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Showing posts from 2016

How much help do our grown children need?

That is a good question. Once I read on FB: “when my child turned 18, I gave him a sock and said Doby is free now”. It had me laughing, but that almost how it was when I turned 18, I did not get a sock, I ran, I no longer wanted to live under the same roof with my parents. Few days ago my ex called me and said “our son’s car broke down, we need to help him” to what my only reply was “stop solving his problems, he needs to learn how to deal with them himself”. Father’s first instinct was to fix baby’s problems. Totally understandable, with an exception of one minor detail. Baby is 20 years old, and he needs to learn how to take care of his own problems. He agreed with me, and that was closed. Yesterday I get a call from my dad, and he is asking me to stop by his house, because he has something he wants to talk to me about. Ok, not a problem, on my way home from work I totally forget to go see my parents and come straight home. After a reminder phone call, I get back in my

Independence day.

When you wake up in the morning and realize that your friends fled your house, you panic. Chain of events starts running through your head, then you sit down and put your hands on your head, bow down and realize “you are a terrible hostess and a bad, bad friend”. It was a three day weekend, it was agreed that our out of town friends will come for a visit. The plan was to hang out, spend some time together, and relax. Great plan. “Please make sure the dinner is waiting for us when we arrive”, not a problem, after a long drive it is very pleasant when hot food is waiting for you. Friends arrive, dinner is ready, bedroom is ready, clean sheets are fresh, the bed is inviting. It's a perfect rest. It's a perfect start to a perfect weekend. Trip to the park is scheduled for the next day, we get up early, no time for breakfast, considering we will be celebrating someone’s birthday and food will be plentiful. Weather was perfect, it was not too hot, celebrating, and laying

Car shopping with a happy ending

Naturally my niece asked me to help her to get a new car. She was no longer wanting to drive her tiny teal color Chevy Aveo with 150k miles. How she got her Chevy is another story, but I really did not expect a car like that to live past 100K, it was a miracle that it was still driving. So I volunteered to help her find a decent car, since I worked at the dealership for a year, I still have few contacts. So I called my former co-worker. When I started selling cars he was my mentor, and a lot more. We had so much history together, when we worked we were inseparable, we were complete opposites. And opposites attract. He is black, goes to church, he is one of those people I always made fun off. So life decided to give me a lesson, when it brought us together. Working at the dealership, we spent at least 60 hours a week together, naturally on the first day we started flirting, and flirting we did. Till the moment I found myself all the way in the back, in the parts room, between very

Driving without breaks

One of the worst feelings you can experience is when someone you deeply care about calls you on Saturday afternoon, when you are just shopping and frantically starts telling you something. Out of the jumble of words, you hear shear panic in the voice so dear to your heart, and you still don’t understand what is going on, besides that there was nobody else was available. That was my 18 year old niece calling, and she was freaked out. First things first, I had to calm her down, in order to understand what she needed help with. When that part was accomplished, and she was talking calmly, I was able to finally understand her problem. She was on the highway, and driving without breaks.  Oh joy! I take a deep breath, to calm myself at this point, I have to keep it all together for her, both of us cannot be freaking out. She tells me that she tried the hand break and all it did was make her car spin. Great! Vik was with me, he is looking at my face, and now he is worried and wants t

Milk & Honey

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This photographer tagged me on my modeling site, so I went to look at his work, and I was pleasantly surprised. His pictures were different, they had “old style” look, like you are getting a glimpse into the past. And I thought to myself that I don’t mind having a shoot with him, especially since his studio was in DC. It will be something totally different. So I sent him email, commenting on his pictures, we started talking, and he invited me to shoot at the location at the beach house, 3 hours away. At first I started talking myself out of it, and I started to compose “thanks, but no thanks” polite email, but then decided to “sleep on it” and in the morning, I could not find anything against it, and giving it final thought, and discussing it with Vik I decided that I can use some time away. The thought of seeing an ocean, when it is so bitter cold outside was warming my heart from the inside, and I was beginning to look forward to the weekend on the beach. We exchanged few lengt

Superman

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First time I met him was on the location he picked, it was an abandoned factory somewhere 40 minutes away from my house. That part I figured out only on my way back home. We decided to meet at one of the oriental supermarkets. I knew where one was so I went there to meet him. I arrived on time and called him to find out what he is driving. Little red car, after looking around for a few minutes of orientation with him, I realized that I was at the wrong place. Rushing to fix my little misunderstanding I took matters into my own hands and thinking I know where I need to be going, I took of in the opposite direction. He chased me in his little red car for the next half an hour, because I drove so out of my way that the figured out that stopping me at the nearest shopping center and picking me up was the smartest idea. So I sat and I waited patiently, giving myself a lecture for wasting daylight, till my superman arrived. And he did, wearing a red superman tee shirt. He greeted me with a

Good Mother, bad Mother

Interesting how a lot of my posts end up being about my parenting and my parents in particular. I talk to my parents over Skype every day, it's more like a ritual at this point. My dad calls me and we exchange news. Most of the time, for the most part it comes down to casual chatting. I am always in the kitchen, making dinner when we talk, so my dad, and mom get to see me make dinner. The other day I went to see them, and saw that they had soup, so I suggested that she uses vegetable broth for cooking instead of regular water for richer taste. So when I was talking to my parent my mom starts giving me lecture on how bad the broth is, because it sits in the closed container on the shelf. So I took the broth out, and read all the ingredients to her, to me it did not sound bad at all, because it was all organic, and I was using it for making food for my dogs. Long story short, I told my mother that it was not for me, it was for the dogs, because she should remember that I have n

True happiness

About a week ago I started talking to one of my old friend’s. We started working together over 20 years ago, and the next 10 continued to work together on and off. Naturally, we started catching up, a lot have changed in 10 years that we lost contact. Yesterday he asked me a question: “ I guess what I'm asking is do you remember when you were really content and happy ?” I could not answer that question right away, it made me think. Life is never the same, there are always ups and downs, but when was I really really happy? When I was a small kid, all I needed was ice-cream or some bubble gum and I was happy, then as I was getting older, simple ice-cream was no longer the giver of happiness. I was happy for a while when I found out that we will be migrating to USA. Growing up in the Soviet country with Jewish parents, I was expected to marry and have children, and I was under the impression that it will bring me everlasting happiness. When I married my Jewish prince, I put