Category: Signs of the Times

Head Over Heels

Posted on:

Okay, I have officially become one of those people. You know, Those People. The People who a mere week ago I felt completely justified, even compelled, to make fun of. The People so besotted with their Blackberry AKA Crackberry devices they can’t take their eyes or hands off them for a minute. No matter how public the place or how scintillating the social scene, their gazes are fixed on that tiny backlit screen, their nimble fingers tap, tap tapping away at the miniscule keyboard. These are the people who suddenly draw to dead stops on busy sidewalks–and hey, it’s Manhattan, so it’s not like there are lots of un-busy sidewalks–Subway stairs, and yes, sometimes even crosswalks.

Okay, so maybe I haven’t done the zombie stuck in crosswalk thing, but it’s only been a week.

I got my Blackberry–The Curve, she’s called–exactly one week ago, last Friday. Chalk it up to the whole Mercury about to go into retrograde thing or just damned bad luck, but getting her programmed and primed to come home with me wasn’t exactly a cyberspace cakewalk.

Stepping into the Verizon store I realized I’d left my glasses at home. That’s bad. For those of you who are shrugging like that’s no big deal, I’ll just say this: Girlfriend isn’t a kid anymore. As we get ahem…older, size matters in ways you’d never really thought about size mattering before. Reference the words “tiny” and “miniscule” above. Ditto for “glare” and “light.”

After the glasses panic, the episode turned into one big downward spiral. I didn’t get the woman retailer I like, the one who speaks in soft, lilting Indian-accented English, the one who explains technology “stuff” so calmly and so well that I always leave the store humming “I am woman, hear me roar.” Instead I got one of her relatives, the smug, unpleasant man with the bad comb-over and the brusque manner. For all his posturing, he didn’t really understand how the device worked. Unfortunately for me, he didn’t much care if I understood how it worked, either. We had to call Verizon technical support–a lot.

The store is in Manhattan’s East Village, on the ambulance route to Beth-Israel. Fridays are busy ambulance days. I’m not sure why. They just are. Being on the Verizon hot line with sirens blaring and the store’s disco music going at full throttle was…well, a lot. Don’t get me wrong, I like Donna Summer as much as the next child of the 80’s, but when your head is splitting, you’ve left your glasses at home, and your not-yet-purchased Crackberry is down to two bars and the seller is refusing to spot you a charger, five back-to-back choruses of “Hot Stuff” is quite enough.

Another thing that tends to happen more on Fridays than any other day of the week is people freak out. It’s as though whatever’s been bugging them all week builds and builds so that by the time Friday rolls around, instead of hi-fiving each other and doing a TGIF version of Snoopy’s happy dance they detonate.

Case in point: a young man whose cellphone had stopped working came into the store. It turned out he just needed a charger. Unfortunately he only had $10. To get rid of him, the retailer (the reasonable woman, not the bad comb-over dude) agreed he could just pay the $10. The “reduced price” charger with tax came to $10.60. But remember, he only had $10–period. She told him he could pay just the $10 but bad comb-over guy wasn’t having that. The kid, who’d begun to sweat and speak at a high volume (AKA scream), went outside and panhandled the 60 cents in record time. Looking on with my one ear plastered to the store phone funneling precious tech support instruction and the rest of me prepping to hit the ground if need be, I was impressed. He returned with the change, only by now bad comb over guy suddenly decided he could keep it. An even ten dollars would do.

Only this young man had gone to some effort to get that 60 cents. He didn’t feel like he was being treated respectfully. He wanted to be appreciated.

“People are rude sometimes,” he howled into my free ear, part fury and part lament. “People really should be nicer.”

Yes, they should. Fortunately there is a Happy Ending to report. The kid slammed the 60 cents down on the desk and left without brandishing a weapon (bonus!). The technical support guy and I struck up sufficient sympatico to get the basic set-up on my Blackberry programmed. (Did I mention he had a very sexy voice)? The bad comb-over guy shoved my “free gift,” some crap carrying case, at me along with my receipt and rebate instructions and wished me a nice weekend in the tone usually associated with “Go to hell.” I got back to my apartment, my Blackberry fully functioning (albeit down to one bar) and my body fully intact, and poured myself a glass of wine.

