TiVo Lady

Clooney: Teflon Boomer Superstar

This is a mystery, a case of a famous, beloved Boomer actor/director who has made the Worst Movie Ever in The History of Movies, and nobody seems to have noticed.

I speak of George Clooney, born in 1961, who starred and directed in Leatherheads, a movie out on DVD that Should Never Be Rented.  Ever.  Or Pay per Viewed, either.

Everybody associated with this movie, actors like Renee Zellweger and John Krasinski, the two screenwriters, and Clooney himself, should be embarrassed to have had anything to do with this fiasco.  The dialogue is a string of cliches;  Clooney smirks and preens for two solid hours;  Zellweger's super-puffy lips and smooshed yet immobile face make her seem like an alien refugee who has escaped from a science fiction movie.  The movie is supposed to be about the roots of professional football in the 1920's, but it doesn't make much sense, nor do we end up caring who does what to whom. 

Clooney must have enormous prestige and power in Hollywood, since nobody seems to have noticed that he starred and directed in this mess.  It's almost as if a massive case of Leatherhead Amnesia spread across the hills and valleys of greater Los Angeles, so that everybody forgave and forgot, for George's sake.  Here are the co-stars:  if the movie had been a Disney production, they would have been called Smirky and Puffy...

This is not a disaster movie:  but it is a disaster.

(I'm cranky about this, because we were desperate for some post-turkey day entertainment, and this was supposed to be it.  Sadly, it did not suffice.)

Now I've Seen Everything...

Cloudy day in the woods.  Two riders on large, shiny horses approach.  

Dog, Kippy, going crazy.  Teenage girl dressed in riding helmet and jodhpurs and high, black leather boots rides up, on her own horse.  She is talking on a cell phone.  While riding.

She chats for a moment, puts the phone on speaker, yells into it:  "Loser!"  Flips it closed.

Rides on.

Blaming Mom

We're finally home from the hospital in Philadelphia.  With stories to tell...

Week Two of the hospital stay was not going well, with my son's headache actually becoming WORSE the longer he was there.  He was frustrated;  I was frustrated;  the doctors were frustrated.  So they decided to deflect the blame.  "Mom is spending too much time here," they said.  "There are too many phone calls from Mom," as in me.  They seemed to be implying that it was my fault that my boy was not getting better:  If only I'd leave him alone, he'd be much better off.

Okay, he's twenty-one year old, not twelve or seven.  He's an adult.  But he's also a college boy, alone in a hospital bed in a strange city, and he's in pain, and often delirious, nauseated, drugged to his eyeballs, and suffering.  Wouldn't anybody in that situation want and need support and sympathy?  Wouldn't anybody want somebody to get drinks and ice chips?  The nurses are too busy to run such errands, and seem to feel it's not their job, either.  A few were wonderful and kind;  some were mean;  one took four vials of blood and left one in his bed, where he found it when he woke up.

I was angry about this development, but there was nothing I could do about it.  My son was so miserable, that I couldn't tell if he wanted me there or not.  I compromised by cutting back on the hours I spent with him, arriving in the afternoon, and only after he told me it was okay.  Eventually, it didn't matter anyway, so I spent the whole final day with him.  I had to be there, to help him plead to be released. 

Thanks to the doctors, a bad situation was rendered worse.  Here's an apt illustration of the way I feel about the past two weeks.  It may seem irrelevant, but not really.

Creative Gardening, 101

I need to transform this sandbox garden into a high security garden, with fencing and posts and high-voltage electricity.  Meanwhile, my tomato plants decided to grow, and I haven't any stakes or long sticks or anything to prop them up.  Then, I found this, the detritus of my son's boyhood.  He's in college, he'll never know these sports sticks are gone.  Right?

Whaddya think?

The golf club doesn't seem, well, up to par, so to speak.  But the lacrosse stick was too bulbous.  And the baseball bats were too short.

Now for bird wire, eight-foot posts, and anti-deer prayers.

Those dangling green things? 

