WHAT A WEEK AND IT'S ONLY THURSDAY

I've been silent here for several days, which wasn't my intention at the outset. My plan was to post every other day, if not daily. The first entries shot out of me like a bullet. Not so, this time. Since my last post, I've begun two posts -- but stopped mid-stream -- twice.  

The first recounted a wonderful evening with my new fabu galpal, MS, who invited me to be her guest at The Goodman Theater.  It was a swell time...opening night of two one-act plays -- the second of three installments of The Horton Foote Festival. I indulged myself by taking a cab downtown; I was like a saucer-eyed kid, taking in the breathtaking sights as we coasted down Lake Shore Drive to The Goodman. The night was made all the more special because of the presence of the playwright, a dapper, sharp-eyed 91 years old. The formidable Mr. Foote is the recipient of an Academy Award (for his screenplay adaptation of "To Kill a Mockingbird") two Pulitzer Prizes, with an impressive list of credentials spanning decades.  

As a writer, it was a particular honor for me to be in his presence, and see his work come alive on stage. The two one-acts (set in a small Texas town in the 1930's) each hitting different notes, were both beautifully performed and produced.  It was one of those wonderful nights in the THE-a-TAH. Yet, for whatever reason, earlier this week, I couldn't pull the words out of me to write about it.  The dreaded writer's block.

Last night, I had one of those horrific online dates. I started to write earlier today about it, but hesitated because I declared last week that I would most likely NOT write about my dating experiences; that said, I can't help myself.  

First of all, I have renewed my commitment to only date age-appropriate men. That's not difficult because I'm only interested in dating men my own age, five years or so on either side. Apart from eye candy moments, I'm only attracted to men 40 and up. "Junior" is, um,  30 and I'm...so not 30. But I went along with it, because he approached me and pursued me and so I thought, I'm game, if it's not an issue with HIM, it won't be with me.  Okay, I'll be Daddy Date for the night. 

Maybe it's a generational thing, but I cannot date someone who sends 20 text messages in one day instead of doing the normal, old-fashioned, but much more efficient and time-saving method of JUST PICK UP THE PHONE AND CALL ME ALREADY! Text messaging irritates me.  Despite that annoyance, I decided to not be an old fogey about it and let it go.  

When he opened the door to his apartment, he lunged toward me without warning and tried to plant a big, wet one on me. I pulled back before I suffocated and looked around to see a panoramic view of dirty dishes, soiled clothes and half-open containers of crusty take-out food. I quickly suggested we leave to have dinner. He mentioned his roommate was out of town and he would have been able to use his car to drive us to the restaurant, but it was in the shop.  On the way down the stairs, he made a crack about his roomie having a Jetta, "the gayest car on the planet. It's such a cliche!"  

As we walked outside to the street, I clicked my remote to unlock my car.  I looked at him and said with gritted teeth,"That's mine over there -- the blue Jetta."

The evening went downhill from there. The restaurant he recommended served the worst Mexican food I have ever endured, and that's saying a lot. I ate four bites of a wad of congealed rice and greasy dark chicken and pushed the plate away in self-defense.  

He wolfed down his food and knocked back a double margarita.  His first.

"I had a rough night last night.  I went out drinkin' with some friends after work and we got so wasted that I wound up sleeping on someone's sofa because I was too drunk to go home."

He paused.

"You think I would have learned from the night before! I got so trashed I don't know how I got home."

He drained the last drop of his double.

"Aren't you going to have one?"

"I told you on the phone, and it was also in my profile, that I don't drink and that I'm in recovery."

He frowned.  "So does that mean you don't drink, ever?"

"Ah, no."

"Bummer."

The endless evening -- which in actuality clocked in at less than 90 minutes door-to-door -- was capped by a late-night visit to the grocery store. I thought I had brushed off the lousy date pretty well, all things considered. I told myself, just chalk it up to one of those bad nights, it will be a funny story sometime, maybe, and it was good that I went on that date, no matter how it turned out, because it got me out of my comfort zone. It wasn't a disaster, I told myself, it was an ADVENTURE. Uh-huh. But when I got home and started to unpack the groceries, I realized that I perhaps not tossed it off as adroitly as I thought I had. The evidence was compelling. And expensive.  

