Aesthetic Values

Los Angeles, California

Recently, while having an HVAC system installed on my roof, I was wasting time catching up on notifications and emails with the goal of deleting a lot of unnecessary storage from that Cloud. During this process, I ran across an article on Wired, entitled Tips and Tools to Help You Stick to Your Goals. And, included in the article was a link to a Psychology Today Values Clarification Quiz designed to help identify what we each want to honor this year in order to set top three goals. This all seems a little lofty to someone who is retired, and many of the questions in the long quiz were employment-related. Still, I answered all in spite of applying a lot of the work-related questions to my current work at home as a retiree.

You have to pay to get a detailed report. Had they known me, they wouldn't even have suggested that. But they did offer a free summary report, based on my answers. The results of the test were said to remind or educate me as to what values are most important. Interesting. It said that they could also be utilized for me to make changes in my life in order to help me become more content. This if, for some reason, I have been living in a way inconsistent with my top values, which could be a disturbing revelation, I suppose.

According to the results of the quiz, my top core value turned out to be Aesthetic: Those who are motivated by these values wish to surround themselves with beauty. Seems somewhat true of me, although my sense of beauty is probably not universal. While I have 'collected' islands my entire life and covet being near the ocean, if you drop me in a forrest or desert, which some find beautiful, I will feel confined, stifled and edgy. I find many cities beautiful, and the nighttime view of a skyline from a top story hotel room or lounge breathtaking. The summary goes on to say: They have a creative, unusual way of thinking and want the environment they surround themselves with to be reflective of that. Without creative outlets, they feel extremely stifled. My top three interests, as delineated at the very beginning of my blog are: Cooking, dancing and writing. The test results further says that when aesthetic people are placed in an unattractive, dreary environment, it could have a very negative effect on them. Ok, this one really hit. Dump me in a subpar home rental or hotel, the former with cheap appliances and/or inferior linens, and it will honestly ruin my entire trip. There is little more that is depressing to me than staying in a crappy motel or shabby home rental. I will not be happy for the entire stay.

The two bedrooms I had when I was growing up were quirky. As a teenager, my bedroom had hardwood floors and paneled walls with red 'flocked' wallpaper above, framed old west 'wanted' posters, and an antique red velvet upholstered platform rocking chair which had once belonged to my great-grandmother. My twin bed nestled under windows in the corner of the room had a leopard-print, fleece bedspread. My furniture, consisting of a desk, record cabinet and dresser, was dark wood with spindles, and at the time its style was called spanish. All-in-all it looked like a teenager's idea of a Western saloon, conceptualized after a family trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming which included a night of entertainment at the Pink Garter Saloon. My sister called my style "early whorehouse." And, with a red light fixture hanging from the ceiling, and my windows facing the street, my dad did suggest that I keep my antiqued-black, louvered wooden shutters closed at night. One Christmas, my parents gave me red satin sheets for the bed, but I found that I couldn't keep the pillow on the bed. It kept skittering off the slippery sheets, so they didn't get used much. My bathroom had an antique barrister's bookshelf that had been painted in a distressed hot pink and was utilized as a cabinet for towels, make-up, and the like. If I were to stay in a house that had that room, I suppose I would think it was odd. Like, Madonna Inn-odd (look it up). Then again, I'm not fifteen anymore. At that time, it suited me and my friends just fine.

When I am looking to rent a home from VRBO I always look for three clues to the quality of the home: Appliances (specifically refrigerator and range), bed linens, and master shower. I can live with any decent modern refrigerator, but the range gives me an idea as to the quality of the rest of the house. A Wolf or Viking tells me that the owners didn't cheap out. While it is hard to determine from a photo that the bed linens are not polyester or other non-breathable fabrics of that ilk, you can get some idea of linen quality from how the bed is outfitted. A cheap bedspread will often look like it is just draped upon the bed. A combo bathtub/shower in the master is a no-go. While a fiberglass stall shower isn't ideal, it can still serve purpose, even if plainly ugly. And frankly, these largely non-negotiable quality clues are all just my own. I have friends who don't want to stay in homes with carpeting, or with front-loading washers and dryers, and one who wants overhead lighting -- no lamps! I have found that the homes I rent which owners occupy for their own vacations are generally better. Leather/vinyl or that cheap, fake suede upholstery on the living room sofa will generally indicate that it is not owner-occupied, but that's not a sure thing nor always a deal breaker.

