Category: worries

TODAY’S WORRY

Does everyone think that where they live is the best? I have just returned from four weeks in Marco Island, FL. As we flew over the Sierras, the Central Valley and then finally into the Bay Area, I thought, wow, this is the best place on earth. Maybe that’s a reaction to being home. I can remember feeling a similar way as we approached Boston or Raleigh. But yesterday, the sky was so blue and the temperature in the mid-60’s. Flowering trees are blooming and daffodils are out. Everything is so green. Then I went to the grocery store. The aisles are so wide. They are not filled with people who are 55 and up, standing in the middle of the aisle trying to remember what they went to store for. And the produce. It made me want to weep. What variety! I actually went over to the produce manager and told how wonderful his produce was. There were piles of leeks and fennel (and not for $4.99 each), many kinds of eggplant, all sorts of lettuces and mushrooms. I know as the glow of being home wears off, I’ll start to notice less attractive aspects of California, but right now, this is the best place to live.

TODAY’S WORRY

I have to take a few days off from blogging so we can get back to California. Hopefully, you will check back on Friday.

TODAY’S WORRY

I have just spent the weekend with both my sisters and their husbands. It got me to thinking about how we relate to each other. I am the middle child of three. I have often felt adrift in the family; I’ve always had a sense of not belonging. When I was in high school and working at the town library, I even went so far as to look up my birth announcement to see if I was really a part of my family. Before writing this, I looked at some interpretations of how birth order affects behavior. Some of it I agree with and some not. A middle child is often a rebel, an underachiever, a champion of underdogs and a people pleaser. I do know that this weekend I tried really hard to make everyone happy and congenial. I’m exhausted.

TODAY’S WORRY

Twenty-eight years ago, there were worries aplenty. The staff at the hospital was engrossed in watching “Roots” in the labor room while I was trying to deliver Jonathan. I wanted to yell at them, “Hey, I’m the main event here!” Finally, only 40 hours later, I had the best (and it seemed the biggest) boy baby ever. And although I’ve worried about him his whole life, he has survived my overly avid attention and become the wonderful guy he is today. So, no worries about him today, just a loving “Happy Birthday!”

TODAY’S WORRY

It used to be that I worried over air travel. (I know. I wrote about this before.) But there seems to be all sorts of fearful traveling modes. A look at the headlines on my “My Yahoo” page confirms this – “Ford to Recall 792,000 Vehicles Due to Fire Risk ,” “Truck Plunges Off I-95 Overpass in Md,” “Rail crash carnage in Los Angeles.”

Are things getting scarier out there or do we just have more news?

TODAY’S WORRY

I despair for the lowly adverb; the modifier of verbs and adjectives. The media will be the death of this once proud form. “I’m feelin’ real good!, “Man, that wide receiver ran quick,” “That train was running too slow.” This is a scary dumbing down of the English (American) language. I was listening to commentary by Brad Gilbert on ESPN2 today. He is the former tennis coach for Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick; he is obviously not their former English coach. Gilbert has definitely decided that the adverb is obsolete. It made listening to him cringeful. Examine your language, are you using the -ly words?

TODAY’S WORRY

When I was a kid, everywhere we went, I always wanted my father to put the bumper sticker on our car – “Frontiertown!,” “I Saw Santa at the North Pole,” “Catskill Game Farm.” I knew when we got back to Red Bank that all my friends would see the stickers and wish they had been to all those great places. Really, I didn’t even care if I knew the other kids who saw our bumper sticker, I was proud to have been there and everyone else should know, and regret, perhaps, that they had not. Fortunately, my father never caved into my little girl ego.

So now I am seeing all these bumper stickers – “Support Our Troops!,” ” Proud to Be an American,” etc. Are these people just like I was when I was a little girl? They are proud to show these stickers but there is, perhaps, the desire to proclaim that one is a better American or more patriotic. True patriotism doesn’t come from a bumper sticker. I think it comes from supporting the ideals of our country as written in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. How many bumper-stickered patriots have even read those documents?

BTW, I checked on the internet and most of the places that sell these stickers are in the “for-profit” arena.

TODAY’S WORRY

On the news today, two people died who were part of my generation’s collective past – Johnny Carson and Rose Mary Woods. Johnny Carson took over from Jack Paar on the Tonight Show when I was still too young to stay up and watch the program and gave it up when I was married with children. Rose Mary Woods was part of the Nixon White House. What happened in those minutes which were deleted from the tape? Mostly, it is sobering when people who were household names pass away. It’s a little like part of your own history passing by.

TODAY’S WORRY

This is actual more like a musing. Many years ago, our good friend Barry wanted us to meet a friend of his. The last name of this guy was Golini. Now, since we liked Barry, we were inclined to like his friend. But we did not. Assuming that this must be some shortcoming of our own, we gave him a second try, wiping the slate clean. We still didn’t like him. We tried again. Same result. To this day, when someone in our family tries a second or third time to like something that they didn’t the first time, it is called “doing a Golini.” It might go like this – I had roasted beets in a salad the other day and really didn’t like them, but I see them on the menu and I guess I’ll do a Golini on them.”

What this has to do with anything is this. I am a good sport but not a good sailor. But I thought, okay, I’ve tried being on a boat before and it hasn’t worked out well but I’ll do a Golini on it. Today I sailed from Marco Island to Key West. At the end of the leg there, I had done the Golini and wanted to rent a car and drive back. After the first 30 minutes there was nothing to see but sky and water, I got burnt on the way there and froze on the way back. My stomach was upset and it was a noisy and jolting ride. People love to do this, what am I missing?

Many years ago when I was ranting to some counselor about a planned trip that my daughter’s band was going to take from Raleigh to New York City and all the things that could go wrong, he said to me, “can you imagine how life would be if everything went right?” Wow, is this hard for me to do. Today we went to the beach and we were supposed to pay $4 to park. But no one was there to take our money so we just went ahead and parked. The whole time we were on the beach I fretted about , what if we get a ticket, what if they tow our car, and what if we couldn’t leave the parking lot because it was after-hours. So instead of enjoying a lovely sunset, I was embroiled in this pointless inner dialogue. When we got back to the parking lot the car was where we had left it, there was no ticket and the automatic arm on the exit went right up. A lot of needless worrying was done. Imagine how life would be if everything went right.