Now is the Winter of our Discontent

If I recall correctly it is King Richard III who begins the play by the same name with the famous “Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by the sons of  York.” It is a captivating speech — the audience, sitting in the darkened auditorium, is introduced to the angry, tortured king and barely breathes so not to miss a word of the drama. The soliloqy ends and there is hush, silence, enchantment, and then the sound of a toilet flushing and old pipes creaking under the force of water pressure. Nice.

Such are the conditions under which summer stock thesbians must practice their craft. A spell so beautifully cast is broken by the ill-timed biobreak, a romantic scene is laid waste when the heroine barfs up her chicken dinner, the smartly timed grand entrance of the leading lady is thwarted when the set door gets stuck. Time for the old ab-lib. “Yoo Whoo, Sweetie. I am going around to the side entrance because I want to see how your tomato plants are doing before I join you for our long-awaited reunion.” Every one of these disasters befell my troupe as we valiently put on plays during the summer tourist season in Vermont.

Actors are trained professionals — we know how to handle a stage crisis. “The show must go on!” However, it is exceedingly difficult to “go on”, to convince the audience that they have been transported to a Depression-era farm house where the whacky family is gathered at dinner when there is a bat in the theatre doing dive bombing raids of the actors’ heads.  We sit around the table bobbing in turn like carousel horses, first mother then father, then sister Mary as the bat swoops and dives. The audience, long since lost to the willing suspension of disbelief, cheers. Finally the curtain is drawn and a little intermission is announced. While the audience has a glass of wine a single shot rings out followed by a barely audible thump.

Perhaps losing a skirt on stage is not too bad. Anyone’s clothes can get caught on a nail (shoddy workmanship set crew!). It is just too bad it happened to a nun as she entered the confessional. And what jokester put real scotch in the decanteur and not tea? (A little too literal prop apprentice?) And what performance of the Scarlet Letter would not be enhanced by the Reverend wearing Nikes?

What does a good theatrical troupe do when their leading man breaks his elbow and requires a shoulder harness to hold up his cast? Why they design a cape of course. So, for the run of the show our hero looked like Lord Nelson ready to address the fleet before the battle of Trafalgar. Too bad we were peforming Equis. For West Side Story, the entire Jets gang had to wear capes. The local newspaper’s review mentioned the “breakthrough in costume design — a refreshing change from the usual interpretation.”

If you or your sons or daughters aspire to a theatrical career please be warned. There are times when we must depart from the script and are left on our own to “act” our way through adversity. You may be doing a love scene during which your lover begins to choke and the Heimlich maneuver is necessary. Practice weaving that in to different scenearios before you give up your day job.

Nero Wolfe (Kitty)

Nero Wolfe Kitty was neutered last week and just in time. A strapping lad weighing in at 8 lbs 14 oz at seven months old, he had hit puberty and had raised our home terror alert system to Orange. His favorite activity being racing up the stairs, doing a reverse pike/tuck combo ending up on the balance beam (bannister) at full run. This is followed by the stealth attack to my leg and a series of body blows aimed at rendering me unconscious on the floor. If I remain motionless, Nero Wolfe Kitty declares victory by a visit to the litter box for a particularly noxious deposit. If I move, I am rewarded with a head-butt followed by a ricochet off the walls and downstairs to use the litter box on the porch.

His defenistration procedure was on a Friday. I deposited him at the animal hospital at 7 A.M. in the care of Admitting Nurse Jenna and spent the day hovering over the phone waiting for the nurse to call. “Hello, Linshaolin? This is the Recovery Room Nurse Jenna, Nero is in Recovery and  is resting nicely. His discharge time is 5:20.”  I was there to pick him up at 5:19, paid the bill and sat in the pick-up lounge to be called. Discharge Nurse Jenna went over his at home care and turned the poor boy over to me.

Nero was wearing one of those plastic Elizabethan cone collars so that he would not worry his stitches. He looked miserable and managed to remove it inside his crate on the way home.  I put it back on him — I had been told how important it was to a) keep him quiet for five days and b) keep his collar on for seven days. Still groggy from anesthesia, Nero staggered around bumping into things because he did not account for the dimensions of the collar. At one point he leaped up the wall to catch a spider but rebounded off when his collar hit first. To his satisfaction, a smashed spider adhered to his transparent plastic collar. To his confusion and frustration it was adhering to the outside — but to the patient it looked like it was right there where he could lick it!

Nero’s nightly routine is to bee-line to my neck the second I put my head on the pillow. He burrows his head into the space between my neck and shoulder and falls asleep. Once again the cone thwarted his intentions. Best we could arrange was an awkward stretching  out over my torso with his head hanging off the bed. He was grouchy and miserable.

On day three I awoke to find him collarless again and happy. I had been checking his “package” three times a day as instructed and everything looked fine. So I was a bad Mom and allowed him to go free (but kept a close watch). Today is day six and Nero is back to normal. I had been hoping for a small calming effect but I don’t notice one yet. In fact he seems to be celebrating his recovery with an Olympics of bug catching, toy mouse hunting, and un-pending of trash cans (our much loved Muffin enjoyed that too).  We are both happy that he has resumed the nightly snuggle. I feel bad that there will be no little Nero Wolfe kitties, but the new status will be better  for him (the vet assured me) and eventually we might reduce the alert to yellow.

Lessons Learned from Mama

Mothers carry a great burden of responsibility for teaching their children everything from basic science to “telling right from wrong.” My mother was particularly skilled as a teacher having had to bring up her younger brothers (by fifteen or so years) when my grandmother died at 56. Mom was only seventeen and suddenly had two “children” and a grieving father to take care of. At nineteen she spent a year teaching in a one room schoolhouse in rural Kansas, teaching an age range from six to sixteen. When her father remarried (some say at the end of a shotgun) and a new female was installed she was free to make her escape to the much-dreamed-of East Coast.

Having found a cache of twenty seven issues of The New Yorker magazine when she was a teenager and having read them until they disintegrated, Mom knew her destiny was to get as far away from any part of the country whose towns were named after forts. Ironically she ended up in Ft. Lauderdale getting a divorce from her first husband and fellow escapee. All this life experience added up to some pretty interesting perspective.

