What Men Do Best

A man can sleep through anything when he wants to: Our little guys got up at 5:45 yesterday and crept into our bed, curling up on their sides to watch kid-healthy cartoons in the darkened room. Yet even those cartoons have loud soundtracks and then too I was standing on the bed to make this shot – AFTER having brought the two little ones  bacon, cocoa and silver dollar pancakes, all of which orbited in a small busy cyclone of  cups and mugs and dishes AND YET NOTHING WOKE MY MAN; he snoozed on.

Later he raked and weeded, even helped the little one twice with some bathroom issues so it’s not that he’s indolent or inactive. But for all the years I have lived with him I have never ceased to be amazed by all he can sleep through or ignore when it suits him. Men are just not like women and that’s the truth.

At the playground Friday too: a young dad there stood near me saying absolutely nothing as his little boy dug silently in the dirt. My boys did the same, wordlessly, purposefully propelling the toy earth movers.

“It’s amazing how boys are, isn't it?”I  said to him. "If they were girls, these three would be talking away, sharing secrets and affirming each other but look at them!”

He only smiled a wan smile and kept silent. He was a young dad so who knows, maybe he thought I was sexist - some sexist older chick. All I know is if I had had little girls here all weekend they’d have been engaging in narrative the whole time and erecting gossamer pavilions out of the zillion silky scarves I’ve accrued  over the years so they could crawl inside them and engage in more narrative.

These little grandsons of mine who are being raised up so gently with no guns, no toy weapons of any kind, not even any scorning, or using curse words like "shut up": even these boys I have heard say 100 times this weekend alone how they will confront their imaginary foes and  "CUT THEIR HEADS OFF!" -  that is, just as soon as they finish with these cartoons here and by the way, TT, is there any more cocoa in the kitchen?

Over the River and Through the Woods

Our Double -Grandchild Sleepover started out great yesterday, when I picked one child up in the Moonbeam Room and the other from the First Grade bus. We went right to a playground by the pond, never mind that it was 45 degrees with a 30 mph wind. Only two other grownups were there, fists jammed deep in their pockets, as their bundled-up toddlers stood stock-still looking this way and that the way toddlers will do.Mine did not stand still; rather for a full 80 minutes they raced around, climbed aboard structure after structure - even wobbled at the e dge of the icy pond as my extremities grew colder and colder.Then? Supper, a loooong bath, several books, and then  the six year old began weeping for his old bed from home, taken down last June and stored in our basement. For a minute I thought he was going to try to get us to dig it out and set it up again. But then he fell asleep, literally mid-sigh.Which acted as the cue for his little brother,  just recently graduated from Cribworld, to began emerging from his room with a calm yet purposeful look, like a man heading out for his appointment at the barber shop.This went on for hours: Just when I thought I had him tucked in for good there would be this helium balloon of a head moving in the hall just below doorknob level.“My crib is boring” he lisped. So I tried him in the big bed with the special child sides. Alas this too got poor reviews. Then he said he wanted the light on. Also, his blankie smelled funny. Grandpops meanwhile had by now had been consuming sports in the living room for two hours so I finally had to say it: “It’s after 10 pal; I'm turning out the light. The little one is all yours.”I heard the two of them later on the baby monitor. Papa put him in the crib and then HE got in the bed with the child sides. “Go to sleep,” he said, just like that, and by gosh if the child didn't do that  – at least until 4:40am when his little helium head appeared again at our elbow. David scooped him right up and they went straight back to to the nursery, each to his safe little sided bed. "Go to sleep," I heard once again on the monitor and took it as a massage for me, and knew nothing until the gloriously late hour of 6:55 when I woke to find this note from our darling older houseguest, just now piecing out the mechanics of the written word.

