Ah Mother’s day. Such a conflictual day. When you have kids and your mother is still alive it gets confusing. Especially little kids. When you think of Mother’s Day you think of your mother. Then you remember, hay, wait, I am also a mother, (if you are a woman, that is). Then, I don’t know about you, but I worry each year that my kids, who are little, are going to forget. There is always the card they make at school but they can’t wait until Sunday so you get it Friday. Then if you are lucky, you get a bowl of Cheerios in bed with your prize rose that was just starting to bud in the garden. That is actually really nice after the initial shock and before the shock of the cold milk as the bowl of Cheerios spills into your warm bed.
Anyway, then finally you figure out how to celebrate your own mother and yourself at the same time. Baby Boomers, this is a biggie cuz it can also bring up some of that fun guilt of taking care of parents and kids at the same time, but I am definitely not going there from here.
Here is a mother story for the day because it happened last night.. My son came home from school with a crayfish. They had built websites telling how to care for them and he was feeling proud. We bought food and some gravel and he lived in his Tupperware for a few days with the gravel in a bag beside it and some fish food. Within about a day my son of course lost interest and it was me feeding the stinky flakes to the New Orleans’s appetizer. But here is the funny part. This crayfish was a tough little bugger. Each time I came near him he lifted one claw and then the other like machetes with witch he planned to kill me. He looked me right in the eye with his tiny black dots for eyes and raised (I swear!) his tiny eyebrows. One time when he lifted his claws, he tapped them together twice in the center, just to let me know he was ready and able. I named him Karate Krawfish. No longer an appetizer, but now a true warrior in my home
So long story shortened. I fed him and decided my son’s desk was cold and boring, so I put KK into a vase with his blue stones and put him on my back deck to get some sun, then something crashed or called or beckoned and I left him. Did I mention I have a 100 pound goofy Weimeraner dog? Well, Remy (the 100 pounds) thinks he is funny when he’s really not. He takes stuffed animals and bras (and only these things) and brings them to the Killing Fields (which is actually the living room rug), where he plays with them and often, gentle giant, destroys them completely. I hear his tags jingling when he gets one as he runs up and down the stairs hoping I will hear him and chase him (mental note, get a dog trainer).
Anyway, I guess you know what’s coming. I walk down the steps to find Remy looking concerned standing near the rug. In the middle of the rug is KK, alive but hurt. I reprimand the dog and pick up KK (who I was previously terrified to touch) and put him in his vase, which I now place on the kitchen counter. I check his shell and see that the dog has torn a small section, but being of the cockroach family, I feed him, relieved and figure he will be okay. Sunny but safe on the counter and go back to the million things I am doing. Just before bed my son goes to see KK and discovers that he has in fact died afterall. We talk at length about what happened. After much deliberation, I tell him the truth, and he blames me until we have another talk about good intentions. I will save the lesson about how they lead to hell for another day. He ultimately understands and we decide to tell his teacher the whole story and see if we can get another Crayfish which we will keep up on the counter. End of story.
Well, not quiet. After my son falls asleep I have the pleasure of flushing KK. After I do, the strangest thing happens. I break down and cry. Yes, over a crayfish. Over the appetizer. All of a sudden I have this horrible feeling that I did not take care of him and he was hurt and killed on my watch. I liked him and he died anyway. I am overcome and completely embarrassed and surprised by my response. yes, I am crazy. But more importantly, I am a mother and I want to take good care of and keep the living beings on my watch alive. I didn’t want my son to lose his little pet. I didn’t want KK to die. I realize this is all wrapped into that crazy mother instinct that enables us to lift cars off of children, or who have instincts that guide us right to the correct conclusions based on little evidence. I realize, I am most certainly a mother, even with my mother alive and my son needs to be told (even if by me) that he needs to honor me at very least this one day a year…….
Anyway. Voila my rant for the day. Sorry to exclude you, dad’s, but you have your own damn day.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Valentine's Day Advice: Local
Here’s a funny thing about Valentine’s day; people actually do care. Everyone complains about Hallmark invented holidays, (Mother’s day, etc..) or Hallmark enhanced (V day, Secretary’s day….) holidays. We believe we are above them. Especially Valentine’s day. Little Cupids, candy hearts with words only ½ legible “You are swet”. And yet, ….sitting at our desks, or while packing up a sandwich (lunch smells gross at 7:00AM) or walking through town or wherever, and seeing the windows speckled with pink hearts, sappy words, sparkling things, I must admit, I fold a little. I secretly long for that certain someone to do that silly certain something. Some chocolate. A really silly card. The card tops it off. I was reading them at CVS thinking just how lame they are and how they are for other people, and yet, wandering down the Tampax/Depends/baby diaper isle, (what’s up with that? )I had this fantasy of opening one and thinking it was not so silly after all… And, yes,, of course, this is a not so hidden message to that certain somebody to NOT BELIEVE me when I say I don’t care about that crap. And yes, my son is also included. I want that mom card.
