Daily News?

At least online dating sites worry about you when you fail to keep in touch.

There may be a problem with your profile read the ominous caption. Oh no! If memory serves me, I didn't say anything inappropriate, was careful to keep the ugliest truths about myself pretty well buried. Maybe I had been hacked. Only a day earlier I had received an email, supposedly sent by a friend, alerting me to an article about how to eliminate belly fat. Fairly certain he does not have a death wish, I believed him when he said he had not sent it.

Assuming I would once again need to change my email password, I opened the email. Maybe you should change your pictures. Oh dear; the dating site was calling me ugly. Maybe you should complete or edit your responses. Oh dear; not just ugly, but dull. And all this time I had been thinking there was something wrong with the guys!

Well, since I really have no interest in trying to optimize my online dating appeal, I'm back to the drawing board (or should I say keyboard) on search engine optimization for my blog. Earlier this week, a discreet "pussy" in the title and "beef jerky" in the text had nominal effect on my readership statistics, so it's time to explore new strategies.

I pondered this the other day, my fingers dancing idly over the keys -- a writers version of air guitar -- while I half listened to the morning news (and I use the term news very loosely -- it took me a week to learn that Yosemite was burning but I knew Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta Jones had split within thirty seconds of the door slamming behind her). Anyway, like manna from heaven came the teaser and then the story about the woman who decided to have sex with her husband every day for a year and then write about it. Seriously. For this, she lands on the morning news. I was thinking I could do that, and I bet I could write about it better than she could. Yes, I could have sex every day for a year with her husband, especially since she admitted right there on television that she's cutting him off. Well, so I thought, until an excerpt of the interview with him came on, and he said something so grammatically incorrect any interest I might have had pretty much dried up.

  
Bad idea anyway. If my kids already find my writing humiliating, I can only imagine how they'd feel if I wrote that I had sex at all much less for three hundred sixty-five straight days and had told them to stay out of the room because we were having a "Santa meeting." Yes, the entire world knows these kids believed that mom and dad were meeting with Santa in their bedroom. Every day for a year, mom came out with her hair looking like it had been in the Cuisinart and dad's fly was always open and the kids think they were meeting with Santa? Forget about the humiliation; how about the years of therapy? Going forward, on December 24th, while all the other kids in the neighborhood are trying to figure out where their parents hid the presents, this mom and dad will be trying to find their kids, who are hiding under beds, trembling, praying that weird Santa dude can't fit down the chimney.

Maybe I should shift my focus back to the dating site. New pictures, new responses, maybe even a link to my blog. It may not optimize any engines, but it could stir up a little activity, let the online dating folks know they don't need to worry about me.

Routine Maintenance

On an occasional summer evening, my father would carry one of our small television sets out onto the postage stamp that was our fifth floor terrace -- our grounds -- and settle in to watch the Mets game.

Maybe it happened a few times a year, maybe only once. I can't remember. But I can still see the flickering light of the screen, my father looking as if he had won the lottery as he sat in a folding chair with his trademark cigar hanging out of his mouth. It was a rare and glorious tweak in his evening routine.

Last night, I sat alone on my deck watching the flickering lights of passing cars flash through the narrow gaps between slats in the fence. The air was still, the sun was down, and the night was making those sounds it makes that are just loud enough to remind you your ears work. If I listened carefully I could almost hear the din of the spotty reception on my father's portable television, the rich thwack of a bat connecting with a ball, an announcer's voice escalating with the excitement of a line drive, a crowd collectively holding its breath as a fly ball sailed toward the fence.  The simple pleasures of baseball and a summer evening. The sheer exhilaration of monotony.

He was a master of simple pleasures, my father. Humble and hard working, he came home every evening tired but content. He would drop his keys on the piano bench, give me a hug, wash up before dinner. Once in a blue moon he would defy my mother, push back her tight schedule for fifteen minutes so he could have a Scotch on the rocks. Usually not, though. She was not a fan of tweaks in the routine.

