Hissy-Fit Rant and my Three Day Time Out

It was Saturday morning and I found myself at the Breakfast only Café. I hadn’t been there in a month but I go there often enough that the waitress knows what I want: no straw with my water, cream with my coffee, scrambled eggs, bacon, English muffin with one tub of orange marmalade. She probably remembers me because I tip three bucks on the $9.95 bill. Why 30%? Because older women are notoriously stereotyped as being bad tippers and if there is anything I don’t want in life, it’s to be stereotyped based on gender. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

I took the gunslingers’ table in the far corner of the room, my back to the wall, where I could see everyone because I’m a voyeur at heart. The annual 15K and 25K races took place in town earlier that morning and the restaurant was busy with people stopping on their way home from running, watching or cheering from the sidelines. I don’t get how and why people from all over the world come to run marathons. Where do they find the time and money for that? A woman at a near-by table was wearing a tee-shirt that read: “I make this shirt look good.” Really? She was coat hanger thin, probably ran to the restaurant from two counties over. I don’t wear message tee-shirts but if I did, I’d want one that said,” Bored women, please talk to me!” 

In this age of mass shootings I don’t understand why there aren’t fist fights over the gunslingers’ table. The people sitting just inside the door would be the first to die if a shooter came in and isn’t it a sad statement on our society that anyone has passing thoughts like this or that on the first day of school teachers have to talk about what to do if an active shooter comes in. How many more mass shootings has to take place before we all stand up and demand that our lawmakers get their noses out of the RNA’s underpants and do something meaningful? Kids shouldn’t have to decide between fight and flight. Heck, no one should! For starters, close the gun show background check loophole. It could be done in a day because back in February the House passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 but Mitch McConnell won’t let the Senate vote on it. It’s just sitting there, stonewalled like McConnell did with the Merrick Garland up or down vote on Obama’s pick for a Supreme Court Justice and we all know how that ended. Mitch needs to go so we can get someone in there who will let Congress work the way our Founding Fathers intended it to work!  Rant off, well maybe not off but it's put on the back burner.

Monday through Wednesday the body shop had my car tied up to repair the hit-and-run damage to my back bumper and adjacent parts. When I went in for the estimate the guy told me they would arrange for a rental car to meet me at the body shop but when I got there to drop off my car the young Chicky-Poo at the front desk said they hadn’t done it and claimed they never do that. She was about a minute and half older than the socks I was wearing so I stereotyped her as either being incompetent or she just got the job and ‘never’ in her book only goes back a few days. She ended up driving me to the car rental place and she turned out to be a nice kid with a baby still in diapers. But in the future I’ll be keeping notes of all my conversations with service people with names and dates because who would invent a detail like them arranging for a rental car to meet me if the guy hadn’t said it? If your answer is an elderly person on the edge of dementia, don’t say it out loud.

I left the car rental place, drove home, and parked the rental in the garage which fascinated the dog when he found a shiny brilliant blue Ford in the space where my generic gray Trax usually sits. Every time he had to go outside to pee he walked around the Ford, making sure it was still there. On the third day I drove back to the rental place, putting a grand total of 15 miles on the car in three days at the cost of $75 for the optional insurance which in hindsight was stupidest decision I've made in years. When the rental rep was explaining the option he was talking at Ferrari sports car speed and I was processing the information at horse and buggy speed. It only covered the $1,000 deductible left over from what my insurance company would have covered, should I have gotten in an accident with the rental. Yes, the one that sat in my garage for three days. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! The actual rental fee was another $81 paid for by the insurance company. Damn hit and run driver that started this whole chain of events! The body work cost $991.66 and thankfully, the insurance company covered it all but they will probably find a way to up my premiums. Isn’t that how it works?

The month of May has been and will continue to be the Money Pit Month. If I was a drinking woman, I’d drown my sorrows about now. But I’m not so I think I’ll go to Starbucks instead. I’ve been wanting a S’Mores Frappuccino, which is back for the summer by popular demand. Hooray for small blessings!  ©

The quote is attributed to Gloria but I guess she didn't say it. The author is still unknown.

