one more day

I will be back rambling soon enough....check back this weekend for sure.  Been sick...pneumonia so they say.  I think it is just exhaustion, from what I have no idea.??? 

just around the corner

I looked up the word ‘Jitney’ in the encyclopedia. It means ‘shared taxi’ and are used primarily in developing countries. It also says that they often are privately owned, have an anarchic operating style and lack central control or organization. It refers to them here in the US as the equivalent of dollar vans. Had I known all that a few days ago I would never have suggested we take the jitney from the Borgata in Atlantic City.

My husband and I went to the Borgata because I was invited to participate in a slots tournament. Me and 10,000 other people. But the oversized postcard that came proclaiming me as one of the ‘selected few’ convinced me to go. That and the free room they offered me. King sized bed, great view, comp breakfast….heaven. Or not!

We drove to AC on Thursday with a planned stop at the Corvette dealership where we bought my sons car two years ago. They have a little museum that my husband wanted to see and missed in 2007 when we bought my son’s Vette. The museum was there, I think my husband was just in sticker shock when we bought an atomic orange Corvette and he completely forgot to check out the museum before we drove off.

The Atlantic City Expressway…Exit 2.…right off the exit. Easy to get to. If the exit hadn’t been closed and the detour wasn’t ridiculously hard to follow. As we passed exit 2 and followed the detour off exit 1 I knew we would get lost. I am probably the last hold out for a navigation system. Even my new cell phone doesn’t have it. (or does it..?) Exit 1 took us under a tunnel over a bridge and passed windmills that harnessed….wind, I guess. The neighborhood was getting beachy and beautiful and clean. We certainly weren’t in the outskirts of Atlantic City any longer. The town was called Brigantine and it was beautiful. But it wasn’t where we looking to go. We drove for about a mile until we came to THE END sign and u-turned. We asked some guys fishing how to get to the Corvette dealership which we weren’t surprised they knew. Way off track, they explained how to get to where we had intended, passed the windmills, over the bridge and back under the tunnel….but from there they had no street names. Turn right at Angelino’s Italian restaurant, another right by the closed Lukoil gas station….then a left….maybe. We backtracked as instructed, looked for Angelino’s, gave up and headed for the Borgata valet parking area. The valet knew where we wanted to go and gave us perfect directions…we found the Vette dealership and in doing so we also found Angelino’s. Passed the windmills, under the tunnel but NOT over the bridge into Brigantine. The museum amounted to no more than old cars, older cars, new cars, used cars, red cars and blue cars but mainly over priced was-this-really-worth-it cars. For my husband it was, for me the slots were calling.

The slot tournament room was 200 degrees but since you only play for 6 minutes and they gave you free coffee, beverages, cookies and brownies…who cares? I could tell by my score that I wasn’t going to score in the top 22 prize spots, but the Yankees were playing that night and possibly clinching the ALCS. Life is good!

