2/13/20 Friday Night Mistake

2/13/20
Friday Night Mistake
by Holly Winter

I ran into my house to change my shoes before I met friends for dinner, because cool women don't dine out while wearing work-related footwear, especially if you are a kindergarten teacher as I am. 

As I zipped up my 2-inch heeled booties, I beelined for the refrigerator to see what I would have eaten if I had to eat at home, you know, out of curiosity.

Hummus. Lemon pudding.

As an act of necessity, I pulled out my phone and added, "Food shopping" to my list of things to do this weekend.

There wasn't a lot of lemon pudding in that small bowl, maybe a half a cup. Why did I even save it? I ate the pudding and placed the bowl in the sink.

What a great way to start my Friday evening. Lemon pudding. I eyed the hummus. There wasn't a lot in that bowl, why did I save such small amounts?

I grabbed a few crackers and dipped them into the bean dip. Delicious. I ate a few more. What a fabulous snack. I polished it off the hummus then ate a few more crackers to wash it down.

I pulled out a hard boiled egg and slathered it with spicy mayonnaise. It wasn't much food, one egg, but it was just what I wanted, protein with a little flavor.

Protein. I was in the mood for protein. I grabbed a handful of cashews and ate them slowly before I grabbed a second handful.

Some people only eat when they're sitting at a set table, not me. I stand at the counter for most meals. But this wasn't a meal, it was just a quick taste before I headed out. 

An apple would be a healthy snack. I ate it while I wandered around the house thinking about things I would do over the weekend.

I returned to the kitchen for a glass of water and then remembered I had some frozen fudge that would round out my pre-dinner snack. One frozen peanut butter fudge square. It was a perfect snack. Smooth. Cold. Sweet. I finished it off with a glass of water then reached for another fudge square and then one more.

In driving to New Paltz to meet my friends, I realized I wasn't hungry. It was strange to have no appetite at all when I'd eaten lunch hours ago. 

Why wasn't I hungry?

Oh, right. The snack. That's right. I ate that pudding. Oh, and the hummus. And as I drove I realized my after work snack reminded me of that children’s book, "The Very Hungry Caterpillar."

In that book the caterpillar eats everything in sight then turns into a butterfly. Unfortunately my eating rampage had nothing to do with transformation; I ate because it was there. How could I defend my grazing habit?

I would not be eating at the restaurant tonight.

Sigh.

Hot lemon water is my go-to drink when dining out. My friends arrived at the restaurant before I did and had my special drink waiting for me. I let them know that I already ate.

“You already ate?” Julie asked “when you were meeting us for dinner?”

I nodded and sipped my hot lemon water as my friends ate bowls of spicy Thai food that looked a lot better than old dip and leftover pudding.

The lemon water had a strange taste, but I didn't think much about it. We've come to trust water, haven't we? I'm a peasant: tap water is my drink of choice, since I don't care to drink water out of plastic bottles.

I watched my friends eating and swore off snacking for the rest of my life.  

On Monday morning when my weekend already seemed like a dim memory, my alarm sounded and the radio blared the news: New Paltz’s water supply was tainted with an unknown substance that made the water taste bad.

I sat up in bed and shouted at the radio, “What?” so the announcer would know to repeat what he just said.

They couldn’t figure out where the contamination came from or what it was. I wasn’t surprised that others noted the bad taste, but it never occurred to me that the bad taste might be something concerning.

I drank three glasses of that hot water with lemon.

Three.

Really? I drove all the way to New Paltz to drink water and now we find that it was tainted?”

Did I have any symptoms of poisoning? Not yet. Nothing.

Governor Cuomo closed the state university in New Paltz and sent the students home, which is hopefully far enough away where they might drink fresh water, but not too far away that they might suffer great expense in the escape.

Wait. Really. Was I poisoned in drinking that water?

A few days later the source of pollution was noted: petroleum leaked into one of the town’s reservoirs.

I googled “Petroleum poisoning.” There was a lot of information about washing gasoline off your skin, but I couldn’t find anything about drinking three cups of warmed petroleum with lemon.

Luckily the only side effect I felt was the gagging feeling from thinking about drinking poison at a restaurant.

It's strange timing, my new distrust of water, because I just bought a reverse osmosis water filtration system for my house. Sure, the water tastes dead, but dead water is better than petroleum water, amiright?

If you see me carrying around a water bottle with my home-filtered water, you’ll know why.

"We're going the wrong way." my friend, Lynda, said.

