Good grief.  A hurricane hits the gulf coast, most likely thousands of people have died in a horrible way, millions are homeless, and what does the rest of the country freak out about?

 

Gasoline prices.

 

** Warning **  This blog post involves math.  If math makes you dizzy, you may want to lie down with a glass of wine before you continue reading.

Monday night Jay and I were in line at the grocery store when we heard someone on their cell phone say "the price is going up 19¢ tomorrow, so get all you can". Somehow we knew she was talking about gasoline.  We were down to about a third of our car’s tank, so we thought we might as well top off.  We stopped by our local station and ended up buying 10½ gallons at US$2.669.  It set us back $27.54.

The next morning, on our way to work, we saw that the price had risen 6¢ per gallon. Good, we thought, we saved 63¢ by not procrastinating.

And since Wisconsin has a law that prohibits a retailer from raising prices more than once in a twenty-four-hour period, we were relieved to think that maybe the 19¢ rumor was just that - a rumor.

Then on our way home, we saw that the price had gone up again - 13¢ per gallon more. It was now $2.859 per gallon.  That made me angry.  Not the price, but that the hike was blatantly illegal. But it was exactly what we had overheard the day before. Our timely purchase now had saved us $2.00.

 

I know some people will argue that $2.859 per gallon isn’t that expensive.  It equals 75½¢ per litre. Converted to British pounds, that's still only 42p per litre. When we were in England last fall, petrol was 85p per litre, equivalent to $1.53 per litre or $5.80 per gallon.  But it’s still costly.  I have to work 3 hours and 9 minutes to buy that ⅔ of a tank of gas.  If I made minimum wage, it would be 7 hours and 8 minutes.  Nearly an entire shift.

But back to my story.  Apparently, higher gasoline prices have a side effect:  it causes stupid people to get even stupider.  This morning, we started hearing horror stories about long lines and fights at gas stations; owners turning off the pumps while people were fueling and raising prices, then forcing the customers to pay the higher rate for their entire purchase (also illegal); and even stations that had run out of gasoline completely. And now there are rumors that prices may reach $3.50 per gallon before the weekend.

It's sick that oil companies are so greedy that prices are hiked on gasoline that has already been bought and paid for by the gas stations. And it’s sick that people are so obsessed with their cars that they think they’re a necessity of life – as crucial as oxygen - and wouldn't know how to survive without them. I know people that commute over 60 miles (96.5 kilometres) each day to work! (Jay and I drive less than that each week.)

 

Today’s Americans would have never survived World War II.  They would flip out if gas were rationed, as it was on a nationwide basis beginning December 1, 1942, and ending August 15, 1945.  Most Americans had an “A” classification, which allowed them four (4!) gallons a week.  Some got a “B”, and could buy about 8 gallons a week.  Only doctors and politicians could purchase more.  For a short time in 1943, rations were reduced further and all pleasure driving was outlawed.  Plus the speed limit was restricted to 35 mph.  If the US government tried that now, there would be mass rioting.

It's just a good thing Jay and I went to England last year. This year we'd have to sell some of our organs just to afford airfare.

 

I don’t know why, but I’ve been very forgetful today.  Again.

 

It started this morning when I got to work.  I was sitting here, checking my email and news, when the Receptionist called.

 

You would think, after three years of going up to the reception desk every Tuesday at 8:30 am during the center’s weekly staff meeting, it would become automatic.  But noooooo… today I completely zoned it out.

 

Then there were the mail runs where I would deliver half of the mail and leave the other half on the cart.  And then I forgot to distribute the Catholic Herald newspapers after lunch.  I’ve only been delivering them every Tuesday for the last five years.

 

Anyone looking for me today couldn’t count on my “Where is Linda?” sign.  I kept forgetting to change it every time I left the office.  I need to add a page that says “Out Looking for her Brain”.

 

It’s a good thing this forgetfulness didn’t start the moment I woke up this morning.  If it had, I can’t imagine what I’d look like now.  I’d have forgotten half my clothing.  Or forgotten to comb my hair, like the girl that I saw walking into a department store next to Jay’s work who looked like her cat horked up a giant hairball on her head while she slept.  Or I’d be running around work with floppy bunny slippers on.  I don’t know whose, because I don’t own a pair.  But I’d be wearing floppy bunny slippers.  Comfortable, but not exactly office casual.

 

I haven’t always been (nor am I always) this forgetful.  I never get lost.  I can remember all my homeroom teachers’ names, from kindergarten all the way through eighth grade.  If we had had homeroom in high school, I would remember those teachers’ names, too.  I can remember lyrics to songs by The Thompson Twins.  I can remember the humorous “alternate” lyrics we made up, too.

 

But in my youth I was a daydreamer.  Heck, I still am.  If I were a kid these days, they’d probably say I have Attention Deficit Disorder and drug me up to my eyeballs.  Back then, I just sat through school daydreaming about owning a horse, surviving a flood, or being a Monday Night Football announcer.  I wanted to replace Howard Cosell.  It sure was more interesting than multiplication tables.

 

Maybe I should stop at the grocery store tonight and find some brain food.  There must be something that’s yummy and healthy and will keep me from leaving my brain on the bathroom counter after I wash my hands.  Except I can’t remember what foods are supposed to be good for your memory.  Spinach, I think, and coffee, and carrots.  No, carrots are good for the eyesight.  Maybe it was blueberries.  Yeah, blueberries.  With a side of vanilla ice cream.

 

But I think I’ll go straight home.  If I go to the store, you know what will happen.

 

Yup.  I’ll forget where in the parking lot I left the car.

 

I have been seriously lying down on the job.  Slacking, or as we called it in college, “sloffing off”.  If I neglect it any longer, they’ll revoke my title of “knitter”.

 

Summer is the hardest time to knit.  When it’s 95º out and the humidity is in the Turkish Bath range, the last thing I want to have plopped in my lap is a big ol’ pile of wool.  Or cotton, or acrylic, or any permutation thereof.  Even the cutest pattern for itty-bitty baby booties doesn’t spur me to pick up the needles.  The stash gatherest dust.  Or it would, if it weren’t in those big clear plastic stash bags.

 

Strangely enough, Mother Nature has given us a break.  I don’t know if it’s due to her ongoing battle with Alzheimer’s, but for the last week or so, it’s actually been cool out.  Highs have been in the low seventies, lows in the fifties.  Perfect weather.  Well, except for one week ago, when we had the 28 tornados.

 

I’m so close, achingly close, to diving into my stash of yarn and starting a project.  Even though I have three other things currently in progress, I feel the urge to start something new.  Something fabulous.  Something everyone will drool over.

 

I’ve been preparing myself for the awesome new project by starting the same hat seven times.  I’ve tried it with three different yarns, two different sizes of needles, and six different stitch gauges.  Yesterday evening it was nearly perfect when I decided that I hated it.  I frogged the whole thing and wound the yarn into a ball.  I was watching Chelsea mouthing off to Hope (and Hope seeing right through her) and I had a lap full of Wool Ease Sport.  And I had to go potty.

 

Jay just sat at the computer and shook his head.  He probably thought the hat was for me.  It wasn’t.  I’ve already knit myself a dozen or more hats.  Berets, long pointy ski hats, toques, roll brims, felted Amish style; I’ve got at least one of each.  You’d think I was a hydra with all the hats I have.

