OneSaneVoice

Rebel Soul for Sale

Posted on April 30, 2010 by onesanevoice

The other day I caught a movie on the vintage film channel that I remember watching with my mom back in the sixties. It’s a 1949 British black comedy called Kind Hearts and Coronets. The plot involves an aristocratic descendant denied his rightful place in the family when his mother marries an Italian and is cast out into a life of shame and deprivation. The son vows to avenge his mother’s honor after her death, so he begins systematically killing off the eight heirs who stand in his way. The best part is that all the soon to be murdered family members are played by Sir Alec Guinness. It’s a remarkable tour de force for Guinness, who plays everything from an old man to a young woman, all destined for untimely deaths.

There was a moment that made me say, “No way!” out loud, and I was all alone at the time. Playing a priest about to be poisoned at dinner by the outcast relative, the actor most known to modern audiences as Obi-Wan Kenobi looks at the wine decanter next to his dinner guest’s hand. Gesturing for his glass to be refilled, he says, “The port is with you.” For real? The port is with you? You think George Lucas maybe saw this film? Prove he didn’t.

Husband and I are frequently talking about the lack of passion and cohesive purpose among the generations that came after the days of student rebellion and protest, aka our days. Well, recently Facebook took its place as an instrument of positive social change when a group of New Jersey students organized a walkout to protest school budget cuts using their Facebook pages. Way to use your resources for good instead of evil, kids. And what a great prop for a network that has been linked of late to less worthy news stories, like teen suicides due to online peer bullying. Likewise the Clockwork Orange-scented flash mobs the site has been used to promote. Wasted talent.

The week just ending was filled with census training for me. I was hired as an enumerator for the 2010 census and it requires over thirty hours of instruction and orientation. Of course, everything is confidential so I can’t tell you much (unless you say please) but I was amazed at how quickly we in the group all started speaking Government. It’s a total language, you know. There are a dozen different forms and three training books and every single one has a number or call word to identify it. Like the forms 602 and 602Supp in case the first 602s didn’t do it for you. The abbreviations all reminded me that we have the U.S. military to thank for phrases like SNAFU (situation normal all fucked up) and FUBAR (fucked up beyond all recognition). But I’m a guvmint girl now, and if you live in my area and didn’t mail in your census form I may be knocking on the door to count your lazy ass.

Now that I’m part of the club, I especially enjoyed the radio ad I heard in my car today for the beleaguered postal service. They want the public’s ideas on how to cut costs for the post office so they don’t have to raise the price of a stamp again or eliminate Saturday service. The request was genuine and they had me at hello until the announcer said, “E-mail your ideas to. . .”

Daughter’s Featured Fotos say go on and Look

taxi work

speaker seat

vintage haring

jef aerosol

Posted in Random Thoughts and Adventures | Tagged Alec Guinness, Facebook, film channel, film classics, FUBAR, Kind Hearts and Coronets, Obi-Wan Kenobi, SNAFU | Comments Off

Share and Share Alike

Posted on April 25, 2010 by onesanevoice

This is not a paid endorsement, so take a look at this totally logical invention for drying thick or curly hair. Think about it. Women are always using their fingers to separate strands of hair to promote faster drying. This bad boy has ventilated plastic fingers that reach through all the layers with 360-degree drying. You just fit it on the barrel of your hairdryer and say goodbye to frizz. If you don’t think this is a godsend then you probably don’t need it, but for everyone else, check it out:

When Husband first saw my Deva Curl magic fingers sitting on the vanity counter, a look of confusion and anticipation passed his face until I told him it wasn’t a bedroom toy or anything that might apply to him. Then he asked, “Where are you keeping it?” which was an interesting question since we have some bathroom issues regarding space and territory.

Our master bath has a long, roomy vanity counter with double sinks. I admit right here that they are not His and Hers. They are Mine and Ours. I have a collection of cosmetics and beauty tools surrounding Mine that don’t want to be splashed on. So we keep the toothbrushes and soap by His/Ours and both use that one because who cares if anything gets wet over there? Make sense? As proof I offer a tour of our house Husband once gave to a visiting couple. Reaching the master bath, he gestured toward the vanity and said, “As you can see, we have two sinks. This one is mine, and the one with all the makeup around it is The One My Wife Never Uses. The visiting wife said, “What’s your point?”

