Monday, January 19, 2015

Quickie Books

by Cathy

Since my sixteenth birthday, I've always held jobs where I've worked for "the man"; retail chains, department stores, large ad agencies, local magazines. And now? Now I work with the man. My man, that is.

Yes, that's right.

I'm going outside my comfort zone by dipping my toe in the proverbial entrepreneurial career pool. Even more frightening, I'm electing to spend almost every waking hour with my spouse....working mostly out of our home office.

I bet you're thinking what my friend Patti is thinking. I can practically hear her skepticism sing-song-ing off the computer screen during our Gmail chats. Here are just a few of her comments:

"So...when you're home "helping joe" what do you do? Are you his hot, hot secretary?" This is Patti being subtle. So I play along.

"The boss just got back home and cracking the whip but not in the way I'd hope," I play into the fantasy.

"Perhaps if you would work in your birthday suit you could leverage some of the perks," she shoots back without missing a beat. "Drop a pencil and bend over to pick it up, if you know what i mean ;)"

Yes. This is how I dress to work at home. Duh.

I tell her that I wish it were like that, but in reality, it's a lot of payables, receivables, purchase orders and invoices. Frankly, I'm on Quickbooks more than I'm on him.

"Okay," she continues unconvinced. "I'll let you go so you can "work". WORK IT GIRL."

I can see why she would think that I'm always "working it" instead of literally working. Ideally, it would seem that a husband and wife working from home, while the kids are at school all day would provide plentiful opportunity to luxuriate in lengthy, decadent afternoon delights; massaging, feeding each other grapes and gazing deep into each others' eyes as we twirl ourselves up in silk sheets. Right. That's not us. That's the soap opera not playing on the television because it's tuned to ESPN or CNN or the 24-hour French news channel as background noise.

Sadly, this concept is something better "romanticized" in theory but not reality. Don't get me wrong; every now and then we do snap out of work mode and have a moment of clarity where we realize that the house is completely empty of kids and the distractions that follow them. There will be no knocking on doors or requests to fetch a snack or something off the top shelf, to find iPhones, iPads or chargers, to fix the television cable channel mix-up, or find a particular tank top. There will be no audible distractions either like the sound of The Suite Life of Zack & Cody reruns blaring from YouTube, or FaceTime conversations had by Ari and her friends while simultaneously playing Club Penguin online.

So do we take advantage of these rare moments at times? We are, after all, smart, grab-an-opportunity-when-you-can, humans who happen to be parents (and we know what that means when it comes to having time alone) after all. So, yeah.


- Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
- Yeah, this Quickbooks thing is a pain in the ass.

However, lest you think that you can quit your job and start a home-office business with your significant other for the anytime "perks" and "benefits" and general "woo hoo party time!!!" euphoria this will provide, think again. You might be able to randomly book a quickie, but in the end, you'll always get screwed by Quickbooks.





Friday, January 16, 2015

Sitting Shivers

by Cathy & Patti


Charlotte: Where are we going to go?
Ray: I'm thinking Alaska.
Charlotte: Alaska?
Ray: Yeah, it's cold and Mexicans don't like the cold. I say we act like white people and disappear and let our lawyer do the talking.
~ From the television series The Bridge, 
which in part, has to do with Mexican drug trafficking
--------------------------------------
Cathy
As our parallel universe lives would have it, we both married Latino men. Mine, J, is part Mexican. Patti's, M, is Argentinian. Latino men, apparently judging from the warm climates their ancestors hailed from, don't fare well in cold weather, as further proved by the quote above. They enter a darkness where no Happy Light can reach. In fact, they become winter beasts of sorts, that transforms them into bitter, miserable, grouchy, whiny, complaining little mean girls who consistently ask why we the hell we live here and not in Miami.

I'm not thrilled about the arctic plunges Chicago weather takes us on a consistent basis now either. I'm not enjoying my parched skin and the literal crackling of my facial wrinkles forming overnight, or the dryness of my cotton mouth which wakes me up in coughing fits, or the fireworks show that ensues via static electricity every time I move. But I deal with it. I power through it. Hell, my ancestors hail from Greece, the land of abundant islands, sea and sun and Patti is Argentinian and Italian, so same pretty much goes for her. And WE quietly deal with it. However, men being men, they can't handle it. It falls into the same category as being sick.

