Author Archives: kelly

Tennis, Anyone? (Part Two)

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As I wrote in my last post, my love of tennis has returned and much of that is due to a young woman from Australia named Samantha Stosur. Oh, and in case you hadn’t heard, she defeated Serena Williams handily in the U.S. Open final yesterday, 6-2, 6-3. Sam became the first Australian woman since Margaret Court in 1973 to win the U.S. Open. While this is great cause for celebration for Australia and Australian tennis, it’s great for anyone who values champions with class.

There was some controversy at the beginning of the second set that almost tilted the momentum to Serena Williams. The umpire deemed Serena’s celebratory scream after she struck a ball before the point was over as as a violation of the Hindrance Rule and awarded Sam the point, which gave her the game. Serena then behaved like a petulant brat and unfortunately the crowd started pulling for her.

This situation reminded me just how much I dislike the idea of rooting for someone simply because he or she is from your country. I support a player because I like him or her not because he or she is an American. An acquaintance on Twitter took offense at my characterization of the crowd as jingoistic yet she basically admitted that she was rooting for Serena simply because of her citizenship. This is not the Olympics or the World Cup where supporting your country is natural and appropriate.

Add to this mix the emotions of the 10-year anniversary of 9/11 and this could have gotten really ugly. Luckily for Stosur and for the game of tennis, she remained composed and let her playing do the talking for her. I hope that when people look back on this match, they’ll give Stosur the credit she deserves for her high-quality play and her grace under pressure. What we don’t need is any whining about a bad call (which it was not) or excuses for Serena’s lackluster performance. Serena Williams is an incredibly talented player who will go down as one of the greatest to have ever played. On Sunday, however, a 27 year-old from Down Under was better.

Tennis, Anyone?

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I’m re-discovering my love of tennis while watching the 2011 US Open and as I do with everything I get interested in, I become obsessed. Thanks to an upgraded cable package that included Tennis Channel, I’m getting acquainted with a lot of new faces, especially on the Women’s Tour. For a few years now, I’ve found women’s tennis unwatchable due to the prevalence of shrieking that so many top players seem to engage in as they hit EVERY SINGLE BALL.

Now, I’m not a professional tennis player but I used to play a lot. I don’t remember Chris Evert (my favorite), Evonne Goolagong (my Dad’s favorite) or even Martina Navratilova wailing like banshees as they hit the ball. They just played the game and played it well. This shrieking is unnecessary, it’s distracting and it’s pure gamesmanship. Some of the men grunt and groan but not all of them. If Roger Federer can win all the championships he has while being as silent as Marcel Marceau, what’s Maria Sharapova’s excuse?

In any case, I found myself watching more men’s tennis of late but I started missing watching the women. So, I started following the coverage on Tennis Channel and there are some incredibly talented women out there, and even some who don’t cause dogs to bark on the other side of the world. One of my favorites is Sam Stosur from Australia. She’s strong and fun to watch. And she’s quiet!

She’s made it to the semifinals and is now set to face Germany’s Angelique Kerber. I know nothing about Kerber but I’m hoping Sam makes it through to the finals. The other semifinal is between Serena Williams and Caroline Wozniacki, the current Number 1 player. Both Williams and Wozniacki can make noise but I’m hoping I don’t have to watch it on mute.

Watching tennis again has brought back a lot of memories, most of which are wonderful. I started playing at age 10 with my Wilson Chris Evert Autograph racquet and I won a mixed doubles championship at aged 11. I remember copying Chris’ mannerisms and strokes as best I could. I try not to remember the cruelty of the girls on my high school team whose taunts and dirty tricks made tennis not fun anymore and led to my quitting the team after two years.

But high school was a long time ago and it may be time to pick up my racquet and start playing again. Luckily, tennis is a game that you can play at any age and I have courts within walking distance from the house. Now I just need to find a partner. Tennis, anyone?

Let’s Get Physical

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If you now have Olivia Newton-John in your head with the title of this post, you’re welcome. However, the “getting physical” I’m talking about is physical therapy. Yesterday I had my first appointment for my back and leg pain. My impression after the first session: Man, do I feel stiff and old!

 

Tara, the physical therapist, is a lovely young girl, very attractive in a pixie-like way. After jotting down notes on my injury and medical history, we started in with the work. She tested my strength in both legs and determined that while my legs are strong overall, my quads and calves are weak. (I think I heard them gasp in an offended manner.) Additionally, my right hip is more rigid than the left. (Insert political analogy here.)

