No Sale

The doorbell rang while I was fixing supper tonight.  That was slightly annoying in itself, but then a mere three seconds later, it rang again, twice -- two impatient rings one right after the other.  That really pissed me off.  "I'm coming!" I shouted gruffly, wiping my hands on a kitchen towel as I walked.  My tiny dog had started barking at the first ding, not even waiting for the dong.  She was sure somebody was coming to steal our stuff.

I pulled open the door and saw standing on the front stoop two girls who looked to be about 12 years old.  They were both dressed in mismatched, loudly patterned slacks and tops that their mothers should have forbade them to wear, had hair that needed laundering, especially to get the purple out, and wore, on top of all that, extremely sullen expressions.  One was texting diligently on her cell phone.  She never took her eyes off the device.  The other only glanced in my direction and said something I couldn't hear because the killer Chihuahua was having a stroke, but I looked down and saw she was holding a small shopping bag containing several boxes of Girl Scout cookies.  I said I had already bought cookies from someone else.  She did not seem surprised nor disappointed, and they both turned and walked away.  The texter continued her thumb gymnastics as she went.

Okay, Girl Scouts of America.  If you want to sell me more cookies, here's what you do:

1.  Show up at my door in uniform.

2.  Do not come just before or during the dinner hour.

3.  Ring the bell once and wait politely.  If the door is not answered in what you consider a reasonable period of time, go quietly away.

4.  Smile at me.

5.  Ask me in a cheerful, audible tone if I'd like to help the Girl Scouts by buying a box of cookies.

6.  If I say no, thank me and say you'll try to get to me earlier next year.

7.  If I say yes -- well, you will sell a ton of condos some day.

Ten Cents a Dance

There is a player on the Stanford women's basketball team whose last name is Tinkle. 

On second thought, I think I'll stop there.

I've been taking bottles back to the grocery store.  Michigan requires retailers to charge a 10-cent deposit on each and every vessel containing beverages specified, according to MCL Section 445.571(b), as "soft drink, soda water, carbonated natural or mineral water, or other nonalcoholic carbonated drink; beer, ale, or other malt drink of whatever alcoholic content; or a mixed wine drink or a mixed spirit drink." 

There were in the garage four 30-gallon bags filled with mostly Diet Coke bottles, with a few 7-Ups and Michelob Ultra cans thrown in, plus I had 36 glass bottles that had formerly contained Miller Genuine Draft, and one from a Seagram's wine cooler.  It took three trips to the store over two days, but I collected $44.20.  It's going into my casino fund.

When you arrive at the recycle area with a 30-gallon trash bag bursting with bottles and cans, there is always a blue-haired grandmother daintily feeding 12 Diet Dr. Pepper cans from their original carton into the machine who gives you that look that tells you she knows you haven't brought bottles back in months because you are way too lazy and are only doing it now because you need the money and/or you have had to start parking your car outside because there is no more room in your garage and she can't even muster up any sympathy for your poor sorry self.  In a case like that, even though you know she won't believe you, you give her a wink and say, "Great party!" 

It looked like I was going to have to try that trick today, but her attention was diverted away from me when two frat boys came in with three shopping carts full of empty beer cans.

I'll bet theirs was a great party.

Sold!

The Girl Scout cookies have arrived. I was going to freeze most of them, since they won’t get eaten up very quickly, but my partner assures me it isn't necessary as they have the half-life of plutonium.

I like to support the Girl Scouts, having been one and having sold my share of cookies.  But what I really am a sucker for is a kid coming to the door selling chocolate bars, as I was required to do in high school to raise money for the music department.  The members of all the vocal and instrumental ensembles were sent out twice a year to peddle "one-quarter pound bars of the World’s Finest milk chocolate filled with whole, roasted California almonds,” as my pitch went and which I obviously have not forgotten.  The 4-ounce bars cost 50 cents each, but when asked how much they were, I always said "two for a dollar,"  which increased sales by at least 70 per cent.  (Today they cost a dollar apiece and are 1.67 ounces.)

Referring to our our having sold that awful chocolate every fall and every spring for four years, one of my fellow choir members wrote in my senior yearbook, “Don’t take any wooden candy bars.”

That turned out to be some of the best advice I ever got, because I never have -- and look at me now.

Speak Now or Forever Hold It

I just went to Google and clicked on NEWS. The fourth story down, right between “NATO approves expanded role in Libya” and “Syrian army cracks down on protesters as government delays concessions” was this:

 

Notice the 2,546 other news articles available about the young couple. I presume they’re not all about the cake.

