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
 You don't need an umbrella all the time Dear Susan,
I have a question…with regards to worry….I am always told that it is futile to worry about things you cannot control…and that worrying is like walking around with an umbrella in case it rains….or it’s like sitting in a rocking chair….it will give you something to do, but won’t get you anywhere….this is of course practical advice….but, unfortunately does nothing for me…I worry from the time I wake up until I am asleep at night….you name it, I worry about it….how can I stop the madness of worrying??
Signed,
Worried in Wisconsin
Dear Worried,
I can relate. Here are some ideas for you to try:
Let’s start with the moment you wake up and begin worrying. Change the channel. In other words break the thought by getting up and doing something else. Or, if you have the luxury of remaining in bed, pick up a book, or turn on the TV.
Keep busy. This is the best antidote to worry. If your mind is focused on something that engages you, you will be distracted from worry. Even playing Words With Friends works for me.
Lower expectations. Highly effective people tend not to be perfectionists.
Worry is addictive, plain and simple. It hits the same pleasure center of the brain as alcohol and other addictive substances. If you are able to control your intake of other addictive substances, then you can control worry in the same way now that you know that when you worry you are feeding the urge to worry even more. Each time you catch yourself worrying, remember again to “change the channel,” break the cycle, do something else.
Make a backup list of pleasant or productive things to think about for when you catch yourself worrying. I often turn my thoughts to a blog post or article I’d like to write.
And when going to sleep at night? Use the backup list to distract yourself from worry. One thing I do sometimes to fall asleep is to mentally list my friends.
W in W, thanks for writing in. Here are some posts that might also help:
The back story:
As ideas do, it popped into my head to try a post that reads like an advice column. So I turned to Cathy, my go-to bFf (best Facebook friend), and her awesome peeps, who are willing to chat whenever I ask; for my article, Relationships: Men Speak out About Sex and More, I used several comments from them.
Do you have a Dear Susan question? If so, please submit it in the comments.
My, ahem, expertise? Hm, I’m good at divorce questions–before, during, after. On parenting, I have hindsight. Packing tips for never having to check luggage. General life style stuff: time-savers (e.g. you can cook spaghetti in a small amount of cold water), memory tricks (like how to remember whether or not you already fed the dog), living a non-stressful life despite being a worrywart.
Full discolsure: the true identity of the worried questioner was Mary in Chicago.
Check out some of my Easter and Passover posts:
*27 Awesome Ways To Dye, Decorate And Display Easter Eggs
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 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 ‘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  One day, after hours of sliding my cursor from Twitter to Facebook to Stats for my blogs and back to Twitter, when I should have been writing, I emailed Dr. M, a cognitive therapist.
Dr. M had previously helped me understand that worry is an addiction; it hits the same pleasure center of the brain that other addictions, such as alcohol, do.
The more I worry, the more it reinforces me to worry; ever the pleasure-seeker, I worry more and perpetuate the cycle. Yet, once I understood the worry addiction, I worried less. While I am inclined toward overindulging in pleasurable activities (In my mother’s words. “Susan, you’re an extremist!”), I am also driven to avoid the consequences, in the quest for maximum, well, pleasure.
It took only one hangover to make me decide never to experience that feeling again. My attraction to pleasure also includes never wanting to be full or overweight or slowed down by the effects of smoking.
So, I feel pretty bad at the end of a day spent, not on writing, but on addictive flitting back and forth between Facebook and Twitter, seeking that serotonin surge I get from seeing that someone commented on my fan page or RT’ed my tweet.
Here’s what The Cognitive advised:
1. Give yourself a daily limit for checking Twitter. You can have a chart next to the computer in order to track the frequency. You can
also print the word, “STOP” in bold red at the bottom of the chart to serve as a reminder to stop.
2. Track what increases this particular checking behavior – like any other habit-related or addictive behavior (e.g., consider over-eating), it is important to understand the precipitants.
What emotions, thoughts, and/or behaviors activate your desire to check the Twitter? For instance:
- Do you begin to feel anxious and then check?
- Do you begin to feel bored and then check?
- Do you begin surfing the net and then find yourself having an increased urge to check?
In summary, find out what the precipitants are and begin to modify these to decrease the likelihood of the stats checking behavior.
3. Give yourself a reward for NOT engaging in the behavior. Remember that checking Twitter may be intrinsically rewarding; therefore, every time you check, you get reinforced on the behavior. Replace the reward of checking with another reward.
Thanks Dr. M. Knowing that–every time I look for a retweet–I’m feeding an addiction, helps me re-think doing it so often.
Conundrum: After I tweet the link to this post about Twitter, I’ll be dying more than usual to see if any of the Twitter mavens RT it.
What reward could possibly replace the pleasure of clicking on that little bluebird icon? Please advise in the comments!
Pondering: Given that the Twitter logo is all lower case (twitter), why do the media capitalize it? And, then, why isn’t tweet capitalized too?
Some of my useful holiday posts on Home Goes Strong (worried about my inability to make choices and narrow down this list):
*MAKE A DECORATIVE CHOCOLATE CANDY HOUSE
*WHITE HOUSE CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS AND DISPLAYS OF FIRST DOG, BO
*TOP 7 BOOKS TO GIVE AS GIFTS AND TO READ
*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, ENTERTAING & DESTRESSING TIPS & MORE!
*10 EASY HEALTHFUL BREAKFAST IDEAS, YUM!
