Flashlight, check. Trash can, check.
Ish and CC at Los Tigres del Norte
My BFF CC and I like to give our friend Ish a hard time because of an incident that happened when we went to see Café Tacuba play at a local theater.
We were standing in line and CC was holding the tickets. Ish said “I see someone I know. I’m gonna go talk to him. Let me have my ticket in case I don’t see you again before we get inside.”
CC held the ticket up and said in her best kindergarten teacher voice “Now Ish – I’m going to give you the ticket, but don’t lose it!”
Ish glared at her. Apparently they had had a tiff because Ish had said the same thing to CC at the last concert they had gone to and CC took offense at the suggestion she would be as stupid as to lose her ticket.
Ish disappeared to find his buddy. Five minutes later we caught up with him as we were entering the theater.
Ish was in a panic. He had, of course, lost his ticket.
In the five short minutes since he had left us, he had mysteriously manage to lose his $50 ticket. The show was sold out of $50 tickets and, since he was determined to get in, he spent $75 on yet another ticket.
We have been shaking our heads about it ever since, laughing. How the hell does someone lose a ticket like that? All he had to do was hold onto it for FIVE MINUTES.
Cut to Christmas Eve. CC gave me my gifts while we were waiting for dinner – some really great extra virgin olive oil from Pasolivo and lovely vanilla peanut butter dog biscuits for Goldie.
Then she presented me with a card.
The card had a ticket to see my boyfriend Anthony Bourdain (I interviewed him one time and I think we had a moment there. That’s as far as it went, but Tony knows that we’ll always have that sidewalk in Westlake Village) in conversation with the incredibly hot chef Eric Ripert.
“Don’t lose the ticket,” she mockingly warned.
Oh, how we laughed. We laughed long and hard, remembering Ish and his follies, and having no clue of the ironic turn of events about to befall me.
I came home late, in the rain, and brought my sopping self and all of the various and sundry items that had been piling up in my car in the kitchen…
Oh why do I go on so? I should cut to the chase. I somehow threw the card away. With the ticket in it. Yes, I did.
Fortunately, I recycle.
Thus, there I was tonight, with my bike headband headlight, digging through the 75-gallon recycling bin at 8 pm, trying to find the card. And did I?
It took some doing, and some neighbors being even more convinced that I am completely off my tree, but I got my fat torso down into the bin and snagged the card with the tippy tips of my fingers. Victory! I DID NOT LOSE THE TICKET. I merely misplaced it for three days.
So I guess I’m still one up on Ish.
The best Christmas present of all
My mom has one Christmas memory that she has shared over and over with me. She was born in 1926, so she was only 3 when the Great Depression hit. Her family, like everyone else, was put under extreme financial stress.
Her folks rented out the home they owned in Santa Barbara and moved into a rented home in Summerland that had no indoor plumbing. They shared the house with members of their extended family – my mom’s Aunt Wini and her children. Mom says the rent was $10 per month.
The men in the family couldn’t find work, so the women got jobs in the citrus packing house. My grandmother Gladis took the job of picking the rotten fruits out of the citrus bins, because the messy, disgusting work paid a little more than the other jobs.
When Mom was about 5 and her older brother, Earl, was 7, they were playing around one day. She was in the house and he was outside. She started making faces at him from inside the large picture window. He got angry and, in a typical dumb 7-year-old move, threw a baseball at her.
The window shattered and they both got whippings. But worse – they were told that Christmas – which was still a few months away – was cancelled. The family would have to use every spare dime to pay the landlord to replace the window and there would be no money for presents.
The children had plenty of time to contemplate the misery that was sure to be Christmas morning. That day would dawn without a single present, without anything special to mark that occasion.
But when they awoke, they found something wonderful. Somehow the family had managed to put together just enough money to buy a little red wagon. One present for all the children. But what joy that one unexpected present brought! Suddenly Christmas was theirs. My mom said they gave each other rides and put the animals and their friends in the wagon and went up and down the hill and played and played and played until they couldn’t play anymore.
I don’t remember ever hearing about any other Christmases my mom had, but I have heard the story of the unexpected wagon every single year.
Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope your day is full of unexpected joy and fun.
Photo by Jason Hickey. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Shepherds, Why This Jubilee?
The True Story of the 12th Day of Christmas
January 6, the year 1
A stable in Bethlehem
Mary: Hey Joey, what’s that noise?
Joseph: There are a bunch of people outside. I know this sounds weird, but it looks like some of them are shepherds.
Mary: Shepherds? What the….? Oh no. Oh nuh UH they don’t.