So going with the idea that somewhere, deep inside, in some pink, connfectionist compartment of my brain and maybe your brain (yes, even you men), we kinda sorta care. I watch my son filling out a box of Valentines he will give to his classmates, which he chose based on the gum included. On Friday he will come home with 17 different Valentines and not for 1 moment will he wonder why 1 might be missing, or who doesn’t love him enough or in the way he had hoped. Ah blessed are the oblivious.
For a non-recovering admitted Valentine participant, let me give you a few clues. Do the following-
1. Act nonchalant so you don’t look stupid
2. Don’t second guess Valentine’s emotions. They are crazy from the start.
3. Find out what your partner (secretly) wants…underwear (doesn’t matter which of you wears it), sparkles, chocolate, a monkey, whatever.
4. Get YOUR VERSION of that thing- make it personal otherwise the other person will somehow feel hurt and then you will be mad because you got them the thing they wanted. It will end badly.
5. Make reservations. This counts. Even to the last minute everyone may say, “oh, let’s just stay home. We can have Valentine’s day any day. We’ll make something special…..” If you want remain with the person who might be your Valentine, don’t stay home and do nothing or make something special. It never pans out. Around 9:15 everyone realizes that it does actually matter. Why not make it special even though everyone else is too. You probably boycott New Years too, but you are right about that.
6. The restaurant needs to be
a. Not too expensive or the romance can wear right off
b. BYOB—
c. Make certain it’s a menu you know or you know is good so you don’t end up having to order strangely. Takes the sugar out of the air.
7. Basically- Reserve at Uptown while there is still time. Bring your present as an after-thought. Everything else will fall into place. Good Luck! 973-744-0915
http://www.uptownmontclair.com/
The author has chosen names and places of interest having nothing to do with ehr own personal interests. The fact that she own's Uptown Bistro is a mere coincidence....
So going with the idea that somewhere, deep inside, in some pink, connfectionist compartment of my brain and maybe your brain (yes, even you men), we kinda sorta care. I watch my son filling out a box of Valentines he will give to his classmates, which he chose based on the gum included. On Friday he will come home with 17 different Valentines and not for 1 moment will he wonder why 1 might be missing, or who doesn’t love him enough or in the way he had hoped. Ah blessed are the oblivious.
For a non-recovering admitted Valentine participant, let me give you a few clues. Do the following-
1. Act nonchalant so you don’t look stupid
2. Don’t second guess Valentine’s emotions. They are crazy from the start.
3. Find out what your partner (secretly) wants…underwear (doesn’t matter which of you wears it), sparkles, chocolate, a monkey, whatever.
4. Get YOUR VERSION of that thing- make it personal otherwise the other person will somehow feel hurt and then you will be mad because you got them the thing they wanted. It will end badly.
5. Make reservations. This counts. Even to the last minute everyone may say, “oh, let’s just stay home. We can have Valentine’s day any day. We’ll make something special…..” If you want remain with the person who might be your Valentine, don’t stay home and do nothing or make something special. It never pans out. Around 9:15 everyone realizes that it does actually matter. Why not make it special even though everyone else is too. You probably boycott New Years too, but you are right about that.
6. The restaurant needs to be
a. Not too expensive or the romance can wear right off
b. BYOB—
c. Make certain it’s a menu you know or you know is good so you don’t end up having to order strangely. Takes the sugar out of the air.
7. Basically- Reserve at Uptown while there is still time. Bring your present as an after-thought. Everything else will fall into place. Good Luck! 973-744-0915
http://www.uptownmontclair.com/
The author has chosen names and places of interest having nothing to do with ehr own personal interests. The fact that she own's Uptown Bistro is a mere coincidence....
Friday, January 29, 2010
God and Santa
So at his 6th Birthday dinner raphael asked me what God is like. I asked him what he thinks and he said he doesn't know but maybe he will ask Santa when he sees him next.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
The Um Guy--A bedtime story for my 8 year old
The Um Guy
There was a guy who could not decide what he wanted or didn’t want, or who he really wanted to be. Everyone started calling him the “Um” Man because when he walked into a store or a restaurant and they asked him what he wanted, he always answered, “Um.., er, um..” and never got much farther. When they made suggestions, he said, “um, ok, er, um, OK”. On account of his inability to make a decision, he said yes to everything. Every thing he saw to eat; ice cream, fudge, fried chicken, steak, gumbo, etc.. he would have for breakfast. Then even more things for lunch, snack, afternoon snack and dinner. Then, of course, between meals he said yes to everything as well. Chicken a la King, Roast Leg of Lamb, cotton candy, and more. For snack. Needless to say, he got bigger and bigger from eating so much. Over time, he grew rounder and rounder until, finally, he was a big ball with a small head and arms and legs sticking out like the stems on a strange cherry.
