By susan fishman orlins My beagle Casey is healthy, spunky and–at 13 1/2–still learning new tricks, like wagging his tail. Yet, today for no apparent reason, I woke up vocalizing a name for my next dog.
 A boy named Scarlet? Maybe it started a few days ago when I phoned the bike store to see if they could fix my flat tire, which occurred right before my car wouldn’t start.
A voice answered, “Hudson Trail, Scarlet speaking.”
Scarlet! I love that name. But a boy named Scarlet?
When we got Casey, I knew I wanted a boy dog. I had gotten divorced some months earlier and the only testosterone in my life, aside from a couple of friends, were my computer guy and my dentist.
So I searched for a boy dog and a male psychotherapist. Casey came to us when he was seven months old, along with his name. My three daughters and I dawdled so long, trying to agree on what to call him, that he remained Casey.
I don’t recall anyone ever asking how he got his name, but I believe that everyone who meets him is thinking, How unimaginative!
 Caseminster Abbey Of course, as you may know, we never call him Casey. My daughter, who was returning from England for the holidays, emailed, “I can’t wait to see Caseminster Abbey.”
I could not adore this boy more, but it is hard not to project into the future, knowing the likelihood of a day when he is no longer here to race me upstairs at night and to spoon with me after lights out.
So I try out names.
I like the name Brad Pitt for Casey. Will I have to meet the next pup to see if that suits him too? Do our names become part of who we are or do our names help define who we are?
So when I woke up, the first thing I did was turn to Casey and try out this new name on him. “Kreplach, time to get up.”
Kreplach are like Jewish raviolis, doughy and cheesy and yummy when you smother them with butter. It’s that East European kind of food that killed my grandparents.
The gutteral “ch” at the end wouldn’t work well for a dog name, but the association let me to Knish. Casey is anything but a Knish. He is neither round, nor knishy squishy. And he’s way too big. Knish is for a little fluffy pup or maybe for a mini dachshund.
 Malibu Ken Names are a funny thing; some seem universally great. I always loved the name Chloe for a girl, for example. But after my French then-mother-in-law nixed it for my third daughter, my then-husband nixed it too. It was one of the few times he said no to me.
We got along well, the ex and I. Each did exactly as we pleased. Most of our values were in concert, so there were never arguments about, say, money; he was thrifty, I hated to shop.
Sometimes I wonder if couples like us, who practically never fight (Did he just give in to everything and then feel discontent?), lack enough passion to care what each other does as they swirl around in parallel universes.
More dog names: Alan, Badger, Barky, Barkley (Tom Hanks’s dog in “You’ve Got Mail”), Boswell (the name of my 5th grade best friend’s autograph hound), Chip, Dodger, Dudley, Dilber (nickname for the nickname of my college boyfriend Dizzy, whose last name much to his chagrin was Silberhartz–get it? Dizzy + Silberhartz = Dilber), Spot (only if he has no spots, which brings to mind other ironic names like Fluffy for a beagle), Dibble, Dobie Gillis (anyone remember him?), Velveeta, Mango Chutney (my ex thought this was a good kid’s name). Qwerty, which I once used as my name on Jdate, so that might be weird.
And then there are words whose sounds I find pleasing, such as Webinar, Koala, Gumbo, Hoi polloi, Ilosone (a cough medicine my daughter used to take; I loved saying, “Ilosone time!”) Ziligengsheng (Mandarin for self-reliance), Ukulele (even though this very word knocked me out of the fourth-grade spelling bee).
I was hanging up Casey’s leash the other day and thought about the name Ken, as in Barbie’s boyfriend. Once Casey and I went to the Bark Ball, costumes required, and I dressed as Malibu Barbie and he went as Malibu Ken, wearing a lei.
And then there’s Mister Personality, which my niece once called Casey, not realizing the extent to which this was one of those ironic names.
Names will continue to pop into my head, because there is a deep track for this in my brain.
By the way, I moved on to cognitive therapy from the psychiatrist, whose name was Fred. Hm, how about Fred for Casey’s successor?
What are your favorite-sounding words? I’d love to try them out for my next dog’s name.
See some of my Home Goes Strong articles:
*Tapas and Crostini Recipes (great meal or appetizers for Superbowl and Valentine’s Day)
*Conversation Starters
*Best Banana Cake Recipe Ever! Chocolate Chips Optional
*Superbowl Party And Potluck Recipes And Ideas
*Thinking About A Valentine Dinner? How About Red, Pink & White . . . & Wine With A Heart?
By susan fishman orlins 
It’s a common occurrence in New York and other cities. You put your key in the lock of your apartment building and someone is about to follow you inside.
What do you do? Usually in the interest of security I ask if the person lives there and then request they use their own key or buzz the person they are visiting.
It happened to me a few days ago. A tall, handsome black man, somewhere around my daughter’s age of 29, follwed me through the first of two locked doors to my daughter’s building in New York City. Several things whizzed through my mind.
Mainly I thought, Will he think I’m a white woman not letting him in because he’s a black man?
Nonetheless, I asked, “Do you live here?”
In a pleasing Obama-like voice he replied, “No, I’m visiting my friend in 5D.”
“Would you mind asking your friend to buzz you in?” I said.
“Not at all,” he said.
And I headed upstairs to quickly drop off my laptop and pick up my jacket before meeting my friend for a day of biking in Queens and Brooklyn. I also wanted to get a snack during my discretionary five minutes.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about that attractive guy in a sweater and down vest and wondering how he felt about my not opening the door to the building for him.
I decided to forgo the salad, chocolate and glass of milk I had counted on scarfing down. Instead, I grabbed my jacket, bounded up to the 5th floor and rang the buzzer of 5D, while running through various permutations of gender and race and how I would have responded to each combination.
I egged myself on, knowing that a story for me to share with you was in the making.
A white guy named Matt answered the door. Still panting from racing up the steps, I asked if I could speak to his friend that a few minutes ago I didn’t let into the building.
“Sure come in,” said Matt.
“Hi, I’m Susan,” I said.
“I’m Shawn,” said Shawn in the soothing voice. “Nice to meet you.”
I handed Shawn my card and told both of them, “I’m a writer and I’m wondering if I can ask you a question about what happened downstairs.”
“Sure,” said Shawn.
I told him I felt bad not letting him in and wanted him know it wasn’t because he was black; I added that I felt bad because, as a black man, he must often run into suspicious white people.
And then I ran through a few permutaions.
“It would have been easier,” I said, “to not let in a white man.” No guilt. I would not have given that another thought.
Maybe I would have let a white woman in without questioning, though the previous day a white woman closed the door on me while I was fumbling for my key.
