Ford Street

Trying to get my groove back

My office moved a couple of weeks ago to midtown Manhattan. 57^th and Park, to be exact.  We used to be located in Union Square – easily one of the coolest neighborhoods in NYC. 

I really, really miss Union Square. 

To make matters worse, I haven’t been in the office much since we moved, due to trade shows and a vacation.  So this was my first full week in the new place.  I walked around a bit during the day to try and find a groove, I really did.  This neighborhood is just plain different.  It’s great if you’re into shopping, but I’m not really into shopping. 

I’ve seen more fur coats in the last week than I have in the last 5 years.  True.  One afternoon, a colleague and I left the building together and were walking south on Park Avenue.  As we crossed 57^th Street, a woman cut in front of us and walked ahead of us.    Both of us stopped walking, because she had just the most amazing perfectly sculpted body and a fairly expensive outfit.  We stopped, and I said to my colleague, “She has a lot more money than we do,” and my colleague replied, without skipping a beat, “no, she has a lot more TIME than we do,” which was more true, and certainly funnier. 

Union Square had its own backbeat.  It had a rhythm.  I can’t find a rhythm yet uptown.  The people are more self-absorbed.  There are no trees.  The stores are snottier. There are no protests or crazy events going on uptown. 

I can’t feel the city uptown.  I’m trying, I really am, and I’ll continue to try. 

I’m testing various parking garages, because I still drive to work way too often (cause I still work late way too often). I can’t even write down the amount that one garage charged me to park for the day.  It’s too embarrassing.  But that’s been an interesting wake-up call for me. 

Everything costs more uptown.  But we don’t talk about it.  Down in Union Square, if you felt like someone was robbing you, you’d tell him/her, and half the store would get involved in the discussion.  Uptown, we just get robbed and meekly hand over our money. 

I hate the whole scene.  What a difference 40 blocks makes.  I’m going to keep trying to get my groove back, though.  I know it’s there somewhere. 

Of not paying attention to things big and small

I have admittedly been ignoring the living daylights out of this blog. An insane work schedule, combined with an office move and a very presumptuous attitude toward being able to work and go to school at the same time have combined to make me generally berserk for the past six weeks or so.

I’m leaving for a holiday in Chile on Wednesday – not a moment too soon – but I feel as if I’ll be completely exhausted for the first, oh, five days or so. Why do we all have these jobs that make us unable to cope with life? I feel as if I’ve been ignoring friends, family, job, home, dogs, cat, even the car – the little “you need to change your oil” whatsit has been screaming at me for about two weeks. I can’t possibly get the oil changed any time soon, and this is clearly the least of my problems. I really have to figure out a way to get a handle on my life, and soon.

I am writing a paper for school (what else is new) and came across this paragraph:

“I remember when I first came back from Vietnam, trying to talk to my father, who had served in the Second World War; trying to talk to my uncles who had all served – but when I questioned my war, they thought I was questioning their war.  They didn’t want to hear it.  I’m saying to them, ‘I’m not questioning your war.  What you taught me, believing in America, believing in the Bill of Rights, I still believe in.  The difference is (that) now I know my country can be wrong, and because I love my country, I want my country to start looking at that Bill of Rights.’  We did what we did because we loved our country and wanted our country to realize that it made mistakes.  I am just as patriotic as my father or my uncle or anybody.”

Jack McCloskey, an Army medic who served in Vietnam, said that.

It’s never wrong to question the actions of our politicians and our lawmakers. It’s our job as Americans. 

CES, again

Spent all week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where, oh my goodness, one of the hot products was none other than the Sharp 108-inch LCD TV! It was royally fun to do so well at the show this year. Saw a lot of friends, saw a lot of cool products and only wore heels one day, so for the first time ever, didn’t want to kill myself because of my feet. Flats are definitely the way to go. 

I am now trying to get over what I’ve heard referred to by many people as “CES Plague” which essentially is a minor disease that is contracted when you spend a number of days at a convention center in the middle of the desert, breathing in piped-in oxygen and sharing same with 150,000 other people. You basically just get congested and feel like Hell for a couple of days, then you’re fine.

