Monthly Archives: April 2024

The Joy of Napping

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Dibujo de una nia en la cama preparada para dormir, es de noche, se est tapando con una manta mientras sonrie

Robert Fulghum tells us that he learned everything he needed to know in kindergarten. I can’t go all the way with him on #1—Share everything—especially when it comes to Facebook, but I’m a solid believer in #12—Take a nap every afternoon. (Well, and #9—Flush.)

I love naps—the sensual pleasure of snuggling into my bed in a cozy little nest of pillows, sheets, and blankets; the quiet purr of the fan and the cat who perches on my hip; the knowledge that, for a time, I can let go of the cares of the day; the promise of renewed spirit and energy; the satisfaction of turning off my phone.

Two of the best ways that I know of improving my mood are having a meal and taking a nap. The one often follows closely on the other, a phenomenon I am told is called “postprandial torpor.” (I’ve often wished I could call in sick to work and claim that affliction. Or “rhinotillexomania.” They sound so serious. But if anyone at your workplace knows Latin, you’re busted. (Which they actually did at one place I worked.) But I digress.)

Naps, however, are part of the reason that I can no longer work regular hours in a regular office. I find that bosses get upset if you take the phrase “break room” too literally. In the past, I’ve contemplated keeping a sleeping bag under my desk, but that would never work. Let’s face it—I snore. Prodigiously. Someone would be sure to notice, and object. (When I was traveling with my mother, she used to beg me to let her get to sleep before I nodded off. But I digress again.)

Fortunately, I work at home, so breaks and naps are entirely my own choice, except in case of deadlines. The transition from desk chair to bed is easy. I’m usually already wearing my jammies, and the commute is just up the stairs. (I can’t nap on the couch. It’s too uncomfortable. I used to be able to nap face-down on an airline tray table. This was useful because the flight attendant, seeing me, would think I was dead and leave me alone for the rest of the flight for fear of alarming the other passengers. But I digress yet again.)

Unfortunately, I’m not able to take “cat naps”—a misnomer if I ever heard one. My cats sleep on average 18 hours a day, and invariably right where a human wants to walk or sit. One of my cats even snores—daintily, but audibly. And no, it’s not a purr. (We’ve been thinking of getting a tiny CPAP machine for her, but we think she’d object to the mask. And cats have unpleasant ways of making their objections known. If you have a cat, you know what I mean. But I digress some more.)

Short, 20-minute naps do me no good. They don’t refresh me at all. In fact, they leave me more muddle-headed than ever. But the real reason I can’t take short naps is that it often takes me 20 minutes or more, usually of reading, to fall asleep. Since that’s the case, it’s hardly worth sleeping less than an hour or two.

But some of the time, even two hours of napping doesn’t do the job. Hence I have invented the Mega-Nap, of at least four hours. Mega-Napping doesn’t usually interfere with my nighttime sleep, either. On one memorable occasion, I Mega-Napped for a good six hours, and woke at 9:30 p.m., just in time to go back to bed and sleep for another 10 hours, giving the cats a run for their snoozes. I also suffer from Nap Attacks, when I hit the wall—hard— and simply must nap, collapse into a heap, or bite someone’s head off. Napping is usually the wisest choice.

With apologies to Robert Fulghum, I do see one glaring difference between kindergarten naps and grown-up naps. Children resist them and resent them and get cranky when they have to take one. Adults seek them and savor them and get cranky if they can’t have one.

I Can’t Do That!

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There are some things I just can’t do or at least am very, very bad at. There are the obvious ones like flapping my arms and flying or walking on water. There are things I just never learned to do like playing the harmonica or doing the hula. But there are also things that I simply can’t do, don’t want to do, or do miserably badly.

The most annoying one is in that last category—singing. Oh, I do sing, mostly alone in my own house at the top of my voice. I’ve tried singing in other places. I was in choir in junior high and was always last chair or next-to-last chair. One other poor singer and I swapped places regularly. (I must mention that taking choir meant that I was part of a heinous concert in which 40 white kids with no rhythm or soul whatsoever performed “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay.” But I digress.) I will sing in a large audience where everyone else will drown me out. I once even took singing lessons, which had no effect whatsoever. The problem is that I may start roughly on key, but over the course of the song, I sing flatter and flatter until by the end I’m in some other key altogether. I desperately wish I could sing well, though.

