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Murder at the Marsh

It never ceases to amaze me how certain things, activities, even people that seem irreplaceable are, in fact, not. Along the lines of favorite things that no longer are, https://oldladywriting.com/2019/08/06/a-few-of-whose-favorite-things/ I once kept a list of “Things that I Loved That Got Discontinued”. When life was less full of stuff, before a certain gazillionnaire made everything magically available for purchase online, finding a substitute for certain beloved items was much, much harder than it is today. I have to say, though, some of these still have no parallel.

Shanty Creek Resort, site of the below-mentioned Oktoberfest and many a ski-trip since

Not the actual photo of incomparable deliciousness, but a close approximation.

The items I miss the most are: Celestial Seasonings Irish Cream Tea, Breyer’s Vanilla Chocolate Almond Swirl Ice Cream, Peanut Butter and Jelly Pop Tarts, and Lean Cuisine Linguine with Clam Sauce. I actually wrote to Lean Cuisine when I could not find my favorite entrée in the frozen section of my local Meijer’s, and they wrote back that it had a “small but loyal following”. What they meant is, it was not selling well. What I read was, there are others like me, who are they, where are they, can we form a club? To this day, I have not found a more delicious linguine with clam sauce at any restaurant from North America to Italy itself. As for tea, I visited Celestial Seasonings headquarters—which merits a separate story, because it was a magical experience—and was told roughly the same thing about the Irish Cream tea. A pity about all these delicious foods. Tastes are hard to replace.

Amongst the non-edible items, I miss St. Ives Henna Shampoo, although it is quite possible that I just mourn the thick hair of my younger days. I just searched and saw it on EBay for $80, and died laughing. That’s nothing, though—the apricot variety, with which I am not familiar, is going for $120. I don’t know what miracles shampoo would have to perform for such price. I would probably pay that much for the linguine with clam sauce, though—I have my priorities.

I also listed several experiences that are never to be repeated, such as the Oktoberfest weekend at Shanty Creek resort in Bellaire, Michigan—a magical weekend during which spouse fell in love with spaetzle and won an apple pie in a pumpkin seed spitting contest, and just had fun badly dancing the polka. This was even before I liked beer! We attempted to make it an annual tradition, but as soon as we registered for the following year, it was cancelled never to be enjoyed again. Until we went to the original Oktoberfest in Germany—and again, our luck manifested itself, because the following year, the plague came, and Munich has not held its celebration since…

But there is nothing that I miss more than Murder Mystery Weekends. Back in the days before all information came from the interwebs, we used to search for fun activities in the magazines. This seems impossibly quaint now, but I remember vividly perusing the pages of AAA’s Michigan Living and uncovering all sorts of cool stuff, like the aforementioned Oktoberfest.

Participation in murder mystery weekends required teams of three or four, and spouse and I joined forces with his parents. This was over 20 years ago, which is shocking in itself, and remain the pinnacle of my relationship with my in-laws. Oh, this was serious business! We would show up at the Marsh Ridge resort in Gaylord, Michigan for a Friday night dinner, when the plot was set and the first murder would occur. Inevitably, we missed it. No one is that focused after a week’s work and a drive Up North. Then the real entertainment began.

Certain rooms at the resort were designated as “crime scenes”. Teams would be allowed to enter for a few minutes at a time. We could question the suspects—a pointless task that was usually left to my mother in-law, as it yielded little to no results, but kept her occupied while spouse, father in-law, and I searched for clues by lifting and opening everything that could be lifted and opened. My first move was always to lift the toilet lid. There was never anything there. I still maintain that it’s a great hiding place.

Murders and searches would continue throughout Saturday, with a break for lunch. It was intense, alternately frustrating and exhilarating. At one point, my father in-law said that even when you return to your own room, you just want to tear everything up looking for clues! Saturday after dinner, after the last desperate rummage and the last exasperated interrogation, we had to prepare and submit our detailed solution. On Sunday at breakfast, all was revealed, and the team who solved the most crimes and found the clues was awarded the most points and was declared the winner. I have to add that the young man by name of Jim Russell who masterminded and wrote the intricate scripts and played the chief detective who served as the sort of advisor to us hapless sleuths was an earnest and thorough host whose genuine love of the game prevented the experience from becoming the random unsolvable farce that murder mystery dinners and weekends usually are. No, this was like the early seasons of Midsomer Murders, convoluted plots full of wacky characters, mild shocks, unexpected laughs, and satisfying conclusions.

