Early Snow - Finally a Voice for the True Victims

I frequently tell people "boots are my thing," and it's true, they are.  I have two dozen pair (plus or minus several more pair, but really plus).  Except, you know what? Tote bags are my thing.  I often say that if I was challenged to do so, for witness purposes of protection relocation or just sheer entertainment, I could pack all my belongings in my tote bags.  But also, jackets are my thing. 

Oh, jackets, fabulous jackets.  Leather (buttery soft! glazed! vintage! fringed! fringed vintage!), corduroy, denim.  Not to mention - a strange obsession with army green jackets.  You can't have too many of those... right? I mean, you need one made of surplus army duffel bags, one that reaches your knees, one with flowers embroidered on the back, one with a fur collar and fireman hardware, one with... wait, I am embarrassing myself.  I don't really have all those jackets.  That would be just nuts. Having so many jackets would mean that the hallway coat closet could house my jackets and only my jackets.  And that would be wrong. Very wrong.

So when the weather turns cold and snowy, as it did so suddenly this weekend, many of those purely hypothetical jackets described above do not get their time in the sun.  They wait patiently all summer to finally be summoned, only to weep in disbelief as my arm reaches into the closet and grabs one of the down jackets (or one of no more than three - well, no more than fourish - down vests).  I can only pray for an Indian summer, during which I will make as many wardrobe changes as Cher, just to give my little friends their fair share of screen time. 

Morning Gory

This morning put my blinc mascara's waterproof claims to the test.  And not because I was taking part of a oceanside photo shoot.  If only. It went something like this:


6:30 AM - Awakened by an 8-year old who needs (needs) a hot water bottle for her tummy.  Get it from her from the closet, but by that time she is back asleep.  But not me...


7:15 AM - Best described in a haiku:

Steaming out a new work top
Sleeve right in toilet
It will be fine - it's just silk 

7:25 AM - Same daughter in tears because, despite being given 15 minutes to eat, she has not taken one bite of breakfast and therefore cannot get dressed as I have commanded.  Suggestion that she take her breakfast with her to eat on the way to school is met with incredulity.  Probably because daughter is not sure that the ziploc will securely contain her Crispix in milk.


7:55 AM - Same daughter leaves her adorable purple lunch bag on bench on subway platform.  Watch it get smaller and smaller as train pulls out.


8:10 AM - Husband, who has been dispatched to retrieve adorable purple lunch bag from bench on subway platform, reports that bag has been taken.  Commuter thought purple plaid lunch bag would be just the accessory to complement suit and wingtips.


8:45 AM - Breakfast place is out of oatmeal, but why don't I wait until it's ready.  Sure I can be late for my 9 AM meeting because I am waiting for slow-cooking oatmeal. A tardiness excuse any manager would find reasonable.


9:00 AM - Faced with Outlook-free loaner laptop.  Curse laptop because I literally cannot work without Outlook.  Curse Bill Gates for selling a piece of software so indispensable .


9:05 AM - Spill diet pepsi all over desk, dangerously close to loaner laptop, possibly in a subconscious and misguided attempt to get back at Bill Gates.


Despite some moisture around the eyes, blinc mascara still in place. Dignity, sanity, equanimity - all suspiciously absent.

Don't Wait Wait - Tell Me!

True story. Once I got on an a crowded elevator on the 31st floor and took it down to the lobby at 5pm, the busiest time in an office building.  This exciting story does not end there.  Not one person I encountered chose to mention to me that my skirt was tucked neatly into my pantyhose.  I was not humiliated in the least; truly  I was just furious. How could all those people let me walk around like that?  It's not like I possess a strong enough sense of personal style that a bystander could believe I was making a unique fashion statement.

The same goes for the poppy seeds in the teeth (after any bagel), the flaked mascara under my eye (today).  (Wow, that is quite the picture of myself I have just painted, is it not?) If you see me or anyone else make any of these mistakes, you owe it to them as a fellow living, breathing, sentient being to let them in on the secret and give them the opportunity to correct it.  I will tell people if their fly is unzipped. In high school my friend Cindi regularly demanded a 'chunk check' after any food item was consumed and I gladly took part.

