because even goddam shoe wheels need friends

Here we have my Costco folly. It has been sitting in my car trunk since I bought it with a coupon at Costco about a month ago. For a nanosecond, the giant box of food storage containers seemed like a good idea, and it was just $20, with the coupon.

By the time I got to the check-out counter, I was completely over the giant box of food storage containers and knew it was an ill-conceived impulse grab. But I felt strangely helpless to stop the march of events through check-out. Before I knew it, I was wheeling my giant box of food storage containers toward the car, already planning to return it.

It’s not that we can’t use some new food storage containers. Our collection is sad and stained. We’ve had to toss a couple that split at the seams. Some of it was supposed to be disposable but was never disposed of. It dates back a few Christmases, came to us filled with Christmas goodies.

That’s one of the problems. Believe it or not, some of my old food storage containers have sentimental value. We have the holiday treats memory. One of our containers has “Zsa Zsa Battles” written in Sharpie on the lid. We used it to send kibble to the kennel. We have a salad container that belonged to our late friend Kevin Findley. It was not significant to his life in any way, but it’s a homely little daily reminder of someone we miss.

In a way, my Costco folly is a hostile interloper, trying to force its fancy big city “snapware” ways into my cozy little ragtag collection.

Also, we really don’t need 32 food storage containers. The giant box contains enough food containers to contain the food of a family of 12. There are just three of us (we have already ascertained that dogs use food storage containers in this house).

I blame the coupon. I got a catalog of coupons from Costco and felt compelled to use some. Had it not been for the coupon, I wouldn’t have given the giant box of food storage containers a glance, despite its prominent display in the store. But I had been recently annoyed by our food storage containers, which are not the least bit modular and frequently topple out of the cupboard. I had a coupon and the giant box of food containers was right there in front of my face. A confluence of events forced my hand. I couldn’t not buy the giant box of food storage containers.

I considered trying to hide it from Tom but wasn’t completely sure if he would be disgusted or delighted. Tom can still surprise me sometimes. He’d been griping about our incorrigible pile of unstackable old food storage containers recently. Still, I wasn’t surprised when he expressed puzzled dismay at the giant box of food storage containers. I immediately assured him that I would return it.

But, as you see, that never happened. The thing has never made it out of my car trunk. It sits next to the plastic bags that will someday be recycled. Every time I open the trunk, I feel ashamed. Were it not for the shame, I might open the box and take out a few storage containers to replace some of our most tired old food containers. But as long as the old grotty ones work, that feels wasteful. And as long as the box remains sealed, I can delude myself that someday I will return it to Costco or give it away as a gift to someone I don't like very much.

Will that ever happen? Maybe. Or maybe someday I will take my Costco folly out of the car and put it in the garage where it will live a lonely and neglected life. Not unlike the goddam shoe wheel (which at least lives in the house).

i'm ever-so confused

cotton candy tomorrow night

Oh yeah--tomorrow night, I'll be at the AllGood Cafe to see a screening of Cotton Candy, a 1978 Ron Howard film about a battle of the bands that was filmed in Dallas. The bad guys band features my longtime buddy Mark Ridlen a k a DJMrRid and one of my first roommates in Dallas, John Painter. (Boy, did that living situation end badly...I try not to think about it.) I've never seen the movie but I've heard about it for years and tomorrow night should be a hoot and a holler.

That's John in the bottom photo, far right, and Mark next to him. That's a heapin' helpin' o hair you got there, Mark.



Read more about the movie here.

dillard's news

I see in today's news that investors want to oust Dillard's management. I take no responsibility for this.

However, here is a Dillard's disaster that has been sitting on my desk waiting for attention. This poor girl appears to have collapsed under the weight of her over-accessorization. I think the watch attached to her purse might have been the last straw.



I have lots more to say about lots of things but I'm trying to catch up after a week away from my desk. Please stay tuned. The goddam shoe wheel will make another appearance and things will get psychological again. But for the moment, I am dealing with Cream of Wheat brain. It happens sometimes.

