An Old Bird Spreads Her Wings

Posted on June 21, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

Well, I did it.  I boldly stepped in to the scariest part of the 21st century thus far.  I tweeted.  I’m following, I’m being followed (well, by a few people) and I’m working on #whatsupwithhashtags.  It’s been an eventful afternoon.

I’m not big on most social media.  Yes, I have a Facebook account, but I  ignore it as much as possible.  I like LinkedIn for professional connections and I actually know how to use it.  And now here I am doing what I said I’d never do, tweeting.  Newsflash, I love it.  Mere hours ago I was making fun of Twitter and Tweets and dismissing its usefulness and now, well, I’ve gone to the dark side.

I fell in love with Twitter because one of the first tweets I received was “Welcome fellow author!”  OMG I’m a fellow author.  Yep, a real deal author, and a fellow of the secret society to which I feel certain I will soon be welcomed.  Sadly, I won’t be able to tell you anything about it.  It’s kind of an author thing.

I am fortunate to have some very talented friends, including one who is a social media guru, @ksboll, and another who is a PR consultant and communications pro extraordinaire, @JillBernsteinPR.  Each of these two very intelligent people have generously given me Twitter guidance, speaking slowly and dumbing it down for me like nobody’s business.  I felt prepared to finally take the plunge.

I’ve been burned before you know.  My sister-in-law Lisa “suggested” (via coercion) that I jump into Facebook a few years ago.  She reeled me in with very tempting bait, my 20 something niece and nephews.  She offered me access to their every thought, every activity, and every drunken college experience, complete with photographic evidence.  Pandora’s box.

Then came Twitter and more recently a dozen other sites in rapid succession.  My eyes blur when I see rows of icons for social media sites.  I start feeling overwhelmed.  I start feeling old.  This makes about as much sense to me as the periodic table that I never learned.

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When I was in high school I tried to show my parents how to use the latest, greatest invention ever, the VCR.  It was a newfangled contraption that allowed you to tape shows and watch them later!

It was just a question of manually setting the timers and remembering to leave the TV on the right station.  A couple of other buttons, a wing and a prayer.  Simple, right?  But since my parents were perpetually confused, I ended up being the Designated Family VCR Timer Setter.  I safeguarded my entire family and singlehandedly ensured that we never carelessly missed an episode of Dallas.

So now here I am, almost as lame as my parents.  It’s a nightmare, and hopefully Twitter will offer me some salvation.  I’ll be tweeting about it; follow me @jillfoerhirsch.  I’ll fill you in on #WTF as soon as I figure it out.

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Who Am I And Why Am I Here?

Posted on June 17, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

This weekend I was tasked with writing a one paragraph bio for the back cover and online listing of my book.  I know I claim to be a writer, but this was one tough assignment.  I grabbed dozens of books and read the author bios, and found that they focused on the authors’ previous books, awards, books in progress, etc.  In other words, they’re all Real Writers with Interesting Lives.

What am I to say?  That one time when I was stuck at home and really bored I had the harebrained idea to write a book?  I figured maybe I should just go with gut-wrenching and soul-baring, but realized that I wasn’t really born a poor black child and my dad hadn’t died in The War (always good to be vague about which one) and I didn’t lose my leg in a horrible childhood accident.  No orphanage, no foster care, not even a victim of a little bullying.  Crap.  It’s just my luck to not have anything traumatic to report.

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Out of desperation, I started just coming up with random stuff.  I am now, I decided, a writer and humorist.  Does anyone know what a humorist is, or how you know when you are one?  My point exactly.  It’s a fine line between class clown and Humorist, but no one knows where it is.  So just try to challenge me on that.

I started thinking about all those leadership retreats and soft and fuzzy training (which I actually loved) I received during my career.  Describe yourself in one word.  Umm, multi-faceted?  Where do you fall on the Myers-Briggs (I know I’m dating myself with that one).  I would say right at the intersection of hungry and short attention span; an HSAS.  I once survived a teambuilding ropes course, outside no less.  That’s something, right?

