Saving the Planet

     We try to do our part to save the planet, so we just dropped off three bags of newspapers for recycling and now I have to start a new bag.
     It doesn't take long to fill a bag. Years ago I got the newspaper every day. I always read the obituaries, of course, to make sure I'm not in there, and because people have led such interesting lives that nobody even finds out about till they're dead. And the Funnies. I guess most people call them the Comics. I think they are essential to a good education and since our grandkids in Edmond don't get the paper at their house, I mail them the Sunday Funnies every week.
     Then I read the headlines to my husband, at least the interesting ones, and I cut out important articles for all the other members of my family because I am the Keeper of The News, the last one in our immediate family who actually reads black and white words from real paper you hold in your hands.
     I used to get the paper delivered every day but since I feel the need to read the whole thing if it shows up in my yard, no matter how old, it sometimes became a problem, like when it built up to a pile the size of a bumpy beached whale when we went out of town or something, and my neighbor very sweetly brought the paper in with the mail she was getting for us. (You can't call and have it stopped because I saw on TV that sometimes burglers have a part-time job in the circulation department and then they know you are aren't home!) I kept trying to catch up, starting with the first day we were gone and then the next day, but there was another one out there each morning and it was like a bad dream where you are running in place but never getting anywhere. I thought I caught Dennis on the internet looking up how you can get someone on that "Hoarders, Buried Alive" show on TV, but, of course, he denied it. I mean, please! He could still walk down the hallway if he turned sideways.
     So I took a deep breath, called the Circulation Department and asked to get just the Sunday paper.  It is full of coupons as well as all the interesting ads...I always call and tell my daughter-in-law when something good is on sale...so I have to get the Sunday paper. But they had this "Week-end Special": if you took the Sunday paper, you got Saturday, which has the real estate ads. I'm not planning to move but I like to see what million dollar houses are really going for these days. And Friday's paper came along with it. It is full of all the entertainment places you might want to go on the week-end if you aren't busy reading the newspaper. And the package cost almost the same as just the Sunday. "Okay," I said. "I'll take the Week-end Special."
     And then a few months later they added Thursdays. For free! You can't turn down free. But that is all! Of course, the neighborhood paper that they throw in your yard whether you ask for it or not comes on Wednesday mornings, and the food ads, which are almost like a small newspaper, come in the mail on Tuesdays. So now, Mondays are the only days we don't get some papers that are going to need to be recycled. I won't even start about the magazines we get.
     I like to use paper grocery bags to store them because they are just the right size and they are recycleable too. You just dump the whole thing in the bin. They are a little hard to find anymore, though. I used to get them from Reasor's but they have changed over to plastic and the only place who still uses paper that I know of is Braum's, the ice cream place.
     So, I guess I don't have a choice. If I want to be keep on saving the planet, I'm going to have to start eating more ice cream.

Things To Be Thankful For While Waiting...And Waiting

As you know, I am very careful about checking to make sure my keys are in my purse before I lock the car, and actually have to touch them again when I get out of the car and close the door.  Except when I don't.

I don't know!  I was at a store.  I saw that I had been overcharged.  I grabbed the item.  I grabbed the receipt.  I grabbed my purse. I did not grab my keys.  I clicked the button to lock the car.  I went back in the store.

They were very nice and refunded the difference that I had paid, but when I left the store and reached into my purse for the keys, no keys.  Of course, they were not in my purse, they were in the ignition of the car.  So, as it turned out, I had plenty of time to reflect on my blessings while I waited for the locksmith.  Here are some of the things I am thankful for:

I'm thankful that the store I was at had a sofa display in their entry and I had a comfortable seat to wait where I could see the car, even though the manager did come out and look at me a couple of times but I explained the situation and he said "Don't worry about it, people do it all the time," but then a homeless-looking guy came and sat down and read the paper but he didn't stay as long as I did.

I'm thankful I had my purse with me, which had my phone in it, and that my purse has a long handle which I could wrap around my arm three times and then kind of sit on it, even though the area I was in is very nice and no purse snatchers seemed to be lurking.  Of course they wouldn't look like they were lurking, would they?  They would make themselves look like regular people, then at the last second...SWOOSH!...they've got your purse.

