Idea I Had After Seeing A Book Title

First Woman, Detective

Eve called her family in for dinner, but only Adam and Cain showed up. “Where’s Abel?” she asked. Adam and Cain looked at each other. “I don’t know,” said Cain. “He was with his sheep last I saw,” said Adam.

Eve went looking for Abel. She saw the crows circling over the field and went to look. There was Abel, face down, his blood drying in the sun. Near his body was a rock with blood and hair on it. She leaned over to look at it and then at her son’s head. She touched him and he felt cold. He was not asleep. Abel is dead, she thought, this is the first one. We will die, just like the Lord said.

She walked slowly back home. “Abel is dead. His head is dented by a stone. Someone has killed him.” She looked at her husband and son. “Did you kill Abel, Adam?” Adam looked stunned. “No!” he said, “why should I?” Eve turned to Cain, “Did you kill Abel, Cain?” Cain licked his lips and then burst out, “Why do you accuse me, Mom?” “I’m only asking, Cain,” said Eve patiently. “Why do you take Dad’s word for it?” he challenged. “Just answer the question, my son,” she said. “You always liked him best!” Cain accused. “Did you kill him?” Cain stared for a moment and then looked away. 

“Is this about the offerings to the Lord again?” asked Eve. “He never accepts my offerings!” cried Cain. “It’s always lamb, lamb, lamb!” Adam put his hand on Cain’s shoulder, but he shook it off. “Of course he accepts your offering,” he said. “Not with favor,” sneered Cain. “How can you tell?” asked Adam, who hadn’t bothered to offer anything since leaving the Garden.

“We’re getting off the point,” said Eve. “Someone has killed Abel and there are only three of us. I didn’t do it. Adam says he didn’t do it. Cain, did you kill your brother?” Cain lowered his head. “Yes, Mom. I lured him to the field and struck him down. I did it in anger.” Adam rolled his eyes. “Oh, boy – we’re in trouble now.”  “Why?” asked Cain. “There’s no one to tell.” “The Lord already knows!” exclaimed Adam. “He knows everything! But first He’ll pretend He doesn’t and will ask you and what are you going to say?”

“Look,” said Cain, “if we all just keep calm and say nothing, no one will find out and no one will get hurt.” He dragged his toe in the dust. “It’s not like there is anyone else.”

“Dinner’s getting cold,” said Eve. “We’ll discuss this later, young man.”

“Why am I always the one getting in trouble?” grumbled Cain.

Eve was sad, but at the same time she was oddly satisfied. I have solved a mystery, she thought. And she wished there were more.

“Who’s watching the sheep?” asked Adam.

“Oh, shit,” said Eve.

Where Did That Watch Come From?

This has annoyed me for ages.
If there is a watch, there must be a watchmaker. Yeah, okay. Therefore, if there is life on planet Earth ...
No, no. Let me stop you there. You skipped something.
Where did the watchmaker learn to make the watch? Where did she get the parts? Did she imagine it all by herself? How did she know time should be divided up the way the watch divides it?
Do people really think that inventions spring fully-formed from the forehead of some really smart person (or a god)? Everything we have, that we make, is based on technology that has come before. Everything we make has evolved. And it took a long, long time to get from one idea (Time - Hey, when's the best time to plant some crops?) to another (Ooooo, digital watch!), but often the latter stages start coming fast and furious. Sometimes technology gets stuck in a rut for a while until someone figures out some nuance to get it going again. [Cold fusion? Helloooo.]
But the fact remains that a watch developed out of hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of cutting time into pieces. And one of the prerequisites was the need for cutting time into pieces.
Let there be light! There was Dawn with her rosy fingers, noon when the sun was at its apex, and tobacco-stained Dusk. As the seasons changed, daytime and nighttime would duke it out and become longer for one and shorter for the other and then go back. The hours of the day were not uniform throughout the year. What good was a timepiece that divided the day into regular intervals? Who would care? Where was the need? (Apparently, there was a need to limit politicians from talking too long, but a water clock worked for that.)
What sort of technology goes into a watch? Let's imagine one of those cool. old-fashioned fob watches. Very basic. You wind it up, and it ticks. First of all, it's made of metal. You need to be able to extract metal from ore and shape it. Oh, wait. You need fire first. You need to control that fire. It probably needs to get pretty darn hot to melt metal. Well, we're at the Bronze Age now. No problem. Some folks worked that out for us.
What about that winding? Someone has to invent a spring. Alternatively, someone has to discover the properties of the pendulum. What about gears? Where did that idea even come from? Someone has to find a way to make all this much smaller, more accurate, and also attractive.
Thousands contributed to the making of a watch.
In 1972 I bought a watch in Switzerland, because that's what you did. And now I don't even wear one. I have a phone that is my watch, my camera, and a total time-sucker.  The watch has evolved right before my very eyes.
So, just because I didn't see life on this planet evolve and can't explain exactly how it happened, doesn't mean life didn't evolve. It took an amount of time and slow change that I would have difficulty fathoming because it is just so vast. At the same time (haha), the technology of a simple watch is something I could not replicate. I couldn't even begin to know how to smelt ore. I leave that up to the experts. And I leave all the steps up to the experts as it seems the human race has a hive mind with everyone running around being expert in their own thing and contributing to society as a whole. Sort of the way every part of our body performs a different job and shares the results to make us live.
I can see the parallels. Or do I mean paradigm? Let me check my phone. Siri might know.

The Old Lady in the Mirror

Yesterday I caught sight of myself in the mirror at work. It was accidental. I have not quite perfected my mother’s trick of just looking at the hair, or whatever it was she wanted to check, and ignoring the wrinkles and wattle. The gestalt hit me. I’ve gotten old. For a brief handful of seconds I caught myself thinking, What have I done with my life? Why did I put off living?

Then I suddenly remembered that I did not put off living. I put off settling down. What needs to happen is to go over my early life and remember that I did what I damn well pleased for over 20 years. I am not waiting to retire so I can do things. I’ve done them, begad.

