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04.29.04
I hadn’t thought about the poem in years. But then, several months ago, I was in the Krispy Kreme in Chelsea with college friend Eleanor Eichenbaum, and I had a weird sudden memory of someone stealing a line from my 1997 Krispy Kreme poem.
I became confused and flustered. I couldn’t remember if it had been a dream or if I had gotten conked on the head and was experiencing a confabulation or if it really had happened. I said to Eleanor, "Did some notable poet recently write a piece about laughing at malformed Krispy Kreme doughnuts?" Eleanor just smiled sweetly the way you smile at crazy people when they say they’ve been speaking to Martians.
I have been haunted by memories of my ancient bad Krispy Kreme poem ever since. So here it is.
Fun Facts you should know about this "Poem":
04.27.04
I received my last birthday card from those grandparents at age 16. Then nothing. My grandfather grew older and more demented and meaner and more limbless. After Brian and I had been dating for six months, we took a trip to New York and visited my grandfather in the hospital. He was so busy yelling at the nurse, he didn’t even notice us. We had come all the way from Florida.
I saw him again after my grandmother’s funeral. When I tried to talk to him, he turned his head and pretended to be sleeping. I whispered in his ear that he had alienated his family and the only thing his grandchildren knew of him was a mean selfish old coot. He died several days later.
Aside from being a mean selfish old coot, my grandfather was also a packrat. When we were cleaning out the house after my grandparents died, we found collections of surgical scissors and used drinking straws and Life magazines and New York Times newspapers dating back to 1948. We also found this telegram. My grandfather’s mother Fanny sent it to her ne’er-do-well husband before their daughter died of pneumonia. My grandfather kept in tacked to a cork board near his desk in the basement in their house on Long Island. So I took it. Because telegrams are fun.
They are fun to imitate. It fills me with immense joy to write emails like:
My next assignment: Write your own telegram. Email me the results. Yo!
04.26.04
www.johnkerryisadouchebagbutimvotingforhimanyway.com by way of wonkette.com. Thanks, Brian, for keeping me both informed and potty-mouthed.
Belle has made the New York Times. I am so excited, even if they didn’t interview me. The Tribeca Film Festival will be showing the film on May 1st and 7th in a program of shorts called "Beyond Manhattan". Brian and I have already purchases 5 tickets online.
More wonderful news: I finished another short story! Deadlines are a many splendid thing. Today I passed out my story to my writing class at the Y. I finished writing it about 11 PM on Saturday night, which sent me into a state of tremendous shock. I had been working on the story in one form or another for over two years, and I had three previous drafts of the sucker on various disks strewn about our apartment.
I did it before and I’ll do it again. If you would like to request a copy of my most-recent story, please contact me at: contact @ debcentral.com.
Also, I noticed how many people responded to my last request for guestblogs. Even my own husband hasn’t responded. Never mind that. I’ll send you my story if you send me yours. Write something fun. Here’s your topic: Garbage. Here’s your deadline: Now. Submit to the aforementioned email address. Get on it.
04.24.04
From: Delltechsupport
Dear Richard:
From: Deborah Schwartz [mailto:deborahschwartz @ excite.com]
my name is not richard.
my name is deborah schwartz, as the email address suggests. I did recently
call dell tech support. please correct your data.
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:05:11
Hi Denise,
From: Deborah Schwartz [mailto:deborahschwartz @ excite.com]
Not Denise. Deborah.
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:04:49
Hi Deborah,
04.22.04
Loyal readers of debcentral, let me introduce myself. I know some of you already, I'm sure. You might remember me as Brian Geller's prom date, Countryside
High prom of 1994. You can see that I once resembled a newborn giraffe. Since those glory days, I have evolved into a high school biology teacher in East Harlem. My students do me the favor of telling me daily who I most resemble.
The first, and most far-fetched (though
widely accepted), was Stephanie Tanner from Full House. I was referred to as "Tanner" from October through
January. I'm not sure where the similarities begin, but it might have something to do with having white
skin. The fact that the actress Jodie Sweetin was five when the show began seems to have no bearing on her striking similarity to me at age 27. You may also ask, why are today's teenagers watching Full House? It's timeless.
On St. Patrick's day, while wearing a green shirt with brown pants, I earned a new nickname -- "the Female Shaggy." I give my students credit for this one, because I feel much closer to Shaggy (of Scooby Doo fame) than I do to any child star on a sitcom from the late eighties. Unfortunately, this never stuck.
