Taking your life in your hands (or, in this case, handlebars)

I've been riding my bike to work frequently this summer. Mostly, it's because I love bike riding. Plus it's good exercise and less tedious than walking (I only enjoy walking if I am with a friend or if I'm listening to "Harry Potter" on my i-Pod. And I am already well into the 5th book, "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," and yes I already know how the 7th book ends, so don't worry about spoiling it for me, just because I am two years behind the rest of the reading population on the planet, so I really need to think about getting another audio book loaded on to my i-Pod.) But getting back to bike riding: there is also the added benefit of my feeling younger than my actual age, and very grateful that, as I approach the age of 60 (yikes!), I can still do this. And finally, there's the admiration I get from my co-workers and even from perfect strangers, such as the clerk in Kinko's today, a middle-aged (although probably younger than I), overweight man who told me, "That's really great that you're doing that." (It was probably the fact that I was wearing my bike helmet inside the store that tipped him off.)

I said, "Thanks--it saves on gas." Which is true, of course, but since my work is only 4 miles from my house, that means...let's see...I really hate figuring out anything mathematical, but if I drive 8 miles a day and gas is $4 a gallon, and a train leaves Chicago at 4:42 PM and another train leaves New York at 8:22 AM...well obviously I am saving money, I have no idea how much, and I don't really care. Like I said, I do it mainly because I enjoy it.

But then there's the Dark Side of bike riding. And I'm not talking about minor obstacles like potholes. No, the real problem is DRIVERS. What is it that makes drivers think that whenever someone on a bicycle is in the vicinity, the normal traffic laws are suspended? There are the drivers who ignore the "NO TURN ON RED" sign and nearly run right over me as I'm crossing the street. They look to the left to see if there's any traffic, but apparently the idea that someone could be moving about the city WITHOUT A CAR has never crossed their minds. I've had to learn a whole new set of survival techniques just for crossing the street. It's not enough any more to just "look both ways," as your mother taught you. Now, when I am attempting to cross the intersection and a car is about to turn right, and I can see that the driver is only looking to the left, I ride up to the car and bang my fist on the hood. When the surprised driver looks up, I give him or her a meaningful stare and point to the sign and yell, "NO TURN ON RED!" Usually the driver just looks at me blankly, like I'm some sort of wierdo. Which may technically be true, at least in this case, but that's not the point, is it!

Then there is the "Stop Signs are Optional" rule, which evidently means that if the only traffic coming across the intersection is a pedestrian or a person on a bicycle, stopping is not required. The driver doesn't even need to slow down more than a token amount, just enough to show that he didn't "blow" the stop sign: he saw it just fine, but he figured that since he wouldn't sustain any damage to his car if he only hit a person, as opposed to another car, he could just keep going. Today I narrowly missed being hit by just such a driver, and as I slammed on my brakes and he breezed through the intersection, I yelled, "You have a stop sign!" He honked his horn and calmly extended his middle finger out the window as he drove on.
But even though I've been riding my bike all summer--and for approximately 50 previous summers--today I encountered a completely new hazard: a humongous tow truck, towing a humongous SUV, driving the WRONG WAY down a narrow one-way street. I spotted the truck at the intersection, with its blinker on, and the driver looking to the LEFT, and not seeing a single car coming, which was not at all surprising because he was LOOKING THE WRONG WAY, just before he made the turn. So, naturally, clinging to my silly notion that drivers should actually obey the traffic laws, I yelled to the driver, "This is a one way street!" But he turned anyway and drove right at me, and I had to zoom in between two parked cars to avoid being flattened.
So to conclude today's Basic Bicycle Safety lesson: I've now added "Humongous Tow Trucks Driving the Wrong Way Down One-Way Streets" to my list of Things To Look Out For While I'm Riding.

Tomorrow's lesson will cover People Who Fling Open Their Car Doors Just As I'm Riding By.

Take-In

It appears that for some people, no restaurant meal can surpass the food you make yourself. At least I assume that was what was going through the mind of a man a friend and I observed the other morning.

