A TREE BRANCH, A HAMBURGER, AND QUEENS

Many moons ago - back when summer parties were legendary and our tolerance for alcohol was heroic, my cousin (we’ll call her Tina) threw a massive backyard bash. I’m talking 50+ people, relatives from both our and her husband’s side, friends, neighbors, and even a live band courtesy of her brother that played in a band locally. It was one of those parties where the music is loud, the drinks are flowing, and everyone is convinced they can dance after a few.

At some point, I wandered down from the upper deck to the backyard to chat with my other cousin (we’ll call him Max), who was manning the band’s soundboard like he was mixing a Grammy‑winning album. A great song came on, he threw his arm around my shoulders, and the two of us started singing and swaying like we were auditioning for a drunk duet competition.

And then… One of us - we still don’t know who - swayed a little too far to the right.

We went down like two bowling pins.

Unfortunately, Tina and her husband had just planted baby tree saplings. Cute little three‑footers. Well, we landed on one and snapped it clean in half.

No hesitation. No mercy. Just crunch - nature defeated by two tipsy idiots.

We laughed so hard we could barely stand. I went back up to the deck to tell my sister what happened, but before I could say a word, she reached out and yanked a tiny branch out of my hair.

“You have a stick in your hair - how’d that happen?”

As I explained, she kept pulling out leaves and grass, and what might have been some mulch- who knows! She laughed the entire time. I must have looked like I tried to camouflage myself for a hunting trip- and failed.

When the party ended, our designated driver, my sister’s husband We’ll call him Joe) drove us home. It was about a 1 hour and 30‑minute ride from Long Island back to Bensonhurst.

Every fifteen minutes, my sister announced:

“I want a hamburger.”

I told her, “You should’ve thought of that before we left Tina’s. It’s 1 AM. No hamburger for you.”

I sounded like I was channeling the Soup Nazi (from Seinfeld), but somehow the Hamburglar from McDonald’s took over.

The next time, she got louder…

“I WANT A HAMBURGER.”

Joe finally said, “We’ll get you one when we get near home.”

Did she remember that?

 Absolutely not.

Every fifteen minutes or so: “I want a hamburger.”

We all stopped responding after a while. It was survival at that point.

When we finally got off the parkway, Joe pulled into a McDonald’s drive‑thru. And my sister-  the same woman who had been chanting “hamburger” like it was a religious ritual,  looked around and said:

“Why are we at McDonald’s?”

We said, because you wanted a hamburger! She quickly responded- No I don’t, I want to go home!

Seriously?

Anyway – Let’s fast‑forward to another time when she visited me. (we were only about a 15 minute drive from each other, but she took a car service because we planned to have wine. We had a great night, a lot of laughs (as we always do), but when she left, she miss-stepped, and fell down my front stoop, landed in a puddle, scraped her elbow, and came back upstairs looking like she had been mugged by gravity.

I canceled the car service and called her husband to come get her. The next day he told me that on their way home, as he turned onto their block, she yelled at him:

“Why did you take me to Queens?!”

Were they in Queens?

Absolutely not.

Not even close.

The Takeaway:

Some nights you break a tree, wear half a lawn in your hair, deny someone a hamburger, and still get accused of being in Queens.

And sometimes the real fiasco isn’t the fall, the puddle, or the drive‑thru - it’s trying to reason with someone who’s three drinks past logic.

ALCOHOL METEOR READING

Category                Score                     Notes

Tree Damage                     8/10           Sapling never stood a chance.

Drunk Swaying                 9/10           Synchronized falling at its finest.

Hamburger Panic          11/10          She wanted it with her whole soul.

Regional Confusion     12/10          Bensonhurst magically became Queens.

Overall Fiasco Level       9/10          Classic chaos with bonus landscaping

THE MIX‑UP

You know how adults are supposed to be responsible?

Well, I tried. I really did.