After college, I worked at low paying jobs and played around with theatre. I was in a musical with Garry Moore. My then boyfriend (sort of affectionately known as The Wicked Step-Ex-Boyfriend) had talked about moving in together and I moved 800 miles away leaving instructions with my parents to not divulge my whereabouts. We are both much happier. He has his home and his partner and I have mine. Our years together (on and off or at a distance) were filled with adventure, if not happiness.

I moved to Manhattan to break into theatre. First, I freaked out and went to Cambridge, MA for a while, staying in someone’s dorm room. A friend found a foothold in Manhattan and I joined him, where I went to auditions, hung out in piano bars, did odd jobs in corporate libraries, advertising companies, and at HBO. At HBO I ended up in an office overlooking Bryant Park and the NY Public Library. I watched the lights come on the Empire State Building (which I tended to call the Statue of Liberty because I’m easily confused by monuments) each night from my office window. I worked for a literary agent and for some famous authors.

Eventually I moved on to Boston, where I did six shows in two years as opposed to no shows in three in Manhattan. I worked as a paralegal and took classes in cartooning, tapdance, cooking, and ancient Greek. I might still be there if I hadn’t fallen and broken my kneecap. Then again, someone had to go back south and look after our parents, or as I called them My Parents and my sister called them The Parents. I started back into theatre and slowly wound down into a full-time permanent job with a house of my own, thinking I had the rest of my life all worked out. All that slipped away when I found someone that actually wanted to marry me. And after I got over bursting into tears every time I heard the “M” word, I finally settled down.

None of the above really exposes the warp and woof of what went on: getting so drunk that I lost track of how I got from one end of Manhattan to the other, parading as a female impersonator on Christopher Street, meeting other actors with interesting abilities such as silverware impersonations (loved the shrimp fork!), having my glasses broken during a fight on the Boston T, trying to train a cat to be tossed in the air for a show (didn’t work out so he was just carried on stage briefly), portraying the Token Tapdancing Lesbian in a gay musical only to have my roommate find out about it later … All good fun.

But settling down has not, really, stopped me from doing whatever I damn well please. It just seems that with age, what I damn well please involves more napping. And jigsaw puzzles online.

Personsplaining

My pies don't look like this. Pie by Bob.

Mentally I'm scrolling through all the couples in my book group Rolodex (remember those?) to see if I can find a "traditional" male. It's not enough to say that my own husband is not afraid to stop and ask someone for directions (while I cringe) and has all our important dates at the tip of his tongue ( I do remember his birthday, but because he was born on a distinctive date: Friday the 13th - can't quite recall what year). Just about everyone I know has a husband capable and often willing to do cooking and other housework. No one complains about channel-surfing or any of those other alleged traits that I can't even remember at the moment. At this moment, I am at work and my husband is doing the laundry. It was all I could do to sneak in and change the bed linens.

That doesn't mean I haven't seen traditional types, but there simply aren't many in my circle. And I'm not a young person.

This prompts me to rise to the defense of men in general and not forward Man Jokes that crop up in emails or on Facebook. You know the ones, the ones that are like Blonde Jokes - perpetuating an unfair stereotype. Stereotypes that don't even line up with my own dad, born over 100 years ago.

Blondes can forward Blonde Jokes if they want. If men can write some funny Man Jokes, they can share them among themselves, but I'll be no party to them. They just don't speak to my experience. People just aren't that simple. We're all nuanced.

I get that, despite decades of women's liberation fol-de-rol, men are still in power. They're getting nervous about it, for sure, and the pendulum has to swing back and forth before it comes to rest in the middle, but they still have the majority of power. Ridicule is a potent weapon the powerless wield against those above them. I just think it's time to put that WMD aside. Use it surgically on a specific individual instead. Don't use it to further divide us.

The Director's the Thing

F. Molnar

The names have been changed to protect, I dunno, somebody.

Many, many years ago, I was in a show. I wouldn't even have remembered this incident if Marlene's imminent visit had not caused me to drift back to the bad old days where we did not tread in case someone asked us, "Are you sisters? Well, then, how did you meet?"

Anyway, I was in a show. The director was a lawyer, but thoroughly trained as a director at a regional professional theatre. He just sort of drifted into the law by accident. Sort of. The show was a fluffy summer comedy of two seasoned playwrights manipulating the lives of those around them, unless you were one of the other actors, in which case it was a romantic comedy about a young man whose heart is broken and whose antics are observed by two cynical, middle-aged non-entities. I was one of the cynics.

The director is fascinated by stage business. He claims that one of the hardest things to do on stage is eat. One of the playwrights orders a huge breakfast, eats very little of it, and leaves the rest for the hungover playwright to finish. And my instructions were to finish the whole deal: beef, chicken, fish, eggs, etc. It is a point of pride for me that eating on stage is a mere nothing. The only thing I seem to be unable to do is whistle in front of an audience, but eating! Ah! Eating is my forte. While eating, I was to listen to the romantic lead moan on and on about his the loss of his love and how his life was over blah-blah, select lines that were particularly catchy, and write them down. I was, of course, a playwright, and all human drama is but grist to my mill.

As the scene rolls on, I go from hungover to delighted with my discovery of a vein of pure gold issuing from the mouth of Mr. Romantic Lead. I am no more than a yard from the nearest audience member in a small, semi-round theatre. I'm not mugging at them - just eating and jotting notes through this whole scene.

Mr. Romantic Lead apparently (according to the denizen of the Box Office) was lying on the carpet in the lobby, pulling at the skin around his eyes and thinking sad thoughts before his entrance into the scene. [Mr. Hoffman, next time try acting.] He was put out during performance by the laughter in the audience. He simply could not reconcile this laughter to the tragedy that was, at that point of the play, his life. He could not figure it out. My back was to him. So he invited his then partner to watch and see what was going wrong. His partner told him. I was making notes and eating.