Curvy and I’ve had quite a week together. I’ve taken her all over the city, checking and sending email in places I never would have dreamt of checking and sending email before. Last night we went to The Modern, the sleek, white-marble topped bar/lounge at the Modern Museum of Art or MOMA. While I waited for my buddy Liz to join me, I sipped my glass of chardonnay and yes, tapped away at Curvy’s cute little raised button keys, sifting through emails, panning through photo attachments, sending reports on my “status” to Facebook. Ah, the techno-life! I’m not sure whether I’m taking Her out tonight or if we’ll be spending a quiet evening at home instead. Aside from cats on Fancy Feast patrol, there’s no traffic to speak of in my apartment, so staying home is probably safer. Either way, my Blackberry won’t be out of my sight.

TGIF,

Hope

Keeping it Real

Posted on:

Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, Liz Maverick and Hope celebrate Liz's birthday in style.
Elizabeth Kerri Mahon, Liz Maverick and Hope celebrate Liz's birthday in style.

I recently met a female writer buddy for Indian food in the West Village.  Over a leisurely dinner of vegetable samosas, curried shrimp, and palak peneer, we chatted about a host of topics–our current writing projects (a given), restaurants, a lecture she’d  attended that day addressing psychoanalytic perspectives on attraction and mating, an award she’d just received for her excellent blog on women in history, and the upcoming national presidential election,  including yes, The Palin Factor.  After exhausting these topics, we took the conversation down a notch–okay, several notches–to yes, men and dating.

Elizabeth and Hope exchange serious looks.
Elizabeth and Hope exchange serious looks.

No matter how balding, paunchy and yes, middle-aged a man may be, no matter that his job may suck or that he may not have a job at all, he still operates on the principle that he has a God given right to date twenty-somethings and models.   

It seems that while my friend and I write fiction, a disturbing number of single men are living it.

Case in point, my friend recently attempted to fix up her attractive, got-it-going-on male co-worker with her attractive got-it-going-on female writer friend.  The man, who works in the finance industry, was so open to the fix-up that on his lunch break he pulled out his Blackberry and went to said writer’s web site.  Sufficiently intrigued, he went on to read her bio, which briefly mentions her graduate degree.  Finishing, he turned back to my friend, smile dropping, and said, “Sorry, but she’s too smart.”

Okay, so once a woman is over thirty-five, dumb is what, the new sexy? 

Pu-lease. 

On the extremely off-chance any single men are perusing this post, listen up, guys.  Whether you’re in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s or older, the time has come to get real about this dating-slash-life stuff.  You are not going to end up with a model or an A-list actress.  You are not even going to start out with one.  Even if Brad Pitt was to be taken completely out of the picture, even if you were to step in and be Angelina Jolie’s shoulder-to-cry-on, her rock, she is still not going to have you.  Ditto for supermodel Heidi Klume and A-list actress, Jennifer Aniston.  Your chance of scoring with these babes is not only remote.  It is nonexistent.

These women are simply not going to have you, so get over it.

I realize that for many of you this comes as a shock, one that you will need some time, anywhere from the next few minutes to the rest of your lives to absorb.  The good news is that there are actual, real life women who maybe just maybe might be persuaded to have you or at least to take you for a test drive–think Zip Car versus the longer-term commitment of say, Hertz.  Generally speaking we’re Manhattan single women 35 and older, and as a cohort we’re well-heeled, well kept, well read, and well employed.  We’re smart.  And sexy.  Like Forest Gump’s peas and carrots, like peanut butter and chocolate in a Reese’s cup, smart and sexy aren’t mutually exclusive.  They can go together.  In real life, they usually do.  Still have doubts?  Then check out these photos of my buddy, Liz Maverick’s birthday bash at Shalel last Saturday.

Dorchester author, Leanna Hieber takes Liz's Steampunk goggles for a test run.

Real life isn’t so bad, now is it?

Hope

Really!

Posted on:

The other night a man had an “angry white male” meltdown a la Michael Douglas’s character in “Falling Down” on the sidewalk below my bedroom window.  Now before anyone gets their–meaning, his–boxers in a twist, allow me to explain that in addition to making a perfectly legitimate reference to the not-so-very-good 1993 film starring this otherwise wonderful actor, the individual in question was also really, really, really angry.  Certifiably…angry, and quite possibly certifiable–period.  Or at least that was my read of the situation based on the fists he was jabbing a hairsbreadth away from the startled faces of a trio of delivery people and yes, the expletives streaming from his mouth like…Well, enuf said.

