The Cranky Cow

Dirty Pleasures

2012-02-27T17:53:00.000-08:00

Who knows what mysteries the canister holds?

I’ll be the first to admit that housekeeping is not at the top of my skills list. It’s not that my mother was a slob by any stretch. She taught my sister and me to vacuum and dust. We tidied the yard and always had clean clothes. How I came to this point is my own doing.

O.k., our house isn’t so bad that we warrant an episode on Hoarders or Clean House. I clean the kitchen after every use, I do laundry a couple times a week, and the bathroom gets a once over about as often, but it could be better. Vacuuming and dusting are way down on the list, below scrubbing the toilet, although higher than ironing – which is a whole other matter and why I tend to wear knits or items that need dry cleaning.

I think it’s the futility of it. Having had multiple dogs in the household for the last twenty or so years, I’ve come to accept that dog hair and dander will be present regardless of how much I wash and groom the dogs or how much I vacuum and dust. My husband and I have come to accept that it’s a fair exchange: a furry, dusty house in exchange for canine companionship. There’s a lint roller by the door and each of us has one in his/her car.

Even so, there comes a point when the situation is so appalling that even I can’t tolerate it any longer. The dusting is still tedious and my allergies don’t make it any easier, but when it comes to vacuuming, there’s an excitement, or perhaps something more akin to morbid curiosity that spurs me on. Our vacuum cleaner is bagless which allows me to quantify our level of filth.

Despite the claim that our vacuum will “never lose suction,” it does when the catch canister becomes too full, which on some occasions happens quite quickly. This requires me to keep a close eye on the “full” marker so I’m not wasting time pushing a functionless vacuum. I poke the “on” button, and watch as a tornado of dust and fur forms and builds in the canister. It’s simultaneously amazing and disconcerting.

In my defense, our carpets are rather a dust color to start with, of that mysterious pile that’s not as long as shag, but not looped like berber either, and it’s got its share of stains. So fur and dust sort of disappear. Still, I know it isn’t really an excuse for letting vacuum sessions lapse as frequently as I do. But seeing the dirt and hair accumulating in the canister discourages rather than encourages me to vacuum more frequently.

If I only have to empty the canister once, I almost view the session as a waste of time and effort. But having to empty the canister multiple times, especially if it’s just one room, confirms that it was indeed time for a thorough cleaning. My husband has caught on with the fascination as well.

The typical end of cleaning conversation goes something like this:

“Whew! Done!”

“Thank you. How many canisters?”

“Seven (or some other appalling number)!”

“Wow! That’s disgusting.”

“I know. It’s a good thing I vacuumed.”

Now if the number of full canisters was one or two, it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting (or repulsive) and the other spouse would likely have little appreciation for the effort or timing. But when the number rises above, say five canisters, that is considered a feat, even a fortunate event, since apparently we’ve been walking around on five canisters of filth unbeknownst to us.

Gratitude and kudos for a job well done is usually expressed with a glass of wine or a martini, which serves as further reinforcement for procrastination.

I suppose a similar fascination is why I enjoy doing laundry. There’s that moment of anticipation as I empty the lint trap between loads. I know lint isn’t really “dirt,” but it still feels like I’ve accomplished something, that somehow I’ve improved our cleanliness situation. Dog bedding laundry day is especially exciting. The amount of fur pulled from the trap on those days can almost be thrilling, momentarily inspiring me to make dog fur sweaters.

How can my dogs not be bald?

I suppose at some point we could phase in wirehairs, poodles or doodles as our next dogs, or better yet hairless, to eliminate the shedding. But I like the feel of longer hair on dogs, and we don’t need to trim or shave them. Sure, with bigger dogs, we’ve gone from dust mice to dust bunnies, and I’m sure dust ponies on occasion. Now that the Uber Hund is gone and we don’t have to worry about his footing, we could get rid of the carpets and go to wood or tile floors, which would keep the dust and dirt from becoming imbedded.

Still, there are those moments when I almost regret cleaning, strange moments that strike me when I’m off guard. I moved the couch and found a small cloud of the Uber Hund’s distinct reddish gold fur. He’d been dead a little over a month and I’d put away all his other things. But there it was, a little bit of him still tumbling around, a silent reminder. I thought about leaving it there, but before I could push the couch back, the vacuum sucked up the fur ball and it disappeared in the whir of other bits of hair and debris.

Six canisters. A good haul.

My husband and I raised a glass and toasted to the little cloud of Uber Hund.

Big Box Wonderland

2012-02-20T18:50:00.000-08:00

An alternate universe in a Big Box

“I think we need a new faucet,” my husband sighs, looking at an unidentifiable, supposedly faucet part. “I can’t go to - - “

“I’ll go,” I volunteer, visions of faucets and nuts and bolts and piping running through my head.

“But I can go if you - -“

“Nope,” I say quickly. “I’ll do it.”

At first my husband seems a little perturbed but I’m grinning, not rolling my eyes.

“Ah,” he says. “You’re going to look for sheep things.”

I have an on-going desire to make lawn sheep.

“No, I just like to look,” I say.

“For what?” he asks, but he knows.

I just like to look. Well, and maybe fantasize a little.

I’m not a handywoman, per se, although I do have my own tool chest and I did just take apart the stopper in my sink so I could better clean out the drain. Oh, and I built the shelves in my office. But my fascination with hardware stores isn’t practical, it’s creative.

Growing up, there weren’t the big box hardware/supply stores. There was the neighborhood hardware store, Rea’s, an odd mix of small appliances, giftware, and the little pieces that one forgets, loses, or breaks during home repair projects. Most of the people who went to Rea’s, my father included, entered in a dark mood, stomping or impatiently striding, muttering a string a curse words as they sorted through bolts and washers in the palms of their work dirtied hands. I didn’t go to Rea’s with my father. Since it was in the closest shopping center, I would go with my mother to look at the collection of tiny ceramic animals. I was particularly fascinated with the cocker spaniel series, but I’d also look at the horses (not as good as the Breyer series), the miniscule ceramic mice, and peruse the other creatures. It was like a glossy, humane pet shop.

My real fascination with hardware/supply stores happened when I went with my friend and his dad to the lumber yard to get the supplies to build an aviary. It was out of our isolated community, which made it an adventure in itself. Then I entered the warehouse which smelled of sawdust and there were stacks of timber and plywood and particle board. There was also cement board, drywall, and chicken wire. These were the ingredients for an aviary, a tree house, a real house, a mansion.

I was in awe.

This is where one acquired the materials to make Significant Things, Big Things, things that were more substantial than pottery or beaded jewelry. I could walk into things built from these materials. I could stand or ride or climb on things built from these materials. I could lose a finger building these things.

That was exciting.

When the big box hardware/supply stores finally arrived, it was an entirely new experience. I ignored the cabinetry, carpet and bath sections. I wandered up and down the aisles spellbound by shiny metals, interesting tubing, tubs of mysterious substances. I intentionally ignored the pricing labels. I didn’t want to know what these things were, their true purpose. I just wanted to enjoy the shapes and textures, my mind arranging them into supernatural creatures or surreal structures.

It changed a little when I became a homeowner. Going to the big box stores was like going on a quest not for redecorating, but for repairing material. I learned about joint compound, various caulks, and types of piping. But, still I paused in front of interesting objects.

Oooh! Shiny Mylar arms and legs for robots, like something from the older Dr. Who shows.

Wire crowns? Dog bone sculpture?

“Why are you looking at air ducts?” my husband asked, having found me after I’d meandered off on my own.

We’ve purchased cabinets and sinks, flooring and gallons of paint, shelving and sprinkler parts along with all the implements that go with them. On one hand, I gained knowledge of home maintenance. On the other hand, the mystery faded. It was like learning that a lover’s intriguing scar was caused by a trip on the sidewalk.

I started making trips to the hardware store on my own to preserve my innocence. I’d get what we needed, then lose track of time as I wandered the warren of aisles, hurrying away when a sales assistant approached me. With their brightly colored aprons, they reminded me of the cards sent out by the Red Queen.

Either through education or clearly marked boxes I can’t speculate any more. I know about saw blades, the screens for florescent light boxes, and copper piping. I stood in the faucet aisle staring at the dozens of different kitchen faucets, debating if brushed nickel was outdated or not.

What does it matter? Get the best price for the most durable.

“Where. Are. We. Go. Ing,” a metallic voice beckoned from one of the aisles.

I glanced over and saw a young girl waving the corrugated tubing on her arms. She lowered her arms and the tubes unfolded like a Mylar caterpillar. She smiled up at her dad.

I grinned. The magic returned. How could I remain callous in Wonderland?

What Is This Thing Called "Love"

2012-02-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

This time, I start it:

“If UPS rings the doorbell at midnight, it’s for me.”

“What?” my husband says, although he’s eyeing me suspiciously.

“Yeah, I’ve ordered the whole Twilight box set so we can watch it for Valentine’s Day, and it comes out at midnight tonight,” I inform him knowing just how anti-sparkly vampire he is.

“Cool, I just ordered you the genuine pink cubic zirconia ring that spins and plays music,” he counters. “Nothing says, Happy Valentine’s Day better that Salt n’ Peppa.”

“Fantastic!” I say, trying to keep a straight face. “I’ll wear it when we watch the bed-breaking scene.”

My husband’s face goes blank. “Bed breaking scene?”

“Yeah, when Bella and Edward finally ‘get together,’ it’s so intense, he breaks the bed,”

I explain.

“Vampires must buy cheap beds,” my husband says. “At $4,000, I’m not breaking our bed.”

“Does this mean I have to return the glitter make-up I bought for you?”

O.k., so maybe we’re a bit jaded after being married for almost 15 years. But there’s also something insidious about holidays created by the greeting card industry (Mother and Father’s Day were also card created holidays). While Valentine’s Day is a Saint’s Feast Day(St. Valentine, of course), we as a nation don’t celebrate any other Saint to the same level. Like Cinco de Mayo, St. Patrick’s Day is a celebration of our immigrant ancestral roots and St. Nicholas isn’t celebrated so much as portrayed as a facilitator for Christmas. Perhaps they need better agents.

Greeting cards have done a bang up job promoting Valentine’s Day, enough so that some people actually feel anxious and depressed when the holiday passes them by, that it breaks our heart to see Charlie Brown waiting for that Valentine from the Little Red-Haired Girl, and that there’s a whole film about the trials and tribulations of the day. The card industry, and by extension the floral, candy and jewelry industry have so ingrained into our social psyche the importance of recognizing love and affection on Valentine’s Day that grade school students are told to give EVERYONE a Valentine lest any child feel unloved. Children are gullible and fragile, adults should be less so.

It’s interesting too, that the Valentine’s ads are targeted towards men giving women gifts. Don’t men want to feel the Valentine’s love as well? Don’t they like chocolate and jewelry? Lingerie is a bit touchier, although I don’t think men call it “lingerie.”

I once gave my husband a pair of silk boxers with hearts on them for Valentine’s Day. I think it kind of spooked him, seeing the flimsy material flutter as he released it from the box.

“Try them on,” I suggested with a bit of a leer.

He did, but he didn’t look happy about it.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It feels weird,” he said.

“What do you mean, weird?”

He frowned. “They’re all slippery and slide-y,” he said.

“Yeah, that’s kind of sexy, isn’t it?” I said. “Kind of like these?” I said.

By the look of horror on his face, it was probably a mistake that I pulled out a pair of silk tap panties I had from my lingerie drawer. That was the last time I saw those boxers.

Of course, there is the subliminal message for men in the Valentine’s Day ads, “Give your wife/girlfriend our x, and she’ll be very happy.” But, I guess without the nudge and wink, some men still weren’t getting the message. A recent floral delivery ad pretty much spelled it out, showing a sultry woman getting suggestively dressed, and then stating, “Gentlemen, it’s simple. Give and you shall ‘receive’.” It doesn’t get any less subtle than that on regular t.v. It would be interesting to see if Valentine’s Day sales increased after the ad aired, a cluster of men saying, “Ohhhhhh! I get it!”

It’s not that I’m totally against the idea of Valentine’s Day. The way our lives are these days, it’s easy to get wrapped up in deadlines, financial woes, and the daily drudge. So, it is nice to get a little nudge to remind us to touch base with our loved ones, to take some time out to recognize our partners, family, and friends who love us with all of our quirks and idiosyncrasies.

Appreciation doesn't mean chocolate,
although chocolate is always appreciated.

“No gifts, o.k.?” my husband and I say almost simultaneously.

We both have giftphobia.

We’ll exchange cards. We won’t go out since restaurants tend to be over crowded for the occasion, with service below par and food suffering as well. I’ll make my husband’s favorite dinner and pick up dessert. Wine will be involved, perhaps even cocktails. We’ll snuggle on the couch with the pups, watching some silly romantic comedy on t.v. At some point, laughing at the ridiculousness of the film, we’ll catch each other’s eye, thankful that we’re loved and not just for the day.

In honor of Benny Hill, “What is this thing called, love?”

How Is the Aria up There?

2012-02-06T23:25:00.000-08:00

La donna è mobile....

I miss having season tickets to the opera. Yes, I could buy tickets to individual performances, but time slips by and I forget to order the tickets or my husband and I can’t coordinate a date that suits us both. With season tickets, like a gym membership, you make time for the performances since you’ve already paid for them and the dates are pre-set. But unlike a gym membership, you’re only obligated to make one appearance a month and there’s no sweating.

I know. The Opera sounds snooty, but it’s changed over the last 20 years. Nowadays, most opera companies have super titles of the lyrics (or at least the gist of them) projected over the stage. And whether through fashion or intent, many of the younger opera singers, particularly the women, are increasingly more attractive. There was a notable gasp when Anna Netrebko, a stunning soprano, opened her scene in Samuel Barber’s Antony and Cleopatra, in a milk bath that glowed and showed off her naked figure. What? Sex at the opera? Yes, not since the Bible has so much sex, violence and intrigue been publicly ignored or forgotten. Carmen, La Traviata, La Bohème, and Abduction from the Seraglio all involve women of dubious reputations, and Don Giovanni and Tales of Hoffman are stories that glorify what the young folks would now call “pimp masters.” My husband and I attended a production of Faust so lewd that several audience members left the performance in prudish horror.

Lest you have visions top hats and capes in our season ticket days, let me clarify that our seats were in the upper balcony, made even more affordable since they were for performances during the middle of the week. The upper balcony occupants were predominantly elderly with some college students and a smattering of people in between. And like any hinter zone, be it theater or sport, it contained the most devout fans. There wasn’t any face painting, but some people sang along during the more popular arias. This isn’t as rude as it sounds. While opera is performed without microphones, historically opera audiences were a rowdy lot, which is why opera singers know a variety of ways to project their voices. There is even a technique where the voice exits the body quietly, but expands and actually seems to drift once released. It’s an incredible experience. When this technique was used, we in the hinter zone sat at the edge of our seats, waiting for the waft of sound to float our way. When it finally did, an operatic “touch down,” we leapt to our feet in an enthusiastic standing ovation. It was one of the rare times during a performance that the performer intentionally acknowledged the cheap seats.

The frugality of our section presented interesting situations. The couple who sat behind us brought along a “carry-on” suitcase that they tended to rest on my husband’s shoulders. The case held the elderly husband’s oxygen tank and a seemingly infinite supply of crinkly wrapped sucking candy for his wife. Rather than keeping the bag unzipped or unwrapping several candies in advance, every performance was marked by series of “zip,” crinkle, “zip,” crinkle, crinkle, crinkle . Sometimes the woman dropped the candy mid-crinkle, which prompted “oh, dear,” followed by some fumbling as she felt for the candy, a resigned sigh, and then “zip,” crinkle, “zip,” crinkle, crinkle, crinkle ….

