The Five People You Meet At Dinner

Last week D and I found ourselves with one of those reasons to celebrate* that allows you to forgo any self imposed budgetary restrictions you had in place and go anywhere you want for dinner.  We mulled it over and talked about where he wanted to go, we thought about some swanky places with over priced food and some really casual places with underrated food.  Finally we settled on a beatutiful local place on the docks that over looks the water and has a view as good as the food.  We generally stay away from these places not because they are not great, but because well…they are always full of people.  Last week was no different.  Here are the 5 different classifications of people who were out that night and easy ways to spot them.

1) The Family That Arrived by Yacht.

Can be spottedwearing: Navy blue blazers with gold buttons, white shirts, tan pants and loafers (no socks).  Amazingly enough, this outfit comes in sizes ranging from 4T to 44/34.  Adult women can be found in Lilly Pulitzer dresses on overly tanned skin wearing their ’summer’ diamonds on polished fingers clutching Chanel bags.   Juvenile girls wear sundresses with impossibly white cardigans and have begun training for their first face lift with hair pulled back in a painfully tight bow courtesy of their foreign nanny.

Can be heard: Saying nothing.

2) The People That Work for the Family That Arrived by Yacht.

Can be spotted wearing: White shorts and matching polo shirts over tan well worked bodies with boating sandals, white sneakers or flip flops.  When the sun goes down and their polarized sunglasses are pushed up on their sun bleached hair you can see serious sunglass lines (raccoon eyes) and are assured they have the farmers tan to match.

Can be heard: Actually talking to the children or seeking out a place to find cheap draft beer.

3) The Tourists.

Can be spotted wearing:  Matching sweatshirts with screened on letters spelling out the name of the town they are visiting or the town they visited before when the temperature dropped and they realized they packed for the tropics not a coastal town in New England.    Outfits are accessorized with shopping bags full of salt water taffy, cheap t-shirts and small boxes covered in shells. Cameras hang unashamedly around their necks.

Can be heard: Asking for directions while looking at their map, discussing the merits of the 2 for 1 coupon verse the 20% off coupon and wondering out loud ‘where all the locals eat’.

4) The Locals

Can be spotted wearing: Judgemental looks, signs of fatigue and whatever they wore to work that day, or whatever they threw on when they got home. 

Can be heard: Complaining about the tourists, saying hello to friends who have also ventured out for the night and comparing this summers crowds to last.

5) The Fishermen

Can be spotted wearing: Concerned looks over the falling  prices of  wholesale lobster** under salt caked baseball caps advertising West Marine or a local shipyard,  foul weather gear, work boots and t-shirts.   Work callused hands clutch bags of gear, coolers of lunch remnants and sweatshirts not needed since dawn.

Can be heard: Giving each other a hard time, laughing at someones expense or walking home exhausted in silence. 

* For anyone who is wondering, D passed the last of 7 exams to become a licensed architect. 

**Go out tonight and buy lobster!  It is cheap, delicious and the industry is really hurting.  If you live in NE, buy local lobster!  If you live anywhere else, buy NE lobster! If you are a lobster lover and are going to write me a nasty e-mail about the promotion of killing sea creatures don’t bother! 

Don’t you want to eat me?

Who needs kindergarten when you have a week with a 4 year old

Yesterday, I returned home from a week long family vacation at the Jersey Shore.  The weather was touch-and-go, but it was great to spend time with all of my nieces and nephews as well as my gaggle of in-laws.  As I have said before, I try not to talk too much about my family on this blog.  It feels like this is my space, not theirs, and I should respect their privacy.  But, this past week I was so moved by one of my nieces I really wanted to share it with all of you.  K, who is 4 was born with spina bifida.  Here are five things I learned from her this week.

1) The things you can accomplish when you set your mind to it are astounding.  Strangers will watch you in awe and wonder where you found your determination.

2) Failure is a stepping stone to success.  You will tread on many falls, mistakes and attempts before you reach victory.

3) There is nothing wrong with being 4 seconds slower, when you are 5 seconds smarter.

4) We are only as different as we believe ourselves to be.

5) When the perseverance becomes tiring, when the failures seem unduly greater than the successes, when you are tired of being smart and different…it is more than ok to cry and take a nap.  Things always seem better after a nap.

