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clothes, Coincidences, Communion, Connecticut, Friends, Humor, Mass, Norwalk, shopping, TJ Maxx, writing

Odd Coincidences

In Humor, Religion, shopping on August 12, 2025 at 7:27 pm

Think of this post as a prompt for you: Describe a something that happened, to you or someone you know, that was really odd and which you never forgot.

I’ll start.

One of my best friends attended the same church that my husband, son, and I attended. That’s where we met. That’s where I met most of my friends in Norwalk, Connecticut. We had moved there from East 83rd Street in Manhattan in 1995 and didn’t know anyone.

We became fast friends and one birthday, she gave me a gift card to TJ Maxx, my favorite store. I bought a pink silk shirtdress that I loved.

One Sunday shortly after my birthday, I was scheduled to be a Eucharistic Minister at Mass, which means I helped distribute Communion. On that particular Sunday, she brought someone to Mass with her who had never met me. I think it was the woman’s first time at our church, but don’t quote me on that.

Anyway, before Communion, the Eucharistic Ministers all congregated behind the altar, while the priest prepared the cups and plates for us. My friend and her friend sat in the last row of the church. During this time, the woman said to my friend, “I love that pink dress that the woman up on the altar is wearing.”

My friend turned to her and said, “I gave it to her.”

The woman probably thought that my friend was insane. I hope so.

Your turn!

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cleaning, cooking, diet pepsi, family, food, houseguests, humor, life, tofurky, writing

Deep Freeze

In Humor on August 11, 2025 at 4:12 pm

If I were a houseguest and my host had to go to bed during my visit due to illness, and she forgot to ask me to remove the cans of Diet Pepsi that she put in the freezer so they’d cool quickly, and I discovered that one of the cans had exploded in the freezer, what would I do?

I would wish I were a man.

A lot of men would quickly close the freezer door and pretend to have not seen the mess. Or, they would pull out what they needed, close the freezer door, and pretend to have not seen the mess.

Women, however, would do one of two things: Immediately tell the host of the mess or decide to tackle it by themselves. I would be in the latter group, unless the host was standing right next to me, in which case, we’d clean the freezer together.

Yesterday, I was especially fortunate to have had a considerate male houseguest who went the extra mile. He took the exploded can out of the freezer, as well as the others in there. He put them in the sink. He even picked out chunks of frozen cola, thinking he had found them all. He didn’t, but he tried.

His actions were much appreciated. However, he could have let me know this morning about what had happened, instead of letting me discover the disaster later that day, after he left. But, if he had told me about the mess awaiting me, I wouldn’t have appreciated all he had done, and I would have gotten myself worked up about all of the cleaning that was in store for me, so it was actually self-preservative of him to leave me in the dark for a time. For the time it took him to get out of the house.

It all worked out, though. My freezer was overstuffed and desperately needed a cleaning before the explosion. I finally had a non-negotiable reason to empty it. On the plus side, I finally got rid of that uncooked Tofurky from last Christmas.

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boobs, breasts, coupe glass, Grand Teton, Humor, Marie Antoinette, Tetons, Venus de Milo, writing

You Want Me to Write About What?

In Humor on March 14, 2018 at 3:01 am

“Write a funny post about boobs,” suggested a friend recently. “It would really cheer me up,” she said.

“I can’t even say the word,” I told her. “How am I going to use it in a post?”

“Oh, please write about boobs,” she said. “I’ve been through a really hard time with mine, and I need to laugh about my boobs, rather than cry over them.”

I paused for a moment, overwhelmed by the excessive use of the word “boobs.”

“Maybe I could call them something else,” I said. “‘Boob’ just isn’t a word I grew up saying. My mother always said ‘bosom.’ I don’t think I was even comfortable saying ‘breast’ until recently.”

“I get it,” my friend said. “My father could never say ‘breast.’ Whenever we had chicken, he always asked for the ‘white meat.’ But everyone says ‘boobs’ now. It’s an accepted word.”

“But what would I say about them?” I asked.

She started to sing, “Do my boobs hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot? Can you tie them in a bow?”

I couldn’t help but join in, “Can you throw them over your shoulder like a Continental soldier? Do your boobs hang low?” We both laughed like bad kids.

