Posts Tagged ‘Memory Loss’
Forty is the New Thirty!*
*…except when you’re pregnant!
Hey folks! I’ve got a neat new game, and I’d like to invite all of you to play! It’s called, “Except When You’re Pregnant!” See if you can follow along.
You know that silly game you played once in college that was totally & completely hilarious (especially after downing 3 sakis, 2 large Sapporos, and possibly having smoked weed before even entering the restaurant)… that “between the sheets” game? If memory serves (which it rarely does), the phrase was most popular paired with a Chinese fortune:
“You will have great luck”
… “Between the sheets!”
“You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability.”
… “Between the sheets!”
“Plan for many pleasures ahead.”
… “Between the sheets!”
“Make two grins grow where there was only a grouch before.”
… “Between the sheets!”
“Something you lost will soon turn up.”
… “Between the sheets!”
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Well, I’ve got a NEW game, a GROWNUP GIRL game, and it goes like this:
I’ll say a statement of fact, and then you yell, “except when you’re pregnant!”
K?
Here goes:
Going out to the movies and a late dinner is SO MUCH FUN! (your turn: “Except when you’re pregnant!”)
Cleaning the house isn’t too hard! (“Except when you’re pregnant!”)
Staying away from ice cream and chocolate is hard, but I do it because I care about my weight. (“Except when you’re pregnant!”)
No one eats pizza every week, chocolate chip cookies and/or ice cream every single day, and full meals of a block of cheese with ten rice crackers every day too!! (“Except when you’re pregnant!”)
It’s so easy not to get emotional about the silly stuff. (“Except when you’re pregnant!”)
BWAHAHAHAHAHA!
Well, that’s it for now, folks. Thanks for joining in, you did great!
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
P.S. Bonus points for coming up with your own phrases for the game and writing them in the Comments Section!
Getting a good night's sleep is easy! (EXCEPT WHEN YOU'RE PREGNANT... or married to someone who is pregnant!!!)
Flashback Friday! (This I know is True)
Every Friday, I will post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memories, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below. !
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – This I know is True – the BLOG
I’ve lived a long while, and learned much in my 28 or so – COUGH – years… and I thought it’s about time I stopped hogging all this important information, and start sharing it with the world. So here goes!
True:
1. You should never ask a woman if she’s pregnant. NEVER. DO YOU HEAR ME?? I don’t care if it’s been two years since she gave birth, that belly she has is from her last pregnancy. I know her stomach is enormous. I know her stomach appears to be bigger this week than it was last week. Don’t. Ask her. If she’s pregnant.
2. The reason women’s boobs get gigantic when they are pregnant is NOT because they are filling with milk. The milk doesn’t come until the baby is born, dummy. The big boobs are there for one reason and one reason alone: to distract your husband from your large belly and big ass. God is brilliant.
3. If you throw gum on the ground, you’ll step on gum within a week or so. Don’t tempt fate. Trust me on this one.
4. If you like food more than alcohol, you are probably Jewish. Seriously, check your lineage on your mom’s side. Told you.
5. Chocolate is good for you. Period.
6. Don’t trust anyone who tells you they have found their soulmate. In fact, TRUST that they have NOT found their soulmate if they tell you they found their soulmate. Off the top of my head, I can think of two friends, very spiritual, sharing, and smart women. They both “knew” they had met their soulmates. I was jealous. Until, a couple years later, when one of those two women had married a completely different guy. The other married her “soulmate”… and then divorced him. She’s remarried now to a different guy. I mean, I’m into my husband and everything, but who am I to know from soulmate?
7. Drinking olive oil before drinking a lot of alcohol does NOT prevent you from getting wasted, nor does it prevent you from getting alcohol poisoning the next day. If my kids ever read this blog, I’m just guessing about this one, I wouldn’t really know since I’ve never gotten drunk.
