Couldn’t Make this Up

What’s in a name?

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‘The story of a girl (almost) named Zeus’

Our Memorial Day tradition is to have our two super-adorable grand-nieces (yup, grand-nieces), Miss Just-Two and her older sister Miss Almost-Five, come down from the Boston area to help us celebrate the first official weekend of summer. Oh, okay. Their parents get to come too.

Last night we were polishing off our umpteenth bottle of wine (with the parents, not the adorable grand-nieces) and got to talking about how kids get their names. I guess things have changed a bit since we named The Child, because these parents confessed that Miss Almost-Five went four days without a name. Even more startling (to us, anyway) was the fact that Miss Just-Two went nameless for four whole months. During this time, she was known to all and sundry as Baby Girl. Or, for officialdom, as Baby Girl Last Name.

The Dad (The Dude’s older brother’s son) said he finally had to give in and name Baby Girl because, without a name, she could not get a social security number, and without a SSN, she sort of, well, didn’t exist. So, name her, they did. At least they didn’t let her name herself, which was Picabo Street’s parents’ genius idea. (Poor Picabo didn’t have a name till she was three years old.) Continue reading

Walking the goldfish

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‘And other Dear (Metropolitan) Diary entries’

A couple of weeks ago, my story (‘The time I had a blind date with an eye doctor‘) came by way of a suggestion by my friend Mary Ann. (Thanks again, Mary Ann!) This week’s is thanks to an idea from another friend, Jim. (Who writes a very cool blog called ‘Forged in Buffalo’. Plug plug plug.)

Jim reminded me that my stories used to appear fairly regularly in the New York Times. Honest. There is this column that appears on Mondays called The Metropolitan Diary. As the Times website puts it, ‘Since 1976, Metropolitan Diary has been a place for New Yorkers, past and present, to share odd fleeting moments at Bloomingdale’s, at the deli around the corner, in the elevator or at the movies.’

You can well imagine that I’ve overheard my fair share of ‘odd fleeting moments’ (emphasis on ‘odd’), and that I haven’t been shy about sharing them. Only now I share them with dozens of followers of my blog rather than with thousands of readers of the New York Times.

Hmmmm. Continue reading

‘Get in the back seat if you want to wiggle your behind’

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‘My priceless Mom. And her priceless Momisms’

When I was a kid, I had a hard time picturing my mom in any role other than ‘Mom’. She would tell us about The Time When I Was In School. And we knew that, sometime in the foggy past, she Had Been A Nurse.

That’s why I  was (and still am) absolutely fascinated by the picture at the top of this post.

There’s Mom, whispering to Dad at some gathering of gorgeous young people who were, no doubt, also Moms and Dads. (I’m pretty sure that the leggy lady on the left ‘belonged’ to our pal Teresa.) But they look, well, rather off-duty here.

Who were Mom and Dad looking at? What was Mom saying? (Whatever it was, it must have been funny; he has a rather amused look on his face, doesn’t he?) Continue reading

The time I had a blind date with an eye doctor

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‘A Cinderella Story. Involving an actual cinder’

My friend Mary Ann said she liked the Forbes story (which was about a honeymoon) and the de Kooning story (which was about a living room), but that the story she really wanted to read would be the one about how The Dude and I met.

And I’m going to tell it. But first I have to set the stage a bit.

See, back in the 80s when this tale takes place, I went out a lot. With a lot of different guys. Trust me, this wasn’t at all unusual at the time. Most of my friends also went out with lots of guys. Young People then were not so into that going-out-in-packs thing, much less that thing called ‘hooking up’. (I’m not sure I know exactly what that means, and I don’t want to know. And please don’t mention Tinder.) True, there were a few couples into that serial-monogamy thing, but most of them were married.

A bevy of pre-dating-app beauties. The one on the right (me, hah) has a role in this story

A bevy of pre-dating-app beauties. The one on the right (me, hah) gets the fateful cinder in her eye

So. During the day I’m having a blast working at Ogilvy. Nights and weekends, I’m having a blast going out with guys. Let’s see, at the time of this story I was going out with a blonde surfer-type guy from California, an energetic older guy (he was probably 45) I met running in Central Park, a hunky television producer who owned his own Personal Truck, and, oh, off and on I was also seeing a Russian waiter. I’m not counting Steve Martin. I met him a week after I met The Dude. (If you have a sec, you can read that story here. It’s a pretty good one.) Continue reading

‘You have an honest face’

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‘How I went home with a Turner without paying for it, and other Tales of Artistic Adventure’

‘If you get a little money, buy art. If you get a little bit more, buy food.’ I’m pretty sure it was Hemingway who said that. Although, if it was Hemingway, wouldn’t he have been talking about buying books? Oh well, it’s a good quote anyway.

And it reminds me of the time, years ago, that I took my own personal plunge (well, maybe more like a dip) into the Art World. It was back when I was the creative director for an international skincare brand based in Maidenhead, UK. Which meant I had to go to London regularly. (‘Had to go to London’. Sure, you can just hear me: ‘Oh, no, Mr. Boss. You need me to go to darned old London again?’)

I have to admit that I don’t remember all that much about what working on that brand was like. But I remember vividly how cool it was to go to London, say, twice a month. And stay in hotels like Brown’s and the Cadogan and Blake’s. On somebody else’s dime.

