Monday, May 27, 2013

Secure This

     If you thought my preparations for my nephew's wedding were stressful (see last week's post), let me tell you about my 92-year-old mother-in-law.
     Helen moved to Chicago last year to be near us after living twenty years in Florida.  She lives at an  independent living facility, which affords her the opportunity to do a lot of things on her own. But shopping for clothes for her grandson's wedding was definitely a daughter-in-law responsibility.
     I adore her, and was glad to help, but this was a big job for both of us.  Just trying on clothes when you are 92 and have trouble lifting your arms over your head is an exhausting challenge.  But eventually we found the perfect ivory suit with a jeweled neckline, size 11 shoes that were flat and comfortable, and new lipstick and blush.
     We freshened up her wardrobe for the other days we'd be in California and I made her a list of everything she wanted to take.  She borrowed a bigger suitcase from one of her friends and packed a little every day.
     We flew to California and had a marvelous reunion with family who had come in from all over the country.  We had rented a great house, but it got hectic as we all needed the bathroom to get ready.  My mother-in-law allowed plenty of time to put on her pantyhose, which nearly wore her out.
     As the time to leave approached, we each came to wait for the others in the family room.  I was first, then my sons, and my husband.  My mother-in-law finally came out of the bedroom and walked slowly down the hallway with her cane, making a grand entrance.
     She entered the family room looking absolutely radiant.  I was delighted.
     Then she turned to me and said, "How do we get this security tag off the jacket?"
     She lifted her arm to reveal a four inch square plastic security sensor firmly attached to her suit.
     All the blood ran out of my head and I had to sit down.
     The whole family sprung into action.   I got on the phone with Macy's to find out if this tag was an ink filled kind that would ruin the jacket if we removed it.  My husband ran to the garage to get the tool box.  My sons started googling "remove security tag" but were locked out of most sites.  Because I have no idea how the internet works, I was sure we were now identified as thieves and at any moment the police would come breaking down our door. Finally my son Jesse hacked his way into a YouTube video which showed us how to disarm the security tag.
     The video instructed us to grasp the tag with two pairs of pliers and twist them in opposite directions. My husband manned the tools while the boys yelled instructions.  This only succeeded in breaking the tag into smaller pieces.  Finally, after 20 sweaty minutes, my husband had whittled the plastic tag down to the metal lock.  He could not get it to release.
     I had been watching helplessly the whole time and could not believe that all our hard work had come to this.
     I said to my husband, "Give me the hammer."
     I can only imagine what I looked like with that hammer in my hands.  I was furious and desperate--a dangerous combination.  I smashed the hell out of that thing.
     The tag gave up the fight, unlocked and fell off.
     We jumped into the car (okay, the rest of us jumped--Helen does not jump) and raced to the wedding.  We ran into bad traffic, and my husband had to call his brother, the groom's father, and tell him why we were late.  "Mom had a wardrobe malfunction."
     When we arrived, my husband drove past the parking lot down a country road to get as close as possible so Helen would not have far to walk. Not knowing the layout, I was concerned we were driving right into the wedding.
     I was also worried that after all our preparations, my mother-in-law would miss the ceremony, but they didn't start without us.  It was a beautiful, joyful, perfect wedding, and as soon as the happy couple said their "I dos" I went to the bar and ordered myself a gigantic cocktail.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Don't Try This at Home!

     My nephew got married over the weekend, and I spent the past two weeks preparing my Winter in Chicago body for the Spring in California wedding.
     You probably know that the current fashion is to go without hosiery.  This is fine if your legs are young.  It is also fine if you are too old to care about fashion. I am at that awkward in-between age.
     Over dinner one night, I asked some friends what to do with my 53-year old legs.  There was universal agreement that I could not wear nude hose.  Then I rolled up my pants leg and showed them my scaly, corpselike limb, and a hush fell over the table.
     My friend Deb showed me her legs after a treatment of Jergens Natural Glow self-tanner.  While the color was slightly unnatural, it definitely looked better than the natural color I was sporting.  I drove directly to Walgreens and purchased the body lotion and lathered myself up.
     Although the smell was putrid, I did succeed in dying myself a darker color.  After three days, I was a glowing bronze!  My co-workers commented that I looked tan and rested.  The Jergens instructions read that I should "use until desired color is achieved" and "reapply as needed," so I stopped using the cream and waited to see what would happen.
     That's when my suntan started to rub off on my bathroom towel.
     I was left with the horrid appearance of a disfiguring skin disease.  I tried to use the Tan-in-a-Tube again but  the dark patches became orange while the pale skin seemed to get inexplicably whiter.  Now that my "tan" was splotchy and uneven, there seemed to be no way to get back to a solid skin tone of any color.
     I immediately bought Spanx Super Shaping Sheers in black and asked God to forgive me for ever disparaging the miracle of pantyhose.
     But now I had a brand new problem: MY ARMS.  Of course my dress was sleeveless, and there was no time to find a long-sleeved cocktail dress (if such a thing even exists.)  My arms looked like an impressionist painting, but not in a good way.  More like Monet's impression of leprosy.
     My only hope was my new best friend, the loofah.  I scrubbed myself raw searching for my old pale, pasty grayish-white arms underneath my tie-dyed exterior.
     I had some success---I found a fabulous Eileen Fisher shawl on sale at Macy's for half price. My skin was particularly ugly in sunlight, so I wore the shawl for the outdoor ceremony and until it got dark and everyone was drunk.
     It all turned out fine.  Shockingly, my hosiery was not the talk of the wedding.  I had forgotten the other maxim of being a 53-year old woman: Unless I came to the wedding wearing a Nazi uniform, no one was looking at me.



