Horse Racing Saved My Life

This is an older piece; never published and not terribly funny but painfully true. The recent PETA revelations made me dig it out. 

Horse racing saved my life. Sadly, I didn’t hit the Pick Six when it was $3 million; the most I’ve ever won is about $38. Horse racing however, did give me a new career, new friends and associates and a sense of purpose.

Roll back to 2001. Even before 9/11 it was easily the worst year of my life. My dog and cat died within two months of each other. Then my uncle lost his fight with Leukemia.  While I was in Connecticut sitting shiva with my family, my new boss at the record company (remember record companies?) ordered me back to LA. To fire me.

I bumbled through for the next year or so trying to find work. Most of my old business associates were chilly. I wasn’t surprised: in the music business once you lose your gig, you might as well have Ebola. Particularly if you are over 40. And female. In what seemed like moments, I went from booking rock stars on TV shows to selling calendars in a mall kiosk.

Weeks into my redundancy, my show horse had to be retired.  For the first time in 30 years, I had nothing to do in the morning. Instead of being at the barn at 6:30 to ride before work—I had no work and nowhere to go. Getting out of bed became challenging.

Then William Shoemaker died. Though I hadn’t been to the track regularly since college, I considered myself a racing fan. On a whim I went the memorial service at Santa Anita. It was sad, but the people were warm even to an obvious outsider

I started going to the track in the afternoons just for fun—Lord knows I didn’t have enough money to gamble. That led to watching the horses work in the mornings.

It was better than Disneyland. And free. At any given moment there were dozens of stunning horses galloping down the track.

                

The best time was as the enormous tractors dragging the dirt finished. There would be 20 or 30 horses impatiently milling around. They were like little kids waiting for recess: some stood quietly while others were kicking, bucking and generally throwing hissy fits. As soon as the all clear was given, they got down to business. Running.

                

I was fascinated by the outriders. They were often my age or older, since in racing -unlike the music business -being over 40 isn’t a dismissible offence. They didn’t always look pretty, but damn could they ride! Occasionally a horse would lose its rider and the track buzzers and sirens would go off warning of the loose horse. The outriders would kick into gear. They’d charge down to the loose horse and cut it off and grab it in one smooth move.  They usually had the horse back to the gate long before the rider unceremoniously limped home.

                

There was a feeling of camaraderie around Clocker’s Corner where I started hanging out. Trainers, owners, riders and visitors all gathered around the coffee stand to chat and gossip. After a few weeks Rosie knew I just wanted coffee, and handed it to me with warm greeting. So did everyone else. If I missed a day, people noticed. Racing is a roller coaster world: the trainer or jockey who hadn’t won a race in a month just might hit a streak. Careers are rarely over—just on a downswing.

               

  Before my music biz career, I was a freelance music journalist. I began pitching features to the Blood-Horse, and was lucky enough to find an editor willing forgive the fact that I was (and remain) a rank amateur in the horse racing world and let me write a little.

                

Getting ideas was easy in the mornings. A man was wearing a tee-shirt with a fire department logo and a horse that read LAR. I talked to him and discovered he was a fireman who had taken one of the country’s few Large Animal Rescue training courses. I was taking to a jockey one morning and he told me about breeding homing pigeons as a child. I convinced the Los Angeles Times to let me do a piece on the huge –albeit almost invisible-- sport of long distance racing pigeons. My horse show background led to a piece for Blood-Horse on Michael Matz long before Barbaro broke his leg and the nation’s heart. I was privileged to spend an afternoon with Merv Griffin at his horse ranch not long before his death. The racetrack is filled with interesting characters, and I became one of them.

                

I met trainers, vets, owners, grooms and track personnel and discovered that most racetrackers share a few characteristics. They work horrible hours—weekends and holidays included-- and are on call 24/7. And they hate when their horses are injured or ill. The worst part of their job is when a horse dies.

                

When a horse goes down—whether it’s Eight Belles or George Washington in a graded stakes, a gelding in a cheap claimer or in the morning works—the backside mourns. They are a close knit group and for most the horses are not just their livelihoods, but their family. When a horse dies, it’s never just another day. There is a pall over the backside.

                

Racing is a brutal life for the horses and the humans, but it’s a part of me—and hundreds of thousands of others, that we could never give up. In the past my dream was to work the next monster tour and chart topping artist. My new goal? Getting my pony license.  And I dare you to tell me it’s not as rewarding.

Yokel in the City; I Take On Manhattan

I used to think of myself as a sophisticate. Okay, not so much a sophisticate, but somewhere between a poseur and cool kid. Depending upon the day, the dial slid one way or another. 