I'm thankful it wasn't freezing outside like it was the day before because that entry way wasn't heated and even though they had some blankets on sale they had not displayed them in the entry way.

I'm thankful my daughter-in-law and sister were home so I could have somebody to talk to on the phone while I waited because the people coming in and out of the store didn't seem to want to chat.

I'm thankful Big Lots has a bathroom right in front of their entryway, even though the person who cleans it probably had not gotten to it yet because he was busy restocking shelves and changing price signs on the shelves because the reason that I got the good deal on the phone charger I bought was that the sign was still up from Black Friday, apparently, but the computer had changed the price although they honored it anyway when I went back inside to tell them I was overcharged.  Without taking my keys with me.

I'm thankful I didn't have a doctor's appointment to go to that I was going to be late for since I was spending my time lounging on the couch in the entryway of Big Lots, and that I had already dropped Dennis off at work instead of stopping at the store on the way because if I had, he would have been wa-a-y late for work and he gets a little testy when we are running late to get him to work.  Sheesh!  It's not like he punches a time clock or anything!

I'm thankful there were no bears loping around the parking lot looking in the windows or walking in front of the invisible beam that lets people in the doors because I have seen some on TV that do that.

I'm thankful we have roadside assistance even if they were very busy and couldn't get to me for an hour and when the guy got there he had to spend more time on the paperwork than he it took him to unlock the car and it was kind of disturbing that someone who knows what they were doing could get into the car that fast.  But he didn't look like he spent his off-time stealing cars.  He looked very nice. Really.  But he may have gotten my address when he was doing the paperwork.

I am NOT thankful for the greedy executives at automobile manufacturers who had the bright idea to make their car keys so that they may not be reproduced under penalty of your car shutting down if you try to insert a made-from-Ace Hardware-key in the key slot so if you want an extra key you have to buy it from them and pay half a month's mortgage payment for it.  I just want one to keep in my wallet to open the door so I can get my real keys from the ignition if I ever lock them in the car.  Which I never do.

The Perfect Guest

Okay, I know Thanksgiving is over and everyone but me has the house cleaned, all their Christmas decorations up and is sitting by the fireplace drinking hot chocolate, but just so you will be ready for next year, I'm going to tell you how to have a relaxing Thanksgiving dinner.

Go to someone else's house and be a guest. You have to be a semi-stranger guest, so that when you say "Is there anything I can do to help?" They say, "Oh, no. Things are almost ready. Just stay seated." Then eat everything till your pants are ready to split and your hostess will feel complimented. The only flaw in this plan is that there are no leftovers for lunch the next day.

The other way is almost as good. Have the dinner at your house but invite someone like my daughter-in-law, Jerilyn, to come early, and let her help. She will wind up doing almost all the work. You just say, "The turkey is always so good at your house. How is it you fix it?" and she will prepare the turkey. Then you say, "Everybody loves your dressing so much. Why don't you just make it here?" and she will.

Then, since she is already in the kitchen, she will probably stir things on the stove, mix up casseroles, make the gravy, (especially when you say "I absolutely love your gravy and you know I can never make it as good as you do!" ) and get things on the table. You can get the dishes down because you know where they are and she is busy. Except the ones that are up too high. She will stop what she's doing and reach the top shelf for you.

If the kids are big enough, you can get them to clear the table when dinner is over, but then when everybody has scattered to watch football or play video games, your special guest will stay in the kitchen with you and help with the dishes. She will scrape the plates and hand them to you to load into the dishwasher since no one else can load your dishwasher the right way and you always move things around anyway if someone else put them in. But she will probably put soap and water in the sink and hand wash the things that are too big for the dishwasher and scrub the really tough ones till she breaks a fingernail. And she'll wipe down the counters.

And then, if you are really lucky, she will whip the cream, get everybody their desserts, cut a piece of pie and hand it to you and say, "Go sit down and put your feet up.  You've been working all day."

You've got eleven months to decide who you are going to invite next year, so get planning.  And, no, you can't have Jerilyn. She's mine!

