Grim Is My Middle Name

So there you are, your hands still puckery from all those dinner dishes, doing laundry at 9:30 on a Friday night. There's never enough time--or a babysitter--to go out and see friends, or a movie. And there's never enough money to waste on an overpriced coffee at Starbucks. Your whole social life is the yearly parent-teacher conferences.

You walk around so tired that it hurts to lay down in bed and try to fall asleep. When you jolt awake, in the moonlight, four hours later, everything's still, and the only sound is your teen-aged son snoring in the next room.

You didn't think there'd be this much homework, this much reading, this many papers. But you're gonna finish this degree if it kills you.

You can't remember the last time you walked around an art museum, met friends for sushi, heard any kind of live music. You simultanously disdain and envy your single friends who manage all these things.

Grim has come to live at your house.

You may still be bitter from your divorce. You may feel as if you have absolutely no time for friends and fun. You may be dead set on finishing up your school. You may be totally, steely dedicated to holding down full time employment and 24-7 Motherhood. And these are not bad things. What you have to monitor is your attitude. If you have been divorced 12 months and have not developed your own, new social life, then it is time. Buy a newspaper. It will tell you what movies are showing, where the local Strawberry Festival is this weekend. What the book club at the library is reading. Where the next fund raiser for the Humane Society is. If you are sitting there, shaking your head no, then it is very definitely time. You may be holding onto your old life a little too much.

The new rule is that you can meet anybody for coffee. Anybody. Try it. You'll like it.

Stages of Divorce - I Got A Lot A' Livin' To Do

So you get someplace else to live, and you get new towels and drapes and the cable TV hooked up. A big box of Cheerios and six Lean Cusines. And then you cannot stand to be there.

Sooner or later, you meet someone else who cannot stand being at their home either. And you run. Run, run, run. I met the girlfriend of one of the guys in my theater group, and she was freshly divorced too. We went out dancing, dancing, dancing, usually till two in the a.m. Which is remarkable, being as how I can usually go asleep at about 8:30 p.m.

It doesn't have to be bar-hopping. You can get super-involved in almost anything. Volunteering, lawn work, tailgating. Even errands. There's just a restlessness to it all that draws you out, out, out of the house.

It doesn't last forever. And it's not all bad. It teaches you things, about how very little the pick up lines have changed, how exillerating it can be still, at your age, to neck like a banshee. How guilt-riddenly late you can eat supper, how big the dust bunnies under the piano can grow.

And it teaches you, in a physically exhausting way, how to be comfortable in your own skin. That's important work, so that you don't fall right back into a new but awful relationship.

Just remember, it does no good to sew your wild oats if you have to pray for a crop failure afterwards.

It also teaches you, in a very visceral way, that you are out of the old relationship and that you have the freedom to charge straight forward into a Brave New World.

Travellin'

Washington, DC, is a magical place. It reminds me of Paris, with the spoked street layout, the circles, the public statuary, the monumental buildings, the trees and the park-like areas.

This trip I stayed at The Ritz. Now, when I was in Paris, when I was 40, our group managed to pass The Paris Ritz about once a day. And I always thought, "Someday, I'll stay at the Ritz." Well, someday came in spades. The desk clerk memorized every guest's name, even the snacks were magnificent, the bathroom had solid gold fixtures, and the view was what every middle-aged person loves to see -- a 24-hour Walgreen's. I went Christmas shopping there.

I was bowled over by The Lincoln Monument on my last trip, and had planned on reconoitering over to The Roosevelt Monument this trip, but my hotel room safe was broken, and I did not want to haul my laptop around The Mall. So I settled for heading out to the airport early, for an earlier flight home. Always glad to come home.

My next trip, as far as I know, will be a big conference in June, in Minneapolis. I want to go back to my favorite antique store up there, see my pastor, and my friends, and go to IKEA and to Candyland. http://www.candylandstore.com/ Other than that, I am quite content in my Little Land of Happy, in the far North corner of The South.

Next post will be another installment of the stages of divorce. Happy Valentine's Day tomorrow, and be ye kind to yourself.

Janelle

The Great Thanksgiving Do Over

So, there I was, minding my own business, packing for my next business trip and trying to eat down the perishables in the refrigerator before I left. The meals were getting more and more spartan. And then my daughter called and invited me to The Great Thanksgiving Do Over.

She had spent Thanksgiving with her husband's family in Memphis. And the cousin hosting the dinner bailed on the traditional meal (which he had never hosted nor cooked before). Instead he had a shish ka-bob grilling party in the garage. Except he had never made shish-ka-bobs before either.

The whole experience did to her what it does to any good cook -- it made her want to come home and cook something better. So she came home and did just that.

We had:

Pork tenderloin rubbed with bloody mary mix
Turnip and potato puree so creamy and tender it jumped up and kissed you
Fresh green beans with bacon
Red leaf salad with diced carrots
Sage dressing
Horseradish sauce
Homemade scones

The Pastry Goddess bats perfection once again.

Said business trip, back to Washington, DC, will take me out of pocket till next Friday. Talk among yourselves till then. Will try to post some photos next week. It's a great town for photography.

Peace,

Janelle

Alone at Christmas Is Not Half Bad

I don't know about you, but it threw me for a loop the first five times people went all agog with pity upon finding out that I was going to be alone for the holidays.

I didn't particularly feel deprived. I was orphaned in my teens, and I have done more than my fair share of mercy invites R.S.V.P.s. After a certain point, you would rather just not have to schlep on over to somebody's house – for another couple rounds of agogness at your purported staggering lack of family and plans.

