The class my friend is teaching is about writing for children, which is what the students look like to me. At the first meeting, I wanted to be inconspicuous and take a seat in the back of the room. However, the chairs were set up around tables arranged in a big U, and the seats at the back, the bottom of the U, were very popular with the students. I was forced to slink all the way around the room to an empty seat up front. The seats opposite me were popular, too. They are the ones nearest the door.

The class is taught in two sections, lecture and workshop. I’d like to be able to sneak out before the workshop portion next time. It would be less disruptive if I had one of the seats near the door, but to score one I need to get there earlier than I have been. If I get there any earlier, I have to pay more to park. The lot behind the building is two dollars for the first two and a half hours, and then it leaps to eight.

The only way to get to the classrooms on the fourth floor is by elevator, of which there is one, and it’s small. There’s a big, broad staircase in the middle of the lobby. I asked the security guard/parking cashier if I could take the stairs to the fourth floor. He said no. I asked if there was another elevator. He said there was, on the other side of the building, and I’d need a Lesley ID to use it, which effectively meant no. The crowd that collects in front of the elevator before class is formidable and if you’re at the back you’re not getting on with the first batch. So even if I don’t want to be early to class, I need to be early to ride the elevator, in order not to be late.

During the first class, while I was trying to be small and inconspicuous, my cell phone rang. My cell phone never rings (except for that time I was at Mary’s mother’s funeral which is a story for another time) and the only way I know how to silence it is to flip it open and closed. While I was scrabbling in my purse, looking for the phone, the whole class was staring at me.

“I’m so sorry,” I said, my cheeks bright red. “My phone never rings. And I don’t know how to turn it off.” I found it and flipped it open and closed. Then I turned it off so the person on the other end couldn’t call back and tell me how rude I’d been to hang up on them.

I had already been introduced as a writer who was going to audit the class. After that the students all mentally adjusted my profile to include dinosaur. Maybe they’re right.

Even though I’m not looking for a job-job, once in a while I’ll hear of an interesting opportunity. If that coincides with a day that hasn’t been productive, or a fleeting depression for some other reason, I might submit a resume. I’m committed enough to producing a saleable novel that I don’t invest much emotion in these forays, and I’m not terribly disappointed when their lack of interest matches my own. That being said, I had an experience recently that made my blood boil.

An in-house recruiter for a software company that does mid- to front-office financial services solutions found my profile on LinkedIn. He wrote that the company was looking for a Director of Marketing and would I be interested? I pondered that question for a bit and decided that there was no harm in talking to them.

Shortly after I replied, I got another email from the recruiter saying he had studied my on-line profile further and realized that I was not currently working. He said, and I’m quoting here, “One of our criteria’s [sic] that we have to adhere to is any person we are considering for employment needs to be currently employed.” I had encountered my first real live Catch-22. I was stunned. Not so much that the company had an internal policy, but that they would say it out loud.

I contacted a lawyer friend of mine and asked if it was legal to tell a prospective candidate that they couldn’t be considered if they were unemployed. She assured me that the unemployed were not a protected class and it was legal, albeit stupid. Hot on the heels of my own experience, Adrian Walker, a columnist at The Boston Globe, wrote a piece called Jobless need not apply. He wrote that, “The problem isn’t limited to Massachusetts. … some states, such as New Jersey, have passed or are considering laws that would ban employers from refusing to consider unemployed applicants.”

I know I asked if it was legal, but really, is this something we need a law for? Do these companies not read the papers? There are people who need jobs out there! The people who have jobs, well, they have jobs! How about we get a job for everyone who wants to go back to work, and then worry about the folks who are looking for a different job?

Maybe then companies can hire people based on their applicable skills, instead of their current job status. Perhaps the company that contacted me could hire a recruiter with better communication skills; someone smart enough to reject me in a less inflammatory fashion. I would have said, “I’m sorry, but we are looking for someone with more financial services experience.” If he’d written that, I wouldn’t have batted an eye. But then I wouldn’t have had a blog post for this week.

Inasmuch as I’ve discovered that not having a job may preclude getting a job, this writing thing better work out.

When you’re home, and you hear a sporadic beep, assume the smoke detector’s battery is dead. Poke around the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet where you keep miscellaneous junk for a 9-volt battery (they are square). Take the opportunity to gather the rechargeable batteries that have fallen out of the old margarine tub marked, rechargeable batteries, and put them back in. Snap the cover on securely.

Drag the small stool that your daughter used to use to brush her teeth, but hasn’t needed for years, out of the corner of the hallway where it’s been because you can’t bear to part with it, and put it under the smoke detector. Step up. Slide the indented piece of plastic out until right before you will break it if you keep going. Use your middle finger, the only one that still has a long enough fingernail to do the job, to pry the dead battery out of its socket.