My shoulders are tight and sore and can tend to round. All of that tightness doesn’t help the rest of my back. And I sure as hell don’t want to end up looking like a female version of this:

She ran me through a series of exercises and stretches to help with the strengthening of my core and my other muscles. As someone who grew up playing sports, I have to admit that I felt like a wimp. I struggled with things I didn’t think I would. The competitive little voice in my head did not like this one bit.

I have been pretty lucky with my body up until this injury. With the way that I have either ignored it or abused it over the years, it’s amazing that it’s held up. I’m trying to look at things philosophically. If I hadn’t had to take time off to care for my mother, perhaps I wouldn’t have hurt myself. If I hadn’t hurt myself and been unable to return to work as scheduled, I wouldn’t have lost my job. If I hadn’t lost my job, I wouldn’t have taken the time to focus on getting my body physically well and strong.

It would be easy for me to look at a lot of what’s happened this year and feel like a victim. And there are some days when the Bobbsey Twins of Despair, Angst and Woe, settle in and won’t leave. They sit on the sofa and bitch and moan and basically make nuisances out of themselves. I let them vent and then eventually they leave.

I then try to remember that I do believe that there is order to the universe and to our lives, despite the times when everything seems chaotic and random. I’m not sure about many things, but I do believe that. Besides, if I thought that there was no reason for anything and that life was purely random, why in the hell would I bother to get up in the morning? I mean, really.

So, I will dutifully do my exercises and stretches twice a day and be ready for my next appointment on Friday. I did notice the Pilates machine yesterday and I couldn’t get over how much it looked like a medieval torture rack. I may not believe in accidents, but I do believe in irony.

Pilates machine

 

 

 

 

The Rack

Wait! It’s Not Perfect Yet!

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Sometimes I think that I have a split personality. Now before any of you can say, “Ha! That explains it!”, I’m not talking Joanne Woodward in a Three Faces of Eve kind of way. What I mean is, I seem to have two competing natures: perfection versus procrastination. This battle occurs in almost every area of my life.

For some reason I didn’t notice this as much when I was a kid. Don’t get me wrong. I was always a perfectionist but I wasn’t always a procrastinator. I was one of those kids who did all the homework due on Monday by Friday night. I finished book reports and projects days or weeks before they needed to be handed in. The only time I ever ran up against a deadline was if the teacher assigned the dreaded “group” project.

Group projects are the bane of a perfectionist’s existence because you have to rely on someone else to hold up his or her end of the project and your grade is linked to his or her efforts in addition to your own. Needless to say, I HATED group projects. Then, as now, I prefer all of the credit or all of the blame. I’m both a Leo and an only child, so I think this makes perfect sense.

I attended a very rigorous high school so I had to stay on top of my studies to maintain a B average (in everything but math and science, that is.) Thanks to the difficulty of my curriculum, college was much easier and this was when procrastination entered my life. I discovered that I could maintain a mostly straight-A average even with waiting until the last minute to complete assignments. As a consequence, I considered my graduating magna cum laude as not a major accomplishment. In fact, I’d tell myself that if I had attended a “better” college, I couldn’t have done that. Ah, well. Masochism is a topic for another post and another day.

Let’s get back to perfection versus procrastination, shall we? Take this blog for example. I’d talked about starting it for a good year before I actually launched it at the end of July. I made list upon list about possible category headings, color scheme, font style, etc. I finally picked a blog theme that I thought was going to be easy to manipulate, but it wasn’t. I got overwhelmed and then inertia set in. Since I couldn’t get it to look “perfect”, I wouldn’t do it at all. I operated under this assumption for a year. My perfection fed into my procrastination.

What changed? Well, it was something that a friend on Twitter said to me in a direct message. While I was angsting over not having the ability to create the look I wanted, she simply said, “As a reader, I’ve never paid attention to a blog’s design. Content is all, no?” I respect this person’s opinion immensely so I took it to heart.

So, I was able to let go of the perfection around the look of the blog. At some point in the future, I may ask a professional to make it look “spiffier” but for right now, I’m satisfied. I reserve all my blog-related perfection for the content and I hope that on the whole, I’ve done a good job. Now, if I could only stop procrastinating about getting rid of clutter, exercising, reading all the major works of literature…

What’s the Big Idea?

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In this article by Neal Gabler in the August 13, 2011 New York Times, the author discusses his belief that ideas just aren’t what they used to be. In fact, he states,

 

“In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world –
a world in which big, thought-provoking ideas that can’t
instantly be monetized are of so little intrinsic value that
fewer people are generating them and fewer outlets are
disseminating them, the Internet, notwithstanding.
Bold ideas are almost passé.”