My husband came up with a good idea, let’s leave the beautiful all inclusive Borgata with it’s 5 star restaurants and renowned bars and go to an Irish Pub we ate at like 3 years ago on the Boardwalk. They have $1 beers….enough said.  I called the bar ahead of time to be sure they would have the game on to which they assured me they would. They never mentioned that there was only one TV, it was a 26 inch black and white, and they were all Phillies fans. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I remembered from my last trip to the Borgata that they have a jitney that takes you from the marina to the boardwalk hotels. I asked the bell services captain where to get it and when he didn’t know and had to look on a map I should have guessed this wasn’t gonna be a noteworthy experience. The jitney was just outside the parking entrance and there was one just about to leave when we got there. We got on thinking it was free, but the handful of dollars in the drivers hand prompted me to ask…how much? $2.50 each…so much for ‘dollar vans’. Before we even had time to sit down the driver peeled out, throwing us to our seats and we were on our way. It was probably the only time I truly wanted to wear a seat belt. The jitney bumped and bucked as it was maneuvered through the streets of AC. The first stop was Harrah’s and every one got off except for us. I asked the driver if he went to St James Place which is where the Irish Pub is. He assured us he did in a tone reminiscent of the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld. I sat down like a good passenger and awaited his direction. To me it seemed like we were going in the opposite direction of the area we needed to go, passing the hotels that our map said were next to the Pub, and it seemed like the neighborhood was getting worse and worse. There we were at night in a well lit mini bus, driving through a rather downtrodden neighborhood, basically screaming….WE HAVE MONEY, WE ARE HERE TO GAMBLE, WE HAVE MONEY. When the bus finally stopped at the corner of St James Place and Atlantic Avenue (so they really did name Monopoly after Atlantic City….cool!) the driver told us that the Irish Pub was around the corner. We got off, barely, before he peeled out of the stop and left us on our own. The people that milled around looked homeless and desperate. I could just feel the knife in my side, the gun muzzle to my head. I wanted to turn that corner and run to the Pub but my husband had to tie his shoe. As we turned the corner we could see the Irish Pub sign in the distance. The long, long block that we had to navigate was nothing more than empty lots, boarded up houses, hourly rate hotels, garbage and broken glass. I wanted to pick up the pace, but Chester had to tie his shoe AGAIN! I told him to double knot the damn thing and please walk faster. He said ‘calm down’ (pissing me off even more) I told him if we had just stayed at the Borgata we wouldn’t be in this mess….he walked a little faster reminding me that it was my idea to take the jitney that left us here. If anyone had contemplated killing us they would have waited first to see if we were going to kill each other. You and your $1 beers! You said the jitney was good! The game is starting and I am gonna miss Jeter! Calm down!

We arrived at the Pub. The game was on as promised, but the TV couldn’t be seen from anywhere other than the bar, where you couldn’t eat. We contemplated leaving but decided to have my daughter text message me the score as we ate and figured out how to get back to the Borgata without getting mugged or killing each other. I could tell the Yankees were losing early on since the people that could see the TV were clapping and hooting….Phillies fans. The food was fine and the beers were no longer a dollar but the waitress called us a cab that took us door to door back to the Borgata. We went to the bar located in the middle of the casino floor and amidst the clouds of throat closing cigar smoke and half dressed barmaids we drank $7 beers and watched the Yankees lose in one of the best games I have seen. 

buzz buzz buzz

I have a backache. I don’t think I slept wrong (if you know me, you know I hardly sleep), I didn’t lift anything heavier than my granddaughter, an open window didn’t give me a chill and I don’t remember bending wrong. My posture is good, I don’t have the flu, and certainly didn’t over exercise it. So why the hell do I feel like I got rapped by A-Rod’s bat in my lower back?

I Googled backache and found that the best remedy for lower back pain is wet heat so every day I virtually empty my water heater letting the shower run on my back. Clean and shriveled, but no relief. Stepping in and out of the bathtub was excruciating anyway. I heated wet dish towels in the microwave which worked for a while, but after one set caught fire I abandoned that idea. Then smell of smoldering terrycloth still hangs in the air. I dismissed the thought of hunting through the linen closet for the three heating pads I know I have in there as soon as I realized I would need to climb on a chair to reach the shelf I was pretty sure they were hiding on. The Ben-Gay pain patches and their much cheaper generic co-horts didn’t do too much but like any good placebo the fact that there was a horrible smelling patch adhered to the exact location of the pain made me temporarily feel better. At least until I moved. Or breathed.

My husband made me take pain relievers. Note that I did not say pain KILLERS which would have made more sense, but I took the little white pills he handed me in hopes of some relief. Nothing. Maybe even less than nothing. I checked the bottle. Excedrin Migraine…what part of backache didn’t he get? I laid on the floor. It was cold and hard and hurt. I had my grandson walk on my back. Scratch that, I asked my grandson to walk on my back…. he marched. One useless treatment after another. And then like a light bulb going off in the proverbial darkness….my son broke his toe! He has drugs. Pain KILLERS! I waited impatiently for him to get home from work. Vicodin…..Codeine….Oxy-whatever? Got any left? Please, please, please!

“One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small, and the one’s that children give you don’t do anything at all…” (not around in the 60’s ….you wont get it…) Nothing. Not even a buzz. I waited….they say 20 minutes to work. Waiting waiting waiting….Nothing! Not even a…………oooooh, what’s this? Buzz buzz buzz.

