A Brush with Fame...and Hypothermia - Boston, MA

Famous actor lady. Credit: Boston Herald

On Saturday I was wasting the usual amount of time on facebook and noted a friend in Texas posting that she was heading off for some dim sum. And I was consumed with envy and a will to do something about it. Off I went to find an appropriate place to eat some dim sum the very next day--I polled my friends on facebook, checked Trip Advisor and then I sent a note to my brother: he was only last gasp because I knew he was on winter break someplace warm and unlikely to answer.

Answer he did, though, and quickly...he responded with an "is that an invitation?" as they were back in town later that night. Of course it was!! We don't see enough of my brother, sister-in-law and their 6-year old daughter in spite of them living about 15 miles away in Boston. I admit there is a suburbs/urban invisible wall--or rather a large snowy one at the moment. We in the suburbs were under the impression that snow was up to the top of the Pru Center there in town, and I'm guessing that the townfolk were thinking the same about Weston (up to the top of our trees at least). We haven't see the family since January. 

Sunday was a wicked cold day, even for Bostonians. Windchill was about 15 degrees, and I swear I heard Mother Nature giggling about it being two days after the start of spring. BH was on a mission to walk around Chinatown and head to the shoreline to look at shivering birds with their heads in their tail feathers which we did until the twins had a short and memorable meltdown. I admit I bought Pringles for one right before lunch because I simply could not handle the crab factor. 

I think I'd better jump ahead. We met up with my brother's family at the restaurant which is upstairs in an old beautiful theatre. We got heavily dim-summed. We came, we ate, we rubbed our tummies. The suburbanites had about an hour before having to get back for skating lessons and we tried to come up with what we could do with the kids in the less-than-balmy temperatures. We discarded the Children's Museum for too short a visit, the Aquarium for distance away (it really wasn't that far) and finally decided to coffee up and head over to the large park. I am not going to name the park. I will tell you why later.  The kids needed to run.

After running up and down the hill then belly-flopping on the snow (Lalo), then gathering garbage to make "art" (Nico) and dipping sneakered feet into freezey water (my niece), we decided that we would try out the playground. Nico calls this particular playground "Danger Playground" as he slipped and fell once while trying to hang onto the metal bars. Oh okay, he fell on his head and another mother ran and found me where I was talking to Lalo and implied that I was a bad mom for not watching my kid. I have two kids. They are seldom endangering themselves at the same time in the same place.

Anyway, a blonde woman held open the gate for us as she walked in with her daughter. I noted her Harvard baseball cap for being completely weather-inappropriate, and her daughter's extremely warm and fun winter hat that had a horse on it. The blonde went one direction, her kid went to the jungle gym and my sister in law (henceforward "SIL") and I went to try to find a wind-blocked area. It was cold. It was really really cold. We eventually just hid behind my brother and BH, one of whom was a good windblocker (huge backpack) and one who was not. Just not made for success here in winter, that BH.

The kids started playing hide and seek and after a few minutes, the blonde woman came over, introduced herself (she shook our hands! she had no gloves on! Criminally insane! And extremely polite! How do I stop with the exclamation points?!?) and asked if her daughter could play with our kids. I have never been asked that in my entire life. Ever. Kids just play together. Or not. I was impressed. And I suspected she was not from here. 

So the five of us start to chat about the kids' ages and the weather, and it turns out that the blonde is from LA but in Boston for a short-term project. And SIL asks "what's your line of work?" and the blonde says "I'm an actor." And it turns out she is here for a movie project. And this is where I would like to point out, no, preface the next part by saying that I am very cool. I am extremely cool, and I didn't even know it. But first I have to preface the preface.

Preface Preface: I can identify no actors. Okay, I know a few more than BH who once stood next to Ana Hickman (she is massively tall, oh and a Brazilian actor/model/whatever so don't worry, gringos, if you don't know who I am talking about) and had no clue who she was. Ditto with many more Brazilian stars.  He did identify Gisele Bundchen while standing behind her in a customs line in New York, but that was more because he was amused by her forgetting that she had to show her passport -- in spite of being famous, you still do have to show your passport.

I admit that if Johnny Depp or Hugh Jackman stood next to me, I could identify them right before losing my power of speech.  But I watch no TV series, could not tell one Kardashian from another (though I do know the name so I'm not completely without taint) and have seen one movie in a theatre in the last year and that was Spongebob Squarepants. Haven't run into him yet.  So there, this is the part where it seems I am not cool. 