Now, to this day, this whole incident upsets me - not as much as it did at the time. At the time, I was enraged, furious, impotent, and nigh-on murderous. Today I merely make my eyes ache with rolling them. In order to keep me from doing anything that caused laughter, Mr. Romantic Lead came up behind me and clamped his hands on my shoulders. He was then able to do his scene (part of which had involved going up to the back wall and resting his forehead against it, which he dropped because that got a laugh as well) of misery without me distracting the audience from his scene chewing.

We came out of that scene with me ready to shred him and he as pleased as punch - grinning. No amount of explaining swayed him. He had won. He had, in fact, killed the scene and removed business given to both of us by the director.

At this point in time, the director was spending as little time with the production as possible, probably suffering from depression. I didn't want to bother him and we had another performance coming up. I did the only thing I could think of: I moved the chair so that I was at an angle partially facing him. If he tried anything else, he would have to upstage himself. I continued to eat and make notes, but this time having to turn to get my food or make my notes.

When the director did finally learn of this, he was more than slightly perturbed. "Why didn't you tell me?" he said. Well, we didn't want to bother you. And it was fixed.

Amazingly enough, Mr. Romantic and I did another show together, along with his partner. And his partner cast me in another show. And thereby hangs yet another tale, but one for another day.

The Famous Club Sauce Recipe

Pretty as a picture! 

This is the family recipe for Club Sauce (according to my notes, it originally came from a nice lady named Rose Petz who had 2 Siamese cats called Si and Pinkie. Pinkie was the one with a big pink lipstick mark smeared on the top of its head every other day ... Okay, that wasn't all in the notes, but I remember her. She was a housekeeping mentor for my mom. Mom stopped by on Christmas day to bring her a gift and Rose was baking Christmas cookies. "A little late," my mom ventured. "I like my cookies fresh," snapped Rose.)

I'll start with the half recipe, in case no one has 20 lbs of tomatoes on hand.

10 lbs of tomatoes peeled and diced (or 10 of the what-used-to-be 1 lb cans but are now 14.something oz.)

3 cups of sugar

2 cups of vinegar (I used cider vinegar because I like the flavor)

2 T salt

4 onions (keep in mind that this is an old recipe that comes from the time when onions weren't the size of grapefruit)

6 red and/or green peppers

Cook all but the peppers 2 hours or until thick. Add peppers, cook 10 minutes. Might make about 6 quarts and a bit.

Getting ready to can.

1/4 recipe

5 lbs or cans of peeled, diced tomatoes (I love those petite diced ones)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup cider vinegar

1 T salt

2 onions

3 red or green peppers

It only made 6 1/2 quarts, but I needed to fill
the middle space to use less water and the
measuring cup was to hold the half-filled
quart down.

The "Marf, I only have 2 cans of tomatoes in the pantry" recipe:

2 cans of peeled, diced tomatoes

3/4 cup sugar (can't you people do math?)

1/2 cup cider vinegar

1/2 T salt (I have a 1/2 T measure, but a heaping teaspoon also works)

1 onion

1 big green pepper (for color)

Now, the cool thing is, you can throw in anything else you think might add to the flavor, like some jalapeños or whatever. And then you can call it "salsa."

Brats with the homemade Hot Sweet Mustard Sauce
as well as the Famous Club Sauce. No bun. Buns
are "edible" napkins. Use a knife and fork like a
person.

Photo is the Serving Suggestion. The brats are from the hot dog section of Publix and I like them better than the Boar's Head ones because 1. they're slightly cheaper and 2. you get 6 in a 1 lb. pack instead of 4. Also pictured is my family's famed hot, sweet mustard sauce. Recipe for that on request.

How To Ruin Someone's Day

Gage and the iron rod that was blasted
through his skull.

Yesterday my day was ruined when I didn't get my senior discount at a grocery store that shall remain nameless so I don't get any more tweets from the Employee Retribution Department - and it "ruined my day." That's what I told my husband, anyway, and proceeded to do some serious moping because what is the point of getting old if you don't reap some minor benefit of sixty cents off or something.

Anyway.

My husband said, "Don't let this ruin your day." I pouted more. "Well, only let it ruin your day for a little bit," he amended. "Like an hour or two?" I bargained. And really, if I hadn't embarked an hour later on nattering about my reading of an article about Phineas Gage, my ruined day would have continued with sullen silences and meaningful sighs, even in the face of BBC Radio Comedy and All the Jigsaws In the World.

So, if I don't want the careless clerk tracked down and lectured/humiliated/docked/fired, then how do I intend to remedy this situation? Well, by golly, next time I will repeat my demand for the senior discount right there at the till even if there is a line behind me. If I want that discount so badly, I will just have to keep insisting on it, despite the embarrassment entailed and the annoyance of people behind me. If the company does anything, it should be to tell everyone how this seemingly minuscule slight causes pain and suffering all out of logical proportion. I mean, look at Phineas Gage! His iron rod was blasted through his skull one day and did he whine about it? Did it ruin his day? Well, it may have ruined that day. And maybe a few after that ...

Most of my job is customer service (that which isn't playing with puppets, singing songs, and making simple crafts with children), and I have to rain on someone's parade every day. I get no pleasure out of telling people they can't have a laptop because they don't have a child with them. It would make my work life easier and more pleasant if I could just hand out the laptops willy-nilly without having to check to see they 1) have a child with them, 2) have a clean library account, and 3) don't run off with it. But it does give me pleasure to find a book for someone and put it right in their hands in a timely manner. I don't give up after looking for one minute or pausing to answer someone's question. I will stick with it until I have either found something or determined that what the patron was looking for just plain isn't there. I would be mortified to discover I had done less.

So, unnamed clerk, you are forgiven. I'm sort of over it. Some day when you look in the mirror and see your parent's face looking back at you and you reel in horror, that free coffee (ew!) for being over 55 or sales tax forgiveness of 1% for being over 85 may be all there is to make you feel better and you'll understand.