Joseph: No they don”t what?
Mary: They probably want their stable back. They are not getting this stable. I’ve fixed it up more in the past 12 days than they have in 10 years. I’ll bet they were the ones who put in that horrible fake Pergo floor. No siree, mister. And why are they quaking? That just freaks me out.
Joseph: And there are old dudes who say they are kings out there, too. They said they are here to venerate the baby.
Mary: They are not touching my baby.
Joseph: They want to venerate. Venerate. You know, like worship.
Mary: Why don’t they use normal words, then? Don’t they know I’m an illiterate virgin girl?
Joseph: You are the Holy mother of God.
Mary: That’s sweet of you to say, hon, and true, at least according to that freaky angel, but they should learn to talk right.
Joseph: They also said they bring gladsome tidings.
Mary: Gladsome is SO not a word. Now I KNOW they’re making things up. I may be illiterate, but I’m not stupid. Tell them to shove off. I’m not showing off my kid to them just because they stop by with their pretentious word-making-up selves after we’ve been sitting around this stupid stable for two weeks.
Joseph: Well, they DID bring gifts.
Mary: Oh, this I can’t wait to hear. Bring it.
Joseph: Frankincense and myrrh.
Mary: Frankincense and myrrh? FRANKincense and MYRRH? Great! Pollute my tiny boy’s perfect little lungs. Why doesn’t one of them just start smoking a rubber cigar and make it an unholy air quality trifecta?
Joseph: Also they brought some silver and gold.
Mary: A child, a child, shivers in the cold…could they bring a blanket at least? I’ll bet thinking of diapers was beyond them, too. Men, I swear.
Joseph: So you’re saying I shouldn’t let them in? Um, there’s also a little kid out there.
Mary:What’s his story?
Joseph: He has a drum he wants to play for the baby.
Mary:A drum? Oh brilliant. He’s a real child care expert, isn’t he? Yeah, have him crank some Trans-Siberian Orchestra on the boom box while he’s at it. Come in here, shut that door, and close those curtains. That big shiny star is going to wake the baby.
Photo by Nic Walker. Used under a Creative Commons license.
Innocent til proven guilty
I go to the 25-cent-a-gallon water store because I am far too superior a person to drink water from those little plastic bottles and wreck the environment BECAUSE I CARE ABOUT THE CHILDREN, unlike some of you people.
No, really I buy water by the gallon because
1. It is cheap and I am cheap
2. I always have 10 gallons of water on hand in case of earthquake. It’s California, people.
So there I am, waiting for this woman to get done filling her bottles and she has all different sizes and shapes, quite a few bottles. She’s shuttling them back and forth to the car and I’m just standing there, not even sighing or rolling my eyes even though she is taking forever, because I’m really cool like that.
She finally gets done, I assume, but I’m not 100% sure because of all the shuttling and whatnot, so I ask “All done?”
She turns to me with Eyes of Fury® and says in a menacing Eastern European kind of accent “Yes. Yes. NOW I am done.” She gets in her car and slams the door, hard.
I was taken aback. I wasn’t saying “You crazy-looking slow wench who is wasting my whole night waiting for you, are you ALL DONE?”
Rather, I was TRYING to say “All done? Because I am an extremely polite person who would never, ever want to butt in on your important bottle filling.”
One of my favorite A Course in Miracles lessons says:
“You stand beside your brother, thorns in one hand and lilies in the other, uncertain which to give. Join now with me and throw away the thorns, offering the lilies to replace them.”
One of the most maddening things in life is to make an offer in kindness, and have the receiver assume it is malicious.
Some of the biggest fights I have had with exes were over this. I thought I was buying the right kind of toilet paper because my kind was cheap and lasted a long time and he thought I was being an inconsiderate jerk and trying to exfoliate his tenderest parts with cardboardy toilet paper, so we ended up screaming at each other in the supermarket parking lot. Nice.
The other day someone complained on Twitter that the other PTA moms never expected the working-outside-the-home moms to bring cookies, just cups and plates. They said the PTA moms were “mean.”
Flip the coin over and assume innocence. Offer some lilies instead of thorns. Just maybe the PTA moms were trying to reduce the time burden on women they knew were pressed for time? Wouldn’t that be better?
Assuming that people are behaving from innocence is a good way to live because you’ll be right about 95% of the time and people appreciate it if they see you seeing them in a good light.
You might get fooled every once in a while, but hopefully your Spidey sense will kick in at those rare moments.
Thorns or lilies? Take your pick.
