The Dog Ate My Blog Post

I didn’t do my blog yesterday because my dog ate it.

Actually, it fell out of my notebook and got wet and the ink all ran and the paper fell apart and I didn’t have time to redo it.

What really happened is that my daughter stuffed it into her backpack because she thought it was her homework.

Actually, my husband wadded it up and used it with a bunch of newspaper as a pad under a hot casserole dish that he put in a cardboard box to take to a potluck because he didn’t want to burn the seat of his car.

Really what happened is I got a massage yesterday by Helga the Swiss dominatrix, a friend of a friend who came highly recommended and was giving a good deal – I’m too cheap to get a massage unless it’s nearly free or a gift.

Normal women should not have this much strength, especially if they have spears for elbows. She planted the point of her elbow at the beginning of each of my muscle groups and bore down with all she had until she was on the verge of skewering me, then very v..e..r..y slowly dragged the elbow across the entire muscle. Ligaments and tendons ducked for cover as she smashed them down like a steamroller until the elbow eventually reached the other side.

I took it like a man because I thought it was supposed to be “good” for me. But she was enthusiastically sadistic. I’d made the mistake of telling her that I had a knot in my neck – probably from blogging – and she gave that area extra special attention. She “stretched out” my neck by standing behind me why I lay on the torture rack and pushing my head forward until my chin was pressing down into my sternum. I thought at any second my head would snap off in her hands and she’d turn the severed head around and hold it at her eye level and say, “oops!” with a wicked grin.

When I left, I was at least 3 inches taller and throbbing so much from head to toe that, seriously, there was no way I could sit and write.

Besides, friends came over and we had appetizers and wine to tide us over for the fifteen-minute drive downtown to get dinner. I was pretty full by the time I left the house because eating distracted me from the pain, and the wine was the perfect medicinal vintage to dull the shooting pains spiking every few minutes.

The restaurant we wanted to try was Toro Bravo. If you’re ever in Portland, you HAVE to go there. But expect to wait an hour and a half to get a table if you go at the same time as everyone else because they don’t take reservations. We killed the time by going to Afrique Bistro – pronounced af– freek by us but who knows what it’s actually called. There we had more wine and appetizers which were really, really tasty (cucumber salad and cheese spinach). I was starting to wish for elastic-waist pants.

When we were done there, we decided to check out Russell Street Bar-B-Que (all of these are on NE Russell Street). There we had pints of IPA beer and two orders of hush puppies. These were the real deal – the hush puppy was about the size of a chopped-off finger and cooked through. They were delicious with butter, and each order had 12 hush puppies, so doing that math, that gave us a total of 24, which meant that, since there were 4 of us, I got 12 and everyone else got 4. We also nibbled two pralines there.

They called us from Toro Bravo to say our table was ready, and we waddled back there and ordered no fewer than 10 appetizers (or tapas) because we wanted to sample all the flavors. And another bottle of wine, which unfortunately had the unpleasant side effect of causing a pain in my forehead, although the rest of my body had long since ceased complaining. Except for my stomach. It was yelling and screaming, “Stop, you freaking idiot. DO NOT put that fork in your mouth again. DO NOT!!!!! You are the stupidest human being in the world. No one has ever continued eating like this when they are COMPLETELY FULL and not regretted it. You will have to run 10 miles tomorrow to burn all of this off. Please stop. I’m begging you. P..l..e..a..s..e.” My stomach’s voice continued like this as I stabbed another potato, pickled beet, and cheese bread slice. It had pretty much given up by the time Julie and I shared a lava cake with ice cream for dessert.

By the time we got home, it was very late, I was very miserable, and I had a headache. And that’s when the dog ate my blog.

ADDENDUM (for extra credit): Speaking of dogs, let me explain about hush puppies. I’m originally from the South so I know that, when people here in Portland make hush puppies big and round, it’s not right. True hush puppies are corn bread batter dropped into hot fat. They fry until they’re browned on the outside and cooked through – and each one of them is like a snowflake – no two are alike. The big round ones can have wet dough in the middle because the heat can’t get in there quick enough to cook the center without burning the outside. If you want a good batch of fried okra, go to Miss Delta (on NE Mississippi), but don’t order the hush puppies there. They are okay, but they’re round and they don’t taste like a real hush puppy and you dip them in gravy, which isn’t bad, but it’s not the real thing.

Sailing Trip Final Part

When we left Orace and Audrey’s place, we started heading back home. It took a couple of days to get back down to Smuggler Cove, and when we got there the place was full of boats. We found one of the last places to tie off, even though it was fairly early in the day. Everyone was sandwiched in there like a trailer park of sailboats. We had to anchor the back of the boat to make sure it didn’t swing out and hit the people beside us.

There were a million jellyfish everywhere in the water. Little ones the size of silver dollars all the way up to ones as big across as a Frisbee were layered from the surface all the way to the bottom. You could barely see a spot that didn’t have one whipping its tentacles to swim up and down.

We would be going back to Vancouver the next day, and we were in a very festive mood. We brought out the Spanish coffees right away and watched the jellyfish pulsating around the boat, and later stuffed ourselves on another of Esso’s feasts.

Since it was summer, and we were so far north, it didn’t get dark until practically 11:00 at night. We could see big rocks below the boat. The depth sounder warning alarm had been beeping this very annoying noise for the last couple of hours until we finally turned it off. We figured the jellyfish were setting it off.

After one last protracted game of Scrabble – the Spanish coffees made it impossible to think of words longer than 3 or 4 letters – we went to bed. About 3 a.m. I woke up, wedge up against the way. The bed was at a 45 degree. “Wake up you guys,” I hollered, “the boat’s tipping over.” We all jumped up and ran out on deck. The boat was listing way over to one side. The tide had gone out and we could see boulders sticking out of the water.

Esso started the engine and tried to drive us off the huge rock we were resting on, but we didn’t move. I yelled, “Jump up and down on one side.” With all of us jumping, eventually we “rocked” the boat off the rock, scraping over it as we went, and motored out into the cove away from the shallows. We dropped anchor out there and congratulated each other for being so smart and getting off the rocks. I bet we woke up everyone in the Cove.

When our adrenaline levels subsided we went back to sleep, and woke up the next morning surprised that everyone wasn’t heading out of there since boaters seemed to like to get an early start. We ate breakfast and shoved off, excited to be going home.

The boat rounded the corner of the protected cove and hit huge waves and wind blowing like a hurricane. Unlike the rolling waves we’d gone through crossing over the Strait the first day, these were coming from all directions. The boat would get smacked on one side, and we’d list way over. We tipped so far that the mast was only feet above the water and we had to hang on to keep from falling in. Then a wave would slap us from the other direction, and we’d tilt way to the other side.

I’ve never been so scared in my life. I’m a great swimmer, but I knew if I fell in that water, even with a life jacket, I probably wouldn’t survive. We were in a shipping lane, and a few gigantic ferries and tankers passed a couple of hundred yards away. Their wakes came all the way across and tilt us even more. There was not another boat our size anywhere in any direction.

“We’re going to die if we don’t turn back,” I screamed above the roar of the wind.

“We’ll be fine,” Eric hollered. “I’ve got to get back to work.” He had flown up to Vancouver from Portland, and I’m sure he didn’t want to miss his flight. I held on and kept my mouth shut until we rocked so far sideways I thought the boat would fall over.

“We’re going to die if we don’t turn back,” I screamed.

“We’ll be fine,” Eric said.

“Look, there’s not another boat out here. That’s why Smugglers Cove was so crowded – people were waiting out the storm. We have to turn back.”

Eric and I continued this debate for about another twenty minutes. Esso was busy trying to steer the nose of the boat into the oncoming waves, which was impossible, but he was making a good effort.

“If this boat tips over, we’ll all die,” I said after a really nasty wave had the mast practically touching the water. “There’s no way we’d could swim to shore.”

Eric argued, Esso fought the steering wheel with all his might, and I whimpered like a blubbering baby and calculated how many hours I could last in the water before exhaustion overcame me and I drowned.

Another ferry went by, and its wake pushed the boat so far on its side that the mast hit the water. I started crying and begging to turn back, “I don’t want to die, it’s not worth it, let’s go back before it’s too late.”

Either out of fear or pity, Esso turned the boat around. Eric was fit to be tied. “You can’t go back, I have to get to Vancouver today. Oh, man, don’t be such a wuss, you can make this!”

We went back like a coward dog creeping away from a fight to lick its wounds, and I was never happier. Eric, on the other hand, would have thrown me in the water if Esso hadn’t been there.

We got back to the little slice of mooring that we’d left – no one had come into the Cove since we set out. We spent the day there killing time because the storm never let up. We figured that’s why all the jellyfish were in there; they had enough sense to take shelter even if a certain member of our crew did not.

It was a long, antsy, uneventful day of passing the hours, listening to Eric lament not getting back on time and how we could have made it. If there had been a harpoon on the boat, his life would have been in danger. We didn’t play Scrabble that night, which was a relief because I know I would have slapped him.

Next morning the sun was out and we had smooth sailing all the way back to Vancouver. Esso was gone for a long time checking in the boat. “They dived under the boat to check for damage and said there was a big chunk torn out of the keel,” he said. “I have to pay them almost a $1,000 bucks to get it fixed.”

It was then we realized it would have probably been better just to let the boat stay on the rock until the tide came back in, but how did we know?

We took Eric to the airport, and we started the drive back to Portland. We got across the border with the three bags of oysters we’d gotten earlier in the trip, and had a party when we got home with some of the neighbors.

To this day, Eric still says we shouldn’t have turned around. “If wasn’t that bad,” he says, and we get in a good-natured argument. Recently, for my birthday, he blew up a picture he’d taken of me sitting in the boat. I looked like a whale. My face was as round as a beach ball, and my sleeve looked like a tourniquet around my arm. I’d forgotten about all the eating I’d done on that trip, and I was a little embarrassed that I made those guys look at me like that for so many days – they even saw me squeezed into a bikini a few times.

Oh well, they survived it. And now I’m done telling this tale. All is well.