I think Gabler is onto something here. Just take a look at television programming. Now, I’m not about to get on some high-brow horse and lament the decline of television because of reality shows, blowhard pundits and the like. There have always been clowns on television, literally and figuratively. What we used to see more of, however, was programming that also appealed to the intellect. Even with the hundreds of channels available today, how much intellectual stimulation do you find around the dial?

As a pre-teen, in addition to heavy doses of reruns of Monty Python’s Flying Circus on PBS, I was often riveted to Firing Line. (Yes, I was a precocious child.) For any of you too young to remember it, Firing Line was hosted by conservative writer and thinker William F. Buckley, Jr., and it featured Buckley debating the issues of the day with leading intellectuals, politicians and other public figures. The pace was slow, the atmosphere, polite. Listening to, let alone reading Buckley, virtually required doing so with a dictionary in your hands.

Yes, I realize that Firing Line was on PBS and not network television, but still, I don’t believe it would even work on PBS today. No one in the public sphere seems to be interested in discussion and dissemination of ideas. Civility seems to be like some outdated Victorian notion. It’s all about the sound bite and one-upsmanship. Watch any news show anywhere on television tonight and listen for the raised voices, the constant interruption of one speaker by another, and the vitriol.

The Information Age has given us access to endless amounts of data, but that doesn’t translate into necessarily understanding that data. In essence, we possess trivia that makes for useful cocktail party conversation or 140 character tweet-sized bites. This isn’t inherently bad, mind you; it’s just ultimately unsatisfying if that’s where the inquiry end. It’s fast food information.

Don’t get me wrong. I love social media and I love that when some inane trivia question wakes me up in the middle of the night (Don’t laugh. This happens.), I’m almost 100% certain that with a few keystrokes, I can find the answer. But, aside from helping me go back to sleep, did learning the answer to that question add any tangible value to my life? Most likely, the answer is “no”. As Gabler concludes,

“What the future portends is more and more information –
Everests of it. There won’t be anything we won’t know. But
       there will be no one thinking about it. Think about that.”

I intend to think about it. What about you?

Dream a Little Dream

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I don’t dream. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I don’t often remember my dreams and when I do, they would be better off forgotten. My dreams fall into two basic categories: school dreams/nightmares and “Odd Couple” dreams (and no, I’m not in REM sleep with Tony Randall and Jack Klugman, thank goodness). Let’s look at these categories, one by one, shall we?

School Dreams/Nightmares: The other night I had one of the nondescript “Kelly is back in college” dreams. These dreams usually center on me realizing that I’m way out of practice when it comes to studying and time management. There is some stress in the dream but nothing too overwhelming. Just the general feeling of being the proverbial fish out of water.

The nightmare version involves me on the verge of graduation only to be informed that I have one more math class to take. Math has been my nemesis my entire life (thank you, Sister Mary, First Grade nun from Hell) and I always lived in fear that one last math requirement would crop up. This nightmare started just before graduation and has continued sporadically in the decades since.

“Odd Couple” Dreams: These are the kinds of dreams in which people you would never pare together show up. Most often I wake up from one of these dreams shaking my head and asking, “What the hell was that about?” They are just weird and almost always amusing. Take for example one dream I had involving my grandmother and Pee Wee Herman doing the lambada. My grandmother used to do the Irish jig on St. Patrick’s Day and we know all about Pee Wee’s dance moves:

Tequila Dance

What always disappoints me is that I’m never coupled with some hottie in my dreams. Didn’t Freud say dreams were wish fulfillment? Well, Siggy, I sure have lots of unfulfilled wishes, buddy boy.  And those wishes certainly don’t include Pee Wee Herman, my grandmother or school.

I’m glad that I don’t have scary dreams where I’m chased or tormented. Nan and Pee Wee is traumatizing enough. If, however, I do have to be chased or tormented in dreams, feel free to send any of the following to do the deed.

 

 

Sofia Vergara

 

 

 

 

 

Salma Hayek

 

 

 

 

 

Charlize Theron

 

 

 (Yawn.) Gee, I’m getting really sleepy all of a sudden. Maybe I should try to take a little nap…

Prepare Yourself

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The scout’s motto is “Be Prepared”. Well, I’d be a horrible scout and not just because I recoil from group activities and the great outdoors. I would suck at scouting because I’m ill prepared. I don’t mean that my checkbook is overdrawn or that I fail to pay my bills. No, I’m talking about preparation for natural disasters. I can’t even find a flashlight at the moment.

