By Cathy Miller

Imagine a lively, witty conversation with the only distraction a duet of bull frogs and a babbling waterfall. Such was the time well-spent with this week’s Person of the Week.

Sandy Polsky, originally from Wayne, and her husband Matt, share their bucolic Belvidere mountain home with Thor, 13, their rescue dog, a feisty guy with a great smile.

They lived in Cranford for 25 years, where they raised their children. Their road to Warren County included a major detour north. Sandy recalled, “We went away for a long weekend in Maine with Noah, one of our sons. It was our first time there and we stayed in a little shack in the middle of the woods, part of a mini-lodge, nothing elaborate. We were surrounded by darkness and trees.” Sandy was smitten with the wilderness!

She continued, “After we returned to New Jersey, I told my husband I was going on a mystery ride. In fact, I met with a realtor who showed me a few houses. We were used to suburbia. I never thought I’d want to be in the country, but that changed after our visit to Maine.” Sandy knew Warren County had a lot of potential.

When she told Matt about her excursion and asked what he thought, she was surprised by his quick response: “I’m not married to Cranford. OK, let’s do this.” 

The house they now live in was the 10th one Sandy viewed. “I’d told the realtor I don’t want to see my neighbors. I want trees around me. I don’t want to live on a busy street. I stood out front for 20 minutes and not one car went by. There was a cat in the middle of the road. Turned out he lived nearby and was 24 years old. The cat’s standing in the middle of the road, which he did it all the time, and he’s lived for 24 years, so…it must not be a busy street!”

She bemoaned how their relatives don’t want to visit. “They think it’s total boondocks here.”

Their children feel the same. “Our kids were grown when we moved here. They think we’re nuts. They say there’s nothing to do. I say it’s serenity. I told Noah, ‘If you want some peace and quiet, come for a weekend, we don’t have to be here, we’ll stay at your place.” There’s just one stipulation – Noah’s pet rabbit, a menacing beast who growls and charges, must go on vacation too!

Sandy continually marvels at her surroundings. “I never felt anybody could be so in love with where they were living. I grew up in Wayne, nothing special … Cranford, 25 years. There’s a real connection with your friends, but this is different. I still can’t believe I live here!”

Sandy is extremely proud of the fish pond she commissioned a couple years ago. She said, “It’s not at all what I envisioned. It’s even nicer than the display model. I left it to designer.” 

The pond is home to several small goldfish. The water recirculates, sometimes needing to be topped off if there’s not enough rain. Is there any other maintenance? “Not much for me!” Sandy laughed. “In the spring, they drain the water, then hose everything down until it’s sparkling clean. In the fall, before the leaves come down, they install a black net dome over the pond for a few months to catch any debris, to prevent algae. I have to do is clean the filter.”

Sandy planned the pond with a garden around it. The rest of her gardens have been works in progress since they moved in. She’s also experimenting with moss. “I’ve always loved the beauty of moss. I’m transplanting it into the yard, which I’d love to be completely moss, although I’m not quite sure it will work.”

Sandy’s gardens include begonias, black-eyed susans, canna lilies, irises, daisies, columbine, allium, caladium, lady’s mantle, coral bells, lamb’s ear, swamp cabbage, and more. “I couldn’t care less about gardening as a kid, nor as an adult when my kids were little,” she admitted. “My neighbor was into gardening, just basic stuff. She made it look so easy and loved the garden so much. Matt’s mother loves flowers. She taught me enough to realize it doesn’t have to be an ordeal. I’ve been gardening around 20 years, working on these plantings little by little.”

Sandy finds herself relaxing by the pond all hours of the day. “Even at night, I’ve got little solar lights sprinkled all around and it’s magical. I’ll come out at 10 or 11 and sit.” She added, “You can actually go into the pond. It’s rather deep in the middle. On a hot day, it’s refreshing to stick your feet in”

With the slate patio, slate steps, slate path and lush gardens, it’s understandable why she feels such contentment stepping into this soothing scenario.