The Um Guy had the same difficultly when he went to the store. If he needed toothpaste, he would go to the convenience store and end up walking out with batteries, toilet paper, gum, headache medicine, an iron, Tickle Me Elmo, hair color, shampoo and sometimes, he would remember the toothpaste. Most of these things are all good and necessary, but he would buy all that and more every day.
His house became more and more crowded. To enter in the front door he had to walk around piles of unopened boxes of things, climb over molehills of things that had been delivered and were still in unopened brown boxes, squeeze up hallways with shelves of multicolored matchbox cars, plastic flowers, pens, bottles of Tums, Pez dispensers for each of the Simpson characters, beginning with Bart and ending with Homer, nuts and bolts from his fan that fell apart, sticky Snickers bar, 1/2 a Power Ranger (the other half is somewhere in the house) and much much much much more.
His bathroom has 3 toilet plungers, (he couldn’t decide which style he liked best), magazines about cars, business, Teen People, Fitness, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine, Popular Mechanic, Psychology Today, National Geographic’s and much more. As a result of his inability to decide between one type of magazine and another, he read them all. He became incredibly well informed and was already quiet intelligent. He knew a lot about every subject. But, back to his bathroom. He had 5 kinds of shampoo, cream rinse, bar soap and squirt soap, scented and unscented, and so on and so on.
All of his rooms were so cluttered, after a while he could not even enter many of them. His house began to bulge. The walls of his house began to bend with the pressure, and to round out until the house itself looked round, with stuff pressing against the closed windows and sticking out the open ones. Finally, in order to get around the house, the Um Guy had to kind of roll/climb along the top, in the open space between the top of all of the “stuff” and the ceiling. It was almost like swimming through the house except that the “water” was hard and full of edges. He would “swim” from his room to the bedroom or bathroom and the neighbors, who were already watching, could hear, “ouch, oof, ow, eeek!, oouch!” and he would swim/rolled along the top.
The neighbors did not know what to do. Everyone liked the “Um guy” although he didn’t talk much. It was hard for him to lift his vast hand, which was like the whole back end of a pig, to make a gesture. Or to speak, he needed to move his enormous jaw, which weighed as much as a heavy chair. So he kept his words and gestures to a minimum. But when he did speak, since he knew a lot about everything, his comments were always right on target and usually correct. If it had been easier people may have visited him more often. If someone rang his bell and he figured out it was the bell and not a number of other ringing, clanging, donging things, by the time he “swam” his way to the front door, they had long gone. He would have dinner alone and go to bed. Occasionally if he was near an open window, a neighbor would call out hello and ask a pointed, long awaited question, and he always knew the answer. He would have been a great Blogger on the Internet, talking about all kinds of interesting subjects and communicating with people all around the world, but he had no idea where his computer was. Plus, if he found it, his large, Knockwurst-like fingers could never fit on the tiny keypad.
One day the Um Man went out to pick something up at the store. He needed a few items from a few different stores, but he could not decide which to go to first. He could not decide whether to go right or left or if he should sit and figure it out or keep walking. He simply kept walking. He didn’t know why, but based on all the information he had gathered in his magazines and books, he decided he would walk until he was forced to stop. And so he did.
He walked for hours, straight ahead. He walked along the town road. He walked into the sunset. He was so big and round that some people thought there had been an eclipse as he blocked out the setting sun on the road in front of him. He walked along the highway. The highway split and he took the straightest path ahead. After a few days he exited that highway for a different one. Some people thought he was a Volkswagen Bug going slowing down the road and honked at him, but he ignored them and continued on his way. Kids pressed their faces to the windows of their parent’s back seats. Some smiled. Some stuck their tongues out at him and he did the same back. He was feeling better then he had in years. He was loving this nice long walk with no decisions to be made. He walked through the tollbooth and tossed his $2.00 into the toll basket. The toll person looked at him quizzically and he smiled. His chin was actually a little lighter as this long walk was actually making him lose a little weight.
