You're My Cocoa

It might be a winter scarf, or a pair of glasses, or a handwritten card  that brings your memories flooding back. In my case it was a can of Hershey's cocoa. It's the day before Thanksgiving, and I'm picking up a few additional items, and I see this damn can of cocoa staring at me from a grocery store shelf... and all I can think of is my mother, who has been gone almost three years now. Why cocoa? At first I didn't make the connection, but all of a sudden I remembered a Christmas many moons ago, when my mother wrapped up a can of cocoa each for me and my three sisters, with one of her favorite dessert recipes. At the time we thought it was silly - a mom thing - and I'm sure we also felt gypped out of one of our "real" presents. Today, I see the love behind it, the desire to give something she did well (baking) to her girls. Today, it seems that can of cocoa held all kinds of messages and affection. And today, the day before we will gather without her (again), I'm thankful to have had a mom who was a little quirky and offbeat, but also generous and funny and sweet and unpredictably delightful.

It makes me think of all the other people in my life, here on earth or peacefully departed, who have helped shape my intellect and heart, and made me laugh or made me funnier; who have given me such gifts of kindness and knowledge and indescribable kinship. The longer I live, the more magical it is to have had a lifetime of such riches. So if you're reading this, you're in my life for a reason, and there's something you should know: you, too, are my cocoa.

A Brilliant Conversationalist

I talk to myself. Not like an insane person (I don't suddenly rise out of a reverie on a train and scream things, and then quiet down again). But I'm a bit of a mutterer, and it gets worse when I'm anxious about work or have too much going on in my personal life. Which is just about all the time.  

I tried to trace back when it started, and I think I was around 27. Or 21. Or 15. It started simply, maybe with me saying, "Now where did I leave that jacket?" and has evolved into entire conversations that go way past the location of a missing garment. 

I don't always realize when the dialog that's happening in my brain finds its way out into the world. Like when I was traveling with a colleague, and she called my hotel room (she was next door) to ask who I was speaking to. Or when I thought I'd finished a cell phone call with my sister while we both were driving (before the crackdowns), and she and her passengers listened to me continue talking for two minutes (yes, it would have been nice if she had shut off HER phone, but reverse the situation and I absolutely would have eavesdropped, too—how delicious to catch your sibling in a lapse of normalcy). Or in the ladies' room at work, which is especially tough to carry off—sometimes I find myself speaking (to be fair to me in this confession, I'm just listing the things I still need to address that day, and not reciting lines from Monty Python or wondering aloud how many miles are left before I need an oil change) and—gasp!—I hear someone else come in.  Then I wait behind my stall door so the intruder can't identify me. Like they would never recognize my voice, or my shoes, or my name on the datacard I left on the sink.

I know that this was cute 20 years ago, is mildly concerning now, and will be de rigueur if I make it to 90. Provided the actual chatter stays at a minimum, I can keep the crazy at bay. But to be safe,  if you ever see me on a train, you might not want the seat right next to me. Just in case...

Fun With Facebook

I started visiting Facebook frequently earlier this year because social media moved from a back burner to a front one in my job, and I needed to understand the communication options it offered.

Like others, I reconnected with school friends and family members. I knew better than to try to friend my 18-year-old nephew, even though I'm dying to see what he puts on his page. (Or not...yeah, probably not.)

I even suffered for awhile from Facebook envy - you know, where everyone else's life looks so much better than your own that you want to either jump off a bridge or start staging pictures of yourself in gorgeous locations, surrounded by people who look like they adore you and find you absolutely hilarious (and who, by the way, are not nearly as attractive as you are).

But I'm over that, and now I revel in the unintended humor and the inadvertent hiccups from people's posts. Like the dad with his 8-year-old daughter sitting on his lap who titled the photo "Date Night." Or my colleague's young son who didn't know the full meaning of his observation when he wrote, "Facebook is like jail, you sit around and waste time, write on walls, and get poked by people you don't know." Or the guy who congratulated a female pal on the new fellow in her life after seeing she'd posted a different profile picture, and she said, "What? That's my friend Emily!" (Note to Emily: I might have made the same mistake. Except that the necklace and earrings tipped me off.)

And don't even get me started on the uproar that occurred when a few fastballs were thrown at us with the "new Facebook," and oh, the torture: we all had to LEARN something else about how to post on a FREE service. If we could have harnessed that indignation and energy, we could have changed the world. In a week. 

