Normcore. You heard it here first (probably.)

Recently I was weeding out my closet when I came across a like-new pair of black suede Birkinstocks. They must have been 10 years old, although I would like to think that they haven't been lurking on my closet floor that long. I put them on an sighed with the pleasure of the familiar. For many years I wore only Birks, summer and winter.(with other suitable coverage, of course.) I have difficult feet and there is something so-out-they-are- in about Birks. In recent years I have migrated to Tom's, but the siren song of a good, ugly pair of Birks began trilling to me on that closet floor, and in no time, I was wearing them to the grocery store, Home Depot and all my usual high-life spots.

My daughter commented, "Nice shoes. Very normcore of you."

What?

Yes, boys and girls. I am a trendsetter.  If you don't believe me, just read the Style section of today's New York Times.

Now there seems to be little or no agreement about what this word means, but if you are trending, as I obviously am, you'll know it when you see it. One view says it is pragmatism wedded to feminism. Another refers to it as a suburban sensibility(not any suburb I know around Atlanta. Must be a NY suburb.) It includes: no makeup - I mean intentionally; a return to the 90's. (What were the 90's like anyway? I don't remember.) Sort of a cut-to -the-chase attitude, as I read it.

That's me all over the place!  I have this trend covered, and I didn't even know it. As long as "no make-up" doesn't cover Burt's Bees Lip Balm, without which the sun will not rise tomorrow.

I am headed to NY soon for a little ballet immersion therapy and I am thinking of wearing my Birks. Due to the general filthyness of the city, I'll pair them with some clever sox, such as leopard print, one-fish-two-fish-red-fish-blue-fish patterned, and so forth.  I expect to be the darling of the fashion world in no time. Of course everything else I plan to wear is black, to be assured of not being mistaken for a tourist. I'll let you know how it goes.

Ignominious ends... sent my balance wheel tumbling into unachored eternity....and other stuff

I have spent my morning cleaning the space at the end of  the hallway to  nowhere. Well, not really nowhere. It leads to two bedrooms and then ends abruptly with nowhere else to go.  I think of it as an ignominious end, one of my favorite descriptives of Victorian literature, as in, "she (or he) came to an ignominious end." There old suitcases go to die, when they seem too tattered to travel again, and certainly too shabby to give away, and yet.... oh, the places they have seen (with thanks to Patrick Dennis and his Auntie Mame.) But today, everybody out!  I discovered a wonderful box of charcoals, a long sleeved t-shirt I could have used this awful winter, boxes that I could definitely use to mail things, if, indeed, I had anything to mail, and a lovely scented sachet which accounts for the faint, ghostly perfume emanating from that unlovely heap, among other things. Very satisfying.

Speaking of ignominious ends, and I realize that that snarky comments are inappropriate when speaking of the dead, two long ago loves of mine passed away recently, within a few days of one another, and sent my balance wheel tumbling into unanchored eternity. The first was Jack, whom I have written of before. Jack was a love of the mind, a soul mate, someone who was there every day until he was not, and I didn't know how much I missed him until I did.

I found Jack again not long ago, when grief and illness had transformed him into a man who didn't want to be found, who isolated himself even from the breezes outside his back door, and who stayed huddled under blankets in the beautiful library he designed. He looked old though he was younger than I, and he leaned heavily on a walker when he made it to the front door to greet me. I think the smile of greeting on his face was put on for the occasion, not really felt, as I wanted it to be.

A friend sent me his obituary not long ago. So four months after we sat in the library and talked through lunch time, which he had forgotten and my stomach hadn't,  he slipped away, without regret, I think, to join his late wife, presumably in that place which is architecturally perfect and would meet with his approval.

The other recently deceased friend from long ago was quite another story. I met him when I was seventeen, and thought he was - let's just say, wonderful. He most certainly was not, at least to anyone who was not teenage-blind. Handsome and rich, yadda yadda, and fun.  Lots of fun. All the time. Endless conversation. Dancing the twist at The Peppermint Lounge across the river and, later, to the Beatles at frat parties in the desert. He was no stranger to alcohol, but he was to drugs. Just not for long. Our relationship ended with him grabbing my hair at a party and banging my face into a jagged stone wall. Before that black eye, eleven years had elapsed. I'm a slow learner. No love like teenage love, I guess.

