Welcome Rosie!

This past week my baby brother and his family adopted an eight-week-old puppy they named Rosie. She’s a Cockapoo, which is a cross between a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle. Here’s a photo of Rosie.

Is she the most adorable thing on four legs or what? Rosie is the newest in a long line of illustrious animal personalities who have brought delight to our family over the years. On Thursday evening, a few hours after they arrived home with Rosie, I skyped them to see Rosie in action. I talked to her on the call while she ran back and forth in front of the computer screen sniffing and responding with curiosity to my voice, then she ran off to chew on her 30 or 60 doggie toys that my Jewish-mom sister-in-law purchased for her earlier in the day at Petco. (I’m buying stock in Petco ASAP.) Half the toys are twice Rosie’s size. She likes the squeaky ones the best.

My brother told me that Rosie came from a Dutch Amish breeder (he lives in Pennsylvania) and so she has never seen technology, which, he explained as scientifically as Mr. Rodgers, accounted for her confusion when she heard my voice coming from the computer. Wait, what? I didn’t think dogs understood how computers work, period. I didn’t realize it’s only Dutch Amish dogs that don’t get it. This started me wondering if Rosie might experience a cultural diversity crisis as a result of being adopted by a Jewish family. Perhaps my brother should avoid putting any doggie sweaters on Rosie that have buttons. It’s not feasible for him to transport her by horse-and-buggy. I hope she can adjust to traveling via car. Can anyone suggest a good Amish dog therapist?

Our family’s known history with pets begins with a purportedly highly intelligent Border Collie named Juno who helped raise my father and my uncle in the Bronx. I have a photo on my desk taken around 1935 of my grandfather, father, and uncle with Juno. She looks quite prepared and capable of herding my father and uncle safely through their Bronx boyhood. When I was a teenager, our family adopted a Kerry Blue Terrier named Happy. Although Happy liked to fake intelligence, he had no one fooled. In reality, he was a doofus. Here he is pretending to be a movie star. 

Sometimes Happy would salvage chewing gum from the trash cans and could be seen in the back yard chomping away. His nemesis was my mother’s bread basket (the one she filled with warm rolls for the dinner table), which lived atop the refrigerator. Whenever he caught a glimpse of the bread basket, he would bark as if possessed and chase the bread basket down as my mother carried it into the dining room. He was a terrific outdoors dog, who accompanied my father on countless boy-scouting expeditions (Dad was a scout leader). And he enjoyed birthday parties immensely because when we sang Happy Birthday he thought we were singing to him and he barked and ran around in circles.

Although I grew up with a dog, I am a cat person to the core. I had been away at college a scant two years before I adopted my first two cats, both of whom I named Woossa. However, I tended to call my more favorite of the two cats Woossa-Woo. My dad went with me to pick him up at the vet when he had to get patched up after a cat fight one summer while I was at home between semesters. Dad laughed his head off when the vet referred to the cat as Woossa-Woo Wachspress (with a straight, serious face). What did I know about naming pets? I was a teenager. My other brother is more of a cat person like me and has had several cat companions over the years, the last of which, Perji, was a cat that acquired my brother when Perji decided my brother’s house would be his and moved right in. He was a gorgeous blue-gray longhair with enormous eyes.

I have had cats, always, for over 40 years. Counting a litter of kittens that my female tabby had in Berkeley (kept one and gave the others away to good homes), I have had more than a dozen cats during my life. I have stepped up my cat-naming ability from the Woossa days. I live with two ten-year-old shorthairs now. Golda is a rare female orange tabby and Ella is my impish black cat with the bright green eyes. While Golda is as dumb as grass, her sister Ella is the smartest of all the cats I have ever had. She can open doors. (Still hasn’t learned how to close them behind her.) Golda has watched Ella open the screen door to the back deck for years and still can’t figure out how to do it herself. She sits at the door, pretending to be patient, but I know she’s simply moronic, waiting for Ella to come open it for her. Golda likes to hunt mice, moles, and an occasional bird; and she eats her kill while Ella watches in horrified fascination. Ella is a pacifist. I have never seen Ella hunt anything bigger than a moth. Golda is territorial and she’ll fight off intruding cats. Ella turns her tail and runs away. She once peed in fright at the back door when she saw a large, strange cat enter our yard.

