Hey, I’m back!  And as distracted & distractible as ever.  ”Distraction?” you ask?  Why, yes, my dear.  Finally, after (mumbles) years & months, I return to my neglected blog. I type in my first line “It’s been a long time.”  Then, I think what I always think whenever I say that line.  I sing that line from that song (in my mind)  even though I wasn’t around in 1945 when it was all the rage.

While we’re on the subject, did I ever tell you about my 1940s phase?  When I was 16 to 19 I was fascinated with the 1940s.  I wore clothes from that era (shopped at a great place called Bazaar Bizarre, on College Ave), I tap danced on a daily basis, I even wanted to make a career of tap dancing.  Until I realized there  wasn’t much of a market for it. (broadcast news was my “safety” career, my fall-back choice.  go figure.)  Anyway, I knew and loved all the old songs.

But I digress.  (Yes.  I know, it’s kind of stale now to say “But I digress” seeing how it was cute, once or twice, three years ago. But seriously.  I mean it.  I digress.)  And digress and digress.  I’m not sure if it’s the ravages of an aging ADHD brain, or the intersection of an attention deficit and menopause.  I like to think of it as one of my charms.  Example.  My niece (Ana, the 24 year old daughter of my sister who now lives with us as she prepares for a life and a job in the big city) asks me “Did you see that movie?”  And I ask my daughter (Laura, the 20 year old who transferred to a university closer to home and moved back in. C’mon people, keep up!) “Did I see that movie?  Did I like it?”  How cute is that?  Asking your kid if you saw a movie because you can’t really remember!  Yeah, okay so it’s not cute.  It’s a little pathetic.  I blame the movie.  If it had been good, I surely would have remembered seeing it.  It’s the non memorable, mediocre ones, that don’t stick with me.  So I rely on the daughter’s memory.

Sweet Jesus, I can’t even remember what I was going to write about for this Grand Reopening Blog.  Okay, stop. Pause for a moment.  I REMEMBERED!  Dick Clark’s Rockin’ New Year’s Eve!!  (and what kind of irony is THAT?!?!?)

Okay, now-hundreds of words into this blog, I finally get to the point!

At first I thought…PLEASE, SIR, HAVE SOME DIGNITY AND HANG IT UP!!! Then I thought…well…his mind must be there if he’s insisting on doing this in spite of his post-stroke, physical failings.  Then I thought (actually, then I probably got distracted by something. But for copy purposes, I’m gonna stay with the matter at hand) well, wait a darned (nope, i don’t really talk like that. and yes i realize my grammar and punctuation has gone to hell here. don’t bother me while i’m thinking, please) minute…more power to this guy for getting back up on that horse, stroke be damned!

It’s interesting, how uncomfortable we are in the face of physical failings.  We’d rather not be confronted by it.  Cripples. Disfigured people.  Fat people.  People who limp.  Hell, we’d rather not  have to see or hear it. All disabled people should be banished to private rooms, right?  I mean…who wants to hear/see an old guy struggling to talk through his stroke-induced, neuromuscular  disability?  It’s kind of…uh…icky. Hey, don’t get upset with me for saying that.  Be honest.  That’s our reaction.  Ick.  Which, like many things we’d rather not see, is rooted in fear.  But nevermind that.  Just get him out of here.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this.  Should he or shouldn’t he?  Maybe yes.  Yeah.  I’m gonna go with yes, he should.  Am I saying the guy should still be doing that show on network television?  Sure, why not?  It’s not as if some of those other “hosts” were much better.  I mean… could you even understand Jennifer Lopez through the giggles?  Who is Ryan Seacrest, anyway?  What did he ever do to deserve to be host of the NYE show?  But more to the point, what’s the big deal?  1-We all know the countdown numbers, so we weren’t being robbed of needed clarity, by Dick’s mumblings. 2-It’s New Year’s Eve, and Dick Clark is tradition.  3-Worse things have happened on television, did you happen to stop by CNN and see that poor Anderson Cooper forced to play straight-man to that awful redhead?  Worse yet, 4-Did you happen to see CNN at all in 2009 and witness human behavior at its cruel worst?

Okay, I’m gonna stop talking now.  Other topics to look forward to in the new year (assuming I write again in 2010) my new puppy Pip, life with two daughters (one real, one faux),  my son, all growed up, my job-now that I’m all growed up, my renewed effort to lose some weight, the cooking talents of my children, being 51, my dinner with Andre…oops, sorry. Got carried away listing.

