Learn Something New Every Day

This morning I went looking for the reason why Catholics eat fish on Fridays because I was planning a blog post about a fish fry I went to last week. It was at a private club that our senior hall takes a group to every year on the Friday following Ash Wednesday. My husband was a member of that club for over thirty years but I gave up my “spouses membership” after Don died. Their fish dinners are the best in town, bar none, so I don’t like to pass up this yearly opportunity to visit the place again.

Anyway, the following explanation is from Catholicism.org: “…why do Catholics eat fish on Friday – or, better said, why do Catholics abstain from warm-blooded flesh meat on Friday? The obvious answer that every Catholic should know is that it is a penance imposed by the Church to commemorate the day of the Crucifixion of Our Lord – to enable us to make a small sacrifice for the incredible sacrifice He made for our salvation. Why, then, is fish allowed? The drawing of a symbolic fish in the dirt was a way that the early Christians knew each other when it was dangerous to admit in public that one was Christian. Our Lord cooked fish for His Apostles after His Resurrection, and most of these men were fishermen....” 

My Catholic ancestors would be happy that I didn’t just accept the explanation a random internet warrior found in the supposed writings of St. Thomas Aquinas: “Meat tastes too good and is too much of an aphrodisiac to consume while you're supposed to be fasting.” I LOVE, love a good steak but eating one has never made my hormones run and hump the first guy I saw. My ancestors would also be happy that I’m skeptical of a theory that “a medieval pope made a pact with some fishermen buddies - not the fishers-of-men kind but literal fishermen - to boost their business.” Thus he proclaimed Fridays to be fish eating days.

I’m not Catholic but all my relatives on my dad’s side of the family are practicing Catholics. (My dad broke from the Church when he was just boy while his siblings and father stayed with it. If you want to know why, read about it here.) I grew up hearing cousins and my best friend talking about what they gave up for Lent. I get the whole idea of giving up something pleasurable to symbolize Christ’s forty days of wandering in the desert and if I was going to comply---and why would an agnostic do that?---I’d give up coffee. During the power outrage last month that’s what I obsessed about, what I missed the most. According to an online article, coffee is number nine on the list of the ten most popular things to give up for Lent. Chocolate, social networks and alcohol topped the list. 

At the fish fry I was at the beginning of the line of 100 of us from the senior hall. I picked up my food at the service window, sat down and soon an acquaintance sat down across from to me---by choice, the place was full of empty chairs. It’s happened a dozen times before at various events so I assume she likes me. She on the other hand makes me laugh for all the wrong reasons. She wears ruby-red lipstick and she purses her lips like Dana Carvey’s Church Lady character. She talks non-stop and when she’s on a word-riff the following country song often buzzes around inside my head:

“She may be an angel who spends all winter

Bringin' the homeless blankets and dinner

A regular Nobel Peace Prize winner

But I really hate her

I'll think of a reason later.”

For lent I decided to give up my judgmental ways, determined to just sit there contented to listen which I did long after we’d both finished eat. From her, I learned how to “band” baby male calves to cut off the flow of blood to their testicles so in a few weeks their balls just fall off and you can make fuzzy little earrings out of them. I also learned her granddaughter is studying to be an animal dentist and has already been “floating” horse teeth since she was fifteen. Floating, I didn’t know, is filing down teeth that gets too sharp and makes it hard for animals to chew their cuds. Which begs the question, what happens to wild horses who can’t get an appointment to see a dentist? Answer: they chew dirt and peddles attached to wild vegetation and that keeps their teeth worn down. I learn something new every day but the most important thing I learned at the fish fry was I don’t have to like Ms. Ruby-Red Lips to thoroughly enjoy her company for a couple of hours. Tops. Longer than that and I make no promises. ©

Judging People by their Appearance

My Red Hat Society chapter had our Christmas party last weekend at a restaurant out in the boondocks that looks like it would be right at home in the Alps next to a ski run. There’s a giant, fieldstone fireplace in the middle of the dining room that effectively divides the space into two semiprivate areas and the twenty-two of us took up one side with a horse-shoe shape of tables and chairs. The log walls and vaulted ceiling went high, chalet style and on one wall was a huge TV screen that was showing a slide show of winter mountain scenes. I had a good time despite the fact that I was woefully underdressed in black sweatpants, a red sweater, purple L.L. Bean vest and a red hat while everyone else was wearing purple and red party garb with spangles, bangles and beads. The night before the event I realized I’d either need to loss 5-6 pounds over the next ten hours or shop at midnight and my good sense ruled out those two things. I hate wearing things that are too tight and I’d eaten myself out of my party clothes. I feel a New Year’s Resolution forming.

I’m also not good at buying $10 gifts for these parties where you don’t know who will get the gift via the pass-it-right-left game we play. I only had this one real gift to buy for Christmas so you’d think I could get it right. While everyone else brought things like ceramic cookie jars (two ladies did), jewelry, scarves, candles, tree ornaments, bird houses and elves, I brought skin care products and breathed a sigh of relief that I didn’t have to lug home a Christmas themed cookie jar. In my defense, we’re all old! We should have the same rule they have at the senior hall where only consumable gifts are allowed. If not that, I wish my Red Hat sisters would switch games and do the one where you get to pick a gift from the pile under the tree or steal one that someone else is holding. I’ll admit that I’ve taken home the gift I brought playing that game, knowing it won’t end up in a donation box. Is that cynical or pragmatic, I can’t decide. Either way, can you guess the second New Year’s Resolution forming in my head? I’m starting to obsess about my skin again. Recently I found the switch that fell off my “complexion machine” last summer (think mini sander for your face) so I can use it again. I found it in a drawer with hair clips I rarely use. 

