Thieves

I discovered this morning that in the span of 2 days ticket prices for a specific time frame went up 100 dollars. I understand that ticket prices are subject to change. But it seems a bit much in the span of 2 days. Not to mention that airlines give you absolutely nothing for these prices anymore. You can’t bring all the bags you want. You don’t get even get meals anymore. Almost all the seats are booked and sometimes even overbooked. It is criminal.


Lately a lot of things get on my nerves and mostly they are big institutions such as the airline industry. Apart from this insane bump of prices, there are the insane prices of flights that are prevailing. I was looking for tickets to go to either France or Italy from anytime between April and November and I have seen nothing less than 1000 per ticket. This just seems astounding to me for a few reasons (only because that’s all I can think of this morning):

1) As I mentioned before, you don’t get anything for these prices (you are charged for bags, get no meals, the flights are overbooked and/or crowded)

2) Airlines are supposed to be providing a service but lately flying is more an inconvenience than anything else. There are delays and flights are cancelled without notification. They can leave you stranded in some boondocks town spending more money for a hotel (Yet another expense) because you’ve been bumped off a flight or the flight no longer exists.

What makes me laugh even more by their tactics is how I get emails saying “discounted travel” or “sale fares” from these airlines. And when I go and look at the cost of these rates, they seem just as expensive as their ‘regular’ prices.

I remember a time when I could get a ticket to Europe for 500 bucks, which is still kind of pricey to me but far more reasonable than now-a-days. Those days, I’d get a meal, I could check in 2 bags, the flight was on time and it was relaxing. Now in order to pay that price to get to Europe, I have to go to Russia before I can even get half-way to my desired destinations in Western Europe. This is ridiculous because it’s wasting more fuel and everyone’s time.

Shoe Fetish

Almost every woman I know loves shoes. I am no different. Through the years the type of shoe has changed but still, I have a collection of them. I am fully aware of lust but never more so than earlier this week.


My office building was flooded due to Hurricane Sandy. It has since been closed but the contents of all of our desks were sent to us this week. I knew I had a lot of stuff in my old drawers and cabinets so when I saw three boxes I wasn’t surprised. I was surprised when I opened one of the boxes to find a LOT of shoes.

I used to go to the gym every day before work so I’d walk into the office with my sneakers. I’d change into shoes that coordinated with my outfit as I got into work. I didn’t think I had so many different outfits since I try to wear neutral colors but I had a pair of winter shoes and summer shoes for almost every basic color imaginable.

I decided free myself of some of the shoes because I’d have to bring all the contents of these boxes home. And home isn’t shoe free, I might add. I didn’t do as well as I wanted but I did toss out 3 pairs of shoes because they were worn down or I knew they would now be uncomfortable (Pregnancy really does change your foot as do electrical blackouts but that’s another blog entry).

Oddly in this same week, I also got a couple of packages because (that darn department store) Macy’s is having a shoe sale. It’s funny because I tend to see myself as a full-time sneaker wearer. Obviously the contents of my shoe closet say otherwise. The worse part is that if a particular pair is really comfortable, I crucify them through over usage. I guess that’s better than not using them at all, right? Please tell me this is a bad thing. I can’t tell by the way my husband looks away whenever I talk about shoes so maybe you can help me.

9 Months

Pregnancy is often referred to as 9 months. It’s actually 10 months but for some women who go into labor, it’s less than that. It’s probably been referred to as 9 months because most women don’t realize they are pregnant until a whole month has gone by. But I’m hazarding a guess.


What this entry refers to is actually the point in time when I realized my daughter will no longer be a baby. And it’s not that she’s actually 9 months old right now. It occurred to me as I was looking for footsie pajamas. When they are young, almost everything is a footsie pajama. Let me tell you a good pair of footsie pajamas are very hard to find after a certain age. They just aren’t as adorable as they are that young age

My daughter is growing every day and I can tell this because her clothes don’t fit her anymore or her diapers are getting tighter. As she develops and grows, I am simultaneously happy and sad. She’s healthy, happy and edible. The fact that she’s growing means time is going by quickly and I can’t contain her in this particular stage (and this is an adorable stage!).