P.S. My new ambition in life is to "go rogue."

cactus

At the opening of this travel writers’ conference I’m attending, the host city, Scottsdale, showed a video that was supposed to inspire the attending writers to further explore Arizona. The image choices they made were curious—they were all shots of models in various states of lolling, lounging and sometimes laughing with the sheer joy of Scottsdale. They lolled by pools, they lolled in spas, they laughed with unrestrained pleasure in restaurants and bars. Now, if I were looking for someplace to loll and laugh, Scottsdale would definitely come to mind.

But if I were making the video, instead of lovely female models in various poses, I would have shown nothing but cactus. (I reject the word “cacti” and choose the alternate plural.)


I’m in love with the cactus here. So many types, so many personalities, all of them kind of prickly (rimshot) but nonetheless lovable. The chubby little cholla, the sturdy barrel, the prickly pear, which makes a nice cocktail, and the iconic giant saguaro.



Saguaro grow slowly and a really big one can be 200 years old. They are protected here, and they, too, each have personalities. They are stately, loopy, droopy, spare, crowded. I saw one so convoluted it looked like some kind of saguaro orgy.

I could spend a week here doing nothing but photographing cactus.

seasonal musing

Is it election day yet?

The campaigning has receded to a dull, annoying buzz in my ears. I care as much as I ever did, but thinking about it has worn a blister on my brain. When I’m flipping through TV channels, the very sight of McCain or Palin or even my guy causes a stab of pain, like when you slip into the same shoes that raised the blister in the first place. I just can’t look anymore. I can’t think about it anymore. And I don’t matter. I’ve made my choice, nobody needs to persuade me of anything. Besides, I still live in Texas where my vote is likely to be a formality.

I’m confused about the whole idea of undecided voters, though. How can you be undecided between these two candidates? I suspect the undecideds are Republicans who see the obvious problems with their ticket but are struggling with the idea of crossing the aisle.

Either that or they’re idiots.

I’m not reading a lot about the economic crisis either. Again, not that I don’t care but at the moment, it’s way too big to wrap my little mind around. I don’t know yet how it will affect me. Will I be waiting in a bread line? Selling apples on a street corner? (And might that be more lucrative than freelance writing?) Is someone going to take my house away? At the moment, nothing has changed for us except the contents of our IRAs, which is scary, but I’m not looking until all the wild swings stop. Right now, we’re as broke and as rich as we ever were.

I may learn something this weekend, at a conference for travel writers, since many of the editors attending work for publications about luxury travel. While I think the depression will have to reach breadline proportions before people give up travel altogether, I suspect the trend of the last decade towards increasingly over-the-top luxury in travel is about to screech to a halt. With that, magazines such as Travel & Leisure might have to rethink their mission. Perhaps it’s time to start a magazine aimed at rail-riding hobos…Bandana-on-a-Stick Traveler.

At any rate, all this stuff is about to be steamrolled by the oncoming train that is the holiday season. The Halloween season started weeks ago. Target’s shelves have been merry with Halloween trimmings since September. Do you have your Halloween wreath hanging? Is your Halloween tree up? Do you have your Halloween whoopee cushion? Yes, really. I found one at Target, bought it for MsKrit as an early Halloween present.

That’s the full extent of my participation in the holiday. I’m back in Halloween Grinch mode. As always, ours will be the house with the lights out and the door locked. Trick away, you can’t scare me. Until Nov. 4.

my husband helps out

Tom husband is very supportive of my work. I'm traveling and busy this week, but he wanted to help insure that the high quality of my blog is maintained, so when he opened his morning paper and saw this, he rushed it to me immediately.


Where this goes wrong is with the strange glowing thighs and the way her hands are strategically placed to mask/draw attention to her childbearing hips. Which actually appear to be smaller than they appear.

cranky yankee

No, not me. This lady:


How did she ever hold up?

fair fare

I bet nobody has ever used that clever headline before.

