Family Sound Bites

It only takes twenty-four hours with my family to gather some quality sound bites.  Without further ado, here are a few. Happy Sunday.

Sitting at the dinner table on Saturday night, my aunt explains to us an “angel reading” that she attended at a friend’s house:

“None of my angels were there.  I just had the standard angels.”

“Oh, what are the standard angels?” I ask.

“Um, Gabriel, Michael, you know the angel names.”

Later that night, watching TV with my parents and grandparents:

“I see double sometimes,” Grammy says.

“So, how many people do you see on the TV right now?” my dad asks.  (There is one skateboarder on the screen.)

“Two,” Grammy says.

(Another skateboarder comes on the screen.)

“What about now?” Dad asks.

“Four.”

(A commercial comes on, with three actors.)

“What about now?”

(And so on and so forth…)

Sunday, in a clothing store with my mom, cousin Sam, Aunt Val, and Grammy:

“Kiki, are you going to buy that hat?” Grammy asks, pointing at the black hat on my head.  “It’s really cute.”

“The hat I am wearing right now?” I ask.

“Yes, I like it a lot.”

“This is my hat, Grammy.  I’ve been wearing it all day.”

Later in the afternoon on Sunday, getting ready to go back into the city.

“Rob, is the chicken almost done?” Mom asks Dad.  Then, turning to me, “I made Austin a roast chicken since he wasn’t here for dinner last night.”

(An entire chicken in the oven for Austin.)

For Liam, one year later

One year ago today, the world lost a little boy who was brave and kind beyond his six years.  When I met Liam a few years ago I could tell that he was the kind of person who could make your glass feel half-full, even when it seemed to be three-quarters-empty.  I could tell this because three-quarters is exactly how empty my glass seemed the day I met Liam.  We were both in the overnight pediatric wing of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.  You could say we were both in pretty shitty situations.  But still, Liam had this light about him.  And I don’t mean that in a woo-woo way, but just simply that it was obvious that this kid made the place—which you could say was pretty drab—brighter.  People became noticeably happier when they were around Liam.  I always thought Liam made a much better hospital visitor—IV tubes and all trailing behind him—than any of the clowns, musicians, and comedians who passed through the hallways of Memorial Sloan-Kettering.  But I wish he had never had to walk down one of those hallways.

It has been a year since Liam passed and I still have many questions and doubts and a lot of heartache.  In the past year, sad things have happened to other people who I care about—the kind of sad things that can make you wonder how the sun could possibly still rise over certain homes.  I do not know what I believe about religion or faith or fairness anymore.  I definitely do not know why bad things happen to good people.  What I do know is that sometimes good things come out of bad things and that good people do good things even in bad (shitty) situations.  I do not know why some people die young while others live to be old.  But I do know that as long as I am here, I want to live like Liam did, or as his mom Gretchen says, “love like Liam.”  And here is how you can, too:

*Love and protect your siblings and best friends.

*Make sure the people who take care of you (and care about you) know how you feel about them.

*Do not worry about all the reasons why you cannot do something.  Think of something you can do and then do that.  Because you can.

*Make someone else feel better who is having a shitty day, on a day when you, too are having a shitty day.

*Do things that are important and special now, today. Be less concerned with later.

*Go about your day thinking that you could make a new friend at any time in any place. Then, make one.

*Support great causes, great people, eat cookies—and do all three at once, which is what Liam did almost everyday.  (Do not worry, this is the easiest one on the list.  Just go to: http://www.cookiesforkidscancer.org/)

*And of course, if you love something as much as Liam loved scootering, do not let the rules or anything else get in your way.  Just be open to scooter-walking when you absolutely have to.

For more on Liam, see these posts:
http://kikikoro.blogspot.com/2011/02/tips-i-learned-from-liam-plus-few-from.html
http://kikikoro.blogspot.com/2011/01/for-liam.html

And really, go to the Cookies for Kids' Cancer website. Much better than this blog.  And you have cookies, t-shirts, jewelry to buy before Valentine's Day.  Email me for my apartment and office addresses...Love Like Liam's Lemon cookies start shipping on February 6 (http://www.cookiesforkidscancer.org/ProductDetails.asp?ProductCode=LLL).

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A little too distracted by SportsCenter and a lot too excited for the Giants game to post right now.  So I am just saying "hi" to Grammy. (Promise to post later, Grams.) Off to Austin and Steve's neighborhood bar, where everybody knows their names...

Things that do not make sense

Some of the funniest stand-up comedy skits that I have seen have been instances when the comedians have joked about realities in our everyday life that simply do not make sense.  And there is a lot of material.  For instance, where are all the baby pigeons?  There is one comedian who performs regularly at The Comic Strip Live in Manhattan, who often bets the audience that no one will be able to locate a baby pigeon in the city before the show is over.  He also says that pigeons must be like Marines—they leave no wounded warriors—because he has never seen a dead pigeon in New York.

