Daze of Penitence

Sometimes it's difficult to tell the difference between indigestion and introspection. The two often go hand in hand, particularly for some of us this time of year.

We are in the throes of the "Days of Awe," those ten days beginning with Rosh Hashanah and ending with Yom Kippur, when we Jews are supposed to reflect on our sins and repent. Penitence is easy, at least before there's time to put our promises to the test; reflection can be a bitch. It's no wonder so many of us feel such a nagging discomfort in the pit of our bellies this week, an uneasiness that just doesn't seem to quit. Or could it simply be too many matzoh balls, too many helpings of brisket?

To be on the safe side, I reflect, I introspect, and I try to sort through the items in my self-critique to determine what's valid and what's maybe a bit too harsh. If everyone ended up with a list like the one I start out with, the Book of Life would have a lot of empty pages. As it is, too many folks have died this year way ahead of their time, and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I'm not quite sure religion -- mine or anyone else's -- can offer up a satisfactory explanation.

Which is why I can't help but be skeptical about the whole cause and effect theory linking a week of introspection and penitence to another full year of life. It just doesn't add up, not when within a period of six months in my neck of the woods alone a fifteen year old, a forty-five year old, and several fifty-somethings have been here one minute and gone the next. Talk about indigestion.

Of course, a little introspection and penitence can be good for all of us, whether it lands us on a page in that mysterious book or not. I just don't think we need to get our stomachs all upset about our inescapable and uniquely human failings, especially when decisions about life and death seem so random. I think the best we can do is acknowledge our sins, vow to do better, and move forward.

And if the discomfort persists, next year go easy on the kugel.

Incontinents of the World

Gone are the days when girls got their noses done because of a (wink, wink) deviated septum. No excuses necessary. We've moved on to botox injections for (wink, wink) overactive bladders. I suddenly feel like I have to pee.

After all, what's a little botulism when it can save you a few trips to the bathroom. And if it ends up smoothing out a few wrinkles, well, that's just a little extra bang for your buck. I'm considering going in for a little bladder touch up as I venture back out into the work force. Heck, my daughter just got out there and she has to work side by side every day with a former Miss Virginia. A real one. Next to me, everybody is going to look like a friggin former Miss Virginia. Life is demoralizing enough these days.

I'm so excited about this new procedure I'm going to ask the vet if it's available for dogs. Manny has a bit of an overactive bladder these days; he prefers to simply pee in the house rather than wait for me to let him out. And, well, you've all seen the pictures. A little wrinkle treatment might do him a world of good, lift his spirits a bit. I can only imagine what it feels like to live in a neighborhood full of schnoodles and shihpoos and maltipoos and labradoodles and all those other designer mutts concocted in puppy labs. (Okay, truth be told, Manny was conceived in a petri dish as well, but I think Dr. Frankenstein was on call that day.)

Face it. The pressure to look good crosses species lines. You'd think with the ever increasing popularity of cosmetic surgery Manny and I wouldn't need an excuse to go in for a little wrinkle plumping. But we'll never hear the end of it from those who know us best.

So we'll just flaunt our Depends, and once we're certain we've aired our cases for excessive urination, it's off to the bladder specialist to tighten things up a bit.

Good Enough Housekeeping

I panicked the other day when I noticed there was a missed call from my son. For the past month, he has gone underground, always sounding annoyed when I finally attempt to break the silence and call. I had taken to texting an occasional "hi sweetie," and have contented myself with the occasional and equally uninspiring one word response. "Hi." Sometimes you just have to aim low.

A missed call, dammit. I leave my phone in the car for ten minutes while I run into the grocery store -- two unlikely events at once! -- and come out to see he has reentered the universe -- my universe, at any rate -- and attempted to reach me and, oh, bad mommy hell here I come again, I wasn't there for him. I immediately tried to call him back, to no avail.

So I called his older sister. She, too, had missed a call from him. Now we were both concerned. Only some dire circumstance could have compelled him to call each of us on a random Saturday afternoon. As we worried together about what may have gone wrong, he beeped in. "Gotta go, he's calling," I snapped at the child who keeps in touch, who would never think of disappearing and always wants to know what's going on. Isn't that always the way?

As it turns out, he was just doing a bit of "housekeeping," which, along with cleaning his room, included calling both his sisters and his mom. Housekeeping! I wonder where we were on the list, whether we ranked higher than cleaning the toilet.

The truth is it doesn't really matter. It was good to hear his voice. September can be a weird month, half summer, half fall, the days shortening and cooling to help us adjust to the pressures that accompany the change of season. Some of us need more help than others.

Come to think of it, I did a bit of housekeeping this week too. Overcame a bit of inertia, tossed out some garbage, made some space. By October I might actually be ready to hunker down and accept summer's abrupt departure.

Maybe I'll even call my mom.

Dance Lessons

The hemlines creep up every year. The shoes get so high they make Barbie look like she's wearing flats. If it weren't for the sweet little boutonnieres and corsages, homecoming weekend at the high school would be downright frightening.

The other day, I tried to explain homecoming to my Canadian friend, who is trying desperately to understand all of those "strange American rituals."

"It's the weekend the football team returns for a home game," I explained.

