Day 6/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

Were you lucky enough to have a parent who enjoyed and encouraged arts and crafts?

One of my favorite art activities to engage in, with Mom's help back in the 70s, was Makit & Bakit "stained glass" ornaments.  

So today, although it looks like it would be great fun, I won't be buying these, though there are quite a few to choose among on eBay. I'll just be reminiscing with you and hoping you have stories to share about Makit & Bakits, too. 

We'd place the crystals in the frames on an old baking sheet, reserved for this purpose (and probably Shrinky Dinks, too), using tweezers and a steady hand. 

We made the frog, the mallard duck, the butterfly, and the unicorn. I also recall making a few Christmas themed ones though detail-wise, I can't remember what they were. Santa, maybe? Did they hang in the window or on the tree? Those specifics escape my normally on-point recall.

I found my completed unicorn one about 5 years ago, white body and rainbow mane, and threw it in a box destined for the Salvation Army. I sincerely regret that move to this day. 

Do you remember these kits and which ones did you make? (I see on the packaging that they were made in Quincy, Mass. so this might have been an East Coast 'thing'.)

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Day 5/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

"O Captain, My Captain!"

Today I was strolling through the market and came upon a dear Facebook friend. You know her, she's the one who routinely posts her healthy, spinach-filled smoothies. Her newly adopted non-toxic lifestyle is seriously admirable and her dedication is fantastic. 

The last time I read one of her posts, I was drinking my sixth cup of coffee, after unsuccessfully hunting for an old, half eaten bag of chocolate chips in the back of the pantry. Admittedly, I feel like her healthy breakfast ideas speak directly to me, reminding me I can do better. 

I can definitely do better.

So when I saw her, I gave my grocery items a quick sweeping glance thinking, "Oh shit." It was like running into an AA group leader with my head in the beer cooler, but thankfully all I had was fruit and the ingredients to make a lasagna. 

But hey! What was that in her cart? A family-sized box of Cap'N Crunch?

Yeah, it sure was. And honestly, I'm kind of relieved that she is she is still occasionally eating junk like the rest of us.

'Cause who doesn't love a great big box of children's cereal? I mean, really, what was better on a Saturday morning as a kid than sitting in front of cartoons with a bowl of the Cap'N? My best friend had a pantry full of fun cereals at her house. On Friday nights, we'd stay up late, trying on her mom's makeup, splashing too much Jean Nate, giggling about boys and acting generally goofy. Then, in the morning, lo and behold, we'd wake up and sweet Jesus, there he was on the kitchen table with his naval sword hoisted over a bowl of nuggets that "stayed crunchy, even in milk!" O Captain, My Captain!

We'd have two bowls each while we watched Captain Caveman as long as her mom wasn't paying attention, and we knew we'd be spending the rest of the day with sore mouths because those crunchberries tore up our palates something fierce. 

Then we'd go listen to the Captain and Tenille while we brushed our hair and got dressed for the day. 

Now that's a triple captain morning. 

So, although Cap'N Crunch cereal is one of the things I won't be buying today, I feel like if you are particularly nostalgic for childhood, in the wake of all that we've gone through these last two years, you might want to stop shaming your choices and go get yourself some 1970s cereal, have a sleepover and a dance party and dial up some YouTube cartoons. 

I won't blame you one bit.

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Day 4/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

There are well-meaning folks who decisively declare that the best two days of boat ownership are 'the day it's bought and the day it's sold', but their sardonic stance has never dulled my desire for this particular beauty. 

It's the item I won't be buying today: the 1937 twenty-five foot Chris Craft Triple Cockpit Runabout.

Some want a party barge. 

Some want a fishing boat. 

Some want a luxury yacht. 

But me, I want a mahogany girl with copper fuel lines and flame red leather seats. I want double flags and chrome gauges and a rumbling engine that sounds like the purring ambassador of a bygone era. I've wanted the sound and smell of a boat like this since having been introduced to one at the age of fifteen by some affluent friends; friends that included me, much to my middle-classed delight, in their highfalutin', moneyed adventures.

