sometimes it takes years to understand something

it took years for these trees to grow on Central Park South for me and my daughter to look up at and enjoy and for her to be of an age and acuity to snap the photo of the beautiful trees that took so long to grow.

Carnivore Study: Meat as currency

I come from a doctor's family. I've pretty much been taught to look at things empirically, scientifically. I see an MD psychiatrist. my brother is one too. I like to collect DATA and experiment with it. Not always very successfully. No sirree. My own son said to me the other day "mom you like to jump off a cliff where people have died and been splattered and see if you can "'make it work". Is that the artist side? I suspect scientists do this too, as they experiment and destroy on their way to discovering new antibiotics. But their journey is a controlled one with a goal and a grant. Mine's a bit more....chaotic. or as the kids would say "random"...as in "god, mom..that's random". they usually follow this up with "jeez, you are like SO bi-polar"....and ok, probably this proclivity toward destroying things reflects some lack of self esteem. again, as the kids might...DUH. but regardless...I just like to experiment and even fix things - which i did with the coffee maker yesterday, so there!) but i have a huuuuuugggggeeee (weird) desire to destroy things too. Like draw or paint the perfect nose, then add one little stroke that screws it up just to push the limit and just because i can and then see if i can draw it again. Analyze THAT.
anyway...per my recent inquiry into Jewish physiognomy vis a vis carnivorous behaviors....here's my mother. she never really had an aqualine nose to begin with. no bump or hook whatsoever. maybe just a tad longer than most to declare her eastern european roots. her nose was lovely. my mother was absolutely beautiful. and everyone told me so. they'd say "Your mother is so pretty. And you look just like your father." but my mother didn't FEEL pretty. and there was no photoshop in the 50s and 60s so there are tons of black and white photos of her gorgeous self where she's taken pencil and shortened her nose. and hollowed out her cheeks and redesigned her almond eyes. the graphite *almost* but not quite matches the greys of the old photos. but of course ultimately she was just doing it to see what she would tell the plastic surgeon. eventually she had her nose scooped out just a bit more and shortened just the way she thought she wanted it. it made me sad when she did this because i never thought there was anything wrong with her native nose. but this was very common in the 60s and 70s and 80s and 90s and 2000s. i can spot a nose job on a jewish woman the way an eskimo can spot a snowball on a glacier. and when my downright aqualine nose was popping out of my teen face at a different pace then my undersized pin head and wide womanly hips and i looked nothing like my pretty mom who had exactly the opposite body and i'd say mom my nose is big and she'd say well, you can fix it and somehow that didn't quite make me feel better. then she'd sing to me: You've got the hips that sink the ships from London France and Peru...and if you're gonna tell me boy, she's my waterloo..." And i've tried to sing similar songs to my own children as i witness their painful lack of synchronicity - the sweet things are ugly and deformed one month and then beautiful and "synced up" the next, and then when the nose is finally proportioned to the face the pimples or the eczema flares up to ruin the canvas....) so back to the Carnivore study. here's bubbie. my darling mom in her sparkly pink-logoed Adidas tee shirt/uniform with the faded denim, elastic wasted Pant Suit. she's now missing a tooth but lately she's never smiled more. the facelift she had in her 50s has now given way to pillowy drapy cheeks. her sweet and hilarious and giving character seeps out of the keloid scars that mark her attempts to look more beautiful and smooth two decades ago. makes me think, of course as i begin the decline and/or desire to hide behind the curtains of aging skin. here she models for me her blue fake denim pant suit with faux mocassins from TJ Max and a real corned beef sandwich which she not only lovingly brought to me and my kids but with which she also "tipped" the cab driver. she opened up the rye bread from Juniors deli in the back of the cab (i can forensically back this up as this morning i discover the twisty for the Rye is in tact while a hole has been bored thru the back end of the Rye's plastic bag. like an evolved badger or a primitive mother, she clearly and urgently scratched the hole thru the the plastic bag of rye bread with her acrylic finger nails so that she could whip up a corned beef sandwich in the back seat of the cab for the dear driver who so kindly waited for her at Juniors Deli then brought her to her daughters house. Corned beef as currency. The Jewish Woman as Carnivore study continues. But this scientist notes (ok, shooting from the hip, not enough data yet but INTUITION (rapid cognition?) is everything, just read Malcolm Gladwell and the case of the phony artwork...and you'll see that this particular Judaic Carnivore is qualitatively different than the Producer painted a few blogs ago. this carnivore, my mother, serves meat to men. the other one makes meat out of men. my daughter eats meat of any gender. i will keep studying this until i figure out my place in this food chain.

