Category Archives: Lifestyle & Worldview

Who Are The People In My Neighborhood?

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I’ve slacked a bit on my scoping-out of the new neighbors in the rental house across the street, and I’m still not sure exactly who lives there and which of the numerous people I see are just visiting or helping them settle in.

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In addition to the dark SUV, there’s now frequently a white pickup there as well. Night before last there was a third truck parked at the end of the street–at ten p.m.–and some guys had lights on it and were doing something which seemed to involve a large rolling jack like they use in auto racing. Whatever they were doing, it rated very high on the “my dogs must bark themselves into a frenzy” scale.

I’ve observed the small humans seem to primarily be there on weekdays during traditional work hours, which continues to support my hypothesis that the woman does some sort of home daycare, either as a job or for family members. I’ve regularly seen 3-5 kids, and they all seem to be taken elsewhere by evening.

I  told Tom I thought this was preferable to them actually having a bunch of kids. He wasn’t sure why. But if there are several children, maybe in some sort of shared custody situation, there’s the potential for a bunch of them running around the yard and street day and night. So, kids that go away are slightly better than those who don’t.

Today, Tom called my attention to several boys unloading items from a trailer in the driveway. The unusual bit was they were all wearing white shirts, black pants, and ties. I have no idea what to make of this. Religious minions? Sheldon Cooper or Alex P. Keaton wannabes?

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For those of you under 40 who have no idea who Alex P. Keaton is…here you go. Michael J. Fox before he was Marty McFly.

The religious aspect is a distinct possibility, which is of some concern because I am slightly allergic to such things. The black vehicle has a “pray” sticker on the back, and since they arrived, whenever I step out the front door, the air crackles with electrical energy, making my skin tingle, and I break out in brimstone.

I told Tom if they turn out to be Jehovah’s Witnesses and come knocking on my door, I could answer wearing my devil horns and offer to introduce them to my dog Cerberus. Tom thinks this would not be very neighborly, so I’ve agreed to revert to my usual door-answering strategy, which is simply not to do it. Besides, I only have two dogs, which leaves me one dog-head short of pulling off the whole Cerberus thing.

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Wonder if these guys are busy…

So, surveillance continues. Eventually, there will be some sort of interaction (Tom, not me…obviously) and all questions will be answered. But for now, I’m gathering clues and theorizing worst case scenarios. This way, no matter what we eventually find out, it will be better than what’s been going on inside my head.

Let The Games (and Spoilers) Begin

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It seems the 2018 Winter Olympics are now underway. How much time will you spend watching?

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I used to be an enthusiastic Olympics-watcher. You’d think all the technology and TV networks would make it easier to watch the events, but I find it much harder.

When I was a kid in the 1970s, it was all pretty simple. The host network might air a few of the less-popular competitions in the afternoon or late at night, but if  you weren’t home during the day or willing to stay up until three a.m., you were shit out of luck because this was in the prehistoric, pre-VCR days.

All the most-anticipated events aired during prime time every evening, and the whole family watched together. This was also before the internet and social media, so you didn’t have to worry about avoiding spoilers. The evening news, if something earth-shattering had happened during the day, would always helpfully warn you to look away or turn down the volume before revealing any spoilery details. Time zones? Forget it. The Olympics happened from 7-11 p.m., regardless.

In the 1980s, when I was a young at-home mom, I watched a lot of Olympic coverage. Cable was by then a thing, and the host’s partner networks let me watch more than ever, and I sort of cared. I actually had a childhood friend, Amy Gamble, compete in the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, and everyone made a point to follow the hometown girl. I also edited her book last year, and you should absolutely check it out! Bipolar Disorder, My Greatest Competitor: An Olympian’s Journey With Mental Illness is incredible.

Now, though, it’s almost like there are so many viewing options I can’t even start. No matter the time of day, there’s something being broadcast on the host network, or one of the other networks they own. News, events, recaps, specials, retrospectives…who has that kind of time?

