst of all the usual hoopla, I find myself skimming my daily meditations with the promise that I'll go back and read them later, but later never comes. Today The Princess comes home from school and I will gently shift a few jobs over to her capable and youthful shoulders.

To keep my spirits calm and to center me as I work late and go in early to catch up with the volume of paperwork that threatens to swamp me, I'm listening to Norah Jone's first album, which always calms me down and relaxes me. I'm also listening to the soundtrack from Love, Actually, which has a great variety of songs about love and Christmas. I find myself belting out "All I Want for Christmas Is You" in my little car as I buzz up the parkway, away from the grime of the Bronx and back to work where so much awaits me. And when I'm really down and dirty, I do my own rendition of "The Trouble of Love Is".

Try singing in the car more often - it's better than a candy bar for revving up your spirits and transporting you to a better place.

First Blog

Here's a copy of my very first publication. In fact, you can consider it my very first blog. It was a neighborhood newspaper put out by myself and my friend. I think it was the only edition! It was sent to me courtesy of my oldest friend, Teri Schnabel Blaschke, who found it in her mementoes and thought I would get a kick out of it. Excuse the gushy youthful excess ( I was in 7th grade!)

Download brookside_gazette.pdf

All I Want for Christmas

        With only  two weeks until Christmas, the papers are loaded with circulars and sales fliers and weigh as much as a toddler with a soggy diaper. My husband and I  divvy up the weekend papers quickly – he takes the front section, week in review, business, classified, and auto, while I am the comics, local insert, travel, magazine, and book review. The sales inserts sit untouched until the kids get up and then they dive into the paper pile at the end of the bed and pull out the glossy, full color fliers for toys, sports, and clothes, depending on the sex and age of aforesaid child. And even though they’ve outgrown the toy catalogs, Mystery Man and the Little One still fight over them, hoarding them in their room. They all used to read them voraciously and circle and annotate the items that they wanted on their Santa list.
     I remember when the Christmas Sears catalog was delivered and having a fit waiting for everyone else to look at it so I could obsess over the toys and dolls. My fingers would be grimy from the newsprint that blurred under my sweaty hands as I whipped through the pages featuring washing machines, vacuums, and long underwear to get to the land of inexpressible joy, the toy section. The days after the Sears catalog was delivered were days of extreme secrecy while we hid ourselves in closets and locked rooms in order to pore over the Easy Bake Ovens and the baby dolls that wet and said “mama”.

    Iconic Christmas gifts. We all have them in our memory.  I remember receiving a huge, metal paint set that contained about 100 watercolor pans. Another time it was the giant box of Crayolas, redolent of wax and pigment, and a thick pad for coloring - remember those rough newsprint pads where you had to go around the pulp bits in the paper? Another year it was my first set of hardcover books - The Five Little Peppers and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm.
    And then there were Barbies.  Yes, Barbie dolls.  I know the rap - they are so unrealistic, they create unrealistic body images, they are terrible role models for little girls who yearned for giant boobs, impossibly large breasts (not anymore) and tiny feet permanently arched (which would hurt like hell, no?)
    Blah, blah, blah.
    I am old enough to say I grew up with Barbie dolls and played with them constantly. Barbie had no deleterious effect on me. In the 60's, Barbie dolls were The Big Thing. As a girl, you had limited choices in terms of your toy inventory: baby dolls, board games, bikes, and roller skates. The latter two were great but were of Little use when the temperature went below forty degrees, which was from November until April.  We had lots of board games, but they required someone to play with, and I had a lot of time on my hands by myself. And baby dolls  pretty much lost their appeal after my attention getting little sisters were born.
    Barbie filled the niche between child and teen, a niche we didn't even know existed back then. The words  "adolescent" or "prepubescent" weren’t even thought of during  my middle school years. In fact, there was no such thing as middle school, a recent invention. In 7th grade, you went to Public Junior High School, unless you were Catholic or went to private school in order to keep your kids away from the Public Junior High School were the kids were supposedly Smoking Cigarettes and having Drag Races.  At least that's how our parents described it to us,  thereby lighting the fire within us to shed our green plaid jumpers and Kiss A Boy, which my best friend did and my mother’s best friend witnessed and told her and she yelled at me in that convoluted surrogate parenting that all parents do, including myself.
    But I digress. Before we could get to kiss boys, we had to play with a lot of Barbie  dolls.
   