As I look at pictures and see newborns in the neighborhood, I remember her at those ages with such fondness. But it wasn’t even that long ago! Now I just take in as much of my time with her as I can. Because it will only go faster, I fear.

Radio Killer

Lately in order to drown out the noise around me in the office, I’ve been listening to internet radio on my phone. The first two days it was great. I was hearing news and keeping up with current events. I was even feeling up-to-date with music. And it also really helped to quiet the incessant office noise.


I found a couple of really cool Italian and French radio stations as well as local ones that I started to listen to. However as of this week I think I’ve gotten too much of a good thing. No matter which American station I listen to, they play the same songs over and over to the point where you wonder if any other songs exist. And if you happen to not like the song, it’s becomes an earworm that plagues your dreams.

It’s also happened on the French stations I’ve been trying out. It’s not as incessant but it’s getting there. Maybe next week, I’ll try something else to drown out the office noise – perhaps I’ll bring in a jack hammer and start drilling around my desk.

Throughout this week, I kept thinking about that song in the 80s ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’. I’ve decided that the new version should be ‘Radio Killed the Song Star’.

Carrots Everywhere

It’s time to eat


Tonight’s meal is not feet

Remove them from your mouth

The spoon approaches your face

You act like it is mace



Carrots over here

Carrots over there



With no teeth you grin at me

It’s unfair; you are so pretty

The second attempt heads south

Subsequent attempts are as bad as the first

Except the mess is the worst



Carrots in your hair

Carrots everywhere

(Dedicated to my daughter and often sang to her while cleaning her up)

GP(api)S

My dad had a great sense of direction. Having driven for so many years in Italy, Canada and in New York, he had a terrific instinct for when he was heading the wrong way. He had internal GPS before Garmin or any of those other companies did.

Despite this fact he wasn’t the most patient driving teacher or passenger. He taught both my sister and brother how to drive. He attempted to do so with me but after a few occasions of grabbing the steering wheel and taking control from the passenger seat, I told him that he was making me nervous. He told me to get driving lessons from a school then and to pay for it myself. Oh well.

After finally getting my driving license, having him in the car was trying. He would tell me how to get places by saying “Follow that red car” (substitute any color car you want, it was always the same). I’d look out onto the road and see 10 red cars. I’d ask him which one and he’d say ‘the one on the right’. Of course, there were 4 red cars on the right. This would result in a dispute of my asking him to be more specific. To which he’d get upset and then we’d end up missing the exit. Or the times when he’d tell me to prepare to make the exit. I’d approach the nearing exit and he’d say ‘not this one’. I’d look ahead but wouldn’t notice another exit but over on the right, a small, service exit would pass us. Then I’d hear a grumble and an ‘ugh’ because he was trying to teach me a short cut.

As my driving experience grew, he became more comfortable with my driving. We found a way to compromise. I asked him to tell me all the directions ahead of time, with visual markers. This made us both calmer and relaxed. The trips became easier to the point that my dad would fall asleep while I drove. This was the ultimate example of his trust in my driving. Sadly, one time he was snoozing and we had an accident. My first instinct wasn’t to save myself but to save him because I was afraid the shock would give him a heart attack. Even though he had his seat belt on, I put my hand out to hold him back. In doing so I braced myself and injured my knee but at least he was fine.

After the accident I insisted that I drive home even though I was shaken up. He said “Good! That’s what you should do. Get back behind the wheel!” Even though he had been sleeping, he blamed the whole accident on the other driver. It was very sweet although there was no basis in his opinion except that he thought I was a good driver and based on how the marks in the street were plotted.

I remember so many arguments and fights in the car with my dad. I was reminded of them all this past weekend when we went to visit a family member. I thought about all those debates fondly because it was such a familiar event whenever I was driving the car. At the time he drove me absolutely insane but I’d rather have those moments now than not.

Scratch and Sniff

I have become highly sensitive to perfumes and colognes. It started when I was pregnant and it’s gotten progressively worse since. I can’t even be around people with cologne and perfumes without my eyes starting to tear up. My nose starts to run and I begin to sneeze. If the exposure is long enough, I start to get headaches too.

