Funny is the New Young

Marital Bliss

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 15:18:00 +0000

As a lover of language, I occasionally encounter a word or expression that enthralls me. Sometimes, however, I come across one that disturbs me.

Let’s talk about one of the latter: marital bliss.

Let me stipulate that I am in a happy marriage. We respect each other, love each other, and take good care of each other. We show each other extreme consideration. I cannot stress this enough. All is well here on the home front.

All the same, I plunge ahead to plumb the fallacy of marital bliss.

Even superficially, ‘marital bliss’ just sounds inane. It evokes cartoon-character, lovesick goofballs mooning at each other. Images arise of intertwined arms and necks and lips, and the crazy period early in a relationship where neither of you ever comes up for air. Of course, this leads to brain damage, which is why it can’t possibly go on for long.

‘Marital bliss’? Who comes up with this stuff?

Still…

My adorable husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU), may have a tendency to use “selective listening.” I realize that this is a common trait in the male of the species, and of course we women may have comparable flaws, but that is a topic for another day, or more likely, another columnist.

CoTU also has a tendency to believe that he is right, he is always right, and that his way of doing something is far and away the best possible, if not the only way. To do anything. Everything. The combination of these two traits sometimes leads me to homicidal thoughts, but I say in all humility that I control the impulse.

My point, and I do have one, can be demonstrated in this brief exchange that took place between us recently.

I had refilled the clear glass hand soap dispenser in our powder room earlier in the week. I did so, knowing that the scant half-inch of soap remaining in the bottom of the vessel was an opaque white, lotion-y soap, and the refill stuff, just slightly shy of the 55-gallon drum, was a clear soap.

In so doing, I had full awareness that CoTU was likely to be dissatisfied with my decision to commingle the two soap types, and that I would hear of his displeasure in the very near future. I considered that, and still chose to jump off that cliff, rather than waste the remaining white soap from some previous gigantic vat-o-soap. But nothing happened. No words of rebuke, no indication of irritation, no tsk-tsking.

Interesting, I thought.

Four full days after this little chore was executed, I was reading an e-mail at my computer when my husband came upstairs with his camera in his hands.

“Did you see that soap dispenser?” he asked.

“I did.”

“No—you couldn’t have,” he said.

“Yeah, I use that bathroom every day, and I always wash my hands,” I pointed out.

“I don’t think you saw it,” he insisted.

“In the powder room—Honey, I’m not joking—of course I saw it.” I was nodding as I said this, to reaffirm my position.

“You didn’t notice it, did you?” he persisted, still unconvinced that we were on the same proverbial page.

Me: “You mean the swirls and whorls of the two soaps, looking like a lava lamp of clear and white?”

Silence. I could almost hear the gears in his engineering brain click into place.

“Yeah—that’s so cool. I just took some pictures of it. How’d you do that?” he wanted to know.

I could tell you, babe, but then I’d have to kill you.

Flight of the Phoenix

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Tue, 28 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

It’s been two weeks since my return from a fun-filled trip to Sacramento where I visited my two grandsons, ages 6 and almost three. (Oh, and their parents were there, too.) Parenthetically, if you will. Obviously I will, so why shouldn’t you?

Anyway, I boarded my flight to Phoenix (since I can’t fly direct to St. Louis from Sac,) set to take off at 4:10. Everyone was seated, all the carry-ons were stashed properly, and all the electronic devices had been turned off. I was turned off too, but that had more to do with the onion-breath on the person sitting next to me. Honestly, if you pay Southwest an extra $12.50 for early boarding, can’t you make it $15, and guarantee a non-stinky seatmate as part of the deal?

The flight attendant launched into her detailed explanation of how to buckle a seat belt, for those flyers who had just been hatched on the plane, and had never been in a car, van, Six Flags ride, or space shuttle. Hell, rickshaws probably have seat belts these days, but I digress. As usual.

Okay, we heard about seat belts, tray tables, electronic devices, flotation cushions and oxygen masks. We’re all set, and Miss Perky informs us that we are indeed fortunate to be flying today with two of Southwest’s top pilots. Really? They rank them? I wonder how the pilots feel about that… (I know, I touched on this in a recent post, but it’s obviously bugging me. My blog—I get to repeat myself repeat myself if I want to.)

So Fabulous Pilot comes on the air to welcome us aboard, tell us it’s 105° and sunny in Phoenix (multiple redundancies there) and that we’ll be on our way momentarily. Well, he was nearly right. Moments later he’s back on the p.a. to tell us that we’re on hold due to a delay in Phoenix. “As soon as we have any information about what that is, I’ll let you know.” Fair enough.

Now it’s gotten to be 4:15, we should already be up in the air, but we’re still on the ground physically, and up in the air metaphorically. Fabulous Pilot returns with the following news. The delay is caused by a sinkhole on the runway in Phoenix. We’re going to be on hold for at least an hour. The passengers are welcome to “de-plane”, and they will keep us advised.

People rush off the plane like lemmings to the cliff’s edge. I decide to go, too, as I’d rather pace than sit. Also, if I’m likely to miss my connection in Phoenix, perhaps I’ll buy a sandwich to take on the plane.

My phone blips with an incoming text message, repeating essentially what the pilot already told us: one hour delay in take-off. While I’m perusing the sandwich array, another text comes in: expected three-hour delay. I make a mad dash for the ticket counter, where approximately a hundred other people are swarming, hoping to make other arrangements.

Luck is on my side. When my turn comes, the agent says he can send me through Las Vegas on a plane leaving in ten minutes. That is, if I’m traveling alone; there’s only one seat left on the plane. I go back on the 4:10 to grab my carry-on while he prints my boarding passes. He tells me he won’t be able to move my luggage, which of course I already figured, but at least I’ll sleep in my own bed tonight, and not on the floor of the Phoenix airport.

Again a stroke of good luck—the gate for my Vegas departure is just two away, and as I board, they close the doors behind me. I get the middle seat in row 5, and neither of my seatmates reek of body odor or offending foods. The gods are truly smiling upon me. Of course, the people in seats 5A and 5C are probably wishing I’d been rerouted through Cleveland so they could have kept that middle seat empty, but such is life.

I missed the flight attendant’s monologue, but since the two top pilots of Southwest were heading to Phoenix, I assume she told everyone that they were being transported today by two average-to-substandard pilots. I’m just guessing here.

Meantime, I called my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) to advise him of the change, and to tell him to take a nap, because now I was due in at 12:35 a.m. The flight actually arrived at 12:45, and by the time we waited for a Southwest employee to be satisfied that my luggage was NOT, in fact, coming in, and to fill out the report on my missing bag, it was 1:00 a.m. Which means we got home at 1:45. Which means it was well past 2:00 when we got to bed.

Well, I reasoned, this was an adventure. And that sinkhole on the Phoenix runway was probably a big story on the news. Nope. Never heard a word, nor saw a photo. I wondered if that whole story was bogus.

Today I searched and found only this: http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/20130514phoenix-sky-harbor-runway-concrete-flight-delays-abrk.html Looks pretty benign to me, but I’m all for overdoing safety, especially when it comes to flying.

Meanwhile, my bag took another day and a half to arrive home. I’m not sure where it went, but I hope it had a good time. Here’s a picture of the tag Southwest put on it. Scary, huh?

Poundstone Begets Sedaris, or Keeping a Straight Face at 10,000 Feet

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Mon, 20 May 2013 17:10:00 +0000

Yes, it was just a couple of weeks ago that I posted about laughing out loud in several random locations while I was reading Paula Poundstone’s book, I Heart Jokes. I feared being thrown out of the car dealer’s waiting area, and was visibly ostracized in the dermatologist’s office. I can’t help it if I have a sense of humor. Really.

So how weird was it when I was flying home from Sacramento last week reading David Sedaris’ hilarious new tome “Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls”?

The flight began with the usual spiel from the flight attendants. This time, though, “Mandy” included a mention that we were being flown by ‘two of the best’ pilots Southwest has. Really? So is there an official ranking of the pilots? If so, does that imply that you sometimes start out telling your passengers that they are being commanded by ‘two of the most average’ pilots in the realm. Or even worse, “Ladies and gentlemen, today we are being piloted by the two very lowest-ranked captains working in the industry. Let me assure you, though, that they are still going to get us there. Or so they say.”

