Unrelated Thoughts

Unrelated thoughts

• Even when they are not home for dinner, they want to know what is for dinner or what was for dinner. It’s all about food for these boys. What will I miss or what did I miss? And often, they will eat again when they get home from dinner at a friend’s house – whatever leftovers there might be. I can definitely tell you, as a teenage girl, if I ate dinner at a friend’s house, I NEVER asked what the family had for dinner. Because I didn’t care that much.
• Michael joked that they just keep putting the same Patriots story in the paper day after day, and week after week. It was probably almost true until Deflategate.
• When I pointed out something obvious to him, Michael said, “Good thing I can’t read. Thanks for telling me.” V. sarcastic.
• Similarly, near Halloween, when I reminded Daniel, “You can turn on the floodlight so you can see while you are sorting your candy. The switch is . . .” He said, “Mom, I think I know where the light is. I have lived here my whole life!”
• Michael announced he would like to be a color commentator for tennis tournaments. That would be his ideal job. I couldn’t tell if he was joking. He is good looking and that does seem to be a major requirement for anyone on television. Next, he said he would be the host of a cooking show. We thought this was hilarious and said he could make an egg sandwich each day, over and over. (This is what he does in real life)
• Michael made Grandma (who loves chickens) a birthday card that said: Why did the chicken cross the road? He heard it’s your birthday and he’s coming over. Complete with an aerial view of the street and our house and a cartoon chicken. V. clever.
• Now that I am not working, the kids are in school, and I am no longer taking care of my mother……………I am sorry I didn’t visit you sooner. I am so busy. Don't you get tired of people telling you how busy they are? BUT, if you wanna get something done, give it to a busy person.

Word Play and the Lawyer's Perfect Skin

There are some words you remember how to spell with simple euphemisms such as dessert is spelled with two Ss – easy to remember because you want two of them, desserts that is. Why would you want two deserts? Unless you were a camel or there were vast underground oil reserves. Similarly, I remember hearing teachers perhaps say that principal is easy to remember how to spell because he is you pal. It sounds far-fetched but it is true.

I had a principal in high school who would come over to the basket where I was shooting in high school practice and shoot with me. He would either retrieve my balls or I would pass him a few shots. His jump shot, in his three piece suit and wing tips, was not bad. Not bad at all. He was my pal for a few minutes in practice and I was one lonely kid. He smiled at me and showed a small interest in my well-being. Thanks Dr. Brady.

Now how do you remember how to spell principle? I don’t have a clue but at least you will know how to spell the one with the ‘pal’ in it and by process of elimination you may remember the other.

Lawyers have nice skin

I don’t think I will visit the lawyer anymore. It put me in a very bad mood and probably cost me in excess of $250.  It was just like the first day of school where they tell you all the work you will be doing over the course of the semester – homework, exams, major projects – the syllabus is overwhelming. And to top it all off, there are multiple lawyers in multiple states and I didn’t get a clear answer about who is doing what. I was fine before I went in there. I think I am better off doing much of the work myself and saving the estate a buck or two. 

But as I was feeling overwhelmed, I suddenly noticed the lawyer’s skin. Now she has a good 10-12 years on me, easy. But her skin, especially on the back of her hands, was like a newborn’s. Now I am exaggerating somewhat, but compared to my skin, it was positively spanking new. The backs of my hands were weathered and age spots were noticeable. I had working man hands while her hands were white as the driven snow and not a blemish or a line in site. The same for her face and probably the rest of her body (though I did not let my mind go there). Wow, she has great skin. And I tried to justify my weathered, leather body I remembered all the sun filled days at the beach and the pool and outside playing sports. She probably hasn’t been outside a day in her life as she sits slumped at her computer screen. Now I exaggerate again, but her skin, that skin. It looked like it had never seen the light of day. Good for her. Good for her skin. But my skin, was the skin of a well lived life. Cancer be damned. 