I later realized I hadn’t mentioned the black woman option; did that omission suggest a bias in me? Would I have admitted a black woman? In general, I’m more intimidated by women, so on that alone I’d be more inclined to let a female in. I wouldn’t want a woman, black or white, mouthing off at me.
 Where Shawn and I are from Shawn said, “I didn’t think about it at all.”
I started to mumble something about living in New York or DC, where my home is, there is so much more blending of races and Shawn said “Oh, I’m from D.C.” and I asked what he did and we three morphed into stop-and-chat chatter.
Already running well beyond my discretionary five minutes, I asked Matt if he knew my daughter, who also lives in the building, and he said, “No, is she single?”
She is. And I wondered whether Shawn was single.
Soon thereafter I had to leave. While pedaling along First Avenue to the Queensboro Bridge, I thought about how rewarding it is to take a moment that could have been nothing more than breezing by a guy in an entryway and make it into a story, in this case, one that challenged my assumptions.
Of course, I’m worried I’ve said something racially offensive here. Sometimes I need to ask a black friend if something I say or think is acceptable, the same way I sometimes have to read New York Times editorials to know what I think.
What do you do when someone is about to follow you into a locked apartment building? Do you act differently based on their gender, race, appearance, smooth voice, etc.?
Check out some of my recent articles on Home Goes Strong:
*BEST BANANA CAKE RECIPE EVER! CHOCOLATE CHIPS OPTIONAL
*SUPERBOWL PARTY AND POTLUCK RECIPES AND IDEAS
*EASY, HEALTHFUL CHINESE FOOD RECIPES
*SHOULD COUPLES HAVE SEPARATE BEDROOMS? READERS RESPONSES MAY SURPRISE YOU
*NEW GREAT IDEAS FOR COOKING FISH AND HOW TO ORDER FISH & SEAFOOD ONLINE
*TOP 10 WAYS TO WIN AT SCRABBLE AND WORDS WITH FRIENDS
By susan fishman orlins When I, always the initiator, smile at a stranger and the stranger smiles back, it puts a musical note in my step. Or in my pedal, as was the case on Christmas Eve day.
I was on a long bike ride from New Jersey to Staten Island and, when a driver stopped to allow me to cycle across the street, I smiled.
He smiled back, and when I mouthed “Merry Christmas,” his grin broadened, then he wished me the silent same.
Maybe it was due to the season to be jolly that our connected smiles filled me with an extra dollop of glee.
 The demi-smile Sometimes, upon passing a stranger on the street, I exhibit the demi-smile. If the stranger does not return the greeting, then I’ll appear to have been deep in thought or to have been pressing my lips together as part of a squint on a sunny day.
The demi-smile is also useful on social occasions, as it helps smoothe out upper lip lines, lift the jowls, and minimize Howdy Doody creases that flank the mouth.
When my youngest daughter was in high school, she wrote an essay called “Smiling Stranger,” about how she loves to go jogging and smile at everyone she passes and how it cheers her when they respond in kind.
She, typically of limited memory, recalled a joyful moment more than a decade earlier when she was in the single digits, agewise. We were in Hong Kong, and we passed a bus, and she locked eyes with a passenger on that bus, and they both smiled.
It may seem counterintuitively sunny for a worrywart like yours truly to seek every opportunity to exchange smiles with strangers. But a friendly encounter with someone unknown to me is uncomplicated and distracts me from whatever worry I’m dwelling on, if only temporarily.
I have a fantasy of being like a lady I read about, who made coffee for her burglar and convinced him to mend his ways.
(But not like the woman who turned up in a Google search: “Woman captures Burglar, Makes him a sex slave, Fed him Viagra and water for 3 days, ‘until he learned his lesson.’”)
 About to be sipped Here’s how another friendly fantasy goes: I own my own coffee place and every morning I greet my regulars with a smile. Problem is I stay up late and could never get up that early. So maybe I could just get a job in a coffee place. But I might not want to go every day. Then I always arrive at the same conclusion, that I can just go to a coffee place and sip a cappuccino.
Studies say married people and those with pets live longer. It’s the interaction with other living creatures. A writer spends a lot of solitary time, which pleases me, and I believe that a snoozing hound balled up against my hip, as well as an encounter with one friend or another every day, will extend my life.
And on the days I don’t see a friend, I’m counting on smiling strangers to help me outlive actuarial predictions and get my face on the Smucker’s jelly jar for living into triple digits.
How do you interact with strangers? Are you a smiler? A schmoozer? An avoider?
See my latest Home Goes Strong articles:
TOP 10 WAYS TO WIN AT SCRABBLE AND WORDS WITH FRIENDS
ORGANIZING YOUR AFFAIRS BEFORE YOU DIE: ADVICE FROM A 29-YEAR-OLD ORPHAN
BEST SPAGHETTI SAUCE EVER!
By susan fishman orlins 
I needed an antidote to worry this weekend, when my bike got a flat tire and then my car wouldn’t start. So here is the latest in my Antidote to Worry Series of food photos and such.
Here’s how I compose this satisfying crunchy salad:
- A base of arugula
- Trader Joe’s Healthy 8 chopped veggie mix, which contains broccoli, carrots, green cabbage, red cabbage, jicama, green bell pepper, radish, celery.
- I add pine nuts; shelled, salted and roasted pistachio nuts; blue cheese; pomegranate seeds and orange muscat champagne vinegar (vinegar also from Trader Joe’s).
And just like that I crunch my worries away!
Btw, I just posted my chili recipe–improvised from a 140-character chili twecipe–that I made with my daughter, another antidote to worry.
How do you crunch away your worries?
Unrelated announcement: See my “most popular” articles this week:
 Orange muscat champagne vinegar, mm
By susan fishman orlins For my recent article on Home Goes Strong about Happiness at Home, I interviewed my blog crush Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project–the same name as her blog–was a #1 New York Times best seller.
 All that goes on underneath my roots Gretchen keeps a one-sentence journal, which she admits sometimes expands to 4 sentences.
Says Gretchen, “The idea of keeping a proper journal was far too daunting, so I decided instead to keep a ‘one-sentence journal.’”
This is me again. Years ago, I gave up journal writing. Between living alone and blogging about my life, I exist so much inside my own head that I’d decided, enough already!
Today, however, I opened my long-neglected journal document and began to write . . .
Thinking about doing a one (or 4) sentence journal a la Gretchen Rubin. This got me thinking about going back to journal writing and seeing what happens. Look at me, here I am in the second sentence of my journal and already it has given me an idea for a WW post about whether or not to journal.
And therein lies the problem of too many ideas.
Question: Is it good or bad that a journal generates a flow of new ideas? Idea management overwhelms me.
When I kept a journal previously, I was always coming up with new projects, like:
- Have a Habitat for Humanity singles party!
