Going Out with a Bang Here I sit on the last day of the last month of this crappy year, 2003. Not that it has been any crappier than the year before it and to compare it with 2001, I'd have to say it was a banner year compared to THAT one...but I am definitely glad it's over (or will be in about 11 hours anyway.) It's probably against some part of the grand scheme of things to be in such a patently black mood on New Years Eve but I am and there isn't much I can do about it. First, I bounced two checks overnight. Combined with the four I bounced in the middle of the month for a grand total of six, that just really put the icing on my New Years cake. Oh yeah, that and the fact that my period made a grand entrance last night, unbeknownst to me, and now I have the worst cramps I have had since before the Boy was born. Second, Alison is coming for the weekend and since this is Wednesday that means the LONG extended weekend. I think I'd rather have root canal and a kidney stone both at the same time. Third, I had THOUGHT this would be a half-day affair at work and as it has turned out, our boss is incommunicado and no one bothered to call or tell us we could call it a day early. Combined with the fact that the idiots in our next door office got off at 12:00 and made sure they made 40 phone calls to us to rub it in...it's not sitting well. So here I sit. My house is a mess since the Boy has been home all week playing with his Hanukkah gifts when he's not busy whining about wanting to ride his new gas-powered scooter from Grandpa. That, of course, ISN'T the problem. The problem is that Alison is coming for the weekend which takes us full circle and back to problem number one above. She'll come in all "happy New Year" and everything with a suitcase designed to take a years' worth of clothing on a world tour aboard the QMII. She'll be carrying three cloth bags filled to bursting with files from work that she'll swear she plans to work on while "you guys take a nap." And there will be the giant plastic box with her Aerobed in it and the requisite pillows and sheets. She won't bring a blanket...she'll bitch at me at 2am after she's watched wrestling and Anderson Cooper that she's cold and just where are our Indian blankets anyway? Then she'll get all indignent and hurt when I tell her they're on Anthony in the other room and she'll want one of my pillows and I'll feel all sorry and give her my blanket too. She'll take all her stuff and cram it into my downstairs because Evan's room is such a sty that even I wouldn't ask her to put anything into it - wedging it between chairs and the organ and then piled onto the spare dining room chairs. She'll throw her coat and her pillows on the love seat and our little house will suddenly be WAY too small for three adults, one child, a dog, two cats and five hermit crabs. Then she'll sit with her legs spread wide apart on the floor since there is now limited seating space with the loveseat taken and wonder why we started bitching that we can't move. Finally, I'll get sick of it all and just go to bed and then she'll get all "No one ever wants to have FUN on New Years Eve!" and pout. Sigh. Like I said, root canal and a kidney stone would at least score me some morphine which would quell these cramps and put me to sleep for 48 hours. By then it would be over, time to go home on Friday and I wouldn't really care so much that our boss didn't give us the afternoon off for the first time in three years. I probably wouldn't care too much, either, that the house is messy or that Alison is invading it soon and will make the mess all that more pronounced. I probably wouldn't give a rat's ass either that she hasn't contributed any food to the party or that she'll incite Evan to riot by Friday night. I'd be knocked out and glad for it! I really wish you a great 2004 and one for me too. Happy New Year!