By this time, people had begun to notice the big (but now already smaller) man walking along the highway. Truckers pulled their big trucks up beside him and offered him a ride but he said no. He made a big decision that he was going to keep walking until he had to stop. Then truckers spoke to one another through their walkie-talkies and all told about the man walking on the highway. Local news trucks drove up and asked him questions. He was extremely knowledgeable about everything because of all of his reading. Everything but himself. He didn’t really know anything about himself. Why he did one thing and not another. Each question they asked him met with the same answer, …”Um….” His town quickly recognized the “Um Man”. They asked the newscasters in their trucks to ask him the questions they had been waiting to ask him about life, science, geography, psychology, zoology, philanthropy, paleontology and more. The Um Man, of course knew all the answers. Marathons were set up and people on telephones brought in sponsors to follow the Um man in their trucks and ask him questions and broadcast them on the radio and the TV and even on the Internet. He was like a walking, human search engine. But unlike search engines on the Internet, his answers took all things into account. For example, if you asked him who discovered America, he did not simply answer Christopher Columbus, but instead spoke geographically about the United States, spoke about the Indians and different tribes and what they are doing today, spoke about Spain and their desire and need to travel the world and conquer and discover new countries, and so on. If you asked him about a sandwich, after he said “No thank you,” he would go on to tell you about the Earl of Sandwich and his card playing and how the sandwich was invented to keep him at the card table. His answers were information filled and heart felt. Nothing on the Internet was like that.
As for him, he enjoyed the company on his walk. He was quite focused on going forward. Never to the side. Never backward of course. He exited the highway about 3 weeks later and walked onto a road, which turned to a smaller road and then an even smaller road. He had lost much of his weight now and looked sort of like everyone else except that his clothing was much too big. He was holding his pants up with his hands and his shirt now hung way below where his big belly used to hold it up like a tent. Also, as he had not stopped in weeks, he had not shaved. His beard had started to grow in and his hair was unbrushed. He didn’t mind though because he was so happy about having made this decision to go forward.
As the road narrowed, the news trucks began to disappear, but people were still interested. They placed, with him permission, a GPS locater on him so they could follow him in the police station (in case of emergency) and on a website where millions of fans checked in every day. People were giving his status on a website called Facebook and on Twitter. He had more people looking at his page then Miley Sirus, the Queen of England, and America’s Got Talent all combined.
The road he took now led to a dirt road. He followed it with great interest. He was curious what was going to be the thing to prevent him from going farther. He dreaded that it would be a huge department store in a mall or something like that, but now that he was on a quiet dirt road he felt better. Maybe it would be a cow. A tree. He walked and walked. In the distance he could see another sun beginning to set. This one was setting into a wide-open sky. He had never seen colors like this before. They sky was red and orange with ribbons of purple. He thought of his full house and decided he would never go back. He fell in love with the open sky and walked towards it. He wanted to jump up and live in the sky. He felt free and happy and now loved going forward. With each mile that he walked, all the clutter fell away from his imagination. With the distance he put between himself and his house, he felt better and clearer. With each step he asked himself questions. Do I like this sky? Yes! I love the sky. And I love red and orange and ribbons of purple. Do I like my cluttered house and all my things..? As a matter of fact, I don’t miss any of it at all. Do I miss my food? I am actually a little hungry. For what? Um…. So some things were still not clear yet.
He looked a head. This was it!! The End of The Road. His new address. The GPS locater dot that had been moving straight west for weeks and weeks suddenly came to a stop. Alerts went out all over the Internet. The news channel perked up. The red dot had stopped moving. The Um Man had come to the thing that would make him stop.
He was standing, looking happily, at the best sunset he had ever seen, over The Grand Canyon! He had walked to the very edge of the biggest cliff. All the mapping technologies went into effect to locate the suddenly stopped red dot of the Um Man. People all around the world, all at the same moment called out, “The Grand Canyon!” The Um Man was pleased. He sat down. His now thin legs were tired. His beard was reaching down a little from the bottom of his chin. He was a little hungry. He sat and watched the best sunset he had ever seen. And then he slept.
The next day, people started to arrive to ask questions. Some brought tents but he only chose 1. Some brought food but he decided on only nuts and berries and water. Everyone asked him all kinds of questions because they had heard that the Um Man knew all the answers. He answered one and then another, like a volley in tennis, he whacked each question back and waited for the next, whack, whack. Then all of them came to the same final question; What Next? He looked out at the Canyon. He looked into their eager faces. He looked all around. And said, “Um, er, ummmm..” and that was all he could say because that answer was not in any book he had read. He didn’t know. “Ummm, er, ummm”. He said it again and again. He said it until he was tired and closed his eyes. The people around thought that this WAS his answer. To say “Um”, sit on the ground and close your eyes. So they sat beside him. They closed their eyes. They said “Ummmm”.
Word spread. People from far and wide came to see the Um man. They asked questions about things and he answered. They asked him what next and then they sat with him and closed their eyes and repeated “Ummm”. They started to wonder what was next for them? They said “ummm” and funnily enough, without answers from him and with the view of the wide-open Canyon filled with emptiness and thus possibility, they found their own answers. The Um man became famous for this. Everyone wrote ‘um” as their status on the Facebook and other web pages. People started to look for their own answers.
As for the Um man. He finally changed cliffs because too many people were coming to see him and he rarely got to watch his sunsets. Now people go on long quests looking for him, climbing mountains and searching cliffs. Sometimes they find him. Ask questions. Say “Um” with him, and then move on.