"Oh. So every time the football team comes back home, it's 'homecoming.'" Friggin foreigners. You'd think I was describing the equivalent of an Incan human sacrifice.

"No. Just the first time." The guy probably played way too much hockey as a kid, suffered too many whacks to the head. I was exhausted by the thought of explaining to him that the whole homecoming thing, as it turns out, has very little to do with football at all.

I decided to give him the short version. There's a dance. The girls spend all day Saturday running around with their moms, getting manicures, pedicures, up-dos, and professional makeup applications. Then, they go home, dress like sluts, and all the parents, the boys, and the girls show up at some generous soul's house so everybody can have hundreds of pictures memorializing the event. The girls can't walk in their shoes, they can't bend in their dresses, and they can't move their heads for fear they will ruin their hair. The boys look terrified.

"A dance," said the Canuck. "That's nice."

What an idiot. "They don't really go to the dance, silly." Those long winters clearly cause brain damage. "Not for more than an hour, anyway."

"If they don't go to the dance, what do they do?"

I was starting to think Canada must be a third world country. "They pile into a party bus -- an intimate group of about forty -- head downtown for an expensive dinner, then pile back into the party bus and return to some other generous and masochistic soul's house to hang out all night. And of course they don't drink. And, by morning, at least half of the girls have cried, hardly anyone is speaking to anyone else, and the kids spend Sunday acting as if they have just been subjected to the worst kind of torture."

"Sounds awful."

Oy. Hopelessly primitive. Why did I even bother to explain.

While Someone's Guitar Gently Weeps

Can someone explain to me why anyone out there gives a shit about the Salahis?

Let's review. She's a tall hot blond. He's a short chubby guy. They achieved notoriety by crashing a state dinner at the White House. And their lives, as far as we know, are a perennial script in progress for reality TV. Just your average couple in the split level down the street, the kind of folks you run into at the corner grocery store. Except now he's shopping solo, since she ran off with a rock star. Shocking.

Tareq was on television shedding crocodile tears. It almost made me want to run over to his house with a casserole. Naturally, he's devastated. Without Michaela on his arm, he's just a short chubby middle aged guy. We all remember her red dress from the state dinner, but does anyone have a clue as to what he was wearing? The best he'll do on his own on the reality TV circuit is a spot on The Biggest Loser. I'd be crying too.

It's just that I can think of countless other scenarios that would be a tad more newsworthy than a self aggrandizing publicity hound running off with a rock star. Like say, a potato-esque broad being whisked away from her double wide by, well, anybody. And not even at gunpoint. Now that would be something to write home about.

Maybe I'm just bitter, jealous that nobody pays me much attention. (Negative attention doesn't count.) My therapist tells me to stop obsessing about things I cannot control and to focus on that which I can. I think I'm gonna pitch my own reality show -- Real Housewives of the Trailer Park. I'll clean up real nice -- get that missing tooth replaced -- and before you know it I'll be gettin' engraved invitations to just about everywhere.

The Fairest One of All?

We each create our own narrative. Two people can live through the same set of circumstances and come up with wildly different versions of what happened. Our own narratives -- it's how we protect ourselves.

I sat in court yesterday, listening to stories. The woman who claimed her husband grabbed and restrained her, the man who claimed his wife had been unfaithful. Neither the grabbing husband nor the unfaithful wife was present, and I could not help but wonder what their versions would look like. It's not that I doubted the truth of the allegations (the speakers did, after all, swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth); I just assumed someone else might very well take the same nuggets of truth and spin quite a different tale.

There will no doubt be an outcome of some kind in all of these cases -- including my own, I've been assured -- but the separate narratives will never be reconciled. The same set of facts will forever be distorted into two fun house mirror images that bear little resemblance to each other. And the story tellers will go their separate ways, some more convinced than others that their particular spin is airtight.

Eventually, it just won't matter. Or it shouldn't. After all, nobody stays in the fun house forever, and certainly nobody stares too long at the distorted reflections gazing out from the mirrors. Heck, ya gotta leave some time for more roller coaster rides, more tempestuous teacups, more cotton candy. Life's too short to stay stuck in one place.

Yes, the world outside the fun house can be scary. There are steep climbs and precipitous falls, dizzying ordeals, and evil temptations. Challenging and exhilarating at the same time. The stuff of life.

I Want Candy!

I received an email notification from one of the dating sites yesterday, inviting me to some upcoming event. "You'll feel like a kid in a candy store," the email promised. Great. Isn't that the place where everything is bad for you?

Another site -- which won't give me access until I resubscribe and pay up -- keeps teasing me with "wink alerts" and an alleged inbox full of emails. There's always a tantalizing photo alongside the tease, a portion of a really good looking male face, handsome in an ageless sort of way. A little eye candy. My guess is that guy has neither winked nor emailed. Just a hunch.

When I was in elementary school, there was a candy store across the street named Mawdy and Eddie's. Actually, I think it was called Mortie and Eddie's, but this was Brooklyn in the sixties, long before I discovered that an "r" in the middle of a word is not silent and a word ending in "a" does not end with a phantom "r." Anyway, during our lunch hour, we would always leave time for a trip across Coney Island Avenue to Mawdy and Eddie's so we could stock our desks with junk to help us survive the afternoon.

