Changing Our Collective Minds (And How Difficult It Is)

education, etc., family, government, , , ,

We’ve heard a lot lately about the Constitution, particularly the 2nd, 14th and 25th Amendments, and the Bill of Rights. Most of us don’t have a clue what those amendments mean, and I’m here to help. (I’m not a Constitutional scholar, nor do I play one on TV, but I do know a few things on the topic, and I’d like to share them with you. But I digress.)

The Bill of Rights

After the Constitution was written, it became apparent that it didn’t cover everything that needed to be covered. There were disagreements over ratifying (the states agreeing to) the whole Constitution, so “amendments” were needed. (There were originally 12 amendments, but they were pared down to ten. These were considered “natural rights” that the government could not take away from the people.

(Nonetheless, the Powers That Be have been chipping away at the Bill of Rights. The right to freedom of speech and the right of free assembly have been nibbled away at by the courts. For example, shouting “fire” in a crowded theater is not a protected right. And the freedom of the press doesn’t mean that you can publish anything you want. It just means that the government can’t censor or suppress your writing before it’s published. Nor does a publishing company have to publish it. You can still privately publish or say anything you want, but no one else has to publish it or agree with it. You have not been cancelled. But I digress again, at length.)

The 2nd Amendment

The 2nd amendment is under fire as well. Most people know it as the right to own guns. However, it says that a “well-regulated militia” is necessary for the protection of the country. (Unfortunately, most people who form “militias” are not well-regulated or even regulated at all. Nowadays, it generally refers to the National Guard. But I digress.) I have opinions about non-militia citizens owning guns, primarily that they should be licensed after proof of instruction on how to use them safely. I will not argue this point at this time and in this place. So don’t push me.

The 14th Amendment

The 14th Amendment is now controversial, as well. It covers what is called “birthright citizenship.” This means that anyone born in the United States is automatically a citizen. It sounds pretty simple, but there you have it. Some politicians and citizens feel it’s no longer needed (or maybe no longer relevant.)

I avoided an ugly argument with my brother-in-law recently by stressing that it didn’t matter what the original intent of the founders was or why it should or should not still apply (though I have opinions on those questions). I argued that those considerations don’t matter, but that if you wanted to get rid of the Amendment, there’s a process you have to go through. It involves getting both houses of Congress to agree (good luck) or two-thirds of the states to agree (also good luck). The point is that this takes a lot of time, debate, and argument. My point to my brother-in-law was that, if you wanted to get rid of the 14th Amendment, there’s a process you have to go through, and it takes a lot of time and relies on a lot of people agreeing to it. You can’t just say, “I don’t like it. Make it go away.” The only Amendment that’s ever been repealed was the one to make Prohibition go away.

(Anyway, the repeal process is also true if you want to get rid of the 2nd Amendment. But I digress still more.)

The 25th Amendment

The 25th Amendment concerns getting rid of the president. It says that if the president is no longer able to fulfill his duties, there is a process to ensure succession. First, the vice-president takes the reins. If he’s not able either, the President Pro Tempore of the Senate is next. If he’s also not able, the Speaker of the House steps in. Changing that is another process that can be long and drawn-out. It doesn’t involve simply holding a new election. It’s usually used only when the president or vice-president is under anesthesia for an operation.

The Amendments to the Constitution were difficult to add and are difficult to get rid of. My point is that when the American public changes its mind, it’s purposely not easy to change our fundamental documents. (And I’m sure if I got any of this wrong, hordes of constitutional scholars and maybe my brother-in-law will descend on me. But I digress even more.)

(Yeah, I know this isn’t funny, but I warned you in the subhead that there would be rants. Now that I have this out of my system, I’ll try to be amusing next week.)

Hebrew Pill Caddies and Other Low-Tech Med-Tech

etc., health, humor, travel, ,

My husband is going to the eye specialist on Monday to have a consultation on his cataracts. There, I assume they will show him a little film (if he can see it) about the latest in cataract surgery, which will presumably feature lasers and maybe robots or some other high-tech med tools. Doppler radar, maybe, or AI scalpels.

