AmyKossBlogThang: Bye-Bye Green

AmyKossBlogThang: Bye-Bye Green: O ur new neighbors are probably lovely people in many lovely ways, but the first thing they did after moving in, was to hack down, up...

Bye-Bye Green

Our new neighbors are probably lovely people in many lovely ways, but the first thing they did after moving in, was to hack down, uproot, clear out, and grind to bits every speck of plant life in their yard. 

This was, of course, within their rights.

Never mind the fact that the jade plants were huge and hearty and probably ancient. Forget the towering bottle-brush plants that the hummingbirds loved. To hell with whatever that tree with the fragrant waxy white flowers was. These plants had thrived and bloomed and not bothered a soul for as long as memory, and yet they had zero right to continue to survive. 

The utter powerlessness of plants is heartbreaking.

But before you think this rant is my selfless plea for plant rights, you need to know that in place of the lush, living wall of green that you see in all these happy BEFORE photos, the new neighbors are erecting an enormous  fence, leaving me in... a ditch.

I am not the first person to have her view obscured, and I am not going to murder these neighbors in their sleep, or do anything harsh or nasty to their ghastly, towering fence.

But this blog stands as a memorial to the greenery, birds, bugs and bunnies of the good old, pre-viewless, ditch-living days, which ended Thursday.

AFTER

BEFORE

xo Amy

Ta-da! The New Me!

Thank goodness it's almost New Year's Day. I don't think I could bear to lug these flabby thighs and wobbly gut around with me much longer. So looking forward to their instant disappearance as 2014 begins! And really, my work habits have gotten so slack and slovenly these last few, well, years, that they too will benefit from a resolution or two. And shouldn't my finances match my new abs?

Up early, teeth brushed, bills paid and neatly filed, maybe take a run. Shower. Wear shoes. Eat greens. Greet the day with a big smile. Then type! type! type! That will be 2014.

Before you assume that I make the same resolutions every year, I'd like to point out that these things evolve slowly.

My earliest recollection of making New Year's resolutions dates to middle school when I resolved to 1) run away from home and become world famous; 2) learn to re-inhale my cigarette smoke through my nose; and 3) get Mike Humphrey to fall hopelessly in love with me, and then treat him like dirt.

My high school resolutions expanded beyond simply not being caught by my parents to not getting caught by any other armed or unarmed authority figure. I resolved 1) not to leave my purse in cars when hitchhiking (this resolution came after one helpful driver called my house and told my parents of my purse's whereabouts); and 2) that if I was ever again caught smoking dope at the park with Boogie Greenberg, I would not helpfully grab and hide his pipe.

Come the college years, New Year's resolutions concerned 1) not getting pregnant; 2) not waiting until the last night of the semester to read the assigned textbooks; and 3) showing up on time — or at least awake, sober and fully clothed — for my 9 a.m. class.

As a young wife and mother, I went on to ignore an ever more sophisticated, if less edgy, crop of resolutions. I resolved not to sing scary songs to my children at bedtime, even if it seemed funny at the time, and not to throw all my husband's dirty underwear in the garbage no matter how many times in a row I'd been stuck with the laundry.

Of course, many New Year's resolutions demand a last hurrah.

It might be one more go at the racetrack or craps table, or a bittersweet, drug-enhanced fling with a stranger before giving it all up for the new year. Some folks need to indulge in the robbing of a final bank for closure, or feel compelled to loot and burn one last village for old times' sake. Others just need to run a few more red lights before midnight.

It's been years since I've required that parting carton of Kools before the annual New Year's Eve Quit. But I can't say that this year won't demand one last deep-fried, chocolate, whipped-cream, buttery, pig-out, with my pants unsnapped.

Then I'll press the magic 2014 Refresh Button and, like a reverse Cinderella, the stroke of midnight will transform me into the patient, disciplined, tactful, competent, enlightened, slim and healthy woman I've always meant to be!

I will awaken on New Year's Day cheerful and perky, signed up for another go with Curves and Weight Watchers, along with Yoga Booty, tai chi, pole-dancing, stretch-boxing, vegan cooking, meditation and scenic water color!