8. Crap. I had a really good one, but I forgot it.
9. Some of the smartest and best people didn’t go to college, and some didn’t even graduate high school. I can say that with authority, because I graduated Yale with straight A’s, and some of my best friends and peers never came close to college.
a. Corollary: Happiness is more important than getting into a “good” school.
b. Corollary to that Corollary: On the other hand, going to a good college does help you think of cool words like “Corollary.”
10. If you forget something you were going to say or do, go back to the exact physical place you were when you first had the idea. You’ll see – do that, and you’ll remember what you had forgotten! Argh, but I’m sitting right where I was before; why can’t I remember what I wanted to say for number 8?? It was such a good one!!
On that note…
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Yummy on Salad. Not so much before drinking 17 kinds of alcohol.
Cocktail Club
When I was around 24 years old, my friends and I created an exclusive membership-only organization: Cocktail Club. My girlfriend Nicole was the President, Richard was either co-President or Vice President, and I was probably the Secretary or something like that.
Here were the rules (as I remember them, which means maybe this didn’t happen at all, but if it did, it went more or less like this):
- Once a month, a Cocktail Club member would host a cocktail party. I think it was always on a Thursday night.
- The host chose the venue, and supplied things like cups, napkins, food/hors d’oeuvres, juice and other mixers.
- The guests brought the alcohol. Entrance to a Cocktail Club party was only allowed under 2 strict conditions: 1. The invite, and 2. Each guest had to bring one unopened bottle of alcohol. Vodka, Rum, lots of wine, cases of beer… entry was denied to any guest who showed up – member or non-member – who didn’t bring their “entrance ticket.” Didn’t matter if you came as a couple – two people meant two bottles. (With this system, even though people drank a lot at each party, the host was always left with a bottles and bottles of leftover wine & alcohol.)
- Members attending the party were allowed to bring one, and only one, non-Cocktail Club member.
- The host, on the other hand, could invite anyone he/she wanted. So the parties always had completely different feels to them, depending on who was hosting, where they were hosting, and who their crowd of non-Cocktail Club member friends were.
I asked Nicole if she had the original copy of the RULES but sadly, she didn’t. She did, however, remember two rules I had forgotten:
- 1. Only clear or light-colored liquids allowed. This rule, I believe, went into effect following the party at our friend Katie Brown’s Hancock Park mansion (rented from the King of Malaysia, if memory serves) where I gracefully managed to spill my glass of red wine all over her white sofa. This was the same Katie Brown who went on to give Martha Stuart a run for her money with her cooking TV shows, workshops, etc… Whoops.
- 2. As soon as the party was over, people had to leave immediately. No stragglers. This way, the host would never have to worry about dealing with energy-suckers after hours.
My friend Caroline hosted her event at the Chateau Marmont, supposedly in the same bungalow where John Belushi died. One person hosted his at a comedy club. Another outside, in a lush garden. I hosted my event in my Spanish style, hardwood floor apartment. People like Margaret Cho showed up and got drunk with the rest of us.
What happened to cocktail club? In a word: Rehab.
Two of our core founding members went into AA and Al-Anon, others of us “cut down” or completely stopped partying, and the whole thing promptly fizzled.
And in another word: Love! (My friend Caroline met her future husband and the father of her 2 kids at cocktail club, too.)
Reunion, anyone?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
It all happened here... the drinking, the fun, the magic, the... um...drinking.
Flashback Friday! (Up All Night)
Flashback Friday!
Every Friday, I will post an oldie but a goodie blog for your enjoyment. To those of you who just started reading The Grownup Girl recently, enjoy the “new” blog! To those of you who have been with me from the start, but have memories like mine, enjoy the “new” blog!
And to those who were with me from the start and who already read this blog and burned it into your memories, word for word, photogenically, I say:
What are you doing wasting your time dilly-dallying on my website? Get out there and find me a book deal!
If you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – Up All Night
“Sister, sister, please let me hold him. I wanna make him stay up all night, here we go! All night long!”
Can you name that song?
Boyfriend from camp around age 14 introduced me to that song. And now, it’s stuck in my head, on a loop.
Because I’m wired.
