Saying 'so long' to JP, but bringing the weird with us

Ah, we’re moving again.  It’s a great reminder that we have too much stuff, as well as the absurdity of the stuff that we own.  It’s also a reminder that my parents have a lot of stuff and that my mother is trying to foist a good percentage of it in our direction, sometimes while we are not looking.  Don’t try to question it: it’s one of her love languages.

Meanwhile, I say this as a person who has recently spent a good amount of time patting herself on the back for getting rid of the majority of her VHS collection.  I say the majority, because, yes, we do have AppleTV and Netflix, but we also still have a functioning VCR.  And no, you can’t always just replace some of those videos taped from TV!   I mean, can I view the Claymation version of Rudolph around the holidays without those 80’s M&M commercials included?  Yes.  Should I have to?  No.  (Please imagine the husband listening to this monologue as I say it aloud to myself on the floor of our living room.)  And Netflix doesn’t carry all the classics.  I mean, seriously, Easter Parade may only be in demand if you are an octogenarian, or me, but I need to watch it annually, so get it together, Netflix!

And then, there have been the other surprise items we own, things generally forgotten about, that emerged from our cabinets like old, weird friends on Facebook.  There was virtually an entire kingdom of bizarre crap covered in dust on the top shelf of our hutch.  It had been so long since he’d seen it that B didn’t even know what the hookah was, for example.  It was a housewarming gift from a Jordanian friend for my first apartment in Boston.  Then there’s the half yard beer glass from my grandparents’ trip to Germany.  While these pieces may be a little strange for display, I assure you they've both been used fondly at many a party, along with our porron, that fanstastic booze-guzzling gadget also from my grandparents' attic:

But do not try to imply that my Yul Brynner commemorative plate is too strange for display, because I currently lie awake at night wondering where his next uplit throne will be in the new house.

And in between all this packing, we also have had to have a few sad moments where we say farewell to the apartment itself; the charming walls that kept us safe and warm and happy, the good old bones of our first home together.  I guess we are both like our families in this way. We get attached to places.  They become infused with meaning.  In the ten years I’ve been in Boston, I’ve only lived in two apartments, after all.  We’ve seen our friends come and go in this neighborhood for the past four years.  We’ve made a lot of jokes about our very quiet neighbors across the street in beautiful Forest Hills Cemetery.  We’ve hosted birthday parties, holiday parties, and even engagement parties.  In short, we’ve eaten a lot of cheese and toasted a lot of friends as we went from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife.  In our time here, I’ve made sure to take advantage of every fest Jamaica Plain has to offer.  I’ve been to Wake up the Earth Fest, the Fermentation Fest, Porchfest, JP Open Studios, the Lantern Fest; all the Fests.  We will miss living in Jamaica Plain in all its kombucha-brewing, art-creating weirdness.  We’ll still be able to visit of course, and without much effort, we’ll take some of the weirdness right along with us to our new home.

Then, I punched an elevator...

          This past Thursday, I punched an elevator. I am not typically prone to violent bursts of anger, but there were many things that led me to be stuck in that hot basement that day, full of minor physical maladies and frustrations. Let’s take a look back, shall we?

           Let’s start with my general experience over the past few years with our current medical system. I am lucky enough to have no major health problems, but rather, it has taken several years to find the root of my relatively minor GI issues. Unfortunately, on the path to ultimately finding out that I have a tomato allergy and something called “abdominal wall pain”, I was re-routed to one urologist, one nephralogist, two gynecologists, two gastroenterologists, and a partridge in a pear tree, because they kept finding things that “might” have been the cause. And each time, there was a co-pay and work time to make up and follow-up visits required. And nearly each visit, I was offered the option of surgery or no surgery and told that it was my decision. (For example, the suggested removal of an asymptomatic kidney stone I have had since age seven; not exactly likely to be the root of my recently formed GI issues).  This surgery as a choice made by the patient thing is a new trend in healthcare apparently. Let’s not even get into the amount of scans and paperwork that don’t get transferred, followed up on, and so forth. 

          So, thankfully, my problems are managed fairly well now sans surgery, but forgive me if my opinion of our overly specialized medical system is not exactly sky-high. In the end, I should be grateful that I am not actually very sick, and I am grateful. I am also one of the lucky ones with good health insurance, and access to some of the best hospitals in the country, but it’s no wonder bills run so high in a business where people are swamped and no one seems to care about efficiency or economy because "insurance will cover that". I have met some wonderful, caring, clinicians and some not so wonderful ones and some great front desk people and some impressively bad ones. Just please keep this in mind as you read about my last few weeks.

