Category Archives: gary

July 23, 2010 · 10:52 pm

No Soap Radio

Here is a perfect example of how I keep myself entertained at all times.

These past few weeks I have been exceptionally busy and preoccupied. Not in a bad way, I thrive on this pace. It has not been the stay up all night, work all weekend kind of busy. More like the very full day and lots of plans at night and on the weekends sort of busy.

The thing is, at times like these the little details of life seem to get put on the back burner. You know, like going to the bank, making sure there is milk, buying stamps (yes we still use stamps on occassion, we are very retro) and the biggie this week…

buying soap.

More than once I heard Gary at 6:30 AM mumbling to himself and then asking me, “Do we have soap?”

Infant that I am, the only response I could think of was:

No soap, radio.

Luckily I was smart enough to keep that to myself because frankly his humor is just not all that developed at such an hour. I, on the other hand, would snicker to myself and then rummage through the travel bags to find soap until I finally wandered down to the basement bathroom and grabbed a vintage bar from the shower that is hardly ever used. (does soap go bad?)

Seriously, if you don’t entertain yourself throughout the day, what is really the point? Now might be a good time to tell you how I was sort of dancing a little to a Frank Sinatra song in Uncle Guiseppes this morning holding a big ass can of coffee and was ‘caught’ by a friend who looked at the coffee (and the little dance) and said, “wow, that’s a hell of a lot of coffee, cranking on a deadline?” I told her that actually I was and she was rather impressed that I could still do that little dance.

Don’t kid yourself folks, inside I am way more of a wreck than I appear to be.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.


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May 10, 2010 · 10:48 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – 25 years

May 11th, 1985.

Hottest day of the year and a NYC loft with no AC; rough combo.

If you were a guest at our wedding you are still trying to cool down from that one. I will never lose the vision of our best man sweating as if he were running a marathon. I will spare the rest of the details of that day and hope the rest of you will be kind enough to do so as well.

But as in most situations that spin out of our control, we made lemonade, had an amazing time and started our life together with the full knowledge that things were never going to get boring around here. And they surely have not.

We have done the better.

And sadly some of the worse.

We have unfortunately known some very scary sickness.

Yet happily we have known more extended periods of good health.

(I would like to personally thank Gary here for not crapping out on me 10 years ago to fulfill the death do us part piece)

Marriage is hard work. But it is also the person you come home to at the end of the day who you share some kids and a dog with. Who holds your hand when you are about to cry and makes you laugh, especially at the most inappropriate times. Who holds up the hose when you have a leak in the basement and shouts ‘where is this water coming from?’ and makes you care more about how funny that is than where the water is actually coming from. Who will go anywhere, anytime without a thought about if it will be hassle or not.

Life is hard. When you can share it with someone who can do a toddler dance, still wake up every day and push the damn boulder up the hill with you, knows every type of music on the planet and helps to teach your kids to appreciate it all(ish)  AND is a damn good tennis player…

then it all seems a little easier.

Happy 25th G. (and PLEASE, stop telling everyone this has been the happiest 40 years of your life).

More than life itself, baby.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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May 8, 2010 · 11:15 pm

All I Want for Mother’s Day is a New Spatula

The scene: Friday morning, making Danny’s lunch (yes I still make him lunch and my days are numbered with this so get off my case)

The Dog: decides to puke up her entire breakfast in the middle of the kitchen floor.

Me: Gary, can you clean up the dog puke please.

Gary: Sure (as he grabs the above spatula, scoops it into a paper towel and tosses it very efficiently).

Now, let me confess that I did not really process this at all until a bit later in the day when I was texting with Jana and told her and she was appalled.

Then she informed me her friends were all equally appalled.

Then I told her Gary wanted to make her an omelette when she gets home from Europe. (I can be a pot stirrer at times)

Then I mentioned it on the lacrosse field and EVERYONE was appalled. In fact one friend said she would never come over for breakfast while another said she was not sure she would ever come over at all.

But the best of all is when Danny came over and we told him.

And he almost gagged because he had just used that spatula to make himself breakfast.

Hey, don’t be so disgusted, it had gone through the dishwasher!

Hey, Happy Mother’s Day everyone.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 15, 2010 · 9:17 pm

Time to Cry Tuesday – Little Shirt

When you have lived in a house as long as we have, things have a habit of lodging themselves in the back of places and you never know they are there.

Until, you have to move your massive armoire over six inches and you have to empty the entire thing out. There, on the top shelf, behind the long underwear and old sweaters that have that funky stripe of dust on them because they haven’t been unfolded in countless years, was the t-shirt above.

Size 24 month.

That belonged to the girl who will turn 21 YEARS next month.

Freaky!

How it got there I will never know. It was not a particularly favorite shirt, although it does say Delray on it and Mom, I am sure we bought it at that little place we loved on Atlantic Avenue. So although the shirt itself does not hold any particular memories of little Jana, the days we spent in Florida when she was young surely do.

