Remember when gas was over $ 4.00 a gallon, and then the price had dropped? Didn’t you feel like you had just won the lottery? What were you going to do with all that extra cash? Windfalls like this could inspire you to do something reckless, like jump into your SUV, drive to the grocery store, and not reuse your plastic bags. Or perhaps you’d commute to work and not hover just above the energy-conserving 55 mph (traffic permitting you to actually get to 55 mph first, of course). Or, it could inspire a road trip – the all-American summertime tradition.
Growing up in the States in the 70’s and 80’s, we usually had summers free for traveling to visit old friends, since my father taught college mathematics. The six of us would squeeze into the miniature Mazda station wagon meant for five. The sixth person would sometimes ride in the back, slightly hunched to accommodate the low roof, crammed in with all of our belongings in the little hatchback. Here I’m showing my age, because in that day the use of seat belts was left to the individual’s discretion, and the individual rarely shows good discretion. For example, when my father had bought our first “new” new car, a spacious olive-green Ford LTD, we (and most of the neighborhood’s kids) rode standing up in the back, because we were so excited and the roof was so high.
Both my parents were heavy-set then, although my father, at age 75, now walks up to 12 miles a day to stay fit. All the young drivers fought to drive, as that coveted position was the only spot in the car that was squish-proof. Two people shared the front passenger bucket seat and its single seat belt. We sat like conjoined twins who shared one wide pelvis, our bottoms making the letter U. If night driving was involved, we either inoculated each other with chewing gum so as not to kill our twin with that foul sticky morning breath or we each stared intently in opposite directions, just as a matter of courtesy. If you rode squished between the parents in the backseat, you also had to bear the heat, since there were only vents for the front seats. Come to think of it, I don’t think that little white Mazda had air conditioning.
Whatever other discomforts we suffered, we never experienced even ten seconds of hunger, nor did we lust as we passed billboards proclaiming the gospel of the Golden Arches or Colonel Sanders’ hospitality along the way. My mother is an excellent cook, and she always prepared complete Indian meals and snacks for the way, as she still does when my parents travel. They typically consisted of “nimki” (the closest equivalent snack would be pita chips), bhunjia (spicy potatoes or cauliflower) that is eaten wrapped in a puri (fried bread). These were all lovingly packed into those empty margarine tubs that no true Indian can ever bear to throw away. Those little white square napkins that sandwiched the stack of puris were oil soaked and turned translucent yellow upon contact. It was best to avoid the first and last puri; they suffered traces of napkin that adhered like an edible form of Velcro®.
I still love long road trips, and possibly due to my scarred upbringing (just kidding, Mom and Dad), I love to grab the driver’s spot. It is the most relaxing way to spend hours and hours, provided there is no stressful driving like being lost or negotiating your way with maniacal drivers through New York City. It's also nice to give my commuting husband a break, I think. Perhaps you think I am a wonderful and selfless person for doing almost all of the driving on long road trips, and if you do, let me know the next time you see me, and I’ll see if I don’t have a quarter or a stick of gum with which to thank you.
But my motivation is entirely selfish. By being the driver, I can avoid all the other uncomfortable places in our eight passenger all-seatbelts-are-loaded Suburban. If I sit in the front passenger seat, it is because I am too tired to drive. I then tend to doze in fits and starts, and am usually awakened as we are approaching a bifurcation in the road, with my husband urgently hissing, “I-76...do I take East or West!” Being in the front passenger seat requires me to be just as focused on the road if any navigation is required, only I don’t have control of the vehicle.
Not controlling the vehicles leaves me in the delicate position of choosing between our safety and nagging my husband. Eyeing the eleven cars piled impatiently behind him in the leftmost lane, I say, “Honey, I think the speed limit here is 65.” (This means the minimum speed everyone is driving is 70 mph, everyone except my husband, who is diligently doing 58 mph.) I have to be very tactful in releasing how much I know, because, being the scientist, he always claims that my readings, made with a surreptitious neck crane and eye strain, are fraught with parallax error and are wholly unreliable. That’s when I say we have to rely on other indicators, such as cars bunching up behind us, then whizzing by us to the right and cutting dramatically back in front of us. “Didn’t you say we have to take an exit on the left?” he’ll remind me. “Yes, but that’s not for another five miles.” So he acquiesces and moves over to the right.
At least, with the availability of Google Maps and Mapquest, navigation is not the pain it once was. I have childhood memories (when my father was the only driver in the house) of my father being lost, and refusing to pull over at any gas station and or consult the map himself. He would demand that my brother or sister, map spread desperately out in front of them, invoke some sixth sense and come up with the next navigational move. (Any kids reading this should understand that this was in ancient times; no one could whip out a cell phone to say they were lost and going to be late and be rewarded with instant help-you-out directions. You had to be convinced enough in your mind that you were a confirmed lost traveler so you could search for the nearest blue pay telephone and hope you had enough change to use it to make a long distance call. You couldn’t just whip out a credit card to pay for unexpected expenses, nor would anyone outside your area take a non-local check. You had to plan ahead with whatever cash you were going to need.)
When we wound up in some obviously residential part of town that we had never intended to be in, my father would finally stop and accost the next headbanded jogger. The man, sweating and flush-faced, would continue jogging in place while he gave directions, repeatedly, as he peered and pointed up the street we were to take to help us get out. My father would nod and repeat the instructions in his heavily accented English, his arm pointing this way and that out of the window. “So, sure, sir. Go laft, than laft, than a right. Right?” Like every child brought up in the West, we dutifully avoided eye contact with the jogger lest we die of embarrassment on the spot. As soon as my father cranked up the car window, he seemed to undergo instant amnesia, and would snap at us in Hindi to repeat what the jogger’s instructions had been. He hadn’t the slightest clue of which way to go.
Enough reminiscing; let me get back to the other places in our car to avoid on long trips. You never want to ride in the backmost seat, because, according to the three who are relegated to ride there, it is a squished and cramped existence with people hogging blankets and poking elbows. Also, some mysterious person seems to visit the back row and leave deposits of chewed gum to harden in the cup holders, because it isn’t any of my kids. Also, this mystery-person is prone to flatulence of a toxic nature. Furthermore, being “all the way in the back” cuts people off from intelligent, adult-like conversation, and they must revert to an animal-like language called “Squeaker Language,” which consists of squeaks, squawks, and shrieks, all at a very soothing, high-pitched level.
I cannot ride in the middle row as I did on the last hour of our last trip. The three-year-old, who is usually a happy car traveler in his car seat directly behind the driver’s seat, now spots me near him and begins weeping and crying and demanding that I sit next to him. Like most young children, this little lad suffers from an acute case of “momallergy.” Momallergy is a condition that makes a child who was previously playing quite happily look up, spot the mother trying to leave or just returning from some place, and makes him begin to cry hysterically. Watch at a childcare drop-off area, and you will see many momallergic kids. (Law enforcement people: don’t read the next sentence.) My fifteen-year-old daughter and I actually had to swap seats in some weird, contorted, Mobius-strip fashion while the car was in motion. His momallergy got so bad that he next demanded that I hold him. (Law enforcement people: do read this part.) Being a law-abiding citizen, I said no, and laid my head next to his in the car seat.
This landed me in the center of the middle row of seats. This is undoubtedly the worst seat in the whole car. It is called the Chief Forager’s position because all the snacks, fruits, drinks, and labeled sandwiches are kept at the feet of the car seat. Because of this, there is almost no legroom here. In addition to passing up and back all food items for all who are weary, tired, hungry, bored, or possibly sleepy at the wheel, the Chief Forager is also in charge of keeping the Young Master happily fed and occupied. Not only that, the Chief Forager is responsible for sending up and back whatever audiotape or CD we are all listening to in the car.
Listening to stories in the car - that is the chief reason that I love long road trips. It allows me to sit back, relax, put on my heated seat, and listen to a wonderful story – sometimes fiction, sometimes nonfiction. Our whole family is trapped and encapsulated together with no distractions, and we can all be absorbed in listening to some story we have checked out of the library. I won’t list them here because I’d hate to be accused of being longwinded. I can’t imagine a long car trip without a good, long story. There is absolutely nothing else to do, as long as I’m the one that’s driving. Too bad summer is almost over.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Monday, July 26, 2010
Camp Ribeiro: Cure for "Those Lazy, Hazy, CrazyDays of Summer"
Nat King Cole, when he sang “Roll out those lazy, hazy, crazy, days of summer…” must have meant us mothers with children out of school. My observations, made the first week of summer one year while shopping at the place that no one is supposed to admit to patronizing, but one that is mysteriously the largest retailer in the world – would concur, but in reverse order: Moms (like me) trying to get errands done – looking positively “crazy”; temperatures soaring outside (not to mention the tempers of associates besieged by numerous small shoppers inside) – definitely “hazy,” and sullen children, too old to be excited by “helping Mommy do the shopping” yet too young to be left home, listlessly dragging their feet, looking positively “lazy.”
By spring break, my kids really look forward to summer, but for some reason, when it gets here, they dread it. Summer can be a difficult time for working parents when school-aged kids are out of school. Okay, let’s admit it – it can be a difficult time for those of us who have the luxury of being at home too. When I homeschooled my children, I had little understanding of parents being overwhelmed by their own offspring in the absence of the school routine.
Suddenly, there is plenty of time opened up for kids and so many opportunities are available to them. Unfortunately, many of these “opportunities” require bussing your children about and having several loose Franklins around.
But I have a solution to your woes. It is “Camp Ribeiro” and will only cost you $50 a week per child. The class will run from whenever you would like to drop your child(ren) off and will last until you are ready to pick them up.