Over the past year, my experience with med-tech has been decidedly low-tech, other than my bionic knee and my Frankenstein ankle. Everything else I’ve had to deal with has been a bit more, shall we say, basic?

The Transfer Board

This is exactly what it says—a board you use to transfer from one surface to another, like from a wheelchair to a bed or from a bed to a chair. By board, they mean heavy-duty plastic, like a huge cutting board. I learned about this amazing invention during a stay in a post-acute rehab facility that offered five-times-a-week physical and occupational therapy, necessitated by the bionic knee and Frankenstein ankle.

You sit on the board and slide, or rather lift your butt somewhat while leaning forward and scootching. (I’ve seen wooden ones in catalogs, polyurethaned to avoid the heartbreak of splinters. Even ones with butt-shaped seats that go down a track from end to end, so you don’t have to scootch. Too bougie for me, though. I’ve stuck to the plastic variety, sometimes literally. But I digress.)

Transfer boards are reversible and even upside-down-able. They’re easy to clean, should you be wearing a hospital gown and shart as you scootch. And now that’s a thing you know.

The Knee Sling

A knee sling is like an arm sling, only even more annoying and cumbersome. It’s a piece of cloth, sometimes with a metal frame, that is attached to a walker. It’s what you use to practice walking on one foot when you’re not allowed to put weight on the other one.

The procedure goes thus:

  1. From a sitting position, fling yourself to standing on one leg within the confines of the walker. (In my case, it was not just a fling, but a massive push-off and a lurch. I was having enough trouble standing up already, but doing it one-legged was well-nigh impossible. (Un)fortunately, I got lots of practice. But I digress again.)
  2. Bend the other leg (the one that can’t bear weight) into a 90-degree angle as you stand, without kicking the chair you were sitting on.
  3. Try to guide the bent leg into the sling without letting go of the walker, which will be essential at this point. Good luck.
  4. Ambulate (hop), using your one “good” leg and the walker for balance. (I found a decided tendency for the steering (me) to pull to the left, as my right leg was not involved in pushing off. But I digress some more.)
  5. Continue doing this until the “bad” leg can once again bear weight. I think this is meant to teach patience, an OT skill, at the same time.

The Pill Caddy

Not directly tied to the rehab stays. In the rehab, the nurses brought my meds and injections twice daily, plus one extra pill visit three hours before wake-up time so I could digest it before breakfast.

Once I was home, though, I had to leave town for three days. I threw my bag-o’-drugs (literally a Meijer bag full of pill bottles) in our duffel bag and off we went. The drive back from Florida to Ohio meant we had to stay in a hotel (with an ADA-accessible room) halfway home.

When we got home, however, the bag-o’-drugs was nowhere to be found—not in the duffel, not in the car. I called the hotel management, who, after several days, admitted that the cleaning staff said it simply wasn’t there.

The people who had to refill all those scripts said I should fill out a police report or they couldn’t do it, as there were controlled substances involved. (No opioids, though.) I can just picture calling the police about it.

(Hello, Georgia police? I probably left my bag-o’-drugs in hotel room 109. No, I can’t come in to fill out a report. I’m 400 miles away. You’ll send me a report form, and I should fill it out and return it? Then you’ll process it and investigate the hotel? And get back to me sometime after that? And leave me unmedicated the whole time? Just no. But I digress still more.)

I finally got the scripts refilled after a doctor visit and three days of phone calls (none of them to the police). I owned my idiocy and went shopping online for a pill caddy.

I never knew there were so many kinds available—one set of pills per day, four sets of pills per day, one-week, two-week, monthly, easy-open buttons, vertical dispensers, and more. I settled on a no-frills model without the turbo-charged carburetor. One-week, twice-a-day.

I was all set to click “order” when I realized something. The caddy I had chosen was embossed with the days of the week, but they were backward. The names of the days were not mirror writing, of course, but the days of the week went from left to right: “Sunday, Saturday, Friday, Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday,” so you’d end up taking your pills from the right to the left, like Hebrew writing. I searched again and found multiple products labeled that way.