          So more recently, I was experiencing a lot of pain in my foot— my second metatarsal to be exact. Years of pronating, (essentially spinning my foot to an extreme point while walking), have done more than just put holes in all my left shoes. The husband has long observed my strange gait: “Yes, you could get orthotics... or you could just learn to walk.” I actually did try to learn to walk in Alexander Technique lessons, and as it turns out, it is surprisingly difficult to walk like a normal person. At any rate, it was in mid-November, when I was onstage in character shoes that I first noticed the pain. But I also ignored the pain, because I had a nerve-wracking, three-hour long German opera to continue performing. By December, the pain was making it difficult to walk and even more difficult to walk downstairs. Apparently podiatry appointments are notoriously hard to come by though. When I looked into seeing a podiatrist in December, I couldn’t get an appointment until February. But you know, it wasn’t like we had a tough winter here in Boston….

          So, two of my appointments were snowed out and I finally limped into the podiatrist’s office in March, where I was diagnosed with osteoarthritis. He McGyver’d a makeshift orthotic insert for me out of medical tape and sent me on my way to check back in in three weeks. Wonderful, swell, pain diminishing. Follow-up appointment booked. Check that off my list.

          In the meantime, I caught a really stellar stomach bug that was making its rounds through my office and I had to leave work in the middle of the day. I managed to time it for my trip home so that I threw up out the door of the cab at a stoplight. One of my finer moments, I must say. I highly recommend this: great for re-living your college days, only with the added humiliation of broad daylight.

          About a week later, I had just finished dinner, and I inexplicably felt very weak. I remember it being weird. The next day, I woke up with an itchy rash on my back that I assumed was a spider bite. The day after that, I woke up and it was bigger, redder, and itchier. So, into the doctor I went, where I was told that I had shingles. So yes, I know I have joked a lot on this blog about how I am actually 85 years old at heart, but now I have ARTHRITIS AND SHINGLES! I am lucky I was able to treat it early, because I did not experience the intense nerve pain that often goes along with shingles. Thanks to an anti-viral, it mostly stayed constantly itchy, unless I scratched it, in which case it also burned. But I’ll take it. Ice packs were very helpful in taking my mind off of it.

          The nurse practitioner who saw me asked if I had been stressed out lately. I told her I’ve been stressed out for about ten years. That very week, I was starting the six performances I had on the docket in the evenings after work and Sunday afternoons. (In this same appointment, she thought maybe I should go see an allergist about my nasal allergies, but I told her that seeing another specialist was not going to alleviate my stress at all—far from it.) She suggested that stress plus the stomach bug can often bring on shingles and pointed out that that weakness from a few days earlier was the beginning of my chicken pox's re-emergence. For all you over 60 who are reading this: (I'm talking to my main readership, i.e., friends of my mom), who are procrastinating getting your free shingles shot; DO NOT PASS GO. CALL YOUR DOCTOR IMMEDIATELY AND GET YOUR SHOT! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. For those of you under 60, for whom it is not covered by insurance, good luck…

          At any rate, I had full-blown shingles. (Such a weird disease term. Singular or plural? I have been mostly referring to them in the plural: i.e., threatening the husband with rubbing my shingles up against him.) I had my return podiatry appointment, during which I was told my treatment would be custom orthotics from another facility. Instead of making me another makeshift medical tape contraption, I was given a cortisone shot. So there I was, with my hand on my shingles to keep them from itching, getting fluid injected into my foot. It felt not awesome, BUT, the results were pretty baller. Within a day, I was freakin’ Ginger Rogers- I could do anything with that left foot.

          Like a junkie anxiously fearing the end of the current fix, as soon as I could, I made an appointment to get fitted for custom orthotics at the facility closest to my workplace. I asked if I could have an appointment on any day but Fridays so they booked me on that coming Thursday.

          I show up to the orthotics office and the receptionist in the front of the building is gabbing on the phone. I have to wait for her to look up because I can’t find the orthotics office on the directory. This is because it is located on an elevator bank that goes to the basement. She tells me there are no stairs for the basement.

