Happy Birthday To Me

From this day on, I will always look back and wish I was this young again. 

This is what I tell myself when I feel sad about aging. The night before my birthday, I joke that tomorrow I will be another year older. 

Our society is very age oriented. There are so many occasions when that number brings a new right - ability to work, vote, drive, rent a car, get discounts, stop working, access money you’ve saved and so on. At any given time, we have an age we’d like to be and except for 18 and 21, it’s usually not our current age.

Age is one of the first questions we ask children and we are asked to enter on forms. We wonder how old others are. We even ask this about objects and food!  How old is that antique, that house, that bottle of wine, the container of milk. 

It’s OK to slow down by choice but not by biology. We do not value wrinkles. We have a million products to slow down aging or give the appearance of youth. We commend younger folks when they finally slow down to smell the roses. Older folks are perceived as less capable and there is less respect for being old fashioned. I don't like getting older. I reached the point where I'm facing a decline. 

So it takes a bit of self-convincing to remind myself that my birthday is a celebration of life.  I made it this far!  And I am lucky!  I have had a really excellent life so far with so much more to look forward to!

At 58, my health is pretty good.  My knees and back are fine, no aches or pains. My hair is thinner and slightly graying and I have a few wrinkles near my eyes and that frowny look due to sagging cheeks is setting in. The skin on my arms is getting papery. 

I was blessed with a very happy childhood and great parents. I have a loving mother, a wonderful husband and respectful kids that became the sort of people the world needs. I’ve had mostly positive experiences in my life with friends, hobbies and work that empower me to confidently want more of all of the above. 

I am more curious about everything now than when I was younger, thanks to life experience. The internet came in my middle aged years and now I learn about new things every few hours and I can look up anything I want to know. So many things are within reach. 

There is something good about every age.  

My mother said this when, as a child, I asked her “how does it feel to grow old”?  Of course I was 6 at the time and she was in her 30’s, but it was a fair question. 

I'd say she was right. There is something good about every age.  

Winter Garden - Could Be Better

Only yesterday I was crowing about growing the best tomatoes ever and donating 40 lbs. of cucumbers to our local food bank. That was ages ago.

Now there is nothing to brag about. There is very little to eat from my winter garden.  Maybe this is normal, I don’t know. I’m relatively new to winter gardening. I just know that right now, I have cauliflower envy. My neighbor, whose raised beds I can see all day in the front of the house, got her winter crop planted in early September. Her cauliflower is gorgeous and ready to be harvested. Mine are finally the size of a quarter.

Back in early September if I had wanted to get my winter vegetables in that early, I would have had to harvest and clear out all my summer vegetables. It’s a very hard choice to make and it's a lot of work just when we have all the Jewish High Holidays. Could we please move Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Sukkot to November?  

Here’s what else is going on out back:

Our raised beds were built in a bad place. In the winter, they are in the shade half the day which slows down growth. Brussel sprouts, cauliflower, beets and peas are hardly growing. I finally got the first pea pods and they are completely tasteless. The chard is half inedible because it keeps getting leaf miner. And I accidentally planted broccoli rabe instead of broccoli and not knowing anything about it or what to do with it, I let it go past its prime and now I yanked it all out. 

The little seedlings I started indoors did not continue to bring me happiness. Once they were moved into outdoor soil, they either died or have remained almost the same size. I also wasn’t sure where to find room for them all, and as I transplanted them in a hurry, I stuck things here and there and in a few rogue places. Now I don’t know what’s what or where. I might find a surprise kohlrabi one day near a weed patch. 

The one great success for which I cannot take credit, is the fig tree, which produced tons of great figs for the past few weeks. “We all want some figgy pudding".  Little did I know that figs are ripe just before Christmas (at least in Northern California) and do make very nice desserts. They also are expensive in the shops and giving away figs is an easy way to make new friends. I have the kind that start out green and soft and not too sweet and go well in salads or with cheese. As they get riper, they turn purple and get much sweeter. 

The fig tree is very lovely and kept its leaves until recently. One morning I woke up and almost all the leaves had dropped. Fig leaves are beautiful but have a weird sticky prickly texture and you don’t want to scoop them up with bare hands. 

Then I couldn't resist and got caught up for 3 hours in the  zen of revitalizing the strawberry patch, which has a few strawberries in December. There are June-bearing and Ever-bearing and the Evers are still producing. They look like the poison apple that the Wicked Queen prepared for Snow White - half white, half red. But they are very sweet! 

