By susan fishman orlins It all started after my friend Chris emailed me a link for the Pitchapalooza, which was to occur the following week at Politics & Prose, D.C.’s independent bookstore that hosts frequent book talks by bestselling authors.
Twenty writers would be chosen randomly to give one-minute pitches of their unpublished books. The lucky 20 would receive feedback—“American Idol” fashion (sans Simon)—from the authors of The Essential Guide to Getting Your Book Published as well as from guest panelists, which included a literary agent.
Given my attraction to scaring myself to death by performing for audiences, this was my meat.
Let’s pause here to note that tied with my fantasy of getting published in the New Yorker, is giving a book talk at P & P, if had a book. (If we had bacon, we could have bacon and eggs, if we had eggs.)
Already deep in the throes of writing my memoir, I thought, What an opportunity! Followed by: What if I win? Will an agent make me rewrite my book? What if I don’t even get chosen to pitch?
I had a million questions about the event, three of which I sent in an email to the bookstore, who forwarded it to the authors:
Will it help my chances if I arrive early?
How many writers typically sign up for the 20 slots?
Will we know ahead of time whether we’ll be called or will we be thinking the whole time, “Yikes, I could be next!”?
Author Arielle replied that arriving 20 minutes before the start would be fine. She also said I could look forward to the “adrenaline rush” of “sitting on pins and needles all night,” because I would be called only if/when it was my turn.
Oy, I thought. But really, how many people in D.C. were going to turn out to pitch their books? And I’d only have to get through one minute. I wasn’t going to over-worry this, wasn’t going to put wine in my water bottle to calm my nerves at the Pitchapalooza.
Over the next six days, I worked on little besides trying to unearth the ideal 200 words and arrange them in perfect order.
 Casey Listening I read my pitch to each of seven friends, three daughters and, 10 times a day, to Casey. After each shard of feedback, I tweaked.
On Pitchapalooza day, I was still re-writing and reciting. I added and deleted bits about my dying mom, my daughter’s lost bear and my travel smoke alarm.
I went back and forth between a fantasy of not getting chosen and one in which I end up with a book deal as well as a movie contract.
I dressed in my usual black and white and put on my new bright yellow high tops—the Price Is Right of outfits—fun enough to get noticed without going over the top. Since author Arielle Eckstut co-founded LittleMissMatched, I decided to wear mismatched socks, believing Arielle would notice and be impressed. But all my interesting socks were in the laundry.
Before rolling out the door on my bike, I emailed my pitch to myself in case I were to lose the two copies I had printed out.
I’d had the entire day to be ready on time and arrive 20 minutes early, as planned. But lateness always happens, and I arrived seven minutes before show time; all seats were occupied, people were standing everywhere and the book was sold out (buying the book was required for participants).
A store employee collecting names of prospective pitchers must have detected an aghast look on my face. He stuck a card in my hand and told me I could qualify by hurrying to the cashier and paying to reserve a book.
“How many people have signed up?” I asked. He told me more than 60 writers were vying for the 20 spots.
With trembling fingers I scratched my name on the card and scrunched it, so it would stand out from the others and have a better chance of getting chosen. (At the time I felt okay doing that, but now that I’m exposing myself, I’m worried. Was I cheating? It’s not as bad as sneaking ahead in the left-turn lane, when you know you’ll be driving straight, is it?)
 Yellow Shoes After reserving my book I found a spot on the floor near the front and leaned against a bookshelf, my yellow high tops extended in front of me.
The first name called was not mine, nor was the second, nor the 17th
Writers pitched and on my laptop I typed notes from the panelists’ critiques:
What is the story arc? How does this change the hero?
Because it’s a memoir about her mom, it will get them on TV
Pugs are good—dog books sell!
Single spinster—good but can’t be both memoir and self help.
Something redemptive.
Oh dear, I’m thinking, Where is my arc? Mom is dead. I have no pug. Single spinster, got that one nailed. Something redemptive—must add that now.
And I began adding something redemptive to my pitch.
“Susan Orlins.”
OMG, that’s me!
I took my laptop rather than my printed notes to the lectern. As I read, I tried not to trail off at the end of sentences:
Confession. I’m a worrywart. In my MEMOIR, Confessions of a Worrywart, I worry about everything from my DOG’S self-esteem to decapitation by ceiling FAN.
A friend calls some of my worries, White Girl Worries, and I WORRY ABOUT THAT.
BUT my anxiety ALSO extends to the COMPLICATED TERRITORY of relationships: with my mother, daughters, ex-husbands, boyfriends and therapists, who are like boyfriends, but who can’t dump ME.
I am more Nora Ephron than Dr. Phil. I blog about worry, then I WORRY ABOUT BLOGGING.
After I looked up an old beau in Paris, he took me to lunch where he choked on a chicken bone. He left abruptly and WENT MISSING for two days; I thought he had died. It would have been my fault FOR TRACKING HIM DOWN.
When your daughter is in Colombia and hasn’t tweeted all day, IS IT EVERY MOTHER’S tweetmare that her kid is locked in the TRUNK OF A SEDAN?
After my divorce, I began searching for my popular, pre-marriage self. After an imaginary encounter with her, I no longer yearn (They stopped me right here mid-add-on sentence. Ordinarily I would never have started two sentences in a row with “after” . . . just sayin’) to be that shallow.
Mothers and others can identify with my real worries and smile at my IMAGINED FEARS.
Who knew it could be SO MUCH FUN TO WORRY?!
Everyone laughed. The panelists said they loved it. They said my pitch got weak at the end, which was the “redemptive” bit I had added right before they called on me. They said my book would be in the humor section. I said something about my essays, because personal essays are my genre—funny at times, but not “humor,” not Erma Bombeck.
“Don’t say ‘essays!’” the four panelists cried in unison. Apparently publishers disdain the word.
There had been so many good pitches that it took several minutes until the authors agreed on a winner, who would receive an introduction to an agent. “And the winner is . . . .” Not me.
The winner’s pitch was good, about his great uncle who was a sociopathic doctor. Among other things, the uncle cut off limbs, for example, of someone with an amputation fetish.
Before leaving, I approached the literary agent from the panel to say one of her clients is my friend. At the same moment, she was approaching me. “I want you to send me something ,” she said as she handed me her card.
I won after all! I thought as I floated out the door and onto my saddle.
The evening had gone so well that I worried I would get in a bike crash on my way home. But I didn’t. Then I unlocked my door all ready to say to Casey, “There you are, There you are,” at a high-pitch, they way I always do when I get home.