But I digress… Back to my reading material. After all, if we are in the hands of the best Southwest pilots around, why bother listening to what to do in the event of a water landing. How much water is there between Sacramento and Vegas, anyway?

Again, I found myself chuckling lightly at first, then slammed with Sedaris’ crazy observations that would elicit a real belly laugh. Realizing, however, that any peculiar behavior on an airplane can lead to wildly undesirable consequences, I tried to put a lid on it. I can control this, I said to myself. I know he’s going to be extremely funny, and I can stifle the giggle response.

Well, that was easier said than done.

Every time I chortled, even softly, my seatmate wriggled uncomfortably. Geez, it’s not as if I was singing Whitney Houston songs, and disturbing the general calm of the passenger population. In fact, I heard every word of a conversation between a man and a woman in the row ahead of, and across the aisle from me, for the whole 2 ½ hour flight. I doubt seriously that anyone more than one seat away from me could hear me laugh. And no one tapped these people on the shoulder and said, “Excuse me, but I don’t care to know about your workflow, your security procedures, or what your toddler will and will not eat. Keep it down over here.”

Still, I worried that someone could do more than look askance at me while I cracked up over David Sedaris’ observations of his father, his partner and himself. I worked a little harder at self-control.

Then I came to the section about learning foreign languages, and the phrases that he picked up. Self-control went out the proverbial window. I defy you to read about his learning German, hearing jokes in a bar, or his meeting readers at book signings without laughing out loud.

The flight attendant glanced over at me. I put Sedaris back in my carry-on. At least Time magazine could be read with a straight face. For now.

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Mon, 13 May 2013 10:00:00 +0000

Satisfaction

I can safely say that I know less about the Rolling Stones than anyone else of my baby-booming generation. The sum total of my knowledge lies in these three statements: 1) There are four guys in the band; 2) Mick Jagger is their lead singer; 3) Their biggest hit of the ‘60’s was “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”. And frankly, I’m not that sure about number one.

When my son encountered “satisfaction” as a third grade spelling word, his unforgettable teacher introduced the class to the Stones’ famous anthem. What she did not do, however, was introduce them to the true path to satisfaction: memorizing poetry.

As children we all started learning rhymes subconsciously. Usually it was the a-b-c song, or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”. Eventually we learned the jump rope ditties required to be a part of the playground scene. Beyond the Pledge of Allegiance, most students balk at the notion of memorizing anything. Ask your kids to commit a poem to memory, and prepare to hear a loud chorus of groans and moans.

High school students who know every lyric of the most obscure and absurd songs ever written still claim that being required to memorize poetry is brutal, punishing, and offensive in ways that defy description. This is likely because it requires such exhausting tasks as reading and concentration. They don’t know what they are missing. Words are powerful, and words that rhyme are magical. Poetry connects us in our marrow. You never know whose cells share your poetic DNA until some serendipitous event occurs.

For example, take the night my husband and I were in a restaurant with our good friends Dave and Betty. When my husband used the phrase, “There are strange things done…” Dave and I simultaneously, and without further prompting launched into a recitation of “The Cremation of Sam McGee”, given that my hubby had unwittingly offered up its opening line. Dave and I amused ourselves, and amazed ourselves at how automatically it spewed forth. Our respective spouses’ jaws dropped. They could not have regarded us with more disbelief if we had picked up straw hats and canes, and done an old-fashioned buck-and-wing across the dining room floor in striped blazers and straw hats. I couldn’t recall as many of its verses as Dave could, so I eventually looked up the old poem and set about memorizing it all over again. If it ever comes up in the future, I want to be ready. The competitor in me wants to be able to match him, line for line. And I found once again, that for pure satisfaction, not much can beat memorizing poetry.

I originally learned that work of Robert W. Service in the tenth grade English class of a wonderfully earnest and enthusiastic teacher; she inspired students to learn. The poem came back readily, and I took pleasure in re-learning it. That competitive side of me, (which certain small-minded people sometimes describe as cutthroat) can only hope that at some future trivia competition they ask for the name of the derelict boat in this poem. (Look it up.)

I confess that these days my personal preference is to read the work of our former poet-laureate Billy Collins. He can make me laugh till I hurt my stomach muscles (who knew I had any?), and he can stop my heart with a simple poignant line. Oh, to write like Billy Collins!

Now the famed former First Daughter of Camelot, Caroline Kennedy has published a book titled “Poems to Learn by Heart”. It’s filled with a hundred poems for children (and adults) to take in and enjoy. Huzzah!

So it’s not only baby-boomers who enjoy this secret pleasure. Five or six years ago my first and oldest friend, then aged 101 years, mentioned in a letter that she always recited “The Day is Done” by Longfellow at bedtime. She did so because her late husband had done so before going to sleep each night. This simple nightly ritual clearly made her feel closer to him, and somehow eased the pain of losing him. Of course, that compelled me to seek out “The Day is Done” so that I, too, could recite it to myself at bedtime, spiritually connecting me to my dear friend. She left this world a few years ago at age 102, but I recite it still, and keep her in my heart.

Poor Mick. He was just memorizing the wrong stuff.

Paula Poundstone Made Me Do It

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Mon, 06 May 2013 13:13:00 +0000

Here is a golden oldie from the early days of Funny Is the New Young... Walk back in time with me...

Paula Poundstone Made Me Do It

You know, some things that are just fine in the privacy of one’s own home should not be done in public places. I’m usually pretty tuned in to the proprieties of basic good manners and common sense. But in the past few days I’ve succumbed to some social pressure (I’ll explain in a moment) and I’ve been doing it in the customer lounge at my car dealer (just an oil change, thanks for asking), and in the waiting room at my dermatologist’s office. (Just a check-up; thanks for your concern.) What am I doing? I’m reading Paula Poundstone’s very funny book, “There’s Nothing in This Book That I Meant to Say”. The pressure?—it’s due back at the library tomorrow. The problem?—I can’t control my laughter.

Now there was a time when I didn’t find Paula Poundstone funny at all. But in the past few years, hearing her on “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me”, ‘the NPR news quiz’, I have developed a full appreciation of her humor. I look forward to her appearances, and she never fails to crack me up. I’ve pretty much learned to time my coffee sips to avoid her input, so as to keep from squirting coffee out my nose. Ouch. Please don’t laugh—it’s happened more than once. Okay, more than twice.

Now I’m reading this book, and I can’t renew it because it’s on hold by another (probably selfish) patron, so I’ve taken it with me to the oil change and the skin screening. I can tell you that several customers of my car dealer moved to the other side of the room when I: 1. couldn’t control my laughter, and 2. I was continually doubled over, clutching my sides. Now, I was able to keep silent, so maybe they thought I was sobbing to myself, but I guess it wasn’t pretty. It rarely is. Anyway, they were sure to establish distance.

In the doctor’s office, there were only a couple of other people, both older-looking men, both dressed casually, and both successfully ignoring me. Or perhaps they feared that I was some psychopath about to burst into a hellish rage, and felt that their best hope for safety was to feign ignorance. Well, feign away, boys, I may be crazy, but I don’t act on it. I’m just laughing with (not at) Paula.

I’m not sure where she gets these thoughts, but I’m pretty sure they’re not normal. But then again, maybe ‘normal’ is just a setting on your dryer. In any case, I’d love to know what makes her tick. She finds a funny way to look at life’s ordinary events, and is able to ask questions we wouldn’t have thought of on our own. With her to guide us, we learn about the Civil War, Helen Keller, Charles Dickens, the Wright Brothers, Joan of Arc and more. Yes, she explores all of these topics (and more!) in her book, and you wouldn’t believe some of the great (and questionable) stuff you’ll learn.

The real lesson, though, is to keep the hilarity at home. It’s much safer there. And then you won’t have to wonder why the dermatologist put you in restraints.

Son of Coincidence

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 10:00:00 +0000

So remember that whole ‘coincidence’ post from a couple of months ago? The one where weird names kept coming up in clumps after an absence of thirty-some years? Or an author I learn about for the first time then presents himself in an e-mail from a totally unrelated third party? And I recognize that an actress I see on tv must be the daughter of Meryl Streep, because of the uncanny resemblance, and almost simultaneously the girl is being quoted in a magazine article I was reading during the commercials… Yeah—those coincidences.

Get ready. It’s happened again. And again.