The appeal was never so much the candy as it was the illicitness of it all. Back before the age of the ubiquitous water bottle, it was perfectly permissible for eight and nine year olds to roam around busy city streets, but god help you if you were caught with a snack or a beverage in the classroom. For us, the more daring the better. The most challenging items -- and naturally the most satisfying -- were the one cent individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubble gum. Not only did you have to be clever about the chewing and the occasional bubble, but you had to risk getting called on while you took the time to read the little Bazooka Joe comic.

Come to think of it, I often do feel like a kid in a candy store these days. Except I'm not a kid, and the candy isn't all bad for me. I can eat what I want, whenever I want, blow bubbles to my heart's content. I'll pass on the upcoming dating event and the mysterious emails, but I'll feel free to help myself to the good stuff. The world is my Snickers bar.

Future Shocks

Yesterday, I Skyped with a friend. The horrifying thing about Skype is not that another person's talking head suddenly appears in your house, but that you get to see what your own talking head looks like when it shows up in somebody else's house. Not pretty.

Who woulda thunk it, back in the day, when prototypes for future video phones were the stuff of fantasy. Back when deafening busy signals screamed at you to just try again later and there was no such thing as caller i.d. to save you from, well, just about everybody. But now, if there's someone you really do want to talk to and that person happens to live far away, that person can seem so virtually close that a hug isn't out of the question.

One of my favorite television shows, Modern Family, walked away with a minivan full of Emmys last night. Oddly, the folks in Modern Family don't need things like Skype; the entire clan lives within spitting distance from each other. But the sweetly hilarious goings on in that show would have been as fantastical to us, back in the day, as call waiting or caller i.d. And I'm not just referring to the flamingly gay couple with the adopted child or the family patriarch and his sexy Latina bride.

The center of the family in the show is as garden variety as it gets: pretty mom, henpecked dad, three kids who are often at each others throats but band together when it counts, like, say, when they walk in on mom and dad "doin it." But this is no sixties style family. The mom worries constantly about how badly she's screwing up her kids. The dad tries really hard to understand what she's worrying about. And the kids seem painfully aware of their parents' limitations.

Back in the day, my mom didn't really seem too preoccupied with what she might be doing wrong; she was way too busy criticizing me. My dad didn't have to waste time worrying about mom's psyche; he just came home, got fed, and did his best to keep the peace so the evening wouldn't be a total bust. And, I can't speak for the rest of you, but I actually thought my parents knew what they were doing. Funny.

The future has arrived with a bang, and it can be very scary. Faraway people appear in your living room, and your kids are the first to remind you that you are leading them down the path to years of costly therapy. Gay relatives have long come out of the closet, and nuclear families come in all sorts of blended configurations.

Scary, maybe, but all good.

Just Like You, Only Different

Teenagers are funny creatures. They spend so much time trying to fit in, they come to believe there's nothing that sets them apart.

Which can be a bit of a problem when the college application essay arrives. The same question is posed in countless ways, couched in terms of experience and community and activities and hopes and dreams: What makes you so special? Nothing, is the initial reaction. Absolutely nothing.

Yesterday, I met with a high school senior who is desperately trying to get started. Okay, his mom is desperately trying to get him started, but that's beside the point. I've known the mom for several years, but never met her son. She sat with us for a while, reminding him to tell me about all the things he does. He sat, staring straight ahead, too polite to roll his eyes, clearly wondering why any of this stuff matters. As much as I wanted mom to stay and help me to tap into her son's weighty silence, I was relieved when she left.

He was dismissive about his activities, even though it was clear that he had excelled. Dismissive, that is, until I began to pry, to ferret out the details. I wasn't interested so much in what he did, but why, and how, and maybe even the people he's met along the way. The quiet boy who was convinced he had nothing to say became animated, his eyes sparkling as he described how one simple activity affected his days. As it turns out, there are other things he's done, other things he's experienced, that make his entire face come alive when he speaks of them. Go figure.

There's a country song called We're Just Like You, Only Prettier. That may work for the southern belle crowd, but up in these parts, with college application season upon us, the differences need to be a bit more stark. The kids I meet with, as it turns out, aren't just like anyone. They are, each one of them, eighteen years' worth of unique history, and on the threshold of so much more.

It might not be a bad idea for the rest of us, every once in a while, to write a college essay -- to remind us not only of where we've been, but of all the possibilities that lay ahead.

Trimming the Fat

I've been doing a little belt tightening to get ready for life in the double wide, and I'm always looking for new ideas. I am not alone. Some woman in Illinois tried to save money on botox and injected beef fat into her face, and now she's dead. Phew. I was just about to dip a syringe into the frying pan when I heard.

After the country club charity luncheon I attended today, I'm pretty sure there's no botox left in the state. I felt overweight, underdressed, and severely underplumped, woefully out of place in my black pants and turtleneck and afraid to smile for fear that the lines on my face would draw too much negative attention. Trust me, I would have bid on the thousand dollars worth of plastic surgery, just to save face, had there not been such a long line. At least there was little competition for the delicious hors d'oeuvres being passed around.