Fortunate to have grown up when and where I did, I know what poor looks like. I know what middle class looks like. And man, do I know what rich looks like. Being around the well-to-do as much as I was as a young teenager made an indelible impression on me. You know how baby ducks imprint on whatever is around them at birth? Well, I am pretty sure I unwittingly imprinted upon things like Mercedes Benzes and antique Chris Crafts when I was hitting my hormonal stride. My taste preferences for cars and boats have always been above my budget and, yes, I know precisely from where those preferences come.

Today's case in point: I had friend whose family was chummy with a New York State Senator, and damn if he didn't have the nicest restored prewar beauty, which he entered yearly into summer shows. My friend and I scored an invitation to a show that summer and were directed to sit in the senator's boat and answer whatever questions we could (while also discouraging any boat defacers) as he walked about, hobnobbing, perusing, and socializing with other big money boat owners. 

In my madras shorts and docks with no socks, my legs were mid-July tan and my collar was half-popped in that lazy "Yes, I just wandered in from prep school" way. I gelled my hair into a ballet dancer's bun and, with my pearl earrings and Tom Cruise Wayfarers, looked like any other teenager lucky enough to be from a family with an antique wooden masterpiece stored in their boathouse on the lake. Except I wasn't. I was just along for the ride in this upper class world, acting as though I belonged there, blase' in my appearance while discussing things like the best options for charitable giving and Peter Gabriel's Biko album.

Walking around that afternoon, I encountered my most favorite, to this day, wooden motorboat. Running my hands back and forth over the thickness of the varnish, I hovered, I suppose, too long, stunned at the luxuriousness of it all; so sleek and powerful, with its marbleized banjo-style steering wheel, and flawless bench seats heating up in the midday sun. Stupefied, and frozen in place, I felt the vibrations of all the years that this boat had been owned and prized, its history rolling up my legs from the floorboards. I saw myself in the water with the hull splitting the reedy grass of the shallows, and I knew in my bones I belonged on it. But, as I grew uneasy in the owners' collective gaze, I also knew I'd probably never have one. Families with money will act like something is no big deal even though they are showing you something that is a very big deal.  

Me: gesturing about the 1937 Chris Craft, "I love your boat."

Rich Guy: "This boat? Oh (chortle) Gooby ordered this from Algonac in 1937 when he graduated from Brown and had it delivered all the way to Rhode Island. You know, all soooorts of water in Rhode Island! The perrrrrrfect spot for a tool around the bay! Econometrics, right, Lovey?"

Rich Guy's Wife: "Old Gooby! Yes, Econometrics from Broowwwn. Gooby was the best, darling, simply the best."

Family members aboard the boat: (clinking Waterford flutes) "Three cheers for Gooby!"

As I stepped away, I remember committing to memory, specifically, 1937. Specifically, the triple cockpit. Specifically, those red leather seats. Maybe I could have one someday.

Well, here we are, well past 'someday' and I'm not buying one, though I do love thinking about it. The desire got lodged in my developing brain where it sits, occasionally kindled back to life when I spot one of these classics either in person or online. I suppose there's no harm in letting that desire remain there.

If you were lucky enough to have a Gooby who bought, and maybe even left you one of these, I raise my glass.

Cheers to Gooby. Simply the best.

 

 

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Day 3/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

Today I won't be buying a Trapper Keeper, even though they are sold, in an updated form and fashion at Walmart and Amazon. 

I also won't be paying eighty five dollars for an original one, dug out of someone's basement junk pile and posted on ebay.

But, I do love a good school supply and this one was the best.

I bought my Trapper Keeper with my babysitting money and it lasted me through all of middle school and high school. Each September my friends and I would go to Schatz Stationery store in our local mall, buy new multicolored Mead files and reams of loose leaf paper, wipe our Trappers down with a little soap and water and the things were like brand new.

Did you have a Trapper Keeper? I sure hope so. Was yours plain, like mine, which was cobalt blue and white, or did you have one of the more decorative ones with rainbows and unicorns or glossy animal photographs?