I have twice stayed in rentals where I was miserable. One was in Lake Tahoe when I attended the Intensive Spanish Summer Institute to study Spanish and stayed in a rental home with four other women. It was a dingy tract home. When I asked Robin, the woman who had organized the trip, how she found the rental, she said that she just looked at the online listing and chose the cheapest one! I don't even want to think of how that home was utilized by frat boys during ski season. Another was a rental in Santa Barbara, where I had to wash the duvet cover before I slept in the bed as it was covered with dog hair. Note to self and all: Unless you are comfortable with dander, don't pick a VRBO home that accepts pets.

I have friends who live in fabulous surroundings and it is lovely to spend time with them in their homes. I was introduced to Aireloom mattresses when I spent the night at my friends' home several years ago after a late night at the opera. I now have one in my master and it is heavenly (actually the Heavenly Mattress -- yes, there is such a brand --  got moved to the guest room). Getting the new mattress led me to getting a new bed from a furniture showroom, a heavy, hardwood and headboard-upholstered sleigh bed, which led me to getting room-darkening Hunter-Douglas Duette window-treatments. The room is painted an aegean blue and has a light fixture of candlelight bulbs with a halo of bronze stars. By the way, I still have the red light fixture from the teenaged saloon room. It is in the guest room. But the red velvet rocker is ensconced in the master which is now truly a haven.

I think the Psych Today test pretty much nailed me. Dreariness can affect the way I feel, so for me, it is important to make my surroundings reflect quality, especially when I am traveling. My personal rule of thumb is to never stay in an environment that isn't at least as nice as my home. Travel is enlightening in all kinds of experiential ways, but you are also out of your comfort zone and if the environment is uncomfortably shabby, so will the experience be. It has taken me a lifetime to get to this place but my best take on the subject is to not cheap out on appliances and linens (and medical care, and scotch... I'm just saying). If your core value is aesthetic, attention to the aesthetics is key. You will make your guests, your friends, and, most importantly, yourself happy. And surrounding yourself with happiness that comes from quality and beauty is not just a value, but a truly essential one.

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered

Los Angeles, California

I had three titles for this post. The first was The Writer's Dilemma. Great title, right? Let's file that away for later. The second was Social Commentary. Obvious, right? Truth be told, all three titles fit the subject of this post.

When I started my blog, it was as a writing exercise and for myself only. I didn't tell my family nor my friends about it initially. But as I became more comfortable, I felt that some of them might enjoy reading it. There was humor, and in the beginning, recipes. But the subject matter was always social commentary, which is writing about what the writer (that would be me) sees around them. I have written about my family, and about my husband and marriage. Also about friends. I have commented on happy times and subjects, as well as personal tragedies. I have riffed on political issues and other things that have disturbed, upset, or irked me. My hope is that some of the topics and my writing about them, will resonate with readers, and might help them to process something going on in their own lives. Or at the very least, to feel that they are not alone in these areas. It is the writer's dilemma that the people who are in their orbit are grist for the mill. I think or thought that everyone gets this.

Calvin Trillin has written about this. His late wife and children are found in much of his writing, evidently whether they like it or not. Nora Ephron pretty much decimated the ex in Heartburn. It also occurs in fiction. In The World According to Garp, Garp has two young sons, as did John Irving at the time of writing the novel. On and on and on. I have often written about situations or topics which catch my attention and are more or less related to the people in my life. In all of the years of my blog, I have had only two complaints from someone related to the subject of a post, one of them recently. And, they were both from the same person. I reread the offending post each time they complained. And... there wasn't a thing there that I regretted writing. Truthfully, their complaints felt a little... parental. Sort of like a mother admonishing not to air our dirty laundry by talking about incidents or problems in their family. But there was nothing being aired here. No laundry. No personal conflict between us. Just my observations and opinions. Which... I kinda have a right to.

While I have sometimes used the first names of my friends, I have always protected their identity so that anyone who read my blog wouldn't clearly know the identities of anyone referenced there, especially since most of my friends don't know each other. And, it should go without saying, that this is not required reading, so anyone who is unhappy visiting should simply not. If it isn't obvious, it may require restating that this is a writing exercise for me. And writing through any scrim or filter would compromise the purpose of it as well as the quality of the writing.