          I walk out of the elevator to the basement to find that it’s approximately 100 degrees there, likely because it’s right next to the furnace. I enter the orthotics office and it is more comfortable. I introduce myself to that receptionist. She takes what feels like five minutes to find my name and appointment and asks me my name no less than three times, interjected with “Are you sure you have an appointment today?” She finally finds it. I tell her I don’t have my prescription in hand, but that my husband scanned it to my email, at which point she tells me she doesn’t know her email address… I should have gone back to work at this point…

          We experiment with different variations on her name and the office domain and she eventually successfully receives my email. Mind you, they’d already told me the orthotics are not covered and will cost me between 300 and 450 dollars, soooo not sure why they need the prescription that badly when they have my health insurance card. But I am told I couldn’t be seen without it.

          The specialist I see in my appointment is great. The prescription from the podiatrist apparently isn’t even very clear and I am able to fill in holes for her. Without prompting, she sympathizes with all the rigmarole patients have to go through, bouncing between doctors and assures me that my custom orthotics would be in in three weeks and that they would work well for a pain management plan.

          I go to check out with a receptionist at a different desk within the office and remind her that any day but Friday would be good for me for my three week follow-up appointment. She tells me that my specialist only works Fridays and that that day had been an exception. They prefer that you see the same specialist consistently.  Awesome.

          Then, I leave to hustle back to my office and here’s when shit really goes down. After ten minutes of waiting in a 100 degree basement, there is still no elevator to arrive. I check the door marked “emergency exit”, which leads me to a weird storage room full of industrial vacuums that I am afraid of getting locked into. I walk back in to visit my receptionist friend who did not know her own email and she exclaims; “You’re still here?!” “Yes,” I said “because I am still waiting for an elevator. Are there really no stairs here?” She says no, there are no stairs. I ask if I can go out the emergency exit and she says she doesn't know where it leads. She walks out with me to the elevator and sees that the elevator light is still lit but nothing has happened yet. She does this super helpful thing of trying to hit the button again, as though that hasn't occurred to me yet... I ask her to please call the front desk at which point she says SHE DOES NOT KNOW THE NUMBER FOR THE FRONT DESK. She is totally unashamed and unapologetic about this. She then answers a call and doesn't put the person on hold or show any other kind of urgency.  I mean, what if there had been a fire or actual emergency?

          I walk out to the boiling elevator lobby again. The “up” button is still green and still no elevator. I wait some more. I walk back into reception, all the while anxiously keeping an ear out should the elevator door open, and this time, the receptionist isn’t even there. It is at this point, at my own boiling point, that I consider creating an enormous scene in front of the three total people in the office, a scathing rant about her gross incompetence, demanding that she find a front desk or security number. And trust me, I am an opera singer. I can scream if I want to... loudly. I take a moment to think of myself as an innocent bystander in that office and instead, walk out into that lobby and slam the side of my fist into that elevator door. Then, I kick it... hard... twice. It has now been 17 minutes since I first attempted to leave their office via elevator. I had been jerked around by the American healthcare system for too long. I was hot, late for work, and pissed as all hell. So that, you see, is how one finds oneself punching an elevator. Fortunately, I am neither strong, nor accustomed to punching things, so I only bruised my hand instead of breaking it. That could have been bad because it may have resulted in another specialist appointment.

          About three minutes after my tirade, which I honestly hope was caught on security camera, an elevator finally showed up. As I walked out through the main entrance, the gabbing receptionist in the main lobby was nowhere to be found to even hear my complaints or suggestions. Perhaps this was for the best…

You might be in Boston's Snowmageddon 2015 if...

I remember thinking at the end of January, that this year's Farmer's Almanac prediction of heavy snowfall like that of last year must have been wrong.  But those guys are almost never wrong.  I just didn't know that it would all fall in a two and a half week span in February. 

If the following list gets rather specific, infer from that what you will...

You've lost track of what number blizzard we are on.

There is a bottle of Berkshire Brewing Company's "Cabin Fever" in your fridge right now.

You check Instagram every three minutes, just to remind yourself that real people exist outside the icicles covering your windows.

You cook, eat, and bake all the things because there is just no need to feel hunger for more than half a second, if at all.

You take pictures of all the things you cook, eat, and bake and post them on Instagram, to delude yourself into thinking you have a life.

You start chomping on your vitamin D pills as though they were Xanax.

Even if you are just responsible for a sidewalk, the Sisyphean task of constant shoveling throws you into an existential crisis about the futility of work in general.  (Not true for everyone?  Just me, you say?)

