I don’t know if it’s just here in
the L.A. area or not, but I’ve noticed that the female weather reporters on the
local stations are getting sexier. They
are CERTAINLY dressing sexier. My
husband & I now refer to them as the “Weather Sluts”. There used to be a bridal shop next door to a
café we frequented for breakfast. Their
wedding gowns were OK, but we saw a red satin dress we couldn’t believe. So tacky!
We figured it was for the Mother of the Slut.
Our son took us, his family &
his in-laws to the Cayman Islands & we visited Sting Ray City. In this area, the water is calm, clear as
glass & about waist high. You stand
in the water surrounded by hundreds of sting rays. (Yes, it was a sting ray that killed Steve
Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter. He got
stung in the heart.) These were very
docile & as long as you didn’t get them excited you were perfectly
safe. They’re used to human contact
& associate it pleasantly with food.
It was a weird feeling to have them swim through & brush against
your legs! You could even pick them up
(they feel like a wetsuit) as long as you used both hands & held them on
your lower arms like a heavy tray. Did
you know their faces are on the bottom of their heads? We went snorkeling later in a different part
of the Caymans. I’d never seen so many
beautifully colored fish. What a
wonderful trip that was!
Bud & I were at Crater Lake, in
Oregon. It’s in the caldera of an
extinct volcano & when it’s not ruffled by wind, the water’s surface is
like a mirror. It is a stunning
sight. The roads had been cleared of
snow the day before we went. We were
standing by ourselves looking at the gorgeous lake when I said to Bud, “I wonder
how deep the snow is?” All of a sudden a
shovel pops up not two feet from us & a voice comes from an unnoticed hole
in the snow & says, “This deep!”
My grandmother absolutely adored
Bud. The two of us were at her house for
dinner one night & she had put a tablecloth on her Formica table. I said that I had been eating there for years
& I NEVER saw a cloth on that table.
She told me sternly it was NOT for me.
I pouted & said, “Bubby, you used to like me” & she said, “You used
to be my granddaughter.” I asked, “What
am I now?” She put her hand on Bud’s
shoulder, smiled & said, “Now you’re HIS wife!” I could swear I heard the word “HIS” in
capital letters--& with harps playing! More
“Bubbyisms”: She always used to say, “forth & back”, never “back &
forth”. I guess she figured (&
rightly so) you had to get there before you could return. Maxwell House ran an ad campaign announcing
their instant coffee was made with “coffee buds”. She wouldn’t drink it—she thought they said
“coffee bugs”. The Yiddish diminutive of
a name is made by putting “ela” on the end—Jack would be Jackela. I met a girl named Pamela & brought her
to meet Bubby. She asked, “What am I
supposed to call her—Pamelaela?” When I was
growing up she had a bird that talked.
Like my grandmother, the bird had a Yiddish accent.
When Sizzler Restaurants first
opened, they didn’t have waiters. You
picked up your own food & brought it to your table. I used to go there fairly often for dinner
with the kids if my husband was working late.
Normally, they had no problem in getting our orders correct. This particular night was another story. I have 3 children & 2 of their orders
were wrong. I didn’t find out the second
was wrong until I returned to the table with the first corrected order, so back
I went. I came back to discover that
mine was wrong, too! I didn’t have
either the energy or the patience to make a third trip, so I asked my 8 year
old son, who had finished his meal, to do it for me. I waited, in my red pants-suited splendor,
for him to return. When he did, he told
me the cook asked him, “Is your mother wearing red?”
Yes,
this IS me. Why did you even have to
ask?
A holiday dilemma:
You know how most packages say "Open here"--what is the protocol if the package says "Open somewhere else"?----fishducky