Happy 50th Birthday To Me!

On July 3, 2007 I turned 50 years old. It was not a birthday I particularly looked forward to, frankly, because after I passed 21, it was all downhill from there.  And, there’s something about the number Fifty that doesn’t sit well with a woman.  The word Old comes to mind, decrepit, saggy, wrinkled……puts me in mind of Retirement Homes & walkers as being in the not too distant future.

Sigh.

When I turned 50, I’d been living with my dear husband, who was then my boyfriend, for a very short time.  We were very happy together & we were also very committed to having a long term future together. We thought of ourselves as ‘soulmates’, grateful to have found one another at long last.

I knew Chuck was cooking up something special for my big day….I could feel the excitement in the air.  My daughter was trilling about the house, and there was definitely something up her sleeve…..I could smell it, as only a mother can.

I was hoping Chuck would pop the Big Question for the Big Five-0, but I was harboring that wish secretly, and keeping my thoughts to myself.

I went to work that morning at the law firm where I was employed at the time, after receiving some Happy Birthday wishes from Chuck & my daughter on my way out.  Big things were coming later that evening…….how EXCITING!

When 5:00 rolled around, I was the first one out the office door. I carefully applied some fresh lipstick in the rearview mirror as I drove home, eager to finally get there already.  Never had 10 miles seemed so far away.

I walked through the door & saw my daughter sitting on the couch with her BFF in the whole world, Erin. They were all giggly & goofy……yep…….something was up indeed, and Erin was there to see the look on my face when I opened the little black velvet box!!!

Chuck gave me a big kiss & hug & instructed me to sit down on the couch, that my daughter would be going downstairs to bring up my gift!

Why would he leave a small ring box downstairs, I wondered?

Well, whatever, I thought as I waited anxiously.

I anxiously awaited my FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY gift from the man I loved dearly & desperately…..I think that’s an important statement  to reiterate at this stage of the game.  I awaited an important gift for an important day!

 I saw my daughter coming up the stairs carrying a medium sized gift bag in her hand. Pretty big bag for a diamond ring…..

As she approached the couch, with Erin & Chuck waiting with barely concealed looks of absolute glee on their faces, I saw that gift bag move.

What kind of diamond engagement ring moves??

She brought the bag right up to me and held it out in her arms, like an offering.

Suddenly, a head popped up out of the top of that bag!

A freaking head.

Covered in long, fine, brown hair.

It couldn’t be a baby because it had long hairy ears.

The damn thing was a dog!!!!!!!!

At that point, I thought I had entered The Twilight Zone.  Shock doesn’t describe the emotions that ran through my body & brain as I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that the Love of My Life had given me a DOG for my 50^th birthday!

He had given me something that poops!

To say I was deflated would be a gross understatement. To say I was flabbergasted would be another gross understatement. I was, in fact, absolutely FLOORED.

The puppy jumped out of the gift bag & onto CHUCK’S lap, where she proceeded to cover his face with doggie kisses!

What? MY dog licking HIM? Oh, this was just too much.

I had to excuse myself & make an emergency trip to the bathroom where I locked the door for privacy.

I felt the tears threaten to fall down my cheeks & wreck my fresh make-up job.

A Freaking. Dog.

Was the man insane?

Where on earth, I wonder, did he ever get the cock-eyed notion that a woman would like a DOG for her 50^th birthday??

I collected myself as best I could & went back into the living room, where the new puppy, a miniature long-haired dachshund, was earnestly trying to chew the leg off of my other dog Kirby, a cairn terrier.

The sounds those two dogs made was like nails on a blackboard.

Not only would I have to suck up the disappointment I’d felt in not receiving the gift of my dreams, I also had to suck up the racket these two beasts were going to be making for quite some time.

Like, oh…maybe, the next FIFTEEN YEARS or so?

With that, the new & nameless puppy took one look at me, squatted down & took a POOP right on the Persian rug in the living room!

Welcome to your new life, my love, cleaning up after TWO mutts instead of one!

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have to be honest here by saying it took me a whole week to accept this puppy as part of the family. Chuck was disappointed with my disappointment, and offered to have one of his son’s take the dog off of our hands. I told him I’d have to think it over, I was way too busy licking my wounds to think clearly or logically at that point.