Sometimes, when I’m not paying attention, my cats work as a team to bring chaos into my ordered existence. On more than one occasion Ella has opened the screen door to let Golda bring a live mouse into my living room, where Golda then proceeded to torture it and kill it while Ella made popcorn and pulled up a chair and I jumped up on the couch and hollered “EEK.” It’s virtually impossible to chase two cats and a half-dead traumatized rodent out of your living room with a broom. Trust me on this. Especially so if you have an irrational terror of mice, which I do. If you even attempt to shoo the whole menagerie out, the mouse winds up hiding under the couch and the cats expect you to chase it back into the open where they can see it. If you don’t chase it out, the cats stare at you reproachfully (and Ella refuses to share her popcorn). Your best case scenario is to let the cat kill the mouse and eat it in the open. Otherwise you risk having a smelly dead rodent in a mysterious location in your house for several weeks. This anecdote makes it sound like having cats is all trauma and a three-ring circus, whereas in reality that’s not true. Golda sits on my lap and purrs whenever I watch football, keeping me warm on the couch in the winter. Ella entertains me chasing cat toys and laser lights and keeps me company when I’m writing by sitting behind my computer in the window or cuddling up in my lap. Cats are calming creatures. Beautiful and centered.

During our Ranch days our family had the most excellent dog, our one and only. She was an Australian Shepherd and Black Lab mix. When we rescued her she was four years old and near death with heartworm. We had her treated and coaxed her back to life with jelly sandwiches and pancakes. We named her Juno after the illustrious Border Collie of Dad’s youth. Juno’s favorite thing in the whole world was going for long walks, and when she discovered that my dad would take her into the hills for hours he became her favorite person. She lived to be about 17 years old, which was unexpected for a 60-pound dog who had suffered severe heartworm in her youth. We attributed her longevity to her mellow personality. She didn’t stress. She tolerated anything our young children did to her. Life was good no matter what came her way. She liked everyone, even the UPS driver. (So much for having her be our guard dog.) The three cats we had for a dozen years at the Ranch would sleep on Juno’s back in her doghouse during the rainy months. Once, Ron arrived home from work, pulled the car into the driveway, stepped out, and saw, when Juno got up to greet him, that Juno had been sleeping with a coiled rattlesnake under her rump. Ron ran the rattlesnake off with a spray of the garden hose while Juno looked on quizzically, as if to say, “what did my bunkmate do wrong?” Some years later, Juno startled a rattler and it bit her in the mouth. By then she was an older dog. I raced her to the vet, who administered anti-venom and kept her overnight. The next day, when I went to pick Juno up, she greeted me with a grin as wide as the Grand Canyon. The vet assured me Juno would survive, adding that she was feeling great because she was on super-strong drugs. Having an older dog survive a rattlesnake bite in the mouth was a miracle. Unfortunately for me, the anti-venom was so expensive that I made monthly payments to the vet for over a year to cover the cost. But there is no price tag on the value of a good dog.

Juno lived to retire eventually to the old folks home with my parents, where Dad coddled her to the last days of her life by feeding her bread warmed slightly in the microwave and roasted chicken made especially for her daily by the kitchen staff; and of course taking her on her beloved walks, which became shorter and shorter. I learned one of my most important lessons in life from Juno. Don’t stress. Learn to lie down gently with the rattlesnake; and if it bites you then you can depend on those who love you to take care of you with strong drugs and jelly sandwiches.

Dad used to have a bumper sticker on his car that said:  God help me be the man my dog thinks I am. I strive every day to be the woman my cats think I am. So, welcome to the family little Rosie – you are one lucky little puppy, and you don’t even know it yet, but you’ll figure it out soon.

Entreprenot

I visited an artist-friend yesterday at her studio, where many paintings she would like to sell cover her walls. She would not charge very much for them. Heck, a lot of them she’d just give away for the satisfaction of finding the right home for the piece; somewhere it would be appreciated. But she, like myself, is not a salesperson. I identify with her plight. I don’t have what it takes to market myself. We talked about this, about her passion for painting, mine for writing, and how we couldn’t stop even if we wanted to (which we don’t); and about not being able to sell our work, to connect with a purchasing audience, to “monetize” our creativity.