So many people judge others by their appearances, I actually felt ashamed of my under dressed party attire though I’m sure my Red Hat sisters were not the ones judging. But going back and forth to the bathroom made me feel conspicuous in my easy wash-and-dry caregiver fashions (and I don’t know how much longer I can use that excuse for not putting more effort into updating my wardrobe. It will be five years come January when my caregiving days died with my husband). Walking through the restaurant with eyes following in my wake reminded me of the summer when my husband had contracted to asphalt-patch holes in parking lots across the city. Dirty, terribly hot work and at the end of the day you’d end up stripping naked in the garage and you’d still manage to track tar into the house. But the thing I remember the most is how people walking by our work crew seemed to be judging our characters by our appearance not unlike how Julie Roberts in Pretty Woman was looked down upon by store clerks when she was wearing her hooker clothes. Thankfully, for my self-esteem it was in the same time frame when I was going back to college in my 40s and I’d have to drive my husband’s Corvette back and forth. Talk about people judging you by the car you drive, I experienced that first hand on campus and I also discovered early on that if I wore a skirt to college the other students treated me like I was a professor---greeting me with smiles and opening doors but when I wore jeans and a t-shirt like they did I didn’t get a second glance.

If asked most of us would say, “Oh, no! It’s not right to judge others by the clothes they wear” but most of us would also agree that we all do it in varying degrees. But here’s the thing: Making snap judgements about our environment and other humans in it is actually a primal act inherent to our very survival, a skill honed by Early Man when staying alive meant being good at reading the sensory messages coming into their brains. Although modern man no longer needs the same level of sensory messages coming in to be safe judging each other by appearances remains a strong, primal instinct. It’s in our DNA. Since I’m as guilty as the next guy of making snap judgements about others I feel an urge to attempt the Tarzon yell as I swing away from writing this blog entry to go search for a website besides L.L. Bean to shop for a new outfit.  “Ooo-wa-ooo-aaooaaooaa-ooo!" ©

The Judgmental Bees in my Bonnet!

I am turning into a judgmental old lady who needs to quit reading other widow’s blogs before I lose my head and leave comments I'll regret. Case in point: A widow in my age bracket is desperately lonely and wants to find another man but she insists that any friendship she enters into must be with a man who is likewise marriage minded. Why? Because her religious beliefs prevent her from spending time with someone just for companionship. Jeez, Louise, there’s full range of social interactions one can enjoy that doesn’t include shacking up for illicit sex! Silly me, I thought sex outside of marriage was the only part of dating or hanging out together that a church would frown upon. Lunch at MacDonald's? How many Hail Mary’s would that earn a widow? And how does that work out if a guy should ask this widow out on a date for the first time? Does she say, “I don’t know if I can accept your offer, are you interested in getting married soon?” That too-eager-to-get-married mindset scared off the guys when we were eighteen, I would imagine it would get the same reaction at seventy.

The truth is, we senior citizens have a whole different set of issues involved with joining our lives together in marriage than young people do. Young people don’t generally come into a marriage owning paid-off houses, having pension plans and investment portfolios or have children and grandchildren standing in the wings who you’d like to see get the fruits of your life’s work when you die. Young people aren’t rooted in homes they’ve lived in for decades or have to worry about becoming caregivers soon after saying, “I do.” And they don’t have children who might worry that you’re handing over your entire estate to a person they don’t know or trust. Sure, a good lawyer can safe-guard against most of those things, but how many people sign a prenup when they marry late in life? I've seen one too many farms that had been in a family for generations end up in the hands of the second spouse’s kids to know that trust isn't enough. Get it in writing!

Those kinds of what-ifs drive me to distraction and the bees start buzzing around inside my bonnet. It also drives me crazy that another widow I've known half my life gives her kids ten to fifteen thousand dollars at a whack yet she counts pennies and does without necessities because she’s afraid she’s going to run out of money. “Stop giving away the money meant for you to live on!” I tell her. “If there’s any left over when you die, then they can have it.” To which she replies, “You don’t have children so you don’t understand.” I understand that one of her daughters has a beautiful hardwood floor thanks to her mom’s ‘donation’ while the mom doesn’t have enough money in her wallet to pay for her prescriptions.

In another blog I read recently, the “other woman” in a love triangle was complaining because the widow to the man she was having the affair with isn’t changing her last name back to her maiden name now that he's dead. They’d been married for over two decades and even if he was a bag of cheating crap they had kids together, for crying out loud. If the widow wants to keep or ditch a surname, that’s her choice. How do people come up with things to resent like that? And get this, the “other woman” wants to change her last name to match the dead guy’s. I guess the tattoo she got to commemorate his passing wasn’t enough. Make me a promise. If my values and sense of logic and fair-play ever sink this low, just book me as a guest on the Jerry Springer Show because that’s where I’d belong. And while I’m standing on my judgmental soap box, ladies, I don’t care what excuse a guy gives you for not leaving his wife, it’s just an EXCUSE. It’s called having his cake and eating it too. 

There, I’ve said my piece. The bees that have been buzzing around my head has left my bonnet. Got any bees in your bonnet to share? Please don’t let me think I’m the only judgmental old lady on earth! ©