This curious situation seemed psychosomatic to me at first. Maybe I just don’t like their cologne and that’s why I am having a reaction. Unfortunately it wasn’t that easy.

I first noticed the problem when a number of visitors came by to see the baby and their perfume made me want to hurl. I didn’t understand why they were wearing perfume to see a baby in the first place because I know how sensitive baby skin can be. But that’s neither here nor there. Then one day in a conference, a guy sat two seats down from me. I could smell his cologne from where I was sitting. When I actually left the meeting, the smell of his cologne was on me. I spent a couple of minutes thereafter in the bathroom trying to clean off the smell from my clothing.
That’s when I realized it wasn’t the smell so much as the obscene quantity of perfume and cologne that people wear that gets to me. I occasionally wear perfume but my spritzes don’t go past 3 pumps. I don’t think everyone should be subjected to my scent. I even tend on the lighter side by pumping twice.

I realize that a lot of the people that wear scents are certain ethnic groups. While I understand that it's cultural and tied to how someone presents themselves, I don't think that others should be tortured by your choices. I don’t think that people should leave a trail like Pepe le Pew wafting behind them when they wear perfume.

Why do people need so much cologne or perfume? If you shower on a daily basis, the smell of cleanliness usually works and isn’t offensive. I guess I also don’t understand because perfume is expensive. If you have enough money to pour a whole bottle on yourself on a daily basis, it just seems excessive to me. I guess people want to make an impression by having their scent linger in the air days past the time they were even in that room. There have to be other ways to make an impression on people without choking them or spending so much money. I always thought a witty comment or a good handshake and nice smile always made a good impression on others. Guess I'm old fashioned and nose sensitive.

Office Space

The trend in office real estate of recent years has been to create more open and common spaces for the peons who do the daily grunt work. It didn’t used to be this way but it’s progressively gotten worse as have people’s workplace manners.


When I first started to work in office buildings, I had my own personal cubicle with tall walls (they didn’t reach the ceiling but still they were pretty high up to cover most tall people’s sight) on 3 sides and a space in the fourth wall that was an entrance to my space. People would need to come into the common aisle in order to see what people were doing at their desks. Normally I didn’t care about people looking in because I was working. But I did know some people who enjoyed this ‘privacy’ because they were known to take naps on the job. If people had phone conversations, they would generally keep their voices low. If the need for gossip arose, they generally kept those discussions in areas away from people’s desks. Overall, I felt productive and could concentrate

The next office I occupied still had three walls but they were much shorter and the fourth wall was missing but because of the spacing of the other 3 walls, it seemed more open than my first one. People could see their co-workers across the aisles but generally everyone minded their own business and kept their personal conversations to a minimum or to a very super quiet decibel level. At that time, people also had meetings in person because everyone they dealt with was usually in the vicinity.

As my business groups have become more spaced out globally, more conference calls were needed. With that requirement, the opening of the space around my desk got bigger and less private and personal. In the last few years, it’s been maddeningly annoying because everyone else is also on as many calls as I am on, or more. Others feel the need to conduct those calls on speaker phone, or while walking around the office so that we can all hear them ‘working’.

I have often become a third party to many very private phone calls without my being complicit in them. I just happen to sit in the row next to these people, for the love of sugar! I don’t want to know these things. They are so loud that even with my ipod in my ears at a high volume, I can hear everything. I feel horrible knowing things about people that I shouldn’t know.

For instance today, I was accosted by a conversation between two co-workers in the area next to mine. They went on for about 20 minutes on how one of them got some great deals on clothes. I turned up the U2 on my ipod but Bono really couldn’t do much to drown out the eyelet top and denim vest that was purchased. I heard the colors and the coupons that were used. I wanted to shoot myself. After this information session finished, I got to hear the clicking of the long fingernails on both of their keyboards. It made my heart flutter and not because spring felt like it finally arrived. It made me want to vomit and not in the same way as my recent spinning class.