There were three frozen pepperoni and sausage deep dish pizzas, a large bag of double-stuff Oreos, two EIGHT-packs of 100 Grand candy bars, two big bags of Doritos (buy one, get one free!), ice cream bars, a twelve-pack of Coke (not Diet, but regular...what better to wash down the sixteen candy bars and ice cream?), four frozen entrees of family-size lasagna and a very pricey bag of coffee.  $20 for a lousy dinner, but $82 for comfort food.  It better snow again, so I can shovel to work off all these empty calories, or it's back to 45 minutes a day on the Stair-Master.  I'm sure I'll be able to fit back into my jeans in a few days. I'm wearing sweat pants now.

I've said before that losing a parent is life-changing.  It shows you whether you've got the stuff to handle just about anything that might be thrown your way.  And that's true here. The date is already ancient history to me (although I'm writing this with a Coke on one side and an open bag of Doritos on the other) because it ain't nothin' compared to real, important problems.

Yesterday morning, I saw an ambulance outside my front window.  I felt like nosy neighbor Gladys Kravitz, pulling back the curtain and peering outside. In about an hour, one of my elderly (but robust) neighbors, a wonderful woman, 85 years old, was to come over and go through my mom's personal belongings with me. She had offered, and I gratefully accepted, because I knew from earlier attempts myself, it was too difficult and emotional for me to do it alone.  

A few minutes after spotting the ambulance, the phone rang.  It was Catherine, the neighbor, who haltingly explained the woman who lived downstairs in her building -- a tenant and friend for over 30 years -- died in her sleep.  She, of course, had to postpone coming over to go through my mom's effects.

She and her husband were friends of my mom for nearly 25 years. They were at my side the entire time of her illness and were there, with me, when my mom took her last breath, here at the house.  They wouldn't leave my side until the very end,  nearly three in the morning.  When I was deciding whether to move back to Chicago, she hugged me and said "We're adopting you now, we'll take care of you...we hope you'll stay and live here."  

When she told me about the woman dying in her sleep, I could hear her fight back tears. "I don't know if I can take this.  Losing my two best friends, your mother and now her, in three months. It's too much."

I spoke to her husband today and he had a different tone in his voice. It was the first time he sounded like an old man, not the vital, robust guy who took on the world.  

"There was no warning.  She died in her sleep. We're the same age.  Your mother died, now her.  Catherine and I were walking home today from our volunteer work and we saw a dead bird on the sidewalk." His voice broke. "Everything around us is dying."

Catherine told me later that her husband wouldn't leave the bird there, exposed and prey to other animals.  He went home, got a small box and tenderly put the little bird in it and buried it in his backyard.

I was surprised when Catherine asked if I wanted her to come over this afternoon to help me sort through my mom's stuff. I asked if she was up to it and she said it would be good for her, it would bring back some happy memories of their friendship together.  

It was more difficult for me than I expected. In my mom's bedroom closet, she found a box of all the letters and cards I had sent to my mom over the years, from grade school on...and the envelopes with her handwriting on each one. I was astounded to find all of my report cards from grade school through high school, my college transcripts, honor roll ribbons, diplomas, things I hadn't seen in years, but there they were, lovingly preserved and carefully documented. I held back tears as much as I could but, funny thing, I was kind of okay until I found her sewing kit.  That was it for me.  I remembered all those years when I was a kid and came home with a torn button or tear on my pants and she'd give me one of those 'boys-will-be-boys' looks and say 'Bring me the sewing kit'...and she'd fix it in a flash. I sat on the floor, holding the green sewing box, seeing the spools of thread and thimbles that had been there since I was a kid.  

They say it's the small things that can get you.  Ain't that the truth.

SAY WHAT?

As I considered creating a blog and writing entries on a regular basis, I was suddenly faced with the prickly new phenomenon of blog etiquette which seems to be alarmingly subjective as I puruse one blog after another...all in the name of research, you know.  I've talked about this with fellow bloggers and friends who would most likely be named and/or appear in my blog. 

