DowntheDrain

Cup o' Joe . . .

2012-01-11T13:19:00.000-08:00

I got a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas--the machine that makes one cup at a time. The booklet advises to register it online for warranty and free coupons, so I figured what the heck! But every time I put in a password the word Weak appeared next to the box. This was starting to irritate me after coming up with about 10 passwords, so I typed in BREWME! (The word Good appeared.) Wow. I just got validated by yelling at a coffee machine site.

VANdalized!!

2012-01-08T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well, Jack was supposed to ride with a buddy to work last week so that he could drive the company van full of equipment home and leave here Sunday evening. But he forgot. Yep. Forgot. So on Sunday as I was preparing to go out and do some stuff with my sister, he tells me that I need to take him to his office—more than an hour’s drive one way to pick up the van. I cancel my plans and drive in pea soup fog and rain to the location. We turn into the back of the building and Jack yells, “Oh my Lord. Someone has stolen the tires off the van!”

There sits the van, sans wheels, perched on cinder blocks. I think it’s a joke. “No you’re kidding right? Where’s the real van?”

“THAT’S IT! PARK THE CAR! I HAVE TO CALL THE POLICE!”

Now that it hits me that I just drove this far in the rain and that this really is the company van, I can’t control my laughter. I’m leaning on the steering wheel laughing. “OMG! This is serious! This is no joke,” Jack counters. Nothing makes me laugh even more than Jack’s inability to see humor in such situations, so now I’m laughing even harder. "This was so worth the drive," I choke out. “Be quiet, I have to call the police!” says Jack. Even though it’s drizzling I have to exit the Jeep because I know if I hear him talk to the authorities, I’ll really lose control. I’m out! 10-4!

Jack exits the vehicle after making what I’m sure was a very serious report and circles the van, taking photos with his I-phone. “Don’t touch the van!” he commands. “Will you send me those pictures?” I ask. He doesn’t answer. “Those bastards have even stolen the friggin’ wiper blades,” he bellows. This ups my mirth yet another notch.

Up drives Officer JB Bowie. He seems very sincere as well so I put my hand over my mouth to hide my uncontrollable grin. Officer JB looks at Jack and asks, “When was the last time you saw the vehicle when it had wheels?” This is too much for me. I’m snorting in an effort to repress myself so I turn and walk away, shaking. Jack says, “That’s my wife” as if that explains my behavior. (When I think about, it really does.) “Oh,” says Officer JB with an understanding nod.

After the officer’s departure we must enter the building so Jack can make some phone calls. “Don’t walk around. Sit in that chair. You’re not supposed to be in here,” he tells me. Then as we’re leaving, walking through a pitch-black room, he announces, “This is the lab.”

“But I can’t see anything,” I respond. (Including my hand in front of my face.)

“Just walk straight forward and follow the sound of my voice,” he instructs. Then he stops talking.

I do some Helen Keller baby steps, whimpering ever so slightly.

Well, many hours later, another van rented and he’s on his way. A good time was had by all . . . well by me.

Dissed Right Out of the Box!

2011-08-03T15:28:00.000-07:00

A million degrees in Georgia every s-i-n-g-l-e day! I'm attempting to rouse myself amidst deadlines, heat, and dogs. My routine: wake up and try to rescue any bugs in the pool that remain alive, feed the dogs, take a shower, try to write, and so on until the wee hours. Then at around 1 a.m. I try to net frogs and/or other insects in the pool. I know otherwise I'll be removing their exhausted carcasses the next morning despite my efforts to put floats for them to crawl upon.

This afternoon, after said sad routine, I start stuffing myself with White Cheddar Cheeze-Its--my most recent Crack of Crackers. Oh, I notice on the back of the box an interesting little ad that reads as follows: "Introducing Cheese High's Graduating Class, including nine types of Cheese-Its." The original cracker's photo is accompanied with the theme, "I'm honored to be the original." The Hot & Spicy cracker's photo says, "Is it hot in here, or is it me?" The Duoz cracker's photo proclaims, "I am phenomenal and so am I."

So I look to the photo of the White Cheddar Cheeze-Its that I'm gorging upon. It says, "I don't get outside much."

Wow, now I've been dissed by a cracker box! Will it every end?!

Not a Morning Person . . .

2011-07-28T10:55:00.000-07:00

My sister and my two nephews were coming in from North Georgia to spend the weekend, so I'd done the usual exhausting things one does to prepare for visitors--clean, clean, clean, pick up multiple dog chews off the floor, vacuum, put out beach towels, straighten up around the pool, sweep the acorns off the deck, collect seemingly dozens of Jack's caps and tiny pieces of paper with equations, diagrams, and numbers scattered around the house, and so on. Also, I made a check-up appointment early in the a.m. (at Jack's request) for dog Bear.

Jack is an early bird which is mainly dangerous when he's not at work, so since it's Saturday and family is coming, I drag myself out of bed early despite my wee night hours habits. You see, for some reason, whenever I've prepared extensively for such occasions, Jack looks around and apparently says to himself, "Gee, this would be a great time to . . . " And mind you, he's done all of the following during the day of such events:

dismantle the entire stove and clean all the parts after placing those parts all over the kitchen floor and previously clean countertops
paint the deck just before our new neighbors and their four small children arrive for a barbecue . . . on the deck
fix that foggy window that's been in said condition for about five years. Oops, the glass broke!
throw some extra chemicals into a perfectly clear pool rendering it extra cloudy for the entire visit
tear down the stairs leading to the front door which happens to be around eight feet above ground level

So, suspecting such shenanigans, I sleepily find Jack with the light switch removed from the wall, wires protruding askew, mere inches from the door where myriad teenage boys will be repeatedly entering and exiting while wearing wet bathing trunks. Not being a morning person, I croak out my first question of the day, "Why? Why are you doing that?!"

"Calm down, it will be fixed in a minute. I just want to get that light working over there."

"It hasn't worked for about three years. Why now? The kids will be here any minute!"

"Don't exaggerate. It's only been out for about a year and a half. Those damn builders [who built the house 24 years ago by the way] didn't know what they were doing. This wiring is all wrong."

"Then is it really a good idea to be sticking a needle-nose pliers around in there?"

"I know what I'm doing."

POW!

My heart's pounding and thankfully Jack's is still beating, but the electricity is out. Five minutes remains before Bear's scheduled appointment. "I'll fix it when I get back," Jack says. I decide to take a nice, hot shower . . . in the dark of course . . . to calm my nerves. Ever notice there's not a lot of productive things one can do when the electricity is down?

About an hour into the dark ages, Jack returns with Bear. "The vet says he weighs 198 pounds."

"That's ridiculous!" I say.

"No, he weighs 198 pounds!"

"If he weighs 198 pounds, let's call the Book of World Records."

"Oh you're right; it's 98 pounds and he needs to lose six pounds. She said one of his eyes is a bit cloudy and she noticed that back in 2002."

"Well since this is a new vet at the practice and it's the first time she's seen Bear and since Bear is only three years old, that doesn't seem right."

"True. I don't know what she's talking about. What are we going to do anyway, get him prescription goggles?"

(Note to self: Call the friggin' vet on Monday.)

Now it's time to repair the lights by testing the breakers. My role is to run into every room of the house to yell yes or no if the lights come on as Jack switches breakers in the basement. The only light that works is the outside deck light so I'm told to watch that one. I'm yelling yes and no through the back door when Jack comes up disgruntled and directs, "I can't hear you! Yell into the house, into the house!"

Oh thanks for those instructions. Here I'd been yelling over the neighbors' fence.

Finally the lights are back on and nephew electrocution doesn't seem as likely. The wires are stuffed into the wall and covered by the switch plate. And what about the non-functioning light that was the focus of all this activity? It still doesn't work. But no worries. If I have any plans for visitors over the next couple of years, Jack can work on it then.

Have you ever . . . ?

2011-06-12T13:36:00.001-07:00

Have you ever received one of those chain e-mails that asks you to answer a bunch of questions about your favorite foods, colors, and other things like "Have you ever been to Europe?" They always end with statements like, "Don't spoil the fun! Send this to 15 of your friends." I don't think I have 15 friends, or if I did and forwarded all these messages to them, I surely wouldn't.

Of course, even though it isn't fun for me to reveal how uncultured, untraveled , non-epicurean, and unworldly I am, I don't want to spoil the "fun" for anyone else, so I end up doing as requested about 50 percent of the time. But I think these chain e-mails may be the equivalent of the theory that one fruitcake has been circulating around the world since the beginning of time, forwarded by one unhappy recipient to the next. So I'm thinking about sending an e-mail survey of my own, one that I can answer in the affirmative for a change:

Has your husband ever set your hair on fire with a party popper?

Did you ever have a grandmother that accidentally set herself on fire three times, but no one can ever exactly explain how?

Did you ever get punched in the face by a drunken person at your high school reunion which you'd traveled 500 miles to attend?

Did you ever dance your heart out trying to get a part in the fourth-grade play square-dance scene (the one where the girls got to dance with the boys) and instead got the rear-end part of the dancing horse behind the most gaseous girl in school (as you found out during rehearsals)?

Have you ever accidentally sucked a button up your nose after trying to breath through the little holes in the button?

Have you ever had two separate encounters with two different monkeys on the loose?

Have you ever had a perfect stranger beat you over the head with Indian corn from a Halloween decoration?

Have you ever accidentally called your grammar school teacher, Grandma?

Did the top of your dress ever fall off on the dance floor at a company party?

Has one of your relatives gone to prison for shooting out a revenuer's eye?

Okay, all of you self-satisfied, aristocratic, globally savvy folk, put that in your pipe and smoke it. Which reminds me, have you ever . . . ? Oh well, never mind. That's a whole new set of questions.

13 Conversations about . . . What was I saying?

2011-06-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

Friends and family say I have a great knack for remembering embarrassing stories . . . about them. However, lately I'm losing (not those stories, of course; they're great ammo) but details about other things . . . I think I read that book back in high school, but I'm not sure. Did I see that movie? Yeah, I know I did, but I can't remember what happened. I think I liked it though. Or as that comedian whose name I can't recall says, "I was driving down the rode the other day. Wait a minute; that wasn't me."

So when friend Jill and I were discussing good movies we've seen, she brought up 13 Conversations about the Same Thing. "I know you've seen it because we talked about it," she says.

"Yes, I've definitely seen in but it was a while ago. I can't remember most of it," I answer. "I remember that Alan Arkin was in it right?"

She describes some of the scenes and I can remember bits and pieces of the movie, but that's about it. Then she asks, "Well can I tell you about one special part of it, since you've already seen it?"

"Hmm," I answer. "I think that's the saddest question anybody has ever asked me!"

Woman from Earth; Man from Mars (A True Story)

2011-03-03T11:21:00.000-08:00

Snow is a rare treat in Georgia so when we recently got about six whole inches of the stuff, I said to husband from Mars, Jack, "Hey why don't we go out on your Gator (another of his gadgets) and ride around the neighborhood to see the snow."

"Okay, sure!" he says.

"Okay, I'll get ready. Give me a few minutes," I say.

I take a quick shower, put on my warm stuff and my snow boots and walk into the living room. The white rabbit has disappeared. "Jack? Jack?" He's not in any of his usual hiding places. I look out the window and the Gator is gone. He's gone without me! I am really ticked off, even hurt.

About half an hour later he comes up the front stairs stomping snow off his feet. "I can't believe it!" I say. "Why did you leave without me?!"

"Well you were taking a shower," he says blankly. He's completely surprised that I'm irritated, missing the point that I was attempting a shared experience. (If he had really thought it through, he would have asked me to go along as ballast. Yes, once when our car got stuck in a ditch, he told me to move over to the other side of the car to act as a counter balance. What?!) He doesn't get it, so I talk myself down in my head, saying, okay, okay just move forward. I'm bundled up like the kid in "A Christmas Story" so I suggest, "Well let's just take the dogs for a walk through the woods, then."

Once again, "Okay!" His cell phone rings. It's our neighbor Gary. "Sure, I can fix that! I'll be over in five minutes," says Jack.

REALLY? I mean REALLY?! (And they say romance is dead!)

Which reminds me, my Dad, rest his soul, often warned me of dangers starting with the words, "They say if you do that . . . " One day, when he began another such warning, I asked, "You've been saying that all my life. Who exactly is 'they'?" He thought for a minute and then said, "Well, actually it's been me all along."

Size "Zero" is Invisible

2010-12-26T20:08:00.000-08:00

Yes, I may have been eating like a pig during the Christmas holidays, but I have to say after watching many weight-control commercials that there is no such thing as a size zero. Who invented this sizing BS? If you are alive and existing in human form, you cannot be a size zero! It goes against the laws of physics. "I was a size eight and now I'm a size zero," claims a woman that I can still see on the TV screen. What?!!

Hokiest Lifetime Movie of the Week Title:

2010-06-04T18:33:00.000-07:00

"Mother May I Please Sleep with Danger?"

Are you KIDDING me?!

2010-06-04T10:24:00.000-07:00

Another Commercial Break

A Stouffer’s commercial shows a family preparing and eating one of the company’s meals along with the voiceover, “Made with real ingredients.” Isn’t EVERYTHING made with “real” ingredients. Isn’t poop made of real ingredients?

***

I like the commercial for a woman’s face lotion that claims the product contains an “injectable skin rejuvenating ingredient." Once again, I’m not a doctor, but isn’t just about any non-solid an injectable ingredient? Heroin, crack, meth: are they not all injectable? Oh you ad writers. I think you’re doing injectables.

***

What about the alarm system ad where a guy is lurking around in broad daylight wearing a ski mask and peeking through a fence hole at a mother and daughter playing in the yard. When they go inside for lunch, he kicks in the front door and stands in the foyer for a few minutes before running away at the sound of the alarm. Of course, the alarm folks call right away and the mother says, “Somebody just tried to break in.”

Now the ad people think we’re so stupid that we don’t know the difference between somebody fiddling with your door lock and someone standing in your foyer. But if the victim says someone just broke in, then it might imply to us dummies that the alarm system didn’t work. So please remember this when someone is standing in your foyer wearing a ski mask and holding a weapon—this means they’re in.

***

New Book Idea:
Title: Memoirs of an Amnesiac
Page One: The End

Barking Dogs

You know how some people look up their ancestry and only find out that they came from kings, queens, and so on? One day, after receiving a random ad on family research and being rather easily distracted from real work, I decided to look up my father’s family “Coat of Arms.” As I traveled through family crest after family crest, reading such valorous mottos as “Courage, Trust, Bravery” and various inspirational Latin religious phrases, I finally came upon my father’s Irish family crest and motto: The Raging Dogs. This explains why my aunt, who like so many people with dreams of grandeur and ancestral royal relations, destroyed all of my uncle's research on the family heritage. (It also explains many other things, such as my urge to howl at full moons.)

Anyway, speaking of raging dogs, I have this dog, Bear, that we rescued who came with a very bad barking habit. We’ve had quite a few dogs over the last 20 years and when you get them young, you can intervene successfully with the barking problem, but Bear (at one year) came with a terrible barking habit.

Okay, I admit it. I can’t be mean to any dog. So just shoot me. I can’t put some sort of shock collar on an animal and I would like to annihilate anyone who has a dog’s vocal chords removed. What kind of monster is that?!

Nevertheless, ever the fan of “As Seen on TV” products, I ordered the Bark OFF. Supposedly, this product emits a sound that is offensive to dogs when they are barking obsessively. And this is important: THE SOUND IS INAUDIBLE TO HUMAN BEINGS. However, theoretically, dogs hear the sound, and eventually stop any prolonged barking behavior. The device is not attached to the dog but is within 20 feet of their barking proximity. Sounded okay to me and it’s only ten bucks, so what the heck.

Well it took quite a few weeks to receive it and when I finally got it in the mail, the product didn’t include the 9-Volt battery, so I asked Jack to pick one up on his way home.

So I come into the kitchen and Jack is barking into the Bark OFF. I ask the obvious, (but I don’t even know why I ask anyore) question, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m testing it to see if it works.”

After laughing until I see that he’s annoyed, I point out that the sound only works on dogs and not humans, but possibly it will work on humanoids like him. He doesn’t seem to find the humor, but that doesn’t stop my razzing. Seems like the joke’s on me. When we have neighbors over for a cookout on Memorial Day weekend, several of the guys pick up the device and ask me about it. I tell them the whole shebang about the sound being only for dogs’ ears and . . . inevitably they bark into the thing.

Now I’m talking about smart people here! Does Bark OFF work? I don’t know yet. I just can’t tell. Every time I turn it on, all the men in the neighborhood start barking.

No Sheet!

2010-05-04T15:05:00.001-07:00

We had these new expensive sheets but they had this no-iron protection. They felt almost silky at first, but then later, it was like sleeping in a plastic garbage bag. Of course, I don’t give a damn about wrinkled sheets. They were just pretty and who in the hell irons their sheets, anyway? Oh, you do?! Sorry.

That’s just weird.

Hoarder at heart, Jack hates to admit that anything is a waste of money, but I was burning up in these things! I could throw the sheets off, but then I needed something because the spring weather was actually a bit chilly. I’m hot natured so Jack kept attributing my complaints of temperature to the inevitable—hormones. This went on for a few days after I put these sheets on the bed, when finally he says to me, “You know what? These things just don’t breathe.”

“Thank you!” I say. “Good grief, I’ve been waking up sweating like a fat girl sunning in polyester.” (No offense to fat girls; I believe I am one.)

So finally, I can give these expensive sheets the 86 (“Get rid of it” in restaurant slang) and put on some nice 100 percent cotton sheets with no bells or whistles.

So I’m talking to him the next day. He’s called me and I ask, “So how was your sleep without those suffocation sheets?”

In his low, booming voice he replies, “It was great! I woke up with a smile on my face! In fact, I didn’t even want to get out of bed this morning.”

I say, “Um, Jack, are you in the car?”

“No,” he announces. “I’m in my cubicle at work!”

“Do you think possibly that what you just said, really loudly I might add, could be interpreted in a different way?” I ask diplomatically.

He pauses, laughs out loud and then states in an even higher volume, “Those are some really great sheets! We need to get some more of those sheets. I really enjoyed them!”

I know he’s trying to correct things, but it’s not working.

“Okaay,” I say. “I’m hanging up now.”

Goodbye Ruby Tuesday

2010-04-25T17:54:00.000-07:00

You know the old Rolling Stone’s words to that song: “Lose your dreams and you will lose your mind.” I think that’s happened!

Sooo, I’ve been thinking of some better way to make a living. I’ve come to the sad realization that many illegal immigrants and welfare recipients make more per annum doing nothing than I make working my butt off. So speaking of working my butt off, during one of my frequent late-night channel surfings I came upon a show called “Ruby.” It’s about this charming Louisiana woman who is trying to remember her forgotten childhood while working her way down the weight chart—so far from over 700 pounds to just over 300. This is a huge accomplishment, no pun intended.

So I’m thinking . . . If idiots can make money off of writing commercials where a discarded broom falls in love with a lawn flamingo or a bowling ball, why can’t I become my own reality show? Instead of getting on the treadmill and trying such bizarre routines as drinking a solyent green mixture of water and chlorophyll twice a day, why don’t I just go for the big give-up?!

Here’s my new show: “Becoming Ruby.” The simple premise is this: the cameras follow me as I work my way UP to over 700 pounds and try to forget my childhood. Get it? It’s a whole reversal thing. Should take me about two to three weeks to get there, maybe even a month or two. At least it’s FULLtime work. Snark, snark.

Right Brain/Left Brain: 29 Years of Miscommunication

2010-03-27T18:29:00.000-07:00

I am no spendthrift and definitely no fashion queen. As a matter of fact, I have a tendency to wear clothes and shoes way past their expiration date. I actually had a pair of boots fall apart in a shoe store, forcing me to purchase a new pair so that I could continue with my day. So when I recently bought some new jeans using coupons coupled with a sale, I put them on and asked Jack what he thought of them. A few weeks earlier I bought a pair of sandals on sale so I donned the whole ensemble. I might be one of the few women in America who can get buyer’s remorse after spending $30 total on jeans and a pair of shoes.

“So what do you think?” I ask Jack.

“I like the jeans,” he says, “but the shoes are different.”

“What do you mean by ‘different’?” I ask, a little annoyed at the somewhat critical sounding, non-description.

“I mean they’re different,” he says flatly.

Rolling my eyes in exasperation, I look down to discover that when grabbing the shoes from my closet, I grabbed a right and a left, but I’m wearing a mismatched pair of sandals, a different style on each foot.

Our communication styles will never mesh.

So Where's the Transparency?

2010-03-17T17:59:00.000-07:00

I just sent a message to www.God.com. The reply was "Address Not Found." I guess I understand, but shouldn’t we at least have his/her e-mail address by now?

Almost 30 Years Together. . . Why?

2010-01-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

Here’s the culmination of yet another conversation between Jack and me at our friends’ house. We had all been discussing a video about George Bernard Shaw and had even looked him up on Jack's IPhone:

Me: He was a Marxist/socialist/communist/elitist ass who believed in genocide and he’s on video promoting the use of selective death using “humanitarian gas.”

Jack: Well he WAS an alcoholic!

Me: So what? What are you saying? Who are you talking about?

Jack: I’m talking about Glen Campbell. Did you know he was an original member of the Beach Boys?

Me: No Damn It! I’m talking about George Bernard Shaw!

The Moon, Mars, and Monkey Grass

2009-09-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

Most of the time, I’m up and about during the wee hours. Jack says that my midnight is about the equivalent of 3:00 in the afternoon for most people. So obviously, I have to find some way to occupy my time besides watching reruns on television. (Not that I don’t do that too.) Sometimes I read. Sometimes I set up my recorder to tape strange sounds in the woods. Sometimes I go outside with my handy night-vision binoculars, but I can’t find them right now. Where are those things?!!

During the summer, the dogs and I have a ritual of running out to the pool and looking for the big bullfrog that takes a late dip around 1 a. m. All I have to ask is, “Want to look at the frog?” and they knock me down on the way out the doggy door. Of course, I use the real door, except for once last week when I locked myself out of the house by first locking myself in the garage, then once I found my way out because there were no lights and groped my way to the back door, I had to crawl through the doggy door.

Anyway, about a week ago, I scooped Mr. Frog out of the pool with the whatever you call that pool dipper thing, as is my habit, and put him in the monkey grass. Suddenly, Bear jumped into the monkey grass trying to catch the frog, and since Bear weighs about 90 lbs. I was very much afraid that he’d squashed our amphibious amie. I was even more worried when the big squishy guy didn’t show up for the next week or so. Bear was pretty inconsolable. He walked around and around the pool every night looking for the frog that he may possibly have flattened. Much to my relief, Mr. Frog reappeared last night, fit as an unflat frog can be. I know that I’m going to have to sit Bear and London down and talk to them about hibernation, but at least I don’t have a death on my shoulders. Not that one at least, yah ah hah!!

Now I noticed that not one news station mentioned the fact that during the last week of August, Mars was going to be closer to the moon that it had been or would be for another 5,000 years. Of course, that entire week was the cloudiest of the summer. However, I took my little camera, aimed it at the moon (I don’t have a tripod and I’m no professional) and snapped a few shots. Above is a photo of Mars to the left of the moon (like many current politicians). I sent this photo to Jack with the tag line, “A picture of your home planet. With love from Earth Woman.” Just in case any of you wanted to come back and see this phenomenon in another 5,000, I just saved you the trip! [Editor’s note: The person writing this blog is obviously under the delusion that not only more than one, but even one person is reading it.]

So what was the point of this whole message? The many benefits of staying up and howling at the moon, of course. How dense can you be?

[Editor’s note: The person writing the editor’s note is also the writer of this blog. How crazy is that?]

Time to Drink the Kool-Aid

2009-09-09T13:05:00.000-07:00

Lately, I’m doing everything I can think of to avoid thinking about the reality of life: it’s just too crushing. Like today I filled salt and pepper shakers. Actually that’s a lie. I just filled one pepper shaker. That was all the energy I could work up.

I went on an interview with a job placement group last week and felt like Methuselah at a frat party. Although I’ve actually never been to a frat party, but since I’m so damned ancient I can get away with saying things like that.

How old am I? This past Labor Day weekend was our 29th anniversary. My Mom called to impart good wishes and I thanked her but gently reminded her that our anniversary wasn’t until the next day. She asked, “Isn’t today the sixth?” By jingies it was our anniversary and we didn’t even know it. I went to get my cards out of the car and came back into the house to give them to Jack but he was nowhere to be found and he didn’t answer my calls. Then I heard him running down the stairs. I flew out the back but he was gone. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to make a romantic trip to the grocery for cards and flowers, Captain Obvious! But just kidding. I applaud his effort. This tendency is exactly why I like to go to card counters on Valentine’s Day, stand behind a group of men and yell out, “Procrastinators!” I’ve gotten some great reactions.

But don’t think I’m insensitive. Today I was coming back from an errand and playing the soundtrack to "The Departed." I was listening to the Irish song where the lead is yelling out “I’ve a sailor’s peg, ‘cause I lost my leg. Climbing on the topsail, I lost my leg!” I noticed that the car next to me had a handicapped sticker so I rolled up my window. Thoughty of me, right?

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve decided to pepper my language with old geezer type words since that’s what everyone has made me feel like lately. Maybe I should start calling interviewers, “Whippersnappers” and asking them where I am over and over again. I interviewed a guy (over the phone) for a magazine article the other day. I knew he was young by his voice and also by the fact that I’d seen his picture on the company’s Web site. Since he couldn’t see my Dorian Grey reflected-in-the-mirror hideous image, he didn’t know my age because I hadn’t called him a "young man" or referred to other ancient things like the Beatles. He was describing a Seniors Day event that his facility put on for “baby boomers” and he actually said this, “You know. We want them to know that they can still do things besides plan their funerals.”

Wow, good to know. He actually inspired me to put down my Funerals ‘R Us Planning guide, but only long enough to fill one pepper shaker. Now, I’m exhausted.

Free Manure!

2009-08-29T21:38:00.001-07:00

The other day I was driving down the road, and I’ve got to say, I was feeling pretty down. Then I saw this sign that said “Free Manure.” Well, damn! Finally there’s something that really is free and I don’t need any of it. That’s just another irony in the bullshit of life! But then, I thought, Wait a minute, angry person . . . Maybe that’s a protest sign. Yeah, “Free Manure!” Manure deserves to be free after all these years of being bagged up, churned under, or just left for stinking dead. Or maybe somebody named their kid “Manure” and for some odd reason things didn’t go right for that kid and now he or she is sitting around in prison and the proud parents have decided that kid should be free!

Anyway, I was just on my way to the grocery but I’ve got to say if you believe in all that is good and holy, “Free Manure!”

A Few Commercials and Why they Eat at Me:

2009-08-11T17:39:00.000-07:00

Dr. Tenlan, that doctor for Restasis, the prescription eye drops for dry eyes: I’m sure she’s a very nice person/alien (the other planet type), but I’ve seen lizards that blink more than she does and whose eyes are closer together for that matter. (Not to mention her Stephen Hawking delivery.) No wonder she has dry eyes! She assumed an earthly form but skipped human facial expressions training. Hint Dr. Tenlan: If you blinked more than once a day, your eyes might naturally lubricate.

The woman who comes over with her entire family to her elderly mother’s house for lasagna every Sunday: One Sunday she and her brood arrive at Mom’s only to find that Mom isn’t in the kitchen cooking away, but taking it easy in the den. “Mom, it’s Sunday!” she whines, automatically assuming that the octogenarian has Alzheimer’s. "I knew then that it was time to call the doctor," she opines. Maybe the poor woman is tired of making dinner for you every Sunday. Maybe she’s sick of lasagna. Maybe it's time for you to get off of your lazy, fat butt and make her something to eat or take her out for gosh sakes!

The young female (who is also a doctor) who rattles off the entire pharmaceutical info/warning sheet for Yasmine (a birth control pill) to her friends at a bar: First of all just the name Yasmine for something that’s going to make you gain 20 pounds of water weight and break you out worse than when you were 12, effectively preventing pregnancy due to enforced abstinence, just ticks me off! Yasmine. She’d be wearing her pretty little martini way before she finished that dialog.