But Casey wasn’t there; I realized I’d gotten home safely, because the disaster in store for me—to offset my rousingly successful night—was that my Casey had died while I was gone.
Then, there he was, there he was . . . in his rarely-used doggie bed; I had dodged two bullets.
The next day, I sent the agent a few chapters and links to some of my blog posts. I haven’t heard back and I keep thinking how different they are from the one-liners in my pitch.
I also sent a thank you email to the authors, David and Arielle. Arielle replied appreciatively and then asked where I had gotten my yellow shoes.
Anyone else have anxiety about public speaking? I’d love to hear about it in the comments!
Check out some of my Home Goes Strong articles:
NEW POST:
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 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 
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 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 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 For my recent article on Home Goes Strong about Happiness at Home, I interviewed my blog crush Gretchen Rubin, whose book The Happiness Project–the same name as her blog–was a #1 New York Times best seller.
 All that goes on underneath my roots Gretchen keeps a one-sentence journal, which she admits sometimes expands to 4 sentences.
Says Gretchen, “The idea of keeping a proper journal was far too daunting, so I decided instead to keep a ‘one-sentence journal.’”
This is me again. Years ago, I gave up journal writing. Between living alone and blogging about my life, I exist so much inside my own head that I’d decided, enough already!
Today, however, I opened my long-neglected journal document and began to write . . .
Thinking about doing a one (or 4) sentence journal a la Gretchen Rubin. This got me thinking about going back to journal writing and seeing what happens. Look at me, here I am in the second sentence of my journal and already it has given me an idea for a WW post about whether or not to journal.
And therein lies the problem of too many ideas.
Question: Is it good or bad that a journal generates a flow of new ideas? Idea management overwhelms me.
When I kept a journal previously, I was always coming up with new projects, like:
- Have a Habitat for Humanity singles party!
- Go polka dancing!
- Play piano, take a painting class, write a children’s book!
As it is, I have no time. Susan’s Law is the opposite of Parkinson’s Law that says, Work expands to fill the available time.
Susan’s Law says, No matter how much time you have, you will always plan more to do than you have time for.
I’ll never finish all there is to do: sew the hole Casey made on the couch, learn to use my new camera, make squash soup.
I love the way starting out to write about one thing brings on a whole other topic. In that way, I’m a psychiatrist’s dream, so to speak. The underlying story finds its way to the surface.
I shall continue to try Gretchen Rubin’s 1-sentence journal, even though it’s so much harder to write one or four sentences than 10 paragraphs where you can just ramble. How do I decide what snippet to capture on the page?
Yesterday, I sat in traffic and was late for the treasured visit of the month to Emily’s kindergarten class [my daughter Emily teaches at 
a charter school]. Worried I’d miss the whole afternoon, I did childbirth breathing to keep calm.
Finally I arrived with a hard-boiled egg and the gizmo I’d bought for making a peeled egg into a cube. I’m not sure if the kids are wise enough to be as wowed as I am by that. At least they were totally engrossed to see what would happen.
Then I read The Golden Egg Book about a bunny and an egg, from which emerged a duckling. “And no one was every alone again.”
I’m pushing the limits of Gretchen’s one-sentence journal, but it’s okay for Susan’s one-sentence journal to be longer.
This is fun! I can’t wait to see what I decide to write in the journal tomorrow.
Hi, this is non-journal me again. Now I’m getting my hopes up that every day a blog post will emerge from my journal. After all, isn’t that what a blog is, a web log?
MORE [too many?] OF MY ARTICLES ABOUT WRITING [When will I ever learn that less is more?]:
By susan fishman orlins 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 Beware of asking me to rant. I am liable to start today, five days after autumn began (also National Good
 Happy National Pancake Day Neighbor Day and National Pancake Day), and never stop until Flag Day.
If you really want to hear loud and wild talk, ask me about the leaf blowers whose noise is banging around in my skull as I write.
It reminds me how we have just gone from the noisiest of seasons to the noisiest of seasons.
My sentiments from summer about the batball game vacationers play on the beach get aroused all over again. That shattering of one’s tranquility is really something to make a furious commotion about.
On more than a few occasions I have wished a grizzly demise for the one who invented that head-splitting, rackety seaside diversion for the yuppie class.
There have even been times when–glued to a rectangle of terry cloth by a teaspoon of drool, then yanked into consciousness by the thwack-thwack-thwack of the dreaded toy– I have whispered to God that all paddlers deserve to be stuffed into a giant garbage disposal and ground into a mishmash.
Then sleep would be further delayed by my conscience tweaking me with: What if my brother is one of those gameplayers? (He just might be.) Sometimes I go back and revise the part about the disposal.
 My family playing the dreaded game And recently my kids have taken up the sport, (with four bats and two balls!) so now I have to go back and revise my entire position with higher authorities who may have heard me rant.
At least my kids know to avoid earshot of sleeping moms.
I have tried dragging my towel to another spot when others start batting near my personal zone. But you can’t count on hearing only the tweedle-dee of gulls and the smack of waves upon the shore.
What’s to prevent some muscled peacock, slippery with sweat and oil, from strutting up to a patch of sand, not four feet from my ear, and planting roots, immediately after which he engages in a lengthy confab on his iPhone? (Let me assure you, however, that no matter how hateful this fellow may be, he is never as uncharming as the ones with paddles and balls.)
If I wait it out, performing the deep breathing trick they teach for childbirth that doesn’t work at all for childbirth pain, there comes a time when the sun sinks behind the roof of the bathhouse, and the paddlers, the peacocks, the kids with sand stuck to their snotty noses pack up their ball games, their i-This’s and i-That’s and shuffle home to their pizza deliveries.
Then it’s quiet.
And the flies arrive.
What noises drive you to rant?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my Dinner Menu: Recipes for my Healthful, Delicious 30-Minute Meal.
Also, tis the season for chicken soup. You Don’t Have to Be Jewish to Make Great Chicken Soup!
By susan fishman orlins Saturday, July 2, 2011
Mother died today. I am not trying to channel Camus, just trying to make sense of how it feels to suddenly become a 65-year-old orphan in New York while my mom’s cold body lay in Philadelphia.
I’m sitting in Union Square, one of my favorite places to work when I visit New York. The usual bustle is going on around me: a pair of Boston terriers rollicking in the dog run and the farmer’s market actively trading consumables, like the quart of organic skim milk in a glass bottle I bought to go with the chocolate chip banana cake I brought here in my bike basket.
A church group on a neighboring bench is painting their faces red white and blue for their annual pamphlet giveaway to promote patriotism and Christ. We take a picture together, my first thought being I can’t wait to show Mom, even as I know from my brother’s phone call an hour ago that, with her hand in his, my mom had just taken her last breath.