Irish Spring soap, on hangers.  Supposed to fend off evil deer.  Mostly, though, I think it just spews bubbles and foam during rainstorms.  Maybe the deer will eat one and drop dead of soap poisoning....

Hey, I can dream, can't I???  So far, Deer:  3,286.  Me:  0.

(Boomer) Ladies Night Out

Last night, seven of us got together for dinner at a local Greek place.  We are ladies, eight of us, who used to run together every weekend, in all weather, all year round.  In the heat of summer;  we'd run.  On crisp, cool fall days;  we'd run.  On frigid, breath-stopping cold days;  we'd run.  Also in the rain, run;  in the snow, run.  Nothing really stopped us from our group runs.  Except when we started getting old;  that's what stopped us.  A year ago, I got a heel spur that crippled me--I could barely walk, let alone run.  A few of us had knee issues, hip issues, breathing problems.  Our original group is now down to three or four, depending on whose parts are not creaking.  Among the original eight, I'd say just two are completely injury-free.  (Insert blast of pure envy right here.)

Anyway, because we don't run together any more, we decided to eat together.  Over three bottles of wine and every Greek appetizer on the menu (Greek salad, felafal, kebbe, spanikopita, grilled octopus, loukanika, tsadziki, humus, olives, taramasalata, skordalia, and tons of pita.  We are all Boomers, fifty-somethings now, so here is what we talked about:  our (mostly-grown) children, giving a sanitized version of their accomplishments and love lives and what they are doing to torture us out of our minds;  our work, what we're doing;  our tenuous health situation;  and our non-Boomer friend's impending divorce.  The youngest of us, just forty-three, she's the only one of us who had to arrange child care to get out of the house.  Her marriage is ending, but now she's got a new boyfriend.  She brought a picture of him, too.  We joked about sex and the not-so-funny lack of it.

Meanwhile, we noticed an odd thing, an unusual phenomenon, at the next table.  It was a group of ten men, MEN, having dinner together.  Just like us, only men.  I don't remember ever seeing a table of men eating dinner together for the sake of it, unless they had baseball-playing sons with them, or they were watching a Big Game, of whatever sport.  Nope, these guys were just eating.  Like us.  Turns out, they belong to a local Ethical Culture Society, which is a "humanist religious community," apparently.  For nerdy-looking men of a certain Boomer age, apparently.  If I were still a New York Times reporter, I'd go on a local, dinnertime trek, to see if I could find men-only tables at local restaurants (no bars allowed), and find out why they are eating together.  It would be hard work, a tough assignment, and would probably take months.  Nah, never mind.  I'm nearly finished Chapter Four, about husbands' view of marriage.  Here's the title:  "What, Me Oblivious?"  As one of my friends commented last night, that's a chapter obviously written by the wife side of the marital equation.

Limitations on Parental Worry?

I need to know if there's a statute of limitations on parental worry.  And, if so, when does it kick in?

See, I'm really, really worried about my daughter, who's now 284 months old.  Ha!  I mean, 23 years old. 

Here we are, 18 years or so ago, looking much younger.  Especially me.  I thought I was worried about her then.  Well, I wish I could have those worries back--I'd trade them in a millisecond for the worries I've got for her now.

FIrst of all, that cute lil' boy is now a six foot, two-inch tall Engineer Boy, who is suffering from chronic and intractable migraines.  Nothing we try to do--medication, acupuncture, healing, Botox, massage, electrical stimulation, shrinking--seems to help. I worry about his health and well-being every single day.

And second, this lil' girl, is grown up and lost and confused, living in Rio de Janeiro and stuck.  And unable, unwilling, to figure out how and why to come home.  She's a kind of lost soul, and there's nothing I can say or do to fix it.  In fact, whatever I say or do about it further ensures that her entrenched position stays that way.  So I'm just on an Infinite Worry Loop, no end in sight.  I should have included all this in my book, Beyond the Mommy Years, but I didn't.  Instead, I wrote about how great life is when the children leave home.  Ha!  I didn't know that the Worry Loop would insinuate itself into every crack and crevice of my child-free life. 