I volunteer at Thanksgiving and Christmas. I fix swell little meals. (My favorite is to recreate the menu from Mister Steak Restaurants). I sleep in. I read the morning paper with Motorboat the cat on my lap. I have a second cup of coffee and take an extra long walk mid-morning and a nap in the afternoon. I love old movies, and Turner Classic Movies runs some great ones around the holidays. (Yesterday was a Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers marathon). And I come back to work rested and relaxed and still enamored of my friends and relatives.

But back to the volunteering. The trick for singles in the holidays is to stay very outwardly focused. I set a December 5th goal for myself to make my contacts at Meals on Wheels and the Salvation Army. I set a December 10th deadline for myself to do a small, home-cooked gift for everyone at work. and my neighbors, and my vet.. I buy Ball jelly jars and fill them with homemade salad dressing or homemade sauces. I fill a small sandwich bag with homemade cookies and sweet-and-salty munch mix and string that and a jingle bell around the jelly jar with curly Christmas ribbon. In all my years of doing this, I have only had one stinkerooni of a person turn it down, and she turned out to be a bad, manipulative apple all the way around. People just don't get homemade stuff with top grade ingredients in their lives on a regular basis anymore, and they go Ga-Ga.

I take treats to the public librarians. I tell them "Thank you for public libraries." I make homemade milk bones for my friend's dogs if I have time. I sing at a Do-It-Yourself Messiah every year and I go to Tuba Christmas

www.tubachristmas.com

And I love church at Christmastime. I have the neighbor ladies in for high tea with my Christmas china. I read "A Christmas Visitor" by Truman Capote, and "Sampson The Christmas Cat" and "Christmas For The Heart and The Home" by Susan Branch every year. I made sure my grown daughter has a Merry Little Christmas, and that it is totally separate from her birthday, which comes right afterwards. None of this involve, uh, a date. Or being the fifth wheel.

And none of which—and this is important—involves sitting around contemplating my own pitiful navel.

And yes, I set up a Christmas tree, even when I was stuck in Minnesota and nobody saw it but me. I also have, from my yuppie days, a whole porcelain Christmas village, but I have been too busy to set that up for years.

This year I am also going to make a bolster pillow in royal purple for Clyde, the college girl dollbaby, who came and helped me unpack in June, and a counted cross-stitch sampler for my new grandson. I am also starting to study up on a grand-looking sock caterpillar and a little felt Santa Claus that I probably will not get to this year, but I have been plans for in the future.

And the exception proves the rule, in that the best party I ever went to was a Thanksgiving meal at a co-worker's house. Marv and Maria were orphans themselves, and always invited four singles over to eat with them and their two brainiac little girls. We saw Maria's oil paint gallery. We saw Marv's stock charting computer program. We told funny stories at the dinner table, and inbetween the main meal and the dessert, we took an stuttering cold walk, a long walk. Then we came back and ate pie. But the likes of people with the hospitality chops of Marv and Maria don't come around very often.

The saddest human being I ever met was a friend of mine who had just found out that her husband had embezzled from her father and raped their 12-year-old daughter. And as we sat at a little cafe luncheon table, she explained to me why she was not leaving this man. "If I leave him," she said, with genuine Betsy-Wetsy tears in her eyes, "then I will be alone."

Alone is not fatal. It can be very calm and gloriously peaceful. And alone is something every adult has to learn to do. It took me a while to realize that the alone-est you'll ever be is in a bad marriage. Just being alone with yourself—that is – in the big picture – a piece of cake.

This year I am very blessed with events too. There is a roast beef dinner and karaoke contest that my union is putting on. And I taking a new friend to that. There is a cookie exchange at work (will be posting those recipes. more on that later). There is a luncheon at work too. And a co-worker has an extra ticket to The St. Louis Symphony Holiday Pops Concert. I am one lucky little old lady. But I've had years where it was just Mister Steak, me and the laundry too. And that is fine too. Peace Like a River, Baby.

So book yourself up. Drive around with a Starbuck's hot chocolate and a CD of cheezy jazz Christmas music playing in your car and make fun of other people's Christmas yard lights. Go watch the tenor at your church sing "O Holy Night." Stay away from The Mall. There be dragons. Find the yuppie grocery store where you can buy single serving pie. Glorious pie. Get one of those quarts of eggnog. Put a Santa Claus pin on your good winter coat. Let everybody you love know you love 'em, nice and early, and then leave them alone. They are busy. And you are, heh-heh, free as a bird.

Janelle

Easy-Peasy Bread - Ice Box Rolls

Homemade bread does a lot to brighten up any meal. Here's one that doesn't involve two days of you doing the culinary version of The Hokey Pokey:

Icebox Potato Rolls

Scald 1 cup milk and cool to lukewarm. Dissolve 2 cakes of yeast in 1/4 cup water, and then add to the milk. Add 1 cup boiled mashed potatoes, 3/4 cup shortening, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, and 1 tsp. salt. Mix well. Dough will be stiff. Spread a little oil on top of the dough. Cover and place in ice box overnight and let rise. Take out amount of dough needed and shape into rolls. Let rise for two hours. Bake in 400 degree F. oven about 15-20 minutes. Dough will hold in refrigerator four to five days.

From "Talk About Good! Le Livre de la Cuisine de Lafayette" (Junior League of Lafayette, Louisiana, 1969)

Not THAT Green Bean Casserole

My dear friend Byron had five heart attacks, rat-a-tat-tat, one Sunday afternoon. When they finally let him out of the hospital, he asked me to teach him to cook. I basically told him to de-glop his life.