I so wanted to be there with her, but one never knows when the end will happen. I knew she was in the homestretch and, though I saw her last week, I figured she would hold tight until my visit tomorrow.
It’s comforting that I spent so much quality time with Mom, yet would a better daughter, knowing she was rapidly failing, have rushed to her side? Would it have mattered to her in her remote state or would that have been only for me?
A few weeks ago when I kissed her good-bye before heading home to D.C., I said “See you next week,” and she asked “Why?”
Although mid-week her eyes began to be closed more than open, I had planned to read to her the picture book of her life stories, which I made 2 years ago for her 90th birthday. It was my fantasy that she would then slip into death while I was there, with her hand in my carbon-copy, arthritic hand.
So, now who will enthrall to what I do every day and to the photographs I take?
Proceeding with today as planned seems odd. At the same time, it’s as though in a way my mom died after we moved her from Florida to Philadelphia, when it dawned on me she would never again be talking on the phone with me from her club chair, the one my dad had sat in for so many years until he died in 2006 and she inherited the throne.
I can just see her now, the books, magazines, newspapers piled on the table beside her, the remote control in her hand, watching the TV in her mirror-backed wall unit with the Lladro figures and other pretty things she had collected reflecting sunbeams while Chris Matthews ranted about the Republicans.
She wielded that remote with the facility of a man half her age.
I meet my friend Anita at Joe for a cup of joe. When I say, “My mother died this morning,” her expression of shock is far greater than mine was when earlier I had seen my brother’s name pop up on my phone and answered it with, “Mommy died.”
After coffee, Anita and I proceed as planned, pedaling into Brooklyn for a look at the local culture and lunch.
Mom would have loved hearing about the Chasidic family I passed on the Willaimsburg Bridge, the gaggle of kids and the man in a long black coat that flapped as he walked, white tights and a big fur hat (she would know the Yiddish term for this).
 salade niçoise We stop for lunch at Fada, reported to be the only authentically French bistro in the area. Happily there is nothing pretentious about this place that feels as though it’s been here since the invention of French fries.
We sit by a counter on high stools in the front that, being on a corner, is open to the street on two sides. My appetite has not faded with the loss of my mom. Rather, as I dig into my salade niçoise, I feel a numbness that friends have reported feeling after their parents have died.
My mom’s was a life well-lived and filled with love that ran its course with no regrets. How many people can say that? This doesn’t minimize how much I will miss our leisurely nightly calls and monthly weekends together. Her laugh, her insights, her contentedness that set the bar high, yet provide a great role model, for when I reach my walker years, if I do.
Pedaling back toward the Manhattan Bridge, I pass an African Arts Festival and shops shuttered for the Sabbath with names like Schenkel’s Fish Market, just the kind of travelogue Mom would have loved.
[Cheesy alert!] On the bridge, high over the river, I feel a bit closer to the clouds, closer to Mom.
My Worrywart feels self-serving linking to/promoting my other articles as I write this about losing my mom, yet she would be all for it! She loved hearing about my writing, both the substance and the successes and even the flops. And, we had so much fun writing a number of my Home Goes Strong articles together:
MY MOM’S DO-IT-YOURSELF DECORATING TIPS
DELIGHT YOUR GUESTS WITH MY MOM’S PARTY GAMES
YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE JEWISH TO MAKE GREAT CHICKEN SOUP
EASY, ELEGANT ENTERTAINING: MY MOM’S PARTY FOOD
By susan fishman orlins There’s a gadget for everything these days, I’m pretty sure.
I’m not worried about this gizmo, ‘cept I have no memory of how it got in my kitchen drawer.
And I’m really curious what it’s for.
It seems to be a scooper of some sort.
gizmo For mashed potatoes? Or something that had froze? Or unfroze? Or doughs?
But then what’s the hole on each side of the silver hemisphere about?
It’s not a lemon juicer. I have one of those. And that’s not how the juice comes out.
Thingamajig How do you Google what something is when you don’t know it’s name?
Trying to figure this out is like a lateral thinking game.
I could try to describe it in a search.
But it’s more fun if you help me out of this lurch, So I can ditch the gizmo woe and instead get gizmo mojo!
Whatchamacallit
If I had already fulfilled my fantasy of ordering Worrywart t-shirts,
I would make this a contest to attract some kitchen-gadget experts.
And, for my blog, new converts.
I’ve heard Web surfers love contests and t-shirts.
How embarrassed should I be if no one gets back to me
with either a clever guess or the solution to my quest?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my recent articles
After my Husband Died, Dealing With his Possessions: One Woman’s Story
Romantic Design Ideas From an Exquisite European Boutique Hotel
Treadmill Work Stations Can Burn Calories, But They Have Other Important Benefits Too
By susan fishman orlins 
I’m drowning in junk, buried in boxes, suffocating with stuff. It doesn’t surprise me that all these metaphors point to an untimely end.
There would be great irony in getting snuffed out by my stuff, since one of my biggest worries happens to be that I’ll drop dead and my children will have the burden of sorting through everything.
I know what I’m talking about, because even though my 92-year-old mom has downsized several times and has already given some of her things to her children and grandchildren, my sister and I recently had to dismantle her apartment. I spent $300 to mail my share of her chotchkes from Florida to D.C.
Of course you could hire someone to hold a tag sale or find a charity to just haul everything away. But how could you resist going through everything, hunting for treasures that reveal in some cases more than you might want to know about your parents.
After our father died, my sister and I sat on the floor pulling things out of his night table drawer. Crossword puzzles, two pairs of glasses, an old watch and . . . What’s this long thing wrapped in a paper towel?
We looked at each other with clenched teeth fearing the most ghastly kind of sex toy as I gingerly unwound the paper towel.
Until . . . what revealed itself was . . . a toothbrush!
Whew! But that got me thinking what might reveal itself in my night table drawer if I were suddenly to get decapitated by a ceiling fan.
My night table drawer is where I always stored my valentines. Out of sheer laziness, I have never moved them to my “letters received” file, though it is nice to glimpse a red envelope occasionally when I reach for a PostIt and remember that men used to send me valentines.
It occurs to me my kids might think I still hold a torch for the previous Mr. Wrong. Yo kids, uh-uh, he’s just a friend.
Condoms? My kids are cool enough to be cool with that, except no one wants to picture their parents having sex. In this case my girls can actually imagine me not having sex, since the condoms expired in 2009.
I’ve strayed from exploring suffucation by stuff, so look for more of that in a future post.
