How to set up a house in a week

System Requirements: Make sure you have a HEALTHY MARRIAGE before you attempt to set up a new house in one week. If you detect a problem in your connection, go to your Travel Agent and plan a nice vacation instead.

User Agreement:

1. We agree that it is a good idea to go to the desert in July while the country is in a heat wave and the desert dwellers have largely vacated to the Northwest.
2. We have learned from every mistake we ever made setting up houses in the past and are EAGER TO GET IT RIGHT this time.
3. We are ON THE SAME PAGE about why we bought this house and how we plan to use it.
4. We have determined this will be FUN for BOTH OF US.

Sancho--a housewarming gift from the kids

Surprisingly, we did set up our desert getaway in one week and it has been fun, except for the part where I got dehydrated, my Windows went into a blue screen funk from which it has not fully recovered, and a garage door repairman stood in the long line of people we are shelling money out to so we can get this thing done.

Tripping down memory lane

No brain cells were altered by the contents of this blog.

A blog is like a scrapbook of musing and memory. For over a year old family photos and cards have collected on a table downstairs like a pile of cold volcanic ash. Finally I began the onerous task of sorting through several generations of family history. I’m tossing duplicates, faded images and photos of people I can’t identify.  

   

I found some treasures  buried in this debris. I promised not to post the “when we were young and foolish” photos of the shaggy- headed two of us with matching seventies era permed ‘fros. With some trepidation I am posting a Mother’s Day card I sent my mother when I was a student at Berkeley—my attempt to share the culture with her.

 Looking at this some decades later I think I’ve finally figured out why she chose not to attend my graduation ceremony.

Then there were:

 the cards to celebrate hallmark holidays 

the child development charts I crafted

the verses I penned

To quote Dorothy of Oz, "Oh my!" I think Berkeley was my Land of Oz. Where is your Oz?

Bonnie and Clyde

photo courtesy Alena Ozerova 

If you are a soft hearted animal lover who gives bed space to furry beasts you may want to skip this blog.

 I am a reformed cat coddler. My last cat, Mellow Yellow, was my undoing. After I adopted him we discovered he had been tossed out in the cold for a reason. He was psycho. His mellow personality disguised an inner turmoil that required medication—a cocktail of Prozac and Prednisone. He was needy and he peed everywhere. But we loved him until he died and then we said, “No more!”

Ding, dong the cat is dead! The word went out and the mice moved in. Nothing we have tried has worked so we are cat-pitulating.

96 and rising

Basting away again in Ocotilloville
Searchin’ for the most perfect malt
Some people claim that this desert’s aflame
But I know when to exalt.

Ocotillo bursting into praise

Conscripted

The guy I’m growing old with signs up for a Medicare drug coverage plan and then he leaves the house to go fly his airplane. The phone starts to ring:

Hello my name is (didn’t catch that, no matter), how are you today? I’m calling from (good grief, his drug plan has a name a paragraph long) to verify (yada yada yada, no breath) this call will take five minutes (still no breath) is now a good time for you to take this call? (Let’s get it over with, yes, YES!) You must answer yes or no to each question, can we get started? (By all means, I mean, YES!)

What follows is painful.

Working it out

Step aerobics before dawn does more than wake up my muscles, it plays with my mind. I step out of the car and the cold morning air slaps a washrag in my face.  I was too sleepy to care how close I came to hitting a deer crossing the road in the dark, but I’m awake now!  

In the weight room, the boom box is pounding out the lyrics to “Highway to Hell” and I know what I’m in for – an hour of heart pumping agony. I have choices. I can grumble, but then I engage the wrong muscles. As I punch and kick the air I can visualize the faceless fund manager who lost a chunk of my money, but that’s probably a misdirection of adrenalin as well. Self-talk sometimes carries me through a session.

