The Other Shoe

       I don’t believe in omens.  I can walk under ladders while a parade of black cats cross my path, if that’s what you want me to.  I can break mirrors all the doo-dah day without a care. In other words, I do not consider myself a superstitious person.  

However. Yet.  Although.  But.  When thing are going too well…I cannot help thinking something is sure to go amiss.  And if you should happen to call my attention to how well they are going, I will likely respond (silently or aloud) with the yiddish incantation poo poo poo, which, loosely translated means don’t give me the evil eye by calling attention to it.  Or, as we say, “Don’t give me a kinehora!” In Italy, it’s called malocchio, the evil eye, and in Turkey it’s nazar, but it all comes down to a belief that calling attention to wonderful things threatens them.  I think it is related to the Greek concept of hubris, in which excessive pride or confidence inevitably leads to a downfall.  There are amulets to ward off the evil eye, but no one has quite figured out how to eradicate the belief within ourselves that if things go too well, it means sometime soon (imminently, dangerously) it will go badly. The worm will turn. The other shoe will drop. Of this, I am an unwilling believer.  

       So, I rescued a dog on Friday.  After a long, seemingly fruitless search, and some sudden twists and turns, I found beautiful Steffi, a 13 pound, 3 year old Maltese (and maybe terrier) dog.  She’s white with touches of pink, and she doesn’t shed, making her “hypoallergenic” and her coat is softer than feathers. I went to see her at the spca. They said that she had been returned from a previous adoption days earlier because she was too shy and was hiding from her new family and wouldn’t eat, so they warned me to approach her cautiously.  But within five minutes, she was reaching her paw to me, and by the end of the day, we were home. She explored the house adorably, and found her “spots,” including next to me, snuggled against me on the sofa.  She did not eat that first day.  But she slept in the little bed I had for her.  The next morning, she ate out of my hand, and by the second day, she let me put the food from my hand to the feeding dish.  She is housebroken and walks beautifully on a leash.  We had a great walk, and she lounges behind me as I write. She is a perfect little dog.  So what could go wrong?  All day, as I took congratulatory phone calls from friends and family for my good luck in finding her, I could feel the self-congratulation slowly curdling into something like a certainty that it couldn’t, could it? Would it last?  

     That’s when my friend, J, stopped by to meet Steffi, and this sweet, gentle, quiet little dog found her voice.  And what a fierce one it was!  She started barking and growling at J as she drove up, and kept at it when J came into the house.  It took a while for her to settle down and it reminded me that this little dog has been through who-knows-what? in her young life.  And now she is ready to protect her new turf, and me.  So we’re going to have to work on it, together.

         No one and nothing is perfect.  And honestly, that’s a relief.  At least I won’t have to wonder when the other shoe will drop because it just did.

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Resistance Is Futile

Resistance for the sake of resisting can be a character flaw, a pointless insistence on independence, a  defiance against taking advice or trusting anyone’s opinion but your own.  (Like when someone recommends a book or streaming series  and it instantly becomes the last one you are going to try. Or, swears the best thing on the menu is lasagna, and you go for the ziti.). But sometimes, resistance is the pause that refreshes: you hit the little arrow in your brain that spins to sharpen your thoughts on a subject, because what you’re presented with begs for you to say “no!” 

       Recently, someone gifted me a marvelous digital convenience: a little device called a bluetooth speaker, about the size of a small clock radio, which can be hooked up to a music app through my mobile phone, so it will act just like a small clock radio. It is sweet.  It is neat.  It is efficient. Yet I resist. And insist on having rude thoughts about how it has just expanded the action from one quick step (turning on a small clock radio) or two steps  (selecting the music I want to hear and lighting up the phonograph/CD player) into four longer steps (getting the app, selecting the music, setting up the little device, sending the music from the app to the device that looks like a small clock radio). 

I have also recently come into possession of a wonderful magical picture frame, which can be plugged in (after a rigorous set-up routine, including submitting my email address, devising a password and username and accepting a validation code — quick, quick, quick before it “times out”– worthy of getting into Fort Knox), and will shunt all the pictures everyone takes with their mobile phones and sends to my Iphone onto said frame instead, which then provides a continuously running slide show of said pictures.  The show is sliding into my peripheral vision as I type this, hard as I try not to notice it.  It supposedly calms down and stops running if the lights are dimmed, but I can’t attest to that because I have to turn the lights on to see if it has calmed down and then it starts up and running again.  I resisted setting it up for almost a month after it became mine.

