Thursday, April 30, 2009

'Faux' you Mom...

My daughter-in-law might be on to something. With Mother's Day looming on the near horizon I'm sure plenty of male spouses and children are anguishing over what to gift Mom without seeming to cliched (like a bouquet of flowers) or profligate (a cruise?) Feh! The other day my D-I-L blogged that she was at that moment on the computer ordering Mother's Day presents for herself from her husband. Brilliant! Who better to know what they really want or need but the principal herself and what spouse or offspring wouldn't agree to the idea and be relieved of the angst of 'trying to do the right thing.' It seems to me this 'faux' gift giving would make everyone happy...

Monday, March 16, 2009

Clogged up...

After the guests left yesterday afternoon I did what I always do: check the toilet. (I look for stains or any sign of malfunction in the mechanics.) Big mistake. The flushing mechanism was sluggish and I had to flush a couple of times to get it working smoothly again. My wife, of course, called me weird for having 'issues' with this sort of thing. So wouldn't you know it-I had one of my classic 'toilet' dreams toward the end of last night complete with the odors, the cramped quarters with other people milling about and the inability to produce in a reasonable amount of time without pissing off the people who were waiting. At least it didn't include, as it usually does, overflowing toilets. I hate these dreams because you wake up in such a humiliated mood. Thankfully, I don't have them more than once every four or five months - but why do they keep recurring at all?...

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Keeping it simple....

I just discovered an amazingly simple to make, tasty and healthful desert: pour some Corn Flakes into a bowl. Dribble some pure Vermont maple syrup over the top and fill the bowl with fresh skim milk. This tastes so good it's hard to believe. Does anyone have the guts to serve it in place of, say, a carrot cake? I'd enjoy it even more....(you could also cut a few thin slices of fresh banana over the top.)

Monday, March 9, 2009

"Designer " genes....

I looked in the window on the door of my granddaughter's preschool class and I saw her sitting at the head of the table with another girl wgho is also her friend. Her skin tone is similar to mine and her personality is too: a little shy, a lirttle introverted. Then I thought her hair is kind of like mine, too, though not as curly. I thought: there I am, sitting there, 65 years ago. My 'genes' will live on beyond me! Then I thought about my daughter's son, B, and that he bears a resemblance to pictures I saw of my mother's brother, Oscar, at his age. How the genes become blended and passed forward through the ages! What a miracle it all is....and what hope it gives us.

In other words....

I just returned from a weeklong visit with my son and daughter-in-law and their two children.

High points: my granddaughter S expresses her love for me by smiling up at me, grabbing my forearms and hopping up as high as she can on my thighs, like a little hoptoad, smiling in my eyes the whole time. At another time, she was down on her knees grabbing my leg and pretending to take a bite out of it,

My son went out of his way to change the defective windshield wiper on my car and when I expressed pleasure using his bread knife he told me to take it. The next morning I noticed he had wrapped it in brown paper and tied it with an elastic band so it would be safe to pack away.

My daughter-in-law cooked a deliciuous meal and provided me with a couple of very funny and insightful blogs.

My wife baked delicious hamantaschen (Haman's hat) with my granddaughter.

I told my son that I would always love him until my last day.

We all have different ways of expressing our love, sometimes in other than words.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Thank you Costco

Sometimes I think Costco was created just for me: an impulse buyer. It's in my nature to want to buy something that seems 'just right' - either in the way it's packaged or displayed or whatever, it just seems to have 'me' written on it. The trouble is, since I'm buying stuff I don't really need but to satisfy some other emotional need, I very often have buyers remorse and wish that I hadn't been so impulsive. This is where Costco comes in: their return policy is so liberal as to be almost utopian. In the last six months, for varying reasons, I've returned two LCD TV's, a Playstation 3 and, just today, an HP Netbook. Every return experience was friendly or indifferent and several times I chatted about the product with the customer rep. For me, it's like tightrope walking with a safety net. Yes, the Costco stores may look plain and boxy on the outside but they're the best shopping experience you can get on the inside.

Monday, January 26, 2009

Worth it....

Nobody's making any comments on my blog so I guess I'm in an 'unknown zone' as the computer sometimes likes to say. We just got back from a six-day trip to Scarsdale and, even though I got sick with flu-like symptoms (chills and congestion), it was worth it. My grandchildren are very funny! At a tot shabbat as soon as the 'rabbi' started talking about shabbat candles my 1 1/2 tear old granddaughter held up the index fingers on her right and left hands. She's had no training yet but it was funny to see how fast she's catching on. After a 'playdate' with one of her friends the 3 1/2 year old was driven home by me as both she and my granddaughter of the same age sat in car seats behind me. I looked in the curved rear-view mirror and saw that they were holding hands! I was in awe at the 'beauty' of the moment and these memory images are still with me.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Past 'tense'

I just finished reading Philip Roth's latest book Indignation. It's a wonderfully revealing book about, who else?, Philip Roth aka Marcus Messner, the son of a Newark kosher butcher breaking away from 'old world' ethnic Jewry into the new world of waspish private college during the Korean War. Not only is the book full and frank about the sexual mores of the early fifties, it is pitch perfect in describing first love and the inabiltiy of an ethical Jewish boy to adapt to the ways of the broader world: get along by going along. The plot is thrilling, the dialogue rivetting and, even though the book ends in tragedy, deeply satisfying. It got me to thinking about my own college experience and what I regard as the single most significant cultural event of my time: the sexual revolution which began with the advent of the birth control pill in 1965. This changed everything - even the way movies would be made from then on. I wonder what it would have been like to live in a coed dormitory...