"Dear TT. I been waiting for you to wake up. I am awake, signed Dear Edward age 6

And this is just our first full day

Chocolate Nirvana

If those old-time explorers had never sailed west we wouldn’t even have chocolate, fat French kings would have had to satisfy themselves with tea, and millions of people the world over would never know the juicy boost that only chocolate can give.Yesterday I came upon some of this wonderful substance, tucked behind the canisters on the kitchen counter. Chocolate morsels they were, maybe a dozen of the tiny peaked things, like wee mountains, or maybe Smurf hats, name your simile.  I scooped them up, quick tossed a few back and got that instant Serotonin high: my nerves applauded, my blood sang, the spongy circuitry in my brain whirred into motion.  The rest I worked into the pocket of my jeans, in too much of a hurry to bag them. “I’ll be getting right to these” I thought as I set out to drive 200 miles in three hours' time. “Soon as I get on the road.”Only of course I forgot about them until I was maybe 30 miles into my trip. I reached down, but jeans are tight and the chocolate-pocket was right at the crease of my hip. I forced my hand further down as I drove, then felt uh-oh  ….something, and saw my fingers come out covered in goo -  Drat! – and so had to drive the whole rest of the relying solely on my sad old mug of decaf coffee.Soon as I got home I peeled the jeans off, lost five hours and when I came back to them at night to throw them in the wash the chocolate had miraculously hardened again to form a delicate solid arc, shaped like the smile of the Cheshire cat. I peeled it away from the lining of the pocket - it left no trace at all - held it in the palm of my hand, considered a minute, then ate the whole thing in one gulp and enjoyed such a fresh burst of energy I was able to  write 30 emails, watch two whole episodes of “Parenthood” on my laptop and clean out that junk drawer in my bureau with the scented soaps, now petrified, and the two dozen pairs of shoulder pads from the 1980s. So all I can say is Viva chocolate! Viva caffeine! (Only I couldn't get to sleep until 3.)

Poor Career Choice?

Some people are just in the wrong business, like the motel owner who won’t rent daytimes to couples with no luggage. I keep encountering this one shopkeeper who is so grouchy every single time you almost think it’s a put-on, like Andy Kaufman’s whole career after his Latka-Gravis-on-Taxi days only its isn't I'm pretty sure. I was in her shop yesterday and saw a hand-lettered sign on the counter: “We Know About It Thanks” it read.“So what’s this now, are people telling you the same thing over and over?” I asked her. I thought  maybe the door to the shop sticks or something and people keep mentioning it, but no.“All different things!” she shouted. “All these news bulletins from morning till night and Did I hear there was a storm coming in and How about this heat! If I hear ONE more person ask me about cold fronts and low pressure systems I’m going to scream!”“So you’re not much for the old small-talk, is that it”?“Yep," she replied with an impenitent smile.So what I'm wondering is, How do you DO that? Get all salty that way? Because I sometimes think I could use a little salt on the old omelet but how do you do it without hurting people’s feelings, even if it is all a big put-on like Andy Kaufman charging people to be made uncomfortable by him? (Check out the video below.)I found the above image on the web by Googling  “mean signs." It shows that in some ways it's  funny when people are this awful which is why someone pulled out a cell phone and quick took a picture. But my real question is what are they doing, the people with these behaviors, like my lady with the grudge against small-talk? And do they secretly want to be kidded out of their bad moods? I sure would love to hear people’s thoughts on that. In the meantime here’s Andy Kaufman, make of HIM what you will, poor lamb. And for extra fun rent Milos Forman’s "Man in the Moon" in which Jim Carrey plays him, an amazing film with Courtney Love, Danny DeVito, Paul Giametti... (watch the trailer here) Life is a mystery all right and the ones out their on the edges make it more mysterious![youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C570byQCLpI]]