It was the time after dinner he enjoyed most, when he would sit in his chair in the living room and light up his cigar and unfold his New York Times. The television was always on for background noise, and I would often sit with him. That's when he taught me how to do the crossword puzzle. In pen. How to fold the newspaper just right, how to pick a section and just go at it. How to make sure you had a few solid across words and down words figured out before you inked anything in. Somehow, the answers would come.

This weekend was all about simple pleasures for me. Lazy afternoons in Midwestern lake water finally warm enough to swim in, a stint at "stand up paddle boarding" -- the closest I'll ever come to surfing, nasty food at a beach concession stand, and an afternoon wandering through the local annual art fair in punishing heat. I watched couples holding hands and young families bickering, chatted with artists trying to keep cool in their stalls, kept my eyes out for something extraordinary, a work of art that didn't remind me of something I had seen the other day at Target. My friend and I each settled on wearable art, pieces we could hang around our necks rather than on our walls. More bang for our buck.

It was a tweak in my routine, this weekend. Time spent outside, away from chores that beckon from every corner at home (whether I do them or not), watching the flicker of people passing by and listening to noises that seem to have no purpose other than to remind us that our ears work. Less monotonous than exhilarating, I suppose. I felt as if I had won the lottery.

This would have been a perfect weekend to unplug the television and take it outside, fiddle with the rabbit ears, watch the flickering lights of the Mets game. Or, if they were not playing, to sit in the living room doing the Sunday puzzle and listening to the white noise of my mother banging around in the kitchen. To inhale the delicious aroma of my father's cigar and enjoy the simple pleasure of a routine tweaked only because it's summer, and summer doesn't last very long.

SEO is Not an Airport in Southeast Asia (So What Else is New, Pussy Cat?)

Recently, I applied for a job that required both writing and marketing skills. I thought I could easily fake the writing skills (though apparently I could not) but I knew from the get go the marketing thing would be an uphill battle.

Before I learned one of life's most basic truths, i.e. that in matters of love it's all about pleasant facial features, buoyant breasts, and perky butt cheeks, or, for purposes of this blog that will become clearer later, it's all about tits and ass, my mother taught me to rationalize away my unpopularity with boys by reassuring myself that I was simply too intimidating. As a matter of self preservation, I've fallen back on a bit of that kind of thinking each time I fail to land a job, but with age comes at least some wisdom and I know, deep down, it's not true. Frankly, this whole job search experience is starting to make me feel fat.

Still, I persevere, and continue to look inward so I may identify my shortcomings and, maybe one day soon, get the equivalent of a fat envelope in the mail from a prospective employer. My writing, I think, is as much a part of me as my crooked nose and my double jointed thumbs, and absent surgical intervention, it's not going to change any time soon. But marketing, that's something I can learn. I am no longer as behind the eight ball as I was when I first applied for the writing/marketing job; I at least know now that S.E.O. refers to search engine optimization, and not the airport in South Korea. I even sort of know what a search engine is, and I can guess what optimization is all about.

Which brings me to this blog post, which is really nothing more than a computer science experiment. It's not just my job search that's been making me feel fat; my blog stats are doing more than their fair share to make me feel like an ugly duckling. I can tell myself my prose is intimidating all I want, but, really, is that what keeps thousands of folks from stopping by for a quick read as they cruise through the blogosphere? I think not. It is time for some soul searching.

Well, not really soul searching so much as careful research, or at least a bit of scrolling. I scanned my list of posts, looking for the ones that, oddly, have thousands of hits (as opposed to the more typical two or three). The key to S.E.O. had to be buried somewhere within those posts. Not buried at all, as it turns out. The answers jumped out at me before I even needed to squeeze my eyes together and concentrate really hard. Genitals. Boobs. Vagina. Dick. Beef jerky. S.E.O. is all about key words, and the words that are most key are all about sex. Okay, I'm not sure about beef jerky, but I think the rest of examples are pretty solid.