By the way, Sam Kean's book, The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons sounds delightful!

Torn

I consider awarding myself a new badge.
Which one is for Existential Dread?

A mom with two toddlers in tow (riiiight, like they aren't bouncing off the walls) brings a woman to the library to help her with a résumé. 

My mind starts running like this:
Gosh, those kids are bouncing off the walls. Is the Children's Room the right place for this? This is a loud adult conversation - will this intimidate the children whose space this is? They're doing this right at the coloring table. Oh, never mind. That other little girl is going to color there anyway.

Then it moves on:
You know, we all sit around wishing we could help someone and thinking we have no time for it, but this mother, who has her hands full of toddlers, is making the time and is actually doing something. I should be doing something. She is actively helping someone get a job. I should be teaching someone English in my free time.

And then I get all angry:
Why? Why does this mother have to do this? She's making a  résumé for this woman and doing a practice job interview (that the woman is floundering around in). Surely some of my taxes are going to pay some people to do this. In fact, the Jobs place is barely two blocks away from here. I've been there myself when I was looking for work. 

I have actually asked my co-workers about this. Why do the people come here instead of going to the Job Connection? Someone there sat down with me and went over my résumé and gave me advice and showed me how to look for jobs on what passed for a search computer in 1990. A co-worker's response was: We're nicer. 

Really? We are?! OMG, how horribly must those people be treating the job searchers over there?! I know we get really cross with patrons gaming the system and we are not supposed to help them too much (we can get them started, but we cannot sit with them and walk them through using computers and getting an email address - we have classes for that), but despite all our sighing and frowning and glowering and such, we're nicer than the people at the Jobs place?!

I don't believe this.

In the end, the mom watched her kids' puppet show and made them pick up the amazing messes they made before they left. But I am still "so utterly fussed and rattled and torn." I don't want to deny the nice mom her good feelings of helping someone - a specific someone - in distress (no job, nowhere to live). I like being helpful, too. It feels nice. It feels much better than glowering at someone for perceived transgressions. And most of that comes from dealing with the public day in and day out. 

So, perhaps this is what has happened over at the Jobs place. Day after day they deal with people who have no computer skills (and most jobs have to be applied for online these days) and less and less desire to actually get work. 

I remember how frustrating it was for me. You just want to give up. I was out of work for four years. Eventually I took poorly paying positions, one after another, until I was able to get this library job. But being unemployed is disheartening, even when you are in a comfortable situation - I was living with my parents and had plenty of money saved. Sure, living with my parents put me back in the Child Role again, and I was pretty unhappy about that, but I had no utility bills and didn't have to wonder where my next meal was coming from. There's a big difference there, and I was still dispirited. 

In the end, the experience of both the unemployed and the people tasked (and paid) to help them wears them down and breeds a dull hostility. At least I get to help a little kid find a book and I get to watch the excitement when it's something he really, really wants. The Jobs people don't get that. I guess. So it's up to us at the library to take up the slack. 

But should it be?

I don't know.

What Does This Say About Us?

This ad was removed. It was for disposable cat litter sheets.

Our house has litter all over it. The area around the litter box is loaded with those little clay gravel things, but I blame most of that on the wonderful man who cleans it out every night for me so I don't have to do it. Let's face it, litter sticks to cats and not all parts of the cat with litter on them will touch this "nano-cling" sheet. Worse: it's something else for the landfill and to be replaced continually. I'm too cheap thrifty for this.

I dunno, disposable cat dishes?

Is this not the worst idea ever? How much trouble is it to wash food and water bowls? Don't you have to wash your own dishes? Again, it's something for the landfill.

Description below. Sorry the image is gone.

Okay, this doesn't seem too bad but, boy, are we lazy! However, just look at the picture. Does this cat look happy? It looks like it was caught on film just before the ears went back. Cat runs up to the new hiding place only to discover it's an over-engineered litter tray. A better photo would have a cat leaving it - but then the text would have to be somewhere other than dead center.

Here's my two cents: make a catnip toy for your cat. They like those.

Pride Goeth

There are many things that pop up in my memory to make me cringe. Long ago I decided that when this happened, I should say, "Hahaha!" to defuse it, but that hasn't worked too well. However, there are moments of great pride I can turn to in these moments and I will share them with you.

My inclusion in the acknowledgements of North and South by John Jakes, a similar inclusion in the biography of Jackson Pollack that won a Pulitzer, the day a co-worker called me an a##hole (which doesn't happen to women often, so I felt I'd finally crossed a divide), an appearance as Miss Palmetto Prunes on the tv show "Real People," and my crabrarian persona in the Unshelved comic strip.

I would recommend finagling your way into a favorite comic strip. It's worth the $$. Here's your chance: Unshelved Goes Digital Kickstarter.

Otitis Nostalgia

I've been reading Mary Poppins to cheer myself up. It has been so long that it seems almost new to me. Jane's earache reminds me of all the earaches I had as a child. I never get them anymore, and I wonder why. Well, I can get an earache from the cold, but it will go away after the ear warms up.

An earache takes me back to an actual doctor coming by our actual house. This was called a "house call." The only time in recent years I've seen an actual "house call" was in the case of a hospice patient confined to a bed in her home. Anyway, the doctor not only prescribed some eardrops, but had them in his black bag. No really, just like in an historical drama!

At that time we had a daybed in the family room, so it was before the room was paneled and the shelving put in. The daybed was a dark red with some sort of pattern and I was probably moping on it. I was given some tangerine segments to take the taste of the eardrops away after they had slid down the eustachian tube. What a great mini-anatomy lesson that was!

