And Just Like That...
…it’s February and I have one chemo treatment left. I’m done on February 16. Thank you, Jesus.
Can It Really Be January Already?
I have just four chemo sessions left before other medical stuff has to happen, but at least I can begin the journey back to chemical health. Chemo makes you tired, screws up your digestive system, nails, occasionally nauseous [at least at the thought of something, if not physically], ridiculous exhausted and, of course, bald. I don’t mind the bald head, I really don’t. I will likely never have long hair again because my fear of going too short is over. Anyway, an MRI and some surgery and radiology is what’s left and I could be done in this year with all of that. Enough of that topic!
All my plans for retirement went out the window last summer 2021, so I’m beginning to look forward to scheduling things to do in the new pandemic (omicron) but, eventually, I would like to do limited excursions with small select groups to dynamo destinations, like Alexandria, Santa Fe, and others. I’m hoping to help my son’s San Francisco group with a killer fundraiser/event, but for now that’s on the back burner and under radio silence lest someone steal that incredible idea.
I’m joining the Indialantic by-the-Sea Garden Club and look forward to helping my bud, Valerie Karis, on her big event. I’m hoping to serve my town in a specific volunteer role, if that comes to fruition. I need to empty my house of everything extra, and so much of it is extra. Let the great purge begin.
I also want to do small but meaningful acts of kindness, alone or with a group of like-minded friends. We need more kindness in the world. The recent Betty White Challenge was a game-changer for animals worldwide. What a gal!
WFIT radio spot!
You can’t upload an MP3 directly to Facebook and this was the easiest way I could figure out how to share a spot that is running today (Tuesday Jan 11) and next Tuesday, all day on the hour. Please listen!
A Lot Can Happen in a Few Months
Dr. Berk shaved his head in solidaryity! What a country!
Just as I was ready to join life fully, I got a diagnosis for breast cancer, but a fully treatable version with a positive outcome. I’m eight weeks into chemo and will finish in February. That is a very long time to be pumped with drugs and steroids; however, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have most of my symptoms be very light with zero nausea. My tastes have changed and I’ve lost a little weight so let’s hope that keeps up.
My son came for two weeks and offered first class service to me and gave Jerry a break. Because of the pandemic, his San Fran tech company allows employees to work from home so he worked while he was here. Unfortunately, he leaves tomorrow, but is returning in January.
Because of the diagnosis, I celebrated my birthday in style with my great friends, many of whom I had largely ignored because of my job, or I met because of my job. Either way, I learned that I gave far too much of myself away.
What Did You Do During the Pandemic?
After spending Mar-December 2020 managing the Eau Gallie Arts District from the home office, I retired from working for anyone else. The plan for 2021 was to check off all the optional medical procedures. Now May, I have brand new “eyes” so no more eyeglasses. I purchased a great pair of Ted Baker non-prescription sunglasses with much excitement. Like many of us, I wore glasses since the fourth grade (1964 ish). My dad being in the Air Force, my first glasses were what the airmen wore, later called birth control glasses by my niece. She was dead on, but that wasn’t much of a concern in the fourth grade.
Among hours of Britbox television, Netflix and Amazon prime streaming, I also built a website for Weiner Dog Promotions, my fun retirement venture for small business assistance as well as a continuation of road trips and special events started while at EGAD. My first client for a website was Jacquie the Nature Baker, a commercial bakery in EGAD who specializes in vegan, gluten free and healthy food and snack options. Jacquie is a contract baker and consultant for small businesses who are exploding and need her services to expand their ability to meet their demand. Her own product line is now available at The Green Turtle Market. I created a new logo and website and will eventually add an ordering page. Jacquie’s optimism and kindness was a breath of fresh air for me.
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Spark Joy and Exercise Respect
It’s the traditional time to minimize our footprint on this earth. Diets and gyms advertise heavily, white sales rule the month, and people begin to remove things from your life that do not spark joy. The most impactful sentence from that link is “We don’t hang on to things; we hang on to emotions attached to those things.” Being newly retired sparks joy, but it gives me time to declutter everything, so that’s my life for the month of January and maybe into February. I’m promising myself that there will be nothing left that isn’t loved and/or required.
Perhaps you had the same feeling as me during yesterday’s inauguration of Joe Biden, the 46th U.S. president. Throughout the day, I began to realize that I was starting to feel safe and even normal. I had a sense that we would all be alright now. I wondered if we all suffered a little Stockholm Syndrome and have a mild case of mass PTSD. The last four years have been an alternate reality, but combined with the pandemic, I’m wondering if we were all a little at the end of the rope of reality and the calendar date flipped to January 20 before hope was lost. We were all so disrespected by our national and local leaders that it made it easy to be disrespectful to each other.