The theme was purses, and the place was abuzz with women looking for a deal. I thought about putting my own Chanel up on one of the tables -- it's worth a lot more than I'm going to be once this divorce gets finished -- but I couldn't figure out a way to redirect the proceeds from the childrens' charity to, well, me. Best that I kept it on my arm anyway; it's probably the only reason I didn't get kicked out.

But back to the woman with the beef fat. I know it's tough to live on a budget, but what was she thinking? Apparently, when she showed up at the emergency room, her face was burned and infected -- I guess you can't really inject cold, congealed beef fat, so it makes perfect sense that she didn't wait for it to cool -- but the coroner determined the cause of death to be inconclusive. Lucky coincidence that she also had an infection of some kind in her stomach, I suppose; it would be so humiliating to have to explain the disfigurement.

All I know is if I want to be the belle of the trailer park I'm going to have to toss the syringes and the beef fat and figure out a Plan B. No more expensive creams from Elizabeth Arden for me; can't afford them. Anyway, the only time I see improvement is when I dim the lights. Hmm. Now there's a plan.

Sacre Coeur!

I like my steak well done, I enjoy country music, and Maxwell House commercials have always made me cry. Okay, now you know my deepest, darkest secrets.

Apparently, I got nothin' on a growing group of orthodox Jews. According to an article forwarded to me by a friend, there is a website that sells kosher sex toys. What? Circumcised dildos? Blow up dolls wearing long skirts and wigs? Stimulating creams that taste like brisket? I looked beneath the headline at the picture of red furry handcuffs. I took out my reading glasses so I could see better, but I could not detect any stamped rabbinical blessings or sprinkles of salt.

Nope, it's nothing like that. Rather, it's just another fiction -- kind of like the shabbos goy thing. Your garden variety vibrator, penis ring, or pair of furry handcuffs can be deemed kosher as long as it doesn't come with graphic pictorial instructions and as long as it's marketed only to married couples. That's almost as funny as the idea of Smirnoff flavored vodkas being marketed to anyone over the age of nineteen.

All I can say is thank god -- any god -- for religion. It gives us permission to do what we otherwise wouldn't. Like ride in an elevator on Saturday as long as a gentile pushes the button, or handcuff your spouse to the bed after you light the Shabbat candles, or, if you're into really liberal interpretations, kill thousands in the name of Allah. Or, if you depend on experts like Pat Robertson for guidance, divorce your spouse because he or she has Alzheimer's. I am not making this up. Divorce is still taboo for silly reasons like, say, mutual loathing, but if your partner of many years suddenly becomes a bit dotty, according to Pat, it's okay to bail. Now I may not be the best person to ask what Jesus would do, but I'd be willing to bet my favorite vibrator that divorcing an Alzheimer's patient would not be his first choice.

And to think I used to blush when I ordered my steak well done.

Autumn for Dummies

Last night, I made brownies. Okay, not from scratch, but I still had to mix a few things and spread batter and stick it in the oven and then remember to take it out. That's baking, in my book.

Something about the sudden coolness of the evenings and the increasingly early darkness made me think of that box of brownie mix in the pantry, the box that held no appeal for me during the hot summer months. As it turns out, it was a win-win proposition. Manny was happy to have a mission, positioning himself at my feet to catch stray morsels. My daughter was thrilled to come downstairs after her shower to an unexpected treat. And I had the indescribable pleasure of licking the spoon and the bowl clean -- at least an entire brownie's worth of batter rescued from the punishing heat of the oven.

The sudden shift in the atmosphere just seemed to warrant some home made (relatively) comfort food. Growing up in an apartment in Brooklyn, I tended to be less aware of the change of seasons. Maybe it's because the treetops were below my window, the ground far enough beyond my view for me to notice the subtle changes in the terrain. There were no apple orchards nearby for annual apple picking excursions, no pumpkin patches to climb through in search of the perfect canvas for a jack-o-lantern. Come to think of it, without an outdoor stoop, there were no pumpkins at all. For years, I thought pumpkin seeds grew in bags.

And my mom was not exactly Betty Crocker. There were always fresh desserts, from the bakery, but never once was the apartment filled with the aroma of cookies baking. We owned no spatulas, no wooden spoons, no stackable measuring cups. I knew, somehow, that cookies, unlike pumpkin seeds, did not grow in bags, but beyond that I wasn't really sure how the whole thing worked.

I'm not looking for pity. There are benefits to growing up in an apartment on a city street. No skunks. No stairs to climb at bedtime. No grass stains. But if it weren't for clothing changes, I might never have realized there were four seasons. No harbingers -- welcome or unwelcome -- outside my bedroom window. No homey seasonal smells. And, in my mom's sparsely stocked kitchen, no comfort cooking. Just the basics, year round.

Who knows where the changing temperatures and shortening days will lead me this year? Maybe I'll do something rash, like make an apple pie. Doubtful, but at the very least, I'm going to stock up on brownie mix. A few well placed cinnamon candles, and we'll know, even inside the house, that fall has arrived.

The Morning After

I thought it would be trite to write about 9/11 on September 11th, and I thought it would be crass to write about anything else. And so, yesterday, the laptop remained closed, and my daughter and I spent the day together on the couch, riveted by documentaries and remembrances, breaking only for the U.S. Open women's final and a brief dinner.

