@ the ladybug picnic

laundry duty.

2012-02-10T16:30:00.002-05:00

"Do you and Josh do each other's laundry?"

As she asks this, I am folding a pair of boxer shorts, so I guess the question is answered. She and her boyfriend are planning to move in together. They are looking for a house, which I guess is the fun part, and talking about laundry, which is probably not. He told her already that he thinks they should each do only their own laundry.

"Well, when laundry needs to be done, it gets done," is my response. She looks shocked, and I don't know why. I can't figure out if I sounded like a whip-cracker or a doormat.

We don't have any official division of labor. There's no chart with our names and a list of chores. We are both capable of recognizing when something needs to be done and we are equally capable of taking care of it. We are also both slobs, and so some things are allowed to slide for a while. Since our toleration for mess is similar, this doesn't create a problem. My sister, the other slobby one, married a man who had a very tidy mother. While he wants things to be clean, he doesn't necessarily want to spend his time scrubbing baseboards. They must have made their peace over this. Their house is not particularly clean. Equality is awesome, y'all.

I remember when I lived with roommates, the division of chores was an issue. One roommate wanted us to each be responsible for ourselves. In her system, each person would buy their own food and wash their own dishes. I didn't like this system. For one thing, it seemed reasonable that we could share some staple items, provided we each contributed in restocking. I mean, were we each supposed to buy our own toilet paper? This did not extend to specialty items, like fancy foods or alcohol. But by all means, have some of my milk, it's fine. I also thought that washing each individual dish as it was used was inefficient. However, my more communal system does require everyone to chip in of their own accord.

It didn't quite work out to anyone's ideas. But we were all pretty non-confrontational, so while there was grumbling, there were few actual fights. Still, there was enough tension about it that when I moved out, that was one of the things I relished most about living alone. Only then do both systems work together. All restocking and cleaning acts are communal, because there is a commune of one. I could wash the dishes or leave them, and the only person who cared was me.

But there has never been that kind of tension between me and Josh. I already wanted a team system with my roommates, so it seemed even more obvious that a romantic couple living together would be that way. Even the census forms we filled out indicated as much; we registered as "partners." These dishes need to be washed, so wash them. This laundry needs to be done, so do it. And it seems to have worked out fine. I have never felt resentful about the things I do, and I feel grateful for the things he does.

Every once in a while, I will wish that he did a little something more, or rather, something differently. Sometimes when I come home from work, the dog's water bowl is empty. Now, I always feed the dog. But he is home during the day because of his schedule, so he usually walks her. We didn't sit down and discuss this, it just worked out that way. But the water is something that needs to be monitored, rather than something that can be done on a schedule. So I just asked him to please check on her water before he goes to work, because sometimes it was empty. He said absolutely, sorry for not doing it before. And that was it. I mentioned before that he would do laundry when he needed clean work clothes (which is more often than I would need to do laundry), but I was resentful that none of my clothes ever made it from the hamper into that load of black pants and black shirts. I mentioned it to him, and the next time I folded a pile of clothes that he had washed, I found several of my things in there.

I'm not trying to say that our relationship is superior to anyone's, nor that we will never have squabbles over household contributions (we had quite a fantastic blow-out during the cleaning frenzy leading up to Christmas - crying and name-calling). Lord knows how well this will hold up when there are children, who are walking mess-machines. We just have a system that works for us right now because we both want it to work.

The snooty part of me thinks that if you're arguing about laundry before you even move in together, it's a bad sign. However, I did not voice this thought to her, because I have made a lot of improvements on the filter between my head and my mouth. Plus, there's no reason they wouldn't be able to work something out that makes them both happy. Maybe they'll be celebrating their 50th anniversary, each still washing their own clothes.

buck oh eight.

2012-02-08T16:20:00.001-05:00

Sometimes, when my will is weak, I stop at McDonalds on the way to work for a cup of coffee. It is a waste of time and money to do so. I have coffee at home and tea at work. McDonald's isn't even actually on my way; I have to drive a couple of stoplights past my usual turn to get there. But I do like the coffee and the whole ritual of making an unnecessary stop for a little treat.

Also, I sorta like just going to McDonalds. Besides the coffee, one thing I like is the cross-section of America you can find underneath the golden arches. There are tables of retired men, who drink their tiny senior cups of coffee while reading the newspapers and chewing the fat. There are young professional types like me, though most of them evidently work at offices that require a bit more effort in the appearance of their employees. Truckloads of construction workers stop off on their way to a site. Half of the staff behind the counter is bilingual, and they switch effortlessly between languages depending on who is ordering.

I was waiting my turn in line. The guy in front of me, a scraggly middle-aged black man in a faded sweatshirt and jeans, ordered a coffee. All sizes of coffee are a buck at this particular Mickey D's, and so the total was $1.08. He had a single and a five. To avoid breaking the five, he asked his friend if he had any change. The friend did not. I sensed an opportunity to be a nice person, so I stepped forward and offered a dime from my coin purse. By that time, the clerk already had the dude's fiver, so the larger bill was going to be broken anyway. Oh well.

The man got his $4.02 back. He gave me the two pennies, which I expected. And then he stuffed another dollar into my hand. Apparently, giving out dimes could possibly be a very good investment opportunity, reaping an immediate 900% return on investment. I tried to say no, because it was completely unnecessary. Plus, it sort of took the shine off my nice gesture by rewarding it. But he was insistent, saying, "You might need it someday." I shrugged and relented. I wondered if it was important to him that I not think he needed it today, just like it was important to me for him to not think I piped up with the expectation of a reward.

I ordered my coffee and paid my own $1.08. I stuffed the extra dollar into the Ronald McDonald House donation box. Pass it on, pass it on.

thaings bin tuff.

2012-02-05T13:00:00.000-05:00

I'm about to divulge some super-secret information here. So listen up, and I will tell you about a secret message inside my house.

Yesterday, you learned about the map of my property which hangs proudly in the house which it illustrates. You also learned that I bought the frame secondhand. The frame is hand-made. If you turn it around, you can see the where they stopped staining the wood. They did a good job, certainly better than most anything I've ever made.

When I bought the frame, it was displaying a painting of a little girl standing in a field of sunflowers. That description sounds very nice and soothing, but the picture was not. There was something creepy and sad about it, like it was a picture of little Jenny from Forrest Gump hiding from her drunk and abusive father. I couldn't find a copy of it online, though I did find many nice pictures of little girls in sunflower fields. Art is art, and maybe this picture was meant to be depressing, but I wouldn't want it in my house.

As it happens, it is in my house. The picture was printed on some kind of sturdy cardboard, and so I kept it to be the backing and just covered up the front with my map. I will probably never have to look at it again, because the map is sorta fragile and I'm not going to risk damaging it by removing it from the frame. However, the creepy sunflower girl picture is not the secret.

The secret is on the back of the sunflower picture. There is a message, presumably written by whoever gifted the homemade frame and picture. I reproduce that message exactly for you here.

Baby,
Happy V. Day. I just won't you to know that I love you so much. Sorry if some times you don't think I am showing it enough. Becuase I say things the wrong way. I am trying my hardest every day to say things the right way. I know that thaings bin tuff for you and me but I know that we are two strong people who wont a happy famiely. I know you are trying. So am I. I know we can make it. Deep in my heart I know I married a very special wife and going to be mommy. Who try's her best. I also know you are doing a great job in beeing a good wife. It is tuff but you can do it you are a lot stronger then you think. So give your self alot of credit. Thing's will get better because together we can beat any battle together because we are a strong team.
Love your,
Husband

I am spoiled, because I date a poet, but I have to agree that the fella had a tendency to say things the wrong way. Well, he made a nice frame, even if his writing skills weren't great. Hey, he is trying, and that's not nothing.

It is easy for me to come up with a horrifying picture based on this message. Something about the combination of terrible spelling, a troubled marriage, and a baby on the way paints an image more vividly sad than the little girl in the sunflowers. But that's not fair. I have an official personal policy to assume the best when I'll never know one way or the other. The story that I invent around this message only affects my mental state. So let's just all assume that these two kids worked it out and their baby grew up to win the Nobel Prize.

This is the kind of thing you end up with when you shop at the thrift store. Pretty much everything has its own little history, though usually it's not written in sharpie on the back (though sometimes the Goodwill price is). And now you know one of my house's secrets. Feel special.

you are here.

2012-02-04T13:55:00.000-05:00

It is a well-documented fact that I love maps. When you blog, all sorts of useless information gets documented. No one was ever able to put down in writing the location of the Holy Grail, but at least future generations will know that I really like maps, hate cantaloupe, and that once I got locked in a Goodwill dressing room.

How much do I like maps? Well, I have one in pretty much every room in my house, including one of the bathrooms. You might find this to be excessive, but I promise that each map is different. If you are not a map person, you may think that a map is a map is a map, but that's just not true. It's not just that they show different locations, which they do, but they are different kinds of maps. They communicate the concept of geography in different ways, depending on their initial purpose. So my topographical map is different than my elementary schoolroom map, which is in turn different from my geological survey map.

The very first thing that you will see upon entering my home is a map. It hangs in the foyer, facing the front door. It is a map of the very property on which you stand.

When I bought the house, the previous owners gave me a landscaping plan that had been drawn up, but never implemented. It was a grand plan, done by a real professional landscaper. It is hand-drawn in pencil and ink, dated September 25, 1989. The house was built in 1984, so it's likely the first owners had this done. And then they never implemented this grand scheme of foliage. I'm glad they didn't. If they had, I might not have even bought the house. What enticed me were the trees, and while the interior of the house is truly marvelous, had the exterior been dotted with variegated ligustrum and dwarf abelia and white caladium, I might not have looked any closer. I would have said, man, that looks like a lot of work. Trees are beautiful landscaping that require no upkeep.

So they gave me this diagram, along with a set of house keys. Likely, the previous owners had given it to them and they didn't know what to do with it but keep it. It was rolled up and flattened, having been passed down from owner to owner, all of them too lazy or too tree-hugging to put it into effect, but not willing to get rid of it.

I thought it was pretty neat, a totally unexpected part of the home-buying transaction. A couple weeks later, I serendipitously found a rustic wooden and burlap frame at Goodwill that fit perfectly, and I hung it up in my new foyer. I just thought it was a cool drawing, but then later, I realized it was yet another map (I'm a little slow). Josh says it was a weird thing to display, but it seemed glaringly obvious to me. Maybe it is weird, but it's also fantastic. Really, how many people have a hand-drawn map of their land? It's so specific; you could put a "YOU ARE HERE" sticker on it. I like my maps to show places that I love, and I love this tiny piece of the world.

Someday, I will probably leave this house. At that point, I will have to make the hard decision whether to pass the map down to the next owner. I am already resisting the idea. Right now, it is a map of my property, but then it will be a map of my first home (sentimental maps!). How will I know that the next people will appreciate and love this drawing the way that I do? They may have great taste in houses, but they may not be map people, and even if I gift them the frame, they might just shove it in a closet somewhere, or worse, throw it away.

I guess I'll just have to keep it. Oh well!

the revolution.

2012-02-03T16:57:00.000-05:00

Note: A dude at work lent me book by Ron Paul, The Revolution: A Manifesto. He is a True Believer. I try really hard to avoid discussing politics at work (okay, anywhere), but I let my guard down and got pulled into a conversation and then I was given a book (that's how much I dislike discussing politics - I think of it as something I have to guard against). Anyway, this is my response that I sent to him in an email. After I finished writing it, I thought I might as well throw it up here. Which may be a mistake, as it seems to be starting a political discussion.

I have no problem with ending the war on terror and the war on drugs. By all means, reduce our military drastically and stop with the undeclared wars. Legalize pot. What we've been doing has not been working, so let's try something else. As for the stuff about the Federal Reserve, I know next to nothing about it, so I don't feel qualified to say one way or the other.

I do have a problem with ending the social safety net. The system is imperfect, not sustainable as it is, and it may even encourage dependency like he says. But I'm not willing to say that government does not have a place in taking care of the poor. He says that before we had these programs, then the poor were provided for by other people. It's quite a nice picture - remember when the government minded it's own dang business and we all just took care of each other? I have no doubt that Paul and many people he knew did work for free or reduced pay. But that is anecdotal evidence and gives no indication of how well this provided for the poor. I talked to Mike the other day, who said that with a reduced tax burden (as well as not having the idea that they are helping the poor through their taxes), people would care more for each other. I'm just not sure that's true. He called it cynicism, but I call it realism (but that's exactly what a cynic would say).

Part of the reason that I am so skeptical of the rosy picture Paul painted is because I recently read a rebuttal of his statement that that the Civil War was unnecessary, that Lincoln should've just bought the slaves. One of the books that he recommends in the back is The Real Lincoln, which is along these lines. This is just...wrong. Here is the debunking, in four parts:
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

I know I'm responding to stuff that was not in the book, but my point is that I don't trust Paul's version of history, even history that he personally remembers. Memory is faulty, and his perspective is one of white male privilege (gah, I sound like such a liberal). That's not his fault, of course, but to assume that his perspective tells the whole picture is ridiculous.

He does not say much about the Civil Rights era. He does sort of gloss over Jim Crow as an unfortunate side effect of people have the freedom to govern themselves, which sort of made my eyes cross. He does not say how he feels about the integration of schools. Rand Paul got in some trouble for saying he would've voted against the Civil Rights Act. Those things were local government acting on the will of the people. Sometimes the will of the people is racist and wrong, and we need something to step in and say no, guys, we can't do it like this. Whether government should play that role, I don't know. I'm not sure who else would, but it's hard to imagine because I have grown up in the world where that was part of government's place. I just have a hard time saying that the federal government stepping in and taking away the right for states to set voting laws that prevented whole segments of the population from having a voice is necessarily bad.

Government is just people. We get some things right, we screw other things up. Just like individuals, we're all just guessing what the right thing to do is. Anything that gets too big has the tendency to become corrupt and inefficient, because it's just a magnifier of all our worst traits. I guess that's a concentration of power thing, but government is just one example of that (see also: corporations, unions, religious institutions, probably others).

I think Ron Paul is a good man, and I'm glad that someone is saying these things. Our government probably is too big, but I don't necessarily want his version either. His base is young, and it may be years before his real influence is known. I was already planning on voting for him in the primary, though you have to admit the other choices are not very inspiring, when they're not outright repellant. But the more I see of the world, the more complicated it gets. I am suspicious of anyone who says there is one answer to everything.

Thank you for lending me the book. It's good that I have a firm grasp of what he is saying, rather than hearing everything secondhand.

don't y'all love your phones?

2012-01-31T17:33:00.002-05:00

Fifteen years ago, "new phone day" meant nothing. And fifteen years from now, well, really, who can guess? So the day that your cell phone contract runs out and you can get a new phone is probably a special and specific thing to right here and right now. Think of all the advertising generated by companies trying to sell you the contract with the promise of a new gadget. Some of that is going to survive, just because there is so much of it, and future generations will use it more than our great works of art to figure out what it was like for middle class Americans at the beginning of the 21st century. Man, these people really loved their phones.

My new phone day came up a couple weeks back. Josh and I both ended up getting Droid Bionics. I even found some neat bionic sounding ringtones. He used the same built-in one that he used before, which I think is boring, but whatever. The Bionic is a 4G, so it has the new technology. I was talked into this by a guy at work, who reminded me that I was going to have this thing for another two years, at which point they would probably have like 10 Gs. The stupid things upsell themselves. The Bionic is not the newest and shiniest, but considering how quickly new models come out, whatever I got was going to be immediately obsolete. So I decided to save a couple bucks by getting slightly older, but still new technology.

Another thing I learned by talking to people who get really excited about looking at phones, even when they are not in the market for a new one: you can get your phone cheaper if you order it through Amazon, and holy crap, that saved me $80. So I pass that along to you. Tell everyone you know.

My mom asked about all the new and crazy things that my phone could do, which is the kind of question that a person with a regular phone asks (regular cell phones are called "feature phones," which is their way of distracting you from the fact that it has fewer, you know, features). My phone does not do much more than my old one. It just does everything faster and better. We have discovered exactly one new feature - FaceTime. You can have your own personal video conference with someone. Josh and I tried this out while standing about three feet away from each other. I remember there used to be such things as video phones (seems like there was a Designing Women episode about it), but they were impractical, because even if you got one, no one else had one. And now we have them and it's no big deal.

Whenever my mom had her most recent new phone day (it sounds like some weird rite of passage, doesn't it?), she considered joining the smartphone crowd. But she frugally decided not to, explaining that she "just doesn't use her phone that much." Maybe it's impossible to explain to the feature phone crowd, but the reason you don't use your phone that much is because you cannot check your email or do crossword puzzles or check your stocks or tune your guitar or look up ANYTHING on Wikipedia or play asynchronous hangman with your best friend in Boise.

These are not really phones anymore. If you ran Skype off your laptop, you would not suddenly start calling it a phone. These are little pocket computers, and one of their features is the ability to make calls. But it also navigates me to yard sales, so you could just as easily call it a GPS. It gives me instant access to email, so I could call it my portable mail device. I play games on it, so I could also say that I just got a new GameBoy. The power of these things is in the programs they run. The "phone" provides a platform for applications to do any old thing you could possibly want, and so it becomes all those things. That's why my new phone doesn't do that much more than my old one. Because my old one already did most everything.

During the Flaming Lips concert, at one point, the guitarist used his phone to call up some sort of synthesizer app, where you use the touchpad to control the tone (whoever you are, there is an app for you). He played that through the microphone for a song. In that moment, his phone became a theremin. While this was happening, Wayne asked, in that sort of dreamy way of his, "Don't y'all love your phones?"

Later, he asked the same thing about the moon, which was bright and vivid that night. I do not equate my phone with the moon, but I do love my phone.

scanners.

2012-01-27T17:19:00.003-05:00

Twice recently, I was browsing the book section in a thrift store when I came across some scanners. These are book resellers. They buy books from thrift stores or yard sales, then resell them online through various online marketplaces. There are tons of websites that facilitate this - Amazon, Half, eBay. It's one of the great things about the internet that sellers of unusual and obscure things have been connected to prospective buyers. One of the downsides to shopping secondhand is the limited selection. The internet has solved this problem by creating the world's biggest flea market, with individual booths spread out all over the world. I often see the limited local selection as the hand of fate - what I find determines what I buy, rather than what I want to buy determining what I look for. But when I do want a specific thing, the global flea market does not let me down. And I can still pay secondhand prices!

Internet, schminternet, I don't like scanners. I call them that because they carry around little devices that scan barcodes and tell them how much a book costs. My cell phone can do this, but the devices that are made to do that one thing are faster and better at it. While "scanner" is the name of the tell-tale equipment of a reseller, you could call the person a scanner, too. When I am picking out books, I look at the cover, the title, the author, the reviews, maybe read a few pages. The scanner's examination of each book is only cursory. Like the electronic scanner translates an ISBN into a price, a scanner reduces a book to its market value, too.

None of that is fair at all. The only reason the scanners bother me is because they occasionally are in my way, or I am afraid that they are going to buy a book that I want (as if I didn't have too many already). I recognize that these are not valid reasons to invent derogatory nicknames for a group of people, so I invent more noble reasons for disliking them. I like to think that my reason for wanting the book is more legitimate somehow. I'm going to read it, which is what a book is for. The scanner is just going to sell it. Pah! Of course, he's going to sell it to someone who will probably read it. Not to mention the fact that after I read it, I will take it to a used book store and exchange it for store credit. Logically, my position is no better than a scanner's, but it feels like it should be.

The first time I met a scanner was at Goodwill. It was a husband and wife team. For some reason, I channelled my mother and talked to a stranger in a store.

"You guys are resellers?" I almost called them scanners. They were very friendly, so I talked to them for a while. Did you know that one way to learn about the world is to talk to people? It's true. My mother taught me that.

These people, these scanners, went to thrift stores and yard sales every weekend (just like me). They'd gotten into it because they loved books. He had a regular job, but she had quit her retail sales job at the mall to be a reseller full-time. She gave me a card for their shop. They told me about how some resellers just use the scanner to look at the price and don't care about the book at all. The man, still looking at the books while we talked, told me that he could usually find a stack of books even after another scanner has just gone through them. He pulled a book from the shelf, one called Daughters of the Conquistadores: Women of the Viceroyalty of Peru. Freaking obscure. And I decided that I was perfectly okay with what these particular people were doing. Maybe somewhere out there is someone who desperately wants to read about the role of women in sixteenth century South America, but they may not live anywhere near the Goodwill on New Market Road, nor do they know that the book is there. But! Now they can get a good price on it from this guy.

After I walked away, I heard them talking to a lady who sells dolls on eBay. She was telling them with great gusto about laws that regulate what kind of toys you can ship to Italy. The world is strange.

The second time I met a scanner was at the Durham Rescue Mission. I'm not supposed to be buying books at all, because even though I am reading a lot now, I still have stacks and stacks of books in my to-read pile(s). I've bought fewer books since I put myself on a buying diet, but there are times when you find something amazing for fifty cents. And then Josh brought home a calendar from the Rescue Mission with coupons for each month, with January's coupon offering ten free books. Pricewise, this is really only 5 free books, because the Rescue Mission has so many dang books that they are perpetually buy-one-get-one-free. But I decided that I was allowed to go redeem my coupon. It would be wasteful not to, right? Right.

As I was looking, a dude came by with a scanner. He glanced at each shelf, picked up one book and scanned it, then put it back. Then he muttered something to himself and went away. At that moment, I felt redeemed in looking askance at scanners, because clearly, that guy did not care about books. I did not try and learn about the world by talking to him. What would I want to learn from a mean old book-exploiter anyway?

But he did the same thing a few more times. Ten minutes would pass, and he would come back, glance around and leave. Like I said, there are a lot of books there, and so it was taking me a while to look through them to pick out my ten (It took me an hour to pick out fourteen before I just stopped looking, then I had to decide which four to put back). Once, when he came back, he said, "Ha, I keep running into you!" I gave a non-committal friendly chuckle, but what I wanted to point out was that I hadn't gone anywhere.

I finally got the idea that he was waiting for me to leave the book section. For whatever reason, he did not feel comfortable looking for books while I was there. It could have been that he was just not much for being in close proximity with other people. Or maybe he thought I was competition. Perhaps he could sense that I did not trust scanners and he was in fear of my wrath ("Take that! And that! I buy books to READ, you illiterate jerk!") I don't know. I have no reasonable guesses. But I did feel a kind of small pleasure, as if I had defeated him by driving him away from the books so that the actual readers could look at them. Geez, I'm petty.

I would like to make peace with the scanners, just because I'm bound to come across them from time to time and it would be nice to not feel irritable during those times. They are not my competition. They buy stuff from the secondhand market, which I wish more people would do. They probably love books, which is why they decided to become resellers. And even if they don't, they are doing the world a service by increasing the selection at the global flea market.

charades.

2012-01-22T15:50:00.000-05:00

The brunch had been scheduled to happen on a Sunday morning while Josh was on tour. That was just fine with me, in fact, it was perfect. I like my social gatherings to happen while he's going to be gone anyway, so that I don't have to choose between the gathering and spending time with him. But then it got postponed to the first Sunday he was back. That was less than ideal, but I said I would be there anyway.

The night before the brunch, I was filled with dread. Why would I want to go hang out with a bunch of people when I could stay home with the one person I like most in the whole world? That's not fair to the brunch ladies. I knew most of them and liked the ones I knew. It was not a dislike of them that filled me with dread. It's just that socializing makes me so tired. Thinking about it makes me tired, too. I have to make myself do it, because I've analyzed the data, and I've decided that it's good for me. Sometimes I have fun and sometimes I don't, but it's become clear that I need to have friends that are not Josh.

So I make myself be social. It's so stupid. Why should I have to make myself go out and do fun things with fun people? I have no complaints about the women that I have met through meetups. With few exceptions, they have been smart, funny, interesting people. I've been to enough events that I can pick out which ones will be the ones I'll enjoy rather than the ones where it's all awkward get-to-know-you conversation. It's not them, it is all me.

I knew enough people at the brunch to be a part of the conversations. I ate the food and drank the coffee and mimosas. There were boys there - three of them. I had thought about asking Katie, the hostess, whether I could bring Josh along. But then I didn't want to be that woman who always has to have her man with her. Plus, I knew I'd spend my time talking to him.

Then the board games came out - Cranium, something called Loaded Questions, and Taboo. I like Taboo. I've had good times playing Taboo. I've played Cranium only once before and did not particularly like it. It's trying to be all kinds of games at once - Pictionary, Charades, and Trivial Pursuit. Loaded Questions advertised itself as being "for adults," and I was concerned that it would involve answering personal questions. There just wasn't enough champagne to make enough mimosas for me to be willing to share openly with people that I don't know very well at all. Whereas I do a reasonably good job faking my way through most social situations, that was one where I was going to be sitting by myself in the corner.

We played Cranium. I was so relieved that it was not Loaded Questions that I didn't mind.

The group that was playing was sitting in a circle on the floor, while a few people like me were on the perimeter. I realized that other people were choosing to opt out. I considered my options. I could also sit back and watch, but I imagined that turning into me sitting back and looking out the window or sitting back and browsing the internet on my phone. I'd driven all the way to Durham to come to this, for my own good, and so I was going to participate.

Katie, who was throwing the brunch, said she would be my partner. She and I are not particularly close, but she is probably my one friend in Raleigh. I set out to make new friends by going to meetups, and I made one. This is progress. I was grateful to her for volunteering to be my partner, even if I could see she was trying to get people to play. She was helping me, and while I felt embarrassed that this was necessary, I was also touched. It's a shame that a twenty-eight-year-old woman needs to be personally invited to play a board game, but at the same time, oh-my-goodness-thank-heavens-katie-wants-to-be-my-partner.

When it was our turn, our card came up as a Charades game. We had to decide who would act and who would guess. Katie volunteered to perform, saying that it was a job for the extrovert on our team. She did an impersonation of Fonzie, and after four guesses (Fonzie, Arthur Fonzarelli, Henry Winkler, The Fonz), I finally picked the specific wording that was on the card. Everyone was impressed by my knowledge of The Fonz.

As the game went on, I started feeling like I wanted, no, needed to leave. This is a feeling I'm very familiar with. I just feel very strongly like I need to get out of there. It's almost like sensing danger. It's not quite at fight or flight levels, but everything is colored by a vague urge to be away from wherever I am or else (or else what?). Away from people. I have no idea how others perceive me, but inside I'm anxious and twitchy: need to leave, need to leave, need to leave. Even when I'm having a lot of fun, that feeling comes on. I don't know how to predict it or make it go away. It's like I hit a wall, where suddenly I can socialize no more.

It used to be a huge problem at Josh's shows. I would hit my wall, but I would have to stay because the show wasn't over or the equipment wasn't packed or Josh wanted to hang out with his friends. I even learned how to dismantle and pack up the drum kit so I could leave more quickly. It took a while for me to realize that I was the problem. Aside from being sort of aloof and sullen, I was making Josh miserable, too. I have made great strides in this. I still hit the wall, but I don't make my boyfriend miserable anymore. That bar is so low that it's depressing to admit how much of an improvement it is.

I have no concept of how common these feelings are. My impression has always been that it's just me, because everyone else seems to be having fun. They could be faking it, too. After I got home from the brunch, I told Josh about my wall. He knew exactly what I was talking about; turns out he has one, too. Apparently what I've always thought of as "my wall" is more commonly called "being an introvert." Maybe the reason I never see anyone else feeling that way is because all the other introverts just stayed home.

I thought about what Katie said about being the extrovert. I was surprised to find that a.) she is an extrovert, and b.) it's glaringly obvious that I am not. I wonder what gave me away (no, really, I do). I'm always surprised to meet people like her. They're so foreign to me that I don't really believe they exist. Once I met another one at a dinner meetup. It was her very first meetup, and about halfway through, she said to me, "This is just another one of those times when I meet a bunch of people and I immediately feel like we've all been best friends for years. You know?" And I was flabbergasted. That had never, ever, ever (ever!) happened to me. Is that what it's like to be an extrovert? I have so little concept of what it must be like that I can't even tell whether it would be a good thing.

It was appropriate that Katie would be the acting half of the Charades team. To me, socializing is performing. I can't tell whether the extroverts don't feel that way or if that's what they like about it. I've always felt like I couldn't really relax and be myself except with a few people that I know very well. I am myself, but sort of a lesser version. Sandra Lite, if you will. It's exhausting being someone else, even if that person is a subset of yourself.

For the most part, I don't mind being an introvert. But I recognize that there are times when I will have to remain in the company of other people long after I've hit the wall. I would like to not be miserable for no reason. Having reached my socialization quota is not one. If having a wall is common, has anyone figured out how to scale it?

it's complicated.

2012-01-21T15:21:00.000-05:00

My book club's most recent selection was The Leisure Seeker, by Michael Zadoorian. This is not a book that I would have ever picked up on my own - it's about two old people going on a road trip. I have nothing against the elderly or extended car rides, but it just didn't sound interesting. That's one more point in favor of the book club - my horizons can always use a good broadening.

That said, I loved this book. It was told from the point of view of an old lady with lots and lots of cancer inside her. Her husband has Alzheimers. So they go on a road trip, taking what's left of Route 66 to Disneyland. They've been together a long time, and in their current fragile states, rely on each other even more. The wife is old, overweight, and in pain, so she relies on her husband for mobility and support. He doesn't know where he is a lot of the time, not to mention how he got there or what year it is or that his baby daughter is now middle-aged. The one thing that he consistently knows is that his wife is his anchor.

Since it is told from her point of view, we get a lot of her frustrations of dealing with him. He wanders off once, and she has to bum a ride with a complete stranger to go looking for him. He will ask her the same question every two minutes, forgetting that he asked her before. He asks about friends who died many years ago, and she has to choose between lying to him or breaking the awful news to him over and over again. He has forgotten how to do many things.

Once, when she is particularly annoyed, the wife thinks to herself that he's just faking it out of laziness. It's a cold and cruel thought, but I can't say that I wouldn't have had the same one in her position. Often I've thought that someone was doing something to me, when really they were just acting the way they thought best, with no thought on how it would affect me. Lucy Grealy once wrote, "Part of the job of being human is to consistently underestimate our effect on other people."

All the while the wife is worrying and looking out for him and sometimes sniping at him, her love for him is never uncertain to the reader. She craves and cherishes his few and fleeting moments of lucidity. (One particularly heartbreaking scene was when he was his old self, talking over some of his memories while she was in incredible pain from her sickness. The conversation and the discomfort battled for her attention; she remarked that when you are old, there are no perfect moments.) But if you only saw her sniping at him or suspecting him of faking dementia, you might think she was an awful mean old woman who didn't love this old man at all.

Love makes us stick with somebody even when they make us miserable. There is this idea that love is supposed to make us happy, and the disconnect from that idea and the reality of loving an actual, fully-formed person sometimes makes the hard times worse. We think it's not supposed to be that way. Love, of course, does not care what it's supposed to be. It just is, and if we don't like it, I guess we can opt out.

Some women in the book club absolutely hated this book. Of the ones who really despised it, most of them were currently or had previously dealt with elderly relatives. One woman was apparently having a hard time with her mother; her main complaint with the book was that it barely said anything about the children of these renegade old people (in fact, it portrayed them as whiny and interfering). She didn't talk much about her mom or the situation, but what she said was laced with bile. You would think that she hated her mother. But I don't think she did. She probably loves her mother as much as any sailor with a Mom tattoo. It's just complicated. Because we're complicated, and the people we love are complicated, and so love is complicated.

Probably better than the alternative, though.

of, by, and for.

2012-01-20T14:57:00.001-05:00

The walls of Deep South Bar are red, though it's hard to tell just what kind of red because the place is a bar, and bars don't make money off bright lighting. If you saw that lady at the other end of the bar under florescents, you might think twice before you bought her a drink. Then again, she might look at you and think twice before accepting.

While the red walls might have made the place look like a cave of doom, the effect is mitigated by the quotes. Most every piece of wall in the bar has a lyric written on it in black or white. Then there is the name of the person who wrote the lyric, followed by the name of the person who put it on the wall, as if hearing a song and writing it on the wall were equivalent with the act of writing the song in the first place.

Of course, looking at all those quotes makes me think what I would write. It's the sort of question that I would agonize over for so long that I never actually wrote anything. I'd want something just a little bit obscure, because I'm a snob. But it would also need to be self-explanatory and pithy and embodying a true and relateable thought. It should stand independent of the song.

It's a neat project, and it underlines a commitment to music that most bars only pretend to have. And also, a commitment to democracy. You can tell that these walls were made by the people.

Maybe my inability to pick a lyric is based on all those people who made such poor choices and then wrote their names on them. Now, I should write a little disclaimer that these opinions are my own, and they count no more or less than the opinions of people who once wrote a crappy song lyric on the wall of a bar. It may well be that the songs are meaningful in some way to the person who chose to put their name underneath them. Or it's possible that I am the one with bad taste.

Now that I've said all that, can we all agree that one should never, ever write a Ratt lyric on a wall? Does the world need to be reminded of the first two lines of "Love is a Battlefield?" And to the person who quoted the Mötley Crüe song "Girls Girls Girls" by writing "GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS," really? The thing that you want to represent you is something that, put in neon, would be a sign at a strip club? And to Christina, who quoted Nickelback with the lyric "You look so much cuter with something in your mouth," okay, that just pisses me off. Christina probably complains that guys don't respect her. Gah.

Aside from the lyrics that were just bad, a lot of them were more like catchphrases. Sure, lots of people like "Imagine," but quoting that you're a dreamer and you're not the only one sorta gives the impression that you're not enough of a John Lennon fan to know any of his other songs. But maybe I just didn't like that example, because I did appreciate the Janis quote, "Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose." It's possible that I am not a dreamer, but I'm probably not the only one.

Good, bad, or trite, this is democracy. This is allowing people to make their own decision and to have it count, no matter their reasoning. And while you'll get some really terrible lyrics on the wall of your bar, no one can say you're not recognizing that rock 'n' roll music is of, by, and for the people.

coquette.

2012-01-19T17:07:00.002-05:00

"Will no one at this table blow on my dice?"

You'll have to forgive us, but it was towards the end of the night, so we all had a few giggles at that.

A couple hours before, when it was still at the beginning of our company's casino night, Lauren was standing next to me at the Craps table. It was her turn to roll, and she asked me to blow on her dice. For luck, or whatever. Something deep inside me said Absolutely Not, and so I gave her a funny look and said no. She persisted. I sighed, and gave a half-hearted blow in the direction of her outstretched hand. I figured I would just get it over with, and then we'd all be free to continue enjoying our gambling. I was wrong. A few rolls later, she wanted me to blow on her dice again.