When Husband and I got married ten years ago, he sold his co-op and moved into my house mainly because my children were still at home, and also because I really didn’t want to move. I have to be honest; when I set down roots they reach Middle Earth. Husband was being so flexible and agreeable that I decided to make a huge gift to him. My favorite thing about the master bedroom is the little porthole window on the upstairs landing facing the double doors of the bedroom. When the doors are open and you’re laying on the right side of the bed drifting off to sleep, you can see the lights of the planes flying by the porthole window on their way to and from the airport. It’s magical. They pass right through the center of the glass like sparkling birds in the distance. I told Husband I wanted to give up my side of the bed for him because I knew he would like it better. Without asking any questions, he said thank you and took it. He’s been on that side ever since, a stretch of time during which I have missed the planes, but relished the satisfaction that he now had the pleasure of seeing them.

Until one night about five years ago when we were having one of those high octane marital “discussions” about who was doing the most compromising in our relationship. We were each tossing out all the things we’ve done for each other and finally I exploded with, “I gave up my side of the bed for you! I never see the planes anymore!” To which he replied, “What planes?” I said, “The planes from the airport! Outside the window!” He looked around the room with his arms raised and asked, “Which window?” Now nearly hysterical, I pointed to the porthole and yelled, “That window! The plane window! I can’t see it from my side of the bed!” He yelled back, “I can’t see it either!” It then dawned on me that once he takes off his glasses and gets into bed, he can barely see the alarm clock. I was so upset over those wasted years of unappreciated sacrifice, all I could think to do was go in the bathroom and splash water on my face and all over Our sink.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos make Pointed Statements

not us

spying through the vents

political tent

Posted in 'Til Death Do Us Part | Tagged bathroom vanity, beauty tools, Deva Curl, double sinks, goodbye to frizz, Magic Fingers | Comments Off

X Marx the Spot

Posted on April 21, 2010 by onesanevoice

It’s really magical taking a college course on comedy. Who doesn’t like to laugh? There is much to study about laughter: the sociological reasons why we laugh harder in a group than alone; the physiology of descending into a giggling fit that won’t stop; the psychology in Freud’s joke triad of joke telling, joke listening, and joke being the butt of. To say nothing of how something as sweet-sounding as tickle can be either tender or abusive. Comedy is serious stuff.

Except when you get to choose a topic for your final paper and you decide on the Marx Brothers. Then it’s off to the races, literally, beginning with A Day at the Races followed by A Night at the Opera topped off by my favorite,Duck Soup. In case you’re the age of the clerk at Blockbuster who wasn’t sure who the comedians were or why their work has lived on for a century, I’ll give you this analogy: If the Marx Brothers were the Jacksons, Groucho would be Michael. And so would Harpo and Chico.

Watching the Marx Brothers in action is the closest you’ll get nowadays to experiencing vaudeville. The quick scene changes, scene stealing, pocket picking, face mugging, fake accents, fake accidents, girl chasing – all still frenetic and fresh and funny. The Groucho one-liners are still the prize. In Animal Crackers, Groucho woos two wealthy matrons while being attracted to neither. Smiling charmingly, he says to them, “How happy I could be with either of you if you’d both just go away.” To a stuffy party guest who approaches him with, “Haven’t we met before?” Groucho says, “I don’t think so. I’m not even sure I’m seeing you now.” Like ‘em? Here’s more:

I’ve had a perfectly wonderful evening. But this wasn’t it.

She got her looks from her father. He’s a plastic surgeon.

Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.

Either this man is dead or my watch has stopped.

I don’t have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They’re upstairs in my socks.

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

The musical numbers are either corny or hilarious. My favorites are the Groucho anthems with titles that tell you all you need to know: “Everyone Says I Love You,” “Hello, I Must Be Going,” Whatever It Is, I’m Against It.” A week after watching Animal Crackers, I’m still humming “Hooray for Captain Spaulding.” I also enjoy the inside jokes inserted by writers too smart by a mile. In Horse Feathers, the central plot involves a college football game between Huxley College and its rival, Darwin College. Historically speaking, Thomas Henry Huxley was a defender of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. Similarly, the song “Hooray for Captain Spaulding” was a sly reference to a real Captain Spaulding, an army officer arrested several years earlier for selling cocaine to Hollywood residents.