My back is still horrid. I moan when I walk, whimper when I bend and snivel when I sit. But when it gets really bad I take a pill, wait 20 minutes and I forget about the pain. I forget my name and where I am….and the fact that there are only two pills left. Uh-oh!

happy birthday

I went to the mall today to buy my son-in-law a birthday gift. Ordinarily I go nowhere near the mall but as I knew exactly what I was getting and which store I was getting it from I felt it was safe to venture in. As I drove up the ramp to the roof where I park for safety reasons, I noticed that the big slabs of concrete that held up the ramp were crumbling. I pressed on the accelerator as if driving faster would get me safely into the parking garage and off the ramp quicker. Although somewhat illogical, I hesitated to think how one gets out of the garage if the ramp collapses.

The roof was under repair. Someone other than me obviously saw the crumbling cement, and taped off a portion of the parking spots, of course the ones nearest the doors.  I parked, walked toward the entrance to Sears, around the caution tape and into Sears. The security guard mumbled something as I passed him which could have been ‘good afternoon’ or ‘stop I’ll shoot’….either way I kept going. It was 100 degrees in the store.  At least.   I broke a sweat as I made my way to the escalator that would take me to floor I needed to enter the mall from Sears. I had barely just finished putting up my Halloween decorations and the mall was decorated for Christmas. Holly, trees and I kid you not, fake snow. As the sweat dripped off my forehead I watched a mother attempt to stop her ADHD child from eating the plastic snowflakes that he was  now putting into places I am sure should not be embedded with plastic snow.

I found the directory with the map and the little YOU ARE HERE arrow and followed the chart to locate Modell’s. Passing the kiosks selling everything from unnecessary cell phone accessories to overpriced air brushed T-shirts I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to pass the gauntlet of try-me’s. Try-me’s are those booths that offer everything from spa services to water massages. I dodged the spa guy, backtracked around the sea salt man and bullied my way passed the aqua spa stand and arrived at Modell’s. The store was adorned with everything Yankees to my hearts delight. I thankfully found what I wanted immediately as it was as stifling here as it was in Sears.  Perhaps the mall owners could lower the heat to a bearable temperature, save some fuel, save some money and pass the saving on to us. But that ain’t gonna happen!  I looked around and realized I was the only one sweating, probably because I was the only one who hadn’t recently immigrated from a Caribbean island.  No comment!

As I waited on  line I found another Yankees shirt I thought my daughter would like to wear for the playoffs. As the girl rang up my purchase she asked if I could get another shirt since the one I chose had no price tag. I looked, none of them had tags. She looked through a price book as she waited for someone to acknowledge her call for help. I jokingly said “it must be free”….she didn’t get it. And neither did I in the long run. She never found my item, no one ever came to help her and my daughter did not get her shirt since I was seconds away from heat stroke and had to leave it stranded at the counter. I took my bag and left the store full well knowing the sea salt man would be ready for me this time around and I prepared my excuse for not trying or buying today.

Me, my Modell’s purchase and my pocketbook (tucked pretty much into my armpit for safety) made our way uneventfully to the escalator in Sears. Before I got on the moving stairs I saw two things that caught my eye…. a section marked full-figured and a sign proclaiming 50% off.  Deadly combination. For 45 minutes I picked through rack after rack of clothes that looked more like island wear than autumn in New York, but I still managed to find three complete outfits. Two for work, and one for those slobby days that I love so much. I got on the line. 30 deep. 4 registers. I waited for 5 minutes. No one moved. One register closed. Another put the manager call light on.  Waiting. Sweating.  Ten minutes…still no movement. I counted to 100 and left. I hung the clothes on the closest rack.  I hold back tears….or is that sweat pouring into my eyes? I get to the escalator. It isn’t moving. This is a joke right? Twilight Zone? Punk’d? I made my way back passed the full figure section, the 50% off sign and the clothes I abandoned and found the elevator. Not that I wanted to use them, but I did wonder, where are the stairs? I got to the roof level and sprinted toward the door where I knew there would be refreshing lifesaving air. The security guard mumbled something that could have been ‘good afternoon’ or ‘stop I’ll shoot’…either way I kept going and didn’t stop til I got to my car.

