Category Archives: Hearth and Home

December 20, 2010 · 10:59 am

Sentimental greeting

How long have you had your current voice mail greeting?

I just realized we have had the same greeting on our home phone for 15 years. Isn’t it about time we changed it?

There are three distinct and definitive reasons we should. One, it mentions Monica, Marty and Joseph. Joseph hasn’t lived here since 2006. Two, Joseph hasn’t been called Joseph since 1995. Three, the greeting contains a grammatical error.

It says, “You’ve almost reached Monica, Marty and Joseph but since you didn’t, leave us a message…” the word “since” is incorrect here. The correct word is “because.” I knew that but, as many are prone to doing, I continue to fall into sloppy habits. Guilty as charged.

“Since” is often used interchangeably with “because,” but not correctly. “Since” relates to the time passed from one period of time to another:  He has been chairman of the board since 1995. I have not seen him since Saturday.

Still, I am sentimental about the greeting. It’s the first greeting I recorded after getting voice mail service through the phone company, replacing the old fashioned answering machine.

Back when we had the old machine, we used to change our greeting often, tailoring it for the season or current events. Now, I just can’t do it.

There’s no way to preserve for posterity this greeting that served us well for 15 years, poor word choice and all. Plus, I can’t imagine representing our family any way but Monica, Marty and Joseph. Joseph is Joe and Joe is gone. No one leaves him messages at this number any longer.

I’d love your suggestions for a new greeting, since—er, because—I am facing a mental and emotional block.

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Filed under All Things Wordish, Family and Friends, Hearth and Home, Technology and Social Media

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December 4, 2010 · 10:08 am

Yule log me out

Tick. Tick. Tick. If you haven’t noticed, there are exactly three weeks until Christmas. I have trouble hearing carols above the ticking away of the annoying clock against which I work fiercely to accomplish the self-imposed and society-imposed holiday chores.

I’ve become a Grinch about nearly every holiday of the year, mostly because self and society collude cruelly to impose unrealistic expectations and impossible deadlines.

I typically don’t get a lot of sympathy when I complain about the holiday stress because about 85 percent of it is self-imposed. I send out 260 cards and hand address each one. The .001 percent lineage I have to Emily Post won’t allow me to print labels. This year, my dreaded holiday newsletter came back from the printer with a typo that wasn’t in the original, so off it went for a reprint, because Word Nymph can’t send a typo to 260 people.

The upheaval caused by our central air installation, which no doubt by now you are sick of reading, stands in the way of most other tasks—from wrapping and shipping to putting up the tree. Hence, the last-minute scramble will be all the more intense.

By this time in the season, I start to go a little crazy. “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” sends me over the edge, and one playing too many of Mannheim Steamroller’s version of “Carol of the Bells” (one is one too many) has me fighting the urge to crash my car into a Jersey wall at 60 miles per hour.

This year, as an experiment, I’ve decided to pick one society-imposed chore and do away with it altogether. If that works, maybe I’ll pick another in 2011. This one wasn’t a hard choice because my family asked me to nix it.

I won’t be doing any baking. The problem is, I like the idea of baking cookies. I like how tingly Martha Stewart looks when she does it. My friends bake exquisite decorated sugar cookies, reaping great joy. The ritual just seems so appealing.

The sad truth is, I am a terrible baker with a faulty oven. Last year’s attempt at my grandmother’s delicate ginger thins could have doubled as equipment for the NHL. I dream about attempting a Bûche de Noël, but fear it would be seized as a weapon of mass destruction.

Instead I’ll dream of Nancy’s chocolate thumb prints, Mary Lee’s angels, Roxanne’s painted ginger snow queens and the Grady family’s fourth generation cookie ritual, while I head to the store for boxed Walker’s shortbread. Sigh.

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Filed under Family and Friends, Foibles and Faux Pas, Food, Hearth and Home, Holidays, Music

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December 2, 2010 · 7:43 am

All shook up

I blog today with a broken heart. In fact, my hands are shaky and my knees are weak, I can’t seem to stand on my own two feet.

Some time ago, I introduced you to Elvis. As cheesy as this might sound, my family and I fell hopelessly in love with Elvis, a 19-year-old deaf, arthritic cat when, about two months ago when, for whatever reason, he left his family and came to live on our side of the street. We suspected that he suspected that his long life was coming to an end.

I pretended that Elvis came to me, the hospice lady, for comfort and end-of-life care. The reality is, I fed him, as did our next door neighbors, who also provided him with a warm bed on their front porch. We all know what animals do when you feed them. But I took Elvis on as my latest hospice patient, giving him as much food as he wanted and wrapping him in a towel when he was too confused to take cover from the rain.

Yesterday, while away on a business trip, I received a message from our neighbor that Elvis had returned home to his family, where he died. According to the note, Elvis “spent the last several nights curled up inside, comfortably on a pillow.” As with most hospice situations, and as it should be, the patient died surrounded by family.

When I get home, I will kneel at the spot under our bushes where Elvis made his temporary home and remember how he brightened my life with his sweet purr and the meow that sounded like a duck quacking.

I can only hope that, wherever animals go when they die, Elvis lives on in his own Graceland.

Godspeed, Elvis. Love ya, buddy.

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Filed under Family and Friends, Hearth and Home, In Memoriam

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