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.