Friends have told me to speak up but really, what can you say to certain people? You know the types. When you tell them something nicely and they decide to get even by being even louder. I had the suspicion these people would act that way if I pointed out their loudness to them.

I complained to my friend who said that maybe we should have department heads and executives sit in these open cubes. To which I replied “if they did that, I’d make sure there was a daily visit from a high school marching band.”

It’s so sad that I need to listen to my ipod to drown out other people’s noise while I work. It’s horrendous that this behavior persists and is getting worse. I really don’t know why everyone feels they need to be so inconsiderate. And then people wonder why I dislike going to work in an office. Yes, camaraderie is nice and might be good for innovation. More often than not, it’s a source of high blood pressure and frustration.

Mistaken Identity

Yesterday was the first day of Passover. When I got to work, my boss asked if I would be leaving early. I thought the question was weird. I said “Not unless the snowstorm they are predicting gets really bad.” He didn’t know it was supposed to snow. He then walked away.


It was only later on that a realized why he was asking me if I was leaving early. My boss thought I was Jewish. He himself is Jewish.

I have been mistaken for Jewish since I was really young. Granted I did have a “jewish grandmother” (C.f. entry entitled My Jewish Grandmother), I never understood why people made that assumption. Was it because I lived in a very Jewish neighborhood in NYC and was a little bit sassy and had chutzpah? What made non-Jews think this about me? After a while I decided it was based on the stereotype that people had of Jewish people having big noses. I have a very Roman nose. A Roman nose, not a Jewish nose. I honestly don’t even know what a Jewish nose looks like. I didn’t get too upset about it because I figured that the people asking me if I was Jewish were not Jewish themselves and they were making assumptions based on very dumb criteria.

Then a lot of Jewish people mistook me for Jewish and then I was confused beyond belief. What I assumed was just an intolerant and ignorant comment in the past was now coming from the people who would know best. I still to this day don’t know why people think this about me but that’s fine. I didn’t think I acted like any of my Jewish friends. I guess that in this world of mixed races and ethnicities, it’s understandable. But it’s still baffling. It makes me really want to look up my family tree and see if there isn’t some basis for this common confusion surrounding my identity.

Counterintuitive

I dragged myself to another spinning class yesterday. One of my friends ended up meeting me there although we didn’t sit close to each other as we had in the previous week’s class. In general it’s hard to get to gym when you aren’t used to it. When I was going almost every day before pregnancy, I’d practically jump out of bed and be at the gym without a single doubtful thought entering my mind.


Lately it’s tougher. I find myself justifying reasons to not go. I have to floss my teeth. Hey, we are out of milk. My toe nail polish is coming off. Whatever insignificant reason, I’ll use it. However the main reason is I’m tired. Or I’m in pain from running 5 insane hours of errands the day before! Anyway, I did get there which is a big step.

For some reason, maybe 10 minutes into this class, I wanted to vomit. It’s not something I like to associate with exercise but on occasion it happens. Mostly I breathe through the huffing and puffing and hope it will go away. It did subside a few minutes later only to rear its head again about 10 minutes after that. I pushed through it as much as I could. I found myself breathing harder and harder. Not enough to pass out but it was getting there. Again, I focused on my breathing to try to get the nauseated feeling to go away. It worked momentarily.

I adjusted the resistance on the bike to drink water and try to recover. It felt better. The last few minutes of class, my heart was pumping as if I had been chased by a ravenous bear. Finally the class was over! Phew!

We stretched and left class. I met up with my friend and she commented too on wanted to throw up. I felt better because I thought it was just me. Everyone coming out of the class looked generally like they had been hanging by cliff with their nails. Ahhh so it was just a tough class!

I was telling my friend how this one instructor told me that if you feel like throwing up in a class that it was a good thing. It meant you were pushing yourself and your heart. I also recalled telling that instructor that I never considered wanting to vomit a good thing, especially since it’s something I try to avoid in general since it feels so horrible. I guess there are a lot of things in life that are a bit counterintuitive. Sometimes you are skeptical and think it’s you but usually there are others who feel the same way. That’s always a relief.