One of my favorite sounds back then was the satisfying rip of the closure. When the entire class tore them open at once it was like a beautiful Velcro symphony. 

Do you remember that fat white plastic paper clip, sort of fashioned like a clipboard? It was super helpful for holding homework papers...and secret notes from friends. 

The original commercial, from 1980 and still circulating on YouTube, is cute, with a simple 60 second conversation between classmates. The more I re-watch it, the more I feel my original desire to have one.

 

 

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Day 2/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

Today, I will not be buying a Mercedes-Benz Classic Car, in particular, this perfect 300SD from the year 1980. 

I became infatuated with Mercedes Benz at the age of twelve when a friend of mine, whose father was a bank president and whose mother was an interior decorator, had a Mercedes wagon; specifically in which to drive their female golden retriever around because the dog was so hairy and stinky. 

Although I am admittedly hairy (but hardly ever stinky), I too, feel like it's probably time I exercise my right to own a car I have coveted for almost 4 decades. 

'Cause that's a whole lotta coveting.

In addition to this being my absolute most favorite Mercedes paint color, Manganese Brown, a rich and spicy root beer hue, it also sports the wood trim I associate with reading rooms and Chris Craft boats and horse barns and old money. It's looks like a rolling library of honey colored leather. 

Might you have any Grey Poupon?  

 

The fact that it has a cassette deck is no problem, musically, as I still have my cassette collection, minus a few that have snapped due to a combination of brittleness and overplay throughout the years...sort of like my body.

But because a bag of groceries cost us 48 dollars today (navel oranges, tangelos, dog treats, apples, bread, a frozen pizza and two bottles of juice) I will be eschewing this Long Island-based Mercedes. 

Okay, let's be honest, I wasn't going to buy it even if those groceries were free. I will, however, keep it in mind if we ever rescue a golden retriever because God knows that hairy stinky thing is definitely going to look great in this.

 

 

 

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Day 1/24: Things I Won't Be Buying Today

I will not be buying a chicken nugget shaped hair clip today.

Having long hair, I like barrettes, elastics, pony holders, head bands and other assorted hair funkery but why anyone would wear a piece of fast food in his or her hair is beyond me. 

The description says it "looks real but is not edible"... yeah, no kidding.

I bet I'd be the most popular sunbather on the beach with this thing on my head. The seagulls would have a flipping field day. 

And then I'd have a hair ornament shaped like fear and loathing...and bird shit. 

 

#mushroomtumbler

Oatmeal Colored Fog

 

Walking up our stairs I am suddenly trudging up a greige carpeted mountain path. On the hiker's scale, it's got a rating of  'Strenuous'.

 

My vision blurs and I am a six year old grasping for the flimsy, frayed nylon exit rope after stepping off the Tilt-a-Whirl. All pigtails and white canvas Keds and between the fingers cotton candy stickiness, I'm stiff from gripping down so hard on a hot steel safety bar. 

 

My palms feel clammy. 

 

I swear I smell fairground metal. 

 

I close my eyes, breathe, and try not to lean too far left or right. My heart beat is a skippity-dippity-do bayoneting its way through the side of my neck. In what now looks like oatmeal colored fog, I dramatically and fitfully seek out the sturdy wooden railing on my first to second floor staircase and force myself to kneel. Remembering what my meditation app says, I picture low tide waves, cerulean and cushy, softly washing over my knees and feet. I conjure my yellow and brown tube of suntan lotion with the smug looking monkey on it. I hear a boom box, grit in all its joints from having fallen over in the sand, stuttering the bass line from 'Come Together'. 

Finally, after a moment of panic, I've got feet down below my knees. 

One thing I can tell you is [I've] got to be free... 

 

of this fucking anxiousness.

 

Later, I'm preparing dinner, stubbornly squinting because I was too lazy to look for one of my ninety nine pairs of reading glasses. I'm pointing and dragging my index finger, ashen and ancient-looking from being washed in million degree anti-bacterial water 82 times a day for the last 731 days, down a cookbook page of rudimentary ingredients like noodles and butter. I question why I even require a recipe for a meal as simple as this when my iPod travels to one of the old George Harrison songs I used to crank in college. I hear the first five notes and begin weeping without an ounce of control. 

