My Silver Anniversary

 

Image stolen from Google

This week marks my 25th anniversary working for the same law firm. It’s a big deal, especially these days when people are constantly changing jobs, and I was honored for my years last Friday night at our company dinner. Not coincidentally, I was the oldest person in the room. I can still remember being the youngest person at work, back in Chicago after dropping out of college (I returned later to get my degree).

I found a quarter in the office parking lot this morning (heads up), which I will take as a sign of good luck from the gods for my 25th milestone, or maybe a sign that someone dropped their change. I’m hoping that it’s not a sign I need to stay employed for 25 more years.

I haven’t felt the blogging muse for a while, though I do have a couple posts scheduled for this week. I guess I mean the prompts lately haven’t inspired me, and I vowed not to post filler here. I did a lot of filler posts on my last blog just to stay in the feeds, and I ended up stressed and unhappy because of that. I started a few poems recently and abandoned them all because I wasn't feeling the vibe.

Interesting that my stats have returned to “normal” after that weird World Cup surge. (Probably a coincidence.) I’m still getting hits from odd places, but not thousands of them. It’s also strange that even on days when I post nothing, I get a hundred or so views. Whatever. I don’t want to obsess over stats.

I’ve also been busy, at least for me. Besides the work event on Friday, I had social events on Saturday and Sunday. I also have more social events scheduled for this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The next weekend is similarly packed with people-ing. What the heck? I’m supposed to be an antisocial, introverted hermit!

For someone with nothing to say, I have managed to write several paragraphs. 

Lunchtime Share

My sweet little Inky

Before I jump into Di’s Share Your World questions, I want to acknowledge that it’s Black Cat Appreciation Day. I love my little Inkerbelle! 

1. What was your favorite TV show as a kid?

When very young, I loved Pink Panther, Speed Racer, Roadrunner, Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Let’s Make a Deal. Later on, all the game shows became favorites, especially Match Game and Hollywood Squares. As a teenager, my sitcom faves were I Dream of Jeannie, Bewitched, One Day at a Time, the Brady Bunch, and Eight is Enough. I also enjoyed detective shows like Columbo, Hart to Hart, and McMillan & Wife. I’m sure there are lots more that I am forgetting!

2. Do you have a favorite “tipple” (alcoholic drink or something when you are out for a meal, etc.)?

I love alcoholic drinks, but they don’t love me, and the older I get the worse it is. Fancy cocktails are so much fun. I used to love margaritas, mojitos, mai tais, pina coladas, Irish Coffee with tons of whipped cream, etc. ~ all those sugary, girly drinks, particularly if they came with tiny umbrellas. I went through a Bailey’s Irish Cream phase (that lasted 40 years), an amaretto phase, and a cinnamon whiskey phase. Yum! Now all of that makes me barf. 

Nowadays, I can have a glass (or two) of red wine or champagne, which may or may not give me a migraine, though since I get migraines frequently regardless, I occasionally decide that it’s worth the extra risk. If I remember to drink water afterwards, it often helps me to avoid a headache. That’s it though. No more mixed drinks or sweet liquor for me. Wah.

The vast majority of time, I order iced tea or Diet Coke.

3. Is there a movie you can watch again and again and still enjoy?

Yes, indeed. In fact, this weekend I rewatched both Mamma Mia movies while I worked on my puzzle (ironically, a pic of fancy cocktails ~ see my IG), and I enjoyed them immensely. Somewhat less frequently, I rewatch Walking on Sunshine, Chicago, Fiddler on the Roof, Saturday Night Fever, and other musicals, and romcoms such as You’ve Got Mail, When Harry Met Sally, 27 Dresses, The Hating Game, etc. And of course Young Frankenstein! I generally do not rewatch serious movies. 