If you have a big question, you can look in a book. Or maybe the internret. Or maybe you can go look for the Um Man and see if he knows. Or, maybe you can even go sit in a nice open place and ask. If you don’t know the answer, try what he did. Say “Um….”
SP
There was a guy who could not decide what he wanted or didn’t want, or who he really wanted to be. Everyone started calling him the “Um” Man because when he walked into a store or a restaurant and they asked him what he wanted, he always answered, “Um.., er, um..” and never got much farther. When they made suggestions, he said, “um, ok, er, um, OK”. On account of his inability to make a decision, he said yes to everything. Every thing he saw to eat; ice cream, fudge, fried chicken, steak, gumbo, etc.. he would have for breakfast. Then even more things for lunch, snack, afternoon snack and dinner. Then, of course, between meals he said yes to everything as well. Chicken a la King, Roast Leg of Lamb, cotton candy, and more. For snack. Needless to say, he got bigger and bigger from eating so much. Over time, he grew rounder and rounder until, finally, he was a big ball with a small head and arms and legs sticking out like the stems on a strange cherry.
The Um Guy had the same difficultly when he went to the store. If he needed toothpaste, he would go to the convenience store and end up walking out with batteries, toilet paper, gum, headache medicine, an iron, Tickle Me Elmo, hair color, shampoo and sometimes, he would remember the toothpaste. Most of these things are all good and necessary, but he would buy all that and more every day.
His house became more and more crowded. To enter in the front door he had to walk around piles of unopened boxes of things, climb over molehills of things that had been delivered and were still in unopened brown boxes, squeeze up hallways with shelves of multicolored matchbox cars, plastic flowers, pens, bottles of Tums, Pez dispensers for each of the Simpson characters, beginning with Bart and ending with Homer, nuts and bolts from his fan that fell apart, sticky Snickers bar, 1/2 a Power Ranger (the other half is somewhere in the house) and much much much much more.
His bathroom has 3 toilet plungers, (he couldn’t decide which style he liked best), magazines about cars, business, Teen People, Fitness, The New Yorker, Mad Magazine, Popular Mechanic, Psychology Today, National Geographic’s and much more. As a result of his inability to decide between one type of magazine and another, he read them all. He became incredibly well informed and was already quiet intelligent. He knew a lot about every subject. But, back to his bathroom. He had 5 kinds of shampoo, cream rinse, bar soap and squirt soap, scented and unscented, and so on and so on.
All of his rooms were so cluttered, after a while he could not even enter many of them. His house began to bulge. The walls of his house began to bend with the pressure, and to round out until the house itself looked round, with stuff pressing against the closed windows and sticking out the open ones. Finally, in order to get around the house, the Um Guy had to kind of roll/climb along the top, in the open space between the top of all of the “stuff” and the ceiling. It was almost like swimming through the house except that the “water” was hard and full of edges. He would “swim” from his room to the bedroom or bathroom and the neighbors, who were already watching, could hear, “ouch, oof, ow, eeek!, oouch!” and he would swim/rolled along the top.
The neighbors did not know what to do. Everyone liked the “Um guy” although he didn’t talk much. It was hard for him to lift his vast hand, which was like the whole back end of a pig, to make a gesture. Or to speak, he needed to move his enormous jaw, which weighed as much as a heavy chair. So he kept his words and gestures to a minimum. But when he did speak, since he knew a lot about everything, his comments were always right on target and usually correct. If it had been easier people may have visited him more often. If someone rang his bell and he figured out it was the bell and not a number of other ringing, clanging, donging things, by the time he “swam” his way to the front door, they had long gone. He would have dinner alone and go to bed. Occasionally if he was near an open window, a neighbor would call out hello and ask a pointed, long awaited question, and he always knew the answer. He would have been a great Blogger on the Internet, talking about all kinds of interesting subjects and communicating with people all around the world, but he had no idea where his computer was. Plus, if he found it, his large, Knockwurst-like fingers could never fit on the tiny keypad.
One day the Um Man went out to pick something up at the store. He needed a few items from a few different stores, but he could not decide which to go to first. He could not decide whether to go right or left or if he should sit and figure it out or keep walking. He simply kept walking. He didn’t know why, but based on all the information he had gathered in his magazines and books, he decided he would walk until he was forced to stop. And so he did.
He walked for hours, straight ahead. He walked along the town road. He walked into the sunset. He was so big and round that some people thought there had been an eclipse as he blocked out the setting sun on the road in front of him. He walked along the highway. The highway split and he took the straightest path ahead. After a few days he exited that highway for a different one. Some people thought he was a Volkswagen Bug going slowing down the road and honked at him, but he ignored them and continued on his way. Kids pressed their faces to the windows of their parent’s back seats. Some smiled. Some stuck their tongues out at him and he did the same back. He was feeling better then he had in years. He was loving this nice long walk with no decisions to be made. He walked through the tollbooth and tossed his $2.00 into the toll basket. The toll person looked at him quizzically and he smiled. His chin was actually a little lighter as this long walk was actually making him lose a little weight.