- Go polka dancing!
- Play piano, take a painting class, write a children’s book!
As it is, I have no time. Susan’s Law is the opposite of Parkinson’s Law that says, Work expands to fill the available time.
Susan’s Law says, No matter how much time you have, you will always plan more to do than you have time for.
I’ll never finish all there is to do: sew the hole Casey made on the couch, learn to use my new camera, make squash soup.
I love the way starting out to write about one thing brings on a whole other topic. In that way, I’m a psychiatrist’s dream, so to speak. The underlying story finds its way to the surface.
I shall continue to try Gretchen Rubin’s 1-sentence journal, even though it’s so much harder to write one or four sentences than 10 paragraphs where you can just ramble. How do I decide what snippet to capture on the page?
Yesterday, I sat in traffic and was late for the treasured visit of the month to Emily’s kindergarten class [my daughter Emily teaches at 
a charter school]. Worried I’d miss the whole afternoon, I did childbirth breathing to keep calm.
Finally I arrived with a hard-boiled egg and the gizmo I’d bought for making a peeled egg into a cube. I’m not sure if the kids are wise enough to be as wowed as I am by that. At least they were totally engrossed to see what would happen.
Then I read The Golden Egg Book about a bunny and an egg, from which emerged a duckling. “And no one was every alone again.”
I’m pushing the limits of Gretchen’s one-sentence journal, but it’s okay for Susan’s one-sentence journal to be longer.
This is fun! I can’t wait to see what I decide to write in the journal tomorrow.
Hi, this is non-journal me again. Now I’m getting my hopes up that every day a blog post will emerge from my journal. After all, isn’t that what a blog is, a web log?
MORE [too many?] OF MY ARTICLES ABOUT WRITING [When will I ever learn that less is more?]:
By susan fishman orlins OccupyDC provides photo ops. Here are a few and, at the end, a link to my salade nicoise recipes. There’s a tie-in, sort of.
 Committee Meeting  Home Sweet Home [
 Two Medics: A Muslim and a Jew  Family Time . . . This father said he's already collected 1,000 signatures for his petition to join the coastguard and keep his dreadlocks.  "This land is my land, this land is your land . . . " Notice there's a guy with a bass, several drummers too.  A melting pot of old, young, disabled, abled, Asian, Latino, Black, White, children, pets.  I bike home to my pet, Brad Pitt  And enjoy a salade nicoise. Lucky me! (knock wood) Check out my quick, easy, delicious, low-cal Salade Nicoise Recipe with Countless Variations.
What has struck you about the protests sites, either if you have seen them live or in the media?
By susan fishman orlins When I’m in New York, I like to hang out and write at Jack’s, a coffee place in the West Village with a patina that suggests long afternoons of sipping lattes and tapping on laptops. The overall look is shades of brown, like paper bags and coffee.
Jack’s is so small it has no bathroom. The other day, I had to pee, so I walked up the block and stopped at the first restaurant, a dark Villagey place called Low Country, another brownish space, where I was greeted by–as you can see from his picture–a fit, attractive bald man with smooth, mahogany-colored skin, wearing a dark t-shirt and black blazer.
With a dip of my right eyebrow, a sort of pity look, I asked “Would it be okay if I used the bathroom?” in the way that, when I was in my twenties, got me anything I wanted.
The man responded with a broad white-toothed smile, “Of course.”
In the bathroom, which was papered with pages from a Faulkner paperback, I began thinking about all the kind restaurant hosts who have welcomed me into their bathrooms.
And one who didn’t. It was a few years ago in D.C., up the block from the White House, a mediocre wannabe kind of place with white linen on the tables, where the maitre d’ rejected me. Admittedly, I was mid-bike ride in shorts and sneakers and with sweaty helmet hair.
I then crossed the street to the Bombay Club, an upscale restaurant with fine Indian food, a favorite of the Clintons and some of Washington’s elite journalists.
The maitre d’ welcomed me warmly and led me to the rest rooms. When I returned to thank him, he walked me into the bar and told the bartender to give me a drink.
I must have look pretty pathetic. When I left, I over-thanked him and mentioned, to show I wasn’t just a bathroom moocher, that I had eaten there and that I would be back. The afterglow of his kindness lasts to this day.
Back to Low Country. On the way upstairs from the Faulkner bathroom, I decided to tell the host how much I appreciated his hospitality.
He again graced me with his sparkly smile and introduced himself. We began talking and I told him I was a writer and that I blog, and he said he had recently started blogging. We exchanged cards.
The following day he emailed me:
| Susan,
It’s your new friend Chad from Low Country. Your blog looks really funny! I can’t wait to read some, especially religion.
It was nice meeting and chatting. Let’s meet for lunch sometime and share life. I love meeting new interesting people.
Cheers and make today an amazing day!
Chad
P.S.
Here’s the link to my first blog post! http://www.africa.com/blog/blog,hip_hop_saves_lives_an_introduction,418.html |
He wasn’t hitting on me; he is somewhere around half my age of 65.
Chad and I are different. He’s writing to help people in Chad and Sudan, and my blog is a platform for my white girl worries, which I mentioned when I gave him my card. As for religion, he’s a believer and I get nightmares about the 23rd Psalm.
But back at Jack’s I was sitting on the bench outside when Chad came along to unlock his bicycle, which was parked right next to mine (technically my ex-husband’s that I borrow when I’m in New York).
I’m a schmoozer and a reacher-outer and I love the way Chad wrote “I love meeting new [ahem] interesting people,” expressing his wish to get together. I am going to use that next time I email a maitre d’ or someone else I’m eager to know better.
How do you reach out?
What are your experiences with using restrooms in restaurants where you are not a patron?
If you or someone you know likes cupcakes, don’t miss my article TLC’s Georgetown Cupcake Sisters Share a Chocolate Cupcake Recipe & Their Recipe for Success!
By susan fishman orlins There’s something serene, along with a sprinkling of smug, about people who practice yoga. They laud the benefits—“Doing yoga has saved my back.” “I’m no longer stressed.”
 Self Portrait With Bike If I had the patience to do yoga, I’d also have the attention span to meditate, read the New Yorker and maybe even drive more.
On the other hand, I’m like the yoga folks when it comes to bicycling. I too often wax smugly about the thrill of breezes in my face and never having to deal with rush hour traffic or the search for a parking space. I stay fit and it takes barely more time to get anywhere by bike compared to auto, sometimes less.
Admittedly, biking requires a degree of flexibility about arriving at your destination with wet circles on the underarms of your shirt.
In the winter, when the temperature is in single digits, many bikers hang up their handlebars and I find myself among a reduced population of peddalers.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You would ski in this weather as well as sit motionless on a ski lift.”