       Since I am older person, these “improvements” can sometimes be a challenge, not only to my underdeveloped computer instincts and aptitudes, but also to my lifelong commonsense.  Though I am frustrated by friends who barely acknowledge email, or don’t understand how Google can change your life, I cannot help thinking that many of these “conveniences” we are becoming convinced we need are really inconvenient, unnecessary, restrictive and silly.  Like apps that buzz to help you find your other apps.  And doorbell cameras that allow you to watch as doorstep burglars steal your packages, and apps that tell you not to eat carbs. (Soon to become apps that detect and buzz when you cheat and eat carbs?) And apps that check to see if you are having a heart attack (but can’t get you an appointment with the cardiologist for 7 months?).

       Meanwhile, industries rise and fall around such trivialities as these, and we still have not figured out how to remain civil in an uncivil world, or how to treat one another with respect and kindness, unless the treatment gets flagged by an app, dragged into social media and goes viral.  

      I know that we live in an incontrovertibly digital world and there is no going back, and hardly any standing in place, either.  We have to move forward. As a former Star Trek fan, I remember what the Borg said to their conquered enemies, and I believe it: Resistance is Futile. But I also remember that the brave, bald Captain resisted anyway. And so will I continue to resist when it feels right to say “no!”.  

Note to readers. Here’s a new advanced review for my upcoming novel, THREE LEGS IN THE EVENING (John Hunt Publishing, May 2023):

an 16, 2023: Marianne Vincent (Reviewer) | NetGalley  Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. Three Legs In The Evening is the third novel by American author Bette Ann Moskowitz. Some five years after losing her husband Artie to cancer, sixty-eight-year-old Sally Battel has moved to retire. Her successful greeting card shop, Seasoned Greetings is located in Maiden Lane, not far from the World Trade Centre, and post-9/11, the streets are deserted. She dismisses her son’s concerns about her safety, but does wonder about a certain seemingly-abandoned red car, and an absent tax preparer in a nearby office. And she’s not entirely sure she wants to retire. It’s after her best friend Susie’s funeral, at which Sally somehow accidentally falls onto the coffin (no, she did not throw herself in, she was pushed!) and breaks her ankle, that she really has to fight off her children and their well-intentioned interference. They are suddenly freer with advice, as if she’s lost the ability to think for herself……Moskowitz’s style is reminiscent of Anne Tyler’s work, describing ordinary people leading ordinary lives with the odd quirk or funny incident to make them a bit more interesting. Sally’s habit of translating her feelings into greeting card sentiments is amusing and sometimes endearing. This is an entertaining, moving and uplifting tale.

The Complaint Department

My very smart granddaughter observed recently that it is a lot easier to write a poem when you’re sad about something.  Sad, but true. Heartache more easily turns hot tears into molten word to put on the page. 

       As a working writer, I’d add that it is also much easier to write an essay or article about something that upsets or angers you, or that you want to change, or influence the world to change. Writing when you’re happy doesn’t happen as often, because when you’re happy, you’re too busy being to stop and write about it.  You’re skiing, or cooking , or buying new shoes, or standing on the TKTS line, or wandering through MOMA, blissed out on art.  You may even avoid writing.  But when there’s something to complain about, you feel it.  You don’t want to ignore it.  So… then is the time for a sitdown.  Time to parse it out, shout it out, testify and attest.  Time to write.  Writing is a writer’s best way of flexing her power. 

     Writing  gives me a chance to catalog my woes, name things, and by looking at the words on the page, gain a deeper understanding of what I am thinking.  Sometimes I surprise myself by finding revelations, enabled by the simple (and complicated) act of putting it all down.  The verb phrase “unburdening yourself” comes to mind.  Indeed, at least for me,  it feels as though putting things on paper is like a literal weight being lifted off my shoulders. I dislike the word “journaling” but in essence, that’s what it is, using pen and paper to bring thoughts out. Outing thoughts. 