 

I found a great sleeveless hoodie pattern online today.  I have to take it home and introduce it to my stash.  Hopefully, one of the yarns will form a life-long attachment to it.  I’m not optimistic, though.  Even if I set a romantic mood, with candles and soft music, fiber love may not happen.  I have so many single patterns and single types of yarn that my work area looks like a failed fiber dating service.

 

But I keep inviting more singles to join the club.  Last weekend, Wally World had Red Heart Pounders in new, bright colors.  Aqua and lime and tangerine and watermelon.  And for some strange reason (maybe my brain has finally succumbed to the ever-present visual assault), I didn’t automatically think, “Who barfed fruit salad on the yarn?”  I found a fun navy-blue-purple-hot pink ombre and a pretty aqua-lime ombre and when I got home I found them in my back seat.  They’d hitched a ride.  Jay doesn’t know about them yet.  Whoops.  He reads this.  I guess he knows now.

 

With those tempting treats tucked behind the sofa, there must be something I can knit.  Before Indian Summer arrives, and it’s 95º again.  Before the heat and humidity threaten to turn all the Wisconsin cheeseheads into fondue-heads.

 

Maybe a few candles and some Michael Bolton music will help.

 

I’m feeling a bit old today.  Not physically; I have as much energy as I normally do.  I feel old mentally.  I feel old because Beloit College came out with this year’s Mindset List.

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this list, it’s made up of things to help college professors get an idea of what’s “normal” for this year’s college freshmen.  Things like “Tom Landry never coached the Cowboys”.  “They never saw a Howard Johnson's with 28 ice cream flavors”.  And “they never saw Pat Sajak or Arsenio Hall host a late night television show” (but then 99% of America never saw Pat Sajak host a late night television show).

 

Beloit College has only been doing their Mindset List for the last seven years.  I’ve always wondered what would have been on it if they had done one for my college freshman class back in 1984.  I bet it would have been strange to read it today.  Things have changed so much in the last twenty-one years.

 

You don’t believe me?  Keep reading.

 

This year’s college freshmen don’t remember when "cut and paste" involved scissors.  When I was a college freshman, “cut and paste” usually meant someone in the room was eating the paste.

 

For them, condoms have always been advertised on television.  For us, condoms were called “rubbers”, and if you mentioned them in public it was majorly embarrassing.

 

For them, Starbucks has always been around the corner.  For us, coffee was made by taking the grounds out of a tin can and putting them in the basket of the coffee pot, filling it with water, plugging it in, and watching the coffee percolate through the clear knob on the top.

 

They learned to count with Lotus 1-2-3.   We learned to count with Sesame Street’s “The Count” (bwah-ha-ha).

 

They had the fun of riding the back of a minivan with six others.  We had the fun of riding in the back of a station wagon with six others – without seat belts!

 

To them, the Starship Enterprise has always looked dated.  To us, it looked like the coolest ship in the universe!

 

They missed the oat bran diet craze.  We snitched our mothers’ “Ayds” diet chocolate candies.

 

For them, judicial appointments routinely have been "Borked."  For us, “bork” was something the Muppets’ Swedish Chef said.

 

For them, TV networks have always had cable partners.  For us, “cable” was what when from the back of the TV to the antenna on the roof.  And we had to change the channels by hand!

 

For them, reindeer at Christmas have always distinguished between secular and religious decorations.  For us, singing “Silent Night” at the school Christmas concert was a normal thing.  And it was called a Christmas concert, not a Holiday concert.

 

For them, Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.  For us, Rock Hudson and Freddie Mercury had always been alive and straight.

 

For them, Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker have never preached on television.  For us, the names Jessica Hahn, Donna Rice, and Fawn Hall would be forever linked with scandal.

 

For them, "Whatever" is not part of a question but an expression of sullen rebuke.  For us, “Whatever” is what we say when we can’t understand a word today’s college freshmen are saying.

 

And that’s just the beginning.

 

I guess I shouldn’t wonder why I have gray hair.

 

I should wonder what color to dye it this week.

 

 

Ya’ll will have to excuse me if I seem a little distracted this week.  You see, I am sitting in the middle of Grand Central Station.  Well, maybe not quite that busy.  I have been to Grand Central Station during the morning commute, when there’s one train (or more!) arriving every minute.  I don’t know how all those people get where they’re going without trampling each other.

 

Imagine if Grand Central were magically transported into a giant field in the middle of Minnesota.  Kind of like Mankato.  That would be the hallway outside my office.

 

The reason that traffic has increased to a whopping ten people per hour (approximately), up from one per hour, is that the shipping entrance has become the temporary main entrance.  The regular main entrance (also known as the “front door”) is being blocked this week while the front steps are being replaced.  They’re hoping it will be done in four days.  We’ll see where they are on Halloween.

 

The reason they need to replace the front steps (and the back steps, too, but that’s next week) is that the geniuses that built this place forty-odd years ago decided to use natural stone instead of concrete.  But no marble or granite for them, oh, no.  For steps, something that millions of feet will be treading on for centuries to come, they decided to use sandstone.

 

So after a mere four decades of use, the steps were disintegrating so drastically that the building administration decided to have a contractor come in and apply this sealant to them.  Apparently the guy who sold them on this “treatment” must have had a history in the used car business, because the sealant lasted about as long as a 1986 Yugo.  Two coats of this white, spackle-like substance still didn’t keep the steps from crumbling.  It just looked like someone had spilled a million little bottles of white-out on the ground.

 

So there are barrels and caution tape and sawhorses and signs blocking the front entrance, and three grimy men with various stoneworking tools demolishing the steps.  Being sandstone, it isn’t taking much.  Most of it came up when they wedged the little bobcat’s forklift attachment under each layer of stone.  The rest got jackhammered.  Now the front landing is so full of sand and bits of stone that it looks like the litterbox for a giant cat.

 

Fortunately, most of the jackhammering has gone on when I am not covering the Receptionist’s breaks.  They seem to coincide with the construction workers’ breaks, so I am spared the risk of deafness from the racket.  Unfortunately, I am not spared the complaints of the Receptionist.  Sheesh, from the racket she makes, you’d expect they’d turned the front landing into a bombing range.

 

They’re supposed to finish cleaning off the old stone tomorrow.  On Thursday, they’ll pour the new steps.  At that point, the major frustration will be the fight with the temptation to run out and put my handprint in the wet cement.  Or my initials.  Or a heart with “LL + JD” in the middle.

 

I hope they do.  Having these hoards of people using the hallway outside my office as the main entrance to the building is really getting annoying.  I worry that while I’m out delivering mail someone will come poking around my desk and steal my purse.  And my gummy life savers.

 

They better not.  If I catch them, they’ll pay.

 

Nobody touches my gummy life savers.

 

 

How weird is it to see your hometown on national broadcast TV?  Mt. Horeb, in all its mustardy, troll-y glory.  Really, thoroughly, truly, genuinely, sincerely, exceedingly, especially weird.

 

There I was, plopped on the couch, watching 200 of my former fellow Mt. Horebites “competing” on My Kind Of Town.  Yes, I was watching television on a Sunday night.  In summer.  And it wasn’t football.  This is not normal.

 

As far as summer filler shows go, My Kind Of Town isn’t exactly Emmy material.  They call it part reality show, part game show, part sketch comedy.  It’s more like something someone at ABC must have dreamed up after listening to A Flock Of Seagulls at top volume and drinking one too many glasses of chardonnay at their twentieth high school reunion.

