Spare Parts

Correct me if I am wrong, but every time a holiday falls on a Monday, the remaining four days of the week feel like an eternity. It is as if you keep thinking: Gee! Is it still only Wednesday? That is somewhat how I have felt all this week, despite having Monday off. The week seemed painfully long and slow. Each day was a test in endurance and patience that was flowing like molasses through a funnel. Even though many people took this week off, the week started with some bad news, so that set the stage for a downturn. We found out a coworker died over the holiday weekend and he was only 38. News like that shakes the foundation of many people who are careless about their health because they think they are young and, thus, invincible. My history makes it impossible for me to feel the same, but I can grasp the concept well enough. It is only when you have to witness a death – for no apparent reason – of someone in your age group that you finally wise up. The news put a damper on the wee...

I am doing something different today. I am choosing to expand upon a previous entry ( The Pretty Girl ), taking it down a different road to explore, not only the feelings of the unpretty me of that piece, but to delve deeper into the psyche of the pre-teen and teen-aged female. I am using a personal experience to better illustrate it. It would be typical of our society to peg our male offspring as the aggressors and our females as the passive – Dogs and snails and sugar and spice and all that. However, any girl who has survived junior high school unscathed is able to say that she either witnessed aggressive, cruel physical or mental bullying, participated in it, or was a victim of it herself. When I was growing up, we did not have the benefit (or onslaught – depending on how you see it) of talk show hosts we have now to bring issues such as girl-on-girl bullying right into our living rooms. We did not have this lead-in and so we could not find a ladylike way to bring it to the dinner t...

As promised in a previous entry - - - - - - Here it is: The Sad and Tragic Tale of One Happy Sick Girl. In November of 1981, every little thing that was free sailing in my short little life felt as if it hit an iceberg in the dead of night. My world rocked uncontrollably and it has not settled itself yet. Reality bites. The things I remember with precise detail about the 24 hours before November 11, 1981 are that I had a tremendous crush on a hot Latin boy of 12, whose sloppy wet practice kisses made me feel like a natural woman even before my menstrual cycle did. I knew without a doubt that I was petrified to be leaving elementary school and going on to junior high and I was depressed because I found out my hot boy was going to be sent to a Catholic school and thus away from my meager public educated life. These were just the simple ramblings of a girl my age. Nothing going on at the time could have prepared me to go from normal, capricious girl to Sick Girl. On that cold and stormy N...

It is 1981 and it is my first year in junior high school. It is early September in the first few days of the new school year. My school is the Joseph Pulitzer Intermediate School #145. It is known more commonly as I.S. 145. I am standing in the cafeteria lunch line with a friend. I am pretending to be cool; when in reality my stomach is in knots. Just last year I was in 5th grade and in the oldest grade of the school. Now I am in 6th grade and in the youngest grade. The word freshman keeps circulating around me. The word is said like it is a bad thing. Kids that are just one or two years older than I am now tower over me. They are not exactly friendly. My school is in one the NYC’s five boroughs and, by default, completely overcrowded. In the crowds I get lost or become part of the pattern. The lunch line is run as if we are a herd of animals. It forms and remains orderly by lining us up in rows separated by aluminum bars bolted to the floor like the rides at Great Adventure. I am try...

By nature, I enjoy studying other human beings. In malls or airports, at restaurants or parks, I like to observe my fellow humans to try to understand some of the behaviors we all have. One of my favorite pastimes is watching and creating stories in my head for people I encounter in the subways of NYC. Everyone has a story and some of the folks I see underground make excellent subjects for tales I make up in my head. I can make these people part of my stories or make up entire books around them from merely a glance between subway stops. I go by what I see on their faces and their body language. I exam what they are wearing or carrying and how they mix in (or not mix in) with the general populace on board a subway car. This morning I see a man on the Q train holding one of NYC’s two free newspapers, the Metro news. His clothes are mismatched and his hair is uncombed. He looks like he has been up for days and he has a week’s worth of scruffy beard to show for it. Off his left hand, ...

Wow! We had three days to ourselves and here I am at the end of Monday and I already find there is a laundry list of things I had planned to accomplish that will go undone. I think this is a mental thing. It’s like the more time we’re given, the less capable we become. On a normal 24-hour day, we know that we have to get up, get to work, work a full day, get home, feed ourselves, bathe or shower and prepare to do it again the next day. And yet we manage to fit all these little pieces of the puzzle of our lives into the allotted 24-hour time frame. But give us a full day with no set plans and what do we do? No, I am serious, what do we do with it? I thought maybe you had the answer. I am asking myself how come I am still running around getting ready for the work week, when I should have had all this extra time today to be ready and maybe – possibly – be asleep in bed right now. Asleep…come on! If you know anything at all about me, you know that sleeping is not one of my strengths. I am ...

Well, here we are in the throes of another Memorial Day Weekend - Day 2. And as I shuffle through another plate of dead cow disks and long, by-product sticks on soft, similarly shaped buns, I can't help but wonder why we Americans celebrate every single event in our lives with food? How come no one ever says: "Hey, let's meet for some fruit juice tonight"? It will usually be coffee, which will inadvertently lead to something in the sweets family as an accompaniment. Why doesn't anyone say: "Oh, wow. It is great to see you again. We have got to meet up to ride bikes, soon." OR "Meet me after work and we'll take a walk around the park." OR ”I know this great track where we can run and walk our dogs." No, that would sound completely insane to us. Instead what we say is something along the lines of: "Let's do lunch." OR "Want to grab a bite later?" OR "We have to have you guys over for brunch-lunch-barbecue-din...