The best part, every bit as good as how talented they were, is the fact that they were friends as well as brothers. They were generous onstage and onscreen, giving each other equal chances to get the laugh. Groucho could be the straight man in one scene and the joker in the next, never hesitant to make himself the joke. It was Groucho who Woody Allen famously quoted as saying, “I don’t want to belong to any club that would accept me as a member.” No sense arguing with him about it. He’d only say, “Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them. . . well, I have others.”

Daughter’s Featured Fotos present Precision

balanced sound

googly-eyed

paper dress

spoon umbrella

Posted in All the World's a Stage | Tagged Animal Crackers, Chico, comedy, Duck Soup, Groucho, Harpo, Hooray for Captain Spaulding, Marx Brothers, Woody Allen | Comments Off

Right Click on Industry

Posted on April 17, 2010 by onesanevoice

Events that transpired this past month brought to mind how far removed we are from those eras we romanticize, like the Roaring Twenties and American Graffiti’s fifties. We view them with a nostalgia that may not even be ours if we’re among those who never experienced them firsthand, but simply absorbed their flavor from media and the cinema. Let me tell you, after the recent storm that knocked out electricity in our neighborhood for five days and then losing my laptop for a week to a virus, I’m thinking modern times come highly recommended.

My number one proof for this would be the evolution of women’s underwear. I don’t know who invented pantyhose or when, but I can guarantee you it was not someone who belonged to womankind. If you don’t believe me, get a bungee cord and tie it around your waist like a tourniquet and then go to work. See how productive you feel. I’m not convinced garter belts and stockings were any better. When I watch movies from the studio days of MGM and Warner Brothers, I look at actresses like Lana Turner and Joan Crawford trussed up like turkeys in their cinched waists, high pointy brassieres, and pencil skirts. Forget emotion and expression; the fact that they manage to look comfortable is all the acting I need to see. On a History Channel show one evening, Husband and I watched women suffragettes marching in some of the most restrictive clothing you can imagine. I was thinking, now that’s something to rebel against. Get the vote next; first get out of the corset.

I’m often whining here about how technology has taken over our lives and made the world impersonal and intrusive at the same time. Not having my computer for a week was disorienting. I felt strangely unproductive. Which is interesting, since most of the world’s greatest discoveries were achieved before the advent of computers, and they weren’t even present in the workplace until about twenty years ago. Fax machines only slightly preceded that in the ’80s. Back then, the office network consisted of phones and conference rooms and workers who got into their cars to go visit clients. If you watch old sitcoms like Leave It To Beaver or Father Knows Best, you see the dad at work sitting at his desk with a pen in one hand, the phone in the other, and a writing pad in front of him. End of story.

I recently received my college magazine in the mail, and the main article was about the man who founded our school in the early seventies. There was a picture of him in his office, a room devoid of a computer, fax machine, or electronics of any kind. No PowerPoint for presentations; no Excel for budgets; no Word for correspondence; no ListServ for fundraising. Just how did he make it all happen under such primitive conditions? Apparently, he didn’t know what he was missing because he went ahead and founded the school anyway.

Instead of being the Featured Fotographer, Daughter is the subject
today as she and friends pose for glamour shots at Pandemic Gallery

blue bunny

red sailor

80s rocker

can anyone say librarian?

too cool

homage to patti smith

Posted in MindFrame | Tagged American Graffiti's fifties, nostalgia, Pandemic Gallery, Roaring Twenties, suffragettes, technology | Comments Off

Issues

Posted on April 13, 2010 by onesanevoice

The woman who does my hair told me years ago I’m a classic Taurus. She said a hallmark of the Bull is being organized to the point of fanatic list-making. She actually guessed my zodiac sign before I even told her. It happened after a few appointments where she watched me cross her off my list when she finished my hair. Literally.