Bar Talk

I had a daunting to-do list Monday and got through most but not all of it: I didn’t get the Tinker Toys. I guess I didn’t get the wine for that big 50-person party either, but why do that before it’s time to set up the bar? Which leads me to brag that after decades of providing alcohol to our friends and fellow citizens, we have finally figured out where to put the drinks when a crowd shows up: There's this six foot wide “alley” in our front hall not 20 feet from the front door. Block it off with a long skinny table and boom: there's your bar.It's works so much better than having the bar anywhere else. Put it in the kitchen, the dining room, the living room and you get your instant bottleneck, with people in a state of mute despair because they’re too nice to elbow their way past those two clueless ones up front who are just standing there running their mouths instead of getting their drink and moving along.But once  people get their cider, their pop, their belt of whiskey you are golden - because you’ve already put out the snacks, the sweets, the wee napkins smaller than a preemie’s T-shirt. Then if people want to step outside and smoke it’s fine; rock back on their heels and bore everyone to death with their political views that's fine too. Who cares if they even go in to the bathroom and inspect the contents of your medicine cabinet? Once you’ve yelled your hellos from behind your front hall bar and set them to circulating you are done baby done. People are responsible for their own fun every other minute of the day so why shouldn't they be at your house too? Here pictured: my old man and his big brother showing how this bar trick works for us. And below the kind of bouncy fun that ensues one you get that party started! (And no, you temperance types, we did not serve liquor to a child.)

So Long Blondie

Scads of people wrote in after what I said about my hair color on Sunday. “Go grey for Heaven’s sake!” was the general consensus and hell maybe I will. My hair couldn’t look worse than it did a year ago when, without my realizing it, my hair stylist was secretly making it lighter and lighter. “What are you DOING?” I finally said at the end of one session when he toweled it off after the shampoo and I saw what you see on the left here. “The idea is to go blonder as you get older,”  he said.“Whose idea?” “It’s what women do.”Not this woman. Next he’ll be wanting to cut it all off and  I’ll look like Florence Henderson and frankly I'd rather model myself on some cool old somebody like Bea Arthur than on Fluffy Little  Flo. So I asked him to make it dark again and he did and that’s what you see below: a fading out-of-focus chick with hair the color of squid’s ink. (Hey what are you gonna do? Life is a journey. I say you’re doing fine just as long as you can sit up straight enough to shovel in some ice cream from time to time.)

To Do List

To-do list for the day:

• Acquire Tinker toys for youthful onslaught on Friday.
• Purchase wine for 50- person party two days later.
• Perform anti-dreading exercises. Breathe!
• Find tiny tripod for video-cam to continue doing YouTube reviews of ridiculous movies.
• Insofar as it can be done, turn youth of America against “Jersey Shore” in all its lowest common denominator stupidity.
• Attempt to hang intensely heavy cabinet bought for burgeoning supply of gaudy earrings.
• Dust off tried-and-true motivational and/or reward techniques for getting husband to hang cabinet for me.

The sun is just coming up after a weekend composed of dining out, dining in thanks to Annie's cooking, playing Trivial Pursuit and begging littlest grandchild not to climb out of his crib next weekend and already I yearn for relaxation. But today I have to also (a) write in sensible fashion for the newspaper, (b) write in light-hearted fashion for the blog, (c) talk to a reporter (d) BE a reporter with respect to certain zoo animals who snack on goat’s blood (above), (e) make an entreé for Smith College Club Annual Fall Supper, (g) take elderly uncle for a little drive, (h) iron while watching Episode Five of "Boardwalk Empire" again, sifting for fine points in plot and theme.It makes me want to be like Annie here and just turn my back on it all - or else down a quick shot of goat's blood myself. Onward and upward however; four more work days to follow! 