You work with your neighbors to designate jobs for the bi-weekly shoveling out of cars; there are assigned diggers, cleaners, pushers, drivers and scouters of oncoming traffic from beyond the six foot tall snowdrifts.  What could be worse than completing the triumph of finally liberating one's car from the driveway, only to have it totaled upon entering the as-yet invisible street?

It's like one of those nightmares where no one heeds your warnings.  You tell everyone that Mayor Walsh has said not to bother digging out your cars with the parking ban still in effect until the next day.  When no one listens, you feel shoveling-induced guilt and you bundle up and help the husband and neighbors with the cars.  With ecstatic screams of collaborative victory when the vehicles are finally unleashed, you find 15 minutes later that you all got $45 parking tickets.  No one saw this while it was happening because of the six foot tall snowdrifts, (see previous).

You live in Jamaica Plain, where everyone but you seems to have at least one dog, so you pass no less than 14 electric yellow urine spots throughout the snowbanks in every block.

There is not enough room in the sidewalk pathways for two pedestrians, so every encounter with a person, (and/or dog), means an awkward interchange about who is going to step aside first.  If you are like me, you will hopefully slip and fall in front of the other person.  Don't worry though, there is no place to really fall.  You just sort of inelegantly bounce off the snowbanks.

On a similar note, leaving the house requires ski pants.

The mere thought of entering the T station has you already breaking into a twitch, thinking about the vast mass of humanity, waiting on the platform to claw its way onto the same car as you.  You have entered the land of no manners, where people's dark cannibalistic underbellies are exposed to all.  This is not the typical part of people you are used to seeing exposed on the T.

You start wishing we had those people whose job it is to push you into the train cars like in Japan:

The idea of a normally functioning public transit system makes you break out into maniacal laughter.

You find yourself saying for the first time ever; "At least I'm taking the green line tonight".
After you take the green line five stops and it takes 45 minutes, you think; Well that wasn't bad.

After you get off the train, you walk into a local coffee chain only to find that it's the end of the world because they have ACTUALLY no food.  They are completely out of sandwiches and salads.  You are in some kind of bizarre twilight zone.

Minutes after you find no food at a usually food-filled establishment, the news hits the internet that the General Manager of the MBTA is resigning, surprising no one.  Let the jokes about Boston Olympics 2024 commence!

A two mile uber ride now costs $69 and the taxi company you call requesting a cab for 20 minutes hence actually laughs at you.

There was no snow on Christmas or even the entire month of January.

When it stops snowing for several minutes, the temperature will not be above seven degrees, just to insure your misery.

Also, your down coat's zipper is broken but the good people of the North Face tell you it will take two months to fix and return to you.  So you use the buttons and are constantly trying to adjust the vents that the lack of zipper has now created, because the air is painful.

Your dryer breaks mid-storm one day, so you are surrounded by your own wet underwear which never seems to dry. 

Meanwhile, your skin is quite dry and is actually staging a revolt against your body for independence.

You really wish your face would stop peeling on your coat, because you can't get it cleaned until Spring.  You need that shit.

You seriously doubt the existence of Spring.  They talk about it being four weeks away, but you've forgotten what basic things like "the sun" and "happiness" feel like.

You stop obsessively looking at the weather forecast, because you can't even.

You think fondly of all those rainy seasons when you said; "At least it isn't snow!", because now 
IT IS SNOW, FRIENDS. SNOW. EVERY. DAMN. DAY.

A slow walk through a hot kitchen

                 On the list of things I would not recommend doing when landing in a brand new destination, is to get off the plane and skip dinner on your way to your New Years’ Eve celebration. “Heavy hors d’oeuvres included” can just mean so many different things. Apparently, at this lovely “social club” in Charleston, South Carolina where the husband and I had booked reasonable NYE tickets, “heavy hors d’oeuvres” simply meant two hours of all-you-can-eat raw oysters. While I used to think of raw oysters as the equivalent of slurping down snot, they are now actually a thing I have developed a taste for as a 30-something. So, I ate some.

Ok, I ate a lot....

