Ena from Egypt

First of all, I would like to admit to being an asshole elitist snob. I just read a great review of High School Musical 2 and I feel a fool for using it as an example of bad LA taste. Although I cannot confess to being a complete snob because one of my favorite movies is On Golden Pond and I like Justin Timberlake and I like millions of Christmas lights hanging on houses and reindeer on the roof and I have been told that that is a tacky thing to do to your house but I love it. I have no idea if I actually get the Disney channel but if I do I am going to sit down and watch that Musical and I am going to enjoy it and respect it and slap myself in the face for acting all hauty taughty. (Okay, absolutely no idea how to spell that one.)

Also, about yesterdays anger...I completely accept fifty percent of the blame for the breakup of my marriage. A breakup doesn't happen just because one person finds another and leaves. And I should have seen the writing on the wall much, much sooner. Like maybe when he told me that he had fallen in love with someone else as much as he had fallen in love with me years before. Was I stupid? Yes. Because it's hard to hear those things...Really HEAR what the other person is telling you. And truthfully, if someone falls in love then come on, it's over. There is nothing you can do about love. But I am at peace with it now and actually feel like that was a good thing and I have no regrets. I just have cancer.

So, Ena from Egypt...I have been going to this little mailbox store for over a year now. I use it to send packages or buy stamps or boxes and stuff. Cooper the dog is there and his owner, a very nice woman named Ena. Ena works hard. She's got high blood pressure. And today Ena told me a little bit about her life. She came here from Egypt in the late sixties with her husband. They got jobs and bought a house in Santa Monica for $40,000.00!! Imagine that. And she got pregnant. The house was small so they added some square footage and then the family grew and they bought the house next door and soon they had a very big house and two kids and good jobs. And then the husband left for (hold your hats) his secretary. (By the way, Ena must have learned English from an African American woman because she had all the moves and lingo down and it was very charming.) Okay, so now Enid is alone and she loses the house in the divorce and what to do, what to do. So a friend tells her she has a mailbox store, a franchise of Mailboxes etc. Ena thinks this might be good for her but she finds out all about it and it seems like one big ripoff having a franchise so she goes to mailbox school (Is there such a thing, you ask? Ena said there is so...)Anyway, she learns all she has to learn about mailing things and learns how to use the computer and in a year or two she has own little shop. Enter husband number 2. Akmed. Now he just wants to stay in the country so he marries Ena because her children did not want her to live alone and Akmed absconds with everything. Her high blood pressure lands her in the emergency room one night and when she gets back home, everything is gone including her car. And Akmed. He calls her a week later from Egypt and asks her to send money so his mother can buy an apartment. And I'm looking at Ena in her little mailbox store and I'm thinking...This woman has guts. This woman is brave. I should be so brave. We all should be so brave. She lives her life with no fear. It's about taking care of yourself and your children and standing up straight and when you get hit in the stomach you take the punch and you get up before the referee counts to ten. (Oh, that was an awful metaphor. I'm sorry about that. I am ill from that metaphor.)

I really do like On Golden Pond. "Look, Norman. The loons. The loons." How can you not love the loons?