He had the money to indulge his vices, which he did with a vengeance. Trips to jet set social scenes across the world, a couple of totaled Rolls Royce convertibles,  a string of lovers male and female, and looking like Dorian Grey himself, his life ended in a nursing home specializing in dementia a  few months after his sixty-ninth birthday.  He was given everything and he took everything. No thank you's to life. He had a favorite line.  When someone departing said, "Take care," he would always reply "I take it any way I can get it."  Funny how we so often write out own epitaphs.

So after those two exits, I couldn't write for a while. I had to put the people, or at least a couple of them,  in some order that made sense, and take the time to be sad for the right reasons. And to find the heart to be funny again, which is quite a lot more work than you might think.  And, I had to wait for some of the cold to go away because my office is unheated! and to work out there, even with a space heater, can be misery.  I work in a sweet, little sun room, windows on three sides and with no registers for the furnace or air conditioning vents. It houses the only computer I can compose on, a desk top that seems ungainly now but was quite the hot stuff in its day. Otherwise I use my smart phone for everything.

I read somewhere that most books today are written on smart phones. How? I want to know.

Kay said, " I just love the little [cream cheese] carrot on top."

I met my old friend Kay for lunch today at her favorite deli. Redolent of brisket and pastrami, it is a cardiologists dream or nightmare, and so conveniently located near several major hospitals. In fact, I suspect it is the loss leader of a certain LLC, providing a steady revenue flow in otherwise lean times.

Kay came through the front door, panting a little, and sat down opposite me. I had arrived a bit early, almost early enough to get started on a cup of coffee, served by, if that is the correct term, the most casual of wait persons.

"How's the cardio therapy?" I asked.

"Had to get off the bike," she panted. "Blood pressure spiked. Off the chart. Wouldn't go down."

This sums up her most recent problem: runaway blood pressure.

She looked at me. "When are you going to get a face lift?  It'd take off fifteen - no, twenty - years. Get rid of the jowly look, the wattles."

Funny. I was feeling pretty chipper when I started, but now, I don't know, I was feeling all jowly and wattily.

"Dr. Fassbinder could do wonders for you. Just the jaw line, maybe the neck. Not the eyes. Leave the eyes alone."

Good. I am glad that there is some part of my face that is passable.

Kay scribbled The Fass's (that's what I call him) name and location on a scrap of paper from her hand bag.

"He'll give you a free estimate," she said

Hmmm.  Just like  a Chevy or a Toyota that needs a few dents pounded out.

"If I looked twenty years younger, what about my gray hair" I asked? "Am I supposed to be prematurely gray?  Or would forty-nine not be premature.  Would I have to go blonde? Maybe blue.   Not little-old-lady purple or blue, but a nice clear cerulean, or robin's egg. I dreamed I had blue hair once. And would people think I married a much older man?  What would he think of that? I don't think he is the trophy-wife kind of guy or he would have made his move a long time ago."

The waitress, taking a break in her busy day, dropped by our table to take our order. Kay,  keeping with her heart healthy regimen, ordered chopped liver on an egg bagel and carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.

"I just love the cute little carrot on top ."

"Perfect!" I said. "That's what I'll  put on your tombstone. By the way, do you have to be somewhere?"  I noticed Kay kept checking her watch.

"Nope, just checking my blood pressure. " Right, she did have two fingers on her pulse. "Could you pass the salt please?"

I showed Kay the calorie checker app on my phone.  This little wonder not only gives the calories in just about anything you can think of, - restaurant food, grocery brands, your own cooking - Calorie King it's called and it's free- but it breaks food down to values of carbs, protein, fats, sugars etc.

Kay was fascinated. "Look, I've eaten my full load of calories for today, and it isn't even 1 PM! I guess there is nothing to do but go home and go to bed."

Oops, I just got a message on my phone.  As you could have predicted from my previous blog entry, I bought the fast-becoming ubiquitous FitBit and I just met my daily walking goal.( And while sitting at the computer, no less!) I have purposely set the goal  low so I can feel cheered by little rewards once in a while. If I set it at 10,000 steps, the amount these programming clowns recommend, I would never hear from my FitBit at all, unless it is programmed to snicker derisively.