I ordered one with orderly days. It should arrive today. Filling it each week will be tedious, but not nearly so tedious as calling the Georgia police and getting transferred from department to department until I reach the department of clueless packers.

On the Road Again

etc., family, humor, travel, , ,

What do you say when someone offers you an 18-year-old car? If you’re me, you say, “Thank you very much,” and you fly down to Florida to pick it up.

Mom Reily had a Mercury Milan that she rarely used, and she said I could have it. So, I have a new-to-me car at long last.

What makes the Mercury more than a museum piece is that it has only 40,000 miles on it—a literal “only driven once a week to church by a little old lady” car. And before we arrived in Florida, it had been thoroughly cleaned and adorned with new tires, and looked over by a mechanic. You can’t ask for much better than that.

The Road Trip

That was how we ended up flying down to Florida to pick up the car. (We thought about having it shipped, but once we added up the plane tickets, gas, and supplies (including hard pretzels and cereal, which, for some reason, Dan always takes on road trips), the cost was a wash, which the car had also had. But I digress.) All the flights were on time and no more or less hideous than economy travel ever is.

Then we drove the car back to Ohio. We figured to be gone for three days: one to fly down there, and two to drive back, stopping at a motel halfway. I kept Dan awake on the road and practiced driving. (With my various infirmities, it wouldn’t have done to leave me alone for three days. I might have tripped over the cat and fallen. But I digress again.)

On each day of the trip back, we drove well into the night. Partly this was because Georgia is a very tall state, and partly because I insisted on stopping at sit-down restaurants. I didn’t want fast food wrappers piling up or taco spills on the upholstery. We even found a Denny’s in Valdosta, Georgia, that was quite nice and had a lovely apple pie crisp à la mode for Dan to have on his birthday, which happened in the middle of our trip. (A little Googling tells me that there are only nine Denny’s in Georgia and only around 1,300 in the whole U.S. Also, there are only 24 in Ohio, none of which are near me. I have fond memories of one particular Denny’s, though. Back in the day, after practice, our martial arts group would convene there, taking up the big, round corner booth, and discuss the finer points of punching someone in the throat. But I digress at length.)

Google Maps helped a lot, except when we got off I-75 to find one of those sit-down restaurants. Then it would insist that we make a U-turn or go down Cherry Blossom Lane in order to get back to the highway. But we never would have found our hotel in Marietta without it.

Now that we have the Mercury home, I have freedom that I haven’t known for years. I will be able to do errands, get to appointments, meet friends for lunch (looking at you, Ellen Kollie, Kelly Heir, and Beth Bengough), or drive myself to Urgent Care without Dan having to take off work. That means Dan will have more freedom, too, which is also a Good Thing.

I know many people name their cars. I don’t usually, though the little Chevette I once owned was “Baby Car-Car.” Will the Mercury get a name? Right now, I’m thinking of it as The Freedom Machine. Or maybe Harriet, after Mom Reily. (No, maybe not. I’d end up saying things like “Someone scratched Harriet in the parking lot” or “Harriet has plenty of gas.” Dan says to call it Mom, as in “My Mother, the Car.” (Yes, we’re old.) But I digress yet again.) Perhaps, as cats do, the car will let me know what her name is. I imagine I’ll be as surprised as anyone when she does.

Game Night Is Over!

etc.

I haven’t played board games in a while, but that’s largely because no one will play with me. I’m considered a killer shark at Scrabble With Friends. (I knew one woman, Joan Milano, who could—and did—regularly beat me. She didn’t have a bigger vocabulary than I do, but she sure knew how to use the board, playing double- and triple-word scores and filling gaps in a way that cut off access to other parts of the board. But I digress.)

Recently, I discovered Scrabble Go, a game I can play on my phone, so I’m giving my spelling muscles a much-needed workout. I managed to win one game when my tiles were almost all vowels.