One of the resort rooms in all its ’90s’ glory. Note the jacuzzi tub on the left–not that anyone had time for that during the Murder Mystery weekend!

We progressed steadily up the championship ladder, ransacking hotel rooms and working our little gray cells, and finally won—of course we did! But as is the way of things, instead of being rewarded with the grand prize of free return the following year, we were informed that the resort will no longer be hosting murder mystery weekends, and were given gift certificates for the pro shop. We loaded up on sweatshirts, the last of which, barely worn, I just recently donated (it had neither hood nor pouch, and the sewn on logo was scratchy). It is small wonder, because the cost of the weekend was a bargain, and the additional property damage inevitably caused by overzealous amateur investigators was not sustainable.

A couple of sad mystery-less years followed, during which spouse and in-laws and I in vain searched for a replacement. Then the weekend was remounted, but with a different cast and crew. It became unnecessarily challenging, and it didn’t take. We did win the consolation prize for funniest answer with a hilarious poem which we sadly did not preserve—but the prize itself lives on, my lucky running hat which accompanied me on three half marathons, two marathon relays, and countless races from one to ten miles.

Then I had another kid, another job, and life became busier. The more things change, the harder they are to change back. But I miss the utter escapism of those murder mystery weekends, and I miss the good times with my in-laws. Both are high on the list of Things that I Loved That Got Discontinued.

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So Many Books, So Little Time

I read a lot. I have always read a lot. It started one warm sunny summer afternoon when I was five. My grandmother was reading “The Wizard of the Emerald City” to me (Russian version of “The Wizard of Oz”), but had to set it down because, as usual, household chores beckoned (this was some years before she started enlisting me and came to the swift conclusion that my lack of floor scrubbing and chicken plucking skills will never land me a husband.) She put the book on a piano stool (a piano in that time and place was mandatory; I was not encouraged to touch it). I circled it for a bit, unsure of how much trouble I will earn myself for touching a library book, but simply dying to know what happened when Ellie, Totoshka, and the gang encountered the savage сannibal. I picked up the book and managed to put enough letters together to get through the rest of the chapter. In my mind’s eye, I still see how the setting sun was streaming through the windows (we had northern exposure in our one room).

And my most enduring, most comforting, most enriching, most faithful, most influential past time was born. I have never stopped reading, not through years of university, child-rearing, long hours at work. Backpacking through Europe at 19, I would go without a meal to spend what seemed like an extraordinary amount of money on English-language paperbacks in non-English speaking countries to read on trains (added bonus—lost weight). I would choose the most pages for the money, which was not always the best literary value, alas.

My reading practices, however, changed over the decades. As a child, if I liked a book, I would read and reread it. I would go back, flip through pages, land on a random passage, read from that point, look for favorite passages, reread those, and so on. This might explain why occasional quotes from “The Three Musketeers” or “Twelve Chairs” or even Chekhov’s short stories still come to me unbidden, but a book I read a month ago is so thoroughly forgotten that I might not recall either the title, the author, or the plot today (I mean you, “Where the Crawdads Sing”. No offense).

At some point, quality fell somewhat of a victim to quantity. You know those Goodreads challenges, to read 50 books a year? (Well, that’s the challenge I set for myself every year—doesn’t everyone? A book a week, with a couple of weeks off for binge-watching Netflix seems very reasonable.) But why such a rush? Is it because a friend said once, “I haven’t even read 1,000 books!” in a self-horrified manner? But, that was probably about 20 years ago, so I have hit the quasi-magic number by now. Or is it just because there is an embarrassment of riches out there? I do not want to miss out on something great, and so gulp books down like Lindor truffles.

But I miss the reflection. And what I really, really miss is the change in my relationship with books.

When I was a child, I read like a child. The literary characters were my friends. They lived in my imagination, and they were my counterlife[1]. I lived in their world, and they lived in mine.

