Lawyerish

If Only We Had a Prius to Get There and Back

If you want to create a yuppie frenzy, open a Whole Foods.  Our neighborhood is probably about as ideal as you can get, demographically, for this store -- lots of reasonably well-off families and professional types, mostly liberal, on the whole rabidly pro-organic and concerned about locally sourced food, blah blah.  Up to now, we've been shopping at an NYC grocery store chain that has a somewhat shabby outpost right around the corner from us, and we've had to traipse to other nearby stores to grab the many basic items that our D'Ag would mysteriously run out of from week to week.  

So of course we were incredibly excited when we learned that Whole Foods would be opening a store close by.  Could one-stop shopping be within our grasp?  Sadly, no, because evidently Gatorade and soda do not qualify as organic, so we still have to stop elsewhere to satisfy our beverage habit.  Otherwise, though?  It's pretty much the best thing to happen to our neighborhood since Alec Baldwin moved in.  So much produce!  So many whole grain snack choices!  So much fresh cheese and artisanal bread and saag paneer!  We may end up 50 pounds heavier and thousands of dollars poorer, but dammit we'll be happy.  Thank you, Whole Foods.  Thank you. 

It was rather frenzy-like, indeed, since we went on Saturday morning, just two days after the place opened.  At first we were one of just a handful of people wandering about, gazing lustfully at the tzatziki dip and fondling the heirloom tomatoes, but within half an hour, the place was awash in Phil & Ted's strollers and Fit Flops (which, in case you've wondered, have proven very comfy but I don't believe they have done much for the tone of my rear area). 

All things considered, it wasn't too chaotic; no fisticuffs broke out over the bulk basmati rice or anything, and even with the teeming masses it was more pleasant than my weekly grocery excursions to D'Ag, with the cramped aisles and the CONSTANT obtrusive restocking of shelves (always RIGHT where you wanted to get something, of course) and the verbally abusive elderly ladies who seemed to follow me around the store as if their creaky upright shopping carts were magnetized to my butt.  We got out of there with everything we wanted and so much more (except the Gatorade and soda), and have been blissfully filling our bellies with wholesome goodness ever since. 

So, ah.  Yep.  That was the highlight of my weekend.  How about yours?

Summer Stupor

The summer between 10th and 11th grade, I went to Princeton for six weeks for an intensive ballet program, and it was one of the hottest periods in New Jersey history.  Our dorms and the ballet studios were not air-conditioned, so basically every hour of the day was spent in a state of sweaty delirium.  With at least six hours of dance class a day in over 90- and often 100-degree temperatures (and oh, the humidity! dear God!), we young ballerinas were on the verge of utter collapse at all times; but because we were dedicated to our art, we persevered and suffered and drank gallons and gallons of Evian. 

All of us, that is, except this group of five girls from Valdosta, Georgia.  Valdosta is way down south in my home state, near the Florida border, and it's best known for its high school football team, which frequently wins the state championships and sends players on to the NFL.  (My tenth grade year, incidentally, my school's team beat Valdosta to win the state and national titles, a distinction that is emblazoned on the signs out by the highway that welcome you to town.) 

The Valdosta girls were perhaps not the most ambitious or energetic dancers ever to grace the Princeton Ballet summer program, and they seemed more concerned than most of us about whether all that effort might smudge their makeup or frizz their carefully devised up-dos.  Each afternoon, as the rest of us started our second technique class of the day in the oven-like confines of the big studio, all five of them would mysteriously take ill or be overcome by some debilitating injury, from which they would miraculously recover by the end of the day, when it was time to walk a mile to the (air-conditioned) dining hall.  They'd lounge on a bench near the dressing room, positioned strategically near an oscillating fan, in various postures of languor, and from the studio you'd hear them saying things like, "Ah think ah'm about to break a sweat about now." 

Now that we're into the heat of August, I have to say, my own torpor reminds me of those girls.  I don't feel much like doing anything except draping myself over the couch, sipping a cool beverage and occasionally nibbling at an ice cream.  Even indoors, under full air-conditioning, the heat seems to penetrate and sap all the life out of you; you leave your desk to go grab lunch and come back ten minutes later in dire need of an hour-long nap, or you take the dog out for a quick walk and have to return immediately to the couch and some aimless channel-surfing. 

