It was one of those work days when I felt especially lousy about being in such a dreary work environment. The receptionist put a call through, announcing “Donald Trump.” The first thing he said was, “Sh-h-h, don’t say anything …,”
Do you have a friend who makes everything a memorable enjoyment? Their zest for life is so passionate they find its magic in even the mundane.
Maybe it’s driving past a 
historical marker you always took for granted; watching a movie with special effects or simply how interesting its location is; a picnic day’s weather, touring a museum you’ve passed unnoticed, or luncheoning in an out-the-way eatery that has a story you’ve never heard. What ever they do, this friend finds something special in everyday life and they bring you into their special world. I was blessed with such a friend.
In my last days of working in New York I’d taken a job that turned out to be, for lack of a better word, a miserable environment. It was in a large upstairs room full of women in various cubicles, twenty or more, with one, in particular, enjoying unmerited mastery over all the rest. (She ‘got along well’ with the boss, they say.)
Our offices were in a nice, new building with windows lining all of the walls. Donald Trump was a prominent local figure whose name was always in the New York news, he being just as widespread in local news then as he is in the rest of the world now.
My friend, an entrepreneur by profession and in-between incomes, drove a limousine at the time, which is also a common sight in New York. He drove a big, stretch, black one with tinted windows, a full bar and all the trimmings. “Hann” was a lifelong New York Irishman with a unique flare for appreciating all of the specialness in life.
Work this one morning was one of those days where I felt especially lousy about just being in such a dreary environment. Then the receptionist put a call through, announcing 
“Donald Trump” was on the phone for me. I took the call and my friend said, “Sh-h-h, don’t say anything …,” as he proceeded to describe his plan for taking me to lunch. Knowing how women are, he had me look out the window periodically until I saw him arrive in the parking lot below. By then word of my call had traveled around the room.
My friend’s black, stretch limo with its tinted windows pulled up outside, taking four or five spaces in the adjoining lot. Driving and dressed in his best Brooks Brothers business garb, Hann exited the driver’s side and withdrew an overflowing 
bouquet of two dozen bright red roses. He proceeded to the back door, opened it and stood guard waiting for me to take a seat inside.
By then the building must’ve tilted with the weight of all of the women gathering at 
windows. I glided downstairs and, arriving at the limo’s back door, sat graciously inside as Hann handed me the lap-full of red roses. He returned to his place in the driver’s seat and off we ever-so-regally drove.
We went to the Dairy Queen around the block and sat outside eating hot dogs for lunch. Mine had mustard and onion. I think I ate two. The stark contrast of whisking me away from work as he did to eat DQ hot dogs in the back of a stretch limo with a huge bouquet of red roses strewn across my lap was the ultimate finding of magic in the mundane.
[In memory of a remarkable entrepreneur, Thomas Francis Hannon, creator of the “bite size” snack food market.]
I cannot go to sleep. My dog doesn’t know if it’s wake-up or go-to-bed time. She runs out to cold-stare me when she thinks she’s heard food, then at regular intervals to sniff my lap in case I snuck something. I should be so alert.
So I checked-out Reader Suggestion Tags to get to thinking about what to write and the wheels began to ever so slowly churn. News flash. ‘DIY’ is no easier to think through than it is to do, especially if you don’t do much DIY.
bread and homemade pies, those I do by myself. Maybe I’ve hit on something. Now what do I do with it. My cognitive mind is not keeping up with this task.
My poor dog doesn’t know which end is up: Whether it’s wake-up time or go-to-bed time so she keeps jumping from her sleep to cold-stare me every time she thinks she hears a crunch or the rattle of a food wrapper. Every once in a while she gets up just to sniff my lap for crumbs, in case I snuck something while she napped. I should be so alert.
this keister down? Hey [light bulb moment]! That sounds like a song. I could DIY writing a ‘put my keister down’ song. I think that verges on plagiarism. Later. Maybe.
Pop some popcorn, pour a soft drink and click.
Every office window, every vehicle, every home, had an American flag on display. Skyscrapers draped flags from rooftops and cars and trucks tethered them flapping in the winds of roads and interstates. People were nicer to one another. Everyone was an American.
water” I’m often tempted to refer to that as a “mistake” of judgment, but in truth it wasn’t. It was the experience of a rural young lady’s lifetime and I’m grateful for it.
Once you are a New Yorker that sense of being never leaves you. You feel like you have this special inside track into the rest of the world. You were inundated with people-in-the-know and had a firsthand seat to renown events shaping our world. You forever view yourself as an integral part of all that has and does take place there.
news for us became of the plane that was being steered back toward Washington D.C. The flight that passengers thwarted in a Pennsylvania field.
pamphlets posted two or three thick across massive New York fronts lining its streets. There was scene after scene of them, many handwritten spur-of-the-moment. It was hard to fathom possible so many loved ones could be missing and even harder to fathom those who’d jumped from the Towers to escape its intense heat. It made one’s heart bleed with all of these souls’ pain.