As the writer of my own blog, I am not censurable. Nor will I self-censor in topics chosen, and subsequent writing about those topics. In fact, I am grateful that this gave me a blog topic, as lately I have been running on fumes, topic-wise, without much going on in life except Omicron, and some unrelated ill health news and another death, in my circle of friends. Which brings me back to the more recent complaint. With everything going on, and our continued inability to live life right now as we used to, is it maybe appropriate for me to want to write this about the complaint: Really? After we get through this, life will go on. And, probably, so will my blog, especially as long as I keep getting handed topics like this to write about. So, please don't shoot me. I am only the blogger.

The Two O'Clock Miracle

Los Angeles, California

My phone conversations with my friend, Lynnette, are occasionally zany, inexplicable episodes similar to twelve year-olds free-associating, and maybe even more like Lucy and Ethel during their trip to Hollywood. I should perhaps write that you have to be there to understand this. Though I will try to recapture it here, after reading this you may still actually scratch your head in incomprehension. So maybe I should just go ahead and write that you have to be there to get this.

Recently, Lynnette and I were trying to backtrack on our calendars to find the date of a farewell crab dinner I hosted around the time Lynnette and her husband were moving away from this area. Oddly, neither of us could find it on our calendars. Particularly odd since we both keep our calendars pretty efficiently. She keeps hers online, and I keep mine on a paper Susan Branch pocket calendar, replaced each year (technically, we are both Scorpios but I am convinced that I was born under the sign of Paper). We knew the year of the party, and had it down to a couple of months, but neither of us could find the exact date of the event noted on our calendars. We digressed to a lot of reminiscing about other occasions which were on our respective calendars from a few years back. It was then that I noticed my calendar square on December 20, 2017 was marked: Miracle 2:00.

I started to tell Lynnette that I had a miracle scheduled on a Thursday in December, but the absurdity of a scheduled miracle caused me to start laughing. And the more I tried to tell her, the more I laughed. I finally got it out, and then she started laughing. Every time we stopped laughing, and I tried to work out how it was that I had a miracle scheduled, and not just a scheduled miracle, but a 2:00 scheduled miracle, we both started laughing again. We continued this in the style of The Mary Tyler Moore Show Death of Mr. Peanut episode for a good ten minutes, both of us being set off into peals of laughter with every comment we made about it. It took me quite awhile to finally figure out that Joel and I had attended a Pasadena Playhouse Christmas production of Miracle on 34th Street, staged like a classic radio show with the performers, including Alfred Molina and Peri Gilpin, standing in front of '40s-style microphones; a sound effects man equipped with all the usual accoutrements also on stage. It was such a fun event, and afterwards we had gone to an early dinner where Joel, dangerously, first tasted The Prisoner red wine. Unfortunately, my calendar squares are small so, for that day, all I could fit in was Miracle and the time of the show.

I am not a silly someone who laughs when a smile is sufficient. I am annoyed by people who laugh incessantly and too long when watching something humorous in a theater, causing you not to hear the following dialog as a result. People who use laughter as an automatic response to everything is puzzling to me. Ever had someone laugh when you switch subjects and tell them something sobering? It's weird. On the other hand, those times when you legitimately laugh until you cry are, as they say in the commercials, priceless. And perhaps all the more so during a pandemic when there isn't so much to laugh about, and you are not someone who is ever going to watch Schitt's Creek.

Lynnette and I have done this before, though usually when we are playing Ticket to Ride into the early morning hours and we are both punchy and stupid at a game which requires intelligence and organizational skills. We have never done it over the phone pouring over our calendars. I was reminded of a phone conversation long ago with a now-lost friend when we were watching Dumbo at the same time. That's my problem, I said, weepily. I didn't have a mother like Mrs. Jumbo.

Aside from the benefit of sharing the laughter, I came away from the conversation with a lesson learned. Miracles are in short supply these days. You never know when one might come again. So it's not such a bad idea that if you see one approaching, you get it down on your calendar, whether paper or virtual. You won't want to risk missing it. And make sure you get the time as well as the date. We never did find the date of the crab dinner, but that was ok. The next time we do it, it will get on our calendars. Something to look forward to until the next miracle comes along.