So, I am going to take my wattles and jowls to the stove and heat up some very low cal. minestrone soup, and wish you warmth and a good bowl of soup on this ridiculously cold night. 

Werewolves and FitBits

In this past year, I have been able to pretty much conquor some of my vices, like white sugar and carbonated drinks, but there is one I will not give up.  For time wasting, it can't be beat.  I am talking about the SciFi channel.

Monday nights, a t.v. wasteland in my opinion, has been rescued by Bitten, a SciFi Channel series that has captured my heart, which is just what the main characters want, not to mention other body parts. Bitten is the story of a  hot, young career wolf in the city, trying to resolve a human fiancee, lunch dates with the girls, her shrink, also a w.w., and the "boys," her  kinky wolf family upstate living in a glam but creepy hunting (get it?) lodge.

High production values, soap opera issues, much like another favorite of mine, Nashville, but with fur and teeth. Well, maybe that, too, but less howling. No wait, that too.  Well, it is a lot like Nashville.

One thing that struck me right off the first time I saw Bitten, was how werewolves used to transform into wolves with bad wardrobes - plaid flannel shirts, raggy jeans and so forth.  But when this chick transforms, she sheds her fetchingly color coordinated bra and panties, although it is chilly out and pretty damp and misty looking, and leaves them neatly folded so she can get to them later. You have to give her points for neatness and good lingerie.

There is also an African-American werewolf, the shrink, whom she calls her cousin, so without more episodes, I don't know whether he is either or both. Anyway, it probably doesn't matter. High time, I say, for a little werewolf diversity.  And please don't tell me Jacob is Native American and that equals diversity. Teenager outsider types who ride motorbikes don't count. Also, he had bad clothes, what clothes he actually had, and this shrink/cousin is impeccably turned out.

And while we are speaking, loosely, of innards and entrails and that sort of thing, I am wondering whether I should get a FitBit or its equivalent, as my trainer suggests.  I know a guy who has one, and he is obsessed by how many steps he takes a day.  Somebody, somewhere decided we should all take 1,000, steps a day.  At least I think that's the number. Maybe it's 10,000.  Doesn't matter, it's a heck of a lot of walking around whatever it is is. Anyway, the FitBit counts your steps for you rather than have you mumbling in the grocery store "a pound of sliced turkey, nine hundred fifty," which could lead to all sorts of misunderstandings. It also keeps track of your heart rate, which is the real reason he wants me to get it. I need more aerobic exercise.

Now I have a very slow heart rate. Just this side of zombie.  That can make a person lethargic, which I don't really see as a downside.  Lethargy gets a bad rap, in my opinion. Anyway, the FitBit supposedly leads to greater self-awareness which in turns leads to jogging up the stairs with a basket of laundry, or something like that.

The guy I know who wears a FitBit is entirely too self aware, as far as I am concerned. One of it's advertied pluses is that it will wake you up  (presumbly for your morning meditation and triathalon)
by quietly vibrating on your wrist, so as not to wake up your sleeping partner. I'll bet my friend's wife loves that one. If she's smart, she'll move into a bedroom of her own and leave him and his FitBit to whatever it is they have together.

So the FitBit is on hold for now, until I am convinced to buy yet another tiny adorable electronic device, which I am a sucker for every time.  I am at least that self aware. And if I can get it with one touch on Amazon with no shipping charges, so much the better. I'm sticking to werewolves, for now, and a good deal of sitting lethargically in front of the t.v. on Monday nights.

A Sturdily Built Woman and a Murder of Crows

I have a murder of crows in my backyard.  Better than a congress of apes, I guess, although we have learned where that leads. But nearly as noisy. (And don't you just love collective nouns?  See the book of the same name, i.e. A Murder... )Five or six of the big guys (the crows, not apes) convene on my birdbath and a bowl-style feeder every morning to plan the day.  Another five or six squirrels gather below in a circle for their breakfast club. It is too early in the year for my groundhog to appear, presumably still napping for another few weeks.