There are many different words that we use—in various situations—for things that do not make sense: “ironic,” “hypocritical,” “tongue-in-cheek,” “strange,” or as my mom sometimes says, “wack.”  Sometimes, it can be annoying or maddening when people are hypocritical.  Like when a friend—who spends 85% of all your conversations with her talking about herself—complains about how self absorbed all her other girl friends are.  But, on a good day, this might make you smile.  Because when you think about things that don’t make sense, sometimes they are just too darn wack not to smile.  Like these things:

*When a guy—who has been arrested for getting into a fight at a bar—criticizes a friend for getting into a fight at a bar that did not end in arrest (“A bar is not the place.”) in front of mutual friends who witnessed the guy’s arrest.

*When your boss tells you (at 5 p.m.) that you should “really go home early tonight,” as he hands you more work to do.

*When someone asks you for advice on whether she should do A or B, and after you tell her to do A, she gives you three reasons that explain why you are wrong and why she should actually do B.

*When it makes people happy to be miserable.

*When a cat survives getting hit by an 18-wheeler.  And when that same one-eyed cat outlives her great, great, great grandchildren.

*When you disconnect the battery of your car every time you turn your car off (and reconnect with a wrench every time you turn it on), in order to save power.

*When someone asks you to do him a favor and you realize that he could have done the task in the time it took him to explain it to you.

*When you pre-game an open bar.

*When you are out to dinner with a dozen or so friends and at the end of the meal, the same few people realize that they do not have any cash and that there is no money on their debit cards.  And those are the same people who planned the dinner and chose the expensive restaurant.

*When a visiting friend (who you gave a key to your apartment to) wakes you up at 5:15 a.m. to buzz him into the apartment.

*When you spend an entire evening dancing, flirting, and making out with a stranger at a bar, and you leave with only her friend’s number.

*When girls wear Uggs with mini-skirts.

*When the innkeeper at the bed and breakfast that you are staying at for the weekend tells you, “I’ve seen blood on the sheets.  I’m not worried about contracting AIDS, though; I’m worried about hepatitis B.”

What doesn’t make sense in your life?

My weekend in photos

Okay, so I am being lazy but I don't want Grammy to be upset with me for not posting—even if I am a day late—so here is my weekend in four photos. Don't worry—I'll get over taking photos on my brand new iPhone 4S soon...

This was Saturday afternoon, after Austin realized that I was not going to stop saying, "We should go outside," (or actually go outside) until he turned off the television and came outside with me. It was an unseasonably warm day that drew many people (and their dogs) to Central Park. It felt just like an early spring day, as Austin waited in line at a Mister Softee truck, behind a few toddlers. This area of the park (above) reminded me of the piazzas I walked through in Italy and the plazas I wandered around in Spain last year. Sigh. I want to go back to Europe.

Another shot from inside the park, after Austin and I walked around the Upper West Side long enough for him to admit that there was not "nothing" over there. This view didn't make me think of anywhere else. Just New York. And how much I like calling it "home."

This was the bathroom I found myself in Saturday night.  Okay, early Sunday morning.  This made me glad to have a bottle of hand sanitizer in my purse, and eager to go outside and show my friend Megan (who was eating at a counter in this Mexican restaurant) the photo.

This is a lame photo from inside Minskoff Theater, home of my favorite Broadway show, The Lion King. Seen it three times. Still magical. I wanted to take a photo of the stage, but I was too afraid of the female employee manning the aisle near me to even attempt. Of course, I thought about Liam and his service and Gretchen. See my first posts about Prince Liam the Brave (January and February, 2011).

Hope you all had a lovely weekend. I know Giants fan did. And how about those Broncos? My mom has been trying to get me to go to church for years, but if the Broncos beat the Pats on Saturday, I just might have to find a nice church in my neighborhood. Another big weekend coming up...

2012 has arrived

The year 2011 ended a little blurry...

...but 2012 started just fine, with:

*Most of the guys at the New York City bar we went to thinking Carrie was an actress who got her start in Precious.  Isn't that what you would tell people if they asked you if you were famous?  Don't people ask you if you are famous all the time?

*Photographs of (quality) bar make-out sessions, white bra straps visible and all. I won't name any names, here...

*A 3 a.m. appearance by RKsoPitted at Ray's Pizza on the lower east side of Manhattan. RKsoPitted was unable to convince anyone from our New Year's Eve group to continue the evening with him in Brooklyn, where RKsoPitted planned to rage, but it was not for lack of trying. And one young man in the above photo did come very close to heading down the steps to the L train along with RKsoPitted, as the young man said, "Every fiber in my body is telling me to go to Brooklyn."

*Slices with multiple toppings. Thanks, Carrie. And, yes, Ray's was a lot more expensive than our Hamilton, NY haunt, Slices.

*Discussions of New Year resolutions, like, "Don't be fat."

*Plenty of anticipation and excitement for tonight's New York Giants game. And lots of fingers crossed.

*Some of the best people I know.

Happy New Year to all my readers. Especially you, Grammy.