 Chill, not chilled, on a ski lift As for environmental benefits of biking, I accept praise for my smaller footprint, though I confess it has much to do with my disdain for the experience of being behind the wheel of my car, whose battery dies and underbody rusts as a result of remaining stationary in front of my house.
The only drivers I can sort of relate to are those who have soothing rides during which they listen to books on tape.
But I then I remember I have no patience for keeping track of a book’s multiple cd’s or even uploading cd’s to my iPod and then figuring out how to find where I last left off.
Instead, while biking, I listen to NPR and learn things like, you should salt your food right before eating for maximum flavor, because salt releases aroma that enhances taste. If you salt while cooking that aroma disperses into the air rather than into your olfactory senses.
How did I get to salt from where I started with smug yogis and biking? It’s like that game where you start with a word, say, “bike.” And you change one letter at a time—bile, bale, sale—and end up with “salt.”
I used to phone my mom while biking. We’d chatter during a 40-minute ride about the news, the family, Oprah and books, while I pedaled home up a long dark hill after making dinner for my friend whose leg was shattered when a car knocked her off her bicycle in broad daylight.
Sometimes I call a friend while biking, who says, “You shouldn’t talk on the phone while biking.”
I’m careful, I say, I ride on the sidewalk and I pause to look both ways at driveways. Plus my bike and I are a Christmas tree of reflectors and blinking lights.
If I think about how I could get hit by a car while biking, my stomach flips, but once I mount the seat I feel as calm and free as a yogi.
How do you achieve a biker’s high, a yogi’s calm?
Unrelated announcement: If you like Avocado, don’t miss my article with tons of fabulous ways to use them from on pizza to on your face, as a masque or as shaving cream! Fried bacon anyone? Avocados go great with that too!
Wondering what to make for dinner tonight? Check out my new post In the Kitchen With my Daughter.
By susan fishman orlins Only eight weeks ago, I was on a half-hour bike ride home, all uphill, when I called Mom for our daily shmooze. We caught up on
 Mom looking at photos as we sped North on Rte. 95 political scandals, Sarah Palin, literature, Oprah and Mom’s latest Bingo game. While we talked, mounting the hill was effortless.
Shortly after that, her doctor determined she could no longer live alone, so my daughter and I flew to Florida, where she was living, to accompany her to a nursing home in Philadephia near my brother’s family.
In a hospital bed, Mom sat propped up like a queen looking at photos on my laptop as our medical coach, a converted 42-foot RV, sped north on Route 95. After an hour of eating pretzels and giving commentary, I needed a break. A bit later Mom fell asleep and soon my daughter Emily and I began laughing as we read email responses from the rest of the family to my “Rte. 95 Travelogue.”
Mom opened her eyes and asked “What am I missing?”
So Emily and I climbed into her bed and we all read and laughed together. After the emails, Mom said she wondered how well off her family had been when she was growing up. She concluded they were pretty comfortable, given that her mother was always able to give away coal and still have enough for the family.
My mom has always loved conversation. But now her 92-year-old body is shutting down. Sometimes she is fuzzy from the morphine being administered for discomfort related to her heart condition; and some of the time her mind is good.
One of many frustrations is that she can’t seem to vocalize. We can tell she wants to express something but nothing comes out.
My sister tried giving her pencil and paper but Mom didn’t want that. Plus her hands are very shaky.
As her voice began to fade, so did her expression. There was no inflection in the little she was able to say.
When I go to see her this weekend, I thought I would try some yes and no questions, beginning by asking if she even wants to try to communicate, say, by lifting her hand for yes or wagging a finger for no.
Yet, that may be a total flop. I’m hoping some of you, my readers, can help. Any suggestions for how to assist my mom in expressing herself?
Maybe you know someone who has been through this. I’d love to hear from you and if I do get a variety of responses, I’ll write an article for Huffington Post or Home Goes Strong, so I can share what I learn with a broader audience.
Thanks for any help!
X
O
By susan fishman orlins What if I meet a guy I like?
Monday: He gets up. I want to stay in bed but now I can’t fall back to sleep. Or, I get up and he wants to sleep, so I can’t turn on NPR.
 Ah, breakfast! I make myself French toast and a cappuccino and just as I’m about to sit down and enjoy reading the Times, he trots in and says, “Mm, that smells good.”
So I offer him some of my breakfast because otherwise I’d feel guily, but now I just feel hungry and my peaceful breakfast with newspaper indulgence is spoiled.
I walk the dog then return and set up outdoors to work on my laptop.
He asks if I want to bike along the river with him. I’m conflicted because a bike ride sounds great but so does my routine of working outdoors. Either way I’m screwed; I’ll regret that I may have made the wrong choice.
The day rumbles along like this with either interruptions or too many choices. Lord knows there were enough choices before he came along. On the other hand, some of the choices I used to enjoy, like walking with friends, have been reduced because of the time I spend biking and being with him.
Nighttime draws nigh and there’s the usual discussion of what, when and where to eat. He feels like going out. I always feel like eating home. He’s hungry now and wants real food; I’m not and I don’t; I just ate a chunk of dark chocolate, a handful of almonds and a large glass of milk, which you may recognize as my favorite diet tip.
I long for the Monday nights before he came along when the second I got hungry I could stand by the kitchen TV watching “The Bachelor,” while whumping down a salade nicoise.
After dinner, he wants to settle in with cops and robbers or the local news on TV, but I don’t like scary TV. Casey, who used to rest his head on my lap, jumps onto his lap.
A while later, one of us is ready to go to bed; the other isn’t. One of us wants to have sex; the other doesn’t.
He raises the thermostat. After his breathing shifts into slumber, I lower the thermostat.
Tuesday to Friday: It’s the same. (He is retired.) Except Wednesday nights I watch “Survivor” and he sulks.
Weekends aren’t all that different, but after a lifetime of conditioning, they feel different. On Saturday night, he wants to go to dinner and/or a movie. I hate noisy eating and crowded theaters. It’s a perfect night to be cozy at home.
There must be reasons people pair off into living spaces, but I can’t remember what those reasons are.
I suspect I’m missing something here. Do weigh in!
SEE MY NEW POST, ESPECIALLY THE PHOTOS: WHAT FALLEN 9-11 HEROES WOULD HAVE WANTED YOU TO KNOW
By susan fishman orlins Call me Ms Memory, with 2 recent articles:
21 WAYS TO REMEMBER PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING!
11 EASY WAYS TO REMEMBER PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING
But last week I go upstairs before my dentist appointment to change into something cooler. I take off my sweats, pee, and then head downstairs to get going on my bike. Halfway down the stairs, I realize I forgot to put on my pants.