 

ABC Chick:  “Dang, I gotta come up with something to fill an hour on Sunday nights this August, or I’m looking at cardboard-box-ville.”

 

ABC Chick’s Best Friend From High School:  “What?”

 

ABC Chick:  “I can’t decide if I want to pitch a quiz show, a reality show, or a comedy sketch show.”

 

ABC Chick’s BFFHS:  “What?”

 

ABC Chick:  “It’s gotta be something that Middle America is gonna eat up.”

 

ABC Chick’s BFFHS:  “Where?”

 

ABC Chick:  (Looks around the Peoria Country Club Lakeside Room) “I think I may have an idea…”

 

ABC Chick’s BFFHS:  “Yeah, I miss Jerry Garcia too.”

 

So ABC picked 200 Mt. Horebites and put them on a plane and flew them to New York City, taped a show, stuffed them back on another plane, and flew them home, all in 18 hours.  And a week later, they aired the show on national TV.

 

Only about thirty of the 200 actually got to participate.  The rest mainly chanted and clapped and cheered as the others “played” some games.  I say “played” because it was so obvious that the whole thing was fixed.  I guess ABC didn’t want to get a whole village pissed off at them.  They wouldn’t want their ratings to fall behind the WB’s.

 

I, like everyone else from Mt. Horeb, was worried that they’d edit the tape to make everyone look like a bunch of backwards, idiotic losers.  Fortunately, they only did that to the guy who wanted to win a pair of red leather pants with yellow lightning bolts down the sides.  Hey, he asked for it.

 

I was also worried that they’d only choose people who had moved to Mt. Horeb within the last ten years.  You know the type – yuppie incomers who don’t have any appreciation for the history of the village.  Jerks with jobs in Madison and egos to match.  But I actually knew four of the “contestants”.  Three went to high school with me.  I recognized the name and face of the fourth, but can’t quite place how I know her.  I think she cuts my Mom’s hair.

 

So, ABC, you did okay.  But it’s still bizarre to see my hometown on TV.  Trolls and all.

 

 

Stoughton (STŌ-tәn) Wisconsin, that is.  The last two days haven’t been the happiest for this Madison area town.  It really is enough to make you think that God has it in for them.

 

Wednesday, the big Lutheran church in town, and its school, burned to the ground.  All that was left was the brick façade and some stained glass windows.  Fortunately no one was hurt, but it was a big loss to the community.

 

A story about it is here:

http://www.madison.com/archives/read.php?ref=tct:2005:08:17:486318:FRONT

 

Then, yesterday evening (we’re talkin’ the very next day here) a series of tornados ripped through parts of the city and turned it into tinker toy disasterland.  Houses were smashed, cars flipped, and trees sharpened like pencils.

 

Here are some photos:

http://www.madison.com/tct/photos/local/index.php?ntid=51099.

 

Stoughton isn’t that big a place.  Its population is about 12,500.  Stoughtoners are proud of their Norwegian heritage.  It has your average mix of older and newer homes in all price ranges.  Many of the homes that were destroyed sat on a golf course, so they weren’t exactly mobile homes.  Except for during the tornado, of course.

 

And now I hear that, less than twenty-four hours later, people have been looting.

 

It makes you wonder who is looting.  Are the poverty-stricken of Madison piling into their ’83 Monte Carlos and chugging down Highway 51 to avail themselves of the pickings?  It’s bad enough that the local police have locked down the city.  Residents can get wristbands, but even with them aren’t being allowed back into their neighborhoods.  They’ve even kicked the media out.

 

There are more storms predicted for tonight.  Some of the weather forecasters are saying that tonight’s storms could be worse than yesterday’s.  How you can get worse than 26 twisters in less than fourteen hours over a seven-county area, I don’t want to know.

 

If I’m not here Monday, you’ll probably find me hanging with the flying monkeys.

 

There’s no place like home…

 

There’s no place like home…

 

 

…there was a girl who worked for one company but at another.  The company where she worked had a bit of a problem with communication.  Apparently the employees were supposed to guess, or use their psychic powers, or drag out their Ouija boards whenever they wanted to know what was going on.

 

It got so bad that the workers began to spend their lunch hours griping to each other about how bad the communication was.  They still didn’t know what was going on, but at least they knew that everyone else was in the same dark closet they were.

 

Several people at this company received copies of the local newspaper at work.  The girl delivered some of them, and knew who received the others.  One of the recipients moved, and another subscription was transferred to another department.  This was all well and good until the Customer Service Gremlins at the local newspaper’s circulation office started wreaking that particular kind of havoc that only Customer Service Gremlins do so well.

 

Suddenly, the number of papers that arrived each day varied as wildly as the stock market.  The recipients, of course, all wanted their papers.  They didn’t appreciate the first-come-first-served approach it seemed to take to get a paper.  And no one knew why it was happening or who was responsible.  They just all blamed the mailroom girl.

 

Until one day, a man asked the girl a question.  It was a seemingly innocent question.  But it finally explained the how the newspaper debàcle started.

 

A conversation ensued.  Another conversation followed that one.  And swiftly the whole situation was clarified.

 

The girl was relieved to have settled this mess once and for all.  So, remembering the lunch-hour bitchfests, she crafted a clearly worded email explaining what had happened, and sent it off to all of the newspaper recipients, the worker responsible for paying the bill, and the building administrator.  Then she sighed in relief.

 

Then her phone rang.  It was the building administrator, chewing her out (gently, thank goodness) because the worker responsible for paying the bill didn’t think it was appropriate to send those concerned that email.  Reprimanding her for communicating.  Like the list of people who receive the newspaper is a state secret.  Like there will be police stings and public scandal and mass hysteria if more than three people know who gets the damn newspaper.

 

Good grief.

 

The girl considered dusting the worker-responsible-for-paying-the-bill’s mail with Valium.

 

But she just blogged it instead.

 

 

They say you should learn something new every day.  I don’t know who “they” are, but I know they’re right.  Not only does it help ward off the onset of Alzheimer’s, but it makes for some funny moments.

 

Today I learned a few things.  I feel like I’m ahead of the curve.  I’m banking learning for those days when I might learn nothing new at all.  You know, like Sundays, when I spend most of the day asleep.

 

** WARNING ** Some of the things I learned today are not appropriate for small children, the elderly, and Catholics (or other easily offended groups).  Consider your wussy selves warned.

 

Today, I learned that you shouldn’t promise someone that you can get 250 hand-folded-and-stapled booklets done in less than 24 hours.  Especially when sixteen of those hours are spent away from work.  And another is spent writing a blog entry.

 

Today, I learned that you can use TerraServer online to find things that aren’t on MapQuest.  Maps can have mistakes on them.  It’s kind of hard to screw up an aerial photograph.  Unless the government Photoshops them to hide secret military bases… but that’s another issue.

 

Today, I learned that all I have to do is take food outside and every bee in a tri-state area will be attracted to me.  Apparently, there is a new breed of bee here.  It’s a German bee.  I tried to get them to leave me alone, but I don’t know how to say “buzz off” in German.  They kept harassing me, even though my co-workers had fruit salad, blueberries, and sugary soda.  They wanted my leftover Outback sirloin steak.  I don’t blame them.  It was delicious.

