Tag Archives: humor

The Ultimate Fashionista – Not Me!

etc., family, fashion, funny things, humor, , , , , , , ,

I guess you’d call me a victim of fashion. Or actually, a victim of no fashion. No fashion sense, at least. Fashion nonsensical, maybe.

I’ve always been this way. Being the second child, I always had hand-me-downs, which is probably why I never learned to pick out my own clothes. Also, my mother chose my clothes, which I was okay with until junior high, when I was mortified to see myself on videotape wearing saddle shoes and anklet socks. Quel faux pas!

It was at about that time that people started taking me in hand and trying to fix me up, sartorially at least. (Apparently, the other kind of fixing up was not even an option until I was properly decked out.) My first fashion consultant was a friend who told me that the main thing I should invest in was a pleated plaid skirt with a large gold safety pin. I did not, and thereby missed my chance to be stylish.

When I did develop my own sense of style, it was based entirely around Banana Republic. Khaki and olive drab were my color palette. I lived for the day each month when the new catalog came out with all its exotic descriptions of the clothes and tidbits of travel writing.

Only once did I ever shop in an actual Banana Republic store, in La Jolla. I hyperventilated, which is something I ordinarily do only when shopping for amber jewelry. I made several purchases and used the leopard print wrapping paper as a background on my bulletin board at work. (A co-worker once brought me an empty Banana Republic bag as a gift. “Won’t she be offended?” someone asked her. “She’ll love it,” Marie replied.  And I did. But I digress.)

Later I learned that Banana Republic had an outlet store about 45 miles from my house. Of course, I had to go. This was before outlet malls became a Thing. The BR outlet was in Erlanger, KY, a few miles from the Cincinnati airport (which is in Kentucky, for some reason). Keeping with either the travel theme or the airport theme, the outlet store was housed in a large, hangar-like warehouse, where I could make a proper expedition of shopping. I was crushed when BR stopped publishing their catalogs and again when they were bought out by The Gap. The outlet store was just no fun anymore.

Still, I wore my khaki and O.D., with occasional accents of camouflage. (This was also before camo became a Thing for anyone other than soldiers and hunters.) My mother, perhaps in atonement for all the hand-me-downs, sewed me spiffy camo vests and scarves. Once she even found some camo flannel and made me a floor-length granny-style camo nightgown, which I adored. (She also made me a forest green cape and Robin Hood hat, which I wore to my college archery classes. But I digress again.)

Another friend took me in hand and tried to eliminate the jungle look from my wardrobe. She introduced me to colors outside the neutral spectrum and accompanied me on shopping trips where she picked out my clothes and dressed me up like a Barbie doll. Well, not like a Barbie, really. I didn’t have the figure for it and my feet aren’t permanently shaped for heels. At least I looked respectable enough for work and dressy enough for social occasions, which for some reason I hardly ever got invited to. When she was no longer able to go shopping with me, she thoughtfully kept me supplied with more hand-me-downs from her own extensive and colorful wardrobe.

Gradually, I developed enough color sense to boss my husband around. (“Let me try on the teal jacket. No, the teal jacket! Not the navy blue! Lady, can you show him which is the teal jacket?” “Of course I can’t wear the knit sweater that I wore to the last business meeting! It’s long-sleeved and it’s August. Oh, and it’s not white; it’s cream. Which goes nicely with the coffee stain on it.”)

Now, of course, I’ve abandoned all attempts at fashion. I work at home in my pajamas and keep a year-round wardrobe of nightwear ranging from sleep shorts to men’s flannel pajamas. I buy them on sale out of season. This nabs me cutesy designs (“Feline Sleepy” “It’s Meow or Never”) and nightshirts that look like hospital johnnies. But no one except my husband sees me anyway, so it hardly matters.

And if I do have to go outside, I’ve developed my own special signature collection of clothing in my own style. I call it “Retro Boho Hobo,” and it suits me fine.

Terms of Endearment

cats, etc., family, funny things, humor, language, , ,

“What’s for dinner, Ler?”

“I don’t know, Doodle. See what’s in the freezer.”

Conversations like those are what keep our marriage strong.

Back when my husband and I were dating, we had a reputation for inspiring a need for insulin in everyone around us. To say we were sickening would be an understatement. We addressed each other with a plethora of cutesie names and endearments. I don’t remember if we ever actually said “kissy-lamb,” but you get the idea. “Sugar,” “Sweetheart,” “Darling,” and other standards were definitely within our repertoire.

