Criminal Mischief

Sometime last night someone decided, I guess, that my car looked like it might have treats inside and smashed my window in to get them. There were no treats, really--the most expensive thing in there was a coat I had left in the back seat, and they didn't even take that. They took some CDs (I hope they like Whiskeytown!) and the mount for my GPS. They also, I am happy/grossed-out to report, appear to have done themselves some injury, since many of the extremely unvaluable papers they pulled out of my glove compartment were blood-stained.

I called the police this morning after I went out to get the newspaper and saw what had happened, and a few minutes later my neighbor, who is a Trenton police officer, was ringing my bell to take the report. He doesn't actually work in our district but saw the call and came over himself, which was super nice. And because of the blood he actually called a tech in to see if they could get fingerprints--just like on tv! Of course, assuming that kind of thing only happened on tv (and honestly not even expecting an officer to show up in person--when I called the TPD, the woman said she'd have an officer call me), I had already been in the car to see what was missing and picked up the stuff that had been strewn in the street. My neighbor kind of tsk-tsked me and said that next time I really should wait for the police before touching anything. (Next time!)

So this kind of thing happens, and I'm not really that freaked out by it (though I did decide that getting your car broken into means that you can eat as many donuts as you want for the next 24 hours), but I admit I am hesitant to tell people who are already critical of where I live, and who will almost certainly start dusting off their speeches about how I should move. The thing is, people break into cars all over. The likelihood of criminal mischief--and various other crimes--is higher in cities. People live in cities despite that fact, because, typically, there are advantages to living in a city that they believe outweigh the negatives. The problem, of course, is that Trenton's advantages are not as easy to pinpoint these days as the advantages of, say, Philadelphia, or even Baltimore, whose crime rates are also high, but whose cultural offerings make up for it. Or even of Newark, which may not be a cultural mecca at the moment, but whose leadership seems to at least be making an effort to make things better there. And because I'm not really in the mood at the moment to regale naysayers with my list of Things to Love about Trenton, I'm laying low today. So do me a favor and don't tell my dad, okay?

Babies Are Awesome

This is my new niece. My brother now has three children, increasing the odds that someone related to me will be around to take care of me when I'm old. I just spent a few days in Florida hanging out with her (and my brother and other various family members, but who cares about them?). I know many people think babies are boring, but I love 'em. They make hilarious sounds and faces, they are mostly uncomplicated in their wants and needs, and they stay where you put them. That's best case scenario with kids, if you ask me.

On Cream of Celery Soup and Other Convenience Foods

The other day I tried to make a dessert bar thing my mother used to make. She just called them Special K Bars, so named because, of course, she got the recipe off the side of the Special K box. Sadly, Kellogg's stopped providing that recipe for us long ago, so I turned to the internet and found many that seemed kind of right. Basically, you mix cereal, peanut butter, and Karo syrup together, smash it all in a cake pan, pour melted chocolate in a layer over the top, and stick the whole thing in the fridge for a couple of hours. That's it. So I figured out what seemed like the right proportions, ignored the infidels who claimed you should melt butterscotch chips in with the chocolate, and gave it a shot. Only the peanut butter I used was fancy-pants Trader Joe's peanut butter, not Skippy or Jif or whatever my mom used to buy, and the chocolate I used was Belgian whoop-de-doo semi-sweet chocolate, also from Trader Joe's, instead of regular old Nestle's Toll House Morsels (how great a word is "morsel," by the way?). You'll be happy to know that I did use Special K, though, and not some Kashi cardboard facsimile, and Karo syrup, which of course I did not buy at Trader Joe's, because I'm sure they don't make their own brand of high-fructose corn syrup. And the bars were okay, I guess, but they did not taste like I remembered, and I'm sure that's because of the newfangled ingredients. Next time I feel like I need to make an entire pan of retro refrigerator bars to eat by myself, I'm definitely going Skippy and Nestle's, all the way.

Making those bars also made me a little hungry for other things we ate occasionally growing up... pork chops over rice baked with cream of mushroom and/or cream of celery soup, for example. Mmmm, sodium! Or that "Chinese" food that came in cans and consisted mainly of water chestnuts, bean sprouts, and some weird, white, gloppy sauce, poured over those crispy noodles. Which all makes it sound like my parents were terrible cooks--they weren't. They were children of the 50s, when everyone became enthralled with supermarket convenience foods, like cake mixes and instant pudding and cans of soup that inspired entire recipe books.* And though in general their tastes had become broader and their cooking skills more sophisticated, they still had a few oldies but goodies in their repertoire.