We Think They're Our Friends

Kate and Richard

Have I told this story before?
I was living in Manhattan with my hairdresser friend who worked on Broadway (on "Cats" - you know, really tiny perm rods) and we were at the Grand Union on East 86th Street picking up some staples when we glanced, as one does, at the tabloids blaring their blather at us in fully saturated color.
Richard Burton had recently passed away and tabloid headlines were all about his messy personal life, made messier by tabloids, no doubt. The latest headline had been about Liz Taylor planning to "crash" the funeral.
Something clicked in my pointy little head. "Fred," I said, "they're talking about Kate's dad."
It was a sort of epiphany.
Fred had worked on a couple of Broadway shows that Kate Burton had been in and if she wasn't personally known by me, he certainly knew her well and talked about working with her. It occurred to me for the first time that these people we see in movies and on stage are real folk. Sure, I knew that, but this time it really sank in. They enter our lives on screen and then even our homes by way of television. We think we know them. We greedily read stories about them. We are their public and we think we own them.
I would give my neighbor some privacy over the death of her father. I'd express my sympathy. Maybe I'd take a casserole. But I'd be irate if the local paper published trashy stories about the family.
Media stars and politicians are usually fair game ...
Until you are touched by them personally. Suddenly they're off limits.

The death of Robin Williams has apparently touched a major nerve, superseding other major news events. The death of Lauren Bacall barely got any attention by comparison. But we think we know these people, that they are our friends in a way that the other tragic figures are not. The pointless violent deaths of everyone else happening at this time sicken me, but I cannot relate to them the way I can relate to someone I saw on television every week who brought me joy. My sarcastic laugh is still "Arr-arr" à la Mork.
The Kate Burton Lesson has taught me, though, that this is someone's husband, someone's dad. My casserole does not fill the void made by his death. His family deserves our sympathy and respect. He may not have been my friend, but I still feel that the tabloids and pundits who receive money for belaboring his life and death are parasites - and the ghoulish people who read or listen to them are just as bad.
Pah, what can I say? We're only human.

Subtle Differences

Typical Southern Belle

I was born in the northeast and have lived all up and down the eastern seaboard of the US. There are subtle differences between how strangers interact from both areas. A fellow who just moved to SC from NJ and I were sharing examples of the differences. His dealt mainly with work regulations - his background and expertise in OSHA and building codes, etc. versus down here being paid $10 an hour to frame a house. "All my experience is worth squat," he said. Or, at least that was the gist of what he said.

I was leaving work the other day and passed by a volunteer who was signing in and checking in with the Volunteer Coordinator. She smiled at me broadly and asked how I was. I responded with a "Fine! Fine! How are you?" I have no idea who she was. This is typical. Typical of my time in New York City would be ... no one looking you in the eye and utterly ignoring you except for the one guy who sees you're carrying heavy suitcases and offers to help and when you say, "No, thank you! I'm fine!" responds with "Oh, sure, fine! Don't f******g trust anybody! What a f******g city! I f******g give up!" etc.

I'm not sure what it says about me that both strike me as normal.

A happy, contented New Yorker

How to Stifle Creativity

Many decades ago, when there was nothing more exciting for a kid to play with than a streamer tied to the end of a plastic golf club, I was sent to kindergarten. I'm not sure what the point of kindergarten was, except to get kids used to the idea of riding a bus and being bossed around for half a day by some adult. My kindergarten teacher, whom I shall call Mrs. Smith (because that was probably her name - it was so long ago that the only last names available at the time were Smith, Jones, Johnson, and Lipschitz), was an elderly lady. At age 60, I look back and picture her in my mind to check on the validity of that assessment. Yup, she was elderly. She had grey hair with white in it and wore those old lady black lace-up shoes, a tweed skirt that enveloped her lower portions like a sausage casing, and a shirtwaist blouse with long sleeves and ruffles down the front topped off with a brooch. She was so old that she had been the kindergarten teacher of my sister nine years earlier, and was old then.

There was no getting rid of Mrs. Smith, a crabby sort of woman who had once fallen on school property and been seriously hurt - which made them afraid to ask her to retire. (That was my mother's story - it was before my time.) I envied the kids in the one other kindergarten class downstairs in the basement. They had mats to roll out and nap on. They had a  young teacher full of enthusiasm and sympathy. Okay, maybe I made that part up, but they did nap on mats on the floor. My first grade boyfriend, Marty, told me about it. Upstairs in Mrs. Smith's classroom we had to put our heads down on our desk, resting on our crossed arms. Any deviation from this during our "nap" time resulted in a resounding "U" for Unsatisfactory on a report card. I have one "U" for this infraction. Granted, I lifted my head and switched arm positions in a mocking, defiant way, but it was enough punishment to have the Wrath of Smith come down on me and shake me by the shoulders without also ruining a perfect "S" record.

Mrs. Smith expected trouble from me because my sister had been nothing but trouble. She was trouble in class, trouble at home. If you looked in any dictionary in the mid-twentieth century under "trouble," you'd see her picture ... along with several things she was pressing and had forgotten about. Mrs. Smith not only expected me to behave like my sister, she called me by her name the whole year. For an entire kindergarten year, I was Anne. This only slightly bothered me because I was called that at home as well. My mother would go through the names of her friends, the dog, and my sister before remembering mine. At least she never called me "Shoppie" or "Bill," two names for my father. However, the dog's name was "Tommy." That stung.

Back in the old days, school supplies were limited. In kindergarten we didn't need to supply our own, they were kept in the Supply Cupboard. In this magic cupboard were hideously blunted scissors, a white substance called "paste" (I didn't use mucilage until I was fully 22), that thick paper with lines for practicing writing, construction paper, and clay. Before I get to the clay, I want to go over crafts in general in kindergarten. If we were going to make anything, we all had to make the same thing. That's okay. I understand that. I do crafts with kids myself. Too many choices can paralyze a child. Mrs. Smith made sure we had everything ready: all pieces cut out and ready to paste. When we were ready to paste, we had to stand in line and go up to her to show her the layer of paste before we were allowed to stick anything together. No one ever got this right. The paste always needed smoothing out with her finger and often a complaint of "You've got it all bumpy with little pickles!" Yes, it was bumpy, but those "little pickles" were actually bits of paste that had dried while waiting in line to be inspected. I still have a card I made for my mom from this experience. My mother saved it, and I hold onto it as a reminder of What Not To Do when sharing artsandcrafts with kids.

