BUT THAT’S NO EXCUSE! I have neglected the blog.  I plan to start daily blogging again, as soon as I find my camera. In the meantime, I thought I’d post a few oldies this week.  Today I came across this, my experience with Zumba, back in 2010.

A Pelvis Story

Today, I decided to start off the new year by doing something I never do.  I decided to take a dance/exercise class.  A friend had told me about this fun  “Zumba” class.

”You just dance around to great music and the hour just flies by and at the end you’re drenched in sweat and laughing,” said she.
“I love to dance!” said I, and I recalled many hours at nightclubs, busting out my moves, being drenched in sweat and laughing away. The part I overlooked, in these rosy recollections, is that I was a) a teenager, b) drunk and c) dancing to the Ramones.  Dancing to the Ramones is pretty basic stuff.  Just a lot of jumping up and down and slamming your head from side-to-side so hard that your neck is sprained and the next day you have to have your boyfriend help you lift it off your pillow.  Ahhhhh. Good times.

So today, I headed off to the gym in my little sweat pants and tank and I met the instructor, who was also wearing little sweats and a tank, but she had a 20-year-old body that was muscular and sexy (that’s not her in the photo above, but you get the idea), while mine somehow manages to be both skinny and flabby.  Fleshy, I guess you’d say. Well, not really fleshy. Flappy.  There’s extra flesh that you don’t notice until I start waving my arms around.  Then you notice.

So we introduced ourselves and waited for the others to show up, and soon learned that there were going to be no others.  Just me and Miss Sexy Body.  Mrs. Flappy and Miss Sexy Body (let’s call her SB).  Together. Live.

“This is actually great, since it’s your first time,” SB said.  And then she turned the music on and immediately started moving her hips and arms and head in a rapid series of moves that had me at first wonder if she was having some sort of orgasmic seizure, until she told me, stomping and gyrating away, to just follow her moves.

“Feel free to lip-sync!” she said, “It helps you keep time!”  I don’t really know the words to songs by Shakira and was going to ask if she had any Etta James, because I really can lip-sync to old Etta.  You’d think I was her.  Really.  All I can say is thank goodness there were no others in the room as somebody could have been seriously injured by my staggering about; my knees flying up near my chin, my arms flailing from side to side. And my crazy pelvis that just moves in a circular series of hitches and tics. Of course, there was some tripping. I never actually hit the floor though. I’m pretty good at recovering my balance.

After the class, I went online to see what Zumba is really supposed to look like and I found this great video which features a dancer who emulates the Ann Leary technique.  She’s the one in the knee-length green pants.  Sort of to the left of the screen:

I hope Green Pants doesn’t sue me for pointing her out. It’s just uncanny, the way we dance alike. We could actually work out a routine and take our show on the road.

Tomorrow: Salsa!

Posing with Mary Beth Hurt

On Wednesday night, I did a reading/book signing at the Manhattan Upper West Side Barnes & Noble.  Well, I should say, I did the signing and the amazingly talented Mary Beth Hurt did the reading!  Mary Beth is the narrator of the audio version of The Good House and I’ve blogged before about how thrilled I am with her rendition of Hildy.  So it was wonderful to sit back and listen to her read from my book on Wednesday night.  Then I answered questions from a wonderfully packed audience.  So many friends were there, and so many people that I had not yet met .

Denis, along with my dear friends and fellow Hash Hags, Julie Klam and Laura Zigman threw a lovely party for me afterward and I saw lots of old friends and met a few new friends as well.

This lovely young woman stopped by

And this beauty too!

The Foxiest people were there

And as I mentioned in a prior post, Laura and Julie had the whole party roaring with laughter at their wonderful speech.

It was a great, great night.