Today is the last day of the fair. I am proud to report that Tom and I returned on Friday, determined to do a better job of it than last time. And, in fact, we had lots more fun, although we did even less.

Jessica Simpson was appearing that night—part of the impetus for going, just for grins—and the fair was packed. We mashed into the crowd for a few bars of her show and what a caterwauling that was. Yikes. Every time our wandering took us past the Chevy Stage we would watch from afar briefly (a much better view than from in the thick of the crowd) but mostly she was background music for dinner.

We started with a turkey leg. Tom was skeptical, he didn’t remember last year’s turkey leg discovery (thanks MsKrit) but after a few smoky bites he was persuaded. It’s a hideous mess to eat—many tendons involved—but worth the carnivory.

The good thing about the turkey leg, I explained to Tom, is that it allows me to feel a lot less guilty about the funnel cake than a corny dog does. I feel the same about my usual annual caramel apple. (I didn’t have one this year. The chocolate strawberry dipped waffle balls were my poor substitute.) But a caramel apple is an apple, so therefore I am permitted funnel cake as well, since it’s not really like two deserts.

We also had tornado taters and broke tradition with a Reuben sandwich instead of a brat at the Hans Mueller tent. The brats are better.

Friday’s funnel cake was of the highest quality. I will only eat funnel cake from The Dock and they outdid themselves on this one. It was golden crispy on the outside, tender on the inside. Perfect. We ran into someone Tom knows there, and she said The Dock serves a grilled cheese that’s necessary to her annual fair-going experience. Maybe next year.

We ran into another colleague of Tom’s on the Midway (Tom has a lot of attractive young women colleagues) and she agreed with us that the chicken fried bacon was not all that. This appears to be the consensus on the chicken fried bacon: Meh.

The fair full of people is a lot more fun than the fair devoid of people. We arrived in time to catch the big beginning of the light show—with fireworks and bursts of open flame—but then when it got boring (classic rock and laser lights), we wandered off. We watched the rides on the Midway. Neither of us enjoy riding rides but we get a lot of vicarious enjoyment out of watching other people ride them. We sat on a bench and MFOPd. (Made Fun of People.) We somehow managed to kill three hours.

Eating and mocking. It’s our version of a good time. We have successfully done State Fair ’07.

my dirty house

Since the first time I experienced the delirious joy of having someone clean my house, perhaps a decade ago, I have had a cleaning lady. I would rather go without food than go without someone to come in every two weeks and turn my house shiny and fragrant. I can do daily maintenance but without that cleaning lady-clean starting point, things get ugly fast.

I feel a little guilty hiring someone to clean when it’s just Tom and Jack and me. And I work at home. Theoretically, Tom and I should be able to keep our little house clean.

I resisted the whole idea at first. It seemed so bourgeois. I was squeamish about it in a class-conscious liberal way. But after spending yet another weekend doing something I don’t enjoy, poorly, I finally succumbed. The first time you hire someone to scrub your toilet because you’re just too lazy to do it is humbling. But not that too humbling to have them back two weeks later.

Not only do I enjoy having others clean for me, they do it a thousand times better than me. They know what they’re doing. They’re Professionals.

My parents always had someone clean. They both worked full time, they had three kids and they had an enormous apartment. Something had to give. Our first house cleaner was a guy named Warren. He taught my older brother to play the drums when Nick was maybe 7 or 8 or years old. Warren suggested my parents buy a rubber practice pad and drumsticks and launched Nick’s career as a musician, which continues today.

A few of my parents’ cleaning ladies were Haitian. My parents tried to speak French to them, but their Haitian French was too different from my parents’ Continental French and so they muddled through with no common language. One broke the Tiffany lamp shade that hung above our kitchen table. I don’t think she came back.

Irma was my first house cleaner. She cleaned my house for a long time. She was obsessive-compulsive, which is not a bad thing in a cleaning lady, if you know what I mean. Once she decided she could no longer bear our filthy porch walls, so she dragged out the garden hose and scrubbed them down. (Never occurred to me. Now I do it regularly.) Irma also would arrange the coasters and remote controls into strange and haunting little shrines on the coffee table.

