A New Approach to Halloween

My kids are older now. But I still really dig Halloween.

While my 16 year old still ADORES Halloween, and will still go out trick or treating, she is a little more interested in just attending parties. My 23 year old? She’s happy to stay at home with me and hand out candy.

Every year we have totally decked out our house for Halloween. While we don’t have any animatronics or blow ups, we bedeck our house with lights, flying ghosts, hanging ghouls and an enormous spider web, complete with a giant black widow.

And my reward is usually about 6 trick or treaters.

We live on a busy road, and none of my neighbors for at least 4 houses in either direction, decorate for Halloween. They don’t even keep their house lights on to invite kids.

Many parents will drive their kids around, and let them out of the car to hit a group of promising houses. I am a tiny oasis in a sea of darkness, so most times, my house gets passed by.

So this year,  my daughter suggested we take a different approach. Rather than sit inside waiting for the bell to ring, she suggested we deck out the bottom of our driveway, and sit there on Halloween night with our bowl of candy.

We can play music, set up lights, and welcome families for a quick stop rather than them having to trudge up our driveway and steps. And it will solve another problem of mine.

Hubby isn’t really into the whole holiday decorating thing…not like the kids and I are. This way, we really only have to decorate the entrance to the driveway – I’ll still hang lights on our deck, but the day of Halloween, we will really trick out our driveway entrance and spend a nice night out in the October air.

I’ll let you know how our experiment turns out.

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My Poor Knees

Today I fell. Again.

I needed to get some skim milk, and the only joint by my office that sells it is the little market up the street. The aisles are very narrow, and the produce guy was unpacking various fruits and vegetables from cardboard boxes. It was hard for me to get to the milk, because there were so many boxes in the way.

I threaded my way to the milk case, grabbed my quart of skim milk, and began to walk back to the register. It was raining, so I was also carrying my rather large umbrella while trying to negotiate the very dark, very crowded aisle. I remember I was looking at a jar of Mezzetta Italian Mix Giardiniera on the shelf when my foot got snagged a box of scallions.

Before I knew it I was down on my knees, now throbbing in absolute pain, clutching a crushed pint of skim milk, and trying to figure out how the hell I could’ve fallen. It hurt. My back hurt, my knees hurt, and to make matters worse,  it was really hard to get up.

The produce dude heard me fall, and rushed over to help me. Talk about embarrassing. He was super apologetic, and I kept assuring him it was okay. While it was a bit of a hazard to have the aisle so cluttered with boxes, I was clearly not watching my step while I was pondering the jar of Mezzetta Italian Mix Giardiniera.

I paid for my milk, assured the still apologizing produce guy again that it was all cool,  and hobbled back to my office with aching knees, a throbbing head, and a back that was all a-twinge. What I was most astounded at, was that I wasn’t more seriously hurt. I fell in my laundry room about 6 months ago, and landed super hard on my left knee – so hard that I still can’t really put too much weight on it. I thought for sure a slamming my knee into a hard floor would’ve shattered it to pieces.

But I’m still standing. I wonder how bad the bruises will be…

NFL N’uh Uh

This is the first year, in I can’t remember how many, that I have not been involved in a football pool. And it’s by choice. I’ve decided to give the NFL the cold shoulder this year.

My old office would run it’s own football pool each year, and most years I ran it. Winner got a $20 bill each week. After that job ended I joined my brother in law’s work pool up in New Jersey. Winner would get somewhere around $200 each week. I rarely won, but it was still sort of fun.

This year? Not so much. I can’t help but feel the NFL is ruled by narrow-minded trump supporters…people who believe taking a knee should be cause for firing or suspension. People who see standing up for racial injustice as a slight on our military or our flag.

And trump himself, who doesn’t even know the words to the national anthem, but will try to whip his maniacal base up into a frenzy over any player who dares to kneel during their precious anthem.

People burning their Nike shoes because they dared to use Colin Kaepernick in an ad.

It’s all so fucked up.