“A successful Community Organizer should be an abrasive agent to rub raw the resentments of the people; to fan latent hostilities of many to the point of overt expressions … then steer his group toward confrontation.”
I know up front that nothing I say is going to change a committed mind. I get that. The best I can hope is that it might cause some to rethink what first comes to mind. “Critical thinking,” is what they call it. The ability to ask questions about what we think we know. (If you’ve not seen it yet, “
The Obama-years are when Americans saw, for the first time in my over-65 years of life, a foreign country’s immigrants flying their flag above ours on our own taxpaid schoolyard lands … with our American flag upside down beneath for good measure of 
insult. At the very same time, American schoolkids who wore a patriotic symbol on their t-shirt were expelled, including those of our flag and of our armed services.
Do you not remember Obama refusing to release his birth certificate? A birth certificate, for crying out loud, the most basic of every Americans’ official record to say nothing of a President’s. Why sow those seeds of discord? Or his countless affronts against American law enforcement, starting with the infamous security guard “Beerfest?” Or his Obamacare signature law with all of its slimey back room deals, denying GOP input, after which we all paid dearly for Democrats-only favorite “bridges to nowhere” type of pet projects.
Department of Justice to dismiss billy-club-wielding voter intimidations in front of Philadelphia’s polling station. I’ll never forget walking into my own rural Midwest voting place to see Obama literature sitting out on the tables, a flagrant violation of voting laws. That exemplified Obama’s level of arrogance.
Under Obama’s economic policies, not only were unemployment and welfare rolls bursting at the seams while numbers accounting for them were routinely manipulated, consumer prices skyrocketed across the board.
“We imagine our delight in how much better a newer version will be instead of the antiquated one we’ve hung onto for longer than any of our beloved pets survived.”
“That was familiar frustration, which is only slightly better than the unfamiliar kind. What happened to evenings sitting on the porch singing folk songs?” (Song Video)
I ask myself why I sit in front of these televised Congressional hearings as intently as I do. Afraid I’ll miss something, I guess, plus just bored with what I could (should) be doing. I don’t like the news snippets afterwards. Those don’t capture the spirit of a moment and depending on which station you watch, oh my gosh, their editing amounts to a ‘spoiler alert’ you hear in regret, because you’re never going to see the real thing again.
I could do without all of today’s “protesting” hoopla, for sure. What a poor example of our society. In retrospect, I know that’s exactly what my grandparents’ generation said of us … and theirs, before them. I reassure myself it’s getting very close to coming full circle when manners are back in vogue. Well, that’s what I keep telling myself.
The last thing my life needs is more frustration, so I spent a few hours hopping from desk to printer and back again several times per post so I could print one, two-sided. That says nothing of all the angst I put myself through when first determined I could find a better way. It’s laughable when I think about it … giving up on that only to count odd versus even pages then misprint and start over a few times, as if that wasn’t “frustrating.” At least that was familiar frustration, which is only slightly better than the unfamiliar kind.
replies disintegrated into the Conservative censorship pit, wherever that is, never to be seen hide nor hair of again. That was disappointing. Now that I think about all of this, though, it is really sad that digital media has so much of a grip on my life. What happened to evenings of sitting on the porch playing a guitar singing folk songs?
My patio is nice and I thought about going out there this evening … but this time of year there are a lot of spiders in the shadows. By the time I gathered my amenities and shoed away those critters, arghhh, too much spooky hassle for me … and it’s a l-o-n-g way back & forth to the printer.
I laid down with him to put him to sleep and he, hearing so much adult talk about current events, asked, “Maka, what happens when you die?”
On one occasion the seasons were changing from summer to fall and trees surrounding my exit had turned from lush green to a bare, stark gray. Seated in his passenger-side car seat as we slowed to exit, my grandson was in his typical gaze out the window.
Visiting one night I laid down with him to put him to sleep and he wanted to toddler-talk. After typical chit-chat about his day and having heard so much adult talk about death, he asked me,
I bought the tape, a Walkman and set it to play …
I hadn’t learned fixings-for-one so the first holiday I cooked up a storm just as I would any other and handed out paper plates full to neighbors in the same boat. Apparently they’d subscribed to my aunt’s theory of what I was still determined could be done. I mean, you have to admit. It’s pretty hard to celebrate with just yourself, but if nothing else 
A-hem. I digress.
Spot In The Road 