We’re making a little progress!  So far I have that I’m a humorist with a “normal” childhood and I once went outside and made my way across a rope by leaning in to some coworker who had tobacco breath and bad teeth.  I have four cats but not in a weird way.  I like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain.  I’m not into yoga and I have half a brain.

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The Sky Is Falling!

Posted on June 14, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

I hope that everyone here in the DC area is snug and safe.  Judging by an afternoon with the StormDesk 2013 Panic Alert, the apocalypse is upon us.  Huge swaths of Montgomery County might be leveled.  It is possible that Anne Arundel County no longer exists.

How do we know what’s happening?  According to a meteorologist reporting breathlessly about the Weather Event, Doppler didn’t think a tornado was developing.  Apparently the meteorologist has stopped thinking altogether.  He’s sitting around waiting for Doppler radar to tell him what to do, but he keeps assuring us he is a meteorologist, not just a talking head.  When did Doppler start thinking?  Is that what happens when they put the radar in motion?

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The StormDesk anchors couldn’t hide their disappointment when the storm didn’t deliver the wallop they had anticipated.  When it quickly blew by, they got desperate and started raising concerns about heavy rain on the highways.  They got really desperate and talked at length about what a storm like this usually does, even though this one didn’t. There’s a lot of scary stuff that totally could have happened.

Just to kill time and reinforce the import of the StormDesk, they had live phone interviews with Mayors, the President of some college I’ve never heard of and “trained citizen storm trackers.”  The Mayor of Laurel, MD said several people tweeted that they might have seen a tornado, so maybe there was one?  He sounded very hopeful.  I know I wouldn’t question a tweet.  I’m sure Twitter has fact-checkers and whatnot.  The StormDesk was forced to report on “rotational patterns”  and beg people to start trending #notaderecho on, you guessed it, Twitter.

Then they put a reporter on the ground to do (wo)man-on-the-street interviews.  Under perfectly clear skies, standing on sidewalks that had already dried up, the reporter stopped people and asked what they thought of the storm.  Most people scratched their heads and said “Huh?”  I’m just going to note that in the summer we get evening thunderstorms two or three times a week.  Unfortunately trees go down and some people lose power, but it’s not like Godzilla came stomping through toppling buildings and catching airplanes with his bare hand.

All I can say is that you heard it here first:  There may be other Weather Events.  Stay Tuned.

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Putting The Human Back in Human Resources

Posted on June 11, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

Well, last weekend brought another romantic date night for Dan and me; dinner at the local diner.  If you must know I had a tuna melt.  As usual I wouldn’t let Dan talk because a couple I’m going to call Bob and Betty were in the booth behind us, talking loudly.  This is, by the way, the whole reason I go out to eat.  Eavesdropping is one of my hobbies.

Bob and Betty opined on many things over the course of their meal, but inevitably the talk turned to careers.  Bob is unemployed, but Betty points that out as a blessing. The company he used to work for sucked.  Before we go any further, I want to point out that I knew what was coming next.  It’s always the next thing people talk about.  The gloom and doom of Human Resources.  Loathing HR is a very popular parlor game.

Betty has it all figured out.  What HR does, is spend all their time figuring out how to get more paper in everyone’s file so they can fire them without getting sued.  Bob adds that HR didn’t believe he was an honest, hardworking guy.  That’s why those SOBs watched him all the time.

For the record (and Mimi and Kate, please jump in as necessary), most HR people with a lick of sense try very hard not to watch anyone, ever.  I don’t want to know what you’re doing, because once I know I have to do something.  But sometimes I can’t help it-I suddenly know stuff I don’t want to know.  And if I call you into my office and say something has “come to my attention,” that is not an open invitation for you to interrogate me about who told on you.  You’re missing the point.  If I can’t get you to stop, I will lean over and whisper “it was Zelda in accounting” and you will say “I don’t know any Zelda in accounting” and I’ll say “hmmm” and pretend to make a note in your file.  If you’re really annoying I’ll tilt my head to one side and stare at you for a full 15 seconds and then say “hmmm” again.