The first few examples of Mom’s teachings are no doubt a hold-over from her isolation on a farm. I’ll start with basic science. “If you stare directly at the sun you will go blind.” Telling any child that if they do something that they will go blind is a guarantee that the child will immediately test the statement. I can assure those of you who are thinking of other things that if we do we will go blind — this would never have entered her mind. The closest Mom got to discussing sex was this lesson: “Why would a farmer buy a cow if he can get her milk for free?” And my favorite words of wisdom from the pre-New Yorker period were “Your own dirt is perfectly clean.” This explains why we did not own a washing machine until I was ten.

Lessons from her New Yorker inspired thinking included: “Any food is better accompanied by chutney.” And one of her weekly instructions to me as I helped her put away the groceries was “Lin, put these cigarettes at the back of the top shelf so the kids can’t see them.” Ah, Mom? I guess like a dog who has just pooped on the kitchen floor, if I go into the next room the poop will cease to exist. Don’t get me wrong, Mom did not smoke. The cigs were for company (like Elsie who would come  over to fold laundry). Mom taught me that smoking “causes your clothes to stink.” Remember, this is at a time before we knew about lung cancer.

Her lessons about boys and relationships can be summed up thusly: “Boys want one thing. Don’t give it to them until you are married.” Such pressure to marry young was pretty wearing. She did not like any of my boyfriends until I met the man who is now my husband. The fact that he was “ethnic” and had been brought  up as a Catholic were strange and thrilling factors for her — I am not sure whether they worked for or against him. In any case, even she could not resist his charm.

Mom had a drawer for gloves. Gloves were a sign that the wearer was a “lady.” I knew about ten-button gloves before I knew how to add two plus two. I knew on what occassion it was appropriate to wear short kid gloves versus short cotton gloves. I knew it was vital that gloves are accompanied by a clutch bag. I also knew that a crooked  seam in stockings was a sign of a lazy and most likely slutty woman. I was taught how to repair a hole in nylons so that it almost did not show. I had several lessons in polishing shoes and many in how to give oneself a manicure (and did you know that if you allow your cuticles to grow over the “moon” in your fingernail that you will go staight to hell?)

Mom taught me how to tackle Filenes’ Basement without getting torn apart by other shoppers (clutch something you are willing to relenquish while tucking what you really want casually under your arm) or waste valuable time waiting for a changing room (wear your ballet leotard so that you can strip and try on clothes in the aisle). She taught me how to order lunch in Jordan Marsh’s restaurant (always start with a Shirley Temple and save her the cherry on a green plastic sword and always finish with a coconut snowball ice cream).

Mom loved to read and subscribed to the New Yorker for her entire life. I would sometimes come home to find her laughing hysterically over a cartoon or in tears over a short story. She taught me to love reading, and drama, and crunchy apples, and what to expect from a man (my Dad bought her a fresh gardenia corsage every Saturday for their entire lives together).

Mom was wise beyond her upbringing or education. She taught herself how to invest money in the stock market (and did very well), how to direct plays (and won awards), how to travel with two kids all over the world so that we would never suffer the narrowness of her childhood, and she taught her children how to love and be loved and how to embrace the chances we are given.

My Car, Her Car, Our Car

I share my car with my daughter — i.e., I get to pay for it and use it when she is sleeping (as long as I have it back in the driveway fully tanked up by the time she emerges). Our approaches to car ownership are radically different and it is only because I was defeated in life some time ago and no longer put up a fight that sharing a car has managed not to cause one of  us to injure the other.

My daughter is a reasonably tall girl and she definitely has very long legs but she pulls the driver’s seat so far forward that I can not even get in the car without a struggle. I have to get in the car diagonally, plant one cheek on the seat and swing one leg inside and then release the seat to push it back as far as it will go. Only then I can get inside. I adjust the mirrors since they have all been set for ideal makeup application. I turn off the CD player which is set on stun. I look for a place to stow my handbag.

The little section between the front seats is being used for a lab experiment. A plastic glass in one of the cup holders, filled to the brim with liquid, is incubating a life form. The second cup holder holds a coffee thermos that is permanently welded in place. The coin holder has about two inches of coffee floating in it and a cigarette butt floating in the coffee. I notice that my sweater sleeve is sticking to the handbrake and when I pry it off a coating of sweater fibres is left on the brake giving it a nice cozy textured affect.

The passenger seat contains the following: forty-seven bright yellow plastic visors from the yoga center, a German text book, five losing lottery tickets, three french fries with ketchup, six used napkins from Dunkin Donuts balled up, a pen refill, three CD jewel cases, a reminder note to buy onions, a bag of onions, and the sausage from a breakfast sandwich. I whip the Fabreeze and every ready trash bag from my tote and do a sweep. Then I do some deep breathing in preparation for looking at the back seat.

The daughter has left two bath towels, a pair of black and pink sneakers, one gym sock, an essay entitled “American Psycho — the new Normal” (A-), a large turkey platter with a batch of cookie dough (i.e., raw) cookies, ants, a martial arts sword, and three parking tickets. The floor contains six glass bottles partially full of an antioxidant berry juice and a  Twizzler. A roll of towel paper has come undone creating an art installation of Bounty on the floor.

The car is two years old. It has had the driver’s side mirror replaced (twice), the front bumper, the entire passenger side up to the rear door; it has been repainted and the new paint has been scrapped off in several places.  I have been assured that my daughter’s new prescription lens will help tremendously. Now, instead of parking on the fire hydrant, she parks four feet away from the sidewalk. I am not saying that my daughter is a bad driver . . . well, actually, yes I am.

 As for myself, I limit my mess to the trunk where I have stored five ice scrapers, three empty gallon jugs of windshield wiper fluid, a bag of litter, a tennis raquet and pair of sneakers (just in case), a shopping bag with items I mean to return, a book about Wittgenstein which I grabbed by mistake thinking it was a Johanna Lindsey novel, and a sweatshirt. I also have a container full of car care supplies.