OK, there was that one time when I was on a project at MTV where we didn't tell our manager he had put an open highlighter in his shirt pocket when he was presenting at a meeting, but that was because it was just so much fun to watch the fluorescent yellow spread slowly across his chest.  Capillary action in action!

Sad But True

A dog is not a child.  There, I said it.  I have the best dog in the entire world (this has been proven through clinical trials), and Stella is still not a person.  What does this mean? A number of things.  For starters, it means I am not required to engage in long conversations at 6:30 AM with other dog owners about my dog - her likes, her dislikes, her hopes and dreams, her culinary preferences, which at one point included her own waste. I have contemplated buying a shirt for dog-walking purposes only that says "I have ACTUAL Children" to ward off these people who call their dogs "fur children," but I am concerned they will physically harm me.  Seriously (meaning both that I am being serious and that they will seriously harm me). 

Here's what else it means.  It means that Stella is much easier to take care of than a child.  When we first got Stella, we fielded a lot of knowing comments along the lines of, "It's like having another child, right?" I hope not.  Did you leave your child alone at 3 months old?  Do you serve him a bowl of the same kibble every day - on the floor? Did you have her trained to poop on the sidewalk at 5 months old? (Listen, please don't answer 'yes' to any of these questions in the comments section, because I am fairly certain I have a moral and legal obligation to report you to the proper authorities and I just can't spare the time.)  It also means that, unlike a child, a dog does not require daycare or play dates.  Really, she just doesn't, no matter how cute the name of the place is, or how many puns it contains.  She does, however, require cute vests and humiliating costumes.  That's just an irrefutable law of nature.

MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE

Way too often I feel like Myrna, in this beloved Sesame Street video from my youth.  Remember her? "My chair! (Myrna's chair.) My bookcase! (Myrna's bookcase.) My window curtains! (Myrna's window curtains.) My utterly 70's style wood burning stove like Janet Fossum had! (Myrna's utterly 70's style wood burning stove like Janet Fossum had.)"

I live in a crowded apartment in a crowded building in a crowded city, around which I commute on crowded transportation.  I choose to live this way.  And I get that as a result of this choice, I don't get a lot of personal space, space that is entirely, completely, and only mine.  But can I please have just a few of my own items? That is, things that belong to me and only me? Just a few little things. Please?


You want specifics? OK.  My concealer.  That's mine and only mine, no matter how little sleep you got or how red your your pimple is.  You never put it back, and if and when I do find it after hunting around for five minutes, it's got concealer fingerprints all over it. 


You do not need my Philosophy facial cleanser.  You just don't.  An argument could be made that I don't need it either, but that is a conversation for another blog entry.  At the very least, I bought it with my money, that I earned all by myself, so it is mine, mine, mine.


My socks, the gorgeous short white Costco ones with the designer "KB" logo, they are mine.  Do you realize you are not convincing when you profess not to realize the socks on your feet are not yours - an average of 4 times a week?

This does not even address everyone else's crippling inability to use rechargers.  The only time my iPad is put properly back in its place is when the power has been entirely drained. 

(In)hospitality Management

In the last week I have had to travel twice for work and doing so has made me cranky. I am now developing some thoughtware, and possibly an at-a-glance or a placemat, with instructions to the parties involved in making my trips miserable on how to make them less so in the future. Don’t worry, I will also produce a tri-fold and the requisite app. Let’s start with…

Hotel Proprietors

• Wifi should be wireless. And it should work. And it should not require me to talk to someone at some other location on some other continent for thirty minutes to get it to work. If I must resort to wired (shudder), at least let that wire be in a location that allows me to work with a good view of the TV and Gene Simmons Family Jewels.
• There should be cell phone service in your hotel. In this day and age, I should be calling home for free, not paying the $17 I paid to make sure that everyone has packed her snack for school tomorrow. Yes, now that we all bring our phones with us, you are losing out on those exorbitant phone fees, but you make up for it by charging us for the wifi. That doesn’t work. 
• The bedside clock should not be 5 hours off. Fixing this issue should not require you to send a member of your staff to my room to replace the clock. This happened, unbelievably enough, in both hotels I stayed at last week. Does no one else need to wake up at a specific time, or did the other guests just tell their colleagues, as they parted after dinner, “Meet you at 7 AM, plus or minus 5 hours?"
• The bed should not be situated right next to sliding glass doors that open onto the parking lot. Yes, sure, on the other side of the glass doors there is a dirty teeny tiny patio with a high cinder brick wall separating the room from the actual parking lot, but as far as I am concerned, that wall exists only to conceal a criminal as he slides the doors off their track and then slips into my room. Too much to ask, you say? At the very least, instruct your staff not to give these rooms to nervous New Yorkers; Ottumwa residents are less likely to be made anxious by this arrangement.  