A few weeks ago, my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I were watching an episode of American Pickers. If you’re not familiar with it, let me say that two guys from Iowa (Mike and Frank) drive around in a big van, looking for the ultimate yard sale. Actually, most of the time they find people who’ve been collecting stuff for years, and have buildings just chock full of old collectibles. Mike and Frank buy the stuff to sell in their shop, or to customers they’ve developed over the years. Back at the shop, Danielle finds them leads, and manages to hold the fort while the guys are on the road.

CoTU and I get a big charge out of seeing what they find, and watching them arrive at a deal with the sellers. CoTU didn’t want to watch it at first, probably because we are both such pack rats, and this hits a little close to home. Hey, at least we’re not on Hoarders. I had to persuade him that since the show is on The History Channel, it must be vaguely educational. Anyhoo…

On this particular day, Mike and Frank were on the road, and Danielle was actually taking a little vacation to New York. The guys had convinced her to take something with her that they bought on an earlier ‘pick’. It’s a papier-mâché model of a cat from the Alice in Wonderland sculpture in Central Park. Ultimately, Dani (like we’re BFFs now) meets with the widow of the sculptor (he was Jose de Cleeft, she is Lorrie Goulet) and arranges to have the cat displayed in a New York museum, where there’s a current show of Goulet’s work. This was all so very cool. Dani meets artist, artist sees cat, cat vacations on display. Nice.

But back to my story. So I may be a little old Midwesterner, but I’ve been to New York numerous times, and have also been to Central Park many times. I have never, let me repeat that for emphasis (why else would I repeat it?), NEVER seen or heard of the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. Don’t know why. I’m sure that if my relatives really did love me they would have taken me to see it when I visited them in New York. But alas, I was quite surprised to learn of its existence.

The very next day (cue the Twilight Zone theme music) I was reading a book that I had heard about on (what else) NPR. Fresh Air, to be exact. It’s called “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”, by Christopher Beha. On page 118, Sophie and her husband are walking in Central Park, and stop at the Alice in Wonderland sculpture. They have a major heart-to-heart there. “Hmm,” I thought. “That’s funny, coming just a day after I first heard about the sculpture.”

Fast forward less than a week. Done with “Sophie Wilder”, on to “Gone Girl” by Gillian Flynn. (Amazing, by the way.) Yep. Page nineteen! I’ve barely cracked the spine of the book, and Nick is growling about Amy expecting him to remember that it’s a favorite of hers since childhood.

This is all pretty ‘woo-woo’ if you ask me. Three slaps in the face with the same reference within a single week. I’m not sure I believe in coincidence, but I do believe in Alice. At least now I do. I keep dreaming of tea parties and going down the rabbit hole. Or maybe that was the political conventions…

Is It Stupid in Here, Or Is It Just Me?

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Yes, I know it’s been hot, not just here, but all over the United States. So, indeed, it is hot in here and it’s not just me.

But I’m asking about ‘stupid’, not ‘hot’.

As in, how is it possible that a clerk at the deli counter of a prominent food-selling establishment doesn’t know what “three-quarters of a pound” means. You think I’m joking, or judging harshly, but I recently was waited on by a perfectly nice young woman who ably served up a pound of sliced turkey. She then politely asked if there was anything else she could get for me. “I’d like three-quarters of a pound of the roast beef,” I answered.

She hesitated. Just a touch, but I caught it. I thought maybe she hadn’t heard me, but she didn’t ask me to repeat it, she just reached her vinyl-gloved hand into the deli case and pulled out a wad of sliced beef. “Plunk!” it said as it hit the scale, weighing in at .38 lbs.

“How’s that?” she asked.

“No,” I replied, “three-quarters of a pound,” now convinced she had indeed not heard me the first time.

Then it came: “Oh, that’s more than a pound, right?” Ruh-roh. Now I get an Academy Award nomination for being kind and supportive and helpful, when I wanted to do a Johnny Carson spit take and ask her how she could have possibly graduated high school without knowing how much three-quarters of a pound is.

“It’s actually less than a pound. Your scale will read ‘point seven five’,” I told her. “Okay, whatever,” she answered, and ultimately came up with the meat.

“Whatever?” My confidence in our education system dropped several points in that exchange.

The very next day I noticed on my Visa bill that a subscription I’ve carried for years suddenly went from $32 a month to $42 a month. Since my public school education took place in the 1960s, I saw right away that that was approximately a 30% jump. I called their customer service line to find out why.

The lad Michael, clearly unhappy with his career choice, sullenly told me that it was because my ‘special offer rate’ had expired. I informed him that I had been a subscriber for over 30 years, and didn’t have a special offer rate. I could bore you with the repetition of our respective positions which went on for a while, but I’ll spare you.

Finally, I believe I outwitted Michael, who, to be fair, seemed to be unarmed in a battle of wits. I asked him if there were any special offer rates currently in effect. “I’ll check,” he offered.

“Yes, I can give it to you for $3.77 a week, which would be $16.34 a month.” Again, thanks to the educational standards of the ’60s, I could see that this was preferable to spending $42 a month. “Sold,” I said.

And my third and final example (due only to the space limitations of this column) of the decline of intelligence and common sense in our civilization comes all the way from London. According to an article in the Associated Press, a man there started a major fire in his apartment by attempting to dry two pairs of boxers and socks in his microwave. The appliance was destroyed, and the apartment suffered serious smoke damage.

Is this so hard a concept? Food in microwave, clothes in dryer.

In London, I guess it’s hot and stupid.

Rock, Paper, Thunder?

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:34:00 +0000

So I woke up the other morning to hear that the Miami Heat beat the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA playoffs. (For my husband, the Center of the Universe, a.k.a. CoTU, that’s basketball. A sports fan he is not.)

I began picturing headlines: Heat Beats Thunder, Heat Crushes Thunder, Heat Over Thunder and the like. And it occurred to me that this sounded like some kind of new version of Rock, Paper, Scissors. Except that you would need a third element, like Rain.

Then the hierarchy would have to be something like Heat Beats Thunder, Thunder Over Rain, Rain Kills Heat.

This reminds me of an episode of The Big Bang Theory from a couple of years ago. Raj suggests settling a dispute over which nerdy tv show to watch by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors. Sheldon ridicules him, saying that studies have shown that good friends will tie in that game 75-80% of the time, due to the limited number of outcomes. As an alternative, Sheldon has come up with a new game, called Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock.

In his inimitable style, Sheldon explains how the game works. I’ll share this with you, in case you want to use it with your own family or friends.

“Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, rock crushes lizard, lizard poisons Spock, Spock smashes scissors, scissors decapitates lizard, lizard eats paper, paper disproves Spock, Spock vaporizes rock, and rock (as it always has) crushes scissors.”

After a blink, Raj says, “Okay, I got it.”

So feel free to play this simple (?) game amongst your peer group. But next year if the Utah Jazz are in the playoffs, I’m staying out of it.

Coincidence or Fate?

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:31:00 +0000

Over time I’ve heard a lot of people say that there’s no such thing as coincidence. They believe that those things which many of us view as remarkable concurrent events—and label ‘coincidence’—are truly tiny little acts of God, or angels, or some oblique universal force that come together to make life more interesting, more fulfilling, to prove their existence, or just to make us smile.

I tend to be in the other camp—the one that says stuff just happens, and whether it’s chance, luck, a fluke or a twist of fate, there are no marionette strings causing the overlapping, quirky happenstances that I still view as coincidences. Still…

Once in a while a whole passel of things take place that—well, let’s just say they get my attention.

For example:

About two weeks ago I was recounting an anecdote from my days working for the comptroller at Ft. Leonard Wood, circa 1975. A key player in the story was our unit secretary, Beth um… Beth… Drat! I couldn’t think of her last name for all the nuts in Congress. To test my memory, I started recalling the names of all the other members of our office, and was pleased that I could come up with all the other analysts, the boss, HIS boss, and several other people I knew in the building. I could even name the personnel people, the Commanding Officer, and his secretary. These little tests tend to reassure me that I’ve not joined the wait list for the Alzheimer’s unit at the nursing home. Yet.

But still it was just Beth _____. Merrill Camp, Jim Burch, Bob West, Connie Welch, and so on and so forth, but nothing I tried would summon up Beth’s last name. Okay, 1975 was 37 years ago, so I cut myself some slack (and a blouse to go with them [sorry, sewing jokes will pop up from time to time]) and let it go.