Yes, back to the experiment. I want to see if peppering my prose with sex words will increase my readership. I thought calling the post something like Girl on Girl Sex or World's Largest Penis would be inappropriate, not to mention slightly misleading. So I took a more subtle approach with key words in the title (do the math, folks, I'm not going to discuss it further) and I'm hoping the tossing in of a laundry list of body parts throughout the body of the post will add some further optimization. And I'm going to wait and see whether I suddenly become popular, or whether no amount of S.E.O. can save me from the ugly truth about why nobody likes me.

No worries, loyal fans. I remain armed with rationalizations, like the quote one of you just sent my way:

“Before you diagnose yourself with depression or low self-esteem, first make sure that you are not, in fact, just surrounded by assholes.” -William Gibson

Yep. Thousands and thousands of them. 

Amazing Grace. Kind of.

A young friend posted some advice I really like on Facebook. "If you work really hard and are kind, amazing things will happen." I like it, but it sounds like an awful lot of effort.

I'm not saying I don't buy into the hard work and kindness thing, but let's get real; sometimes no matter how committed you are to busting your butt and smiling your way through it you just end up banging your head against the wall and that can take the wind out of your sails, to put it mildly. Although, come to think of it, it's true that amazing things usually happen. Amazing as in wtf? Amazing just isn't always good.

So I think I'm going to ease into my new found (or maybe newly rediscovered) philosophy and aim for kind of hard work and trying hard to be kind. Same words, different order, more or less indistinguishable. It's like Tokyo and Kyoto; same letters, different order. Both capitals of Japan at one time or another, more or less indistinguishable. (I wonder if there's any such correlation when they're spelled out in Japanese.) Anyway, compared to sitting around on my ass and watching mold grow in my bread drawer -- watching the grass grow requires dragging my ass outside, which, these last few days, seems like an awful lot of effort -- just about anything I do will more than qualify as kind of hard work. And compared to snarling at anyone who attempts to talk to me, just about anything I do will more than qualify as trying hard to be kind. 

This morning, I have already begun my quest for the good kind of amazing. I resisted the temptation to roll over and play dead when the dog woke me at four, and instead not only got out of bed but made it. I overcame the urge to step around the growing pile of clothes on my bathroom floor and sorted through it all. I've even replaced some light bulbs, and it's not yet six o'clock. If that's not working hard, at least kind of, I don't know what is.

As for trying hard to be nice, most normal people aren't awake yet, but I said please and thank you when I got my coffee in Starbucks and didn't growl at anybody when they unlocked the doors forty-five seconds past five o'clock. A Herculean effort, if you ask me. And I got plans. I'm going to respond to emails I've ignored and texts I've forgotten, and I'm going to give a thumbs up sign to just about everything that shows up on my Facebook news feed. If that's not kindness, I don't know what is.

We'll see how all this pans out. If anything quasi amazing in a good way happens, I'll kick things up a notch and start putting in some real effort. Maybe stop job hunting in my underwear and actually get dressed and pay attention. Make things happen instead of hoping for a miracle. Hmm. It's a concept.

The kindness thing might be a bit more of a challenge. A fellow Starbucks morning regular just told me the forecast for tomorrow is something nobody has ever attributed to me: pleasant. Ouch. And he sees me at my best time of day.

I'm just not going to let stuff like that get to me. I'm committed to kind of hard work and trying hard to be kind, and I'm remaining optimistic about the good kind of amazing. I told him to go screw himself, but I said it with a smile.

Walk of Shame

For years, I had been certain that I would always be a runner. I would never become one of those old ladies in a matchy matchy sweatsuit walking through the neighborhood for exercise. At least I still don't own a sweat suit. Heck, my socks don't even match.

So I walk, except when I'm feeling particularly irrational and decide to take a half hour run that will no doubt incapacitate me for days. This morning, with my jet lag about half cured and my sanity (such as it is) half restored, I set out on a walk and noticed almost immediately that the face of the neighborhood has changed. Today is the first full day of elementary school here in deep dark suburbia, and everywhere I looked children were walking. Not just elementary age children, but larger children. The streets had been overtaken by a new demographic; there was not an adult in sight.