Back in April, Roger and I went for our eye exams. We both wear progressives - distance, up close, the whole “I need to see life in HD” package. The eye doctor’s staff told us that the lenses alone would cost $700 (that was for just one of us)! Then they tried to sell us frames that cost more than a used Honda, so we grabbed our prescriptions and high-tailed out of there, like two fugitives escaping a luxury heist. We figured when we had time, we would go to Walmart. It came recommended from a friend that gets her contact lenses there.

Fast‑forward through April’s busy schedule chaos, May’s chaos, June’s vacation and my fall (basically, our general theme of 2026) … “We’ll get to it eventually”. 

And we did, late but we did it. We finally picked up our new glasses. Tested them on some reading material,  tiny print and all. Everything was crisp and clear. In the end Walmart saved us almost two grand compared to what we would have spent  (and have spent in the past) at our Eye doctor’s office.

We felt like champions.

Then… about a month later…

I started noticing things looked blurry.

Not “I need to clean the lenses” blurry.

Not “I’m tired” blurry.

More like “Did my eyeballs file for early retirement?” blurry.

I’d try to read fine print and suddenly I could barely see it. I’m thinking, great. My eyes have changed again ALREADY? Perfect. Love that for me. As usual though, I kept meaning to call the eye doctor, but life kept happening. And honestly, I was dreading hearing, “Yes, your eyes changed dramatically in 30 days, please hand over another $400.” Well, I’m glad now that I didn’t get a chance to call because…

Today… TODAY…

I discovered the truth.

I wasn’t going blind.

I wasn’t aging at warp speed.

I wasn’t experiencing sudden ocular betrayal.

No.

I was wearing my OLD GLASSES from last year!

Apparently, at some point during my daily “swap to prescription sunglasses” routine, I grabbed the wrong pair, didn’t realize and kept wearing them.

For WEEKS.

It was the glasses.

The WRONG glasses.

The glasses from 2025.

I’ve been out here living life in last year’s vision like it was a vintage filter.

The Takeaway

Sometimes life doesn’t blur because your eyes changed — it blurs because you accidentally downgraded yourself to last year’s prescription. Before assuming your eyeballs have entered early retirement, check to make sure you’re wearing the right glasses!

Meteor Reading: The Mix‑Up

Category   Score Funny Notes Eye Confusion    8/10        Everything looked like a soft‑focus soap opera for a month. Internal Scream    9/10       WHY ARE MY EYES FAILING ME AGAIN? They weren’t. Adulting Failure   10/10       Accidentally wearing old glasses is peak “I tried.” Hindsight   11/10       Turns out the problem wasn’t my vision - it was my mix-up

 

 

The Curfew Chronicles

I wasn’t a good teenager. Then again, what teenager is perfect? They all come with their own master mind and illusions. For part of my teenage years, we lived above a delicatessen on 5th Avenue and 83rd Street in Brooklyn, NY. I thought I was grown enough and therefore exempt from curfews. My mother disagreed.

Of course she did.

I stayed out past curfew constantly, got grounded every time, and yet, still held onto the fantasy that one day my mother would throw her hands up and say, “just do what you want - because you’re going to anyway!”

She did not.

On Fridays and Saturdays, my curfew was 11 p.m. Weeknights were even earlier. And on one particular night? I came home at 2 a.m.

I figured I could sneak in undetected like a Ninja. I crept up the hallway stairs of our building like a burglar who had studied the architectural blueprints – double stepping and skipping those few, loud creaky steps, sometimes holding my breath like that would somehow help.

At the apartment door, I slid the key in at the speed of a garden snail. Turned it even slower and opened the door to step inside. The apartment was dark. I closed the door silently, locked it, and turned right toward the dining room. (Immediate right was the dining room doorway, and another immediate right led to the three bedrooms), my brother’s, my mother & stepfathers, and mine was the last one.

As I was saying… I went to turn into the dining room… and apparently my mother had taken our coffee table and barricaded the doorway of the dining room with it!

Believe me when I tell you: I flipped over that coffee table like I was Jackie Chan in a scene from Police Story! I did a full tumble and roll, then crash‑landed into the dining room chairs. They banged together loudly, like an uneven washing machine cycle.

