I suck gettiing along with difficult people

The witch on the top floor of my five floor building threw my cat into my apartment today.

He likes to escape when I do my laundry (the only time I leave my door unlocked). But he just had bladder surgery and she knows it. She said he was scared by the “kids” going to the party on the fourth floor (above me). But she just opened my door and threw him in!!!!

When I met her again in the laundry room, I told her that I would try to make sure Clancy doesn’t “escape” again without me knowing, but I would like to ask her to just ring my bell, so I can get him, rather than picking him up. I explained he just had surgery and the danger of ripping the stiches was bigger than him being scared by the guests in the hall.

Well, she just got loud and defensive. and I did not handle it well. I repeated myself: I am just asking you not to pick up my cat again. She got more defensive. I said, “all you have to do is apologize and agree not to pick up my cat again, as you might not know his circumstances. I will try not to let it hapen again, but if it does, please, just ring my bell.”

Again, she’s like “i worked for a vet and I know what I’m doing…and I have two cats.”

And I’m like, “i don’t need to be best friends with you. I just need you to agree to not pick up my cat again.”

And she fumed….leaving the laundry room, saying, “i guesss I’ll leave you to yourself.”

Yeah. That did not go well.

today I break from LSAT hell

I’ve been trying to spend lots of time prepping for the LSAT exam in June. If I get a good enough score, I get into a decent law school, and I prepare for a second true career. I was once an economist (15 years) then a stay at home mom and artist (12 years…but neither was profitable! ) and art therapist (2 years, definitely not profitable).

Yesterday, despite a lot of breaks…I made a great deal of progress plowing through the material assigned by Stratus Prep, the company I signed up for to help me get a better score. I didn’t stop till 10:30. This morning I did a few exercises . Yay! they came naturally , after struggling with the same types of problems yesterday and wondering if I was brain dead.

Now I am putting away the books: Off to my kettlebells workout, then my horse for an hour lesson. This is a four-hour commitment, including driving time, training with my instructor, and caring for the hors).

Then I WILL just shower and hopefully have a nice date with Eric if he doesn’t cancel (which I still fear he will…he’s that overcomitted,and sometimes things come up last minute…. I will not take it personally). Regardless, I’m going to take a break from these hellish workbooks.

I need it. I will probably feel guilty. But I think like working out — for your muscles to strengthen, you need days off from hauling the weights.

Do you drink milk?

I have to admit, I have a lot of not so great drinking habits! But as a middle aged women (yuck…what an awful term!), milk is important for bone density and avoiding osteoporosis — something I really don’t want.

I’m not going to say I’m “healthy” in all my drinking habits. Yup, I’ve wondered if I’m an alcoholic (I’m not), but I do like my wine and my favorite drink is a Manhattan (bourbon, vermouth and bitters, with a marachino cherry). I can and do go days without any alcohol, and I’ve never had a beer in the morning, lol, so I think I pass the non-alocholic test, heheh.

Even though I try to be healthy, my second favorite, and most consumed beverage is diet softdrinks (love FRESCA!), and on a positive note, I love grapefruit juice!

But milk! I can’t do without it. Maybe it makes up for the softdrink and liquor vices.

I like milk plain in a glass, I like it as a chocolate eggcream. Yeah… I really like these. There is no egg involved. They are a New York fav at old fashioned ice-cream shops and are made with chocolate syrup, milk and seltzer! And of course, I like my milk over cereal.

How about you? Do you drink milk, and what liquid “vices” will you admit to?

I will cry, btw, I think as I take another break

Taking yet another break from these hellish LSAT prep worksheets, I’m doing the hard prep work for dinner with Eric tomorrow.

I swear I will cry if he cancels.

I don’t want him to know how difficult and time consuming the dish I’m planning is. So, today I’m doing the hard parts and anything that can be done ahead without sacrificing freshness. I’ll be able to do only the easy parts while he’s here; he’ll never know what went before.

The dish — Shrimp and Cheese-stuffed Roasted Poblanos with Red Pepper Sauce — is something I’ve made before and goes over big when entertaining: It has a lot of different flavors and textures, including, cilantro, shrimp, goat cheese, montery, and two kinds of roasted peppers. A nice mix of heat and sweet, crunch and cream.

But anything good takes work.

yeah…better get back to that test book.

Banging my head against the wall

I don’t know if I took the wrong LSAT prep class, or if I’m just DENSE about some things.