Since we’ve been married, not so much. I suppose it’s because no one can keep up that level of goo and drivel for too long. Oh, we still call each other by affectionate names, but they’re more likely to be odd ones.

First, I must admit that, aside from that dating phase, I never had a lot of experience with terms of endearment. My father’s favorite thing to call my mother was “Old Squaw,” which would now be objectionable for any number of reasons. My mother never objected to it, though, so I don’t see why anyone else should get a vote.

Dan and I started out along the same lines. One of his favorite names for me was “Old Boot.” (No, I have no idea of how that started. I suppose it sort of made some kind of sense at the time. And I didn’t mind, so again with the no one else getting a vote. But I digress.)

Over time, our endearments got even stranger. We took to calling each other “Doodle,” “Cake,” “Bug,” and “Ler” (no, I have no idea what that means either). Dan calls me “Rabbit,” “Bunny,” and sometimes “Rabbi.” (“Where’s the Torah, Rabbi?” he’ll say. We also have a scrap of dialogue that goes like this: “Friend.” “Thing.” “Friendly Thing.” And yes, I sometimes do say, “Thank you, Thing.” But I digress. Again.)

We mostly skip old standards like “Honey,” except in compounds: “Honey-Lover,” or “My Own Sweet Honey-Lover,” which is still pretty icky, now that I think about it.

Recently, we tried out “Bae” and “Boo.” (I’m Bae. He’s Boo.) But I’m not sure it will ever really catch on with us. It must be out of date anyway, now that we’re saying it. Along those lines, one endearment I don’t like is “Baby.” It raises my hackles. I’m not a baby. Of course, it’s different when combined with something else – “Baby-Bunny,” “Baby-Cake,” “Baby-Bug.” Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you.

The truth is, I’m really bad at terms of endearment, other than the occasional “Honey” and the silly ones. I prefer to call Dan “Dan.” (And for some reason, he can call me “Jannie,” but I can’t call him “Danny.” I think he’s afraid I’ll burst into a chorus of “Oh, Danny Boy,” although I sing like a bird. An off-key bird. I do, however, occasionally call him “Fuzzer-Bear.” But I digress yet again.)

Of course, we do know people that stick with the sticky, as it were. One couple of our acquaintance call each other “Wifey” and “Hubby,” though they’ve been married for quite a number of years.

Just don’t get me started on the terms of endearment we have for our cats. Toto-boo-boo-baby (Toby) is a bit icky even for me, though I have been heard to say it. Toby doesn’t mind, and I don’t see why anyone else gets a vote.

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Chill Out, Kitty!

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My husband’s big orange-striped cat, Matches, was so chill that Dan once put the creature into an empty birdcage and hung it from the ceiling. Amazingly, the cat voiced no objections. He just looked around calmly from his unique new vantage point.

Not many cats are that agreeable about being put in a cage – especially when it signals a trip to the vet. Even the cardboard boxes that pass as pet carriers are useless. Just try to put a cat in one and you have a (Your State’s Name Here) Chainsaw Massacre. And cardboard carriers aren’t designed to stand up to a massacre.

We had a black-and-white cat named Shaker, who started with one fang hooked into an air hole in the cardboard carrier and demolished the entire thing until it was a pile of Shredded Wheat. We had to drive the rest of the way to the vet with one revved-up, pissed-off cat. For later visits, we just let her sit on my lap while we drove and while sitting in the waiting room. While we waited, Shaker hopped off my lap and made a break for it. She waddled (she was chubby, okay?) as fast as her little white feet would carry her toward the door. She just hadn’t counted on it being glass. She bonked her head against it and while she was stunned, I scooped her up.

Another cat, Julia, was okay with going to the vet. It was what they did to her there that she objected to. The vet tried to demonstrate to us the proper way to give a cat a pill or liquid medicine. Julia went into her act. She demonstrated her own little invention – projectile drooling. Soon the exam room was dappled with gooey patches of sticky saliva. And so were we, when we tried it at home.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that her cat, known as Mrs. Bompstample (I may have spelled that wrong), had been voted the second-worst cat at their vet’s office. And that was despite Mrs. B. being sedated before she came. I don’t even want to contemplate what the worst cat was like. There was a note on its cage that said, “Do not open!” which probably made it difficult to treat the cat. (Personally, I think most vets coat their hands with a Valium salve that is absorbed through the animals’ fur, which is why vets don’t shake hands with pet owners. Although maybe they should in some cases. But I digress.)

