First thing’s first, my friends: Welcome to 2020. I swear I can’t write that iconic phrase without hearing Barbara Walters utter her signature opening line for “20/20,” the TV newsmagazine she anchored for a quarter century. Hard to believe she’s 90. Speaking of television, if one of your goals for this new year is lowering monthly expenses, here’s a tip: Ditch your cable. We cut the proverbial cord last summer. Best decision ever. Other than deleting my Twitter account. Cut to a recent scene in our family room: “Honey, what’s on TV?” “Nothing.” “There must be something. We have like a thousand channels.” “Nothing. Zip. Nada. It’s a wasteland.” Seriously? Hundreds…
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Ev’rywhere you go
This will be brief because I know everyone’s busy. It’s Tuesday, for goodness’ sake. Woke up today in a lighter mood. It’s been a tough December this year. Not sure why, except around certain holidays I miss my folks and other lost loved ones more than usual. Guess it’s not uncommon. Check in with me on Groundhog Day. Our house is decorated, the stockings are hung, and all of the gifts (and checks to the Amazon children) are written. So, as I’m lying in bed this morning, petting the dog and thinking about actually getting up, I started singing to Madison: It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas ……
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Tell me more
“It was impossible to get a conversation going. Everybody was talking too much.” – Yogi Berra “Tell me more.” When’s the last time you heard that? Or were asked what you really thought about something important in your life? I don’t mean a tweet, text or email. Not by phone either. I’m talking in-person, face-to-face conversation when you answered meaningful questions, such as: What do you like best? What makes you laugh? Who do you enjoy spending time with? Your answers might surprise you. Just in time for the holidays, there’s a card game from the Netherlands called Vertellis, which means “tell us more” in Dutch. The object of the game is simple: Turn off…
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Game of chance
It’s not often you find a Las Vegas slot machine sitting in the middle of an RV center’s waiting room. But there it was, next to the camouflage-themed popup camper marked down to $9,995. An authentic Bally’s casino Blazing 777, the slot machine had plenty of complimentary credits for customers to pass the time as they waited for their recreational vehicles at Kline’s RV Center in Warren. Before I could pull that one-armed bandit’s lever, an older gentleman got up from his chair and walked toward me. “Good morning, young lady,” he said. Seeing his crisp, blue Oxford shirt with the RV company name and logo on its breast pocket,…
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Scat
The “tap-tap-tapping” was loud enough to startle the dog, who woke up from a sound sleep with her game face on, barking as if the Jehovah’s Witnesses were on our front porch with copies of The Watchtower and Awake! As I’ve been known to tell them, “Trust me, you’ve got the wrong house.” “Tap-tap-tapping.” The ubiquitous Ring Video Doorbell we had installed wasn’t chiming. No one was outside. It was something else. Madison – the killer dog who allegedly nipped Sprinkler Guy John – growled, barked some more and then went back to sleep. I heard the noise again, so I got up and put my ear to the outside wall, where the…
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Staycation
If it’s early November, then I am, as Gilbert O’Sullivan sang, “… alone again (naturally).” A three-time Grammy Award-winning record, this 1972 soft-rock hit may be the most depressing song ever written. Recap: Jilted groom gets ghosted at the altar and contemplates jumping to his death. Pass the popcorn. More than 45 years ago, this song made grownups cry and sixth-graders like me giggle, especially at these tender lyrics: “To think that only yesterday, I was cheerful, bright and gay.” What can I say? There’s something incredibly silly about the word “gay” to a 12-year-old kid. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Luckily, I’m not getting married or throwing myself…
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Domenica’s birthday
In her later years, my Italian grandmother couldn’t remember what day it was or her own name. Yet before leaving the house, she never forgot to grab her black leather pocketbook with the single-snap closure that safely housed her dentures, balled up in a slightly-used Kleenex that ultimately ended up being thrown in the trash. By her. One minute Nonna would be sitting in her tattered living room chair, and the next she’d be out the front door, down the crumbled cement steps and halfway up the block, on a mission to go home. We soon figured out that “home” meant back to Italy, where she was born on this…
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Bite me
I have failed as a mother. Evidently, our fur-baby tried to bite Sprinkler Guy John last spring during his annual startup visit. This was news to us when we called last week to set up our winterizing appointment with the irrigation company. The owner’s wife answered and made some small talk, saving the best for last. “Oh, and, um, you’ll have to lock up your dog when Sprinkler Guy John’s there because a note in your file says she nipped at his baby-blue cotton elasticized surgical shoe covers back in April. Sorry.” What? A note in our file? Nipped at his what? Sorry? Suddenly, I’m transported back to Goodale Elementary…
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Retired lady
Six years ago, after 25 years of too much work and not enough play, I retired. It was time to leave. And don’t forget what Cicely Tyson’s character, Sipsey, said about Idgie Threadgood’s beloved friend, Ruth, in the film, “Fried Green Tomatoes”: “A lady always knows when to leave.” For Sipsey, who nursed Ruth through terminal cancer and gave her the lethal dose of morphine that ended her pain, leaving meant dying. For me, that job – the hours, the workload, the stress – was killing me. Staying meant dying. Leaving meant living. Performing the duties of not one but two people myself for several years had taken its toll on my…
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Half full
For most of my life, I’ve been a “glass-is-half-empty” kind of person. Maybe because as a working journalist for more than three decades I became rather jaded covering the news. The daily grind turned this once idealistic college graduate into a hard-nosed, cynical reporter. Half full or half empty. Pick one. You are what you are. Yesterday, heading to the dentist for a routine teeth cleaning, I was daydreaming about how much I loved driving my 1965 Mustang with the top down on crisp autumn days, with visions of fresh apple cider and warm, cinnamon-sugar doughnuts dancing in my head. I wish fall could last forever. Then the car lurched…
