My daughter and my darling grandkids are here. They are leaving today after a whirlwind of activities. I have eaten more pizza in six days than I have in a year. I have walked all over Dayton. Drank a lot of Coke. All of this seems to have produced vivid dreams in which I am besieged by men, all wanting to have *ahem* “relations” with me.

On Monday, Robert Redford (who has not aged well) approached me at a party, looking like the above. I was drinking something chic, like a Cosmo, when he leaned over and asked me to meet him later, in order to discuss filmmaking, which I apparently knew something about. Inhaling his masculine scent of what romance novelists call musk mixed with hints of leather, I demurred.

We went to La Comedia to see Jersey Boys, and it was a terrific show, and the dinner was quite good, especially the mashed potatoes. I went home after and Googled Frankie Valli, and he was very handsome  in that half lidded, Sylvester Stallone way. That night I dreamed that Frankie Valli was taller than I, and that he wanted to slow dance with me. Before things heated up, I had to get up to pee. I went back to sleep and the dream shifted to me being able to do yoga. Go figure.

I often dream of being able to wear strapless gowns. I have never worn strapless anything, due to fatty armpits. In this particular dream, I was at one of those Hollywood parties, and it was black tie. My gown was black with sparkly things all over it, and I had on four inch heels. Reacher was there. He walked over to me, biceps hard as rocks. He touched my lower back with just the slightest pressure, and things got steamy, but I nixed any shenanigans, because under my gown I had on Spanx. I would have been mortified for Alan Ritchson to see them, because they were the longline version. And beneath the Spanx, my strapless bra was white and front closing. End scene.

We also went with the kids to see bull riding at the Nutter Center. There was enough testosterone among those riders to service the entire female population of Chicago, at least. So naturally, I dreamed that I looked good in chaps and a cowboy hat, I was in my thirties, and two of the riders looked me straight in the eye before mounting their bulls. The symbolism.

I used to dream of being single, and men like John Cusack, Idris Elba, and Pierce Brosnan populated my dreams on nights I had invested spicy foods, or in Idris’ case, binged the entire first season of Luther in one day. Funny thing about dreams–they never get to the good parts. Activities dissolve as soon as the action starts, and then the dream shifts, and I find myself suddenly back in my regular life, still young, but married and pushing my now 42 year old daughter in a stroller. Apparently, even in my dreams I can’t let myself be free and wild enough to go through with anything.

I need to smack my superego in the face.

Lots of young people think that if a person is over the age of 60, that person is dementia adjacent. This is not true. Every human on the planet forgets things. Even 10 year olds forget things.

I have an oven that has the “self cleaning” function. I like that function. It makes housekeeping a lot easier. However, using the self cleaning function

• heats up the kitchen, so you have to clean your oven in wintertime
• uses up a lot of energy

Thus, I don’t clean my oven often. As a matter of fact, we have lived in this apartment for five years, and I have cleaned the oven once. But my daughter and our grandchildren are coming next week, so I am doing massive spring cleaning. My husband wonders why having a clean oven is necessary, because who on earth notices the inside of an oven, but I am on a mission to get this place in shape.

So. Night before last, after dinner, I locked the oven door and set it for self clean. The digital dashboard on the stove said that oven cleaning would take 4 hours. I hit start. This was at 8:15.

At 12:15, just as I was dozing off, after doing some late night furniture rearranging and moving various home accessories around for better impact, an intermittent beeping started.

I crossed my fingers that it was just a car in the parking lot, or something out in the hallway, and it would stop shortly. It didn’t. “I bet this is how they torture political prisoners,” I thought.

It went on for more than 5 minutes, and I knew that I wouldn’t be able to sleep. So I got up and wandered around, looking for the beep’s origin. It didn’t seem to be in the hall, nor was it coming from the parking lot. I knew this was serious. I figured other tenants were probably upset at the sound and wanted it stopped.

So I went into the tv room, as not to bother my husband (who can sleep through a five alarm fire, so I was being polite for no reason), and I called the emergency service number, and a man who was obviously asleep moments before answered his pager.

I attempted to explain to him the annoying beeping, and as I talked to him, I walked into my living room. The living room is “open plan” with the kitchen. As I was telling the sleepy man what was going on, the beeping seemed louder, and I looked over at the stove.

I had forgotten that the stove beeps to announce to you that the oven is now CLEAN, and you should push the button to shut off the beeping. I pushed that button, the beeping stopped, and I proceeded to  try to apologize to the service man, but something happened to our connection, and we were cut off…

He and the rest of the service team at our building I am sure had a “good laugh” at the stupid, probably demented woman on the fifth floor. I AM NOT THAT SORT OF WOMAN. Would you remember that the oven beeps when it is done self cleaning, if you had only done it once in 5 years? Of course not.