We’ve never had a cat that needed Valium to go to the vet, though we have had cats be naughty. One jumped off the examining table and holed up between it and the wall. We had to get down on our hands and knees to coax her out (something we couldn’t do now). Well, and Drooly Julie can’t strictly be said to have been on her best behavior. Django once scratched my face and various other cats have bitten me. Once it was so bad that I had to ask the vet to treat me too.

Matches, of course, was so chill at the vet that he should have worn shades. He loved riding in the car and never had to be put in a box. Maybe that was why he was so cool.

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‘Splaining to Do

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“Lucy! You got some ‘splaining to do!”

It was one of Ricky Ricardo’s most memorable lines. But nowadays, Lucy doesn’t get to do the ‘splaining. That’s because the latest trend is mansplaining. (It isn’t really a new trend. It’s been around since Og tried to teach Raquel how to build a fire. But I digress.)

Mansplaining is really simple. It assumes that women are really simple, and that a man knows better than they do – about everything, but especially about highly intellectual subjects like politics, technology, history, economics, sports, and fire-starting. He talks down to her – sometimes literally, as it’s not uncommon for him to mansplain while standing over her. The thing is, the woman already knows the topic well and didn’t ask for any ‘splanation.

“Actually” is the signal that introduces an episode of mansplaining. “Actually, Christopher Columbus never landed in America.” “Actually, Big Ben is not the clock.” “Actually, you have to rub the two sticks together.” The mansplainer is at the same time authoritative and condescending. He may really think he’s helping, but the effect is demeaning.

The classic tale of mansplaining is that, at some kind of conference, a man lectured a woman about the subject, saying that she had got whatever-it-was all wrong. “You need to read McCarthy, et al.,” he pontificated. She pointed to her nametag. “I am McCarthy, et al.,” she replied.

Nor is mansplaining the only gaucherie that men have been accused of. Manspreading is another. Notice how men often sit with their legs wide apart. It takes up more space than necessary, which leaves less room for someone else (i.e., women). (Men say that they have to sit that way because it’s the only way they can be comfortable, but I think it’s really because they want to take the opportunity to display their package. But I digress again.)

Now, though, it seems there’s a whole lot of ‘splaining going on. The latest trend I’ve heard of is “richsplaining” – when well-off people try to tell less-well-off people how to save money. “Cut out Starbucks.” “Buy cheap sneakers.” (As if there are any!) “Eat only beans and rice.” “Go to fire sales.”

I haven’t heard of it being official yet, but I’d like to introduce the word “sanesplaining” – when people with no emotional problems lecture those who have them about the best route to proper mental health. “Take vitamins.” “Try yoga.” “Choose happiness.” “Don’t be so depressed.” “Own the fire.”

Related to that is medsplaining. Avid Googlers who “do their own research” have all the answers and are all too eager to share them with friends, relatives, and even strangers – sometimes even their doctors. “Apple cider vinegar is all you need.” “Slug slime is a magic age-eraser.” (I’ve actually seen that product.) “Blueberries/kale/kohlrabi/quinoa/chia seeds are superfoods.” “Firewalking will cure what ails you.”

Then there’s momsplaining. Everyone seems to know better how to raise children than actual mothers do. “Teach them manners.” “Teach them phonics.” “Don’t let them read comics.” (That’s “graphic novels,” boomer.) “Don’t let them set the cat on fire.”

(Come to think of it, I’m a boomer and I know what graphic novels are. Have I just invented selfsplaining? But I digress yet again.)

When Ricky asked Lucy for a ‘splanation, he wanted her to account for her own behavior. Let’s get back to that instead of spouting off “wisdom” to people who don’t want or need it. And unless you’re stranded in the Arctic with someone, don’t offer advice on fires.

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Bye-Bye Nose! Bye-Bye Ear!

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I’m lucky that I still have an ear and a nose, without which my face would look unfinished. Or Cubist. It’s not because I had necrotizing fasciitis. (I’m ghostwriting a book right now about necrotizing fasciitis, leprosy, and other dreaded diseases, which is actually right up my alley as a devoted fan of Monsters Inside Me and Mystery Diagnosis. But I digress.)