“Maybe your story angle could be about how language has changed and how words that used to be offensive aren’t anymore.”

“I don’t know,” I stalled. “To write that post, I’d have to use words that some people still consider to be crass, and I might lose one or two of my ten loyal readers.”

“Well, then, just stick to boobs. You can write about mine. They’re perfect. I have Venus de Milo boobs.”

I didn’t know what to say. So I said, “Excuse me?”

“I do!” she said. “They’re small and perky!”

I wasn’t aware of this. I’ll have to take a closer look the next time we see each other. I’ll need to be discreet, however, or she might whip off her shirt.

“Did you know that the champagne glass was modeled after Marie Antoinette’s boob?” she asked.

I pictured Marie Antoinette squashing her breast into a champagne flute. Then I figured

Screen Shot 2018-03-14 at 2.50.52 AM.png

coupe glass

out that the champagne glass in question was a coupe glass, with a wide, shallow, drinking bowl.

“And did you know that the Grand Teton mountain in Wyoming translates to ‘the big tit?'” she asked. “It’s the largest of three Tetons and together they were called ‘The Three Breasts.'”

“That’s very interesting,” I said, wondering where else this conversation could lead. “I’ll think about writing about … ahem … boobs, but not … uh … tits.”

“Oh, please do,” she urged. “Your blog always makes me laugh, and a post about boobs is just what I need right now.”

After hearing about the Grand Teton, writing about boobs didn’t seem so bad.

Venus de Milo photo from Wikipedia

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Central Park, Humor, Jimmy Breslin, Manhattan, New York City, New York Daily News, snow, snow day, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, writers, writing

Snow Write

In Humor, snow on January 6, 2018 at 8:59 pm

Many years ago, my sister, brother, and I walked to Central Park from our apartments on East 83rd Street in Manhattan. It had snowed tremendously, and our companies had given us a snow day. This was before anyone had computers in their homes so very few people were expected to work from home.

We trudged westward through the snow, up East 83rd to Fifth Avenue, and across Fifth to the park. We slogged through the knee-deep snow, alongside the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s glass enclosure that housed the Egyptian room.

My sister told my brother and me that we should write about what it was like to walk around New York City in the snow. She said that that was what real writers would do. That was a dig at us because we fancied ourselves writers. Our brother was actually earning a living by writing for a trade magazine at the time. I just told people that I could write and some of them, my sister included, believed me.

Anyway, we returned home with cold hands and feet … and warm insides due to our prolonged stop at a bar. Neither my brother nor I wrote about our day. Even if we had, who would we have submitted our stories to? It’s not like there were blogs back then.

The next day, my sister, brother, and I must have met up again because I remember her waving The New York Daily News, or maybe Newsday, at us. “Look at this,” she said, pointing to an article. “Jimmy Breslin wrote about walking around New York in the snow yesterday. I told you both that you should have written about the snow.” We told her that we weren’t well-known writers with established columns in a New York newspaper. She said it didn’t matter. That’s what writers did: they wrote. Looking back, I see that she was right. We should have written for ourselves, if for no one else.

The other day, it snowed a foot in Norwalk, Connecticut, where I live. The winds blew maniacally and the temperature felt like it was in the low single digits. It was too cold to leave the house, so my only interaction with the snow was through my home-office window. From what I could see, the wind was so strong that the snow fell sideways, and nobody came out of their houses due to the extreme cold.

My company’s office was officially closed for the snow day, but we were all told to work from home. I complained to my husband that snow days weren’t fun anymore, now that we had to work through them.

But, truthfully, I was secretly relieved to have an excuse for not writing about the snow.

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Charles Dickens, cheese head, classes, free ice, Green Bay Packers, hotel, hotels, housekeeping, Humor, ice, Jane Austen, maid service, Marriott, Marriott Hotels, Ohio State, Racine, reservations, The Ohio State University, Wisconsin, writing

Such a Deal!

In Humor on November 3, 2013 at 1:09 am

I don’t usually write about recent events because my writing teachers at Ohio State told us not to include details that could date our prose. We were instructed to write stories that future generations could relate to. (I’m glad Jane Austen and Charles Dickens didn’t go to Ohio State.)