4. Did you have a favorite toy as a child? Or perhaps one you wanted and never got?

I loved my Barbies, but this was back when you had a few dolls and bought outfits and accessories for them. Nowadays, you buy a whole new doll in a themed pack instead of changing their clothes. While I appreciate themes, it was a lot of fun to mix and match outfits and browse the Barbie catalog for new ones. I also loved my Super Spirograph set and spent many hours creating cool designs ~ and redoing them obsessively until they were perfect. I don’t remember if there was anything I wanted and didn’t get, except a sister.

Gratitude: I am grateful that FedEx delivered all my stuff and that I managed to connect the new Spectrum equipment without any glitches (except for my Roku being slower). My daughter asked if you only had to plug it in. WELL YES, but I am extremely talented at messing up the simplest things. She should know that!

Transplant

At Marina del Rey, CA ~ August 2020

Didn’t bloom where I was planted

Traded blizzards for hills of gold 

Chi-town left me disenchanted 

Didn’t bloom where I was planted

Took those promises for granted 

The sunny sands were oversold

Didn’t bloom where I was planted

Traded blizzards for hills of gold 

~*~

Triolet quadrille (structured 44 words) written for the dVerse Poets prompt of bloom. I never regret my move from Chicago, Illinois to Southern California in 1983, but the grass is definitely always greener in your dreams.

Quiche (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

My mom's engagement pic, 1957

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with Q for Quiche.

This post is more about my mother. Unlike me, she liked to try new things, especially foods. Supposedly, one of the reasons my father fell in love with her is because she delighted in all the cuisines available in NYC after 20 years of eating the same old boring small-town Ohio farm food. I forget when she said she moved to New York though ~ somewhere in her early 20s, I guess, when a job opportunity arose. She married my dad in 1957 when she was 26. There was no long, complicated engagement or fancy wedding; they met at work at Nationwide Insurance, dated for two months, and he proposed. My dad's philosophy on dating was very simple: find a pretty girl and ask her to lunch. He didn't understand my problems with dating sites or why my relationships had to contain so much drama. I don't understand it either.

From as far back as I can remember, my mom was jumping into the latest food fad. She made her own bread for a while (delicious) and her own ice cream (meh). Any new kitchen gadget that arrived on the scene found its way into our house. In New Jersey, she created blender desserts made with Jell-O, whipped topping, and canned fruit. Not my favorite. She grew vegetables and made zucchini "boats" ~ huge squash halves stuffed with ground beef, tomato sauce, and cheese. Those were great! Zucchini bread was tasty too. Ceviche. Paella. Granola. Next came the quiches. My dad loved those, so Mom experimented with all sorts of different quiche recipes.

Mom returned to work full-time the year after we moved to Illinois ~ she got a job as a claims adjuster in the same insurance company where my father worked as an underwriting manager. Their jobs were in Chicago though, which was a long commute from our suburb 40 miles away in Cary. Since they got home late, during the week our dinners were often casseroles or crockpot concoctions that she had put together earlier. After a while, I started cooking for us and enjoyed it. For years, I liked to cook until after I became an empty nester. It's no fun cooking for one, not to mention there's just as much prep and cleanup. 

I used to enjoy baking as well, and that lasted until a couple years ago when it seemed as though all my friends were on various diets and not eating eggs or sugar or gluten or whatever. It became too hard to cater to the individual preferences, so I gave up. It made me sad to toss all the leftovers, and I didn't want to eat them all myself either. Occasionally, when I was still dating, some man would bitch about how I didn't cook or bake for him. Why didn't he cook or bake for me? I work full-time too. Eventually, I decided I liked my new lifestyle of Not Cooking, Not Baking, and Not Dating so much that I didn't want to switch back for any reason.

The jury is still out on the Not Writing. (When I say "not writing" I mean novels, not posts or poetry.) I am enjoying this recent burst of blog writing… we’ll see how long it lasts this time!

Illinois (April A2Z ~ Misty Memories)

Cary, Illinois

Welcome to my April A2Z posts! This time, I am officially signed up on the challenge sheet and will be visiting other bloggers on the list. My theme is "misty memories," which will include a bunch of rambling about old stuff in my life, and hopefully some of it will be accurate, but if not, there's no one around to contradict me. Today we continue with I for Illinois.