I'll tidy the office and give the bathroom a New Year's scrub, while flossing my teeth and doing kegels. Then, I'll call my parents and roll nary an eye as they repeat the same three questions on loop.

I'll pay the rapt, adoring attention of a newlywed bride as my husband goes into excruciating detail about his work. Then I'll cheerfully scrape up the enormous turds dropped around the yard by the long-term-visiting daughter's enormous dog without making mention of said daughter's laziness. I'll happily open the wallet without comment for the unemployed son. Then, most difficult by far, I'll resist the urge to send my agent the daily, petulant, nag-o-gram regarding my latest book manuscript.

No, wait! I won't have to "resist the urge" because the New Year's Me will be free of such old-year urges! All that evil inner chatter will have been effortlessly hushed. Ah! to no longer feel the call to nag, or criticize, or sulk, or be tempted by pie or potato chips! This must be what they mean by a happy and peaceful new year.

xo Amy

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-new-years-resolutions-20131231,0,1499350.story#ixzz2p6f6Xwdz

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-new-years-resolutions-20131231,0,1499350.story#axzz2p1cXU1IA

A Three Alarm Night

Three car alarms are going off on the street. They don't blend and are not playing well together. Maybe it is the work of merry holiday pranksters, or malicious elves. Maybe some clumsy neighbor staggering home drunk, ricocheted off the cars, oops! oops! oops! 

Or, maybe it is an earthquake, the beginning of the end --- what we Californians on the fault line call: The Big One.

The dogs find it inspiring, and have joined in the holiday carol. 

Diamond, the pit-bull, goes, AROOO!

Little Guy is delivering his uniquely irritating, staccato, relentless, sanity-eroding yip.

Wally the poodle-mutt is on cow bell. 

SHIT.

I hope the dogs and I are not about to plummet, yipping and barking, to the molten center of the earth -- with a ghastly, three- siren accompaniment.

It never occurred to me that the end could have such a crappy sound track. 

One car alarm, maybe. The approaching semi-reassuring wail of an ambulance, a few on- lookers shrieking, maybe someone crying... But a cacophony of discordant alarms is way too... well, alarming.

Grim mid-December thoughts as we skim past the 25th anniversary of my friend Lisa Endig's death. Hers was quiet. Didn't have anything to do with alarms, except the ones going off between my ears. Early morning on a living room couch on a quiet Santa Monica street. Maybe some traffic sounds outside, maybe birds. All I really recall is the lengthening silence between her breaths.

Ah! The sirens have stopped. We've been spared. 

In the quiet that the sirens leave behind, the dogs return to licking their butts and watching me for signs of snack-happenings, and I re-notice the sounds of rain. 

I'd forgotten the rain! Even forgot all about the double rainbow I saw earlier on my drive home. But now, I'm glad to remember, glad The Big One has been postponed, and glad for the chance to wish us all, in these last few weeks of the year, a pleasant sound track, stable ground, and many continuing breaths, in and out.

lots of love,

amy

Thanking

My dears, Forgive me for re-posting this oldie, but the feelings have not changed with the years. xo Amy

I, Curmudgeoness Koss, am glad we got all that thankfulness out of our systems, as there is no math more cloying than the counting of blessings. It is not that I don’t see how amazingly lucky we are. I do. 

• We’re lucky to be ALIVE and healthy and more or less conscious and intact and housebroken. 
• We’re lucky to be alive NOW after the good folks before us took care of the messier aspects of inventing pie, and e-mail and deodorant and elevators. 
• We’re lucky to be alive HERE where we are free to believe, write about, wear, eat, and say pretty much whatever asinine thing pops into our addled little minds, as evidenced by this blog.
• All that is a great start, but it always seems like underneath all the warm fuzzy thankfulosity lurks an under-tone of bargaining; The assumption that if we act really grateful it’ll stall worse crap from descending. See Fate? How fun it is to do good things for us? See how grateful we are? (and worthy) 
• 
  
• But the real issue about all this thanks-giving is its implication that the job is done, mission accomplished with no room for improvement. 



Let's Talk Turkey -- photo by Marla

• Call it greedy, but I want more. Just because I’ve got a house doesn’t mean the world can check housing off its list of problems. And just because I can eat like a pig doesn’t mean we don’t have a ways to go before hunger is no longer an issue. 