Mutiny on the...(I was going to say Brownty, but that's too cheesy even for me.)

Just as I was settling down into this calm, empty nest and feeling pretty smug about surviving the Terrible Twos and the Angst-ridden Adolescents, just when I thought I was finished dealing with my share of the rebellion in this world, suddenly, in my twilight years, when things are supposed to be smooth, with no more foot-stomping "I do it by self!", with no more eye-rolling "Whatever!", I am now faced with the most insidious battle of all:  The Belligerent Brows.

What happened?  I look in the mirror and apparently Andy Rooney left me his eyebrows in his will! His white ones! There are some that are three inches long. The ones that are not making little corkscrews are reaching for my earlobes.  

There are black ones too.  I've never had black eyebrows before in my life! To think I wasted all those years trying to perfect little strokes with eyebrow pencils and brush-on eyebrow powder in an attempt to transform my pale blond eyebrows into visible ones.  But are they the nice, silky smooth dark eyebrows I longed for as a girl?  No-o-o.  These are the consistency of a broom straw and just as straight.  They poke horizontally out at the world.

No problem, you say.  Grab those eyebrow tweezers.  But here is another irony of middle, okay past-middle, age.  To see up close enough to pluck my eyebrows I need reading glasses.  If I am wearing reading glasses, I can't reach my eyebrows to pluck them. 

I try a magnifying mirror.  OH MY GOSH!  That is way more than I wanted to see!

So now I'm faced with a dillema:  Do I pluck out all these rebellious eyebrows that will not lie down or smooth out?  Every one?  Because if I do, I will be bald there. There is nothing left but bristle brows. The eyebrows of my youth have disappeared. Well, maybe they have not totally disappeared.  I think they flew south.

I might have I spotted them on my upper lip the other day.

Meet Gus

Gus, the Wonder Yorkie has come to believe that I am the source of all that is good, or at least the source of his food and water, and the daily home-made treat, and occasional chew toy.  He loves me.  If I am sitting, he is in my lap.  He wants to be with me wherever I am, will follow me from room to room, and will dash ahead of me so that he can reach the bathroom before the door is closed, then lie patiently on the bath mat and wait, unless he can talk me into holding him.

He always helps me in the kitchen by hanging around under the cutting board to catch whatever I drop, then runs to the rug (being the aristocratic dog that he is, he prefers to eat in the dining area) where he sometimes eats it, sometimes leaves it till later.  He has even been known to gobble down broccoli or peppers or lettuce.  His favorite place in the kitchen is in front of the open dishwasher door when I am loading it.  If there is a spatula or a spoon still holding remnants of dinner, he does his best to lick it clean.  (Stop  making that face.  The water in the dishwasher is way hot enough to sterilize anything he licks.)

When I leave the house, he makes a big show of sitting obediently on the carpet where I tell him to wait, then, when he hears the car pulling into the gararge, runs back to that same spot, pretending he has been there all along.  But he only stays there for the moment it takes for him to think he has fooled me.  In a nano-second, he is running and jumping and turning in circles till I pick him up, as glad to see me as if I were the Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes crew bringing a giant check with a promise of five-thousand dog bones a week for life.

Come bedtime he snuggles into the "nest" I make him by folding our comforter into a big pile, and gently snores for an hour or two, but soon  he  decides to move and tiptoes across the bed to a better spot: against the back of my legs, where my lap would be if I would just stop that silly sleeping thing and sit up so he could curl into in his usual spot.  He makes up for the difference by pushing against me as tightly as he can, like a night time hug.
  
Who couldn't adore such a dog?

He does, however, have just one tiny flaw. When he is confronted with a beautiful woman, er, female dog, he forgets that he was neutered years ago and attempts to impress her by hiking his leg on the nearest wall or piece of furniture, or perhaps any purses he spots on the floor nearby. It does not impress the humans who own the wall or the furniture or the purse.