These days I pretty much fall into the category of clueless dope. I can’t even read the tabloids at the salon. That used to be my favorite part of getting my hair cut: the guilty pleasure of catching up on celebrity gossip without embarrassing myself by purchasing tabloids. The last time I visited Rosie not only did I not know the people who were ‘Just Like Me’ but I didn’t care. I only know about Kimye because Seth Rogen and James Franco won’t stop pranking them. Which is how it should be.

I blame some of this on the fact that I work for myself. Since there are days when I don’t actually interact with anyone other than my phone, and I don’t watch reality television, I miss a lot of the useless pop culture information one absorbs from co-workers and clogs your brain. By the time I hear jokes in incredibly bad taste, they have already gone from ‘too soon’ to irrelevant.

It doesn’t help that I moved from an area where star sightings were common at Starbucks, in restaurants and regularly in my yoga classes. Where I live now, my horse vet is a celebrity. And guess what? He is  ‘just like me!’

Last week it became really obvious that I’ve become a complete country bumpkin. I took a red eye to New York for a day trip to Manhattan followed by a week with Mom in the Berkshires. Before I went to Mill River, MA, population 500, I was taking on the Big City.

The first stop was the rental car agency. It was seamless, but it did throw me that there was a concierge in the pick-up area.  Normally the clerk just tosses the keys, points toward a bunch of cars and waves me towards the door without looking up. Not at Enterprise JFK. Here the guy walked out with me and gave me a choice of the cars and colors. ‘Course, it could have been because it was 6:30 in the morning and he was lonesome. Or I might have looked insane. A red eye in sold-out coach does not cultivate pretty.

After driving in Los Angeles for a million years, I didn’t find the traffic to the city particularly daunting, though the $7.50 toll for the Midtown Tunnel took my breath away. As did the pot holes in the road. Literally. They were tire-swallowing huge. I was convinced that the axles in my tiny rental car were going to snap.

I also didn’t expect that it would take almost as long to get across town from the Tunnel to my Westside hotel as it had taken for me to get cross country. It wasn’t the number of cars, compared to the 101 at rush hour, the traffic was nothing. It was all those damn pedestrians. They were everywhere. If you stopped for a minute, to avoid rear-ending the truck stopped in the middle of the road, hundreds of people would jump in front of the car. These are things that never happen in LA. Particularly in my sleepy section of LA.

If you walk in front of a moving car in Los Angeles, you are either trying to die, or a member of a ring of insurance thieves.  You’re definitely not trying to get from one place to the next. Not so in Manhattan.  

After I ditched my car at the hotel valet ($59 a night!!!.) I rediscovered the joys of walking in the city. I could jaywalk across any street without fear of a $250 ticket. In Manhattan you are encouraged, nay expected, to jaywalk if you actually want to get anywhere. If you wait for a light or a break in traffic you’ll never leave the corner.

I had a lunch and a dinner set up with friends. Neither of whom said to me, “You’re staying on the West Side? Sorry, I don’t do the Westside.” Neither did they preface their acceptance with a disclaimer that if it was raining or snowing they were going to cancel. Impressive.

They did say that the respective restaurants were only a few short blocks from my hotel, which I believe is the NYC equivalent of the LA phrase, ‘it only takes 20 minutes.’  But they were close to my hotel. Directions were a little sketchy. “The address?” They both said, “It’s on Broadway, between 48^th and 49^th. You’ll find it.”  I was a little skeptical about locating anything without an actual street number, but when you’re walking, it turns out those are pretty good instructions. In both cases they were correct. The eateries were close to my hotel.

Following drinks and dinner and conversations that did not involve either facelifts or the sex lives of people I didn’t know or recognize, it was time for the theater. (Of Mice and Men; it was terrific.) After the play we had a drink or three to recover from the weighty mood of the show.  The cost of relief was pricey, but necessary.  We walked back to the hotel. Not a thought of DUIs.

I had a lot of time to think when I was driving to Massachusetts the next day, mostly because I missed the turn to the 87 and the trip took about an hour longer than normal. I miss New York. I love LA, but I really, really miss New York. I haven’t given up on city life. Yet.

Crying Fowl: Ground Zero for Urban Chickens

I used to live, in what the LA Weekly recently dubbed as the most up-and-coming neighborhood in Los Angeles. The overwhelming night sounds were patrol cars and what my less charitable friends call ghetto birds- police helicopters. If the noise didn’t shake you out of bed, the lights beamed in the backyard from the air might. The occasional shout, “Get back in the house” that came from above definitely put a damper on the evenings.

Now that I live in a place that the LA Weekly doesn’t even acknowledge as a part of the city, the nights are considerably more bucolic.  In fact, what I hear most are the neighbors’ dogs and a cacophony of insomniac roosters. It’s lovely.