While watching Hurricane Irene prowl up the East Coast, I was reminded once again that I have no plan or preparations in the event of an earthquake. Yes, you heard me correctly. I, Kelly Reiterman, a native Californian and 4th generation San Franciscan, no less, have no earthquake plan. It’s my sense that transplants to California do seem to have a plan and all the gear ready. It’s those of us who grew up feeling earthquake after earthquake who aren’t prepared.

My grandmother was nine years old when the 1906 earthquake and fire hit and burned her family out of their flat on Clementina Street in the South of Market neighborhood of San Francisco. She was understandably terrified of earthquakes for the rest of her life but not enough to prepare for the next one. Her preparation consisted of praying at her home altar.

Little earthquakes happen all the time. You learn to discern between one that “shakes” and one that “rolls” and you’re just not fazed by them. If you were, you’d be on anti-anxiety drugs all the time. Sometimes, though, when an earthquake lasts a little longer than usual, a native has a conversation with himself or herself. It goes something like this:

Native
I wonder if I should get up and go under the door frame.
(beat)
Wait. Didn’t I hear that we shouldn’t go under
door frames any more? I wish they’d make up their minds.

And before the dilemma can be resolved, the earthquake is over and the native goes back to what he or she was doing before.

I didn’t feel the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake because I was on a bus rounding a corner downtown (not too far from good old Clementina Street) and with the usual bus shaking, there was no way to tell an earthquake had happened. That is, not until I got up to Market Street and saw hunks of buildings in the street.

I did feel the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles. I was shaken awake in my little studio apartment in West Hollywood and it wasn’t from my neighbor’s Madonna CD. I heard wine glasses falling in the kitchen area and I do remember saying out loud, “This can stop now!” Yet even after that, I never thought of preparing myself for “The Big One”.

I’m now thinking about getting more prepared. I’ve been scouring websites that offer earthquake survival kits and comparing them. I’ve gotten as far as this:

Kelly
Hmm. This one has a whistle but no wrench. Do I need a whistle?
(beat)
Dammit! Why didn’t I ever learn to whistle?!

Scoff if you must, but at least it’s a start. Hell, I even found my flashlight! Now all I have to do is find batteries…

Gratitude

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Gratitude isn’t second nature to me. My tendency is to focus on what’s wrong or missing and not on what’s right and what I already have. I’m not proud of this and it’s something that I’m trying to change, but it’s not always easy. Some of you know that this year has been a bit challenging for me. My mother had major back surgery that I helped her through. I subsequently hurt my back and lost my job. I’ve often felt like I was living in a depressing country song, without the big hair and sequins, that is.

While I realize that there are many people in extremely dire and depressing situations all over the world, our personal stuff is our stuff, after all, and it’s important. That’s why the news yesterday about my mother’s back was so welcome.

The surgeon wanted her to go for a CT scan in order to really see how her spine was fusing. Her recovery has been excellent so far. The debilitating spasms have disappeared and other pains have diminished and at age 78, she has her life back. And yes, I have been grateful for her renewed lease on life. However, I’ve still been operating in crisis management mode, monitoring practically each and every move she makes to make sure she’s not doing too much and worrying over every single thing. It’s exhausting for me and I know it’s annoying to her. This little coping strategy of mine hasn’t been conducive to slowing down for a little gratitude.

So, she went for the scan and the results couldn’t have been better. Her spine is completely fused less than seven months after surgery. This is amazing. Part of this is due to some innovative techniques by her surgeon. The other part of it is due to my mother.

She has survived more than her fair share of health issues and traumas throughout her life and she never gives up. She wants to live more than anyone I know and she puts in the work to get better. I, on the other hand, can brood about my birthday and feel that all my chances for happiness are behind me. (I know. Overly dramatic, much? I am a Leo, after all.)

Hearing that she has recovered faster and more completely than some patients half her age gave me pause. How can I not live each day fully and embrace life’s journey after watching my mother this past seven months? Without even realizing it, I became filled with gratitude, not only for her brilliant surgeon and other doctors, but also for her. I’ve always been proud to be her daughter. I’m even more grateful that she’s my mother.

