buying happiness.

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.

“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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 lose 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.