But, undeniably, the new year is fully underway, and resolutions, if you made them, may already have begun to slip. I am still slogging along with last year's, actually made on my personal new year, my birthday a couple of weeks before Julian's (Don't remember the Julian calender?Oh, sure you do.)   Lose 100 pounds.  And I have come 70 pounds of the way before bogging down in points and pounds that refused to move on along. My trainer, who always says "you have to switch it up" once the body gets too comfortable with a particular routine, pointed me to a nutritionist, and yes, boys and girls, it is a whole new world.

 Now, I am not counting Weight Watcher points, which can lead you down stale nutritional paths.  Now, it is old fashioned calories, carbs and protein grams, and it seems to be working. More work, more specific, but, as Mark the Nutritionist says, think of it this way: "When you are in your twenties, you can use any gas at the pump and not show the effects unless you use way too much and it spills all over the parking lot and your cell phone sparks and it catches fire and burns the whole place down in a big explosion that you can see three counties away. " Actually, he didn't say all of that.  He stopped at "any gas" and I filled in the rest.  But, continuing more faithfully with what Mark said, "but when you are more mature ( I interject: pretty damn old) you are more like a Ferrari that needs high test gas to run properly."

Mark did of those biometric tests where your (by that I mean I) stand on a scale and then a print out rolls out,  telling you everything from your metabolism rate, bone density, fat ratio and so forth.

I won't bore you with the details, although the result was interesting to me, say the least.  Just showed me how many misconceptions you can have about your own body. For one thing, I probably need to lose only 20 pounds more, because I have pretty good muscles  (thank you, Trainer and heredity) which make up part of what those weight charts (thank you Army and Insurance stats.) classify as fat weight. And speaking of fat, the "fat of death," visceral fat that lurks around the organs waiting to kill you - well, mine is pretty scarce. So that gut I am working off at the gym?  Blubber, sitting on top of what must be killer abs just waiting to spring forth and show themselves.

Unfortunately, blubber means three 400 calorie meals a day or a 1200 a day limit, if I want it to go anywhere reasonably soon. And I won't even get into when to eat carbs and what kind, let alone the protein story.  Let's just say I have learned a lot in the last couple of weeks.

The most interesting piece of self-misinformation to me: In my childhood, let's say elementary school years, I was a fairly skinny kid. Photos of me in a tutu and ballet slippers, and knobby knees and boney arms, confirm this. "Fine boned," my mother called it, and fine boned is what I believed. That is, until my print-out gave me a body type classification : sturdily built.  "Sturdily built?" Why didn't it say "good peasant stock?" Need someone to pull a plow? You got 'er!  In three words, I love it. I think it is hilarious that all these years, so many after those pitiful black and white eight by tens, I saw myself as a loving mother saw me, and not with the eyes of reality.

The power of a parent, I guess.

Ah, Bruce. Where are you when I need you?

In the last week, an odd form of courtesy has befallen me, and I don't like it one bit.  It involves parking, a thing I am very good at.

The first incident happened to me while I was parallel parking on a street just off the Marietta Square. Parking was at a premium, and I was elated when I found a largish spot between two parked cars. Or rather, a parked car and one, just in front of me, with a driver still in the car, having just completed what he apparently felt was a spectacularly good parking job and  had to pass his skills along to me.

As I maneuvered the rear of my car backward,  a silver haired driver sprang from his driver's seat like St. Nick and began waving and gesticulating as if he were guiding a 707 into its berth at O'Hare. When I turned the wheel, he pantomimed the same, shouting when he thought I had turned too far or not far enough.  A space I could have whisked into with no fanfare became a three act play with choreography, as I went forward and back, turn to the right, turn to the left, pause, begin again. Left alone, I would have been fine. With this parking aficionado, it took me forever to finally complete the job to his satisfaction.

The second incident, just this morning, involved the simplest of parking maneuvers, a straight back- out from a shopping center parking spot. This was not a particularly busy location, and I was unlikely to be swiped by passing cars.  Once again, silver haired and full of human kindness, this gentleman who had parked next to me jumped from his car and swooped in right behind my car. Presumably he couldn't hear my expletive as I nearly knee-capped him.  Waving and gesturing to indicate all was clear, he guided me back past the SUV on my other side, and got me into the stream of non-existant traffic with nary a dented fender.