The previous owners built a lovely mound and covered it with strawberries. What I’m finding is that as all the water runs downhill, the top plants dry out quickly and die while everything else erodes to the bottom and the base is a dense little forest with strawberries fighting for space with the crabgrass. After the rains, it’s all mush and slugs under the top leaves. I trimmed each one back to the mother plant. I can now recognize runners and mother plants! I plan to move the entire patch near the artichokes where it’s flat. 

As I did all this work, I found little “gifts’. Walnuts!  There are walnut trees in the neighborhood and in the fall, squirrels brought some nuts over and hid them all over the place. I found the first ones a few weeks ago, buried in the straw on the raised bed. I was clearing out the old straw and I worried that if I move the nuts, the squirrels won’t find their food. Greg assured me that they have very poor memories and never come back. Today I left 5 walnuts out in the open for them to find. 

My lunch today was that little bit of broccoli rabe sautéed with a few chard leaves and 4 pea pods, which made a warm salad bed upon which I put a medallion of Laura Chenel’s fine-herbed goat cheese and a slice of toasted sourdough, two figs and two strawberries. And yes, using foodie language to describe my meal is showing off. 

Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll have the fish, please!

Growing up in New York in the 1960’s and 1970’s, my family did not exactly celebrate Thanksgiving. We weren’t part of a big family dinner and my mother did not shop days in advance for turkey, swap recipes for stuffing, or bake pies. As a Jewish child of European born parents, it was normal not to follow the traditions of an American holiday. But as can be expected, we unintentionally developed our own tradition. 

When I asked my mother how we came to ignore the customary family feast, she said that my father thought it was a shame for my mother, who worked a full time job and did all that was expected for the many Jewish holidays, to spend a precious day off slaving in the kitchen. It was a rare day without any obligations, just relax.

And so it came to pass that we would go to a nice restaurant for dinner. “We” was the four of us: my parents, my grandmother and me. The only prep work involved was deciding which restaurant and then calling ahead to find out if they were open and serving fish on Thanksgiving and make a reservation. We kept kosher and we only ate fish in non-kosher restaurants. 

On Thanksgiving afternoon, we would get dressed up, bundle up, and take a taxi to the restaurant. If we got lucky, it was a taxi with those little extra fold-down seats that were phased out by the mid ’70’s.  These were 2 little stools between the rear bench and the driver’s front seat, that folded down onto the floor in the back of the cab. When you had more than 3 passengers, you popped up the stool and had a real adventure. The smallest passenger crouched on the little seat and as the taxi hit every pot hole and you got to bounce along like riding a bucking bronco. When the driver hit the brakes and you were propelled forward, the stool went into collapse mode and you could easily land on the floor. It took skill to keep yourself and the seat upright. It was as good as any amusement park ride but it lasted much longer!

When we arrived at the restaurant, we got the usual warm welcome, a huffy “Do you have a reservation” which was code for “You better have a reservation because we are completely full tonight and there’s no way you’re getting a table if you didn’t call ahead”. Then we performed the initial intake: did the first impression live up to the restaurant’s reputation?  This set the mood for either a good experience or more disappointment. 

We were never given menus. After a brisk walk to our table to get rid of us quickly, we were handed off to a waiter would rush to our table and verify,  “You’re having the Thanksgiving special, right?” 

Could we see the menu please?

That’s when the fun started. 

Let me pause and say: For the first few years the I was young, I was embarrassed and secretly wished we could have the special like everyone else. The room smelled like the special. Those warm creamy mashed potatoes, gravy and whatever else was on the plate, looked really good. I had never had that. I had most of the dishes separately. We often had turkey, usually with a noodle kugel from Meal Mart’s kosher take-out. My mother made parve mashed potatoes with margarine on holidays (no dairy ingredients with our meat dish). We had cans of Ocean Spray jellied cranberry sauce all the time. We had Birdseye frozen green beans regularly. But I had never had it all on one plate at the same time, drowning in that magical brown gravy. 

As I got older, I looked forward to the dramatic moment when we shocked the waiter. No one said “no” to the Thanksgiving special!  We were the first! Rebels! 

Could we see the menu please?

We have completely derailed the waiter. Now he has to fetch menus and then come back and take our order for four specials away…such a waste of time on a busy night. 

The waiter returns and pencil poised, says, ”So…four specials?”

No. We’ll have the fish, please.

The fish? 

Yes, the fish. For all four of us.

I don’t think we have the fish today. It’s Thanksgiving. We have a special menu. It has tur….

Yes, you have filet of sole. 

I'm not sure. I have to ask. 

I called ahead and asked. 

You did?  I’m not sure the chef can make the fish tonight.