The subway platforms, of course, are like the surface of the sun (it's really best not to speak of them at all), and as usual the hot weather and the scarcity of a large chunk of the population (i.e., people with vacation plans and summer homes) brings out the crazies in full force.  Just yesterday, as we moseyed (slowly, sloooowly under the flattening sun) back from the library, we were greeted by an older woman who was crossing the street with the aid of a cane and shouting at the top of her lungs about a conspiracy of Jews (the details were unclear); as we passed her, minding our own business, she suggested we "suck [her] d**k."  Always fun to get to know new people in the neighborhood, eh?  And so, staying indoors with a stack of books and a ready supply of water and Gatorade is about all I can muster, outside of necessary trips to the grocery store, the office, and the Gap.  I'll venture out  in September, when life is in swing again and the humidity is less than 1000%.

In other thrilling news, our shower is done being retiled and we've enjoyed a week of bathing that does not involve the gym.  Our water pressure has improved and the tile is pristine and non-moldy and there are no more workmen tromping through our house anymore.  AND, as a side bonus, the cat appears to have been broken of his soul-crushing habit of only drinking water from the bathroom faucet.  Since the sink was out of commission for several weeks, we gave him a water bowl and he figured out that he had no choice but to take it instead of engaging in the usual routine of going into the bathroom at random (always inconvenient) times and wailing loudly until one of us came in and turned the faucet on for him.  He still jumps up on the sink expectantly when you go in the bathroom, but he continues to drink from his bowl and doesn't bother us much about the faucet.  Victory!

Finally, we also replaced our home theater system, which had become unusable as the DVD player stopped recognizing DVDs some weeks ago, so now we not only have Blu-Ray capability (I am as surprised as anyone to say that I could actually tell the difference between a regular DVD and a Blu-Ray disc) and better sound, but we also don't have to sit in front of the machine for 30 minutes prior to watching a movie, feeding the disc into it again and again in the hopes that it will load instead of deciding there really was no disc there at all. 

This is the kind of excitement to be found in August in New York City.  Invigorating, no?  Ah, well.  Things will improve soon.  We just like to save our thrills for fall. 

The Terrible Teens

Does anyone watch "NYC Prep"?  I have seen about eight minutes of it, total, and in those eight minutes I could feel my brain melting and my will to live rapidly slipping away.  I'm not sure if there could be a more unpleasant group of entitled, bratty, pointless teenagers anywhere on the planet.  I can't stand the lazy way they speak or the vapid conversations they have or the arrogance with which they treat absolutely everything. 

Here I am, someone who clearly has no shame about trashy reality television (I have even given "More to Love" a half hour of my life that I'll never get back, and there are so many offensive and wrong things about THAT that I'm not sure there's room on the Internet for me to talk about it), and this one show sends me into an uncontrollable fit of rage and disgust just by existing.  I can hardly believe that someone wanted to give these kids a public forum, and I can only begin to imagine how insufferable they must be now that they can consider themselves "famous."  It makes my blood pressure rise just to consider their smugness. 

I think there's something about teenagers in general that easily sets me off; when I see a pack of skateboarders taking over a public plaza or a bunch of rowdy eighth graders on the subway, shoving each other and talking so loudly that no one else can even think in their general vicinity or groups of almost identically dressed girls eye-rolling at each other while texting furiously in a coffee shop, I instantly transform into a crotchety old lady, the female equivalent of the old guy from "Punky Brewster."  I want to tell them all to go work on a skill or play a sport or volunteer or read a damn book, already (as I shake my cane at them and adjust my blue permed hair). 

I was in an airport sometime in the past year and there was a family with two teenage kids sitting near me at the gate.  The boy had long, scraggly hair and skinny jeans and a look of crushing ennui on his face, while the girl clearly was near death from embarrassment simply from being within the same airspace as her family.  The boy pulled out a guitar and started tunelessly picking and strumming at it, ignoring the hundreds of people in the area who probably had better things to do than listen to his budding musical genius.  Meanwhile, the mom tried multiple times to engage her daughter in pleasant small talk, and every time was met with the deepest, gustiest of sighs and an exaggerated shrug.  The mom was lucky to get a grunt out of her. 

I wanted to take both of the kids by the shoulders and give them a good shake.  Seriously, how do you not throttle your kids when they're teenagers?  I know it's temporary, but those have to be long, LOOOONG years.  I wasn't a wild or unruly teen, and I think I was reasonably close with my parents during high school, but I was fully capable of endless stony silences, icy glares and exasperated sighing that I'm sure were tiresome at best and hurtful at worst.  I think back to little moments from that time, and I want to punch my young self in the face. 