Happy New Year!

xoxox, Rebecca

Now… I think all I was doing was a bunch of things haphazardly.  Oh, sure.  I was fully capable of running a board, reading a newscast, and giving myself a manicure, all at the same time.  This, while making a pediatric appointment for my daughter during stolen moments.  But really…were the nails worth the risk?  If all hell broke loose, was I at the top of my game?

Truth is, like a lot of parents, I had to do six things at once.  The alternative was to admit that I can’t have it all.  Perish the thought.  Along with that, comes admitting that someone is being shortchanged…namely my progeny.  Double perish.

All of which is my “you buried the lead” way of saying I find it difficult to earn a living and do anything else.  Like laundry.  Or meal-making.  Or emailing dear friends.  Or, obviously, blogging.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I admit I am powerless over my daily life.

Further complicating matters, I had a daughter to pack off to school.  A son to fete as he turned 27.  A couple of recalcitrant bones to slow me down.  That Damned Leg.  Sounds sort of like a late 70s/early 80s sitcom, does it not?  No one told me my leg wasn’t going to work correctly 3.5 months after the break.  Okay, I lied.  My orthopedic surgeon told me it would take a year and a half to heal and “it may never be totally normal again.”  I just like the rhythm and sound of “No one told me…”

Oh, hell.  Gotta go.  The dog just barfed on the rug.  AND HE ISN’T EVEN EATING IT!!  Which means I’ll have to clean it.

xoxox, Rebecca

ps: How ’bout that Sarah Palin, huh?  Life just gets more amusing by the minute…

pps: Please forgive any typos or glitches.  Proof reading means no post today, and we don’t want that now, do we?

PS: I just felt SO sports knowledgable.  I just answered “four” with no hesitation when my daughter asked how many quarters are in a basketball game. SO sporty of me.

Where was I?? Parenthesis have the same effect on me as spinning a little kid in three circles before letting him try to pin the tail on the donkey.

Here’s the kind of secret keeper I am: once asked to keep the secret, and reminded… maybe a second time, it’s as good as locked. But when the secret is announced and someone says “Oh…isn’t it exciting that Suzie is pregnant?” I have to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out “Yes it is, and I knew it five months ago!!” (the first trimester and the few months that they were trying). But I don’t. Seriously. I don’t say that. I just want to.

All of which leads to this: (singsong voice goes here) I have a secret, I have a secret, I have a secret. (at which point, several of my friends begin to get nervous) No, don’t worry, . Your secrets are not about to be blurted out in blog form. (Would that be “blurgted?”) It’s my own secret. I have The Best Story Idea Ever. But I’m not saying, because I want to save it for myself!!!

It’s not in the public domaine yet. But all it would take is an observant newspaper person (cuz they’re the most enterprising, i’m sorry to say) and there it would be. So…I’m crossing my fingers and sitting on it. Why not just hand it over to my colleagues? Because I want to do it myself when I get back to work, silly.

Okay. Truth be told, it’s not like this is “gonna knock this town’s socks off!” But I like it. It’s got all the perfect elements: timely, sign of the times, juicy…the kind people will talk about AND it’s tied to world events. HA!

I really need to go back to work. It’s time.

I have organized all the thread in my sewing room according to color. I spent a long time debating whether one spool belonged on the green row or the blue. Now I’m organizing my fabrics by color. What does it mean, that I have a disproportionately large amount of purple fabric? Followed by green. Then black. Then red. Lots of yellow, too. Hardly any white. Even less blue. A “normal” amount of brown and beige. Then there are the multi-print pieces that defy color categorizing. What would Melvil Dewey have done?

xoxox, Rebecca

ps: i looked it up. it’s “mnemonics” oops.

I should probably stop writing about them, I don’t want them to think they’re all that.

xoxox, Rebecca

Eventually everyone is happily contributing a line.  You learn a little more about each and every one of them, from the line they choose to quote from the movie.  Plus, suddenly everyone is cheerful.  Really, they are.  Try it.  Sure there’ll be someone there who’s never seen “The Jerk” or, worse yet, someone who has, but pretends he hasn’t.   Careful, he’s gonna want to talk about the works of Ingmar Bergman or perhaps his favorite scene from “An Andalusion Dog” -which he’ll allude to in the French “Un Chien Anadalou.” (Which reminds me…should it not have been a tipoff when the first movie my first husband took me to see was “Children of Paradise?”   Okay, off topic.  I’m just saying…)

Jayzus.  Speaking of off-topic,  this post is not about “The Jerk” …it’s about my garden.  Little by ever-so-slowly little, the tomatoes are ripening.   True, some never got a chance to ripen, because, in their enthusiasm, Laura and my father would pluck an orange little beauty from its vine and present it to me with a suspiciously high level of joy.   I would complain they’re not ripe and should be left on the vine until ripe.   My father would insist a few days in a sunny windowsill is all it needs to ripen up.  Umm…that’s the point of growing your own, Daddy.  You can pluck it ripe, off the vine, and eat it at its peak.  That’s when my father walks away shaking his head, mumbling in half English, half Spanish.