PS Only I can incorporate toilet paper into a Deep Spiritual Lesson®. Also? I know those are irises, not lilies, but those are pretty ones, huh? I bought the tubers for my mom and she made them grow.
The Best Gift I Ever Gave
It cracks me up to get these blogging assignments. Don’t get me wrong – I appreciate having someone pay me occasionally to write a blog post, but the topics always make me think of the first week of school and the inevitable “What I Did This Summer” essay.
Here comes the disclosure:
SWAGG is a free mobile app (download here) that lets you shop smarter using your mobile phone. Buy, send or swap SWAGG GIFTS and organize your old school plastic gift cards.
For every download of the app between now and Dec. 31, 2010, SWAGG will donate $1 to Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C) , up to $125,000.
Clever Girls Collective and SWAGG are sending a pair of movie fans to the Sundance Film Festival! Download the SWAGG app and then visit the Ultimate SWAGG Getaway Sweepstakes site to enter to win a trip for two to the Sundance Film Festival. Entry deadline is January 3, 2011, 11:59pm, PST.
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So.
The Best Gift I Ever Gave
by Suebob Davis
Let me begin by saying that I am not going down the path to non-gift gifts. You know what I’m talking about…”I gave my husband the son he always wanted,” or “I gave that smelly man on the bus bench a kind and loving smile and made his day just a little brighter.”
Nope. Not going there. Materialism is where it’s at, baby. Save the heartstring-tugging for Oprah. Oh, wait, she likes material gifts, too. Even Oprah is on my side. Boo-yah.
The best gift I ever gave was about $15 on Amazon.com. Maybe less. It was cheaply constructed of silver plastic and the world’s cheapest chain. And yet it was beloved and used every day.
Let me ‘splain. My dad loved a schedule. He retired in 1980 and he never, ever, til his dying day, ever deviated from his work schedule. Up at 5:15 a.m. Lunch at 11:30. In bed by 9:15 p.m. He never saw an episode of ER or Hill Street Blues or Letterman in his life.
He checked his watch incessantly and was obsessed with time. His favorite criticism was “You’re late!” He was routinely the first person to arrive at anything. The swap meet near our house opens at 8 a.m. on Saturdays, so he went over about 7:15. Did not want to be late.
He went blind gradually. He got so he would hold his watch right up to his face and peer at it to see the time. Even without anywhere to go or much to do, knowing the time was all-important.
Then came the great eye infection. “Great” as in “Great Depression,” not as in “good.” It was terrible and serious and left him almost completely blind.
He did not let this bother him much. If you didn’t know he was blind, you might not have guessed. He soldiered on, as was his tendency. The thing that truly upset him, though, was not knowing the time. It was as if he was cut adrift, unmoored from life.
I went shopping for a talking clock and found this. He could push the button and hear the time. Suddenly he was back in business.
That little cheap thing was his constant companion. He loved it far beyond anything I had ever given him before. He and my mom laughed because it had an alarm that sounded like a rooster crowing, and somehow the alarm got set for 6 pm and could not be unset. Every night during dinner, they had about a minute of rooster serenade.
When we buried Dad’s ashes, my sister made a little packet of things to accompany him on his journey. Photos of mom and of all of us, and, of course, that silly little clock. We like to imagine that, as sun sets over the cemetery, you can hear the faint sound of a rooster crowing.
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More stuff I didn’t write:
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Stand Up To Cancer receives a $1 for every download, up to $125,000, and/or the Sundance Film Festival Sweepstakes, with an AMAZING prize valued at $4,000.
More info about Stand Up To Cancer (SU2C)
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Drunk Broke
A few weeks ago I posted about quitting drinking for a while. That was on my 30th day sober.
I didn’t mention it then, but my intent was to stop for 40 days, a good Lenten period. At my new-agey church, they say the number 40 is “a symbol of completion.” Good enough for me.
About day 34, the desire to drink at all left me completely. It just didn’t seem that attractive a proposition. On day 39, I went to my boss’s Christmas party with the open bar, and I was not tempted.
I drank two lovely glasses of club soda with lime. I ended up in the kitchen, comparing cooking notes with the caterer. Never let it be said that I don’t know how to work a room.
On day 40, I had a drink. I almost felt like I had to. The experiment was complete. I fished the gin out from the freezer and poured myself a Tanqueray and tonic with lime. Sipped. It still tasted as wonderful as ever, crisp, refreshing, bubbly, with that juniper snap that seems like Christmas and summertime all rolled into one.