(Once my husband, in an effort to cheer me up, said, “There are people who sing worse than you.” “Name three,” I replied. Long silence. Then he said, “That wheelchair guy.” I was appalled. And I didn’t know whether I was more appalled that he couldn’t name Stephen Hawking or that he couldn’t think of two more people. I mean, he could have mentioned Shel Silverstein or my sister. But I digress again.)

Another thing I’m not reliably capable of is riding carnival rides. I can handle most of them okay, but there are ones that I absolutely refuse to go on. First are roller coasters that flip you upside down. The second are those towers that spin and then drop the floor out from under you as you’re pasted to the walls. I understand the physical principle of centripetal acceleration that keeps you from falling out, but they still look iffy to me. Maybe I’m just not confident in the maintenance and repair of carnival rides.

(For a long time, I was leery of Ferris wheels, because I had nosebleeds as a child and my mother wouldn’t let me go on them because she feared the height would bring one on. This despite the fact that every nosebleed I ever had was when I was lying in bed, which was at a height of only a couple of feet off the ground. (I do admit that the idea of having a nosebleed when the wheel stopped at the top and dripping blood on everyone else below me was pretty appalling.) As an adult, I have ridden the ride and never experienced a nosebleed. But I digress some more.)

And then there’s eating liver and onions. I’m not fond of that many onions in one place, but that’s not the problem. It’s the texture of the liver, grainy as well as meaty. I simply, literally, gagged on it. It wouldn’t get past my uvula. (That’s apparently its only function—guarding against liver.) After several valiant attempts, both my mother and I simply gave up trying. (I can eat other foods with peculiar textures. Octopus. Gizzards. Tongue. Snails. In fact, once when I was going on a business trip, I had a hint that the boss, who used to order dishes for everyone at the table, would present us all with escargot. I went to a local restaurant where no one knew me and ordered some before we went, just to see if my uvula would object. I found that snails go down quite easily. They have the texture of gizzards, which don’t bother me, and taste like scampi since both are served in garlic butter. And yes, the boss did order escargot for all. But I digress yet again.)

That’s all for this week. I’m going to try again to flap my arms and fly. Maybe sing while I’m doing it. But I’m not going up on the roof to experiment. That would be crazy.

Chopped Rules!

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I love the Food Network show Chopped. It’s calming. It is a competition show, but there are no hosts or contestants who yell or sound like wrestling announcers. (I’m looking at you, Guy Fieri.) They don’t even provide recipes. (That’s okay with me since I hardly ever have to make dinner with pork bung, stinging nettles, and green bean ice pops.) I do pick up a few tips: When they say “lacks seasoning,” they mean salt. (This is something my husband doesn’t understand.) You can glaze turkey with tangerine juice. (I used orange juice.) You can’t plate the way a normal person does. It has to be piled up like food Jenga. But I digress.)

There are everyday rules that apply to the show…well, every day. If you get blood on your plate, the judges won’t eat it (unless blood is one of the basket ingredients, which is not altogether impossible). Honor the ingredients (no, I’m not sure what that means either—bow to them, maybe?).

But beyond the official rules, there are “rules” that ought to be Rules. These are the things that a contestant should absolutely not do.

Don’t try to make risotto or polenta. Most of the time there’s not enough time (the rest of the time, there’s too much). If there’s not enough time, risotto will come out so al dente that the dente means tooth of the chipped variety. If there’s not enough time for polenta, you’ll have grits. Also, they both require a lot of attention—adding liquid and stirring—so if you want to make anything else (you do), it won’t come out right either.

Don’t try to make panna cotta. There just isn’t enough time for it to set up, even in the blast chiller. You might as well just put some strawberries in and say you’re serving cold fruit soup for dessert. Cold fruit soup is a thing and a yummy one at that.

Don’t use truffle oil. You may be tempted. After all, truffles are a high-end ingredient. But truffle oil overwhelms anything it touches. (Another common trap is using extracts. Almond. Amaretto. Anise. Rose water (which will make your dish smell and taste like soap). You should probably take the hint when you learn that rose water is used for make-your-own lip gloss (if you’re into that kind of thing). But I digress some more.)

Beware of garnishes. In the world of Chopped, NFG means Non-Functional Garnish. (Never mind what it means in the rest of the world.) Basically, it means any garnish you can’t eat or wouldn’t want to. They’re put on a dish just to make it look pretty. Think parsley, which used to garnish everything and now simply isn’t seen. Whole ghost peppers added for color. Even the little mint leaves that, like parsley on dinner plates, used to decorate any dessert are now out of vogue.