I've been trying really hard since then to figure out why I was so resistent to blowing on the dice. Now, if a man (other than Josh) asked me to do that, it would be inappropriate, but I'm not quite sure how. Is it the puckering? The hot breath? You wouldn't have much of a case in divorce court, and it probably wouldn't even be worth fighting with your boyfriend about, but something about it is too intimate for me to be comfortable doing it with any male but my significant other.

It's entirely possible that I am a prude.

But this wasn't a man, this was another woman that I work with. We were at a company holiday party, playing Craps. I really, really did not want to blow on the dice. At that point, the intimacy was not the issue. It's just that the whole thing seemed geared toward drawing everyone's attention to two women doing something vaguely sensual. It was flirty. I don't care if Lauren acts that way, but I do not want to be drawn into it. I do not want that kind of attention, particularly not from my coworkers.

When she asked the second time, I realized that my earlier policy of appeasement had been ineffective. I needed to let her know that I wasn't down with this. She had no intentions of making me uncomfortable, and she probably didn't even realize that I was. I have to assume that she likes that kind of attention, and just as I can't imagine why she would, she can't imagine why I wouldn't. But seriously, I needed to put a stop to this. So I said no.

She pleaded. I remained firm. I sought out sympathetic glances from those others at the table. You see what I have to deal with?

At this point, I was dug in. It's been a week or so, and I've had some time to think about why I didn't want to blow on the dice. But at that point, all I felt was resistence. I shouldn't have to say no more than once. I was about to tell her that there was no point in continuing in attempting to break my resolve, because I am a stubborn, stubborn woman.

But then I looked at her and saw that she was dug in, too. Whatever inside her told her that having me blow on her dice was a good idea was telling her to keep pushing. I imagined this going on and on, my coworkers increasingly irritated. Already, I was tired of it. By drawing this out, I was making the spectacle worse. I sighed and blew on the dice out of the side of my mouth while rolling my eyes. I like to think that it was the least sexy dice-blowing ever.

When it was her turn to be the shooter once more - you guessed it - it started all over again.

"Why won't you blow on my dice?"

"You just want someone else to blame if you get a bad roll. Then it's my fault, rather than yours." A-ha! This was a major point for me.

"Will no one at this table blow on my dice?" she wailed, and we all laughed. See? If it's not vaguely sexual, then why does it make us giggle like seventh-graders? She was embarrassed, and I felt triumphant. Then I felt bad for feeling happy at her discomfort. Then angry that she put me in the position in the first place, when I was just trying to enjoy a nice game of Craps, a game that I enjoy very much and only play once a year. I wondered why her insistence matched my resistence, and why either of us were acting this way at all.

old man sweaters.

2012-01-12T17:32:00.002-05:00

Josh says that when your grandmother calls you on your cell phone, you have to pay attention. Disregard the fact that she is using a regular phone, that to her it is a regular phone number that she dialed, and that the cell phone is the only phone he has. When your grandmother calls you on your cell phone, you better sit up, son.

She called about sweaters and pocket knives. She was going through his grandfather's things and had called each of the grandchildren, maybe even on their cell phones, to ask them if they wanted anything. But she didn't want them to take things that they didn't need, she didn't want to be the reason for clutter. After all, there was a neighbor man who was going to come and look through the clothes after them, and she supposed that whatever was left could be taken to the Goodwill.

We showed up with a pitbull for Sunday lunch. Grandmother was still wearing her church things, an old lady purplish pantsuit. I wonder what I will wear when I'm old.

She remarked what a pretty dog we had, and I only had to stop Remix from jumping once. The rest of the time, she wandered around the house, smelling the new smells. Whenever her tags stopped jingling, I went looking for her, afraid that she was up to mischief. She must've heard my footsteps, because she always appeared almost instantly from some other room, her head cocked to one side. You needed me, boss?

Grandmother showed Josh the two closets and the couch covered with folded sweaters and told him to take whatever he wanted. She said again not to take things just to be nice. I told her that we had a high tolerance for clutter.

While he was looking, she went into the kitchen to make lunch. I decided to follow her and help. It seemed perfect in that it fulfilled my twin goals of being a more helpful person and talking to old people. Maybe some people just do things like that, but I still have to decide to.

Brunswick stew was heating on the stove. She made the coleslaw and assigned me to cut up the peppers and onions. I asked how she wanted them cut, because some people care about these things. I know I do. I diced two small white onions carefully, and they only started getting to my eyes at the very end. I felt a strange need to show her that I was competent, that I knew how to dice vegetables. I diced half a green pepper, too. I was instructed to slice the other half, in case someone wanted to just have some to munch.

Grandmother asked about marriage and babies. I don't know why I worry about her opinion of my onion-dicing skills, since she is clearly anxious to see my child-bearing skills. She always asks, but I can tell her that there are no firm plans and she lets it go. Well, she lets it go after saying that she doesn't understand these young people who aren't interested in babies.

Remix stretched out in the middle of the kitchen floor. I made a comment about her being in the way, but Grandmother was fine to step around her, not minding an animal that is content to lie down wherever the people are. She told me about a dog she had growing up, named Poochy, who they fed corn flakes with sugar, even when the sugar was being rationed and the kids ate their corn flakes unsweetened. She said that she loved dogs, but that she had finally convinced her concerned daughters that she didn't need one.

Lunch was leftover Brunswick stew, coleslaw, baked beans, and tea. Dessert was some kind of fruit cake and Heath bar ice cream. Just in case you were thinking that those things do not go together, I'll let you know that you're right. But it was fine.

She talked about some of the clothes that Josh had picked out; several items that had come from the "Snob Shop," which I gathered was some kind of consignment shop. She and Josh talked about secondhand clothes.

"Sandra, surely you don't buy used clothes with that good job you have."

I looked down at my outfit for confirmation, then said, "Everything I'm wearing was bought secondhand."

"What do you do with the extra money?"

"Put it on the mortgage," Josh said, beaming proudly. Money management was emphasized in my childhood home, but not in his. He's taken to it very quickly. I suspect that he learned to appreciate thrift in this very house. I have his grandparents to thank for him being attracted to a woman with a good credit score.

After lunch, we went back to the bedroom, where Grandmother put a pile of pocket knives on the bed. Grandfather subscribed to the Boy Scout motto of being prepared, and that must have meant always having a pocket knife. Then they went through the jewelry, the tie pins and watches, the attendance pins from the Lions Club, still in their little plastic boxes with the spongy blue squares of padding. There were several watches, and Grandmother seemed a little dismayed that she didn't remember which one he had favored. They went through everything, even drawers and boxes that she hadn't gotten to yet. They came across a piece of shrapnel that had landed right next to Grandfather in France and that he had saved all these years. Josh had heard the story many times and was in awe at being offered this lump of family history. All his cousins had already come and made their selections, so whatever was left was his, but he felt guilty at getting so much. I got the impression that no one else had taken much of anything. Admittedly, the clothes were old-fashioned, and it's possible that some people don't like those kinds of mementos. A high percentage of our stuff was separated from its previous owner by death. We thrive in the past.

We needed to leave. Josh had to work that afternoon. I was getting antsy, not because I needed to be anywhere, but because schedules and the adherance to them make me anxious. But it was the kind of scene that I didn't want to break up, so I went in the other room to look at the sweaters. They were mostly cardigans, folded up and stacked up in four piles. Grandfather was a man of sweaters. And a man of taste: most of them were cashmere. There were a couple that I found myself admiring, and I went ahead and tried them on. While they were too small in the shoulders for Josh, they fit me pretty well. I picked out two - a gray and a vibrant fall orange. Grandmother seemed happy to let me have them. I felt a little weird about it, but I shouldn't. After all, Josh has some old ammunition boxes salvaged from my grandparents' house.

Finally, we really really had to leave. We loaded up the car with sweaters, shrapnel, and a pitbull. Half an hour later, we stopped for gas. I filled up, while Josh went inside. He came back out with a large soda and a Snickers bar that held two half-sized bars in one package. A share pack. He pulled out one of the four pocket knives he had just inherited and cut the wrapper neatly in half so that each fun-sized bar had its own sheath. He handed one to me.

"My grandparents used to do this. Cut a candy bar in half. I thought it was stupid, because I was a little kid and I wanted a whole one. Now I think it's sweet."

cluttered.

2012-01-10T17:20:00.000-05:00

In The Happiness Project, the author states that there are several types of clutter, meaning things that you keep but don't really need. I found these types helpful because they explained the many reasons that humans seem unable to get rid of certain objects. Here are the types:

Nostalgic - Things which have sentimental value.
Conservation - Might be useful someday!
Bargain - I got such a good deal on it!
Freebie - Someone gave this to me.
Crutch - I need this.
Buyer's Remorse - I bought it, and by gum I'm going to use it.
Outgrown - I used to use this.
Aspirational - Someday, I will be the kind of person that will use this.

The only thing on that list that I don't relate to is the crutch clutter. I couldn't think of anything that I owned that would fall into that category, but perhaps I am so in denial that I just don't realize it. As for the rest of them, I could take you through my house and show you lots of examples of each.

Obviously, I have a high tolerance for clutter, and I'm okay with that. I don't mind there being a lot of stuff about, and so a lot of stuff will appear. I do try to purge often, but really that's more about getting rid of stuff to make room other stuff. It's about upgrading my clutter, not getting rid of it.

All this clutter talk brings me to an email that I got an email from my sister-in-law, asking about a bridesmaid dress I'd worn in her daughter's wedding (that's my niece, if you are keeping up). Her other daughter (my other niece) was going to be heading to D.C. with her choral group, where she would go on a dinner cruise. So she needed something kinda fancy to wear. This niece was also in the same wedding that I was in (her sister's), but since then, she has grown in some places that teenage girls grow (well, some of them do, sigh). Her bridesmaid dress no longer fit, so she was interested in mine.

I was pretty certain that my bridesmaid dress would not fit her at all. Because women in their twenties grow in different places than women in their teens (sigh, again). But I did have some dresses from high school and college languishing in the back of my closet that might fit her. These dresses are clutter, because as it is now, I cannot wear them. It's been that way for a while. Every time I see them, I feel bad because I am reminded that there used to be less of me. But I keep them. Why?

Apparently, some clutter can actually fit in multiple clutter categories. These dresses are nostalgic, aspirational, and bargain clutter. They are nostalgic because I wore them to fancy events that I remember fondly. Also, I'm nostalgic for the time when I was able to zip them up. They are aspirational clutter, because I aspire to be thin enough to wear them again. Finally, they are bargain clutter, because everything I have is bargain clutter (I did the math - the average dress price was less than five bucks).

I handed the dresses over to my niece and we had a little try-on session. I told her that whatever she wanted, she could keep, but she should not feel obligated to keep anything that didn't fit or wasn't her style. Of course, they all fit her just great (SIGH). It's silly, but it was hard for me to part with them. I didn't think about how they don't get any use now, I thought about how I used to look in them and how I could look like that again. But good sense won out. If and when I am that size again, I can always find another $5 dress. I've got the room in my closet for it now.

mexican wrestler finger puppets.

2012-01-09T21:09:00.000-05:00

Josh likes to start Christmas traditions, or at least try out other people's traditions to see if they are fun. Last year, he decided we should borrow a tradition from the good people of the United Kingdom and have Christmas crackers. These are little paper tubes full of Crackerjack-type prizes that you pull apart with your neighbor at the dinner table, sorta like a wishbone. They generally contain a joke, a paper hat, and then a small trinket or toy. They're supposed to make snapping noises when you pull them, thus the name. You can buy crackers already assembled, but we're contrary types, so we put together our own. We bought a bag of small toys from the thrift store. I had the good fortune to visit my sister on Christmas Eve, who had used store-bought crackers at a dinner the night before and so had some leftover paper hats and jokes. The things inside are supposed to be fun and silly, rather than necessarily anything you'd want to keep and treasure forever. It's about the experience, not the stuff.

He decided that he liked crackers, so we did them again this year. They were completely homemade. Like last year, the tubes were paper towel rolls with tissue paper wrapped around them. For the surprises, I found some old international coins at the flea market. Then I bought a bunch of Mexican wrestler finger puppets out of the quarter machine at Food Lion (Random passerby: "Those are for children, you know."). I made the paper hats out of more tissue paper, and Josh wrote the jokes. They were uneven in funniness and some of them didn't quite make sense. My favorite:

Q: What letters does Jesus draw in Scrabble?
A: M, N, U, L

My boyfriend, ladies and gentlemen!

We all had a good time reading aloud the jokes to each other, then asking Josh to explain the more obscure ones. The coins were interesting, but the finger puppets were the big hit. Sitting there on Christmas, reading silly hand-written jokes, wearing silly homemade hats, and playing with luchador finger puppets, I thought that I like being me.

It is a easy and leisurely sort of existence where I can spend time thinking about what kind of person I want to be. As I have no major strife, I might as well try and be the best Sandra I can. I have many people in my life that I use as models of being that I can strive for. Pretty much all of them demonstrate much nobler qualities than providing excellent homemade Christmas crackers. But it is a pleasant, if small, victory, to look at something that you have done and think that if you were someone else, you'd think you should be more like that.

cuddly-wuddly was a pitbull.

2012-01-07T20:04:00.003-05:00

I try to hold back on the gratuitous pet entries, because y'all may not care. I know, because I used to sigh inside (and sometimes outside) when people wanted to tell me about their pets. What I have learned since getting a dog is that people who talk about their animal companions all the time are just trying to share something that is important to them in an effort to relate to other human beings and not feel so alone in this world. I'm not boring you with stupid dog stories, I'M SHARING MYSELF.

Thing 1: Ambassador
We had some friends over for Christmas dinner, a couple and their roommate. They have a miniature poodle, mostly because they live in an apartment and therefore needed a smaller pet. I guess the roommate is not a fan of the dog, because upon meeting Remix, he commented that at last, here was a "real dog." I have nothing against poodles in general, nor theirs specifically. There are many types of people in the world, and they have many different ideas of what they want out of a canine pal. I personally like an animal with a little physical heft, but if you want something you can carry in your handbag, that's cool, too.

Anyway, the guy spent a lot of time with Remix. He pet her and played tug with her and asked us lots of questions about adopting from the animal shelter. He seemed to have the idea that shelter pets are all damaged in some way, otherwise they wouldn't be there (Hint: the problem is overpopulation). She was the first pitbull and the first shelter pet that he'd ever spent any time with, and I can proudly report that she was an excellent ambassador. It's exactly what we want. We want people to meet our dog and change their minds. They don't have to go out and adopt one immediately, but their general impression should go from "face-eaters" to "not all face-eaters."

Thing 2: Cuddly-wuddly
At the New Year's party, someone asked a general question of those assembled: What was the best thing about 2011 for you? I was about to make fun of these kind of cutesy conversation starters, because I can be kind of a jerk sometimes, but then I realized that I had a really good answer.

"I got a dog." Everyone agreed that a dog was definitely the kind of thing that would go into the Plus column of a personal year-end inventory.

"Did you get the cutest widdle cuddly-wuddly puppy in the world?" some dude said, I'd never met him before. In fact, that is not an exact quote. He continued on in the cuddly-wuddly vein for a while, complete with hand motions that you might make about some sort of genetically engineered tiny fluffy creature that would break if it fell off the couch. I let him finish.

"She's a pitbull from the pound."

"Oh."

As much as I want to convince the world that pitbulls can be good dogs, sometimes it's fun to let people think that I live with a ferocious beast, particularly people who assume, for whatever reason *cough* 'cause I'm a woman *cough*, that I go in for cuddly-wuddly.

To be perfectly honest, Remix is actually pretty cuddly-wuddly.

Thing 3: Tug

I mean, little dogs are fine, but can they pull you out of bed in the morning?

prominent diarists.

2012-01-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

Josh's mom is a solemn person. She has a serious earnestness (or maybe a earnest seriousness) about her. I like earnest and sincere people. In fact, I like to think that I am one. But my earnestness is of a more silly variety. I have a hard time talking to her sometimes. I make a silly joke, then she turns it into something very serious. I end up feeling sort of deflated and newly sad about something that I had previously been cheerful about. She probably thinks that I am incapable of taking anything seriously, and that is a fair complaint.

My favorite example of her gravity is a birthday letter she sent me a couple of years ago. For you young scrubs out there who have never written out a letter by hand, the result is that you can't go back and edit it. You're mostly just writing down your thoughts as they come. There were some birthday greetings, then some general news stuff, including a paragraph about a book that she was currently reading. This book was about the Holocaust. Ooooookay, a little grim. Her next statement was about how awful it was that some people went around saying the whole thing never happened. It was like she one-upped herself in grim. I've tried to think of something more depressing than Holocaust denialism, and I can't beat it. For a fun game, see what you can come up with!

This all brings me to about half an hour past into 2012. I was sitting in a living room at a house that had cable. A few other squares and I were watching Ryan Seacrest's New Year's Rockin' Eve. I don't remember the conversation, only what I said next.

"That would be like Anne Frank being your mom." And then I sort of stopped in horror at what had just come out of my mouth. What I had meant was that it would be like having a prominent diarist as your mom. That was even what made sense in the context of the conversation, and the first diarist that I came up with was Ms. Frank. Even now, I can't come up with another example where everyone would know what I was talking about, so probably I should have just avoided making a joke about diarists at all. I realized too late was that my statement did not make sense, because Anne Frank did not get to be anyone's mom, what with the Holocaust and all. I tried to explain myself, and they understood, but still thought it was more fun to tease me about it. I made it a joke, because that is a skill that comes with never taking anything seriously. You're welcome, folks, I am the source of your very first conversation about the Holocaust in the new year. Cheers!

At that moment, while we were all laughing at me, I thought about telling them about the birthday letter. But then I realized that I would be responsible for the first conversation about Holocaust denialism in the new year, and I stopped. Phew!

convenient medical care.

2012-01-05T11:25:00.000-05:00

I was just a little bit sick over the Christmas holidays. I had a low fever and was coughing up goo. The worst part of it was the fever, which meant I was always cold and achy. This started Monday night, about an hour after I struck a blow for feminism by spraying caustic chemicals within a small and enclosed space. I knew that it was probably not the pesticide, but it did make me consider why the exterminator had been wearing a breathing apparatus.

So Monday night was kind of miserable, with me balled up under a blanket, wearing a full set of fleece pajamas and wool socks. I woke up in the middle of the night feeling like I'd been in an oven, because my body decided it was tired of being freezing cold and went the other way. My temperature was at 100. I got a reasonably good night's sleep and woke up feeling fine, just fine. I pumped my fist in the air, thinking that my rock star immune system had just kicked the flu to the curb. Take that, germs. I don't need no stinkin' flu shot.

However, by about 5 in the afternoon, the chills and the aches and the wool socks were back. As an aside, do you have any wool socks? I recommend them. They are warm and scratchy in a comforting sort of way.

This continued throughout the week - fever starting in the early evening, peaking sometime in the night, then subsiding in the morning. All along there was some light coughing, but my sinuses were clear. I did some at-home medical research, which is a fancy way to say that I googled my symptoms. Guys, I'm just not sure in this case whether more information is better. If you tell the internet that you have flu-like symptoms only at night, the internet will tell you that you have lymphoma, dementia, a bun in the oven, or some combination of the three. Thankfully, I am a sane and reasonable person, so I dismissed all of these. I thought about Josh, who is neither sane nor reasonable when it comes to his health, and how he would have convinced himself that he was going senile. Every time he spills when pouring his beer into a glass, he assumes that he has a degenerative nerve disease.

So the internet did not help, though I did learn a new word: sputum. It was the goo that I was coughing up. Josh had suggested that I had a sinus infection. Let me tell you that I know when I am having a sinus infection. I did extensive research in the having of sinus infections when I lived in basement apartment in Boone. It's a condition that comes with headaches, because your body makes more snot than it has storage room for. My sinuses were free and clear. Whatever I was coughing up was coming from somewhere else. Goo that comes from the lungs is called sputum. Based on this, I self-diagnosed myself with bronchitis. Not because I know anything about bronchi or medicine, just because it seemed like a simple sickness that a body might pick up. Sure, why not, bronchitis. It sounds much better than saying that my lungs are infected.

In the wee hours of Thursday morning, after a few days of this being sick, then not being sick, I decided that I was tired of it. While I mostly felt fine during the day, I never felt well enough to really be doing anything. And this was my Christmas vacation! I should be out and about, enjoying the unseasonably mild weather, not sitting on the couch playing Lego Harry Potter on the Wii. Or maybe I'd be playing video games anyway, but I'd rather not need to do it in wool socks.

I do not have a primary care physician. I have an eye doctor, a dentist, and a lady doctor, but I don't have anyone I go to for these sorts of minor sicknesses. However, the Minute Clinic at the CVS does not deal with infected lungs, so I would have to go to an actual doctor. There was a primary care place that just opened up in a shopping center near the new Food Lion, so I decided I'd check that out. Something about the strip mall location and the fact that they accepted walk-ins lead me to believe that it was kind of like the Minute Clinic, but prepared to treat sputum problems.

I turned to the internet again, not for a diagnosis, but for an appointment to get a diagnosis. The doctor's office had a live chat feature to make appointments. I am wary of live chats, because my experience with them has not been great. It seems like the people on the other end are never really comfortable with the chat medium and also are completely unable to answer my questions anyway. But I tried it this time. I logged on at around 10 in the morning. Five minutes later, I had an appointment for 11:30. I could have had one even earlier, but I decided that I should probably take a shower first, otherwise my diagnosis would be "probably just kinda gross." I spent another ten minutes filling out and submitting my new patient paperwork online. There was a question about the reason for the day's appointment, and I used the word "sputum," because I am a show-off.

The waiting room was bright and modern - filled with flat screens and furniture made of synthetic materials. I had to sign something that indicated that I'd read and understood the privacy materials. I did this at one of two terminals set up in the waiting room. I clicked a button that said I'd understood, then signed a little device, similar to the ones at the grocery store.

While I waited, I noticed that there was a sign on the wall that listed the prices for various basic procedures, for the benefit of people with no insurance (euphemistically called "self-pay patients"). Okay, here I was impressed. My experience with health care is that the pricing is hidden and obscure, perhaps intentionally. Here, it was posted right there on the wall in the waiting room, like a menu. I'll have one tetanus shot to go, please!

I waited only a few minutes before being called back. The nurse, who couldn't have been any older than I am, carried a tiny laptop. She also had lots of earrings, a tattoo, and a pair of Chuck Taylors. I appreciated her ability to show a little personality even in pastel scrubs. She took my vitals, asked a few questions, tap-tap-tapped on the laptop keyboard. Then she went out again.

While I waited for the doctor, I read another sign. It said that if I did not have a primary care physician, the doctors here would love to serve me in that capacity. They had some advertising bullets, for instance about walk-in hours and electronic medical records. The first word in their tagline was "convenient," and I groused at that. My very first thought at that was that medical care should not be focussing on convenience but efficacy.

Yeah, it was a pretty stupid first thought.

I personally can afford medicine to be inconvenient. After all, I had the whole week off anyway. But if I didn't have that kind of work stability, I would really appreciate the walk-in hours and the fact that I got an appointment the same morning I asked for one. I came because I was tired of being kinda sick, but there are a lot of people who can't spare the time to be sick. It wasn't just convenience, it was access.

The doctor, a petite woman who looked to be Southeast Asian, came in carrying another tiny laptop. She asked me more questions, listened to my breathing, typed up some more electronic medial records. She said I had bronchitis and said she'd fax a prescription over to the CVS down the road. I guess CVS does not use only electronic records. I sheepishly asked if the antibiotics would prohibit me from celebrating, i.e. drinking, on New Year's Eve. She said that by that time I'd be fine, which was just one more reason to like this nice doctor lady.

And that was it, my first experience with convenient medical care. I got an immediate appointment (convenient!), used no actual papers (electronic!), and saw a female doctor with a funny name (diverse!). The future is now.

do-it-myself.

2012-01-04T17:37:00.001-05:00

Something was eating the siding on the back of the house, so I called in a professional. The exterminator, a short and wiry young guy, pulled up and then immediately began putting on his work gear. This consisted of some heavy duty kneepads and some sort of breathing apparatus. I decided that being an exterminator was not something I'd ever like to do. I periodically have to go into the crawlspace to clear out the water filter. I only have to go in about five feet, there is a light, and it's more of a hunch-space at that point. But I don't like doing it. It's creepy and dirty down there, not to mention infested with camel crickets, who are not dangerous, but still very spooky with their long and bendy legs.

The exterminator went around and under the house and finally told me that we had carpenter ants. These are ants that eat wood, rather than ants that build little ant garages and wear cute little ant toolbelts. And I guess they prefer house-flavor, rather than all the many many trees that we have. The exterminator said that if we were willing, we could buy products at the local home improvement store to take care of this problem ourselves, rather than paying for guys like him to use the same stuff.

If ever I have any future exterminating needs, I will definitely be calling Swift Creek Exterminators. They tell you how to fix it yourself.

So I listened to his advice and then wrote it all down before I forgot it. I bought a fogger for the crawlspace (oh yeah, we have German roaches, too) and some spray for the perimeter of the house. The day after Christmas was lovely, and I was home from work while Josh toiled away at the restaurant. I figured that it was a good day to take care of my house.

It was a simple job. The stuff comes with its own spray attachment. I just walk around the house and spray the bottom foot of the wall. No biggie.

Except.

We have a back porch. The exterminator said that I should spray the house both above and below the level of the porch. Above was fine, easy. Below would mean crawling around under the porch for the length of the house. This was an actual crawlspace. There was probably a foot and a half of clearance under there. I did not have any heavy-duty kneepads, not that I would have room to go up on my knees. This would be more like shimmying underneath a locked bathroom stall door, or maybe something from boot camp.

I did the other three sides of the house, plus the area on top of the porch. It was my plan to leave it at that. Then, when Josh came home, I would tell him that I had done most of the work (four-fifths, in fact, nearly all), and I just needed him to do this last little bit. I would even have a nice cold beer ready for him when he was done.

I knew this was a raw deal. I tried to justify it to myself, saying that it really more of a man's duty. But then I got all offended on myself. I can do the stuff a man can do, but what if I don't actually want to?

I sat on the ground next to the porch and peered into the shimmy-space. I sat there for a good long time, feeling bad about making Josh do the dirty part, but not quite bad enough to start. I sighed several times. Earlier, I had been happy that the exterminator told me how to do it myself, but then I started thinking that there was a reason we paid people to do this job.

Finally, I just did it. It was a blow for feminism. Or homeownership. Or something. I would like to feel like it was a larger act than just me belly-crawling through the dirt and old leaves spraying chemicals on my house. It was a blow against carpenter ants.

there is no problem.

2011-12-19T11:38:00.000-05:00

I buy cards at yard sales and thrift stores. I have bunches and bunches (and bunches) of them. I keep them organized in a dresser. Stationery is probably one of those things that most people don't realize you can get used. Not only can you get them, you can find enough to develop an unhealthy collecting habit. The best place to find them is estate sales. Old ladies are card hoarders. They buy them in multi-packs all the time - on vacation, at holidays, to support various charitable causes. And then they die, and someone sells their whole card collection to me for a buck or two. I pick out the ones I like, and then the rest I ship off to a relative with small children. I suggested they use them for crafting, but I really have no idea what they do with all those cards. They probably wonder the same about me.

I've always been big into sending birthday cards. People just like it so darn much. Even as stamp prices rise, it's a pretty cheap way to make someone happy. If you did the math and figured out how much happiness is created with the cost of a card and a stamp, you would find it's an excellent value. Then I would ask to see your numbers, because I'd really like to know how you quantified happiness. It doesn't have to be a nice card, and you don't have to put money in it. Somehow, the act of getting mail, of being remembered, is enough.

I call them "used" cards, but "secondhand" is probably a better term. However, sometimes they actually are used. A person will buy a 25 pack of Christmas cards and then just sign them all in one session before realizing they only have 21 friends. Then they stuff the four extra cards in a drawer somewhere with every intention of using them next year. But they forget about them until the next time they move or clean, which is how they end up at the thrift store, where I buy them. Sometimes, I send them anyway. (For a couple of years, I sent cards signed from the local Masonic lodge to a girlfriend of mine in New York. She thought the first one was weird, but she got really freaked out when one year she moved and they found out her new address. She suspected me, but when she asked, I told her that I would never ever forge the Masons' signature, which was true, though misleading.)

Anyway, while my collection is impressive, it is not exactly a replacement for Hallmark. I used to take a lot of time to pick out just the right card, spending a half hour just to find one. It was pretty stereotypical woman behavior (I make up for it by being good at math). Now, the selection is more limited, though frequently more interesting (and free). I do make myself pull from my stash, otherwise, I would have no justification to keep buying stationery (and I do want to keep buying it).

Basically, I have to get a little creative, but is that ever a bad thing? Luckily, I have a very large selection of cards that are blank inside, so they can be for any holiday. I do write a little note for each one. I frequently feel the need to make an explanation as to why the other person is receiving what might seem like a pretty weird card. I try hard to make the card choice seem relevant. But maybe I don't have to explain that at all. Maybe the people who get cards from me know me well enough to realize that I don't know how to send cards like a normal person. Being weird acts as its own excuse.

Anyway, all this is to explain that I got a couple of odd birthday cards this year. They were from my nieces, who live in a household that has been the recipient of my ~~rejected~~ overstock cards. One of them was an Easter card, and the other was a Christmas card. While the older niece made some effort to replace the Season's Greetings with birthday ones, the little one just stuck a "Dear Aunt Sandra" before the message wishing me a happy Easter. Considering one of those girls once gave her brother one of her baby teeth in a jar as a birthday present, this was actually a relatively sane gift.

I think this is a positively brilliant solution to feeling like I don't have the right card to send. The solution is to not care at all. Frnakly, I should have thought of this myself, since I apply it in other areas of my life.

For instance: accessories! While visiting my sister this year, I wore a green shirt, while I was also carrying a green suede purse. She asked if I had a different purse for each outfit. I told her no, sometimes it works out that way, but in general I'm not that put-together. She said that she always carried a black purse, that way it matched everything and she didn't have to worry about it. My response was that she didn't have to worry about it anyway, and then she could use any crazy purse she wanted. We are different people, so we each thought our respective way was better based on our priorities. It is more important to her to match. It is more important to me to have fun purses.

Just like the problem of having a matching purse, the solution to the problem of using an appropriate card is to not care about the problem. It turns out that there is no problem.

It's funny - my nieces sent the out-of-season cards because they are kids and have not yet succombed to the idea that only birthday cards are for birthdays. They probably picked those specific cards because they liked the pictures. Give them ten years, and they will likely do things differently. Except for the fact that they have an Aunt Sandra, who has decided that the problem of appropriate cards is not a problem. Given my example (which was originally their example), maybe they'll see it that way, too.

burglar fantasies.

2011-12-16T10:44:00.000-05:00

I used to work with a guy who would brag that if a burglar broke into his house, he wouldn't know what to steal first. The point was that the guy had many valuable and hockable things, from fancy guns to media equipment. My coworker had an elaborate fantasy of a robber, dressed in all black with a hockey mask, entering each room in a state of building excitement, like Aladdin in the Cave of Wonders. He rubs his hands together as he tries to decide which thing to pilfer first.

I think we can all agree that this is an obnoxious thing to say in public.

I started thinking about someone breaking into my house, and I also concluded that any would-be burglar would find himself at a loss as to where to focus his efforts. In my fantasy, he comes into the living room and then just stops, not excited but confused. He looks first to the obvious grabs, but the TV and stereo are so ancient, the thrift store wouldn't accept them. Then he starts looking around at everything else. He slowly rotates in place, his eyes scanning the room for something to go into his special burgling sack (with his name embroidered on it).

Gumball machine (with gumballs)
Books
piggy bank made from old post office box
mid-90s TV
Antique scientific scale

Though his burgling eye is trained to quickly pick out the valuables among the clutter, he's frankly not quite sure what each of the things even are.

WW II dummy cartridge
metronome
1934 encyclopedia set
half-size scuba helmet reproduction
GE Custom Decorator
mid-80s stereo receiver with turntable
Records
Huge three-armed lamp
Giant schoolroom map of South America

And even when he can figure out what an item is, he's not entirely sure whether it's valuable. He can tell from a glance at a video game console how much he can get at Crazy Larry's pawn shop, where they don't ask questions. But what would a gumball machine be worth? He is not sure that even Larry is that crazy.

More books
Giant beaker
Globe of moon
Standing globe of Earth
Toboggan
Lamp made from a fire extinguisher
Sarcophagus

Even the things he think might be worth something are so oddly-shaped that it's probably not worth it at all. But he's not sure, because he's never had to price a sarcophagus before. Is it real? Is it haunted? Does that make it worth more?

And the answer is that none of it is worth anything at all. His best bet would be to sell the fire extinguisher lamp for the copper. But he'd have to haul it out of there, and it's heavy and has a lamp on it. Our collection combined is probably worth less than one of my coworker's fanciest guns. He was proud because he could make a criminal salivate. I'm proud to just confuse the heck out of him, to make him stop short and wonder what was the matter with these people.

I am being just as obnoxious as my coworker was. My identity is wrapped up in having weird things, rather than expensive ones. We both think that our stuff says something positive about us. It does, but the stuff probably doesn't say as much as our pride in it does. The best thing is probably just to keep our burglar fantasies to ourselves.

Besides, before the thief would even get to the sarcophagus, the pitbull would find him. He probably knows what to do when he sees one of those.

black friday.

2011-12-15T17:27:00.000-05:00

I stopped to fill up in Hickory on Black Friday. Not because we desperately needed gas, but because I wanted a snack. That's something we do, stop for a soda and a candy bar. We always split a mammoth soda, the biggest gulp we can find, and lately we've been getting those Snickers bars that have two small bars within one pack. I filled up the tank while Josh went inside the store.

He came back out, empty-handed. Total failure in procuring snacks.

"What kind of drink do you want?" He seemed distracted.

"Whatever is fine." Usually, we share a Dr Pepper, which is his favorite and my second favorite. But most any drink is fine. I don't like root beer, and he can't abide Mountain Dew, but whoever is filling (and paying) can make the call. I wasn't sure why he bothered going in and coming all the way back out to ask. I was finished with my gas-pumping duties, so I said I'd just go inside with him.

"Okay. I'm going to talk to this guy over here." By "this guy," he meant the homeless person standing at the side of the parking lot next to a suitcase of shiny things for sale. I began to suspect that he was not thinking about snacks at all. What happens inside his head is frequently a mystery to me.

When I came back outside, a giant Dr Pepper and share pack of Snickers in my hands, he was still talking to the guy. Homeless people make me nervous, but it was a magnificent day, and somehow that made me less nervous. No one would rob me (or whatever it is I'm nervous about) on such a nice day. Plus, Josh was talking to the guy. Josh exhibits a kind of openness to other people that I wish I had. I could tell that this was one of those occasions that I should be More Like Josh, so I followed his lead on this one.