My potential disfigurement was at the hands (well, not hands, exactly) of two wild animals. How I met them and how I escaped assault on my body parts is the real story here.

My nose almost left me during a journey in a drive-through zoo. (I didn’t know if they still existed until I asked Mr. Google. They do. Whether it’s a good idea, I’ll leave you to decide.)

One day, my husband and I visited the establishment in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey (exactly where it was is lost in the mists of time). The people who ran the place posted warnings about not trying to drive through any animals that blocked your path. They also warned you not to attempt the journey if you had a vinyl roof on your car. The car in front of us did have one and ignored the sign. They were quite alarmed when a troop of monkeys descended on their car. (Yes, a group of monkeys is called a troop. Mr. Google again.) We had an unobstructed view as they learned their lesson. The monkeys ripped holes in the vinyl top. Shredded it, really, which I don’t know if the occupants realized. The troop also pissed down the windshield, which they definitely did notice. From our vantage point, we could even see the look of disgust on the passenger’s face.

Our difficulty came a little later in the self-tour when we encountered a herd (yes, herd) of ostriches. A small herd, but still. They came very near the car, so we had a close-up view. As you can see from the photo, an ostrich close-up is pretty damn ugly. They don’t improve when the only thing separating you from one of them is a pane of glass.

That pane of glass – our car window – was the only thing that saved my face. I got to see one of the ostriches up close and personal. It strolled up to the car and peered curiously inside. I pressed my nose against the glass to see the ostrich better. It wanted to get closer to me, too. It took its hard, horny beak and tried to attack my nose. Peck! Peck! Peck! I could hear it striking the car window, which fortunately withstood the onslaught. Dan didn’t drive on, out of its reach. He was laughing too hard.

My other wild animal encounter came many years before that, when I was particularly young and stupid. It was at a local mall, where an area was set up that had baby animals. They were offering to take photos of customers with a baby animal. Being a cat lover, I chose the baby lion. The photo you see here is the result.

The attendant hefted the lion into my lap. As you can tell, even though it was a youngster, it was still quite heavy. I could barely hold it upright. I smiled like the idiot I was, and they snapped the picture.

Right after the picture was taken, the lion looked over at me, stuck out its huge, rough tongue, and slurped my ear. In less than a second, the attendant swooped in, snatched the lion out of my lap, and put it back in its pen. My theory (and theirs too) was that the lion was taking an exploratory taste test to see if my ear was worth snacking on.

(No, I don’t remember whether the attendant was the infamous Joe Exotic, but I kind of doubt it. I think I would have remembered his remarkable appearance. I do know that they don’t allow this kind of thing anymore, which I didn’t need Mr. Google to ascertain. (I did find out that it was legal until last year when Biden signed a ban.) But I digress again.)

Because of those incidents, I’ve learned my lesson. I have kept my interactions with animals limited to domesticated cats, semi-domesticated dogs, and the occasional garter snake that my husband sometimes catches. The cats, despite being domesticated, have damaged my skin with tooth and claw, though the wounds seldom get infected.

I haven’t lost any actual body parts yet. And I avoid ostriches and lions, not that they roam the countryside in Ohio. But I keep an eagle (sorry not sorry) eye out!

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The Care and Feeding of a Writer

books, etc., family, funny things, humor, writing, , ,

So you’ve got a writer in the family – and, like many or even most writers, they act peculiar. They can bite your head off one day and be clingy the next, go for days without eating or sleeping, or zoom back and forth between elation and depression. What’s a family member to do? Is there anything you can do that won’t get your head bitten off?

I’m here to tell you that, although you’ll likely never change a writer’s behavior unless they give up writing, there are ways you can live successfully together. It won’t be happily all the time – I can’t guarantee that. Just think of your writer as you would a tropical fish. They need a certain amount of care and attention, food, and a filter, but they can be a focal point for a room. (If you keep the door closed, that is. Writers are notoriously cranky, and guests and young children maybe shouldn’t be exposed to that. And not having a filter is a problem (not just for writers, but for people in general). So perhaps they’re not like tropical fish at all, except for maybe a triggerfish or a lionfish. But I digress.)

Care and Attention

There are times when a writer doesn’t need attention – or even interaction. There is a stage of writing called “prewriting.” It looks an awful lot like lying on the couch, doing nothing. The creative brain is churning nonetheless and doesn’t take kindly to being interrupted. This is especially true if the writer doesn’t have a room of their own, which many don’t. The corner of a room is more likely to be the writer’s habitat. But a door that will open and close is a definite asset if you expect your writer to actually produce anything.

