Thanksgiving Salad Days

Thanksgiving finds me in Denton, Texas, at my mom's, and I had dinner tonight at my grandmother's assisted living center in Carrolton. Nice place, nice folks.

Anyway, in honor of my grandmother, I'm in charge of making her annual Frozen Cranberry Salad, which is very genetically similar to most any Jell0 salads. Yes, salads. Here in Texas, and in Oklahoma where I grew up, Jello and anything frozen with Cool Whip and a semblance of fruit is deemed a salad. Mama Lu's Frozen Cranberry Salad is a mix of cranberry sauce, mayonnaise, pineapple chunks, pecans, cream cheese and Cool Whip, frozen into a salad and served sliced and next to your brocolli. Again, it's similar to all Jello-related salads, including this doozy. Happy Thanksgiving.

11.15.1965 @ 13:25

Today is the end of the fourth decade of my life. It marks an uncomplicated life and a complicated day. I was born Brian Scott Schwarz at 1:25 p.m. on November 15, 1965, to a young woman who was 19, had acne, and who for the past five months had resided in a Georgetown home for unwed mothers. I was born at George Washington University Hospital, and was with my mother for seven days before, I am told, I was swaddled up on a Monday, held carefully and placed into the arms of a stranger, and then driven across town to Family and Children's Services at 16th and K Street, near the international youth hostel in Washington, D.C.

The ride between Brian Scott Schwarz and the person I am now was about fifteen minutes. I doubt I understood the noise of the car nor comprehended the light from the day passing over my face. I don't know who drove the car, but I imagine it was a woman, and I don't know if she hummed a song, remained silent, or listened to the radio. I wonder what she did, a stranger who transported me from one life to another, from an unwed mother to an expecting couple. In those fifteen minutes I was still Brian Scott Schwarz, son of Pamela Schwarz, given up for adoption.

I left the arms of one young woman, bereft, and as I traveled from the life into which I was born and into the life of new parents, I was alone with a stranger in a car, bumping across a city and through the afternoon traffic, turning on Whitehurst Freeway, down K Street NW, past the monuments and statues, into a parking lot next to a garden, with a large plate glass window looking over us as we pulled in. What an incredible, short and immeasurable distance, this day of my 40th birthday, that seventh day of my life.

Lawyers, Freaks and Funk

Ugly Juice took me to lunch the other day for my big 40th birthday, which is tomorrow (and when I'll also be honored in the evening as an "Everyday Angel"). I spilled the beans about being such a Yes Man now, all suited up in my navy blue suit, which my son objects to if I am going to volunteer at his kindergarten. He's specifically asked me not to wear a suit on those days. I guess he's like a growing number of kids who view attorneys as freaks, like the five or six kiddos who dressed up as lawyers for Halloween recently. Or maybe we are now on the same scale as princesses and firefighters.

My days are so friggin' long nowadays, starting around 5:30 a.m. and ending around 8:30 p.m. or later, but part of that is the craziness of being a single dad, as well as my continuing urban ultrathon competition now that my truck's brakes have gone out [the other day I bussed to the train, then walked to Max's mom's house, then took a taxi with him to school, then bussed to work--can you say "loser?"]. I'm exhausted.

Hopping Mad

Oh, man, I'm hopping mad and have done what all hopping mad people do: create a hopping mad blog. As I've disclosed before, I used an online dating service to begin my initiation into dating after an absence from the dating scene of some 17 years. I used the ever-present and hugely successful Match.com, paying $29.99 for the one month trial period. Turns out that the one month trial period is actually a perpetually renewing month to month subscription, at a tune of $29.99 per month. So, I've now been charged nearly $90.00 in the last three months, all for a service I thought expired and for which I had no need to use. Same went for the person I ended up dating--she was unknowingly charged for an additional three month period. We only found out by discovering the charges on our credit card statements.

What did I do? Well, I've already written demands and now I have completed a Complaint to the Attorney General's office. And, I created the one and only matchdeceives blog.

So there.