By Hand

Neither my husband’s car nor mine is equipped with spare tires, something I’m told is now normal.

When we got a flat recently, we ended up stranded for the night in Corsicana, TX*, till the tire shop opened in the morning.

I have zero idea how to change a tire and think the world is safer if I don't try.

My husband did once change the tire of a rental car on the Cross-Bronx Expressway, an awful stretch of pavement. Yes, everyone who hears this story wonders why he just didn’t call the rental company. He said when he turned the car in, he told the guy at the rental counter he had changed the tire and the guy just shrugged. Sure hope that tire was on right.

My point is we all seem to be moving away from doing things with our own hands.

It’s not just flat tires. Lots of things aren’t fixable; either they are disposable or you need specialized tools, including, maybe, a diagnostic computer, to even open them.

Children aren’t even taught handwriting in school anymore, which, research shows, may have some broad negative impacts on their abilities to learn.

Weirdly, there are games you can get for your phone where you play at cleaning a house or planting a garden by tapping your screen. It’s not the same.

Patience is required to do things with your own hands, an acceptance that things aren't perfect and won’t come together perfectly, a tolerance for frustration.

And when you are able to fix something, you feel accomplished.

*One thing to recommend in the tiny town of Corsicana: Collins Street Bakery, world-famous for its fruitcakes. The tow truck driver and tire-shop guys, all gruff and heavily tattooed, recommend the cherry refrigerator cookies – hot-pink little confections – and they’re right.

Mental Maintenance

I once actually read how-to books about housecleaning. My goal, sort of realized, was to figure out the least I could do yet stay in the “normal” range.

I realized I've done the same when it comes to "mental maintenance."

Our minds are not machines, and even if they were, machines need maintenance, too.

Be kind to your mind!

Hokey as these sound, they work.

Keeping a Journal. I've done this since I was 12 years old. Spent a lot of time scribbling away, but the benefits outweigh the costs. It is the best way to learn how to write. And you think through your thoughts.

From the author Julia Cameron, keep a Ta Da List. Write down the things you did do.

Write down 5+ things you are grateful for. Some of mine -- "I'm grateful I'm not her" -- are clearly not in the spirit, but even they work. Any focus on the positive helps.

Meditation: Literally 5 minutes. Just breathe. And it’s not so much clearing your mind as it is simply trying to let your mind be clear. My favorite book on the subject: 10% Happier.

Learn Something Different: I spend about 5 minutes a day using a phone app (Duolingo) to learn a few words of Spanish. I got excited in the supermarket yesterday when I realized the people in front of me were talking about onions (cebollas)!

Exercise ... Particularly yoga ... Exercise helps emotionally as well as physically. Studies show that exercise can be as effective for alleviating depression as medications. The yoga pose half-pigeon, which is done near the end of yoga class and stretches things deep in your hips, seems to dispel stress especially well.

Sleep. It is shocking how much better you can feel simply from getting enough sleep.

My Husband Wrote a Haiku!

Happy homecoming
Alert and excited, woops!

Poor nozzle control 

:)

Winning at Yoga

Is feeling competitive a good thing?

I used to think “Hell, no.” I used to avoid it in all things, at all costs.

I was the uncoordinated kid who was always picked last for teams. I wasn’t competitive as a kid in gym and sports, I came to loathe them, because I didn’t have a chance of “winning.”

Being forced into competitive situations then, when it didn’t fit, did harm.

I think this happens to a lot of people. How else do you explain why over 80% of all American adults don’t exercise?

So often, people have such bad memories that it leads to a lifelong aversion to any exercise, which is sad.

Who is at fault? The adults – gym teachers, coaches and parents – who get so caught up in vicarious competition that they forget the point. Shouldn’t we be teaching and encouraging all children about physical fitness?

I was lucky. I eventually discovered exercise can be fun.

Because my college had a PE requirement, I signed up for a student-taught dancercise class. (Hush, that was all the rage in the ‘80s.) The teacher, apparently a dancer, was just a good teacher, a nice person.

I wish I could remember her name. That class was life-changing, no exaggeration.

I have to laugh.  Recently, I asked a trainer at the local Y for advice.  I told him I wanted to be able to do the yoga poses that the most advanced students in my classes can do. You know, stuff like this. Which I am, incidentally, nowhere near doing.

“Wants to win at yoga,” wrote the trainer in his notes.

Yup, I’m finally good enough at a physical endeavor, which doesn’t even have to be that good, to experience feeling competitive as motivation.

Yay!

Crushes

[Wow, so this super-duper didn't age well. Avenatti was just sentenced to 14 years in prison (12/5/22) for embezzling millions of dollars from clients and Elon Musk has clearly lost his freaking mind.]
 