I called this afternoon and spoke to Robert. He said we can have the fish. 

Robert is not here for the dinner shift. 

Robert said it won’t be a problem. 

Are you sure you don’t want the special?  It’s got our homemade…

No!  We can’t eat that. We’d like the filet of sole. 

At this point, the waiter is clearly thinking: Are you nuts? Who CAN’T eat turkey and mashed potatoes?  

The wrangling sometimes dragged on, the waiter trying to persuade us to give in to temptation and make his evening easier, but in the end, we always got the fish. We also got an angry frazzled waiter, who sometimes, as he cleared our main course plates, sarcastically asked, “Ready for some pumpkin pie?” with a tone implying that for some crazy reason his difficult diners might be resistant to the special, but no one says no to pumpkin pie! A triumphant finale!

Of course not. Like most Europeans, we don’t like pumpkin pie at all. In fact, even if we did like it, we probably can’t eat that. Pie crust might be made with lard.  

Do you have a nice seven layer cake?

Red Buds

The smallest things me extremely happy. 

Literally - the smallest things. No...not diamonds!  

I fell in love with a plant at the community garden called Pineapple Sage. There are many types of sage and they all thrive in our Northern California climate. They are drought tolerant and a really good choice for the garden. Supposedly, they are easy to grow...or hard to kill, as they say. 

Pineapple sage has beautiful bright green leaves that smell like pineapple. It's subtle when you're near it, intense when you touch the leaves. In the fall, they develop beautiful red flowers which usually attract hummingbirds. The plant looks great all year round. 

I've taken cuttings from someone else's plant several times to grow a plant of my own. Each time it first thrived and then died. I couldn't figure out what went wrong. Did I overwater it? Underwater it? Too much sun? Not enough? 

When we moved into our new house, I tried again. I planted a cutting in April in a very large plastic pot in a mostly-sunny spot. Again, it thrived and my little cutting was a lovely 2 foot tall hearty plant by July. By August, it was not looking so great and I tried moving it to a sunnier spot. It got worse. It got yellow leaves and looked kind of droopy. I was very sad. I was killing the un-killable plant. 

One day during the Kavanaugh hearings, I was pulling crabgrass and I realized my sage was trying to tell me "Mom, my shoes are too tight!". I was pretty sure it didn't like the plastic pot. It had outgrown it. So Greg helped me dig a hole in the ground and transplant it. He prepared me for the worst: this is risky, your sage might not make it. 

Six days later, I saw RED BUDS. 

This is a wonderful surprise!  Usually plants go into shock after you move them. Although Greg pointed out that the move may have shocked the sage into producing the red buds and the sage might still fail. I tempered my joy and I ran out 3 times a day to check, coo and admire it. 

Meanwhile, I also planted seeds indoors. I kept meaning to not spend $4 on vegetable starters at the nursery and to stagger the growth and not have all the veggies mature at the same time. That's when we eat the same vegetable every day for a month and then it's gone. 

I finally went to the dollar store, bought a thin foil cookie sheet and set it up at the sunniest spot in the house with a flat surface - on my desk by the big living room window. I planted spinach, lettuce, beets, chard and kohlrabi. In this little hot-house environment, the seeds sprouted in the first 2 days. 

It makes me insanely happy to see these little tiny vegetable plants growing on my desk. They are barely half an inch and I feel more pride and attachment than a normal person should. 

Full disclosure - I'm also very pleased that this endeavor cost me one dollar and that my brain found a solution to finding space. The six-packs are recycled, the seeds were free, the soil is from the garden. All I needed was a cheap tray to catch the excess water and to find a good surface in the sun. Don't ask me why it too me so long to figure out that I had room on my desk and yes, it's OK to grow vegetables next to my laptop and bills. Now it seems like it was the most obvious thing!  I would have put a plant on my desk. I just didn't think of it as a place to grow vegetables. Duh!

It was only in the past couple of weeks that I dug up the last of the summer garden. It was hard. I felt very destructive tearing out so many green things for which I felt such pride. The garden is an emotional rollercoaster. One day I'm ecstatic growing tomatoes and a few weeks later, I have to rip the vines out. 

But then (cliche coming...) one door closes and another opens. I see new red buds and forget the loss of rotting tomatoes. 

Decraphobia

I diagnosed myself in a doctor’s waiting room. I have decraphobia. 

Don’t worry - I’m OK.  This happened many years ago. I was waiting for my annual eye exam, leafing through Better Homes and Gardens in the waiting room. One of the writers was lamenting that she has had a fear of decorating - and she named it “decraphobia”. I immediately realized that I had it too!