Captured!!! I have been trying to get in here for the better part of a week to chronicle the events which led up to the above headline...and no, I am NOT talking about Saddam Hussein! Yes, dear readers, the oft-anticipated day has come...the Squeeze is NO more. She was evicted earlier this week...the day and time, unfortunately, I am not sure but after talking with my Dad last night...she is, indeed, HISTORY! The story of how she finally came to this sad and lowly state is pretty exciting even by MY dull and boring standards! But first, I have to explain a few things to you about my Dad. First off...my Dad puts the P in paranoid. If you look up paranoid, his picture is in the dictionary beside of it. He is to paranoid what the color red is to roses. I am sure you're getting my drift. Second...the man has cameras everywhere trained on everything. There is NOTHING he cannot look at when and if he wants to. At the bar, he has three or four cameras which hook up to video links to closed circuit tvs which he has installed in his upstairs apartment. These cameras look at the parking lot in about three or four different angles and from above at the registers and from the side at the bar. He knows who's doing what when and to whom. And to tighten the nipple clamps a bit more, he is recording EVERYTHING onto videotape. In his defense, this has been advantageous when someone tries to sue him for whatever since he always can find the tape with the evidence that contradicts the claim and therefore, he usually wins. Any moron could pretty much assume he'd have the same setup at The House and the answer to that is, yes, he does indeed! There are cameras in EVERY room which are busy watching everything and everyone and beaming the transmission to various and sundry TVs setup all through the house. My dad can sit at the kitchen counter and pretty much know what's happening at the pool, the backdoor, the driveway and that weird little alcove beside of the garage simultaneously. To take this a step further though....if you know he's taping everything at the CLUB, then you wouldn't be making MUCH of a stretch to assume he's also recording everything at home. And it wouldn't be THAT far-fetched, then, to assume he's PROBABLY listening in on you too. And then...yes, you become as paranoid as he is and the circle is complete. Well, he moved the Squeeze into the house in August and she'd been there ever since. PLENTY of time to first, figure out there are cameras EVERYWHERE even if you don't know if they're "live" or not and second...plenty of time to figure out that he has them at the bar too. I mean come on...how stupid was she anyway? Apparantly, PRETTY stupid since none of these tipoffs triggered her into any semblance AT ALL of either decency OR tactfulness. Here's the deal: Remember last summer when she called the cops on him when they were at the camper in Ocean City? Well, he left her there when the cops took her away and she got her ex-boyfriend to bring her home. APPARANTLY, they did the deed along the way and then never STOPPED doing the deed AFTER that. My dad must have been pretty lonely because while he suspected all of this and even caught her a few times in a few big, fat lies about it...he never threw her out. After what he said to me last night, that tattoo she got on her back of his name in a heart had pretty much 100% convinced him that she was in love with him. Well, tattoo or no...she called the ex up and went off about how her new "old man" (i.e. my Dad) was 10 years older than she was and he would be dropping dead pretty soon. Once again, that proves her general DUMBNESS since a 61 y/o man is NOT going to just tip over and obviously she hadn't been paying attention because despite everything, the man is in the peak of health. He wasn't going anywhere. Geez, he has two aunts, for crying out loud, who are in their late 90's! Anyway...she goes on that he's gonna croak and then she'll inherit it all...the whole $4-5M. Yes, I said M. And besides, she was living in a mansion ANYWAY complete with pool, hottub and tanning bed (THAT will have to be SO disinfected!) and he bought her anything she and her kids ever wanted, so she had it made. She went on to assure the ex that if he would just play along, she'd be in a position to take care of him and his kids and her and her kids forever. Or something like that...but that's what both my Dad and my sister told me. My dad had been recording this all along (and probably broke a few laws but it's West Virginia so who really knows?) and confronted her with the tapes and then promptly threw her out without so much as her mouthwash and tampons. He called me last night and asked if my sister had told me about the tape... Now remember, my sister has been telling me EVERYTHING since day 1 and even took the heat from him when she slipped and told him she had told me something he didn't want me to know. He felt I was "too conservative" to understand his complex relationship. Right... So I said..."Yeah, she mentioned it." Well, he's happy but he HAS decided to give her all of the Christmas presents he bought for her and her kids and grandchildren, including the Mother's Ring he bought for her. This is typical of him but he did add that back in the old days he might not have done that but now he thinks that was the "asshole" way of doing things and he doesn't want to be an "asshole" anymore. That's pretty commendable. It's sad. I think he really cared a lot about her. Anyway, looks like Christmas in on again and so I took an extra day off so we can be there all next weekend. He sounded really excited when I told him. As he watched the housekeeper drive the Squeeze down the road and drop her off at the main road, he was busy dialling the phone and making reservations for his week in Brasil in February. He's such a softie!