All I could think of was, I Didn’t Get Proposed To Today.

Men are idiots. No offense intended for the non-idiotic men who may be reading this.  But think about it.  If you are 100% honest with yourselves, (ha-ha), you will admit to having been an idiot at some point during your life, with regard to giving your wife or girlfriend a totally inappropriate ‘gift.’

Perhaps it was a size Extra-Small, super short Teddy from Victoria’s Secret for your mate who wears a size 16 when she’s not bloated from Aunt Flo.

Oh wait, Chuck’s already done that too!

Perhaps you’ve given your darling mate a pair of slut-wear high topped, lace up patent leather boots in a too-small size for ‘later’, when you both had some romantic time away from the kids? As if watching her hobbling around in extra-tight boots is sexy or something. PUH LEEZE!

Oh wait, Chuck’s already done that to. 

Sigh.

Which is why I’m using this opportunity to let you guys in on a little secret. Here’s what constitutes an appropriate Gift for us ladies:

1.       Jewelry of any kind, preferably the type that sparkles & glitters & is measured in carats versus chips.

2.       Something little momento of your love that sits on the driveway & still has temporary plates on it, but does not have a car freshener in the shape of a pine tree, or a garter belt hanging from the rear view mirror. The words Lincoln or Mercedes are the only acceptable ‘graffiti’ your darling wife should be able to read on said Gift.

3.       Candy & flowers are not acceptable signs of your undying love unless they are attached to a pair of airline tickets to France, Jamaica or the Italian Riviera.

4.       Just say NO to crock-pots, corning-ware, steam irons God-forbid, or small appliances of any kind, unless said appliance contains jewelry of any kind, an IOU for a new car, or a set of tickets to someplace foreign or intriguing.

So the old rule of thumb used by men…the JFC routine…..jewelry candy flowers, are only good if they meet the aforementioned criteria.

Now that we’ve had this little talk, I’m sure you guys who are reading this will See The Light, and I will never again hear from another woman lamenting over the stupid, thoughtless, ridiculous birthday gift she’s had the great misfortune to receive from YOU.

As a final note, I am irritated to say that we named the damn dog Ruby, after the gem I did NOT receive to commemorate my 50^th birthday *as the Ruby IS the July birthstone*, or, the nice sparkly DIAMOND I REALLY wanted.

But who am I to complain? Chuck says it’s just as easy to clean up after TWO bad dogs as it is ONE.

Boy does HE need a reality check. Not to mention another box of bags from DogPoop.com.  Because, hey, if it’s so easy to clean up after two dogs, HE can do all the turd-herding himself!

Going Green Is Making Me Blue

Lately, I hear everyone from Obama to my teenage daughter preaching the Go Green mantra.

Helllooooooooo……I know all about Going Green folks.  For me, “Green” has been a matter of economics rather than social consciousness or political ‘correctness’.  While my children think they’re saving the planet by tossing a soda can into the recycling bin, I’ve ‘walked the walk’ for the past 54 years.

But hey, today’s generation is Green in theory at least.

When I was growing up in the 60’s & 70’s we weren’t Green in theory; we were Green in reality.  It wasn’t until I was 10 years old that dad broke down and bought us a washing machine. Until that time,  Mom & Grandma washed the clothes in the bathroom tub, with a washboard, and hung them out to dry on a clothesline.  Wind-power dried our clothes & not one lick of energy was used, except for the human kind, squeezing clothespins onto the cord. When Dad’s undershirts or Grandma’s bloomers were too tattered to be worn any longer, we’d stuff them into the rag bag to be used to wash the kitchen floor with later on.  Shark Steam-Mops hadn’t been invented yet, and, even if they were, they would have been way too expensive & no substitute, certainly, for good old-fashioned elbow grease.

We did have a dishwasher though, her name was Christine.

No air-conditioning in our little household, either.  In the sweltering heat of the summer, when Mom insisted we close all the windows so a maniac wouldn’t sneak in and stab us to death, I’d fill a plastic bag with ice and put it between my legs to cool off.  That was my version of A/C.  Today, our homes have 20,000 BTU electricity-sucking units that are capable of cryogenics……falling asleep with the temperature at 68 degrees can result in waking up frozen solid.