Those cervical cancer immunizations commercials in which a slew of supposedly caring mothers announce that they’re having their pre-pubescent daughters immunized: With a shot that has never been tried, that no one knows what the long-term effects might be, and that the voiceover reminds doesn’t cure all kinds of cervical cancer. Thanks Mom!

Gross miscasting because someone must have known someone (wink, wink): One commercial has the daughter rolling her eyes and saying, “I always get grounded.” The mother counters that the daughter will lose that sassiness when she’s on her own. Let’s hope that’s soon, because the “teenager” is about 35-years-old! (About the same age as the klutz that played Liam Neeson’s daughter on the movie “Taken. She was not a day younger than 27, playing a 19-year-old that acted like a 12-year-old with the mental capacity of a four-year-old. I kept hoping Liam wouldn’t get there in time to rescue her from the white slave traffickers but I think they were pretty well fed-up with her and death was their preferred option.

Why do I even bother with critiquing these ridiculous gaffes? Because people other than me are getting paid really good money to come up with things like an animated set of lips with legs that asks questions of an animated, and poorly drawn ear that only answers, “No.”

Oh well.

Monday 'Til Midnight

2009-08-11T08:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard all the admonitions about hating Mondays—that’s a seventh of your week; thank God it’s Monday, yada, yada, yada. But these people must be writing Chicken Soup for the Soul entries and sipping mint juleps all day. Mondays stink and I try to lay low and survive the 24 hours until Tuesday. I could try going to bed early but since I’m a night person, I’d just be spending the time staring at the ceiling.

Jack calls and tells me that he woke up with a black eye. Not guilty! What the heck! We haven’t figured that one out yet, but even though I’m up way after he goes to bed, beating the sleeping isn’t one of my activities. I’m too busy doing things like chasing bullfrogs.

Yes, every night between midnight and 1 a. m. the dogs and I go out to the pool to remove a giant frog from his nightly swim. Bear especially loves to run around the pool chasing the frog’s underwater path and usually blocking my attempts to catch him in my net. The frog seems to enjoy the whole thing. In fact, if he isn’t in the pool when we come out, he suddenly emerges from the monkey grass, jumps right past us, jumps in and swims around a bit. He then compliantly lets me lift him out after a few laps. (He has to be removed because the chlorine isn’t good for him and sometimes the frogs can’t get out and eventually drown.) This one seems to be an old pro, but I don’t want to take any chances. Besides, it’s a ritual for my two canines who jump up and run for the door when I ask, “Want to go see the frog?”

After deliberations with dogs over continually begging for treats, running through the house, and fighting with one another, I finally sat down to watch a bit of television. Yeah right. The rest of the evening was spent on HazMat cleanup duty that led me to leave this note for Jack:

Sweetie:
One of the dogs threw up—a lot—and Bear was eating it. I had to spray him with the bad dog water spray to get him away from it and put the vacuum over the spot after cleaning it because he was still licking the carpet. Very, very gross!

XXOO,
Me

P. S. How’s that for a love note?

Thank God it’s Tuesday.

I'm Baaack . . . I Think

2009-08-09T12:54:00.001-07:00

Over the past few months I’ve put my brain into even more of a self-imposed state of hibernation than usual due to a series of events including :

A fraudulent accusation by a nutcase accusing my son of purposefully kicking the back of her chair in a theater when he crossed his legs. She wanted him charged with assault! The kid’s never even been in a fist fight. The accuser and her husband were on police blotters, had aliases, but we couldn’t bring that up because she was the “victim.” I think they thought we’d give them a call and make an offer to make it go away, but we had nothing to offer. No telling how many innocent victims she’s had and probably continues to have. Never being in the courts for my entire family’s history, I learned that anyone can make any accusation and no matter how outrageous, the accused pays for the entire debacle. In England the accuser pays if the case is deemed ridiculous—as it was—but not in good old America! In short, we endured a several months long nightmare, or should I say daymare, because I barely slept through the entire ordeal. Case dismissed, but legal fees and moving him to another location because these people know where he lives (another courtesy of the court)—very pricey.

Moses, my 14-year-old pug and my little baby: we had to have him put to rest after months of trying to address with pharmaceuticals what may have been sinus cancer. The tests and the operations were just too cruel at his age so I gave it a try. It was rough going, so I finally had to make the call. After years of having that heavy little fire hydrant command my sleep position, I actually thought I’d sleep better even after all the grief, but so far I still can’t get quite as comfortable without his pudgy little body against me. Can there be too much flexibility freedom?

Bills without billables. The year for this freelancer has been a bit meager which means I spend my time looking for work or completing the little work that I find. I’m very tired of the whole shebang, but sort of stuck in a rut. Anyone know of a company that will hire geezers?

I have to have outpatient surgery. What a hassle! Nobody hates hospitals and medical procedures like I do, but hey, guess I better go while I can. I understand that soon I’ll be categorized as not worth resuscitating. Are they going to put that on the driver’s licenses along with the donor status? NWR!

Okay, so kvetch, kvetch, kvetch. My sense of humor may eventually make a comeback, but right now it’s in slo-mo. I’ve missed my little blogging habit though. It’s an outlet, so I’m plugging back in and hoping my generator will recharge.

And the Beat Goes On . . .

2009-02-02T19:26:00.001-08:00

Oh, the new year, full of promises such as the world is going to hell in a hand basket and all of those who have worked for a living and retirement for the past three decades should finally realize that any promises the government ever gave them—which were far and few between for working folk—were total BS.

So let’s move on. I asked for pepper spray for Christmas. Didn’t get it, but did get a night vision scope. When I asked for a coach gun for my birthday, Jack asked, “What is wrong with you?!” Just trying to be a good Boy Scout, I think.

Mom called early on a Monday a. m. and in a panic-stricken voice said, “I’m in big, big trouble!” Did she kill someone, rob a bank, pull up the pansies at her subdivision entrance? No. She had flushed her entire set of keys down the toilet at Publix. And . . . she had a bridge party at her house within the hour. Luckily, after some coordination, Jennifer, who works near the debacle, was soon to the rescue with a set of keys to Mom’s house which also held a set of spare keys to her car. “You can put this in that blog of yours,” said Mom. Here you have it Mama!

The first of the year is always slow for writers. Coupled with the psychotic Georgia weather—just shoot me. Jack is once again out of town which means that Bear, his favorite canine child, is ever vigilant, jumping between barking at everything that moves—today a wild turkey in the driveway—and sitting on top of me whenever I settle. That would be fine if he didn’t weigh 80-plus pounds.

Jack called and told me once again that I couldn't reach him via cell phone the following day because such communication-with-humans devices weren't allowed in the high security area where he worked. "That's so that no pictures can be made, no data recorded, and so on," he explained.

"And also for the most important reason," I added. "Because cell phones cause the aliens' heads to explode when you're all in the pod, and though their heads do regenerate it causes a horrible mess."

"Yes," he replied patiently, and then quickly changed the subject.

Today, a Monday, gloomy and alone, I watched a PBS special by Dr. Amen who wrote a book called “Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.” He had some good tips but I wondered if I could rebuild a brain from the medulla oblongata up, because that’s all I have left. So I called David to give him some of the doc’s hints about focus and concentration. I started with, “I just saw this guy on television who wrote the book ‘Change Your Brain, Change Your Life.”

“Mom, I am NOT getting a brain transplant!” David asserted. Then he went on to tell me about an ROTC field trip next Sunday which includes a trip in a C100 transport plane. Great. “Could you tell me about these things AFTER their completion?” I asked. I actually accept change (such as my only son talking to me in military acronyms) really quickly. For example, just this weekend I peeled the Tasmanian Devil and Yosemite Sam stickers off of our bedroom mirrors that David put there when HE WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD! Yes, I’m flexible that way and always on the forefront of change.

Oh well, out with the old and in with the new. But as I asked at a “FINAL DAYS” sales event with friend Denise, “Does that mean theirs or ours?”

Suffering is Relative

2009-01-18T18:18:00.000-08:00

I've been sympathetic with Jack about all the travails of his constant travel. Believe me, just one trip put my entire physical system into a state of hold for months, if you know what I mean. Apparently, I'm not built for world adventure, at least not in this life. Yet, Jack never seems to ask me about my miseries, career wise. "Career" what a lofty word. I don't know if I've ever been able to use that word seriously concerning myself.

The poor guy has decided to drive this Monday (with a coworker) to a military base in Indiana rather than deal with the Atlanta airport on Martin Luther King Day. (I think initial caps are okay for that esteemed day. Should it be in all caps, also in bold, in giant type? Is it ever enough?! I just don't know!)

While he was packing, I asked, "Tell me the truth would you rather drive to Indiana tomorrow or write an article about a contemporary furniture store in Peoria, Illinois?"

He thought for a second and said, "I think I'll pick driving to Indiana."

"So would I," I answered. "Can we trade? I'm beggin' ya!"

Solitary Confinement

2009-01-13T20:30:00.000-08:00

Since I’m somewhat of a night owl and also easily bored, I find some odd but rarely constructive ways to amuse myself:

*Jack was out of town so I got a piece of chalk and drew around all of the dog shapes that I could see in our kitchen floor tile.

*I turned out all the lights, went out on our bedroom balcony, and peered into the woods with my night vision scope. Then I creeped myself out by thinking, what if I saw somebody standing still out there in the woods looking up at me with glowing eyes? I ran in the house and locked all the doors.

*Jill and I went out to dinner and when we came back took turns walking like a zombie in the dark outside toward the person with the night scope. Jill said mine was the scariest because the dogs were attacking me as I tried to walk and their eyes were also glowing.

*I never have matching socks so I just wear mismatches—what does it matter with boots? I try to at least match seasonal themes though. I was holding one sock with Christmas trees on it and complaining that I couldn’t find another holiday scene sock when Jack said, “Why don’t you wear that sock with the pilgrim hats?” They were actually witch hats and that festive day had passed. So recently I decided to gather all of my mismatches. Unbelievable! I only found about six matches and threw away about 50 socks. There really is a place where they escape. It’s called Sock World and it’s in Gatlinburg, TN. We drove past it one day and David’s friend Dan said the store’s slogan should be, “For all your puppet needs.” Anyway, how can a person who almost never travels and when she does, never packs socks, lose at least fifty of them?! That effort took about an hour and it wasn’t as gratifying as expected.

*A world championship Tiddley-Wink tournament with myself. I won quite handily, thank you very much.

*Google myself. Pretty disappointing, but one Dr. Mary Gail Snyder must never sleep! She’s everywhere!

*Sometimes when I’m editing a manuscript that is extremely boring and I’m reading it for the umpteenth time, I read it out loud with a different accent—usually British, but sometimes German, or Japanese, even Gone With the Wind Southern.

*Talk to myself. My most common sentences are “What are you doing here?” “Why don’t you just shut up!” and “Okay, I’ve had just about enough of you.”

*Sing to the dogs. They clearly hate it.

*Take pictures of the moon.

*Draw smiley faces on the bottoms of my feet with a temporary (Do you think I'm crazy? Of course, it's temporary) tattoo pen while watching television.

*Look for frogs (a seasonal activity).

I guess I’ll stop there. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m weird or anything.

Dumb & Dumber 2008

2009-01-08T13:29:00.000-08:00

Dumbest Question 2008: From the local UPS store, I sent an edited manuscript to a client. Soon afterward the client sent me an oops e-mail that they had forgotten to notify me the company had changed its address. I called the UPS store to ask for a rerouting. The young store clerk seemed quite perturbed. She sighed audibly and asked me, “Well did you know this was the wrong address when you sent it?”

Most bizarre dog story 2008: During the holidays, my 12-year-old pug was sleeping next to me on the bed. In his defense, he’s getting aged, grizzly, and arthritic and has never been anything but a Teddy bear. Jack got up earlier than me and decided to pick the pug up. Suddenly I heard Jack yelling, “That S.O.B. bit me!”

“What?!” I’m groggily asking, as Jack in full temper re-enters the room from the bathroom, bleeding from the lip and grabs the old dog in anger. Old dog then bites Jack another time—once again on the face. At this point, Jack wants to kill the dog. I’m yelling, "Stop! Calm down!" David, home for the “holidays” enters the room asking, “What the hell is going on?!”

Conclusion: Dog still alive. Jack recovering but very angry (and I think justifiably a bit hurt, though he won't admit it, for two days). Sister Jennifer asked me how a man over six feet tall was bitten twice in the face by a pug. “Is it a flying pug?” she quipped.

When men hear this story they consistently state: “I would have killed that dog!”
When women hear this story, they consistently state: “Poor old dog; he’s just old and was startled.” (I’m going with that one.)

Strangest voting conversation 2008: My friend Jill and I went together to an early voting location. The line wasn't very long, but a voter volunteer went down the line handing out forms to be filled out. Jill asked him if we were at the correct location for our voting precinct. He eyed her for a minute and asked, "Do you have any hot chocolate?" After he assured us that we were in the right location, inquisitive Jill asked why the heading on my form differed from hers. He answered, "Because her hair is shorter!" pointing to me. Joining in, I then asked him why my form was printed in German. He looked momentarily stunned then blurted, "I bet you caused trouble in Sunday school" and re-entered the building. Actually he was right. I did cause trouble in Sunday school.

Most bizarre Christmas gift 2008: Night vision scope for me from Jack including instructions to “Invade the night!” Love it, but I see some trouble comin’ in 2009!

Second most bizarre Christmas gift 2008: I gave my neighbor a wooden sign printed with the words “No Peein’ Off the Porch” because I understand that, by his own admission, he does this regularly. He seemed to take it as law, whining, “But I like to pee off the porch!” Then I showed him my night vision scope.

Happy New Year Everybody! Gird thine loins!

"People are Strange, When You're a Stranger" (Jim Morrison)

2009-01-02T11:57:00.000-08:00

I do forget names but almost never a face. Many light years ago in my mid-twenties and dating Jack, I saw a couple walking to their car at Jack’s apartment complex. “Excuse me,” I called out. Aren’t you Jim Foxx who came to Knollwood Elementary in the seventh grade?” Totally befuddled, he answered in the affirmative. We had actually never talked back then and he moved away after a few months. Of course, he had no idea who I was. Why would he? I simply remembered his face, and in this case, his name.

While working at Emory University Clinic, I saw another elementary schoolmate. Isn’t your name Craig Pye and didn’t we both go to the Methodist Church retreat when we were about eleven years old? He was amazed. I didn’t tell him that I remembered when we were walking on a hiking trail with the church group. I was eavesdropping and heard him mention to a friend that he wished he were walking with a girl. A particularly mean teenager yelled, “You wouldn’t know what to do with one if you had one!” That was uncalled for especially since Pye was at a somewhat porky stage at the time.

Not long ago, Jack and I were at Sam’s and I got that someone-is-looking-at-me feeling. I turned and saw an Asian woman quite a distance away staring intently at me. She waved. In this case I felt very happy to see her. I walked the distance and we stood facing each other. She seemed reciprocally happy to see me. “How are you?” she asked. “I’m good, how are you?” I said. “Fine, fine,” she answered. We both seemed puzzled, but still glad to meet. When I returned, Jack asked, “Who was that?” “I have no idea,” I answered.

I also have long conversations with strangers. People I’ve interviewed for business or technical articles have told me intimate details of their relationships, cried on the phone about a pet that passed away, and have even sent me presents: homemade jam from a real estate magnate, a stone oil lamp from an international stone supplier, and a cooler full of deli meat from a sausage manufacturer. And just strange interchanges: Once passing my newly wedded boss on an office stairwell, I casually asked, “How are you?” “Oh my God, my wife is such a bitch! I think she’s actually insane,” he answered and proceeded to expand on same. “Wow,” I thought. “I usually just answer that question with ‘I’m fine. How are you?’”

Last night the phone rang and the caller ID simply said Atlanta, Georgia. “Who is it?” Jack asked. “The entire city of Atlanta,” I answered.

Actually it was a solicitor from the Georgia Vietnam Vets. I always try to give to the veterans, so I readily agreed to buy a pepper spray key chain that also sprayed the hapless perpetrator with a dye so that he could be quickly apprehended. “Sounds like fun. I’ll take one!” I told the woman. With the transaction over, we soon discovered that we shared the same first name and that we spelled it the same way. Then we discussed the spelling of her chiropractor’s name and the origins of certain spellings. Next she told me about having her pepper spray confiscated at the airport because she forgot she had it and having ridden MARTA there had nowhere to leave it. We laughed it up about asking a criminal to stand downwind before we sprayed him in the face and she shared the fact that she had used her canister on her ex-husband. “Let me tell you! It took that sucker down!” she exclaimed. After about half an hour we shared Happy New Year wishes with one another. “Who was that?” Jack asked from his chair. “Oh some lady with the Georgia Vietnam Vets,” I replied. “She once sprayed her ex-husband with pepper spray. Said it worked really well.”

At times I wonder when my eyes briefly meet a strangers’ and a sharp pang of recognition seems to hit us both as we silently pass, if we really did know one another in some alternate universe. Or, when we communicate with someone almost intimately and then never speak to them again—how did our paths cross? I’ve heard that everyone has a doppelganger, a ghostly counterpart or alter ego. (Oh, I pity the fool!) Wouldn’t it be strange, though, if we all came face-to-face at once? What if everyone could go to a certain bus stop at a certain time before the world ended and meet their own doppelganger for just a few minutes?

Just recently, while standing in line at the grocery (yes, I’m always at the grocery) the woman in front of me openly stared. “Hi,” I said. “Do you mind if I ask your name?” she queried. “You look so familiar.” I didn’t tell her that I hardly ever forget a face. Her name was Maggie something and ultimately we concluded that we’d never met. “Maybe I knew you in another life,” she pondered. “Good Lord!” I said. “You mean I’ve looked like this for at least two lifetimes! That simply isn’t fair.”

Christmas 2008

2008-12-29T09:14:00.000-08:00

Thank God that's over!!

Insomnia: A Christmas Tale

2008-12-09T05:03:00.000-08:00

Christmas was coming, and she was getting fatter. Just like Jack Sprat and his portly wife, juxtapositions between herself and her spouse, ironically also named Jack, came to mind. One was his blatant morning up and at ‘em disposition which contrasted starkly to her night owl schedule—a difference now being punctuated by his radio alarm which was at that very moment belting out country music (another conflicting taste) on the nether regions of the darkened world, a.k.a, the night table on the miles-away opposite side of the bed, while he cheerfully showered. It was 5:30 a. m. for damn sakes and he had beat the alarm!

“Let’s see, I forced myself to go to bed at 1 a.m. which means I’ve had 4.5 hours of sleep, if you don’t count the half hour it took me to get into a position that was agreeable to the comfort of the pug,” she thought as she reclined in her middle-aged puffiness. “Boy, speaking of puffiness that Candice Bergen really blew up, but she’s so good on Boston Legal,” she added. “What a great show.”

In his dotage, Moses the pug snored and grunted beside her as she tried to pull the covers over her backside which stuck jauntily over the tiny wedge of bed space which he allowed her. Suddenly she was overcome by gaseous fumes. “I knew I shouldn’t have let him eat that sandwich meat!” she chastised herself as the stench of digested chicken with the promise of more to come added to her discomfort. And now it was over, the incessant thoughts began . . . as she knew they would, so she ceased to embrace her somber musings with quotation marks.

It’s just a shame. All that we women go through and then wham, we get old and turn into Mrs. Claus. I can't believe I joined a gym last week. What was I thinking? Think of something that will make you go back to sleep. What was I dreaming? Some sort of conflict of course, various animals, couldn’t find my shoes, bathroom stalls with open blinds on the doors. No think of the beach, standing on the beach. Wow, I remember when I was young, brown, and lithe. Well I think that now but since I was borderline anorexic, I didn’t enjoy it at the time. But what is thinness except the absence of fatness? Is thinness a word? Of course it is as well it should be, by gosh, by golly. Have a holly jolly Christmas this year!

Wow, only a few more weeks before Christmas. I haven’t decorated the tree much less cleaned the bathrooms. I should just get up now.

By this time the Newfoundland mix giant rescue, Bear, had wedged into the room from his cozy bed (a.k.a. the sofa, even though he has a very comfortable bed of his own) in the living room with his American Eski-beagle-whatever could he be-mo companion and hastily painted a cold nose mucus picture on her foolishly unshielded backside. Spry Jack kindly escorted him from the room. Hmm, now what was I thinking? Life goes by so fast. What will become of us? Death. Tears welled in her eyes. No, stop! Change that thought process sistah! Pretend you’re a character on the Sopranos. I think I’d be an Irish arms dealer.

When I peruse my life, it seems to be one long string of questionably relevant events, dotted with dubious accomplishments, and inundated with unforgettably embarrassing moments.

She remembered her mantra (stolen recently from a dysfunctional woman on Dr. Phil). I can do this; I can do this. Sadly it was focused on the lofty goal of falling back to sleep. It wasn’t working. “Obviously I can’t do this. What if I was dying and these were my last stupid thoughts?” she wondered, once again introducing punctuation to her mediocre meditations.

"E=MC squared!" she whispered, because she was too lazy to search out the superscript on her keyboard. Take that Stephen Hawking! But she knew it wasn’t her original formula, so small solace was attained. Poor Stephen Hawking. Sorry I thought "take that." I really don't know why I did. Well, it’s all over. I might as well rouse the sleeping pug. I suspect he’s damaged my rotator cuff from lifting him.

She removed the rest of her body from the bed and stepped into a pair of flip flops. It’s the middle of December. Why the hell am I still wearing flip flops? As she plodded into the hallway, also known as the gauntlet of canines, she finally spoke aloud, "Today is Tuesday."

Home for the Holidays

2008-11-26T18:05:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is upon us and I have “officially” taken off a week of vacation for the first time in over five years. You see, when you’re a freelancer, taking off official time is like saying “I don’t need no more money,” and that’s never true.

The great thing is that David is home from college for the week and some of his friends are off at different times. Don’t get me wrong—his girlfriend suffers from some sort of viral sinus thing going around. I’m not glad about that but with the bad weather, and so on, we have some time with our only offspring, who continually cracks me up.

The first night we ate the chicken pot pie I made, one of David’s favorites, and he and I played Battleship into the wee hours. I’d forgotten how to play and tried to put pegs in the game board holes for his misses as well as mine. Much well-deserved derision ensued, but witty derision is the best. Good times. Good times. The next morning I thought I’d had a stroke because of my blurred vision but realized eventually that I had accidentally put on Jack’s glasses instead of mine. A good start to the week.

I’ve already sent out several e-mail apologies to friends and family for my e-mail rantings regarding my feelings about adopting mongrel vs. purebred dogs. I have both so don’t attack me. I’ll say no more because I don’t want to send out future apologies. I know I should be strapped into a Hannibal Lector mask and gurney to prevent further transgressions but no one is willing to step up to the job, even though I know many would enjoy doing so. If I could just get a slapping/offensive comments Tourette's medical necklace, I'd be in fine shape. I could state my mind, slap people across the face, and then ask for their understanding and sympathy.

Jennifer, Mom, and I went shopping and suffered several, ridiculous, but normal-for-us mishaps—Mom almost fell out of my Jeep, we had a near head-on collision, my card was rejected due to a computer error and then accepted after much public humiliation, and so on. Exiting Jennifer’s car to unload our bounty from the trunk, Mom dropped her gloves on the ground. I bent over to get them and Jennifer said, “I don’t know how we survive,” as she jumped out of the driver’s seat. Lucky that Mom dropped the gloves because it delayed us from being run down as the SUV rolled backward. Jennifer had forgotten to put it in park.

Jack told us a long story in Jack-speak in which he stated, “You know those Japanese. All they ever ask are questions.” It is difficult to do otherwise, don’t you think? But there I go. Whenever I ask something, it’s a question.

(Don’t get me wrong though. Jack is a mad scientist and my beautiful-mind sweetheart. I understand his language which is the product of a brilliant brain in overdrive. “Where are our black paper towels?” he asked me yesterday. Of course, he was searching for our trash bags which are black and in a roll.)

Lately, I’ve reverted to Spoonerisms, named after a pastor of the same name who was known for the inadvertent misspeaks that reverse the first letters of words in a sentence. I think it must be due to stress. “Yes I’m looing the daundry.” (Translation: Yes, I’m doing the laundry.) “I’ll be mere in a thinute.” (Translation: I’ll be there in a minute.”) Ultimately, I’m a liter wrosing the ability to speak. It may all be due to the fact that I’ve been trying to finish a book in record time so that I can take time off. Will it be worth it? Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, that ever- terrorizing event when the family gathers together in one room, and barring firearms, survives the love-in until the following year. If I could just get that mask and gurney . . . no apologies necessary, and no legal charges that could stick due to mental inpediments. Oh well, maybe next year.

I hope it’s wonderful for everyone, although I know that’s not possible. We are really very fortunate to live on our particular part--America-- of this strange rotating ball.

We can always hope for better things for everyone. That’s one of the things that Thanksgiving is all about, after all.

Love to everyone and God bless.

Workin' for a Living

2008-10-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Everybody thinks that working at home is just great, and I’m not complaining but it certainly isn’t as ideal as most people think. First of all, if one is on a project that is somewhat boring—and that happens to me all the time--so many distractions are available such as friends, family, dogs, laundry, food, and saving bugs from drowning and going to a watery grave in the pool. I, single- handedly, have probably saved the entire population of wood beetles in North Georgia. I can’t stand to see them floating on the water, paddling frantically with their little spindly legs and getting nowhere, so I scoop them up with my net and dump them into the monkey grass where they are probably immediately consumed by other insects (or by one another).

You can learn a lot from insects drowning in a pool. In many ways they are like some people. You try to bail them out, but they keep jumping out of the net right back into their original circumstances. But I persist. I’m a one-person insect interventionist.

So I usually drag myself out of bed when some idiot calls me at 8:00 a.m. or so, known as morning business hours for many, but for me known as “I stayed up until 1:00 a. m. last night, you inconsiderate morny-mornington!” Then I do my best to stumble my way through a hall full of dogs that are eager to greet me and to keep one another from doing same. Dogs eat first, then me, and finally I sit down to work with a cup of coffee by my side. Now mind you, this is a flexible routine if I’m pre-warned that it must be flexed, and that’s all I require. Otherwise, I work away with hair greatly askew and pajama-clad until midmorning when I take my now-caffeinated body into the shower.

After 20 years, we are getting a new roof, by necessity, unfortunately. We’ve arranged with an insurance man to come and look at the roof before the project begins in the off chance that we may have some hail damage. I’ve prayed for hail damage as our neighbors have had one, even two replacements, but no such luck and I don’t think acorn damage counts. Even though I’ve been hit in the head with those things quite a lot now that fall is here and those damn things hurt. One even bounced through the door (propped open for dogs) and almost got me as I toiled at the computer.

Anyway, all I ask is for a pre-schedule-change warning but this morning as I saved insects out in the pool clad in my pajamas and in a generally frazzled state, a large flatbed covered with a tarp stopped at the bottom of our driveway and men began jumping from the cab. Oh my gosh, I’d been over this a thousand times with Jack. The roofers were to arrive on Thursday and it’s Tuesday! The dogs are going nuts. I run to the bedroom and frantically start to try and dress myself and make myself look better without first pounding down my Einstein hair with a focused funnel of shower water. There is no remedy. I call Jack who is at an airport in Texas. This week he went from Alabama to California to Texas. I saw him for five hours during the California/Texas layover. As I’m scrambling to get dressed, Jack is calling the roofing office secretary who calls the roofers to tell them they are scheduled for Thursday, not Tuesday. By the time I run outside they’re gone with only a big pile of shingles in the driveway as evidence that they were here.

