The Artisan

The definition of artisan is "a person or company that makes a high-quality, distinctive product in small quantities, usually by hand and using traditional methods: food artisans". For some reason this term has become a catch phrase for the marketing of bread products. Local chain stores are making "Artisan" breads. Large fast food chains are putting their meats on "Artisan" rolls. Yesterday I saw "Artisan" Tostito's. This is contradictory to the definition of the word. The last time I looked, I did not see a baker in Burger King. I cannot imagine the person that works in the Tostito factory making each chip by hand. That would be grueling work and would take many hours to fill one bag. Someone in a marketing firm found this phrase and thought it would fool the public into thinking that the product they are purchasing is made in Europe in a small bistro shop. I resent people that think I can be so easily tricked. If they truly wanted to be honest in advertising, the product label would read "mass produced, chemically enhanced, overly salted bread made in bulk in a large factory setting". The company would be honest but bankrupt.

Tennis Anyone

This morning my parents got up early and went to the clubhouse in their community. Each week various clubs set up tables for the community members to join. They have luncheons, trips and events. I asked my parents what clubs they were signing up for. They said "tennis club, Italian American club, Democratic club and Snow Bird club. I understand the Democratic and Snow Bird clubs but was baffled by the other two. My parents are 89 years old and never held a tennis racquet. They are also not Italian. I asked them how they can be part of the tennis club if they do not play the game. They said no one in the club plays tennis. Maybe they did years ago, but not now. They said that the tennis club has good trips and the Italian club serves good food. The state of Florida makes me laugh. It is the only state in which a couple in their 80's can buy property and take out a 30 year mortgage. They can also renew an eight year driver's license at 95 years of age. God Bless them all.

The 60 Day'er

I belong to Costco, a wholesale shopper's club. You pay a yearly fee and are allowed to buy bulk food items for lower than usual prices. Of course you still need to be a good shopper because regular supermarket sales are sometimes a better value. A new wholesale club, BJ's, opened up in a neighboring town and to promote business they mailed out coupons to be a free member for 60 days, to see if you like their store. I decided to go see the new store and went to customer service to open my free membership. The store was nice and carried some different items than Costco. I signed up, had my ugly grainy picture taken, and began to shop. As I got to the first aisle, I saw someone with a circular. I asked an employee where the circulars are and she said at the customer service counter. I went back to the counter and asked for a circular. The girl took one from a box behind her and almost handed it to me. Almost. In the flash of an eye, the woman who opened up my new account appeared behind me, almost on my back. She shouted, "Don't give her the circular...she is a 60 day'er". I felt like a spotlight was being shined upon me. Like a prisoner trying to break out. In a split second I had been labeled, "A 60 Day'er". Segregated from the "regular" people. Discriminated against for my free membership. I walked away feeling shunned and found a circular in an abandoned cart. There was nothing in it that interested me. I have no idea why the woman needed to make a big deal out of a little piece of paper.

Beautiful Moon

Yesterday afternoon I was in my backyard and saw the beginning of a beautiful sunset. The sky was bright orange and the air was crisp and cool. As I looked to the left, I saw the moon. A bright yellow full moon. It was then that I realized that a full month had passed since the storm. Twenty eight days on the calendar but a lifetime for many. Last month the full moon brought devastation. This month is brought only beauty.

Marketing and Produce

When I was a child, I used to go to the supermarket with my mother. We walked there, pulling a small metal shopping cart behind us. Those were the days when most moms did not drive. The shopping cart was our set of wheels. Once we arrived at the store, the first aisle we went down was the produce aisle. There were stacks of kelly green paper bags next to each bin of fruits and vegetables. You filled the bags with your fresh produce and continued to shop. I can still remember what the aisle smelled like from the mix of paper and fruits. Last night I received an email from one of my doctors. It started off like this..."I do not want to do marketing and was not hired here to produce". Those two words jumped off the screen. Marketing and Produce. Over fifty years the meaning of those words has changed as much as our society has changed, but in reality the meaning never changed. When I was a kid, my mother did marketing to put food on our table. Nowadays young moms still do marketing to put food on the table, but now it is done from an office and on a computer screen. The only produce they are really interested in is the business numbers that their marketing has produced.

Chessed Dollars

I was in Sheepshead Bay yesterday shopping in the local stores. Much of this area is now Russian and it is quite apparent that there is a cultural difference. The stores are stocked with Russian brands and most of the signs are also in Russian. I love cultural diversity and the new foods that I have tried are very good. As I was checking out at one of the fruit stands, I saw a sign that said, "We accept Chessed Dollars". I had no idea what that meant so I asked the cashier. In broken English, she said "For Jewish people". I said, "Is that Russian money?" and she replied again, "For Jewish people".  I did not ask anything further because I knew I would get the same answer. Instead I went home and looked on the internet. It seems that Chessed Dollars are like gift certificate dollars that are bought through local Yeshivas. You buy the money and when you use it in a store, the store gives a percentage back to the Yeshiva as a donation. Yeshivas require you to purchase this money, sometimes thousands of dollars of it, but in the past no stores really accepted it. By accepting these dollars, the store owners are steering people to their stores and away from the other stores that do not accept the money. It is a convoluted plan that really only works in the Yeshiva's favor. I hope that next time I go to Brooklyn, I am not required to pay in Disney Dollars.

Brooklyn Bound

This morning my sister and I are going to Brooklyn to check my parent's house. We have not been there since the storm and heard from a neighbor that a few shingles had flown off the roof. We are hoping that is all of the damage and that the inside of the house is still okay. My parents house is a brick row house that was built in the 1930's. They really knew how to build houses in those days. Cement walls, parquet floors and rounded doorways. The original windows had blocks of stained glass. In the 1960's, people decided that stained glass was old fashioned so they replaced it with clear glass. Most people threw the old glass away but my father kept it and now I have it. One day I will frame it and hang it like a picture. So, off we go hoping to find the house safe and sound.

The Masses

My father has an expression, "The masses are the a**es". Today, more so than any other day of the year, it holds true. Today is Black Friday. It comes after Grey Thursday. These days represent the beginning of the holiday shopping season. Years ago, shoppers began their "quest for gifts" the Friday after Thanksgiving, at 9am. Then the retailers moved it up to 4am. Then midnight. This year the greed has multiplied and Friday, started on Thursday. The funny thing is that shoppers are like sheep being led to the slaughter. Many people cut their holiday short and showed up like zombies to the mall. I believe in discounts and sales, but I believe in family more. Employees are asked, no, made, to work on a holiday that otherwise would be spent enjoying family, food and possibly football. I think this is a disgrace. My son told me that when he came home from work last night at midnight, the cars lined up at the mall exit extended two miles back. I just do not get how people let business dictate their behavior. Let's hope that next year the public is not asked to show up on Thanksgiving Day at 2pm, naked. I bet a few people would actually do it.

Happy Thanksgiving 2012

Happy Thanksgiving! For some of us on the East Coast, it will be a harder holiday than most. Although we all weathered the storm last month, some people are still living the nightmare. They are no longer living in their own homes and have lost most of their possessions. One of my good friends, with his wife and three small children, is now living in a third family member's home. That cannot be easy. Each day he comes to work with a positive attitude and moves one step closer to going back to a normal life. We are all thankful in our own way, but this year there are many levels of happiness. I am thankful for my family, my health, my home and my job. Others are thankful for their family, their health and their job. Some are thankful for their family and their health. The ones that were most affected by the storm realize that the most important things cannot be purchased. You carry your most valued possessions within your heart. I wish everyone a good day and hope that each day brings us closer to peace and happiness.

Party Planning

Yesterday, the topic reared its ugly head. The dreaded topic of the annual holiday party. I am not a grinch, by any means. I just don't like holiday work parties. We had to decide between a lesser of three evils. A cocktail party at my boss' house, a lunch in a nearby restaurant or a pot luck luncheon. We decided on the pot luck lunch. It is just easier to bring food in and have it during work hours. I work with a great group of people but they seem more interesting as "floating atoms". They float in and out of the main office and we talk for 30 seconds at a time. That works for me. When I have to sit across from them for a two hour span, I realize that no one has anything in common. Awkward. I tried to set the party date on a week I will likely be in Massachusetts for my grandchild's birth but they would not allow that. They made the date around my schedule!

Due Diligence

Due diligence means doing your homework. Finding out information prior to completing an act. Unfortunately in this day and age due diligence is required when you use the internet. Most unauthorized emails go to our spam box, but some make it to the inbox. Sometimes the scam emails look like they are from trusted sites but you need to look closer. I always check the email address where to mail was sent from. If the email looks like a Verizon email but the return address was mail@verizon1.co.com..... Scam. Every email carrier has a system to view the "header" of an email so you can see the IP address and exactly where it is from. Most people are never told that. Many times in work my boss has asked me to respond to an email that looks important and when I check further, it is from a scammer. No matter how many times I tell her how to check, she still thinks the emails are real. I have become the email police. I would rather it that way though, since mopping up the mess after a problem is so much harder.

Thumbs Up

Lately, wherever I go, I see an icon of a closed hand with its thumb up. I see it on TV, in print ads and on the internet. It is the new international sign for liking something. It seems that the world has become very insecure and needs constant reassurance that it is liked. I have no idea what relevance liking something  is about. Is it intended to sway people's opinions? Is it to show popularity? I think that we need another option. I want a "dislike" symbol. It should also be a closed hand with one finger up. In the dislike symbol, the only finger standing should be the middle one. Then we would have a clear idea of what is not only liked, but also disliked. I hate for things to be one sided.

Pen Pals

Every morning I open up my emails. I have a few different email accounts. Some are personal and others are business. I seem to have the same friends writing to me on each account. Certain days I wake up to over 30 emails. I go to the inbox to look at the list of pen pals. Every day they are the same: Toys r Us, Babies r Us, Old Navy, Vista Prints, Tiffany's, Amazon and Staples, just to name a few. I feel so popular because all of my friends invite me to come to see them. Not only invite, but entice. Each one promises me that if I come to see them they will treat me very special. Most times I decline the invitation by checking the delete box but these friends are very loyal. They are back again within hours inviting me to come over. They never get insulted. Occasionally I do visit them and then they always send a thank you email rewarding me for the visit. Email friends have wonderful social skills.

The Lost Month

I feel like I have lost the month of November. For the first two weeks, I was in a daze due to the storm. I had no idea what day it was nor did I care. I missed a friend's birthday and now feel awkward mentioning it. My birthday comes up next month and I would rather stop the gift giving. If I say I forgot, then I need to back it up with a belated gift. I am too old to be creative in my gift giving. I give my family money. I can't do that with a friend. If I just do not mention it at all, I will be embarrassed if she still gives me a gift next month on my birthday. I think I still have to ponder what to do.  I cannot believe that this Thursday is Thanksgiving. My frozen turkey is resting in my freezer until Monday when I will start the defrosting process. I am looking very forward to Thanksgiving as it is my favorite holiday. I just can't believe it snuck up on me so fast. After Thursday, I will begin the baby countdown. I am packed and ready to go. The only thing I need to do now is screw my head back onto my shoulders.

Gift of Music

One of the owners of the office I work for has been sick for a long time. He is an elderly man and has had a few strokes over the past years. As much as his wife tries to keep her household normal, there comes a time when you have to face reality. This week she realized that he can no longer sleep in a regular bed and needs an electric hospital bed. The only problem was that she now needs to rearrange her living room furniture to accommodate the bed. The only place it will fit is where a beautiful organ was. I was never aware of either of them playing the organ but it was a beautiful piece of furniture. I started making calls to see where I could donate the organ. I called a few places that did not accept furniture donations. I called the Salvation Army and was told that all of their trucks were delivering relief goods due to Hurricane Sandy and that no pick up trucks would be available for at least two weeks. Then I got bright idea. I would call the local high school and ask them if they would like the organ. I called the main office and asked for the music department. The secretary said she would take a message for the music director. I started to tell her my message..."This is Susan from Dr. N's office and I would like to donate an organ to the school". She said "Why are you calling here, this isn't a hospital". I said I knew it was a school and I though it would be nice to donate the organ to them. Then she laughed and said, "I thought you meant a kidney or liver. You said you were from a doctor's office and wanted to donate an organ." We both laughed and she said she would forward the message.

The Gas Man

One of my patients told me a story about her experience during the hurricane. She was laughing as she told me but like any "war story", it was upsetting at the time. After the storm, for the first time in about twenty years, there were gas lines. Part of the reason for the lines was insecurity. People did not know when gas would be readily available and that made them wait on the lines just to have their tanks on full. This woman is 87 years old and still drives. Her son came to see her from Connecticut and waited on a gas line for 2 hours to fill up his mother's car. He did not want to subject her to the long wait. A day later when she went to her car, she saw her gas cap pried open. When she turned the car on her gas gauge was on empty. Someone had siphoned her gas from tank. She had no other choice than to get on a gas line and hope the car did not conk out while she waited for gas. She waited 3 hours and filled up. When she got home she wrote a sign and taped it to her gas cap. It said "Don't even bother, I am empty. Someone got to me first".

33,45,78

Anyone that is over fifty years old knows what these numbers represent. These are the speeds of a record player.Not a dvd or dvr or cd. An old fashioned record player.The ones that played different sizes and colors of records. I had small records that were red, orange and yellow. The larger records were only black. Some were thicker than others. The small ones played at the 78 speed. The thin large ones played on 45 and the thick large ones played at 33. We used to have fun playing the 33 record at 78 speed and hearing the music sound like a munchkin. Then we played the 78 records at 33 and they sounded like slow motion. We thought this was so funny and couldn't stop laughing. The simple things made us laugh in those days. As get older, I am realizing that I used to move like a 78, now I move like a 45 and before I know it, I will move like a 33.

Black And White

They say that dreams are our subconscious thoughts. There are many ways to interpret them. Last night I had a dream that my hair was parted in the middle and one half was black and one half was white. I looked like a walking black and white cookie. People were staring at me but I didn't think I looked odd. When I got up, I tried to figure out what the dream meant. I am a person that does not see things as black and white. I see all shades of grey. Nothing is rigid and I go with the flow. That is the irony of my dream.

Things I Learned

After fourteen days I have my electric back. As I was sitting reading my Tiffany's catalog at 5pm last night, my world lit up. The television resumed playing and the familiar tune of Windows booting up played. For a moment I was stunned. I had not seen my house clearly for 2 weeks. Everything had been muted by the glow of a flashlight. It took a few moments to acclimate to the brightness. I scurried around putting things back into their place, trying to recreate some normalcy. When I finally sat down, I thought about the last two weeks. I realized that I learned a life lesson. Here is what I learned:

• Family is the most important thing on earth
• Television is not that important
• Reading is fun
• I can live for two weeks without cooking hot food 
• Crying relieves tension
• Shelby keeps me warm at night
• We can all survive, even if it is hard
• Home Depot and the Public Library are user friendly

I do not think I will ever forget this blackout. It has changed me forever. I am a more humbled person who will never take even the smallest things for granted.

Happy Birthday and Veteran's Day

Today is a special day for two reasons. First, it is my daughter-in-law's 30th birthday. I met her when she was 19 and have loved her as my own since then. In a few weeks she will be giving birth to my first grandchild. I have watched her grow from a capable teenager to a sophisticated woman. She is one of the most sensible girls I know. Always has been. She is the perfect mate for my son. The second thing that makes this a special day is Veteran's Day. It is a day to remember all of our war veterans who fought so bravely for our country. Some of them were thanked in great ways but some of them were not. That should never have  happened. I wish a happy, healthy, beautiful day to all of our servicemen and women and a special day to JMS.

Adjusting

Human nature is to adjust to uncomfortable situations. After 13 days and counting, I have adjusted to no heat and so has Shelby. I might even enter him in the Iditirod races in Alaska. Thanks to the snow, I have better refrigeration and thanks to a heat wave, I am warmer. Today I am hunting down butane canisters so I can continue to cook on a gas camping burner. I am still on a borrowed computer and am thankful for it. I will "keep on trucking" and hopefully have lights soon.

Long Hair And A Short Memory

There is a saying that people have long hair and short memories. I guess that is a survival skill. I look forward to the short memory part as I am still freezing in the dark. Everyone that has had their power restored has forgotten about the others. Life has resumed as normal for them. I am sitting at a borrowed computer, not knowing if I will be able to write this blog tomorrow or the next day. That all depends on LIPA, my power company. To me LIPA now stands for LittleInformationPureApathy. I wonder if LIPA's CEO has power. I bet if he lived in my 40 degree house for one night, I would have power the next.

What Have We Done

What have we done to deserve our current situation? If Hurricane Sandy was not bad enough, next came the gas shortage. Now that the gas shortage seems to be easing, a Nor'easter with 6 inches of snow has fallen. People that finally had their lights restored have lost them again. Now those people go to the back of the line as far as having their power restored again. I feel like a vagabond. A beggar. I beg for light. I beg for heat. I beg for gas. I beg for warm food. I beg for the safety of my family. It has all become so disheartining. I cry every day. I just want normalcy. I want to go back to my own house and resume pre-Sandy life. Other's have it worse and I feel for them. Right now I can barely feel for myself.

No More Storms

It is day 10 without lights and now a Nor'Easter storm is approaching. I hope and pray that no more power outages will occur from it. There are still 200,000 people in Nassau County without lights and nerves are frayed. LIPA is running around like a chicken without a head trying to figure things out. I wish I could see what their strategy was and tweek it a bit. Obviously it is not a good one. My sister has power so at least I have a safe haven to go to. I am still so out of sorts and desperately need to go back to normalcy. Maybe soon......

Still Freezing

I am mad as hell and I won't take it anymore. Just like in the movie "Network" I am tired of bureaucracy. I know there was massive damage but 8 days without power is just too much. Last year in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene, plans to avoid another disaster should have been made. The politicians had well over a year to brainstorm ideas. Today is Election Day and I am voting out every incumbent politician. Every one. I want a clean slate of people with fresh ideas who are not yet corrupt. I think our political system needs a shake up. Fresh blood. People that are still "one of us" and not yet "one of them". Out with the old and in with the new.

I Am Back

After a very long week I have finally found a computer to write this blog. The devastation of Superstorm Sandy is unimaginable. Lives lost, homes swept away and people still without lights and heat. I hope to have lights and heat back by Wednesday. It has been a hard week and many lessons were learned. I will write about them for the next few blogs, if I am able to get to a computer. I learned I am strong in some ways and weak in other ways. I learned that people,  by nature are good and bad. I learned that human nature is to survive. I pray for those who lost family and homes and I thank G-d for only taking away my lights and heat.