Shabbat At sunset tonight my family will light the Shabbat candles in our copper candlesticks and welcome the Shabbat Queen into our home. As Reform Jews, our observance is traditionally Reform although we borrow meaningful elements from the Conservative and the Orthodox traditions. We choose to center our celebration around our family and our home. The candles will be lit by both my son and myself. As a family, we will stand and say the blessing and then wish one another a "Shabbat Shalom!" and kiss one another's cheeks. Usually my husband will then start putting the finishing touches on dinner - tonight it will be cubed steak, mashed potatoes and onion gravy, cauliflower, homemade biscuits and cherry crisp for dessert! We all look forward to the warm, family dinner we share on Friday nights. We say kiddush and ha'motzi (usually over challah but sometimes we have to improvise) and sometimes sing "Bim Bam" before we eat. No matter what, the food is always the best of the week and we all come to the table not only hungry for the delicious food but hungry to share this very special and wonderful twenty-four hours together. After dinner we all rest and talk or read before it's time to get ready for services. The tv stays off because this is our FAMILY time. Sometimes Evan will color some coloring pages I downloaded from aish.com which are related to the weekly Torah portion. Sometimes we'll play a matching game with different Jewish ritual symbols. Sometimes we take after-dinner naps! But soon, it's time to put on our coats and start the van and bundle ourselves off to Shabbat services! The synagogue is a small one...only 80 families strong but we love it here. On Fridays we look forward to seeing our friends and immersing ourselves into the Shabbat experience. There are many "Shabbat Shalom"s as everyone comes in and as the 15-20 people gather (sometimes a little more, sometimes, sadly, a little less) everyone is chattering away, catching up on the latest news with everyone else. There's hardly enough time before Rabbi comes in and the service starts! We're all used to the rhythm of the service now and it's comforting in an "end of the week" kind of way. For us, it's like kicking our feet up and heaving a huge sigh...we have made it through yet another week! Baruch HaShem! Afterwards, as a congregation, we do kiddush - a few weeks ago Evan led the prayer! He was so excited and I was so nervous, afraid he wouldn't know what to do or would mess things up. But Rabbi knew best and apparantly, so did Evan! It went perfectly. And then it's time to deposit the kippot back into the box at the back of the sanctuary and meander down the stairs for oneg. I always tell the Rabbi's husband that I come for the water because after the service I am always ravenously thirsty and load up a plastic cup with ice and pour the water, glass after glass, as I wander around and socialise. Finally, it's cleanup time and sadly, another Shabbat has ended at our little synagogue since there are no Shabbat morning services. We all say goodnight and wander out into the cold, starry night. Sometimes the moon lights our way down the street to the van and sometimes not. But all of these things together are what makes Shabbat the most special day. We go home, feeling all warm and glowing inside. We've been renewed for the week. Plans have been made for activities for the weekend, week or month. Our synagogue is our family and every week on one special night we get together there and celebrate that. The next day our Shabbat continues - we nap, we eat, we spend time with friends and each other. Books are read, sometimes special movies are watched together and the whole thing comes to a close with the havdallah. It's a special, cozy time and one I cherish more and more each week. If something happens and our Shabbat is interrupted or rushed or not quite as peaceful as we have created it to be, week to week, I can feel it throughout my whole soul until the next Shabbat. Shabbat is what makes me complete.