Should I be worried about my memory?
SEE MY LATEST HOME GOES STRONG ARTICLE: 27 Awesome Ways to Dye, Decorate and Display Easter Eggs
By susan fishman orlins There’s a lot to learn during 10 days in New York.
I learned I can go far north or south on dedicated bike lanes. And once a day someone grouses at me for wheeling crosstown on the sidewalk, not that I blame them.
But I do blame the guy who tried to push me off my bike as I pedaled up the sidewalk one night on E. 92nd St.
“What the f*uck was that for?” tumbled out in an involuntary scream, as I regained my balance from the mound of trash bags he’d shoved me into.
“Get the f*ck off the sidewalk,” he shouted back. I responded with the equivalent of what you say to an aggressive toddler, “Use words!” adding, “You didn’t have to assault me!”
I told this to my friend Alice, who shared safety advice from a male poet she’d met in Paris: Never say anything to a strange man that makes him think of his penis. Any dirty word starting with P or F is dangerous. “Don’t tell him to piss off,” the poet had advised.
Adding to my biking concerns my friend Pam asked, “How old is your helmet?” After falling off a bike, her friend became partially paralyzed due to helmet fatigue. Her helmet had been either more than 5 (some say 3) years old or compromised by previous impact or heat exposure.
What I love about NYC is all the worrywart material I pick up from neurotic friends. Over sushi, I asked my pal Mike to borrow a pen. He answered, “I have a silver pen I love, but I’m too afraid of losing it, so I never take it out of my office.”
This very same worrywart imparted advice to never order spicy tuna. He told me it’s likely to be less fresh, since it’s chopped and spiced. “But Google it to be be sure,” he said.
“Even if there’s nothing about stale spicy tuna on Google,” I replied, “that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
Mike added that New York restaurants now get ratings from the health department. He dropped one place because they only got a B. What a dandy opportunity for bribes to the health inspectors; an A could really be a C . . . or worse!
 - sarah needs a job On another note, if I ever need a job I can take a tip from someone named Sarah whose fliers on West 14th Street’s lampposts read “SARAHNEEDSAJOB.COM.”
To boost my readership, I considered doing the same with fliers that say CONFESSIONSOFAWORRYWART.COM.
But then I looked around and, like in a horror movie, where the handsome young man grows fangs before your eyes, everyone coming my way morphed into vampires.
Finally, I learned from a fellow who’d traveled to Antarctica that there is a barber pole, marking the South Pole, and that if I go there and get sick, they have Medivac service.
Note to burglars: I’m home now, so no funny business.
What ideas do you get from your friends to worry about?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Do you have trouble remembering names, etc.? See my article “21 WAYS TO REMEMBER PRACTICALLY ANYTHING.”
By susan fishman orlins
 Ah, Paris Unrelated Announcement: Check out my recent Home Goes Strong article “Brain Food . . . Simple Recipes to Delight Your Palate & Your Mind.”
How do I strike a balance between time spent living and time spent documenting?
For example, when traveling, my anxiety about documenting rises. Should I sit and write what I did yesterday or should I go do something today?
Is it enough to find a park bench in Paris where I can write and, when pausing to think, glance up to watch tots at the edge of a pond floating their wooden sailboats?
If I miss a few days of journal-keeping on a holiday, there accumulates a brain-boggling backlog to record; instead of the satisfying documenting of charming details, I end up making a list: biked in park, roamed vegetable market, roast fish for dinner. Unsatisfying, not the fish, but the list.
 It occurs to me now that relating my adventures on the page are part of the travel experience. And though I’m mainly drawn to elaborating on what I see–giggly Chinese girls in panda hats–in the future I’ll strive for more reflection.
That said, I gave up my daily journal writing years ago, due to generating too many ideas. The more I write, the more ideas spring up, ideas to paint a huge wooden CURB YOUR DOG sign with a stake to drive into my front lawn, ideas for a come as you are potluck party, ideas to volunteer Casey as a therapy dog (which we did until he got anxious and pooped on a rug amid a ring of senior citizens).
And then there was the idea to print out my essays and sell them for a dollar a piece at rush hour. Getting photographed at the Dupont Circle subway station for the front page of the Metro section–with my stack of essays on a bridge table–accompanied the fantasy.
I struggled to narrow down the journal-generated list but that resulted in accomplishing nothing. Plus, working at home, writing essays about myself, I was already hanging out in my own head to excess, so I gave up the journal.
Then there are all the photographs. Yipes. See my upcoming post, Documenting My Life, Part II, The Photographs.
I’d love to hear how you document your life.
Newly posted on Huffington Post, my article “9 Easy Ways to Save Time.”
By susan fishman orlins 
Semi-related announcement: Divorce, Downsizing, Dating & Death . . . One Woman’s Story If you read the article, I’d love to hear your thoughts and advice in comments there.
The quest for happiness is popping up everywhere these days: in books, college courses, blogs and on Oprah. In the same way my oldest daughter, when she was little, shared her life with invisible companions Sibby and Babby, Worry and Quest for Happiness accompany me wherever I go.
Like sibling rivals, they argue constantly, vying for my attention. Happiness tells Worry, “If you’d vamoose, I could have her all to myself.”
“With all the bad things she thinks up, she needs me,” retorts Worry. ”So I’m not about to skedaddle anytime soon.”
Okay guys, quit quarreling, you’re both right. Worry, it’s true you get in Happy’s way, yet I do feel safer knowing you’re there to dwell with me when scary thoughts sprout.
 Nonetheless, I’m realistic enough to know that Worry can’t control everything on my list: world peace, my daughters’ safety, polar bears, homelessness, the budget deficit, sneezing while driving, driving, the Supreme Court, decapitation by ceiling fan, for instance.
Even though Worry follows me wherever I go, I have experienced happiness peaks: being a stockbroker in the
 Seventies alongside guys who made every day feel like a party, living in China back when the whole place looked like a black and white movie, raising kids, campaigning for my ex’s Congressional race, for instance.
Then along came my divorce to prove I was not immune to big setbacks. I spent a year writing nothing except lengthy faxes to my lawyer. Yet I continued to enjoy happiness pockets (funny how “pockets” showed up here compared to “peaks” above), like snuggling on the couch watching “Gilmore Girls” with my girls. And having romances with a smattering of Mr. Wrongs.
Among other joys reaped after my marriage ended, I count friendships I never would have had time to cultivate had I remained married. And having time to write, despite it’s solitary nature, gives me the pleasure of engaging with strangers.
But am I happy enough? Dan Buettner, author of Thrive: Finding Happiness the Blue Zones Way, told Oprah that the happiest people get 8 hours of social interaction a day. Can I amortize all the social interaction from the first half of my life? Does watching Oprah count?