The old battery and the new battery are identical. Do not forget which hand the old battery is in. On second thought, step off the stool and put the old battery on top of the bookcase in the hallway. Step back up on the stool. I neglected to tell you to note the position of the battery before you took it out, my bad, so crane your neck to see how it goes in. Try to force the battery into place.

The battery is not going to go in. You will need to go down to the basement to get an old chair to stand on so you can see how to put it in correctly. While you are standing on the chair, with the new battery in your hand, you will hear the beep again. It is not coming from the smoke detector.

Put the new battery, which is still in your hand, back in the file drawer. Do not stop to rewind the extension cords you find there. Return the chair to the basement. Leave the old battery where it is, retreat to your office, and shut the door.

***

How to Stop the Beep was written for an assignment to create a “How To” story. I hope you liked it.

These days, I’m not as apologetic about my viewing habits. I look forward to relaxing in front of the television with my tailored list of must see TV, made possible by the miracle of Tivo. My daughter encourages me to turn on the television, a shared experience implicit in her suggestion, but then she opens her laptop and abandons me, emotionally if not physically. If I say, “You’re not watching!” she admits that she doesn’t like the show I’m watching. It turns out that she doesn’t like most of the shows I watch, and while I would be happy enough to watch the ones she likes, I’m rarely invited. Besides, she usually watches them on her computer, on Hulu, while I’m watching programs on Tivo.

My husband used to watch TV with me. Now he may sit in the same room, but he is rarely watching the television. Instead he is glued to his iPhone. If I chafe at the lack of companionship and ask what he’s doing, he’s likely to tell me that he’s “Reading the Times.” He might as well say he doesn’t watch television. Reading The New York Times is what intellectuals do while the rest of us are watching Hell on Wheels, or The Walking Dead (both, I might add, on AMC, the network that brought us Mad Men and Breaking Bad, shows that are darlings of the critics).

Frankly, I don’t care if they watch with me or not. The problem is that if they’re not going to watch with me, then turning on the television becomes an overtly anti-social act. It signals that I don’t feel like having a conversation (hold on, my husband is staring at his iPhone; he doesn’t want to talk to me anyway) and my daughter will have to put in her earbuds (oh, who are we kidding, they were in anyway).

Maybe when I turn on the television I’m actually broadcasting my loneliness.

There are still occasions when we come together as a family in front of the TV. For instance, we all watch Downton Abbey. Sure there is a little texting on my daughter’s part, and my husband glances at his phone once in a while, but by and large we share the experience. And the best part is that it is on PBS, which is the station that people who don’t watch much television watch when they’re watching television.

Have you seen Downton Abbey?

There were some sharp intakes of breath when the family heard about the hot air balloon ride, but most thought floating over the countryside sounded romantic. They were much more nervous about the idea of sky diving and one aunt made it very clear that she thought I was being downright irresponsible. Despite her fears, he made it up, and down, in one piece.

In any case, I am most emphatically not trying to kill my husband. He likes to be up in the air, and I like to give experiential gifts, particularly for significant birthdays that end in zero, that leave him with memories. Dementia aside, memories last forever. Tangible things go in and out of vogue; they break, wither or fade; or are too expensive to contemplate in the first place.

(If you read my blog regularly, you may be getting tired of reading about presents, but this is a big year for significant birthdays in my family, and they’ve been on my mind a lot lately. I promise, after this, no more gift posts.)

My sister told me flat out that she wasn’t interested in jumping out of a plane ─ I wasn’t even going to suggest it! ─ and my sister-in-law suggested I curb my Fear Factor urges for her husband’s upcoming birthday. Apparently I’ve developed somewhat of a reputation for giving gifts that leave people feeling that they’re living on the edge. And maybe I do, but isn’t it more memorable if your heart rate goes up a bit?

I can provide earthbound experiences as well; a trip to a day spa; a B&B in Maine. I’m dying to give someone the opportunity to swim with a Beluga whale at the Mystic Aquarium. What an experience that would be! Who wouldn’t love that?

As it happens, one of the upcoming honorees is a homebody who wants nothing more than to let the significant birthday slide by unobserved, no hot air balloons, no field trips, no Beluga whales. I’ve been pondering this problem for a while now and have concluded that in this particular case, the best way to remember a significant birthday might be to pretend it never happened. But there is a helicopter tour of Newport that looks awfully inviting…

This post is dedicated to Paul. Happy Birthday

I’m not very good at keeping my thoughts inside my head where they won’t get me into trouble, but this time I prevailed; conflicting emotional responses battled it out and called it a draw. My first reaction was irritation; so, we’re not old friends catching up? The next was sympathetic; I knew how difficult things had been and I appreciated his need to do whatever he could to keep body and soul together. While I kept all that to myself, I did allow as how I did not need insurance.

