Bedazzled

It was late and I was on Amazon.

I have no clue about fashion. I wear t-shirts with sayings on them (often hand-me-downs from my  kids) and hoodies.

Oh, and I have a zippered garment bag of my “normal-person disguises,” clothes I wear when I am not allowed to dress like an 8-year-old boy. The garment bag is necessary to protect them from dust.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I realized this past weekend that I dress (sort of, in a distorted way) like a Texan woman. Go to a mall in Houston and you will see clothes bedazzled with rhinestones, topped off with marabou feathers, in tiger and zebra prints. And no, you are not in the little girls’ section (I checked), you are in the section meant for adult women.

I went to visit my son at college in Oregon. Arriving for the parents’ tour, wearing my rainbow-colored sneakers and my bright purple down jacket (for Texans, cold weather is novel and fun), I realized that all the other parents were wearing expensive hiking gear in earth tones. Oops.

Place has a definite effect on your clothes. I remember, when our kids were small and we lived in New York City, we went to Disney World in Florida. My husband and I laughed when we got back to the city. People at Disney World wore pastel colors, were super-friendly and also, sorry to say, fat; people back in Manhattan were skinny and wore scowls and black.

Also, in New York, I remember seeing an elderly woman on the bus, wearing her coat, just so, accented by a pretty pin. I thought, I hope I dress like her when I’m old … but that’s not looking likely. At the rate I'm going, I’ll probably be the little old lady in the bedazzled baseball cap.

Now, I Want A Kitchen Garden

https://thebuzzmagazines.com/tags/kitchen-gardens

The Self of My To-Do List

If I were the self depicted in my to-do lists, I’d have already done a morning yoga class rather than be sitting here at mid-day in thermal-underwear pajamas, my husband’s cast-off flannel, tartan-plaid robe and fuzzy slippers with pom poms.

My dog would be well-trained and well-behaved, wouldn’t pee in excitement when people came over, wouldn’t pull like a maniac on his leash, wouldn’t bark and growl at passing small children and strollers. He’d be an agility dog and a therapy dog.

I’d have taught myself French long ago and be fluent in it.

Ditto Spanish.

Also guitar.

And piano.

I’d do triathlons, be able to do all the poses of yoga and weigh quite a bit less.

My house would be organized. At the very least, I’d change all the burned-out lightbulbs I’ve been ignoring. And my closets would be so organized, like the ones in magazines, that they’d look like little shrines.

I’d have a kitchen garden. Also, I’d know all the names of the things growing in my yard and they’d all be flowering, which is good, because I’d also have a hive of bees. Well-behaved bees.

I’d have more dogs, all rescues, and they’d be well-behaved too.

I’d be wildly successful in some sort of creative field. I might be a little famous, in a beloved, low-key kind of way, and I’d have made gobs of money. I’d have a pied-à-terre in New York. (I have one picked out: a certain teeny-tiny room on the top floor, in the corner, of the Beacon Hotel). I’d also have a summer house at which I would, indeed, spend the entire summer.

Too bad my to-do list is complete fiction. ☹

And P.S., I thought I was being so efficient this morning, but turns out it’s “fall back.”

I Can Hear That Whistle Blowing ...

Did you know you can take a cross-country passenger train out of Houston? It's called the Sunset Express.

Yeah, no one else knows either. 

But everybody should, so I wrote about it for The Buzz Magazines. You can see that article here.

Going by train takes longer, doesn't, if you get a sleeper, save you any money, and it generally doesn't arrive on time.

But it's really fun. :)

Close Calls

I was walking.

I am such a caricature of myself: the doctor’s wife, in my yoga clothes, with my yoga mat slung behind me, in flip flops, clutching a latte … but I digress.

There was a lot of construction. On one side of the street, there was a fenced-off lot with a backhoe working and on the other side, a big truck was slowly backing into a driveway.

Since the sidewalk along the fence wasn’t closed, I was walking there.

The fence was about 8 feet tall. The heap of rubble behind it was much taller. It had been a brick building that morning. And it was shaking. The backhoe, which I couldn’t see, was working behind it.

It began to occur to me that, perhaps, I shouldn’t be there.

The construction worker directing the truck saw me and waved me to the other side of the street. “Just in case,” he said.

Of course, he was right.

(Also, that sidewalk should have been blocked off, hello.)

After I had walked on, I turned. As I watched, that pile of bricks tumbled over, flattening the fence and spilling all over the sidewalk.

Whew, a close call.

We all have them and have more of them, the older we get.

Once you become a certain age, it seems, doctors are always finding things that could be terrible. I continue to have doctors monitor me for possibly horrific things. In fact, I just got another all-clear after a week of worry.

Even with all these all-clears (thank God), I am left with residual fear. What about next time?

Because something will eventually get you, right?

How are we supposed to deal with that?

Yet, the bricks didn’t bother me … I am going to buy that construction worker a coffee, though.