 Last week someone said to me, “If you say you’re happy people just get jealous.”
It’s true. Recently I had to stop following a well-known author on Twitter, because she was always off to do this reading or that book talk and constantly tweeting about the hilarious fun she was having with her micro pigs.
Not that I begrudge anyone else their successes or their pets, nor would I want to stand in anyone’s knock-off Uggs except my own, but still it’s more comforting to pretend nobody’s having a better time than I am.
After finding myself single again, I began searching for Susan Fishman, my free spirited twenty-something self, who did things like crash the star-studded opening of the Barbra Streisand film “Funny Lady” at the Kennedy Center. How different we are/were. She played Scrabble for fun; I make a recording of all ninety-six two-letter words as well as u-less q words and vowel dumps, like qwerty and looie, to memorize during long walks.
I’m a smidge embarrassed to admit it wasn’t until recently that I accepted the idea of what made me happy in the 60’s and 70’s is not what makes me happy now. The last thing I want to do is don a long skirt, and sneak in somewhere (or even pay) to gawk at and be ignored by glitterati.
 My ideal day now consists of putting on elastic waist pants and writing, biking, watching Oprah on Tivo while I broil a pork chop. And watching a Larry David rerun while I take a hot bath. All with Casey by my side.
In 1989, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” won a Grammy for Song of the Year. For me, it’s not one or the other; both Worry and Happy follow me like ducklings imprinting on their Mama Duck.
But is it a sign of age when Content in Mom Jeans has become the new Happy in a Long Skirt?
How do you measure your happiness?
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: Worried about your waistline over the holidays? See some great diet tips in my new Home Goes Strong post: Stock Your Kitchen to Reduce Your Waistline.
When traveling, I experience this pull between what I feel like doing and what I think I ought to be doing. In Beijing, something always draws me to Stone Boat Teahouse in Ritan Park. And on this current trip, an urge to write and reflect attracts me here for hours every day, to sit on the worn wooden deck at the edge of a pond that is ringed by weeping willows.
Strains of Louis Armstrong crooning “Mac the Knife,” Nat King Cole’s smooth “White Christmas,” the soothing sound of Lena Horne’s jazzy “I’ve Got You Under My Skin,” and her warbling “As Time Goes By” play all day long. As for tea, choices include claims to promote energy or sleep and to protect from flu. In any case, one pot with free hot water refills allows me to sit all afternoon, writing, using the Internet connection and, when it gets chilly, wrapping up in a red fleece blanket they keep in a cabinet for this purpose.
It was only a few days into my three-week visit to my daughter, who lives here, that I established this behave-like-I-live-here-too routine. Perhaps a 20-mile bike ride to Beijing University shortly after I arrived in this city, to which I moved for 16 months in 1979 and which I have visited often, allowed me to feel I’d inhaled a full array of the sights, sounds and smells of both new China and, above all, my beloved old Beijing.
I wheeled through quiet narrow lanes, past workmen and babies in grandmothers’ arms and lines of laundry. Then a meandering hutong would open to a bustling, screaming neon area with sidewalks crammed with shoppers, dense as new packs of cigarettes.
Striving to pedal on back streets, I just kept heading north and west and at each intersection made a decision as to which direction would be loveliest. Frequently, though, I paused to consult my map and strategize how to circumvent certain frightening, mega-lane crossings.
I also stopped to snap the occasional photo, like one of a restaurant named Palatable Pizza, which reminded me of the sign I had seen here last year in a spa that read “Slip carefully.” It also made me flash on the menu at lunch earlier in the day whose not very palatable curry potatoes turned out to be sweetened mashed potatoes with rainbow sprinkles on top. Maybe I would have done better with their “bacteria beef” or another dish called “gives birth for the first time for the peasant family to be happy.”
Often, as I bike, I think about things to write, but during the four hours it took to pedal to the university’s campus I had to concentrate solely on keeping myself alive. Over the year since my previous visit, I must have processed in my sleep how to cross Beijing streets, as I’ve become more competent at getting from one side to the other of ring roads that seem wide as football fields. Nonetheless, I still hold my breath in terror every time I have to cross.
It’s five p.m. now in Ritan Park. The blue sky is fading into dusk. Opposite Stone Boat Teahouse, above the pond, five high-flying kites flap toward the heavens like rainbow-colored birds. Soon it will be time to pack up my laptop, put on an extra sweater and head out along the park’s lamplit path until tomorrow morning when I return to Ritan to join mostly retired folks for my pre-breakfast exercises.
Notice to burglars: I’m no longer in Beijing, so don’t try to break into my house. I waited till I returned to post this.
Notice to readers: I’m working on a post about deterring break-ins for Home Goes Strong and welcome your ideas. I already wrote one such post and got so many ideas from the comments and that’s why I’m planning a second article.
My favorite was from a 69-year-old woman who lives alone. If the doorbell rings, she yells, “Larry, when you finish cleaning your gun, get the door.”
By susan fishman orlins Last week, in the writing group I facilitate for homeless people, I suggested a pre-Thanksgiving exercise that got me thinking. Instead of the grade-school-type assignment of writing what you’re thankful for I suggested we come up with some things we are not thankful for and see if we can find bright spots in those, the proverbial silver linings.
I’m not thankful that my children’s parents are divorced, but there are many things I am thankful for as a result of my divorce. Let me say at the outset that I liked being married. The greatest loss was that of our family unit, yet we still go on “family” vacations and gather on holidays when possible.
The three things I miss most about being married are:
1. Reading the Sunday New York Times with my ex. He would quote to me bits of interesting articles, which doubled my reading pleasure, literally.
2. Even though Steve traveled a lot, I never felt lonely. At times I felt disconnected from friends because it takes time to be married, time that I now use–and this is one of the silverest linings–to spend with old friends and cultivate new friendships as well as to visit my mom and talk to her every day.
3. Oops, I can’t remember the third thing. If it comes to me, I’ll let you know. Oh, now I remember, he wrote all the checks and dealt with life’s fine print.
As for a sleeping companion, I stopped caring whether someone with hairy legs was sharing my bed. In fact, at some point I began to believe that sharing my bed with my hairy beagle, Casey, was as pleasurable in it’s own way and in other ways a lot less bother. For example, I can blow my nose loudly in the night and Casey could care less. If only Casey could talk politics.
Sex begs to be addressed, even though my children, who read my blog, might gag. I’ll spare you details, but yes it’s nice to have a built-in partner. On the other hand it’s nice to have one’s own bedtime routine and to once again have had the opportunity to experience feelings of new romance with an–albeit limited–succession of boyfriends.