My brother, meanwhile, was also not super-rebellious, but he was into The Heavy Metal for several years; he plastered his room with Iron Maiden posters and Slayer logos and listened to ear-bleeding music that compelled some teachers to caution my parents that he might become a devil worshiper (he didn't, in case you were concerned).  He was also the king of the sarcastic remark, and I recall one epic fight between him and my dad (my dad, who NEVER gets mad about anything, was as furious as I can ever remember him being) over his escalating telephone usage; my brother muttered something snarky under his breath as he left the kitchen and my dad slammed his hand on the table and said, "You are NOT going to get the last word!"  (At which point, I dissolved into tears because this level of conflict was unheard of in our household and it sort of shattered my worldview.)

Since neither of us was completely ungovernable and we still did well in school and had friends and hobbies and so forth, it's not like we were disastrous as teens; but still, I don't know how I would have endured it as a parent.  I look back and wonder if my parents just kind of held their breath and counted down the days until the moment they'd get to ship us off to college.  It could have been so much worse, and I'm sure they recognized that even at the time, but still.  To have your sweet little children become these tempestuous, blase creatures who want nothing to do with you anymore and think they know everything has to be painful and aggravating. 

I know it's a time of individuating and all of that, but teenager-dom seems to me something that everyone on both sides, parents and kids, are lucky to survive.  I guess like any other trying time, you just do the best you can and know it will pass.  I like to think that I'd get through it as a (hypothetical) parent by making light of the situation, going out of my way to embarrass my teen as much as possible so at least I could get some laughs out of the equation.  Of course, ideally I'd have a teen or teens who were worldly and saint-like and spent their spare time saving baby seals and learning obscure languages and helping old ladies cross the street, and we'd have lots of quality time together filled with meaningful conversation; but let's not kid ourselves, this isn't some soft-focus, overwritten TV drama.  Still, I guess as long as I didn't have a teen like the "NYC Prep" kids, I would thank my lucky stars. 

Remember My Name

For me, the greatest revelation of last week's "So You Think You Can Dance" finale was not when they announced the winner (Jeanine?  Really?  Not Brandon or Kayla, two of the best dancers ANYWHERE in the  world right now?  Sigh.) but rather, when they showed a trailer for the "Fame" remake, which is coming out next month. 

I think they've been trying to remake "Fame" for something like fifteen years -- I seem to recall hearing murmurs about casting for it back when I was in college, but then the project was scrapped for unknown reasons -- and now it's finally happened.  And somehow I knew absolutely nothing about it until last week.  It should go without saying that I am flipping out with excitement.  I mean, who didn't love Coco and Leroy and Bruno and Doris back in the day?  (Actually, to tell you the truth, I found Doris a little annoying.  I was more a fan of Lori Singer and her cello.) 

I used to watch that show every Saturday morning in the early 80s, when I was probably far too young for it (I don't think I saw the movie til many years later -- and man, that was edgy; one kid was on drugs, another was homeless or close to it.  It was very New York In the Seventies.).  I got such a rush when the synthesizers kicked in and the kids started dancing in the street and Debbie Allen slapped her cane on the floor and said, "Right here is where you start paying...in SWEAT."  And then I have this memory of all these dancers doing wild pique turns around the Lincoln Center fountain, but the opening credits on YouTube don't have that shot.  Odd.  Oh, wait!  Here it is.  Must have been a later season.

Remember the episode that was an interpretation of "The Wizard of Oz"?  And wasn't there some kind of student-teacher affair at one point?  I also had the soundtrack to the movie, replete with Irene Cara's vocal stylings and a great deal of synthetic drums.  I spent countless hours wearing out that tape and performing my own choreography in my room and dreaming of attending a performing arts school where people would understand my artistic needs.  I also thought that the end of the theme song went, "Rem 'em up! Rem 'em up! Rem 'em up!" instead of "Remember! Remember! Remember!", which I believe I realized were the correct lyrics about, oh, two years ago.  And there was a whole song about hot lunch?  My memories of the details are rather hazy.  I do recall that I was a bit annoyed that there wasn't more ballet in the show; the dance stuff was more modern/jazz, and being a bunhead snob even at the age of seven, this distressed me.  

Anyway, I'm sure the new movie won't play to my nostalgia and undoubtedly it'll have some soul-crushing dialogue and flat, stereotype-driven characters -- but it will be another dance-y movie in the vein of "Center Stage" (albeit without Peter Gallagher and his eyebrows, which is a shame), and this excites me.   