Understated Sandals

i'm still trying to get through my ex's "memoir". i'm getting near the end and there have been countless allusions to blonds and boobs and tight white jeans. but i had to actually put the book down when i came upon: Understated Sandals. as usual, some "blond bombshell" (now that's an original term) is "checking him out" at his father's "opening" of photographs of non-jewish standing in as Shekinah, women wearing nothing but white gauze and Marquis de Sade amounts of strappy teffilin...and as he wanders around at this opening without a sense of humor and the usual dose of desperation...he just KNOWS the "blond" wants him.....and then, pretty much nothing happens....but this one is wearing Understated sandals. and it made me wonder what ARE understated sandals? and what are Overstated Sandals? i've always considered myself a fashion buff but i never thought to categorize sandals in terms of under or over statements. are understated sandals leather flips flops? Miu Mius without the rhinestones? Marc Jacobs without he bows? Berkenstocks just the way they come? nah, they wouldn't be Birkenstocks...at least not at a Michael's restaurant opening of Leonard Nimoys pix of naked women wrapped in teffilin.

Understated sandals. maybe they're black suede Barneys Co-Op.

God, this is a breakthru memoir. Forget the so-called Recovery part,
its given me a whole new way of looking at sandals.

she says i'm doing a good job with my kids

i was yelling at my kids, i guess loudly enough for her to hear, telling them they had to stick to a budget as we bought last minute chanukah gifts for The Cousins. maddy was yelling back at me. on one hand mad about the budget on the other telling me (correctly) i never have the guts or srength to stick to one. and i'm sure we talked about her wanting a Blackberry and how sick that made me. (her dad got her one for the last night of Hannukah which pissed me off, put the fake pleather jacket i got her H&M to the bottom of the ho hum gift food chain) anyway, this little short woman with the velvet scarf chimed in that i was Right. I was Good. she was that type of little withered apple-faced woman who's a hybrid homeless. she could indeed be living on the margins or she could be a famous filmaker. she said she was a nurse. and she empathized wholeheartedly and just HAD to speak up (comrade in arms) about what an uphill battle it is to raise good teenagers. and what a good job i was doing. my kids stopped dead in their tracks and smiled from their hearts at her which made me forgive them for being spoiled brats because of course it's not their collective fault that they want blackberries and gold Marc Jacobs bags and Randy Rhodes guitars and too many games for the Wii. its' mine of course. i'm inconsistent and confused. and obviously it's a kids job to push the limits and a mom's job to set em. and god help us if i'm the designated driver.......

microwave mental hygiene

sometimes when i'm feeling really down and self destructive i stand too close to the microwave while heating up the kids' lunch. and sometimes when i'm feeling really frustrated by the state of the world, and how nothing i do seems to matter, and no one will vote for Obama, the only candidate with guts and passion, until Oprah kicks their butts....on days like that, i don't recycle water bottles. and as i commit that modern crime, i wonder to myself how long it will take for the stupid plastic bottle to decompose in the regular trash as opposed to the recyling bin which i understand just generates a lot of wasted energy too by the time they shlep all the recylables in a gas guzzling truck to the recycling plant and spend all the energy it takes to melt it down and turn it into something else. and speaking of pointless recycling, throw into the big blue trashcan that my ex is writing a Memoir at the ripe old age of 51 with the "voice" of a 17yo. yet another Recovering Addict story because we need another one of those. Laced with much homage to his 70s pop icon dad from whom he still wants approval. i call it Psych 101 meets Introduction to Photography. in fact, it's a thinly veiled 12 stepfordly attempt to meet chicks. and that too makes me wanna stand next to the microwave while i'm heating up the kids' lunches.

itsNOtimportANtWhatItisYouarELOoKingAtbuT....

more pondering of nancy's ID. nancy remembers the day michael told her that she needed an Identity. she didn't know she didn't have one till he pointed this out. she's been completely grateful to him ever since.

modern day absinthe

michael, the environmentally eternally sustainable designer. painted here on recycled Epson Matte Paper Heavyweight cardboard box

chappy chanukah

Carnivore Series/Female Jewish Physiognomy: TV Producer with wrinkled Neck

this is a TV Producer producing a new show called Cashmere Mafia. She is atheletic and has broad shoulders and is married to a man who is unatheletic with narrow shoulders. She is a fierce lioness - her own unique ruthless brand but honestly not unlike a lot of Jewish women i know. There is a strain of this in me and my daughter whose first words were "more meat". But our noses are less aqualine. So maybe my daughter and i are watered down versions. If we had this physiognomy we'd be producing tv shows instead of watching them.