Not the Best of Times...

As if I didn’t already have enough on my April plate now I have a car with a big boo-boo to add into the mix. I have no idea how it happened but my back bumper is bashed in, wide and deep. I can pin-point approximately when and where it happened because I got a car wash last week Wednesday and walked around the entire car before I left the place and it was fine and I’d only been to two places before I noticed the damage. The worst part is that one of the backup camera’s sensors is misdirected and therefore unreliable. I took the car over to the insurance company to report it and the agent told me they will waive the deductible since I wasn’t in the car. That was a nice surprise considering it will need a whole new back bumper and a few other parts and I have a $500 deductible.

So now I’m waiting for the insurance adjuster to call and he’ll probably ask if I have the insurance apt on my phone and “Can you I send a photo?” I’ll say, “No to the apt and only if I can email a photo from my computer.” I can’t take photos on my phone without my thumb included in the shot. And half the time when I try to take a photo I end up turning the phone off instead. That off/on button is right where old cameras have their shutter buttons and apparently I’m too old of a dog to learn new tricks. I’ll have to take the car up to the body shop to get an estimate soon. I haven’t had a claim in more than twenty-five years and I’ve been with the same company all those years. It should be a slam-dunk. But we shall see.

But a boo-boo on my car while annoying and time consuming is not a big deal. A big deal is what my nephew’s family is dealing with right now. His daughter just lost her husband. He was only 35 and he leaves behind two girls under three and a son due to be born this August. It was an unexpected death, a suspected pulmonary embolism. He died the day after Easter while she and their daughters were back here in Michigan for the holiday weekend. Like my mom dying on Easter, now another generation will forever have melancholy thoughts factored in their holiday memories. 

After graduating from college and getting married my great-niece and her husband moved to New York state to work at a religious camp and retreat on Lake Erie. In her case (and maybe his), she was answering a call she’d had most of her life to serve her church. She was filled with joy and totally happy with her life's projectory. They came back to Michigan often for holidays, parties, weddings, etc., and her parents visited them, too, but this time he wasn’t feeling well and decided to stay at home rather than make the long trip cooped up in a car. So she and the girls came back alone. I honestly don’t know how someone with two little ones and a baby on the way will get through this first year. It’s hard enough for widows in my age group who have chalked up more life experiences before losing our spouses. All I know for sure is she’ll have both their families and her church family to lean on and time will do the rest.

Another noteworthy happening in my week: A mini half-day trip I went on through the senior hall. They have a yearly trip labeled “Off the Beaten Path” and the destinations are always tiny towns where they drop us off at a museum and then we’re free to roam the main street shops and have lunch before the bus picks us back up a few hours later. They’re popular trips because most of us who go have a connection to these towns in our pasts. Newago, Michigan, where 50 of us went this week is not a place I had particularly warm, fuzzy feelings about but it’s got a rich history that starts back in 1600s with the French fur traders and voyageurs and includes Prohibition Era gangster Al Capone hanging out in the area. Canoeing and tubing on the Muskegon River are huge summertime draws in the area, but the speakeasies of Capone’s era now exist in the form of a micro brewer and a couple of bars. His lawyer’s former mansion is now a B&B and its said to have tunnels that once connected it to the speakeasies and brothel in the downtown area. Myth or reality, Al Capone and his gang left a mark on a lot of out-of-the-way places in my state and they’re all romanticized to serve the tourist trade. I guess we still love a good Robin Hood story and for some strange twist of reality we probably all assume we’d be on the receiving end of their crime spree and not on the taking-at-gun-point end. 