Unrelated announcement: See my article Easy, Elegant Entertaining: My Mom’s Party Food.
By susan fishman orlins The other day my youngest daughter sent an email to her sisters, her dad (my ex) and me to say she would be receiving a prize for her senior thesis on the day before graduation. She asked who of us would be there in time for the awards event.
I wrote my response to the “family,” hitting “reply all” as we often do. As I was about to hit send, I began to worry about my enthusiasm and whether I should temper it, given the contrast with her dad’s email, which he had already sent to the rest of us.
It’s not that he is not equally pleased and proud, he just has a different way of showing it.
From her dad:
Em,
My plane lands at 4pm so I will try to make it.
Love,
Dad
From me:
Oh my goodness!!!! How fabulous!
My train gets in at 3:40, so I should be there 
Congratulations!!!!
XXOO!!!!
I began to delete some exclamation points, but then decided to leave them and ask what you think I should have done.
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See these unique mosaics, including urns for your pets’ ashes, personalized with photos imbedded under glass.
By susan fishman orlins I’m a high-functioning agnostic in that I do ask God for things. But in the same way that, as a kid, I was creeped out every time we had to sing “My Country ‘tis of Thee, ” the line that goes Land where our fathers died, the Twenty-third Psalm gave me the willies. Respectfully, I continue to find it unsettling.
The problem is, as with most things, I take the psalm literally. With a lazy reluctance to explore its historical significance, I prefer to spend the time worrying and whining how the words arouse in me dark and gloomy feelings.
Though I don’t know why I’ll need a Shepherd, I can live with the Lord being my Shepherd. It conjures up the sheep farm of rolling green hills where I once stayed overnight in New Zealand. But the Valley of the Shadow of Death? That’s one scary place I never want to be.
As for Thy rod and Thy staff providing comfort . . . I’ve never been able to work out exactly how that would go.
To make matters worse, there’s the table in the presence of mine enemies. I have trouble shaking the image of me and Mrs. O’Brien–my piercingly blue-eyed tenth-grade English teacher–digging into the same casserole of heavenly mashed potatoes.
I’m not sure what the implications are of having someone anointeth my head with oil, but for years I pictured a hole drilled in my skull and a Shepherd brandishing one of those long-nozzled cans they use to lubricate cars.
When I think of dwelling in the House of the Lord, I envision the dark mansion from “Beauty and the Beast” but without Mrs. Potts, the singing teapot and Chip, her son the chipped-cup. And forever? Even dwelling at the New Zealand sheep farm forever would be overkill, so to speak.
The good thing about reciting a prayer in Hebrew, the sacred language of my forefathers, is that I don’t know what it is I’m praying for. On the whole, on my way out, I’d rather recite the words to the song “Mockin’ Bird Hill.”
Tra-la-la, twiddly-dee-dee
It gives me a thrill 
To wake up in the morning to the mockingbird’s trill
Tra-la-la, twiddly-dee-dee
There’s peace and goodwill
You’re welcome as the flowers on Mockin’ Bird Hill
When the sun in the morning
Peeps over the hill,
And kisses the roses ’round my windowsill
Then my heart fills with gladness
When I hear the trill
Of the birds in the treetops on Mockin’ Bird Hill
Yea though I walk through the Valley of Mockin’ Bird Hill . . .
Anyone out there have similar feelings?
Unrelated Announcement: See my latest post on Home Goes Strong, Readers Speak Openly: The Case for Separate Bedrooms.
By susan fishman orlins What if I meet a guy I like?
Monday: He gets up. I want to stay in bed but now I can’t fall back to sleep. Or, I get up and he wants to sleep, so I can’t turn on NPR.
 Ah, breakfast! I make myself French toast and a cappuccino and just as I’m about to sit down and enjoy reading the Times, he trots in and says, “Mm, that smells good.”
So I offer him some of my breakfast because otherwise I’d feel guily, but now I just feel hungry and my peaceful breakfast with newspaper indulgence is spoiled.
I walk the dog then return and set up outdoors to work on my laptop.
He asks if I want to bike along the river with him. I’m conflicted because a bike ride sounds great but so does my routine of working outdoors. Either way I’m screwed; I’ll regret that I may have made the wrong choice.
The day rumbles along like this with either interruptions or too many choices. Lord knows there were enough choices before he came along. On the other hand, some of the choices I used to enjoy, like walking with friends, have been reduced because of the time I spend biking and being with him.
Nighttime draws nigh and there’s the usual discussion of what, when and where to eat. He feels like going out. I always feel like eating home. He’s hungry now and wants real food; I’m not and I don’t; I just ate a chunk of dark chocolate, a handful of almonds and a large glass of milk, which you may recognize as my favorite diet tip.
I long for the Monday nights before he came along when the second I got hungry I could stand by the kitchen TV watching “The Bachelor,” while whumping down a salade nicoise.
After dinner, he wants to settle in with cops and robbers or the local news on TV, but I don’t like scary TV. Casey, who used to rest his head on my lap, jumps onto his lap.
A while later, one of us is ready to go to bed; the other isn’t. One of us wants to have sex; the other doesn’t.
He raises the thermostat. After his breathing shifts into slumber, I lower the thermostat.
Tuesday to Friday: It’s the same. (He is retired.) Except Wednesday nights I watch “Survivor” and he sulks.
Weekends aren’t all that different, but after a lifetime of conditioning, they feel different. On Saturday night, he wants to go to dinner and/or a movie. I hate noisy eating and crowded theaters. It’s a perfect night to be cozy at home.
There must be reasons people pair off into living spaces, but I can’t remember what those reasons are.
I suspect I’m missing something here. Do weigh in!
SEE MY NEW POST, ESPECIALLY THE PHOTOS: WHAT FALLEN 9-11 HEROES WOULD HAVE WANTED YOU TO KNOW
By susan fishman orlins 
Unrelated Announcement, my new article: CAN SEPARATE BEDROOMS SAVE A MARRIAGE? Weigh In!
It wasn’t like I had a choice when, at the breakfast table, my then-21-year-old daughter Eliza presented me with documents to sign. The whole family had to swear to confidentiality or the plan was off for her to be a contestant on “Survivor.”
If I refused to sign, the plan was off for her to continue being my daughter. So I signed.
Her father, my ex-husband, reassured me “CBS makes too much money from the show to let anything happen to her.”
But I had seen the episode where a contestant fainted and fell forward while huffing to augment a campfire. Cameras rolled as he lifted his face from burning logs with the skin hanging off his hands.
I tried to be excited for her. After all, I would have applied for the likes of “Survivor” when I was her age. But I kept thinking up things like What will happen to Eliza’s teeth if she goes six weeks without flossing?