The “selling gene” is absent from my DNA. During the years when I had children at home and their schools and sports teams sold things to raise money, I always bought out. If each baseball player was supposed to sell 10 candy bars, I paid the coach for the candy bars and told him to keep them. Magazine subscriptions, tulip bulbs, every conceivable variety of tooth-rot candy, seed packets, event tickets, you name it and I could not sell it. Neither could my children. I passed my failure at sales on to them. None of us could sell a thing. My children and I could not even talk anyone into sponsoring the children when they participated in events, such as Jump for Heart (to raise money for the American Heart Association). We couldn’t even sell raffle tickets. You would think that I would have won something during those years when I bought $10, $20, $30 (however much was required to remain on the team, to help the school, to promote the cause) worth of raffle tickets myself so that my children and I didn’t have to sell them. But I never did. The raffle-winning gene seems to have bypassed my DNA as well. This is often a good thing when you live in a progressive rural community and the item being raffled is, say, a cow or a colonic. But I would have liked winning a trip to Hawaii, a quilt, or a case of wine. Rural raffles are sort of a crap shoot that way. But all I ever got out of the raffles were the tickets.

Some of my children’s teammates demonstrated impressive selling talent. One boy on my older son’s sports team sold $600 worth of peanut brittle one year. I don’t think I know anyone who eats peanut brittle. In fact, I’m not even sure what it is. I can’t remember if I have ever seen this substance. Peanuts set in concrete? I say this because most of the things the baseball teams sold to raise money were designed to inflict severe damage to teeth. Maybe I could have made some money selling dental care gift certificates to the people who purchased the $600 of peanut brittle. Anyway, if I remember correctly, you don’t actually need teeth to play baseball. The baseball fundraising was the worst. Fortunately, my older son dropped out of baseball early on and his younger brother, who was passionate about baseball for a few years, lost interest in the game before he lost any teeth. He preferred soccer and water polo, which thankfully didn’t require me to sell things.

I realize that it’s deeply un-American for me to be incapable of selling, unpatriotic in fact. Our political system is built on sales. Without advertising, how would anyone know who or what to vote for? I suspect that I am unclear on the concept of closing a sale. I have brought homemade cookies to the school bake sale only to buy back the same cookies I baked from the bake sale table for my children. Since I bought the ingredients, I have then paid for the cookies twice. Perhaps it’s my math disability kicking in. (My disability is that I can’t do math. I need to drink four cups of anti-stress tea to balance my checkbook, which never balances.) I have no doubt that if my life depended on me selling an aspirin to a shopaholic with a whopping migraine headache that I would wind up pretty much dead, in fact completely dead. I’d probably manage to talk the shopaholic out of ever taking an aspirin again as long as s/he lived. I couldn’t sell wood shavings to a nesting hamster. I’m hopeless.

So what was I thinking when I self-published a book? That the entrepreneur fairy would appear and zap me with her magic wand? If there is a word for the opposite of an entrepreneur, that’s me. The entreprenot. I know what I want to buy and I don’t let salespeople talk me into buying anything I don’t want to buy. So I wander through life clueless because I imagine that everyone else is the same way. I make that dangerous error of not being able to view the world from someone else’s perspective. I make assumptions about others based on my own worldview. I assume that if people want to buy my book they will. I don’t need to make a nuisance out of myself by getting in anyone’s face about it. No matter how wonderful the product, no matter how much I believe in it, no matter how much I think the buyer will love what they buy from me, no matter, it feels morally wrong to me to try to talk someone into buying something. The first thing that publicists tell us authors is for us to write our “elevator speech,” a one-sentence pitch that authors can rattle off in the event that they find themselves in an elevator with Steven Spielberg. I feel 100% certain that if I found myself in an elevator with Spielberg I would offer to carry his briefcase and not mention that I am the author of a book that would make a great movie.