*12 UNIQUE & JAZZY GIFT IDEAS FOR EVERYONE ON YOUR LIST
*CREATE FUN, EASY, NO-BAKE GINGERBREAD HOUSES & A GREAT ICING RECIPE
*GINGERBREAD HOUSES . . . FUN, DECORATIVE & CAN BE MORE THAN A HOUSE
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  Mom had often complained that I'd thrown away her bag collection when I helped her move. So, for her birthday, we gave her a gift of gift bags . . . and she cracked up. I’m a saver. Every time my inbox mounts to the limit of 4,000 emails, I move a few thousand to random folders I doubt I’ll ever find again; and then I’m set for another few weeks of not deleting messages, mainly from the likes of Sock Hop Sundays, Hot Tub Works and Book TV Alert.
Aside from reminding me of my hedonistic tendencies, keeping these emails relieves the fear I’ll miss something, even though I have never opened a Book TV Alert and I went to Sock Hop Sunday only once.
Someday, after I finish watching all the Oprah episodes saved on my DVR, I may just want to check out Book TV. The emails will serve as a reminder.
Plus, I don’t want to waste time deleting emails or unsubscribing.
The first time I surfed to Book TV, Isabel Allende was speaking about the death of her daughter Paula. She referred to the remarkable ability of the human spirit to rise above adversity. I was going through a divorce at the time and it helped to say to myself, if she can rally after such a tragedy, then surely I can deal with this divorce.
With phone messages, it’s different. I so fear accumulating my kids voices, which are much more precious than emails, that I delete them right away so as not to tempt any hoarding instincts.
A few weeks ago, while visiting my 28-year-old daughter, Eliza, in New York, I listened (except when she made me hold my ears) as she transferred to her computer 20 special voice messages she had saved over time. She was preparing to trade in her Blackberry for an iPhone.
I heard the message from me, singing happy birthday. And then the room filled with the voice most familiar to me, the one I heard for hours every week during long conversations about our lives.
Lizie, it’s Grandmom. The book you sent me, I never laughed so much! (laughter) I laughed out loud the whole time I was reading it. (laughter) I just loved it . . . It was so funny! (more laughter) . . . .
It was only 7 months ago that Lizie asked me to take Shopoholic to my mom in Florida, “I think Grandmom will like it,” she said. Four months later, in early July, my mom died. On Christmas Day my mom would have been 93, the birth date she shared with Eliza.
I didn’t cry when my mom died, just as she didn’t cry when her mother died. My mom and I were/are not criers.
But as each day passes, I miss her more. How she would have loved to hear the details of my interview with TLC’s Georgetown Cupcake sisters about their bakery and their lives!
No one gets excited about what I do each day, the way my mom did.
Every adventure I have, every picture I take, I wish I could share with my mom. Hearing her voice and that laugh—so real, so hearty, so alive—was like having her right there on the sofa with us, making me feel so happy, so sad.
Now that I have this recording of my mom’s voice, I’m wondering whether I should start saving the voicemails of everyone I love. Oy.
What do you do about saving voicemail? Email?
Check out my recent articles on Home Goes Strong:
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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 When I’m in New York, I like to hang out and write at Jack’s, a coffee place in the West Village with a patina that suggests long afternoons of sipping lattes and tapping on laptops. The overall look is shades of brown, like paper bags and coffee.
Jack’s is so small it has no bathroom. The other day, I had to pee, so I walked up the block and stopped at the first restaurant, a dark Villagey place called Low Country, another brownish space, where I was greeted by–as you can see from his picture–a fit, attractive bald man with smooth, mahogany-colored skin, wearing a dark t-shirt and black blazer.
With a dip of my right eyebrow, a sort of pity look, I asked “Would it be okay if I used the bathroom?” in the way that, when I was in my twenties, got me anything I wanted.
The man responded with a broad white-toothed smile, “Of course.”
In the bathroom, which was papered with pages from a Faulkner paperback, I began thinking about all the kind restaurant hosts who have welcomed me into their bathrooms.
And one who didn’t. It was a few years ago in D.C., up the block from the White House, a mediocre wannabe kind of place with white linen on the tables, where the maitre d’ rejected me. Admittedly, I was mid-bike ride in shorts and sneakers and with sweaty helmet hair.
I then crossed the street to the Bombay Club, an upscale restaurant with fine Indian food, a favorite of the Clintons and some of Washington’s elite journalists.
The maitre d’ welcomed me warmly and led me to the rest rooms. When I returned to thank him, he walked me into the bar and told the bartender to give me a drink.
I must have look pretty pathetic. When I left, I over-thanked him and mentioned, to show I wasn’t just a bathroom moocher, that I had eaten there and that I would be back. The afterglow of his kindness lasts to this day.
Back to Low Country. On the way upstairs from the Faulkner bathroom, I decided to tell the host how much I appreciated his hospitality.
He again graced me with his sparkly smile and introduced himself. We began talking and I told him I was a writer and that I blog, and he said he had recently started blogging. We exchanged cards.
The following day he emailed me:
| Susan,
It’s your new friend Chad from Low Country. Your blog looks really funny! I can’t wait to read some, especially religion.
It was nice meeting and chatting. Let’s meet for lunch sometime and share life. I love meeting new interesting people.
Cheers and make today an amazing day!
Chad
P.S.
Here’s the link to my first blog post! http://www.africa.com/blog/blog,hip_hop_saves_lives_an_introduction,418.html |
He wasn’t hitting on me; he is somewhere around half my age of 65.
Chad and I are different. He’s writing to help people in Chad and Sudan, and my blog is a platform for my white girl worries, which I mentioned when I gave him my card. As for religion, he’s a believer and I get nightmares about the 23rd Psalm.