I don’t know where people keep getting the idea that HR is a bad thing…

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Credit:  Scott Adams

I never could find a copy of the Evil HR Digest, but I learned everything I know from Catbert:

With the help of his “random policy generator” he comes up with sadistic, illogical, and often evil policies to enforce on the employees, such as permanently branding employees, requiring employees to schedule sick time before they actually get sick, replacing the health plan with Google and making time spent in the bathroom count as “vacation.” He also has the help of his “Life Suck 3000” (to suck the life force out of employees faster than normal) …Catbert typically celebrates the creation of a new evil policy by purring loudly, hugging himself, doing the “evil dance” or by occasionally laughing himself fuzzy.

Credit:  Wikipedia

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I’m Ready For My Close-Up Annie

Posted on June 8, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

So the good news is I don’t have breast cancer!  The bad news is that it looked like it might have come back, so I had to have a biopsy last week and wait 6 endless days for the results.  Ugh.  Thank goodness it was good news.  My first, and only other biopsy in November 2009 didn’t end well at all. 

My first biopsy was an ultrasound guided needle, quick and relatively painless, except for the call I got two days later giving me the bad news.  I guess over the last few years someone has made it their business to cook up a darker, more ridiculous biopsy process…just for me.  Not to be paranoid or anything.

So this time around, I had to get something called a stereotactic needle biopsy, or as I like to call it, stereo-tastic!   There was a table with a big hole cut out of it.  You can’t fool me twice-after going through breast cancer I know what that’s about.  But get a load of this-as if dropping my breast through the hole isn’t awkward enough guess what’s waiting beneath the table?  A freakin’ mammogram machine thingymabob.  You heard me correctly.  I dropped my breast into a vise under the table.

OK, but I was still breathing.  That’s when they tightened the vise and told me I had to hold absolutely still.  For about 40 minutes.  Just in case I tried any funny business (like breathing) a nurse stood over me and held me down the whole time.  Then they  went in with a needle and pulled out samples while taking a ton of pictures.  I’m very photogenic and I was flattered to see that the doctor agreed.  I peered under the table and sure enough, there was Annie Leibovitz with her Nikon.  I was relieved that the photos would be artistic and tasteful, and that she takes insurance these days.

The problem is that I had already crossed biopsy and breast cancer off my bucket list.  So we were really wasting a lot of quality time that I could be spending on other items on my bucket list, like breaking my pinky finger or something.

And not to be a complete whiner, but my plastic surgeon spent kind of a long time reconstructing breasts for me 3 years ago.  He’s sort of a perfectionist.  And now, a little chink has been cut out of one of them, and if he finds out, things could turn ugly.  After my surgery I promised him I would not let anyone chisel anything out of my boobs.

So the good news is I don’t have breast cancer!  Also, I think Stereo-Tastic! would be a great name for a band.

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The Long And Winding Road

Posted on June 4, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

It seems that I haven’t made fun of my mom in a while, and she really misses it.  She was in town this weekend; she left the DC area 14 years ago, and tells me she isn’t used to this kind of traffic anymore.

She tells me she got stuck on Rt. 66 (not the route 66) and I tell her that no one in their right mind would get on 66, ever.  It is a parking lot.  Then she tells me that she got stuck on the beltway while it was under construction.  I was exasperated.  Why would you get on the beltway?  Not sure.  I tell her the happy news that now that construction is complete we have toll lanes on the Virginia side of the beltway that totally rock.  How much do they cost?  I don’t know.  I don’t care.  It’s zapped from the little EZ Pass box on my windshield.  What I do know is that if I pay to get on the toll lanes, I absolutely, positively will not come around a curve to find the beltway backed up for 6 miles.  I can predictably get to a location, on time and everything.

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Photo Credit:  Transurban Development

Anyway, the traffic has gotten worse, but at least the solutions are getting better.  Mom tells me she loves living at the beach, no traffic worries at all.  Nope, she just zips around whenever she wants with no traffic worries.  Here’s the thing—my mom lives on a long narrow barrier island.  At its widest point, it is no more than a ½ mile, and there is one long road that goes the length of the island.  One road.

The thing about the one and only road is that in the summer a gazillion people come to the beach to tan, eat crabs and get drunk.  Well those are the top three reasons.  And of course everyone loves the boardwalk, which just happens to be on the complete other end of the one road from where my mom lives.

