By susan fishman orlins  After the sun slides behind the ash trees in my backyard and I’ve satisfied my hunger, my heart begins to thump with anticipation. It’s finally the time I have set aside for GETTING THINGS DONE.
My daylight hours are for pretending to write: hopping around the Internet, pausing periodically to click on the lopsided W at the bottom of my MacBook Pro screen and compose a few words before returning to my mail, my blog stats, Twitter, the New York Times.
But ah the evening! After a day of disappointing myself with how little I’ve produced, I can finally look forward to the sense of accomplishment I crave. I turn on the news and face a pile of bills. It soothes me to hear pundits drone about this candidate that President, while I tend to the soothing task of typing numbers. After an hour my reward is a reduced pile of papers on the coffee table.
If, however, I tune into “Smash” or “Survivor” or “The Daily Show,” I get through perhaps one envelope every 20 minutes, the way I used to stare at my day planner, a Filofax wannabe, and get nothing done. Sometimes my online banking times out. After an hour, I ask myself, “Why don’t I just watch TV and not pretend I’m getting things done?”
I answer myself, “I’m too restless to just sit still and watch.” (an aside, Grammar Girl at quickanddirtytips.com says it’s okay to break the misguided rule about not splitting infinitives.)
Sometimes I allow the same news hour to loop twice. Then I look at the clock and it’s midnight. If I race upstairs right then, I can be in bed by one, and at exactly this moment I realize I haven’t yet walked the dog. And I’m hungry again.
Oh, and I haven’t made my to-do list for tomorrow, which is actually today. I pull out a new piece of scrap paper and write the things I didn’t complete today as well as the usual: paperwork, email, file, organize house.
 Before anything else, though, now that it’s this late, I become a whirling dervish to get more things done. I raise the TV volume then race to my office to file paid bills in manilla folders. I then distribute around the house the day’s accumulation on the dining room table. I go through my mental bedtime checklist: lock porch doors, take vitamins, fill water bottle, adjust thermostat.
I walk Casey, plop some chicken livers into a small pot and place a piece of bread in the toaster. When I finish eating, it’s after 1 a.m. I limp upstairs because of my bad knee that I really ought to have someone look at.
When I get upstairs, I’ll write on my iCal to get a doctor’s appointment, if I remember this by the time I get to my room. If it were urgent, I’d keep repeating, “knee, knee, knee . . .” till I noted it. But if I forget it in the next 60 seconds, tomorrow I’ll have the same thought.
I run the bath and realize I haven’t stretched. So I scurry to finish my squats and leg raises before the tub overflows. I put my floss and face cream on the tub ledge, so I can perform these nightly events while soaking. Even while bathing I am driven to double task.
I just realized I can save a few seconds by leaving the floss permanently on the tub ledge, which I shall do starting tonight.
After I climb into bed, Casey and I adjust ourselves to the perfect cozy position with his chin on my thigh. At once, I remember that I forgot to charge my phone. Now that I’m upright with phone in hand, it’s hard not to play one last round of Words With Friends.
I might as well pee again in the hope that this will be one of the rare nights I don’t interrupt my slumber to empty my bladder. Casey and I readjust, but it’s never quite as good as it was a few minutes earlier when we first settled in.
I read for seven minutes, not that I’m counting, but that is always how long it takes till my eyelids droop, maybe because I once read that it’s a good sign if you fall asleep within seven minutes. I check the time, 2:14, and set my mental alarm for at least eight hours from now. I close my eyes and imagine myself awakening at 10:14, excited by the prospect of doing a better job of writing. But I’m more excited for the evening, when I can count on myself to get things done.
How do you manage to get things done? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!
See my Life Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins Have I been spending too much time while I’m alive worrying about what will become of my body after I die? I would like my daughters to chime in on this, but they avoid the topic of my ashes as though it were pink slime.
The idea of spending eternity in a meadow appeals to me:
“Mockingbird Hill,” a bluebirds’ trill. A child’s drawing of grass with white cloud puffs, a smiling Mr. Sun, medleys of rainbow-colored posies. A rainbow.
I used to think I wanted my body preserved above ground. My brain tells me it doesn’t matter what happens to my body after I die. But the below ground and other alternatives give me the willies.
My father chose airtight coffins for his parents and for himself. Is keeping the worms out any better than keeping the air out?
My parents are buried in my grandparents’ family cemetery plot in an unattractive industrial neighborhood of Philadelphia. I gave up my spot, thinking I’d rather end up somewhere near my daughters. Now, though, regrets about being homeless in the afterlife seep into my thoughts. After all, my daughters may have families of their own to be with on “the other side,” so maybe I should have taken a sure thing with my family of origin.
Will my daughters want to visit me after I die? It’s unlikely that all three will live in the same city. So cremation, as unpleasant as that  sounds, seems like a good plan for sharing my remains. They could divide the ashes and each have part of me in a locket.
Each of my girls could also keep some of me in a gorgeous mosaic urn, personalized with photos under glass beads, like the ones my friend Sybil Sage makes for ashes of your cat or your mother.
I doubt they will want to eat my remains the way, as you may recall, a former Mr. Wrong swallows a pinch of his late father whenever he feels blue.
Though I consider myself a secular Jew, I consulted askmoses.com about Jewish law regarding cremation. Moses takes a hard line:
Jewish law requires no mourning for the cremated. Shivah is not observed and Kaddish is not recited for them. Those who are cremated are considered by tradition to have abandoned, unalterably, all of Jewish law and, therefore, to have surrendered their rights to posthumous honor.
The footnote, however, offers hope for flexibility:
1. This is the prevailing custom. Please consult with your Rabbi to see if this is also your custom and/or if there is reason to make an exception.
This is one of the things I like about being Jewish: You can always find an interpretation of Jewish law to suit your needs.
What ideas do you have for where to go and how to be near loved ones after you die? Do you care?
See my posts on Life (as it were) Goes Strong:
By susan fishman orlins
Recently, while sipping breakfast coffee, I commented on a New York Times article about, among other things, connecting with friends,“The Flight From Conversation” by MIT professor Sherry Tunkle. Her first paragraph goes like this:
“We live in a technological universe in which we are always communicating. And yet we have sacrificed conversation for mere connection.”
Though I am guilty of sacrificing conversation for mere email connection, I too lament the flight from conversation. I commented that being at my laptop feeds the pleasure center of my brain, as any addictive substance would. After I have been out for the day, my heart races to return home and check my email.
I am not part of the walk-and-text culture. I’m barely part of the text culture. As a writer, who lives alone, it’s my laptop that has become one of my best friends.
I still talk on the iPhone, mostly to dear ones who live afar. Indeed, those iPhone convos are more satisfying and memorable than email.
All of this makes me think of my friend, Louisa, who—like me—lives alone; she makes it a point to call at least one person every day.
Louisa saw my comment in on the New York Times Website and emailed me her system for keeping in touch. Fascinated by how effective and detailed her method is, I want to share it with you:
My rule is I have to speak on the phone to at least one non-family-member friend every day. If a friend calls me and I answer the phone, that works.
A few resolutions of the gray areas:
(1) Speaking into someone’s voice mail fulfills the requirement. However, I allow voice mail messages for no more than three days a week.
(2) When outside the US or Canada, I’m excused.
(3) Colleagues count as friends only if I feel close to them and they have voluntarily given me their cell phone numbers. I have four people in that set.
(4) If I do more than one call a day I can carry over the second call for the next day’s credit, but I can do a carryover no more than once a week.
Call me crazy but it works. One of the best lifestyle decisions I’ve ever made.
On a related note, one evening I was at the symphony by myself and the woman next to me, another solo type, noticed I was on the iPhone all the time. She too said that devices are killing the art of conversing in public. I wanted to say that I wasn’t so bad because I was Googling bits of classical music trivia I wanted to know (Is Renee Fleming older than I? What operas did Handel write?), rather than typing emoticons to disembodied friends. But is that really better than texting or Facebooking? No.
Louisa’s method of connecting appeals to me not only for its quirkiness, but also for the human contact it provides; I am a pack animal, who—in addition to living alone—works alone. Still, I worry about keeping up with everyone I care about, a virtual impossibility without email.
 My own rules for human contact are similar to Louisa’s, except I try to get together with someone in person each day: for a walk, dinner, therapy.
Sometimes I become overwhelmed with all those I’d like to remain in touch with; a mental picture emerges of my arms filled with more friends than I can hold, some spilling over, as if I were trying to carry more apples than the skirt of my apron could hold. When I have nothing scheduled, I walk with a friend via cell phone. (Does anyone talk on the phone without doing something else at the same time?)
There are those who are content with a handful of close friends. But I’m greedy. I hoard confidants, the way I’ve saved every letter I’ve ever received, except once when I was cleaning a closet more than a dozen moves ago and threw away armfuls of mail, which I regret.
