Grand Central Station Busy Around Here

I’ve been planning my bedroom and bath redecorating project since January when I wore out the internet shopping for a quilt and shower curtain to establish a color palette. I wanted a girlie, beach cottage theme which probably has you wondering why I’m now the proud owner of newly painted gray walls, white ceilings and freshly steam-cleaned gray carpeting. The answer would be that I like starting with a neutral foundation that lends itself to making changes down the road should I get tired of living with the pale coral and soft aqua accents I’ll be living with for a while. Those are not colors I’ve ever had before and, believe me, it was hard not to go full out with pale pink and burgundy cabbage roses with moss green accents that I lived with for years (in my pre-husband life) and I still adore that combination.

My redecorating project was a long time in the thinking stage because I wanted to get a new mattress and bed and the harsh winter and bad roads kept me from shopping. And it was also hard to justify getting rid of my old mattress that still has a lot of life in it. But the bottom line is it’s too heavy for me to lift to make properly since my issue with my elbow that resulted in a life-time weight restriction on what I can lift unless I want to risk an elbow replacement surgery. I’ll bet I’m the only mattress shopper who had to act out putting bedding on a mattress before ordering one. Not being able to make a proper bed, I think, is contributing to my restless sleep. And I hate the way cleaning service girls don’t have a clue how to make a hospital corner. I’m so old that all females had to learn how to make them to get out of high school. I doubt schools even teach ‘domestic engineering’ anymore aka home economics.

Figuring out a schedule for painting, carpet cleaning, pickup on the old twin mattresses and bed frames, delivery on a new full-size bed and finally delivery on the mattress was driving me crazy. No matter how I shook it up, I figured there would be a few nights of me fighting the dog for the couch. Stay tuned half the swap-out is completed and the rest should occur over the coming week. In the meantime, the bathroom is almost finished. I still have some artwork to go up. The photo at the top is a preview of my big reveal when the whole project is finished. I love that shower curtain!

Monday I woke up with an Ambien hangover which has never happened with that drug. Or maybe it was a hard-work hangover because the day before I wore myself out washing windows and mini-blinds and polishing furniture. But I had places to go and things to do and one of those things was to have brunch with my Gathering Girls friends. It was the day after St. Patrick’s Day and I was lucky to score a great corn beef sandwich. When I got home---after a detour to Bed, Bath and Beyond to buy sheets and towels---I got a call from one of my friends. She was crying because she’d lost a diamond and sapphire ring she’d paid $1,500 for, but more importantly it had a great deal of sentimental value. She called the restaurant. They did a search around our table and out where she parked. She searched inside her car and around her house. A few hours later she called back. The ring was sitting in a soap dish in her guest bathroom. She figured she hadn't even worn the ring to brunch. Haven’t we all been there with something we thought we lost? I’m just glad it wasn't me, this time, who had to call all my friends back and own up to having a senior moment. 

Now a warning to Trump supporters: Stop reading here unless you have an answer to what you think he had to gain by bad-mouthing John McCain in a series of tweets this past weekend? Did he think we’d be so outraged over his treatment of a guy who’s been died since August that we’d be distracted from the fact that the terrorist who killed fifty people at two mosques in New Zealand wrote in his manifest that President Trump's White Nationalism was an inspiration to him? I feel badly for McCain’s family. At least McCain’s daughter had a good come back: "No one will ever love you the way they loved my father....”

Trump also spent time twitter-ranting about GM and Saturday Night Live---that’s what keeps him up in the night? Forty-nine tweets over the weekend from his presidential account but no mention of the disastrous bomb cyclone that raged across the Midwest leaving behind devastating floods. No compassion for American still in peril. But he did tweet several times to his fans to put pressure on FOX News to bring back pundit Jeanine Pirro who’d been suspended for making Islamophobia remarks plus he whined-tweeted about Hillary, Steele, McCabe, Amar Ilham, Weissmann, various republicans and the country of France. Okay, rant off. In truth I’ve cut the time I usually spend on politics in half this past month or two. But I fear I may have to redecorate my entire house to stay sane between now and the next election. And should he get re-elected? I'm going to invest in a barf-bag factory. ©