The symptoms of decraphobia are:

-Fear of painting your wall any color other than off-white. 

-Buying neutral practical furniture and blah curtains to match because you’re afraid to buy the ones you really liked

-Buying something beautiful because it spoke to you (like a red and pink hand-embroidered Mexican poncho) and then getting home and being afraid to display it because it will look out-of-place.

One weekend you decide to overcome your fear and take one baby step:  you’ll paint a tiny space pale lavender and see what happens.  Next thing you know, you’re cringing at the awful purple walls - wait, maybe they’ll grow on me - uh no bit mistake - and now you’ve got the nasty chore of painting it off-white again. What’s worse than a boring off-white wall? Going back to an off-white wall. And another 10 years go by until you are brave enough to try another color in another dwelling. 

Having moved often in my adult life, it was easy to not decorate because why invest in a place when you know it’s temporary?  I also made enough mistakes buying something and hating it. I can’t really trust my own taste.  And what is my taste?  I recently took out every decorative item I have had packed in boxes and assembled them in one place and took a good look:  I have not been loyal to any style. I like too many things! And for those who say, your eclectic mix IS your style - trust me - this stuff really doesn’t work together. I am completely stuck!  I get it now!  Unlike my kids who fearlessly used fairy lights and friends' artwork to decorate their rooms much nicer than anything I ever did, I have no natural talent for this and I can’t afford an interior decorator. 

In other words, I’m going to have to find my own treatment and cure for my decraphobia. 

The journey has begun. 

I took the academic approach:  reading design how-to’s and subscribing to decorating blogs. I find Houzz and Pinterest too overwhelming and hardly use them. I went to the library and discovered The New Bohemians by Justina Blakeney which even comes with a workbook that I found useful. I’ve also gravitated to lessons on Hygge - the Danish way to make a home cozy. 

By coincidence, I started a new consulting gig recently where I have a big blank cubicle right when I had just made the big pile of all my decorative things. I followed the rules of Hygge and decorated the cubicle with a pretty rug, small lamps, fairy lights, a couple of ceramic bowls and baskets, a small sketch by my father, a few Indian fabrics and some green sprigs of rosemary and ivy in vases. And I added a coffee and cookies corner with cute little cups from Israel and a bag of freshly ground coffee. The result is very pleasing, a cozy homey little corner. You could almost forget it's an office cubicle. I did it!  

What I’ve learned is this:

-Find a style or two and be loyal to them. Craftsman and Bohemian are the most us.

-Go with things that speak to you, as long as they map to the style. 

-Have patience. It’s going to take years to curate and evolve your style. Don’t buy something just because you think you need it now. The right things will find you some day.

-Don’t wait 10 years to try another color of paint. 

-The Danish people got it right - you can’t go wrong with Hygge.  I really want to visit Denmark.

Decraphobia is treatable. It starts with awareness and learning, then building confidence. For me, decorating falls under “trying new things” - building a new skill that requires some rules and lots of creativity. I’m usually pretty good at that. I have hope!

Yom Kippur 1988 - Happy Endings

Back in 1988 I worked for a small medical company in San Diego as a secretary to the Vice President of Sales, Mr. Peterson. When hired, I mentioned to HR and Mr. Peterson that I would be taking days off for all the major Jewish holidays and of course, everyone said they were fine with that. 

Until the High Holidays. 

Giving a good 2 months notice, I informed Mr. Peterson and Darlene, the President’s secretary, which days in September I would be out. That’s when Darlene (Queen Bee) said I could not take off on Yom Kippur because the other two secretaries would be on vacation that day and there would not be enough coverage. I had never been asked to cover for anyone and no one had ever covered for me, so this was an odd excuse. 

I politely told Darlene that this is a major religious holiday, my boss and HR approved my days off, and I will not be at work that day but maybe they could not pay me and hire a temp instead. Within no time, things escalated and the President came to tell me that if I didn’t work that day, I would be fired. 

We had one other Jewish employee, an older gentleman and an executive, who took me aside and asked me to please come to work on Yom Kippur. “What’s the big deal? So you miss one holiday? You’re making all of us Jews look bad.”  It was one of my first experiences standing up to a superior at the office, and an elder, and saying, “shame on you!”  We were perhaps two generations apart in age which may have partly explained the difference. Before the law changed in the 1960’s, you could get fired for taking a religious holiday off without your employer’s permission. 