Now, let me get to the clay story. I don't remember the exact day of the week, but one day was designated "Clay Day." On that day, let's say Tuesday, we would line up outside the Supply Cupboard and Mrs. Smith would hand out a ball of clay, all of them equal in size, to each child. This clay was made from many colors of clay that had all mixed together over the years but bits of yellow, blue, and red seeped out here and there in that brown. We would all return to our desks and Mrs. Smith would tell us what we were now allowed to make. The (alleged) Tuesday in question, the goal was a cat.

First, you had to work the clay to get it soft again. You had to squash it down onto the desk with your tiny five year old hand, turn it, and squash it again. Once it was warmed up and malleable, you could start modeling with it. I had a book at home that showed the various implements used in modeling clay that poked or shaved. We had to use our little fingers to improve our fine motor skills - and, besides, anything pointy in a child's hand is just an accident waiting to happen. I worked hard on my cat. I strangled the clay to create a neck and head. I pinched ears onto it. I pinched and pinched and formed a tail. I was about done with pinching some front paws onto it when I happened to look up at one of my classmates at a desk one ahead of me and to my left. She had taken an entirely different approach! After softening the clay, she had torn off pieces of it and rolled them into balls or snakes of different sizes and was now building a clay version of a snowcat! Brilliant! Little triangular ears were being put on as a finishing touch when a huge vision of tweed obscured my view.

"That's not how you do it! You're supposed to make it out of one piece!" There was a slamming noise as Mrs. Smith's palm squashed the little girl's efforts. "Start over!" was the command, and Mrs. Smith lumbered onward. I couldn't see her face, but the little girl's rigid posture told all. She started over eventually. Her hands may have trembled or maybe I'm making that up. I looked at my own wonky clay cat and decided that I was glad I had done it the "right way." But that other way looked easier and more fun.

Moral: Please don't do this to kids.

The end.

My Calling

I have always wanted to be a Great Actor - but I'm not keen on being famous, having my every nervous breakdown chronicled in the tabloid press, signing autographs (I'm embarrassed about my handwriting), being accosted on the street by fawning admirers (I even hate it when salesmen use my first name over and over and over again - who teaches them to do that?  It's like being slapped in the face continually).  I had seen Carol Burnett doing "Once Upon a Mattress" on tv and thought, I want to do that.  One of my friends in college was in that show and I burned with envy.  Eventually I "did" that show myself, playing Winifred to Garry Moore's King.  Other than that, it was a ghastly experience.  Not as bad as "Kiss Me, Kate" where the director tried to kill the leading man with a wrecking bar and I burst into tears because he missed.   Or "Big River" where the rehearsals were so badly organized that I showed up at 8pm and waited four hours for my scene only to have the director break for "dinner."  I laid down on the stage and tried to make myself One With the Universe.

I would also like to be a Great Director ... having only directed once, and that was a show I hated to begin with and now cringe when anyone mentions it.  I liked what we did with it, trying to inject meaning into it, updating it (but only a few decades, not like Peter Sellars, the director).  But doing that only made me want to do everything: sets, costumes, acting, directing ... and that's what I do now.

I have the Best Job in the World. I am a Children's Librarian.

I can do all of that. I take stories from books and convert them to dramatic form. I choose the characters/puppets, make any costumes necessary, arrange for all the props, record all the voices and sound effects (although my husband does the mixing and burning to cd), and perform. I do storytimes, using all the skills I have acquired in theatre as well as my craft hobbies. I find crafts to do with the children. On top of all that, I have a German background and I just love organization. Oh, and reading.

It took about 20 years, but I finally found a career that uses my talents to the fullest. Not everyone is so lucky. And not everyone can afford to do everything they love best at this salary.

Into the Century of the Fruit Bat

Recently, my husband and I got new cell phones. We had old, old flip phones that barely held a charge for more than a couple of textings. Forget phone calls! While Bob used his more frequently, I only turned mine on when I thought I'd be using it:

• Expecting a call from Bob
• Arranging to meet someone for lunch
• Emergencies.

The phone did nothing but send and receive calls and text messages. It made me feel more secure when I was out on the road. It was an umbilical link to Bob.

We are now in utter future shock. Bob picked out the iPhone5 and we now have everything at our fingertips. We spent two days just playing with the phones trying to get things set up and explore. But it doesn't turn off. It only goes to sleep. It wakes up if someone calls and if I want to stop that, I have to put it on Do Not Disturb or something. [Had to have a 10 year old explain things to me.] Then there's Facetime. Bob and I can look at each other when we chat. Oh nooo! How can I play spider solitaire while we talk if he can see me? But then again, I can show him the kitties loving me up in his place.

Siri is my new best friend. "Call my husband!" "What time is it in Hong Kong?" "I'm home now." "I'm at work." I may adopt her. Mo makes fun of me; she's had an iPhone for a few months longer. She had been sending me little (very little - postage stamp size) photos to my flip phone. Show off! I tried taking photos of my cats and accidentally video'd one of them. Probably the most boring cat video ever: Cat looking at floor ... looks up ... looks back down at floor. Why do camera photos look better than photos I take with my actual camera? It's just not fair.

Last night as we waited for a table at our favorite Thai Fusion restaurant, I managed to relay information to Bob about texting that he didn't know. That's because I went to the website and read up on some tips. I was complaining about the stock market app only being set companies (Google, Yahoo, duhhh) while I would want to see just my own holdings when I accidentally called mine up through the internet. Oh, yeah - just what I need: the ability to obsess over my stocks at any time.

