Mon

09

Mar

2009

Put That Back!
Written by Pat Fortunato   

I have a cleaning person (we don’t call them ladies any more, ladies ) named Eva, who is lovely and cleans up a storm. She hardly breaks anything, and if I left cash lying around, I would find it on my desk, the bills ironed, the coins polished and stacked in neat piles. She’s also reliable, shows up on time, and doesn’t drink the liquor.

So what could possibly be the problem? Well, you know that I MUST have something to complain about, every day if possible, but definitely on Tuesdays and Fridays when I write new posts, but  honestly, there is an actual problem here, and it is simply this: she moves things . . .

pats_jewelry_tree.jpgReal panic occurred the day she "straightened out" my jewelry, putting the antique ring given to me by a dear friend into the little mesh pouch that holds a costume necklace and earrings that look, to be honest, very much like the ring, which is the real thing.  When it wasn’t where it was supposed to be, and Eva was long gone, back to her own digs presumably to happily rearrange her own things, I freaked. (“It’s in here someplace!” was absolutely no consolation.) I was positive I had somehow lost it. . I am capable of losing anything.

Did I ever tell you about the underwear I lost near the Spanish Steps in Rome? No? Another time, another blog. Promise.

Well, I found the ring. Phew! And Eva and I cleared it up about the other rings and things, plus I got one of those cute little torso ladies (women? headless mannequins? trees in dresses? It's so hard to be politically correct these days!) that hold your jewelry, so all is okay in the baubles and bangles department. But what about the rest of my life, you might ask . . .

Well, Eva is on the job. Which is good, and bad.

She straightens up your desk so that it looks nice and neat as all get-out, but you can’t find anything. Where's the checkbook? Where's that check you were supposed to deposit? The business card of the person who’s going to give you a book deal? The menu for the Chinese restaurant? (You’re hungry!) Your blood pressure is not helped by these incidents, even though you find the missing items eventually, because she doesn’t throw them away, she just rearranges them.

She does, however, throw away those little tidbits of food that you were planning to eat. Hey! All the latest medical evidence indicates that lots of small meals are really good for you, and can keep you thin. Works for me. I admit that some of these tender morsels end up hidden in my fridge and eventually would qualify as exhibits at the New York Historical Society, but honestly, I do try to eat them soon. Well, “soon” wasn’t soon enough for Eva, so out they went, quicker than you could say, “Where’s that half a tuna sandwich I left on the counter?” Happily, Eva and I have cleared that up, too, and now, you can find little baggies of goodies in my refrigerator, my counter, and my kitchen cabinets.

Then there's the bathroom. Bathroom problems are bad. Actually, the problem lies in the medicine chest above my sink, which, truth to tell, holds very little in the way of medicine. That’s in another cabinet. No, this one holds all the beauty products a woman (or this woman) thinks she needs to look sufficiently presentable to show her face (hair and neck) to the Outside World.

The problem arose because I’ve been getting more and more absent-minded lately. Bear in mind that I started out as an absent-minded little kid, never remembering to bring a pencil or paper (or both) to school and getting all A’s just the same, and have continued doing things in this time-honored tradition.

The piece de resistance (besides the underwear thing) was losing my senior thesis at college. I had to reconstruct it entirely from my notes, because, sigh, there was no copy. I got a B-, a grade I always rationalized by saying that something had gotten lost in the translation, but really, I probably wouldn’t have gotten an A anyway. It was on Dylan Thomas, the Welsh poet, in case anyone cares, and he lost lots of things too, including his sobriety, lots of times. Looking back, I probably lost the paper in some tavern or other myself. Who remembers?

But lately, “absent-minded” doesn’t begin to cover it for me. I forget where I put my glasses, even when they’re right in front of me, even when they’re on my head! Then I started noticing that when I put on makeup (wearing contacts, of course), that I often would forget something. Like the eyebrow pencil. Or the concealer. Or the lip gloss (to go over the lipstick). Okay, so it's not nice to fool Mother Nature. But neither is it nice to go out without eyebrows, especially when you’ve got circles under your eyes and your lips are dry!

