3rd of July fun on the 4th of July weekend

Happy 4th of July!!!   Independence Day.  To celebrate, I had my first holiday blowout.  A tire blowout.  It could not have been more fun.

I was driving along singing to an original Broadway Cast Production of Aida with the barfing dog in the back and suddenly I heard a noise that did not sound like Adam Pascal singing.  Damn.  I pulled over and there was a very large metal object sticking straight out of my right rear tire.  It sorta looked like I had installed those spikes on my tires like they used to have on Roman chariots. That would have been cool.  Unfortunately I had a big flat tire which was so not cool.   And as a special added bonus to my day, my 100 lb dog had just barfed not once but twice in the back seat.  I pulled over to the side of the road (luckily there was a shoulder) and called AAA. Turns out they can’t come on the Saw Mill Parkway (don’t know why) but they called a county police officer who called a tow truck.

A tow truck finally came and changed the tire.  Before that some guy pulled over and asked me what was wrong.  He said he would change the tire for me, but I told him I already have a tow truck on the way.  He seemed nice enough, but I’ve seen enough TV shows to know that he was probably a serial killer.  It’s times like that when I’m glad I have a 100lb dog with me.  Isn’t that terrible?  One can no longer trust the kindness of strangers.  (If in fact he was going to be kind and not chop me up into little pieces and throw me into the woods.)

And then to top it off, one tow truck with an official “westchester.gov” address on the back showed up and the man was very nice, afraid of the dog and said he could change the tire.  He was almost done when ANOTHER tow truck showed up and the 2nd guy started saying that the first guy shouldn’t have helped me because HE was the truck that was dispatched by the county police.  I just wanted to get out of there.  I found out later from my sister and brother-in-law that Westchester County (that’s the one north of  the Bronx for all of you getting your maps out) has these “help” trucks that patrol the highways and help people with flat tires, cars that overheat, etc.

It was all very creepy and I’m just really glad it was in the middle of the afternoon and not the middle of the night.  My cell was barely getting reception up there.  Thank goodness my sister was available to meet me, take my doggie and all my stuff and bring it home with her while I went to a Sears Automotive place and got the tire changed.   It took 3 hours and cost me much more than the $156.00 for the new tire since I spent those 3 hours at the mall.  (I hate shopping and I hate malls, but I had no choice I had to shop.)

But I learned quite a bit!   I now know where the spare tire is on my car, how to get to it, where the special thingy is to take off the one lug nut on the tire that is “locked”, what a lug nut is, not to drive 70 mph with a doughnut instead of a real tire and, most importantly, that I can take care of myself even though I wanted to cry.

So Happy 4th of July to everyone.  I got me some independence today.  I learned how to get a flat tire changed!

Records for sale!

Whilst walking the doggies yesterday evening my friend Charlie and I saw this written on the sidewalk in chalk:  “RECORDS FOR SALE” This is a popular local way to advertise in the neighborhood when one is having a stoop sale.  (Yard sales or garage sales to most, but we in Park Slope usually have neither a garage nor a yard.  We do, however, have stoops.)   Charlie immediately looked at me and said he imagined someone selling personal records of people in the neighborhood.

Charlie: “Hey, they are selling my 1986 Con Ed Bills.  Look, the logo has changed.”

Carol: Laughed and laughed    And then my mind immediately imagined someone selling my old report cards,  files on my work history and all my pay stubs that are banded together in a drawer since the ’70’s.   (I have GOT to clean out that back room!)    I remember when my college friend and I got our first jobs.  I was making $12,000 a year which I thought was pretty good.  Then SHE got a job making $16,000 which I thought was a FORTUNE.  I was so jealous.   She was RICH!

I’ve been experimenting with some watercolors lately.   I thought I’d play with  a few different techniques.   The yellow flowers above are OK, but I really had a great time with a wet on wet technique on the vase.    I also did a beach scene while thinking that I would like to be back in Curacao than work on contracts for the City.  (Yes, I know you find this hard to believe, but it’s true!)

After I painted it, I wanted to try something a little more interesting so I cut it up and changed some of the image locations and then reglued them on another sheet of paper.     I also reworked the clouds by lifting up some of the top layer of paper with tape.   I am happy with the end result, but may reglue the stips slightly closer together.   Watch out,  I’m going crazy!   Next thing you know, I may be having a stoop sale selling my 1981 pay stubs for $2.00 a calendar year. Ok, I’ll take a dollar.  And I’ll throw in my College Diploma for an extra 50 cents.

