Take a breath. It will all work out.

Life has taught me that expectations are guaranteed assurance for disappointment. I have spent countless hours of my life predicting and preparing for situations, many of which never arrive. I look for exits in unfamiliar locales and questionable strangers have my eyes darting in all directions. I’ve prepared dozens of scenarios for every late night phone call from every possible area code.

And why? The situations are rarely a threat. The weird person passes right by me without notice, the late night phone call turns out to be the wrong number.

I try to make sound decisions but in retrospect there are probably only a handful of decisions that I think were truly brilliant or life altering. As I’ve gotten older I have learned to slowly let go of what I cannot control, but not entirely. Like driving a car in cruise control, but I still keep my foot near the gas and the brake. For better or worse, control is something I can never truly relinquish – and not for lack of trying. Sometimes, I’ve realized, that the path life lays out for you is not the one you have envisioned. Like a club you never considered joining and then you’re not just a card-holding member, but also the executive director.

I love the number 8. All my emails have 8’s, my passwords have 8’s, I was born in the 8th month, and live in apartment # 8. 2008 was going to be my year – but I had no idea how.

The year started with a partial thyroidectomy. Half my thyroid, half my metabolism and half my over anxiety were cut out. On the road to recovery through Guitar Hero therapy, I was on the mend like a champion. Life, however, had a plan all its own.

Three weeks after my surgery, crossing Lexington Avenue after work, a heavy woman tripped and fell on me. Most of the rush hour crowd stepped around her; one person helped her up. I stood frozen in the background, a tree you don’t worry about after crashing into it. My knee was throbbing. Afraid to take a step, I suddenly realized that this may have been the knock I really needed to put me into another path. My knee was fractured and I was ordered to be on no-weight-baring crutches for 6 weeks (in a walk up apartment).

So now I was crutching up and down my walk up apartment, bringing my 6-year old to school and struggling to get to work at my advertising agency job. Not surprisingly, May brought me a positive performance review at work. Then June gave me the exclamation point of the year … I was “terminated.”

I felt sorry for myself for 2 hours and then I felt a gush of overwhelming happiness. This was the best thing that happened all year. If it comes in 3's - this was going to be the end; everything would be great from now on.

Originally a Journalism major at NYU 13 years ago, I gave up creative writing in a string of rebound jobs that defined my career path rather than the other way around. I worked in advertising, human resources, and theatre. I launched a Website. Now I want to do what I cannot go without doing anymore. Writing.

Defining who I am one word at a time; stringing together words and forming sentences - I am slowly coming to terms with my new life and getting to re-know myself.

This is the horoscope I got for August 10, 2008. I think it’s a keeper.

Your party hasn't been canceled, but it may be postponed until you get your life back on track. You may have lost your way, even if you had the foresight, like Hansel and Gretel, to leave a trail of breadcrumbs. But everything is different now and there's no sign of the markers anywhere. You'll need to pay close attention to all the clues to figure out where you are going and the best way to get there.

I wish I could call the horoscope wizard and ask him some follow-up questions to the horoscope. For instance, is there a map? A legend with a key with clues? A magnifying glass? What pray tell are the clues and how do I ascertain the legitimacy of the clues?

In the meantime, I continue to dance with 2008 – leading mostly, following sometimes. My eyes are peeled and my mind is mostly open and somewhat clear. I am taking a deep breath. I am having a little faith. I am getting there.

Baba's Heart

She sits peacefully in the hospital chair with a look of hope and recovery in her eyes. She wears her light blue hospital gown as comfortably as a housedress and proudly shows me her arms freed from all the IVs. She boastfully tells me how she ate chicken soup that morning and how she spoke to Rosa on the phone, who called her directly in the hospital room. My grandmother is excited about going home tomorrow. We discuss how she needs to hurry up and get home to make my grandfather more chicken stew.

Liz, the clinical nurse comes in and we exchange polite greetings. She tells me my grandmother’s potassium levels are dangerously low; it’s not good for her heart. I translate for my grandmother. I tell her that she needs potassium to heal after the surgery. They need to inject this into her IV. She doesn’t understand why she needs this extra potassium. She says she eats a banana every day. Liz explains that she has not been eating regular food for a week and that now her levels are low; she needs the intravenous dosage for her heart.