          I figured; “Hey, these are full of protein for my hypoglycemic hand shaking”. I lost count at about oyster #8 or 9. Mind you, I did not stop there; I just lost count there. And what goes better with a small boatful of raw oysters on New Year’s than a glass of Rosé Brut? Fatal mistake, my friends. The husband, who is obviously infinitely more in touch with the bottom of his stomach than I, declined to eat more than 3 raw oysters without supplementing by ordering something else from the menu. So it stood at about 11:50, with the live music in full swing and the ball about to drop, that his Wagyu beef tartare was placed in front of us. That’s right; another pile of raw meat for me to contemplate. For those who know me, this would not normally be a problem. I usually request that my beef and lamb take "a slow walk through a hot kitchen", but this time... damn. With nothing but a pile of slimy gifts from the sea and bubbles having gone down my gullet, I thought I was going to vomit right there. I wish I could say that my nauseated New Year’s was caused by wild times, but alas, I am apparently past those. At any rate, after desperately ordering a glass of water, I did not end up throwing up at the bar, or at all in the end. For me, 2015 just came in riding several waves of queasiness. We were out of there and walking in the fresh air by 12:08.

          The husband and I really did have a great trip to Charleston though. We ambled down the prettiest little streets you’ve ever seen, full of cobblestones and scattered with charming porches. It was almost infuriating just how every little corner of the old town is so picture perfect, between the live oaks with the Spanish moss and the historic homes with the gaslights out front. You’d turn a corner and wonder; Where even are the ugly parts of this city? (We managed to find only one unattractive tube of a Holiday Inn on our way out of town.) In this way, the area really plays to my fantasies of living entirely in another time period. We woke up to church bells on Sunday morning, drank the hotel’s sherry offering, and strolled up lanes with architecture that only seemed to reach as far as the art deco period. And since it’s become such a foodie town, we ate updated Southern classics like hipster kings. It was splendiferous.

          For people who are over-extended, (of their own doing, of course), this was the perfect New Year’s Eve long weekend getaway, and just what we needed after the holiday rush. Our last vacation was in July and since we have both had overlapping singing gigs since then, we basically have been going non-stop for six months. So here is an interesting thing: Why were we both momentarily hung up on the like, two or three things we didn’t have time and/or energy for there? For example, I had wanted to go inside the home of the 19th century abolitionist sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, whom I had recently read about in a historical fiction novel. (Incidentally, this is The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd, and it is beautiful and you should read it.) Alas, the home was closed by the time we got there on Saturday and not open the following day of our departure. B had wanted to see the Vietnam exhibit on the waterfront and one more tour where we had just walked through the USS Yorktown, but I was trying to get to the historic home. We just were trying to do too many things, which is very un-southern of us. And the bitch of it is, that had we not known those things existed, we wouldn’t have missed them at all, because we also toured a tea plantation and a historic rice plantation. And you never know what will surprise you as you go. So after my disappointment at the Grimké home being closed, it was on our second plantation tour that B discovered something. It was a building where a Reverend, who was the nephew of the Grimké sisters, and highly influenced by them, had taught the slaves on the plantation to read, which was illegal. Under the auspices of teaching them Bible studies, which was permissible by law, he taught all his "black roses", as he called them, to read! This, as you can imagine, had me all verkempt.

          The thing I constantly learn about travel is that no matter what, I will always feel enticed to go back, but I also know I likely can’t get back to every place I have already visited more than once. Life gets in the way and there are just some places you likely won’t have a chance to return to. This is both frustrating and beautiful. There is something really lovely about the impermanence of a fleeting moment. Maybe we will get back to Charleston and maybe we won’t. I’d like to get back to all the beautiful places I’ve been and fallen in love with, but new places also call… At any rate, we'll never need to go back to Charleston for their raw oysters. We've had our fill of those.

Yes, I did spend almost a full two hours creating this

Classical Composers Who Are Severe Hotties:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/operaloversanonymous/11-classical-composers-who-are-severe-hotties-145r2

I'll tell you what to do with your pumpkin spice...

         Ahhh, it's fall again. The season of fall gets a lot of abuse in this blog and it's not even the worst time of year really- just a manifestation of all my summer dreams being crushed and a herald of the frigid, frozen onslaught of a messy work commute to come. I was talking to a friend who shares a November birthday with me and we agreed there is always one day in fall, and it's usually a day in our birthday month, where the beautiful part of the season is officially over. You know this day. This is the day the once colored leaves have all fallen and there is frost on the ground. You're losing feeling in your fingers and you have to suck it up and turn on the heat in your home, and then, and this is the kicker, the sounds of crickets now a thing of the past, on this day, there is a lone crow cawing outside. This became hilarious as we recounted this all-too-real day over dinner this summer, but now it doesn't seem quite as funny. That crow is the harbinger of emotional hibernation. To quote another friend: "#SeasonofDeath".

