The Party, the New Resident and Striking Auto Workers

It’s been two years since I moved into my independent living apartment on the continuum care campus and we had a party to prove it. Our first anniversary party was a huge affair with fancy finger food, an ice sculpture, a champagne fountain, music and dancing---all paid for by the management. This past weekend we had our second anniversary party which was less upscale than the first and was mostly paid for by the residents but even better attended than the first. Management did paid for the musical entertainment and a bartender but the Resident Council organized the whole affair and decided that those of us who wanted to get involved could sign up for making a tray of finger food or help with setup and cleanup. Those of us who didn’t want to volunteer could pay ten bucks to help cover the cost of ingredients and paper goods. I do not cook or work well with others---at least here in Senior Land---so I gladly paid the fee.

We have a new resident who practically lives at the jigsaw puzzle table and she has reaffirmed that I don’t work well with others. She'll a pick up a piece, compare it with the photograph, then declare it belongs in the area where she lays it down. You end up with a table full of unconnected pieces that may or (may not) belong in the general area where she lays them down. That alone drives me crazy but she sends me over the edge by talking about each piece as she does it, wanting you to confirm her hawk-eyed brilliance. (Note the hint of sarcasm here.) The constant talking takes away any meditative value jigsaw puzzles usually gives me so I've had to quit my routine of working on the puzzle 15 minutes here or there while I'm waiting in the lobby for a class, lecture or dinner to start.

She used to be a labor negotiator working for the Big Three automakers and against the UAW union negotiators so she raises my hackles just for being part of that team. During the auto crisis of 2008 was one of the most stressful periods in life. We didn’t know if we’d still have a pension or health insurance---the latter her team wanted to take away from we retirees all together. As it ended up the UAW agreed to pay cuts plus a two-tier structure where new hires came in with a lower pay scale of $17 an hour and no pension rights like those hired in before 2007. GM did give the UAW a promise that when the auto companies got back on their feet again they’d do away with the two-tier system. Well, they got back on their feet, paid off their government bailout a head of time and never made good on that promise to workers. Oh, and the GM retirees union got a three-part lump sum to put in a trust to manage our own health care so the company could wash their hands of that whole ball of wax. It was a big sigh of relief when the third payment was made in 2011 or 12 and the medical trust became viable.

Fast forward today, the auto industry recovered enough to give their CEOs golden parachutes along with their $25 to $30 million dollars yearly paychecks. I haven’t been following the strike too closely but I do know that only Ford has offered to do away with the two-tier system along with offering a cost of living increase in pay. When GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, was asked if her $30 million yearly paycheck plus $14 million in stock grants was fair to workers she gave a non-answer of: “92% of it is based on the performance of the company.” Yet she doesn’t get how the two-tiered system creates a hostile workplace? I know it isn’t fair to look at our new resident and see the self-centered mindset of Mary Barra so I feel obligated to try not to judge Ms Negotiator too early. I will, however, say she’s also the talk of the line dancing group. She comes on like gang busters. And isn’t that exactly what she did for a living, try to break up gangs, so to speak, try to get them to bend her way or the highway? 

Okay, back to the party. In the planning stage there was the usual fight over what to wear with the men wanting to dress up and the women split on the issue. One guy in particular really cleaned up well. He had on a well-fitted black suit with a black turtleneck sweater---I’m guess cashmere---and he accessorized it with a $5 gold piece hanging on a long, gold chain. On his head he wore a gold colored beret. This guy usually wears t-shirts and shorts so it was quite a transformation. Most of the women wore what I’d call their grandmother-of-the-bride outfits but 3-4 ladies didn’t get the memo and wore slacks and a sweater. I wore a royal blue silk blouse that is knee-length and full that I’ve owned for 40 years and only wore once before---to an art showing of my work back when I was in college the second time around. I got a lot of complements but I felt like a circus tent.

The hours they set for parties around here amuse the heck out of me. I think I’m the only person here besides the security guard who is up past ten o'clock. This party started at 4:30 and ended around 8:00 and I got there around 4:40 which was a big mistake I won’t make again. By then everyone was there and had claimed their posses and clicks to sit with and I ended up sitting with non other than Ms Negotiator and our resident pastor. I like the pastor. A lot. She’s in my writing group and I figured the universe was playing a trick on me to throw the three of us together. Ms Negotiator looked fabulous in her magenta crepe dress. Thin as a weed and looked even more so next to me and my body twin, Ms Angel.

