A good cry on the train

I propose a Party in Paris to everybody.

Because....why not?

Joe, I used to go to the NYC Marathon. Outstanding spectator. I never went to see the front runners. I always went when the slowies would be passing by. I thought they needed me. Rooting. Shouting. Applauding. Many walked. With a little encouragement, some started running again. Many smiled.

I admired the efforts of all and let them know it.

And what do I really think of people who decide to run for 26+ miles? Meshigunas. But only the best kind.

Hey Dag (party gal) maraka

Why not indeed!

Hugs Joe! x

Iz (race you to the top of the Eiffel Tower) zie

Hmmm,. Paris party.... .

Some things going on here.
I have picked an attorney. I meet with her on Friday. I told her she was the winner, picked from a fairly large group. What got my vote was her follow-ups to my phone calls and emails. All brief, but bright, replies. I want tough, but I want someone with a naturally upbeat sense of life and the future. (Like me.)

I have a cold. But I seem to have beaten it back in three days instead of the normal seven. My last cold was in January.

Here something odd or interesting. (Have I mentioned I am the family genealogist??) When he visited last week, my brother brought some old letters he had from distant relatives for me to read. Several were from a woman who had seen my brother's name written up in some Catholic Church magazine. They described some history and named some people that I need to follow up on. Good.
One mystery of our family is where in the heck did Grandma come up with our father's name? Of all the males in the family, he is the only one with the peculiar moniker except for my brother who got his middle name from our father. The names are Ben Eldred and Brian Eldred.

My father's sister, the first family genealogist, said she had been told some things and that they were written down in her notes somewhere. (Her notes, and I have them all, are chaotic.) So, I read the letters, make some notes and start refolding them to put them back in the envelope when I see a small yellow piece of paper. It's in the aunt's handwriting, not the lady writing the letters, I found that odd because she would have never seen these letters. In the note are the words "Ben Eldred Hoff owned house in Green County, Illinois." That would be the same county where Grandma and Grandpa raised a bunch of kids. Now to find Ben Eldred Hoff and see if they were neighbors.

The interesting thing was the my brother had never seen that note before. Maybe the solution to the mystery of his middle name and he never knew it was in his top drawer all this time.

Joe(I'll let you know.)Nation

Hmmm. A friend, who started out as a med illustrator, used to do anatomical drawings for a neurosurgeon named, uh, Dr. Eldred. I suppose it's a common enough name, and in that case, a last name.

On my way to the attorney (mine) this morning.

This is hard.

Joe(way.)Nation

((Joe))

It was good to hear that you had found a person that you trust to fight in your corner.

This was never going to be easy, but at least you will have someone watching your back legally, under circumstances when your emotions may not be co-operating with you.

Do you have any idea what sort of time frame is typically involved?

Good luck, stay cool.

I hope the lawyer meeting goes well. Lawyers on Halloween are always wearing lawyer costumes.

"Lawyers on Halloween" is a good title for an Aldrich - no connection to Eldrich, unless some related sprite, elf, or whatever other spirit interfered:


http://www.fbi.gov/libref/historic/famcases/ames/ames.htm

Hope you're OK Joe
x

I can't put my finger on the reason why, but somehow it seems perfectly appropriate to spend Halloween in a lawyer's office.

Random thoughts on an interesting day:
About five am, I was making breakfast and decided to make tomorrow's lunch at the same time. I've become increasingly adept at making food ahead of time. Sunday's lunch is egg salad w/cottage cheese, fresh parsley, celery seed, alfalfa sprouts and tomatoes. I hate making hard boiled eggs. My whole life I have never managed to figure out how to get the shells off without tearing some of the egg apart. Isn't that odd? And there is nothing in any of the (hmmmm) twenty five cookbooks I own that gives any hint as to how to manage the shelling better. I always guessed that it was just dumb luck or I wasn't waiting long enough to shell them or I was waiting too long ...arrrrgh.
So, it's five am and I put on the weather channel to see just how cold it's going to be. (I am going for a run in the pitch black before heading downtown to the lawyers and then over to the Marathon Expo.) The tv turns on on the Food Channel and, I kid you not, there is a little square blurb thing in the upper left corner of the screen that says: "Hard Boiled Egg Secrets: Next".
I sit down. I sip my coffee. I wait through three minutes of commercials for :tapes of the program I am watching. (Lydia's Italian Kitchen) Promos for the Food Channel (something about Chef Jeff or Chuck or Ermilio.) and an invitation to rent the most spectacular Wedding Reception Space in all of Brooklyn - the Something Something Hotel. Ahem.

The secret is an ice bath after they simmer, not boil, for ten minutes. Ay yi yi. An ice bath? It's too late to try it then. I head out and down and around and it's dark and cold and I'm still sick from Sunday and the radio won't get NPR and I'm sick about going to the lawyers and I am wondering if I wrote enough in my notes to her or too much or ..... I headed back to the house after the first three mile loop. I took a long shower. I put a note on A2k and headed downtown.

The first thing that strikes you when you are talking with a lawyer for an hour as opposed to talking to a therapist for an hour is that the more you talk in the lawyer's office the less you will find out. I think the opposite is true in therapy.
I talked a little. She read my notes. They were very good notes she said. I shut up. She versed me in the law. Many good verses. She told me that I didn't have to be L's friend if I didn't want to be. (Did I mention that my lawyer is ALSO a therapist?) That was a big relief to me. Friendly, yes, but,.... and this is the word she used:
hard boiled.
The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
(BTW: the only time I got verklempt (teared up) during the talk was when I was describing the support I had gotten from the lot of you on this website. I remain deeply moved by all your kind words and backing. I intend to write a poem: it will be called PERFECT STRANGERS.)

