Friday, September 5, 2008
My fingers are crossed
Here's my wish for today, thrown out there in the hope that people who care about each other will give each other at least the same leeway for having different points of view that they give people they neither know well nor particularly care about.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:51 AM

Friday, August 15, 2008
Gather moonbeams
Any rare readers, please gather lots of kind thoughts, prayers, best wishes, whatever you can, and send them to Kate. Life often doles out more than we think we can bear but she's really having to cope with too much at the moment. Our collected energy might help a little.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:01 AM

Friday, June 27, 2008
What obligations ensue in friendship?
A fairly casual friend with whom I have lunch once or twice a week, during which we seem to plunge into intense conversations, raised the question today of what obligations I think should or might follow between two women who call each other very good or even best friends. I think she feels like an old wife who is much cared for but not especially enjoyed nor whose company is sought by her mate. At what point, she wonders, would it be reasonable or even psychologically sound to give up her long-time friend's company in exchange for a fair amount of loneliness/solitude before she makes new friends, but during which time she might be able to stop feeling like an old worn toy. They've been friends since grammar school so she will not find another friendship of so much endurance nor constancy; on the other hand, she is weary of never receiving offers of help from her friend, not of physical assistance nor of money nor, really, of anything. Their bargain seems to be my friend's effort and energy in exchange for her friend's company. Interesting and a bit unsettling. I'm not even sure what questions to ask to help. My father once said that sometimes friendship is very uneven, 60/40 or even 90/10 for a while, but that at other times it goes quite the other way. But when I said that to my friend, she said it never seesaws the other way. Brother. I have to believe she gets more out of it than she is able to verbalize so perhaps my role should be to help her identify that? If anyone has any thoughts . . . . ?

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Permalink | 5 comment(s) | posted by jau at 6:03 PM

Friday, March 7, 2008
"Sermon"
The always wonderful, fantastic, erudite, succinct, clever, poetic, and observant Seablogger wrote what he dubbed a sermon the other day as a result of experience fighting his current illness.
If you are healthy, but sluggish and heavy, move your butt until you downsize it. If you are ill, that’s no excuse. When my lung was collapsed, I could feel that it was no longer possible for me to bicycle to the beach, but I didn’t take the elevator to my third floor apartment. I kept climbing the stairs because I could, even if it left me winded for a moment. Do all you can, and learn to tell the difference between mental and physical resistance. If you brain says I don’t wanna, ignore it. If your body says, I can’t, yield.

Exercise every day. It doesn’t matter what you do. Walk, jog, weight-lift, skate, cycle, swim. Stretching is good too. You don’t have to take up yoga, like some of the freaky people I used to see out on the beach at dawn. But keep limber. Don’t let the parts stiffen up.

Why? Here’s another basic truth. Exercise probably won’t lengthen your life. If you lose a roll of the genetic dice, disease will happen. But if you exercise, even when you are ill, you will be strong enough to lead a normal life almost to the end, and believe me, that beats shuttling to the hospital. You will also be more alert, you will sleep better, you will feel better than if you sit in front of the computer all the time.
This is terrific advice. The trick is to heed it.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:26 AM

Saturday, October 27, 2007
Running in the rain
It's slightly more than one week from the starting moment on the Verrazzano Bridge and it's pouring rain here on the East coast. The NYC Marathon is that astonishing moment when a small town's worth of people don scant clothes and water bottles and supportive shoes, and choose to run through New York City's five boroughs under the steam of their feet instead of just going for a nice forty-minute drive. I give them all tons of credit for creativity and determination, but I am reminded of Bob Newhart's routine as Sir Walter Raleigh calling Queen Elizabeth I to tell her about the colonists engaging in a new activity they're calling, er, tennis. No, he says, he doesn't know what the word is meant to suggest. How does it work?, he seems to answer, well, they take a piece of wood and bend it into an oval shape and wire it with cat's intestines stretched really tight across the center; then they take a small bright yellow and fuzzy ball (yes, he messed with historical accuracy for the sake of humor) and they toss this little ball back and forth, whacking it with the wooden contraptions. After a pause when QEI is presumably digesting what he's said, he answers, no, he has no idea why they do it, but they say they enjoy it.... Exactly.