I’m not saying I’m above taking an interest in royal doings.  I’ll be watching the wedding, naturally. I wouldn’t miss the nuptials of my twenty-second cousin twice removed, would I? Besides I like spectacles and pomp – as long as I’m not the one who has to show up in ancient taffeta and lace in high-heeled shoes with a tiara on my head.

I remember Chuck and Di’s wedding, of course, and Princess Anne marrying Capt. Phillips, but my first and favorite royal wedding was that of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones in 1960. I have never forgotten the Archbishop of Canterbury asking the groom to repeat after him, “I, Anthony Charles Robert, take thee, Margaret Rose …”

I guess if you have two last names you need at least three first names to go with them.

Fugitives that might have got clean away

I am not feeling creative today, so I will share with you three things I read on the Internet this morning that amused me.

Pat Sajak tweet: “It might seem strange, but I like giving names to my underwear. Thinking of wearing Ed today.” (I wonder what Vanna thinks of that.)

Local crime report:  “Police received a report of a newborn infant found in a trash can at Wal-Mart. Upon investigation, officers discovered it was only a burrito.”

Text to girlfriend: “You need to do dishes. I am eating corn flakes from a brownie pan with a fork.” (Why doesn’t he wash the dishes?)

Lots of people were born on this date, among them James Caan, Nancy Pelosi, Pierre Boulez, Sandra Day O’Connor, Leonard Nimoy, Alan Arkin, Erica Jong, Bob Woodward, Diana Ross, and Vicki Lawrence.

An interesting day in poetic history: A. E. Housman and Robert Frost were both born on this date (1859 and 1874, respectively), and Walt Whitman died (1892). So did Beethoven (1827).

Remember my St. Patrick’s Day homage to Anna McAllister and William Conley, my Irish ancestors? They were married on this date in 1864, in St. Louis.

You don’t get much more fugitive that these thoughts, do you?

Bread, Finally

Sometime between 1978 and 1980, as a guest at someone's house for dinner, I had home-made beer bread for the first time.  I had not heard of it before, and I liked it so much I asked for the recipe.  I wanted to try making it myself.

And today I did.  It only took me 30 years to get around to it.  It's this retirement thing, I guess.  I now have time to do things I always thought I didn't have time for.  Or didn't make time for.

The bread is excellent, by the way; a nice accompaniment to the potato soup I made for supper.

I also made brownies today, from scratch.  That's one thing everybody should always make time to do.

Mother Married a Hunky

My mother used to say she was Scotch-Irish, although she wasn’t really. (“Scotch-Irish” actually refers to Irish Protestants from Ulster who settled in Pennsylvania in colonial days.) Her ancestry was mostly English, but she was one-quarter Irish and a tiny bit Scots, so that’s where she came up with the Scotch-Irish thing. There is also a persistent legend in the family that we are descended from an Indian chief, one Red Eagle of the Creeks of Alabama.

My father’s side of the family, of course, is entirely Bohemian, both his parents having been born in the Old Country.

My mother was from south-central Illinois where people of Eastern European descent are derisively referred to as “Hunkies,” which I presume comes from Hungarian.

But the provincial down-staters in Illinois aren’t the only ones with ethnic biases. There was no love lost between the Bohemians and the Irish in greater Chicago. Luckily, my father’s family did not hold it against his intended when she told them she was Scotch-Irish. Perhaps adding that she also had Indian blood mitigated it somewhat.

Having set a date for the wedding, my folks were looking for a place to live. She was renting a room, and he was still living at home. Grandma Knez said she knew of an apartment that was available and sent the young couple over to look at it, but with a strict warning. The old Bohemian woman who owned the building hated the Irish, Grandma said, so whatever you do, don’t tell her your fiancée has any Irish blood. (She said all this in Bohemian, of course. She never learned to speak English very well.)

They went over to see the apartment, liked it, and said they’d take it, but the old landlady looked skeptically at my mother and said to my dad, “What nationality is she?” Without missing a beat, he replied “Scotch-Indian.” The old woman gave a curt nod. That was all right – it didn’t matter how ridiculous it sounded, as long as she wasn’t Irish.

I once asked my grandmother why she didn’t like the Irish. She said it was because their children wore rags, but they always had a maid – an odd but very telling observation.

My grandmother worked as a domestic when she first came to this country. If no man is a hero to his valet, I’m sure no uppity Irish lady of the house would inspire admiration in a teenaged servant girl just off the boat with only a nickel in her pocket.

What if it was the Spartanettes vs. the Gamehens?

With both the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments under way now, a lot of college names and nicknames get bandied about.