The very next morning I was reading an article in my newspaper (remember, I AM the dinosaur/subscriber) when there it was: Jay Skaggs was mentioned in the context of his role as a state legislator. Skaggs. As in Beth Skaggs. I was tickled to get the retrieval cue, but it did feel a little eerie. How often do you encounter the name ‘Skaggs’ in the paper?

Just days after that, I was reviewing overdue notices in my official capacity as a volunteer in a school library. I came across the book title “Owen and Other Stories.” It caught my eye, because a family member had recently named their baby Jacob Owen. You don’t see the name Owen all that much, so I made myself a note to look at the book in our public library, thinking that if it was a cool book, I would send it to our Jacob Owen for his personal collection. The author is Kevin Henkes; I had never heard of him. “Owen” is indeed a cool book.

The very next day I opened my e-mail account (the private one I use only for professional contacts, so there are fewer than ten e-mails a day, not the hundreds that come in on my personal address) and clicked on a link to a blog post by someone in the Missouri Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Yep, it was about this wonderful artist/author/illustrator Kevin Henkes. Cue the Twilight Zone theme music.

Item three: Last night I was simultaneously watching my Tivo’ed episode of Smash, and reading an article I had clipped from Vanity Fair. The article was an interview with Julia Roberts and Mike Nichols, and I had read most of it the previous evening. This Smash episode brought in a new character, the daughter of the broadway producer. This young woman looked more like Meryl Streep than Meryl Streep, but not the daughter who is sometimes featured on “The Good Wife”. This one was younger, but unmistakably Streep-bred. When the show ended I flipped it back to the beginning to catch the ‘guest star credits’. Sure enough, Grace Gummer’s name appeared. (Streep is married to sculptor Donald Gummer, and the kids, oh, you get it.) I thought how cool it was to see another of her daughters entering the milieu.

See what I mean?

Then I returned to my article to wrap up the Julia and Mike story, and in the very next paragraph Julia recounts a conversation she had had with Grace Gummer about her mother’s fame, and how she dealt with it. Crazy coincidence? Perhaps.

This morning I was thinking about how my ankle problem is called subluxing maxillary tendinitis. It has bothered me because I think of ‘maxillary’ as relating to the jaw, and I had no idea what ‘subluxing’ meant. I opened my e-mail account (the general one with a zillion e-mails) and today’s Word of the Day is ‘luxate’. It means to put out of joint, or dislocate.

I think it’s time for me to reassess my view of coincidence. Maybe something IS going on. Or maybe I luxated my brain in a twist of fate.

Marbles and Baseball

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 21 Mar 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I heard a great expression the other night. As so often happens, it came out during a rousing evening of bunco. You remember my bunco crowd? –Twelve women of a certain age who gather to roll dice, keep score, nosh a little and laugh a lot. That’s us, the Boisterous Bunco Babes.

Anyway, as usual, we caught ourselves confusing who should move, who was keeping the score, whose partner was whose, and the ever-popular “What number are we on?”

When we finally had laughed ourselves into oblivion, one member exclaimed, “I’m losing my marbles!” In response, another uttered, “I’m on my last marble.”

They both overlooked that bunco is a game of dice, and marbles have nothing to do with it, but that’s not important right now.

I love the concept of being on one’s last marble. I wish I had thought of it myself. It’s just so perfectly apt.

Not too long ago I was getting ready to go to an early morning meeting, and just about to put my makeup on. My husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) came into the room to ask me about something just as I was about to begin my simple ritual. [By the way, I am not blaming him for this at all, just illustrating that I was distracted and not paying enough attention to what I was doing.]

I hit the pump on my moisturizer and smoothed a dollop onto my face. I sort of noticed that it felt funny and smelled different, but I was multi-tasking, and until I turned away from CoTU and looked in the mirror, I thought I was imagining things. Then I looked on the vanity, and realized that I had ‘smoothed on’ a glob of liquid hand soap in lieu of moisturizer. Not a good sign. Yes, it smelled good (my moisturizer is hypoallergenic and thus unscented) but now I had to stop what I was doing and wash the soap off my face, towel off, and start again. This time I made sure I hit the moisturizer pump, not the soap.

Recently I met up with some friends in a parking lot to carpool to a relatively distant theatre to see “Sunday in the Park with George”. I spent an embarrassing amount of time looking for my other glove as we switched cars, just to make sure I hadn’t dropped it on the ground outside the car. Yes, I eventually noticed that I was wearing one and holding the other, so OF COURSE I couldn’t find it on the seat or in my purse. Strike two. Getting scary.

Sounds to me as if I have one strike left, or as my friend put it, I’m on my last marble.

I will hope for another ‘at bat’, just to mix the metaphor, and I’m planning to keep a close eye on the ball. This one’s for all the marbles.

Generally Speaking

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 14:40:00 +0000

People say things without thinking. To be sure, this generalization applies to me, too. I once had a teacher who enjoyed saying, “All generalizations are false, including this one.” Still, as a whole, we say things that we often realize in retrospect, were foolish.

Of course you and I experience this less often than some people. You probably think I’m headed for the politicians, don’t you? Surprisingly, I’m not. Fish in a barrel, and all that. No, I’m getting at the inane things announcers say in commercials. Specifically I am addressing one in particular.

I’ve been hearing a mattress company ad on television lately that raises my blood pressure and sets my teeth on edge. Oh sure, lots of ads do that, and I couldn’t tell you the name of this advertiser even if I thought it advisable. There are dozens of them, and they all sound alike. Mattress Giant, Mattress Firm, Mattress Source, Mattress Direct, Mattresses R Us… I think you could play MadLibs and insert any noun after the word ‘mattress’, and you’d find there’s a company somewhere operating under that name. Like Mattress Canary. I’m just saying.

Here’s the irksome line: Nothing is better than a good night’s sleep.

Yeah, it sounds innocuous enough. We all like to sleep soundly. Heck, I’ve gotten to the point where I could safely say I cherish a good night’s sleep. It makes the world a better place in which to wake up. A good night’s sleep refreshes and rejuvenates us. On nights when we’re disturbed by storms, nightmares, sickness, phone calls or whatever, we really feel reduced the next morning. It’s harder to get going, harder to focus at work (or play) and our senses generally feel dulled at whatever we attempt.

But ‘nothing’ is better than a good night’s sleep? Really? Not a cure for cancer? Not selling the house you’ve already moved out of? Not finding the siblings from whom you were separated as children? Not getting pregnant when you thought you couldn’t? Not holding your newborn child/grandchild/niece/nephew/neighbor? Not winning the $389 jillion Power Ball jackpot? Not reading a headline about WORLD PEACE? –universal disarmament, clean water for everyone, renewable energy breakthroughs, a return to sanity and civil discourse? Really?

I know, I’m getting carried away, and it’s just a mattress commercial, but I can’t get past the unconditional, unqualified, categorical, absolute and unrestricted notion that NOTHING is better than a good night’s sleep. It sounds like one of those things you wish you’d never said.

A good rant, like a picture, may be worth a thousand words, but a generalization, like Yogi Berra’s famous observation about the verbal agreement, isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. And you can take that to the bank.

Just Enough of a Good Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

We just returned from a week on the sunny gulf coast of Florida. And you know that when I say ‘we’ I mean my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I. In contrast to previous Florida visits, this time the weather was perfect. Every day was warm and sunny. Even the days that began as cloudy and overcast became bright and beautiful by late morning.

Our trip was planned as a visit with our dear friends, snowbirds who we’ll call Fred and Nadine. Because those are their names. Kidding—they are not, and I’d like to protect them from any fame that might come their way as a result of this column. Also, I would not like for them to sue me for invasion of privacy, or for anything else for that matter. Moving on…

We walked on the beaches, we sought out several art fairs, we poked around numerous antique shops and we drank more than a little wine. Life was beautiful. There was much relaxing, reading, dining in, dining out, and the ever-popular collecting of sea shells. By the seashore. I’m done.

So this was a lovely vacation for us—we were able to spend lots of time with each other, and with Fred and Nadine, who are always gracious and generous hosts. They encourage us, dare I say they try to entice us to buy a condo nearby and join them there.