The other day, I walk into my living room to find this:

The Hobbit? Obe Wan Kenobi? Nomadic tribal elder?
Now clearly, the sheer over-dramatization of J's reaction to the cold is laughable. I stifled my chuckle and as it seemed fitting, I simply greeted him with a "Shabbat Shalom".  Minutes later, Patti and I were LOLing and commiserating via text at how alike our enrobed bundles of misery really are in terms of the literal mourning they go through each winter: the death of summer.

And the texts went on:

PATTI: "By the way, I don't think M and I will still be married after this winter. He is worse than ever with this weather. I cannot take his crankiness."
ME: I get the same from Rabbi Elder over here on a daily basis too, don't worry.
PATTI: They should sit shiva together!

As if luck would have it, they planned a coffee date a few days later without us girls knowing a thing until I happened to call J for something completely unrelated and lo and behold, he was commiserating and shiva-ing with M at a local coffeehouse. I promptly texted Patti to see, did she know about this?

PATTI: Of course not. I'm sure they will just sit there and kvetch about the weather.

I had no doubts about that and I'm certain they kvetched about us as well.

Patti
..as if they had any good reason whatsoever to kvetch.

I'm not quite sure how I could possibly illustrate to the fullest the life I lead from November to April. It is one in which my normally quite "macho" husband is grouchily tucked into corners of the couch and the bed and other cushion-y surfaces, blankets wrapped to the point of swaddling 'round his shivering body, and I pretty much wave a mental goodbye to the man I love and, with heavy heart, say hello to the Winter Monster. There is no light, only darkness and snow and lots and lots of f-bombs.

Here's the thing: As superficial as it may seem, I love tights and turtlenecks and cute leather boots. I love seasons with their breezy, blue-sky summers and silvery, snowy Christmases. And most importantly? I'm pale. Unlike my perpetually tanned husband, I am perpetually transparent and, rather than become golden in the sun, lean toward purple scorch. Therefore, no matter how monster-y the Winter Monster gets, I can't find it in my seasons-lovin', pale heart to up and move to 365 days of OMG I'M SWELTERING and MELANOMA-ING.

The result? I have to deal with Grandpa Bitches-a-Lot.  When Cathy sent me that picture of her own Grandpa Bitches-a-Lot, wrapped up like a Hobbit/Obe Wan Kenobi/Nomadic tribal elder, my heart swelled with kinship for my friend. She knew. She knows. She lives it just as I do. She has her own Winter Monster, one whose moans of discontent rise from within the swaddled walls of his misery for 7 months out of every year.

At first, when I heard the two Winter Monsters had gotten together, I worried. I pictured them both sitting there, scarfed and hatted and multi-coated and shivering, and I knew their shared kvetch-ing would only lead to one-way tickets to Miami - with or without their MUCH better halves. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized the Winter Monsters are also Summer Mourners and, as grieving brothers, they need one another. They are their own support group, of sorts. So let them kvetch. I'll just sit here and sip on my cozy winter tea, turn up the heat, and cuddle up under the fuzzy blanket I never get to use.








Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Orientation

by Patti

Today we received in the mail a document that caused S to squeal and jump 6 feet in the air. I wondered if the Lottery Department had written me a letter informing me that, even though I hadn't purchased a ticket, I had somehow magically hit the jackpot of the century and would I please come down to headquarters and pick up my winnings?

I soon found out that equivalent to this in a 13-year girl's mind is her High School Orientation letter. She immediately ran to the refrigerator and slapped the letter under a magnet, singing joyfully to herself. "I can't believe it! DON'T FORGET!" she eyed me sternly.

But oh, how I want to forget.

How is this possible? Certainly the sudden lines that have appeared on my face - lines that no longer disappear by noon - have been trying to tell me about this passage of time, but I've been ignoring them. Because the passage of time is not something I'm handling very gracefully.

Aside from the "aging" part of it, what has gripped me most is the permanence of this passage of time. No. Matter. What. We can never get it back. And the last 13 years with my daughter, since the first earthly cries of my one and only child, are suddenly a dream-like patchwork of moments and memories, the only tangible evidence they ever happened the coltish, beautiful teenager standing in my kitchen, singing about high school.