I had transportation of my very own, too: a bicycle with monkey handlebars and a banana seat.  That bike took me everywhere and used not one ounce of energy besides the leg-pumping type. These days, at 16 years old, our children have their own cars which are not jalopies with bald tires and Saran-Wrap for windows.  My first car was a 1968 Buick Riviera I paid $650 for which spewed pitch-black smoke and fumes from the vents located by the front windshield.  I had to stick my head out of the driver’s window just to see where I was going with all that smoke!

We had 1 black and white television set with me being the remote control (and DON’T YOU DARE spin that dial).  I’d be the designated channel changer for all of the 5 stations that came in with any degree of clarity.  The rabbit ear antennas saw to that. Or else Dad would go up on the roof to wrestle with the big-kahuna antenna instead.  Nope, there was no super wide 60” flat screen behemoth sucking up electricity faster than a storm drain in a thunderstorm.

We had a steam iron though, a real electric one. Grandma did all the ironing in the house, including the sheets and  towels.  You could hear her banging that iron with every ounce of her strength……..I think that habit was left over from the days when irons heated up on a wood stove.  Either that or she was taking out all her hostilities on a piece of hot metal and cloth, I don't know.

If anyone dared to leave a light on, my dad bellowed about how he wasn’t working till midnight every day to keep the electric company in business.  Today, we leave 123 canned lights burning in the kitchen alone. Our homes are lit up like Christmas trees and our backbreaking electric bills require part time jobs to subsidize.

When I was a kid, we played in the water from the fire hydrants in the street, when we were lucky enough to find them open.  If mom was in a particularly good mood, she’d set up the sprinkler to run through for half an hour IF the lawn was scheduled for watering that day. We had no built-in swimming pools with electric filters running 24/7, Aquabot’s to crawl the perimeter and continuously clean it, or a chemical test kit to make sure the chlorine was at just the right level.

The rotary dial telephone hung on the wall in the kitchen, with a short cord which forced the caller to sit at the kitchen table where everyone could hear her private business.  We were fortunate……we didn’t have a party line like the vast majority of the neighbors. No call waiting, no answering machine, no *69 to see who last called, and absolutely NO costly information calls were permitted to be made from that phone. Zip. Nada.  By the time I was about 17 years old, mom broke down & bought a longer cord which enabled me to go into the bathroom & close the door to find a moment of privacy.  These days, we’ve deemed it  necessary to pay $250 a month to Verizon for cell phones with blue-tooth headsets so we can be contacted any time of day or night, anywhere on earth, by anyone who cares to speak to us.   One end of the phone is continuously plugged into the cigarette lighter in the car while the other end is plugged into our ear canals, while the phone, the CD player & the GPS drain power from the battery of the gas guzzling car the entire time. How did we function without cell phones we now wonder? What was it like to hear blessed SILENCE & be wonderfully incommunicado?

On the nights I had a bath, the water was saved so my grandmother could get in and bathe after me.  We were saving water……..not in an effort to be Green but in an effort to save money on the water bill. Nowadays, we have 4 bathrooms and an over sized hot water heater, to make absolutely certain all 3 of us can take 40 minute showers anytime the mood strikes.

We had no need to waste electricity on hair dryers or curling irons; we used soft pink curlers or Coke cans to roll our wet hair up in, cover it up with a hairnet, and go to bed, hoping beyond hope for 15 minutes of uninterrupted-by-pain-or-bobby-pin sleep. We scotch-taped our bangs down before the lights went out & voila, 8 hours later, we had a home-made hair-do.

My legs were another source of energy back in the day.  Believe it or not, I walked back and forth to Jr. High School AND High School every day since I lived about 1/8th of a mile too close to qualify for a bus to pick me up.  Nowadays, we drive our kids to the mailbox because their feet hurt after a long day of playing Gameboy & watching videos.