I love musicals!

Yes,  I love musicals.  I don’t care what you naysayers out there think. (This means YOU Christine.) I’ve heard it all.  “I don’t get it.  Why do they just jump up and start singing?” Let me tell you.  There are plenty of times where I jump up and start singing.  Problem is I can’t sing.  Of course that doesn’t stop me.  Except when my husband starts howling.   Then I know I’m really off key and much too loud.  My friend Kung keeps trying to get me to go to karaoke with him and his friends.   Really Kung?  Are you sure you want me along?

I’m inspired to write about musicals because they are showing CHESS on PBS tonight.   I LOVE CHESS.   I could listen to it all day and all night.  In fact, I have.  Until I am told by my ever patient husband that it may be time for something else.  That’s when I put on Evita.  Or Les Miz.  Or the Pirates of Penzance.  Or even an opera.  The old lady on the lower east side is finally finished.  And I can’t help but think she is going to take that cane, whip out a top hat, straighten up and launch into a tap dance to show tunes.   How great would that be?

Speaking of tap dancing, you know who loved to tap dance?   My mom.  Here’s a drawing I did of her one Sunday.   Unfortunately she can’t dance anymore, and she thinks Lincoln is the President.  But she’s still happy when she hears music.

Today is my friend Charlie’s birthday.  In his honor I am posting this picture that he took of a sign outside a coffee shop near us.   It made us laugh and laugh.

Not for nothin’ but that drawing of a freshly baked croissant looks like something my dog leaves for me to pick up in the winter.   Really Ozzie’s?  you can’t draw a better croissant?

And finally, let me just say that I’m so excited that we will be having our St. Croix reunion on another fabulous island.  The isle of Manhattan.   Bonnie is in from St. Croix and we are glad to have her home.  (yes, even though St. Croix is now her home, New York was her home first).  So welcome home Bonnie.  She’s staying at the Judy Holiday Inn, a favorite for out of town guests.   Mary will be here from Massachusetts, Matt will be with us and a good time will be had by all.

I’m off to the gym to sing and dance my way through a bootcamp class.

An old lady on the Lower East Side, Japanese Garden and thoughts about blogging

I believe I finished the Japanese Garden. My teacher told me I was finished so it’s finished.  I started on this old woman walking down a street on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The Lower East Side is interesting since it was once tenement slums and now it’s the home of young hipsters.   About 7 years ago I asked this young (20ish) guy at my job where he lived.  He said Orchard Street.  HUH?  How could he live on Orchard Street?   He wasn’t a recent immigrant.  He spoke English.   I was so confused.  Which is not an unusual condition for me. But I later found out that’s where all the cool people and hipsters were moving to when they weren’t moving into Williamsburg, Brooklyn.  Who knew?  Not I. And since I didn’t know I guess that excludes me from the following categories:

cool

hipster

Could be worse.  Could be in this category:

dead

Whew.   Not so bad after all.

This lady was cruising down the street, knocking people out of the way with her cane.  She was sporting a giant ring and was wearing a hat at a jaunty angle.  Good for her.   However, it was a dark and stormy night.  Ok, it wasn’t really, but that line always cracks me up.   She was in shadow, and the foliage on the brick wall is actually a shadow of foliage.  I will work on the all the shadows next time I go to class.  Dark Shadows.  Remember that show.  I used to RUN home from grammar school to watch Barnabas Collins bare his fangs.

Here’s the Japanese garden finished:

I could have put a lot more detail into in, but thought it was ok the way it was.

There is a very funny website called www.graphjam.com.   If you’re tired of doing all those TPS reports, as I am, stop for a moment and take a look.  You’ll get a good laugh.    Here’s an interesting graph from them about blogging.   I thought it was right on.   One always hopes that one’s blog would be at least in the purple circle, if not the tiny blue circle, but let’s face it.   Most of our blogs are on the big pink circle and that’s the way it goes.

Graph by: raiderrobert via Graph Jam Builder

When we are old or dead will all our blogs be cluttering up the internet?  Hmmm,  I wonder.