I reflect on the dear friends I have accumulated since my divorce. Were I still married, I never would have had time to cultivate those friendships. Take Louisa, for example. We met biking on a Backroads trip, something I started doing after dissolving my nuptial vows.
How do you manage to keep in touch? Anyone out there who single tasks while talking on the phone?
Check out my articles on Home Goes Strong:
By susan fishman orlins
Dick Clark and “American Bandstand” played a big role in my early years. After the Ricky Nelson crush, I lost my heart to another teen idol. Living in Philadelphia had the advantage that it was the home of “American Bandstand,” the first reality TV show; adolescents who jitterbugged after school on Bandstand became as famous as movie stars.
My girlfriend Bev and I formed our own two-member fan club for James Vincent Peatross, a Bandstand regular and frequent dance contest winner. On the backs of two index cards, intended to spend eternity in hidden compartments of our wallets, I typed the club motto:
We love you Jimmers Vincers and always will until you hear otherwise from a reliable source.
Bev, whose code name was Vincers, was vice president and I, Jimmers, was president; the two of us were the world’s only reliable sources.
Sometimes after school Bev and I took the elevated train to West Philly, where Bandstand was broadcast. On the way we played a game of fake coughing so the other riders would think we had TB. But the second we stepped out of the railcar onto platform and the lineup of dancers across the street came into view, we transformed from giggling little girls into lovesick teenagers.
One afternoon we mustered up enough courage to ask Jimmy for his autograph before he entered the studio. He withdrew a toothmarked yellow pencil from his jacket pocket. Mesmerized, I studied his long, slender fingers, nails chewed down to the moons, as he wrote in my composition book, “Dear Susan, May I have the next dance? Yours always, Jimmy Peatross.”
That’s when I realized how much power I had to make things happen in my life.
P.S. Jimmy too has died, January 31, 2011.
By susan fishman orlins
With the kerfuffle about Ann Romney having been a stay-at-home mom, I thought I would chime in about stay-at-home moms.
There is no question that it is a luxury to have even had the choice. When my first daughter was born, I was a stockbroker for Morgan Stanley, making more money than my lawyer husband. I began working at home for a few months, keeping my options open, even as I felt in my gut that I just wanted to stay home with my baby.
My husband thought I should continue working. It wasn’t about the money and—funny-peculiar enough—I don’t recall discussing with him why he thought I should continue working.
Was it because my having a big job elevated him in other people’s eyes? That’s what happened with a boyfriend I had after divorcing that husband. Boyfriend Daniel took me to meet his elderly uncle, with whom he was very close.
“What should I say you do?” Mr. Daniel Wrong asked me.
Really? I was doing what I do now, writing, but at that time my free-lance articles appeared sporadically in print, unlike now, when they appear on the Internet three days a week (on my blog and on Home Goes Strong).
He was embarrassed that I did not have a more impressive label than free-lance-writer-who-publishes-occasionally.
Back to stay-at-home Sue. Half-heartedly, I pondered the question of going back to the office. The stay-home deal got sealed one day when I received a visit from a friend, Rita.
“You can always go back to work if you want after your kids start school,” said Rita. “But you will never get these early years back again.”
Of course I’m worried that someone will read that and feel bad, someone who doesn’t have the choice I had. Rita’s words were obvious, but hearing them from her made my choice clear.
That said, plenty of people who did have the choice were happier working than sorting socks and playing Happy Happy Hippo all day.
I stayed home for myself, not for my kids, though in later years they said they were glad I had been there. I know adults who feel the same way about the nannies who raised them.
The best reason I could think of to go back to work was for cocktail parties. When asked what I did, I would be able to respond with something other than the conversation stopper, “I’m a mom.”
Just like, in my opinion, the best thing about going to a name-brand college or university is that, for the rest of your life, when people ask, you get to say “I went to Name Brand.” It’s a short cut way of saying “I’m smart.” You don’t have to work at letting people know.
Similarly, a stay-at-home mom is assumed [fill-in-the-blank] till proven interesting.
I’d love you to share your thoughts and experiences.
Check out some of my Life Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins  The To Do List Dear Susan,
I should be working now but instead I’m writing to you. You see, I’m a procrastinator. Please help me stop putting things off!
Signed,
Puttingthingsoff in Peoria
Dear PiP,
I’m so glad you asked. I am great at procrastination. Here is one thing I do to procrastinate:
I check Twitter to see if anyone retweeted my tweets and who new is following me. Finally I consulted my go-to cognitive therapist for help with the Twitter addiction. I had to go cold turkey to give up reading my tweeps’ tweets.
The problem with not procrastinating is that whenever I do plunge into a project, it creates even more work. *Take for instance the rare closet go-through. I end up with a pile to give away, a pile for alterations and the dreaded maybe pile, all of which creates more things to put off than I started with.
On a positive note, when it comes to tasks like answering mail, if you wait long enough, they no longer require action.
I thought it might be useful to see what others have said about procrastination.
- “The sooner I fall behind, the more time I have to catch up.” ~Author Unknown
- “If it weren’t for the last minute, I wouldn’t get anything done.” ~Author Unknown
- *”Every duty which is bidden to wait returns with seven fresh duties at its back.” ~Charles Kingsley
- “One of the greatest labor-saving inventions of today is tomorrow.” ~Vincent T. Foss
- “There’s nothing to match curling up with a good book when there’s a repair job to be done around the house.” ~Joe Ryan
- “You know you are getting old when it takes too much effort to procrastinate.” ~Author Unknown
- “I do my work at the same time each day – the last minute.” ~Author Unknown
- “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” ~Mark Twain
Now, if you still don’t want to procrastinate, here are some suggestions:
- Prioritize a to do list. And then, try not to do what I do, which is to perform the easy, non-urgent tasks, so I can get the thrill of crossing them off the list.
- Make a list of distractions, and then consult the distraction list to reward yourself for getting something done.
- Decide how often you will allow yourself to receive a distraction reward from the above list; use a timer.
- Try for peer pressure: Find a procrastinating buddy and check in with each other at the end of the day to see how you did.
- Break tasks into smaller, more easily doable, events.
- Eat some chocolate while you work to make it more fun.
- Give yourself an alternative task that needs to be done and choose: I can either do my work to meet my deadline or I can organize my closet. At least you may get an organized closet out of this arrangement, though with the above *caveat.
- Finally, just because something ought to be done, doesn’t mean you have to do it. Will you be happier embracing your Procrastinator and continuing along the slacker path?
- My new Home Goes Strong post may help: How to Reduce Stress at Home.
Check out some of my other articles:
By susan fishman orlins Lately I’ve noticed how logical I’ve become. Two cases in point:
1. When saying good-bye to someone who is embarking on travel, I no longer say, “Have a safe trip.” That raises the spectre of an unsafe trip. So lately I say, “Have a great trip,” applying the subset logic that if it’s a great trip, it will also be a safe trip. Of course when I say it, what I’m thinking is Have a safe trip.
2. I have these velour jogging pants that turned out to be too short from the day I bought them several years ago. Even when my weight remains unchanged, I notice that my clothes seem to shrink over the years. In the case of the velour pants, however, suddenly this season, when I put them on, the length was perfect. Yay! Then I realized why: I’ve shrunk, the way we do by the time we are in our sixties.
It reminds me of a party game my parents once played with their friends. They asked everyone how tall they were and then measured each guest. You can guess what happened. If interested, you can read more about this as well as about my parents’ other party games.
I am happy my mind is still logical enough to solve the mystery of why the pants fit. Old pants finally fitting is one very good thing about being 66.
Other good things about being 66:
15% senior discount on Amtrak.
Medicare.
Naps. And even if you don’t nap, the house is quiet enough to nap if you want to.
No more PMS.
Fewer years remaining to endure global warming, income inequality, religious fanaticism, violent crime, earthquakes, terrorism, newly discovered deadly micro-pollutants, politicians (stretching the truth here, as most of my entertainment derives from politicians), safe trip worries, pants that don’t fit; in short, fewer years of worry remain.
What are your favorite things about getting older?
Check out my recent Home Goes Strong articles:
*Collection of Favorite Vegetarian and Vegan Recipes
*Living Together: Men Speak Out With Advice About Sex and More
*Living Together: Relationship Tips
*Easy Meditation
*Tapas and Crostini Recipes
*Conversation Starters
By susan fishman orlins Early in our relationship, on warm Friday evenings, my boyfriend Steve (who later became my husband) and I frequently squished onto a Long Island Railroad car to spend summer weekends with his parents. On one such trip a muffled siren began to blare. I turned to Steve and shouted, “Sounds like someone’s portable smoke alarm has gone off.”
