Above and Beyond the Call

If you'd asked me before this week, I would have said that nowadays most people don't take pride in their work. I would have been wrong. Wrong, at least, in the case of Olde England Painting, the company E. and I hired to paint the exterior of our house four years ago.

When we first met Paul Adkins of Olde England, we were favorably impressed. We had interviewed several painters and Paul's bid was quite reasonable. He seemed very knowledgeable about exterior painting in general and also about a particular problem our house presented—the nail heads of the thousands of nails used to hold the clapboards in place had rusted, causing rust to show through the stain applied when the house was built nine years earlier.

Paul proposed to fill each and every nail head with putty, then sand it down, all in preparation for a new coat of stain. His suggestion sounded good to us, so we hired him. We were impressed every step of the way. Paul showed up with his crew exactly when he said he would and he was a hands-on boss, up on the ladder and prepping and painting alongside his men. All of them were pleasant to have around, worked hard, and cleaned up after themselves. They did a great job. So good, in fact, that I offered to act as a reference for Olde England Painting.

Department of Culinary Affairs

Today, I have several worries to discuss. My sanity, for one. Also, my hearing. Plus, the strange state of restaurant names.

Last things first. There are a couple of restaurants in the Miami area whose names have caught my attention recently and, frankly, horrified me. The first, in South Beach's trendy SoFi neighborhood, is called La Gloutonnerie. Yep, that's right, the restaurant is named Gluttony. Isn't that a sin? Not, apparently, to the restauranteurs who opened the place in 2012. "Go ahead. Indulge," the website invites. "Sin is in." This is, after all, South Beach, fabled for its hedonistic tendencies, but still, isn't there something unseemly about gluttony? Wouldn't the same food served under a different name taste the same?

An Unkind Cut

By definition, an accident is something unintended and unexpected, an innocent mistake. In hindsight, so simple to avoid, but in the moment just before it happens, not even on the radar. I worry about accidents, but never about the right one. An accident is something that occurs when you're not worried.

I had a little accident the other day. So minor that I can afford to make fun of myself about it. A dumb mistake, but also a cautionary tale.

Here's what happened. I have a nifty little pair of scissors with a comb attachment that I use to trim my eyebrows (that's another story). The comb is removable for cleaning but it doesn't come off easily, and refitting it back onto the blade is even more challenging. After several frustrating attempts to insert the comb's protruding ridge into the groove on the blade, I finally succeeded. I also succeeded in cutting myself.

The Worry Displacement Solution

I haven't posted for a while, but that doesn't mean I've stopped worrying. Lately, I've been particularly worried about my failure to post a new blog about worrying. Have I run out of things to say? I haven't run out of things to worry about, that's for sure.

The harder I try not to worry, the more worried I become. Like alcohol, cigarettes, or chocolate ice cream, worry is apparently addictive. Living with E. has made the depth of my addiction particularly apparent, since he's not a worrier.

Oddly, on the rare occasions when E. does become worried, I calm right down. Recently, as we were about to leave for the airport, he realized he couldn't find his driver's license. He became understandably anxious and began frantically searching for it. I reacted with composure. I reminded him that he could bring his passport along as a photo I.D. and I could drive the rental car once we reached our destination. While in this state of serenity,  I methodically retraced his steps and located his license in the pocket of the slacks he'd been wearing the prior evening.

While I enjoyed the rare role reversal, I felt as if I were disturbing the natural order of things. I was born to worry and E. is meant to assure me there's nothing to worry about. Balance was soon restored. As we headed for the airport, E. with his license in hand, I realized that had he not found it I would have worried for the entire flight about my promise to drive the rental car once we reached our destination.

Not that I'm a bad driver. Actually, I like to drive and I'm pretty good at it. But, as with so many other aspects of my life, I worry. About taking the wrong exit. About crazy drivers on the road. About getting a speeding ticket. I've begun to believe my worries are a displacement solution—if I worry about the small things, about every small thing, I can avoid paying attention to problems that are truly worthy of worry. And maybe even worthy of a blog entry.