In fact, a writer will need a fair amount of alone time. When they’re actively writing (as opposed to prewriting), they won’t want to be interrupted – short of fire or death. Death (other than the death of the writer) may even be ignored and so will any fire not directly threatening the writer’s computer.

Feeding

When the writer is on a roll, they won’t want to stop to eat. At the most, they will pause for long enough to down a yogurt. If you realize they haven’t eaten in quite a while, you can offer a sandwich, but it’s best to poke it through the door with a stick, the way you would offer food to a large bear. (Personally, I’m lucky. I have a small refrigerator in my writing room, stocked with easy edibles like cheddar and American cheese, yogurt, applesauce, and things that are spreadable on crackers (cream cheese, apple butter, peanut butter). But I digress again.)

Rejection

This is a fact of life for writers, at least if they write for publication and not for the desk drawer or computer desktop folder. If they’re new at putting their work out there into the wild, this can cause distress, desolation, or just generally hopelessness. There is not much you can really do about this, except a generous application of “there, there,” which doesn’t actually help but sounds sympathetic. You can try reminding them of famous writers like J.K. Rowling whose works were rejected multiple times before they were published. This will either rev your writer up with dreams of becoming a multimillionaire (which are, let’s face it, bound to be dashed) or make them feel worse because of the likelihood of having to endure the many, many rejections.

Unless you yourself are a professional editor (which you probably aren’t, or shouldn’t have married a writer if you are), don’t offer suggestions unless asked for them. Even then, you should probably bow out more or less gracefully – “I don’t know. You’re the writer. I could never presume to give you advice.” Most writers won’t even listen to suggestions from their writers’ group or editor, should they be so lucky as to find one.

You and Your Writer

Maybe you married or live with a writer knowing what you were getting into. Maybe it came as a surprise later, when they announced a desire to express themselves in writing. Whatever your situation, rest assured that living with a writer is possible. You just have to have unfailing patience and supportiveness – and a job to bring in income if they’re a “full-time writer.”

Does it seem like you have to sacrifice a lot (and then listen to the writer in your life complain about the sacrifices they make for their art)? I won’t deny it. Just ask my husband. He lives with a writer. And I appreciate it – every time he pokes a sandwich through the door and then I close it, or when I zone out while we’re watching TV and can’t catch him up on the plot if he leaves the room for a moment. I live a writer’s life – and I couldn’t do it without my husband. I try to remember that. He puts up with a lot in the process of caring for and feeding me.

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Things I Want to See in My Lifetime

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World peace? An honest politician? A flying car? A second season of Firefly? Being able to retire? A printer that works?

Those are all worthy – though extremely unlikely – goals. But I want something else.

The first “thing I want to see in my lifetime” was to have a published book. Now I’ve done that. Twice. Check, check.

Another “bucket list” item was to see the Amber Room in St. Petersburg. The Amber Room is a recreation of a room in the Catherine Palace lined and decorated entirely with amber, weighing over six tons. The original Amber Room was constructed in the 18th century; later, it was disassembled and disappeared during World War II. It’s now considered lost forever, though there are always theories about how the pieces are on a sunken ship somewhere or in boxes stacked in an abandoned Nazi bunker.

Now that’s pretty much out of the question, what with U.S. relations with Russia, combined with my lack of funds for taking such an elaborate vacation. I’ll just have to be satisfied with my collection of amber jewelry and trinkets.

(Amber is prehistoric, fossilized tree resin. There are sometimes flies, mosquitos, or other bugs trapped in it, which makes the amber worth considerably more. The best-known varieties are clear golden in color, with shades from pale honey to nearly brown. There are also green amber and cherry amber, but I don’t care much for them. But I digress.)

No, what I really want to see in my own lifetime is a quotation from me on a t-shirt or a coffee mug. I know that I can order them one-off printed with anything I like (and I’ve had my book covers made into t-shirts and earrings), but what I want is to have someone else produce and wear them. I want to be in an airport and see someone wearing that shirt. I want to walk into an office and see someone drinking out of that mug.

Unfortunately, I don’t really have any sayings worth saying. Perhaps my most well-known one is “If my aunt had wheels, she’d be a tea cart.” That could, I suppose, appear on a t-shirt with a nice weird graphic of an aunt with a tea cart. My other signature saying is, “Sad, but true. True, but sad.” That’s short enough to fit on a mug, but a little nonspecific for anyone to take as their preferred slogan.