The closest I ever got to TV fame occurred when I was 22, during a micro affair with Chuck Barris, creator of “The Dating Game.” He offered me a gig to go to Colorado Springs as a “Dating Game” chaperone. My training consisted of one instruction: Make sure the girl doesn’t get pregnant.
Worry is relative. My daughter’s 26-hour trip on three flights to get to her “Survivor” destination, including one on Air Vanuatu, would have been enough to make me go on a hunger strike. But the idea of her starving on an island, one I’d never heard of, trumped the aviation rumination.
Thankfully it was pre-tsunami.
I got through it, perhaps calling on the same resources that help me worry less now that my daughters no longer live at home. Although they go out in cars and subways till all hours among drunks (themselves at times driving sleepy, which is the same as driving drunk), I can at least pretend they are snug in their beds when I turn off my bedside lamp at night.
How do you cope with worrying about your loved ones?
By susan fishman orlins Are the doors locked? Am I on the right train? Is there spinach in my teeth? 
There’s spinach in your teeth; but isn’t it too late, too awkward to tell you now that we’ve been talking for 20 minutes?
Have I re-read the email I wrote enough times to hit “send?” Should I send it to myself first and double check it later?
Did I remember to put water on my night table? What if I’m in captivity and can’t have water by my bed? Do I need to break the habit now? How?
And if I am captured, how will I distract and occupy my mind? Should I memorize a list of things to think about, now while I still can, to keep me from going crazy in such a case?
What if I fall getting out of the bathtub and can’t get up? Should I get one of those necklaces with a button to summon help, like my 92-year-old mom wears? With that button around my neck, is it worth feeling old in order to feel safe?
What if Casey dog needs an operation to save his life? How much would I spend? What’s the cutoff?
What if I get a boyfriend and soon after he gets a terminal illness? Would I have the patience to sit with him in doctors’ windowless waiting rooms?
What if I get a terminal illness (knock wood or whatever)? Will I have the patience to sit in windowless waiting rooms? (NO)
Will I be as afraid of something bad happening if I take my (as yet unborn) grandchildren outdoors as I was to take my daughter’s Yorkie for a walk when I was his sole caregiver for a week, so I didn’t?
Ought I never again experience the joy of a plump raw oyster in case I get a bad one?
Do you know that for each worry I write, I have a dozen more? And that I’m afraid if I write them they’ll come true?
What if I run out of worries to write about? Is that even possible?
Possible or not, it worries me.
POST-POSTING RUMINATIONS: Is this post good enough? Too long? Too boring? I’ll make some phrases bold. Do the bold phrases help? Or distract? Will faithful readers ditch me? This is my 33rd update of this post. What does that tell me?
What are your what if’s?
COMING SOON ON CONFESSIONS OF A WORRYWART: STARTER MARRIAGE, THE MINI-SERIES
Unrelated announcement, see my new articles:
PAELLA: MY ALL TIME FAVORITE ONE-DISH RECIPE WITH VEGAN OPTION
11 EASY WAYS TO REMEMBER PRACTICALLY EVERYTHING
By susan fishman orlins Each time Casey and I come home from a walk, he barks for a treat. And each time I throw a kibble in the air for him to catch. He never does. After he roots around in the wrong direction, I telll him when he’s getting warmer and finally he finds it. Then I always say, “Wow, good job, good job!!”
 Casey all ready for his walk in the rain This reminds me of the time my oldest daughter, maybe 5 years old or so, accused me of deceit because I raved about every mark she ever put to paper.
Today it occurs to me that maybe, given all the praise I shower on Casey in order to boost his self esteem, he thinks he’s supposed to miss the little brown kibble when I throw it. And then he thinks he’s supposed pretend to look around, puzzled, heightening the excitement for me, even though all the while he knows it’s under the hall table.
You can read about Casey’s nicknames, whether he’s bored, mayhem with a squirrel in the house and more.
Also check out my slide show, Elizabeth Taylor Family Photo Album, Rarely Seen Domestic Scenes.
I’d love to know other games to play with Casey (fetch is not in his vocabulary) . . . suggestions anyone?
By susan fishman orlins There’s a lot to learn during 10 days in New York.
I learned I can go far north or south on dedicated bike lanes. And once a day someone grouses at me for wheeling crosstown on the sidewalk, not that I blame them.
But I do blame the guy who tried to push me off my bike as I pedaled up the sidewalk one night on E. 92nd St.
“What the f*uck was that for?” tumbled out in an involuntary scream, as I regained my balance from the mound of trash bags he’d shoved me into.
“Get the f*ck off the sidewalk,” he shouted back. I responded with the equivalent of what you say to an aggressive toddler, “Use words!” adding, “You didn’t have to assault me!”
I told this to my friend Alice, who shared safety advice from a male poet she’d met in Paris: Never say anything to a strange man that makes him think of his penis. Any dirty word starting with P or F is dangerous. “Don’t tell him to piss off,” the poet had advised.
Adding to my biking concerns my friend Pam asked, “How old is your helmet?” After falling off a bike, her friend became partially paralyzed due to helmet fatigue. Her helmet had been either more than 5 (some say 3) years old or compromised by previous impact or heat exposure.
What I love about NYC is all the worrywart material I pick up from neurotic friends. Over sushi, I asked my pal Mike to borrow a pen. He answered, “I have a silver pen I love, but I’m too afraid of losing it, so I never take it out of my office.”
This very same worrywart imparted advice to never order spicy tuna. He told me it’s likely to be less fresh, since it’s chopped and spiced. “But Google it to be be sure,” he said.
“Even if there’s nothing about stale spicy tuna on Google,” I replied, “that doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen.”
Mike added that New York restaurants now get ratings from the health department. He dropped one place because they only got a B. What a dandy opportunity for bribes to the health inspectors; an A could really be a C . . . or worse!
 - sarah needs a job On another note, if I ever need a job I can take a tip from someone named Sarah whose fliers on West 14th Street’s lampposts read “SARAHNEEDSAJOB.COM.”
To boost my readership, I considered doing the same with fliers that say CONFESSIONSOFAWORRYWART.COM.
But then I looked around and, like in a horror movie, where the handsome young man grows fangs before your eyes, everyone coming my way morphed into vampires.
Finally, I learned from a fellow who’d traveled to Antarctica that there is a barber pole, marking the South Pole, and that if I go there and get sick, they have Medivac service.
Note to burglars: I’m home now, so no funny business.
What ideas do you get from your friends to worry about?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Do you have trouble remembering names, etc.? See my article “21 WAYS TO REMEMBER PRACTICALLY ANYTHING.”