I doubt I’ll be up all night tonight – it’s only 11:13pm, so I’ll finish this blog, watch one TV show or so, do my before-bed routine, then sleep… and with luck (translation: no children waking me up all night), I’ll get a good 5 hours or so before it’s up time again.
I don’t like to go to sleep at night. I would rather watch TV, surf the computer, or write emails. Or blogs. Sometimes I’ll go to the gym late, though that means I need to shower when I get home, unwind (TV), which pushes bedtime even later. Or do errands – I mean I do have 3 kids after all, & a full time job. Who has the time during the day? Yes, I’m that weird girl who hits Trader Joe’s at 9:55 pm (5 minutes before closing) and then gets to Target by 10:20 to do a good half an hour of shopping there before closing.
The funny thing is, I love to take naps. If I’m tired, on a weekend day, my favorite thing in the world (short of sleeping in, in the morning, which I haven’t been able to do ONCE since I was preggers with my 7 yr old, so you do the math on that one), is to fall into a cozy, comfy, warm, enveloping sleep. Ahhhhh.
But at night? Hell to the no. Especially once everyone goes to sleep. It’s finally ME time. Veg time. Relax time. It’s not such a big deal, but usually I push the envelope throughout the week so much that once a week or so I crash when putting the kids to bed around 8 and sleep the whole night through. [Editor's note: or I get sick. Like I did last week. 
]
At least I don’t actually have insomnia anymore – almost never, unless I take something caffeinated too close to bedtime. My whole childhood I suffered from terrible bouts of insomnia. I spent many nights from as early an age as I can remember (not that I remember much, see “Memory Loss” blog for details) awake to hear the first birds chirping, the first light rising, and finally, finally, the long-awaited awakening of whatever family member happened to get up first. Mom, usually.
By then, I’d be spent, exhausted, a pale ghost. I’d finally fall asleep and then wake up late, if I could. Then the cycle would start again.
By college, I was partying like crazy. (What was I doing? Use your imagination. Yes, that is what I was doing. Yes, that too. Yes. Seriously. Yup. Yes, at Yale, believe me, nerds know how to party, too.) I was partying like it was 1999, and that just made my insomnia go into an even higher octane gear (if there is such a thing??) and I would go sometimes days or even one week without really sleeping at all.
It only took me another seven years, give or take, before I got help, and helped myself, and broke that pattern.
But that’s another story.
You know what? All this writing is starting to make me sleepy.
c/xo
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
My actual bloodshot, exhausted eye. Live from Los Angeles. Don't be a hater.
Flashback Friday! (Television Trumps Memory Loss)
Yikes… I was going to re-post my old blog, Memory Loss, today. But when I read thru it… sometimes old blogs are meant to be just that – old blogs (that live for eternity on cyberspace, hibernating, lying in wait for the perfect time when they’ll jump out into the public again and freak your current self out).
So instead, here’s a shallow-er one for you to sink your teeth into-or, you know, to tap the tips of your teeth onto:
(BTW, if you hate to read, just click on the audio link, below.)
BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin) – I Want my Primetime TV – the BLOG
Can we talk? About TV?
Wait – don’t go! What did you think of that last episode of Lost?
Still here? Whew.
Truth: I’ve never seen Lost. I’m really glad. Because when I get into a show, I get INTO a show. I go deep.
Me and House, for example? We’re lovers. (No need to tattle to my husband – we’re kind of in a threesome, anyway.) Bones? Silly show. Stupid! But I’m hooked. 24? Don’t even talk to me, I’m busy being angry that it’s only 1 hour once a week, and Jack hasn’t had a truly hot girlfriend since the girl who was in Lipstick Jungle went crazy. Fringe? Fucking creepy but AMAZING acting & characters & yes, I’m hooked. Lie to Me? I’m having an affair behind House’s back with Dr. Lightman…
[editors note: Update - 24 is long gone, and Fringe has long gone off the deep end, and now that Lie to Me has bitten the proverbial dust particles, GrownupGirl's obsession with Dr. Lightman has been replaced with a much deeper and more worrisome obsession with ALL Grey's Anatomy's characters, men and women.]