So I had to put in another service request, not an emergency one, of course. In this one, where there is a box that you fill in to describe what you need fixed, I wrote:

I want to apologize for waking up one of your service team members last night at 12:15. My daughter from California is coming, and I wanted to make sure that our apartment is clean, and so for the second time of our tenure, I set the oven to “self clean” mode at 8:15 last night. Since I had only done this once before, I had forgotten the fact that the oven makes a “beeping” sound when the clean cycle is finished. I hadn’t discovered this until I was already on the phone with the service person to report a mysterious beeping that was keeping me awake. I am sure I woke him up with my call. I disabled the beeping myself. I told the service man not to bother coming over. But in the middle of my conversation with him, our call was somehow disconnected. I hope he got right back to sleep. I am so sorry for waking him up for nothing.

This apology sounds totally sane, right?

Things suck right now. All over. I can’t even let myself think about that.

Instead, I need to devote at least an hour a day to fantasize  about what my life should be like right now. The above isn’t a photo of New York City, but it’s as close as my photo library gets. So let’s get this fantasy started:

I live in New York. Probably in the East or West Village, but maybe on Gramercy Park. My apartment, which I can afford, has a working fireplace, a kitchen that is small, small but lovely. It has marble countertops and an ocular window over the sink. The taps are old brass with patina. Of course, I have a small terrace. I fill it with blooms and tomato plants in summer. I have a Siamese cat. His name is Onion.

Or, I have a glass walled apartment in a high rise in the Financial District with a skyline to die for, a gourmet kitchen, and a delightful small terrier pup who goes against character by being calm. Her name is Rabbit.

I have somehow become svelte and single, because husbands cramp your style. I wear leather blazers and thong underpants. I can have biscotti with my coffee in the morning, eat an actual lunch, and have pasta for dinner if I want to. My skin is not crepey.

I work as an editor for a small imprint of a large publishing company, and my writers are all bestsellers, which is how I can afford to own this apartment. My bedroom in the Village is on the third floor, and I see greenery out my windows. OR, I have views of the Statue of Liberty out  of my sparkling floor to ceiling windows in the skyscraper.

For fun, I have David Sedaris and John Oliver over for dinner, and I actually know how to make entrees with truffles. In this fantasy, I love truffles and don’t think they taste like dirt.

On rainy evenings, I curl up with my cat/dog and watch old movies on tv while snacking on caviar, which doesn’t taste disgustingly fishy. I am not lonely.

I am probably lonely, so I redo the fantasy and invite my husband in, so we can watch tv together, and also so he can take the dog out at midnight, or he can scoop the litter box. It works either way.

We take walks all over the city, and we love to sit on a blanket in Central Park and drink lattes, because I don’t have arthritis in my knees. We eat brunch in our favorite bistro on Sundays, leafing leisurely through the New York Times. He has pancakes, and I have whatever I want, even donuts. We chat with our hip friends, who are all poets or stand-up comedians.

I am fulfilled. I have three hobbies: I can knit a sweater, I make hand dipped candles, and I use my calligraphy skills to write little notes to my friends. I am never on Social Media. I have a tattoo of a pencil on my wrist. My skin is not crepey.

Every day is a slow news day.

My skin is not crepey.

Things right now in the world are so overwhelming, it is getting more difficult for me to be bright and entertaining. I am taking a little “vacation” from my columns for a while. Peace and love!

Times are bad right now. Fires, cold, tragedies everywhere.

I look for things to make me feel better.

Lots of folks on social media are telling about how comforting it is to make chicken soup. They list their recipes, which involve a chicken or chicken bones, water, and vegetables. I have tried making chicken soup so many times, even substituting chicken broth for the water, and my soup is always virtually tasteless.

What about making chili? My husband hates my chili; he says it’s too loose. Other comfort foods are roast chicken (mine is either undercooked or too dry), macaroni and cheese (WAY too much trouble with the roux and grating all that cheese), spaghetti and meatballs, which I do well with Rao’s and Trader Joe’s chicken meatballs–but my husband is sick and tired of it. Sick and tired.

Bypassing the comfort food, people recommend staying busy. I have tried that, and this week I touched up the dings in my baseboards, got on a ladder and used Dawn Power Spray to clean the big grease spot above the stove. I Swiffed every damn surface in the house. I binge watched 20 episodes of 48 Hours. This was Monday. Tuesday dawned and I couldn’t come up with anything, and I realized that I should have spaced out the busy things.

