Pushing My Buttons

     It would be nice if I could work the buttons on my car radio. It used to be easy: turn the dial, pull the button out, push the button in. Bingo, you drive down the road listening to Vivaldi, or Beethoven, or okay, back when I could work the buttons, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones (who may or may not be dead by now but their semi-preserved bodies are still touring and probably being made to appear alive by electric jolts from the amps behind them.) I, at least, have moved on.
     Now, the car radio manufacturers have "fixed" what wasn't broken and I don't even know the first thing about it. You can't even dial; you have to push "Search" or "Seek" and be quick enough to pounce on it when you find your station. Of course, if they are on a commercial you don't know what station it is, so you keep on pushing the "Seek" or "Search" button (I never know which one I'm supposed to use) passing up the one you were looking for, until you make the circuit from 88.1 to 109.9 and have to go around again. And even then I find it I don't know how to make it stay. Oh! Am I supposed to be watching the road?
     The people from whom we purchased our car gave us the lovely gift of satellite radio.  They probably didn't realize they had paid for it for infinity, but now we have it and I was excited when I finally found the Classical music site. I left it there. I had already found, through much button pushing, the FM classical station broadcasting from the University of Tulsa on the regular radio, so, voila! Two stations I could listen to. There is one button that lets me toggle back and forth between those two.
     One caveat: this works as long as nobody moves anything. If one of them is playing something I'm not fond of, say an Aaron Copeland composition which, I'm sorry, sounds to me like the Country & Western version of classical, then I can toggle to the other. The problem comes when I'm reaching for the toggle button and accidentally hit the button that "searches", which is next to my toggle button, and I have to spend five minutes trying to get back to where I was and before you know it  I've got Sinatra's Greatest Hits. Even I'm not that old. And you thought texting while driving was distracting?
     Sometimes while Dennis is waiting for me in the car when I run into Wal-Mart for just one thing and I will be back in Ten Minutes,Tops! because you know how quickly you can get in and out of Wal-Mart, Dennis decides to listen to the Satellite Radio. He changes the channel to the Sixties Music site or sometimes even the Fifties Music site, (He seems to know how to do these things) and later I have to tiptoe back in time, all the way through the Forties to the Nineties, then thirteen Latin stations, including Playboy, Radio en Espanol, five different Country stations, Hard Rock, Rap, Polka, Sports, Krishna Das Yoga, Disney, Opera, and on and on. Did you know they have a whole site devoted exclusively to Elvis music? Not to mention---I am not making this up!---161 play-by-play Sports sites. I just keep pushing the search button until they get back to something I can bear or my finger is worn down to the second knuckle, whichever comes first. Usually, I'm at my destination before I find it.
     I know what you are thinking: car radios are so-o-o last century. I should have a Touch or an I-phone or something that plugs into my ear. Well, my son gave me some little square thing awhile back. It is in my dresser drawer.  I think it is a Touch, but how do you get music from the thing?  I can't even see any buttons on it.

Hands Free Talking

Even though I think people look like Cyborgs when they wear that thing in their ear instead of talking into a real cell phone, I want one.  A Blue Tooth, I think it is called, although I don't know why they don't call it a Blue Ear, but they didn't ask me.  I don't want a phone like that, I just want the ear piece.  That way when I am walking around talking to myself people will think I'm on the phone and will quit looking at me like I'm weird.  Okay, they'll probably still look at me like I'm weird but it will be because I'll look like a Cyborg talking on the phone.

I can't help it.  I've always talked to myself.  It's important that I list what I have to do next, like "The keys. You have to take the keys if you want to start the car," or "Probably better comb your hair today. You don't want a repeat of yesterday."  Or, it just comes out, like "I can't believe she's wearing that out in public!  Don't people own mirrors??"  It's okay when you have a baby with you or even a dog because you can pretend you are talking to them but in reality, it's me talking to me.