I didn’t realize when I moved here that my neighborhood was ground zero for urban fowl. My next-door neighbor keeps her hens and rooster in a shed that backs against my barn. When I feed my horses in the morning the sound wakes up her elderly chickens none of whom are too pleased about it. The people across the street have a flock of pet turkeys. If you’ve ever heard a turkey, it doesn’t so much go ‘gobble gobble’ as ‘glurck glurck.’ I never knew that before.

My heart though, belongs to the flock of feral chickens that gather up the street. There are four of them, two hens and two roosters, though the numbers fluctuate a bit. Occasionally there are more roosters, since people apparently ditch them because they are noisy. The flock visits me daily, waddling down the street until they hit my patch of grass, which must be full of bugs and other chicken delicacies. They hang out chortling and stuffing themselves until one of my dogs wakes up and starts barking at them. Then the birds hop around in a huff and bustle their way back up the street.

I would have chickens of my own—purely as pets, I’m a vegetarian—but I have Poppy the Brittany. Brittanys are bird dogs by nature. Their job is to flush and retrieve. Because the closest thing to hunting that I do is choose between brands of tofu dogs at the market, Poppy has to make her own fun. Which she does. She’s a hunter of great magnificence. Thankfully she rids my house of rodents regularly, but when there are no mice inside, she turns to the yard. She has caught and brought me squirrels, crows, pigeons and birds of undetermined breed. Thankfully she’s never brought me a chicken.

I really like chickens and I always ogle the baby chicks for sale at my local feed store. But the reality is that as long as I have Poppy, or any Brittany (I’ve had seven so far) I can’t have my own chickens. So I’m forced to live vicariously through my brother.

He lives on a small farm in Connecticut, and he and Nancy have a lot of birds running around the barnyard. For a while they were losing some regularly to a resident hawk and neighboring coyotes. So as a good sister, I thought I’d give them a present. What could be better than poultry?

I turned to the McMurray Hatchery, a huge poultry supply company based in the Midwest. They have literally dozens of breeds of chickens as well as pheasants, ducks, grouse and just about anything with feathers. After a pleasant hour or two perusing the website, I settled on ‘fancy Top Hat’ chickens. These are the ones that have feathers on their heads that look like Minnie Pearl’s hat. They also have feathers on their feet. What I’m saying is that they are ridiculous looking.  Just perfect for semi-urban farmers like my brother and sister-in-law. The great part is that they are apparently prolific egg producers. It was a win – win.

I ordered the chicks on a Friday to be shipped on the following Monday. When I hadn’t heard from Andy by Tuesday I was panicking a little. Wednesday was a Federal holiday, so I planned to call the hatchery on Thursday. Instead Thursday morning brought a call from Andy. “Why did you mail me a box of dead chicks?” he asked. Apparently McMurray mails its chickens and had neglected to factor in the holiday. By the time Andy heard from the post office the day-old chickens weren’t anymore. It was a chick holocaust.  Four chickens out of 26 survived.

This must happen a lot, because McMurray couldn’t have been more pleasant about the situation. They sent replacements. Most of those lived.

Chickens in general aren’t brainiacs but Top Hats populate the short bus. They lay a lot of eggs, but forget to sit on them and are always rushing into the waiting jaws of death. After several years only half a dozen remain. But they are really pretty.

Maybe it isn’t such a bad thing that Poppy keeps the house poultry-free. I don’t mind being the chicken hold-out in the neighborhood as long as I get my fowl visitors.

The Love of My Life is a Dog; Get Over It

When I first met Murray he was two weeks old and weighed five pounds. That’s pretty normal since Murray is a Great Dane. I never planned to become a Dane owner; I was happily devoted to Brittanys and had three at the time. But when I saw that cute little lump wrapped up in new puppy smell, I fell in hopelessly in love. Like all love, there was no reason involved.  Before I knew it, I was agreeing , no begging, to be allowed to take him home.

A month later we were on our way. Setting the tone for the rest of our lives, Murray ignored the pillow I had set out for him on the passenger seat. Instead he shoved his way onto my lap, wedged beneath the steering wheel . Technically I was driving, but already he was in charge.

The next day brought his first leash lesson and my introduction to the legendary Dane stubbornness.. Oh, he was glad to follow me - as long as I was going where he wanted. However, when a butterfly fluttered by my lovebug transformed into Kujo. Murray started flinging himself around, flopping like a marlin on a fishing line and screaming at the top of his lungs. My neighbors came rushing out to see what the hell I was doing to my puppy.

Eventually we came to an agreement. Murray walked nicely beside me and I gave him regular treats for doing so. Eventually I ditched the snacks and he was just fine. In fact Murray was delighted; all he ever wants to do is be with me.

I mean every second. I can’t remember the last time I was in the bathroom alone.  I had to stop taking baths and switch to showers because he climbs in the tub. There’s something inherently pointless about getting out of the bath covered with more dog hair than when you began.