Books. Read the books. I made a bad choice and checked out a book about men in the trenches during WWI, and that made me feel worse. Cheerful books seem hard to come by, and for heaven’s sake, I checked out A Little Life, which nearly killed me. The man on the cover should have been a hint, but the title sounded so innocuous…

I like to imagine that during tough times, people sit by the fire with cups of tea, chatting or playing cards. They wear shawls over their shoulders, eat lavender lozenges, and remain calm. I don’t love tea, we live in this apartment with no fireplace, and my husband strongly dislikes games. I do have a shawl. Lavender tastes like cough medicine in my opinion. My husband has never been one to sit down to a nice chat. So there you are. Just me and my shawl.

Here is what I have found to be effective. I go to bed early, ask my cat Hattie to join me, and we scroll Instagram for pictures of Taylor and Travis. This works for me and thousands of women all over the globe.

Here is a website giving multiple organizations you can support to help fire victims in Los Angeles:

http://supportlafd.kindful.com

Airbnb has homes for victims and is accepting donations  http://www.airbnb.com

You can call The Red Cross at 800-733-2767 or text the word CAWILDFIRES to 90999 to make a donation.

Another source:

https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/la-wildfires-how-to-help-donate-relief-organizations-list-1235874389/

For pets:  http://www.bestfriends.org

We have been hearing for days about a huge snowstorm that is rumbling our way. Here in Dayton it was supposed to start 2 hours ago, and they are predicting 5-9 inches. So far, nothing has happened.

It must be coming, because they are getting a blizzard in Kansas City, and it is just a matter of time. However, I can’t even count the times this exact thing has happened, and we got nothing. We stock up on food, put on sweaters, and sit by the window, waiting.

If snow does come, it is tremendously exciting. Why, I don’t know, because all anyone can do is stay home. I guess people under 65 go out in it and revel in the beauty, but if one is over 65, we worry about slipping and falling and stay in. I know about the actual result of falling.

When we were visiting the family in Los Angeles for Christmas, I foolishly turned out the lights in the bedroom we were staying in and didn’t wait for my eyes to adjust. I did walk gingerly toward the bed, and it seemed as if it was right there. So I sat down. It was not right there. So I went from standing to falling on my rear in a nanosecond. Luckily, I did not fall on my glasses.

A day later, it seemed like I had a sore muscle in my left glute. No big deal. But that was two weeks ago. Now it feels like I have a hot poker in there whenever I take a step. It turns out that in this situation, according to Dr. Google, a fall like this results in small tears in the gluteal muscle. It can take up to 6 weeks for them to heal. Six weeks of the hot poking with each step. So that happened.

Back to the snow. I check the weather app every half hour. The onset has changed from 2 hours ago to this evening. When this happens, my husband says that all the prognosticators are simply liars, and that nothing will happen. He is usually right.

So my buttock and I are losing hope for a magical snow day, and now I am not only in gluteal pain, but disappointment. My husband just asked me what I think I would do if it didn’t start snowing immediately and drop all those inches on the balcony.

I told him that all of the macaroni and cheese and chicken noodle soup would lose their cachet. It would just be dinner. And in addition, I wouldn’t be able to commiserate with all of my social media “friends” about how awful the snow is. I would have enormous FOMO.

He rolled his eyes.

This is my favorite tree in the neighborhood we used to live in. It’s a classic.

We went to Los Angeles for Christmas with our daughter and her family. We did a lot of things.

We went to a Christmas walk in the dark, and for the first time in years, I had no trouble doing it, since I no longer have cataracts. What an experience to walk and actually see the ground.

We ate so many calories, I think I may have gained 40 lbs. from the danishes, the cookies, the spaghetti and meatballs, the coffee coated chocolate balls, the cookies, and the cookies. This is the truth: when I got home, I could not face the candy we got from friends. I threw it out. WOW

We went to the Slime Museum. It was so much fun. We each made a slime of our own. I made mine blue and scented it like Ginger Ale. My granddaughter Birdie was very brave and got slimed all by herself. Slime is not edible, but I think it must not be poisonous, because even I was tempted to taste some. I can’t be the only one.

We went to church, where our grandson and granddaughter were Joseph and Mary in the pageant. Mary had no lines, but when the innkeeper said they could stay in the barn, Mary ad libbed, “Sure!”

The magnetic letters spelling out Merry Christmas on the garage door got changed to Cherry Smartims again this year. We think we know who the culprit is; his name is Charles Campbell. It may become a tradition. I guess it already is one.

We drove around to see the Christmas lights in Burbank. It was spectacular. We figure that all those lighting technicians who work on movie sets have both the talent and the access to technology that just doesn’t exist in Dayton, Ohio.

It is as warm here as it was there. Global warming is all too real. We Americans may have to shift our cultural association with snow and Christmas to shorts and Christmas. Coats–what will happen to the coat industry, I wonder?

I had a cold before I left, and then got another one while there. It is possible, according to Doctor Google. I have so far consumed two bottles of Robitussin. Wait: They say you need extra calories when you are sick, so maybe I only gained 30 lbs. from the cookies…

Happy New Year.

