I Love the Smell of Chlorine in the Morning

I wish I could say this is me...but it's not.

I have a thing about chlorine. It makes my heart beat a little faster when I catch a whiff of it. I'm not sure why, but I have a kind of love affair with pools. So when I found myself on my own schedule after quitting my day job to build another business, I made a vow to work out every day for 90 minutes... and with a pool just minutes away, of course I picked water! And chlorine!

I'm an early riser, and if I leave my house at 5:50 a.m., I can be sitting poolside by 5:55 with my feet dangling in the water, waiting for the lifeguard (who cannot be more than 14 years old) to mount his chair... and that's my cue. My morning is part swimming, part "water-leaping," a technique that I've developed where I leap forward on my toes as fast as I can and push hard against the water with my arms. The swimming part is a little choppy (I'm going to get help for that soon - I have lined up a swimming "consultant" to bark commands at me, come mid-May). But the water-leaping part makes me friends! I have met some great pool peeps. And, of course, they have met me, so I'm sure I have been referred to as the crazy water-leaper in their conversations. (Don't laugh - on Sunday, two women asked me to show them what I was doing, and they followed me. Of course, I was the most graceful of the three of us. Which isn't saying a whole lot).

But I digress... so back to my water pals: there's Mary, who hates coming to the pool but does it so her back won't hurt for the rest of the day; and Kim, who worked for a Korean bakery for ages and has been a pool member for 20 years; and Tom, who doesn't say much but smiles at me a lot; and Marie, who says the rosary on her fingers while she's exercising and reminds me about all of the traditional Italian customs I had long forgotten. Marie is my favorite today because she said, "So, how old are you? You're not 50 yet, right?" I wanted to say, "Right!," but I didn't. I fessed up that I will be 57 in a few weeks. (May 30, to be exact, in case you want to send me something. Let me know if you need my address.)

I'm proud of myself for not yet missing a day - it's been over three weeks since I started, and now I'm hooked. My arms are so much stronger, my stomach's getting flatter, my face is rosier and more defined, and my clothes are looser - those all amount to a good outcome. But the thing I love best is that I get to breathe in as much chlorine as I want. Ahhhhhh. It's the little things that make me happy.


© 2013 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie

Taking Early "Rewirement"

Wish me luck! Today is the last day of a work relationship I have had with my professional association for 34 years. I'm not retiring; no way - not yet. I'm taking a gigantic leap of faith and jumping off into the stratosphere on a wing and a prayer. Well, to be honest, not even the wing. Just the prayer.

I have the heart of an entrepreneur, and I came up with (what I think is) a great idea for communications professionals like me last May, and so far have only laid the groundwork for this initiative. I just haven't had the time or juice to pursue it while I'm working a demanding full-time job. So, with another birthday just around the corner, and my inner voice whispering to me that I'm not getting any younger, and if someone else ups and creates this business instead of me I'm going to be pretty sorry, I (gasp!) resigned from my wonderful job with my amazing employees and colleagues, and I'm going to get this done.

I have a business colleague to thank for the spin on my new career choice. She sent me a note and said, "Best wishes in your rewirement!" And, with all the love that I have for a clever twist on language, I am adopting that term as my own.

I'm scared, but it's "good scared"— just enough to move myself along briskly and with purpose. But mostly I'm excited, with all the exhilaration that comes from letting go of all the "can'ts" and "don'ts" and seeing only the possibilities that a big change can bring. And I'm not just an entrepreneur anymore. I'm also a "career electrician," the kind of professional who is learning to do all of my own rewiring. You know, for my rewirement.

©2013 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie   

WWF: Is There a 12-step Program?

My name is Anita and I am an addict. A Words With Friends addict.

A couple of years ago, Lori K.N. invited me to play WWF (Bless you, Lori! Damn you, Lori!), setting off a chain of events that showed me the addictive personality lurking inside me. I have always loved Scrabble, WWF's parent. How could I not? Avid reader since I was a child, sneaking an extra hour of a favorite book under my covers with a flashlight; English major; communications professional: words are woven into the fabric of my life.

So when Lori reached out with that gateway drug - "Just one game, come ON, Anita, it's easy!" - I didn't see the road ahead of me. That I would embark on an odyssey that would lead me to playing 15 games at a time; that would cause one person to unfriend me on Facebook, that would have me using words like "za" and "xu" and "vrow," and that would prompt me - gasp! - to strike up games with total strangers just to get my word high.

I am ashamed. I know I need to get this in check. This can't be good, all this spelling and triple-word-score-lusting-after. I will stop. Next week. I can stop anytime, really. Hey, you, over by the coffee and donuts - have you played before? Wanna have a game?

Rice Cakes = Love

I currently have five bags of Quaker's gluten-free rice cakes sitting on top of my refrigerator. And I am worried that in short order, that number will rise.

Why? Because that's been my elderly father's gift to me every time I'm at his house lately. I don't know whether he forgets he gave me one before (I really don't think that's the case, because he's a pretty sharp fellow) or he thinks I'm going through them at the rate of one bag every few days (that's possible) or he just thinks they are the greatest thing since sliced bread (yes, that's it - because they ARE his replacement for sliced bread). It's particularly odd when he asks me over for dinner and offers me a caramel rice cake with my chicken and salad. Not a good taste sensation. But you do a lot of things when you don't want to hurt someone's feelings.

I finally decided that these increasingly frequent bags of rice cakes are like party favors. It's my dear old dad saying, "Thank you for coming, and here's a little treat to take home with you. Please come again." There you have it: rice cakes equal love. Come to think of it, there's still plenty of space left on top of my refrigerator.