A different kind of recipe

How to make a perfect evening, in five steps. 

1) Start with 2 people who may live together but due to work and social obligations and at times sheer exhaustion, spend far less time together than they should.

2) Bring to a beautiful evening with a warm setting sun and a cool ocean breeze.

3) Add a walk along the docks and delicious meal at a fabulous local restaurant. 

4) Stir in easy laughter and fluid conversation.

5) Allow to simmer for 5 hours or until you drift off to sleep in bed together. 

Recipe keeps forever with attention and care.

My little town blues, Are melting away…

Five things I really, really miss about my home state of NY. 

1) It is the kind of place where state senators have secret meetings to change allegiance from one party to another and STILL claim that they are a member of the party they just screwed over.

2) It is the kind of place where once the senators have changed the power structure of the senate the now minority group grinds everything to a halt to try to prevent what has already happened from happening.

3) It is the kind of place where the senators do a political version of taking their ball and going home and literally, yes literally, lock the door and refuse to work until they get their way.

4) It is the kind of place where someone stands in front of news camera’s dangling a key to the state legislature but does not use it.

5) It is the kind of place where all of this is considered perfectly normal, business as usual and really, just another day at the office.  Or, standing out on the lawn refusing to go to the office. 

*If you want to hear actual facts about this story, you can listen here

Letter to my neighbor

Dear Neighbor, 

I just wanted to take a moment and mention the following five things.

1) It is not completely unreasonable for the people in the immediate vicinity to want to get some sleep on a Sunday evening.

2) Spending time in your back yard swearing like a sailor, trying to sing songs you don’t know the words to and screaming at the top of your inebriated lungs do not help the rest of us fall  or remain asleep.

3) Responding with threats, assertions that you are the only civilized person on the street and saying that it is America when politely asked to quiet down or move the party inside do not help either. 

4) Taunting, hollering and daring the people around you to call the police might not be the best plan for helping your case. 

5) I hope you spend the morning vomiting up your indiscretions and suffering with a headache that makes your re-think your religion.

Sincerely, Your Neighbor

Almost within reach

As some of you know, D and I purchased a house a few months ago and have been fixing it up little by little.  We are hoping to move in some time next month and are starting to look at what new furniture we will need.  I had hatched a moderately evil plan to take my grandmothers dinning room set but as she told my mother last week, she is not dead yet, and that plan failed miserably.  Appalled by the prices of decent looking dinning sets I started to look on Craig’s list and other places to find a table we could live with until we could afford the table we wanted.  Then, yesterday, at approximately 3pm est, I hit the craigs list jack pot.  In  the pages of hideousness and crap, nestled between an Ikea coffee table and a used mattress* there is was… a Design Within Reach 6 person dining room table for $200.  The moments that followed were a little hazy but I am pretty sure the discovery was followed by the following five things.

1) Freak.  Assume that my eyes have failed me and there is no WAY the DWR in the description really  means it is from Design Within Reach.

2) E-mail D to see what he thinks.  Sit at wait for his response with all the calm and patience of a Labrador puppy.  Receive confirmation that D loves the table.  Become obsessed with hearing back from the owner to see if table is still available.

3) Continue to act like a Labrador puppy.  Check my e-mail 18 times in the next 10 minutes to see if he has responded.   Hear that the table is still available and do a victory dance at my desk. 

4) Do not even try to keep my cards close to my chest. Confess to the owner that I really want that table and am happy to come by in 2.5 hours to get it. 

5) Realize that there is no way the table is going to fit in or on my car under any circumstances.  Call D freaking out.  Develop a strategy to borrow an SUV from anyone who will lend it to us.  Make a plan to go get the table after work the next day.  Spend the next 12 hrs obsessing over the table. 

We are planning on getting it today after work.  Is it way too much to ask for it to still be there and to be as sturdy and heavy as I have hoped?  I am serious about that table. 

* Who buys a used mattress?  I am all about vintage and recycling and being green but there are just some things in this world you want new.  A mattress has got to be one of them.

Lets play ball…

Last week D and I visited our good friend B&C in Chicago.  Among the many awesome activities they planned for us (whirly ball anyone) we went to watch a Cubs game at Wrigly.  Here were five highlights.