Still, it's good to know that this platform is there to immortalize pictures of our drinks and appetizers; count the days down to our vacations; increase the audience for YouTube videos of salsa-dancing dogs; and help us publicly humiliate ourselves, because lord knows we weren't doing a good enough job on our own. Ah, Facebook. Can't live with ya, can't kill ya.

She's So Vein

Now showing: Shawshank Redemption

On many a weekend morning at 7:00 a.m., I head out to Parklawn Drive in Rockville for a film fix.

If you're a treasured friend or close acquaintance of mine, you likely have received one of my "go give blood!" e-mails over the years. I'm a big proponent of blood donation: it helps cancer, burn, sickle cell and other diseased patients, as well as accident victims and newborns; it doesn't take long; our bodies replenish quickly; and if you are someone with the best intentions toward volunteer work (who doesn't get to it as often as you'd like), it's a big check mark in the charitable outreach column.

I've been donating since I was 18, when my friends and I would go out for drinks afterward (precisely because the nurse told us not to). About a year ago, I was asked to switch from whole blood donations to platelets. It's more of a time commitment - about three hours from intake to finish, instead of the hour or so it takes to give whole blood. And you can give platelets every two weeks, rather than two months. But the person who called me must have known my two soft spots:
1. Flattery: Apparently my blood has so many platelets that just one of my donations is like 2.5 or 3 of another person's. So of course I must share my riches with the universe, right?
2. I get to watch a MOVIE!: Turns out my Red Cross visit isn't much different from the kid who goes to Cartoon Cuts and doesn't squirm under the scissors because he can have a dose of Tom and Jerry. Put a good movie on, and I wouldn't notice if you drained me dry. Until, of course, the movie's over.

There are some other benefits, too - the Red Cross staff I see on my platelet mornings are some of the nicest people I know, and I can call for blankets and drinks of water and to have my shoes removed and my head scratched and my headphones adjusted in a way that doesn't work for me at home (maybe because both of my arms aren't hooked up to IV lines there).

But at the root of it all - no kidding around - I love knowing that over the years, no matter how flawed I may be as a human being, something of mine that was so simple to give may have helped out in such a remarkable way - perhaps in a national emergency, or for a child battling leukemia. And in a world where we can find so many differences between us, I am grateful that our blood doesn't make those distinctions. It just heals. And that beats watching a movie any day.

©2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Wherever you are in the world, please give blood as often as you can.

It's much harder on the people who need it than it is for us to give it.

Uh...What Zone Was That?

I think the mix of entendres was foreshadowed when, on my way to a bridal shower on Saturday, I saw a hand-lettered sign that said "Crabs at the Sunoco station." (This being a coastal region, there was all likelihood they were advertising a local catch for dinner, but just in case it was a cautionary alert, I drove right by.)

The shower was as much fun as I thought it would be: amusing and appealing guests; fetching bride; great weather; beautiful pool to relax in and around; lots of liquid refreshments of the grown-up variety and of course, the requisite naughty gifts among the "real" ones. And, always up for wordplay—especially when it's unintended—I loved it that my most charming malaprop-y friend pointed out that one of the presents was for the "erroneous" zone. (You know...that's the zone that is most frequently mistaken for something else, and subsequently mishandled.)

©2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

For Valerie, 10 Years Later

Valerie was the smart, sassy redhead across the street. All of seven years old to my six when I met her, she already knew how to laugh from deep down, was bitingly witty, and glittered with an excitement that we kids wanted to be near. The first Seventh Day Adventist I’d ever encountered, she tried to convert me, offspring of a zealous Catholic mother, within days of our first hello by luring me to her bible study group: “We have cookies there—does your church give you cookies?” (I have to say that communion wafers placed a weak second to the mouth-watering prospect of actual Seventh Day Adventist cookies.)

Our two families intertwined on that street with another, also full of girls, and our three moms became fast friends. We all moved freely in and out of each other’s homes, played Beatles records, sunned together on our front lawns, put on plays in our backyards, dressed up like clergy and pretended to conduct Mass (because we just couldn’t get enough of it on Sundays, I guess) and, feeling the power of a couple years’ seniority, snubbed our younger sisters from time to time. We grew up, and over the years Val and I lost touch, occasionally converging at weddings or neighborhood gatherings; once in a while seeing each other in New York, after my sister and Val both landed there with husbands and jobs.