But back at Jack’s I was sitting on the bench outside when Chad came along to unlock his bicycle, which was parked right next to mine (technically my ex-husband’s that I borrow when I’m in New York).
I’m a schmoozer and a reacher-outer and I love the way Chad wrote “I love meeting new [ahem] interesting people,” expressing his wish to get together. I am going to use that next time I email a maitre d’ or someone else I’m eager to know better.
How do you reach out?
What are your experiences with using restrooms in restaurants where you are not a patron?
If you or someone you know likes cupcakes, don’t miss my article TLC’s Georgetown Cupcake Sisters Share a Chocolate Cupcake Recipe & Their Recipe for Success!
By susan fishman orlins “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 Popcorn is one of my favorite comfort foods. It fills me up, is healthful, tastes delicious and I pretend that eating this overflowing pot of it, sprinkled with sea salt, won’t make me feel squeezed in the waist by my elastic waist pants.
When my oldest daughter Eliza was a toddler, I thought it would be fun to place the electric popcorn maker in the middle of the living room, take off the top and watch the kernels explode all over the floor and furniture. I was right; for excitement it rivaled, hm, well nothing I can think of.
I took the above photo 25 years later in Eliza’s apartment. We became overly zealous with the amount of kernels and this time we were the ones all over the floor, cracking up, wondering when it would ever stop popping.
 We were like Lucy and Ethel in the “I Love Lucy” episode when Lucy and Ethel were trying to prove their pioneer bona fides to Ricky and Fred by baking bread. Lucy misread the recipe and used 13 cakes of yeast instead of 3.
You won’t be sorry if you try our fabulous popcorn.
What are your comfort foods?
Speaking of food, check out my newest articles on Home Goes Strong:
By susan fishman orlins You can tell a lot about a person’s life from the files they have open on their browser.
 Too many tabs Eugene, my computer guy, says I shouldn’t keep so many files open. But like with my desk, if I put things away, I’ll forget about them. So I leave them out and layers of other things gather on top of them and then I forget about them anyway.
Just yesterday, while taking my Organizing Challenge, under a pile on my desk, I found a dress I meant to return back in June.
Similarly, on my browser, I keep Sites open, holding onto the fantasy I’ll get around to reading them:
- An article about devices that help you watch your home from afar
- Twitter so I can check every 20 minutes to see if anyone retweeted my Holy Guacamole! tweet as well as see what my daughters are up to.
- Likewise, a tab to my stats that show how popular my blog posts are and, by association, how popular I am.
- “A Pro Confides his Best Tips for Painting Exteriors” I hope will help me figure out the best painter from the six I’m interviewing.
A tab with a “Consumer Reports” report on point and shoot cameras is open, so I can compare the one I just bought to the ones I didn’t buy. Is it a worrywart thing to seek opportunities for regret (and then regret having done so)?
Also open is Adam Gopnik’s piece about dogs in the “New Yorker.” It’s reassuring to know it is only a click away. But also anxiety-provoking; the tab is a steady reminder I don’t make time to read.
The “New Yorker” Festival Site is open with events ranging from a tasting walk in Greenwich Village with Calvin Trillin to Malcolm Gladwell waxing about The Virtues of Obnoxiousness. If I weren’t commitment averse, I’d buy tickets and close this tab.
Instead, I entered the limerick contest to see if I could win some tickets, which takes the matter out of my hands:
- A writer of wee note I became
- But my dream in this role was not fame (false, but here for the sake of rhyme and meter)
- Nor a view of the High Line
- Nor a New York Times byline
- But on New Yorker Fete’s slate my name.
(Hm, I worry they (and you for that matter) will not get the last line, my dream to be a featured writer in the Festival.)
I could make a file of these links, but I worry I’ll lose my place in the dog article if I close it and who needs one more file to keep track of?
Plus, as with newspapers that pile up, well, you know what happens, I chuck them on recycle day, and then I feel guilty I haven’t read them as well as worried I’ve missed something great.
Eugene is always telling me to reboot my computer more often for it to run its best. So once in a while I summon up the discipline to bid my tabs good-bye, and I log out only to start accumulating all over again, knowing I’ll never remember there was once a really great dog story I didn’t finish.
I’d love to see in the comments below what your open tabs say about you.
Check out my Home Goes Strong articles.
See my latest Huff Po post New York has The Moth, DC has SpeakeasyDC.
By susan fishman orlins There’s something serene, along with a sprinkling of smug, about people who practice yoga. They laud the benefits—“Doing yoga has saved my back.” “I’m no longer stressed.”
 Self Portrait With Bike If I had the patience to do yoga, I’d also have the attention span to meditate, read the New Yorker and maybe even drive more.
On the other hand, I’m like the yoga folks when it comes to bicycling. I too often wax smugly about the thrill of breezes in my face and never having to deal with rush hour traffic or the search for a parking space. I stay fit and it takes barely more time to get anywhere by bike compared to auto, sometimes less.
Admittedly, biking requires a degree of flexibility about arriving at your destination with wet circles on the underarms of your shirt.
In the winter, when the temperature is in single digits, many bikers hang up their handlebars and I find myself among a reduced population of peddalers.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “You would ski in this weather as well as sit motionless on a ski lift.”
 Chill, not chilled, on a ski lift As for environmental benefits of biking, I accept praise for my smaller footprint, though I confess it has much to do with my disdain for the experience of being behind the wheel of my car, whose battery dies and underbody rusts as a result of remaining stationary in front of my house.
The only drivers I can sort of relate to are those who have soothing rides during which they listen to books on tape.
But I then I remember I have no patience for keeping track of a book’s multiple cd’s or even uploading cd’s to my iPod and then figuring out how to find where I last left off.