©2013 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie  

Whether (or not) Report

Whoever is weary of waiting for spring, raise your hand. No, not that one. The one with the wool glove on it.

I can only speak for the East Coast, but I'm tired of all the temperature teasing. Come on, already - where's the March "out like a lamb" we are promised by the proverb? We get one or two days of 60ish temperatures, then a whoosh of cold, then snow flurries...and we can only conclude that Spring is toying with us, taking her sweet time to be fully sprung and laughing at the outfits we concoct during this in-between time.  

Should we dress for morning or afternoon temps? Boots or not? Is a down jacket over shorts too edgy? Dare we venture out in sandals for a pedicure on a warm day, or will we be mocked by the falling mercury in the thermometer's glass? 

One thing I know for sure - there's an infallible method to keep warmer weather at bay. Just pack all your winter clothes up  and store them for next year. And then listen closely for the seasonal laughter that will surely be woven into the ice storm that follows.
 

©2013 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie  

I'll Have Sound, With a Chaser

About twice a month, I go for an acupuncture appointment. This is fairly new for me, and started because I have a good friend training to be certified in acupuncture at the moment. She is pursuing her second (and her dream) career, and I am getting educated by her on the benefits of Chinese medicine. She's not certified yet, so she introduced me to a classmate who is.

On the occasional Saturday, I arrive at Tai Sophia Institute, have a chat with D., my amazing acupuncturist, and she decides where all the needles are going to go for best effect that week. I love every minute of this treatment: I love lying in a dark room on a massage table with white sheets and soft pillows, shutting off my brain, and knowing that the needles are clearing the way for my body to balance its ch'i (energy) and bring me peace. And I also love the "quiet noise" that I know is coming when D. says, in her great Russian accent, "You want some sound machine?"

Yes, D.! I want some sound machine! Because when she turns the dial to "Crashing Waves" and leaves me to incubate in that small, dark, calm space for 15 minutes, I see this picture: beach chairs, white sand, foamy water, good friends, a few Stella Artois and lots of sun. It's the kind of place where I don't have any projects waiting to be finished, where everyone in my life is taken care of and doesn't need me, where I have no commitments or concerns that can't be put on hold. It's a "don't worry, be happy" kind of place.

It's so nice that whenever anyone asks me these days, "Can I get you anything?," I want to say, "Yes, please. I want some sound machine. Make mine Crashing Waves, with a side of Stella. And a big helping of ch'i."

Move Over, Rachael Ray

Mom, in her twenties.

This is a love story.

I'm not writing it just because it's Valentine's Day. I'm writing it for my mother, because she died on Valentine's Day, just four years ago.

My mother wasn't the kind of parent I could go to with a problem, or have deep talks with. But she was the loving mom who stayed up all night with me when I was in junior high as I suffered through writing a paper (a thought that has amazed me throughout my communications career, when the words cannot leave my mind and my fingertips quickly enough). She was the mom who read voraciously and passed that on to me - another career builder. And she was the faithful, affectionate and uncomplaining healer who was tireless with five kids through earaches and messy stomach flus and general ailments.

She was the mother who lost her only son - my funny, smart, handsome brother Pat - in a drowning accident when he was only 21, and somehow she and my father did not stop living. They kept raising me and my sisters through the grief and loved us all the way up to adulthood, and into caring and productive women.

She was also the mom who, in my fuzzy memory, had at least one nervous breakdown during my childhood, and who'd been given electroshock therapy after my youngest sister was born, when it was still too new to know enough about it. And who, as a result, would lose patches of time, so that sometimes we'd arrive home from school in the afternoon to find her still in her robe at the dining room table with a cup of now-cold coffee; almost as if she had not moved since we left for the bus earlier that day.

She was fun and funny - from her, we learned the "sheet dance" when we were folding clothes. She had us put on "whoopee socks" to polish our wood floors with bright orange Johnson's wax while we perfected our skating technique. She was one of the first people I knew of to go into the Hair Cuttery when it debuted in the early '70s and ask for a "haircut and a blow job," innocently not knowing what she was saying. Then there was the day she sadly told her friends her eye doctor diagnosed her with gonorrhea (when she really meant glaucoma).  And once when I came home from high school to run lines with Tommy Wheatley, with whom I was "starring" in Bye Bye Birdie, she ran into the kitchen to make him a banana cream pie because she wanted him to stick around and be my boyfriend. (He never was, but we were pretty good friends. Banana cream pie or not.)

She was easy to love some days, tougher on others. She gave me a run for my money when she was old and ill, but in those last few months, when Alzheimer's was added to her dementia, she stopped being angry about her stay in the nursing home and just smiled and adored me when I was with her. One day, when we were watching TV (she loved the Food Network), she turned to me and said with a sigh, "I wish Rachael Ray was my daughter." I, who was spending all my spare time with her, was pretty jealous of Rachael Ray, who as far as I knew had never visited my mother once.

My sisters and I stayed up with Mom the night before she died on a Saturday - Valentine's Day 2009. It was a day that is forever changed for us, that will always be, first, the day she passed, before we think of flowers and candy and cards.

After she died, I found a letter she wrote to her sister but never mailed. She was about the same age as I am now, and she wrote about feeling hurt and out of sorts because all of us kids had moved on, and she didn't know what to do with herself. It breaks my heart - my Valentine's Day heart - that I wasn't wiser at a younger age about what's really important, that I didn't take more time back then to make her happy, to give her what every parent wants: not gifts, but more time with their children.

Still, I know that I did right by my mother, and loved her imperfectly but well. I know that she knows that. And even though I'm not Rachael Ray, I think my mom was pretty glad to have me as one of her girls. Happy Valentine's Day, Mom.

©2013 A Bit of Brie/Anitabrie