Here’s how it works: if you will entrust your children to me, I will help you train them to be helpful at home. But since they won’t be in your home, this learning will have to occur in mine. You won’t need to bring them anything: even their food will be included in the fee.
First thing in the morning, we start with Place Values by emptying the dishwasher. Then we walk about and pick up and put everything away. There is great Value in having everything put into Place. As mornings progress, your children will learn time management (because I myself have birthed a slackard or two who can drag this job out till midmorning), so I add a timer to ensure focused task completion and efficient use of time.
Right after the lesson on Place Values, there is a simultaneous seminar on Nourishment and the Declaration of Independence: that is, if your child can maneuver to and open the refrigerator, I Declare him/her to be Independent enough to get his/her own breakfast. Sorry, we are completely out of Pop-tarts and whatever Cookie-Candy-O’s cereal is being pushed on children’s television. Also, while your kid is at it, get something for the little ones who can’t fetch their own breakfast. That brings in our lesson on caring for others and serving one another.
Immediately following is my workshop on “Cleaning the Environment” also known as put your dishes in the sink and wipe up the table around you. Also, if you have spilled, go get the broom, gather your offerings in the dustpan, and place them in the trash. Like a game of musical chairs, if you are the one left with trash that just won’t fit into the liner, you get to empty it in the dumpster. One lucky child each morning will be chosen to do further studies by loading the beloved (but tiny) dishwasher.
Soon after come Horticulture and Early Child Development classes. For the younger ones, it translates to “time to play outside.” For others, it involves learning to identify weeds and carefully collecting these specimens by their roots, also known as weeding. Those interested in younger children can monitor their activity and possibly engage their attention with sidewalk chalk or other outdoor toys. There will be a quick Place Values refresher before we come indoors.
Then follows Hygiene, mostly having to do with washing of hands after playing outside, before eating, and after flushing. (Yes, there will be Remedial Flushing for those with severe attention deficiencies.) As a bonus, there will be Technology Training, but this will be reserved only for the keenest and most observant child(ren), and only those genetically endowed with mechanical aptitude. They will learn to put on a new roll of toilet paper when the existing supply is gone.
If it is too hot outdoors, we will stay indoors and progress to “Treasure Hunting.” This might involve emptying out the kitchen/junk drawer, wiping it down and sorting items into correct piles. As a reward, loose change can be counted and divided amongst the hunters. (See that math lesson sneaking in there?) For older children, there will be “Exploration and the Value of Open Space.” Basically, this entails opening up boxes that we still haven’t unpacked, eleven months after our move here.
Then there is my Creative Cooking class – how can we use rice/pasta/potatoes to form yet another quick but healthy lunch for a number of hungry children? We can’t figure out a new dish? This is where we combine Thankfulness with Nutrition. Whoever said “hunger is the best sauce” was not only hungry, but also never had probably never had Sriracha Hot Sauce. No, you cannot have a cookie right before lunch, and yes that will help you to be thankful when you do get lunch. A few children will be chosen for this task while others help set the table, straight out of the dutiful dishwasher, and so on and so forth.
After lunch, we rotate tasks so others have a chance to Care for the Environment while readers take small children along to read them a story. There might be a chance after that to play with toys, color or draw while we listen to a story on tape.
Who knows, if there is free time before starting supper, we might combine Apparel Care (known as folding laundry) while we (gasp) watch a TV show or movie. Just as the entertainment ends, we apply Place Values to Apparel – put away the hanging and folding.
Before you know it, the day is gone, and your children will be amazed at how little time they have had to be bored. Who knows? If this concept takes off, I might expand my services to adults. But I’m afraid that will have to wait till the end of summer. And, I might be wrong, but don’t they already have something like that…in state prison?
By spring break, my kids really look forward to summer, but for some reason, when it gets here, they dread it. Summer can be a difficult time for working parents when school-aged kids are out of school. Okay, let’s admit it – it can be a difficult time for those of us who have the luxury of being at home too. When I homeschooled my children, I had little understanding of parents being overwhelmed by their own offspring in the absence of the school routine.
Suddenly, there is plenty of time opened up for kids and so many opportunities are available to them. Unfortunately, many of these “opportunities” require bussing your children about and having several loose Franklins around.
But I have a solution to your woes. It is “Camp Ribeiro” and will only cost you $50 a week per child. The class will run from whenever you would like to drop your child(ren) off and will last until you are ready to pick them up.
Here’s how it works: if you will entrust your children to me, I will help you train them to be helpful at home. But since they won’t be in your home, this learning will have to occur in mine. You won’t need to bring them anything: even their food will be included in the fee.
First thing in the morning, we start with Place Values by emptying the dishwasher. Then we walk about and pick up and put everything away. There is great Value in having everything put into Place. As mornings progress, your children will learn time management (because I myself have birthed a slackard or two who can drag this job out till midmorning), so I add a timer to ensure focused task completion and efficient use of time.
Right after the lesson on Place Values, there is a simultaneous seminar on Nourishment and the Declaration of Independence: that is, if your child can maneuver to and open the refrigerator, I Declare him/her to be Independent enough to get his/her own breakfast. Sorry, we are completely out of Pop-tarts and whatever Cookie-Candy-O’s cereal is being pushed on children’s television. Also, while your kid is at it, get something for the little ones who can’t fetch their own breakfast. That brings in our lesson on caring for others and serving one another.
Immediately following is my workshop on “Cleaning the Environment” also known as put your dishes in the sink and wipe up the table around you. Also, if you have spilled, go get the broom, gather your offerings in the dustpan, and place them in the trash. Like a game of musical chairs, if you are the one left with trash that just won’t fit into the liner, you get to empty it in the dumpster. One lucky child each morning will be chosen to do further studies by loading the beloved (but tiny) dishwasher.
Soon after come Horticulture and Early Child Development classes. For the younger ones, it translates to “time to play outside.” For others, it involves learning to identify weeds and carefully collecting these specimens by their roots, also known as weeding. Those interested in younger children can monitor their activity and possibly engage their attention with sidewalk chalk or other outdoor toys. There will be a quick Place Values refresher before we come indoors.
Then follows Hygiene, mostly having to do with washing of hands after playing outside, before eating, and after flushing. (Yes, there will be Remedial Flushing for those with severe attention deficiencies.) As a bonus, there will be Technology Training, but this will be reserved only for the keenest and most observant child(ren), and only those genetically endowed with mechanical aptitude. They will learn to put on a new roll of toilet paper when the existing supply is gone.
If it is too hot outdoors, we will stay indoors and progress to “Treasure Hunting.” This might involve emptying out the kitchen/junk drawer, wiping it down and sorting items into correct piles. As a reward, loose change can be counted and divided amongst the hunters. (See that math lesson sneaking in there?) For older children, there will be “Exploration and the Value of Open Space.” Basically, this entails opening up boxes that we still haven’t unpacked, eleven months after our move here.
Then there is my Creative Cooking class – how can we use rice/pasta/potatoes to form yet another quick but healthy lunch for a number of hungry children? We can’t figure out a new dish? This is where we combine Thankfulness with Nutrition. Whoever said “hunger is the best sauce” was not only hungry, but also never had probably never had Sriracha Hot Sauce. No, you cannot have a cookie right before lunch, and yes that will help you to be thankful when you do get lunch. A few children will be chosen for this task while others help set the table, straight out of the dutiful dishwasher, and so on and so forth.
After lunch, we rotate tasks so others have a chance to Care for the Environment while readers take small children along to read them a story. There might be a chance after that to play with toys, color or draw while we listen to a story on tape.
Who knows, if there is free time before starting supper, we might combine Apparel Care (known as folding laundry) while we (gasp) watch a TV show or movie. Just as the entertainment ends, we apply Place Values to Apparel – put away the hanging and folding.
Before you know it, the day is gone, and your children will be amazed at how little time they have had to be bored. Who knows? If this concept takes off, I might expand my services to adults. But I’m afraid that will have to wait till the end of summer. And, I might be wrong, but don’t they already have something like that…in state prison?
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Grandma Strikes Back
“I see you finally found your mommy,” the lady cooed to my youngest when she saw me washing his hands in the restroom. He had been crying for me earlier on the campus where I was checking on some things. My friend was entertaining him, and although he is so fond of her that he plans to “marry Miss Rose,” he still suffered (or made me suffer) from separation anxiety. The lady in the restroom now recognized him as the owner of the wailing lungs. Then she paused to re-examine my face.
Whenever strangers stop to look at me, I become fearful or vain. Self-conscious that I might have spinach (or realistically, candy) lodged somewhere in my teeth, I shut off my crooked-teeth exposing smile and looked down to discreetly perform the tongue-as-a-toothpick probe. Feeling safe in this regard, I allowed a small and sad thought to enter my small and sad mind. Dare I think it? Did this lady recognize me from this column? Sometimes people do, and are kind enough to stop me and say so.
But I had little to fear here. The main advantage of being published in a family hometown newspaper is that you can continue to be just as anonymous as you might have ever hoped to be. The cooing lady halted and checked herself after conducting her facial cross-examination. She addressed my son again, “Oh, or is it Grandma that you found?”
Grandma? Grandma??!!! Too bad “Grandma” wasn’t equipped with her walking stick, or she might have executed a few deft, eyesight-improving maneuvers. Too bad Grandma was showing additional signs of aging and was too slow to retort with, “Oh, I’m not his grandmother, but thank you for the compliment. I’m actually his great-great-great-grandmother, arrived here fresh from the crypt.”
I realize that at 42 then, it is conceivable (pun intended) that I might be a grandmother. A young mom of 21 whose child repeats the feat, could very easily be a grandmother. And being an “older mom,” I should be used to comments like this.