 [O.K., so this clearly didn't age well. Michael Avenatti, how could you?]

I know a woman who told her husband that she'd never cheat, except if Bruce Springsteen were a possibility, then all bets were off.

Who you have a crush on, like any all-time favorites list you might have, says something about you, I think.

My crushes, for example, make it pretty clear I’m liberal. Also, I like the good guys. And I like them smart. Also, fearless. And funny.

They are currently:

Michael Avenatti. I know, I know, he'd make a terrible boyfriend. I don't think he can turn that testosterone-fueled aggression and competitiveness off. Still, he and Stormy Daniels just might save the country.

Elon Musk. Yes, he's probably super-odd. Musk once asked a reporter how much time he should pencil in for a girlfriend: “How much time does a woman want a week? Maybe 10 hours?" Maybe it’s because I’m not that girlfriend, but I find that cluelessness in an otherwise super-genius kind of endearing.

And no, no crush of mine is about money. I’m not that practical; also, I’m not Melania Trump. (And I don't think even she likes Trump.)

It's just that Musk just might save the human race.

Jon Stewart. Nope, he's not on The Daily Show anymore, though many of his protégés continue what he started: Stephen Colbert, John Oliver, Trevor Noah. Maybe it's a matter of me imprinting like a baby duck on the first because it’s Jon Stewart who I have a crush on. And he is still around and kicking. Yay!

How about you? :)

Tony's Bucket List

Tony's always thinking.

It boggles my mind to think there are people who believe animals’ souls are not as good as ours, that  they don’t have emotions like ours and even that they don't feel pain.

Take Tony. (Please ... ba da dum.)

He feels Christmas-morning-level joy and excitement at least three times a day: Breakfast, Dinner and Walk.

He tries to do right. When I tell my husband that, he sputters, "No, he doesn't! He doesn't try at all." (To be fair, this is usually after Tony has peed on my husband's shoe out of excitement. Totally not Tony’s fault.)

As for barking at passers-by, chewing up our dish towels, getting into the recyclable bin, leaping up to nip our butts: he's trying to do right, he's just not sure what that is.

After all, getting after the recyclable stuff has become Tony's official job. You know how you are supposed to clean those jars and cans? I defy you to find a better, easier, more thorough way to clean that peanut-butter jar than to give it to a dachshund. For Tony, it's better than a Kong, and when he's done, it'll be pristine.

Tony’s Bucket List
1. To be eating, always.
2. Barring that, to chew and shake things to make sure they're dead: toys, socks, dish towels, pizzle sticks. (What's a pizzle stick, you ask?)
3. To be in a lap.
4. To pee and/or poop in the garage.
5. To be in a car. Doesn't matter where, or if, it's going anywhere.
6. The holy grail: To pee or poop in my husband's fancy car.
7. To be outside … or maybe inside … or maybe outside … or maybe inside ….
9. To catch the neighborhood possum. (He thinks.)

10. To be the boss of all he surveys.

Favorite Movies of All Time

All-time favorites – of anything, really, music, books, places you’ve been – are things that really made a lasting impression on you. And whenever you make a list of your all-time favorites of something, it ends up showing you something about yourself, I think.

So, movies.

The first movie that made my all-time list was Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid. That movie came out in 1969, when I was four. I didn't see it till it came out on television years later, when I was about 10 or 11, at just that age when I didn’t know whether I wanted to be the Sundance Kid or sleep with him. (My present-day self says, Why not both? And also now, I appreciate the charms of Butch as much, if not more.)

Next was Paper Moon, with Ryan O'Neil and a young Tatum O'Neil.

In college, we were all fascinated by The Big Chill.

I stole a tradition from a friend (Hi, Jared!) and now we always watch Moonstruck on Valentine's Day.

Speaking of holidays, for Halloween: Young Frankenstein (I don't do horror movies), for Christmas, A Christmas Story.

The Big Lebowski: My brother-in-law, in a stroke of genius, introduced this movie to our father-in-law.

The Hotel Budapest.

Raising Arizona.

I liked going to (most) children’s movies with my own kids. Some are amazingly good, like Shrek and Mulan.

And just recently, my daughter gave my husband Florence Foster Jenkins for Father's Day. Days later, I continue to think about this movie, based on a true story and so carefully written, acted and constructed.

So, I like funny movies, clever movies, movies with a touch of the absurd, movies in which the characters let their eccentricities all hang out.

Yeah, sounds about right.

What movies make your all-time list?

To Do Lists

Nutty.

I have ridiculous to-do lists. 

I am trying to be organized.