Luckily, I came up with a solution. I lined all the things up in the order that I use them. That way, I wouldn't forget any of them. Simple, no? All great solutions are simple. Remember that. But alas, great is not perfect. Because then, Along Came Eva. And after she got through with them, all my bottles and lotions were sparkling clean but hopelessly mixed up, and not only might I forget to use the deodorant (lift an arm and lose a friend, anybody?), but on a really bad day I might mix up the toothpaste with the Preparation X (we don’t even want to go there).

So why don’t I just have another little talk with Eva? Well, there is a language barrier, although I do speak a few words of Polish, and her English is improving rapidly. (Lately she leaves me notes that are spelled better than most of the e-mails I receive.).  It was easy to explain about the leftover chicken or the precious jewel. But how in the name of household gods do I tell her about my Saving Face System — while still saving face? She thinks I’m rather eccentric as it is. And although I worked long and hard to achieve this level of eccentricity, I somehow don’t want to get into this with her.

So for the moment, I’ve come up with another plan. You knew I would, didn’t you?

I cleaned out the cabinet to get it down to the bare necessities: you know, eyelash curler, two shades of foundation, three kinds of blush, four cases of eye shadow, stuff you need.  Then I put all the lotions and liquid things on the second shelf, and all the “dry goods” (brushes, pencils and such) into a little black plastic rectangular container, which itself fits into another little black plastic rectangular container, which both fit into the first shelf of the cabinet.

Then, when I am ready to get to work —  or "put on my face," as we so quaintly used to put it — I place both containers on the sink, side by side. And as I use something from the one that’s full, I put it into the one that’s empty. When I have successfully moved everything from one container to the other, my work here is done.

So, unless Eva decides to move the little rectangular boxes — or the medicine chest  — (she is big and strong besides being beautiful) — I am good to go, secure in the knowledge that everything was moved, nothing was missed. My face in place, my head held high.

Now, if I could just find my underwear . . . Come to think of it, it was the Trevi Fountain, not the Spanish Steps.


SEE ALSO: I've Lost it! AKA Law and DisOrder
 
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0 # Pat Fortunato 2009-03-18 10:21
The underwear story is posted! Go forth and enjoy.
As for Eva, she's a keeper, for sure, and I do appreciate it. However. . . there is another It's-In-Here-Somewhere crisis: I can't find my wedding album. Either Eva moved it, or I did. She's coming on Friday, so maybe between the two of us, we'll find it.
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REVIEWS TO PERUSE

I'm All Right, Jack:
"Jack" is not just all right, it's totally delightful and fresh as a daisy after all these years (made in 1959), with Sellers, although not technically the lead, giving the brilliant performance that launched him as an international star. He plays an all-too-zealous union leader and father of a blonde bombshell who falls for Stanley, the British Upper Class Twit played, also to perfection, by Ian Carmichael, who you might remember from the Lord Peter Wimsey series. The makeout scenes between the the Twit and the Bombshell are priceless. But what is Stanley doing in this working class atmosphere anyway? Working. And too well at that. Forced by financial circumstances too dreary to discuss, he gets a job in his uncle's factory and messes things up for the other workers by, well, working, and thus making his fellow employees look bad. The film takes a big shot at unions — but also at management: they are manipulating white-collar thieves who'll do anything for a buck. Or a pound. Except for the ones, like Major Hitchcock, played by Terry Thomas, who are just plain lazy and inept. Needless to say, Stanley foils everybody's plans, labor and management alike, to my great joy and delight. Oh, and on top of everything else, Margaret Rutherford plays dotty dowager Aunt Dolly. Delicious!

