Another $100 Day

My new haircut.

Every so often I have what I call a $100 day. It happens when I schedule Levi for an appointment at the doggie foo-foo beauty spa and me for a haircut on the same day, with lunch and shopping in between dropping off my schnauzer and picking him back up again. On the way home we stop at Starbucks where he gets treated to a free pup-a-ccino and I get a caramel macchiato. It all might sound like a yuppie way to spend the day until you picture me driving around with a bag full of poop in my cup holder. I had walked Levi before dropping him off, his first one of 2015, but the park was technically still closed for winter so there were no trash contains available to leave the poop behind. Trust me a plastic bag does not mask all the smells that come from inside and I was afraid to put the bag of poop in the trunk for fear I’d forget about until I found a cop standing next to my car with a search warrant on the suspicion there might be a dead body inside. Could happen if it was summer.

When I picked Levi up one of the “stylists” was shaving a tiger cat into a lion cut. I’d never seen anything like that in my life. The cat was like a bean bag, so relaxed and seemingly unaware that two people were pulling it every which way but off the table as one was shaving it down to the skin. The  pom-poms on its feet and tail already were perfectly shaped and the long hair on its neck and head had already been blow-dried and brushed. Poor pampered baby. Who does that to an animal who loves to groom itself as much as cats do? Now you know why I call the place a foo-foo beauty spa. They are known as the best in town. If it was a clothing store, it would be Macy’s compared to my hair salon which would be J.C. Penny’s. 

The place I had lunch was new to me and is one that specializes in breakfasts. I had seen an interview on local TV about the place and their famous red velvet pancakes. I didn’t order them because I couldn’t bring myself to put that much red dye in my body and risk the gods of chronic hives crying out, “Oh, boy, thank you!” The omelet I had was good but I probably won’t go back because the way the place was set up it didn’t lend itself well for customers to have conversations with one another like a place down the street that I call the Breakfast Only Café or even the Guy-Land Cafeteria. Secret revealed: I don’t go out to lunch just because I’m hungry. Sometimes I just want to hear a human voice that doesn’t come from an electronic devise. 

During my travels through my $100 day I stopped at Lowe’s and ended up with an unexpected tear in my eye. Crap! It was such a simple thing, a split second that changed my good, the-sun-is-shining mood to a sad reminder of the past. A man in my age bracket cut in front of me to get a cart from the cart lineup then he realized what he did and he said, one word---“oops”---and went on his way.  “Oops” was without a doubt the most frequently used word in my husband’s very limited, post-stroke vocabulary. Sometimes it was a one word apology and sometimes it was a one word comical punchline to something someone said. Talk about fifty shades of grey, Don could do fifty of shades of the ‘oops’ word. The sad reminder at Lowe’s didn’t last long; I went directly to the paint department where I picked out some paint chip samples to bring home. I don’t plan to paint anything anytime soon but paint chips are like happy pills in my world. I have two shoe boxes full of them. Crazy, I know, but don’t most people do something that others wouldn’t understand without reading a dissertation on quirky habits?

If I spend enough time in the car, like I do on $100 days, I’m sure to hear a song that has me changing the station with the speed of a crow plucking out an eyeball. Okay, I’ve never seen a crow do that but if it was inclined to disfigure a person I know it could do it pretty fast. Anyway, the song is Garth Brooks’ That Summer. It’s about a eighteen year old who gets a summer job on a ranch and a widow with “leathery skin” who teaches the kid all about sex---you guessed it---that summer. I’ve written about this song before but today it reminded me of a story about widow who lived in my cousin’s neighborhood.

It was a story told by some grown adult men I know who in their younger years were introduced to sex via a line formed outside the widow’s bedroom door where she took them (and others on) one at a time. Boys from twelve to sixteen and they talked about the experience like it was a fun coming-of-age event in their lives. Can you image that happening now? The woman would be sitting in jail and the boys would be testifying in court about how they are scarred for life. What happened to her? Parents got wind of the whole thing, talked to the police but all that happened is parents were told that "boys will be boys" and to keep their kids away from her house. Times sure change.