Liz warns my grandmother that the medicine may burn or sting. “Some patients say that it hurts a lot,” she says as she pushes the drugs into the abandoned IV plug. My grandmother starts to wince and wiggle in her chair; she wretches her neck and shuts her eyes tightly like fists. She is moaning and then she is yelling and pleading for the pain to stop. My 78-year old grandmother, a strong-willed Russian woman, is sitting in this hospital chair begging Liz to stop the pain she is injecting directly into her body.

This one minute is standing still long after it has already passed. This one minute that starts a series of events that will stamp themselves onto my memory and loiter my dreams much longer than necessary.

Liz stops the medicine. I am telling my grandmother that she stopped it, but she cannot hear me, she is screaming that it hurts. I am telling her louder that she stopped it; I am walking towards her. My grandmother seems weakened and defeated by the whole incident. Like a shock treatment totally altering a person, she came out of the experience demanding to know “Why?”

“Why do I need this?” she keeps repeating. Like a confused child who will persist to ask a question until someone answers him, she keeps telling every nurse and doctor that just this morning she was feeling wonderful. She had just had some soup; she had walked around and done exercises. “Why are they doing this to me?” I continue to translate Liz’s medical jargon into Russian for my grandmother. I hold her hand and tell her to breathe through it. I try to give her my strength.

Liz comes in with a warm pack for my grandmother’s arm. It takes half an hour for the pain to go away and then my grandmother has to take four potassium chalky oversized pills. There’s not enough liquid to help my grandmother’s dry mouth get these pills down. They lodge themselves in the base of her diaphragms and time slowly and painfully digests them.

Within minutes there is a rapid beeping sound and Liz runs into the room. She is asking how my grandmother is feeling and quickly tells her that they need to get her into bed. They need to take a picture of her heart they are telling her. I tell her they need to do an EKG. Liz is asking me to ask my grandmother what hurts. My grandmother tells me that she is not feeling well. She was fine until that potassium. Liz explains that the pain was too strenuous on her heart.

Liz is anxious; she is rearranging the idling chairs and carts in the room, making room for the bulky metal EKG cart. My grandmother is ordered to lie down right away; this is an emergency. “It’s OK,” I tell her. “Your heart is just making them concerned.”

Back up arrives in three more with a cardiologist already on her way. “She needs to lie down right away!” they are echoing – one over the other. “A-Fib, D-Fib, Tacking,” a string of words that every medical drama has taught me to hate.

Three of us get her into bed, moving tubes aside, careful not to hurt her repairing stomach. Two nurses begin to pull down her gown to put the sticky pads on for the EKG. She is saying that it hurts. She is asking why this is happening. “It is not my fault,” she says. “I was fine before the potassium shot.”

I am holding her hand and brushing her hair off her face. I am fixing her gown so that her breasts are covered. I shove my way between the bed and the wall and stand there reassuring her in a way that makes me feel powerful and powerless all the same. She is getting angry and the pain is both intense and confusing. The faces hovering above her are exasperating her.

I watch the readings on the devices above her head. Her blood pressure goes from dangerously high to dangerously low. More medical staff enters the room; I move further and further against the wall and the bed is crushing me.

Everything starts to bother my grandmother – the oxygen tube, the heart monitor, all the IVs, her swollen legs, and all the blaring voices. She wants to know what each beep signals and what each medicine does. They order more blood work and another IV. She refuses; she tells them that they just put a new one in this morning. There is no more skin color left on her arm, just a swollen vessel in shades of magenta and navy. I see the color drain from her face as she gives up the fight a little. She feels defeated and stifled; an unexpected glitch in her healing path.

She says she wants them to stop everything. “No more!” she yells. She finally uses her English to yell out “I am dead.”

I take her hand and tell her that isn’t acceptable; there are many people working to get her better right now. I am trying to fill a role of a mother, a friend, a cheerleader, but I am a granddaughter – terrified and worried.

The new IV needs to be put in right away, they are demanding. My grandmother acquiesces. She recognizes the nurse who inserted her last IV and says that he did a good job. She lets him proceed. She praises his work again.