Stay tuned for instructions to the airlines, including a request that klonopin be handed out at check-in for those flights on planes that seat fewer than 60 people.

Thank You, Harvard

Thank you, Harvard, for making me feel even worse about myself.  This HBR article says that if I don't smile after work, my early adolescent children's sense of well-being will be shattered.  So awesome!  It is not enough to work hard all day (and, let's face it, into most evening and every weekend) to support my kids, I better come home with a smile on my face.  If I don't smile each night while I juggle the kids' homework (and, honestly, just figuring out what has been assigned is an incredible stress-inducer), my own work, the kids' dinner (my gourmet meal of cheezits comes much later), and laundry, my kids will have a poor sense of well-being.  I couldn't even rephrase that term, because I don't really quite know what it means, but I do know it must mean that my inability to force a pageant-winningly manic smile across my face while saddled with all those responsibilities each and every night is doing my children irreparable harm.  And it's all my fault.

And where did I read this enlightening article, Harvard? Why on a plane to Phoenix for work.  Work that kept me away from my kids for three nights, three nights that I could not aim my pearly whites in their direction, three nights that no doubt eroded their sense of wellbeing yet further, if that is humanly possible. But when I finally arrived home at 3 am, you just know I ran right into their room, woke them up, and beamed madly at them both.  It's the least I can do for them.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

Well, that was a nice, if unnatural, foray into the positive. Luckily, I received this email from my friend Karen that slapped me right back into reality:

Hi, j. Here's a photo my hs friend posted. I thought of you.

Oh, thank you, Karen, you saw right through the silver lining to the angry thunderclouds underneath.

Happy Happy Blog Blog

So after a long, crappy week, that I only just realized is going to run straight on into another longer and more craptastic week, I have decided to try something completely new – relating positive experiences  Don’t worry, I’ll be dry and cynical and true to the spirit of this blog, and myself.  It’ll be a whole new trip for us! Ready? Vamanos!

Very Lovely Things People Have Done for Me

1.  A couple of months ago I had an extremely painful one-day meeting in Atlanta. Many things went wrong that day, including, but not limited to, the theft of the phone from the conference room in which I was hosting a meeting of partners. The meeting was arranged to allow the attendees to fly out and back the same day, leaving me no time to visit my sister and her family, who live in Atlanta. But, in a move that should really win her sister of the year, my sister took my Starbucks order and waited for me outside the downtown Atlanta office building. During a 5-minute bio break (can we stop saying that please, it’s not cute, it was never cute) I dashed out and retrieved my grande caramel light frappuccino (extra caramel)  through her open car window.  That same week I got a raise and bonus, but this still ranked as the best thing to happen to me all week.

2. Once, for no real reason at all, I decided the return flight on our family vacation was leaving at 2:30 pm.  It was leaving at 11:30 am.  When my husband, two small children and I arrived at the airport only 3 hours late, a kind agent named Lyn took great pity on me, hustled us out of line, and put us another flight ASAP and for free.  No doubt she did it to spare herself and the passengers on line the tantrum that was clearly imminent.  I mean, no one wants to see an adult woman screaming and crying in frustration on the floor of an airline terminal. (FYI – this would be the same trip during which my carefully packed clothing remained carefully packed in a carry –on on my bedroom floor, to be unpacked only upon my return.)

3.  When my older daughter was a wee baby, a friend of my cousin’s was moving and trying to place her nanny.  Although she hardly knew me, and although I already had a nanny, Marilyn insisted I meet her nanny.  She pursued me for literally months until I met beautiful, sunny, sweet, Nicole who has been our nanny and friend for more than 12 years. 

