Alice

Our neighbor of 45 years—and Jasper’s beloved babysitter—died today.

Gary and I watched with horror from our kitchen window. The distraught father shouting on his cell phone and clutching his baby outside—he must have discovered her body by looking in her front window when she didn’t answer the door to customarily care for his child on Monday—the ambulance that arrived and the attendants who rushed into the home but then twenty minutes later, still no one came out—and I kept telling Gary, “maybe she’s okay, maybe they’re staying inside because they’re giving her oxygen..”

But then the police car pulled up.

And an officer went into the house and didn’t come out for another half hour.

“She must have passed sometime over the weekend,” we overheard the policeman say. 

“She was 75,” he said to another neighbor.

Funny, 75 doesn’t sound that old anymore.

Anyway, hug the people you love. Today was a cruel reminder how everything can change in an instant.

Happy anniversary

 

Gary and I are married fifty one years today.

Yeah, I know, how is that possible when we don’t even remotely look like we’re fifty? 

Har har.

Here’s my post from last year, prepared with love on our 50th.  What a long strange trip it’s been—hey, this morning we even got congratulations from a Talking Head.

We got married at eighteen and much to the disbelief of everyone who attended our wedding, I wasn’t pregnant.

Married at eighteen.

WHO DOES THAT?

Whose parents let them do that?

I’m always flirting with the idea of writing a memoir. A lot of it isn’t pretty but oh well, at least it’s entertaining.

Especially if you like watching burning buildings.

Some of the knuckleheaded stuff Gary and I did over the years would have ended even the stablest of marriages but we’re Exhibits A-Z of whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger.

Between the two of us, we’ve covered every twelve step program imaginable.  If it was illegal or batshit crazy, we were first in line.

But despite our best efforts to destroy ourselves and each other, we survived. Gary is my best friend, my love, my rock.  He makes me laugh every day and I doubt I could live with anyone else.  Besides, who would ever feed me like that?  His cooking, always five star gourmet, has reached extraordinary new levels since our retirement.  Not that I care about food or anything.  

Much.

Most importantly, though, he’s an incredible father. I don’t have enough hours to go there but all you have to do is observe and speak to our kids.  They’re pretty fucking special.

And woo hoo, now we can add being quarantined together for the past three years and not killing each other to our list of accomplishments.  Besides the kids, I think it’s #2 on our greatest hits list.

Oh, we go out, we travel, but we limit what we do because Covid is still around and people over sixty-five with wonky hearts and such have to be, um, cautious. Okay, try terrified. But we’re reclusive homebodies anyway, which really sounds funny coming from 2023 Robin. 1973 Robin would not have believed it, she was the one out every night dancing on the table wearing the lampshade and not much else while 1973 Gary was busy breaking the most Jello shots and bong hits by a human record.

Ah, well.  Passages.  

Getting older is weird and to quote George Martin, it sure isn’t for sissies.

The problem is, when you do get older, you realize not only are you suddenly invisible and irrelevant, there’s a daily onslaught of change and death and destruction in a world you no longer understand so guess what, you can’t avoid becoming a sissy.

Haha, well, not Gary.  He’s gonna be the cranky old coot screaming at you to get off his lawn.  He’s still fearless and thinks he’s nineteen.

I’m the one whimpering and hiding from the UPS guy knocking on the door.

“But Gary, I read on the Citizens App there’s a maniac delivery guy impersonator in the neighborhood preying on seniors…”

“Oh my god, Rob, go breathe in a paper bag. Seniors?  I don’t see no fucking seniors!”  

He laughs.

Truth: We still have a mummified package of brown paper lunch bags from when the kids were little that Gary loves breaking out when he tells me to calm down, which is often and when I want to kill him the most but I have been known to use the damn bags because yeah yeah I do hyperventilate when I’m upset sometimes maybe.

What can I say, we’re the yin to each other’s yang.

Last year I wrote a book addressing fear of change and loss and getting older called The Crazy House but I just changed the title to Leaving Candyland and I still can’t decide what to do with it but that’s a story for another post.  The new title has me stoked because it says it all.

Anyway…

Fifty fucking years.  Man.  I still can’t believe it.  

We should have some cake or something.

Yay us.

Me vs The Cabbage Part II

Me since yesterday, after learning my novel is being considered for publication along with four other writers, with seemingly my biggest competition a book about a talking cabbage. 

I sense I’m going to have to rewrite my epitaph 😂

Me vs A Talking Cabbage

 

 

That feeling when you learn your new novel is still in contention by visiting your wishlist publisher’s website and seeing a line taken straight from your query on their latest news page.

“From a former Navy pilot’s high flying memoir, to tales of a wandering Irishman imbued with a hint of Mark Twain; from the sublimely plausible story of a man and his talking cabbage, to a humorous look at navigating inevitable change, plus a mystery that confronts the issues of crime and homelessness and the importance of friendship—our inbox overflows. It’s likely one of these will round out our 2024 season.”

I’m the “humorous look at navigating inevitable change” though I probably didn’t have to tell you that again.

Oh my god. I’m old, I’m retired, and I can’t handle rejection. Why why why am I putting myself through this?

Because you just know I’m gonna lose out to that talking cabbage 😂😂😂

The Sunday before Super Bowl

Welp, it’s the Sunday a week before the Super Bowl, which means there’s absolutely nothing on television so I’m watching pre-olympic figure skating with the sound off, pretending I’m the one picking the music for every skater.

Having that job has been my fantasy ever since I saw someone skating to Great Gig in the Sky thirty years ago and thought to myself, “This is so beautiful, why doesn’t everyone do this?” instead of the hokey Broadway tunes  or bland elevator music classical they usually skate to. Watching a beautiful woman sensually move to Pink Floyd was a whole new level of art.