Despite my professors’ warning, this current event cannot be ignored: A woman moved into a Racine, Wisconsin, Marriott (for future readers: that’s a mid-price hotel that can be counted on for cleanliness and service) for nine years and moved out before she was evicted for her $28,000 bill. http://gma.yahoo.com/wisconsin-woman-kicked-hotel-9-years-210721001–abc-news-travel.html?vp=1

That is a little more than $3,100 per year. I hope somebody rich steps up to help her. But, more than that, I hope they have a vacancy. I’m packing up my things right now. You cannot live for that price anywhere else, even if you add in the cost of a rented refrigerator. That is less than my family pays for our mortgage payment and heating bill per month. And we certainly don’t get free cable, maid service, and ice.

When I was little, I said that I wanted to live in a hotel. Everyone laughed, as they cleaned their homes, filled their ice-cube trays, paid their mortgages, and stayed home because they couldn’t afford to get off their couches. Little did they know that the day would come when they could live almost for free and have endless disposable income, and lots of time to spend it.

Forget the good old days. Embrace the great new days and make a reservation at that Marriott in Wisconsin … for the rest of your life. http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/mkerw-racine-marriott

You will have to wear a cheese head once in a while and become a Green Bay Packers fan—but that’s a small price to pay, for a small price to pay to live.

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Amazon, Amazon.com, authors, Avon, book, books, buy, catalogs, company, corporations, domain names, domains, famous, famous people, for sale, Hemingway, Humor, indie books, ladies' room, laziness, lazy, LinkedIn, mail-order, motto, novels, path of least resistance, restrooms, sale, self-published books, self-publishing, sell, site, website, websites, writer, writers, writing

Wanna Buy a Website?

In Humor, Website, Writing on May 13, 2013 at 3:38 pm

A long time ago, I remember reading a complaint by a wanna-be author about young authors who, with little life experience, wrote best-selling debut novels. The complainer said that he thought that one had to run with bulls, shoot big game, and fight in wars before writing a book. He was really ticked off that novices had the nerve to succeed as authors without emulating Hemingway. I, on the other hand, was inspired. Maybe I could write a book, too. I knew very little about anything, so I was qualified. The only thing holding me back was my innate laziness.

My personal motto is “Take the path of least resistance.” Why struggle when you don’t have to? You can get there the easy way, or the hard way. The choice is kind of obvious.

I remember being awed, many years ago, by the marketing expertise of an Avon lady in our 20-story office building. I first learned of her existence in the ladies’ room. She had put a stack of Avon catalogs next to the sink. Out of curiosity, I visited all of the ladies’ rooms on every floor, and I saw an identical stack on every counter. That was ingenious, in my opinion. With very little effort, she had reached every potential female customer in the building. She became my role model, even though I had no idea who she was.

Then the Internet came along and entrepreneurs started buying up website domains with the names of big corporations and famous people. Big corporations and famous people were not amused, but many of them were forced to pay big bucks to the domain owners to buy back their names. Some of the companies sued the domain owners, but many chose to just pay up and be done with it. A new world had opened up for me.

So, I started a website. The site, www.spbroundup.com, is a list of self-published books. I had two purposes in starting the site: to promote the work of self-published authors, who needed one site where book buyers could go and find titles for all tastes; and to have a big corporation, like Amazon.com, buy it. The big corporation would have the resources to improve my site which would benefit indie authors, as well as me.

I mentioned the site on LinkedIn.com’s author and writer pages, and received a number of book submissions. I started entering the information, and then I got more submissions. I couldn’t keep up with the demand which was, in truth, small. But it was bigger than I could handle. Now, I have a backlog of titles to post on my site—and an inbox full of annoyed emails from self-published authors who want to know what is taking me so long to upload their book information. The worst part is that the site is taking up a lot of my time and nobody has shown any interest in buying, or even visiting, my site.

I think it’s time to change my path. This one is very resistant. Maybe I’ll start selling something in restrooms. If you’re a big mail-order company looking for an indolent rep, feel free to send me catalogs.

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Patsy Porco

Patsy Porco's Blog: Free and Worth It!

Posts Tagged ‘writing’

Odd Coincidences

Deep Freeze

You Want Me to Write About What?

Snow Write

Such a Deal!

Wanna Buy a Website?

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