No matter how repetitious it all became, we could not seem to stop ourselves from watching. She was five on the day our world changed, and she recalls vividly watching images of the burning towers on television. "Why does this keep happening?" my child of the video generation had asked. At least she hadn't asked why it happened at all. That would have been difficult to answer. She admitted to me yesterday that, back then, it had not occurred to her that there were people in those smoldering, collapsing buildings. I am thankful for that.

Ten years later, it's difficult to imagine what the world was like without the threat of terrorists willing to go to unimaginable lengths to create destruction and despair. We move without complaint through security lines in airports, we eye the most innocuous looking package with great suspicion, we are unfazed by hideous concrete blockades lined up in front of government buildings. A couple couldn't even make out in peace in an airplane lavatory yesterday; their foray into the "mile high club" resulted in the scrambling of F16's to escort the plane down. Jeez, folks. Get a room. A real room.

On September 12, 2001, we were all still in shock. We were horrified, vulnerable, terrified. The skies were eerily quiet, with all air traffic halted indefinitely. The images of the day before were everywhere, the sense of loss was immeasurable. Ten years later, on 9/12, when I flipped on the morning news, I half expected to see a continuation of the coverage, remembrances of the remembrances. On one channel, they opened with Serena Williams' outburst at the U.S. Open. On another, they teased viewers with a report that Spongebob Squarepants might be bad for children.

Life goes on.

Inert Gas

If I ate an entire box of donuts after dinner, and I mean entire -- box and all -- I'd fart all night too. I'd probably have the decency to sleep with my butt as far from someone else's face as possible, but Manny gets away with stuff like that.

Actually, I cherish Manny's odd sleeping position (no matter where I move, he shifts so that his rear end is never far from my nose); it's what he's always done, and, in the wake of Leo's death in May, it did not go away. Unlike his eyesight. Or his boundless energy (when you bump your face into brick walls constantly, you slow down a little). Or his delightful ability to sleep soundly all night and until a very civilized hour in the morning, no matter how often Leo barked his head off before dawn.

These days, Manny is restless, and he starts making the most awful noise at four in the morning, like clockwork. I had never heard this particular noise before Leo died, but maybe that's just because all the barking drowned it out. It's a crackly whine, a high pitched quasi bark that has a bit of that nails on a blackboard quality, though it would probably be less grating at a more decent hour. I try to be tough. I squeeze the pillows over my ears and pretend I hear nothing, wanting desperately to go back to sleep. Sometimes he'll stop, but the longest we've made it before I give up and take him downstairs for breakfast is five.

Poor Manny. It's a common refrain these days. He lost his best friend and mentor. He went blind. I often find myself wishing I could explain it all to him, why Leo never came back that night after we carried him out, why everything in his world suddenly went dark. Sometimes I think he blames me; I am the last person he saw with Leo, and I am, come to think of it, probably the last person he ever saw. I know he's just a dog, but I can't help thinking he must wonder why his world was suddenly turned upside down.

Poor Manny. Okay, let's face it. Manny's no fool (for a dog), although he does continue to go face first into the same walls in the same house he's lived in all his life. He does milk things a bit. He knows that when he plants his fat ass on the ground and refuses to budge for a walk I'm not going to force it. He knows that when he pees in the house from time to time I'm not going do anything more than sigh and mop it up. He knows that when he pulls all the books off that one shelf in the office when he thinks I've been gone too long, I'm just going to quietly put them back and sweep up the little bits of pages he's chewed.

I did draw the line on the poor Manny thing when he got skunked. Poor Manny was everyone's immediate reaction. Hellooooo???? How about poor mommy? Manny thought he had found a friend, thought he smelled divine. Did he have to try to scrub a fat dog at two in the morning with tomato juice? Did he have to go to Walgreens at three to look for some other miracle ingredients? Did he lay awake on the couch with a pillow over his nose until it was time to go to PetSmart for a bath? As I recall, he was snoring happily, having been treated to an unexpected play date and a few soothing spa treatments.

But, for the most part, poor Manny still works. Maybe one day, when he doesn't have that perpetual sad look in his unseeing eyes (I think he always had the same sad look, but it used to just seem funny), I'll stop cutting him so much slack. But for now, I'm secretly glad he treated himself to a few donuts, even happy he had the wherewithal to sniff them out and retrieve them from the table.

And I'm a little stuffed up anyway, so, at bedtime, Manny's ass can stay just where it is. I wish it would just stay put for a few more hours.

The Great Indoors

Today I head back to the tennis courts. Most lovers of the sport await with wild anticipation the arrival of summer and the brief few months of outdoor play. I, on the other hand, welcome the indoor season with glee. Indoors. It's where tennis was meant to be played.

The U.S. Open in New York has been plagued for a couple of days by rain, with intermittent stops and starts that allow for a game or two to be played here and there before everyone is called inside. Hell for the participants, to be sure, but what about people like me? The ones who look forward to the four major tennis tournaments each year, four two-week periods during which I can sit for hours in a total stupor marveling at the sheer athleticism and the mental toughness of the stars. When I can bare witness to the occasional upset that literally makes me weep with empathic joy for the young unknown who just experienced what will probably be the most unforgettable moment of his or her life.