Doing It My Way

I grew up next door to a breathtakingly beautiful girl who at age 20 sat for a formal portrait I can still see in my mind's eye: how the light played on those lovely bare shoulders; how the dress billowed at those generous hips. That same year she married and moved away, and the next time I saw her she was hatted and high-necked with a torso encased in the tight rubber hug of a corset.It’s what was expected of women back then; they married and overnight they turned into matrons. And though expectations for women may be subtler today, they’re still present.Take hair color for example. Women are simply expected to color their hair at a certain point.I always had black hair, but when some white began appearing, I thought, “OK fine.”“But … you’re going to look old!” said my hair stylist in grave and disapproving tones.So for a while there I had hair the color of cow’s liver – chicken gizzards maybe. My hair stylist thought it made me look young, but I hated it.I mean you CARE about you appearance. You WANT to fit in, only … not that much, you know what I mean? I think of something former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said once in an interview. She said sometimes she dresses up, sure. “But when I work, I really work: I rub my eyes and my makeup comes off and I stick pencils in my hair.” I think that’s great.Of course these days the pressure doesn’t stop with your hair. These days it’s not unusual for women to have the skin of their very faces sanded down, or injected with some fluffing-up drug or pried up like so much wall-to-wall carpeting and tacked down tighter.“Stay attractive!” is the message the world sends women generally. “Slim, too! Buy great scarves if you can’t stay slim, but please: Go easy on our eyes!”It’s what this youth-centered culture tells us. And it’s making me feel a tad rebellious.Example: I’ve always hated pocketbooks, and the sundress I had on the other day didn’t have a belt, so I had my phone sort of hooked to my left bra strap just under the fabric.As I chatted with the proprietor of a shop I visit every day, the phone rang, causing me to glance down at the small boxy bulge it made under the cloth.“Does this look like a pacemaker?” I asked, suddenly wondering.“Yup,” said my friend.So I quick undid a key button farther down, hooked it onto the waistband of my underpants and rebuttoned. “Better?”“Now it looks like a colostomy bag,” he said dryly.Pacemakers, colostomy bags: the parts of our little machines do wear down over time and we’re bound to age, sure enough. I guess I’d just like to do it my way.

Let's NOT Go Gentle

The wind came and the leaves fell and why do I think every year they won’t do that? Why every autumn do I just assume somebody in that that celestial control room is about to make an announcement: “Sorry to have alarmed you. We now regard winter as a failed experiment so no, no winter anymore; no death.”But then they all fell, just in 24 hours.Twelve hours ago I looked at the Almanac and saw that the sun set at 6:04 last night. Today it sets at 6:01, tomorrow at 5:59. The light sinks away like water from a leaky basin. Then we really lose big when we're forced turn the clocks back, and what weekend do we have to face that wholesale loss I then wondered, this weekend, next weekend, the weekend after that?I looked that up too just now: Brazil, Fiji, Syria:all these countries turn their clocks back before we do, some even tonight. But have three glorious weeks before we’re faced with the jarring sight of people ducking in and out of shops in the utter darkness. I can never get over it in those first November, I get so confused: "Shouldn’t these people all be home in their bathrobes and slippers?" I keep thinking.  I almost want to see us all of us dressed that way, in PJ’s in line at the Post Office and the pharmacy. It would be our way of saying “You can’t fool us! This isn’t 4pm; it’s midnight! Now for God's sake bring back day!”

Can't Be Too Rich or Too Thin? Really?

It always shocks me to see how skinny rich chicks can be; rich older chicks I mean because the young ones still have enough of that collagen padding in their faces to look sort of normal (I point to that Olsen twin at her thinnest. I point to Angelina Jolie who bodywise may look like a little toy kite made of rice paper and bamboo sticks but who gets away with it with those big old puffy lips.No I’m talking about your older gals, like the ones I saw at this very large charity ball  the other night. Sure maybe some of them have had the extra flesh under their necks hacked away by the nip-and-tuck man but really I think they’re just thin - anyway they all had skeleton jaw.And  then there was this really pretty one who looked like Kristen Scott Thomas and was maybe 50 and had a world of pearls filling her chest so you couldn’t SEE how skinny she was there….But when she shrugged off her coat and turned toward the bar? The sight made me gasp: a spine like the tail of a horseshoe crab and two scapula so bladelike you could shave your legs with them.Not that I’m the perfect person of course; I’m thinking of having a little work done myself, especially around the nose area, but hey tell ya one thing: I do enjoy pointing the finger at others!