And so, when Gus goes visiting, he must suffer the humiliation of wearing a diaper.  Not those tiny dog diapers that cost fifty dollars apiece, or thereabouts, and slide off at the slightest wiggle.  No, Gus wears a a real baby diaper that wraps around his middle, covering any offending parts, and then on top of that, to make sure the diaper doesn't come off, because he is a very resourceful Yorkie, a onesie.  Not a silly doggie dress, a real baby onesie, size nine months.  The three tiny snaps at the bottom are perfect for holding it on him and still leaving room for his stump of a tail to hang out.

Here is Gus's picture in his onesie.  If you are ever lucky enough to meet him, don't tell him I showed it to you.  As you can see, he is embarrassed enough when he wears it.

If The Shoe Fits...

Okay, who among you wears those crazy shoes that are as tall as the Eiffel Tower and cost about as much?

My curiosity got the better of me the other day at Marshall's and I pulled out my tape measure right there in the shoe department and checked to see how tall the heels were on a pair of....umm, lets call them...amazing, blue shoes I saw.  The heels were five inches tall and then there was an inch of platform under the toe box.  I guess they had to add that part in front or you would fall forward onto your face every time you tried to take a step.

I know I'm an old lady and I wear old lady shoes, so maybe I just don't get it, but....Why?  Not only are shoes like that impossible to walk in but they are ruining your feet in the long run, killing them in the short....walk. Or, make that stumble.  And here's a newsflash:  some of them make the wearer look like a hooker.  Sorry, but that's my humble, okay, not so humble, opinion.

So I went home and looked online.  I found some so tall that you would have to wear them like ballet point-shoes.  Can you imagine walking around on the tips of your big toes all day?  Do these look attractive to you?  Am I that out of it?

And guess what??  Tonight on the news I saw a report that some women are having surgery, their toes shortened or their pinkie toes REMOVED, to be able to wear their own personal torture chambers.  Are you kidding me???  Where is their self-esteem?  Where is their common sense?

Here is what I think, girls: The Emperor Has No Clothes!  Just because something is in fashion, just because something costs a whole month's pay, just because somebody says something is the latest "must have", does not make it beautiful.

Less than a century ago young Chinese girls were horribly deformed and crippled by foot binding because it was thought to make them beautiful.  Does that ring a bell?

Ladies, please!  Just walk away....if you can.

Just Sittin' There

On Facebook lately there have been several posts from young moms who are celebrating successful potty training, some including pictures.  Yay!  Cue the balloons!  I am so happy for them.  But for every one who's genius child finally "gets it", there are five sets of parents out there in dispare, convinced that their kid is going to have to take his diapers to school in his backpack.

I hear that some people will give an M&M for a successful performance on the potty.  One M&M!  Come on!  No wonder it's taking awhile. When I was baby-sitting one of my grandkids every day and her mother decided it was time to work on potty-training, at Grandma's house she got a whole Hershey bar when she did something extraordinary! (The grandkid, not the mom)

Here's my take on it.  I think every child has a date embedded in his brain.  If the parents start trying to potty-train him or her six months before that day, they will think it takes six months for potty-training and they will believe this is a hard and fast rule for all children.  If, by some miracle, the parents happen to start training their child the day before the pre-ordained date, they will think,  "Wow!  We are great parents.  We potty-trained our kid in only one day!"

Sometimes the little darling just isn't ready.  I am not naming names, since I want to still have access to my grandchildren after this is posted, but I know a child who was so enamored of his potty chair when he was two, that when it was time for his dad to get home from work, he would carry the chair outside with him and sit on it while he waited by the driveway.  And he brought it into the living room when we, I mean, his parents, were having a church Youth Group meeting and sat on it in the middle of the circle.

The other child in that family did not get the message quite as early.  While the mom was not too disturbed by this, his grandmother was mortified.  She said, "Any child who can tell you he wants his diaper changed....and bring you the diaper!!!...is old enough to do it himself."

But, his pediatrician said, "I guarantee you he will not be taking diapers to kindergarten with him.  Leave him alone!"

And the kid said, when pressed by his grandmother, "Jesus doesn't want me to."

Then that special, pre-ordained day came along.  His aunt gave him a package of Spider Man underwear for Christmas.  He laid down his diapers and never looked back.  I'm pretty sure that if they made Spider Man underwear in his size, he'd still be wearing them today.

Take heart.  It will happen when it happens.