This morning began, as usual, with a bowl of potato salad and a huge gulp of tonic water. I like my drinks to scald my throat, just as life does. I was born to be bad. You know who said that? Joseph Brodsky, a poet, who I rediscovered this Christmas morning.
The topic this morning is Christmas cards, indeed cards of all types. As my readers may know, today is my birthday no. 63. I always thought 60 was old.
Stay tuned. I've gotta start my whole wheat challah and then I'll be back.
Okay, the yeast is rising in the potato water I saved from last nite's potato salad. I've got 2 eggs stirred in there, plus a quarter cup of blackstrap molasses. I don't measure anything. For the yeast, I just poured it out in my palm which is about the size of a tablespoon.
When the timer dings, I'll go in and add the flour and then let it rest again.
Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday cards and Christmas cards. I'll use my friend Pam as an example of how I treat 'bought cards.' Pam is a wonderful friend. She came over thother nite to pick me up to see the mediocre movie Vampire. I had erroneously confused it with another vampire movie my daughter had blogged about. This is the bad part of being 60. Your memory has lost some of its finer points. This is true unfortunately! I could never enter medical school now.
We're sitting in her van in my driveway. It's the coldest night of the year. "I got you something for your birthday," she says, handing me a gift-wrapped little box and a card.
I thank her effusively, give her a hug & attempt to stuff them into my backpack.
"Aren't you going to open them?" she cries.
"Well, I thought I'd do it after the movies. We're late as it is...... oh, lemme open the card."
It's one of those cards that costs more than the gift. It's a triptich like those religious paintings of Christ and the Madonna at the art museum.
Oh god, I'm thinking, what a frigging waste of money.
Nice, I ooze, trying to put it back in my backpack.
Aren't you going to read it?
I did, I say. It said Friends are like Sisters. That's a b'ful sentiment, Pam, and I feel the same way about you. I'll read it when I get home, I lied.
I threw it out first chance I got. Threw out, in fact, all of the lovely cards people sent me. Can you guess why I threw them out?
In case you can't figger it out it's b/c the words on the greeting card werre written by a PR expert. All the buyer need do is match up the card with the person. Yes yes I know I'm being a scrooge but one can't argue with feelings!
Then my cantankerous nature had a pang of conscience. I realized I'm hosting a meeting at my home on New Year's Day, I'd better display some of the cards, so I fished a couple out of the trash.
Then this morning, as if to further taunt me, I get is an ECard from Nancy for my birthday.
What is my duty about opening ECards?
You're on your own, Ruthie, there's no one to ask. Think for yo'self.
It took so long 'loading' on my computer - god gives us only so much patience - so the decision was made for me. HOWLEVER (that's how they pronounce it in Philadelphia), HOWLEVER, Nancy herself wrote a small inscription on the ECard, to wit something about the joy of being placed on this planet.
Now THAT was beautiful and meaningful and ORIGINAL.
I have never ever sent a 'bought card' to anyone w/o writing something original on it. My bought cards are all freebies from various nature groups I belong to and they have glorious blank spaces in which to write your encomia (incorrect plural of encomium). Make that, correct plural. I just checked.
Also, if you send someone a card, if you think well enough of them to mail them a card, why not be courageous & sign it with the Love word. As in:
Love,
Ruth
Other acceptable signatures are:
With love,
Ruth
or
Warm regards,
Ruth
Once I sent Jane Pauly a pretentious email when she was first diagnosed w/bipolar & spilled her guts to the news media & I signed it Godspeed!
Knock! Knock! It's the news media camped outside on the lawn. Please provide us with the most gruesome details of your life, weep while you're speaking, so that we can move up on the shameless CNN news ladder.
Born to be bad, as the late Brodsky said. You MUST read him. Start with the Wiki entry being sure to read what the Accusing Judge said to Brodsky when he was brought to trial in the Soviet Union.
Then you can hear Brodsky himself read - in English & in Russian - on the Poets.org link. His English is perfect (the man was very gifted) and then you'll hear him read the same poem in Russian. O how that Russian language pours from his lips like gusts from the almighty sky and ocean crests, you feel the might of the beleaguered Russian people and the tyrants who continue to rule this great people.
Okay, the timer just went off.
Next installment is about LAST NIGHT!
Scott's parents were married on Christmas Day, the only day Dave could get furlough when he was in the Air Force in Lincoln, NB, so he and Natalie were married 53 years ago. Altho they're Jewish, they LOVE celebrating Christmas. And what a spread they put on the table!
Isn't it amazing when you think of it how the food is all over the place & then it gets macerated in your mouth & fits snugly into your intestines! Well, I guess if you think about it we've got miles n miles of intestines. But ya know what? It's best not to think about it.
Scott & I left early since he had to work Christmas Eve. As he says, Someone's gotta take care of the trains. He works with the electronic systems at the city's transportation center.
After I drove him to the train, I came home and began cooking for Xmas dinner at my son's and future dtr/laws today. I wanted to get that tater salad marinating in the fridge all nite & did. It tasted pretty good this morning altho I forgot the relish in my secret sauce of mayo, mustard, olive oil, paprika, garlic, parsley, celery leaf which is blooming right now outdoors.
At midnight I lay down to go to sleep. I stopped saying my vespers a few years ago cuz it made me too depressed. I would start thinking about Darfur, Iraq, Afghanistan, schizophrenics, political prisoners, mothers with postpartum depression & psychosis, the betrayal of Bernie Madoff, the camps and ovens of the Holocaust and I just couldn't go on so I stopped praying. YOU pray if you want to. Look, I'll even lead a group prayer, I just can't pray by myself.
I lay waiting for sleep to come. There's lots of noise upstairs. Clanging and banging. It sounds like someone's upstairs. Oh shit, I think, must I go upstairs to check? Should I carry a knife? Or maybe brew a cup of coffee as a peace offering?
I swung out of bed and marched purposefully upstairs turning on lights as I went up. The noise emanated from the third floor of my modest-sized split level, the floor with the 3 bedrooms and the bath. I turned on the light of my bedroom and pulled off the covers.
No one was hiding there.
Then I went into the closed doors of Sarah's bedroom. Freezing cold but no one was there.
Lastly, I went into Dan's room, painted bright yellow. As soon as I opened the door I heard it: the loud rustling of plastic taped to the windows to keep the cold out. The wind was shaking that plastic and giving it a good what-for, I'll show you, who dyou think you are trying to control the wind.
I shut the door loudly and went back to bed.