I left the lawyer's office. Ran to the ATM a block and half away and ran back with her first hour's wages: $350.00. Worth every frigging penny. Details to follow but she revealed several things I had no clue about re:taxes and all those mundane sorts of things with which I have no usual interest.
Every frigging penny.

I took myself to breakfast. Is it my imagination or is the whole world full of women coming on to me? I am seated next to a very attractive Hispanic woman. This is New York. Tables are only elbows width apart.
I am reading my newspaper. I am sipping the most delicious French Onion Soup trying hard to not sneak glances at her when she says "Excuse me. I need your help, please."
I look up. She has eyes you could dive into and swim until you drown, but I say "Sure. What is it?"
We talk. The man she has been with for twelve years is a liar and a cheat and she wants to tell the IRS on him.
(OK)
Please, would I write the address on this envelope so he won't know it was she who turned him in??
(She has a notice from the IRS to send to him that someone has reported lack of Tax Payments asking for an explanation from him to the IRS.)
(he should be thrilled.)
OH, I say, they will pay you for turning him in you know.
She doesn't want anything.
I am finishing my soup.
And he goes with other women when I am not at home.
I say...I thought about this..I don't believe he could be so stupid or so cruel. (I remember the Spanish word/slang for dope. It is Huevo -- egg.)
What a huevo he is, I say.
She laughs and then she starts to cry a little.
The waitress comes over to see what is what and brings my hamburger.
The lady has paid for her breakfast. ( a waffle? fruit? Coffee?)
She is calm now. Watching me eat a not very good hamburger.
Thank you, she says. um. I am staying near here at my girlfriend's apartment. You could walk me home if you like.
====
I arrived at the Javits a little before two and signed in at the volunteer's office. I got a badge and a Marshall's placard to hang around my neck and then I guided, answered, urged, directed, pointed, indicated runners and their families through the process of getting their bib number and chip for the greatest race on earth. When I got to my first station the monitor wasn't working and I was disappointed, but then the video suddenly started playing. Good, I thought. It was a video describing the way the corrals will work at the start. It ends with a wonderful swelling of music. Beautiful.
Then, it plays again. About the 10,oooth time it plays, the swelling music isn't so swell.
I met Marge, the fake volunteer, she almost eighty years old and has figured out that most weekends at the Javits Center they need volunteers. Volunteers get no money, BUT they get a dinner ticket after five hours. Marge paced around the registration area for four hours and thirty minutes and then asked for her dinner ticket. We didn't see her again.
I liked volunteering for the Expo because it brought back the memories of last year and getting my bib and chip and kind of floating back to the city afterwards.
Some of the runners are hard boiled.
Some appear to be just as soft as kindergarten clay.
They will all trot their way home in their own way.

---
I was in the subway. On the platform at 42nd waiting to go home when a guy with guitar started to play an upbeat version of Desperado complete with fast picking of the intro and finish. The twenty or so people on the platform with me listened or didn't listen until the last notes died and then did what any respectable New York Subway audience would do./...... nothing.
Nothing. Not a single clap, not a single 'right on', not a single nod of the head towards the guitar man. The guitar man who took it in stride that no one would ever acknowledge his existence just started playing "Trees blowing in the Summer's Breeze."
Hard boiled he, and hard boiled the folks on that platform, but they have to be, don't they?
====
We walked to the corner together. There was a mailbox. She put the envelope onto the flap and let it slam shut. I said Good. That's done.
I gave her a hug, a long hug, I tried to squeeze some of my new hard boiledness into her. It felt like a hug that you'd give to someone you've known forever but that you knew you would never see again.

Joe(she told me, but I didn't get her name.)Nation

Joe, watching and saluting...

Can't help so much with the lawyer thing, but that seems copacetic at the moment.




Eggs:

Boil 'em hard for 12 minutes, and then let 'em sit for 5.

Put the pan in the sink, and run cold water on 'em till it stays verra cold.

crack and serve, my friend...

(good luck, sir)

JoeN, honey, some of us have understood (word for questionable approximation) you for years, admired you for years. You have seemed spare in the interest in enthusiasm for you, tended to toss it off, closed door, until recently.

I figure you have a calculating aesthete nature, not an insult, and a babyness wanting to be loved, which means you qualify as human. Working those out, don't get me started.

But, give it up, I figure we all love you - or regard you well - in our ways. Those that don't, pffffffft.



Carry on.

Thanks, osso. Thanks, Rocky... . (simmering ten and ice bathing for ten and ..... tah dah, those shells slipped off like a prom dress.)

Joe(I've been listening to the younger folks these days.) Nation

yes... pfffffffft seems right.

well, at least you're fully into the legal stuff now... soon it will be all over... think of it in the scope of human history, but a speck of time. think of it in the scope of human tragedy...but a little sneeze compared to genocide...ummm.....at least that's what i do. usually helps.

there are many threads on 'how to peal an egg' on a2k. you've been a party to some of them :-)
dag (back in 2005 or so) maraka.

I sure enjoy reading your thread. My best regards to you Joe.

the ones who can catch their breath on meeting you

eh(I have a friend who couldn't speak for nearly half an hour after meeting you)Beth

Boiled eggs. The cold water/ice bath are the key.

I think we need to have chopped egg salad on rye today. Mebbe with a half-sour on the side.

Eggs -- see now you can practice your cheesy pickup line --

How do you like your eggs? Hard-boiled or fertilized?

Good day at the lawyer's -- excellent. Glad you're getting good, competent and compassionate help. It makes SUCH a difference.