On the other end of a sales pitch, I am vicious. On the rare occasion that they get through all my filters and do-not-call listings, when they call, I hang up on telemarketers, pollsters, and salespeople in under five seconds. I refuse samples in food stores, actually mark junk mail “return to sender” and send it BACK to the perpetrator, leave coupons for products I don’t buy at the cash register when they print out with my receipt, and mute the TV during commercials while watching football games. I am the anti-marketer, the original non-consumer. If I am in the market for something, like a car or a bed, and the salesperson says they can offer me a special deal but I have to take it in 24 hours to get the special price, I’m out of there faster than the Roadrunner. My aversion to being sold to is probably the underlying reason why I can’t sell to others. If I would hang up on myself, walk away, throw the flyer in the trash (or refuse to take it when thrust at me), then I don’t feel comfortable making the call, approaching the prospective buyer, handing out the flyer.

It’s ironic that I have spent more years self-employed than working for others. You would think that I would never manage to get work because I don’t promote myself. But that’s not the case. I started a contractual grant writing business and I have consistently secured great clients for over 15 years without ever having set up a website for my grant writing biz or doing any promotions or marketing. I started a publishing company and sold 2,000 copies of my book despite my reserved marketing style. (When I think of how many copies of my book the kid who sold the $600 of peanut brittle could have sold it makes me sick. But so would peanut brittle.) While 2,000 may not seem like much, the truth is that less than 2% of books published sell more than 1,000 copies (and less than 20% sell more than 250 copies). If only I had that sales gene, I would be a famous writer by now. A bizarre twist to this is that I write grants for a living, for heaven’s sake. I convince the federal government to give my clients millions of dollars, and I think that pretty much qualifies as selling on some level. But it’s different because my job is to convey an excellent narrative; and if the narrative is excellent enough (and follows all the instructions), then the funder awards the money. If only selling was nothing more than telling an excellent story.

In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs, he shows that Jobs was not a computer whiz or a brilliant engineer but a masterful salesman. Jobs knew how to market the stuffing out of a product. That’s what really made him so successful. If Jobs held a bake sale, you can bet that the cookies would be hyped so much ahead of time that millionaires would fly in from all over the world in their private jets to purchase one of those chocolate-macadamia-nut specials. Of course, if any of those cookies crumbled then the buyers would need to take the cookies to an authorized Apple cookie repair agent to be reassembled and uncrumbed for eating. Jobs knew how to work it. He would never buy his own cookies back at the bake sale. I bet he even knew how to balance his checkbook.

I just don’t know how to work it. I can’t bend it like Jobs. There must be lots of people out there who would enjoy my books, who would get something of value out of them, something to take on the journey through life. There must be more than 2,000 people in the whole world who would enjoy my books. But these hypothetical people who populate the world simply don’t know about my books and I don’t know how to connect with them. I can’t monetize. I can’t close the sale. Sigh. I confess that I do get a sense of satisfaction from the fact that the kid who sold the $600 of peanut brittle drives a UPS truck for a living and my non-salesman son has a college degree and makes a six-figure income. No selling involved. Perhaps there is some justice in the world. Have a cookie.

I didn't know what picture to put on this blog post so chose 

chocolate macadamia cookies. Eek. Now I want to eat some.

Renegade Medical Billing

Have you ever encountered a live person who codes hospital medical expenses for a living? I would wager you have not. Medical billing coders who still live among us must conceal their identity for their own safety. If they’re outed then they must go into hiding. I suspect that most of the medical billing coders in this country live together on a remote farm in Arkansas as participants in the Medical Billing Coders Witless Protection Program. I say this because, although I am a pacifist, I don’t trust myself to behave pacifically if I ever identify the medical billing coder who put together the itemized bill I received from the hospital for my emergency room (ER) visit in July when I was stung by a demon nest of yellow jackets. (In case you missed it, here is the link to my blog post about this life-altering event.)

If you have ever received a bill for services provided to you by a hospital, I challenge you to figure out exactly what you were charged and for what. You could conceivably have been charged $80 for a Band-Aid and $500 for the privilege of having a teenage clerk ask you for your date of birth. You could make a down payment on a blood pressure cuff manufacturing factory for the amount you were charged to have a junior assistant nurse-cadet-in-training take your blood pressure. I am outraged that hospitals are allowed to bill patients for services without being held accountable for even vaguely justifying the costs.