     In that spirit, I want to say that in the past weeks of hunting for a dog to rescue, I have had the most surprising experiences – and not in a good way. After losing my dog, Pete, I was determined to “adopt” or “rescue”(rather than “purchase”) an adult dog who needs what the dog shelter ads call a “forever home” with a “forever family.” I have viewed hundreds of dogs, contacted multiple shelters, and made application after application to adopt.  I have answered searching questions about my living conditions, my intentions, my reasons for wanting a dog, my habits and my age.  I have submitted references and alerted my previous veterinarian to release all requested information to prove I was a responsible pet parent and kept up with all required shots.  I have worried that my own desires would prejudice the people who were matching the dogs with new owners, against me.  Should I admit that I would rather have a male than a female dog?  Should I mention that I don’t want a dog too big for me to lift if I need to, or so small I might trip over him?  Was my age the reason so many shelters never responded?  

   Did you know it is no longer possible to go to a shelter without an appointment, and you can’t get an appointment without making an application for a specific dog you are interested in? There are pictures and brief descriptions of each dog, but after a while you realize you are seeing dogs you have seen many times before.  Matching dogs to owners is not easy, and most of the work is done by volunteers, and because there aren’t enough volunteers to keep things current, often the dogs still pictured on the websites have been adopted.  I discovered that not all the dogs are fully described, and that the euphemisms for a dog that bites include, “he is reactive” and “he has a bit of stranger-danger.”  

       And by writing all this down, I can see that I no longer feel like I am “rescuing” a dog, I feel as though I am auditioning to have a dog rescue me.  The reality of searching for a “forever” dog includes the disappointment of not finding the right pet, and the anxiety about being rejected if I do find him. I’ll keep you posted. If you don’t hear from me, maybe it’s because I am too happy and busy training my new dog.

My Favorite Sport

While most of my family was watching the Giants this weekend, I was indulging in my favorite sport – shopping. ( In this case, online, since it was New Year’s Day, and the brick and mortar stores were closed. ) 

Being a true shopper is different from just shopping.  A true shopper rarely shops out of need. A true shopper is inspired.  She shops because she has a deep, sudden yen for a pair of red booties or a green sweater that won’t let her be.  Or she sees a picture that gives her a bright idea about how to enliven her entire living room with two throw pillows and a lamp. Or because she is depressed and needs some retail therapy.  Or because her favorite store has sent her a ten-dollar bonus for having spent twenty times more than that last time she was there.  Or, because it is Tuesday.  Or because. 

A true shopper has a mythical “perfect game” in mind involving a white whale:  Maybe a jacket or pair of pants with a designer label, multiple markdowns,  the right size, the nervous moment-of-truth try-on, the triumphant result, and the coup de grace, another 20% off at the register.   

A true shopper has memories:  of the old Loehmann’s, which sold very expensive clothing at slightly less expensive prices.  Loehmann’s was the big league of sports shopping, with big league rules: you couldn’t use a credit card and there were no returns.  You had to pay in cash or check only. There were no discounts for a missing button or a broken zipper.  The dressing room had no private cublicles; it was one big room lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and women in all stages of undress, trying to avoid looking at each other, while averting their eyes from their own reflections, too,  until they were safely zipped into whatever it was they were trying on.

And the men?  There were hardly any items for men, besides maybe a nook with belts or wallets a woman might pick up for her man.  

In the old Loehmann’s, there was a line of chairs along the front wall of the store, and on it sat the men who belonged to their women, who, deep in the game, scrolled through the overstuffed racks of tops and bottoms, while they sat and waited, slightly ashamed, reading their newspapers or snoozing.  ( He loved her so much he would sit in front of Loehmann’s and wait for her for hours. Or, He wouldn’t be caught dead sitting in front of Loehmann’s. Or, It was so much pressure having him sitting there, impatiently waiting, that she learned to drive. )

       Far be it from me to assign deep meaning to this trivial pursuit. But, I can’t help thinking how football legitimizes deeply competitive spirits, and makes violent physical contact respectable and even desirable.  And if I were to read into sports shopping, similarly, I might say that I see a yearning, not for merch, but for possibilities, or betterment, or something new.  To hope for.  As if, with a new pair of shoes, you might walk a different path.

Solitude and Quietude

         Last week, in the small hours, I was awakened by a loud noise outside.  It sounded like something had hit the side of the house.  After a time of quiet, and since nothing jutted through the wall or from the ceiling, I went back to sleep.  In the morning, I checked outside, but there was nothing there, and I couldn’t see anything on the roof. 

It got me to thinking, about solitude and quietude.