So let’s say it’s June, July or August, and you decide to leave my mom’s place and go down to the boardwalk.  To travel maybe three miles, you’re looking at a minimum of 45 minutes.  Why?  Because every car on the island is on the same road as you are.  And one of the lanes is a bus lane, and one is always backed up from people making left turns and there are traffic lights every block and families meandering across the road after a day at the beach.

So it’s true, my mom has no traffic from September through May.  But in June, July and August she lives right in the middle of a big parking lot.  No complaints.  At least where she lives you can jump out of your car and take a dip in the ocean.  They haven’t built a beach next to the beltway yet, but it’s coming soon.

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Sneak Preview

Posted on June 2, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

Circus Cooking With Dan The Man.  That’s the name of the new show I’m going to pitch to the Food Network.  Or maybe Animal Planet.  As I noted recently, Dan can cook anything while under adult supervision.  Last weekend, as he was whipping something up, I once again noted that our kitchen is a three-ring circus.

The blasted cats.  Helen of course sleeps through anything, but if you so much as think of fixing food Jack, Janet and Chrissy jump on to the counter and lie in wait.  Three cats are a lot to contend with when you only have two elbows.  So when we prepare food we have to huddle over the bowl or cutting board with both elbows pointed out.

And good luck if you need something from the refrigerator or pantry.  The refrigerator is a stretch but with the right angle you can guard the counter with one arm while grabbing something with the other.  But the pantry is a precarious 3 steps away which usually calls for double teaming if possible.  If not I always try saying “No kitty!” in a stern voice while they stare at me unfazed and go for whatever food I left unattended.

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Sometimes we get desperate enough to hiss.  The cats laugh in the face of our hissing.  Why is it that they can have a hissy fit and we can’t?

But if you’re Dan, you also have to contend with yours truly yakking nonstop in the background.  Admittedly I am a royal pain in the arse, but sometimes it’s because Dan leaves me no choice.  Last week, for example, as he was putting something in the oven I noticed the rack was on the bottom rung.  I asked him if he didn’t think it should be in the middle of the oven and he looked at me like I had two heads.  “Uh, it was like this when I found it.”  I explained that sometimes I move the racks around so we can cook two things at once, or for certain dishes, but as a routine matter the rack should be in the middle.  “Oh.”

So just picture the show.  Cats face first into whatever Dan is cooking.  Me blabbing on and on in the background about middle racks.  And Dan, rolling his eyes, hovering over a bowl and hissing.

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You would watch it and you know it.  Please back us up when we pitch the concept to Bravo.

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What Does The Rocket Scientist Say?

Posted on May 30, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

My friend visited recently with her adorable little baby.  As I was entertaining the baby while mom went to the restroom I started pointing to the animals on her bib and saying “that’s a lion!” “that’s an elephant,” etc.  And out of sheer habit I asked her what the cow said and then I mooed.  We went through the usual suspects, dog, cat, sheep.

It seems that everyone teaches babies animal sounds, with some urgency, as if they can’t succeed in life if they don’t know that a lion roars.

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Sure, there is the alphabet and numbers and putting the right shape into the right hole (I still can’t get that one) and a million other things for their sponge-like brains to absorb.  It’s true that animal sounds write over the data in the little crevice in the brain that houses geometry or rocket science or some other useless information.

Is there a better trade-off for valuable brain real estate?  What if parents filled that crevice with useless trivia instead?  Information that will be handy at cocktail parties and pubs.  Imagine asking baby “Who won the Oscar for best actor in 1956?”  or “How many people have climbed Mt. Everest?  How many died trying?”  Now your baby is the best conversationalist in his or her play group.

So enough with silly animal noises.  Moo is so last week.

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What’s Cookin’

Posted on May 27, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

Years and years ago Dan claimed he didn’t know how to cook.  I can hold my own but most of our meals ended up coming from Olive Garden (no, not proud of that) or out of a Kellogg’s box because who feels like cooking when they’ve been at work all day?  I know lots of you out there do just that all the time, and when we first got married I felt like I should be one of those perfect wives you see on TV.