By this time, people had begun to notice the big (but now already smaller) man walking along the highway. Truckers pulled their big trucks up beside him and offered him a ride but he said no. He made a big decision that he was going to keep walking until he had to stop. Then truckers spoke to one another through their walkie-talkies and all told about the man walking on the highway. Local news trucks drove up and asked him questions. He was extremely knowledgeable about everything because of all of his reading. Everything but himself. He didn’t really know anything about himself. Why he did one thing and not another. Each question they asked him met with the same answer, …”Um….” His town quickly recognized the “Um Man”. They asked the newscasters in their trucks to ask him the questions they had been waiting to ask him about life, science, geography, psychology, zoology, philanthropy, paleontology and more. The Um Man, of course knew all the answers. Marathons were set up and people on telephones brought in sponsors to follow the Um man in their trucks and ask him questions and broadcast them on the radio and the TV and even on the Internet. He was like a walking, human search engine. But unlike search engines on the Internet, his answers took all things into account. For example, if you asked him who discovered America, he did not simply answer Christopher Columbus, but instead spoke geographically about the United States, spoke about the Indians and different tribes and what they are doing today, spoke about Spain and their desire and need to travel the world and conquer and discover new countries, and so on. If you asked him about a sandwich, after he said “No thank you,” he would go on to tell you about the Earl of Sandwich and his card playing and how the sandwich was invented to keep him at the card table. His answers were information filled and heart felt. Nothing on the Internet was like that.
As for him, he enjoyed the company on his walk. He was quite focused on going forward. Never to the side. Never backward of course. He exited the highway about 3 weeks later and walked onto a road, which turned to a smaller road and then an even smaller road. He had lost much of his weight now and looked sort of like everyone else except that his clothing was much too big. He was holding his pants up with his hands and his shirt now hung way below where his big belly used to hold it up like a tent. Also, as he had not stopped in weeks, he had not shaved. His beard had started to grow in and his hair was unbrushed. He didn’t mind though because he was so happy about having made this decision to go forward.
As the road narrowed, the news trucks began to disappear, but people were still interested. They placed, with him permission, a GPS locater on him so they could follow him in the police station (in case of emergency) and on a website where millions of fans checked in every day. People were giving his status on a website called Facebook and on Twitter. He had more people looking at his page then Miley Sirus, the Queen of England, and America’s Got Talent all combined.
The road he took now led to a dirt road. He followed it with great interest. He was curious what was going to be the thing to prevent him from going farther. He dreaded that it would be a huge department store in a mall or something like that, but now that he was on a quiet dirt road he felt better. Maybe it would be a cow. A tree. He walked and walked. In the distance he could see another sun beginning to set. This one was setting into a wide-open sky. He had never seen colors like this before. They sky was red and orange with ribbons of purple. He thought of his full house and decided he would never go back. He fell in love with the open sky and walked towards it. He wanted to jump up and live in the sky. He felt free and happy and now loved going forward. With each mile that he walked, all the clutter fell away from his imagination. With the distance he put between himself and his house, he felt better and clearer. With each step he asked himself questions. Do I like this sky? Yes! I love the sky. And I love red and orange and ribbons of purple. Do I like my cluttered house and all my things..? As a matter of fact, I don’t miss any of it at all. Do I miss my food? I am actually a little hungry. For what? Um…. So some things were still not clear yet.
He looked a head. This was it!! The End of The Road. His new address. The GPS locater dot that had been moving straight west for weeks and weeks suddenly came to a stop. Alerts went out all over the Internet. The news channel perked up. The red dot had stopped moving. The Um Man had come to the thing that would make him stop.
He was standing, looking happily, at the best sunset he had ever seen, over The Grand Canyon! He had walked to the very edge of the biggest cliff. All the mapping technologies went into effect to locate the suddenly stopped red dot of the Um Man. People all around the world, all at the same moment called out, “The Grand Canyon!” The Um Man was pleased. He sat down. His now thin legs were tired. His beard was reaching down a little from the bottom of his chin. He was a little hungry. He sat and watched the best sunset he had ever seen. And then he slept.
The next day, people started to arrive to ask questions. Some brought tents but he only chose 1. Some brought food but he decided on only nuts and berries and water. Everyone asked him all kinds of questions because they had heard that the Um Man knew all the answers. He answered one and then another, like a volley in tennis, he whacked each question back and waited for the next, whack, whack. Then all of them came to the same final question; What Next? He looked out at the Canyon. He looked into their eager faces. He looked all around. And said, “Um, er, ummmm..” and that was all he could say because that answer was not in any book he had read. He didn’t know. “Ummm, er, ummm”. He said it again and again. He said it until he was tired and closed his eyes. The people around thought that this WAS his answer. To say “Um”, sit on the ground and close your eyes. So they sat beside him. They closed their eyes. They said “Ummmm”.