I was 23 when my eldest was born, but after all, I was 38 when my last child was born. A few years before that, when I was 35 and expecting my fifth child, I had noticed an “AMA” stamp on my chart at the ob-gyn office. I might have been flattered to be included in the American Medical Association by virtue of being an experienced mother. Remember those old cough-syrup commercials that had taught us to appreciate the value of “Dr. Mom” with her maternal, medical wisdom and her keen ability to select the appropriate cough syrup?
But alas, AMA is no compliment. It is a red flag to alert medical personnel that the woman this chart represents is risking childbirth in spite of her Advanced Maternal Age. My nurse-midwife, in the initial interview, had asked, “Have you had a change of sexual partners?” No. “Are you now, or have you recently been using drugs or other illegal substances?” No. “Alcohol?” Again, the answer is no.
I’m sorry to disappoint people, but my life is just not that exciting. If I go to the grocery store and can actually find and use a coupon to save a dollar, that’s excitement. Getting a “real” handwritten piece of mail in the daily deluge of bills that pepper our junk mail, that’s excitement. If someone else changes a roll of toilet paper in the house, then that’s excitement, bordering on delirium. Getting my 3-½-year-old (who still wears 2T clothing) to actually eat a complete meal – that’s just about as giddy as my life ever gets.
Whether I seem young or middle-aged or incredibly old to you will depend on your vantage point on the great number line of life by which we define our time-strapped selves. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me what my age is, because as long as you’re in circulation on Earth, I figure, you have to land somewhere on the number line. I must admit to paying closer attention to obituaries nowadays. If I may borrow the words of Arundhati Roy, the 1997 Booker Prize-winning Indian author of The God of Small Things, being 42 is like “Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable, die-able age.”
There are people whose every hope for happiness hangs on a number. What’s my age? What’s my salary? What’s my GPA and class rank? What’s my weight? What’s my car’s mileage? What’s my SAT score? What’s my credit score? How many kids do I have? How much money is (oops, was) my retirement account worth? I would like to pretend that numbers don’t really matter that much to me, because I know the One who holds my life in His hands. But in spite of that, I haven’t been able to achieve that state of sublime philosophical detachment from the numbers that shape and quantify my life.
So the other day, when I stepped out of my car and caught sight of a puffy-faced, middle-aged woman, it bothered me to recognize it as my own reflection. I don’t mind being 42, but I don’t necessarily want to be instantly pegged as being 42, if not older, as Ms. Grandma-Detector seemed to have done.
Fear and vanity are not only the pathetic plight of the middle-aged woman, they are the basis of a booming, billion-dollar industry of make-up, weight loss, tooth-whitening, de-wrinkling and cellulite-defeating agents. According to James M. Rubenstein in An Introduction to Human Geography (the textbook for an online course that I took through NOVA- Northern Virginia Community College), the United Nations reported that “Americans spend more per year on cosmetics ($8 billion) than the cost of providing schools for the 2 billion in the world in need of them ($6 billion), and Europeans spend more on ice cream ($11 billion) than the cost of providing a working toilet to the 2 billion people currently without one at home ($9 billion).” A sad and sobering thought, is it not?
So what’s the lesson in all this? To rise above self-absorption and not worry what I look like? At this age, apparently, the three B’s of basic hygiene (bathing, brushing teeth, and brushing hair) just don’t seem to cut it. Or is it to never venture out in public without eye make-up? On any given day, it depends on my resolve and my mood. Either way, though, I’m definitely going to look into that walking stick.
Whenever strangers stop to look at me, I become fearful or vain. Self-conscious that I might have spinach (or realistically, candy) lodged somewhere in my teeth, I shut off my crooked-teeth exposing smile and looked down to discreetly perform the tongue-as-a-toothpick probe. Feeling safe in this regard, I allowed a small and sad thought to enter my small and sad mind. Dare I think it? Did this lady recognize me from this column? Sometimes people do, and are kind enough to stop me and say so.
But I had little to fear here. The main advantage of being published in a family hometown newspaper is that you can continue to be just as anonymous as you might have ever hoped to be. The cooing lady halted and checked herself after conducting her facial cross-examination. She addressed my son again, “Oh, or is it Grandma that you found?”
Grandma? Grandma??!!! Too bad “Grandma” wasn’t equipped with her walking stick, or she might have executed a few deft, eyesight-improving maneuvers. Too bad Grandma was showing additional signs of aging and was too slow to retort with, “Oh, I’m not his grandmother, but thank you for the compliment. I’m actually his great-great-great-grandmother, arrived here fresh from the crypt.”
I realize that at 42 then, it is conceivable (pun intended) that I might be a grandmother. A young mom of 21 whose child repeats the feat, could very easily be a grandmother. And being an “older mom,” I should be used to comments like this.
I was 23 when my eldest was born, but after all, I was 38 when my last child was born. A few years before that, when I was 35 and expecting my fifth child, I had noticed an “AMA” stamp on my chart at the ob-gyn office. I might have been flattered to be included in the American Medical Association by virtue of being an experienced mother. Remember those old cough-syrup commercials that had taught us to appreciate the value of “Dr. Mom” with her maternal, medical wisdom and her keen ability to select the appropriate cough syrup?
But alas, AMA is no compliment. It is a red flag to alert medical personnel that the woman this chart represents is risking childbirth in spite of her Advanced Maternal Age. My nurse-midwife, in the initial interview, had asked, “Have you had a change of sexual partners?” No. “Are you now, or have you recently been using drugs or other illegal substances?” No. “Alcohol?” Again, the answer is no.
I’m sorry to disappoint people, but my life is just not that exciting. If I go to the grocery store and can actually find and use a coupon to save a dollar, that’s excitement. Getting a “real” handwritten piece of mail in the daily deluge of bills that pepper our junk mail, that’s excitement. If someone else changes a roll of toilet paper in the house, then that’s excitement, bordering on delirium. Getting my 3-½-year-old (who still wears 2T clothing) to actually eat a complete meal – that’s just about as giddy as my life ever gets.
Whether I seem young or middle-aged or incredibly old to you will depend on your vantage point on the great number line of life by which we define our time-strapped selves. It doesn’t matter one way or the other to me what my age is, because as long as you’re in circulation on Earth, I figure, you have to land somewhere on the number line. I must admit to paying closer attention to obituaries nowadays. If I may borrow the words of Arundhati Roy, the 1997 Booker Prize-winning Indian author of The God of Small Things, being 42 is like “Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable, die-able age.”
There are people whose every hope for happiness hangs on a number. What’s my age? What’s my salary? What’s my GPA and class rank? What’s my weight? What’s my car’s mileage? What’s my SAT score? What’s my credit score? How many kids do I have? How much money is (oops, was) my retirement account worth? I would like to pretend that numbers don’t really matter that much to me, because I know the One who holds my life in His hands. But in spite of that, I haven’t been able to achieve that state of sublime philosophical detachment from the numbers that shape and quantify my life.
So the other day, when I stepped out of my car and caught sight of a puffy-faced, middle-aged woman, it bothered me to recognize it as my own reflection. I don’t mind being 42, but I don’t necessarily want to be instantly pegged as being 42, if not older, as Ms. Grandma-Detector seemed to have done.
Fear and vanity are not only the pathetic plight of the middle-aged woman, they are the basis of a booming, billion-dollar industry of make-up, weight loss, tooth-whitening, de-wrinkling and cellulite-defeating agents. According to James M. Rubenstein in An Introduction to Human Geography (the textbook for an online course that I took through NOVA- Northern Virginia Community College), the United Nations reported that “Americans spend more per year on cosmetics ($8 billion) than the cost of providing schools for the 2 billion in the world in need of them ($6 billion), and Europeans spend more on ice cream ($11 billion) than the cost of providing a working toilet to the 2 billion people currently without one at home ($9 billion).” A sad and sobering thought, is it not?
So what’s the lesson in all this? To rise above self-absorption and not worry what I look like? At this age, apparently, the three B’s of basic hygiene (bathing, brushing teeth, and brushing hair) just don’t seem to cut it. Or is it to never venture out in public without eye make-up? On any given day, it depends on my resolve and my mood. Either way, though, I’m definitely going to look into that walking stick.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Peach Picking Part II – or, Death by Peaches
Last week’s column described my adventure to a local orchard several years ago. What do you mean you didn’t read my column? Run back to your recycling bin, stat, and retrieve it, will you? What do you mean, you put me in the bottom of the birdcage? I hope you had the decency to put me face down, at least.
Each of my six children, even the non-ambulatory one, had a plastic grocery bag to collect peaches. Each one had filled and stretched the bag far beyond its natural capacity – you know, sort of the way middle-aged women tend to dress for weddings. We returned with 135 peaches in six bags. Notice I didn’t say “about 150 peaches” or “over 100” peaches. I gave you a specific number because we decided to count the booty (no longer referencing women’s wear here) when we came home. Then we came to our senses.
We did not count with the rising elation of an expert angler describing his catch, or a child counting out his coins. It was more with a sense of dread: like the mounting death toll after a disaster strikes. As the numbers rose, so did our dismay. We got to 135. We decided to omit the peaches we had devoured in the orchard with our picnic lunches.
Even though 135 peaches is too much for a family of eight – and mind you, the two youngest were so little that together, they barely had the peach-eating capacity of one small child - I would have been happier if we had brought home 153. Then, I could have felt all good and spiritual about it, because it would have been like the Biblical haul of fish. Remember when the resurrected Jesus used His divine Fishfinder to tell the disciples exactly where to cast their nets, and they brought up 153 large fish without breaking the nets? I might have sensed some spiritual insight if we had bagged 153 peaches. Instead, I felt like some depraved (deprived?) peach glutton.
