none of us are normal

So obviously you can see what we're dealing with in Claire. We love her dearly, and in our own way will help her deal with her eccentricities. None of us are normal, so why does she think she's so special???  Because  she hasn't figured that out yet.  That's all!
Anna will not eat two different meats in one dish.
Ruby considers herself a "dog whisperer" and goes into a deep depression if she meets an animal that doesn't instantly bond with her.  Last night we watched a  movie in which the good guy was kidnapped and being tortured by having rats all over him eating his body. Ruby was most worried about what the cops would do to the rats when they found them munching away .
I am way too close to my weirdness to even be able to identify all of it, but I'm sure it's there. Don't even have to give it a name!
I guess if you can realize that none of us are "normal" ,( nor would we WANT to be), we can come one step closer to the ever elusive self-acceptance and even self-love.
I'm convinced beyond the shadow of a doubt that this dorm is extremely loveable,  and special ,each and every one!
But "normal" we are not! ( and proud of it!)

Feeding the soul

I've had 4 good years of marriage.  The bad news is, I've been married 25 years. So the Dorm get-away is like a breath of fresh air  for me! Lots of laughs and people who work hard, play hard and actually take their eyes off the TV when they talk to you.
So I'm making the most of it!
Stuff you can't do at home...listen to opera at 8AM instead of watching Mike & Mike discuss sports on the boob tube (like at home in Dallas) . I tried something different this morning...I put on Pavarotti to listen to while we put on our make up and slowly woke up to face the world. It was so ethereal and beautiful that neither Ruby nor I wanted to leave for work!
But the echoes of the majestic music stayed with us as we waked to the subway and throughout the day...
And when we were figuring out later, what we wanted to cook for dinner, we were still sufficiently in the euphoria to decide that we deserved to go out for a lovely dinner (even though we were all but broke). 
I digress for a moment to explain "broke". Ruby and lost our jobs when our respective companies closed. It's tough for anyone over 40 to get a new job in the apparel business and both of us saw 40 in the rear view mirror. At least her husband was a hard working college professor, close to retirement. My spouse lost his job 2 years ago and has not been able to find anything appropriate to his talents since them. so by the time I lost mine, we had gone through most of our savings and 401K. After a few months I was able to put together a proposal for a new apparel division for a company in NY and pulled Ruby along with me to design.  I also gave my husband a sales job in Texas, so while we had a lot of losses to make up, at least we had an opportunity to get back on our feet.
So, as we were saying...we deserved to go out for a lovely dinner...
Ahhh!!!!   Nothing takes away the stench of poverty like the fragrant aroma of French cuisine at the Un ,Deux, Trois Cafe... We used to frequent that place when we travelled to NY on business and had the almighty expense account as our companion.
For a brief evening, we felt like the successful business women we were!
Our souls were well fed today and I'm confident it will make for a better day tomorrow!
Who knew how much my life was about to change!

Friday night and the girls go wild!

So can you remember liking your job so much that it ticked you off when the office closed early or was closed for some lame holiday? Well Ruby and I are there. We were forced out of the office by 4 and were like lost souls without our lifeboat. After all, 4 seemed a bit early to start drinking. By the time we moseyed our asses home it was almost a respectable 5 pm and I received a few welcome business calls (Thank GOD some part of the world had not gone MAD!) 
Soon Ruby and I had our evening (first)glass of wine, and realizing Wheel of Fortune was not on for another 2 1/2 hours, went around the corner to our favorite Mexican restaurant with Clair and then watched a movie we had downloaded. It was a 1977 classic called "Chatterbox" OMG- In case you have lived under a rock for the past 34 years, you know its about a woman who discovers that her vagina can talk! This ornery little pussy embarrasses the crap out of it's owner, so she finally goes to a doctor to see if he can resolve her problem. Instead of seeking a cure, he convinces Penelope that her alter ego, now named Virginia ( how fitting...) knows her better than she knows herself and is probably the eighth wonder of the world!  He presents Penelope and Virginia to an AMA convention to a standing ovation and  rave reviews. And a star was born...!  The premise is actually more amusing than the movie itself, but it was a great break for us.
After that excitement subsided, Ruby and I took Mr. J dog to Central Park for his evening run. Dogs are allowed off leash after 9 pm and it's like the "teddy Bear's picnic".  When everyone else gets  OUT of the park by dark, the doggies and owners come out and play like crazy. The typical dog crowd is 6-10 owners and probably a few more dogs. The dogs romp and play and run and fight , while the owners share conversation and perhaps a beer.
Ruby took our Dorm's white dog to central park for his 9PM romp a few weeks ago in a snowstorm. Just so you  know, Ruby is almost blind without her contacts, but after a few glasses of wine, she must have thought she could see better, and bravely strode out with Mr. J. Unfortunately, when she got to the park and let him off leash we had the perfect storm brewing: white dog in a snowstorm, led by an almost blind, extremely relaxed and happy lady who can get easily confused. Needless to say, she "lost" Mr. G and when he finally found HER, she was hopelessly lost on the EAST side of the park (and  we live on the west side). We laugh about it now, but at the time she was really pissed!
Friday night at the dorm...you never know what to expect...I'm going to go contemplate my vagina and and see if she talks back! G'night!