[Hahaha just kidding. There's no "editor," just me, Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin). Hi! Okay, back to your flashback blog...]
…Not to mention all the reality shows I’m hooked on, like America’s Next Top Model (don’t hate me because I’m beautiful), Last Comic Standing (so sue me, I like to laugh), So You Think You Can Dance, and the annoying but impossible not to watch, American Idol.
[Update: Don't watch any of those shows anymore. Could it be that I'm growing, evolving? Or just that I have less free time? You, Simon Cowell, can be the judge. Or you, Adam & Christina and CeLo.]
A year ago before we cut costs here at the homestead, we also had Bravo, Showtime & HBO, so you could have just added Project Runway, Top Chef, Shameless, Entourage and Big Love to that list. (NO I am not into True Blood. Vampires are gross unless they are steamy 2010 versions of 1980 Rob Lowe heartthrobs… yes I’m talking about you, Mr. Pattinson.)
I guess it’s obvious why I’ve never had the time to do a blog before now.
OMG did I forget to say GOSSIP GIRL? Love. Don’t ask me how old I am, it’s none of your business. That show rocks. Usually.
I caught the pilot of Grey’s Anatomy and I already know that if I ever have another baby I’ll watch that whole series on DVD like I did 24, Weeds, and Project Runway to get caught up. What? I have 3 kids & I work full time. Without post-maternity bed rest, how else could I have found the time?
[Update: Um... I guess I hadn't yet heard of Hulu when I originally wrote this blog. Who needs a DVD when I can stream old episodes anywhere, including on the treadmill at the gym?!]
I remember the days of being single, and busy – writing a novel in the evenings, working in an office during the day, going out most nights…
OH – I forgot Modern Family. Run do not Walk to see that show. [Or - just sit on your couch and remember to program the Tivo. Okay, I'll shut up now.]
And I’d never abandon Law & Order SVU. Mariska, you are the Koolest. Plus my old Yale friend Jamie Waterstons’ dad is so likeable. Wait, which Law & Order was he on? [I lied. I do have one more thing to say. I actually don't watch Law & Order anymore, ever. Sorry, Jamie.]
[But I am addicted to The Daily Show, which sometimes stars another ex-Yalie, John Hodgeman.]
O, Sex in the City, how I yearn for you! The golden days of yesteryear.
I’d write more, but I need to sign off & finish this episode of The Good Wife.
It’s fantastic.
Cx/o
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
This party was awesome because my friend and I spent the entire time taking pictures of each other in front of the 'photographers' board' on the red carpet. Eat your heart out, Blair & Serena..
The Reindeer
My mother kindly reminded me that – contrary to my insistence that The Wedding Dress I received at age nine was my Best Christmas Present EVER – my actual BCPE was most certainly the REINDEER she gave me around age seven. Blast my mother with her faulty memory which turns out is, nonetheless, less faulty than my practically-nonexistent memory!
(Note to my newer blog readers, yes it’s true, my memory is horrible. Mostly, I don’t remember things, and when I DO remember things, there’s a 50-50 chance I’ve made them up – or, you know, “remembered” my imagination, and turned it into a “real” memory. Consider yourselves forewarned.)
BTW, I was just kidding, God. Don’t blast Mom! After all, she gave me The Wedding Dress. And the Reindeer. Which, for those of you who don’t read my blog comments religiously, was a reindeer statue my mother gave me one year which measured about half a foot high, one foot long, and was covered in real animal fur. Squirrel, possibly.
Yes, it’s true, The Reindeer was the BCPE, mostly because I was obsessed with reindeer in general during that part of my life, and I may have turned suicidal if Mom hadn’t given me said reindeer. (Or – not, but Mom couldn’t know that, otherwise she may not have searched the entire metropolis of Washington, DC, looking for a reindeer in mid July.)
Wait a minute – the reindeer wasn’t a Christmas present. It was a BIRTHDAY present!