Sandy has befriended a chipmunk named Chipper who takes food from her hand. “It took just a few days with peanuts. He wouldn’t have come so close without the lure of food.” She’s also befriending a squirrel named Paul. “He’s come closer to me the last few days,” she smiled. “I may be able to get him to take food from my hand if I keep trying every day. He doesn’t run away as soon as he sees me, like the other squirrels do.” With dense woods along the edge of her back yard, she’s always watching for bears.

What about her career? Sandy said, “I was a personal injury paralegal. It was a wonderful job with Sills Cummis in Newark, one of the biggest firms in New Jersey. They had a very small personal injury department and it was perfect. Most personal injury attorneys have hundreds and hundreds of injuries. Here, at most, I had 35 cases at one time. They were great trial attorneys and really worked up the case. I was there for 27 years.”

Shortly after Sandy and Matt moved to Belvidere she began doing freelance paralegal work. Two years ago, she retired. Just weeks ago a friend of hers, an attorney, desperately needed some help so she agreed to work 10 hours a week for her.

Sandy self-published her book “Paralegal To The Rescue! Why A Personal Injury Lawyer Needs A Paralegal To Maximize Case Results” in 2012. She has another one in the works, a spoof of “Paralegal To The Rescue!” which includes her own cartoon-style illustrations. She didn’t want to release it while still working with lawyers, warning, “Some attorneys just don’t like attorney jokes.”

She is a prolific a writer. “Matt is the one who first got me published – he put me in touch with the editor of the Cranford Chronicle, where I published for years,” she said gratefully. 

The premise of most of her short stories is: “Things always happen to me. I call it my ‘I Love Lucy Life.’” Of the very first vignettes she wrote, she noted, “I felt compelled, but I wasn’t planning to write a humor column. It’s called ‘Fencepost.’” It involves a love of music, a rush hour traffic jam, a missed visual cue, a back-end bump, and some adult name-calling. Honestly hilarious.

Later, Sandy contributed a monthly humor column to a local publication, two actually stirred up a little controversy. The name of her column was “But It Makes Sense To Me.” Each individual story had its own name. The humor was 90% poking fun at herself (and occasionally her husband).

She remembers, “The first controversial story was about me running out of gas seven times in my life and calling AAA. After the story ran, the publication decided to put my column on a short hiatus when a reader complained, ‘I don’t know what the author is trying to say, but she wasted AAA’s time and that’s irresponsible.’ The reader didn’t realize I’m making fun of myself! I asked the publisher to reconsider my column and they agreed.”

All went well until…“I submitted a column called ‘Urine To Go.’ It’s such a silly story, but after a few weeks it still hadn’t run – it had been deemed inappropriate.” Here it is in a nutshell!

Sandy had to do a 24 hour urine test – collect every drop for a full day and bring it to the hospital’s lab. The full jug, a book and her wallet all went into a big bag. At check-in, the nurse asked for identification. Reaching into the bag, everything felt wet. So gross! Calmly, she headed to the ladies room, bag in hand. Emptying the soggy contents, it slowly became apparent that the jug was not the culprit, a water bottle had sprung a leak.

At that point, Sandy ended the editorial relationship.

Here’s one last “But It Makes Sense to Me” as shared by Sandy, about the lure of nuts and raisins on a moving vehicle. It’s entitled “Baboon Freedom.”

“I’m at Great Adventure Safari along with my son and his friend, both 12. You drive your car through the wild animal area, which you can bypass if you don’t want baboons ripping it up. They’re jumping all over my car because I tossed raisins and nuts on the hood. The park employees drive little zebra-striped trucks, barking ‘do not feed the animals’ through a megaphone. We’re moving slowly and baboons are jumping on the rearview mirror. I had a sunroof and we could look up and see them. There was a baboon on the hood of my car. I was mesmerized. I didn’t realize how close to the exit I was. The guard is yelling frantically, “Stop!” The baboon escaped. The baboons on the inside were screeching. The guard drew her super-soaker and aimed it at the renegade baboon. Seems the escapee didn’t enjoy his freedom, so he hastily returned. The guard then marched up to me and scolded ‘don’t ever do anything like that again or you’ll be banned from the park.’ OK. And then I ran out of gas on the way home!”

