You know you're old when...

You begin to look forward to summer for the simple reason that it means you can breathe.

I can't say that 2016 has been a bad year, but it's been a hard year. Every several years as a teacher, you get a year where you think it can't get anymore bat-shit crazy than it already is, but it does. Those are the worst years. This year is one of those.

I had already told Phil before Christmas that this summer I was not working full-time. I was not going to run a summer camp. I was not going to wait tables. I was just not.

And the good news is that I'm not. I'm teaching one college class and working on my dissertation for my next residency.

This is, end-of-year-teacher-tired.

It's still going to be a lot, but it won't be the insanity that was this year. I am hopeful that next year will be easier and won't have the personal stuff with it all too.

My grandmother is pretty sick and my cat, Jack Nicholson, was just diagnosed with diabetes and a heart murmur. His heart is actually the size of my fist. I've only had him for a year and he had spent much of his life being a NYC tom cat. Scary when I think that when I got him, he had a clean bill of health other than a cold that antibiotics quickly took away. Now, for the rest of his little cat life I will have to give him insulin shots. We have the consult with the vet specialist on Friday and I am not looking forward to this at all. I can get shots, but giving them skeeves me out. Probably one of the big reasons that after Rutgers, I went on for teaching instead of nursing.

 

The guys. Jack & Milo

I think the most unnerving of everything with Jack Nicholson is that when I look at photos of him from before, he's a big, meaty lynx point and now he's a patchy haired skeleton that sits on my feet purring and lays on the floor licking his butt and farting into his own face. There was a time where he was a lot more...err..regal than that.

If you'd like to donate to help with Jack Nicholson's ever-growing vet bill-- I set up a go fund me...here.

To end on a happy note...guys, look at my beautiful bathroom:

 

A Little Disney Magic for Christmas

We just got back from Disney World. It was Phil's second time going and it was my first. It was worth the nearly 30 year wait for me to go. I rode a lot of rides, including my first ever upside down roller coaster. I'm getting ready to leave for my family's so we can have this delicious Slovak dinner. I'll post in the next few days over at A Hart Full of Love with photos and stories. 

Merry Christmas Eve!

Book Review: Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity

“The slum had been settled in 1991 by a band of laborers trucked in from the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu to repair a runway at the international airport. The work complete, they decided to stay near the airport and its tantalizing construction possibilities. In an area with little unclaimed space, a sodden, snake-filled bit of brushland across the street from the international terminal seemed the least-bad place to love,” writes Katherine Boo in the prologue to her book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity. This beautifully poignant novel, is a first for
Boo, a journalist for The New Yorker.

Boo chose to cover a section of Indian society that is largely ignored using her documentarian style to showcase the wide-range of human emotions and stories that she uncovered while staying in the Annawadi slum.

3,000 people crammed into 335 huts on a half of acre of land just outside of the Mumbai International Airport, the Annawadi slum serves as the main focus for Boo’s novel. Within the slum, Boo documents the life and struggles of many of the slum’s residents including Zehrunisa and her eldest son, Abdul. In 2008, the main job that most Annawadi children aspired for is scavenging and selling trash.

Abdul, forever being the realist makes a career out of this. He becomes an expert in garbage collecting and trading. “It was a fine time to be a garbage trader, not that that was the term passersby used for Abdul,” Ms. Boo writes. “Some called him garbage, and left it at that.”

However, not all of Abdul’s family shares his realism. His brother longs for a hotel job, a “clean job” as Ms. Boo describes and Abdul’s sister longs to redo the kitchen wall of their hut using the yellow tiles from the concrete wall that hides their slum from the view of the rest of the city. It is this desire that sets into motion the destruction of the family. The wall is shared by two families, on the other side of the wall lives a onelegged prostitute named Fatima.