The Wedding Dress still holds the title.
Then again… there was that llama…
The minute I got the reindeer, I supplanted my reindeer obsession with a llama obsession. And my mother, being my mother, rewarded me with a majestic llama statue (real llama fur, natch!) the following Christmas.
Which would make The Wedding Dress… 2nd favorite?
…and then there was that year I got a car…
…Nahhh! Wedding Dress still takes the cake.
Nothing quite like a pre-teen obsession, is there?
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
My other pre-teen obsession - the one even my mother couldn’t give me for Christmas.
WHY on Earth do I Remember THIS??!?
Remember my blog about how I have no memory of, more or less, anything that ever happened to me prior to about three minutes ago? Well, turns out – I DO have a memory! And not just any memory. A razor-sharp, photographic, phonographic, corpusographic (I know, I know, I’m making these words up, but they sound cool, don’t they?) awesome amazing perfect memory.
Of the most random, useless crap on the planet.
Case in point: I was at dinner the other night, sitting at a table with a couple I had never met before. As soon as I found out the husband was from Sweden, out of my mouth blurted: “Hey! Jag heter BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin)! Hur murde?”
In a perfect Swedish accent.
The guy was floored – nobody knows Swedish in Los Angeles! Turns out – neither do I! But I know that sentence, in PERFECTLY accented, PERFECT Swedish. Along with one other gem: “Catan och mousan gor til skolan.” You guessed it folks, the one phrase you would hope every child and adult would be able to say in a foreign country: “The cat and the mouse go to school.”
When I was around thirteen, I had a friend whose father was the Diplomat from Sweden. She taught me these two phrases. And apparently, they were burned for all eternity, into my conscious memory.
And those Swedish sentences are not swimming all alone in that vast terrain! They are accompanied by song lyrics, amazing song lyrics, stuff I listened to as a pre-teen, all the way up to the present. A taste of what rattles around in my brain:
Valley Girl, she’s a Valley Girl… Okay, fine, for sure, for sure, she’s a Valley Girl, and there is no cure. Okay, fine, for sure, for sure, she’s a – “Like, Oh my God!” Valley Girl. “Like, Totally!” Valley Girl. “Oh my God, gag me with a spoon, I’m so sure!” Valley Girl.
Which reminds me of another little nugget seared into my cerebral cortex, a little sing-song rap, that must be said in a lilting imitation of a 1980’s Valley Girl:
Like, if someone held a gun to my head and said, like, “hit the floor!” I’d like, hit the floor, but if they didn’t, I, like, wouldn’t.
This was a comedy routine I learned from two adorable sisters I babysat for when I was about fourteen years old. They’d sing it, shout it, banter it back and forth… and when I came home and told my sister about it, we adopted it, and would occasionally adapt it, with whatever our latest obsession happened to be – Like, if someone held some Toesies to my head and said, like, “Hit the floor!” I’d, like, hit the floor. But if they didn’t, I, like, wouldn’t.
Don’t ask me why we were obsessed with Toesies (an infomercial gem of the 80’s, a little pink foam cut-out that fit between each toe so you could paint your toenails without them smushing each other and messing the polish up before it dried). But we were. Obsessed. It was the answer to everything, from “Hey, what are you up to?”
“Toesies!”
“Hey, come on! What are you really up to?”
“Toesies!”
“Come on!” (repeat that ad infinitum)… to
“Okay, let’s play Twenty Questions! What am I thinking of?”
“Toesies!”
“Awww… how’d you guess??”
So, yeah, that stayed with me. That, and this little moment in time when I was running through the streets of Yale, high as a kite on… ummmmm….. Well, let’s just say Book & Snake wasn’t the only Secret Society I was a member of. There was another one called B & K. Rhymes with “Long and Beg” – you figure it out, I’ve got little kids to think about!
Anyway, I was running down the street & I ran into my friend Ondi Timoner who may or may not have been in a similar state as I was, and she stopped me and held my arm tight, looked deep into my eyes, and told me, “Oh my God! I was just running down the street and I was trying to get away and I was looking for the party and all of a sudden I saw a man with a gun and he shot it and it made a sound like this:
“crackle.”