But even my lists are a mess. A day’s list for me is really several lists written on a Google calendar page. There are arrows, stars, exclamation points. Some things are circled, others underlined, some, but not all, numbered. This is what it’s like inside my head.

Still, I think it helps to write it down.

I work on my own. I often have several long-term projects going with lots of deadlines. And somehow, I managed to become the scheduler for our entire family.

I went through a phase where I read a lot of what my husband calls “productivity porn.” While reading a book about how to be efficient might feel like you are being efficient, spoiler alert, you’re really not.

However, once in a while, I would come across an idea that appealed. I’ve incorporated these into my to-do list, which might explain some of its complexity. I’ve written about this before.

I even read books about how to clean your house (really) and figured out how to do the least amount possible as quickly as possible to avoid ending up on the television show Hoarders.

Interestingly, one of the guys who wrote a book I liked, Tony Schwartz, turns out to be the guy who ghost-wrote The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump and is now abjectly sorry.

Another idea I like: Julia Cameron, who wrote a number of books about being creative (I liked her first such book the best), recommends, not a to-do list, but a ta-da list: Think about what you did get done, after you’ve finished your day. More often than not, although I feel like I didn’t do squat, I realize that I did do quite a lot. Yay!

Hey, whatever works.

Spiciness

I don't get it. 

Sure, some can be nice, but too much can make food inedible.

Recently, I had a jambalaya so spicy, it left my lips chapped. I hate when I order something that would be wonderful but someone, probably in the very last step, wrecked by adding too much spice.

Other people seem to love it, though.

It seems like a "prove your manhood" kind of thing. Take my husband. He will eat spicy food so hot, he will happily point out that his head is sweating. At a nearby Indian restaurant, where you order at a counter and are asked whether you want the spiciness level "mild" (garnished, to keep things straight, I noticed, with cilantro), "medium" (one slice of jalapeño) or "hot" (two jalapeño slices), my husband ordered "hot" the first couple times. I suspect it was because, at least in part, he had to make his choice publicly. (Since then, even he has quietly backed off to "medium.")

What else but misdirected competitiveness can explain this guy who ate the hottest pepper in the world (which clocks in, according to the Washington Post,  at 1.64 million Scoville heat units (SHUs) compared to the 8,000 SHUs of a jalapeno) in a hot-pepper eating contest. (What the hell?) He not only suffered dry heaves (to be expected, the New York Times article notes) but also the poetically named “thunderclap headache,” which is so intensely painful he had to be hospitalized. Or this guy, who, after eating ghost pepper, retched so violently, he tore a hole in his esophagus?

As I strongly suspected, liking spicy foods has everything to do with screwing around with the pain receptors in your mouth for the thrill of it.

No thanks.

Favorite Quotations On Writing

Writers, unsurprisingly, come up with the best quotes.

Some of my favorites:

“I hate writing; I love having written.” –Dorothy Parker

“I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking ….” –Joan Didion

“I have the heart of a small boy. It is in a glass jar on my desk.” –Stephen King

"’The cat sat on the mat’ is not a story. ‘The cat sat on the dog's mat’ is a story.” –John le Carré

“Most grown-up behavior, when you come right down to it, is decidedly second-class. People don’t drive their cars as well, or wash their ears as well, or eat as well, or even play the harmonica as well as they would if they had any sense …[F]or the serious young writer who wants to get published, it is encouraging to know that most of the professional writers out there are push-overs.” –John Gardner, The Art of Fiction

What quotes about writing do you like?

By The Book

I’ve been volunteering at a local school through a program called Read Houston Read. If you’re looking for a volunteer opportunity, I’d recommend it.

You spend a half-hour each week reading with each child.

I think the kids, first-graders who are as cute as buttons, like it.

Read Houston Read books are about things like a boy in Africa who saves up his money to buy a bicycle so he can help his mother or a Chinese-American boy who gives his New Year’s money to a homeless guy with no shoes. There was one about the life cycle of a butterfly.

That’s fine, they’re well-written and their illustrations are well-done, but … meh.

This week, there was a book fair going on in the library, blocking access to the Read Houston Read books. The librarian suggested bringing books from home. So, I did: some of my own kids’ favorites.

One of my students picked My Life with The Wave. The other picked Elbert’s Bad Word. I also brought Sweet Dream Pie, Seven Silly Eaters and Harvey Potter’s Balloon Farm and, in case they wanted something to read to me, Dragon’s Fat Cat by Dav Pilkey, author of the Captain Underpants books.

When my own kids were small, we used to go to the library and check out piles of children’s books, whatever caught any of our fancies. Many turned out to be “meh,” but some fascinated my kids, we read them over and over. Those ones we bought to keep.