1) Our seats.  Yup, we sat here: (and this photo was taken with a crappy iphone camera)

2) Our neighbors.  When you sit 8 rows behind home plate you get to meet a lot of interesting people.  That guy in the tan hat and jacket was just one of the many scouts* at the game keeping stats and measuring fast balls with one of those guns you see in movies like Major League.**

3) Our entertainment.  Strait from ESPN, and courtesy of YouTube, here is Mr. T throwing out the first pitch and singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

4) Our favorite good Samaritan.  There was this adorable little kid with his dad a row in front of us who must have spent the first 5 innings begging for an enormous bag of cotton candy.  By the 7th inning stretch his dad relented and he got it.  Five bites into the bag the kid realizes that much sugar may in fact kill him, so he decides to share.  He opens his bag and walks up and down the row asking perfect strangers if they want any.  His kindness and general awesomeness was rewarded my Mr. T who happily signed his glove and took lots of pictures.

5) Our dinner:  beer and popcorn and peanuts and ice cream and beer.  Life just does not get any better. 

*I was shocked to see how friendly and cool the scouts were.  After they got their first few readings they pretty much passed around the gun and let their whole row give it a try.  How cool is that?

** I happen to think Major League was a good move.  Judge away.

Maybe some things are better left alone

Yesterday on my way home from work I heard this story on NPR.  If you don’t have the time or energy to read it, I will sum it up by saying that there is a Dr who believes any spiritual connection or feeling that a person experiences can be attributed to a specific part of the brain.  People who have religions visions or feel a presences of a spirit around them are simply experiencing a deformity or irregularity in this part of their temporal lobe.  Now, I am not going to claim to be an overly religious person.  I don’t attend religious services with any regularity and quite frankly I could use a good review of those ‘Thou Shall Not’s’ every once in a while.  But I firmly believe that faith should be taken for what it is…faith.  The blind belief in something not because you have evidence or proof but because you choose to believe.  Anyway, the whole story kind of ticked me off and got me thinking about other things I really do not care to know more information about.  Here are five.

1) The fat and/or calorie content in my favorite She Crab Soup at a local restaurant.  They only serve it when the season is right and I only order it when I can spend time sitting at the bar on a dock watching the sun slowly fall into the Atlantic and am preferably alone.  I can only imagine the rich broth they pour over the delicate crab right in front of you consists of butter, heavy cream and something magic and I just don’t care. 

2) The number of sexual partners anyone I have slept with has had.  I went to college during the late 90’s and trust me and I KNOW how important it is to talk about ones sexual health and use protection but I have never been a numbers girl.  I honestly don’t want to know and quite frankly, I don’t want to tell.

3) What happened to all the members of the US Olympic  Hockey Team of 1980.  After that movie Miracle came out a few years ago a whole bunch of documentaries started popping up on where they all are now.  Frankly, I found it a little depressing.  Sure some are doctors and hockey coaches, but some work at gas stations and are presently unemployed.  I prefer to think of them perpetually in 1980, as the greatest underdogs of all time, fighting for an Olympic medal, the Cold War and kids everywhere who blindly believe hard work pays off .

4) Any information about how, when or where I was conceived.  Actually, any information about how, when or where anyone was conceived.  I just really think some things are better left private. 

5) The inter-workings or any explanation about what makes my car go.  Through years of reminders and pestering by my father I religiously get my oil changed and I ask them to ‘check the fluids’ while they are there.  And when something specific breaks I listen long enough to relay the information to a more qualified person but ultimately…I just don’t care.  I am not a car person, I have never been a car person and as long as it starts when I need it to, I am a happy camper.

Hello, yeah it’s been a while. Not much, how ’bout you?

So it has officially been ages since I have posted.  I wish I had a really good reason why I have been missing from the interwebs* but the fact is, life has just been insane.  Since the truth about where I have been is no where near as exciting as it should be, I am going to post five really good excuses and let you pick which one is your favorite, and you can go with that. 

1) An oldie, but a goodie; I was abducted by aliens.  I was driving my car along I95 between Hartford and Bridgeport, CT (the WORST stretch of highway in the world) and I beganto think that nothing in the world could be more aggravating than this. Then SLAM  a bright light appeared form the sky and I, my 2004 Mazda 3 and all the crap I keep inside were beamed up into the sky.  Three weeks later, I returned to earth.