Sailing Trip Part 4

We finally reached Desolation Sound on the 7th day. The wind was blowing, and we hoisted the sail and the brightly colored spinnaker. Each of us took turns sailing the boat. The guys kept their eyes straight ahead and got the boat up to about 6 knots. I had learned in sailing class to watch the tell tales. You want them to go straight back - that shows your sails are getting the most bang for your buck out of the wind. I quickly had the boat going over 7 knots, and the boys were in awe.

When they wanted to drive again, I told them about the tell tales, but neither of them listened, they just kept looking straight ahead and trying to “catch the wind” by steering. Neither got the boat above 6 knots the whole day. This proves my theory about the brain of a man.

Desolation Sound was worth the trip. It had utterly spectacular views of jagged, snowcapped peaks straight from a postcard. There were other brightly colored sailboats leaning into the wind, and I quickly forgot the boredom of motoring all those days. We stayed there for a while, reluctant to leave the first wind of the trip, but it was time to find a place to tie up for the night.

It started getting dusky as we crept along scanning the shoreline for a place to stop. I’m not sure why we didn’t just anchor, maybe it was too deep. Fog set in, and the trees cast spooky shadows that made me think the woods were full of Sasquatches. I was getting a creepy feeling that led to goose bumps. I was also tired and hungry, among other complaints. We saw a couple of dim lights in the distance and motored blindly toward them. We came up to a dock literally in the middle of nothing and nowhere. There were no houses – I don’t even know what the dock led to – it could have just been free standing. It was obviously private property, with only one sailboat tied to it. Esso guided the boat next to it and Eric jumped out with a rope to tie us off. “You guys wait on the boat and I’ll see if anyone is home,” Esso said. I expected a shotgun report to crackle through the silent night.

Someone came off the boat and started walking warily toward us. I jumped on the dock, figuring I could turn on the Southern accent if I needed to – desperate to get some dinner.

“What do you want?” the guy asked like some moonshiner protecting his still. I couldn’t see his face but he was about my size and I thought I could take him if I had to.

“We need to tie up for the night,” Esso said.

“This ain’t a public dock,” the man said coldly.

“Ple-ease let us tie up here tonight,” Scarlett O’Hara said (that’s me). “We’re soooo tired and hungry.”

“We’ll pay you,” Esso added, “and we’ve got beer.”

“Oh well, now, if you’ve got beer, let’s pop one open. I’ll tell the Missus we’ve got company.” He hovered while Eric fetched him a Kokanee. He tilted the bottle up and drank half of it in four fierce gulps. “Ah, that hits the spot. Bring the six pack with you.”

“Give him a minute to tell his wife,” I said, grabbing a fistful of stale pretzels. After a couple of minutes he popped back up out of his boat and yelled, “You coming?”

We walked across about 50 feet of dock to his sailboat. He turned on some lights so we could see to climb on board, and we went below. “This here’s Audrey,” he said, pointing to a smiling, curly haired, squatty little woman in a sweatsuit, “and I’m Orace.”

“That’s an interesting name,” I said.

“Oh, it’s really Horace,” Audrey said, “he just don’t say the H.”

Their boat was a floating single-wide. Seriously, I have been in trailers in East Tennessee that were decorated exactly like this one with a lot of oversized furniture that they must have taken apart to get in the door, and plenty of pink gingham and mauve prints. And there were doilies and knickknacks. A floating white trash museum, but pleasant and homey and a very welcome port in a storm, as it were.

Orace helped himself to one beer after another. I whimpered about wanting to go and start dinner, but he wouldn’t hear of it. He had company and he was going to damn well take advantage of it. Finally I said I’d go fix something and bring it back. That was welcomed by everyone, and I left Esso and Eric there as hostages. I made who knows what – probably peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with potato chips. Esso popped in to get another six-pack of beer.

“You guys drank that first one already?”

“Orace doesn’t even bother to swallow. He just pours them down like he’s putting oil in a car. And she’s pretty fond of beer, too.”

Orace had an appetite, and so did Audrey. For that matter, so did I, and the food vanished well before my growling stomach was ready to throw in the towel. I went back for more, and Esso went back for another six-pack.

They were delighted with everything we said, and wanted to know all the details of our trip. Orace told us slurry stories about being the mailman in these parts, and wintering over without seeing anybody for days at a time. He stood up most of the time, using his hands and arms to accentuate what he said. After awhile he became incoherent, which made the up to then jovial Audrey a little cranky. “You’re drunk,” she said, more than once. She’d stopped smiling.

We kept tying to leave he wouldn’t let us go. “What’s your hurry?” he’d say, and we felt compelled to continue being his audience. I realized that this party could go on all night, so I said, in my Scarlett O’Hara, “Audrey, you have been so kind to welcome us into your home and let us stay here tonight. We might have died out there in the ocean if it hadn’t been for you. I honestly don’t know what we would have done if we hadn’t found you. Thank you so much for everything.” I got up and said, “Esso and Eric, we have overstayed our welcome and you need to get up right this minute and let these wonderful people get some rest.” They sprang up like prairie dogs and grabbed Orace’s hand, gushing gratitude. Esso handed him a greenback, which must have satisfied him for the overnight mooring because he grinned and stuffed it in his pocket.

“There’s no sense in rushing off,” he said, obviously befuddled at the sudden end of his party.

“Let ‘em go, Orace. You’re drunk,” Audrey said, sealing the nail in the coffin of his good time.

“We’re leaving the beer,” Esso said. “And thanks again.”

“We’ll make breakfast for you all in the morning,” I called down from the upper step.

It was fun for a while, but I was pretty to escape the clutches of our clingy hosts. We slept soundly in the perfect quiet of that deserted dock. In the morning, we got up, dressed, made breakfast, did our usual routine at our usual speed, and there wasn’t a peep from the other boat.

“What do we do?” I asked, wondering what sailboat etiquette was in a situation like this.

Esso took another six-pack of beer and put it on the dock beside Orace and Audrey’s boat. They would have come out if they’d been awake. I really wanted to say goodbye and thanks again, but who knows how long it would take them to sleep off that much beer? We started our engine and figured that would rouse them, but still no sign of life. It was a beautiful, green, hidden cove surrounded by mountains and lush forests, with a wispy fog still hanging close to the water. I drank in the scene as we pulled away from the dock, and hoped a Sasquatch didn’t get the beer before Orace found it.

Sailing Trip Part 3

Fast forward to four days later. We had settled into a routine. We got up and had a hearty breakfast of eggs and bacon and toast and coffee and oranges (to ward off scurvy). Then we’d pull up anchor or leave the dock we’d tied up to overnight. We started our motors and puttered further up the coast, past scenery that was surprising exactly like we’d seen every day so far. Then we stopped and had a nice lunch of sandwiches, chips, apples, and pop before starting our engines back up and going further up the coast. Late afternoon we arrived at a new dock or place to anchor and prepared a feast of barbecued oysters or something Esso had prepared like marinated steaks with grilled toast, salad, and dessert. The wonderful meal was accompanied by beer and wine, with Spanish coffees as after dinner drinks that took us all the way to bedtime.

Sometimes, if we were lucky, there would be interesting rock features or little secret coves along the way that Esso and Pat knew about because they’d been sailing up this way before, but the sites didn’t last very long. We’d sit all day long, and then sit all evening. Out of boredom, I gorged on potato chips, candy, fruit, pretzels, cream cheese, string cheese, pork rinds, licorice rope, Tootsie Roll Pops, leftover bacon, trail mix, cashews, and the occasional carrot or celery stalk.

Boredom was making my clothes too tight, which made sitting around even less pleasant. The rest of the gang was delighted with the R and R they were getting. I was going nuts. About the third day I started taking the little dinghy out that was tied to the back of our boat. I’d row it around and around the cove just to get my circulation going and check stuff out. No one else had any interest in exploring.

I had how many more days of this? On the 5th day we went to a secret place Esso and Pat knew about that was full of oysters. We anchored about 500 yards away from the rocks and rowed our dinghy’s close in. Everyone got on the little rock islands and started filling bags with oysters. I didn’t have the heart to do it, so I rowed around in the dinghy. After awhile Eric needed to go back to the boat, I guess to use the facilities, and so I sat on the rocks and talked to Sue as they collected potato sacks full of oysters. Erick got back to the boat and neglected to properly tie up the dinghy. Oh boy, what excitement that was! We all yelled and screamed at him as the dinghy started drifting away, but he didn’t hear us. Finally he appeared on deck, gave us that “What?” look, and just kept raising his arms like he was trying to understand what we wanted. He held up a bag of potato chips and we all screamed and shook our heads frantically. The dinghy had floated past the front of the boat so he couldn’t see it from the back where he was facing us. He picked up a beer and pointed to it. We screamed some more. Finally he went to the front of the boat, probably to pick up the bag of pretzels, and noticed the dinghy, which was becoming a small speck on the horizon. He stared the sailboat up and drove it to the dinghy, where he jumped into the water to snag it. We were terrified he’d let the sailboat get away while he was fetching the dinghy, but he managed to retrieve the one without losing the other. I so appreciated the diversion and entertainment of that half hour of distraction.

I’m not saying that there weren’t good times. Evenings together were full of laughter and fun. But this was not what my vision of a sailing trip had been. We did try to put the sails up one day, but there wasn’t enough wind to get us going and we gave up quickly.

Pat and Sue were only with us for five days, then they headed back. We said our goodbyes and continued on. The first night alone with just Esso, Eric, and me, we decided to play Scrabble because it was the only game on the boat. Esso turned out to be the best Scrabble player in the world. He’d hold onto a bunch of X’s and Z’s until he could make a word on a triple word space, and then score 90 points.

In stark contrast, Eric would stare at the board for a solid ten minutes, until we’d lost all patience and told him he had to go or else, and then he’d spell the word “on.” Next time, same thing, and then he’d put down, “it.” You think I’m joking? If he got a three-letter word like “the” he was ecstatic. In any other situation I would have grabbed the board and flung it across the room, but I was desperate for any stimulation – even the most aggravating kind.

Lest you think Eric was a numbskull, he’s really quite charming and a handsome, 6 foot, slim guy who was a golf star in college and a successful architect. I think the Spanish coffees and who knows what else were fogging his brain.

I began wishing I’d brought a mu-mu, because waiting for Eric to move upped my appetite. I was wearing one pair of fat shorts pretty regularly – all the cute stuff I brought was still folded neatly in my duffle bag because I couldn’t get anything else to zip up. I knew I looked like a fat cow, and that made me want to eat out of depression.