These books tended to trust the children more. Their story lines were more complex, contained magical elements and were told with wry humor. They didn’t hit you over the head with “life lessons,” but my kids, now 22 and 19, and even my husband still remember them. They were better.

There Are Good People Out There

I write for a group of super-local, small magazines, called The Buzz Magazines, here in Houston.

I do it for fun and I also like to think that, maybe, something I write ends up being helpful to someone.

And the people I like best to talk to, and whom I admire so much, are people who are willing to talk about their own struggles, problems and dark times, in the hopes of helping others.

The latest time I did that was for this month's article on young adults and alcoholism.

But I also admire the people I spoke with about finding your birth family, having learning differences as an adult, dealing with dementia in yourself or in a family member, trying to find a functionally disabled family member a happy life and dealing with a devastating illness.

In this dismal time, when so many seem to be afraid of and in competition with everyone around them, grabbing all they can for themselves, like starving dogs, it's nice to know there are still good people around. :)

Highway to Hell

Highways freak me out.

I also have no spatial sense.

I am possibly the worst person in the world to write this article, about a major highway construction project in Houston. But I did and I obsessively triple-checked my facts, so I think it turned out OK. :)

The magazine, quite rightly, wanted more than just the standard "Here's the basic facts about the construction," surrounded by lame jokes about how much everyone's commute is going to suck during it.

Their commutes are going to suck during it, don't get me wrong.

But there is a lot more to the subject than that. And I enjoyed the people I talked to: the man who wrote the book on the history of Houston highways, which is actually pretty interesting, the 94-year-old former mayor of the city/neighborhood most directly impacted who can remember when the Houston freeways first went in, the engineers who work on these unbelievably complex plans.

Body Language

Yoga teachers walk around the class, doing “adjustments” or “assists.” This is when they touch someone to correct their pose or help them take that pose further than they could on their own. There is a lot to this.

And sometimes, during shavasana, “corpse” pose, when you are lying there at the end of class, eyes closed, “letting everything go,” they will pick someone, glide over and give them a massage. Shoulders, neck, forehead.

They’ve done that to me. And the two or three times they have, without fail, it’s been a day when I’ve been under stress. Maybe I am waiting for a medical-test result. Maybe I just found out my dog has cancer. (Yes, that happened.)

“How do you know?” I asked one of my yoga teachers after a class when she gave me one of those (totally awesome) massages.

The teacher just smiled and scrunched up her shoulders till they were up around her ears.

Body language. There are many articles on the internet giving “tips” about how to read body language. I think there is a limit to how much of this you can put into words. I also think that people who try to manipulate body language, like that salesperson who keeps staring into your eyes and touching your arm, aren’t as good at it as they think. This article seems particularly good because it does address the limits of what you can know (it’s not as simple as “legs crossed” = uncomfortable).

And you know what? That quick little massage by the yoga teacher works. And it’s not just my imagination. Medical studies have shown all kinds of measurable effects from what is called “supportive touch.”

Cool.

Would You Take A DNA Test?

The way people can research their family tree these days is amazing and these people were so great to share their stories with me:

https://thebuzzmagazines.com/articles/2018/02/shaking-family-tree

Cheap Wines Are Just Fine

I used to write – a tiny bit – about wine.

But my husband is under strict orders not to tell anyone … because then wine snobs (there are always some) will want to debate/compete.

Here’s a dirty secret: When people taste wine blind, they tend to like the cheaper wines a little better than the more expensive ones.

I liked the wine professionals I met. One demonstrated to me the difference between “old world” and “new world” wine styles. If you taste a French white wine by itself, say a chardonnay, which is called a Burgundy (after its region rather than its grape varietal, because it’s French), it will taste thin. A California chardonnay, drunk alone, will taste better. But put some salt on your tongue and the French wine will taste a lot better. That’s because French wines are meant to be drunk with food, while California wines are meant to be what the wine person called “a cocktail-party wine,” often drunk alone.

Sommeliers told me the cheapest wines on their lists don’t sell because no one will order them. If they find a great deal, they often have to raise its price to sell it. That’s why I like a pal of mine who, with a great flourish, will tell a waiter, “Bring me a glass of your cheapest chardonnay!”

One wine guy told me syrah (or shiraz) wines – syrah is a red grape varietal grown mostly in Australia – are always good, though cheap.

I discovered vinho verdes at a Portuguese restaurant. These “green” or “young wines” have a slight sparkle, taste like the wine version of beer and cost $4 a bottle at my Kroger.

Which is where I search the lowest shelves (cheapest wines) for funny names and labels.

Because, really, most wines are just fine.