Some people brought their own cocktails even though the theater served beverages both before the performance and during intermission. This wasn’t an issue until someone accidentally kicked the bottle, which happened on a fairly regular basis. Our balcony seats were severely raked, so it was a noisy and perilous journey as the bottle rolled and hopped down each row. The usher would rush over and try to catch the bottle’s movement in the glare of his or her flashlight. We all held our breath, hoping the bottle wouldn’t jump the low rail, perhaps killing someone below thereby confirming that we were indeed the rabble. Once the bottle stopped, the usher would collar it by its neck and stomp back up the stairs in a huff.

Babies love the opera ... sort of.

And then there was the baby. I’m all for early exposure to live performance, but taking an infant to a non-Italian opera was daring. Taking one to an opera about a child molester (PeterGrimes. Did I mention opera could be tawdry?) was cruel. Rightfully, the child burst into tears and was inconsolable during the scene when yet another child was brought into Peter Grimes’ care, only to meet a horrible and violent death. The baby’s cries were loud enough to draw the performers’ attention to our little aerie. I think we all leaned back a little and sank into our seats. After the performance, we saw the couple carrying their sleeping baby. “Our baby loves the opera,” they said to anyone who looked in their direction.

The baby incident prompted my husband and I to splurge on seats in the Founder’s Circle the following season. Along with our tickets, we were also issued an invitation to the Founder’s Room and given the opportunity to place orders for refreshments before the performance to circumvent any waiting in line at intermission. When we took our seats, we noticed the sea of black ties, furs, and silvered hair. During the performance, no one sang or even hummed along. The gentleman next to me snored.

From our new seats, we saw the singer’s faces and enjoyed the sets without seeing the framing. All the super titles were visible and the performers seemed to be singing directly to us. It was opera as it was meant to be. I sat grinning as a stunning version of an aria drew to a close and I jumped up to give a standing ovation. My husband gently tugged my skirt. Everyone else in our section remained seated and only politely clapped. I sat back down, trying to keep my restraint for the duration of the show.

Somewhere up above us, a bottle dropped and rolled.

Eat like the Dead

2012-01-28T17:56:00.000-08:00

Nature trumps molecular gastronomy.

I remember the first time I had a pomegranate. The outside reminded me of a woody pink pear. I watched as my mother put the dull looking fruit on the cutting board and sliced it into quarters. The juice was magenta, my favorite Crayola color. My mother handed me two slices.

“This is messy,” she said. “Eat it outside with your sister. Don’t swallow the seeds.”

I motioned to my sister to follow me into the backyard.

“Don’t drip on the carpet,” my mother called after us. “It’ll stain!”

My sister and I hurried into the backyard and examined this new treat. The beautiful pink was faint. It didn’t look like an apple or pear inside. It looked a little like a giant version of the pulp inside of a grapefruit. Or pink corn. The rows upon rows of cut white seeds surrounded by dark pink made the kernels look like targets. My sister and I each picked one out.

It was tart, bitter, and astringent.

“Don’t eat the seeds,” I warned my sister.

Both of us spat the seeds out over the short wall into the iceplant. We picked and spat, picked and spat, not quite sure what to make of the fruit except that it was a great deal of effort for a very small pay-off. But it did allow us to spit, so that was a plus as were the magenta stains on our fingers.

My sister and I both looked at the ghostly rinds. The fruit looked bigger than the yield. I went back into the house.

“Mom, we’re done …?” I said holding out the remainder.

My mom looked at us in puzzlement.

“Already?” she asked.

My sister and I were both voracious eaters. I shrugged and looked back at her. She stared at the fruit.

“No,” she said, as she took the fruit and held it out for me to see. “There’s more.”

She peeled off the creamy membrane. The pomegranate looked very different uncut. It looked like a pavé of jewels.

“Oooooh,” I gasped as I showed my sister who ‘ooh”-ed as well.

Both of us grinned and ran outside again. I didn’t want to eat the pomegranate. I wanted

to admire it. I picked out a seed and held it up to the sun. I could see the white seed deep inside, but the fruit around it reminded me of a garnet ring my mother had, which I always admired. I put the seed on my finger.

“Look at my beautiful ring,” I said in my snootiest voice.

“I have fancy earrings,” my sister said in an equally snooty voice as she held two seeds to her ears.

We put the fruit into our mouths. I felt the crunch as I bit down. We were eating garnets, rubies, pink sapphires. My sister and I laughed maniacally at the decadence. We strutted around the yard, balancing the kernels on our wrists and fingers then ate the “gems,” disdainfully spitting out the pale remains, only to pull out more.

“If you put them on your tongue and push it on the top of your mouth, they pop,” my sister informed me giddily.

I followed my sister’s suggestion and felt the burst of tart bitterness. We tried to see how many kernels we could fit in our mouths at once. I peeled off another layer of membrane and raked my teeth against the fruit, feeling the juice drip down my chin, onto my shirt. Mother had warned that it would stain, but I wore the magenta like a badge.

“Look, there’s more,” I said as I peeled away another membrane and we both admired the fruit all over again.

We tucked the kernels between our lips and teeth and grimaced at each other, unaware that jeweled grills would actually become a trend 15 years into the future. We laughed at the gaudy and somewhat gruesome effect. The gems also looked like droplets of blood. We pretended to be vampires.

And then it was over.

“We’re done!” my sister and I announced with wide smiles, showing the thin rinds to my mother.

She rolled her eyes at the spatters and stains all over us and our clothes.

“Did you like it?” she asked us.

My sister and I both nodded eagerly but then wrinkled our noses.

“But it doesn’t taste so good,” we both agreed. “It’s sour and makes our tongues feel funny.”

My mom laughed. “Then why do you like it?”

Tree-ripened pomegranates split open,
revealing the gems inside.

My sister and I looked at my mom incredulously.

“Because it’s like eating rubies,” we said, stating the obvious.

“Ah,” my mom said with a nod.

In sixth grade, we read the myth about Persephone and Demeter. Persephone, Demeter’s daughter was kidnapped by Hades and taken into the underworld to be his wife. She’s told that as long as she doesn’t eat the Food of the Dead, she’ll be able to escape.

“The Food of the Dead was the pomegranate,” the teacher said. “When it’s ripe, the tree is completely bare, so that it looks dead, except for the fruit.”

“She’ll totally eat it,” I blurted out, unable to stop myself.

I smiled at the memory. Who could possibly resist the joyful hedonism of eating jewels?

Sarong, Farewell

2012-01-22T14:55:00.000-08:00

Island vacations are great ... depending on the island.

“We should go on a cruise,” my husband announces.

“Yeeeeahhhhh, no,” I respond.

My husband can see I’m already a little green around the gills. Despite several successful trips on the Catalina ferry many, many, years ago, my last couple seafaring journeys resulted in me orally chumming the sharks.

“You could wear those ear patch things,” he says.

I hate being nauseous and the thought of being potentially nauseous for days is not an alluring thought.

“My sister says they totally work,” my husband assures me.

O.k. It’s not like he’s going to book a cruise today, so I’ll play along.

“Where would you want to go?” I ask.

“Well, what about the Caribbean ...?”

My nose wrinkles.

“Or the Bahamas?” he suggests, but already his shoulders are drooping. “Greece?” he adds meekly to my ever more crinkling face. “Alright then, where would you want to go?”

“The Baltic?” I suggest, and his face drops. “Alaska?”

“Those places are freezing,” he says, as if I didn’t know.

As if he didn’t know.

I hate hot weather and by hot, I mean anything over seventy degrees Fahrenheit. I’d like to say it’s a hormonal thing, but I’ve never enjoyed sunbathing nor fantasized about tropical vacations. I always preferred temperate or cold climates, although snow is not a necessity. I like to think it’s in my blood. None of my ethnic genes drops below 34^th parallel, which isn’t as cold as I thought (who knew Hiroshima and Los Angeles were at the same latitude? The axis threw me off.), but still it’s out of the tropics. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a “dry heat” or not. Hot is hot. It’s just a question of whether I feel like I’m melting or if my skin is shriveling away like an overdone turkey.

My general rule is that I can always add more clothing when it’s cold. I only briefly experienced “seriously” cold weather (0°F at the airport in Toronto), so I can’t attest to the cold weather lifestyle. But as far as heat goes, I can only take so much off, and once the weather hits eighty, I’m at that limit. The day we moved into our current home, it was 114°F and it stayed that way for two weeks. I was beside myself, especially when the rolling black outs hit. Uber Hundus and I spent the days confined to one room, the portable air conditioner turned up to 11. We moved to Northern California for cooler weather. Who knew one little tunnel could make such a huge difference? Granted, the winters were colder here than in San Francisco, but I’d compromise for cooler summers. Thankfully, global warming has done that and the last two summers didn’t see any days over 105°F, and even the hottest days were scattered. Sorry, polar bears.

It's not just the rolls of "belly fat" that are making me frown.

A more temperate climate is probably why I enjoy the coast. I like the ocean at winter, when the water turns cold iron grey and the strand is nearly deserted except for the hardcore surfers. Growing up, it was the rolling fog and distant moan of fog horns that lured me to the beach, not the scent of coconut oil and fried corn dogs. Beach communities, especially port cities, tend to be a little more tolerant of eccentricities as well, perhaps because they’re accustomed to the variety of people and items that the sea trade brings. That’s important to someone who looks like an outsider in most areas.

I did actually vacation in Hawaii once, on a paid holiday with my husband. That’s when I confirmed my suspicions. While my husband laid out by the water sucking down various umbrella drinks and taking the occasional stroll into the bath temperature ocean, I sought refuge in the jungle, hoping it was cooler, momentarily forgetting that the lack of sea breeze meant swarms of mosquitos would be there to greet me. I returned reeking of DEET applied too late to prevent the multitude of bites on my legs. From then on, it was hopping from shop to shop, hoping to find air conditioning among the Maui dirt dyed t-shirts.

That was enough for me. Having grown up among palm trees and sandy beaches, it didn’t seem like much of an escape to go somewhere else with palm trees and sandy beaches, especially if there's also added heat. I did, however, fall madly in love with coconut syrup. Tropical food is delicious. I’d just rather have it imported.

That doesn’t mean island vacations are off the list. I’ve visited Newfoundland three times and loved every minute of it. I’m dying to explore Nova Scotia, especially during the Celtic Colors. I love Ireland and the UK. I look forward to visiting Iceland and its ponies one day. The Shetlands would be interesting for the same reason. There’s even the scattered islands that help make up Denmark. Locally, I’d like to see the Farallons. In my fantasy life, we’d spend half the year in New Zealand, strategically timed so that I could live in perpetual fall and winter.

Yes, I’m definitely an Island Girl. It’s just that on my islands, sarongs are so wrong.

Hair Goes Nothing

2012-01-15T18:33:00.000-08:00

Fear not, Sinéad.

“I’m losing my hair,” I tell my husband as we’re eating dinner.

“Oh, yeah?” he says drily.

He looks at me, at my hair, and there’s a flash of resentment. His forehead has been expanding its real estate since he was in his mid-twenties.

“Yeah,” I confirm. “I’m pulling wads of hair out of the bath drain like, every other day.”

His expression is a little more sympathetic now. “Are you just losing it, or is it stress?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe both.”

I run my fingers through the hair at the back of my head. It’s there, but it’s paltry. Insubstantial, compared to how it was. I don’t think my scalp is visible, but I’ve always had really thick hair and lots of it, big heavy hanks. It’s always been an issue when getting my hair cut.

“Wow, you’ve got a lot of hair,” most beauticians moan about an hour into what was probably booked as a 45 minute session while standing ankle deep in my hair.

My hair grows fast, as well. A few years ago, I finally found a beautician who knew how to cut not only thick hair, but Asian hair. Because I wanted a change, she cut it really short. Halle Berry short. I hadn’t had hair that short since high school, when I had to get a botched trim job by my mother fixed. Aside from a 4 years in my twenties when my hair went waist long, my hair usually hovers somewhere between chin and a little longer than shoulder length.

I loved the short hair. It made me feel sassy, a little avant garde because I used wax to bring out my waves. But to keep it in optimal shape I had to get it cut every month, and that was too expensive, so I went six to eight weeks, and even that was too pricey. Three months was too shaggy, and not in a SallyHershberger way.

“Could you cut it into something that can grow out?” I sighed resignedly the last time I saw my beautician, almost six months ago.

And now, when I need it to look lush, it’s falling out. Even my mom noticed it.

“Is it just falling out or stress?” she asked, echoing my husband.

“I dunno,” I shrug.

I comb my fingers through my hair and only a couple strands come out. That’s not bad, is it?

“Eh, it’s genetic,” my mom finally says breezily, scratching the thinning top of her head.

I’m not sure how I feel about losing my hair. I don’t think it really bothers me. I’m pretty negligent with it, brushing it twice a day, once before I go into the shower, then running a wide toothed comb through it when I get out. I’ve always let it air dry, although when it was really long and ropey, it never really dried since I twisted it into a bun. For a while I was a little concerned that it would get moldy and turn green like sloth hair. Then, I thought that might be kind of cool, since I could always cut it off if it got stinky or slimy. Oddly, dredlocks, struck me as kind of gross.

“You’ll tell me when you can see my scalp, right?” I ask my husband.

That’s one thing I don’t want. My grandmother’s hair was a mist of white over vast plains of pink

“Why?” he asks, playing with a narrowing peninsula of hair. “What are you going to do when that happens?

“I’ll shave it,” I tell him.

It’s only fair. He’s promised to shave the peninsula when the hair bridge fades and it becomes an island. He doesn’t want to be one of those guys sporting The Unicorn. I’d shave my sparse hair because I don’t want people thinking I’m undergoing a battle for my life when I’ve just got bad genes. And I’ve kind of shaved it before, back in the 80s, when I had my sister buzzed the back half of my head as a fashion statement.

“You’re both idiots,” my mom had groaned in exasperation. “You,” she pointed to me, “for asking for it and you for actually doing it,” she finished, pointing at my sister.

My sister and I grinned. It was one of those rare moments when we conspired to do something “shocking,” and it was fun. Later when we highlighted each other’s hair, I rinsed mine with food coloring or Kool-Aid to make it streaked cherry red or blue. The great thing about hair was that it always grew back.

Except maybe now. I cleared the drain again. I don’t think the loss is “serious.” Yet.

Rodent or hair?

On the other hand, I have a large collection of scarves and hats that I enjoy wearing. I haven’t worn wigs, but the idea always sounded fun. If I’m lucky, my hair to scalp ratio will hold out until my seventies. Seventy seems to be my marker point to let my wild run amok. If my hair goes thin then, I plan to go the route of the eccentric French interior designer Madeleine Castaing, who famously wore her wigs with a party hat chin strap.

“A wig is just a ‘at made out of ‘air, non?” I could imagine her saying, batting the layers of false eyelashes that surrounds her extravagantly lined eyes.

Many years ago, a friend told me that a person’s hair reflected their personality.

“Coarse and unruly,” I said then.

“You said it, not me,” she laughed.

And twenty years later, how would I describe my hair?

Well, obviously, I’m losing it.

A Rat in a Cage

2012-01-05T17:11:00.000-08:00

It's just a matter of time before I gnaw off a limb.

Sorting through my stuff, I came across my passport. Just touching it made me smile. I thought about the places I’ve been: Paris, Rome, Cardiff, St. John’s, and the places I could go: St. Petersburg, Barcelona, Marrakech. Drunk with wanderlust, I opened my passport and was yanked into a vortex. The universe, the borders, the walls closed in on me.

My passport had expired.

I couldn’t breathe. My heart raced and I started to have a panic attack. I was trapped, trapped in a 3.79 million square mile cage.

Unbelievable!