We were sitting at a booth next to the window at a local bagel restaurant, with a lovely view of the parking lot, when we noticed a man carrying a small blender and a paper cup. He stopped in front of a large, covered trash can right outside the window, and placed the blender on top of the can. He took the lid off the blender and poured what appeared to be water from the paper cup into the blender container. Next he took two paper packets out of his pocket, and poured the contents into the blender. Then he picked the blender up and walked away, with the electric cord dangling, and disappeared around the corner.

Strange, we thought--was he going off in search of an electrical outlet? Did he think there might be a strategically placed public outlet nearby, like an ATM or a phone booth? I've never seen one. And if he was in the habit of blending-on-the-go, why didn't he buy a battery-operated blender? (Although I'm not actually sure whether they actually exist--but they must, for camping or something...)
Anyway, in the time it's taken me to digress about blenders, Blender Man has returned from wherever he went around the corner, and he evidently has located an outlet, because now the stuff in the blender container appears to have been blended.
It was brown.

As he passed by our window, he removed the container from the bottom of the blender, walked to his car (which was parked next to the trash can,) put the bottom of the blender in the trunk, and proceeded to come into the restaurant.
Was this the opposite of take-out, we wondered? Making your own food at home (or, in this case, on top of a nearby trash can) and then bringing it to the restaurant to eat there? I suppose that's one way to get "home cooking" without having to actually be "home," although, frankly, it seems like a lot of extra and unnecessary work.
But Blender Man didn't sit down. He walked over to a group of diners who were just preparing to leave; spoke a few words; and then turned around and went outside and got in his car.

Just before he drove away, he took the lid off the blender and took a sip.
It's the new version of "take-out": "home cooking" meets "drive-thru."

Sarah Palin: Just Like Me

Dear Jane,

Sorry I haven’t e-mailed all week. I’ve been kind of busy, although I know that’s not an excuse for not writing to your oldest and dearest friend. But it was sort of an unusual week.

Monday: I spent a couple of hours at the Palin for VP office, addressing envelopes to registered Democrats in Florida, and when I left to go home, my car wouldn’t start. It was in the shop for 2 days, and finally on Tuesday the mechanic called and said it was ready, so I got a ride there and picked it up, and I paid them $300 and drove out of the lot but I’d only gone two blocks when the engine started making a really horrible noise and smoke started coming up out of the hood. To make a long story short, the mechanic confused the generator with alternator, so now the engine is ruined. But just because my car is now junk, it wouldn’t be right to get a different mechanic, or sue him—like Sarah Palin said at the Republican Convention, working people like my mechanic are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America –the ones who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they’re always proud of America. After all, they’re working people, just like me, and that’s who I want to fix my car, whether they can tell an alternator from a generator or not.

Tuesday: We had to take Grandma to the hospital, because she developed stomach pain suddenly, but the ER doctor just gave her some antacids and Tylenol and sent her home. The next morning she was even worse, so we took her back to the hospital and it turned out she had a ruptured appendix. Her regular doctor said the hospital was negligent in not checking for appendicitis when she was there the first time. But I talked to the ER doctor, and he told me he was kind of new at this. It’s just like Sarah Palin said in Dayton, Ohio in August—she never really set out to be involved in public affairs, much less to run for Vice-President. So I really can’t fault the doctor, just because he always thought he’d be a truck driver and didn’t really plan on going to medical school. Grandma’s funeral is Sunday, by the way, if you can make it.

Wednesday: I went to a PTA meeting at the high school, and the principal said that because of severe budget cuts, he’s going to have to lay off most of the qualified teachers. But he said we parents can help out by taking over for the teachers. I never went to college myself, and certainly never trained as a teacher, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have experience—just like Sarah Palin, I was just your average “hockey mom,” and I also served as the team mom for the basketball team and did some coaching on the side. In that same speech in Dayton, Sarah said she signed up for the PTA because she wanted to make her kids' public education better. So, just like Sarah, I’m going to give it my all. I’m scheduled to take over the Advanced Chemistry class beginning next week. But it’s the least I can do: like Sarah says, to have been chosen brings a great challenge. I know that it will demand the best that I have to give, and I promise nothing less.