When we hung up, I thought about how lucky I was compared to my friend, and how tenuous it, writ large, all is. You can live responsibly, take care of yourself and your family, help friends and neighbors, but there are still so many things that are out of our control that even the best laid plans can come to naught in the end.

In the past year, two friends have had to give up their homes due to the recession-driven mortgage crisis (or was it the mortgage crisis that caused the recession?). These were good, responsible people, not ne’er do wells trying to beat the system.

Other friends lost parents and siblings and other loved ones this past year. I often rail against the birth/death system. It seems like such a bad plan to me. And the older I get, the worse a plan it seems. PBS did a two-part documentary on Woody Allen recently. Someone asked him if his relationship with death had gotten any better as he got older. His answer boiled down to no. Why do people think his preoccupation with death is strange? To me, it’s one of his most endearing qualities. I’m a little freer to concentrate on other things knowing that he’s worrying about death enough for the rest of us.

Years ago, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote a book called, When Bad Things Happen to Good People. I haven’t actually read it, but I’ve always loved the title. He wrote it partly as a response to his son’s death at fourteen from an incurable disease. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that reading it will be a New Year’s Resolution, but I will add it to my list of things to do.

I will, however, resolve to try to remember that even when we don’t know it, bad things are happening to people so we should hold everyone in kind regard. I’m going to try to do that ─ every day ─ because it doesn’t seem like something that should be reserved for the New Year, does it?

My husband went to California on business and then took some time to visit with his sister and her family. I was all for it. I wanted him to have a break, particularly since his company was paying for the airfare. Everyone deserves a break from their normal lives once in a while. Most people call that a vacation, but when you’re taking your family with you it’s not the same kind of break.

I was okay for the first week. It was kind of like a stay-cation for me and my daughter. We didn’t really do anything we wouldn’t normally do, but we could have, and that meant something. There were, however, a few downsides that I hadn’t anticipated. The biggest was meal preparation. And by meal preparation, I mean cleaning up after meals.

I don’t like to cook, but that’s one of my jobs anyway. The problem is I know how to multi-task; most women do – men don’t. (Look it up if you don’t believe me.) That means I can do other things and still get dinner on the table at a reasonable hour. If dinner were left up to Andrew, we’d eat, but not until after I’d lost my patience and maybe stomped off to bed. The reason I don’t mutiny about cooking is that Andrew typically cleans up, by which I mean he washes pots and pans, the stuff that requires a bit of muscle to get clean. This week, I’ve been cooking and cleaning up.

The other thing I’ve been soloing on is being my daughter’s chauffer. This is what Saturday looked like: I took her to the mall first thing to shop for a dress she doesn’t need until January, but just had to look at during the worst time to visit the mall, the week before Christmas. Then she needed to get to the movie theater to meet friends, the theater that’s not accessible by bus, and I had to pick her up when it was over. She couldn’t wait for someone else to drive her home because there was very little time to eat dinner before we had to leave again to get her to an indoor soccer game, a twenty-minute drive from home. After all that is it any wonder I insisted we stop for ice cream on the way home? It wasn’t for her, it was for me. I wanted recompense for all my hard work.

My husband will be reading this blog while he’s away. I am not writing it so that he’ll feel guilty. Really, truly, I am not. I’m writing it to say, next time you see a veteran from our most recent war, or any of them, stop them and tell them how happy you are to see them home safe, and how, for the sake of their spouse, it wasn’t a moment too soon.

Just to make sure we’re all on the same page here, I offer you two successful branding examples; Kleenex and Xerox. When someone’s nose is running, they are as likely to say, “Can you hand me a Kleenex?” as they are to ask for a tissue. Similarly, if you need to photocopy something, you’re as likely to say, “I’ve got to Xerox this,” as you are to “copy it.”

The art of branding is rarely part of a company’s core competency, so when it is time to brand a new widget some may choose to pay big bucks to branding consultants. Sometimes they pay many thousands of dollars to hire a firm and then ignore their input. You see, branding, like so many things a marketing person deals with, is highly subjective. Branding is about making up names, a game the whole company can play. And if it’s a game the whole company can play, the boss usually wins. (To fully appreciate where I’m coming from, you may want to reread my post, Writers Get No Respect.)

I’ve named a few products in my time, or tried to anyway. Once, after spending many weeks working with a cross-functional team, we reached consensus on a name for a new product. With great excitement we presented the name to the president of the company. He nodded and smiled and seemed pleased with our recommendation. We left the meeting sure we had our name. The president then visited each member of the team and expressed his displeasure with the name we’d chosen ─ and presented one he preferred. Guess which name won in the end?

Another time, at a different company, management insisted that I hire a branding firm. Their process was not unlike the one I used myself, but they facilitated the brainstorming and charged for the basic trademark research that our in-house counsel could have done. After the list of possible names was whittled down to a few strong contenders, the consulting firm asked us, without irony, if we would consider one more: Blazuli. I am not making this up.