In my childhood, the counterlife was galloping through the vaguely unimaginable streets of Paris with the musketeers. It was pure fantasy, as I never expected to walk the streets of Paris any more than I expected to walk on the surface of the moon[2]. When Did the Arc de Triomphe Start Leaning? – Old Lady Writing

At some point, and I do not know when exactly that border into adulthood was crossed—and the crossing was, I imagine, inevitable—book characters stopped appearing in my reality. Or, more accurately, I stopped going into theirs. A certain detachment occurred where, while I remain entertained, enlightened, educated, and generally touched (and occasionally irritated and even bored) by what I read for pleasure, it is no longer my alternate reality. It is just that—entertainment, education, etc. It is enough—of course it is enough, there are so many great books that I have read and have yet to read—but I sometimes miss that untamed fantasyland of my childhood, where every story was examined through the lens of how it could play out in counterlife, and where I tried every character on for size as a potential friend or alter ego.

It is unavoidable and logical, but it is occasionally sad when I stop and think about it. That wild inventiveness would be very helpful right now, as the global pandemic still rages, theaters are still closed, and non-fictional friends are still remote. This might be a good time to work on breathing new life into the counterlife…

The three most influential books of my childhood. There might be a theme here. Please note and appreciate that the illustration to famous poisoning scene of the “The Anjou Wine” chapter of “The Three Musketeers” is by the author of this blog.

[1] Thank you for introducing this term in “The Glass Hotel”, Emily St. John Mandel. I have always said “parallel universe”, but that implies, I think, something more impossible rather than improbable.

[2] I might add that the vast majority of my childhood literary heroes were male. I am of the generation and culture that was not bothered by that. In the childhood reenactments that I held with my girlfriends, we WERE the musketeers. I even won the top prize at a school New Year’s party, dressed as a musketeer in a costume made by my mom, wielding a plastic rapier, and performing the famous “Song about the sword”. What did I win? Probably an orange. Valor and Glory of the Motorbuilders – Old Lady Writing

“One for All and All for One!” Again, by the author.

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London Calling

With my love of travel, my love of Gilbert and Sullivan, and my love of “Chariots of Fire”, there is one important location that has not yet been mentioned. It Is a Glorious Thing – Old Lady Writing Did you guess London? If so, you guessed correctly. If not, I cannot fathom what you are thinking.

London was slightly elusive in my younger days. During my college summer in Europe, the Chunnel train was not yet in existence. While the British rail system was covered by the Eurail Pass, the passage from the continent to Albion was not. There was no way I was going if there was an extra charge.

The Royal Family in the “good old days” (At Madame Tussaud’s in London. I love wax museums, and never miss one!)

Around the time of my last college spring break, my mother gifted me with enough free, rapidly expiring airline miles for two tickets to Europe. I could bring a companion. No catch. In what can only be described as a fit of temporary insanity, I invited Grandma. No, really, I was twenty one years old, and I went to London with my Grandma. I am expecting to be rewarded for this in my next life…

And so, I flew to New York, and Grandma and I set out on a cross-continental flight together. Our troubles started immediately when she set off a metal detector. The year was 1990, a kinder, gentler time when everyone could walk on to the departure gates, and TSA was only a vague concept—except in a case of an elderly, five feet tall woman who was bringing not only an apple for her long flight, but an accompanying knife wrapped in a handkerchief. Bizarrely, the TSA agent who confiscated Grandma’s best paring knife agreed to mail it back to her home address in Brooklyn. The potential loss of the knife caused Grandma considerable distress during our vacation, until we were informed by triumphant Grandpa, upon being picked up from our return flight, that the knife arrived safe and sound. No “How was your trip? How is London? Welcome home!”, but “Those bastards did not steal our knife after all!”

The flight itself was an unmitigated nightmare. Grandma, immeasurably energized by full access to me for the upcoming week, decided to start early on what we call “educating” me, but really the better term is “nagging”. I was treated to a seven-hour lecture about the various deficiencies of my character, my appearance, my behavior, my friends both male and female, and my overall prognosis for a productive life. As a graduating university senior heading to an Ivy League law school and holding down two jobs, I naively thought I might have had a right to feel sort of OK about myself. However, I was also overweight and single, two of the most cardinal of mortal sins in The World According to Grandma.