My Taurus juices got jammed up earlier this month when my laptop contracted that hideous Win32/Virut virus that is the tech disease of the year, the one that shut down courthouses and offices around the country and wormed its way into my Toshiba Satellite. One minute my desktop icons were Adobe and Acrobat, and the next they were Booty-cam and Spread-em and there wasn’t a single click that took me anywhere but hell. Watching a virus run rampant through your equipment is both scary and fascinating. You can feel it replicating and racing with each attempt you make to do something normal, like reach a familiar website. When it’s worn you out and filled you with dread, it gives you the final middle finger by not letting you shut down. I called a mobile tech company to come exorcize it, and after two consecutive visits they took my Satellite away on a field trip. It came back with a pristine hard drive, a $300 invoice, and the need to reset all the settings it took me five years to set.

But the biggest casualty was my list. I had schoolwork trapped inside that machine in various stages of completion, and deadlines looming, and no choice but to redo work already done but inaccessible. That meant over a week of not crossing anything off my list. The Bull needs to cross off. If not, the Bull is in danger of imploding. This is messy for the Bull and anyone nearby because the Bull also needs to keep things clean.

Normally, when I have to write a paper for school, I start by jotting down everything I know on the subject so I can gauge the amount of raw research required. For my math class History of Calculus paper the sum of my knowledge is “What?” This is not much to build on. For another class I need to watch two movies and do comparable journal research, and it’s all due soon, all of it together, along with a weekend residency workshop in between. The semester is over the end of April, which suddenly became shorter when the Census called to hire me, meaning I’ve lost the last week to government training.

On top of that, although I feel great physically, I’ve been diagnosed with that scourge of post-menopausal women, osteoporosis. This happens as a result of the hormonal changes that occur in a woman’s body as she ages. My doctor gave me two options: a regimen of pills or a regimen of weight-bearing exercise. Rather than do the pharmaceuticals, I opted for a personal trainer to build my core strength and make my bones solid. So twice a week I go see this great trainer – by happenstance also a Taurus – and she puts me through some intense weight and resistance training. It’s a tightly choreographed session that she designs the night before based on what she feels I’m ready for. As I complete each cycle of reps, she crosses them off her list. I’m so jealous I could scream.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos say Howdy! to Spring

castle bonnet at the easter parade

sunny stairwell

rooftop painting

proud to be new yorkers

Posted in Join me on the couch, or How did that make you feel? | Tagged lists, organized, osteoporosis, Taurus, trainer, weight-bearing exercise | Comments Off

Last Roar of the Lion

Posted on April 9, 2010 by onesanevoice

There was a song by the band Looking Glass that poured out of every car radio the summer I graduated high school in 1972. It was called Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl) and if you listened to the melody streaming through an open window on a hot summer day, you could hear the waves crashing in the background as the barmaid Brandy awaited her lover’s return from the sea. It was a song and a summer of endless possibilities with no guarantees for the future – only innocent hopes and lofty dreams. With high school behind us and college waiting on the horizon, it was the most freedom my friends and I would ever feel, and the closest we would ever be.

On Friday nights, there was a gathering held at a local park which we called the Canteen. I don’t remember who sponsored the weekly event – maybe the school, maybe a church group – but it succeeded in keeping the town’s youth occupied on the first evening of the weekend. I was fairly oblivious back then about who was responsible for my fun; I regularly attended CYO dances with my friends thinking the initials stood for Children’s Youth Organization. It wasn’t until years later I discovered the C was for Catholic, and I was probably the only Jewish teen regularly in attendance. You’d think the fact that the dances were held at St. Patrick’s Church would have been the tipoff. But maybe oblivious is unduly harsh. Perhaps I was just on the cutting edge of diversity consciousness.

The Canteen featured a local band every week that always covered the current hits by Cream, Led Zeppelin, and especially Iron Butterfly’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, an endless droning cloud of noise lasting half an hour. In 1972 we believed the title’s translation was In the Garden of Eden sung by people too stoned to enunciate, and that suited us just fine because we knew that sneaking a beer behind a tree and puffing our maturity-enhancing Marlboros were memories we would look back on.

Husband and I returned from Florida recently for the last time. My father-in-law passed away at 89 after being hospitalized following a fall. I wrote about this a little in All the Right Moves, but what I didn’t write was what a king of the jungle Husband’s Dad was. He had the familiar biography of a child of immigrants: two brothers; wartime service; taking over the family butcher shop in the Bronx because he was the only son who would; 63 years of marriage; three children, one of whom I married on a splendid November day ten years ago. What the man never did was complain – ever. His can-do attitude was unstoppable. He was a salesman who lived his life by the golden rule of sales: treat the customer right and he’ll keep coming back. Make that your philosophy and you are In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida every day.