“My sister-in-law once told me, ‘Things like this might happen occasionally, but it feels like they happen to you incessantly.’ When something crazy transpires, my friends and family will say, ‘That will be a great column.’ I’ve been really good the last few years,” Sandy admitted, “but we all have our foibles.”

She continues to write columns, but less frequently, given her other projects. She said, “I keep a folder of ‘future columns’ where I store my ideas, otherwise I’ll forget the incidents. I do my other creative projects as I go along.”

She described a big project in the works. “I have over 100 columns which I’m compiling into a humor book with cartoons. I use an iPad and Procreate® for my drawings. Hopefully the book will be on Amazon by year’s end.”

The fun doesn’t stop with Sandy’s unpredictable escapades. She proclaimed, “My whole family is pranksters. Matt has taught each of our kids well. My younger brother Joe is a prankster too, although I don’t think he’s quite as good as Matt or Noah. I guess I’m very gullible.” Once she tried to prank her mother-in-law, but it backfired terribly.

In retirement, Sandy is an author, columnist, cartoonist, artist, Zumba instructor, actor, gardener, animal caretaker, and part-time paralegal. 

Her paintings are displayed throughout their home, mainly wildlife and nature, some watercolor and some painted on glass, which she really loves. Her painting entitled “Serenity,” a watercolor of swans gliding on a pond, won an award in Belvidere in 2020. She also had her own show at the Aboud Foundation in Lawrenceville, where 40 of her paintings were exhibited, and five were sold.

“The main reason I like glass painting is the feel of the markers sliding across the smooth glass (or plexiglass), and the fact that it’s an unusual medium. The problem with painting on glass/plexiglass is that it’s impossible to blend colors. The markers are vibrant colors so you can’t get a ‘soft’ color as with other media. I’ve learned some tricks to blend the beginning of one section of color into another so it looks cohesive, but that’s different from blending the colors themselves. I love watercolors the most, but haven’t done them for awhile since I’m enjoying the newness of glass.”

Known as Mama Sandy to her grandchildren, she is collaborating on a book with her five year old granddaughter Micaela. It’s entitled “The Flower and The Sun” with text by Micaela and illustrations by Sandy. Tatum, Micaela’s sister, turns three in June and loves to stroll to the train station with her grandmother, watch the trains, and feed geese at the lake.

Every year Sandy presents each granddaughter with her own birthday book, personally illustrating momentous events in their lives during the past year. She also compiles a photo album for each child annually.

While living in Cranford, she enjoyed a brief acting career with a local company called Westfield Community Players. Portraying a maid in a hotel, she had 23 lines in the play “Born Yesterday.” At the end of the run, Sandy was presented a certificate for “best wiggler” for a dance routine performed in the opening scene. She hasn’t necessarily left the stage for good, a small community group would suit her fine.

Certified through Zumba Fitness, Sandy has been a Zumba instructor for eight years. She continually plans fresh music and choreography, looking forward to resuming in-person sessions after a year of remote classes. She specializes in working with seniors and the physically challenged at various Warren County locations.

She’s volunteered with Domestic Abuse and Sexual Assault Crisis Center for eight months. She said, “You know abuse is happening, but people are afraid to report it. As a volunteer, I’m there for moral support and to offer DASACC’s services. We can go into court as an advocate to help people fill out forms and prepare them for questioning.”

Sandy also volunteers at the Barnyard Sanctuary in Columbia, whose mission is to rescue and rehabilitate farm animals by providing them a safe, nurturing, lifetime home.

Sandy quipped, “During my so-called retirement, I have so much to do, there’s never nothing to do!”

To read “Baboon Freedom” in its entirety, simply email Sandy at sandypolsky05@gmail.com. Type ‘I like your column’ in the subject line.