Instead, while biking, I listen to NPR and learn things like, you should salt your food right before eating for maximum flavor, because salt releases aroma that enhances taste. If you salt while cooking that aroma disperses into the air rather than into your olfactory senses.
How did I get to salt from where I started with smug yogis and biking? It’s like that game where you start with a word, say, “bike.” And you change one letter at a time—bile, bale, sale—and end up with “salt.”
I used to phone my mom while biking. We’d chatter during a 40-minute ride about the news, the family, Oprah and books, while I pedaled home up a long dark hill after making dinner for my friend whose leg was shattered when a car knocked her off her bicycle in broad daylight.
Sometimes I call a friend while biking, who says, “You shouldn’t talk on the phone while biking.”
I’m careful, I say, I ride on the sidewalk and I pause to look both ways at driveways. Plus my bike and I are a Christmas tree of reflectors and blinking lights.
If I think about how I could get hit by a car while biking, my stomach flips, but once I mount the seat I feel as calm and free as a yogi.
How do you achieve a biker’s high, a yogi’s calm?
Unrelated announcement: If you like Avocado, don’t miss my article with tons of fabulous ways to use them from on pizza to on your face, as a masque or as shaving cream! Fried bacon anyone? Avocados go great with that too!
Wondering what to make for dinner tonight? Check out my new post In the Kitchen With my Daughter.
By susan fishman orlins
 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 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)
By susan fishman orlins China Baby
Last week the daughter of friends in Beijing wrote to me about her baby:
My baby is more than four months now. She is very healthy and very happy. Recently, I made haircut for her. In China we cut all the hair from birth, in order to grow better. Generally these hair be used as writing brush with the baby’s name and birthday for keepsake.
I wanted to share that bit of charm with you, especially because I have more to report on deer. If, like me, you are sick of deer talk, you may want to look up from your smartphone at this point and join the meal conversation that is going on around you or, if you are crossing the street, pay attention and look both ways.
Hm, that makes me so curious to know what you were in the middle of when you began reading this. Work? Other Websites? Work? Studies? Kids? Work? I’d love you to take a minute and let me know in the comments.
Think of it as a come as you are party, which reminds me of the Come as You Are party I had in the Seventies and my dear friend–who is now a big shot talking head, MacArthur Fellow, lauded by Clinton and others–loves to remind me how I’d invited him with a phone call at 7 am. So on the evening of the party, he arrived wearing only a towel around his waist and shaving cream on his face. The rest of us were dressed suitably enough to at least go grocery shopping.
I need to post more below on the deer to clarify/correct some tips on ticks.
BEFORE YOU GO, CHECK OUT MY DESSERT RECIPES, including Coconut Rice with Mango and Mango Sorbet that is fit for an Emperor. And a Cheesecake that I can’t even think about without salivating. There’s also a Fruit Salad that is a work of art.
Baby Deer: Corrections and More
I received this email after my previous post Deer Update With Deer Tips:
There is, in fact, a species known as the deer tick and, although they do pick up Lyme disease from white-footed mice, they spread it to deer and, thus, to other ticks which spread it to people and pets. Lyme disease contracted from deer ticks is very painful and treatment lengthy.
My experience with deer and other wild animals (think ducks, geese, rabbits and squirrels) is that you can put out all the commercial food you want and they will still prefer your shrubs and plants.
. . . Be advised that Chronic Wasting Syndrome among deer has been confirmed in Maryland. This is a horrible illness that causes deer to waste away no matter how much they eat. There is no cure or treatment. It has been around for many years but has only recently been confirmed in this state. Judging from the size of the fawn pictured, it has not needed to be nursed for some time. Perhaps the mother is recovering from the ordeal of raising twins.
I have been rehabilitating wildlife for over 24 years and have attended numerous classes and conference and done much reading regarding wildlife and the problems facing them. Through networking with other rehabbers in Maryland and across the country, the rehabbers at Second Chance keep abreast of new developments and treatments. We are in the process of using a specific drug to combat West Nile Virus in crows and hawks which has had good results in trials.
 Mama deer keeping cool under my deck
Christine Montuori, Founder/Director Second Chance Wildlife Center
And below is from David Stang, also at SCWC:
I may have misspoken about deer ticks when I said “no such species as deer ticks and in fact, the most common way to get ticks is from mice.” What I should have said is this:
Black-legged ticks can carry Lyme disease and some other diseases that can affect both humans and animals. This tick is sometimes found on deer, but adult black-legged ticks also feed on white-footed mice, chipmunks, shrews, raccoons, skunks, opossums, and other mammals. When deer are scarce, ticks don’t necessarily become scarce, because they have alternative hosts. Lyme disease can be found where there are no deer, and there are areas in this country that have deer but no Lyme disease. Deer can travel farther than a mouse, so can transport a tick farther… but we have many more mice than deer, and mice are the likely vector for most of the ticks we come upon.
By susan fishman orlins The fawns scamper across my backyard like teenagers off to a pep rally. Despite a few scares–days when I didn’t see the
 Mama Deer emaciated-looking mom in my yard–Mama deer has been here too.
But I’m still concerned about her.
After I wrote “Oh Dear, My Deer” about how worried I was for the little deer family, readers’ comments rivaled the debt ceiling negotiations in their diverse perspectives.
On my Facebook wall, one friend wrote “I am so DISTRESSED” and went on to say she hoped I’d been serving milk and cookies to the deer (or something like that; I spent 20 minutes searching for her exact comment.)
