Movie Madness

I have seen every movie this year that has been nominated for a major Academy Award.
I dragged my husband to the animation short films yesterday at our local arts theater.
I made my friend go back there with me this morning to see the live action nominated short films.
I do not go to the movies as an excuse to eat fresh popcorn.
I go to the movies because I love the movies.
I got the movie-loving gene from my late mom.
I know I have passed it on to my daughter who, when in the same zip code as me on Christmas Day, shares in the tradition of a movie triple header and Chinese food. We deviated from that this year -- the Chinese food -- and are putting it back to committee for a vote next year.
So here are my selections, in the categories people care about -- my apologies to the documentaries and best foreign language films -- before the stars saunter down the Red Carpet and dear Ellen DeGeneres entertains us for three-plus hours.
The envelope please:
Animated feature film: Frozen
Best animated short: Room on The Broom - UK
Best live action short: Aquel No Era Yo (That Wasn't Me) -Espana
Best supporting actor: Jared Leto - Dallas Buyers Club
Best supporting actress: Lupita Nyong'o - 12 Years a Slave
Best actor: Leonardo DiCaprio - The Wolf of Wall Street
Best actress: Cate Blanchette - Blue Jasmine
Best director: Alfonso Cuaron - Gravity
Best picture: 12 Years a Slave
Off to make popcorn!!!

An Olympic Postpartum Posting

Is anyone else suffering from a post Winter Olympic Games hangover?
For more than a fortnight I have used my obsession for the games as an excuse for not sitting down to write this blog.
It was nice to be missed. My loyal readers at the fitness center and Starbucks, two of the few places I frequented during my personal DVRfest of winter sports, kept asking me why I wasn't updating the blog.
I won't miss living on the edge of spoiler alerts and early A.M. wake up calls to watch prelim events that really misled me as to the outcome of medal rounds. But I will miss the "live'' competition.
Have I mentioned I always wanted to report on an Olympics, before retiring from the newspaper business? Oh, yeah I think I did. 
I'm sure I will mention it again before I retire from this blog.
I need to get over it the way Shaun White (my wayward pretend professional snowboarding son) has gotten over not medaling at the Sochi experience.
My real son and I, avid X-Game followers, knew what tricks White honed on the half pipe before the sport took off in popularity and all the current medalists cut their teeth on White's tricks. 
Of course I would always tell my real son not to try any of the snowboarding or skateboarding tricks at home. I let him live vicariously through the gravity defying feats we watched on TV.
White, not my real son who is premed boy plodding through midterms in the South for another week, seemed to be back to normal on his visit with Jimmy Fallon this week on "The Tonight Show." 
I figured White, a two-time Olympic gold medalist, who holds the X-Games records for gold medals and highest overall medal count, would pick himself up. He was still thrilled - despite pulling out of one event due to course conditions and finishing off the medal stand in his favored event - to be at the Olympics and a member of the team. 
While I'm on White and the Olympics, I want to mention something my real son mentioned that he learned this semester in his Ancient Athletes history class. 
When the Olympics were first organized, they only gave out gold medals.
Don't go intimating that your local Olympians and national treasures are losers or disappointments because they came home with silver and bronze medals. For crying out loud, they got to go to the Olympics.
They still don't give participation trophies for going to the Olympic Games. You do, however, get a lot of clothing, photos and memories. And once you are an Olympic athlete, you are always an Olympic athlete.
In some sports the odds are stacked against the athletes because of scoring systems that no one really understands. Why does everyone always act so surprised when there is controversy in the skating competitions?
I was never going to let my children participate in sports where adults could subjectively mar them for life. In this house you raced against the clock, had to make the basket, had to hit the ball or the birdie. Okay, there were a few missed calls behind the plate and at the badminton boundary lines over the years, but we kept it in perspective that our children were not playing in the Olympics. The Olympics ARE NOT an easy level to advance to if you are an American playing badminton.
Going to the Olympics IS NOT an easy feat for any athlete to achieve. Although some of the Scandinavian and German families, who come back year after year, from much smaller countries, have figured something out.
Americans have figured out how to win lots of medals in non-traditional events -- especially ones we invent.
Speaking of the Wheaties "Breakfast of Champions" box, American gold medalists free-style snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg and alpine skier Mikaela Shiffren are on the 2014 boxes.
Shiffren, 18, became the youngest Olympian to ever win her event. Kostenburg won the first ever gold medal in men's snowboard slope style.
Despite their awesome achievements, I wondered if they would have been displaced if the men's and women's ice hockey teams had won gold medals?
Today I was picking up my husband's pants at the dry cleaners and saw Olympic hockey jerseys on the carousel. Hoping there was not a HIPA agreement on dry cleaning, I asked the woman behind the counter if they might belong to one of our hometown Olympic heroes, or her family members. Even after looking at the name on the tag she had no idea.
I'm moving on.