Okay, now I can take a shower since I’ve worked up quite a sweat. While in the shower, the phone rings. It’s Jack telling me that the roofers are leaving and he’s getting on a plane. I get back in the shower and the dogs go wild again. I keep hearing jingle, jingle, jingle. It sounds like a cowbell. It’s too early for Santa Clause, but now I hear men calling and whistling and jingle, jingle, jingle running through the woods around our house. I get dressed and head down the driveway to discover the source of the annoying sound. My flip flop hits a rock and I catch my skidding fall with the front of all of my bare front toes. As I limp back to the house, a hound dog runs past me jingling all the way. I try to call it but it disappears into a nearby wooded lot. More whistles and calls from afar. Damn it! I get in my Jeep and ride in the direction of the calls only to find two men completely clad in hunting gear with rifles slung over their shoulders holding and patting the dog. I roll down my windows and tell them the dog was on my street. “I tried to call him but I didn’t know his name,” I say.

“Well neither do we!” Har-har-har. I’d like to ask, “What kind of an ass goes around shooting poor, helpless animals out of a field that is the only patch of undeveloped land left in the area?” However, I don’t think it’s a good idea to irritate armed men. So I turn around and go back home, only to hear jingle, jingle, jingle followed by canine madness. The guy is taking a leisurely walk down my street with his hunting dog, rifle in tow! Wow. At least the dog is wearing a bell so that the deer can hear him coming. Stupid is as stupid does.

As Christopher Walken says, “I’ve got a fever and the prescription is more cowbell!”

It’s now past noon. Guess I’d better take another look at the pool. Then I’ll get to work. Yeah, right.

Becoming a Dog

2008-10-06T18:20:00.000-07:00

(Bear and London as pups, six months ago.)

In my many hours of human isolation as a member of the pack, I think that I am becoming a dog. Although I will never meet such high levels as that species; I aspire to it. I would rather reach the spiritual level of a dog than that of a human, because that of a dog seems so much purer. Oh yeah, people will say that is because canines don’t have the intellect of a human. Thank Dog!—or the dyslectic equivalent thereof.

The American Indians, if I understand correctly, see wolves as mentors for the method of bringing up children and preserving society. Wolves are definitely a better role model than that of humans in many ways. However, it makes me sad that the Lone Wolf, the one that goes out on its own, is sought after and killed because of its threat to the rest of the pack. I wonder if Bear, our Newfoundland-mix rescue, fits into that category. David rescued Bear right before Bear was euthanized, and I later discovered that black dogs (and cats for that matter) are euthanized more often than any other animals.

Despite the fact that Bear has adjusted quite well with every dog (and person) around him, he looks like Stephen King’s Cujo—big, black, with large, white wolf teeth, and, at times of absolute affection (which are many), he nibbles you relentlessly not realizing the pain that he is inflicting. (We’re working on that, but it’s very endearing.) Honestly, I was horrified of him when we first brought him home and when he wouldn’t come in at night. I slowly backed away after trying my best to cajole him inside when he glared back at me with those glow-in-the-dark gold eyes. Okaay then, stay out here if you like. Do dogs judge one another by their covers? We’ll never know, but I can tell you that Bear’s cover was nothing but that—a sheep in wolf’s clothing. We rescued him from his first placement because the other dogs were attacking him, despite his threatening dogsona.

What a baby! He whines, cries, and begs like a spoiled child. He climbs on everyone’s laps and tries to curl into a ball, not realizing that he is a 75-plus-pound beast that looks like a killer wolf. He wraps his paw around your leg when he wants your full attention and relentlessly licks the smallest wounds, such as a mosquito bite, that he spots on your skin. We are still working with his need to jump up and wrap his big arms around anyone’s neck without invitation, as he did when I first said hello to the big fella. I said, “So this is Bear,” and he jumped up immediately and hugged me tight as if to say, please take me home and love me. That habit is a tough one to break, because it does tend to melt one's heart.

Tonight I took poor old Moses, who is deteriorating as I speak, on a trek through the woods to retrieve the mail. It was dark and I made the younger two rapscallions stay behind and me and my old pugmeister traipsed through the undergrowth. Moses seemed very happy, but breathless, as I stopped for him on several occasions. One of those stops was our pet cemetery filled with the memories of mostly dogs, but also rabbits, mice, and a memorable ferret, all loved ones who have added many happy stories to my life.

Last week at PetSmart a rescue pit bull being walked for a pit stop halted dead in its tracks and wagged its entire body as it stretched toward me. “Wow,” said the handler, “I’ve never seen him react to someone that way. Maybe you could take him home!”

I would love to have taken him home, but I can only afford three dogs right now, and truthfully, I can’t afford those. The thing that bothers me is those people who will only take the purebreds. In 30 years, I’ve had two purebreds myself, but the rest were these little mutts that make the best of pets. But even discarded purebreds are waiting to be rescued, for gosh sakes, if people didn’t have that puppy fixation.

Like I said, I’ve only had two purebreds in my life, but I can’t distinguish the joy I had from them from any of the others. This old Bear reminds me of Jack and these two most recent dogs (Bear and London, the American Eskimo-who knows what mix) despite my worries, took an immediate attraction to each other. Bear has a beastly approach, but is a sweetheart beneath. He growls sometimes, but craves affection, even though he doesn’t seem to want to admit it. He jumps into your lap with the impact of a fullback and receives hugs magnanimously. I fell in love with London via an online rescue, and when Jack tried to get me to cancel him due to Bear’s unexpected arrival, there wasn’t a chance that I could do so. The two fell in love at first sight.

London is like a little red fox devil. He wants attention, but only on his terms. He likes to cause trouble and aggravates Bear relentlessly and Bear puts up with his shenanigans good-naturedly, to an extent. London is a little loner with a bent sense of humor that nevertheless seems to get his feelings hurt unexpectedly. Bear and London are unlikely, but inseparable friends and companions.

Oh my God, we just adopted the better version of ourselves!

Deep TV

2008-10-02T21:19:00.000-07:00

Those Viva Viagra commercials aro so cringe-inducing that I have to leave the room when they're on, not because of the subject matter but because of the hokiness. What must they pay those guys to "star" in them? Somebody has something on those guys and it must be something horrible.

But the ones I really can't figure out are the Cialis commercials--what do two claw-footed bathtubs, side-by-side on an elevated deck out on the beach have to do with erectile dysfunction? First of all, who put those tubs out there, and why? Plus, if a guy is having that particular problem, shouldn't he at least try getting into the same tub as the woman? How do they get water in those things? If they have to load it all out in buckets, because I don't see any plumbing, the guy is probably too tired to do anything else. Water is very heavy. How many years have they been doing this? They don't need Cialis, they need indoor plumbing and one bathtub.

And what about those air freshener commercials with animated animals wearing clothes? What the hell does an octopus, a kangaroo, or a chameleon have to do with air freshener? Did somebody luck onto some free graphics discarded by Disney? In one of these ads, an elephant's husband is a centipede! Now that's just wrong.

I looked over at Jack and asked, "How can that be?!" (Of course, I had accepted that an elephant wearing clothes had a picture of her insect husband framed on the wall.)

"I don't know, hon," he answered with way too much disinterest.

Maybe the centipede should take some of that Viagra or Cialis because that couple's kids aren't elephants OR centipedes. They're not even elepedes or centiphants. Next thing you know, I'll be seeing those two on Cheaters or Divorce Court. Mark my words.

The Sopranos and Carpe Diem

2008-09-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Once again Jack is out of town and I’m working my rear off because any and all jobs have converged into a two-week deadline after a summer of zero income. Meanwhile, we’re trying to put David through college. When Aunt Jennifer generously gave him a check to help cover expenses he thanked her profusely and said, “I only wish I was in a position to refuse this.” Don’t I know it!

I’m supposed to be focusing entirely on a book deal, but I can’t sacrifice my client base, and I’m waiting for pay-on-publication checks—as if!! The media’s political coverage has slowly turned my brain into an angry mush, if that’s possible. Well hell yes it’s possible! My brain IS an angry mush. It’s like a slushy soup in which the ingredients of apathy are mixed with equal parts of antipathy.

David is talking to me about his tests in required classes that have nothing to do with real life. I know it, but I must downplay that reality. Education could be fun if your life didn’t depend on it. Then again, you discover that even though your life might depend on it, it doesn’t do you that much good except for deleting one more demerit against you when competing against Susie or Charles with connections. So call me bitter!

Knowing that every day is precious doesn’t help when you can’t do anything about it. Yeah, I’d much rather be frolicking on a beach somewhere but seizing the day is a bit difficult when you’re transcribing interviews 24-7. Then friends Jill and Ray who took me out to eat Mexican tonight (hey even recluses need to get out once in a while) informed me that somewhere in Switzerland experiments are going on to prove the Big Bang Theory. Why?! The experiments involve some types of energies which are above your understanding, dear imagined readers—meaning that I have no idea either, but scientists are saying that such tinkering may create a black hole that swallows the earth, in which case, I have really been wasting my time this summer even more than I had previously presumed! Balls!

With my whole world collapsing in a continual downward spiral, including the fact that now there aren’t even any bugs to save from drowning in our pool—one of my prided community outreach endeavors—I’ve become captured by morning reruns of “The Sopranos.” In fact, the few minutes of indulgence while drinking my morning coffee persuaded me to rent the series again, and I’m beginning to think the so-called mob should replace the U. S. government. At least they get things done! (Just kidding, Big Brother '0 Mine.) [To all others: No I’m not kidding.] There’s some good philosophy going on in that fictional scenario. I love it when Tony Soprano (mob boss), alluding to the beliefs of one of his Hassidic “customers” asks his psychiatrist, “If this life shit is all about nothing, then when why do I have to keep thinking about it all the time?”

Well said Tony. Well said.

That Little Yellow Pill

2008-09-01T20:43:00.000-07:00

My nephew turned thirteen this month and we recreated his yearly birthday that we have had here for at least seven years. My rescue dog, Bear, escaped several times during the fiasco. He has no street savvy and seems to think that our retrieval efforts are a big game, running and smiling as we approach, then jumping right into the Jeep when we finally find him, stop, and open the door. Still, it's a bit hurtful. Don't you like us you big jerk?! As London, his best little companion cries for his return, it's difficult to not harbor resentment and lick wounds until I realize when he gets back he thought the whole thing was a romp and doesn't realize the danger he's in due to his lack of life experience.

Due to several different factors, I told Jack that this summer sucked and then it was over. That ticks me off, because I know how important time is. I've been deaf for the past few weeks due to "barotrauma" or airplane ear and today I watched a few episodes of "That 70s Show" during which the mother said, while posing her kid and his friends for a high school graduation photo, "Now smile for your mothers who spent the past 18 years of their lives living for you. And while you're smiling, think of what we're supposed to do now!!" As she runs out of the room, her son, says, "You're supposed to take that little yellow pill."

The other day at a department store, the lady asked me if I qualified for the senior discount. "What?" I asked, followed by asking what the age cut-off was. I didn't qualify yet which was doubly depressing, but I added, "I couldn't hear you because I just got off a plane and have barotrauma, not because I'm old." DAMNIT.

I wish I had a few of those little yellow pills.

Update: Irrelevant and disconnected thoughts

2008-08-19T20:29:00.000-07:00

This agoraphobic just traveled from Atlanta to San Francisco to Portland to Medford to Denver in less than five days. Sadly, I may never hear clearly again due to a condition called barotrauma. Can you hear me now? NO!!

Commercial watch: Please explain why an octopus married to a walrus is a spokesperson for air freshener.

The Price is Right: Who writes the garbage for describing the prizes and the showcases? Also, who watches this stuff? Unfortunately me, while on the treadmill.

Most of you probably don’t know this, but I actually wrote several missives to the Scrubbing Bubbles folks when they changed to a very unsatisfactory dispenser. My last e-mail began with “It’s a sad day . . .” which cracked up sister Jennifer. Well, laugh if you will, they discarded the dysfunctional dispenser sometime near the timeframe of my passionate complaints. However, now I see on commercials that they are daring to change it again. It’s time to get out my “It’s a sad, sad, very sad day” pen.

Son David was going to take German for his language requirement, despite our warnings. I guess he though that since it was his grandfather’s native language, he might take to it naturally. Then he got a Beginning German syllabus all in German. Oh yeah, that professor is going to be fun! Like Jay Leno said, “The Germans can be wonderful people, but you better watch out once they start marching!” (What? I’m married to one!) Anyway, David changed to another language. Smart move, in my opinion. You can always learn a language on your own time when it isn’t tied to your GPA.

While I was in Oregon, enacting a combo of “The Odd Couple” and “The Out of Towners” with my boss, Bear, the chewingest dog in America, ate my entire first season of “Reno 911.” (Oh, I know, you’re too sophisticated to watch that kind of humor.)

Endorsement: Hey, those Roasted Garlic Triscuits are fantastic if you don’t mind the after-breath.

What are the odds? – When I got on the plane in Atlanta I started to experience extreme itching in an area that I couldn’t obviously scratch, being wedged between two men. What is this?! I asked as my ears burst and I struggled to scratch my left breast without being noticed. Why can’t I just have a normal flight like everyone else? I thought, as I subtly wriggled and planned my escape to the dreaded airline bathroom. First they put on the movie, then turbulence (please stay seated), then the drink cart, and then everyone seemed to need to go. Finally, I made my way to the cubicle of terror and found . . . a tick in my bra!!!! He/she was still crawling about in shock I assume due to the altitude. Oh the horror! I hate these creatures, but can only trace it's origins to my extreme hugging of the multiple canines before my departure. They were one month behind on their Frontline treatments due to the fact that we can’t keep them from bite-playing for the six-hour requirements. I frenetically tried to wash it down the drain using the motion-sensory water flow.

Is there a Tick-in-Your-Underwear-Mile-High Club? Yeah, but I’m the only member.

Can I hear you now? No! And it’s ticking me off. (No pun intended.)

The airlines lost my luggage, but what once was lost, now is found. Hallelujah!

P. S. Jack met me at the airport with flowers. My boss probably thought, What the heck, she was only gone five days! But Jack understood what five days is for an anxious, crazy person like me and . . . he brought me flowers.

ADD Ramblings

2008-07-28T17:39:00.001-07:00

This just about sums it up for me:

"One day a beaver and a termite were walking down the road together. 'I can eat through a tree with my teeth,' said the beaver.

'That’s nothing,' said the termite, 'I can burrow through a tree.'

Then they heard a voice behind them. 'You two think you’re so smart, but you’re NOTHING!' It was a bitter old drunk lady." --Jack Handy

******

This weekend Jack was pulling out drawers and rummaging through cabinets in the kitchen—nonfood-oriented cabinets and drawers, mind you. “What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Then how will you know if you find it?” I foolishly inquired.

“Oh, I’ll know!” he replied.

O-kee-doh-key.

******

"Life is a constant battle between the heart and the brain. But guess who wins? The skeleton."
--Jack Handy

******
I went to the UPS store to mail our taxes (another year of extensions). This lady with a nasal voice and an abrasive NY accent (sorry, but not really) was going on and on about how another place hadn’t charged her as much for shipping a larger box the week before, so she was going somewhere else to complain some more. Then she complained some more about the packing cost. Then she complained that they put too much tape on the box, so where was she going to put the label when she supposedly got a cheaper price from the other place where she was going to complain? All of this in this high nostril tril while I was in the middle of my would-have-been brief transaction.

The guy helping me told her that he would help her with the package if she would just wait two seconds, but she said she’d drive her car up and get it herself because she didn’t want to have to carry it all that way. When she came back in, the UPS employee offered again to help. “No, I’ll just have to carry it myself,” she opined.

As she struggled through the door, it took her several times to get through—she bumped against the sides of the door repeatedly with the big package, struggling to see her way through--but I just leaned against the counter and watched. So did he. Then I said, “What a whiner! Anybody else, I would have held the door open or something, but I really didn’t want to.”

“Yeah, I agree,” he said.

Is that bad?

******

“Instead of a trap door, what about an area of the floor that just shoots up real quick and smashes the guy against the ceiling?”--Jack Handy

"People were always talking about how mean this guy was who lived on our block. But I decided to go see for myself. I went to his door, but he said he wasn't the mean guy, the mean guy lived in that house over there. 'No, you stupid idiot," I said. 'That's MY house.'" --Jack Handy

******

For some reason, David and I were talking about sunburn. I told him about my Dad’s (his grandfather’s) love of the latest trends. For example, I know he was the first in the neighborhood to bring home the “Peppermint Twist” album.

Anyway, in the early 1970s—yes people still were alive then who are miraculously living today—he purchased a sun lamp with an alternate therapeutic heat lamp bulb. Jennifer (younger sister, but in her teens, so age is no excuse) decided to see if the warming bulb would melt a caramel on her head. So she unwrapped a Kraft caramel, stuck in on her head, and fell asleep under the lamp. Sadly, she mistakenly had the sun lamp in the fixture, not the heat lamp, so she woke up with a terrific burn and a prominent white square in the middle of her forehead that was near to impossible to cover with makeup for over a week.

“Don’t we have any normal family stories that I can pass on to my children?” David asked.

******

“I hope I never do anything to bring shame on myself, my family, or my other family.”—Jack Handy

The Lunatic is in My Head

2008-07-23T13:38:00.001-07:00

(Dedicated to cousin Diana--no she isn't dead, but she thought I might be.)

Have you ever felt like a rat in a maze and you don’t even want the cheese anymore? That’s about how my summer has gone. Spending a lot of time alone while Jack travels—he recently returned from Cannes, France—I realized the other night that if someone trained one of those spy cams on me for any given twenty-four-hour period that Jack would have plenty of fodder to have me committed.

Just last night consisted of wandering out to the pool at midnight to make sure no frogs had drowned, talking a Newfy into coming into the house during a violent thunderstorm, and screaming, “That’s it! Where’s the bad dog spray!” as London (a combo of wit and wily) tortured the pug. As leaves, tree limbs, and nuts (besides me) hit the windows, I discovered that Newfy the Bear had already eaten half of a hundred-dollar bed I’d purchased for him. “Bad dog! Bad dog! No more bed for Bear!” I screamed as I hurled the huge mattress into what was once David’s room but has now become a giant catchall for any unwieldy object in the house—including unfolded laundry. Of course Bear didn’t care; he just reclined on the sofa watching my mad Bride-of-Frankenstein choreography enacted to the background of blasting thunder and streaks of lightning.

(An aside: Just the other night, Jack, suffering from jet lag fell asleep on his chair. David, home for the weekend, and I were watching a movie. Still asleep, Jack stood up with arms outstretched and started veering forward and backward while mumbling.

“Look Mom, it’s Franken Dad,” said David. So I guess Jack and I are an appropriate couple.)

Composing myself, I open an e-mail containing the story and a video of Christian the Lion, returned to the wilderness by his owners who had raised him from a cub. Now tears are flowing down my cheeks and I am sobbing aloud as my canines look at me with what-the-hell’s-wrong-with-her-now? expressions. Drying my tears, I turn on an old episode of “Seinfeld” and laugh and laugh (somewhat maniacally, one might say) until the Newfy lands in my lap with London the American Eski-Beagle-Basset-Mo attached. The impact leaves me breathless as the combined weight of over a hundred pounds hitting your ribs tends to do. And then “No Bite! No Bite!” as Bear begins to nibble on my buttocks with his giant white teeth. If you think raising a dog with good manners is difficult, try teaching manners to one that was raised with bad ones by somebody else.

What is that in the little one’s mouth? Oh my God, it’s one of those giant buzzing bugs and it’s still alive! It’s flying at my head! Loud screaming ensues. I have had enough for a day and my imagined spy cam now has some great close-ups of me in a full range of manic emoting: rage, tears, laughter, sorrow, pain, abject fear, and back to rage. Also some good action shots as I crawl under the table on all fours to pick up the shredded hot pink tissue paper that the pups have secreted from a drawer and turned into giblets. “No! No! That is not why I’m in that position!” Where is the bad dog spray, (actually just a spray bottle of water) when you really need it? Now a disheveled, near molestation victim of a mess, I decide I’ve had enough. The pug sleeps with me but this requires some maneuvering as the “pups” like to push their way past me into the bedroom, grab whatever suits their fancy, and escape out the doggy door into the woods to decimate their hapless victims.

Oh yeah! Say I’ve lost control! You try to hold back two dogs with your feet and squeeze through a door while holding an aged twenty-pound pug!

I’ve managed the separation but dare I venture out into the hallway to turn down the air conditioning? No, I decide not to take the risk. Exhausted I fall asleep, but there really is no rest for the weary. I dream that I’m married to Billy Bob Thornton who as it turns out is a twisted, mentally abusive SOB, at least from my experience as his wife. Nice, then mean, then nice he gaslights me by saying, “Now don’t be lak thaat” whenever I react.

“Okay Billy Bob, you’re out of here, because it’s morning,” I say as I get up, get outta bed, and drag a comb across my head. Later I go to get the mail. There’s an invitation to my high school reunion. DAMN IT! Does the torture never stop?

Notice to the class of 1800: Gail will not be attending the reunion. She is currently weaving baskets at a nearby facility for the unstable.

(At least he sent me to a place with arts and crafts.)

Time Flies

2008-06-16T18:03:00.001-07:00

It’s the Saturday before Father’s Day ’08. I’m preparing to go to dinner and Jack’s in the shower. We’ve decided to go to dinner the day before to celebrate because we know that the actual day will be crazy at all of the restaurants. David is coming home from Athens for the occasion. “So should we wait for David to go to dinner?” I ask.

“No, he says it will be too late,” Jack answers.

Then I have one of those out-of-body experiences. A chill goes through me. My God, I just brought my baby home! It’s a time-warp experience that makes me want to cry. “Jack, what happened?” I say. “It’s as if I was holding him for one minute and now I’m waiting for him to come for dinner on Father’s Day!? Where did the time go?”

Jack says, “I just don’t know.”

Why I'm Crazy!

2008-06-16T13:52:00.000-07:00

Jack and I are traveling across town to have our new rescue puppy, London, neutered. Jack likes to travel at the speed of sound and makes such abrupt stops that everyone in the car gets a wedgy.

At least twice, the puppy flies from his little bed in the back to the floor. Then I try holding him, but all the movement makes him carsick. I kick myself for not purchasing one of those doggy halters, but little did we know that in order to have the rescue association neuter London for free, we’d have to go to one of their designated facilities two hours away. “Don’t gas prices even out just paying for our own vet?” I want to know. Jack begs to differ.

He starts to program his GPS while he’s driving which results in another occasion for a sudden, heartstopping halt, less than inches from the car in front of us. Then the dialogue continues as follows:

GPS: Please turn right in 20 feet.

Jack: No way!

GPS: Now turn left.

Jack: No damn way I’m turning left!

GPS: Please make a u-turn now.

Jack: Yeah right! You’re out of your damn mind!

Me: I think you’re the only person I’ve ever known to use a GPS just so you can argue with it. Why are you using it?

Jack: Because this thing is incredible. Right now (pointing to the screen) it’s communicating with nine satellites. But I know a better route.

Me: I’m so confused.

Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, DRIP!!

2008-05-15T14:32:00.000-07:00

It’s the little things that push people over the edge, like when someone shoots another person for making a repetitive sound just one time too many. I once worked with a woman whose husband constantly sucked his teeth. We had to be around them at company gatherings and after a point, I didn’t want to be in the same room with the man for fear of exploding in a violent rage. Glasses could be clinking, music playing, people talking, but all I could hear was the suck, suck, sucking like the tale-tell heart. I eventually changed jobs, not for that reason, but in doing so I may have saved a man’s life.

When I’m home alone with the dogs, which is a lot—and anyone reading this should know that they are very, very vicious, cruel, violent creatures who would rather kill you than look at you—these little things in my surroundings start to drive me nuts, or should I say, nuttier. This doesn’t make me a very good companion for myself. For example, television commercials drive me crazy, and yet I continue to watch and listen to them. It must run in the family because my sister got so annoyed with a fellow employee for pronouncing the Toot in Tootsie roll (which she had in a bowl on her desk) like the toot that a train makes that she had to call him on it. The discussion got so involved that they wrote the company for the correct pronunciation. She was right. So for your information, it’s the short toot, not the long toot.

Anyway, one late, late night I was sitting here watching reruns of the “Price is Right” which is sad enough but what really made it sad was that I was watching it ONLINE! So I turned on the television to see a commercial with this beautiful young actress, can’t remember her name. She sidles across the screen and says, “Do you know what you really, really want? Well, I know what I want! A makeup that blends with my skin.”

Wow, what a deep thinker. Plus, life must be really, really easy for her. Not only was she really, really beautiful, but according to the commercial, she had already found the makeup that blended with her skin! Some people are just blessed.

Next comes a commercial for yet another new drug. Lately the side effects listing for these things have become so long that one would think people would rather just have the disease or malady that the drug supposedly treats. These are horrible side effects like anal leakage and possible aneurysm or death, but said in a chirpy voice they don’t sound that bad. Anyway, this particular new remedy, for whatever, was called Acifex. Yes, that’s right. People who probably make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, who set up think tanks, take surveys, and then run their name choices past executives who make even more money—they all agreed on naming a medicine Ass Effects. When Jack is here, I yell out things, like, “They PAY people for this?” But he doesn’t seem to care. Why, why, how can people not care?!

Now for those of you who want to remind me of famine, plague, sorrow, and war, all the serious stuff that’s going on in this world, have no fear. Those things bother me a lot and I’m not just saying that either. But remember . . . it’s the little things that drive you crazy.

Farewell for Now, My Max

2008-05-13T20:17:00.001-07:00

Since mid-March when my Max left us, I felt a sense of numbness, the kind I’ve felt when other seemingly unbearable sadness has come over me. I felt guilty the first time I felt the same, when many years ago my grandmother passed away. I was seventeen and seemed to feel projected away as I watched a woman I loved so much, someone I thought actually understood me, being lowered into the ground. Then my father: it was months, maybe almost a year, before I allowed myself to walk into the woods behind our home and sob. I think this is because outward displays of strong emotion have never been condoned in our family, but also because I need the time to express the pain that just might never stop if it starts too soon.

It’s been only two months since old Max left us and I have felt a sort of sad numbness. I dreamt about him once. I refuse to talk about him. Within a week of his passing, I heard him bark when I returned from the grocery. It was his strong, clear bark that greeted me whenever I returned from even a five-minute errand and I turned to look for him in the window. Of course, he wasn’t there. My friend Jill made the remark that when she drove up in the driveway she missed his greeting. I held up my hand and shook my head and she knew to go no further.

I have filled my days with new rescue pups and they are wonderful, but I still look around and miss old Max. I put the thoughts aside in the middle of the night when I wake up dreaming of giving him a hug. Out with the old and in with the new is a heartbreaking reality when I think of him covered with mud at the back door after digging through the fence to get to us and his smiling face and wagging tail in the last few years when he finally got his wish to sleep in our bedroom.

I miss him in the many ways that someone misses any loved one who was always there, but I pushed my sadness aside, pushed it aside. Then for some reason, it all came out. Today, I sobbed; I wailed. If you have never wailed, then it is an astonishing thing. Wailing is a sound that emerges like a primal animal. Jack, kindly, just sat next to me and didn’t say a word as I intermittently apologized for emitting sounds that I never thought could come from me—and they did, in a grief that I couldn’t express in words for that old dog. I knew it had to come. I just didn’t want to deal with it, and I have to finally say good-bye for now my sweet Macky.