Holiday Inn London – Kensington Forum Hotel |Best Price Guaranteed |Kensington London Hotel (hikensingtonforumhotel.co.uk)

We were staying at the Forum Hotel, now Holiday Inn Kensington Forum. This is important, because this hotel is huge—900+ rooms and 27 stories. Upon arrival, after a sleepless night of “education”, I determined that I lost interest in my travel companion. We had a brief discussion and decided that, in order for each of us to preserve our own mental, emotional, and physical well-being, we will tour the city separately and only share sleeping quarters. I lived in a dorm—I could do it! Grandma was married for 45 years at that point—she could definitely do it! We each had our own money, room key, basics of the English language (some better than others), and I generously gave her one of my maps of London (this was when giant folding paper maps were all the rage). She stormed off. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Here is what I did next: (1) Called my mom as I still do during all important times, or really any time at all. She was supportive, as she generally tends to be. (2) Unpacked my suitcase and staked out my bed. (3) Took a shower, washed and blow-dried my hair, and changed clothes, because I needed a pick me up. (4) Opened the minibar and daringly consumed an adult beverage, because I needed a pick me up. (5) Ate a bar of chocolate, also from the minibar, because, well, isn’t it obvious? (6) Unfolded my giant paper map and determined that the first stop on my tour that day will be Harrod’s, which was the closest landmark to this hotel, and also made the most sense, given how the trip started.

The reason for these boring details is because I want to convey that I was only ready to depart the hotel quite a fair bit of time after Grandma. I mean, all of these activities took a while. I am not sure exactly how much, but long enough that when I heard a tentative knock at the door, I logically assumed that the day’s cleaning crew was arriving. Since this was my first time staying at a place fancy enough to be cleaned (and with a mini-bar—did I mention the minibar?), I grabbed my coat and rushed to the door, on my way toward my adventure in London, yelling encouragingly to whoever was behind the door that I am leaving and they can get down to business.

Behind the door was Grandma. All this time, she was trying to find her way out of the huge hotel, rode the elevator, stumbled on the underground garage, gift shop, and every other floor, but regrettably, never the lobby. She was exhausted, defeated, and ready to make peace.

Thus began my love affair with the West End… [The photo is not mine]

The rest of the week actually went reasonably well, all things considered. We walked a lot (some of it was because Grandma was always a tireless walker her entire life, never having learned how to drive), saw all the main sites, including a day trip to Windsor Castle (where Grandma concluded that the tiny medieval royal beds are far inferior to her Italianate suite back in Brooklyn), and experienced our first (but far from my last) West End musical (“Me and My Girl” at the Adelphi theater). In those days, London was still boasting its terrible cuisine, though to be fair, the two of us, a college student and a Soviet retiree, were decidedly not “foodies”. We ate at McDonald’s and were excited. Once we had pastries at a cafe and felt rather sophisticated. I bought six decks of cards for my collection. I took only twice as many photos. Every night, after Grandma fell asleep, I watched British TV and treated myself to a beverage and chocolate from the mini bar.

It was not my best trip to London, but it was a decent first encounter with an exciting city which I came to know well in subsequent decades. Later, there came many laughs, many discoveries, and many unforgettable theater experiences. This was the slightly inauspicious start.

One of the twelve photos I took. Seriously? What is it even?

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Always Nordic, Never Alpine

Pandemic winter is both harder, because there is no place to go, and easier, because there is no compulsion to go places. I briefly interrupted my hibernation on a Saturday afternoon to engage in some cross-country skiing. It was more like “cross-yard”—in fact, it was exactly that, because I literally skied out of my backyard and around the subdivision where I live. Very Old Country. Driving to a specified and possibly paid location just to ski around seems entirely too bourgeois, unless one is on a holiday.

This is me, starting out in my actual back yard.

I would not say I was skiing before I was walking, but I certainly do not remember learning to ski. It was just something children did all winter long, along with sliding down every snow drift and every patch of ice in our path. All my skis in childhood were the kind that did not require special boots, but the type where you just slide your foot into a rubber band, and another rubber band goes around the heel (and sometimes not even that). You put your “valenki” onto the rubber piece, because “valenki”, being just felted wool, are very slippery (Although I was always made to wear galoshes over mine. I come by my indifference to fashionable footwear honestly). In Russia, I never graduated to the adult skis which came with special boots that attached to the skis with the metal cage-like fastenings that looked complicated and somehow final, leaving no possibility of escape.