This morning I looked down at my step askew on the floor and thought about the four countries of the heart that people live in. Maria told me about a personality model that divides people into quadrants. According to this model, the perfectionist would kick the step into place repeatedly until it squared with the tiles on the floor.  The person who lives in the country of control would divert her attention to figuring out the proper way to get the step to adhere to the floor.  Then she would inform the rest of us how it should be done. The peaceful person would align the angle of her body to the angle of her step and breathe. Then there’s me. I’ll look at it, see the irony and go home and write about it. Yup, I live in the fun country.

So why am I up at six AM doing curls and crunches? Because it feels so fun when I stop!

Contraband

We smuggled the contraband out in a tote bag filled with voltmeters. The stuff is easy to get in our county. You can buy it at Walmart but as it happened, I had some hidden in a cupboard in the garage.  It was part of our plan to get kids hooked.

In Santa Cruz, you can’t buy this stuff!  We were careful about how we distributed it, placing it in front of the children only after a detailed explanation.  Mr. A. assured the children that what they were about to do would not give them a jolt. “It will be fun,” he promised, “although if you aren’t careful you could get burned.”

Parents gathered around their children as they began to experiment. When Mr. A. felt they were ready, he signaled to his helpers to pass out the stuff. They controlled it carefully to make sure there would be enough for everyone.

The children maneuvered tinfoil wrapped sticks, wire and batteries with awkward fingers and intense concentration.  “Oohhh,” one said, “I can smell it burning!” Finally they began to cut the stuff. They were hooked.

“Awesome!” said one boy. 

“Can I keep mine?” I want to go home and burn something!” a girl said.

The helpers gathered up what was left of the illicit goods. One of the parents jumped at the opportunity to take the remaining stuff home, saying “I’ll stash it where I hide my plastic bags.”

From the get go, Mr. A had these kids – voltmeter probe, nickel chromium wire and D-cell battery. When they sliced the hot wire foam cutter they made through a Styrofoam cup to test Ohm’s Law that defines the relationship between (P) power, (E) voltage, (I) current, and (R) resistance they got their first lesson in circuitry at Fun Science Night at school* and some lucky parent scored some plastic foam to keep for posterity.

*The name of the school has been withheld to protect the innocent. The school is not responsible for the reprobate behavior of volunteer Mr A. in importing illegal Styrofoam into Santa Cruz County.

For a copy of Mr. A's Basic Electric Circuit slides, click here.

Pink

My manicurist squinted at the color of shellac she was applying to my nails.  “That looks like the color of bubblegum,” she said.

“I hate bubblegum!”  My fingers stiffened.

“I’m sorry! Do you want me to change the color?”

“Eeeuuuww!  Now I can taste that nasty stuff in my mouth. It reminds me of the gum dream.”  I turned to the woman sitting in the chair next to me who regarded me wide-eyed. “Didn’t you ever have the gum dream, where your wad of chewing gum takes on a life of its own? You try to pull it out but it sticks to your teeth. The more you pull out, the bigger it gets and the nastier it tastes?”

“Where do you come up with this stuff?”  She asked, staring at me as if I were an exotic bird that might bite.

I thought the gum dream was universal – like flying dreams, naked dreams and not remembering your high school locker combination dreams – apparently not though, because I didn’t find it in my Mystical Magical Marvelous World of Dreams book.

My manicurist took another look.  “Actually, it’s more the color of Pepto-Bismol.”

I yanked my hand from her grasp and glared at her.  “Two strikes,” I said.

She recoiled and went into deep thought mode. “It’s princess pink.” She smiled like a mom trying to get her kid to take a bitter pill disguised as candy.

“Three strikes.” I’m a hard customer.

Across the room the salon owner was doing a comb out. In a gracious, tip-saving gesture she suggested that my now humbled nail girl look at the bottle to see what they named the color.
Nail girl flipped over the bottle.  Everyone in the salon held their breath. “Pink Dawn?”

“Lovely.” I offered her my hand. The salon breathed a sigh of relief.