....loser

I have decided to attempt yet another diet. The only one that ever worked for me, albeit a short lived triumph….is Weight Watchers. The one that they modify every few years because someone decides that the current plan is too hard to stick to. That someone is probably 115 pounds. Bitch! I joined Weight Watchers in the recent past, lost some weight, got a milestone key chain, a pin and a bookmark with star stickers representing every 5 pound loss. I gained back the weight, lost the key chain and the pin and the stars fell off the bookmark. I therefore am looking into other options before committing again. I saw an online version of Weight Watchers but I know that I would cheat. When the time came to enter my weight for that week, I know I would make sure I lost at least 5 pounds even though I pigged out on Swedish fish and Goldfish Crackers. (my personal favorites)

I then looked into Jenny Craig. Many years ago I joined Jenny Craig and never the optimist, I signed up and paid for a lifetime membership, just in case I failed. And I did. Several times. The experience was upsetting to say the least, to my ego and my wallet. After paying over $100 a week for what amounted to tasty but hummingbird portions, I lost 6 pounds. And I am sure I peed most of that out the first day. The next few weeks cost me a small fortune and my weight loss even smaller. I thought, this is not the plan for me and decided half-heartedly to move on. I looked into NutriSystem. Their plan involved picking a 28 day menu which is delivered by mail. It takes me 20 minutes to decide what I want for lunch on any given day, chosing 28 meals would take me more time than I was prepared to invest.
  

I went to Walgreens to price the Slim Fast products. They had shakes and bars. They had sugar free, carb free, lactose free and gluton free…the only thing not advertised was taste free. On to the Medifast Plan. This was kind of a combination of Slim Fast with bars and shakes, and NutriSystem because you order food in bulk and I would have been willing to give it a try except for one thing. The snack list….hyped as delicious healthy snacks they included soy crisps, vegetable crackers, celery, pickles and gum. Are they friggin kidding? Where are the Ho-Ho’s? The Yodels? The cookie dough? I know there is a diet out there for me….I just have to keep looking.

Atkins, Cabbage Soup, South Beach, Grapefruit Diet, the Zone, e-diet all great diets in their own right, all wrong for me. The one thing they all have in common is the fact that you need to couple the diet plan with an exercise plan. I have nothing against exercise, I even bought the Richard Simmons Sweatin’ To The Oldies tapes. Unfortunately by the time I got around to opening them my VHS player turned into a DVD player and the tapes are still….well, VHS tapes. Do they make these in disks?   I like to walk, just not fast, or uphill, or far, or in the summer, or the cold.  I bought an exercise ball.  Where did I put that thing anyway?  I even thought of getting a personal trainer like they have on the Biggest Loser, but I know the first time they made me work  hard enough to puke, the trainer would be officially pink slipped.  I could join a gym....if I had $500 to honor a contract I will use twice, at best,  after the intial signing.  I could do yoga if I didn't giggle everytime the instructor said to get into the downward dog or the extended puppy position.  These choices are exhausting....maybe I should just stay fat.  Twinkie, anyone?

 

duh?!

Its been a while since I’ve played a good board game. I remember playing board games a lot more often. Monopoly, Clue, Life….all the classics, but with the internet and it’s countless game sites, the Nintendo DS handhelds and the high def Wii gaming system the board game has all but disappeared. The other night I went with a friend to my sister in-law’s house and before we bored each other with mundane conversation we decided to play a game.