Inevitably (although it usually takes longer than it should) the commentators tire of hearing themselves talk about the weather, and the picture on the screen of rain beating down on the empty courts is replaced by video of some classic match -- usually one I've already seen. But that's okay; even a mediocre classic beats weather watching, and it's particularly fun to see how tennis outfits have evolved over the years. If only the Speedo would go the way of the mens' short shorts of the seventies.

Anyway, I've noticed that the classic matches, the ones people can watch over and over, tend to be played in perfect weather conditions -- no rain, no wind, no blinding sun. Hmm. Almost as if they're being played indoors. Where tennis should be played.

Today, when I head back to the courts, I will not care about the weather conditions. I will not have to worry about the wind or the sun or the uneven and unpredictable surface. No birds, no airplanes, no odd shadows or cloudbursts will add to my misery. It'll be just me, my racquet, the balls, and the person on the other side of the net.

When I spray balls way outside the lines, I will not be able to blame the elements. When my serve toss corkscrews up in an odd path somewhere out of reach, there will be no sudden gust of wind or ray of sun to pin it on. When my timing is completely off, I won't be pointing to some rut or pebble in the exasperating clay. Yep, I'm going to do all those things, make tons of stupid mistakes, and I'm going to have only myself to blame.

Shoot, that's no fun. I'll have to come up with something.

Border Patrol

Sometimes a man really can be just a friend. Mr. Canada has indicated that no matter how smitten he is, he has no intention of meeting me. He says it's because he never again wants to suffer the heartache of the constant parting that goes along with a long distance relationship. I told him I think it's because he probably looks like a troll and nothing like the guy in his profile pictures.

As much as I enjoyed our email exchanges for a few days, I wondered why we would keep them up if we were never to meet. I have plenty of wonderful friends, flesh and blood women who keep me afloat. But he was insistent; he admitted to checking constantly for my next missive, and his responses have been immediate (to the extent they can be on work days), thoughtful, and funny. When he compliments me, I'm skeptical, having been betrayed by men more than a few times; by nature, now, I am prone to wonder what the ulterior motives are. But you can't really have sex if you're not even in the same country, and, honestly, what other motive is there?

Over the past five or six days, I've amassed a collection of emails from north of the border -- for the most part chaste -- full of wit and caring and hopes and dreams and even some painful secrets, and I, in turn, have sent a good share of my own. I'm revealing my warts -- a little bit at a time -- and I have yet to scare him away. Puzzling, very puzzling.

I'm almost positive I'll wake up to a sweet email from Mr. Canada in the morning, one that might even help to keep some of the demons that kept me awake most of the night at bay. And if I don't, I'll feel perfectly comfortable emailing him to demand my morning dose of sweetness, without fear that he will be feeling stalked or pressured in any way. After all, we will never meet.

I have assured him that, just as he is no doubt a hideous troll, I am nowhere near as stunning as

the Mrs. Potato Head in the picture. I am, rather, like the burly German haus frau from the old Saturday Night Live skit who irons in her torn housecoat while she makes a living offering up phone sex. It just doesn't matter. With each passing day, our budding friendship has less and less to do with pictures and more and more to do with our written exchanges. Old fashioned letter writing. Sort of.

And there's no reason for him to know I'm still pricing out tickets to Toronto. Just in case.

Three Words

When you tell someone to go fuck himself (or herself), it's serious. Unlike the rather benign and commonplace "fuck you," "go fuck yourself" is pretty definitive; it doesn't leave much room for discussion or reconciliation. Or interpretation.

Most of the time, folks will fall from the roster of my life long before anyone has to say those three words. But sometimes people choose to hang on a bit too long and torture each other, suck the life out of each other, draw some blood before they're ready to shut the door and lock it. Bad habits are hard to break.

The good news about a solid and mutually exchanged "go fuck yourself" is both of you are ready; the hatred and utter disdain have reached such a fever pitch that you actually feel relieved it's over, that there's nothing left to say.

And so it went this weekend, and so it was that I've achieved some sense of clarity, and a big dose of closure. Well, as much clarity and closure as one can achieve without ever really having had a satisfactory conversation. I guess sometimes it's best to rely upon expletives in lieu of explanations. Even the most relentless truth seeker reaches a point at which head banging leads to more bruising than it's worth. Some questions will never be answered, unless, of course, you consider an assertive "go fuck yourself" an answer. And, in many ways, it is.

The other day, at work, one of my colleagues handed me a large collection of reading glasses I had been leaving in the same little drawer over the past few months. I'd been wondering why everything has seemed so blurry. Armed with my newly rediscovered arsenal of drug store readers in every color of the rainbow, I expect that I will once again be able to see things more clearly. No more fuzzy outlines, no more indistinct words. A little bit of magnification goes a long way toward eliminating ambiguity.

From here on in, I won't go anywhere without a pair of specs. The blinders are off, and I hope like hell I never have to say -- or hear -- those three words again.

Dark Mornings, Dark Pants, Light Hearts

By all rights, Labor Day should be depressing; dawn comes later, dusk comes earlier, and lazy days at the beach are, officially at least, over. For school age children, it marks the start of the arduous portion of the year, and for parents, it's a sudden jolt into the harrowing world of schedules and carpools and piles of paperwork cluttering up the kitchen table.