I’ve got a couple more stories to tell, so this will again be continued. Hope you can stand all this excitement.

Sailing Trip Part 2

This story is continued from day before yesterday. I was describing how I spent the first day of the sailing trip emptying the green contents of my stomach all over the walls of the little sailboat’s bathroom. That was a hard way to find out that I get seasick.

All the way across the Strait of Georgia from Vancouver to Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, Eric and I heaved. My husband to be, who I’ll call Esso which is a play on his initials, skippered the boat deftly through the huge swells, laughing that his “crew” were such landlubbers.

When we arrived in Nanaimo, we met our friends Pat and Sue. Sue is a nurse so she had a whole duffle bag full of prescription and non-prescription drugs to cover every situation, including bubonic plague. She gave me and Eric some miracle patches that she guaranteed would get rid of the seasickness by morning. “Until then,” she advised, “It’s best to just drink alcohol and forget your misery.” Eric and I thought this was sound medical advice and we were soon as rowdy as pirates and looking for someone to keel haul.

I honestly don’t recall what we did that night, but the next day I woke up feeling chipper and ready to sail the seven seas. “Arrrr,” I said, “Let’s hoist the mainsail and lift the boom!”

“We probably won’t be sailing today,” Esso told me. “There’s not much wind and we’ve got a lot of distance to cover.”

“Not sailing?” I said. “Isn’t this a SAILING trip?”

“Yeah, but you’ve got to have wind to sail,” Esso explained, looking up at the limp tell tales. “Tomorrow,” he added.

So we started up the engines and motored single file up the coast of Vancouver Island. Pat and Sue owned their boat, a 35-foot sailboat named, “The Winter’s Tale.” It was black and very sleek looking. Since their boat was bigger, they got to lead the way.

The wind never did pick up, but the scenery was quite pretty – a shoreline covered with trees and rocks to the left of us, and sparkling blue ocean on the right. When you looked straight down into the water sometimes you could see fish, and on occasion rocks. Esso and Eric used nautical maps to make sure we didn’t get too close to the bottom. I liked the little gizmo that showed if there were fish under us and how far down.

After a couple of hours, the excitement of creeping along had been replaced by a sore posterior and a desire to find some shade (there wasn’t any on the boat except in the cabin down below). It was like being on a road trip except there weren’t any roadside attractions to break up the monotony. Out in the ocean there aren’t Dairy Queens or “The World’s Largest Tennis Shoe” to stop and invigorate your brain. Plus the boat seemed to move very slowly. We could stand up and walk around the little circle from the front to the back of the boat – it was about the size of a jail cell so laps made you dizzy after just a few.

By the time we anchored that evening out in the middle of nowhere, I was as antsy as an ant on a hot sidewalk. I quickly changed into a bathing suit and jumped overboard. The ocean was cold and felt great, although I had never been in open water swimming and I soon got the creeps. What if there were sharks down there? I quickly climbed back up the ladder into the boat.

We roped our two sailboats together and had a feast – Esso had pre-prepared huge meals that he stored in giant coolers full of dry ice. We had marinated steaks and twice baked potatoes and sautéed vegetables. And alcohol. We made Spanish coffees because that’s what Eric liked, and drank them under a sky that looked like someone had shaken sparkling glitter over black velvet.

“We’ll sail tomorrow, right?” I asked Esso and Erik.

“If there’s enough wind,” Esso said. Soon we all hit the hay, and thanks to the patch and Spanish coffees, the rocking boat did nothing more than lull me to sleep.

To be continued…

An Amusing First Communion

It was First Communion at church, and all the girls were dressed in these darling white dresses (symbols of purity) with little veils. The veils are a carry over from when all Catholic women wore hats or veils. Cradle Catholics of a certain age (ancient) will remember this.

When I was a kid, we weren’t allowed to go into church without something on our heads – and there was no exception. At a minimum, we had to have this little doily-like thing on our head. A doily is a round piece of lacey stuff about 6 inches across that old-timey people used for coasters, or, heaven forbid, decoration You still see these things in nursing homes. I never much cared for them, but that’s just me. Older women wore those long lacy things called matilda’s. Except I just googled it and they are actually called mantillas. All my life I thought they were matilda’s!!

The little bit of doily-like headgear we students wore was called a “chapel veil.” We went to Mass before school every morning except Wednesday, and if you ever showed up without your chapel veil, then your nun, who was as tall as the Eiffel Tower and wore a long black dress and massive headgear so you didn’t know what might be hiding under there, would bobby pin a piece of tissue to your head as she gave you a scowl that told you you had better not let it happen again.

Nuns back then were strict. They weren’t trying to be our friends, they kept us on the straight and narrow – they wanted us to be quiet and sit still while we learned and that’s what we did. We seemed to have a lot of fun, though, especially during the one-hour recess. But I’ve strayed off topic, which was the First Communion service I just witnessed.

The boys had on sports coats, slacks, and ties and the girls wore their white tea-length dresses with white, chunky-heeled shoes and ribbons and curls in their hair. They were paraded in front of the congregation as much as possible, which was delightful because they were really cute. So they came up to do the readings. They stood on a little platform, and put their mouths way too close to the microphone.

Which reminds me. I have to say one thing about the priest. After opening prayers, the priest, who was a substitute, asked us to spend a couple of minutes of silence to reflect on the topic of the day. We obliged by bowing our heads and the church got very quiet. At this precise moment, loud scritch, scritch, scritching came over the loud speaker. I finally lifted my eyes just enough to see what was going on. The priest had a determined look on his face as he fiddled with the microphone clipped to his collar. His fingers moving over its speaker was causing the noise, and surely he heard it too, especially when it got louder. Other heads lifted. By the time the “moments of silence” were over, he’d gotten it just the way he wanted. The only thing I had spent time reflecting on was what an id…. well, never mind.

So the first child, a girl, started reading and did an impressive job. She read such words as “Theophilus” as if it were Smith or Jones. A boy was next up, and he sounded like he had a mouth full of Corn Flakes. You couldn’t understand a word he mumbled. The third was also a sharp looking boy and he started off great but after a few words he paused, flinched, and then proceeded. This happened again, then again, and I realized he had the hiccups. The rest of the congregation caught on too, and we all chuckled softly each time he hiccupped. He’d swallow after each hiccup, which became more amusing as it went along. We were waiting for it, waiting and wondering if they had gone away, or if we’d imagined it, and then – pause – flinch – swallow. Don’t know why that was so funny, but there’s not much else happening in church so we, the congregation, would have been rolling in the aisles if not for decorum and sympathy for the little trouper and his parents. We kept our mouths shut to mute our laughs, and I saw several people with their hands over their mouths trying to hide their mirth. I almost applauded when he got done it had been such an entertaining show.

A couple of other things happened that I would share except I’ve run too long and there’s nothing above I’m willing to cut. Suffice it to say, the congregation en masse enjoyed this Mass.

Ralph Visits the Sailboat

A couple of decades ago, when my husband and I were dating, he wanted me to go on a sailing trip with him. To prepare I took a sailing course on the Willamette River, and had so much fun. These were little sailboats that caught the wind and flew across the water. If you didn’t have them facing the right way, the wind would catch them and they’d almost tip over which was scary but exhilarating. I couldn’t wait until we headed to Vancouver, B.C. for a 2-week trip through the Strait of Georgia up to Desolation Sound. Little did I suspect what I was in for.

We stayed a night at Granville Island where we met our friend, Eric, who was going with us. We danced at the Cotton Club and roamed Gastown. The next morning I had this wonderful spinach quiche at a farmers market before we picked up the boat. I can’t tell you how excited I was! Little did I suspect – oh, I said that already.

We rented a 33 ft. sailboat that had two sleeping areas, a kitchen/dining room, and a little bathroom. By little I mean it was about the size of a port-a-potty, but very cool. The whole thing was a shower, too. The boat was trimmed in beautiful wood. I’d never been on a boat like that, and I felt so Jackie Onassis! Eric hadn’t either, and he felt, well who knows.

My husband had lots of experience so he was the Skipper. He popped the top off a brewski, lit a cigar, and stood behind the big steering wheel that was the size of a wagon wheel except not as thick since it was made of metal instead of wood. It was big, is the point I’m belaboring, and he seemed right at home. He was looking very America’s Cup.

We had to travel down this long, straight water alley before we got out into the open ocean. We motored along, the sun warming our faces, our hair blowing in the breeze, cigar smoke perfuming the air, feeling like rich folks.

Then we hit the open sea. I had never been on the ocean before. I’ve been IN the ocean, swimming and frolicking in the waves, but never on a boat. We were surrounded by water – a little sailboat island that dipped and rose 10 feet at a time without any sight of land in any direction. The waves came one right after the other – first we’d be facing down like we were on some free-falling carnival ride, then we’d be pointed toward the sky like we were on a roller coaster heading to the top. When we were in the trough of the wave, it looked like we were in a bowl of water – like we were seeing the parting of the Red Sea. It was frightening but exciting, and my husband-to-be had a grin that nearly went off his face, steering with one hand, his head periodically tilting up to drag on the stogie, and whistling some tuneless song like some happy-go-lucky pirate without a care in the world.

The motion of the boat made me feel funny, and I decided to go down below and rest my head. “Don’t do that,” they both said. “You need to stay up here and look at the horizon.”

“I need to lie down,” I said, and headed below. I stretched out and knew immediately that I wasn’t going to get any relief lying down. I felt queasy and thought I’d better check out the little bathroom. I opened the lid of the toilet to find that it had been made for Munchkins. There was a very small bowl, and just at that second I tried to fill it. Everything I’d eaten for two days decided it needed to be out of me immediately. Thanks to that lovely spinach quiche, it was all green. Just as the gusher left me, the boat dived down and the mini-toilet moved from where I’d aimed. A green wash spread all over the wall. I steadied myself and aimed the second volley more carefully, but the boat lurched upward I coated a different wall. I hoped these two blasts were the end, but was soon disappointed. One after the other gushers about the force you’d see coming out of a fire hydrant squirted all over the walls. Try as I could, not one single blast reached the preferred destination. Not even one drop.