Preface: getting cooler. When I first got Coal (subject of last blog), my friebor (friend-neighbor) who loves being an extra in movies suggested I sign up for Boston Casting which was looking for a family who had recently adopted a dog. For a commercial. So I did, because I didn't have anything better to do. So they called me and asked me a few questions and I failed. I failed because I admitted I did not clean my own house on a daily basis. True story. 

But I still get the Boston Casting weekly calls for extras or commercials or whatever. I never respond but I have looked at some of the projects. The one that comes up most often looking for extras is "Kay's Baptism". All this extra work means long days in far-away places (okay farther than 15 miles; if I can't get to Boston to meet my bro, I am hardly driving to Rhode Island for $15/day as an extra. Hello.) Also I can't act. Not even as background. Also, I don't care. 

So anyway, the point of the preface is that I had heard of Kay's Baptism. This is the only movie thing I know about so when the nice blonde woman said she was here on a movie project, I said "oh, Kay's Baptism?" and my brother and SIL looked at me like "hunh?" and BH looked at me like "I really have to be in town more often; she has cracked." And the nice blonde woman said yes, that's it. Apparently that is only the working title as my friebor pointed out later but what the heck? I'm cool.

Then my awesome SIL starts asking more questions. I am too shy for such things. I would not know what to ask. So nice blonde woman who introduced herself at the beginning as "Elisabeth" turns out to be a rather well-known tv actress by the name of Elisabeth Rohm with those little umlautie things over the "o" and was in the cast of Law & Order for five years as the Assistant District Attorney and also starred in the movie American Hustle (sorry, don't know it, never heard of it) as well as some other work. And then it occurs to me that I know exactly who she is from watching three straight days of Law & Order re-runs while my husband was in the hospital three years ago. What can I say? Brazilian game shows and soap operas were not my cup of tea.

Assistant District Attorney someone or other.

And here is what I have to say about famous blonde actor lady. She is really nice. She asked as many questions of us as we did of her. My SIL told her about her work. One of the actor's best friends went to my alma mater maaaaaannnny years after I did (oh, all right, 7 years younger than me) and we talked about women's schools and kids and life. And in twenty minutes, she did more for my respect for people who act as a full time job than any other person ever except perhaps my elementary school friend Henny (name changed now) who is a theatre actor in New York. 

And then it was time to go to skating classes (the twins). And swimming at the Intercontinental (bro and SIL and niece). And to get coffee and head back to her temporary apartment (famous actor). And that is my Boston brush with fame. And hypothermia. No selfie.

* park unnamed in case famous actor lady goes a lot with her daughter and doesn't want anyone to know.

Boston Strong - Boston, MA

So while I've been sitting out here in Weston complaining about snow and plows and shoveling, I forgot what the snow means for the "city" of Boston (I grew up next to "THE city" -- that's NYC, folks -- and came from a city of 11 million people most recently. Metro Boston has around 4.5 million people, but the actual city has less than one million pop). For Boston, winter 2015 is out-and-out warfare. 

As I have mentioned, we currently have around 6 feet of snow in Boston. And we've had it since late January. While I have joked about this quantity of snow, the stark reality is that there is nowhere else to put it. People are getting fines for not shoveling out their front sidewalk but where in the world would they put the snow? In Weston, our main concern is peering around the huge piles of snow and pulling out slowly in intersections but in Boston, you can't even move a car. Or possibly, you don't want to. 

I did some reading up on the Boston parking page, which has a whole page of Do's and Don'ts for snow. If you're interested, it's here at this link. The primary rule is that you cannot park on a major artery (as defined by the parking lord) during a snow emergency. For obvious reasons--emergency vehicles and snowplows have to get through somewhere. 

For smaller streets, they suggest people move their cars to local parking garages where apparently you can park free if you arrive within two hours of a snow emergency being declared, and leave within two hours of it being lifted. Which means you are going to be shoveling out the space in front of your house so that you have somewhere to park when you get booted from the garage (you won't want to overstay your welcome--parking garages in Boston routinely exceed $30 for a couple of hours of parking. There is not an overabundance of parking in cute ol' Boston). 

And this is where I start to be amused. If you shovel out a parking space, you have the right to park there for 48 hours. There is an ordinance for this. It's on the parking page for Boston. So if you have to leave your space to drive to work, or go to the store, what do you do? You leave space savers.  And these can be literally anything. If you want to be amused by what people leave to save their spaces, do a google search, or go to this link for 25 Things People Value Less than a Parking Space. 

(actually from Chicago)

Now, as much as this makes me laugh, you have to know that this is serious business, especially during a February full of snow. I have heard stories of people who ignore the space savers getting their cars keyed or windows broken.  And having shoveled for 20 of the last 23 days, I understand it. I do. I think we should all be glad that Massachusetts has strong gun laws because at the level of crabbiness that is rife in the "city" these days, people could die. Not kidding. 