A mixed-breed but cared-for puppy was tethered to the suitcase full of wares. A red scooter was parked behind him. From the suitcase hung two things: a business license issued by the city of Hickory, and a cardboard sign asking to help the homeless help themselves. I was no longer nervous. Homeless men with puppies and scooters who pull themselves by their bootstraps are not threatening, especially on such a nice day.

"Hey," Josh smiled when I appeared beside him. "Go ahead and pick one out. I've already paid."

When we drove up, we took the shiny things to be watches. In fact, they were SPOON RINGS.

Let me tell you about spoon rings. They are rings that you wear on your finger, just like any other regular ring. However, they are made from spoon handles, and they feature all the designs that you might find in your silverware drawer. I came across spoon rings in New York City. My friend Sarah took me to a shop that she said I would really like. The whole place was filled with things that were made from other things - motherboard coasters, bike chain picture frames, LP bowls. I wanted to buy pretty much the whole store, because I love things made from other things. I love reusing something for a completely different purpose, I love looking at something common in a totally new light. After carefully examining (and wanting) every single thing in the store, I ended up buying a spoon ring. I paid $20 for it, which is pretty spendy for me, but it was my little souvenir, plus it was a freaking SPOON RING.

I'm not sure that Josh knew that I was already the proud owner of a spoon-turned-ring, though he could hardly have missed my excitement when I saw what was for sale and shrieked "SPOON RINGS!" I'm guessing that the salesman does not have a lot of customers who are familiar with silverware jewelry, but maybe I'm underestimating the good people of Hickory.

So I picked through the rings. I am picky about jewelry. A lot of the rings were too bulky, though I'm sure that made them high-quality spoons. A few had really nice monograms, but not my initial. One had a Holiday Inn engraving, and that one would have been mine forever had it not been so thick. I finally settled on one with simple lines. The shop in New York advertised its wares as being handmade by artisans, but I actually got to meet the maker here.

When Josh had walked up, the guy was selling them 2 for $10; he said he was flat broke. Josh went ahead and gave him $10, hoping that I would go along with it. As we were looking, a trio of college girls came up and started enthusiastically poking through the rings, perhaps encouraged by our presence (and the puppy, the scooter, the nice day). They bought four between them.

We left feeling pretty much awesome. It was truly a gorgeous day, Josh was elated at having done a good thing, and I had a new spoon ring (and a boyfriend who loves his fellow man without judgment). He was also happy that I was happy. I guess somewhere along the way, he got the impression that most girlfriends do not appreciate jewelry made from used silverware by men who live on the street. I'm under the impression that most boyfriends don't go shopping on Black Friday in the parking lot of the RaceTrack. I guess it's good we found each other.

vision.

2011-12-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

One fine Saturday afternoon last May, I was on my way to the local trash dump site. Since I live just outside the city limits, I do not get trash service. There are companies who will allow me to pay them for this service, but I'm too cheap for that. There are several dump sites scattered throughout the county which are quite convenient. One of them is right on Josh's way to work. That makes it doubly convenient for me, though less so for Josh.

However, on that spring day, Josh was out on tour, which meant that I had to be an independent woman and take my own dang trash out. I was sitting at a stop light on the way, when a red pickup truck turned onto the road ahead of me. It had a trailer, which was hauling some cabinets, an old toboggan (the sled kind), and a windsurfer. Fresh from my successful yard sale day, I thought to myself that he had just come from a really great sale. Then I remembered that most people are not like me, and this guy might well be on his way to the dump, too. And if that was the case, maybe I could pick up someone else's trash while dumping off mine. I continued to sit at the intersection, watching the trailer full of goodies get smaller and smaller as it continued down Aviation Parkway. I cursed my red light luck.

But I guess my secondhand crap luck was with me, because I found myself directly behind him in line at the dump. As soon as we stopped, I jumped out of my car and asked if I could have the sled. He said sure, and he didn't even ask when I was due back at the asylum. He'd picked it up at a flea market for $25 several years ago and seemed happy that it would not be thrown away after all. He asked if I wanted a windsurfer, and I had to tell him no. I showed restraint in not telling him that the local Goodwill would be happy to take it (frankly, I'm not sure that they would, but you should always try).

Saturday afternoons are a busy time at the dump, and the line behind us was building up. I'm sure the person in the SUV behind me sighed with impatience at the crazy lady trying to fit an eight-foot sled into a hatchback. I like to think that his frustration turned into grudging admiration as I closed the door with my rescued item inside. Everywhere I go, it's like I'm filming a commercial for the Honda Fit.

Even after I got the toboggan in the car, I'm sure everyone there was wondering what I was planning to do with it. The previous owner had bought it as a Christmas gift. In fact, it still had a battered red bow on it, because after that jolly Christmas morning, it had sat neglected in his basement for years (next to the windsurfer, probably). I wondered if the recipient had been as enthusiastic as the giver. The sled was a little broken and therefore not useful for its original purpose. It was an eight-foot broken sled. As a Christmas gift. That then sat in the basement for years and years, a sad pathetic symbol of resentment and crappy gift-giving.

Of course, I can relate to the guy who saw the sled at the flea market and immediately knew that He Must Have It. I stalked a stranger to the dump and asked for his trash because I was overcome with the same feeling that I Must Have It. Sometimes you don't know why you like a thing, nor do you know what you will ever do with it, but you know that this right here is what they call an opportunity, and you should take it.

In addition to not knowing why I liked the sled or what I would do with it, I didn't know where I was going to put it. I've mentioned this twice already, but the sled is seriously eight feet tall. I put it on the porch, at first so I could take pictures of it, then because it was out of the way. And there it sat for seven months, barely protected from the weather by overflowing gutters. Every time I saw it, I felt both guilty and stupid. Guilty because it was beautiful and it was wasting away on my watch, stupid because it was ridiculous, and I had no idea what to do with it. Eventually, I would have to load it back into my hatchback and take it back to the dump site. Any sensible person would have left it there in the first place.

That is secondhand failure, folks. I have experienced much of that in my life. Sometimes, things just don't work out. I don't mind so much when it's a sweater or a bowl. But the sled was rare and so beautiful. It is old technology, a piece of very specialized craftsmanship. Someone figured out how to bend boards. Perhaps a Jedi made this sled. You know, one hiding out in Vermont. The sled even had a good story. I saved it from certain doom, a relic lost in a world that didn't know what to do with it. Except I didn't know what to do with it.

Last week, Josh got tired of seeing the sled on the porch, so it actually made it inside the house. We tried a couple of different spots, before finally deciding to rig it up from the railing that prevents people in the second floor hallway from falling into the living room (though they could easily land on the futon). And it sorta worked there. Still feeling productive, I mixed up a bowl of olive oil and lemon juice and I rubbed it on the wood to undo some of the damage done by years in a basement followed by months on a porch. The wood was dry and sad and gray. But trees must love olives and lemons, because the stuff revitalized the sled. It looked like wood again. It still looked old, but like someone actually cared about it. Once the sled was restored, we agreed that it totally worked there. It doesn't match the sarcophagus at all, but that could be the latter's fault. It fits in very well with our overall theme of "Stuff We Like."

And thus I felt redeemed. I had not been crazy to rescue this sled. I had vision.

It's a weird thing, I know. I fully understand that most people would not want it. It looks like something that might hang on the wall at a board shop in the mountains or maybe a ski chalet. Some woman was very, very glad to finally get it out of her basement, even as she enjoyed telling the story of the ridiculous thing her husband gave her one Christmas, isn't that just like him. And I hope that the man was comforted by the fact that he was not the only person in the world who thought an eight-foot wooden toboggan was a great thing to bring home one day. He wasn't crazy at all. He had vision.

many, ten, five.

2011-12-11T13:33:00.002-05:00

Too many
I organized my books this week. By that, I mean only the books that I have not yet read. My to-read pile takes up two bookcases, one of them stacked two deep. I am not proud of this. It's very easy to collect books and then not read them.

I have therefore put myself on hold in terms of buying books. I am not allowed, as according to me. Unfortunately, it's also very easy to say that you're not going to buy any books and then do it anyway. Which is how I came home from the Goodwill yesterday with seven books. In my defense, three of them are hardback copies of books that I already own, so I can upgrade my current copies. The other four? Well, they look really good.

Seriously, y'all. No more books.

Ten
I have a Wii and about five games to go with it. It doesn't get a whole lot of play in the house, but it's nice to have the option. On Cyber Monday, I bought a copy of Lego Harry Potter for $10. Admittedly, a video game made about a toy line based on a movie that is based on a book series is some ridiculous cross-marketing. But hey, if it's a good game, who cares?

My ten dollars was not wasted. Low-stress, hard to die, lots of things to see and places to explore - these are things I like in a video game. In fact, it seems to be impossible to die. You lose all your life points, but you get a fresh one right away. That is a trend I've noticed in a couple of the other games that I have. You can die, but you have unlimited lives. It's like they want you to keep playing.

Anyway, if I don't get sick of it, I hear the Lego Indiana Jones is pretty fun, too.

Five
I stumbled across a new-to-me retail store. I even went inside! It's called Five Below, and the premise is that everything is less than five dollars. It's basically a dollar store, but it's somehow hipper than Dollars Tree or General. For instance, there was a large wall dedicated to smartphone cases.

It's a fun little store. I'm missing the target demographic by about fifteen years, but I'll probably be returning before too long to grab a couple of stocking stuffers. I read recently that dollar stores are doing quite well right now, what with the lousy economy. That's A-OK with me. Widespread acceptance of frugality is maybe the silver lining of the recession.

arms-a-bleeding.

2011-12-05T18:27:00.001-05:00

The Rex Hospital Blood Services sends out the Bloodmobile to my office park every once in a while to ask us all to roll up our business casual shirt sleeves to save a life or three. I am always eager to give blood, both for the warm mushy feeling it gives me and also for the free snacks at the end. As an extra incentive, if you give blood during the month of December, you get a special Christmas ornament that you can take home and treasure forever. These ornaments are nice pewter medallions. On the front is a scene from "The Twelve Days of Christmas," while the back says "REX" and the year.

They've been doing the "Twelve Days" theme awhile, because the one I got this morning has eight maids-a-milking on it. Well, actually, it has women in bonnets and aprons carrying pails. We are assume that they just back from their a-milking, rather than believing them to be just back from a-mopping or a-fire-out-putting. Also, there are only seven, because it's hard to fit eight women in a little space. The eighth one must be short and behind all the others, or maybe she just had a full cow. One additional limitation of the medium means that the maids are all quite homely, if not outright deformed, as if the cows have kicked them in the face more than once.

All that complaining aside, I was very excited to receive my ornament. I got the swans-a-swimming last year, so I am actually collecting the set. Now, I know that's just what they want. They dangle a matching set of ornaments in front of me like a but-wait-there's-more offer on an infomercial, just to get me in the door so they can take my blood. It's very devious, and I hate to think that I am falling into that trap. But I was going to give blood anyway, just because I like to do it. Also, saving others with my precious donated life force is different than buying a SlapChop at 3 in the morning.

Unfortunately, I didn't even move to Raleigh until after they'd started the "Twelve Days" ornament gift, so I missed my opportunity to get several. My set will never be complete, and there is nothing sadder than eight (or seven) maids-a-milking without three french hens.

However.

Last year, I found two other Twelve Days ornaments at thrift stores in the area. So some people out there are giving blood, but for some reason do not care for the highly collectible pewter keepsakes. So, I bought them. I added the golden rings and the partridge to my set. I paid for them with cold hard cash, rather than warm flowing blood. And I feel a little guilty about that, like I didn't earn them. I imagined someone coming into my house and accusing me of fraud. No, I did not give blood to Rex Hospital in December of 2008. But I've given blood a bunch of other times when there was no seasonal gift. Can't I just transfer my March 2010 donation to that December so I can say that I have a legitimate right to the fifth day of Christmas?

It's a silly thing to worry about.

viola jokes.

2011-12-02T20:53:00.000-05:00

We used to have a guy named David working at my company. He was a funny guy in a lot of ways, for example, he knew a lot of jokes about viola players.

Q: How do you know when a violist is playing out of tune?
A: The bow is moving!

I get it, but I just don't know any violists, so the joke doesn't resonate with me. What's the fun of cracking jokes about a group of people when you don't know a representative? David himself played the violin, and I think his twin brother played the viola. So I guess it's funny if you look at it that way. My viola knowledge is nil, but I know a thing or two about sibling rivalry.

Besides his obscure stringed instrument humor, David always used to take advantage of our monthly company lunch. He would bring in plastic containers, sometimes cleaned-up take-out containers from a previous company lunch. After everyone had finished eating and gone back to their desks to try and work on too-full stomachs, he would go into the kitchen and fill those plastic containers with free leftovers. Then he took them home, where I presume he and his family made a dinner out of it. I never got the impression that it was out of need; that was just something he did. Of course, we all made fun of it. Maybe it's the high testosterone levels, but you'll get teased for pretty much anything here. Some people probably did think it was weird or would be embarrassed to do it. Leftovers are for poor people, I guess. I was not raised to think that way. I was raised by a woman who used to collect all the soda cans from her workplace and then turn them in for money.

And then David left and we couldn't make fun of him anymore. I mean, we still mentioned it on company lunch days. "Someone call David, his dinner is ready!" The thing is, I never realized that when David went to get his leftovers, he also cleaned up the mess, too. Who has been doing it since he left? I suppose the cleaning staff takes care of it, but I bet they just toss it, no matter how much lo mein is left. Basically, we were making fun of him for being prudent and also cleaning up after us. Man, people are jerks.

This afternoon, a company lunch day, I passed through the kitchen on the way to the bathroom. And the food was still sitting there on the tables where we had left it. It was near the end of the day, so most people had already gone home. Food waste makes me sad inside, so I did the right thing and took care of it, while grumbling only a little. Clean-up consisted of throwing away empty containers, consolidating the half-empty containers, and packaging up the leftovers and putting them away in the fridge, where come Monday lunchtime, a couple of people would be happy to find them there. Some people think that leftovers are perfectly acceptable, but they wouldn't think to take them home. Then I wiped down the tables, even though the cleaning staff probably would have done that.

As I was cleaning up, I found a couple of smaller empty containers. And then somehow, they weren't empty, but filled with a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I mean, it was silly to save three (okay, five) measly rangoons and one little spring roll. Might as well take some of this beef with vegetables, too. Before I knew it, I had a nice little dinner all ready to be reheated. I suppose they'll start making fun of me, now. Whatever. Free dinner!

playdate.

2011-11-21T17:30:00.000-05:00

Being an only pet, Remix does not get to play with a lot of other dogs. It's too bad, because she is a great playmate. I mean, okay, she's kind of enthusiastic. It may be because she's not yet two years old, but she can be very energetic. Her encounters with older dogs remind me of being a little kid and always wanting to play with my older siblings. Hey! Wanna play? Wanna play? And she's also pretty big, without being very aware of her own size. So little dogs can end up a little bruised.

But she is not aggressive, and she doesn't try to bowl the other dog over.

I am happy for every opportunity for her to play with other dogs. She loves it so much. To see her running in frantic circles makes me realize that not only am I not exercising her enough, I'm probably not even capable of exercising her as much as she could take.

As it happens, we live next to a goldmine of playmates. Remix has limited interaction with them. They bark at her when she goes out. She wags her tail and cocks her head to the side while not barking, as if listening very closely. She does "play" with one of Gail's dogs, a little black one. They run around in their own yards, then come back and sniff at each other through the chain-link fence. It's sort of pathetic to see them do it, but of course, they're dogs, so they think it's great.

I mentioned one time to Gail that it would be nice if one of her dogs could come over for a playdate sometime. It seemed like a waste for her to have all those eligible playmates over there and poor Remix all alone with her yard full of stick toys. So she picked up the little black dog and dropped her on our side of the fence. That's how I met Brownie, who looks a lot like a similar black dog that my uncle had, named Blacky.

The thing about dogs is that they know and play different games. My sister has border collies, and their favorite game is called Herd. Remix enjoys Chase, and so she and the border collies are able to combine their games in a way that each thinks they are playing what they like. Brownie seemed to enjoy Run, which also can be played in tandem with Chase.

When you get Remix with another dog, you can tell that she does not get a lot of dog interaction. She constantly bothers them, hey hey hey. When the other dog gets tired, Remix will sit next to them for a second, then go back to hey hey hey. Brownie quickly revealed that she gets plenty of dog play, but she sure would enjoy some people time. I sat outside and watched them run in circles. Every five laps or so, Brownie came up to me to get some affection. Remix is not a jealous dog, so rather than try to get in between me and Brownie, she would just try to start up another game of Chase.

At one point, I went into the house for a minute or two. When I came back out, the book I had been reading was on the deck, rather than on the railing where I left it. It had chew marks. I sighed, but it was a used book anyway, so I just decided to pretend that it had come that way. Then about a foot away, also on the deck, I saw my smartphone. The protective cover was off, and so was the battery cover. I alternated between cursing Brownie and saying hopeful prayers as I replaced the cover and turned the phone on again. Luckily, it worked just fine. Lesson learned: do not leave your stuff outside with Gail's dogs.

After a half hour or so, when I was ready to go back in the house, I picked Brownie up and dropped her back into her yard. Despite the phone incident, I considered the playdate a success and thought it should happen again the future.

However, Josh is afraid that this is our first step into animal hoarding. He is afraid that by encouraging Gail's dogs to come and play, we are encouraging them to come over and stay, that Gail will want to give us dogs. I am not worried about this at all; it would never have occurred to me. Gail is pretty self-conscious about her menagerie. She knows that she has an unusual situation and is far more worried that her dogs are bothering us. But he is convinced that we are going to end up with ten dogs, six chickens, three cats, and a bunny. I told him that the only way that could happen was if we let it happen. If she tries to give us a dog, we can just say no.

One night last week, we were sitting on the back porch, enjoying the mild weather. Remix was sniffing around the yard. A minute or two later, Gail's brood noticed her presence and started up a ruckus. When this happens, we just shrug our shoulders and put Remix back in the house in the interest of neighborhood peace and harmony. Gail called out to us through the night, "Want me to drop Brownie over the fence?"

I didn't want her to, because we were only going to be out there a few minutes. I looked at Josh, who was wearing a tired sort of I-told-you-so look. I sighed, then called out, "Nah, we're just going to be out here a little while." Gail responded, "Okay!" Josh smiled, happy to not have an extra dog in the yard and also not to have to be the one to say no.

I still think it's a good idea.

buying happiness.

2011-11-19T11:33:00.000-05:00

Our most recent book club choice was The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin. The author spends a year researching happiness and trying to find small ways to boost her own. She has a chapter on money and the old question of whether you can buy happiness. She comes to the conclusion that you can. She tells about meeting a woman who disagreed very strongly with her on this point, explaining that she had no money because she spent it all to buy a horse, and that horse brings her so much happiness. Rubin responds that she just proved that you can buy happiness - the lady bought a horse, which made her happy. The lady vehemently said no, she was happy even though she had no money, because of the horse. BUT YOU BOUGHT THE HORSE.

I can imagine getting into an argument with the horse lady. YOU BOUGHT THE HORSE. WITH MONEY.

I agree that you can buy happiness. Maybe it would be more accurate to say that you can buy some happiness. I'm not saying that more money equals more happiness, nor that anyone's happiness comes entirely from things that were bought. I'm saying that you can exchange money for things that make you happy. Money is a tool in our world that can give you access to things or experiences. I bet that for everybody, there is something that could be purchased that would make them happy. My house makes me happy. I need a place to live anyway, and it is also a long-term investment, but my particular house just makes me happy. The silly things that I buy at yard sales make me happy. That ridiculous sarcophagus makes Josh happy. Every time he sees it, it gives him a little burst of joy. Other things that he did not (and could not) buy make him happy, things like tall, goofy girlfriends. The fact that a bought sarcophagus makes him happy does not diminish the happiness that I give him.

Like the lady's horse, my dog makes me happy. A pet is a great example of a bought-happiness situation. Remix costs money. I paid to get her, I pay to feed her, I pay to keep her healthy. She does not bring anything tangible to the household. She does not do the dishes, she gets fluff all over the place, and she eats the furniture. She does lick the floor clean, but I'm not sure that counts as paying her way. I feel better having a ferocious pitbull in the house, but thus far there hasn't been a situation where she has actually protected us. She brings peace of mind and entertainment and compansionship. We pay for happiness in the form of a slobbering goober dog.

The relationship between money and happiness is complicated. There is no simple equation that explains it. For one thing, if you have no money, such that your basic needs are not being fulfilled, you're likely to be unhappy. A lack of money can correspond to a lack of happiness. Rubin compares it to good health in that way. When you are not healthy, it's hard to be happy. But being healthy doesn't necessarily mean that you are happy. So it goes with money.

What's also interesting is that you can feel happiness by giving money away, like by giving it to charity or buying someone a gift. And money itself, rather than the things you buy with it, can also make you happy. I am happy that I have money in the bank. It's like a pitbull in the house.

Money is not good or evil, it's just a tool that can only be what we make it. You can worship it, and many people do. You can pin all your hopes on it, only to be disappointed. You can use it to try and buy happiness and fail. Or, you can buy a horse!

explanations in charity.

2011-11-18T11:29:00.000-05:00

“From 15 to 18 is an age at which one is very sensitive to the sins of others, as I know from recollections of myself. At that age you don’t look for what is hidden. It is a sign of maturity not to be scandalized and to try to find explanations in charity.”
-Flannery O'Connor

While it has a certain touchy-feely niceness to it, I declare the practice of finding explanations in charity to be logically sound. So, if someone cuts you off in traffic, you can yell and holler and call that guy a jerk. It's very easy to assume that because that guy cut you off, then he is just a jerk all-around. He is not a nice man, not even his dog likes him, he will probably die alone. Or you can find an explanation in charity, like he is hurrying to his wife at the hospital, or he's distracted because he just got some really horrible news.

Now, which way you choose to feel about it makes no difference to the guy whatsoever. He is off in his car, in his thoughts, maybe cutting other people off, too. He can't hear you call him a jerk. So you can pick the one that makes you feel grumpy and generally hateful to your fellow man, or you can let it go and hope that whatever situation is making him behave that way goes away before he causes an accident. Advanced users can even feel grateful that they are not having whatever kind of day makes you cut people off in traffic. I can't imagine ever being that zen. I'm just trying to not let people who cut me off ruin my day. Bad moods are contagious, but you can always work on boosting your immunity.

But hey, it works the other way, too. Because someday, you will have a crappy crappy day. Your wife will be in the hospital or you will get some terrible news or maybe you'll just oversleep and miss your morning cup of coffee. You will give other people reason to believe that you are a jerk. You should hope that they are practicing in explanations in charity for you.

ladies' book club.

2011-11-17T11:29:00.001-05:00

As part of my general effort to get out more, I joined a book club.

Book selection is pretty democratic. From what I've heard, this is a necessary part of a successful book club. If one person chooses all the books, then there is certain to be grumbling by people who routinely do not enjoy the selections. In our group, we hold periodic nomination evenings, where everyone brings a book, talks it up, and then the gathered group votes on eight favorites. Then a poll is posted online for the whole group to pick what we'll read for the next four months. I've never been to a nomination meeting, since I've only been in the club for four months. I'm a little shy about what book I would bring and also about having to give a little report to the group about why they should want to read it, too.

The selections have been hit-and-miss for me. It was maybe lucky that I really enjoyed the book we read for the first month I joined, because I wasn't impressed with the two after. It's funny how the reactions to each book are different. When I go in feeling pumped about a book, I find that a lot of the other women couldn't even get through it. And then when I go in ready to rip the book up, there are people there who give it the highest ratings. And that is why you need a democratic nomination process.

Even when the book doesn't do much for me, the discussions are routinely great. The one thing we've got in common is being women who like to read and then talk about it. There are so many backgrounds and a very wide age range. We all bring our own perspectives, without even meaning to. By doing that, we expose the others to the myriad of ways to approach life. Sometimes it's amazing to me that we actually read the same book, because I came away from it feeling completely differently.

The variety of perspectives is great, but it wouldn't work if the group didn't also have a very open and accepting atmosphere. You can tell that there is disagreement, even if no one really says anything, but it's all taken in stride. And people do disagree, but they do it in a just-my-two-cents kind of way.

Aside from meeting new people and being exposed to ideas that I might not come across otherwise, the book club is giving me practice in discussion. I am rotten at it. I tend to just sit by, maybe crack a joke or two, but I never join in to say anything of substance. I get very anxious and upset, so much that I can't speak without my voice shaking. It's a highly physical reaction, like an allergy. I hate it, and I am tired of it. So my first step in getting better is participating in discussions in these open and welcoming environments. Then, eventually I'll be ready for more aggressive ones. I don't seek those out, but I would really like to not freak out when they happen. I would like to be able to say something if I feel compelled to give an opinion. I do not want to be trapped by my own anxiety.

It's goofy, I know. I want to get over my discussion anxiety so I joined a ladies' book club. But I think it's working. We are all coming to the table with the same amount of knowledge, because we read the same exact book. And I know that the women will be nice about disagreeing. I can be nice about disagreeing with them, even though sometimes they say some crazy crap. That gives me permission to say my own crazy crap. Each time I go, I feel more confident about speaking. Pretty soon, I'm going to be obnoxious! I can't wait.

voracious.

2011-11-15T19:41:00.004-05:00

During the first couple of years at my job, I spent my lunch hour playing board games with a group of three or four others. This period was a lot of fun. I learned a lot of crazy new games, which I have been introducing to my brother's family on fortnightly game nights. I also got to play board games with people, which doesn't seem like a big deal until you consider that I spent my childhood playing them by myself. The only not-fun part about playing with others is that you do lose sometimes, but the upswing is that I got a lot better at that. I'm proud to say that I'm now an accomplished loser.

But then the guy who owned most of the games was laid off. We switched to playing Mario Kart during the lunch hour. I also hold those hours in a special place in my heart, because I finally found out what it was like to be good at a video game. It's not a major life accomplishment or anything, but I feel more a part of my generation. Plus, I got really good, and it's fun to be good at something, even something useless. But then we had to stop playing that, because some of the other people were not accomplished losers, and maintaining good working relationships with my coworkers is more important than that elusive perfect game.

I have turned to a solitary activity during my lunch hour now. But like the others, I have found myself relishing and looking forward to the noon hour. I've been reading.

I always feel like I don't read enough, particularly since I have so many books. For years, I've been picking up books based on their cover. When they cost less than a dollar (sometimes less than a quarter), you pick up anything that looks remotely interesting. It's easy to buy cheap books, but hard to read them. I tried reading at bedtime, but somehow I fell asleep every time. Then I would abandon the habit for a week, and by the time I got back to the book, I'd forgotten what it was about. I had several books on my nightstand with a bookmark about 25 pages in. And then I'd just feel guilty for having all these books and never reading them.

It's something I enjoy when I do it, but somehow I never make time to do it. Why do I need to be made to do something I love?

So I started taking books to work. After eating leftovers at my desk, I go into a rarely-used meeting room with squashy chairs. Lo, and behold, I discovered that I love to read. I think I knew that already.

This system works great for me. Besides making sure that I do make time to read, I frequently get so interested in the book that I pick it up again when I'm back home. No more lonely dog-eared books, I finish them, usually inside a week. I mark passages to copy down later in a little book, otherwise they would probably all start blurring together. When I finish, I either keep it, give it away, or put it in a bag bound for the used book store. And since I'm reading now, I have an excuse to buy more! I just feel...happier somehow. I feel like I am challenging myself, like I am broadening my horizons without having to go outside.

Like the board games and the Mario Kart before it, I am becoming a better reader. Josh told me once that I read like a scientist. I really had no idea what that meant, but even then, I suspected that it wasn't a compliment. I skim more than read, picking out the important stuff while leaving the details behind. Details are pretty and all, but I want to know what happens! I follow what is happening, but I don't really savor the language or the writing. With a lot of books, like most of the books I read in school, you can still get a lot out of reading that way. But when I tried to read something that was slower and less plot-driven, I struggled to get anything out of it.

These realizations have only come lately. For a long time, I did not know that I read this way. I didn't know there was any other way to read.

Recently, I was reading a travel journal written by a guy who went into British Columbia to talk to old prospectors and see the last of the wilderness before it disappeared. Man, nothing happened in that book. I liked the part where he told stories about local characters, and I liked the history of a place so shaped by a long-ago gold rush, but I struggled with the rest. It was a slog, which seemed appropriate considering it was mostly about travelling to places where there were no roads to get there. One night, when I was reading, I couldn't focus. I was skimming to the point where I couldn't have told you what the last sentence had said, because nothing had happened in the last ten pages. In an effort to pay attention, I made myself reread a passage several times. And then finally, something clicked. There was a line in there about a wall full of filleted salmon hanging up to be smoked, like a wall of leaves in autumn colors. I realized what a beautiful image it was, and as I kept reading, there were more and more. There was a whole chapter about salmon. All they did was swim upstream, but I was riveted.

By then, I was more than halfway through the book. I realized that the parts that I had considered a chore were also probably full of such lovely writing, but at that point, the memory of the slogging was too strong. I finished the book wishing that I had paid more attention to it in the beginning. But it was worth it, for the little bit that I got out of it and also the realization that I needed to slooooow down. It was like discovering reading again, not just for the story or the ideas, but the transportive feeling you can get from it. Before, I was learning about the British Columbian wilderness, but now I felt like I was there. It's more than a little sad that it took me so long to figure this out, as I've always considered myself a reader. It makes me wonder what I've been getting out of reading. I swear I loved it before. I bet I wrote college scholarship essays about how much I loved it. I bet I used the word "voracious."

So yeah. I discovered, at the age of 29, that reading can open your mind and transport you to other worlds. I could've saved myself a lot of time and just listened to LeVar Burton, but I guess some people have to learn things the hard way.

evidence of my idiocy.

2011-11-10T18:57:00.003-05:00

I've been a regular journaller for a long time. So in addition to what goes here, there are pages and pages of handwritten stuff hiding in my closet inside various books. It's boring, daily writing. A lot of it is just what-I-did-today kind of stuff, plus a fair amount of relationship drama, though sometimes I try harder to have actual thoughts. I never write about events larger than my own world; the words "Arab Spring" just haven't come up. That's right, folks, what you see here is the exciting version.

I use a wide variety of books. I have stopped buying them, because I already have a couple in reserve, waiting to be christened. The first thing I do when I start a new one is to number the pages, so that later, if I need to reference an earlier thought, I can do so easily. I always feel weird writing about intensely personal or negative stuff on the very first page, as if it sets the stage for the whole book. I have associations with some of my books. There's a spiral-bound teal one that I associate with a lot of crying and a lot of red wine.

I don't go back and read them, unless I want to look up something specific. This is rare. The few times that I have done it, I always remember something anew, which is one of the selling points that a door-to-door journal salesman will use on you. They never tell you that it's not all good memories.

In fact, I probably avoid going back, just because I am afraid of what I will find in there. I know what I will find in there: undeniable proof that as recently as this past July (when I started the current one), I was an idiot. I didn't even try to hide it. Instead I went on and on, leaving page after page of evidence of my complete and total idiocy. And I keep doing it, as if this time it will be different. It will be such a pleasure to go back and read this book, the one where I stopped being an idiot.

Logically, I know that we are all basically idiots. My writings are an indication of my humanity. It's also a sign of growth, that I can see the flaws in thoughts that were sincerely held. But then I read them again, and I'm like, gah, shut up, you moron.

I am a little obsessed with my audience, namely who it is. Obviously, Future Me, who, having grown out of Current Me, is very judgmental. But who else? Children, grandchildren, strangers who come to my estate sale, county dump workers, no one. My ex-boyfriend used to say that when he died, he wanted all his notebooks and letters destroyed immediately, like before the body got cold. He gave an example of some famous guy that was like that, too, though of course the heirs of the famous guy completely disobeyed his last wishes and published the unfinished works and correspondence instead. What's the point of being an heir if there is nothing to inherit? This ex-boyfriend would probably be appalled to find out that I simply threw his old letters in the dumpster, rather than burning them. In my defense, it was in the middle of the summer. Also, burning seemed too melodramatic for a shoebox of mementos that I just wanted to stop carrying around each time I moved. I wanted to move on, not have an exorcism.

I suppose he had the goods on me, too. More evidence of my idiocy, I mean. Maybe he burned them, or maybe they all got tossed one time when he moved. Or maybe they gradually escaped, one spring cleaning at a time.

I have had a lot of pen-pals over the years, so I've done a really good job of distributing the evidence. I came across some letters from a girl in upstate New York that I corresponded with during my middle school years. I read one where she told me about her first kiss, and being on the soccer team, and all the silly little things that fourteen-year-old girls care about. Her letters were really sweet. Then I thought about my letters being in the bottom of her drawer wherever she is now, and I was sickened. I know that I was a complete blockhead at that age. She was sweet, but I was just an idiot.

I'm just embarrassed to admit that I'm just winging it, all the time, making it up as I go along. And then documenting it all, for whatever reason. Maybe so I can go back and say, well, at least I'm not that stupid anymore.

misterwich.

2011-11-08T19:24:00.002-05:00

I never had any sort of affinity for sloppy joes until one fateful evening in college, when my roommate Krystal decided to make sloppy joes and I decided to eat them. I will forever hold her in a special place in my heart just for that one meal.

I felt like I had never really known sloppy joes until that moment. My experience up until then had been with Manwich, which came in a can and had a silly name. I think this was what my mom served. Actually, she probably served some sort of generic alternative, maybe Misterwich. It was okay, but I wouldn't recommend eating it without pickles. It just can't stand on its own feet. We also had sloppy joes at the public school cafeteria, and I don't know if there is a better definition of mystery meat than something that can be scooped and plopped onto a bun.

Krystal was a pretty good cook, but she didn't do it very often because there were so few opportunities to cook for more than herself. I feel her pain. Now, I like to cook and I'm not bad at it, but it's really hard to muster any amount of enthusiasm for cooking for one. I cook very regularly, until Josh goes out of town. And then it's fried eggs every night or cucumber sandwiches if the skillet is still dirty from the night before.

Anyway, Krystal made sloppy joes, not from a can, and I found out why anyone ever bothered to make a product such as Misterwich. To have a successful canned product, you must first have a successful homemade product. Otherwise, people will notice that what you're selling is pretty crappy, actually, rather than feeling it is a convenient approximation of something they had once back when they were small.