Mt. Etna from Taormina

We had a guide take us to Mt. Etna, because we had been told it was exciting to hike up along the craters. So a young man named Luca took us.  First he drove us through the town of Zafferana.  Luca gave us a history of the eruptions of Mount Etna, many of which happened during the past few decades.  The most devastating recent eruption was in 1992 when lava flowed down the mountain threatening various towns and destroying numerous buildings.  Luca told us that there is a legend involving a similar eruption that had occurred about 300 years ago.  According to this legend,  the villagers of Zafferana, upon seeing the lava flowing toward their homes, prayed to the Virgin Mary and in fact carried a statue of the Blessed Mother to a point just above the town where the lava would arrive first. It was at that very spot that the lava stopped. So, when this huge eruption occurred in the 90s, Luca explained, the people in the town again carried a statue of the saint to the spot where they hoped the lava would stop and AGAIN, the lava stopped just at that very spot.  Luca took us to the place where the lava stopped and you can, indeed, see what was once molten lava but is now a long hard crumbled ridge of volcanic rock that ends just above the town – actually right behind a house.  There is a small monument of the Virgin Mary there and there are always fresh flowers placed around her feet by the people in the town.

According to Wikipedia, the government set off a series of explosions that diverted the lava flow from the town during the eruption in the 1990s.  I still said a wee prayer at the monument.  We were about to hike up the side of the volcano. I just thought she might put in a good word.

There are a series of craters that descend from the yawning active crater at the very summit of Etna.  We didn’t go to the very summit, but we did hike past several smaller craters. The landscape is eerie and lunar, barren, but with surprising waves of color:

It was a long steep hike to the summit of the highest crater around.

We thought we were the only people on this particular summit, but when we reached the crater at the top, there were a couple of hippies sitting there smoking a joint.  I’ve climbed a few mountains and hills and in my experience, there are always hippies smoking a joint at the top. This friendly pair didn’t speak English but they offered to take our picture and we took theirs.

Denis wanted to get a photo of me.  ”Back up,” he kept saying.  I backed up. “Just a little more.  A little more.”

“Just a few feet more!”

The hippies laughed and laughed.

Yes, we are in Sicily.

Yesterday, we spent the morning on the beach and then we took a little drive.  Our travel agent, Rosemary,  had told us not to rent a car because she thinks the driving is difficult in this area.  ”Most Americans find it to be a little intimidating,” she said.

We are NOT most Americans, so we insisted on the rental car and yesterday afternoon, we set off for a drive to a scenic town that a man named Enzo had told us about. We met Enzo on the beach yesterday morning. Enzo doesn’t speak English very well, and we don’t speak Italian, though I am constantly trilling, “Buongiorno” and “Grazie” and “Permesso” at hapless waiters and passersby, gesticulating wildly,  all my accents on the wrong syllables and my spittle bouncing off the wrong consonants.

Denis just says, “Hey. How’sit goin’?”  To everybody. He insists that the phrase is universally understood and he uses it in every country he visits, no matter what the native language. He used it yesterday when we were pulled over by a pair of the sexiest traffic cops in the world.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We decided to drive to a Sicilian town that is not on any tourist map, according to Enzo, but is in fact a “real” Sicilian town. ”Like in the Godfather!” Enzo had proclaimed. And then we had to go see this real Sicilian town.  So we jumped in the car and set off.

The road was winding and a little scary at first. I could see how many Americans would be frightened. “This isn’t so bad,” I said to Denis as he drove along, “I think it’s sad that people are so limited by their fears, because you can’t really experience a place until you drive its roads, just like we are. Really, it’s only by poking along the byways and in and out of the sleepy villages that are off the beaten track that one may really get to know a place.”  Denis told me that I was blocking his view. He was trying to pull out of the long steep driveway that we had just ascended. I had thought we were on a road but it was the driveway from our hotel.

“Nothing coming this way..no STOP!” I said as three motorcycles whizzed past.  The road we were entering was winding and narrow, and it was hard to see what was coming. “Okay, now, NO WAIT!” I screamed, then after a truck flew past , I shouted, “GO …GO..GO…GO..GO….STOP!

“Sit back so I can see,” Denis said, through clenched teeth. And then he steered us onto the road and we were off.

The thing to do, when you’re traveling in unknown places, is to get lost right off the bat.  That way you get it over with, and you don’t have to worry about it anymore.  We tried to get on the Autostrade – the highway heading north, but instead, found ourselves ascending steep winding roads leading to the lovely, but very congested town of Taormina. We could see how others might think it scary.  But we weren’t afraid.  We said this quite a few times as we sped around tight turns, the road dropping off thousands of feet beside us, a honking bus on our tail and motorcycles flying at us from the opposite direction.  Once we got on the Autostrade, it would be better, we reassured each other. And then we entered the Autostrade.