In fact, I’m doing a puzzle of the Grand Canyon that has exactly that shade of pink. Now my nails match my jigsaw puzzle and my manicure reminds me of an Arizona sunrise.

 I’m still wondering what the gum dream means.

Of rhino pairs & bipolar bears

On a manmade field of ice, a bipolar bear takes three steps forward, three steps backward, bobbles her head to the left and to the right and repeats the process. She resembles a windup toy with a weak battery that is compelled to move in place, never forward.

Across campus, rooms with bulky equipment designed to entice a rhinoceros to charge large objects sit idle. The resident rhinos are napping near a pond out in front. It appears they are no more interested in staying fit than most of us. A sign cautions that rhinos have been overhunted and are now an endangered species.

Nearby, an expanse of grass labeled Bison Environs appears to be an exhibit of where bison would live if any inhabited this zoo.  At this moment, the Detroit zoo appears to be fresh out of buffalo.  Happily though, this regal animal has made a comeback since it flirted with extinction in the 1800s. (The food industry will dispute that buffalo were ever endangered. Perhaps that’s because they were part of the drive to replenish the American herds.)

The Detroit Zoo in Royal Oak provides luxury accommodations for damaged animals. It is evident that patient rights come first here, but visitors aren’t complaining about how few animals are actually in view today. Peacocks roam zoo paths looking like docents and that is what we are here to do this hot summer day just outside the motor city. We are just out for a walk in the most diverting of landscapes.

About the time that we think all the animals have gone to lunch, we spot a trio of giraffe strolling across the grass in front of a reproduction of an Egyptian palace.  Egypt was one of the first cultures to keep wild animals on display in royal compounds, a human docent tells us.

When you don’t demand to be entertained by nature, the simple curve of a giraffe’s neck is grace. The tiger’s repose is refreshment. Like so many regional zoos, the Detroit Zoo provides a safety net for God’s creatures. We exercise a God given right (Genesis 1:28) when we care for animals.

The Zen of Wii Bowling

One of my favorite quotes is from Thomas a Kempis.

The more a man is united within himself, and becomes inwardly simple, the more and higher things he understands without labor, for he receives intellectual light from above.

To put it simply, don’t work too hard.

The more I apply the principle of not over thinking or overdoing a situation, the more I find myself “in the zone.” It’s exhilarating, it’s magic, and it has improved my Wii bowling score.

I belong to a Wii bowling league that involves sixteen people who bowl three sets in two shifts with a break for pizza and chit chat.  The logistics of scheduling, handicapping and scoring the bowlers is one of those high things I can’t understand without labor, so I don’t try. I just show up and try to break 100.

We’ve been at this for a couple of years and like baseball players, each bowler has developed a liturgy of tics that works for them. Wina hops up in the air on her left foot, swings her right foot ballet-like across her meridian and lets ‘er fly. Mike sits in a chair with his shoulder braced against the wall and flicks his wrist at the screen. They both get amazing results.

Paul bowls an S curve that is truly impressive and Agnes basks in the intellectual light from above, swinging her arm with a mathematical precision that causes the pins to fall all over themselves in awe.

Cheryl positions the controller, pulls her arm back, does a three step run- up, lunges, pulls her right foot behind her left heel like a pro and releases the ball. Score! Ron dispenses with the drama and goes for the hard and fast hook. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Then there is me.  Traditionally, I bowl like I walk. I start out knowing where I’m headed and then veer off into the gutter. It’s a pretty sharp turn to the dark side. But tonight, I channeled the Zen master and it worked!  I squared my feet, pressed A, lifted a wine glass in my right hand, and floated my left hand forward without effort. The pins were mesmerized. They swooned at the sight of my ball spinning slowly toward them.

I think the wine glass gave me the balance I needed to correct my wicked curve ball, which I suspect mirrors the scoliosis in my spine. But, I don’t want to over think this.