In the big picture, there is nothing quite so gloppy as that canned-green-bean casserole everybody plops onto the Thanksgiving table. Between the canned beans and the canned soup and the canned, french fried onion rings, the sodium levels are circling Venus. It is one of those foods that are simply carriers for salt. And if you're eating the least widdle bit circumspectly and healthy the rest of the year, this casserole is not going to do a thing for you—except making you puffy and deathly thirsty the next day.

Enter "The Winter Kitchen," by Louise Andrews Kent and Elizabeth Kent Gay (Houghton, Mifflin Co., Boston, 1962). This book should be called, "What Would Mrs. Appleyard Do?" It is one of those old cookbooks that you can read like a novel. There're slyly funny little vignettes before each recipe, describing Mrs. Appleyard's rural Vermont life. What Mrs. Appleyard would do with the ubiquitous green beans is:

1. Start with fresh green beans. Cook them until just tender.

2. Use fresh mushrooms, and ditch the soup for fresh onion, and a little slap of butter and cream. Thus creating a (gasp!) homemade mushroom sauce, in which you (gasp!) control the salt, the quantity of sauce, the add-ins (nutmeg, a little sherry, or jalapeño peppers). Mrs. Appleyard notes that this sauce is also good with broccoli, lima beans, Brussels sprouts, and shell beans.

Here's the recipe:

Green Beans and Mushrooms

(serves eight)

2 pounds fresh green beans
1 tsp. fine minced yellow onion
2 Tbl. or less real butter
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
1 pound fresh mushrooms, caps cut in two and stems sliced thin
1 Tbl. flour
1/2 tsp. paprika
salt or salt substitute to taste
1/2 cup or less cream

Cook beans until just tender. Saute onion in the butter until straw colored. Add the mushrooms and cook 4-5 minutes, stirring well. Sprinkle in the flour, mixed with the seasonings. Blending it in. Do all this over very low heat. Turn off the heat, and add the cream. The standing heat will warm the cream. Add this mixture to the beans and stir well. Serve hot.


I love old cookbooks, especially from the early 60's. I call them "P.C." = Pre-Cholesterol. They give you a good place to start, if you want to cook fresh and you want to cook at home (and have a grocery bill less than one-arm, one-leg). And if you love to tinker with recipes, start with a solid old cookbook. I have been making all my own salad dressings and sauces for about ten years now. These books know how. Because they didn't, back then, have all night grocery stores or all of the prepared, shelf-stable stuff we have now. But nowadays you really do not have to be part of the thundering herd that spends five bucks on something you can make at home for 45 cents.

Here's a quick test: Pick that grocery item up. Look at the expiration date. If it says, "Best used before June 1, 2022," put it back down and walk away.

Yum-yum,

Janelle

Episodic

Minnesota Public Radio, last year, interviewed a beloved, retiring weatherman and asked him what the overarching pattern of Minnesota weather was. He told them, "There is no pattern. It's episodic."

This time of year, with the cool mornings and the blankets on the bed and the honking Canada geese, it's episodic too. You gain just enough introspection this time of year to be open to all kinds of things. You are, as my friend Rosina says, "ready to receive."

My old girl cat, Motorboat, was a stray teen-kitten who limped across my frosty front yard, in just this kind of weather, just this time of year. I went out and threw my afghan over her, took her in, fed her, and let her sleep in my lap for four hours. Then I took her over to the young neighbors across the street, who had just lost their cat. The husband took her, walked through his house, opened the back door, and threw the cat back outdoors.

That little cat had the good fortune to limp back through my front yard the next morning. She let me throw the wool afghan over her again, and take her in, and feed her, and she slept in my arms, in spite of being sick as a dog, and she never, ever stop purring. Sandy, the vet assistant, promptly named her Motorboat, for that purr. She's kept it up for 13 years now. We are little old ladies together now.

I left my dying marriage just about this time of year. I had found an apartment and put it on hold for two months. Just knowing I had someplace calm to go sleep if I had to was a tremendous relief. Then the big yuppie department store downtown, Schmulekov's, put mattresses on sale for 99 dollars. I went down and bought a mattress and had it set up on a metal Hollywood bed frame in the new apartment. When Motorboat and Buster Cat and I finally left, we slept on that bed. And the weather broke into bright, deep fall sunshine days. Day after day. It was just incredible how good the weather was that fall.

My friend Diane left her husband just at the start of the Christmas season, just about this time of year . Her husband had taken her and her daughter out to the Christmas tree farm for the tenth year in a row, and was, for the tenth year in a row, too drunk to tie the tree to the top of their car in any functional way. And, for the tenth year in a row, the tree fell off the car and onto the freeway on the way home.

Diane found a little apartment up over the movie theater, in her little town in Virginia. She found out her first night there that the landlord had forgotten to tell her that the heat had been turned off. She was so cold that she kept waking up from the shivering. She could smell the popcorn from the movies downstairs. And she could not stop smiling.

Sometimes you just got to step forward, into the arms of the future. You don't get blueprint approval, but it gets better the farther out you go. I found my way to a furniture store across the street from my workplace and the salesman showed me a wonderful thing called a Lady Lane Recliner. I got a little TV that I could lift and move around by myself. The judge ordered my soon-to-be ex-husband to give me my furniture, on board a moving truck, in clean and good condition. I watched the Slumberland sales and got my chest of drawers and a much better mattress. Me and my back love that upscale mattress with a great and abiding love.

Diane found a house, a wonderful house. And a wonderful, dreamy-handsome new boyfriend, who, stone-cold-sober, tied the Christmas tree to the top of the car and it DID NOT fall off.

