School Daze

I found this picture recently in one of my mom’s old photo albums, and it made me realize how times have changed since this picture was taken. These days it’s all about which designers are dressing the Obama girls, what toys they play with and whom do they like besides the Jonas Brothers. I think this is probably a “first day of school” picture as we’re carrying lunch boxes. I’m on the left, and then my brother Jim and my cousins, Joyce and Ken. The picture was taken a few years ago . . . okay . . . many years ago. We looked like fashionistas! I can’t believe we dressed so stylishly just to go to school. I was wearing a very cute jacket – I don’t even own a cute jacket! My mother made nearly all of my clothes at that time as we couldn't afford "store-bought" clothes. Joyce was wearing a hat and the guys wore caps of some kind. I’m glad I didn’t have a hat on – I never liked hats. When I look at the picture, I think of the times in which we grew up. They seemed so simple to me, but they were actually very hard times of which I was totally unaware. That’s just the way it was, and who was I to question things?

The four of us lived close together as our dads had adjoining farms, so we played a lot together. My favorite game was “kick the can.” I loved it! We must have played other games, but none stand out except for that one. Do kids these days know about that game, or are they inside texting everyone all over the world? We didn’t have iPods, iPhones, Xbox or Xbox 360, MP3, Play Stations or Game Boys. Game Boys? That sounds a little perverse to me – or maybe it’s just my dirty little mind in over-drive. We didn’t have as many options as kids have now. They have all sorts of games they play on computers, alone or with a friend. When I was young, we didn’t even have a television! I don’t know how I existed, but I did. I was involved in 4-H – do they even have that anymore? I learned to sew, cook, took care of my rabbits and played with all the pets we had throughout the years. I entered many things in the State Fair every year, winning some ribbons. I was a regular little farm girl who lived in a time that seemed much simpler to me than what we are experiencing now. I was very happy.

But now that I’m a big girl, I’m so glad someone discovered television! I hate to admit it, but I’d be lost without it now that I know about it. I don’t care about all the electronic games the kids have – I’m not a kid anymore and wouldn’t know what to do with them. But I do know what to do with television – WATCH IT! But my childhood was wonderful, and I wouldn’t change any of it. Don’t we all look pretty happy in the picture?

My reviews of this week’s Fox shows – the ones I especially like

Tuesday night I watched a new episode of “Fringe.” I’ve written about this show before, so I won’t go into a lot. I never thought I’d be watching something like this – it freaks me out sometimes as Olivia (Anna Torv) gets into so many creepy situations. She’s an FBI agent and is always being captured by someone who then hooks her up to all sorts of weird instruments for god knows why! It gets very creepy, but I like it. Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) is a genius physician who had been in the loony bin for many years until he was released to his son Peter (Joshua Jackson). These three characters try to solve the many weird crimes that go on during that hour. Sometimes it takes several episodes . . . actually I don’t think they’ve ever completely solved all the creepiness that takes place. But it’s interesting and keeps me watching.

Wednesday night I watched “Lie To Me,” a new show. I loved it! I watched it twice – I put it on my DVR and watched it again this morning. Tim Roth is very cute and sexy in this, but I guess that’s not the main reason I liked it – although it helped. Tim plays Dr. Cal Lightman who runs the Lightman Group that is contracted out among federal law enforcement and local police to solve crimes. He studies facial expressions and involuntary body language which shows if someone is lying and why. Kelli Williams plays Dr. Gillian Foster who is a happy, normal person, unlike Dr. Lightman who never seems too happy about anything, but very serious. I believe he’s divorced which doesn’t call for much happiness, and Gillian’s husband lies to her although she seems unaware of it. Dr. Lightman knows her husband is lying, but he knows everyone lies all the time anyway. There are a couple other characters that are also very good. The show moves along briskly so something is happening all the time. The writing, I think, is excellent. There’s quite a bit of humor interjected all through it which makes it fun to watch. I think humor in writing can make or break a show, and this one does it for me. I’ll be watching!

I watched a new “Bones” episode last night and liked it just as much as when the series began. Bones and Booth make a great couple of investigators and are very funny at times. There’s a lot of sexual tension in their interaction, but I don’t know if Bones (Emily Deschanel) is that aware of it. Or does she even know what it is? I love the show and hope it keeps on like it has been so far.