Whatever happens in the coming years, I at least feel certain that respect will start at the most important house in America and, more importantly, safe. That makes it easier to spark joy in our lives, too.
Staring Down Retirement
I started working during the height of the Apollo Space program. Our family had just left being stationed in Bitburg AFB in Germany for Cocoa, Florida. I was 13 years old and sold Current Stationery door-to-door in my neighborhood. Along the way, I picked up housekeeping jobs and a few babysitting gigs. Both of my parents worked at Kennedy Space Center during Apollo. The space shuttle, which was just an idea, was shelved so they were RIF’d (reduction in force) by NASA, only to land at Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt, MD. We lived in a Levittown community where the neighborhoods were grouped alphabetically. First I lived in “Pointer Ridge” (street names all started with P) and then “Somerset” at 12415 Starlight Lane, Bowie MD. I continued to sell Current door-to-door and, because I was older, got a ton of babysitting jobs. I learned that I got better and more comfortable at cold-calling the more I did it. That led to my ability to ask anybody for anything.
Eventually, I lied about my age to get a job at McCrory’s in the mall just off Superior Lane and Stonybrook Avenue. McCrory’s was a chain of five and dime department store with a lunch counter and record section. The first McCrory store opened in Pennsylvania in 1862 and, after a few corporate restructures, by 1963, it was the fourth largest department store chain in the U.S. but eventually the company filed for bankruptcy in 1992.
To have a “real job,” you had to be 16 and I was 15 but, apparently, a good liar. I was queen of the records department and, in 1970, the music bidness was booming. It was the perfect job for me because I had been listening to music since birth. My parents listened to crooners and country music. I was the fourth daughter of five kids and my oldest sister graduated from high school in 1963. My internal playlist started with what my three sisters were listening to — Wolf Man Jack, Jan and Dean, Elvis, The Association, Chad and Jeremy and working our way up to the Beatles. I was in the right place at McCrory’s when the new acts came out — James Taylor, Carole King, CSN&Y, Simon & Garfunkel and all the greats who were releasing albums and crossing their fingers that they climbed the charts to #1. Today, my playlist ranges from Dean Martin to Dave Brubeck to Notorious B.I.G. and Snoop to Harry Styles; that bus makes many stops along the way. (My 7th grade teacher was a big Brubeck fan.)
I don’t know why, but eventually I moved over to the bigger mall which had a Florsheim Shoe Store and Thom McCan. Thus began my trip into the rabbit hole of … shoes. To this day, I could be wearing a sack from the knees up, but I will rock a great pair of shoes. The photo is a dead ringer for the platform shoes I bought in high school—they’re back!!! I learned that women get hung up about what size shoe they wear. Big shoe size people feel real shame when they go to the shoe store so I’m sure Zappos is like an AA meeting for that gang. I was always a perfect size 8, but my feet have gotten bigger with age. Hi, my name is Lisa, and I’m a size 9.5.
First base.
Eventually, I landed my first grown up job as a secretary in the big DC law firms. I cut my teeth at some big name places with big name clients and have scandalous stories to tell about the misbehavior of newly rich lawyers drunk on money and power. I worked on two U.S. Supreme Court cases with the former Dean of Harvard Law School and U.S. Solicitor General (the one who argues for the U.S. vs anybody else). He called the justices by their first names. That’s real juice. He was the model for Professor Kingsfield in the movie The Paper Chase. Yeah, that guy. I have a few stories about him, too, and the scared younger lawyers who worked for him. Not me. I wasn’t afraid of anybody, kinda much to my detriment sometimes.
Those were years of pounding the keyboard at 100 wpm and running (me! running!) down the street to file a document before they closed at 5 pm. Accuracy was critical because no White Out was allowed (look it up, Millennials). I was the only secretary on the squash board and I beat people, people with Ivy League squash club memberships. I played first base on the firm’s softball team and my dog, Cajun, played it, too. Someone said that Cajun would follow me into a buzz saw. I learned my way around a law library and more; I pushed myself to learn as much as I could without going to law school. I was ready to move beyond the restricted life of a law firm where you were either a lawyer or not a lawyer.