Twenty minutes later I was sitting in my chair in misery. Not emotional misery. I had no problem with myself for taking that drink. I was in physical misery.
People, I think I broke my drunk.
I felt awful, kind of poisoned and heavy. I sat there, almost in disbelief. I did not expect this outsome at all. I may have left the world of alcohol forever without meaning to.
It was like tearing up your library card in a fit of rage and finding out you can never get another library card.
I was really, really ill for quite a few hours. It inspired me to drink again the way a bad burrito will inspire you to go back to that same food truck – which is to say not at all.
So. Here we are. Day 49 if you don’t count the day I drank. Day 9 in AA terms. Whatever. Living in the land of the sober, maybe for good.
Wisdom
Here’s the latest Reverb10 prompt I’m willing to do:
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
Half my problem is that I take these things too literally. I spend so much time thinking of things and then saying “Is that really the WISEST? Or is it just kinda wise? Was there something wiser? What do you know about wisdom, anyway?”
I thought about talking about quitting drinking. That was pretty wise. Or going to CA10. That was awesome and wise.
But earlier in the year, I did something extremely tough for me that was also kinda wise. Let me frame it up for those of you who have forgotten.
In December 2009, I got laid off, along with thousands of other people from the company where I worked. I searched and searched and searched for another job and got a few interviews. I finally had an offer for a job that I really wanted, a job that seemed perfect for me, a job that would pay somewhat more than my old job.
The HR lady made me an offer. She and I really had not hit it off. If it was up to her, I am sure that there would have been no job offer, but it wasn’t up to her, thank goodness.
What did I do?
I asked for more money. Not a HUGE amount more, but about 10% more than they offered. I am not a good negotiator. I am more of a “Oh, thank you for whatever pittance you want to pay an incompetent like me!” I stepped up this time because I felt like I had to, that it was time, that I was worth it.
The HR lady was like my worst nightmare come true.
“Why, don’t you think YOU’RE special,” she snapped.
“You know what? I do,” I said, quietly and evenly, willing myself not to run from the room crying.
She told me she had to check with my boss-to-be.
I got the money. All of it. It isn’t enough to make a large difference in my lifestyle, what with taxes and all, but it did make a huge difference in my self-esteem. That was like getting a million dollars, and I gained a bit of wisdom: Ask. All they can do is say yes or no.
(Not really related). And then I made tutus. Photo by Average Jane.
It is ALIVE
I’m a little behind the times for the Reverb10 thing, so I’m doing Day 3 today:
December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)
I had just jumped off the New York City double-decker tour bus across from the Staten Island Ferry landing. It was a hot, early August day, the sun shining silver across the sky. 50 other bloggers and I had been on the tour, slip-sliding around in pools of sweat on the plastic seats for about two hours.
This was our first and only stop of the day. All of us steamy, wilted bloggers dashed across the street into the coolth of an air-conditioned Starbucks, where we stood in long lines, first for the bathroom and then for icy drinks. The staff there was obviously used to this tour-bus-unloading drill, because they handled the sudden crowd with clocklike efficiency and utter boredom.
It was the first moment of the trip that I realized I could take Red Stapler photos and that I was with two of my favorite bloggers on earth.
I handed my stapler to Donna from So Cal Mom and Deb from I Obsess and they began goofing around, laughing echoing off the walls, joyful at having empty bladders, air conditioning, cool drinks and togetherness.
That, my friends, was a moment where I felt fully alive.
Dark
I love that everyone is doing all this thoughtful, inspirational Reverb10 posting. I’d almost like to participate, but I feel like I have been pinned down by these short dark days, praying for the solstice to swing by and bring back the light.
I’m a winter wimp. I live in a relatively southern location where it barely gets a hint of cold. Heavens to Murgatroyd, I have BANANA trees growing outside my window. With bananas on them.
Don’t tell me to get a light box. I have a light box that I am supposed to use for the 2 hours after it gets dark, say from 5 to 7 pm.
Anyone who actually has a life might find that funny. Oh, yes, those quiet hours from 5 to 7 pm when one can just pause and sit and let a blue light shine on them instead of drive home or go to the gym or do errands or make dinner. Not gonna happen.
Every year I say it isn’t going to be that bad. Every year until November 20 or so, when it hits like a ton of dark.
People says Jesus is the reason for the season, but me – I’m just living for the Solstice, waiting for the daylight to come back to me.
How lucky can one person get?
I’ve been a goat fan from way back.
Now, who is the lucky family member who is going to get a goat given in their name?
Suebob's Red Stapler 