For the Rescued

Recently I put a poem up here called “Green Feathers” which keeps coming into my head with respect to these miners. It's about hope, and moss, and the part I love best is when it says: “routinely amazing how moist tufts, half mud, keep supposing almost nothing is hopeless. How the bluest potato grew eyes on faith the light would be there - and it was.”Sometimes all you have is that sure and baseless KNOWING that a thing will turn out, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.In my family I’m the sunny one who expects each least goose to lay a golden egg. My husband, on the other hand, inherited the more wary disposition of his mother. But David had the faith I lacked when I began bleeding in my fifth month of pregnancy. It was Friday afternoon by the time we got to the obstetrician’s office and our real doc was off; we were seen instead by an OB who took out his high-tech stethoscope and pushed it hard against my belly. “I'm sorry but I hear no heartbeat. We'll do an ultrasound," he said.But the ultrasound lab was all done for the week so we had to wait until the following Monday. I remember lying in our bed in that desolate state when you fear the worst but don't dare speak it. “What do you think?” I said to David during one of those dark hours. “What does it mean that he couldn’t get the heartbeat?”“It means there’s something wrong with his hearing” he said back..... And sure enough, when that long weekend was past and we saw my 'real' doctor Monday morning, he donned a stethoscope that wasn’t even the high-tech kind and leaned in to my belly. “Well there it is, plain as day,” he said. Then we went for the ultrasound and there it was for sure.It's true I bled for the whole rest of the pregnancy; couldn’t travel, couldn't exercise, couldn’t even take a bath but one May morning doing a thunderstorm here was our baby Annie, small, but fine - perfect in fact.I’ll never forget that morning: the relief I felt; the surprise. David was relieved too of course but not surprised. Like the miners and their families, he had faith that the light would be there…. and it was.

Lessons for the Day

Yesterday was a good day for lessons. It was still just the beginning of the week yet I learned:+ That a dog will definitely smile at you if you wave to it in the back of its master’s car.+ That a baby will cry if you set a jug of cold milk beside it in the shopping cart.+ That you can’t fool a dental hygienist. She’s only asking if you flossed to see how big a liar you are.+ That “smh” means “shake my head.” People born after 1990 all know this.+ That it’s best not to use common language in front of poetic souls; it pains them to hear coarse pedestrian terms.+ That if you’re asked to read the lead in a Shakespearian play in front of 30  Shakespeare enthusiasts you should probably at least look the thing over first.+ That underlining your part might not be a bad idea either and that missing your cues won’t win you any friends any more than asleep while waiting for your next line will - even IF you end up cutting your forehead on your Complete Works.+ That if you think it’s normal to get up at 5, do an hour of hellish home cardio, foodshop, visit the sick, get tutored in the use of the Wave machine, then get yourself to appointments at noon, 2:30, 4:00 and 7:30, well, you will get what you  deserve for being an insane overfunctioner - especially if the 7:30 appointment involves sitting up very straight breathing from the diaphragm, and clearly enunciating Elizabethan verse until 11:30 at night.Welcome to my world. If you have time for a glute-y video here’s me on the Wave Machine now. :-)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mzL8Ev6UBM

Goodbye

Goodbye country weekend. Goodbye horns on the cattle we were too scared to pat.Goodbye electrical fence. Goodbye little boy offering Kung Fu moves against them all.Goodbye brooks and country air, goodbye sunshine everywhere.Goodbye house. All summer we drive to you,then sneak back again and again as long as the good weather holds. But the other night the temperature dipped below 30 with far colder nights ahead.And yesterday just before we left, a big machine knocked over our friend the birch tree and carried it off like they spoils of war.We knew it had to go, It was in a bad place and it was getting weaker every year. But have a look at this video and tell me you can’t feel it yourself: the jaws of that Big Beast that pulls Summer up by the roots and drags her off to God knows where.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03UN3aAxUvw]