But it brings to mind a practice I dislike, which is the feminizing of the women’s team nicknames, such as the Tennessee Lady Vols, the Alabama State Lady Hornets, the Georgia Lady Bulldogs. What’s wrong with being a plain old Volunteer, Hornet, or Bulldog? There are female volunteers, hornets, and bulldogs, after all. And why the namby-pamby “lady” anyway?

It is interesting to note that the vast majority of schools that choose such names are in the South.

Some schools get cute with it – at USC the men’s and women’s teams are Trojans and Women of Troy; Kenyon College in Ohio has the Lords and Ladies; Wyoming has Cowboys and Cowgirls; and then there’s the Central Missouri Mules and Jennies.

One women’s athletic program really needs to rethink their choice: the Lady Rams (huh?) of Winston-Salem State.

Except for Penn State’s Lady Lions (a league newcomer), the women athletes at schools in my favorite conference don't have a problem being called Spartans or Badgers or Fighting Illini or even Boilermakers.

It also does not appear to bother the women of SUNY-Buffalo to be called Bulls.

The subject gets touchy when it comes to my alma mater, however. It was in 1927 that the first athletic director and coach at Western Illinois University, a former Marine, started calling the football team the Fighting Leathernecks. I really can’t blame the women for rejecting that. But what they came up with for the women’s teams – speaking of namby-pamby – was the Westerwinds. That’s way too whimsical for a sports team. It makes me think of a gentle breeze off the Mississippi River, not a force to be reckoned with.

Even the Prevailing Westerlies has more oomph than that.

Michigan State's women play Northern Iowa tonight.  Go State.

No, no. Not so.

Picoseconds after yesterday’s post hit the ether-sphere, I received an email from my partner telling me quite emphatically that I had rendered her speechless by accusing her of mendacity. Obviously not lacking for words, she went on to compound the deceit by saying, and I quote, “I love doing laundry. I really do.”

That is patently ridiculous. Nobody loves doing laundry.
What is there to love about it? The blue splash of detergent hitting the bottom of the wash tub? The smell of Clorox2? The cushy softness of the lint-trap fuzz?

My mother used to say she liked to clean house. Another bald-faced lie. Nobody likes to clean house. I am living proof of that.

What my mother really liked, I think, was the result. She liked a clean house. She took pleasure in knowing that she had labored to make it so. But she cannot really have meant she liked scrubbing floors and cleaning toilets.

My partner is forthright and honest in all things, so I must concede that she does not utter this untruth with malice aforethought. I believe she is merely delusional, in the same way my mother was about cleaning the house. I am sure it is the results that she loves when she has completed the washing and drying and folding of the clothes and the linens and the throw rugs.

But love it? No. That is absurd.
 

It's a Wash

I hate doing laundry. I’m mighty lucky, therefore, that for the past 25 years, my loving partner has done 99 and 44/100 percent of it. She claims she likes to do laundry, which is an obvious fabrication, but it provides me with an excellent excuse to let her do it all.  Far be it from me to deprive her of something she enjoys.

When I was single, I did my laundry only when absolutely necessary, which was not a moment before my supply of clean underwear was completely exhausted. My dread was so intense you would have thought I had to carry it two miles to a stream and beat it on a rock, instead of taking a short trip (on foot or by car, depending on where I lived) to a laundry room or laundromat, sit around while it washed, sit around while it dried, fold it up, and take it home.

Once I finished doing the laundry, I would always think to myself, “Well, that wasn’t so bad.” But that did not encourage me to do it more often or more cheerfully.

Nowadays, the only trip I’d have to take is to the basement. I wouldn’t even have to take the clothes down there. Items dropped down a chute in the little bathroom will land right on top of the washer, or right in it, if the lid is open. I wouldn’t even have to carry the full laundry baskets back upstairs. Our hired girl will do that when she comes.

And on top of that, I’m retired now, home all day while my loved one goes to work to earn us a living. Shouldn’t I relieve her of this burden? I suppose. But I hate doing laundry.

Nevertheless, I went downstairs yesterday and did a load of whites. I played Tetris on the Nintendo in the basement family room while I waited for it to finish, which made the time fly by.

I did it partly to assuage my guilt, I admit, and partly just to show that my heart's in the right place.  I was also out of white socks.

And when I finished it, I thought, “I guess that wasn’t so bad.” 

A great day for the Irish

For all the noise I make about it, I am only 50% Bohemian. My mother’s ancestors come mostly from the British Isles, and I proudly boast of being at least one-eighth Irish, courtesy of my great-great-grandparents, William Conley and Anna McAllister, both born in Ireland, he in 1818 and she around 1842.

