Stuck in a Rut

Most ordinary people do the same things over and over. This is commonly called being stuck in a rut. Being an ordinary person this applies to me, and I am pretty much sick of it. Life is fleeting and so when, if not now, will I do something new and different?

Following is a list of things I have never done. I need to pick one and do it today. Hopefully other people reading this will follow my lead and many people will have new experiences today.

skydive

install a hardwood floor

paint a self-portrait

have a pedicure

Skype
eat snails

ride a horse
clean my basement

read "Jane Eyre"

not talk for one whole day
take in a refugee

move every piece of furniture in my house
have acupuncture

use the Shop-Vac we bought a year ago and is still in the original box, unopened

go fishing
visit the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
get a hamster
make a pizza from scratch

In Case You Need Me, I'll Be Here

By any measure, last winter was rough. It snowed on and off for seven months, burying the fall leaves in early October. With drifts piling up around our house that were waist-high, things looked bleak because they were. My car got stuck in my own icy driveway and it took a day and a tow truck to get unstuck. It was well below zero many days and nights. My husband and I came to the same conclusion: We're outta here!

So we started looking for houses back in our old stomping grounds, Washington, D.C.  We still have many good friends living there who we'd love to hang with. The climate is much better -- they actually see flowers in late February whereas here in Maine it's not until late April or early May that a daffodil shows up. Aside from the preponderance of knee-jerk liberals and a simmering undercurrent of racial tension (the city is 43% white, with African-Americans, Hispanics and a host of other ethnicities making up the balance), life there can be pretty sweet.

Except, as it turns out, the real estate market in D.C. is so hot that every house sells for between 50 and 100 thousand dollars over the asking price. Bidding wars abound, even for a crummy dump. So our enthusiasm began to wane, considering how much we love our current home and could never come near anything as nice ever again, certainly not in Washington. Still, our wonderful old friends! The Kennedy Center! All those theaters, so many museums, the fabulous tulips and cherry trees! Beautiful parks everywhere! Movie theaters of every ilk, showing everything from indies and oldies to brand new IMAX blockbusters!

Cherry trees in bloom around the Tidal Basin in Washington, D.C.

Then last week, that simmering racial tension boiled over.  A wealthy white family of three plus their housekeeper, living in what is arguably Washington's best neighborhood, and certainly its most secure since the Vice-President's home is but a few blocks away, was robbed, brutally tortured and then burned to death in a fire set in the home by a black man. They caught the guy a week later, tracing his DNA from a leftover pizza crust found at the scene. (Imagine, he ordered a pizza while he was holding people hostage.)

Back when I lived in D.C., which I did for 30 years, I had friends who were murdered too. And others who were raped, and many who were robbed, and lots who were mugged -- you name it, it happened to someone, even us. Since moving to Maine six years ago, the worst I have heard of was a cell phone stolen from the front seat of an unlocked car and an ice dam on a neighbor's roof.

Fresh fish for dinner every night!

So you know what? We're staying in Maine. I'm making new friends, lowering my hoity-toity standards concerning "theater" and "art," and sleeping soundly at night. And no small thing, what with all the talk of omega-3's, the fish here is to die for. And speaking of death, I'd rather freeze to death lost in a snowstorm than meet my maker at the hands of a crazed lunatic with an axe to grind.

The Fear Factor

A childhood trauma has come back to haunt me. So says the therapist I see to help me understand why my blood pressure has chosen this particular time to rear its ugly head, if blood pressure can have a head, ugly or otherwise. She suggests I engage my 4-year-old self, the age I was when the trauma occurred, in a dialogue and convince her (me) that she (I) is safe now because my grown-up self is looking out for her (us).

Thus I am posting a picture of the dear little girl here so she knows how important she is to me. And somehow our conversations will help control my runaway hypertension, once the child inside of me truly feels safe. Aha! If only. Just now on the radio I heard that ISIS controls fully half of Syria and a lot of Iraq and there is no stopping them. Their goal, like in the game of RISK, is to take over the world. Suddenly my 68-year-old self is feeling pretty damn unsafe too. Who's going to protect her? (Not Obama, that's obvious.)

Happy Birthday Cher

Among today's young adults, fitting in is all the rage. The desire to be like everyone else, from what you eat to how you dress and including even one's vocabulary, sexuality and most of all iPhone apps, has made individuality all but obsolete. In fact, being "different" is no longer even a goal.

Once considered bold and daring, tattoos, body piercings and crayon-colored hair are now the uniform of the young, along with a few pathetic midde-agers clinging to their fading youth.  The wildest outfits are merely yawn-inducing, barely worth a turn of the head, since everyone wears them. This is truly a sad stage in our evolution and one that I hope soon passes.