Finally the heaving subsided enough that I thought I could venture out of there. The little room was like some Nickelodeon set where everything gets coated with green slime. By the grace of God none got on me, but I was so drained and disheartened I wouldn’t have cared if it did.

I went up to tell the boys that I was seasick. I found the Skipper still whistling and grinning. Eric, however, hadn’t benefited from staying topside. He was leaning over the rail blowing chips to feed the fishes. Seeing it made me run back downstairs to the green room, where the impossible happened – more blasts from a well I thought surely must be empty.

More tomorrow.

The Sunny Pinata

I was up at the high school tutoring yesterday, in the second floor library. It was sunny and warm outside so the windows were open. I could hear a commotion coming from outside so I got up and went to see what was going on. A classroom full of students were standing around a blindfolded girl holding a stick and standing in front of a piñata hanging from a tree.

I could understand the class being outside and soaking up some rare Oregon rays, but I couldn’t figure out the piñata. What did that have to do with Economics or Health or French or whatever subject this class and their teacher were avoiding? It wasn’t even Cinco de Mayo, which is Latin for “Pass the Mayonnaise.”

The class was trying to get her to hit the thing, but she was being timid and wouldn’t even give the stick, which looked like a lacrosse stick without the basket, she wouldn’t even give it a full swing – she’d go halfway and lose her nerve. I supposed if you are worried about messing up, then you’d have a reason to hold back. However, the crowd was lusting for piñata guts and they were getting louder by the second.

Soon everyone in the Library was craning their necks to see out of those windows that you never see anywhere but in schools – the ones with the latch that makes the same sound when you undo it whether the school was built yesterday or in the 1920’s. Then they pull in so it’s really difficult to look down.

The crowd below was losing patience with the girl. “TAKE ONE STEP FORWARD! NO IN FRONT OF YOU! NOW SWING! SWING NOW! SWING YOU STUPID…I MEAN SWING REALLY HARD!

I have to admit; I couldn’t understand why she was so cautious. Even if the stick would have by some miracle made contact with the piñata, she would have been more like petting it than whacking it. What is the down side to swinging at a piñata and missing? She finally gave in to the mob and swung with all her might, and missed, so she turned and was facing the crowd with the stick raised high over her head. Kids scattered like cockroaches in a flashlight beam and she swung down and hit the ground SMACK!

NO TURN TO YOUR RIGHT! YOUR OTHER RIGHT! NOW HIT! HIT HARD RIGHT NOW! YOU CAN’T MISS! She could and did, but she had got the scent and she was going for blood – hard candy, that is. Her next slash through the air broke right across the little pink and orange pony’s back. It didn’t break, but it looked like the old grey mare that had carried one average American and ended up with a U-shaped bow in it’s back.

Giddy with success, she commenced to whack like someone trying to drive a nail with a giant hammer. She made many connections, but the pony danced on the string, trying to avoid the assault. Unfortunately for it, she delivered a solid deathblow that severed it right in two, and it spewed out cheap hard candy like a hotel fountain.

Cheers erupted, and then kids dived onto the grass like they were trying to catch a low-thrown football. They piled up on the girl, who was at ground zero, and snatched what they could. Some of the more dignified students waited until the others got up to try to get their fair share, but they came up empty handed.

With the show over, we spectators in the Library went back to our seats, shaking our heads. What was the lesson those kids learned? Well, they learned the social dynamics of mob rule. They also learned that nice guys finish last. And they certainly learned that, even though ancient hard candy has a squishy, sticky outer layer that causes the wrappers to stick like they are duct taped, the candy is all that much sweeter when you get it avoiding calculus.

Keeping the Peace

We’ve had quite the upheaval in Portland. Our police chief just got fired for a variety of alleged reasons. All I know is there have been some bad altercations between the police and citizens, and the citizens came out on the short end of the stick. 3 or 4 people have been killed over the past couple of years, and they generally turn out to be unarmed and/or mentally ill. One person had an X-acto knife. Oooo, dangerous! Whenever I read about these things, the first thing I wonder is why can’t the police just shoot them in the leg? That seems like enough to stop an unarmed person from doing too much damage. The second thing I think about is what the Italian police did to a guy in Rome.

My daughter and I were having breakfast at a sidewalk café across from a gigantic basilica (big church) that had a circular square in front of it (as opposed to a squarular circle). It was a warm, sunny Sunday morning and people were walking all around and going into the church. Marvelous people in flamboyant attire – one extraordinarily elderly woman was dressed very much like a bull fighter in red pants and jacket that had long slits at the ankles and cuffs with many layers of black lace sticking out. We watched an ancient priest in a white robe come slowly out of the church and start walking around the outside of the circle heading toward us. He moved at a steady pace but only covered a couple of feet a minute. It was like one of those Matrix movies where everything is moving at a fast pace except the person (or bullet) going in slow motion.

On the sidewalk about ten feet from us, a portly Italian man who was either schizophrenic or drunk started creating a ruckus. He was loud, ranting about something to himself. Almost immediately a little tiny car pulled up and four policemen got out. They surrounded the man, and I thought that my daughter and I had better run for cover before bullets started flying. But no one else was scrambling so we lingered at our table to see what was going to happen.

The police just stood there. A couple started putting on rubber gloves very slowly, and I thought they were going to throw him to the pavement and start hitting him and they wouldn’t want to hurt their hands. But they just stood there with the gloves on, forming this wide circle around the man. Passers by weren’t slowing down to gawk; in fact, no one was paying any attention.

The man started getting rowdy. He yelled Italian. The police just stood there, arms folded across their chests. He became more agitated and threw a set of keys onto the sidewalk with all his might. They bounced and skittered along. A rubber-gloved policeman bent over and picked them up and put them on the hood of the police car. The man gestured some more, gesturing with his arms to show his irritation like Italians do in movies, then he threw a bottle down that he had in his hand. It shattered. The two policemen with the rubber gloves bent down and picked up the glass.

I knew one of them was going to lose his temper any second and slam the guy up against the car and start frisking him. But it didn’t happen, even when his tirade grew more intense. Meantime the ancient priest had made it about halfway around the square.

This went on, literally, for at least twenty minutes. The police never tried to talk to the guy, never tried to calm him down or ask him to get in the car. They just formed this loose circle that grew as needed to accommodate the man’s flailing around and lunging. Finally, the little priest made it to where we were sitting. I expected him to go over and avail his services to help keep the peace, but he only watched the scene as he proceeded on.

I concluded that no one was paying any attention because people knew nothing was going to happen. The police were there in case the guy became hostile to others, but they obviously saw no reason to interfere with his ranting and raving. The guy finally started walking away, and one of them handed him the keys he’d thrown down. The four policemen watched him for a couple of minutes, then crammed themselves back into the tiny car and drove away. About that time the little priest rounded a corner and disappeared from view.

You know good and well what would have happened in America. The priest would have tried to save the man and gotten him worked up even more. The police, irritated that they’d been called away from Krispy Kreme, would have roared up in a big car with hemi, sirens blaring, and pushed the priest out of the way, grabbed the belligerent guy, thrown him to the pavement, kicked him a few times, tasered him, and then shot him a time or two just in case. There would be an investigation and the police would be exonerated because they had followed their training. I’d like to see that training manual and compare it to the one those Italian police must have been following. If I ever get drunk or go crazy, I hope I’m in Rome, where the police see their job as keeping the peace and not brandishing their piece.

Aren't Hospitals Great?

I was visiting my brother in law in the hospital and was impressed by the comedians coming and going. Practically everyone who came in the room had a comeback for any comment we made. You’d think they’d heard all our questions before.

While I was there I made up a riddle that I think is quite clever. Feel free to impress your friends with it. Where is the only place you can be in bed all day without getting any rest? A hospital.

I was there for about four hours, and it was a veritable freeway in there. We never did figure out who was who – people brought in water, pills, just stopped in to say “How ya doin?” The only ones we were sure about were the phlebotomists because they had long fangs and carried fat needles and said, “Excuse me, I vant to suck your blood.”

Which reminds me of an old joke that we used to love to say when we were kids. A man invited the Count to his home and asked, “Count, would you like some wine?” The Count replied with a wicked laugh in a thick, Transylvanian accent, “I don’t dlink vine, I dlink BLOOD.” We thought this was the funniest thing in the world, but I guess you had to be there. It doesn’t type out as funny as it sounded in person, especially when the Count swings his fake cloak in front of his face.

Speaking of kids, is there anyone who did not stumble across some Ex-Lax and think it was a chocolate bar when you were a kid? I found a “chocolate bar” on my grandmother’s dresser and ate a square. It was so good I ate another, and then another. Not too long afterward I was making chocolate syrup in the toilet.

The nurses gave my brother in law some stuff to relieve him. “Your goal is to go three times, and then we’ll talk about releasing you.” So he drank the stuff they gave him and pretty soon he went to the tiny, in-room restroom. When he came out, he was quite proud. “One down, two to go!” he said brightly. When the nurse came in, he couldn’t wait to tell her.

“What color was it?” she asked excitedly, as if he were telling her he’d just seen a unicorn.

Where else but a hospital can you talk about BM’s and everyone thinks it’s totally acceptable? Can you imagine being at work or at a party and having this discussion?

“Hey, where have you been?”

“In the bathroom. I’ve been a little plugged up, you see, so my doctor gave me some pretty tasty stuff and I’m very relieved to say that I’m flushing again after three days, if you know what I mean.”

“Oh, that’s wonderful. Bob and Carol, I want you to me Ben, here. He’s just taken a crap after a three day drought.”

“You must be so proud of yourself, Ben. Just out of curiosity, was it brown? The reason I’m asking is that just the other day I was reading an article in Bowel Health Quarterly that the color is very important.”

“You don’t say!”

However, even though we were in a hospital, I can tell you that today I was not comfortable with the direction the conversation was going. He might be my brother in law, but I do NOT need to think about him on the toilet. I’m going to have nightmares tonight.