The meltdown-ee was verbally accosting–as well as air punching–three deliverymen who’d set up a ramp across the sidewalk to get the goods, so to speak, from their truck to the convenience store next to my building.  They do this every night roughly around 1:00 AM.  It’s nothing new–really. 

But apparently circumventing the operation by crossing the street, walking down a block, and then re-crossing every night was blowing this dude’s bliss–big time.

The delivery guys handled the scenario far better than many of us would.  Rather than playing into the drama, they kept their cool and their hands to their sides–well, except for the guy who used his fingers to plug his ears.  Anyone of them could have pounded the screamer into the pavement, into pulp, only no one did.  Instead they stood there and took it until the guy finally exhausted himself and stalked away, spent but still seething.  At that point, they did break out and laugh and well, I couldn’t really blame them.

Meltdowns aren’t really laughing matters, but they do make the rest of us feel, if not exactly superior, then certainly uber together.  Meltdowns really aren’t so very bad–so long as they happen to other people.

I like to keep my blog sunny side up.  Ask me if the glass is half empty or half-full, and I’ll not only call it as half full, but I’ll point out that heck, you’ve also got a glass.  In hand.

And so this week has challenged me–big time.

I had to fire someone today, someone to whom I’ve paid good money, really good money, someone to whom I’ve been loyal, someone from whom I expected not only some loyalty but yes, decent service in return.  When my loyalty was tested beyond its limit, when a lack of professionalism collided with a surfeit of cockiness, causing a mistake of potentially colossal proportions for which I alone would take the hit, when I dared to stop being a good girl, to stop smiling and taking it while signing that big check, this someone–he–had the audacity to call me out for being emotional, for being a woman.

To paraphrase SNL’s Amy Poehler and Seth Meyers’ “Weekend Update” shtick, “Really ?  Really !!!”

To be really clear, I never once raised my voice to this man.  I used no expletives (not out loud, anyway–there was a thought bubble scenario) nor did I pantomime punching him out, tempting as that might have been.  And yet pointing out calmly, clearly, and yes firmly what he’d: a) done wrong and b) not done at all somehow made it okay for him to brand me as “emotional.”

Because I’m a woman.

As if being a woman weren’t bad enough, I am also a Libra–you know, the scales of justice, the eternal striving for balance, the expectation–demand–that things be fair. 

And so I did what any respectable Libran woman would do.  I got my Donald Trump on and I fired him.  On the spot.  Termination effective immediately.

Whether it’s that Hillary’s pants suits aren’t svelte enough or that Sarah’s lip gloss is too pink, apparently women remain the fifty-percent “minority” it’s still okay to blatantly and publicly degrade.

But what we women are isn’t only resilient.  As women–because we’re women–we’re downright tough.  You’d have to be tough to not only survive but thrive in these centuries-upon-centuries following yes, “The Dawn of Man.”

Back in July, I had the great pleasure of hearing Gail Blanke speak at the national Romance Writers of America conference in San Francisco.  Though I’m just over halfway through, Gail’s latest book, BETWEEN TRAPEZES, is riding high on my must-read-this-book list.  In it, she urges us all to “step into our power” not just once in a while but every single day.  Gail’s message isn’t specific to feminism or women but for the purpose of this post, I’m taking it that way.  Hey, as she points out in her book, we mostly make decisions based on interpretations, not facts, and since according to her we all get to make “It” up, for the few hours left of today, like the ole fast-food burger commercial, I’m having it my way.

Yes, really!

Hope

P.S.  Okay so this wasn’t exactly how I envisioned my launch post from my spiffy new WordPress interface but well, life happens.  Tune in next week and I promise to be back to my glass-half-full self.

Happy Memorial Day

Posted on:

Memorial Day weekend in Manhattan overlaps with Fleet Week, made famous (or is that infamous) by that great “Sex and the City” TV episode. Literally thousands of U.S. sailors, marines, and Coast Guardsmen (and women!) make port in Manhattan for a week-long celebration that includes public visitation of the ships.