This is the Barbie that I played with. Note how stiff the dolls seem, with their perfect hair and poised arms. They usually didn't stay that way, after they were handled a million times by girls with grubby hands. We bent their arms, lost their heads, bit their feet, and left bombs of pointy, tiny shoes all over the house just waiting for a barefoot father to step on and scream.
    Barbies were impossibly pretty, a male fantasy, but Barbies were ours. And they were not helpless babies, they were women with lives of their own. Barbie had her own house. Barbie had her own car. Barbie had a boyfriend and a little sister, Skipper, for whom she seemed to have a responsibility. She even a best friend, Midge. Yet, she didn't have a husband or kids. She was probably the first single role model that I had.
        Barbie had everything we didn't have - a pink roadster, a boyfriend with a tuxedo.  But the clothes, oh, the clothes! Barbies had outfits and a catalog of outfits and accessories.  Who had "outfits" and what the heck were accessories? I had a school uniform, a dress for Sunday, and probably a pair of stretch pants and two sweaters. That was my wardrobe and that of most of my friends and cousins.

My sisters and I each had a Barbie suitcase similar to this one,  in black patent leather or pink, with a swingy handle and cool graphics, that were packed with our Barbie clothes and accessories.  (The same suitcases are on eBay these days for ridiculous prices and we all scream at ourselves for passing them onto younger cousins.)
    With the same drooly, wild-eyed fervor that my kids display over the Sunday circular with Playstation 2 games, my little sisters and I drooled over the little Barbie catalogs that came with the dolls and outfits.  Barbie had red velvet coats with stand up collars, long white clothes to the elbows, and a red pillbox hat a la Jackie Kennedy and Audrey Hepburn. Barbie had a yellow  rain coat and white go-go boots. Barbie had strapless tulle gowns  with sparkly shoes and more elbow-length gloves.  And she had swimsuits with "cabana cover ups" ( we had no idea what a cabana was but we wanted one), and a cheer-leading sweater with real pompoms!

    If this all sounds impossible juvenile and pre-feminism, think of in the context of a working class family, whose older relatives spoke another language, and whose kids went to school with girls with impossible straight, shiny hair, monogrammed sweaters, and Bass Weejun tassel loafers. Barbie was our hold on the American dream. We begged and cried until Santa brought Barbie's Dream House and roadster and we set up shop in the back corner of the living room. Most of my contemporaries had a Barbie, a Ken, a Midge, and a Skipper that they'd bring over "to play Barbie". The goal was to collect all the outfits and accessories one could for birthday and Christmas gifts.  (Barbie jumped the shark when Mattel realized the money was in the dolls, not in the accessories.     When Barbie started coming out in different roles and models for every week of the year, the concept of Barbie as a play item morphed into Barbie as a collectible.)
    The Princess has a box full of them, but I don’t recall her ever playing with them, not like my sisters and I did, for hours and hours, with complex neighborhoods made of shoes boxes and intricate social settings comprised of my mother’s bric a brac, pieces of carpet samples and, oh my God, finally after begging all year, the Barbie swimming pool that we were allowed to fill and play with on the sink counter.
    When my mother sold the house after my Dad died, my sisters and I found all the old Barbie clothes in the attic and my two younger sisters and I fought over the 30-year old Barbie outfits. Who originally owned the Chubby faux fur jacket and hat? Did our aunt make the beaded wedding gown for me or Alicia? And while I couldn’t recall if I had been given the strapless foam green tulle ball gown, I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the red velvet coat and pillbox hat were MINE. We divvied up the Barbie clothes into neat plastic baggies and warned our own little ones not to even consider touching the vintage Barbie clothes!
    Years later, mine are sitting in their bag on my art room shelf. Once in a awhile I take them out, ostensibly to consider using them in a Miriam Schapiro type of art statement in which I will enshrine my acculturation  to the feminine and contrast it with icons of phallic technology .....
    But instead I just fondle the red velvet coat, and put it with the opera length white gloves that I’ve never owned,  and twirl around the tulle ball gown that I’ve never had, and put on the tips of my fingers the little pointy stiletto heels that are all the rage now that I couldn’t even shove my foot into if I wanted to.
    And that’s why I have Barbies.

   

Nevah Mind

So the IT geeks wonderfully helpful computer dudes at Stan's office worked on the baby and couldn't figure out why it wouldn't connect wirelessly. They warned us that I might need a new wireless card.

Today they worked on it again for about an hour and called to say that they'd fixed the problem.

I'd shut off the wireless button on the front of the computer.

What wireless button??

Then they very smugly as only computer people can when dealing with non-geeks sweetly got the wireless up and running installed new virus protection and updated all my programs.

This is why I became a lawyer should not be trusted around electronic equipment.