For a while, I was obsessed with Texas Hold’em because I had read the book Positively Fifth Street, all about professional poker players. (I also once read Word Freak: Heartbreak, Triumph, Genius, and Obsession in the World of Competitive Scrabble Players, a book that revealed the dark underbelly of competitive Scrabble, which I didn’t know had a dark underbelly until then. But I digress again.) I even watched the World Series of Poker on TV. (There weren’t any games to speak of around here except for charity games at the VFW. And one private game that was robbed, leaving the participants with no money and no clothes. A casino has been built just outside of town, but I have no real desire to go. That part of my life is over. I have moved on. But I digress some more.)

I also played a lot of Trivial Pursuit back in the day, and again, it was hard to find opponents. One night, however, we had another couple over (let’s call them Sam and Sheila).

We set up the game board, card boxes, and pies. (There was some controversy at the time—and still may be, for all I know—about whether the little triangular pieces were called “pies.” I come down firmly on the side that says the round holders were the pies and the triangular ones should be called “slices.” I know I’m in the minority, though. But I digress even more.)

Anyway, we might have ended up playing couple against couple, but when the subject of teams came up, Sam turned to Dan and said, “C’mon, Dan. Let’s whoop their asses.” Dan shied away from him. He knew what was coming, but there was no way to back out.

Play proceeded pretty much without incident until Sam pulled a card and said, “This will really stump them!” Again, Dan gave him major side-eye. “What is the national flower of Switzerland and Austria?” Sam intoned with a superior smile on his face.

Sheila and I looked at each other. Then we burst into song together: “Edelweiss, eidelweiss. Every morning you gre-e-e-t me!”

Sam looked annoyed. “What is that?” he asked. “What does it even look like?”

Sheila and I could recognize a straight line when we heard one. We gleefully launched back into the song: “Small and whi-i-te, clean and bri-i-ght; you look happy to me-e-e-t me-e-e!”

Just to rub it in, we continued with even more enthusiasm. “Blossom of snow, may you bloom and grow, bloom and grow for-ev-er. Eidelweiss, eidelwiess, bless my homeland for-ev-er!”

The game went on from there, but there wasn’t really any competition after that. Sheila and I sat back smugly, correctly fielding questions from every topic except sports.

As I recall, we never played board games with them again.

It Came From Michigan!

cats, etc., humor, pets, ,
Toby, sleeping peacefully with his prey

I was in my study, peacefully watching a rerun on the Food Network. I was warm and cozy in my gray sweats and under my blue blanket. All was quiet in the house, as it usually is when I’m home alone. Dan was at work at Meijer. The cat was snuggled up asleep in my arms, and I kissed him on the head without disturbing him. It was a good morning. But that wasn’t going to last.

All at once, I heard a hideous clatter and clang from behind me. It sounded like crashing bottles, clashing metal, and thundering, heavy boxes. It sounded like someone had broken the window behind me and was trying to climb in. Or like the tornado that had destroyed our house in 2019.

Suddenly, I was bleeding and bruised. My arm stung. My ears rang.

Disaster!

It wasn’t an intruder or a tornado, however. It was what we call a stuffalanche. (There’s an interesting portmanteau word for those interested in such things. But I digress.) One of the bottles, boxes, or jars that lived on top of the minifridge had shifted, tumbled off the side, and overturned the garbage can next to it, releasing numerous soda pop cans and other detritus.

Suddenly, the cat was no longer sleeping blissfully in my arms. Toby launched himself like a gymnast on a springboard, flying through the air toward the vaulting horse. Unfortunately, the springboard was my arm, on which he was no longer nestled in comfortable slumber.

When he leapt, he dug in with his death blades. Blood spurted from my arm. In fact, his claws dug in so deeply that he nicked a vein, which spread the blood under the skin and left me with a purple bruise surrounding the puncture wound.

(I secretly suspect that Toby caused this disaster. He sometimes treads where he’s not allowed to go, like the top of my desk. If he pussy-footed across the top of the minifridge at any point, he may have created an instability that later triggered the unfortunate cascade. But I digress again.)