When I realized an inordinate number of the female children appeared to be pregnant, it occurred to me that even though I have yet to purchase a matchy matchy sweat suit I am indeed old. Young mothers and fathers in their thirties are looking prepubescent to me. These children smiling politely at me as we passed each other on the sidewalk were really just being smug. I knew exactly what they were thinking. How quaint that she is still trying to take care of herself. That will never happen to me. Where is her matchy matchy sweatsuit, and what the heck is the deal with her socks?

Insolent little brats. I had half a mind to bend down and have a little chat with some of the smaller children, let them in on their parents' dirty little secret. Luckily, my knees were feeling a little to stiff for bending. Otherwise I would have told the little tykes how excited mom and dad were that the first full day of school had finally arrived. Those hugs at the school house doors might be sincere, but the murmured I miss you's, well, not so much. Trust me kids, mom and dad have big plans for the day that do not include you, and if you want to know how to make them cry, just whisper three o'clock in their ears.

At least those thirty somethings who still look like children will soon have their comeuppance, sooner than they can possibly imagine. One day they will know what it feels like on the day their youngest child sets off, in her own car, on the first day of her last year in high school. They will know what it feels like to go out for a walk (because it hurts too much to run) before their child leaves the house in the morning just so they can resist the temptation to leap across the kitchen floor and grab her by the ankles and beg her not to go.

On the back end of my walk there were still a few large children straggling home, smiling broadly, looking nauseatingly happy. I'll let them have their fun, and I'll comfort myself with the knowledge that when the clock strikes three, their lives will be hell and I'll be the one doing a victory dance.

Maybe I'll buy myself a comfy matchy matchy sweatsuit today, and when three o'clock rolls around I'll throw it on and do what nature intended for us to do at that hour -- take a nap.

Umbrella Policies

My father, a master of the silly one-liner -- which can only be appreciated when repeated zillions of times -- used to love to pose this question: What do they do in China when it rains? 

My long anticipated Japan visit is over, and I could certainly use some ancient secret Chinese wisdom to figure out not only what to do when it rains but when things in general just seem crappy. Returning from a trip is always difficult. My re-entry this time around -- to quote a friend who put it better than I could ever hope to -- feels a bit like landing in a shit storm without an umbrella. Unfortunately, my father may have clued me in on garden variety rain, but he never told me what they do in China -- or anywhere, for that matter -- when there's a shit storm and no umbrellas.

As with most things, I am left to figure it out for myself. For starters, if I am being blown around in a shit storm, I'd just as soon take a pass on the umbrella. Odds are, if everything else is going south, the umbrella will be blown inside out, and I have yet to see anybody win a battle with an inverted umbrella. It's a waste of energy, you end up getting drenched anyway, and you inevitably make a complete ass out of yourself in the process. Shit storms don't scare me; umbrellas do. I'll just take my chances walking between the rain drops and and dodging puddles and staying a safe distance from the curb.

Reality check! To slip between rain drops and avoid puddles and tuck yourself a safe distance away from splashing vehicles you have to be little, particularly your feet. On a good day, my feet are disproportionately large for someone of my small stature. Add in long plane rides and lots of salt and my feet look like flippers. Shoe shopping in Japan was demoralizing; I watched with envy as my daughter, whose feet are each about the size of my big toe, struggled to fit into the larger sizes. I looked at the size conversion chart; they don't even make shoes big enough for me in Japan. Now I know why Cinderella's stepsisters were so bitchy. I can do without umbrellas but not without shoes. Winter would really be a bitch.

Plan B. If I cannot make my feet -- or the rest of me -- smaller, maybe I can just disappear. I could become invisible, out of reach of the storm, and what better place to start than with my blog. I messed around with the settings until I figured out how to remove it from view, and with just a couple of mouse clicks, my ramblings went underground. They were there, somewhere, but nobody would be able to find them. A few disgruntled emails from my loyal followers confirmed it; they could gain access by invitation only, and I had clearly not invited them. Good riddance to everybody, I thought, no more positive reinforcement, to be sure, but no more negative comments to rain on my parade. All well and good, until I realized how much I rely on my writing to get me through my most confusing moments. It's much sturdier than an umbrella, something I can actually rely upon in a shit storm. A couple of mouse clicks later, I was up and running.