By contrast, my friend Jane wrote on my blog:
I can’t believe I’m trying to find ways to keep deer away from my hydrangeas (just bought coyote urine) and my brother never wears short sleeves or short pants because he worries so much about deer ticks and you are encouraging them so close to your house. Deer bring nothing good. Get rid of them! Soon!
Another comment, from my friend Lise, confused me at first: “What is the deer-equivalent of matzoh ball soup?” I thought oh, she wants me to make deer soup. Ew.
But now I realize she was suggesting I make deer-friendly matzoh ball soup to help plump up the malnourished-looking mother deer.
I did not make soup, but I did place in the yard a pan filled with water.
Even though I haven’t seen my dears today, I phoned The Second Chance Wildlife Center, believing that nearly a month is long enough for the deer to be in residence at my residence.
Happily, David Stang answered my call and I couldn’t wait to share the 411 with you!
David first tip is is no such species as deer ticks and in fact, the most common way to get ticks is from mice. I don’t like cats, but I like ticks even less. Is it time to get a kitten?
Also, if you want to keep the deer from eating your azaleas, try feeding them deer chow, which they may like better. Just buy a bag for $10 and scatter it on your lawn.
David had great news for Casey, who has been banned from even the front yard, because it has deer droppings that he likes to eat. Deer droppings, according to David won’t hurt him. “It’s like putting some hay in the blender,” he said.
Severa; deer wizards have advised me to leave the yard gate open so the deer will leave. I asked David what he thought about leaving the gate open. He replied, better to keep it closed; they can jump the fence if they want and the closed-in yard will protect them from dogs (and I’m thinking coyotes).
David noted he would be pleased if a deer family like mine were to settle in his yard.
 one of the teen twins; blurry I know--I have a tremor So I can sit back and enjoy my deer, though now I’m worried they’re off to greener pastures, as I haven’t seen them all day 
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: SEE MY FAVE HEALTHY RECIPES
By susan fishman orlins
Hobogies-add oil, vinegar, soy sauce, wrap in foil and grill
Welcome to my periodic series: Antidote to Worry (oh dear, is that now a commitment?), in which I highlight food I ate over the weekend.
Consider it a “Worry Break,” as in one of my Tip Day tips.
Plus, much to my pleasure and surprise, I turn out to be a food writer, among other things on the NBC Website Home Goes Strong, my specialty being recipes that are generally quick, easy and healthful–often but not always vegan or vegetarian–with not a lot of ingredients and no lemongrass or other stuff you wouldn’t find at the average A & P.
Also, whenever possible, I subscribe to creative measuring.
This weekend my daughter and I made hobogies, whose ingredients you can see in this photo. You can read how to make them on Home Goes Strong. The fun of preparing hobogies, especially with friends, as well as eating them is today’s Antidote to Worry!
Pair your hobogies with drinks from my new post Refreshing Summer Drinks for July 4th Parties or Anytime.
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See my recent post CARING FOR MY DYING HUSBAND AT HOME: BETH’S STORY (AS TOLD TO ME)
By susan fishman orlins
 Bathtub buffet
Bathtub snack: Ham, aged gouda, fresh multi-grain bread, spinach, arugula, mushrooms and strawberries.
And to wash away any lingering woes, red wine from Chile.
Before your bath, why not work out at your treadmill desk? Burning calories aren’t the only benefits!
For more great ideas for bathtub buffets, try some of my delicious healthy recipes with fat-burning foods.
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: My new post “Divorce, Downsizing, Dating & Death.” Share your thoughts.
In a previous post 10 Days in New York: Lessons Learned, Worries Amassed, I mentioned seeing a flier that said simply “Sarah Needs a Job .com.” I was so intrigued by this that I went
 sarah needs a job to Sarah’s Website. Sarah Feldman is around the age of my daughters, and I thought I could help, so I wrote her the below email.
On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 5:03 PM, Susan Orlins wrote:
Hi Sarah. I saw your flier and loved it. Went back to photograph it for my blog www.confessionsofaworrywart.com. But someone had taken down the ones I’d seen on W. 14th St. I was intrigued, because I thought your fliers showed great initiative and imagination.
I also like your Website, though as a mother of 3 girls in their 20′s, I wanted to make a couple of motherly suggestions.
 sarah needs a job sit here I apologize in advance for being presumptuous.
One, I would clean up anything you can, because I think it won’t appeal to employers. I would remove the f-word, even from comments and I would rename the page of NEWYORKSHITTY.
I love how your enthusiasm comes through and I would be inspired to interview you, but also I would be a bit put off by the angry tone that shows up…naturally you feel that way. Maybe there’s a humorous or other way to express it.
Anyway, all that said, I’d like to mention you on my blog and maybe at some point do a separate post about you.
Oh, one more thing. I couldn’t tell what you do? I think from a comment that you are an artist and went to Pratt. It would be nice to know that. I adore the graphic on the Site that’s under construction and your earrings too!!
 sarah needs a job fruit market Good luck and I hope to hear from you and I hope you take my suggestions as from a well-meaning (overbearing Jewish) mother.
On Mar 27, 2011, at 6:35 PM, labohemianartist wrote:
newyorkshitty.com isn’t my website…
On Mar 27, 2011, at 8:34 PM, Susan Orlins wrote:
Now that you point it out, I looked more carefully and I see that.
The following day . . . Unable to leave it at that, I posted on her blog where she mentions a job interview:
Good luck with your interview! See my shout out to sarahneedsajob.com on my blog http://tinyurl.com/tyspf.
I’m mulling over whether I’ll show her this post that you are now reading.
 sarah needs a job and glam poster Please tell me you too have a story of being an unwelcome buttinsky!