So I’m turning my back on the NFL. I don’t want to put down $36 dollars to take part in a pool for a sport that I have little respect for. I know there are companies and coaches that are backing their players’ right to take a knee, and I applaud them. But the NFL as a whole?

They can bite me this year.

 

My Carpool Parole

For the past year, my daughter and I have been carpooling to work every day. We work a short distance from each other, and until she could figure out the means to buy her own car, this was our only option.

It worked out well, with the exception of our schedules. I work from 9:00 – 4:30. She has two radio shows; one from Noon – 2:00 and another from 4:00 – 6:00. Our usual daily routine was, she accompanied me to work, and sat reading at a local coffee shop until 11:30 or so, and then she’d take the keys and head to her job. At 3:30, we would meet at my office, and I would drive her to the station for her 4:00 show, and then return to my office for the last 45 minutes of my day.

That 3:30 shuffle sucks. The lot I park in for my job is 2 blocks away from my office, which may sound short, but in heat, rain or snow, that walk turns into a tiresome trek. And then, when I’m done at 4:30, I had the pleasure of waiting 1 1/2 hours for daughter to be off work. Most times I would grocery shop, but other times, when money was low, it was harder and harder to find creative ways to pass that time.

A favorite of mine was to spend a half an hour at our local animal shelter petting cats and kittens. Or sometimes I would just walk around the mall and “window” shop. For the most part that hour and a half would go by fast.

An additional burn? Sometimes our boss would let us out early.. like at 2:30 if there was little work to do. Then I’d be stuck in town for hours and hours when I could’ve been home with me feet up in front of Food Network. It also was not convenient for meals. We would not get home until 6:30 or so, and the thought of starting chicken piccata at that late time was a tiresome thought.

For a year I did this. My husband would pitch in when it worked for his schedule, but his schedule is ever changing, whereas ours was set, so most times it was me.

The commute itself would be great. We would usually spend the time talking. Sometimes we played music, but the commute was typically spent discussing a variety of things; upcoming vacations, plans for work; and it was really nice.

It all ended this week. Our children recently came into a small sum of money through the passing of a relative, and my daughter knew…this was the opportunity to buy her own car. She test drove quite a few, but in the end we decided to buy the same make and model as my car, which she was very used to driving.

I’m so happy for her. What a sense of independence this must give her. I remember when I owned my first car…you felt the world could be yours. You could go anywhere. But I’m also happy for me. While I really miss driving with her, it’s really nice to be able to just come home after work.

I’ll can always pet kittens on Saturdays…

See ya, Sucker

Something wonderful has happened in my 53rd year. My uterus, which has plagued me my entire adult life, has finally decided to throw in the towel.

I hear lots of women complain about menopause…heat flashes, moodiness, night sweats. But I have have zero complaints. Do you know why? BECAUSE I HAVEN’T HAD A PERIOD SINCE JANUARY. And that is the best thing to happen to me ever.

At the beginning of the year, I was actually looking into a hysterectomy because my uterus was going haywire. It began to bleed in October, and didn’t stop until December. Heavy, non-stop bleeding. I had a consultation with a surgeon, and then, just like that, it stopped. It’s as if it wanted to torture me for one last time before Mother Nature shut her ass down.

I’m not sure if she’s done for sure and for certain, but I’m optimistic. To have not had a period for 6 months has been a blessing the magnitude of which you can’t realize.

I’m free.

Food Network…to the Rescue

I love TV. I am unapologetic about it. I don’t understand people who “don’t watch TV,” just like I don’t understand vegans. To each their own, but I love it…always have.

Food Network is my go-to channel. It is the first channel I check when I am looking for something to watch, and it is the channel I usually drift of to sleep watching.

A month or so back, my husband and I had to reconfigure our cable package. The sweet deal we had for the past two years had run out, and to keep all the same channels we had would’ve boosted our bill to over $200 bucks per month.

Uh, no thank you.

