Look ma – no hands

The other night I was knitting in the car, in the dark (I was not the one driving.) I have a long history of trying to do things with my eyes closed, in the dark, with my left hand, or in one case, with my feet – I brushed my teeth with my feet b/c my husband claimed I couldn’t. (“The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.” – Walter Bagehot)

Yes, I did yoga more regularly then.

But, anyway, I like to reassure myself that I will be able to adapt if I go blind or lose the use of my hands. Cuz we all do that, right? Guys? Hey, is this thing on?

I’m not concerned about being crazy – I merely don’t want to be substantially more so than others, that’s all.

Bananas

When I worked at an investments firm in Boston about 15 years ago, I was scolded for eating a banana at my desk.  Apparently I had violated a “no strongly scented foods in the work area” stipulation in some document of employee conduct that, curiously, I had not committed to memory.

“Hah, strongly scented foods, that’s a good one,” I had said and waited for the admonisher to laugh too.  But it was no joke; I really was being told not to eat healthy fruit at my desk.  They preferred instead that we buy rich muffins or bags of chips from the cafeteria.  No distracting “real food” scent.

I mention this by way of contrast.  Though it took me longer than it should have to realize I’m a poor fit for the Finance industry (Pantyhose and heels?  Fascist food rules?), I did find my way to a better fit.  Higher ed is no paradise but there is an awful lot to love, including the array of personalities that surround me.

When I look around the cubes here, I see a colleague who has built a shrine to her horse.  Another colleague who eats spicy curries for lunch.  A row that has facetiously named themselves “The One %” and given themselves imaginative wealthy fatcat nicknames.  One Halloween we toilet papered each other’s cubes.

I cautiously starting bringing bananas in a few years ago.  I unpeel and eat them in my cube.  And I haven’t looked back.

By the way

It’s amazing to get to 38 and only just now have certain things mentioned. Casually, on thanksgiving day. Who the longtime alcoholics were that share your genes. Who was beaten and stolen from. Who got thru what deadly circumstance.

The kicker is, I don’t think anyone’s been holding out, protecting me. I think they all think someone must have mentioned it already sometime, somewhere. And after all, so hard to segue into these topics, no?

Thoughts on “About a Boy”

OK, so I never claimed to be the quickest.  I read “About a Boy” many years ago, and just the other day I had a couple of revelations about it:

First, he does a fantastic job of showing and not telling with his characters.  For instance, he doesn’t say the main character is clueless about kids.  He has him claim that his very young (made-up) son told him something eloquent like “Dad, I just want you to be happy.”  Like, at an age when kids are hardly forming sentence.  That’s good showing.

Second, I realized that as I read the book, I always assumed that the “Boy” of the title was the tween-aged boy who becomes attached to the main character.  But now I’m realizing – because we watch the main character grow, and come to grips with the fact that he must evolve and finally grow up – I think HE, the grown man, is the “Boy” of the title.

Kind of brilliant, Hornby.

Making lemonade

I’d like to thank the impatient readers in my town who jumped ship on the waiting list for Tina Fey’s book “Bossypants”.  Because I went from like 972 on the waitlist to….it’s waiting for me on their shelf!

Woohoo!

In other news, my husband I and have been struggling to figure out which character I am from the various shows we watch (our regulars are New Tricks, Inspector Lewis, Psych, 30 Rock, Big Bang Theory, and IT Crowd).  We had already identified him as a combo of Wolowitz from Big Bang Theory and Gus from Psych (“enthusiastic random factoid thrown out at random, anyone?”)

But we were a bit stuck on who I am.  then we both realized, around the same time, that I am Liz Lemon.  For better and worse.  Her twisted, self- deprecating sense of humor, the glasses, the lack of fashion sense, the misadventures, the sometimes tragic lack of filter on what she blurts out, the getting mistaken for being 10-15 years younger, the fear of having to act like an adult.  It’s all there, people.  I embrace my inner lemon and will, er, make lemonade.

Indoctrinated Idiopathy

I used the words “idiopathic” and “indoctrinated” non-ironically in (different) conversations with coworkers today.  And yes, I am a little proud of it.  If they now secretly think I’m the female Cliffy Claven, so be it!

Thanks, Professor Freaking Obvious

Please enlighten me: HOW and WHY would any of us in the U.S. FREAKING FORGET?  (Besides a medical condition).

It’s not like a grocery list on the coffee table, for cripes sake.

After

Decided this blog needed a new look.  Seeing as I know html and have done web design I should probably do my own template or get a domain or something.  I did it years ago and it was kind of a pain – seemed like every time I turned around there was something to renew.  So, anyway, instead I decided to pick a new wordpress template that better reflected me.  I liked the old one, but it was a little drab and I love lots of color.

The picture in the header is of my grandmother, Ginger DelGrosso.  She had been a dancer on the Broadway stage before marrying my Papa.  I love all of the glamorous black and white photos we have of her.  She also had a wicked sense of humor & loved a good practical joke.  She could down a whole loaf of the delicious seeded Scali bread from the local Boston bakeries.  She owned boxers and Boston terriers and loved them fiercely.  She would say, “Love me, love my dogs.”  Many, many people adored my Nana, so I guess those dogs must have had a lot of people who loved them, too.

My Nana was paralyzed in a car accident a few before I was born.  She had limited communicative abilities and couldn’t use her right side.  (When she was in the hospital, they found several of those loaves of Scali bread hidden around the house – she was hiding them from the 3 boys so she could have them to herself!)  She was limited to being in a wheelchair or her bed, a special one with rails that could move up and down and have different angles via remote control.  When I was small, I would climb over the rails and snuggle on the bed next to her.

We were there every Sunday, and as kids do, we treated her rehab equipment as ersatz playthings.  We used the remote control bed when she was up in her chair.  My brother and I played a game  where one of us would get in her wheelchair and close our eyes, and the other one would wheel the chair around and narrate a trip through a spooky haunted house.  I often pretended I had lost control of the wheelchair and it had plunged down the stairs.  I would shake the chair around (older siblings suck sometimes).  My brother would first get freaked out, then sore at me.  I don’t blame him.

She also had what looked like parallel bars, for trying to strengthen muscles and perhaps get back to walking (it was never to be however).  I would make up gymnastics routines on the bars and try not to do too hard a dismount onto the hardwood floors.

Later when I studied to be a speech pathologist (another thing that was never to be), I learned the specifics of what she experienced.  She had Broca’s aphasia, which means she could process all of the language she heard from others, but could not express a lot of words herself.  She had a limited vocabulary and slurred speech.  The phrases she said to us most were “A lotta clothes – you,” which meant that when she was well and could walk again, she was going to take me on a shopping spree.  She also said “Bottom of my heart.”  For some reason I keyed in to her speaking really well and there were times that she was asking for something and my folks would fetch me b/c I was the only one who could translate.  There was not much I could do to make her situation better except occasionally translate her needs, and love her and share all of the many exciting things in a kids life that she could not leave her house to see.

It’s hard not to feel badly that there are now developments in alternative communication that could have helped her express her thoughts and wishes.  I have cried so many times thinking of the way this glorious, funny dancer became trapped in a body that had limited movement and speech.  If it had been years later she could have had so much more.  But it wasn’t to be.  She passed away when I was fourteen.  In my memory there are two Nanas – Before,  when she was intact but unknown to me; and After, when she was ill but known and loved from the bottom of my heart.