Beware of the oven. Ovens are tricky. They will never (I repeat, never) cook that puff pastry in time. Or the phyllo dough. Or the croissants. Probably not even the cookies, and definitely not the cupcakes. (The cupcakes will also not release from the pan, which means you have to dig out the tops and call the result “deconstructed.”) On the other hand, if you put streusel in the oven, it will burn. And if you keep opening the door and peeking in the oven, you’re toast, so to speak, though your bruschetta won’t be.

How do I avoid these pitfalls in my own daily life? That’s easy. I make peanut butter and jelly or bologna and cheese sandwiches, or microwave some soup. (If you’re thinking Dan would object to this, he doesn’t. My efforts are for lunch. He does the dinners. Except when I have to make the cornbread to go with the cowboy beans. But I digress yet again. I guess I’ve digressed a lot this week if you’re keeping score. I just can’t help myself. Just like I can’t help myself when a cooking competition comes on. I’ll even turn off InkMaster to watch Chopped.)

It’s a Bird! It’s a Hat! It’s a …

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What it is, is a fascinator. Better known as that silly thing the women in the British Royal Family wear on the side of their heads.

They’re almost the only ones who wear fascinators anymore, and theirs are so large that they’re often mistaken for hats. And like hats, they often include elements such as netting, veiling, organdy, beads, flowers, and even feathers (hence the bird reference).

They’re different from hats, although. In general, they’re worn on the side of the head, though again the British Royal Family’s fascinators are so large that they perch on the side and spill over to the top of the head, or vice versa. They look like they want to grow up to be the hats that women wear to the Kentucky Derby but still have a ways to go.

You sometimes see fascinators on brides who don’t want to do the whole veil routine. Or you see them on the kinds of ladies who go to high tea and try to impress each other. (You don’t see them on me, largely because there’s this stupid rule that you don’t wear a fascinator with glasses (unless you’re the Queen of England (or Queen Consort, I suppose, if she wears glasses, which I don’t know, not being a Royal follower, though I’ve never seen a picture of her wearing glasses)), and I’m not willing to sacrifice sight for fashion. Or comfort for fashion, for that matter. I’m pretty sure there’s also a rule about not wearing a fascinator with pajamas. There’s also a rule that the escort of a woman wearing a fascinator should stand to her left, as the fascinator is worn on the right side of the head and this would impede conversation. That’s a lot of rules for a piece of headgear or an accessory or whatever. But I digress. At length.)

Fascinators impinged themselves on my consciousness recently because there’s a writer’s conference here in town this week. People have been posting on Facebook about rides to and from the airport and what to pack due to the weather in Dayton (layers was the best suggestion).

The writer’s conference is held in honor of Dayton native Erma Bombeck, and focuses on humorous and human-interest writing. There are sessions and seminars featuring noted writers and comedians, speed-pitch sessions with agents, a stand-up comedy contest, and a writing contest, as well as decadent chocolate cake and killer brownies. (There is a lot of chocolate around here. Some of the presenters even pass out M&Ms. It’s thought to spark creativity, and, as we learned in the Harry Potter books, chocolate really does help. I don’t think there are any studies on the effects of chocolate on creativity. All the evidence is bound to be anecdotal. But I digress again.)

Where was I? Oh, yes, fascinators. Well, people who attend this conference—the women at least (I think)—sometimes wear tiaras. And feather boas. And bunny slippers. Sometimes all at once, I suppose, at least for the overachievers.

Several first-timers noted the suggestion of such accouterments and wondered if they were seriously proposed. One anxious newbie asked if they were required, as she had been viewing “How to Wear a Tiara” videos on YouTube (which I didn’t know is a thing) and decided she couldn’t make the requisite bobby pins (are they still called that?) work with her short hair. I suggested she try a fascinator. She wasn’t sure whether that was a fashion tip or not. But, she said, she is fascinating, so it probably would be appropriate.

(Where she’d find one is a different matter. I don’t know where the Ladies Who Lunch (or Take High Tea) shop. And I suppose a bridal salon would be too pricey as well. I think I’d start in secondhand shops or antiques stores. I think I’ve seen one at such a shop and even tried it on, though it of course looked stupid with my glasses. But I digress for the last time this week. I promise.)

At any rate, I find the subject (cue Mr. Spock)…fascinating.

(And I hope you’re impressed by the number of parens I opened and closed in this discussion.)