Being young and inexperienced, I called my synagogue to ask for advice. “Call the Jewish Anti Defamation League”. I did. I think I left a message on their answering machine (very ’80’s)

The next afternoon at work, the President came storming over to my desk and yelled at me in front of a room full of people: “If you think you’re going to intimidate me with some loud-mouth lawyer, you’re wrong, young lady. If you don’t work that day, I will personally fire you.”

I guess the ADL sent a lawyer, unannounced, to barge into the President’s office to threaten him. I never met the guy. 

I took the day off. 

There were several happy endings to this story. 

I was not fired. 

I resigned a couple of weeks later. 

Mr. Peterson and the secretary who replaced me fell in love, got married and lived happily ever after.

At a young age, I strengthened my convictions about standing up for my rights and what I believe in. When do you go along with things to make problems go away and when do you fight for what’s right?  I stood my ground in the storm which was really hard. I learned about egos and empty threats and about the concept of religious freedom. 

During the High Holiday season, I have found that the act of asking for the days off and letting managers and coworkers know when I’ll be out of the office and why is a ritual on its own. The ritual has its own phrases uttered, preparations, stories and repetitions. 

And after that comes the ritual of sending out Rosh Hashanah cards. 

May you be inscribed in the Book of Life.  Happy 5779!  

Proof that I'm Responsible

Why endanger the lives of others when an employees work on a spreadsheets?

Why risk health or injury when a team member schedules a meeting in a conference room or books a flight?

I spend my entire days at work sending Outlook email and calendaring meetings, adding data to Excel reports or editing someone’s PowerPoint slides for spelling. Sometimes I order office supplies or a catered lunch for a meeting. 

I was wondering why companies have been so trusting all these years that I could use these dangerous tools and execute such risky tasks without any sort of test. Today was the day their trust has finally ended. 

I had to take a drug test for my new job. 

I entered a very small room with a man. I was given a sheet with instructions of many steps of collecting my “donor specimen”. I had to empty my pockets, step away from my purse and my possessions, go wash my hands, listen to elaborate instructions that involved not flushing and then sign several documents. Then I was instructed to pick up the cup from that table, enter the restroom on the other side of this door, and I was given precisely 4 minutes to pee. Afterwards, I repeated the process in reverse, putting the cup back, washing my hands, signing, collecting my possessions. All while this man was watching me (except while I was in the bathroom).

This is where my newest employment situation has led me. I need a drug test to use Microsoft Office and sit in a cubicle with a laptop. 

It's been a bit of a journey getting here. 

In May 2016, I was part of a large layoff at a company where I had happily worked for 11+ years. Greg and I moved away from the lucrative but frenzied world of Silicon Valley to Sonoma County, where life is a lot quieter but there are few really good companies. I have developed a preference for working in publicly traded techy companies. There are very few of those in our new area. 

I began applying for Executive Assistant jobs at formidable companies in early 2017. There were very few jobs posted so I went to a classic “temp agency”, where I got an assignment for a small private medical company supporting the CEO. They made me an offer to hire me directly and I worked there for about a year. They had some financial challenges and laid me off in March 2018. 

Before starting a proper job search, I turned my LinkedIn profile to “available for new opportunity” and my phone started ringing daily. The tech companies have a new business model - they hire most administrative people through 24 month contracts through MSPs (Managed Service Providers).  The benefits are minimal and not really beneficial. Their health insurance plan is often higher than whatever you already pay on your own. You don’t accrue vacation days or sick days. 

A company posts a job requisition for a 24 month contract. All these MSPs rush to find candidates to submit and win the contract. They are extremely aggressive and pushy. They want you to reply to every request in the next 5 minutes. They call, text and email incessantly until they hear from you. 

In May I started to work at a great company with local headquarters on a contract as an admin assistant. I settled in quickly and enjoyed the work and the people and they have been happy with my work. Then I got an offer from another great company, at a much higher rate. Although my nature is to be loyal and continue where things are going well, I can’t turn down the higher pay when I’m not receiving any benefits. 

The goal is to get hired as a direct employee. The business model of hiring contractors is difficult for employee and employer. As an employee, just after I got trained, I am moving on to start all over again elsewhere. My employer is sorry to see me go and they have to start all over again to find a new person and train them. 

That’s the job climate now. The economy is good. Companies are hiring but fewer direct employees. There is a shortage of skilled experienced employees like me. Yet it’s really hard for employees to find a full time direct hire job with benefits. 

So in addition to the routine background check, I took my first ever drug test to prove that I am responsible. If I pass, my new employer can feel secure knowing that I won't come to work high and injure anyone with my mouse or show up staggering drunk and send a ridiculous email.