The Late Arrival

  After fourteen months of working from home, I’m convinced that the biggest perk is the view.   My “office” is situated on a hill, so I can see everything and everyone,  but they can’t see me see them . Remember Gladys Kravits, the nosy neighbor on Bewitched who made it her business to surveil everything that everyone was doing from her front window? Thanks to COVID and working from home, I am Gladys Kravitz now. As the Neighborhood Gladys, I’ve seen things. Things I would’ve missed on my way hurrying out the door in a game of beat the clock. Things I would’ve missed at the office. Like, The Squirrel Community. Yeah, they’re all adorable, but the let me tell you: the Squirrel Community is rife with inequity and bullying. Ever hear a squirrel growl? I have. It happened during that little chase game you might’ve seen and liltingly laughed at.   But it’s no game, it is WAR. Bully Squirrel (that’s what I call him) chases and growls at little guys daily. He ...

Almost every tchotchke in my house has a story. Here is one of those tchotckes and this is its story. We were out shopping in a pseudo-fancy store selecting fancy cheeses, meats, crackers and fruit for a New Year's charcuterie board. I grabbed some kind of goat cheese in the round and clumsily bumped the one next to it. It rolled and rolled. I laughed and a told my daughter to catch it before it got too far away, even as a another customer nearly crossed its path. I kept laughing as my eyes met with his. His gaze had an icy, somber and hostile demeanor that told me I, nor my daughter didn't belong at the pseudo-fancy discount store. I steeled myself and kept laughing almost out of spite as much as I laughed at the site of my kid racing the cheese wheel. She caught it and returned it to its place. That was 2016. A little over a month after the election. My daughter knew something was off, so realizing she'd follow my lead, I suppressed my eye-roll and shrugged...

And there we were, traveling a private, winding road up through a mountain forest. At times, the car was at a 70 degree angle as we whizzed along at 80MPH. I sat buckled in, tense and frustrated at my dad's reckless driving and at myself for taking a first-time road trip with him and my step-mom to his birthplace. This Milwaukee born and raised girl was now in Alabama. Rural Alabama. For the first time. Now before we began the journey on the endless upward winding road, I was scoping out the little southern town's idea of hotels. Since there wasn't a diamond star rated hotel within the vicinity, I decided the motel with a blinking neon VACANCY sign would have to suffice. I'll take it! It'd be enough for me to retire on my own to someplace solitary after meeting this side of the family, giving hugs and recognizing traces of myself and my dad in their faces. After endless, winding and climbing, the car slowed, entered a thicket and there it was, my aunt...

At a sneeze away from fifty, I’ve been thinking about my teen daughter muddling through college or career, relationships, student debt and just figuring out who she is. She’s not too far off from nineteen -- the age I was when my mom died. I remember having to discover so much -- too much -- through bumps on the head instead of through her guidance. Now, I figure if can tee my daughter up to be okay by shuffling in all of life’s instructions in the next couple years, AND guidance to learn to be at peace when I’m gone, I will have done my job. We talk about how although I may, but do not plan to make an early exit, there is that reality. The cool thing thing is that the more she grows in her faith, the more she understands that no one’s spirit ever dies. That while we do miss the person’s “container” for awhile, we will eventually be reunited with their spirit. She gets it. And I feel good about that. Except she’s a little zealous in her comfort sometimes. Like, she’s g...

Even though my ears couldn't pick up the buzz, I assume in Bug World the panicked hornet's buzzing thundered like a storm as he hovered at a window trying to escape. I, on the other hand, was soaking in the sun while waiting for my friend to arrive for a an all-too rare lunch. She arrived and we hugged. It'd been way too long since we had gotten together. She settled in and soon noticed the panicky hornet buzzing at our floor length window. I saw a look in her eye. Leave him alone and he'll leave us alone  I advised. I can now confess this was an untruth, as a beekeeper friend once said honeybees will only sting if provoked. Yellow-jackets and hornets, on the other hand... We continued chatting unbothered. Until our frustrated hornet friend hovered and lit upon my index finger, and then flitted over to my friend's shoulder. She jumped up and I was like Oooooh...you done messed with the wrong person. Next thing, the hornet's on the gro...