It’s different than having a favorite sports team or race car driver. You follow them every season, year after year, and have a lot of emotional energy invested in their performance. The Olympics, however, are made up of 99% people I’ve never heard of, or athletes I literally haven’t given a single thought in the past four years. Other than national pride–which is getting harder and harder to manufacture these days–the emotional investment isn’t there.

I haven’t watched any of these sports since the previous Games. I only vaguely recall the rules or how they’re scored, other than they all seem to involve either “go fast,” “don’t fall down,” or some combination of the two. I don’t know if the guy from Transylbergerstan hates the other guy from Blombodia because he beat him out by one point or 0.00001 second in the last big ski thing.

Thanks to social media, there’s no way to avoid pesky spoilers unless you totally unplug and vigilantly monitor every flip of the channel (or simply watch nothing but Netflix) so you don’t accidentally give away the outcome of the event you planned to watch later. Which, for most of us, is not an option.

I guess I can appreciate the edge-of-control thrill of luge, skeleton, downhill skiing, or bobsledding. Ice skating can be entertaining. Overall, though, I prefer the summer Olympics. Gymnastics has been a favorite event for me since Olga Korbut in 1972, though I wonder if I’ll feel the same for the 2020 Summer Olympics, or if knowing now what so many of those girls have gone through will taint the experience. Maybe it will make their strength and determination even more impressive.

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Every little girl wanted to fly like this. I used to spend hours performing “floor routines” in the front yard, and was even briefly on the Y gymnastics team…but I quit before the first competition because team sports are so not my thing.

I sincerely admire the monumental accomplishment each athlete achieved by becoming an Olympian. That’s a dream far beyond what most of us could ever imagine. I wish them all well, and for thrilling competitions, but the tension and conflict are a bit overwhelming for me.

You’ll find me here in my usual spot in the evenings, watching The Vampire Diaries on Netflix.

What’s Cooking?

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For years, I said I couldn’t cook. This wasn’t really accurate, though, because what I meant was I didn’t cook. I always worked outside the home, and cooking simply wasn’t very high on my priority list. There was a period of a year or two when Tom worked only a mile from the house, meaning he got home well before I did, and often had dinner waiting. That was pretty awesome. But typically dinner was my responsibility, and I relied on packaged products or quick and easy recipes with minimal ingredients.

When I started working from home in 2010, I vowed I would “learn to cook.” This actually meant I’d bother to find recipes and acquire ingredients and turn them into tasty, home-cooked delights.

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This hasn’t happened yet, but it could. I remain hopeful.

I’ve never understood people who claim they can’t cook. The internet is full of recipes and video tutorials. All you have to do is take a minute to read them, follow the instructions, and–voila!–food.

But then I remember math, and consider things from a different perspective. People claim math isn’t that hard, because numbers are clearly defined and behave in certain ways, and as long as you follow the steps, it always turns out. I beg to differ. Numbers are sneaky, slippery, tricksy things, and we have a longstanding animosity dating back to third grade when I was forced to learn multiplication and fractions. But if I can have some form of (undiagnosed and possibly imaginary) mathematical dyslexia, I guess people can be culinarily dyslexic too.

While I was once known to look into my pantry and sigh, “All I see here are ingredients, but nothing I can actually eat,” I do now cook, and not too badly.

I also bake, though I’m currently forbidden to do so. Tom is watching what he eats, and when I make six dozen cookies, it’s up to him to eat five and a half dozen of them, because I’m a gastric bypass patient and can only tolerate a small amount of sugar.

I don’t do anything fancy. I see friends’ posts of gourmet meals they’ve prepared, with exotic ingredients and complicated presentations. I’m not going to be seeking out specialty markets to procure organic saffron or truffles or imported albino hummingbird eggs or whatever foodies do. But I can produce above-average meals, and in a pinch can peruse the pantry and freezer and come up with some combination of the available options we won’t mind eating.

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My dinners will never look like this. At all.

The problem is there are only two of us. While broiling two steaks and baking two potatoes isn’t difficult, most meals end up being large enough to feed a dozen starving Teamsters. If I’m making soup or chili, I learned long ago to just start out using the enormous soup kettle, because by the time I get done adding everything I want in there, I’m going to need that kind of capacity.