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: How Couples Resolve the Thermostat Wars & Other Domestic Battles
Sometimes I think my memories are based solely on photographs. My kids won’t forget anything the way they record themselves every time they change clothes, then post and tag the results on Facebook. Come to think of it, I’m not in a high percentage of those photos, so how much in the way of our times together will they recall when they’re my age?
 - chillin’
That raises the whole question of making memories. Unlike my kids who would like to vacation in St. Lucia, I prefer to be home, all of us hanging out, doing jigsaw puzzles, playing Boggle, cooking and watching movies, biking, walking the dog, reading or just chillin’.
Will it all blur into one moment of time for my daughters when they tell their grandkids what times with Ma were like?
Recently I went through photographs from my trip to Europe at age 23. I remember the faces of those kids I hung out with on the Costa Brava so clearly, but not their names, nor their nationalities. I think we sat around a lot, but that’s probably because it’s what my Kodak film captured.
That was July, 1969 when the first men had landed on the moon. I do recall one undocumented moment from that summer. I awoke in my pensione room and heard voices outside my door exclaim, “There are people on the moon!” And I thought, “Wow, Americans landed on the moon and found people up there!”
Not documenting may pose a problem for me, but documenting can be a greater problem. How do I organize all my journals and snapshots I’ve generated? I still haven’t put photos in the album I bought 20 years ago for the pictures from my marriage 31 years ago to a man I divorced 12 years ago.
Though digital pictures take up less space than snapshots, every time I go to press the button on my digital camera, I hesitate, thinking here’s one more photo to go in with the organizational mess of thousands.
So to document or not to document? Either way, it’s stressful. But then again, either way there’s some relief!
How important is documenting your life to you, how do you do it and how on earth do you organize it?
Here’s are links to related posts: ORGANIZING MY LIFE PART I, THE JOURNAL and PHOTOPHOBIA.
By susan fishman orlins
 Ah, Paris Unrelated Announcement: Check out my recent Home Goes Strong article “Brain Food . . . Simple Recipes to Delight Your Palate & Your Mind.”
How do I strike a balance between time spent living and time spent documenting?
For example, when traveling, my anxiety about documenting rises. Should I sit and write what I did yesterday or should I go do something today?
Is it enough to find a park bench in Paris where I can write and, when pausing to think, glance up to watch tots at the edge of a pond floating their wooden sailboats?
If I miss a few days of journal-keeping on a holiday, there accumulates a brain-boggling backlog to record; instead of the satisfying documenting of charming details, I end up making a list: biked in park, roamed vegetable market, roast fish for dinner. Unsatisfying, not the fish, but the list.
 It occurs to me now that relating my adventures on the page are part of the travel experience. And though I’m mainly drawn to elaborating on what I see–giggly Chinese girls in panda hats–in the future I’ll strive for more reflection.
That said, I gave up my daily journal writing years ago, due to generating too many ideas. The more I write, the more ideas spring up, ideas to paint a huge wooden CURB YOUR DOG sign with a stake to drive into my front lawn, ideas for a come as you are potluck party, ideas to volunteer Casey as a therapy dog (which we did until he got anxious and pooped on a rug amid a ring of senior citizens).
And then there was the idea to print out my essays and sell them for a dollar a piece at rush hour. Getting photographed at the Dupont Circle subway station for the front page of the Metro section–with my stack of essays on a bridge table–accompanied the fantasy.
I struggled to narrow down the journal-generated list but that resulted in accomplishing nothing. Plus, working at home, writing essays about myself, I was already hanging out in my own head to excess, so I gave up the journal.
Then there are all the photographs. Yipes. See my upcoming post, Documenting My Life, Part II, The Photographs.
I’d love to hear how you document your life.
Newly posted on Huffington Post, my article “9 Easy Ways to Save Time.”
By susan fishman orlins If you’ve read my post “Choosing my Parents,” you know how much I adore and admire my 92-year-old mom.
Nonetheless, now that I’m 65, you would think I wouldn’t get annoyed when she talks to me in a tone. Not an unpleasant tone, one that’s off-putting only to me. As in What? You haven’t had breakfast yet?
Admittedly I have an eating schedule different from hers. She goes to dinner shortly after I’ve finished breakfast. At 11 p.m. when Mom and I have our daily phone chat, I’m often starting to broil a pork chop. Sometimes she’ll ask what I had for dinner.
“Pork chops,” I lie.
It’s the same kind of thing when I’m visiting her. On the day I’m leaving for the airport at 11:30, I head out at 9:30 for a half hour walk. “You always have to fit everything in,” she’ll say.
Fitting everything in was true when I was in my teens, 20’s, 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s, so I can see how she thinks that.
“But Ma,” I say, “I’m 65, I don’t do that anymore.” I know she’s thinking, “Yeah, like fun.”
(Do you know that expression “like fun?” I never hear it anymore. It has a similar sarcastic meaning as “Yeah, sure.”)
And as I’m packing up, she’ll ask, “You’re wearing that?” It’s the bookend to the welcome greeting “What’s with your hair?”
To my mom’s credit, she doesn’t seem to care whether I get married again. She can see I’m happy . . . even when I’m not.
- In what ways do your parents persist in annoying you?
- In what ways do you persist in annoying your kids, whether you mean to or not?
- In what ways to you persist in annoying your parents?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See my latest post on Home Goes Strong, “DOES YOUR BED MAKE YOU HAPPY? A GUIDE TO BUYING A BED, BEDDING & BEYOND.”
By susan fishman orlins I like Oprah not Opera.
Country not Classical.
I prefer Silence to any Music at all.
I choose Breakfast at Tiffany’s over My Dinner With Andre.
I’m all about Story, not at all about Historay.
Some words whose meanings I never retain
Are insipid, insidious and Machiavellian.
I’d rather eat turkey than go to Turkey.
Or Albequerque.
I’d rather watch “Survivor” on TV
Than Shakespeare, who baffles me.
BTDubs, how does anyone grasp what Shakespeare states?
I have the same problem with the Williams, Wordsworth and Butler Yeats.
Is it like “The Emperor’s New Clothes”
Whereby no one knows what he claims he knows?
I love movies with Meg Ryan
Or Doris Day.
And I’d rather play in the snow
Than go to a play.
I like Grandma Moses
And Norman Rockwell.
Children’s art is also swell.
Neither lowbrow nor highbrow is this:
I can relate to the wits
Of a 23-year-old Miss
Whose dress with Clinton’s cum stain
Uncleaned in her closet remained.
Given that souvenir, I’d’ve done same.
