50-42 – 42

I have never had a problem telling anyone my age. In theory. After a few milestones, I really couldn’t remember my age. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to forty, and surprisingly I was fine. I didn’t have a party or anything because a few weeks later my daughter would be turning one, and that was a bigger deal for her. My family took care of me though, and the year went on.

Forty-one hit pretty hard. I guess all of the mid-life angst that I didn’t have at forty came crashing down at forty-one. It was traumatic, and I couldn’t tell you why. I cried. But…at the end of that year was gong to be the best birthday, the birthday that would bring all the knowledge of the world, all the answers that I was looking for my entire life even if I didn’t know what the questions were, and that was:

42.

Such a simple number, comes right after 41 but before 43, but still 42 held it all. The answer.

To life, the universe, and everything.

When asked how old I was, I grinned and said very firmly this is my Douglas Adams birthday. My year of Douglas Adams.

Most people understood, but many did not.

I did not suggest they read the book. I let them wallow in their ignorance. After all, I can’t complete everyone’s lives with one single explanation on the merits of reading one book, even if it is life altering, but it’s probably not for everyone, but I digress.

All I would say in response to Happy Birthday, how old are you was:

It’s my Douglas Adams year.

In answer to their quizzical look, I’d continue:

42. Life, the universe, and everything.

It all made sense.

That was my best birthday and it lasted all year.

50-40 – Collections

I have always been a collector. I’m not quite at the hoarding stage yet, but it’s not that far off, so I need to be ever vigilant and aware so I don’t end up on the nighttime news when they come with a shovel.

Our whole family collects something or other. My oldest son collects fire department memorabilia and history, books and pictures. My husband and middle son collect comic books and action figures. My middle son also collects Lego. He loves to build them and display them. He also continues to play with them. My daughter collects clothes. She wants to be a fashion designer and she loves putting new outfits together and seeing how she can make something old new again.

In my basement, I have videotapes and newspaper articles, magazines that I wanted to keep forever. I have the newspaper when NY Yankee Thurman Munson died. I have magazines when Princess Diana was married and I saved the newspapers somewhere for President Obama’s inauguration.

I have a collection of pewter pieces, primarily on the medieval theme, but also groupings of griffins, my favorite animal. Yes, of course, it’s a real animal.

I collect some stamp sets and sheets, usually the ones that my kids would want to have when they’re older. I’ve showcased some of them on here recently.

I collect coins. Not anything really worth much, but just a remembrance of where I’ve been or gifts that I’ve been given. I’m not sure where they all are, but I have German marks and French francs. A shekel and a Scottish paper pound. My friend sent me New Zealand money from his home and my husband brought me coins from the Philippines when he was there for his work. I almost always have Canadian money on me somewhere. We just went over the border this past summer for a couple of days vacation.

I also collect Hufflepuffs. They are a rare find, so I’m pretty sure I’ve got everything sold in our local stores, including Hot Topic.

My biggest collection is my pins. I love pins. I buy them wherever I am, and I am sent them by frineds, although I usually have to ask. I have San Francisco and Las Vegas from a friend. I have a Hello Kitty from Japan and my son brought me an Eiffel Tower pin from Paris. He recently went to the 9/11 Memorial and Museum and he brought me my newest pin from there commemorating the fire department. Another new pin is my 50th anniversary Star Trek pin that a friend got for me at a convention. I have loved Star Trek since I was a little girl, and I thought that since I was also turning 50 this year, I’d really like the pin. The picture below is what my jacket looks like currently, but I display my pins on corkboard and need to get a few more squares of it to get the rest of them on.

My collections remind me of things, whether they’re what’s depicted on the pins or they remind me of the person who gave it to me, or the adventure I had when I got the pin. That’s especially true of my Gettysburg Bike Week pin.

All of my collections remind me of who I am and the important things I’ve done and want to remember.

The pins currently on my jacket: from the top, clockwise: my RCIA cross, trio of crosses from the Shrine of the North American Martyrs, rainbow Pride, Gishwhes, safety pin, Niagara Falls, 9/11 Memorial, 50th anniversary Star Trek, Hufflepuff, Supernatural anti-possession symbol, Star Labs, Michonne and Daryl from The Walking Dead, Wales, Niagara Falls/Hard Rock Cafe, 9/11 Memorial larger version. (c)2016

Hallelujah

Gwen Ifill (1955-2016)

Gwen Ifill was one of the most respected journalists of our time. I’ve watched her for years, both on NBC and PBS. She was always happy to be where she was and reporting the news. She was a true journalist. I will miss her, especially her insight for the upcoming politcal year.

50-39 – My Music Studio

I think when we’re young we think we can do anything. We can fly and run and draw and sing. We sing in the shower. We sing in the car. We sing as long as no one is watching.