I don't talk just to me, of course, although at least I will always listen to me and not totally tune me out while doing stuff on a smart phone and I'D LIKE TO SEE SOMETHING BESIDES THE TOP OF SOMEBODY'S HEAD SOME DAY! and......Sorry, where was I?  Oh, yeah. Sometimes I talk to the people in the other cars on the road when I am driving.  Necessary things, like "The speed limit is 45 and you're going 30 because...???" or "Oh, sorry. I didn't see you in my blind spot there. My fault,  my fault.  I SAID I was sorry!"  Stuff like that.

Dennis makes fun of me when I talk to other drivers. He says "You do know they can't hear you, right?" I'm not sure though.  I think they get the gist of it sometimes.  I'm pretty sure they talk to me too.  Occasionally they will even answer me with sort of a wave.

This is from the guy who records the baseball games so he can zoom through the commercials, then when he is watching he yells at the players while they are at bat. "Keep your head down! What are you doing? That ball was completely in the dirt!" etc. He's talking to them even though the game has occurred an hour and a half ago, thus transcending both time and space. I don't think they can hear him

At least when I'm talking to myself or to other drivers or, that guy at the dog groomers where I'm never going back, the guy with so many piercings if you took out the bling & put a hose in his mouth he could double as a lawn sprinkler, it is in real time. (Well, of course I only said it when he was in the back room getting Gus.  He was the size of a Humvee.  Do you think I'm crazy?)

So if you see me at the store or someplace and it looks like I'm talking wildly to myself, check out my ear to see if I'm wearing any kind of communication device.  I may be having an important discussion with.....someone.

I Was Definitely Going to Clean House on Saturday...

I wish there was a planet where when you planned to get up early and give the house a mighty cleaning, including even the top of the refrigerator where aliens may be camped out but you never would know because you are too short to see up there, but then you had to go out to the bank first because it is only open till noon on Saturdays, on that planet you started cleaning when you got home.

But since you are out you might as well go to breakfast and then run into the supermarket for just one, okay, fifteen, things that are on sale This Saturday Only! and also the post office, but then you could start cleaning as soon as you got home.

But when your grand kids came home with you and stayed another four hours eating goldfish crackers, showing you funny cat videos on the computer while eating fgokdish crackers, jumping on the bed, and watching Monsters, Inc. for the nine-hundred and fifty-fourth time while eating goldfish crackers, until their dad pulled into the driveway and texted them to come out, and after only half an hour of looking for their shoes they went home, that then you would clean the house. 

 On that planet, when you woke up from your nap, you would get up from the recliner where you fell down exhausted when the kids left, and would jump into housework-mode like a housecleaning Ninja getting ready for the Health Department inspectors.

But I don't live on that planet.

That Glass Holds How Much?

I'm usually not just a "Glass-Half-Full" person but an "I-Drank-The-First-Half-Myself-And-It-Was Delicious-And-I'm-Expecting-A-Refill-Any-Minute" person.  If I believe Romans 8:28, which says "For all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose," there is no reason for me to be depressed, is there?  So it is really easy to look down on all those people who let themselves get depressed.  Whoops, I may see a little flaw here.

Nobody ever said God doesn't have a sense of humor.  I obviously needed to be taught to look at both sides.  Accordingly, it seems that a few months ago, okay, probably nine, I started seeing less and less in the proverbial glass. Don't ask me for specifics; I'm not sure I could enumerate, or even recognize them.

Actually, I've been there before.  Within one month in 1994 our youngest son graduated from high school and got ready to leave home for college, our oldest son got married, and Dennis' mother, for whom I had been caring in her last illness, died.  Plus I hated my job but felt I was trapped there because we had to have the insurance.  I think I cried every day for about a year and probably should have had some medication. And about fifteen years before that when we were experiencing some severe financial problems I sank in into a pretty deep funk. (Aren't you glad you tuned in today to get a little humor ?)

But there's the difference.  Back then I could point to legitimate reasons to be down.  Norman Vincent Peale, the "Power of Positive Thinking" guy, might have gotten depressed if I had spent enough time explaining it to him at the time.  But, things changed, I got through it.