Those years in the law firms taught me the value of manners. Prior to the late 70s-early 80s, only people, and primarily men, for whom the law was the family business went to law school. Then smart kids without the pedigree started applying and it changed the dynamics of the firms. I experienced three kinds of people: (1) the lock-jawed upper crust with a perceived pedigree (with equal amounts of assholes and good people because money only defines your buying power and absolutely nothing else); (2) the smart kids who were secure in their identity so they basically stayed the same; and (3) the smart kids who were insecure about who they were, put themselves on a pedestal, and announced their superiority by being an asshole.
What are manners for? Write this down and teach your children because it’s one of the most important things I have ever learned. Manners are a code, a set of behaviors, which we employ in our interactions with each other to ensure peace in the village. They are especially helpful in scenarios where one is uncomfortable. When you don’t know what to do or say, at least mind your manners.
In the latter couple of decades of my life, I have had three jobs that I really loved and taught me so much. I spent about six years at an international sports management and marketing company, one of two in the country at that time, and met close to everybody in the sports world. I saw how money and fame changed their lives and for the worse if they weren’t sure in themselves.
I took a break and went back to college to study Social Work (graduated with honors and was class president). After graduation, I spent another six years or so at Lindsay Automotive Group where I was given unlimited freedom to experiment with my own abilities. I had three special promotions that reached the big time. One was mentioned on Good Morning America, one was given a big fat attaboy by the corporate office of Lexus for creative promotion, and another attaboy from the corporate office of smart usa for special event. My work here is done. I learned that I was creative. I didn’t know that before.
Eventually, I started and quit grad school at GMU (Public Admin) and found my way to Melbourne, FL, where I found the arts district. I was drawn to the historic community that had incredible bones; a real hidden gem. I served on the first board of directors and ended up with the ED job for the main street program. There’s an earlier blog that talks about my love for downtown. I changed a state law. I left a legacy, if only in my own head. I’m proud of the work I did, and I wish my knees and back hadn’t imposed their will so much. The one thing I love to do, I couldn’t do — walk up and down and chat with people.
…and so, it’s time to go and see how I can make retirement my bitch. We’ll see. My brain never turns off.
That Weird Year
2019—There were rumblings of a bad virus in China around Christmas and, by late March 2020, the US shut down while the virus went on a rager across the country. You would thinking working from home for the past five months would have given me plenty of time to write in my blog. Not so much. With the country on “lockdown,” people going a little crazy fighting over face masks, and a critically important presidential election looming, we have all witnessed the country on full tilt crazy. If I was a young mother right now, it would be every day is snow day which meant snow day doughnuts.
One of the most exciting things that can happen to a kid is to learn that school is closed for snow. SNOW DAY! There’s nothing better so, back in the day, we added to the fun by making snow day doughnuts. You can find the recipe on page 22 of the Cookbook. They’re cakelike and best if you make a great icing or shake them in a brown bag with sugar or powder sugar while they are still hot.
In 2011, when Josh went to U-Wisconsin, a school that was famous for snow and never closing, they had a massive snow dump which made the national news because an epic snow ball fight erupted and created a new tradition.
Being a mom was the best time I ever, ever had.
Christmas Traditions
When Josh was little, I started a cookie swap one week ahead of a Children’s Christmas party, both of which lasted for about five years [upper four pictures]. Everyone baked enough to share so each attendee would go home with a dozen from each. While there are no pictures from the Children’s Party, dressy clothing were required (which the girls loved and the boys kinda hated), sit down dinner of fun food, followed by a gift exchange (of which I kept extra in case someone got a book b/c nobody wants a book at Christmas), followed by dancing and games. They drew names and made Christmas cards for that person and put them in an envelope which I mailed. Two days later, each kid got a handmade Christmas card from someone. It was super fun until they got closer to junior high. Middle school. Yuck.
Jerry and I made the candy canes using a jigsaw and we put on a hinge in the middle so we could fold and store for the next year. In the picture, you can see my Christmas badge and Kyra, our first English labrador, enjoying the snow. Snow is fun and also like dry cleaning for dogs. They come back inside so fresh! [TIP: Some people also put their hooked rugs in dry snow for cleaning, too.]
I also made two gumdrop topiaries which lasted for probably 20 years before I gave up on them. Here’s how:
What You Need:
Large Styrofoam ball (this will be the “canopy” of your topiary)
Wooden dowel, up to 1” thick and approximately 15” long (too long makes it unsteady) but long enough to insert it deep into the foam
Green spray paint
Flower pot or vase (paint first if you need to)
Moss, faux grass, or shredded paper for finishing
Floral foam (available at your local arts and crafts store) (I put in concrete stuff (it’s been too long) with my dowel inserted so it could “set”
Toothpicks (I used hot glue and it lasted for years)
Gumdrops
Ribbon with trails
Instructions:
Spray paint the dowel (and your pot if necessary) and let dry overnight.