Happy Anniversary, Civil Air Patrol

Yesterday was the 65^th anniversary of the U.S. Air Force Auxiliary Civil Air Patrol.  As you know, if you read this blog, I’ve been a member of this particular organization for 15 years now. 

CAP has given me a lot of grief, in the past few years of my life.  There are a lot of intolerant people in the organization; there are a lot of people who don’t like change and a lot of people who don’t deal well with women in positions of power.  Of course, men in positions of power have no idea that this sort of thing occurs, and right now, for example, I’m too disgusted to push the point. 

But CAP does a world of good, which is why I’m still a member.  I fight to find the good sometimes, but it’s there.  CAP members find the time to volunteer for their country and their community, and that’s a good thing.  For many years, I participated in a squadron (lowest-level unit of organization) in New York City that did a world of good for its members.  Together with my excellent friends Pete and Dan, I gave up nights and weekends and sleep and sanity so that the world was a small bit safer.  Just a small bit.  But what a marvelous feeling.  In addition to the search and rescue work that we did, we directly influenced the lives of hundreds of NYC teenagers.  We took them camping for the first time, and showed them trees.  We listened to their problems.  We laughed (a LOT) at their antics.  We showed them how to deal with angst, and anger, and sadness.  We taught them discipline and the power of goals and the wonder of a sunrise. 

We did great work. 

I’m still in CAP, and I know there are people who still experience this on a regular basis.  I’m not one of them right now, and I miss it a lot.  I miss being exhausted at work on Wednesday mornings, after a late night at a squadron meeting.  I miss the utter lack of politics involved in a small, well-run group of people.  I miss laughing my head off at the observations of teenagers trying to figure out how the world operates.  I miss eating crappy food at 3 AM and being woken up at 5:30 after a night of hardly any sleep.  I miss curling up on a World War II cot in the middle of a roomful of strangers, knowing I have to get a couple of hours’ sleep so that I can get back on duty as soon as I can, because everyone else is just as tired as I am. 

I figure I’ve been taking a bit of a holiday from CAP of late, and that I’ll get back to doing (part of) what I do best in the New Year.  For today, I’d like to wish CAP a happy birthday, and I’d like to extend my thanks to all of its members, for getting out there every single day and doing a great job. 

I've got about two more good years

Let’s talk about getting older.  Just for a minute. 

Come on, it’s not as bad as you think.  It’s part of life!  I used to have a friend who would say; “It’s all part of life’s rich pageantry.” 

She’s probably dead now. 

My body is doing odd things to me, mostly when I’m not paying attention.  I’m entirely too young to be going through menopause but then there’s this thing called “perimenopause” which, near as I can figure out, means “a word we medical types use to speak to women who are going through menopause but think they’re entirely too young to be going through menopause.” 

If you Google “symptoms of menopause” you get a list of 35 delightful experiences, ranging from “irritability” and “difficulty concentrating” (these seem quite doable) to “feelings of doom” and “incontinence, especially upon sneezing.” 

This is the part that unnerves me.  Since I happen to be enjoying several of the other symptoms listed, I now live in terror of sneezing.  This used to be something I rather enjoyed.  Now my heart starts racing (yet another symptom) when I realize I’m going to sneeze.  Is it OK to sneeze in public?  Do I need to race to a bathroom to prepare to sneeze?   Essentially,  you realize, this translates into feelings of doom.  So they are right.  It’s hard for me to tell, though, because I have been having difficulty concentrating.  What? 

I’ve recently been experimenting with “crashing fatigue” and “trouble sleeping through the night.”  I would bet that anyone that works with me would be able to attest to “disturbing memory lapses” though I was kind of hoping that I’ve got another ten years or so before that attacks me.  Another unnerving one is “electric shock sensation under the skin and in the head.”  I have to believe that this would cause “incontinence” – don’t you think? 