The car needs to be washed but I am afraid of the conveyor belt and my daughter thinks that the car is supposed to have a textured finish. About twice a year my husband can’t stand it any more and takes it to be cleaned. Recently I did spend a good hour cleaning the  upolstery which had started to bubble.

When my daughter  graduates I plan on giving her the car and getting myself a new one which no one can touch. It will be a girlie car in soft taupey mauve with cream interior. My CD visor will have only Debussy and Andrea Boccelli. I will have a color coordinating coffee thermos and kleenex dispenser. The passenger seat back will hold a car organizer for maps, pens, trash etc. I have already purchased tasteful decals (Rainbow, Peace symbol, I heart Family Values)  in anticipation. I will get a vanity plate (FASTLANE or maybe LNSHAOLN). Instead of protecting myself from hijacking by growing eboli in the cup holders, I will have a trusty trigger spray bottle of Fabreeze close by. If my daughter even thinks of borrowing my car she will get a shot of microbial action right in the snoot.

Oh When that Shark Bites

I’m not talking about the Brecht/Weill sort of shark, I am talking about real sharks as in Jaws. (Let’s not  haggle about whether Jaws was a real shark or not ok?) You remember that there was a brief spurt of popularity in dropping your newborn into a pool to re-create its “natural environment”? Well, we did not have a pool so the folks dropped me in the local pond. Note to parents: the womb does not contain rotting weeds or grouper. My little infant eyes opened in shock at the sudden cold, wet, slimey environment and I was face to face with a fiish twice my size with opaque eyes and a nasty grin. But that was the least of my worries since I was taking in water faster than the Titanic and was about to drown.

At the ripe old age of four my Dad decided that I should learn to swim. We were spending the summer in California where the waves are referred to as the Kamakazi Pipeline and the sand crabs eat four-year old surfers for breakfast. Daddy took me by the hand out over my head, turned to have me face the oncoming breaker and gave me my swimming instructions. “Lin, just face the beach and ride the wave. It’s fun.” Then he left. Luckily I had sunk under water before the wave hit me full on. But I was still sucked down and pushed forward so that I skidded across the ocean floor watching my bathing suit being sucked off in another direction. I was deposited on the beach naked and with a sand burn racing stripe. I was given a towel and Dad asked “Do you want to do that again?”

At seven we went to visit friends of my parents at their beach house on Long Island. My Mom and her buddy were deep in catching up so my brother and I  headed for the water with our toys. He got busy immediately filling his bucket with wet sand so he could start a construction project. I spotted some very pretty lacey things floating nearby and went to collect some. Within seconds I was lacerated over every inch of my body by Portugese Man of War jelly fish and my screams, I am told, were horrific. I spent a week in the hospital.

At ten my toe was nearly amputated when I stepped on a jagged shell while wading. I developed blood poisoning and spent another week in the hospital having the toe reattached and the sepsis leeched. At twenty I had a close encounter with a nurse shark. At thirty-eight my daughter was caught in a rip tide and had to be rescued by the life guard. I made her promise never to go in the water again. She ignored me and at twenty found herself swimming with barracuda in the British Virgin Islands. Luckily she is a strong swimmer and managed to clamber back on to the catamaran without losing a limb.

My last forway into the ocean was in Mexico where I decided to go snorkling by myself. There was a reef about one hundred yards out and I was told it was fertile snorkling ground. I swam out with the score of the movie Jaws playing in my head. It grew murkier. But I spotted some interesting looking dift wood which I proceeded to collect. I arrived at the reef just in time to see a large, dark eel jack-in-the box out of the darkness making a direct line for my face. I simultaneously screamed, went into full reverse, and wielded the drift wood, clonking the eel (I think). I was back on the beach faster than you can say “I am never going in the water again.”

On my last vacation I did go in the pool. I leaned against the pool wall at the shallow end drinking a  pina colada and chatting with the other pool ladies. I think pools are great.

Acid Reflux Mary

You remember Typhoid Mary, the poor girl in the early 1900s who was locked up practically forever because she (allegedly) unknowingly infected many people with  typhoid through her working as a cook? Well, it appears that I am an Acid Reflux Mary — it seems like everyone I get into close contact with develops chronic, massive heartburn. This could well be a coincidence, but statistically this is getting harder to accept. The mechanism for spreading acid reflux is very difficult to pin point. Each person responds to environmental stimulus differently. For example, my husband is nearing the point where he has to have his stomach stapled — the reflux appears to be in direct relation to my adding a new handbag or other kind of bag to my collection. Just the other day he wanted to get his Fall jacket out of the cedar closet. Upon opening the door he was brained by an avalanche of backpacks (only seven but one of them was being used to store my collection of fanny packs  . . . eighteen . . . and I had forgotten that I was using one fanny pack to store rolled quarters . . .). He appeared to feel justified in being cross with me. “What the heck do you need seven backpacks for?” he groused. I explained that two of them were gifts and one of them I got for only ten bucks because I had a coupon. For some reason this made him get more unhappy and he stomped out. I could hear him in the bathroom opening the Tums bottle. Later that day, when he tripped over my two gym bags that I had been meaning to put away he silently left the room and took two Prylosec. I have decided not to tell him about the new snakeskin Sharif bag I got at TJ Maxx marked down from $169 to $22.50. Where any normal person would commend me for such skillful shopping, I just know he would burp bile. I have mentioned before that I am not a great cook. But perhaps I am worse than I thought. Although I regularly invite friends over for dinner, the last couple that accepted did so in the summer of 2004 when they were having their floors sanded and varnished and had to stay out of the house. Bob was OK after taking Ipecac, but Dolores still has lingering reflux for which she requires a monthly intrevenous injection of Zantax. They did not actually accuse me of giving them food poisoning. I told my husband I was probably being paranoid and reading things into their behavior. But he said “no.” When I took them homemade cookies after they were released from the hospital they very pleasantly offered me some and were extremely polite watching me eat. I am not sure whether their subsequent looks of sadness or disappointment were as a result of lingering aftereffects of their recent medical crisis.My new boss’s acid reflux could not have corresponded with his transfer to manage our group. That would be too much of a coincidence since he was replacing our old boss who had to go out on long-term disability because of a persistent stomach ulcer. But at a recent staff meeting he had a horrible attack and we all thought he was going to gack himself to death. He had been telling us that the recent marketing promotion to download our software for free had been a huge success and over fifty-eight thousand copies had been downloaded thus upping our market share terrifically. I interjected, “Ah, Doug, actually I think we have really had only two thousand customer downloads.” Doug has an unusually high-pitched voice. “What do you mean, Linshaolin?” he squeeked. “Ah, well I was trying to see if I could use my old laptop as a server for games so I did not tie up RAM on my new one and I made a local area network of all the workstations in the Tampa office to test it and I guess I forgot to uncouple the network when I downloaded the software from the promotion site and then I left for lunch and met Ned from the Dublin office and we got talking. . .and  when I got back my cat was sitting on the keyboard . . .”