I decided to use a relatively new company, SRATUS prep, instead of the more well known companies, such as Kaplan, because:

a) they claimed they had the highest point increase in the industry, but b) much more importantly, they had a schedule that fit with my life. I just couldn’t go to a night class five days a week for instance, and for some reason, the schedule that was coming up when I was looking for a course had classes on Dad Saturdays and Tues & Thur nights.

But I’m really frustrated. My group happens to have the founder as the teacher, and instead of speaking slowly and saying everythiing once, he speaks really fast and repeats himself so much I want to kill him. We are behind schedule in the class itineray and we haven’t done more than a few real life questions. So far it’s all in the abstract.

Moreover, I know more about his past boyfriends and his love life than I really want to know. I even blurted out –“Too Much Information!” last class.

And, then there is the problem that I’m not so sure his methods are the best way for me to learn.The pressure is on because my test date is June 7.

Taking practice tests now makes me feel better because I can do much of the work (without the pressure of time if I don’t use a times), but makes me feel like shit because I panic and fuck up as soon as I put the timer on.

The class is supposed to give me the tools to take this standardized test so that I can jump around, identify and skip the very hard questions” and automatically translate questions into a logical easy to solve framework. So far it’s not working, because the abstract stuff is just confusing me (I keep having to look at the index cards I made up as cheat sheets). Plust the course book, is so poorly written — big strings of paragraps instead of bullet points — I want to re-write the darn thing.

Anyway. Thanks for listening to me. Can you hear the walls cracking? Bang. Bang. Bang.

How Racially Open are You?

After Dan’s question on how many people you’ve dated, I pondered my very large tally, and couldn’t help but notice how racially diverse it was!

I realize that those of you who enjoy eating gravy and live in Iowa (ok, bad joke) might not actually even be exposed to a lot of ethnic and racial diversity. But just for fun, how many ethnicities are represented by your friends? How many ethnicities are represented by those you’ve dated (whether you slept with them or not)?

For me, I was pretty happy to realize that the globe is pretty wll much covered! Testament to the fact that I’m pretty color-blind, I’ve dated, men with Italian, Black (Haitian), Peurto Rican, Greek, German, Cyprian, Jewish (mutt), Russian, Irish, English, Scottish, Filipino, Canadian, and Argentinian cultural backgrounds and racial heritages. (There are probably more but that’s all I could think of for now.) The cultures of those of friends, extend further, to Indians, Chinese, Japanese, Belizian, Swedish, French, and who knows what else!

How about you? Do you consider yourself racist or racially accepting? And do your friends and dating patterns support that claim?

I’m in hell punctuated by sex

               +       =bearable hell
(hell)                                    (sex)

There’s something about sex that makes even the roughest patches in my life bearable. Call it a hedonistic tendency of mine if you want. Call it whatever you want.

But I got a surprise booty call at 8 this Am from Eric and it’s making practicing this hellish LSAT exam bearable today!

The test sucks. “The LSAT is about “NOTHING” as the prep folks say. You can’t memorize for it …. you just have to learn the tricks to beat the test masters and boost your speed.

Practicing for NOTHING is not fun. But having the torture punctuated by pleasure, well, is fun. Plus Eric brought coffee and breakfast, lol.

For those of you who want to know what the heck I’m talking about, the LSAT is a law school admissions test. Eric is my firefighter fantasy man come to life.

Back to the boring/hellish part:  Financially, I could probably swing not going back to work, but I have to. I have a good 20 years of potentially super productive life ahead of me, and I want a challenging job like the one I left on Wall Street. A return to economics is out of the question, and I just love reading and research — a big part of the work done by economists and corporate lawyers (No, I don’t want to be a divorce lawyer, lol, I want to spend my time in an office, reading and drafting and writing).

I signed up for a prep class & I’m going to do it. The instructor thinks I should take the October Exam, to allow more practice test time, but I’m going to cram till I’m purple to take in in June.

I already took this useless exam twice in my life and just want to get it over with. With unlimited time I can do this piece of garbage test with 100% accuracy. I need to learn the tricks to do it fast. So June it is.

Thanks, E, for making today’s cramfest a little more bearable. So mannequin A is wearing the Red Skirt…Which color jacket could mannequin B wear? haha…this stuff is so stupid.