2) I briefly joined the Obama administration to try to talk him through his pick for supreme court justice.  We all know that the Obama team has had trouble with their choices and taxes and I thought that I could help out.  I went through his lists of Hispanics and Chicks and personally checked their tax returns for the last 22 years.  Step off GOP, I have this one covered.

3) I ran away from home.  I decided that work and laundry and the never ending job of vacuuming up cat hair were too much for my feeble mind to handle any more.  So I tossed some things in a back pack grabbed a sleeping bag and headed to North Hampton, MA to join all the spoiled-little-rich-kids engaging in political homelessness and trivializing the real problem of mental health issues and people living on the street.  Then I realized I could not stand those people but I sold my phone for a Venti non fat no whip latte and had to hitch hike home.

4) I went to a meditation retreat and spent three weeks removing myself from people, noise and technology to focus on my breath and the sounds of nature.  I Ohm’d morning, noon and night and slept on a board to insure my soul was grounded and close to mother earth.  This worked out exceedingly well for me until I realized that I don’t like my breath and the noise of technology is no where near as frightening as the things that run through my mind when giving the opportunity to take over. 

5) I have just been insanely busy.  Work has been both really good and really stressful and D and I are trying like the dickens to move into our new home in June.  This is the new home that currently has no bathroom tile, no kitchen floor and is still waiting for the gas company to find the time to hook up our gas line so we can have luxuries like hot water…and a stove. 

I hope you have all been well and I look forward to catching up on your blogs this week. 

PS:  If you ever google “hello, yeah its been a while” to double check the lyrics (something I always do before I post) you will find pages of people starting posts about why they have been away for.  It is pretty funny even it is is most obviously unoriginal. 

*I stole this term from FB.  Consider this a footnote please.

And she didn’t even get something to hide her hooters

This past weekend I had the great pleasure of celebrating the much anticipated arrival of my good friend A’s first son at her baby shower*.  As some of you may remember from my last baby shower experience…finding yourself among hooter hiders and baby leggings and all sorts of necessities can be a little overwhelming.  So, for those of you who are going to be going to baby showers in the next few years, or for those of you who are just curious, here is my second instillation of “Things you just had no idea a baby needed until you went to a baby shower”

1) Cloth Diapers – Don’t get me worng…I am all for going green.  I recycle and take those little canvas bags to the grocery store on the days that I remember but I draw the line at cloth diapers.  Modern technology helped us to many life easing milestones like washing machines and swifer wet jets and disposable diapers.  Modern technology did this for us because no one should have to clean poop out of a white cloth 27 times a day.**

2) A bottle sanitizer- Silly me…I thought they called this soap and water.  I did not get close enough to this product to see what it promised, but it had a lot of bells and whistles for a product that could be duplicated in a dishwasher.

3) A sleep sack – I am all over a sack for sleeping.  I am actually all over a sack for anything.  How about a work sack or a car sack?  Has someone developed an eating sack?  Does it replace the need for a bib?

(Baby: Look, it is my own personal sack for sleeping)

4)A sleep positioner- this is apparently for the child who is failed by the sleep sack and needs to step it up.  Personally, I like to sleep laying down but I guess any other position will do.

5) A boppy-  I would LOVE to meet the dude or chick who came up with this idea.  Like the non-parent that I am…I took one look at it and said “who convinced someone they needed to buy that, it is just a big neck pillow”  I was later informed that it is a device that helps kids sit up when they are not big enough to sit up yet.  Now, I think it is brilliant.  Do they have other products that help kids do the stuff that they are not big enough for?  A magic diaper that makes you kid toilet trained?  A pair of sneakers that can teach them to walk?  A spoon that shows them how to feed themselves, prepare dinner and do the dishes?  No?  Looks like a new product line to me.

(You tell me that this thing does not look like a big neck pillow)

*As a side note:  A’s sister J (one of my favorite non commenting readers) threw quite possibly the nicest baby shower with the cutest ideas I have ever seen or heard of.  Everything was perfect and if she ever decides she is ready to do this sort of a thing for a living…she is going to be loaded.

**I have no confirmation that babies poop 27 times a day but from what I understand…they go a lot.