Sigh.

And I won't get the baby back until tomorrow evening bec. Stan worked at home today to rest his back, which I thought was a horrible idea and he should just take some Percocet and go get the baby! was a good idea and I am patiently waiting at home and grabbing his laptop every chance I get doing cool, non-online stuff like knitting and drawing and making papier mache angels gilded with gold leaf and inscribed with each of the children's names....

I bow my head in shame hold my head high knowing it could happen to only a total dweeb anyone.

I'm sorry Bill Gates!

No good deed goes unpunished. My Microsoft Word program keeps crashing on me so I went to the website to try to find a patch. Couldn't find one, but ended up at Windows and it said I need an update. 45 minutes later it was installed and I remember thinking, "Wow, that was so much easier than in years past...."

Yeah, right.

As my computer rebooted and I attempted to long onto the internet, I discovered that I had lost my wireless connection. It appears that the #@%!^%# update crashed my wireless card. How? Beats me! The IT guy at Stan's job are trying to figure it out and in the meanwhile I have to use his laptop, which has some quirky deal where the page jumps around and I have just typed this post twice.

I'd better get my baby laptop back soon as I am going through withdrawal. I can't believe I've become so spoiled that the thought of sitting in my art room at the desktop has no appeal whatsoever. I also can't scan anything because only the laptop has the scanner driver and I can't remember where I put the disk....

I'll be back!

Advent II - Listen & See

When I first designed the banner for this website, the image came to me of an angel's wing lifting off o in blessing before flying away. It just came to me as I held the brush and dipped it into my set of pan gouache. After the painting emerged, I was a little put off. Angel imagery is ubiquitous and I didn't want to be linked  to the image of that  little cherub resting on her arms that is printed on everything from a coffee mug to mens' ties.

I have no particular affinity to angels.  I don't collect angel imagery and I don't believe I have an angel that looks after me, as many people do, and as we were taught in Catholic grade school. I don't give much thought to angels one way or the other but I thought I acknowledged the goodness of those around me and their efforts to help others.

So I was surprised when the hovering wing of angel appeared over the bowl of pomegranates and wondered what story she had to tell me. She'd been silent up to now, or rather, I haven't been listening well. The demands of work and family fill my ears with the buzz of dailiness. Familiar to us all are the noises of world crises, family troubles, schedules to keep, papers to be filed, calls to be returned, each working in tune with the others to drown out everything else but their clashing cymbals. 

To help me quiet these noisemakers, I've been reading a daily meditation for Advent. Over the weekend, the reading was by a Jesuit priest, Alfred Delp,  who was hanged for treason by the Nazis. He wrote this essay two days before his death, in his 3 X 3 prison cell.Delp writes of the three "figures" of Advent: the angel of annunciation, the blessed woman, and the one who cries in the wilderness.

  The angels of annunciation, speaking their message of blessing into the midst of anguish, scattering their seed of blessing that will one day spring up amid the night, call us to hope. These are not yet the loud angels of rejoicing and fulfillment that come out into the open, the angels of Advent. Quiet, inconspicuous, they come into rooms and before hearts as they did then. Quietly they bring God's questions and proclaim to us the wonders of God, for whom nothing is impossible.

The entire essay can be read at http://www.bruderhof.com/articles/RealityofAdvent.htm?source=DailyDig

 

I was discussing this reading on a writing list, writing about learning to listen for these messages of hope and love. A good friend, Ann who is an Episcopal minister, replied to me, observing that I didn't have to listen too hard if I just read the many comments that had been sent to this website in response to my posts about my husband's illness and surgery.

I was humbled by her words and felt the veil lift from my eyes. Immediately, into my mind came the image of my angel's upturned wing hovering gently over this website. We all have stories to tell, yes, but we all have stories that we must learn first. We must learn to listen the stories that are being told all around us every day. They come in the quiet, inconspicuous ways, not mysterious at all. I was listening for the loud, rejoicing voices of triumphant angels, looking for that mystical slant of light, or the strange feather on the pathway.

Today my ears are tuned for the angels of annunciation who "come into rooms quietly as they did then". Quiet, serene, and comforting. The angels of annunciaton speak to me through all of you and I offer my blessings in return. May we continue to comfort, to support, and to annunciate the messages of joy, hope, faith, love to one another through our Advent journey, a journey we are all on whether we've ever said a prayer in our lives or not.