Normally the weather report doesn’t make such an impact that I should decide it is worthy of its own blog entry. However, as I mentioned yesterday, the month of May has been so rainy that a full four-day forecast of escalating 70+ degrees of sunny days makes an impact. Add that to the fact that it is Memorial Day weekend and a shot day at work and you know that I feel pretty damn great! Sunshine coupled with my early escape from work and a nearly empty office to start with has all the ingredients to start off the Memorial Day weekend with a bang! A little bird told me that I have made some references to my health (or lack thereof), but not fully delved into it. This brilliant birdie suggested I add some details to the mystery to avoid confusion. At first I thought, well that should bore someone to tears. But then I said: Oh, hell no! Not the way I will weave that tale! However, I am going to post that part in its own entry. Seeing as how it encompasses such a huge chunk of my existe...

Phew! There are some days when I wish I was an eagle or, at the very least, I wish I had the gift of flight. I know I described myself as a New Yorker living in New Jersey, but I have got to tell you that there are days - there are days - when the commuter in me makes hate the very subway system that suspends us all below ground! The NYC subway system, if you want to get technical, is really quite the architectural marvel. I mean this is the island of Manhattan. Yet beneath it, some brilliant minds saw fit to excavate gigantic portions to make tunnels to fit trains cars to transport commuters on an island that is a mere 13.4 miles long by 2.3 miles wide with extensions to all five boroughs. Now that is 'cojones', baby! Wait! I am not sure if Staten Island is among the privileged boroughs to fully connect with the City’s subway system. Yes, that's what we call it here - The City. It's an island but has its own persona, really. But back to that other island. Staten Is...

I am so sleepy, it's by sheer miracle that I don't hit the desk with my face. It's just been one of those days when all of the functions of your day can be accomplished in a seated position - darn that Bill Gates! I never even have to stand up and walk down the hall to talk to someone. Nope, we have email - thankyouverymuch!Sometimes, when I have been in one seated position for far too many hours, the image of that respected NBC newsreporter who died in Iraq comes to mind. Gruesome, I know... His name was David Bloom and he didn't die in an explosion or in enemy fire, as one would expect when reporting from a war torn country. No, David Bloom died of the most unfortunate luck. They claim it was the long hours he spent cramped in that army vehicle that led to his death. He'd complained of leg cramps and doctors suspected DVT - also known as deep veinous thrombosis - but true to his journalistic roots, David Bloom downed a couple of aspirin and went on working. Deep...

Hmm. It's not even 8 a.m. and I am already sitting at my desk at work having arrived a whole 47 minutes early. I know what you're thinking: How does this display of eagerness to reach the office coincide with those bitter expressions of Corporate America from a mere 24 hours ago? Well, to be honest what I do and what I say don't always harmonize. However, the feelings from yesterday remain. The thing is that I just don't like to be late anywhere, or be unprofessional at any job. I'm a closeted goody-two-shoes. There, I've said it. Sue me. Aside from sitting here in the pre-chaotic hours of the morning and in the deafing silence of the floor, I am sipping on that ever-present morning cup of joe. I have tried repeatedly to give up the crutch, but I am helpless and at its mercy. At least I am in good company, right? Famous last addict's words. The truth is that coffee is the antidote to what I take before bed each night. Stories go that Mr. Elvis Presely h...

Still stuck at the desk! I am currently wondering how I arrived at this age (you know – 30-something) still working For The Man in Corporate America. I dislike corporate. Don't get me wrong, I like my company now and what it stands for, etc. It isn't this one company I don't like. It is corporate as a whole that I am uncomfortable in. I hate its trivial tangling and full-of-crap rules. I despise the hierarchy that builds upon itself not by what you know, but by who you know. The every-where signs of favoritism that I witness, all carefully hidden in the proper wording and documentation, just sicken me. And the strange tactics used day in and day out make me feel - on a good day - like I am on a planet not our own. And this is not by any means a slight to my current employer, but an overall view of corporate as I have always seen it and lived it. Carbon copies of each other, no matter where you go! I find its daily routine suffocating and demoralizing. Corporate is defini...

Welcome! This is my first foray into Blogging and I am hoping not to make a complete fool of myself. Odd, you might say, considering the amount of writing I do and the passion I have for the "sport" of writing. What? You don't consider it sport? Well, if you had the limitations I do, this would be on your short list of activities that take a lot of (brain) muscle. I think it eerily appropriate that when I looked at the time I am starting my blog, it was 10:20 a.m. As a date, 10/20/40 holds great significance for me, as it was the birthday of my sweet mother, whom I lost in June 2006. There are a lot of reasons I feel like I let my mother down, but the main one remains that in her lifetime I never did anything so outrageously great that she could take with her. One of my dreams was to place a book in her hands that had the author listed as Marilyn Lara Puccio. The Puccio came after I married, but really I just wanted to give to her the gift that her daughter had taken ...