 

Today, I learned that quickest way to have a bunch of people hand you scads of mail right at the end of the workday is to start your final collection rounds ten minutes early, so they have to chase you down the hallway with their last-minute mail.

 

Today, I learned that you should not offer to let the maintenance guys store their extra urinal blocks on the shelves in your workroom.  Unless you don’t want to breathe.  Urf.

 

Today, I learned that you never, ever, ever step outside your door unless you are fully dressed and in possession of your keys.  This applies to your house, your office, and most definitely your hotel room.  If you think I’m kidding, read about Stephanie’s incident in Edmonton at http://www.yarnharlot.ca/blog/archives/2005/08/09/there_is_the_downside.html.

 

Today, I learned that you need to clean your desk more than twice a year.  Otherwise you end up with the Leaning Tower of Paperwork-that-needs-to-be-filed.  Then you try to extract something from three-quarters of the way down the pile, and your workstation ends up looking like Tokyo after Godzilla came through.

 

Today, I learned that nothing can’t be improved by taking a really big crap.  Everything works better after an inordinately large amount of poop has exited one’s body.  Clothes fit better, patience comes more easily, and even the flowers smell better.  I think it’s because they’re not competing with another smell.

 

But the strangest thing I learned today is that Catholics can be excommunicated for having or assisting in an abortion if they know that they can be excommunicated for having or assisting in an abortion.

 

Well, that’s all for today.  I wonder what odd things I’ll learn tomorrow.

 

School's out!

 

 

One of the reasons I started writing this blog was to get back into the practice of writing.  One of my inspirations is Donna Andrews, the authoress of nine books (and two more in progress!) and winner of the 1998 St. Martin's Press/Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Contest.  I figured if a self-confessed “nerd” like her can crank out such enjoyable and original works as Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos and We’ll Always Have Parrots, then I can certainly extract something out of this twisted mess I call a brain.  Especially with Jay’s help.

 

I’ve actually found it fairly easy to tap out five, six, or seven hundred words a day, five days a week.  Surprisingly easy, considering how torturous it was back in junior high to complete a simple one-page essay.  How I used to panic and cry whenever I saw that big, blank page and knew that I had to fill it from top to bottom with words.  It was almost as bad as being picked last for softball in gym class.

 

I have decided on a subject for my future best-seller, and now that I’m starting to get some of the specifics down on paper, I’m realizing that my ten-year-old self was pretty oblivious to a lot of the details of the Ice Storm of 1976.  I need to do some research.  I need to do a lot of research.

 

So I started looking for some of the information I need.  I started with the Internet, my favorite research tool.  And I ran into a brick wall.  You know the one.  It’s the wall graffiti’ed with “History starts in 1996” on it.  Problem is, I need information twenty years prior to that.

 

My friendly neighborhood library website has a contact page, so that’s where I went next.  I filled out a form requesting advice on how to obtain access to old newspaper articles.  The form said I’d get a response by the end of the next business day.  That was Friday, and I haven’t heard anything from them yet.  You think after all of the overdue fees I’ve paid, I could get a little service.

 

Since I always go to the library every Saturday morning, I tried to find some more information while I was there.  Nada.  It’s probably on microfilm, in a subterranean bunker, and you need the super-secret password to get past the archivist guarding the door.  I bet her name is Gertrude, and she wears her hair in a severe bun and has a shady past involving an escape to Venezuela in 1945.

 

I wasn’t going to give up, so I leafed through the latest copy of Writer’s Digest.  I figured that if I couldn’t start at the beginning, I’d start at the end.  WD had some articles on self-publishing, and since I have zero confidence in getting an agent, publisher, or even my mother to read my book, I could at least investigate publishing the thing myself.  Dumb idea.  It’s not that I don’t have the money (well, I don’t, but that’s beside the point), it’s that self-publishing is a lot more complicated than I thought.  Copyright issues, first rights, bookseller discounts, returnability; throw in the need for press kits (what am I going to put in a press kit?  Um, here’s a picture of me that I was too embarrassed to put on the dust jacket, and that?  It’s a slightly smooshed Twinkie.  Just in case you get hungry or something.) and 200 to 300 reviewer’s copies (200-300?  There are that many people out there who get paid to sit around and read books?  And do I really want that many people telling me I suck?).  Urf.  The legal details alone are enough to make me feel like I just rode the Zipper a dozen times in a row after one too many corn dogs.

 

So before I could convince myself that writing a book was a crazy waste of time, and did I really think I could do it, and did I really want 500 copies of my book in one of those budget clearance bookstores that pop up in empty storefronts and sell everything for under $3.00, I gingerly placed the magazine back on the shelf, scrubbed my hands on my jeans to remove any remnants of bad mojo, and checked out a copy of Chicken Soup for the Writer’s Soul.  I hadn’t even started chapter one, and I already needed some serious encouragement.  Who knew that the trail from idea to hardcover was so fraught with danger?

 

Donna makes it look so easy.  But then, her stories have parrots.  And flamingos.

 

I just have a bunch of big, blank pages to fill with words.

 

And that’s the easy part.

 

 

There are days that frazzle me, days that exasperate me, days I want to tear my hair out.  They’re caused by lazy co-workers, stupid customers, bad weather, cramps, or burning the breakfast cereal.  On days like this, when the most optimistic thing I can think of is choosing my own coffin, there is only one thing that can make me feel better.

 

Chocolate.

 

Vast amounts of chocolate.  Nibbles are nothing.  Bars will barely suffice.  I’m talking heaps of Hersheys, masses of M&M/Mars, carloads of Cadbury; chocolate as high and wide and far as the eye can see.  Like the perennial favorite I Love Lucy episode, I need a conveyer belt of bonbons rolling right past me.  Except I want to control the speed.  And lose the studio audience.

 

I think if I did nothing for the next 48 hours but eat, drink, and breathe chocolate, then I might – just might – feel better.  Maybe I could find the chocolate river from the Willy Wonka movie and divert that sucker right through my living room.  Or invent a chocolate bong.  All I know is there is not enough chocolate in my life right now.  And that has to change.

 

It’s not enough to buy a sackload of Snickers and survive until Saturday.  I know there can be other ways to enjoy the lusciousness that is chocolate.  Because I have invented them.  Okay, maybe I don’t have working models and PR kits and a business plan, but I have some ideas.

 

Like chocolate gasoline – will that be white, milk, or dark chocolate for your tank today?  As expensive as regular gasoline is getting, we might as well use a bit of Hersheys in the Hummer.  Now that would be a hybrid auto!

 

Or ideas to get more chocolate into the office.  Just think how wonderful it could be if everyday office supplies were chocolatized.  Like chocolate printer ink and toner.  No longer would copies be black-and-white.  They’d be brown-and-white.  Put it on rice-based paper, and after you’ve read your memo you could eat it.  It would taste just like a Nestlés Crunch. And no more gross-tasting envelope flap glue.  It would be chocolate.  Get that perfected and everyone will want to send out bulk mailings, and receive them, too!

 

And how many of us chew on a pencil to aid our thought processes?  We don’t actually write with them – not in the computer age – but we gnaw at them and suck on the erasers until they’re mangled to a pulp.  But if they were chocolate pencils… with a marshmallow eraser and a hazelnut “lead”?  Yum.

 

What should I invent next?  How about personal care items that can be enhanced by the addition of chocolate?  Not just body lotions or lip gloss, either; too easy.  What we need are chocolate-scented deodorants!  Chocolate-scented Breathe-Right nasal strips!  And for the Olympian in all of us, chocolate athlete’s foot spray.  Wouldn’t that make you jump for joy?  Or at least jump for Almond Joy?