The company had created this name at some point and remained convinced that it would be good for some product, some time, if only they could get a company to take a chance. I rejected Blazuli and ultimately management rejected all the other options that our twenty-five thousand dollar investment unearthed. The boss had a better idea.

I honestly do not remember which product this story supports, but I do remember Blazuli. Maybe we should have used it. It sounds contemporary. It doesn’t appear to mean anything in Spanish, Macedonian, or Azerbaijani. A Google search turns up next to no hits from anything vaguely competitive, and according to the United States Patent and Trademark Office it hasn’t been trademarked. And best of all, it’s easy to remember. I’ll race you to the trademark office.

Summer birthday gifts can include bathing suits, sunglasses, and flimsy shirts. All wonderful, I’m sure, unless you’re dreaming of your favorite season, winter! How many people born in June do you think get skis for their birthday? I’m guessing very few. If you had a summer birthday and lived for winter, I imagine birthdays could feel like lost opportunities to you. But for those of you with summer birthdays, all is not lost! If you’re one of the 93% of Americans who celebrate Christmas and you’re seasonally disappointed on your birthday, all you need to do is make your desires known and then sit tight for half a year.

Gareth Cook, a Boston Globe columnist, recently wrote an article called The Perfect Gift. He said that a scholar at the Harvard Business School, Francesca Gino, reports that people appreciate gifts that they’ve requested more than those that you give without consulting beforehand. For me, this is terrible news. According to the article, “Gino has published a detailed scientific paper, complete with tables and footnotes, describing her findings,” and I believe every word of it sight unseen. But it doesn’t apply to me. I don’t want you to ask me what I want. I want you to know me well enough to know what will make me happy.

I’m always making little notes to myself about what might make a good gift for someone. When I hear you say, “Gosh, I’d really like to have a widget someday,” I write it down so I won’t forget. I want to give you something you want, but I want to surprise you, too. That means I have to be attentive to you all year round. That sounds like a tall order, but it isn’t. It simply means that I listen when you talk. Then I can reflect back on the conversations we’ve had over the year and extract clues and hints about your heart’s desires. If I’m lucky, I have a stated desire or two written on a piece of paper somewhere.

If you are an adherent of Ms. Gino’s, you may think you’re honoring me by asking what I want for my birthday, but I want to be surprised. I believe it’s the thought that counts. I’d like you to think about me. Have you been listening to me over the course of the year?  The greatest gift I could get would be for you to say, “I remember you saying that…” If I thought you listened to me, I wouldn’t care what was in the box.

Since the season is upon us, I thought I’d share a little rant about what a drag a Christmas birthday can be. In case you haven’t guessed, I know from experience. Yup, I’m what the world refers to as a Christmas baby. Whenever I need to supply my birth date, the response is, “Oh, a Christmas baby!” Then, with barely a pause, the person will add, “You must get screwed on presents.” (Really, they say, “You must get gypped,” but that is not politically correct, and I wouldn’t want to offend anyone, especially not in a post that is partly about my taking offense.)

“I’m Jewish,” I used to say huffily. “I don’t celebrate Christmas.”

“But,” they would always say, eager to help, “you don’t have to be Christian to celebrate Christmas,” (which, by the way, is not something a Jew would ever say).

I’ve reached the age where I’m no longer offended. Nowadays, after the expected reaction, I’m likely to mumble something like, “Oh yeah,” or, “You bet,” so we can move on gracefully.

What I haven’t outgrown is how lonely I can feel on my birthday, even though my husband goes out of his way to try to make the day special for me. The problem is that he can’t make the rest of the world not celebrate Christmas. Stores aren’t open, most restaurants are closed. I understand; people want to be with their families. But it is a little sad that on my special day, everyone else is otherwise occupied.

My little family usually spends the evening of my birthday with my parents and my sister’s family. They come over for dinner and we order Chinese food. My mother brings my favorite cake from the Royal Pastry Shop in Lexington. (The cake part is nothing special, but the frosting is to die for, creamy with a slightly crusty layer on the top. It’s pure sugar, delicious.) There was one year, when I was around ten, that we didn’t get back from a ski trip on time for my mother to pick up the cake from the bakery before it closed for the holiday. There was no joy in mudville that year.

And I don’t recall ever having a birthday party as a child. My little friends were busy eating their figgy pudding and breaking their new toys. To be fair, I don’t recall my siblings having birthday parties either so maybe the day on which I was born had nothing to do with it, but it sure didn’t help.

At the risk of sounding ungrateful, my final complaint has to do with presents. I hate it when someone gives me a present and says, “This is for your birthday and Christmas.” It makes it painfully clear that if I did celebrate Christmas, when it came to getting presents I’d be screwed.