But other than that, my visit to the hospital was quite pleasant. There is never a dull moment. When there was a small lull in activity and we were about to resort to having to watch the TV that was mounted in such a way that you’d get a crick in your neck after a couple of minutes, a man came in the room and asked if he could test the fire alarm. At first we said, “Absolutely NOT!” But when he started begging and I could see he was about to break into tears, I finally said yes. He put this long stick with a cone on the end up to the fire alarm and must have blown some smoke into it because the alarm went off. Woo, that was some excitement for a couple of seconds until he disarmed it.

At regular intervals of about 2.5 minutes apart, various staff members needed to know what my brother in law’s blood pressure was – and it was never the same or even close, even though he was just lying there. They also kept him hooked up to a monitor that beeped every thirty seconds for no other reason than to remind us that there was no peace and quiet to be found in this den of sickness.

Luckily, after his third trip to the john, they told him he could go home after he gave a play-by-play of the size, shape, consistency, and color of the intestinal discharge (or “poop” in lay people’s term). It was the first time on record that my brother in law was NOT full of sh--.

Truth be told, I’m gonna kindof miss it up there in Room 377D.

I Miss My Satellite Radio

They say all good things come to an end. This is especially true with free trials. The satellite radio stations that came with my car were free for 3 months. Unfortunately I ignored them for the first month because there were so many new things on the car to try and learn. It’s a Prius and it doesn’t have a key. You just press a button and the engine starts. Weird, huh? Plus it has a navigation system that it took me at least a month to figure out. I kept trying to code in streets while I was driving, and it kept refusing to respond. I thought it was defective, so I’d push other buttons and whole new screens would come up with all kinds of things to play with. Satellite radio was way down the list of new toys.

Then one day I was somewhere where even the hardiest radio stations couldn’t reach and I remembered the satellite stations. I started pushing scanning and found a million stations in every category – country, easy listening, rap, polka, the All Accordion station – you can get anything on satellite. I came across one with people laughing. The digital readout said it was called, “Laugh USA.”

I listened, and the station lived up to its name, because I laughed, and laughed some more. I was in love. This was the best radio station I’d ever found in my life. There were little 2 or 3 or 4 minute bits of just plain funny stuff. A week or two later, while I was waiting for someone, I went through the stations and found 5 more comedy ones. My next favorite after Laugh USA was Blue Collar Comedy. This station had Jeff Foxworthy and Larry the Cable Guy. Now that there is funny, I don’t care what you say, that there is funny. I looked forward to getting in my car. I often took the scenic route so I could listen longer.

Then I got a letter in the mail saying my 3-month free trial was ready to expire. Gasp! I did not want to PAY for these stations, even though they were reasonable – about $14 a month or so. I started talking myself into being glad that the time was ending. “After all,” I said to myself, “you haven’t listened to any news since you found those comedy stations. You don’t even know how many people have been killed in the Middle East wars, or where the latest suicide bomber is, or what leader has been assassinated, or what mud the Republicans are slinging at Obama, or what tea party Sarah Palin is holding. You are in a vacuum.” I told myself this and looked forward to the day when my comedy shows were gone and I could get back in touch with the real world.

On Saturday afternoon it happened. Right in the middle of a bit Jerry Seinfeld was giving about pilots talking on airplanes, the satellite was snuffed out. I brushed away tears as I turned to regular FM. Immediately I heard the “imma bee” song by the Black Eyed Peas and figured out they meant “I’m gonna be,” then I heard reports from NPR about tornadoes killing people in the Midwest and explosions that took 26 lives and about the fear of a grasshopper invasion in Oregon this coming summer. I switched from station to station and got imma bee and tragedy everywhere I looked.

Know what I decided? Imma bee buying dat satellite radio and be stickin my head all up in the sand and pretendin’ the world be a happy place where da people laughs at people who says stuff like imma bee. That’s what imma bee.

Climbing Mt. Hood, Part 2

After almost six hours of stair stepping, the final stragglers in the group (me, an 18 year old Japanese exchange student named Koz, a guy in his late 20’s, and the poor guide who had to stay behind for us slow pokes) arrived at the part of the mountain that made this an official “technical” climb – where being roped together would save our lives. It was a straight up sheer cliff of ice about 20 feet tall that we needed to plant our feet in the toe holes and hold on for our very lives. I was terrified. But I was roped to these guys and I had to go. It went fast because there was a line of people behind us, and the lead guy set the pace. This was Andrew, and he was as scared as I was. He wanted to get the heck done with it.

After we survived the Cliff of Terror, we had only a few steps to go before we reached the top. When we got there, we saw the other 20 people in our group, plus about 80 more crazy people. It was 8:30 in the morning. I was exhausted and just shy of the point of passing out and already dreading the climb back down, plus I had to pee. All that stopping for drinks of water caught up with me. I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but next time you look up at a snowcapped mountain, see if there’s a bush or a tree up there. There’s not a one. I was in a panic, because as miserable as every muscle and joint in my body were, my bladder was worse off. I had to go.

In case you ever find yourself in this situation with a hundred people around and nowhere to hide, here’s what you do. You move a little down slope of the crowd. It’s about 15 degrees, but take your coat off anyway, lie on your back in the snow, arrange your coat discreetly over your midsection, wiggle out of the three layers of clothes that have not been enough to keep you warm (despite what the guides said) and relieve yourself for as long as it took Austin Powers when he was first awakened after being cryogenically frozen for 20 years. This may take a full ten minutes, depending on how many water/rest stops you’ve took. Breathe a huge sigh of relief, and then move a little sideways (remember, you’re still lying down on a fairly steep incline), struggle back into your clothes, put your coat back on, and pretend you don’t know a thing about the steaming yellow river cutting little snow valleys into the snow as it flowed down the mountain right beside you. I’m sure this information will come in handy for you someday.

After all the agony of getting to the summit, nobody stays at the top for long. It’s freezing up there! Plus, even though the view is breathtaking, you can only look out over the vast empty plains and mountain peaks for so long, and then it’s blasé. Seriously. You look at Mt. Rainier and The Three Sisters and Mt. Bachelor for a few minutes; then you’ve seen it. I've noticed in movies that the people who reach the summit of Mt. Everest don’t linger around either, and I bet they can see more than we could.

Getting down, for the most part, was more fun than going up. Having a baby and getting a root canal at the same time without drugs is more fun than going up. Going down, you get to slide part of the way. It’s got a technical name, glaceeing, but it’s basically taking out the plastic garbage bag you put in your backpack and sitting on it. Gravity does the lion’s share of the work, but there’s danger in this simple act, too. I saw Kos go sliding at 250 mph straight toward a smoking, belching, stinking sulfur pit that probably went straight to the core of the earth. Luckily our guides had gone over “self arrest” where you roll over and dig your ice pick into the snow to stop sliding. Kos frantically did this repeatedly before he stopped on the edge of the foul pit, and then he had to climb all the way back up to the Hogsback, the narrow ridge we were on.

The guide who herded us slower ones to the top kept telling us we needed to hurry. We ignored him as we were trudging upward, but I found out why he was so insistent as we made our descent. When the sun beats down on the snow, even when it’s cold, the surface starts to soften and get slushy. Gravity and the slush duke it out, but the slush wins and you are no longer able to slide. Plus the snow gets so soft that you sink to your knees with every step. I can't tell you how difficult it is to walk like this, but it takes forever to pull a heavy foot out of a deep hole and then pull the next one out. This went on for about two days or the last half hour, it was impossible to tell the difference. Everyone else in our group was already at the bottom, and had been there for an hour or more. Even Kos and Andrew were there. Just the guide and I straggled back at noon.

Let me tell you this. I hated climbing Mt. Hood more than anything I’ve ever done. But having survived it, I have to admit I’m proud to be able to say I did it, especially when I’m around a bunch of jogging, weight-lifting, buffed-up people. It’s nice to ask casually, “Have you ever climbed Mt. Hood?” Like it’s something I do for fun on weekends.

But I wouldn’t advise anyone else to climb it, ever. If you’re too foolhardy to listen to me and insist on going anyway, I have one parting thing to say. Don’t drink too much water.

Climbing Mt. Hood Part 1

When it’s a beautiful day, and Mt. Hood is silhouetted against a royal blue sky, I’ll hear people say, “Wouldn’t it be fun to climb to the top of that mountain?” Let me answer that question from my own experience. ARE YOU CRAZY??

It is not fun. I know, because my brother, the salesman, talked me into attempting the climb. He paid $25 dollars at an auction for the services of two guides to take a group to the summit of Mt. Hood. He invited thirty people to his home, served lots of wine, and then let the guides convince us that it would be “fun” to be part of their expedition.

Both these guides were tanned, taut, and toned. They ENJOYED rock climbing and snow camping. I had absolutely and positively nothing in common with them. They said our climb date would be in May because there’s LESS CHANCE of avalanche (how encouraging). We’d need to rent boots, crampons, and ice axes, and we’d be roped together for the last leg of the climb. Everyone got all excited when they started in with this technical jargon, but I heard the word Crampon which made me think of something bloody awful, and Ice Axes, which made me think of axe murderers, which did not bode well.

I had no desire to climb Mt. Hood. Anybody in their right mind would know that this wouldn’t be fun. Our guides said that we could get in shape by finding a bunch of stairs and running up and down them. Does that sound like fun to you? Also, our group had to be roped together like a string of sausages. Why roped together? In theory, if one person falls the rest would catch him. I wasn’t afraid I’d fall, I was terrified that one of the big sausages would slip and drag us to our deaths in some bottomless precipice. But group mentality and peer pressure overcame our better senses, and all of us signed up to go.

The guides were well worth the $25 investment. They took us on two hikes in the Columbia Gorge, and they took everyone else to the top of Mt. St. Helens. I wasn’t invited to that one, probably because I complained so much during the hikes in the Gorge. For crying out loud, they forced us to practically jog up steep trails in the winter, with snow on the ground. My response was to repeat, “I’m tired. Can’t we slow down? It’s freezing!” I was freezing because I guess I didn’t read the instructions that said not to wear cotton next to my skin (it gets wet from the exertion then makes you cold or some other scientific mumbo jumbo) so one guide had to give me his polypropolenesuperthinbutsuperwarmthermal shirt. That, and the fact that I’m not one to keep my complaints bottled up were probably the reason the guides must have waited until I was in the bathroom to tell the others about the Mt. St. Helens hike. Or it might have been on the instruction sheet that I neglected to read.