It rained in Florida the day we flew back to New York, and Husband and I sat in the airport watching drops of water pelt the motionless planes out on the runway. We spoke of childhoods spent watching our Dads leave every morning for work, secure in the knowledge that they’d return at night. Until the day they no longer would, and then the ones who always caught us when we fell would be gone, and suddenly we would be the elders.

At night when the bars close down, Brandy walks through a silent town, and loves a man who’s not around, she still can hear him say. . .

Daughter’s Featured Fotos offer Irresistible Sights at the Easter Parade

all dressed up

with matching shoes

largest. hat. ever.

a bunny and his peeps

Posted in MindFrame | Tagged Brandy You're a Fine Girl, Easter Parade, elderly parents, Florida, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, New York | Comments Off

Enlighten Me

Posted on April 4, 2010 by onesanevoice

I needed one of those 9×12 manila envelopes with the clasp closing, you know the ones I’m talking about, and there wasn’t a single one in our entire house. Those of us who do not work in offices where we can permanently borrow one (let’s be honest) must go out and purchase them, and I say ‘them’ because you can’t really buy a ‘one’. Staples had a package of 12 for $5.99 and even though it was 11 more than I had a use for, there didn’t seem much choice. Except that right next to the packs of 12 were boxes of 100 with the sign underneath saying $8.99. Hmmm. For only $3 more I could have 99 I had no use for. I’m telling you, I would probably buy a barrel of brussels sprouts if it was cheaper than the pint.

I took both size items to the cashier and asked her to verify the prices. She confirmed with her barcode scanner that they were correct.

OSV: Wow. So twelve of them are six dollars but one hundred are nine dollars?

CASHIER: That’s right. That’s what the system says.

OSV: It seems strange, doesn’t it?

She shrugged, like, whatever. We stood there looking at each other.

CASHIER: Well, which one do you want?

OSV: I’ll take the better deal.

CASHIER: Which is that?

OSV: Um, the box.

I gave her a ten, she gave me change, and as she handed me the bag a light came on in her eyes and she said, “You know, you’re right, that doesn’t really make sense.” I asked her if she wanted to go check with a manager because I didn’t want her to get in trouble for undercharging. She shrugged again and said, “Nah.” We did the have a nice day thing and I left.

The next day I visited Daughter in the city for a lunch date and handed her around thirty 9×12 envelopes when she answered her door.

DTR: And these are for. . . ?

OSV: You. Because I love you.

DTR: Okay then. Thanks, Mom.

It was a beautiful spring day so we walked over to Madison Square Park to see the wild new art installation Event Horizon by British artist Antony Gormley that features 31 lifesize fiberglass statues on the streets and rooftops. It was startling, as advertised.

As we cruised past the newsstands on our way down to the Village, I noticed many of the headlines were about actress Sandra Bullock’s husband, Jesse James, checking himself into a rehab center for sex addiction. This is a disturbing trend wherein hound dog husbands attempt to disguise their misogyny toward their wives in a veil of illness. They seem pretty healthy until they get caught in an affair and a dozen other mistresses surface, a la Tiger Woods. Then they whimper about being unable to control themselves, and I might actually believe their defense as sex addicts if any of the women they had sex with were ugly.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos go All Around The Offbeat Town

photo shoot on broadway

dumbo industrial

creepy projections

anthony lister, lyons wier gallery

Posted in Random Thoughts and Adventures | Tagged Anthony Lister, Antony Gormley, Event Horizon, Lyons Wier Gallery, Madison Square Park | Comments Off

Rules of Engagement

Posted on March 31, 2010 by onesanevoice

Husband and I had to fly down to Florida again last week as a result of my father-in-law’s injury from a fall, except it was bad weather and schools were out for spring break, and the grand total was no flights to south Florida. So we wound up flying into Orlando and driving down, which would have been annoying except Husband’s brother caught a similar flight from his city and we all drove down to Delray from Mickeyland together.