Should I let Sarah know about this post? Please vote!
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT:
See my article Interfaith Passover Seders & a Heavenly Flourless Chocolate Cake and join the convo on that Site–I love comments!
And see my article Extreme Couponing: How Discount Coupons Can Save You up to 99% at the Supermarket.
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 (Whether you are my age or pre-memory loss, please share this with parents and friends who’ve crossed the line.)
What was I was just thinking to write about? Oh yeah, memory loss.
That sounds like a bad joke, but it’s what I actually said to myself when I opened this file to write about my forgetfulness.
Already this morning, I knew I needed to go upstairs but couldn’t remember why (to turn on the humidifier). And there was something else. Oh yeah, I went to my laptop while preparing my shredded wheat—and I knew there was a reason. After a minute I remembered it was to stream NPR while preparing my shredded wheat.
The first time I looked up Alzheimer’s (and it’s cousins senility and dementia) was shortly after I gave birth to my oldest daughter. I attributed my diaper brain to, well, diaper brain.
Still, I needed to put memory triggers into place. So before leaving our New York apartment, in addition to taking the diaper bag, I ran through my mental checklist: Keys, Tissues, Aspirins, Gum, Money. (Memory Tip #1)
 That didn’t help the time I forgot to take my daughter out of a taxi; she wasn’t on one of my checklists. Since I’ve never been a fan of purses, I continue to use that same mental list. Except now I include reading glasses and Medicare card.
I’ve grown to accept the Trivia game I play with my mom. We both do it (I saw whatshername on Oprah, y’know the one from California. Maria Shriver? That’s it!).
When I was in 7th grade my dad took a memory course and would come home after each class and teach me what he learned.
For example, using that mnemonic system I still recall the phone number of my piano teacher, the one with slick black hair and  pointy shoes to whom I took a bus downtown from my junior high school. I would mount the steps to his third floor apartment and learn to play “Tears on my Pillow.” To the boogie woogie beat of “Beat me Daddy Eight to the Bar,” he would rub my bare thigh faster and faster closer and closer to my panty line.
Though it was as creepy as it sounds, it never occurred to me to tell my mom and I didn’t want to be impolite and ask him to stop. Funny how my distant memory is sharp as cheddar cheese.
On the other hand it’s almost a cliché to say I can’t remember whether I took my vitamins five minutes ago or whether I was just thinking about it. Yet, I lack the patience to fill one of those day-of-the-week pill holders.
So, after I take my morning vitamins, I separate out the one I need to take at night. And then after I take the vitamin at night, I put it back with the others for the morning. (Memory Tip #2) (Another morning pill I keep with my toothpaste so I remember to take it (Memory Tip #3).)
Then at night I go through my closing up the house mental checklist (Memory Tip #4): Doors (make sure they’re locked), Water (refillable bottle to take upstairs), Phones (ringers off for the night), Thermostat (turn down), Vitamins (as mentioned above).
 As for memorizing, it’s not so easy. But the benefit is that it trumps all other worries for a month while you work on it, as I wrote in my post Speak Easy about my stand-up performance in a Valentine’s Day show.
Thank goodness for photographs, because without them my whole life might be as ephemeral as a shadow. Maybe this is why I cling to the notes my girlfriend and I passed in Mr. Ashcom’s 10th grade history class and to letters I received nearly 60 years ago and all the time in between. Though I’m sad about the lost art of letter writing, the Internet has at least saved my Letters Received file and my fireproof memory box (random bonus tip) from bursting.
Agatha Christie’s lexicon decreased significantly as she aged, while her use of vague phrases such as “all sorts of” increased. Scholars believe she probably suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Generally, though, when writing I feel less challenged than when bumping along in the rest of my life. But do let me know if you notice me slipping into all sorts of uninteresting words and phrases.
What worries me most is that I can’t remember what happened in the short story I was reading when I paused ten minutes ago to refill my cup with hot water. Or when I can’t tell you anything about the movie I saw last week. There’s no checklist for those.
Anyone out there have other memory tips or creepy old man stories?
UNRELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: See my latest Home Goes Strong posts (they’re packed with tips!)
By susan fishman orlins Unrelated announcement: A MAGICAL USED COOKBOOK SHOP & A DIVINE COOKIE RECIPE
I’m addicted to worry. Not long ago, I wrote a Huffington Post post, Worry Less: 10 Lessons From Cognitive Therapy, in which I advised, “Be aware that rumination and obsession are like drugs, in a bad way. They activate the pleasure center of the brain, so the more you obsess, the more you are drawn to obsess. It’s an addiction. If you think about it that way, it can help you realize what’s happening and put the brakes on some of that worry.”
So each time my mind flashes on one of my favorite things to worry about, I’m feeding the addiction and it makes me want more.
Who knew it was such a pleasure to worry?
How do you measure up in the addicted to worry category?
By susan fishman orlins RELATED ANNOUNCEMENT: SEE MY HOME GOES STRONG ARTICLE, 11 More Great Ways to Deter Break-Ins, Readers Speak Out.
It was Christmastime. I was ten years old and playing on the adding machines in my father’s office. I walked down a narrow hallway to show the secretary my string of numbers. At the end of the hall I saw a man locking her in the bathroom that was in her office. When he saw me heading his way, he pointed his shiny silver gun at me. I thought he was one of the men from the factory playing a game and I smiled. Then he ran and the secretary instructed me how to use the switchboard to contact my dad and my grandfather.
He had stolen the Christmas bonuses for all the men in the factory. And he stole my naivete that bad things couldn’t happen to me, though of course I knew I was lucky to be safe.
