Ina, Ina the ultimate Dinna- we’re stuffing the chickens, we’re making the pies- can’t even imagine the width of our thighs. Your flowers are blooming, your smile so strong, so how you and Jeffrey Really getting along? We’re thinking of popovers from Silver Palate Days- depends on the hour, depends on the day. As long as we’re distancing from our own malaise, we’ll take out the pan and follow your ways. We are cooking and drinking – and ordering our meat and every so often we’ll bake up a sweet. Your reruns we’re watching as you cook with aplomb, we’re shaking martinis measuring more then a thumb. When all this is behind us and you open your door we trust you’ll be smiling as you set the table for Four.

We set the tables- one for a game of play the other for lunch. Check with Sonos, our unwavering music pal, fill the coffee table with treats, unlatch the door and wait with anticipation for the women to arrive. The day is analogous to moments of enjoyable pleasures we have gathered along our journeys. We aim for cheerful friendliness. With zero ambiguity and the absence of pushy tactics we roll the dice. Celebrating our time together is optimum. Yes we compete but know that ultimately “Everyone Wins.” After our day of play a friend and I debriefed our time together. Her mother, who also played the game, gave her a sound piece of advice. She told her above all to make sure you really enjoy the ladies you sit down with. This is ultimately how I live my life now. Weeding out disappointments, striving for better fits. Merely overlooking much more. We bask in treasured certainty- pleased, proud… Amazed at how good it can be- astonished by it’s capacity for sudden bursts of brilliance. “Fill my heart with song and let me sing forevermore.” Let’s make it a great day! Again soon, short term goal #justhavefunseries.

Norman Lear’s line in Carl Reiner’s documentary on aging “If You’re Not in the Obit, Eat Breakfast,” says so much. His credo is find your “hammock” and live in the “now.” As he sees it the transition of time in between the “ok it’s over, to what’s next, is when his productivity kicked in. 

HBO launched the show, catch it if you can. Mel Brooks is funny, Dick Van Dyke dances, Norman Lear is brilliant,  Carl Reiner hosts. They are all Nonagenarians.

A big take away message is if you spend too much time working off disappointments and complications you will be one miserable soul. Excuses hold no water when they are used without discretion. Limiting your “woe is me’s” gives you more time to go for the gold. Get hugged, get attention where the tariff is reciprocal and strong. “And I love you so.”

The future might be an assumption but when you “find yourself in times of trouble ,” find your version of Mother Mary and become the ambassador of your estate. One thing the long “livers”had in common, whether or not chopped “liver” and french fries were mainstays, is that they fell in love with lots of things. They attached passion to their activities. Cole Porter, hit it- “The night is young, the skies are clear-So if you want to go walking dear. It’s delightful, it’s de-lovely, it’s delirious. Make it a good one!

As I often theme my writing with the concept of “just do it now” I am traditionally reflecting back on the year just lived. Some days our get up and go is pro forma. Our time to make the donuts occurs in a knee jerk fashion. Some days our knee jerks. My Bubby Chicken, for those in the know- phrased the difficult times with a “just look away mamala.” Oh Bubby I believe now more then ever that your schmaltze and sugar laden food added wisdom to your 95 years. You didn’t exercise, but you never sat down. You worked the majority of your life and when you stopped formally working you worked at whatever you did. As you gathered your loved ones around the table, your emotional nutrition sustained us and your cooking created memories that still linger. We talk about your baking as treasures. We reminisce about your traditions and the intensity is still palpable. How lucky my sisters and cousins were to have Our Bubby Chicken. So at this time when uncertainty and fear is being served up in prodigious proportions, we turn our daily prayers to a time where panic, disorientation and the certainty of loosing lives is not sitting first row first seat. Why not exhume your Grandma, Grammy or Bubby memories. Hanging with her babies and watching them grow into themselves was her Pilates, her group therapy and our legacy. So Bub, here’s to our days gone by. We carry you in our hearts and tapping into your Sechel gives us reasons to believe especially when we loose our way. When we played musical chairs and the music stopped, you pulled over one extra chair so we all stayed in the game. And by the way I spend more time “looking the other way,” as my knee jerks.

People complaining on social media about things being canceled due to corona. ….. I wish you could see what we see on a daily basis. #countyourblessings#endrant
My precious 28 year old niece is a trauma unit nurse at Westchester Medical Center. She excels at what she does and was assigned to help run the corona unit when this pandemic exploded. This was her post (see above) today at lunchtime on social media when she took a break from adjusting the percentage of air flow into her patients lungs who breathe because of a machine. Without explanation further- we all know the limitations and change of life lifestyle we have succumbed to because of this virus. So stop complaining when the brand of hand wipes you ordered was substituted with another one or your canasta game was kicked off line because of high volume. Oh -and while we are all taking precautions in whatever way we find comforting or respectful so as to not spread the virus, let’s understand that we are all gropping in the dark trying to do the best we can to work toward the same goal. Safe and sound in whatever way we can. All for one and one for all. Forgive everyone everything- especially now. The disease is killing us as a nation, lend a hand whenever you can.