Finally, this week, I got to eat ripe tomatoes.  Perfectly red, plump, sweet, tiny ripe tomatoes.  Tomatoes that I grew with my own little hands.  Okay, full disclosure:  my own little hands and my dad’s hands.  He’s been helping keep the garden watered since my leg broke.  Oh, and Suzie’s little hands.  She’s helped me too.  Let me say that again.  Perfectly red, plump, sweet, tiny, ripe tomatoes that Daddy and Sue and I grew with our own little hands.  And yesterday I made brown rice and ground turkey with red peppers, onions, and–from my garden–crookneck squash and fresh herbs:  thyme, basil and parsley.  From my garden.  That Sue and Daddy and I grew with our own six hands (two small, and four normal).  

I think I’m gonna start calling it The Farm.  Garden sounds so… amateur.

Right about now, I bet you’re telling yourself “I know we’ve only known each other for four weeks and three days.  But to me it seems like nine weeks and five days.  The first day seemed like a week.  And the second day seemed like five days.  And the third day seemed like a week again. And the fourth day seemed like eight days.  But the fifth day you went to see your mother, and that seemed like just a day.  But then you came back…”

xoxo, Rebecca

I went to the Bay Street Apple store in Emeryville yesterday to get a new power cord for my iBook. This was the first time I’ve driven myself anyplace. The Lovely Laura has been doing all the driving, and I’m starting to make a test run here and there in preparation for my return to work. Anyway, I’m a klutz on crutches.. so getting out of the car, strapping on my backpack, pulling the crutches out, hobbling to the back of the car to get my laptop out of the trunk…it didn’t go particularly smoothly and I set off the car alarm. Nothing to see here folks, go back to your homes…

I lock the door and crutch, crutch, crutch my way across the street to the Apple store only to notice two long-ass lines stretching out of the store and down the street. I asked the iManager womanning the store if those were iPhone lines. “One is for iPhones, the other is for everything else.

Even if you just need to get a new power cord?

“Yessss.”

Even if you’re here to buy a new Mac?

“Fraid so.”

Even if I want to buy 25 new Macs, all with cash, I’d have to wait in that line?

“Yup.”

Shit.

I tell her I have a broken leg and it wasn’t easy getting here. “Yeah, I can see that…” she said, and told me to have a seat on a folding chair right inside the door. In five minutes, one of the Mac clerks came over (heck, I was willing to walk to the cash register in the back of the store…) he took my iBook and broken power cord into the back; and returned a few minutes later with all my stuff, a new cord and some paperwork for me to sign, and I was on my way. Danggggg, as Baby Luke would say.

Crutches seem to bring out the compassion in people. Last weekend I was waiting outside the Home Depot with my cart full of stuff when a man walked over and asked if he could take it to the car and load it up for me. No thanks, my daughter is about to pull up, she’ll do it. And no, he wasn’t a mass murderer, his wife was with him. I think she told him to help me. Ditto in Target, earlier that day when I was in the motorized scooter they lend to the immobile…I was gazing up at the high shelf when a man walked over (again, urged by his wife) and said “Can I reach something for you?”

People gas up your gas tank for you. Okay, so it’s the law when you’ve got a disabled parking placard. But I didn’t ask for the help, I was about to do it myself when the really sweet Costco worker said “No, no, sit in the car, I’m happy to do it for you…” Happy? Seriously? He looked like he meant it.

I dunno. Maybe it’s just simple civility and I shouldn’t be so surprised. But seriously, I’m touched. It’s just so damned nice when people are so…so… you know, so nice. My daughter thinks it’s proof that people are mostly good, and the world is an okay place. Having come off the day I just had, I’m inclined to agree.

And I’m really happy (and a little shocked) that a kid I raised actually believes the world and the people in it are inherently good. To anyone who knows me (and my neurosis) I ask: how the hell did that happen?