Channeling Sarah Winchester

I get Sarah Winchester.  She thought as long as she could hear the sounds of construction in her house, she would never die. I too feel happy when I hear the industrious buzz of worker bees in my house –updating a bathroom or installing fresh carpet that banishes old red wine stains and cat barf we discovered when we moved the piano.
 

It seems that I wake up every morning to unfinished business. Unlike Sarah, my agenda is not to live in this body, in this house, on this earth for eternity. Still, I feel compelled to wrap things up in an orderly fashion.

I want to put my house in order, literally and figuratively.  I want to finish things – the revision of my novel, my ancestry tree, the pile of photos and photo albums sitting in the corner.

Even though I know it’s a race I won’t win, I want to maintain things. In aerobics the other morning the instructor on our tape encouraged us to let the house go and take better care of the temple – this body we live in. If I took as good care of my body as I do my house, I would look like Queen Esther.

Life seems to have a heavy maintenance schedule. I’ve started considering that when some delightful shelf dweller wants to go home with me. Is it worth the time to learn how to use it, the space to store it and the aggravation of caring for it?  Usually not.

It’s come to my attention that I got way to good at acquisition, and now I can’t get rid of stuff fast enough. Today I tossed a pair of Capri pants because they take too long to iron. Also a pair of vacation pants I bought for my husband so he would look like a stud.  Because he defines “stud” as a surface that doesn’t require a molly bolt, they’ve never been worn. I sorted my Tupperware into square containers and round containers and bagged all the round ones. Square containers without lids are followed their round cousins to the thrift shop.

In the glee of divestiture, I still find I want to start things – not new rooms in my house but new life experiences. I think that’s where Sarah and I part company.  I don’t need any more rooms in my house.  I need room in my life for God to fill with good things.

Can you have too much fun?

All you care about is having fun, my mother used to tell me. She pronounced the f word with exaggeration and distaste. It’s true, I enjoy a good time, but in a more literal sense than she imagined. Fun times have their element of entertainment and distraction but more than that, it’s the layers of satisfaction you can discover in a perfect moment.


What’s the most fun you had this weekend, I asked my husband while my own perfect moment played in my brain.

Four of us enter a beer joint carved out of a recycled warehouse. Full disclosure: it’s an organic brewing company in a trendy industrial setting that also houses bakeries and wine tasting rooms, but on a Monday afternoon only the locals hang out here.

Are these fishermen, wharf rats or seedy surfers swapping tales in salty language? We order ale and a couple of stouts, find ourselves a dark corner and settle in. Vic swings open a window and perches on the ledge, a graceful figure in relief against the sudden appearance of sun. She unpacks our sandwiches and we sip, munch and contemplate the action at the bar.

The topic of conversation is music. A young man in a black sweatshirt and cool boots holds forth on the musical themes of Beethoven that appear in his favorite rock tunes and how much fun it is to actually play Beethoven. The small group that gathers about him is enthralled. I lean over discreetly and say to my son, “Is this a University hangout?” He lifts one corner of his mouth.

Two young boys enter the bar and the people reconfigure, some moving to tables to give the boys room to belly up. They seat themselves and spread their homework out in front of them. The conversation turns to vocabulary lists and math problems. The barmaid tests their spelling and the university student explains an obscure number theory to the boys.

He did a good job, my husband says.

I think we are witnessing a new model for education that is very workable, I say, and we finish our brews, Warmed by the sun, the hops and the interaction we witnessed in... whatever that was... bar, pub, tasting room, classroom, we head out for more adventure.

This was fun.

Belly Bombs

After a week of taking care of the 5-year-old and the 7-year-old while their parents vacationed in Puerto Vallerta we celebrated with dinner at Anthony’s in Seattle – with them – in the expensive dining room upstairs because I wanted choice fish.


