I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

Being a widow has allowed me the ability to watch eight years of Hallmark Christmas movies without criticism, but there are times admittedly, when it’s just not fun going it alone. Take vacations for example. I’ve been following a winery in British Columbia which coincidentally shares my maiden name. They don’t have distribution in America so it's going to take traveling there to buy their wines. A trip half-way across America is not something I relish doing alone-especially since it’s at least a four hour drive from the nearest airport. Ideally, I envision a week to see the Napa Valley of Canada.

Hey 19: No We Can’t Dance Together, No We Can’t Talk At All

A message to the social planners out there: while my 2020 event calendar is undeniably light to the point of being non-existent, choice weekends in 2021 are already full. There’s no getting around the fact that COVID-19 has been a social game changer. We are at Day 174 of the two-week total shutdown. The wedding I was to have attended in May, was at first pushed back to August and now will happen next August. The entire seasons of two community theatre groups pushed everything into 2021. James Taylor, Hall & Oates and other concerts I have tickets for have been postponed. Elton John, Art Garfunkel, Ringo Starr and a couple of others are moved to the “TBD/God knows when” category. And the charity I volunteer with in November and December has shelved their entire 100-show season.

It was family events that it hurt to miss more than concerts and shows, because they didn’t get makeup dates. April was always a busy birthday month and one son and granddaughter were royally gypped. Wingman, if he were alive, would also have had an April birthday, but wouldn't have been nearly as gracious as either of them. He loved his birthday and would have expected the birthday drive-by (complete with fire trucks) that have become common during the quarantine. There was also no Easter, no Easter egg hunt with the family, no big Italian Easter meal together.  The only consolation was that the quarantine allowed me to win the coveted family Devilled Egg contest for the first, and probably only time. I made them, I voted, and I won.

The beginning of the pandemic was like a Bill Murray-less Groundhog’s Day. Construction was deemed essential, so every morning I breezed to work on empty streets. Before my boss arrived, I carefully wiped down door handles, light switches and bathroom and kitchen fixtures. And every afternoon I rolled my eyes behind my computer screen when he said he couldn’t understand why I couldn’t find Charmin toilet paper much less any other brand. Speaking of supplies, I became the female MacGyver figuring out where to get them.  The only place selling antibacterial soap and dispensers was on a fitness equipment website. I found a distillery in Pennsylvania making hand sanitizer by the gallon to replace Purell. A veterinary supply website was the only place to buy right-size pumps for the gallon jugs. Schools and parents snagged every web camera in the United States, so I got them directly from China on eBay. If you’re ever having trouble on a scavenger hunt, I’m your gal to find the obscure stuff. Just don’t call me for Charmin.

The Corona Virus made me realize that I could never move to a country like Russia or Venezuela. I don’t  have the patience to wait on lines at grocery stores only to find empty produce bins, meat counters and no cleaning supplies. Six months in, and I break the one-way aisle rule regularly because it’s stupid to walk two aisles to grab something five feet from an end. 

Try walking an 128 pound dog when the new normal included not only other dog walkers, but all those new walkers, runners, bikers, and people with baby strollers trying to escape the four walls of their homes. When the parks closed, they had nowhere else to walk except our normal potty paths. So while he was busy sniffing the ground, my head was up like a prairie dog trying to avoid having my arm pulled out of its socket. We ducked between cars and zig-zagged across streets like Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible. Yep, a real thrill a minute minus the movie cameras and stunt doubles.

I don’t mean to make light of the pandemic. When my mom needed surgery this summer, she had to enter the hospital without any of her five children to accompany her. My next door neighbor, a train conductor, and a police detective who lives a couple of units down both had the Corona Virus and have since recovered. Three of my friends’ mothers were not as fortunate. The funerals could only be attended by immediate family and they still haven’t been able to plan memorial services. Along with them, two friends lost their husbands, and they not only had to go through this troubling time without their best friends, but can’t have the support of friends like I had when Wingman died. And let’s not even talk about the millions of people who lost their jobs.

Yet despite all the inconveniences, it hasn’t been all bad. My son used his catering skills to cook chef-quality dinners from food in the freezer.  I had time to clean out the garage, then cleaned out all the closets...and filled the garage up again. At night, the neighbors would pull chairs out to the curb and we’d have socially distant get togethers. And everyone in my family has stayed healthy.

People are starting to worry about a second wave of the virus this fall. I refuse to buy into more of the Henny Penny “The sky is falling” hysteria.  The only thing I do worry about is how my son is going to homeschool his kids AND work while his wife goes to her in-school teaching job. 

Wait, I stand corrected-I do have one worry. What if there is a second wave and I still can’t find Charmin for my boss?

What's Too Painful To Remember, We Simply Choose To Forget

This marks taking my 6th trip around the sun flying solo.  Six years of having total control of the TV remote. 6 years trying to figure out how to fix a toilet (I still have trouble asking about ballcocks in front of mixed company, even if the term was invented by a Mexican priest-go look it up).  And six years of wondering how the Hell this all happened.

