The door hanger.


But isn’t it hysterical?

Lifetime friends understand temporary insanity.

I’m at the tail end of a project that has been as difficult as any I’ve ever worked on. I want to feel relief, but all I feel is worry. Worried that the client will say, “THAT’S not what I meant” or “What about the XXX?” or that it just plain sucks.

So I got to thinking. Why do I doubt my abilities? Why do I believe the client will be unhappy? Is it because this project was outside my comfort zone? No, I don’t think so. I know I’m capable of this. What I don’t know is what the client expects.

Ahhhh. Expectations.

When I was married to the previous Mr. Wendy, we went to a marriage counselor. Who’da thunk? Anyway, the doc said there was one way that I could be happy with Mr. W. All I had to do was lower my expectations. To none.

None.

Absolutely none.

What a bleak and dreary existence that sounded like to me. But honestly, I might have tried except Mr. W had little interest in any of it. He just did not particularly like me.

And yet, he asked me to marry him. And we made a home together and we began to build a life. But when push came to shove, he admitted that he had real disdain for me.

Fast forward to this project.

Client courts us. Client hires us. Client, over the weeks, appears to be not-so-fond of us. So as I prepare to deliver the gargantuan document that I’ve spent every waking hour working on, I fear that there will be dissatisfaction.

Consider it intuition.

Or pessimism or insecurity or whatever you want.

I don’t know what they expect. And I’m a nervous wreck.

Seems there’s a trend showing women 50+ going vacationing in Kenya, a country they say is “just full of big young boys who like us older girls.” Seems that the handsome young men don’t mind a bit – there’s plenty in it for them, too. And then there’s the local drink: a powerful mix of honey, fresh limes and vodka known locally as “Dawa,” or “medicine.”

Can you say roadtrip?

Read the article here…

Clearly, I’m not going. I’m a happily married woman. But this really caught my eye!

Theres no one to see me theres nothin’ to say,
And no one can stop me from feelin’ this way
Lazy Sunday afternoon I’ve got no mind to worry
Close my eyes and drift away
Close my eyes and drift away
close my eyes and drift away……

(credit: song by Small Faces)

My sister and I live 4 hours apart. We both have 3 kids and extremely busy lives. We talk on the phone in shorthand – 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there.

It’s been a long time since we really had time to catch up.

She and her family came here for Thanksgiving dinner. It was great. Her girls stayed the night (yay!) but she and her husband couldn’t (cat allergies). They all stayed with my parents last night. (It’s only fair to share the kids, right?)

So this morning, the boys and I went to hang out with them for 45 minutes or an hour – just to have a little more time….

Two hours later, we really did have to leave.

Lucky for us, we’ll see them for Chanukah in 2 weeks.

(that photo was in 1971 or 1972. she may have changed a little since then.)

I am grateful for…

1. my husband, chef, friend, partner, chef. (did I say chef?)
2. my boys. they are so wonderful.
3. my extended family. they’re all great. well, almost all. (just kidding.)
4. my clients. nice people, challenging work, and it pays the bills.
5. wine.
6. my bff. (and she’ll be here next week. omg!)
7. everything we have that makes our life so comfortable.
8. this blog. it’s been a great outlet for me. (and I’ve made some wonderful new friends.)
9. you readers. what’s the point of blogging if no one reads it? so thanks.
10. brian and all his crew who are busting butt for us. (but I don’t want to get political here. certainly not on Thanksgiving.)
11. wine. did I say that already? okay, fine. my friends. love you guys.
12. cyrus. I’m extremely lucky to have a personal trainer. particularly one who pushes me so hard. thanks, man.
13. health and happiness. who could ask for more?

My grandmother, Betsy was, shall we say, a bit odd. She was one of a kind. Her schedule was so rigid that you could, at any given time, know exactly where she was and what she was doing. Seriously. When she was in the hospital after a stroke that she had at her club playing cards with the girls, her hairdresser called my father to see where she was. She never missed an appointment. Never.

So when she didn’t show up at our house for Thanksgiving dinner in 1987, we knew something was wrong. She never woke up that day. Her newspaper was at the front door. There was a glass of orange juice by her bed. And she was gone.

I think about her often. I know I was her favorite grandchild (sorry sibs). As a young adult, I used to go over to her apartment and we’d talk. She was very open-minded and had very strong opinions.

She told me stories and fed me M&Ms. Sometimes, she’d have baked goods in the house. When she did, they’d been made by her housekeeper. Surely, not by her.

My grandmother told me never to get married. “Live with the guy,” she said. Her husband (who died before I was born) was outlived by his mother, who lived with them. Oh, what fun that must have been. So my grandmother’s mother-in-law was like the woman of the house. She cooked and took care of everything. It drove my grandmother crazy. So crazy, in fact, that she took a job. And since a paying job was unseemly for a southern girl of a certain background, she took a volunteer job. A full-time volunteer job. At the local hospital.

I have a yellowed newspaper article that talks about when she was honored at a luncheon for volunteering more than 10,000 hours to the hospital. And from what I remember, she worked there for nearly 10 more years after that.

And speaking of articles, she was famous for cutting out and mailing articles. If she thought you’d be interested, she sent it. She saved me the JUMBLES from the paper and sent them when I went to camp, too!

Some say that I write a lot of thank you notes. I can tell you that I got that from her. She was a letter writer, extraordinaire. And her handwriting was so distinctive that you knew it was from her before you even really looked at it.