Almost the second he was housebroken (at 10 weeks, yay!) he began sleeping on my bed with the Brittanys at night. Gradually he took up more room than the three others combined. A few years ago I bought a king-sized bed. It’s still too small.

When most people think of Danes they think of Scooby Doo or Marmaduke— majestic fawn colored dogs with huge pointy ears. Murray is a harlequin, that is white with black spots. I didn’t crop his ears; if anyone in the family was getting plastic surgery it wasn’t going to be the dog. So I can sort of forgive people for not comprehending that he’s a Great Dane.

The first time I took Murray on an outing he was about three months old. We were minding our own business outside a Starbucks in Studio City. A hipster pointed Murray out to his girlfriend and announced loudly, “That,” he said with authority, “is a miniature Great Dane.”   If such a thing existed, I guess it would be a not-so-Great Dane. But at 140 pounds, it isn’t Murray.

When you have a Great Dane one becomes accustomed to people commenting. They seem to believe it’s their duty. One woman loudly declared that he was the ugliest Dalmatian she had ever seen. Which would have upset me if he was a Dalmatian.  Another time a toddler mistook him for a cow. That embarrassed her mother terribly, but at least it was original.

As was the time I was walking in Griffith Park when a businessman in a suit approached me. “What is it?” he asked pointing at Murray.  I told him ‘it’ was a Great Dane. “No,” he insisted impatiently, “What species is it?”  I thought he was joking. “He’s a Great Dane, a dog” I replied. The man argued with me. 

People always ask where his saddle is. I have taken to telling them that I always wanted a pony. This seems to make them happy. At the very least it makes them go away.

We drew a lot of attention when I started competing Murray in agility. Danes are uncommon in the sport for a lot of reasons, primarily because of their size. Over the years I have had a number of competitors and officials make it clear that we weren’t welcome. I, however, am as stubborn as any Dane. We competed quite successfully because Murray loved it, until he was too old to continue. At eight.

That’s another thing: strangers feel it’s their job to tell me that giant breed dogs don’t live very long. That’s just mean. I am sadly aware of the statistics, but I also ignore them.  So does Murray. He’s now nine and a half and doing just fine thank you. He still chases his ball, plays with his sisters and goes for walks. And rules my world

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Past My Sell-By Date; Single in Los Angeles

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As the ads on Facebook and the sponsored tweets on Twitter keep reminding me, I am a single woman. Because apparently I might have forgotten that fact. They also see the need to tell me that I’m kind of past my sell-by date. I guess they figure at my advanced age, these are the things I’d forget, unlike where I put the TV remote. Which I actually do lose.  All the time.

I’m at that weird age that the world-particularly where I live, in Los Angeles—no longer acknowledges your existence. If you’re a woman and over 45, and especially if you’re well over 45, you’re invisible.

Now sometimes this is handy. I don’t need to put on make-up to go the grocery store, or get gussied up to go to the movies. I work at home, so sometimes I take the ability to dress down to an unpleasant extreme. Sweats have their place but at my age when I go outside into the world it’s not considered cute. People assume I’m a bag lady, which is not really the look I’m going after.

However, I can browse in shops without being attacked by salespeople. They simply don’t see me. Sales staff are trained to look for younger people who are eager to add to their credit card debt. If I was so inclined, I bet I could be an ace shoplifter. No one would notice. They’d think the stuff was just magically disappearing from the shelves.

There is a downside to this. Just trying to get someone to help when my stupid smartphone died was maddening. The last time I needed to replace my phone it took 45 minutes before a Verizon person saw me. Couples ALWAYS get helped at the phone store. They just walk in the building and are swarmed by salespeople pushing tablets and the newest iPhone their way. Not so, the invisible old bat.

Phones aside, most of the time it’s pretty okay to be alone. I have two Great Danes, a Brittany, a cat, some birds and a couple of horses in the backyard, so I’m never really alone. I can have entire conversations and nobody would think it was too odd, unless I start believing that the critters have answered back. And I’m not quite there. Yet.

Occasionally it is a bummer living by myself. When I need to change an overhead light bulb there’s nobody around to hold the chair I perch on, which means I have nearly landed on my butt more than once. When I need pictures hung, I have to ask a friend. But heck, he’s an artist and has better taste than I do anyway.

I did faint once and came to surrounded by dogs, one of whom ran off with my glasses. But at least they noticed I was on the floor. If something serious happened I’m convinced that eventually they would lick my face until I regained consciousness.

Family get togethers suck a bit when you’re an aging single. My immediate relatives get that I’m single and okay, but go a little further out on the tree and it gets dicey. My aunt recently grabbed my arm and said completely earnestly, ‘I know someone who got married recently and they were even older than you! Don’t give up hope.’ I didn’t know what to say to her. So I got another glass of wine.