To those who are training and preparing for November 4th, I wish them all kinds of good luck . . . and a whole lot less rain.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:40 AM

Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Birthdays
It's the birthday of one of my friends today, a very nice woman, as well as that of Faulkner, Christopher Reeve (a/k/a Superman), Mark Rothko, Dimitri Shostakovich, Phil Rizzuto, Barbara Walters, Scottie Pippen, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas (did you know they share a birthday?!), and Will Smith. As for astrological and "sign" similarities, other than that they are well-known, I'm darned if I can find anything they have in common.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 9:29 AM

Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Keeping in touch
When blogs I check nearly every day go quiet for even a few days, I inevitably worry. Is he/she sick? Did something happen to someone in his/her family? Should I write and tell them they're on my mind? Silly, I know, but since one's acquaintance with bloggers is so personal - at the ends of one's fingers and often in pj's or even less, after all - it takes on enormous (not to mention overblown and undue) importance. Just saying.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:05 AM

Sunday, April 8, 2007
Good friends, good food
My friend concocted a wonderful meal tonight (roast chicken, asparagus, fluffy rice, home-made bread, ending with strawberries and cream) and I contributed white wine and Girl Scout cookies. Everything was cooked just right and tasted scrumptious. After dinner we watched several episodes of one of our favorite BritComs, My Family. What better way to begin the season of renewal than sharing delicious food, good conversation and lots of laughter with best friends.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 10:12 PM

Thursday, April 5, 2007
Update and warning
On Wednesday morning a point of view which had not been presented in stories on my friend's murder was included in a front page story. That's because I was quoted, and my name printed, along with a couple of sentences from an email I wrote to the so-called journalist who's been covering the arson-murder-suicide of my friend - but without my prior knowledge or authorization.

This is what they quoted: "I have to tell you that another friend and I feel certain that she would never have agreed to ending her life like this. It is simply inconceivable to us that she would have agreed to something as horribly gruesome and violent as a gunshot suicide pact."

The good news is that the quote was accurate and what I said completely true. But imagine seeing your very own name and words from a private (you thought) email right there on the front page. I doubt it was legal but I am loathe to protest lest that show up on the front page too. (Which must be why the likes of Britney and George stay quiet when we'd expect them to speak up.)

What had happened was that a day or so after my friend was murdered and having read one too many suggestions that she was complicit in the horrible event, I wrote an email to the bylined author. She wrote back the next day to say she would take my comments into consideration and definitely let me know what developed in the investigation. She also said she might contact me for a quotation or two for a future piece. I guess that was all hogwash since a mere two days later, she simply plopped my name and words right down. So beware what you write or say . . . and, by implication, what you read.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 1:11 AM

Sunday, March 25, 2007
Light brown locks
My friend's daughter's daughter, who is 7, allowed me to cut her hair today. Quite an accomplishment apparently because she's refused to let it be cut until now. She'd agreed to let me do it last time she visited but time got away from us. By today, her hair was almost to her waist. The main motivator is that it often snarled or knotted, and as we girls can surely remember, it's ghastly to have knots brushed or combed out by insistent mothers.

When we began, as we were talking about how much to cut, her mom mentioned Locks of Love so we looked it up and learned that they require 10" and that anyone can do the cutting (whew) and that the clean hair needs to be sent in a plastic bag and can even be braided if one were so inclined. They welcome photos and notes from the donor, too, which sounds really nice! Ten inches turned out to be just the right amount, not too much and not too little. And I'm happy to say that the result is lovely. The front is slightly longer than the back and swings charmingly when she shakes her head. Plus, she can still tuck the front behind her ears, which she likes. And it will be much cooler in the summer. Of course, I saw places that could have used better technique, but I didn't want to keep snipping and shaping until it was half an inch long all over. (I still have bad memories of my mother cutting my bangs so short and straight that I wanted to hide under a table or, preferably, run away from home.) In the end, parents and grandparents were pleased and, best of all, she liked it a lot! A successful venture.

This was lots more fun than going to an office every morning; maybe I should think about a change of career, one I can do from home? Is there such a thing as a fifty-something coiffuriste?

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 8:47 PM

Monday, March 19, 2007
Visual DNA
A cute idea. Visual who-are-you. It's a bit fun to do, too. (Thanks to Barb the Evil Genius whose visual dna isn't very different from mine - not surprising I suppose since we read each other's blogs. A tad disconverting to be in the under-10%-chose-like-me group except for two, though.) (Update - I removed the visual as it's way too big for a small page like this and it doesn't permit resizing or anything.)

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:03 PM

Saturday, September 16, 2006
commuting speed
In offices, it's not ususual to make friends, given shared interests and so much time in each other's company. But on the train? I've been commuting to New York City for 12+ years and have met some terrific people. Just from a storytelling point of view, two of the best were the perfume salesman-conservationist-philantropist and the theologician-horseman-comptroller, but everyone has a story to tell and many are caring and kind with a wide variety of interests, not surprising since we all converge on superlative NYC. The long commute offers unavoidable concentrated personal time plus an opportunity to meet people. Definitely a perk of my job.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:57 PM

Friday, September 15, 2006
co-workers speed
One hears and reads much grousing about work and colleagues but, first of all, I quite like my job and my colleagues and my employers so I wouldn't say much negative anyway, but today I am hugely grateful and appreciative and just have to say something out loud. (Do you suppose two ptft's earn even better karma than one?) Anyway, I really needed help with something and was on the verge of panicking - which you could tell because my voice was getting higher (a really annoying affliction, I have to say) - until one of the supervisors offered to ask all her people for a volunteer . . . and four people appeared within seconds. Generosity, cooperation and assistance are wonderful things. Pass it on!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 3:46 PM