I had dreams of Krystal's sloppy joes, though she never made them again, probably because I ate all the leftovers (a clear violation of roommate protocol, though I see it as repayment for the time she was going through a bad break-up and drank all my liquor). A couple years later, I decided that I was ready as a chef to tackle the daunting task of browning ground beef, so I asked for her recipe. It was:

"ketchup, brown sugar, maple syrup, garlic powder, onion powder, worcheshire (sp?), beef and green olives."

Now, if you are looking to make sloppy joes, this is a good solid recipe. Brown the ground beef, add in the saucy stuff to taste. You don't even need pickles. To me, it tastes like a basement apartment in a cold mountain town, with a dash of roommate bonding. If all you've ever had is Misterwich, it just may change your life.

But just as Krystal's sloppy joes made me go "Wait, they can taste like this?", I naturally began to wonder just how good they could get. I wanted a definitive recipe, one that would make a can of Misterwich hide in the corner, too ashamed to be in the glow of a truly awesome sloppy joe. I scoured the internet.

I first tried this recipe, and I found it wrong, all wrong. It was sloppy, but it must have been some other dude. I got on board with the addition of vegetables, but I could not abide the sauce. It was delicious and tangy, but just too strange. I was so distracted by its non-joeness that I couldn't enjoy it. These were sloppy alberts or something.

I despaired. Woe! Would I ever find a sloppy joe for my very own?

Once I discovered that I could make my own very excellent barbecue sauce, I decided to try it as a sloppy sauce. I used the vegetables and browning technique from the sloppy alberts recipe, but went with my own sauce. And then I just kept doing that. The result is probably not really a sloppy joe either, but something more wholesome with a certain spicy smokiness. It is still sloppy. Maybe sloppy rogers?

I have started a small tradition with myself of making these when Josh goes out on tour. You see, he did not have a special moment with a plate of sloppy joes, and he is so-so on them, even though the ones he gets are about as fancy as Manwich can get, like Monsieurwich. So I wait until he is gone to make them. I forego the cucumber sandwiches for a night and go through the arduous task of chopping an onion and grating a carrot and browning ground beef. It takes like a whole hour, just to cook dinner for one measly person! However, I do get to eat all the leftovers by myself.

waste not.

2011-11-07T14:09:00.000-05:00

Note: I'm about to say "poop" a lot. Just embrace it. It's a funny word.

One thing that I never anticipated about dog ownership was how much you have to think about poop. Not poop itself, but the last time poop happened. In addition to the regular clock that tells you when you have to go to work or meet a friend for lunch, you have to keep track of the last time the dog pooped. You've got a poop clock, which probably will need to be reset before you go to work or meet a friend for lunch.

You do also have to deal with the poop itself. Remix does a lot of her business in the back yard. I'm sure a lot of poop has happened back there. Luckily, there is a thriving circle of life back there, because I don't have to see very much of it. As soon as she lets it go, a bunch of wee beasties are there to, well, whatever they do with it.

We also take her on walks around the neighborhood. And there you have the need for poop bags, a first-world invention if I've ever heard of one. People do not like for your dog to poop on their lawns. I guess verdent lawns are not the home to the kind of wee beasties that get rid of dog poop. I have a yard full of dirt and leaves. Whatever lives in the leaves loves poop, but whatever lives in the grass does not. So the owners of lawns get mad at your dog, when they are the ones who ruined their own poop-recycling environment.

Thus the need for poop bags.

At first, we used plastic grocery bags. These worked pretty well, except that sometimes there were holes in them, but you didn't realize it until it was too late. Newspaper or produce bags worked better (less likely to have holes, better shape for the purpose), but they were harder to come by. I used to grab an extra produce bag or two every single time I went to the grocery store. It was kinda stealing. But we were bagging poop every day, sometimes twice a day.

I am perfectly aware that you can buy poop bags by the hundred. But if you thought that I wouldn't try to get out of buying something, then you haven't been paying attention.

I mentioned my woes to my mother. She laughed at me, because they could hardly be called woes.

But the next time I saw Mama, she gave me two large bags full of newspaper bags. She gets two papers every single day, which is two poop bags. She was thrilled to do this, because she personally was overrun with newspaper bags, perfectly good plastic bags, that she had no purpose for. But now! She could give them to me. They were no longer going to waste, they were containing waste. She even told one of her friends about it, who also started donating newspaper bags to the cause.

I'm sure you can see the connection between the mother who refuses to throw anything out and the daughter who refuses to buy special plastic bags.

The problem was that we no longer had a problem - we'd found another solution to all the poop. When we walk Remix, we just direct her to poop in one of the many wooded areas that are scattered around the neighborhood. These areas are owned by the same people who own lawns, but for some reason, it's okay to poop in the woods; even bears do it. Plus, those wee beasties take care of it right away.

So now I have lots and lots of poop bags, with no need for them. I use them when I need them, and I recyle the rest. I'm happy, lawn-owners are happy, my mama's frugal heart is happy.

the little things.

2011-11-06T20:03:00.003-05:00

"You know. It bugs me that you never wash my clothes. You just wash yours."

"What?"

"When you do laundry, you only wash your clothes and never mine."

"Oh."

"I know it's because you don't do laundry until you need work clothes, and-"

"Well, yeah, I have to wear a uniform to work, and-"

"And all your work clothes take up a whole load, so-"

"I only wash mine."

"Right, I know. That's why I haven't mentioned it until now. It just bugs me."

"Oh."

"Just throw some of my socks in there. To make me feel better."

"Okay."

the scenic route.

2011-11-05T17:08:00.003-04:00

I don't know why it's so hard for me to get off my duff and walk the dog.

Especially when I walk out my front door and this is out there, waiting for me.

There's really no excuse for such laziness.

Even when it's 7:30 in the morning and 40 degrees out.

Okay, maybe then.

friday night's alright for things.

2011-11-04T20:19:00.002-04:00

Thing 1: Wish fulfillment
I came home yesterday to find an unexpected package. Rather than call the Department of Homeland Security, I took my chances and opened it. Inside was a biscuit cutter set and some wide-mouth jar lids - the weirdest terrorist attack yet. Apparently, when you whine on the internet about how you're too cheap to buy yourself a biscuit cutter, your sister takes pity on you and buys it for you. Had I known that the world worked this way, I would have asked for something fancier, like a jukebox. However, it probably only works when your wish list is pathetic enough to include jar lids. I celebrated by throwing away two years worth of olive jar lids.

As for the Harry Potter DVD, the price went down to $6 on Amazon, so I just bought it for myself.

Thing 2: Classic!
From a yard sale listing on CraigsList: "Classic, approx. 25 year old VCR that still works. I actually paid $1200.00 for it because they had just come out."

I sincerely hope that they mention this just to make conversation. Too often, when someone mentions what they paid for an item, they are using that to justify what they want you to pay them for it. I should start replying, "Yeah, that's why I shop at yard sales."

Thing 3: Futon privileges
I got home today and immediately saw too much fluff. Remix had ripped into the futon and strewn its contents around the floor. She went into submissive mode because I was obviously mad. Honestly, I had been expecting this one to happen for a while. One of Remix's favorite things to do is de-fluff from that which is fluffed. A futon is one giant ball of fluff, protected by a thin piece of cotton (actually, most things are basically a thin piece of cotton to a pitbull). Still, the fact that she had not yet turned her teeth into my most expensive stuffed thing had lured me into a false sense of futon security. It is a smallish hole, near the seam. I can fix it, but all the same: ARGH. Tonight, as punishment, she has lost her futon privileges. Of course, her tiny doggy brain cannot connect the punishment to the crime, but I feel better about it.

I wondered if it would have happened if I had gotten my lazy tail out of bed early enough to walk her this morning. Josh is on tour, and so she is alone in the house for nine hours while I'm at work. If I had exercised her this morning, maybe she would have been too tired to rip open the futon. I used the semi-drizzle as an excuse. She doesn't like the rain. I had to go out with her into the back yard just to get her to go off the back porch and pee; otherwise, she would have just sat by the back door and waited for me to open it. I guess I probably wouldn't like peeing in the rain either.

But when I went out with her to make her go, she looked up at me like we were on a grand adventure. Where are we going today, boss? I bet there are squirrels about. Remix doesn't care where we go or whether she gets enough exercise. She is happy just to be with her pack.

It is a funny thing that when you take care of simple-minded creatures, you blame yourself for their mistakes.

spherical map.

2011-11-03T17:03:00.001-04:00

When I brought home the fire extinguisher lamp, Josh was suddenly filled with dread. Hidden upstairs was my birthday present. It had been there for the better part of a week, but I had agreed to not peek. He did not quite trust me on this point, one day accusing me of looking, claiming there had been fingerprints on it. I declared my innocence. He asked if I had looked inside.

"There's an inside? With another present?" I guess that convinced him that I had not looked. I think he just randomly accused me because he figured I would cop to it if I were guilty. Men and their mind games.

Josh is nervous about giving me gifts. He thinks I have high standards. I think that if he did not want me to have high standards, he should not have given me such good gifts in the past. If you do not want your girlfriend to expect gumball-machine-level-excitement every year, then I guess you should give her scented soaps or something.

So while he was pretty excited about this year's gift, the super amazing fire extinguisher lamp that I bought for myself made him wonder if his gift would be overshadowed. I told him there was plenty of room for many ridiculous and wonderful things in my life, including him. Actually, it was pretty cute, as I watched him think to himself about what he had bought, and his face gradually revealed his confidence in the present.

Throughout the course of the week, he let drop several clues.

You can put things inside it.

Made in Italy

He saw one in a rich person's catalog when he was little

These clues were pretty much useless.

Finally, on Sunday, he went upstairs and came back down carrying a liquor cabinet globe. A spherical map. That you can put things inside. Yes, please.

Now, we already have a liquor cabinet made out of an old stereo console. That stereo sat in the living room for a year, looking mid-century and cool, but not doing much more than take up space. But then we had the idea to put booze in it, and Josh fixed the sound, and hey, presto! Custom liquor cabinet. We call it Jeeves (we've gotten in the habit of naming our appliances). So we will have to come up with something else to put inside our globe.

We did find the perfect place for it, though we had to shuffle some things around. It's sitting next to a bookshelf in the living room, which is chock full of our random crap. On top of the bookshelf, on the side next to the globe, we have a globe of the moon that I inherited from my uncle Johnny. The placement was unintentional, as the moon was already sitting there. But the effect is like a little model of the earth and the orbitting moon, except that the moon is 3/4 the size of the Earth and the Earth has a hinge where you can open it up and make it talk like a planet puppet.

I am taking suggestions for other things to keep in the globe. It should not be too valuable, as it's not really a secret compartment. And anything roughly bottle-shaped would work well, since the interior is carved to fit that shape. It could be a wine holder, but I already have two of those. I have a lot of things.

In any case, Josh can feel satisfied about his gift giving, at least until next year, when he will curse himself for setting the bar so high.

i love lamp.

2011-11-02T17:37:00.000-04:00

A month or so ago, I saw an antique fire extinguisher at a church yard sale. It was battered and silver with a thick layer of basement dust on it. They were selling it for $40. It even had the hose still attached. I looked at it, thought it was amazing and neat, then didn't buy it. What am I going to do with an old fire extinguisher? It is not useful and it takes up space.

Last weekend, I saw another antique fire extinguisher. However, this one had been turned into a lamp.

You may not know it, but I have a serious weakness for lamps. This weakness is actually a general one for decorative items that are useful. I have many stuff-related weaknesses, and they are pretty much all utilitarian things - lamps, clocks, dishes, linens. Of course, when you have a strong desire to collect such things, the fact that you have 50 of them makes them a little less useful and a lot more in the way. I have to be picky. Thank goodness I have a high tolerance for clutter, or I'd have to be really picky.

Picky or not, I had no chance of resisting this lamp. A month ago, I hadn't even known that an antique fire extinguisher was something one could have. But now that I knew that not only could you have one, you could have one that provided light while you read in the evenings, then it had to be mine. At first I was in denial. I took pictures of it, so that I could show people the crazy thing I had seen at an estate sale. Then I walked away from it to go look through the rest of the house, thinking that it would surely be gone by the time I got back around to it. And then I lugged it downstairs and wrote out a $45 check for it.

Forty-five dollars is a lot of money for me to spend on something, hence my indecision. But then I thought about the retail stores, and the kinds of lamps that millions of people buy in those places for $45. Those lamps suck in comparison to this lamp. If one is to pay that much for a completely unnecessary light fixture, it might as well be freaking amazing. That is not good logic at all, but I really just wanted to buy the lamp.

I guess if I were a more creative person, I could have seen the lamp possibilities in that first fire extinguisher. I'm not and I didn't. Perhaps this will teach me to think more of this in the future, to go to yard sales and think about what crazy things could be lamped, which would then make them useful and give me a reason to buy them. That's probably a bad idea, actually.

My silly purchase was redeemed later when Josh came home and saw it. Our tastes do not always align, so I'm always worried when I let my inner lamp lady have control of the checkbook. Luckily, he proclaimed it amazing, too. We cleaned it up, but decided not to polish it because we like the patina. The body is copper, with brass details. For a ridiculous lamp, it's quite handsome.

The neatest part about this thing is the label. We also have two modern household fire extinguishers in the house, and they have instruction labels on them. How to make the stuff come out, where to point the stuff (at fire), where not to point the stuff (at eyes). These labels are brightly colored plastic stickers. On the antique one, the label is made of brass, like a plaque marking a historical building. The instructions tell you how to make the stuff. I never knew it, but modern fire extinguishers are the fire-fighting equivalent of Bisquick. In the olden days, you had to mix it yourself.

See? It's educational, too. And it's a lamp!

birthday money.

2011-11-01T17:18:00.001-04:00

A few days before my birthday, I sent my mom a wish list. We are the kind of family where you can just ask for presents. While Josh was horrified the first time I just came out and asked him what he wanted for his birthday, he was very happy with the results. Surprises are nice, but so is getting exactly what you want. My mom used to send me an email at the beginning of October, which basically asked if there was something specific that I wanted or if she should just send money. That's the kind of straight talk that you can expect from my family.

I guess I asked for the money too many years in a row, because she is just sending cash without asking these days. The trouble is, there are some things that I want, but don't want to buy for myself. Basically, these are things that I'm unlikely to find at a thrift store anytime soon and I kinda really want them now. Here was my birthday list:

a set of widemouth plastic jar caps - I found a boatload of various wide-mouth jars at a yard sale and replaced my entire storage jar collection with them. Unlike my previous collection of hodgepodge mayonnaise and pickle jars, they did not come with lids. I have some of the canning lids, but those are kind of a pain to deal with.

biscuit cutters (double-sided, with both round and fluted edges) - I had one biscuit cutter and I managed to lose it. I do not like using jar lids or drinking cups for cutting biscuits, they just don't work right. You can find these at estate sales once in a while, but they seem to be the kind of thing that people mostly hold on to.

Harry Potter and the Dealthly Hallows, Part 1 DVD - I just want it.

I even sent the list with helpful Amazon links, telling her she could just pick and choose what was in her budget (secretly hoping that she would just go over budget and buy them all). But she responded that she had already sent the money.

And that's a bummer. Because while it is one thing to know that you have birthday credits coming and ask that they be dispensed in a certain way, it is another to have the money in your hand and actually spend it on jar caps and wizard movies. I already had the money to buy those things for myself, but not the inclination. I would instead look at the jar caps and then look at the price, all the while calculating that I could probably spend as little as a dime a cap (maybe even free), if only I could find someone to sell them to me.

So when the money came, I just folded it up and put it in my cash stash. I will probably pull it out next month to stuff in birthday cards for my niblings. Maybe I will buy those things for myself. Maybe I will wait until I find them used, and my secondhand lifestyle will be redeemed. Or maybe I will wait so long that I will forget that I ever wanted them.

Anyway, Mama, thanks for the birthday money.

ten-and-a-half.

2011-10-28T17:20:00.001-04:00

I bought some new shoes this week. Like, actual new shoes from a retail store. Not only that, but it was a retail store located inside a mall.

I was driven there out of desperation. Sometimes, in every secondhander's life, they find that they need something kinda like now. They cannot wait until they find whatever they want at a yard sale or a thrift store. Plus, it's amazing how when you actually need to find something used, all of those things suddenly stop appearing.

This desperate situation was brought on by the dog, who has made great progress in not chewing our stuff, but still cannot resist the siren's smell of shoes. Dogs interact with the world in a different way than we do, and there is something about shoes that turns Remix into a very bad dog. She turned my favorite pair of sneakers into open-toed shoes. Then she did the same to my backup pair, and though I still wore them for a week, I realized that even a small hole in the toe is kind of annoying. I'm considering duct tape. Then if anyone asks, I can just tell them that there is a recession on.

Obviously, I need to do a better job of keeping my shoes away from the dog.

In search of new shoes, I went to several retail stores. I was disappointed as usual by both the selection and the prices. Actually, I was disappointed by the selection and nauseated by the prices. We'll skip my growing frustration and all the angry muttering I did as I left each store roughly five minutes after I came in.

But finally, I found a pair of cute little slip-on sneakers at Payless for $11. The only problem was that they were a size 10.

I have big feet. It's not something I mind for the most part, because I figure it is something that goes along with being tall. I know girls who are of average height with big feet, and if I were them, I would feel very ripped off. It is harder to find shoes in my size, just because stores do not carry very many of them. Plus, a lot of women's footwear does not translate well to large sizes. Just looking at them makes me think "get on de boat."

I actually wear size 10 1/2. However, most shoes don't come in that size. They come in 10s and maybe they come in 11s. There just aren't enough women with clodhoppers that size to merit making the half-size. So most of my shoes are either a little big or a little small. On the rare occasions that I come across an actual 10 1/2, it fits like it was made from a mold of my foot. It is a miraculous experience that I'm sure women with size 7 feet take for granted.

I'd found the shoes that I wanted, but the size 10s were a little snug. There were no size 11s at the store. I could order them online, but then I'd have to buy them without trying them on, at which point I might discover that the 11s were too big. It's tough being me, with my shoe size that doesn't seem to exist.

Bigger problems that being a size 10 1/2: being a size 13, not being able to afford shoes, having your feet bound, not having feet.

So I decided to just suck it up and get the small shoes. My big feet would stretch them out after a day or two, and it would be fine. I was really just tired of going to stores. The plan was to wear really thick socks for a few days. I would break in these shoes like a rebellious colt. Then I had a better idea.

You know those shoe form things? You know, old men have them for fancy shoes so that the shoes don't look shape when they are sitting in the closet, waiting for the Queen's visit. Well, I bet I could use a set of those to stretch out the shoes so that I didn't have to.

Amazingly, I happened to have a pair of them. I bought a giant bag of wooden hangers (Josh favors them) for a dollar at an estate sale, and in the bottom were a nice set of wooden shoe form thingies. I'd kept them, because...well, I don't know why. Because they looked cool and vintage. Because maybe Josh wanted them. Because they might come in handy someday. And they did! And since I have great big feet, they actually fit into my size 10s. Now I didn't have to use my own poor suffering feet, I could use these fake wooden ones. In just a few days, I'd have my own custom pair of 10 1/2s.

Just keep them away from the dog.

twin pet.

2011-10-19T17:41:00.001-04:00

Lately, dog food has gotten me down.

Before we got a dog, I was anxious about how much pet ownership was going to cost. I knew that dog food could be very expensive or it could be very cheap, but I wanted to be a Good Dog Owner. I was afraid that my desire to be a responsible pet parent would conflict with my desire to not spend very much money on anything ever. I did a little research online. Consumer Reports told me that dog food is dog food, and that as long as it says "nutritionally complete," then it was fine. I felt like a savvy customer, not falling for clever dog food marketing.

I went to Wal-Mart to scope out the options. Next to every name brand was a bag of Ol' Roy that was meant to compete with it. So if you were a Purina kinda person, right next to it was a bag of Ol' Roy in the same color, a couple of bucks cheaper. Or if you were Iams all the way, there was an Ol' Roy for you, too. It's a pretty clever strategy. They're assuming that people are attached to their dog food brands. So if they only made Ol' Roy to compete with Purina, those Iams folks would walk on by and never even consider the store brand option.

I was disappointed that while I could get Ol' Roy in a variety of knockoff flavors, it still was only a couple of bucks less than the name brand. And then I found Twin Pet. Man, that is some cheap dog food. While the Ol' Roy bags come in a variety of bold colors, featuring happy and energetic family pets, Twin Pet comes in a beige bag. On the front is a beagle that looks sort of sad and plaintive, as if he is saying, "Gruel again?" While the name "Ol' Roy" conjures up an image of a faithful hunting dog, "Twin Pet" doesn't give you any sort of picture at all. What the heck is a Twin Pet?

I bought the Twin Pet. I bought 15 pounds of it for $4. It's funny that there is this ultra-cheap option for the ultra-cheap (or ultra-poor). Maybe Ol' Roy costs the same as Twin Pet to manufacture, but I bet they sell more of it if they put the price closer to the name brand options. I know from experience that buying Twin Pet makes you feel like a jerk.

Consumer Reports or not, I felt like a bad owner for spending so little. I normally don't buy into the idea that you have to pay more to get more; in fact, in any other case, I would feel superior and smart for not falling for that myth. But no, I just feel bad. Here Remix, I only love you $4 worth.

She seemed to eat it; in fact, Remix can set records for eating speed. And she seemed healthy and energetic. She was enthusiastic at feeding times, and in my mind, I tried to imagine her saying "Twin Pet! Twin Pet!" like a dog in a commercial. Then she said a bunch of other silly things, because I sure do like pretending my dog can talk.

At some point, I read an article about dog food. Reading an article about anything is a dangerous activity. The article talked about corn in dog food. Basically, it said that most dog foods have a high corn content, but that is a waste of your money. Because dogs can't even digest corn, so it's basically just a filler. Dogs are naturally supposed to eat mostly meat with just a little bit of vegetables ("roughage" - yum!), but not grain. So the dog is not getting good nutrients, and is basically just a machine that turns corn into poop. Also, they will age faster and die sooner (but only after racking up a lot of expensive corn-related medical bills). I was already feeling a little guilty about the Twin Pet, and now I was feeling worse. Because if anything was chock full of useless filler, it had to be the Twin Pet.

So I went back to the dog food aisle to check out the various Ol' Roy options. I was even thinking about more expensive brands, depending on just how expensive they got. After all, I love my dog. I want her to be happy and healthy, to reach her full doggy potential.

Guys, all the dog food has corn in it. ALL OF IT. Ninety percent of them had corn as the first or second ingredient, even the snooty organic ones. I found one brand that did not have corn in the first five ingredients. It was made by Rachael Ray, who appears smiling on the cover with her rescued pitbull. However, I happen to know that her pitbull bit somebody, so maybe she's feeding it too much meat.

I checked every single bag. I got pretty frustrated right there in the dog food aisle. Finally, I gave up and bought a bag of Ol' Roy that had corn as the fourth ingredient. It was $11 for 18 pounds, more than twice the cost per pound of Twin Pet. I took my relatively expensive dog food and my irritation home. Then I looked on the internet to find out what kind of mixed up world will only sell you dog food that your dog can't even digest.

The thing is, there is not really a consensus on the corn issue. There are articles going either way, and then below them are comments calling the authors of said article an idiot. Dogs can't digest corn, they're carnivores! I've been feeding my dog Purina for 15 years and she's healthy as a horse! I make my own dog food! I run a kennel and have never had a problem!

Nothing sounded particularly authoritative. No one seemed to have any data beyond anecdotes or vague ideas about what was "natural." At the end of it, I pretty much sided with cost and availability. I am not going to cook my own dog food, nor am I going to pay $2 a pound for some stuff that I can only get over the internet. At some point I realized that most of the pets in the country were eating the corny stuff, and they managed to live pretty happy, healthy lives. At some point, you have to decide that it's probably good enough. That's the kind of practical thinking that makes me sound like a terrible person. You know, the kind that feeds her dog Twin Pet.

However, I have switched to Ol' Roy. I'm just a sucker that way.

it's a shame about ray.

2011-10-12T17:32:00.000-04:00

Friday, 4:03 PM
Someone has taken the newspaper funnies from the breakroom. I suspect it could be found sitting on a toilet tank in the mens room. I cannot go get it, nor am I sure that I would really want to now. I look through the Weekend section instead, not that I ever find anything I want to do in there. Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer, is going to be in Durham on Saturday night, but I have no idea what his act would be. Also, The Lemonheads will be in Carrboro, performing the entirety of their 1992 break-out album It's a Shame About Ray. I file this item in my memory. Josh had told me many time how much he loves this album.

Friday, 8:37 PM
We are on our way to Winston-Salem so Josh can play a benefit for burn victims. I mention the thing about The Lemonheads, and he responds enthusiastically. I also mention the Dog Whisperer, and he doesn't realize that I'm joking.

Saturday 10:50 AM
I ask whether we need to buy tickets in advance. He says yes.

Saturday 11:34 PM
I buy tickets.

Sunday 9:20 PM
We leave for Carrboro. We have timed it so that we will miss the two opening bands.

Sunday 9:53 PM
We arrive and magically find a close parking space. We have missed the first opening band, but the second hasn't showed up yet. We go around to the new side entrance and find that they've taken down the wall separating the club from the bar area. It's now just a great big room. We get beers and find positions in the middle of the room. There are people here, but not so many that we won't be able to see.

Sunday 10:18 PM
A man in a hoodie comes onstage with a guitar. The crowd cheers. This is Evan Dando.

I don't know any of The Lemonheads's songs. In fact, all I know is from a Kimya Dawson lyric about the kind of binge drinking she used to do before she got clean: "Evan Dando never planned on telling you the truth." From this, I decide that Dando, if that is his real name, cannot be trusted. His appearance now doesn't help. The hood is up on his sweatshirt, making him look like a recluse. Whether he is one of those crazy geniuses, I don't know, though I could hazard a guess on the crazy part.

Evan says that he is going to entertain us for a bit. The second band got lost, but they are on their way. He doesn't want us to miss them, so he's going to play so we won't leave. Considering that it's him we are all here to see, it seems doubtful that anyone would go. But maybe he just wanted to play. In any case, we are thrilled at this spontaneous performance, this secret show. He plays a couple songs, and then just starts taking requests from fans who probably know his whole catalog.

Once, during a show, Josh's brother broke a guitar string. While he fixed it, Josh and the drummer made up a song on the spot and just played. They've been playing together for so long that they can compose as they go in front of an audience. Once the broken string was replaced, the guitar came screaming in during the middle of this brand new song, as if they'd planned it that way. They finished it, and someone from the crowd yelled out, "That's rock and ROLLLLL!"

This lone guitarist on the stage in front of a reverent crowd, this was rock and roll.

Sunday 10:34 PM
Evan leaves the stage and the second opening band starts setting up. I don't care about the second band, no matter what Evan Dando says, and besides, I am hungry. We walk outside and across the parking lot to a taco truck. We order two burritos, one steak (asada) and one lamb (borrego), $10. They are ready in minutes and are delicious, simple peasant food, our favorite kind. Meat, rice, lettuce, cilantro. We finish eating them in the car, because it is the first cold weekend of the fall.

Sunday 11:01 PM
We walk back inside just as the second band is thanking the crowd and saying goodnight.

Sunday 11:13 PM
The Lemonheads, all three of them, take the stage. They play It's a Shame About Ray, though they skip track 4 ("Rudderless") and have to go back. Evan seems scattered. The bassist is not amused.

It's a good show, but there is no encore. Well, we can't complain. We did get a secret show. Josh buys a t-shirt. He is happy.

Sunday 12:30 AM
We walk outside. Behind us, a man complains that the taco truck has left.

Sunday 12:31 AM
We stand next to the car while Josh smokes a cigarette. Maybe twenty feet away is Evan Dando. He is talking to the lead singer of the second band. Every minute or so, another fan comes up and asks him to sign something or have their picture taken with him. A couple just say "Great show!" and walk on. Evan is being friendly and cool about it. I ask Josh if he wants to go say hello, and he hedges, feeling shy. So we continue to stand there awkwardly at the outskirts. It's silly for him to be bashful. Hasn't he stood around after shows and talked to fans before? I encourage him to just go shake the man's hand, saying he might regret it if he does nothing.

He decides not to, and we drive home. He says that Evan seems too fragile to approach. Whatever.

Sunday 1:11 AM
We pull into the driveway, and he says I was right about regretting it. But it's okay. Lemonheads. Secret show. Burritos. It was a good night.

goober smile.

2011-10-11T17:21:00.000-04:00

Being female, I periodically get emails that are full of pictures of cute animals. I resent the implication that just because I am designated double-X, I enjoy looking at such things. I mean, really, I am a highly educated, logically-minded woman. I would complain, but awwwwwwww...look at the wittle puppy!

I recently received such an email from a coworker. It was full of dog pictures - dogs wearing hats, dogs snuggling with kittens, dogs making funny faces. There was one picture of a pitbull. It was sitting next to a chair that had been so thoroughly destroyed that it was not even a chair anymore. The dog was smiling. Not that dogs smile in the sense that we do, but pitbulls have huge wide jaws full of teeth, and when they pant, it looks enough like a big goober smile that you'd want to put it in an email and send it to your best girlfriends.

Now I resented the implication that pitbulls were destructive. Okay, fine, my particular pitbull is kinda destructive, but doesn't mean they all are. There are probably some really old ones that you could leave alone with your chair.

Like I told you before, we give Remix stuffed animals to destroy so that she won't turn our chairs into not-chairs. It sorta works. We call them Cartmans, after the first toy, and she occasionally seems to understand what we mean by this word. New Cartman day is a special one in our house. We take her into the spare bedroom where she is generally not allowed to go. Ah, forbidden room with strange unsmelled smells! Then we dump the bag of possible Cartmans on the floor and allow her to pick one. Sometimes she sniffs around indecisively for a while before grabbing one and getting down to the hard work of ripping it open. Sometimes her decision is more immediate. Once she pretended to look at something on the wall before snatching a brown stuffed dog and bolting from the room.

Thus she has selected her new toy, and its days are numbered. The easiest thing for her to go for are almost always the eyes, which are usually hard plastic. Those are pretty much gone within the hour, chewed and then abandoned on the floor. By then, the hull has been breached, and she can start getting the fluff out, which she does by enlarging the hole left by the missing eyes. When you come to visit, our dog will probably offer you a toy that has no face. It is disconcerting.

Aside from being an outlet for pure destructive energy, the Cartmans also are tug toys. You can't tug in earnest, because they'll rip right in half (which is what happened when another pitbull came over one day and played tug). But you can tug a little bit, enough to make Remix really, really happy. You will never win at tug. Opposable thumbs are useful, but they are no match in this game against a wide jaw full of teeth and backed by huge muscles. These dogs evolved to bite and hold on, or rather, we bred them to do that. However, you can occasionally outsmart the dog and get the toy. And then you throw it a few feet away and she joyfully leaps to get it. Then she brings it back, because she wants you to try and take it from her again. Go ahead. Try.

I don't spend more than fifty cents on these things at yard sales. Stuffed animals are as ubiquitous as Christmas tins, the secondhand marketplace is lousy with them. I try to get the ones that are stuffing only. Obviously, the ones with voice boxes or battery packs are right out, but a lot of them have beans in them, either in the body or the feet. I try to avoid these as well, since she would probably swallow them. At the very least, they'd be a pain to clean up. But once I accidentally gave her a green brontosaurus with beans in the feet. I didn't figure it out until I heard them hit the floor in a steady stream, and thus the term "foot beans" was introduced into our house.

Usually if I'm buying Cartmans at a sale, I'm buying a bunch. People who have stuffed animals to sell never have just one. So while I'm standing there, paying for my armload of new-old toys, I tell the seller that they are destined for my dog. No one really responds very well to that. They look a little uncomfortable, as if they're not sure they want to sell them to me anymore. Perhaps they have fond memories of their children sleeping peacefully with those toys. I can't understand being squeamish about something you were selling for a quarter. I dunno, maybe those people don't like dogs.

I went out of town a couple weekends ago. Before I left, Remix had been working on the destruction of a stuffed lamb. When I returned, I asked Josh if she had gotten a new one yet.

"Well, yeah. But I didn't give it to her."

"Uh..."

"She got into that room where we keep them. It's a stuffed Snoopy?"

"In a Santa suit?" I had been saving that one for Christmas (SHUT UP, I CAN GIVE MY DOG A FIFTY CENT CHRISTMAS PRESENT).

"No. It had beans in it."

"Oh. That one was not for her. It was mine."

"I'm sorry." He was sorry, but we both know that this is what happens when you live with a dog.

"My ex-boyfriend gave it to me."

"I'm sorry." He was not really sorry anymore. He actually smiled at that.

Remix was ecstatic to see me, as she always is. She immediately came running up, Snoopy hanging limply from her mouth, his face chewed off and beans leaking from his foot. I took it from her and sighed, as it was far too late to salvage the toy. So I threw it across the room and she bounded to get it. Then she came straight back with it clenched in her big goober smile, daring me to try and take it.

princess of cake.

2011-10-10T17:20:00.000-04:00

We followed the girl dressed as cake into the bar. She had three layers, held up by wires in orbit around her, and yet if she bent down to pick something up you'd be able to see the filling. There were a couple of them, and their outfits were cute, but awful trying to get through the door. They were Liquor Girls, women dressed in little nothings and passing out favors and samples of booze. The companies that hired them would like you to have a good time, so you can associate that good time with their brand-new flavored liquor experience. They were handing out crowns and tiaras and shots of a new booze that was named Cake and supposedly tasted just like cake. Now you can have your cake and drink it, too! I don't know what the crowns had to do with it. Drink Cake! Then you can be the King of Cake!

We ignored the Cake girls (though I was interested in the free samples), sat down, ordered some drinks. The bar was crowded, and the TVs were showing some local team. I think it was baseball, so it must have been the Phillies. Clearly, I was very interested in the game. We ignored it except when the other bar patrons started cheering excessively. Instead, we discussed Cake recipes. I wondered how long it would be before some man came up to hit on Ashley.

I'll just put this out there - I never get hit on at bars, and I never get approached when I'm on my own. Only when I am hanging out with another girl do I get any attention at all, and that's from a wing man. There are lots of uncharitable explanations for this, and they all have to do with my appearance. Maybe I'm hideously ugly, or maybe it's just obvious that I'm not trying very hard. I'd had to wait back at the hotel while Ashley freshened up her makeup. I'd told her if she just didn't wear any, there would be no need to freshen it up. It's a real time-saver. But I guess that's not the point.

We managed to remain unbothered by the other patrons. I left for the bathroom, then came back to find Ashley in conversation with a guy that looked like the chubby guy from Superbad. I'm sure he was just as thrilled to see me. He was asking where we were from. This question had been very common on our trip. We merely had to say one sentence before someone called us out on our accents.