This was the view to our right as we entered the autostrade:

Unfortunately, that was the view to our left as well, because apparently, when they built the Autostrade, on this part of the Sicilian coast, the tunneling through mountains and cliffs became too tiresome and so they engineered a sort of Jetsons-stye space highway. You just speed along, at 80 MPH, on a twisting, turning superhighway that is suspended thousands of feet – Oh, I beg your pardon, meters – above the land or sea below.  I really don’t mind driving across bridges, because bridges have fences or walls to keep you from falling off.  The autostrade has a guardrail.  Do you know how easy it is to flip a car over a guardrail?  Denis does, I know, because I asked him.  My head was buried between my knees but I was able to shout, “DO YOU KNOW HOW EASY IT IS FLIP A CAR OVER A GUARD RAIL?  Do you know that you JUST HAVE TO TOUCH THE RAIL WITH YOUR TIRE and you’ll be…”

“Yup, yup,” said Denis. And he said some other things too.

Well, now I’m out of time and, we’re off to be terrified by an active volcano, so I’ll have to tell you about our run-in with the gorgeous polizia later.

TURNING 50 IS REALLY NO BIG DEAL BECAUSE:

A) Nobody cares about 50-year-olds

B) I know this to be a fact, because I keep telling people and

C) They don’t care

WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING SOUNDS LONGER?

A) 50 Years

B) 5 short decades

C) Half a century

D) Two score and ten years

E) Pre-dotage

F) Post-prime

SOME OF US ARE ABLE TO AGE GRACEFULLY, AND WE ARE NOT CONCERNED ABOUT OUR FADING LOOKS. THIS IS BECAUSE WE ARE:

A)  Concerned with larger things, like world peace and the environment

B) Confident that people see who we really are – inside – and then are so horrified that they can’t look at our faces

C) Almost blind and when we look in the mirror we see a blurry image that we suppose looks like the one we saw two decades ago

THE UPSIDE OF GETTING OLDER IS:

A) You have the whole diaper thing to look forward to.  It’s supposed to make you feel incredibly young

B) You get to talk about what a relief it is to be finally taken seriously for your mind, rather than your body

C) Which gives the impression that you used to have a great body

D) And have a mind that still functions

YOU’RE ONLY AS OLD AS YOU:

A) Smell

B) Limp

c) Feel

WHEN MEETING A 50-YEAR-OLD ON THE STREET, IT IS BEST TO:

A) Offer her your arm

B) Compliment her on her whiskers

C) Palpate her abdomen for tumors

D) All of the Above

I used to have satellite radio in my car, but the subscription ran out almost a year ago, and I never bothered getting it renewed.  I like to listen to playlists of music in my car, especially when I’m working on a book, so I didn’t really miss all the radio talk shows at first.  I was no longer able to listen to NPR, BBC Radio and CSPAN and I don’t watch the news on TV very often, so before long, the only information I was receiving about the world was from The Daily Show and the Colbert Report and on Twitter and gosh, the news was funny!  I have spent the past year viewing candidates, politics and even wars with an attitude of rather bemused indifference, which is, I know, the American way, and I was a happy person.

Last week, before a drive to Marblehead, Massachusetts to visit my mother and sister, I decided to renew my satellite subscription and on the 4-hour drive I heard numerous interviews with authors, political pundits and scientists and I arrived in Marblehead just brimming with knowledge.  At a dinner party, I was able to discuss Mitt Romney’s experience as a Massachusetts governor with people who actually live in Massachusetts. I knew the latest on the Bain Capital situation and discussed three different best-selling new books about history and politics as if I had read them cover-to-cover.  Interested in learning more about genetic pioneering, performance art or sustainable farming? Ask me. My brain seemed to have expanded on that interstate drive and when it was time to return to Connecticut, I thought it likely that a recruiter for the CIA or NASA or maybe some think-tank or another would be waiting for me at my house, having somehow learned of my newfound genius.  I listened to talk-radio the whole way back and then I listened to it for the entire week, but somewhere along the line, I went from an instant egghead/blowhard, to a jittering, cowering paranoiac.  People, the world is f%$&ud up!