Once at an auction in ‘97
A friend and I bought lunch
With journalist Fineman.
When I said what I said about Lewinsky’s blue dress
He looked up from his soup (at me) in distress
Like he’d bitten hard into an olive, with a pit no less.
Why am I telling you this?
 Playing in the snow It gives me neither pride nor shame.
It’s just who I am.
But I wonder if I’m all alone
Peering into a smartypants zone.
And I wonder about you
Whether you have lowbrow tendencies too.
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: Check out my latest post on Home Goes Strong, Are You Sleeping as Well as You Could? Bed, Bath & Insomnia
By susan fishman orlins Riddle: Every family has them, what are they?
Answer: Nicknames that are too embarrassing to expose outside the home.
 Casemaster General After coffee with friends, I return home, open my front door and call to my bassety beagle Casey, “Casemaster General, where are you?”
To say he’s non-responsive overstates his activity level.
So again I call, “Caaay! Caseman! Whatcha up to?” Suddenly realizing the open-door opportunity, he brushes by to pee in the front yard. Just then it pops into my mind, Would it be too embarrassing to explore on my blog all the names I use to address my best friend? (Just how far would I go to embarrass myself?)
My father, who called me “Poodlebug” when I was a kid, thought Casey should have a Jewish name and dubbed him “Chaim.” I embellished it and, only when he’s especially good, I call him “Chaim Goodman.” Other times, he gets nicknamed after the food group he’s broken into.
So he responds to “Pretzelman” and “Nutman” as well as the current “Teaman,” after he unloaded an open shelf of teas, scattering all over the place the leaves he didn’t feel like eating. I now have to store the salvaged tea in the dishwasher.
“Caseminster Fuller” is a derivative of Casemaster General. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Yes, I think it follows this progression: Buckminster Fuller>Caseminster Fuller>Casemaster General.
With sagging jowls, sorrowful eyes, shiny as big black marbles, and ample folds in his neck, he looks as much like a Chester or Chesterton as a Buckminster Fuller, but the Chester monikers never stuck.
“Basset Case” is one that has stuck, its origins a Hallmark card my daughter sent that features a basset hound below the words, “Without you . . .,” and inside, “I’m a basset case.”
Speaking of dog names, when I was in my twenties and getting ready to move to Vermont, I told my boyfriend (the one who was moving to NY and didn’t invite me to join him) I wanted to get a hound dog and name him Alan. Sometimes before going to sleep, I would  practice calling, “Alan, get in here for lunch!” and we’d dissolve into giggles.
For years I wanted to name my next dog Audrey Hepburn. But then I had to deep-six the idea after Charlotte on “Sex and the City” named her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Elizabeth Taylor. Otherwise, people would think I copycatted. Hm, that would have embarrassed me.
Most often I call Casey “Caseman” or just “Son.” The other name I call him most often is “Cutie,” conincidentally the nickname my ex chose for me, except he shortened it to “Q,” a nickname for my nickname.
Back to How far would I go to embarrass myself? I was hoping the pup names would embarrass me, but they don’t.
Even though I don’t embarrass easily, I easily embarrass others. Just ask my kids. Or my friend Jackie, who was embarrassed to be seen with me the time we were both in Paris because my only footwear was New Balance running shoes.
I submit it would have been a lot more embarrassing if, trying to look French, I’d worn a beret.
Unrequited handshakes, especially with Orthodox rabbis, awkward but not embarrassing.
The friendliest girl in the ninth grade at Thomas Williams Jr. High in 1960 passes another biker on an isolated path, and squeals “Hi!!” but the biker doesn’t respond. Disappointing, but not embarrassing.
Embarrassment for others, does that count? Like watching a comedian and no one laughs; I get so embarrassed for the performer I could plotz.
At a reception, I once saw a woman who wasn’t even drunk fall onto a buffet table and topple it. Embarrassing, unless you didn’t like the person; then it’s just schadenfreude.
There was the day I biked 26 miles in China and my bell didn’t work. I bellowed “ling ling” all over Beijing, biking on the sidewalk as I do. Maybe I figured “ling ling” sounded more Chinese than “beep beep.” Indeed, the following night at dinner, my Chinese friend told me ‘’ling ling’’ means vagina. Amusing, but not embarrassing.
Oh, I just got one, proving that if you keep writing, ideas come (or if you Google “things that embarrass people” ideas come). In first grade I was too embarrassed to ask Mrs. Salkind if I could use the lavatory and I peed in my pants. Then I put my head down on my desk and cried into my folded arms.
What embarrasses you? What are your funny or embarrassing family nicknames?
Unrelated announcement/Foodie Alert: See my recent post 12 QUICK, EASY RECIPES FOR DELICIOUS, HEALTHFUL VEGETABLE DISHES.
By susan fishman orlins 
Unrelated Announcement: See my article 50 TIME-SAVING TIPS FROM SMART, BUSY, HIGHLY EFFICIENT WOMEN (AND MEN)
“Saturday Night Live” ought to do a skit about their contrived lovefest at the end of the show. What up with the forced hugging?
Sometimes the embraces look genuine, like with Taylor Swift the night she hosted. Robert De Niro, awkward. I always search for the singleton who, as he casts about for a hugmate, appears as forlorn as the isolated kid in the schoolyard.
Seeing these SNL performers, whom I imagine to be so cool, looking uncool in pursuit of contrived affection during the obligatory hug-in makes me feel a little less uncool myself.
By susan fishman orlins 
In seventh grade my friends and I were not part of the popular crowd of girls who looked sexy in gymsuits and paired off with boys. Instead, we immersed ourselves in a world of make-believe.
We were three couples: me and Ricky Nelson, Phyllis Kirschner and Tab Hunter, Shessie Einbinder and Pat Boone. Each “family” had one child as well as a fat scrap book filled with photos of the husband, and gossipy headlines cut from movie magazines. On the wall next to my bed I taped a picture of Ricky wearing a cowboy suit with pants so tight you  could see a bulge in his crotch.
Star-struck by Ricky, I saw other girls on TV screaming when they watched him perform. Then one sultry afternoon I squeezed in among thousands of sweating, lovesick teenagers at Steel Pier in Atlantic City to see his show. Once the shrieking started, I joined in and couldn’t stop; each time I screamed was louder than the time before until I thought the veins in my neck would pop.
Nearly two decades later when I was living in D.C., Ricky was featured at The Cellar Door, a small nightclub in Georgetown. Only now he was called Rick. I decided to go say hello to prove that childhood dreams could come true. The owner was a friend of mine and helped me time my arrival to be between the 7:30 and 9:30 shows.