Anybody have a cure for the Worry Loop?  Please let me know....

Holiday Distractions

I'll bet you are not distracted by having to go to the Consul General of Brazil on 1185 Avenue of the Americas at 9:00 a.m. to get in line for the line that awards you a number for the other line that allows you to apply for a visa to visit Brazil.  Right?

First, you have to show picture I.D.  Then, they take your picture--as in 'overkill'--then they give you a new, black-and-white ID to let you upstairs.  Then, you go upstairs where, if you're me, you're so early they haven't opened yet, so you wait near the elevator banks for nearly an hour.  There, if you're me, you meet a charming University of Connecticut pharmacy student who is visiting Rio for two weeks during winter break, because he can't really leave his six-year program to go abroad for a semester.  (Then, if you're me, which you are not, you give him your daughter's blog address and tell him to read her stuff on Rio.)  A few minutes later, you meet a Queens College student who is here for the third time because she didn't have the correct Money Order the first time, or the right photo size the second time.  Then, if you're me (again, not), you give her your daughter's blog address too, because she'll be in Santiago, Chile and Buenos Aires, Argentina, and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil all alone, and wants some company. 

These kids today:  Where do they get all of their money????

Unfortunately, I didn't bring my camera, so you can't see the remarkable similarity between the Consul  General of Brazil and Every DMV Ever Invented, so you'll have to trust me.  The plastic chairs:  Check.  The plexi-glassed windows:  Check.  The digitized number system:  Check.  The air of despair:  Double Check.  You stand in line to get a number.  If you are well-behaved, and you have all of your documents, you will get a number.  Then, you sit in the area for People With Numbers.  If your cell phone rings, though, or you decide to make a call:  Watch Out!  You will be instantly castigated by the Security Guard, whose sole function seems to be yelling at rule-breaking people on cell phones.  (Not such a bad idea, now that I think about it.) 

Now, you are waiting in the seats.  The digital numbers rise.  Slowly.  Then, it's your number.  You go up to the window and present the following:  your passport, your visa application, a Postal Service Money Order (no other kind allowed) for exactly $100 (unless you are also getting a visa for your mom, which is not you, so that one is for $110), a photograph of you, passport style, affixed by staple to the application.  You slide all of this under the window.  Then, of course, the clerk notices that you have written "Consul General of New York" on the money order, instead of "Consul General of Brazil" (well, I'm a Boomer, my mind wanders).  But, hey, I crossed out "New York" and wrote in "Brazil."  I mean, I'm not totally senile.  Yet.  She really, really did not like this.  She also muttered something about whether or not it would be allowed.  Who knows?

The good news is that it's supposed to be ready the following day, a brand, smacking new visa affixed inside your passport, which you have left in this office.  As in, no longer in your possession.  As in, will I ever see it again?

Stay tuned on whether I do, or not. . . . . .

Are We Boring?

The very first thing you notice after all the children leave home is the quiet.  It's noiseless in your house--no matter how many yippy, barking dogs you may have.  (Like me:  just one.)  Children are  almost always accompanied by their noise and hubbub and complications and dramas and brouhaha.  They are their own three-ring (seven-ring?) circus wherever they go.  Once they're gone, all of that elaborate, vivacious circus-like entertainment vanishes.

I am thinking about this as I'm anticipating the return of my son from college:  with him comes messiness and music and phone calls and appointments and stuff happening all day long.  Well, more like all night long.  But what does that say about us, the ones he left behind?  Are our lives so circumspect, so bland, so boring, that any kind of activity, by comparison, seems exciting?

Are we really that boring?  So boring that a dog's bark brightens up our entire morning, day, week???

Yikes, I hope not. 

On the other hand, it's much more exciting to be younger and stronger and healthier than older, weaker, and unhealthy.  I don't think I'd want to be, say, 22 again.  But I would love, love, love, to be 22 again, just for a day.  Any takers????