How could this have happened? Why didn’t I know? This is a catastrophe of epic proportions!

It’s not that my work requires me to travel or that I’m a jet setter, but having a valid passport is that last step to complete freedom. The first step is learning to run, usually willy-nilly with parents chasing behind. Next, there’s getting that first bike, where the neighborhood suddenly expands with speed and wind. And then a driver’s license and an actual car with a full tank of gas. Pedal to the metal and go! A passport is the ultimate. It’s access to the final frontier, across oceans and borders, wherever that may be. There’s something thrilling about knowing that, given the opportunity, I could go pretty much anywhere in the world.

But not now.

Now, I’m stuck. If Colin Firth showed up at my door and said, “Forget my gorgeous italiana wife, I want to run away with you, my chubby delusional hapa. I know the perfect spot just north of Reykjavik (hey, it’s my fantasy) where we could raise beautiful Icelandic ponies together” or conversely, if my husband had a business trip and invited me along, I couldn’t go. I’d be making a sad face through the window as I waved good-bye.

Of course, I’m getting my passport renewed. It’s easier now with the forms online. I’ll have to get a new official photo, which is always interesting. I firmly believe that passport photographers consider moving to the DMV a promotion. I don’t think I’ve seen any smiling passport pictures, which is strange. Most people are happy when they travel. Maybe not so much when they arrive after a long journey. Nor when customs pulls you aside and a big burly bald guy pulls you into another room and asks you to sit down while he glowers and asks questions in what sounds like French, but not really. Then you actually do look like the picture. On the other hand, over ten years there’s been some fashion changes. Looking at the old picture, the hair’s not completely awful, but the lace vest is a little questionable. And then there’s the wrinkles, grey, and pudge that I’ve acquired since then.

Free Flat Cranky! Print, cut her out,
and take her along on your travels!

Meanwhile, I’ve come up with an idea that I saw in a children’s book, Flat Stanley. I’ve created Flat Cranky. I’ve included a copy for your own perusal. Simply cut it out and take it with you on your trips and then, include it in your photographs of famous landmarks and send them back to me. It’ll almost be like me actually being there, kind of like going to the Paris or the Venetian hotels in Vegas rather than the actual cities in Europe. But for now, it’s all I’ve got.

Oh, and while you’re taking pictures of Flat Cranky, feel free to include Flat Colin Firth. That’d be o.k., especially if you’re somewhere north of Reykjavik with some Icelandic ponies. Hey, Flat Cranky has dreams, too.

Coming up Roses

2012-01-02T16:24:00.000-08:00

And good riddance!

At 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve, I jolted awake and made a mad dash to the bathroom.

“Not today,” I groaned.

Not that any day is a good day for a urinary tract infection. The extreme discomfort of a UTI is immediately identifiable, with the obvious burning in the “nether regions,” and an electrifying, strangely metallic pain that glides simultaneously up from my finger and toes to my arms and legs. Then there’s the urge to go again and again and again when I’ve just gone.

“Awwww, maaaaaaaan ….” I slammed my head against the wall.

I drank all the water in my glass upstairs, then went downstairs to fill another monster-sized cup and drank as much of that as I could handle. I refilled it and took it back upstairs with me, already thinking of any larger containers I might have stowed away some place. I emptied out again, and sat for a while with my head against the wall. I picture the pain chart with the smiley faces and not so smiley faces and try to think where my expression falls. Is a 10 the worst pain I’ve ever experienced, or the worst pain I can imagine? I put a nail through my foot once, and that didn’t really hurt, but then when I used to get stuff caught under my hard contact lenses, that was pretty unpleasant, and a UTI is pretty close to that, but not like being burned alive. And then there’s different kinds of pain, so how does that figure? I crawl back into bed.

I’m very familiar with UTIs. It’s an unfortunate circumstance that with each infection it becomes almost exponentially more likely to get another infection. To make matters more complicated, I’m allergic to penicillin and over several UTI bouts, I’ve become allergic to sulfa as well, taking the two most common antibiotics off my list of solutions. However, I’ve discovered that drinking copious amounts of water and sugar free cranberry juice can clear up a UTI, verified by the swabs taken once I’ve seen the doctor. So, that’s the route I’ve adopted, saving my $25 deductible and telling myself I’m also preventing the rise of super-bacteria. Then again, if the current infection doesn’t run its course in 24 hours, because it’s the beginning of a three day holiday, I’ll have to wait two more days before I can even call my doctor, let alone get an appointment.

Drink, drink, drink.

At 8 am I forced myself into the planned routine, feeding the dogs, hoping that if I pretended all was normal, it would be. It was New Year’s Eve, dammit. I have a house to clean. I can’t start the New Year in a dirty house. And then I’ve got dinner to make. My husband was running errands to prepare for his New Year honey-dos.

I gave it the old college try, cycling among cleaning, chugging water, and running to the bathroom. My legs and fingers swelled. I felt woozy. I couldn’t do it. I crapped, or rather peed out. Water drunk, at 3 pm, I popped a couple aspirin, guzzled a half gallon of water, and literally threw in the (dusting) towel. I changed into my pity party pjs and crawled into bed, doubling up the comforters, a dog curled up at my side and my feet, the t.v. mumbling in the background.

I don’t think it would have bothered me as much if it were another holiday. My husband and I go out for our birthdays on the weekend. We do Valentine’s dinner the weekend after to avoid restaurant hassles. “Christmas” is scattered among visits with friends and family. Most of our “holidays” revolve around friendships and family, so it doesn’t matter what actual day it falls upon, as it’s the time we spend with company that counts.

Except for New Year’s Eve.

New Year’s Eve is a day of closure, an actual chronological cusp. Whole calendars are changed, not just a page (yes, I do still use an actual paper calendar - with cute dog pictures, I might add. Like a prisoner, I need something concrete to mark my days). New Year’s Eve is an event in which I’m forced to participate, whether I’m cleaning house or sick in bed.

I watched Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin ring in the New Year as I lay shivering under the blankets. Firecrackers blasted outside as one dog ran through the house barking and the other, somewhat stoned, stared at me pleadingly. I got up to go to the bathroom and drank another giant glass of water.

The Rose Parade on any other day is STILL The Rose Parade.

I woke up on New Year’s Day feeling considerably better. I went downstairs, chugged more water, and started the coffee. Following New Year’s tradition, I turned on the t.v. to watch the Rose Parade.

It wasn’t on.

“What?!”

I flipped to all the channels that usually run it, then caught an ad. It would run on Monday.

Monday?

Well, as far as I’m concerned, it’s not New Year’s Day without the Rose Parade. So, I cleaned the house and prepared dinner as planned and felt much better. I got a reprieve, a mulligan, if you will.

Happy New Year, everyone.

2012’s going to be a good year after all.

Learning to Fake It

2011-12-21T19:30:00.000-08:00

R.I.P. O Christmas Tree

“So ... I’m just throwing the idea out there, but ….”

My husband looks at me, waiting for me to continue. I wring my hands in imitation of the contortions my stomach is performing.

I shake my head, shrug. “I was just wondering if maybe ….”

My husband nods in encouragement.

“Well ….”

“What?” he finally asks, although now he’s a little pale and he’s biting his cuticles.

“What do you think about a fake tree?” I blurt out.

He stops biting his cuticles, but his brow falls and his lower lip slides out just a little.

“What do you mean?” he asks.

“Well, I’m just thinking … every year we get a tree …sometimes two - -“

“Only once,” he interrupts. “We only got two trees once.” And then he gets puppy eyes. “And that was really nice.”

“But we get really big trees,” I say. “They’ve got to be at least 10 or 15 years old.”

“They’re from tree farms, they’re not clearing out forests or anything,” he adds.

“Well, yeah, but …” I concede. “Still, 15 years is a long time and if you figure in the water and then the waste - -“

“The city recycles them,” he says. “They get all the trees and then make them into mulch for the parks or something. The trees don’t wind up in the dump.”

“But it’s a live thing,” I say and his face drops. I’ve hit the right note. “It’s a live thing that we kill just because we want something that smells good in the house.”

His brows go back up and start to furrow as he thinks.

“It’s like we kill something to make a giant air freshener,” I say. And then for the final note, “ … and it’s a fire hazard.”

“It’s not a fire hazard,” he argues. “I keep it watered so it stays fresh all through New Year’s.”

Doh, I pushed too hard, I think. “Well, they’re messy,” I say.

“You’re a Grinch,” he says, narrowing his eyes at me. “You’re hating on Christmas again.”

“No,” I say to my own defense. “I feel sorry for the trees.”

He groans and rolls his eyes at me. “You eat vegetables.”

“But they don’t take 15 years to grow,” I say. “And I’m eating them, not just looking at it and smelling it.”

He sighs.

“And the trees are expensive,” I say, especially since we moved away from our bargain tree place in Southern California. “And it’s inconvenient since we don’t have a truck.”

We had borrowed his brother’s truck or a family friend’s truck in the past. He didn’t feel comfortable asking anyone up here.

I know my husband’s a reasonable man.

“O.k., we’ll look,” he says. “But it can’t look fake.”

I know he’s thinking about my mom’s lop-sided wire bottle brush tree.

“And nothing funky,” he warns, knowing that it’s not beyond me to suggest a feather tree or a tinsel one.

“No,” I assure him. “We’ll look at something realistic.”

“We’ll look,” he says not fully committing.

“Michael’s has one on sale,” I say. “It’s nine feet tall and bushy.”

His eyes light up. “Nine feet?”

“Yes, and they have some taller,” I say.

“Taller?” He grins.

When we get to Michael’s, I can tell he’s wary. He eyeballs the various trees, surreptitiously touching the “needles,” peering beyond the ornaments to check out the trunks.

“They’ve got too much crap on these trees,” he huffs. “You can’t really see the trees.”

“But aren’t we going to put a bunch of ornaments and stuff on the tree, too?” I say. “We hardly see any branches as it is.”

He snorts disgruntledly. I walk over to a tree with a mix of wire and plastic needles.

“This is the one I’m thinking of,” I say cautiously.

“It’s too short,” he says quickly.

I look at it towering over us. “It’s nine feet,” I tell him.

“No, it’s not,” he says and points to the raiser beneath all the trees. “It just looks that way. They just want you to think it’s a tall tree.”

I hold up the tag for him to read.

“It’s nine feet,” I repeat.

I can tell he’s still skeptical.

“Look at the cute pinecones on it,” I say and he rolls his eyes and wrinkles his nose.

“Nobody buys pinecones on a Christmas trees,” he says.

“On sale, this tree costs as much as a live tree and it’ll last for several Christmases,” I say.

It’s a losing battle, I think. Another tree is going to bite the dust.

Then suddenly it comes to me. His Christmas nemesis.

“It’s pre-lit,” I say quickly.

“What?”

“The lights are already on it,” I say.

“How can they do that?” he asks looking at the tree closer.

“The tree comes apart in sections and each section has its own set of lights,” I explain. “When you put the tree together, you plug in the lights.”

“Hm,” he grunts examining the interior of the tree.

Putting the tree on the lights was always an ordeal.

“No more hours spent untangling,” I say. “No more cursing, No more frustration.” I can see this is a deciding factor. “Just plug it in, and it’s good to go,” I say and then take a step back. “And there are lots of lights on the tree as well. Just the way you like it.”

“Um-hm,” he says.

I can see the wheels turning.

“You can even get the multi-colored lights if you want?” I offer.

So, that Christmas we unfolded the fake tree. He actually went for the white lights. I put every ornament we owned on it. I made sure it was the best looking tree we ever had. I even bought a wreath so he could smell real pine.

“See?” I said victoriously. “It’s perfect.”

My husband gave a small nod that wasn’t entirely convincing.

“And you didn’t have to struggle with the lights,” I reminded him.

“That’s true,” he said with a sigh of relief.

That Christmas, we also acquired the Wee One. He was a mellow dog who came to us as a “foster dog” while he recovered from kennel cough and an eye infection. He got along perfectly with the Uber Hund and Rockstar and was so cuddly that we couldn’t let him go.

“Where’s Wee One?” my husband asked as he was putting away the empty ornament boxes.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I thought he was with you?”

Guess I got some 'splaining to do.

My husband glanced around.

“Wee One, NOOOOOO!” my husband cried out.

I rushed over, expecting to see a puddle, a common misunderstanding for dogs experiencing their first indoor tree. The Wee One popped his head up from behind the tree and gave a low tail wag.

It was worse. Much worse.

My husband held up the two pieces of chewed lighting cord.

As Lucy Ricardo would say, “Eeeeeeeeewwwwww.”

JMXED4GSKJ3R

A Ghost from Christmas Past

2011-12-17T16:49:00.000-08:00

"All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth"
and for my sister to be out of prison garb.

It’s not unusual to wax nostalgic during the holiday season. After all, Christmas as a child generally consists of all the fun parts of the holiday season, decorating, eating, visiting, and making and receiving gifts. As adults, we realize the work involved in creating holiday “magic,” the hauling down of decorations from the attic, the unraveling of the light strings, the planning and shopping for the holiday feasts, and coping with irritated holiday shoppers. What restores the holiday cheer is often the music, music that can instantly put us in front of the tree, sharing cheer with our loved ones, or singing in the school chorus. To this day, the opening line of “We Need a Little Christmas,” brings me back to fifth grade on one particular day with the chorus teacher, Mrs. Krause.

It was the third year I was in the chorus. That year, we “auditioned,” although I didn’t know anyone who was cut. Without any advanced notice, those who wanted to join the chorus went one by one into an empty room with Mrs. Krause and were told to sing something. I froze up, not knowing what to sing. Mrs. Krause started me on “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” except she was a soprano and I was … well, I suppose an alto, but “halt-o” might be a better description. Still, the tune was identifiable, so I was “in.” Whether through kindness or charm, being a bad singer was not reason for exclusion.

In those days, school really did feel like a second family. It seemed like all the teachers, at least by grade level, knew all the students. Or maybe, as I learned when I took my turn behind the desk, it was that they learned the names of the rabble-rousers first, so that when they called out that child’s name, the rest of us assumed they knew all of our names. With turnabout being fair play, the students also knew all the teachers. I never had Mrs. Krause as a teacher, but even I knew that no one messed with her. One kid tried, and she took him by the ear to the principal’s office. Teachers took in loco parentis seriously back then and our parents supported them.

When I first heard the term “battle ax,” I knew immediately what it meant. Mrs. Krause was the “Coach Beiste” of our school with an undershot jaw, a pugilist’s nose, and a chest that entered the room significantly before she did. She always wore dresses (as did most of the teachers in the mid-70s), but because of her build, they looked homemade, usually of a “sensible” fabric, to go along with her sensible shoes. The bottom of her slip and top of her knee-highs usually showed, probably because her chest blocked the view of anything below it.

But Mrs. Krause was also one of the kindest teachers I knew. There was one girl at our school who was from a seriously troubled home. While this girl frequently acted out, I remember seeing her in quiet conversation with Mrs. Krause several times, and as I was well acquainted with the girl, I knew Mrs. Krause frequently bought her her lunch. On cold days, Mrs. Krause left her classroom open for lunch and recess, so her students and their friends could take shelter. Mrs. Krause also wasn’t afraid to give hugs, grabbing us with her Popeye arms and smushing us against her iron clad bosom to express thanks or to praise us for a job well done.

That one day of chorus practice, we had gone through our repertoire of traditional songs and were finishing with “We Need A Little Christmas,” one of our favorites. We couldn’t get past the first line and we could see the growing frustration on Mrs. Krause’s face.

“Can’t you hear the difference?” she said in exasperation. “It’s not, ‘Haul out the hooo-oooolly,” It’s, ‘Haul out the hol-ly.”