His incredulous look made clear he found the suggestion preposterous that anyone besides me had packed a travel smoke alarm. From then on I always removed the alarm’s batteries before placing it in my wheelie bag.
Check out some of my recent Home Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins  The Age of Aquarius Here is some news I haven’t shared with you yet: I’m writing a book!
I’ll give you a moment to digest what it might be like for a worrywart to write a memoir.
Will this offend? Is that too racy? What will my three 20-something daughters think? Will this come back to haunt me? Is that too boring? Too long? Too short?
For example, I enlisted a former Mr. Wrong to opine on a couple of lines: Here is my email to Mr. W:
Hi W. I’d love your thoughts on this excerpt from a chapter about my Jamaican boyfriend of 40 years ago. Would this be offensive to non-Jews? Here it is:
“Susan,” my father said, sounding graver than I had ever heard him. “You’re going to have to choose him or us. We want what’s best for you, and seeing this boy can only hurt you. You think about it and we’ll call you tomorrow.”
There was nothing to think about. Did my father actually think I would give up my boyfriend just because he was black? Anyway, Dad had to have been bluffing; Jewish parents did not disown their kids–they didn’t even send them away to boarding school.
W replied that he thought it was good, which inspired me to hit him up again for his opinion:
W, One more? A little background–in the story I make it clear that Chev and I had a relationship before we jumped into the sack together. Let me know what you think of this excerpt (and let me know if you no longer want to be my compass.):
After we hung up, the phone rang again.. It was my father; he got right to the point.
“Did you have sex with him?”
“Yes.”
“When did you begin having sex with him?”
“On the first date,” I answered, barely audibly, surprising myself with my boldness at having answered at all. It had not actually been a date. Chev and I had been playing tennis together nearly every day for months; on many days we just hung out at the courts for hours. One afternoon we walked to my house for a drink. The next thing I knew we were in my bed, his bony brown hips pressed into my soft white belly.
To this Mr. W replied that the last line reads like a cheap porn novel.
I worried on a couple of counts. Regarding the question in the first email about Jewish parents and boarding schools, the one Mr. W liked, I worried because, like me, Mr. W was Jewish and I realized I needed a couple of Gentiles to weigh in. As for the porn, I needed a focus group for that too. So I sent a group email with the same passages to a handful of friends:
If you have a chance, I’d love your comments. How does this sound to you? Do I sound slutty? Does the last line sound like cheap porn?
Here are a few of their responses:
Not slutty. Jackie
It doesn’t sound slutty. But … do you care if your daughters read this? I’m such a prude… The boarding school line is very funny to us non-Jews. Caren
I find myself trying to figure out how his hips were pressed into your belly. He would seem to have been badly off-center! Bunny
Whew, glad this doesn’t sound slutty to my friends, who were also single during that little window of time after the sexual revolution began and before anyone had heard of AIDS. Oh dear, now it occurs to me that I need a focus group of twenty-somethings. And do I need to clarify that Chev and I were not badly off-center, but that Chev was terribly narrow?
There is the larger picture of how much a writer is entitled to reveal about others, how much one owns one’s own story. Authors expose all kinds of things about parents, ex-husbands and paramours. In her riveting tell-all memoir, At Home in the World, about her affair with J. D. Salinger when she was 19 and Salinger was 53, Joyce Maynard reveals embarrassing details about all three.
Maynard explains in her book’s introduction, “I had always believed I owed [Jerry Salinger] my never-ending silence, loyalty and protection. It came to me as a new thought that the girl he had invited into his life . . . deserved certain things, too.”
As for the “shameful and embarrassing” things she reveals about herself Maynard writes, “I wanted to tell the story of a real woman with all her flaws. I hoped by doing that, others might feel less ashamed of their own unmentionable failings and secrets.”
Joyce Maynard is not worried. In my book, every line gives me something to worry about.
In the comments below, I welcome you to share your thoughts on the Jewish and porn questions, as well as on the kinds of things authors reveal in their memoirs.
Check out some of my Home Goes Strong relationship articles:
*Living Together: Men Speak Out With Advice About Sex and More
*Living Together: Relationship Tips
*Should Couples Have Separate Bedrooms? Readers Responses May Surprise You
Other recent articles:
*The Primal Urge to Eat Bacon: Ways to Enjoy
*Bike Riding Tips for Travel, Safety, Gear, Family Fun and More!
By susan fishman orlins 
You may already know about my infatuation with Gretchen Rubin, who applies her genius to the study of happiness.
It would take a village for me to accomplish all that Gretchen does. In addition to writing books and a Page-a-Day Calendar, she maintains The Happiness Project blog and manages her Facebook Fan page, where she asks things like what is your favorite number and 213 people reply.
On my Facebook page I ask things like “How do you place toilet paper in the holder? With the paper coming from the top or bottom?” and two people reply.
Gretchen also created The Happiness Project Toolbox with a mind-boggling assortment of tasks to help you become happier: resolutions, group resolutions, one-sentence journal (I tried this one), and secrets of adulthood, to name a few; and then these tools have tools.
“If you wake up feeling yucky . . .” she has a solution. How does she do all this?
Moreover, you can email Gretchen to get all kinds of things, such as Gretchen’s personal Resolutions Chart for inspiration. She has her own YouTube channel! I could go on, but I’ll mention just one more thing, the daily Moment of Happiness email I receive from Gretchen.
Here is today’s:
“Human felicity is produced not so much by great pieces of good fortune that seldom happen, as by little advantages that occur every day.”
— Benjamin Franklin
*If you enjoy these emails, please forward one to a friend.
You see that asterisk at the bottom? She knows how to promote herself in a way that makes you admire her. By contrast, at the bottom of each of my blog posts, I clock you in the head with an arms-length list of links to articles I’ve written. At times, I copy Gretchen’s idea of saying “It’s Share With a Friend Day!” imploring my readers to share the link to my blog with friends.
By the way, Gretchen is no lightweight, having been, among other things, Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Law Journal and having clerked on the Supreme Court for Sandra Day O’Connor. She pursues happiness with an intelligence and gusto that must also have led to her success in previous careers.
For Gretchen, every Wednesday is tip day; copycatting, I started having tip days, which occur randomly, when I think of it. Mine of course are worry tips, which are close cousins to happy tips. If you eliminate worry, you’ll be happier, right?
So today I am combining the best of Happiness guru Gretchen Rubin: Tip Day along with a Moment of—in this case—Worry . . .
First a smidge of background. I generally do not wake up feeling yucky. My bedroom has sunlight and my Casey, snoozing in a sprawl beside me, gives me something to smile about. But then, lest I become too jolly, I (sometimes) remind myself of all that could go wrong. (I added “sometimes,” because if I tell you that I always do this,my brain will believe it and become set to do this kind of worry. Worry Tip #1: Avoid brain-setting.) Recently I wrote a piece called Easy Meditation, in which I shared a method I heard about on NPR. The author talked about allowing thoughts to pass through your mind like clouds. So now, when I awake–or any time bad, mad, sad things visit my thoughts–I try to allow them to come and go like passing clouds. (Tip #2)
Two More Worry Tips:
- Take a Moment of Worry each morning and then tell yourself to be done for the day.
- Or, and I may have mentioned this before, make an appointment with yourself to worry later, say at six o’clock in the evening. When the assigned time arrives, you may not feel like worrying at all!
How do you manage your worry?
And now for what Gretchen would call Shameless Self Promotion:
Did I mention that today is Share With a Friend Day (Facebook, Twitter, email, LinkedIn, Pinterest)?
Check out my lastest Home Goes Strong article, Roasted Vegetables.
I had the privilege of interviewing Gretchen, who shared lots of Happiness tips:
*Happy Home, Part 1: How To Be Happier At Home, A Conversation With Happiness Project Expert Gretchen Rubin
*21 Ways To Remember Practically Everything!
*How Couples Resolve The Thermostat Wars & Other Domestic Battles
*Aphrodisiac Foods & 7 Easy, Delicious Recipes To Give Your Libido A Boost
*Brain Food . . . 5 Delicious, Easy Recipes
- Author’s note: It would probably take the rest of the day to figure out why there is formatting glitch on this page. I’d like it to be perfect, but if you’ll allow me one more tip–which I learned when my ex ran for Congress–it’s a good idea to drop the last 15% of perfection. I’ve noticed that letting go of perfection is a habit of highly successful, less-stressed individuals.
By susan fishman orlins I have these two nice quilted throw pillows on my bed; they used to be all smooth, marred only by a dot of black ink from when I dropped a pen on one. Then I washed the covers. They came out spanking white, but wrinkly.
 Throw pillows with freshly-washed quilted covers The pillows now remind me of what I’d encounter at a really clean boarding house, like the one I stayed at when I was in my twenties and visited Saratoga Springs, where I went to bet $10 and hang out with my buddy, a journalist, who wrote about horse racing with such success that his name became a verb.