I did try online dating once. But before you can meet someone, you have to write a scintillating profile with a great photo. If I took terrific pictures, I probably wouldn’t still be single. Writing the bio was tough. I was boring myself; anyone who was interested in that would probably be even duller than I am. I let it go.

Some of my friends have told me they would be afraid to live alone the way I do. Did I mention that I have two Great Danes? One of whom, the big one, doesn’t like strangers? Particularly strange men? Nobody is coming into my yard. Hell, half my friends won’t come in my house unless Murray is locked up. I don’t worry too much about break-ins.

As I’ve gotten older I do appreciate living by myself. I don’t ever need to argue with someone over what to watch on TV, which movie to see, where to eat dinner or, and this is a biggie, what music to play. I admit I have broken up with men because they had horrendous taste in music. I’m glad I did. I’m proud of it. Life is too short to spend any time with someone who sees the finer points of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. 

Murray loves Neil Young, and that’s good enough for me.

Man the Lifeboats, We're all going to Die. It's raining in Los Angeles

The news media was agog: after the worst drought in three years, and no measurable precipitation for almost a year, it was going to RAIN! Not just drizzle, it was going to pour. We were expecting more rain in three days than we had had in almost 30 years.  Yes ladies and gentlemen, it was on. It was STORMWATCH 2014!

I find it pretty amusing that Los Angeles gets its collective knickers in a knot whenever it rains.  As a city we are even more distraught about a quarter inch of rain than Atlanta is with two inches of snow.  Except no one in Los Angeles would EVER abandon their car on the 405. Unless Godzilla comes to life and picks up the car and shakes its occupants out, we’re going down with the auto.

That doesn’t mean that Los Angelenos know how to drive when it’s damp. Some would say we don’t know how to drive at all, but I digress. In our defense, because it rains so seldom, oil and nasty stuff does build up on the roadways, which makes it exceptionally slick when it’s wet. Also due to terrible drainage, roads tend to flood. But that’s a rationalization.

The sensible reaction to all this would be to simply slow down. Instead, most LA drivers clutch the wheel in a white knuckle panic and step on the gas. They tailgate the driver in front of them as if that car is carrying  the last development deal on earth and if they catch up, it’s theirs.

Or people just hole up in their homes and don’t leave until the weather gets better. Seriously, people are actually afraid to leave their homes if it’s raining. It is as if everyone in Los Angeles is related to the Wicked Witch of the West and will melt if unimported water touches their surgery-freshened faces.

I grew up in the East, in Connecticut, where we not only had rainstorms; we had hurricanes. And snow. Nobody worried about driving in the rain; it’s just what you did if you wanted to have a life. In New England, it is unheard of to blow off plans due to weather unless the snow is dumping.

I was back there earlier this winter, and realized that I’ve become quite a Southern California flower. If it was up to me, I’d have never set foot outside. It was cold. I mean really cold.

I was in the Berkshires for almost two weeks, and except for one day, when it was a balmy 20 degrees, it never got above four during the day. We won’t discuss how cold it was at night.

During the day I had two small chores. I had to drive the two miles to the Village center to pick up the mail and I had to fill the outside birdfeeders. This meant I had to brave the wind chill. On went the sheepskin lined boots. The scarf, the fuzzy hat, the mittens and of course, the down jacket. By the time I was dressed I looked like the Michelin Man. I didn’t care. The drive to the town was too short for the car heater to kick in, and five minutes sitting in a car in that temperature is five minutes too long.

When I got back the bird feeders were waiting. Most people have a feeder or two; mom has more than a dozen. They hang from poles and are all outfitted with a complex system of baffles that are supposed to keep the squirrels at bay. Actually, the squirrels have no trouble bypassing them. I, however, do. Getting the feeders open on the best of days is a chore. Doing it wearing mittens while standing on an ice floe becomes a sport worthy of the winter Olympics. But I did it twice a day, with only a modicum of complaining. Okay, there was an enormous amount of bitching. It was COLD for God’s sake!

Making it even worse, for reasons known only to the DirectTV people, mom gets the West Coast feed for network news, so we were getting Los Angeles weather. And it was taunting me. The temperature was in the mid-80s in Los Angeles. People were complaining that it was beach weather. That there was no winter this year. Apparently that was a problem.

Thing is, if I’d have been home, I’d be leading the whining pack. Which is why now that we’re under STORMWATCH 2014! I’m keeping my mouth shut.

Of Mice and Woman

At 5 am yesterday Poppy the Brittany decided that there was a mouse in the house. Even worse, it was in my bedroom. And as much as I tried to ignore her, that wasn’t going to fly. She didn’t care how comfy and warm my bed was. Heck, five minutes earlier she had been up there snoring too. But now she was awake, barking and trying to push the canaries’ flight cage, which sits on wheels, around. Poppy’s little and determined but she wasn’t having any luck.