Sometimes people are just not grateful when they should be. But I am a sensitive sort of person and realize that having wicked heartburn can make anyone cranky. I am keeping my eye out for more cases of acid reflux and if I become convinced that I am a carrier then I guess I will lock myself away.

My Boss Has Never Seen Me . . . Again

I get a new boss about every two years.  It seems like supervising me is a step in the career ladder at Big Corporation. This puts quite a weight of responsibility on my shoulders and I try to make the step as challenging as possible for the current manager. This is made easier by the fact that I work at home in an office three thousand miles away from the hub. Unless I make the trek to Boulder, these guys don’t ever see me. When I do go to Boulder I can roam the halls for days, passing my boss time and again, without so much as a glance. I can attend meetings anonymously, lurking at the back asking annoying questions. If someone asks  “who are you” I can say that I am an auditor from headquarters. That clears a room fast.

It was particularly rewarding to mess with one boss’s brain. He was trying to establish himself as a to-be-taken seriously manager. I showed up for our first meeting together with my Asian colleague  (who also reported to him remotely) and introduced myself to him as Ms Chan (my colleague’s name). And I introduced her as Ms. O’Kearn. Not a blink.  We allowed him to carry on under this false impression for about fifteen minutes before I buckled and confessed.

This same boss later got the delux treatment when a bunch of us were on a business trip together and we had to have a group meeting in his hotel room. My colleageue and I were the first to arrive and I put down my laptop and purse and threw myself on to his bed declaring “I am so tired  I could fall asleep right here. Let me nap until the others arrive.” The look of horror was priceless.

My favorite prank of all time however was directed at my boss’s boss — a senior exec. He was notorious for ignoring pleas for much needed responses and approvals. After failing multiple times toget him to respond to her emails, I suggested to my colleague that she send one last email with the header “Did You Know that Linshaolin Used to Be a Victoria Secrets Model?” She did as instructed, marked her email “Return Receipt Requested” and sent it off. We synchronized our watches. At forty-three seconds the Return Receipt was sent, meaning Boss Man had read the mail. My colleague’s email had said “Now that I have your attention, please answer my previous three emails.” He did not respond.

So in October I will get to go to Boulder to meet my newest boss for the first time. He is already quite worried having been forewarned by his predecessor and by the fact that I recently exchanged the following with him via instant message:

Me: was the information I sent you sufficient — you said you needed it  urgently so I pulled it together this morning. Him — I have not had time to look at it yet. Me: — oh, it was good then that I got up at 4 AM to work on it.

I feel a bit sorry for my managers. I should be more gracious in allowing them to savour the climb up the corporate ladder. Perhaps this year when I write my annual holiday office poem to share with my peers I will be a bit kinder to the senior staff. I will leave out all references to golf, Do Not Disturb, and Twister.

Dishwasher Wanted

On a recent drive we passed by a restaurant that had posted a very large Help Wanted sign on its door facing the street. The help they were seeking was a dishwasher. My husband (who  does the dishes at our house) queried “Are there still dishwashers in this day and age?” Hello, Earth to husband . . .  if someone had invented a way to collect up all the dirty dishes, rinse them off and put them in the dish washing machine, pour in the soap, press the buttons, watch TV for an hour and then empty the washer and put away the dishes being sure to have all the coffee mug handles facing at exactly 45 degrees, then we would have purchased this handy device by now. Yes there are still dishwashers and you are it.

As my regular readers know, we have a new dish washing machine at  home. Once I found out how to open the clothes washer door I then moved upstairs to try out the dishwasher. Basically it is fabulous with two exceptions: the plastic unit to hold the cutlery is held on to the front of the lower rack by an act of will. If I lose concentration or sneeze or get absorbed in watching “Eureka” then it falls off. I missed being impaled in the foot by my drug store Ginzo knife by just a hair. How hard would it have been to put a sturdier mechanism on the cutlery container? Thing two: the soap dispenser does not stay closed if you put soap in it. This means that after I fill it up I have to close the door really fast or soap falls through the crack onto the floor. The floor under the dish washer is three shades lighter than anywhere else  in the kitchen.

Ok, now that I am thinking about it, I think there is a third thing I don’t like about my new machine. It uses big words on the buttons. No “On”  or “Start” but rather “Activate” or “Treblepushrequired”. Instead of “Rinse” it has “Salivate” or something like that. I am not sure I want drool all over my Fiestaware.

Dish washing is one of humankind’s oldest tasks and thus oldest professions. Legions of men and women have performed this vital service, unseen and rarely appreciated. The cook gets the “Please thank the chef for me — this was delicious.” The wine steward gets a huge tip. The busboy gets to eat leftover filet mignon every night of the week. The dish washer, whether in the finest restaurant or in our very own home kitchen gets to work in a hot, moist environment, made hazardous by sharp instruments, fragile glass, and has the nauseating tasks of separating out cigarette butts from the rice pudding so the disposal does not get clogged.