A couple of months ago, I sent all of our old VHS tapes, some of Wingman's band's cassettes, and even old family slides to a company to be preserved.  Some VHS tapes were ruined in Sandy, so there are gaping holes in our family's lives. Like the family picture in "Back To The Future", it's scary and it's sad that some of the memories I have of Wingman are beginning to fade. Fortunately, most of the fading ones are the bad ones.  But in knowing the guy for more that three decades, there are still things that I look back on and smile. 

Wingman loved the Yankees as much as any guy could love a team.  He convinced the film company he worked for to buy season tickets, which got us to plenty of games and landed him some coveted signed pictures of his favorite players.  A little bit of him now lies directly between Don Mattingly and Reggie Jackson in Monument Park. And last year, when Summer Son found the one-of-a-kind Aaron Judge Golden Rookie Card in his Topps card box, I found myself wishing he was around to giggle at the thought of seeing a card that the kid later sold for about what two years of college tuition costs.  Maybe it's better that he wasn't around, because I could see him wanting to own it.

The smell and taste of  Jersey tomatoes will forever be associated with him. He would move a garden hose around the yard every morning, (we didn't have a lawn irrigation system like I have now) to grow a crop of Beefsteak tomatoes, basil and jalapeno peppers. He preferred his tomatoes on a crusty roll with his own homemade pesto, while I liked them on simple white bread with mayo and salt. I think about him with every, runny, squishy, drippy mouthful.

The last song he was trying to learn before he died was Neil Young's "Harvest Moon". He would actually get choked up listening to it, and since he couldn't read music, he would play it over and over trying to learn the chords by listening. Whenever I hear it, I'm reminded of his passion for music. And in the music that I had recorded on a thumb drive, was the only song he ever wrote and sang called "I'm Your Pilot."  The most notable line that still makes me wince is the last one: "You bring me down, down, down..."

Wingman had a terrible fear of heights, which included not only planes (quite ironic considering the title of his one-hit wonder), but included famous landmarks like the Statue of Liberty, buildings, amusement park rides...even ladders to do chores.  Despite that, he painted our two-story house single-handedly and would hang the five-foot wreath I insisted we had to have on the second-floor side every Christmas.  It's all that I can do to drape the same wreath over the side of the deck with bungee cords.

And finally, the end of Toys R Us this summer was the end of another Wingman era.  Toys R Us was his account when he was a film editor in NYC, and he spent months editing the famous "I don't want to grow up, I'm a Toys R Us kid" jingles into commercials to entice kids about the toys they just HAD to have. Toy commercials that, like politics, were targeted to big city kids (Atari, Nintendo, etc.) or kids in the heartlands (games, dolls and action figures). From my seat behind him at the editing table, I recall some of the outtakes that didn't make TV...like Barbie being taken apart by a Star Wars monster, with G.I. Joe drinking a beer and taking a pee with his Kung-fu grip.

So this weekend, I'll be sitting and remembering the good times while watching a Yankee game with the remote planted firmly in one hand and a tomato sandwich in the other.  I'll to go to the Quick Chek Balloon Festival and marvel as a hundred or so hot air balloons ascend into the morning sky. And I'll listen to music that recalls the better times in both of our lives.

Smile An Everlasting Smile. A Smile Can Bring You Near To Me.

 Working at Wrinkle City, I met some pretty fascinating men and women. One of my all-time favorites was a vivacious woman who won two Olympic medals for swimming and hadn’t missed a day in the pool in over five decades. We pitched her to Corporate Marketing to use in our ads for the great independent lifestyle we offered.  They agreed...until the close-up of her very crooked teeth put her out of Marketing medal contention. The only picture used showed her in the pool. At a distance. With her teeth photoshopped to look better.

Having crooked teeth only works if you’re a British actor. Hugh Grant gets away with it. So did Matthew Lewis as the Harry Potter character Neville Longbottom. And even Kiera Knightly doesn’t get any grief from Johnny Depp for her mouth of crowded teeth since he has a snaggletooth of his own.

My childhood dentist use to say that he couldn’t make any money off of my parents since my teeth were so straight. Straight, but soft. The poor old guy shouldn’t have retired because he could’ve made a fortune off of me now. In the past year alone, I had two teeth with childhood silver fillings deteriorate, which led to root canals which led to crowns. I could have gone to Europe for a couple of weeks for that. Or for sure he could have.

Wingman had much better teeth than me, and use to flip out when I came home with dental bills every six months. One year right before Christmas, I broke a prominent almost-front-tooth and the oral surgeon proposed a necessary implant to the tune of $4500. When I told Wingman the cost, I was shocked that he actually endorsed it...until he realized that I was talking about a tooth and not the only thing men associate with implants: breast augmentation. From the bone graft, to the titanium post, to the final tooth screw-in, I had to live with his snide comments that if I had gone for breast implants, no one would have noticed the gaping hole in my mouth.

