More Weird Search Terms
May 9, 2008
I think I am going to regularly collect weird search terms from my blog stats. They are just too much fun to pass up. If you have odd questions, I’ve got the answers right here! (Wikipedia, eat your heart out!)
1.) “How do they do a lobotomy?” — I’m assuming this is from neither a medical student looking for help on his finals, nor Dr. Frankenstein’s faithful assistant. It’s probably someone who just landed a managerial position with the U.S. Postal Service. Part of his job description is to do “the operation” on all new supervisors. I discussed “the operation” in a previous blog, Regulations, Bean Counters, and Lobotomies. Happy brain dissecting!
2.) “What are retirement dinners?” — What do you think this blog is, the web home of Jeopardy? Retirement dinners are the backyard cookouts that add the final perfecting touch to an afternoon get-together of bubbas who are bonding by outfitting their pickup trucks with monster-size retreads. If you do it in a group it’s a lot more fun. Honestly! I thought everyone knew that!
3.) “Prayers for doubt and confusion” — All I can say is, I wouldn’t pray for that. If you want doubt and confusion, be my guest and go ahead and ask for it.
4.) “Mountain Dew gallbladder” — Which puts many ??? in my think-tank. Is this a new song title, like Foggy Mountain Breakdown? I like Flatt and Scruggs, and I like Foggy Mountain Breakdown, but somehow I don’t think Mountain Dew Gallbladder is going to make it.
And if we’re really talking about gallbladders, is a Mountain Dew gallbladder one on hyper-overload? What does a Mountain Dew gallbladder look like? Is it greenish-yellow? For that matter, what color is a regular gallbladder? I don’t think I really want to know — but somebody does.
5.) “Chicago Cubs bubbler” — Let’s get this straight: bubblers reside in Wisconsin, while Chicago Cubs only visit Wisconsin occasionally to humble the Brewers. Do you want a Chicago Cubs bubbler? You can probably get it at eBay. But then, there’s always the risk of 169,543 other people wanting one at the same time, and the auction spirit will drive all reason out of your noggin, and the price will go up to $997.01. You will be riding high on the euphoria of your victory and will be so indiscreet as to tell your missus, who will shriek, “Honey, what have you done??!! Now we’ll have to eat dandelion greens all summer, because you’ve spent the family fortune on a sports bubbler!” I’d say the cheapest way out of a tragedy is to just buy a plain old white one at a resale shop and plaster Cubs decals all over it.
Weird Search Terms
April 30, 2008
I’m intrigued by the search terms that people use to get to my blogs. A lot of people don’t just type in search words; they enter whole questions. Here is a sampling for your entertainment, along with my reactions:
1.) “Where in the Bible did Daniel fast?” — He probably did it in the kitchen, in the living room, at the annual convention of the Chaldean Wise Men for Better Working Conditions, and in the bathtub. Oh. It says, “in the Bible.” I think it was in Genesis 1, because they weren’t allowed to eat meat at that point in the Bible yet. So Daniel ate veggies. Eat your veggies. They are good for you.
2.) “Talking like a Yooper” — (For those of you who are uninformed, a Yooper is someone from the U.P. — Upper Peninsula of Michigan. It is a territory of Wisconsin.) The question raised in my mind was, “Why would anyone want to?”
3.) “Did Tommy Thompson ever eat Fruit Loops?” — Only when Lee Dreyfuss did not send him any “bee poop” for Christmas. What kind of a fruit loop asks these things?
4.) “Did the Pope visit Door County?” — Of course he did. Everybody visits Door County, even Santa Claus. The Pope ate at Al Johnson’s — had the Swedish pancakes with lingonberries (because it was Friday, so the meatballs were off-limits).
5.) “Undertaker grants a wish” — I’m sorry, but this one really brought a question to my mind: who is “Undertaker”? For some reason I kept thinking of a pro wrestler, or maybe a champion killer bronc on the rodeo circuit. But on second thought, it sounds a little like a title of a children’s picture book.
6.) “Free socking music” — Do people need background music for fistfights? Does it enhance the experience? Come to think of it, I think there was music in the background on those old Roy Rogers movies while he was duking it out with the bad guys! Or maybe it’s someone who needs soothing music to play while they fold laundry and match their socks.