Japanese Garden

While many may think that living in NYC means that you only live within brick walls and concrete sidewalks, we are very lucky to have some beautiful parks right in the middle of all that brick and concrete.

One of these beautiful places is called the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Among the many lovely spots in this 52 acre refuge is the Japanese Garden which was completed in 1915 by landscape architect Takeo Shiota.  It’s a lovely spot and I gave it a shot at capturing it in the watercolor above.   It’s  just a start, and as usual, I’m so-so about it.  We’ll see how it progresses.

In the meantime I progressed out my door and down the block. There is a street fair on 5th Ave. today.   And it’s the same crap every year, at every street fair that I’ve ever been to from here to New Hampshire.  There may be other crap at other street fairs that I haven’t been to, but so far I haven’t seen any new stuff.   Or any new food.  One must get some street fair food or one will not be happy.  One of my favorites is the fried dough.   Any variation of fried dough usually works for me.  Have you ever noticed that every culture has some sort of fried dough food.  YUM.  Street fairs in NYC always have the obligatory zeppole stand.   Zeppole are fried dough delights covered with confectioner’s sugar.  Light, fluffy and just damn yummy.  These trucks also sell funnel cake.  It’s the same dough, they just drizzle it out of a funnel into the boiling oil so you get something all squiggly instead of a big fat round piece of dough.  They still dump confectioner’s sugar on top.  How can you go wrong?  If you prefer something a little less sweet, find the Indian stand and get the samosas.  Or the Chinese stand and get the dumplings.   I could go on and on.  In fact, I think I will.

Ok, I won’t.  But you get the idea.  In about 20 blocks one could eat food from around the world, buy local artists’ works, get henna tattoos, meet the neighbors and listen to local bands.  Fun.  The Fifth Ave. Fair is the first of the summer.  By August you’re done.  Where can you hide?  The Japanese Garden of course.

Dessert anyone?

Finally back to class after vacation and having friends in from out of town.  My intention was to finish this one up quickly and move on to something else.   I think I finished this one, but with only 1/2 hour left to class I didn’t want to work on a new painting.   Everyone said they felt like having some cake, so I guess I’m happy with it.

I always laugh when I have to write the word “dessert”.  I don’t remember where I head or read this, but here is a trick on how to spell dessert correctly and not confuse it with desert (usually a hot, sandy place.)  Dessert has two “s”.  Like when you ask for a SECOND HELPING OF DESSERT.  For some reason that always stuck with me.  Unfortunately there are many, many, many more things that went right out of my head.   How to spell the word dessert is not one of them.  And all the dessert I’ve eaten (second helpings and all) has stuck right to my body.  I started to have the 3 pieces of cake on a table, but somewhere along the way the table disappeared.  Now they are 3 pieces of cake floating in space.  Exactly where I will be on Monday when I go see the new Star Trek movie.

I CAN’T WAIT!!!!!

Many people know that I am not that fond of movies.  But I will always go see a Star Trek Movie.  I have loved Star Trek since the beginning with William Shatner as Captain Kirk.  I was fascinated by Spock and his pointy ears.  And I always thought things were a little more exciting in space.  After it went off the air I was sad.   Then a new Star Trek came along.  HA! I said to myself.  Who are they kidding.  They cannot make a new Star Trek and make it better than what I now call “classic Star Trek”.  But I was wrong.  Along came Captain Picard and I was enthralled again.  I even watched Deep Space 9 and the one with Captain Janeway.  (What’s the name of that one?)   I could never get into Star Trek Enterprise, but there is always comfort knowing that there is a Star Trek showing somewhere on my 1000 cable stations of crap.

How did we live with channels 2 – 13 for so long?  Now I have over 1,000 cable stations and I swear there is not much to watch.   There is the NCIS station.  (What’s up with that?  All of a sudden it’s NCIS all the time.)  And there is the Law and Order station with that show and all the spin offs.  And of course there is the Discovery Channel, National Geographic Channel (I refuse to call it NatGeo), the History Channel and the Science Channel. As I said in a previous post, I like those channels.