The Rainbow Bridge Story

Just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge. When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable. All the animals who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor; those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. His bright eyes are intent; His eager body quivers. Suddenly he begins to run from the group, flying over the green grass, his legs carrying him faster and faster. You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again.
The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.
Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together.... Author unknown

Dogs In Heaven?
An old man and his dog were walking down this dirt road with fences on both sides, they came to a gate in the fence and looked in, it was nice grassy, woody areas, just what a 'huntin' dog and man would like, but, it had a sign saying 'no trespassing' so they walked on. They came to a beautiful gate with a person in white robes standing there. "Welcome to Heaven" he said. The old man was happy and started in with his dog following him. The gatekeeper stopped him. "Dogs aren't allowed, I'm sorry but he can't come with you.""What kind of Heaven won't allow dogs? If he can't come in, then I will stay out with him. He's been my faithful companion all his life, I can't desert him now.""Suit yourself, but I have to warn you, the Devil's on this road and he'll try to sweet talk you into his area, he'll promise you anything, but the dog can't go there either. If you won't leave the dog, you'll spend Eternity on this road." So the old man and dog went on. They came to a rundown fence with a gap in it, no gate, just a hole. Another old man was inside. "S'cuse me Sir, my dog and I are getting mighty tired, mind if we come in and sit in the shade for awhile?""Of course, there's some cold water under that tree over there. Make yourselves comfortable""You're sure my dog can come in? The man down the road said dogs weren't allowed anywhere.""Would you come in if you had to leave the dog?""No sir, that's why I didn't go to Heaven, he said the dog couldn't come in.We'll be spending Eternity on this road, and a glass of cold water and some shade would be mighty fine right about now. But, I won't come in if my buddy here can't come too, and that's final."The man smiled a big smile and said "Welcome to Heaven.""You mean this is Heaven? Dogs ARE allowed? How come that fellow down the road said they weren't?""That was the Devil and he gets all the people who are willing to give up a life long companion for a comfortable place to stay. They soon find out their mistake, but then it's too late. The dogs come here, the fickle people stay there. GOD wouldn't allow dogs to be banned from Heaven. After all, HE created them to be man's companions in life, why would he separate them in death?"
Author Unknown

The Power of the Dog
There is sorrow enough in the natural way From men and women to fill our day; And when we are certain of sorrow in store, Why do we always arrange for more? Brothers and sisters, I bid you beware Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Buy a pup and your money will buy Love unflinching that cannot lie-- Perfect passsion and worship fed By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head. Nevertheless it is hardly fair To risk your heart to a dog to tear.
When the fourteen years which Nature permits Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits, And the vet's unspoken prescription runs To lethal chambers or loaded guns, Then you will find--it's your own affair-- But ... you've given your heart to a dog to tear.
When the body that lived at your single will, With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!) When the spirit that answered your every mood Is gone--wherever it goes--for good, You will discover how much you care, And will give your heart to a dog to tear.
We've sorrow enough in the natural way, When it comes to burying Christian clay. Our loves are not given, but only lent, At compound interest of cent per cent. Though it is not always the case, I believe, That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve: For, when debts are payable, right or wrong, A short-term loan is as bad as a long-- So why in--Heaven (before we are there) Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear? Rudyard Kipling

Where To Bury A Dog
There are various places within which a dog may be buried. We are thinking now of a setter, whose coat was flame in the sunshine, and who, so far as we are aware, never entertained a mean or an unworthy thought. This setter is buried beneath a cherry tree, under four feet of garden loam, and at its proper season the cherry strews petals on the green lawn of his grave. Beneath a cherry tree, or an apple, or any flowering shrub of the garden, is an excellent place to bury a good dog. Beneath such trees, such shrubs, he slept in the drowsy summer, or gnawed at a flavorous bone, or lifted head to challenge some strange intruder. These are good places, in life or in death. Yet it is a small matter, and it touches sentiment more than anything else.
For if the dog be well remembered, if sometimes he leaps through your dreams actual as in life, eyes kindling, questing, asking, laughing, begging, it matters not at all where that dog sleeps at long and at last. On a hill where the wind is unrebuked and the trees are roaring, or beside a stream he knew in puppyhood, or somewhere in the flatness of a pasture land, where most exhilarating cattle graze. It is all one to the dog, and all one to you, and nothing is gained, and nothing lost -- if memory lives. But there is one best place to bury a dog. One place that is best of all.
If you bury him in this spot, the secret of which you must already have, he will come to you when you call -- come to you over the grim, dim frontiers of death, and down the well-remembered path, and to your side again. And though you call a dozen living dogs to heel they should not growl at him, nor resent his coming, for he is yours and he belongs there.
People may scoff at you, who see no lightest blade of grass bent by his footfall, who hear no whimper pitched too fine for mere audition, people who may never really have had a dog. Smile at them then, for you shall know something that is hidden from them, and which is well worth the knowing.
The one best place to bury a good dog is in the heart of his master.
Ben Hur Lampman

I love you Macky Doodle all the day.

You Say "Majah" and I say "Minah"

2008-05-08T16:44:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago was my dear Mom’s 80th birthday, and true to form, she gave us some specific (and often impossible) birthday gift suggestions i.e. a stainless-steel pot big enough to boil 7 to 9 sweet potatoes and with a long handle (not side handles) and some Vinca Minor ground cover for her yard. Now every retail person told sister Jennifer and I that they simply did not make such pots with long handles, but they had said pots with side handles. They looked puzzled at our refusal. No, must have long handle! And is it large enough for up to nine sweet potatoes? That was a no go. Oh well, we’ve been defeated before. On to the Vinca Minor!

Now even Mom warned us that a nursery had informed her of a bad Vinca Minor crop this year. I can’t believe that wasn’t on headline news. Mind you, we had already fulfilled much of the rest of the list and then some but we had to have those Vinca Minor. We went to several nurseries and finally found two flats labeled Vinca. Oh frabjous day. Calooh, calay, we chortled in our joy! As we loaded the flats onto our cart, Jennifer asks, “How many does she want? Do we have enough?”

“What does it matter? We have all of them they have to offer,” I answer. Good point, (and an obvious one) I think.

Well, we’re taking her to dinner later, but we decide to give her this part of her gift early, so we drive over to her house, proudly place the plants in her garage and knock on the door. “Mom, we wanted to give one of your gifts to you now. Come and see!”

Mom dutifully walks over and looks at the plants and in her Southern lady accent simply says, “Oh no, guhls that’s not Vinca Minah; that’s Vinca Majah.”

“Damn it!”
“Sh--t!”

(We both said those words simultaneously.)

We load up the incorrect gift and head back to the nursery to return the plants. There we ask one of the employees if they happen to have any Vinca Minor that we overlooked. “I don’t know,” he replies. “Do you want me to find out?”

“No, we were just making conversation, as we are wont to do when covered in DIRT AND SWEAT!”

“Man no wonder Pike’s went bankrupt,” Jennifer muses.

Long story longer, we found the Vinca Minor at Home Depot. You would have thought we’d stumbled onto the Holy Grail. We were more excited than Mom, when she declared them appropriate Vinca Minahs. All’s right with the world! Until Mother’s Day.

More Dog Days

2008-05-03T06:53:00.000-07:00

As I predicted in my own mind, I have been partially eaten by dogs over the past few months. When I’m not at work, I’m looking for work, and when not doing either, I’m performing in my sole act as the dog yeller. “NO, NO! NO PEE-PEE IN THE HOUSE!” “NO, LEAVE MOSES ALONE!” “DOWN BEAR, DOWN! “NO GIVE, GIVE!” The latter as I tried to rescue a Teddy Bear from the jaws of (ironically) Bear, the Newfoundland mix that thinks he’s a lap dog. (He consumed the entire head of a toy bear I’d had since I was a child, the first night here.) Let me tell you, it’s not easy running in flip-flops.

My house and yard are filled with shredded magazines, the innards and ears of once stuffed toys, and parts of shoes of which I finally just said, “What the hell, eat ‘em. I can’t run anymore.” I’m covered in bruises from encounters with puppy teeth and paws, and I’m sure the neighbors think that my sole vocabulary is “Good boy, pee-pee outside!” which I often say at 3 a. m. Now that the puppy is trained, I’m so trained to repeat that phrase that I’m still yelling it out the kitchen window when I see him doing his business in the yard. At this point, he’s giving me dirty looks that seem to say, “Shut up already. You’re embarrassing me in front of the other dogs.” Speaking of which, I probably smell like pee. I’m not really sure but I do know via several close encounters with a mirror, that I look like hell.

Jack, who said of our “foster” dog Bear, “I want to keep him,” two hours after he arrived, immediately left town, leaving me to referee three canines with three different kinds of food and to pull the puppy away from an irate pug who doesn’t want a damn thing to do with either one of them. My original reason to get the smaller dog, London, was as a companion for Moses. Boy was I ever wrong! Thank goodness that the other two play non-stop, unless they’re sleeping or I would have shot myself by now. I actually considered doing so after the first few days alone with this crew.

Selfishly, I brooded that I had ruined my life. Then I worried that I had ruined Moses’s life. When I shared that worry with friend Denise, she reminded me that he had looked depressed all of his life. “That’s his face!” I guess she’s right and he has perked up a bit. I think he’s so ticked off at me that he’s vowed to live to be a hundred.

Anyway, Jack returned from out of town and as we watched the dogs play, marveled at how London came when I called him and stopped short of Moses when I told him no. “Wow he’s really smart,” said Jack. “Look how smart he is!” I gave him a look. “Oh, I guess you taught him some of that,” he quickly added.

Yah THINK?!

Life's a Bear

2008-04-10T17:33:00.000-07:00

Time does fly when you’re not having a good time. Another major loss of income resulting in raised APRs from late payments despite my best efforts, tax time, and the loss of my beloved friend and fellow in crime—Lab Max. His death eclipsed everything and enshrouded me in a muffled cocoon of constant pain. Occasionally, that pain explodes into anger, but how can I describe it? Ever since I can remember, when an event in my life seems without escape, I go into a state that is bearable and unbearable at the same time. I feel as though I personify pain in a pillow.

Edward Munch’s "Silent Scream" has spoken to me since I first saw it. In fact, its miniature dirigible duplicate on my desk attests to my sick streak of humor. I don’t know how long it will take for me to write about my “Macky Doodle All the Day.” I’ve braved only two trips to his resting place and still talk to him when I wake up in the morning and he isn’t reclining beside my bed with that beatific smile on his sweet face. “Good morning my Macky Doo. Hope you’re so happy today. I miss you my sweet, sweet boy.” This is as far as I can go at this moment, so all mention of that dog that was my heart must temporarily stop, because I am dissolving at the thoughts and the agony caused by attempting to put my feelings into words.

So do all things happen for a reason? Can we control anything? To the first question, I’m still in a quandary. To the second, control freak that I am, I think the answer is a definitive no. Moses, my puggy, who has never lived a day for the past 12 years without his Max, whom I know he saw as a loved one and a constant irritant, went into a funk. He would not eat. He would not drink. We were afraid that he was dying of grief. The vet gave him an antibiotic for an indication of a mild infection, but things were not looking good. I even held water to his mouth on my fingers and he wouldn’t respond.

Over the years, as our beloved pets have aged, bringing in a puppy always appeared to pep up our geriatrics and kept them alive for several more years. I began looking on the Internet for a rescue pup. I felt guilty about all the older dogs that needed homes, but Moses is a little guy and just didn’t need any intimidation. We found a little pound rescue whose mother had been adopted (thankfully) and that would be available when weaned. We filled out surveys that almost made us promise our only child in exchange. As a result we were rewarded with a pup named Linden that would not be available some two months after losing our Max. (Jack hated the name, so as a compromise to not confuse the pup, we agreed on London.) We reasoned this would be good timing for our little Moses and for us.

What happened next is so typical that I’m amazed I still allow myself to occasionally be excited or calm about upcoming events. Two months ago, David, my son, going to school up in Athens and working part-time at a pet store, called me in desperation about a dog that had a sign reading “Last Chance” on its adoption cage. Max was still with us, and I sympathized but held steadfastly that we could not help him. David called my sister in Blairsville and found the dog a home in the mountains. It seemed perfect. This was a seven-month-old Newfoundland mix. Does anyone know how big a purebred Newfoundland is? Up to 150 pounds!

Long story short, the adoptive woman, very kind and animal loving, happened to have seven other dogs, several of which were attacking the Newfoundland. Lynn, my sister called telling me that my son got her into this mess and that the least I could do was foster the dog until we could find a home. I held firm; Jack said it was the least we could do.

Guess who drove to the mountains to get this dog that is still a pup but strong as a horse and smart enough to know it? Guess who left for Canada on Monday and left me with a dog that looks just like a bear and is named the same, a dog desperate for affection, yet still looks as though he could eat me alive? Guess who is trying to present as the alpha dog to a canine already half her size, while anticipating bringing in a new puppy this Saturday? Guess who has already decided that this big ole thing is a piece of work that will be living with us from now on unless he eats me first?

Old-Couple Speak

2008-03-17T15:12:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine told me about a couple recently on the “Today Show” that has been married for 83 years. Is that even conceivable?! Both of the pair are in their low 100s and the wife did all of the talking, even though they were in good health, considering the circumstances. It got me to thinking about how after only going-on-thirty years, Jack and I are already communicating in a shorthand method that eventually will be shorter than the Morse Code. Some actual interchanges:

Jack: “Where is my?”

Me: “Next to your chair.”

Jack: “Yep, there it is.”

We turn on the television.

Jack: “My gosh, is that?”

Me: “No.”

Jack: “Are you sure?”

Me: “Yep, but looks like her.”

Jack: “I could have sworn.”

Me: “But she was in that other movie and she’s married to that guy.”

Jack: “You’re right!”

As I walk through the room:

Jack: “Are you?”

Me: “Depends on the weather.”

Jack: “Okay.”

Scary.

Misc. Blunders and Life Goes On

2008-03-16T16:58:00.000-07:00

A water main break, a broken windshield, being laid off from a steady freelance gig without warning, the loss of a lucrative project, and the death of the sweetest old yella fella, my lab Max, in the world (which made everything else pale in comparison)—if I could buy a truck and wreck it, I’d be fully qualified as a country music song writer. However, despite being in somewhat of a sorrowed and shocked daze for most of the week, I still managed to engage in a few other oddities:

On the way to the grocery, with one of my list items being adhesive rollers for picking up pet hair, I walked out to the back where Jack had just mowed down some foot-high monkey grass to make for healthier regrowth and gathered tons of leaves from nearby trees. Moses, our old pug, is missing his lifetime partner, so I gave him a bath to try and cheer him up, which means the fur is a flyin’. Sans rollers, I used a piece of gorilla tape to meticulously remove his fur from my black shirt, told Jack that I was leaving for the store, and was turning to exit when he cranked up the leaf blower full-fledge.

I tapped him on the shoulder amidst the noise and when he turned to look at me his mouth fell open and he turned the blower off. “Could you have waited just a second?” I asked. I was so covered in leaf debris, dirt, and monkey grass residue from head to toe that Jack had to take me to the garage and de-leaf me with his high-pressure air hose.

Then Jennifer (younger sister) and I stopped off at Walgreen’s Drug Store to try out one of those machines in which you insert your camera’s photo card and pick and choose from a number of options to print selected photos. We’d never used one before so we though we were doing pretty well until I looked at one of the thumbnail photos and remarked, “Oh my God! Is that me? I look like a big, fat pig!”

Then I touched the screen to enlarge the photo. It was Jennifer.

My mind went into a blank marquee sign surrounded by flashing lights. Jennifer put her face in her hands and laughed so hard that I thought we’d be removed from the store. I went into that wheezing laugh that only such unrewindable moments inspire. Note to self: Never make a comment until you hit the “Enlarge” button.

My Cup Runneth Under

2008-03-12T16:32:00.000-07:00

About a week ago, I bought this giant mailbox. Even though it’s 250 feet from my front door, it’s so obnoxiously huge that even from my back deck (which is even farther away), it still looks like it belongs in a scene from “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.” I’m hoping that the neighbors will chalk its grotesque proportions up to the price they have to pay for not having to associate with me, but I did it for a reason: I was committed. (No not in the asylum sense, but if there is any government money to be had for same, I think I have all of the qualifications; and since I’ve never received a dime on the dole, maybe it’s about time that I did!) Jack, who installed it for me, said it would be a great place for sleeping if necessary. Anyway, I was committed to this fulltime part-time gig I got doing marketing for some really wonderful people (and I mean that). Part of the job was writing letters and the other part sending those letters in rather large marketing packages that wouldn’t fit in a standard mailbox. You got the drift?

I’ve been working my butt off for the past six months training on this job while working freelance, and driving into the city several times a week, thankful to have a steady gig that pays well. I even called and said, “Hey, I hope you guys like what I’m doing, because I just ticked off the whole neighborhood by buying a truly oversized mailbox!”

Meanwhile, a really well-paying freelance job disappeared. After hiring me and allowing me count-your-eggs-before-they-hatch daydreams of handing my son some money for school and expenses, the hiree decided to write the copy herself. Dreadfully disappointed, I consoled myself that now I could put more time in on the other job which also included bonuses. It was the answer to my money-varies-drastically-from-month-to-month-and-hence-payment-of-my-bills dilemma.

So the waterline broke again on our property ($$$), and my windshield was cracked from stem to stern by a flying something or other on the expressway going into Atlanta—probably merely a glancing bullet ($$$); squirrels continued their yearly drive to share our habitat ($$$), and so on.

But then my lab Max—Mackey Doodle All the Day—the best, most contrary, most beautiful, old yella fella in the world started acting odd on Monday. We had to have him put down by Tuesday. I have cried an ocean without relief, and I simply can’t write about it beyond this announcement. Not for now. Getting out of bed without seeing this companion/my heart who was glued to my side from morning to night for fifteen years was almost more than I could bear. Despite ice packs from non-stop sobbing, my eyes were swollen, and I looked like hell, (oh well, maybe that last part isn’t much of a change), I dutifully got in that Jeep and drove into the inner city. My boss stopped a meeting midway to express his sorrow for the loss of Max. I got hugs all-round despite my warnings that such attention would incite possibly unstoppable waterworks.

I kept a variably stiff upper lip all day and then got the news. I’m doing a great job; my efforts have resulted in new business, but times are hard. I’m laid off until further notice.

Does anyone want to pay me to hang out as a reliable jinx for someone they truly hate, because I’m available. Then, as the ultimate insult, when I got home, I had to pull up to that giant friggin’ mailbox and go spelunking to retrieve my bills! Actually, I think that adds a whole new “dimension” to post-office humor, tragic as such humor may be. One of the junk mail envelopes read, “Ever had one of those days?”

Wow, I’m worried. It’s only Wednesday and Jack’s out of town. If bad things happen in three’s, I may be going for doubles.

But honestly, the thing that hurts the worst is that no crazy, hyper, tail-thumping, old lion of a dog is here to greet and comfort me. Forgive me for my pity party, but my cup runneth under. In fact, without my old Macky-Doo, I know there’s an irreparable crack through its very core.

Typical Encounters of the Snydley Kind

2008-02-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

It’s a cold February day and David has come home to visit for the first time in months, which to Mom (me) feels like years. David and Jack settle in to rewatch “The Last Samurai” starring Tom Cruise, and since I’m too hyper to sit through a movie, I just watch once in awhile. Poor Jack doesn’t have much of a chance when David and I get together, but to be honest, we do our best to contain our natural tendencies.

Jack has this tendency to state the obvious throughout a movie, and for two smart asses, it’s almost unbearable. While watching Samurai, during the close-up of the Japanese woman who is housing the errant Civil War veteran, played by Tom, Jack states in sotto voice: “This woman is attracted to this foreign American man.”

David and I exchange glances and attempt to repress ourselves.

Several minutes later, following many such Captain Obvious expressions, a shot of ice thawing from a cherry blossom appears on the screen and Jack declares in his low voice: “Spring has come.”

David can’t take it anymore and tells his Dad that he should write for Hallmark. Jack replies that he is going to throttle David with a pillow. David says, “Only if you narrate it while you do it.”

At this point, I happen to look out the back and discover that half a dozen beautiful deer are gathered mere feet from our back deck. Mind you, we see them at times in the woods, but these huge creatures are only feet from our glass doors. Jack grabs the video camera. I say, “How did they get through the back fence, I wonder.” Jack says, “Oh, hon, those deer jump over a fence like it’s standing still!”

David and I exchange a glance.

Then Jack reprimands David to quit moving around so much. “What do you think they’ll do Dad? Open fire?”

Kidding David, I call him a smart ass.

“You raised me.”

Jack, who tries to never truly listen to what either of us is saying (and understandably so) says, “Nothing I did when raising you would make you move around so much.”

David looks at me and asks, “Is my nose bleeding yet?”

Jack says, “It’s going to be!”

David says, “That’s the first thing you’ve said that I’ve understood all morning!”

Good times. Good times.

Ask Jesus

2008-02-17T13:07:00.000-08:00

The first month and a half of 2008 has been nothing but a lot of work—the feast from people who decide to get something done by hiring somebody to do it (me) that precedes the famine of we don’t have to look that busy anymore, let her starve. It’s the type of thing that makes me want to be one of those salaried folk whose work is like a steady meal.

One morning after a previous evening of working late again, I dragged into the kitchen, turned on the TV, and proceeded to make some toast when I heard an interviewer asking people what they would ask Jesus if they could ask him only one question. One person stated the old standby, “Why is there so much suffering in the world?” Another person schmoozed with “Why am I so blessed?” Then as I walked toward the set to change channels, one woman said, “I’d ask Jesus, where is Osama Bin Laden?”

“You IDIOT!” I shouted at her. She would give up the opportunity to ask about heaven and hell, seeing loved ones in an afterlife, or why we are here, to find out where that chauvinist terrorist goat is?

I have to admit that over the last few years, it seems like every time I look at the clock it’s 3:33 a. m. or 3:33 p. m. In my car, when I wake up in the middle of the night, when I glance at a banking sign, it just happens to be 3:33. Then I saw a T-shirt that had 333 printed across it, along with the message, “I’m only half evil.” Whoa! So I started thinking even more about my points with the big guy. With that in mind, maybe I shouldn’t write the list I’m about to write, because after hearing that woman’s stupid question, I remembered Dave Letterman’s Top Ten List and thought I’d compile my own of the ten dumbest questions to ask Jesus if you only had one question to ask.

10. Hey Jesus, do you have a good recipe for unleavened bread?

9. Hey Jesus, how do you keep that robe so white?

8. Hey Jesus, what’s my favorite color?

7. Hey Jesus, what card am I holding in my hand? No peeking!

6. Hey Jesus, am I going to get a promotion anytime soon?

5. Hey Jesus, does WWJD on those bracelets really mean What Would Jesus Drink?

4. Hey Jesus, why did the chicken really cross the road?

3. Hey Jesus, where did you go to high school?

2. Hey Jesus, does my next door neighbor dye her hair?

1. Hey Jesus, who’s going to win the Super Bowl next year?

Uh oh, I looked at the clock and it’s 3:30. I just lost three points!

Happy January Damn It!

2008-01-25T12:53:00.001-08:00

I don’t want to be a downer, but it does come so naturally, especially in January and February. I’m more than a bit burned out. All the clients whom I begged for work in the aft months of 2007 have come out of the woodwork and want their projects completed now! Work is plentiful; pay, not so much so, (or good, but difficult to get my hands on). In my usual desperation mode, I took on too many projects and I’m now in a bind. Even though I’m working day and night, I don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Jack is out at the Jet Propulsion Lab for the rest of the month (now that’s a strange sentence) Yet, before he left, he installed a doggy door. This doggy door is not your usual, run-of-the- mill door, it’s a Jack custom spectacular, which isn’t a criticism—far from it. It’s a one-of-a- kind, installed inside of a glass storm door that he found for a great price that he sawed out in the middle of the living room, power tools, saw horse, etc., because it was too cold in the garage. If he’d had more time, he could have made the world’s first automated doggy door. Now there’s an idea!

However, I was then left at home with two old, recalcitrant dogs with the mandate of training them to enter and exit the new aperture. This all came about because the two canines need to go out frequently and a new gig keeps me out for extended hours. Not only has the absence of their fulltime doorwoman worked them into a frenzy, but it’s subzero temps out there, and Jack doesn’t want me to leave the back door propped open for obvious reasons. Once again, I’m stuck between the freelancer’s rock and a hard place: I need more work which may require my presence onsite, but expectations lean toward continuing my at-home duties. Ho-hum. I’m boring myself.

Push come to shove—and it did, Max and Moses could not/would not go through the flap after the first day of its installation—go figure! I had to leave for the day, so what to do? Jack suggested we minimize the risk by taping the flap open. He made these suggestions from thousands of miles away, safely out of my reach. I tried electrical tape; it didn’t work. Then he suggested Gorilla Tape which required a trip to the Tractor Supply Store. Okay, since I have nothing better to do. I listened to a long monologue about this fascinating product from the checkout clerk, but soon found that this stuff was worse than the electrical tape or duct tape. Now Jack had another great idea. Tape it around the top of the door, through the opening, while holding the flap up, thus creating a hammock effect for the flap.

Okay, I’m five foot five, the door is over six feet tall, the doggy door is at the bottom, and it’s 25 degrees outside. Add in two dogs who are suddenly enthralled with all things doggy door, tape that won’t stick to anything but gloms onto itself like gum on a hot sidewalk, a 30 m.p.h. wind and answer this: how old is Kathy and when will she reach Chicago in the 9:15 train traveling north at 75 m.p.h.? Who gives a damn! I’m freezing my butt off and I have to travel to downtown Atlanta—an equation of time, distance, road rage, and pure happenstance that defies all mathematical configurations.

Thoroughly disheveled with a new Mr. Freeze hairdo, I actually achieved the feat. I gather my belongings; turn down the heat to minimize energy consumption, grab my keys and a bird flies past my head in the kitchen. Now I have left that door propped open on many a day and listened to Jack rant about a beast entering the house, but five minutes after I leave an opening a tenth of that of an open door, I’ve got a bird in the house. I won’t even try to describe what ensued but I was determined not to have a little dead creature on my hands when I returned, so I persuaded the bird out—eventually, and I use the word “eventually” very lightly. On the way to work, I was stopped for 15 minutes to watch roadside construction, delayed by a water main break at another juncture, and a rock hit and cracked by windshield five minutes after I hit the expressway. It was a wonderful day, all topped by the fact that when I got home, the Gorilla Tape had miraculously held, but for some strange reason, my entire kitchen was covered in bird sh_t!

Blow My Snow!

2008-01-20T20:57:00.000-08:00

When I was 13-years-old, my father’s company transferred us to a part of the country where generations of our family— a combination of Irish, French, English, Dutch, and Cherokee Indian—had never been: Ohio. My God, we were north of the Mason/Dixon line!

I was an Atlanta suburban kid with a heavy Southern accent, yanked from the midst of my first long-awaited year of high school in Georgia, only to be plunked into something called a “middle-school,” a non-entity down south until way later. I could write an entire book on the prejudices I experienced upon my arrival in this state of provincial people, but right now I’m just going to talk about snow.

Why? Because the subject of “snow” just PISSES me off!

Just as one example, stoned out of my mind in the 1970s, I found myself and a friend of mine in a tunnel-vision blizzard out in the country. All I could see was a snow funnel and no road. “We’re going to die!” the Ohio native screamed. “Not helping,” I replied, but I drove safely through the storm.

You see, she had never experienced the road trauma of “Black Ice” that I had survived on, albeit rare occasions, in the South. Snow ain’t got no fear compared to black ice.

Now, whenever the South has snow, the Yamn Dankees down here can’t stop commenting about how stupid we are about this phenomenon that is as rare to us as a hot day in January is to them. Yeah, we’re stupid. We take a holiday and enjoy ourselves when we experience a beautiful anomaly in our region. We use it as a reason to go out and enjoy life with our loved ones, even using the smallest accumulation to try and build a snow (person), throw a snowball, or hopefully let our kids experience the fun of sledding over even the slightest, whitest clump we can find.

We haven’t invested in extensive snow equipment for road clearance, because that would be stupid. And if the rest of you are so hell-bound to get to work every day, just view some of that footage of multiple-car pileups from your region of people who just had to get to work on time. Smart. Really smart.

I recall years ago when a certain Northern transplant sped past us with a condescending glance as in his BMW, he passed us in our hilly suburban neighborhood. His car hit the invisible ice, so often prevalent in our Southern climes, and he lost control and hit a tree. As he sullenly walked past us, we were courteous enough not to say a word. If only our Northern transplants had the upbringin’ to do the same.

Just in Case I Go Missin'

2008-01-12T18:24:00.001-08:00

Jack got home from a business trip, one of the few where he rented a vehicle to drive to the site. Usually he flies all the way across or out of the country. He asked me to follow him down to the rental place to return the truck, but first he wanted to stop off at the recycling center. It was crowded when we got there and I didn’t want to muck up the line, so I rolled down my window and told Jack I’d pull around and wait for him at the exit.