Hearing that we were from the Old North State, he launched into his best approximation of a Gone with the Wind accent. Bad southern accents are a pet peeve of mine. While his wasn't terrible, it was straight from the plantation. You know what? There are lots of southern accents. Mine doesn't sound like that, nor does Ashley's. Also, why would any girl be impressed with a stereotypical representation of her home?

At some point, he began singing. He had a very nice voice and some familiarization with show tunes (mostly from Oklahoma!). Still on his southern theme, he also treated us to "Old Man River" and an incomplete rendition of "Dixieland."

Basically, it was either bad accents or singing. I make it sound quick and sorta amusing, but this went on for an hour or two. We tried to explain to him, first politely and then not at all, that he was annoying us and that this whole act in general was unlikely to ever help him score at a bar. At one point, for maybe twenty minutes, he wandered over to the table next to ours, where we could hear him trying out a similar routine. Those people just left. That's probably what we should have done, but I had my eye on a tiara. I would be crowned the Princess of Cake!

He was nice enough to bring over a wing man, who was thankfully normal. They were both grad students, studying astrophysics at Penn. We asked the friend why he would continue on with all the bad accents and the singing when it was clear they were not working. His only explanation was that his friend was just really, really drunk. I was even more amazed once I realized that the guy must be actually pretty accomplished and intelligent. He was apparently signing up to do a research stint in Antartica.

I guess that was the worst part. It wasn't sitting there and having to put up with the guy. It was knowing that I could have actually enjoyed his company instead. I could have learned something and been enriched by his presence and experience. Maybe he had some interesting stories! But no. I had to listen as a guy from upstate New York sang half the words to Dixieland.

At least I got a tiara.

happy heart.

2011-10-07T17:16:00.003-04:00

When I was in the eighth grade, my class took a trip to Washington, D.C. Our itinerary was pushing the limits of time itself, as the organizers wanted us to get as much out of the trip as possible. I basically had a crappy time, because we didn't spend long enough at any one location to appreciate any of it. As soon as we got somewhere, it was time to leave. We did spend a looooong time at the Holocaust Museum, or maybe it just seemed like a long time.

On the last day, we had an hour left to kill before we needed to leave. Our options were to spend the whole hour at the National Zoo or to ride the subway once and then spend half an hour at the zoo. It was put to a vote, and since most of us kids were from rural Western North Carolina and had never ridden a subway before, that's the option that won. I was pissed. I had ridden a subway before, but I had never been to a zoo bigger than the one in Great Bend, Kansas, which is about as impressive as it sounds. We rode the subway, then saw maybe one animal, before hopping back on the bus and driving back to North Carolina. I had a bad attitude about the whole thing, and so didn't enjoy any of it. My sister calls this not having a happy heart, which is kinda hokey but better than saying "shut up, you rotten ingrate."

I learned a couple things from this experience about vacation time management, namely that I would rather miss out on some things than not see anything properly. I did not learn anything about having a happy heart until many years later.

I was reminded of that brief zoo visit while in Philadelphia. See, we had tickets to go to the zoo as part of the CityPass, but there was just not enough time to do it. We wanted to focus our time on going to things that were not in other cities, and well, even Great Bend, Kansas has a zoo. So we spent a long time at the Eastern State Penitentiary and then realized that we only had an hour before the zoo closed. We knew that we would not be able to get there on another day, so we decided that we might as well use our tickets to get an hour of zoo time. We would not waste time riding the freaking subway. Instead, we rode a double-decker tourist bus, also as part of our CityPass. Because of my great strides in improving my attitude, I was okay about the shortness of the visit. Also, I've been to more zoos since the eighth grade.

Here are some random things from my time at the Philly Zoo, which is the oldest in the country.

They have a really nice rare animal exhibit, where I saw some animals that I'd never heard of. Each animal had a map that showed its natural habitat, and most of these guys had tiny little blips on their maps, about the size of Great Bend, Kansas.

Did you know that some porcupines have prehensile tails?

Ashley does not like birds, so we skipped the aviary completely. I love exotic birds, but remember, I had a happy heart. However, I did take a picture of some squabbling flamingoes to send to my flamingo-obsessed niece. She called me the next day to ask where I saw the birds, then said "Okay, that's all." and then hung up. We're not phone people in my family.

There were also some free-range peacocks. One of them chased Ashley, who, seriously, does not like birds.

They had a system of wire tunnels set up between the trees all over the park (sort of like the tunnels in a fancy hamster cage), such that the monkeys could wander around the park while still being separated from the apes with clothes on. As we were leaving, one of them was using the system to travel along, but he stopped and yelled at us for a while. We yelled back. WHAKU! WHAKU! I wonder what we said.

There were several flat penny machines, but none of the design options had "Philadelphia Zoo" on them, just pictures of animals. So I saved my fifty-one cents. I mention this in case anyone who is looking into getting a flat penny machine and is considering designs. If you don't put the name on the penny, then it's a pretty crappy souvenir.

Ashley could have spent the entire hour watching the prairie dogs.

The cheetah enclosure was at the top of a hill. There was a low stone wall that you could see the animals over, and on the other side of the wall was a huge drop, so any cheetah that wanted to go see the prairie dogs would have to jump pretty high to get out. And then they'd just run into the electric wires at the top. However, from the bottom of the hill, you couldn't really tell all this. You just see a low wall separating you from the worlds fastest land animal. Because of this, Ashley refused to go up the path because she thought the cheetahs were out, as in escaped. Not until I was all the way at the top could I convince her that it was safe. And she was still freaked out, enough that any stray squirrel in the bush made her jump. I guess she thinks that zoo animals just escape all the time, and once they do, they hang out in other parts of the zoo. If I had been an escaped cheetah, I would have gone to see the sights of Philadelphia, maybe invested in a CityPass.

We entered the zoo at 4:00 and walked out at 5:12, just in time to run across the street and catch the goofy tourist bus. We pretty much ran past the last few exhibits and missed the big cats completely, but it was fun anyway. Everything is fun when you have a happy heart.

all about the benjamins.

2011-10-06T17:15:00.000-04:00

There are lots of things that the city of Philadelphia loves - cheesesteaks, sports, brothers. But the thing that they love most of all is Benjamin Franklin. They just cannot get enough of the guy. There are reportedly 5,000 likenesses of him in the city, and that doesn't even include all the hundred dollar bills. There is a parkway and a bridge. Finally, there is an institute, which actually is on the parkway.

We had tickets to the Franklin Institute because we invested in the CityPass. The CityPass is available in many cities, and you get admission to several of the area's best attractions for a reduced fee. I like to keep a loose schedule when I travel, but I was quickly overwhelmed with all the possible things to do in Philly. So aside from the discounts, the CityPass gave me a checklist of things to do that I had essentially already paid for.

We decided to do the Franklin Institute first because it was across the street from the hotel. Also, it was about to rain. I had looked at the Institute when researching possible stops, but wasn't really sure if I wanted to go. The only thing I knew was that there was a giant heart that you could walk through. Woo. I wasn't even entirely sure what it was, as "Institute" is kind of a vague word.

Now that I've spent a rainy Thursday there, I can tell you that the Franklin Institute is a science museum. Oh, and it's also totally awesome. Some museums are stuffy, look-with-your-eyes places. The FI is not. There is another museum in Philly called the Please Touch Museum, but you could easily call the FI the same. While this makes it a great place for kids, I can report that it is a good time for adults who have not lost their childlike wonder. And if you have lost it, this might be a good place to regain it.

The Institute is divided into several sections that deal with different areas of science. It's all very light on reading and high on doing. And the activities are great in that they demonstrate a series of simple concepts until you have the whole complex system. You can play with magnets or build pulley systems or fold paper airplanes. There is a hall of mirrors with lasers where you can pretend you are trying to rob a casino and need to get through the alarm system. You can pretend to be a TV weatherman with a script and a green screen. They even have a shimmer wall! I've only listed a tiny fraction of all there is to see and do there. We spent most of a rainy Thursday there, and were just finishing up the airplane section when they were closing for the day.

There were several sections that we didn't initially have any interest in. But by the time we were through with those sections, we were suddenly very interested in those topics. "Trains? Eh." "Trains are so cool!" It kindles interest in learning. I can't think of any higher recommendation for a museum. The staff members are knowledgable, and they like to see silly adults playing with the exhibits. We even saw a janitor building a pulley system, his vacuum sitting in a heap beside him (in his defense, the floors were clean).

One of the 5,000 Benjamins in the city is the memorial that sits in the atrium of the Institute. It's a huge marble statue, twenty feet high. When I was going in, I imagined old Ben, who reportedly liked his ladies, checking out all the fine honeys coming in to check out his Institute. Maybe he even had a good pick-up line about the Giant Heart. But when I left, I was feeling less cynical, and I felt like the Institute was something he would have approved of. Instead of a pick-up line, I imagined him instead as that old guy in the Thomas Dolby video.

SCIENCE!

lips afire.

2011-09-21T15:33:00.001-04:00

"I don't know if I'm ready for the best show of my life," the woman behind me said.

"You should always be ready for the best show of your life," the voice in my head said. In fact, at any moment, you could be experiencing the best something-or-other of your life, be it a shower, an ice cream cone, or a morning at the DMV. In fact, I might right now be having the number one afternoon coffee experience out of all past and future afternoon coffee experiences in my life. What if I am not enjoying it enough? I am just frittering away my time on this earth!

It's exhausting to live life to the fullest. Oh well, at least I got to see The Flaming Lips.

Personally, I was ready to enjoy the heck out of the show, though I knew that I was seeing this band too late. There was a time in my life when I would have known every single word to every single song, not just the old hits they played to cater to fans like me who haven't heard any of the new stuff. I almost saw them once, in my last year of college. It would have been the right time, because their three most-recent albums were getting heavy rotation in the soundtrack of my life. My then-boyfriend wanted to go, and I said heck yeah. But he was supposed to get the tickets, but then he didn't buy the tickets, and I ~~nagged~~ reminded him about it several times until he finally said, "Why don't you just buy them?" So I said fine, I WILL, but then when I went online to buy them, the show was sold out. And somehow it became my fault that we didn't get to see the best show of our lives. I'm sure he would tell it differently. Maybe he had a good reason for not buying the tickets, but in all my reminding, I never asked.

Sorry about that. Baggage.

Anyway, I must have a type, because my now-boyfriend wanted to see The Flaming Lips. I was not initially enthusiastic about the idea, because I haven't listened to any of their new stuff in years. They probably had whole albums of material that I did not know. I am so behind that I don't even know how many albums. But then I thought about that one time I didn't get to go see The Flaming Lips, and I decided that late was better than never.

So I was prepared to enjoy the show, though I kinda sorta hoped it wasn't the best show of my life. That thought made me feel old, as if I was already peaking. There was a couple in front of us; they were old (for the crowd). If this was about to be the best show of their life, then they had done the smart thing and put it off until late.

They were out of place, and not just because their combined ages topped a century. They looked like someone had taken them shopping that very day to find something appropriate to wear to a rock concert. Someone had advised them to buy clothes that were hip and young (sorta), but their consultant was unable to keep them from wearing their jeans too high and tucking their shirts in. It was cute.

They looked like they were having a great time. And why not? It was a gorgeous day, and they were wearing new outfits!

Frankly, you'd have to be pretty devoted to misery to not be in a good mood. It was a truly magnificent day that should have been bottled up and included in a Raleigh travel brochure, maybe in one of those magazine perfume sample things. The sky was cloudless, the temperature was perfect, and they were selling Fat Tire on draft at the beer tents. We were in the middle of the City Plaza, one of those new revitalized downtown areas that have vague names and feature lots and lots of oak tree art.

We took positions in the crowd, which was still pretty loose. At some point, we'd have to take our last beer/bathroom break, because once the crowd got full, there was no getting back through the mass of sweaty music fans.

The second opening band was Superchunk. I don't know much about them, except that they are from Chapel Hill and are sorta-famous. They had some mainstream success years ago, and I guess they have enough fans to keep making music. They have been at it a long, long time. I wonder if their mothers have stopped nagging them about becoming accountants. Do they still think about hitting the big time, or are they just making music and happy to be doing so? Do they have day jobs?

I don't know a single Superchunk song. But those old people in new outfits knew every single one. It's possible that they are living life to the fullest, and they didn't look that exhausted.

After Superchunk, but before the main event, there was a long lull. Apparently the best show of your life requires quite a bit of setup, from the confetti cannons to what must have been the biggest disco ball in the disco ball store. The plaza was filling up. Behind us loomed the Sheraton, where half of the balconies had occupants looking down on us. I guess they'd skipped the entrance fee and just paid for a room instead. It seemed like a good idea - no mad crush of bodies, no porta-potties, much cheaper beer.

But then I thought, no. One should not experience the best show of your life from the sidelines. For one thing, the confetti cannons would never reach you.

The first thing that happened was that the giant semi-circle of a screen at the rear of the stage started lighting up like a laser Floyd show at the planetarium. There were still roadies on stage, so it was clear that this was just a test sequence. Then the man of the evening, Wayne, came on stage to loud cheers. The frontman doesn't usually appear on stage before the show. Most bands have roadies to tend to their instruments, and casually strolling onstage ruins your entrance later. However, Wayne has thought of a solution to the ruined entrance. He came out to tell us that the show was about to start, and that we should not freak out, but he was about to come out in his space bubble. People started cheering. I didn't know what a space bubble was, but I cheered anyway. I was just feeling cheerful.

A space bubble is like a giant clear beach ball. Inside is a crazy person, in this case a rock star who has had enough success that he can display his crazy and charge an entrance fee. From within this bubble, he walked out onto the crowd as people reached up and supported the bubble. Not only has he solved the problem of the ruined entrance, he has found a way to crowd-surf without being groped.

Then there was confetti - oh, the confetti! I came away with a new appreciation for the confetti cannon. Confetti, like fireworks, feels like something that we should all be too old and wise to enjoy any more. But then there is a huge burst of it coming in overhead, pastel colors fluttering against the cloudless night sky, and you just want to reach up and grab a piece of it. And you can! It reminded me of a 3D movie, except, you know, in actual 3D. I think life should have more confetti cannons. They're probably a mess for the clean-up crew, but think of it as a possible solution to the jobs problem.

There was brightly-colored paper flittering down from the sky and there was brightly colored video coming from the giant screen behind the band. When there wasn't animation, there was live footage from a camera that seemed to be mounted on the microphone. These crazy rock stars and their egos, they think we want to see up their noses. However, it was not flattering footage. It was full of crow's feet and sweat and nostril views. It was like documentary footage of someone's last days. But I think that was the point. It was not meant to be glamourous, but human.

You know, there was so much going on - the space bubble, the flashing video, the confetti, the glowsticks, the lights - that the music was almost incidental, as if it were just the score, just one part of the whole ridiculous experience. It was like watching a movie about someone else having an acid trip. The Flaming Lips put on a show, not a mere concert.

Was it the best show of my life? Yes. So far.

cheerleader slumber party pants.

2011-08-30T17:49:00.000-04:00

I needed new pajama pants. The ones that I had were either too warm for summer or too snug for my post-college bottom. And while I had held on to the too-small pairs long after they became that way, I finally decided that pajama pants that are too tight defeat the purpose of loungewear.

Deciding that I need to buy something means adding it to the mental list of things that I specifically look for at thrift stores and yard sales. In my mind, I pictured the perfect pajama pants. They looked suspiciously like a blue pair that Josh owns which features penguins in their underwear. They're roomy, soft cotton pants, just what I wanted. Also, did I mention the penguins in their penguiny underwear? I borrowed those pants so often that it was really more like stealing them very slowly. I happen to know that Josh is also fond of these pants, and well, I suppose he does have first dibs.

But in my secondhand shopping, I could not find another pair of penguin pants, or even a similar pair of cotton pants with a pattern that I didn't hate. I found a lot of old man stripey pajama pants and a few that were very small and had suggestive words on the butt. Finally, I found a pair of satiny ones with a green pattern that were not too bad. These were sort of a compromise with the Gods of Secondhand. They were not what I wanted, but they were available for $1.39 and they would do until I found what I did want (or until winter, when I could start wearing my fleece ones). I mean, there was nothing wrong with these pants, but they were just a little bit girly. Besides being fake-satin, they had little green bows on the ankles. They were cheerleader slumber party pants, when I was hoping for something that looked as if they had been borrowed from a boyfriend. Basically, they came from the women's side of the Old Navy store, rather than the men's side.

But whatever. They're just pajama pants. I realize that most women would not have a problem with being forced to wear - gasp! - women's clothing. I just have a style, and it ain't ankle bows.

The first time I wore my new used pants, Josh immediately commented positively on them. This made me wonder if he liked women's clothing on his woman, in which case, I suspect he is disappointed by much of my wardrobe.

A few days later, Josh did the laundry, and I noticed that he hung the pants up rather than put them in the dryer. I was pretty sure the tag said "tumble dry low", being your basic mass-produced sleepwear, so I asked about it.

"If you dry them, they get little fabric pills on them. And those are really nice."

"They're not that nice. They're just Old Navy."

"Oh. Well, you're not going to want to pay for another pair of them."

"I'll pay a buck for a pair at Goodwill. They made 15 billion just like them."

This exchange made me wonder whether he thought I got them at some secret Ladies Only store. Did he think they were special pants just for wearing around him? What if I got invited to a cheerleader slumber party?

Only much later did I realize that I should have just shut my fat gob. I should have preserved his illusion that I had fancy nighty things that needed special handling. You know, delicates. And why do I have those things? Because I am delicate. Instead, I trampled on both his illusion and his sweet gesture. I also told him that I bought something that he possibly considered lingerie at Goodwill.

None of this would have happened if I had just stolen his penguin pants.

the wishbone squad.

2011-08-12T15:18:00.000-04:00

You can't talk about my next-door neighbor Gail without talking about her dogs. I imagine that the animal shelter has her number on file - whenever they get a particularly hopeless case, they call her up and ask if she can fit in just one more. That's sort of a joke, but I found out that it's kinda true. After we got Remix, she was delighted that we had gone to the county animal shelter for our pet needs. Then she advised us to get our next dog at the tiny and underfunded Harnett County Animal Shelter, where they are closed on Wednesdays for the purpose of euthanizing every single animal that came in that week. She sometimes goes and looks on the web site, you know, just to see who won't be alive on Thursday. I'm not sure how she decides when to save one, since it clearly is not based on any sort of sane vacancy limits.

Gail is a sucker. But there are worse things you can be a sucker for than a stray dog. Her animals seem to be cared-for, and I know they're loved, so it doesn't bother me that I live next to a crazy animal lady. She also has a bunny and some chickens. And a horse, which she boards at a local stable. I have heard that there are cats as well. It's a little bit like living next to the actual pound.

We like to speculate about how many dogs she has. There are at least nine, divided into front yard dogs and back yard dogs. I can't tell if the yard division was invented for the purpose of separating big dogs from little dogs, or just so people won't be able to tell just how many of them there are. When Gail comes home from her nursing job, she lets them all out in a giant noisy burst of canine exuberance. They do a few laps in their yards just to waste energy, then there is a lot of investigative sniffing. Finally, they patrol. Passing each other in their various routes, it almost seems organized.

There are two Jack Russell Terriers which seem to lead the crowd. For that reason, I have named the whole bunch the Wishbone Squad. You can almost here a little theme song in your head when they come running up. Dun-da-da-DUN! Woe to the burglar who ever tries to take Gail's treasures. I give him five minutes before he would run screaming from the place, perhaps with a Jack Russell Terrier still clamped on his posterior.

The dogs, being dogs, bark. The worst offenders are the JRTs (front yard), a shaggy something-or-other (back yard), and a beautiful hound (back yard), which does not bark so much as bay. It's a beautiful sound, if you're inclined to appreciate hound sounds. Not all of the dogs bark, and some of them are barkier than others, but when they are provoked, the result could be classified as a ruckus. This is turn starts up the other neighborhood dogs, and pretty soon you got a ruckus in surround sound.

You know, Remix didn't bark for so long after we got her, that we we afraid that she had been de-barked (which is illegal in some areas, just like pitbulls). But no, she is just a dog of few words. When her time outside coincides with that of the Wishbone Squad, they find her to be something worth barking about. Sometimes she completely ignores them, but other times she bolts over to the fence to stand there, nose to chain-link, and never make a sound. It must drive Gail mad. We think it's awesome, just because she looks like she is calmly staring them down. But then we go and fetch her, because we don't want the other people in the neighborhood to be mad at Gail.

Gail is very self-conscious about her dogs and the noise they make. Every time I talk to her, the first things she does is to she apologize for them. Someday, I hope that she will learn to believe me when I say that I really don't mind. Apparently there is tension between her and the guy that lives on her other side. Last night, Remix and I walked with her and one of hers (a stubby-legged little mutt that was sweet in every way), and she vented to me about what a jerk that guy is. I am sympathetic to her, but I would have been surprised if someone didn't complain. When I say that Gail is a crazy animal lady, I mean that in the nicest way possible, not as a slur, but as a description which is objectively true. But I recognize that a lot of people wouldn't feel that way, particularly if they lived next door.

I wonder if Gail and her motley mutts wouldn't be happier if she bought a chunk of land outside of town with more room to run and fewer neighbors. Of course, if Gail had more room, she'd probably just get more dogs. Then she might be happier still.

the neck cramp section.

2011-07-27T12:13:00.000-04:00

Spoiler Warning: This entry is about the final Harry Potter movie. It reveals secrets about the movie and the books. However, if you have already read the books, you know what happened. And if you haven't read the books, I don't really see how you'll be able to follow the movie anyway.

I met some girls who proudly stated that they had seen every Harry Potter movie at a midnight showing at the IMAX. I didn't realize that such a thing was possible. I've only seen two IMAX movies, both documentaries. One was about fossils of ancient sea creatures found in Kansas. The other one was in high school, and I don't remember what it was about, but I do remember being called out for talking during the movie. If the person had just listened, I'm sure they would have found my commentary very amusing. But I guess some people like to watch the movie or something.

So I decided that I might as well see one of these newfangled 3D movies, and since I wanted to see the last Harry Potter movie anyway, it looked like a two birds and one stone situation. The IMAX theater in Raleigh is part of the children's museum. When you buy a movie ticket for $11.95, you can pay an extra dollar to get into the museum. I guess they know where the money is.

My previous experience with the IMAX theatre taught me that I wanted to get there a bit early to get good seats. If you have to sit at the very front, then your neck gets cramped trying to look at the giant screen. So we showed up fifteen minutes before the show was supposed to start, our internet tickets safely in my purse (next to the grocery store Milk Duds and Raisinets). There was no one waiting outside, and I felt maybe that paying the convenience fee to buy tickets online was wasted. But then we got inside and saw the line to get into the theatre. Neck cramps, here I come.

There was a lot of smart marketing for the Harry Potter dorks inside. The elevator was labelled the "Floo Network," and a subway baggage cart was sticking halfway out of a wall, as if it were on its way to platform 9 3/4. I didn't see any costumes, though a couple of people had wands with lit tips.

The doors opened, and we were allowed into the theatre to take our seats in the neck cramp section. An usher passed out 3D glasses, green and blue pairs. She handed me a blue pair, saying that they would fit right over my prescription glasses. I felt pretty old at that moment. Just because they are prescription glasses doesn't mean that I like young whippersnapper ushers calling them that. My vision is not that bad, so I experimented with watching the screen with just the 3D glasses. Kinda blurry.

There were previews. In between the second and third preview, we were instructed to put on our 3D glasses. Thus began my first ever IMAX 3D experience.

3D is cool when it works and annoying otherwise. There were certain parts where it was fantastic - the whole Gringotts sequence and the fire in the Room of Requirement in particular. It really does seem like the action is coming towards you - not just the audience, but YOU. It is sort of an individual experience that way, even if you logically realize that the other audience members are perceiving it as coming towards them. And any scene where there are lots of little floating objects (snow, paper, essence of Voldemort) works really well with the medium. However, the problem is that there is really only one thing you can focus on. You have to be looking directly at something for the 3D to work right, which means that everything in the periphery is just blurry, as if I had taken my prescription glasses off. Also, it's really hard to wipe your eyes when you're wearing two pairs of glasses (and if you don't tear up a little at the death of a Weasley, then I guess you're just made of stone).

As for the movie itself, it was fine. As usual, I was annoyed at the little things they changed for what seems like no reason. But then again, I don't know anything about turning books into movies, and the fact that very few people seem to be able to do it well indicates that it's probably hard. I was very irritated at Dumbledore's dialogue in King's Cross station, just because it was out of character. Also, it took too long to kill the snake. Even if it was a magical snake, I have a hard time believing that Hermione could not have finished it off sooner, though I am glad they respected who actually killed the snake in the book.

And I guess that's about all you can ask for. There are going to be changes when going from book to movie, and the best you can hope is that the movie is true to the spirit. And it mostly was, even if I got sick of people saying that dead loved ones live on inside our hearts.

In the end, the Harry Potter IMAX 3D experience hurt my neck and gave me a headache. It was really expensive, but it was a fun thing to experience once. I don't think 3D is worth it at this point. It's cool, but I left feeling like I didn't really see the movie, which means I'll be seeing it again at the $1.50 theater in a few months. I'd like to see a movie that was designed to exploit the 3D medium the whole way through, rather than a regular movie that has certain scenes that look good.

Make it shorter than 2 hours, though. Those glasses give me a headache.

a death in the family.

2011-07-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

He had come in the door last Thursday and immediately enveloped me in a strong and silent hug. Our daily reunions are always affectionate, but something in his embrace made me ask what was wrong. He said it was nothing, then immediately contradicted himself: there's a funeral on Sunday. He warned me that he would cry, explaining how he was just a sensitive guy. I didn't understand how crying at your grandfather's funeral meant you were sensitive. Sunday morning, I packed my purse full of tissues.

Together six years, this would be our first funeral as a couple. Somehow these sorts of things are always left out of the movies.

We arrived at his grandparents' house for a family potluck lunch and were greeted with lingering hugs. The atmosphere was tense, as everyone seemed to be dealing with the loss by being anxious about the ceremony itself. His mom told us about having to reprint the program three times because of mistakes and omissions. She said it was the work of the devil, rather than a inattentive Kinko's employee. Blaming the devil for a misprint seems like asking God where you left your shoes, but given the amount of stress the whole thing had given her, maybe she had a point.

It was important that we get there in time, so we left an hour early to drive less than a mile. The fellowship hall smelled like flowery discount cleaning products. Everyone looked so nice in their dress clothes. Josh was in a suit that his parents had bought him back in high school. He was a pallbearer, so he had to go off somewhere with his brothers and cousins, each wearing the one suit they owned.

I stayed in the perfumey fellowship hall and did more awkward standing. Funerals have a way of making everyday things seem surreal. Really, a funeral is an everyday thing.

Josh's mom asked me to walk in with the family. Rather, she said she would like me to and then asked if that was okay. It seemed silly to even ask, just like it was silly for his aunts to thank me for making the ninety-minute drive. They were just going out their way to include me in the family. They're good people like that.

Finally, we filed in, the family and also me. No matter what they did to include me, I still felt like an intruder into their grief, as if I was not sad enough to sit in the special section. Honestly, that's been much of my experience at funerals, even when I was a blood-relation. Most of them have been for elderly relatives who lived far away. I saw them infrequently and knew them only as their old and world-weary selves. When other family members would tell stories about the deceased, I would be unable to connect the person in those stories to the person I had known. Those stories were about active and vibrant people, while the ones that I knew had been merely old. I would watch my older siblings mourn and feel sad and a little jealous that I had never had the opportunity to become attached. And now it was too late.

I knew Josh's grandfather only a little. Someday, I will go to a funeral with these same people, and I will be sad because a member of my family has died.

I sat in the reserved section, behind an aunt, next to another girlfriend. Josh was sitting across the aisle with the pallbearers. I craned my neck to get a look at him, to see how he was doing. My purse full of tissues would not do him any good from this distance.

Josh's younger brother and cousin performed a piece by Sibelius on the violin and cello. His brother's face was impassive and focused on the sheet music before him, while the cellist looked about to break at any moment. Her grief flickered onto her face every few seconds, so fleeting that I hoped it was just an expression of concentration. But she got through it, and it was beautiful.

Josh stood and walked up to the lectern to read a poem. He took a breath, and then one more, before starting. Once started, he did not stop, though his voice shook once or twice. His emotion added more beauty and depth to the moment than the words themselves. Sympathetic tears formed behind my eyes, and I wished that I could somehow telegraph him the strength to get through it. But he didn't need it.

There were four preachers, and half of them made a joke about four sermons. I was disappointed in them all. I couldn't tell that they knew the decesased any more than I did. The intimacy of the music and poem highlighted the genericness of the speakers. I suppose that's a hazard of being a preacher - having to give eulogies for people you didn't know very well. Then again, it's probably worse to give one for someone you were close to.

When the service was over, and we all filed out to the graveyard. As I left the church, I got my first glimpse of the crowd. It was a packed house, all the way up to the top row in the second level of the sanctuary. From the perspective of world history, Josh's grandfather was an ordinary man, living an ordinary life. But from the vantage of my own ordinary life, he seemed to be have figured it all out.

More evidence of his legacy stood next to the gravesite: a row of pallbearers, eight strapping grandsons, ages ranging from sixteen to twenty-nine. They carried the flag-covered coffin like some sort of generational baton that has now been handed down. Their youth and strength was thrown into sharp relief by the occasion; in the midst of death, there is so much life. Their duty complete, they stood looking straight ahead, hands clasped in front of them. I watched their faces, searching for any betrayal of their feelings. There were a few surreptitious nose-wipes, but mostly just stubborn jaw-clenching.

There was one in the middle, though, who had given up on trying. I saw a tear make its way down his face, a face that I had kissed, oh, about a million times. I snuck around behind the row of men and slipped a tissue into his hand. He gave me a small and grateful smile. I walked back to my position in the crowd. It made me angry that Josh should feel like less of a man for daring to show emotion upon the death of his grandfather.

This stoicism was all a surprise to me. The men in my family cry at funerals. Sometimes they even cry at other times, too. It's not because they are blubbering sissies, it's because life is sad. It was a little shocking to me the first time I saw one of them cry, but also natural. I cry, they cry, life is sad.

But I guess that's not how it is for everyone. I felt sorry for the rest of them. Maybe some people really don't ever tear up, but maybe they were so busy keeping their emotions on lockdown that they didn't allow themselves to grieve. I actually hoped that the younger guys, the sixteen-year-olds, would see Josh and rethink their ideas of manhood. Being a man is a lot more complicated than being strong, and strength is more than lifting heavy things and being invulnerable. I was proud that among those men, mine was the one who was not afraid to feel.

The service ended, and finally I was able to hug my sweet and brave man. We returned to the perfumed, but mercifully cool air of the fellowship hall. Old ladies, and a couple of old men, came up and told Josh how much much he has grown and how they had loved the poem. We talked with family and friends over cucumber sandwiches and orange soda. The crowd thinned out gradually until it was just us, the family. We cleaned up the plastic cups, packed up the flowers, and drove back to the house and our interrupted lives. A funeral is only a ceremony after all. It's the next day and the next and the next that you have to watch out for.

We stayed awhile for leftover potluck, but then we had to leave, too. Just like that, our first funeral together was over. Here's to many more, my darling.

chores.

2011-07-21T11:35:00.000-04:00

By the time we had arrived back at Grandmother's house after burying her husband, she had already changed from her church clothes into a faded pair of baggy jeans and t-shirt. I reminded Josh that our time here was limited, because back in Raleigh was a dog that probably needed to go to the bathroom. I felt terrible for even suggesting that he cut short time with his family for the sake of letting the dog out.

While the rest of the family sat, ate, and visited, Grandmother was already out the screen door. Predictably, Josh was only a step behind, still wearing his suit pants, shirt, and tie. It was predictable because he is just so helpful all the time. Before I can even recognize the opportunity to lend a hand, he is already two hands in. Sometimes, strangers compliment me on it, as if I had done something other than stand stupidly by. He doesn't ask what needs to be done, he doesn't offer assistance, he just jumps in and does it. Then later, I point it out and tell him to please, please, please teach that to my children. I don't even know if it's something that can be taught.

After a minute, I decided that the best place to spend our dwindling time was with Grandmother, so I followed them out. I found them in the barn, feeding the sheep. Actually, Grandmother was feeding the sheep, and Josh was taking pictures of them with his phone. There has been talk of getting rid of the animals. While they did sell the wool and eat the lambs, the sheep were mostly pets. With Grandfather gone, Josh's mom and aunts thought that the sheep might be too much work for a widow in her eighties.

I didn't know the sheep-feeding process (we had goats when I was growing up), so I got in the way twice and also almost let them all out. I worried about looking like a city kid. She gave them two coffee cans full of feed before taking a pitchfork and throwing in a fork-load of hay. It was the last of the bale. Josh asked if he should get another bale ready for her, which was the first time he had offered to do anything. She said they had enough for now; she'd get another bale in the morning. How she was planning to do that, I don't know.

Then we went down to the chickens. We collected eggs in an old saucepan. She went into the henhouse with a bucket of feed and a broom to fight off the rooster. She came back out with a bucket of dirty water. She carried the water up to a flower bed that had fallen into neglect. There were flowers, blooming and beautiful, but also weeds and a series of chipmunk holes. She said that Grandfather had just gotten out the trap for the chipmunk the other day, but it was still sitting on the picnic table under the carport.

She refilled the water bucket from a spigot in the henhouse - indoor plumbing! I was still carrying the saucepan of eggs, feeling somewhat useless tagging along for farm chores. We went back to the house. She keeps the eggs in a fridge in the basement, but the door was locked, so she set the saucepan on a shelf in the garage and said she'd get it in the morning. Anxious to be helpful, I thought that I should offer to run in the house right quick and unlock the door from the other side, but then it seemed like the moment had passed.

Back inside, with all the food and the folks, I saw Josh disappear down the hall. And I knew then that he had gone to the basement to get the eggs and put them away. Somehow he knew what to let Grandmother do and when to step in.

I thought Grandmother seemed to be doing pretty well, all things considered. But I guess the sheep and the duck and the chickens get hungry, just like the dog needs to be let out, no matter what day it is.

coffee shops.

2011-07-20T17:32:00.002-04:00

Crossroads
Maybe I would not have started liking coffee so much if not for my roommate, who worked at the campus coffee shop. It was a very convenient gig for her, as the shop was located in the Student Union, mere steps from our dorm. And that made it very convenient for me to drop in when she was working and order something with my roommate's discount. To get the roommate discount, you have to a.) have a roommate working in the shop and b.) go around to the side to order, rather than the register. Obviously, if it's very busy or if the manager is standing right there, the roommate discount does not apply.