I see the appeal of wintering (that is now a verb, I believe) in the warm and sun-kissed clime that is Florida. I love the idea of spending a week wherein the biggest decision you make is “Soup or salad?” I just can’t see myself spending months at a time there. Too much happiness.

No that’s not it. Here’s the real reason: I’d miss my stuff. I don’t mean shoe collection, kitchenware or tchochkes. I mean the stuff I work on every day, like my sewing machine, my fabric stash, my yarn and my knitting books. I missed the computer and the internet a lot, and while it’s true that we could take a computer down there with us, I’d have to share it with CoTU, and ‘share’ is not a word that comes to mind when we speak of CoTU. He got his name for good reason. His “It’s All About Me” coffee mug suits him to perfection.

So I can relax with reckless abandon for a week, and I’d be willing to try two, but I’m pretty sure that into my third week on Fantasy Island I’d start to go a little crazy. Without the hobbies of golfing and boating that so many people enjoy in Florida, I think I’d be rather a lost soul. There are only so many online Scrabble games I can play at one time, and even those look a little fuzzy after a couple of glasses of Riesling.

The bottom line is that we will remain in St. Louis, probably forever. Winter is winter, summer is summer, even when they both occur in the same week. This is home, and we claim it. Besides, even if we decided to move tomorrow, it would still take us five years to clean out the basement. We have a lot of stuff, and just enough happiness.

Is My Phone Smarter Than I Am?

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

For the past four years I have said that I did not want a Smartphone. I said it so often that I began saying that I didn’t want a phone that was smarter than I am.

All four of our kids and their spouses have Smartphones. I maintained that I was perfectly happy with a compact device that enabled me to make contact while away from home. I rarely used it for conversation, per se. I wanted the reassurance that in an emergency (mine) I could call for help, or in an emergency (anyone else’s), they could reach me.

Sure, we’d had numerous dinners out with one of the kids when a question came up that one of the wisenheimers answered with the help of the internet, simply by picking up his or her cell phone and Googleing for help. Still, I wasn’t prone to joining that club.

Then suddenly, inexplicably, a few months ago I decided that I had been kidding myself. I, too, wanted to be able to connect via satellite to the worldwide web from the chair crammed into a meeting room, from the noisy seat in the airport waiting area, from the passenger seat of a car. I, too, wanted to be able to look up the name of that guy—you know, the one in the movie with what’s her name—oh yeah, Glenn Close, where they—well, not that it matters, I just WANTED to. I wanted to be able to put my hands on that knowledge wherever and whenever the urge struck, because, let’s face it, at my age when I plan to look something up when I get home, odds are that it will never again cross my medulla oblongata. And if you don’t know what that is, you can look it up on your Smartphone.

Now if you know me at all, you know that in my General Rules of Life book, the top five includes the following: Don’t ask for anything. Part and parcel of this is never to say “I want ______.” Somehow I have adopted the worldview that the less you ask for in life, the greater your worth as a person. Now, I know that this does not make sense. I would spend serious time counseling anyone I know to abandon such a tenet. Yet I can’t seem to shake it as a personal credo. Until now.

My former inclination to eschew any requests for anything of a material nature went right out the window. I’m sixty-two goddamn years old, and I don’t think I have the right to ask for (by which I mean buy myself) a particular cell phone? That’s nuts, and I know it. So I broke my rule and I asked.

Then I researched all the data plans, the activation fees, the software and the hardware and I did the hokey-pokey till all the numbers swirled in front of my face and made me slightly nauseous. But I pulled up my socks and went to the kiosk of the best deal and got Smartphones for the Center of the Universe and me.

Now I can find any quilt shop in the United States because I have an app for that. I can read the New York Times, the Washington Post, and USA Today in the palm of my hand, because I have an app for that. I can scan the bar code of any item in any store and comparison shop it across the universe because (wait for it…) I have an app for that.

But more importantly, I can play Scrabble with my son, Wordfeud with my stepson, and soon Scrabbleicious (I think) with my son-in-law. And I can do all of these 24/7. This makes me very happy. It’s a cool way of being connected around the clock.

Now I don’t mind that my phone is smarter than I am. I just need an app for my addiction to it.

Running the Race

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I’m running a marathon. Don’t faint—it’s not the 10K for cancer research. It’s not the 5K for heart disease. It’s the never-ending race against the relentless dust and grime in my house.

How does it accumulate so fast? It seems as if by the time I’ve finished dusting and vacuuming I could write my name in the new deposits on the coffee table. Is that fair? Shouldn’t I at least get one day’s grace?

I feel so good when I’ve cleaned the whole house that you would think I’d be looking forward to the next time I attack it. You would be wrong. I still curl my upper lip and flare my nostrils at the thought of Windex, Formula 409 and Lysol. At the end of a day of cleaning, I’m sure I need a good detox from inhaling all those fumes.

I guess I like it being done, not so much the act of doing it. I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing, and so can you. You know how it is: your baseboards need dusting, your windows need washing, your shower has soap scum and if only modern technology hadn’t eradicated waxy yellow buildup, you’d be battling that, too. There are not enough hours in the day, and this is now that I’m retired from ‘work’. And did you notice how I shifted this from my problem to yours? You’re in this, too.

How did this happen? When I worked full-time I was gone fifty to fifty-five hours a week, including the commute. I always fantasized that when I retired my house would be neat as a pin and clean as a whistle. (Why pins and whistles constitute the gold standard for household presentation I cannot explain, but they do.) I imagined that my closets would all be color-coded, hangers lining up like little soldiers—all their heads and shoulders at the same precise angle. My shoes and purses would look like the gorgeous photos in splashy magazine layouts, which are clearly shot just to make us all feel inferior.

I fantasized that my kitchen drawers would all be so neat and tidy that Martha Stewart could drop in at any time and pluck a spatula of just the right size and shape from the second drawer. If Oprah herself had rung the doorbell, I could welcome her in without a mad dash through the house to pick up a stray newspaper or coffee mug. And if Dr. Oz ever dropped by to inspect my medicine chest, I’d be so proud when he opened the door to see my neatly organized and categorized supply of pharmaceuticals, not a single one out-of-date.

Need I tell you that none of this has come to pass?

My closets still look like I frantically ransack them for the perfect item on a twice-daily basis. The house is tidy, but my floors have a protective coating of dust that the Guinness people are coming to measure on Friday. The outsides of my windows make me cringe when the sun shines. I’m a failure.

One of these days I’ll wake up with an uncontrollable urge to clean everything in the house. That will be the day I sign up for the marathon at the Senior Olympics. I’ll just have to find out whether Windex would disqualify me under the doping rules.

That's How We Roll!

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:03:00 +0000

What’s the best thing about spending eleven nights in a hotel?

Fresh and ironed sheets every day? No, but that’s certainly in my top five.

New towels hung for you every day? Not really, but still it’s way up there.

Not having to make your bed at all? Definitely a 'plus', but not huge in my book.

Here’s a clue: it relates to something you have to do at home, that your husband NEVER does, that has to be done every couple of days, and that can—at times—create an emergency.

Yes. Changing the toilet paper roll.

Husbands have been proven to be 96.3% incapable of achieving this seemingly simple task. (Some rare events –we’ll call them anecdotal evidence—have been cited elsewhere, but I remain dubious.)

At least when you’re in a hotel, they generally put a fresh roll of toilet paper out each day, and you don’t have to run out, don’t have to seek a replacement roll, and don’t have to make the swap yourself.

I know, I know, this is a tiny task that takes so little time or effort—why do I let it bug me? I think every one of us has a particular chore that simply irks us, whether it makes sense or not.

In part, it’s this: I don’t mind changing the roll; I mind being the only one who changes the roll. Especially since I’m not the only one who’s using the stuff.

So what happened on this particular trip? Don’t ask. Okay—actually, if you don’t ask, there’s no point in this blog post at all, is there? Well, here are a few documented photographs of my experience…

Every time I went into a bathroom, anywhere, it seemed, the roll was empty when I got there. There was always access to a replacement roll, in contrast to the times when you go into a public restroom stall, only to realize just when you need it most, that there is no paper to be found. Those are the times I am grateful that I (nearly) always have Kleenex in my purse or pocket.

Even at my daughter’s house, I went into the hall bathroom on my first day there and found this:

No big deal, of course, but it became funny very quickly. Mostly because if you don’t view it as funny, you will begin to tear your hair out by the fistful. So I took a picture. (My cell phone was in my pocket. –as in, is that a cell phone in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?)