Ron looked at his phone.

Lynda walked in the opposite direction. "Come on." she said. "This way."

We were headed to a restaurant Janine chose from a list of gluten-free restaurants on her phone.

I walked next to Lynda and said, "This isn't like you..."

"What?" she asked, checking the map on her phone as we crossed the street.

"You're the one navigating with your cell phone?"

She laughed.

"You don't understand." I said. "Ron is a big IT guy."

She laughed harder.

Ron said, "Good thing Lynda is here."

We laughed.

"And now Lynda he's probably going to offer you a job." I said.

"Yes." he agreed. "You're chief navigator."

We all laughed.

Ron and I were friends in Denver and I hadn't seen him in a year and a half. It was great catching up. It's no wonder we kept getting lost because we had so much to say.

Jeanine was hungry and stopped in front of a restaurant with small tables.

"Here." she said. "Let's eat here. I'm tired of walking and they have food."

We all agreed that finding a restaurant with food was a good idea.

The waitress sat us at the end of the bar where we sat in tall chairs with short backs and faced each other.

Jeanine and I both ordered the shrimp tacos because the waiter highly recommended them. The waiter put a plate with two tacos in front of me. Ron asked if they were gluten-free, just to be sure. The staff went into a flurry of being careful.

They returned the tacos to our table, but had divided the tacos onto two plates. Wait, did they think we wanted to share one order?

Nope. In that restaurant, Alta in New York City, one $15 order of shrimp tacos means you get one taco. Total. That's all. So it wasn't "Shrimp Tacos" on the menu. It must have said, "Shrimp Taco."

One taco?

I took a bite on my miniature taco that cheese melted onto the sides with greens over the cheese. The shrimp was cooked perfectly with a touch of spice and bits of guacamole and cilantro. As I went for the second bit I thought it might be the best shrimp taco I'd ever eaten.

Yes. The best shrimp taco ever.

At the end of the meal we were still hungry.

We walked to the rice pudding store where they had every imaginable flavor including Rocky Road, Mango Coconut and Old Faithful (plain).

Ron and Jeanine got rice pudding. Lynda and I stopped at the ice-cream store and got ice-cream. We headed back to Lynda's son's apartment where she was dog sitting.

We ate our treats.

Later our friend Adam joined us and said he was famished. We were all ready for more food.

We found a Vietnamese restaurant that

2/9/20 Neighbors

2/9/20
Neighbors
by Holly Winter


An older woman by two decades rearranged her produce on the counter at Adams grocery store so I could get my groceries out of my hands. I thanked her for her kindness.

She looked at what I was buying and said, "You're going to make garlic cauliflower."

I laughed and told her she was right, even though she wasn't. I've never been particular about who's right and who isn't right.

While she was checking out she asked the young man bagging groceries if the puma on his t-shirt was for a sports team.

He very politely told her that the puma was for a shoe brand.

She looked back at me and said, "In my time there weren't so many things to remember about sports teams."

I said something about not being able to remember sports teams, either.

She said, "I grew up in Queens, NY, on the same block as Jackie Robinson. He was my neighbor."

I perked up. "That must have been so cool, to watch a neighbor become the most talented ball player in the world."

"That's why he became so great," she said. "because he knew he had the neighborhood behind him, caring about him."

I said something about how cool that must have been, to have a community of people caring.

She stood and talked for a minute about the neighborhoods of long ago, then left.

I asked the two young men if they knew who Jackie Robinson was. The cashier turned towards the register and busied himself. The bagger said, "Yeah. I know who he is. I'm into baseball."

I thanked them as I gathered up my food, thinking about neighborhoods and how people care about those who live next to them. I barely know my neighbors where I live, though we do text from time to time important things like, "I got a piece of your mail, again. I put it into your box." or "I'm leaving for six weeks. Here's my sister's phone number in case something goes wrong with my house."

When I grew up, if someone new moved into the neighborhood, it was a cause for celebration. My mother always baked a cake that we children would deliver, hoping the new neighbors had unpacked a knife to serve it so we might share it with them.

We were constantly borrowing a cup of sugar from a neighbor or talking about the weather or worrying about the water running out due to the lack of rain.

Housing has changed in the past fifty years and there are more people living on smaller lots, so neighbors are often taken for granted and/or seen as a nuisance for their loud car or crying children. I Wondered what children today are missing out on, by not living in a caring community.

I thanked the boys for helping me buy my cauliflower, and the bagger said, "What a day, meeting someone who knew Jackie Robinson!"