Rummage Sales
April 29, 2008
It is April 29. Even though it snowed big flakes all over the lawn yesterday and it was only twenty-five degrees when I got up this morning, I know that rummage sale season is right around the corner. In Wisconsin, we walk by faith, not by sight. We believe in spring and summer, even when neither of them has yet shown up by the Fourth of July.
At our house, we are veterans at hosting rummage sales. My teenager, who thrives on cleaning out my clutter, sees to it that we have one every year. Through the years, we have noticed some patterns among the customers, and I thought it might be fun to pass on our observations to the world:
First of all, maybe you don’t call them rummage sales where you come from. Yard sales, garage sales, rummage sales — they’re all the same thing. Come to think of it, not everyone calls them rummage sales here, either. I’ve seen quite a few signs for rumage, rumige, rummag, and rammuge sales. We may know how to have ‘em here in the Rhubarb State, but we don’t necessarily know how to spell ‘em.
People spend their hard-earned nickels on the oddest things — gross things, to my way of thinking. Why would anyone want to buy used personal items — deodorants, cheap perfumes, body wash, lipstick, makeup, hairbrushes(!)? I wouldn’t buy them, and I wouldn’t have the guts to try to sell them. However, it works. A friend sold them at one of our sales. I’m wondering what would have happened if she had attempted to get rid of used toothbrushes for a quarter each. My guess is that somebody would have bought them. She managed to unload samples she had gotten through the mail, too. Resourceful creature!
Do you know what sells best? Stuff that comes out of the junk. My husband occasionally junk-picks. I don’t know why he does, so don’t ask. Now that he is retired, I think I am going to send him out every trash day to look for salable stuff. He brings home seemingly worthless items, and the rummage sale queens all want them – lamps, bicycle baskets, rusted milk cans, flower pots, Christmas garland, radios, plastic flowers, you-name-it. If it came out of somebody else’s trash, it is guaranteed to be the first thing to go. Perhaps this is because Wisconsinites are a very ecology-minded folk. We do our duty to God and our country by recycling our junk back and forth among each other, rather than filling up landfills.
The guys that come through really get into all the hardware and technology items. But sometimes they want to know why my husband would have fifteen razor knives, eight bottles of windshield wash, and ten wire nippers (all still in the package), in the first place. I don’t usually divulge the reason: Paul gets them free with rebates at the local hardware store, and then sells them at the yard sale. Sometimes the men are onto him: “I know where he got these … I got them there, too!” I just smile and don’t say too much.
Grandma gifts are in much demand. (Pink flamingoes really do sell, folks.) If my mom bought it for me to hang in my kitchen, living room, backyard, or on my person, it’s probably going to end up in the rummage sale. Please, don’t tell on me! Gaudy plastic butterflies that will pop your eyeballs out 300 yards away, grinning cows wearing flowered pantaloons, plastic “Home Sweet Home” plaques spray-painted gold, ceramic plates etched with sentimental calligraphy about a woman and her kitchen. Tsk! The mail-order outfits that sell this stuff ought to be prosecuted for taking advantage of little old ladies! These are very hot rummage sale items. Grandmas not only buy these things through the mail. They pick them up new on the summer rummage sale tour. They pass them on at Christmas to their daughters and granddaughters. The daughters and granddaughters smile and say thank you — and then shuffle the items into the basement, where they wait in happy anticipation of being recycled at the daughters’ or granddaughters’ rummage sale the following summer. Other grandmas buy them at that sale and save them up for Christmas …. They become like Aunt Maude’s recycled fruitcake — they just keep making the rounds.
True Confessions
April 22, 2008
I was just looking at my official picture — the one I use on this blog — and I have decided it is time for a confession: I don’t look like that. First of all, in real life my face is not pumpkin-orange, and my neck is not the color of an embalmed cadaver. Maybe it doesn’t look that way on your computer, but it does on mine — pumpkin/cadaver. It is our camera’s fault, and I was too cheap to shell out to Glamour Shots.
Secondly, in real life I wear glasses at least part of the time. When I was young I always wore them to avoid bumping into walls and other dangerous objects. But, although old age has not always been kind to me, my eyes have improved. I can now read without glasses, and I only occasionally bump into things when not wearing them. We tried taking the picture with the spectacles on, but there were flashes of light showing up in odd places, so I decided the do-it-yourself portrait would be sans glasses.