Not my actual skis, but a pretty accurate representation.

In my childhood, my main ski route was in the front yard of our house (so that my grandmother could watch me out of our kitchen window). It was an easy and pleasant morning before going to school during the second shift, until it became less attractive when big garbage bins were installed in my direct path. Occasionally, I was allowed to ski in the big field behind our house, a site of soccer matches in the summer. Both of these have since been sacrificed to progress: the field is now home to an auto dealership, and an extremely shocking high rise is getting built right across from the old two- and three-story apartment buildings. At least the trash bins have disappeared.

These are way fancier than anything we had back in the USSR

Skiing was the gym activity during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the school year. As a gym activity, it was terrible for many reasons. First, the school-provided skis were awful and literally went nowhere, because they were never properly waxed and got stuck in the snow. Choosing skis in the gym was a predictable pandemonium. If you were not appropriately aggressive, you could end up with two left skis. I usually brought my own skis, like some of the children of Soviet privilege, and because my grandmother was convinced that the school skis were unsanitary disease-bearers. This involved hauling a pair of skis on the crowded trolley #4, an experience similar to riding the NYC subway during rush hour, but with worse smell (some of which was contributed by me, because at one point I had a winter coat with goat fur collar. Let me tell you, nothing, nothing at all smells worse than goat fur, even after it was aired out AND sprayed with Red Moscow perfume. This might explain why I have never found goats even remotely adorable). Guarding my skis against breakage was a nerve-wracking experience for several winters.

When I was very young, we were not allowed to use poles in school—the temptations of wielding them as swords or trying to poke someone in the eye was too great. I am ashamed to confess I was not always able to resist either once the pole ban was lifted.

Second, although gym during the ski season was a double lesson to allow us time to change, returning to regular classroom after being outside for an hour and a half, sweaty and soaked, covered in snow, was entirely uninspiring. In my later school years, I have taken to not returning. Along with a few pals, we would ski away from the pack on the field where we raced in a long loop, right across the roundabout at October Square (luckily, there were not that many cars in my hometown in those days), grab our backpacks from the school vestibule, and keep going. Who knows what kind of a delinquent I might have become had we stayed in Russia? American schools sure scared me straight…

Third, we had to learn downhill skiing. Now, there are no mountains where I come from. In my entire life, I have never lived anywhere near a mountain range of any kind. To me, anything taller than me is a mountain. If I see an incline, it’s a mountain. There was not so much as a hill in either our front yard or our back yard. However, my hometown, like any medieval fortress, is built along a river. The dramatic and terrifying hill, “Friday Descent” (probably referring to Good Friday, otherwise it is a pretty random name) was the location of our Alpine exercises.

Trust me, this is significantly more terrifying in winter.

Although I am not particularly afraid of heights, I am strangely afraid of speed—or, more precisely, of my inability to control myself on runaways skis. Thus, most my training on Friday Descent ended with practicing safe falling, which is the skill that serves me well to this day whenever I am confronted by any elevation while skiing. I either fall immediately, or sit on my skis like they are a sled. Occasionally, tired of rolling over into a snow bank, I would just find an opportune moment while the gym teacher was focused on observing students at the bottom of the hill and ski away on the hilltop, across the roundabout, and you know the rest.

Since I have not attended a gym class since I managed to get an exemption from my last one in the mid-80s, skiing, strictly of the Nordic kind, has been a pleasurable activity. And so, if you see a middle-aged woman gliding across your front yard—or your back yard—one sunny winter afternoon, it just might be #oldladyskiing.

The Old Country. Front yard: behind the fence on the right is where I used to ski.

The Old Country. Back yard: the big wide open field is no more.