I've always liked fall. When I was kid, it meant my birthday was coming. I like it when the sweaters all come out. I like warm tea and cats who want to cuddle. I like crisp, cool mornings when anything is possible, episodically. Helen Keller said, "Life is either a great adventure, or it is nothing at all."

Peace,

Janelle

What A Difference A Year Makes

Hello, and yes, it has been a year. But what a difference a year makes. Through a tremendous stroke of good luck, I was able to transfer my job 700 miles south, to the city where The Beloved New Grandbaby is.

It is now late November, and it is like what September is in St. Paul. I have not even gotten out my winter coat yet. And I had lunch yesterday with said Grandbaby. He smiles when he sees me.

I have another small, second floor apartment, but this one has a pantry, a walk-in closet and a fireplace. All in all a very nice change.

And I know, just as sure as I know anything, that part of why this happened was I was able to move quickly. My new boss hired me on June 5th and wanted me to report to a training center in Austin, Texas, on June 14th. I would not have been able to do that, plus relocating, if I was still married. Just imagine coming home and saying, "Honey, could you find a moving company tomorrow? Because we have nine days to move."

More later. Just remember, Sweet Babies, what my father always said, "Just because there's snow on the roof, doesn't mean there's still not fire in the furnace."

Bestest,

Janelle

The Stages of Divorce - Two - Happy Days Are Here Again

It is such a relief to have the staticky dysfunction gone. The contrast between the high-drama last few months of a dying marriage and the new life you gain is palpable. You can eat in peace, sleep in peace, watch whatever you want on TV, and use all the hot water. The world is full of opportunities. And you're sure, absolutely sure, things are gonna be better from now on. It's like that old rock song, "And I'm prob'ly gonna feel a whole lot better, when you're gone!"

I remember my first little post-divorce apartment—I called it "Little Land of Happy." The cats relaxed. I relaxed. My sense of humor came back. I started laughing at things on TV. And my appetite, always the first thing to go in a tense situation, came back in the slyest way. I tried to eat my little six-bite suppers, and I was still hungry. One evening in particular, I had to get up and re-plug-in the George Foreman Grill and simply make myself more food.

I threw a little dinner party, all divorced women. And I met my neighbors, one of whom turned out to be one of my former, favorite students from when I taught college. I found a whiz-bang divorce support group and changed churches. Found a friendly little gas-and go mart that sold Sunday papers. Found the Y's Buys second-hand shop across the street from my new apartment, and every payday, I bought the nicest piece of dove gray clothing I could find. I went to my grad school graduation in a dove gray, secondhand dress. My friend Theresa remarked on my rather-instant transition from Yuppie Homeowner to Broke Divorcee. She called me the most alarmingly downwardly mobile person she knew. And I remember telling her, "As long as ramen is 12 for a dollar, I don't have to go back to that man."

My pal Barbara invited me to join her group of friends on that first on-my-own Fourth of July, for a big outdoor Pointer Sisters reunion rock concert and fireworks—bring your own lawn chair. I had to buy a lawn chair, but I showed up. Barbara stared in wonder at the chair, "You know," she told me, "that right there is nicer than anything your ex-husband ever bought you." And she was right. The music was wonderful, the fireworks were wonderful. Barbara's husband went and bought us all gloriously salty and hot and greasy cottage fries, and I was so happy. I had a real sense of getting to do something that made me so happy without having to (a) drag an unwilling spouse along, or (b) go alone and then (c) paying for every ounce of happiness the minute I got home from going out without him.

Have there been hard times? Yes. But they are few and far between. And I have coped—without my Ex—through them all. And there have been many, many occasions when I went through something breaking, something gone wrong, something awful, that I thought, "Gee, this sure is easier without the Shame and Intimidation Monday Morning Quarterbacking Spin from a bad spouse."

And sooner or later the euphoria wears off and The Urban Grind wends its way back in. But I still am very (VERY) happy living alone and the peacefulness of it all. I tell people, "I was married for 11 years and then a nice judge gave me time off for good behavior."

And enjoy this time for what it is—a gift. Don't be rushed into anything, not even a new hairstyle. Just take your time. This is part of your healing, a time to do the emotional processing you need to do, not a time to jump into a new relationship or a 30-year mortgage or a navel piercing. They tell those'uns at A.A. to wait a year before entering into any kind of new relationship. That's an excellent rule of thumb for us all.

The Stages of Divorce - One - A Calmer Place to Sleep

My friend Beth thought she had the ideal marriage right up until her husband came home and told her that he was in love with somebody else. That if Beth truly loved him, she would want him to be happy.

The problem was, he would not Establish Separate Residence. He kept his clothes at Beth's house. He came over once a day, around 5 a.m., showered, and changed clothes. This was lawyer-advice for holding on to the financial asset of the house. (When I got divorced, the lawyer told me to move my clothes out last, the very last.) He also had the receipts for his new Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous goings-ons mailed to Beth's house. And it all had the effect of making Beth even more miserable. She was stuck in a very early stage of divorce – that place where you hurt so much, so often, so actively that you feel like you're being peeled by the world's largest potato peeler. And all you want is a little something pleasant and familiar and good and not-not-sad.

Divorce is a form of processing. You move through the stages, maybe at your own pace, but you do move through the stages. You have to, to stay healthy and actively involved in life and to keep from scaring your loved ones and boring your friends.

The first stage is often a dichotomous blend of abject calm and abject misery. This is because as your physical and emotional surroundings calm down, your mind starts to process. At its worst, this can take on a form similar to Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. At the best, the former spouse will get out of your life enough to let you start processing. You will come back to equilibrium in your own time.

