Luck Be a Lady Tonight

It is true that I have been on a losing streak since last summer.  Casino Craps bosses would take the dice away after the number of snake eyes I can throw in a row and send me packing to their competition. It's bad for business to have a loser on the tables.

So what does a person do who has broken the mirror, while walking under a ladder, with a black cat in in her arms wearing an open umbrella hat?

She buys lottery tickets.

Torn Between Two Lovers

I was married to Wingman for 30 years and dated him for another six prior, before I gave him the "marry-me-or-hit-the-highway" ultimatum.  Which didn't leave many other years to date. But I did have a first love. A high school first love who committed suicide last week.

I met him through my brother-they played on the same summer baseball team.  He was a hell of a shortstop-he lettered in high school as a freshman.  His dad died when he was young, so he was raised along with two brothers and a sister by his sweet little Japanese mom.  Being half Asian, his looks were exotic, and with his long shiny black hair, just a little bit dangerous-so different from the Catholic School boys I saw every day.  He was three months younger than me which put him a year behind me in school. Imagine-me a cougar-in-training back then.

Color My World

It's no joke when I say that what Queen Elizabeth in 1992 called her "Annus Horribilis" was nothing compared to what I went through in 2012.  So what if three of her kids separated and/or divorced and one of her daughters-in-law wrote a tell-all book? Big deal that she had a castle fire and had to charge admission at Buckingham Palace to pay for it!  Didn't she still have her husband (pompous, arrogant jerk that he is), a job that's only requirement is to wear pretty party hats and a couple of other castles to escape to?

From July to the middle of October, there were days that I felt pretty good about my life and where it was going.  I had great friends and family who were constantly there for me, my oldest son and daughter-in-law were expecting right around my birthday and I found out that I was going to be a grandmother for the second time this April, complements of son and daughter-in-law number two. Then, like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, my world was picked up, spun around and dropped into uncharted FEMA territory.  Only in my version of Oz, the movie was filmed in reverse-the color went out and everything changed to black and white-heavy on the black.

Grazing in the (Crab)Grass

One of the things that Wingman was the best at was maintaining the yard and especially his pristine lawn.  I mean it, that grass stood at attention when he went outside.  If the NY Yankees' grounds crew had ever done a flyover of our yard, it might have garnered him a new career. I however, chose to be on a need to know basis only-I just needed to know the grass was green while he mulched, de-grubbed, sprayed and spread "stuff'. 

If he wasn't already dead, Superstorm Sandy would have killed him.  Forget that there was three feet of water everywhere inside the house.  Wingman would have had a heart attack seeing the mud that covered the Arborvitae. Lumber, marsh reeds and trash was everywhere.  All the beach grasses were smashed from floating debris.  The tree that sent out shoots that he cursed every spring was uprooted and perched precariously on the deck and roof, preventing us leaving by the back door.  And when the service came to take down that tree, the crane and chipper left deep ruts all over the back yard.  But priorities prevailed. The house needed all of my attention and six months from the day I left, I was back in. I didn't look back.  I also didn't look out the window.  Until last week...

Here She Comes...Miss America

Before last summer, I was someone's Miss America.  Someone chosen as his best of the best.  And, for a brief time, I think I'm safe to say that my sons also thought of me as their Miss America, or at least the best of the peanut-butter-and-jelly-set moms.  Two of them are married now and their wives wear the crown.  My youngest has a girlfriend who is taller, thinner and prettier than I ever was.  Everyone I know is someone's Miss America...but not me anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to go out on a Friday night and headed to a local church carnival.  Walking alone with my snow cone,
I mused about the teenagers mixing and mingling with excited hopes of finding that first love, the young moms and dads taking pictures of their kids on the rides, the senior citizens holding each others arms as they maneuvered over cables and curbs.  It was a raucous smoky crowded night and I was a little depressed being alone.

One Is The Loneliest Number...

Growing up, there were seven people in my family sharing a three bedroom, one bath home.  At college, I lived with three girls in a one-bedroom NYC walk-up.  I shared my first post-college apartment with my best friend, and when she got married, my boyfriend/future husband moved in.  We raised three active sons who for the most part stayed close to the family. As dysfunctional as we all might have been, there was some comfort in having someone around to at least tell you that you were dragging toilet paper on your shoe or had spinach in your teeth.

Three Times a Lady (Or how this blog got started)

It's 18 days short of a year since my IRS status changed from "Married" to "Head of Household". Most of the house is different now-no Yankee games on TV, no dirty dishes in the sink, no vodka bottles hidden in the garage.

My husband of 30 years passed away of a pulmonary embolism; a complication of brain surgery after a long battle with alcoholism. The night he passed, I went to the hospital with a buttered hard roll for him: his healing brain had reverted back to his NYC commuting days when he'd grab a coffee and a roll for his bus ride to his film editing job.