We sang it over and over again, some of us hearing the difference, others still struggling. We muttered among ourselves, exaggerating the desired version to help those that didn’t understand until finally we all got it right. Mrs. Krause beamed and we grinned back, continuing the song with smiles on everyone’s face. She praised us afterwards, not just on the song, but for rehearsal that day, congratulating us on our persistence. My friends and I laughed about how long it took for us to figure out the problem and how glad we were that we did. Other students were doing the same as I could hear smatterings of “haul out the hol-ly” as we walked out the door. When it came time to perform the song, we all gave a little extra effort to do “hol-ly” and Mrs. Krause proud. While I don’t think she intended for us to accent the word, her nod and wide smile said our conscientiousness was appreciated.

Whenever I hear “We Need a Little Christmas,” I always listen carefully for the “hol-ly.” 37 years later, I still smile. My heart swells as I remember Mrs. Krause and how our chorus came together to bring a little Christmas to each other that day.

Carol of the Dogs

2011-12-09T15:36:00.001-08:00

It might look like an ordinary porch light, but it's magic.

“What time was the guy supposed to come?” my husband asked when we first moved into this house.

“About an hour ago,” I shrugged.

“Well, I just got a phone call from him and he said no one was home.”

“What do you mean ‘no one was home?’ I was home the whole time,” I inform my husband, my voice an octave higher with irritation.

“He said no one answered the door when he knocked.”

Crap. I had been upstairs and the backyard. At that time, we only had the Uber Hundus and Jindos don’t bark. The guy could have come and gone and I would never have known.

“We need to get a doorbell,” I sighed.

Our 1929 house has had multiple additions over the years and at some point, a two car garage was added and was later converted into the current living room/dining room. No one bothered to put in a doorbell at the “new” front door, although I suspect someday we’ll discover a doorbell somewhere in one of the closets.

When an electrician arrived for another job, I thought I’d ask about a doorbell as well. He went outside and examined the entry, the door jamb, felt along the clapboards, knocked on walls as the Uber Hund watched with interest. The Jindo was an excellent supervisor. The electrician frowned and came inside and studied the interior wall and jamb. He flicked on the light switch to the porch light.

“This shouldn’t work,” he declared, flicking the switch on and off several times.

It was the first of many times I would hear that phrase.

“Well, it does,” I said, reinforcing the obvious.

“It shouldn’t,” he said wonder written on his face as he flicked the switch on and off again.

“It’s magic.”

Uber Hundus and I exchanged looks. The Uber Hund gave a sniff of disdain.

“So, can you put in a doorbell?” I finally asked, suspecting wizardry was not one of this electrician’s fortes.

“I - - , “ the electrician shook his head in marvel and flicked the switch once more for good measure. “I don’t know how I would do it.”

The following weekend, my husband and I went to the hardware store and purchased a remote doorbell, the kind that is double-taped onto a surface and has a battery operated receiver. It worked o.k., except that it wasn’t loud enough to be heard upstairs. So, I bought an additional receiver, the kind that’s programmed to match the other receiver and I plugged it into an outlet.

It worked. It worked very well. We discovered that our neighborhood was a magnet for faux magazine and security system sales, with the occasional missionary and child asking for support of his/her school, club, or team. There was also UPS, FedEx, and other shipping companies. And the pizza guy. And friends. The doorbell rang at least once a day.

Not long after installing the doorbell, we acquired The Rockstar who, unlike the Uber Hund, does bark. A year later, we got the Wee One, who also barks. And bays: “Aa-rooooooo! Aa-rooooooo!”

In classic Pavlovian fashion, the younger dogs learned to associate the doorbell with pizza and friends. Whenever the doorbell rang, The Rockstar and Wee One scrambled, barking and aa-roo-ing, to the door. They jockeyed for front position, leaping and jumping, trying to out bark and out greet each other. The Uber Hund observed cooly from a distance, it wasn’t going to be the pizza guy if it wasn’t Friday night. If it was friends, they’d want to see the Uber Hund first anyway, so there wasn’t any rush.

Because of all the sales, faux and real, we stopped answering the doorbell if we didn’t recognize the person on the other side. However, the dogs were ever the optimists. They were staunch believers that whenever the doorbell rang, it could be the pizza guy or friends. In fact, they probably believed that the more they barked and jockeyed, the more likely it would be the pizza guy or friends, because everyone else would be frightened away.

Fortunately, the police started to crack down on the door-to-door sales scams so they diminished significantly. We lived here long enough so that the local missionaries stopped trying to recruit us. We watched for the pizza guy and friends’ arrival and went out to greet them rather than have them ring the bell.

The house got quieter and calmer. It was a huge improvement.

And then the doorbell started to mysteriously ring on its own.

Once more, the dogs got whipped into a frenzy. They’d do their routine, charging at the door, barking and baying. But most of the time, they’d fade out in confusion since there was no shadow of a figure at the door. I was a little confused as well. At first, I thought it was a game of ding-dong ditch. But there was no giggling, no scampering away as I watched from the upstairs window.

After a while, I realized that whenever our doorbell rang on its own, the people next door had visitors. Apparently, the neighbors didn’t have a traditional doorbell, either. Our doorbells were on the same frequency. Not only did we get double the ringing of sales visit, but we’d know whenever the neighbors had friends visiting. And they had lots of friends.

I yanked out the upstairs receiver.

As a Christmas gift last year, we purchased a new front door. My husband did the installation, pulling out the jamb and hanging and aligning the door.

Waiting for the pizza guy.

“What do you want me to do with this?” he asked, holding up the remote button to the doorbell.

I looked at The Rockstar and the Wee One who wagged their tails with giddy anticipation.

“Chunk it,” I said.

He examined the button doubtfully. “Really?”

I went outside and stood in front of the glass panel of the new front door and knocked. The Rockstar and Wee One burst into a joyous noise.

“Yep, really,” I said.

One less bell to answer, but no chance The Rockstar or The Wee One will let me miss any more service visits.

Giftphobia

2011-12-04T15:30:00.000-08:00

Training Tip: Do not reward bad behavior.

Let me say it again: No gifts, please. Seriously. I mean it. None. Don’t. I’m not joking. Please. Really.

Every Thanksgiving, a queasy sensation grows in my stomach, and it’s not just from sucking too much whip cream from the can. It usually starts with the Black Friday ads for inane products, like the Forever Lazy or Pajama Jeans. It’s that feeling of dread of the holidays. It’s knowing we’ve entered the “gift-giving” season.

Let me clarify. It’s not the giving that freaks me out, it’s the receiving. I’m terrified of offending the giver, and it’s a justified fear. I was not blessed with a poker face and my social filter is defective. I’ve been known to blurt out things, horribly ungracious remarks. I know, “it’s the thought that counts,” and I do appreciate the thought. Really, I do. And yet somehow I can’t help myself. And then I just feel awful.

I try to avoid gift giving situations. I don’t have bridal showers or housewarming parties or birthday parties. Although, I did have a fortieth birthday party. I was blunt on that one. I specifically stated on the invitation and with conformations “no gifts.” But, wouldn’t you know, I still received some. So I’ve decided to no longer mention that an invitation is in celebration of an event. Still, when the holidays come, there’s no getting around it. It’s expected for one to give AND receive gifts.

It’s not that I’m a Scrooge. I enjoy holiday decorations, parties, kids getting whipped up about Santa and reindeer. I like going into The City and looking at the giant Christmas tree in Union Square and seeing decorations in the stores and shop windows. I like how people try to be a better version of themselves. I even like getting gifts for my nieces and nephews, especially because they know exactly what they “need.” The older ones prefer gifts they can put in their wallets and the younger ones have their consistent likes.

It’s more complicated with adults. As adults, we usually have the funds and access to get pretty much anything we want, especially in this age of instant gratification. We all hear the suggestion to get the thing others wouldn’t get for themselves. Well, there’s a reason why we don’t get “it” for ourselves. I’ve gone to enough yard sales and thrift shops to see where these gifts end up. And gift cards, while widening the possibilities of purchases often end up languishing in wallets or bureau drawers – money generously spent, but frequently wasted. And I feel guilty about that as well.

I understand the desire to give gifts, to show appreciation but at least in my case, my family, friends, and colleagues are gifts in themselves. I neither need nor want more “stuff.” I’ve finally convinced my husband that we should do something together for our anniversary, Valentine’s Day, and Christmas to avoid a gift exchange. I’m being perfectly honest when I tell him all I want is to spend time with him or to share something we both can enjoy, like our new front door or a great bottle of single malt scotch. Ideally, that’s what I want from my family and friends as well, a moment of sharing.

The holidays are full of hustle and bustle, so I know time is the one gift few can spare, but there’s no reason that the gift of time must be given during the holiday season. The best gifts I receive are spread throughout the year: the glasses we raise at Great Big Sea concerts, the confidences exchanged over Wahoo Fish Tacos, the emails we send sharing news of our lives, the words of encouragement we exchange when we’re feeling low. These are the gifts that I treasure, and truly, they’re enough. They can’t be purchased and they can only be given by those who love me and by those whom I love. That’s why receiving tactile gifts worries me so much. I don’t want to hurt the people I love with my boorishness, especially knowing they have only the best intentions at heart.

And yet, there is the compulsion to give.

Some memories have grown a bit hazy with time and martinis...

So, how about a compromise then, dear family and friends? Since I don’t take pictures, a photograph of you or your children at a memorable event would be great; consumables that we can share at a later date like cookies or a bottle of Two Buck Chuck; a self-made coupon to watch a dvd together at one of our homes, share a frozen yogurt and chatter, or a martini and gossip, or a hike and dog play time; an email with a link to a video that conjures a fond memory we share. Easy on the wallet and guaranteed to bring a smile to both of us.

For my part, I will try try try to find something that won’t force you to grimace politely and hide that cringe with a sneeze. I’m sure I’ve come up with some doozy gifts, but my family and friends are much more gracious than I.

Crap.

Well, there you go. That’s another gift given to me, which I’ve been too ungracious to appreciate.

The Fox and the Hound

2011-11-25T19:19:00.000-08:00

Giving thanks can change at a moment's notice

As a child, Thanksgiving began when my father pulled out the homemade red stained table with detachable pipe legs. The holiday consisted of cleaning my room (and later the house and yard with my sister), fanning the smoke alarm, waiting for guests, eating and ending with my parents complaining about the outrageous rates plumbers charge for holiday visits.

We always had a huge holiday spread. Appetizers consisted of the standard mixed nuts, salami and red wax covered gouda cheese with crackers (if I was lucky, Wheat Thins, if not Triskits, or worse, Ritz). Crudités with dill or onion dip and pitted black olives which all the children, including my sister and I, immediately popped onto our fingers and waved around like finger puppets made the appetizers Thanksgiving. The main menu and serving containers were always: turkey and stuffing on the spiked teak cutting stand, ham, spikey with cloves, on the pink rimmed platter, Pillsbury Crescent Rolls, kept warm in the electric casket-shaped bread warmer, marshmallow topped yams baked on pineapple rings on the white platter, mashed potatoes in the white casserole dish, gravy in my parents’ wedding china gravy boat, and my father’s creamed corn casserole (one of the three dishes he cooked), served in my grandmother’s brown glazed casserole dish. Salad made its appearance in any variety of bowls because nobody really cared about salad, except that we needed something “green.” Mushrooms marinated in Wishbone Italian Dressing were served in a stainless serving bowl. It was the 1960’s – 70’s. “Cooking with convenience” was all the rage. Most of the food was canned or rehydrated. Except for the turkey.

My mother and I hated turkey. It was dry and crunchy. I assumed that was the nature of the bird, until I went to summer camp, and we cooked a turkey in a dutch oven on hot stones, buried under charcoal and ash. It was delicious. Who knew? After that, my sister and I took turns cooking the turkey. I stuck to a traditional roast while my sister went the Martha Stewart route, placing herbs beneath the skin, making it look like stained glass when it came out of the oven.

By far, my favorite part of Thanksgiving was the guests. My father had some friends who were “larger than life:” the colonel who reminded me of a walrus and his beautiful cat-like wife, the professional gambler who showed up with interesting women when he was “up” and no one when he was “down,” the magician who scared my mother by throwing flames from his hands, and the Italian Count and the Countess. The Count and Countess were our regular Thanksgiving guests. In exchange, we went to their house for the Fourth of July, which was ironic considering they still relished their unrecognized titles and the wife was from Hong Kong, still a British colony at that time.

To say the Count and Countess were eccentric would be an understatement. Their cars were beautifully restored Packards. The Count was a tall man who only wore bespoke (according to my mother) clothing. He had a thick black mono-brow and longish wavy grey hair that he combed back so that it looked like a powdered wig (appropriate for the Fourth of July, less so for Thanksgiving). He had a booming laugh that exposed sharp canines, giving him a dangerous air. His wife was a petite woman who wore stilettos that made her take tiny minced steps. She styled herself after Elizabeth Taylor, with exaggerated eye make-up and frosted hair teased into a froth. She delicately brushed stray locks from her eyes with her pinky finger. Most of the time, she wore a giant fur coat.

On one Thanksgiving, the Countess wore a fluffy red fox coat. It was too large to fit into the coat closet, and for whatever reason, my mother didn’t think it would be appropriate to store in either my sister’s or my room. Actually, I understood why not my room. I would have petted the fur off of it. So, instead, she left the coat hanging off the arm of the couch, next to the Countess. They sat and chatted.

The Gentleman as a puppy. Note the "piglet belly."

At that time, we had an elegant standard sized long-haired dachshund. My father taught him basic manners as well as tricks. We called that doxie The Gentleman because we could leave food on the very low coffee table and he’d never try to take anything. When we had company, The Gentleman would lie quietly on the couch between my mother and the guest and my mother would share her hors d’oeuvres with him as she toyed with his silky hair.

The Gentleman had one flaw: he loved to gnaw on fabric. He could look adoringly at the guest, chin on their laps all the while working his lower jaw on a shirtsleeve or pant cuff. Nobody would be any the wiser until they stood to leave and saw the wet spot and hole.

On the Thanksgiving the Countess brought her fox fur coat, The Gentleman sat between the Countess and her coat, rather than next to my mother. Despite the fur coat collection, the Countess loved animals and had two Pekinese dogs that she adored. No one thought anything was amiss, believing that The Gentleman knew an animal lover when he met one. The Countess alternated between stroking her coat and petting the dog. My sister and I were excused from the room.

After a while, my dad announced that dinner was ready. My sister and I dashed into the hall, but stopped dead when we saw the Count and my dad staring, eyebrows raised, into the living room. It was as if all the adults were frozen in time. My mother was ash white, her eyes and mouth open wide in mortification. The Countess held her fox coat by the shoulders and on the coffee colored satin lining there was a large dark area with a hole through the pocket. My sister and I looked at The Gentleman who slid off the couch and hurriedly trotted down the hall past us, into my parent’s bedroom, most likely to hide out under their bed.

“I’m so sorry,” my mother managed to say.

My dad’s eyebrows kept lowering until they were set in a glower, and his mouth went tight. His face turned a dark plum color.

“Uh - -“ My mom’s mouth opened and closed but no other sound came out.

Even I knew that the coat was expensive and that there was no way that we could replace it, like we did with the neighbor’s cashmere trousers. I looked back at my dad. He had a terrible temper with us, especially if we embarrassed him in front of his friends. All I could think about was what he would do with The Gentleman.

“Would you like me to hang up your coat?” I offered, pretending the damage was too minimal to notice.

“I’ll have the Count put it in the car,” the Countess said icily.

The Count sprang back to life. “Of course,” he said, taking the coat and going out.

“We’ll … we’ll pay for the repair,” my mother offered.

“Don’t worry about it,” the Countess said with a tight smile.

“Please,” my mother insisted, her tone stronger as she shot a sharp look at my father.