And the problem snowballed. Every time I entered a bathroom, I just expected to see an empty roll where toilet paper should have been… And I was not disappointed. Hilarity ensued.

I somehow lack the joy that my husband and so many others share, of never having to worry about toilet paper. Conversely, I do have the lovely gift of parking karma. I tend to find the first spot in the first row by the door of wherever I’m going. It also works if I’m a passenger in someone else’s car. Certainly there are exceptions, but by and large I get the best parking spaces on a regular basis.

Would I trade parking karma for t.p. roll karma? Hmmm… I suppose not. So I guess I should keep mum about this particular complaint and learn to live with it.

And in case you’re wondering how I know about the 96.3% of toilet paper rolls changed by women, I submit the following evidence.

Some time ago, I discussed this irksome task with my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU.) He innocently professed that it was his belief that he changes the roll with great frequency, and never shirks from his responsibility in this regard. I raised my eyebrows and nodded my head and quietly went about the business of saving the empty rolls instead of discarding them.

first box...

Here are the rolls I replaced.

First pile...

Second pile...

second box

third box

Here are CoTu’s.

Pathetic, isn't it?

Case closed. By the way, it was really 99.7%, but I scaled it back out of charity. Even though he only changed these because I was out of town.

And as for the best thing about staying eleven nights in a hotel? Trick question. The answer is coming home to sleep in your own bed.

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

I learned a great lesson on how to keep a marriage happy from the French master chef Jacques Pepin. He was on the radio on Thanksgiving Day (on NPR, of course—you know me!) talking about cooking for the holiday with Lynne Rosetto Kasper of The Splendid Table. She does a turkey day program every year called Turkey Confidential. Listeners can call in and ask all manner of questions regarding the preparation, cooking and serving of virtually anything you can imagine. It’s quite informative, and lots of fun to listen to if you happen to be alone in the kitchen on that day!

Lynne Rosetto Kasper

One of her guests was the aforementioned Jacques Pepin. He’s very amusing and entertaining, and being a Frenchman of the old school, I must say that he is also charming. In the midst of all the discussion of how to choose your ingredients, how to clean, slice, and dice them, how to safely cook them and how to beautifully serve them, Monsieur Pepin slipped in the most valuable nugget of info of the decade. I will share it with you. Perhaps many, many marriages and other relationships can be saved.

Jacques Pepin

Jacques Pepin noted almost offhandedly that there was a point on which he and his wife disagreed. They therefore did what she wanted, as their plan is that when they differ, they do what she wants. At the same time, when they agree on things, they do what he wants. This, he avers, is completely fair. I agree. It just ain’t never gonna happen in this marriage. You recall that I am married to the Center of the Universe, so we handle things differently.

In our marriage, CoTU handles all the small decisions, and I handle all the big decisions. We’re just so lucky that in all these years we’ve never had to make a big decision.

Hair and There

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:00:00 +0000

I have no idea why I spend so much time and energy ironing the backs of my pants. Let’s face it, by the time I drive anywhere, they’re so wrinkled, I might as well have spent that time drinking. Unless I’m dressing to have people over at my own house, I hereby vow to stop wasting time ironing the backs of my pants. Until the guilt gets me. It got me. I’ll iron ‘em, I promise.

But it’s a lot like combing the back of my hair, or more specifically, the hair on the back of my head. I twirl my round brush with one hand, wave the hair dryer over it with the other hand, and then I check it in the hand mirror, to make sure I don’t look like a wacko. Well, at least not like a wacko who doesn’t know enough to fix the back of her hair. Then I get in the car to go where I’m going, and the headrest makes the back of my hair look like Woody Allen. From the front. Seriously, it ends up looking like a matted and misshapen stuffed animal is perched on the back of my head. It’s gross.

This brings me to a question that’s been bothering me for years. Now I’ll bring it up here and it can bother you, too. Or perhaps you’ll have an answer for me, and I can start sleeping through the night.

We –that is my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I --will go out on a Saturday night with friends. In preparation, we shower, shampoo, rinse and repeat. I fix my hair, he shaves, we dress, I put on makeup, not necessarily in that order. But close. I frequently iron my pants, his pants, and God knows whatever else happens to need ironing.

I’m pretty sure the other couple we’re going out with goes through the same rigmarole. Except for one thing. At least half the time, we see other adult men in a restaurant or at the theatre who, while nicely dressed, and driving nice cars, don’t seem to own a comb or a hairbrush. Or if they do, they don’t know what it’s supposed to be used for.

Now I understand that men of a certain age (though I’m uncertain as to what the ‘certain’ actually means here) are no longer trying to attract a mate, having already accomplished that feat. Same thing can be said for women. But I never see women who go out (except on the way home from the gym) without at least trying to make their hair look decent. Women may not always curl, straighten, flat iron, or spray their hair, but I’ve yet to see a woman on a Saturday night at a restaurant who hadn’t at least COMBED her hair. Men? –not so much. I’ve seen hair that looked as if it hadn’t even been combed when the barber cut it. It’s scary.

Again, I can even comprehend that it slips a guy’s mind, and he’s more interested in who won the Big 12 game that afternoon, and what dinner’s going to cost him. The real mystery is how his wife doesn’t pleasantly suggest that he comb his hair before they leave home. You know, a simple, “Mortimer, your hair looked so nice when you combed it last month. Would you like to try that again tonight?” Unless his name isn’t Mortimer, and then it just wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Maybe she was busy ironing her pants.

Leaves, Snow, Pollen, Moles: The Four Seasons

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 11:00:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is behind us, and if the first snow has not fallen where you are by the time you read this, it cannot be far behind. We had a flurry here Monday morning. Happily, it didn’t amount to anything. We can only hope that we get the last of the leaves raked up and hauled away before the white stuff really descends.

I think it’s a sign of old age that we have begun to view the change of seasons only as they relate to dreaded household chores.

We have not yet put the leaf rakes and yes, I admit it, power leaf blower into that bleak section of the garage known as ‘off-season storage’, and we’ve begun to bemoan the prospect of winter and snow shoveling. As winter ends, we’ll start fretting about the spring pollen that clogs our screens and fills our deck. Just as that’s clearing away, we’ll be worrying about the lawn and the moles and the carpenter bees. And then, of course, we’re back to the leaves. Perhaps we’re ‘glass half-empty’ kind of people.

Now this would not be such a bad thing, but it does keep us from what life coaches and zen masters call ‘living in the moment’.

Today we should be enjoying the comfy temperatures that enable us to walk the neighborhood in just a sweater, instead of the heavy coats and caps that are soon to come. We should be enjoying the fact that it’s not yet dark at 4:30, as it surely will be a month from now. We should be enjoying the relative beauty of the brilliant reds still clinging to the row of burning bush shrubs that line our driveway, and the wonderful crunch of the dried leaves under our feet on the paths in Babler State Park. Are we doing this? Not so much. We’re changing furnace filters, fighting the woodpeckers opening knots in our cedar siding, and lamenting the impending ice age that is sure to come.

Have we learned nothing from the sixty-something winters we have survived? It’s as if we are embarking on new and unseen territory as fearsome and threatening as the surface of Jupiter. Is this why so many clear-thinking seniors have become ‘snowbirds’ and spend the harsh winter months in the balmy and temperate southern states?

Last year we spent Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law in Washington, D.C. From there we drove to Englewood, Florida at the generous invitation of friends. We spent five delightful days there, but I believe that in some deep-seated way it altered my ability to experience winter.

We ran into some very cold and blustery weather en route home, and it was as if I had no winter coat and gloves. I believe that somehow my body had decided that Florida was right, and anything else was wrong. And while I’m not a Florida person in general, by the time we returned to St. Louis on December 8^th, my body was inexorably altered. I endured last winter with incredible disdain for the cold and damp. Every 30° day felt like a 20° day; twenty felt like ten, and I pretty much felt like Sam McGee who needed to be ‘cremated’ just to defrost. I survived, without Sam McGee’s incineration, but my suffering was intensified by my newfound world view.

This year it will be different. We’re not visiting Florida till February, at which time it should feel like Paradise. By the time we come home, it will be time to put the snow shovels into dry dock and welcome the pollen. Meanwhile, I’m putting on a sweater and going out for a walk.