It's really a fascinating topic, since good taste, discretion, personal disclosure, and naming names and revealing one's secrets -- and others, with or without their consent -- seem to be highly variable these days.  Besides not wanting to be hit with a libel suit, I don't want to tick off some wide-eyed psychotic/online blind date who might take offense and a hammer to me if I ID'd him when recounting our conversation when he said within the first five minutes, "Do you know I have a theory that serial killers don't find their victims...their victims find their killer because they want to die." 

As Jane Fonda recently said on "The Today Show" when she explained why she didn't want to do a monologue called C***T, "I have enough problems..." 

Blogging creates a unique dynamic.  I attempt to remain somewhat anonymous, and yet I choose to reveal a good deal about myself and my life.  Of course, there is the art of selective disclosure, where it seems the person is revealing all, but, of course, is doling out select portions of one's life.  So the blogger decides what is within the parameters of what will be open season to write, and what is kept private.  On the other hand, when a blogger writes about friends in his universe, even if they aren't openly identified, they, oftentimes, know each other.  So just because I only ID my best galpal friend as "CB," her friend, "GW" knows her, and will thus know it's HER when I write about her.  And vice versa...and that holds true for anyone I write about who knows each other.  I blow their cover by default.  And then there's the issue: What is fair game in what they tell me about their lives and what I can write about?   

A sub-topic:  Who the blogger invites to read his blog...does the writer tell all of his/her friends -- or some, or only a select few?  And what about co-workers, colleagues, relatives, former schoolmates, ex-dates or spouses, current flames, old paramours? And what are the reasons behind that selective process?  What if your friends found out some of them were told by you about your blog, and others were not? Ka-boom, friendships.  

For those of us in 12-step fellowships, there is the added layer of not revealing who is a "member" and who is not...and how much can be written about, even in the most general terms, of what might have transpired at a meeting or within a conversation with a fellow 12-stepper.  

Of course, common sense and discretion will hopefully win out, but sometimes what's benign to me is explosive to the other person. C'mon, who doesn't like a good date or, especially, a bad date anecdote?  I gotta million of 'em...I could tell you about three from last week....but I won't...or will I?  If word gets around that I write about my dates and, in a perfect universe, my sex life (if I had one), I'd be a pariah in this town within the space of only three weeks since I arrived. I work fast, but not THAT fast.  

I said to a friend and fellow blogger last night, Blogging is fascinating...it's like holding up a mirror to a keyboard.  Some hold to the wisdom of holding back..others, in this age of desperate stardom and instant fame (talent no longer necessary), it seems more and more people are willing to sacrifice their dignity and self-respect in exchange for a moment of fame or attention....and to what end?  And here I am, blogging...my shrink just bought six more months with that one.  

TUMULT

My sudden, unexpected mid-life move from L.A. to Chicago -- due to the November '07 passing of my mom -- compels me to memorialize it as it happens.  Four months ago, I would have vehemently dispelled any notion that I would give up my life as a showbiz writer in Hollywood to move back to my hometown of Chicago...in the dead of January, in the worst winter the Windy City has known since I blew this town (no, no, no) in '79.  

The life-changing experience of losing a parent (perhaps even more acute since I'm an only child and she was the only parent I had since the age of five) is like nothing else I have gone through and words cannot convey all that comes with it.  I'm blessed in that I had a wonderful relationship with my mom in her last years, augmented by the great comfort I can extract from the sadness because I was there at her side from the onset of her illness to holding her hand as she took her last breath after deciding she wanted to spend her last days at home via home hospice care.  

My life is completely different as I knew it in the span of twelve weeks or so.  I never would have predicted that mom would take ill and pass away in six weeks, that I'd walk away from 27 years in Los Angeles and move back to Chicago, where I was born and raised (through college), and take on a new life...and a new role as a first-time homeowner...of a cozy, inviting but slightly neglected, one-hundred year old house in the heart of the city...surrounded by wonderful neighbors who loved my mom and my stepdad, now having "adopted" me as one of their own.  