Cut a block of floral foam to fit inside the flower pot or vase and place it inside.
Insert the dowel into the center of the Styrofoam ball about half way thru the ball.
Insert the other end of the dowel into the floral foam all the way down so that it touches the bottom of the vase. Make sure the dowel is stable.
Stick a gumdrop onto the ball using a toothpick or hot glue. Work in rows and start at the bottom. Place gumdrops all the way around the ball with hot glue.
Once the Styrofoam ball is completely covered, cover the top of the pot with whatever material you’re using to hide the foam (it may be something different in future years or save it each time).
Tie a bow around the top of the dowel with the ribbon just under the gumball.
Saving it for future use:
Remove the ball and wrap it up very well in butcher wax and then put it in a freezer Zip-Loc bag. Place it in your freezer where it will live until next year. You can save the rest of it anyway you want; I put mine with the holiday decorations. You might end up replacing the floral foam if you don’t use the concrete stuff I used. Freshen the bow each year or change it…voila!
I hosted the Wilton Woods Garden Club in December and made my first flan and brought in wine for the first time. That year, we made boxwood topiaries and my backroom was a mess with water and boxwood! We had a big snow that night and I remember people had trouble getting out of the driveway. The picture taken in the living room with photos in the foreground are the senior ladies who started the club some 30 years earlier. [Dot Gould is white hair with black bow.] They had wine, kicked off their shoes and I caught them chatting in the living room like a sorority reunion. On their way out the door that night, they told me how much fun they had and that they were actually thinking of quitting after all these years, but I was making it fun again.
We also had a terrible freeze and couldn’t remove any decor/lights from outside b/c they were encased in ice for a long time. Other years, it might be 55 degrees and the fruit on my badge would slide down and I would have to get on a ladder and reglue it, but the warmth was ruining everything.
A couple of years later, when I was club president, Dot invited the regional garden club bigwigs to watch me run the meeting and, if they liked me, ask me to serve on the regional board for the National Capital Area Garden Clubs, Inc. I didn’t know I was “trying out” for anything. [Dot Gould is blue dress on the right who started the Wilton Woods Club with whom I became very close.] I declined because I knew I was leaving the neighborhood. I told the ladies I didn’t know “squat” about flower arranging. They said, “We have plenty of that. We don’t have an organizer with fresh ideas.” Boy, we got plenty of that. [By the way, those brown silk pants are size 10.]
Ahhhh...Christmas.
In Virginia, Jerry and I made large candy canes out of wood, painted the stripes and added hinges so we could store them. We put those up for years and held a children’s Christmas party every year. The kids always liked the canes. I started with a cookie swap, then the children’s party a week later, and that tradition ran from preschool to fifth grade. We hoped it would run thru graduation, but kids get weird in middle school. Jerry used the jigsaw to cut the wood and installed nails for a Williamsburg Christmas badge, and I covered it every year with fresh magnolias, apples and the pineapple on top. We had one particularly warm Christmas and I had to keep running outside, getting on the latter, and re-gluing the pineapple and fruit b/c it was melting. Other years, everything became encased in ice and it couldn’t come down until it all melted, including lights on trees.
The year we had Kyra (English labrador), we installed a large bolt in the corner of the family room and tethered the tree to it. You can figure out why. We soon learned to put no decorations below her wagging tail height. You can figure out why on that, too.
The house at 4007 Pinebrook Road was a lovely place to enjoy holidays where mother nature put on a show. The back room was three sides of nearly floor to ceiling windows. Falling trees, lightning, and especially snow falls were magical in that room. Add a roaring fire and a nice glass of brandy and it was perfection.
More pictures coming.
Before we sign up for Medicare...
…I found a few old pictures of before and right around the time we got married (the first time), October 3, 1981. We were young, strong, energetic, slim, and loved to explore wherever we went. That’s Jerry shivering on the upstairs balcony of the Sonnenalp Hotel in Vail, CO, still one of my all-time favorite hotels. We stepped outside to take in the amazing vista and cold weather and let the door shut behind us and lock us out. We had to yell for help to the employees who were walking towards the hotel from the parking lot to save us. We’ve never let that happen again. My picture is taken from a balcony at Purgatory ski resort near Durango. That was a magic trip. We flew to CO, rented a car, and drove through every nook and cranny, in a state with impressive nooks and crannies. We repeated that trip several years later with Josh, but this time adding Pike’s Peak and getting lost somewhere along the Navajo Trail west of Durango. Those stories can’t be retold; they are only shared memories.
