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Monday Listicles: Things I Miss

I woke up this morning in Abu Dhabi with a bad case of the blues. The see-for-miles view out our 37th floor windows didn’t help; the gulf gleaming in the distance didn’t help.  Then the Monday listmaker struck again: Stasha at The Good Life said the topic for today’s list is: 10 things I miss.

Well. That’s easy-peasy, folks.

Numbers 1-8:

Mother, sister, brother, brother-in-law, nephew, 2 nieces, stepfather, gathered in Provence for mom’s 70th birthday. Actually, I miss Provence, too (but that’s not an official entry on the list).

9. Not people at all but things:

I love magazines. I know, I know, hard copy is so 20th century that it’s positively quaint. My subscription to The New Yorker comes to my iPad but it’s just not the same. I can’t flip through the pages, dip in and out of articles, skim the cartoons, dart around to whatever strikes my fancy. Yes, yes, I could just hit a link on the table of contents but somehow a dedicated jump like that lacks…serendipity. (And yes, Richard, I fully appreciate the irony of a blog writer bemoaning the loss of print culture!)

10. Coming on the heels of #9, this “miss” will seem a little odd, but here goes. I miss my iPhone 4. I am unmoved by gadgets, mostly, but I loves me my iPhone4. Mostly, I love all the camera apps I’ve got–I think of it more as a camera than a phone. Because the iPhone 4 can’t be easily unlocked, it can’t use an international sim card, so I’m relegated to my (far inferior) iPhone 3.  Please note that “easily unlocked” and “international sim card” are phrases that I do not fully understand, so please don’t ask any questions. I parrot only what DTS (domestic tech support, aka Husband) tells me. The phones don’t look that different, but a day hasn’t gone by that I don’t itch for my 4.

11. Finally, as I suspected I would, I miss green. The dominant color here is…tan. Lots of different shades of tan, but mostly? Tan. In the white heat of day, even the gulf waters look bleached out, a silvery blue-ish beige. Nowhere yet have I found this:

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Read full story · Comments { 15 } on August 15, 2011 in Abu Dhabi, expat, Monday Listicle, tech life, Travel, UAE

Reverb #4: Cultivating Wonder

Today’s reverb#4 prompt: How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year?

I wondered what happened to my waist-line. I wondered what happened to my (aging) skin. I wondered when my children would stop squabbling with each other 45 out of every 60 minutes they spend together. I wondered why so much of my brain has to be devoted to logistics (see reverb #2, on “what gets in the way of your writing?”) I wondered how I could possibly make room to work on a novel, a screenplay, an academic article. I wondered if all the fashion designers in the world got together and decided en masse to forever erase the concept of “hips” from the clothes they design.  I wondered about where we’d go if Sarah Palin & Co actually won the White House in 2012.  I wondered why Barack doesn’t stand up and tell the Repugs to go fuck themselves because there comes a point when trying to play nicely with playground bullies is just dumb. I wondered how I got so lucky as to find a collection of sane & creative mommies to have as friends. I wondered how much it would cost to live in a brownstone with a garden and whether it was too late to become a hedge fund manager. I wondered why sports stars and Kardashians make so much money but give so little away. I wondered if Caleb knows how much joy I derive from listening to his elaborate Lego stories, which spin on literally for hours at a time. I wondered about taking a month off to follow Michael Franti. I wondered why in the hell I live in New York and came to the disconcerting realization that I might be miserable anywhere else. I wondered if I could learn to make a perfect roast chicken and then remembered that because I live in New York I don’t have to make a perfect roast chicken: I can have one delivered to my front door.

In short, I’m not sure I cultivated much wonder this year, but wonder sure seems to have cultivated me.

Next year, I’m going to think about wonder as a noun. And cultivate it. Maybe in a little pot right here on the window sill. I wonder how you cultivate wonder? Probably with the same sorts of seeds you use to cultivate joy. Put that on the list for 2011.

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Read full story · Comments { 2 } on December 4, 2010 in reverb10

Schadenfreude Beach

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Driving from Camp Grandma to Chicago on our midwestern vacation last week, we stopped at a secret: this beach. This beach which is in Indiana. Yes, Indiana. The same state that gave us the smells of Gary, the sound of Dan Quayle, and the Indianapolis 500, has an amazingly lovely string of beaches that follow the southern tip of Lake Michigan.

We had a wonderful day here, romping with cousins, in and out of the waves, until sundown. We gave all the kids pizza on the beach for dinner and they thought they’d died and gone to heaven. Pizza? and the beach? Bliss.

And somehow out there on the lake shore, it seemed okay to be wearing a two-piece bathing suit. Maybe because I was with “just” family? Or maybe it was because I was in the midwest, where a startling number of people resemble large pink hams?

Were I to appear on a beach in, say, Southampton, however, someone would doubtless call the local constabulary who would then have to invoke the mandatory caftan ordinance. I would be summarily swathed in designer linen and escorted to the nearest westbound jitney.

East Hampton, where we are going to visit friends later this week, has a slightly more relaxed caftan policy, thank goodness, so I think everything will be fine. After all, once your town has counted Jackson Pollack and co. as residents, you can’t be too uptight about anything, can you? 

But just to be safe? I’m tucking a caftan into my overnight bag.

And if you’re thinking about a vacation for next summer? You could do worse than flying to Chicago and then heading east to the Indiana beaches. It will be our secret.

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Read full story · Comments { 1 } on August 14, 2010 in Travel