And when all the dishes are clean, dried, and put away, someone starts the process all over again at breakfast. Dishes do not stay done. We do not value and honor the dish washers of this nation adequately. I suggest we take a moment to reflect on their contributions. Next time you are at a restaurant please ask the waiter to let the dish washer know that the plates are sparkling. Tell your domestic washer that s/he is doing a fantastic job — that you love the sound of squeeky clean glass and love the sight of shining silverware. And next time you go to grab your third glass of the evening, put it back. Rinse oout the one you have been using and  use it again. Dishwashers need love too.

Rain

When darkness falls and all the signs

Are neon glare and headlight reflections

And rain makes the air blur and squiggle

Colored worms before my face

When it is warm and soft to breathe

And droplets fail to break but slide

Leaving snail tracks from fat to thin

Rain tears a sign of grace

When wet wool and warmth combine

To make a community of scent

That binds us as we tunnel through the night

Sniffing lightly like dogs before the race

When we emerge back into the rain

Back into the prism colors cast by light

And torrential now the sky casts stones

That slice and scratch and bite

Umbrellas twist like dervishes by wind

So mellow that it is hard to comprehend

That the storm has all but died

We burst the ribbon and don the laurel

Home at last the windowless room

Forgets the rain and warmth and color

The tea and silence are just enough

Company to keep me until tomorrow

Linshaolin Invents Indestructible Mortar

In my recent post about Fleedee and Jeremiah I mentioned that when my brother and I were kids our Mom used to try to guarantee a few more hours of sleep by leaving us “breakfast” in our playroom. Our instructions were to get up quietly and confine ourselves to the playroom until the parents woke up. Our breakfast consisted of peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches and milk (unrefridgerated since midnight) and occassionally an orange if we had been especially good all week. (Aside: my mother came from near poverty in rural Kansas and used to get one orange a  year — in her Christmas stocking. She never got used to the fact that she could now have an orange whenever she wanted.)

My brother and I were not fussy eaters by any means, but stale sandwiches and room-temperature milk did not do a lot for us. Every morning we would sneak down to the kitchen and help ourselves to cheese, crackers, imported chutney, and large green olives washed down with Coca Cola (and later by Tab). We used to fish out cigarete butts from the ashtrays and have a nice smoke to settle our tummys before returning upstairs to get rid of any evidence of our Mom-prepared breakfast.

My Dad had constructed playroom shelves out of stacked bricks and planks of wood — I soon discovered that the weight of three bricks was sufficient to flatten a peanutbutter and jelly sandwich and if I placed the sandwich precisely in the center of the brick the oozing filling would stop just short of showing on the outside. Thus, for a number of years our shelving was reinforced with sandwiches. My  parents failed to notice either the fact that the shelving units somehow were always at my chest height no matter that as the years passed I grew a foot taller nor the fact that the playroom was home to a large colony of ants. (I had a small pink plastic baby stroller that my Mom brought home from a baby shower once — I used to push ants around in  it. Ants make wonderful children.)

The milk was easy to dispose of — mine was flushed down the toilet and my brother’s was fed to the cats (Inkypoo and Sheba) and paraqueet (Chico, which oddly is what my brother named his son…) The cigarette remains were put in a cash box from my brother’s all-aluminium Country Store toy set.

Years later, when I was twelve or so, we moved to another state and in the process of moving my parents discovered our secret. When my Dad tried to dismantle the book shelves he found they were permanently assembled. After taking a sledge hammer to one of them he did manage to knock off one plank, revealing a barely discernible sandwich mass. All attemps to pry the layer of Wonderbread from the filling failed. Dad filed a patent claim which is still pending.

The shelving had to be put out on the curb for the trash men. Mom noticed several cars stopping to investigate whether the shelving was worth hauling away but there were no takers. Perhaps they found the thousands of petrified ants to be offputting. The trash men did not take it either since it was too large to fit in the crusher. I think the shelves are still there by the curb.

Sometimes You Get Immediate Feedback

This past Saturday I was driving in town to drop off a fabric sample I had borrowed (to see whether it was a contender for being made into living room drapes — note: tangarine Marimeko is a bit much in floor to ceiling drapes). I saw that a lady was about to leave a handicapped parking spot so I put up my handicapped placard from the mirror, turned the signal light on to  indicate my intentions, and waited. The car behind me then zooped around in front of me and into the space.

However, and this is where the fun begins, the driver did not execute the steal smoothly and had to back up to reposition. She backed up onto the curb and managed to get her rear passenger side wheel lodged behind a street lamp. She shifted into forward aggressively and ripped out the back end of her car with a metal tearing noise that was horrendous. I had started out watching this audacious maneouver with fury and was ready for a fight, but that soon turned to amazement and then laughter.

The dear woman got out of her car and viewed the damage. She turned to look at me and gave me a look that said “this is your fault!”. Then she stormed off. No handicapped plate or placard — nothing but sheer, raw, “me, me, me”. In a way I felt bad for the lady — what could make someone so self-centered? But then I also felt a  smack of satisfaction.

Fleedee and Jeramiah

I have not thought about these two dear friends for awhile, but something about this morning brought them clearly into focus. Fleedee and Jeramiah are old friends of the family — Fleedee is kind of like a bird and Jeramiah is kind of like a giraffe — but I am really just guessing here since they have never been actually seen. They always came to visit at night, left their little presents for us and then returned to the realm of the imagination before my brother and I woke up. What made their visits special is what they left behind.

My brother and I would wake up on an ordinary Saturday morning — there were strict family rules about  Saturdays –no waking up the parents, no kidding. We had the run of the playroom and Mom would always leave us some food to tide us over (and that is another post). We were not to leave our corner of the house (bedrooms, bathroom, playroom) for any reason. Fleedee and Jeramiah made that rule impossible to follow. We’d get up and still in our jammies would head to the playroom. Somewhere along the way one of us would spot a silver Hershey’s Kiss on a window ledge or stair bannister. Forgetting ourselves, we would shout with joy “Fleedee and Jeramiah have been here!!” — for we knew with certainty that spotting one Kiss meant that the visitors have left  Kisses hidden throughout the house.