I like the boarding house image of clean, unpretentious and used. Now that my quilted pillows are freshly-washed and well-worn looking, I favor them even more than when they were new and smooth.
I have a record of attraction to worn things. Before Kindle, back when I read paperback books, they appealed to me far more after I roughed them up with: dog-ears, notes in the margins and swollen pages from the times I read them in my hot tub.
Inanimate objects that show indications of wear represent history and take on lifelike dimensions. Regarding my books, most volumes reside on my shelves with spines unbroken. Because I am a slow reader, I have trouble getting into a story and often abandon a novel early on. Thus, those ragged books I’ve completed stand like trophies in my den.
Last year I wrote about my disdain for new clothes, so stiff and unfamiliar. And how relieved I feel when a new car gets its first ding, because I no longer need to worry about it getting its first ding.
People, too, acquire patina, don’t they? I apply my appreciation of patina to my face, especially to the crinkles around my eyes that signal how much I like to laugh. As for my jowls and everything else, well, I’m working on patina appreciation.
And take the case of those with whom you have or seek romantic relationships. My first boyfriend after my divorce was a journalist with crooked teeth, who could make good omelettes. After he and I parted, I was always on the lookout for someone new with crooked teeth (as well as a gift for scrambling eggs).
For as long as I can remember I’ve been attracted to what others might call imperfections, like chipped teeth and scars (case in point Howard Goldman, kindergarten, Samuel Gompers Elementary School, 1950).
And the relationships themselves acquire a worn aspect. When I first met my second ex, Steve, he didn’t like to go out to restaurants as much as I did. He preferred to stay home and read the paper. I barely read the paper.
Over the years with Steve, the paper became like a tantalizing confection, with which I now reward myself after a hard day of work. And I disdain restaurants. Funny thing is, though Steve still reads the newspaper, he seems to go out all the time.
What, if any, of my patina patter rings a bell with you?
Check out my recent Home Goes Strong articles:
*Best Chocolate: Websites, Recipes, Quotes
*Easy Meditation
*Tapas and Crostini Recipes
*Conversation Starters
*Best Banana Cake Recipe Ever! Chocolate Chips Optional
*Superbowl Party And Potluck Recipes And Ideas
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 My New Year’s resolution is to learn how to play Angry Birds.
But an essay in the New York Times suggests that daydreaming increases creativity. Daydreaming requires time, time I dump into playing Words With Friends.
Words With Friends, though, is more than just words. It’s confirmation that my sister, my nieces, my colleague, my daughters and the guy whose name I got from the hardware store to hang my daughter’s curtains are out there, connected to me. I also play Words With Friends with a friend.
Playing WWF helps make me patient in checkout lines and waiting rooms. Deep in the night before going to sleep, I go into such hyper-focus that I wouldn’t notice if a squirrel were in the house, especially if I were struggling–as I am now–to find a 7-letter word with the letters R-T-S-A-Blank-S-D-P that does not end in S.
This is not conducive to sleep.
My fellow Life Goes Strong blogger Irene Levine (Don’t you love names that rhyme? I had a history teacher named Mr. Prusan and the boy who sat next to me fantasized I would marry Mr. P and become Susan Prusan) . . . Irene, whom I’ve never met, wrote about her addiction to Words With Friends. So I commented “Irene, I want to play with you. I’m on my way to addiction . . . .”
We started playing and because she wrote about getting up in the night and checking her games. I worried I would do that too; a worrywart worries about catching other people’s worries.
Irene wrote another post, about a couple meeting on Words With Friends and getting married; she mentioned me in that post, pointing out, “You can learn a lot about someone’s character from playing together. You get a glimpse of their intellect, reliability, tenacity, sociability — and sleeping habits. Susan, like me, is a night owl.”
Maybe if I spent less time playing Words With Friends I would have daydreamed my way into enough creativity to say something similarly insightful.
In yet another article, Irene wrote how a stranger playing Words With Friends and chatting with her opponent saved the life of a man halfway around the world.
It made me want to play with a stranger, so I signed up for a random opponent. I got username zyngawf_23083873. We just started our game, but I sent a message to say “Hi zyng. Where r u from?” I’m hoping for a story to emerge from our relationship and if it does I’ll definitely let you know.
Meanwhile, I’m rethinking my New Year’s resolution. I still want to learn Angry Birds but I resolve to play it only after I daydream.
What is your New Year’s Resolution? And what have you learned about people by playing Words With Friends? Saved any lives? Met any spouses?
See my recent Home Goes Strong articles:
By susan fishman orlins  Marathon women a decade hence On an ordinary afternoon in 1998, Eliza, my sixteen-year-old daughter, plopped her backpack at my feet, waved a brochure so close it grazed my nose and declared, “I’m signing up for the Marine Corps Marathon. I’ll be running with a group that raises money for AIDS and trains Sunday mornings at seven.”
“Seven a.m. – are you crazy?” Then, pausing for less time than it takes to say “PowerBar,” I added, “Tell you what, I’ll sign up with you.” It was as though, for just this microsecond, I had morphed into Jane Fonda.
Now alone, I began to confront different questions. Was I doing this for myself or for Eliza? Or to bolster my athletic image with friends and acquaintances? Was I willing to risk injury and, in turn, all the skiing and swing dancing that filled the void left by my divorce? Wasn’t there a simpler bonding opportunity with Eliza? And an easier way to meet guys? Would I ever find a sports bra that worked? And why would I give up six months of Sunday mornings to arrive at my weekly training sessions earlier than the newspaper arrived on my doorstep? Surely not because running 26.2 miles with thousands of other Type A’s had always been my dream. More likely, my interest could have been called morbid curiosity.
Nonetheless, I attended an orientation meeting with Eliza where we exchanged motives with other hopefuls. A trim secretary, seated beside me, told the group, “My best friend is dying from AIDS. He can’t run, so I’m going to do it for him.” Ashamed of my egocentric motivation, I sheepishly introduced myself and expressed my desire to regain a sense of focus in my life. When Eliza announced that she looked forward to training with her mom and raising money for an AIDS clinic, I felt exonerated.
At our first weekly training session, our leaders assigned partners and placed us in pace groups. These were the people with whom we would train as well as run the actual marathon. Eliza’s tight-abs pack lined up near the front; despite our neon CoolMax costumes, my partner, Rayford, and I found ourselves in the rear among the less hurried.
In the weeks that followed, the pain of placing one foot in front of the other was eased, ironically, by Rayford’s sagas of his partner’s death from AIDS and living with his own HIV. After we got through a twelve-mile Sunday run by exchanging the ordeals of Rayford’s coming out and the final year of my marriage, we agreed on “single in the seventies” as our topic for the upcoming fourteen-mile run.
If I were still married, I would have bristled at the idea of striding the equivalent of halfway from Washington to Baltimore (or if you compute all the training miles, round trip to Scarsdale). Isn’t it striking how a major life change, like divorce, can transform you into the opposite of who you thought you were? Yet, dim recollections suggested that the marathoner was who I originally was. It seemed that marriage had molded me, temporarily, into someone less adventuresome.
Sometimes I imagined Eliza and myself as two intersecting rings. I worried I was treading on her exclusive territory but I asked anyway, “Would you mind if I try to keep up with your group on next week’s six-mile maintenance run? It might be my only chance to jog with you
 What our cupcakes did not look like. before the distance increases.”
Even before she answered, her response was evident in her bright eyes, lit up the way they did on the trail when her group–in their homestretch–passed me still huffing my way to the halfway mark, and her fellow speed-mates cheered, “Go, Liza’s mom.”
As Eliza and I planned a party for the fundraising component of our marathon, she asked, “Mom, how can I take credit for half the donations? They’ll be mostly from your friends.” I told her that so many of my friends were the parents of her friends and that we were in this together – a partnership. We not only jointly crafted invitations and made cupcakes, but we also explained to our guests what raising money for drug therapies that offered hope to people with HIV/AIDS meant to us. I reminded Eliza that, without her, this expansion of my world would never have occurred.
The training distances mounted, I began to believe I could actually make it to the finish line. New queries surfaced. Would Eliza wait on marathon day until I completed the course? Wasn’t it backward – shouldn’t the mother be the one to soak up her little girl’s I-did-it grin as she crossed the finish line? Or was this one of those role reversals dealt to us by the passing years? On my birthday, Eliza hauled out a cake she had baked and shouted, “Yay!” when I extinguished all the candles in one blow.
And on marathon day, there I was sailing by on my merry-go-round as I cried, “Look at me!” Eliza jumped and waved and cheered my victory – hers, mine, ours.
What have you plunged into with unexpectedly satisfying results?