When I lived in the city, the sound of an airplane was commonplace, since we were in a LaGuardia and JFK flight path.  Traffic, across a playground and a wide greenspace to the street beyond was so audible I could tell the difference between buses and cars.  My children, talking to one another, my husband on the phone, people passing under the window as they walked by.  Sounds were everywhere. And my attention was splayed, reaching here and there.  

         Here and now, solitude has joined the quiet, and both yield sound cameos everywhere, single sounds that claim my attention. I hear the click of the thermostat on the wall outside my office and I get up to check and see if it is set the way I want it to be. The air rushing out of the vents in the kitchen and bathroom, reassures me, as does the ticking of the baseboard heating and the rumble of the furnace in the garage kicking in, that all is well. 

In my solitude, I have focused. I hear everything.  There is momentary scampering over my head, in the attic, but then it stops. I can hear the dishwasher all the way at the other end of the house buzzing along.  I hear an owl calling to me out in the woods.   And a big branch from high above, hits the ground with a thud, while a clunk against the roof is, I know, pine cones or small tree chunks and a bonk with a little echo behind it is a bird, dive bombing into the dining room window. I close the drapes so he won’t see his reflection and try it again and hurt himself.  The gas fireplace ignites with a thook.  The generator, “trying” itself on Wednesday afternoons, hums.  A sudden smoke alarm – is it in the house or on the tv? – shrieks.   

I can differentiate between the sound of the town plow and my own special plowman and  between the banging of bears upending my garbage cans and the 4 a.m. pickup of the trash collectors.  

When I first tuned in, it was to decipher each sound, and to allay my fear that something might be going wrong.  Now, I am reassured that everything is humming along in my world. 

That is the gift that quietude and solitude have given me: knowledge and understanding of my house and surroundings, in a way I have  never known it before.  That world has changed a lot, but this unexpected growth reassures me that I am changing with it, and it is possible to keep on tuning in. And so far my hearing appears to be holding up pretty well.

Looking forward to hearing the new year ring in. Have a happy.

Collections I Didn’t Collect

Whenever I watch the Antiques Roadshow, I feel regret.  I think of the threadbare rug from my parents’ house which I didn’t keep, which, as soon as it was gone, I was sure was a Bokhara, its threadbare condition a sign of provenance rather than shabbiness. I knew I made a mistake selling my gooseneck brass lamp almost instantly, because what if it was a Tiffany?   

Whenever someone comes into the Roadshow with a collection, and the expert surprises her with the one piece that is worth a million, I feel I probably missed my chance. Whether it is napkin rings or miniature ceramic dogs, a feeling of loss lurks.

Once, someone started me off on a salt & pepper shaker collection, I suppose because it made it easy to find a gift for me for every occasion,  and I tried to cooperate, even buying one or two myself, but I lost interest, and it seemed like six salt & pepper shakers was not enough to be a collection, but too many to have in my cupboard, so I eventually re-gifted, lost or broke all but one, which salts and peppers my food adequately.  

M travelled all over the world, and in the early days he brought home souvenir spoons because his mother had a collection of souvenir spoons from Atlantic City and Maine and Quebec. But what do you do with souvenir spoons? Where do you put them?  After a while they got mingled in the silverware drawer with my everydays, and eventually disappeared. Recently I found one with other odds and ends of home décor, including a few napkin rings.  (In later years he brought home souvenirs like chocolate from Switzerland and scotch from Scotland, which we didn’t have to collect, just consume.)

Certain items lend themselves: coins and stamps, of course.  I love owls, but don’t want to collect them, and I just happily gave away the one nutcracker I owned. Elephants with their trunks up, for good luck, is popular with collectors.  My friend, Gen, collected them, and when she died, her daughters sent me two.  They are beautiful, but I have no desire to add to them.  

Still, I always thought it took perseverance and decisiveness to mount a collection, and maybe I didn’t have what it took.  But I am thinking it is more than that.  It is a resistance to amassing things, and this led me to actually break up a set of quarters M had been saving in a hardcover folder with slots for coins minted in certain years.  I pried them out of their little felt nests and used them for a laundromat run.

And at this point, I am not going to change. So, as the song says, I let it go.  

THE WORD OF THE DAY

Vintage. Vintage makes everything better.  

It’s etymology is from the Latin for wine, and originally it referred to when the vines were planted(vin + age), but eventually it also indicated finer than ordinary wine (not vin ordinaire), probably because if a wine’s date of birth is considered notable, it will be considered more desirable and expensive as well.  