          I hope in years to come when the husband reminisces on the early years of our love, that he remembers his summer wife. I often tell him during those months to savor things and create a mental picture because I am my best in the summer. My hair is curlier and wild, I can't stay out of the ocean, I want to venture everywhere, and most importantly, I'm not a moody, light-deprived maniac.

          And I know all you fall-lovers out there are going to remind me about pumpkin flavored things, apple-picking, cider donuts, scarves and scented candles. To which I say: yes, I already know about those things because they are the only things that keep me from weeping in my pajamas while listening to Joni Mitchell twenty four hours a day- well, that and the mound of crap I have to do. But thank you nonetheless. Feel free to keep your annoying fall joy confined to the internet. This is what keeps pinterest chock full of slow cooker recipes after all.

          I'm going to pick a bone with apple-picking this year though.  Basically, apple-picking day is like the New England hipster National holiday.  You can put on your scarves, boots, and hats pretend you live in 19th century Massachusetts for a day, or with Instagram filters, 1970's New Hampshire.  (We surely do romanticize this era of our parents' youth more than any other.)  

          I'll admit it.  I've gone apple-picking and shamelessly shared my photos on Instagram and Facebook myself.  There is nothing quite like a filtered photo of apples so glistening they look like part of the set of The Wizard of Oz, and if you can get the sun to glint ever so slightly, it will set the hearts of your 600 or so hipster Facebook friends a aflame with nostalgia and envy.  

          This year, B and I are basically booked every weekend from now until Christmas, so we snagged just a few hours to go apple-picking last week.  This truly is a Massachusetts thing.  Growing up in Connecticut, we would sometimes go pumpkin-picking, and there was a great "Haunted Hayride" nearby, but I never used to feel this annual compulsion for heading to the nearest apple farm.  Turns out, the nearest farm that we could get to with just three hours to spare this year, has become a bit of a tourist-trap circus.  We paid $38 for admission and a very small, tiny really, bag to fill with apples.  Then we had to board a miniature train with a gaggle of screaming toddlers and were dropped off in the middle of a field, and since none of the signs were visible from the train, we found ourselves surrounded by nothing but a bunch of Asian pears.  But no matter, it was a beautiful, unseasonably warm day.  After wandering around for a while longer and filling our bag to a satisfactory level of actual apples, we decided to hit the store to look for cider donuts, which is surely the only other tangible reason people go apple-picking.  I mean, hello?  I can get apples in Stop & Shop.  But there is nothing quite like a freshly baked, warm apple cider donut.

          And then this happened:

          That's right, nearly 40 bones later and not an apple cider donut to show for it.  Fall, you are going to have to try a little harder to convert me to your fan base next year.

         

Here's to Jo-Anna: An oldie but goodie

That's my mom's seasonal mannequin, wearing her eighth grade graduation dress.

          We celebrated my mom's 70th birthday in a pretty big way this summer. As my mom's big decade change approached, I suggested to my dad that we throw her a party and make it a surprise if possible. He thought this idea was ridiculous since she would start planning her own party. He was right.

          My mother called me up and said she wanted to have a party, she wanted it to be at the Lodge- the restaurant they formerly owned- and she wanted it to have a rock 'n' roll theme. I said; "Great!", but because I had this crazy idea that she shouldn't be the sole person planning her own party and that she might like a surprise or two sprinkled in there, I told her I wanted to try and take care of much of it. Apparently our wedding last year wasn't enough party-planning masochism for me. Let's add some of that stress onto this year too! So invitations went out to family and friends, and at my urging, included a note that 1950's and 60's attire was not required but encouraged. (Some of the invitations came back or never made it to their destinations because Paper Source doesn't like to put ugly "extra postage required" markings on their non-standard envelope size... but I digress.)

          Semi-planning a party with my mother is an interesting process. I would come up with an idea to surprise her with and she would intercept. No sooner would I think: I'll get a bunch of vintage 45's to use as decor than my mother would call and say she pulled up the old 45's from the basement to use as decor. I'd think I'll order a cannoli cake from Eddy's Bakery and she'd call to tell me she ordered a cannoli cake from Eddy's. You get the idea. At one point I said "Do you want there to be any surprises here?" So while people were thanking me for organizing things, I'd tell them not to give me too much credit. It was more of a 50/50 process.