Unrelated thoughts

• ·         “Cross Country is like going in the ocean. At first you don’t want to and then you are glad you did.” Michael McGovern summer 2014
• ·         “Mom, that is the least of my worries”. . . after I wondered what Michael’s college roommate would think about his clothes all over the floor.
• ·         I thought if I gave you two laundry baskets you could use one for your clean and one for your dirty clothes. “But then I can’t see my clothes.” Michael McGovern summer 2014
• ·        “I am eating like 5,000-6,000 calories a day and I am not gaining weight.” Matt McGovern fall 2014. You will young man. You will. 

Trifecta

After a true trifecta of bad luck – my mother died (I found the body), my father-in-law died (I lost my support network of my husband for a while), I lost my job (due to an evil boss) – suddenly there were subtle signs of recovery, about two months after the grisly discovery. I pulled into a parking spot on South Main Street outside my lawyer’s office (yes I have a lawyer to help me with my unjust lay off) realizing I had about 35 cents in my wallet for the meter (this excludes the $3.50 in 50 cent pieces I have been carrying around to spend when the coin dealer told me they are each worth precisely 50 cents each). Lo and behold, there were 28 minutes on the digital display. Good because the meter doesn’t take 50 cent pieces and the 35 cents will buy me all of 11 minutes. Hallelujah I thought. O.K. things are looking up.

Just the day before, I was making copies of a proposal I was writing (to fill the void left by my job loss) and I am at the copier in Staples. Lo and behold, the copy machine is open for business without the insertion of my credit card. I figured out that someone’s card was already in the card reader (and was ready to eject and turn it in like the good person I am) but when I ejected it, I also realized it was a Staples card with $10 of credit on it. Hallelujah it was my lucky day (by the end of this I may learn how to spell Hallelujah correctly but I know from church there are multiple spellings – I can latch onto one). So I said to myself, would you turn in a $20 bill (even though this was only $10 of credit) if you found it on the floor in Staples? Of course you wouldn’t. You would thank your lucky stars and say thank you or hallelujah (is this word always capitalized?) or some other positive interjection. So I made copies of my proposals and still had 99 cents left on the card, which I stuck in my wallet.

I didn’t feel guilty. I didn’t feel guilty at all. Because when the universe gives you a gift you don’t smack a gift horse in the mouth, you say thank you God, Hallelujah, and pass on the positivity. So I was feeling it - these subtle signs that my luck was changing.

When I walked into the State agency to turn in the proposal, there was nary a soul to be found. No receptionist. No employee in the designated cubicle. So I asked a young woman if the designated person had a mailbox and before I knew it people are scurrying around to help me and my old boss (who I didn’t recognize after almost 15 years and well, more than 15 pounds of weight gain) emerges and says my name with enthusiasm. Enthusiasm. After asking me how I am (I mention the rough summer, my mother dying etc.) she says “So Galen, what are you doing now?” (A spider literally just crawled out of my keyboard so I will keep you posted on this luck changing thing.) Now I take this to mean, what are you doing workwise but it could have been literal – I am delivering this proposal to you right now. What do you think I am doing?

I feel deflated and tell her I worked with ABC Company for a while but they had some difficulties……………..I trail off. Did I miss something here? Did I miss another positive sign? Was this my chance to find work? Was she looking for someone?

We talk (or should I say she talked) about her daughter who is a senior in college and calling home to ask about how to cook pasta. I remember asking my mother how to cook a baked potato. I laugh. When I told her there was no receptionist and I just wandered in, she said something about that’s how it is at the State these days. Decimated. Deflated. Injured.

I just want a job. I wanna feel good. But I am determined not to grovel. I am determined not to be desperate. I feel like someone is gonna offer me a job without my even having to look hard. I will bump into someone and they will say “Wanna job?” And it will seem interesting and I’ll think what do I have to lose? The universe will provide and at the risk of sounding like my new age sister, it will feel right.