When the planes hit the towers on 9/11, I heard the news and didn’t recall at first that she worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, the company that inhabited the floors just above the impact zone, with the unspeakable loss of nearly 700 people: Val among them, only 46. I spent time afterward trying to get to know the adult that Val had become when I wasn’t watching, and her generosity, compassion, hard work, coolness, success and humor—always humor—were mentioned, over and over again. One of my favorite stories about Val is from her early days at Cantor Fitzgerald… a senior trader gave her some shoes he wanted repaired, and Val acted the part of the dutiful newbie, took them to a shop, and returned them with taps on the toes and four-inch heels. When she was ordered to reverse her mischievous additions, she had the shoes bronzed. She knew how to make a point.

Her husband Sam said of Val that “she collected people.” Her brother Steve said, "Val could talk with a homeless person or the chairman of the board. She would empty her purse to someone in need. Despite her professional and financial success, she never lost touch with what mattered—relationships and people, not money."

It seems surreal that it has been a decade since 9/11, since the shock and the pain and the bittersweet beauty of the world working to heal this unfathomable hurt. I silently remember you, Valerie...you were—are—a shining example of what we have learned again, over and over, since that day: relationships and people are what matter. I hope wherever you are, you’re glittering with excitement, surrounded by those you love, laughing so hard you can’t stop, and wearing a slammin’ pair of shoes with four-inch heels and taps on the toes.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

 

Cat Fight

Peaches

I have to laugh when I think of myself as a cliche in other people's eyes: single woman with a cat. There are no pastoral scenes in my house with my feline; no moments of purring and sweetness; no sleepy kittenish stretching that makes me go "Awwww."

I have the most frustrating cat in the world. She's absolutely beautiful, but gives me no love. If she deigns to come out when I have visitors, I have to warn everyone not to pet her—even when she's winding around their legs as if she can't wait for a rub behind the ears—because they're liable to need surgery afterward. She has been known to bitch-slap me when I'm trying to carefully extricate her claws from my ankle, as if I'M hurting HER; has destroyed two sofas and numerous carpets; and made my wrists look, at times, like I'm self-mutilating. But every once in awhile, like a disinterested boyfriend who throws out an unexpected compliment, she is nice to me. Just a little. And in my mind, I paraphrase Michael Corleone: "Just when I thought I was out...she pulls me back in."

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

When the Crises Cometh

This has been quite a week... first the earthquake breaking up a work day that was already plenty full of rumblings without a fussy fault line, and now Irene is coming by today, and I need to get ready. She's a pretty demanding visitor; the kind that doesn't just smudge up your guest towels - she's likely to fling all your deck furniture over the edge and crack a few of your windows if she's got a mind to. Like most East Coasters, I scoff at hurricane warnings, because the actual storms are never as bad as they are purported to be.   But this one made me a little more nervous once I heard that the mayor of Ocean City, MD shut down the liquor so that they could actually evacuate people. (I guess you can't get some folks' attention in a crisis if there's a scotch or a stein in the way.)   FEMA suggested some items to have in a home hurricane supply kit, and since I saw this list late last night and the storm's supposed to hit in a few hours, I'm doing triage to see whether I have the right supplies on hand:

• water (one gallon of water per person per day for at least three days) CHECK
• nonperishable food (at least a three-day supply) CHECK, if you count 2 cans of black beans, 1 can of almond pastry filling, 1 bag of brown rice and a box of Grape Nuts cereal.
• flashlight CHECK
• extra batteries Uh-oh
• first aid kit Do Hello Kitty bandaids do the trick?
• battery-powered or hand-crank radio Yikes!
• wrench or pliers to turn off utilities I call points for knowing I have them even if I don't know where they are.
• can opener CHECK, as long as the electricity is still on (well, really...FEMA didn't specify non-electric!)
• local maps Of course... for those intimate neighborhood walks when the wind whips the shoes right off your feet.
• cell phone with chargers, inverter or solar charger WTF - solar charger?

Clearly, I have to make some tracks here to FEMA-tize my bunker for the storm. I wonder if CVS keeps the solar chargers next to the hand-crank radios?