Not a remote chance of bringing home Olympic gold

"I can't remember when I've done something so fun," my friend said as I opened the door. 

With that she clamored into the foyer, clutching the still cold newspapers from her driveway and her breakfast cereal, bowl and all. 

The sun had not yet come up over Buffalo Grove and the coffee was brewing. 

We were going to watch the U.S. Women's Olympic Ice Hockey Team play Team Canada, before she had to go to work. It was 6:30 stateside. I was and still am having trouble trying to figure out what time it was/is in Sochi. 

I offered to make blintzes in honor of Russia, the host country, as we prepared to cheer for our hometown girl Megan Bozek and her teammates against the Canadians, our neighbors to the north. Kimberley said not to go to the trouble with the blintzes. 

She scarfed down her oatmeal squares, I a yogurt and we rushed into the family room to watch the puck drop. 

Lots of these morning viewing parties were going on across the country. Bozek's elementary school opened its doors early so the students could watch the game together and cheer her on.

The time difference and 24-hour spoiler alerts are agonizing to us Olympic watchers. Last time I got up this early for a televised event was a Royal wedding. Didn't need any spoiler alerts for that event.

In the good old days of my writing/editing career I would throw Americas Cup viewing parties with sailing friends. Generally we were just rolling in to watch the early-morning broadcasts from Perth. 

I dazzled Kimberley with my remote control savvy, turning on the TV and finding the right HD channel on the NBC sports spectrum. I was recording the game on the DVR so my husband could watch it later. And so I could replay anything NBC didn't replay ad nauseum. 
I had no idea I had put a delay on the recording and we were actually watching the game a good 20 minutes behind its live showing.

Coffee in hands we got involved in the game. Veteran sports moms, and good friends, we were now cheering for other moms' daughters.
Bozek is actually Kimberley's neighbor and a peer of our own four daughters, who are stalking her on line from Paris and the southern cities they now live in. 

If it had been at all feasible, geographically, economically, and timely, I know Kimberley would have been in the Sochi stands. Covering an Olympics had always been a goal of mine as a sportswriter.
I met and wrote about a lot of aspiring athletes, a few who accomplished the goal and even a few Olympic medal winners in my career.

Meantime, we were sitting in the family room, chewing our nails, clutching our coffee mugs and wishing for a U.S. victory. Between periods we discussed broadcaster Bob Costas' eye infection and the "disappointing" performances of our favorites in other Olympic events. We were sad for Shaun and Shani, who were denied their third gold medals. We were trying to put it in perspective that despite NBC hyping the heck out of our heroes, there might be other athletes (even teammates) who would outperform the best athletes from the Vancouver games four years ago.
After a scoreless first period the U.S. women scored the game's first goal in the second and we were riding the rush and the caffeine buzz as the game headed into the third. Despite my protests (I am very superstitious about people changing their seats and disrupting the momentum of the game), Kimberley had to go to work. As she drove to work she listened to the game in her car. I had poured my third cup of coffee and settled in to cheer on my own.
"Why are they saying Canada has scored two goals?'' Kimberley queried from the car (I am going to assume she was parked at work and not calling and driving at the same time). 
I didn't know but I immediately grabbed the remote and saw that when fast forwarded, the U.S. was in fact down 2-1 in the third.
Crap, we had been watching behind the live action. Worse, it wasn't going to get any better. Canada rallied to win the game, 3-2.
The U.S. women will play Sweden at 6:30 a.m., Monday, in a semifinal game. Canada plays Switzerland in the other semifinal.
Kimberley will be out of town. I will most likely watch the game against Sweden alone.
We're hoping for a rematch between the U.S. and Canada in the gold medal game. We're also hoping for a better outcome.
And I am hoping to master the TV remote.