For some reason, this statement, with its anti-punch line, made Ondi and I not only crack up to the point of not being able to catch a breath in that moment, but it provided conversational fodder for the next couple of years we were at school together, plus another year or so when I would see her around Los Angeles.
That is, if you can call saying to each other in a soft voice “crackle“ - ‘conversation.’
And finally, it’s not just jingles, rhymes, jokes and foreign languages that have glued themselves to my brain. It’s old tap-dance routines, too. One, in particular, from my much heralded role as one of the Cabbage Patch Children at Howard University’s highly anticipated Christmas in Cabbage Patch Land extravaganza, is still so familiar that if I had a video blog, I would jump up right now and do the solo tap number for you!
Lucky you, dear reader. Lucky you.
c/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Played that 45 until it had a crack in it. Then I played it some more.
Harry Potter Dies
SPOILER ALERT: IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY SEEN THE FILM OR READ THE LAST HARRY POTTER BOOK, AND YOU ARE PLANNING TO SEE THE MOVIE, READING THIS BLOG MAY SPOIL THE ENDING FOR YOU! ON THE OTHER HAND, IF YOU ARE LIKE ME, AND YOU READ THE BOOK AND WERE SURE THAT HARRY POTTER DIED, PLAIN & SIMPLE & CLEAR AS DAY, READ ON, BECAUSE YOU WERE WRONG.
Whoops. Did I spill too much in that spoiler alert? Sorry…
I was out with some friends the other night when the subject turned to Harry Potter. My friend works at the studio that produced the movie, so she had seen it a bunch of times. I announced cockily that I would never see that horrible movie because “Who wants to see Harry Potter die? It’s depressing!” (If you’ve been faithfully reading my blogs, you know I never waste my time watching a movie that doesn’t have a happy ending.)
My friends looked at me strangely. “But – you know he doesn’t really die,” the one who works at the studio offered gently.
I stared at her blankly.
“BatSheva (BatSheva Vaknin). You really think that J.K Rowling would finish the whole series off with Harry Potter just dying and never coming back? Ten million kids would break down her door and murder her!”
“But I read the book. Harry Potter dies. So did Dumbledore.”
“Well, yeah, it seems like he dies. But then you read about him in the epilogue, how Harry is grown up with kids, and you realize he survived. You remember? The epilogue.”
Epilogue?
Turns out, I realized when I got home and flipped through the book, I hadn’t really read the epilogue carefully. Or at all. Or – I think I was just so confused and mad at the book for killing off Dumbledore and Harry Potter, that I just didn’t even want to deal with understanding how an adult Harry was doing 10 years later. I tuned it out.
I’m a really fast reader. I can read a 500 page novel in a couple of days, tops. (Before I had kids I could do it in one or two days, but those rascally creatures really demand a lot of our downtime, don’t they?!) It served me well throughout life, reading this fast – especially at Yale, where most teachers assigned something like 10,000 books per week on top of papers and exams.
My problem is with absorption. I don’t remember anything! (For those of you who also don’t remember anything they’ve read past a minute ago, here is the blog where I wrote about my terrible memory.) If I race through a book I’m usually okay because I can recall a character or event from earlier in the book when it’s referred to later on. But if I’ve had to put the book down at some point, then pick it up days or weeks later? Forget it. I can still enjoy the read, but I won’t be able to put all the pieces together into a coherent picture.
As I mentioned in my Memory Loss blog, this is especially frustrating when it comes to politics or social issues – I read convincing arguments that completely back up my point of view, but when it comes time to defend my point of view, I usually can’t recall the details – only my general feeling that I know I’m right!
Saw the movie, enjoyed it. He doesn’t die. What else happened? Ummmmmm……
C/xo,
Sheva (BatSheva Vaknin)
Now if THIS had been in the movie I would have remembered!! Wait - where's his scar?