Those Poor Children

Just wrote to my representatives about the children on the border, the ones the US government says it doesn't have to provide food and water and soap for (all while Trump charges the Secret Service, whose job it is to protect him and his family, rent at his properties). Disgusting.

Anyway, here's what I wrote:

I am writing to you today as one decent human being, one decent American, to another.

The migrant children, some as young as 5 months, having not only been ripped away from their families, but now being held without access to proper food, water, medical care, need to be taken care of.

Period.

Full-stop.

Do not use them as a bargaining chip to get funding for any other thing, including immigration enforcement.

Do not use them to complain, as I have keep hearing politicians do, that it’s “the other side’s” fault or that the children’s parents broke the law. I don’t care if their father is Jeffrey Dahmer and their mother is Ted Bundy. Which, incidentally, these people are not. They are refugees. Maybe ones that fit our asylum requirements, maybe not. Maybe they are “only” economic refugees. Maybe they are fleeing climate change or violence. But they are people and they, particularly their children, now artificially orphaned by the Trump Administration’s cruel policies, are in distress.

We are Americans. We take care of children. We take care of people in distress. It is the decent thing to do and Americans are decent people. Those there, on the ground, including government workers, are trying, even coming in on their off hours to help. Other Americans are coming with donations of diapers and soap and toothbrushes and paste – only to be turned away.

Other countries take care of such influxes with refugee camps and invite in organizations like the Red Cross. Why aren’t we doing something like that?

We used to be a country that could handle things like this, would even help other countries.

Please do whatever you can to take care of these children. And do it without delay.

Thank you.

Tchotchkes

I apologize to the college friend to whom I gave two life-sized, carved, wooden geese as a wedding present.

I don’t know what I was thinking.

Tchotchkes. Gimcracks. Doodads. Baubles. Gee Gaws. Knick Knacks. Dust Collectors.

Utterly useless. Oftentimes, ugly and cheap.

(I thought the geese were nice, though.)

 We all end up with such things, often for decades.

For some reason, they can be hard to get rid of.

These photos were taken by my daughter at a thrift store. The people who donated these … things … couldn’t bear to just throw them in the trash. They felt like someone else might … want? need? collect? … them.

I watch those shows, American Pickers and Storage Wars and even the one that started it all, on television at least, Antiques Roadshow, and when they quote some tantalizing price that some “collector” somewhere might pay, I think, “Yeah, show me that collector, right here, right now, with cash in hand, or I am throwing it out.”

Marie Kondo said something in her first book that stuck with me: When (I am paraphrasing here) you are contemplating something someone gave you as a gift but you don’t want, realize that it has served its purpose: that moment, when they gave it to you, a symbol that they had been thinking of you. Marie Kondo would have you thank the thing – and then throw it out!

Note: For anything that might be useful or desirable to someone, I do post it to give away on Nextdoor (and get anywhere from two to a bazillion responses; so, obviously, other people feel differently than me) or I donate it to Salvation Army.

So, my old friend, on whom I poxed those geese: If you haven’t already, please feel free to let them go.

A Dachshund Conundrum

Tony is lucky he's cute.

Dachshunds are notorious for several things: They are difficult to house-train, they hate rain and they  are stubborn.

E.B. White wrote of his dachshund: “When I address Fred I never have to raise either my voice or my hopes. He even disobeys me when I instruct him in something that he wants to do.”

I have run headlong into all these traits in our dachshund mix rescue, Tony.

I did manage to house-train Tony, more or less. You know those dogs who, once house-trained, would rather bust than pee in the house? Not Tony. When left alone, uncrated, I’m pretty sure he rings the bells on our door (how he lets us know he needs to go out), and when no one appears, shrugs his little dachshund shoulders, figures “I did my part” and pees on the floor.

Another charming dachshund trait: He pees when he’s excited. That’s a totally different thing, I tell my skeptical husband. Tony can’t help that.

Tony does hate to go out in the rain. He won’t go out alone, and when I go with him, he used to stand, miserable, getting wet, not doing the business he badly needed to do. We could be in that stand-off for hours.

I decided I’d make that better. I’d teach him the command guide dogs are taught: “Get busy.” Yup, seeing guide dogs are taught to relieve themselves on command.

It was not an onerous lesson. I’d just say the command and give him a treat, once he went. He figured it out quickly. Now, he knew what to do to get to go back in AND he got a treat.

Well … being a stubborn dachshund, he has decided he doesn’t like being told what to do.

He now hates to go outside, period. ☹

Blasts from the Past

Well, so, yeah, when I couldn't get up enough energy to go to bed last night, I Googled myself and came up with these two ancient clips. :)

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/04/style/game-not-cattle-on-texas-ranch.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/food/1993/10/20/food-newsletters-eating-between-the-lines/cef0fbf1-598f-45a3-96ba-0442b0631e05/?utm_term=.b9211b8ae28a

Things really don't ever disappear from the internet. :o

Yes, and ....