 The Big Lebowski:
What can you say that hasn't been said before: brilliant, inspired, with some of the most memorable lines ever to come out of a movie, the most quoted being "The Dude abides." Oh yes. For anyone who hasn't yet seen the film, and it's now out in a special Blu-Ray edition if that floats your bowling ball. The Dude in question,  played to perfection by Jeff Bridges, is an out-of-work pothead who is roughed up and has his rug destroyed by some thugs mistaking him for another, bigger, Lebowski. The Dude is really upset about this because, man, "that rug really tied the room together," which The Dude says with all seriousness and not a trace of irony, a great comic touch considering the condition his condition is in.  Oh, and besides "Just Dropped In," all the music is perfect for the film. The plot, according to Wikipedia, which has been known to be wrong, is "loosely based on Raymond chandler's novel, The Big Sleep." Could be. But who cares. It involves a bowling competition, "the occasional acid flashback," a trophy wife, a group of German nihilists, a kidnapping gone awry, a mad millionaire and his lackey, in another great performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Actually, they're all great performances. Never a fan of John Goodman before or since, he is brilliant in this film. And so are John Turturro, overacting his little heart out, Steve Buscemi in a nerdy, needy role that makes you marvel at his star turn in Boardwalk Empire, and even the actors in the smaller parts, especially Julianne Moore and Sam Elliott. Elliott plays The Stranger (God? Everyman? The part of us that roots for the bad boy?) who elicits from Bridges the immortal words, "The Dude abides." Which prompts The Stranger to comment to the audience: "Don't know about you but I take comfort in that. It's good knowin' he's out there. The Dude. Takin' 'er easy for all us sinners. Shoosh. I sure hope he makes the finals." We'll never know about the bowling trophy because there's never been a sequel to this 1998 film by the great Coen Brothers, and I hope there never will be. It just abides, as all great films do.

Prince of the City:
Okay, the criticisms of this movie are not totally unfounded: it's too long, and Treat Williams may have overacted a bit, although I found him so deliciously charming I couldn't care less, and there's one part concerning the Jerry Orbach character I just didn't understand. But get over it, The New Yorker, this is one powerful movie. And yes, Dog Day Afternoon it isn't, but what it? The DVD has a great special feature with Williams (I so want to call him Treat) and Sidney (what the hell: I once made a meatloaf sandwich for the man) that explains a lot about filmmaking in general and this movie in particular. Also, Sidney's views on good and evil, and how things are not so black and white as you think. I loved it.

Bad Day At Black Rock:
Recommended on TCM by Robert Osbourne as a film he originally had no interest in seeing, then loved it, and by Alex Baldwin, who pointed out the great actors in the cast, including Lee Marvin, Ernest Brognine and Dean Jagger. Well, after all that, I had to like it, right?  I did. A lot. It was a Good Day On My Couch.
Behind the Scenes Stuff: Spencer Tracey was off drinking and wouldn't commit to the film until the producers (who wanted him desperately) told him that they had Alan Ladd, at which point Tracey grabbed it.  He was perfect for the part, wearing a dark suit and tie the entire time in a western setting,  pulling it off perfectly. Other than that "fashion statement," the film makes a strong case against racism: the hatred of the Japanese during WW2. See it.

Song of The Thin Man:
I usually like these frothy, silly, suave, utter unrealistic films from the 30s and 40s, with William Powell and Myrna Loy as the couple we'd all like to be — if only we had the looks, brains, money, a huge capacity for drinking and a dog like Asta. But this one was a stinker, rather than a stinger, or maybe a sinker, because  it turned out to be the last, not to mention the least, in the series. Watch any of the others four sequels, but not this one: Even the pooch jumped the shark.

The Children's Hour:
It had its moments, and just looking at Audrey Hepburn makes life worth living, but mostly I kept thinking that the play, by Lillian Hellman, was so much better. It's about two young women runing a school for girls, who are accused by a hateful little brat of being (GASP!) lesbians. And although the closest we get in this 1961 production to using that actual term is the word "unnatural," it's enough to ruin their lives.  A young Shirley McClaine is worth seeing in this, and James Garner, and Audrey Hepburn is, well, Audrey Hepburn. The rumor of the love that dare not speak its name is totally untrue — or is it? And I'll say no more, because you should see the movie for yourself, imperfect as it may be, as is Life Itself.

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