Fairly Awesome Gifts People Have Bought for Me

1. My Aunt Alicia always bought me the best gifts ever when I was a kid.  Every Chanukah we got lots of gifts, but hers were the ones my sister and I looked forward to the most (sorry, Aunt Yetta, who gave me a coloring book when I was 12, I know you tried your best).  More often than not, she got us something personalized, and as we are named Rani and Jayn, you can imagine that meant the world us.  No picking up a Jayn or Rani pen at the drugstore for us.  Also, this was not the age of internet instant personalization, my aunt no doubt had to fill out actual paperwork on paper and send away for these items 3 – 6 weeks ahead.  There was a bracelet, there was a tote bag and umbrella set, there was a book with a main character named Nyaj, and I loved them all.  None of them, though, could hold a candle to the personalized brass gum holder.  It was (and still is) a little brass box with “Jayn’s Gum” engraved on the front and you would slide the pack inside and flip down the lid.  If there is a classier way to dispense a stick of Juicy Fruit, I don’t want to know what it is.

2. When I got engaged my mother got me a Kitchenaid mixer as a surprise.  It’s actually pretty surprising that she held out that long, which really wasn’t long at all, since I got married at like 12.  Anyway, my mother needed to know what color I would like, so she got my friend Suzanne to call and pretend she was going to buy one for herself and ask me what color I recommended.  And, of course, I chose a color that would match Suzanne’s kitchen.  Still, my Kitchenaid is a treasure that regularly turns out yummy cookies and breads, and what is a better present than that?

3.  After an email exchange with my friend Alisa, that included my telling her both that I needed to drink more and that I had been accused of always wearing implied fringe, in a boho sort of way, she sent me a delightful surprise – a flask with the words “In my heart I’m wearing  fringe.”  Working late into the night on yet another iteration of a budget request for work is so much more bearable when I have that flask full of diet coke beside me.

And that’s it! Six cheerful happy thoughts from me, an angry NYC chick.  I’d bookmark this entry if I were you.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

Not for all of us though.  Only some of us understand that when the elevator doors open, you must wait to let people off before you charge in - if only so that there is more room for our dainty selves.  Only some of us realize that you and your entire family, side-by-side and arms linked of course, cannot just enter the subway car doors without waiting for the arriving passengers to be released.  (And ome of us realize that not waiting in that instance is sometimes taking our lives into our own hands.) 

So, when I arrived at JFK this morning, at the painful time of 5:10 AM (please read that again - 5:10 AM), it was more than not ok for some woman to run over to my car and ask my driver if he could break a $100, all the while blocking me from exiting the car.  I get it, you are too head-up-your-own-ass to realize that you can't go around waving $100 bills without impunity. And I bet you are also in a hurry, probably to catch some sort of plane that is probably leaving in the very near future.  Here's the thing - I am too.  You must wait for me to exit my car, pay, and get on my way before you may hound my driver to assist you in resolving an issue created by your own stupidity and/or self-absorption.

(And look how I got the Tom Petty song title in there.  I am not Bill Lawrence, but that worked out nicely.)

The One Ass One Seat Policy

I subscribe wholeheartedly to the 'one ass one seat policy' and you'd better too.  It is the way and the light.  You have one ass, you execute one metro card swipe - you are entitled to one seat on the subway or bus.  That's it.  Not one for you and one for your dry cleaning.  Not one for you and one for your feet.  Not even one for you on the bus aisle, leaving that window seat open for anyone who dares to climb over you, which is an acrobatic feat even when you swing your legs into the aisle in order to appear as if you are being helpful, when in reality you are just a selfish pig.  One freaking seat for your one freaking ass.  You know where you can have two seats? In a taxi.

Who the Hell am I

Let me introduce myself. I live in NYC.  I am a chick.  I am angry.  That pretty much sums it up.  The world is not living up to my expectation and I hold it entirely responsible.  I believe in instant karma, but I expect it to happen in a New York minute and I need to be there to witness it.  If I have to help it along, well so be it - I am not lazy and am willing to pitch in when my assistance is needed.  You know, in the interest of keeping the universe, or at least this little piece of it with its 8 million residents, in spiritual balance. Because I care about people.  That's just who I am.


Oh, and my name is Jayn.