It's the elusive, something's not quite rosy, you can't put your finger on it, feeling that has been wearing on me lately.  Maybe it's that the bucket holding my Bucket List appears to have a slow leak.  Or it's that the sand in the hour glass and the shape of my body are more and more in sync:  most of it is at the bottom. 

I'm trying to work through it.  When I wake up at three in the morning I start thanking God for all the things that make my life great, right down to toothbrushes and indoor plumbing, and Facebook.  (Yes, you made the list.)  I can look at the clock and it is after five a.m.  and I still haven't run out.  But then there is a lady on the morning news who is standing in front of her burned-out house, who has absolutely nothing left, and she says "Every day it gets better," and I start talking to myself "You ungrateful WRETCH!" and multiply everything I'm feeling with a mega-dose of guilt.

So, there you have it.  I could find an expensive therapist and feel guilty about not being able to pay her, or I could blab all this to you, dear reader, probably accomplishing the same thing.  If you've been following awhile you probably already know much more about me than you ever wanted to, like how I inadvertently gave a dog shock treatments, or bared more than my soul at my high school graduation, and all about my mastectomy, and I could go on and on. (Oh, yeah. I have gone on and on. That's what I do in my blog.)  How much more can you stand?

I have to admit, nothing makes me feel more alive than writing. I'm chopping away at the Writer's Block.  So, I'm starting to look at the glass from different angles these days.  I'm thinking it is going to start sparkling any day now.  Yeah, it does look like it's getting fuller and fuller. 

Language Lesson

So, it's about ten years ago, when she was close to ninety, and my mom and are I tottering out to her car, (No, I'm holding onto her. SHE'S tottering, smart alec!), when four or five guys about fourteen or fifteen years old come walking down the road laughing and talking really loud and there are only about two regular words to every nineteen of the grossest cuss words in the world in their whole conversation.  I look at my mom to see if she hears. This is the woman who would confide in you that cousin Margaret was "in a family way again" to avoid saying the word pregnant. She's pretty deaf but these guys are coming closer and getting louder.

Well, what could I do?  I get Mom to the lamp post, prop her up and tell her to wait a minute, then I march toward the boys in my toughest, "I've taken on two sons and most of their friends" attitude and say "Guys!  Come on.  Don't you see there's an old lady there?  Can you keep it down at least while she can hear you?" 

Here's where it could have gone either way.  They could have whipped out their switch-blades, or better yet their Saturday Night Specials, and taken care of this pesky little old lady first, then the other little old lady by the lamp post, or they could have looked kind of sheepish, mumbled "Oh, sorry," and slunk on down the street without saying another word.  Thank the Lord, they chose the second option because I hadn't considered the first possibility until I got us both in her car.  Then I realized what I had done and could barely breathe.  I've been thinking about that lately.

When Jake was five years old we were coming home from Mother's Day Out (he hadn't even been to kindergarten yet!) one day and he asked me what the F- word meant.  He didn't spell it out.  I tried not to act shocked but I still remember exactly where I was standing in the garage at the time. It made an indelible mark. (Okay, I know you are wondering:  I did explain it to him but I also let him know it was NOT a word we say.)

I'm not sure people even care any more. They don't seem to have taught their kids otherwise, anyway.  It's just the culture, they say.  You hear way worse than that in movies and in the music everybody listens to.  You can't walk through a school hall or sit in a restaurant without hearing that word or most any other word out there. You hear it from the Vice President of the United States.  Even from Betty White, for heaven's sake.  It's just the way it is.  So, what's the big deal?

Sorry, but it is a big deal to me.  I recently "un-friended" a young relative on Facebook because the language in his posts was unbearable.  Actually, it didn't even make any sense in the context he was writing; it was more like he was using a four-letter punctuation mark every other word.  And, always being the second mom to those boys who hung around our house when the kids were growing up, I recently took one of them to task for his language on Facebook.  So, call me an old-fashioned prude.