Even without abusing the discount, I went and got coffee there often enough. I had this magical thing called a "meal card" that I could swipe in exchange for caffeinated beverages; it was like they were free! It was at Crossroads that I got into the sweet drinks; my favorite was the Grasshopper, which is the beautiful flavor friendship of mint and chocolate, hanging out inside a latte. I was there so often that I knew who made the best drinks, because all baristas are not created equal. I had a particularly transcendent experience with a Grasshopper one Tuesday morning before my Anthropology class. It was made by an immaculately dressed man, and from that, I came to the conclusion that gay guys made the best coffee.

Jimmy's Java
Jimmy's was located on King Street, the main drag through downtown Boone. Or rather, King Street is downtown Boone. That shop was something else before that and now it's something else again, but for about a year, it was Jimmy's Java. They had a deal for a 16 ounce drip coffee for a dollar, which I would enjoy on the mornings when I hit the snooze button one less time than usual and could afford a nine minute caffeine detour on the way to class. It was there that I started to recognize the difference from one coffee to another. My favorite was the Nicaraguan. Sometimes, on those evenings when I would take myself out to the $1.50 movie after a long day of waiting on tourists, I would stop at Jimmy's on the way back. I would order decaf, which is how you know that you really, really like coffee.

Jimmy's closed just as it was starting to get regulars. Apparently, it's hard to pay your employees when you're only charging a dollar per customer. And so they just didn't, which meant that all their employees quit.

Espresso News
Espresso News is a Boone institution. It lived in a building on Howard Street that used to be a Ford dealership. There are pictures on the walls of its former life, and you can just recognize the building behind all the banners and posters for Zero Dollars Down. I started going there when Jimmy's closed. It was always good, but somehow a little too hip for me. And then I moved out to the country, so there was less downtown coffee for me.

Starbucks
When I lived in Winston, I enjoyed Starbucks more as an excuse than as a coffee shop. It was a Get Out of Work Free card, a way to kill half an hour with a few friends in the name of morale. There was no standing appointment, just someone would decide that right now would be a great time for some coffee that did not come from the break room. And then that someone would round up other interested parties and we'd head down to the one on Stratford Road, across from the Thruway. One thing I missed at my job in Raleigh was those impromptu trips to Starbucks. Either they weren't happening, or I wasn't in the circle.

Then another young female came to work here, and I started my own circle. We go to Starbucks on Friday afternoons, where I get a drip coffee in a travel mug, and she gets something non-fat. We talk about the weekend, music, and health care policy. We are not close, but it's still nice to be in a circle, particularly one with coffee.

Taylor's
There are several things you can get at Taylor's, including wine, beer, and live bait, but I like the coffee. The full name is Taylor's Wine and Bait Shop, and it's located inside a BP station. Taylor's started out with just bait, supplying people going up to Falls Lake to fish. But then North Raleigh kept expanding, so Taylor's added a biscuit grill in the morning for the people building houses and a wine shop for the people who would live in them. They also have Slim Jims and candy bars, just like any other convenience store.

It's not a true coffee shop; there are no baristas. Just like the pumps, the coffee is self-service. There is a counter full of thermal canisters, each labeled with a laminated sign. The best ones are made with Larry's Beans, a Raleigh-based company. There are usually three or four of Larry's coffees sitting out, including "Taylor's Blend." Its sign features the Taylor's logo, a worm in a tin can, drinking a glass of wine. Last Christmas, I even bought a bag of Taylor's Blend beans to drink at home.

I stop at Taylor's on Saturday mornings when my yard sale route takes me past Six Forks Road. Or maybe I plan my yard sale route so that it does.

I consider Taylor's to be "my" coffee shop, as do the old men sitting on the porch in rocking chairs and the young professionals who stop at the produce stand in the parking lot. It's close to my house and has that small town charm that seems hard to find in North Raleigh. But you can find it, and Taylor's success is proof that people are still looking for it.

bleeding realtors.

2011-07-18T17:15:00.000-04:00

My appointment was at 11, and I remembered it at 10. For an hour, I drank water like it was my job.

Around the corner in the office park where I work is some sort of building company. They sell houses that have not yet been built. Every six months or so, they host a blood drive. They don't have room in their office for a bunch of beds, so the Red Cross sends out the Bloodmobile, a travelling blood donation center.

The lady who organizes the blood drives is Jenn, the receptionist at the building company. She is enthusiastic about the blood drive, which makes me think that she has personally been affected by the losing and giving of blood. Or maybe she is equally enthusiastic about selling homes. I am on the mailing list of people in the neighborhood who will come out, so I schedule my appointment ahead of time. When I check in, she says hello to me by name, even though our whole relationship exists at blood drives.

Usually, I can get in and out with my complimentary Rice Krispie treat within half an hour. But there were two people waiting in front of me when I arrived to fill out the questionaire about my history with mad cow disease. They weren't even allowing people to go out to the bus, because it was full. Another lady who was waiting with me was a saleslady at the home building company. She said that Jenn had scheduled the blood drive on a day when there was a sales meeting so that everyone would be in the office.

Jenn knows how to drum up some blood.

Once inside the bus, there was even more waiting. I had to wait for a donation spot, one for a right-arm-bleeder. My left arm is capable of bleeding, and I suppose if you cut it off, you'd get just as much blood as you'd get from the right. But the vein in my left elbow is shy. Every time someone comes near it with a needle, it rolls around in an effort to escape what surely must be a terrifying sight to something that spends all of its time indoors. I make it sound real cute, but I assure you, it's incredibly unpleasant for me. So I just go ahead and let them know that they'll have more luck with my right arm, thankyouverymuch. Anyway, this arm restriction only lengthened my wait.

Finally, I was seated in the special donor bed, one of five in the blood bus. Four of the beds are in one section, facing each other. The other is at the front and is used to hold a cooler. The coolor looks like a regular ole cooler that you might buy for taking drinks on a long drive, except that it's labelled "BLOOD" in red marker - pretty fancy equipment on the Bloodmobile. In front of me, in front of each donor, was a tiny personal TV. I was just in time for an episode of Cannon. The volume was turned down, and the stereo was playing the hits of the 70s. It was cold, but the blood bus is always kept cold to keep people from passing out after having their bodily fluids taken away from them.

I guess the sales meeting was over, because everyone besides me in the bus seemed to be an employee of the building company. There are a couple of people at my company who regularly give blood and probably a few more at offices all over the park. But most of the people in there with me had likely been personally persuaded to give by Jenn. They were realtors.

Realtors are VERY EXTROVERTED. Their personalities come screaming out of them faster than blood out of my right arm.

Picture little-old-me, tied to a plastic-coated bed in an enclosed space, having my life force drained, while half a dozen laughing people in business casual wear acted more familiar than our relationship would require. Also, Cannon is on.

I don't want to imply that I was cowering in my donor bed, surrounded by small talk and laughter. Okay, I cowered a little. It was just odd. I spend most of my time in a little cube, not talking to the people in the other little cubes. And I think that's just awesome. Obviously, it takes all kinds. If it were up to people like me, those houses would never get sold.

flix.

2011-07-15T16:43:00.002-04:00

Dear Sandra,

We are separating unlimited DVDs by mail and unlimited streaming into two separate plans to better reflect the costs of each. Now our members have a choice: a streaming only plan, a DVD only plan, or both.

Your current $9.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into 2 distinct plans:

Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month
Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 1 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $7.99 a month

Your price for getting both of these plans will be $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99). You don't need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs.

These prices will start for charges on or after September 1, 2011.

You can easily change or cancel your unlimited streaming plan, unlimited DVD plan, or both, by going to the Plan Change page in Your Account.

We realize you have many choices for home entertainment, and we thank you for your business. As always, if you have questions, please feel free to call us at 1-888-357-1516.

–The Netflix Team

Sigh.

Further confirming my suspicion that everyone is on Netflix, it seemed like everyone was talking about this bit of news. I even went over to the Netflix blog to read the official release and the comments that resulted. The comments were angry: threats to cancel service, accusations of money-grubbing, demand for more streaming options.

This last one had me astonished. I am constantly delighted with the selection on the instant viewing. Now, if you are looking for something specific, you might not find it. But if you are looking generically for something to watch, it's there. And plenty of it is really good, even if it's not new or popular. Maybe this is all in line with my thrifty lifestyle - I am willing to be less picky for a lower cost. My idea of going to the movies is heading to the $1.50 theatre and picking out whichever sounds the most interesting. The movies are not brand new and the floor is sticky, but I'm still getting the entertainment I wanted.

Such is Netflix instant viewing. It would never occur to me to complain about the selection, because I've always found something worth watching. I'm paying for entertainment, not specific movies. In some ways, I like that I am forced to watch things that I might not have seen otherwise; some of them are really awesome. Netflix even recommends things it thinks I would like, which means it shows me a big list of puppet shows and crappy monster movies. Plus, there is a lot of old stuff out there that is still new to me. Maybe I should thank my parents for not having cable or letting me watch anything when I was growing up, because now I can finally catch up on what everybody else was talking about. Annnnnnd, in another five years, I'll be able to catch up on what everyone is talking about now. No, I don't watch True Blood, but did you see that episode of Buffy that aired ten years ago?

I am considering dropping my DVD plan. I've let DVDs sit unwatched for weeks at a time, but my Roku gets daily use. Paying $8 a month might light a fire under me as far as watching my DVDs sooner, but if I can simply live without it, why not? We were going through the discs at a good clip for a while, because Josh and I were working our way through Star Trek: The Next Generation. But now, the whole series is available on instant viewing, so why bother with the discs? If Star Trek were removed from the instant viewing, I guess we'd be stuck. Or we would just find something else to watch. We could always get the DVD plan again if we wanted.

As for the cost, while no one likes price hikes, I still think it's a great value. The $8 streaming plan is worth it to me, even if I decide that the $8 DVD plan is not. I have no idea what Netflix's operating costs are or how much money they make off each individual customer. I just know that I still feel like it's a good value for me. That's all I am qualified to judge.

My one worry is that this is just a first step. We've all seen companies turn evil. I would hate for Netflix to do that, because I like them. They took an old model (movie rental), made it awesomer and cheaper (movie rental by mail), and then blazed a trail into the future (instant viewing). Companies like that deserve to win.

So. Netflix, I still love you. Don't turn evil.

awesome sauce.

2011-07-05T17:40:00.000-04:00

I had forgotten all about barbecue chicken. It was something my mom used to make, one of the many things in her rotation of cheap, fast meals. She did not get them from a 30-Minute Meal cookbook. She did not find them on a $5 Dinner web site. I don't know where she got them, but she did, because she had a lot of kids and not a lot of time or money to work with. I grew up on poor people food.

I was reminded about barbecue chicken by the Pioneer Woman when I was browsing the web for something to make with chicken. This dish was never my favorite. I didn't dislike it, but it was really just chicken with sauce on it, and the way the skin was a little fatty always bugged me. But I decided to make it, just because I felt vaguely nostalgic about it now that I remembered it existed.

The Pioneer Woman makes her own barbecue sauce, because that's what the pioneers did, I guess. So I did that, too. However, I did not have a can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (also like the pioneers). Even if I did, I was not interested in opening one up so that I could use a small fraction of the contents. Then the rest of the can would sit there in the fridge. It would make me feel wasteful for not coming up with some way to use it, so I would push it towards the back. Then one day I would find it, nasty and growing wee beasties with a penchant for spicy food. So, I'm sorry, Pioneer Woman, it's just not worth the guilt.

So I used a substitution. A year (or two?) ago, I made my own hot sauce. It's a delicious hot sauce, so good you have to wear gloves while you make it. It mellows as it ages, so by now it's mild enough that even I can eat it. I threw a few tablespoons of that stuff into the saucepan and then used the results to make the chicken.

The chicken was fine. Like I said, it was never my favorite thing in the whole world. It might not have even been my mother's favorite thing in the whole world, but it was at least one more cheap and fast meal. But, man alive, that barbecue sauce. I have two bottles of store-bought barbecue sauce in the pantry, and I don't even know what to do with them now. The thought of using them instead of my newly-discovered awesome sauce makes me lose my appetite. I could not stop singing my own praises for having brought this sweet and tangy sauce into being.

How good is this stuff? I'll tell you. The next day, I had some leftover fries with lunch. I ate them with my homemade ranch dressing (my mother's recipe). I was unable to enjoy them, because I was wishing that I had the magic barbecue sauce instead. This sauce is so good that it makes me not enjoy ranch dressing. Not just any ranch dressing, but the ranch dressing of my childhood. That's, like, heresy.

The coolest part about my new sauce is that now I can say that make my own barbecue sauce. What's even cooler is that it has a secret ingredient. And it's not even like one secret ingredient, it's thirteen of them blended together in secret quantities and then aged for a secret amount of time. I feel like a freakin' superhero, or at the very least, Colonel Sanders.

If you are at all interested in making this, please do. It's not hard. The hot sauce is a blender recipe, and the stuff keeps for a very long time, so you won't feel guilty for not using it right away. The barbecue sauce is very good and quick and good and easy and so very good. Did I mention that it's good?

Hot Sauce
Barbecue Chicken - The recipe for the sauce is in there, sub hot sauce in recipe for adobo sauce. Depending on how long you've "aged" your hot sauce, you will need to add to taste. Whether you make the chicken is up to you and your nostalgia.

space camp. duh.

2011-07-02T16:58:00.000-04:00

There was a lull in the conversation. Actually, there were several conversations going on all around me, but somehow I seemed to be on the outskirts of each one. I started with the one on my left and listened quietly to each one to figure out which one was the most interesting. One hundred and eighty degrees of boring conversations later, I realized that the girl to my right was doing exactly the same thing. I decided that I would start my own conversation, and I would make it interesting.

"So. Tell me about yourself."

Yup. I guess my idea of starting a conversation is to sound like a job interviewer or perhaps someone on a blind date. It seemed like an appropriate thing at the time. I sorta knew this person. She was the new roommate of some people I did know, and we had been introduced. However, if pressed to give her name, I would look panicked for a minute before guessing something really common in the hopes that she was one of the 750,000 Sarahs in the world. Had I not known her at all, I would have gone with "So. Who are you?" When I'm not complaining about other people being boring, I like to be awkward.

Since I demanded it, Sarah (we're just going with that now) told me about herself. I learned that she was from Alabama and had an English degree, but was spending time here to establish residency so she could get into UNCG's Master of Library Science program. I pounced on that bit, asking what her grand ambitions were with regards to Librarianing, but found out that she had just hated teaching and wasn't sure what to do next, so was gonna go back to school while the economy was so bad. I was disappointed. I was really hoping that she was just a vessel for a hot ball of Dewey Decimal System passion. I really wanted to meet someone who was enthusiastic about being a librarian. Maybe someday I will.

If I was disappointed about her lack of card catalog conviction, I was surprised to find that, with very little prompting, Sarah will give you a spirited spiel on the virtues of Huntsville, Alabama. I am very much in favor of embracing your roots, so I encouraged it. She was ecstatic to find out that I had heard of her hometown. Seriously, the fact that I had merely heard of the place was enough to make her day, because I guess no one else in Raleigh had. Sensing that I was obviously also het up about Huntsville, she informed me of the ridiculousness of everyone else's ignorance of it. Space Camp is there! I mean, Space Camp! Duh.

I feel her pain. People in Raleigh make fun of me for being some kind of backwoods mountains hick, no matter how many times I try to explain that I'm from the foothills (It's different, okay?). I imagine they all figure that any town in Alabama not named Mobile might as well be named Podunk (okay, maybe Mobile, too). Us folks in the Shallow South like to think that we are better than the Deep South. You know, the good cooking and the hospitality, but only a little bit redneck and racist. I do have a redneck past, and Sarah probably does, too, but redneck pasts are all relative. Bless her heart, far away from home and being treated like a bumpkin by a bunch of kids attending agricultural college and playing cornhole.

You never know what you might learn when you start a conversation. I learned a lot about Huntsville. They have missiles. Perhaps I could have cheered her up by pointing out that there are probably a bunch of people in Pakistan who knew about Huntsville. They also have Marshall Space Center, and, of course, Space Camp (duh). At that point, someone from another conversation sensed that ours was more intersting than the one they were engaged in, and then Sarah was forced to say that she had never been to Space Camp. Then that person learned about Huntsville, too.

Maybe if that whole librarian thing doesn't work out, she could go work for the Huntsville travel bureau.

an acquired taste.

2011-07-01T15:50:00.001-04:00

Shortly after my twenty-first birthday, I ordered a beer at Black Cat, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant across the street from my apartment in Boone. I had come to the conclusion that I was going to have to learn to like beer, mostly because drinking wine or mixed drinks at bars was really expensive. I was going to ease myself into beer appreciation, so I ordered a seasonal ale: something expensive and fancy. My birthday being in the fall, seasonal meant pumpkin beer. It did not take multiple sips for me to realize that I hated it. I can't say for certain that I even finished it. I resigned myself to the conclusion that I would never acquire the taste for beer.

That was the wrong conclusion. The right conclusion is that pumpkin beers suck. Always. Even when they are not loaded up with pie spices, they taste awful. Ever the idiot, I am periodically convinced to try a pumpkin beer, thinking that since it's so novel and interesting, it must be good. Unfortunately, novelty is not a flavor. Pumpkins are not meant to become beer, and while that is sad for them, they should just learn to accept and appreciate their many other uses.

Pumpkins notwithstanding, I did learn to like beer. And now I like it the most of all. At the end of a long day, it is a brew that I crave. I had not understood the idea of an acquired taste, thinking that if I just found something that was easy for the novices, I'd become an instant beer drinker. But the truth is that liking beer is work. There is no shirking it, so you might as well get to it.

I learned to like beer by dating a musician. True, I dated a musician before him, but we didn't really drink together. For one thing, I was underage for most of our relationship. For another, he didn't really like the way my tactlessness increased with my blood-alcohol level. Other people thought I was just so candid and funny; well, except that one girl who I made cry.

Josh never met anyone he didn't like to drink with, and the first few months of our relationship coincided with Lowes' Foods offering twelve-packs of Bavaria for $9. Bavaria is kind of Heineken knock-off, and it is a beer for novices, though it still took me a while to actually like it. It's light and non-offensive. That's my code word for boring, now that I've moved on to much bolder brews, but it was I needed back then. Not bursting with flavor, but refreshing without the bitter beer face.

At some point, the price of Bavaria went up, probably due entirely to us. Sometimes I pass by the Bavaria in the grocery store and think of buying it for nostalgia's sake. But then I see that it's $13 now. For that price, I'd rather drink something else. Actually, I'd rather just pay less and deal with a worse product. With Bavaria out of our price range, and our relationship no longer in the stage where he was trying to impress me all the time, we became PBR people.

It's a funny thing about cheap beer. Most people that I know prefer a specific cheap beer and will eschew all others (unless it's free or there's nothing else around, of course). I know that PBR is bad. It is actually offensive. Bavaria was a mid-range beer because it didn't taste bad, even if it didn't exactly taste good. But PBR doesn't manage even that. It tastes bad in the mouth. Sure is cheap, though. And by now, I am so used to it that it is what cheap beer tastes to me. Give me a Coors or a Busch, and I will think it is positively nasty, because it is nasty in a way that I am not used to.

So in my fridge, there is PBR. For a while, Harris Teeter carried Lionshead (which we called Gryffindor beer), yet another cheap American beer. Lionhead had the benefit of being non-offensive at offensive beer prices. Josh tried taking it over to other people's houses in an effort to spread the word and get everyone on the Lionshead train. But I guess it didn't work, because those gold and red packages stopped appearing in the beer aisle, so it was back to PBR. Sometimes we will get Yuengling when it's on sale. Yuengling is less offensive, though you don't notice it until you go back to PBR.

Even PBR is not as cheap as it used to be. Whenever it's at $7 for a 12-pack, I consider dropping the extra $2 to get Yuengling. And then while I'm down at that end of the aisle, I think about just going for the extra $3 after that for Sam Adams. At that point, I realize that I've managed to talk myself into spending $5 extra, and maybe $7 is not so bad. I am not a starving musician, so I could afford to buy nice beer every single time, but I don't. I really don't mind cheap beer now, and if I drank Sam all the time, it wouldn't be special. Sure would be good, though.

We drink beer out of glasses. A long time ago, when my family was visiting Italy, my mother saw another woman request a glass to pour her beer into. My poor unsophisticated mother was embarrassed for not doing the same, as if drinking out of a glass was another of those Lady Rules that she did not know (and thus did not teach to her daughters). I'm not afraid to drink out of a can or a bottle, but we have beer glasses, so I use them. And it does make me feel sort of fancy and classy, even though I know it's still just PBR in there. If you didn't see me pour it and didn't hear me burp after finishing it, you might think I knew the Lady Rules.

We have a lot of glasses, picked up at thrift stores and yard sales. A couple were stolen from restaurants. Shocking, I know, and I swear we haven't done that in years. But we have them now, so what are we supposed to do but use them. They come in all shapes, including some hideous bulky glass goblets that have the labels of the very cheapest beers on them (PBR, High Life, Falstaff). Josh even has a fancy German beer stein that he picked up at an estate sale, though he informed me that it was just for display.

And that's what I have to say about beer.

what's the hellenistic?

2011-06-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

When I was a junior in high school, I took a world history course. It was the last in a long line of public education history courses that did very little in the way of educating me about history. My teacher was gruff and middle-aged. Had she always been just a little bit standoffish and grumpy, or had twenty-five years of teaching done it to her?

One day, we were reviewing for a test that would gauge how much we had learned about the Hellenistic civilization. We'd been studying that particular period for about the last six weeks. So poor is my history education that I don't really remember much of anything about Hellenistic civilization, but I think it was probably important, since we spent so long reading about it.

To sum up: We studied the Hellenistic period for six weeks. We then reviewed the Hellenistic period in preparation for a test. Also, I don't know crap about history.

The teacher, seeing that we had only a few minutes left in the class, gave us the opportunity to ask any last minute questions for clarification. One student sat leafing through his textbook with a perplexed expression on his face. It wasn't the book itself causing his confusion, though you might wonder. We all had the same enormous book, but his was the only one that had been left on top of a car, flung by one of Newton's Laws onto Highway 18, and then run over a few times. But it was not the state of his book hurting his puzzler. Rather, it was a specific word that he kept seeing over and over in the chapter that we were all about to be tested on. So he decided that he needed to ask about this ubiquitous and unknown word.

"What's the Hellenistic?"

Every other student in the class started laughing. Not because his question was an indication of stupidity or inattention, but because the student had spoken so quickly that it had sounded as if he had asked "What the hell is this?" while staring in confusion at his mangled book. Our laughter was first shock, because you can't say "hell" in front of a teacher. Then we all laughed some more as we figured out what he had actually said.

Unfortunately, our teacher did not mishear him, nor did she know that we had, and so we were treated to a lecture about the importance of not laughing at anyone in the quest for knowledge, even if they ask what might appear to be a stupid question. It was quite a long speech, and we all slumped in our seats, unfairly accused and unwilling to explain. At the end of it, she might have told that kid what the Hellenistic period was.

Sometime during the next week, I ran into that teacher in the hall after school. She brought up the incident again, but this time, her explanation was entirely different. She had felt obligated to lecture us, because there are no stupid questions blahblahblah. But really and truly, she thought that kid was an idiot and she wished that she could have delivered an entirely different lecture, one just for him.

I just sort of smiled and nodded, because some things are just too hard to explain.

samaritans.

2011-06-15T12:00:00.000-04:00

I was taking exit 301 off I-40 to get on the beltline. It was dark, and traffic was light. The exit ramp curved down and to the right, carving a path between the tall, tall trees. Towards the left of the ramp, there were a pair of headlights illuminating some of those trees. I thought it was an odd place for a cop to station himself - surely the exit ramp is not the best place to catch speeders. But then I realized that the car was a civilian vehicle, and it was facing away from the road, as if it had tried to take the exit, but then forgotten to turn and instead plowed straight into the weeds.

By the time my brain had processed the scene, I was past it. And then I immediately felt terrible.

A couple of years ago, I found myself stranded in the middle of the road with a car that wouldn't run. It could have been any single girl's worst nightmare, but really it was not bad at all, since it was a nice day, and I had AAA. While I was sitting there waiting on the tow truck, I was impressed with how many people stopped to see if they could help. My faith in humanity was restored, even as I sat by a car that had been dinged multiple times by people who had not bothered to leave a note.

Since then, whenever I have seen a motorist on the side of the highway, I've always felt a little obligated to stop. And yet I haven't done it, not even once. Usually, the person does not seem to be in any danger - they are very close to open businesses, it's in the middle of the day, or someone else has already stopped. Of course, all those things were true when I got stuck, too, and those people stopped anyway. And then I didn't need them.

But this situation was different. It was at least a mile in any direction to any sort of gas station, and it was nighttime, so fewer places would be open. Plus, there was just the whole emergency vibe of the situation. I had been stopped in traffic when my car just cut off. This person had run off the road. They might be incapacitated, and every minute that a Good Samaritan did not stop and help was one minute less they had to be saved.

Finally, my guilt got the best of me, and so I decided to turn around. This was not as easy as it could have been. I had to take the next exit to go back in the other direction, then take the next exit that way to get back to the ramp. It gave me a lot of time to think about why this was not a good idea. I was, after all, still a single gal in the city. Instead of finding a person in need, I might find a jerk with a knife. As I got closer and closer, I planned carefully how I was going to lock the car and hide my wallet and phone on my person. I wasn't thinking about how the person might be dead or badly injured or a traumatized teenager.

This is why people shouldn't watch the news. You see someone who has driven their car into the trees and think that they are going to rob, rape, or kill you.

Despite my fears, it was important that I do this. In all likelihood, the person I found would not be dangerous. And they probably wouldn't be dead. They would be like I was when I was on the side of the road: frustrated at the situation but surprised by the way strangers took the time to lend a hand. Someday, they, too might see a car by the side of the road and feel obliged to stop. Maybe it would take them five minutes to get back to the exit ramp, and maybe they would worry the whole way about sting operations involving disabled vehicles. But still, they would do it, and the world would be a better place because of it.

I like that I live in a world where strangers help out. And if I want to continue living in that kind of world, I have to be one of those helpful strangers.

When I finally got back to where I started, there were three cars parked on the side of the exit ramp with their flashers going. I guess some people have a little more practice at this Good Samaritan stuff, so they don't have to drive all over the place having a crisis of conscience. Figuring that the situation was under control, I drove on by for the second time in five minutes. Yes, I was relieved that I didn't have to stop. But I would have, and I think that counts for something.

richmond.

2011-06-08T14:07:00.001-04:00

It's not fair to hate a city and really, it doesn't make much sense. What are you hating, anyway? The inhabitants, the buildings, the weather? It does no good to hate a place, because the place surely doesn't care. Even the inhabitants of the place won't care, telling you that you just don't get it and that they don't want you around nohow. In the end, you are just wasting your energy.

All that being said, I kind of hate Richmond. I have a good reason: they towed my car once.

Josh had a show in downtown Richmond. My car was parked on the street, along with the cars of the other bar patrons. There were many. We came out of the bar at 2 AM, or whenever bars close in Virginia, and the night was lit up with blue lights pulsing from the tops of cars labelled "RPD." But no civilian cars on the street. I went to talk to a policeman, because that's what you should do when you're in a strange city and you can't find your car.

He said it had been towed. I asked why. He said it had been parked in a No Parking zone.

That seemed very odd to me, since I had been parked with a lot of other cars. Also, after living in Boone for four years, I am very careful to check for signs about where it is acceptable to park. Boone will tow your butt in a heartbeat, and then you have to go down to Ashe Lake Garage in the middle of the night, pay $70 to get your car back and then listen to the guy complain about stupid college kids. Spend any amount of time in Boone, and you will quickly develop a lifelong dread of public parking.

Apparently, Richmond and Boone have something in common.

It turns out that there were signs posted about No Parking. In front of every other space, there is a blue sign that says "2 Hour Parking, Monday - Friday, 8 AM - 5 PM." Now, from that sign, you might interpret that you could park there as long as you wanted on weekends or overnight. However, that sign should include some more text that says "Please refer to other signs". Because for every five of those signs is an additional sign which says "No Parking, Monday - Sunday, 11 PM - 4 AM." This sign is red, and there is a helpful graphic of the city of Richmond gleefully towing your butt.

So that's what happened. I presume that all the residents of Richmond know about this little trick and that 10:59, they sneak out of the bars and go move their cars to some secret free parking area, laughing at the clueless tourists all the way. Me, I was one of the clueless tourists, so at 10:59, I was still enjoying my beer inside the bar, unaware that the Okay To Park zone was about to become a HAHAHA SUCKAS zone. The policeman told me that my car was now at the police impound, which did not open until the next morning. We spent the night in Richmond, and the next morning, we took a cab over to the impound and rescued my car. It cost a lot of money, none of which the city of Richmond will use to put up more of the red No Parking signs.

And that's fine, that's life. But I can still hate Richmond, just a little bit, for that.

like a good neighbor.

2011-05-27T16:56:00.000-04:00

Once I heard a story on NPR about a guy who tried to make a TV channel that was all puppies, all the time. It was called The Puppy Channel. There was a theme song, which was basically this old dude singing "Puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies puppies PUPPIES!" That theme song pretty much describes my thought process for about a month now. My brain has been receiving The Puppy Channel.

I'm a little embarrassed by this condition, because I used to hate it when people talked about their pets all the time. And me being me, I probably did not do a good job concealing how uninterested I was in what those people were saying. And now, with The Puppy Channel in my head, I'm beginning to annoy myself. I'm also annoying other people, some of which probably do not care about Remix but who do a better job at responding appropriately than I ever did.

If you ever told me about your pet and I was a jerk, I am sorry. You were just trying to share about something that makes you happy, and sharing ourselves with others is the fabric of our lives, or something like that.

I know (hope?) that this is a temporary affliction. While I may be permanently a dog person, after a while I will get used to the fact that there is a dog in my house and she does adorable things. And when people tell me about their pets, I will be able to be enthusiastic with them. I may still be bored if they go on for too long, but that's only because I know that their pet is not as awesome as mine. But I will listen nicely anyway, because at the end, I will have earned my right to whip out my phone and show them pictures of Remix. Here she is smiling, and here she is sitting, and this is her digging, and...

I have tried not to talk too much about the dog here, either, because I know that some of you really, really, really don't care. Today, I am going to talk about something that is Remix-related, but not cute dog stories. It's about something even more thrilling: INSURANCE!

Back when we were first considering our dog options, I found out that various forces in the universe discourage owning certain types of dogs. These forces include city councils, apartment managers, and insurance companies. Did you know that no one who lives in Topeka, Kansas is allowed to own a pitbull? I formerly had a good opinion of the Kansas state capital, but now? Screw you, Topeka.

Let's talk a little bit about the ridiculousness of breed-specific restrictions. Aside from the idea of punishing all dogs for the actions of some, it's really hard to know what breed a dog is. Most dogs do not have papers that trace their lineage. If you get a dog from a shelter, then there really is no way of telling what all went into it. You can look at the dog and guess, but even then, it's really a crapshoot. These rules are practically unenforceable. The Topeka police might bang on your dog to collect your dog, but you can just say, "This dog? It's some kind of lab. Also, aren't there some actual crimes you could be investigating rather than harassing animals that haven't hurt anybody?" Are they going to do a DNA test on every single dog?

One of the reasons that we picked out this specific dog was that the shelter listed her as a "lab mix." Frankly, we are not sure why. Anyone else that has looked at her has immediately said something along the lines of "Got a little bit of pit in her, eh?" The only thing we can figure is that whoever processes the dogs goes by a picture, not by looking at the actual animal. The picture that was taken of her was not particularly flattering and was at an odd angle. Really, all you could tell from that photo was that she was mostly black, therefore, she was a lab mix. I knew that my insurance company had some restrictive policies regarding pitbulls, but I figured that we could always just send them the info sheet from the shelter, which had a blurry picture and the words "lab mix." Maybe we should have named her "Plausible Deniability."

But something about that didn't sit right with me, even though I know that a lot of people choose that route. I think that it is stupid and unfair that insurance companies have rules about specific breeds. But lying to my insurance company wasn't really standing up for the breed; it was just lying. The system can be stupid, but going outside the system doesn't really change it. I wanted to say to the world that I was not scared to live with a pitbull. The only way any of this would come into play was if she bit somebody, which I don't expect. Remix is exceedingly friendly to people; in fact, I worry that if there were an intruder in the house, she would attempt to snuggle him rather than chew on his face. She does not warm up to every single person, though, and in those cases, she tends to just back away. However, I am one of those people who believes deep down in the very bottom of me that not preparing for a worst-case scenario is the best way to make it happen to you.

So I started shopping around for insurance. You probably already know that it's a completely joyless exercise. I found a list of nationally rated insurance companies, and I basically emailed every single one of them with a single question: Do you offer insurance to households with pitbulls?

Several of them responded with a short and sweet "No." Some of them will give you a policy with an exclusion on the dog, meaning if someone gets bitten, they're not going to pay for it. Some of them want you to take the dog to obedience training. Still others had a long list of questions about fences and children under twelve and the dog's personal history. One ambitious insurance agent, who sells for a company that says "Absolutely not" with regards to dangerous breeds, tried to get me to play the lab mix card. Sir, if I wanted to lie to an insurance company, I'd just lie to the one I have already. It's cheaper anyway.

I got really, really frustrated by the whole thing. I felt like I was being punished for doing the right thing. I had rescued a dog that did not have a home, one who would forever be associated with eating babies because of its breed. And I was trying to play by the rules and be honest with my insurance company. It was causing me nothing but grief. Does everyone else just lie about their dogs? What do Jon Stewart and Jessica Alba do?

And then finally, FINALLY, State Farm responded to my desparate query with two questions: 1.) Has the dog ever attacked anyone? and 2.) Has the dog been trained to fight? In terms of Remix, I can answer 1.) No, and 2.) She has been trained to sit, fetch, and snuggle.

The really happy ending here? I'm going to save $208.46 a year. HA!

some things.

2011-05-24T11:28:00.000-04:00

Thing 1: Free to good owner
When we were looking for a dog, I checked the newspapers in search of a "Free to good owner" ad. There were none. Instead I found fifty ads offering puppies in a variety of breeds, complete with papers, in exchange for money. We had already visited the animal shelter at this point, and after seeing cage after cage of dogs that were one step away from elimination, I just didn't feel good about buying from a breeder. I also did not feel good about paying $300 for a dog.

Where, oh where, were the free dogs? Is that just a small town thing, where someone stands out in front of the Wal-Mart with a box of wriggling lumps of fur, giving them away to whoever is willing to take them? Maybe here in the big city, people spay their pets and don't end up with a litter of unintended consequences.