I waited and waited. I even talked to a woman about her shaggy dog. Then I saw him coming around the corner, but he was going really fast. Also, remember that this is a rental truck so I wasn’t certain it was Jack. He flies past me. I jump out of my Jeep and try to flag him down. He’s outta there! He zooms right past me and the guys who are doing community service by recycling cardboard look at me like, “What a loser!”

So I get back in the Jeep and call Jack.

“Hello?” he calmly answers.

“Where are you?!”

“I’m going to the rental place.”

“Didn’t you forget something, like me?”

“I didn’t see you.”

“How could you have not seen me? You almost ran over me! You went out of here like a bat out of hell!”

“Well, I didn’t see you.”

“So you left?!”

(Note to self: Don’t rely on being saved by Jack if the house catches on fire.)

Then his classic line that’s like salt on a slug. “Well there’s no sense in arguing about it now.”

AAAaarggh! @##@$%@@&^

I found the rental place and as he exited his vehicle, I jumped in front of him, jumped up and down, and said, “Do ya see me; do ya see me?”

“Smart ass,” he said

At lights out that night I offered some advice: “You know that was a really flawed plan. I can find my way back home, after all. The next time you try to ditch me, we’ll probably have to be outside the borders of the state in order to delay my return.”

“Okay,” he said.

Props to Gir' Friens

2008-01-12T17:42:00.001-08:00

Yeah, I’m just trying to be current with that title. As I age, such attempts will probably get worse and, if possible, more pitiful.

January sucks for me even when I try to convince myself otherwise. I’ve been having a bad week for a month and that’s not a typo. For some reason, during these first two months of the New Year, no matter how I try, I can’t suspend disbelief and pretend that life is all A-o-kay. Jack is out of town; I’m working 12-plus hour days, I can’t get clients to pay, and I’m trying to remain patient with two geriatric dogs. They’re old but not senile. They know if I’m on the phone with a client, I’ll feed them copious amounts of meat and cheese to keep them quiet and thus maintain my professionalism. (Yeah, right.)

Then at night, while Jack is away, Max (the Lab with the baritone) barks constantly at me for two hours straight. “What are you saying Lasssie? You want to kill me? Do it; do it now and quickly! I’m beggin’ here.” Then quickly he goes to sleep and I wake up hourly to check his breathing the rest of the night.

Anyway, I allow myself a quarterly crying jag. Not that I schedule it; I just put it off.

I was in the midst, when most-wonderful friend Jill called. She probably thought a family member had passed because I seldom allow ANYONE to witness such episoodies.
She rebuffed my protests and came over with a salad and a bottle ‘o vino. We consumed both, finished off some freshly baked chocolate chip cookies, and watched a movie where we laughed our butts off at our own comments. Jill destroyed my view of Christian Bales by saying he has Red Skelton teeth and tongue. Oh my God, he does! So in the movie, when an attractive woman talks to him about performing a certain sexual act, it’s all ruined. I can only think of him thanking her with a “”God Bleth!”

We laughed so much that I temporarily forgot the fact that I’m an aging, semi-employed, half-a-hundred year-old woman with highly limited prospects. Thank you my friend!!

Then, after ten years of separation, that crazy Denise called and we arranged a lunch meeting. Our history could be described as hilarious and/or dysfunctional but we’ve never had an ill word between us. We picked up right where we dropped off. “I ordered their most expensive glass of wine at 11:00 a.m.,” she told me when I met her. “I don’t know anything about wine, but I’d rather they think I’m a connoisseur than a common drunk!” Funny line and funny person.

Denise, you’re a hoot and though you always seem to have moola at your disposal, which you always generously offer to bestow upon me, I would recommend you for a reality show any day.

Bottom line: thank God for girlfriends. The true ones truly save our lives from minute to minute and year to year or even when we least expect it. I hope that someday I can do the same for them in return.
God Bleth!

2008--Ain't that Great

2008-01-05T08:03:00.001-08:00

It’s 2008 and sometimes I feel about the same age. I think it’s because, as I tell my friends, I look a little more like Nick Nolte’s mug shot every morning when I wake up. The songs that defined my generation in the sixties and seventies are now showing up as boxed-set oldies and Easy Rider’s Dennis Hopper is selling investments or something like that on commercials. Would our hip generation ever have foreseen such a thing thirty something years ago? And speaking of thirty-something, wasn’t there a TV show by the same name about a bunch of young, married whippersnappers? This is the kind of useless trivia bouncing around in what’s left of my withering brain unit. Sure, I can remember the words to the song “A Good Breakfast Starts My Day,” that I learned in the second grade, but I can’t remember a very important point I was going to make a second ago. I have more and more conversations that include someone asking me, “Now what were you saying?” I focus for a minute and have to admit, “I’ve got nothin.’”

I have read that depression and stress affects short-term memory more than almost any other factor, and I’ve got plenty of both, especially in the first two months of the year—what drear. Maybe, like the words in the Steely Dan song, “I’m just growing old,” but I can’t remember the last time I was really excited about anything. (Maybe I just forgot.) Upset, yes. Angry, yes. Frustrated and anxious, yes. Morose, yes. Excited, no. Hey, at least I’ve still got feelings. I will have to say that I'm really looking forward to seeing which politician will be selected to send us down the drain. NOT! Wait a minute. "Down the drain" now where did I hear that phrase? It sounds vaguely familiar.

Anyway, Happy Damn New Year!

Deja Vu Doo

2007-12-23T19:43:00.000-08:00

I’ve always been one of those people who never forgets a face. If only I could as consistently remember the names that went with them. Sometimes I do. Once when I was in my early twenties, I saw a man and his girlfriend in the parking lot of an apartment building. “Aren’t you Warner Fox who came to Knollwood grammar school in the third grade?” I asked him. “Yes,” he answered with a look of amazement. “We were in Mrs. Smith’s class together,” I told him. He was amazed.

But here’s the thing. If I fix a name to someone that seems to suit them better, I literally cannot get it out of my mind. Jack and I lived next to a very nice older couple when we were first married, and though the man’s name was Ray, I persisted in calling him Neil. I tried and tried, apologized and apologized. Eventually, he began to answer to Neil. The human brain is a strange device and in my case, a sometimes torturous one.

For example, I put out sunflower seeds every day for the squirrels and birds—I never get it why people want squirrel-proof feeders. I’m an equal opportunity sunflower seeder, so much so that the squirrels put their little paws on the glass of our back doors and peer in if I’m late for lunch. Anyway, I’m putting out the sunflower seeds that David says I’m pouring out like little lines of cocaine—hmm—and all of a sudden, I notice that my tried-and-true sunflowers are mixed with little white birdseed pellets. I don’t like this and say so. David doesn’t understand the problem.

“The birds can eat both and the squirrels can eat the sunflower seeds,” he tells me.

Long a person who doesn’t like chips in cookies or nuts in brownies, I explain that now the birds have to pick out their stuff or mix it up and the squirrels as well. “Now it’s just annoying for everybody!” I say.

“It must be really difficult living in that head of yours,” says David. He has no idea. Obviously, I have digressed but this whole blather actually does have some thread of relativity which is about how our minds work or don’t.

Today, Jack and I were in Sam’s, the giant-portion store, and during Christmas rush no less, when I looked up and locked eyes with an Asian woman some twenty feet away. We both immediately smiled, waved vigorously, and yelled over the din of the crowd, “Hello! Hello!” We were both very happy to see each other, but as I wheeled my cart closer to her, I could tell by her expression that we were both in the same predicament. As I passed her, we both said, “How are you?!” then as if by unspoken agreement, neither of us answered but just kept on truckin’.

“Who was that?” Jack asked.

“I have absolutely no idea,” I replied.

Maybe this hectic world makes our synapses jump when we see a familiar face in an unfamiliar setting. Now if I could only match a familiar setting with the face. (She might be doing the same thing right now.) Or maybe people knew one another in completely different lives and in some strange warp their elliptical paths cross over in a grocery store, or on the street, and sometimes they notice and sometimes they don’t.

In any case . . . weird.

My Thought Process

2007-12-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

My sister Jennifer looks at the decoration--calling it that is a stretch--on my dining room table. On either side of a blue vase with some glittery stuff in it, I have placed my very expensive Publix Mrs. Santa salt shaker next to my Publix Mr. Snowman. On the other side is Santa with Mrs. Snowman (or is that Ms. Snowwoman?)

"So why did you split up the couples?" Jennifer asks.

"Because the Clauses have been in a box together all year and so have the Snow couple and they're sick to death of each other!" I explain.

"I knew you had thought that out," says Jennifer, nodding her head.

Christmas Redux

2007-12-10T19:05:00.001-08:00

Every year, I plan a great holiday season, probably because I love Christmas. But every year, that season comes faster and lasts a shorter amount of time. As a kid, I remember being shocked when I discovered that Christmas came once a year. In my childhood timeframe, it seemed that it only came every five years, and at random. Now, with my only child grown, the season has this eerie, duplicitous quality of arriving and ending very quickly with its latent, sad spirit hinting that it might never come again.

Jack scrolled through the television onscreen menu the other night and chose the “Frosty the Snowman” cartoon. I have some nostalgia for certain seasonal shows, but this one is a particularly cheesy attempt to add more plot to a basic song, along with a sleazy and completely fabricated magician. Plus the animation is flat and cheap. We sat there and glared at it for about 20 minutes before I asked, “Is there some reason we’re watching this?”

Jack said, “I thought you liked it.”

“Nope.”

“Thank God.”

I guess it might be a sad commentary that the traditional festive movie for my son and I is “The Ref,” with Dennis Leary, so tonight, once again the empty nester and grass widow, I tried to watch “White Christmas.” Suspending disbelief is getting tougher and tougher, I discovered. For example, for years I’ve been trying to convince myself that Rosemary Clooney was attractive enough to land Bing Crosby, only to finally admit that she had a better chance with My Friend Flicka. Then, while Bing croons about counting his blessings, I have to struggle to snuff out visions of him drunkenly beating and berating his kids.

I can’t remember the name of the “sister” in the movie, the one with the incredibly pointy breasts, but when she tells Danny Kaye that he’s witty, handsome, and gay, I have to say, “Well three’s a charm.” I watched a Christmas television movie with Linda Hamilton this weekend that was so astoundingly schmaltzy that I stayed with it just for the shock factor.

Tonight I spent an hour on the phone with my Mom who wants assistance ordering television trays online for my sister. I tell her there are over two million hits for same. As I read her one description that fits her quite distinct specifications, she asks me if there are any other choices. Unfortunately for me, only one million, nine hundred and ninety-nine more options!

It’s the end of the year, and suddenly I’ve got work—lots of it, just as I planned for some official down time. Go figure. Maybe if I get a chance, I’ll do a holiday puzzle. Possibly that will get that old piney smell, pretty lights, magical feeling going. I doubt it.

Okay, so I stopped blathering about this subject long enough to watch (with tears welling) the scene where all the military men gather in Vermont to sing “We’ll follow the old man, wherever he wants to go . . .” to the old defunct general. I guess I feel the same way about Santa.

Mystery Solved, But Will You Act?!

2007-11-28T15:26:00.000-08:00

How many times have you (or someone you know) thrown a shoe at a fellow vehicle passenger, lost the shoe out the window, and left it behind on the road?

How often have you run across the street, blown a shoe and continued on your way half shod?

Have you ever, while carrying an extra pair of shoes, dropped one of the said shoes and chosen to simply not pick it up, or perhaps not notice? And if so, why were you carrying an extra pair of shoes? (That might not really be relevant to this particular query, but I would like to know.)

If the above scenario did happen, once the errant shoe was discovered absent, did you then decide not to retrace your steps to retrieve the lost foot covering?

Now, one last question: how many singular shoes have you seen either in or alongside the road throughout your life?

Why am I asking you these pointed questions and hopefully clarifying the improbability of stated scenarios? Because my friends, my family and I have pondered this bizarre mystery on many a road trip, and have come to the tragic conclusion that every such shoe marks the site of an alien abduction. Yes, I said it. Scoff if you will, or provide a better explanation . . . if you can!!

I try to put this horrific realty out of my mind most of the time, but today, there it was—another singular shoe in the middle of a main thoroughfare. "Abduction!" I yelled aloud. A last-ditch effort of the abductee to signal his/her exit, or a cruel calling card of a maniacal Martian? It’ a slap in the face of all Earthlings, yet we continue to turn a blind eye.

The only other explanation is that the aliens have but one foot, are only stealing footwear minus the wearer of same, and then discarding the unnecessary shoe; which would also solve the mystery of all those missing matches to my socks.

Humor's Hidden Side

2007-11-27T21:58:00.000-08:00

Melancholy runs in my side of the family, though we express it in different ways. Apparently, I’m the only one that expresses it as melancholy, or in non-Southern terms, depression. You see, depression (at least in these regions) has historically been regarded as a sign of weakness and still is: past, present, and future. One gets more respect as a full-blown multiple personality or Boo Radley misfit than someone with the blues—unless you play an instrument such as the harmonica, which I don’t. Still, I do the best I can. In my late, great life I’ve recently decided to quit writing for fun.

Nevertheless, as I recently shared with Cousin Di, my son’s sociology professor just penned on his paper that she deemed him her most intriguing student. This unusually effusive compliment was regarding his response to several questions, one of which was, “How do you expect the world to end?” His answer: “In a ridiculously avoidable manner.”

These are the types of funny takes tinged with hopelessness that have traversed my tiny brain since I can remember, and when seeing them expressed so humorously by my son, they conjure up torturous thoughts regarding nurture versus nature. To this day, David and I share the same nights of convoluted and sometimes beautiful nightmares/dreams that we share the following morning. Did I somehow curse him with my persona or uncontrollably damn him with my downer genes? It would be great if I could rely on the latter, wouldn’t it? Because after all, who can control a dysfunctional gene pool? That way, I can just keep dog paddling without claiming that I’m swimming.

Just the other day, when David was home for the weekend, I asked him for the time. He said, “It’s time for you to just shut up!” We both laughed. Humor is an odd thing. For me, it’s a means of survival. However, in the most horrible circumstances, I have used it in a macabre way—most of the time (at least now that I’ve learned better) internally. I think it’s a mechanism for those of us who can be hurt to the core by people who don’t understand how easy it is to hurt people to the core.

That’s why for now I've going to keep on blathering about my inconsequential adventures in hopes that others will realize we’re all out there—laughing whenever possible while we just tread water.

Turkeys Cry Too a.k.a. "I'm baaack."

2007-11-17T16:01:00.000-08:00

Remember that movie “Broadcast News” where Holly Hunter endures a crying breakdown prior to every newscast, then emerges as a tough, hard-shelled broad? That’s what I do, but on a bi-annual (and at times tri-annual) basis. I had one of my semi-annual meltdowns last night—I cry, rant, and express all of the horrible fears that I squish into my nightmares during a year’s time. Then I feel guilty and remorseful for being human.

For the most part, these episoodies occur in private, although I must admit that Jack bears the brunt of such unexpected manifestations. You see, I pride myself on keeping it together, because as I remember it, outward expressions of negative emotions were strongly discouraged in my family. Oddly enough, humor can always be a safer, passive-aggressive (or even aggressively acceptable outlet) than truly expressed feelings. That’s the option I’ve chosen (often to my detriment) over time. Friend Jill said, “You always think of the perfect zinger right on the spot, but I only think of them later.”

I thanked her for the compliment, but reminded her that thinking of the zinger and then immediately expressing it has been the downfall of my personal and professional career. For example, I once grabbed the necktie of my hyperactively obnoxious boss at the conservative company of Kimberly-Clark, jerked him forward nose-to-nose, and hissed that if he would just shut up, I could correct the multiple mistakes he had made and was attempting to blame on me. Oddly, he staggered down the hall and never mentioned the event again. (Although, I did hear him squeak to a fellow manager, "She tried to kill me.") Yet, I was never promoted. Oddly. Now I focus on trying to keep my clever rejoinders inside of my toady brain. Sometimes I win; sometimes I don't.

In any case, I usually have the meltdown alone, wipe away my tears, buck-up and move on, but it takes a few hours of recovery. However, if someone haplessly wanders into the 24-hour recovery period, strange things might happen. As luck would have it, mom and older sister, Lynn, called amidst the event. My sister was a bit taken aback when I explained that I was in no place to hear about her current dilemmas, but she surprisingly called me back the next day and remarked that I sounded better, before asking my advice about which pies to bring for Thanksgiving. “Well I’ve brushed myself off and I’m starting all over again, as usual,” I said. That seemed to be enough of an explanation. We keep-it-all-inside people don’t get a lotta press or air time.

So I have been to the abyss and have slowly floated back to the top for a short while, before I get tired of treading the murky waters again, ask “why botha?” and instantly sink like a stone. I’m looking on the bright side; I had the meltdown before the Thanksgiving family gathering. Now that’s something to be thankful for!

Memory Medicine

2007-11-02T22:01:00.000-07:00

We all have those déjà vu moments that bring back a flood of memories, and I recently had one myself. For the past month or so, every time I talked to son David on the phone, his every few words were interrupted with a dry cough. Of course, whenever I mentioned it, he got defensive. “I’m fine Mom! Geez!” he replied in typical macho guy fashion. Then he’d explain that he felt great, was working out, and running regularly. Still, the next time we talked, that dry cough continued. A veteran of many bouts of bronchial pneumonia since I was two years old, I happen to know that a persistent, dry cough can be a dangerous implication, so when I spoke to him again and still heard the cough, I insisted that he go to the doctor.

I was pleasantly surprised when he showed up at the door this afternoon explaining that he was starting a new job next week that included weekend work, so he thought he’d come home for the weekend as it might be a while before he had the chance again. Then he told me that, thankfully, he’d made an appointment at a nearby medical center. He was gone for a while, and then called me to say that he was on his way to see his girlfriend who had returned with him. That’s when he reluctantly told me that he had a sinus infection and that the doctor had also done a chest x-ray and was admittedly a bit shocked that he had bronchitis as well. Feeling as well as he did was a testament to his good physical shape, but as I told him, he could have been quickly laid out for months (or worse) if he hadn’t attended to the problem.

Anyway, David said that he would pick up his prescriptions on his way home, and, after all, he is a grown man, as much as I hate to admit it. But did he pick up his medications including cough medicine? Nooo. “I’ll get it tomorrow,” he said as he headed for his old bedroom, hacking as he proceeded.

“Wait, I have some over-the-counter stuff,” I persisted (to his exasperation). “At least take one teaspoon so you’ll sleep better.”

I headed down the hall toward him with bottle and spoon in hand when it all came back to me.

When he was little, I’d pour his liquid medicine into a shot glass and in my worst John Wayne impression would say, “I don’t know pahdnah. This is some strong liquid. Why I’ve seen some of the toughest cowboys in the West fall flat over after drinkin’ this stuff.”

He’d always rise to the challenge saying in that little duck voice that kids have, “Give it to me Mistah. I can take it!”

“I’m worried,” I’d reply. “This stuff is stronger than rattlesnake venom or a poisoned arrow.”

At that point, the little guy would grab it, down it, and grin at me triumphantly.

I would respond with some version of “Why, I can’t believe you’re still standin'! You must be the toughest hombre in the whole Wild West.”

He’d smile, laugh with delight, and walk off.

As he stood there in the hall looking at me with frustration, I poured a spoonful and said, “I don’t know cowboy, this stuff is pretty stiff.”

“I can’t believe I used to fall for that Mama propaganda,” he said, downing the spoonful of syrup. Then he gave me a big grin and sauntered into his room to bunk down.

Tidbits from a Failing Mind

2007-11-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

(Observation)--I just watched a commercial in which a woman with bladder control problems discusses her embarassment with that little icon of a woman in a dress that they put on bathroom doors. She doesn't want her friends to know that she has to pee so often, but shouldn't she be more worried about the fact that she is obviously hallucinating?

(Conversation)--I asked David for some gift ideas for Christmas. "I'd like a St. Jude medal," he says.

"You mean a St. Christopher's?" I ask.

"No, a St. Jude's. He's the patron saint of lost causes."

"Isn't that somewhat self-defeating?"

"Perhaps." (Later he asked if I remembered to put the medal on his Christmas list. "You mean the loser medal?" I asked. He began to choke me.)

(A story dedicated to Jerry)--My sister who lives in the North Georgia Mountains told me a horrific Halloween tale of a local Baptist church. Their alternative to the satanic goings-on of the sinful holiday in which children play dress-up and eat candy was a walk-through play called (ironically) "The Judgment." If that's not frightening enough, the plot is about a kid who was tortured by bullies at school and ultimately killed them. The ending scene is the kid burning in hell for eternity.

"What happened to the bullies?" I ask.

"I guess they went to heaven," my sister answers. Then she tells me that she was taking her sons and a friend named Calvin to the town Halloween celebration. She asked if they wanted to go to the haunted house there. "I've already been to that and it's not that good," said Calvin. "If you really want to be afraid, go to 'The Judgment.' That scared the pee out of me!"

And we've come full circle.

The New Book Disease--Literally

2007-11-01T14:31:00.001-07:00

I just heard about a new malady that none of us would have suspected—popcorn lung. Apparently, a significant number of employees in factories that produce microwave popcorn are suffering from symptoms of being able to inhale, but having difficulty exhaling. Obviously, both functions are necessary for the process of what we technically call “breathing.” Once, on a beach vacation I came down with a sudden case of severe bronchitis. Jack went to a nearby pharmacist who recommended an over-the-counter drug that disabled me from exhaling air properly. Fortunately I wasn’t inhaling the proper amount of air either. According to another pharmacist, consulted after my less than satisfactory reaction, I could have died because the medication was for asthma, not bronchitis. Anyway, the feeling was horrifying, to say the least, and I think worse because I was at the beach on VACATION.

Researchers pinpointed the problem of popcorn lung when a man with manifest symptoms revealed that he had eaten one to two bags of microwave popcorn per day for the past ten years. However, here’s the hitch: when he opened the bag, he allowed himself the innocent pleasure of sticking his nose in the bag, inhaling deeply, and saying, “Wow, that smells great!” Apparently the permanent damage to this man’s (and the factory workers’) bronchial tubes occurred due to intake of a chemical that makes the corn pop evenly. It’s the long-term inhalation that does the trick, but it made me think about how every once in a while I like to slightly burn a bag of the stuff and the stink floats around for a few days. So don’t stick your nose in the bag and don’t have it that often.

Then I started wondering about other seemingly innocuous habits of mine. I mean I have some habits that are blatantly bad for me, but I’ve been smelling books with a full -nose plunge into the bindings since I figured out the difference between cover and pages at approximately the age of four. In fact, I just received a new dictionary from Amazon today and the first thing I did was open it up, stick my face in the pages, and sniff. That scent of new ink and paper (coated or uncoated stock provide different highs) sends a chill through me. Comic books smell wonderful (especially the old ones); the newspaper exudes its own scent, and magazines (with the exception of those obnoxious perfume samples) can be intoxicating. The smell of the old "Reader's Digest, " for example, has retained its homey aroma somehow for decades. If I get a new novel, the first thing I do is breathe deeply the gathering tome. Up to now, I thought it was one pleasure that I shouldn’t worry about, but who knows? Can't anything be okay for God's sake?! "Everything gives you cancer; There's no cure, there's no answer." (That was a song on Atlanta's old Jazz Flavours radio station.)

Possible symptoms for such wordy snortings might include any of the following:

An inability to exhale coherent sentences
A tendency to physically assault others’ reading material with one’s face
A black (or comically colored) nose
Broken and/or abused book backs
Difficulty reading due to too close contact with the page
Ink addiction

I just got a new dictionary, because I realized that my edition was ten-plus years old and that the word "lifestyle" was still listed as two words. This new dictionary has moved on and made it into one word. I’ve already smelled my new dictionary twice. Am I a print-a-holic, a paper addict, or both? Can I sue the forestry foundation or the publications industry? I don’t know where to turn, but I do know that I don’t want to be the first case of Webster’s Lung. I guess I should pursue a healthier "lifestyle."

"Inhale my new dictionary," I said to Jack, pushing it into his nostrils.

"Hmm. Smells like new words," he said.

Junkies love company.

Wordsmith

2007-10-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

David came home from school for the weekend. He told me that he, his girlfriend Amanda, and another couple had plans to go to a pumpkin farm. “What will you do there?” I asked. “Look for bananas,” he answered dryly.

Jack, (originator of verbal twists such as “kitchen quesadillas” and “The Nodules of Nottingham,” a.k.a. “The Chronicles of Narnia”) was halfway under the sink working on the pipe that the counter installers broke off at the wall. He poked his head out and asked, “So you’re going to the Function Farm?”

David and I exchanged a glance. “You’re revealing your Martianality again. Remember, you’re not supposed to talk about those things with Earthlings,” I said.

“Dad, what the heck is a Function Farm?” David asked.

“Well at least I didn’t say the Dysfunction Farm,” the Martian attempted as a cover-up.

“No, that would be this house,” replied David.

I picked up a newly arrived catalog with a robot on the cover. “Here’s one of Dad’s friends from the Function Farm.”

“Oh boy, you guys aren’t going to let me forget that one, are you?” said Jack.

“Not as long as we’re standing here in the chicken,” David replied.

No wonder the poor man travels so often.

Of Marble, Men, and Maltese Canines

2007-10-22T18:09:00.000-07:00

Everywhere we look, our house appears to be falling apart. Most of the repairs require money we don’t have, so we try to turn a blind eye. When we moved here over twenty years ago, we told ourselves that it was a fixer-upper, and by-gosh-by-golly it still is! All of our renovation dollars went into that large amount of funds required to raise one child and numerous dogs—I think it’s an estimate in the hundreds of thousands. I find it too painful to research the exact sum, but so far, it has been our only investment with justifiable returns.

Anyway, a few years back I picked up a kitchen trivet from the counter to discover that it was covering a huge weltering burn mark. We host many family and other gatherings, so some scoundrel did the damage, covered up the murder, and stayed for a few more drinks. Of course, the trivet found a permanent home there. Then my BFF Jill accidentally set a plastic plate afire with a birthday candle and burned some odd shapes into another portion of the counter. She felt terrible, but I truly didn’t care because the whole thing was a mess already. Besides, I drew a Happy Pig and Dancing Horse around the burn marks that made for a spiffy conversation piece if I might say so myself, although some people said the pig looked more like an aardvark.

A bargain is never a bargain, but we are also people who don’t learn. We got a great offer on some marble “left over” from another project and the seller told us he knew some people who would cut and install it for less than we could have ever imagined. It was a bargain we couldn’t afford but couldn’t afford to miss. When the installers called Jack early on the morning of the job and the first thing Jack yelled into the phone was, “That’s a bunch of crap!” I knew the day would be going downhill from there.

Supposedly the stone cutter/installers needed more stone even though they had done all of the measuring and assured us it could be done for our budgeted amount. Wow it seems like only last year but was just five days ago when they broke the kitchen sink pipe off at the wall, disconnected all my fixtures (including the dishwasher), and left us with countertops that looked like a very bad glued-together jigsaw puzzle. Jack yelled, “I wish I’d never seen this damn stuff!” I just felt sick that I was going to have to look at the botched job for the remainder of my life.

After much “diplomacy” the installers returned and removed the most offensive portions of the countertop. They were gone for three days while I tried to work on a table covered with every item that previously resided in the kitchen. (I have to work off of the kitchen table because Max can’t make it downstairs to the office.) They finally returned. In the melee of trying to keep lab Max and pug Moses in a back room where they wouldn’t bother the workers, answering phones, and so on, I lost one of my paychecks from a client. I prayed and I sweated, but my prayers went unanswered. I never found the check even after considerable dumpster diving. However, I did find a large honeydew melon ripening in the seat of one of my dining room chairs.

I inhaled a lot of passive glue fumes during said installation and took it upon myself to advise the very young men doing the work that they should be wearing masks. “Constantly inhaling this stuff cannot be good for you,” I admonished. “They stared at me blankly. I told them the story of Popcorn Lung. One of them said, “Wow man.” I had as much impact on them with my warning as I do with my own twenty-year-old: namely, absolutely none. However, they appeared to be slightly amused by my efforts to protect them from lung cancer or worse two decades from now.