No one, and I mean no one, gets into local costume and vernacular faster than Joshua. I have proof. If I was under a book contract and had oodles of time, I would drag them all out and document his transformations. He always loved to be mistaken for a local and, dang it, if it was always his Dad who was spoken to like he was from there. Why? Because every dad sitting on a park bench is from there!!
The Joy of Snapping Beans and Pittsburgh
I grew up on an Air Force base, so seeing a “real town” was only when we drove to visit relatives who lived in either West Palm Beach or Miami, FL, or Columbus, OH. My Dad was an only child with a difficult childhood so we returned to Lancaster, OH, a suburb of Columbus, very rarely, although I remember a relative had a house on Lake Buckeye. Therefore, I grew up with an appreciation for the Ohio State Marching Band, but we also spent time on Lake Ozark from our time at Whiteman AFB, so I’m not sure which lake porch I’m remembering. The point is, my love of old wicker, rocking chairs and snapping beans was born on a porch by a lake. Also my love of a good drumline.
Years later, I attended Frostburg State College in Frostburg, MD, which is located at the top of a “mountain” at 2,000+ feet above sea level. The valley below could be 55 degrees but Frostburg could still have blizzard conditions. Kids could jump from their second level dorm room onto the snowdrifts below and remain there if they had enough grain alcohol in them, or at least that was the legend. Frostburg had a lovely downtown with a great old theater, a shop that I couldn’t afford, but I gave up meals to buy great sweaters instead. When I had the money, I’d treat myself to the Princess Restaurant, which is still there. Main Street USA at its best. It reminded me of visiting Ohio relatives because my father’s uncles were butchers and they had a great old butcher shop, with a massive brass cash register, and a glass store sign with gold leaf lettering which my brother still has. That’s where I would get the dime and a cold Crush outside from the machine and then walk to the candy store for a edible necklace. Back in Frostburg, for fun, we would go to Dan’s Rock (picture on the lower right) and climb to the top just to look out at the vista or, a few times, scale down on the other side and walk the several miles to the pick-up point. To be able to do that now…goodness.
Frostburg was about three hours from Pittsburgh, PA, so on my 20th birthday, October 11, 1975, my boyfriend (Lord knows who that was) and I drove to Pittsburgh for the day. I shopped at Gimbels and Kaufman’s and every little store on Sixth Avenue, the heart of downtown. A crisp autumn day during the middle of Pittsburgh Steelers football season was all it took. I was now a Steeler fan. Little did I know it but on that day, the Steelers, led by Chuck Noll with Bradshaw, Bleier, Stallworth, Swann, Mean Joe Green, Jack Ham and Lambert, were preparing to play at home that Sunday against the Broncos.
When I got my first job as a legal secretary in Washington, D.C., making $10,250 a year, I met Jerry Zaucha who, in turns out, was born in Uniontown and raised in Washington, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh and himself a diehard fan. I chose Pittsburgh first and Jerry sealed the deal. We would drive five hours from DC to attend games with his parents. His mom would prepare gourmet food for tailgating; no hot dogs for that chick; and chant HERE WE GO STEELERS, HERE WE GO. We would eat a lot of peanuts while trying to stay warm and then listen to Myron Cope’s post radio show on the drive home. I was introduced to Sarris Pretzels and food his mother made. She could make a gourmet meal out of absolutely anything. That’s a post of its own.
Check out those Frye boots and me in my size 4 jeans.
After a great day, we drove back to Frostburg and pulled in about 11 p.m. only to find my housemates huddled around the television waiting for the anticipated new sketch comedy show called “NBC’s Saturday Night” because Howard Cosell already had a show called Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. SNL took the name in ‘76 after Cosell’s show closed. Nobody had a clue what to expect or what was about to be unleashed into popular culture. Hosted by George Carlin with musical guest, Billie Preston, the show featured The Not Ready for Prime Time Players, a cast of soon-to-become household names — Aykroyd, Belushi, Chase, Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman and Gilda Radner. Life, or at least television, would never quite be the same.
Coming up next…Thanksgiving and how going home to Pittsburgh with Jerry at Thanksgiving only to arrive in time to watch his mother pluck feathers out of the chicken that was {clearing throat} extremely fresh.