“Forget it,” the Countess said with a lighter tone, although it was equally false.

I was relieved but couldn’t understand why my parents seemed embarrassed.

The count returned.

“Let’s eat,” he roared, smiling broadly, eagerly rubbing his hands together.

The tension broken, we entered the kitchen. I knew first hand that my father’s punishments were always immediate and swift, company present or not. The Gentleman was safe. That Thanksgiving, I was eternally grateful that my father was more forgiving with animals than he was with people.

Saying, "Good-bye"

2011-11-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

R.I. P. Uber Hundus Maximus April 1999?- November 18, 2011

This is not the entry I was intending to write. I knew this was coming, but no matter how prepared I thought I was, the actuality hit with an abruptness, a finality that sucked the air out of my world, left an enormous hole in my heart, left me wandering in a haze of loss. My Uber Hundus Maximus has died.

I had thought about writing something earlier and then storing it, like newspapers do when they know a great celebrity is nearing the end of his or her time, and then adding the necessary details at the actual moment of death but I’m superstitious. I thought that I could delay the process, so I didn’t. Now, I feel compelled to write something, but there’s just so much I want to say, most of which won’t make much sense to anyone except for me and the people that knew him. Even so, let me tell you about my Uber Hund:

He came into our lives, October 2000, on his own volition, as he did everything. He had been wandering the streets of my mother’s neighborhood for a few weeks. He walked by my parents’ house. My mother, never seeing an empty mouth she didn’t want to fill, set out a bowl of food and went back to the house. A few minutes later, as she was doing dishes, she felt like she was being watched. She turned around and saw the stray looking at her through the window. Not a pushy look or desperate look, but one of curiosity, as if to say “oh, so this is where you live.” Then he turned around and left.

My mother called me, saying I should come and look at this dog, come help him. My husband and I were both working full-time and living in a townhome. It was an especially stressful time for us because several of our friends were also ill and dying. Anyone could see it was a bad situation for dog ownership. In fact, the dog I had gotten pre-marriage, a spaniel mix, was living with my parents, their dachshund and two cats. Still, my mother encouraged me to see this stray dog.

So, after work, I drove up to her neighborhood, not really having a plan in mind. She’d put out bowls of food and water, and there he was, eating and drinking. She hadn’t prepared me for the sight. He was a medium sized dog, incredibly thin. I could see his spine, ribs, and hip points. He was nearly hairless, his skin that dark grey elephant skin texture that dogs often get when they have mange. But he still had fur on his foxy face and when he turned to look at me, he wasn’t frightened or exuberant. He was incredibly calm, relaxed and confident. He gave a wag in greeting, then returned to eating.

When he was done, he came over to me. He wore a wide leather collar, that was so tight that his skin had grown over the edges. There were no tags. He let me pet him.

“Let’s see if he’ll get in the car,” I said.

I opened the car door and he approached and looked, but didn’t want to go in. I tossed in a treat to no avail. I tried to pick him up, but he balked and when I let go, he ran a couple steps out of reach, but then returned.

I told my mother that I would try again the next day, since my sister would be there to help. If he was gone, then it wasn’t meant to be.

He wasn’t there when I arrived, but appeared a bit later, checking in at the window again. He let me remove the collar. It made a sucking sound when it pulled off of his raw skin. He let me put a harness and leash on him and with my sister’s help, we got him into the car and she held his leash while I drove him to the vet.

After a few weeks, the hair started to grow back.

I left him at the vet for a few hours so he could have a work-up and a bath. I alerted my husband to the situation, and being an animal lover himself, he gave the o.k. to bring the stray home, reminding me that we didn’t have the ideal conditions for keeping a dog. I concurred and assured him that as soon as the dog regained his health and fur, I would find him a permanent home. When my husband came home that night, the dog greeted him at the door with what would become his usual reserve. Although my husband was stunned by the dog’s condition, he was sold on the personality.

Because we didn’t know anything about the dog, that first night I slept on the couch downstairs and the dog slept on a folded comforter. He slept hard almost as soon as he lay down, waking once to come to the couch and give me a kiss on the nose before returning to his bed.

I was smitten.

In the morning, I went upstairs to change. The dog waited at the foot of the stairs for a minute, then came up. He stopped when he saw our bed. He glanced from my husband to me and back with a look that would become his trademark, a look that said, “Wait. There’s a bed? Why the heck were we sleeping downstairs? That’s ridiculous.” And then he jumped up on the bed.

The next night, he slept on the bed with us. But the next morning was Monday, a work day. My husband went downstairs and called the dog. The dog came. My husband put on the harness and leash and opened the front door. It was dark and cold. The dog glanced from outside to the warm bed upstairs. “Wait. I was sleeping in a warm comfy bed and you woke me up to go out into the dark and cold? That’s ridiculous.” He ran back upstairs to bed. And from then on, the dog was convinced that my husband ran a few kibbles short in the mental food bowl.

Even so, once the dog’s fur returned, when I followed through and asked if I should look for a new home for the dog, my husband gaped at me.

“We belong together!” he exclaimed. “How could you ask such a thing?”

And so Uber Hundus Maximus remained with us

Uber Hundus was different from my other dogs because he always made it very clear that he didn’t need us, kind of like a cat. If we did something that displeased him, he would give us a puzzled look as if to say, “I don’t need to take this crap, you know. That’s ridiculous.” And then he would check out either physically or mentally, until we did something that interested him. However, he also made it clear that he chose to be with us. He was willing to work with us, he’d hang out with us, and he’d always come back to us. His choice was our privilege, and I have to say I agreed.

When his fur grew back and he went from 25 lbs. to 45 lbs., people would literally stop their cars and back up to compliment how handsome he was and ask about his breed. My husband and I assumed he was a shiba inu mix, perhaps some type of dingo, since he didn’t bark. However, whenever I walked him through our townhouse neighborhood, Koreans would stop us, saying we had a beautiful jindo (their national dog) and asking if we wanted to breed him. They were horrified to discover I’d had him neutered, saying he was a perfect jindo specimen. The breed was relatively new to the United States, the first introduction being during the L.A. riots. They were the dogs guarding from store rooftops. When I looked up the breed, they looked like my Uber Hund, although Uber Hundus Maximus was even more handsome, as he would concur.

The Uber Hund didn’t like bullshit. He had to take a variety of pills throughout his life because of his compromised immune system during his life on the streets. At first, I tried to hide his pills in food. Regardless of the kind of food, he would spit out the pill. One time he spit out the pill and stood on it, “You think you can fool the jindo? Ridiculous.” From then on, I gave him the pills straight, but I’d open his mouth from underneath and give him a treat chaser. He was perfectly fine with that. He also hated baths, but wouldn’t suffer the indignity of being lifted into a tub. Once he was in the bathroom, he’d jump into the tub on his own and take his “punishment” like a dog. After the bath was over he wanted to chase me or my husband around as payback.

Very unlike jindos, the Uber Hund loved people. He enjoyed parties and would work a room, greeting everyone, but never jumping up to take a plate or to counter surf. When he volunteered as a therapy dog, he loved working the sitting room of the assisted living facility. And the Uber Hund was an exceptional flirt. He always picked out the prettiest girl in any situation. He’d sit in front of her, and put a kindly paw on her lap. He’d work her with “big eyes” first, and if cute didn’t work, he’d break out the “sexy eyes,” where he’d narrow his eyes just a little and give a little head chuck, as if to say, “Hey, baby, how ‘bout a treat?”

Uber Hund with my niece.

He was exceptionally gentle with children. When he saw children, his eyes would go soft and he’d want to visit. They were entranced by his foxy appearance. He loved having them ruffle his fur and would let them play with his fuzzy ears. When my niece visited, she would pet him as she colored and he would fall blissfully asleep. When my later-to-be nephew visited, he wanted to walk the Uber Hund. He strutted as the Uber Hund walked easily at his side. When I asked my nephew why he wanted to walk with the Uber Hund, he said it was because it was like walking a wolf. I think even Uber Hund liked that idea.

Although the Uber Hund liked to play the role of lone wolf, he eventually allowed other dogs into the household, so long as they didn’t cramp his style. He’d never admit it, but I think he more than tolerated the company of Wee One and Muzzy, a dog we adopted but died before we moved. There are even a few photographs of the Uber Hund touching – he would vehemently deny “snuggling” - the other dogs while they slept together. When I was training the other dogs, the Uber Hund wanted to participate. But, he didn’t want to do what the other dogs were doing. He made up his own routines to get a treat. Then he’d look at the other dogs as if to say, “Top THAT! What you’re doing, it’s ridiculous.”

He loved cheesecake, smoked cheese, car rides, and supervising in the front yard as we gardened. He was a great supervisor. When we briefly lived in an apartment, I came home to see the jindo’s tail wagging as his front end was under the sink with the plumber. When I called away the Uber Hund, the plumber actually protested. “He’s o.k. He’s just keeping me company.” So, the Uber Hund returned to the task at hand.

Working the "sexy eyes."

Uber Hundus Maximus always had That Look ready, the Uber Hund look, the look that said, “don’t even try to understand the way of the jindo,” the look that wondered at human ineptness, “What?! Why did you make it rain on BOTH sides of the house? That’s ridiculous!” the look that said, “You don’t know how to do it. I’LL DO IT.” We got to know that look and love the look.

We knew the Uber Hund was old, fragile with health issues. In the last few months, he had a bout of pancreatitis, breathing issues, and something going on with his liver. We thought we’d have to make The Decision a few weeks ago, when he started to become incontinent, drinking lots of water, breathing heavily. We even prepared by asking our vet if he could make a house call when The Time came. We should have known that the jindo wouldn’t let us do that. However, over the last few weeks, the jindo prevailed, as he has been known to do. He regained energy, held his bladder, ate with enthusiasm. He wanted to go for walks and climbed the stairs.

Friday, November 18, was a regular morning. Uber Hundus ate a whole chicken breast and some special kibble. The dogs did their business. I took Rock Star and Wee One for their walks. Uber Hundus was in my husband’s office and when my husband went out for a second, the Uber Hund and Wee One migrated to my office. I was upstairs, with the Rock Star, changing clothes.

There was a yowl.

My husband rushed to my office. Each dog was in their usual place, Wee One on the couch, Uber Hund lying on the carpet next to him.

“Uber Hund?” my husband said, touching the jindo.

Uber Hund yowled again and went lax.

And then we realized. He had just said, “Good-bye.”

Music of the Night

2011-11-09T17:15:00.000-08:00

The things that happen while you're asleep.

It’s 3 a.m. and I’m up again, not because I have to go to the bathroom, although I will, but because of stress, minor aches and pains and a general lack of sleepiness. Like my husband, I’ve been struck with insomnia, but unlike him, I usually initially fall asleep quickly only to wake up later to watch the clock tick off the hours. This night, though he is able to sleep. Good on him.

It’s a chilly night, my favorite kind. I dash to the bathroom and back, jump into bed where my spot is still warm, not waking anyone, including the dogs. I’m not angry or frustrated this night. I don’t have any appointments in the morning, so when I eventually do fall asleep, I won’t have to worry about the alarm clock jarring me awake. I’m comfy and cozy, but not sleepy.

And so, I just lay there, listening.

There’s a period of time from around one or two a.m. to about four a.m. that’s deliciously devoid of human interference, the witching hour, so to speak. When I’m in a writing bender, I love this time period because it’s like dead space where everything’s muffled and quiet, although I’m sure those young’uns out there in the clubs would beg to differ. But, when I’m in bed, staring at the ceiling, it seems to be a completely different world.

First, because one of our dogs is an old guy, I always key into his breathing, just in case. One never knows, although I’ve never been “fortunate” enough to have any of my dogs pass on in their natural sleep. Uberhundus Maximus, as we’ve taken to calling him, has always had upper respiratory issues - allergies, sinus infections – so there’s usually a bit of a rasp to his breathing when he’s not completely congested. It’s a good night for him. He’s snoring lightly, regularly. I can’t see him because he’s sleeping on the floor next to my husband, but I can picture his whiskers ever so slightly waving back and forth. Then he makes “smacky lips,” one of my favorite sounds, the sound of relaxation and contentment. I smile, knowing how much his life has changed since he joined our family over 12 years ago as a street dog.

My husband is also softly snoring in a pitch only slightly deeper. He and the Uberhund are harmonizing.

“Mmmmmmm,” the middle dog groans as he shifts positions in his crate.

He’s our loose wire. We call him The Rock Star because he always needs management, and yet when the slightest thing goes amiss, he immediately appeals to his people for assistance. He likes to make his presence and condition known, hence the groaning whenever he shifts or adjusts even while he’s sleeping. He gives a long sigh.

“Moof! Moof!”

The bed jiggles as The Wee One, who really isn’t such a wee dog at 65 pounds, is next to me, dreaming. He’s the baby. His paws move as if he’s trotting through the park (or woods or savannahs of Africa) and he suddenly spasms, his eyelids twitching, his head jerking back and forth.

“Grrrrrrrrr. GRRRRRRRRR!”

It’s a bit unnerving hearing him growl while he’s sleeping because he never growls while he’s awake. He’s our expert communicator, giving all the polite doggy signals so he never has to get to the growling stage. But, when he’s sleeping, he’s a badass. I don’t know what or who he’s taking on, but he does it with a great deal of gusto and his tail is wagging wildly. He’s having a fabulous time.

By day, mild-mannered dog, by night, Cujo.

I try not to laugh and I move over a little to avoid his gnashing teeth. He drops back into deep sleep.

Very faintly, I hear honking. Canada geese. I’ve left the skylight open, although the shades are closed. The honking gets louder and closer. I can hear the rush of wings and it’s almost like the geese are going to fly right through the room. I’m tempted to wake my husband so he can experience it as well, but I know it’s not his thing and he’ll never be able to get to sleep afterwards. The sound is exhilarating and I can’t help but think of Julie Andrews singing, “wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings, these are a few of my favorite things.” I don’t even need to see it, and it’s still one of my favorite things. The honking fades into the distance, probably going to the high school where the geese will hang out until the kids either chase them away or feed them sandwiches.

It’s quiet for a long while. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that digital clocks don’t tick. When I was a kid and our family got a puppy, my dad said that wrapping a clock in a towel would remind the puppy of his mother’s beating heart. He cried anyways and my sister climbed into the box and slept with him instead. I press the button to start one of my “sleep inducing” cds. It only plays for a couple seconds before I turn it off because it’s irritatingly electronic.

A dog barks in the distance. It’s not a warning bark, like dogs do when they see a rat or squirrel. It’s a bark of boredom, a plea for interaction, but it doesn’t last long.

“Mmmmmm,” the Rock Star groans.

My husband shifts and I hear the soft whispering sound of him ruffling the Uberhundus’ fur. Uberhundus responds with smacky lips.

The Wee One readjusts so that he’s nestled between my husband and I, his head on the pillow, cold nose and hot breath on my neck.

To think, I’d miss all these things if I were sleeping.

Legends of Fall

2011-11-02T19:31:00.000-07:00

The elusive Fall

“California has three seasons: fire, earthquake, and awards.” - K.V. Muir

Despite having grown up in a Southern California beach community, I’m not a fan of summer or warm weather. True, where we lived, it seldom got into the 90s and the evenings were always cool. But, it was late fall and early spring, on the rare days when the wind kicked up after a rain and there was a bite in the air, when I was in my element.

I remember being in kindergarten and learning about seasons. At the beginning of each month, we made a calendar and got a lesson on the events of the month as well as the season. It was a strange thing to learn about leaves changing colors or snow. My teacher, Mrs. Cook, who had lived in Connecticut, showed us pictures of fall color and snow covered towns. It was beautiful, but like something on t.v. or a movie. We painted brown, orange and yellow leaves, made paper snowflakes, watched Frosty the Snowman. But none of it seemed real.