Jack came home and though I was relieved and pleased with the results, he started yelling out things like, “Hell, this is a quarter of an inch off!” “Where’s the damn backsplash right here?” “Damn it, I told them to make this hole an eight of an inch bigger!” “The stove won’t fit back in this space!” (Actually it all did fit due to Jack’s expertise later, but this kind of reaction is a pattern of his.) Between calls to Jack, dogs, “work, and lack thereof” and the mess around me, I needed to get out, and since there was no visible means available of preparing any food other than cereal, Jack, my Mom (who had come up to view the debacle), and I went out for a bite. Returning after dark on a busy road that fronts our road of habitat Jack slammed on the brakes for what appeared to be a tiny white and dead long-haired squirrel. Instead it was a white Maltese puppy lying in the middle of the road. She stood up and wagged her tail, stared into the headlights, and appeared to have no idea that she was soon to become road kill. Jack got out of the car, picked her up, brought her to the car, and handed her to me. She was adorable and wore a little pink collar with LOVE embossed on it with rhinestones.

“We don’t need this!” I wailed. “We can’t leave her here and there is no way I’m taking this dog treat to Max. I don’t think he would hurt her, but he could accidentally sit on her.” We started ringing doorbells, and mind you, this is not in a well-lighted neighborhood, but on a rural, dark road. “Well Jack looks cute carrying that little dog around like that,” Mom commented from the back seat. Long story short, we took the dog home and called and called all of the neighbors we could. Amidst much barking, we eventually found the owner who was very happy to be reunited with the little pup that had been let out of the front door inadvertently by the husband.

“She is not street smart!” explained the neighbor when she came to pick up Sassy (her name we now know). “I never let her out alone. He just doesn’t pay attention. I’m going to kill my husband!” she said.

“Well, time’s a wastin’” I advised.

The Death of Halloween

2007-10-14T09:56:00.000-07:00

For decades American children have enjoyed Halloween and built memories from cool nights running through the streets, falling over poorly made costumes and, as comedian Jerry Seinfeld says, yelling “Wait up!” in whining tones to our siblings and friends as we try to fix the flimsy rubber bands on our plastic masks. I actually only had two “store bought” costumes as a child: one was Tweety-Bird and the other a gorilla. Both had great masks, but the rubber bands, not so good.

Later, as old black-and-white photos will attest, older sister Lynn always dressed as something glam like a fairy princess or something. I stand next to her in oversized clothes from my father’s closet with charcoal on my face and sometimes a tooth blacked out—a hobo, or something similar. Those were the times when we could run through the neighborhood with those lousy pre-printed Halloween bags that when the bottoms hit the damp ground or bushes gave way and spewed our precious candy everywhere. I was a picky eater and didn’t really care that much for most of the candy, anyway; I’m still the same way; I don’t have much of a sweet tooth, but I enjoyed the hunt.

Once my Dad put his suit coat on backward and wrapped his head in gauze, Invisible Man style. He wanted to scare some of the big teenagers who he thought were well past the door-to-door age. So he crept up behind one who was standing on our front porch and tapped him on the shoulder. His little trick backfired because the kid ripped our screen door right off the hinges and ran through our living room screaming leaving muddy footprints all over my Mom’s carpet. She wasn’t pleased.

When son David had his first go at Halloween at about two-and-a-half years of age, we dressed him like a Jack-o-Lantern and took him to my parent’s neighborhood. (It’s the only age that parents can ever get away with that type of costume.) Once we coached him on the right words, he was unstoppable, running from one door to another shouting “Fwick o Feet.” He was one persistent pumpkin. Then I think he was Batman for the remainder of his Halloween career with one brief sojourn as Sonic the Hedgehog. Now all these politically correct do-gooders, along with their twisted sicko counterparts have just about ruined the tradition. Kids have to roam around in brightly lit shopping malls and collect candy. What a drag!

I devised an elaborate treasure hunt for a Halloween party one year, at the age when only boys were invited and that was fine with them. I hid cool stuff like squishy eyeballs, skeletons, and rubber fingers throughout the woods and handed them all a poem I’d written that included clues to the bounty. What the hell was I thinking? Within five seconds of telling them about goods in the woods, I was picking up a ream of orange handouts and listening to what sounded like a re-enactment of the Civil War in the trees. It started to drizzle as I prayed that no one broke any noses or limbs during the rampage. My brother-in-law, dressed as Freddy Kruger ran out of the dark with a chain saw as Jack pulled wagonloads of them through the woods on the tractor. (They loved that.) And Grandma as gypsy read fortunes. They were naively amazed when she told them revealing things like, “You appear to like baseball.” Jennifer the pirate tried to apply rub-on tattoos as the kids said things like, “These tattoos suck!”

“Aye, me matey, just hold still,” she replied.

The piñata fell on the floor after the first hit and as a scene from “Lord of the Flies, a Halloween story” ensued I was witness to what vicious little beasts the male gender can be. As the parents retrieved their muddy children, they looked at me like I was insane, but there may have been just a glint of admiration in their eyes, a nod to my bravery. Nah! Probably not. To this day, I have never fully recovered.

But my real disappointment regarding this upcoming festivity is that we don’t have Trick or Treaters. As David grew up, we had eighteen children on this small rural road—one was mine and the remainder belonged to two, yes two, other families. These are the ones who go around telling their children that Halloween is evil and so on, but one such family would let the kids go from room to room in their own home while the Mom and Dad answered the interior doors and gave them candy. Now if that isn’t scary, what is?! The daughter from said family once spotted a plastic pumpkin filled with candy on my kitchen counter and admonished me that Halloween was the devil’s birthday. “Oh it is not! Have some candy,” I told her. Then the all-of-six-year’s-old tyke looked at Jennifer and asked, “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

“I don’t think a little girl should be asking an adult that question because it’s none of your business,” Jennifer replied blandly. (I thought that was a great answer.)

Now you can’t even find a damn Halloween puzzle depicting this most sinful of celebrations where God forbid, kids dress up in costumes and laugh and giggle and eat candy. Blasphemy! I’ve given up putting a bowl of candy on the steps for the kids that never come if I’m not at home, becaue I occasionally go to a friend’s house to view the paltry few little cherubs that show up at the door. It’s a shame, but I still decorate with my plug-in pumpkin and cardboard skeletons and witchy lawn ornament. So Happy Halloween you bad, bad people! One of these days I’m going to follow through with my idea to put a big sign in my front yard that reads, “Happy Birthday Satan!”

Stairstep Conversations

2007-10-05T18:45:00.001-07:00

For the entire month of September, which included our 27th anniversary, Jack was out of town with the exception of one weekend. Both of us are like separate planets in the same orbit, so we fall back into our familiar patterns. Max, old yeller Lab, is joined to me at the hip, so I have had to move my office upstairs to the kitchen table. It’s exasperating to have to put a baby fence across the top stairs, because he will follow me hell or high water and fall down the steps if not stopped by a barrier. When I do run down, blocking him with the baby fence, old Max works himself into a frenzy running back and forth on the landing and whimpering. He had a horrible seizure last week. The poor old lion went through the frightening events of literally flipping over backward, and then losing all control of his body and bodily functions.

Of course, Jack was out of town, David in college, and much crying was involved on my part as I tried to console old Max and clean-up the aftermath. The vet said later, that at Max’s octogenarian- plus age, we were lucky not to have experienced more of the same. All that aside, we must keep the baby fence at the top of the stairs, because Max can’t negotiate the steps anymore. First day home, Jack is down in his office and I spend about twenty minutes at the top of the stairs telling Jack about recent events, after saying “Hey Jack!” and receiving his “Yeah!” response.

I tell him funny stories. Nothing. I tell him frustrating facts. Nothing. I tell him what his son just said about their last conversation. Nothing. “Okay, I’m getting flop sweat up here,” I yell down the stairs. “Can you just acknowledge that I’m alive?”

“What?” Jack replies.

“I’ve been telling you about everything that happened recently,” I call.

“Oh,” he shouts. “Sorry! I thought you were talking on the phone.”

“No, damnit, I’m trying to talk to you!” I reply. He laughs. The phone rings, and I go to answer it. Then I return and yell down the stairs, “Hey Jack!”

“Can’t talk! I’m on my cell phone!” he replies.

And people wonder why I’m crazy.

Riverfest: Part Deux

2007-10-04T17:21:00.000-07:00

So as we meandered through the fair, Jennifer decided to purchase one of those wooden frogs (she really wanted a cricket but they were sold out) with ridges across its back. You move a stick across the ridges and it sounds like it’s croaking. She had to ask for lessons so the gay guy (not that there’s anything wrong with that) in the booth said, “That’s okay honey, I’m blonde too.” And he was!

Full of kettle corn and having seen our “fair” share of painted gourds, signs that said, “No sketching or photography; these items are copyrighted” (No Problem!), and wooden Santas, we decided to leave.

However, more fun was yet to come. A K-Mart existed nearby, one of the most run down, sad sack of its kind I have ever seen. (And I’ve been to two of them!) Jennifer who has dog-with-a-bone-syndrome about certain things, a malady from which every member of this side of the family appears to suffer—but manifests in different ways and which professionals call “obsessive compulsive,”—was on a tear trying to find a Halloween jigsaw puzzle. Apparently, these things no longer exist because she had already completed a nationwide search for such and this K-Mart was the only place remaining.

We entered the store only to be immediately greeted by a man handing out raffle tickets for a free gold necklace. “The drawing is in two minutes and you have to be there to win!” he said as he disappeared like the white rabbit. Then he began to yell over the store loudspeaker that the drawing was happening right now! in the furniture department. Have you ever tried to find the furniture department in a K-Mart? For some reason we felt compelled to do so! It’s one of those things that’s difficult to explain later to oneself or others. As it turned out, a couple of pieces of furniture officially constituted that location.

About ten people showed up, all with a look of utter despondency on their faces, with the exception of a little girl with her Mom and Grandmother. Some of the people had too few teeth; others had way too many. That poor jewelry representative stood behind a little white ply board podium and tried to drum up some excitement (more about drumming later). Well, as one always learns, there is no free lunch. He proceeded to ask for a show of hands to rate such and such piece of smaltzy jewelry. Then he proceeded to make a pitch for buying said jewelry at an all-time low price. And, he announced that the winner of the gold necklace worth $120 was required to yell “Whoopee!”

“Let’s get out of here,” Jennifer whispered.

“No, I’ve already wasted too much time,” I reasoned.

“May I have a drum roll?” the poor salesman sap requested.

I was standing next to several cartons full of dishes adjacent to the “furniture” department, so I accommodated him with a drum roll via the box top cartons. He seemed eternally grateful.
“Oh my God!” said Jennifer.

Then guess what! He called my ticket number. It’s the first thing I’ve ever won since—okay it’s the first thing I’ve ever won. “That’s me! Whoopee!” I declared.

He gave me the necklace, a gold chain with a crystal heart on it in a little velvet pouch. We examined it and decided that none of us would ever wear it, but it had its merits. I hunted down the little girl and gave it to her. She was absolutely thrilled and her ear-to-ear grin made it all worthwhile.

Mom enjoyed seeing that, so I told her I should have made her stand on the other side of the store during the present giving after her parasol incident. (She still had no regrets.)

Later, in the K-Mart “puzzle section” Jennifer pondered over puzzles for about half an hour, which was difficult since there were only about eight of them. If so much as an orange leaf appeared in the puzzle picture she proclaimed, “This looks like Halloween.”

“Self-deception is sad,” I told her.

So she finally picked out some puzzles, got to the counter, and decided not to buy them. “Well, that was an hour of my life that I’ll never get back,” I said as we left.

All the way home we laughed about a scenario in which I got the little girl’s phone number and called her for the rest of her life to remind her that I gave her the necklace. I’d keep asking if she still liked it, until as a grown woman she’d beg me to take it back as I requested an invitation to her wedding. It would be the gift that kept on taking.

Jennifer summed up the day: “Oh well, you’ll have a lot of good karma for giving her that necklace,” she said to me. “Mom, not so much for the parasol.”

ATTENTION!

2007-10-02T20:45:00.000-07:00

This first week of October is National Squirrel Awareness Week. And I must say that we are very aware of the dozen or so that are living in our attack (wait, I meant attic) and about to eat their way through the ceiling. Their next stop: our faces.

An Outing as an Attempt to End the Malaise

2007-10-02T18:13:00.000-07:00

Every year a fall festival called “Riverfest” takes place in this area, supposedly to honor American Cherokee Indians. My husband and I both have descendants from the tribe, by the way. Usually, however, fair attendants are treated to Civil War re-enactments (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but it’s confusing. Every year we vow to never return, but it’s become a ritual that signals the transition into the fall season.

This year when I reminded Jennifer (younger sister) of the upcoming event, she vowed not to go.

”But remember last year when we found the African water baskets and everyone kept asking us where we got them?” I queried. “That was a fine, fine day!”

“It was a fine, fine day,” she agreed. “Maybe we should go.”

By “we,” I mean Jennifer and I, and sometimes Mom. No, Jack would have to be knocked out or dead to attend, and who can blame him for such good sense? So we travel past several groups flagging us on with signs that say “No parking spaces left; go to next lot up the road” to a local high school, business, etc. Then you have your inevitable Yankees who are raising hell because they have to wait for a shuttle bus. “I don’t have time to be here!” yells a New York-accented woman to a poor booth volunteer, who has been schooled and trained in the Southern school of courtesy. “Then take your precious time and obnoxious persona and stick it up your self-righteous a--!” I murmur to present company. Sadly, my family encourages me to share such sentiments, but I know that if the police are hauling me off, they’ll just shake their heads and tisk-tisk about my lack of self-control.

Anyway, as we wait for the shuttle in front of a sign that says “Wait here for Shuttle” Mom asks, “What are we waiting for?” I respond, “We’re waiting for the festival to come to us.” She hits me. Then we pass another (probably Northern transplant) who is passed out on the pavement surrounded by 911 employees. Everyone is sympathetic, but when it’s almost 95 degrees outside, you just shouldn’t be wearing a Halloween-themed sweater and wool pants!

I’m already thirsty so I go up to a booth and ask for their advertised Sweet, Brewed, Iced Tea. (By the way folks, iced tea was invented in the South, so if you have a problem with it being sweet, go to the maker! When it’s 100-plus degrees outside, you need to rush hydration to your system!) Larger or small? the vendor asks. "Large," I answer thirstily. "We only have small," she answers. Okaay, and here we go.

In a large festival, Mom (of course) wins a door prize—a little yellow parasol painted with daisies. We decide to search the crowd for a deserving little girl, because Mom has no use for it. Not that one, too spoiled; not that one, too old; not that one, a tomboy. Jennifer and I stop to look at some jewelry and Mom says she’s going to stand over in the shade. Five minutes later she appears sans parasol. “Where is it?” we ask.

“I gave it away,” she answers.

“We have so little! How could you not understand that we wanted to see you give it away?” asks Jennifer.

“I gave it away to a Yankee family with a little girl.” She points to the ambivalent little girl whose mother is holding the gift. “They said thank-you.”

We’re incredulous. “You gave a parasol to an ungrateful little Yankee girl?” Jennifer exclaims.

“I have no regrets,” says Mom.

A little boy walks past chanting, “Jesus died on the cross.”

“I think I’ve had enough,” I say.

(Sadly, there is a part deux.)

Malaise Days

2007-09-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

Having spent a large portion of this hot, humid, drought of a summer alone, I’m ready for better weather as a backdrop to my lack of enthusiasm. One would think that having a lot of time on one’s hands would inspire one to do all sorts of projects around the house. One would think. But when there’s no one around but me and the old dogs (not my feet, real old dogs) my I’ll-do-it-tomorrow syndrome saps my energy and productivity. My whole approach to life is “Ehh” or as in the Bette Midler mini-film “Why botha?”

Husband traveling most of the time; son away at school; me working whenever I can but never really having enough work to have fun money—that’s my life. Oh, I know it could be worse; that’s why I’m just at Ehh. Once when I was in this Phase of Malaise I actually stopped mid-sentence when talking to sister, Jennifer. “Aren’t you going to finish what you were saying?” she asked.

“I’ve got nothin’,” I replied.

David did come home for a few days. We shopped for a gift for his girlfriend and went to I-Hop. He peered past me in the booth and asked, “Is there some law that at some point of old age women are required to get those little tight bubble hairdos?” he asked.

“Apparently so. When I get to that point just shoot me,” I said.

“No problem,” he assured? me.

I also got in my Jeep and rode slowly through a nearby cemetery in search of an incessantly barking dog that I never found. It got me away from the house for a while. “Just promise you won’t get out of the car,” David said as I left, never looking up from his book. Now David is back at school, but he did tell me that a huge, six-point buck tore out of the woods and ran right past him on the sidewalk in broad daylight near the urban Athens, Georgia, campus. Reminds me of when I was in school. Good times. Good times.

One day I spent about forty-five minutes trying to extricate a bug from an adhesive lint roller without maiming it. Every time I worked one leg loose, the nut case put down another foot. It was quite frustrating for me and probably for the bug. I did manage to extricate it sans one leg (his, not mine) and it flew away, most likely at a disadvantage. I thought about the other bugs calling him gimpy, but how bad would it be to spend the one-hour lifespan you've got stuck to a lint roller?

I’ve been reading true crime books with names like “Kiss me, Kill me” but I hide them at night so as not to give an intruder any ideas, because he would probably just take the second part of the title literally. I started to view ordinary household objects like scissors and potato peelers as “weapons of convenience” as termed in the books, so decided to stop reading that genre for awhile. I admit, however, that I did consider putting a candlestick, a pipe, a knife, a rope, and a gun next to the bed along with a Professor Plum card and a sign that said, “Pick just one and make it snappy!”

Last night I watched several episodes of “Intervention” while drinking several glasses of wine. Then on a Sunday morning at 7:30 I got a recorded political message from the Fred Thompson for president campaign. You just lost any hope for a vote from me, you inconsiderate %#@$! It’s as good a way to make political decisions as any at this point.

I can't believe it, but that damn dog is barking again.

So should I watch a movie? Ehh.
Should I fold some laundry? Naah.
Read the paper, clean the bathrooms, vacuum, dust, clean out my closet? No, nein, and nada.

Should I write a blog with any interest or redeeming value whatsoever? Apparently not.

Personal Shopper

2007-09-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

Big sister (and I say that quite loosely) Lynn, a.k.a. “Hell on Wheels” is in for a big challenge. The shortster is undergoing a foot operation tomorrow and is being forced off her feet for a solid week before she can even transition to crutches for the duration of the next month. This would be difficult for anyone, but for someone like Lynn . . . well, let’s just say it ain’t going to be pretty. She can’t even delegate the job of pouring dog food into a bowl to someone else. She actually once accused me of attempting to control her life when I tried to do the same while visiting. Hell, the dogs were hungry and they didn’t give a damn if she hadn’t wiped the counter clean for the umpteenth time. Even though Lynn has a housekeeper who goes so far as to sanitize the walls once a week, Lynn can never stop cleaning. I also must say that she’s a very smart cookie, and literally runs the highly successful family business, along with everything else.

I took my Mom to meet Lynn halfway for a sojourn to her beautiful mountain home. Mom is staying with her for the first post-op week and I’ve gotta say that Mom looked more than a bit “trepidatious.” Love her, but Lynn is not what one would call “laid back” even in her finest moments. “May the force be with her,” sister Jennifer said, referring to Mom's predicament. After a much delayed lunch, (we were to meet at 1:30 and Lynn showed up at the rendezvous two hours later), mixed with criticism for my every move, including being weird for not liking raw tomatoes and exceedingly strange for laughing at one of my own jokes (somebody has to), they departed.

A visit to the tranquil Georgia mountains at Lynn’s house can be entertaining, but never soothing. Hey, if you want rest and relaxation go scuba diving naked with angry sharks! Lynn spends a lot of time yelling up the stairs at the boys, out the door at the boys, everywhere at the dogs, usually at me, in the car at the boys, and then some more at the boys. Threats are bountiful; consequences nil—the only reason that I continue to live and the main reason she must continue to yell even more loudly and frequently at my nephews in her large and cavernously echoing home. When there are threatening moments of calm, the boys fill such potentially relieving nanoseconds with their own yelling.

So I wish them all the best. Lynn had to rent a pair of child-size crutches. (Tee-hee.) So sue me, I think that’s funny.

I returned to my quiet home, still alone except for the dogs for company, and thought about how I love Lynn, my lifetime tormentor, and how I hope and pray that all goes well. Then I got on the Internet and ordered the perfect gift to arrive at her home just as she clears her anesthesia-induced fog—a bull horn! It’s the gift that will keep on giving. I’m sure of it!

Sometimes It's Okay to be Corny!

2007-09-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

How is it possible that I have now lived with a person who is my complete opposite for longer than I was alive as a single person?! And don’t get me wrong, I’m not being critical. Jack and I ask ourselves this question on a regular basis. What do we have in common? He is a morning person, full of vim and vigor and get up and go, who accomplishes more than ten men in a day within an hour. I am a night person, roaming about the house throughout the wee hours, reading, sometimes writing, peering out the windows, lurking outside and looking at toads and lizards (sometimes talking to them), while ruminating on the meaning of life.

Jack greets me cheerily in the morning as I amble out (disappointed, yet somehow grateful that I’m still here) with his agonizing question, “What are your plans for today?” In my mind, I’m planning to survive, but only if I mainline some caffeine first.

On one of our first major arguments, we both left the house in our cars and veered off in opposite directions at the end of the street while shooting the finger at one another. I don't know what we were thinking, because we both had to sheepishly return to the same house. As corny as it may seem, we were too responsible and dedicated to each other to do anything else.

How many times have we argued, wanted to throw things, actually thrown things, and wanted to simultaneously strangle each other during these almost three decades? How many arguments or, worse yet, silences have we foolishly prolonged over conflicting opinions on raising a child or the perceived insensitivity of one over another? (Actually, usually those sensitivity arguments were mine, because he just doesn’t talk about those things, unless forced. How insensitive is that?!!)

On the other hand, how many times have we laughed uncontrollably at something that finally hit us both as ridiculous, or said the exact same thing at the same time, or brought home identical groceries? How much joy have we experienced from a son that somehow manages to understand that we’re strange, yet brings his friends over to display us without embarrassment (well, maybe some embarrassment) and tells us he loves us even in front of his macho amigos and girlfriends?

Incredibly, Jack has put up with my annoying ability to sing a song phrase, Tourette’s style, which fits any occasion, and let me tell you, I remember all the verses to ditties like “A Good Breakfast Starts My Day.” I, on the other hand, have learned to translate his alien-speak to Earth language. For example, when he tells me that he put the hat in the microwave, I intuitively know that he put the mayonnaise in the refrigerator. Jack once reprimanded my son, “Young man, get in here and put your kitchen in the chicken!”

“What, exactly does he want me do?” my son asked.

“He wants you to put your dishes in the dishwasher,” I whispered, and we both laughed, but David complied.

My husband is often in another world of high-tech thinking; the house is littered with bits of paper, doodled with reminders and numbers; the dryer and washing machine filled with drill bits and odd little tubes, our garage (never again to house a car) is filled with God only knows what. It drives me crazy, but I can live with it, obviously. Just before he left on another long business trip recently he frantically informed me that he had torn the house apart looking for a charger for another of his technical doo-higgy whatevers. "Did you look under your recliner?" I asked.

"Here it is! How did you know?" he asked.

After this long, I know.

His is a beautiful mind and underneath all of the sternness, a beautiful soul. On the rare occasion of getting one Martini into him, he’s hilarious. And believe me; I know that I am no piece of cake. After all, I must unfortunately, live inside my own head—for me, that makes 27 years with a great guy like Jack seem a cake walk. I can’t imagine what it must be like for someone on the outside who can’t envision my convoluted reasoning to stick with it over the years.

For the first twenty years, we never spent so much as a night apart. Then for the last seven we have spent many weeks apart due to his changed travel schedule and economic necessity. Once again, on this anniversary, he is all the way across the country. Maybe certain people are meant to get together even if they have to cut the jigsaw parts to fit, or like Jack hide the last pieces of the jigsaw puzzle in his pockets so that he can put in the final pieces. What a control freak!

Somehow we managed to raise a wonderful son who has profited from our odd quirks rather than suffered from them. Thank God. It could easily have gone the other way. Now we have to figure out how to live together again, just me and Jack, and two old dogs that think I’m THEIR wife.

In any case, we all have lessons to learn in this life and I sincerely believe that’s how and why we find each other.

I’m very, very glad that we did.

Happy 27th, Jack-a-roon!

Who's on First? and Labor Day Pains

2007-09-06T14:36:00.001-07:00

I lived through the birthday party I threw for my nephew, but barely. It was the holiday weekend, but I sure couldn’t tell it. From the continual charges of being “weird” for doing such things as taking too many small bites from one square of watermelon--What the heck!—to being told by my brother-in-law that I have too much “shit” in my refrigerator (half of which was there for his son’s birthday) the event eventually wore me down. I love my family, but after such a visit, I understand my nature to be a lone wolf.

Jack, poor guy, spent half the day blowing up the five dozen happy face beach balls and other assorted dirigibles with his air compressor. I called to tell everyone to come over in about ten minutes when he started calling the balls “Sons of bitches!” which meant he was probably almost finished with the lot. “At least he’s in a party mood,” said sister Jennifer.

“As close as it gets,” I replied.

There was the cake, the splashing, the arguments between brothers and nephews, the sun, the bugs, the icing everywhere, the pizza everywhere else, the ripping open of the presents, yada, yada, yada. It all ended with a dinner at a local Italian restaurant where everyone tried to figure out the bill after vast wine consumption. (Poor waitress, but at least we all tip well.)

For some reason, I have so many pairs of men’s swim trunks in my home you’d think I was running a brothel, but with the teenagers and the nephews, who knows where they come from? I acquired some new suits this weekend that no one would claim, but let’s not discuss the Bermuda Clothes Triangle that is our family. My sister once actually found one of my bras in the pocket of her winter coat. What happened there?!

Anyway, both of my sisters had originally told me that they were bringing an additional guest: Lynn’s friend, Renee, and Jennifer’s, Michele. Lynn and family arrived sans Renee, and Lynn told me she wasn’t coming. Jack then called out to us from the other side of the pool, “Stephanie isn’t coming!”

“Who?” I asked.

“Stephanie isn’t coming,” he repeated.

Me (to Lynn): “I don’t know a Stephanie.”

Lynn (calling to Jack): “Do you mean Renee?”

Jack: “Yeah, your friend Renee.”

Lynn (snidely) to me: Yeah, after all Renee sounds so much like Stephanie.

Hours later, everyone is here, but Jennifer had told me previously that Michele was coming by after attending a wedding. Finally, I figure we are going to have to start the birthday festivities.

“So when is Michele going to get here?” I ask Jennifer.

“Didn’t Jack tell you that she isn’t coming?” Jennifer asks. “I called him and told him to tell you!”

Jack saunters by. “Why didn’t you tell Gail that Michele wasn’t coming?” she asks him.

“I did! Remember, I said ‘Stephanie isn’t coming,’” he says to me.

“I keep telling you to not let him answer the phone!” Jennifer admonishes.

“I do my best,” I answer.

Happy Birthday at Dirt Haven!

2007-08-30T20:04:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I threw a party for my youngest nephew, at the time four years old. His birthday is in August, so when I was gainfully employed, I completely filled our small poolette with inflated Smiley face beach balls and a blow-up palm tree. I added a five-foot-tall inflated monkey, because he loves monkeys. He never forgot it and now, seven years later, he wants a semi-re-creation of that event, with varying themes, every year.

His mom, my sister Lynn, doesn’t get it and accuses me of being a horrible influence and OCD that she is, I am also disparaged as a person who sends home innumerable dirigibles that I imagine her stabbing and secreting out in garbage containers during her into-the-wee hours cleaning binges. “You two must be cut from the same mold!” she accuses over the phone (referring to me and my nephew), when her only responsibility for the party is to send the hundreds of inflatables our way so that Uncle Jack can blow them up with his industrial strength air compressor. (I admit that some of those bizarre collectibles of his have occasional use.)