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Happy Campers

I wasn't intending to buy a tent for my living room. Really, I wasn't. But my visiting 5-year-old niece and 8-year-old nephew had been waiting all week to have a sleepover at my house, and when I told them we were going to camp out in my living room the next evening, my niece's face lit up. "In a tent?" she beamed. "No, just on the floor," I said. And then, of course, the biggest sucker for a cute kid ever, I scooted over to Target and bought one that night.

It said "two-person tent" on the label and I just assumed that it would be one of those tiny, 3-foot-high tents, nice and snug, just perfect for a couple of kiddies. (Yes, I know, the actual dimensions were probably on the label, too, but I have never been accused of being overly observant when it comes to things that require assembly.) So when I started putting it together, the flexible poles stretched across the living room floor and through the dining room, and after wrestling with nylon and metal and elastic, I eventually had a room-within-a-room, fit for... well, fit for about five or six kids.

Bottom line? They LOVED it. They watched a movie from the tent, they ate their dinner in the tent, they slept and fought and giggled and made shadows on the tent walls with a flashlight. Oh, and they forbade me to enter it the entire time they were my guests.

They've gone home to California now. Guess who watched a movie and ate dinner in the tent last night?

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Feet First

We go together about every two months, on a Sunday morning, my dad and I. An early trip to my nail salon before it opens to the public, when the only traffic moving past us consists of cars headed toward church or diners or doughnuts. My favorite technician, Jenny, drives 45 minutes from her home to greet us at 7:30 a.m. so that my father can have a pedicure without anyone else around.

I can't remember exactly when we started this, but I do recall that the first time I brought my father - some time after my mother died - he was, at 85, still raw from losing her, and not talking much. I noticed that his lower "paws" needed some attention, and asked if he'd like to try a pedicure. He refused, but I kept asking, and then promised total privacy after arranging an early morning visit with Jenny.

From the start, she was in charge - she called him "Daddee" immediately, with the emphasis on the "dee," helped him into a chair, and tended to him as she trimmed nails, put hot towels on his legs, and - this is my favorite part - told him what a great daughter I am. And now my father, who loves routine, breaks my heart (in a good way) every time we have our pedi date. He hurries in, greets Jenny with a huge hello, grabs a magazine and heads to "his" chair... and we sit side by side: daughter and dad, feet immersed, in this unusual place to be connected.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie 

Mygraines: Apeeling Treatments

You've surely heard a version of this joke before: a man goes to the doctor for his debilitating and persistent migraines, and after listing all of the treatments he's tried, the doctor says, "Listen, I have migraines, too...and here's what works for me. When I have a migraine, I go home, get in a nice warm bath, and have my wife sponge my forehead with the hottest water possible. Then I get out of the tub, take her into the bedroom, and even if my head is killing me, I make love to her. Almost always, the headache is immediately gone. Give it a try, and come back and see me in six weeks.” Six weeks later, the patient returns with a big grin. “Doc! I took your advice and it works! By the way - you have a really beautiful house."

Anyone who's ever had even one migraine knows that it's about as close to a trip to hell as you can get without actually expiring. And if you're in this elite group, you also know that you'd dress up like a nun and play hopscotch in front of the White House if someone told you it would get rid of your headaches.

I've done it all - the rounds of medications and shots, gallons of jasmine tea, hot water on the wrists and ankles, bursts of caffeine, vinegar compresses, and tapping (EFT) - which actually brings me a lot of relief (despite my refusal, while tapping, to repeat this affirmation: "Even though I have this migraine, I deeply and completely accept myself"). 

Ten years ago, in abject pain, I even draped a banana peel on my neck after reading that the potassium would work wonders. True to my patient nature, I gave it one try for about 10 minutes, and it didn't work. But as I sat to write this post, I thought I should at least check this out again. One source (some kind of practitioner, but not of the medical persuasion) said he had measured the electrical resistance at the site of pain in more than 18,000 people and said that he believes pain is caused by the breaking, cutting, failure, or suppression of electrical signals between cells in living tissue, so if the banana peel was able to conduct an electrical signal, it really could help. His conclusion? "Just as I thought, banana peels are excellent conductors." I got a mental picture of his lab, a Frankensteiny place with a banana skin splayed out on one gleaming silver table and a human being on another, strung together with metal, and that "zzzzzzzzzzt" sound buzzing along the wires. A little more googling got me this information from the book The Keeler Migraine Method by Robert Cowan, MD (a real doctah!). He said of his patients asking about banana peels: "Finally, I learned that the miracle [banana peel] cure had come from a bogus letter to Ann Landers... and was a complete spoof." That makes me think the nun-hopscotch-White House thing might be a fake, too. Not that I ever tried it or anything.