The Art of the Matter

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     I’m going to this exhibition today and I’m very excited. I’m a big fan of the Dutch Masters (and I’m not talking the cigars). I don’t claim to know anything about art, but I know what I like. Basically, I like trees that look like trees, people who look like people, etc. I like subtle use of light and shadow. This is the main reason that I like artists like Johannes Vermeer. And it’s a main reason why I don’t like modern art. I mean, if a painting looks like either:

 

 

(a) something that a kid in kindergarten could do with finger paints (Mark Rothko – “Number 9”)

or

 

 

(b) something one of my cats threw up (Jackson Pollock – “Number 4”), I don’t see it as art. Sorry, I just don’t.

 

 

 

 

 

    The most modern I get are the Impressionists. I like the colors and you can still discern what the shapes are in the paintings. As is the case with this work by Claude Monet:

 

“Le Grenoillere” (1869)

 

 

 

     Picasso, I don’t get at all. I know there’s symbolism and all that but nobody can convince me that the craftsmanship in this:

 

 

“Woman With a Flower” (1932)

(There’s a woman? There’s a flower? I’m lost.)

is comparable to this famous Vermeer painting:

 

 

 

 

“Girl With a Pearl Earring” (1665)

 

 

 

 

     Maybe they’re not supposed to be compared? Like comparing punk to classical is a pointless musical exercise? I don’t know.

     I want to be open-minded, I really do. For example, I used to deride soccer as “hockey on grass” and claim that it was boring. Now, that I’m understanding it a bit more and following the Wolverhampton Wanderers, I now appreciate the “beautiful game”. Will this happen for me with modern art? I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll take a chance and go to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art one of these days. But, alas, today is not that day. Today I get to remain in my comfort zone and gaze at the artistry of works like this by Jan van der Heyden:

 

“View of the Westerkerk, Amsterdam” (1667-70)

(Courtesy of the Rose-Marie and Eijk van Otterloo Collection).

 

 

 

      Ah, very nice.

What Fresh Hell is This?

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Today is my birthday and I share it with Dorothy Parker, the writer who asked the question that titles this post. I don’t know if the “fresh Hell” to which she was referring was birthdays, but it usually is in my book. I have a love/hate relationship with my birthday. Yes, I’m grateful to be alive and all that, but birthdays have had a negative connotation for me for a while now.

Birthdays, like New Year’s Eve (another occasion I dislike), offer an opportunity to gaze back on the year that has passed and take stock. You know, relive the fun things you did, the places you’ve been, and the goals that you accomplished. This might be a fun and fulfilling exercise if the past year has been full of merriment and mastery. When it hasn’t, well, stay away from the Sylvia Plath poetry and hot ovens.

Aside from the lack of fun, travel and success, there is always the age issue. I can, and do, take solace in the fact that people often don’t believe me when I tell them my age. (In case you’re keeping score at home, I’m now 46.) Who doesn’t want to look younger, aside from a kid with a fake I.D., right? However, there are benchmarks we all assume that we’ll meet by certain ages. For some, it’s marriage or kids by a certain age and for others, it’s a career goal.

I’ve met none of the benchmarks I imagined when I was looking forward to the future 20 or 30 years ago. The ominous “tick, tick tick” of my non-biological clock grows louder every year. I see so many roads not taken and chances missed. I worry that my window of opportunity has closed or at least is closing very quickly.

I give lip service to believing in some metaphysical concepts like everything happening for a reason and in its own time, etc., but what if life is random and as the saying goes, “You snooze, you lose”? What if my “best” days are behind me? What do I do then? Do I just stay in my pajamas all day and watch bad television? Do I listen to The Smiths over and over again? Or, do I do something else?

The first thing I decided to do was see what other people born on August 22nd (aside from dear Dorothy), had to say. You know, maybe there’s some wisdom I can take from them. First on the list was science fiction writer Ray Bradbury. Sci-Fi really isn’t my thing, but hell, it’s worth a try. You’re on, Ray.

Ray Bradbury: “If you don’t like what you’re doing, then don’t do it.”

Pithy, yet profound. But, can it really be that simple? Hmm. Let’s see what blues great John Lee Hooker thinks. I met him once back in the mid-1980s when I interned at a radio station. Okay, John Lee. Hit me.

John Lee Hooker: “I don’t do nothing I don’t want to do.”

Am I sensing a theme here, fellas? I get it. Only do what makes me happy. A tad esoteric, but that’s okay. I think Boston Red Sox legend Carl Yastrzemski summed up life and the big questions that plague us just right. He was referring to baseball, but it fits this little discussion. Okay, Yaz. You’re up.

Carl Yastrzemski: “This game is strange.”

Yes it is, Yaz. Yes, it is. But it’s the only game I have, so I guess it’s time to suit up and play.