#KillTheGroundhog

Those of you who know me, know I would never really hurt an innocent animal (mice and snakes in the house, are an exception).
The Groundhog has got to go.
Stand down PETA! You are dealing with a woman who just doesn't want another six weeks of winter. A woman who wrenched her back this morning while learning to use a snow blower (because she should not be shoveling), so that she could make a much-needed haircut appointment.
Made it up and back on a handful of Advil and sat down to write this before a muscle relaxer does its magic.
I had already been thinking about the need for the big rodent's demise before the Chicagoland area got 50-plus inches of snow and started to refer to the Polar Vortex as the new state of the union.
The additional 6-8 inches that socked in our already shrinking driveway today only added to my frustration. Worst winter in memory (of course I did get to live in Florida for 18 years, where a hard frost is a reason to panic) . 
When we moved to the Midwest from Orlando 17 years ago, one of my new friends here couldn't believe it and would call me after every first snowflake to question why we moved here.
Weather aside, it has been a great relocation for our family. 
My real Florida friends have also stopped calling me between blizzards to see how the weather is up here.
That not-so-new-anymore Chicagoland friend now knows better than to rub in the weather. A hardy native, she is also willing to hunt down the groundhog.
Punxatawney (Pa.) Phil, in all his furry glory, "saw his shadow" on another gray overcast Feb. 2-day and sentenced us to six more miserable weeks of the weather that has packed an extra 15-20 pounds on a lot of my stay-at-home friends. My neighbor told me her Weight Watcher friend said she is suffering from "Polar Vortex eating." I feel her pain.
Couldn't have been the fact they woke Phil from his snug burrow and surrounded him with inquiring minds and intrusive cameras and lights that sent him down under for another six weeks?
My hairstylist and confidant pointed out that she heard the groundhog only had a 48% accuracy rate. Professional meteorologists at AccuWeather find Phil has only a 80 percent accuracy rate. NOAA National Climatic Data Center claims Phil has no prediction skills at all.
I am glad to see this is being researched and debated by finer weather watchers than I.
Several other groundhogs compete with the Pennsylvania prognosticator each year. In Washington DC they use Potomac Phil, a stuffed stand in, to make their own winter prediction. This does not surprise me.
I had to cancel my coffee group coming over for coffee and conversation this afternoon because of my back pain. Too bad they won't get to see my great haircut. Most of them were already out and about running errands and carrying on as the people around here do, despite the weather. It takes more than a few feet of snow to stop Chicagoans.
That is unless O'Hare shuts down.
My sister and 600,000 fellow Philadelphians are suffering without power right now. Might not be back up for a couple of days with all the downed trees and power lines.
A neighbor helped her exhume her car from the garage and she is hoping to get a train into the city to get a shower and be closer to her office for work tomorrow. You don't want to know what she has been texting me about the groundhog.
You know that expression let sleeping dogs… ? Next year let's let sleeping groundhogs do the same.