Did you know that Antarctica is melting at an even more alarming rate than was previously thought and that in areas that were once frozen, there are now spongey boggy masses of land?  And do you know what is thawing there? Microbes.  Microbes that our environment has not been exposed to in millions of years.  Prehistoric bacteria – perhaps dinosaur waste (I just made up the dinosaur waste part, but I think it makes sense) and other germs that our bodies will not have sufficient immunities to fight against?  Did you know that if you listen to satellite news, especially non-American news stations that actually report on other parts of the globe such as Syria and Iran, you will hear the term “a potential World War III” situation, on average, every 15 minutes?

Cancer clusters, disease, drought, violence, animal cruelty,  pedophile priests, warlords, starving children – this is the stuff of our world! And the worst part of it is that, because of the hilly terrain in this part of Connecticut, the satellite service cuts in and out, always, at the most crucial part of a story.  I will be hearing the words: The single most important thing any person can do to avoid cancer is (dead silence for 90 seconds).  Nothing else really matters, as far as prevention goes, but (dead silence for 60 seconds) Then Bob Edwards is thanking the guest and signing off.   Or a news report comes across as follows: President Obama stopped at a diner in Ohio yesterday and joined other patrons in eating (silence, silence, silence) his birth certificate.  These truncated reports can be terrifying – yesterday it sounded like there was a mass-slaying at a Batman movie, I just couldn’t make out exactly what it was that they were saying because I now drive wearing body armor, helmet and a surgical mask and it’s hard to hear.

Last night, I locked all our doors and turned my EMS radio to the scan setting, so that I could be ready when …. well, something… happened. Because something bad is going to happen! I don’t know what it is, but it’s bad.  I’ll fill you in later, I’m about to go for a drive.

The other day I was driving through a neighboring town that has a rather busy main street, when I saw, in my rearview,  that a state trooper was speeding up behind me, lights flashing, sirens blaring.  I pulled over to let the car pass. Obviously there was a crime happening and I’m not one to step in the way of the law.  Instead of speeding past, however, the police car pulled up behind me. It was me they were after.  I did a quick inventory of my driving behavior. I hadn’t been speeding or talking on my phone. I wasn’t drinking, littering, fornicating, firing weapons, sleeping behind the wheel, smoking bath salts.  No, I was just driving along, minding my own business.

When the officer arrived at my window,  he asked to see my license and registration which I immediately produced for him.

“Your registration is expired,” the officer informed me.

“Oh no,” I said.  Then, “Why did you pull me over? Was I speeding?”

“No,” he replied. “Your registration is expired.”

We don’t have registration stickers on our license plates in Connecticut  anymore, so I had no idea how the officer knew my registration was expired. I explained to the officer that I didn’t know that it was expired.  I apologized and  told him that I would have it taken care of immediately.

“Do you have somebody who can come and get you?” he asked.

“Really, you’re not going to let me drive home?”

“Not with an unregistered car, no,” he said.

“Okay, well, I guess my husband can come and get me.”

Somehow, I had it in my mind that I wasn’t allowed to drive the car, but somebody else could.

Why did I think that? I’m just not the brightest bulb.

I called Denis and told him to bring a friend to drive my car back to the house.  While I was on this call, the trooper had returned to his vehicle and a huge tow truck had pulled up. This wasn’t one of those trucks that pulls your car along behind. No, it was the kind that pulls your car up onto a long flatbed that is designed to carry several cars.  I saw the driver, who was stopping traffic, shouting something to the cop, and the cop shouted something back. This guy has a lot of nerve, interrupting a cop in the middle of writing a traffic citation, thought I.  Then the driver of the rig got out of his vehicle and walked over to my window.

“What town do you live in?” he asked

I told him, and he said, quite apologetically, that he wouldn’t be able to tow my car to my town.

“OH! That’s so sweet of you!” I gushed. (I wish I was joking about this, those were my exact words).  ”My husband’s coming to get me, so I’m all set.”

I thought the man was some kind of good Samaritan who had been passing by, and, sensing, somehow, that I wasn’t going to be allowed to drive my car home, was kindly offering to tow it for me.  I had only been pulled over a few minutes prior, so it seemed like a coincidence that he happened to drive by.