Thursday: I spent an hour on the phone with the gas company, trying to correct an error on my bill. I knew it was wrong because it was almost $100 higher than last month, for Pete’s sake! They kept insisting the bill was correct, and I wasn’t really getting anywhere, and finally the woman on the phone told me to go outside and look at my gas meter, and it turned out there was no mistake, the numbers were correct. She explained to me that the cost of natural gas in my area jumped over 80% last month because of something having to do with taxes and Federal regulations and trade deficits, which I didn’t really understand, but the bottom line is that I now have to come up with an extra $97 for the gas bill, and I don’t know where that’s going to come from. I suppose we can cut back on groceries, and hopefully Jason can squeeze his feet into his old tennis shoes for another month—honestly, the kids seem to grow out of their clothes faster than I can buy them. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. After all, I’m certainly not the only one going through this—like Sarah Palin told the Alaska Federation of Natives last year, we are all paying a higher price for energy, and she understands very well the hardships this is causing us. She’s aware that this crisis is affecting families, schools, local governments and local businesses, so that’s very comforting. I just hope Jason finds that just as comforting as his shoes get tighter.

Friday: I borrowed my sister's car and drove Grandpa down to the Social Security office, since now that Grandma’s gone, he had to fill out some forms. Of course now that he won’t be getting her check every month, it looks like he’s not going to be able to afford to keep the house. There used to be a government program for people like Grandpa, people who were old and couldn’t work any more, but it was discontinued a couple of years ago when the Administration cut the budget so they could give us tax rebates. Lower taxes are supposed to stimulate the economy, but I’m not really sure how that worked out; I know a few people who bought big-screen TV’s and things like that, but even with the lower taxes, our expenses for gas and food and insurance are so much higher that we’re worse off than before, and we can’t even help Grandpa. It’s too bad, really; he worked his whole life and that house was the only thing he ever owned. Guess he’ll have to sell the house and move in with us, although I’m not sure where we’ll put him; I suppose we’ll just have to put the boys in one bedroom. Maybe we’ll use this year’s tax rebate for a bunk bed. And I’m not sure what he’ll do all day, since the Senior Center closed last month when their state funding ran out. He likes to go to the library, but since the bus line that ran near our house got cut, there really isn’t a way for him to get there. But what can you do? It’s like Sarah Palin said at the convention: how are we going to be any better off if taxes go up?

Well, that’s it for now—it’s getting late and I need to go to sleep. I’ve been feeling unusually tired for a couple of months, but since Jim got laid off we don’t have health insurance so I’m not going to go to the doctor unless it’s something really serious. I’m sure that if I just try to eat healthier and exercise more, I’ll be fine. Like Sarah Palin told the Alaska Federation of Natives last year, health care is everyone's job, not just in treating illness but in promoting healthy living. She said we must take personal responsibility, engaging our minds and hands in meaningful work, and that these are all essential components of healthy, secure lifestyles and communities. Hopefully if I do that, the heart palpitations and dizzy spells will go away.

TTYL,

Phyllis

Always Brush Your Teeth

Last month I paid a “visit” to my dentist. I am using the term “visit,” because in many ways, going to the dentist’s office is a lot like a social occasion, although a highly unpleasant one, sort of like a bad date. And since my mother always said Never Let The Guy Pick You Up In His Car Until You’ve Known Him For A While, because it lets you stay in control in case things start to take a bad turn and you want to get out of there NOW, I drove to the dentist’s office in my own car.

