To an obedient Catholic girl growing up in an affluent, sheltered Boston suburb, Billy Joel’s 1978 hit Only the Good Die Young felt like an invitation.
I’m assuming nobody wants to hear about how dependent I am on my phone, car and TV. I’m thinking favorite gadgets might be more interesting?
Per Merriam-Webster, a gadget is “an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use, but often thought of as a novelty.”
Based on that definition, my top three gadgets du jour are:
My Ember smart mug, which is pictured here. It keeps my coffee warm for a very long time. No need to nuke it* over and over again.
My Oxo citrus squeezer, which is pictured here. I bought it at Whole Foods. It’s the perfect size for juicing limes, specifically.
My Pure Enrichment tabletop humidifier. I like it because it also has a calming blue light. I bought it for $35 at CVS two years ago, kept the receipt, and the company sent me a new one this year when the original developed a slight crack. I like a company that stands behind its products.
*Nuke it means “microwave it” in the above context. My GenZ son thinks that my husband and I made this up and that nobody else in the whole wide world says “nuke it.” If you would kindly let me know whether or not you say “nuke it” when you mean “put it in the microwave oven” and (if comfortable) your approximate age and home country, I would be very grateful. (The results may be used to convince my son that I am not weird.)
TYIA
For me, there was no greater growth experience than college. The college experience is like no other. The sheer number of new people and new ideas you’re exposed to in a short timeframe is bound to change even the most “set in their ways” 18-year old.
I was lucky my parents paid the bills and my college had no core requirements whatsoever, so I could take whatever classes I wanted—from poetry to Russian history. (Amazingly, I didn’t take a single science class.) Throw in my semester abroad, internships, guest speakers, drug experimentation, and a winter trip to the Soviet Union, and it really was a mind-expanding time for me.
It’s sad that the liveaway college experience has become so expensive and debt-producing. It’s not fair. I think the four-year model needs to go. Three years of college is plenty, and would be significantly cheaper. “Uni” – as they call it in the UK – is only three years. I mean, maybe a few select majors (like Engineering) need four years, but everyone else (Liberal Arts, Fine Arts, Business, etc.) could be done in three.
Speaking of the college experience, we went to see One Love, the Bob Marley biopic, based on DanLovesFilm’s recommendation (American critics be damned) and I had fun. There are definitely some weaknesses in the script and I had a hard time understanding the Jamaican/Rastafarian accent, but the music is the music and it’s great. Marley is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir and he’s 🔥
So, GenX: I recommend you have yourself a cocktail or a weed gummy (or both) and go see One Love. You’ll have a good time jamming in your theater seat to one of our key college soundtracks.
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Honestly, no. And I don’t believe in “soulmates” either. (I don’t think there’s just one person for each us.)
We have free will. And choices. And circumstances. And plain old luck – good and bad.
I guess I’m not a romantic. I’m more of a pragmatic pragmatist.
I’m no longer working a paid job. I had a career that I loved for decades, but that ended in late November.
Related post: Work update 4
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
There’s a phase of life that ends before true empty-nesterhood begins. It’s the “under one roof” phase.
As a young mother, it’s hard to get to sleep at night until all your kids are home in their beds. You want the whole family under one roof – safe. This gets more challenging as your children grow up. They’re out with friends and it gets late. They say they’re on the way, but what if something happens? Sleepovers, camp and other things sometimes require you to go to sleep with your kids NOT under your roof, but in those cases, I always made sure the ringer on both the landline and my cell phone were turned on high. If someone called, I wanted to hear it.
The “under one roof” phase inevitably ends and you just have to accept it. It’s very hard at first. What if they’re not safe? What if there’s an accident? Eventually, with practice, you can get to sleep having no idea where your offspring are.
As Hillary Clinton once said, “having a child is like deciding to let your heart forever walk around outside your body.” Letting go of the “under one roof” phase is just another step in the process.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
I think this may be a GenX thing: a question like today’s prompt automatically makes you think of the movie “Freaky Friday” that came out in 1977 with Jodie Foster and Barbara Harris.
It’s about a girl and her mother who wake-up in each other’s bodies on Friday the 13th and have to live life as the other one for the day. (It was remade in 2003 with Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis.)
There’s something about the mother-daughter relationship that makes the premise of these films irresistible (to girls anyway). If only she got me.
When you’re young, nobody can bug you quite like your mother. It’s a special skill! But I assure you, nobody—and I mean nobody—is ever going to love you like she does.
At 58, I am very lucky to still have my mother (and father) with me on earth. I am just wrapping-up a nice visit with them in Florida.
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I married a hard worker.
Our first house was a somewhat dilapidated antique outside of Boston. It had a “city yard” – about a quarter acre of rutted dirt and weeds. My husband Mario transformed it into an adorable garden and play area, complete with extensive stonework, including a patio and stone wall.
I take credit for none of it. He lifted all those rocks and pavers himself. Italians are known for their wonderful stonework. I think he got that gene. He also got the Italian “green thumb” gene.
As for me, sometimes I paint my own fingernails.
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My biggest challenge in the next nine months is our national challenge: to try to make sure Donald Trump does not get re-elected President of the United States. If overturning Roe v Wade and staging a coup d’état was not enough to convince you that a second Trump term would be truly disastrous for both the United States and the world, then please get up to speed.
Free gift article from The Atlantic: The Danger Ahead
This is not a time to be shy about your political views or to sit on the sidelines and see what happens. It’s a Code Red, people. The simple act of handwriting postcards to likely voters in key districts has proven highly effective in the last two election cycles.
Over the next nine months I’ll be volunteering with Vote Foward and my local Indivisible group, along with a bunch of folks from my church.
Yes, Joe Biden is too old to be President. But the likely alternative, a second Trump term, would “instantly plunge the country into a constitutional crisis more terrible than anything seen since the Civil War.”
I don’t want to wake up on Wednesday, November 6th regretting that I didn’t do more.
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What advice would you give to your teenage self?
Fight mom on letting you have your ears pierced at the mall. Her ancient doctor is going to make yours uneven. Also, one hole in each ear is plenty! (You’re going to regret those extra piercings.) You were right to avoid tattoos.
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