The opposite of Love is not Hate. The opposite of Love is Indifference. Hate takes tremendous psychic energy and eats you up inside. And, as Mark Twain said, "Always be pleasant to your enemies. It costs you nothing and it annoys your enemies." You don't have to be a doormat, but just refuse to participate in any type of dysfunction. Then you will have a calmer place to sleep.

And remember, getting out of a bad relationship is like throwing out old underwear. It feels so much better when the creep is gone.

Watchin' The Indian

My beloved Minnesota Public Radio did a report earlier this year on how nobody knows how to be bored anymore. Everywhere we go we have music, phone service, coffee in dandy to go cups, and advertising. And those advertisers have had to go from 60 second commercials to 30 second commercials to 15 second commercials as the national tolerance for Attention Span Theater has dropped straight into the cellar. We need to be bored, we were taught when we were young, so we could learn what to do when we are bored. 1950's Zen, but Zen, n'est pas?

Us kids, in my mother's huge Victorian house, used to get up early on Saturday morning and wait for the TV to come back on. We would curl up in my mother's soft blankets, with bowls of cereal and the front parlor TV on with the sound turned completely down, watching for the test pattern to turn into the Mighty Mouse cartoon show. We were allowed to do this because all the adults back then, including the adults in Mama's house, considered this placid waiting charmingly goofy and filled with self-entertaining boredom-dealing that was considered a virtue in those days. Back before cable TV, little towns only got TV signals between about seven a.m. and midnight. The rest of the time, they put up a test pattern, with a profile of a very politically incorrect Indian on it. We called it "Watchin' The Indian."

There used to be huge stretches of great gobbly boredom built into this society. We were raised to tolerate boredom. Remember visiting elderly friends and relatives of your parents? You were expected to sit on the secondarily nice furniture and behave yourself by being politely and quietly bored out of your mind. Sermons were 90 minutes to two hours long. Special events often involved speeches. Big. Long. Speeches. Sometimes one right after the other.

School used to incorporate boredom as a social skill. And the art of entertaining oneself, once again very quietly, in queues and waiting rooms, was the stuff of legends. When all we had was one another, the braver ones of us interacted with each other. I was in a Carlos O'Kelly's waiting area when an impromptu spelling bee broke out. I have been at a big outdoor concert where a series of objects for a homemade wine and cheese sampling were passed down the long, long rows of audients. And my pal Andy, the absolute King of Boredom Management, can recite whole movie plots from memory in the most fascinating way. He is the absolute best companion in the world to fall into a good two-hour wait with.

All this came to mind because I was in the girly-girl scary waiting room of the Mammography Unit at the big, downtown St. Paul hospital yesterday early. They took away our purses and cell phones and water bottles, put us all in matching mauve kimono tops and put us in this waiting room. There was a very elderly Hispanic woman with a hospital translator, a woman who was crying, a very quiet obviously lesbian woman, a teenager, and me. When i realized that they were going to take everything away from us, I very quietly kept my newspaper with me. I learned in grad school how to read the daily paper in about five minutes flat, and I knew I could get rid of the paper before I got busted. I sat down between the lesbian and the crying woman. Minnesotans can be a very preternaturally quiet, self-contained bunch, but the next woman that came in said, "Let's read the newspaper together." We got the crying woman to stop crying and start talking about the obituary pictures. We got the lesbian to show us how she had smuggled in her cell phone in her cargo shorts. And we made fun of our mauve tops and got the teenager to giggle for us. It was just a little bit of Watchin' the Indian but it surely was nice. In such a scary situation, with nothing but ourselves. The Cameraderie of Boredom.

It Takes Two

There is a calmness that comes after a divorce. It can be rather immediate. Sometimes all it takes is finding a calmer place to sleep—what the lawyers call "Establishing Separate Residences." Sometimes it takes getting through to the other side of the un-co-mingling of the family finances. Sometimes it just takes hanging out with enough Normals to where you get where you trust your instincts and your feelings again.

Dear Abby last week had a letter from a young woman who found out that her father was binge-drinking again. He started up when his wife, the writer's mother, went away on a vacation with her sister. The writer wanted to know whether or not to tell her mother. Abby told the writer that the family dynamic was this – Husband was punishing Wife for going on vacation. It was a startling thing to read in the newspaper in the broad daylight—that people who love you so much that they went and married you could punish you. Oh, what an Elephant on the Sofa Moment!

If you stay in a dysfunctional marriage long enough, you begin to self-monitor yourself to avoid this punishment. You will, literally, catch yourself being happy and check yourself, knowing what will happen later on. I have always gone through life lucky—things just happen to me, good things, happy things. And the saddest part of my life was being married to a man who resented any happy thing—and I mean anything that could put a smile on my face—that did not come from him.

I remember taking him along to my Senior Convocation, when I got my bachelor's degree at age 40. My voice teacher had urged me, "Bring your husband," and I remember having a little mental blip of "Why would I do that?" It turned out that I was the only triple-dipper, the only triple honoree. It was more than my husband could stand. And then, afterwards, over by the red-punch-and-cookies that the nuns supplied in endless quantities for all Catholic college occasions, people came up and hugged me, told me congratulations, told my stoic husband how proud he must be of me. My teenaged daughter could see him getting tenser and tenser and then start to twitch ("like a popcorn machine, Ma."). He could hardly wait long enough to get to the car, where he turned to me, still with the three parchment certificates in my hand, and sneered, "You just think you're such Hot Sh*t."

I remember thinking, "I do not have a normal marriage."

There's psychology behind all this—Google "abandonment-engulfment cycle" sometime, or "Narcissism." But it mainly amounts to hostage taking. You are punished for being a "Bad Hostage, Bad, Bad!"