If the electricity went out back then, my dad would get on his knees & thank God for a lower monthly bill. Out came the candles & the battery operated radio was turned on to the soothing melodies of Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians.  Nowadays, if the electricity cuts out, there is chaos in the streets! We’re breaking out in a cold sweat punching OK on the TV remote, over and over again, in a futile attempt to understand why-for-godsakes that picture turned off right before we found out who it was that slept with the hunky handyman on The Housewives of New Jersey.

Every Wednesday morning, we had one trash can for a family of four to put out for pick up.  Why?  Because we threw away ONLY the rotted pieces of fruit, the pits, bones, egg shells, coffee grinds, the very tips of the vegetables being cut up for stew, an empty milk jug, and maybe a few empty cans of tomato paste used for the Sunday-spaghetti-sauce. In fact, my kooky old Aunt would feed her dog those old coffee grinds & eggshells. Nothing went to waste….absolutely nothing.

  In today’s world, we put out 4 huge trash cans on wheels, 6 empty cardboard crates from Sam’s and 3 stray, can’t-fit-into-the-trash-can Hefty lawn bags which do NOT contain grass cuttings.  Why?  Because we live in a society where everything is disposable.  We throw OUT more food than we eat.  If the apple has 1 small bruise, the whole fruit is trashed.  In my house, we cut the bruise out and eat the rest of the fruit, since each one costs $1. The plastic containers used in the processed foods we now eat fill up a whole trash can alone! Styrofoam from restaurant doggie bags take up another.  A family of 6 can eat heartily from one family’s trash alone!

We were indeed Green back in the old days, and now we’re Blue because we’ve hogged up all the planet’s resources & have nobody to blame but ourselves.  Who, I ask you, would know better about saving energy than us old-timers?

Nobody. That’s who.

Am I A Hoarder?

With all the new ‘hoarding’ shows on television these days, one has to ask himself a question:

Am I A Hoarder?

Of course, the producers pick THE worst case scenarios to air.  The guy who has SO much clutter piled up in his house that his head hits the ceiling when he’s trying to navigate around through the mess.  Or the woman who’s hardwood floors are caving in because she allows her 46 dogs free run of the house &  sees no  need to give them outside potty privileges.  I feel sorry for the cameramen working on that particular episode…..if it were me, I’d demand a ventilator & oxygen tank, not to mention a HAZMAT suit.

UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I own 2 dogs & let me tell you, that’s PLENTY. Plenty of mess to clean up, plenty of all-star-wrestling matches, plenty of expensive Vet appointments for everything from scratched eyeballs to eating trash & bleeding from the rectum because of it.  Plenty, too, of potty visits to the lawn & then ‘accidents’ on my expensive Persian carpet in the dining room. Uh huh. Let’s ignore the tiled laundry room & focus on THE worst place in the entire house to make a little oopsie. 

I hate dogs and if I didn’t love them so much, and if they weren’t SO darned CUTE, in spite of horrifying breath from rotted teeth, which makes a whole new experience out of ‘doggie kisses’,  they’d be OUT of here in a New York minute. What I see in the very near future is a bill for $1,000.00 to pull out those rotted teeth & another bill for the baby food dinners they’ll have to eat thereafter. Sigh.

My ‘favorite’ Hoarding, Buried Alive episode was about the young woman who turned her home into a cat sanctuary, or, a gigantic scratching post complete with mazes for them to crawl through INSIDE the drywall.   She didn’t see the situation as a problem though, because being a ‘cat lover’ requires a level of devotion the rest of the human race has NO clue about.  Alrighty then.

My husband & I are avid garage-salers. We devote every Saturday morning to the thrill of the hunt, and the even-bigger-thrill of the Bargain.  I rub my hands together every Friday night in anticipation of what loot we may find the next morning, especially at the Mother Lode Itself: The Community  Garage Sale. Most likely, unnecessary & superfluous items that other people no longer want.  One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, after all, isn’t that what they say?

When I look around my 2-car garage, I can vouch for the fact that my husband & I have indeed purchased a whole load of another man’s trash. Every inch of that square footage is stuffed with ‘necessities’ that may one day actually be necessary.  As of right now, however, they are not.  