I had no plans except to eat peaches and make my children eat them.
It was not too many a year ago,
In an orchard near to me,
That we picked too, too many peaches
That hung right off the trees;
And soon we were consumed by the peaches we’d brought
And were forced to eat them to be set free.
--- With apologies to Edgar Allan Poe and “Annabel Lee”
My culinary vocabulary did not include canning, preserving, or freezing. We were just going to have to eat our way out of this peach avalanche. I now realize I could have cut the peaches, sprinkled a little sugar on them, and put them in the freezer, but I didn’t know this then. How much more memorable for my kids was the summer we shall refer to as “Death by Peaches.”
We didn’t know many others in our subdivision, so sharing peaches would have been a fine and neighborly gesture. That, too, was too normal a thing to do. I’m ashamed to tell you that I didn’t share a single peach with a single soul. My mental facilities always work better in reverse gear. At the time, all we did was eat and count peaches.
Our glut of peaches required everyone to eat their daily quota. It was like a rationing system in reverse: you had to eat three to five peaches a day if you wanted to eat anything else. Of course, we had only picked the plumpest, ripest, and juiciest peaches, so we had little time in which to accomplish this feat. It didn’t matter how it got done, so long as they were eaten. I was setting the rules; let someone else figure out the logistics.
They could eat their afternoon’s dose of peaches prior to enjoying lunch, or they could enjoy it as their lunch: peaches on your pizza, or peaches with your pizza. For some variety, try peanut butter and peach sandwiches along with a peach smoothie.
My kids really got into the kitchen during our peach-capades. They made peach cobbler, peach pie, peach glaze, peach bread, and peach turnovers. We tried the blanching/boiling technique that was supposed to help the peels just slip right off, but all it did was turn our peaches into big gray balls. I don’t remember how we finished that batch of peaches off, because it wouldn’t look too appetizing in a peach cobbler.
Toward the end, our peaches, like little aging people, had become a little too soft and a little too wrinkly, with mysterious bruises here and there. No matter, with a knife the blemishes could be excised. Just think of it as a little botanical botox. At long last, we finished that 135th peach. If we were not so bloated with peaches, we might have been proud and celebrated.
Later that fall, the ladies’ group at church announced a trip to an apple orchard. “Ooh!” squealed my youngest daughter, who was about four years old then. “Could we go peachpicking for apples next time?”
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Peach Picking – or, Why Moderation is Not my Middle Name
My coworker, Carol Brigden, had been eating a peach a day. Carol is one of those uber-healthy women who doesn’t take any vitamins: she eats them by carefully selecting the foods she consumes. I, on the other hand, buy junk food in bulk for my children, and then, as a panacea to compensate for my nutritional negligence, also toss in the whole gamut of Gummy Bears for kids: vitamins, calcium, and fish oil. You know, just in case their bodies aren’t extracting anything of value from the cartons of popcorn and peanut butter granola bars that weigh down my cart.
I feel as if I spend equal amounts of money on vitamins as on real food. Maybe these products should be relabeled “Dummy Vitamins” for people like me. Am I the only one that has the lingering suspicion that maybe, just maybe, there is absolutely nothing of nutritional value in these adorably stamped, squishy, supplements? What if they are made from the identical recipe as those sour neon gummy crawlers, but just smashed into bear shapes, and then packaged in bottles that are priced five times more than the candy. Would the real candy please stand up?
Carol also happens to exercise regularly and vigorously. Hailing from South Africa, she says everyone who is anyone back home is athletic. This might explain why Carol the figure to rival an athletic sixteen-year-old’s, even though she could be a grandma any day now. I, too, believe in exercise, but my efforts tend to concentrate on specific areas, such as on building a healthy jawline: chewing up food or chewing out children. This sort of exercise can leave you looking more and more like Howard Cosell.
Her daily peach-ification was the result of what Carol called an overzealous Farmer's Market purchase, but she has no idea what true peach-picking zeal can produce, because she was able to consume all of her peaches within a week. Real zeal is the time I took my kids peach picking several years ago.
My friend Holly Schoenhoff had organized an outing to Hartland Orchard for the ladies of our church that summer. Holly is one of those amazing women who, despite having two young rambunctious boys, can find time to organize things. Every once in a while, we would get an email that Holly had tackled some corner of the house, and had discovered she had an extra copy of a children’s classic. Who would like it? Or, her Erich or Ben had outgrown a coat, and could anyone use a nice, puffy green hooded jacket in a 3T? (She is thoughtful enough to ask this just as the air is getting nippy in the fall, when you could really use it, and not in the middle of July, when just thinking about coats could cause you to faint.)
Holly is also something of an educating domestic diva. She not only grinds wheat, but also makes time to invite friends over so they and their young children can join in on the delights of baking a fresh loaf of bread. She also happens to be an avid photographer and a charming writer. I’m not anywhere near as organized as Holly, but she lets me be her friend anyway.
We went to Hartland Orchard on a – and I apologize here, because I must use strong language – stinking, hot day. Even my kids’ faces turned red.
I thought this trip would be a great opportunity to show the kids that fruit could be found hanging off of trees. I gave each of my kids a bag to fill. My youngest daughter, then 4, squealed at the sight of fruit bursting from the trees. My youngest son rode in a backpack carrier. I can’t recall if he squealed or cried; I just remember having a sticky back afterwards. Of course, he had to have his own bag too. I carried it for him. Despite all their previous food-procuring excursions had taught them, my children learned that fruit does not grow in highly polished, perfect pyramids in super-air-conditioned grocery stores.
We thrilled in the joys of walking through orchards we had neither sweated nor toiled to tend, and plucked the ripened fruit right off the trees. It was important that we fill all six bags with nature’s bounty. People who know me claim I don’t know how to do things in moderation, which is why it’s always such a delight to meet new people. They tend to have much better opinions of me. They don’t know that I can finish off an entire bag of jelly beans (with real fruit juice!) in one night. Peaches, however, are a different matter. You cannot eat all the peaches in one night.
One-hundred thirty-five peaches. We came home with 135 peaches. What was I thinking? More precisely, “Was I thinking?” I know exactly how many peaches we had because one of the first activities we had at home was to count them. It would not be the last. More on peach gluttony next week...
I feel as if I spend equal amounts of money on vitamins as on real food. Maybe these products should be relabeled “Dummy Vitamins” for people like me. Am I the only one that has the lingering suspicion that maybe, just maybe, there is absolutely nothing of nutritional value in these adorably stamped, squishy, supplements? What if they are made from the identical recipe as those sour neon gummy crawlers, but just smashed into bear shapes, and then packaged in bottles that are priced five times more than the candy. Would the real candy please stand up?
Carol also happens to exercise regularly and vigorously. Hailing from South Africa, she says everyone who is anyone back home is athletic. This might explain why Carol the figure to rival an athletic sixteen-year-old’s, even though she could be a grandma any day now. I, too, believe in exercise, but my efforts tend to concentrate on specific areas, such as on building a healthy jawline: chewing up food or chewing out children. This sort of exercise can leave you looking more and more like Howard Cosell.
Her daily peach-ification was the result of what Carol called an overzealous Farmer's Market purchase, but she has no idea what true peach-picking zeal can produce, because she was able to consume all of her peaches within a week. Real zeal is the time I took my kids peach picking several years ago.
My friend Holly Schoenhoff had organized an outing to Hartland Orchard for the ladies of our church that summer. Holly is one of those amazing women who, despite having two young rambunctious boys, can find time to organize things. Every once in a while, we would get an email that Holly had tackled some corner of the house, and had discovered she had an extra copy of a children’s classic. Who would like it? Or, her Erich or Ben had outgrown a coat, and could anyone use a nice, puffy green hooded jacket in a 3T? (She is thoughtful enough to ask this just as the air is getting nippy in the fall, when you could really use it, and not in the middle of July, when just thinking about coats could cause you to faint.)
Holly is also something of an educating domestic diva. She not only grinds wheat, but also makes time to invite friends over so they and their young children can join in on the delights of baking a fresh loaf of bread. She also happens to be an avid photographer and a charming writer. I’m not anywhere near as organized as Holly, but she lets me be her friend anyway.
We went to Hartland Orchard on a – and I apologize here, because I must use strong language – stinking, hot day. Even my kids’ faces turned red.
I thought this trip would be a great opportunity to show the kids that fruit could be found hanging off of trees. I gave each of my kids a bag to fill. My youngest daughter, then 4, squealed at the sight of fruit bursting from the trees. My youngest son rode in a backpack carrier. I can’t recall if he squealed or cried; I just remember having a sticky back afterwards. Of course, he had to have his own bag too. I carried it for him. Despite all their previous food-procuring excursions had taught them, my children learned that fruit does not grow in highly polished, perfect pyramids in super-air-conditioned grocery stores.
We thrilled in the joys of walking through orchards we had neither sweated nor toiled to tend, and plucked the ripened fruit right off the trees. It was important that we fill all six bags with nature’s bounty. People who know me claim I don’t know how to do things in moderation, which is why it’s always such a delight to meet new people. They tend to have much better opinions of me. They don’t know that I can finish off an entire bag of jelly beans (with real fruit juice!) in one night. Peaches, however, are a different matter. You cannot eat all the peaches in one night.
One-hundred thirty-five peaches. We came home with 135 peaches. What was I thinking? More precisely, “Was I thinking?” I know exactly how many peaches we had because one of the first activities we had at home was to count them. It would not be the last. More on peach gluttony next week...