When I received the bill for my ER services, I was dismayed that it did not break down the expenses. The bill listed a lump sum of $4,250.19 with no explanation whatsoever. Mystery medical services. After my insurance paid their portion, I was left with $750 to pay out-of-pocket. I called the hospital billing department to set up a payment plan AND I requested an itemized bill. I thought the itemized bill would reveal exactly what I got for all that money. Silly me.

When the itemized statement arrived, I called the billing department again to have them interpret it for me because it was more confusing than a Chinese schematic depicting how to assemble the space shuttle. Below is a simplified version of the itemized statement as reinterpreted by me after my conversation with the billing department. This resembles the original statement, but without the confusing billing codes, equipment serial numbers, account numbers, patient ID numbers, VIN numbers for the vehicles owned by the staff in the ER at the time I was admitted, inspector number of the inspector who inspected the vending machine in the ER lobby when it was originally assembled, and the phone number of the hair stylist for the family nurse practitioner on duty. Itemized expenses follow:

   INJ IVP ADD SEQ NEW $307.96

   INJ IVP SNGL/INTL $307.96

   INJECTION SQ/IM $214.78

   IV HYDRAT THRPY ADD HR $592.06

   ED LEVEL 4 $2655.85

   EPINEPHR 1ML INJ $59.76

   PRED 20MG TAB $22.82

   PRED 5 MG TAB $22.82

   DIPHENHYDRAMINE 1ML $1.62

Alrighty then. Let me break it down for you as I see it. The first thing that I notice about my itemized bill is that it does not add up to $4,250.19. It seems impractical to employ math-impaired individuals in a hospital accounting office, but that appears to be what was done by this hospital. You would think that a prerequisite for the job would be the ability to add, but what do I know? Moving right along, next I notice that 20 mg of prednisone is billed at the same amount as 5 mg of prednisone. This leads me to assume that prednisone is one of those all-in kinds of things, like virginity or being dead. Either you are or you’re not. No matter how much prednisone you buy, it’s always going to cost $22.82. That does simplify matters.

This is what disturbs me the most: How can the hospital list one line item for $2655.85 without breaking out those expenses? Seriously? By way of analogy, what if I took my car to the shop and the mechanic handed me a bill for $2655.85 with no explanation? How can a hospital toss a huge lump sum in there like that without breaking out how much the carburetor cost to replace and how much the spark plugs were and how many hours of labor at XX per hour, etc., etc. When I called medical billing and asked if I could get that cost $2655.85 broken out into its parts, I was informed that the $2655.85 is the fee for the use of the room in the Emergency Department. Wait, what? I wasn’t even in a room. I was in a corner with a curtain pulled around me. So was the curtain valued at $1500, the bed at $600, the blanket $100 (I should have taken it home with me), and so forth? How much did I pay to wear the gown? $300? $800? If I had known I was going to have to pay so much to wear the gown I would have had my husband take a picture of me in it. I would have asked for matching shoes. What was it that cost 85 cents? Rental fee for the doctor’s stethoscope? The 2.75 inches of surgical tape used to tape the cotton ball to my arm after they removed the IV needle? The lint I picked up on my shoe? Sheesh! If they can come up with such a precise cost, down to the penny, why can’t they provide a list of what it includes?

The main thing I needed to counteract the yellow jacket stings and keep me breathing was epinephrine. The epinephrine injection cost $59.76. Apparently, the use of the room in which I was injected with epinephrine was $2655.85. I should have asked them to give me the shot in the restroom. I wonder how much they charge for the use of the restroom. I didn’t use the restroom while I was there, but if I had, then my bill would probably have been another $400. I notice that the diphenhydramine, which is a fancy name for the antihistamine Benadryl, only cost $1.62. This was the primary drug I needed to stop the symptoms of my allergic reaction. The Benadryl was administered via IV, which cost $592.06. The IV had nothing but water (listed as hydration therapy on the bill) and Benadryl in it (this according to the medical billing department when we spoke). I drank a gallon of water after I was stung. I didn’t need any further hydration. I have Benadryl in my medicine cabinet. They charged nearly $600 for IV water and Benadryl. I could have declined the IV and swallowed a Benadryl tab (washing it down with water) and saved $600. Furthermore, NOT included in the IV, I apparently received an injection of new sequins (SEQ NEW) and an injection of single international (SNGL/INTL), both costing the same amount, and both as indecipherable to medical billing as they are to me. I’m grateful the sequins were new and not used.