Really, improv is fun -- if scary -- to do.

Wrote about my experiences with it and Houston's improv scene recently for The Buzz Magazines.

Out and Back

Crescent Beach, Oregon

 My family is getting into hiking. Though we remain rank amateurs, we are learning.

The terminology: out and back (you go out, get to the end and turn around to end up at your starting point), loop (as the name suggests, you go in a big circle and end up back where you started) and point-to-point (you end up at a different place than where you started).

The difficulty rankings: easy, moderate, difficult. Though people have done studies and even math (!) to determine a ranking scale, it’s, of course, kind of a subjective thing.

Easy is easy. Usually short (as short as ¼ of a mile, no longer than 2), flat, this is the trail for strollers and wheelchairs.

Moderate is a leap up from that. Longer: the ones we’ve been on have been 5-6 miles. Some changes in elevation. My phone tells me, when I do one of these, that I’ve climbed anywhere from 40 to 60 flights of stairs.

Moderate is currently our sweet spot.

I’m a little hesitant to try difficult. These trails cover longer distances (8+ miles), with more elevation changes and more difficult terrain, requiring things like “scrambling,” using your hands as well as your feet.

Hot Springs Trail, Big Bend, Texas

I once wrote an article about thru-hikers, who hike for months at a time. Once they’ve hit their stride, so to speak, they hike around 20 miles a day, carrying all their stuff, then sleep in a tent on the ground, to get up in the morning and do it all over again.

Nah, I’m a proud “slack-packer.”

I feel I am roughing it if my hotel doesn’t have a spa. 😊

My husband and daughter at Hood River, Oregon

Nice day hiking, a shower, dinner at a restaurant serving locally sourced produce in some sort of cuisine before sleeping in a bed. Perfect.

That’s Not How Any of This Works

At least, it’s not supposed to. 

How can Russian intelligence use social media to interfere with American elections?

Because, apparently, a significant percentage of people lose sight of reality when they get online. They get ugly, nasty and scary.

It’s like there’s lead in our water supply.

Like the guy who threatened to use his Second Amendment right on me because I said I thought gun owners should have to carry liability insurance.

Hey, in case you are wondering why many of us are frightened of gun owners, there’s your Exhibit A.

Or the little old lady mentioned in this Washington Post article. At first, I felt bad for her. A smarty-pants blogger is making his living fooling simpletons on Facebook. The blogger, Christopher Blair, a liberal, makes up the most ridiculous “news items” he can and sees if he can fool (and humiliate) right-wing conservatives.

And he can: millions of them.

Like Shirley Chapian, a lonely 76-year-old living in a trailer in Pahrump, Nevada.

But look at what Shirley, looking like someone’s grandma, likes on Facebook:

“A Muslim woman with her burqa on fire: like. A policeman using a baton to beat a masked antifa protester: like. Hillary Clinton looking gaunt and pale: like. A military helicopter armed with machine guns and headed toward the caravan of immigrants: like.”

What the hell?

According to this superb and frightening 2017 Rolling Stone article, rather ordinary people are used by everyone from Russian intelligence to Trump campaign officials to Alex Jones to teenagers in Macedonia looking to make a buck, to spread bizarre and hate-filled conspiracy theories.

And this has already had, predictably, real and awful consequences.  After all, the New Zealand massacre, which killed 50 people, was planned by its perpetrator specifically to go viral.

What is wrong with us?

Listen for a Change

This 30-second commercial, has been fascinating me for months.

I see it when I do my Duolingo Spanish lessons. I am such a nerd for this app. I do Duolingo every day, and while I am far, far, far from understanding Spanish, every once in a while, someone will say something and I will understand a word or two!

I am also a total sucker for this app’s tricks. Currently, I have186 crowns and 3,765 gems and I am on an 8-day unbroken streak. I feel a pang when I miss a day and mess up a streak but I don’t, though the app always tells me I could, spend a dollar or two to reinstate my streak.

But the commercial.

For Audible, the audio book company.

It’s just so well done.

I see it often because I am a cheapie and use the free Duolingo version, which requires me to watch ads. I always even agree to watch more ads to get more gems just because gems must be good, right?

Pretty slick that I am using Duolingo to learn Spanish and I get the commercial where a trucker is using Audible to learn Spanish.

But there’s this whole other story going on. The cute-as-a-button trucker is learning Spanish because he has a crush on an equally adorable waitress at a diner he apparently stops at a lot, and she on him. The commercial starts with his Audible book explaining that “para” is used "when you are talking about something for someone.” He goes into the diner and nervously asks her, in Spanish, for a table for dinner. She, beaming at him, says his attempt is “pretty good.” The ad finishes, as they walk away together, by asking, “Could Audible inspire you to start something new?”

Aww. Love it.