“Okay,” said the driver, and he got back in his rig.  The police officer returned to my window and gave me my ticket.  He told me that I had to pay it within ten days and that I needed to get my registration renewed before I could drive the car again.  I told him that I would.  The officer then returned to his car and that’s when I saw that the tow truck had pulled up right in front of me and that the driver had slanted the bed of the truck down toward my car, as if he intended to tow it.  I got out of the car and marched up to the guy’s window.

“Are the keys in the car?” he asked.

“NO! No, I don’t need you to tow me. My husband’s coming to get the car!” I said.  I was losing my patience.  ”So, thanks anyway,” I snapped,  and I returned to my car.  The tow guy then got out of his truck and walked back to the patrol car and then the cop and the tow guy approached my window together.  They seemed like they were being cautious for some reason.

“Ma’am,” the officer said, “You can’t drive the car and your husband can’t drive the car.”  He was speaking very slowly.  He was smiling and speaking slowly and calmly as if he was trying to explain something to a small child.  ”So this man is going to have to tow your car and you can get it from him when you get your reg-i-stra-tion renewed.”

I just blinked at them.

“So you need… to… get… out of the car, you see, or else the …man… won’t… be able to pull the car onto his big truck.”

“Don’t worry, ma’am,” the tow truck guy said. “Here’s my card. I’m just taking it to Middlebury.  Give this card to your husband, he’ll know what to do.”

Then I was finally able to process exactly what was going on. “Okay,” I said to the men. “I was having a blonde moment there. So I guess nobody can drive an unregistered car, is that it?”

I’m not a natural blonde but I find it less humiliating to blame my hair color than my actual brain during moments of profound stupidity.

I got out of my car and handed the tow truck guy my keys. “I don’t understand how you got here from Middlebury so fast.” I said. Middlebury is several towns away. That’s when he and the officer explained that I was part of an “experiment.”  Connecticut has new Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPR) on many of the squad cars. These are cameras that scan the license of every car that drives past and when it reads a plate that has expired, it immediately alerts the officer. “We got 40 people yesterday alone,” boasted the officer.

“So I guess your experiment is a success,” I grumbled. “Do you have all the cars towed?”

“Yup!” exclaimed the tow truck driver. “Haven’t slept in 24-hours. Hope you get your registration sorted out soon, my lot’s pretty full.”  Apparently, he is sort of on standby, waiting for his next victim. He towed my car to Middlebury, and then, two days later, to my town. The bill?  $350.00.

My registration is still not renewed because you can no longer renew your registration at the DMV.  You must do it online or by mail. The problem is that you must be “invited” to renew your registration and on that “invitation” is a pin number that you need in order to renew online or by mail. I don’t remember receiving this invitation and cannot find it so I must wait until I am sent a new one.

So I guess the moral of my story is, when the DMV invites you to do something, DO IT.

Here’s the first, my directorial debut, if you will.

This is my second video film.

Apparently, book publishers prefer videos that aren’t shot on a Flipcam. And would also prefer that the cameraman/director not snort with laughter throughout. So I’m looking at videos for inspiration for my own book trailer and this morning I came across this, which is not only my new favorite book trailer, but my new favorite Youtube video. Enjoy:

Now I just need a songwriter for The Good House music video.

Here’s the thing, my novel is complete and is being prepared to be “launched.”  That doesn’t mean that it’s coming out soon. It’s not, it’s coming out next winter.  But it has been sent out for  endorsements from other authors that will appear on the cover of the book. My agent sent the book out to two authors who were kind enough to read it promptly and then reward me with just the most flattering blurbs. I don’t think I’m allowed to reveal them yet but it’s a great relief to get their feedback.

Now the manuscript is being copy-edited and the publisher is working on cover ideas, promotion strategies, etc., and I’m always on the slightly anxious/obsessive end of the spectrum, so in order to not obsess about what’s going on with my book, I’ve decided to focus my extreme tunnel vision on real estate.

I love real estate. I’m a real estate junkie.  When I’m depressed or anxious, I turn to cruising real estate websites the way others turn to porn.  I guess you could say it excites me. Arouse might not be too strong a word.  Titillate would be too strong, but you could say arouse.