I’m lying on the floor, trying to figure out what dimension I’ve fallen into, when the dining room light snaps on and my mother yells:

“Ah‑HA! I KNEW you wouldn’t make curfew!”

Naturally, I got grounded… Again.

But wait – There’s more! My faithful readers know there’s always more...

Our apartment had two doors leading to our building hallway. Guess where the second one was?

My room!

Time to develop a new plan!

I decided I’d outsmart my mother. Before going out on weekends, I’d quietly remove the chain from my bedroom door, then unlock it, close my bedroom door and leave through the main apartment door like I was a normal teenager heading out to be with friends. Mom would give her usual warning:

“Be home by 11. If you blow curfew, you’re grounded for two weeks instead of one this time!”

I’d roll my eyes and say, “Ugh, whatever. I can’t wait until I’m 18.”

Knowing full well, I apparently had a fool-proof plan that was sure to work.

It did not.

There I was, on a Saturday night, blowing curfew like always. Once again I was stomping on my mother’s last nerve, like I was putting out a fire. I snuck up the stairs, skipped the noisy steps like a delinquent acrobat, I slipped into my bedroom, closed the door silently, turned around…

And my mother was sitting on my bed.

Of course she was!

“Did you think I wouldn’t notice the chain off that door? Did you think you could fool ME?”

Two weeks later, I was released from house arrest by my mother, the warden. With only a couple months until my 18th birthday, I decided it was in my best interest to follow her curfew law and become an abiding teenage citizen. For the next 8 weeks I treated my release as though I was on probation and managed to ride it out.

When I turned 18, I proudly announced, “I know you’ll be disappointed, but now that I’m legally an adult, you can’t tell me when I have to be home anymore.”

She stared directly into my soul as if she was burning a hole through it with heat vision, like superman. Then she smiled. It wasn’t her usual ‘I’m happy for you" kind of smile. It was confusing and scary. 

Then she said something I never thought I'd hear... she said: “You’re right.”

I inquisitively asked, “I am??” 

“I mean - YES, I AM!” I declared, boldly.

She continued, “You ARE an adult now. You can do what you want, as long as it’s legal. And legally? You just became my tenant, unless you want to move out. Adults work and pay rent. Rent will be $100 a month for room and board. You might want to hit the pavement tomorrow and get a job fast, because the first of the month is just two weeks away!”

I remember thinking, That’s cold, Ma. Happy Birthday to me, huh?

Obviously, she was moving into a different phase of motherhood- the one where parents begin to teach adulting lessons instead of kid lessons and as adults we have to do adult things and if we don’t, we pay the for it with repercussions far worse than being grounded.

She did give me a nice birthday present that day though- a real one! A Walkman (if you are old enough, you will remember those) and if you are too young- go ask an adult what that is! Mom also baked me a birthday cake, and the family sang to me, like always. Mom was Sturn when she had to be to shape us into responsible grownups, standing on our own feet, but she was also very loving and caring.

Looking back, she taught me a lot of life lessons. And with age and those lessons came wisdom… which gave me a one‑up on my own kids when I was raising them. Whenever I caught them doing something they shouldn’t, I’d say, “There isn’t much you can pull over on me; I pretty much did it all.”

Apparently, I didn’t “Do it all”

My kids tested the waters and made their mistakes, just as I did, growing up. Obviously, any product of “ME,” had to turn out somewhat like me, right?

And honestly? I can only respect that.

 

Eau de Car Show

It was a Sunday - the sacred day of rest for normal people, and the sacred day of Cars & Coffee breakfast for me & my husband, Roger. It’s always the first Sunday of every month, which means I automatically wake up on this particular Sunday knowing two things:

1.      I will be surrounded by men who think horsepower is a personality trait. 

2.      I will need caffeine to get me going.

After breakfast, we planned to visit a very old classic car museum - the kind of place that smells like dust, engine oil, and unresolved family disputes. The museum is owned by an eccentric man who opens it only once a year, for five hours, like some sort of automotive groundhog. If he sees his shadow, maybe you get to see a Model T.