We moved from New Jersey to Illinois the summer after my seventh grade (1974). Although my parents moved us around a lot, usually due to my father switching jobs, they were good about waiting until the school year was over. My dad left within weeks of accepting the job, but my mom stayed to sell the house. I remember that month with her ~ we went to the beach several times a week because we knew we would miss the Atlantic Ocean. The days were serene, since my parents weren’t arguing in front of me, and I wished things could stay like that, but Mom and I left to join Dad in August.

My memory is fuzzy on the move itself because I don’t remember a motel or temporary apartment. It’s hard to imagine that my father bought a house without my mother seeing it first, but nevertheless it seemed like we moved right into a new townhome in Cary, which was 40 miles northwest of Chicago and basically in the middle of nowhere. Or so it appeared to me, but my parents couldn't afford a place closer to the city. I looked forward to making a new start anyway and leaving my Eastern baggage behind. I was slim, which seemed important, and no one needed to know I had been a fat little girl who used to have mild asthma in the winter.

I made a friend, Nancy, who was a grade up and lived around the corner. We swam and played tennis daily. I also rode my bike alone for hours to new places for exploration purposes, with no way to contact anyone if I fell and hurt myself. Back then, this was perfectly acceptable for a thirteen year old; even my normally anxious mother had no issue with it. I decided I should earn my own spending money, so my dad told a few guys in his office who also lived in the complex, and their wives hired me to babysit their kiddos. One of the wives was exceptionally beautiful, and I used to try on her clothes. I guess that was pretty weird.

There was a meeting at the school in September, where they considered skipping me straight to high school because of my test scores. My mom thought it was a neat idea. My dad didn’t have an opinion that I recall, and no one asked me what I thought. Ultimately, the PTB decided to keep me with my age group, even if I would be bored at times. It turned out that the kids my age were mean and horrible, but who knows? It might have been worse to skip ahead. So, I endured eighth grade in this backwater place, where people were scared to visit the "big city," and my one good friend began to drift away, which made sense, as she was already in high school. 

After high school, my parents sold the townhome and bought a condo in a high-rise building in Chicago off the lake. Insanely freezing! I was supposed to go away to college, but that didn't work out, so I lived with them until we moved to California together, four years later. I have never returned to the Midwest.

The Invisible Bee

The year I left Chicago (1983) was full of drama. 

In January, I broke up with my boyfriend Charlie. He was a great guy, and I have often regretted not staying with him. But at age 21, I didn’t want to be tied down ~ I had already developed a crush on a new classmate besides. His name was Mark, and he was odd. (I don’t see why I can’t use real first names on a blog barely anyone reads.) I have always been attracted to weird men, the more psycho the better. Why? No idea. Mark and I used to ad lib wacky tales of adventures to amuse the other students. We were in a six month computer programming course for post college age peeps, to turn us into nerds who would make the megabux. LOL

A bunch of us, including Mark, used to get together after class on Fridays to hit the bars around Rush Street. This was a lot of fun, and sometimes we would dance. I usually didn’t eat anything beforehand, so I would get buzzed faster. (I only ever used public transportation in Chi-town, so no worries there.) My crush deepened, and on my birthday (April), Mark took me out for a fun date and kissed me at the end of the night. In May, I heard him say to a mutual friend that while it could be hard to remain friends with someone you’ve dated, it’s even harder to turn a friend into a date.

In June, Mark and I were hanging out at Mike’s place after school and impulsively decided to stay overnight. Mike’s girlfriend lent me a cute yellow outfit, and we hit the bars. At one point we stopped for gyros. Around 1am, the bar we were in said it was last call and played Lionel Ritchie’s “You Are the Sun.” Mike told us to dance, so we did. Slow danced. Mark kissed me again. I fell in love… or what I thought was love back then. We slept cuddled up together on the floor at Mike’s.