Whatever, in early May we were to meet at the appointed time, which was 2:00 a.m. (another reason I did NOT want to do this climb), at Timberline Lodge – so named because it’s so freaking cold at 6,000 ft. even the hardiest mountain trees cannot survive any higher. Our guides told us to go to bed early in the afternoon and get plenty of sleep. You can climb in a bed anytime you want, but if your thinking about being a sausage-on-a- string in an avalanche, sleep will not come to drown your fears.

I met the guides at midnight to hitch a ride almost two-hours to the mountain. I asked as many dumb questions as crossed my mind, mostly about what to do if someone was pulling me into a crevice (pronounced like your snooty aunt would say “vase” as in “crevaass.” They were patient at first but finally told me that if I knew what was good for me I’d lie down and get some sleep.

When we got there, the parking lot was full of climbers. What a bunch of idiots. Our group was doing this because we’d paid a guide, albeit only about two cents an hour by the time you factored in all the training hikes, but these nincompoops were doing it because they wanted to. Crazy. We all signed in so they’d be able to notify the families when we didn’t come back, another reassurance that this was not a good idea. Then we put on our heavy boots and stuck our food, water, crampons, extra clothes, garbage bags, and our trusty ice axes into our backpacks and hoisted them on. I didn’t weigh in, but it seemed like I was 200 lbs heavier than in my birthday suit, maybe 300.

I took the first step and almost buckled under the weight. Those boots weighed a ton, and even though I’d walked in them for a couple of days to condition myself, it was just too much with the backpack. I felt I couldn’t go on. Everyone chided me into continuing, which I did against my better judgment. You are probably wondering why I kept listening to these people. Me too. I guess I just didn’t want to be the only sissy in the group. Perhaps I felt that if I did enough complaining they’d kick me out and I wouldn’t have to feel like a pansy. You’d think they would have said, “It’s obvious you don’t want to do this, maybe you should not go.” But no one ever said that, au contraire! They did the exact opposite – the more I complained, the more they encouraged. Since I couldn’t give up, I just had to try harder to get booted out.

Want to know what mountain climbing is like? I couldn’t tell you. But getting to the top of Mt. Hood from Timberline Lodge, except for about twenty feet, is like this: Remember that movie, “Ace Ventura, When Nature Calls?” There’s a scene in which Ace climbs to the top of an infinite stairway leading to a Tibetan monastery. He puts a Slinky on the top step and gives it a little push. It starts going down the steps, one by one as the camera zooms out like the scene is being filmed from an airplane so that it can get all nine million stairs in. When the Slinky FINALLY gets almost to the bottom, it stops at the next to the last step. Ace raises his hands in frustration because now he’ll have to climb all the way back to the top and start over. THAT’s what climbing Mt. Hood is like. Each time you lift your leg, you are raising it like you are going up another stair. There is never even one step where you just walk. You are climbing the stairway to Heaven, or just shy of it. Plus you’re on snow and ice. Thank goodness for the crampons which keep you from slipping and sliding like you’re walking on a grease slick, though it’s not much consolation.

At about Silcox hut, not too far from Timberline, I sat down in the snow with my head in my hands and said I couldn’t go any further. “You can’t give up now,” the guides said. “It’s a beautiful day; you’ll never get a better opportunity; just keep putting one foot in front of the other.” I know they soon regretted prodding me along - wailing gets on people’s nerves.

The guides told us to drink plenty of water because it helps prevent leg cramps. My legs hurt so much I wouldn’t have even KNOWN if I had a cramp, but I drank water constantly. It was an excuse to stop and rest. By the time I was two-thirds of the way up, I rewarded myself with a drink after every ten steps. Did I mention the air is thinner and you get more out of breath with every step as you go up? That’s about the same time my pleas to go back turned into wails and near tears.

Tomorrow I’ll tell about the rest of the adventure.

Prom Night

The subject of today’s blog is also the reason I didn’t do this blog yesterday. It was Prom Day, and my daughter had requested dinner for her entourage at our house. So I had to slave, yes literally slave, over a hot stove AND clean my house for the six sets of parents who would be coming over to take pictures. I’d like to spend this entire blog whining about how tired my legs were but I know, as a writer, that you will not read any further if that’s all you have to look forward to, so I’ll talk about interesting things, starting with the make-up artist fiasco.

Actually, I’ll start a little earlier because those of you who read about the problems we had finding a dress will be pleased to learn that the alterations turned out beautifully – the dress fit like it had been tailored and made my already gorgeous daughter (people say she looks like me) into a veritable beauty queen. Too bad about what happened to it.

The girls all skipped school because they had to get pedicures, updos, and makeup done. I wasn’t too keen on that but my daughter pointed out that, “Everyone else skips school all the time and I haven’t missed a day all year. Katie misses class so much and she’s stoned most of the time and Celina….” They wear you down.

She got a purple pedicure, “it matches my green dress,” and she got curls in her hair. The next thing was makeup. At an auction, Jenna’s mother bid on the services of a makeup artist who would come to the home and do a small group for a special occasion. That was scheduled for 3:00. At about 2:00 the artist called and said she couldn’t make it because her husband was called unexpectedly into work and she didn’t have a ride. “We can come to your house,” Jenna said, to which to artist replied, “Oh, and there are child care issues, too.” “We can babysit.” “That won’t work, look I’ll call you Monday and we can reschedule.”

We live in Oregon, and it normally rains from November to July. On rare occasion, we get a sunny day. Ever rarer is a sunny day AND a warmer temperature. Yesterday it was sunny with a high of 71 degrees – downright Hawaiian for Portland. This may or may not have had a bearing on the artist’s sudden decision to break the hearts of these sweet girls just hours before their prom.

Of course this change in their perfect day was the end of the world. They all decided to call their dates and cancel the whole thing. Well, the thought crossed their minds, but then they rallied and stuffed their own makeup into duffle bags and came to my house to put it on. They crammed themselves into one small bathroom and stayed in there for about an hour with the iPod blaring so loud it drowned out all but the loudest squeals. At one point my daughter came in and said, “Sam put fake eyelashes on me, does this one look crooked?” I’m not a fan of fake eyelashes, mostly because I’ve never successfully gotten them unstuck from my fingers to transfer them to my eyelid. “They look beautiful,” I said.

When the girls emerged in their tank tops and shorts, they were knockouts. I don’t think a selfish, unreliable, flaky makeup/con artist could have done any better. At 5:30 – fifteen minutes before the boys and parents were to arrive, they raced out the door to go to Jenna’s house to get a memory stick for her camera. Good grief! Luckily they were back in 7.38 minutes and dressed in 2.4, so they milled around in their gorgeous dresses, looking for something to spill on them. My daughter succeeded. She rubbed up against something oily, Lord knows where, and had spots on the front AND back of her dress. All that shopping, altering, the tears, the fights, and finally finding the perfect dress (that cost a small fortune) only to have her get it dirty within minutes of putting it on. Kids – you gotta love ‘em or you’d strangle ‘em.

All the parents arrived on time (5:45) and we took pictures of the girls, but where were the boys? Everyone knows that girls are supposed to be late. It’s almost a requirement. But there were strange forces at work – a sunny day in May, false eyelashes that looked real, I hadn’t burnt the chicken – and now late boys. And I don’t mean fashionably late. They didn’t arrive for 45 minutes. They’d all gotten ready together, which means that instead of pulling up their pants, buttoning their shirts, clipping on their ties and tying their shoes at their own homes, they were at a friend’s doing it all at one time. How could they have been 45 minutes late? They blamed it on Luke’s mom. “She kept making us pose for more pictures.” They were awfully cute in their purple and green ties and black shoes so pointed they could have used them for arrows.

We took every combination of pictures you could imagine – serious, funny, girls only, boys only, moms and kids, dads and kids, couples only, couples only on stairs, group on stairs, group funny, couples funny, my daughter holding the dog. Finally, exhausted, the parents packed up and left an hour and a half after they came, and we served the first course – Caesar salad.

My husband was the dapper waiter – carrying plates out of the kitchen and refreshing their sparkling apple-pomegranate cider. Then I dished up their plates with chicken with lemon sauce, herbed rice, marinated green beans and garnishes of snow peas, radishes, petite pear tomatoes, baby corn and tiny radishes. It was pretty, though I knew most of them wouldn’t touch the garnishes. Then we cleared their dinner plates and served a lovely cake on a pedestal that Sharon brought, plus strawberries with whipped cream. A feast!

My kids won’t stay at a dinner table more than ten minutes unless forced, but this bunch wouldn’t leave. My legs were throbbing. Every now and then one of them would say, “Shouldn’t we leave?” and I bit my tongue before saying “YES!” out loud. Then someone else would say, “I’m having such a good time sitting here enjoying everyone’s company.” I don’t know who said that, but I wanted to slap them. My husband and I were just hovering in the kitchen, trying to give them space and overhear any dirt we could but these guys weren’t ever interesting. They didn’t cuss. They didn’t talk about sex. They didn’t talk about other people except to tell funny stories about them. SO LEAVE! I was saying over and over in my head to send the vibe. Typical teenagers – they didn’t pay any attention to me, much less my vibes.

Finally about 8:20 (the prom started at 8) they got up and the guys put on their coats while the girls rushed back into that small bathroom and stayed ten minutes. Then they loaded up into two cars and I took a couple more pictures and went back in the house. I looked out the kitchen window and they had all climbed out of the cars, so I went out to see what was wrong. They were spraying, “Just Prommed” on the car windows. Then my daughter sprayed directly on the car and had to run in and get paper towels because it was someone’s borrowed nice parent car and it might eat the paint off. Finally they loaded back up and I got to go back in the house and spend another hour on my feet cleaning up.

When they came back around 11:30 to rummage through the refrigerator and get the two other cars they left parked here, I didn’t even get up out of the Lazy Boy. “It was SO MUCH FUN,” they all said and took off. The girls were going to end up at Jessica’s house for a sleepover, and hopefully the guys weren’t with them.

And that is why I didn’t do my blog yesterday. Oh, and the dog ate my paper.

Vegetable Banter

Today I went to the high school to volunteer tutor but I didn’t have any takers for awhile so I pondered the names of fruits and vegetables.