On the way home from breakfast, I told Roger we needed to stop at the house so I could use the bathroom. I had just drunk 2 cups of coffee and a full glass of water at the restaurant, and we were about to embark on a 50+ minute drive to this museum. I wasn’t about to risk guessing whether the museum had a bathroom or just a decorative outhouse from 1912.

When we got home, I realized I hadn’t taken my blood pressure meds. So I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge, popped the meds, took a quick sip, and rushed off to the bathroom, so we could get going. I was basically in “we only have a few hours before the museum closes” mode - the same urgency people have when they’re trying to catch a flight, except mine was for antique cars.

On the way out of our house, I tossed the water bottle into my bag because I always carry spring water with me.

We had a lovely time at the museum, even though it was raining. The outdoor classic car show didn’t interest us because it was not only raining, but we see those types of cars all the time (and we each own one ourselves). Plus, Roger runs a classic car show.

 But very early 1900’s cars? The Bonnie‑and‑Clyde‑might‑have‑sat‑here type? That’s rare!

On the way home, I reached into my bag, grabbed the water, and took a big swig. And immediately regretted it. The water tasted like perfume!

Not a “hint of floral.”

Not “lightly scented.”

No.

It tasted like someone had steeped gardenias in a bathtub and bottled it.

I said, “EW. This tastes like perfume!” and then I smelled it. It reeked. Roger smelled it too and made the same face he makes when someone suggests buying a Prius.

My first thought: One of my travel perfumes must’ve leaked in my bag. Except… it didn’t smell like any perfume I own. I don’t do floral perfumes. I don’t like to smell like a garden.

So, I sniffed inside my bag.

Nothing.

No perfume.

No leak.

Just the scent of leather from my bag. Now I’m confused. Where did this eau de Fiasco come from?

I told Roger, “I don’t think it tasted like this earlier when I took my meds. But I was rushing, and took a tiny sip, so maybe I didn’t notice?” I’d dump it when we got home.

 When we got back, I poured it out, tossed the bottle, and thought that was the end of something unexplainable. Except I couldn’t get passed it. I kept thinking about this mystery, because the scent was so strong, I think it had permanently perfumed my soul. I was a little upset because I thought I might get sick from drinking it.

So, I turned to AI to help me figure this out, because with something like this, I could either call Coco, a doctor or consult a robot. And Coco would’ve told me I was dying! 

 After explaining to AI briefly what happened, I asked: Am I going to get sick? Can I die from drinking the tainted water? AI basically said (And I'm paraphrasing) ... “Calm down, drama queen,” but in a polite robot way. It said I wouldn’t get sick from two swigs and would’ve already shown symptoms. So, I was relieved. Then AI gave me several possibilities of how this could have happened, but the one that made the most sense was contamination during storage or transport. Maybe it sat next to scented detergent that leaked in a hot warehouse. Maybe something else leaked. Maybe the plastic absorbed the scent. 

Maybe the universe hates me.

Then I wondered which case of water in my garage was tainted. I looked in the fridge but had two different brands of spring water in there. Not helpful. I went back to the garbage can, retrieved the empty bottle I threw out earlier, and checked the label.

First clue- It was purified water. I NEVER buy purified water. I only buy spring water. This was a foreign object that came from my fridge. I was confused. I went into the living room and told Roger, and suddenly he had an epiphany - the kind where eyes widen and look like he just solved a murder.

“I KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED!” he said with enthusiasm.

Me: “How??”

He explained that the day before when he went to a car show with his friend, they handed out goody bags to those that brought classic cars there. Inside the bag was:

·         A bottle of water

·         Random trinkets

·         And… A car air freshener meant to go under your seat. It was not wrapped.

Roger left the bag in the car on a hot summer day. With the air freshener marinating with the bottle, in the heat like a potpourri crockpot. Then he came home and put the water in our fridge…

Hot car + plastic bottle + car air freshener = Eau de Car Show Water

 A fragrance nobody should infuse with anything ingestible. I don't blame him though, he didn't know. Hell, I didn't even know this could happen.

Sometimes I swear Fiasco's like this.... only happen to me.