Monday, July 12, 2010
Grocery Store Grumbles
I was getting groceries the other day. With six kids at home all summer, getting groceries is about all that I ever seem to do. I’m no Rachael Ray, yet my world revolves around food and its acquisition. The meals need to be planned, the food retrieved and revived (if necessary), cooked, and doled out. By the time we’re done eating and cleaning up, it’s time for the next meal. These days, food consumes me as much as I consume it.
When I go to the grocery store, even if only for milk, at checkout it costs at least $60. That’s why milk is at the depths of the store, so shopping carts can magnetically attract purchases en route. I try the smaller carts, but these groceries know I come from a country of over a billion people. They just crowd in and pile high.
Desperate for a quick and economical trip, as risqué as it sounds, I have even gone cart-less. You would be amazed by what I can clutch in my hands and amass in my arm-chest fortress. Since I have no shame (the first childbirth sheds you of that), I can even bite the Krispy Kreme Crullers bag and deposit it first, like an obedient dog, onto the conveyor belt. Mouth free, I can beam at the cashier while releasing the armload avalanche.
Perhaps, instead of bypassing the cart, I should leave the credit card behind to curb impulsive purchases. It would be effective, yes, but embarrassing when that bitten-bag of doughnuts has to be voided.
I once had an economizing scheme when we first married. My husband was a graduate-student and I was a junior in college. Tight finances stipulated that I frequent the grocery store…less frequently, just once a week. If we had to get creative mid-week, then so be it. Regular people count carbs, calories, and fats when choosing food. In college, you just count the cost.
By Thursday night, I served this colorful (and cheap) dinner to my new husband: a hot bowl of Cream-of-Wheat and a plate of watermelon chunks. Whatever his other faults, this man almost never complains about food. All he did was raise his eyebrows, a gesture which I interpreted as wonder at my ingenuity and resourcefulness.
Moments later, he rushed away. What his intellect had accepted, his stomach had duly rejected. He was just in time to coat the bathroom doorknob with a fountain of pink. Under other circumstances, it would have been such a lovely color. He has never eaten Cream-of-Wheat since. And, to prevent the recurrence of such culinary crimes, I go grocery shopping as often as necessary.
Clip coupons, you suggest? I have lost faith in coupons. Sometimes I have a valid coupon, but saving 75¢ on a huge shopping bill doesn’t feel that effective. Most often, I find trifling coupons for items I rarely use. “Brand XYZ of salad dressing: gallon size only. Must purchase three gallons at the regular price to get 50 ¢ off the fourth gallon.”
And I haven’t grasped that member vs. non-member pricing system. It’s supposed to make you feel good when you check out: your bill would have been $ 237 at the non-member price, but as a “member” (i.e., you supplied your phone number), it is $ 203. Wow! You just saved $ 34, over 10% of your bill. Why aren’t you shopping here all the time?
I like saving money just as much as the next man or mom. So why not price things so I “save” even more? Why not mark the non-member price for strawberries, say, instead of $ 5.99, something really ridiculous, like $ 15.99? Instantly and effortlessly, I now save another $10.
And as long as I’m griping, what’s with bulk-pricing policy? Brand X yogurt is 8 for $6. Brand Y is 5 for $4. Once you’ve figured out that that means Brand X yogurt costs 75¢ per cup while Brand Y costs 80¢, your work is still not done, because, of course, Brand X is sold in 6 oz. cups while Brand Y comes in 8 oz. cups. I can do the math, but please don’t ask me to do it while I am freezing to death in the cheese and dairy aisle. Just give me the price for one, and I will multiply if I need to. (I’m much better at multiplying – after all, I have six kids.)
When I do find a useful coupon, it has invariably expired. Or, worse yet, I start with a good, unexpired, and useful coupon in hand and misplace it in the store. You have to hold the coupons, Silly. How else can you ensure you are buying the selected variety in the requisite size and specified quantity?
What kind of loon loses a coupon? Once, while trying to be stylish, I was parading about the store with a cup of coffee in hand. I must have gotten an older model cart, because it did not have the cup-holder that is legally required to be in every vehicle, stroller, riding mower, La-Z-Boy, and shopping cart. Thus, as my tiny cart filled up, I had to keep setting the coffee on a shelf so I could use both hands to speed up the collection process. I wonder who eventually found that old (and now terribly cold) cup of coffee.
I last had it in the yogurt aisle, fending off hypothermia while doing mental math. If no one has found it, have no fear. I’ll be back before too long.
When I go to the grocery store, even if only for milk, at checkout it costs at least $60. That’s why milk is at the depths of the store, so shopping carts can magnetically attract purchases en route. I try the smaller carts, but these groceries know I come from a country of over a billion people. They just crowd in and pile high.
Desperate for a quick and economical trip, as risqué as it sounds, I have even gone cart-less. You would be amazed by what I can clutch in my hands and amass in my arm-chest fortress. Since I have no shame (the first childbirth sheds you of that), I can even bite the Krispy Kreme Crullers bag and deposit it first, like an obedient dog, onto the conveyor belt. Mouth free, I can beam at the cashier while releasing the armload avalanche.
Perhaps, instead of bypassing the cart, I should leave the credit card behind to curb impulsive purchases. It would be effective, yes, but embarrassing when that bitten-bag of doughnuts has to be voided.
I once had an economizing scheme when we first married. My husband was a graduate-student and I was a junior in college. Tight finances stipulated that I frequent the grocery store…less frequently, just once a week. If we had to get creative mid-week, then so be it. Regular people count carbs, calories, and fats when choosing food. In college, you just count the cost.
By Thursday night, I served this colorful (and cheap) dinner to my new husband: a hot bowl of Cream-of-Wheat and a plate of watermelon chunks. Whatever his other faults, this man almost never complains about food. All he did was raise his eyebrows, a gesture which I interpreted as wonder at my ingenuity and resourcefulness.
Moments later, he rushed away. What his intellect had accepted, his stomach had duly rejected. He was just in time to coat the bathroom doorknob with a fountain of pink. Under other circumstances, it would have been such a lovely color. He has never eaten Cream-of-Wheat since. And, to prevent the recurrence of such culinary crimes, I go grocery shopping as often as necessary.
Clip coupons, you suggest? I have lost faith in coupons. Sometimes I have a valid coupon, but saving 75¢ on a huge shopping bill doesn’t feel that effective. Most often, I find trifling coupons for items I rarely use. “Brand XYZ of salad dressing: gallon size only. Must purchase three gallons at the regular price to get 50 ¢ off the fourth gallon.”
And I haven’t grasped that member vs. non-member pricing system. It’s supposed to make you feel good when you check out: your bill would have been $ 237 at the non-member price, but as a “member” (i.e., you supplied your phone number), it is $ 203. Wow! You just saved $ 34, over 10% of your bill. Why aren’t you shopping here all the time?
I like saving money just as much as the next man or mom. So why not price things so I “save” even more? Why not mark the non-member price for strawberries, say, instead of $ 5.99, something really ridiculous, like $ 15.99? Instantly and effortlessly, I now save another $10.
And as long as I’m griping, what’s with bulk-pricing policy? Brand X yogurt is 8 for $6. Brand Y is 5 for $4. Once you’ve figured out that that means Brand X yogurt costs 75¢ per cup while Brand Y costs 80¢, your work is still not done, because, of course, Brand X is sold in 6 oz. cups while Brand Y comes in 8 oz. cups. I can do the math, but please don’t ask me to do it while I am freezing to death in the cheese and dairy aisle. Just give me the price for one, and I will multiply if I need to. (I’m much better at multiplying – after all, I have six kids.)
When I do find a useful coupon, it has invariably expired. Or, worse yet, I start with a good, unexpired, and useful coupon in hand and misplace it in the store. You have to hold the coupons, Silly. How else can you ensure you are buying the selected variety in the requisite size and specified quantity?
What kind of loon loses a coupon? Once, while trying to be stylish, I was parading about the store with a cup of coffee in hand. I must have gotten an older model cart, because it did not have the cup-holder that is legally required to be in every vehicle, stroller, riding mower, La-Z-Boy, and shopping cart. Thus, as my tiny cart filled up, I had to keep setting the coffee on a shelf so I could use both hands to speed up the collection process. I wonder who eventually found that old (and now terribly cold) cup of coffee.
I last had it in the yogurt aisle, fending off hypothermia while doing mental math. If no one has found it, have no fear. I’ll be back before too long.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Confessions of a Facebook Flunkie
You know you're a Facebook Flunkie when your friend's fourth-grader sends you a friend request. I don't know what possessed me adopt a posse of cyberfriends when I barely make time to be good to my own family or the friends I count on when I need to boo-hoo.
You’re a confirmed Facebook Flunkie when you only check your account every few weeks. That's not enough if you're a “happening” person. Just because things happen to you, you aren’t a “happening” person. My weekly “excitement,” distilled into 850 words, is often decades old.
I refuse to log on to post updates like: “Just finished a load of laundry!” Who cares, except for the people waiting on that clean underwear? Even then, the merits of clean underwear are dubious, because people rarely get excited enough to transport it into their rooms. The only time they begin caring is when company is here. When visiting eyes rest upon the various mounds of undergarments on the coffee table, then they care. “Coffee, tea, or 34C?” Those eyes might be sizing up family members and guessing whose mound belongs to whom. It's like a perverted version of Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.
Next possible update: “Out of toilet paper.” This generates sympathetic responses: “Oh, Vineeta, so sorry you guys are roughing it.” Or, thoughtful gestures like, “Someone just sent you a roll of toilet paper!” You click to accept the roll of cyberpaper for all your cyber...well, you get the picture. Now you've enrolled in something else.