But this wasn’t the day. (The spider just crawled out by the Esc key and I blew it away, across the room somewhere). It wasn’t the day in this time warp of a State agency. Where everyone is still doing the same thing they were 15 years ago and everyone still sits in the same cube.

This wasn’t the day. But I am still thinking my day will come. What I need to know, am I crazy? You see all this goal setting and visioning isn’t working for me. I think I am due. After the trifecta, a friend said go buy a lottery ticket. I didn’t but I appreciated the sentiment. Things come in threes. The bad luck is over and the next time I wander into an office, perhaps they will offer me a job. An unsolicited job offer – like finding a $20 bill while doing something grueling like jogging on a 95 degree day. Hallelujah.

The spider is gone and my luck runneth over. 

The Buckies Are Back

The buckies were running all last week in the mighty Saugatucket River in Wakefield. They are also called river herring, buckeyes or alewifes. Perhaps you saw the volunteers and DEM workers netting them, scooping them up over the dam. Every once in a while, as the nets were emptied, a fish slipped back and went over the dam with the continuing flow. The RIDEM even brought a tank truck and a ‘bucket brigade’ of nets filled up the tank to drive the fish up stream.

These fish are anadromous. They return from the sea each spring and swim up area rivers to spawn and then some die, some return to the sea. In the fall, the juveniles migrate back to the salt water where they spend their adult years. The survival rate for these juveniles is very low (1 percent, I am told).  

It all had me wondering, what these fish did to survive before people were netting them on their way up stream or in very luxurious fashion, driving them up stream. When the several mills were operating along the Saugatucket, were the fish able to swim up the sluice ways? When hundreds of mills were operating all over New England, how did the buckies return to upstream waters to spawn - before fishladders and volunteers could coax them on their way?

Apparently, the fish ladder in Wakefield has a design flaw and in addition when the fish miss the ladder, they will not move from their position at the dead end of the dam. That’s where volunteers and workers filled their nets, in the riffles below the dam.  

The two young boys I was with, both avid fishermen, scurried down the bank to look under the Main Street bridge. There in the shadows of the overpass, hundreds of fish pooled and rested for the continuing journey. You had to look closely to see them camouflaged in the shadows and blending with the rocks.

I told the boys there were Indian camps near this site along the Saugatucket - to harvest the herring in the spring. I also told them about a nearby store who sold smoked herring on a stick out of big barrels. They didn’t seem all that impressed but I realized I was witnessing an ancient ritual, as ancient as the sea. This return to spawn and retreat had been going on hundreds and maybe even thousands of years. If we dug along the banks of the Saugatucket, we would find remnants of Indian camps and fires for smoking and drying the fish. The years sent a shiver up my spine as we watched heavy ladened nets hoisted over the dam. But the boys just shrugged, wishing all the while with envy that they had their rods or better yet, a net or two. Then my reverie was shaken as I heard them speak of permits and fishing licenses.

But upstream from the dam, a dozen cormorants dove and resurfaced, gorging themselves on the buckies. No permit required. I wondered how many fish a cormorant could eat “in one sitting.” My son referred to this stretch of water as a gauntlet. A gauntlet indeed, between the cormorants, the dams, the obstacles and their own mortality.

Still, the boys didn’t tire of watching and wanted to stay longer. My thoughts meandered and returned to the Indians who probably marveled at this migration each spring and depended on it. And they told their forbearers who told theirs, until the traditions were altered by mills, dams, sluiceways. But still, the buckies return each spring.

Take One For The Team

I’ve been swimming alongside the URI women’s swim team for months now. One day the URI coach said “I have something for you.” As I waited, I contemplated what it might be – a workout plan perhaps. I really had no idea. He gave me an official RAMS swim cap so I could feel like one of the team. Did I mention he is so nice? Always opening up a lane for me, flagging me over to the pool that is dominated by the URI swim team. “We are only supposed to have 4 lanes,” he explained, “but if no one is here, we use them all.” So, he didn’t really think he was being nice, but I did. As a result, I decided I should get him something too, but not something I had to buy. I didn’t want the guy to feel bad. A couple days later, I gave him a copy of my CD Country Road asking him if he liked country music and explaining this was me - Galen McGovern.