Thirdly, I brushed out some of the wrinkles with my handy-dandy photo-correcting program. Nice little tool. I like the reduced-wrinkle look! Too bad the software couldn’t do anything for the pumpkin/ cadaver issues. But people read this blog when they want to laugh, so they might as well laugh at the picture as well.
(I learned the evil little practice of photo enhancement from one of my friends, but she is more radical than I am. She wipes out her double chin completely, and replaces her left eye by flipping a copy of her right eye and plopping it in where the left one used to hang out. She also creates family portraits by taking twenty bazillion pictures of them all and then cutting out each kid’s best shot and pasting them all together. You’d think she could get one shot out of twenty bazillion where they were all behaving and smiling nicely together, so that she wouldn’t have to do all the pasting, but you don’t know this family. I do, and I understand.)
I thought about posting a picture of my daughter instead. She is young and oh, so beautiful! Everyone would have wondered how many facelifts it took for a woman in her fifties to accomplish that look. It would have been fun! But alas. Susan would not have spoken to her mother ever again. She would have been embarrassed to have such story-telling associated with her lovely person — even though she spins a good yarn herself.
Someday I will find a way to put together a better picture or else fork out to Glamour Shots, but in the meantime, I had to ease my guilty conscience by confessing. Now tell me you don’t doctor your pictures a little here and there!
Writing Grants Galore!
April 19, 2008
I have been learning a few things since I embarked on the freelance writing route. Did you know that there are wealthy people out there who are just dying to pay me to do things and go places that churn their butter (but don’t churn mine)? I’m talking about grant money for writers.
Some grants are quite specific, and I would not qualify in the slightest. They go something like this: “The Reebok Foundation is awarding a $5,000 grant to three women under twenty-five who have a desire to write biographies of current great basketball players. To qualify, the writer must have lived on government assistance for at least two years and not be able to afford Reebok athletic shoes.”
There’s a grant that will let me live in a mansion somewhere out East for a couple of weeks. I would have to share it with a few other writers, but hey, with dozens of rooms at our disposal and a front lawn the size of my home town, who cares? I’m sure we could all stay out of each other’s hair. We’d probably have to put up with sharing the butler at mealtimes, but I’m good with that. We would all be useful to each other, too. Other people’s eating quirks are very inspirational. My own eating quirks are very inspirational. An etiquette-based mystery could emerge from the depths of my grant-motivated brain — Who Stole the Vichyssoise?
I would jostle the aplomb of my fellow grant winners with lively table conversation: “Escargot’s OK, but have any of you folks ever sampled bratwurst? No? Make sure your next grant settles you in Wisconsin for a week or two. You haven’t lived until you’ve had a brat — succulent little section of piglet, nestled in a bed of meticulously aged cabbage … artistically surrounded by cheese curd rosettes ….” At that point I’d be grabbing for my hankie, overcome with emotional memories of the cuisine back home.
There are residencies to be had with prestigious colleges. Author in Residence. Sounds good. All I’d have to do is hobnob with the students, tell them cool anecdotes about my buddy Edna Ferber and the big bestseller that got away, and drop a few political harangues here and there. I suppose I might have to do a lecture or two on the similar writing styles of Kurt Vonnegut and Charles Dickens, and I might have to write something, but hey, none of that would be difficult. The hard part would be living somewhere other than home-sweet-home. I could probably bring the family along, but the bratwurst — what about the bratwurst?
There are some grants that aren’t at all attractive — unless you are an Indiana Jones wannabe. How many people really have a yen to go to Tehran to write? If I did that, I might end up being Lady Jane Grey instead of Lady Zane Grey! I’m known for being sensible and not losing my head here in Wisconsin, but I’d be certain to do something taboo there, and … well!
Postscript: I’m getting some questions from folks who seriously want to get writing grant money. C. Hope Clark has a couple of wonderful weekly e-mail newsletters that will tell you what you need to know. Sign up at Funds for Writers.
Where Life’s At
April 17, 2008
I have been one busy little person lately, and haven’t blogged much as a consequence. I hope to get back to writing my favorite wacky stuff soon, but just haven’t had the time or the inclination. (Besides, the retired mailman and the teenage princess haven’t been doing anything outlandish enough to tattle about in the last few weeks.)