One thing I didn’t expect on our trip was a gourmet, mouthwatering lunch that was probably the best food I’ve had in years and at half the cost of city prices. That was not just my opinion. We were all rubbing our bellies and raving about the food. I brought home a mile high piece of rhubarb cake that melted in my mouth and made me regret that I didn’t also bring home a piece of the dark chocolate cheesecake and a lemon tart. Yes, a week with a minor car boo-boo and a major heart break should end with sweet treats. At least in my world. ©

 

After the Storm and Selfies

The Guy Land Cafeteria was full to the rafters and it didn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure out why. Anyone with any sense stayed inside and out of the sub-zero temperatures all week as heavy, polar vortex inspired snow and cold descended over Michigan, but you can only stay home for so long and when a window in the weather opened up yesterday, we escaped our ‘prisons.’ I, for one, needed stuff. I needed to stop at the post office, UPS, the grocery store and Chow Hound where I had a nice conversation with a ‘sample guy’ giving away bags of freeze-dried meal boosters for dogs, the very product I’d gone to the store to buy. I discovered the product a couple of weeks ago when I was looking for something to fool Levi into thinking I’ve turned into a world class chef.

The sample guy was an official company representative who stood behind a card table handing out samples and $5.00 coupons. He was in his 40’s, a nicely groomed, super-fit and take charge kind of guy which begs the question of why a man like him would have a job handing out samples. There’s probably a hard luck story in there. If I had been a skilled conversationalist like my husband was, I would have found out his backstory but I’m not, so the guy remains a mystery to mull over in my idle mind. And my idle mind turned him into a FBI agent who's moonlighting because he fears another government shutdown.

But the backstory of a woman I sat near at the Guy Land Cafeteria was not hard to guess. She was old enough to have a five-six year old daughter with her in the booth, sitting on the same side where plenty of selfies were taken by the child. When the mother left to pick up their food after her number was called I noticed she was wearing two watches---a Fitbit and a man’s watch that wasn’t made in this century and didn’t fit her. I know watches. My husband had dozens of them and I gave several of his watches away after Don died. I even wore one of them myself for four-five months. Its band was too large and the face too big for a woman, but wearing something that Don had loved and worn in his last months on earth made me feel closer to him. The mother at lunch---I’d bet money on it---had lost her dad in recent weeks and she was wearing his watch. I’d also bet money that if I had made an admiring comment about the watch, she would have shared her loss and I would have said a few comforting words. Was it a missed opportunity that would have added to the pool of human warmth and kindness or would I have been invading her privacy? I vote for the former but as I age I second guess myself more and more.

Back to the topic of selfies. From where I sat at lunch I could see everyone at all the tables. It’s a big place but even so I was shocked at how many children scattered around were taking selfies. What is the fascination with taking photos of yourself? What is it going to be like for these kids growing up if they are so self-absorbed with their own images as children? I see a lot of selfies on my Facebook page, too, and I just don’t get it. A friend my own age even peppers her Facebook with her newest selfies. “Can you tell I lost a pound yesterday?” No, but I’d tell her I found it if I thought she wanted it back.

If I’m going to be honest here, I’d have to admit that back in 1967 when I was pen-palling with Vietnam soldiers, I took some selfies. Back then a selfie involved having a tripod for your camera and a timer to release the shutter. The timer gave you a few seconds to get back in front of the camera. My selfies served a purpose---strangers I met by mail had all suggested a photo exchange. I try to use that experience to identify with the selfie addicted and I wonder if phone cameras have been around back in 1967 would I have been caught up in Cult of Selfies?

  

Back in that era when I was a true camera buff, I mostly took candid shots of people who didn’t know I was shooting photos of them. Today if I tried that I’d probably get put on a pervert predators list. I took candid photos I thought I might like to paint in oil as well as for assignments in photography classes. “Ya, sure,” I can hear a cop in the park say in today’s world, “that’s what all the perverts say.” At a family gathering last year I tried taking photos of the toddlers in our family, but something strange happened. The minute I (or anyone else) pulled out the cell phone, the little kids stopped what they were doing, posed and froze a smile on their faces. I fear there will never be another candid shot of anyone ever again in Cell Phone Generation. I miss those kind of photos, the ones where body language or pensive looks off into the distance told a story. I miss a lot of things but mostly I miss having a steady enough hand to click/press a shutter without moving the cell phone. I cannot take a good picture with a phone and carrying a regular, heavy camera around makes me feel old. ©