Now, of course, the supermarket convenience foods that enthrall us are far, far different from those that made our grandparents' lives easier. Which brings me back to Trader Joe's. Maybe I'm just missing something, or haven't bought exactly the right salsa, or crackers, or frozen seasoned meat to make me understand what all the fuss is about. I've only been twice since the new store opened locally, and had never been to one before that. So while I will grant you that their instant chocolate pudding is pretty freaking good, by and large I'm just not getting it. Clearly I'm in the minority, though, since the last time I went the checkout lines were halfway down the aisles toward the back of the store, kind of putting a damper on my desire to go back. So for now I'll stick with things I can make with Campbell's Soup. And stuff you can buy at Whole Foods, which, thanks to Trader Joe's, has been blissfully empty the past couple of weeks.

*And a dress!

Circle It on the Circle Line (Toot Toot)

On Sunday my dad, stepmother, and I met in New York to take the three-hour Circle Line tour. I was born and grew up in New York State, never more than a couple of hours away from the city, and sometimes I actually even lived in Manhattan, but I had somehow managed to miss this staple of Big Apple sightseeing. My father had done it once with his father when he was a little boy (the Circle Line has been around since the 1940s), and my stepmother, who's not from around here, had never been. So we took the tour, and in so doing, I also saw (from the water) several other sightseeing staples I've managed to miss...Ellis Island, the Cloisters, the United Nations, and the little red lighthouse under the George Washington Bridge. Or, at least, I think I've missed them. As we have established, my memory is terrible.

For example, as we were sailing by Riverside Church my dad said "I climbed up to the top of that tower while I was waiting for you to finish your interview at Barnard. Remember that?" No. I did not remember. I said, "I applied to Barnard?" "And you got in!" he said proudly. We mused on that separately for a bit. Then it became clear that my memory is not the only spotty one, because he said, "I never understood why you didn't go to Columbia." Now this I believe I have a clear memory of, because I really, really wanted to go to Columbia, but, at least in my version of events, I was told it was too expensive and we couldn't afford it. When I reminded my dad of that he said, yeah, other schools had offered me scholarships and/or were less expensive, but in his mind at this point clearly that shouldn't have been a deciding factor. Huh. How about that, ya'll? I could have gone to Columbia. And then probably not met virtually any of the friends I have now, whom I met either in school (grad school too, but who knows whether I'd have gone to the same grad school, or grad school at all, if I'd gone to Columbia as an undergrad) or through the job I now have, which I have because of someone I met at the college I did attend, or because I live where I live because of the job I now have. Freaky. Anyway, please enjoy some pictures from the cruise.

Watch This Space

Not a very exciting week. We've just been sitting around, waiting for summer to be over so this big fur coat doesn't seem so inappropriate.

Protesting Too Much

So a few weeks ago the Trenton Times printed an editorial about how Trenton's stock as a city was rising, citing Art All Night and the success of the Broad Street Bank building. Then some guy who does not (and I believe never did) live in Trenton wrote a letter to the editor to say that, in fact, Trenton's stock is not rising, it never will, and we should all just give up. (Please forgive me if I am getting the details wrong. I'm pulling all of this from my foggy memory, because the NJ.com website is absolutely useless if you actually want to find anything, and I abandoned my search for anything pertaining to the editorial or letters that followed after 10 minutes of fruitless clicking and wanting to punch someone. I guess I could dig through the actual papers, but it's recycling night, and they're already out on the curb.*) In the days that followed, some of my fellow Trenton citizens wrote letters to the editor talking about how Trenton is really a great place, full of dedicated people living, working, and trying to bring about change, and about how negativity is a bummer, man. (Again, I am paraphrasing.) Then, and this is my favorite part, one of my fellow citizens gathered up some Trenton-made items (Ana candles, a Tektite flashlight) and drove them to the original letter-writer's house. If that guy didn't immediately get a restraining order, he has more self-control than I would have in that situation, I'm telling you that right now.