The Michigan Part of the Story

So, why do I say this disaster came from Michigan? That’s where Toby’s from, as far as we can tell. Apparently, he hitched a ride on a Meijer delivery truck that originated at the home office in Michigan and came to the store where Dan works. The cat skulked around the stock room for about three days before Dan was able to nab him and bring him home.

(This wasn’t really all that difficult. Dan has a glowing sign on his forehead that only cats (and a few dogs) can see. It says, “Sucker!” They know it leads to shelter and food. But I digress some more.)

Toby has been with us now for about ten years. He’s still skittish at times (and at other times, like yesterday, more than a little skittish). Most of the time, he is a cuddle-bug, but every now and then, he hides under the bed for some unknown reason. He’s really more attached to Dan, who rescued him, but he will attach himself to me when Dan’s not around.

I guess eventually I will forgive him for the blood and the bruise (probably about the time the bruise goes away or the scab heals). After all, I jumped too when the crash occurred. I just didn’t have anywhere to leap!

How Not to Sell Out

books, etc., family, humor, , ,

As a Girl Scout, I was not a success. Oh, I did a lot of the usual Girl Scout things. I wore the uniform, even to school, when the meetings were right afterward. (This was not a cool and popular look in high school.) I went camping and hiking. One summer, I was even a camp counselor. I learned the campfire songs and taught them to younger campers. I earned badges for esoteric pursuits and wore them on a sash. (Another reason the look was uncool at school.)

Trying to Push Cookies

What I couldn’t do was sell cookies—at least not well. Back in the day, we went door-to-door. (This is considered unsafe now for obvious, unsavory reasons. Nowadays, Girl Scouts market the treats by phone or online, or at tables outside supermarkets. (They would no doubt sell more if they set up their tables outside marijuana dispensaries.) I have a dealer who fixes me up every year. She’s the granddaughter of a fellow scout from my high school days. But I digress.)

My problem with selling door-to-door was that I had a sister who was also a Girl Scout, and with whom I went door-to-door. We split the orders, which meant that I got only half the orders I could have had without her.

Another way that Scouts got orders back then was to send the order forms to where their parents worked. The grown-up could then apply pressure to coworkers to buy. (This led to infighting. “You bought from Norma’s daughter, but not from mine.” But I digress again.)

My father, however, had a government job and claimed that he wasn’t allowed to pass around the order form. I now suspect that this wasn’t strictly true, and that he simply didn’t want to be the middleman.

As an adult, I have become a consumer of Girl Scout cookies, not a purveyor.

I Didn’t Learn My Lesson

My eptitude with sales has not increased over the (many) years.

I have written two books on the subject of bipolar disorder (gleaned from the writings in my other blog, Bipolar Me (www.bipolarme.blog). They aren’t selling well on Amazon. I get royalties from time to time. I’m saving up for a pizza.

I figure my choices for selling these books are:

A) door-to-door (That would be silly, not to say ridiculous. Well, okay, it would be ridiculous. There simply isn’t a neighborhood full of people living with bipolar disorder that I could canvas. But I digress some more.)

B) from a food truck or bookmobile-like trailer. (Same problem as with A. Besides, the price of gas would kill me.)

C) Facebook ads (I tried a few of them, to resounding silence.)

D) ask Dan to take orders at work (That would go over well. Not.)

E) have a website

I chose E. I found a company that would host a website—an online bookstore with my two books (and a third, when I finally write it). The site is called Bipolar World, and it lives at books.by/bipolar-world. Of course, the product is not as appealing as cookies (of the Girl Scout type, not the computer sort).

Maybe I should be pushing books AND cookies on my website. (I could call it the Cookie-Bookie Website, except then people would think I was taking bets on which cookies are the best. I’m pretty sure oatmeal raisin would lose. But I’ve digressed enough for this week.)

On the Bougieness of Pets

cats, etc., fashion, humor, pets, , ,

It all started with a post about rescue dogs and how adorable they were and how much they needed homes.

I replied that rescue cats are the same. Dan and I get our cats from shelters, ones that come up to us on the street, or ones that choose us by appearing at our door. They’re adorable and need homes, too.