And then just like this we are home, confined to our thoughts and how they leap from page to page. Exhuming memories of a time other than this situates-us in a better position than staying stuck in this place. Who matters and who doesn’t? Are there expiration dates on relationships when put to the stay at home test. There are people who fill a seat at the table of games only because you need an extra player. There are friends and family members you would mourn if you never met up with again. Bottom line time to clean the collections of people in your world. History accounts for so much, but it doesn’t mean you need to start another chapter if your story has ended

• 

Housekeeper, housekeeper when were you here, it’s only a month but feels like a year. With honor and glory I hand you respect- there are so many things I’d didn’t expect. With dust balls and clutter and schmutz on the floor I’m cutting through grease spots and so very much more. My hands are so brittle in spite of the gloves, my elbows left scratchy cause I’m scrubbing with love.

Through quarantined isolation I am down on my knees, when I get up it’s you I will please. The future’s a bit clearer, so now we can see, I’m heading back down to beg on my knees. Tomorrow we’ll change our once a week sheets, I can’t wait to hear you are just down the street. Lysol, and hand wipes and swifters galore. From now going forward it’s you I adore.

Humpty Trumpty sat on a wall – 

Humpty Trumpty had a windfall

 Alexander Hamilton was constitutionally correct

A thud like Donald he’d never expect 

Through tweeting and twitching he drove his point across

The United States of America, well yeah, we want a divorce

From this wild man of loose tongue

We will run and we’ll hide

Putting aside every ounce of our pride

We scream can this be happening at noon Jan.20

This is alarmingly serious in the absence of funny.

We confess we accept, this fate to be had -Our four years ahead portend to be bad- We’ll listen very closely and circumspect when need be. By the dawns early light, O say can you see!

And then one day I just stayed in bed, under the covers, eating mozzarella cheese. A mental health day? Perhaps. A day of feeling sorry for our mess of a country moment, indeed. With so many things on my “to do”list the pathetic state of affairs has immobilized me. I got tagged and today I’m It. Devastatingly in a crowd of millions. We are barely living through the Kavanaugh Countdown. With no obvious panacea, but time, I long to watch reruns of Dobie Gillis, I Married Joan and Topper. I derive comfort in exhuming memories of eating a can of Buitoni ravioli after school before I left to go to my algebra tutor. Gornisht Heflin, I barely passed the class anyway. Did anyway need to know what a parallelogram or a quadrilateral was ever?
Ah, simple joy of listening to AM radio on the drive over. The days when one of our greatest pleasures was hearing the Temptations, as we were “not to proud to beg” while we waited to be built up by buttercups, knowing at this point it was the “worst that could happen.” Run on counters I know. I’d drive under the tressel , make my way through third ward park and look to see if my latest boyfriends car was parked there. How easily serotonin and endorphin rushes happened in the long ago and far away days, we so long for now. If only we were living the days when busy signals offered the worst of frustrations. When setting our hair with pink plastic rollers and enduring the fumes of Aqua Net hairspray was one of our toughest endurances. Only if, our not so guilty pleasures were peanut cheddar crackers, Ring Dings or Funny Bones and a can of Tab, the acronym for the first (Totally Artificial Beverage). With lots of quarters, nickels and dimes I’d stop to get my algebra snack at the candy store next to Jan, Jill and Jon on Main Avenue. Shout out to Rhoda and Seymour Zucker ( antique aficionados) for 50 years . What a run. Side bar, your Honor. Those were the times before rats were tested for lethal saccharine levels. Loved the rush from Tab.
So we wait under the covers with bated breath as we watch as our future decisions will be weighed in by one more unstable narcissist who has perfected the art of lying through his teeth. We pray for the times we imagined that when Cosmo Topper, married Joan the only thing that was artificial was the beverage he toasted with. Hashtag Sad.

I am officially the corona moan-a!
Getting ready for a “go to humor” virtual committee meeting sometime I think today or tomorrow or in the next 100 years that we are in quarantini. I like my apartment but every freakin corner is now too clean. Not only do I need a manicure, like desperate in nature, I think I need a pinky transplant. I hear beeps- yeah like beeps and I don’t know where they are coming from- did you ever? I am rounding out the bottom of the hand lotions and I am hunting for those airplane give aways with the mini bottles. Just for today to maintain that one increment of Sanity (capital S like in wishful thinking), I vow not to touch any baggies, tin foil, saran wrap, dishwasher powder or a sponge. I am so over sponges- I can’t. I kiss the mezzuha’s, rub the Buddha Bellies, and say Shemas at the major shrine a.k.a. the refrigerator every single day and Gornisht Helfn. Ok, so the lights are on, the dishwasher unloaded, dinner is defrosting on the hermetically clean counter- (no cross contamination here)- and now that we are tapped out on Netflix-I’m searching on prime and hulu for what we can binge for the next 8 hrs. Signing off from the go to humor committee member. Flip it and have a good day!