Ms Negotiator likes to talk and she got on the topic of how scared she is: "terrorists are coming in over the border, communists are trying to take over the country, food and water shortages coming soon." Wow! In any other setting I might have asked her if she's scared of me knowing full well the 'communists' she was talking about are those of us who care about the environment and homeless people. Did I already say, "Wow?" We were at a party listening to a great entertainer who was wearing a pair of shiny red, Dorthy-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz shoes I couldn’t take my eyes off and she was gyrating her cute little body around reminding me of what it was like to be young and have fun moving to music and Ms Negotiator was too scared to enjoy the moment! And in the back of my unfiltered thoughts I was glad about that. Does that makes me a bad person? ©

Just so you’ll know…

Just so you’ll know I’m writing this on Sunday the 15th and the report on my Wednesday party will be published on Saturday, but I will tell you that the Evil Overlord of Party Planners got me again. It wasn’t enough to give me an easy-fix electrical problem and an impossible-to-fix ice storm that had me rescheduling my party, this morning I hopped in the shower to discover that I didn’t have any hot water. We had some wind but I’ve never lost a pilot light on the hot water heater in the 15 years of living here, like some people do on windy days. I did, however, have the faucet control mixer on the shower break once so that's a possibility it did again.

Calling a plumber on a weekend costs double their rate---even if they’d come out in an ice storm for a non-emergency. I’m hoping if I call early Monday I can get them out the same day. I don’t have a choice but to wait and in the meantime, I’ll try to figure out if it's the pilot or the mixer. The water in the kitchen seemed a little tepid or is it my imagination working overtime? And, drats, I’d have to lie on my stomach on the basement floor to look at the pilot! Scratch that off the list of possibilities. If I did that, I’d have to call 911 to get back up. The last time I lost a hot water heater---the bottom blew out---was the morning of my mom's funeral. It was one of those infamous things that happens when you have to ask myself, "Is this an inconvenience or a disaster" to put it in perspective.

At any other time but during an ice storm, I could ask the son-I-wish-I-had to come over to check the pilot light but he just buried his father a few days ago after spending two weeks doing a day and night vigil at his dad’s Hospice bedside. I just can't do that to him because I know he’d come, if I asked. To answer my blogger friend, Judy, before she asks why I don't call the gas company, I took that option off the table years ago when we had rental property. I don’t like dealing with them when I have other options.

Monday Update: 7:30. I just got off the phone with the plumbing company. Mind you, this company has 160 trucks on the road---a very large and well established business---and they couldn’t get out today. The only choices for scheduling were: 1) smack dab in the middle of my bi-annual doctor’s appointment with my internist on Tuesday which would have been just a quick check of the pilot light with no repairs, if it’s something more serious; 2) smack dab in the middle of my party for a check, repair and/or replacement; or 3) smack dab in the middle of my dentist appointment on Thursday. I picked door number three and I will reschedule the dentist. After talking with the plumping company, I’m probably just going to go ahead and replace the hot water heater, which I planned on doing this summer anyway. A 15 year old unit isn’t worth putting any money into repairing it and he said that if I've never lost the pilot light before, it’s likely not a simple fix like relighting it.

It’s going to be quite a week and if nothing else, it’s proving that I’m still one of the lucky ones. Why? Because as many things as the Evil Overlord of Party Planners threw at me, I’m still standing and I can find the humor in the never ending process of revising my party game plan---did I mention I had to add shoveling snow to my schedule today and salting on Tuesday to help the ice melt as the temperature gets above freezing? More importantly I am lucky because I live in a part of the world that has running water and electricity and I’m not a refugee seeking a new life away from unending wars, bombs and chemical attacks. And if I've learned anything in my twenty years of servicing weddings in the floral business it’s that no one cares about the challenges the vendors go through as long as the end results turns out great on the big day.  ©