First mistake, Trivial Pursuit. We did have choices though including the 20th anniversary edition (which was 8 years old already), the 60’s or Music. We opted for the anniversary edition. Second mistake. I say ‘we’ opted when it was really me that opted since I thought the diverse topics would show off our all-around knowledge of the world. OK so I was wrong! The game was horribly hard. We spun, moved our little pie wheel piece around the board to a color we thought we had a shot at answering correctly, got it wrong and moved on. This is basically how it went for a while. Hey, what about the 60’s? We all lived through them, we gotta be better at that one. We exchanged the cards for the new edition and we started fresh. We spun, moved our little pie wheel piece around the board to a color we thought we had a shot at answering correctly, got it wrong and moved on. Ok been there, done that. After a while we caught on that the answers were going to be a Kennedy (pick one, any one), Janis Joplin, Woodstock, Jack Nicklaus or Charles Manson depending on the category. I guess the writers at Hasbro only remembered a few highlights of the ten years the 60‘s encompassed.….that or they figured that somewhere down the road some dopes (like us) would play this edition believing that because we survived the 60’s we would know the answers.

One by one we got pieces to wedge into our pie wheel game piece. Even with our new insight the game went on and on with unanswered questions. So we made up our own rules. You now got a choice. If you landed on, let’s say….green, which is Sports, you got to chose which of two questions you wanted to answer. And when that didn’t help much, we resorted to charades with me stabbing the air and slitting my own throat with a mock knife to get them to say OJ Simpson in response to a Heisman Trophy question. I know it seemed more like cheating and less like playing but it made the stupidness we were feeling dissipate somewhat. In the end, my sister in-law won, but I think she had an advantage. She plied us with sweet and sour ooze stuffed Twizzlers (I kid you not) that I am sure sent a mind- numbing sugar rush to our brains. Ok, so I asked for them, but she really should have refused after we polished off the better part of a dozen Dunkin Donuts which thankfully doesn’t have the calorie count printed on the box.  It was late, we were all tired, nauseous from the Twizzlers and humbled by our dumbness so we thought we would leave but not before vowing to play again and get more answers right then wrong without cheating. 

you say tomato......

I used to have a green thumb. I grew everything from flowering cacti to large hanging plants with even larger names. I even got, to my husband’s untenable joy, my Christmas poinsettia to flower at Easter time. I grew herbs in tiny pots on my kitchen windowsill. Yes the thumb was definitely green. Not so much anymore.

 

I planted tomatoes. I got four. Two plants, two tomatoes each. I also planted patio tomatoes. Remember when they were called cherry tomatoes? Little round tomatoes. Nothing’s changed, but now they are either patio tomatoes at 1.99 a pound, or cherry tomatoes at 2.49 or the newest addition to the tomato family, grape tomatoes at a ridiculous 2.99 a pound. I got a whopping 13 of those. Two salads full on harvest night.

Last year my son gave me two Topsy Turvy planters. Like me he probably couldn’t sleep one night and saw an infomercial convincing him that tomatoes should be grown hanging upside down because….well, just because. But last year didn’t work out so good. The upside down plants never really took to the whole reversed growing regime and simply laid there. Not one tomato. I blamed the bees for not pollinating correctly but I think it was probably the sporadic (at best) watering. This year I started them with big, healthy plants from Home Depot. (because where else would you buy big healthy plants?) I had my husband hook up a hose on my deck so I could water on a regular basis. The plants grew large and lush. The bees must have found their way to my deck and suddenly I had little yellow flowers turning into green tomatoes. And if we liked green tomatoes it would have been a success. But the tomatoes just hung there, staying green until they rotted. So I started picking them green, pre-rot, and allowed them to ripen on my kitchen counter. I even put some in brown paper bags which I heard expedites the ripening process. I still remained with hard green tomatoes until they turned into hard green tomatoes with mold. I threw them out. Hey, Beefsteaks are only .99 a pound in season.

I planted basil and oregano. The basil grew tall and thrived until I decided to start picking the leaves to use in my tomato gravy (yes I say gravy, not sauce) when it suddenly folded over and limply lost its great green color. I guess that was it’s way of expressing its discord at being violated. So, no pesto tonight either. The oregano never really looked like the dried flakes I buy at the supermarket so I just enjoyed the smell and harvested none.

The only other edible things I attempt to grow were peppers. Green Bell peppers, and as I had seen how well I did with the ‘green’ tomatoes I figured this to be a slam dunk. Wrong! The plant thrived the peppers did not. I got one pepper the size of a walnut which I watched carefully each day so as not to let it go from green bell to rotten produce. The pepper grew to almost fist size and was hours away from the big harvest when a squirrel brazenly scaled the deck, hung upside down from my Topsy Turvy planter and confiscated my single beautiful pepper and absconded with it into the tree.