But Irma often broke things—including a beloved marble and bronze Art Deco figurine—plus we weren’t allowed to call her directly because her husband didn’t know she was working for us. Irma had a lot of demons, I think. We had to let her go.

The woman who has been cleaning for us the past few years, Maria, has suddenly become unreliable. I’m completely flexible about days if she wants to call and change them, but she hasn’t even called the past couple of times she couldn’t make it, so screw it. Last time she showed up a day later, this time I haven’t heard a peep out of her.

I’m actually relieved. I’ve been trying to work up the balls to fire her for a long time. She doesn’t clean that well, she puts things away wherever she feels like it and we could never find things after she left, and she often blew through here in two hours, which made her hourly rate pretty high.

But all that liberal guilt … For months now, I’ve been vowing to fire her but I just haven’t had it in me. But since she now seems to have quit, I am spared the effort.

Tom and I have been cleaning the house today, so it doesn’t get unbearable before we find someone new. We’re finding some very nasty surfaces and corners. It seems Maria only cleaned what she could see. I guess I’m not a very good employer, she might have taken advantage of me. Maybe I should have offered her more money. She never asked for a raise, she just sort of gave herself one by blowing through faster and faster. And we were paying the going rate.

Of course, I wouldn’t clean my house for the money I was paying her. But then again, you couldn’t pay me enough money to clean someone else’s house. You couldn’t pay me enough money to clean my own house. I’d much rather pay someone else. A Professional.

on dread

Among my many neuroses about which I "enjoy" ruminating is dread.

For example: I gave a speech about my Yankee Chick book this week to a local newcomers group. I have given dozens of speeches on the topic in the seven years since the book was released and I’m actually pretty good at it.

When I first started promoting the book, I simply decided not to be nervous about speaking in public. Most people under most circumstances, when they come to a program like the ones I give, are there with every intention of having fun. These audiences are mine to lose and seeming awkward and anxious is a good way to lose them. So when I step up to a lectern, I banish all anxiety and have fun through sheer force of will.

Of course, I have had some clunker experiences. There was a reading I did for book club that met in a noisy bar. I had to bellow over the racket and I still don’t think everyone heard me. Nobody had fun that night.

Then there was the time I was invited to speak at a community college. The room was full, which was great, but it was an unnervingly deadpan audience. No matter how hilarious I tried to be, I got blank stares in return. When I finally, finally, finally wrapped it up—the longest 45 minutes in history—I found out that my audience was mostly ESL students who had been required to attend.

Some sort of cruel joke?

So anyway, I suppose I have some reason to be nervous about an approaching speech. But nervous doesn’t do justice to the intense feeling of dread I experience as a speech day approaches.

I usually am booked for these things months in advance. When it’s four months away, Sure! Happy to do it! The closer it gets, the more onerous it seems. By the night before a speech, I feel like I’m preparing to face a firing squad.

Once I’m in front of the audience everything is fine (provided my audience speaks English), but what a lot of energy I waste on dread up until that point.

Today, my dread is about a trip to Arizona next week. It’s going to be a great trip, but it requires waking up early a couple of days. One day, I have to be up, dressed, packed and checked out of the hotel by no later than 6:45 a.m. And my flight home at the end of the week is at the appalling hour of 5 a.m. (Using frequent flier miles is getting harder and harder these days.) This means I’ll have to be out of the hotel at about 4 a.m.

I know, I know. Not a big deal. In fact, it’s a pretty small deal. A miniscule deal. Not really a deal at all. So I wake up early--so what? I rarely oversleep, so I’m not afraid of that. I’m just dreading… what? Feeling tired? Having bad hair? Missing an hour of sleep? I can’t figure it out and yet this dread is palpable and it will increase as those days get closer.

Strange.

***

OK, I know you can’t face your weekend without your Dillard’s fix. And here she is. Twice.