 

There are literally millions of products that could be enhanced with chocolate.  A little human ingenuity and a lot of product testing, and chocolate could make the world go ‘round.

 

Wait a minute.

 

The more things that are chocolate, the less chocolate for me.

 

Whoops.  I guess that backfired.

 

Although, if that backfire came from a chocolate-hybrid car…

 

Yum.

 

 

Today is a very special day.  Forty-three years ago, in an Army hospital in Okinawa, Japan, in the middle of a typhoon, a very special person came into the world.  His name is Jay Derks.  Today is his birthday.

 

How do you wish a Happy Birthday to the person who means more to you than anyone else on the planet?  I’ve thought and thought, but no good plan is coming to mind.  I considered balloons and cake and candles and streamers and confetti and those neat little noisemakers that unroll when you blow into them.  I considered steak and wine and romantic music.  I considered answering the door in a French maid outfit, but since he’s at home and I’m at work, unless he wore the maid outfit (and I don’t think there’s a chance in hell that he will) that one is out.

 

I did some little things for him today, like changing the screen saver on our computer to “marquee” and having it read “Happy Birthday, Jay!! I Love You!!!”.  I started a birthday thread on a message board we both belong to.  I sent him a Hallmark e-card.  I have a gift for him when I get home.  But I want to do more.  I want to do something that tells him that he’s the greatest.  I want him to have a Mega Super Ultra Fantastic Happy Birthday!

 

I have to do this, because Jay is feeling really really old today.  He’s 43.  I keep telling him that is not old, but he doesn’t believe me.  I give him examples of old.  Examples that prove he can’t possibly be as ancient as he thinks.  Things like:

 

Old is when you throw your back out while clipping your toenails.

Old is when you remember babysitting for George Burns.

Old is when you mistake your rice cake for a coaster.

Old is when you forget where you put your glasses, and they’re on top of your head.

Old is when you forget where you put your hair, and it’s on the top of your head.

Old is when you have to run everything through the food processor before you eat it.

Old is when you start every phone conversation with “I was at the Doctor’s the other day…”

Old is when you’ve got more wrinkles than a shar-pei.

Old is when you spend more time sitting on the can than at the computer.

Old is when you put the computer desk in front of the can.

Old is when you drive a Buick.

Old is when they automatically give you the senior discount without asking for ID.

Old is when you listened to Mozart as a baby… Live in concert.

Old is when you turned in your homework by taking your teacher to see your cave wall.

Old is when you have a ticket stub from your passage on Noah’s ark.  The boat, not the water park.

Old is old… it is NOT YOU, JAY!!!!!

 

So, my sweetheart, you are not old.  You are the age you are right now, and that is just right. 

 

Happy Birthday.

 

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxox

 

 

I, like just about every other teenage girl in America, was crazy about the band Duran Duran.  Simon LeBon, John, Roger, and Andy Taylor, and Nick Rhodes were our fab five.  We all had our favorite.  Mine was John – what is it with me and this fascination with bass players?  We all knew the Taylors weren’t related, the band was named after a character in the movie Barbarella, and the original video for “Girls on Film” was banned by the BBC and only shown on MTV with the nude girls edited out.

 

In 1983, Duran Duran released Seven and the Ragged Tiger.  We didn’t care that the title made no sense, unless you added Siegfried and Roy and their menagerie to the five band members.  We also didn’t care that the lyrics made no sense.  We weren’t singing along.  We were fantasizing about what it would be like to be kissed by Nick.  Or wondering what Andy’s original hair color really was.

 

But, back to the lyrics.  Charlie FM has been playing a lot of Duran Duran lately.  In the ‘80s, the lyrics on Seven and the Ragged Tiger were referred to as “existentialist mumbo-jumbo”.  I think that the band had become so popular that they thought Hey, I bet we could sing any old shite and the girls would still scream and throw their undergarments at us.  So they did.

 

You don’t believe me?  Look at the following.

 

“Union Of The Snake” chorus:

The Union of the Snake is on the climb
Moving up it's gonna race it's gonna break
Through the borderline

 

“The Reflex” chorus:

 

The reflex is an only child he's waiting in the park
The reflex is in charge of finding treasure in the dark
And watching over lucky clover isn't that bizarre
Every little thing the reflex does
Leaves you answered with a question mark

 

 

“New Moon On Monday”, first four lines:

Shake up the picture the lizard mixture
With your dance on the eventide
You got me coming up with answers
All of which I deny

 

Now, the reason these lyrics make no sense at all could be due to the fact that they were written in the south of France, Monserrat, and Australia.  Sunstroke, perhaps?  Or a little too much vino?

 

Or maybe a brain injury from being whacked in the head by too many pairs of girls’ panties.

 

 

Jay called me this morning.  He tries to call every morning, just to see how my day is going, and to vent if his is rotten.  I knew something was wrong the moment I heard that the-world-is-coming-to-an-end tone in his voice.

 

Me:  “Service Center, this is Linda.”

 

Jay:  “Hi, Sweetie…”

 

I can almost see the miniature skull-and-crossbones-shaped clouds of doom floating around Jay’s head.  Even though he is a mile and a half away.  And I have my back to him.

 

Jay:  “How’s your day going?”

 

Me:  “Not too badly… how about you?”

 

Jay:  “Well, I’m kicking myself for forgetting something today.”

 

Now, I usually remember to do an oral checklist as we are going out the door each morning.  For me, it’s keys, pager, purse, knitting, lunch, smokes, and sunglasses (whether it’s sunny or not).  Jay’s list is more varied, but usually includes his PDA, wallet, glasses, and keys.  But this morning I forgot.  Maybe it was because I’d only had three and a half hours of sleep, because I had to finish the latest Elizabeth George mystery, because I’d seen a snippet of it on PBS and had to know what happened to Lynley’s wife.  So I had no idea what he had forgotten.

 

Me:  “What did you forget?”

 

Jay:  “Money.  I have absolutely no money.  No money for snacks.”

 

There is a reason Jay never has any money.  He has Teflon hands.  A naturally occurring non-stick surface.  Money can’t stay in his fists any longer than muffins can stay in those SmartWare flexible pans they sell on TV.

 

Me:  “Oh.”  Is that all?

 

Jay:  “Yeah.  Good thing I brought an extra Pepsi.  And I found some pizza rolls I left in the breakroom freezer last week.  So I’ll be okay.”

 

Me:  “Or you could sell a Max Assurance.”

 

Jay’s Store Manager, David, bought big bags of limited edition candy bars last week as performance incentives.  Like dark chocolate coated Twix bars.  Sell a Max Assurance Plan (i.e. replacement warranty or extended service warranty), or get three add-ons to a sale (paper, ink, and cleaning kit to go with a printer, for example), etc. etc. and get a candy bar.

 

Jay:  “I never thought of that.”

 

Me:  “Yeah, and if people are undecided about the plan, you can get on your knees and say ‘Please, Mister, Please, you have to buy a Max Assurance.  Look at me… I’m starving!  I’m so thin!  If you buy one, then I can eat!   Please!  I’m hungry!’”

 

Jay:  * hysterical laughter *

 

Me:  “Hey, it would work.  You are really thin.  You could get down on your knees and make sad puppy eyes at them.  I bet you’d have six candy bars by lunch.”