 

I'm a Dark Horse. Running on a dark race course. 

 

It's just one of those days.

Because, like you, if I have to read about one more person whose last breath looked a lot like the last breaths of a bug-eyed guppy discarded on the beach by the 4 year old who'd not been taught better, dumping her water pail full of stolen sea creatures out on the sand before grabbing her moldy towel and dragging it, tripping over and over on the way back to her family's summer retreat; or one more small businesses owner first watching her last two employees nail sheets of cheap splintery plywood to the windows of what was to be her American Dream, and then going home to cry silently behind the door of the freezer so the kids don't hear her pitchy gulps as she pulls the last pound of overly fatty ground beef out of the freezer to cook with a box of Hamburger Helper found in the back of the cabinet from 2019 when it seemed more like a cheeky nod-to-nostalgia impulse buy than an actual end-of-our-working-life-as-we-know-it meal; or one more exhaustively walloped health care provider following the familiar footpath from the ER to his favorite hospital parking spot for the last time, scrubs sweaty with the acrid funk of fright and forced out of his job over a choice about what he puts in his body despite saving thousands of lives over the course of his 20 plus year career, I'm going to crack. 

 

I am a handful of peppermint Mentos, quickly and sinisterly forced one by one, into a tepid can of Diet Coke on Granny's doily-covered end table.

It's the bad news. It's the hatred. It's the shaming. It's the hopelessness. 

 

It's the lack of accountability. It's the politics. It's the fear factor.

But, I wipe my nose, find a pair of horn-rimmed readers, and slip into my thirty year old clogs, not so much brown but more the color of that dead pelican I found. Just an enormous bill, bleached white bones and clustery tufts washed ashore. I feel my aching feet loosen up in the worn leather, thawing from having numbed atop the icy kitchen tile, and I look out the frosty window pane to admire the fresh snow and know this too shall pass.

 

It just has to.

Everyone my age has a long list of sufferings and nearly all of it has shifted, either temporarily or  permanently. And if it hasn't, we have figured out a way to live with and among the misfortune. We might make it through the day with a healthy jog on the treadmill or we might make it through the night with a hearty swig (or five) of Jack Daniels. We might have steel resolve forged by confidence and the knowledge that we can stand strong against whatever we encounter or we might have an invisible exoskeleton created by thousands of alternating layers of panic and recovery, like thick bubbly varnish on a beautiful antique.

Either way, we make it through.

 

Today, I scratched out a list of things that I have endured and, very significantly, which have passed. I used a bubble gum pink marker which I realized the irony of after item 35. The list is long, or maybe it just feels so fucking long because of where we are in the world. But as I look at it and try to just regard the events as "times gone by", I reinforce that I've motored through and figured out every last hurt, tragedy, trauma, and disappointment. I've proven that the abandonment, the recklessness, the harm done, and the abrasions are no match for me. 

 

I am triumphant. 

I am a blue ribbon and a first place trophy.  

I am more undefeated than the 2007 Patriots.

For just a brief moment I am more Jolene than Dolly.

 

Most importantly, I'm still here. 

 

I flip through the list again. It can be viewed, as can most things in the human condition, multiple ways. It can be looked at as a life that has been less than saccharine sweet, or it can be viewed, as I am choosing to see it right now, as a life that has prepared me for disaster and recovery, calamity and recuperation, strife and calm, cataclysm and rebirth.

 

Normally, I wold totally choose the Oatmeal Fog as a paint color, but today, if I were selecting something new for the hallway where I stumbled for a moment overcome by panic, I would choose one of these, as sentimentally cloying as they are, just to make sure I am focused on the possibility of a happy tomorrow. 

 

 

Keep going, friends. 

We are journeying through this together and one day we will emerge, like baby voles blinking at a corona of concentric circles surrounding the white summer sun, stunned by the notion that this new day is for nothing more than our collective enjoyment.

 

Keep going. 

 

Keep. 

 

Going. 

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