Why do I have a Facebook account? My husband is annoyed by my “breach of security.” (Has he read this column?) It's a nice way to keep up with people you'd normally only send a Christmas letter. I know those annual letters are supposed to be tacky, but that’s all I do during the holidays, since I'm no good with decorating, baking, or any other festive merry-making.
Security breach? What security breach? To think I'm posting anything of vital importance that hasn't been in this column is a laugh…or a gas. Speaking of which, some people do post everything: “Barney just passed gas and burped. At the same time!” That might be someone's status.
You're hoping Barney is the infant, and not the husband. Because:
A.) That could be embarrassing for the husband.
B.) If it is the husband, this is not news-flash material.
Whoever poor Barney is, I doubt he has a Facebook account. Otherwise, Barney will get an urgent email, “You were mentioned in someone's status update. Don't rush to check, it wasn't very flattering.”
Speaking of flattering, notice how the younger generation is always armed with digital cameras? They post fabulous photos – of themselves. After all, they’re young and gorgeous; it’s not that hard. You will be tagged and lurking in the background, nose recoiled for a solid sneeze, or eyes half-closed in a drunken, groggy appearance that you hope is not your norm.
A security breach would require posting something of any significance. My posts are: “First time on this thing in three weeks!” Or, “Back on Facebook after a one-month hiatus.” You have to be able to throw a word like “hiatus” in somewhere, especially when you aren't really saying anything.
The only time I posted “real” information was after Mother's Day, when my husband bought me this little Dell Mini. “Ahh. Battery that lasts more than 12 minutes. I love this Dell Mini. Thanks, Eldred, even though you will never read this.” Shortly thereafter, he read it. Wanting to show how I could connect to our email while at Panera, he asked me to get onto Facebook. We got coffee, but I also got that look that that says, “Security breach.” The best part of our visit there is when we see Tom and Maureen, who are practically a fixture there with their morning papers. Not only are they the cutest couple, they also happen to read this column, which indicates that they are obviously people of keen intelligence and impeccable taste.
There are Facebook users and Facebook over-users. Over-users are people who spend a small portion of their day doing something, and the rest of the time documenting it for the virtual world. They send cyber flowers and cyber cards. They have little pranks where they can “kidnap” you.
I don't even qualify on the radar as an under-user yet. There is an Indian version called Yaari, which I have so far managed to avoid without hurting anyone’s feelings. (I hope.) There’s also a “Geni” networking program, whose slogan is “Everyone's Related.” One of my family members initiated this before my parent’s 50th anniversary, and the invitation to join this network said, “It's private, so only your family can see it.” The counter back in June said we had 199 family members...so far.
Then there is LinkedIn, which is like the professional’s flavor of Facebook. Obviously, I don't have one. I'm not professional enough for that. If you want to look me up and send me a message on Facebook, that would be a nice gesture. Don't be offended if it takes me a month to respond. It’s nothing personal, I'm just a Facebook Flunkie.
You’re a confirmed Facebook Flunkie when you only check your account every few weeks. That's not enough if you're a “happening” person. Just because things happen to you, you aren’t a “happening” person. My weekly “excitement,” distilled into 850 words, is often decades old.
I refuse to log on to post updates like: “Just finished a load of laundry!” Who cares, except for the people waiting on that clean underwear? Even then, the merits of clean underwear are dubious, because people rarely get excited enough to transport it into their rooms. The only time they begin caring is when company is here. When visiting eyes rest upon the various mounds of undergarments on the coffee table, then they care. “Coffee, tea, or 34C?” Those eyes might be sizing up family members and guessing whose mound belongs to whom. It's like a perverted version of Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.
Next possible update: “Out of toilet paper.” This generates sympathetic responses: “Oh, Vineeta, so sorry you guys are roughing it.” Or, thoughtful gestures like, “Someone just sent you a roll of toilet paper!” You click to accept the roll of cyberpaper for all your cyber...well, you get the picture. Now you've enrolled in something else.
Why do I have a Facebook account? My husband is annoyed by my “breach of security.” (Has he read this column?) It's a nice way to keep up with people you'd normally only send a Christmas letter. I know those annual letters are supposed to be tacky, but that’s all I do during the holidays, since I'm no good with decorating, baking, or any other festive merry-making.
Security breach? What security breach? To think I'm posting anything of vital importance that hasn't been in this column is a laugh…or a gas. Speaking of which, some people do post everything: “Barney just passed gas and burped. At the same time!” That might be someone's status.
You're hoping Barney is the infant, and not the husband. Because:
A.) That could be embarrassing for the husband.
B.) If it is the husband, this is not news-flash material.
Whoever poor Barney is, I doubt he has a Facebook account. Otherwise, Barney will get an urgent email, “You were mentioned in someone's status update. Don't rush to check, it wasn't very flattering.”
Speaking of flattering, notice how the younger generation is always armed with digital cameras? They post fabulous photos – of themselves. After all, they’re young and gorgeous; it’s not that hard. You will be tagged and lurking in the background, nose recoiled for a solid sneeze, or eyes half-closed in a drunken, groggy appearance that you hope is not your norm.
A security breach would require posting something of any significance. My posts are: “First time on this thing in three weeks!” Or, “Back on Facebook after a one-month hiatus.” You have to be able to throw a word like “hiatus” in somewhere, especially when you aren't really saying anything.
The only time I posted “real” information was after Mother's Day, when my husband bought me this little Dell Mini. “Ahh. Battery that lasts more than 12 minutes. I love this Dell Mini. Thanks, Eldred, even though you will never read this.” Shortly thereafter, he read it. Wanting to show how I could connect to our email while at Panera, he asked me to get onto Facebook. We got coffee, but I also got that look that that says, “Security breach.” The best part of our visit there is when we see Tom and Maureen, who are practically a fixture there with their morning papers. Not only are they the cutest couple, they also happen to read this column, which indicates that they are obviously people of keen intelligence and impeccable taste.
There are Facebook users and Facebook over-users. Over-users are people who spend a small portion of their day doing something, and the rest of the time documenting it for the virtual world. They send cyber flowers and cyber cards. They have little pranks where they can “kidnap” you.
I don't even qualify on the radar as an under-user yet. There is an Indian version called Yaari, which I have so far managed to avoid without hurting anyone’s feelings. (I hope.) There’s also a “Geni” networking program, whose slogan is “Everyone's Related.” One of my family members initiated this before my parent’s 50th anniversary, and the invitation to join this network said, “It's private, so only your family can see it.” The counter back in June said we had 199 family members...so far.
Then there is LinkedIn, which is like the professional’s flavor of Facebook. Obviously, I don't have one. I'm not professional enough for that. If you want to look me up and send me a message on Facebook, that would be a nice gesture. Don't be offended if it takes me a month to respond. It’s nothing personal, I'm just a Facebook Flunkie.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Lamentations: the Link between Low Literacy and Low Nutrition
No one in my family reads this column unless I compel them. I’m entertaining subtle new ways to “plant” it around the house. I’ve considered taping it to the refrigerator or microwave, and while that technique is subtle, it’s no longer new.
I could make reading the column a prerequisite to getting dinner, but then that might make making dinner a requirement for me. I often prefer the “Every man for himself” method. This is an alternative to serving a hot, nutritious meal in which the caretaker (forget political correctness, let’s just say “Mom”) has slaved away for over an hour, chopping, stirring, and simmering fresh things until an irresistible aroma draws people to the warmth of your loving and cheerful kitchen. In “Every man for himself,” all you do is shout (even louder, if shouting is your primary means of communication) that there is no dinner tonight. It’s “Every man for himself!” Place your hands on the shoulders of smaller family members, and guide them away from the potential stampede. This is crucial if the edible leftovers are limited, meaning only a single or double portion of the better items. Usually, you have only four pieces of chicken curry, but an entire vat of old dried up brown rice and a container with a huge splat of overcooked lentils that nobody wanted on the night it premiered. That’s what you get for trying to cook healthy food. (Whether four pieces of chicken is considered a single serving depends on who gets to it first.) This method teaches young people to fend for themselves, and it trains them to respond when you holler. It leads to gratitude, especially in the person who gets to the fridge first, and sometimes even encourages cooperation among the slowpokes, as in someone young preparing tuna salad and serving it to someone even younger. Best of all, it saves you time so you can think of clever ways to make family members read your column.
They can’t tell me they’re too busy to read, even if they just had to put together a meal because the maternal one has feigned illness or exhaustion - in layman’s terms, start with “I am sick and tired…” and then fill in the blanks. They can't complain that it's too long to read, because I have diligently adhered to an 850-word limit, after some very kind and clever people with limited attention spans complained last summer that this column was too long. Fortunately, I don’t hold grudges, so I have completely forgiven these moronic people. Let’s not waste any more words on them now.
I happen to know lots of people in my house who would gladly read tomes, provided they begin with “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” or “Captain Underpants” or some other cerebral material like “The Encyclopedia of Immaturity.” Oh, fine – those are actual published works. What are you trying to say?
My second daughter says she would indeed LIKE to read this column, in the same way that I might LIKE to floss my teeth, but it is never available when she has the time. (For example, if it weren’t considered rude or unhygienic to floss your teeth while entrapped in a long, boring meeting, wouldn’t you floss more often?) She suggests I bait people into reading by stuffing the newspaper clipping into an empty Pringles can. I know; I shouldn't even admit to having this food-like material made of salted and flavored dehydrated and uniformly compressed potato fragments, but nutrition-happy people should relax. All our Pringles cans are empty.