My friend Donna Waller replied that cats are bougie. That took me aback. I didn’t know whether she meant that cats themselves are bougie or that people who own cats are bougie.

Are Dogs Bougie?

They are if they’re toted around in purses the way Paris Hilton does. They are if they wear diamond-studded collars. They are if their owners dress them up in precious little outfits, especially if the outfits include hats. (Come to think of it, dog owners are bougie if they carry purse-dogs or buy mixed breeds like chi-weenie (chihuahua and dachshund), pom-chi (pomeranian and chihuahua), shnoodle (schnauzer and poodle), mal-poo (maltese and poodle), or shi-poo (you can figure this one out for yourself). In fact, any dog breed that ends with poo is bougie. But I digress at length.)

Non-Bougie Cats

Rescue cats tend not to be bougie. Even when they’re mixed breeds, people don’t invent cutesy names for them. You never hear of a Siam-ersian or a Norweg-anx. (I once knew some cats that had, let’s say, some irregularities in their ancestry. The mother was a Siamese, and the kittens, like all Siamese, were entirely cream-colored at birth. But when they were old enough to develop “points” (the colors on their legs and face, like chocolate-point, or flame-, lilac-, or even blue-point), the kittens had striped points, their father having evidently been a tabby. They were definitely not bougie. But I digress at great length.)

I have also known silly cats, affectionate cats, mischievous cats, and athletic cats. I’ve known tortoiseshell cats, calico cats, tuxedo cats, ginger cats, and many varieties of tabbies. None of them were bougie. (Ginger or orange cats can be stroppy, but not bougie. One orange cat we had would bite Dan on the ankle when he stepped out of the shower. But I digress yet again.)

Truly Bougie Cats

In my opinion (not very humble at all), there are only a few types of cats that are truly bougie. First are all the cat breeds with pushed-in noses that look like they’ve been hit in the face with a nine-inch cast-iron skillet. (Please don’t mistake me. I do not advocate doing that to cats. Some of them just look like someone did. But I digress some more.) And they always look like they disapprove of you.

Flat-faced cats are the most likely to be dressed up by their owners in diamond-studded collars and frilly little outfits. Cat therapist Jackson Galaxy says that no cat should be dressed in any kind of little outfit. (The closest we ever came to doing it was placing a stray whisker on top of a dignified cat’s head and making beep-boop noises like she was an alien. What she was, was deeply offended. But I digress still more.)

So, Donna Waller, there’s your answer: Many bougie dogs, few bougie cats. And because, as I mentioned, Dan and I get strays and rescues, we’re unlikely ever to have a bougie cat. So there.

Things I Never Thought I’d Say

cooking, etc., family, food, humor, ,

When you get married, you’re moving into uncharted territory. Plenty of people have been there before, of course, but this time it’s you. And it can be an education.

For me, marriage brought with it a lot of things I couldn’t even imagine myself saying. Of course, there are things like, “Which side of the bed do you prefer?” and “So how did your mother make her amazing stuffed peppers, anyway?” But there are also things you say that, when you look back, are completely unfathomable.

Here are some of mine.

“Please don’t use power tools after I’ve gone to bed.”

I’m not even sure which power tool it was—let’s say a circular saw. I’m not sure what project he was trying to finish. And I’m not sure where in the house he was. (I was in bed, upstairs, on the edge of sleep. But I digress.) But I am sure that it was loud enough to wake me up and unexpected enough to alarm me. Was some evildoer trying to saw his way through our front door? Was the intruder trying to even out the height of the dining room chairs? I never found out. But at least hubby’s never done it again. (Or anyway, he wakes me up first and tells me he’s going to be using power tools, so it won’t take me by surprise. But I digress again.)

“What do you mean I’ll cater your parents’ surprise 50th anniversary party?”

Actually, I knew what he meant. He didn’t mean calling a catering company and telling them what we wanted, or sampling the wares of various purveyors and choosing among them. What I had heard him promise over the phone was that I would prepare all the food and drink myself. He graciously agreed to book the venue, their longtime family church, which at least had a kitchen. (I got it done, but it was only by channeling Martha Stewart. And I hate Martha Stewart. But I digress some more.) I managed to convince Dan to hold it in the afternoon, so dinner was not a concern. Hors d’oeuvres, cake, and punch seemed doable, at least until I saw how many cherry tomatoes I’d have to core and stuff.