Taking a twist today on Dickens' classic A Christmas Carol : I am legally blind. If anything is to be taken from this story, the reader must understand that. Rochelle, have a seat over here. Now what kind of contacts do you wear? I'm prepared for an overdue visit to the optometrist and have brought the boxes for my extended wear contacts with me. I take them out of my purse and proudly hand them to the optician. She sees the prescription, her eyes widen and she scribbles something down. Do you have your glasses with you, because you'll need to take contacts out of your eyes now. Dangit. I left my glasses at home. The glasses I should've brought with me. I take out my contacts anyway and prepare myself for the little puff of air in each eye...with full expectation of putting my contacts back in once it's over. To my surprise, the optician orders: Have a seat over there and the doctor will be right out. Uh...without my contacts? And, over where ? A...

Dig if you will the picture: On a ordinary Saturday, kids show up at high school detention to pay penance for any number of infractions. They're all there: the Jocks, the Stoners, the Brains, the Perpetual Outsider and even the embittered detention monitor. A poisonous explosion blankets the town or the world, and our kids are now on lock down. The explosion didn't cause deaths, but it left multitudes of Undead ravenously hungry for the living. It's The Walking Dead meets Breakfast Club. Actually, it's  Freakish , a series on which my daughter was binge-watching over Christmas Break. Because I wanted to be the cool mom, I watched it with her. " A group of high schoolers struggles against predatory mutants who have taken over their town after a chemical plant meltdown. " It was a predictable, corny plot: Undead people crazily run in stopmotion and feast on the living -- of course, in between the survivors' teen romance, angst and anxiety. Just ...

I’m on the sidewalk in front of our post-World War II salt box, stretching for the three-times-a-week nightly run. The steep slope to the east makes it easier to jog the two blocks toward the busy street, despite the neighbor kids’ toys habitually left in the middle of block two’s sidewalk. I take off at a fast-walk, cross the street and begin a quick jog. Despite the custom playlist beating in my head, I hear each foot fall on the pavement in rhythm. My shoulders open, I feel taller, healthier…and free. Fatigue is a phantom and I may as well be flying the 3.75 mile route instead of running it. A voice-over murmurs There’s no way you can get back into rhythm without an asthma attack or cardiac arrest. It’s been four years and forty-five pounds ago since you last ran. The voice-over isn’t lying: I am heavier – way heavier – than the long ago running days But I persist: one foot, then the other. Slow, growing faster and faster with each step. It feels natural. I begin ...

I’m not taking the easy way out today. Easy would be ranting about how my post from last year at this time was about a mass murder and this year, this week is only a week after another mass murder, and today is the day that legislation controlling firearms was voted down even as funerals are being held for people killed in the latest mass murder. At this point, Easy would force me into a corner, curled up in the fetal position while sucking my thumb. Instead, I’ll tackle more palatable topics because there's just too much insanity right now and I'm just unable to can with Easy . Thank you, Awesomely Luvvie for creating the mug we all need at one time or another. What's Easier than Easy? Things like... Where Did My Eyebrows Go and When Did They Leave? No really. I used to have eyebrows. Like, on each side of my face. Sometimes they’d convene in the middle, conversating and strategizing ways for them to be the best, most efficient unibrow they...

Now look right here, I said, touching the space between my brows. Picking up the t-shaped millimeter ruler, I looked directly into the eyes of my patient and measured. The t-shaped millimeter ruler had a name, but I still don't know the technical name for it even twenty-some-odd years later. It was a tool used by opticians like me way back in the day who worked at optical stores. The place I worked was a franchised shop in the neighborhood mall. Optician training was trial by fire, but within three years, I learned the difference between progressive lenses and bi-focals; the difference between base curves and diameters; I knew how to UV coat an unfinished lens, set it into the chuck, run the edger and rotate the lenses into the frame according to an axis dependent upon the patient's astigmatism. Impressed yet? Of course, there were other things I learned too, unrelated to the fine art of Opticianing. (And no, that is not a technical term. I ju...