If you're a BMFF, I feel your pain, brothers and sisters—and I hope that, somehow, somewhere, some way, you get some blessed peace. Oh, and one more thing. Even though I wrote this post about migraines, I deeply and completely accept myself.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

The Magic Closet

Some months ago, my cousin, fresh from extended world travel where she had the opportunity to meet a range of potential mates, made a surprise visit to her mother's home for Christmas; fully intending to continue her journeys after the holidays. But there - emerging from his work on a closet in the middle of a remodeling project - was a handsome fellow who, in short order, became her boyfriend...and then her roommate. It made me wonder if this closet had some magical qualities, like that Milton Bradley game that came out in the late '60s, where you took your chances on the James Bondish guy, the athlete, or the bookish nerd, who at the time was the one nobody wanted to end up with, but who might be pretty nice to hang out with now. Bookish nerds get considerably more interesting with a little time and experience. (And by the way, this has nothing to do with this little story, but they still make the Mystery Date game, and it's - gasp! - FIFTY DOLLARS! It would be cheaper to buy your little girl a date. But that's probably illegal.)

Anyway, my cousin's meet cute story is not the first one like this I've heard...I started to remember other love connections that but for a few minutes earlier or later, people who are perfect for each other might never have met. Like my friend who went with her sister to the Birchmere on her birthday to see one of her favorite performers, and was seated at a table with four guys, and now she's getting married this fall. (Not to all four guys - just the one that she liked.) Or my buddy who met his wife on the subway on his way to a blind date, and was so taken with her he explained the whole situation - and asked if she would please agree to one lunch with him so that he could persuade her to understand what he was already feeling.

Ah, true love. Basherts. Meant to be. Soul mates. It's almost convincing enough to make me check the closet before taking the subway to the Birchmere.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie 

My $88 Breakfast

A Saturday morning, and I was headed out to meet a friend for breakfast at a great little mom-and-pop spot with real pickle barrels and career waitresses. It was sunny and perfect...the kind of morning that lifts your heart because all around you feels bright and full of promise. Only one problem: if I'm happy, I sing. And when I'm happy and singing, there's a chance my car gets a little happier, too. And faster.  A lot, apparently.

Oh, nothing happened that morning, except that I had a great time chatting with a friend I really enjoy, ran a few errands and then headed back home the way I'd come. Still happy.

A little time passed - maybe a week - and when I picked up the mail, there they were. Two envelopes which, when opened, held notices with front and back photos of my car - one was headed east, one west. Raising the grand total of my relatively inexpensive breakfast that sunny, perfect morning to $88.

The pictures are kind of dark, but if you look really closely, you can see me singing. I looked a lot happier back then.


© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie 

And so it begins.

This first entry has been a long time coming. First I had to create a blog...which I did about three years ago, and then let it sit because, as I'm fond of remarking, life interferes with life. But this time it's gonna happen. And just to lock myself in, I wrote three entries at once. (Secret note to my "palison" - I win!)

When I picked up the blog baton again, as most communicators will who prepare collaterals and fancy materials for a living, I spent time picking colors and fonts... and struggled to find a meaningful name for this undertaking. I worked through all of the best "write-oriented" ones, but they were spoken for. I thought I had it when I picked "Tighty Writeys" - because my intention is to get to the point and make it fun to read - but that was taken, too, albeit with one more "e" than mine. Then I decided to use something with the word "brie" in it (part of my last name), even though it makes my blog sound like a good source of amuse bouche recipes. (Disappointed that it's not? No worries. You'll find Brie and Crab Soup at http://ow.ly/5LOOU and Walnut-Brie Tartlets at http://ow.ly/5LOQj.)

But if you did come to read, please pull up a virtual chair and keep going for a few more minutes. And I hope you'll come back again sometime. I love having you in my place.

© 2011 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie