I am rapidly turning into a non-blogger which has both its good points and bad points. I like having a place to go to vent about what annoys me (grocery store seem to pop up in my mind), to announce what’s going on with my writing, and to discuss various issues as they strike me, especially in regard to my creative side. BUT I just can’t see to show up.
I’m not making any commitments, vows, and pronouncements any more. That’s one of my 2010 resolutions. Every time I make a new promise to do something, that will assure the world that it ain’t going to happen. Instead, I’ll just trip a bit here about where my head is at.
1) My head is, in fact, just a wee bit hung over (and what’s wrong with the head is always wrong with the body). Why since I rarely drink? Well, dang, we had dinner at friends for the Oscar telecast and the first thing I was offered was champagne. I have to drink champagne, especially if I’m watching the Academy awards.
- My mother and I loved old movies and we loved the oscars. I don’t think there was a year in my growing up that she and I didn’t sit down and watch them together. My mother kind of looked like Joan Bennett or Hedy Lamar. I thought Hedy myself and I was a fan, but Mom said when she was young it was Joan Bennett that people thought she reminded them of.
- I used to know all the top three awards from 1928 through sometime in the mid sixties because for some reason it seemed important for me to know it. So I knew that emil jennings (jannings) was the first winner and I think he actually appeared as a character in Inglorious Bastards. Perhaps I was only one of few who could make that connection. All that memorizing so that in 2010, I could do that! Haha!! Janet Gaynor in Seventh Heaven won for best actress and Wings for best picture, but I could be misremembering…
2) It was the Maker’s Mark, though, not the champagne that did me in. People kept handing me that nice little glass with the dark amber liquid in the bottom. That happened to me before at the rehearsal dinner of my son’s wedding. I have no memory of that night after the second drink except for a vague image of myself making a toast. I guess my son is lucky his bride’s family didn’t hold it against him.
3) I’m going to go back to grocery stores for a minute.
- When I was growing up, the other thing I did a lot with my mother was to go to grocery stores and buy food. She cooked a lot, a good southern cook, so we were at the grocery store a lot.
- In those days, grocery clerks tended to be people who acted like neighbors, friendly, out going, remembering her customers names. Not like today when most clerks spend most of their time reciting a script that Safeway has given them: How are you today? (They don’t give a shit), Do you have a Von’s card? (before you’ve even put all your stuff on the conveyor belt), Would you like to make a donation to leukemia, breast cancer, jerry’s kids, prostate cancer? (and then you have to click no or yes to the same question on the machine that makes love to your credit card) and finally the most irritating Would you like help to your car? (Uh, no, thank you. Not after I’ve just bagged up my own twelve bags myself because all the box people are checking everyone else out so that there aren’t more than two people in line without regard to the fact that the customers overall wait remains the same unless he or she –the cranky ones like me–bag there own stuff and where in heavens name is the person going to come from to help me to my car????)
- In those days too the clerk would ask about your day and listen to your answer. Not become distracted with the next clerk over’s hook-up with some guy she met in a club.
Okay, enough of that stuff. Phew. I do feel better. Hmm, I’m getting a little bit hungry now. Maybe I’ll go in and have some oatmeal and an episode of Law and Order now. Yes I think I will.
Gay Degani 