Wandering Jew The past three days I have spent in the lovely town of Camp Hill, Pennsylvania where I was "exiled" for business meetings. The fact is, I HATE...nay LOATHE...travelling for business! I am always afraid that the car will break down, or I'll get stranded or worse yet, LOST somewhere I can't even remotely begin to find my way out of. I worry that the hotel will burn down just as I am in the shower or that housekeeping will walk in on me as I am changing my underwear. I hate to eat alone and I hate to wander around in the dark in a strange town. For me, there is absolutely NOTHING redeeming about business travel when I am alone. Nothing. This trip was no different although I have to admit, I am starting to get more comfortable with my surroundings when I am there...since it seems I am there about 4-5 times a year now. I stayed at the Radisson Penn Harris which, while not a popular choice among my fellow meeting-goers, worked well for me. It meant I had to travel onto the expressway and across the bridge into Harrisburg every morning but it also meant I was in a hotel that had a Perkins restaurant in the parking lot and a McDonald's across the road. These are amenities I will pay for! I left for Harrisburg early in the day on Monday. It was our Board of Director's Christmas soiree and since I wouldn't be able to stay for the lunch part of it ANYWAY, I figured, why not just get on the road? I stopped to pee outside of Bedford and got off the turnpike about 2.5 hours after I left, which is pretty good time. Since it was early, I decided to hit the mall. I was feeling rather worldly and pretty confident and so I thought, hey, why not wander the mall, take in the Christmas sights and maybe have a spot of lunch before I checked into the hotel? First, I went to a Toys R Us which, from the outside, promised to be a treat but which, from the inside, was, sadly, just the same old, same old. I am still not sure what they were giving away but everyone who was anyone in eastern Harrisburg and Camp Hill was trouping into the store complete with a buggy, all ready to search and destroy. I got a little confused and rather than looking like the bumpkin I truly am since I got misdirected and was standing in the breezeway where the buggies are looking for the "real" entrance, I grabbed one of the blue carts and went into the store. I quickly realized I needed to ditch the thing, but quick, and did so somewhere in the Barbie aisle. I looked around the Hanukkah stuff, didn't find any and decided, after a turn in the baby clothes looking at cute stuff for my friend Michel's little girl Karissa, that it was time to blow this popsickle stand and so I left. Back in the car, I tooled over to the actual mall and parked at the Hecht Company. I walked in and looked at all the cool new kitchen appliances most people only get for those hard-to-buy-for individuals on their list....like a twirling pizza cooker or a pink Kitchenaid mixer. I thought the pink Kitchenaid mixer was wicked cool, by the way! Anyway, I wandered out into the mall...hoping for some new and different shops to look through when this Gen X'er jumps out from behind one of those kiosks in the middle and grabs me. "Can I bother you for just a moment?" she asks imploringly. "Just a minute, I promise! I want to show you something!" My better judgement must have still been sitting out in the car because I said okay, figuring I had nothing better to do and why not? She told me she was from Germany and then grabbed my hand and started to tell me the virtues of this high-tech nail file she had. One side was a file with diamonds, which, she assured me, were the highest quality! The other side was pure cotton and as she rubbed my nail with it, she said I could tell it was pure cotton because my nail was heating up. Could I feel that??? And finally, the pure silk side...straight from the Orient, she assured me and then proceeded to buff my nail to a gleaming shine. My nail looked like a dead person's. It really did. She tried to convince me that the value of this nail file alone was $29.99 and when she saw that this wasn't selling me, she squirted some mineral oil on my cuticle and tried to wow me with it's amazing disappearing act. But wait...there's more...it's not sold in any store!!!! (my mind started to hum this old Weird Al tune!) Next, she asked me to smell three bottles of lotion and pick the one I liked best...which happened to be the Unity one, it was green. She rubs it on my hand and has me look at my two hands and SEE the difference!!! Of course there was a difference, immersing my hand in plain water would have made a difference! And, as you guessed, I STILL wasn't sold. She said that for me, because she liked me (and this was where I started to think I just could NOT believe that this was happening) she would offer all three products - the file, the lotion AND the cuticle oil - to me for $25. "Is this not good?????" she asked. "What a great Christmas present!" I decided not to go into the whole I-don't-do-Christmas thing and instead just went straight for the pissing-her-off and fleeing after telling her I really wasn't interested and to please let the you-know-what go of my hand. She did and I walked away. I didn't even stop at Subway...it had ruined my whole afternoon. Instead, I wandered around Penney's and then back out of the mall and drove to my hotel and checked in. I still think fondly of the pink Kitchenaid mixer that I saw and the salad I got later that night at Panera Bread. It was worth the twenty minutes I sat in rush hour traffic to get it. I drove home yesterday afternoon and made it in 2 hours and 45 minutes which may qualify for some weird, land-speed record. My son was so happy to see me, he ran outside and hugged me for about twenty minutes! And then he looked at my hand and said, "Mommie, what happened to your fingernail?!" It's great to be home.