A couple days later, in my swimming haze of plugged ears and lack of vision (due to the fact that I stopped swimming with my contacts in), I hear what I think is Neil Young coming from the stereo system by the pool. Hmm, is that Helpless, Helpless, Helpless? Whatever it is, it’s pretty good. I should find out who it is. Wonder why they are playing folk music? Then I realize, it’s my CD blasting away on the side of the pool. The swim coach in nowhere to be seen but I am smiling underwater.

A couple days later, I see the coach and tell him that was pretty funny playing my CD. He said we’d have to find another celebrity to swim with me in the pool. He also asked if I wrote any of the songs. YES, all of them.

And, I thought I was pretty special with my swim cap and the fact that he played my CD, but I have noticed he has given caps to other swimmers. I am not the only one…………………..but I think I might be his favorite as I doubt any of the others gave his country music.

The 378 Best Colleges

“Michael, where is that college book?” I asked.
“I thought you took it,” he said.
“I gave it back.”
So I looked in his room and found it on the floor amidst the wreckage.
“See I told you that you had it,” I said proudly.
“What are you doing in my room?” he asked.
(I can't win)

Unrelated thoughts

• My eyes are getting so bad, I bought non-alcoholic wine. It was positively putrid. Now my memory may be getting bad too – did I write about this wine before?
• Daniel said, “That is one ugly moon.” Now I have never thought of the moon as ugly so I asked why. “Because it’s not full.” Oh.
• Seen on the Domino sugar box: “We’ll always be your sugar.”
• When driving Daniel along a built up stretch of Route 2 he said, “I hate this. Where do they play?” That’s my boy.
• Daniel was doing his touchdown dance in the house and I asked what that was for. “NFL, obviously.” Oh.
• Dangerous question for a woman to ask a man: “Do you notice anything different?” Only answer I could think of that was safe is this: “You look more beautiful than usual.”
• Daniel’s latest: “I need to drain the lizard.”

Unamusing From Main Street

My mother is obsessing over her possessions and every time I see her/talk to her there is some new request for me to help her with something. Her helper says it’s a little dementia. I think as my friend Etta used to say, old people become more the way they are. And it’s not a pretty scene. She is positively obsessing about the dollar cost of things and possessions she can’t keep track of and insulting people and driving everyone crazy in the process. Does she have any redeeming qualities? My friend Nan said something about how she has probably always been this way. At least she used to ask me if I wanted a grilled cheese once in a while. Now it’s a negative energy vortex, sucking me in and sucking me down. And it sucks. It's all about her. As Nan says when we talk about old age “Bus” - meaning get hit by one before you become a burden. Bus. There are nice old people out there, aren't there?

Tips for those of us approaching old age

Be nice.

Don't be a burden. Move into assisted living if you can afford it.

Don't live alone in a house.

Have friends and a community. Stay active with something other than TV.

Realize you are f..cking old, and deal with reality like the fact that you won't drive forever. Plan accordingly.

If you have children, you do not want them to hate you - be nice.

Chicken, Little

This is the chicken I will give to my new friend.

 

I was watching one of Daniel’s baseball games and there was a handsome boy of age 3 or so who had a small rubber chicken. He was clearly fascinated with this chicken and more specifically, the butt. He kept pulling the legs apart looking at the butt, showing me the butt, putting the butt right up in my face and asking me if I could see the butt. You get the idea. It was amusing and I said several times, “Yes I see it.” Tiring of the butt talk, I told him we had chickens at home and he asked, “Can you bring them to the next game?” That had us both thinking for a minute but then the chicken was back, inches from my face “Do you see the butt?” In an instant, he was snatched away by who I can only presume was his mother. She apologized and I explained it was really no problem.