Good Wedding

That was one good wedding Saturday during which Jason joined his life to that of Kristen and her little boy Caleb. who was lively enough at the rehearsal, coming up onto the altar to stand between the two of them and even livelier on the big day. After clomping down the aisle in his little dress-up shoes, he then clomped some more. All during  the prayers and poems and the passing of a daughter to her husband he was on the move, sometimes disappearing of sight completely as when he went into the choir pews and knocked about like a poltergeist. When he started to cry he got gently carted out by a beautiful young woman in a red dress and so missed the vows and the gorgeous rendition of The Broken Road that Jason at one point stepped back and sang to his bride.  You could hear the little guy wailing  through the doors a bit near the end, but then the ceremony was done and Jason and Kristen were Mr. and Mrs. and 100 happy people spilled into the church hall to eat and drink and do a little clomping of their own.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lg-QIX088U]

People Are Stupid (Part 99)

What’s the most insensitive thing you’ve heard anyone say? In my column this week I look at how thick people can sometimes be: the perfect stranger who tries to shame a new mom for calling early motherhood hard; the ditzy 20-something who tries to equate what was probably her own mere hangover with the real and dramatic struggles of a man who even when standing still can’t help pitching and tilting about like a sailor in a storm.I hope I didn’t come off sounding superior for noticing. I mean I realize: people just get nervous and say things. Once my brother-in-law rode down in an elevator with F. Lee Bailey, the most famous lawyer  in the country at the time. He looked at old F. Lee and looked away; looked and looked away, then blurted “Excuse me: Are you who I think I am?”And that’s nothing compared to what people will say at a wake. Three of the people I lived with died within 15 months when I was a kid so I know. They laugh, tell jokes, even dead-people jokes, believe it or not. They lean in and whisper gossip ... and all this without benefit of alcohol which you don’t see served so much at wakes these days but which I can tell you will certainly be served at my wake, to be held in my living room, it’s all arranged.There’ll be drink, food, major sitting around, bring the kiddies we’ll all have fun. Now go up top and read this week’s column. :-)

Mazeltov

The year after Jason Parkhill graduated from high school, the whole Senior Youth Group of our church came to my house for a weekend retreat  - to consider life and make face masks, to laugh and eat and stay up til all hours talking. I mention Jason: He has played such a key role in this Youth Group he seemed to be there even AFTER he'd gone off to college. In fact he was there every time he came anywhere near our zip code, both then and in the years that have followed as, from his place in the choir, he has sent beams of positivity over to the corner of the church where the kids all sit, looking so happy. (I call this picture “Sermon? What sermon?”)When not in the pews or on Mission Trips they can usually be found in the specially designated Youth Room which I have haunted for over 25 years, most notably the year I team-taught the Confirmation class.  There, Jason has been an especially faithful presence, from the time he sat in my class until now when he functions as a kind of Visiting Professor of Fun and Lively Talk. (This is he on the right here during the End-of-Church Sleepover of '08.)But today Jason will do something else at our church: Today he will meet his beautiful Kristen and her son Caleb there and be married in a nuptial ceremony where I will get to read a poem and our two great ministers will get to offer prayers and three people will get to sing, including the undauntable bridegroom himself. At 4 o'clock today, in this church that has nurtured so many, a hundred lucky people will get to witness the on-paper birth of a family already well begun. To which I can only say "Mazeltov!"

The Gift-Laden Tourist

Speaking of  ‘and all I got was this lousy T-shirt’ what's this new custom where you’re supposed to bring everybody presents when you go away? My parents never did that, maybe because they never went away except for a yearly business trip to New York when they’d send us kids a postcard of a hotel with an arrow pointing to some room on the 27^th floor.Me I’m just back from Italy where I bought nothing but the meals I ate (which come to think of it stands in great contrast to the last time I went when our foodie kids had us practically sewing ten-pound hunks of cheese and cured meats into the hems of our coats.) Truth is I can’t stand all that trinket-buying. It’s just so wasteful! And mindless!  I mean did you really want a hand towel with the Royal Family on it? Does your kid really need a Sea World T-shirt?As the lawns grow ever stiffer with cold you can feel us getting closer to the mass delirium of holiday shopping. Yet the happiest people I know these days seem to be the ones who have a kind of lottery at the holidays and give their one person the coolest thing they can come up with for under 25 bucks.Maybe my family will do that this year, buy our little ones a bunch of cheap little gizmos and spend the rest of the time playing board games and shooting the breeze. Keep it simple as the man said. Let our home be our mast and not our anchor. Because otherwise, think about it:  who's gonna dust all THIS?