So we reworked things to give us a lower bill, but in the crosshairs were a lot of channels our family really loved…Nickelodeon, all the sports channels, and *gasp,* Bravo. I watch A LOT of Bravo programs. A new season of Real Housewives of NYC had just started, as well ad a new season of Southern Charm. I was sick about that, but bit the bullet.

We invested in a Roku and got a Hulu subscription. I thought this was the perfect solution – I could still enjoy Bravo and a plethora of other TV shows. I binge watched “The Handmaids Tale”…worth the subscription price alone. Hubby fell back I love with “Hill Street Blues,” and my daughter and I began watching “Top Chef” back from season 1.

However, Bravo? That was a problem. They don’t carry the current season of RHONY, and they don’t carry Southern Charm at all. The high price of cable had cock-blocked me from watching two of my faves after all.

Yesterday I switched on the TV to see what Food Network show I was going to indulge in when I got an error message on the screen. That channel was not available.

WHAT????????

I immediately called our cable provider, who proceeded to tell me that their plans had shifted over night. We had lost Food Network, The Weather Channel, and a few other who-gives-a-fuck stations.

I flew into a panic….This was too much for me to bear. Food Network on Hulu only runs specific shows. Ina and Giada? Gone. Pioneer Woman? Gone. Brunch at Bobby’s? Gone.

I was not going to take this lying down.

So I called back and thankfully got a really nice woman on the phone who helped me pick a package that was in our price range, and restored ALL our channels.

Bravo? Got it. Food Network? Got it. Nickelodeon? Got it. The Weather Channel? Got it. ESPN? Got it. I feel human again.

I spent all last night catching up on season 10 of Real Housewives of NYC last night, and Friday night I will binge Southern Charm and America’s Next Top Model.

We are still going to keep our Rokus and our Hulu subscription, because in my opinion, the more TV the better. Old episodes of The Brady Bunch and I Love Lucy are now at my disposal. And there’s no way I can do without seeing what happens to June and the other handmaids.

Thank goodness they cut Food Network yesterday. That cloud definitely had a silver lining.

May The Fourth Be With You

This is an encore publishing of my 2012 blog post “My Star Wars Experience” in honor of May 4th.
When I was 12 I saw a commercial for a new movie that was coming out, and it looked really bad.

It was for Star Wars.

If you’ve ever seen the original trailer/commercial for the movie, you might know where I’m coming from. It looked BORING. You can view the trailer here if you’ve never seen it. So with no plan to spend my allowance on that movie I put Star Wars behind me. But it wouldn’t be for long.

When I was a kid, I was pretty good friends with Andrew Shalit, son of NBC’s film critic Gene Shalit. While having a dad with connections must be a grand thing, having a friend with a dad with connections is nothing to sneeze at either.

Andrew invited me and roughly 6 other friends to come into New York City to see a private showing of, what else? Star Wars.
While I was not thrilled about the film we were going to see, I was pretty excited to hang out in the city with my friends. I was not going to miss this just because the movie looked a little dull.

We took a van into mid-town Manhattan and were let off at a large office building. Hmmmm. I was expecting a theater. We took the elevators to an unknown floor/office where we were then ushered into a little tiny theater.

It had a big screen, but only 4 rows of seats, and maybe 6-8 chairs in each row. This alone was worth the trip to see the boring movie. I’d never been in a private screening room. I’m not sure if I even knew they existed.

Before long the lights went down and the movie began. 121 minutes later I emerged from that little theater in love with Luke Skywalker and wanting to be exactly like Princess Leia.

Except for the hair.

We were each given a T-shirt that had the Star Wars logo or the phrase “May the force be with you.” I chose the one with the Star Wars logo. What a great bonus to an already awesome day.

When we were dropped off back in our home town, my friends and I played jedis vs. stormtroopers on the walk home, using sticks for light sabers and rolling/running over people’s lawns and across streets. I don’t think the movie had even hit the theaters yet, and I was already hooked.