And so the hunt began. Every window ledge, table top, lamp finial, under every pillow, inside mugs, were hidden silver foil kisses. We careened around the house shouting happily as we spotted another treasure. Our little fists could not contain all the loot so we would find boxes, bowls, anything that we could use to carry the chocolate kisses in. My brother, being 18 months older than I and with a dominant personaility, would storm through the house on a boy-charged mission critical. I on the other hand, used a systematic approach (which ultimately yielded more candy). I’d start at my waist level (knowing Fleedee and Jeremiah were not likely to leave things on the floor) and work my way around clockwise. Each room was scanned from waist level to as high as I could reach. Common places my brother overlooked in his storm-trooper approach were inside lamps, inside drawers of side tables, and planters.

After we were confident that we had found all the kisses, my brother and I would take our haul to the playroom and, sitting far enough apart to ensure that our booty would not enter the other’s territory, we dumped out the candy and began the count. And, even more remarkably, we would then divide the stash up equally. The fun was in the hunt more than the eating and we were good siblings. I don’t remember any occassions of barfing on Kisses so we must have either restrained ourselves (not likely) or by this time a parent had awakened and was monitoring our actions.

As I got older I began to suspect that my Dad was at least an agent of Fleedee and Jeremiah’s if not their alter ego. They only came to visit when he was not away traveling on business. And they only came to visit when he had that beam of mischievous happiness on his face the day before. That look always meant that either he was planning an elaborate practical joke or was planning to make his kids happy. Once he did both by assisting Fleedee and Jeremiah in glueing all the kisses that were in our playroom to our plastic toys. We’d grab a Kiss and get a Lincoln Log along with it. The three of them must have been up all night working on that silliness.

Fleedee and Jeremiah once came to visit my daughter when she was three or four. Dad had come over for a visit and brought the dynamic duo with him. Alli certainly gave him positive reinforcement — her eyes growing huge as she began to realize the potential of what she was discovering. They stopped coming when Dad died. But the bird and the giraffe and, of course the much-loved dad, live on in our happiest memories. Every time I see a Hershey’s Kiss I  think of them..

Linshaolin Explains Fall Foliage

When I drove to the health club yesterday at 5:30 A.M. (yes, I am showing off), I noticed that it was dark outside. I made a mental note — it is quite important for an observer of Nature of the calibre of myself to make record of the Factors that are significant to our environment. Note to self: nights are getting longer. Indeed, I also noted that I had to wear a sweat jacket since the air was quite crisp. Another note to self: it is getting colder. During the course of the day those two factors jumbled around in my head, clanging and crashing with a persistence that said “Lin, pay attention to me, I am trying to tell you something.” And, in fact, during dinner at Phat Ng Food Emporium with my family, I had that “eureka” moment.

Every year it is the same — nights get longer and it gets colder. Well certainly then, if I look around and Observe I should be able to spot the impact of this phenomenon. And I did, in really remarkably short time. Why, every Autumn kids go back to school.  And every Autumn the traffic gets worse. And every Autumn stores fill up with cheap chocolate and plastic skulls. Hmmmm. I felt I needed to stretch the confines of my brain and Observe more closely. My grass no longer needs to be cut because it is burnt to a crisp. My Fall wardrobe, which has been moldering in a plastic bin for the summer, has been eaten in at least one visible place on each item. My “Christmas curtains” which I put up in 2004 have faded and are now pink and lime — very preppy. When it gets darker and colder I should change the curtains.

But I am wandering far afield here and am torturing you with false answers. We know from the title of this post that I realized that the two factors aforementioned (dark and cold) make the leafs turn color. Whoa now! Don’t go running off just yet to spread the news. Those are only two of the four factors that are needed to make Nature’s Fall Festival of Color. I will not drag it out — leaf pigment and chlorophyll are also needed. There are four vital Agents of Change.

Let’s start with chlorophyl — chlorophyll is the America’s Top Model of plant chemical reactions. During photo shoots chlorophyll helps the sunlight create sugars in the trees which immediately disqualifies them from further competition. Leaf pigments come into play as they turn green with envy and stomp out, sometimes downing carotenoids to ease the pain, or if they are really desolate they abuse anthocyanins — thus you see lots of orange and red leaves.

Let’s go back to those pesky sugars a second. Yes, it is true that they are needed to sustain the tree through the winter, but the poor trees have to get to the point where their veins collapse, trapping the sugars inside before they can become dormant. We all know that clogged veins produce the above mentioned anthocynanins which strike the coupe de grace and the leaf falls from the tree.

Despite the fact that I lost the America’s Top Model metaphor somewhere, I will pick it up again in closing. What happens to all those models who are sent home (i.e., for those who are metaphor challenged, what happens to the fallen leaves?)? They mould and fester turning to rot doing department store gigs on Saturdays while going to CC and passing you your greasy bag at the drive through — in other words, leaves rot on the ground creating rich, life enhancing humus, a nourishing ecosystem for organisms, seedlings, and fungi.

Nature can be cruel. That glorious burst of color precedes dry, wrinkled, drop. Youth is beauty and beauty is youth. The tree must shiver out the winter awaiting the warmth of spring before another cycle of lush beauty blossoms briefly before dying.

Lin — you’re hilarious!

Dear Readers, you have no idea how demanding you are. Whenever I receive a comment, a word of encouragement, or even spam — it is like piling on the pressure to write ever more and better blogs. Every time I click the Publish button I wonder “Will this post disappoint my readers? Will they think that it was dumb?” Your constant demands for ever more amusing stories is taxing. One life can only hold so many moments of hilarity. And I must hold some things back for later . . . if I told you now about my Go Go dancing in the Combat Zone there would be no reason for you to come back. Really, we must talk this out and come to some agreements.

What I really want to write about is science. I have an intuitive understanding of science and want to share my insights with you. But I fear you will click the Back button faster than one can bobbit a . . . well, pretty darn fast. If you do you will miss out on some startling revelations. But why would I want to hear about science from someone who got her dipolma via correspondence school? I had hoped we had a relationship.