The morning routine is my treasure. I go to sleep when I please and wake up when I please and I turn on NPR without worrying I’m disturbing someone. And no one disturbs me. Casey simply follows along with my schedule, which often varies from day to day.
After getting dressed, if the weather is 50 degrees or above, I go out to the porch that is off my bedroom and stretch then write, which is what I’m doing now. It’s 12:48 pm and when I finish this, Casey and I will have breakfast and take a short walk. After that, I’ll write some more and then walk with a friend. (In case you missed the diet tip, my tip goes that I eat all day long, so the later I start, the less I eat.)
Often at night I go to dinner, to book club, to a swing dance. Other nights I turn on MSNBC and cook Brussels sprouts and answer mail, sitting through repeat rounds of Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow. I find catching up on mail while listening to jabs at Sarah Palin a pleasant way to spend an evening.
Last night I went ice skating with my ex-so-called boyfriend under a velvety midnight-blue sky with a crisp half moon on the outdoor rink that sits between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Afterwards we went for frozen yogurt and a stroll.
Don’t get me wrong, the skating was as lovely as it sounds but it’s not perfect. Mr. Ex-So-Called was cranky about my fiddling with stuff in the car, putting things in my pockets so I wouldn’t have to take my backpack to the ice and then fiddling again after we skated to put back stuff from my pockets into my backpack, all of which proves, of course, that you don’t have to be married to get on someone’s nerves.
When I was married, I loved when my ex traveled and I had the house to myself after the kids went to sleep. Plus, as I recently wrote in a Huffington Post article about helping kids deal with divorce, the kids and I could have French toast for dinner if we wanted or dinner in the bathtub or French toast for dinner in the bathtub. I can do that every day now, if I choose.
Now, it’s just Casey and me at home. The serenity is ideal for my writing. Ah, but there’s the rub. I’m not complaining, but as a free-lance writer, I have no anchor, no office culture. I regret that, as a competent loner, I’ve built more space around myself than I presently need. It helps that I’ve compiled a list of people I like, long enough to form a small village. So when the house gets too quiet, there’s always someone to bike to if I’m desperate to escape the racket of molecules banging together.
Maybe I could do more to attract the company of a suitable man. Instead, I have chosen a path of comfort in my “mom jeans.” By contrast, some women I know have undergone the cosmetic blade to look sexier and younger. Would I ever pay a surgeon to cut open my face open and staple my head and expose myself to the risk of looking like Popeye? Certainly not to attract a guy who’s too vain to use sunscreen like a man I met some years ago on a bike trip.
In sum, divorce has many silver linings and I have oodles to be thankful for. I hope you won’t allow this upbeat post to detract from my worrywart creds.
What silver linings can you find in things you’re not thankful for?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my latest post on Home Goes Strong: COFFEE TABLE BOOKS . . . FEAST FOR THE EYES & GREAT GIFTS
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: See my latest article on Home Goes Strong, “Renovation Basics, What You Should Know Before You Remodel.”
I was not looking for trouble. As you may know, my riskiest activity is bicycling and I do so with great caution, riding on sidewalks, wearing a helmet, using a Velcro travel mirror on rental bikes, lighting up like I’m Las Vegas when the sun goes down. 
I’ve biked in some scarily trafficky locations for a worrywart, like Beijing, Paris and New York. So the last thing I expect is to have the bejesus scared out of me on a bike trail in Niagara-on-the-Lake (near, but nowhere in sight of, the terrorizing falls) where summer-green vineyards soothe on one side and a lazy blue-green river meanders on the other. On my first day out, I am biking along in a dream, when I emerge from a short stretch of sun-dappled woods (I know all this is a cliché, but it’s precisely my point that this whole place is a cliché of sun-dappledness).
Just as the shade trees part, I spy in front of me a fox. Tightening my hold on the handlebar grips, my legs spin the pedals fast as a pinwheel at sea. The fox continues strolling, like we’re two neighbors passing on the street in the kind of  neighborhoodwhere folks go about their own business and don’t acknowledge one another.
Then, swifter than I could say “Gadzooks, a fox!” this guy from nowhere bicycles up close and says, “There are plenty of foxes around here. They’re just looking for food, nothing to be afraid of.” And I’m thinking “Oh, yeah?” but I say “Whew, that’s a relief.”
Then he adds, “What you need to look out for are coyotes.” The bicycling bearer of impending doom hears me gasp and tries to reassure me, “The coyotes usually won’t hurt you (here, I breathe out, but only a little). . . unless they’re in a pack.” What?! My brain is doing a jig trying to figure out when I run into a pack, am I supposed to pretend I’m a rock or ought I skeedaddle?
Maybe Guy on Bike is perversely trying to take it down a notch when he says, “What you really need to be careful of is all the ticks.” He reports he plucked two off his leg this very morning.
Funny how everything is relative. Without the coyote scare, I could have made a whole day out of dwelling on ticks. As I pedal, I keep glancing down at my legs in search of blood-sucking insects and the Target logo. I mention my plan to bike the vineyards tomorrow, hoping he’ll steer me to some especially scenic areas. “I hear they’re lovely,” I say.
“Yes, they are,” he answers, “but watch out for drunk drivers, they’re everywhere.” He cites wine tours and out-of-towners who indulge to excess. I’m impressed by how many alerts he has managed to cram into such a short span of time, but is this guy for real?
Or is it me? Do I have some kind of anxiety feramones that attract frightening information? I wonder whether other people encounter admonitions like this wherever they go. Maybe they do and just don’t take notice.
When I return to my bed and breakfast, the uber-involved owner sits down and pours us both a glass of wine. I tell her about the doomsayer and that I plan to bike the vineyards tomorrow. “Keep an eye out for chemicals in case they’re spraying the
fields,” she replies.
The next day, before wheeling around to admire the grapevines, I saturate my skin with deet (I know, I get the irony, it’s a tradeoff) and put on my neon yellow windbreaker so drunk drivers will at least see me. On the ride, I sing Christmas carols to keep the coyotes at bay, and I keep an eye out for chemicals.
I return to D.C. with nothing worse than one poison ivy bump. (Come to think of it, I was warned about that too.) It is a relief to be back in a place where the only things I have to worry about are crime and terrorism.
By Susan Fishman Orlins  Today, as I was unlocking my bike in front of Trader Joe’s, I heard the sound of car meets guy on bike, and I looked up to see this guy sliding off the hood of the car that hit him.
To my relief, he picked up his bike and hobbled to the sidewalk. He looked to be around 30 years old, and I got to him just as he was saying to the driver who hit him, “I’m okay.”
Well the mother in me, which is just about all of me, planted myself there and as the driver left to call his insurance company, I mouthed to the biker, “Make sure you get his insurance info and phone number and all.” Then I asked if he had parents he could call for advice.