As an interesting aside, the ER doc gave me a prescription for Benadryl to fill at the pharmacy. But as it turned out, the prescription was more expensive than buying the exact same amount of Benadryl over the counter in a generic brand. The prescription epi-pen I needed to buy (in the event I am ever stung again) at the pharmacy cost me $50 and the doc told me to carry it with me at all times for the rest of my life. The darn thing is the shape and size of an intermediate-level dildo. I have not worn pants in 40 years, but I’m tempted to buy a pair of jeans just so I can put the epi-pen in the front to see how people react. I wonder if anyone else has developed transgender fantasies in the wake of a yellow jacket attack.

The ER bill, by-the-way, does not include the cost of physician services. Physicians bill separately for their services. So I received a separate bill from the ER doc for $704. I only have to pay $50 out-of-pocket on that one, which is a good deal. He was a nice doctor (young, he looked like a teenager to me, or maybe that was just the insect venom talking) and he saved my life. The thing that concerns me about the physician’s bill is that it lists the services as ER VISIT LEVEL 5. Notice that on the ER bill the visit was listed as a LEVEL 4. I found this so curious that I called the hospital billing department to ask which level I had actually been. A cheerful woman who introduced herself as a “patient advocate” informed me that sometimes the medical billing coder for the physician codes a visit at a different level from the one assigned by the medical billing coder at the hospital. I asked if the cost for level 4 services is less than the cost for level 5 services and the patient advocate told me not to worry about it. I suspect she was lying about being a patient advocate and that she is really a medical billing coder incognito. She belongs in Arkansas.

So, what did it cost me to get stung by a nest of yellow jackets? ER bill $700 + physician $50 + epi-pen prescription $50 + yellow jacket nest exterminator $200 = $1000. I’m not complaining, because, you know, death is like prednisone, all-in (virginity is no longer an option), i.e., it’s either $22 or it’s not; and I’m truly grateful to be alive. But next time I get attacked by insects I’m calling an ambulance. I’ve learned from experience that if you can prevent the ambulance paramedics from taking you to the hospital, and you can get them to treat you on the spot, then the ambulance service is free. And free is a better deal than the cost-obfuscating ER. So I’m calling an ambulance and chaining myself to my front door.

Which Day Would You Pick to Live All Over Again?

If you could magically have one day of your life to live over again from start to finish exactly as it happened, which day would you choose? Tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of the marriage of my son to his wife. Thanks to the generosity and hard work of his wife’s family, this event was super-wonderful, a fairytale wedding. I would love to relive that day, but if I could only choose one out of my whole life, would that day be my choice? I could choose my own wedding, 33 years ago. That seems too far to go back in time; seems like honest-to-goodness hardcore time traveling. None of my children had been born yet in 1982 and it was years before I moved to my beloved 40 acres in the forest in gorgeous Mendocino County. I don’t think I would choose to relive a day without my children. From the moment each of them was born, I could no longer imagine the world without them in it.

This week I’m reading Charles Yu’s book How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe. The protagonist repairs time travel machines. In Yu’s sci-fi, people usually choose to return to the saddest day of their lives because they hope to change what happened, or at least their relationship to what happened. But in his book it doesn’t ever work that way. The past can’t be changed. I think he’s wrong about people wanting to return to sad days. I think people would want to return to the happy days, but I think that because that’s what I would do.

So what would constitute a happy day? One of the happiest? I could choose to return to the exciting day we moved from Berkeley to our land at the Ranch, when our adventure as a family living in a remote forest in paradise first began. I could choose to return to one of the extra-special Thanksgivings that we spent on the land with my parents (when Mom was still alive) and our friends (when all of them were still alive, before so many of them passed away much too early, too young), and when our Australian shepherd was still alive (I feel guilty putting her in this sentence with friends, and, of all people, Mom, but she was an excellent dog and Mom loved her so she would forgive me for wishing to spend more time with them both in the same breath). I could choose one of the festive Saturdays over Labor Day Weekend when the abundance of friends, food, music, and laughter overflowed at the Ranch. I might choose the particular Labor Day party when I celebrated my 40^th birthday, or my 50^th birthday, or our 25^th wedding anniversary. I could choose the first Christmas after all my children left home when they all returned for the holiday (including my son’s wife, who was his fiancée at the time).