Word spread. People from far and wide came to see the Um man. They asked questions about things and he answered. They asked him what next and then they sat with him and closed their eyes and repeated “Ummm”. They started to wonder what was next for them? They said “ummm” and funnily enough, without answers from him and with the view of the wide-open Canyon filled with emptiness and thus possibility, they found their own answers. The Um man became famous for this. Everyone wrote ‘um” as their status on the Facebook and other web pages. People started to look for their own answers.
As for the Um man. He finally changed cliffs because too many people were coming to see him and he rarely got to watch his sunsets. Now people go on long quests looking for him, climbing mountains and searching cliffs. Sometimes they find him. Ask questions. Say “Um” with him, and then move on.
If you have a big question, you can look in a book. Or maybe the internret. Or maybe you can go look for the Um Man and see if he knows. Or, maybe you can even go sit in a nice open place and ask. If you don’t know the answer, try what he did. Say “Um….”
SP
A Twist of Lymes
What happened to last week’s Springlike weather? It always feels like we get a last Harrah and then batten down the hatches. Or it is that we have a few perfect days and then are somehow punished with a bearing of winter freeze. It’s a glass half empty/half full situation.
I am writing this in the restaurant that I own. When everyone is upstairs ordering our Tuscan Chicken, our Uptown salad, Croque Monsieur, or Farmer's Omelets. I am down below, in the cave of a basement, windowless, oder-filled. I am here, chipping away at my keyboard. A friend (the artist who painted our wonderfully strange and fun canvases currently hanging on the wall, (upstairs) came by to talk about weather and health. He's English. He can't help it. Everyone is sick. I think we all ran inside and slammed the windows shut and then proceeded to catch everything. Now, we are finally all healthy and I’m done sending home sneezing waitresses. Everyone but moi…
Here’s an interesting twist of events. One of my favorite parts of living in Montclair is is our abundance of rustic nature reserves. We have mountainous Mills with Turkey Vultures and another reserve, who’s name I’m keeping a secret. It has a fresh water stream and woods. It’s across the street from my house and my dog and I ramble through every morning. I have thought of it as my saving grace. But here is the twist, or squeeze as it may be, my Life Line turned into a PIC Line after I was bitten by a Lyme bearing tic from that reserve. Impressive you can catch not a cold or a virus but a full fledged Disease from a Tick. I hope in my live to have equal ratios of power. For a tick to bring down a 5 ’10 healthy woman, imagine what I could do? Only in a good way, of course.
Use all that power for good. Anyway I am finally cured. I have this wierd tingling in my face all of the time and headaches, but short of becoming on of those internet crazed, blog-posting people who feel they are sick with some untended to disease (it is true, in fcat, that no one knows much about Lymes), I don't want to dwell too much. Not beyond today's post. Here is a funny (not really) thing. The doctor, when he took the line out of my arm said I tested with less Lymes and so all was good. I asked about testing with, say, NO Lymes and he said it doesn't work that way. I asked if you could have a little Lymes and he said yes..which means, he really doesn't know. I asked if his wife could be a little pregnant and he said his day was busy and excused himself. So I guess I am cured in that I am not shooting 5 vials of liquid into my arm every day, but am I Lyme free...que sera sera
I am writing this in the restaurant that I own. When everyone is upstairs ordering our Tuscan Chicken, our Uptown salad, Croque Monsieur, or Farmer's Omelets. I am down below, in the cave of a basement, windowless, oder-filled. I am here, chipping away at my keyboard. A friend (the artist who painted our wonderfully strange and fun canvases currently hanging on the wall, (upstairs) came by to talk about weather and health. He's English. He can't help it. Everyone is sick. I think we all ran inside and slammed the windows shut and then proceeded to catch everything. Now, we are finally all healthy and I’m done sending home sneezing waitresses. Everyone but moi…
Here’s an interesting twist of events. One of my favorite parts of living in Montclair is is our abundance of rustic nature reserves. We have mountainous Mills with Turkey Vultures and another reserve, who’s name I’m keeping a secret. It has a fresh water stream and woods. It’s across the street from my house and my dog and I ramble through every morning. I have thought of it as my saving grace. But here is the twist, or squeeze as it may be, my Life Line turned into a PIC Line after I was bitten by a Lyme bearing tic from that reserve. Impressive you can catch not a cold or a virus but a full fledged Disease from a Tick. I hope in my live to have equal ratios of power. For a tick to bring down a 5 ’10 healthy woman, imagine what I could do? Only in a good way, of course.