Inauguration Day . . . and Larry

Yesterday I spent in front of the TV and didn’t move until they had the inaugural lunch and cameras were off. I took a shower then and came back to my couch by my window to watch. The whole day was overwhelming – something I won’t see again in my lifetime. So many people braving the freezing weather just to be there where it all happened. I thought his speech was great. It was a speech that got down to business about what we should do in the coming days. He’s not campaigning anymore - he’s the president and speaking very seriously about what has to be done now, and he did it beautifully. I watched the entire day and into the night where they danced at many balls. Barack and Michelle are both beautiful people and their daughters are gorgeous! With them it’s what you see is what you get. They are beautiful on the outside as well as on the inside. We are in for some interesting times in the coming few years.

I watched with my new friend, Larry, who was sitting on the ledge on my deck’s railing. In August of 2001, a pigeon flew into my front yard and stayed there during the day for several months. I named him Larry after Cindy’s wonderful dog of the same name. So Larry stayed with me and I bought him birdseed and fed him every day. He’d fly away at night, but always come back in the morning. He was banded, but I could never get quite close enough to read the numbers on it. I sat on the grass, close to him when 9/11 happened. I cried and he just sat and looked at me. Somehow he was comforting to me. He stayed until he found a wife or slut or whatever they find. He appeared with her, did the mating thing right in front of me and then took off, never to return again. So my new Larry appeared over a week ago. I think it’s a little wren or snowbird or something like that. He was sitting on the ledge and pecking at old cracker crumbs I had put there during the big snow but were now frozen to the ledge. When he flew off, I put out some new crumbs and he came back. Now he is here every day, all day. I give him bird seed and Orowheat Oatnut bread which is delicious. He likes it all. I have water for him which he drinks. The other day, he was pecking at a piece of bread so hard that he fell off the ledge, dragging the bread with him! I love watching him, so I sit on my couch and watch him all the time. I don’t do any housework, but I didn’t before anyway. We just had a horrible windstorm that lasted for nearly a week, so I decided I needed to do something to keep the bread crumbs from blowing off the ledge. I found an old stewed tomatoes can and pounded one side nearly flat. I put a big rock in the bottom to keep it steady in the wind. I put crumbs and bread inside the opening of the can and put it on its side on the ledge. It worked very well – the wind didn’t blow it off and Larry stuck his head inside the can for his food.

The point of the Larry story is that while I was watching the inauguration festivities all day, he was sitting not ten feet away from me on the ledge, apparently just looking in my sliding glass door. He didn’t seem to be eating, just looking. Maybe he likes TV as he does spend a lot of time just looking in. Or maybe he was into the whole Obama thing. I felt like I had company during my day as I watched it all. I’m feeling about him as I did about Larry the pigeon. That’s not a good thing as he’ll leave just as the pigeon did. But it’s comforting to have him for a while.

My three grandsons at Christmas celebration

Our celebration was quite an event as the entire family was together which very rarely happens as we all live in different parts of the country. I’ve written about it in previous postings this month, but I thought I’d put up a picture of my three grandsons. I don’t think there is another picture in existence of the three of them together! On the left is Nick, age 22; in the middle is Harry, age 13; on the right is Pat, age 24. Mick and Cindy are parents of Nick and Pat, and Teri and Mark are parents of Harry. However, I believe I’m going to have to start calling Mark “Lurch” as in the Addams Family! He became aware of his resemblance to Lurch in the picture on the posting I did on January 2 with Teri, Harry and Mark . . . I mean Lurch. So from now on I must remember to refer to him as Lurch.

I can hardly believe those three big, strong guys are my grandsons. Where did the time go? I remember rocking each one of them when they were little. I would sing my favorite songs to them over and over again – “Bye, Bye Blackbird” and “You Are My Sunshine.” I loved doing it and they seemed to enjoy it.

I remember when Nick and Pat were little, they came to stay with me and I had a big, cardboard box on the floor and they spent most of their time in it just playing. And when Harry came to stay with me, I had a Maytag store friend deliver an empty refrigerator box to me for Harry to play in. He slept in it and watched TV from it. He was not a baby then, but he still loved it. He did that for a couple of years, but I couldn’t keep getting huge boxes every time he visited, so we stopped with the boxes. I have a feeling he’d still like to do it if I could get a box. It would be fun to get a box big enough for the three of them.