But Labor Day, like the month of September, has its pluses. Despite lingering days of extreme heat, mornings and evenings are cool and comfortable, crying out for sweaters and sweatshirts and all the other cozy outerwear of autumn. By some bygone fashionista's decree, it's the last day on which it is appropriate for people to wear white. Let's face it, most people out there can't carry off your basic pair of white pants, so Labor Day brings with it some esthetic blessings. And, with the onset of the end of summer, there's no longer any pressure to enjoy the outdoors and live life to the fullest, to make the most out of seemingly endless days, or -- and this is a real upside for me -- to fall prey to the passion and fantasy of a summer love affair.

The closest I came to a passionate, fantastical love affair this summer is a second date with a guy on whom I had spilled a glass of red wine during our first five minutes together. I thought it was quite romantic of him to not only call me again but also to refrain from presenting me with a dry cleaning bill. It don't get any more passionate than that. At least for me.

I'm kind of liking my fall fantasy love affair better. I've decided to rule out any man on a dating site who lives within a hundred mile radius of my end of deep dark suburbia, focusing instead on exchanging passionate emails with someone completely inaccessible (in the geographical sense). My latest fantasy man lives in Toronto; even better than having the buffer of over a hundred miles of physical distance, we'd need to pass through customs to actually meet each other. A total pain in the ass, totally not worth it.

To him, I am just a picture, a picture of a radiant, smiling, showered, coiffed (sort of), and made up (again, sort of) fifty-one year old. My profile boasts a somewhat accomplished history of education, careers, and hobbies, and my emails do little to disabuse him of the notion that I am a smart, witty, well adjusted, and forward moving middle aged woman who can't wait to experience the next adventure. Sure, on a good day there might even be some truth to that. But he does not have access to the bleary eyed insomniac, the scared, exhausted pessimist who tosses and turns all night worrying about how she is going to survive the divorce that just keeps on giving. Oops, wait, I did give him the blog site. Hopefully he's lost it.

I'm going to enjoy my fantasy Canadian and his funny emails (which have, on occasion, included silly poems and enticing descriptions of our first meeting), and his adorable photos as long as I can. When I chat with him, I actually feel more like the chick in my pictures and less like the faltering, uncertain little girl who seems stuck in a permanent state of limbo. It feels damn good. I suppose it's fair to say that the real me is just a little bit of both.

So life is good in September. Even if I had white pants I wouldn't be wearing them, and there's some guy out there who doesn't know the whole story yet, who, from across the border, makes me smile. God, I hope he doesn't read this!

The Alchemist

The already disturbing concept of the shabbos goy has been taken to a new level. Somewhere in the West Bank, an Orthodox rabbi has set up a computer dating site, well, more like a computer breeding site, to bring together gay men and lesbian women who wish to have children.

Granted, there are a lot of things in life I don't understand, but this one is giving me a particularly healthy dose of confusion. According to the rabbi, the service -- which has existed for several years but only just went on line last month -- will help orthodox homosexuals to fulfill the biblical commandment to have children in a way that is consistent with Orthodox Jewish law.

Okay, let's review. Create a loveless marriage (always good for the kids), and expect people as unlikely to have sex with each other as a camel is to have sex with a chicken to have sex in some sort of biblically acceptable way, which I assume does not involve major electronics and porn. Then, there's the somewhat sticky issue (pardon the word choice) of irrepressible desires by both parties to go outside the marriage to satisfy their sexual needs. The rabbi has created a wonderful fiction for this -- Jews are great at creating fictions -- noting that as long as each partner is aware that the other is "dating" it's not really infidelity. Solid.

Aren't there enough fucked up people in the West Bank? It's bad enough to live under constant threat of attack; why create a micro-generation of kids whose parents find each other repulsive from the beginning, who are so busy fantasizing about the sex lives that should have been they can barely focus on taping both sides of a diaper? Frankly, it surprises me that there is even a market for this kind of thing in the West Bank. Who has time to worry about sexual orientation when every day brings with it an overwhelming threat of death and destruction?

The rabbi seems confident that, with the right chemistry, a gay man and a lesbian can consummate a marriage. I realize my evidence is purely anecdotal, but I actually once had a conversation about blow jobs with my gay friend. I expressed my theory that a blow job is a blow job, and any red-blooded male -- gay or straight -- would be hard pressed to turn one down. Had it not been for the look of complete disgust on his face when I suggested to him he would happily accept a blow job from a woman, I would say the rabbi has a point. But, alas, I

think he's mistaken. Even Hollywood backs me up. There's a reason Harry is in awe when he watches Sally's awesome rendition of a woman faking it; it's just one of the many things that women can do well and men cannot do at all. And, yet, we still have to fight for equal pay.

There is no shortage of controversy in the Orthodox community regarding the matchmaking rabbi. Many just argue that things be done the old-fashioned way -- a little encouragement, a little therapy, and you simply "fix" these people.

I wonder how many Orthodox rabbis have ever done well in high school chemistry.