The new IV means more injections – many stinging and then cleaning out the IV. They are trying to control her heart rate. A normal heart rate is 75 beats per minute; hers is 180 right now. They use a stethoscope to try to listen but say that they cannot hear anything; it is too fast they are saying. They are paging the cardiologist again. More medicine is injected into the IV.

All the white coats are gathering around the bed. They are clearly nervous and confused. They compare numbers and charts and keep running the EKG machine. They scream at my grandmother. It’s loud in the room and since she doesn’t speak English they speak louder. They ask her where it hurts but she doesn’t know where. “It hurts everywhere,” she says.

Beepers keep going off and the intercom is paging more people – they wheel in a crash cart and attach her to that monitor. I cannot keep my eyes off this TV image of my grandmother’s erratically beating heart. I speak softer and calmer. I translate everything they are saying. I tell her to breathe.

My grandfather is a statuesque figure on the chair in the background. He has faith in medicine and tells her to calm down and let them do what they need to do. He seems unusually calm, but adrenaline and denial are an interesting force together. He starts to tell me that this is a good hospital. He says to give them space to work.

My grandfather loves my grandmother in the way that I imagine a man loves his wife after 58 years. A love that transcends a lifetime begun together in another continent half a century ago. In Kiev they got married. They had two children – a boy and a girl. They worked two jobs each and afforded a rare two-room apartment and a small VW bug. They immigrated to America in the first wave of Russian immigrants in 1976.

In America they built a second life filled with American grandchildren who they struggled to understand. My grandfather survived throat cancer and open-heart surgery. He speaks with an artificial voice box and has a permanent stoma in his neck. After his quadruple bypass, the blood thinner they gave him caused him to start bleeding out of the hole in his neck. But this man can build, reconstruct and fix anything – cars to 3D Jigsaw puzzles. He doesn’t drinks regular water – only coffee with milk and sugar during the day and sweet red wine out of the gallon jug with dinner.

Now this strong man of 5’7” is watching my grandmother in her bed surrounded with doctors and nurses pulling tubes, injecting medicines, and piling on more IV bags onto the pole. Just this morning she was IV-free. She was going home tomorrow. Now this mess. Her heart was beating too fast and there was no pattern. She wasn’t responding to the medicine. Her blood pressure was dangerously irregular. The cardiologist arrives and studies the scary EKG printouts. She prescribes another medicine – first one dosage for 6 hours and then another smaller dose for the next 6 hours.

For two hours they inject and measure. They take her blood pressure on the left arm and then the right. I help them Velcro and unvelcro the cuff. They use the machine to check the blood pressure and then they do it manually. My grandmother keeps asking me what the readings are. I answer her truthfully each time.

Finally her heart slows down and regulates. She lays in bed drained and sounds defeated and resentful with each word. She just can’t understand what just happened. She was fine this morning she keeps saying.

“Maybe it’s because your husband was in the room,” Liz jokes.

My grandfather gets up from the chair and fixes my grandmother’s blanket. She asks him to twist her socks into position and he does, careful not to touch her swollen legs. He walks over to her head and leans into her. He says he wants to see if she is warm. He gently puts his lips to her forehead and smoothes her hair into place. He kisses her forehead, the same skin he has known for 60 years.

His eyes water. “He’s my number one,” she says to whoever is still listening.

Dental Barbarism

“The dentist – he is a BARBARIAN! ” my father says in his thick Russian accent as I whine and recount the story of getting two cavities filled at Dr. Fine’s fancy dental office on Fifth Avenue. Let the fancy address fool you not – he too is a card-carrying member of The DBS (Dental Barbaric Society), where they make you take a lifelong oath to perpetuate oral misery to the masses with eroding ivories in our mouths.

The last time I had a cavity filled was in Forest Hills, Queens by my Trusty Childhood Dentist. Two decades later, in this midtown Manhattan office with a fancy polished bronze logo on their 31st floor mahogany door, I declare a recall on dentistry. I want to go back to the days where they gave me gas and sent me adrift to la la land.