Monday, May 13, 2013

Hooked

     I want to tell you about the day I met my true love, Video Poker.
     It was 1987--after Joel and I were married but before we had kids.  Those were the days of big hair and bigger shoulder pads.  It was my first trip to Las Vegas and it was very cheap---they advertised shrimp cocktails for 99 cents and hotels for $29 a night.  Flights were also inexpensive--the main objective was to get people to Las Vegas, and only later to separate them from their money.
     I didn't want to go.  We were newlyweds, and if we were going on vacation, I wanted to spend our money someplace else, but Joel made plans for us to meet up with his best friend.
    Our plane made three stops on the way to Las Vegas, and on one of those stops my luggage got off to stretch its legs.  When we arrived in Las Vegas, all I had was the bright pink, purple, blue, green and yellow one-piece jumpsuit I was wearing.  I was mortified that I'd be wearing the same outfit all weekend, but of course once I arrived in Las Vegas and saw what everyone else was wearing, I realized how silly my concerns were.
     We arrived at our hotel but I had nothing to unpack.  I was crabby.  Joel suggested we go down to the casino where I imagined we would lose what was left of our wedding cash, but what else was there to do?
     Joel showed me around the casino--roulette, the blackjack tables, the slot machines.  He sat down at a 25-cent video poker machine and showed me how to play.  I sat on the stool next to him and did not move for three days.
     I was winning!  And then, of course, I was losing, but I kept the memory of winning, and I couldn't stop.
     Oh, I did go to the bathroom, and yes, I must have eaten something, but I know for sure that I did not change my clothes.  I distinctly remember not wanting to leave "my" machine and risk someone else taking up residence.
     Our flight home was on Monday morning at 8:00, and Joel came to fetch me around 3:00 a.m. for a couple hours sleep before heading out.
      "You go ahead," I told him, pressing my buttons at lightning speed, never taking my eyes off my cards.
     "Sher," he said, "come on up, get some sleep."
     "I'm fine," I said.  "Let me know when it's time to go."
     He was quiet for a second.
     "Sher," he said, putting his hand on my arm. "Stop for a second.  Look at me."
     "I know it's you!" I said.  "I recognize your voice!"

Monday, May 6, 2013

Promoted

     I have something wonderful to tell you.  I've been promoted!
     This came as a total shock to me, like a fat inheritance from an uncle you never even knew you had.
     I've been back to work for one year.  In 1996 I retired from my career as an advertising professional when my sons were 6 and 3, and I had been a stay-at-home mother for sixteen years.  I stayed and stayed until the children grew up and left me.  I went back to school to learn ASL, but as regular readers of this space know, my attempts to help the hearing impaired were, well, impaired.
     I knew that there was no chance of getting a job in advertising after a 16 year break. But I had an accomplished career as a volunteer during my layoff, and thought I might be able to turn that into a professional job in a non-profit.
     When I began my job search, the economy was bad.  My odds of finding a job seemed remote.  I made a quick-off-the-top-of-my-head list of friends who had gone back to work after ten or more years at home.  I counted 17 friends, and only four went back to their previous careers (teacher, nurse, landscape architect and accountant.) Six had taken non-professional jobs in retail or selling something they had created.  Five had their own service businesses, consulting on something they knew how to do.  Only two had been hired to do something new.
     I dipped my toe into the professional world of non-profits with a consulting gig.  After impressing the interviewer with extensive stories about my fundraising, board and leadership development skills, she put me in charge of six Excel spreadsheets.
     I still think I could have been good at this, even though it was the opposite of my skill set, but when you are a consultant, you are alone at your kitchen table with no one to ask, and if you are 52 years old and have been out of the workforce for 16 years, you have a lot of questions.
     I had been hired for the wrong job, and it was painful. Luckily, as I've mentioned before, I have a condition my husband calls, "confidence for no apparent reason."  I resigned after a couple of months and pretended it never happened.
    Then I found a part-time job doing fundraising for a local non-profit called Friedman Place, a residence for 81 people who are blind or visually impaired.  I have absolutely loved it since the day I started.
     Recently my boss called me into her office for my one-year review.  We talked about the successes we've had this year, and she asked me about my personal goals.
     Now to be frank, I didn't have any personal goals--not where my part-time job was concerned.  I had fundraising goals, but I had not spent even one minute thinking about this as a career.  I had been so happy to have the perfect part-time job that my only goal had been for everything to stay exactly the same.
     But my boss wanted me to assume more responsibility and be the director of my department.  I had no idea this door was still open for me.  I wish I could have seen my own face.
     My first question, of course, was whether or not I could still work part-time. I don't think that is the question that Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, recommends in her book Lean In.
     Anyway, my boss said yes, and so I said yes.
     I am so accustomed to being proud of my children, I'd nearly forgotten I could feel so proud of myself.
     Yay Me!