The kids were on their best behavior. The 5-year-old ordered fish and chips and ate his fish first. For dessert he polished off dolce la leche ice cream with caramel sauce. I had to talk him out of the espresso. The 7-year-old ordered a house salad and Ivars clam chowder. She finished with Seattle chocolate chip cherry ice cream. I helped.

As we gazed out over the sound -- wondering what a slip in the harbor goes for, counting the number of rude teenagers spitting ice cubes over the side rail (4 boys and 8 girls) and musing about the pedigree of the handsome dog being walked on the wharf by his master (a French bulldog, the 7-year-old thought) we speculated the source of success of our experiment – taking the children to an expensive restaurant before collecting their parents from the airport.

Granddaughter declared it was the “good behavior and excellent taste buds” they both exhibited that made the evening a success. She went so far as to extrapolate that good behavior and well developed taste buds were probably the secret of success in life.

She was primed for this experience by her discovery that the bathroom stalls at Anthony’s each have their own sinks. She was also impressed by the cocktail dress one of the young diners was wearing, and offered her a compliment as we passed to visit the bathroom (again). The compliment was well received.

A couple of nights later we were all eating dinner at their house. My daughter served brussel sprouts – belly bombs my husband calls them. He hates them. The children each asked for a brussel sprout. The 7-year-old sided with her dad and her papa by wrinkling her nose. The 5-year-old sided with his mom and his nana by chewing, swallowing, smacking and smiling.

The conversation turned to food tastes. “I bet you like ginger and licorice too, I said to him.”

“Yes!” he said. High fives.

“So, how would this sound to you?” I asked him. “A dark chocolate covered brussel sprout dipped in Brie cheese,

“Sprinked with sea salt,” his mother added.

“With caramel sauce!” He finished.

He totally gets us.

Spontaneity

In a recent Wall Street Journal book review, Alexandra Mullen noted that blogging uniquely captures “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” (Wordsworth). I guess I haven’t been feeling spontaneous lately, which is why halfway through April there are no blog titles listed for the month. My annoying sister pointed this out. Powerful feelings are just hard to conjure.


My daughter just emailed from Dreams Resort in Puerto Vallerta where she and her husband are celebrating their 10th anniversary:

Did water aerobics, played blackjack, learned card tricks, lounged by the pool, had a wonderful dinner on the ocean and now we're listening to a concert on the beach from our balcony.

We have moved into her house on overcast Bainbridge Island off the coast of Seattle for a week to ferry the grandkids to school, after school activities and birthday parties. Our other duties include:

Sorting fact from fiction

Her: Mommy lets me buy milk from school every day.

Me: How much money do you need for that?

Her: Three dollars.

Me: For a carton of milk? I don’t think so!

Finding homes for socks

Me: Whose socks are these?

Him: Not mine!

Her: Not mine!

Me: Okay, you – go put these in your brother’s drawer.

Her: Okay, they’re mine.

The list goes on.

I wish I was the kind of grandmother who cultivated grandmaternal feelings with an outpouring of spontaneity. You know, the kind that takes the kids out of school and whisks them off to Canada to introduce them to Haida Indian culture, sparking a lifelong interest in anthropology.

We did take granddaughter to see Chief Seattle’s grave in Susquamish. Then we wandered into a curio shop owned by the delightful Rainey Daze (Is that an Indian name? I think I might have known a Rainey Daze at Berkeley in the sixties). Rainey recommended the local pub for the best food, assuring us it was a safe place to take a seven year old on Sundays. Granddaughter wrinkled her nose and shook her head, declaring her preference for “American food, like pizza.”

What happened to your adventuresome spirit, I asked her. I think it ebbed after Rainey showed her the skinned lynx heads the Indian children used to push their hands into to keep them warm on their three hour walk to school in zero degree weather.

Like granddaughter, I’m feeling uninspired. No font of powerful feelings to report. I do feel a spark of pleasure, though when I hear granddaughter say, “this is a very fun puzzle,” in response to the challenging jigsaw we packed and brought to encourage the children to focus on something they can’t finish in a day. It’s time well spent to hear grandson say, “it’s very hard, but look! I did it!”