Of course, there’s also “DBF&P,” which stands for “Drop Back Five and Punt.” This is a phrase my husband and I use often because we’ve had to do it so often in our lives. Maybe the t-shirt would read “DPF&P*” with the translation as a footnote. I have plenty of obscure t-shirts and mugs (and shot glasses). Maybe someone else collects them too.

Most of the quotes from my blogs are too long for a mug, or even for a t-shirt. For example, “Teachers are the artists and architects of the future. We owe them a little more slack and a lot more support.” Readability would be a problem. It seems out of the question for me to be both meaningful and pithy.

Another thing I would like to see is one of my Facebook posts going viral. So far, I’ve had no luck there, either. I pass along plenty of other people’s posts, but almost no one passes along mine. Of course, that’s likely because most of the things I post are personal – interesting (at least to me) things that are happening in my life and funny things my husband or cats do. Apparently, our little family is insufficiently amusing.

The other day, I did download a meme generator (called, cleverly, Meme Generator) in hopes of putting a novel caption on an existing photo. The thing is, I didn’t want to use the too-familiar ones like “Disloyal Boyfriend” or “Change My Mind,” and again I have the problem of thinking up a clever caption short enough to fit. So here’s what I came up with as a trial run. This is my husband in a bar in Ireland. I haven’t gotten up the nerve to post it yet.

You can help make one of my dreams come true. Vote on whether I should post this meme (keeping in mind my husband doesn’t have Facebook) or not.

In the Kitchen 2.0

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I watch way too much Food Network. I’ve only ever tried to make two recipes I learned there and one was really only a theory, not an actual recipe. The actual recipe I tried was Ina Garten’s Triple Ginger Cookies. (I learned that when Ina says “jumbo eggs,” she means jumbo eggs.) The theory was Bobby Flay’s Tangerine Turkey, which I adapted to use orange juice instead of tangerine.

(Bobby Flay is so predictable. No matter what he cooks, he always includes one or more of his favorite ingredients. In addition to the tangerine juice, he invariably includes Calabrian chiles, pomegranate molasses, and either bourbon or tequila. Sometimes even when he’s making dessert. I don’t know why they even bother to have a blind tasting on Beat Bobby Flay. But I digress.)

But, even as Flay never changes, lots of changes do occur in the cooking world – all manner of trends come and go. For a while in the 70s, everyone who got married received a fondue pot. Later, the trend was blackened everything, which meant either burnt or way too spicy. Now we have pumpkin spice everything. Though with nearly everyone hating on it, it may not last for much longer.

But there are other trends in food and cooking, and the times, they are a’changing. What do we have now?

I’m glad you asked. We have bacon on everything. Avocado toast. Salted caramel. Poached eggs. Cauliflower. And, apparently, buttered saltines.

Bacon is such a trend that it appears everywhere. Strawberry-bacon crepes. Garnish for a Bloody Mary. I can’t say whether this is a recent trend. It feels like it’s gone on forever. Today I heard that men’s second favorite thing, apart from sex, was not beer but bacon. (I just had a brilliant idea for a new flavor of edible panties. But I digress some more.)

Avocado toast has a rep for being the chosen chow of hipsters. Although I have no objection to it (I love avocados and have eaten many a slice of toast), I’m not sure what’s so exciting about guacamole on bread. Though you do eat guacamole with chips, and that’s another grain product.

Salted caramel is something I heartily approve of, and I hope it stays in vogue for many, many years. I wouldn’t have thought just from hearing the name that it would be good, but I love caramel and was willing to try a new version of it. Now I’m hooked. Makes me wonder what other candies would be improved by salt. Chocolate? Butterscotch? Peppermints? No, probably not, though someone is bound to try it sooner or later.

Poached eggs are appearing everywhere, especially on sandwiches. The idea is to rupture the egg when you chomp into the sandwich so the yolk becomes some kind of marvelous sauce. The chefs describe it as “unctuous,” which I have always associated with “oleaginous,” loosely translated as “smarmy,” something I don’t want my sandwiches to be. I once ate a burger with a poached egg and it unctuoused all over my sweater. I was not a happy chomper.