My personal favorite, though, is “exacerbation of existing conditions” – which means, everything that’s already wrong with you will get 100 times worse with menopause.  Or perimenopause.  Or whatever this is.  I don’t remember. 

I have been tidying up

Things I am quite certain other women don’t have in their jewelry box/top drawer:

Marbles

Two Leatherman tools (a regular one, and a cute smaller one)

A Bill Clinton “Cool Cats” campaign button

A small neon green water gun (empty)

A pair of glow-in-the-dark skeleton earrings

A little tiny Coleman lantern on a keychain

At least three whistles

Three tiny die cast aluminum airplanes; a Mustang, a Lockheed Constellation, and a Space Shuttle

One die (where’s the other one?)

A thimble (I don’t sew)

Three rolls of undeveloped slide film

A Carabiner

Various A.F. uniform bits and pieces

A compass

At least three challenge coins (military joke; I apologize if you’re a civilian)

A dog treat (this concerned me)

An orange M&M (gross)

Several stray Advil

.73

Clapton at the Garden

Went to see Clapton last night. More on that in a minute.

Why is it that everyone in NYC thinks that Madison Square Garden is, like, their living room, and they can just relax and smoke as much pot as they want to without fear of retribution.  It’s like no other concert venue anywhere.  I was so stoned, just from the pot clouds, that I had to walk back to my office (in Union Square) and kill A LOT of time before I was able to drive myself home.

Anyway.  The concert was great, it’s always great to see Clapton. I always come home deaf, deafer than other sorts of concerts, but always worth it. The band was extraordinary, couple of new hires in there I think, and the music was just alive. Man, that fellow can play.  I don’t have the set list in order (I was too, um, foggy) but he played:

Pretending

I Shot the Sheriff

Got to Get Better in a Little While

Motherless Children

Back Home

Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out

Running on Faith

After Midnight

Queen of Spades

Further on Up The Road

Wonderful Tonight

Layla

Cocaine

And of course, Crossroads (which Robert Cray joined him on)

Not a chatty concert.  They just played the living daylights out of everything, the band really fed off of each other, nice transitions, no bullshit. Just great music. 

Banned Books Week

This is banned books week. 

Free people read freely. 

I will spare you a sermon about people who actually take time out of their day to go to the trouble of getting a book banned.  The first amendment is one of my personal favorites.  Go do something crazy and dangerous:

 

A word about television

I must confess that, for the past couple of years, I like to watch TV a couple of hours a week to unwind. This never used to be the case, so I’m still sort of getting used to it. It’s hard for me to cop to the fact that there are TV shows I like.

For example.  I love “The Daily Show” and have watched it for years. Jon Stewart kills me, and if you read this blog, you already know that so I won’t waste any more of your time. “The Colbert Report” is pretty good too – today I went to a taping of the show, and it was great fun. Ariana Huffington was the guest, and while I still shake my head at HuffPo, I have to admit the woman has skills. Maybe she sold out; maybe she only started the blog in order to flip it; maybe she has a staff of writers who wrote the whole damn thing for her. Watching her on “Colbert” though, I have to admit she’s got some game.

Anyway.

I loved watching “The West Wing” because it was smart, and it was funny, and it made me want to work in politics. It made me want to work for something, or someone, that I believed in. When it went off the air, I was genuinely heartbroken – I’m not kidding here – and felt that the characters, my friends, still live somewhere, going on with their lives. That’s great writing; God bless Aaron Sorkin.  I waited patiently for another Sorkin show to come back, and have been rewarded for my patience. “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” is a great show, with a great cast, great writing, and a great producer. What a relief. 

My aunt said recently that she didn’t know if “Studio 60” would light her fire the way “West Wing” did because she cared very much about politics but doesn’t care so much about the television industry. That’s a fair criticism.  But I think that “Studio 60” just goes back to the principle of doing something that you care about, and doing it well.