Maybe it's ok that we're taken by different things, me by a sence of community and the bagger by a sense of fame.

Whatever we think, time continues to march forward.

12/29/19 Not Bored

12/29/19
Not Bored
by Holly Winter

I wanted to help my friend, Linda celebrate her birthday. We met at the Denizen Theater in New Paltz for a Christmas play, and then I was going to take her out for dinner.

The play was great, but I was so tired I was falling asleep. It's the last showing of this run and the room was packed. I liked the play with it's puns and one liners, but was so tired from the late Christmas party in Argile last night that I was fighting to stay awake.

It's a small theater and the actors noticed my nodding head. So they played to me with looks of desperation. Louder noises. Steps in my direction. They stared at me all the time, as if they were willing me awake.

Their attention embarrassed me, but I was too close to sleep to turn the tide.

I don't think Linda noticed my struggle and I hope the rest of the audience didn't notice.

Do the actors understand that my exhaustion had nothing to do with my feelings about the play or the quality of the play, both of which were amazing?

I had this deep need to let them know that I wasn't bored, but they were busy at the moment and it would have been difficult to have a heart to heart conversation with them, besides I was nodding off--not a great time to talk.

Pinch. Pinch. I pinched my thigh over and over again in the same spot. It hurt. A lot. This was going to be a nasty bruise. The pain mostly worked. I stayed awake for the rest of the show. Or I think I stayed awake, maybe I was snoring through the whole thing and only dreaming of staying awake?

When it was over Linda cancelled our dinner plans. We are expecting an ice storm tonight and the rain had already started. It was safer to head home right away.

I got home and tumbled in to bed, ready to nap.

But I was suddenly wide awake.

12/15/19 Finding His People

12/15/19

Finding His People

by Holly Winter

Heather, Dianne and I went to Kings Valley Diner and sat at a booth next to the windows. We let the waiter know we would tip well, but we had just come from dinner and weren't hungry. He shrugged and continued his fast pace waiting tables.

Heather's tenth grade son, Hector was there with his classmates from the Kingston High School choir. They were celebrating after their big concert at the Old Dutch Church.

We could see Hector sitting with his friends, his hair bun sticking up over the sides of the booth where he sat. I had the best view of the kids and lifted my camera to take a photo as fast as I could, but Heather had used my phone and left the settings on video, I whined at her for leaving the phone on video.

I missed the best shot, but this is the second best shot:

The girl sitting next to Hector jokingly changed her hair style to match his: a bun for two.

Hector has found his people. 

The owner of the diner went over to the kids and made a blanket statement about them needing to stay quiet and the kids, all of them good kids, immediately lowered their voices.

I said to Heather, "Tell the owner to ask the kids to sing."

And so she did and so he did.

After some rearranging and without a teacher present, the kids stood and performed one of their songs from their concert.

Teenagers finding their gifts and talents and their people gives me hope for us all, because the sooner you find your talent the sooner you find yourself.

12/9/19 That's the Good a Phone Call can Do

12/9/19
That's the Good a Phone Call can Do
by Holly Winter

Every time I call my friend Gayle, I say "Hello" in a different way. I'm not sure when this habit started, but this joking of a greeting has become a reflex.

Tonight Julie was at Gayle's house and I called so we could coordinate our trip to New York City.

The start of a phone conversation started with 'hello' in three syllables, "He" in a low voice, "lo" in a squeaky high voice, and the "oow" in a low voice again.

Gayle started laughing. And laughing.

Julie said in the background, "Why are you laughing? Nothing's funny."

That got me laughing.

Gayle and I laughed and laughed while Julie kept asking in the background what we were laughing about which made us laugh harder.

Finally Julie laughed, too.

After a few minutes of laughing, Gayle said she was going to put the call on speaker phone, but she must have hit a wrong button and the call was disconnected.

Which made me laugh even harder as I lay alone in my bed at 8:00 at night where I was resting because lying down helps the pleurisy (a virus on the outside of my lung) hurt less.

It doesn't matter that laughing hurts right now, because even though it hurts, it's as if the weight of worry is lifted when I laugh.

I called back, laughing so hard when she answered the phone that we all set off laughing again and might have continued but once again Gayle hit the speaker phone option and disconnected us, again.

It took three calls for us to stop laughing and remain connected so we could discuss our NYC trip.

I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to walk as fast as my friends or that I couldn't go home if I didn't feel well. But after all of the laughing, I decided there was nothing to be worried about.