This means leftovers. For days. And days. At first, I felt badly about feeding Tom the same thing four days in a row, but he swears he doesn’t mind. He’s thrifty, and the comfort of knowing we’re not wasting perfectly good food makes him happy. Once I got past the feeling I was somehow failing by not cooking fresh meals every single day, I could totally get behind this concept, because it means I might only have to cook twice a week.

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Slow cooker full of Santa Fe Chicken. This usually takes care of dinner for about four days, until the risk of botulism outweighs the bother of cooking something else.

While I’ve realized I most certainly can cook, I’d still rather not. Even though I don’t have to brave the Out to go to work, I do still have a full workday with managing the editorial department, all the managerial admin stuff, and editing for my clients. When I meet my goals for the day, I’d much rather crochet and watch Netflix than trash my kitchen making dinner.

The other challenge is finding things we’ll both eat. Tom prefers lots of meat, rice or potatoes, and if vegetables are nowhere to be found, he’s 100% fine with that. I’ve never met a vegetable I didn’t like, or a bread, and I prefer most dishes without any meat at all. I’m happy with peas, artichokes, olives, mushrooms (all of them), eggplant, squash, broccoli, cauliflower, or avocados, all things that make Tom pinch his nose and flee to the other end of the house.

The latest “holy crap, how many days will we be eating this” situation involves ham. Tom can’t pass up a bargain, and he found a Smithfield spiral-cut ham on sale for roughly half price. It is a 12-pound ham. Twelve. Pounds. Google tells me the proper ratio when serving ham is 3/4 pound per guest. My handy-dandy calculator on my phone tells me this works out to 16 people. For the two of us, that would mean eight days’ worth of ham. I know I could freeze some of it, but I hate our freezer. It’s ridiculously small and the compartments are stupid, and it always feels too full. Plus, Mozzie is afraid of it, and every time I open the freezer drawer, he runs from the room.

Fortunately, I exist largely on sandwiches, and I’m doing my best to work my way through Hamzilla. The downside is it makes me thirsty, and my kidneys are starting to wonder what the hell is going on.

What about you? Can you cook? Do you enjoy it? Do you have favorite dishes or kitchen tricks?

And now…time for a sandwich. I still have about eight pounds of ham to eat.

Sunglasses Are Easier Than Eyeliner

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I started using makeup the summer after 7th grade, when I was 13 years old. There was a girl in my neighborhood who I secretly thought was rather plain, but she could get her hair in those lovely Farrah Fawcett curls, and she wore makeup. She looked like the cover model on a teen magazine, but I looked more like this.

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In my defense, it was 1978. 

I was rescued from being shanghaied by the KISS Army by my older sister when I visited her at her house in Pennsylvania. I saw her as the epitome of class and elegance. Her house had things like valances and a master bathroom and a chair in her bedroom just for reading and drinking coffee. I had a sliding closet door in my room at home which contained a toilet and sink, and the toilet never worked in all the years I lived there. The only use I ever found for it was as a secret beer cooler when I was in high school. Come to think of it, my sister didn’t have a secret beer cooler in her master bedroom, so maybe I actually won that point.

She got me a dark gray Revlon mechanical eyeliner pencil and persuaded me that bright blue eye shadow was not an acceptable alternative. I also learned to tweeze my eyebrows, though that produced mixed results, because I spent much of the next two years looking perpetually surprised.

The late 1970s and early 1980s had high expectations for teen girls. One did not leave the house without proper makeup application and a perfectly coordinated outfit with accessories. I had a royal blue satin jacket with white piping and a matching baseball cap, for crying out loud. They matched the blue and white pom-poms on my roller skates. I weep at the memory.

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Oh, wow…I forgot! I also had the shorts. This outfit in royal blue. But I also had the hat and the pom-poms, so I out-1978-ed Chrissy Snow.

Hair was sacred. Every day, without fail, girls were required to wash, dry, curl, style, and hairspray it into submission. Having long nails was also desirable, and I focused intently on growing my nails into uniform perfection. But it never failed–every time I was almost there, one would break, and I’d have to cut them all back and start over.