We had half a finished basement in our house. Coming down the short staircase, to the left was the bar area. My parents almost never drank, but they collected really. nice bottles of liquor. Most were gifts from friends, visitors to our house, and “tips” from their office.

Chivas Regal, Johnny Walker Blue, Canadian Whisky, and about a dozen more that have left my memory. Oppposite the liquor shelf was a counter, and beneath the counter were the glasses, probably about a dozen of a variety of shapes and sizes.

On top of the counter was a stereo. Big and burly. It was only a turntable with a clear plastic cover and two very large speakers on either side of it. We had a separate eight track player somewhere else, either in the basement or the den, but that was used by my mother mostly.

We had a pretty decent record collection; mostly oldies and showtunes, but for my birthday or Chanukah I was gifted The Beatles Greatest Hits. It was a red album and I think it had four records in the set. We called them records, not vinyl.

I put the record on and set the needle to play. Sometimes I would skip a song by moving the needle carefully to the next groove or the second to next, looking for whatever my favorite song of the day was.

Michelle.

Please, Please Me.

Nowhere Man.

Octopus’ Garden.

Yesterday and Hey Jude.

So many more that if I named them all it would take all day.

If the record sounded a little off, I’d lift the arm and pull the lint off the needle with my fingernails. Then I’d blow on the record to make sure that there was no more dust, and usually the record would play fine.

I had headphones that plugged into the stereo and I would sing along. I had a beautiful voice. At least I thought so. No one else was there to boo or cheer me on, but I sang as if my life depended on it. Maybe I could be the next Beatle. Who knew?

That was how I spent many an afternoon. After school, I’d run downstairs and pull on the big black and silver headpohones and I was in the recording studio, practicing for my upcoming tour.

50-38 – Chinese Food

While I love a good macaroni and cheese (Kraft blue box original), probably my next best comfort food is Chinese. It could be take-out, eat in, buffet, I don’t care. It is the best food in the world. It might even be my first go-to comfort food.

When I was a kid, we used to go to this place near our apartment. I don’t remember the name of it, but it was on Horace Harding Blvd. in Queens. It wasn’t brightly lit. That’s how we kids knew it was a fancy restaurant. My one vivid memory is being dressed up, so it may have been for some kind of school congratulatory meal. I remember the owner knew my parents. He’d greet us at the door and show us to our table, talking to my parents the whole time. My Dad was a friendly guy, and everyone loved him. It was like going to Cheers.

We would sit at a large round table, covered with a white linen tablecloth. My parents would order: two from column A, one from column B, duck sauce and mustard. My mother put a dab of hot mustard in her wonton soup. I have never dared. Everything was put in the center and we shared, serving ourselves. This was the one place that no one ordered soda. We had a glass of water and of course, the hot tea. I loved those small tea cups, and I would put in more sugar than I should have. I think that was where I got my love for drinking tea. For dessert it was always either vanilla ice cream or pineapples with a fortune cookie. I would get the pineapples, but I think I only got them because they came with a toothpick that I used to pick up the small chunks of pineapple.

We used to bring Chinese take-out to my grandmother’s house sometimes. My grandmother’s house was kosher, so she never ate any of the food, and she made us eat on paper plates because we couldn’t put the non-kosher food on hers. We had to sit in the dining room and eat, and then clean up and take all of our leftovers with us.

As an adult, it took us a couple of years to find our perfect Chinese take-out place in our new town. My barometer is the fried rice, the egg rolls, and the spare ribs.I like really fried rice, brown in color with nice chunks of pork. My egg rolls also need to have little bits of pork in it and a nice crunchy shell. Spare ribs – the more burned, the better.

There is something warm and comforting about the smells and tastes of Chinese food. I really don’t know what it is.

My husband’s family has a tradition of eating Chinese take-out on Christmas Eve, and so we’ve adopted that for our family. We even have a Chinese take-out box ornament for our tree. Our kids know it, and look forward to it each year. It is a really nice tradition and ritual for them. They get a new pair of pajamas; we eat Chinese take-out, and we bake cookies for Santa.

It’s warm and wonderful.

Politics, Man…What’re Ya Gonna Do?

Well, I’m going to write and do art.
Today will have a multitude of posts and topics. I have another 50 Reflection, a political post, perhaps two, but I’m not sure I’m that ambitious, and the Year of Mercy post that was postponed from yesterday.

In the meantime, enjoy my two pieces of word art:

6 Writers on Why we Need Art Now

50-35 – The Alarm

Equal to Duran Duran for favorite bands growing up, and continuing into adulthood is The Alarm. I had a cassette that I played in the car constantly. I knew every word of every song. It didn’t hurt that they were Welsh at a time when I was obsessed with Welsh history and culture, something else that never went away.

The Alarm also holds another distinctive place in my life’s history.

In 2008, they came out with a new CD – Guerrilla Tactics. I wanted this album desperately.