Let's just hope more of us have more to be thankful for by next Thanksgiving.

xo

Amy

A Room of My Own

They say that the trend these days is for adult children to move back in with their parents. So, since my family is nothing if not trendy, my college-graduate daughter and her boyfriend and their pit bull and hamster moved in with my husband and I, and our turtle, and our two dogs a few months ago. Then, just to round out the jolly scene, a beloved childhood friend of my daughter's, whose life had hit a tricky patch, joined us as well.   

Luckily, our estate is such that we were easily able to set the young folk up in their own wing, simply alerting the staff to stock one of the other kitchens and a few of the other bathrooms with whatever the kids might want or need.

It was lucky too, that we'd tired of our garden and were eager to see what the new pup, a master of deforestation, had in mind for the space.   

                                             ***

My Room

When the time came for my scheduled trip to New York, I bid the household farewell, and after a pre-dawn flyaway bus to LAX, a flight to Kennedy, an airbus, a train, a brisk walk from Penn station, a stop at the hotel desk to check in and get my key, an elevator ride up to the 7th floor, and a brief struggle with the door, I was all alone, in a room of my own.

And that, my friends, was a feeling beyond compare.

My room was perfect. The frowzy furniture reminded me of my ancient Auntie Rosie, for no reason I could put my finger on. I found the tacky faux-Asian lamp almost unbearably touching.

My View 

Since we don't have television at home, I usually hit the remote pretty hard when I get the chance, but the urge never once arose this time. I was content just to hang my gig clothes in my closet, arrange my toiletries on my sink, look out my window, and sit on the edge of my wonderful, lumpy, bed.

The next three days were entirely blissful. Granted, I was there to do fun things and see people I adored, rather than to have un-anesthetized surgery, say, or attend the funeral of a loved one. But still, just the sense of utter privacy was indescribably delicious and I could not have been happier. 

On reflection, I'd felt precisely the same joy years ago, when I was between husbands and rented a dank, windowless, basement apartment in Alston Massachusetts where I worked in a plastics factory. That room, too, was perfect.

I am back home in the messy, moody, crowded bosom of my family as I write this. I'm glad to be here and know that this is where I belong. But that takes nothing from the sweet, sweet memory of having a room, however briefly, that was all my own.  

xo

Amy

Costuming Conundrum

As Halloween approaches, the mind turns to thoughts of spirit gum and fake warted noses. But before I get to don my witchy weeds, I need to stress about another costume drama; my fast approaching trip to New York.

1. I’m told it’s more civilized there. The flowered muumuu will not translate -- will not bespeak an intelligent, classy writer of note. 

2. They have weather, meaning one must wear shoes. And not just shoes but serious, writer-of-note shoes. Plus a possible sock or stocking item. Also sleeves. 

I enjoy the invisibility of being a woman of a certain age. No one looks at me very closely and that suits me well as I make my occasional forays into public in any one of my five $5.00 polyester China Town shirts and Target jeans. 

And when I speak at school & library gigs I figure I’m talking to kids, and they don’t bother to judge my fashion choices or lack thereof since I’m safely out of their hipness age range.

But as I plan to take two meetings and accept an award in New York, I have to spruce up. The question then becomes: Who shall I be? 

I cast an eye around at my friends who dress for their jobs. 

1. To be S, is to wear loose dark skirts and tops, which she says all come from one source; Eileen Fisher, at well over a hundred bucks a piece. I am far too cheap for that. 

2. To be the other S, is to wear white or beige in girly billowing layers and lots of earth-tone jewelry.  

3. To be C. is to show cleavage. 

4. To be M. is to wear stiff-looking tailored suits.

When I picture these as paper-doll outfits over my frame, the results are at best unconvincing and at worst ridiculous. So how does a person impersonate a reasonable adult at this late date, without having cultivated a personal style? 

 Ah to be the man with the easy uniform of a dark suit & tie, or a nun with full habit, or a cop, or sailor, or a line cook at In & Out, or a Halloween witch... 

Although the temptation is to forget the whole thing and just hide in my room, I will not do so! Am therefore off (bravely) to clothes hunt and identity shop. Tally-ho!

xo

Amy