As for my generation, we don't care about fitting in and we never did.  Aside from getting wrinkles, having arthritis and fighting with my blood pressure, I am still happy to have been born when I was. After all, I'm not dead yet. And yesterday, Cher turned 69. She's even older than I am and still doing her own thing.

Setting Goals

If you live long enough you reach a point where you can honestly say, "Been there, done that" about most things. If you are not careful this can lead to a deep feeling of ennui, which is annoying to say the least, especially if you have a lot of years left to live. So in the interest of staying interested, I am trying to come up with a "bucket list" of sorts. Not the usual kind involving seeing the Taj Mahal or climbing Mt. Everest, but one less focused on the external world and having to do primarily with controlling the unruly wild child that inhabits half my body and wreaks havoc with half my brain. The one that watches TV and eats donuts. That one has simply got to go.

The first step on this path is mastering the art of meditation, something I have grappled with for years. Since I have a sort of bad hip -- I say sort of because it causes me little trouble but takes a mean X-ray-- I can't sit on the floor in that typical cross-legged Buddha pose and instead simply sit upright in a hard, straight-backed chair. This feels much less Zennish, making me think I am not really doing it right. Also, I don't light candles or incense since that just seems stupid and poses an unnecessary fire hazard. Still, I am determined to get it right and will keep at it.

My long-term goal is reaching Nirvana. Apparently, experiencing "the imperturbable stillness of mind after the fires of desire, aversion, and delusion have been finally extinguished" is way better than donuts, TV and even summiting Mt. Everest. In the short-term, I would like to go one whole day without checking my Facebook page.

On Being Out of It

Born and raised in New York and educated at New York University, I used to know about pretty much everything except brain surgery and rocket science. Certainly I was up to speed on literature, art, food, music, theater and film. You could have asked me anything and I'd have an answer. This is no longer true and it's not because I have Alzheimer's. It's just that two things happened, one causing the other: I moved to Maine and I stopped caring.

Living in Maine one cares most about the weather, the black flies and how the fish are running. There is only one art museum to speak of and it has a new exhibit only two or three times a year, mostly of boats and rocks and surf crashing on rocks painted by Maine artists. The symphony plays rarely and sometimes when you go expecting violins and Mozart you get a fake rock concert instead. Big name performers come here only every few years. The theater is amateurish and movies that open simultaneously all over the country don't play here, or else finally show up when they are already old news. To be fair, the city of Portland is very into food and many of the trendiest places serve all the same pretentious things you never heard of that you find everywhere else.

Katy Perry

These are facts, folks, not my skepticism talking. Anyway, because I don't listen to popular music, instead limiting myself to my son's rapping and my Queen CDs, I have never heard Taylor Swift sing and had no idea her song was responsible for that horrid "haters gonna hate" line. (My husband, who is 11 years younger than I, knows all that stuff and he told me.) And who is Katy Perry and is she any relation to Governor Rick Perry?

I don't watch regular TV, only reruns of comedies from the 90s when I was busy raising a child and never could watch them the first time, and so I missed that Diane Sawyer interview with Bruce Jenner about how he has always felt like a lady inside. I know nothing about the art world these days. I read books I have loved for years, eschewing modern fiction for obvious reasons. But something caught my eye in this morning's paper: Harper Lee has written a new book and everyone is all excited, with bookstores nationwide ordering many copies and planning "read-a-thons" to draw in customers.

I have to say that I read "To Kill a Mockingbird" back in 9th grade and thought it was just okay. Then I read it again a few years ago and thought it was a boring drag, and because there would be no test I stopped halfway through. So I will not be reading her latest and instead will keep working on my own novel, which I am hoping will be finished before I am. It is quite a good story and one you won't want to miss.

Some Questions for Hillary

That brooch doubles as a Secret Service agent.

There's a big to-do among the members of the press on both sides about the fact that candidate Hillary Clinton has  answered only 13 questions since she entered the race for president, and none of them had to do with anything important. This is indeed outrageous, ridiculous, egregious and all kinds of other things ending in "ous." I think that without further ado, she should answer a few of the burning questions we'd all like to know:

1. How come on some days you have really bad bags under your eyes and then like the very next day they are completely gone?
2. Can you recommend any particular products you use to get rid of them?
3. Do you find Botox injections painful?
4. Does it bother you that everyone likes Bill better?
5. Do you prefer being called Grandma, Granny, Nana, or one of those oddball nicknames like Opa or Boppie?
6. Where do you find such ugly jewelry, and why?
7. Do you wear pantyhose underneath all those pantsuits, and if so don't you find it hot and uncomfortable, especially around the waistline? (Maybe if you get elected you could get someone working on a solution to that age-old, or is it old-age, problem.
8. Aren't you tired of all this bullshit with all the boring old men in suits yet?
9. Wouldn't you like to just once be able to sleep in and schlep around in your bathrobe for an hour?