We've barely had time to get used to the phones when we received a message from our provider, which has been bought out by another one. We will have to pick out new phones - equal or better.

I'm too old for this.

Don't Ever Call Me Stupid

Otto is not, I repeat, not stupid.

Thanks to Stephen Fry on Twitter, I read Alec Baldwin's Final Word on being a homophobe. This is based, apparently, on what he shouted at people who annoyed him. He relates, convincingly, how much harder it is to be a celebrity in the age of technology. Anyone can take a photo and paste it up on the internet for everyone to see. Even New York City has changed. Celebrities could walk down the street, eat at restaurants, go about their daily routines without being bothered, or bothered much. I saw this myself as a newcomer when the entire cosmetic section of Bloomingdale's emptied out so that Yoko Ono (and her enormous bodyguard) could walk through in peace.

And, let's face it, when has Alec Baldwin ever given the impression that he was a pussycat?

Then I started thinking about what we call people when we are angry with them. I'm not the sort that resorts to namecalling when angry, but I'm sure I think bad thoughts about someone. All that does is keep them from hearing the name, if I have one for them. More than likely, what has annoyed me is someone being stupid. I know only too well that this is my own greatest fear: being stupid. So, "stupid" is the worst generic thing I could come up with.

I get the impression that when we call people names, we use whatever we fear most. I have a framed print-out over my desk of Protagoras and Yehudi Menuhin on this subject. "One of the principles I have learned in life is that when people speak of others, 99 times out of 100 they are describing themselves ... I have found so often that people that people describe others as they would have to describe themselves if they were really honest and self-aware, that I have almost accepted it as axiomatic." So they also project themselves onto others.

Also other young people trying to be more "adult" have tried lashing out with new vocabulary. There's probably a learned habit where you use language that your peers bandy about. When I was in college, "slut" and "bitch" were names we used on each other playfully and only on people we knew and liked really well - both male and female. It was part of that showing independence and peri-adulthood bravado. Being well brought up, I had to practice saying "shit" quietly while walking in order to be able to wield it proficiently in context. If only I'd worked as hard for class ... But I can see where the vocabulary specific to a social group becomes ingrained. It's difficult, in fact, for those within a group to not fall into that group specific vocabulary. I was involved with a community theatre that latched onto an example of idiolect by one member and repeated it endlessly. Because this was a conspiracy to mock that member, I tried to refrain from using it, which took considerable effort.

I have been called names, mostly by my sister, which I've tried not to analyze. "Squirt" was one, varied by creative adjectives and adverbs. And there were many alliterative variations on "The Modest Maiden" because I wanted to pee without someone bursting into the bathroom to comb her hair or would rather not hear about sexual escapades I was too young for. Why I should be harassed for perpetual virginity in my teens is something I will never understand and it totally put me off any experimentation.

As an adult, I was called "The Yankee"* one too many times by another teacher at an in-service day and I was at a total loss of what to call him back. I gave it some long, hard thought until I remembered a particularly local epithet related to the ubiquitous textile industry. "They used to call us 'lint-heads,'" someone told me - with a certain amount of surprising pride. So I rolled it out the next time my colleague suggested that "The Yankee" do something. I felt really awkward about it, but it actually worked. He stopped calling me "The Yankee."

So we  have three possibilities of why a person uses a particular name to express their anger: fear, projection, and peer pressure. Are there more? This isn't excusing anything or offering extenuating circumstances, but if Alec Baldwin really wants to get past this, maybe he needs to ask himself where he first heard the words he uses.

Oh, and I just remembered that a friend's brother called me a "faggot" for reasons neither I nor his sister could figure out. Now, however, I have some possible leads.

"I offer a complete and utter retraction ..."

*I suppose down here in the south, "Yankee" is a bad word. I would think "carpetbagger" would be worse, but there you are. It grated on me because I am from a mid-Atlantic state, not New England. What's more, I've lived in the south more than half my life. When I head back north, they think I sound southern: "Marf must be talking to her parents; she's got her southern accent on!" I also find this annoying. My mother would have been horrified if she heard me commit some southernism ... other than calling all women "Ma'am."** She threatened to send me back to New York just for saying it was "a quarter till" instead of "a quarter of."


**A tour guide told us about how she preferred being in France, where everyone called her madame, to her home in Switzerland, where she was called mademoiselle. I immediately understood the notion of demotion in the difference. Vive la différence?

Cutting Them Some Slack

When new ... Actually, doesn't look much different now!

I am 8 years into my second Toyota Corolla. The first one lasted about 17 years. Without tempting the gods or Fate, these have been the easiest 8 years of driving I've ever had. The only things I have had done to this car are: oil changes, tire rotations, new tires, a few recalls that were free, and, for some reason, replacement of the cabin air filter.

This cabin air filter thing annoys me. My husband has a brand new Corolla and I took it in for an oil change and they said the cabin air filter was dirty. Well, so what? Then I got all annoyed as the guy stood there with a slightly dirty square filter and finally I said to go ahead and change it. Mine, at least, had a mouse nest in it, probably from the two weeks we were away out west traveling in my husband's car and mine was left in the mouse-riddled garage. That made sense. A little dirt on the cabin air filter didn't seem to warrant a change. The next time I took his car in, I told them I didn't want to hear about the cabin air filter. After all, it's the cabin air filter. How is it going to affect the running of the car? With a little dirt on it?

The last time I took my car in, they didn't mention the cabin air filter (I think they have my number now), but they were trying that on some other lady who got annoyed and finally caved because it was only $30-ish dollars to replace it. It just screamed scam to me. But on the way home I thought about it. Re-read the first paragraph. Eight years. Absolutely no major problems. Minimal cost.

I've decided that those poor folks at the Toyota Service place are desperate for anything that will bring in some cash because the darn cars run too well. I had one 1969 Ford that was eating alternators after 4 years and a Ford Pinto that had the worst battery karma imaginable (including theft of the battery).