I find it hard to believe these guys are as old as they are. I find it even harder to believe my girls are as old as they are. And as for me . . . well, I can remember asking my mother if she had made a mistake on my birth certificate and I really wasn’t that old at all. It seems that the years go by faster the older you get. When you’re young, you want to get older and do older things. When you’re older, you’re just glad you’re still around!

Busy day on the phone

This past week, I hurt my left heel in some way, so I spent several days lying down and watching TV which was no hardship for me, or just sitting down and watching TV – again, no hardship. I decided to do something productive which didn’t require walking, so I called my mortgage company to see if my payment amount would be going up as it seems to do every year. I called the Customer Service number and got the automation department where no live person exists. I sat through numerous questions which I answered with a click of one of the numbers on my phone, and then I was given a list of choices from which to pick. These are a few of them:

1. Do you want to make a payment?
2. Do you want to re-finance?
3. Do you want a loan?
4. Do you like missionary or doggie-style sex? (That's obviously from another survey.)
5. Are you happy with the service your mortgage company gives you?
6. How happy are you?
7. What do you think of Sub Prime loans?
8. Would you like to have a Sub Prime loan?
9. Why not?
10. Did you know Craig Ferguson got married and would you like to talk about it?

None of the choices given would have answered my question, so I gave up on Customer Service. I was so pissed that I decided to call the number for people who wanted a loan. I knew they’d have some live people there. So I did and I got a nice gentleman on the first try. I told him I didn’t want a loan – I just wanted an answer, but all I got was shit from the Customer Service automation department. He laughed and transferred me to a live person – a woman who sounded like she was about 14 years old. It took a while for her to come up with the answer to my one question – she kept going off someplace for help. All I wanted was to know if my payment was going to go up, and she finally was able to say that it wasn’t. But I’ll believe it when I actually get the payment notice.

By then, I was all revved up so I called my electric company who is beginning to install “smart” electric meters throughout the city to all its customers. From what I’ve read, it has doubled the rates in at least one house which doesn’t sound too smart to me. Also, the article in the paper stated, “The utility predicts it will eventually be able to remotely control customer appliances . . .” I don’t like the sound of that at all. And some old houses may have to replace the base that attaches the meter because it’s too old. That will cost $750 and the electric company won’t pay it; the customer will. Too bad! So when I called the electric company, they explained everything to me which added up to higher electric bills. I decided this was something to make their lives easier, but not the customers’. But they have never given us a break. Remember Enron? So I hung up and had a glass of wine. I deserved it after the hard day I had put in.

Hypothetically, of course . . .

In a recent posting, I mentioned my tall son-in-law who fixed my shower head for me as I was too short to reach that high. I’m fairly short, so almost any man would be taller than I. I wrote how nice it would be if I could have a tall guy – not terribly tall – who would stop by occasionally and do things for me. And it would be a plus if were kind of cute. My friend, Michele, suggested I do more with this idea, so I thought I’d do a posting with my list of chores for the cute, not too tall guy.

I’ll begin with screwing . . . there would be plenty of that going on. I have light fixtures in my ceilings that I can’t reach, so when the bulbs go out I feel like I’m living in the twilight zone. I’m sure he would be able to reach them and screw in the bulbs.

Grocery shopping is another problem. The shopping isn’t bad; it’s packing in all the stuff when I get home. Sometimes I have a gallon of milk, half gallon of orange juice, cans of all sorts of things, potatoes, etc. I often wonder why the clerk puts all the canned stuff in one sack so it’s extremely heavy, and then puts the dental floss, aspirin and tooth brush in another sack. I also get six bottles of wine – you can get six bottles for 10% off – and they come in a six-pack carton that weighs a ton. So when I come home, I would love to have a man waiting to carry in my purchases. He wouldn’t even have to be that tall.

I am scared to death of bees, so when one flies into my condo, I fly right out the door! One time I grabbed a strange man outside – he really wasn’t strange – I just didn’t know him – and he came in and killed the bee for me. I feel the same about spiders. Now if I could call on a man who would take care of my bees and spiders, life would be beautiful.

Maybe he might want to watch TV when he had some free time, and that would be fine with me except for the fact that the remote is MINE! The TV remote is like an extension to my body, and I am the only one who has control. And if I’m watching a drama and all absorbed in it, I don’t want someone chattering or trying to make conversation. And there would be no channel surfing. When I find something I want to watch, I stick to it. There’s
no room for negotiation on this one.