Overheard at 30,000 feet

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Ah yes, the airplane trip: a dependable source of frustration, humor and shared germs. Squished carry-ons, people who won’t turn off their cell phones, talkers who want to yak in your ear, and the incessant coughing that turns the aircraft into a flying petri dish. Yet it gets us where we want to go, and by and large, it’s all just fine. Every safe landing is a happy landing, I like to say.

None of which keeps me from laughing about some of the escapades we experience or witness in flight.

On a recent trip home from Sacramento, I changed planes in Phoenix. After most of us were in our seats, our intrepid and unflappable flight attendant, Shonda, brought a young boy of 9 or 10 aboard. She seated him in the aisle seat in the row across from me. As a result, I was treated to the following overheard conversation.

Wait—I got ahead of myself. I was seated on the aisle, too, and the young boy shared his row with an older couple; the wife was at the window, and the husband was in the center seat. Now, back to the ~~eavesdropping~~ entertainment.

Boy: My last name’s a color. Guess it.

Man: Green.

Boy: Nope.

Man: White.

Boy: Yep.

Man: My last name’s a position—guess it.

Boy: Pitcher.

Man: (Chuckling) No. What’s the opposite of right?

Boy: Left.

Man: Right.

Boy: Do you live in Phoenix? We live in Mesa.

Man: I live on the opposite side of Phoenix in Sun City.

Boy: Sin City?

Man: No, Sun City, like the sun shines in the sky.

Boy: I thought you said ‘sin’ and sin is bad.

[Oh great—this poor man’s in for a 3 ½ hour lecture on original sin and the evil nature of man from a 9-year old, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.]

It got real quiet in their row after that.

Break-In or Break-Out?

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 14:37:00 +0000

The day started off innocently enough. We had slept soundly. Everything looked and felt normal. There were no overt signs or sounds of a break-in…

I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and dressed for the gym. I grabbed an armload of laundry and headed downstairs to toss it all into the washing machine, where I had casually dumped a couple of towels and cleaning rags the previous morning. The plan was to fill the load today and run the thing at capacity. But then…

I opened the lid, and found it empty.

What?

Where are the things I had left inside? I looked around the laundry room. Nothing on the floor. Nothing on top of the dryer… Then I looked inside the dryer.

Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh—scare me to death—the missing laundry was in the dryer, clean and dry! There was only one conclusion: a burglar had gotten into the house and done this tiny load of laundry!

I struggled to get my breathing under control, and reached for the phone to call 911. Then I realized I should tell my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) first. I wouldn’t want the sirens to be his first awareness of this.

I found him upstairs at his computer, and broke the news as gently as I could. “Honey—I’m sorry, but there’s a problem downstairs. It looks like we’ve had an intruder, and I’m not talking about another squirrel.”

Of course, he jumped up and freaked out. “What? Where—what happened?”

“Calm down,” I said, there doesn’t appear to be any real damage, just a load of laundry done.”

He sank back down in his chair, and attempted to wither me into shame with an icy glare.

No explanation was forthcoming.

“Hello???” I prodded. “You know, some things are givens. The sun will rise in the east, the Mississippi flows south, highway 40 will jam at the 141 overpass, and you do not touch the washing machine. These are not facts because I wish them to be so, they seem to be forces of nature. Well, at least the first two. The others I have come to believe because of so many years of observation and experience. I open the washer and expect to see what I left there the day before. It has always been so. You can’t do something so unexpected and out-of-character and think I’m not going to be stunned. I need an explanation.”

“Ummm… it’s really no big deal… I wanted to clean my new lens cloths, and you were in that all-day workshop, so I stuck them in the washer and did it. Dried ‘em, too.”

“But,” I struggled to say with aplomb, “it seems that there’s always been a force field in the laundry room that repelled you from the washer and dryer. Remember the time I was away on Father’s Day and left your card and gift inside the dryer, knowing full well you would never run across it accidentally? I had to call you and tell you to get it out and open it. That space has always been sacrosanct—what’s next? You’ll be rinsing dishes and putting them into the dishwasher? Please—where’s my real husband, and who are you really?”

He turned back to his computer with a smug smile. “CoTU, here. Where ya gonna hide my next present?”

I’m not worried. There’s still the vacuum cleaner closet.

My Marriage and Al Gore

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 13:08:00 +0000

Al Gore had a good week last week. He was on The Colbert Report Tuesday night, and sparred competently with the amazingly agile and witty Stephen Colbert. My husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I enjoyed the spectacle immensely. When it ended, I blithely commented that Colbert hadn’t even plugged the new dance studio Gore had opened.

“Dance studio?” the hub inquired.

“Yeah, it’s based on math formulas. It’s called the Al-go-rhythm,” I deadpanned. He threw a throw pillow at me. Maybe that’s how they got the name. You know: throw pillows. Sorry.

Then Wednesday as I was preparing our lunch, listening to Neal Conan’s Talk of the Nation on NPR, and soaking up the pun-ditry and wisdom of the ‘political junkie’ Ken Rudin (his cohort for the Wednesday show) CoTU moseyed into the kitchen. I subtly pointed at the radio so he’d know that I was focused on what was being said, and implying that he might be interested, too. He was.

He also began quietly foraging in the pantry for a snack to tide him over the next ten minutes or so while I created a chef’s salad for me and a turkey wrap with black olives and sun-dried tomatoes for him. Often, when he does this, I point out (helpfully) that a meal is just moments away. He then (helpfully) points out in response that his snacking has never dulled his appetite for a meal. Case closed. This time, I chose to save my breath, since my helpfulness has never deterred his snacking anyway.

Meanwhile, Mr. Gore again espoused the breadth and depth of the scientific community’s belief in climate change and the human component thereof. Although he said it much better than that, and didn’t have to use ‘thereof’.

CoTU popped some dry-roasted peanuts into his mouth and said, “He does a fine job of stating the facts, outlining the situation, and proposing solutions.”

I stopped chopping tomatoes for the salad and gave him a cold, hard stare. “This man has been vice-president of the United States, holds numerous honorary doctorates from respected universities, in 2007 he won an Emmy, a Grammy, the Nobel Peace Prize for heaven’s sake, and pretty much everything but the Heisman trophy—but believe me, I’m sure nothing would mean as much to him as your glowing assessment of his competence.”

“Yeah. I’m sure he would,” CoTU agreed, totally missing my sarcasm. “Is he divorced now?”

“I guess so—I recall hearing that he and Tipper separated about a year ago. Why—are you planning to fix him up with someone?” I asked.

“Nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-no.”

Pause.

“You want to date him yourself?” I suggested.

He choked on a peanut.

We went back to listening to the interview, enjoying the rich repartee of the co-hosts with their guest. Soon our lunch was ready and we sat down to eat, still listening to the radio. When the program ended, we did our usual post-mortem on it—what we thought about the points made, and the other ideas that had come to mind while we had been listening.

As we cleared the table and put the dishes into the dishwasher (and when I say ‘we’, I mean me), CoTU suggested we head upstairs to double our entrendres. (Insert your favorite euphemism here.)

“Cool,” I said. “As long as you’re not going to be thinking about Al Gore.”

“And as long as you’re not going to blog about this,” he added.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiight…

“You know, maybe Al and Tipper would still be together if he had spent less time working on the environment of the planet, and more time working on the home environment,” CoTU said.

“Or maybe Tipper got tired of polishing his trophies,” I remarked.

“So to speak…” he mumbled.

Back to Back

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 17:21:00 +0000

Our mattress is done for. We used to love it, and even on the best of vacations, we would talk all the way home of how much we looked forward to sleeping in our own bed.

I have a long history of back problems, dating back to my twenties. (Yes, I can remember back that far, thank you very much.) My brother has the same problem with the same disk, so we blame our parents. That’s fair, isn’t it? My kids blame me for everything they suffer from, so why should the buck stop here? I ain’t no Harry Truman, you know…

Anyhoo, this summer my back issues seemed to escalate, and by the fourth of July had really flared up (pun intended.) I was walking like the 2000-year old man: hunched over and grimacing in pain.

My husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) suggested I try sleeping in the guest room. I gracefully declined, unwilling to believe I could blame my troubles on the mattress I had so loved and relied on for so long.

The problems with my back continued.