Birthday Bashes

In our house, early winter means lots of birthdays, so I've been thinking a lot lately about the blessings of birthdays.  I don't enjoy it when my children are far from home, and I can't celebrate their birthday on the right day;  on the other hand, they're in their twenties now, not six years old, so I guess they're supposed to be celebrating on their own.  But because my daughter, RioGringa, is so far from home,  for her birthday and the holidays, I seem to be suffering from an acute Need to Give Gifts.  Which is probably why I am enjoying giving away prizes to strangers so very much... (For my marriage survey, as promised on my Website.)  Although I'd only bought a very small Starbucks Coffee Caddy as a survey prize, once I spoke to the charming Eric of Indiana, and discovered that he had two-year-old triplets, I couldn't resist buying him more stuff.  This is the result.

But my birthday is coming up, too, and it makes me sad that my children won't all be here to celebrate.  Granted, I have a really Dopey Birthday--situated between Christmas and New Year's--so that everyone is usually home.  And usually too distracted by other holidays to notice mine, but still.  That's why I was impressed when my friend, Julie, told me that her daughter actually came home from college for the weekend to help her celebrate her birthday.  I'm pretty sure that if my birthday were scheduled at a more reasonable time of year, neither of my kids would trek home for a visit. 

Maybe it's just that, for some families, birthdays are a Big Deal, a holiday worthy of major hoopla and celebration.  They are for Julie, apparently.  Anyway, I really like birthdays, and have always thought of them as a special treat, and a special day.  I was a believer in birthday crowns and birthday cakes and birthday parties and birthday presents piled high and opened one by one by one.  Where'd all those birthdays go???

Take this cake, for instance.  I'd really love a cake like this for my birthday.  (Hint, hint.)  But, usually, I don't get a birthday cake, unless I buy it myself.  Which always feel sort of pathetic, so I rarely do.

But, hey, maybe this year I will.

Anybody know where to find this particular cake???

Real Life Interlude

When, in the course of parental events, it becomes necessary for a people without children at home to advance from that automobile subordination in which they have hitherto remained, they must trade in the mini-van.  This is probably why Cars.com was invented:  for Boomers to get rid of zillions of no-longer-necessary mini-vans.

I know that I should want to replace my MomVan with a hybrid:  it's The Right Thing to Do.  I know.  And the Prius is sort of cool-looking, and very very Hollywood.  But, um, that's my head talking.  My heart says something quite different.  It says:  It's your turn for a FunCar!!  Now, I don't really like driving; my idea of hell is a four-hour car trip.  And I don't need a red convertible to make driving fun.  But, still . . .

I tried a Camry Hybrid.  It was zippy.  And had a neat GPS system with a fancy display of how the  engine was working, on gas or battery, that was so incomprehensible yet mesmerizing that I was afraid I'd crash the test car while staring at the screen.  And I felt, well, righteous, driving this car.  A kind of I'm-Greener-Than-Thou superiority, though not quite as grandiose as if I were driving a Prius, since this Camry doesn't shout HYBRID ALERT.  It's much more modest about its hybrid status--you have to get really close to tell that it's a battery-powered car.

But, um, still.  It's not really fun to drive.  I feel guilty thinking this way.  Which is probably why I dreamed that it cost $140 to fill new car with gas.  I guess I didn't buy a hybrid in this dream.  Also, I declared that I was no longer driving anywhere, that I'd be taking cabs from now on.

So, don't tell the Nissan dealer, but this is the car of my dreams.  (Though it wasn't actually in that dream.)  I want a Murano.  Maybe red.  With the Bose stereo and the GPS system and the camera view of the rear when it goes in reverse.  I want the leather, heated seats and the 6-CD changer.  I'm a bad person:  this is a "crossover SUV."  I hate SUV's and everything they stand for and especially the people who drive them.  So why do I want this one?

Maybe I got confused by the salesguys at the four dealerships we visited.  They clouded my mind, so it was barely functioning.  Then, one of them, I think it was Tony, said this, to try to get me to trust in him and to believe what he was telling me:  "I know I'm a car salesman, and it's something I have to overcome."

There's an existential message in that sentence, somewhere.  But I don't know what it is.