EXCITING NEWS: Coming soon my new book Confessions of a Worrywart: Being a Mom, Having a Mom
Check out my latest Home Goes Strong articles:
*NEW YORK FISH MARKET: ORDER FABULOUS SEAFOOD ONLINE
*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 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 In my post My Year of Blogging, I noted that writing personal essays involves catching yourself in the act of thinking and then exposing and exploring it on the page.
Here’s something I do every single day, and it was not until this morning that I caught it in my consciousness as something to write about.
I have a drawer stacked with undies of assorted stripes, dots and colors. More than once I’ve pondered how it would save time if all my clothes were black and even all the same, so I would never have to decide what to wear from the meager, tattered wardrobe of one who detests shopping.
I have more variety in my undies than I do in my closet, so each day, I have to figure out which underpants to wear. (Full disclosure: this photo is not me.)
When going out, I feel more attractive in black undergarments; other times, I’m after something more upbeat in a pantie.
On a regular day–during which my interaction with life on this planet consists of a game of catch with Casey, which will last for one throw, as he hasn’t yet got the hang of giving back–I give deeper thought to which underpants to wear.
My choice depends on my mood. If I’m afraid of feeling glum, I’ll wear one of my faves, such as the green striped ones my fashion-plate daughter once complimented.
The ones with light gray stripes would also cheer me up without making me feel clownish, the way the ones with little orange and green dots would. What ever possessed me to buy these dotted ones? They looked so cheery on the table at The Gap.
The thing about the light gray striped ones, though, is that I really, really like them, so I avoid them the way I avoid all my favorite things. I wear them mainly when I’m with my kids. They make me happy and they also seem cool; I remember my daughters wearing similar patterns when they were younger.
Then there are the gray underpants. Very sporty. Good for all occasions, except that if my calendar is blank with nothing special to look forward to, I wouldn’t want to wear gray, which could further promote a gray outlook. That said, if I awaken feeling a bit glum, I don’t want happy underwear, nor do I like a sunny day when I’m blue; in both cases, the contrast is too great. Those are the days to wear mood-neutral pale blue.
My writing mentor Phillip Lopate always told me “Think against yourself.” So here goes: What if I were to wear the goofy dotted unders on a dinner date? I’m not expecting to get seduced, but still.
Why do we wear attractive underwear if no one is going to see it?
The question of why I put on earrings during a day when my only plan is a game of catch with Casey is more easily answered. I wear earrings and a dab of makeup every day, because I still have to pass by a mirror and I prefer to not be aghast upon a glimpse of my reflection. I simply feel better if I think I look okay.
Maybe the whole notion of wearing happier underwear is akin to the idea that if you smile, even if you don’t feel smiley, it will help to make you feel more smiley. Or maybe I just cooked that up.
And maybe that’s the point. I cook up a notion and then I live by it and that seems to be a dandy plan.
What quirky things like pondering which underwear to wear do you do, or maybe this isn’t quirky at all? Let me know!
Heartfelt thanks to all who have read my posts in 2011. I wish you happiness and peace in the new year!
See some of my Home Goes Strong articles, which may trigger some New Year’s Resolutions:
By susan fishman orlins ‘Tis the season to obsess . . . about gifts. For someone like me, who gets overwhelmed by choices, and–even when the options are narrowed to two–can’t decide, this can be a hard time of year.
So I resort to creative gift-giving, like ice cream sodas for the third night of Hanukkah. Making placemats for a homeless shelter for the fourth night. And saving polar bears for the fifth.
I guess that’s why so many Jewish kids envy their friends who celebrate Christmas.
I think I’ve passed along to my kids the notion of non-traditional gift-giving.
For her birthday, Christmas day, my oldest daughter Eliza requested that I find and supervise someone to hang the curtains and rods she bought two months ago for the apartment she has lived in for two years.
Presents on the “day of” are not expected in our endlessly mobile, sometimes indecisive, family.
Our Christmakkah gift shopping goes like this: My three daughters and I start out with $60 to spend, half provided by me. Then we each spend $20 on the other three: one “big” present for around $15, and one small for $5.
This year one of the shopping-spree presents I gave Eliza was a $6.99 “as advertised on TV” pair of foot scrubbers, consisting of two plastic sandals with brushes that suction to the bathtub. The selling point here is “Wash your feet without bending.”
I bought it, even though the foot bath I’d bought her years ago sits in a corner of her room, having never experienced so much as a toe.
But everyone knows I feel good about clean feet.
Eliza and I have a history of foot baths. We used to bond, sitting on the edge of the tub, soaking our feet in bubble bath and then applying scrubs, oils and toenail polishes.
Two days after I gave Eliza the foot scrubber, she gave me a present on my birthday: a foot scrubber, just like the one I’d given her; great minds think alike!
Then I realized it was the one I’d given her. I loved the re-gift and the creativity it took to think of giving me this. Plus, it would be one less thing for her to New York with all her other presents and her dog.
“I love it,” I said. “The gifts a person gives are always a clue to a gift they themselves will like.”
The following day, I went to New York with my other two daughters and brought the foot scrubbers so Eliza and I could try it out together. I’ve decided to leave one for her and take one back home with me, re-gifting her re-gift to me.
 New earring! Not every gift has such re-gifting qualities. On my birthday, Sabrina and Emily, the two other sisters, and I found ourselves in a holiday market. I loved a pair of earrings and was about to buy them when Emily said she wanted to buy them for me.
Aww, they were expensive–$56—so I said I’d split the price with her. But she wanted to give me $40 for them.
As Henry Higgins similarly pointed out when flower girl Eliza Dolittle offered to pay him a shilling for an elocution lesson, Emily’s $40 is the equivalent of my thousands of dollars, based on our relative net worths.
Sabrina bought me–from a vendor of old books and prints–a book I adored from my childhood, Five Little Peppers at School, with a cover so charming it doubles as an object of art.
Though in recent years planning gifts ahead of time has not been part of the script, the first December after my ex and I separated, Emily, who was 7, knew I loved Charlotte Church singing Christmas songs whenever the commercial appeared on cable TV.
That year, before the kids went to Tortola with their dad and I went to Sun Valley alone, Emily gave me the Charlotte Church CD.
I was so touched by this gift from my daughter, at a time that I was feeling so keenly the loss of holidays with my children, that I could barely listen to it as my plane flew over the Rockies.
[cheesy alert!] It can still bring a teardrop to my heart.
As for gifts I received from my parents, I can see my mom and dad in the light of the menorah, glowing in anticipation of my pleasure as I opened the angora sweater set I secretly wished had been a Villager brand wool cardigan, like all the tweedy girls at school wore, from a real store, and with the authentic label still attached to the sweater, rather than having been cut out the way the discount stores we shopped at removed the labels.
And, oy, I can still feel the guilt whenever my mother pointed out, “Susie, you haven’t worn your new sweater set.”
The gifts I gave my parents were not much better. They took us each year so we could shop at our Uncle Ben’s pharmacy. I remember buying my dad a carton of Camel cigarettes and for my mom, a bottle of toilet water. I now realize she wore Chanel No. 5 all her life. I wonder how she felt every time she looked at the bottle I assume was unused.
Happy, Merry Christmakwaanzakah, a time to celebrate that soon we’ll have 7 whole weeks until Valentine’s Day, 50 days we won’t have to think about giving or receiving any gifts.
What are some of your gift-giving traditions, horror stories, etc.?
See my articles about gift ideas, recipes, relationships, ugly sweater parties and more on Home Goes Strong.
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 Is it a worrywart trait to seek pleasure on the highest plane? To always be wondering whether–no matter how good something is–it could be better? That’s how it is with me and eating.
It’s a similar quest with family time. When I hear about a family who acts out Shakespeare together or who is always texting photos, I wonder why my family isn’t doing that; competitive and envious I am, even though I’ll never understand Shakespeare, and I cherish every minute with my girls, time typically amid a flurry of knives, cutting boards, skillets and olive oil.
Back to my quest to elevate taste to the max. For a long time now, I’ve been in search of how to best savor food.
 Big bite? Little bite? Chew slowly? Slosh?
- Do I take a bite and slosh it into all the crevices in my mouth?
- Should I slosh savory and sweet differently?
- Ought I study a map of my taste buds, so I can be sure to hit the right ones with the right foods?
- Did you know we have taste buds in our stomachs; how does that work?
- Mindful eating? Benefits of 100 chews? What if the patience required is not in my Ashkenazi DNA?
- Eating with hands? Um, licking plates?
- Do I need to be sitting down, even though biting into a warm, pink, juicy, olive oil sautéed chicken liver, over the kitchen sink fills me with an elation that makes time stand still (I know what you’re thinking and, yes, it is orgasmic)?
- What about little bites or big bites?