Note: While I was searching for a photo for the top of this blog I ran into an article titled, How to Burn Fat with Cold Showers proving that for every negative thing life throws at us there is always an upside. LOL

Party Time and Wasting Time on Widowhood Lane

I nearly forgot to write my Saturday sacrifice to the gods of cyberspace because all week I’ve been burning up the internet shopping for birthday décor for a party that isn’t going to happen for two and a half months. I’m so one tracked when I’ve got a bee in my bonnet like that. I should be working on my income taxes or cleaning the insides of my kitchen cabinets which I usually do this time of the year. I’ve got a whole house full of similar projects I could be doing but, no, instead I’m driving myself crazy looking at Alice in Wonderland theme napkins, drink me bottles, keys, pocket watches, pink flamingos, tea party menus and other things that have nothing to do with the age of the guest of honor. And who would that be, you ask? Me. I’m throwing myself a party. An English Afternoon Tea Party with finger sandwiches and eatable gemstones---rubies, sapphires and diamonds, oh my! Well, unless I change my mind which I’ve been doing all week.

I’ve probably driven my best friend since kindergarten crazy right along with me with e-mails flying back and forth. N.B. is my go-to person when it comes to questions about cooking and entertaining. She’s spent most of her adult life creating fabulous menus for parties and get-togethers out in suburbs of Washington, D.C.  She creates and cooks. I buy and warm up. She loves entertaining. I fall apart at the very thought. She owns lots of china and linens in different patterns and colors. Back two years ago I decided to downsize my large collection of Buffalo 1940s diner dishes that I used every day and instead I completed my mom’s set of lily-of-valley dishes by Primrose China to make up place settings for six plus a few serving dishes. The internet is great. It only took me a two month of shopping e-Bay and the China Replacement LTD and more money than I care to admit to find what my mom probably got free with her groceries. It seems fair since my brother and I were probably responsible for breaking more than our share of her favorite dishes back when we were kids.

I got off track here. Back to the party. This week I’ve been to Hobby Lobby twice. Once to buy and once to return the table décor. In between I discovered that my one and only table cloth isn’t big enough when I put the extensions in the table so the color scheme I was going to use had to leave town before dark. Can you tell I don’t entertain enough to even know a basic fact like that? That wouldn’t happened to N.B. and I panicked over the discovery. She had a great work-around solution only by the time I read her e-mail I had combed the World Wide Web and found a set of six placemats that will go with my mom’s dishes and my vintage moss green Fenton thumbprint stemware. Yes, the party will be small---my Gathering Girls friends---and I’m not sure what I’m going to do for a seventh place setting but I’ll come up with something for the birthday girl.

What I’m most proud of finding on the web are little glass bottles with corks and tags that read, “Drink Me!” Do you think women in their 70s and 80s---my guests---will remember that Alice drank a potion from a bottle to shrink her size so she’d fit through the door to the magic garden? I’m thinking of buying the “Eat Me!” tags too to put on cherry tarts like Alice ate but I think we all know that eating sweets makes us grow bigger. I may have to read Lewis Carroll’s book again in case someone quizzes me on how some of the Alice in Wonderland things fit into the story, include pink flamingos, pocket watches and Victorian keys.

At Hobby Lobby they had an entire featured display of flamingo stuff---from pillows to signs to salt and pepper shakers to glasses and dishes. They grew on me as I walked around and around the display. They made me smile and reminded me of vacations with warm weather and blue skies. If the dollar store has some flamingo yard ornaments this spring I might buy one to put by my front door for the party and make a sign saying, "Go this way!" But I'm not sure how many adults will remember the book well enough to know about those signs and flamingos.

In my travels around the internet this week I found an article at Smithsonian.com titled, The Tacky History of the Pink Flamingo. I wasn’t really surprised to learn they’ve been around since 1957. Talk about staying power! They were first created in Massachusetts, of all places, by an art school sculptor who’d been hired by a local plastics company and the rest is history, a history that early-on included Andy Warhol helping to make the fake birds become a cultural pop-icon. And that’s your retro-cool aficionado lesson for today. Oh, no! Should I/could I change my party theme---again---this time to Flamingo City? This week should go down in The Big Book of Wasted Time as a classic example of a widow with too much time on her hands. ©