I may be the last person in the world who feels this way but I find such language disgusting and offensive, vile, insulting, and objectionable, not to speak of nasty, hideous, ill-bred and rude.  See?  There are other words available. Have you no imagination? Is your vocabulary so limited? When you use the same tiresome vulgarities over and over you not only sound crude, you are also advertising your apparent lack of education.  As Dennis is fond of saying, "When you talk like that nobody listens to what you are saying, only to how you are saying it."

If you want what comes out of your mouth to sound like it made a detour through the bottom of the kitty litter pan  (it is, after all, your right of free-speech, as much as it is my right to complain about it) so be it.  I'm sure you won't mind if I choose not to listen or read or watch.

If you're trying to shock people, too late. We've all heard it, seen it, read it before.  If you really want to shock people, imagine there is a little old lady leaning up against a lamp post just within ear shot.  Speak accordingly. The one who might get the biggest shock is you when you realize you sound like an intelligent person with self-respect and dignity.

It's a Grand Old Flag

     I'm having a love/hate relationship with my flag today. I love the flag that is a symbol of my country, but I'm frustrated by the piece of cloth that is wrapped for the twentieth time around the beam on the front porch. I've just come in from pulling it loose yet again.
     When we moved into this house we put up a bracket to hold the flag pole. It was screwed into the bricks between the front porch and the garage but when I went to put the flag up for the first time this spring, I found that one of the screws had pulled loose from the mortar and the bracket wouldn't hold the pole. It was probably just as well. When the flag hung from that pole it was always twisting around and tying itself in a tight knot. It looked like a big red and white swimming pool noodle sticking out from the house. Not very patriotic.
     I kept going out to take it off the pole and re-hang it but once, about an hour after I had unfurled it, our sweet young neighbor knocked on the door to ask if we were okay. Apparently I had hung the flag back upside down, which is a universal distress signal. She said she just wanted to know if it was all right if she fixed the flag but I'm pretty sure she thought she'd better check on the old people next door once again.
     So then I decided to climb the ladder and hang the flag straight out on the beam across the front porch. I hammered nails in the beam and stuck the grommets over the nails and tried to hammer the nails straight up. Now the flag is dividing it's time between flapping wildly in our Oklahoma wind, wrapping around the beam, and knocking into the robin's nest that is on top of the beam.
     I'm not going to give up, though. It is important to me that we hang the flag out. I remember the story about how Al Quaida bragged that they would change the look of America on 9/11...and they did. After the attack, flags flew from almost every house on almost every block in all kinds of neighborhoods where they had never been before.
     Don't tell him I said so, but my husband has been known to sniff pretty loudly when watching a sad movie, but it takes a lot to make me cry. However, when the flag comes past me in a parade, or when they unfurl it onto a baseball field, or I look up & down my street and see flags flying at my neighbor's houses, it brings tears to my eyes every time.
     One flag we owned had rested on the casket of my husband's step-father, a World War II veteran. My brother was in Korea. My husband's brother was a Marine in Viet Nam and some of my friends from high school died there. Our son was deployed to Kyrgyzstan, where he patched up soldiers who were wounded when they flew in and out of Afghanistan taking supplies to the troops.Today one of our nephews just graduated from Army Ranger school and is getting ready to leave again, and another is in Afghanistan now.
     All of them have sacrificed for my right to fly that flag, and untwist it and run out into the rain and bring it in and climb up on the ladder and pound the nails to try to keep it up there; to go online and search till I found a flag that was "Made in America." They've gone and left their homes, their families, the way of life we are enjoying today. Thousands of others have lost arms and legs and even their very lives to allow me to fly my flag.
     I think I'll go pull it loose again.  That isn't too much trouble, considering.

