Okey Dokey, Artichokey!

Tonight I went out to meet Alice, Hope, Patty (Alice's oldest sister), Chris (Patty's husband), and Alex (their baby) at Kate's joint, the great vegan diner in Alphabet City. They were all going to the zoo beforehand but I had gone swimming instead. When I got there Mia was standing outside, and so we chatted. I hadn't known that she was going to be there, and we joked how we get invited to the same things but don't know that each other is going to be there, so we don't bring the borrowed items we want to exchange. Then Hope came by and we looked at her with a question mark because she wasn't with Alice and Alice's family. Hope simply stated, "I ate them." It turned out that the baby was tired from a big day at the zoo. Though I was disappointed not to see Alice and her family, I was glad to be having another nice dinner with my pals. We had un-chicken, un-turkey, un-shrimp, un-wings, and a variety of vegetables. It was a delicious meal, accompanied as usual by talk of Dr. Phil and Oprah. Dr. Phil is working with a town in Texas called Elgin, and he is helping the town to become less dysfunctional, "one family at a time." Watching it, as per Dr. Phil, will allow each of us to "Elgin-ize" our own towns. As for Oprah, two of us have discontinued our subscriptions, and one of us has continued (You can guess, and I'll put the answer in the comment section). After dinner, we stopped by my office so that I could give Mia the CD of Hillary Clinton's awesome autobiography. I had brought it to work to mail it to her but hadn't gotten around to it. I read in a magazine article that Hillary's favorite expression is "Okey, dokey, Artichokey!" Cute!

Upper-decking??? (Go see the movie and find out)

Friday night I went with Dave, Jan, and Jan's professor, a gallery owner, to see the movie "A Dirty Shame" by John Waters. I won't give anything special away in this post for others who plan to see it, not that there's much to give away, because this is just a fun, poorly plotted movie. It was all about sex and offered some educational information about subcultures. I noticed that correct terms were used for a lot of things. He addressed lesbians, bears, adult babies, upper-decking, shrimping, funch, sex addiction, and sploshing, among many other things. John Waters is always pretty cool with fat people, and he was in this movie too. There were a lot of great one-liners. I found it weird and quite progressive, though sort of boring at the same time. However, I'll give it a definite thumbs up because I'd see it again!

The Animal Drive Thru

Excerpt from a late night phone conversation with my close friend, Mark, the gay teacher:
(excerpt begins mid-way through the conversation with Mark speaking first, then back and forth)---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I really want you to meet my two friends, R and S" [two married doctors who are good friends with Mark].
"I know, I definitely want to meet them. You've talked about them for so long."
"Well, we have this day trip planned that you could come on. We're going to take their kids to Great Adventure, only we're just going to the animal drive thru because R and S don't like amusement parks but they're not assholes -- they'll let their kids enjoy a safari now and then."
"How would we get there?" [I like driving with Mark]
"We'd take a train to their house and then we'd all load into R and S's van."
"I don't know Mark. It sounds too much like Planes, Trains, and Automobiles..." [a good movie in which multiple modes of transportation become stressful].
"Yeah, I told R I had a special friend I'd like to take, and he said that someone would have to be a pretty good person to put up with the hassle."
"That's nice that you thought of me."
"Actually, you weren't the friend I was referring to...Didn't I tell you about T from the gay church retr-"
"Yeah, yeah, you've told me about T."
"Well, T sometimes longs for a family and kids, so I thought he might enjoy looking at one for a few hours. You know, seeing the kids smile at the animals out the window."
"Yeah, that's thoughtful."
"So, do you wanna go? I didn't get a chance to ask T because he's in SF this week."
"I don't know. If I'm going to go to Great Adventure, I'd like to experience the park, not just the animal drive thru."
"Jennifer, this animal drive thru is nothing to sneeze at. There are male elephants." He chortles with smug pride. "You don't get that at the Bronx Zoo."
"Why not?"
"Because they're elephants, Jennifer. They're hard to handle. The males are aggressive."
"Oh, sorry, I didn't know."
"That's okay."
"I'll think about it, Mark, okay?"
"If not, we could go to the fright show at Halloween or the Christmas light display in December."
"Oh, that might be more up my alley. We could rent a car and go ourselves."
"Actually I meant we'd take the train to R and S's house and drive with them, you know, to keep the kids progressively educated."
Mark pauses in response to my silence and then adds, "Or you and I could rent a car and go ourselves."
"That might be nice."
"Mark, how long is the animal drive thru?"
"It's one hour, and it costs seventeen dollars" [I like to gather info on a plan that I likely know I won't go on but it's nice to keep gathering info. In fact, it's kind of like going].
"Can I get back to you?"
"You can decide right before if you want."
"That sounds good."
"Okay, good night, Jennifer."
"Good night, Mark."

Being Gentle is the Key...