--Meredith

Getting into the good stuff

The name "Dorm" is really an injustice to home we have in NY. It's more like a high class sorority house without the hazing and silly rules. (I de-activated Phi Mu years ago when they wanted to charge me a penalty fee for missing Sing practice because I was working in order to stay in school.) Sororities can get rather full of themselves, but the housing is far more desirable than a dorm. And so is our place. We have a nice communal living room, dining room and kitchen.
I love to cook and offered to cook group dinners pretty quickly. Anna also offered to make meals for us. I mean, how cool is it after being a Mom for 18 years and being expected to come home from a hard day's work and cook for your family in a reasonable time, to have dinner almost on the table when you walk in the door??? Heaven! Ruby and I came in from the snow and sub zero temps last week and smelled this mouth- watering aroma as we came into the lobby of the apartment, and when we walked into our unit, shouted "Yeah! It's coming from our place!!!"
Kick off coats and boots, pour the wine after the obligatory "Can we help with anything" and drink while watching "Wheel of fortune". It's a great life! I feel almost like a guy! The only difference is we do the dishes when someone else cooks. No problem!
Dinner is a one to two hour experience, depending on how deeply we pursue the "topic du jour". Coming soon...some of the juicy topics we discuss around the dinner table under the influence of our grape "truth serum"!


--Meredith

Meredith on Ruby

As you can tell, Ruby is a bit of a "glass-half-empty" person. She gets mad when I call her "Eyore" because she can be a little negative. She is anxiety ridden much of the time, but that's becasue she so hard on herself.
But talk about a GIGANTIC heart! Size 6 with a size 22 heart! If your'e hurting or in trouble, Ruby will not buy into your tough-girl facade. Oh no! She'll dig it out of you and not let you get away until she makes it better ( Or at least helps you get it out of your system!) I love that about her!
I had become a walking zombie before arriving at the dorm. Having lost both parents, my job, my husband losing a job, my daughter having serious physical and emotional problems that almost killed her... all in a relatively short periof of time, I couldn't cry or even react to anything. I had gone completely on Auto-pilot. But after a few months with Ruby...  I'm starting to thaw and feel things again. She's a good "therapist" becasue she won't le ou hide from  yourself ...and her Wine- therapy is the BEST! ( Althought not AMA approved) 
All of my dorm mates have been supportive and wonderful. But Ruby is the one who forgets her own issues in a hearbeat for a friend in need, even when they don't know they need it:.
That's why no matter how much we fight about work or irritate each other I know there is no better person to have in your foxhole.

How Ruby and I got to the Dorm

I met Anna when I moved to NY the first time over 25 years ago. I had left my job as a dept store buyer in Cleveland, Ohio and propositioned one of my vendors with promises of improving his line and get more department store business as a “merchandiser”.  He knew I was good, but he also seemed to have the “hots” for me.  I’m not sure which factor pushed him to make the decision to give me a shot.  I was just extremely grateful that he did! (More on that subject in another chapter!)

So I left Ohio for the big city to seek my fortune and see “if I could make it there” so I’d know I could “make it anywhere”. Anna was one of the first vendors I met.  She sold Italian prints and was a former Sears buyer so we spoke the same language of retail.  Anna was bright and enthusiastic and so calm that NOTHING EVER threw her off her game!  I loved her immediately. To this day she is one of the few friends I have who not only has never pissed me off, but has never even become mildly annoying, no matter how much time we spent together! 