Today my ever-vigilant students pointed out a celebrity look-alike that I am certain
nobody else on the planet would have found: Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks. My male twin, separated at birth, only he's 6'9" and a millionaire. I was slow to decipher the hints being tossed my way late this afternoon, when a few kids
started asking how I liked Dallas. They then started passing back and forth a crumpled piece of paper which read "Miss Scott, aka Dirk Witkoski of the Dallas Mavericks, 6'9"." I think this was supposed to be the title of a piece of artwork that was interrupted before coming to fruition. Our similarities seem to be messy hair, and a glazed stare with mouth hanging open. He may also have "no ass", which is my number one figure flaw in the eyes of the scholars at Urban Peace Academy. They (thankfully) ignore my spare tire and prefer to constantly berate me for an insufficient ass.
All good blogs should come to a witty conclusion, or a good moral, like a He-Man cartoon. Unfortunately, I'm exhausted. It's not easy starring in NBA games by night and educating our country's future leaders by day. A girl/guy's gotta sleep!
04.21.04
Most of my grapefruit consumption takes place within a half hour of my waking. And I am a relatively low-functioning person within the first half hour after I wake up. When I say “relatively low-functioning” I mean “I sit and stare at the wall and drool and am sometime seen dropping things and breaking them.” This is the reason I must set my alarm for almost two hours before the time I need to be out of the house.
This is why my new grapefruit-sectioning device and I were not meant to be. To work it, one must have the semblance of coordination. I think the Chef’n company assumes that its users will be mid-to-high-functioning. Heavens! Who else would buy an $11 grapefruit knife that looks like a wacked-out beaky nutcracker but some high-toned society person or fruity intellectual?
If two hours have passed since I’ve awakened and one squints and awful lot, one might mistake me for a fruity intellectual. But within the first half hour after waking, I look more like an 80 year old emotionally disturbed person wrapped in a blanky, hair matted, repeatedly stabbing a grapefruit with what appears to be a nutcracker with a knifey beak at end.
For the past several mornings, my grapefruits have been turned to pulpy messes as I employ the grapefruit sectioning device using the wrong end or being overzealous or underzealous or downright primitive in a pounding fruit sort of way. While I am never particularly gracefully, in the mornings, as I jab my gadget into a grapefruit, I maintain the hand-eye coordination of an athritic manatee. Sad. Very sad.
I have noticed that my guestblog program never really got off the ground. Never fear. My 6-8 week trial is in it’s 7th week and shows no sign of letting up. This is your big chance! When was the last time you had an opportunity like this? When was the last time I asked you to write a guestblog for my website because I was on perpetual jury duty?
Never mind that. Hop on the wagon. Get on the boat. All aboard. It’s the crazy psychedelic schooner of civic duty, it’s out of control, and it’s heading for you!
I know what you need. You need an assignment. Okay, then, here’s your first assignment. Someone write a piece about a grandparent (figuratively or literally). Do it! I really mean it this time. Don’t make me come in there (contact @ debcentral.com).
04.18.04
"Why do I need to take a shower more than once a week?" he said. "I change my shirt three times a week, I change my pants twice a week, and I shower once a week. What’s wrong with that? There are people here who pee on themselves and the staff doesn’t make them change their pants or shower more than once a week. But they yell at me! Do you see what I’m telling you?"
I believe what he is telling me is that:
We met Heather Scott for brunch on the west side yesterday. Afterwards, we went to Zabar’s and I bought a Grapefruiter. I am forever on a quest for new and more interesting instruments to aid my consumption of grapefruits. A couple months ago, I purchased a special curved graprefruit knife. But my new gadget is more fun. It looks like a nut cracker with a sharp knifey beak. Brian and I have already consumed five grapefruits since acquiring this appliance.
Brian thought it looked like a torture device that might be used by an evil drug lord to take out the tongues of snitches. He re-enacted the exchange with me as the snitch and himself as an evil drug lord called Pablo Neruda. When I refused to have my tongue removed again with the grapefruiter, Brian made me get a out stopwatch and time him as he used it to section a grapefruit. When he didn’t like his time, we went out to buy more grapefruits, and he tried it again. I think he is down to 15.8 seconds, which is still over the 12.4 seconds the website boasts.
We went out this morning and purchased another half-dozen grapefruits. We’re going to keep working on it. With the highest technology in grapefruit sectioning, my coaching, and a whole gang of hope, I think Brian could even make it to the finals this year.
04.14.04
In other news, I almost got into a tussle with some random jurors this morning. There is often quite a line to get through security and into the courthouse in the mornings. The Lexington line was experiencing technical difficulties, and I was already late for jury duty. I pushed up through the line (as I was told to do) displaying my yellow juror card in the air for all to see. When I got to the entrance door, an older woman blocked my way. I said, "I’m sorry. I’m a juror on a trial. I’m already late for court."
"That doesn’t mean you can just cut in front of everyone in line."
"I was told I should show my card and move to the front of the line." I said.
She said, "I’m a juror too. We’re all jurors here. Get back in line like the rest of us." Then a large shtarker of a woman in back of her said, "YEAH. GET TO THE BACK OF THE LINE."