I ponder the size-of-bite question regularly as I chomp on my daily ounce of a Trader Joe’s 72% dark chocolate bar (diet tip). A big mouthful is simply more satisfying than a dainty nibble. I stand practically frozen, chewing at my chocolate drawer, concentrating hard on the bittersweet flavor sensation under the sides of my tongue, while Casey at my feet concentrates, waiting for an errant crumb. (Chocolate is not the only food that can poison dogs).
 Concentration by the chocolate drawer It’s the very same delight for me with a mouthful of pomegranate seeds. I’m drawn to the idea of biting on one shiny red seed at a time and savoring that nano-burst of juice, yet I find it impossible not to fill my cheeks, till they bulge like a squirrel’s, with a whole fruits-worth of seeds.
If I remember, and can bear to put off masticating that shiny, red heavenly mouthful, I run my tongue over the cluster’s bumpy terrain. And, as above, all sexual inferences you draw acknowledged but not intended. That’s how it is with eating.
The other night I went to see Adam Gopnik talk about his new book, The Table Comes First: Family, Friends and the Meaning of Food.
When I asked about eating technique, he wasn’t able to tell me how to slosh, but my question led him to talk about experiments where wine connoisseurs were asked to taste fine wine with a cheap label.
Their reactions that it tasted just okay were corroborated by MRI’s that showed brain changes, compared to when the subjects saw the accurate wine label.
I don’t like milk chocolate; it’s a totally different food from dark chocolate, and I wonder what would happen taste-wise, if someone were to give me a chocolate bar, milk chocolate in color, though exactly the dark chocolate taste of the one I love eating every day.
As with the wine label switcheroo, would it taste like milk chocolate?
On my way to the book talk I’d been listening to NPR. John Sebrook was talking about his latest “New Yorker” article “Crunch” about a hybrid apple. In the article he says that the sound when you bite into the apple is like “hearing with your mouth or tasting music,” which enhances pleasure.
This leads me to ponder taste buds in my ears and wonder why my music preferences are so limited, which I’ve noted to elaborate on in a future post.
How I’d love to see your comments on how to savor food to the max!
Check out my latest articles:
*EASY, VEGAN (AND DELICIOUS) BUTTERNUT SQUASH SOUP RECIPE
*TOP 10 WAYS TWITTER CAN HELP PLAN A PARTY FROM RECIPES TO CONVERSATION STARTERS
*ENTERTAINING: HAVING MARTHA STEWART TO DINNER? ENTERTAINING TIPS FROM SOMEONE WHO DID!
*THANKSGIVING: VEGETARIAN RECIPES, CRISP MOIST TURKEY, DESSERT, DIY CENTERPIECES, TABLE SETTINGS, ENTERTAINING & DE-STRESSING TIPS & MORE!
By susan fishman orlins If our family were contestants on a TV know-your-family game show, and the emcee were to ask, “Who is least likely to be a pest?” we would all shout “Emy!” The rest of us can be annoying, not least of all yours truly, but never Emy.
 3 a-door-bell kids When my three daughters were little, however, we commonly referred to Emy as “Emy the P.” You never heard Lizie the P or Beanie the P, even though they too were often P’s.
I had coined the term “P” because I knew from the volumes I’d read about child rearing that you weren’t supposed to label your kids, as in Emy the Pest. So, I introduced the moniker, Emy the P.
Realizing now, of course, that P was indeed a label, I feel really bad about this. The funny thing is that years later a discussion came up in which Eliza said she thought it was spelled Emy the Pea.
That got me thinking about the family glossary and the fact that I never got an explanation from my mom before she died about an expression she had used as far back as I remember: Jolly George.
It went like this: Suppose she accidentally broke a dish. She would say, “Oh, that’s just George, Jolly George”
Wikipedia has a George Jolly, a 17th century impresario, but no Jolly George. And on LinkedIn there are 24 Jolly Georges, but those Georges are not my mom’s Jolly George.
Just as we all have funny names we call our dogs, and our kids for that matter, we have family vocabularies that would make no sense to those outside the family. To help my own kids have a record of the meanings and etymology of our family’s unique language, I’ve compiled a glossary.
So, my a-door-bells, this is for you . . .
What are some expressions in your family glossary? Please comment, the way you did about all the funny names you call your pets!
Unrelated, some of my recent articles on Home Goes Strong:
I’m excited about my brand new Facebook Fan page. Please visit by clicking the button above on the right, and become a fan!
By susan fishman orlins While shops experience brisker business on weekends, blog traffic slows, at least mine does.
So I’m posting this shortie today, hoping for weekend visitors.
What I’m about to write is one of those things I wouldn’t give a second thought to, were I not examining myself all the time for the very
 gaggle of cups on the kitchen counter purpose of writing about it.
The trick is to catch myself either in the act of something quirky or in the act of something everyone does, but no one thinks to talk about, sort of like how we don’t talk about the conversations we have with out dogs.
So here’s what I think is a quirk, but do let me know if you do this too: I save drinking water. Let me explain.
I have these under-the-sink filters that make the Potomac River potable as it comes through my kitchen faucet. I treat this water with the same respect I give my homemade chicken soup.
For one thing, ever since I went four years without realizing I was supposed to change the filters annually—not realizing they were in canisters that were clear plastic, not brown—I try not to tax those filters unnecessarily.
Plus, ever since I got kidney stoned, I drink buckets of water every day, either hot water with lemon or room temp with nothing in it.
So, if I’ve been out with my stainless steel bottle of hot lemon water and now I want to have regular water in that bottle, I pour the remains of the lemon water into a separate cup for later. This routine leads to a gaggle of cups on the kitchen counter.
 Tablescape, Cafe Matisse in Washington, D.C. It’s a similar look to my place setting at restaurants, where I request a half glass of white wine, half glass of red, tap water, fizzy water and sometimes hot water. Oh and a large glass of ice for my white wine.
That’s it for now.
Oh, by the way, do check out my meaty post, Thanksgiving: Moist Turkey, Vegetarian Recipes, Appetizers, Desserts, DIY Centerpieces, Giving Thanks, Entertainment Tips. Just as with my inability to select one color of wine, one flavor of water, I seem unable to narrow down my titles to something pithy.
Do you do hoard water or other things? I’d love to hear about that and other quirks!
By susan fishman orlins 1955
After a swallow of dinner, I dirty my face with burnt cork and, on my shoulder, rest a broomstick with a bundle of rags tied to its end. I then prepare for the battle with my mom over not wearing a coat.
I step into the hallowed night, wondering which house has the apples with razor blades.
Nervously, I take the shortcut home through waist-high weeds that surround a haunted house whose creaky steps I’ve mounted on blue-sky afternoons.
On the kitchen table, I dump my bag for my mother’s inspection. It’s a disappointment that nothing sharp turns up in the apples.
1966
In college I feel stupid dressing up in costume, and I feel stupid if I don’t for a Halloween party where everyone else is in disguise.
1979
Halloween becomes fun again once I get married. Six weeks after Steve and I exchange vows, we move to Beijing. With the enthusiasm for holidays that comes from being separated from one’s roots, we invite our new friends to celebrate with us.
The Hungarian journalists have sewn their own clown suits and a partner in Steve’s law firm dresses as a flasher with a sausage attached to boxers under his raincoat.
We provide umbrella hats for our Chinese friends who wear only their Mao suits, obligatory attire for locals in 1979 China.
Only Steve’s Chinese-American secretary creates a stir. The room becomes silent when she enters dressed as a Red Guard. She stands in that arched-back pose you see on posters, with Mao’s ubiquitous red book in her raised hand.
The wounds from the Cultural Revolution are still too raw for people to accept reminders of that holocaust.
1992
Through my children, I re-live the thrill of my own childhood autumns, the season of crayons that still have their points and blank composition books. We convene on our front stoop to decorate the door for Halloween.
Steve tells us he heard on the radio that witches and hobos are politically incorrect, so I craft my witch as an ethnic-neutral with paper-bag
 Noodle Pudding hair, and a newspaper face.
After we go trick or treating, I tell my four-year-old goblin, “Nobody likes the raisins–those we’ll give to Grandmom for her noodle pudding.”
Emily’s blue eyes, bright as light bulbs under normal conditions, are on high wattage tonight.
“This one’s bad for your teeth, Sweetheart,” I say. Then I drop an appallingly puny Almond Joy into the “throwaway” pile that will go on the high shelf in my closet where I hide my gum.
A pack of Soda-Licious fruit snacks that really will play havoc with the molars, I place into her pile. I don’t like the flavors. Halloween does this to me.
1993
Each of my grade-school daughters accepts my offer of $10 to buy their Halloween candy in my effort to protect their dear little bodies from all that sugar. Soon they regret it; no such transactions occur ever again.