Did I mention that Key Food has a lovely produce department?

what the #$@*!

I have to stop reading the paper. It upsets me. No, it more than upsets me, it causes me to….well, Ramble.

A writer for the Daily News is upset with the CDC for not making a bigger deal out of the fact that, according to him, statistics show that blacks and Hispanics are contracting the swine flu more often than the rest of us. Maybe we wash our hands more, maybe we cover our nose and mouth more when we sneeze, maybe we throw our used tissues away before the germs can make their way to another poor soul. Whatever the reason, what is his point? Would he feel better if the white Americans got the flu more? The Italians? Greeks? What the $#@*! He goes on to quote statistics from Boston, Chicago and Oklahoma where again, blacks and Hispanics (oh, and in Oklahoma, Native Americas as well) are coming down with swine flu more often. He claims it is because they are from low-income families who can’t afford health care and therefore can’t go to the doctor and therefore can’t get the care they need and therefore end up in cardiac arrest and therefore have to go to the emergency room for treatment. I have an idea, you get sick and fear you have the swine flu…..go to the emergency room. Don’t wait til you go into cardiac arrest….a low income doesn’t make you lose your common sense. A Brooklyn pediatrician attributes the high Hispanic numbers to the fact that so many Mexican immigrants (many of them illegals) have compromised immune systems due to a lack of Vitamin D. The news writer wants the CDC to waste valuable money that could be spent on preventing or curing the flu on a study to prove that blacks and Hispanics are the most likely candidates to get it.

Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (say that three times fast) was the first Al Qaeda murderer to be brought to the United States from Guantanamo by President Obama. He is going to be tried in Manhattan’s Federal Court by 12 you-and-me New Yorker’s instead of a military tribunal. This bomb making one-time cook for Osama Bin Laden lucked out again when Attorney General Holder decided that the Manhattan U.S attorney could not ask for the death penalty. We are sending a terrible message to the nations that wish to do us harm….we are going soft. We will indict and prosecute, but we will do so with a weakened sympathetic and caring hand. When questioned why the death penalty was removed from the proverbial table, a unintelligible answer surfaced. Since earlier embassy bombers were spared the death penalty, then it would only be fair to keep it consistent. What the $#@*! The mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed may also be sent to New York for prosecution. What then? Will Holder also allow him to escape the death penalty under his ‘consistency’ rule? Why is it again that President Obama wants Guantanamo closed?

David Letterman slept with several woman. Consensual sex. That would be where two adults agree to have sex. Good for him. But there are people that feel that he abused his employer status and therefore abused them. What the $#@*! The girl in the middle is 34, not 16. She knew what she was doing when she climbed between the sheets with Letterman, and then again with the producer Joe Halderman (the dumbest blackmailer in history). What she didn’t know was that when you cheat on your live-in with your boss you need to NOT take notes. Not write everything down. (Didn’t Monica’s stained blue dress teach her anything?) And if she wanted to write sexually explicit letters to Letterman she should have mailed them instead of leaving them laying around for her boyfriend to find and use as blackmail bait. She is not a victim, the others he dallied with are not victims, the network airing his now through-the-roof ratings show is certainly not a victim, so what the hell is anyone (including me) talking about this for?

thanks...

Thank you Gov. Paterson for shaving. Being blind I suppose you couldn’t see how hideous you looked, kinda like Stevie Wonder and his braids, but I would have thought your friends and family would have at least whispered in your ear…“lose the hair, Braille boy.”

Thank you to the NY Yankees for clinching the AL East and a big NAH NAH NAH NAH NAH to the Boston Red Sox and to the Daily News for putting Derek Jeter on the cover of the paper after the win.

Thank you to CBS for airing the 8th annual Tunnel to the Towers Run last Sunday morning. As I watched from my couch (hey I was sick) I never felt more proud to be a New Yorker and more importantly, an American.

Thank you Dr. Oz for putting on a shirt and tie for your new Oprah fueled TV show. I am sick of seeing you in scrubs, we already know you are a doctor!