What do they do in China when it rains? They let it rain. They don't fight it, they just go about their business and let it rain. Makes perfect sense. Storms move, and like all dark clouds, this too shall pass.

La Belle Japan

For our last dinner in Japan -- at least this time around -- we chose an Indian restaurant in Kobe. Nothing puts a smile on my daughter's face (or mine) faster than the sight of a single loaf of naan so big it hangs off all the edges of your plate. Knowing you don't have to share it makes it all the sweeter.

We have yet to eat a bad meal here. Our choices have run the gamut -- from Japanese to Chinese to Mexican to Spanish to Italian to Nepalese to Indian -- not to mention all the baked goods and ice cream. There have been a few service snafus which seem to have nothing to do with language barriers (my son is sufficiently fluent to articulate accurate orders) and everything to do with cultural differences. Like yesterday, when the item I ordered for lunch was, as it turned out, only available for dinner. Apparently, when our waiter discovered this, he chose not to make waves, just resigned himself to the fact that I would not be eating lunch. Don't even get me started on the shaved ice and noodles incident. Let's just say if my my son had not been there to remind me to be polite, a Japanese waitress at the top of a sacred temple mountain might have been wearing a syrupy ice cap on her head. A Shinto temple does nothing to ward off a Jewish mother's unholy thoughts.

We have discovered it is often helpful to a have a native Japanese person with us at meals, someone who can reassure the staff that though we look like typically American boors, we are essentially decent people and worthy of solicitous service. My son brought a Japanese friend last night to the Indian restaurant last night, so we had our buffer. Folks from the Asian sub-continent living in the Far East are generally less suspicious of us than the Japanese natives seem to be, but still, our guest helped us to let down our guard. And, much to our delight, she had the capacity to be as boorish and rude as we can be, which gave us a pretty wide berth. The food was great, and dinner was a blast.

Visiting Japan can be a lot trickier than popping into your average European country. Yes, there's more than enough preconception about the "ugly American" to go around the world over, but when East meets West it all escalates. We look different. Different in a far more fundamental way than the way I'd look different standing next to a six foot tall blond beauty in Iceland. Babies and young children stare at us, our Caucasian features not something they see every day. We behave differently. We hug instead of bow. We complain when something bothers us. We put our feet up on coffee tables, our elbows on dinner tables. The differences are superficial, but the superficial is often what gets noticed the most.

I have found that the discomfort and the suspicion can be mutual, no matter how unwarranted. And it often is, in fact, unwarranted. In my two visits to Japan, I have spent time with more than a few of my son's Japanese friends, and their friends, and so on. Like our dinner guest last night, they have been, as a rule -- after some initial awkwardness -- as goofy and flawed and as possessed of unique personalities as anybody. Maybe not as impolite, but I suppose that's not such a bad thing. It is my hope that they see the uniqueness in us as well. Lord knows my children would not want the Japanese thinking they have anything in common with me.

As we left the Indian restaurant last night, our waiter invited us each to ring a giant bell hanging over the bar. It would bring us good luck, he told us, something to do with the Hindu elephant faced deity Ganesh. I'm all about good luck, and I'll take it wherever I can get it. And I'm a yogini, which theoretically makes me all about Ganesh. I wheeled back and gave the heavy bell a good whack. The chiming seemed endless; it sounded like a royal baby had just been born or something. My children and our dinner guest were far more gentle and polite. I didn't really get that. If ringing the bell brings you luck, why not ring the crap out of it?

I apologized for offending, but I really didn't mean it. I have a feeling Ganesh, protector and supreme guard against obstacles, heard me loud and clear. There was no cultural divide, no suspicion, no misunderstanding. When I rang the crap out of that bell, there was nothing lost in translation.