If for some reason he were forced to spend the night sometime, there would be no breakfast waiting for him in the morning. He would just leave abruptly. I was married once, and don’t want to go that route again. Do I sound like a bitch? Well, maybe I am. But I’m a happy bitch.

I’m sure I could expand on and embellish this list and come up with many other chores for the tall man. I’ll just have to give this some more thought. But I almost forgot . . . this is all hypothetical. But it’s fun to imagine.

Continuing the family Christmas celebration

As I wrote in my previous posting, our family celebrated last weekend at the Mallory Hotel here in Portland. We had a wonderful time as it is so seldom we all get together, so this was a very special several days for us. We had some gifts on Saturday night, and I took a few photos.

When I got prints made of my film, I was almost freaked out by the one of Teri and Cindy opening a gift I gave them. The economy is so bad now and no one has any money, so we didn’t go overboard with gifts. I never do as I never have any money – I don’t care what the economy is. One of my gifts for my daughters was some really, really cheap lipstick and some lip gloss that was under $1 each. I know we are always looking at lipstick and trying new ones, so I thought it was just a crazy, fun gift. Teri looks happy about it, but Cindy looks shocked and horrified! She’ll probably kill me for using this picture, but I couldn’t help it. It was nice to see my daughters so appreciative of my gift to them.

My other gift that was a huge success – much to my surprise – was a t-shirt with a picture on the front of Harry when he stayed with me last summer for a few days. He and I watched “Stargate SG-1” on television until my eyeballs nearly fell out. Either Mark or I took a picture of him watching it, and I used it in one of my postings back in August. I had my photo shop put it on a t-shirt for me, and I thought it would just be a fun gift. I was hoping Harry wouldn’t think it was stupid. Well, when he opened it up, he went crazy! He loved it and I loved his reaction. It was so much fun that Saturday night when we exchanged gifts. It wasn’t the gifts that made it special, it was the fact that we were all together and doing it at the same time rather than in separate cities around the country that made it so special. Those times are to be cherished.

Belated Christmas celebration

My entire family met last Friday at the Mallory Hotel (Hotel Deluxe) here in Portland for three nights of Christmas celebration. Teri had arranged everything, and it worked out beautifully. The picture is of the family minus me since I was taking the picture and didn’t like the way my hair was looking at the time, or any other time for that matter. Cindy and family came from Tacoma, Teri and family from New York City and I came from the compound (my condo) which was not spacious enough for that kind of crowd. The accommodations were perfect, the food was delicious and the Driftwood Lounge out of this world!

We walked downtown – I was dragged through the snow – for dinner. We were joined by Rita and her family who live here – Rita is a long-time friend of Teri’s from high school and college. We had a good time and were entertained by Pat who showed us his finger where he’d sliced off a piece of it when he was trying to fix Cindy’s car. That was one of the high points of the evening. We could never have planned that type of entertainment! Reggie, Rita’s daughter, is about the same age as Harry and quite taken with him. She thinks he’s a studly, cool dude from Manhattan and even brought a couple of girlfriends over to the hotel the next day to spend time with Harry. Harry is only 13. He’s probably texting his new friends here in Portland right now from New York. Things have certainly changed since I was 13. Actually, I can’t even remember if I ever was 13!

When I went to bed that night, I couldn’t get to sleep because the flags in the entry-way of the hotel kept clicking together and I was situated right behind them. I finally went down to the lobby in my t-shirt that had big printing on the front that read, “I’d love to stay and chat but you’re a total idiot.” This was about 12.30am and the lobby was empty which was a good thing. I asked for another room and got one right away. I think they wanted me out of there!

The next morning I discovered the shower head in my tub was out of my reach, and it was facing the wall. So the water just sprayed on the wall, and I had to press my body against the wall and the water would trickle down on my head and body. It took a while . . . quite a while. Later that day I asked Mark to turn the shower head so it would spray on me. Mark is very tall and had no problem. It must be nice to be married to a tall man who can take care of all the tall things. But you wouldn’t have to be married to one . . . just have a cute, tall guy who made house calls occasionally and took care of whatever you wanted. But I guess that’s another story.

It was so good to have the family all together for a couple of days. That very rarely happens. I was able to get close to my grandsons which made me very happy. Just having the family together was the best kind of Christmas. I’ll write more about it in my next posting.