Antisocial Network

Los Angeles, California

When I heard the news that "Meta" (FKA Facebook) stock had tanked this week, I was reminded of a recent text conversation with a close friend about social networking. I debated using this as a topic for a blogpost as I wasn't sure where I could go with it. I can pretty much sum up how I feel about social networking by simply asking: Why would anyone do this? It's tangentially related to my not being a fan of Amazon. I wish I could shun Amazon entirely, but sometimes I have to use Amazon, as there are things you can only find there. Still, while I can't draw a line in the sand, I can avoid it as much as possible. But, social networking? Totally out. The first time someone enthusiastically showed me Facebook, I thought: Why in the world would anyone think this is a good idea? I saw it as a huge participant in what I recently heard Benedict Cumberbatch refer to as our ever-shrinking island of privacy. When dancers in the salsa community started asking me if they could "friend" me on Facebook, I demurred, and, honestly, I was thinking: This is pretty tacky. I later read that these sites were contributing to our collective cognitive degradation. Someone put it like this: Facebook should be called Timesuck. After American politics blew up through social media with Russia utilizing Facebook to plant those preposterous stories about Hillary Clinton, that followed by the incessant drone of Trump's illiterate tweets, which was then followed by recent whistleblowing about Instagram and Facebook; I realized it wasn't just a bad idea nor tacky, but was really toxic. As I heard David Mitchell say on The Graham Norton Show: The internet has made it easier to order pizza and for the truth to die.

So I had to question why people would still be enthusiastically utilizing social networking. And partly, the answer is the same answer I get from the people who rely on Amazon for everything. Convenience. They are both easy-to-use instruments for hustling to get us what we want, whether it be products or a community of "friends." In that recent conversation, my friend outlined some of the ways in which Facebook has enabled her to find resources. But she is obtaining recommendations for those resources from strangers. How can you judge the qualifications or standards of someone whom you only know superficially through a social networking group? It reminds me of asking the waiter to recommend items on the menu. Why would anyone assume that waiter has good taste? That they don't hit McDonald's on the way home or that they aren't most likely going to recommend what the kitchen told them to promote due to other menu shortages? I don't subscribe to any social networking site, even avoiding linkedin when I was a business owner. Yet, I am able to obtain great resources from my own network, and my friends often come to me when they need workers, product info, etc. In turn, when I am in need, I have my go-to friends who are trusted, totally checked-out referral sources. I've known them for a long time, and have been to their homes, so I am assured of their standards of quality. While much like with Amazon, I try not to, I do occasionally need to use online sources. I found a specialized repair person recently off of yelp, even though having been a business owner, I know how yelp works so I don't much trust the reviews. I once gave a deserved mixed review to a plumbing contractor which was posted, but shortly taken down. I knew this was because the contractor paid for advertising on yelp, and yelp didn't want to lose his revenue. Still, all social networking aside, I am fully cognizant of the benefit of online information. After all, I no longer have encyclopedias in my home, so my phone and MacBook are handy for research. It's the networking part that is sticky for me, especially with everything we now know about these companies. And while understanding the importance and need for validation, even virtual validation, when the monetization of what was purported to be the free flow and exchange of information becomes the raisin d’être of these sites, it may be time to question participation.

What is interesting to me is that many of my friends are supportive of so many causes like animal rights and the environment. Some shun animal products, and I've had others tell me that their adult children would not let them use paper products like paper plates! Not. Let. Them. Sink that in. But many of these same conscientious souls seem to have no compunction about putting money into the pockets of these unconscionable tech gizillionaires.

Oddly, this got me thinking about the slow food movement. I don't really eat processed foods. And I don't eat a lot of fast foods, though I am still recognized at my local Del Taco when I need my bean and cheese burrito with green sauce fix. But I do embrace the quality of the slow food I cook, and the source of where my food products originate. And in the same sense, I'm now realizing that in staying away from these online sites, I am continuing in a movement of slow networking. Everything today moves fast. We have speedy and ready access to a multitude of stimuli and immediate gratification in entertainment, retail and even, sometimes dangerously, health services through the internet. But on the other side of this, we are increasingly engaging virtually with strangers. And even more so through the pandemic. For myself, I often use texting to set up times to have real face-to-face or at least voice-to-voice conversations. Would I give up email and texting completely and embrace amishness? No. But real communication, trusted resources, and the intimacy we all need? These are not available through social networking sites. They only pretend they are.