When the word spread out and became an adjective you could use to describe fashion or furniture, it was already a positive term. “Vintage” jeans are not only old, ripped, broken in, faded, distressed, maybe second-hand Levi’s, they are something special. 

Vintage can sometimes be imitative of a certain style, in which case it is called retro.  While vintage refers to the age of the item, retro refers to a particular cultural moment (style, period.) Retro is also usually confined to eras just next door to us – styles from back in the 70’s (bell bottom jeans), or the 50’s (poodle skirts)—while vintage can be anything old (or much older) than that, and not from any particular era or point in time. You might say vintage is on its way to antique ( since antique is anything older than 100 years).  

We are more accustomed to seeing the word antique used as a noun, where it refers to a collectible item that has some monetary value. Occasionally it is used as an adjective as well, and there can be a negative slant, then, indicating an outdated belief (“The antiquated notion that the earth was flat…”) whereas vintage has those mostly positive connotations. 

Though I am not an antique, I consider myself vintage.  I may wear retro clothing (maybe without knowing it?)  but I am not a throwback. Still, the cowboy boots I bought in 1998, with the leather stretched over the years to accommodate the bunion on my big right toe, and the scuffs above the heel from years of driving and hitting the brakes, all of that doesn’t make them only retro or only old, it makes them vintage.  In fact, while I’m on this particular roll, I’ll admit that there are vintage tissues in the pockets of my vintage jackets.   

Is vintage just another word for old?  A euphemism?  A dodge or a sidestep?  Is this an occasion for sly self-praise or an author in search of a subject?

Self Help, A Journey

One of the things I like about the language of advertising and marketing is how aspirational it is.  Hopeless becomes hopeplus, you might say.  Especially when it comes to the important things, like shampoo, depilatory, full body deodorant, dental floss.  It is “astonishing,” “inspiring,” “explosive,” how these simple fixes will empower me to have the hair and nails I was meant to have.  And once I have those…how far from perfection?

Getting the outer me all squared away, hair and nails and underarms and teeth up to snuff, inspired me to move on and maximize the inner me. On a recent morning show, an author advertising a new book said if you start the day with 5 minutes of affirmations with your morning coffee, it will change your life.  Wow, I thought.  Right up my alley.  My kind of transformation: big, quick, and easy, like a swipe of the right deodorant.  

But first, just to be sure I didn’t change my life in the wrong direction,  I looked up  this recently-changed author to see what she had changed from…to, and learned she was an expert at  something called “self talk.”  I was pretty sure I knew what “self-talk” meant, but just to be sure, I Googled that, too.  As I suspected, “self-talk” means talking to yourself.  Did you know, there is more than one type of self-talk?  You can talk yourself down, or instruct yourself, or talk yourself up. (It is never good to talk yourself down, by the way.) And, of course, talking yourself up, by another name, is affirmation.  

So now, with my definitions firmly in place, I set about my self-affirming five minutes, giant mug of black coffee in hand.  I visualized it first: one sip, one affirmation, another sip, another affirmation.  It was going to be astonishing, maybe even explosive.  I began: 

I am a good person.   Sip.  It is better to write a poem than vacuum the rug.  Sip.  It was kind of me not to say ugh yesterday about ______‘s haircut.  Sip.

 But then, crazy thing, I went blank. I couldn’t come up with the next positive thing to say about myself.  Finally, with the clock ticking,  I had to Google “affirmations.” There were multiple listings and tons of short self-praising statements.  I borrowed one: “I am calm and relaxed in all situations” (changing the words to “serene” and “collected” so I didn’t feel like a plagiarist.) But then my rational mind stopped me and said, “No, you’re not, you’re a nervous wreck in most situations,”  so I had to start the clock all over again.   I am a good person. Sip. I am not a plagiarist. Sip. Poem…rug. Sip.  Haircut…ugh. Sip. Then, another blank, and I had to go back to the Google list.  This time I borrowed I love every part of me, but my rational mind stepped in again, because frankly, I don’t like my elbows. (Which was all right, because it yielded I am honest.) 

All told, it took me about half an hour to complete my five minutes, and by then my coffee was cold, and I did not feel empowered, I felt sweaty and distraught.   

 I’m going to try again tomorrow.  Or maybe I will just work on selecting the perfect moisturizer for my dried out winter skin, to empower my essential oils.