So, the next time they try to pull this cabin air filter thing on me, for either my or my husband's car, I'm going to say, "Sure, go ahead, knock yourself out. Because I feel sorry for you guys, desperately trying to find something you can charge for on cars that Just Don't Ever Have Enough Wrong with them. And I feel I owe something to Toyota for eight years of absolutely no trouble at all."

The Good Death

Still 20 years to go.

Death is in the air. My co-worker's mom died at age 90 after a brief illness. Scott Adams's father died shortly after he ranted in this blogpost. His father's illness was not so brief.
I watched my mother spiral out of control in a year before her death. Fortunately, I did not take the doctor's advice and have a pacemaker put in her. My mother no longer knew who the people were around her, she did not recognize her home, she wanted to go back to her daddy, and thought her husband of 60 years was her kidnapper. She lived in perpetual sadness with occasional flares of terror.
I was lucky that her extreme dementia only lasted a year, but even that short a time took a heavy toll on me. I am certain that it brought on my first grey hair at least.
As for my dad, his downward spiral was much slower and longer. He lived to be 101, and each year he said it was "old enough." He missed his wife, he'd outlived all his golf partners (although they had all been younger), and occasionally he would forget who I was. I was lucky again in that 99.6% of the time he was a sweet, tractable man.  But perhaps our (because I could not have handled this without the support of my husband who did so much) constant attention forced my dad to hang on too long. In the end, we had to be out of the country for him to die. I really think his mind and body decided that would be the safest time to give in because we wouldn't be there to call him back or insist that the doctors keep him going.
I believe in death with dignity. I do not want to linger, sad and afraid. I don't want to be a prisoner in my own mind. I don't want to be a drain on the system or my family (all of them distant).

Some Thoughts on Mawwadge

Great Granddad and Wife Number Three

How do you know when you're well and truly married? Marriage isn't a rite of passage you go through one day and Presto! you're Married. It isn't magic. It isn't a weekend hobby. Marriage is a process that requires daily work. Unlike a painting or a sculpture, it's never really finished. But like art, there's the rough draft stage, the filling in, and the polishing. If you aren't willing to put in the work, don't mess up someone else's life by marrying them.

I suppose I was lucky to marry late, after watching everyone else's mistakes. Here are a few of the things I have learned about this partnership business, that smoothed my way for me.

1. Meet the family. Watch your potential partner's behavior in the bosom thereof. If they seem different (and it might take a few visits) in that environment, expect that the in-family behavior is a norm for them. If the workings of their family seems utterly bizarre compared with yours (the family runs spookily smoothly or they are constantly sniping) - this could mean trouble down the line. It could be, though, that your own family snipes constantly and that's a norm for you, right? But if it isn't - and you don't like it - you might want to find a different partner. Or maybe your family is the Blands and there's never any conflict. Would you be comfortable with a partner whose communication is chiefly through conflict? What if they are the Blands? Do you want to spend your married life trying to get a rise out of someone who's too laid back to mix it up with you?
2. See how your partner lives. We've all seen "The Odd Couple" and know what happens when a slob and a neat freak live together. It very nearly results in murder. The only reason that "The Odd Couple" doesn't end in actual murder is that it was intended to be a comedy. [I think Neil Simon pulled some punches there. That story has tragedy written large on it and the ending seems tacked on.] Are you more casual about housework? Does your potential partner seem obsessed by it? Compare definitions of what is "clean." For some, it means things are picked up. For others it means the surfaces are clean. You would think that if this describes the differences between two people living together, that it wouldn't be a problem. The one who liked it tidy would tidy and the one who liked it polished would polish - but that's not what I've seen happen. I've seen two people just argue about how the other person was doing it wrong. 
3. Do you and your partner communicate well about money? Please, for the sake of all the pixies in Pixieland, hash that out before you tie any knots. Money is one of the biggest bones of contention in a marriage. If you like to live on the edge of bankruptcy, don't just assume your partner is going to foot the bill for it. Find someone else who likes to live dangerously. If you are scrupulous about paying your bills, don't hook up with someone who thinks it's "optional."
4. Learn to forgive. My mom tried to teach me that. "Forgive and forget," she would chant - which was hard to do when my sister was always pulling the same guff on me, making my young life a living heck. Mom would also say that there didn't seem to be enough "Kiss and make up" in marriage today. She always made it sound so easy - but forgiving isn't, just by definition. You need to suck up that pride and make the first move. That doesn't mean everything is forgivable.
5. Learn to compromise. No matter how in tune you might be, how well you match, people can change, or situations change, and you have to be flexible. Make sure your potential partner can do this as well. I definitely did not marry the date who insisted I decide on where to go for dinner and continued to drive around until I told him where to go. Then he got mad because he had to keep driving. I wasn't being stubborn - I really have trouble making decisions on where to eat and if I'm hungry, it actually gets worse. I wandered around Midtown Manhattan for a couple of hours unable to decide where to eat. I had to resort to (freshly ground) peanut butter and (my favorite stoned wheat thin) crackers.

Once I knew a man who had been married four times. I asked him - "Why?" After a while you'd think he'd have learned something. He told me that sometimes he thought he could make someone happy and sometimes he thought the other person would make him happy. "Didn't your momma teach you that you are responsible for your own happiness?" I asked. I mentioned this later to one of his ex-wives who said that, no, his momma taught him that he was responsible for her happiness. He went on, by the way, to marry a fifth time.

This is my last point. If you are unhappy, you can't expect someone else to do something about it. You have to decide to be happy. If that doesn't work, you take yourself to someone who can show you how to make yourself happy, even if it means medication. I have heard people say that they aren't changing to make things easier on other people - other people should rearrange their expectations. Well, good luck with that, hon. I applaud your strength of character. As long as you don't make other people suffer, you can go right on being a pain in the arse. Just make sure that you are as forgiving of others as you expect them to be of you.