I have to tell you that things are getting a bit rough with another blizzard expecting to dump a foot of snow here on Sunday. Our level of amusement is going down. And the level of danger is going way up. Several towns have canceled this week's school as they fight to get thousands of pounds of snow off of school roofs. Why do almost all public schools have flat roofs? I wish I knew. Must be cheaper to build--one of Weston's new schools (opened this year) has a flat roof. Those need to be cleared. 

Yesterday BH was at Home Depot where there were workers up on the roof clearing off the snow--flat roof.  Several building roofs have collapsed in the area. My brother's historic building near Boston Common had to hire snow removal trucks and men to take off the snow from the fifth floor flat roof--and you don't want to even consider that cost.

Teamworks Auburn roof collapse (photo credit: Auburn police)

Our public transportation has ground to a halt. All subways and trains were shut down for a day this week to get the snow off the tracks. It's crazy. I have to tell you that a lesser "major city" would have given up by now. So as of now I'm going to take the quotation marks away from "city" for Boston--we are definitely a city. Boston Strong, I think they call it. 

Folks, it's hairy out there. If you are in the Maine, Mass, RI, NH areas, please please be careful. I hope that Sunday's storm is the last of it for the season, but I don't have high hopes. 

And for those of you in warm places in the US, I suggest that now is not the time to make wisecracks. We're close to disaster level out here and I think you'll find that New England rarely mocks tornado, earthquake and fire destruction. You can mock us in mud season, promise.

Everything is Awesome! - Weston

Capoeira at Boston Common

Here's the thing: this blog is a total failure. I have run dry of amused jibes, sarcasm, irony and anything approaching horror.  I just can't drop out of my elation, happiness and let's face it--out and out chortling--about being "home" in New England.  Frankly, nothing is going wrong. Nothing. Oh, okay, my kid broke his $7 Ninja sword within an hour of getting it from Amazon.com and there was that whole arm-break thing, but other than that, things are going well. Yeah, I have a woodchuck the size of a capybara patrolling the back yard, and skunks eating lawn grubs and leaving pits everywhere and my $70 bird bath has attracted nothing but poop so far but things are going well.

My niece made a mix CD for her birthday giveaway and the last song is "Everything is Awesome" and I have to tell you, it's my new theme song (yeah, I get that it is tongue-in-cheek but if it weren't...).  My kids are happy here though they still can't sleep in their own rooms. They have made fast friends not only with the neighbor kids but with the kids of a college friend who came to visit yesterday. Lalo even said "wow, she is really good at soccer" about the 10 year old and if you know Lalo, you would know that a compliment about a girl is a rare bird. Hang on, I have to go knock wood before continuing--I am so sure I am going to jinx myself...

As you probably know, I am a huge proponent of the American public school experience and so far, I am simply blown away by Weston public schools. First, both kids got letters from the superintendent of the school system, the principal of their elementary school and then today, their individual teachers sent them letters to welcome them. We went to an ice cream social for new families two days ago where I met several awesome (Everything's Awesome!) moms and PTO mamas (you know what I'm talking about).  We walked into the school's gym and it was nicer than their private school in Brazil. Their class size? 18. Class size in private school? 22. 

On Wednesday we had the kids' cousin over for a play date. When Lalo cried about his cousin leaving at 5 pm, I made a spur of the moment decision to go in with the boys to Boston where the cousin lives. There we met my sister-in-law who brought some stealth white wine in water bottles to the Boston Common and the kids collected acorns and played on the playground until full dark.  Ah, I should mention we did not give wine to the kids. Only pizza. Then I ran into the capoeira master for the group I had contacted two months ago from Brazil to see if the kids could join.  Then we (me and the kids, no capoeira master) slept over at my sister-in-laws house--nope, no change of clothes, no toothbrush--the walk of shame down Beacon Street the next morning brought back memories of college.

Today we went to capoeira in Brookline, a vibrant and fun community next to Boston. There we met up with Mestre Chuvisquinho (he of the Boston Common) and he said that the kids were doing capoeira in the park that day due to a scheduling issue. And then proceeded to give a class to the kids that totally kicked the butt of their São Paulo academy. In the warm sunshine of a neighborhood park. While the berimbau and drums played, I quietly sang to myself Everything is Awesome!

I know I'm jinxing myself. I know there will be bad days. I know I will hate something. But until then I give you full permission to skip my blog--I'm just not feeling the sarcasm, the wit, the fun. Awesome is perhaps not so great for my writing career.

Back when something goes wrong.