So when we came to Los Angeles last week, I made a few appointments to look at homes. Denis was interested, he’s been out here a lot and we decided to see what’s on the market.  Denis hates the traffic in LA and we both like the country – we have the dogs and horses – so we decided to look in the Topanga/Malibu areas.  The morning that we were to meet the broker, we drove up through the Malibu hills first and we instantly settled into our old dynamic in which Denis feels he must try to quell my unmitigated enthusiasm with hefty doses of annoying reality.

“Look at the views,” I cried out, as we ascended a steep, winding road. “And it never snows, so you’d never feel stranded up here.”

“No, it never snows, you just have to figure out how to drive it when the road cracks open during an earthquake, and there’s a fire raging all around you. Imagine driving this through a blazing inferno and then you’ll get a picture of what it’s like to live here.”

“No screens,” I marveled as we toured a beautiful cottage.  ”No bugs!”

“Nope, no bugs, just the giant tsunami that will cover this whole valley after the quake. You’ll have fish swimming above your bed, but no bugs.”

Denis’s naysaying, as always, spurred me on and we ended up in a constant dialogue of pros and cons about the area, with Devin trying to act as the voice of reason with her  reminders of our families back East and friends and pets, etc.  We ended up dropping Denis back at the hotel and Devin and I decided to do drive to the Venice area to look in some shops.  At one point, I needed to change lanes at a traffic light, but there was a car next to me with salsa music blasting.  Dev informed me that the driver was politely waving me in front of her, instead of blocking my way, East Coast style.

“See that?” I said. “People never do that in New York.  People who are courteous to other drivers are happy people.  People are happy in California.”

“I think that driver is happy because she’s eating corn,” said Devin.

“She’s eating popcorn?”

“No, she’s eating corn on the cob,” Devin replied, and I leaned over her for a look and sure enough, the jolly driver was eating corn on the cob, while driving her car. She was bobbing her head in time with the music, carving neat rows on the cob with her teeth, balancing the steering wheel with her elbows and when butter started dripping down her chin, she simply dabbed at it WITH THE BIB that was tied about her neck.

People, this is a very, very special place.

The best part of our Los Angeles visit was seeing our friend Peter Gallagher perform in his one-man show at the Geffen center. It was a fundraiser for the Actors Fund and the Geffen Center and it was AMAZING.  Peter sang and told hilarious stories about all the people he’s worked with in the theater and in films over the years: Peter O’Toole, Jack Lemmon, Mike Nichols, Glenn Close, Annette Bening. He sang songs that brought tears to our eyes. And afterward we got to visit with Peter’s wife Paula, one of my favorite people on earth, whom I’ve missed terribly since they moved to LA, and their two gorgeous and talented kids.

Now we’re in San Francisco. In the pouring rain. I understand that it’s sunny and 60 at home. Sigh.

Dev, the photographer took the nicest photos:

We ate a dinner of delicious fishes we had never heard of in Carmel-by-the-Sea last night and then I dreamt I was in the Lewis and Clark expedition, in canoes, in tents, but I was in college and was hiding the fact that I had cocaine with me.  I know. I know.

I love California. Now here’s a nice poem.

I HAVE NEWS FOR YOU
by Tony Hoagland

There are people who do not see a broken playground swing
as a symbol of ruined childhood

and there are people who don’t interpret the behavior
of a fly in a motel room as a mocking representation of their thought process.

There are people who don’t walk past an empty swimming pool
and think about past pleasures unrecoverable

and then stand there blocking the sidewalk for other pedestrians.
I have read about a town somewhere in California where human beings

do not send their sinuous feeder roots
deep into the potting soil of others’ emotional lives

as if they were greedy six-year-olds
sucking the last half-inch of milkshake up through a noisy straw;

and other persons in the Midwest who can kiss without
debating the imperialist baggage of heterosexuality.

Do you see that creamy, lemon-yellow moon?
There are some people, unlike me and you,

who do not yearn after fame or love or quantities of money as
unattainable as that moon;
thus, they do not later
have to waste more time
defaming the object of their former ardor.

Or consequently run and crucify themselves
in some solitary midnight Starbucks Golgotha.

I have news for you—
there are people who get up in the morning and cross a room

and open a window to let the sweet breeze in
and let it touch them all over their faces and bodies.