Here is little Birdie getting slimed:

As I have said before, if it’s a documentary, I have seen it. Some are so educational, like the ones about Orthodox Jewish households, in which I feel so sorry for the mothers who have to do so much work. The one about Passover Pesach rituals made me very tired for these women. They have to move all the appliances and wash and bleach behind them, wipe down the walls and take everything out of their cupboards to clean them, and search the entire house for leavened bread crumbs. They cover their microwaves, take their toaster ovens out into the garage. Some of them even exchange their stoves for special ones they keep in the garage just for Passover. There is more, but you get it.

Christmas is also put on by women, who do all the decorating, gift buying, wrapping, and baking. I myself have never made a Christmas cookie, because I am, I guess, a less than exemplary homemaker. But my older daughter makes up for this by being Martha Stewart, Ina Garten, and Julia Child rolled into one. I am going to her house for Christmas, and so I get to soak all of that in while sitting on her sofa.

I watched a YouTube video about a darling German couple living in Britain. They have no children, but they do all the things, both British and German, for the holidays. I have to admit that I was a bit taken aback by their “traditional German” Christmas Eve dinner, which consisted of, and I kid you not, boiled hot dogs (they called them sausages), but they were dead ringers for Oscar Meyer weiners, and potato salad that had both apples and tomatoes in it. Also parsley and mustard, as I recall. Boiled hot dogs. Boiled.

There was another, I guess you could call it a documentary, but it was also on YouTube, about women in Hollywood getting extreme plastic surgery just in time for Christmas. One woman wanted to, and really, I am serious, “have the biggest buttocks on record.” They were unbelievable. So unbelievable that I had to call my husband in to watch her walk down the street, and he blanched.

On the “home” channels, they feature all the designers’ homes decked out for Christmas. They all have houses festooned in literally THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS worth of decorations. Of course, they have teams that come in to decorate for them. I can’t imagine one of them mounting a ladder to attach lights to their molding. Also, they all seem to then have huge holiday parties where some sort of special pomegranate or pear flavored cocktail is served to their friends wearing tartan.

I think the concept of Christmas goose sounds really traditional and festive, but I bet it would taste gamey. It’s turkey all the way for us.  A friend’s nephews, when they were small, dubbed their turkey dinner “the Holiday Chicken.” That sounds delicious.

Happy Holidays to all of you out there. I will be back after Christmas.

I have coughed five thousand times in the past week. I have little energy.

Why is it that when you have a “significant” cold, things like walking from one room to the other become almost insurmountable?

And the sore throat. On fire. I went to my social media friends to ask for sore throat remedies, and I got so many suggestions. As I posted this at midnight, I could not implement any of them, because I was in the dark in my pajamas. I thought the suggestions I would get would be to utilize stuff I had on hand, like honey. Yes, honey was suggested, and it did nothing for my throat. But I got some very interesting ideas for future sore throats

• Eat three (no more, no less) marshmallows
• Use propolis, which I do not know what that is
• Gargle with vinegar, which sounds sore throat inducing
• Suck on root turmeric (What??)
• Take a shot of bourbon
• Oregano tablets-there are oregano tablets?

You get the picture. But the sore throat subsided on its own.

Then, yesterday, I got the deep chest cough. You know the one–it is ok as long as you are vertical. You cough, and then stop. But LIE DOWN and you are doomed to a cough cycle that never ends. Thus, no sleep for you! I have to admit that I texted a friend last night at 1:45, and she answered. And she doesn’t have a cold at the moment. I felt better that I was not the only person sitting in the dark at 1:45.

After two cups of tea and honey, with no respite lying down, I got up again and emailed my doctor. At 4:15. I pleaded for help, but prayed that he wouldn’t answer right then, because 4:15. I stared out the window for a few minutes, remembered to “feed a cold,” and had an English muffin. That was delicious, and I didn’t cough once while eating it. So I went back to bed.

We have the “old people” bed, the one made up of two single mattresses that you can lower and raise at will. I configured my side sort of like a recliner, and finally dozed off.

So today, I am sick and tired. I have no “get up and go” anywhere inside me. So I am lumping. Sagging into the sofa in a heap and staying there with not a glimmer of desire to do even the simplest of tasks. I gave myself a full-on pep talk in order to shuffle to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I hope I will have the wherewithal to stumble into the tv room to watch a Christmas movie, but people in movies walk around so much. It’s exhausting to watch all that bustling.

My doctor did answer my email this morning, like a well person who sleeps all night long. He told me, and this is verbatim, to “try not to cough.” He did prescribe a cough medicine, however, that precipitated a call from the pharmacist, who cautioned that this particular formula might make me very sleepy. Apparently, if one is over 65, one must take the syrup while already in bed, it’s that strong.

I cannot wait until tonight.