Autumn was a shape shifting season and not just because of Halloween. It did get cooler but neither palms nor pines seemed to care. My mom talked about autumn in Japan, the colors on the mountainsides and buying hot chestnuts to eat and keep her hands warm. She bought and roasted chestnuts for my sister and I, cursing when she burned her fingers or jabbed under her nails with the shells as she peeled them for us. We’d go for neighborhood walks, eagerly pointing out red or gold leaves on specimen trees as excited as if they were a Bigfoot sightings. However, we never got to dive into a pile of leaves nor smell burning leaves (burning is BAD in California).

My dad had lived in the Midwest and the Southeast, before moving to California. He had nothing to say about fall, except that it was the beginning of football and hunting season, and he had to wear a sweater when he golfed. When I asked him about winter, he had a canned response.

“It’s goddam cold,” he’d snap. “Why the hell would you want to go someplace goddam cold? California’s got the best goddam weather in the world, dammit. You can play golf just about every day in the year. Why the hell would you want to live anywhere else?”

He’d say this every time I, or anyone else for that matter, talked about moving out of Southern California. He never seemed to catch on that numbers of days I could play golf were irrelevant to me since I didn’t play golf and most of my hobbies were done indoors. For my dad there weren’t seasons. There was weather and only two kinds of weather: golf-able or non-golf-able. His golf bag held sweaters, sun screen, and rain gear.

Liquid Amber a.k.a. gumball maple tree

When I started high school, my mom pointed out a little park area as we drove by it. There was a cluster of three liquid amber maple trees.

“I like those trees,” she said. “It makes me feel like we have seasons.”

Through the school year, we watched the leaves turn red, gold, then brown. They dropped from the trees, leaving the branches bare in the winter morning fog. Then, when spring arrived, we would watch for the little chartreuse buds and the bright green leaves that sprung from them.

At one point, we had birch or aspen trees by our car port. I remember the white trunks and seeing leaves turn yellow gold and then dropping. My sister and I liked to strip the ruffled seed pods. They looked like tiny inverted cat tails made with hundreds of papery layers. They’d flutter away with the breeze and we’d watch in amazement, wondering why we didn’t have hundreds more birch/aspen trees, since the dandelion seeds we blew created hundreds of dandelions.

I asked my mother why they were cut down.

“Your dad said they were messy,” she said.

When I moved to Louisiana, I expected tropical weather, something along the lines of the Florida Keys. I wasn’t looking forward to it, and it was a pleasant surprise to find that Louisiana had three seasons: Spring – pleasant temperatures, blooming wisteria and dogwood, and stinging caterpillars; Summer – hot and humid all day AND night with warm late afternoon thunderstorms that dropped inches of rain in an hour, but at night the egrets roosted in the cypress trees like glowing Christmas ornaments; and Winter – frost, occasional snow, and bare Cyprus trees. But still, no autumn.

My sister moved to Maine to go to school. Back in the pre-e-mail days, she sent photos snail mail of the gorgeous fall colors. I had the opportunity to visit her one Thanksgiving, and while I saw snow flurries and 20F degree temperatures, the few leaves that remained on the trees were already brown and desiccated. My heart sank.

My husband was offered a job in Northern California. We were originally hoping for something in New York or Pennsylvania. We even went to Pennsylvania several times so I could experience its seasons, but because of school, we could never go in fall. Still, the Bay Area was second choice, and realistically more convenient for both of our families. My husband moved up first so we wouldn’t be “stuck” in case his job didn’t work out. I visited frequently to explore the area and eventually to look for our future house. Living in San Francisco was a romantic notion, but the reality of our finances and commute time, the East Bay was more practical. We were initially looking at larger properties, which brought us further inland.

A swirl of red and gold.

On one of the trips, we were driving down a major street. It was chilly and the sky was an amazingly bright blue. The street was lined with walnut trees and every one blazed in yellow and red.

“Wow,” I gasped.

“Looks like fall,” my husband said.

At last.

A Ghoul's Guide to Holiday Dressing

2011-10-27T15:45:00.000-07:00

Halloween is legitimate identity theft.

Halloween is by far my favorite holiday, not because I’m a witch, which most people will say is a misspelling anyway, nor because of the spookiness component. In fact, I’m quite the scairdy cat, as my sister will vouch. What I love about Halloween is that it is carte blanche for everyone to be anyone or anything for a few hours without being concerned about social repercussions, a few hours to explore aspects of ourselves that we keep hidden due to fear, shame, or propriety. For me, Halloween is a celebration of exploration and revelation

The first Halloween costume I remember was Cinderella. In my mind, I wanted to be the scullery maid, magically transformed into a princess for one night – life imitating art imitating life. I was probably hoping for the horses as well, but there were no mice willing to participate. My costume consisted of an acetate smock, tied in the back like a hospital gown, with a princess dress printed on the front. It included a sweaty plastic mask that attached with an elastic band across the back of my head and cut into my throat whenever I lowered my head to see better out of the eye holes. I was a one dimensional princess, nothing near the magic I imagined. My sister was a one dimensional skeleton. From behind, we looked identical.

When we were done trick-or-treating that night, I helped my mother distribute candy to the “big kids.” Some of the costumes were scary, some clever, and some simple. But I loved all of them, even the ones that made me run out of the room screaming, because they were “real.” They incorporated real, not printed, clothing, make-up, wigs, and on occasion, a latex mask. The idea of actually becoming something for the night, in three dimensions made my mind spin. I was already planning for the next year, when I could actually be someone, something, other than myself.

Jelicle Cats wear red tennis shoes and pom-poms
on their tails.

I started out simply. I wanted to be a cat, not Cat Woman, but an actual cat. Since my mother doesn’t sew, it was the perfect beginning. I wore a leotard (with long johns underneath to keep warm) and tights. My mother stitched felt ears onto a black head band and attached a tail also out of felt, to the leotard. The best part was that she painted a nose and whiskers on my face with her black eye liner. I was thrilled. I was a cat, sleek, sly, and stealthy. Rrrrrowr!

The next few years bled together: Mad Madame Mim, from Sword in the Stone (a bust since everyone thought I was a princess despite the giant hairy wart I painted on my chin and the wacky grey wig), a witch, a pirate, Venus. All were familiar personas. But, then a neighbor created a costume where he became Igor carrying a coffin. Brilliant! Suddenly, I saw costumes as a showcase for artistic talent as well as identity. With a friend, the next year we created a horse using boxes, paint, and a sheet. We took turns being the front and back. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t the best horse, the knowledge that no one else had thought to do it was enough.

When I entered high school, my parents put the kabosh on me going trick or treating. I was heartbroken, not because of the loss of candy, but because I wouldn’t have a predictable date to play dress-up. Fortunately, because my friends were equally fond of dressing up, we moved on to Halloween parties. I was ecstatic with the expectation of one up-manship of artistic endeavors. I hosted the first party and dressed as a chamber maid. The next year, I went to a party dressed as the Grim Reaper, with incredible face painting. It was creepy, androgynous, and anonymous. Just like Death itself. I felt powerful and sinister. And then I realized the hostess wanted to surprise me by inviting the boy on whom I had a crush. From then on, artistic genius was tempered with social opportunity.

While I was dating, costumes became a two-fer. My boyfriends and I dressed as a set rather than solo. Fortunately, the people I dated were willing if not active participants. We dressed as dead Heathcliff and Cathy, 18^th Century vampires, and dead Hamlet and drowned Ophelia – one of my favorite costumes until a friend informed me I could get chiggers from the Spanish moss I wove through my hair and clothing and the possibility that leeches might still be clinging to the rotting lotus leaves.

As I got older and my friends had children of their own, opportunities to dress up for Halloween dwindled. Because giggling and ringing doorbells upset the dogs, we’re forced to stay home on Halloween night. However, I still found other opportunities to don costumes: the Labyrinth Ball, the various Victorian Balls, and an Art Deco dance. However, when we moved to Northern California, the opportunities vanished.

In the spirit of the Highlands.

Then, a couple years ago, a co-worker held a party. My usually very staid husband agreed to dress-up, mostly to humor me. We went as Highland ghosts. I asked my husband to take a picture of me so I might admire my handiwork, and I took a picture of him. As a whim, I combined the pictures, and created a ghostly collage that included not only the two of us in the Highlands, but also all our dogs, including ones that had died. Basically, it was the story behind the costumes. I showed it to him. He glanced at it first, then started looking at it more closely, recognizing the other dogs.

“That would be nice,” he said.

“What?” I asked, puzzled.

“If when we died, we became ghosts and had all our hounds with us,” he said, although he looked like he was still reconciling himself with the thought.

“Maybe that’s what happens,” I said.

"Yeah, maybe,” he smiled.

I think he’s finally getting the spirit of Halloween.

There's a Hole in the Bucket

2011-10-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

"Charming" and "quaint" translate to bizarre and
inconvenient.

We live in an older house – by California standards. It’s a quaint farmhouse. The original portion was built in 1929 and it has been added to and revised several times since then, causing many oddities and idiosyncrasies which are alternately called “character” or “another drop into the money pit,” depending on functionality, aesthetics and mood.

My husband and I play two games with the house. The first is called “In the Land of Infinite Funding.” This is where we fantasize about various improvements to the house, like correcting the switches so that the lights (or outlets) correspond to switches within the same room. And then there’s changing up the bathroom so that one does not need to turn sideways to gain access to the toilet in the cubby. The way “In the Land of Infinite Funding” ultimately ends, is that we realize, if we had infinite funding, we probably wouldn’t be living in this house.

The second game is similar, but usually starts out unintentionally and bears a striking resemblance to the folk tune, “There’s a Hole in the Bucket.”

After a pleasant day of working outside, my husband and I sit in the backyard, sipping wine and enjoying a moment of peace without the neighbor’s dog barking.

“The grass looks good,” my husband says with a sigh.

“Yes, but it’s such a waste of water,” I say. “Gravel would be more efficient and cheaper in the long run.”

“Oh?” he replies with some hesitancy.

Our dogs look at him.

“What about shade for the dogs?” he asks, refilling his glass.

“Oh, I’d put up a pergola with wisteria outside the dining room doors and then a covered porch out here,” I begin.

He looks behind us at the laundry shed.

“What would you do with the washer and dryer?” he asks.

“Weeell …”

The dogs sigh and put their heads on their feet. I’m off and running.

“If we flip the stairs so that they start in the kitchen, then we could convert that long hallway to a utility room,” I say.

“But then, what would you do with the fridge and hot water heater that are where the stairs will be?” he says.

“You know,” I draw a breath. “Those instant water heaters take up much less space and they save money because they only heat water while it’s in use. Of course, we’d need to get rid of the asbestos first.”

“Asbestos?” He looks worried and pours more wine.

“Yeah, remember, the guy told us about it?” I remind him. “But it’s fine as long as you don’t disturb it, which we’d be doing if we moved and got rid of the current water heater - -“

“To replace it with the instant heater that will save us money,” he finishes for me.

“YES!” By George, I think he’s got it!

Airing our dirty laundry in public ... sort of.

“And the fridge?” he asks. “Where will that go?”

“We’d have to move it to the other wall, where the pantry is,” I say.

“The pantry.”

“Yes, it’s a poorly designed kitchen anyways,” I explain. “We should just redo it. Then we could put in a gas stove. They’re more efficient.”

“It’ll save us more money,” my husband says with a shrug and refilling his glass.

“Of course,” I agree and nod to another glass. “But we’d have to put in a gas line.”

“Of course,” my husband says. “Maybe I could get a gas fireplace in the living room.”

“And, since they have to crawl under the house for the line, they might as well level the floor,” I shrug. “Then we can redo the bathroom, because that needs to be done. No one would buy the house as it is.”

“So, a new kitchen AND a new bathroom,” my husband sums up.

“Well, yeah, that’s what makes a house saleable,” I say.

He nods. “If we’re talking re-sale, don’t most people like lawns?”

I look at him and blink a couple times. “But grass is such a waste of water.”

My husband sighs and stands. “I think I’ll go open another bottle of wine.”

Perhaps rum would be better and this time, let’s discuss it in a Calypso rhythm.

Keeping Clothes Minded

2011-10-13T14:17:00.000-07:00

Just say "NO!!"

“Step back,” the bullhorn in my mind demands.

I ignore it and reach for the sweats again.

“Eh!” it warns me.

I can’t hear you, I can’t hear you, I think, reaching anyways.

“Eh-eh!” It scolds.

“What!” I ask that inner voice.

“Work day over?”

“No.”

“Sick?”

“No.”

“I didn’t get an invitation to the pity party.” My inner voice is even more sarcastic than my outer voice.

“FINE!” I huff and put on the jeans instead. “Awwwwww maaaaaan!” I groan as I suck in to button and zip.

They’re not even my “good” jeans. They’re the stretchy $15 mom jeans. That means a piece of toast and fruit instead of stuffing my face with a ridiculous amount of butter soaked pancakes.

I throw on a t-shirt. A normal one, not a gigantic sleeping one.

“See? How much more difficult is that than sweats and a t-shirt?” my inner voice says smugly. “Don’t you feel better now?”

“Shut up,” I snap.

But, despite the breakfast let down, I do feel better. I put on my make-up, brush my hair, and go on with my day feeling like I can answer the door without freaking out the UPS guy. Working from home has its perks: a flexible schedule, time for my dogs, write-offs. But, when I’m not meeting with clients, it means there’s no need to “dress,” there’s easy access to the fridge with various snacks, and there’s the prevailing air of “who gives a flying fig?”

Not having to dress is an issue for me. I gain weight easily and quickly and during a difficult time I found myself close to 200 lbs., and I’m only five foot five. It would have been different if I’d gained the weight eating cheesecake and raw oysters, but at that time, I couldn’t tell you what I ate for dinner the night before, let alone the meal before. I was just Hoover-ing anything at any time. It’s what I do when I’m stressed.

It took about a year, but I lost much of the “excess” weight eating salads, cutting out desserts (except for Sunday night cruises to Cold Stone Creamery), and walking more with my dogs. I looked better and health-wise felt better. Of course, I had to get a new wardrobe and since I was feeling better, I dressed better. Sure, I was hungry all the time. But I’m also vain and cheap. I liked my new clothes and I looked good in them, so if they started to feel tight, I cut back again.

Since moving, I’ve gained back some weight, partially due to stress, but also because I hate salads and feeling hungry. While I worked at the animal shelter, my wardrobe switched from predominantly skirts and dresses to trousers and jeans. I wound up buying a larger size, but when they felt tight, I knew I gained weight and I’d adjust my diet. Now that I work for myself, the temptation is to forgo even the jeans and reach for the sweats.

The problem I have with sweats, or any elastic or drawstring waisted pants, is that I lose track of how much slack I’m taking up. I’ve deluded myself into thinking that if I can put it on, it fits. This is why I have staunchly refused to join the leggings/jeggings revival. Aside from the fashion rule of thumb that if you wore it the first time around, you should avoid it on the second turn, I know that spandex expands. During the 80s, I wore leggings paired with Boy George shirt-dresses and giant t-shirts. When I took off the leggings, I looked like I was wearing invisible leggings with welt seams running along my calves, thighs and around my ankles. But, if I could still put the leggings on, I did. I only escaped them because I got distracted by the New Romantic wave and someone threw away my leggings when I wasn’t looking - probably my roommates. You know who you are, and if I haven’t already thanked you, THANK YOU!

My other problem with sweats is that I tend not to buy the “cute” sweats with logos or slogans written across the buttocks. The sweats I buy are $5 on sale. Even worse, they always look like I have them on backwards. They’re not blems that have been mis-tagged. I’ve actually put them on backwards to make sure, and they look the same, like I have a butt on my front. I had the will power (self-respect?) to purge one set, but somehow, I can’t bring myself to throw away the other. I set the criteria mentioned above and try to stick to it, despite my sartorial whinings.