Or how about one of those perfect sun-drenched days at Manresa Beach near Santa Cruz, sparkling blue, graced with passing schools of dolphins, on our family’s annual summer vacation during the years that the children were growing up? I might go for one of those days to live over. Building elaborate sandcastles, flying colorful kites, talking for hours with our children and their friends as we lolled on the beach, going for long walks, collecting sand dollars, playing Frisbee, digging a hole to China. In the evening, cooking dinner over the campfire and finishing up with s’mores. Playing Taboo at the picnic table by lantern-light. Perfection. However, if I chose such a day (and they were often glorious so I am sorely tempted) then I wouldn’t get to see my mom again since she never went to Manresa with us.

Maybe I would choose a day of great accomplishment or recognition. The day I found out that a publisher wanted to publish my novel that I spent 20 years writing? Recently a friend of mine whom I have often admired for the good work he does in the world opened up and confessed that he wonders what he accomplished in his life. I was stunned. How could he, of all people, feel as though he has accomplished nothing? I share with him my fear that one day, when my time comes, I will face death wondering if I used my life wisely, to do good in the world, to make a small difference. So perhaps if I could relive only one day I would do well to choose a day on which I was reminded of something I had accomplished to make a mark, something that matters. But I am, in the end, so tiny in the inconceivably huge depths of the universe that, seriously, how could anything at all that I do here really matter? I am smaller than a blip on the screen of the firmament.

One day. One day to have again. I would not choose an auspicious day, an unusual day, an eventful day. I would choose, instead, an ordinary day. I would choose a slow summer day, during the Ranch years, when my parents drove up to visit and Dad took the dog for a long walk up the hill, and we chatted by our modest doughboy pool while the children played Marco Polo (and I jumped in to play with them for a while), and the lazy afternoon slid by filled with homemade pesto on crackers, watermelon, lemonade, and small talk with my folks, my husband, my children. A day when we had challah French toast with real maple syrup for breakfast, enchiladas for dinner, and ice cream for dessert. A day when I picked purple and red flowers I had grown and put them in a vase on the kitchen table; and picked tomatoes and basil from the garden and made tomato salad. A day when we played R&B from the old days in the late evening and danced around our house for no reason other than that we felt better than James Brown. When the children gathered before bed and listened to me read aloud from a good book, maybe the latest Harry Potter, because it seriously doesn’t get any better than J.K. Rowling. When the country night filled with infinite stars and, after the children went to bed and my parents headed back home, I sat on the deck with my husband to enjoy the beauty of the vast universe in the hour before sleep. When I drifted off at the end of the day under the watchful gaze of tall, tall Doug firs and oaks, embraced in gratitude, feeling blessed. I would choose that kind of ordinary day. I could choose that day again and again and again.

Sometimes I am lucky enough to have one of those kind of miraculous ordinary days appear out of nowhere in the midst of my life as it is now, even with my children grown, even after leaving my beloved land, even when so many loved ones have moved on. Delight happens, taking us unawares when we least expect it.

Which day would you choose to live again? Message me to let me know—I’m curious. I’m grateful for the miracle of living at the same time as you, my friend, so that we can pass this way in each other’s company. May you be inscribed in the Book of Life for a sweet year, a good year. Wishing you L’Shana Tova (Hebrew for “good new year”) at this time of the Jewish High Holy Days.

Still life photo taken by Akili Wachspress. 

We were fooling around with ideas for book covers for "Memories from Cherry Harvest." 

None of our photos were used of course by the publisher.

Terminology for Use When Dating Over 60

You might well ask what I know about dating since I’ve been out of circulation for 35 years, but, hey, I have women friends. We talk. And terminology is one of my specialties. To begin with, should we even persist in referring to it as “dating” when the daters are over 60? I mean, seriously, by the time we go past 60 we don’t have time to mess around; we know how to cut to the chase. Dating is spending time with someone to find out if you share similar interests, if you laugh at one another’s jokes (or at least get them), if the grandchildren are well-behaved, if at least one of you can see at night to drive, and if your meds are compatible. This can be accomplished quickly and then we are no longer talking about dating but have graduated to a relationship. Once we reach this point, then how to refer to this person-of-interest? That’s the crux of the matter, the question that got me going here.