1996
Emily, age 8, writes in her school journal, “I like Easter because it is fun and I get a lot of candy. My mom doesn’t let us eat our candy so I save it for so long that it gets rotten and I have to throw it away. Eliza eats hers anyway.”
2011
Ever since my kids flew the coop, I’ve become a Halloween Grinch. I don’t want to keep jumping up to answer the door, so I go out to dinner.
After years of grappling with the temptation of leftover Reese’s peanut butter cups, this year I give out individually wrapped Lifesaver mints, which I leave in a bowl on my front stoop.
The following week over coffee, friends inform me that no kid likes peppermint Lifesavers. I had wondered why the bowl of mints had not been emptied.
 Participants in D.C.'s high-heel drag race On Halloween night I go to a bistro in Georgetown with my friend Daniel. Last week, we went to D.C.’s annual High Heel Drag Race, and now I want to see more costumes, the Georgetown scene.
Daniel says, “It’s not safe, so let’s eat a bit farther up, then walk down.” I say, “You’re being a terrible worrywart.”
But Daniel is right. We zigzag to skirt around thick crowds of made-up young adults who exude no merriment.
The next day I learn that 15 minutes after we left the area, a 17-year-old boy suffered a gunshot wound in the head.
This makes me long for the days when I was a politically incorrect hobo for Halloween.
What are your memories of Halloweens past?
Get ready for next Halloween:
For awesome eats, check out my recipes:
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 Public Service Announcement: Help my article “Dear Customer Service: Thoughts While on Hold” go viral, so companies get the message! Please tweet, comment on it, share!
 Mom as a little girl at the shvitz w/ her mom, getting beaten with fans Up until I first got my period, I was Susie. In high school, I was Sue. After reinventing myself in college, I became Susan.
My mom and, hence, other relatives continued to call me Susie.
My dad called me Sooze, (pronounced Sooz, not Soozie) starting when I was 20 and began selling my cutesy pen and ink and watercolor pictures, the kind homeowners hang in their bathrooms. In order to further cuten up the faceless creations (gag/blush), I signed them Sooze.
This quadruple-split in my moniker causes angst when signing an email; frankly, I’m wiped out by the time I’ve figured out whether to write XO or what.
It would feel preposterous to sign “Susie” in an email to my cousin. She knows I’m now Susan. Yet it’s like she’s referring to someone else when she leaves a voicemail, saying, “Hi Susan, it’s your cousin . . . .”
This has been going on for years with Cuz and it’s too late, not to mention too weird, to say, “Please call me Susie.”
 Sue CHS '63 I’ve trained myself to sign Sue on emails to my Cheltenham High School peeps, with whom I correspond sporadically.
It would simplify matters if I were to sign S on all emails, but I’ve tried and just can’t bring myself to represent myself as a single letter. I’m not knocking anyone who does: lots of friends sign just an initial.
In fact, I don’t know any single-initial signers who use upper case. Are they saving time bypassing the shift button?
I, myself, am guilty of pondering whether typing one space or two after a colon or period takes more time; it requires effort to unlearn typing two spaces. Other time-wasters I seem unable to sidestep include proof-reading casual emails and correcting typos.
If I can’t sign S, there’s no way I could sign s. Do I think so highly of myself that a small s just won’t do? Or, am I so insecure that I need a great big SUSAN to prove how unimportant I am NOT?
I cannot even talk about my email exchanges with Kay, a dear, brilliant, creative woman who has helped me part-time for 15 years, cleaning, paying my bills, dogsitting, catering parties and sharing family stories.
When we first met, she called me Mrs. Orlins, and I didn’t say right away “Call me Susan.” Then it became too late to change.
If it’s impossible to sign Susie, S or s, similarly there is no prospect I could sign Mrs. Orlins when writing to K, so I don’t sign anything.
Unable to call myself anything, reminds me of 1965, when I was unable to call my first set of in laws anything. Back then it was de rigeur to marry and overnight convert the in laws from Mr. and Mrs. Fiance to Mom and Dad.
My niece sends me emails without any name. She starts right in, and I always wonder whether her salutation-less emails mean she’s not sure what to call me.
 Brad Pitt
All that said, I like the friendly sound of nicknames; I call my kids Lizie, Beanie and Emy. And I call my beagle-basset, who’s name is Casey, everything from Casemaster General to Caseminster Fuller to Cary Grant.
Speaking of names, is there a point at which you transitioned from what you called your parents as a kid? Is it infantile that, even in my sixties, when speaking with my siblings, I refer to my parents as Mommy and Daddy?
How do you sign emails? With angst, like me?
XO
Angst
AS MENTIONED ABOVE, VISIT “DEAR CUSTOMER SERVICE: THOUGHTS WHILE ON HOLD” VENT AND SHARE!
CHECK OUT SOME OF MY OTHER EMAIL PONDERANCES:
How do You End an Email Thread?
Worried What You’ll Think
TIS THE SEASON TO TRY THESE AWESOME PUMPKIN SEEDS:
PUMPKIN-CARVING TIPS AND RECIPES FOR ROASTING PUMPKIN SEEDS!
By susan fishman orlins “Help! I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!”
I’ve been thinking I should get a medical alarm button to wear like the one advertised in the campy Life Alert “Help! I’ve fallen!” commercial. My mom wore one until she died at age 92.
Otherwise, how would I contact someone if I were to fall, unable to move?
Every time I take a shower, along comes the imaginary falling scenario: Warm water cascading over me turns icy cold as I lay motionless on the tub’s white porcelain. Casey, my beagle-basset, hears my wails and sprints to rescue me, like the cat I once read about who dialed 911. Or maybe it was a toddler.
 This no-solution thinking scares me, so I switch my ruminations to the day my life-saving, rectangular white pendant in the mail.
I slip it over my head for the first time and, BOING, white curls spring from my scalp.
A few nights ago I had a scare. I was home alone with my pooch Casey, and I heard the front door shut. I immediately phoned my daughter, who lives only a few miles away, so she would be on the line with me when I confronted the burglar.
(Do you ever wonder, the way l do, what you would do if, when you go to check, someone wearing a ski mask is actually there?)
Probably no one had entered.
But just in case, that night I locked the door to my bedroom. I was too scared to check all the rooms in the house.
I imagine the intruder having taken up residence on the third floor, which I still have not checked. I picture him pulling peanut butter sandwiches out of his backpack and sitting cross-legged as he picnics on the bed or al fresco on the roof.
If I’d had a Life Alert, I could have pressed the button and emergency help would have arrived to scare off the burglars.
On the Life Alert Site, a video shows a woman taking a bath when an intruder enters her home.
She hears a sound, presses her Life Alert and reports a break-in to the man who answers. His deep voice then announces over a speaker, “You have been detected. Leave now!” At that, the burglars skedaddle.
In the next video sequence the deep voice wakes the woman, “Sharon,” he says, “We have received a smoke signal coming from your kitchen. Get out now.”
 I love the personal touch. Sometimes on a Sunday it’s too quiet around here. Wouldn’t it be nice to push my button and talk to the nice gray-haired man. He would call me Susan.
They also have a video of helping poor Sharon after she falls off a ladder.
Shouldn’t anyone who lives alone have a medical alert system? Maybe I can order one for each of my kids.
Friends say, “Just keep a cell phone in your pocket.”
I prefer a button to push when someone in a ski mask is pointing a gun at my nose.
Not to mention the cancer risk of carrying a cell phone centimeters away from my ovaries.
I just called Life Alert for my free brochure and already my hair is turning grayer.
Can you think of any good reason not to get the help button?
Take advantage of my research and check out the 411 on how to find Emergency Response Systems for yourself or aging parents, including red flags.
While you’re at it, check out some of my home security articles:
By susan fishman orlins
 Season 8 of “The Family Vacation” has ended. Back from The Hamptons to their everyday lives are “Family Vacation” stars: the exes—since 1998—Steve and Susan (yours truly) and their three twenty-something daughters, Eliza, Sabrina and Emily.
Let’s take a look back at Season 1, Summer of 2004.
“The whole family’s in the pool,” my oldest daughter observes in a tone as sparkly as the cool water after I ease in to join her, her two sisters and their dad, Steve.
Even though Steve and I divorced in 1998, the five of us are in East Hampton, New York on what we call The Family Vacation.
It started that summer of 2004, when camps, trips and jobs allowed only 9 days that all three girls were available at the same time. Steve called me to discuss how to divvy up the time.
I searched my mind for a way to get 5 days to his 4.
But then I had a eureka moment and suggested that rather than each of us taking a mini holiday with the kids, all 5 of us could go away together for twice as long. Without hesitation, Steve agreed.
I relished the novelty. Steve and I had both recovered sufficiently from the bruises of our union and its dissolution. And we each had new love interests; neither of us was pining for the other.