There she was, Miss America

Miss America was a lot taller when I was a child.
Being in the same building, the same common area and the same auditorium with Nina Davuluri, Miss America 2014, briefly on Saturday, was a larger than life experience for me.
I was nearly as giddy as Amy Farrah Fowler when Sheldon gave her a tiara on The Big Bang Theory. But I reeled it in.
Davuluri was at our community high school to headline its World's Fair and promote her platform and philanthropy.
The high school was raising money for Circle of Women* as part of its Student Diversity Council's two-day program to appreciate foreign countries and cultures. The Iran booth was next to the Israel booth. This year there was a North Korea booth to match the South Korea booth. The China delegation had ping pong and mahjong tables at ready. And there was food of all flavors and singing and dance performances followed.
I went as the guest of my friend whose daughter was behind the South Africa exhibit. In the seven years my children attended the high school I never went to the event. Miss America's attending was probably what lured me there.
Growing up in the Philadelphia area, the Miss America Pageant was one of my favorite seasonal events. Despite signaling the end of summer, it ranked up there with the Mummers Parade and watching "The Wizard of Oz." I never dreamed of being in the pageant, but I sure always wanted to attend it.
I'd walked the same Atlantic City boardwalk growing up, the contestants still parade down. You knew it was the end of summer when the stores and restaurants began taping photographs of the contestants in their windows.
Once, with a nearly third-degree sunburn, I dragged my grandmother a good hour down the boards to try and sneak inside the Atlantic City Convention Center -- the epi-center of the most important pageant in the world. 
The Miss America Pageant was conceived in 1920 to extend the summer vacation season at the Jersey Shore beyond Labor Day Weekend. In my house it meant TV dinners in the 60s and 70s with my Grandma Fisher (mom's mom) and watching way past normal bedtime to see who would be crowned America's "ideal" young woman.
The contestants from all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, were like Barbie dolls that had come to life.
My grandmother and I would of course always root for Miss Pennsylvania but we had other favorites. The talent competition was our favorite part. I liked the baton twirlers and singers, she loved the piano players. Davuluri performed a Bollywood fusion dance in the talent segment.
I remember thinking Miss America, at 20-21, was really old. Now I feel really old thinking that I could be Davuluri's mother.
I'm sure the current Miss America's mother is kvelling about her daughter. Davuluri, 24, whose platform is diversity and cultural competency, is one of only 93 women in the country who can call herself Miss America.
She was at Lincolnshire's Adlai Stevenson High School on an official crown-on-her-head Miss America visit, one of thousands she will make during her 12-month tenure that puts about 20,000 miles on her each month. She is never in one city for more than 18 to 48 hours.
You can actually book a Miss America appearance on line on their official website.
I am not a fan of reality pageant shows. I really am not comfortable with the whole bathing suit issue. But those of you loyal blog readers know I am not comfortable with bathing suits at all.
Davuluri, who mentioned to a whole room of teen-agers that she has dealt with eating issues in her life, defended that suit segment of the competition as a way to show how healthy and fit contestants are. She insists proper eating and fitting in an exercise routine even on her busy schedule helps her maintain.
The reality is the Miss America Pageant has handed out $45 million in scholarship money to its contestants. Davuluri won $50,000 with her title and crown. Thru the pageant system the former Miss New York has accumulated $91,000 in scholarship money to offset her undergraduate degree in brain behavior and cognitive science at the University of Michigan. She has already completed post-baccalaureate work and plans to go to medical school in 2015.
The way she captivated the audience and educated us on the hard work that went into her becoming Miss America, I found myself secretly wishing that she would run for the U.S. Senate.
Davuluri is the first Miss America of Indian descent, the second Asian to wear the crown. I only mention this because of all the crap from the crazies she took after being crowned. Somehow being born in Syracuse, NY was not American enough for a certain segment of the population. 
She was raised by grandparents in India before moving back to the USA to live with her parents in Oklahoma, Michigan and New York.
English was her second language, when she moved back to the states from India. On her journey to becoming who she is, she had to deal with racism and discrimination until she found her comfort level, and a few more "brown" people like herself, in college.
She has launched a social media campaign to encourage constructive and civil dialogue on diversity issues. The daughter of a physician and IT specialist, she has also promoted STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) to high school and college students. 
There she was, looking like every one's daughter in very high heels and comfortably holding a microphone. Earlier, before taking the stage to talk about perseverance, she took photos while wearing her crown for the Diversity Council's charity.
The crown has four points on it -- representing the pageant pillars: style, service, scholarship and success. Miss America gets to keep the crown she had pinned to her head the night of the pageant, when her reign ends. The organization holds onto a copy just in case it gets, misplaced, stolen or broken, while she tours.
Even when it isn't on, Davuluri embodies those pillars.

* Circle of Women is an organization that builds and supports secondary schools accessible to young women in developing countries.

Shoe repair

The sign on the door said the local shoe repair place would be closed January 17and 18. The dilemma: It was the 22nd. 

My husband had already stopped by on Saturday, the 18th, but the shop was closed. A mountain of unclaimed shoes and luggage behind its locked door. Frost on the insides of its windows.
But no cobbler,  only a locked door and the handwritten note that said the shop would be temporarily closed. 
Anyone who has attempted to pick up shoes there knows it is never open on Monday. It was Saturday (the day his boots and our daughter's dancing pumps were to be ready). Closed. Something must be wrong. 

There was no point to going by on Sunday, the day the cobbler rests. And I knew not to go by on Monday. 

The same note, that looked like it had been scribbled by Pinocchio, was hanging on the door on Tuesday. 

It was gone on Wednesday when a short parade of cars pulled up and people, including me, put on their flashers and left the warmth of their vehicles to peek in the yet still locked door. 

I don't know the man, the artisan, who has reheeled our shoes for more than a decade. Not even sure if his name matches the sign on his shop, but I was beginning to worry about him. 

No one answered the phone when I called. There was no recorded message. 

I was hoping he would be okay in a few days. 

Maybe he was mourning the closing of the strip center's grocery store. Maybe he got out of the Polar Vortex for a few days.

Maybe he got tired of rooting about the shelves of unclaimed wares, persisting til he plucked out your proper pair. According to friends, even with the claim ticket that warned patrons to pick up within 30 days, it was never certain he would find your repaired pair. 
We have been lucky. He has always made our shoes look like new and we have never lost items in the chaos of his small workspace. 

Wednesday I inquired in two of the neighboring business if anyone knew the inside story. Nope. So much for small business owners watching each others' backs.
Thursday, after voicing my concern over the cobbler's health and the well-being of my family's footwear, to my friends, I called again. Thursday morning a wheezy voice answered. 

I confirmed that the shop was open and would be open in the few minutes it would take for me to drive there. 
"Yes," he weakly said. 