Well, by sheer coincidence or not, my mother-in-law when dropping off scraps for our chickens left me with a rubber chicken of my own. I have kept it in my purse waiting to encounter the boy again. I thought I spied him at another baseball game but he was distracted with other friends and I wasn't ready to approach him.

Perhaps tonight, when the moment is right, I will see him and ask him if he brought his rubber chicken. Whether he says yes, or no, I will reach into my bag and present him with a beautiful, new, rubber chicken. He may be disappointed though. It  is not nearly as flexible as his, the legs are fused together, and hence the butt not nearly as visible. Pity.

Unrelated thoughts

• Saw a cute old lady in the grocery store. Her items on the belt: 1 deck of cards size piece of sirloin $4.72, 1 small cardboard box of salad, 1 bagel, 1 Coke, 1 apple, 1 bag of ginger snaps, 1 small milk. Her shopping for the week? Note: Daniel did not think she was cute.
• Me (age 47): “Do you need anything?” Matt (age 14): “Mom, I am leaving in 30 seconds.” Me: Well, I have cash if you need to buy lunch and I can dispense hugs if you need one.” I did observe a small smile.
• Daniel (age 9): “There’s nothing to eat.” Me: Do you want me to make you some French toast? Daniel: “No.” Me: “Well, you could skip a meal.” Daniel: “What, I can’t skip breakfast. It is the most important meal of the day.” He settled for an egg sandwich.
• My eyesight is getting so bad I bought non-alcoholic wine at the liquor store. I used to laugh when Doug pulled out a can of seltzer instead of a beer from the fridge……………..This wine taste god awful, like grape juice with no sugar whatsoever. Positively putrid but perhaps I will find some use for it - like an innocent prank at an upcoming dinner party.



The Kitty Litter Diet

It’s not always so easy losing weight, though truly I wouldn't know. I only seem to lose weight when I am sick. But people keep telling my husband “You’ve lost weight.” He’s down over 30 lbs. from when we met 20 years ago, so this is no overnight weight loss. He looks good but he doesn’t know how to respond to the constant comments. Here are some of my ideas:

“I only eat red meat now.”

“I stopped smoking.”

“I did this great beer and ice cream diet.”

“I stopped eating fruit and vegetables and only eat carbs.”

“High carb diet.”

“I only eat eggs now.”

“I’ll tell you how I did it in one word: bacon.”

You get the idea. If he could do this with a straight face, he could have a lot of fun.

Unrelated Thoughts

• What is the point of going to McDonald’s without french fries? I read they offer substitute sides now like fruit.
• Text message from Michael: “Can you pick me up?” My answer: “No, you are too heavy.”
• Daniel thought the animated cat in this kitty litter ad was hysterical – so hysterical that he wants to use copies of the ad for wrapping paper for his friend’s next birthday present.
• My favorite expression used by co-workers in Maine about the boss: “Your lack of planning, does not constitute our emergency.”
• From my armchair quarterback position here on the sidelines, letting Wes Welker go seemed like the bonehead move of the century for the Patriots, and yet they are 4-0. The magic of Tom Brady. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Broncos win the Super Bowl and Welker scores the winning TD.
• I saw the funniest commercial on-line about tidy whities and skid marks. I think it was a real ad for Charmin toilet paper. ► 0:32► 0:32 www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo4oEdtDRPo
• Do you remember in the movie Erin Brockovich when Ed Mastry asked Erin how she had managed to gather all the chemical data from the Water Board and she responds, “They’re called boobs, Ed.” Duh.
• Last time I wrenched my neck so bad, I was trying to keep up with the triathlete in the lane next to me at the pool.
• When I was instructing Daniel about what he needed to do before we went to church: Get Dressed, Cut Your Nails, Brush Your Teeth, he said, “I can’t multi-task.”