But what does it matter if no one is there to see it? Well, for me “who gives a flying fig” is a slippery slope. The step beyond the comfy schlumpy wardrobe is the crazy wardrobe. That’s when I start arbitrarily wearing and doing things because they serve an immediate need, such as opting for a quilted zebra print hopi coat (like a short kimono) on top of the butt sweats and the sleeper t-shirt that has shifted to day wear along with the fuzzy slippers. Forget make-up and brushing my hair. I’ll just wear a headband. The black stretchy kind, not the decorative plastic ones. I have a fat head.

And now that my husband is also working from home, we’re both in the same boat. When we first got married, he wore dress shirts and slacks to work. But now, he only goes into the office once a week, at most. On those days, he irons slacks and a button down shirt. When he doesn’t go in, he’s unshaven and in sweats. Plus he’s on a 24/7 work schedule, so he tends to steal sleep when he can, blurring the line between sleepwear and home office “work” wear.

When both of us haven’t worked out of the house in a while, we get a bit wack-a-doodie because we don’t even see each other. We’re hunkered down in our separate home offices.

The danger of solitude and untrimmed bangs.

“Check this out, honey!” my husband calls to me from his office.

I leave my office to look. Somehow, he’s managed to loop the cord from his sweat pants around his neck so not only does he look like he’s wearing shoe string suspenders, but the waistband is up under his armpits. And he’s wearing gym socks with slippers.

Holy crap, I think.

“Geeze,” he says, staring at me, “What’s up with your hair?”

“It’s a reverse ponytail.” I tug at the clump of hair spurting from the middle of my forehead and tie the zebra hopi coat shut. “My hair was getting in the way.”

We both lose the glassiness from our eyes.

“I’m gonna take a shower and go to the grocery store,” I announce.

“Yeah, I’m gonna take a shower, too and then run some errands,” my husband says.

Sometimes, we have to give a flying fig.

Lifestyles of the Average and Ordinary

2011-10-05T15:11:00.000-07:00

The world is full of doors and everyday lives behind them.

When I was around seven years old, my father’s co-worker invited our family to dinner at his home. As was proper in those days, we dressed up (not formally, but nicer than school clothes), hopped into the station wagon and headed out. We pulled up to a large building and parked on the street. An apartment!

My sister and I grew up in a tract home suburb in an isolated quasi-beach community. Although there were apartments about a mile away, the majority of housing in our area at that time was free-standing homes and all of our friends lived in freestanding homes. Our house literally bordered on an affluent community, but in the early ‘70s, the area below our house was still fields of garbanzo beans or wheat, depending on the year. So, actually going to an apartment was exciting.

We stopped at a gate and had to get buzzed into a large green courtyard with hillocks, bridges, and lush plantings. There was the sound of gurgling water. My sister and I exchanged piqued looks and rushed towards the sound. A river! Sure, we had a little fish pond in our front yard, but we didn’t have a river. How cool was that? A river! We hadn’t even met my father’s friend yet and already he rated high on the coolness scale.

“It’s not a river, it’s a stream,” my dad corrected us.

“A stream! COOL! Can we live here??” my sister and I asked breathlessly.

“We live in a house,” my dad snorted. “And it’s not a real stream.”

My sister and I looked at the running water in confusion. The water was clear and there were rocks lining the sides and bottom with a little concrete. There weren’t any fish, but it wasn’t a gutter. And hadn’t Dad just said it was a stream? Moving water was thrilling. My sister and I exchanged shrugs and gleefully followed the stream.

My dad called us to him and we entered the building. It was like a hotel: carpeted hallways, doors on either side with numbers on them. Were we going to have room service for dinner? We’d done that once before in a hotel and a guy showed up with a cart and the food was covered with silver inverted bowls, which made the food soggy and taste all the same. It was like a mix between take-out and eating in a restaurant.

When we got to the apartment, we met my dad’s co-worker, who was much younger than my dad. He was tall and thin, wore tiny silver framed glasses and a sweater vest. His parents were there. Their voices lilted. They from Switzerland and so was my dad’s co-worker. Was this how Swiss people lived?

The apartment itself was disappointing. It looked like a house, not a hotel room. There was a kitchen, so no room service. The t.v. was black and white and only got a few channels. There were two wires on top. By moving them around, my dad’s co-worker showed us how to get channel 52, a channel we’d never heard of, and we were introduced to The Little Rascals. It was a night full of discoveries.

The wonder of seeing different lifestyles is something I’ve kept. There’s the quirky individual stuff, like my friend’s house where they used toilet paper as napkins, but I’m more intrigued with other people’s lives in different environments.

When I was in middle school, a friend moved to Minnesota. She sent pictures of her new home and I thought she’d died and gone to heaven. They had three acres, horses, woods, and a large old colonial house. I was allowed to visit her for a month, and while the property itself was fabulous, the hordes of mosquitos weren’t and it was a good thirty minute drive to get groceries or go shopping. I did get to swim in a lake and we hiked through the woods, which I stopped doing when my friend told me about ticks dropping out of trees. I pictured tiny skin boring ninjas. We rode daily, but it was so hot and humid that the barn looked like we’d hosed it down. We spent evenings on the porch listening to the mosquito zapper pop and sizzle. Rural life definitely had perks (horses) and lakes were definitely beautiful, but I’m not a bug person. As I’ve grown older and more forgetful, convenience has become increasingly important.

In college, I lived in dorms and on campus apartments. I later moved into duplexes when I lived in Louisiana, having learned that neighbors above or below created complications and aggravation. I learned I liked having a little elbow room. But I still hadn’t lived in a city. Urban living was still a mystery.

A friend of a friend lived in San Francisco. We discussed rent rates, which were ridiculous in comparison to Baton Rouge. He paid more to rent a parking space for his car than I paid for half of a shotgun duplex with a deck and yard. My friend and I stayed with him when we visited San Francisco. I fell in love with the city, but it struck me as odd that there weren’t any major grocery stores nearby. The apartment building had its own store that had groceries, prepared meals, and “necessities.” It was only maybe 800 square feet, so the offerings were limited. Still, I was intrigued by the idea of the store owner knowing the customers by name and ordering items to suit his specific clientele. There was a charm to that as well as being able to be carless, if one chose. San Francisco has good public transportation, and there are plenty of restaurants and shops just out the door and in walking distance.

The ultimate looky-loo coup for me was when my husband and I visited New York City. Everyone has seen NYC apartments on t.v. and in movies, but that never meshed with the “word on the street.” In magazines and conversation, the dilemma of a NY apartment was size. Neither Seinfeld’s nor any of the Friends’ apartments seemed small. They seemed ordinary. Lofts of course, were spectacular (and I have yet to receive an invitation to explore loft living), but what about an “ordinary” New York apartment?

We met a family friend of my husband’s. He was a restaurant investor, so we went to his diner and then he offered to show us around the area. I was thrilled to see “real life” New York as opposed to tourist vision. At the end of the tour, the friend asked if we would like to see his place.

“Yes!” I blurted out before my husband could refuse.

The apartment, in fact, wasn’t completely “ordinary.” The neighborhood, Tudor City, was actually one of the first “planned community”/gentrification projects in NYC. It was built as a suburb in the city. Still, it was someplace “real.” The building itself was a 1920s take on gothic. There were restaurants, dry cleaners, and other shops contained within the building. There was a private garden across the street and another in a building. The architecture was gorgeous and then we went up to the apartment.

The apartment was 500 square feet, two rooms: a living area and a bedroom with a small bathroom. It was the size of a large motor home and as efficient in its use of space. The “kitchen” was contained in a closet. There was a burner, an oven and an under counter refrigerator, like the kind used in dorms. The sink was bar size. Dinnerware as well as pots and pans were stored in the console behind the couch. I was stunned. How cool. How perfect. There was no room for clutter, and yet the apartment was beautifully decorated, could even accommodate several guests for a cocktail party, although there was no seating to eat. But, it was NYC. Who needed to eat at home?

I’ve lived in a townhome within a maze of townhome complexes, a house within walking distance of restaurants and shops, and now in an old house in a pseudo-rural community. We like having space both indoors and out. For coastal California, we’ve managed to have homes on large-ish pieces of land which allow a certain lifestyle, such as having three medium to large dogs. But, we’re contemplating the next move.

The best of both worlds, except for the missing llama.

My husband and I always waver between the excitement and convenience of urban living and suburban comfort. Both of us are drawn to the idea of a farmette, someplace where we can have horses and chickens, perhaps a llama (my husband’s dream), a pond and space to run the dogs. On the other hand, we’ve never really lived a truly urban existence, and that still holds a romance to us. Maybe someday.

When I was first started grad school in California, my sister and I decided to live together with two other roommates. Since my sister and her friends were undergrads already going to school in the area, they went looking for apartments. My sister called me and told me she had found the perfect place.

“It’s within walking distance of school,” she told me. “But I know you’re really going to love it. It’s got something awesome.”

“Oh yeah,” I said wearily, knowing my sister had a penchant for being a party girl.

“Yeah,” my sister assured me. “The place is called ‘Stoney Brook.’ It’s got tons of streams running through it.”

Both of us laughed. Streams? How could it not be cool?

Forget the champagne and caviar. Here’s to imported beer wishes and mixed nuts dreams, and the chance to vicariously live it all.

Freedom of Voice

2011-09-29T14:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a voice should be used, but
not heard.

My family is a musical family. We love to express ourselves through music. Strangely, despite my father knowing how to play clarinet and my sister and I having played competitive level piano, we prefer the most primal route. We sing. And we sing all the time. Loudly. Usually acappella. And stone cold sober. And for three of us, not very well. Most people would find this disturbing and grounds for institutionalization. Or at least a violation of the local noise ordinance.

I’ll start right off by clearing my sister. She has a great voice. It’s not a sweet Sandy Denny soprano nor even a hip Lady Gaga voice. My sister’s voice is a booming Broadway voice that could bring Ethel Merman to her feet and show Lea Michel a thing or two about breathing and hitting a note squarely as it should be rather than sliding around it like butter on a hot plate. She actually performed with her voice. The rest of us just sing.

We played and sang a variety of music in our house. My father played swing music on the stereo so we were exposed to the Andrew Sisters, Bing Crosby, and Johnny Mercer at an early age. My mother favored Burt Bacharach and with him, Dionne Warwick. My sister developed a crush on Andy Williams (although I think it was really because she wanted to get to know Cookie Bear) and so she got an album of his. I liked the traditional and sentimental songs found on children’s records, so I’d go around the house crooning ‘Let me call you sweetheart” or making everyone sick to death of Daisy whenever I rode my bike. The neighbor boy showed us where to find rock music on the radio. A whole new world opened and I embraced Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods while my sister gravitated towards The Beach Boys and Elton John.

Because it was the age of variety shows, my sister and I used to provide after dinner entertainment for my parents with musical revues. We did solos and duets, but the grand finale was always a huge medley of random songs, usually not preplanned, but involving a word in a lyric that overlapped with another lyric. It felt like the shows went on for hours. I'm sure my parents would agree. Then my dad changed jobs and stopped having dinner with us. It was the end of an era. We went solo and stopped performing before a live audience.

My sister and I took turns listening to albums on the stereo. The headphone cord wasn’t very long, so we’d sit on the carpet, leaning against the bar, studying album covers and reading record sleeves (something I dearly miss with downloads). We’d close our eyes and become absorbed into the music.

One warm summer day, it was my turn to use the stereo. The patio door was open, allowing a cool breeze to blow through the house and I was transported to a blissful circa 1960s beach with no sand or sunburn, listening to Jan and Dean. It was all fine and dandy until dinner time when my sister whipped out the tape recorder.

“Do you want to hear something?” she asked our parents.

“Sure,” they said.

My sister frequently recorded herself singing along with Andrea McArdle in hopes of being the next Annie. However, tonight’s performance was not my sister.

"Deadman’s curve it no place to plaaaaay …oooh eee wah ooh …Deadman’s curve , you best keep awaaaaaaaaaay …”

There’s a reason why recording artists have the audio of their mikes looped back into their headsets. I was mortified. My parents laughed themselves to tears and my sister chalked one up for the younger sibling.

Despite the embarrassment, I continued to sing along with the stereo. The joy of singing with Patti Lupone easily outweighed any humiliation a hidden recorder could bring. It’s not that my singing improved. In fact, when I practiced sight singing with my piano teacher, the dog would routinely run out of the room to the furthest corner of the house. He’d only return to the living room once we moved on to playing.

Singing to albums or while doing chores or to pass time is a different category altogether. It’s not only self-entertainment, but a way to more pointedly express emotions, like when I sang “Just You Wait, Henry Higgins” as I vacuumed and dusted or when my sister lamented that “maybe far away or maybe real nearby” she had “real” parents waiting for her in their mansion. In a way, we lived life as a musical.

The extent to which our lack of musical inhibitions wasn’t normal was a brought forth during friend’s overnight stay.

"What’s your mom doing?” my friend whispered wide-eyed from the bed in the morning.

“Making breakfast,” I said while stretching.

“No,” my friend said, then dropped her voice, “the other thing.”

“Other thing?”

My friend frowned and listened to the swirling wail that came from the kitchen.

“Is she doing some sort of special Japanese prayer-thingy?” she asked, trying not to be offensive, but curious about cultural differences.

“No,” I laughed. “She’s singing.”

“A Japanese song?” my friend asked, perhaps referring to her perception of an Asian atonal scale.

I strained my ears trying to identify the tune. My mother is horrible with lyrics. Forget melody. I heard something about “sgy.”

"'scuse me, while I kiss this guy.."

“I think it’s Jimi Hendrix,” I said getting up to check.

My friend trotted after me, looking at my then sixty-something mother contentedly beating eggs. My mom doesn’t look like the psychedelic sort. More like a Mamas and Papas woman, which she sings as well, especially on Mondays.

“Mom, what are you singing?” I asked after we exchanged ‘good mornings.’

“Hendrix,” my mom said.

My friend, stunned sat down at the table. I sat with her.

“You’re surprised my mom knows Jimi Hendrix?” I asked.

“I’m surprised your mom is singing when I’m here,” my friend muttered under her breath.

“Why?” I asked.

“Well,” my friend hesitated and then lowered her voice even more, “it’s really bad.”

“Yeah, well, you should hear her sing Burt Bacharach,” I said.

“Oh!” my mom exclaimed with disgust. “Burt Bacharach! He has a terrible voice! He should never record it.”

Commercialism is one thing. But, when the heart wants to sing, any voice will do.

Scents and Scents' Abilities

2011-09-21T15:20:00.000-07:00

The Quest for the E-Scent-ual Me

Once more I’m cruising the counters, eyeing the various bottles, avoiding the questioning looks of the clerks until I find the object of my desire.

There! I spot the ad behind the counter and then the shapely vessel coyly hiding among other bottles on a silver tray.

Alas! There is another customer standing between me and my potential love. I pace nervously at what I consider a polite distance, but apparently not I’m not polite enough. The clerk scowls at me and jerks her head at one of her sister clerks.

“Can I help you?” the other clerk asks.

“No, thank you,” I nearly snap.

The initial meeting must be private, an intimate introduction and perhaps conversation between just the two of us. I stop my pacing and pretend to study the display shelf behind me, picking up bottles, looking at boxes while taking surreptitious glances at what might be my perfect match.

Oh, the places we’ll go, the sensation we’ll make. She’ll announce my presence when I enter a room and linger a moment after me when I leave. She’ll cause curious, secretive smiles from men and women, cause people to raise their heads from their books or laptops, lifting their noses into the air, unsure of exactly why.