(Smiley face goes here)

xoxo, Rebecca

ps: Although I’m pretty sure my other child, if he reads this, will refute the premise and once again urge me to stop blogging and if I feel a need to keep my writing skills honed during recuperation, start writing term papers to sell to students or some similar enterprise. Hi Ben.

I’ll tell you what happened. The moment I made a commitment to blogging, it felt like… ummm… a commitment. And you know how it is with commitments. Suddenly that swooshing noise I heard was the magic being sucked out of the room. Before I knew it…what had once been fun and exciting began to feel like an obligation. It was like I needed a literary Viagra just to set my fingers to the keyboard. Ideas for blogs eluded me. The notion of actually writing something new was greeted by my heart with the enthusiasm usually reserved for bill paying.

Woe was me.

So…we took a little break from each other, the blog and I. It wasn’t a legal separation or anything. It’s not like either of us moved into a new apartment. It was just… a little break. Pretty soon I found myself wanting to call, just to say hello. I began reading other blogs, a little misty eyed at what they have (and I don’t). One day, in Walgreens…I thought I saw the blog coming down the office supplies aisle with someone else. I have to admit, that was a shocker. The kind that makes you think long and hard about the direction your life has taken. The kind that makes you reassess your reluctance to commit.

So…here I am. I’m back. A little humbled, definitely focusing on what I have instead of what I don’t, and no longer expecting a constant diet of erudite commentary. It’s what life is made of, right? Beans and rice and the occasional filet mignon. Instead of daily fireworks, we can get comfortable together, right? I mean…who can sustain the constant passion, the high-energy zeal, the 24-7 intensity, right? Right? This doesn’t mean I’m settling or anything, nor do I expect that of you. I’m just going to…blog without judgement or expectation from now on. It’ll be a warm and loving blog based on friendship and mutual respect, with the occasional hot moment thrown in now and then.

(would’ve been easier to just say I got lazy for awhile, eh?)

xoxo, rebecca

Today, we went out to lunch. We drove by the “cheap” gas station, the one with the lowest prices in Oakland, where regular is $4.50 a gallon. That’s an increase of 70 cents (which may as well be a dollar) in just five weeks.

Yeah, I read the papers, I listen to the news, I pay attention to the market, I watch the price of crude, blah blah blah blah. Still, there’s nothing like going to sleep when something costs less than four bucks and waking up when it’s almost FIVE.

I almost want it to hit five dollars a gallon just to see what happens. I know. Heretical thing to say. But don’t you kind of want to see it? Riots in the streets would be great, although I guess we won’t. But don’t you wish we would? The best part is, the rioters would be ordinary people, not radicals. People like my mother and father. People like me, my neighbors, the mailman, waitresses, teachers, the checker at the grocery, nuns, babysitters, students, bus drivers, salesmen, mechanics, realtors, accountants, librarians…

I mean…we keep saying “this is ridiculous, we’ve had it, we’re mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore…” Well, maybe not exactly that. But stuff like that. Yet… we don’t. We don’t riot in the streets. Ever since I was a little kid (growing up during Vietnam protests and Black Panther riots) I thought the only way to really get stuff done (when the men in charge don’t share your feelings) is to hit the streets.

I’m no radical or anything. I’m as mainstream as the next guy. But c’mon…you can hold Capitol Hill hearings until they’re blue in the face…and things aren’t gonna change until some cars are flipped over and set on fire.

I’m just sayin…

The cheapest gas I ever bought was 56 cents a gallon. I learned to drive during the oil crisis in the 70s. I remember we could only gas-up the car on odd days because our license plate number was odd. The big hubbub then was OPEC jacking up prices on us because we were on Israel’s side during the Arab/Israeli war.

I’m amazed I can remember any of this stuff. Truth is, I barely can. That was a lonnnnnnnng time ago when I was 15 years old. But I remember the newscasters reporting crude was something outrageous like almost four dollars a barrel. I know. Makes you want to laugh, doesn’t it? Or cry. By the time I got my license (November 24, 1974) crude was 12 or 13 (sorry, not much of a numbers person) or 14 or 15 dollars a barrel, four or five times as high as it was the year before. (I guess I could look this stuff up and try to be accurate. But I’m on disability. Leave me alone.) The point is, it was high and climbing fast. And the country was freaking out about the numbers. I remember this well because I had just started driving and you pay attention to those things when you’re using your own money that you earn bagging groceries (I really did) to fill your tank.

I’m going back to sleep.

xoxox, Rebecca