Eventually I got up. Bitching loudly. To prove to the annoying dog that there was nothing under the cage, I slid part of it away from the wall. Imagine both our surprise when a hefty mouse tore out the opposite end and took refuge in back of the dog crates. It’s worth noting that the Dalai the Great Dane did not even notice the mouse underneath her. Or even wake up.

Later it became apparent that in addition to buying a mouse trap, I was going to have to do a full, serious, intensive house cleaning. I didn’t want to. I hate cleaning. Oh, I don’t mind sweeping and doing dishes and stuff like that. In fact my kitchen is quite pristine, but the idea of washing floors and scrubbing the bathrooms makes me run for the hills. Or, more precisely, to my office to write.  And as any writer will tell you, we will do practically anything NOT to write. Cleaning is worse.

But it had to be done.

I’ve had mice in the house before. But please don’t judge completely. I live on what in Los Angeles we call a ranchette. It’s under an acre, but I have two horses in the backyard. All my neighbors also have horses and then some. There is also a small flock of feral chickens that visit my front yard every morning and a rogue Guinea Hen that lives up the block. So mice aren’t unheard of, though I would prefer they stay outside where they belong.

In fact, the first mouse I had, I caught in my kitchen sink. What he was doing there remains a mystery to me.  Still, he was tiny, cute and the first. So I carefully put a glass over him and gently transferred the glass to the backyard where I let him go. I’m pretty sure he beat me back into the house.

The mouse, or its relative showed up a couple of days later in the bedroom, where Poppy, dispatched  it rather quickly. She was a little bummed that her new toy had stopped moving , but she was very, very proud. It took a little time to convince her to let me take away.  I was cringing the whole time, mind you, but if I didn’t move it to the outside trash it would still be there. With Poppy poking the corpse.

The next mouse arrived a few days later, in the TV room. That space is alternately known by one and all as the ‘cat room.’ Because that’s where the cat lives. She doesn’t get along with the dogs, so when they are in her room she hides under the couch. Don’t feel too sorry for her—she has an outdoor catio with a tree and a puffy pillow. Which is a big step up for a cat that was dumped at a barn and lived on mice and rats for the three weeks it took me to catch her.

Obviously she had decided that her days of eating mice were long past. I was sitting watching TV one evening when I saw a tail twitching in the bookcase. The cat refused to acknowledge its existence. So I shooed her back under the couch and called my personal exterminator, Poppy. Ten seconds later the mouse was no more. It was, as they say, a clean kill. This time Poppy was resigned to me taking it away. Yuck.

I know Poppy will eventually take care of the current rodent—if in fact it’s still in the house. I did a thorough cleaning today and even vacuumed the bird cage inside and out and saw no sign of the mouse.  

I mean, it could have gone out the way it came in, right?

Only Assholes Or Fools Go to Graduate School As Adults

It began as a whim. I had started noticing that I was getting stupider every day. I needed to do something to curtail my downward spiral into idiocy before I got to the point where I’d be too dumb to even read Dear Abby in the newspaper. Now some people would pick up a Suduko book. Others would attempt the New York Times crossword puzzle

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Not me. When I decide to do something, I go big. When I wanted to try running, I didn’t practice for a simple 5k. Nope. I began training for the Los Angeles marathon. And I’d have done it, gosh dang it, if in month six, when we were readying for a half marathon, I hadn’t pulled a groin muscle.

So with what was left of my mind, I decided to back to school. I wasn’t going to just take a course at the local community college or an extension school. Nope. I set my sights on a PhD. In English. At one of the top schools in the country. Hell, I figured if a dope like James Franco could go to Yale for God’s sake, I could go to USC.

In my defense, I was an English major, and then a writer by trade, which I felt would give me a leg up. And I’d gone the Master’s Degree route before, in Journalism. Which is almost as useful a degree these days as Art History. Or English.

When I started researching the seats of higher learning that surrounded me in Southern California  I  discovered that most didn’t offer advanced degrees in English. SC did. Looking through the course catalog sold me. It was like being in a candy shop for intelligent  people. I could take this! And that! With that professor! Or that one! I was hooked. I felt smarter just reading through the list.

Not that there weren’t a few flies in the proverbial ointment. One of the requirements was that I needed to speak a second language. If you know me, you’re aware that I occasionally have trouble with English I have been known to make up a word when an existing one didn’t serve.  A new language was going to be a problem.

You’d also think that the requirement would be Greek or Latin, since that’s the basis for English. In my case, it might as well have been, since languages are not my forte. In grade school I took 6 years of French. Which means that I can now sing “Frere Jacques” perfectly. In middle and high school I took six years of German. “O Tannenbaum!” This time I settled on trying Spanish since that would actually be useful in Southern California.