Thank you to the Hershey’s company for making dark chocolate kisses. I get to fool myself into thinking they are ok indulge on since they have those heart healthy flavinoids.

Thank you to the powers that be, that there are no explicit videos of David Letterman’s sex romps. (so far) I don’t think I could watch that gap toothed old man having sex with anyone let alone women half his age.

Thank you to Disney & Pixar for giving us Toy Story 1 & 2 in the first place, but to revamp them into 3D is a gift.

Thank you to the creators of Suduko….It has single-handedly kept my mind from turning into the mush I know it wants to.

Thank you to Starbucks for introducing Via Ready Brew, an instant coffee packet for us instant-gratification junkies. Tastes like crap but ready in an instant and it’s Starbucks…what more could a coffee snob ask for?

Thank you to Continental airlines for not cutting out the in flight snacks. For the price of an airline ticket I would like something more than a seat two sizes too small and a carry-on restriction.

Thank you Whoopie Goldberg for finally showing your true colors. Polanski not a rapist? The girl was 13! I think your dreads have been in too long….

Thank you Rio for winning the right to host the 2012 Olympics. Of course we could use the revenue, but we have enough foreigners here already, athletes or not.

And a very sarcastic Gee Thanks…. to the Daily News and other media outlets for showing the world exactly where the surveillance cameras are and aren’t in Manhattan. So if I was a terrorist I would know exactly where to smile as I lit the fuse.

tea anyone?

I am babysitting.  The bane of every horror movie.  The baby is asleep upstairs and the house is quiet, except for the infernal clanging on the back deck from one too many wind chimes. It is time for me to nestle myself on the couch to watch Desperate Housewives.  I figured I would make a cup of tea before I got comfortable, and don't they usually leave a little snack for the sitter as well.  As I near the kitchen doorway I realize there is a baby safety gate in place.  For almost ten minutes I pushed and twisted, prodded and poked but I couldn't get the gate to open and I couldn't climb over it either since it stood waist high.  If this was a baby gate it was for the baby orangetan exhibit at the zoo.  I contemplated forgetting about the tea, but now it was the principle.  I should be able to win out over a stupid baby gate.  I pulled a dining room chair over to the gate, stepped up and over forgetting the drop on the other side was going to cripple me.  It didn't but now that I was in...there was no way out.  And certainly not carrying a cup of hot tea.  What if the baby got up?  I was beginning to see why they always wrote the babysitting thing into horror films. I pulled the kitchen nook bench over to the kitchen side of the baby gate from hell, and realized that this in fact would work.  I could have my damn tea after all.  Ha ha, take that baby gate!  I looked through four cupboards and two cabinets and couldn't find a mug or cup or anything that wasn't plastic or had Spongebob on it.  If there hadn't been one in the drainboard by the sink the whole tea deal was a bust.  It took another 10 minutes to find the tea bags that were cleverly hidden, but my cup was now locked and loaded and nuking away in the microwave.  I managed to get up on the bench without falling or burning myself, over the gate and onto the dining room chair still unscalded.  I balanced the cup on a shelf, knocking over a few framed pictures, and decended from the dining room chair.  My pride intact, I felt euphoric at my success. 