I can’t say I’ve celebrated Fleet Week Carrie Bradshaw style–ever notice how *she* never seems to have revisions, certainly none that interfere with her social life? Still, when I have gotten out to soak up the spring sunshine, it’s been fun seeing tribes of crisply outfitted Navy men and women roaming the city in packs, savoring their shore leave in America’s most exciting city.

On occasion it’s also been heartwarming. Take yesterday, for example. I was headed east through Greenwich Village when I fell in behind a foursome of white-suited sailors. A bright-eyed elderly woman stepped in front of me, not as it turned out to knock me to the curb.

She reached into her purse, pulled out her wallet, and shoved a twenty dollar bill in one young sailor’s hand. “This is for your service, to show my appreciation for all you do to keep this country safe. I want you all to have a beer on me. It’s the least I can do.”

Random acts of kindness and senseless beauty isn’t just a catchy slogan that looks good on car bumpers. Some people out there, quite a few, actually, are living the dream.

Happy Memorial Day,

Hope

You get what you need…

Posted on:


Last Friday my local Athenaeum threw a book launch party to celebrate the release of my Harlequin Extreme Blaze contemporary romance novel, The Haunting. The book is set in downtown Fredericksburg, VA, the 40-block historic district, to be exact. So was the party. Not in the heart of Manhattan where I’d always imagined my book release party would be, if indeed I was fortunate enough to have one but in Fredericksburg, the small town where I’ve made my home for the past six years–and counting.

Fredericksburg is very much a character in The Haunting much like Manhattan in the Candace Bushnell bestseller, “Sex and the City.” I jokingly refer to The Haunting as “Sex in the Itty Bitty City” to some people’s amusement and others’ chagrin.

If you haven’t already guessed, I’m a huge “Sex and the City” fan–the television series, that is. I faithfully watched the episodes when they were first broadcast on HBO, and I watch them in re-run most weeknights.

During the program’s last season on the air, I gathered with girlfriends every Sunday night to drink Cosmos (what else) and nosh on themed snacks as we counted down to the final episode. Like the ubiquitous spin doctors who rear their “talking heads” post-televised Presidential speech, we’d hang around afterward to dissect the underlying truth of that night’s episode, which invariably held far reaching implications for our own less-than-perfect romantic lives.

Most devotees of any TV program have their personal favorite episodes, and I’m no exception. I have a few. I actually thought the producers did a great job with the final episode and though it’s probably not politically correct to admit it, I really liked that Carrie ended up with Big. Heart of gold aside, Aiden was always a little too earthy for me and as for Carrie’s other main love interest, fellow author John Burger–“Burger”–well, he always struck me as a whiny wimp. I mean, dude, your book tanked. Get over it and write another one. (All joking aside, Burger would never make it in romance fiction. We romance writers are made of sturdier stuff.)

The mention of Burger brings me to one of my top favorite episodes, the one where Carrie’s publisher throws her a posh Manhattan style book release party. There is a Cosmo bar, an enormous blow-up poster of the book cover featuring Carrie looking fabulous in short black coat dress and f-me-pump designer high heels, and the two Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum publisher reps cooing over our girl as though her book’s the greatest thing to roll off the press since Gutenberg invented it. For her part, Carrie sports a chic shorter ‘do, a killer party dress and even more killer designer shoes–either Jimmy’s or Manola’s, we’re not sure.

But all is not exactly paradise. Friend Samantha’s face is an angry orange from a chemical peel gone bad. Other friend Charlotte is down-in-the-mouth about…something and Miranda is characteristically sarcastic albeit supportive. The guest of honor is dateless. Love interest John Burger shows up to wish Carrie well but despite the quantity of lingering looks exchanged, he leaves to go home to his girlfriend. Standing on the balcony staring onto the crowd, Carrie admits to herself she isn’t just alone. She is lonely.

She ends the night solo in a cab headed for home. The female driver learns she’s published a book and insists on stopping for a celebratory hot dog. The hot dog vendor, equally impressed with her accomplishment, refuses to let anyone pay. Sitting in the backseat of the cab with a sloppy hot dog in hand, Carrie suddenly realizes the night isn’t just kind of perfect–it really is perfect.