As the wall is being worked on one day, Fatima is overcome with anger. “There is rubble in my rice!” she shouts. “It’s my wall to break, prostitute,” Zehrunisa shouts back. The fight quickly begins to escalate between the two women. Fatima, in an effort to completely take down Abdul’s family, lights herself on fire. She is badly burned and survived long enough to tell the police a made-up story that leaves Abdul accused of murder. From there, Boo begins to tell the story of Abdul’s struggles and the stories of other slum-dwellers like Asha, a self-driven woman who is eager to have a better life. Boo precisely highlights the struggles and catastrophe that is the Indian justice system by documenting Abdul’s story and the struggles of the people around him.

This is the first novel for Katherine Boo. She is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post. Her reporting from disadvantaged communities has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize, a MacArthur “Genius” grant, and a National Magazine Award for Feature Writing. She divides her time between the United States and India, the birthplace of her husband, Sunil Khilnani.

Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life,Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo is available for purchase via amazon with ISBN 081297932X. It was originally published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This review refers to the April 2014 reprint edition.

The Search for Mr. Fabulous: The Fairy Tale to Hold All Fairy Tales

My grandfather died twelve years ago today. His was the first death that really hit me probably because my grandfather was just the best. He would always hug me, play with me and make me feel loved - no matter what. He'd carry me around, call me sweet pea his raspy voice and laugh whenever the kids did something funny.

It was such a deep, happy laugh too. When I think about it now, I just think of comfort and consistency.

And that's just who he was. He was just such a man. He worked hard, he loved his family and was happiest when he was with us.

He also loved my grandmother to absolute pieces. He was about 9 years older than her. He was my age when they met and she was just a teenager, but to this day, she will tell you he is the only man she had ever loved.

My favorite story about my grandparents is that my grandfather had been engaged before he had met my grandmother and gone off to war, when he came home the woman was having a baby with some other guy! Can you believe that? So, my grandfather of course leaves her and sometime later meets and marries my grandmother.

Fast forward to a trip to Coney Island a couple years, after they're married. My grandma at this point is very pregnant with my aunt and she sees my grandfather talking to some girl. She walks over to them, probably as pissed off as my hormonal grandmother could have been and waits. Within seconds, my grandfather bursts into a smile, puts his arm around my grandmother and goes, "And THIS, this is my wife, Helen," oozing with all sorts of adoration and pride at showing her off to the very woman that had probably hurt him very deeply years before that.

That's the kind of man my grandfather was. When he loved, he loved for real and he protected and adored.

My grandmother tells me one other story about my grandfather that moved me to tears. At the time I thought it was because she was telling me this as a means to make me hold out for that kind of love following another relationship ending, but even now, I'm tearing up as I type this.

Twelve years ago when my grandfather was dying and his mind was rattled with dementia, he didn't really know us anymore and it was fleeting glimpses really. But there was one last conversation she had with him where he turned to her one day in the hospital, knowing that his end was in fact coming and said to her, "I'm scared."

Nodding, my grandmother seeks to comfort him. "I know."

"I'm scared for you," he tells her.

She stares at him.

"When I'm gone who will take care of you?"

Mustering up what I feel would need to be a huge amount of strength, my grandmother says to him, "It's okay, John. God will take care of me."

"Then I leave you in God's hands," he replies.

He died a few days later. Even in the end which I am sure is the scariest freaking thing that can ever happen to you, his thoughts were for my grandmother. Now, isn't that the fairy tale? To know that you were loved that much, for so long and even in your partner's final moments, his thoughts were solely of you for a bit.

Every year since then, I visit my grandmother because I can not imagine how horrible this day still must be for her. I couldn't get there this year and we had all but a five minute phone call, but I know she still appreciated that because sometimes you just need someone to care.

She listens to me cry over my breakups, well the big ones that actually bother me, and sometimes I wonder if she wants to slap me because the love she lost seems so much greater than the love that I've had in my life.

I still can't believe it's been 12 years already. It seems like yesterday but in the same time, another life time ago as well.