Spying on Myself and Finding Ghosts

March 16^th. How did that happen? Life goes by too quickly and sometimes I think that happens because I tend to over schedule myself but I know if I didn’t the Lord of Boredom steps up to harass me. And he has a wicked sense of humor. Monday I took Levi to the Foo-Foo Doggie Beauty Spa, then I picked up some lunch, stopped at the pet store and on to the grocery before swinging back around to collect the dog. Tuesday and Wednesday I emptied out my bedroom and bathroom of everything I could carry to get ready for the painters to come beautify my rooms. (You should have seen all the stuff I purged out of my media cabinet and my medicine cabinet!) Wednesday I went to a lecture on Music Theory and how it affects the brain. Thursday was book club day and I’m composing this post before the painters are due on Friday. Is this lineup enough to qualify as over-scheduling my life? It wouldn’t have been back in my heydays when if I didn’t have a half-dozen things to do each day I was on vacation.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I’ve been playing with my little spy tape recorder. Years ago when I was using it a lot, I had a bad habit of not labeling the tapes I made. And since I wanted to recorder myself sleeping to see if I snore with and without the Snore Stopper device I wrote about last week, I decided I should listen to a few tapes to see if there was anything worth keeping before I recorded over one of them. The first two I listened to were conversations with my dad---he died in 1999. Worth keeping. The third tape I pop in was a shocker. It was my husband’s last out-going message from his telephone answering machine. The forth tape had me cracking up laughing along with myself laughing on the tape. I was attending a lecture given by the humor columnist from our local newspaper but there’s no denying the other voices on the tape were mine and my husband’s from 25+ years ago. A few minutes into the lecture the speaker had asked the audience members to each state our names and why we came to the lecture. Here’s what I heard…

“My name is Jean and I’m here because I don’t get a lot of humor.”

The speaker: “Are there any comedians or comedy shows you do get and like?”

I like Barry Miller,” I answered, “but I don’t get Woody Allen. I really don’t!” Then the speaker explained the differences in the two kinds of humor employed in my examples. 

Next up was my husband. “I’m Don and I’ve got to agree with her. She doesn’t get all humor and I think she’s funny when she’s not getting humor.” I’m laughing in the background as he went on…and on. “Barry Miller is a classic and Night Court. I predict in the future there will be tapes of those shows we can watch over and over again and still see the humor in them. Robin Williams is another. When he gets on a roll---say on the Johnny Carson Show---he can have us laughing until our stomachs ache. Another thing I find funny are your columns.” Don was being a kiss-up, but I could tell he was nervous speaking in public because he always talked faster when he was. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside to hear the two of us having a good time laughing and interacting with the group. But I’m glad he wasn’t around to see what happened to Robin Williams. Don dealt with a few periods of deep depression in his life---which few people knew about---and Robin’s suicide would have hit him hard.

The first night I set the voice activated recorder to find out if I snore I was in bed from midnight to eight in the morning but my Fitbit claimed I only got three hours of sleep, the rest of the time I was restless. Now I know why. I’m not snoring but I sure am having a lot of conversations in a language that would take an intergalactic interpreter to translate. Pure gibberish punctuated with laughter and some whimpering and apparently I must look at the clock because at one point I said, “Three o’clock” as clear as a bell. Interestingly enough it was after 3:00 when Fitbit said I actually slept deep enough not to be labeled ‘restless.’ The second night I set the recorder I was wearing the Snore Stopper “baskets” up my nose and my Fitbit said I slept 6 hours and 53 minutes with only 49 minutes being labeled ‘restless.’ But the funny part was the words I was saying were easier to understand and there were less of them. 

Talking in your sleep is generally harmless, according to my online search and the only treatment needed is having your bed partner wear ear plugs, but have you ever tried making a dog wear them? I’d probably forget to take them back out in the morning and spend all day wondering why he’s ignoring me. It’s the Lord of Boredom who makes me do experiences like this, but all kidding aside, how much does a sleep study cost these days? A $1,000+? And I’ll bet I wouldn’t have learned a whole lot more. ©

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. ©