That's the good a phone call can do.

12/3/19 Playing to Win

12/3/19
Playing to Win
by Holly Winter

On Thanksgiving day, my 5 year-old great nephew H and I played a chase game around the dining room of the firehouse where my family celebrates. We ran around tables, with H always a few steps from me. He laughed so hard as he squirmed out of my reach.

I was finally able to catch him; I picked him up and spun him around. "I'm the winner!" I joked.

He broke into tears of frustration and struggled to get away. My sister motioned for me to let him go. Later she told me that my brother's grandchild can't handle frustration, which I found frustrating.

A child will have trouble learning to read or write if he buckles when things don't go his way. I am a kindergarten teacher so I know a lot about 5 year old boys. Being able to take a risk is essential to learning, and you also need to have a high frustration tolerance, meaning that you can continue learning even when things aren't going your way.

H is a student in a Kindergarten class in a school in the same district where I teach. It's such a shame that he doesn't live in the area where I teach. I would love to help push his learning so he could gain even more skills.
He came to my house to play one snowy day when school was closed. He picked up two giant chips from my giant Connect 4 game and asked, "Can we play this?"

"Yes."

"Can we play it right now?" he asked.

"Let's do it." I smiled.

We'd spent the afternoon together, grateful that the roads were passable by lunch time. I took him to a friend's restaurant and then to an art center where he worked on projects for a few hours. He asked if we could go to my house to play some more.

I won 8 games of Connect 4 in a row before he broke into tears. This time there was nobody around to interfere with his moodiness around losing.

"I want to win." he stood with his fists clenched and tears falling fast.

"You want to win?" I asked, ignoring the tears.

He sobbed, "Yes, I want to win. You always win. I want to win."

"I'm very good at this game." I said. "I've been practicing for a lot of years, and I like to win."

He buried his head into the living room chair and shouted to me. "Now it's my turn to win."

"Nope." I said without pity. "I will never, ever let you win. I like to win."

He has many (2nd) cousins who are in their twenties. They love to spend time with him and I'm guessing that do whatever they can to keep that smile on his face, like let him win or backdown when he gets upset.

He cried louder.

I suggested that maybe we should do something else if playing this game was going to make him sad.

"No" he sobbed. "I want to play." He demanded to go first, and I let him. He dropped the chip into the outer row and I put my chip into a center row.

"Why do you put it there?" he asked, wiping away tears.

"Do you really want to know why?"

He nodded his head.

I showed him all of the ways I could win the game from the center and how few ways I could win the game from the edge.

He watched as I motioned over the rows then said, "I thought I could win at the edge because it was the first circle."

I nodded and told him I liked his strategy, but if it wasn't working he might want to try another strategy.

From then on he watched every chip I dropped and tried to guess my reasoning behind each move. I couldn't have been more excited, that he was making himself focus even when he was upset.

"Hey." I said to him. "Stop focusing on the game. Shouldn't you start crying again?"

He laughed and focused harder.

"No more focusing." I joked, which made him study the board even more.

When he lost the next game he didn't cry, he studied my diagonal win, then told me that he was going first again.

"Nope." I said. "It's my turn to go first."

He went to cry when I grabbed a center slot, but his mood changed back to curiosity and he dropped a chip next to mine. For every chip I dropped, he dropped a chip next to mine. I loved the way he had changed his strategy, even if it didn't work.

During the next game he worked to build his own row of chips, rather than only focusing on my builds. After a few more games, it happened. He won a game.

He flopped on the floor and giggled uncontrollably. "I won." he laughed. "I really beat you."

"You did." I smiled.

"And you didn't let me win." he said.

"I will never let you win, I like winning too much to give it away."

When he was done laughing, he reset the board and asked me if I wanted to go first.

"Yes." I said, dropping the chip into the center column.

After another batch of games, he won again and couldn't stop laughing.

I smiled. "How does it feel to win?"

"Really good." he said, nodding his head up and down.

"How does it feel to play the game even if you don't win?"

He thought about it for a moment, then said, "It feels fun to play but it feels better to win."

As he set up the board for another game, I relaxed. Today he learned to push through his frustration and his brain might remember that a good way to move through frustration is to focus. It's a first step.

I tried so hard to get his parents to enroll him into my classroom, knowing that I could give him the skills he needed and help him excel. But they liked their neighborhood school.

I sighed. I couldn't have him in my classroom every day, but maybe I could help shape him into a learner by spending time with him on snow days.