An Afternoon with my Two Favorite People

Friday night I packed the back of my Chevy Trax up with an oddball collection of stuff, all with one thing connecting them to another---my parents.  There was a coat and hat rack from the turn-of-century, a small side table/book case my dad made, a box of silverware, a box of containing embroidery pieces my mom did, a few of her hand crocheted dollies, a baby quilt she made for either my brother or me, a quilt she made for my dolls, a set of embroidery quilt blocks that never got put together and my brother’s and my baby blankets. I was actually worried I’d get into a rear in collision on the way to the lake and these things I’ve been holding onto would get destroyed before I had a chance to put them up for grabs.

The next day I almost fulfilled that car accident vision in my head and it would have been a doozy. I was in the right hand lane of the expressway going through the busy city and after passing a large convoy of slow moving military equipment in the center lane, I put my turn signal on to pull in front of the head truck in the convoy and at the exact, same time a car in the far left lane was doing same. We came towards each other like two fat and happy sports fans coming together for a belly bump. And like a synchronized ballet we both saw each other at the same time and jerked ourselves back to where we came from, the belly bump not completed. Thank goodness! I would bet money that the young guy driving that head military truck was peeing his pants. I know I would have been if I hadn’t just emptied my bladder at home five minutes before the almost pileup of heavy equipment that surely would have closed the highway down for hours. At least my obituary would have noted the fact that I always follow the rules of life. “She died in a fiery crash, her turn signal still flashing when the fire department arrived.” 

I met my two nieces at a popular bakery/restaurant for lunch before going over to the family cottage to have what one of my nieces dubbed an episode of the Antiques Road Show. After the waitress took our orders my oldest niece told the waitress to bring her the check and I protested telling her to give it to me. The waitress said, “The first one to speak up wins.” My younger niece laughed and said, she told her husband that’s exactly what would happen. Niece #1 always has an excuse for taking the check, this time it was because niece #2 had a birthday in August and I was bringing family treasures out for them to pick through. One time niece #1's excuse for taking the check was, “I just got a new credit card and I want to see if it works.” When hearing that, her nephew naively asking, “Why wouldn’t it? You have to apply to get them” which had everyone howling with laughter. 

Niece #1 is enamored with all things mid-century and she was thrilled to get my mom’s silverware. Before I gave the set to her I researched to find the pattern name on Replacements Ltd. and I had to go through 28 pages of flatware before it popped up. When I saw that ‘1950’ release date, I was so excited that she’s lucky I didn’t call her because it was after midnight. Replacements Ltd. is a great resource for finding missing pieces of vintage and antique crystal, china and flatware sets. I love Google. I was also able to find the building plans for the revolving book case/end table that my dad built for my mom’s 1958 Christmas present. I have my ways of paying my niece back for lunches. I snapped those plans up on e-Bay. She was a teacher and will enjoy that show-and-tell prop.

But the most fun part of the day was when niece #2 told a long-drawn out story about a trip she made to Pet Smart to buy a goldfish and they wouldn’t sell it to her after asking what size tank she had (15 gallons) and how many fish she already had (three). She was told her a fish would die with four in a tank that size and then she’d come back wanting a replacement. “What if I sign a pledge not to bring back a dead fish for replacement, would you sell it to me then?” “Nope.” “You’re serious!” “Very.” “Can I see your manager?” After telling the manager she’s got four grandchildren and she wanted a forth fish so they’d each have one to name the manager told her if she didn’t quit trying to buy a fish they’d have to ask her to leave the store. She ended the story by saying she went to another store that confirmed the fact that four fish in a fifteen gallon tank is too many. PETA guidelines. “So you won’t sell me one either?” “I’ll sell you anything you want,” the clerk said. Niece #1 and I had tears running down our cheeks we were laughing so hard. Niece #2 has always had a great sense of humor and a personality that makes her fun to be around but until that afternoon I didn’t realize that she could easily do standup comedy. ©