At the other end of my mother’s dining room table that now graces my daughter’s front room I’m watching the five and seven-year-old work on a large puzzle together. “You know, practice does make perfect,” she tells him. “I’m not very good at this,” he says, popping in another piece.

The 7 Laws of Money

Natalie sat up in bed at 5 a.m. on Monday and looked over at her sleeping husband. She reached for her book light and her morning devotional. Forty-five minutes later, Greg rolled out of bed and headed to the kitchen to start the coffee. Natalie pulled her laptop across her knees and switched it on. She opened her email and clicked on a message from an attorney informing her that that her Aunt Maggie had passed away and left her a sizeable sum of money.


Greg came back to bed with two mugs of coffee and handed her one. “Honey, I must have done something right!” Natalie hopped out of bed and danced around the room. “This is what I’ve worked for all my life! Now I have enough money to go to Europe for the opera audition season.”

“Don’t count your chickens, Greg said. “You don’t have a check yet.”

By Tuesday, the chickens had come home to roost. Natalie had a Publisher’s Clearing House moment when she opened her door and signed for a FedEx package with an unreadable return address. As she tore it open, Greg said, “Did you even know you had an Aunt Maggie?”

Natalie pulled a sheaf of papers out of the cardboard mailer. Rummaging inside, she came up empty handed. ‘There’s no check here, only instructions. The attorney wants to me send him information about my bank so he can deposit the check electronically. He’s asking for passwords and pin numbers.”

“Is Aunt Maggie’s attorney possibly from Nigeria?” Greg asked.

On Wednesday, Natalie stayed in bed until noon. She was thoroughly depressed. She had set her heart on finally attaining her goal – enough money to live in Europe for a year. She had fantasized for so long about writing checks with no thought to taxing her bank account. She would rent an apartment in Paris, take voice lessons from the masters, shop for haute couture fashions befitting a diva, and enjoy all the accoutrements that enabled the life of a rising opera star.

By Thursday life had become a nightmare. “Did you tell anyone you inherited a fortune?” Greg asked her after the mailman piled several boxes of mail on the front porch. All the boxes contained cards and letters pleading for money. “I might have said something in a tweet,” Natalie said, pulling the covers over her head. She had disconnected the phone and stayed in bed all day. “I didn’t know having money was so hard to handle.”

At 7 am Friday a chastened Natalie woke up and told Greg she realized she had set the wrong goals for herself. “I’ve been acting as if that money would make a difference between whether I have a career in opera or not.” She vowed that if by some miracle she did receive a check, she would give the money away. That afternoon, she received a check in the mail for $500,000. True to her word, she sat down and began to draw up her philanthropic plan. It wasn’t long before she realized that giving away money was a career in itself.

Early Saturday morning the attorney called to remind her that if she cashed the check, she was agreeing to the terms. What terms? Natalie wanted to know. Didn’t you read the sheaf of papers I sent you? said the attorney. Your aunt specified that if you accept the money, you must join the Libertarian party, become a Scientologist and move to Nova Scotia. Natalie tore up the check.

On Sunday Natalie stayed after church to rehearse for evening Vespers. Her voice teacher pulled her aside after rehearsal and asked her if her phone was out of service. “I’ve been trying to reach you all week,” Elizabeth Schiller told Natalie, her eyes sparkling with excitement. “You’ve won Operalia, the World Opera Competition. You are going to Europe for a year, and you won’t need a dime.”

Have your people call my people

Have your people call my people. That toss off phrase reminds me of a little boy in a café we happened onto in our travels. I was standing at the cashier’s counter looking out the window at a man working in a field when the proprietor’s son noticed my idle gaze, pointed to the man and said, “That’s our person.” Captivated by the thought, I turned to Joel and said, “I want one!”