Sunday, September 3, 2006
easy for him to say :)
The other day I said I was out of sorts because of the endless rain. Although it's rained now for ten days, off and on, with a promise of at least one more, I feel a bit better partly because I hate feeling bad for long and try to get in a better mood, if I can. Also, Ligneus left a comment that "the way to deal with rain is to revel in it, to walk in it and to think of the awful places where it rains once in a long while and instead of the beautiful mist you get dust." I certainly agree except that I'm over ten and don't have Wellies. Ligneus grew up in England had Wellington boots, raincoats (presumably slickers like mine) and "Sou'Westers, [a hat something like you see in old prints of lifeboatmen]." Mind you, I've spent several months in the UK over the last ten years or so and it's rarely rained. But he perpetuates the story line and extols the virtues of "every kind of rain, Scotch Mist, drizzle, ordinary old rain, April showers, summer downpours and especially winter storms by the sea, all of them enjoyable in their different ways if you don't resist them and think them unpleasant". As I think and say at least once a month or two, oh to be in England!!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 12:12 AM

Thursday, August 24, 2006
a feast of family fun
One of T2CGITW is coming to visit today and staying until Sunday. Yeah!!. Tomorrow we all go to the 161st Dutchess County Fair (don't miss it if you're anywhere near - it's always grand). Saturday we're traipsing off to the birthday party of the other of T2CGITW. I'm making two cakes, one a watermelon look-alike and the other a swimming pool! I'll post photos when they're done. I did a test of the watermelon one, a couple of weeks ago, and it was very cute - and tasty, according to everyone who taste-tested. I am very lucky to get to spend two entire days with both girls and another half day on either side with the elder. I'm so excited! Also here all weekend will be my friend of over three decades (eek) and one of her daughters and that daughter's two children. A veritable feast of family and extended family.

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 4:27 PM

Sunday, July 23, 2006
lucky me!
How lucky can one person feel!? The weather is nice today - breezes and low(er) humidity - and I'll have spent three days of the current four with both of ttcgitw. I visited one on Friday and the other will be here this evening and tomorrow. It's one of those times you wish you could keep the days just a little longer than the allotted twenty-four hours. And don't you wish there was a way to at least double the adorable, curious, funny, charming toddler years?!

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 2:34 PM

Friday, July 14, 2006
yippee tay yay
Update: Had a great time reuniting with my friend/hairdresser. She gave me a nice haircut although my expectations were probably too high, as usual. I wanted something exciting and different, maybe even dramatic. One of those "wow, cool haircut" things. It certainly looks okay but it's not very different, for one thing, and not at all dramatic, for another. I guess I need to look at pictures and try that route next time. // Once upon a time I was happily going to a hairdresser that I loved at a salon that was quite nice. It had taken me about three hundred years to find someone who understood my quirks and wanting to hide behind my hair and yet be adorable too. But then came the day when the evil stepowner had an argument with my friend, the result of which was that she went to a different salon. She kindly sent me at least two notices about the new place but I promptly put them into that place where things go when you're sure you know where you put them but they never see the light of day again. When I'd read the address change, I'd had a mental image of where she moved and yesterday my hair was at that point where cute barrettes and swanky clips are the only things between me and utter hideousness (on my head, anyway) so I did an online-yellow-book search for businesses on the street I thought she moved to and . . . voila: tomorrow afternoon I will see her and get better hair in the bargain. Yeah!

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Permalink | 0 comment(s) | posted by jau at 11:04 AM

Sunday, July 9, 2006
more bdays
Today is the birthday of someone who was, for a while, a good friend. I am sorry we parted in anger and with hurt feelings. I hope she is doing well, enjoying her work and her life as much as she deserves.

It also is my next-door neighbor's birthday, an active and energetic man who admits to 39 but is, I believe, about twice that. He is thoughtful and helpful and good to be getting to know.

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Permalink | 1 comment(s) | posted by jau at 6:54 PM

Friday, May 6, 2005
Train People
I hear there's going to be a sitcom or dramedy on tv this fall about commuters. A fellow traveller (smile if you remember what that used to mean) and I used to amuse ourselves fabricating what various people's lives were like. We never wrote it down and never submitted a proposal, though. Silly silly us. Apparently someone stole our idea (just kidding!). Our daily trek moseys along the beautiful Hudson River - lucky us! - so I hope the show doesn't put a "drudgery" and "what a drag" spin on the whole thing (although I know some people's commutes are harder than others). More important, I hope they include real touches like annoying Crutons and wonderful Train People.

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Permalink | 2 comment(s) | posted by jau at 6:48 AM