The source of the below advice from burglars is Richard T. Wright, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, who interviewed 105 burglars for his book Burglars on the Job.
1. Of course I look familiar. I was here just last week cleaning your carpets, painting your shutters, or delivering your new refrigerator.
2. Hey, thanks for letting me use the bathroom when I was working in your yard last week. While I was in there, I unlatched the back window to make my return a little easier.
3. Love those flowers. That tells me you have taste… and taste means there are nice things inside. Those yard toys your kids leave out always make me wonder what type of XBOX they have.
4. Yes, I really do look for newspapers piled up on the driveway. And I might leave a pizza flyer in your front door to see how long it takes you to remove it.
5. If it snows while you’re out of town, get a neighbor to create car and foot tracks into the house. Virgin drifts in the driveway are a dead giveaway.
6. If decorative glass is part of your front entrance, don’t let your alarm company install the control pad where I can see if it’s set. That makes it too easy.
7. A good security company alarms the window over the sink. And the windows on the second floor, which often access the master bedroom – and your jewelry.
8. It’s raining, you’re fumbling with your umbrella, and you forget to lock your door – understandable. But understand this: I don’t take a day off because of bad weather.
9. I always knock first. If you answer, I’ll ask for directions somewhere or offer to clean your gutters. (Don’t take me up on it.)
10. Do you really think I won’t look in your sock drawer? I always check dresser drawers, the bedside table, and the medicine cabinet.
11. Here’s a helpful hint: I almost never go into kids’ rooms.
12. You’re right: I won’t have enough time to break into that safe where you keep your valuables. But if it’s not bolted down, I’ll take it with me.
13. A loud TV or radio can be a better deterrent than the best alarm system. If you’re reluctant to leave your TV on while you’re out of town, you can buy a $35 device that works on a timer and simulates the flickering glow of a real television. (Find it at http://www.faketv/.com/)
14. Sometimes, I carry a clipboard. Sometimes, I dress like a lawn guy and carry a rake. I do my best to never, ever look like a crook.
15. The two things I hate most: loud dogs and nosy neighbors.
16. I’ll break a window to get in, even if it makes a little noise. If your neighbor hears one loud sound, he’ll stop what he’s doing and wait to hear it again. If he doesn’t hear it again, he’ll just go back to what he was doing. It’s human nature.
17. I’m not complaining, but why would you pay all that money for a fancy alarm system and leave your house without setting it?
18. I love looking in your windows. I’m looking for signs that you’re home, and for flat screen TVs or gaming systems I’d like. I’ll drive or walk through your neighborhood at night, before you close the blinds, just to pick my targets.
19. Avoid announcing your vacation on your Facebook page. It’s easier than you think to look up your address.
What tips do you have for deterring break-ins?
By susan fishman orlins It’s been a longie since my last Tip Day. I’m worried you’ll think I’ve run out of tips. To be honest, I’m a little worried myself.
So today, when a positive thought visited me, I wondered how I could put a worry spin on it. Then I remembered long-neglected Tip Day! (There are so many things to remember and unless I have a checklist just for remembering Tip Day, which I would have to remember to look at, I might again have a long delay.)
The tip is to extrapolate from a long-held diet tip of mine: Whether you have 10 ribs or 2 ribs, what you’ll remember is that you had ribs.
Oops, now I’m trying to retrieve the analogy I just had in mind. Oh, here it is . . . Say you’re worried about taking a long enough a vacation. Maybe you’re short on time or money. As weeks, months, years pass, though, you’ll remember you had that visit to Paris (or Atlantic City) rather than how much time you spent there.
Happy Tip Day and enjoy whatever holiday time you may have in the upcoming days as well as any couple of ribs you eat; your memory will take care of the rest.
Speaking of accepting less of something, with the holidays, I hope to be able to keep up my usual pace of posting, but if not, I figure you’ll be busy at home or in Atlantic City or elsewhere and will check in with Confessions of a Worrywart when you can or when you’re back at work where you’ll have more time. I wish you a worry-free new year!
Do you have any worry tips for the New Year? If so, I’d love to hear them.
By susan fishman orlins 
Unrelated announcement: Zhuzh up hot chocolate with a candy cane stirrer and other Breakfast Ideas to Wow a Couple or a Crowd. See my article on Home Goes Strong.
I’ll be flying on the day after Thanksgiving and I’m dying to try a pat down. But I’ll not do it if the lines are long. I’d be annoyed if someone else held up the line just for a cheap thrill.
Natch I worry about security, but what takes up more space in my head, maybe because I have a bit of control over it, is where to sit. There are so many things to bear in mind when selecting an airplane seat.
It’s a discredit to my worrywart bona fides that hedonism gets in the way and the first thing I go for is comfort. (Is it an oxymoron to be a hedonistic worrywart?) I’ll even book aisle seat 1C (assuming it isn’t first class), despite it being the known worst place to sit if a terrorist is on board. I offset that troubling thought with the risk a window seat passenger incurs of being sucked out into the atmosphere, which I’ve read can happen.
 But ever since chatting with a physical therapist, who told me to keep the shade at least half-closed when flying in order to reduce radiation exposure, I worry that from the aisle I won’t stand half a chance of controlling the shade. I’m comforted, though, that some pilots, who have clocked tens of thousands of hours with their noses pressed against those huge jet windshields, live long enough to retire to Arizona.
My ideal seat is an aisle with an empty spot next to me on which to spread out my newspapers, writing files and food bag. Being only 5’4” (formerly 5”5”), lateral space means more to me than leg room. I’m okay with the tray table extending to my appendectomy scar, if I had an appendectomy scar.
