Friday, July 26, 2013

that's what I was aiming for

Finally, someone referred to my hair as "your mane." Thank you.

(Even better: he was a musician who'd just come off stage. I said, "You know, I was up there dancing the whole time." He said, "I know, I saw you - you were the only one I could see. I couldn't miss your mane.")

That might possibly have been the payoff for following musicians around all these years. And, you know, the music. The kind that makes you dance for nearly two hours.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

he's the coolest

Raghu Dixit is playing in New York on Thursday, but it's a bad week and we don't have money for tickets. So even though it's been a while since I tweeted him (I'm rarely on Twitter of late), I tweeted him and asked if he could comp us:






@Raghu_Dixit Dying to see you on Thursday but we are flat broke. Any chance we can get on the guest list? My husb and I loved the Sept show! - 24 Jul









@JennLevyBKLYN Sure thing! @GauravVaz kindly do the needful please. - 24 Jul



@Raghu_Dixit @JennLevyBKLYN - oops I meant 25th!








Honestly, do they come any nicer?

And any of you in New York - do come see him at SOBs on Thursday night!

Monday, July 22, 2013

travels in Pennsylvania

Just spent two weekends in Pennsylvania: with Joyce in Pocono Mountain, and with Jannah in Yardley. I wouldn't say I know Pennsylvania well - hard to know any state well without doing a lot of driving - but I like Pennsylvania and have some good friends there.

Joyce's house is more rural and Jannah's more suburban, but it's all very different from my little castle in Brooklyn. Lots of talk about cars and boats and homes: costs and methods of repair and maintenance, comparisons, troubles, comparisons, and so on. Pool patches. Gardens. Guns. It's all very foreign to me, and some of it is very interesting, some...less so. But it's interesting to see how much less important my city-girl concerns are to non-urban folks.

It happened that there was a birthday party for John A. - his 60th - when I was at Jannah's, so we went to the party. I do love going to parties out around there (John is in Bordentown, NJ), except for some excessive drunkenness...and then it depends on who the drunk parties are. John was pretty rocked by the end of the evening, but he was very sweet and sentimental. Then there was another guy who was just plain obnoxious and was passed out by the time I left. (Needless to say, the latter was the only only guy at the party who flirted with me.) Some folks I knew and some I didn't. Linda made piles of food. John and his posse played some old-timey/bluegrass stuff, calling themselves "The Clam Daddy All-Stars," and even slightly out of tune, it was a good time. Before the weekend, I had a vague fear that V. might turn up, but I don't see John inviting him for a social occasion at this point. (One of the first times I V's incredible self-centeredness was when he was invited to John's wedding. V's response: "Why should I go?" Not a clue about being there for a friend. Of course, when he learned he'd have a chance to play, he decided to go.)

Jannah's life is insanely busy, like being inside a blender. She commits herself to a lot of stuff and then runs around like crazy. For instance, she joined a boat club so he could dock her boat (they actually call it a "yacht club," but the boats are not at all what you'd think of as a yacht). Next thing you know, she's an officer of the club and knows every single person there and is organizing all kinds of events. I accompanied her to a "short" meeting she was running there, which lasted three hours. Most of her boat pals are heavy-drinking white non-Jewish blue-collar men. Not really my crowd, though I met a few nice folks.

Things around Joyce are a lot more quiet. We went to see "Raymond, the Amish Comic" near Jim Thorpe, PA (we thought he'd be laughably bad, but he was actually pretty good). We walked around Jim Thorpe before the show, which is a quaint, touristy little town, not unlike New Hope. But the buildings were more impressive. It was certainly more relaxes in the Poconos than whizzing around between Yardley, West Trenton (where Jannah's boyfriend lives), Bordentown, and wherever the yacht club and the marina are (it's called the Bristol Yacht Club but I think the town is called Easterly).

I'm kind of all over the place here, but just wanted to post something...the bottom line, I suppose, is that it's good to get away, good to be with friends, and good to be with close women friends. Joyce and I have gotten pretty thick after years of not seeing each other - and when we did see each other, she was primarily my uncle's wife and not my pal. But we always liked each other, and in fact I absolutely worshiped her: she was so attractive, talented, funny, adventurous. Still is. And I still worship her a bit. And am so enjoying the way we slipped into a very warm friendship.

All of my women friends have been having bizarre relationship problems and arrangements (except for L., who doesn't have a boyfriend or boyfriends or girlfriends or husband or some combination thereof). Joyce's seems to be the simplest - which doesn't mean it's easy. But I can understand it. With some of my friends, I simply have to step back and just watch to see what happens.

A little plug: John's daughter Ashley and her fiance Joe have a charming blog called Our Bklyn. I feel like my blog has a lot of potholes in it, but their Brooklyn blog hits all the right notes.

Thursday, July 11, 2013

some good causes

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=c2ab94bb-3ff2-4564-a7e4-8159029ff657&rby=32957170-591b-4585-9949-27c07e587bb6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=696d565e-8266-4fde-aed2-b700a7967ddb&rby=32957170-591b-4585-9949-27c07e587bb6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=1cbff490-7ef5-435e-adea-135d203d36d0&rby=32957170-591b-4585-9949-27c07e587bb6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=b2ab3cbe-6690-4f57-a07f-fc0c62862e26&rby=32957170-591b-4585-9949-27c07e587bb6

http://www.globalcitizen.org/Content/Content.aspx?id=dda0183b-dd86-40f3-a9a9-49b6a1b8ae6e&rby=32957170-591b-4585-9949-27c07e587bb6

Monday, July 8, 2013

this wasn't supposed to happen

It's business as usual for early July, which means the weather is too hot, work's quieting down, and we are constantly broke. The stress of the latter is really beating me down...except for the couple of months after the holiday jewelry sales, it's always a squeeze. And the constant anxiety has been making my life generally unhappy. And I suppose it's been hard to reconcile myself to such reduced circumstances...maybe that's why I always feel so frustrated. And less-than. I think I'm going to cry if one more person asks what I'm doing for summer vacation. (Answer: I'm spending a long weekend in the Poconos, because my aunt can afford to send me a bus ticket; and I'm spending a long weekend in Bucks Country, because I can afford the $30 train ticket.)

I'm bummed out that I haven't been able to afford to stock up on materials to make a lot more goods for the crafts fair in November...once my recent trigger finger surgery permits such things, And it's hard to know what kind of effort I need to make in order to sell more. Would an Etsy store be worth the fuss? I'm pretty sure going to jewelry stores to try to consign my work would not be worth the fuss and could lead to more aggravation. The last place where I consigned my jewelry was the typical consignment experience: the store owner marked my work up way too much, making it unsellable; then she stopped returning phone calls; then it was like pulling teeth to get my goods back. I've never made enough on consignment sales to justify all the hassle.

As weird as it seems to me, Barry can start collecting social security in January; apparently he makes little enough to do it. I suppose we might as well d it now, since who knows how much longer there'll even be social security, and it'll add another $1,400 to our monthly income.

But it just feels sad and pathetic overall. I'm so tired of "no, we can't go out to dinner/a concert/go on vacation," can't shop for clothes or shoes, can't see a movie in a theater, and don't have a dime put aside. This wasn't supposed to happen.