Use all that power for good. Anyway I am finally cured. I have this wierd tingling in my face all of the time and headaches, but short of becoming on of those internet crazed, blog-posting people who feel they are sick with some untended to disease (it is true, in fcat, that no one knows much about Lymes), I don't want to dwell too much. Not beyond today's post. Here is a funny (not really) thing. The doctor, when he took the line out of my arm said I tested with less Lymes and so all was good. I asked about testing with, say, NO Lymes and he said it doesn't work that way. I asked if you could have a little Lymes and he said yes..which means, he really doesn't know. I asked if his wife could be a little pregnant and he said his day was busy and excused himself. So I guess I am cured in that I am not shooting 5 vials of liquid into my arm every day, but am I Lyme free...que sera sera
pending LOVE
As for my monthly ramble...I figure, in light of the decending holiday (holidays decend like natural desastaers) I will start this crazy thing off with a dash of LOVE. Love and the art of love? What can I possibly say? Nothing. Anything one says about love needs to be countered quickly so as not to be ridiculed by friends. Best to quote others...
If God is the DJ, then Life is the dance floor; Love is the rhythm, and You are the music. P!nk
That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear. John Lennon
Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves. Henri Frederic Amiel
And men….?
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other. Rainer Maria Rilke
1821-1881, Swiss Philosopher, Poet, Critic
We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love Mother Teresa
Grow old along with me the best is yet to be. Robert Browning\
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. Dr. Seuss
[The lover says:] How beautiful you are, now that you love me Marlene Dietrich
I hold it true, whatever befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. Lord Alfred Tennyson
Funny, most people don’t know who said this. Last website I looked at said Shakespeare and another said Hemmingway.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as the are not. Friedrich Nietzsche
It's easy to halve the potato where there's love. Irish Proverb
Falling in love is so hard on the knees. Aerosmith
For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. Francis Bacon
Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence. Vincent Van Gogh
What? Speak into my other ear…
“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other”
Rilke
Conquer the devils with a little thing called love! Bob Marley
My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily. D. H. Lawrence
When we cannot get what we love, we must love what is within our reach. French Proverb
Well, that explains a lot of things in France
…
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home. Australian Aboriginal Proverb
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia. H. L. Mencken
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us Helen Keller
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
From the man who said that “Woman are cats and birds and at best, cows….”
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction. Antoine de Saint-Exupry
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. Dorothy Rothschild Parker
These two imparadised in one another's arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss. John Milton
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important. Lisa Hoffman
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Rainer Maria Rilke
If God is the DJ, then Life is the dance floor; Love is the rhythm, and You are the music. P!nk
That’s what I’m talkin’ about!
Love is a promise, love is a souvenir, once given never forgotten, never let it disappear. John Lennon
Women wish to be loved not because they are pretty, or good, or well bred, or graceful, or intelligent, but because they are themselves. Henri Frederic Amiel
And men….?
Love consists in this, that two solitudes protect and touch and greet each other. Rainer Maria Rilke
1821-1881, Swiss Philosopher, Poet, Critic
We can cure physical diseases with medicine, but the only cure for loneliness, despair, and hopelessness is love. There are many in the world who are dying for a piece of bread, but there are many more dying for a little love Mother Teresa
Grow old along with me the best is yet to be. Robert Browning\
You know you're in love when you can't fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams. Dr. Seuss
[The lover says:] How beautiful you are, now that you love me Marlene Dietrich
I hold it true, whatever befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost Than never to have loved at all. Lord Alfred Tennyson
Funny, most people don’t know who said this. Last website I looked at said Shakespeare and another said Hemmingway.
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as the are not. Friedrich Nietzsche
It's easy to halve the potato where there's love. Irish Proverb
Falling in love is so hard on the knees. Aerosmith
For a crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love. Francis Bacon
Love is something eternal; the aspect may change, but not the essence. Vincent Van Gogh
What? Speak into my other ear…
“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other”
Rilke
Conquer the devils with a little thing called love! Bob Marley
My God, these folks don't know how to love -- that's why they love so easily. D. H. Lawrence
When we cannot get what we love, we must love what is within our reach. French Proverb
Well, that explains a lot of things in France
…
We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home. Australian Aboriginal Proverb
To be in love is merely to be in a perpetual state of anesthesia. H. L. Mencken
When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us Helen Keller
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
From the man who said that “Woman are cats and birds and at best, cows….”
Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward in the same direction. Antoine de Saint-Exupry
Oh, life is a glorious cycle of song, A medley of extemporanea; And love is a thing that can never go wrong; And I am Marie of Roumania. Dorothy Rothschild Parker
These two imparadised in one another's arms, the happier Eden, shall enjoy their fill of bliss on bliss. John Milton
I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important. Lisa Hoffman
For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. Rainer Maria Rilke
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