I mean, what’s not to like about London? For one thing, everything you do is ‘brilliant’. Seriously. You get in a cab and the driver asks ‘Where to, Love?’ (Nice, being called ‘Love’.) And when you say ‘The Ritz, please’, the cabbie says ‘brilliant’. Continue reading

Lost Cat: Answers to the name ‘Mango’

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‘Or “Salmon” or “Steve”. Or maybe just “Kitty.”‘

I’m kicking myself that I can’t find that poster. The Child made it herself, when she was, oh, ten or so. See, we had this most amazing cat at the time. His name was Mango. And he went missing.

He was an orangeish tigerish marmalade cat. So The Child named him Mango. She was very good at naming cats. She was responsible for the late lamented Tuna (whose runner-up names were ‘Grandpa’ and ‘Lipstick’), and our current cat-in-residence, Wombat. When I was a kid, I was terrible at naming cats. I would give them names like (barf) ‘Buttercup’. And then everyone, including me, would just call them ‘Kitty’. We had two littermates once called ‘Black Kitty’ and ‘White Kitty’. They were both brown; one was just darker than the other.

Alienation of Affection, feline style. The Dude captures the heart -- and fur -- of Kitty

The Dude captures the heart — and fur — of the kitty in residence when we met (the ‘Kitty’ whose real name was supposed to be ‘Flicka’)

When I was pregnant with The Child and considering names for her As-Yet-Unbornedness, my Oldest Younger Brother Scott would tease me and say ‘Why worry about names? You’ll just end up calling her “Baby”‘. (He wasn’t far off the mark, since I do in fact refer to her as The Child.) Speaking of names for The Child, remind me sometime to tell you about how The Dude wanted to name her after a Greek goddess. (‘Persephone’ was one of his suggestions.) Continue reading

Out of Africa (but not out of stories)

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‘How could I resist sharing these tidbits with you?’

‘Jambo’, everybody! And other forms of greeting. It’s considered less-than-cool to photograph people in Kenya and Tanzania, at least not without their permission. (I’m totally on board with this; I only mention it to explain my lack of people-in-the-scenery shots.) But it is the ‘done thing’ to say ‘jambo’ to everyone you meet. It’s Swahili for ‘hello’, and it’s pronounced sort of like ‘jumbo’, so the first time someone said it to me, I was rather taken aback. But then I got into the swing of things, and was ‘jambo’-ing like crazy.

Little kids in school uniforms got a real kick out of this. They’d wave gaily at us as we passed by in our safari-mobile, shouting back ‘how are you?’. (At least they didn’t shout ‘shikamo’, which is the greeting used when meeting an elder.) Such waving and smiling! I’ve never felt so much like a Clinton County Fair Queen in my life. Continue reading

Zebra Crossing

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‘And other signs we’re not in Kansas any more’ 

Not even in New York City have I heard of traffic having to stop to make way for zebra crossing the road. (‘Zebra crossing’; couldn’t help myself.) Though I have heard that elephants used to tie up whatever traffic was happening at three in the morning whenever the Ringling Brothers, Barnum & Bailey Circus was in town.

Maybe that's not an official elephant crossing. But who's going to argue? Not those guys on the left, anyway

Maybe that’s not an official elephant crossing. But who’s going to argue? Not those guys on the left, anyway

But this post isn’t about zebras, or even about elephants. Though we did in fact see a very wide range of animals crossing the road whenever the spirit moved them: warthogs, wildebeest, hyena, baboons, impala, gazelle, ostrich. And goats. Many many goats. Continue reading

Spotting the leopard

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‘You should have been here yesterday’

First things first. Yes, yes. I know that the picture at the top of this post is not of a leopard. (Though leopards, not lions, according to our Amazing Guide Donald, are the cats one expects to find draped in trees. Though only one at a time. Leopards, apparently, are loners. Lions like being with other lions. There were actually two more lions draped in this one tree. I just couldn’t fit them into the picture.)

'Let sleeping lions lie', I always say. At least when I'm this close to one

‘Let sleeping lions lie’, I always say. At least when I’m this close to one

While lions, contrary to the evidence in that photo, do not exactly grow on trees, we were very lucky safari-goers, lion wise. We saw not only lions sleeping in trees, but lions sleeping in the grass.  And sleeping on these huge rocks called ‘kopje‘. (For you ‘Lion King’ movie fans, that’s where the Big Boss Lion lived.) We even saw lions not sleeping. One rather large male even crossed the road right in front of us. Each of us remained very still, and tried not to look like a warthog, which is one of his favorite foods. Continue reading

Safari, so good.

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‘Our African Adventure gets off to a roaring start’

You can’t just wave a magic wand and wish yourself to Africa. Even if it is Someone’s Dream Trip, you still have to get there the old-fashioned way. Which is modern air travel.

Now some of you readers may fly first or business class, or even on private jets. In which case, I ask you most kindly to skip the comments section this week. Or I just may bring you back some unwashed fruit, and chuckle demonically while I watch you eat it.

Because, not to sound ungrateful for the amazing opportunity to go on a trip like this, let’s be honest and say that getting to Africa, by coach, New York to Amsterdam to Nairobi, all in one go, is definitely not half the fun.

I will skip the sordid details — the toddlers who, when not shrieking, played percussion with the tray tables, starving in the Amsterdam Airport and finding nothing to eat but cheese. (They sold cheese in every store, bless them. If a sign said ‘Electronics’ it sold electronics. And cheese.) And I will most definitely skip the stealth gas attacks from the sleeping man wedged next to me on the 9-hour flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi.

Aaaaaah. The anticipation. That's Nairobi National Park out the window

Aaaaaah. The anticipation. That’s Nairobi National Park out the window

Because, guess what? We’re in Africa. And it’s pretty darned terrific. Continue reading