My neighbor lady works two jobs to support a husband who will not hold down even one job if it gets in the way of his drinking. He punishes her for working that second job by doing things like letting her beloved little dog out loose, cooking up all the meat in the freezer and gobbling it down in her absence, and—just last week--getting her little car impounded when he went out driving at night, with no valid driver's license and his third OMVI, and he got a mandatory four days in County Jail. She did a very brave, un-Hostagy thing—she did not go down to Payday Loans and get the money to bail him out. She, instead, had four days without him. She told me, "It's so-o peaceful." Yes, Dear Heart, it is.

Janelle

The Middle Aged Travellin' Mack

It's a whole new ballgame travelling for business at my age. Half the hotel room bathroom counter was taken up with all the homey, Walgreen-y purchases that it takes to keep my antique body up and at 'em. You don't want to have to find all that crap out on the road. My fellow Middle-Agers found that out. One guy had to go out about ten a.m. in a strange city and buy Dr. Scholl's insoles for his tired feet, and then was totally bereft of a pair of scissors, in the middle of the meetings, to trim them to fit. Two women got sick (one from bad restaurant choices and one from good old upper-respiratory crud) and both could have kept on going if they had had a little Kaeopectate and a couple of antihistamine pills.

It's very tempting out in The Great Land of Expense Accounts, to pretend you still have the digestion of the Sweet Young Things around you. That you can eat what they eat, scarfing down greasy lunches and big suppers. The great truth is that your stomach is your stomach no matter where you take it, and if you can't do pepperoni anymore at home, it's not going to work a thousand miles away from home.

So here's the travel lessons I learned mostly, believe me, the hard way:

1. If you have to travel Business Casual, go for the most comfortable Business Casual clothes you own. And don't wear dressy-dressy, uncomfortable shoes until you hit the meeting room door. You can wear yourself out in modern airports before you even get on the plane. You're going to walk much, much more than you usually walk, so plan for comfort.

2. Plan for hurry-up-and-wait. Bring along a paperback and quarters for the newspaper vending machine. Carry a bottle of water with you whenever you can (that being before and after airport screening). If you don't want to chat on the plane, buy one of those blow-up neck support pillows and close your eyes. Even a 40 minute flight can be a 40-minute-long, refreshing nap. The worst you could miss is that 2.5 ounces of pop they hand out.

3. Right before I went to Europe, somebody told me to lay out all the clothes I thought I would need and all the money I thought I would need on my bedspread. And then to take half the clothes and twice the money. The point being to (a) underpack—you will thank yourself over and over again, and (b) plan for contingencies, and Laws-A-Mercy, will there be contingencies! I got this trip down to my two smallest rolling suitcases, and I checked both suitcases. Then I went through the airports with a big, silvery, oversized travel purse and a girly-girl carry-all with my reporting orders, my paperback book, my water bottle, and my knitting.

4. Get to know the hotel staff. If you have a concierge, consult that person about restaurants, public transportation, amenities, extra pillows, where the spa treatments are, et al. Our hotel this trip was the big, swanky Marriott in Atlanta, and the amenities were wonderful. Two of my compatriots asked for refrigerators in their rooms and they got 'em. We all had European-style, pillow-top mattresses with duvets and good pillows. We had a big indoor-outdoor rooftop pool and a full-sized Starbucks.

And tip the maids, tip the bellboy, tip the courtesy shuttle driver. Those are the people who have saved my bacon over and over again. I cash out a couple of 20-dollar bills into ones before every trip, and I tip people. I have gotten wonderful, hospitable things done for me for those onesies. You never know what can really make a difference. So spread a little graciousness around.

5. If you regularly can't sleep through the night, plan for it. If you aren't sleeping at home, then it's statistically probable you aren't going to sleep through the night in some strange hotel room. The world won't stop because you're awake at two a.m. One tip is to turn the TV on sleep-timer with the volume down just to a mumble-minimum. It acts like white noise. Or run a little hot water through the coffeemaker and use that chamomile teabag you brought from home.

6. Plan for stress release. On longer trips, I look in the Yellow Pages under "Yoga." If I can't find a yoga studio, then I go to knitting shops or bookstores. The last time I was stuck in Atlanta, I went on a big Grayline bus tour one weekend, and I joined a group going to Stone Mountain the next weekend. I got to see the Phoenix Symphony Orchestra Triple Beethoven season opener and the Science Museum's James Bond traveling exhibit. You got to have balance, good work-play balance, even if you are living out of a suitcase.

7. Celebrate coming back home. I did my favorite little chicken meatballs for my first supper back home. I went over and talked to my favorite clerks at the huge Goodwill store. I got down on the floor and played Catnip Mouse with the cats. It's good to be back home in my little treetop studio apartment.

We are all, Babies, gonna be working a whole lot longer than we figured on. And sooner or later we are all gonna be loping down some skyway with an E-ticket. We are all gonna be told to hike to a business meeting "just six blocks away." I saw big groups of sales teams, all in matching polo shirts and big matching binders, galumping around the hotel and down Peachtree Avenue, and they were not slowing down for the middle-aged ones. We had to hike to a business center every morning, and climb stairs to get to the tower elevator. We had to walk to lunch and run for the Marta trains. And after the meetings, we all wanted to do fun things that involved, yup, walking.

At the very end of my trip, on the big shuttle van home, I met a fellow middle-ager who is working delivering cars. He drives new cars to new owners and then flies back home. He says they pay him just about enough to eat at McDonald's. But he's working. We are all gonna be working. This is not the life we planned, but it's the live we got. Here's to us.