This morning is beautifully clear and sunny and cold. The light green paint that Stan chose for our room makes any sunny morning seem like Spring in our bedroom and I'm thankful that he talked me out of the bright blue I had selected. I'm getting this mane of hair cut and colored and then I plan to do some Christmas shopping. So far I've ordered all the gifts on line, but today I'm going to shop in some small, local stores and I'm looking forward to an afternoon filled with browsing and a latte.

Stan feels a lot better from the aftermath of the procedure. The incision site is less sore and he has more mobility. We are calling him RoboStan as he walks around with electrical wires hanging from under his t-shirt and into the pocket of his sweat pants. You can only imagine the jokes that have flown about the placement of those wires....

As for the therapeutic effects of the neurotransmitter, the procedure appears to have been a bust. He has had no further luck in getting it tuned up to a level that is comfortable without experiencing painful jolts when he moves or sneezes, etc. Tuesday the trial implant comes out and then he'll had to decide whether he wants to schedule the permanent implant. Thus far, there's nothing that's caused him to think he will.

So back to the drawing board, or perhaps I should say back board. I've shared with him the many emails I received wishing him hope and prayers. He was embarrassed by my writing about it and by the level of response we received. He's rather puzzled that total strangers would care about him, but he is beginning to understand how much strength I derive from writing and from the responses that I receive.  He's not a spiritual person and his faith has been sorely tested, maybe even extinguished, by this trial by fire, but he is an extremely compassionate person and often forgets that he needs compassion as much as he gives it. So thank you to everyone for cheering us through another twist in the road.

And we will now resume regularly scheduled programming, discussing art, writing, journaling, food, and the trials and tribulations of an overweight woman with bad knees who fancies herself an artist but who really just wants to sit and knit and eat bonbons.

Tonight Stan is trying to rest comfortably after the procedure. It was pretty painful and his back hurts a lot where the incision is. He has two leads coming out of his back that are attached to two large grey plastic wires that lead to a control device. So far he's having trouble adjusting to the level of the transmitter, and getting a bad shock like hitting his funny bone when he coughs. He's turned it off for tonight so he can just rest and he'll try it again tomorrow. On Tuesday, he either has it removed or permanently implanted.

I'm overwhelmed by all the prayers and good wishes from so many people, many of whom I do not even know. I especially appreciate the comments from those who had or know of those who have had this procedure. I will respond to everyone personally, but not tonight as I am wiped out.

This morning my husband woke up with excruciating pain in his stomach. It is a byproduct of the damaged nerves in his back. He had two good days in a row, working all day yesterday, and today he is laid low again. Tomorrow he is scheduled to have a neurotransmitter implanted in his spine that is supposed to block the pain signals from being received by the brain's nerve receptors. The transmitter will be temporary while he decides if it helps him, and if so, they will implant a permanent transmitter under his skin like a pacemaker. If anyone knows of any who has had experience with this, please let me know.

If you are a praying sort, I ask that you remember him today and tomorrow. He is very depressed and extremely nervous and skeptical about this procedure. It is a last ditch surgical intervention and I am more concerned about his state of mind if it fails than about the procedure itself.

We are quiet when his pain flares up; quiet and sealed off in our own worlds. Momentary distractions draw him out of the fog and pain and I tend to chatter around him like a bright parrot landing on his shoulder. I'm sure he'd like to smack me off his shoulder as he hates birds.

I am afraid of silence; afraid that the silence will  allow our thoughts to take word, to bubble to the surface like gasses escaping from a swamp. I am afraid of what we will say, afraid of what will come out of his mouth or mine. It is important not to say the feelings that simmer right beneath the surface. Reaction is dangerous.

The Advent reading this morning are the words of Dorothy Day, the Catholic aid worker. She decribes her faults in an examination of conscience. Each words rings in my heart as the truth about myself:

Here is my examination at the beginning of Advent, at the beginning of a new year. Lack of charity, criticism of superiors, of neighbors, of friends and enemies. Idle talk, impatience, lack of self-control and mortification towards self, and of love towards others. Pride and presumption. (It is good to have visitors — one’s faults stand out in the company of others.) Self-will, desire not to be corrected, to have one’s own way. The desire in turn to correct others, impatience in thought and speech.

The remedy is recollection and silence. Meanness about giving time to others and wasting it myself. Constant desire for comfort. First impulse is always to make myself comfortable. If cold, to put on warmth; if hot, to become cool; if hungry, to eat; and what one likes — always the first thought is of one’s own comfort. It is hard for a woman to be indifferent about little material things. She is a homemaker, a cook; she likes to do material things. So let her do them for others, always. Woman’s job is to love. Enlarge Thou my heart, Lord, that Thou mayest enter in.

http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/