When I look in my master bathroom, what I see is a collection of jewelry that I cannot conceivably wear in a lifetime.  If I were to wear a different necklace, bracelet, ring-on-every-finger & earrings in both sets of pierced ear- holes every day for a year, I still wouldn’t come close to sporting every piece I own.  Not by a long shot.

I’ve purchased a set of 8 colorful drawers on wheels, at a garage sale of course, to house some of my various & unique collection, which also comes primarily from garage sales.  Then there are 4 large, divided embroidery boxes to contain a small fraction of my earring collection, along with a screened frame to store those which have shephard’s hooks.   Then there’s the coat-rack-type-thingy-with-arms inside of my enormous, overstuffed walk-in closet to display some of the lovely necklaces I’ve collected over the years.  Did I mention the 4 foot, free standing cherry-wood jewelry chest in a corner of the bedroom? It houses the ‘left-overs’…….pieces I don’t like too much or infrequently wear, but are certainly not trash-worthy for petesake.  Then there’s the necklace holder in the corner of the bathroom sink, next to the electric toothbrush.  It’s purpose is to hold some of the short, choker type necklaces.

I’m beginning to wonder when enough is enough though, and what constitutes Too Much? Perhaps when I need to rent a Pod storage unit to reside on the driveway?

The purses take up 2 full length wire racks on top of my walk in closet which is overstuffed with clothes, while the remaining 4 wire racks contain my collection of cute shoes, scarves, hats & other assorted accessories.

But I’m not a Hoarder: I Am A Collector. There is a big difference between the two I’ll have you know.

The rest of the house is full of tshotchkes…..meaning trinkets in Yiddish.  There’s the German porcelain miniature monkey band which NO ONE is allowed to TOUCH, God-forbid!   The enormous snuff-box collection resides in another section of shelving in the family room. For a while, I collected miniature everythings. In addition to the miniature everythings, there were  hatpins,  (and no, I do not wear vintage hats), clocks, old portraits & ornately decorated marriage certificates, roosters, bird cages, pill boxes, vintage posters, pottery, bronze statues, and antiques of all kinds.   My favorite paintings are old, moody oils which cover an entire wall of my study, so I can enjoy looking at them while I type, especially if I had eyes in the back of my head.  Even though I stopped collecting quite a while ago, I still have the entire loot, gathering dust quicker than a bee gathers honey.

Then there’s the Mirror Collection which is located in the first floor half-bathroom.  My husband calls it the Versailles Bathroom or the Hall Of Mirrors. He’s been known to cuss rather loudly while atop a ladder, attempting to hang yet another ‘find’ in just the right location….not too close and not too far away from the other.  My daughter hates using that bathroom, because she can see herself on the toilet when I’ve placed another new find on the floor by the sink, which gives her a perfect view of herself taking a tinkle. At last count, there are 38 mirrors covering the walls of the Versailles Room. But, there is still open space in various spots on those walls, so………I’m not officially hoarding mirrors, am I? Hmmmmpffffffffffffff!

Sometimes the clutter has to be de-cluttered, but then comes the all-important question of whether to donate it, throw it out, save it for MY garage sale *yet to actually occur*, sell it on Ebay *also yet to happen*  or transfer it to yet another location “for future use”?

What is the definition of hoarding, anyway? According to Dictionary.com;

HOARD

/hɔrd, hoʊrd/ Show Spelled[hawrd, hohrd]

–noun

1.

a supply or accumulation that is hidden or carefully guarded for preservation, future use, etc.: a vast hoard of silver.

Ah! There you have it! An accumulation that is carefully guarded for future use.  Just because that future date never actually arrives is no good reason to dismantle the collection!

Or is it?

While de-cluttering a kitchen cabinet the other day, I found an Easy Bake oven, completely intact, including the macaroni & cheese packets it came with originally; the pans, spatulas, and even the directions for baking a perfect creation.

My daughter, the original owner of this Easy Bake Oven, is currently 18 years old & getting ready  to go to college next month.

So much for carefully guarding precious tshotchkes  for preservation or future use, eh?

Although I’ve asked myself the all-important question, Are You A Hoarder, more than once, the answer always has to be No! Of course not!

I, my friends, am a Collector.

Phew.