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.

Celebrity Sightings

One time in the St. Louis airport I saw the guy who played Mr. Carlin, one of the people in Bob Newhart's therapy group on the Bob Newhart Show, the old one, when he was married to Emily.  I was in a quandary about what to do.  On the one hand, I thought it was cool to see him, but on the other, I didn't want to disturb him, but then again, since he wasn't a big star or anything, maybe he would have enjoyed being recognized, but by the time I thought through all that, he was gone.  You can see how confusing it is.

I hear celebrities complain about the paparazzi and they have no privacy and the guy who was in those Twilight movies was just on the news saying he had been in a depression for three years because he couldn't go anywhere without being recognized.  Excuse me?  Three and a half years ago was he not begging anybody who would talk to him to put him in a movie or something so he could be famous?

When we lived in California I thought we ought to be seeing movie stars right and left, walking down the streets or at the beach, but it didn't happen.  I guess maybe they didn't hang out at the same places we did, although once I saw some guy that looked really familiar----I am sure he played the bad guy in a bunch of movies, but I never figured out his name----at the KFC.  I guess he was a minor player, to be picking up his own bucket of chicken and all.  The big stars have people for that.

Here in Oklahoma, seeing somebody famous is even less likely, even though Christen Chenoweth is from Broken Arrow, where we live, and went to high school here and maybe when our grand kids get up there they can see where her locker was or something, but really, what kind of people go around looking for "stars" and stuff?  People need to get a life, is all I have to say about that!

Of course, when it is foisted upon you, what can you do?  Awhile back Dennis and I were just leaving McDonald's after breakfast when we saw a huge, fancy looking bus filling up at the gas station right across from us.  And on the front, where the destination usually is, on that sign above the front windshield, you know?  There in big letters it said "DEMI  LOVATO".  Really! 

Of course, I wouldn't know Demi Lovato if she looked right at me, (I thought it was the girl from "iCarly" but our granddaughter, Hayley, said that was somebody else)  but I remembered hearing Hayley talk about her.  Anyway, of course I had to turn around and go back and take a picture of the front of the bus.  For our granddaughter, of course. And then, I thought, "What the heck?" and I went around and up the steps and into the bus!!!  Can you believe it?  In case I could get an autograph.  For the grand kids.

There was somebody sitting in the driver's seat and I said "Pardon me.  Is this Demi Lovato's bus?" (like I hadn't just taken a picture of the name on the front)  And he said "No, this is her cousin's bus.  Her cousin isn't here either, but Miss Lovato supplies her with this bus.  You can take pictures if you want."  So, I did!

Imagine! Me!  I was on Demi Lovato's cousin's bus!!!  You can touch my hand next time you see me if you want. I might grace you with an autograph.

Birthday, Umm...Pastry

First, I would like to say that I make very good pies.  People have even been known to request that I bring pies that I have made to holiday meals.  I make my own crust, and while my pies may not be as beautiful as the ones you see in magazines, they are quite tasty.  So in the future, if I am responsible for the dessert on a birthday occasion, you just might be getting a pie instead of the traditional cake. 

Regular readers may be familiar with some of my other forays into cake making, and really, that angel food cake I made for my daughter-in-law's birthday last year tasted perfectly fine, even the parts we scraped off the oven racks when it erupted from the pan and ran all over the oven.  It was the presentation that was a little bit lacking.  I may try something else for her birthday this year, though.

It's just that birthdays are supposed to have cakes, normally.  I had been trying different cakes for our son, Jake's birthday for quite awhile, (He doesn't like chocolate.  I don't know where he came from.) so a few years  ago when I stumbled onto a recipe for pumpkin cake I figured he would like it because he loves pumpkin pie. (See?  That should tell me something.) In the picture it looked pretty impressive because there are four layers with gooey filling.  The first time I made it, it turned out great. 

The last couple of years, maybe not so much.  You have to make the cake in two layers, then you slice those layers into four.  Nobody tells you how to slice them evenly, and it's not like trimming bangs where you can just keep taking more off the sides, so when one side of the layer that you have sliced is about the depth of an envelope and the other side is a couple inches tall, you have to remember which side of the first layer is skinny and which side is fat and try to turn them opposite each other to line them up with the next layer.  Are you with me?  Then you slap the filling on, plop the next layer on that and keep going till there are four layers.  While it is still gooey you might be able to kind of twist the layers to try to even them up, but that doesn't always work. (Don't think I haven't heard some people, who shall remain nameless, calling it the Leaning Tower of  Cake, either.) But it still tastes good.

Which brings us to this year's cake.  Jake's birthday fell on a Tuesday, which is the day Dennis usually only works a couple of hours, so when I take him to work I just wait for him since it's a thirty minute drive.  I got up early, made the cake, (which I took over to my neighbor's to bake in her oven, but that's a whole other story) and figured I could do the slicing into four layers and make the filling in the afternoon when we got home.  Of course!  For the first time since I started just waiting for him, Dennis wound up working all day while I sat outside and totally finished my library book.