After leaving my job back in June, my bank account has now gone Ryan Gosling on me. Like any red-blooded American woman, I can't resist Ryan Gosling, so I dove in. Understand, the last time I applied for a job was fifteen years ago. FIFTEEN. It was simple back then. I'd show up with a resume and a starchy blue suit, scribble in forms with a fancy pen, sign the application and leave. There'd either be an interview call a couple days later or a thanks-but-no-thanks letter in the mail. It was simple. But online applications are icy cold as a Wisconsin winter and as frustrating as driving through a snowstorm in rush hour. First, I searched. Then I refined the search by city, then I further refined by miles away from the city that I just refined. Then, I searched by industry and then refined the industry by sub-industry. How refined of me. After an hour, I finally found the position and description. Press Here to Apply! Yay! I thought, Techn...

There were no recipes. No measuring spoons. Just a mish-mash of ingredients that went in the stuff. We used our senses: did the veggie pile look like another celery stalk should be added; did the dressing feel too mushy when you stirred it; could the sweet potato pie use a little more vanilla when you tasted it? The heat, the stirring, the tastes of my childhood Thanksgiving followed me into adulthood. And then I got married. Of all the things people tell you about marriage, the thing they don't tell you is about Thanksgiving -- or more specifically -- Pumpkin Pie v Sweet Potato Pie. My husband and I can handle the black/white thing. We can handle the financial thing. We can even handle the division of labor thing. But Pumpkin Pie v Sweet Potato Pie? That's another matter entirely. Our first Thanksgiving, we found ourselves in the midst of an escalating war of the pies. Him: Um...why don't you have pumpkin pie written down on the Thanksgiving menu? We always ...

One the way to school this morning, my daughter asked What's with you wanting stay in pajamas all the time? She had a point. At that very moment, in the car, in public I was in my pajama uniform: standard t-shirt layered with a standard blue sweatshirt, my husband's standard blue sweatpants and baseball cap. Comfort, I told her confidently. I like being comfortable. Besides, who's gonna see me? I'm only dropping you off and heading back home . Thing is, I had heard about insanely low gas prices at a station I always pass on the way home. The car was nearing a quarter of a tank, so I stopped to fill up when I heard... GOOD MORNING! I flipped around to see a TELEVISION REPORTER and CAMERA MAN. They wanted to talk with me ON THE AIR about the cheap gas I was innocently buying while I was in my PAJAMA UNIFORM looking like this: And mind you, it wasn't just a television reporter and camera man but a reporter with whom I had been on television back in t...

This marks the 6th day of my participation in NaBloPoMo - or National Blog Posting Month. What it means is that I, along with thousands of other bloggers, are posting something EVERY DAY in November. It's no small task and, frankly, my brain is a little bit tweaked. So what helps when a brain is tweaked? TELEVISION does. And that's what I'm posting about today. ******************** There’s something about the solitude of home when everyone, including the dog, is asleep. That's when the dark sky brings a peculiar comfort as it settles on everything it touches. So tonight, I’ll cocoon myself in a plush blanket with laptop or cell phone in reach and channel surf until sleep arrives. Now that I think about it, I’ve always been a late-night loner who kept close company with TV. Especially during high school, that whole innocent time before boyfriends that never should have been boyfriends, two drinks over what should have been drunk, marriage, babies and pet...

Hey, I know it’s summer and everything, but it’s getting late. Bedtime, kiddo. Georgia and I were watching Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs . She had seen it before, so it wasn’t like she was missing out. We said bedtime prayers, and I kissed her goodnight. The movie had sucked me in by that time and I wanted to know how everything would get sewed up in a tidy bow, so I went back to watching. It didn’t disappoint. I was entertained and nearly clapped as the credits rolled. The next morning, I told Georgia what a clever movie it was. You watched the rest of it? Seriously, mom? Now I felt stupid. Well, yeah. I got hooked and wanted to see how it ended. She and Jamie exchanged looks. Um, mom...you saw that movie already. At the movie theater. Don’t you remember? Listen, my brain’s memory chip has been deleting a ton of low-priority information lately. But an entire movie? Like, a swath of time and place that I completely blanked out on? Between you and me, I still contend ...