My Eddie One of my favorite holiday flicks is Christmas Vacation. Evan and I just LOVE to watch Clark W. Griswald, Jr. and his family bring in the Christmas season. I noticed it was coming on on Sunday night and it got me to thinking. My family is my "Eddie." It's true. Every time I pull up in front of their house or go to the mall with my sister when I am visiting, it's like watching Eddie empty the shitter into the sewer all over again. And again. And yes, AGAIN! Despite the fact that apart from my sister, we're all college-educated and you can actually count her since she went to travel school after she graduated...my family still reeks of "back woods." Which they aren't from - even remotely. But like Clark, I accept that they are my family and also like Clark, I am the idiot, sentimental one who says that the holidays just wouldn't be the same - that somehow, someway during this "magical" time of year, they will miraculously become "normal" and the perfect holiday will ensue. But that's never the way it really turns out. My sister will show up in a dirty sweatshirt which makes her look more enormous than she really is. She'll have on old loafers with her toes hanging out of the holes on the side. She'll come in and then quickly head for the back deck and light up and talk on my Dad's phone for an hour to her friend in South Carolina that she met while in the funny farm in Austin when she lived there. The kids will be dirty, too, and we may even take Trev for a dunk in the jacuzzi tub before things get started. PJ will start tearing things up or just running around like a crazy person, screaming. IF their father comes, and that's a big IF, he will skulk around not speaking to anyone and making us all feel uncomfortable. Then he'll haul all of his gifts and the gifts of the OLDEST boy (the one who isn't handicapped) to the car and sit outside and beep for my sister when he's all ready to leave. My OWN son will run around like a wild man with his cousin - last year he fell down the spiral, maple staircase backwards and required three stitches. When he stops to rest, he'll hug and kiss the little one who will be crawling around in bare feet (like they brought him) trying to "get into" the fun of the two, crazy, older ones. My husband and I will open our gifts and thank my father profusely as well also give each other knowing looks when all of the above happens with my sister. Obviously, the Squeeze and her brood are out of the picture for now but Christmas is a long way aways and she could still be a factor. If she IS, we will be doing a day trip or staying at a hotel most likely. This is not a BAD thing I want you to know. While my dad's house is like staying at a four star European hotel without the sitz bath in the toilet, he usually has no food and since the Squeeze had her two welfare daughters and their illegitimate kids staying too plus the 17-y/o and her best friend...well, it was crowded at the least. A quiet Comfort Inn where we can sit and listen to the quiet would probably be the best "Silent Night" we'd hear all year compared the the cacophony at Chez Dad's. But if she's gone, then we will most likely stay for a day or two and hoepfully it will all be like she never was there at all. Evan can run around in his underpants in the morning and wake us up too early to watch the sun rise over Harper's Ferry. And we can sleep in my dad's bed (after we bleach the sheets naturally!) and draw the bed curtains like Alistair Sims did in the REALLY old "Christmas Carol." Thinking about it, it shouldn't be TOO bad at all. Even with the Eddie's in my family slurping the eggnog out of the Marty Moose glasses while wearing white Christmas sweaters and black dickeys - that is, of course, when they're in their best.

Interesting news...just in time for the holidays too! My sister called last night and announced that Dad and the Squeeze have broken up for, as she put it, GOOD! She was on her way over in her new minivan that somehow has something wrong with the axel in the rear (insert ironic face here) to gather the Squeeze and all her skanky stuff and take her to the ex-boyfriends house. Geez...and only a week ago my Dad asked me to find out about some spyware he could install to track her online activities. I never get to have any fun at all!!!