So I did. The line went all the way back to the curb, and was moving slowly. It took a million years to get through security. When I finally got to the magnetometer, the police officer there said, "You’re a juror. Why didn’t you move to the front of the line?"
I spoke at length ratting out the two mean ladies that had threatened me. The officer said, "They don’t know anything. Next time someone says something like that to you, get an officer to escort you up through the line to security."
Ha!
When I got on the elevator, the evil shtarker was on there too. It was very crowded. I pressed the button for the 11th floor. I wondered if she had heard me complaining about her to the officer. The elevator crept up to the fourth floor, and then all of a sudden started heading down again. Then it sat in the lobby for another couple of minutes before the doors closed again. It crept up to the fourth floor again and stopped. Oh god, I thought I am trapped in an elevator with this evil mean juror who heard me complaining about her, and she will surely come over here and bop me on the head.
Then the elevator lurched again, and was about to head down, when everyone screamed and began madly hitting the buttons for the higher floors. It stopped. Lurched again. And finally began to move up. I was almost a half hour late.
It was gray and rainy out today. Several of the other jurors on my trial said they had had similar evil juror experiences on their way in this morning.
This was an extremely boring story. I’m sorry.
04.13.04
Jenny Miller has been feeling a bit down. So drop her a line and cheer her up.
Also, I am still accepting submissions for guest blogs. I am in my sixth week of jury duty, and as a famous man once said, "Ain’t done yet." It’s true. I have no idea how long we have left, but it has suggested that we shouldn’t dream of being done before May.
So take out your cyber-pens-of-the-future and tell me about your crazy family. I’m all cyber-ears-of-the-future.
PS: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MOM.
04.11.04
We did arrive early, and were surprised to find that the room was not only not very packed. In fact, it was quite empty. There were moments in our nearly two-hour visit when we were the only people in the visiting room. It was at these moments that my uncle’s voice would rise considerably, causing chewed-up hamburger to projectile out of his mouth and bespatter his protruding stomach, the table, and us.
He was very angry about a lot of things. One of them concerned his having requested a special Passover meal for the first two days of Passover. Manhattan Psychiatric Center has a rabbi-at-large who drops by once a week to offer patients spiritual support. He conducts services, and has been known to bring my uncle coffee and a Danish from time to time. I don’t know if it was the rabbi’s responsibility to secure special Passover meals for patients at the institution, but my uncle perceived it to be so. Instead of getting his first special meal on Monday night, Uncle Ira didn’t get it until Tuesday afternoon. When he saw the rabbi on Wednesday, he told me, "I gave him a real piece of my mind."
"You yelled at the rabbi?" I said.
"You bet I did. He’s an asshole and a fraud and he screwed up my special Passover meal entirely."
Later in the visit, my uncle remembered his Haftorah portion from his bar mitzvah to be the Veahavta, which is a basic Hebrew prayer chanted or sung at nearly all Jewish services. Then he recalled a stirring Hebrew hymn they used to sing at the synagogue near an old apartment of his. He slapped the table to keep the beat and crooned:
Whatever spirit was moving my uncle must have infected the homeless men on the bus ride home. One man had pulled the back of his jacket up over his head and sauntered up and down the moving bus, saying, "Hisss, Hisss. I’m the cat lady." Another gentleman grew increasingly more agitated as we neared Manhattan, slapping his knees, jumping up and down, singing, and performing what appeared to be a free-style rap about his endeavors in New York City. He said charming things like, "No Remorse (heh, heh). I’ll be baptized by the god of the horse (heh, heh)," and "Don’t worry about a thing. I’m Mr. Chicken Wing." Many of his verses referenced the lottery and its ability to turn poor immigrants into rich Americans.
Yesterday, the weather was gorgeous. Brian and Susan and I sat in the grass in Central Park and admired the sky and the clouds and the breeze and the people near us doing headstands and falling over and rolling down the hill. It was all so nice and bright and verdant. I suppose there might be a little bit of karma in it. For every beautiful crisp spring day spent in the grass on a hill, one has to pay up with seven ounces of chewed up hamburger meat, an ear-full of fervent nonsense singing, and an unlimited supply of drool.
04.08.04
In honor of spring, of this holiday, and of the Israelites release from bondage, I am making available for the first time seasonal wallpaper for your computer.
Another seasonal occurrence is Tax Day. Brian and I are proud to say that our tax returns are completed and ready for our pal, the IRS. This is because we had someone else do them.
Last year, I insisted on doing our taxes myself, and this resulted in them being still largely undone the day before they were due. I had worked for several weeks to come up with relatively random numbers that I had then scratched into the blanks on the federal form. When it came to our state taxes, I completely collapsed, and Brian had to remove from our paper work the sobbing, wilted lump that was me and resume where I had left off.