I parked the car in the empty parking lot and was relieved to see the OPEN sign ablaze. Even more relieved when the door opened and that familiar smell of leather, glue and polish permeated my nostrils. 

I told him I was beginning to worry about him as he began to search for the footwear that corresponded to my weathered ticket stub. He found the pumps.

"I was in the hospital," he shared. "I'm sorry."
"I'm sorry,'' I replied. 
I felt horrible for him and he was now apologizing for any inconvenience.

 The boots he remembered were not yet fixed. He would have them today at noon, he promised. 

I resisted wrestling the boots away. I told him Saturday would be fine. I'd send my husband. 
And maybe some chicken soup.

More mind games

Collectively, we are losing our minds. I know this because I am writing more and more notes to remind my friends to remember to do certain things. 

Add those notes to the notes I already write on my iPhone notebooks so I can remember what I need to do each day, and you will understand the callouses on my fingertips. Note to self: paraffin treatment and manicure for birthday treat. 

My mom and I used to joke about taking Ginko Biloba or St. John's Wort or some other magical herbal treatment to improve our memories. Alzheimer's and/or dementia didn't run on her side of the family. While the bodies of the matriarchs on her side of the tree began to fail in their 80s, their minds remained sharp and intact til the end. We joked about not being able to remember the name of the supplements, or even when to take them. Sometimes, before she passed in February, we laughed about not remembering having the conversation about memory loss.

The Hallmark people are not helping me. They have not expanded the selection of birthday cards enough to prevent me from sending the same birthday cards to friends year after year. One kind friend just pointed out at lunch today that that card I picked may just be the perfect card for that perfect friend. 

Another one of my friends suggested we just resend the cards we open, back and forth, each year. For a while I was buying a lot of belated birthday cards because I could not remember dates. My iPhone has helped fix that problem.

Recently I re-received a fantastic cookbook from my girlfriend in New York, penned by Sirius radio personality Frank DeCaro, one of her dear friends. It was inscribed to me, thanking me for a Fiesta ceramic dinnerware bowl I sent Frank for his collection. 

I have never met Frank, but I remembered he was a collector. The things I do remember. Fiesta collectors have to stick together to preserve the integrity of the original pieces and colors from the 1930s. 

Funny, the reason I sent Frank the rare Fiesta piece was because he had already sent me the same cookbook, at my girlfriend's request, when it first came out. She remembered my son was a foodie and a fan of celebrity chefs. The first book was also inscribed to me. 

My girlfriend -- whose mom was also one of the sharpest, wittiest women I have ever known, until her body gave up the fight -- and I also had a good laugh when I shared the story with her about her cookbook gift that keeps on giving.  She vowed to keep a better gift/card list. I vowed to actually look at the one I have, wherever it is.
Meantime, now both of my children will inherit a copy of a very clever cookbook. 

I use staving off losing my memory as a daily excuse to do Sudoku puzzles and play Words With Friends. My children are fourth generation Scrabble players. My grandmother and mom both insisted the game swept the cobwebs away. I studied for the SAT in the 70s by constantly playing Scrabble with my mom. Even when her vision was impaired by macular degeneration (another bonus in my gene pool), she could still beat me in Scrabble.

At the peak of my sports editing days I kept track of some 75 Florida high schools' coaches and athletes for readers in eight counties. Now I find myself with four bottles of the same mustard in the cupboard because as I peruse the grocery aisles, I can't remember if I am running low at home.
Most of my book group read the book Still Alice (hold on I am Googling the author -- Lisa Genova ) a few years back. It's a story about a 50-year-old professional woman with Early-Onset Alzheimer's Disease. Most of us, along with the main character, flunked the cognitive tests peppered throughout the book's pages. We passed around dessert and chalked the symptoms up to peri-menopause. Luckily we all found our car keys, our cars and our the way back to our own homes. 
I have been trying to return assorted trays and dishes friends left at my house during the holidays. As if meshing each other's schedules is not difficult enough, if both parties are forgetting stuff, little stuff gets done.
After remembering to put said trays in the right car to deliver, I texted my friend  -- a woman I worked with for months to organize the senior class party at our kids' high school -- to find out when she would be home today for a handoff. Her text response:
"Don't know. I don't know how long I'll be at work. If I remember, I will call you when I leave."
I am sooooo happy to not be alone*.

###

*After I first posted this my friend called to tell me she remembered to call and she came by to pick up her platters.
Also Brian Williams, of NBC Nightly News fame, reported on the SAGE (Self-Administered Gerocognitive Exam) test the folks at Ohio State University put together to help people detect early signs of Alzheimer's. For more information, go to http://sagetest.osu.edu/ or check out the the Nightly News' link.