For those of you who don’t know, I am an author and publisher. We publish Christian prayer and character building materials, some of which cater to the home school community. At this time of year, I am up to my earlobes in book-packing for my wholesale customers.
Although I work pretty hard and get a little tired, at least I get to stay home. The folks who buy wholesale from us are out on the road, traveling with their vans full of kids from one home school convention to the next, trying to make a living. They travel all week, and then spend Fridays and Saturdays giving speeches, doing workshops, and, most importantly, selling books. Some of them travel the entire length of the country and do not get home for months at a time.
I would not want their lifestyle for the world, but I guess they enjoy it. I’m happy to take their orders, ship their boxes of books to wherever they hope to show up next, and relax in the recliner with a heating pad on my sore back at the end of the day. They are all surprised that I do not want to do the circuit with them, and they tell me I am missing a lot of fun and fellowship, but it’s just not me. I would rather spend my time in prayer and with Beebee and Paul, and I certainly would not want to miss being with our beloved church family on the weekends.
I’ve been spending a lot of time writing stuff for this magazine, that newsletter, and the other anthology. Being a freelancer is fairly new for me, and I’m still learning the ropes. I’m finding out which writing things are time-wasters (writers’ forums where people socialize over their desire to write the next best-selling murder mystery fit this category) and which might be worthwhile (paying articles and ministry writing fit here), and I’m improving my writing skills in the process (I hope). I’m also discovering I can crank out stuff on a wide variety of subjects, if need be. I love the funny stuff, but I can do the heart-warming reminiscence of Grandpa or the totally serious informational report on something boring, when required.
I even waxed imaginative a while back and did a fiction piece about an environmental cop. A problem developed, though. It was for a writing contest sponsored by some folks who are really, really, really serious about living the green lifestyle, and my quirky sense of humor refused to be denied, and it ended up being a spoof on environmentalism. Realizing I would be making a total idiot out of myself if I submitted it, and not being fond of doing that unintentionally, I decided it was best to sit on it until I find a market where
a.) the editor hates the green movement and wants to take a few pokes at it,
b.) the editor is green to the gills, but doesn’t mind laughing at himself and his royal environmentalness, or
c.) the editor doesn’t care whether he is green, brown, blue, or purple, just as long as he can laugh ’til his sides ache.
So that’s how it’s been lately.
Retirement Dinner
March 18, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, we attended the postal retirement dinner held in honor of my husband. You might think it is odd to have a retirement party five months after the fact, but hey, they don’t call it Snail Mail for nuthin’. Truthfully, they always have them in March, and all those who have retired during the entire previous year get their moment of glory … unless they have died before it gets a chance to happen. The party happens even if no one has retired — because of the free dinner.
This year there were two retirees — a conventional one and the not-so-conventional one (my husband). They both wore suits and ties, much to my surprise. Beebee and I managed to keep our man from wearing the bowtie, so we were happy. The conventional guy’s suit was ill-fitting, in keeping with how postal workers normally dress when not in uniform. I have noticed this tradition before, at every retirement dinner I have attended over the last thirty years. Mr. Not-So-Conventional looked dapper. His suit fit him. It did not sag and bunch in weird places. My coaching on attire had absolutely nothing to do with it this time. He pulled off a proper appearance all by himself. I was proud of him. (I married him for his elegant figure.)
We ate the standard banquet affair victuals. Postal parties truly must be abhorred by banquet facility owners, due to letter carriers eating so much. I do not know where they stuff it all. Even the skinny ones manage single-handedly to put more chicken in their gullets than a whole pack of foxes invading the hen house could ever hope to accomplish. I suppose a ten-hour day out in the cold contributes to this talent. They slide it all down with the help of the cole slaw and jellied cranberries.
They all talked about the ten-hour days. Sixty-hour work weeks are the norm right now for everyone, and have been for the last few years. It costs less to work them to death and then get new ones than it does to hire more help. The morale is low. They all thought the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1863, but it has not taken effect in the U.S. Postal Service yet. (They must have an exemption clause.) Paul was one of the fortunate ones: he had a bum ankle and a consequent doctor’s excuse that kept him to a forty-hour work week. If that had not worked, he might have tried what some of the others did: mental distress exemptions from the psychotherapist. (I would have felt bad if he had had to stoop that low, but some did, in order to survive.)