Before I get to the drive, I have to say that the JetBlue plane to Orlando was FULL of kids and they were all exceptionally well-behaved inflight. The individual who pissed me off was the woman seated right next to me. She wouldn’t turn off her cell phone, even after the crew made the announcement at takeoff and I asked her twice. She told me she wasn’t emailing – she was just entering messages to be transmitted later.

At the end of the trip, the announcement came on for everyone to once again TURN OFF ALL ELECTRONICS in preparation for landing and she still kept plinking away. Finally, a crew member came toward us and I thought okay, now she’ll get instructed to comply, but the two of them just nodded at each other and he kept walking. When the plane landed, she took out a badge and affixed it to her belt-loop and it identified her as an employee of JetBlue’s marketing department. So I guess JetBlue either has separate rules for employees enjoying their free flights or else they’ve been jerking our tails that non-approved electronics interfere with aircraft instruments. I’ll wait for them to tell me which it is in their response to the letter I sent to corporate.

Back to the drive with Husband and BIL (Brother-In-Law), which was actually painless, until we stopped for a snack and Husband got two donuts at Dunkin. One of them was a round glazed, and one an oblong cruller. He ate half the cruller and handed me the bag with the 1-1/2 donuts to keep in the back seat. Before I folded down the top I looked inside and the cruller looked luscious so I broke off a little piece. All right, I broke off half. It was scrumptious.

A while later, Husband asked for the bag and I handed it up and he looked inside and said half the left over cruller must have broken off and fallen out and do I see it in a napkin on the back seat? I looked all around and BIL even leaned over to help and Husband said it has to be back there and he gave me the bag so I could see for myself and I said I must have eaten it. He pretty much went a little ballistic, asking all about what was I thinking? And I said I obviously went into survival mode because his record for sharing goodies is so unpredictable. Sometimes he’ll say, “Of course, take whatever you want,” and other times it’s, “No, I want the rest.” I was all cramped up in the back of a Chevy Cobalt and I just couldn’t take the chance. Hearing my defense Husband exclaimed, “So this is MY fault?” And I told him if I had to answer that he clearly wasn’t seeing the bigger picture. BIL laughed for about five miles. We joined in the last two.

On the flight back, we plunked down an extra $25 apiece for those Even More Legroom seats, and the very tall and husky man next to me pulled out an enormous hero sandwich as soon as we were airborne. His eating style was a little locker room but that wasn’t the surprise. The surprise was what he was watching on the JetBlue TV. Husband had on NCIS, and I was enjoying the NCAA Final Four recap on ESPN. The giant with the salami hanging from the side of his mouth was watching The Real Housewives of New York City.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos take us on Other Trips

california texture

walking the dinner table

israel

rules 4 trips_cristinavergano_justforyou

beyond

Posted in Travelblog | Tagged Even More Legroom seats, family, Florida, JetBlue, New York, turn off all electronics | Comments Off

The Census Sends Us

Posted on March 27, 2010 by onesanevoice

A while back I took the test for when the census comes to town. I figured for $18 an hour I can knock on doors as well as anyone. It was an interesting test in that it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to finish flawlessly in half an hour. I took it at a community center in a nearby town on an extremely miserable day and the room we were in was on the cool side. When the guvmint lady called out, “Fifteen minutes left!” I actually got a chill as I discovered halfway through there was math involved.

The questions all had several parts, and I found myself rereading some of the paragraphs on which the questions were based multiple times. It reminded me of the reading comprehension tests from grade school where they’d give you a story and then ask questions pertaining to it. Which was fine if it was about the circus or something interesting, but when it got down to soil erosion and layers of sediment, you could look around the class and see everyone’s head rocking back and forth in misery and you knew which question they were on.

One of the multi-part questions went something like this: If the house you are sent to is a rental, go directly to part H skipping A-G, but if it’s a private house, answer A-H unless the property owner is either absent or a leper and then skip A and B and just run the hell home. Not really, but that’s how it felt and that’s what I’d do. I was the second person to hand my test in and the guvmint lady marked them as she received them, giving out the grades when everyone was finished. I got a 95% and I know exactly which question set I messed up.