I held up that little shirt and a rush of memories came flooding in. The smell of suntan lotion mixed with Desitin (she used to eat so much sand it was rough going on the way out). The way she could sit in a hole that Gary dug for her on the beach for hours. Standing at the shoreline with each of us holding one of her chubby little hands and lifting her up as the waves crashed on her feet, her squealing with delight each time as if it were the first. The cry of ‘five more minutes’ when we told her it was time to get out of the water. My kids adored the beach. Nature or nurture? Both, I am sure. Salt air and sand are something ingrained in their lives and a symbol of their childhoods.

That little Jana was one handful. Loads of fun but always giving me a run for my money. She could out-stubborn me any day of the week. Those toddler years were trying as hell but damn what I would not give for just one more day of that curly-headed little whirling dervish.

And now she is halfway across the globe navigating the world as if she were riding her bike around the corner, “It’s fine mom, I’ll figure it out, don’t worry.”

Don’t worry?! Isn’t that my job?

Janny-girl, I am thinking that I just might have to save that little shirt a while longer. And no, you cannot still wear it even though I know you love tiny T’s.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 14, 2010 · 10:17 pm

Fill in the blank

Fortunately this blog post is not intentionally blank. In fact it is filled with the nonsense inside my head and a big fat question for the brand guys at Samsung.

We just bought this super cool flat screen TV for bedroom because, well because it was Gary’s birthday and I could not bear another life cycle event with him looking longingly at the TVs everywhere we went. If you read yesterday, it was a bit of an ordeal to buy and make room for this item. It continued to be an ordeal when our main man Carlos came to install this baby and he could not find the stud. Yeh, I know, it was a present for ‘the stud’ but I can’t hang a TV off of him so we needed to find the one in the wall. Built in 1939, this house has its charms, but finding studs in plaster walls is not one of them.

I digress. While Carlos was making countless holes in my wall looking for the stud, doing a great job installing the TV, I decided to look through the QuickStart manual and familiarize myself with the TV.

Ok, that is a lie. Actually, I did not even consider looking at the manual until I was checking out the nifty swing mount on the TV that will actually allow me to get into the back of my underwear drawer in the armoire by moving out of the way (the old stationary tv blocked it) and in turn touched… SOMETHING, that knocked out the reception on the TV. Did you follow that last stream of consciousness insane sentence? Anyone out there distracted by my underwear drawer? No matter, point is we needed to figure out how to get the TV back on again so I looked at the manual. Gary, on the other hand, called Carlos and he told us how to do it.

Never mind. None of this has anything to do with what the point of this pointless post is. Looking through the guide I came upon 3 pages that said ‘This page is intentionally left blank”. Really? WTF. Why would three pages be left blank. Intentionally no less. Ok all you printer and designer types out there, we all know that a saddle stitched (fancy name for stapled) brochure has to have a multiple of 4 pages because the sheets are printed in spreads and folded in half creating 4 pages per signature. Enough of the print layout lesson. My question to the brand manager at Samsung would be:

YOU COULDN’T THINK OF ANYTHING TO PUT ON THOSE EXTRA 3 PAGES OTHER THAN “THIS PAGE WAS INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK”?

I mean seriously, guys, a little marketing opp here maybe. Perhaps some more troubleshooting, I am sure you did not cover all the problems that I will encounter on that one page. But three blank pages? And your solution to them was to let us know that it was intentional? Yikes, I have been in the biz for a long time. I have never had a client say, “Hey, let’s intentionally leave these pages blank and then state it so we don’t look like we made a mistake. Ok, our work is done here, drinks anyone?”

Yeh, well, the TV is real nice, even if the brand guys are kind of lame.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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March 12, 2010 · 11:29 pm

Stone Free

Well, a Friday night in the household and one by one we lost the dogs.

And the boys.

Guest dogs have all gone to their respective families, guest boy is off to sleep in his own bed before the SATs tomorrow (good luck Mikey), and our boy is off with his campies.

That leaves me, Mel, Gary and Jimi.

Hendrix of course. Gary brought home the much awaited, newly released Valleys of Neptune and we listened to it a bit in the car on the way to dinner.

Yeh, a chick that loves Hendrix, what can I say?

Oh great, now she is a rock critic? Hey screw off, this is my blog and if I want to indulge in a little rock n roll, I damn well can. Oh sorry, feeling a little testy on a Friday.

Back to the music; it is such a clean sound, the remastering is phenomenal. The technology allows us to hear what we have missed for so long. It makes me both grateful for this new compilation to be released and so very sad that this giant died so young. Jimi could have really changed music. More so than he did in his few short years. He had IT; felt it like no other and could bend sound and minds alike in such a way that it is hard to imagine where he would have gone. And if this is not wonderful enough, our friend gave us a rare CD of acoustic recordings titled, By Himself: The Home Recordings that all you Hendrix fans will be very jealous of (and yes we share). Six tracks including my all time favorite Hendrix song, Angel. It’s like having Jimi hanging out in your living room with just his guitar and his voice. Thanks Alan, best gift ever.