All I ask is a little assistance in terms of gift suggestions and decorations but when I call, she yells, “WHAT!? What do you want now?!” Gotta love that little five-foot demon from hell.

Jack is taking his first week off in more than seven months, because otherwise he will lose his 140 hours of accumulated vacation. I’m still trying to get in some billable poor person writer hours, but other than that, it’s like taking a vacation with the Energizer Bunny. He’s up at 6 a.m. tearing boards off of the house, declaring that squirrels are in the attic, and vowing to shoot the little creatures that I feed daily. “You’re attracting them to the house!” he yells as I, a person who seldom retires before 1 a. m., attempt to funnel coffee into my shocked body.

I watch from the back window as he zooms back and forth, back and forth, on a Gator vehicle, then a tractor, then my Jeep with various tools and appliances. I am able to locate him occasionally by the sounds of banging on the sides of the house. The day before, he pulled over a dump truck driver and negotiated a dump of a dirt load in our front lawn—right before the alleged birthday party. When I complain he admonishes, “Never turn down free dirt!” He tacks up a sign in our front lawn to alert the truck drivers: “Dirt!” it reads.

“Let’s just skip that step and put up a sign that reads ‘White Trash’,” I suggest.

“There’s a lot of difference between dirt and white trash,” he tells me.

I must admit that this is very true.

Well, Jack chased the trucks down today and they were out of dirt. We didn’t get any. I attempted to console him. Just write the word “Haven” under “Dirt” on the sign and we can join the pompous elite who name their abodes.

The Bitch is Back-ward and No Longer in Charge

2007-08-29T15:38:00.000-07:00

So Leona Helmsley, the Queen of Mean, left her dog, Trouble, $12 million in her will, leaving out two of her grandchildren and providing stipulations for the other grandchildren that they must visit their father’s grave annually in order to receive their piece of greedy pie. A true control freak to the end, Leona obviously just never got it. I mean, with the proper investments that dog could live quite well on a mere million annually!

Her chauffeur received $100, 000. Great! After taxes, I’m sure that makes up for the abuse and humiliation he received from that biddy. So I’m reminded of Janis Joplin’s song lyrics, “Oh Lord, wantcha buy me a Mercedes Benz?” We’re all taught (at least the rats on the wheel middle class) to not base our lives on possessions and that our rewards (possibly in heaven) will come. But it’s difficult not to think, Yeah a bale of hay, you donkey’s ass!

Twelve million buckaroos! I could pay off our mortgage and debt, send my son through college worry-free, give my family and friends some big chunk change, do some home repairs, and easily live the Life of Riley while finding people who truly are in need and helping them out. Yet, the friggin’ dog is a multimillionaire. I don’t know if Trouble is a bitch or not, but in either case the dog is probably thrilled to be rid of that one. Maybe Trouble truly did earn at least a cool million.

Oh yes, in the balancing act, news networks inform us that Leona left millions to her favorite charities. Are those funds going to philanthropic organizations like the BBC—the charity of choice for the McDonald’s widow? Maybe Leona donated millions to a museum that would name a wing after her. At this point, I don’t give a damn. I hope she spends eternity in hell completing income tax forms for the “little people” as she so often called us, with multiple amendments and audits included.

Other Planet Gender Communications

2007-08-27T16:02:00.000-07:00

I know I will never fully understand the workings of men’s minds. They seem to be able to engage and disengage in the strangest ways. My two, husband and son, always confuse me with their segues. For example, David was returning to his college apartment today after spending the weekend here. We saw him for brief, enjoyable moments but his calendar was full as should be expected. Jack and I kept trying to carve out a few moments to discuss the serious stuff—i.e. his roommate for a two-bedroom apartment disappeared into thin air (another story for later, but now I just don’t have the energy.)

Just before David’s girlfriend arrives for their trip back to Athens, we talk about his efforts to find a new roommate. He's doing just about all that he can. Then Jack starts to escalate emotionally, stating the obvious by proclaiming, “We just can’t pay for this apartment! You have to get a roommate!”

I decide to absent myself because I don’t want this to become a family conflagration. I let the dogs out into the backyard, and re-enter about five minutes later. “And you know,” Jack is saying as David nods. “Hummingbirds are the only birds that can fly backward and are the strongest birds and fastest birds for their size.”

Okaaaay.

Addendum to Fried at Fry's

2007-08-25T09:18:00.000-07:00

After a ridiculously frustrating experience at Fry's Electronics, I notice that my automatic blog ads have been promoting the place!

Does the irony never end?!

Restless Legs Must Gamble!

2007-08-25T09:13:00.001-07:00

Okay, you’ve heard all of the drug commercials where, usually a woman, rattles off a list of possible side effects for some new medication in sexy sotto voce: “Some people may experience rectal leakage, abdominal pain, unconsciousness while driving, spontaneous dismemberment,” and so on. Therefore, I had to listen to this commercial for Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) many times before I was convinced that I was hearing correctly. One of the side effects for the RLS medicine, Mirapex, is an intense urge to gamble! What?!

Once convinced that I had indeed heard correctly, I concocted a number of schemes. I occasionally do have the RLS symptoms that resemble electrical shocks going up and down my legs, so I could easily get some of this stuff. Then I could go to Vegas and it would be a win/win situation. If I won, great, but I could still sue the drug manufacturer for trip expenses and for making me a compulsive gambler. If I lost, I could sue the drug company for my losses plus for making me a compulsive gambler. However, when I Googled the drug, I discovered that apparently quite a few people have beaten me to the punch without first applying my creative scheme. See below:

“If you or someone you know have been prescribed Mirapex and have developed a compulsive gambling addiction, and you wish to consult with us, please send us an e-mail or call us at 1-800-553-9910.

Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi L.L.P. has filed over 58 Mirapex gambling lawsuits in federal court on behalf of clients who developed a compulsive gambling disorder while on Mirapex and are currently involved in the discovery phase of the litigation, including reviewing many internal documents of the Mirapex manufacturers. A trial ready date has been set by the court. We represent many people who have been negatively affected by Mirapex, and we continue to investigate individual cases and to file meritorious cases in court.”

This blows my mind for more than one reason. If taking a pill can give someone a compulsive gambling addiction, then the sky’s the limit. Gambling is a behavior, not even a substance, which says to me that all addiction is a physically ruled condition in the brain even before the body is biologically involved. If a pill can be produced that causes a gambling addiction, than why the hell haven’t they been able to invent one that erases that addiction, and many others?

Anyway, another plan to accumulate riches is once again foiled. But I have advice for all casino owners. Get your hands on as much of that drug as you can and start spiking those complementary drinks!

Early Morning Riser

2007-08-22T05:33:00.001-07:00

I am by nature a night owl, so when somebody tells me I can interview them at 6 a. m. I emit a silent groan. I was recently hired to interview a gentleman in the Midwest for a profile piece, and I asked his assistant for an additional contact—a friend or business acquaintance who might add some comments about the fellow. She sent me a name and number and told me I should call the man as early as 6 a. m. Groooaaan. I negotiate for 8 a.m. When do these early risers go to bed? Probably at 7:30 p.m. so they can get a jumpstart on torturing us folk whose circadian rhythms doom us to put up with Early Bird Special people.

So Jack gave me this alarm clock for Christmas. (He’s a morning person.) I can’t figure out how to set the thing AND it’s fifteen minutes fast, so I asked him to reset his clock for 7 a. m. (that's Eastern Standard Time) before he leaves for work in the morning. He does so, and places it on my nightstand, but he also sets my clock for the same. Therefore, my alarm clock jars me awake, from a not good night’s sleep. My pug roamed about and over me throughout the night as though I was a challenging mountain range. I dreamed about an appointment I had for coffee with writer friend Kimberly scheduled for later in the day.

The dream was full of the Sturm and Drang of my usually dreary nightly visions—terrorists, robbers, misunderstandings, late arrivals, some sort of a jumping mouse that I was trying to tame, a Malamute puppy, ridicule, my older sister and her friends (more ridicule), an annoying man with a giant cookie at an adjacent table (hmm), a history book, discovering that I had arrived at the appointment without a blouse, and so on. You know, the regular frustration fare.

Anyway, since my newly working alarm went off and I know the clock is fast, I hit snooze only to find that the snooze allows me a mere two extra minutes before sounding again, but I persist. Then the other clock goes off. Its snooze gives me three minutes. After a span of time recreating Chucky Cheese’s Gopher in the Hole game with the clocks, I decide to heck with it and get up. Drearily I pour a cup of coffee; soggily I arrange my notes for the interview; with exhaustion I pull up the interview number on my e-mail.

Wait a minute! I look at the area code. That doesn’t look like Ohio. Damn it to hell! This guy is in California! I have to wait three more hours to call him!

And another day begins.

Fried at Fry's--A Cautionary Tale

2007-08-20T14:20:00.000-07:00

This Sunday against my better judgment I allowed my sister to persuade me to accompany her on one of her diligent errand fests. She brandishes receipts for returns, coupons for specials, lists, color swatches, and recipes. Marveling at her determination and organization, I go along for the ride with really nothing to accomplish. Of course, it didn’t go smoothly. A time-sucking trip to a new Fry’s Electronics coupled with a cart-dodging visit to the United Nations building, which most of us have nicknamed WalMart, can only end in dismay. I once again declared a vow to never venture amongst the others again. “I can’t just have a normal shopping or restaurant experience,” I declared. For once, sister Jennifer agreed rather than putting it off to my paranoid perception. “That’s true. What is it?” she asked with a look of consternation. If only I knew. As we parted ways, Jennifer remarked, “Next time let’s get together for a root canal.” Anyway, the Fry’s experience inspired me to compose and send the following letter to corporate headquarters:

Recently my sister and I decided to go to Fry’s, the Alpharetta, Georgia, location. She was in search of an office chair and several other items. It was my first visit and my last! I think I can say the same for my sister. The chair that she chose from the floor display was no longer available. The clerks, if findable, were nice enough, but seemed surprised to be there—not much product knowledge, or if they possessed it, they weren’t sharing. I found the DVD of the movie "Office Space" for $7.99, but when I tried to purchase it, the item rang up for twice as much. The cashier called a manager over who told her he couldn’t make any revisions exceeding $5. Come on corporate; loosen the reins; the horse is dying! Ever heard the saying, “Penny wise; but pound foolish”?

Said cashier informed us that she would be right back and disappeared into the belly of the beast. After about fifteen minutes, we had just about decided to leave when she returned and asked for my phone number and name, and then once again disappeared into the abyss. After another quarter of an hour we summoned a manager who vowed to find the long-lost cashier. He too disappeared, actually never to be seen again. Once more, we discussed leaving, but my sister vowed we had invested too much time to do so. She went on a search for the cashier, and I admit, I was worried that she might also permanently vanish. She returned. Together we consumed a bag of cashews--slowly. The cashier, after forty minutes returned with apologies that she had to get about ten managers to sign off for the price clearly marked on the movie. I decided not to buy half of my other selections having had the time for multiple cases of “buyer’s remorse.”

My sister asked where she could make a complaint and was directed to Customer Service. Oh but you have to leave the building and re-enter to get to customer service because once you check out—if you’re still amongst the living—“you can’t get there from here.”

Goodbye and Good luck Fry’s. You’re going to need it!

A very short-term new and now former customer

When I Googled for Fry’s Web site, I was amused but not surprised when one of the first hits read, “Fry’s SUCKS!” This man actually devoted a Web site to his justifiable anger at the franchise. Ironically, this very afternoon, Jack called on his way home from work to tell me he was stopping off at Fry’s. “Do you not know that I just sent their corporate offices a complaining letter?” I asked. “That place is reminiscent of Nazi Headquarters. The cashier station is like something from ‘A Wrinkle in Time!’ It’s ORWELLIAN!”

“Orwellian,” Jack repeated with a laugh. “Don't worry. If they ask me if I know you, I’ll deny everything.”

Barker and Bradbury--the Lethal Cocktail

2007-08-17T15:29:00.000-07:00

One should know that one is in trouble if one’s eyes well-up when someone wins a BRAND NEW CAAHR! on “The Price is Right.” Oh no, I’m not talking about myself; it’s just a general warning. Actually, I am speaking of myself. About two weeks ago, I came upon the old show with Bob Barker that plays every week day at 11:00 a. m. I may have watched it occasionally, when I was a kid, but I was certainly never one of those rabid fans who run to the front, jumping and shrieking like speed freaks with handmade T-shirts acclaiming a lifelong love for Bob.

However, I’ve got to say that I watched it that day, and found myself floating into a, how do I describe it, feeling of euthanized bliss. It was so nostalgic, so unchanging, so unthreatening. I was back in the fifties again, in a world where the most stress came from not knowing the exact price of Johnson's Baby Oil. I became fascinated that the women hostesses of the show, even in this day and age, are willing to humiliate themselves in such cheezy setups for the showcases, pantomiming shticks that would embarrass even Red Buttons. Is it even possible that a time existed when a person made an entire “career” using that name? Then there’s Red Skelton and Soupy Sales, of course.

So I was mesmerized.

Then the next day, intolerably frustrated, my heart pounding as my deadlines crashed upon me and I made no progress, I turned the show on again. At first, I laughed at the silliness of it all. But, now I relax and hope with all of my heart that the contestants, who are so frenetically excited and willing to kiss the cadaverous Bob, (do they give them some sort of illegal cocktail?) will win that smaltzy gift of a new dinette set and a trip to Canada. I have begun to bid competitively, and shout out, “No you idiot!” I love the way the contestants hug one another and cheer each other on. It’s very sad really, now that I put it into words. But I watch it nonetheless. I find it oddly calming, though I’m sure it’s only a passing phase, a mere Bandaid to my malaise. I’m very ADD.

One day I missed the show when one of those pesky business calls involving work interrupted my regular schedule, and discovered, it’s almost unbelievable, a parody of the show on “Mad TV.” In the skit, an elderly woman told Bob that with his tan skin and white hair, he almost looked like a negative. I watched it anyway—an unsatisfactory fix for my new daily habit, like methadone for heroine. I want the pure stuff!

During this summer’s intense heat wave, the non-ending, but poorly paying work, the endless pressure of debt, elderly animals, and the encroachment of age, I’ve chosen to read Ray Bradbury’s, “The October Country,” a collection of short stories that make you want to slit your throat, (or eerily someone else’s), except for the fact that his descriptions make the prospect of death even more horrifying than his depictions of deplorable life in this banal existence. The writing is incredible. I don’t recommend it!

So for some reason, as I muddle through the South’s Dog Days, I turn to Bob and his prizes. Oh shut up about the taxes that winners must pay and Barker's publicized chauvinism. I’m escaping for now and crossing my fingers that the next contestant from Wisconsin wins “A BRAND NEW CAAHR!!”

Survival Skills

2007-08-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

David made it out of the Cahutta Wilderness intact. At one point, he and his three hiking companions inadvertently punctured an underground bees’ nest and were attacked by the swarm. They wisely ran! Since he tends to be allergic, I admonished David about how dangerous the situation could have become. They had no Benedryl and all received multiple stings. Yet, his main focus seemed to be to abstain from killing one of his best friends since grammar school. “I swear if he called us ‘gents’ one more time, I might have beheaded him,” he told me—not big on tolerance this one. Then there was the fact that the same friend snores like, as he put it, “a moose on a respirator.” It’s true; I’ve heard him, but I love him like my own, nevertheless.

David got severe blisters, not from his hiking boots, but from his water shoes while trekking through the falls. Believe me, those things can do some major damage. After hiking across Canada and the Western U. S. for about three months in my hippy-dippy years, I quickly decided I was done with the camping thing. It was over for me for a variety of reasons. My dad, who survived four years of WWII in the deserts, always said he would never set foot in a campsite again. Undergoing pitifully less rigorous standards, I quickly understood his position after only a paltry few months of doing it on my own. At one point, having not seen myself in a mirror for several weeks, I panicked when I saw the strange markings on my neck reflected in a crude campground shower mirror. I decided that I had skin cancer, dramatic youth that I was, until I ran my finger across my skin and discovered that it was dirt and I was simply filthier than I had ever been in my life.

So I asked my son, after his three days of hiking during the hottest, most ill-timed season of the year for such a quest. “So what did you think of the experience overall?”

“Well,” he said, in his deep, thoughtful voice. “As I lay there in the tent, listening to the night sounds, and thinking about all of the things we had seen and done, I said to myself, ‘To hell with this!’”

That’s my baby.

Mean Old Man

2007-08-05T14:10:00.000-07:00

Well if and when Jack ever retires, I’ve decided I won’t ever complete a project again. Since losing days of work moving David to school, I decided to try and catch up a bit over the weekend, transcribing some interviews and writing editorial captions. But nooo. Just a few minor distractions every five minutes has drastically hindered my progress, so I’m giving up—as writing this may indicate. I’m writing this to the sound of the severe banging on the front door. No, I didn’t lock him out, but he tore down our front porch, steps and all about two weeks ago. As I’ve peered into the sheer drop off, I’ve reasoned that coming through the front door would be very difficult indeed for would-be robbers, so I’ve lived with using only the back door for a while. Right now he’s reattaching whatever it is he’s attaching.

This morning Jack announced that when we were in the Home Depot last week he forgot all about flashing. “Thank goodness for that,” I said. Actually, flashing is that metal stuff that you do something with during construction. As you can see, I’m into detail.

Before that, the tremendous, hammering and shaking came from his removal of an entire section of concrete slab around the pool. We’re searching for a leak. It wasn’t there. Don’t get me wrong. Jack is a very handy guy, but he just doesn’t know when to quit and call in the people who have equipment for listening for leaks which I suggest before we tear out more concrete yardage. He finally relents.

Next he comes in for a break and tells me that something is wrong with the television. He looks at cables and punches buttons, muttering about the “damn thing.”

Me: “The cable is probably down.

Him: “Don’t push any buttons! We can’t both be pushing buttons!”

(Well actually we can because we have about 20 remote controls all of which control one separate and mysterious function each. Sometimes I’ve literally given up on turning on the television and taken a shower instead.)

Me: “Before you waste any more energy on this, why don’t you call the cable company and find out if the cable is down in our area?”

Jack has reached such a state that he is actually looking in the manual—a sight I thought I’d never see. He punches another button and the screen says, “Going into deep sleep.”

“That can’t be good,” I observe.

“Maybe we need new batteries for this one remote,” he suggests. I bring them. No go.

“Maybe you should call the cable company,” I repeat like a broken record, as he wedges between the wall and the set to check wiring.

Finally I hear him on the phone. “Oh okay. Yes, I thought that might be the problem. So when do you think it might be back up? Okay. Thanks.”

I walk around the corner but before I say a word he says, “Don’t say a damn word!” as he tries to strangle me.

Okay, he’s off to another project and I once again try to write a caption. Jack comes bursting into the back door yelling, “Those kids down there in the cul-de-sac are burning something. There’s smoke everywhere and everything is dry as a tinderbox!” He calls the fire department.

“Gosh Mr. Wilson. Are you sure they started a fire? Teenagers have to go somewhere, you know.”

“That’s what the parks are for!”

He’s looking out the windows and announces, “Here comes a fire truck. They’ll at least keep them from setting the whole neighborhood on fire.”

“Are the fireman cute?” I ask.

“What kind of question is that?” he asks.

“A valid one,” I think.

Anyway, the threat of the blaze is over. “I hope they think that our neighbor across the street called,” I say, because she frequently complains.

“They probably will,” he assures me, then laughs and adds, “Works for me.”

"Well you've certainly had an exciting, tyrannical day," I tell him. "Needless to say, I haven't written 'War and Peace.'"

"Yes, it's been quite adventurous," Jack says.

"I think most of the adventure has been self-generating," say I.

"That it has been," he agrees, leaning back in his recliner. "That it has been."

Empty Nester's Past Coming Back to Roost

2007-08-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

I’m keeping myself as busy as possible in an attempt to not think of my empty Nesterdom, and other worries. David calls and says, "I really miss you guys” with an emphasis on the “really.” I know he’s homesick because this is so unlike him to admit such a feeling. We do the old-folks-at-home thing by getting on the extensions so we can all talk together. I find it horrifying even as I do it! Tragically, I’m singing old nursery songs in the shower like the “Itsy-bitsy Spider,” only now, I’m drawing on the words to instill self-stamina.

Now to add to my worries, David and some friends have decided to hike into the Cohutta Wilderness for the next four days. Even the name spells trepidation! Amidst my usual admonitions he asks, “Didn’t you spend several months during the seventies camping across Canada and the West doing acid?”

“I certainly did NOT!” I reply. “I was smoking the occasional pot. I only experimented on the rare occasion, doing the other a very few times within the boundaries of the US of A.” (Yeah, that makes it all better.)

Anyway, I’m happy to learn that my son is coming home in several days following the hiking trip to pick up his car which we just paid a hunk to have repaired (if he isn’t consumed by a bear or picked off by a serial killer). To bolster my credibility I point out that there weren’t as many nutcases around during the time of my late, great adventures, (aside from the Green River Killer, Gacy, Bundy . . . oh, I won’t mention those, or the fact that I was kept at the Canadian border for three hours because the Border Patrol thought I was Patty Hurst). I’m much more afraid of people than I am the animals, so I get in as many warnings as I can within five short minutes—all of which he attributes, I’m sure, to a Mom who is paranoid and insane.

Meanwhile, I’m forcing myself to meet writing deadlines, which for any of you familiar with the task, is a Herculean effort. When I discover that the article I’m writing has a 350-word maximum and I finished at 500 words, I decide to get out of the house. I see our retired next-door-neighbor cruising past our house on his golf cart. No, we do not live in a golf community. We can’t even afford to play at a golf community, but he’s a retired engineer with a propensity for renovation.

I stop my Jeep at the end of my pitifully sink-holed driveway and get out to collect my disappointing mail, meaning no money, just bills. He motors up, points to a nearby house and says, “Hey, I just saw signs that they’re having a garage sale. I want to see what junk they’re selling that I don’t have. Let’s go.” This is a bit odd because we’re separated by about ten acres and I have talked with this affable fellow about three times in twenty years (Is a trend starting here? [See previous blog]). However, I’m game, so I park my car and we’re off to the sale. He tries to convince me that I should buy a large Teddy bear, but I know I don’t need it. “Don’t throw it away or make it an orphan,” I tell our neighbor. “If a deserving kid doesn’t buy it, call me so I can rescue him.”

We leave—my neighbor on his golf cart and I in my Jeep. “I really need help in this assigning human properties to inanimate objects,” I think.

I talk to Jack on my cell phone. “I just went to a garage sale with our next-door-neighbor and I bought some wallpaper border for a dollar, even though I have no idea where we can use it,” I tell him.

He pauses. “I never have any idea what you are doing,” he says.

My prediction is that it’s only going to get stranger.

Sans Son Baby Bird

2007-08-01T17:09:00.000-07:00

“The thermodynamics of bovines play an integral part in their overall health.”

That was the line that some farmer repeated to me in a dream before I woke up to take my only son to college. The rest of the day was a similar, indiscernible fiasco. I won’t go into the details because I’m simply too exhausted. Maybe later. I’ll sum it up with the following action words and phrases: disagreeing, arguing, attempted murder, eating, loading, sweating (profusely), negotiating, driving, unloading (sweating profusely), fighting the urge to strangle, shopping, seething, hugging, smiling, laughing, crying, remembering, resenting, overeating, driving back to an empty nest, and trying to open a wine bottle without a corkscrew. As you can see, it’s just too long a story involving a large cast of characters, all eliciting a cornucopia of emotions. You can thank me later for not telling the story, although when I’m emotionally stronger, I may tell it anyway. You’ve been forewarned!

Bottom line: now Jack and I are living alone again after twenty years, even though at one point I lost control and pleaded with my son, “Don’t leave me at home with him!” This was when Jack was doing tests to see how small a gap he could leave in the back door to let my poor, incontinent Lab let himself in and out.

“You know, Dad,” said David. “If an intruder gets this far, do you really think he’s doing to say, ‘Oh that gap in the door is just a tad too little for me. I’ll turn back now’?

Okay, I promised no details.

When I awake this morning, I fight back tears. It's the little things: David is not in his room. He won't be coming home from work, telling me his adventures for the day. He and his friends won't be raiding the refrigerator. I can't bug him with my impromptu, stupid stories (lucky him.)

My next-door-neighbor, Gary, calls and asks, “So how are the newlyweds?”

“I have resisted killing Jack while he sleeps and he has obviously done the same,” I answer.

We are now “sleeping” with an 11-year-old baby, our pug, Moses. He’s been sleeping with our son for all these years, and in a single-human bed, he’s fine. But he wants Jack OUT! Jack is complying, disappearing mysteriously into the night to whereabouts within the house unknown. Dogs-left-behind is something that people may not consider. I now have to set the air- conditioner even lower, now that I have a 20-pound little snuggly, breathing fire hydrant attached to his ever-changing choice for the part of my anatomy that he considers pillow-like.

Plus, after the arduous, letting-number-one-and-only-son-with-a-sense-of-humor-escape journey, we had to arise at the crack of dawn to return the Budget Rental Truck. I am still resentful (for reasons that I have not explained but that are perfectly justifiable when you take into consideration that I am married to a German who considers all emotion anathema! Ahem!) combined with the fact that I am NOT a morning person! I get over it. That’s how I have survived this long. (“Oh poor you! SHUT UP!” yells one of my many critical personalities.) Let’s move on.

Jack and I stop off at a Home Depot on our way home from the truck drop-off and discuss the intricacies of the new kitchen counter tops that we’ll get when we have 99 CENT to spare! We’ve had this fantastical conversation for twenty years. (If you notice a lot of all-cap lettering, it’s an expression of my repressed rage, which as a mother who has just watched her only baby bird fly away after she spent his childhood working and trying to get more time with him, seems appropriate at the time; so if bothers you, then UP YOURS!!)

Again, I apologize.

Anyway, we enjoy looking and dreaming about home improvements. Then Jack drops me off at home and I start working on the freelance stuff that pays nothing but is due TOMORROW! Then I hear this beeping sound and discover that Jack has decided to deal with his pain like so many men do—with large and powerful mechanical equipment. I save my Word document and walk out to see him 50 feet in the air on a cherry picker/bucket crane, holding a giant, revving chainsaw.

“If these dead limbs drop off, they’ll kill somebody or squash the cars,” he yells down at me from his skyscraping bucket perch.

“Wait a minute!” I yell back. “I’ll get my camera!” (The one I didn’t get to use on a monumental day, yesterday, because . . . take mental control, take control.)

So I get the camera and then decide that this is a good opportunity to torture myself by confronting yet another of my personal fears—the fear of heights. “Will that thing take up two people?" I ask.

Fifty feet up (which to window washers is nothing) I cling to the bars with sweaty hands and say, “Okay, you take the camera off of my neck and take a picture of our rooftop, yard, and the dogs below ," who are too stupid to look up when we call them but keep looking around at every angle (except up) when we call their names. (Yes, I write “who” for dogs rather than the recommended “that” because I consider a dog as a who not a that! Obviously, the editorial staff at one of my jobs is getting to me.)

When I finally get to the gut-wrenching maximum height of this man-mobile and try to snap a shot, the camera screen flashes “Batteries diminished!” We lower back down to the ground. I run into the house, when sister Jennifer phones. “Can I call you back?” I ask breathlessly, “Jack and I have a cherry-picker and I need to put new batteries in my camera so that we can get some tree-top views of the house.”

“Oooh-Kaaaye,” she answers, a practical person that already believes I should be committed.

I don’t know how this together again routine is all going to play out. I must confess that I'm worried.

“What are you doing?” Jack asks as I walk down the hall.

“Going to the bathroom, but actually not as I walk but heading in that direction,” I answer.

Later, “What are you doing? You aren’t saying anything. Where are you?” he asks.

Oh, MY GOD!!”

Then, a neighbor several acres down suddenly appears at my door after I've downed most of a bottle of wine (thinking, what the heck, it's justified) that I got for cheap at the UGA Walmart. She has two (approximately) ten-year-old girls with her and two little boys: one in diapers and the other just beyond, a jet-black-hair little fella named Hose'.