For the past few years, I’ve noticed that, much like the pool lady at Wrinkle City,  my bottom teeth have started to look like a whiter shade of Stonehenge.  Grinding my teeth from stress may have had something to do with it. After all, Wingman's death and Superstorm Sandy within three months didn’t help. Losing a few jobs through the recession certainly added to that. But my dentist assured me that it’s “natural aging,” and offered a $4000 opportunity to give me back my 1980's smile with clear aligners. If Wingman's company stock had been worth what he/we thought we'd get when it finally sold, I'd have the aligners and probably the implants he envisioned. Instead, I went to Ireland, where I drank, sang and danced without caring what my smile or any other part of me looked like.

Last month, a TV commercial caught my eye while I was making my New Years resolutions. In between vowing to get up to enjoy more sunrises and deciding not to go on any more diets, I made an appointment at a pop-up shop in a local drug store. There, this perky little Millennial bitch who said “Wow, I’ve never had anyone as old as you want to do this” signed me up for aligners. About two weeks later, they arrived in the mail, and for the last three weeks I have lisped my way into my future perfect smile.

My resolutions included more trips which don't include passports, and at least for this year, my smile is my vacation.  But next year don't expect to see any photos of beautiful waterfalls or sunsets or beaches.  Because every picture is going to show nothing but teeth. Mine.

There's So Many Dreams I've Yet To Find

A long time ago, the Platters had a hit with singing "The Great Pretender".  Too bad there's only three syllables in pretender because substituting  "PROCRASTINATOR" fits me so much better. I'm always planning things I want or need to do, and then waiting until the last minute to implement them. I've scammed a lot of people thinking that I've got my act together.

Take for example, a recent chili cookoff. I had a recipe for what I thought would be award winning, but since I was immersed all day watching Hallmark movies, I was late making it. Since I didn't get there until everyone had eaten and voted, I had to drag home what I brought and freeze it. So now I have to eat at least one container every week to be done with it by summer.

Wingman was Type A (totally anal) in our marriage. He could move a manual sprinkler around the yard every hour to achieve a carpet-like lawn.  Mine only got somewhat that way after I installed sprinklers, and only because the sprinklers went off on a timer. His garden was lush. My under-watered tomato plants were an embarrassment even to me.

I'm admittedly horrible at finishing what I've started. I've got a whole closet of yarn and craft materials in one form of completion or another. There are 25 blog entries started that need endings. My passport stands waiting in the file of cruises and trips that intrigue me. And my accountant wants to fire me for always bringing my tax stuff to him late.

So this year, like an old tee shirt my son has that says "the low man sets the bar", I'm going to do some of the many things I dream of doing that don't have hard timelines or deadlines. Things like:

See the sun set.  Pretty easy to do on my way home from work. I can stop by the river and chillax after a tough day.

Watch the sun rise.  This is a little harder because it means I have to get my lazy butt out of bed instead of checking social media. I did it last Sunday-took the dog with me for a long walk as well.  More about that later.

Take rides to towns I've never been to before like Cape May. Smithville. Lancaster.  Nothing that needs a passport. Drop in with a cake or pie or a bottle of wine and see people I only call or text. Visit local food festivals and craft fairs. More crafts? Maybe I'd better just keep driving past those.

Clean out my closet and donate things I don't wear. I can think of more than just a pair of pink jeans that need a new home. In the same respect, I'm going to dress up for no reason. What good was working in retail the last decade if I can't wear those nice things I just had to have? Pink jeans not withstanding.

Try new foods of different ethnicities.  I have Italian down pat, and know my way around grilled meats. But French, Thai, Vietnamese and Indian cuisine?  The worst I can say is I will never eat it again.

Watch documentaries.  I can't say that I'm totally through with Hallmark movies, but really, are there that many good looking widowers out there (with two perfect children) waiting for their ultra-successful single high school sweethearts to come back to their hometown and decide to stay?  The Royal House of Windsor provides the dirt, and Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez makes me realize that all those squeaky-clean single Hallmark guys aren't half-bad after all.

Do random acts of kindness.  Anything as simple as letting a stranger go in front of me at the grocery store or complementing someone who looks frazzled. I bought the cop behind me a cup of coffee at a Dunkin Donuts one Sunday. He pulled me over a couple of minutes later-just to say thanks and I spilled my coffee all over the seat of the car.  Gave a new meaning to warm and fuzzy.

Walk more-by myself or with the dog because both of us can use it.  And remember when I said I took him for a walk to see the sun rise? The boardwalk was a sheet of ice so we had to walk on the grass. We carefully made our way down the ramp UNTIL he got to the grass and lurched because he had to pee.  My feet came out from under me and I landed flat on my back which was not how I intended to watch the sunrise.  I have bruises everywhere except my butt, which I guess isn't as lazy as fat.

So maybe I should think about losing weight. No, that requires the discipline to shop and plan healthy menus. Something that, like Scarlett O'Hara said in Gone With The Wind, follows my procrastination motto:"I will think about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day."