Performance Anxiety

Yesterday we got up even before the dog woke us so we could hurry over to the Tulsa Community College Performing Arts Center to get a good seat to watch our granddaughter, Hayley, perform a couple of numbers from "Little Shop of Horrors" with the members of the theater class she has been attending all school year.  We sat for two hours through, approximately 4,327 other kids singing and dancing, some of them quite amazing (in many senses of the word) and finally, in the last fifteen minutes, Hayley and her group came out.  She was third from the left, as I had to continually point out to her PawPaw, but I don't know why he had trouble finding her among all the twenty other girls in green polka-dot dresses; she was obviously the one with the most talent up there!

Then we jumped in our car immediately after the show and drove two hours down the turnpike to watch our second granddaughter, Emily's, dance recital, following the MapQuest map to the Luther, OK school administrative building instead of to the high school where we were supposed to be.  Thank the Lord for cell phones because by staying on the phone with our son through all the turns we made it to the right place just in time to sit in another Performing Arts Center and watched another group of kids performing their hearts out and, amazingly enough, our granddaughter was the best one again! What are the odds? 

In the weeks before, we had attended our grandson, David's, band concert (the star trombone player!) and almost all of Miranda's softball games.  (She may not have been chosen MVP but I'm sure it was only because her Dad was the coach and didn't want to appear to show favoritism.)

Things are different now than they were in the last century when I was a kid.  I didn't know anybody who  took ballet or even played organized sports.  It may have been that no one we knew could have afforded to pay for any such thing or it may have just been that kids were too busy playing in the neighborhood to have time for lessons and so on, but if they happened anywhere, I didn't know about it.

The closest I ever got to a recital (I wouldn't have recognized the word) was a performance that my fifth grade class put on one time.  It was going to be on a Wednesday night, so I knew my parents wouldn't be able to come since this was also Prayer Meeting night and my dad, being the preacher, would be at church instead. My mother was always dutifully at his side. I'm pretty sure here in the Bible Belt a school function wouldn't be held on Wednesdays but in St. Louis, this was the regularly scheduled PTA night.  My parents had never been to a PTA meeting for that reason.

The sketch was a depiction of Alice in Wonderland's encounter with the Queen of Hearts.  Everyone was going to wear kind of a cardboard sandwich board of one of the cards in the hearts suit and march around in formation.  Immediately I knew I had a problem: playing cards was considered a sin for Baptists in that part of the world and if I couldn't play them, how could I be one?  I don't remember if I thought of it, (being either a child prodigy or just desperate to not be left out) or if one of the teachers did, but someone remembered that I was in possession of a lovely red formal with a poufy skirt from when I was a junior bridesmaid in my sister's Valentine's Day wedding.  Perfect! I would wear that dress, march around imperiously, and be the Red Queen. I could shout "Off with her head!" while all the playing cards marched around me. Suddenly, I was the star!  (I don't even remember if there was an Alice.  She was inconsequential to the Queen, at best.)

Now, whenever Miranda gets up to bat at her softball games she looks over to the stands and yells, "PawPaw!!!" to be absolutely sure that he is watching her and she is never disappointed.  I, on the other hand, did not expect to have any family members in the audience at DeHart Elementary School when we put on our performance.  I don't recall that it bothered me;  that's just the way it was.  My mom had dropped me off at school and gone on to church, I guess, and I felt lucky that I was even able to be there myself and not at Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting.

The music swelled, the Ten of Hearts, the Nine of Hearts, the Eight of Hearts and all their...ahem, co-horts...began marching around the stage.  Soon it was my cue and I glided out onto the stage, red skirt swaying, ready to say my line.  And there, front and center in the audience, was the whole congregation of Mary Ann Baptist Church's Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, with the preacher and his wife on the front row.

Did he call off Prayer Meeting for that night?  Of course not.  They just relocated, my dad told me later, and had the meeting in the school auditorium.  I'm not sure what those good Baptists thought about having all those sinful playing cards marching around, life-sized, but I know that the preacher's daughter has never forgotten seeing them all there. And my dad was pretty sure I was the best, most talented kid on the stage.