To Fume or Not to Fume

Bad enough to be flying home to a monsoon from gentle Italy but then to have the guy behind me hijack my electrical outlet because he needed two: grrrrr!  Okay, so I didn’t actually know planes had electrical outlets until the flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder and asked if the guy could use the one under my seat. So now, just when I was finding out I could get some real work done on this eight-hour flight back to Rainytown here she was on her hands and knees under my seat, plugging this guy into MY outlet.“Actually, I was going to do a little work myself,” I said in a high strained voice.“Oh!  Well we can find you another seat!” she sang cheerily.I felt my jaw tighten. If she were a dog she’d have known I was about to bite, but no. Oblivious, she went on:  “There’s a sleeping man 10 rows back,” she chirped. “You could sit beside him!” and back she dragged me to invade the privacy of a poor slumped thing who suddenly woke to find not one by two women fishing around under his knees.When at last we found the outlet of course it didn’t work. “Whoops! Well that takes care of that!” she chirped. So back to my seat I went, past the skinny hipster.“Hey so maybe we can share as the trip goes on?”  I said.But he only looked at me blankly, leaving me the choice of whether to fume or not to fume as we traveled like Pilgrims of Old over the whole of the icy Atlantic.I chose the second option and just read my book content to hope that  maybe I'd go right into Heaven when I die, with no stops or hiccups along the way.

Mangia Mangia

The way that last post ended  “Nice eat you?”  really rings true for me because food does eat you, in the sense that it slowly consumes the “you” you once were, leaving in its place a much more, shall we say, upholstered version. As recently as 2001 I looked as thin as Flat Stanley. For at least a year after my romance with the Atkins Diet. I looked like an Aerobed just pulled from the box.Now though? Well let’s just say I inflated, largely due to trips like this one in Italy where they bring fresh hot bread to the table the second you sit down and leave you alone with it for a whole ten minutes before then setting down several carafes brimming with the local wines that taste like the kiss of God himself on a hillside in springtime.We’ve been eating this week in Italy my seven college pals and I, sleeping walking, eating, sleeping, walking, eating - all under the watchful eye of an eighth pal who has lived here for 25 years and so can say all the hard words like the one for ice – ghiaccio – which when I try to say it sounds like I’m about to spit a wad of chewing tobacco clear across the room and which in any case the bartenders can't understand.Here’s the evidence, with my hand pointing to it like all those funny Renaissance paintings where the St. John character looks right out at the viewer as if to say. "Do you see this?  Do you see what’s about to unfold here?"Suffice to say it's unfolding. As my sister used to say we'll just have to be careful not to let TOO much blood get in our alcohol stream. :-)

Lost in Translation

You think you’ll be fine in a place like Italy - unless you fail to pick up that instructional phrasebook until two hours before you go there.  Still, I was sure I could read all the road signs, just by recalling a couple of super-old French lessons and intuiting the rest. For example I saw many that said “Sit Down and Shut Up” - if the ‘ferm-’ root In Italian means to ‘close’ or to ‘shut’ as it does in French.  Saw a picture of smiling young men on a billboard advertising inseminations – at least I thought that’s what they were advertising if my method was working on the words ‘insieme’ and ‘studiando.I was on top of it all; ready at every minute to yell “Ho Vomitato!” which is funny all by itself and basically means, “I pray you, kind hospital sir, I have felt the nauseation for all the day.”Luckily on this trip with my old school chums we have had many kind angels helping us figure out what what we are trying to say. The last one was so excited to learn I was from near Boston and told of his colleague's new establishment about to open up there. "Pizza Beach" he said it was to be called and wrote a hand-written note for me to give to the main guy the first time I go there.So here's to Pizza Beach then, with a name no funnier than the one chosen by an equally enterprising  person new to our shores reading "Chinese Take-out. Nice Eat You?"