Burn Baby Burn

All of a sudden, I'm noticing all the things that need repairs in my house. Could it be that I'm finally becoming more observant, more tuned in to my surroundings, more conscious that the state of one's living quarters speaks volumes about the state of one's psyche?

Sure, it could be any of those things. Could be, but it's not. My friend just got a lead on a new handyman service, and she immediately passed it on to me. I have no idea what they charge, have neither seen nor heard testimonials about the quality of their work. Don't care. All I know is it's a group of moonlighting firemen from a nearby suburb. Oh my. I think I'm having my first hot flash.

I've spent a good part of the last two days going through my house, inch by inch, making a list of items in need of some fixing. Sure, there are the big ticket, obvious problems, like the rutted driveway and the cracked fluorescent light covers and the leaky faucets and the scratched up door frames (thank you Manny). But I never realized how many other hidden flaws lay lurking beneath the surface, flaws that need the immediate attention of a few hot, virile firemen and their hoses. I mean handymen.

There's the little knob from the kitchen cabinet that's come unscrewed, and lord knows I'm not going to risk ruining my manicure trying to screw it back in. There are the bulbs in my ceiling fan that need replacing. I'm all about sacrifice in the name of being cautious, and I'll certainly agree to tolerate a few firefighters in my bedroom, just so I don't get electrocuted. And there's the bathroom mirror that has, in recent months, depicted me as a worn out middle aged woman with cracks in her skin. I'm gonna need the chief and his big old axe for that one.

Yes, there is certainly much to be done. I'm going to take a break from my closet cleaning and rescue a few tight mini skirts from the discard piles. Thank goodness I didn't give away the slutty wedges with the big blue polka dots.

Manual Labor Day

I kept the shoes. Not because I'll ever wear them again, but simply because my daughter told me she still has hers. And, though I could tell she was teasing, she said we'll have to wear them together one day.

Sometimes, in life, you have to let go, but sometimes, for even the silliest reasons, you have to hold on. Letting go is the hard part, especially when the memories are all good, but even when they aren't. As I reflect upon the shoes with the shiny insoles and the bright polka dots, I realize they have never caused me a bit of unhappiness, not a moment of stress. Even for the few hours I wore them one day, they did not rub, left no blisters, no gaping wounds. And always, when I catch a glimpse of them gathering dust in my closet, they remind me of that happy, impulsive shopping day with my daughter. Not only am I going to hold on to them, but I am going to hang on to those damn shoes for dear life.

Labor Day weekend is upon us, the three lazy days that, for most of us, have little to do with the labor force and everything to do with the somewhat unpleasant transition into the part of the year during which we hunker down and get down to business. It's time, for me at least, to start cleaning my closets in earnest, to relinquish any reminders of discomfort and pain and start fresh. Gone will be the too-tight jeans of my life, the outdated sweaters, even some of the comfortable old shoes. They constrict, they take up valuable space, they invade my air. Gone will be all the things that make it hard to breathe. Scary as it is, it's time to let go.

The shoes, they're staying. (I looked for my daughter's pink ones, but she's got a bit of her own closet cleaning to do, and I will leave that to her.) Who knows, I might actually slip them on one day, risk the snide glances and the snickering stares, and teeter off, unencumbered, into my next chapter.

What Was I Thinking?

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I did once purchase the shoes in the picture, and it was some time in the last decade. I know that because, at the same impulsive moment, I purchased the same shoes (in shades of pink) for my daughter, and I'd like to think she was older than twelve when this happened.

Over the years, I've put together countless black garbage bags full of clothing and shoes for charity, yet, each time, these shoes have escaped the pile. I have held them in my hands, turned them every which way, wondering how on earth I ever fit my "ugly stepsister" feet into them. I'm pretty sure I wore them once, on vacation, where it was unlikely I'd run into anyone I knew. Although I can't really remember vacationing in West Virginia any time within the last ten years.

Last night, the shiny blue shoes with the clownish polka dots on the wedge were in the crosshairs as I filled up a bag of old stuff for this morning's pick up. It was time. Frankly, it's time for ninety per cent of what is in my closet, but sometimes I'm just not ready to pull the trigger. Occasionally it's a sentimental block; somebody important gave it to me, or an item reminds me of a particularly poignant moment. Usually, though, it's pure delusion. Despite the fact I haven't worn an item for years, I harbor some fantasy that I will some day. Maybe because it's a tad bit too small and I think I will somehow shrink, maybe because I truly believe an occasion will arise that just screams for that "good as new" item that I never really liked but must have purchased for a reason. It's irrational, I know, but I hardly think that's out of character.

I gave the crazy blue shoes a serious look before tossing them in the bag last night. There is no question in my mind that I will never again wear them, will never find myself wishing they were still there in my closet as a perfect accessory to some bizarre outfit. But it's that distant memory that stops me every time -- that almost stopped me again. The one of me and my daughter, giggling by the table of Coach shoes, thinking how much fun it would be to have a matched set. I wonder if she still has hers. Frankly, I think she got about as much wear out of them as I did, but maybe she, too, has held on to them all these years out of pure sentimentality.

I comfort myself with the thought of future shopping trips. It's always possible to make new memories, even if all you end up with in the shopping bag is a pair of sensible shoes.