Tom sez: “Ooh, which one is worse?” Good question, although the one in the foreground appears painfully crammed into her confusing outfit so my vote goes there.

Oh, and BTW, I got a call from the National Enquirer this week. They are hot on the trail of the Dr. Phil/Robin story. Evidently, they have evidence that the couple is living separately and they are seeking sources to confirm. We can only hope this big news will knock Joe the Plumber out of the headlines because I, for one, am sick to death of him.

morning paper

I don't have to tell you how much bad news there is in the paper these days. Dismal.

That's why I like to ignore the real news and concentrate on everything else to get my morning laughs.

For example--what, exactly, is happening to this woman?



If you buy new windows you are then consumed by balloons?

Then we have the ever-entertaining apoplectic readers:



And a special shout-out to Dear Abby for this:



That is all. I am busy.

squeezing out a post

Sorry to be erratic about posting. Rocktober is taking its toll on me and I struggle to string sentences together. I’ve been socializing a lot, which is a good thing but leeches my energy. The more I socialize, the weirder people seem. Myself included. I’m getting a little obsessed with the weirdness all around me, which means I’ve overextended myself.

I have one more trip this month, that will require a great deal of interaction (writers’ conference) and then I feel a serious bout of reclusiveness coming on. Just in time for the holidays.

To make up for my bad blogging habits, here’s a link (thanks Ms Krit) that promises lots of thought-provoking fun for all.

bless her heart

I don't even know how to mock this.

my new favorite place

This is not an easy place to do justice to in a photo and my very, very, very annoying day of lostness and overshooting turns-ness and generally screwing things upness gave me little time to try at the Tallgrass Prairie Preserve in northern Oklahoma. (See here.) I will return, though. It is the largest protected piece of tallgrass prairie in the world--a sea of grass and tranquility.

And bison.



The day was gorgeous, the only sounds out on the trail were birds and insects and rustling grasses, the scent was baked earth...and I was in a hurry. All wrong. All wrong. I had about 30 minutes out of my car at the preserve and the rest of the time was spent getting lost, getting there, getting frustrated, having to drive all the way back to my hotel to check out, killing time until a scheduled tour in Bartlesville that ended up not so great....Ugh. Travel can break your heart. Especially if you're me--directionally challenged.

I love solo road trips but not having a navigator can suck. I was on rural two-lane highways most of yesterday (much of it on the Osage reservation) and if I missed a turn or got mixed up, I had to pull over to consult my map. But finding places to pull over wasn't always easy. And so I would be driving along, cursing, knowing I was burning time and gas in the wrong direction and unable to do a thing about it.

Time for GPS.

After my messed up day in Bartlesville in northern OK, I thought I'd try a different route back south than I took north, but that involved more time on small roads and lots of little towns. You'd get 100 yards of 65 mph, then approach a town and it was 45, 35, 25, 25, 25--then 65 for another 100 yards, then 45, 35, 25... I was due at Lara's house for dinner in Norman at 7 and it looked like I would never get there.

What a frustrating day. I have callouses on my hands from driving. No kidding.

On the other hand, Oklahoma is double-A-OK. I see lots of exploring of this state in my future.

Now I am comfy at one of my favorite hotels, the Sooner Legends Inn. (See here.) All the rooms here are themed to a OU football game, star or other legend. They put me in the Texas-OU room--appropriately since the big game is tomorrow. I hope my car (with Texas plates) wasn't egged in the parking lot.

feet du jour

Like my new shoes? Oh, those? That's Jackson, the blind kangaroo, at the Little River Zoo in Norman, Oklahoma. (Very cool place. See here.)

more on cute old folks

I'll be darned. This NYT article is all about the way we talk to/about elderly people--a discussion we had here recently.

when I shake my head, this falls out my ears

Some loose thoughts that have been rattling around in my head. Maybe if I get them out I’ll have room for fully developed thoughts.