Now, I don’t want to own people. I don’t even want to manage people. I want staff. Maybe that’s why I so thoroughly enjoyed Masterpiece Theatre’s recent offering, Downton Abbey, which featured a “family enduring for generations and its staff, a well-oiled machine of propriety”. I figure a well-oiled machine should be able to manage itself. The Earl of Downton Abbey put good people in place and let them run things. I could do that. Here is what I think I need:

Technical staff – my techweenies; at a minimum I need a personal photographer to snap and post my photos, a webmaster to keep my social networks up to date and a scribe to record points in my weightwatchers tracker system – that is a time consuming!

House maintenance staff – over and above the garden and housekeeping chores, I really could use the services of a plasterer, painter, rough and finish carpenter and handyman with plumbing and wiring skills on a pretty regular basis.

Personal maintenance staff – here is where the serious overhead occurs. I’m thinking a dietician, a chef, a fitness trainer, a shopper and a dresser who will not let me leave the house thinking my midnight blue jeans are really black and pairing them with the wrong socks and shoes.

Design staff – a personal interior decorator to advise me on what shade of purple I should use on the accent wall in the bathroom I’m redecorating. It is so easy to make a mistake.

Business staff – in addition to the obvious, the finance manager and the bookkeeper, I would like some clones and drones – people who can stand in for me at meetings when I double-book myself and do volunteer work when I over commit.

I know what you are thinking. I haven’t addressed the expense of maintaining such a staff. Watch enough Masterpiece Theatre and you know that the great houses crumbled under the expense of such maintenance. That’s the oil required to keep the machine running. I’m just going to have to depend on the salesman at Orchard Supply Hardware to help me choose the right shade of purple.

RIP Ford Taurus

Yesterday my five-year-old Ford Taurus gave up its engine on the road to Sonora. Just as we passed Sierra Motors in Jamestown, Joel remarked as how he’d heard that was a great place to buy a car. I relaxed into idle conversation and commented on how well our Taurus was running now. The alarming smell of engine oil that sent us to the auto repair shop last week seemed to be gone. The moment I said that, the oil pressure light came on, something clunked under my feet and the car expired half a mile passed the dealership.

We had it towed to AutoTech where it received last rites. A couple of quick calls on a dying cell phone located a friend in the checkout counter at Safeway who came and collected us and all the worldly goods that had collected in the crevices of my young car. I was surprised to find I owned so many flashlights and that they’d all found a home in the car.

We shed no tears for the untimely death of my Taurus. It’s just a car. Still, the thought of abandoning her in a parking lot, a perfect body with an engine that just stopped turning makes me sad. Soon, a wrecker will come for her and dump her where vultures will rip parts from her body. Maybe it would be more comforting to think of her as an organ donor, giving new life to other cars with failing parts.

She was only five years old! Something gave out inside her engine. It’s rare the mechanic said, but it happens. It’s just bad luck.

Last night, we went to Sierra Motors and ordered a 2011 Buick Regal; white, like my little Taurus, but with upgrades -- cashmere colored leather seats, a sun roof and a navigation system. We’ll get to take her home next week.

Mammogram

No amount of tying and retying the short strings on the smock would hold the fabric across my naked breasts, so I finally gave up, held the garment in place by anchoring my elbows to my sides and reached for a copy of Stephen King’s On Writing. The perky radiologist came around the corner with my chart and said,


“What are you reading?” I held up the book for her to see. That instantly exposed my left breast but she was more interested in the book.

“Are you a writer?

“Yes.”

“Come with me.”

In the room, I dropped the smock to my waist. We are both women, but she said,

“Oh no,” and pulled the smock over my right shoulder, leaving my left breast in line as the first candidate. She lifted it and plopped it down like meat on a tray. Then she threw a lever, flattened it and said,

“I just read the best book! Hold your breath now.”

Breathlessly, I waited for the synopsis.