By the time he came out we barely had time to get to the restaurant in time to meet Jake and his family for his birthday dinner.  I left them finishing up, in fact, and dashed home, bringing my granddaughter, Hayley with me, to finish up the cake.  I called out directions and Hayley opened Cool Whip and cream cheese and mixed them with the pumpkin while I sliced the layers.  I was just finishing putting the top layer of cake on top of the gooey stuff as Jake and the rest of the family came in the door.

That's when I licked my fingers.  That's also when I realized that I had forgotten to add the sugar.  "Oh, no!" I said, with dismay.

"Oh, yay!"  Hayley said, with great joy. "Another cake disaster!  It's a tradition!"

I definitely am going to start figuring out how to get birthday candles to stand up in a pie crust.

The Square Blue Car

Before there were mini-vans or SUVs, there was the Volkswagen Bus, which was basically a mini-van.  The smaller version was called a Volkswagen Square-back.  It was our first second car.

Dennis and I had just moved to California and you have to have a car in California, if just to appreciate the freeway system.  On our trip to look for a house we rented a car.  Even though we were used to St. Louis traffic, nothing prepares you for driving in Los Angeles.  We had often been in bumper-to-bumper traffic.  Driving seventy miles per hour was no big deal, either.  It was the bumper-to-bumper traffic WHILE driving seventy miles per hour that was terrifying.

Nevertheless, I had to have a car, so after we got settled in our new city we went to the car dealer recommended by people at Dennis's new job and came home with the cutest car they had.  (Well, it was my first car!)  It was not the newest car on the lot, or the biggest, but it was blue and I liked it.

We lived in Fountain Valley, south of Los Angeles and about twenty minutes from Disneyland, and the first year we lived there we went to Disneyland thirteen times.  At first we went to experience it for ourselves but after that we were tour guides for every friend and relative who came to visit and, of course, Disneyland was first on the list of must-sees.  Since Dennis was often working, I got to take everybody in my blue Volkswagen Square-back.

It only had a few little quirks.  First, the headlights didn't work.  As you know, I rarely drive at night since I don't see well in the dark, so that didn't pose a problem.  If we went out at night Dennis drove us in his car.  The other thing was that the windshield wipers didn't work either.  Or rather, they did work.  They just wouldn't turn off once you turned them on.  No matter that any rain might have stopped twenty minutes before, the wipers went back and forth, back and forth ad nauseam until you turned the car off.  And often they went right back to chugging along when you turned the car on again if the time lag was not to their liking.

This usually wasn't a problem because California was in a drought at the time and we didn't even find out about the wiper thing until long after we had the car.  Our friend at church, who was somewhat of a mechanic, said the lack of lights and the wayward wipers were probably part of the same short in the electrical system.  That made sense, but still, I didn't worry about it because neither problem came up often.

And then, the Perfect Storm occurred.  My sister and her two sons, about eight and eleven at the time, came through on their way home from Tokyo.  Of course we had to go to Disneyland.  Dennis had to work, so it was the four of us in the square blue car.  Disneyland was as much fun as usual.  We went on Space Mountain.  We rode the Teacups.  We climbed into the faux rowboat and ducked down to hide from the Pirates of the Caribbean.  It was all rides, all the time, several times.  (Prices were considerably less back then.)  And all of a sudden, we realized the sun was setting.

Like four kinds of Cinderellas (well, it was Disneyland!) we made a dash, not for our pumpkin coach, but for the square blue car, and headed into the dusk.  All around us people were turning on their headlights.  The best I could do was turn on the emergency flashers.  Oh, wait.  In my hurry to find the flashers I hit the windshield wiper knob.  So, off we went, flashers flashing, windshield wipers wiping, and every car we encountered blinking its lights at us to let us know the headlights weren't on.  The twenty minute ride from Anaheim to Fountain Valley seemed like a hundred and twenty.  My sister, ever supportive, scrunched down in the passenger seat with just her eyes showing, trying to help navigate without being seen.  Like anybody from Tokyo was going to recognize her!  I have no idea how we managed to make that drive without being stopped by a police car.  But the boys thought it was the most fun ride they were on all day!

When we moved from Fountain Valley we left the blue car behind and I got a square-ish orange Nissan.  The lights worked and the windshield wipers turned off when ordered to do so.  The only quirk it had was that it backfired like a cannon going off every time I drove it on the freeway.  Hey, you can't have everything.