Mark and I began dating, and even though I knew we weren’t exclusive, I had a great time. I also knew that I wasn’t his physical type ~ he was on the shorter side and preferred very petite girls. Regardless, I believed he truly liked me because our personalities meshed well. He would come over to go swimming; I sometimes made dinner. Once I threw a party for all the peeps, and my dad developed a little crush on Mike’s girlfriend, who was an advocate for prison reform or something. Mark was impressed that I was one of the few people who got a job right after “graduation,” but it was only clerical ~ I mostly reformatted floppy disks all day.

On a Sunday in July, I walked to the drugstore to buy a notebook. I did that a lot, believing that starting a fresh pile of pages was the key to everything. I still tend to believe this, though nowadays I use a Word document. My mom had made dinner ~ meatloaf, potatoes, and veggies ~ nothing unusual, and while I was eating, my hand began to feel itchy. Soon it turned purplish. Then my throat felt itchy. I struggled to breathe properly and went to lie down. My mom called the paramedics who took me to the hospital. Naturally, they all thought I was on drugs. The ER doctor said I was going into anaphylactic shock, treated me for that, and by process of elimination he decided I had been stung by a bee. Since the treatment worked, this seemed reasonable, but I had not seen a bee that day nor felt a sting. There was no mark on my hand from a stinger either. I guess it must have been one of those silent invisible bees with ouchless stings. 

In August, Mark asked me to go camping in Canada for a week, but I told him I didn’t have any vacation days yet. He took another girl. My father found a new job in California, where he and my mom had been wanting to move to for some time. They assumed I would go with them, but I liked my new job (floppy disks!) and also the idea of getting an apartment with my friend Kathy. Around this time, I bumped into a former coworker who had assaulted me on a date a couple years before, and we both said hello and pretended that nothing had happened. Afterwards, I wished I had said something clever and cutting. Kathy told me she couldn’t get an apartment together after all because she’d used all her money to buy a car. 

So, I decided to move to California.

~*~

Inspired by John Holton’s Writer’s Workshop.

Water Tower Place

[long boring post alert]

My parents bought a condo in Chicago when I graduated high school. I had originally intended to go to college in Evanston (Northwestern University), which was nearby, but it was pricey, and after my mom and I had some dumb argument, she said she wouldn’t pay for it. The new plan was that I would go to University of Illinois in Champaign beginning in September, so in the meantime I camped out in their den. We were on the corner of Lake Shore Drive and Sheridan Road, right off Lake Michigan, and it was ridiculously cold and windy most of the year. One of the things I liked to do that summer was to take a bus down to Water Tower Place, a fancy mall on Michigan Avenue complete with a glass elevator. My parents gave up our cars when we moved to the city, so we always took PT or cabs. I didn’t appreciate at the time how nice it was to be free from the burden of vehicle ownership.

One weekend my HS friend K visited, and we went to the mall, had dinner, and got stuck in the glass elevator for a couple hours. Everyone was staring at us, but at least back then no one was taking a video on their phone to make us famous. The WTP people rescued us, and somehow they got their lawyers to show up at 9pm on a Saturday night to shove releases of liability at us the second we stepped out. We signed them without reading because we were 18. Then again, we weren’t hurt. 

As we wandered out of the mall, two guys started to walk with us to talk about our adventure. I don’t remember why, but I ended up giving one of them my phone number and we went on a few dates before I left for college. He was an actor around age 25 and took me to see Julia and Julia, which was an excellent movie. Whoops! False memory. That was a film from 1987. Idk what we saw, but I do remember him telling me that college was silly and I should stay in Chicago and have his baby instead. I may have been dumb enough to sign a waiver without reading it, but thank goodness I wasn’t dumb enough to do that.

Turns out that I left college after only one semester anyway and moved back to the den because I couldn’t handle all the drug use and crazy behavior in student housing. I got a job at an insurance company and didn’t finish my degree until after we moved to California in the 1980s. Before I moved away from the Windy City for good, I spent many weekend afternoons at Water Tower Place, seeing movies alone and browsing in the shops.

I always took the escalator however. 

~*~

Written for Stream of Consciousness Saturday (tower).