The union representatives’ speeches were all the same as they are every year. We heard about how much better working conditions are now than they were before the Rebellion of 1970 (the year of the illegal postal strike, which brought the Postal Service, the President, the Congress, Wall Street, and Joseph’s Fish Market to their knees, and introduced collective bargaining). Even with working sixty hours a week, the guys were encouraged to be grateful that they no longer work seven days a week for $.35 an hour (my slight exaggeration) and live on cat tuna and welfare assistance. Whenever the president of the union’s name was mentioned, there were little ripples of reverence in the speaker’s voice. Someone should have played ethereal music to enhance the moments of awe, but I guess they didn’t think of that.
The speakers encouraged us to vote for Obama or Hillary, whichever gets the upper hand, so that all our postal workers do not have to go back to cat tuna or worse. And the guys were also encouraged to think about using the hours left after working sixty hours a week to campaign for whichever Democrat eventually wins the nomination. They wanted them to work hard campaigning for the incumbent Democrat in Congress, too, but most of the guys probably aren’t fool enough to do that, because in the last election, he promised the postal workers at our office a big box of free doughnuts if he won, and he never came through with the food.
When the union mucky-mucks got done with their speeches, the retirees got their chance. The conventional guy made a standard speech of gratitude which was very nice. He had to behave himself, because he had brought a whole tableful of his relatives to the dinner. Mr. Not-So-Conventional behaved himself relatively well, considering he can always be a bundle of surprises. He paved the way for the rest of his speech by telling what a wonderful support his wife had been to him through thirty years. (I was, too!) He had gone to all the effort of tallying up how many sandwiches I had made for his lunches in all that time (about 6900, by his count — that’s a lot of Wonder Bread!). He went on to tell his funny dog stories in his engaging way. And he topped it off the way they had all known he would, by telling them about Jesus, and how they could be as happy as he is, if they would give their lives to Him.
They gave us gifts. Paul received a watch, and I got a green plant the size of a cedar tree.
I think Paul enjoyed his evening immensely, and the rest of his little family were pleased for him.
Funeral Quirks
March 10, 2008
We all have our stereotype expectations of how people in certain vocations should be. My experience of undertakers from my childhood on up was that they were very prim and proper sad-looking beings, dressed up in penguin attire, with great big black circles around their eyes. They floated through the funeral home with soundless steps, bringing comfort here and condolences there, always using exactly right, highly dignified phrases. In the small town where I grew up, this is just what the funeral director who lived down the street was like. So was his son. They both had the same sad expression, with the same big black circles around their eyes. They both knew how to float. One was a carbon copy of the other, except for a slight discrepancy in age. As I grew older, my stereotype expectation of people in the funeral trade was continually reinforced — until it came time to make arrangements for Dad’s funeral.
Mom decided to use the new-kid-on-the-block funeral home. (It has been there for a number of years, but not for decades.) Our funeral director did not have the black circles around his eyes. (My older daughter speculated that perhaps the peculiar eye-look was intentional, as in makeup, and that this one did not use it.) He wore a more casual version of the penguin costume. He did not float; he swaggered. He reminded me of a cowboy. I cast a glance at his midsection — nope, no six-shooters.
He told stories. I love stories! But it was very odd to be entertained with them by an undertaker. I heard why we were fortunate to be using his funeral home, rather than the other funeral chain in the area. You are going to hear it, too:
Shhh. Don’t tell anyone. The other funeral home chain in the surrounding area is not owned by the people whose name is on the outside of the building. The ________ Family in the _________ Family Funeral Home are all dead. The ________ Family Funeral Home is now owned by the Spabigliani Family in Milwaukee, and they are — shhh! — Mafia.
The funeral home we were using was standing for truth and justice, the free market, and the chance to spit in the eye of the Mafia. I rather like the idea of spitting in the eye of the Mafia — as long as they don’t spit back!
Mr. Undertaker told us about his own family funeral home. He is a fourth generation mortician — started hanging around the mortuary when he was twelve, helping with body preps. I think this is why people in funereal families do not think it is weird to choose the undertaker profession. They have lived with the whole idea from the time they were toddling, so it is not odd to them. (It is a good thing, too, because we need them to help us, and we appreciate what they do.)