Cauliflower came around with the advent of the gluten-free movement. As I understand it, gluten-free food is really beneficial only if you have celiac disease, but that doesn’t stop every Tom, Dick, and Harriet from swearing by it. And everyone who likes gluten in their mac-n-cheese, pizza crust, and rice pilaf swearing at it.

As for buttered saltines, I just learned this week that this was a thing. Personally, I don’t think it sounds very exciting, not the way bread and butter is.

Celebrity chefs are responsible for a lot of other kitchen trends, not necessarily associated with food. Take clogs, for example (specifically Crocs). I recently read a whole article on this – I think it was in the LA Times. Apparently, Crocs are valued for their non-slip soles and their ease of cleaning up after spaghetti sauce spills on them. But I’ve noticed that celebrity TV chefs are now wearing fancy sneakers – brightly colored or sequined ones. I don’t know how well they stand up under bolognese, but I guess if you’re a celebrity chef, you can always buy new ones.

Even kitchen equipment has changed. It used to be that no self-respecting chef would go anywhere without their squeeze bottles, the kind that used to hold ketchup and mustard in diners. They were used to decorate plates (and food) with dots, spirals, and squiggles of whatever sauce was on the menu. (Old joke: “Do you have everything on the menu?” “Yes, what would you like?” “A clean menu.”)

Nowadays, chefs have paintbrushes to put a swoosh of sauce on the plate for the food to rest on. If they can’t afford paintbrushes, they make a swoop with the back of a spoon. Which is all well and wonderful, but you can’t write Happy Birthday in chocolate on a plate if you’re using a spoon or a paintbrush. (Unless it’s a wee tiny one.)

When I was in college, there was a class called Food Facts and Fads. I never took it, so I don’t really know, but I think the fads they were talking about were extreme diets. Personally, I say to heck with the fad diets! Bring on the salted caramels!

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No Bitey!

cats, funny things, humor, etc., pets, , , , ,

Our cat Dushenka is really a sweetie. In fact, she’s a love-muffin. She’s a part-time lap cat and is given to nose touches, head bonks, and loud purring. She slurps my husband’s forehead. Sometimes at night, she walks back and forth across our (formerly) slumbering bodies, making sure that each of us gets some of her attention. We call her the Incredibly Pettable Pet.

But, once in a while, she goes a little wild. If we rub her belly a bit too long or scritch and fuzzle her head a bit too much, she changes. When she gets overexcited or overwhelmed by all the play, her teeth come into play, too. She bites the hand that pets her.

Most of the time this is just a love-bite, with no attempt to harm. She just places her teeth on your hand or wrist. When that happens, I tell her, “No bitey” and withdraw my hand. She knows that when she calms down I’ll go right back to adoring her and demonstrating it with more caresses.

This week, however, she didn’t follow her usual pattern. This time she chomped down on my forearm. And drew blood. There was nothing different in the way I was petting her. I wasn’t pulling her tail or touching any of the places she doesn’t like to be touched. (Not that there are many.) I immediately stopped petting her and went to get a tissue to mop up the blood. The mark was gone by the next day. It didn’t get infected the way it once did when Dan’s cat Matches bit me on the web between my thumb and forefinger. And since then she’s been perfectly agreeable.

Why did this happen? Well, the BCSPCA (2022) says, “Many cats exhibit what behaviourists call ‘petting-induced aggression,’ an instinctive reaction to something they find unpleasant, even painful. Compared to dogs, cats are generally less tolerant of petting. When, where and how long cats can be touched before they become overstimulated vary from cat to cat.” Another source compares it to being sensitive to being tickled. When it’s just too much to handle, the tickle-ee tries to get away. If they can’t, they lash out (Shubin, 2022).

(Yes, I’ve been doing some work that requires me to use APA 7th citations, and I can’t quite break myself of the habit. And yes, I have also been tickled past the point of play into pain and know what it is like. Nonetheless, I didn’t bite anyone, though I probably should have. But I digress. Twice.)

Still, while Dushenka’s occasional bites are almost certainly petting aggression, that isn’t true of every cat that’s ever sunk their teeth into my tender (but apparently yummy) flesh.