It was the first day of school for the kids, and the group therapy had a great energy to it. The kids were all excited to see me, giving me hugs and telling me about their summers. I asked one child what he did and he responded very sincerely, "Listened to light jazz...which is exactly what I wanted to do." He comes from a past history with a lot of violence and loves to imbibe the peace and quiet available to him in his life now, so his answer was cute but also nice to hear. We did pets as a topic because one boy is getting a dog, so I asked how animals should be treated. The same boy I just discussed raised his hand and said, "Being gentle is the key, being GENTLE." I didn't work with him much last year because I wasn't assigned the K-2 class (he's now in 3rd grade), so I feel delighted to have such a smart, wiser-than-his-years child in my therapy group. That night I went with Alice, Hope, and Klaus to the East Village to celebrate Klaus's birthday. Klaus is Alice's ex-boyfriend, and now we are all good friends' with him. We got him a deck of cards that gives ideas of things to do at work to have fun instead of work. We had a lot of fun reviewing the options. One was to use a pen to drum out a tune and have a colleague guess what the tune was. We thought that would be too hard, but when I did it Klaus got it immediately. We were at a restaurant, so Alice put a stop to the game after a few tunes, for etiquettes sake. Another idea was to switch a scarf or tie mid-way thru the day with a co-worker and see if anyone notices. The four of us had a great time together, getting a whole lot of laughs. Now I'm playing fetch with my cat every two minutes, saying, "Oh, what is this by my feet, little cat? Wow, it's your ball! What a smart, talented cat!" Then I toss it, and she (Cloud) meows with excitement, looks at me quickly, and I say, "Go, little cat, go! Fetch your ball!" and she does.

CVR

I'm at the gym now after a very refreshing swim. It's a hot Saturday. David, Jan, and my mom went to see the movie Mean Creek. That's about the group of kids who kill the bully. I couldn't take another downer movie after seeing the play Charlie Victor Romeo at PS122 last night with them. Of course, the play was my choice, and it was excellent, with a great discussion with the cast afterwards. It was just so jarring. It's composed of several of the exact transcripts of the black boxes for flights that ended in an accident. It involves the last fifteen minutes of discussion between the captain and any others in the cockpit. We joked afterwards to calm down from how scary it was. It showed how the only difference between us and flight crew is their training and so if something goes wrong they have similar reactions to us. None of them had any existential reflections before death, even though in most of the situations, though they kept trying until the end, they had at least ten minutes where it was pretty evident that death would be the end result. The most common comment was "Shit! Fuck!" and at the very end "Going down! Going down! Going down!" It was quite chilling and fascinating. I recommend it. The cast has been doing the play for four years and said they have had all positive feedback from flight crew, many of whom go to see it. A few of the reasons for the planes crashing were icing; multiple bird strikes to the plane (Alaska); and maintenance crew taped over left static port (that was one of the scariest--they had completely inaccurate readings and the pilot and co-pilot argued from tension and then hit the sea). On one flight in Japan only four out of five hundred people survived and were stranded on a cold mountain for twelve hours. One was under a chair and another was in a tree. The cast told us that the survivors had said that more people had been alive but the crying and screaming lessened throughout the night, with only four able to withstand shock, injury, and cold. One of the cast members visited the isolated mountain in Japan and saw plane seats seperated by miles. Well, as you can imagine, I was quite moved and disturbed by this amazing play. I chose it because it was a documentary format, and that genre is always my favorite.

Curry in a Hurry

Tonight I joined Mia, Alice, and Hope at David and Jan's apartment. David had cooked a delicious appetizer: polenta cakes with some kind of yummy vegetable topping. They are both great cooks. Jan has been thinking of writing a cookbook that simply has tips that he has learned from his mother. I love hearing his tips. Then we went to a new vegetarian indian restaurant only it was closed. Not only was it closed but a hard metallic shade was pulled down over it from the outside. And on the covering was a creepy grafitti image of a child screaming. It was not very welcoming! David and Jan live in Little India, an area full of vegetarian, South Indian cuisine. We considered a few places, and then settled on one, concluding that all of the places were pretty much the same. During dinner we discussed the issues of having kids, the presidency, and www.speeddating.com. We also discussed hugging parties and cuddle parties, both of which are becoming popular in New York. This led to a lot of jokes, as you can imagine. After dinner, we went back to Jan and Dave's place and had tiramisu, vegan cookies, and fruit. David told us a very funny, true story about how he went to a class by a midwife who trained the students in gynecological issues using her own vagina! David did a hilarious imitation of her in stirrups lecturing them and having them practice on her, chastising them about what they were doing wrong all the while! David said that it was very anxiety-provoking! We also discussed our usual topic, www.hippa.com. David again told a funny story about how while Hope and I simply saw HIPPA videos, he and his classmates had a HIPPA play acted out for them. My brother really comes to life at a party and does the funniest imitations! We are very good at complaining and joking about HIPPA rules for a long time. Today we added the issue of how we think some people use HIPPA as an excuse not to do work. For instance, David had a psychotic patient who he really needed info on to help and was given the HIPPA run-around by the previous treatment facility. After leaving, since I didn't have work the next day, instead of the subway--I took the bus which only took about a hundred hours to get home (well, it didn't help that I took the bus in the wrong direction for quite awhile).