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Wanting All the Cards

I got to play “Two truths and a lie” on a Zoom call at work. Of course I loved it. In fact, I think everyone did, because we are lawyers. And of course I obsessed about it for a couple of weeks leading up to the big day, because I like to think that many interesting and unlikely things happened to me over the years. I was just a trifle annoyed that most of my colleagues had similarly outrageous and improbable experiences, though somewhat mollified when, after I announced my three “facts”, someone muttered that “they are all lies”[1].

This got me thinking about what, among the many weird, yet non-traumatic, particulars of my life remain obscure, yet interesting? And I keep coming back to my playing card collection.

For a large part of my life, I have loved playing cards and wanted to possess them. By this I mean, I do not necessarily love playing card games, but love the cards themselves. It has been a deep and abiding love, a bearer of much joy, a literary and artistic inspiration, and #42 on my list of Favorite Things [A Few of [Whose] Favorite Things – Old Lady Writing][2].

Sadly, this is not my photo, but this is exactly how it was.

I trace the beginnings of this beautiful friendship to the early summers of my life leisurely spent on the Crimean beaches, playing a rousing game of Fool with whatever friends I made hanging out on the wooden sunbeds[3] between dips in the sea. We also played Witch (Old Maid) and Drunkard (War), but Fool, the most popular Russian card game, was the only one that required some skill[4].

Clockwise from top left, Stella, Ophelia, Violette, Sylvia, and Sylvester. This is the deck she drew from memory.

When I was six, my grandmother, with whom I spent all my summers at the beach, and I were joined by acquaintances from our hometown, a couple of sisters around her age, one of whom had a 10 year old daughter, Irina. For reasons that are lost to time, there was a joint refusal by the aged relatives to purchase a deck of cards for us, and so Irina simply drew one. Although no record remains of that deck, I remember it as the crowning achievement of Pre-Raphaelite art. We even gave the queens the fanciest names we knew, and attempted to name the jacks, but could only come up with one (look, we were just little girls in the USSR). We so much wanted a real deck of cards! At some point, Irina’s mother relented and bought her one [5]. Searching for a facsimile of that deck became a goal in my adult life.

Arriving in the US, I was absolutely stunned and disappointed to discover that playing cards here are not beautiful, and the face cards in all the decks are the same. Of all the easy wins, playing cards were such a letdown! And then, for American Christmas ’84, my mother presented me with a deck surprisingly purchased at Jacobson’s. Baroque by Piatnik, which started my collection, is still the most beautiful deck I own.

The rules of the collection are simple: face cards have to be distinct, human, and beautiful. That means no animals, no cartoons, and no decks that have a weird theme like politicians, posters, quotes, or whatever. They have to have traditional suits (French is preferred, because that is what I am used to) and traditional court cards. I include stripped decks, because again, that is what was popular in Russia in my day. The backs are irrelevant.

According to Wikipedia, the largest card collection is over 11,000 decks. Mine is about 100 times smaller, not counting double decks, but I love [almost] each and every one. About a third of them are by Piatnik [Piatnik – Company], the greatest and largest card manufacturer in the world. As a teenager, I vaguely dreamed of working for Piatnik, but literally could not imagine what skills I possess and into what job they would translate.

My collection was enlarged by stopping in all stores that might carry these “artistic”, for lack of a better word, European-style cards. In the US, that primarily included fancy stores that might carry gambling paraphernalia (and surprisingly, the store inside Cinderella Castle in Disneyworld, as well as my beloved and dearly missed quirky Peaceable Kingdom in Ann Arbor). In Europe, it was pretty much any stationery or souvenir store, as well as big department stores like Harrod’s. My mother has been a very enthusiastic contributor since the beginning, always traveling with the hard copy list of my decks. I stopped collecting almost a decade ago, because Piatnik seems to have run out of ideas, and ordering on the internet is no fun. I have a very slight and vague regret of not buying a new deck in Dublin last year, but this gives me a reason to return[6].

A word about artistic inspiration. As a refugee child in Rome with no toys but an extravagant set of markers which my family somehow managed to afford for Christmas, I drew a paper doll and, over the years, a mass of elaborate period dresses, inspired by my own imagination combined with dolls in Italian toy store windows and later, playing cards. Since queens on playing cards are only portrayed from the waist up, all the skirts are mine.

(Just a few of the dresses; the last one was left unfinished around 30 years ago.)

