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