PS:   The first time I took it was after college when I made it to the 98th percentile after a Kaplan cram prep class (I also wasn’t bipolar, so I didn’t have to take the drugs I take now that affect my cognitive ability). The second time was five years ago when I got in the 79th percentile by just taking ten billion practice exams on my own and never getting any better (The fact that I took it five years ago, just before my 3 1/2 year  divorce started made going to law school and actually doing well impractical; it also meant it was long enough ago that the score expired in December, ugghh)

A 79th percentile result would definitely get me into a bottom tier school, or, if probably into a medium tier school, like Fordahm, which I had been wait listed for in ’06. Yes, it stinks that I didn’t realize the score would expire. But this time I’m going to take it with prep and I going to raise my score 5 points (that’s my goal).

 

40 days of church? FAIL!

Michelangelo, Fall of Man (detail)

FORTY DAYS OF CHURCH? 
FAIL!
or “my ups & downs in the Catholic religion”

So this Catholic raised girl is not particularly literal or religious in her religion, to be honest.

Church?  I stopped when I was 19.  It just so happend that the first homily that I heard in church after I had an unfortunate abortion in college  was about the evils of abortion! (what are the chances of that happening?).  I didn’t return to a church until I had my daughter babtized. 

Then it came time for First Holy Commnion. I decided to teach the class so my daughter would go: three years. My belief in the ways of this guy, Jesus, who most certainly lived around 2AD, definitely became elevated. Teaching to children is the best way to get to the “core” of the message. No matter the topic.  Did I believe in the miracles?  No. I have always held that they were parables, meant to teach.  Do have “faith?” Yes, in a broad sense: I believe that Jesus existed and that  and  he clearly spoke of ways of living –and showed by example ways of living — that can only benefit those who “practice” what he preached. A lot of it has to do with not being judgemental, being loving, being charitable and foregiving. How can any of this be bad?  

Do I hold to the Catholic Chatecism? Fuck No. And, I don’t believe many of the stories in the Gospels of the new testemant actually, literally, occured (Like one loaf of bread feeding a throng).  The first installment, John, wasn’t even written until 100 years after Jesus’ death. And that was the first one. Oral tradition can only be so accurate, especially when religion is concerned and parable works to teach and amaze the masses. (Although it always stuck me as quite a feat  that the Oddessey was passed down orally….I don’t think I could recite a full page and pass it on without mistakes!!! And that is one loooonnng  book)

Anyway…..for some reason, I went to church this year a few weeks before lent started (call it 3 months ago). I’ve been trying unsucessfully to tell my kid to make her “confirmation” which is sort of an adult initiation into the catholic church.   So I wanted to be an example.  

The church is around the corner from me and the priests rarely go beyond 30 minutes. Plus,  I was learning stuff from this one priest in particular, who had a degree in philosophy from Columbia from many years ago. The others were ok, but I always came away feeling like I knew something about history, world events, and got some insight into the parables that I could use in my daily life.  Not bad.

So Ash Wednesday, they ask us to do something as a penance for the 40 days up until Easter.  Usually people do things that are very juvenile (and really meant to help them lose weight) like stop eating chocolates. My cousin cut out wine. I decided to go to church every day.

I actually was doing it!  Every day. Church before gym.   That is, until  “THE SERMON.” 

It was last Sunday, Palm Sunday. One of the few days that catholics who don’t go to church actually show up. And what does the priest talk about?   (it wasn’t the Columbia grad, btw).  He talks about SIN!!! 

This is like flashback to age 19.   He talks about how it is our sin that has taken God’s beautiful world and made it into a mess.  He referred to wars overseas, to the economy, to crime.  You name it, he blamed US for being sinful.  On palm Sunday!   

How ’bout a nice lecture on the good message of christ and if we followed it, we would have more joy and spread more happiness and love to those around us? How about how willing, God our father is to forgive us when we falter?   How ’bout saying something that might inspire the folks standing around me — or me, for that matter — to come back every week.

I became so angry listening to the homily, I swore not to return. In fact, I almost walked out in the middle .  Yeah, I know…anger can be my middle name.    But quiet anger, not punch the wall anger.   Bubbling, intellectualized, rage I guess I should call it.

I went back one more time, and I return today for Easter.   I don’t know what lies ahead. But I can’t help but thinking it wasn’t me who failed to keep my promise of 40 days of church, but the priest’s failure to want me to keep it. 

Something you didn’t know about me

Ok. you know I have a horse. But since the divorce, I’m no longer one of those rich Hamptonites who arrive at the stable gloves and crop in hand to be given a perfectly groomed horse to ride for an hour at a rate of $165 an hour.