Anjou, for example, got to me while I was sleeping. She came to me in bed and gave me the ol’ face-nuzzle. I grunted and tried to ignore her. I failed in this, because she immediately nuzzled me again. I grunted louder. Then she nipped me on the tip of the nose, which startled me nearly awake. Reflexively, I caught her up with one hand and heaved her off the bed. My husband said she flew through the air in a graceful arc and never stopped purring the whole time. It’s a pretty picture and I hope it’s true. He’s been known to exaggerate. But she certainly didn’t seem to resent it and showed no sign of harm or even stand-offish-ness the next day.

Another bitey cat was Louise. We got her when she was a tiny little baby kitten. I bonded with her right away, to the point I could even hold her belly up like a baby in my arms.

When we went to bed, however, it was a different matter. Every night, she wriggled under the covers and attacked our toes. Her teeth may have been tiny, but my God, they were pointy! They were like little needles piercing our lower digits. (Afterward, we referred to her as “naughty baby Fek’lhr,” a joke that almost no one gets. But I digress again.) Fortunately, she grew out of it.

Right now, Dushenka is upstairs cuddling with Dan. If I hear a yelp, I’ll know why. It’s not as likely to happen to him, though – Dan has thicker skin than I do. I know it’s not because he doesn’t pet her.

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Help Yourself

books, etc., humor, writing, , , , , , ,

I admit it. When I was younger, I used to read self-help books. You know the kind, ones with titles like Women Who Hate Women Who Love Men Who Love Women Who Hate Cinderella. Back in the day, most self-help books were targeted at women who wanted to know why their love lives were train wrecks or why their psychological conditions were train wrecks. (Apparently, they didn’t consider that their psychological conditions might be train wrecks because their love lives were train wrecks. But I digress.)

Nowadays, most self-help books are written for business leaders – excuse me, entrepreneurs – and have titles like Give Yourself the Power to Lead Right Now With Powerful Leadership Secrets From the Early Etruscans. The rest are some modern-day versions of Norman Vincent Peale’s The Power of Positive Thinking, which I suspect the Early Etruscans knew something about too.

I don’t know much about business leadership except that I prefer managers who use a hands-off management style (for both business and interpersonal interactions). I also don’t know much about women’s love lives, except my own, which I don’t think would be appropriate for a self-help book. I do know a thing or two about psychological conditions and write about them every week in my other blog, Bipolar Me.

Nonetheless, I find myself in the perhaps-awkward position of writing self-help books in my guise as a ghostwriter. (Or disguise. I’m required by the company to use a pseudonym.) I haven’t tackled one on women’s love lives yet, but I have written a couple about life with pets, something kind of New-Agey about envisioning your future, and two sort of business-y ones about listening to your inner voice and setting boundaries. My latest endeavor, which I’m about to start working on, is a senior health book, about which I ought to know a bit more than I actually do.

Apparently, a lot of the books that people want to have written are some variety of self-help – parenting tips (titles like Why Your Teen Behaves Like a Teen and Why You Can’t Do Anything About It), investment advice (Become the Only Person in America Who Tries to Pay the Electric Bill With Cryptocurrency), and doomsday prepping (Apocalypse When? Build Your Own Bomb Shelter Using Wattle and Daub) being some of the most-asked-for topics. (Again, subjects about which I know nothing.) I put in requests for book projects with more mental health focus such as overcoming anxiety or dealing with your inner child. But no. I get inspirational titles.

I must admit, I hate inspirational books. If they’re not about succeeding in business without really getting a business degree, they’re about positivity.

What’s wrong with positivity? Well, first of all, it’s been hard for me to achieve for most of my life, seeing that I was diagnosed with depression for decades. I’ve never been perky and seldom gung-ho. In addition, I’ve always hated cheerleaders, both the pom-pom kind and the believe-in-yourself ones. I guess I just don’t believe it’s possible to think yourself to a better, more fulfilling life with daily affirmations that sound like something from Jonathan Livingston Seagull. (If I’m going to take advice from a bird, I’d rather it be a parrot. Although it could conceivably provide me with daily affirmations. But I digress again.)

In fact, I’ve been exploring self-help books that are about non-positivity (not that I’ve been asked to write any of that kind). But Barbara Ehrenreich, the noted author of Nickled and Dimed who died recently at the age of 81, wrote a book titled Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Another such book, which I’m reading now, is The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking by Oliver Burkeman. (Ehrenreich also wrote a book called Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer, another one that I need to read, though probably not until I finish writing the self-health book.)

I sincerely do hope, though, that readers will get more out of the books I write than I did out of those that I read. I’d hate to think that all my good, if ill-informed, advice is going to waste.

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