No, we are not stockpiling them for a craft activity. They just happen to get that way a few seconds upon entering the threshold. Why are empty cans left in the pantry? The same reason people cannot read this column: they're just too busy.
Don’t be impressed that the cans were at least returned to the pantry. They never left it in the first place. Here’s how it works. A bored or hungry person shuffles toward the double doors of the pantry. Yes, it’s a place to stock food, but it can even store its consumer. The doors are only opened wide enough to let the forager get in, but not so wide as to allow you to ascertain the identity. As they feed, you might see powdered puffs of potato-esque fragments explode into the air with each crunch. The height at which the potato particles are emitted is a good indicator of the grazer’s identity. If you shout for everyone to come to the kitchen, (keep it a mystery when there might be the next hot, nutritious meal), the person in the pantry will instead lurch into the formal dining room and make a 359-degree circuit to return to the kitchen, all the while forgetting to dust the Pringles off the face.
The next time you see me buying junk food, please remember I am just trying to promote literacy in my own household. I might even take the added precaution to pre-eat the contents before I plant them into the pantry.
I could make reading the column a prerequisite to getting dinner, but then that might make making dinner a requirement for me. I often prefer the “Every man for himself” method. This is an alternative to serving a hot, nutritious meal in which the caretaker (forget political correctness, let’s just say “Mom”) has slaved away for over an hour, chopping, stirring, and simmering fresh things until an irresistible aroma draws people to the warmth of your loving and cheerful kitchen. In “Every man for himself,” all you do is shout (even louder, if shouting is your primary means of communication) that there is no dinner tonight. It’s “Every man for himself!” Place your hands on the shoulders of smaller family members, and guide them away from the potential stampede. This is crucial if the edible leftovers are limited, meaning only a single or double portion of the better items. Usually, you have only four pieces of chicken curry, but an entire vat of old dried up brown rice and a container with a huge splat of overcooked lentils that nobody wanted on the night it premiered. That’s what you get for trying to cook healthy food. (Whether four pieces of chicken is considered a single serving depends on who gets to it first.) This method teaches young people to fend for themselves, and it trains them to respond when you holler. It leads to gratitude, especially in the person who gets to the fridge first, and sometimes even encourages cooperation among the slowpokes, as in someone young preparing tuna salad and serving it to someone even younger. Best of all, it saves you time so you can think of clever ways to make family members read your column.
They can’t tell me they’re too busy to read, even if they just had to put together a meal because the maternal one has feigned illness or exhaustion - in layman’s terms, start with “I am sick and tired…” and then fill in the blanks. They can't complain that it's too long to read, because I have diligently adhered to an 850-word limit, after some very kind and clever people with limited attention spans complained last summer that this column was too long. Fortunately, I don’t hold grudges, so I have completely forgiven these moronic people. Let’s not waste any more words on them now.
I happen to know lots of people in my house who would gladly read tomes, provided they begin with “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” or “Captain Underpants” or some other cerebral material like “The Encyclopedia of Immaturity.” Oh, fine – those are actual published works. What are you trying to say?
My second daughter says she would indeed LIKE to read this column, in the same way that I might LIKE to floss my teeth, but it is never available when she has the time. (For example, if it weren’t considered rude or unhygienic to floss your teeth while entrapped in a long, boring meeting, wouldn’t you floss more often?) She suggests I bait people into reading by stuffing the newspaper clipping into an empty Pringles can. I know; I shouldn't even admit to having this food-like material made of salted and flavored dehydrated and uniformly compressed potato fragments, but nutrition-happy people should relax. All our Pringles cans are empty.
No, we are not stockpiling them for a craft activity. They just happen to get that way a few seconds upon entering the threshold. Why are empty cans left in the pantry? The same reason people cannot read this column: they're just too busy.
Don’t be impressed that the cans were at least returned to the pantry. They never left it in the first place. Here’s how it works. A bored or hungry person shuffles toward the double doors of the pantry. Yes, it’s a place to stock food, but it can even store its consumer. The doors are only opened wide enough to let the forager get in, but not so wide as to allow you to ascertain the identity. As they feed, you might see powdered puffs of potato-esque fragments explode into the air with each crunch. The height at which the potato particles are emitted is a good indicator of the grazer’s identity. If you shout for everyone to come to the kitchen, (keep it a mystery when there might be the next hot, nutritious meal), the person in the pantry will instead lurch into the formal dining room and make a 359-degree circuit to return to the kitchen, all the while forgetting to dust the Pringles off the face.
The next time you see me buying junk food, please remember I am just trying to promote literacy in my own household. I might even take the added precaution to pre-eat the contents before I plant them into the pantry.
A Christmas Carol – too much 3D, not enough depth
“A Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey - undoubtedly, the worst movie I have ever seen – partially or otherwise. The kind of movie that drives you to write incomplete sentences.
I'm no movie reviewer, but my lack of qualifications has never stopped me before, so let me make a public service announcement. Do not go see this movie, unless you particularly enjoy wasting time and/or throwing money away. (Those with excess time and money, call me. I need help in my house!)
Our family went to the movies over Thanksgiving. There were so many other things we could have done: de-junk the basement, de-junk the garage, de-junk the kids' bedrooms, or de-junk the office. In hindsight, any of those would have been cheaper, more productive, and far more entertaining. I don't want to knock my husband's generosity, as going to the movies was his idea. Trust me, he knew better than to suggest de-junking as a family form of entertainment.
I don't want to admit how much this outing cost. I miss that dollar theater we had in Ohio now. Eight of us could watch a movie AND get snacks for $20. Not here.
When the cashier said $ 94 for our eight tickets, I was stupefied. Then, I did something I swore, as a child, I would never do as a grown-up. I remember being a kid in the checkout line of our local Bi-Lo grocery store. My father stood in line as the cashier rang things up (ka-ching, ka-ching – ancient sounds – not the “beep” with every scanner swipe nowadays.) Then, to my supreme humiliation, my father would actually attempt to haggle over the price of cabbage with the teenaged cashier, as if he were back in India in an open-air market. The girls cashiering and the bag-boys (very gender specific roles then) were high school kids that we recognized, and worse still, who recognized us. I decided then, that if I survived the disgrace and ever reached adulthood, I would never haggle with a cashier. My smarter and more American self knew that the cashier's job was merely to punch in, and not to establish, the prices.
All that resolve melted away in me, the price-paying adult. I was dumbfounded by the $ 94, but managed an, “Are you sure? Don't you need to know my kids' ages?” He was not interested in ages: theirs, mine, or otherwise. All the tickets were uni-priced: too high. “Right, but isn't this a matinee?” I made a second attempt to scale this summit. Was this guy new? Didn't he know the rules? No, the time of day didn't matter either. Not that I thought it would be cheap to go to the movies. I knew it was going to be pricey, but I was thinking $60 - $70.
The whole movie was dark and dull and depressing. I realize that “dull, dark, and depressing” conveys Scrooge, but the WHOLE movie? There were odd moments of humor too. For example, Jacob Marley's ghost dislocates his jaw while talking, and it ends up flapping around. Was that supposed to be funny? Later, the Ghost of Christmas Present knocks Scrooge in the head. Hilarious. All we were missing was some bathroom humor. Does Disney need 3D in order accomplish slapstick?
Because of this 3D “handicap,” much of the film concentrates on making main characters “fly” through things or in “throwing” objects at the audience. It's like the woman with a new ring or fresh manicure who finds herself “needing” her hands for constant gesticulation. There were ridiculous scenes of Scrooge nearly rocketing to the moon, too, all while the man has his nightshirt decently clad to his thighs. Not that I was looking, mind you. This is a shriveled old man who is weirdly animated to be as skinny and bony as if the actor had starved himself for months and been resuscitated just for the camera. I disliked the morphed actor-animation, but it must have been required. God forbid a male actor starve himself to be on the big screen.
Despite all the rip-roaring action, I went to sleep. Yes, it cost about twelve dollars for my ticket, but trapped in a darkened theater, sleep was better than enduring this farce. I've never paid to sleep before, but there was literally nothing better to do.
Even my contact lens got bored and fidgeted during the movie. My right lens tried to curl up and go to sleep too. When it assumed a painful fetal position, I had to remove my attractive 3D glasses. Watching the overlapped, and for one eye - partially blurred - images was not at all deleterious to the movie's quality.
At the end, some people in the packed theater started clapping. What? Were they glad that the long, drawn-out, will-this-movie-ever-end, but-we-thought-it-was-entertainment, torture was over? Could they possibly have liked it? I wonder what Charles Dickens and Walt Disney would have thought of this blight to their names. I preferred the Muppet version.
Ninety-four dollars. Bah! Humbug.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Dominion Power and Me: Going Green Together
By now, we should all know that the Town of Warrenton is on a quest to become green by reducing our carbon footprint by 25% in the next several years. Well, until January 2nd of this year, I was sure I had beaten Mayor George Fitch to the game. You see, at the tail end of 2008, my family’s power bill had been low. Really low. Phenomenally, unbelievably, low… in an almost non-existent sort of way.
While others were worrying about the size of their carbon footprints, our family seemed to have undergone a collective, yet miraculously painless, carbon foot binding. (The ancient Chinese practice of foot binding, outlawed almost a century ago, involved breaking a girl’s toes to fold them under the sole of her foot, and then breaking the arch of her foot before binding it tightly to achieve the highly desirous, “perfect-sized” Golden Lotus foot length of…get ready… three inches. Ouch.)