Yes – he was 24 years older than she, probably a widower when she agreed to marry him, which she did in 1864 in St. Louis. They settled on a farm in Illinois, where Anna bore him eight children between 1866 and 1883.

The births of William and Anna’s children are recorded in huge books in the Montgomery County Courthouse in Hillsboro, Illinois. In addition to the child’s and parents’ names, the date of birth, and the place of residence, there is also an entry for “Nationality of Mother.” Anna’s is listed as “Irish” in all but one case.  On the record of birth for her last child, her nationality is given as “American.” It took twenty years and eight children, but she had finally arrived.

I suspect Anna had quite a brogue that would have betrayed her Irish origins to anyone who heard her speak.

I’ll be wearing green today in honor of St. Patrick’s Day, my Irish ancestors, and the MSU men’s basketball team – they play UCLA tonight in the NCAA tournament (tip-off at 9:40).

Go Green.

Helium Dissipatium

Is there anything sadder than an aging balloon?

For almost three weeks now, one that says HAPPY RETIREMENT has been maturing in the kitchen. Brought home from the party, it was tied to the arm of a chair to prevent it from flying exuberantly to the ceiling. Where it once bounced right back if poked, shot straight up if its ribbon was yanked, and swayed happily when the door was opened, it now hovers tentatively, struggling to stay afloat in the gentlest air current, its tether no longer taut, its Mylar body no longer a tight, smooth skin.

A very clear indication that the party’s over.

Libation of the Nameless

One of my favorite potables is a very simple cocktail consisting of vodka and tomato juice. I've been trying for years to determine if this concoction actually has a name. I’d like to be able to order it by name in a restaurant or bar.

There is an interactive web site where you can enter the ingredients you have, and it will return all the drinks that can be made with them.  I listed vodka and tomato juice, hoping it would tell me what that combination is called. It told me there is no drink that can be made out of just those two ingredients.

A bartender in an Indian casino in Sault Ste. Marie once told me this drink was called a Caesar. I tried to confirm that, but every recipe I’ve found for a drink called Caesar (or sometimes Bloody Caesar) is made with Clamato juice, plus such things as hot sauce, Worcestershire, celery salt, etc., which makes it too much like a Bloody Mary, which I don't care for at all.

So, I guess I’ll just have to continue asking for vodka and tomato juice.

Speaking of Bloody Marys, however, reminds me of a brunch at an elegant restaurant at which my sister-in-law, unable to recall that the alcohol-free version is called a Virgin Mary, shocked the daylights out of the waiter by telling him she wanted a Bloody Virgin.

Eewww.

I'm the victim here

I think my civil rights have been violated.

Last night we went to a Chinese restaurant for supper. I don’t really like Chinese food, but my loved one does and will go through Chinese food withdrawal if we don’t get her a fix now and then.  The restaurant was packed, and almost all the other diners were Chinese.  All of the restaurant employees were Chinese too.

After we were shown to a table, a young waiter placed before each of us a knife and fork rolled in a paper napkin.  All the other patrons were given chopsticks. He didn’t ask us if we wanted chopsticks, he just gave us a knife and fork.

Isn’t that racial profiling?

The future will be coming

If I can sort out supposably I can take on forthcoming.  And somebody needs to -- too many people do not use the word correctly.

If something is forthcoming, it will happen in the future.  We look forward to our forthcoming anniversary.  He will speak of his forthcoming novel.  Payment is forthcoming.

I frequently hear people say (and did twice this week) something like, "More information will be forthcoming."  Wrong.

If something is forthcoming, it will happen in the future.  To say it will be puts it in the future too.  So if you say, "It will be forthcoming," you're really saying that sometime in the future it will be happening in the future, but not yet.

These things make my head hurt.

Of course, forthcoming can also mean friendly and outgoing, or open and candid.

I hope to be all of these things.  Presently.

This Kind of Kind, or That Kind

One day last week I stopped to pick up a few things at the grocery store. When I came out, it was raining kind of hard.  Being a senior citizen on social security, heart-attack survivor, and short person, I don’t move too fast, but I was clipping along as quickly as my little squatty legs could carry me, holding my head down and to one side in an effort to keep the rain out of my face.

As I crossed to the first row of the parking lot, a woman I would guess was in her early 70’s was coming toward me holding a large black umbrella over her head. She stopped right behind my car, which was in the first handicap spot, and when I approached, she said to me, “Would you like to get under my umbrella until you get to your car?”

I said something like “Oh, no – this is me right here, but thanks anyway.” She said I was welcome and went on toward the store entrance. I put my purchases in the car, got in, and drove off. And promptly forgot all about it.