“There’s a Cheerio in my underwear.”

Now, this one takes some explanation. Dan has a favorite snack food. He buys a huge bag of already-popped corn. Then he dumps in a variety of crunchy foods—Cheerios (as you may have guessed), Wheat Flakes, Corn Chex, and sometimes mixed nuts. Then he shakes the whole thing and feasts on it for not as many days as you’d think. Often, he sits in the comfy chair to watch TV as he snacks. And he grabs handfuls of his magic concoction and shoves them in his mouth, never caring where the crumbs fly. (Hint: Into the crevices of the comfy chair.) I use the comfy chair sometimes, too, often wearing a rather short nightdress. And one night, I did indeed find a Cheerio in my nether garment. (I guess I’m lucky it wasn’t one of the Corn Chex. At least Cheerios don’t have corners. But I digress yet again.)

“I do.”

I was never the sort of teenager who wrote her initials and a boy’s in hearts on my notebook cover or wrote my name in combination with various potential last names. (As it happens, when it came down to it, I didn’t change my last name. But I digress even more.) I just assumed that I was too weird to attract a male partner and settle down with him. But here we are, after more than forty years. We do things I never thought I’d do, like live with five cats or travel to Croatia. I guess the power tools, the catering, and the Cheerios are just what go along with it.

Sweet Obsessions

Christmas, etc., food, holidays, humor, , ,

Everyone has their favorite candy, from Ronald Reagan’s Jelly Belly jelly beans to the butterscotch cotton candy that Trump wears on his head. At Halloween, these preferences really come out. We know that children prefer full-size candy bars and hate boxes of raisins, and that everyone hates candy corn. (I don’t know why. As far as I can tell, it’s pure sugar, which should make it popular. But I digress.)

But candy doesn’t just make its appearance on Halloween. There are Valentine’s boxes of candies and Easter candies like Cadbury’s Creme Eggs (though I’ve noticed that these days, Easter baskets come with more toys than treats. It just seems to me inappropriate to celebrate Easter with Spiderman action figures. But I digress again.)

I have fond memories of Christmas candies. Every year, my sister and I could count on finding in our stockings an assortment of Life Savers packaged to resemble a book. We never tired of them. (We also got an orange that filled the toe of the stocking. This was no surprise, as every year our Grandma in Florida sent us a crate of them. But I digress some more.)

Through the years, my taste in candies changed. I fondly remember Reed’s Cinnamon red-hot candies that looked like Life Savers, but with a dip in the middle rather than a hole. I went through a Tic-Tac phase (never mind that they were marketed as breath mints). Now I’m very fond of Sanders’ dark chocolate bourbon-flavored sea salt caramels.

Salt and sweet make a great combination. After all, the four food groups are salty, sticky, sweet, and crunchy, which makes nature’s perfect food the chocolate-covered pretzel stick (sprinkles optional). If you look hard enough, you can even find chocolate-covered potato chips. There’s a local potato chip manufacturer and a local chocolate purveyor who team up every year to make them.

My Aunt Thelma and Uncle Earl had a general store in Campton, Kentucky, which offered a vast supply of penny candies, which actually cost a penny in those days. Sugar Babies were my favorite, along with their larger cousin, Sugar Daddy (no rude remarks, please). I also had least favorites, such as jawbreakers, Butterfingers, and Good’N’Plenty.

Recently, however, I’ve developed a new sweet obsession. I saw that there were dark-chocolate-covered dried Montmorency cherries available locally, but made in Michigan. I absolutely despise regular chocolate-covered cherries. I hate the sickly sweet goo between the cherry and the chocolate. But I had hopes that goo would not be a component of the dried kind of chocolate cherries. So I bought a couple of small bags.