And here's those Chicken Meatballs:

Mince about 3 Tbl. of sweet onion and mix with
1 Tbl. parsley
1 tsp. minced garlic

Crumble in one-half pound of ground chicken
1/4 cup Italian bread crumbs
2 Tbl. grated Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
dash pepper
1 egg

Mix well, and shape into eight small meatballs.

Brown in 2 Tbl. oil. Then add 2 Tbl. water and 2 Tbl. red wine
Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.

Take meatballs out of pan and make pan gravy:

Measure juice in pan and add water to make 1 cup liquid
Add a beef boullion cube and a capful of Kitchen Bouquet browning agent

Make a roue of 1 Tbl. flour in 2 Tbl. water. Add to gravy and stir to blend and thicken. Reintroduce meatballs to pan and heat everything through.

Serves two.

And Speaking of Macaroni....

This is a true story. It happened to a friend of my friend Annie.

Annie's friend took her only son up to college. Took him to the bookstore and got his books and a college sweatshirt. Got him unpacked in the dorm room. Went down and bought him a cafeteria card. And then she hugged him and handed him a small amount of cash. She told him, "Now, Daddy and I have talked this over and we can send you this amount of money every month, but no more. So you're gonna have to budget. But you've got your room and your cafeteria pass and you should be OK."

Eight days later, Son called home. He said, "I need more money."

"For what?" his incredulous mother asked.

"Food."

"But you've got your cafeteria pass."

"I sold that. I don't like that food."

"But you have your cash allowance."

"I bought everybody pizza. And restaurants are expensive. It's gone."

"I'll call you back," his mother said. She did better than that. She drove up to the college and she handed Son a big bag of macaroni.

"What's this?"

"Macaroni."

"Why are you giving me macaroni?"

"Because you don't have any more money coming in for 22 more days."

"But what do you want me to do?"

"I want you," his mother told him, "to learn to like macaroni."

What this country needs is about two million more moms like that.

J.

Seven Dollars A Day, My Aunt Fannie!

Ran across a blog called "Eating on Seven Dollars A Day." The author pulled his punches, however, declaring that the main ingredients for supper be seven dollars, for two servings, and then you cart the leftovers to work the next day for lunch. And wherefore art thou, breakfast?

I can do better than that. I eat on about five dollars a day, breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. And no, ramen noodles never cross my lips.

It's good, healthy eating, based on good nutrition and the things that got me my Lifetime Key at Weight Watchers. I did Weight Watchers, BTW, because you are never hungry-starving on Weight Watchers. I eat enviably good.

Repeat after me:

A normal, healthy adult only needs five to seven ounces of protein a day.

While it is fun to have a big protein-feed now and then, a diet focused more on vegetables, healthy grains and fruits will keep you spry. And who doesn't want to be spry? I have fruit and whole-grain bread for breakfast, or fruit and cottage cheese. I cook two or three entrees every Sunday (mainly chicken and fish and vegetarian) and I heat up a small serving of one of those entrees for lunch at work. Dinner is a fresh salad, a little more protein and good-quality skim milk.

Snacks are 33 cent mozzarella string cheese sticks, or carrot sticks (from a big 69-cent pack of carrots), or Wheat Thin crackers (bought on sale). My grocery store does a wonderful job of stocking fresh fruit in season, on sale. This week I got strawberries for $1.50 a quart and two tangelos for 50 cents each. I also got a big pink grapefruit, which I eat like an orange. My co-workers are positively fascinated with my snacks and the Sherman Tank Health level of an Old Lady like me.

Americans need to get over their obsession with meat. If your plate was the face of a clock, meat should take up no more than one quarter of the plate, the space from nine to 12 o'clock. It's better still to mix a little meat in with the other ingredients.

My vegetarian entree this week is what my Southern mother always called, "Snap Beans and New Potatoes." Fresh green beans were 69 cents for a two-pound pack this week, and I will cook them with the last of the new baby potatoes from the Hmong farmers at the Minneapolis farmer's market. Serve it up with sliced tomatoes, and it is a meal fit for a King. Or a parsimonious Divorced Lady.

Other dirt cheap feasts include:

Stir-Fried Cabbage, with sweet onion and soy sauce

A good old-fashioned chicken pot pie, (with the meat gleaned from backs-and-necks if money is tight), and a sour cream crust

Oven roasted baked potatoes, with The Brown Derby Restaurant's recipe for creamed spinach over the top.

Macaroni Anything. Macaroni has wonderful mouth feel, and a big bag of any frozen vegetables (my store's house brand is 99 cents) mixed with macaroni will keep you alive till next payday.

"But, hey, lady, I like meat!" you say? Then make friends with the butcher. If you go in early (I do mean early), you can get the markdowns from the day before. My last 6 a.m. foray to the grocery store scored me six pork chops for $1.99 and a four-pack of chicken breasts for about three bucks.

I also watch the sales on meats. I buy up ground chicken, or ground turkey or lean ground beef when it goes on deep sale. I divide it up at home into four-ounce freezer packs. Or I cook down huge turkey wings and use the meat for turkey and noodles. Or I wait for the big bags of Wisconsin cheese to go on sale, and make a big, baked macaroni and cheese.

I don't scrimp on quality skim milk, or yoghurt or cottage cheese or good whole-grain bread. I have a bad jones for Italian pasta. I eat out with friends, when there's coupons. I have been known to go to a bargain matinee and eat enough popcorn that supper is just a snack that evening. I ask for things like Italian expresso powder and Italian tomato-paste-in-a-tube for stocking stuffers.