It had to do with directions on a map, maps being my nemesis. For example, you’ve visited the house on Watergate Lane and your next stop is on Haliburton Road. To do this you have to travel a) west and then north, b) east and then south, etc. and there was a legend to consult which I’m pretty sure I didn’t look at. I got tricked because the street connecting Watergate and Haliburton was called West Avenue, and in my directionally challenged head, west is always to the left and east to the right so that’s how I answered the questions. It’s like I live in a private goofy world where no matter where I’m standing, if I walk to my left long enough I’ll hit California. I know, it’s ridiculous, which is why I carry a GPS with me anywhere beyond my mailbox.

At our recent family dinner celebrating Son’s birthday, I mentioned having taken the census test and how I was waiting for them to call me since I scored a high grade.

HUSBAND: That’s probably why they WON’T call you. Intelligence is not a priority for the government.

SON: Hey, I just got that thing in the mail. What do I do with it?

HUSBAND: Fill it out and send it in. It’s important for receiving the services we’re entitled to in our area.

SON: What if I don’t send it back?

OSV: I’ll have to come count you. (turning to Husband) What do you mean they won’t call me? I was one of the first to finish. Two people didn’t even get a grade because they got frustrated and left in the middle.

SON: (nodding) One of them will come count me.

Last in a series of entries where Two Words Say It All in Daughter’s Featured Fotos

tolerance meter

paper cuts

tempting myself

wet lights

Posted in Random Thoughts and Adventures | Tagged 2010 Census, census multi-part questions, government, intelligence | Comments Off

The First 26

Posted on March 23, 2010 by onesanevoice

We celebrated Son’s birthday at our favorite sushi place the other night, and the evening was garnished with a sprig of serendipity along with the tempura rolls. Husband’s evening meeting was canceled so he became available at the last minute, and Daughter took the train out from the city earlier than expected. When she reached our house, she texted Son suggesting we meet at the restaurant at 6:00, and Son said better make it 6:05. Daughter told him to go all out and make it 6:10.

Son’s text response to Daughter was to ask me if I had 5 extra wooden hangers. We’re very specific with numbers in our bloodline. When I responded that we had our own wooden hanger shortage, Daughter suggested we pop over to Bed Bath & Beyond since she hadn’t gotten Son a gift yet. Yet? We were meeting him in an hour. How much more yet was there?

At BB&B, Daughter picked out some stellar wooden hangers and a canister of leather wipes for her brother’s supple chocolate-colored sofa. Back home in front of my closetful of gift bags, we found a HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! satchel of the proper proportions with matching tissue paper and set it down next to our own HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! gift bag for Son. I’m all about the neon greeting.

Son showed up for sushi with his left forefinger professionally bandaged, igniting our immediate concern. He told us that two days earlier he had been cutting a roll with a new knife and sliced open his finger. He went to CVS for bandages and caught the attention of a pharmacist who advised him to go get stitches. Son drove to the local hospital, which has a reputation for sucking, and observed quickly that it did in fact suck. So he got back in his car and drove to a different hospital where he was stitched and bandaged.

Ironically, I bought Son kitchen knives for his birthday. We also got him his two favorite colognes – Chanel Pour Monsieur and Jean Paul Gaultier – but the knives suddenly seemed like a vicious gift. I guess it was better than a voucher for one emergency room co-pay, but still. He was charmed by Daughter’s gift, the drive-by wooden hangers, and she smiled at him like an all-knowing Tooth Fairy. Which reminded me of a recent newspaper comic I had wanted to ask the kids about.

OSV: Have either of you ever heard of the Sandman?

DTR: The one from the Metallica song?

OSV: No, from your childhood.

SON: Was he a friend of yours?

DTR: Wait, he was a comic book hero, right?

OSV: No, parents used to tell their kids at night –

SON: I know! He was a serial killer.

OSV: Forget it. People are looking at us.

SON: Because I have two big bags on my lap that say HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Hey, thanks everybody. I mean it. This was pretty much the best birthday ever.

Our pleasure.

Daughter’s Featured Fotos present the fourth installment in our series of Two Words Say It All

winged woman

sand art

embroidered pillow

self portrait

Posted in The Kids Are Alright | Tagged Bed Bath & Beyond, birthday, happy birthday, Metallica, Sandman, wooden hangers | Comments Off

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