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But all Mrs. Cleaver had to do during the day was have luncheons with her garden club.  I had a Real Career.  For a while I cooked on weekends and froze meals for each night but how long do you think I kept up with that?  Right.

Dan became a reluctant cook, although he would deny that he is any such thing.  His repertoire includes microwaving soy dogs, cooking frozen pizza or even reheating leftover pizza, grilled cheese, eggs (not too shabby); and he likes to peer into the pot and stir it if I’m making marinara or chili or whatever.  But it turns out he can cook nearly anything else if I’m telling him how to do it.  He follows instructions really well.  Coincidentally, I’m pretty good at giving instructions.

Now I still work all day, but in my house or the Writer’s Room or Panera or whatever.  It’s pretty flexible.  So you would think my sorry butt would be cooking dinner right?  No, but I have good reasons.  For example, how can I cook dinner when I need to catch up on my reality TV?  I have a strict No TV During the Day rule, so evenings are still reserved for Bravo.  And where are the cats going to sit if my lap isn’t available?  I have to prioritize.

So when Dan comes home each evening we play a game we’ve played for years and years…Dinnertime Dilemma!  It has everything you want in a game-mystery, challenge, excitement and even a chance to leave your opponent in the dust.  You’ve played this game too, even if you don’t realize it.  “What do you want for dinner?”  “No clue, what do you want?”  “I dunno.”  We can go on like that for a long time.  So long, in fact, that we miss dinnertime all together and just have cereal. Or nothing at all, but then I’m cranky all evening because I’m hungry.  All these years and Dan still can’t distinguish between my regular grumpiness and my hungry grumpiness but it doesn’t matter because he ignores me no matter what kind of grumpy I am.

If Dan tries to sneak something in for himself because I’m busy watching TV, I always catch him.  I am kind of like a house pet—if I hear something rustling in the kitchen I want to know if it’s food.  And if it is, I demand some of it.  But nine times out of ten Dan is eating some disgusting microwaved thing I wouldn’t touch, so I just get more annoyed.  Well there’s a shocker.

One of my dreams in life is to be someone who can use the word supper instead of dinner; it just sounds more appetizing.  Sometimes for fun I’ll say “What’s for supper paw?” in an overdone southern accent.  I think I got that from Opie Taylor on The Andy Griffith Show.

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Either way, we’re both sort of looking forward to spending our golden years at Sunset Retirement Home, because they figure out what you’re having for breakfast, lunch and…supper.  I think Sunset is going to be a great place to reinvent myself.

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A Balanced Diet

Posted on May 24, 2013 by Jill Foer Hirsch

You know, you do everything you can for your cats.  Teach them right from wrong, nurture their little dreams and convince them they can be anything they want in life as long as it’s a cat.

But sometimes, no matter what you do, your cats develop bad habits.  Take Helen for example.  No really, take Helen!  Ba-dum.  Ooops, that’s the script for my Catskills schtick.  Disregard.

Helen is in general a fine cat.  She doesn’t cause too much trouble when she lumbers around the house, and mostly she just sleeps on her semi-firm pillow on top of the sofa.  She tries to play gently with the kittens but if she gets a little rough they can easily get away from her because Helen doesn’t get worked up enough about anything to actually run.  She’s not one to present us with hairballs and she keeps her nose, and paws, clean.

Dan brought home a spanking new Double Wide Cat Scratcher last week, and all the cats not only scratched it but took turns sleeping on it.  If our cats have a deep and abiding love for anything, it’s that scratcher.  It is Helen’s new best friend.  But the other day, as she was lounging on the scratcher, she started to, well, eat it.  Well maybe not eat it so much as chew it up and spit it out.  She goes to town on that thing, munching and spewing cardboard like there’s no tomorrow.

I checked the cat food-she should be getting plenty of fiber without eating cardboard.  But whatever the reason, she will not be deterred.  Here she is doing her thing, surrounded by cardboard “shrapnel”:

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And here is her “I really don’t give a damn that you caught me” look.

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Please just let me know if you see double wides on sale somewhere.  I have a feeling we’re going to need to stock up.

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