          Most of the planning went off without a hitch, but the weekend of the big day was, we'll say interesting for me. I didn't have to worry about food or presentation or anything like that because Martha and the Lodge employees had that all well in hand and my mother had of course, already selected the buffet menu. My friends Molly, Rachele, and Jamie generously offered to help me set up the flower arrangements and my mother-in-law generously contributed a dozen vases for said arrangements.

Hitch #1: The day before I head down to CT, I tell my mom that I'd bought a fabulous new, but vintage style ivory lace and green satin evening dress. At this point my mother says: "Oh, I just thought I'd wear one of my comfortable jersey dresses." So yes, the guest of honor, who had the idea for the 1950's and 60's theme, who also owns approximately six closets full of vintage buys and old prom gowns, wanted to wear a 21st century knit jersey dress to the party because you know, "comfortable"...

I just couldn't... nope.

          By the time I'd reached home however, she'd either sensed the frustration in my voice or realized the errors of her bizarre logic and had laid out several beautiful 1950's wardrobe options to choose from for herself.

Hitch #2: We had a surprise slideshow planned full of photos of Mom through the years. Through a mis-communication, it wasn't quite clear if we had any way of projecting it. Keep in mind, all this is happening while my mom was flitting about baking things for out-of-town guests because you know, sitting still on one's party day is not an option in her world.

          So we were sneaking around on the front porch trying to investigate the situation. My dad returns from the Lodge to tell me that there is bad news. And this part is SO my dad. While I am on pins and needles wondering about the status on the projector, he leads with "So two things. First, the guestbook does have lines in it." And then he proceeds to expatiate on the completely benign details of that situation and when I interrupt him for the second piece of bad news, he says; "Yeah, there's no projector". You might have led with that one, Dad.

          My husband saved the day on this one. B quietly made calls to every rental place in the tri-town area and scored us a projector and even went down to the Lodge for the guy's arrival to make sure it was set up and ready to go. Crisis averted.

Hitch #3: Some of our great family friends were hanging out with us all that day and were a huge help as well during all of said minor glitches. After much planning about what time we would need to be ready, everyone agreed that we'd all need to be ready by about 3:30. The first car would head out first to set up the flower centerpieces. The next group would head out 15 minutes later because the photographer would be there early to take some posed family photos. It was at about 3:00 that everyone in the house decided to sit down and watch the end of the Clint Eastwood movie they'd started the night before...

          Every time I emerged from my room with another addition to my ensemble, there they all were sitting exactly where I had left them in their regular old street clothes. Apparently, the literal cliffhanging scene of this film was very engrossing. For me, it was like one of those anxiety dreams where no one realizes the timeline you'd set up and you can't get your dress on and the clock is ticking and no one seems to care but you. I wish I could say that that was the first time I felt that way with regards to my family's virtual clock but alas. Someone is constantly waiting for someone else because it's in the last two minutes that everyone loses all sense of time. The last minute is designated specifically for one or two people to start losing their minds with panic.

          On this day, I just kept returning from whence I came shaking my head. When my friends arrived to the house a bit late, they apologized and I assured them not to worry. No one here had felt any sense of urgency whatsoever. Then there was the typical mad dash out the door and my mother insisting loudly that I help my dad's so that his outfit would not resemble Larry David too much. This time, it was perfectly acceptable for him to channel Buddy Hollly at least, since he was planning on wearing an old plaid jacket which my mother had actually made him to fit in with the retro theme.

          In the end, the actual party went off without a hitch, I'd say. People appeared in fabulous costumes, the food was delicious, the dance floor was hoppin', the slideshow was a hit, and the speeches were plentiful and heartfelt. My mom is a very generous friend and overall inspiring woman after all. She's inspired much of this blog with her eccentricities and big heart and we wanted her to have a great celebration. B noted how the next day, my mom said she could hardly fall asleep that night because she remained so amped up at all the fun she'd had.

Below are some of the fab images from the evening in all their retro glory:

Jo-Anna, woman of style, put that vintage dress over that under-layer.  They weren't sold together.

Yes, that plaid jacket is actually a fabric that my dad picked out at one time.

When my little cousins showed up for photos in coordinated poodle skirts, we actually broke into applause.