Some things are never destined to go further than they have. The music of Jimi Hendrix sadly falls in that category.

At the risk of sounding like a Time to Cry Tuesday, I will turn this around and share the sheer joy I found with these new releases. It is like having someone special re-enter your life that you never expected to see again. Cool, right?

Now if you will excuse my I have a date with Jimi.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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February 28, 2010 · 9:31 pm

The Perfect Husband

I know, you all saw that title and thought, “How sweet, she is going to praise the virtues of her sweet Gary of Hey Nanny Nanny and Janie Knight fame.” Well, of course he is the perfect husband, but this post is not about him.

For those who have been following along, my daughter Jana is doing a semester abroad. That is college-speak for I will tolerate a few hours a week of class so I can be in a different city (sometimes two) every weekend. This weekend found her in Amsterdam, with a side trip to Brussels. When she is traveling I usually wake up to a BBM (blackberry messenger message – it’s like a text for you non-crackberry heads). This morning I found this photo with no message. It was hard to read on my bberry so I had to email it to myself to see what it was.

If there was any doubt that I was genetically linked to this girl you will now understand that I would have to be her mother. Ahhh, the Inflatable Perfect Husband. This must be the 20-year-old version of the Grow Your Own Parents that I bought her in middle school when we were getting on her last nerve. I particularly like the french word for inflatable… gonflable. How do you pronounce that? Anyone? I took Spanish so it is lost on me but I love the way it looks.

I shudder to think what the Inflatable Perfect Wife has behind her back.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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February 17, 2010 · 7:40 pm

Honey, does this potato make my butt look fat?

No, folks, no Photoshop miracle here. This baby came right out of the bin at the supermarket we affectionately call Stinky Farms (for the way it used to smell when I was pregnant, before they renovated).

I always find it uncanny when I find body part vegetables. This is not the first time I have blogged about them. Who could forget my friend Katie’s rather impressive cucumber from fire island? (All the other vegetables were jealous Vol. 1) or the rather impressive horse radish during Passover (vol 2)? And then of course there is Gary’s hidden talent for peeling an orange into an ‘elephant’ (cough, cough, yeh right)

But this one? This one is almost freakish in its resemblance to a perfect little baby’s butt.

Yeh, I know, you all wish you could go food shopping with me.

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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February 16, 2010 · 9:44 pm

Taking the Gold in Snow Shoveling

4:30 AM Wake up to snow… again (damn)

5:30 AM Still snowing, thinking about shoveling. (damn, again)

7:30 AM Drag our asses out of bed and think, “We are so over snow!” (except for Mel, she loves the stuff)

Until…

I walked outside and saw how breathtakingly beautiful everything was. And even more beautiful was the sight of Gary in that red jacket halfway through the job!

I love this shot. If not for the signage and his jacket the whole world was black and white. We had just finished our annex shoveling job – our 88-year-old neighbor who I swear is going to propose to Gary if he shovels there one more time. That Danny, he went and had all 4 wisdoms pulled just so he would not have to shovel again!

There has been talk of a snow-blower, but then how would we go for the gold?

Is it almost spring yet?

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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January 2, 2010 · 5:13 pm

Bags under my eyes and the spousal look of terror

I woke up this morning, looked in the mirror and noticed some not so attractive bags under my eyes.

That’s right.

Bags.

Under.

MY.

Eyes.

I stared in that mirror and the first thought that came to my mind was, “Ok, Ms. age gracefully, never consider plastic surgery, stop trying to chase your youth, I would NEVER… how do you like them bags?”

Not to brag, but I have – by no doing of my own – been fortunate to inherit the beautiful skin that both of my grandmothers sported well into their 80s. That coupled with an extra XX lbs on my ass, has left my 50-year-old punim relatively line and bag free(ish). But last night I was having some sinus and ear issues (no doubt from all the flying I witnessed at the movie, Up in the Air) and when I woke up it all settled in those not so endearing bags under said eyes. Luckily they started to disappear as the day wore on.

I was on the couch with my daughter and asked her to take a look at me and see if she noticed them. Then Gary came in the room. He was leaning over the coffee table innocently placing clementines in a bowl when I asked him. “Hon, do you notice bags and dark circles under my eyes?”

Deer.

In.

Headlights.

Poor thing. He stood there half bent over the table, frozen in time. I could hear the inner workings of his mind, “How in hell am I supposed to answer this friggin’ question?” This, my friends, falls into the proverbial ‘does my ass look fat in this…’ question. The way in which the husband answers this question will change the entire architecture of his day, if not his whole weekend. And he is fully aware of that fact. Luckily for him I had mercy on that poor terrified look on his face and started to laugh.

I am happy to report that the bags have ‘resolved’ but left in their wake is a new found terror that I am not as void of vanity as I once believed. And Gary, he is just happy he did not have to answer that question.

(oh, and of course that picture at the top of the post is not ME!)

Haven’t had enough of me yet? You can also read me at 50-Something Moms Blog. For photo enthusiasts, visit Leaving the zip code, photos from outside the comfort zone.

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