So yeah, that’s what I did today, and my husband obliged me by playing the music I wanted while I watched tv.

Right now Nathan Chen doesn’t know it, but he’s skating to Theme from Local Hero by Mark Knopfler.

I’m doing it this way from now on, it was fantastic and bonus points, I didn’t have to listen to Johnny Weir and Tara Lipinski or hear any more music from CATS.

Actually, other than sports and the Food Network, I am not watching television at all. I’m having such anxiety over Donald Trump, I’m making myself sick.

WHY THE ACTUAL FUCK IS HE STILL HERE?

Sigh.

In other news, my new novel, Leaving Candyland, is still out in submission land. I remain hopeful, which is unlike me :).  I just think it’s a sweet book that has a happy ending and a moral — change comes with aging and it doesn’t have to be negative, in fact, as I’m finding out daily in retirement, it’s pretty cool.

I dunno, I think I am going to get an acceptance email any day now.

Any dayyyyyyy…

Probably the most important thing I’ve learned in *old* age is that I now accept I can’t control anything that happens…the only thing I can control is my reaction.  I admit to saying it to myself every time I get sad, like when I remember the kids live thousands of miles away.

I dunno, lately I have been realizing that Gary and I aren’t going to be around forever. It’s sobering to know that every day is a gift now and we can’t take anything for granted. Even if a miracle occurs, we have 20 more years tops, but let’s face it, Gary smokes and I have congestive heart failure. We’re going to be very lucky to have ten more healthy years.

Very, very lucky.

I never felt old before, but Gary’s 70th birthday somehow changed everything, and it’s a real struggle not to be anxious.

So I write.  I write and I write and I write. And I try to avoid catastrophic thinking.

But it’s hard.

I know the pandemic changed me, too.  I still can’t believe it happened and you know what, I was gonna talk about that but it would be breaking my other new rule, which is don’t visit the past or the future, stay firmly in the present. 

So yeah, I’m writing another new novel and a short story because I got a crazy idea and it’s fun so all good.

I just wish spring would get here but hey hey it’s just five weeks until daylight saving time!

I’m rambling, I just wanted to post something here and not Facebook where I’m too lazy to reply to comments today 😂

Anyway, this is actually going to be an exciting week for my son. I will pop by on Wednesday with some news.

Peace and love.

Oh my god!

I have an unbelievable story, so insane I can only post it here because I am afraid people on Facebook will roll their eyes and think I am either lying or crazy or worse, not really care…I mean, it’s not something major, but it’s a nutty coincidence or ESP moment I had that’s blowing my mind.

From around 1982-1992 or so, I worked with a woman named Ellen Hutton I really liked—we were both paralegals who didn’t fit the stereotype—we loved rock music and getting wasted and we were total foodies. In other words, we were wild women in a very conservative atmosphere.

Back then, I would occasionally bring the kids to the office when they were little, and four year old Eric had quite the crush on Ellen, who was very pretty. He called her “Madonna” because even at age four, Eric was obsessed with both music and beautiful women. At the time, Ellen wore her hair curly with a headband just like Madonna.

One Sunday morning, I met Ellen for brunch at Marathon Grill at 19th and Spruce and took Eric with me because he begged me to let him tag along and have breakfast with “Madonna.” 

He sat there silently and blushed all googly eyed the entire time.

I haven’t thought about that episode in thirty-five years. I even wrote a hundred page speech for Eric’s wedding that included similar stories like his crush on his large breasted babysitter but forgot about the Ellen/Madonna story.

Until today.

Let me preface this story by letting you know that Ellen and I are friends on Facebook but we don’t interact and she rarely posts—with my 3700 friends she’s never in my timeline anyway—and we lost touch thirty years ago when she took another job, but I do know she’s married and lives in downtown Philly. In looking at her posts, she is definitely still cool.

But I digress.

So here’s what happened.

This morning I woke up with Eric’s new song in my head. It’s one of the world’s poorest kept secrets that Eric has a new record coming out this year and I know I’m his mother, but this music is mind blowing and I think it’s going to be huge. I can’t get the music out of my head, it’s very catchy, with amazing lyrics.

So yeah, I woke up singing the first single, which is coming out in two weeks. And then I got a little thrill realizing our local college radio station will play it. The last time Eric had a single in regular rotation on the radio a few years ago, Gary and I heard from all kinds of people from our past who heard it, too, everyone from former co-workers to our former pot dealer. It was a lot of fun.

So that’s when out of nowhere as I am getting out of bed, the Ellen/Madonna story popped into my head because out of all my former coworkers in fifty years of working, she was a favorite and one of the few I even remember and I know it’s weird and probably obnoxious but I hoped she would hear Eric’s song. I would love to meet up with her again and have dinner.

Anyway, I went downstairs, poured myself a cup of coffee, and picked up my phone. As I took my first sip, I scrolled down my Facebook timeline and saw a post which I read right away based just on the photo but when I saw who posted it and read the words I almost died.

In fact, I read it like eight times, in total disbelief. How I didn’t spit out my coffee, I have no idea.

So yeah, that’s my story for today.  Out of nowhere—Ellen Hutton and Madonna twice in one day. I’m still shocked and shaking my head. The coincidence of waking up thinking about them and seeing Ellen’s post today is NUTZ.

Oprah said when stuff like that happens, it’s God letting you know he exists. Well then God, if you’re listening, please have Donald Trump arrested today and let him die in jail tomorrow.

Also, I would appreciate it if Eric’s new record would soar to number one on the Billboard charts though I think he’s pretty solid to get there regardless, his record is that brilliant. 

You heard it here first.