But then last week, a guy from work sent out an email, offering a free puppy. There was a picture. It sure was cute (of course it was, it's a puppy). I thought hard about it, but then decided to delete the email so I would stop looking at the picture. It's nice to know that you can still get pets free, provided you promise to be a good owner.

Thing 2: Do not distract Simon.
We've just received our assignments at work, which is the list of things that we will be working on for next year's release. One fellow, Simon, is working on a very long, arduous, and critically important task. This week, my boss sent out an email to the rest of us, telling us not to distract him in any way, not even with work=related questions. In fact, if we were to ask him something, he has been instructed not to respond. I wonder if they are monitoring his email to see if he is replying. He must feel very sad and isolated.

I suppose that's an important thing to tell us, but it makes for a rather comical email. Indeed, I will think twice before I send Simon any questions. But also, I have a strange urge to hire a mariachi band to go stand inside his cubicle and play for hours on end. That sort of thing would never have occurred to me before, but now the thought is so appealing that it would almost be worth the money and the stern talking-to.

Thing 3: Some things are worth paying for a $8 ticket.

SO EXCITED.

blueberry bursh.

2011-05-20T17:22:00.001-04:00

We were driving to see The Forbidden Caverns in my sister's minivan. Her kids were all in the back in their special kid seats. Seems like it was kind of a long drive, because we'd all fallen silent into our own thoughts. The kids were making noises, but that's just what they do. I had woken up that morning to what sounded like an entire herd of children playing, but when I came out of the bedroom, it was just three, running in a tight circle and chanting "Otter otter otter otter." No, I don't know why.

I call it chanting, which isn't exactly the right word. It's somewhere between talking and singing, and it's repetitive. Her kids seem to do it a lot, and I don't know if that's something in common with most kids or if it's something about her family. Maybe it's something about my family. My dad does it, and he doesn't have the excuse of being four years old. He'll just get a word or phrase in his head and repeat it randomly, the way that some people hum or whistle. It's just absent-minded noise-making. During the Albertville Olympics in 1992, he would periodically say "Yamaguchi Yamaguchi" for no reason at all.

Meanwhile, back in the van, I was sitting in the passenger seat, looking at the scenery, thinking about whatever. I don't know how long it had been going on before I noticed that my niece Claire was chanting again. I tuned out again to return to my thoughts (about something important, no doubt), but a minute or two later, I realized she was still doing it.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

Why was she saying that? Had we been talking about blueberries? I didn't think so. Is this one of those darnedest things that kids say? Over and over?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

It was incessant. It wasn't too loud or screeching, but it just kept going. When does a person run out of impetus to keep saying the same thing?

Now, I don't have kids. So when I spend an extended amount of time with some, I am usually struck by something about their behavior. Usually, it's something that I already "knew," meaning that I'd heard about it from parents or seen limited evidence of it. But not until I hang out for a couple of days do I really start to get the idea about what kids are like. For example, did you know that children ask questions constantly? No, I mean it. ALL THE TIME. Also, when you have kids, you don't get to ever eat your own food again. You have to share. ALL THE TIME. Plus, kids can't go anywhere on their own. You can't just kick them out and tell them to get out of the house for a few hours so you can take a nap. No, they are there, underfoot and making noise, asking questions and wanting a bite of your donut.

ALL THE TIME.

While I'm all agog at the ins and outs of living in the same house as a child (or several children), the parents don't even seem to notice. Either they are used to it, or they know better than to ponder these things. More likely, they don't have time to ponder these things. It is only in my child-free state that I have the time for luxuries like pondering. Sometimes I do it in my pajamas in the middle of the day while eating a donut.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

How long had she been doing this? Five minutes? Ten? The weird thing was that no one had said anything about it, as if it were completely normal. If a random person did that in public, no one would say anything, but that's because everyone would be too polite to point out that there was a crazy person in the room. Are children actually just small crazy persons?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

The thing about a repetitive sound is that once you do notice it, it's hard to tune it out again. I'd sat there for several minutes, not being annoyed at all, but now I couldn't think anymore, because of

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

I was just a teensy bit annoyed. I didn't want to be, because my niece is very sweet and cute. Not all children are, but she is. So maybe her chanting wasn't annoying at all, but actually cute. If I decided to think that it was cute, would I stop feeling irritated?

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

Okay, you know, now that I think about it, it's kinda cute. It's pretty funny, really, particularly with her little speech impediment.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

I giggled. My sister, in the seat next to me, giggled. Soon we were just laughing outright, because I suppose our other option was to be pissed off, and this was more fun. Claire picked up on our amusement, and she hammed it up, getting louder and saying the words with more gusto.

"BLUEberry bursh! BLUEberry bursh! BLUEberry bursh!"

It's a cute little story, but hearing about the incident secondhand is probably like looking at pictures of other people's cats. Everyone thinks what their kid does is incredibly adorable or smart or interesting, but really it's how you feel about the kid. I can tell you that Claire is very cute and sweet, particularly with her little purple glasses and long hair, but you don't care. She's just another kid, saying another darnedest thing. Yup, kids do that. There are a million blogs out there with people telling stories about how their kid did just the cutest/funniest/most precocious thing the other day.

So this story is not really about Claire and her affinity for alliterative phrases. It's actually about a particular moment in the story, the one right before I giggled. The one where I made a conscious decision to be amused instead of annoyed. I remember actually making that decision, partly for the sake of my sister and niece, but also for my own sanity. Perhaps it's not so surprising that I made the decision, but what blows my mind is that it worked. And that implies that I could do it all the time. I could just choose to enjoy myself, even when my first inclination is be grumpy.

Are all your minds blown?

I am a lucky person. I have absolutely nothing in my life to complain about. That does not mean that I am not sometimes whiny or bitchy or just in a bad, bad mood. Sometimes there are legitimate things to be momentarily unhappy about, though more often there are things that I am unhappy about, but don't necessarily need to be. These are the times that I need decide to be happy anyway, because I freakin' can.

It's weird. You would think that now that I have made this incredible, momentous discovery - happiness is a CHOICE, holy cow! - I would be happy all the time. But that's not true at all. For some reason, even when I know that the only thing keeping me from enjoying myself is myself, I have a hard time making that first step, having that first giggle. Is it laziness? Am I working undeveloped happiness muscles? Do I want to be miserable on some level? I don't know. More likely, I'm so busy going with that first instinct to be grumpy that I forget about the incredible epiphany I had while in a minivan on the way to the Forbidden Caverns. If only I had a reminder.

"Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh! Blueberry bursh!"

neutral, but not afraid.

2011-05-19T16:55:00.002-04:00

Today, our topic is pitbull propaganda. If you go looking on the internet, you'll find lots of conflicting information about pitbulls. Basically, some people love them and some people hate them. The former show pictures of happy dogs, with quotes like "Punish the deed, not the breed!" The latter put up gruesome pictures of people who have been attacked. Me, I'm just gonna skim over all of that, because y'all know where I stand: next to my dog.

But! Way back in the day, back before people associated an entire breed of smiling, wiggle-butted dogs with the ripped-open faces of children, pitbulls were actually a national symbol. In fact, there were posters made to boost the American spirit in a time of war, specifically the first World War. This was before we actually got into the war, when we were just sitting back and letting Europe do its thing.

Basically, these posters want to show that while America is not involved in this little European matter, if push came to shove, we'd push and shove better and harder than anyone else. And we'd do it with PITBULLS!

We're thinking of dressing Remix like this for the Fourth of July.

Do you need a safe place to put your kittens? Wrap them up in an American flag and then hand the whole bunch over to a patriotic pitbull!

I love this last one: Neutral, but not afraid. After living with a pitbull for a month now, I think it's appropriate. She's a powerful and muscular animal, pretty in the noble and strong way that a horse is pretty rather than in the fluffy way that many dogs are. She's got a huge jaw - all muscles and teeth. You can see why this kind of dog would make a great symbol of strength in a time of global turmoil. When we are playing tug-of-war, and she just won't give up, I can see why someone might be afraid of a dog like that.

But then she rolls over for me to scratch her tummy, and I just don't feel that threatened.

yard sales, may 14.

2011-05-16T21:50:00.001-04:00

In case you were wondering, the 2011 Yard Sale Season is officially on.

Once you've been yard saling in the same area for a few years, you end up going to the same church sales every year. Me, I love a good church sale more than most anything, but there are definitely some church sales that I look forward to more than others. On Saturday, there was a sale at a gigantic Presbyterian church in an older, richer part of Raleigh. This is a great combination - rich people have lots of nice stuff, and old, rich people have lots of interesting stuff. Just as I was walking in the door, I heard someone announcing that you could fill a box for $5. I went out and picked the biggest box I found. Then I proceeded to wander around and fill it up.

While walking around the sale with my giant box, I overheard a lady tell her friend, "I dunno, I guess all the good stuff is gone." I wanted to hit them. Maybe it's just a difference in style, but I had actually timed my arrival at the sale so that I would be there for the box sale. It's true that I did not find anything ¡¡¡SPECTACULAR!!!, just a huge box worth of small things, well worth five dollars. Books, stuffed animals for the dog, some handy kitchen items, a huge box of old stationery, movies. Stuff that you might buy after a day at the mall, or wherever the kids are going these days.

I did the most damage in the books section. There were three tables piled high with books, and I could have looked for two hours and not seen them all. Anything that was remotely interesting went right into my box. I think I ended up with at least twenty, some of which will be given to my local book-hoarder.

I picked up yet another ridiculous clock to add to my ridiculous clock collection. This one has a fireplace attached, which was apparently a specialty of the United Clock Company. I have to note that neither the clock nor the fireplace is in working order. When you plug the thing in, the clock makes a noise but does not run, and the fireplace does nothing at all. There is a bulb in back that is supposed to light up, which might just be burned out. I have plans to replace the plug with a battery-operated clock mechanism, probably one from some other yard sale clock. I'm not sure yet about the bulb. I could probably get away with a battery operated tealight or something similar.

The funny thing is, I bought this from a lady who was clearly just an older version of me. She said she'd bought that clock fifteen years ago because she thought it was so neat. She meant to fix it, and then never did. There were several other items that she was selling that were clearly in a similar situation. Crazy lady buying crazy things because they are cheap and cool.

I also got an egg basket shaped like a chicken. I've wanted one of these for a while, though I have no idea why. Sometimes, a secondhander develops a hankering for some random thing. In my case, it’s usually something shaped like a chicken. Two bucks. I would have preferred it to be a little rustier, but I guess I could just leave it out in the rain.

There were three estate sales this weekend. Sometimes at one of these sales, I can look through the possessions of the deceased and think that we would have gotten along famously. Such was this sale. I came away with this milk scale. Since I don't need to weigh any milk, it's completely ornamental, and I'm just going to hang it up on the wall like those people did. I paid the whopping sum of $10 for it, so you can tell that I really wanted it.

I think my best purchase of the day was an ironing board, of all things. I already have an ironing board. It's a avocado green metal number that I got at an estate sale for $3 a couple of years ago. We don't do a lot of ironing, just enough that we should have a board handy. So buying that one was a practical purchase.

This one was folded up in the corner of a bedroom. I missed it on my first pass through the house, and only saw it when another person mentioned a chair sitting next to it. I was just about to pass it by, but then I decided to see how it stood. So I maneuvered it out of the corner and set it up in the middle of the room. I was instantly hooked. It's so darn rustic. It's also really sturdy. I could not figure out how to fold it up again and had a friendly stranger help me figure it out. I think he wanted to buy it. Or pick me up. Maybe both? An old ironing board and an unshowered crazy lady, all at one sale? That’s the kind of day he could write about on his blog.

Three bucks. The former owners apparently didn't like to just throw away padding, so they just added on top. At the bottom level, you can see that there are pages from the May 1964 Philadelphia Inquirer sticking out. SO FREAKING COOL.

This ironing board is yet another illustration of what I love about shopping the way that I do. Sure, my house is full of unusual things - a sarcophagus, a WWII dummy cartridge, now a milk scale. And there are some things which are semi-valuable, like antique books or glassware. But even my most practical things are so much more interesting than their retail equivalents. When you buy secondhand, even your ironing board can be neat.

pluck and flush.

2011-05-05T11:54:00.001-04:00

When I was in high school, I had a friend who was bitten by a tick. He told me a thrilling tale about trying to get the pest off by burning it with a lighter. He killed the tick and singed some leg hairs. Then he fretted about Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever for a week or two.

I didn't see what the fuss was about. When I was growing up, I was bitten by a fair share of ticks. That's what happens when you tromp around in the woods and play with outdoor pets - you get parasites. Whenever I found a tick on me, I would just pluck it off and flush it down the toilet. Then I would tell my mom, who would ask whether it had been attached. If I said no, she would respond "Good," and the matter was done. If I said yes, she would say "Hmm," and the matter was still pretty much over. I knew that ticks carried diseases, but I figured that they must be such rare occurrences that it wasn't a big worry. If my mother wasn't worried about her favorite child, then I wasn't worried either.

Ticks have made a resurgence in my life since we brought an animal into the house. They gave her a dose of Frontline at the shelter, but I've still found two ticks happily sucking away her mutty blood. I plucked them off and flushed them down the toilet. You know, as far as deaths go, being flushed down the toilet is probably one of the worst. You just have to hope you die before you get to the septic tank.

More concerning is that Josh has been the host of five ticks - three attached, two still looking for just the right spot. He found the first one slurping on his knee. After taking the appropriate measure of plucking and then flushing, he promptly freaked out.

I'll just let you in on a secret. Josh is a bit of a hypochondriac. Anytime he gets a little cough or a rash or a bump, he obsesses over it for days. I am less than patient when this happens. Maybe that's because he frequently finds some way to blame it on me. Somehow, I gave him Sealpox, even though I haven't been bitten by any seals, and I don't seem to be showing any of the symptoms.

So my general impatience with his hypochondria, in combination with my blase attitude about ticks, added up to me being not all that worried about a silly little tick bite. I've had dozens of tick bites - no, hundreds! Stop doing internet searches for Lyme disease and come snuggle. He eventually would come snuggle, but only after checking me for ticks. I am not even kidding about that.

After a couple of days, I happened to see his bite, probably while he was examining it for the eightieth time that hour. The scab had turned black, was a bit oozy, and there was a dark red blotch about an inch in diameter. I have never seen a tick bite look like that, and I've had hundreds - no, thousands! - of tick bites. Alright, now I understand your concern. It didn't look like the pictures of Lyme disease on the internet, but it sure looked like something bad.

The thing is, Josh continues to be without health insurance. As much as he would like to run to the doctor, he has to use the wait-and-see approach. It's amazing how many things just clear up on their own. Our strategy was to wait until the next week, and if it still looked gross, then he would go to the doctor. Despite having a clear plan of action, which always makes me feel better, he still looked at his leg with furrowed brow approximately twenty thousand times a day.

The following Monday, his tick bite continued to scare even the likes of a country girl like me, so he went to the CVS Minute Clinic. The lady there took one look at his leg and told him to take his Lyme diseased self down to Urgent Care. The doctor there said he wasn't sure what it was, but agreed with my assessment that it wasn't good and put him on some antibiotics. The doc told him that this stuff - doxycyline - kills pretty much everything except for MRSA. Of course, that offhand remark convinced Josh that he had MRSA. If he happened to also have anthrax or the bubonic plague, though, he's good to go now.

Here's a brief interlude to say nice things about the doctor at Urgent Care, whose name I do not know. He was apparently very understanding about the fact that Josh was without insurance. There is a blood test that they can do to check for Lyme, but the doctor opted not to do it. Even if Josh did have Lyme, the treatment would be the same - really dang strong antibiotics. The doctor also called the pharmacy and told them to charge the generic price ($10), rather than the full price ($40). Being without insurance often means being without treatment, but sometimes you've got a red and black oozing tick bite and you've got to suck it up and shell out the cash. It's nice that some doctors are willing to work with him.

After only a couple of days on the meds, the bite cleared up beautifully. And then Josh got a couple more bites, which he agonized over. But he still had twelve more days of antibiotics to take, so why worry? I am concerned about what we will do if this continues to happen. Anthrax or no, it's probably not good to be on antibiotics for an extended period of time.

The funny thing is that I haven't had a single tick on me. Either they are all hiding somewhere that is not visually accessible to me, or they're just not interested. It must be because I'm a country girl. They can tell it does no good to bite me, after thousands - no, millions! - have already tried.

cookie cake.

2011-05-03T11:36:00.000-04:00

Like many offices, we have birthday celebrations. My only complaint with these little parties is that our birthdays are not more evenly distributed. In May, we get called into the break room for dessert about once a week. But then in September, there is a goody drought. Maybe we should consider this factor during the hiring process.

"I'm sorry, Phil, you're incredibly qualified and we really need to fill this position; however, we were looking for a Virgo."

The day of the party, a blue folder is passed around. Within this folder is a greeting card and a list of all the employee names. When you sign the card, you're supposed to cross out your name and then hand the blue folder to someone else on the list whose name has not been crossed out. It's all done with the utmost secrecy, as if the person did not know it was their birthday. The surprise is further ruined by the fact that the lady who buys the goodies asks what kind of sugary snack the person wants. Well, it's not always sugary. One guy is kind of a health nut (fruit) and another is on Atkins (meat and cheese tray). The rest of us know what birthdays are about, so we ask for cake or pie or cookies or ice cream bars.

Every once in a while, someone will be unable to decide between cookies and cake, and we'll end up with a cookie cake. This is basically one giant chocolate chip cookie which has icing on it. It's cut up into slices and served like a pizza.

I'm here to report that the cookie cake is crap. It's a waste of a perfectly good birthday wish, maybe the only birthday wish that ever consistently comes true. If you want cookies, wish for cookies. If you want cake, wish for cake. But this bastard son of cookie and cake is an abomination. It satisfies neither craving and just leaves you with a gross, sugary, fake dairy taste in your mouth. A glass of milk cannot save you.

Cookie cake is not worth the calories, the money, or the experience of eating it. I gotta tell you, my threshold for free dessert being worth the calories is incredibly low. I did not even know that it existed until I tried cookie cake. I do alright managing to resist junk food at the grocery store, and if I don't bring it into the house, I'm perfectly content not eating it. But when it's sitting there in the break room, waiting to be eaten, then I lose all sense of self-control. I am like a child who has not yet learned the rules of sharing, except I have learned the rules, so I mostly try to sneak in and get a piece when no one is looking.

Whereas on cookie cake days, I can sit idly by and watch other people consume it while I feel sorry for them. Suckers.

HOWEVER: You can make homemade cookie cake, and it is freaking amazing. In fact, you could make this tonight, because you probably already have all these ingredients.

Cookie Cake
From Alosha's Kitchen

2 c all-purpose flour

1 t baking soda

1/2 t kosher salt

3/4 c (12 T) unsalted butter, softened

1/2 c sugar

3/4 c packed light brown sugar

1 large egg

2 t vanilla extract

1 bag (11.5 oz) chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt.

Use a mixer to cream together the butter and sugars. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and mix until they are just combined. Stir in chocolate chips.

Put dough in a 12-inch cast iron or other ovenproof skillet, and spread so that you have one layer completely covering the bottom of the pan. Bake 40 - 45 minutes, or until edges are brown and top is golden. Be careful to not overbake, as it will keep cooking in the pan once you take it out of the oven. Cool on a wire rack in pan, 15 to 20 minutes.

Notes - I do not have a 12-inch cast iron skillet. But I do have a 10.5-inch and a 5-inch. I did the math, and it was close enough for me. Plus, the 5-inch skillet is really cute and would make a great individual cookie cake for someone's birthday. If you have a similar situation, you might need to increase the cooking time.

If you have ice cream, it needs to be involved. If you don't, it's still pretty dang good.

bogeyman.

2011-05-02T17:35:00.001-04:00

Really, Saddam Hussein was the bogeyman of my childhood. By the time September 11 happened, I was eighteen. And while there was a new bogeyman to fear, there was also a lot of blame being distributed to entities with funny names - the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Afghanistan. And then Iraq and Saddam got pulled back in there again. It was all very confusing.

After Saddam was executed, I found and watched the cell phone video of his hanging. It's the sort of thing that you seek out and then afterwards wish you hadn't. The video quality was terrible, for which I am grateful. At the end, there he was, the bogeyman, swinging. He was just a man after all, and then he wasn't even that.

I logged on to my work computer this morning and read that Osama bin Laden was finally dead. I was stunned, because up until then, it had been a very regular kind of day. I had hit the snooze button too many times. I'd read the advice column in the paper while waiting for my tea to steep. And then it became a momentous day, even though the moment was actually yesterday. Then again, 9/11 had started out as a normal sort of day, too.

And then I read a bunch more - articles, blogs, reactions from politicians, obituaries that had been written years ago (Whoever wrote most of the copy of the New York Times obituary has since died; how depressing to be outlived by the subject of a pre-written obit). There's a whole spectrum of views out there. Many of them are jubilant and triumphant. Others pay lip service to the idea that you shouldn't celebrate the death of a human being, then go on to say that this particular guy deserved it. Still others compare bin Laden's body count to that of the two wars that were started in his name and the loss of individual liberty for the sake of national security.

In all that reading, I was hoping to find someone else who had figured out what I was feeling and put it into words, since I am apparently unable to. I'm not at all sorry that bin Laden is dead. Justice, as far as we humans understand it, has been served. Mostly I wonder why I don't feel more. First I was stunned, and then just...well, not really anything.

Here is one thing I feel: I'm happy for the President. Just last week, I listened while someone told me that Obama was weak. I should have responded that recognizing that there are other options besides force is not the same as weakness. I did not say that, because political discussions turn me into a tense mash of mush. I am glad that Obama will get credit for this assassination, and I hope that it helps him get re-elected. He seems to be the only adult left in the room a lot of the time.

But I'm not celebrating in the streets. The fact that such a person existed at all is too depressing to make his death a festive affair. The fact that he is finally gone seems to have given a lot of people some closure, and I'm glad for them, even though I can't help but think that nothing is really closed. One less bogeyman is a good, good thing, but there will always be more.

give me your answer do.

2011-05-01T14:34:00.000-04:00

Part of me was relieved when the guy told me that it had already been sold.

Part of me still wants it.

the cartman.

2011-04-30T17:54:00.000-04:00

I used to think that dog toys were silly. They were the kind of thing that over-enthusiastic pet owners wasted their money on, because they could not differentiate between animals and people. The pet industry does not help, with their aisles of brightly colored packages featuring pictures of happy and cute dogs. This thing will make your dog happy. Don't you want him to be happy? What are you, some kind of puppy-hater?

While the industry does take advantage of people who love their animals, I very quickly came to the conclusion that dog toys are a requirement, at least if you own a dog. Otherwise, you're probably still wasting your money.

The day before we were going to pick up Remix, I went to a retail store, where I picked up things that I knew to be actual necessities - leash, collar, food. I specifically went to Wal-Mart rather than an actual pet store. I do not trust pet stores. They offer more selection; you can buy a collar for a medium-sized dog in just about any color you like. But the cost for carrying so many colors is built right in to the price of each individual item, and in the end, you will pay more for something that does the same thing. At Wal-Mart, they had three colors: black, red, and blue. I like red.

I also wanted to get a toy. At that point, I did not believe in them, but I had been suffering from a bad case of Puppy Anticipation for a couple of weeks. I was already smitten with my new dog that I did not yet have, and I wanted to buy her something she would like. While Wal-Mart only has three collar choices, the toy selection is much greater. That's where the money is. You'll probably only buy one collar, but you might fill your buggy with toys.

I was quickly overwhelmed by the different varieties of playthings. There are things to throw, things to chew, things to pull on. Many of them had squeakers inside, and I felt conspicuous squeezing toy after toy that made a ridiculous noise. I had no idea whether dogs liked any of this crap, much less what my specific one would want to play with. I was tempted by the one that looked like a rubber chicken, but it did not seem very durable. I was leaning towards a tug-of-war toy, because I personally like to play tug-of-war with dogs. So I found something called a "DogZilla," which was a knotted rope inside a rubber chewy thing. I was pleased with myself for escaping the dog toy aisle with only one item. Take that, pet care industry! You will not take advantage of my love for my dog.

Back at DogZilla Corp., they smile and say, "Just you wait."

Even after dropping $25 at a - gasp! - retail store, I decided that it would be good to check out the thrift stores to see what kind of pet options they had. The answer is none, really. They don't have a pet section, except for the occasional terrarium. I have spent enough time in the used marketplace to know about this limitation, which is why I went to Wal-Mart for the things I definitely would need. Thrift stores do have a lot of stuffed animals. Back in December, I had found a stuffed Mario that we gave to Josh's brother's dog. I felt ridiculous giving a dog a Christmas present, but I have a great fondness for that particular dog, it was only a buck-fifty, and it was a lot of fun to see Mario in the mouth of a Rottweiler. I was willing to buy a couple of cheap toys to give to our new dog for the sole purpose of her destroying them. Here dog, go nuts. I dug around in the bin of stuffed animals and found an Eric Cartman and an inexplicable green lobster that I kindof wanted for myself. They were fifty cents each.

The day after we became dog-owners, Josh sent me a text message with a picture of Remix chewing on Cartman. Fifty cents well spent, in my opinion.

The funny thing is that Remix loved the Cartman. She would happily play tug-of-war with the DogZilla, but it was the Cartman that she carried around the house in her mouth. She was destroying it, sure. By the time I got home that day, there was a hole in his feet and big wads of stuffing on the floor (which is thankfully very easy to clean up). But when she was not ripping it apart, she was very gentle with it. She trotted along behind us from room to room, and then once we settled in a place, she would plop down on the floor and go back to extracting fluff from its innards. "Toy" to a dog means "something to be destroyed," because that's apparently how they have fun. Still, she seemed to be savoring it. She would chew on it as she fell asleep, and so she would end up sleeping with her front legs around it, like they were snuggling. Guys, my dog is freakin' cute.

Even with her careful handling, it was clear that the Cartman's days were limited. She was surely capable of obliterating it within the hour if she wanted, but instead it took about three days. After that, he was still mostly together, but the majority of the fluff had been removed and I guess she lost interest. Let's do the math: three days worth of happily occupied dog was fifty cents, which puts us at five dollars a month. I think I can do even better, given a bag sale at a church yard sale. It's possible that a $5 chew toy would last longer, but I put some value on watching her play with a recognizable character.

While she was ripping apart the Cartman, we noticed that she was not doing that to anything else. We thanked the shelter gods for giving us such a well-behaved dog. She clearly had the power and the inclination to destroy, yet she was thoughtfully limiting it to the one item we allowed. What a good dog, we thought. We planned to just keep buying her cheap used stuffed animals for her to massacre on her own time. We decided that we would always refer to the toy of the moment as the "Cartman." Where's your Cartman, girl? Where is it?

One night, she started chewing on one of the blankets we had folded up to use as a dog bed. In the morning, we found stuffing on the floor, a sight that has become ubiquitous in our house during the past couple of weeks. Our dog is apparently very interested in fluff-extraction. Well, we reasoned, it was old and there was probably already fluff coming out of it. Plus, we did give it to her. If later we had to spend a dollar on a new blanket at a yard sale, that was no big deal. Then another day, the day after she lost interest in the first Cartman, Josh had to retrieve my shoe from her mouth. Then I had to stop her from chewing on the futon cover. One morning, I found her in the library next to a book (from the 1860s) that showed clear gnawing marks. Bad Remix.

I read an article about how to stop your dog from chewing on your stuff. It basically said to keep your stuff away from the dog, and also just go ahead and start making peace with the fact that something will be destroyed, and it will probably be something you really liked. That was not the kind of advice I was looking for. I wanted a clear list of steps that I could complete in like five minutes, and then forever after that, Remix would never be caught with my shoe in her mouth again.

That's when I figured out that dog toys are necessary. They are a bribe, a distraction. Here, you may maim this however you want, just don't bother anything else in the house. It's like the dog comes to you one day and says, "You got a real nice futon mattress right here. This is new, isn't it? My guess is that you bought it within the last year. Bet it was expensive. It would be a shame if something happened to it. A real shame." And so you give her a stuffed green lobster to keep her happy. The pre-Remix me would have said that the dog needs to be properly trained until she doesn't chew on stuff, but I realize now that this is what dogs do. They chew. If you keep them in the house, they chew on things in there. If we can keep her in Cartmans such that she leaves our shoes and mattresses and books and furniture alone, then that is a deal that I am willing to make with her.

And if I can fulfill my part of the deal without having to go to the pet store, then that is just gravy.

finish your thought.

2011-04-29T17:28:00.001-04:00

I was there for a poetry reading. That's not strictly true; I was there for a poet. When I was an adolescent, I used to go places to meet boys. Now I was here because a boy that I had met had co-founded a poetry club. Sometimes, when I'm feeling much too old to be out late at a downtown bar or a poetry reading, I think about telling my adolescent self that the boy I had picked out was a rock star and poet. She would have thought that was so thoroughly fantastic that maybe she would lend me some of her energy and lust for life so I could get through the night. Life is happening, pay attention.

"You look tired. Good time last night?"

"What was last night?" I remembered being up late, but couldn't remember what we had done. "Oh. Yeah." We'd had friends over for dinner.

I had no bottled youth, so I settled for a beer. The bar was trying to get rid of all the seasonal beers from the winter, so they were selling them for two bucks a pop. I ordered some calamari, too, because when there is an opportunity to eat fried squid with a zesty dipping sauce, one should take it.

Aside from poetry, there was a guy with a guitar and another fellow doing live painting. That's what Josh called it, "live painting." I told him that all painting was live. I painted my own house live and on location. Maybe I should have sold tickets. Anyway, what with the poems and the guitar and the painting, I guess the point was that there was art happening there for those who wanted to be patrons of it.

I don't get poetry. I've tried, I promise. There are poems that I enjoy, but more often I find my mind wandering away as my reading turns to skimming before I give up altogether. It used to be the way I read recipes before I learned to cook. Poetry seems like unnecessary complication, at least in form if not also in word choice. It's a piece of writing that has been given a structure, and I don't understand why. Why is this written as a poem and not a paragraph?

The calamari was not good. It was well-fried, not too greasy, but the squid itself was rubbery. Very disappointing. I decided to have soup and asked the waiter to tell me which was the best of the three offerings. This is something that my brother does - he asks the wait staff what the best thing on the menu is and then he just orders it on their word. I admire his style, his ability to try something new as recommended by someone who may not care or have terrible taste. I've been trying to do this more, but I am not ready for complete trust, so I narrow the question. Just give me the best soup. And another beer.

I have no idea if the poetry was good. I liked the first reader, who was a professor at NC State. Her poems were like scenes from a sad movie. But they were beautiful, and I could relate to them. I've personally never had an affair with a slow but sweet boy in the California heat, but I've been caught up in a moment, even one that lasts a whole season. At the end of those kinds of moments, you look back and wonder who you had been that something like that would happen to you.

Josh read one that he had written just the night before, the night that was so long and late that I had already forgotten what I'd done. He wrote it after our guests had left, at his writing table in his library, while I drifted off to sleep in the leather chair. I've come to think of it as my chair, even though the library is his room. But that's where I sit, and I think he is so happy that I want to be in his room that he lets me take the more comfortable chair. The dog also thinks its her chair, but we are snugglers, so there is no conflict.

I would like to tell my adolescent self that one of the best things about dating a rock star and poet is that you know where he gets his material. A reference will come up in a poem or a lyric and I can smile to myself, knowing why that thing was on his mind that day. It's like our secret, the thing that redeems having to share him with so many. In the poem that he had written while I was falling asleep in his chair, he used a new word he'd discovered recently: frisson. All the other people who were listening might wonder where a man gets a word like that, while I enjoy my private knowledge that he got it from a Harry Potter book.

The other poems were fine, I guess. The restaurant filled up with people who were not there to listen to their boyfriend's poetry club, and it became harder to hear every word. My soup arrived. It was truly awful. The chicken pieces were dried up and chewy, and the citrus flavor was overwhelming.

As promised, there was live painting. A guy stood to the side of the microphone and painted a picture of a man grasping a pen while words came at him from an indistinct and gritty cityscape. Despite my mockery, I like live painting. It was like watching a Bob Ross show, but modern and edgy. I wondered if the artist was just making it up as he went along, thinking to himself that he would just add a bleak deserted building here, a dreary little tree right over there.

At the end of the readings, they announced that it was time to play a poetry game. This club that Josh is in - they basically get together and come up with a prompt, then everyone writes a poem on the spot. They read them aloud, then critique. I sort of played it once, at a Christmas party where I had consumed an immoderate amount of spiked egg nog. I wrote on the little slips of paper, then hurriedly crammed them in my pocket rather than share them with the group. I'm pretty sure how they were all about how I don't get poetry. I've always had a hard time being open with my writing. I like having enough time to edit and revise, so I don't have to put myself out there until I feel like I'm presenting my best. So this whole write a poem and then read it out load was terrible. I can't even write poetry. I was just trying to impress a boy.

They explained the rules of the poetry game, the most important being "Finish your thought." They handed out little slips of paper for people to write on. The guest readers and a couple of confident friends took them. The prompt was the painting itself, which had been created live before us. They stood around it, looking at this still-wet piece of art that had been created while we were all sitting around, listening to poetry, and not enjoying the calamari.

I ripped a piece of paper out of a notebook in my purse and wrote a haiku.

I just want to thank
y'all for coming out tonight.
Support live painting!

I folded it up and slipped it to Josh, who smiled and offered to read it to the group for me. I shook my head no in alarm, because even a tiny haiku is twelve syllables too much sharing. But I did share. Just not with everybody.

I feel bad for not understanding this thing that he loves. I'm not a musician either, but at least I have the capacity to appreciate music. Whereas Josh can read me a poem and I will have absolutely no reaction to it, other than the sinking feeling that he would be better off with a girl who thought in lines of verse rather than lines of code. He doesn't seem to care, and he can't read code, so I guess we're even. People act like I must be so smart because I write software, and they didn't even know that software was something that was written. I think my brain is just wired the right way for this job. I like it, but it's not for everyone. I guess neither is poetry.

singing and dancing hoodlums.

2011-04-27T17:42:00.002-04:00

Summer Stock
This is one of three movies that paired Gene Kelly and Judy Garland (another being For Me and My Gal). In this one, Judy plays a farmer who lets a theatre troupe (led by Director Gene) put on a play in her barn in exchange for chores. Eventually, Farmer Judy is forced to take the leading role, discovering her true calling! People fall in love, there is singing and dancing. We are not told for sure, but presumably Judy does not lose her farm and Gene becomes very successful on Broadway.

