Wallpaper

We live in a condo that was built in the early 1970's. We bought it in 2001, right before the housing boom that marked the first few years of Bush's (I prefer to think of him as "Moron Boy") presidency. It's in a condo subdivision that was originally age restricted for 55 and older. In the 1990's the age restrictions were lifted and families started to move in. As most retiree's in the 1960's and 70's did, the original owners of our condo decorated with custom drapes that covered, not just the windows, but rather the entire wall. White shag carpeting was everywhere and even greeted you at the front door. We were rather relieved to find that there was very little wallpaper. (Note: I said "little" wallpaper, as opposed to "no wallpaper".)

The carpeting needed replacing, which we anticipated considering the age of the place. (We chose a simple berber in the living room and bedrooms, but we put Pergo in the dining room and entrance.) Obviously the curtains had to go. The kitchen needed updating, but again, the place was almost 30 years old. We got a good deal in terms of price, so we weren't complaining too much about what we considered fairly minor updates. Trust me when I say that for the most part, we had a clean slate to deal with. We hired someone to paint and to put up a wall to make the "convertible" into a true 3rd bedroom. Part of the job was removing the wallpaper from the 2 bathrooms. It was typical wallpaper from the era; ugly colors (what were they thinking?) combined with metallic foil. Until this afternoon, all I could remember about the wallpaper was that it was hideously ugly stuff. I happily purged that wallpaper from my memory.

Fast forward 7 years to today-July 2008. We're smack in the middle of having one of our bathrooms completely remodeled and the other bathroom is receiving a partial remodel. In the spirit of water conservation and all around "green" ideology, we decided to replace both toilets with units compliant with modern water efficiency standards. My contractor pulled out the toilet today and low and behold, there was still a scrap of wallpaper behind the tank. Here is a scan of it:



The scan doesn't do it justice. I promise it is most definitely metallic wallpaper. What I would like to know is, WHAT ON EARTH WERE THEY THINKING?!?!

It looks like algae....or mold.....maybe fungus? No, it looks like someone ate some shrooms, threw up and then decided the resulting mess would make a lovely home textile. Then in 1974 some old broad discovered it and thought it would look smashing in her master bathroom.

That wallpaper is a fantastic argument against recreational drug use.

Watermelons and Other Memories

I'm taking a Storytelling course this semester. The following was my first performance piece for the class.

"Water-Melon...A penny a slice for Water-Melon!" That was the watermelon song, or at least, that was how I thought of it when I was 3 years old.

Back then, during the dog-days of summer, when the sun sizzled and it felt like it was hotter than the surface of the sun, my brother and I would head out to the backyard. We would bury the bottom half of our faces in cool and refreshing hunks of watermelon. Our chins, necks and hands would drip with sweet and sticky watermelon juice and "Thhhhhhhwat" we would spit out the seeds.

While Grandma would chop the watermelon, Grandpa would sing "The Watermelon Song". It wasn't until I was in high school that I gave the lyrics of the "song" any thought. That's when it finally occurred to me that he was simply reminiscing about the street vendor who peddled fresh produce in the New York neighborhood where he grew up.

I had a small case of hero worship for Grandpa. Many girls have that kind of relationship with their fathers. I didn't, so Grandpa filled that role in my life. Grandpa was the one I went to when I skinned my knee and needed soothing. Grandpa was the one I went to when I needed to talk to someone...about anything. Grandpa was the one who made everything seem alright in the world. Grandpa was the one who made me feel safe and secure.

I thought Grandpa was invincible. I thought he was almost immortal. I thought he was a large hulking and strong man! I find that funny in retrospect because the reality is, I come from short people. Grandpa was only around 5' 5" and he probably weighed around 150 or 160 pounds. But when you are three years old your perspective of your heroes tends to be a bit larger than life.

Grandpa was a gentle man. He was kind, thoughtful, compassionate and the eternal optimist. He always tried to look for the best in people. He was so easygoing; he never lost his temper or raised his voice. I didn't learn until after he died that he never finished high school, and yet he was a self made intellect. He watched and read the news on a daily basis. Politics and world issues were things he discussed regularly with his friends. I strongly suspect that if he were a college student in today's world he would be highly interested in Political Science, Peace Studies and World History.

During the last 3 years of his life, as his body wore down, his mind paralleled that journey. Dementia started to set in. He had his good days where he remembered his name and continued on his daily routines. He would walk out to the recreation center in the community where he lived and he would sit and chat up his pals, discussing politics and foreign policy, among other things. He had his OK days where he remembered his name, but you probably couldn't have any kind of in depth conversation with him. And then he had his bad days where it seemed like he had a bad case of temporary amnesia.

I inadvertently visited him on one of those days about a year before he died. Grandma wasn't there; I guess she was visiting with her friends. I sat down with Grandpa and started up a conversation. For 10 minutes we spoke, but he sat there with an extremely confused look on his face. Finally he said to me, "Who are you?" He didn't recognize me. It broke my heart. After I left I pulled my car over the side of the road and cried my eyes out. I said to myself aloud, "Is this how it is? Is this how it ends?!" That was not how I wanted to remember my Grandpa. It was even more upsetting because that was not how he wanted to be remembered.

My grandparents weren't really religious people, but it was important to them to at least recognize the more significant Jewish holidays. Passover was one of them. My standard joke has always been I'm a lousy Jew. I'm not religious. There are a million things I would rather spend my time doing, than celebrating Passover. It's a labor intensive holiday in terms of food preparation because there is so much symbolism regarding food. Passover is a bit of a chore for me; it's a drag. But we went through the motions because it was important to Grandma and Grandpa. We didn't necessarily have a full seder, but we at least ate the foods related to the holiday.