It turned out they were amazing! The dried cherries were chewy and tart, with a texture like raisins. The dark chocolate coating was a perfect complement. Before long, I had devoured both bags.

Then I noticed a whole box of the candies for sale. I had to have it. I thought it would contain a number of the small bags of cherries. But no. It contained one large plastic bag filled with three pounds of yum. It’s all I can do to keep myself from diving in headfirst and binging into a potentially dangerous chocolate-and-dried-cherry sugar rush. (The small bags say that eight candies equal 130 calories. I’d have a Willy Wonka blueberry (only cherry) moment if I ate my fill. But I digress even more.)

I hope they sell well. Well enough, anyway, that they aren’t discontinued, but not so well that stores run out of them. While I wait to see, at least I have pounds of them to see me through.

Simpsons-Speak

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Pop culture is responsible for many sayings that people quote: “Inconceivable!” “He’s dead, Jim!” “Make it so!” “You’ve been chopped.”

(Of these, “Inconceivable!” and its follow-up, “I do not think that word means what you think it means,” are perhaps the most useful in everyday conversation. But I digress.)

But if you ask me (no one did), the best source for memorable quotations would have to be The Simpsons, which today airs its 800th episode. Some of these bon mots have even made it into our family vocabulary.

Bart was on his way home from Sunday School when Marge admonished him for saying hell. Bart’s reply? “I sure as hell can’t tell you we learned about hell unless I say ‘hell,’ can I? Hell, hell, hell, hell!” Now, whenever one of us says “hell,” the other jumps right into the quote.

Then there’s Homer. After a lesson on fire safety, He sings, “When a fire starts to burn/There’s a lesson you must learn./Something, something, then you’ll see/You’ll avoid catastrophe. D’oh!” Dan forgets lyrics often, and some older songs I just don’t know. We often end up saying, “Something, something. D’oh.”

(I understand that in the Simpsons’ scripts, “D’oh” is indicated by “annoyed grunt.” But I digress.)

One particularly important exchange for Dan and me starts when the characters are standing around the statue of Jebediah Springfield, the town founder and local hero. The legend on his statue reads, “A noble spirit embiggens the smallest man.” Someone inquires whether “embiggen” is a real word. Mrs. Krabappel, the teacher, replies, “It’s a perfectly cromulent word.”

(I would think the meanings of “embiggen” and “cromulent” should be clear from context, but let’s take a look at Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary, where both are defined. “Embiggen” means “make bigger or more expansive.” And M-W defines “cromulent” as “acceptable; satisfactory.” What’s even more amazing is that autocorrect didn’t balk at either one when I typed them just now. But I digress again.)

(Just as a digression (to a digression), Dan and I use “embiggen” all the time, almost daily. Because of my various injuries and operations, I can’t climb the stairs to where the bedroom is. So we bought a chair that expands into a single bed and collapses back into a chair. I ask Dan to embiggen the bed in the evening and dis-embiggen it in the morning. But I digress some more.)

Then there’s Grampa Simpson. He has a technique for answering intrusive questions. He goes into a totally irrelevant soliloquy. Like this:

“Like the time I caught the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for m’shoe. So I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ’em. ‘Gimme five bees for a quarter,’ you’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time….”

(Sociolinguist Suzette Haden Elgin recommended this tactic as well. She could also shut down awkward conversations by saying, “Well, you can’t tell which way the train is going by looking at the tracks.” But I digress yet again.)

Let’s finish with Marge. In one episode, she went away for a self-care day, indulged in a bubble bath, and called room service:

“I’d like a banana fudge sundae. With whipped cream! And some chocolate chip cheesecake. And a bottle of tequila!”

(We don’t use this one in conversation, but once when I had to write something on self-care, I worked it in as an example of what self-care isn’t. But I digress even more.)

Thus has our vocabulary been enriched by a cartoon show. (I also like the episode in which Ned Flanders complains to Principal Skinner that he doesn’t want Darwinian evolution taught at school, and Skinner replies, “You mean Lamarckian evolution?” It doesn’t fit into any conversation I’ve ever had, but it cracks me up every time. And this is my final digression for this week.)