So yes, it's kind of a douchebag move to write a letter to the editor trashing a town in which you do not live. And I am also tired of having people look at me funny when I tell them I live here, or overhearing comments about people's fear for their very lives every time they find themselves within our borders. But I think it's a waste of our collective breath to try to win over letter-writer guy, or anyone like him, with plaintive letters to the editor and gift baskets. It's like trying to win back an asshole ex-lover. He's not coming back, and we don't really want him. In fact, what we need is a younger, hipper, braver, more energetic lover, with a less cynical outlook, who hasn't convinced himself that coming to visit us is going to result in his untimely death from a gunshot wound. We also need a lot of other things too, like competent leadership and a plan** for dealing with our budget woes. But in the meantime, I promise you, we are not going to convince people that Trenton is the grand place we all know it can be just by saying it's so. Or bringing them candles.

*Okay, I found a link to the article about the gift basket delivery. Not on nj.com, of course. Because they suck.
**Reinventing Trenton has a plan...check it out.

It's Not the Years, It's the Knees. And the Flowy Tops.

People, I am here to tell you that the slippery slope of middle age is, in fact, a precipitous cliff.* It was only a year or so ago that I was sniggering about the catalogs that had started showing up at my house. Remember that? Well kittens, I went shopping with a friend in Flemington NJ over the Labor Day weekend. She and I often meet there because it's about halfway between our houses, but there isn't anything to do there except shop, or go to the oldest, mustiest, creepiest still-operating multiplex on earth. Not feeling much like watching The Time Traveler's Wife** or similar, on a screen barely bigger than the one in my living room, with duct-tape upholstery patches digging into the backs of our necks, we opted for shopping. There are outlets in Flemington, and a new shopping center that appears to have been conceived and built during happier economic times...right now it's a few stores (excuse me, "shoppes") and a lot of empty space for rent.

Neither the outlets nor this new shopping center are exactly filled with stores that scream Young and Hip. I didn't expect to buy much, thinking the outing was really just an excuse to walk around and chat with a friend. But by the end of the day I had shopping bags, and I am still stunned by their origins. Talbots and J Jill are the most shocking. Talbots, for crying out loud! The only thing I ever pictured when I thought of Talbots was the mom/grandmother on Gilmore Girls. Now, of course, *I* think the things I bought are cute. But I also readily admit that they are all kind of soft and flowy, and probably designed to hide what we middle-aged ladies like to call our "figure flaws." I even, god help me, went into Coldwater Creek. I didn't buy anything there, but I did try things on, which was confusing at first because everything I tried on in my normal size was way too big. Then I realized that their sizes were scaled up. Extra Small was a 4. There was no size 2, or 0, or, for the extra-anorexic, 00. So one thing I will say for Coldwater Creek is that they spare you the experience of having the person in the dressing room next to you call out to the saleswoman and ask "does this come in a 0 long?" The answer to which I always want to be, "no, but here, let me force-feed you a sandwich." But clearly they are not targeting the younger set.

So anyway, this could be all about how my misconceptions about these stores were proven false after all these years. But I really think that it's just another example of how getting older works...just like you never thought you'd say the things your parents said, or forget what you came into a room for, or buy the wrong kind of cereal at the grocery store (gross, maple-flavored Quaker Oatmeal Squares, I'm looking at you), you never thought you'd dress like they did. But I am quite certain that the flowy tops and skirts that I bought over the weekend are the equivalent of the blouses and wrap-around skirts my mother wore. And I guess I'm okay with that. Because honestly, have you seen what the kids are wearing these days? Shameful.

The other thing I've noticed aging-wise is that I have my mother's knees. I remember her complaining about her weird lumpy knees when she got to be in her 40s, and I have definitely inherited them. This picture doesn't really do them justice...in the right light, they are like a bowl of congealing oatmeal.

*And I don't need you to tell me, by the way, that it's obnoxious to complain about your age. I know that if you are even five minutes older than I am you're all "oh, just get over it." I know this because anyone even five minutes younger than I am who complains about his or her age gets a big old eye roll from me. Hell, I'm even annoyed at myself for the posts I wrote a year ago about how old I was then.

**How bad does that movie look? Seriously? You knew that the guy you were marrying disappears periodically without warning because he is a time traveler. Did you really think that was going to work out? Quit whining.

I Collect Spores, Molds, and Fungus

This freakishly huge mushroom popped up in front of my house the other morning. That's what 20.4 inches of rain since June* will get you.

*a.k.a., 161% of normal, which may be what I rename this blog