This year, I vowed we would pay someone to do our taxes in order to save money on my future mental health counseling. And that’s exactly what we did. Hip-hip-hooray for random accountants!
I visited my the ever-pregnant former co-worker Aiesha yesterday, and was disappointed that she was not, in fact, bigger than she actually was. Her stomach had certainly expanded to such proportions as to be able to fit a small human inside. But I had envisioned something more supernatural. Sometimes, I think could match wits with a six year old on the subject of child birth. I seem to “not get it”. I am always asking expectant mothers questions that make them glare at me and ask me what’s wrong with my head.
I asked Aiesha, who is a mere two weeks from delivering, whether she could ever see the baby’s hands or feet pushing against the skin of her belly, like in those horror movies when an alien who has been gestating inside its unwilling human host tries to make a break for it. From the look I received, I’m guessing it was an idiotic question.
Brian and I have been discussing my memoirs about jury duty, which I will invariably write once the trial is finished. I thought we might call it “My Day in Court: the Deborah Schwartz story”. Brian suggested the title “I Made a Duty!”. We both deserve each other.
04.07.04
In fact, we were constantly being lapped by the cars on nearby roads that were visible from the window. Brian maintained that the train traveled faster than he or I might walk, but I’m not so sure. Maybe faster than we could saunter.
Once the short slow jaunt from the airport was finished, we descended into the earth to wait for the dirty E train at it’s penultimate station in Jamaica, Queens. Much akin to Jan and Dean’s Surf City, where one can find two girls for every boy, the train held two homeless people for every one clean civilian rider.
We left the airport for the AirTrain at about 10:50 PM and finally reached our apartment via the 6 train about 12:30 AM. But we saved some $34. And this was before the taxi fare hike.
The other big news: Belle is up!
04.06.04
I have been eating for four days straight, and now I feel very gross.
In another couple of weeks, I will have a new story due for my class at the Y. I have a couple paragraphs so far, and these are the same couple paragraphs I’ve rewritten on three separate occasions. The story promises to be a great success.
The price of a taxi ride is rising in New York City. This really breaks my heart. I just love traveling in taxis. Especially late at night, when I know riding the subway home with take a hour and a half, but a trip in a taxi will be a cool 20 minutes.
Once, Brian and I had to return a video in the snow to the store which was five blocks from our apartment. We came very close to finking out and taking a taxi. We didn’t though. We hoofed it the whole way there and back, but we spent our walk trying to imagine even more frivolous taxi rides than one to the video store five blocks away. Brian finished with “I’d like to take a taxi from our apartment to our apartment.
Now, all this is changing. The base price for cab fare is going up and there will be an additional $1 fee for riding during rush hour. The fare from JFK will increase from $35 to $45 dollars (not including the $4 toll). Our stupid taxi fantasies have been squelched.
We have been considering taking the new AirTrain home tonight. Taxis are just so much faster. And when you’re sitting in a taxi, no one tries to punch you in the face for rolling your suitcase over their foot in a crowded subway car. There are an untold number of advantages to riding in taxis.
04.02.04
I asked Brian (my very own law student) if he knew how many differnt terms there were for objections. He wasn't sure, but speculated there were probably many. There may even been some that have fallen out of use over time.
We imagined the follow scenarios:
We're heading to Florida tonight in honor of Passover. Happy Pesach/Last Supper. It's all about the springtime/rebirth holidays. Let's all eat some eggs and crackers.
04.01.04
Before I left the courthouse, I received a call from Aiesha saying she had a
migraine and was feeling too ill for my visit. I went home with my second
batch of cookies intact.
Today, Brian and I broke into the stash. I may bring them to work tomorrow.
I’ve got to get them away from me before I eat them all – out of pity and a
lack of self control.
Despite the fact that my mother dislikes when I talk about my dreams, I will
talk about my dreams. Last night, I had a vivid dream that it snowed again. In
all the commotion, I left my purse on a set of bleachers. I’m not sure why I
had been sitting on bleachers, but I’m pretty sure they were located inside a
mall.
I ran back for my purse, and found it, but it was empty. My wallet turned up
sometime later, and my credit cards and cash were just where I left them, but
all my photo I.D.s were missing. I was annoyed, because I had been so thrilled
to have a new nice-looking New York Drivers License and feared I would have to re-take the
photo. But I was most bummed because my University of Maryland student I.D. as
well my old Florida I.D. were missing as well. Now I would no longer be able
to lie and get into cultural places at student rates.
All day today, I kept re-experiencing surprise and relief when I’d look in my
wallet and find both my old student I.D.s as well as my drivers license
present and accounted for.
I’m getting a little taste of the joys of dementia.
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