Until this morning. I was walking to my car in a different parking lot, and it was either raining or snowing (or both), and as I put my head down against the wetness, it suddenly reminded me of the complete stranger who had been willing to go out of her way to walk me to my car under her big black umbrella.

Such uncommon kindness should not be forgotten; should, in fact, be celebrated, if by no other means than a public acknowledgement.

Thank you, kind lady, whoever you are.

Julie, Julia & Jan

I just watched the movie “Julie & Julia” for about the third time. Maybe fourth. I love that movie. Meryl Streep is magnificent, Stanley Tucci is adorable, and Jane Lynch is hysterical.

It’s based on two true stories. One is that of Julia Child writing her famous cookbook (Mastering the Art of French Cooking) in the 1950’s, and the other is about a young woman named Julie Powell who, in or about 2002, undertook to make every recipe in Julia’s cookbook in a year. She blogged about it every day. The blog became a book. The book became a movie.

I need a project like that. I need to have my blog turned into a book and then into a movie. And after that a television series. Blogging for blogging’s sake is noble but not profitable.

Looking over at my bookshelf, I see I already have the ideal volume.  I could set myself a deadline of one year to complete every recipe in 1000 Best Bartender’s Recipes.

It would certainly be fun trying.

Hold Me, Thrill Me, Squeeze Me

When you want orange juice, you can get the stuff that comes in a cardboard can with metal ends, which is created by squeezing the juice from the orange and then squeezing the water out of the juice. The concentrated mush that is left over is frozen, and you turn it back into orange juice by putting the water back in.

Or, you can buy orange juice in a bottle that was made from concentrated orange juice mush but which has already had the water put back in for you.

Or, you can squeeze the juice out of an orange into a glass and then drink it.

In a blind taste test, you would be able to tell which one came directly from the fruit. It will be the one that tastes exactly like an orange.

If you are the proud owner of a brand-new electric citrus reamer (and I am), then the squeezing will be so effortless you will never hesitate to create fresh-squeezed juice. My thoughtful partner (my main squeeze) presented me with this appliance last week, meant to save my poor old muscles when squeezing lemons for my various cocktail concoctions. Now that I know what real orange juice tastes like, however, it won’t be just for lemons any more.

And the orange juice won't be just for breakfast either. Now it will also be for screwdrivers, Mimosas, fuzzy navels, and Harvey Wallbangers.

Protestations

The protests currently raging in Wisconsin remind me of my college days there in the 1960's. Nobody seemed very interested in protesting anything in Wisconsin back then.

I do remember one time some lawmakers proposed raising the drinking age for beer and wine from 18 to 21, which the students were very decidedly against. A rally on campus overflowed into town, and a boisterous but not angry crowd joyfully overturned a beer truck and distributed its contents to the protesters.

To be fair, it was a bit early for anti-war protests when I was there, but there was one student who shouldered the burden for all of us, and I have never forgotten him for his courage and determination.

This dude’s name was Tony Majewski. He was tall and slim and had long, light-brown hair and a long beard to match, both of which he kept clean and neatly combed. He looked so much like modern depictions of Jesus Christ that if he had showed up wearing a robe and sandals, people would have thought it was the Second Coming.

While there were a number of students I knew at the time who were opposed to U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia, Tony was the only one who cared enough to protest against it. It was a shame he was never able to convince anyone to join him. But true to his convictions, he did it all alone.

Every Saturday morning from 9:00 to noon, Tony would picket the post office, the only federal building in town. He walked back and forth in front of the post office with a hand-lettered sign that read TUNAFISH FOR VIET NAM.

His plan was to have planes drop tons of tuna on Viet Nam in the neighborhood of the border between the warring factions, where it would lay in the hot sun and get real ripe. The smell would eventually drive people away -- the North Vietnamese would head north and the South Vietnamese would head south, and there would be no more fighting.

I said he was determined. I didn’t say he was real smart.

You Watch Your Phraseology!

This week there is a great deal of media gas being expelled about people saying a certain word at inappropriate times and places, especially on television shows such as the Academy Awards telecast and "American Idol."

You know -- the F-word.

It gets bleeped on television. In print, it is shown as f--- or, more daringly, f--k.

What is the difference? I mean, really -- what difference does it really make if everybody knows what the word is, how it sounds, and what it looks like? Is it all right for us to know the word was spoken as long as we don't hear it or see it spelled out?

Are we that delicate?

Because it seems to me all we are doing is reducing NO SWEARING ALLOWED to NO SWEARING ALOUD.