 

Jay:  * more hysterical laughter *

 

Me:  “I can see it… Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeease!  I’m hungryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!  We could train all the sales staff to use it.”

 

Jay:  “I don’t think so.”

 

Me:  “Well, maybe not.  But it sounded like a good idea.”

 

When we ended the phone call, he was still laughing.  It was nice to know I’d turned his skull-and-crossbones clouds of doom into little smiley faces.

 

Until he called me just now, after getting home from work.

 

Turns out he did sell a Max Assurance today.  And he forgot to get a candy bar.

 

I hope the desperate hunger didn’t affect his brain.

 

 

I know, I know.  Top ten lists are the blogger’s version of fast food – satisfying, cheap, and not a lot of work.  But there are some days when you have short thoughts that, no matter how you try, you can’t expound upon enough to make a decent blog entry.  So, with apologies to David Letterman, here’s today’s topic.

 

Top 10 Reasons It Sucks to be a Woman

 

10.)  Really annoying to use the toilet when wearing a one-piece bathing suit.

9.)   No-one advertises free birth control pills, only free Viagra.

8.)   Getting caught in a downpour while wearing pantyhose.

7.)   Too many places on body that need frequent shaving.

6.)   PMS.

5.)   Always seem to be second in line for the TV remote.

4.)   Everything makes your butt look big.

3.)   Can’t legally go topless in public on really hot days.

2.)   Most bras hook in the back (What “genius” came up with that, by the way???).

1.)   After years of hard work and sacrifice to be respected and admired for our intelligence and class, the world gives us Jessica Simpson. (“Hi!  I’m stoopid!  Isn’t that cute?”).

 

But, you know, now that I think of it, being a woman isn’t all bad.  So, to add some positive thoughts to the above griping, here are:

 

Top 10 Reasons It’s Kinda Cool to be a Woman

 

10.)  Can wear pretty much all men’s clothing without risk of being thought of as a weird cross-dresser.

9.)   Can blame overindulgence in chocolate on PMS.

8.)   Can carry a purse.

7.)   Don’t have to get a haircut every three weeks.

6.)   Not necessary to grow moustache and buy little red sports car during midlife crisis.

5.)   You cried at the end of Titanic, too?  Nothing to be embarrassed about.

4.)   Can buy tampons without the cashier looking at you weird.

3.)   Ever see a guy in capri pants?

2.)   There’s always an excuse to take at least one day off a month

1.)   Limitless supply and variety of gorgeous shoes.

 

I guess in the end, it all balances out.

 

Now, back to my evil plot to rid the world of Jessica Simpson.

 

(Just kidding.)

 

 

Very few people have ever heard of my hometown.  Fewer have been there.  When I was growing up, the population was a measly 2402.  This didn’t include me, as I actually grew up in the country.  It wasn’t nowhere, but you could see it from there.

 

There weren’t a lot of reasons for anyone to come to my hometown in the ‘70s.  Cave of the Mounds and Little Norway were the closest tourist attractions, but even they were three miles out of town.  Anything we could buy there, we could find in Madison for half the price.  Even though the highway went right through town, with gas at fifty-odd cents a gallon most people would drive the seventeen miles into “the city” and make a day out of shopping there.  We’d hit K-mart and Prange Way in the morning, lunch at Mickey D’s or Mars (remember build-your-own-Mars-burgers?), and spend the afternoon at Westgate Mall where, among other things, we’d try on oxfords at Ragatz shoes and see if we could make their myna bird say “Hi, Joe”.

 

When the highway bypass around my hometown was being completed in 1984, the village board decided that they’d better do something to entice visitors.  They were worried that travelers wouldn’t visit the village, since the city was now only fifteen minutes further down the highway.  There wasn’t really anything famous in town except for the Open House Imports’ troll.  For many years, this importer of Norwegian goods had a two-foot-tall carved troll that they placed outside on a platform when they were open.  It was the object of many tourist snapshots, so the board decided to adopt the troll as the village mascot.  Thus was born the “Trollway”.

 

Billboards were placed at the exits on each end of town to lure drivers to “take the Trollway” into town.  The local diner and bakery, the antique shops, and other merchants put out signs visible from the highway.  And the village recruited the high school wood shop students to make trolls.

 

The first trolls on the Trollway weren’t the evolved masterpieces you see today.  No, they were kind of a Neanderthal attempt to make trolls.  They started with pieces of plywood.  The outline of the characters were traced on and cut out with a jigsaw.  Then the cartoon-like trolls were painted.  The end results were two-dimensional Smurf-ish things that were put up all around town.  They’d be hanging from trees, peeking from behind signposts, and perching in bushes.  I think they probably scared more children than attracted tourists.  They were ugly, amateur, and utterly embarrassing.

 

Eventually, those Cro-Magnon trolls were replaced by the intricately carved ones you see today.  Even so, when I say “I’m from Mount Horeb, Wisconsin… you know, where they have those trolls”, the light bulb above people’s heads refuses to go on.  What does get the juice flowing, however, is mustard.

 

Particularly, the Mount Horeb Mustard Museum (http://www.mustardmuseum.com), owned and operated by Barry Levenson.  Wherever mustard is being discussed, the Mustard Museum always comes up, and everyone seems to have heard of it.  Founded in 1992, there are over 4,100 different types of mustard from all over the world in the museum, and many domestic and imported mustards to buy in the gift shop half of the building.

 

Jay and I spent some time in Mount Horeb last Saturday for National Mustard Day.  They actually block off Main Street (the Trollway!  Really! ) and have live music, free hot dogs, mustard custard, and the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile.  We arrived late.  We missed the hot dogs and mustard custard.  We spent over $17.00 on mustard.  We bought some Mucky Duck British pub style mustard, some Slimm & Nunne Maple Peppercorn mustard, two mini-sized Slimm & Nunne Sweet & Nicely Hot mustards, and a mini-size Whole Grain mustard that’ll burn your nose hairs off if you take too deep a whiff of it.  And just in case you’re starting to think that we’re daft, the couple ahead of us in line spent over $75.00.  They must have been from out of state.

 

Then we stopped at the Grumpy Troll Brew Pub for something to drink.  Here we thought that the place was named after the frowning mascot on the sign.  After we went in, we realized “Grumpy” must be the manager, and the Trolls, the bartenders.  We were looking (in vain) for a place at the bar when the manager asked “You gonna eat?”  Not “Dining room or bar today?” or “May I help you?”  No, this frosted-blonde, fake-bake Boomer said “You gonna eat?” in quite the rude manner.  After waiting for the troll-like barmaid to help every other customer, we finally got our drinks: Jay, a lager; and I, a Coke.  The barmaid never once smiled the whole time we were there.  Maybe it was because she has fewer teeth than the Troll on their sign.

 

That’s the problem with my hometown these days.  More incomers with their granola-crunching, Birkenstock-wearing, Madison snobby attitudes.  They act like they have a hot-dog stuffed up their ass.

 

One without mustard.

 

 

I got a letter from my church this week.  Along with a request to confirm or update my contact information, it asked for my thoughts about the church and how I feel I could contribute.

 

I don’t think they realize what a loaded question that is.

 

You see, despite the fact that I work with Catholics, graduated from a Lutheran college, and worked at a Bible camp two summers during high school, I’m not a fan of organized religion.  Don’t get me wrong - I believe in God, Jesus, and heaven.  But I also believe that Man has seriously screwed up when it comes to the interaction between them.