I bought a few movie stills to hang in my room and spent that summer falling in and out of lust for both Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. I think I saw the movie a few more times in the theater as well. But, that’s where the love ended. I saw Empire Strikes Back along with the rest of the world, but hated the ending. How dare they cliff hang me with at least a year to wait for the outcome.

Return of the Jedi was good, but neither that or Empire Strikes Back grabbed me in the same way Star Wars did. I also did not like any of the prequels. Jar Jar Binks was fucking annoying as hell, and the story didn’t interest me in the least.

I never jumped on the Star Wars saga bandwagon. You’ll won’t find me at Comicon dressed as Darth Nihilus (Stern fans may giggle at that), and I don’t collect the figurines. But if that wonderful, original, innovated film from 1977 is on television, I’ll grab my kids, pop some corn and plop on the couch to escape in to space for 121 minutes.

“What’cha Got There?”

I pack my lunch almost every day, and even if I buy, I usually eat at my desk. This leaves me open to every single person I work with seeing what I have for lunch, and even worse, seeing me eat it.

Ugh.

I have a few co-workers who are fairly obsessed with what anyone and everyone is eating for lunch. Every day, one of them will come up to me with my food spread before me and ask, “What’cha got there?”

It’s an innocent enough question, but it kind of irks me because I’ve always been a private eater. I don’t like eating in front of people at all. The beauty of my last job was that while the room my office was in was home to several agents, they were almost never there, so I could eat in relative privacy every day.

My office now? I’m surrounded by coworkers at all times, and my desk is small. So, my food has to sit to the left of me (because my mousepad is to the right of me) and is in plain view of every person who walks by. I don’t know why I should find this bothersome, but I do…especially if I’m eating soup.

So I’ve toughened up, and become used to people looking at my food, and looking at me eating said food. It’s a fair price to pay to work at one of the best companies I’ve ever had the to honor to call my 9-5 home.

Soup Me…

One of my all time favorite foods is soup.

I have loved soup since my childhood. My mother made a killer beef vegetable soup. She would leave a pot of it on the stove along with a bowl of noodles. Our method was to fill your bowl with noodles and ladle the hot broth over the top. After adding copious amounts of black pepper, I was in heaven.

Nowadays, chicken soup is my favorite by far, and I make a giant pot of it at least once a month. I don’t even follow a recipe anymore. I’ve made split pea from my leftover Easter Ham, I make potato leek soup, and my girls really like my mushroom soup – a pot of that doesn’t last too long.

I love having soup for lunch. We have a store up the street from my office that sells containers of soup during the winter months, and I am addicted to their chicken noodle. Yesterday they didn’t have any, so I settled for brisket & butter bean soup, which was also good, but I have to admit I ate it begrudgingly.

We also have a place close by that makes a really good Pho…I try to order it every few weeks. Today for lunch I am trying a Thai beef noodle soup. I hope it’s good. (PostScript it WAAAAASSSSS!)

My one rule for soup is I like it brothy. I don’t mind if a potato soup is on the thick side, but if your spoon doesn’t sink into the soup, it’s not soup…it’s pudding.

I also love how soup is a meal that lasts. It seems to take a long time to polish off a big bowl of soup, and it you want seconds??? Big deal…there are worse things you could be eating.

My next soup move is to branch out from the 4 or so varieties I cook. If anyone has a great recipe, be sure to share a link to it! Anything but seafood…Tracy doesn’t do seafood.

Resisting the Notion That I’m a Dope

Today is the March for Our Lives. Across the country millions of kids, moms, fathers, sisters and brothers who are sick and tired of being mowed down at school by crazed gun men with semi-automatic rifles are going to march nationwide in support of sensible gun control laws.

And where will I be? Hosting a sweet 16 birthday party for my daughter at a trampoline park. When I booked the party I totally zoned out on the fact that it was the same day as the march. By the time I realized it, I couldn’t reschedule.

So here I am, a mother in the Resistance, buying balloons and cutting birthday cake when I should be carrying a sign, while fighting the NRA and this shit-show of an administration.

Ugh.