The Times They Are A-Changin'

     Saturday night was my favorite night of all the year. Make that: Sunday morning was my favorite morning. Well, not counting Christmas morning. It was Time Change Sunday. The Fall Back one, where you get an extra hour of sleep. (The Spring one is my least favorite day.) I always think I am going to lounge around in bed on Time Change Sunday, maybe even have time to eat breakfast before we leave for church, but the night before I kept thinking "Hey, I can finish this chapter, we get an extra hour's sleep tonight." And, "Just a few more minutes on Facebook. We get an extra hour sleep tonight." So by the time I got to bed it was more than an hour later than usual.
     And then there was the changing of the clocks. Who knew we had so many clocks? It turns out we have a clock of some sort in every room including the bathrooms, and sometimes two. There are three in the kitchen when you count the wall clock, the microwave and the oven. The round clocks with hands (there's a word for them, but if I ever get on Jeopardy and it is one of the questions, I'll be losing money,) aren't too bad, although my fingers got kind of numb after turning and turning those little knobs in back. The computers and phones and even my alarm clock change by themselves, which is kind of spooky. Some year I'm going to stay up until---is it one a.m. that they are supposed to change?---and watch to see what happens.
     It's the digital clocks, the ones that are supposed to be so easy, that take me forever. On my husband's alarm clock you have to hold down one button for "hour" and push another button through all the numbers till you get to the right one, but of course I pass it and have to go around again, which is why, especially in the fall when you have to keep going, like, eleven hours, it takes forever. Then you have to do the same thing with the "minute" button.
     The oven and the microwave clock, digital, of course, drive me craziest. That is, if you don't count the fact that I keep thinking about the electronic ones changing by themselves and what other stuff are they doing in there that I don't know about and how much do they know about me anyway and----where was I? Oh, yeah. Trying to get those stupid numbers to match. The microwave is right on top of the oven so you can see both clocks at once, so first I change the one on the oven, but by the time I get the numbers right on it, then go to the microwave and push the "clock" button, hold it down while the numbers change, then push "clock" again. Then push "a.m. or p.m." (Who cares? They are the same numbers!) By then it is a minute later on the oven clock and I have to start over on one of them. They have to match or I can't stand it.
     Don't let me get started on the clock in the dashboard of the car. Every six months I go through the whole house on Saturday night changing all the clocks, then the next morning when we get in the car to go to church, the time is wrong. And stays wrong for about a week. Who can find those teeny-tiny buttons to change that thing anyway? I am always tempted to try to do it while I'm driving which, safety-wise, would make texting and driving seem like being parked. It takes an ink pen, or an ice pick, or a little person with fingers the size of toothpicks.
     By the time I had finished with all the clocks I was exhausted and really needing that extra hour although I had already wasted it resetting clocks. But at least I went to bed knowing I was going to get to sleep till it was daylight.

Except I forgot to tell the dog about the time change.

Living on the Edge

     Years ago I thought it might be really neat to become an Efficiency Expert when I grew up. This was before I figured out that there was probably math involved, so I went another direction.
     The concept still fascinates me, though, and I try to do as many things as I can in the most economical way possible. The way I see it is this: the more time I save on the unimportant, the more time I have for other things. If  I'm going to waste time, I want it to be a really enjoyable waste of time, like sleeping late, or laying around reading a book and watching junk TV.
     I started this program way back in High School, maybe even Junior High (that's what we called it back in the middle of last century. None of this Middle School nonsense.) If I was given an assignment that was due in a week, I never spent time messing with it ahead of time. The night before, I put in an all-out effort, probably spent about half the amount of hours on it as if I had done an hour a day, and, voila!, it was done. I didn't even waste time sleeping much that night.
     These days some people that live in this house don't appreciate my great saving of time and even give it other names, like "Procrastination" or "Deliberately Driving People Crazy." They say things like "When you are supposed to be somewhere at nine o'clock, you can't leave here at nine o'clock and expect to get there on time!" And, I'm ashamed to admit it about someone I love, but this person has even been known to lie about what time a plane is taking off. Can you believe it? How much time is wasted by people arriving early to places and then sitting around waiting for all the other people to get there, anyway?
     And what about things like housework?  I could do it everyday, and it will just have to be done again the next day or so, or I can wait until I know someone is going to come over and all of a sudden, I'm Super-Martha and can get it all done in about an hour. Most of it, anyway. At least what's out in the open. Now which is the best use of time?
     Think of all the time people waste doing things and undoing the same things and then doing them again. Like making the bed. You're just going to get right back in. Or getting dressed. When my boys were little and we had to be someplace early in the morning, I got them dressed the night before, let them sleep in their clothes, then took them right from the bed to the car, handed them a peanut-butter sandwich to eat on the way, and off we went. I don't know why everybody doesn't save time like this.
     And filling the car up with gas. I'm not too fond of doing it, so I do it as infrequently as possible, thus saving aggravation as well as time. Okay, I may cut it a little close sometimes.  Like today, you know that little indicator thing above the rear-view mirror? It said we had five miles more to go before empty, but it was really more efficient to stop and get the bread first, even though it was a couple of miles out of the way because then after we got gas we could head straight home. But that indicator thing kept nagging me and it did say "Zero miles to empty" about a mile before I got to the right gas station. The van has a twenty gallon tank and the pump said I put in twenty and four/tenths gallons, which is the most I've ever put in before, but we got there didn't we? Some people get so nervous!
     I'm really more professional than some people give me credit for. There is a business model called Just In Time that saves manufacturers a pile of money by waiting till the last minute to do things and/or pay for things and they save on storage space too. Sound familiar? It was probably thought up by an Efficiency Expert. Who knew I was so far ahead of my time?