Even during the worst moments, we had managed to compartmentalize our differences and problem solve whenever issues arose regarding the girls. In fact, I was often secretly grateful for a crisis, so I could experience the fuzzy feeling of good will between Steve and me.
As soon as I enter the rented house on the first day of that first family vacation, I scurry to check out the bedrooms and stake claim to the one that best suits me.
Steve cares about quiet; I care about openings to the outdoors. He is happiest in a room away from the kitchen and girls’ rooms; I like the pj-party atmosphere when my room is near the kids.
Steve avoids bickering; I am a better bickerer.
In the Season 1 house, I bicker better and get the bedroom farthest from the kitchen, the quietest but also the one nearest the girls’ rooms and the only one with a door to the outside. Steve ends up in the room closest to the kitchen and the morning rumpus.
We go to the beach every day no matter what. Steve has Weatherman in his DNA and sometimes he has us set out while it’s still raining, but by the time we step on the sand with our folding chairs, the sun is peeking through, as he’d predicted.
On such weather days, we are practically the only ones at the water’s edge. We are all alike in our fondness for slouching in beach chairs and reading. Everyone loves the ocean, except for me. I dislike the feeling of water on my face and I’m afraid of waves.
Once when Steve and I were dating, we ventured into the water together and the surf was bigger than I’d thought. One after the other waves washed over us, never pausing long enough for me to get out, the same way, when my labor was induced for my first child to be born, the contractions came back-to-back, no break, no exit strategy. Bang, bang, bang.
At night we like to cook and eat in, only occasionally venturing into the town, which is dense with city folk clad in expensive sports clothes. We go only to prowl the bookstore, get ice cream cones or see a movie.
Most nights we line up in front of the TV after dinner, each of us with a laptop perched on our thighs. It’s the 2004 Olympics and Steve and the girls like watching the competitions. Steve gets teary during athletes’ personal stories and when unexpected victories and heartbreaking losses occur.
I don’t mind watching the Olympics, though it makes me sad that kids are packaged into mono-track lives that deprive them of their childhoods. No one agrees with me. I’m a Debbie Downer when it comes to the Olympics.
The only thing that feels odd over the 9 days, is that it feels so normal to all be together. Everyone agrees we should do this again next year.
This is such a win-win-win-win-win situation for our family. I wish more divorced families would vacation together. Please share this; maybe it will inspire others to try. Of course, it takes 2 willing parents.
SPEAKING OF SUMMER, CHECK OUT MY HONEST-TO-GOD, SECRET, ONE-MINUTE WAY TO STOP A MOSQUITO BITE FROM ITCHING
By susan fishman orlins At first it all seemed like a big adventure: stepping into Hurricane Isabel at one am with two pajama-clad teenage daughters and one dog in tow, basking in mini-celebrity the following morning when neighbors gathered in small clusters to gasp at the damage, and moving in with my ex, which surely interrupted whatever sameness had existed in my day-to-day life.
The forecast had been known for days, so it was no surprise Friday night when the power went out and the house went dark at ten o’clock.
“We might as well go to sleep,” I said to my kids, Sabrina and Emily, whose older sister Eliza was safely away at college. “I want you girls to stay in my room tonight just in case.”
They knew what I meant, as it was not the first time I had expressed concern about the monster poplar tree outside of Emily’s bedroom. Sabrina arranged a pile of blankets on the floor at the foot of my bed and Emily climbed in next to me, where her father used to sleep before our divorce five years earlier. Casey, our beagle-basset, wedged himself between us.
We fell asleep to the crackling sounds of falling trees that had been going on all evening. At one point I woke up to a loud bang and thought, That must’ve been a big one. Casey and the girls were in sound slumber and I fell right back to sleep.
Within what must have been a minute, I awoke to the siren-like whine of our smoke detector. Too drowsy to fully digest the potential danger, I stumbled into the hallway and saw it was all smoky. Although at some level I was aware the scent of smoke was oddly absent, I  /media-credit]calmly said to the girls, “Get up. We have to leave. There’s a fire.”
Casey got up too and when he arrived at the bottom of the stairs and noticed me reaching for his leash, he did what he always did: he ran in circles around the dining room table with me chasing behind until finally I caught him.
Then, due to a lifetime of having it branded on my brain that when there is a fire, you leave everything and get out, I knew to leave my purse. So it did not occur to me to actually take my purse rather than what I did, which was to spend precious seconds rooting around in it for my cell phone.
I guess my urge to communicate trumped my instinct to save myself from what, for all I knew, was a house in flames.
The moment we ventured outside, I looked to the right and up, where that ancient tree had towered for a century, maybe two; now, only dark sky and a huge yawn of open space glared back. A strange feeling of amputation washed over me. Something that had been such a presence was simply gone.
Don’t get me wrong. I was not sorry to see it go. Two days earlier, knowing the storm was headed our way, I had spent a half hour on the phone with my mom, discussing the anxiety I’d had ever since moving in six years earlier that the tree would fall and, in particular, that it would fall and crash into Emily’s bedroom.
I concluded that, even though I would miss its shade and proud, broad, leafy branches, I would overcome my resistance to paying the price of a small car to end up with less rather than more; I would have the tree cut down the following week. I had written “tree” in my day planner.
Why hadn’t it occur to me to do something about that tree before the most destructive hurricane ever to hit D.C. arrived? Would I really have followed through if the tree had withstood the storm? Aside from the thousands it would have cost, it gave me a grumbly stomach to imagine anyone traveling up that high to take it down.
Fortunately, my friends Lorraine and Joel lived around the corner, and I knew that I could rely on Lorraine, who was always sending emails in the wee hours, to come to the door when I rang.
Given that there was no choice about being out, I did not fret at the level of which I am capable about the dangers of sagging power wires and falling trees as we trudged against the fierce winds.
Rather, there was something enchanting about the debris swirling around us, and the sense we might get lifted up and blown to the Land of Oz, like Dorothy and Toto.
ARE YOU PREPARED IF A TREE HITS YOUR HOME?, my post on Home Goes Strong.
By susan fishman orlins Getting ready to go with my daughter to the cobbler on our bikes on this lovely summer day.
Passing under a doorway, I start shaking while the house is quaking. Dare I run to get the dog who is barking at the front door or stay here where it’s safer?
Things are falling off the shelves. The little ice fishing figure I bought after going ice fishing falls and it’s head breaks off.
I panic. My daughter, who gets hysterical if her gazpacho isn’t tangy enough laughs, saying, “Mom, calm down, it’s just an earthquake.”
Then, though my hands are still trembling, the earth has stilled.
The construction guys pour out of the house next door. The neighbor across the street, whom I’ve never seen, comes out and says “Is it ok to go in?”
“No,” I yell, “stay under the doorway.” The construction guys laugh.
It’s like after a blizzard in my quiet D.C. neighborhood, everyone is out.
My daughter goes on Facebook and learns of all her schoolmates who are in D.C. Everyone is posting.
Her aunt on Long Island tells her Cousin, there’s an earthquake. Cousin says, “No, Mom, it’s your pacemaker.”
My oldest Eliza tweets link to FEMA.
But I’ve already been there, having Googled what to do during an earthquake.
Venturing out on our bikes now to get shoes repaired. Life goes on.
What a fun way to turn an ordinary day into an adventure, even for a worrywart.
By susan fishman orlins Yesterday one of my daughters told me, “Dad sounds unhappy with me.”
When I asked why, she said because he had left a message on her phone three days earlier and he hadn’t heard back from her.
Then she told me, “If you want to reach me, text.” She added, second best is email, which she usually checks at least once a day. If you leave a voicemail, it sounds like you’ll be lucky to hear from her at all.
So I want to get better at texting, which takes too much time. I’m always worried about time.
If you are half my age or less, this may sound silly, but today’s Time-Saving Texting Tip is: In order not to have to switch to the symbols page for exclamation points, type i’s, as in “Greatiiiiii”
I hope this is helpful to some of youiiiiiiii
And, btw, do your emoticons : – ) and : – ( really need noses? : )
For more time-saving tips, see:
50 TIME-SAVING TIPS FROM SMART, BUSY WOMEN on Home Goes Strong
9 EASY WAYS TO SAVE TIME on Huffington Post where one commenter said my tips sounded like bad satire. Others totally didn’t get the benefits of boiling half the amount of water in each of 2 pots with lids to speed up the pasta-cooking process.
I don’t get that they didn’t get it. In any case, the comments are the best part.
Please share in the comments your time-saving tips!
SPEAKING OF WHICH, FOR TIME SAVING MEALS, TRY “SANDWICHES!” (don’t miss the dark chocolate and brie panini)
|
|
RECENT COMMENTS