He nodded yes that he had parents and then . . .and please listen carefully to what he said, especially if you are one of my kids . . . he said, “But I can’t call them, they’d freak out.”
I am bursting to preach my reaction to this. But all I’ll say is: Hey kids, show some confidence in your parents to cope–even if they are worrywarts–when you find yourself in a pickle of any sort, just the way you want them to have confidence in your ability to handle it when they are in a pickle. And parents, vice versa.
If one more preach is more than you can bear, you might want to stop reading at this point. My one more preach is: Make sure you wear bicycle helmets (and ski helmets and seat belts and condoms). The driver today, simply turned his car and drove right into that young man. Which is why I support biking on the sidewalk rather than the street–as long as you can be sure to brake at driveways where someone can come shooting out, not expecting you to be there.
Questions and comments?
By susan fishman orlins While writing a recent article for Huffington Post, “Worrywart’s 8 Stress-Reducing Things to Do in Beijing,” I began thinking about how much planning a worrier does before traveling in order to help assure things go okay. Yet the most fun parts of a trip can result from allowing serendipity to take over, especially in Beijing.
For me, the best way to experience serendipity in Beijing is on a two-wheeler. So the first thing I do after I arrive and drop off my luggage is head with my helmet to a bicycle shop, where I can buy a shiny black Flying Pigeon with lock, bell and basket for around $60.
The thrill of navigating Beijing’s densely-populated streets and sidewalks on a bicylce—the polluted breezes caressing my face—gives me the same sense of accomplishment I get from beating out taxis when I drive in New York.
The bike enables me to go all over the city and stop if I want, say, to snap a picture of couples waltzing at 8:30 on a Saturday morning by the entrance to Longtanhu Park. Or get a shot of a cluster of old men schmoozing with one another by their birdcages, which they’ve hung on tree branches.
 On my bike I can leave the bustling, gazillion-lane main drag to explore narrow hutongs where families live cramped in one-story houses behind courtyard walls. So many of these lanes have been demolished in the “concreting” of this out-of-control country, that pedaling along hutongs makes me feel as though I have recovered a smidgen of old China.
One afternoon on a recent trip to Beijing I biked south in search of a little shop I had heard about. As usual, this outing was more about the destination than the journey. I wove through a labyrinth of back streets I’d never seen, stopping at a tiny vegetable shop to buy for around 30 cents a bag full of cabbage, peppers, bok choy and onion for the stir fry my daughter (who lives in Beijing) and I planned to cook that evening.
I didn’t find the original shop I was seeking and as the evening sky darkened, I felt exhausted and realized I could never find my way back along the little lanes. Yet, the huge streets, wide as city blocks, are terrifying even just to walk across, especially at rush hour (except rush hour has the advantage that you can squish nicely in the middle of the mosh-pit-like crowd as they cross, but that’s hard to do with a bike).
So I approached a man in his pedicab. He had a warm craggy smile that revealed only a few teeth and he looked way older than my 91-year-old mom. While puffing on a cigarette, he said he could accommodate both me and my bike and that it would take a half hour to get back to my hotel.
As soon as we pulled away from the curb, my bike fell off the pedicab, so he secured it with rope, but it fell off again. Therefore, I had to hold tightly onto it as we bumped along, and it stuck out on the sides and at one point he scraped it against a wall, and bicycles and cars and motorbikes and busses were streaming all around us. I was freezing in the 20-something degree night, but my terror distracted me from the cold, especially when the old chap made a left turn with his wobbly pedicab cutting across what seemed like forty lanes of traffic. When at last we got close to the hotel, I asked–or rather pleaded–to disembark.
With an outstretched hand I took a picture of the two of us, arms slung around each other’ s shoulders like we were posing for Facebook after our journey through a traffic-y version of the Arctic tundra. He then wrapped his big padded arms around me for a long hug and said zai jian, which is Mandarin for good-bye but literally it means see you again. I hope so.
By susan fishman orlins Friends often say to me something like, “I can’t believe you’re afraid of driving to New York, but you bicycle everywhere.” I don’t worry as much as you’d think a worrywart might about getting hit by a car while biking (uh-oh will this jinx me?). It helps that I wear my new danger-zone-yellow helmet, ride on sidewalks, brake at driveways, brake on downhills and make eye contact before crossing in front of cars. Except sometimes, when I’m rushing, I scare myself to death by speedily pedaling across the street with only one second left on the traffic light timer and then the light turns red before I get to the other side and I swear I’ll never do it again and then I do it again.
|
RECENT POSTS
- A BOY CALLED SCARLET?
- WRITER + ENCOUNTER WITH STRANGER = STORY
- WORDS WITH FRIENDS
- MARATHON WOMEN
- SMILING STRANGERS
- CATCHING MYSELF IN A DAILY THOUGHT: WHICH UNDERWEAR TO WEAR
- ANXIETY ABOUT GIFTS: GIVING & GETTING
- Twitter Addiction: Advice From a Cognitive Therapist
- IT’S 3 A.M. & THERE’S AN EMAIL: TALE OF A BLOGGING LIFE
- ANTIDOTE TO WORRY: CRUNCHY SALAD
- 10 TWITTER QUESTIONS & 1 TWITTER TALE
- IN SEARCH OF THE ART OF EATING, TECHNIQUE-WISE
- IN SEARCH OF JOLLY GEORGE: OUR FAMILY GLOSSARY
- HOARDING WATER LIKE CHICKEN SOUP
- HALLOWEEN HARDSHIPS
- SAVING EMAILS. SAVING VOICEMAIL. MY MOM’S VOICE.
- STARTING A JOURNAL . . . OR WILL I GET TOO MANY IDEAS?
- OCCUPYDC PHOTO STORY, PART 2, & A SALADE NICOISE RECIPE
- “OCCUPY WALL STREET” ON K STREET, WASHINGTON, D.C.
- HANGING WITH CHAD: MAKING A NEW FRIEND
- THE NAME GAME: HOW DO I SIGN AN EMAIL? SUSAN? SUSIE? SOOZE? SUE? S? s?
- HELP! I’VE FALLEN AND I CAN’T GET UP!
- ANTIDOTE TO WORRY: POPCORN
- NOISY SEASON RANT
- MY OPEN TABS AND WHAT THEY REVEAL
- My Year of Blogging, Lessons Learned
- Yoga-Envy, Bike-Smug & How to Salt Food
- THE “FAMILY VACATION,” AT THE BEACH WITH MY EX, SEASON 1
- GETTING TREED: WHEN THE TREE FELL ON OUR HOUSE, PART I
- #EARTHQUAKALYPSE
|
RECENT COMMENTS