In 2008, we were barely on the internet. I hadn’t even joined Live Journal then, we had no wifi – wifi was available but we didn’t trust it, so we had to be plugged into the wall. I had my first laptop, its own experiment into personal computing.

When I signed onto Amazon, well, actually, I had to create an account because I had never ordered online before, but when I signed on, I had a choice. I could buy the CD for $14.99 or I could download the MP3 version of the album for $9.99.

I actually thought about this for a couple of days. Eschew this new digital world and spend more money or give in to my innate cheapskate, get the album digitally and save the $5.

Eventually, I chose digital.

It was the first digital music I ever bought, and I listened to it always, over and over again. I transferred it to my new mp3 player, another new bit of technology that I had just discovered.

It opened a whole new world of digital media, and despite my going kicking and screaming into each new thing, I still went.

Eventually.

50-33 – Our Engagement

This was inspired by the prompt, Engagement from my memoir writing group. The original prompt came from The Sun magazine.

It really is an exaggeration that our engagement was a disaster. To be fair, I didn’t know it was a disaster until later, but my future husband’s plans did not go as planned. One reason is planning is hard, and planning a surprise is hard and even he would admit, he’s not good at it. Right now, he’s planning a birthday surprise for my 50th in a few weeks, and I know it’s stressing him out.

At the time of our engagement, I didn’t know that we would be getting engaged despite thinking that it would/should happen soon. We were on vacation in Pennsylvania.

My future husband had planned on a special dinner on a boat; not quite a cruise, I think , but the timing was wrong, and so we arrived too late to do that. There were no more tickets or the last boat had already left. I don’t remember. He was trying to come up with something else that would match his vision for this evening and there was a smaller boat that we could rent. I was appalled. I hate the water. I’m terrified of it and boats. I’m not sure why this never came up before but I was adamant that no, I wasn’t getting on that rickety, little boat. Nope. Nuh-uh.

We ended up going to dinner at the Chi-Chi’s in Harrisburg. There was a two hour wait and then they forgot about us. This was actually apropos because on our first date five years before, we were at a Chi-Chi’s with a waiter who forgot us and we ended up eating for two plus hours. That first date culminated with the movie, Stealing Home which we thought was about baseball, but was actually about suicide. That was my second first date movie that turned out to be about suicide. Maybe I should pick the movies from now on.

We did eventually get engaged on that trip, in the hotel room right before his self-imposed “deadline” – my husband likes to commemorate anniversaries, so our first date, engagement, marriage are all on the same date or the day after. It’s really very sweet.

The ring he gave me was his grandmother’s ring that his mother brought over from Northern Ireland. I treasure it and twenty-two years and three kids later, our disasters still seem to be working out.

50-32 – Happy Halloween

Halloween is one of my favorite holidays. I tried so hard to find a picure of when I was a kid in the plastic Princess costume – it may have been Sleeping Beauty – but I could not find it. It’ll probably turn up around Christmas.

That is the first costume that I remember wearing as a kid. I have no real memories of other costumes until high school when I went as Oscar Madison one year and wore my Dad’s Army uniform another. Someone shaving creamed my back while I was wearing that and I was so pissed off because I wasn’t supposed to get it dirty.

Over the years, I’ve gone to several Halloween parties, some with themes like science-fiction [I was a Bajoran civilian from DS9] or superheroes and villains [as Poison Ivy].

For a decade I was in a medieval re-enactment group so every weekend was Halloween, only historically accurate.

I remember going through the drive-through at Burger King or Dunkin’ Donuts in full medieval regalia where I would get some odd looks. I went into a 7-11 once to buy soda.

Our friends have a summer family reunion that is a costumed event. Last year, we were pirates and cowboys the year before.

Gishwhes has also afforded me opportunities to dress up, most memorably as Batgirl, an homage to Yvonne Craig who had recently died.

Any excuse to dress up and have fun.

This year’s costume, as journalist/press person, is my first, perrhaps only politically charged costume.

This year, my middle son is a pink dinosaur person with a spear, and he is the happiest little kid in the world. He can’t wait until after Halloween because the pink dinosaur costume is also pajamas, and he will probably wear them every night this winter.

My daughter is Harley Quinn from Suicide Squad, and she is using all of her own clothes. Resourceful, and…a little scary. She decorated an old wiffle-ball bat and I put the makeup on her, and it is perfect.

This is what Halloween is. Kids and fun and candy, of course. This year, we’re also giving out toys and Halloween pencils that we had around the house, leftovers from a school party or McDonald’s happy meal. We did this last year, and the kids were so thrilled to get something like that.

The school parade is in an hour – my daughter’s last one in elementary school; then no more school Halloween parties. It is the end of an era.

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Griffins and Ginger Snaps

-I write, and I have a blog because of course I do-

GGS