Eggplant. Where did that get its name? Sure, it looks like an egg in shape, but it’s purple. Maybe some purple dinosaur could have laid such an egg, but it seems an odd name. A cherry, on the other hand, is well named. It’s a happy fruit – a cheery fruit, if you will.

But who came up with the name for squash? It’s a word most often used to describe what you do to a bug. There’s a game called squash that’s played with racquets. I guess you could use the rackets to squash a bug, but it would probably crawl through the little holes. The point is, it’s neither a logical nor an appetizing name for a vegetable, and you just have to wonder how it got its name.

Some names don’t show any creativity at all. Green beans is one. You’ve got a bean and it’s green, so you go, “Duh, what will we call this thing. Uh, let me see, uh, I’ll think of something, uh, just give me another second here, it’s going to be a good one, uh, okay here’s what we’ll call it: GREEN BEAN! Star fruit is the same way. And I’ve never seen breadfruit - does it look like a loaf of bread?

If you want creative names, go to the melons. I love the name “casaba.” I’ve never eaten one but they sound exotic, like something you’d eat in your cabana on the beach. There’s also honeydew melons. Doesn’t that sound delicious? And cantaloupe, which sounds like some kind of sailboat – spinnaker sails catching the wind and good-looking guys in deck shoes and microbrews, slurping the juicy summery orange melon and tossing the rinds over the side. All of these are members of the muskmelon family, just so you know.

Also, here’s something interesting. If you scramble melons you get lemons. Did someone look at lemons and say, “These are the same shape as melons but we can’t call them the same thing or it will be way too confusing. I know! Lets rearrange the letters and come up with a whole new word!”

The Legume Family has some odd characters. The little guy is named a chickpea, which sounds sweet and cuddly, but it is also called the garbanzo bean, which sounds like a guy who smokes pot and surfs all day. My daughter was about four years old and had this little orange figurine that she called, “Orangie.” She was trying to be like her big brother, who gave everything nicknames, so she informed us that “his name is Orangie but you can call him “Tail.” We laughed so hard she started crying but we couldn’t help it - the thing didn’t even have a tail. It was two totally unrelated names that made no sense, just like chickpeas and garbanzo beans.

Here’s some names that do make sense: blackberry and blueberry. They at least let you know what kind of berry you’re getting. But what about strawberry? Is it the color of straw? Does it look like straw? Does it at least taste like straw? No. Then what genius came up with that name?

Here are names I like but they’re hard to spell – pistachios, avocado, cilantro, and rhubarb. In fact, my spell check says I’ve gotten two of the four wrong.

Finally, there’s the potato and tomato, so similar in so many ways. You can slice ‘em, dice ‘em and rhyme ‘em.

Here’s a sentence I made up that I think is particularly clever: This thyme lettuce squash and beet the boysenberry them before the news leeks to Rosemary.

Luckily for you, a student came into the library wanting my tutoring services, so my fruit and vegetable musings stopped here.

200 Days Down, 165 to Go

This is my 200th blog! I’m more than halfway to my goal of doing 365 blogs in 365 days. Yippeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

I will take this opportunity to talk about trying to be funny. I mentioned before that I got satellite radio in my Prius for a 3-month trial, and I’ve been listening to comedy stations with really funny people saying very funny things. Oh how I wish I could remember some of them.

These guys are either telling some outrageous story that is funny all by itself, or they use surprise. A comedienne tells the story, “I went to the doctor with an ache in my back. He asked me questions for twenty minutes, looked things up in some books, then said, “Have you ever had this condition before?” and I said, “Yes, a couple months ago,” and the doc says, “Well, you got it again. That will be $100.”

Comedy is about connections – the ones you automatically make in your head and then the alternative ones that funny people throw at you. It’s about the people around you doing odd things, or it’s the way you can connect that odd thing with something else. Remember that old Pink Panther movie where Peter Sellers, in his heavy French Inspector Clouseau accent, says to a guy holding a sweet little dog on a leash, “Does you dog bite?” The guy holding the dog answers, “No.” So Clouseau bends down to pet the cute little thing and nearly gets his hand chewed off. “I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite.” The man shrugs his shoulders. “It’s not my dog.”

These comediennes are great observers of the ordinary. They take the most mundane thing and describe it until it looks absurd and funny. Jerry Seinfeld is great at doing that, and so was George Carlin. Seinfeld points out that studies show that the number one fear people have is public speaking. The second is death. If that’s true, and you’re attending a funeral, he says, then you’d rather be in the casket than delivering the eulogy.

As Larry the Cable Guy says, “Now that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.”

I love reading Dave Barry’s books. He also points out ordinary things and then takes them to the depths of absurdity. For instance, he says that Magnetism is one of the Six Fundamental Forces of the Universe. The other five are: Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control, and The Force That Pulls Dogs Toward The Groins Of Strangers. He makes his words even funnier by capitalizing them as if they were truly some scientific or official entity.

It doesn’t matter how much you listen to comedy, though, to be good at it you have to practice it. That’s why I’m doing this exercise. Sometimes it appears to be simply exercise (I’m sorry), but sometimes I hit on a topic or story that amuses me and I laugh out loud. I hope I’ve given you a giggle or two here and there.

I’m thinking I may make up some people for the next hundred and sixty-five days. I wish I could say that my friends are really funny and I’m surrounded by humor – but frankly I am not. My friends tend to like to bitch about their lives to me because this is what women do with each other – we shop and complain. Others I encounter during the day are usually doing their best to hack me off rather than amuse me. My kids are teenagers, and there’s nothing funny about that. Plus life isn’t a whole lot of fun and games, truth be told. We have these great incidences of fun but they are like oil floating on water – the everyday tiresome repetitive functions are the water. You get out of a warm bed, make the bed, pick up someone’s discarded underwear, feed the dog, do laundry, fight traffic, work for a person who knows less than you do, dodge grocery carts, cook the same old dinner after sitting in the freezing rain watching a track meet. Yep, there’s a lot of water in life.

But when I approach the day with humor, I can find things to amuse me if I don’t let my natural irritation get in the way. So I’ll keep looking for subjects to write about, for another 165 days at least. If you see anything you like, please don’t hesitate to say something.

Dodging Squirrels

I don’t know about where you live, but around these parts we’re being inundated by squirrels. They’re everywhere, but mostly they’re in the road. When I’m driving it’s like avoiding potholes. I’m gripping the steering wheel, banking the car sharply to the right then to the left to avoid hitting them.

A squirrel is an indecisive creature. Unlike a deer that will run through a field and leap over a fence to spring into the road right in front of you, a squirrel can’t make up it’s mind. It’s not that the squirrel isn’t planning to cross in front of you; it’s just a matter of timing. He’ll wait by the road until you get close, then he’ll dart halfway out, stop, lunge forward a few steps, then run back in the direction he came from, turn around, then run all the way across the road when you’re right up on him.

I have a theory about this. I think the squirrels all go to a school to learn to annoy humans. The young ones gather in some hollow tree somewhere and learn the essentials of being a nuisance. “Now today we’re going to learn about burying nuts. The thing you want to keep in mind is that a nut will bury easier and taste better if it’s stored in a person’s flowerbed. The dirt is already loose in there, and it’s generally better quality dirt. You go over there and pick through a clump of flowers until you can get your nut right in the middle and it will stay safe all summer long.”

When it’s time for recess, the squirrels all head for the nearest playground – our city streets. They hide in the bushes until one gets up the nerve to try and cross. If he goes when there’s no car around he gets taunted. “What a sissy squirrel you are. You’re grandmother’s got more guts than you do.”

The brave ones wait until the car is right there, then they dash out. Some of them get scared and start back, but seeing their friends, they turn right around and try to make it across. This game is like football to Texans. They never get tired of it.

One time a squirrel dashed across in front of me. I slammed on my brakes, but I knew I hit it – the timing was perfect for it to go right under the wheel. I had my two small children in the car, and I was afraid I’d only maimed it. So I got out of the car to assess the damage. I honestly didn’t know what I was going to do – back over it to finish it off? Put it in a shoebox and nurse it back to health?

I dreaded the blood and guts, but when I looked under the front driver’s wheel, I saw the squirrel’s tail, then the squirrel jumped out and scared the crap out of me. Just as quickly it stopped and started running from side to side. I realized my wheel was on its tail – and just on the fur. It wasn’t harmed, but it was held in place.

If I tried to go forward, it might swish in front of the tire – it had a whole tail length of range of motion. Same with backing up.

What to do? I finally made my son get out of the car and terrorize the squirrel away from the tire so I could ease forward enough to free him. My son thought that was pretty fun. “Grrrrr,” he said. The squirrel strained away, and I eased forward a few inches. “Grrrr,” he kept saying, and I kept easing. Suddenly the squirrel was free and leapt across the road just in time to get smashed by an oncoming car.

Just kidding. The squirrel escaped unharmed, and the three of us clapped and cheered at its good fortune and our creativity. I bet that squirrel had some pretty good tales to tell his friends. “And this giant bully of a kid was trying to pound my head off while the one in the car kept pulling forward to try and squish me flatter than a stink bug, but I outsmarted them all and escaped without even a scratch!”

Judging from the roads, some of his friends haven’t been so lucky. Still, weaving in and out of squirrels all over the road is about to drive me nuts (get it?). DRIVE me NUTS! LOL.

User Manual for Babies

I wish someone would write a complete user’s manual for babies. There’s no way to know what they’re thinking. They can be laughing one minute and then crying the next and you are helpless to know what to do for them. Then they get these weird physical things to have to worry about.

When my daughter was a baby she was the sweetest thing on earth, she slept well at night and smiled a lot – just a model good baby - but she had a temper if something riled her up. One thing she hated was having her diaper changed. I don’t know why. I was the only one who changed her diaper and I always did it the same way, but at about four months old she decided she didn’t like it and she was going to pitch a screaming fit from the second I started to the time I was done.

I coped by changing her as quickly as possible. I used cloth diapers because I was an earth momma, so I’d get a new one ready along with everything else so I could whip that sucker off of there, do cleanup, then have another one on in seconds flat.

One day I had her on the changing table and, as usual, she was screaming so hard her whole body was red. Her fists were balled up, every muscle in her body was tense, she was pushing against the changing table, her stomach arched toward the sky – her normal changing table demeanor. Anyone who could read body language knew she hated every second and wanted to make that loud and absolutely clear.