Now I own one of Wollffer’s horses (the owner, Christian Wollffer, sadly died last year bathing of the coast of Rio De Jeneiro when he was hit by a boat). After the tragedy, the business manager of the estate, which is also known for some of the best wine on the south fork of Long Island, decided to sell all of Christian’s school horses. I took one of them off his hands and relocated him closer to New York city.

The cool thing is, all the stuff the Mexican hands used to do, I do now. There are exceptions. I do hire a ferrier to take care ofZip’s, hoofs, and a dentist came in today to file his teeth (a horse who isn’t grazing all day on grass will get pointy things on his growing teeth…so they get filed every year…something I would have no expertise in). I also have a vet to give him injections four times a year, because he has arthritis in his hocks from power-jumping when he was a young, over-used champion.

So, what do I do? Every time I go to the farm I have to first go to the pasture to retrieve him with a lead line that I attach to his halter. He’s always at the bottom of the hill and often resists,so I give him a few sugar cubes to get him going! When I get him to the stall, I have to get him ready to be tacked up — that means putting the saddle and bridle on. It’s a great thing, that I never did while at wollffer estates, because Zip knows my touch and seems to enjoy the scrubbing and brushing so their is no dirt under the pads, saddle and bridle. I also have to “pick” his hoofs, which can be hard in the winter. I use a hammer to chop out the ice then, and in muddy season it can be quite difficult to get the clay-like dirt and rocks out. He’s very patient with me though.

But if you’ve gotten this far, you’re getting to the interesting part: When the weather is warm I bath him after a hard workout like today. I jumped and cantered him a lot, so there was foam all over his body! That’s horse sweat. And it had probably been last Fall that I had given him the full “works.” In addition to a good scrub with horse shampoo and a brush, twice a year, I clean his “sheath.” You guessed it. But you cannot imagine. I put warm water up the sheath, then with my arm — and I swear, I can reach almost up to my elbow, I clean out schmegma — that stuff you guys that haven’t been circumcised have to worry about. But on a horse, it forms these big brown clumps of stuff that have to be pulled and swept out. Sometimes there’s a “bead” on the tip of the penis that has to be removed. It’s so weird that he just stands there while I do this. When I’m done, I take the hose and just spray warm water right up so he’s relatively clean and schmegma free (you don’t want to take everything out because there is apparently some “good” bacteria up there!

The stuff I pull out has the most distinctive smell, but I strangely like it. Even after I wash my hands, I can still smell it. Anyway, that’s it for the bath.

Tomorrow, when he’s super dry (I couldn’t wait that long today), I will clip him myself. I bought a set of really good high powered horse clippers (like you would use to shave your head….but it has enough power to go for hours). The whole process takes me about four hours — from legs to nose. I still haven’t mastered the ears, and I botched the face a little the first time out, but I really enjoy the relaxing buzzz of the clippers and the way Zip kind of just patiently stands there while I make him show-ready. I could pay someone $300 a clip, as most people do. But I hate the idea of being a “girly girl,” which is one of the reasons I do all this stuff for my horse, instead of paying someone to do it.

the end, lol.

I’m a hibernater..I think

Someone asked me in a comment recently, why I cut off from virtually all my old friends after 9/11. It’s too complicated and too painful to even think about, so I’m not going to do that here. But the same personality trait of mine that made me do that isn’t likely to change.

Yeah . Guess it’s a friend. Like one you should get rid of. More like an enemy.

People seem to like me. But I guess I don’t like “having a lot of people.”

Just this week, I got a call (went to vmail) from Meera, a happy beautiful, long haired Indian “girl” (she’s in her 20s) who was one of my best friends when I was doing my Art Therapy Degree a few years ago. We went out before and after classes a lot. She called to say she missed me and “wanted me back in her life.”

What a beautiful thing to say. Just like her. But I know I won’t call.

The day before, Zaharo, a slightly older friend –she was my boss and mentor when I worked at Lehman some 30 odd years ago — whom I still see occassionally, called with all sorts of wishes to see me when she get back from Cypress. She want to visit her parents, who are not doing to well as they get on in age.

But I just want to be alone. Yeah…I know eric is around, and dan calls almost every day, but I’m still basically alone. And I don’t know why. And I don’t know if it’s good or it’s bad. It just is. Even in highschool, I never hung with a big crowd, always a few friends. Don’t know any of the now, needless to say.

I think I’m getting myself depressed…so I’m going to sign off now (other not so great things are going on ..what is new….but …..)