Dad wanted to be cremated. The funeral director explained to us why “Pa” would not be cremated in “the garage” on-premises. He has an arrangement with a crematorium forty miles away BECAUSE when he was a younger man hanging in the bars around town, he ran into a guy who had a side job as a cremator. The bar guy incinerated bodies in HIS garage. And he told stories about the bodies in the bar. Our undertaker did not think that was right.
“I take them to __________ forty miles away, where nobody knows ‘Pa,’ so nobody can talk about him in the local bars.”
My eyes were wide as saucers. I forced the lids back down over them, and tried to look dignified. If he wasn’t going to be, somebody had to. But I felt relief that “Pa” was safe from the barfly crowd.
We heard about the various cremation ideas that other people have come up with. You are going to hear about them, too. Some are pathetic and sad, and we won’t go there. But others ….
This is Wisconsin. We have lots of lakes and rivers, and lots of beer. I am not ashamed of the lakes and rivers, but I wish we did not have to deal with the beer. One family, whose dearly departed enjoyed his free moments fishing and drinking beer at his cottage “up nort’,” decided to send him out in style. They put his ashes on a rubber raft and floated him out a few yards from shore. Keeping him company on the raft was a CD player belting out polka tunes. Half-a-dozen beer bottles were strategically arranged around the rim of the raft. The raft was attached to the family and friends on shore via a string, which was wrapped around the air valve plug on the raft. The family and friends enjoyed a funeral dinner of beer and beer-marinated brats. When they’d had enough and were tired of the polka music, they gave the raft string a yank, and sent dear old dad to the bottom of the lake. I don’t think they had a church service attached to all this. Dear old dad probably didn’t ever get to church, because he was too busy enjoying the pleasures of the cottage up nort’ on the weekends.
Mr. Mortician showed us an urn alternative, also for the river and lake lovers. Beer had nothing to do with this one, but the paper-making industry, which Wisconsin is famous for, did. The urn alternative was made of thick pressed paper. There was a bottom section that the ashes rested in, and a lid with a grotesquely ugly floral design painted on top. “You float it on the water, and it lasts just long enough for a quick speech and a short song!”
He told us about the unique urn of one of our prominent business owners: they put him in the first milk bottle that ever came off the line of the family dairy.
I was overwhelmed, and very glad my mother chose a traditional box for Dad’s ashes, rather than a paper float or a milk bottle. I am conservative by nature, and Appointment #1 was a total information overload.
The next day we had Appointment #2, which continued on in the tradition of Appointment #1. It started out in a subdued fashion, but then Mom started asking some questions about legal things. The funeral director was most helpful and knowledgeable, but the questions triggered an unfortunate train of thought in his mind.
“I suppose you read the bad press about me in the papers the last couple of days?” (This elicited mystified stares from us, concern creeping into my wrinkles, a slight negative shake of the head.)
He went on to tell us about his personal family woes, involving a very close relative who ran off with $$$$$$ from the funeral home because the bank did not check carefully into who could still sign checks on the family business and who could not. (It was part of an instructional comment on how to take care of bank business when death or divorce certificates were needed to prove authorization.) I felt very sorry for our undertaker, but he was messing with my stereotype expectations, and I was having trouble processing. I mumbled that it must be very hard for him. I think we had some role reversal going on for a moment or two. The comforter and the comfortees accidentally got switched.
I breathed a sigh of relief on our way out to the car. The funeral director came highly recommended by many people. I’m sure he did exactly whatever funeral directors are supposed to do these days, but, the stereotype expectations! What about my stereotype expectations? Maybe if we had gone to the __________ Family Funeral Home, now run by the (shhh!) Mafia family from Milwaukee, I would have gotten my penguin with the big eye circles who could float noiselessly across the carpet.
Stay in Touch, Mr. Bell
February 29, 2008
We are decidedly phone-challenged at our house. For years after everyone else had touch-tone phones, we still had our old rotary model on the kitchen wall. We had it so long after the rest of the world had pitched theirs, that one time a repairman doing some work for us needed to use it, and he had to ask how it worked. Although I am not very technically savvy, I would have thought the process was obvious, but perhaps there are some repairmen who are less techy than I am — which is scary in itself!