I took my tea over to the couch and looked for the remote.  There were three.  I pressed power on one of them.  Nothing.  I pressed TV on another one.  Nothing.  I pressed power on the third one and the box on top of the TV sprung to life.  The TV however remained dark.  I pressed TV on each remote again.  Nothing.  My tea was getting cold.  I decided that it made no sense to fight with yet another inanimate object so I left the remotes and took my tea over to the dining room table where my daughter's laptop sat.  I opened it and clicked on the Internet Explorer icon.  It wanted a password.  I guessed.  Wrong!  I guessed again.  Wrong again!  But then I remembered that my daughter had given me the password the last time I babysat and as I sat there trying to get my short term memory to kick in,  the monitor remained as dark as the TV screen.  I remembered hearing an infomercial guy talking about some product that helped you with memory and he said that simple math equations can sharpen your brain enough to help you remember things.  So there I sat with my cold tea and the dark TV and the laptop waiting patiently for a password doing multiplication out loud.  9 x 2 = 18, 9 x 3 = 24, 9 x 4 = 36, 9 x......and there it was....I remembered!  I typed in the password and waited for my mail to popup.  As I chatted with my sister in law on line the alarm went off.  Blaring, screaming alarm.  And then nothing.  I jumped up and called my son...the one with the broken toe.  The one I called an ass for breaking his toe.  The one I now wanted to limp over and help me check the doors and windows.  He came with a three foot sword.  My hero.  He checked the basement and didn't realize to question why the bench was by the baby gate.  I called my daughter's cell.  No answer.  My other daughter's cell.  Voicemail.  My son-in-law's cell....and she answered.  I couldn't hear her amongst the roar of the venue, but I did hear this....I DONT HAVE AN ALARM.   Oh yes you do!  And it works....and by the way,  I am not babysitting here anymore.  I will watch the baby at my house, buy a crib, a playpen, stay up all nght...whatever it takes....but this will be the last time I baby sit here.  Sorry!

this little piggy

Everyone is talking about health care. I try to follow it but simply can’t. I have no idea what an HMO is as opposed to a PPO or a PHO. I know COBRA is something that extends health coverage after you’ve gotten your sorry ass fired or thought it would be a smart move to quit in this horrible economy. My idea of health coverage is the one I have known since I got married 35 years ago to my civil servant. Is it good? Don’t know…I have never had a problem seeing the doctor that I want, the surgeries I have needed or the medications that went along with both. I do know that with what my husband pays for it through his automatic payroll deduction I could have paid for medical school, became a doctor and treated myself…..but so far so good. What I do have an issue with the other part of health care….the people behind the counters.

My son broke his toe. He was going too fast over what looks like the ruins of Pompeii on a bicycle. They call it mountain biking. I call it, ‘you’re an ass, what did you think was gonna happen?’ But I digress…..so while he wouldn’t listen to me, his girlfriend was able to convince him to go to the emergency room to have it x-rayed. It was broken and since they do not cast a toe, he was simply given a prescription for pain meds and sent on his limping way. We had a few pain pills left from the last injury he sustained so it wasn’t until a few days later when he was planning a ‘hiking’ trip (I kid you not) that I dropped off the prescription. I went to pick it up after work only to be told that the emergency room doctor did not sign the prescription and that they couldn’t fill it. I called (call #1) the hospital emergency room and was told by some snarky sounding woman that I would need the name of the doctor that treated my son which could be found on the yellow paper they released him with which was currently in his briefcase with him in court. When I got Dr. McDopey’s name I called (call #2 & 3) back the emergency room to be told by another uncaring toad that the info I was originally told was wrong. I needed to call the ‘follow up office’ in the morning since it was now long closed. The fact that this hospital even needed an office that just ‘follows up’, leads me to believe that there are many issues that need…well, following up on. I wait until morning as my son hopped and moaned. Unsympathetically I reminded him that he is an ass! Anyway morning arrives and I call (call #4) the ‘follow up’ office where I am greeted by, I am sure, a woman who hasn’t gotten laid in like 5 years. What a bitch! Immediately I am chastised for making the call for my 27 year old son who she thought should have been making the call himself.  Listen Nurse Ratched, don’t worry about why I am taking care of this and just do your damn job.  She said her office does not call in prescriptions and that I would need the drug store to call them. I called (call #5) the pharmacy again and gave all of the info to the person pretending to care on the other end. I left for work. After work my son went to pick up the pain meds and of course, another snag. No one, I repeat no one there knew what he was talking about….there was no note to call the hospital, no note stating what happened when they did get around to calling the hospital and no one was owning up to being the person I spoke to 6 hours earlier. They were however willing to throw a fellow employee under the bus since she had left already. Must have been her!

My son, throbbing and limping (and still planning the hiking trip) called (call #6) the emergency room and got a real honest to goodness doctor who was willing to call the pharmacy and order the pain meds. The prescription for 8 pills was picked up by my son this morning. He left for hiking tonight. I hope he breaks his ankle.