I  started looking for a tutor.Not surprisingly, that was easy. Just about everyone and their brother,(actually usually their kids, had a Spanish tutor. After talking to a few of them -in English- I found a very patient lady who just so happened to specialize in teaching people who were taking exams.

The next problem loomed even larger: the GREs. The Graduate Record Exams are standardized tests similar to the SATs, but are used for entrance to graduate school. Sadly, the ones I took 30 years ago for J-school had apparently expired, and I’d have to take them again. 

Standardized tests have never been my friend. The idea of taking a four-hour exam was beginning to give me nightmares. Talking to friends that had gone back to school didn’t help. “It will make you cry,” one assured me. “Be prepared to blow your brains out,” said another. One comforted me by recommending a test preparation book. “It helped,” she swore.

So off I went to Amazon.com and bought the fattest GRE prep book I could find. It boasted heaps of tricks and memory boosters as well as actual practice tests. For a week I couldn’t bear to open it. The enormous book sat on my counter scorning me. Finally I cracked it. The first half was the English part. I zipped through it and aced the practice tests. Something had apparently sunk in after 30 years of working with words.

But then I came to the math section. Did I mention that I was an English major? And can barely balance my checkbook? And had to take Algebra 2 twice? And what the Hell does math have to do with my ability to pursue an English degree? I can promise you that Shakespeare never took calculus.

I finally forced myself to open the first math section.  The first paragraph was a blur of numbers and squiggley lines. I slammed the book closed.

I took a deep breath and opened it again slowly. I forced myself to focus and slowly reread the section. I made myself  do everything they said, step by step again and again. I gradually worked through the section. And then the next. I’m never going to be confident about the math part, but I might be able to fake my way through.

I’ve set a deadline to take the test in June. I may still do terribly. Or I may do okay and USC may decide that they don’t want to waste a precious spot on a geezer. But I do feel a little teeny bit smarter. At least I can understand Dear Abby.

It began as a whim. I had started noticing that I was getting stupider every day. I needed to do something to curtail my downward spiral into idiocy before I got to the point where I’d be too dumb to even read Dear Abby in the newspaper. Now some people would pick up a Suduko book. Others would attempt the New York Times crossword puzzle

. 

Not me. When I decide to do something, I go big. When I wanted to try running, I didn’t practice for a simple 5k. Nope. I began training for the Los Angeles marathon. And I’d have done it, gosh dang it, if in month six, when we were readying for a half marathon, I hadn’t pulled a groin muscle.

So with what was left of my mind, I decided to back to school. I wasn’t going to just take a course at the local community college or an extension school. Nope. I set my sights on a PhD. In English. At one of the top schools in the country. Hell, I figured if a dope like James Franco could go to Yale for God’s sake, I could go to USC.

In my defense, I was an English major, and then a writer by trade, which I felt would give me a leg up. And I’d gone the Master’s Degree route before, in Journalism. Which is almost as useful a degree these days as Art History. Or English.

When I started researching the seats of higher learning that surrounded me in Southern California  I  discovered that most didn’t offer advanced degrees in English. SC did. Looking through the course catalog sold me. It was like being in a candy shop for intelligent  people. I could take this! And that! With that professor! Or that one! I was hooked. I felt smarter just reading through the list.

Not that there weren’t a few flies in the proverbial ointment. One of the requirements was that I needed to speak a second language. If you know me, you’re aware that I occasionally have trouble with English I have been known to make up a word when an existing one didn’t serve.  A new language was going to be a problem.

You’d also think that the requirement would be Greek or Latin, since that’s the basis for English. In my case, it might as well have been, since languages are not my forte. In grade school I took 6 years of French. Which means that I can now sing “Frere Jacques” perfectly. In middle and high school I took six years of German. “O Tannenbaum!” This time I settled on trying Spanish since that would actually be useful in Southern California.

I  started looking for a tutor.Not surprisingly, that was easy. Just about everyone and their brother,(actually usually their kids, had a Spanish tutor. After talking to a few of them -in English- I found a very patient lady who just so happened to specialize in teaching people who were taking exams.

The next problem loomed even larger: the GREs. The Graduate Record Exams are standardized tests similar to the SATs, but are used for entrance to graduate school. Sadly, the ones I took 30 years ago for J-school had apparently expired, and I’d have to take them again. 

Standardized tests have never been my friend. The idea of taking a four-hour exam was beginning to give me nightmares. Talking to friends that had gone back to school didn’t help. “It will make you cry,” one assured me. “Be prepared to blow your brains out,” said another. One comforted me by recommending a test preparation book. “It helped,” she swore.