I don’t know how I can finish off this post so that the ending ties back to the beginning unless I say the widow from my cousin's neighborhood missed her calling. She should have been $100 hooker. ©

$100 Days, Psychic Apps and Free Ice Cream

Every four weeks I get a haircut and every eight weeks I get a pedicure and the dog goes to the groomers. Monday was our mutual day of beauty. I got up at the crack of dawn so I could get a shower and show up on time for my haircut. Then I raced the five blocks back home, picked Levi up and took him to the nature trail for a short walk before dropping him off at the groomers for his bath, haircut, doggie pedicure and whatever they do to his butt---I don’t even want to know. I’m just glad I don’t have to do “it”---whatever “it” is. After dropping him off at noon I grabbed a quick lunch at a drive-through Wendy’s that has a lake behind it. I like sitting back there as I eat, listening to the seagulls but I often wonder if they feel deprived because they consume more French fries than fish. Do they ever get out to Lake Michigan? Is this lake next to a parking lot a ghetto in the Kingdom of Birds?

The pedicure place is close by and while I was waiting for my nails to dry I read an article about sleep research. After sitting in their back massaging chair for over an hour, I could have fallen asleep but I had to pick Levi back up before they sold him off to a cat food cannery or a medical research lab owned by Dr. Evil. They have five groomers, one bather and two desk people working at the doggie beauty parlor and it’s always busy and bubbling over with canine energy. For some reason Levi and another schnauzer seem to get booked on the same day. The other dog is so cute and lady-like and I think Levi has a crush on her. I know I do. I call days like this my hundred dollar days but they actually cost closer to $120 to get us both “prettied up” and that doesn’t even include tips and lunch. First world problems, Jean, remember how lucky you are to have them instead of second and third world problems.

Today was the annual ice cream social at the senior hall. A local creamery donates the ice cream and all the sundae fixings to honor us oldies-but-goodies for reasons all their own. It’s the best made ice cream in area and usually it’s so hot in July the ice cream melts before you can get to the bottom of your dish. Not this time. It was 60 degrees! Can you believe that? The cool weather we’re having coupled with the back-to-school advertising blasted out everywhere is making me sad. I’m not ready for summer to end. I’m not ready for a lot of things. They will come anyway. But if I’ve learned anything in my 70 plus years it’s that life is constantly changing. The ebbs and tides, the yin and yang, the positives and negatives all do their dances to keep the world turning which means no one can stay sad for long at the senior center where they book bands that tell corny jokes like this: An old guy using a walker made his way up to the window at Tasty Freeze and ordered a sundae. The clerk gave him a kind smile and asked: “Crushed nuts?” and he replied, “No, arthritis.” You can always count on old people humor at the senior hall.

All of us at one time or another wonder about life, what it’s all about and why do some suffer and others don’t. I compare my first world problems with those from around the world and wonder, why me?  Why am I lucky enough to have hundred dollar days and free ice cream? Why am I lucky enough not to have the sound gunfire over head? I’ve been thinking too much about this topic lately and even when I try not to it comes knocking on my door. Turn on the eerie music while I explain that one. I have a Buddhist Mediation app on my cell phone that I like to use in the car if I have time to kill. It gives you a phrase you’re supposed to repeat each time a Burmese gong or Chinese hand bell rings and before the ice cream social I turned it on. The phrase they gave me was, “There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it.”

Usually my Buddhist Mediation app puts me in a mellow state, almost on the verge of sleep. Not this time. After spending four minutes repeating, “There has to be evil so that good can prove its purity above it” I was analyzing and wondering if we truly wouldn’t recognize the intrinsic value of good if not for the evil in the world. Do we all know the perimeters of those words, or are some of us still in the dark ages and truly don’t know that doing good is better than doing evil? I decided the latter is true. Since time began, we’ve gotten a lot better though. We no long burn girls at the stake because a neighbor’s cows went dry. We no longer shanghai boys to work on pirate’s ships. We have a world court to try crimes against humanity. And we have eerie mediation apps that seem to be psychic and make me focus on Truths as old as enlighten thought and written language. And one of those Truths is the fact that all any one of us can do is our best to leave our tiny slice of the world a better place than when we found it. ©