This was a note (with a check!) that she sent me after I took her to see my apartment in 1983 – my first apartment after college. It was half a house with a slanted floor and a faint (or not so faint) scent of eau d’cat. But I loved that place. And she wrote that she thought it was lovely. It was not that lovely, but she would never have said that. She probably hoped that the check would pay for a cleaning job, but she wouldn’t have said that either.

Anyway, I think about her and miss her often. But most of all around Thanksgiving. I light a yartzeit candle every year.

So when my mother found this recipe yesterday, it seemed particularly timely. She emailed me a scan yesterday.
I should point out that my grandmother was a horrendous cook. So, if you dare to try this recipe, try at your own risk. (I can’t help myself. I have to make them!) Also know that she was a fan of sinkers, not floaters. If you’re not a matzo ball connoisseur, that means that they are heavy and rock-like rather than fluffy matzo ball goodness.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

We all know the story about the scorpion.

One day, a scorpion looked around at the mountain where he lived and decided that he wanted a change. So he set out on a journey through the forests and hills. He climbed over rocks and under vines and kept going until he reached a river.

The river was wide and swift, and the scorpion stopped to reconsider the situation. He couldn’t see any way across. So he ran upriver and then checked downriver, all the while thinking that he might have to turn back.

Suddenly, he saw a frog sitting in the rushes by the bank of the stream on the other side of the river. He decided to ask the frog for help getting across the stream.

“Hellooo Mr. Frog!” called the scorpion across the water, “Would you be so kind as to give me a ride on your back across the river?”

“Well now, Mr. Scorpion! How do I know that if I try to help you, you wont try to kill me?” asked the frog hesitantly.

“Because,” the scorpion replied, “If I try to kill you, then I would die too, for you see I cannot swim!”

Now this seemed to make sense to the frog. But he asked. “What about when I get close to the bank? You could still try to kill me and get back to the shore!”

“This is true,” agreed the scorpion, “But then I wouldn’t be able to get to the other side of the river!”

“Alright then…how do I know you wont just wait till we get to the other side and THEN kill me?” said the frog.

“Ahh…,” crooned the scorpion, “Because you see, once you’ve taken me to the other side of this river, I will be so grateful for your help, that it would hardly be fair to reward you with death, now would it?!”

So the frog agreed to take the scorpion across the river. He swam over to the bank and settled himself near the mud to pick up his passenger. The scorpion crawled onto the frog’s back, his sharp claws prickling into the frog’s soft hide, and the frog slid into the river. The muddy water swirled around them, but the frog stayed near the surface so the scorpion would not drown. He kicked strongly through the first half of the stream, his flippers paddling wildly against the current.

Halfway across the river, the frog suddenly felt a sharp sting in his back and, out of the corner of his eye, saw the scorpion remove his stinger from the frog’s back. A deadening numbness began to creep into his limbs.

“You fool!” croaked the frog, “Now we shall both die! Why on earth did you do that?”

The scorpion shrugged, and did a little jig on the drownings frog’s back.

“I could not help myself. It is my nature.”

Then they both sank into the muddy waters of the swiftly flowing river.

Well, I like a clean and tidy bathroom. I have this irrational compulsion to clean up public restrooms. I mean seriously. To see toilet paper on the floor. Paper towels that missed the trash can. It’s unbearable to me.

Tonight, we went to dinner at Bare Bones Grill for Max’s 9th birthday.

As usual, I had to use the restroom. And yes, it had stuff on the floor.

It’s such a dilemma. To pick up others’ trash or to shudder and walk away. What to do? I’m such a mom. Such a neatnik.

For the first time in recent memory, I walked away. But it wasn’t easy.

And I couldn’t help but wonder if the next patron thought that I was the one who left that stuff on the floor.

I swear, it wasn’t me.

I thought I solved my bleach problem back in September. And December 2006.

But alas, the first gallon is gone and the jury is in.

The Wal-Mart Rain bleach does not cut the mustard. (If you, like me, are curious where that saying come from, see below)

I saw two new scents – lavender and meadow – the other day. I might be reduced to trying them.

Sigh.

From alt.usage.english

This expression meaning “to achieve the required standard” is first recorded in an O. Henry story of 1902: “So I looked around and found a proposition [a woman] that exactly cut the mustard.”

It may come from a cowboy expression, “the proper mustard”, meaning “the genuine thing”, and a resulting use of “mustard” to denote the best of anything. O. Henry in _Cabbages and Kings_(1894) called mustard “the main attraction”: “I’m not headlined in the bills, but I’m the mustard in the salad dressing, just the same.” Figurative use of “mustard” as a positive superlative dates from 1659 in the phrase “keen as mustard”, and use of “cut” to denote rank (as in “a cut above”) dates from the 18th century.

Other theories are that it is a corruption of the military phrase “to pass muster” (“muster”, from Latin _monstrare_=”to show”, means “to assemble (troops), as for inspection”); that it refers to the practice of adding vinegar to ground-up mustard seed to “cut” the bitter taste; that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of
a difficult task, mustard being a relatively tough crop that grows close to the ground; and that it literally means “cut mustard” as an example of an easy task (via the negative expression “can’t even cut the mustard”), mustard being easier to cut at the table than butter.

The more-or-less synonymous expression “cut it” (as in “‘Sorry’ doesn’t cut it”) seems to be more recent and may derive from “cut the mustard”.