Perhaps in future posts I'll try to tackle some of those big worries, the ones we all share, along with those that are uniquely the product of my own anxious mind. For the moment, though, at least I can cross one worry off my list. I've finally posted a new blog entry!

Isn't It Romantic?

Picture this—A beautiful spring day in 1969. A handsome college sophomore (E.) and his new girlfriend (me) sit on a lush green lawn on the campus of UMass Amherst, listening to a blues musician who calls himself Taj Mahal. The girl wears a pretty white Mexican dress with colorful embroidery on its yoke. Her hair is long and loose. E. wears jeans and cowboy boots. His dark hair and a Western-style mustache add to his cowboy appeal.

Taj Mahal's music is an engaging amalgam of blues and Caribbean rhythms, derivative but entirely original. Among the songs he plays that day is a number called Corinna. The girl (me) instantly loves it. A few years later, when she moves in with E., she's thrilled to find that he owns the record album, Natch'l Blues, on which "Corinna" is featured. They listen to it incessantly. Still later, after they've married, they jokingly agree that if they ever have a baby girl, they'll name her Corinna.

Now picture this—Forty-three years have passed since that concert at UMass. The couple is about to celebrate their fortieth wedding anniversary. They have two sons, so no Corinna in the family, but the wife (me) feels transported back to her youth every time she hears the song. She wonders whether Taj Mahal might still be performing. To her delight, she discovers that he will headline at the Newport Blues & BBQ Festival later that summer. She surprises E. on their anniversary with plans to spend a weekend in Newport, culminating in Taj Mahal's performance at the Blues Festival.

Thinking of Neil Armstrong

During the summer of 1969, after my sophomore year of college, I was living at home on Long Island and working in the billing department of a commodities firm. I watched the moon landing with my parents. A few weeks later, on August 13th, I was heading out to lunch, completely unaware that the astronauts were being celebrated with a ticker tape parade on Wall Street, right around the corner from my office.

As I walked out of my building, I encountered a crush of people and could see ticker tape flying. I followed the throng and got a distant glimpse of the trio of astronauts—Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins. It was a thrilling moment, marked by the odd realization that I was almost the only woman in sight. Wall Street was then so dominated by men that even the secretarial pool couldn't make a dent in the impression that the street was men-only.

Walking on Water

I'm not a natural athlete. As a kid I tried hard, which spared me from being the last girl picked for the softball or basketball teams, but I was never a standout player. While I had good endurance on the track, I was a klutz when it came to gymnastics—even cartwheels were pretty much beyond me. So, no one was more surprised than me when, the first time I tried waterskiing, I immediately succeeded in standing up on the skis. I was a natural.

Girls bunks, Camp Tamarac.

I learned to waterski on Yokum Pond in Becket, Massachusetts, site of Camp Tamarac, my beloved sleep-away camp. I spent eight weeks there each summer for four years, starting at age ten. What Tamarac lacked in luxury, it made up for in camp spirit and an amazing array of activities, among them scuba diving and waterskiing.

You might well wonder what kind of scuba diving experience could be had in a pond in the Berkshires. Surprisingly, Yokum Pond reached 50 feet at its greatest depth. Still, its murky waters didn't allow for the type of diving one might expect to find in the Caribbean. In fact, you could barely see two feet in front of you. Nevertheless, during my last summer at Tamarac, the camp began offering its campers scuba classes and certification.

I enthusiastically signed up for the scuba program. All progressed well until one sunny day in August. I had come to the surface after a short dive and was using a snorkel while I swam back to the dock. The snorkel was necessary because the tank on my back was heavy and unwieldy, so I couldn't get my head above water to take breaths. As I paddled toward the dock with my flippered feet, feeling pleased with my diving progress, I allowed my head to sink a little too low. Instead of air, I suddenly found myself swallowing a sample of silty pond water.