So off I went to Amazon.com and bought the fattest GRE prep book I could find. It boasted heaps of tricks and memory boosters as well as actual practice tests. For a week I couldn’t bear to open it. The enormous book sat on my counter scorning me. Finally I cracked it. The first half was the English part. I zipped through it and aced the practice tests. Something had apparently sunk in after 30 years of working with words.

But then I came to the math section. Did I mention that I was an English major? And can barely balance my checkbook? And had to take Algebra 2 twice? And what the Hell does math have to do with my ability to pursue an English degree? I can promise you that Shakespeare never took calculus.

I finally forced myself to open the first math section.  The first paragraph was a blur of numbers and squiggley lines. I slammed the book closed.

I took a deep breath and opened it again slowly. I forced myself to focus and slowly reread the section. I made myself  do everything they said, step by step again and again. I gradually worked through the section. And then the next. I’m never going to be confident about the math part, but I might be able to fake my way through.

I’ve set a deadline to take the test in June. I may still do terribly. Or I may do okay and USC may decide that they don’t want to waste a precious spot on a geezer. But I do feel a little teeny bit smarter. At least I can understand Dear Abby.

My Smart Phone Thinks I'm A Tramp

With all of the interest in Spike Jonze’s “Her” I’ve been giving some time to pondering what my OS thinks of me, and what kind of relationship we have.

                

The answer, I’m afraid, is a little worrisome.  Quite obviously, I am dependent, some might say addicted to my OS. I never leave the house willingly without my phone, and if I do, I almost obsessive check it.

               

  Naturally I use it for my email—it’s even kind enough to pre-sort the letters into several categories . This helps me when I just have a moment to scan my mail. There are my regular letters, notifications from social media groups and the so-called promoted mail.  ‘Course occasionally my person mail does get bundled with my social media, and the promoted mail falls into the regular mail file.

               

  But until recently I believed that was just an honest mistake; that my little Samsung had no ulterior motives behind the mail mix-ups. I mean, how paranoid would I have to be to believe that some of the ‘promoted’ mail had deliberately been placed in my real mail file. After all my OS isn’t perfect.  It’s  told me a few times, it’s just doing the best it can.

                

However, for some reason lately I’ve been getting a ton of spam and suggestions for internet sites. Most is sorted into the spam file, but, one does have to check that regularly to ensure that the invitation for drinks from George Clooney doesn’t get misplaced. 

But while I believe the absolute best of my OS, apparently, it doesn’t have the same high opinion of me.  Apparently my OS thinks I’m a desperate single. Why else the constant barrage of pleas from cowboys dying to meet fellow single horse owners like me? Or fantastic Jewish men looking for their soul mate?  Or even other fish from the sea. (Nevermind that I get seasick.)

I can even almost forgive the ads for the senior dating websites, even if they do offend me—who the hell are they calling a Senior? And what makes them think I’m looking for an old man? Everyone who knows me knows I aim young. But I digress.

No, my OS thinks I’m a tramp. Lately I’ve been inundated with messages from ‘married but lonely’. Or others whose mantra is ‘life is short; have an affair!’ Well, I’m here to say that I’m not that kind of girl. I mean I’m really not that kind of girl. I am not married and don’t have anybody to cheat on. So their whole pitch is kind of flawed. I thought my OS knew me better than that.

I was wrong. I have also received an onslaught of information regarding high school degrees by  mail. Initially this had me worried, was it possible that my OS knew something I didn’t, and that my degree from many moons ago was falsified? I checked with my high school, who were delighted to hear from graduates like me, and suggested I make a donation to the building fund. 

Obviously Sammy has no respect for my education because it next had questioned the validity of  my college degree. According to OS, exceedingly reputable organizations will accept me no questions asked and will rectify the situation. Again, I checked with my alma mater. They too assured me that the sheepskin I owned was for real. But they were also  more than willing to take a nice donation if I felt up to the task.

 Having straightened that out, OS is extremely concerned—and confused—with my earning potential. It implores me daily to enter sweepstakes for millions—or buy a raffle ticket for my dream home. But it isn’t sure I can pay to enter, so it helpfully suggests that I make extra dollars from the comfort of my own home stuffing envelopes or doing data entry.

I’m going to be really good at that, OS believes, and has even given me several ways to access helpful workers willing to toil for well under the minimum wage. I thought that was illegal, but I trust that my OS would never point me in a direction that would endanger our relationship—I understand that phones are not allowed in prison.

I could live with all of this. And I truly wanted to believe that since I took the time to understand my OS’ wants and desires, the intricacies of its apps and oddities of its software, eventually it would really come to know me as we

That ended today. OS pleaded with me not once, not twice, but three times to skip grocery shopping (something I’d be happy to do) by signing up with Omaha Steaks. Oh, OS break my heart. You don’t know me, a 20 year vegetarian, at all.           

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