For the Passover of 1997 my stepfather Jerry was the designated driver. He drove around town and rounded up all the grandparents. When we all sat down to dinner that evening Grandpa started talking about current events. He had watched the news that afternoon and he wanted to talk about it. He was having one of his good days. He talked about all sorts of things that night. He repeated some of his favorite old stories. Like the time Grandma and Grandpa had the interior of their Bronx apartment painted. (The moral of that story was, if you ever want something faux painted, hire a pro, rather than trust it to unskilled workers who don't know the language.) Or the story about the miserly and crotchety, rent-controlled tenant who lived in the building where Grandpa housed his business. (He tried to swindle Grandpa out of some money over the old fashioned, claw foot bathtub he had abandoned in the basement of the building and his plan backfired magnificently.) He spoke in detail about the day he installed the ceiling fan in the vaulted ceiling of our living room. (He had to climb up a 12 foot ladder to do it and he had been well into his 80's at the time.)

He even got a little verschnickered on Manischewitz kosher wine. (If you've never tried the stuff, imagine the overly sweet grape juice you drank as a kid, only slightly fermented. That's what Manischewitz tastes like.) Grandma said, "Irv, you shouldn't drink so much!" and Grandpa replied with a big grin, "What? It's not like I'm gonna drive home!" We all got a good laugh out of that one. He had voluntarily given up his drivers license a few years earlier.

That night Grandpa was ON! It was as if his mental clock had, for that one magical evening, turned back 10 years. It was, as they say on TV, priceless!

Towards the end of the evening Jerry rounded up all the grandparents to drive them all home. We said our goodbyes and then the door closed. The evening was over.

That was the last time I saw him. Later that evening, the first night of Passover, my Grandpa peacefully passed away.

My (former) vice

I have a confession to make. I used to drive an SUV. In 1998 I bought a Honda CRV. It was a small SUV and it accommodated all of my work gear much better than any small car available at the time. The price of gas was also right around $1 a gallon back then, so fill ups were cheap. 2 years ago, in 2006, it was dying so I traded it in for a Honda Element-another small SUV. But gas had more than doubled and I was starting to feel guilty about my SUV habit. I (stupidly) chose not to look too closely at the Toyota Matrix, the only small car at the time that might have fit my purposes and I would have trusted in terms of mechanical reliability. While the Element was absolutely fantastic for lugging around all of my work gear, I felt increasingly uncomfortable about driving an SUV when gas prices had jumped skyward and would obviously only continue spiraling up. I also felt like a hypocrite criticizing large SUV drivers when I too, was driving an SUV (even if my vehicle was smaller).

As it happens, a few months ago when we replaced my husband's aging Honda Accord, he opted for the fuel efficient Honda Fit. Once he was off for summer break I started driving his car around town to save on gas. And then it happened last weekend-the last weekend in June. On Friday night he suggested that it might be prudent to dump my SUV while we could still get rid of it and while dealers might actually take it as a trade. He assumed in another 6 months or a year no dealer would touch it. So I took his Fit on a dry run the next day. I loaded up all of my gear and off I went to a gig 40 miles away. Everything fit quite nicely; certainly much better than I had anticipated. Friends and neighbors, I can attest that a Fender Passport, several large Rubbermaid cases, 20 hula hoops, a 24 pack of toilet paper (don't ask-you'd be surprised how much a pack of toilet paper can entertain a bunch of kids) and various other miscellaneous gear, can easily fit in the back of a Honda Fit...and won't block your vision while driving. (All that gear doesn't even reach the height of the headrests!)

When I got home from work we headed to the Honda dealer with my SUV. Two and a half hours later I drove off the lot, with a brand new Honda Fit. So now we're a 2 Fit family. Now I feel perfectly free to make fun at the expense of Hummer, Yukon, Suburban and Expedition owners everywhere! I also feel like I'm setting a good example for my kid.

Library manners

As I type this I'm sitting in the public library, supposedly working on a school project. I am determined to get a lot of work done on it, as it's due in 2 days. I want it to be done already! So I set my laptop up in one of those tiny, desk sized cubicles. I'm surrounded by books and I'm ready to go.

I am the kind of person who does not work well with distractions. My husband works best with the radio blaring, the TV on, and a herd of small elephants running around him. He claims it as a side effect of his dyslexia. I on the other hand work best in silence.

For the record, dyslexia runs on my side of the family too. I have long suspected that I am mildly dyslexic, though never tested or diagnosed. I suppose my brain operates differently than his. Minor sounds that no one else would hear, like the quiet whirring of a machine, or someone lightly tapping their feet, annoy the heck out of me.

This particular project requires that I briefly look through 10 books. I don't need to check them out, I just need to look through them.

Well there's a turkey a few cubicles down who is reading out loud. He started out whispering, but he has gotten a bit louder. Right now it sounds like he's mumbling to himself. It's INCREDIBLY annoying! I really don't want to pick all my gear up to move. But jeeze, why is it necessary to read aloud?!?!

Grrrrrrrrr! Fuck it. In self defense I picked all my stuff up (as loudly as possible) and stomped off to another area. Stupid schmuck! If you want to read aloud, do it at home. That's why you're not supposed to yap on a cell phone in the library!