Trusty Childhood Dentist used to give me the “Snoopy nose.” “Breathe deeply,” he would say and the sweet smell would come through the rubbery nasal contraption strapped onto my nose with 4 large plastic tubes. Secured into this dentist’s chair, I was happier than ever. Yes, the drilling noise was still the same, but when I closed my eyes, a kaleidoscope of images distracted me in a happy way to a happy place.

Today’s visit is to fill two small flossing cavities. “This would be a great case for the medical boards,” Dr. Fine had told me last year when he diagnosed these microscopic painless cavities in my molar teeth. It took me over a year of postponing appointments to make it to this one this morning.

First the dental hygenist cleans my teeth by scraping them with a stainless steel pick. She scrapes and then wipes the scraped remnats onto my dental bib. I wish for the chalk-on- -blackboard sound or the fork-on-a-plate sound; both would be an improvement over this scraping noise. I can only presume this was to ready me for the drilling on the horizon.

The cleaning is done. I spit chunky bloody saliva and rinse with Listerine. The best is yet to come.

First Assistant comes in and shoves a wooden stick with green gel onto the left side of my mouth and walks out of the room. This is to numb my gums before the injections. I sit here, very slowly getting topically numb, but not really numb … and I’m drooling like a teething baby. I spit into the little dental basin and wipe my mouth. The wooden stick is still sticking out of my mouth. I sit, I drool, I spit, I wipe my mouth with a tissue.

Fifteen minutes of this repetition and Dr. Fine comes in, clearly in a fowl mood. He skips the usual small talk and instructs me to keep absolutely still. I recognize this tone – tattoo artists and make-up artists also use this tone to stress the importance of stillness. So fine, be prideful, but do you have to shove your fingers that deeply into my mouth, ripping my cheek off?

So he comes in and injects the anesthetic. I think this is the same dental barbarians have been using since the beginning of time. It is somehow reminiscent of the first scuba helmet – archaic but solid. I see the vial of Novocain with a fading yellow label in a brown glass jar on the sterile tray on the stainless steel counter. I don’t think I ever realized that they go back into the same vial of Novocain. He pulls my cheek open and pushes my tongue aside and then ouch, ouch, ouch. The first assistant is still here and she says breathe, breathe, breathe. So I breathe. But it still hurt – a lot. He finishes the torture and walks out.

First Assistant sits in the chair next to me for the next 15 minutes, flipping through a magazine as I drool even more all over myself. Drool, spit, wipe. Again. Dr. Fine comes in and asks me if I’m numb. I feel some numbing in my lip, I’m drooling like crazy, but I still don’t feel the numb I remember – where your whole lip feels like it’s a balloon and your mouth insides are chewy rubber.

Dr. Fine tests for himself; he takes a sharp devise and starts poking around my mouth. I feel every poke. “Oh you’re not numb at all,” he says frustrated and goes back for round two with the injection device. Deep sigh, wish for Xanax and here we go again. He says it won’t hurt but he’s lying. He pulls my cheek and pinches it and injects and repeats over and over until he’s satisfied that I’ll be numb alright! He rips off his gloves storms out of the office. More drooling and more waiting. What fun.

Now First Assistant leaves for lunch and Meaner Assistant accompanies Dr. Fine as he begins. The drilling is awful; directly into the brain. He is drilling and poking and pushing and pulling. Meaner Assistant is stretching my cheek farther than it uncomfortably goes; Dr. Fine keeps telling me to open wider and keep stiller.

I moan a little bit and as Dr. Fine reloads the next evil tool, I tell Meaner Assistant that my mouth really hurts. She seems annoyed and says, ‘”You want Vaseline?’ I tell her never mind, but think it would have been a good idea to use the lube before they raped my mouth.

They finally finish after what seems like a whole day in this chair. The corners of my mouth feel ripped and my jaw feels locked. It takes five hours for the feeling to come back to my face.

Only now as I research ‘after cavity filling pain normalcy’ online do I learn that some dentists put you to sleep for a cavity. Why did I not know of this voluntary sedation? Why didn’t I research my cavity filling options? I thoroughly researched my thyroid surgery, but took these little flossing cavities for granted.