Remember Brian Williams

"Don't believe anything you did not personally witness." That is my new motto.

Moments ago, while making the bed which is when I turn on the TV most often, I saw a long news segment about the fact that despite reports to the contrary, our military had killed a "nobody" in the ISIS organization. They had gone after a key leader but did not get him, and instead bagged a second or possibly third banana whose name wasn't even known. Then a few minutes later I went online to check my email and saw the headlines heralding the big news that last night members of our fearless armed forces killed an important leader of ISIS!

Lol.

An Unplanned Occurrence

Today I was inside an ambulance for the first time in my life, as a patient, not at the elementary school fair. Since I am 68, I guess that's good -- not that I was in one, but that it took so long to get there.

I had just entered my local upscale, high-priced, borderline-snooty food market to pick up some things for dinner. I grabbed a cart and got as far as squeezing a canteloupe when I started to feel woozy. Within seconds it was clear I was going to faint, which I never like doing, at least not if nobody else does too. It puts you at such a disadvantage. So I groped my way out of the store and semi-collapsed on the ground, gulping air and trying to put my head down between my knees like they tell you to do to keep from passing out but which is almost impossible when you are lying down. Some nice lady brought me water and some other nice lady called 911, even though I said no, please don't. Good thing she did.

Within seconds two Angels of Mercy dressed in blue uniforms arrived. They lifted me up onto a gurney and slid me into a quiet, cool little room with a lot of beeping machines. In a few minutes all my vitals had been tested, my finger had been pricked and it was determined my blood sugar was fine and my blood pressure and pulse were in the normal range. No fever. I was good to go, unless I wanted a ride with them to the hospital. Does anybody? I demurred.

So now I know that even if the stone-faced citizens of Freeport won't give you the time of day, God forbid a smile, the Freeport Fire & Rescue team will come to your aid in a flash, and at no charge. I can honestly say that for the first time in six years, I feel proud of my town. (Get it, Michelle Obama, proud of her country?) Anyway, those were two really great guys and I will send them a donation with my thank-you note.

Now all I have to figure out is what the heck is wrong with me. I certainly hope it's not a brain tumor. Could the whole thing have been a ploy to avoid yet another boring trip to the market?

Krazy Kaffeine Kapers

What's coffee got to do with it?

Of all the evil corporations out there, and there are so many, surely none can compare with Starbucks. Tapping into man's overwhelming need for coffee, their mad scientists have twisted it beyond recognition while using the lure of caffeine to suck in customers. They're basically drug dealers. 

Yesterday they came out with the big news that, for a limited time only, they will be offering a mini Frappuccino for those folks trying to save about 30 cents and a couple hundred calories. They are so considerate. (Lol.)

Oh grow up: There's coffee, that rich, delicious, blood-pumping brew we all need to get the engine started, and then there's Chocolate Cookie Crumble Crème Frappuccino, available at your local Starbucks, and who the heck needs that? Even more, what the heck is it?  Consisting of mocha "sauce" blended with vanilla syrup, chocolaty chips, milk and ice, and topped with chocolaty whipped cream and chocolate cookie crumbles, it doesn't even have the word coffee in its description on the Starbucks website. Besides, one wonders what makes something chocolaty rather than chocolate. Obviously, not real chocolate or they would call it chocolate. So exactly what is it?

I'll tell you what it is. Considering that their chairman and CEO is a man named Howard Schultz, it's a shonda for the goyim.

Oh Grow (Shut) Up, Michelle

The new Whitney Museum of American Art in Manhattan.

I recently saw a movie, "Woman in Gold," about the stealing of art and other valuables from rich Jews by the Austrian government during the war leading up to the Holocaust. It was just so-so as a film, not really adding much to the already overflowing cinematic library of that tragic time, and even less to the sterling career of its star, Helen Mirren. But in it was buried one memorable line that stood out for me, having grown up in a Jewish family that pretty much harped on those "six million Jews" constantly despite my begging them to stop, already.

An Austrian citizen had just heard the impassioned request for the return of her possessions from a woman (Mirren) appealing her case in front of the court. Afterwards, he approached her on the street and sneered, "It's always the same with you people. Everything isn't always about the Holocaust, you know." The same might be said to Michelle Obama concerning race. Last week, speaking at a dedication ceremony of the new Whitney Museum in New York City, a temple of modern art open to anyone who can pony up the twenty bucks, she chose to focus everyone's attention on her being black. Inferring that people of color "are not always welcome here," or something along those lines, she turned what should have been a joyous celebration into a political brouhaha.

I know, I heard -- her great-great grandmother was a slave. But she is the freaking First Lady of the United States of America, so obviously everything isn't always about race.