CoTU again suggested I give the guest room a try. After all, our guests were gone, and though that mattress is significantly older than the one we currently share, he posited that I had nothing to lose. I again declined, this time without a trace of grace, and got down on the floor to resume the physical therapy exercises that usually grant me relief. But like the Cardinals’ bullpen, there was not nearly enough relief to be had.

Within a few days I gave in to his urging, and gave the guest bedroom a try.

That room is now known as Lourdes.

The very first morning I woke up and walked upright for the first time in weeks! I slept better, felt better and moved a whole lot easier. Knowing CoTU as you do, you know how pleased he was to have been proven right.

Except for one thing. Now he can’t lure me back to the bed that causes me so much pain and discomfort.

He tried enticing me back with tales of his ‘invisible friend’. “She’s really special. She’s really hot,” he said.

“She’s really imaginary,” I replied.

Both beds are available for conjugal visits, but I insisted that he boot out his invisible friend before I agreed to go back. No more references to her, her specialness, or her hotness. “She doesn’t take care of you like I do,” I helpfully pointed out. “I haven’t noticed her helping with feeding you, for instance.”

“True,” he agreed. “But she doesn’t have to.”

Ouch! “You’re going to die,” I deadpanned.

“In your arms?” he asked.

“No, I’ll be the one in handcuffs.”

We’re going shopping for a new mattress. Today.

The Wild Kingdom

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Thu, 25 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0000

You remember my bunco club, the Dicey Housewives of West County, don’t you? Yes, the ten of us have been getting together for years on the second Monday of the month to play bunco. There used to be twelve of us, but the other two let sanity overtake them, and they dropped out. We ten survivors probably laugh too much to be tolerated on a regular basis. It’s better this way.

Anyway, over the years we have come to realize that in July and August we are too scattered (geographically, not mentally—that’s permanent) to gather enough members for our usually rousing evening of throwing dice and rotating among the tables. (If you don’t play bunco, just visualize a game of musical chairs punctuated by a gaggle of giggling grandmas asking each other what number we’re on.) So we do what otherwise normal women do—we go out to dinner instead.

Here I will pause to point out that alcohol is not, and has never been involved in our get-togethers. We’re all pretty sure we could be dangerous with a glass or two of chardonnay in us.

But back to our story…

At our August dinner, everyone was laughing, talking and sharing stories. We try to keep each other apprised of the comings and goings in our families, the travels, the remodeling, the moving, the medical issues, the not-to-be-missed recipes, and the ways in which our husbands drive us batty.

Suddenly Jan says, “Oh, Leah—I was thinking about you! The other night I was getting ready for bed, and last thing, I’m about to go to the bathroom. I lift the lid on the toilet and see that there’s something in there! I think, ‘Oh, the grandkids were over earlier, and one of them forgot to flush.’ Then, as I’m about to reach for the handle, I see this thing BLINK at me! Then I realize it’s a frog! I close the lid as fast as I can, and start yelling for Stu (her husband) to come in. My voice got so high-pitched, he thinks I’ve hurt myself or something.”

No, Jan did not take a picture.
Consider this a facsimile.

Jan went on to tell us how long it took for the two of them to get the frog flushed away. The next day, she called the Metropolitan Sewer District to report this, and to see what could be done to keep it from recurring. She was redirected to the water company. Jan thought she had a “you won’t believe this” tale to tell, but the customer service representative at Missouri American Water Company was unfazed. “You wouldn’t believe how common this is,” she said.

She also said that there was virtually nothing that could be done to prevent it from happening again.

Ruh-roh.

This led us all to speculating about what might have happened if it had been a snake or a rat. Yes, we all spoiled our appetites ‘going there’. But we all vowed to keep our toilet lids down at all times, just in case. Not that it would help much if a snake wanted to slither out.

But as the laughter died down and we were all grimacing at the possibilities, I had a thought.

“Jan,” I began. “I’ve never had a frog in my toilet before, so what made you start this story by saying that you thought of me the other night?”

“Well,” she began, “You did have squirrels in the attic, a chipmunk in the ceiling, and mice in the garage. You’ve had more in-house wildlife than anyone I know.”

“So I’m like a cross between Martha Stewart and Steve Irwin?” I asked.

She agreed. I went home and polished my squirrel traps.

I'll Take "Names & Jobs" for $800, Alex

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0000

By popular request, we’re back with another installment of “I Chose This Profession Because of My Name”.

You may recall that we’ve shared examples in the past of people whose names almost prophesy their professions. Doctors like Dr. Wink (the optometrist), Dr. Bonebrake (the orthopedic surgeon), Dr. Fang (the dentist), Dr. Wisdom (the oral surgeon), and my personal favorite, Dr. Philpott (the urologist.)

And they’re not all doctors. Remember Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut? She fits in quite well here. There was the pilot, Ross Aimer, and the dietician named Kathy Kitchens Downie. If only she hadn’t married Mr. Downie, she could have emphasized the Kitchens more. Still…

So now that I’ve refreshed your memory, here are a new crop of discoveries:

A woman metalsmith whose last name is Hammer. (Sorry I didn’t jot down her first name when I saw her interviewed on the Newshour.)

An expert on animal breeding at an animal preserve whose name is Ron Sweisgood (pronounced “Sways good”.)

An archivist at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia by the name of Sarah Forgey. (Yikes—and they hired her!)

The trading floor guru of UBS, and frequent guest on CNBC, named Art Cashin. How could he have possibly chosen any other profession in the world? Of course, if his name were Cashout he’d have a whole bucket of problems…

The veterinarian named Dr. Hoot! (Thanks to astute reader and blogger “Sunny in Seattle” for contributing this one!)

And my current favorite, the Bangor, Maine Home Depot employee, who, in June, presided over a nest of mallard eggs, and protected them till they emerged: no—wait for it—it’s worth the wait—Brenda Hatch.

200th Post and Celebrating Two Years

noreply@blogger.com (Leah Rubin) — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Happy Anniversary to the Blog!

Yes, here at FITNY (no, that’s not a chic New York gym—it’s Funny Is The New Young) we’re turning two years old, and this is my 200th post! That seems worthy of celebration. In other words, let’s have some cake. So while you dig in (chocolate layer cake with chocolate icing) feast on my 200th offering. And as they used to sing in the theme song to Golden Girls, thank you for being a friend!

In all the years I’ve been writing this blog (yeah, I think ‘two’ can be ‘all’) I have refrained from getting political. And that’s not easy for me. I’ve been a news junkie for as long as I can remember, and I thrive on listening to and reading about all things political.

But I decided before FITNY ever saw the light of day that it would be neutral, politically. No commentary, no opinion. Just those slice of life stories that (I hope) make you laugh.

And even I get overdosed on the political at times, and this week has definitely been one of those times. It’s been hard to keep from shrieking at the ‘leaders’ who have their moments in front of the camera and use them to blame others, no matter which party they represent.

So please believe me when I tell you that what you are about to view is completely apolitical. It’s a simple observation that the gentleman who is third in line to the presidency was recently seen quoting Sheldon Cooper (played by Jim Parsons) of The Big Bang Theory. This is frightening. Not politically, but socially. Sheldon is brilliant, but insufferable.

I recently caught a news snippet of John Boehner, Speaker of the House, (and yes, if you remember your high school civics class, you know that in the event of the unthinkable, and the president AND vice president were both incapacitated, John “Cry Me a River” Boehner would become President of the United States.) Boehner was in front of a microphone saying, “If ands and buts were candy and nuts, every day would be Christmas.”

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7110956n

Now I admit to being a little sheltered at times, but the only other time I had EVER heard that expression was earlier this year on The Big Bang Theory, when Sheldon told his friends, “If ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we’d ALL have a merry Christmas!” Which, to be fair, rings a little sweeter than the Boehner version.

[Sorry, but despite my best efforts, I could not find the clip of this rare and special moment in the annals of situation comedy to share with you, my treasured readers...]

So if we were worried about leadership, set those fears aside. Speaker Boehner is taking his cues from a genius-level Ph. D. physicist: Sheldon Cooper. Even if he is fictional. Hey, the guy’s won an Emmy and a Golden Globe, so at least he’s distinguished.

Check it out. And wipe the cake crumbs from your chin—there’s no candy and nuts to be found here, and Christmas is nearly five months away. Good thing there's an anniversary to celebrate! Cheers!