One of my closest women friends met a man online a few months ago and so far he’s more than passing muster. He has a roaring green light. The critical question that my friend asked me recently when we got together was, “What should I call him? How to introduce him?” Because “boyfriend” sounds ridiculous. You just don’t refer to a mature man, over 60, retired from a long and illustrious college teaching career, with children and grandchildren, as a “boy” in any way, shape, or form. “Man-friend?” Ugh. We tossed out “significant other” as too politically correct, self-conscious, uptight, and text-bookish. “Partner” sounds like my friend has met someone to go square dancing with. She was also concerned that “partner” makes it sound as if she’s in a same-sex relationship, and of course there’s nothing wrong with a same-sex relationship, but in this case that’s misleading because she’s seeing a guy.

We commenced to use our vast reserves of creativity to come up with terms to consider. Paramour. Consort (or, in more formal situations, Royal Consort). Suitor (too 18^th Century). Escort. Lover (too much information). Milkman (wait, no one has milk delivered anymore). Mate (too anthropological). Latin Instructor. Gardener. Pool Boy (oops, no, not a boy of any type). Soulmate (sounds like a Chess move; anyway, too pretentious and New-Age-y). Squeeze (as in a sponge?) or Main Squeeze (as in a very big sponge?). Chauffeur. Hanky-panky Companion (OK, that’s a stretch). Late-night Collaborator. Playmate (this begs the question “What are you wearing?”). Romantic Interest (works if trapped in a Henry James novel perhaps). Associate (buying real estate together?). Novio (can’t fool me, that’s just “boyfriend” in Spanish). Admirer (has potential). Guy, as in “My Guy,” but the Temptations might have that one copyrighted. Florist. Flame (sounds dangerous). Honey, Sweetie, Tootsie? So many terms of endearment to choose from and none of them a comfortable fit. I don’t have this dilemma to contend with because I can refer to Ron as my DJ. Or baby-daddy. Or my husband. I suppose my friend could refer to her guy as her Potential Husband (with his permission of course).

After brainstorming terminology for quite some time, I mentioned that my 30-something daughter often refers to the man in her life as her “boo.” That’s cute, but a bit ghetto, and definitely not a good fit when the boo is over 60. (Unless he’s a little scary, I guess. Then you would say BOO!) However, she also refers to him as her Beau. I think we have a winner. My friend loves that one. I cautioned her to beware of putting an “x” on the word because Beau is French and, in French, Beaux is plural, and therefore implies that my friend is involved with a ménage. The 60-something who has the energy for a ménage is rare, and, in my opinion, deserving of careful scrutiny. If someone over 60 is genuinely involved with more than one beau then I would imagine they are not accomplishing much else in their life. Not impressive.

My friend met her beau (that term definitely goes down easy) at an online dating site. I have two other 60-something friends who met a great guy online (they each met their own great guy, not the same one, not a ménage so don’t get excited) and embarked on a relationship via that route. This makes me think that there should be an entire set of terminology for relationships that originated through online dating or other online, electronic, or digital communications. Maybe these should be called computer-initiated relationships or meet-and-tweets. This adds a new dimension to dating terminology (woo-hoo, my specialty). A person could call someone they’re seeing whom they met through online dating their Cyber-link, Virtual Hunk or Electronic Gal (depending on gender), Keyboard Pal (as opposed to Pen Pal, which is so last century), Screen Savior, Bed-Byte, E-Male (obvious one), or Google-ee. The possibilities for newly minted terminology are endless. Perhaps I will invent terminology that will soon appear in the cyber-sphere; perhaps I will be credited with starting a meme or two. If my terminology catches on then it will become permanology. My terminology may make you wince, but I assure you I am well-meming.

Alrighty then. Calling it quits and winding up this blog. Tonight is Rosh Hashanah. May you have a sweet year, a good year, a year full of joy and wonder. Thanks again for reading me. You’re a terrific blog-ee.