My friend told me about the morbidly obese channel.  I am not making this up.  For a while there was a channel that kept airing shows about morbidly obese people and how they went to these clinics to lose weight.  There was one guy who went and he was actually gaining weight because he was sending out for Chinese food while he was in the weight rehab center.  You know what….as my friend Charlie says…If you can’t get up and get your own damn food then you shouldn’t be eating.    Tough love.  What?  you want me to get you another piece of cake?   Ok, be right back.

Curacao

I just spent a week in Curacao.  It it a Dutch Island in the Netherland Antilles.   (For the geographically challenged it is next to Aruba and off the coast of Venezuela where, co-incidentally I went to on my honeymoon.) There were a lot of Dutch tourists there.  They are a blond people.  I am not a blonde person.  (Far from it.)  Yet a few times people asked me if I was Dutch.  It made me laugh.  (I am easily amused.)  And they speak a strange guttural language.   When they pronounce a “G” it sounds like they are clearing their throat of about a gallon of phlegm.   I asked one young woman how they avoid spitting on people when they talk.  Luckily she laughed.  It was this same young (very young) woman who, when  discovering I was older than her mother,  screamed, at the top of her lungs to the other young Dutch crew member:   SHE’S OLDER THAN MY MUDDER.   And after she screamed “she’s older than my mudder” 4 times I tossed her off the catamaran.  Such a shame. She was a lovely Dutch girl.

The Dutch may be able to speak many languages, but can’t pronounce the “th” sound easily.  I am a champ with the “th” sound.  HA!  So there.

We had a great time, I have a fabulous tan, only got sick once (on a catamaran that was traveling against 10 foot swells – barf-o-rama!) and I’ve been back to work one day and am ready to put a gun to my head.   Whatever relaxed feeling I had is GONE, GONE, GONE.   Maybe happy hour needs to begin in my living room.    Very soon.   Like now.

I promised my sister (and myself) I would try and give some watercolors a shot while on vacation.  Here are two versions of the view from our hotel terrace.   Both were quick studies done either while trying to decide whether to go to the pool or the beach. Or which happy hour to go to.  These are the only two I am willing to show.  The others really sucked.  And for those of you who are asking, in the top painting, those are supposed to be rocks, not the Loch Ness Monster.

Some fun facts about Curacao or stuff on the island.  Most residents speak FOUR yes FOUR languages.   (Makes me feel damn stupid!)  Makes me think of that old joke:   A person who speaks three languages is trilingual.  A person who speaks two languages is bilingual.  A person who speaks one language:  American.   It was fascinating to see them go from English to Spanish to Dutch to Papiamentu without thinking.     There is an ostrich farm on the island.  An ostrich egg is equal to approximately 24 chicken eggs.  (Matt enjoyed an ostrich omelette with ostrich ham and bacon before the tour.)  There are a lot of rocky beaches and it is quite windy which is nice when the sun is strong.  There is a beautiful national park on the western end of the island called Shete Boka (seven mouths in Papiamentu) where we did some hiking.  The food wasn’t great.  But a great time was had by all.

Piece of cake!

Piece of cake it’s not.  This watercolor business.  I find it difficult.  But I go to class every week and I so enjoy it.  My biggest problem is that I don’t have either the ambition or energy to paint or practice drawing during the week.  And I really want to.   Really.  I am just so tired when I come home from work……

I love cake.  I love pie.  I love cookies, candy and pastries.  And they should (almost) always have chocolate in them. Seriously, do you want to waste those raspberries in that chocolate cake?   I like raspberries.  But they should not ruin a good chocolate confection.   Blueberries in pancakes?  Don’t waste my time.  Strawberries on that lovely cream puff.  STOP THE INSANITY!

I enjoy a large bowl of fresh strawberries as much as the next person.  When they are in season they are sweet and yummy and delicious.   But DO NOT RUIN my dessert with fruit.

I have dark hair, dark eyes and  a sweet tooth, all of which I inherited from my parents.   And this is the nutritional lesson I learned from them:

EAT DESSERT FIRST.  If you’re still hungry, you can have something else.

My father, who was very sick for a long time from a number of things (a different post when you have about a month to read) couldn’t taste food very well.  But he still wanted candy.  All the time.  Even when he was being fed through a tube. “Bring me some M&Ms!”  My mother, who is in a nursing home and really doesn’t eat all that much, still opens her eyes wide and smiles whenever we bring her some chocolate covered jell-rings.  (I hate those – good chocolate ruined by jelly)  So I am genetically pre-disposed to liking sweets.  Can’t help it.  It’s in the blood.  Or the genes.  Pass that piece of cake over here please.

