Good Fortune

Those who know me well know that episodically my skeletal-muscular system asserts itself.

I am then left to coax it into submission first with drugs and then with movement.

And it was there—in the movement phase that I found myself out and about-ish—taking a walk to limber the formerly squawking body parts.

I reveled in the brilliance of the sun---and the wind temperature and humidity of yesterday’s September-like weather.

I was free—mobile-- drug free yet intoxicated.

I smiled—thinking of my good fortune.

That was until I intersected with Mr. Buzzkill on the corner of Poplar and Tremont: a very very old man with a walker moving at a speed that absolutely positively exceeded my own.

He was smug with accomplishment.

I was resting on the edge of humiliation.

The old bastard was beating me.

My mind (and ego) was frantic.

And then I remembered: the hare never wins the race, the tortoise always does. The very very old man and his walker would only overpower me for a little while—the differential in our ages would eventually determine this race.

I might be losing the sprint, but the marathon was mine.

And so I kept walking—once again intoxicated---into the sun.

Sweet Medicine

I was under the weather—not up to par---feeling not too terrific.

And so shortly after lunch, to promote some self-healing, I went upstairs pulled back the comforter and crawled into bed.

Cosmo, my faithful companion, was befuddled, and sat on the floor staring at me in  a clear attempt  to correctly assess the situation.

Suddenly, I could see that he had gotten an idea.

Cosmo abruptly left my bedroom and came back with his favorite toy in his mouth.

He proceeded to jump on the bed, stared into my eyes, and dropped red ball squarely on my chest. He seemed to say Mommy this will make you feel better.

And then he laid down beside me—his warm body pushed up against mine.

 I indeed  felt better.

Because all dogs intuitively know Love is the best medicine.

Baking Biscotti

It is one of my all-time favorite jokes: 

An elderly Italian man lay dying in his bed. He had only a day or two of life left. But as he contemplated his inevitable demise he was overcome by a magnificent aroma wafting up into his bedroom from the kitchen below. It was the smell of biscotti being baked by his wife of 55 years. Tears streamed down the dying man’s face as he thought If only I could eat one more cookie—I will die a happy man. And so he musters up all his strength and crawls out of bed—then crawls down the stairs---then across the kitchen floor. But just as his hand reaches up to grab a warm biscotti cooling on a baking rack on the kitchen table, his wife of 55 years slaps him on the hand  and says—They are not for you!—they are for the people at your funeral!

And that joke is what came to mind shortly after discovering my great Aunt Zia Giangrasso’s biscotti recipe. I thought about the toil of preparing six pounds of biscotti dough and the time and precision required to evenly bake hundreds upon hundreds of  1 x 3 inch perfectly twisted cookies in an oven with only one rack and without the luxury of a Kitchen Aid food processor equipped with a dough hook or a prepatory kitchen with infinite counter space.

I thought I can barely stand the effort and mess of opening a solitary package of Nestle’s Toll House Chocolate Chip break and bake cookies and arranging 1 x 1 inch squares of prepared dough  on Teflon pans placed in my convection oven which houses 3 cookie sheets at once.

It occurred to me that baking in my great Aunt’s times was a dedicated all-day event—which also was completely labor intensive.

I thought if I was the woman in the joke I would not have merely slapped the dying man’s hand—I would have beaten him unconscious with the weighty wooden rolling pin while saying I have to do all this work just for you!!.

Because for as much as we complain about how hard it is to juggle a career and a household and how we never have enough down time because we are too busy and our lives are too complicated, it pales to the laborious lives of our grandmothers’ generation.

Those women really worked hard.

And their achievements (for the most part) went totally unrewarded and   unrecognized—unless you were fortunate enough to be Betty Crocker.

Wine Glasses 101

It was because of his somewhat generously sized proboscis that my father complained that his nose did not fit comfortably in the very fashionable ruby-red cylindrical wine glasses housed in our upper right kitchen cabinets.

My father implored in earnest to my mother Can’t we just buy new ones that make sense?

My mother considered his inquiry to be rhetorical.

Because in the 1970’s, wine glasses only stood about 4 or 5 inches high, spanned just over 2 inches in diameter, and only held about 4 ounces of Burgundy or Chablis.

By today’s standards—wine glasses were small.

That was, until times changed---and everything became oversized.

By the mid 2000’s a typical serving of wine measured about 8 to 10 ounces. Wine glasses now stood 10 inches in height with a softball sized receptacle to house its fermented content.

And it was right around this time in glassware history— also a time when we switched from drinking Chardonnay to Merlot-- that it happened.

I was seated at a dinner party at the club when my storytelling became so hyper-animated that the back of my left hand accidentally lofted my oversized overfilled softball dimensioned wine glass such that the red liquid content tsunami-ed full frontal on my best friend’s apple green Ann Taylor silk sweater as well as my other friend’s brand new white Lacoste golf shirt.

Utter silence ensued.

No amount of club soda or blotting could mitigate the damage.

Super storm Sandy caused less wreckage than this natural disaster.

The Merlot stained sweater and golf shirt could have hung to the left and to the right of a Jackson Pollack canvas at MOMA.

And I am pleased to say that the new trend in glassware is stem-less. Wine glasses are ergonomically designed to topple like a Weeble, not loft like a softball. Spillage is relegated to the tablecloth and/or the keeper of the glass.

No more friendly fire.

These new elliptically constructed stem-less wine glasses have the added attraction of being    engineered to fit comfortably in the dishwasher—as well as around generously sized human proboscises---like those of my father.