My book release party was held in a converted third floor artist’s studio with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out onto Caroline Street, downtown Fredericksburg’s main drag. Despite the conspicuous lack of traffic noise–okay, lack of traffic in general–I could almost imagine I was in a trendy converted warehouse in the Manhattan meat packing district. There wasn’t a Cosmo bar but there was some really nice wine and nice noshes to go with it and best of all, a bevy of good friends who turned out to celebrate with me along with a sprinkling of new faces who, like the cab driver in the “Sex and the City” episode, stopped in not to curb my enthusiasm but to share in it.

At the book signing earlier that day, I’d sold out of books, the book store’s copies and finally my own personal inventory. The party was the proverbial icing on the cake. Like Carrie, I didn’t have a date. Afterward, though, instead of going home alone in a cab, I went out with a group of friends to Bristro Bethem, our favorite downtime restaurant, where the owners Blake and Aby treated us all to a champagne toast.

It wasn’t exactly as I’d imagined my book release party to be–it was a hundred times better. Like the song says, “You can’t always get what you want but you get what you need.”

What times in your life turned out differently than you’d envisioned–only as good or better? Are there events you look back on with the 20/20 wisdom of hindsight and thank the Universe, God or so-called “dumb luck” for *not* letting you have what at the time you really, really wanted? Is there “someone” or maybe a collective of someones working 24/7 to save us from the hubris driving our all too frequently blind human desires?

Wishing you a springtime blossoming with needs fulfilled and dreams exceeded…

Hope

The Best Gift Ever

Posted on:

For many of us, the winter holiday season brings about an almost instant association with jam packed shopping malls, long, long checkout lines, and ballooning January credit card debt. Years ago when I was a college student, I worked a retail job at a Benetton clothing store in Towson, MD. Even after I left the local area to go off to graduate school, I would come home for the holidays and spend the break working in the store. In fact, for five consecutive years (count ’em–five) I worked the double shift from opening until closing on the day after Thanksgiving, known as Black Friday for good reason. Very good reason.

Spending the Christmas season in the retail trenches gave me a host of great war stories, several of which stick with me today, twenty years later. Like the frantic dad who brought his small daughter shopping for a present for his wife on Christmas Eve an hour before the mall was due to close. With the clock ticking, we were picking through the leavings of folded Italian sweaters when I suggested he might expedite the search by giving me some description of the target–I mean gift recipient. (Forget knowing such vitals as say, her actual size). When he only stared at me, I could see I was going to have take the lead.

“What color is her hair?” I asked in that patient but firm voice usually reserved for small children. Professionalism aside, I’d been on my feet for coming on ten solid hours sans break and young though I was, my high heel shod feet were beginning to swell.

After a moment’s hesitation, he looked me up and down and declared it was sort of like my shoulder-length chestnut brown locks. Okay, now we were getting somewhere! Then I asked, “What color are her eyes?” As it happened, I had a bunch of blue hued sweaters left in my badly dwindled inventory, and I was hoping I might have a match.

There was another pause, a l-o-n-g pause and then he looked down at his little daughter, his own dark eyes bulging, and asked, “What… what color are mommy’s eyes?”

“They’re BLUE, Daddy!” the child fairly shouted and then looked up at me with her own china blue eyes, presumably inherited from her mom. That look, I’ll never forget it. It fell somewhere between disappointment and downright disgust. I looked back at her and though I was a twenty-something and she was probably only around eight, we shared a moment of silent commiseration over the vageries of men.

But my winter retail gig didn’t end with December 25th, oh no. There followed a day even more dreaded by retail clerks everywhere than Black Friday. December 26th, otherwise known as The Day After Christmas. If the shopping days leading up to Christmas are about fantasy and infinite possibility, the days after the holiday are all about reality (and that would be cold, hard reality) and the limitations of material things to fill us up. The size 12 lady returning the size 2 sweater. The size 2 lady returning the size 12 sweater and both shocked and more than a littled miffed that the gift givers, in both cases the husband, seemed to know them so little, at least when it came to personal style.

Like Maggie in It’s A Wonderfully Sexy Life, I’m finding more and more that what I really want for Christmas or any other holiday doesn’t come inside a store box, no matter how exquisite the wrapping.

What was the best holiday gift you ever received? What was the worst? Or, if you’re so inclined to share, what is the gift for which you secretly or not so secretly yearn, the one you’ve never gotten, at least not yet?

Whatever holiday you celebrate during the winter months, I hope it’s joyous and filled with myriad reminders of the true magic of the season…

Hope