Lesson learned – explore all anesthesia option for EVERY medical procedure – no matter how minor they’re deemed by society.

eHarmony falls flat

My best friend Sophie had a very Sex and the City-worthy week of dating in New York. She got broken up with on a text message, took home a busboy from work in a broken hearted shameful moment, and then drunk-dialed her ex-boyfriend from college. The next morning she calls me swearing off men again. So I suggest an alternative. “How about crossing your sex wires with some Internet wires and give the whole Internet dating a chance?” I suggest.

So we browse some of the well-advertised sites and decide on eHarmony. The hype and advertising finally gets to her. Who doesn’t want to believe a message that preaches that it’s time to experience the joy of falling in love with someone who sees you, loves you, and accepts you for who you are?

eHarmony says this kind of happiness only comes from true compatibility – something they claim to have mastered. They invite Sophie on a no-risk trial to find her soul mate.

Marketing themselves as the #1 trusted relationship site to go beyond traditional online dating, eHarmony claims 90 members get married every single day. They match you based on 29 dimensions of compatibility. “Compatibility necessary for a lifetime of joy,” they explain.

So Sophie fills out the 436-question survey and clicks “FIND NEW MATCHES.” 26 new matches. Sophie begins to click through each one, slowly scanning down each profile and ultimately clicking “NO MATCH.” More than half of the users don’t have photos even though the “JOIN NOW TO SEE PHOTOS” was what finally tempted her to type in her credit card numbers, charging $110.85 ($36.95/month) for a 3-month trial.

But Sophie keeps clicking with an open mind. The matches just aren’t. In the extensive questionnaire, she honestly states that she is a moderate Jew who drinks and smokes several times a week. More than half of her matches are moderate Christians who never smoke or drink and prefer matches who don’t.

A week passes by and Sophie gets a few more bad matches. Another week – even more bad matches. Finally a week and a half goes by with zero matches. Apparently when you first sign up (7-day return policy) is when they run the initial compatibility query on the 20 million existing members of eHarmony. Once they serve up the majority of the matches, the rest of the time, it’s a slow drippy faucet.

Sophie logs on each day seeking her 29-point compatible soul mate. Each day – nada. Where art thou eHarmony matchmakers? Are they not all sitting hunched over scientific raw data drawing compatibility charts or mind mapping Sophie’s 436-question survey?

After a month of the dripping matchless matches, Sophie decides this isn’t worth the price of a massage. Beyond an occasional chuckle or small-talk email exchange, the matches were worthless. The one man Sophie finally thinks is a potential offline communicator ends up emailing her from his hotel room in Las Vegas expressing his loneliness.

Unmatched men loiter Sophie’s “MY MATCHES” tab on eHarmony. Sophie wants her money back, but she’s fair; she wants the portion of the membership that remains unused – 2 more months.

Since the product involved in this e-commerce transaction is the love of your life, you’d expect a customer service contact phone number or an email address. Sophie entails my help in contacting eHarmony; certainly there was some sort of error with the matching system.

Together we go on a treasure hunt for this buried contact phone number. In fact, this is the path we had to follow in order to get to a contact number:

• On the front page of eHarmony, there is a tiny text link at the bottom that says “About”
• Read through and click on “Click here for a list of Frequently Asked Questions”
• Scroll down to the 40th question on the list: “How do I contact Customer Care?”
• Another link comes up that says, “Click here for FAQ’s relating to eHarmony’s Singles Matching Service.” Here you see a list of “Most Popular Answers.” Ignore these.
  
• On the left there is a list of topics. Ignore those too.
• Activate the psychic part of your Internet browser.
• Click on “Subscriptions” in the left hand tool bar.
• On this page, there were 5 answers. One of them is a link to “How do I close the account?”
• Now a link pops up that says, “If you need assistance re-opening your account, please Click Here.”
• On this page, there is a tiny text link on the bottom right that gives a phone number.

Eureka!

So Sophie calls this buried phone number. They were experiencing high call volume, appreciated our interest and thanked us for using eHarmony to find the love of our life. While on hold, ethereal music comes on and like a scene out of Defending Your Life, we start to hear a message that could be on a welcome-to-heaven soundtrack. The cult-like hypnotic message repeats itself over and over when Charlotte finally answers.