Next discussion:  Carbs.  Great food, or the GREATEST FOOD.

Oh yeah,  I just started the painting of the 3 pieces of cake.  It’s about an hour into it.   I will go back and work on it next time in class.  In the meantime, I have to go bite the ears off  a chocolate Easter bunny that’s been trying to stare me down all day.

Window without a view – Part 2

I’ve finished Window without a view, but now I’m thinking of calling it Windowsill with Tomatoes.   Or better yet,  TUSCAN windowsill with tomatoes.  Doesn’t that make the painting sound better?  It makes the tomatoes sound better.  Tomatoes are always better in Italy. Actually almost everything is better in Italy.  The food, the clothes, the art.

But I’m hungry right now so let’s talk about the food.  I have never gotten a bad meal in Italy.  Ever.   I have HEARD STORIES, but I believe they are apocryphal. And not for nothin’ but my grandmother could have boiled a phone book in water, added a little pastina and it would have been THE BEST SOUP you ever had.  REALLY!   She was the best cook ever.  My friend Jim’s grandmother was a great cook too.  Different parts of Italy, but unbelievable cooks.  My friend Charlie can make a lasagna that will clog your arteries and have you begging for more.

Not that there’s not good food in other countries. There is.  And I’ve tried it.  But there is something about Italian food, especially eaten in Italy, that is perfection.   Jim once said to me “If  Italians didn’t teach the French to cook they’d still be eating rats in cream sauce.”  It made me laugh.

I could go on and on about Italian food.  Instead, I think I may go enjoy some.  In the meantime, I would like to add that the tomatoes in the painting are more vibrant than in the above photo.

The size of the paper is 22″ x 15″ and the image size is approximately  20 1/4″ x 13 1/8 “.  Olives and prosciutto anyone?

What you be sayin’?

On my way to work a few mornings ago I photographed this sign that was just posted in the window of a local restaurant.

I couldn’t decide if I was more appalled at the message or the sentence structure and grammar.  (Did it cost extra to add a period after the word help?) And that stupid picture of a defeated boxer for extra drama.  Stop it!

Really???  It was OUR fault that your restaurant failed?  Really???  Maybe it failed because you write sentences like:  “Some of you will be really sad as Us…”   They may have put their heart into the place, but obviously no customer put his/her foot into the place!

I probably would have found this sign quite funny had it not been for the content and the fact that the longer they stayed open with no customers, the more rainbow flags and stickers got plastered on their windows, walls and menus.   My sister, among others, will be annoyed that there is no apostrophe after the “s” in friends.    That bothered me too, but now that I’ve read “THE ROAD”, not so much.  I read the first few pages of  “THE ROAD” and saw that the author wrote cant and wont and didnt and I thought, hmmmm, they have typos in this book.   But no.  Apparently when living in a post-apocalyptic world, grammar regarding contractions is the least of your problems.

I have to admit that I’m also annoyed by the way some people write things. Like “R U going 2nite?”   I want to reply:  “No I ain’t.”   You can’t type all the letters?   I know that with typing and texting and emailing and im’ing and tweeting and facebooking one’s fingers may get tired.  Still. It annoys me.  I can’t help it.

One of my favorite new words I heard recently was “ambulamps”.   Meaning: ambulance.   How in the world did that get morphed from one to the other?  Who knows,  maybe years from now ambulamps will be considered the proper pronunciation for that word.  By all the Baby Daddys in the world.

They say English is a living language.  It’s changing all the time.  If we don’t have a word in English and they have a word in another language that works, well, we just steal it outright.  No problem.  Unlike the French.  “We don’t like those damn English words creeping into their language.  Le weekend?   We don’t think so!”

We stole schadenfreude right out from under the Germans and it is one of my favorite words ever!

Let the language change.  I will still speak it the way the nuns taught me.

And to anyone who will read this and immediately comment to say I misspelled something, was grammatically incorrect in one sentence or another…please…. Gimme a break.   I have to go text my husband, i-m my sister, email my brother and see what everyone is doing on facebook.   I don’t got no time to spel chek.

After all that I be going to eat.  Where you be goin’?