Last night, DJ MrRid came over with eight DVDs of The Midnight Special. You oldies remember those—the live rock shows on TV every week. Oddly, I didn't watch them back then but we had a blast last night. Earth Wind and Fire. Small Faces. Aerosmith. Kiss. KC and the Sunshine Band. Minnie Ripperton. Peter Frampton. Delicious and we still have hours to go.

I was struck, once again, how nice it was to see people on TV with lumpy hair, crooked teeth, pores. People who look like the people we see every day, only dressed up. Or not dressed up. Those were not dressing up days. Some guys looked pretty smelly. But still, it was nice to see people I could imagine hanging out with instead of people so perfectly toned, exquisitely groomed, and impeccably dressed, I would be struck dumb in their presence.

What are we doing to ourselves? We're beating ourselves up with relentless images of unattainable beauty. We're wasting countless hours and dollars on things that have nothing to do with our true potential value to society. We hate ourselves.

**

Has anyone every pined for you? I don’t think anyone has ever pined for me, and that kinda bums me out.

**

Our front yard swarms with busy, busy squirrels and I’m not the only one who has noticed. A red-tail hawk has been hunting here. The other morning, I saw him lift off with a squirrel. I’m haunted by the image of the squirrel’s little legs hanging down helplessly.

**

Tom and I went to the Fair on Friday. Funny how sometimes the Fair clicks for us and sometimes it’s just off. Last year was great, this year was off. We should know better than to try the exciting new fried foods of the year. They’re expensive and we’re almost always disappointed. The chicken fried bacon ($6, I think) was mostly salty, the chocolate dipped strawberry waffle balls ($5) were gummy. Nasty. I didn’t finish mine. Fortunately, my funnel cake was as good as I expected.

But I had the wrong shoes and my feet hurt and Tom had been working like a dog all week and he was tired. We saw a daredevil act, but heights make me so tense that I couldn’t enjoy it. We saw the dancing dogs, sat in a new car, saw a kid throw up, looked at the creative arts. But this visit, we weren’t feeling it. Mostly we felt sticky. The waffle balls were our last-ditch effort at fun and when they didn’t work out, we went home and fell asleep on the couch.



(State Fair 2007)

Although, lest I romanticize State Fair '07, I will report that the fabulous expensive pillows we bought last year suck. They are rock hard and I woke up with a stiff neck the two or three times I tried to sleep on one.

**

Last week, a friend and I went to a dance recital at SMU. Student dancers dancing student choreography. The kids were all very talented and it was a lot of fun.

I’m not big on regrets. I decided long ago not to nurse regrets and have been mostly successful. I acknowledge my regrets but don’t wallow in them. But one of my regrets is the way I ignored my body through my youth. I envy dancers for their control of, respect for, and joy in their bodies. I wish I could dance. I mean really dance—turn my body into a leaf or a stream, into anger or ecstasy. I think that would be swell.

a useful post for your coming week

This awesome NYT blog post (and comments) is called Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User. It's a collection of keyboard shortcuts for PCs, Macs and other technology and an embarrassment of riches.

a giggle

No need to watch the whole video. The best bit is less than a minute in.

back into the archives

Hey look! My first feet photo was not a photo at all. My toenails are like Monet's water lilies--I never tire of their many moods. I made this sketch on my first and only visit (so far) to Washington D.C., in 1976.

My best friend Susan and I went to celebrate our HS graduation. (Our nation's Bicentennial. We have the Bicentennial yearbook to prove it and a tassel with a little Liberty Bell on it.) We stayed in the Howard Johnson's where Nixon's henchmen listened to bugged conversations from the DNC offices across the street, at the Watergate. Too bad I didn't sketch the view of the room beyond my own feet. But drawing feet is hard enough. I probably exhausted myself on that.



Here is Susan lolling in the room.

I've never been good at sketching landscapes but at least I tried.





I preferred sketching the people. These aren't great but at least I was in there swinging. Haven't done it in years and I'm afraid to try 'cause I know I've lost it.





And there you go, today's Lazy Gal post.