I guess this movie fits in the big bucket of musicals which are fine, but not particularly special in any way. There are funny bits and poignant bits and the songs are pretty good, but you get the feeling that the only thing keeping this movie afloat is the cast. If it were starring a lesser pair, it would pretty much suck.

Songs and Dance: well, excellent, of course. If you like singing, there is Judy and if you like dancing, there is Gene. There are a couple of scenes where Farmer Judy is just going about her day - getting dressed, driving a tractor - and she's singing. A lot of people don't like musicals because they find it unrealistic that people just sing all the time, but I think that if I were Judy Garland, I would sing ALL THE TIME. I would sing while getting dressed and driving a tractor, plus while clipping my toenails or waiting in line at the DMV. I don't know if Judy actually did that, but I like to think that she did. The same is a bit true for Gene - even when he's walking, he's dancing just a little bit. Must've driven his downstairs neighbors crazy.

The movies features "Get Happy," which you've probably heard. It was inspired by a movement within African American Gospel Music. Getting happy means to receive the Holy Spirit, which makes you want to sing. I'm not going to post that song, though. I'm going to post Gene Kelly dancing with a newspaper and a creaky floorboard.

Will I Make Josh Watch It: Nope.

Carmen Jones
When I first started watching this movie, having basically no idea what it was about, I was amazed that I had not heard of it before. It takes songs from Bizet's opera Carmen, throws some Oscar Hammerstein II words on it, and sets it in the rural South with an all-black cast. That sounds awesome! Then I watched some more of it, and I realized that for all its grand ambitions, this movie is a swing and a miss.

What bothered me the most about this film was that it was supposedly a black movie, but there was nothing really black about it other than the people. There were occasional half-hearted attempts at dialect in the dialogue and lyrics, but they seemed to come and go. I expected some black culture. It's possible that the point was just to have a popular musical film with all black actors, and maybe for the time that was revolutionary enough. But I was repeatedly disappointed whenever there was a musical number. I wanted rhythm and blues, and what I got was Bizet and Hammerstein.

Maybe that's not fair. I wonder if I would have liked the movie if it had been cast with the standard lily-white actors that are usually in musicals from this era. That way, I would not have been distracted by whether it was a "black" movie or not. This movie seemed little more than just an all-black version of Oklahoma!. Which is fine, I guess, but it could have been so much more. We already have Oklahoma! and fifty thousand-million musicals just like it.

Okay, I probably would not have liked it anyway, since the plot follows the slow decline of a good and honorable man after he falls in love with a loose woman, our titular character. He shoulda stuck with the sweet and stable Cindy Lou, the girl he had in the first place. We're supposed to see Carmen as this beautiful and tragic figure, but I just relate more to nice girls. How can I relate to Carmen when the movie is telling me that nice boys everywhere will drop girls like me for girls like her?

Songs and Dance: You already know the tunes. Bizet's opera has managed to sink into the public consciousness through cartoons and commercials and whatever else sneaks classical music into our lives. And Hammerstein's lyrics were excellent as well. I would like to say nice things about the singing of Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge's singing, but they were both dubbed. So I'll just say that he was handsome and she was lovely. Pearl Bailey was not dubbed, and she was wonderful (and lovely).

Here's Pearl Bailey singing "Beat Out That Rhythm on the Drum." It really illustrates perfectly my problem with the whole movie. She's singing about that bump-bump-bumpin' in the music, but this particular song surely doesn't have any bump-bump-bumpin'. And then there is the dancing. Seriously? I saw that same exact dance in the barn-raising scene in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.

To the movie's credit, the drummer is Max Roach, who was a famous jazz percussionist (and was born in North Carolina).

Will I Make Josh Watch It: Nope. He wandered in with about ten minutes left and called it a blaxploitopera.

West Side Story
Man, Stephen Sondheim sure can write lyrics. I feel so silly saying that this movie is good, because everybody knows this movie is good. But this was the first time I had ever seen it, so I'll just say, this movie is good, y'all.

For the other two people who haven't seen it, this movie is yet another retelling of Romeo and Juliet, but with dancing street gangs. Shakespeare never saw it coming.

One of the best things about this movie is the way it goes back and forth between the two plots. One storyline is the continuing feud and upcoming rumble between the Sharks and the Jets. The other is the budding romance between Tony and Maria. So you have a scene with some hoodlums, the singing and dancing kind. Those scenes are incredibly depressing, because everyone is caught in this inner city quagmire. Even if they did manage to stop killing each other over territory, everyone's lives would pretty much still be rotten by my privileged middle-class standards. The white kids are talking about their terrible home lives, what with their abusive and drug-addicted parents, while the Puerto Ricans are talking about the awful way they are treated, but it's still better than the old country.

And then! You have Tony and Mario, who are in love. Their love creates a little bubble for them and even as everyone around them is caught up in this gang war, they are oblivious. So you've just spent a scene being thoroughly depressed at how much it sucks to be an immigrant, when all of a sudden you are bombarded with sweetness and light. It's a good thing, because this movie is pretty dark.

Songs and Dance: Wonderful, all the way through. There are plenty of songs that you might recognize, including "I Feel Pretty" and "Something's Coming."

I'm going to post two clips, because this movie is just that good. First, the Jets singing about why they're such bad kids. You might recognize Russ Tamblyn as Riff, who is just so cute, especially for a singing and dancing hoodlum.

And since I'm equal opportunity here, a song by the Sharks. The women are singing about how awesome it is in America, while the men counter with the troubles of being immigrants. Everybody dances!

Will I Make Josh Watch It: He watched it with me, then looked up the lyrics to "Gee, Officer Krupke" because he thought it would be fun for his band to cover.

with all the frills upon it.

2011-04-24T12:10:00.000-04:00

As a child, it was a family tradition to buy a new dress and matching hat every Easter. Looking back, this seems to be very out of place in the general theme of my childhood. We were frugal people and not fashion-forward. This was a girls-only activity, and I don't think the boys got new Easter pants or anything like that. I wonder now where my mother got this idea. I seem to remember her being as excited about buying the new clothes as we were to pick them out and get them. Maybe she liked the fact that there was an excuse to spend a little money on ourselves.

This tradition obviously extends outside our family, as Irving Berlin didn't write songs just for us. New clothes at Easter go along with the whole theme of renewal. Easter was also the first opportunity to be frivolous after Lent. It's like Mardi Gras, except with less drunkenness and more, uh, flowery hats. Okay, it's nothing like Mardi Gras.

We would make a special trip to the big city of Hickory on some Sunday afternoon before Easter to go to all the department stores that we didn't have in my hometown. The racks would be filled with pastels to attract us and other women who were eager to start wearing feminine colors again after a winter of black and brown. I don't remember where we bought the hats, and if I had to go out and buy an Easter hat right now, I'd be pressed to think of a place to go (I guess I'd go to the thrift store, like always). But the stores must have had a few for the holiday, knowing that there were still some mothers and grandmothers out there who wanted bonnets for their little girls. I got new shoes, too, and also those constricting symbols of innocent girlhood - a pair of white tights. We would come home and model our new clothes for Daddy, who endured the fashion show with remarkable patience. Or maybe it was indifference.

The clothes and hats and shoes would be put away until Easter morning. Left to my own devices, I would have put them on every day after school and gone around in the goat pen in them. I'm sure the goats would have appreciated them very much; the hat in particular would have been tasty indeed. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio says "Did'st thou not fall out with a Tailor for wearing his new Doublet before Easter?" In my case, it would be more like "Did'st thou not fall out with thy mother for letting a bovidae nibble on thy new hat?"

Come Easter Sunday, I'd get up early just to get dressed, being very careful about not ruining the tights, and revel in the newness of my outfit. At church, I would be sweet and demure, looking like a proper little girl from a picture book one day a year, instead of the kind of little girl who would have to be told not to wear her nice clothes into a goat pen. In an effort to match my pretty and clean clothes, I would try very hard to be still and quiet while the preacher talked about the stuff that Easter is actually about.

At some point, probably somewhere in my adolescence, the tradition faded out. But there was one Easter, probably while I was in college, where my mother and I wore hats again. We had these nice sun hats that we'd bought in Australia for going out on a day trip on a boat. We put on pretty spring dresses that we had lurking in our closets, donned our Australia hats and went to Easter breakfast at church. We were the only people with headwear, and everyone there was sure to comment on it. It was a sweet mother-daughter morning, feeling special and dressed up in our outfits, but a little embarrassed at all the attention.

And that's my bit of holiday reminiscing for the day. Happy Easter.

poor people food.

2011-04-19T11:47:00.001-04:00

Lately, I've been trying to make simpler food. I'm doing it for all the usual reasons, to save time, to save money, to build up a repetoire of dishes that save time and money. Luckily for me, Josh really responds to this kind of cuisine. We call it "poor people food." Poor people have never had much time or money, so there is a long and rich history of making really tasty food with neither. Once the rich people allowed them to learn to read and write, the poor people thoughtfully wrote down these recipes and shared them, so now even us middle-class people can benefit from their knowledge.

Last month, I wanted to make a Mardi Gras meal, a simple one. That's another thing that Josh loves - cajun and creole food. It's the seafood and the spice. There were plenty of recipes out there to choose from, many of them complicated. But I found one that seemed easy enough, and I already had all the ingredients waiting for me in my pantry or fridge.

Andouille Sausage Creole
Cheesy Creole Grits

Simple is right. This whole thing took about an hour from start to finish, and that includes chopping time. Oh, and it was really amazingly delicious. This meal instantly became a new favorite in the house.

But, Sandra!, you say. Andouille sausage is not cheap. How can this qualify as poor people food? The thing about making poor people food from other locales is that some of the ingredients which are common and inexpensive to them might be sort of exotic to you. I happened to have some andouille sausage that I had bought (on sale, with double coupon) hanging out in the freezer. Now it's all gone, because I made this dish again last week and used up the last bit of it. While I will still clip coupons and look out for the sale, I don't think this dish requires fancy sausage with a french name.

In fact, I would argue that the dish doesn't require sausage at all. You could substitute any ole meat (or even faux-meat?) in this dish. Brown a little ground beef with some spices, grill some chicken and cut it up, throw in some shrimp. I dare one of you to try it with hot dogs. I think this dish is probably pretty versatile in terms of what you can put in it, which is another hallmark of poor people food. Poor people make do with what they have.

One more thing - do not underestimate the cheesy grits. A lot of the spice and all of the cheese lives in the grits. To not include that would take away a lot of yum. But if you hate ~~good food~~ grits or if you just don't have any around, then you could probably use rice instead. Make do if you have to, but do make this food.

remix.

2011-04-15T16:34:00.004-04:00

After losing the first puppy, I first sulked and then was motivated. After losing Madison, I became determined. We felt at war with the Universe, which we had previously thought was plopping a puppy in our laps but was now obviously plotting against us. I checked the animal shelter website multiple times a day to pick our potential pets and monitor which ones had been adopted. Meanwhile, Josh started working on a fence. He dug holes nearly three feet deep in the clay soil with those secondhand post-hole diggers. At the end of the day, he would tell me about his progress and also about the biceps he was developing. I was more interested in the latter, but I never cared about the fence.

Again, I made peace with our second lost dog in a week by thinking about the person on the other end of it. Some guy had lost his beautiful and sweet blue pit bull, and no doubt he thought he would never see her again. Isn't that the way it goes? When a pet is gone, you call around and you put up posters to appease your heartbroken kid, but you have to know that your chances aren't good. But this guy called the animal shelter and there she was, his lost dog. Despite what we thought, Madison was never ours. We wanted a dog, but we weren't trying to take anyone else's dog. Trust me, there are plenty to go around. It is all-you-care-to-handle pit bulls out there.

The next weekend, we went back to the shelter, bringing along our receipt from Madison like a gift certificate good for one dog, please. We could have gone to any number of other shelters in the area. I talked to a guy who got his dog at a no-kill shelter. He described it as a dog paradise, a big farm in the country where the puppies may run freely, without fear of the gas chamber. I respect that, but I can't help but think that adopting from a no-kill place is saving a dog that wasn't about to die, though perhaps it opens up space at the no-kill shelter for a dog that is still at risk. Either way, we got one dog saved and fifty bazillion still at risk. The Wake County Animal Shelter is big and nice and well-maintained, but they are facing up to the reality that there are too many dogs and cats. Euthanizing animals is a unpleasant solution to a difficult problem. No-kill shelters, while good in that they are providing space for more animals, aren't dealing with the problem at all. They just act like they're above it.

Heck, I don't know. This is just what I've been thinking about while looking at the profiles of dogs on the animal shelter website. It seemed like there were half a dozen new dogs every single day. Help control the pet population. Spay and neuter your pets.

At the shelter, I was dismayed to find out two things: 1. the dogs that I had picked out on the website were not there at all, and 2. Josh still pretty much only wanted a pit bull. I had come to think that losing our blue pit bull was maybe a blessing, because when we put down the deposit for her, we had not done any research. You all know that people don't like pit bulls. You know from that gut reaction that you got the first time I said we might be getting one. Even if you never ever had any interaction with one, you felt like maybe it wasn't a good choice for a nice family pet. That's how Josh and I felt anyway. But then we did all that reading about them, we met a couple of really sweet ones, and we looked at twenty-five (thirty? forty?) of the big-headed cuties who needed a place to live. Unfortunately, some people have turned that instant distrust of pit bulls into policy. Some insurance companies will not give you a homeowner's policy if you own a dog of certain specific breeds that they deem dangerous. The reason given is increased frequency of bites and increased damage if a bite occurs. They might have a point on that last one, seeing as how pit bulls were bred to combine the strong jaws of a bulldog with the perserverence of a terrier. Good job, selective breeding, you succeeded!

Me, I say let people have whatever dog they want. The insurance company can put a limit on how much damage they'll cover if it bites someone or they can charge more for the policy.

I emailed my insurance company and asked, oh so casually, if they had any restrictions on dog breeds. Why yes, of the following breeds: pit bull (a.k.a staffordshire terrier), akita, chow, presa canario, rottweiler, sharpei and wolf hybrids (wolf hybrids?!). Assuming there would just be a increase in the cost of my policy, I asked how much more I would have to pay for a year's worth of pit bull (completely hypothetically, of course). She replied that the charge would not go up, as long as the insurance company did not find out. That is baffling advice to receive from your insurance agent, but it does explain how there are so many pit bulls when no one is allowed to have them.

So I had to tell Josh that pit bulls were right out. We passed by cage after cage labelled American Staffordshire Terrier, and some of them were so cute. I felt like a rotten hypocrite for contributing to the continued disenfranchisement of the pit bull when I knew it was just not fair.

I pointed out a couple of hounds that I liked, but Josh was just not interested. He said they were too skinny. He wanted a thick and broad-shouldered dog. We made the rounds through the whole shelter, then came back to one cage with a dog that we were both completely unenthusiastic about. We didn't have to get a dog today, I reminded myself. And then the thought of coming back here to look at more sad dogs, of looking at the website every day was just so depressing that I figured we should give this dog, who was named Daisy, a chance. She was mostly black, with some white on the face, chest, and paws. She was labelled as a lab mix, but we had seen a lot of pits in the past couple of weeks and found her wide jaw very familiar. She was what neither one of us wanted - too much pit bull for me and not enough for him.

But you know what? When you get in the dang kennel with them, it's just over. You pet them and they instantly love you so much. They can't believe that you have finally come to see them, they have been waiting so long for only you. You are already in this doggy death camp, surrounded by misery, but here in this one place is a creature that is beaming pure, uncut love right at you. Must. Rescue. Dog.

So we did. We were thrilled to find that she had been surrendered, which meant that the owner had given her up. There was no waiting period where an owner might swoop in out of nowhere to ~~steal~~ reclaim our dog. And yet, we were twice bitten, which I guess made us frice shy. We agreed to not tell anyone about this new dog, afraid we might jinx it. We had enthusiastically told lots of people about the last two dogs, and we were just tired of having to tell them again later that no, we did not have a dog. There were many opportunities to tell people. My sister asked, and I wanted to tell her to ask again Thursday, nudge-nudge wink-wink. But I was strong, though I suspect that she, like my insurance agent, saw right through it.

But! I just told you! And you're so smart, so you know what that means.

Ladies and germs, may I present to you OUR dog, Remix. She is pure, uncut love.

the pits.

2011-04-14T17:34:00.000-04:00

The day after Puppy Disappointment, Josh asked how long before I wanted to go pick out a dog at the shelter. I asked if he had any plans for the afternoon. There was more googling, and I discovered that the Wake County Animal Shelter has an online list of pets available for adoption.

In the throes of my renewed Puppy Anticipation, I somehow forgot that the animal shelter is one of the most depressing places you might care to spend a Sunday afternoon. Cage after cage of dogs of all shapes and sizes. Some of them looked up at you hopefully, and if you stood there for just a second, they would hop up and start with the tail-wagging. Others didn't even turn their heads, as if they'd given up hope of ever being loved by a people. We had talked about getting a puppy, but once at the shelter, it seemed like getting an adult dog, who was far less likely to be adopted than a puppy, would be the better plan. We had felt like good samaritans for offering to rescue a puppy, but we soon realized that there had been tremendous need all along.

I was almost too bummed out to even imagine which dog I might want, because I had to look at fifty others that I would not be able to save. Josh, however, was feeling up to it, so he picked out the biggest pit bull in the place, who was named Patrick and had a humongous head. Every dog that he pointed out was a pit bull. I was surprised at this, since we had previously discussed more houndish options. But then I realized that it was the internet's fault.

During our first phase of Puppy Anticipation, we had both done a lot of research about boxers and pit bulls, because when you haven't got the puppy yet, the best you can do is read about other puppies on the internet. We thought we were getting a breed of dog that much of the country considers to be a menace. We are the type of people to embrace our own eccentricities, so we became full-throated Pit Bull Defenders. We told anyone who would listen that they were unfairly maligned, a dog bred to fight, taught to fight, then hated for being exactly what we made it. Did you know that sometimes the media won't even report on a dog bite incident if the dog in question is not a pit bull? Have you heard about Sergeant Stubby, the most decorated dog in WWI, who used to warn his unit of poison gas and incoming artillery and also caught a German spy?

Fully half the dogs in the shelter were some mix of pit, which the shelter euphemistically labelled American Staffordshire Terrier, or Staffy, in the hopes that you fell in love with the face before you pictured it mauling you. If no one wants this kind of dog, how come are there so many of them around?

So now that Josh had aligned himself with the cause of the pit bull, that's all he wanted. The man likes his underdogs. We settled on a blue one that the shelter had named Madison. We took comfort in the fact she had her complete tail and ears, which meant that she was probably not raised to fight. The shelter people will let you in the kennel to do a meet-and-greet, but they might as well call that the Sucker's Downfall. You get in there with this dog that is even more desparate than a regular dog for love. She started out aloof and trembling, but inched closer with every scratch of the ear before finally trying to give me doggy kisses. She acted like a dog, you know - man's best friend, not a ferocious baby biter. I was still very hesitant about signing up for pit bull ownership, so the shelter employees offered to do a "cat test." I took the California Achievement Test in the third grade, but this was completely different. They put a cat in a cage and then brought in the dog to see what would happen.

This is what happened: Madison walked by the cat in the cage without noticing it, looking up at the lady in hopes of attention. Oh crap, I thought, she's lost her sense of smell. So they turned her to look right at the cage. She sniffed at it, then looked again at the lady. Finally, they let the cat out. Madison sniffed her up and down before looking once more to the lady. The cat calmly walked out, neither animal the slightest bit concerned about the other. I decided that a pit bull that opted to sit nicely rather than eat a cat was just fine with me.

Madison was a stray who had only arrived at the shelter that very day. They give owners a week to claim lost pets before allowing them to be adopted, so we couldn't take her home just yet. I paid my deposit and arranged to pick up my brand new blue pit bull the next week. I prepared my mind once more for being a person with a pit bull. I was ready to tell anyone about how pit bulls are just like any other dog - if you teach one to be mean, it will be. If you give one a loving home, it will be a steadfast friend (okay, and fierce guardian). I imagined us - me, Josh, and Madison - changing the way that people thought about pit bulls. Everywhere we went, people would pet our sweet and pretty dog and think, Huh. And then all the pit bulls at the shelter would be given loving homes, even Patrick, who is 75 pounds and not house-broken.

The next afternoon, right after Josh posted a picture of our soon-to-be dog, the animal shelter called and said that Madison's owner had come by and claimed her. BAM: Pit Bull Disappointment. I never realized it was so hard to get a dog. I thought building the fence was the hard part, but it turns out that it's darn near impossible to get an animal to put inside the fence that we still don't have.

puppy anticipation.

2011-04-13T16:58:00.000-04:00

Josh has been talking about getting a dog for a while, since before we even moved into the new house two years ago. We agreed that a dog small enough to fit in an apartment was not big enough for us. And then once we were in a house with 0.56 acres to call our own, he said we needed a fence. I didn't see why we needed a fence, but all that dog stuff was his idea anyway.

He grew up in a dogs-in-the-house home, while I grew up with parents who were adamantly against any kind of pet in the house, except for special circumstances. An example of a special circumstance is when one of my dad's goats had kids and then refused to nurse them. So Daddy bottle-fed some goats in the kitchen. They might have escaped his grasp a couple of times and taken a nice jog through the house, trip-trap trip-trap. All our various pets were outdoor animals. Based on their behavior, which was that of outdoor animals, I had to conclude that my parents were right about them not belonging in the house. On the rare occasions that I met indoor pets, I was annoyed by them, because they were either in the way, begging for food, or leaving hair all over the place. Why would anyone want that?

Since I've branched out into the world, I've met some indoor pets that make it look like a good idea. For one thing, they weren't goats. Plus, they were housebroken and snuggly, unlike so many of the half-feral cats that I chased all over my parents' land in an attempt to hold them and squeeze them and never let them go. Maybe this pets-in-the-house thing wasn't so crazy after all. I spent some time with very Good Pets. They still were sometimes in the way and there was still a lot of animal hair lying around, but also there was another member of the family, one that licked food off the floor and barked at strangers.

Given my new positive experiences with indoor animals, I became open to the idea of getting a dog that would live in our house. But it was sort of like the way my mother is open to having goats outside - whatever you want, as long as I don't have to do anything about it. Sometimes I would spend some time with a Good Dog, and I became more motivated to get my own canine companion for a few days. But my enthusiasm would be quickly spent by the thought of the fence, which Josh wanted to build himself. We talked about what kind of dog and fence we wanted, but it was all talk. In two years, the closest we got to getting a dog was buying a set of used post-hole diggers. It sounds like we didn't really want a dog all that much. I wanted a dog, but I understood that it would be a new responsibility and expense. I was willing to take on that additional load, but in the meantime I was also enjoying not having to do so.

One time, I got really motivated about the dog, and so we measured the backyard, marking out where the fence would go. Having made some progress, I promptly lost the slip of paper where I wrote down the measurements. Then I got motivated again and told Josh that I was going to hire someone to build the fence while he was out on tour. I was just trying to get closer to our end goal, but he took this as a challenge to his manhood. He told his coworkers that his crazy girlfriend was making him build a fence so we could get a dog. Unsurprisingly, they inferred from his colorful storytelling that I was demanding hours of back-breaking labor so that I could get something dainty and cute that would then supplant his place in the household. This backfired on him when they started giving me tips about how to get him on board with the whole dog idea. While I wondered whether he ever actually wanted a dog at all, I began plotting to just get one anyway. He said he wanted a dog, and I like to take people at their word, especially when I get something that I want and it serves to punish them for being dishonest.

Then one night he came home and asked if I wanted a puppy - an actual, physical pupppy, not some theoretical future puppy that was contingent on a fence. It even came with a good story.

It was a dark and stormy night when his boss was driving home. A black cat skittered across the road in front of him, spooking him. All of a sudden, he saw a tiny dog barrelling down the middle of the street, straight at his headlights. He swerved and stopped in time. When he got out, the dog stood frozen in the road, trembling. He took it home. No tags, no microchip, just a suicidal puppy that was now his responsibility.

See? It's a good story. We told him that we would take the dog, and I set to thinking about names and collars and teaching it to sit. I thought about raising such a very Good Dog that would show my parents that you can live with dogs in the house. We were told it was a little bit boxer, a little bit pit bull. Josh saw a video of it on a cell phone and said it was all cute. He promised to build a fence. I did not care whether we ever built a fence. That was his arbitrary requirement, not mine.

Talk about motivation. A carrot had been dangled in front of me, except it was a furry cute carrot with sweet breath and too big paws. Though we had been dragging our feet for years about getting a dog that we supposedly wanted, now we felt like the Universe was giving us a dog. It needed us, so it was time to step up to dog-ownership. This was bigger than a fence; it was fate.

Puppy Anticipation is an intense and all-encompassing feeling. I coyly asked coworkers about recommendations for local veterinarians, just so I could mention, oh by the way, I'M GETTING A PUPPY. My thoughts were all puppies, all the time; I felt like a ten-year-old. To be more specific, I felt like a ten-year-old in the internet age, as I performed rampant googling to find out everything I could about boxers and pit bulls. Also, I just looked at pictures of puppies and went "Awww, super cute!" Rampant Googling is an effective balm for Puppy Anticipation.

Two days after we agreed to take in stray dog, just as a favor, we found out that Josh's boss had decided to keep the dog instead. Josh wasn't told directly. It was more like he was told several times how attached the little girl in the house had become to the puppy. Apparently, she promised to take real good care of it herself and she was totally also going to keep her room clean from now on, please-oh-please-daddy-can-we-keep-it.

I'll just let you know that Puppy Disappointment is every bit as intense as Puppy Anticipation. We acted like someone had taken away our puppy, which, as far as we were concerned, they had. After hours of sulking, I finally made peace with my lost puppy when I thought about the little girl who probably had every intention of taking very good care of it. As a grown-up, I should be better able to handle Puppy Disappointment.

Plus, as a grown-up, I can just go out and get a puppy whenever I want. I don't have to wait for the Universe to hand me one, and I don't even have to promise to keep my room clean. I am in control of my own puppy destiny.

joshua and the purple crayon.

2011-04-01T17:19:00.001-04:00

"There is purple all over my clothes."

"What?"

"Purple. See?" He held up one of his black work shirts. There was a splash of purple that I didn't recall seeing before. We started rifling through the pile of clean clothes on the kitchen table. Most of them were black shirts and black pants, and all of them had been purpled. I'd never considered using "purple" as a verb before, but it certainly applied in this case.

"Was there a chapstick in one of the pockets?" I've made that mistake before.

"No. Now I have to buy a bunch of new work clothes."

"I'm sorry, baby."

"I'm the one who did the laundry." Well, yes. I wasn't apologizing because I felt like I had done anything wrong. I was communicating that I was sorry he was in the rotten position of owning several sets of unusable waiter outfits.

"We can go around to all the Goodwills tomorrow and get you some new work clothes."

"It must have been something of yours. 'Cause you're a girl." I heard him mumble something else; the only word I caught was "fruity." Okay, that was kind of a stretch. I couldn't think of anything that I owned that would purple a load of laundry. But I let it go, because he was just upset about the prospect of searching every thrift store in town for a new wardrobe.

It was time for me to go to work. He sat at one end of the table, his Cheerios and a pile of ruined laundry before him. I leaned in for my good-bye kiss. He was a little aloof, but kissed me and told me he loved me, too. I could tell that he was absolutely furious with me. But I could also tell that he was suppressing it, and, figuring he would be over it by that evening, I didn't mention it. You may blame me for being a girl if it helps you through this difficult time, but only because I love you.

I recognized that suppressed anger, because I have felt it and I have held it deep down in my tummy. Sometimes we get angry, even when we know it's irrational and unfair. If we can't always help our feelings, we should get credit for having the sense to recognize when not to act on them.

That night, I came home and searched the pile of laundry, the dryer, and the washer for anything that might have made everything so fruity. I found nothing. I shrugged and gave it up as a lost cause.

Later, when he got home, he brought it up again.

"I figured out what made everything purple."

"Yeah?"

"I had a crayon in my pocket. We have them at the restaurant for kids and I must have kept one in my pocket after bussing a table."

"I bet there's a way to get it out. Someone on the internet has figured this out before."

When he wasn't looking, I took one of his black work shirts and rubbed one of the spots on a piece of paper. It made a purple scribble, like the results of a three-year old let loose on a paper placemat at a restaurant. I giggled.

rock chalk, jayhawk, k-u.

2011-03-25T17:18:00.000-04:00

Used to be, the only time during the year when I would miss having TV was during the NCAA men's basketball tournament. However, thanks to my friend the internet, this is no longer a problem. I entertained the idea of hooking up the computer to the TV so that I could watch it on a marginally bigger screen, but apparently TVs made in the mid-90s just weren't built for that. A guy at work told me that a new TV would only put me back $300. I have to admit, that's not all that expensive for how nice televisions have gotten. But the one I have works perfectly well, has a remote, and only cost $15. It's probably got another five or ten years of good service left.

The point is, I've been watching basketball. The tournament this year has been thrilling. There have been upsets and buzzer-beaters and just good, tight games. Josh watches with me. I think he enjoys that his girlfriend gets so much enjoyment from sports. He also is amused to see how emotionally involved I get. He should see my mother.

The first year they put the tournament on the internet, you could only watch the first two rounds of play. At some point, they must have decided that this streaming thing was really going to take off, because now you can watch all the games for free. Every once in a while, I'll have connection problems, but overall, it's been a good experience. There are commercials, and they are special internet commercials, like the one where the Ruby Tuesday waitress tells you to get off the computer and come down to watch the game at her restaurant where you can get overpriced and greasy appetizers. Advertisers are paying for the right to show their commercial on the internet broadcast. I'm sure most of the ads are ones that are shown on regular TV.

Coke Zero is a big advertiser of the internet broadcasts, and they are kind enough to rotate four commercials. Since there are fewer advertisers, you tend to see the same commercials over and over. Although, come to think of it, that happens on regular TV, too. Two of the Coke Zero ads are about basketball, specifically wild and crazy fans. They show clips of college students acting insane while wearing ridiculous getups, and then they compare that madness to that of a soft drink with real Coke taste and zero calories.

The two schools they chose to feature were Duke and Kansas. After seeing the commercials only once, I thought they were just using the same shots, since both teams use dark blue. But the footage is different. The Duke kids are not doing anything particularly Duke-ish, but they are called the Cameron Crazies. And they do that thing where they make a lot of noise while someone is shooting a free throw, but everyone does that. As a matter of interest, the Cameron Crazies do still yell out "SEE YA!" whenever a person on the opposing team fouls out. I remember them doing that when I was a kid, and the tradition lives on. I guess they pass it down every year.

Despite my Tobacco Road loyalties, I actully like the Kansas commercial better. In fact, it led to one of my other favorite things about the internet, which is random knowledge. The narrator said something about a "Kansas rock jock jam" and how it was possibly not as much madness as real Coke taste without the calories. I didn't know what a rock jock jam was, so I looked it up. Another awesome thing about the internet is that you can search for "Kansas rock jock jam" and it will know that you really meant "Kansas rock chalk chant."

The Rock Chalk Chant is just that - a chant - that Kansas fans use at games. It has one line - Rock chalk, jayhawk, K-U. That line is said twice slow, then three times fast. The rock chalk refers to a kind of limestone that is found in that part of Kansas. The chant was written over 100 years ago. I have always liked Kansas, because I am like our President in that I am half-Kansan. When we visited Kansas for the last time a few years back, Josh and I decided that we needed to pick Kansas teams to root for, because we love a good rivalry. So I picked Kansas, and he picked K-State. We talk trash to each other about this rivalry, even though we really don't care anything about it at all. I never really considered that any other state could have the kind of rich basketball history that I associate with the schools right here in North Carolina. Part of that is the recency illusion - most of the success around these parts has really happened in the last 30 years. But that's my whole life, so as far as I'm concerned, we've always been awesome.

However, reading about the Rock Chalk Chant has led me to believe that Kansas has an illustrious college basketball heritage. Also, their program was started by James Naismith, the original Dr. J. As far as basketball credentials go, that's pretty good. Turns out, he's been the only basketball coach in the history of the school who finished with an overall losing record.

In any case, I am now even more of a Kansas fan. I walk around the house, saying the Rock Chalk chant. It's way better than a drink with real Coke taste and no calories.

the wrong side of the room.

2011-03-17T12:36:00.000-04:00

Josh asked me how the wine tasting went, and my response was lukewarm. "I think I sat on the wrong side of the room." Maybe it's just a grass-is-greener perception, and the conversation on the other side of the room was not any better. They sure looked like they were having fun, though.

Seating is important. Whenever I find myself in social situations where I will have to sit in one seat and talk to the same people for any amount of time, I stress over who will be near me. The first priority is to avoid those who are outright unlikeable or just plain boring. Then you want to try and get near whoever will make the time the most fun. There is timing in this, but I've never really figured it out. If you show up too early, then someone undesireable may sit next to you. If you show up too late, then the choice of seats will be limited. Also, I like to be slightly to the side of the middle of the action. I can't handle the center - too much pressure.

Sometimes it's easier to just stay home.

I can bring my own fun, I promise. There are some social situations in which I flourish. I can be funny and thoughtful and ask good questions. But there are other times where I am simply awkward, aloof, and disengaged. Maybe I should be working more on being the kind of person that other people will be happy that they sat next to, rather than trying to figure out how to pick a seat.

When I sat down, the left side of the room was two-thirds full. There was room for me. But I decided to go for the mostly empty right side of the room. I was hoping that it would fill up with interesting people.

But it ended up that the right side of the room was a small circle, with two girls on the end kinda off by themselves. I was one of them. The other girl was probably spending her time stealing furtive glances at the left side of the room, when she wasn't checking her phone anyway. We talked, because even though I paint myself as a social retard, I do know how to act. She told me about how she used to work in TV, but now she was a recruiter. I should have asked more questions, because I'm sure she had lots of interesting stories to tell about both those careers. Some people need drawing out. But by that point, I had used up all my saved-up extrovert points.

When she mentioned that she was using her phone to check college basketball scores, I thought that finally we had found some common ground. Being from Connecticut, she was keeping tabs on the UCONN/Syracuse game. She also hates Duke with a passion, but many people do. She said she was surprised when she moved here to find that some people actually love the Blue Devils with equal fervor. Did she think that Coach K just put an ad in the paper offering cash to anyone who would show up at the stadium (bonus money for being painted blue)?

She also held a grudge against Christian Laettner. Okay, fine, he did stomp on a guy once. The evidence is in, and I think he was probably a jerk, but it was great when he was on your team. I told her that if it made her feel any better, the high point of his entire life was probably over when he was 22. Some people peak early. I have to admit, his was a pretty good peak.

I think talking about Christian Laettner was the highlight of my evening, just for the nostalgia of it. I need to start bringing more of my own fun.