Tomorrow I will cook my mother's macaroni recipe, with about four ounces of lean ground sirloin, stewed tomatoes, celery and Vidalia onion. Then I will oven-bake the last of a six-pound bag of catfish fillets I found at the grocery store for three bucks. Make a saucepan full of glazed carrots. Make some homemade biscuits for a not-so-sweet strawberry shortcake. And eat like a queen for another week.

Oh, and I also contribute to the food bank. So I feed myself, the cats and the food bank.

Seven dollars a day, my Aunt Fannie! That's for amateurs!

Christmas - How To Be Happy In Spite of One's Self

Christmas - How To Be Happy In Spite of One's Self,


Back when I worked at the Radio Ranch, I had a bright yellow poster in my
office. It was entitled, "How To Be Happy In Spite of One's Self."

Joyce Meyer gave a sermon about that a couple of years ago. She said as
long as the Devil can make you just walk around, staring at your own navel,
going, "What about me?! What about me?!" -- then he owns your butt.

So--

1. Go to your favorite local grocery store. Experiment around and see
what's the biggest bag of dry dog food you can lift. Seven pounds? 15? 50? 75? And then haul it out to the local humane society. Walk a couple of those big,
graybeard dogs while you're out there.

2. Go to your favorite discount store and buy six pairs of mittens. Take
them to the local homeless shelter. And my friend who runs the AIDS hospice
says people at the very lowest end of the socioeconomic food chain have
problems with Sock Management. He believes all God's children get clean,
dry socks. He has a desk drawer full of them. D.D., who has run a homeless
women's and children's center, got corporate yuppies to buy plus size underpants, 30 pairs at a time, and donate them.

3. If you have a weekend, cover your oldest bedspread in flannelette. Find
some grade school kids to help you tack it with yarn and tie double bows.
Then take it down to the fire department. They'll give it to someone who's
lost everything in a house fire.

4. Hitch up the dog and go on a dusky, full-moon walk. Admire all those
Christmas lights. It takes a certain amount of brave maudlinism to spend $800 on exterior lights and what a way to love Christmas.

5. Go to Target and buy some half-price Christmas mugs. Fill them with
individually wrapped teabags and take them to your favorite librarians. Say,
"Thanks."

6. Take the loaf of bread you bought last week and tear it up outside, on
the lawn. The birds will have Christmas Dinner on you.

Last Christmas, I took Meals on Wheels to one woman who had two weeks to
live. When I asked her what I could pray for, she said, "Pray I don't see
New Year's." She was speaking from a zilcho quality of life situation.
But, us guys, us'uns, we have an embarrassment of riches. And we desperately need to,
in this woulda-coulda-shoulda, mass consumerism explosion of
gimme-gimme-gimme Commercial Christmas, center ourselves and think
outward-outward-outward.

It'll be swell.


Janelle

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

Why, oh, why does it hurt so much to end a relationship? The short answer is that we are socio-enculturated to believe in Big Love. "Love is the answer to everything." "Love is all you need." "Don’t you want somebody to love you?" It’s tough to buck the system, but it can be done.

There’s emotional work to do when you end a relationship, whether you’re the dumper or the dumpee. If you don’t do your homework, then you will repeat the situation over and over again until you do. There’s a lot of F.O.G. (Fear, Obligation, Guilt) in almost every relationship and F.O.G., even when it ends, takes a long time to work through.

My friend Karen, who counsels young women who are often in the turmoil of relationship woes, says that many young women work at Trying To Date Someone as hard as if they were working a second job. And here’s the news flash—it shouldn’t be that hard. If you have to work-work-work at the relationship, then maybe (gasp) it is not the best relationship for you.

And in the world according to “Designing Women’s” Suzanne Sugarbaker, “The answer to every problem a woman has is not ‘You need a date.’” There’s a lot of women that cringe when their friends say, “Maybe you’ll meet a man.”

AARP did a landmark study on older women and re-marriage and they found that older women don’t feel that they HAVE to remarry, or even date. Just about two years ago, the statistics on single households beat out the Ozzie-and-Harriet households. Women are on to a great and wonderful secret – We can make it without Prince Not-So-Charming.

And as my friend Alan says, “I’ve been unhappy and married and unhappy and single. And believe me, unhappy and single is much easier.”

Janelle

Knitting

Well, I'm knitting again. I found a skein of pretty, light-gray Wool-Ease at the Goodwill Store for 99 cents. It should be enough, with my stock of white wool, to make a nice wool beret for the bus stop this winter. I even know where my circular needles are, so it's Kismet.

If you haven't been to the Lion Brand website, you're missing a great deal. There's also a great knitting e-newsletter called "Knitting Daily."

Janelle

Black Friday

Black Friday, once again, went on without me. My idea of a good shopping day is a spare 20 dollar bill and a overly large thrift shop. I am, therefore, not one of the souls in line in front of the Circuit City, at 4 in the morning. For one thing, it's about 19 degrees above zero at 4 in the morning, here in The Frozen North (Motto: Why Get Warm When You Are Just Gonna Get Cold Again?).

But earlier, in my "I want to make everybody happy" days, I got talked into two Black Fridays with friends. I can still hear those women saying, "Oh, come on! It'll be fun."

The first Black Friday was at a big mall, and my shopping companion mainly wanted to eat her way through the food court. At some point, they just about ran out of food, and I got to go home.

The second Black Friday was at an even larger mall, and it became apparent that my shopping companion just wanted to window shop. And the logical, little nerdy Girl Scout part of me blurted out, "But if you aren't going to buy anything, why can't we just go home?" Then I was in for it.

I do like to shop. I just don't consider it a competitive sport.