I am sorry. I must be firm. There will be posts about science. Not all the time — I won’t turn this into a respected academic journal. And I promise — no footnotes. I will intersperse science with other stuff. I have been thinking about a series of posts on Henry the Eighth’s wives. And I am waiting to hear from the Pentagon in response to my letter volunteering to provide counsel on Iraq. That will make for some rich posting. I was going to focus on troop morale and maybe change my name to Linchowline.

I promise to throw in some funny stuff like putting the cat through the rinse cycle. And I have not told you yet about the Schwarldhochstrasse and the goats and the beer hall. So can we make a deal? You ease off the pressure. Let me do some science. And I’ll tell you about opening the car door and getting out on the edge of a cliff. OK?

Conference Call Interruptus

The 10:00 call starts late because someone took the telephone cord from the conference room. Eric finally gets the phone to work and opens the line to callers who can not attend the meeting in person. It is now 10:27. The conference call service announces each caller as they enter the meeting, cutting off the speaker:

and so the action item will be — Reggid Dougal is entering the meeting.

Hi Eric, this is Reg. Reggid Dougal from the Toronto office. Hi how ya doi’n?

fifty five people attended the seminar. A summary can be — Melvin Hobblestone is entering the meeting.

Hi Eric, this is Melvin. Sorry for dialing in late.

plus or minus 25% is the range for the sizing at this  — Saundra Smith is enterting the meeting.

Hi Eric, this is Saundra. I’m calling from my cell so sorry for the static and the ambulance noise. Oh listen I am stuck backed up at a construction site where they are drill. . .how do I put this on mute again?

apologize for the continued interruption of this — Albert Nichols is entering the meeting.

Hi this is Albert. Ah, Albert Nichols the VP. This is the Vegas auctions call right? No? What call am I on? Oh, sorry.

will see if this feature can be elimin — Jurgen Johansen Jonssen is entering the meeting.

Hi Eric, this is Jurgen Johansen Jonssen from the Tibetan office. Sorry to dial in late. We have moved to daylight savings time here.

try to call in on time as a courtes — Nasty Evans is entering the meeting.

Hey Eric, how’re they han . . . what? This is a con call? Huh? Is that what the recording meant when they said I was caller 14? No Shi. . . um. Call  ya later.

about that.  — Glenn Glennroy Glenplaid is entering the meeting.

Yo Eric. This is Glenn and I’ve  got Rog and Whitney here in the office with me. Listen we can only stay for the first half hour . . . what? The call has been going on for 37 minutes already? Oh, well look. Sorry but we are double booked. Unavoidable conflict. Yeah. Catch the minutes. Thanks.

Are any voting members of the Steering Committee present?

Yes. This is Louise Whitfield standing in for Tom. I will vote for Finance today.

Anyone else? No? I am sorry ladies and gentlemen but we do not have a quorum of voting members so I will now adjourn the meeting. Thank you for attending.

Scientists discover link between exposure to needlepoint floss and early onset of CD

Up eight percent in the last decade, a staggering eighteen percent of the female population in the United States and Canada now suffer from Nohwartoputstuff syndrome, better known as Craftsters’ Disorder or CD. The syndrome, named after its discoverer, Japanese geneticist Dr. Noh, cost these countries millions in lost productivity and stress-related meltdowns in Craftmarts and other fine stores across the Western hemisphere. The Craftalooza Express chain has had to add questions to its employee application form to help identify potential sufferers and get them into early intervention. A typical question used to identify CD is “How many hours a day do you spend wrapping needlepoint floss onto plastic coated cardboard skeins?”

Craftsters’ Disorder is characterized by the obsessive buying of craft supplies and changing one’s interest in a craft every twelve weeks or after spending $17,000 on scrapbooking paper (whichever comes first). A typical CD sufferer has teenage sons who are forced to share a room so that the extra bedroom can be used as Mom’s hobby room. Long since overrun with fabric, corregated plastic scissors, stickers, die-cut machines, stamps, needles, floss, magnifying mirrors, FIMO clay, cutting mats, plastic canvas, sewing machines, bobbins, skeins of yarn, half finished projects, sketches, and latch hook rugs from the Buck a Bag store, the upstairs hallway, linen closet, and guest bathroom’s tub have been utilized as backup storage. Sufferers deny having a problem and are resistent to seeking help.

Dr. Noh’s colleagues, Dr. Han and Dr. d’Launder were recently studying the effects of injesting needlepoint floss (DC 3264 and as a control DC2109) when they noticed a statistical trend between environmental floss and developing CD. Further research is needed to understand the correlation fully, but they have sufficient data to make their findings public. It seems the threshold of exposure to floss is around 260 skeins of floss (and remember, only deep violet blue has been studied) — anything above that number increases your chance of getting CD by 80%.

Significantly, women who own a three inch binder with plastic floss sleeves, always contract terminal CD. Although CD does not shorten a normal lifespan, it always leads to horrific coughing up of “hairballs” (actually needlepoint floss) and compulsive checking to see whether the squence of floss numbers is related to Pi.

Women who suspect that they may have Craftsters’ Disorder should seek psychiatric help immediately. Group therapy is especially effective and one of the group activities should always be the swap-n-shop. Surgery is sometimes needed to remove floss balls since they may cause intestinal blockage. It is important to remember that CD is not contagious and CD patients should be treated with respect and sympathy. If you are visiting a hospitalized CD sufferer a nice present would be a knitting tote or a coffee mug that says I Heart Doll Houses. Leave impressionable young children at home when you visit someone with CD in case they have an attack of reorganizing which can be quite traumatic to witness. To protect yourself from developing Craftsters’ Disorder, limit spending on craft supplies to under $15,000 a year and avoid injesting floss.

Data Elements

I am sure that most of you are lucky enough to be in a line of work that has no need to concern itself with data elements — you save lives or invent stuff that improves the quality of our days, or you contribute to society through art or science or maybe you lift our spirits through entertainment or counsel, or perhaps you are that nice person who makes my large iced coffee with cream and two Equals. I am not so lucky –data elements R Us. What the heck is she talking about you are asking . . .