It's strange, because I'm okay with her growing up. I love the "she" she has become; I love that we are friends and that she tells me most everything; I love that she is a hilarious companion and a quirky sidekick. I love her and all that she is. Yet, I find myself mourning the "she" she will never again be. Not because I don't adore who she is becoming, but because I will never get back who she was.

As I mark my calendar lest I DARE FORGET, I am cautiously looking forward to experiencing the energy I will no doubt absorb from all the other vibrating 13-year olds on High School Orientation Night. I will sense the jittery anticipation of all things new; I will take in the shine of young eyes as they dream about what will be. And I will look at my daughter and do my best to be present because, yes, even THIS moment, the one in which I am lamenting how she has grown up so fast, will one day be part of that dream-like patchwork of moments and memories. And I will never get it back.




Friday, January 2, 2015

2015

by Cathy



2015...

This is the year that I turn 45, celebrate my 18th wedding anniversary and see my first-born enter high school.

It sounds like someone else's life; someone much older than me. Those are some serious double-digit milestones, the kind reserved for "old" people I used to hear about when I was in the prime of my youth and all of this seemed light years away. Nonetheless, this is where I am in my life right now, crazy numbers and all, so I am here to face it and yes, embrace it.

It still doesn't make sense to me that we are in the year 2015. It still sounds ridiculously futuristic, as if we are living in another dimension. It was, after all, the year Marty traveled to in Back to the Future Part II.

Back to the Future is now


Back in the day, the decades had real sounding names with now marked events and characteristics that defined them for each of us, from the 1920s through to the 1990s. Each decade felt like it meant something, like each had its own representation and weight.

Then it all started sounding strange. How do we refer to the decades after the 90s? The zeroes? The two-thousands? What about the decade we're in now? Are we in the 10s? The 2010s? You don't hear people referring to decades like they once did because there's no non-awkward sounding, all encompassing way to refer to them. They all sound futuristic, even though we've been "in the future" for now, fifteen years. And if you ask me to define the marked characteristics of the last two decades since 2000, I'd venture to say that it's one big reality television show whirred into a technologically frenzied blur. Maybe I just don't care enough to distinguish these decades and acknowledge their own weight because they don't have a cool sounding name that warrants it. That's just me.

There is something, however, about the number and year, 2015, that compelled me to write about it. It's not an even-numbered year, yet it stands out because of the milestone simplicity it represents. It falls directly in the center of this decade, neatly separating the polar (and literal) opposites of what decades start/end, bring/take for people facing, dare I say, middle age.

Writing that statement was very sobering, as were writing the statements that follow...

This year, I am at equal distance from age 30 as I am from age 60. That stark calculation was made by me after an eye-opening statement made by Bella as we sat at home on this past blistery cold New Year's Eve 2014.
"Did you know that right now, at 2015, we are at equal distance from the year 2030 as we are from the year 2000?"
She wasn't even alive in 2000. So, again, those damned numbers. Why do they represent so much?

Well, they do and it's up to us to make these number mean something. God willing, this year like always, we intend to do so. Therefore, in addition to the wedding anniversary, high school milestone and 45th birthdays my husband and I will celebrate in 2015, we've also set goals. Goals put less pressure on results as they are plans to strive towards, not non-resolute resolutions.

We have goals to grow our business, to move into a single family home if plans take us in that direction, (and then maybe get a puppy to round out that American dream altogether), to buy a second car, and to travel to a place we haven't been before. Our personal goal, besides the ever-present "aim-to-salvage-what's-left-of-our-quasi-youthful-physique" goal, is to learn a new language and constantly strive to learn more and network more (Joe's) and for me, to finally embark on my lifelong dream.

We will continue to pray for our good health and those of our friends and family, to take in every minute of the crazy rate at which our girls are blossoming, maturing, molding their personalities, smoothing their rough edges and keeping sharp the ones that should stay that way, and to spend as much time with our parents as possible. The most challenging though for me, will be to make it through Bella's grammar school graduation and high school entrance without becoming a complete blubbering, broken down mess. Kids are, after all, the barometer against which the speediness of passing years is measured.

So please, 2015, seeing as you're right smack in the middle of this unnamed decade, do us a solid and slow down to let us take it all in.

---------------------------



Happy, healthy, prosperous New Year to our dedicated readers, followers, believers, supporters, fans and visitors from around the world. 




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