Meanwhile, I'm now 34, which means my Jesus year has ended and I am now firmly in my mid-30s.  Unfortunately, our shower retiling project did not end in time for my birthday (we're on Day 13 of showering at the gym, and we're told that they should be done this Friday; if they're not, someone should be prepared for a swift kick to the groin, because walking several blocks and undressing in front of sweaty strangers is not how I want to start my day for any longer than I absolutely have to), but I did take off from work on Friday and had a really great, mellow day that was capped with some fun presents and a lot of birthday greetings on Facebook (am I the only one who is dorkily touched by people wishing me happy birthday on FB?). 

And on Saturday night, we bailed on our plans for a fancypants dinner and instead went to the Outback.  Because sometimes you just want some chicken smothered in bacon and cheese. 

Changes

Our plumbing seems to have a peculiar talent for melting down at the most inopportune times.  Last year, as you may recall, our toilets stopped working when Jonna and my mom were here, putting a sudden and unfortunate kibosh on our planned preparations for a certain baby shower.  We sat in the living room for most of the day, unshowered, while a team of m en with heavy equipment excavated the pipes.  At one point Jonna peered around the corner and said, "I hate to tell you this, but your toilet is in the hallway." 

The year before, we'd recently moved in and the bathrooms had been freshly renovated.  We were enjoying a nice dinner and watching the Oscars when things got plugged up and a series of plumbing experts came through the apartment, wielding increasingly complex machinery that produced large clumps of what appeared to be paper towels that had been tossed down the drain by the workers during the renovation.  (Thanks, guys!)

This time, of course, we're already down to one toilet (and no shower) because of the waterproofing/retiling in our full bath.  Lo and behold, Saturday evening things came to a head with the telltale, disheartening half-flush that always signals that we're about to have an expensive several hours.  It appears that our half bathroom is just not capable of handling the flushings of us plus a bunch of workmen.  Sadly, this means that our Charmin days are over.  It turns out that Charmin (especially Ultra or Plus) is terrible for old or sensitive pipes.  We have to switch to -- gulp -- ONE PLY SCOTT TISSUE. 

Woe! 

A plus, aside from saving money on the hundreds of dollars in annual plumbing repair, is that the rolls should last a lot longer; Charmin goes so fast that you start to suspect that someone in the household is EATING it instead of using it for its intended purpose.  Scott, meanwhile, is so abrasive that you figure more isn't necessarily better.  And it does flush nice and fast; it's not like trying to get a washcloth down, unlike the old stuff.  So.  It was a sad turn of events, but if this means that next summer we won't have to be up past midnight on a Saturday night (I mean, have you even HEARD of such a thing? (God, we're lame)) or run down to the basement to pee while our toilet sits in our hallway, then I'm willing to make the sacrifice.

In other news, this Monday morning will be the first business day in about forty years that my Dad will get up at a time later than 4:45; he'll sleep in until he wants to get up, and when he gets up, he'll do absolutely anything he wants.  Forever!  Yep, he's officially retired, as of Friday, and I couldn't be more thrilled for him.  No more long business trips to China (or any other corner of the world, and believe me, he's been to them all); no more pre-dawn three-mile runs; no more brown-bagging it; no more commute.  Woo hoo! 

My dad has had a long and successful career and gained some really hilarious stories from his many travels -- one of which is recounted by him, here, in his inestimable fashion, and one was retold by me here -- and growing up, I learned a great deal by his example of the quiet discipline and perseverence that work requires.  There are hassles and difficult personalities and sometimes you might run into frustration for years on end, but there are also good people and fruitful opportunities and satisfying moments that balance things out.  And ultimately, work is a part of who you are, but it doesn't define you.  For all the traveling and hard work that Dad did, I don't think of his absences but rather always remember him being home -- and he certainly never missed an important moment, like a dance recital or a birthday -- and when he was home he wasn't preoccupied by work; he was present and involved to a degree that I imagine many dads with demanding jobs and careers aren't.

I'm thrilled that Dad will finally have unlimited time to read and write and fly on his flight simulator and do whatever the hell he feels like doing (I personally would get in a lot of napping, but that's me).  He's certainly earned the right to do anything or nothing at all.  I do hope, however, that he'll make some time to write guest blog posts here, because he's got lots more stories that need to be shared with the world.