 

Some people think Man created God.  (S)He needed something to explain the unexplainable, to give meaning to what was a crude existence here on earth, to take the fear out of death.  I’ve seen enough strange stuff in the last thirty-nine years that I can only explain by including God in the equation, so I do believe in a “greater power”.  I call It “God”, because that’s what I was brought up to call It.  It may manifest Itself to others as “Allah”, “Buddha”, or “Earth Mother”; it’s not my place to say It doesn’t.  How would I really know, anyway?  God supposedly came to humanity on the tower of Babel and made them all speak different languages; couldn’t it be possible that It made humanity see Itself in different guises as well?

 

So, I don’t think that Man created God.  But I do know that Man created religion.  And that’s where Man, for years, has seriously effed up.  Religion is, ostensibly, the way for Man to interact with God.  But Man has used it in some awful ways: to wage war, steal fortunes, suppress science, stifle speech, permit slavery, and control every detail of people’s lives.  They take religious texts, twist and mangle them until they fit their needs, and profess it as “God’s will”.  When you count everything that’s been done in the name of organized religion, can you blame me for being disillusioned?

 

I don’t feel I need to ally myself with a corrupt institution in order to properly interact with God.  I do that one-on-one.  However, in order to keep peace with my family (and continue to qualify for the life insurance my parents bought for me), I have to be a member of a church.  I don’t have to go to worship services every week.  But they want to know how I’ll “share my gifts” with them.  I know that means contributing money, which I don’t do now, although I may have to in the future.

 

It really bothers me that this church may require a payment of dues (which is really what it is, when you stop the spin) in order to be a member.  It seems they don’t realize that not everyone may be able to afford it.  And when poverty bars you from the church, what does that say about Christianity?  I don’t think Jesus charged an entrance fee to hear the Sermon on the Mount.

 

It also makes me angry when I see the projects that my church endorses.  They’re the typical Yuppie/Boomer feel-good causes.  But I think it’s hypocritical to buy Fair Trade coffee while the local family-owned grocer goes bankrupt.  A dollar may buy a lot of food in Africa, but what about the kid down the block that can’t afford a school lunch?  Clothing drives for people in Mississippi when there are local families that can’t afford shoes?  Send the Youth Group to West Virginia to fix up homes there, when people in your own township shiver through the winter in an uninsulated trailer?  You’d think they would care about the welfare of their own neighbors instead of ignoring them for the more picturesque poverty of people they most likely will never meet.

 

I hope my church really wants to know what I think they should do and won’t just pay lip service to my ideas.  Because if they really want to make an impact on people’s lives, they should look around themselves.  Give their neighbors jobs.  Support their neighbors who may be depressed or mentally ill.  Break the hold that alcohol has on our society.  Make sure that every kid in the school district has a computer – the library ones don’t count.  Erase the gap between the haves and the have-nots.  Encourage interaction between all ages and economic groups, singles and marrieds and divorceds, professionals and laborers.  Make the whole town one big family that will come to each other’s aid at all times, not just during disasters.  And don’t brag about how great you are while you’re doing it.

 

It may not be as glorious as the struggle for world peace.  But it’s what a church should do.

 

 

The Feds, the Fates, God; what- or whomever was controlling my universe today had it in for me.  It wasn’t broken nails, paper cuts, or jammed copiers, though.  It was food.

 

More specifically, it was lunch. The Greater Powers were messing with my ability to eat anything between breakfast and supper.  It was either trying to tell me to go on a diet, or make me feel empathy for the hungry of the world.  Or it was just playing mind games.  I don’t know.

 

When I left the house this morning, I’d had my usual breakfast: two cigarettes.  You see, I am not a morning person.  It’s enough that I drag myself out of bed and get to work around eight.  My employers have no idea how lucky they are that I am able, at the ungodly hour of 7:25 am, to wash, brush, and make myself presentable.  I even make the effort to put on a shirt and a skirt that match.  Sometimes 7:25 am is before the freakin’ sun comes up!  What a miracle!

 

But to try to remove a bowl from the cupboard, pour cereal and milk into it (providing the milk isn’t sour… or chunky) and spooning it into my mouth?  That takes a level of energy and focus I don’t possess until at least 10:15… and on some days, that’s 10:15 pm.  Eggs?  Bacon?  Toast?  Hash browns?  No way.  Unless I have time for Mickey D’s, which is never, unless they start letting me phone in an order to be delivered to work.

 

So, two cigarettes (one while I watch the weather report, the other while I’m driving) are my daily morning get-me-going.  Then, on days my lunch break is at one, I have a snack at eleven.  Otherwise I hold out until noon, and stuff my face at lunch.

 

Today was a 1:00 lunch, so around eleven (actually, 10:30, because I was hungry, dammit!) I counted out 65¢ and made my way to the vending machine.  I was having a Pop Tart Emergency, and only some hot, gooey, sugary, cherry goodness would satisfy my craving.  I put in the first coin and prepared to insert the second, when I heard a clink! in the change dispenser.

 

My coin had been rejected.

 

Stupid machine! I thought as I retrieved my quarter.  Why does it always do this to me?  I tried the quarter again.  Clink!

 

I tried a dime.  Clink!  I tried another dime.  Clink!  I tried the quarter again.  Clink!

 

The evil vending machine was denying me my Pop Tart!  How dare it?!  It knows I’m hungry.  It knows I’m dying for a sugar fix.  It’s got it in for me.  Dirty rotten machine.

 

So I toughed it out until 1:00, all the while trying to decide if I needed to get something to supplement the sandwich and peach I’d brown-bagged.  I’d planned on getting some chips out of the aforementioned evil vending machine, but there was no guarantee it would be fixed by then.  I pondered long and hard, and decided that if I made up my mind that a sandwich and a peach were enough to fill me up, then they in fact would fill me up.

 

Mind over matter doesn’t hold true, however, when you cut into your peach and find out it’s rotten.

 

One ham salad sandwich later, my stomach was still howling feed me! and I had twenty-five minutes of lunch left.  This narrowed down the list of possible places I could run to three:  a sandwich shop, a Chinese take-out place, and The Border.  It was easy to rule out the sandwich shop, because I really didn’t want another sandwich on top of the first.  The Border just wasn’t calling to me, either.  What were calling to me were french fries.  Hot, potato-y, salty, artery-clogging french fries.  But they were fifteen minutes away (no thanks to Wally World) and, as I said, I had only twenty-five minutes left.

 

So I went down to the Chinese take-out and got some Crab Rangoon.  It satisfied my hankering for hot grease and, smothered with sweet and sour sauce from those little plastic packets, made my tummy happy.

 

That, and the giant container of egg drop soup.  Hey, I was famished.  I finished the whole thing.

 

I certainly wasn’t going to share any with the Fates.  Not after the Pop Tart Incident.

 

That’ll teach them not to mess with me.

 

 

When I was a kid, my sisters and I always looked forward with anticipation to the arrival of the annual Christmas catalog.  We always got two: one was from JC Penney’s, and the other was the Sears Wish Book.