[1] My big lie was the monkey story from The First Spanish Trip. The truths were crashing a circus rehearsal (stay tuned!) and being chased by someone wielding a can opener (a singularly unpleasant event not worth retelling).

[2] I specifically did not mention it then, because I knew it will someday deserve its own full entry.

[3] English language fails me here. The word that we actually use translates as “trestle bed”, but that seems to mean nothing to anyone. I literally have spent no time on the beach in my English-speaking life, after an entire childhood of sun-drenched salt-water summers.

[4] In later years, during summers at the Baltic Sea, Nines replaced Fool as the rousing card game of choice. My grandfather subsequently demonstrated himself as the most charming cheat in the game of Nines.

[5] Eventually, the seven of clubs was lost, and we drew a card on nothing better than a piece of green blotter paper. Needless to say, the seven of clubs was extremely conspicuous.

[6] And I never found Piatnik’s King Arthur deck. I probably could now, but I prefer to leave this slight gap in the collection. “Nothing in life has any business being perfect”.

A Few of [Whose] Favorite Things

I used to read self-help books. I am not entirely sure if they really did help, but there is no real way to know, is there? We never stop learning and growing, and all that. Even as I write this, I am waiting for the library to deliver to me a copy of “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck”. I am #110 on 6 EBook copies, and #223 on 20 audiobook copies, with wait time of at least six months, according to the library website. I am expecting that half a year from today (at least), I will be so much cooler and calmer and more collected. Until then, I have to keep relying on old coping skills.

One of those is a list of 100 things that bring me joy. I made this list almost a quarter of a century ago, and I still have it. I have never revised it. Looking at it now, I am generally in agreement with my younger self. However, there are some items that are genuinely puzzling:

#15: Playing badminton. Not that it is not fun, but seriously—when did I play so much badminton in this lifetime that it merited its own entry on the list? I mean, badminton got into Top 100, and even Top 15? OK, the list is not in order of priority, but to have thought of badminton so early on? A head-scratcher…

#19: Lilliput Lane houses. Again, Top 20 in the Spirit of Acquisition? I have a few of those cute miniatures, but since I have been focused more on unloading than acquiring crap, I mean, stuff, in recent years, I have to say that this one is decidedly off the list.

#41: Trivial Pursuit. Is it even a thing these days? I think it might have been replaced by Cards Against Humanity in my life. Maybe less intellectual, but a lot more laughs!

#51. Jelly Bellies. Whoa, really? I used to love Jelly Bellies, but that much? Glad they are not in the Top 50—that would be embarrassing. Bottom 50 is OK.

#61. TV Guide. That’s a heartbreaking one. I used to love TV Guide so much, when it was in that little compact format. In high school, I used to trek to Meijer’s Thrifty Acres weekly to buy TV Guide as soon as it was out on the stands. It was so important in the pre-internet days, my main source of information that counted (don’t judge!). Then they changed the format, which made me super-mad, because then it looked like any other magazine. And I just could not keep up with the thousands of new channels anyway. And then technology got so ahead of me that these days I can only turn the TV on with express instructions from my spouse and children. Oh, but I still miss TV Guide! I wish I had kept that issue with Richard Chamberlain as Father Ralph from “The Thorn Birds” on the cover…

#89. Fashion magazines. I have no idea who actually made this entry, although the handwriting seems to be mine. It must have been a minor case of possession, as I do not recollect ever purchasing or even looking through a fashion magazine. I must have been running out of things that brought me joy…

Then there is a handful of items that are largely gone from the world:

#17. Bookstores. Oh, what a joy it was to browse at Borders or even Barnes & Noble (but Borders was the ultimate)! But who am I to complain, when I so utterly and completely, albeit somewhat belatedly, jumped on the Kindle/Audible/OverDrive wagon and have not physically set foot in a bookstore in years? If Borders was still around, I would still be buying books there. I can safely tell myself this.

And finally, something that was not on the list decades ago, but would be #1 today:

Dogs. I love dogs. But I did not even like them when the list was initially written. Which just goes to show how much things can change in one lifetime, as I write this while wearing my “Home is where the dog is” T-shirt, given to me by my mom. [Who also did not make the Top 100 list then, but definitely would now!]