“The Red Leather Diary, have you read it? You can breathe now.”

“I haven’t,” I exhaled. She adjusted her equipment, put my right one in a sidewise vise-like grip and retreated.

“A New York columnist lives in an apartment building. Hold your breath. One of the apartments is being renovated. The contents of the apartment have been thrown in a dumpster. She’s curious to see what got thrown away. She goes through the dumpster and finds a red leather diary and reads it. The woman who wrote the diary lived in the 1930s. She wrote about her life and it was so fascinating the author, I forget her name, wrote a book about it. You can breathe now.”

“Was it a good book?” I ask, gasping for air. She repeats the drill for my left breast.

“I didn’t want the book to end. That’s how much I liked it.”

My right breast is now sandwiched between sheets of plexiglass. She seems to be applying more pressure to this side. I focus on the music that is playing in the room. It’s not your usual massage room ocean-waves-lapping-the-shore soundtrack. This sounds like the music wafting through the lobby of an upscale resort hotel in the tropics.

“Gee, I feel like when I’m done here, I should go get a margarita,” I said.

“Good idea!” she said. “You’re done.”

I like this woman.

Clothes Story

I walked into my closet and announced to my clothes,

“I’m going to Arizona for a month!”

The fleece vests immediately got in a huddle and muttered,

“She’s not taking us.”

The church clothes hung proudly on their hangers and said,

“She’ll still go to church. She’ll take us.”

The sundress contingent peeked out from where they’d been shoved back behind the church clothes and laughed,

“I don’t think so.”

Then they flaunted their airy skirts and sleeveless construction. The lovely sweaters slumped in the corner.

“We’ve hardly been worn. It’s just now turning cold. We’ve so looked forward to a trip to the mall to see the new styles. Why would she want to go to Arizona in the winter? Now we’ll never get worn.”

The clam diggers slid looks at the short sleeved tees and smirked,

“We’re goin’ to Ar – uh – zo – na.”

The tees sang,

“We’re going too,” and they began to pair up.

The sandals rattled in their boxes high on the shelf, but the underwear remained quiet in the drawer,

“We never get a break. What difference does it make to us whether it’s the snowy mountains or the sunny southwest? We never see daylight!”

"Don’t get too excited,” I said. “I’m not going until March.”

They all relaxed, except for the designer jeans, whose bid for attention is constant.

Invasion

General Petraeus tried to Skype me. I’m not kidding. Perhaps he needed my advice on exit strategies. As I don’t trust myself with the nation’s peace plan, I blocked him from ever contacting me again.


I now get regular updates on what fast food establishment provides nutrition to my husband’s cousin in Arkansas. I fully expect reports on what she ordered and how much she left on her plate in the new Facebook rev, that should be happening in, say, the next two minutes.

Facebook commandeered information from my profile and now Bob Dylan is my pal.

My favorite TV programs ping me regularly with mundane chat about things like what Alicia is going to wear to court next week. (It got about 30,000 thumbs up. That many people care? I hope they aren’t on the General’s contact list.)

We were very patient during the elections with the dinnertime phone calls from Mike Huckabee and Ronald Reagan Jr. (Who calls my liberal friends, I wonder.) I was even a bit intrigued bya live town hall meeting that left a recording on my telephone answering machine. How else would this misplaced city girl ever hear about the irrigation woes of my central valley farmer neighbors? And how interesting that Meg and Carly knew so much about what the farmers were talking about.

The latest is that my son sent me a recording he made; I clicked on it and it played in iTunes and then iTunes invited me to ping – follow my son’s recordings, I assumed. But no; I clicked on ping and got invited to connect to the music loving universe. Scared that I might spend the rest of my days with soundtrack accompaniment not of my choosing, I shut down my computer.

I wonder, where will all this go in 2011? I love being connected. I hate being invaded. I think there is a good Pixar animation movie in here somewhere.