"I got some of your mail,"" she says, after ten years of never seeing or speaking. The two little boys squeal at seeing our dogs and run toward the pool. Both immediately strip naked and jump into our poolette. Neither appear to be able to swim, so I freak out and yell, "Girls, grab them now!"

Soon, all is calm, and these little buck-naked boys with the girls' supervision are grinning and floating on various devises with their little bottoms shining from the pool floats for all to see.

"I'm so embarrassed," says the almost unknown neighbor. "But somehow the expression on your facc tells me it's okay."

"Bring them over whenever you can," I say, remembering my little boy and all his friends since kindergarten. "You can't imagine what good timing this has been."

"

"Once there was a way to get back home." The Beatles

2007-07-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

My son is leaving home. I know it’s time for him . . . but not for me. I think if I had a few more kids about, it wouldn’t be as traumatic, but I’m probably wrong. Maybe because I had him when I was a bit more mature, I understand how lucky I am to be his mom. I still cringe when I see some harried "mother" yelling at her child in the grocery store, or worse yet, just ambling ambivalently along as an infant without a choice screams its lungs out, probably for food or drink . . . or a little affection. This mother is usually way too young with about three kids under four years of age grouped around her. I find it highly disturbing.

Oh, I haven’t been perfect, and those times that I haven’t been will always haunt me, but I know one thing--if I ever felt that I came up short, I apologized. I’m not a yeller; I’m not a demeaning person; and I probably spoiled David, but not so much that he doesn’t fall over backward thanking me when I buy him so much as a box of animal crackers (which he still loves, by the way), a characteristic of his that only wants me to give him more. No matter the occasion, the kid has never whined about something he didn't get. Every birthday, every Christmas, to him has been "the best ever!"

When I was a kid, I made a promise to myself: If I ever have a child, I will tell that child that I love him or her AT LEAST once a day, and I will hug that child every chance I get! I think it’s the only resolution I have ever made that I have absolutely kept.

So I’m helping David pack up his room, the one that he keeps in monklike, precise order. I tell his girlfriend that I feel for her, and I know he’s in for some reality checks. He arranges his many books perfectly, along with his albums, but he’s no dweeb. In fact, with his humor (and I must add, good looks—I’m his Mom, after all, so give me a break!), he’s usually the life of the party, and the life of this house. As I help him fill boxes and try to give practical packing advice, I start to remember when, eight months pregnant, I stood on a ladder and stenciled Teddy bears across the wall borders. Of course, I had to paint over those when he went into Batman mode, and then came the neutral shade, plastered over with Pink Floyd, Jimmy Hendrix, Beatles, Steve McQueen, and Paul Delaroche posters—he has good taste, in this nonbiased Mom’s opinion. So I think it only natural that as we’re stowing his life into boxes, I start to tear up a bit.

“Focus Mom! I can’t handle that yet. You MUST wait for the actual moving day,” he instructs.

“Okay, okay. You’re right. Must maintain,” I reply. And we continue. Then, “You know you could always become one of those guys who stays at home and I could feed you whatever you want. Then you’d get depressed and become the thousand-pound man and we’d eventually have to have the back wall removed and take you out on a gurney,” I suggest.

“That’s always a fallback plan,” he assures me.

I don’t tell him that old adage about not being able to come back home, because it is so painfully true. Even if you do fall on hard times and return to your old room for a time, it’s never really home again. Wow, when I had my first apartment, I put one suitcase and a few books in the car and headed South to meet up with my sister in Atlanta. This kid, in comparison, has it made.

Still, when I drive away from that place, I’ll see the same little guy that wanted to walk into the school by himself on the “third” day of Kindergarten, the kid who grinned, waved, and ran into the school without me.

And, just like that day, I can guaran-damn-tee ya, I’m going to sob all the way home.

Forever Young

2007-07-22T18:19:00.000-07:00

So Jack had a thrown back, and then my always healthy son pulled a neck muscle so badly that he missed a week of work and had to see a specialist. Just as they are both recovering, I wake up in agony. I can’t move my head to the left, a reminder of an old motorcycle injury when I was a wild seventeen. “If you were going to voodoo your problems away, why me?” I ask my now-cured son. “Sorry Mom, I already had a doll in your image. It was convenient,” he replies. No respect.

In one of those rare occasions, we go out on a Friday night with great friends Jill and Ray to a new place. The restaurant served, as one comedian says, “just enough food to piss you off” at an elevated price. Jack, the teetotaler, is always our designated driver but when I decide to order a mixed drink, which I seldom do (I’m a wino), he too orders a scotch. When the waitress comes back for a second round he says, “I’m the designated driver. What do you have to offer?” She lists the usual non-alcoholic fare and he says, “Okay, I think I’ll have a rusty nail.” (That’s a double-whammy liqueur and scotch, by the way.) We laugh tremendously because we will never understand his reasoning. Don’t worry. We all went upstairs to listen to the band and watch young singles pick each other up, where we continued to imbibe but he consumed coffee. Ironically, the band played their rendition of “our” music—the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Allman Brothers, and the Rolling Stones, et cetera.

“I feel old,” said friend Jill.

“Hell, they should all be asking for our autographs,” I replied, knowing that by now I probably look like Keith Richard’s sister.

One trip to the restroom and having a guy yell, “My girlfriend really has to pee!” outside the door brought back some good old memories. Wow, it’s sad that our wiser, but still fun spirits remain in our aging bodies isn’t it? Otherwise, we’d all be hell on wheels and the youngsters wouldn’t have a chance.

I guess that’s the reasoning behind it all.

Freelance Hell

2007-07-20T21:16:00.000-07:00

Looking back on the past couple of miserable weeks, I’m reminded of one of those cheesy black-and-white films of the 1950s where the calendar pages are blowing off into the wind and the clock hands rapidly spin. On my personal film, this visual rendition of the passage of time would be accompanied by my framed faced in various expressions of agony, rage, and despair . . . perhaps a laptop computer smashing against a wall or me throwing back a glass of wine with my eyes darting madly to and fro, as in that old “Reefer Madness” movie.

Is it rabies? you may ask, if you’ve had the patience to read this far. Is it some sort of inherited mental disease? The answers are no and yes respectively, because I surely must have some sort of mental disease to have chosen the writing profession to try and make a “living.” It’s much more akin to “a dying.” Before becoming an unwilling participant in the world of freelancing, I could at least project my measly pay stub as a fulltime employee of people who viewed me as an adjunct who did what they would do if they had the time; but now even that semblance of stability is gone as I walk wearily into old age—and my time is flyin’ by like those damn calendar pages. I’m over half a hundred years old damnit! Shouldn’t I be sitting on the veranda talkin’ to the youngins about life, blitzed outta my mind in a good way?

Changing deadlines, competing deadlines, people who haven’t called you in months, but who now need a fast turnaround; it’s always feast or famine, but the feast is a small one and the famine a long one. Knowing this you try to say yes to everyone so that you can save up like the fabled industrious ant, but inevitably you land up as the grasshopper anyway.

Everyone thinks you must be doing this for fun, because who wouldn’t want to write one’s heart out and wait interminably to be paid a paltry sum? Then my computer shuts down amidst a complicated transaction and an errant e-mail sends without my permission and the adrenaline flows; my Irish face flushes a frightening red and as I throw cold water on my face I beg Jesus not to kill me now! Not now, when I’m having so much fun and when so much more enjoyment awaits!

So I survived another bout of multiple deadlines and finally received a check big enough to be consumed by one bill. Then my rich brother-in-law calls and says, “I just booked a Caribbean cruise for me and your sister next February and I was wondering who might take the boys to school and take care of the dogs. Then I thought, what about Aunt Gail? What do you think?”

I can’t even tell you what I think.

The Terminator

2007-07-09T07:01:00.001-07:00

My older sister (by two years) Lynn and I have always had a typical sibling relationship: she tries to murder or maim me while I persistently cling to life. She’s a small person, barely five feet tall, but she makes up for her lack of height with extremely focused energy and explosive ire. Once, in the seventies, when we were in a van riding to a concert with friends, her hair burst into flame. I don’t know how that happened! Yeah right. The fire circled the edges of her curly locks like a halo, and my immediate reaction was to extinguish the inferno by beating her about the head with my bare hands. Unaware that I had just saved her from a brutal singeing, and seeing herself as a victim of an unprovoked attack, she retaliated. It took about three people to pull her hands off of my neck, all saying things like, “Not cool man, you were on fire, man.”

Anyway, I have survived, but sadly, I am still none the wiser. Because I was physically beaten into submission as a youngster, then suffered severely stunted self-esteem in my pre-teens when she and her friends gathered round me to chant “Go to hell Gail” there is no longer any need for physical coercion. I developed one finely tuned mechanism for survival however—sarcasm. It has served me well at times, even though my son often fondly asks me, “How come no one has killed you yet?” Oh they have tried, grasshopper. They have tried.

Still, old habits die hard (such as using too many clichés) Lynn still catches me with her cunning and even manages to argue with me when I agree with her. How does she do it?! Just the other day at a July 4th celebration, we began an innocuous conversation after she remarked on the height of one of the cousins. “Well, I guess our side of the family got the short genes,” I innocently remarked.

“What do you mean?” she asked as though interested.

I pointed out that my father’s brother (our uncle) and his son were both 6” 5”. Our female cousins on both sides are approximately 5’ 9” or 5’ 10”. We are all well below such measures.

“Hmm,” she said. “And how tall are you?”

“Only about 5’ 5”,” the unsuspecting prey replied.

Mom jumped in and stated that she liked her own height just as it is. Of course.

“How tall would you like to be?” Lynn asks ever so casually as she backs her victim into a corner.

“Oh, I’d like to be about 5’ 9”,” I answer.

Now she fixes me in her glare. If she could emit lasers, I’d be dead. I sense that something has gone “terribly wrong” as the newscasters like to say. Then it comes.

“Well I’d like to be 5’ 5” you bitch!”

How I love family gatherings.

Squirrely

2007-07-02T07:53:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I started putting out sunflower seeds for the squirrel population in the woods surrounding our house. They have since grown greatly in population, courage, and girth. I usually fill a big red to-go cup with the seeds, fill up a feeder attached to the tree, and put some more out on the deck. I know, I know, I’ve heard all the admonitions, but I enjoy the little critters and they only get the stuff once a day, alright sometimes twice. When I peer out on the deck, it often resembles a Disney movie, with squirrels, chipmunks, and a variety of birds all eating side by side. I even get adorable flying squirrels at night, but when I read an article about flying squirrels making excellent pets, Jack freaked. Not to worry, I don’t like to keep wild animals in cages.

The price I’ve paid though, besides the cost of the seeds, is some very spoiled squirrels. I can be in the middle of a phone call, or writing an article, or answering an e-mail, but if I haven’t brought out breakfast in time, one of the squirrel troops is assigned to walk up to the glass doors, stand up with its paws pressed against the glass, and stare at me. This is followed by knocking on the glass with one paw. If I’m still unresponsive, said squirrel will make several running leaps and hit the glass with all fours. Several other squirrel spectators usually lounge around on the deck rails watching the performance which culminates in my emergence with the big red cup.

The other day, I inadvertently left the empty cup outside and it blew under the deck during a storm. This morning, one of the performance squirrels became so perturbed at me that he crossed his arms and glared at me through the glass. I was in the middle of an Internet transaction, so I hadn’t yet responded to his prompts. Finally, I filled another cup with seeds and headed out, but I was greeted with this strange grating noise that seemed to be coming from the giant oak near the deck. I was looking all around when the noise suddenly stopped. I put my hands on my hips and stared straight up into the tree. Suddenly from the uppermost branches of the tree, the squirrel lobs the big red to-go cup from the day before at me! (Luckily, it was empty so it wasn’t able to pick up much speed.) However, if one day I “suddenly disappear” (see previous post), please look for me in the oak tree immediately.

Confusion

2007-07-01T18:18:00.001-07:00

Why do so many commentators state that someone suddenly disappeared? Can a person slowly disappear?

The cable T. V. people told me that I had to leave my phone open for a scheduled visit so that the cable guy could verify that someone was home before he came over. Wouldn't a busy line imply that someone is home?

A co-worker who was scheduled for minor surgery told me that the thing she hated most was that she couldn't drink any water immediatley before the surgery so she couldn't brush her teeth. What?

Red-faced

2007-06-30T18:10:00.000-07:00

My friend, Jill, has a Portuguese Water hound—a very cute, but also expensive, and somewhat rare pooch named Chopper. She recently e-mailed some pictures to me that she had received from Chopper’s breeder, photos of a new litter of Portuguese pups. Each pup photo featured a disembodied hand holding a black-and-white newborn with its eyes still shut. As I opened the individual photos I read the captions: Male—Blue, Female—Red.

“Arrogant breeders,” I muttered to myself. “These dogs are all black and white, yet they try to make fine, invisible distinctions. Who do they think they’re fooling?”

I opened another attached photo that read, “Male—orange.”

“Oh, the pomposity!” I fumed.

Next photo: “Female—Yellow.” Outrageous!

That’s when I noticed the tiny yellow ribbon around the dog’s neck and the matching hue/caption for the ribbons around all the babies’ necks.

“Oh,” I said sheepishly to the empty room. “Color me stupid.”

Driving Me Crazy!

2007-06-29T18:30:00.000-07:00

Since Jack pulled his back out we made a ride into the North Georgia Mountains where my brother-in-law is a renowned chiropractor. No kidding, many people testify that he saved them from a life of pain. He even healed a little dachshund that, after being hit by a car, had two tiny wheels hoisting up its hind quarters. Wheels be gone! after only a few sessions and that little wiener dog is as good as new.

So Jack decides to make the drive up with his bad back. Yes, he has to have control of the wheel, even in extreme pain, which would be okay for a human being, but not for a being from a planet far, far away called Velocity. I’ve seen grown, burly men stagger from his vehicle with perspiration stains to their belt loops gasping, “Never again!” I view this as a testimony to my bravery and a defense to my verbal pleas to remain alive.

Picture yourself hurtling around a slim mountainous avenue at three times the safe m.p.h., and as your driver points out the beauty of the sheer drop-off view, he drives straight toward it! This is one of Jack’s driving habits. Granted, he grew up in the Smoky Mountains, driving like a he-devil; he’s worked on the pit crew of professional race car drivers, and he can build any car from the ground up. He also seems to will himself to believe that everyone on the road is going to do the sensible thing—bad idea. Most people trade in their cars when they tire of the model. Jack has someone total his old-hat autos. Jack was actually involved in accidents in which his vintage Porsche was totaled three times. He refurbished it every time, then sold it for a profit, being perfectly honest about its blighted past.

Anyway, as the scenery becomes one of those swirly paintings that kids make at country fairs, I glare straight ahead in the belief that doing so will somehow glue the wheels to the road. Velocity Man points out a scenic farm. “Oh God!” I dart my eyes in the direction that he’s pointing only to realize that we’re driving straight off the road and into it. “Aieee!” That’s close to the kind of dying animal sound I make as he swerves to miss a row of mailboxes, the tire goes off the shoulder, then we skid back onto the pavement. (By the way, he destroyed the right rear view mirror of my car in a similar venture.) “Damn it! Why do you have to do that?” he yells. “Because I want to look at the farm, not buy it,” I say between my permanently gritted teeth. I estimate that if we are strangely fortunate to reach senior status we will have this conversation at least 10,000 more times.

Now we pull off the road to grab something to tide us over at a fast food restaurant—Burger King. People think I’m exaggerating about the way Jack orders food, often resulting in multiple and erroneous items, until they experience the oddity themselves. We once drove through for a cup of coffee and received six cups of coffee and a small milk even though Jack and I were the only people in the car. “Let’s just get a couple of orders of onion rings and a drink since we’re going out later,” Jack says. Fine with me.

He pulls up. “I’ll have an order of chicken tenders and an order of onion rings, a tea and a diet coke. No, make that two orders of onion rings and a tea.”

The speaker: “So you don’t want the chicken tenders?”

“Yes, I do want them.”

“And the one drink?”

I remind him of the Diet Coke. He orders it and adds an ice tea with onion rings.

“So you want three onion rings, two ice teas, a Diet Coke, and chicken tenders?”

“No!” he rolls his eyes at me, like what’s wrong with this idiot.

We land up with one very large order of onion rings, two drinks, and a bag of about four “chicken tenders” shaped like little crowns.

“What the hell are these and where are the fries?” Jack asks incredulously.

“You didn’t order any fries.” At this point I’m laughing so hard that my Precious Pup raspy hissing evil laugh that I can’t control starts.

“I thought I ordered fries!”

“No, but lucky for you, I’ll share some of these onion rings.”

As I reach into my onion ring container, I discover one lone stubby French fry. “Oh, here’s that fry you ordered,” I say as I offer it to him.

He’s not even smiling, but as he tries to grab it, knocks it between the seats. “Now I’ve got a fry under the seats!” barks Mr. Wilson.

After the chiropractor visit, Jack tells me that he can now walk upright. “It’s a miracle!” he proclaims. It certainly is.

True Colors

2007-06-29T07:31:00.000-07:00

Last night in a dream, I walked into a vintage record store and started reading the cover of an album. The store clerk walked over and said, "Excuse me, we don't allow our customers to read in this store." I said, "What about the prices? Can I read the prices? And what if I'm deaf and I'm reading your lips?"

Now I'm even a smart ass in my dreams!

Quote of the Day

2007-06-22T15:16:00.001-07:00

"Funny how people get so gentle with you once you're dead."
(From "Sunset Boulevard")

Wouldn't it be nice if it were the other way around?

A Serious Discussion: Part II

2007-06-22T13:01:00.000-07:00

My sister, Jennifer, read the highly intellectual discussion regarding super powers and the following dialogue occurred via e-mail:

----- Original Message -----
To: Gail
Subject: RE: Something Serious
From: Jennifer

(Name of coworker) said that the part about not being able to become visible to surprise people shouldn't really be a problem because you can still speak. That would freak people out significantly enough I think. The feelability is still problematic.

You make some very good points. I think these would be excellent super powers. If I couldn't get the teleporting, I think flying would be my next choice. Invisibility and flying would be a fun combo.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gail
To: JenniferSubject:
RE: Something Serious

(Coworker) makes a good point, but it relegates one to simply being Casper.
And you would have to fly NAKED for gosh sakes! There's no getting around it! Then you would have even more problems because you would have to return to the same spot where you left your clothes, because you can't teleport! This means you would be limited to very casual flying expeditions within a few miles radius of your clothes.

----- Original Message -----
From: Jennifer
To: Gail
Subject: RE: Something Serious

Well you need one invisible outfit then, plus invisible accessories.

-----Original Message-----
From: Gail
To: JenniferSubject:
RE: Something Serious

Well that's just wacky talk!

----- Original Message -----
From: Jennifer
To: Gail
Subject: RE: Something Serious

Hey, if you can grant the exception of two super powers, why can't we tack on some special allowances? You're going to have to be able to wear your glasses, remember?

-----Original Message-----
From: Gail
To: Jennifer
Subject:
RE: Something Serious

I think that Jack would argue that x-ray vision comes with invisibility :) Besides that, if I had those super powers, I'd go ahead and spring for Lasik. I'll have to contemplate the special allowances concept--could be a slippery slope.

Original Message -----
From: Jennifer
To: Gail
Subject: RE: Something Serious

As if we're not already on a slippery slope!

A Serious Discussion

2007-06-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

During dinner last night, Jack and I got into one of those age-old discussions about a subject that all married couples repeatedly have if they’ve been together for any length of time—what super power would you have if given the choice?

I know that in many families, only one super power is usually allowed, but bon vivants and free spirits that we are, we’ve always allowed two super powers per person. Now I must admit that I’ve faced some frustrations with this over the years, because I have remained steadfastly loyal to invisibility and teleportation. What could be wrong with those super powers? you might ask. (Or you might not ask.) Well, I’ll tell you Mr. or Ms. Not-thinking-it-through! The answer is simple: clothing and accessories.

You see, I want to use these powers to better the world, to spy on people who threaten our freedom and our country. I also want to listen to what people are saying about me behind my back and to do some cool party tricks. Also, I could get into many parties to which I wasn’t invited, so that I could actually do the cool party tricks. But here’s the problem. I think that a big part of the fun of being invisible is that one could suddenly become visible and freak people out. “Surprise! I heard what you just said about me!” However, you couldn’t do this with much enjoyment because you’d always have to be naked when you suddenly reappeared. Why? Because clothes and accessories (such as weapons) aren’t invisible. And who isn’t going to react if they see like a dress, a pair of shoes, and a couple of earrings walk into a room? There goes your espionage attempt right there. What if you just get invisible/naked and walk into a spy enclave to off a bunch of terror types? Well an AK-47 floating into the front door is going to tip them off, don’t you think? Industrial espionage for a person with these two powers might be the only fallback plan, but then you would have to have a good memory because you couldn’t record conversations, and there you are back in the boring corporate world again.

Why teleportation? At first glance, the casual observer might believe that as an invisible person, one could get on any subway, train, or airplane for free. But no! People are going to feel you, especially on public transportation. Hello, you’re invisible, not vaporized. I’ve never even heard of a super power called unfeelability. That sounds more like a bad date!

“What’s your super power?”

“Unfeelability!”

“Ewww.”

Sure, if you were a spy, you could ship your clothes to a hotel near your destination, teleport to the James Bond-like casino (invisible and in the nude) to listen to some information, then teleport back to your room to get clothes for say, when you want to see and be seen. But that scenario really cuts out the spontaneity of the whole invisible thing. As is probably transparent to you now, these factors are quite problematic when seriously contemplating a choice of super power.
In fact, our dinner discussion became a bit heated at one point, especially when Jack, who should never be trusted with the Monopoly bank and who hides puzzle pieces so he can put in the finishing piece of the jigsaw, tried to sneak in a third super power for himself. He, too, chose invisibility, but then attempted to claim that time travel came part-and-parcel with teleportation. No way Mistah! You have to watch that sneaky rascal.

(I think he may be a spy.)

The Night Shift

2007-06-17T02:18:00.001-07:00

It’s 4:19 a.m. and I have completely given up on that elusive state-of-being once known as sleep. A number of factors are involved, but let me just say up front, never eat a piece of cheesecake right before going to bed. Jack and I have become much like the walking people pods of the night. Complete opposites: I’m the night owl; he’s the early-to-bed, early-to-rise guy, we sometimes wake up in rooms other than the ones in which we first attempted to slumber. A prodigious dreamer—it’s the only thing I’m prodigious at—I can sometimes return to R.E.M. by thinking about the dream I was having and going back in for the next chapter, but not tonight, mainly because of the cheesecake and the havoc it’s wreaking on my esophagus.

Many years ago, we purchased a pug puppy for my son’s ninth birthday gift. As we all rode home with the adorable little guy, Jack (who had never owned a small dog) began a recitation of we-will-nots. (Jack strives to take the edge off of anything resembling glee.) “We will not feed this dog scraps from the table; we will not put this dog in the bed with any human being!” and so on. You think I digress, but there is a point here. As soon as the little wriggly, pudgy pup that we aptly named Moses, made one pitiful peep from his basket, the Rulemeister sprang from the bed, picked him up and threw him out the door . . . just kidding. Jack picked him up, “What’s the matter little guy; yes him is lonely; yes him wants to sleep with his mommy and daddy.” Hence, the pug became the Rulemeister. We are today merely his malleable human sofas. He instructs us whether to sleep on our right sides or our left sides, depending on his preference, several times a night. On some occasions, he allows us to move our legs, but this is rare. In all positions, he snores and he snores loudly. He’s doing so now, in my bed. He is one of the non-sleep factors.

The old yeller lab, Max, is another. No longer able to make the leap onto my bed when Jack is out of town, he sleeps on a mass of cushions and blankets worthy of the Princess and the Pea. However, he tends to bark and run in his sleep, often crashing his feet against the wall or the bed table. At first, I thought we were having an earthquake, but now I just try to wait it out. When I arose tonight, Max hauled himself up for a nature call. As I stood waiting for him to return, I chewed on a few Tums. Then he came back and drank water for about three days. I turned down the air conditioner another notch but it didn’t click on. Back in bed, I realized that damn it Jack had my skinny pillow! I turn to the left to comply with Moses’ instructions. “What’s going on?” Jack asks. “A little bit of everything,” I answer. Most of the time, we try not to speak because it will bring us into another state of awareness called “Now I’m more awake!”

As I relax like a deer in the headlights, Jack gets up and walks toward the door. I know he’s checking the air conditioner. “Are you hot or are you cold?” I ask. “Hot,” he replies. He turns the air down a bit more and gets back in bed. “Do you have my pillow?” I ask. We switch pillows. It doesn’t do the trick. That’s it! I’m outta here. I’m sitting at the kitchen counter typing. Jack comes wandering in? “What are you doing?” he asks. “What are you doing?” I respond wittily. “Moses is driving me crazy,” he says as he pours some milk. I start chatting. Moses runs in from the bedroom. As I am mid-sentence, Jack heads toward the bedroom stating, “Stop talking! You’re making me more awake!” I pick Moses up: “Him is the cutest little puggy in the world. Him is mommy’s little Moses.”

Thoughts and Deeds

2007-06-11T21:04:00.000-07:00

Television Commentary:

I have a very difficult time watching almost any regular non-fiction television program (with the exception of good comedy) because the fictional dialogue is so, uh, unbelievable. Therefore, I tend to ruin the program for other viewers, which doesn’t make me very popular. For example, I was walking through as Jack was watching an episode of CSI (Crime Scene Investigators). Two guys are standing over a dead body and one says: “Don’t worry; everything will be fine. All you have to do is get rid of the body.” Now those are two contradictory and highly improbable statements if I ever heard them. If you have to get rid of a body, EVER, nothing will be fine again. Period. And even to suggest such a thing is just plain silly.

As a night owl I’ve discovered some frightening but mesmerizing content in the reality genre, especially quite a few shows about morbidly obese people and people with giant fibroids or bizarre skin conditions. These shows are often accompanied by commercials for sleep number beds—but who needs one? Just listen to Lindsey Wagner, the product's spokesperson, for five seconds and you’ll fall into a deep and thankful coma. Then there’s that Hover-Round motorized wheelchair commercial with grinning geriatrics riding around in a circle to the Beach Boys’ tune “I Get Around.” Oh my eyes . . . and ears! I became depressed and angry all at once when watching this. Who asked those senior citizens to do such a thing and why, why would they comply? How were they coerced into such a disturbing act? It comes with a “free in-home test drive” by the way.

I’m still in disbelief that there is such a thing as a Pope Mobile.

Blank stares:

My son and I were (on a rare occasion) actually going on an errand together—to buy some things for his college apartment. Now for some reason, and I’m not trying to be insensitive, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s such a strange malady, but I can’t help but think of some renditions that might be advantageous on certain occasions, like Slapping Tourette’s—but you’d have to have the medical verification necklace to get the most out of it and in order to avoid a lot of bail. Anyway, as we rode along I shared this thought. “What if there were such a thing as Woosey Tourette’s where those people afflicted with the disease shouted out words and phrases like Fiddle-dee-dee, or Pardon My French? Would people think that it was as tragic as the regular Tourette's?” David remained silent, then asked if I was having a flashback of some kind.

David’s girlfriend was about to be a bridesmaid at a wedding. She was perplexed that her parents and those of the other bridesmaids had been invited to the rehearsal dinner. “I thought the groom’s family were invited and the bridal party, not just the groom and the bridal party’s families. “Maybe they’re dyslexic,” I suggested. “I wonder if the groom will say ‘Do I’ at the wedding.”

Jack, watching the news, remarked, “Can you believe that Dr. Kevorkian is out of prison already?” “At least we know he’s available,” I answered. No reply.

Jack and I had a big argument over his obvious insensitivity. Soon thereafter he went out and returned with a present for me--a book by Ann Rule, (an admitted guilty pleasure of mine, true crime). He must have known I was really ticked off! Oddly, the title is "Too Late to Say Goodbye." Hmmm.