I have just participated in a two day workshop via teleconference. Eight hours a day we discussed data — where it is sourced, how it fits into the heirarchy of information, what legal and business standards it must be in compliance with, etc. Oh, what a rich and fertile ground we covered! We spent a long time discussing writing algorhythms to yield the desired data and even longer talking about how to keep data current. Does the data have to be available real time or is a  nightly refresh sufficient?

I know that by now you are intrigued and perhaps a bit jealous. “I bet that next she is going to tell us she got to talk about databases too!” you grumble. Yes, dear readers, that too. Data elements are, of course, stored in databases. Databases require access control, resolution of replication errors, they can be accessed via a server or standalone on your desktop. You can query them — some nights I can not sleep because the possibilities of quering are so endless. You can house confidential information in them, or pictures, or anything you want as long as you have nice, pretty, well organized data elements.

“Now yur talk’n Lin,” you say as you begin to realize the possibilities. Then you begin to feel a nagging doubt. Have you made a mess of your data? Does your taxonomy make sense? Is it logical? “Oh please,” you think, “tell me that at least my data elements are consistent!” You sit bolt upright in bed. “What’s the matter sweetie?” inquires your spouse. “Where are you going?” You get up, your eyes dry and red from the early hour, and go to your desk. “Hey, wait a minute,” you say. “What the heck? I don’t have any databases. I don’t have data elements. I don’t care about hierarchy, taxonomy, compliance to standards, currency of data, or consistency! Gee, thanks, Lin, for giving me a heart stopping moment there.” You get some cheese puffs and a Coke and head back to bed to watch a movie. Fantastic, Blade II is on.

On Tuesday Judy Will Wear Her Pajama Top to Work

How many of us have worn pajama tops, bottoms, or both to places other than bed? I am quite sure the answer is “everyone”.  The reason this topic is in my mind is that yesterday, while shopping with my friend Judy, she spotted a lovely white blouse on the clearance rack. She tried it on and we both agreed it was a winner. But then Judy spotted the label which read “Intimates.” “That means that this is a pajama top Lin” said the ever insightful Judy. “No one will know” I countered. “Yes they will” was her retort, “because you will tell them!” Judy purchased the lovely top nonetheless. “This is a blog, Judy”  was my confirmation.

 I remember an incident from when I was a child. My mother had failed to do the laundry and every one of my tee shirts was grubby beyond saving. It was Monday morning and  I had to go to school. Mom whips out a red flannel pajama top with a cowgirl print and says “wear this.” I argued that everyone would know I was wearing pjs and she told me that was silly. No one would notice.

As I left the house, head hanging down in shame already, I passed the home of my arch enemy Billy Moran. Billy took one look at me and called into his house in the loudest voice “Mom, come look. Lin is wearing her pajamas to school. Mrs. M, who liked things to be the way she thought they should be, called after me. “Lin, go home. You can’t go to school wearing a pajama top.” I dug in my heels and told her it was NOT a pajama top – it was a regular shirt. Good try.

As soon as I got to my classroom my teacher said “Lin. May I speak to you at the desk please.” I approached the desk knowing full well what was about to transpire. “Lin. Did your mother see you this morning?” I decided to cut the agony short and blurted out “Yes, she saw me, yes I know this is a pajama top, yes she gave it to me to wear because all my clothes are dirty.” There was a short silence followed by a sensitive “That is OK, Lin. It is a very pretty top.” I loved that teacher!

I have no doubt that my mother received a little phone call that day from the principal informing her that in the future they would not allow sleeping garments to be worn to school. This was back in the days when girls had to wear skirts and blouses to school (no pants). My mother sent me to school every day in my brother’s hand-me-down corduroy trousers just daring the school board to murmur a peep. I think the town officials knew that mom would take this to the supreme court and they would lose. For even then any moderately thinking person realized that making the sexes wear some clothes and not allowing others was a lawsuit waiting to happen, not to mention a violation of our Constitution.

Times have changed. My own daughter likes to make flannel pajama bottoms and wear them to school. But then so do all her friends. And I, working from home, have no problem presenting to the executives in my nightgown. So, it is OK Judy, even if everyone knows. It is a terrific top, well-made and it looks like a million bucks on you. But I guess you did not notice the little embroidered sleeping angels resting on the words “Pleasant Dreams” that adorn the back . . .

Music in My Head

I am not sure whether it is a unique trait of mine  or whether others share this phenomena. Many of my thoughts are accompanied by music. This is all in my head, of course, others can not hear the melodies that help “color” my mental life – unless I sing. Yesterday I drove to the mall, about a twenty minute drive. All the way there and all the way back home I sang out loud in the car. I sang some songs, but mostly I sang my thoughts. Singing allows me to add trills and vibratto, volume, and even shades of sadness to thoughts that otherwise remain trapped soundless in the confines of my brain.

 Sometimes there is  just music in my head and very few thoughts. There are some composers who are able to hand over the package deal, homoginized and ready. My brain even on its most creative day can not conjur up the crashing notes of Beethoven. I integrate Beethoven – his music is forever associated in my brain with certain thoughts. I wish I could write music. Then I could communicate my thoughts fully. As for now they are like trees that cast no shadow. The closest I get to this is to write poems — every once in awhile my boss or a colleague will receive an email with the contents being a poem. A business poem. Yes, they think I am odd but what is business without an occasional poem? Think how much better even than that if it were socially acceptable to sing your ideas at the weekly team meeting.

I do not hear voices talking to me. I am quite sure the fact that I have music in my head is not a sign of wackoness. Ok, I do confess that once in awhile, very rarely mind, I do burst into song during a meeting. But I have been working almost forty years and no one has yet complained. I am just one of those eccentrics who keeps work from being deadly dull. I would give my  eye teeth to know if anyone else, when watching people assemble for a meeting hears “When you’re a Jet you’re a Jet all the way” (West Side Story) or when the meeting takes a biobreak hears “It’s been a long time come’n”.

I know it is going to be a good day when I start out with “I feel pretty” and lead seamlessly into “Proud Mary” – but if I wake up with “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the accompaniment to brushing my teeth then I go back to bed and hope there is a documentary about the Roman Republic on TV.