Still in a tennis skirt from a game I had played earlier, I ran in breathless and said, “I wanted to meet you in order to prove that childhood dreams can come true.”
“Thanks,” said Rick. “Are you staying for the show?”
God, it never occurred to me to stay for the show; I had moved on. “Gee, I’m sorry I can’t,” I answered and hurried away.
I still can’t believe he’s dead.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: See my latest Home Goes Strong article, LOOKING FOR A WARM COMFORT FOOD MEAL? WARM RECIPES FOR CHILLY NIGHTS.
Like me, does everyone become as frozen as Michelangelo’s David whenever they think of all their photographs fading in plastic bags, on sticky non-archival album pages, and loose in various boxes, chests and drawers? Not to mention all those out-of-control digital photographs?
Recently I wrote a series of three articles for Home Goes Strong in which I encouraged readers to Take My Organizing Challenge, taking an hour each day for 5 days organizing this and that.
I gave dozens of organizing tips and I too took the Challenge. It now takes me only half as long to find a pair of socks.
The most rewarding part came when I returned a call to my daughter.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Home,” she answered.
“What are you doing home?” I asked. “You’re never home on a Saturday.”
“I’m taking The Organizing Challenge!” she exclaimed. Later that day she texted me a photo of her miraculously empty-ish desktop.
[  [ Lizie's desk I’m always rooting around for ideas for my Home Goes Strong column. While rooting around unsuccessfully for a picture of Casey, I decided to lauch my Photo Organizing Challenge.
My Photophobia (*dictionary meaning, I just learned, is extreme sensitivity to light) has become so intense that I hesitate each time I’m about to capture an image, knowing it will add to the digital heap. My prayer is that the Challenge will help get my photos in order; plus, I’ll end up with another series of articles. A two-fer.
Photos pose a much greater challenge than drawers and random piles of mail. I just timed myself at my expected speed of going through photos, not allowing extra minutes for reminiscing or decision-making.
Twelve photos took 30 seconds, which translates into my 3,000 pictures taking 20.83 1/3 hours, if I don’t dilly dally.
The thought of jumping from prints into my thousands of digital photos is so scary I might as well be attached to a bungee cord, jumping off Zimbabwe’s Victoria Falls Bridge.
Okay I didn’t mean to learn about all that can go wrong if you bungee jump, but I was looking on Wikipedia to find the above example and became morbidly curious about the risks:
- Harness fails.
- Elasticity is miscalculated and you suffer a fatal bump to the head.
- Cord not properly connected to the jump platform.
- Upper body intravascular pressure can lead to eyesight damage, the most common result.
- Whiplash.
- Broken neck.
- Stroke from getting tangled up in the cord.
- Increased stress (duh).
- Decreased immune function.
All these incidents involved young, healthy adults in their twenties and thirties.
Oh dear, I try not to be morbid. However, I have a number of readers in their twenties and thirties, and in my role of universal mother I aim to dissuade some or even one from ever taking the bungee plunge.
On the other hand, adrenaline junkies may be all the more inspired.
Have I ever told you how, after seeing the Imax film “Adrenaline Rush,” I realized so many of our choices are motivated by our personal level of adrenaline craving?
Oh my, I’ve strayed from Photophobia. But isn’t that what a phobic is supposed to do?
That said, I’m dying to get any and all advice on how to organize my photos, print and/or digital, including time-saving shortcuts.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated: Check out “The Best Food to Come out of Philly Since the Cheesesteak,” my post on Home Goes Strong.
Valentine’s Day, 1991, New York City. My then-(China hand)-husband and I knew a young Chinese couple. The sweet wife Mei Ling, who was exquisite to look at with her porcelain complexion and appleseed eyes, sometimes babysat for our daughters.
On this particular February 14th, she had plans to go out with her (cranky) husband, but with my gentle coaxing, she agreed to help out and accompany one of my girls to a late afternoon dentist appointment.
At around 5:15 the phone rang. “Mrs. Orlins, I have your daughter and she is fine, but her babysitter was hit by a car. The ambulance is on the way. She’s bleeding quite a bit.”
A flurry of my questions garnered no more information, except that Mei Ling was babbling in Chinese. After calling my husband to let him know what happened and that they needed him to translate, I paced the dark rooms of my happy, homey apartment, which now seemed empty and hollow.
Please God don’t let her die, please God don’t let her die . . . I know I’m a fair-weather believer, but please, please make Mei Ling be okay. I could do nothing else but pace in the darkness and repeat my monoversation with God, while grim thoughts bombarded my mind, not the least of which was guilt for my role in urging her to help out on Valentine’s Afternoon.
 Mei Ling remained in the hospital for a week or more and emerged with a vertical scar from her cheekbone to her jaw.
Her husband was looking forward to collecting a bundle from the insurance company for the injuries he claimed where incapacitating, though his windfall was diminished by the fact that Mei Ling became pregnant with a baby conceived shortly after the accident.
I thought about this incident recently after having dinner with a couple of atheist friends. I wished I had asked them what they would do in a situation where you are helpless to do anything except pray.
Would they root for a speedy recovery, the way as a kid I rooted for the Philadelphia Phillies to win the penant? Or, would they pray, just to cover their bases in case there really is a God?
Then it occurred to me that next time I’m desperately in need of answered prayers, maybe I need to cover my own bases.
Even though I’m a Jewish person who is between agnostic and atheist leaning a bit more toward the latter, the same way I like my steak cooked between rare and medium rare but more toward the rare side, respectfully I could try other Lords.
Like:
Hi Jesus. Susan here. I bet You’ll understand that it only just occurred to me to check in with You and I’m really worried. If You’re The One, it would be so great if You would help.
Maybe You can give me a sign that we connected—like reviving the plants in my window box or even creating a minor hardship, like making my porch umbrella blow over on a non-windy day–and I’ll give every consideration to continuing our relationship.
And then I could try the same with Mohammed, Buddah and Krishna, first apologizing for making them third, fourth and fifth.
All this makes me think about what a college student in China said to me after I sat in on her Jewish Studies class at Nanjing University for an article I was writing. She pointed out that most Chinese people have an absence of spirituality, which I knew, but after that I’ve always tried to get my mind around what they do in a pinch; I’m not sure Confucius accepts prayers.
Imagining a lack of spirituality is like trying to imagine how it would be not to have eyes. It wouldn’t be darkness, just an absence of sight. I can’t picture that (so to speak).
I’d love to hear from any atheists out there about what you do in situations that would have others praying.
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susan fishman orlins | CONFESSIONS OF A WORRYWART
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