MISSING THE BOAT

People say, in their reach for wisdom, that in life everything is luck.  Or everything is karma.  Or everything is balance.  But for today, I’m going to say it’s timing. 

Everything in life is timing.  And we tend to forget when the timing was right in our lives, don’t we? We only remember when it was not.  

I was a free spirit way too early for the Woodstock/Bethel concert.  If it had been in 1962, who knows what would have happened, where I would be now?  But no, by 1969 I had a three year old and a one year old, and my thoughts about traffic and mud had changed radically. Living in Woodstock has not made me feel redeemed, either. Rather, it is a constant reminder.  Did I miss the boat or dodge a bullet?  Of that I’m not sure.

Have you ever had the feeling you came into a situation just a bit too late?  If you had gotten there a month earlier, before the wunderkind showed up, you would have won a spot on the team? You would have rented the sunnier apartment you wanted first before someone else got it? When I joined a faculty and eventually decided to apply for tenure, the (unspoken) affirmative hiring preferences had passed me by.  By then the Department had so many women and so many Jewish people, that they were on to other minorities. Was my right time the wrong time?  

Have you ever felt that you waited too long to do something you always meant to do?  By the time I got around to passing on all my cooking secrets and favorite recipes, my kids had moved on from me and established their own versions or their own favorites.  I always find coupons the day after they expire and I remember to use the avocado one day past its eatability.

And have you ever felt that your understanding of something comes way after the event itself happened?  

I recently came across an artifact from the past, an award once given to me that, at the time,  I blew off. I never realized the importance of it, until it disappeared in the rear view mirror and was left behind. Now, so much time has elapsed between the event and the realization, that it is no longer in my power to thank the people who honored me, or to invite my loved ones to the awards ceremony (which I didn’t do!) or to feel the joy and pleasure in my own accomplishment.  I hadn’t wanted to make a big deal out of it at the time.  

So, this, it turns out, is not quite about time, it is about having the courage to live fully, in whatever moment in time we are in. 

I think there is more to be said about this.  Do you have anything to add?

USELESS BUT IMPORTANT MOVES

I found a piece of handwritten music  the other day on my walk.  It was lying in the grass, and it was wet with dew, but still in one piece.  The notes were  round and chubby, like the first notes I ever drew on a piece of sheet music paper when I was fourteen, before I learned that  little slashes on or above or below the staff lines were how real musicians wrote music.   (Now, who knows how annotation occurs?)  The song was “Jeannine,” its ink slightly runny but still legible.   I lifted the sheet tenderly and carried it home.   Well, now what?  If I took it inside to let it dry, I would eventually throw it in the trash, because really, what was I going to do with the handwritten sheet music to an old or new song titled “Jeannine?” Yet I felt the unusual find had some meaning, and to honor it, I gently rolled the sheet into a scroll and inserted it into a hollow in the large tree stump in my yard.  It was vaguely stealthy, like tossing  an errant bit of trash where it shouldn’t go, but it was also vaguely ceremonial, because paper and tree are kin, pulp to pulp. I have resisted going back to see if it is still there.

I agreed to be interviewed for a film about love, by a total stranger who contacted me via email in the midst of the pandemic. I opened my door to a film crew and spent a chaotic and surreal Sunday with disrupted living room, cameras and sound equipment everywhere, laying out a full lunch for them and sending the producer off with a songbook from my collection.  That was two years ago, and I have not heard from the producer yet. It was important because I was willing to do it, because it was about love, and because I didn’t care about  the outcome right from the get-go.  It remains one of my favorite useless moves.

And just yesterday I liberated the juice from a whole bag of clementines which I had failed to eat in the record time I needed to, so they wouldn’t spoil. It involved finding the  juicer among the many small appliances I never use.  I had to wash it to use it, and then wash it again. The effort yielded about a cup of juice.  I’m not a juice drinker, so I did it knowing how unlikely it would be for me to drink it.  But it was important because it seemed wasteful not to do something for the clementines which I had taken into my kitchen despite how many of them there were, and how it was only me. Maybe I will add vodka and someone will drink it on Thanksgiving day.  Maybe I will go outside and pour it into the hollow of the tree trunk outside in my yard. 

From love to rotting fruit.  Some useless moves are big and some are small, but I am a big believer that it is important to keep moving, so I do. 

Happy Thanksgiving, dear readers.