What is this?  What have I done to attract the attention of these unwanted helpers?  Have I forgotten how to drive? Do I look befuddled?  I don't think so.  I don't do befuddled, and my children are still willing to ride with me without grabbing for the keys.  Is it the gray hair? Misplaced Southern manners? I'm not sure, but twice in a week? Something is afoot.

 I suggested to my family that maybe I should do a full McClain.  No, not John McClain (think Bruce Willis.)  I am talking Shirley.  Flame red spikey hair, lots of scarves and jewelry, plenty of make-up.
Scare the Bejesus out of these old guys who want to help a little old lady. It's not as bad as it was in Ireland where everyone calls gray haired women "Mother."  That is the definition of ego deflation.  But...you old goats, if I want parking help, I'll let you know, O.K? Maybe Bruce Willis' John McClain is a better model for me after all.

A little stir fry sauce in the pantry can be a very good thing.

With the nearly silent hum of the dishwasher in the background, I have a moment to look back on the last few days.

The untimely deceased dishwasher was replaced by by my husband at around 4 a.m. the morning of Christmas Eve, with only the smallest leak dripping into a bucket under the sink.  By Christmas Eve, he had that conquered and we could dirty our dishes without fear.

My favorite day of the year had arrived, murky and cold. No, not my birthday. Not even Christmas.  No. Winter Solstice. My daughter says it is because I am a Druid, but I share my love for this day with my late father-in-law, who was anything but a Druid.  It is the moment that days start getting longer.  Spring is stirring, the earth is turning, and it will be green again. He would noticeably brighten and his spirits would lift, just as they sank at Midsummer's Eve, when the days slowly grew shorter. The one thing, I think, that we had in common.

Our two children were with us, and happy to be here, and that, of course, makes me happier than anything else. On Christmas afternoon, we took our two dogs to an open field close to Kennesaw Mountain, where we could walk and they could run with unbridled glee. This time no deer were in evidence, no other people or dogs, and we had just the blazing blue sky, winter woods and soaring hawks for company.

And then home for Christmas dinner.  This time, determined to cut down on on the work of producing our traditional replay of Thanksgiving dinner, I had the turkey cooked by Publix, and picked it up Monday. "It's fully cooked," the lady reminded me.  "Just warm it in the oven. Directions are on the package."

And so, trustingly following directions, I put the bird, still in it's inner wrapper, into the roasting pan. And when the oven timer summoned me, I pulled it out of the warm oven and cut the cover only to discover... a raw turkey! Publix! How could you do this to me, I who spend an absurd amount on your wares, day after day, week after week?

After my initial panic and too shocked to cry, I sliced the raw meat, just enough for modest servings(our daughter is vegetarian and her tofurkey with wild rice stuffing was perfectly cooked and delicious - I couldn't bear to eat that turkey,) threw the meat into a deep skillet with stir fry sauce and a few other things, and produced edible, if somewhat Japanese restaurant flavored turkey. And only about an hour later than the announced dinner time.

The sides and dressing were great, made by me or Whole Foods. The beet salad, not a hit, no surprise to me, was an experiment. I happen to love beets, the "in" vegetable of the moment. They remind me of childhood holiday dinners, but without the goat cheese and chopped walnuts that graced my beets, resting picturesquely in a nest of butter lettuce and purple radichio. My son even had seconds of the stir fried turkey and is still alive this morning, so all is well.

So we come to Boxing Day. Between now and New Year's Eve, it is time to clean out the fridge, with everything but the truly current food stock cleared away for the New Year. And with a husband who is one of five "kids" who still give one another Christmas gifts, which nowadays consist of baskets filled with forbidden sweets, crackers and cheeses, wines and etc., that means a post Christmas selection that looks like the interior of Dean and DeLucca for friends who wander in had leave with chocolate covered coffee beans, brie en crout and gourmet jelly beans.

To her everlasting credit, our dear daughter took the largest, most lavish (but wine free) basket, given to her in thanks by a very large family of out of town friends whom she hosted for a couple of days last spring, and gave it, along with some kid oriented gifts, to a large family who would never see such bounty. Hers is the very definition of a good soul,  and she blesses us in so many ways.

So, I go forward bravely toward the New Year, counting Weight Watcher points, never skipping the gym except for major holidays, and always keeping some stir fry sauce in the pantry, because you never know when you will need it.