I don’t want to watch TV that caters to the lowest common denominator. I don’t want to watch a soap opera, or “Dancing with the Stars.”  If that’s what you want to watch, that’s cool.  I want to watch TV that makes me laugh out loud at its cleverness, or makes me appreciate the fact that I paid attention to 7^th grade English, or, frankly, that I’ve paid attention to life. If you’re my age (44) and you can’t sing along to “I am the Very Model of a Modern Major General” then you haven’t been paying attention to some very important parts of life. You need the little things, to get by successfully.  You’ll get more jokes. You’ll appreciate walking into a hotel lobby and hearing a bad cover of “There’s A Small Hotel” (or walking into a bar in Valparaiso, of all places, and hearing nothing but Edith Piaf.)  The little things are an important part of life.  I’m not saying they’re the most important – only you can decide that, I’m not here to judge you. Certainly our jobs are important and our marriages are important and our kids are important. But, there are other things that are important too.  Nuances.  When you get into your 40s and 50s and, I imagine, far beyond, you start to pick up on life’s nuances. It’s kind of what’s wonderful about getting older.  You miss a lot when you’re in your 20s and 30s. I appreciate that there are writers out there, like Aaron Sorkin, who can write for people who don’t want the gaps filled in. Guys, I’ve paid attention to everything along the way.  You can make jokes about Homer, or the Andrews Sisters, or Gilbert & Sullivan, or the Bible, or the 60s, or Charlie Parker. I’ll get them all.

You know what?  The “Modern Major General” skit on Studio 60 was funny, but they could have done better. But I’ll watch next week to see if they do. 

Avoidance mode

Lots of great sports action this week. As I write this, Notre Dame is beating the living daylights out of Penn State. Not a squeaker by any means, but still fun if you’re a Notre Dame fan.

Love the U.S. Open, as always, though I won’t get a chance to go this year. When is NYC going to figure out a traffic solution for events like the U.S. Open? Tomorrow I am going to the Mets game, and I can’t see any other solution but to drive to Manhattan and take the subway to Shea. It’s just too crazy this time of year, to go near that part of town in a car. What a drag. 

And of course the Mets are…the number one team in baseball…I have not gloated at all this season. I have been too busy having a great time and loving all these great baseball games. I’m still not gloating, and I reiterate my view that all I want is the pennant. The pennant would make me the happiest woman in Brooklyn.  Anything that happens after that is just icing on the cake. (I do love icing, though…)

I think that I have been very happy with distractions this week, because I am fairly preoccupied with the 9/11 anniversary. I try not to think about it, as we all do, but I have done a lot of thinking about it this week. I guess it’s unavoidable, with all the media coverage.  I’ll write more about this on Monday, but I do want to relay one small story.

I was in Paragon Sports yesterday, looking for a pair of sneakers (I will be spending one hell of a lot of time on airplanes in the next six weeks, and want a new pair of traveling sneaks.)  It was kind of crowded in Paragon, so I sort of struck up a conversation with two other women waiting for help. One was about my age, and must have been a nurse, or a psychiatrist, or some such. I’ll call her Nurse.  The other was a very elderly lady, I’d say late 80s, God bless her, who started the conversation. She allowed that she couldn’t think of anything else but 9/11 and the anniversary. She couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t concentrate, we all know this song, etc. Nurse said, you have to talk to someone, you have to see a shrink, it will make you feel better. She then went on to explain the side effects of ignoring traumatic anniversaries such as these, and as she was talking, other people waiting around on the basement level of Paragon started to listen to her. She said that right now, there should be shrinks on every street corner in New York. (This got a lot of laughs, but a lot of nods as well.)  She talked for a bit, and had our attention, and when she was done she wrote down a number for the older lady to call. The lady thanked her profusely, and said she’d really call, and talk to someone. Nurse turned to me and said, will you talk to someone, too? 

I could have lied to her; it would have been very easy.  I shook my head and said, no, actually, I won’t.  I’m leaving for Denver on Tuesday and have too much to do before then to talk to anyone.  Nurse looked at me and said, that’s a shame.  I nodded and said, yeah, it is. 

So I’m glad that Notre Dame is winning. 

Go Irish. 

Go somebody.