How did we achieve such a tiny carbon footprint? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps our conservation efforts were finally paying off. The amazing thing was, we weren’t making any spectacular efforts – none that caused pain or demanded extra effort. No one was hand-drying the dishes. No one was drying clothes outside. I have yet to meet people who are so talented that their success has not been wrangled with a significant amount of hard work and sacrifice. Maybe I just don’t run in those types of circles. (Actually, the circles I run in are in my own home, generally looking for my keys, my children, or their shoes.)
Was it the time that I charged my six-year-old daughter a dollar for leaving her bedroom lights on? That may seem harsh, I know, but you have no idea how this little tyke is bilking me out of my pocket money.
Ages ago, while we were still a young family of home-schoolers in California, I would sit teetering high atop a barstool juggling math flashcards in one hand, and a nursing infant in the other. I know, could I possibly have chosen a worse picture of home-schooling to give you? But remember, this was in California, so the only weird thing was that I wasn’t also wearing roller skates and drinking wheat grass juice at the time. Despite my devotion to a good math foundation for our kids, my husband decided there was an element of danger that this type of mental math did not merit. He decided, in his brilliant, one-stroke way, that there was only one real solution to this problem. It was not to shorten the legs of the stool; rather, the two of us should write a “quick” program in Visual Basic to automate the flashcard process. Forget Mom’s Night Out as a break for moms with young kids; let’s sit at the computer and do a little programming with the spouse. (Don’t tell him that I enjoyed it – he might come up with some other assignment.)
This game keeps score in cents – a penny for every right answer, with one taken away for wrong answers. Ten years later, our younger children are still using that little program, and every once in a while, they will demand that I cough up a dime or a dollar, because they “earned it” on Flashcards. So my “charging” a dollar for keeping the lights on is as much a lesson in environmental awareness as a method of recycling Flashcard money.
So, was our family just ecologically gifted with an inherent knack for conserving energy? According to our power bills, our family had achieved a state of greenness that not even the humblest of hut dwellers could hope to attain. Our quest, like many Americans’ financial fortunes of the past decade, had met with success in a quick and pain-free manner. It is a rare thing in life to achieve such great results with so little effort, unless you are the progeny of a Hollywood star or a star politician, assuming that there remains any difference between the two.
Instant success should have been the first and most glaring clue that something was not right. If the tiny bills weren’t big enough to get my attention, the big burly man knocking on my door did. He had a new watt-hour meter that day in late November.
He had a sly smile and asked if I had noticed anything odd about our power bills. “Well, yes, they have been unusually low…” my voice trailed off. Right. He was going to have to momentarily turn off our power while he replaced our energy meter at the side of our house.
I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I have seen a crime show or two in my time. Even I know that a stranger at your door who offers to turn off your electricity might not be the best combination, especially when your big and burly husband is away. I studied the man’s work badge, hardhat, tools, and truck with the flashing light. He had the right outfit, and he knew about our anemic power bills. This was legitimate. And anyway, after our conversation, I was the one feeling like the criminal – inadvertently stealing power from poor Dominion Virginia Power.
Thanks to our new meter, and the diligence of the accounting people at Dominion Virginia Power, we received our first piece of non-junk mail of the New Year from them. This time, it would not be ignored: their bill, a calculation of all the power we energy hogs had most likely, probably, statistically used, based on their careful calculation, and then bloated by some mysterious multiplier, I’m sure, was $ 1,171.28.
Yes, that did get my attention. When I called to wail about it, the customer service representative chided me for being remiss. I should have noticed when our bills came in low, and complained immediately so they could have taken corrective action. I am lucky if I notice a burned out light bulb. It usually takes the tiniest person in the house to point that out to me.
The next person up the chain was a little more sympathetic. He took into account that we had one child off at college from about the time that the meter decided to take an early retirement. Were there any vacations? Yes, yes! We had been gone one for nearly ten days! There’s more energy that we weren’t ever billed for, but since we couldn’t have used it, there was more that we shouldn’t be billed for.
I searched my mind feebly. Hadn’t we spent weeks camping out in our backyards, living like hermits who had taken some electricity-free family vow? Sadly, no. Now I was really wishing we had been more conscientious and a little bit greener. There were the three weekends in a row that my washer was dead, and I had had to take our clothes to a Laundromat (another column ENTIRELY). My memory was working in full gear now, but there were no other mitigating factors I could produce.
The gentleman who helped me went back, recalculated, and came back with a slightly tamer number ($ 998.77), noting that the winter of 2008 had been milder than usual, so that should count for even more of less energy used.
We have six months to cough it up, so that lightens the load. In the mean time, I think we had better get serious about going green – just no so green that I look like the Incredible Hulk. Just don’t put a hammer in my hands the next time I pass that meter.
While others were worrying about the size of their carbon footprints, our family seemed to have undergone a collective, yet miraculously painless, carbon foot binding. (The ancient Chinese practice of foot binding, outlawed almost a century ago, involved breaking a girl’s toes to fold them under the sole of her foot, and then breaking the arch of her foot before binding it tightly to achieve the highly desirous, “perfect-sized” Golden Lotus foot length of…get ready… three inches. Ouch.)
How did we achieve such a tiny carbon footprint? I honestly don’t know. Perhaps our conservation efforts were finally paying off. The amazing thing was, we weren’t making any spectacular efforts – none that caused pain or demanded extra effort. No one was hand-drying the dishes. No one was drying clothes outside. I have yet to meet people who are so talented that their success has not been wrangled with a significant amount of hard work and sacrifice. Maybe I just don’t run in those types of circles. (Actually, the circles I run in are in my own home, generally looking for my keys, my children, or their shoes.)
Was it the time that I charged my six-year-old daughter a dollar for leaving her bedroom lights on? That may seem harsh, I know, but you have no idea how this little tyke is bilking me out of my pocket money.
Ages ago, while we were still a young family of home-schoolers in California, I would sit teetering high atop a barstool juggling math flashcards in one hand, and a nursing infant in the other. I know, could I possibly have chosen a worse picture of home-schooling to give you? But remember, this was in California, so the only weird thing was that I wasn’t also wearing roller skates and drinking wheat grass juice at the time. Despite my devotion to a good math foundation for our kids, my husband decided there was an element of danger that this type of mental math did not merit. He decided, in his brilliant, one-stroke way, that there was only one real solution to this problem. It was not to shorten the legs of the stool; rather, the two of us should write a “quick” program in Visual Basic to automate the flashcard process. Forget Mom’s Night Out as a break for moms with young kids; let’s sit at the computer and do a little programming with the spouse. (Don’t tell him that I enjoyed it – he might come up with some other assignment.)
This game keeps score in cents – a penny for every right answer, with one taken away for wrong answers. Ten years later, our younger children are still using that little program, and every once in a while, they will demand that I cough up a dime or a dollar, because they “earned it” on Flashcards. So my “charging” a dollar for keeping the lights on is as much a lesson in environmental awareness as a method of recycling Flashcard money.
So, was our family just ecologically gifted with an inherent knack for conserving energy? According to our power bills, our family had achieved a state of greenness that not even the humblest of hut dwellers could hope to attain. Our quest, like many Americans’ financial fortunes of the past decade, had met with success in a quick and pain-free manner. It is a rare thing in life to achieve such great results with so little effort, unless you are the progeny of a Hollywood star or a star politician, assuming that there remains any difference between the two.
Instant success should have been the first and most glaring clue that something was not right. If the tiny bills weren’t big enough to get my attention, the big burly man knocking on my door did. He had a new watt-hour meter that day in late November.
He had a sly smile and asked if I had noticed anything odd about our power bills. “Well, yes, they have been unusually low…” my voice trailed off. Right. He was going to have to momentarily turn off our power while he replaced our energy meter at the side of our house.
I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I have seen a crime show or two in my time. Even I know that a stranger at your door who offers to turn off your electricity might not be the best combination, especially when your big and burly husband is away. I studied the man’s work badge, hardhat, tools, and truck with the flashing light. He had the right outfit, and he knew about our anemic power bills. This was legitimate. And anyway, after our conversation, I was the one feeling like the criminal – inadvertently stealing power from poor Dominion Virginia Power.
Thanks to our new meter, and the diligence of the accounting people at Dominion Virginia Power, we received our first piece of non-junk mail of the New Year from them. This time, it would not be ignored: their bill, a calculation of all the power we energy hogs had most likely, probably, statistically used, based on their careful calculation, and then bloated by some mysterious multiplier, I’m sure, was $ 1,171.28.
Yes, that did get my attention. When I called to wail about it, the customer service representative chided me for being remiss. I should have noticed when our bills came in low, and complained immediately so they could have taken corrective action. I am lucky if I notice a burned out light bulb. It usually takes the tiniest person in the house to point that out to me.
The next person up the chain was a little more sympathetic. He took into account that we had one child off at college from about the time that the meter decided to take an early retirement. Were there any vacations? Yes, yes! We had been gone one for nearly ten days! There’s more energy that we weren’t ever billed for, but since we couldn’t have used it, there was more that we shouldn’t be billed for.
I searched my mind feebly. Hadn’t we spent weeks camping out in our backyards, living like hermits who had taken some electricity-free family vow? Sadly, no. Now I was really wishing we had been more conscientious and a little bit greener. There were the three weekends in a row that my washer was dead, and I had had to take our clothes to a Laundromat (another column ENTIRELY). My memory was working in full gear now, but there were no other mitigating factors I could produce.
The gentleman who helped me went back, recalculated, and came back with a slightly tamer number ($ 998.77), noting that the winter of 2008 had been milder than usual, so that should count for even more of less energy used.
We have six months to cough it up, so that lightens the load. In the mean time, I think we had better get serious about going green – just no so green that I look like the Incredible Hulk. Just don’t put a hammer in my hands the next time I pass that meter.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)