I worked as quickly as I could because I couldn’t stand crying. It broke my heart. I had gotten the dry diaper under her and was pinning the first side when she thrust her stomach up and at that instant her belly button popped out. It went from an inny to an outy in one second.

Oh my gosh. I freaked out. “Oh no, oh no, oh no,” I screeched in a panic. I don’t know what I thought. That her innards were going to pop out? It just scared the crap out of me. She knew it, too. She stopped crying immediately, watching my reaction. “Oh honey, oh baby, what’s happened? Oh my gosh.”

I rushed to the phone and pressed the speed dial to the pediatrician. “My baby’s belly button just popped out,” I babbled. “What am I going to do?”

The advice nurse, as always, was very calm. She was used to my calls. “It’s okay, tell me what happened.” When I explained she said, “Well, we’ve seen this before and it will go back on it’s own over time. It’s nothing to worry about.”

“Shouldn’t we come in?”

“No, really it’s quite common. You can press on it and it will go back in, but it will probably pop back out.”

Well, I pressed on it and it was creepy. You know how a balloon looks when it loses some of its air? It has that little stem you blow into? That’s what this outy looked like. It was a little creamy white cylinder full of air sticking about ¾ inch out of her belly. I pressed it back in, but when I let go it popped out like a Jack in the box.

After that she didn’t cry during diaper changes. She probably didn’t want to see me freaking out. It took several years for the outy to go back in. In fact I’d forgotten about it until I heard her telling one of her friends about it a few days ago.

“”When did that thing go back in?” I asked.

“Like seven or eight years ago. It just started going away.”

This is the kind of stuff they don’t prepare you for in the baby books. Someone should have said, “If your child has an explosive temper and pitches an intense fit, be sure to check his or her belly button periodically to see if it has popped out like a timer on a turkey. If so, don’t be alarmed. Besides, there’s nothing you can do about it but if you insist, you can call the advice nurse who will tell you the exact same thing.” This would have reassured me at that hour of need. The user manuals for children are certainly lacking, if you want my opinion.

Why Kids Never Learn

My son is working for a department store. He was telling me that people come in late and he has to stick around waiting for them to relieve him. “I mentioned it to my supervisor and she said, ‘Oh yeah, Rick runs about ten minutes late.’ Mom, if I did that in my old job they’d fire me. But this is a union and you’d practically have to kill the manager to get fired.”

That got me to thinking about work ethics, which made me think about something my dad used to say: “You can’t get by doing a half assed job. Get in there and do it right.”

When I try to pass that wisdom on to my kids, they say things like, “Stop being so anal, mom.” How come when my dad gave me advice it was wisdom, and when I give the same advice to my kids, I’m obsessing?

I guess I didn’t listen too much to what my parents told me once I hit the teenage years either. I thought they got pretty stupid about then. They didn’t understand what I was going through, my motivations, the pressures I had. Now when I talk to my kids the way they used to talk to me, I see them getting that glazed over look and I know exactly what they’re thinking.

“Here she goes again. Oh my gosh I hope this is a short one. She doesn’t know anything. How can I get out of sitting here? I could tell her I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Maybe she’ll forget by the time I get back. She is ADD. Yak, yak, yak. Doesn’t she have anything better to do? She’s always complaining about how overworked or tired she is or how there aren’t enough hours in the day. She could get about six extra hours every day if she’d just stop with these lectures. Oh crap, did she just ask a question? If she thinks I’m not paying attention she’ll start all over again.”

I know this is what they’re thinking because it’s what I was thinking. I thought my parents didn’t know anything, and so it was almost to my detriment to listen to them. I’d sit there while they tried to tell me stuff and think, first, how stupid it was that I had to be put through it – again – then my mind would wander to some guy I had a crush on McDonald’s French fries – anything but what they were saying. My dad used to tell me, “One of these days you’ll understand.

Now, with my own kids, I try to help them avoid the pitfalls in life, and the more I do that the more they are determined to do the exact opposite of my advice. Because they feel like I’m stupid and it would be to their detriment to do anything I suggested.

What’s that Justin Timberlake song – what goes around comes around? True that!

Ignorance Is Bliss

Oh the horror. On my way to driving my dog to the park, I saw a giant stuffed headless dirt person. This creature was almost in the road, leaning against a white fence, standing about four feet tall and even without a head. It had on a size 40 million blue denim shirt and painter’s overalls. Someone had gouged large holes everywhere, and out of each hole was a plant. The plants dotting this dirt person looked like green hairs growing out of giant brown warts.

My description does not do it justice. Why do people make a mockery of their own homes by putting hideous things out front for everyone to see? You know what I’m talking about. Toilets with plants lunging out of the bowl like a bidet spurting green water. What is the conversation like in that house?

“Honey, what do you want me to do with this old toilet now that we got the new one?”

“Well, it’s perfectly good. I hate to just throw it away. I know! Let’s put it in our front yard!”

“Now that’s the best idea you’ve had all day.”

“Why thank you, sweetheart. I think it would look really purty to put a fern in the bowl.”

“Oh, I like how you think. But let’s do it one better. Let’s put some flowers in there too.”

“Why, aren’t you just the most clever thing? That’s why I married you. Let’s put it right up by the road so everyone driving by can enjoy it too.”

“Well, that right there is why I married you. You’re always trying to make other people happy. I love you Sally Bob.”

“I love you too Delbert Freddy.”

And that’s how the toilet ends up at the front yard, decked out with plants and flowers stemming from every orifice, and usually surrounded by an impressive collection of nearly every weed known in these parts.

I can understand the toilet. But how can anyone come up with making a giant headless dirt man?

“Honey, since you’re down to 250 lbs., we ought to get rid of your fat clothes.”

“Aw, shucks. I hate to give ‘em up, especially that there denim shirt and overalls.”

“Those old things? They was full of holes. I’m glad to be shed of them.”

“Well, can I hang on to jest those ones to remind me of what I used to look like before I slimmed down?”

“Sweetheart, I’d just as soon get them out of the house. I don’t want you tempted to gain all that weight back. You know what the doctor said.”

“Yeah, I know. Wait, I got an idear. How bout we fill them things up with dirt and lean ‘em up against the fence out front? We could tear them holes a little bigger and plant some plants in there.”

“Well my goodness, how you DO come up with the best ideas. I think that would be just the ticket! And when people drive by, they’ll see how clever you are and it will brighten up their day.”

“I’ll get the shovel!”

“Wait for me!”

Now I’m starting to get a little jealous of these people. Here I tromp, ill-tempered, from store to store to get the perfect hanging baskets or flower pots, and these happy guys don’t have a clue that they should be embarrassed to death. This is exactly what they mean when they say, “ignorance is bliss.”

Stalking the Perfect Parking Spot

I went to Costco today. I’m assuming that everyone knows about Costco – that gigantic warehouse of bulk items that requires a membership to enter the door, and at least a hundred dollar bill to leave. Honestly, I might go in there to get a $9.99 jar of Gummy Vites, and between the entrance and the pharmacy I see 30 items I want – all of them packaged so that I get enough to last two years, BUT IT’S SUCH A GOOD DEAL! I always end up finding an empty cart and worrying if I’ve got enough money to cover everything I pile in it.

Because Costco is so popular, there’s never anywhere to park. Even at 10:00 a.m. when they first open the door, the parking lot is full except for the outlying areas. If you pack a lunch, you can park out there and take a rest break halfway in.

I pride myself on getting good parking spaces, so I cruise around the entrance and stalk someone coming out of the store. I’ll see them pushing the cart out the door, then try to gauge their direction. I’ll speed up and circle around, following them slowly until they reach their car.

Surely these people know they are being stalked. Wouldn’t most people sense the presence of a huge chunk of metal out of the corner of their eye? Knowing that someone wants their parking space, you’d think they’d be considerate and go about their business efficiently.

Today I stalked a woman down the parking lane and saw her push her remote. Jackpot! The lights of a car pretty close to the front went on. It was a great spot, and I got very excited. I pulled over a little so cars could go around me. A car pulled up behind me and just sat there. There was plenty of room for him to go around. I turned on my turn signal to let him know that I was going to be sitting there, and that it was okay for him to go around. I could see in my rear view mirror that he was frowning. He didn’t want to go around. He wanted me to move.

Meantime the lady pushing the cart had her trunk open and was unloading each item, taking her sweet time. “Hustle, woman,” I thought, “before this idiot rear ends me.” She finally gets the cart unloaded and decides to be a good Costco Samaritan by walking the shopping cart back. For crying out loud. There are carts everywhere like freckles on a redhead, but she thinks hers is too good to be put out to pasture with the others. Two cars have stacked up behind the one waiting for me. I rolled my window down and signaled them to go around. The first one refused. The second didn’t want to go either, but the third one whisked around like he was racing a Ferrari.

Meantime the woman comes back and gets into her car. I wait for the taillights to come on but they don’t. The guy behind me is looking very angry. I decide he’s trying to intimidate me so HE can get my space. Who knows why the other car is still there?

Finally the bitch starts her car and slowly backs out. Inch by inch. Meantime, the second car decides at this very moment to make his move, and he whips around to pass. He pulls up next to me and sees the woman backing out. She sees him and pulls back in.

Now no one is moving. It’s like a four way stop when two cars ease forward at the same time and then stop and wait. They both wait the exact amount of time and pull forward again, then stop and wait.

The woman doesn’t move, and finally the car pulls forward and gets out of the way. She still doesn’t move, obviously shaken by the crazy turn of events in the parking lot.

I am this close to saying the hell with it when she starts inching back again. Slowly she eases out of the spot, jerking from applying the brakes every six inches. She backs way further back than she needs to, hesitates while she ponders what gear to put the car into – drive or reverse – then slowly pulls forward out of the way.

I greased into that spot like I was getting sucked by a giant magnet. The guy behind me lunges forward like he’s getting sucked by a giant vacuum, giving me the evil eye as he passes. I didn’t actually see the evil eye, I just felt it.

In the time it took to get that primo parking space, I could have filled my arms, dropped my $100 at the cashiers, and been driving out of there. But I had to stick it out. It was the principle of the thing.