I am also blessed with a cluster of friends in Los Angeles (and elsewhere) who have spanned years and, more often than not, decades.  My best friend (and most creative and kindest person on the planet), CB, flew out from L.A. the week after my mom died to get me through it, prop me up, keep me going and keep me afloat, focused and not allowing me to crumble at the worst of it, and finding the joy of best-friendship that only gets better and stronger after 25 years.  She's helping me with my life, the house and gives me that 'upside-the-head' kind of smack down advice I usually need on a daily, if not hourly, basis.  My dear friend, Ed (a fellow blogger), flew out from LA during that rough time, and continues to inspire, prod and love me from afar, as I do him. And then there is the cast of characters, including GW, sponsor Brian, Tom B., Jerry, John F. and a dozen other good souls whom I love dearly and who remain close to my heart if not in geographical distance.  

I feel loved, protected, saved, scared, excited, transformed, overwhelmed, in awe, and in gratitude for this new life, a new change, a new slate and a new start.  I left Los Angeles sad and somewhat broken...single all last year, I was adrift, and without purpose and lonely, though surrounded by friends and pals in the 12-step fellowship.  When I finally got here to the house after my flight was delayed eight hours because of the snow and ice, I unlocked the front door to an empty house, suddenly now mine, with memories of my mom flooding me.  I sat down in her favorite chair and started to cry. 

I was alone, without a parent, and yet I felt her presence everywhere.  I had a feeling at that moment, bolstered every day since, that her death has brought me a new life.  And a new appreciation for how fragile life can be...and how I want to make the most of it.

FROM SANDMAN TO SNOWMAN

I've avoided starting a blog for as long as I could.  I would die happy if I never saw another blog entry by some semi-illiterate who writes "to" instead of "too," "definately" for "definitely," "alot" to replace "a lot" and the increasingly-popular and ever-irritating phrase, "I'm looking for a dominate man" -- you want "dominate"?  Okay, subs, listen up: Turn off the computer, find a friggin' dictionary and learn the difference between a verb and an adjective and differentiate between "dominate" and "dominant"...you want a "dominate man"?  Here's an order: Always use Spell-Check.  

Clearly, I'm no longer taking the higher ground on not launching a blog.  I'm a writer and I can't resist.  To leave L.A. when it's 80 degrees and arrive at 3AM at O'Hare when the temperature is twenty-below with a forty miles-an-hour wind chill factor?  I'm thrust in "Survivor Chicago: The Ice Age" without much advance notice.  

The rental car had an odd brush-like thing in the back seat and I said to the rep, what IS that?  Giving my tell-tale tanning salon tint the once-over, he rolled his eyes and explained, You scrape the CAR with it, to remove the snow and ice...Ohhhhhh.  

I had selective amnesia about this sort of thing, since I spent the first 23 years of my life in Chicago but avoided trips here during winter.  Now, I wake up in the morning and never know what I'm going to get when I look out the front porch window...sun, rain, snow, sleet, ice, flurries, hail...the possibilities with Southern California weather are limited...sun, less sun, rain and grey skies...that's the patina of Los Angeles.  I opened an umbrella four times a year in Southern California.  In Chicago, it's all about the shovel.  I've traded the high-end treadmill for the humble shovel. I can't shake this cold but, who cares, my body fat is now down to 8%.

There are two men in the 'hood who have snow blowers.  When the snow piles up, one goes out with his blower (in West Hollywood, men are armed with hair blowers) and mows the snow on the sidewalks from one end of the block to the other.  The second guy comes out, later, when more snow falls, with the bigger blower, and he scoops the rest up in grand fashion. It's like a pissing contest, but better, because we all benefit. I told one of them, it's like "High Noon' with the two of you out there in the sun beneath the snow, staring each other down...and then blowing.  One with a big piece of equipment, the other with a smaller one, but he really knows how to use it. It's not just about horsepower, baby.

Sometimes I feel Chicago is a really good fit for me...and other times, I feel like Lisa Douglas on "Green Acres"...you know, "Oh, Olivah! Where is the electrisical?"  

The adventure continues.