I adhered to this regimen through much of my adult life. Even when my weight was out of control, I kept it up. Then, sometime in my 40s, I asked myself, “Why the hell are you wasting so much time and effort on this?”

Good question.

Up until 2010, I worked outside the home, and continued to maintain “out in public” grooming standards. Since then, however, I’ve worked at home, and can honestly stay home for weeks at a time. I prefer it that way. By current cultural standards, I imagine I’ve “let myself go.”

Let’s compare.

Back then…

  • Meticulous makeup when leaving the house, and even at home if the husband was present.
  • Hair washed and styled daily.
  • Nails as long as possible, later transitioning to acrylic nails at a salon when it became clear my nails were never going to cooperate. Forced to endure contact and small talk with manicurist, which is one of the lesser circles of hell.
  • Clothing as stylish and coordinated as possible. Comfort optional.

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See? Cute as hell, but how many hours did I agonize over the perfect hair, makeup, and accessories? I mean, seriously, I even have a stupid red flower in my hair.

Now…

  • Makeup only when having “a night out,” which occurs only when Tom manages to lure me into the Out with promises of delicious seafood and copious adult beverages. Until recently, I used to also put on makeup if I had to endure some sort of extended interaction with someone, such as the veterinarian or groomer, but now I figure as long as I remember to shave my chin-whiskers and mustache, I’m good.
  • Hair…brushed. Usually. Until the last couple of years, I had my hair professionally cut and colored (to cover the pervasive, persistent gray), complete with highlights. But for the past year and a half, I’ve stopped coloring and have been trimming my hair at home. My stylist friends recoil in horror when I mention this, but there are many tutorials on YouTube, and it’s not that hard as long as you have very low standards.
  • Ironically, now that I don’t give a rodent’s derriere about my nails, they grow long and thick and I could probably rip open a tin can with them if I had to. Since I spend most of my day keyboarding, I have to cut them back more often than I apply makeup.
  • Clothing criteria have shifted from “stylish” to “fits and sort of matches and doesn’t squish my middle.” This includes stretchy shorts and tank tops in the summer, and leggings and weather-appropriate shirts in cooler weather. I feel fancy if my underwear matches my pants. Bras are only for social occasions.

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Hair, brushed…mostly. Makeup…none. Lack of makeup disguised by convenient sunglasses. Dogs perfectly groomed and adorable. As it should be.

I’m strangely okay with this. I’m not sure if Tom approves, but if he doesn’t, he’s been smart enough not to say anything about it. This might be slightly unfair, since he is the one who has to look at me, but the dogs have to look at me more, and they don’t mind. In fact, when I get a shower, they sort of look at me like “hey, you were just starting to smell right,” but even I realize they’re not the best judges of personal hygiene.

It’s liberating not to waste so much time and money. I’m baffled by the women I see on HGTV when they’re touring potential new homes and open the gigantic walk-in closet and sigh. “Oh, it’s so small.” (It’s roughly the square footage of the home I grew up in.) “I’ll never get all my things in here. Is there, like, a shoe closet somewhere?”

In October 2016, we attended the Walker Stalker Convention in Atlanta, and I was forced to buy new liquid makeup, blush, mascara, and lipstick, because I was fairly certain my liquid makeup was technically old enough to vote. I haven’t bought any since, and should be good for the next few years. I do still love my eyeliner, and if I wear cosmetics that is one thing I never skip, but I use it so rarely I haven’t run out since Atlanta.

By contrast, the Direwolves are shining examples of fashion and grooming. They have signature style Lupine collars with matching harnesses and leashes, and color-coordinated tags. They are bathed regularly (but not too often, because they are dogs and too much bathing is bad for the skin), their nails are kept trimmed, and Oliver receives a poodle-clip at Jill’s Pet Resort every six weeks.

Most women freak out if their stylist is on vacation when they need a cut and color. Oliver’s groomer was out on medical leave when he needed his most recent appointment, and I almost had a panic attack.