 

We would spend hours pouring through the pages, dreaming of what we would put on our lists for Santa Claus.  The Wish Book was our mall, without having to drive the twenty miles one way to get there (heck, Mom wouldn’t even drive us the five miles to the nearest Ben Franklin, much less the mall ).  We salivated over the dolls, the playhouses, and the games.  One of my sisters used to stare for hours at the swing sets.  We’d fill notebook pages with lists of toys that would have bankrupted our parents to buy for us.

 

But now we’re all grown up, and the Wish Book just doesn’t hold the pleasure it used to.  The holiday outfits all look tacky and the toys are overpriced.  My priorities have eclipsed having the latest Barbie doll.

 

Now, when I want that vicarious thrill, I do what I did today.  I pull out the office supply catalog.

 

And the best thing about perusing this catalog is that, with a little shrewdness, I can actually get what I want.

 

The child who wanted an artist’s easel now gets a twelve-pack of highlighters.  Posters of rock stars are replaced by colorful desk calendars with pictures of the ocean.  Post-it tape flags, neon note cubes, black Sharpies, coordinated desk sets; office supply catalogs are full of little goodies to make a working person’s heart go pitter-pat.  And as long as you don’t go too far overboard, your company will pay for them all!

 

Then there are the bigger ticket items to drool over.  The playhouse and swing sets become personal digital assistants and digital cameras, leather executive chairs and mahogany file cabinets.  It’s enough to make you want to write a list to Santa.

 

Unfortunately (in my case), Santa is a cranky divorced woman in her late fifties who pinches pennies so tightly you can hear Lincoln scream.  So I have to be creative when filling out my order form.  When I have a list of seven different pastel colors of copy paper, it’s easy to sneak that multipack of fluorescent post-its in.  The monotony lulls her into the belief that there is nothing but a bunch of boring things on the list.  Better yet, I sometimes make the order so long that she just faxes it without even looking.

 

Too bad there aren’t Barbie dolls in that catalog.  I’d be tempted to order one just to see if I’d get it.

 

I don't know how I'd justify it.  Maybe I could use it as a bookend.

 

 

I got an awesome flier in the mail today.  Okay, it was addressed to “Mailroom Manager”, not my name.  But since that is my job, I opened it.  And what was inside was just too cool.

 

It was an invitation, complete with $25 VIP Pass, to MAILCOM 2005, at the legendary Riviera Hotel and Casino in Fabulous Las Vegas!  (Hm.  Ever notice how the word “fabulous” almost always precedes the name Las Vegas?  I wonder if there are people who grow up thinking that “Fabulous Las Vegas” is actually the name of the city?  If there are, I bet they watched too much Wheel of Fortune.)

 

I’ve never been to a business convention.  I’ve been to the odd trade show where you might pick up a pencil, key chain, and refrigerator magnet with company logos, but never a real-honest-to-gosh convention complete with drunk balding middle-aged men stumbling into their secretaries’ hotel rooms.  MAILCOM 2005 is two and a half days of scintillating speakers and cutting-edge technology, all about “The Art & Science of Mail Communication”.

 

I think I’m going to have to convince my “boss” that it is imperative that I attend this convention.  Where else will I be able to view the contributions that can be made to my job by companies like Astro Machine Corp., Kirk-Rudy, Inc., and Sartori Software?  I mean, if the flier is telling the truth (and why wouldn’t it?) I could save thousands of dollars in postage, courier bills, and leases, not to mention adhesive bandages for those darn paper cuts.  And if I’m really, really lucky, I might win enough in the casino to cover my expenses.  What boss could say “no” to that?

 

Plus, anyone who has been to a Star Trek Convention knows that “Cons” are a blast.  I can only imagine all the fantastic extras the organizers couldn’t fit in the flier.  The dealers’ room, where you can buy everything mail-related under the sun.  Exotic postmarks.  Replica uniforms.  Antique postage meters.  Autographed pictures of the Postmaster General.  Klingon knives that look like letter openers.

 

Then, they’ll have a viewing room.  One wall will be covered by a giant movie screen.  All day and night, conventioneers will be able to view such classic episodes of mail mania like “FedEx Follies”, “Bloopers from Bulk Mail”, and reality footage such as “Live from New York – Inside the Back of a UPS Truck!”

 

And don’t forget the highlight of every Con – the costume contest.  Good thing I have a sewing machine, because I’m going to have to get cracking if I’m going to finish that “Summer Blue” Postal Carrier outfit before September.  Plus I’ll have to get down to the local costume shop to buy some fake dog-bite plastic appliances for my legs.

 

You gotta go all out if you want to take home the big prizes.

 

Just ask those contestants on Wheel of Fortune.

 

 

One of the things l like about being a handy girl is that I don’t have to play bimbo and ask a big strong man to fix things for me.  I’ve changed a flat tire and replaced light bulbs on my cars, hung drywall in a Habitat for Humanity house, installed RAM in my PC, and set up my own window air conditioning unit.  I’ve even assembled my own furniture with nothing but a pocket screwdriver.  I know that if something moves, and it shouldn’t, you use duct tape; if it’s not moving and it should, use WD-40.

 

Over the years, my Dad has given me tools for Christmas.  I have a socket set, screwdrivers, a power drill, hammer, and a jigsaw - and I know how to use them.  All I need is a tool belt that drags my pants so low you can see my buttcrack, and I could go into business for myself.

 

The really neat thing about having all this DIY knowledge is that, when something breaks in my apartment, Jay and I can usually take care of it ourselves.  Now, when the garbage disposal decided to detach itself from under my sink, we called the management office.  The top of it had completely corroded away, and no amount of duct tape or superglue was going to fix that sucker.  But, to be honest, I really don’t like the idea of having a stranger in my apartment while we’re at work.  I know they’re supposed to be trustworthy, but I can’t shake the image of some repairman fixing whatever is broken and then taking pictures of everything we have stuffed in our tiny place and showing it to the landlord, and him kicking us out... after the local news shows it with the caption "apartment declared unfit for human habitation".  Or worse, I imagine him pawing through my underwear drawer.

 

I know Jay or I could take time off to be at home when the repairman comes.  But with my luck, I’d wait all morning, get frustrated when he didn't show, and decide to take a shower… and that’s when he’d arrive.  Or I’d run downstairs to get the mail, and come back to find a “We were here; where were you?” sign tacked to the door.

 

So, I usually fix whatever I can.  Sometimes I’ll even put off fixing something.  For years.  All because I really don’t want some stranger in my home.

 

Which is why, last Saturday afternoon, I found myself in the local Home Depot, trying to figure out what to buy to fix my toilet.

 

Luckily, it’s not cracked or leaking or falling through the floor.  That I would call management for.  All it’s doing is running every few minutes.  If you take off the tank lid and wiggle the overflow tube, the gasket at the flush valve seals back up and it stops.  Sometimes the gasket gets dislodged, and you have to reach down there and push it back into place, all the time hoping that the drain monster doesn’t bite your fingers off.

 

I know that all I need to do is replace that gasket.  I bought one Saturday.  But I’ve been procrastinating actually draining the tank, pulling up the overflow tube, and putting on the new gasket.

 

I don't know why I'm putting off fixing it.  Maybe it’s because it’s a TOILET, for heavens sake, full of germs and other grossness.  It is really slimy in there, even though only clean water flows through that part.  And when an occasional wiggle makes the problem go away, it’s easy to say nahhh, I’ll do it tomorrow.

 

Because I don’t have that heavy tool belt yet, and I want to do the job right.

 

Yeah.  That’s why.

 

Really.