The securing of a seat next to no one involves a strategy I am afraid to divulge because, even though the whole world does not read my blog, word could get out. Well, I’ll tell you anyway, especially since my plan hasn’t worked lately.
I pay up for an aisle seat near the front, figuring most people won’t pay extra for the middle, which ought to improve the percentages of my getting lateral space. As I said, lately it hasn’t worked at all; instead, I suggest you use that $10 to buy a slice of pizza in the airport Zaro’s.
Speaking of seats, we all know by now that bedbugs are waiting for you to sit down on that nubby blue upholstery so they can hitch a ride in your pocket to your boudoir. I recently learned that lavender is a natural bedbug repellant, so now when I travel I smell like a blue-haired lady. Fingers crossed that it works.
Let me know how you deal with all the stress of flying.
Home Goes Strong Cupcakes and Chocolates for Mother’s Day and beyond!
By susan fishman orlins Last week, in the writing group I facilitate for homeless people, I suggested a pre-Thanksgiving exercise that got me thinking. Instead of the grade-school-type assignment of writing what you’re thankful for I suggested we come up with some things we are not thankful for and see if we can find bright spots in those, the proverbial silver linings.
I’m not thankful that my children’s parents are divorced, but there are many things I am thankful for as a result of my divorce. Let me say at the outset that I liked being married. The greatest loss was that of our family unit, yet we still go on “family” vacations and gather on holidays when possible.
The three things I miss most about being married are:
1. Reading the Sunday New York Times with my ex. He would quote to me bits of interesting articles, which doubled my reading pleasure, literally.
2. Even though Steve traveled a lot, I never felt lonely. At times I felt disconnected from friends because it takes time to be married, time that I now use–and this is one of the silverest linings–to spend with old friends and cultivate new friendships as well as to visit my mom and talk to her every day.
3. Oops, I can’t remember the third thing. If it comes to me, I’ll let you know. Oh, now I remember, he wrote all the checks and dealt with life’s fine print.
As for a sleeping companion, I stopped caring whether someone with hairy legs was sharing my bed. In fact, at some point I began to believe that sharing my bed with my hairy beagle, Casey, was as pleasurable in it’s own way and in other ways a lot less bother. For example, I can blow my nose loudly in the night and Casey could care less. If only Casey could talk politics.
Sex begs to be addressed, even though my children, who read my blog, might gag. I’ll spare you details, but yes it’s nice to have a built-in partner. On the other hand it’s nice to have one’s own bedtime routine and to once again have had the opportunity to experience feelings of new romance with an–albeit limited–succession of boyfriends.
The morning routine is my treasure. I go to sleep when I please and wake up when I please and I turn on NPR without worrying I’m disturbing someone. And no one disturbs me. Casey simply follows along with my schedule, which often varies from day to day.
After getting dressed, if the weather is 50 degrees or above, I go out to the porch that is off my bedroom and stretch then write, which is what I’m doing now. It’s 12:48 pm and when I finish this, Casey and I will have breakfast and take a short walk. After that, I’ll write some more and then walk with a friend. (In case you missed the diet tip, my tip goes that I eat all day long, so the later I start, the less I eat.)
Often at night I go to dinner, to book club, to a swing dance. Other nights I turn on MSNBC and cook Brussels sprouts and answer mail, sitting through repeat rounds of Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow. I find catching up on mail while listening to jabs at Sarah Palin a pleasant way to spend an evening.
Last night I went ice skating with my ex-so-called boyfriend under a velvety midnight-blue sky with a crisp half moon on the outdoor rink that sits between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. Afterwards we went for frozen yogurt and a stroll.
Don’t get me wrong, the skating was as lovely as it sounds but it’s not perfect. Mr. Ex-So-Called was cranky about my fiddling with stuff in the car, putting things in my pockets so I wouldn’t have to take my backpack to the ice and then fiddling again after we skated to put back stuff from my pockets into my backpack, all of which proves, of course, that you don’t have to be married to get on someone’s nerves.
When I was married, I loved when my ex traveled and I had the house to myself after the kids went to sleep. Plus, as I recently wrote in a Huffington Post article about helping kids deal with divorce, the kids and I could have French toast for dinner if we wanted or dinner in the bathtub or French toast for dinner in the bathtub. I can do that every day now, if I choose.
Now, it’s just Casey and me at home. The serenity is ideal for my writing. Ah, but there’s the rub. I’m not complaining, but as a free-lance writer, I have no anchor, no office culture. I regret that, as a competent loner, I’ve built more space around myself than I presently need. It helps that I’ve compiled a list of people I like, long enough to form a small village. So when the house gets too quiet, there’s always someone to bike to if I’m desperate to escape the racket of molecules banging together.
Maybe I could do more to attract the company of a suitable man. Instead, I have chosen a path of comfort in my “mom jeans.” By contrast, some women I know have undergone the cosmetic blade to look sexier and younger. Would I ever pay a surgeon to cut open my face open and staple my head and expose myself to the risk of looking like Popeye? Certainly not to attract a guy who’s too vain to use sunscreen like a man I met some years ago on a bike trip.
In sum, divorce has many silver linings and I have oodles to be thankful for. I hope you won’t allow this upbeat post to detract from my worrywart creds.
What silver linings can you find in things you’re not thankful for?
Check out some of my posts on Home Goes Strong:
*Joyce Maynard Adopted Two Girls From Ethiopia Then Gave Them Up
*A Great New Way to Date
*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
*Dating After My Husband Died: Widow With Cancer Moves On
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