It’s not that I don’t care how I look. I just think it’s not nearly as important in the scheme of things as I’d been led to believe. By not wasting buckets of money on clothes and makeup, I have more for the important things, like yarn and dog toys.

It’s all about priorities.

Knowing What You Don’t Know

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On this date ten years ago, I posted this on Fermented Fur. At the time, I managed a holistic veterinary clinic, to give you a little context. I do need to ask Rachel about “the toilet and the sacrificial pen,” because I have no idea what that was all about.

Sometimes I realize all over again that I’m the smartest uneducated person I know. I just know stuff, but I don’t know how I know it. You know?

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Yeah, so, anyway, I had a brain-deadening day at work. We had a planning meeting first thing in the morning. (Translation: Me and all three doctors sitting around for forty-five minutes trying to figure out creative new forms of torture to reinforce with our employees the consequences of not doing their damned jobs.) This was followed by a marketing meeting in which Dr. Vet-Friend One and I worked out a plan for our next “program launch,” including educational material, logistics, staff training, blah blah blah, resulting in a 74.9 % increase in my workload.

Eventually it became lunchish, and at 12:45 I clocked out so I could write my daily blog for you, my discerning, loyal readers! Six minutes later, my intercom interrupted my musings about the glory of the golden retriever and my fervent wish to have a tail. Seemed I was going to need to cover the front desk so my poor, overworked receptionist could get a break. We were short-staffed because one of our techs has a litter of bulldog puppies at home, and apparently you have to hand-feed them because mama bulldogs will smush them (not on purpose, probably), so she had to go home and tend to the little fuzzies.

If appointments hadn’t run late in the morning, I’d have still have had someone to listen for the phone while the receptionist went to stave off hypoglycemia. This was all fine. I did reception work all my adult life and am more than capable (and damned good at it, even though I hate it with a white-hot passion). What was not fine was that I didn’t learn of this situation until about three minutes before I had to go up there. I need time to prepare, plan, figure out when I will get to take my own break, and get stuff ready to take up there with me to work on. Or find a way out of it altogether. It was another hour before I got to take my own shortened break and hammer out my blog so I could get back to my lengthy to-do list.

Wow, this wasn’t supposed to be a work rant. In fact, I seem to recall saying in my Forbidden Topics blog that I wouldn’t discuss work. I should probably listen to myself more often. But not today.

I got home, and my lovely honey-bunny had dinner ready, and the dogs were already fed. The day was looking up (what was left of it). We settled in on our respective couches. He sits on the nice leather one, and I sit on the furry dog-friendly love seat known as the Sofur. My choice. I like to be where I can have canine company. I’m currently debating whether I need to cover the slip cover with a slip cover, because it’s getting totally gross, but it’s such a pain to get it off to wash it, and even more of a pain to get back on. Wrestling, tugging, stuffing, cramming, straps, buckles, safety pins, bleeding fingers, etc. Maybe we should just get a new love seat. Okay, worry about that later.

A story preview came on the TV, some bit that was going to be on the news later, about some people who threw their baby out the window of a burning building to save its life. The conversation that followed perfectly illustrated the gaps in my formal education.

Me: I wonder if there was someone down there to catch the baby. Or a net or something.

Tom: There had to be. Otherwise, wouldn’t they have just jumped out, too?

Me: Why would they jump out? (Picturing a pulverized parent, topped with a pair of intact arms clutching a very confused baby)

Tom: Couldn’t they just jump, then right before they hit the ground, toss the baby up in the air?

(I thought he was kidding, but now I’m pretty sure he wasn’t. Or maybe he really just wanted to test my science trivia knowledge.)

Me: What? No. It doesn’t work that way.

Tom: Why not?

Me: (Mentally flipping through notes from every science class I ever took, which apparently was at least one too few) I don’t know. It just doesn’t.

Tom: Yes, it does. It has to.

This troubles me, because it certainly seems as if it should work that way. I mean, there you are, a couple of feet from impact, but if you toss the baby in the air, wouldn’t that reverse its momentum, thereby either negating or lessening impending smushage? Acceleration of 32 feet per second per second. I remember that, but have no idea how it applies to this situation. Yet I know that it does not, in fact, work this way, though I have no evidence, no facts to cite, no ammunition with which to arm my argument.