So after I got married and left NY for LA, Anna and I stayed in touch but whether we spoke monthly or annually, it was as if no time a passed at all. (Later, if I have a glass of wine, I’ll tell you about the time that Anna and my new husband and I went to the nude beach on Fire Island.)

Naturally when I knew I was coming to NY for a job interview, after many years in LA , then Dallas, Anna was the first person I called. It was such perfect timing that  she thought she had sold her condo, and had her roommate move out, only to find out that there were technical issues involving the zoning of her unit that prevented the sale from materializing. SO SHE HAD A ROOM AVAILABLE FOR ME!  At least if I had to commute from Dallas to NY to work, I had a perfect place to stay and perfect friend to stay with!

 NY life begins.

I actually got the job! My almost dream job! I had always wanted to have my own apparel business. While this was not my OWN (as in “owner”) it was the next best thing. They wanted someone to create a new business and wanted someone who would “take the business and run with it”. Minimal interference or supervision. Just up my alley!

The even better part is I was able to recruit my dear friend and former work associate Ruby. We had worked together over 15 years before in another industry. She was 50 something and out of work like I had been.  Sadly, we had both discovered the ugly truth that women over 50, no matter how accomplished or talented were considered unfit for the fashion business.  (Everyone knows your taste goes in the toilet after 50, and even with a lifetime of analyzing trends and being in the business long enough to have more concrete information in your “gut” than 12 little Parsons graduates who have no actual business experience).  So sad that they don’t realize that one bad line can cost you more in damage to your credibility than any mistake you could make. Experience dramatically increases your hit ratio. Ruby and I had been batting  300+ for awhile now, but nobody wanted to even interview us to find out what a real pro actually knows!

But I knew what a goldmine of talent and experience she was, so I decided to do exactly what the “good-ol-boys” do and start out by hiring a friend.  Ruby would have to be in NY almost as much as I did so that’s how she and I got to the Dorm.


--Meredith

Meredith

Here we are in NYC, living in a lovely 3 bedroom upper west side apartment that my friend, Anna has had for 30+ years.  4 women ranging in age over 4 decades, from all over the country, that fate has so cleverly brought  together to give us more laughter than we have had for years,  more sympathetic support, and more new experiences than ever thought we could have under one roof!

Little could I have guessed a year ago when I was married and living in a suburb of Dallas, TX, that I’d be working my dream job in NYC (while my husband kept the home fires burning), and becoming the person I was meant to be!

I never had that much use for women friends when I was younger. They seemed to be focused on the wrong things (men, men, men) while I was concerned with earning myself a substantial career so I‘d never have to be dependent on a man to take me out to dinner or a Broadway show or to Paris.  But somehow as we had gotten older, and had our numerous disappointments with relationships, I’ve found a stable and understanding support system among my women friends who have been through so much of life’s joy and pain.  Anna and Ruby are in my age range, so we have a deep understand of each other and the individual challenges each of us has faced over the past years. The “kid” is very cool and we love her to death, but she’s at the beginning of her life and all the possibilities in the world are open to her. I think most of us hope in a subtle way to teach her how to avoid some of our mistakes. ..So over many bottles of wine we share those” faux pas” and often downright “misbehaving” with the Dorm and laugh like hell at how awful we actually were sometimes!

The nude beach on Fire Island, a first Club Med vacation, erotic dreams about Stevie Nicks…Stay tuned.  Eventually it will all come out.

You may also get some of our awesome Dorm recipes! Anna, Ruby and I love to cook and love to show off our expertise to a captive and appreciative audience. The kid is coming right along, too. ( at 23 who knows how to cook?). But she blew our socks off with her Peach Cobbler recipe, so we could see she had some real promise and have been teaching her our tricks of the trade( and teaching her to cook, too! LOL).  We then made her do cherry cobbler and blueberry cobbler to make sure it wasn’t just a fluke…  The kid’s got skills. (See my thighs? That’s called cobbler cellulite!)

I hope that this blog (and eventual book) will inspire you to live life to the fullest, enjoy the blessing of good close friends and strive to find a few more “laugh-till- you-cry-or-pee-your-pants” moments in life!


--Meredith