At last! I think with relief as the customer sashays away swinging her pretty bag with rope handles.

I rush forward, seize my potential beloved, weighing the coolness of glass in my hand. I sniff the atomizer.

Yes, yes, you are pleasing even freed from the fold-over in a magazine, I think.

I spritz a little on my wrist, sniffing it immediately, catching the faint hint of alcohol. I wave my hand in the air a moment to dry, then sniff again.

Yes, jasmine and a hint of gardenia … maybe tuberose …

“Can I help you?” the clerk asks again.

“Not yet,” I say turning my back to her, closing my eyes and sniffing my wrist again.

There’s no change. I spray more on my forearm.

“I just want to walk around a bit,” I inform the clerk matter-of-factly.

“Of course,” she says with a roll of her eyes and leaves me alone.

Is this it, I wonder. Can you be The One?

It’s not just perfume. Other scents also conjure up emotions or meaning for me . The smell of diesel makes me smile, reminding me of the train that travels around the perimeter of Disneyland. Leather reminds me of horses, as does the smell of cut grass. Tuberose reminds me of my wedding day, when I wove the blossoms into the wreath I wore. Sweet olive reminds me of Louisiana and a friend who said the smell reminded him of urinal cakes (yeah, well, how would I know?). Rubbing alcohol makes me wince, conjuring the doctor’s office and injections. Stinky cheese makes me drool. And each of my dogs have their own smell (and not in a bad way).

But, perfume ties in a specific identity for me. My mother used to wear Chanel 5 or Halston for her daily scents, Shalimar for her evening fragrance. Even though she dabbles with other scents now and then, whenever I smell Chanel 5 or Shalimar, her image immediately comes to mind. My sister only wore Poison briefly, but it still reminds me of her. L’air du Temps reminds me of my 5^th grade math teacher. Giorgio reminds me of a dear family friend. Pavlova reminds me of my first college roommate.

I started regularly wearing fragrances before I started wearing make-up, around sixth grade. The first one I remember enjoying was Chantilly, powdery, casual, young. It came in a pink box with a lace pattern on it. It was a gift from one of my mother’s friends, who also gave me Jean Naté, Charlie, and Youth Dew. But, it was the Giorgio family friend who gave me the fragrance with which I fell in love, Anne Klein. It became my signature fragrance, at least in my mind.

I wore it every day for ten years. It was also powdery but heavy with the fragrance of “white flowers” – lily of the valley, jasmine, gardenia, and tuberose. I loved the top notes, but even better how it wore during the day. When I showered at night, there was a last fragrant sigh. The scent was discontinued about eight years after I started wearing it, at which point I started hoarding bottles, but I didn’t give up the daily wear.

A guy I moved in with also loved the fragrance. He also proved to be the tragic demise of Anne Klein. When we broke-up, he took some of his belongings right away. I was planning to move out as well, but I had to finish teaching the semester which ended in the next week. We agreed that he could continue to remove his things while I was at work. When I came home one evening, I noticed a scent in the air. It wasn’t Anne Klein.

“You brought your girlfriend to my place?” I said with disbelief into the phone.

“No,” he said.

“I can smell her,” I said.

“What??”

“You’re a stinking liar,” I said, slamming the receiver into the cradle.

How could I, with my signature fragrance not notice another perfume? I stormed into the bedroom. While the bed was mine, the mattress was his. I sprayed the remainder of Anne Klein on to the mattress, pulling it off the bed and turning it over to make sure it was saturated. He’d always remember the scent with me. I’d find another fragrance to call my own.

It was more difficult than I thought. I went back to White Shoulders but it wasn’t My Fragrance. For my wedding, I raided perfume counters looking for something fresh and exciting. I found Champs d’Elysée, a perfume made by Guerlain, maker of Shalimar. I thought it appropriate that I follow in my mother’s footsteps, but not exactly. I wore it for a while, but lost interest. I still wear it occasionally and when I do, my husband smiles and says, “Smells like Ireland,” where we took our honeymoon. But, he doesn’t say it smells like me.

I love freesias and looked for perfumes that featured freesias. Somehow, the scent didn’t transfer well into fragrance. L’eau d’Issey incorporated ozone, the “new” fragrance, and while it was pretty, it lacked depth and personalization, something I learned about when one of my college roommates and I both briefly wore Chanel 5 and discovered it smelled completely different on each of us. I thought Tocca’s Stella was The One, even tried to convince myself it was, but it too, dimmed.

Alas! We are one no more!

About a year ago it occurred to me, even though it’s almost 20 years later, maybe Anne Klein was still The One? I went on E-bay and found her! I paid much more than her original $16 price. If she was as I remembered her, it might be possible duplicate her. If not, at least I could wear her during “special occasions.” When she arrived, I ripped open the box and sprayed her all over me. I regretted it. Either due to her age or mine, we didn’t click like we used to. We’d moved on.

So, back to the perfume counters I go.

I wander around the store, sniffing my arm periodically, looking for deepening scents. It’s nice. I return to the counter and ask the clerk for a sample. She sighs and obligingly squirts some into a small container and hands it to me. I take it home, carefully remove it from my purse and put it on my dressing table among the other sample containers. I sniff my arm again.

Will you be The One this time? I wonder, already feeling let down.

There’s a company in Los Angeles that makes custom fragrances with a professional “nose.” $2,000 for the “recipe” seems reasonable if it restores a piece of one’s identity, but how will they know what's me?

Confessions of a Bibliophiliac

2011-09-16T00:10:00.000-07:00

I keep blinking and squinting and slowly things start to come out of the fog.

Where am I? Who am I ?

It slowly dawns on me that my husband is standing in front of me, waiting from me to say something.

“Ehhhhh-uhhhh,” I groan screwing up my face. Since when do I speak Zombie?

I think there’s some dry drool in the corners of my mouth.

“Book,” I grunt, waving the flopping appendage at the end of my arm.

“The one about the hangman?” my husband asks.

“No, I finished that yesterday,” I say, feeling a little tetchy. “This is another one.”

“Another one?” There’s a bit of shock in his voice.

“It’s on loan,” I say, averting my eyes. “I have to finish it before she gets back,” I mumble. “It’s almost done.”

I hold the book up, my thumb marking my place well past the half-way point.

“Uh-huh,” he says and walks out of the room shaking his head.

He’s not even in the hall before I hunker back down on the couch and fade back into the world of a five-year old boy trapped in a room.

I know what my husband’s thinking. I’m on another bender. But I can stop. I’ve done it before. I just need to finish this one …

I’ve always been an avid reader. It’s so easy for me to disappear into the written world. I love living alternate lives in other places and the more lives lived, the better. It doesn’t even have to be a particularly well-written story, although a great read is appreciated and savored. But, I’m beginning to get concerned, perhaps because I’ve been watching Dr. Drew and “Celebrity Rehab.” I’ve checked the symptoms online (thanks, About.com) and I think I’m a book addict.

1. Extreme mood changes – happy, sad, excited, anxious, etc. - Yes. Of course, it depends on the book, but I’m definitely anxious when I’m away from the book.

2. Sleeping a lot more or less than usual, or at different times of day or night – Yes. Must. Finish. Book.

3. Changes in energy – unexpectedly and extremely tired or energetic – Yes. See #2.

4. Weight loss or weight gain - Yes. Clean finger foods are o.k. (Pages with Cheeto fingerprints are nasty). However, stop reading to cook? Forget it.

5. Unexpected and persistent coughs or sniffles – Yes. I’m a sympathetic reader. Sometimes there’s a little something that gets in my eyes.

6. Seeming unwell at certain times, and better at other times – Yes. A few extra hours in bed to read a few more chapters, slipping out into the yard to read on the chaise...

7. Pupils of the eyes seeming smaller or larger than usual – Yes. Mom always said I’d ruin my eyes, but who has time to turn on the lights?

8. Secretiveness – Yes. My bladder isn’t really that small.

9. Lying – Yes. “Just wait until I finish this chapter…”

10. Stealing – Yes. Book “loaners” and “borrowers” – we know once a book leaves our hands, it’s never coming back.

11. Financially unpredictable, perhaps having large amounts of cash at times but no money at all at other times – Yes. Curse you, Amazon, and your one click purchases!

12. Changes in social groups, new and unusual friends, odd cell-phone conversations – Yes. Not everyone appreciates the world of wizardry or time travelling to visit hot 18^th Century Highlanders.

13. Repeated unexplained outings, often with a sense of urgency – Yes. Sure, I’m the one who planned the cocktail party, but I just wanted to get to finish this chapter.

14. Book paraphernalia – Yes. But most of the time it’s hastily homemade – a post card advertisement made into a bookmark, a small flashlight on the nightstand

15. “Stashes” of books - Yes, on tabletops, in purses, next to the toilet. You never know when the urge might arise and there’s nothing worse than not having a “fix.”

Just to be clear, I’m not an indiscriminate addict. Sure, I’ve dabbled with a little chick-lit and some detective dramas. Come on. Who hasn’t? And, yeah, there was that Harlequin Romance summer, back in ’82, but, hey, that was high school.

O.k. Who am I kidding? I’m hardcore. I’ll read just about anything once. But the stuff I really go for, the really good stuff, is epic. Ideally, historically epic. We’re talking over a thousand pages. Oh yeah, man. I read that stuff, and I’m out for a couple days. And then the literary hangover, that time that I’m just kind of staggering around in a daze trying to get back into “reality,” that can last another day or so. And I’m starting to do my own stuff now. Yeah. “Homegrown” historical novel. Not as good as the stuff on the street, but I’m working on it.

And, hey, I just found out - this friend of mine? The one that loaned me the book about the five year old? She’s got the hook up on the new Ken Follet book that she says is awesome. AND it’s part of a trilogy. She says she’ll let me read it as soon as she’s finished. I can’t wait.

But, I can stop any time I want. I just don’t want to.

The Plasticity of Beauty

2011-09-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

I’m obsessed with make-overs. It doesn’t matter if it’s a person, house, dog, or furniture. I drive my husband insane with hours of watching What Not to Wear, various HGTV shows, and the Style Network. Real estate godmothers convert humble abodes into the belle of the neighborhood. Beasts become beauties. Ugly ottomans are transformed into furniture swans.

“But they’re all alike,” he says.

Au contraire, mon cher. These shows take the ordinary in its infinite varieties and make it uniquely extraordinary. That’s what makes the shows so appealing. It’s not the beautiful made more beautiful. It’s the democratization of beauty. Everyone and anything has the potential to be beautiful, whether you’re an ottoman or human being.

Let me backtrack and clarify: I’m not talking about the “Extreme” shows. I don’t like the tear downs and rebuilds of people nor homes, the most horrific examples being a tie between The Swan and the show where brides competed for a multitude of reconstructive surgeries. It’s not that I’m totally opposed to plastic surgery, but I think it should be reserved for moments when health or function are at risk or when a feature is so malformed that the general population is distracted by the feature. The current trend of reconstructive surgery/injectables/implants in the pursuit of beauty and youth has resulted in a generic mathematically “pretty” face that isn’t attractive since it’s not individualized. I can’t tell any Real Housewife apart from another and the only way I can tell one Housewife show from another is by accent.

No, what I like are surface make-overs – hair, make-up, a bit of paint, a change in fabric - is that they’re temporary, transient, and plastic, in the sense that they’re flexible and subject to change on a whim. For me, it’s imperative that the base structure remains.

Eek, that’s an awful chair.

“I’ve painted this chair and changed the fabric on the seat …”

Oh, that’s kind of cute, but the color is off a little …

Being able to change something up to suit your sensibilities is a way of awakening the eye to potential that might’ve been otherwise overlooked. And then, once a change is made, other features might become more appreciated.

It’s not just with chairs.

I’m not beautiful.

What’s “beautiful?” Jennifer Aniston? A burn victim survivor? A baby? Generally speaking, so long as everything is where it’s supposed to be (nose roughly in the center of the face, an eye on either side of the nose, mouth below nose), “beautiful” can be emphasized with a bit of powder, gels, or paints. Learning to find beauty and how to help others see it is a little more challenging, but available to everyone and everything.

My mother is one of those women who looks completely different when she wears make-up. She’s also one of those women who is rarely seen without make-up. She slept in her make-up (and contrary to what the beauty magazines threaten, she has great skin) and she rose and showered before everyone to re-apply her make-up. The first time I saw her bare-faced, I had no idea who she was. Really. I must’ve been around four or five years old. Bewildered by this strange woman with my mother’s voice and body, I followed her into the bathroom and watched her “apply her face.” Before my very eyes she was transformed from mystery woman to my Max Factor mother. It was astounding what eye liner and lipstick could do.

I used to sit in my room, repeatedly drawing intentionally “unattractive” people with hair and clothing in pencil. I’d “make- up” their faces in marker and crayon and restyle their hair. I didn’t change the face structure. Even back then, I decided that the structure beneath was fine. Sometimes, I’d hold up the drawing on the window, retrace the original figure, and come up with a different “beauty treatment.” I liked knowing there were a variety of looks that could make someone attractive.

I transitioned from painting paper to painting faces. At first, like most girls, I imitated my mother’s beauty make-up. But then it dawned on me that I could also transform myself into a cat, a dog, a clown, and even a man. It was liberating, knowing how easily my outer appearance transformed to fit any inner fancy. Add a little cold cream to clear the palette and I was ready for the next look. I did the same with my room, painting murals on the wall, rearranging furniture, switching up bedclothes. Some attempts weren’t as successful as others, but they gave a new angle. Fun.

Beauty shouldn’t be underestimated. Feeling beautiful or in control of beauty is a powerful thing.

My sister and I are close in age. We often experimented on each other with make-up applications and hairstyles. On one occasion, my younger sister was begging me to do her make-up when I wasn’t in the mood. To placate her, I consented to do her make-up, if she agreed with the usual terms: no looking in the mirror until I was done. She agreed.

I set to work in a flurry. It was an exceptionally long session. There wasn’t a corner of her face untouched by my hand and brush. Finally, I was done. I handed my sister the mirror.

At first, she seemed confused, not recognizing the face that looked back at her.

“I hate you!” she said, then burst into tears and went to our mother to register her complaint.

“Look what she did,” my sister wailed.

My mother was usually pretty good at being stern when discipline was involved, but this time she couldn’t help herself. It’s very hard to take tears seriously from a child who looks like an 80 year old. My sister cried harder.

We might not be The Fairest,
but who doesn't want to be at least "fairer?"
(courtesy of Disney)

Of course, I was punished for taking advantage of my sister’s trust, but my mother is an eldest child as well, familiar with the obligatory mischief done to younger siblings, and there was no bloodshed or bruises. But looking back, I realize there was some emotional bruising.

In asking me to do her make-up, my sister wasn’t just asking for my attention. She came to me because she wanted me to make her feel beautiful, even if it was only blue eye shadow and red lipstick. Making her look like our grandmother made her feel “the uglies” worse. Even back then, I must have known there was more to her tears than just being a patsy. I didn’t play make-up jokes on her after that.

I continue to play with make-up and on occasion I still apply it on friends and my sister. I go to make-up counters to let strangers apply make-up on me. I watch as other people get their faces done. I re-do furniture, redecorate my house, and take apart and re-purpose old jewelry.

The general rule for any make-over is to play up the best features of the basic structure. Individuals vary on what they perceive to be the” best” feature. So, if there are infinite perspectives on what is beautiful about a chair, dog, house, or human, doesn’t it follow that every chair, dog, house, or human is beautiful? And beautiful in infinite varieties? I love watching make-over shows, because I love watching people discover that beauty was always there. They just needed to go through the journey to realize it.

Cue the Ray Stevens. Sure, he also wrote “The Streak.” Even comedians have beautiful moments.