Sophie starts out calmly explaining that she wants a refund because she is displeased with the service. “You promised me COMPATIBLE matches, but these matches are starting no fire,” Sophie explains to a sympathetic-sounding Charlotte.

Charlotte continues to answer Sophie in a very script-like way. She is sorry that Sophie is not happy with the service, but unfortunately the refund policy clearly states that she cannot get a refund after 7 days.

“We have 242 weddings every day,” Charlotte brags. (What happened to the 90 they advertise on the Website?) Sophie starts back, “Well thank you for that information, but I have not received a match in a week in a half.”

So Charlotte looks at Sophie’s profile on the computer and has a clear A-ha moment as only a telephone customer service representative can have. “Oh I see,” she realizes “You have limited your matches because you indicated that you would only accept matches from a 30-mile radius.”

Sophie lives in New York City, where the last US Census clocked in over 8 million residents. “Clearly in a city with over 8 million people on a site with over 20 million users, there are more than 26 matches for me,” Sophie reasons. Charlotte seems stumped.

She rewinds to the part in the script where she starts explaining their matching techniques and tells Sophie about the 68 PhDs who work on-staff to constantly improve the questionnaire.

So Sophie tries for one last time to explain to her that she feels that their matching system is flawed; it’s broken maybe. Charlotte explains that something on Sophie’s questionnaire deemed them worthy of a match. At this point Sophie isn’t thinking very highly of herself.

Vulnerable and frustrated, Sophie asks for the supervisor. After 15 minutes of hold music, Alan comes on the line. “Let me take a look at your account here, ma’am” he says boldly with this Texan drawl.

Sophie repeats much of the same arguments to Alan. “I’m not happy with the service,” she pleads. “I have not gotten regular matches since the initial batch in the first week and the ones I do get are entirely mismatched. You promised compatibility but are delivering shy of mediocrity.” Alan is upholding his end of the conversation but inserting the obligatory “right, right” in between her complaints.

“We are America’s #1 trusted relationship service, ma’am,” he says.

“Yes I know your tagline,” Sophie answers. “But you promised me a service and eHarmony is not holding up to their end of the relationship. I want to break up.”

Alan refuses a refund and instead encourages Sophie to stay with the service for the entire 3 months. “It only takes one person to be the love of your life, ma’am. Only one of the matches needs to be Mr. Right.” “But I’m not even getting Mr. Maybe Right’s.” Alan explains that in the compatibility questionnaire, you get to choose which types of things are important to you and how important they are – very, somewhat or not at all. “Maybe you chose too many things as important to you,” Alan suggests. Perhaps you should go back through your profile and change what’s important to you. But be careful,” he forewarns. “You could get upwards of 300 or 400 matches!”

“Great news,” Sophie says, optimistically. “So basically in order to find more matches for me out of your 20 million users, you’re suggesting that I go back and change what’s important to me?”

“I can do it on my end,” Alan says excitedly. “We can regenerate your matches.”

“No thanks, Sophie snaps. “I can change my settings by myself.”

“Thank you for calling eHarmony. Have a great day!” Alan, the matchmaker, cheerfully says.

Alan at eHarmony, helping people find their soul mates one call (to the secrete customer contact number) at a time.

So Sophie tries to change what’s important to her. She goes into her profile and clicks “not important at all” on every one of eHarmony’s categories. She clicks “FIND NEW MATCHES.”

5 new matches.

Essentially Sophie gave up everything that was important to her on eHarmony’s selection criteria to yield 5 new matches. Fiddler on the Roof’s Yenta the Matchmaker would not be proud.

Sophie begins the click through process for the new five. Three of the matches are Hindu since the religion element is no longer important. One of the men is a Christian high school math teacher who stresses that he never drinks or smokes; party girls should look elsewhere.

So Party Girl Sophie clicks open one last match – John.

John’s profile doesn’t have a photo. In his profile, he lists his occupation as “ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg,” his passion is “ddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd” and most influential in his life is “kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk.” He does make it a point to fill one thing out – his life skills. The first skill he lists is “using humor to make his friends laugh.”

So Sophie laughs just long enough to Control + Alt + Delete, restarting her computer and her dating approach.