We finally kissed the old rotary goodbye when it got to the point where we couldn’t get through to businesses with automated systems anymore. For a long while, they had an option at the end of the “press 1, 2, or 3″ messages that said, “If you have a rotary phone, please stay on the line.” But eventually they abandoned the stay-on-the-line option, and just hung up on us.
I think we need to write our congressman and see if he can do anything about getting all phone manufacturers to standardize the way the equipment works. We’ll present it as a senior citizen issue. Maybe we can get AARP to enter the fray on our behalf.
It could even become the deciding factor in the presidential race! Mr. McCain, looking very grandfatherly, could do commercials saying that he understands how it is. He could tell about his own difficulties with technology, and promise every senior citizen in the country a standardized, easy-to-use, free telephone. Mr. Obama (the young whipper-snapper!) would not be able to relate in the slightest, and would lose that election hands-down.
But I digress.
My husband has a cell phone. As I have said in a previous blog, he has it, but he does not know how to answer it. He can call home just fine, but when I try to call him, I always get a computerized voice telling me that the user of this phone is unavailable. He’s not unavailable! He’s strolling the aisles of Menards or Home Depot! He’s either got the phone accidentally turned off, or else he can’t hear it ring. And he cannot figure out how to set up voice mail. (I probably wouldn’t know how, either, but that’s neither here nor there, because I’m the one picking on him, not vice versa.)
Paul’s cell phone is usually off when it should be on, and on when it should be off. This morning we were at a family funeral. In the middle of the church service, we were all treated to some music that was not part of the program — The Russian Dance from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. It went on for several seconds.
“Paul, is that your phone?”
He gave me an innocent, vigorous shake of the head that indicated, “Uh-Uh. Not me. I wouldn’t be doing that in church!”
I listened to it for several more seconds, and finally decided, since no one else was turning it off, that the dance music must be emanating from Paul’s pocket. (Besides, no one else in the whole world has Tchaikovsky as their ring tone.)
“Paul! It is TOO your phone!”
He decided I might know what I was talking about after all, and got it shut down before it finished playing the entire piece. It flowed rather nicely into How Great Thou Art, or whatever we sang next, but it’s good he got it stopped. Everybody knew the words to How Great Thou Art, but they didn’t know how to sing The Russian Dance.
Family Visits, Bathroom Takeovers
February 22, 2008
After a week’s visit, my older daughter and the grandkids went back to Pittsburgh. It’s always wonderful to see them, but I think we all breathe sighs of relief when we part company and go back to our own little routine again. We cry and we smile at the same time!
Our house is small, with no extra bedrooms, so when family comes to visit, our younger daughter must leave behind the luxury of her own room and bath, and take her nightly repose on the living room couch. This is somewhat inconvenient for all of us, especially when she waxes imperious in ordering the rest of us to bed when she feels it is time to get her beauty rest.
However, three of us all using the downstairs bathroom is the most traumatic part of the whole experience. Have you ever had to share your facilities with a teenage girl for a week? Our bathroom suddenly looks like the health and beauty aisle at Wal-Mart. I do not know why one small person should need so many products to keep herself looking lovely. When she moves in there is not a square inch for any of the rest of us to so much as store a toothbrush. There are skin cleansers here, oil-absorbing papers there, makeup to the left of me, hairspray to the right of me – and many other foreign objects too numerous and mystifying to describe. The shelf fills up and the residue spills onto the floor beneath. The tub holds whatever the shelf and floor cannot contain – and it is a mighty big overflow, let me tell you! We have to pick our way carefully along the narrow path from the door to the commode, if we want to avoid stepping on something. Even my older daughter, a beauty queen in her own right, wonders at the magnitude of it all.
Even worse than the clutter is the amount of time our teenager spends hogging the bathroom. Two-hour showers — I kid you not! Now, the hot water runs out after about the first half hour, but Beebee gets in some great cogitating time while waiting for it to heat up again. If she doesn’t eventually solve at least half the world’s problems, while waiting for phases two and three of her shower, it will all be a total waste, but I am hoping it will all bear fruit somewhere down the road.
There are times that the wait has been so extended that I have had difficulty remembering what it looks like in that bathroom. And woe betide to anyone who has not planned carefully to use the facilities before the teenager commences her toilette! The only solution is the gas station down the street.