Me: No, it doesn’t. Call The Boy. (The Boy is a science nerd, and totally knows everything about such things)

No move is made to call The Boy. We suspect he will think we are both idiots, and we will hear his eyes rolling from 25 miles away.

Me: (Thinking of an episode of Myth Busters) No, seriously, I know it doesn’t work that way. It’s like in an elevator when it’s crashing. You can’t just jump up right before it hits the bottom of the shaft. It doesn’t work. Otherwise nobody would ever die in elevator crashes.

At this point, I’m wondering if the same argument could be applied to plane crashes, because people clearly die in plane crashes all the time. I’m not sure there are all that many elevator crashes. I’m frustrated, because this is one of those things I know, but don’t know how I know it. It sure seems that if you toss the baby up right before you hit the ground, the baby wouldn’t hit the ground at terminal velocity. But I know there’s a clear scientific principle that explains why the baby would still end up a 10-pound maraca. Maybe if I hadn’t exhausted my daily allotment of brain function at work, I’d be able to figure this out.

About here is where the conversation fizzled out. I was thinking, “This is absurd. I can’t believe we’re having this discussion. Am I really this stupid? Why don’t I know this? This conversation reminds me of Rachel and Ryan and the toilet and the sacrificial pen. (Don’t ask.) Could be a good blog, though.”

I wandered over to my overworked laptop, which still hadn’t fully cooled down from giving its all today at work. I Googled “jump up before elevator crashes” and got a whole bunch of very detailed, informative hits, none of which I fully understood. There were calculations and formulas and such.

There was talk about how if the elevator is falling at 60 mph, you can’t jump up from a standing start at enough velocity to make any difference. And if you don’t time it perfectly, you will quickly regain any tiny fraction of momentum you lost by jumping.

One site said the best bet would be to get on top of another passenger, so they could cushion your fall. Preferably a person with a high body fat content. This sounded like a good plan to me, since I am quite brittle. They also pointed out that more people die falling down stairs each year (Yep. Stairs are treacherous, especially when the stair-user is tanked.) so we should all stop worrying about elevators.

By this time, I completely forgot what this had to do with babies and burning buildings. Frankly, I no longer care. I’m just annoyed that I, a semi-intelligent 43-year-old person, can’t organize simple facts about something that should be easy to explain. I’m still halfway tempted to call The Boy.

My plan is to avoid elevators which might be about to fall. I also suggest staying out of burning buildings, and if that is unavoidable, it’s probably better to throw your baby toward a dumpster or bush or waiting good Samaritan than to jump while holding the baby and try to calculate your velocity and how hard to throw the baby at which precise instant so it doesn’t end up looking like Flat Stanley. I am also in favor of avoiding stairs, given my recent troubles in that area. The earth is our mother, and we should endeavor to remain in close contact with her at all times.

However, I do have to get on a plane next week to go to Las Vegas. If it begins to crash, I will not attempt to save myself by jumping upward at the penultimate moment. Instead, I will decide that sobriety is highly overrated, and I will commandeer the drinky cart and consume as many of those teeny tiny bottles of liquor as possible before impact. If I’m going to be reduced to a fine grind or a smoldering hunk of charcoal, I’d rather be in the middle of an alcohol-induced blackout at the time.

We never did bother to watch the story about the baby and the burning building. I’m assuming it turned out fine, because the commentators didn’t use the word “tragedy” eighteen times in the preview. If it had been even remotely tragic, they’d have said it. A lot.

The real tragedy is that I can’t explain why tossing the baby in the air just before you hit the ground wouldn’t help.

But the most important thing of all is that we were not talking about it being a puppy in the burning building, because that would have freaked me out. What kind of puppy? How old? What’s his name? How high up was he? Who caught him? Was he scared? Was he hurt? Is he okay? Did he have smoke inhalation?

Of course if it had been a dog, he would have alerted his family before the fire got out of control, and we wouldn’t be having this conversation at all.