WARNING: LONG PARAGRAPH AHEAD

When I got to the office (which, by the way, is located on the 4th floor of an office building that has six floors, and when you get in the elevator there are only five buttons, and there is a sign that says “exit at 5 for 6th floor,” so apparently anyone who wants to go to the 6th floor has to get out on the 5th floor and walk up, which leads me to wonder exactly what is ON the 6th floor, but I am afraid to go up there so I guess I will never know. Once when I got in the elevator a man got on with me and I stayed in the elevator even though my mother always said Never Stay In An Elevator Alone With A Strange Man, but he didn’t look that strange, actually, he was just a normal-looking sort of guy, balding a little bit but not bad-looking on the whole, no missing teeth or anything, and his shirt was even tucked in, so I stayed in the elevator and I pointed to the sign and I said to him, “The elevator doesn’t go to the top floor,” expecting him to laugh, but evidently he didn’t know that this is a euphemism for “not the brightest bulb in the pack,” so he just stared at me blankly and I smiled weakly and turned and stared at the numbers above the door until we got to the 4th floor and I could get out) –where was I?

Oh, yes- when I got to the office, I went in and gave my name to the receptionist, and sat down in one of the uncomfortable chairs that dentists always have in their waiting rooms. There must be a special catalogue that doctors and dentists order their chairs from—the “Uncomfortable Chair Company,” perhaps, but I don’t know why they’d want to do this, because you’d think that if they are going to make you sit there, fuming, because your appointment was for 11:30 and you rushed to get there on time so the receptionist wouldn’t look at you sternly when you walked in three minutes late, the way your third-grade teacher used to, and even if the Stern Look doesn’t bother you, who knows what other punishments they have for being TARDY? Not only might they tell you that you have Missed Your Appointment and now you owe $55 and you have to come back Another Day, but they might even make you Stay After and clean the erasers (or in this case, since the dentist probably doesn’t use too many erasers, the Water-Pik)—you’d think that if they were going to make you sit through all of this, the least they could do is have comfortable chairs.

Now it’s almost noon, and you are considering walking brazenly through that door and telling the dentist that he has missed HIS Appointment and now he owes YOU $55. But you know you won’t do that, so you just sit there meekly and wait until the dentist is ready. So that’s what I did.

To pass the time, I “amused” myself by leafing through a year-old issue of “Today’s Dentistry.” (Actually, though, since it was a year old, that would really be “Yesterday’s Dentistry.” But let’s not get picky.)

Finally, the dentist came out into the waiting room and he greeted me very sweetly, with a big smile on his face, and acted as though he was sincerely glad to meet me (which I’m sure was true, because he knew that I was about to pay him $800.) “Come on in,” he said, and “Have a seat,” as if he were inviting me into his living room to have a drink and sit in his comfortable chair and relax and visit for a while. The only thing missing was the fireplace and the soft lighting.

I settled myself into the chair, and his assistant, who was already wearing a mask (which I found sort of offensive, because it’s not like I have Bubonic Plague or anything,) put a little purple paper bib around my neck and then, without warning, lowered the back of the chair so that I was lying down. The dentist, meanwhile, was puttering around with his Instruments Of Torture—I mean, Dental Instruments—and humming, and every so often he’d absent-mindedly ask me a question, like, “How are we doing today?” and then immediately begin humming again without waiting for an answer, or even seeming to expect one, which I guess is what dentists consider “conversation,” because most of the time when they talk to you, you can’t answer them anyway because your mother always told you Not To Talk With Your Mouth Full.

When the dentist apparently was satisfied that his Dental Instruments were sufficiently sharp, he turned to me and rubbed his hands together and said, “Okay!” with more glee than I thought was appropriate; but after all, the kind of people who decide to become dentists are probably people who really, truly find this kind of stuff thrilling. (I think in other contexts these people are called “sadists.”) Then he lowered the back of my chair even more so that now my head was actually lower than my feet, because the first thing they teach in Dental School is, “Always Make The Patient As Uncomfortable As Possible Before Beginning Any Actual Dental Work.” (The second thing they teach is, “Always Make Sure That The Light Shines Directly Into The Patient’s Eyes.”)

Then he started with the poking, the probing, the squirting of air and water, and finally the painful injections into my gums, after which he left the room, and there I was, all alone, in Dental Limbo, without even anything to read, because, unfortunately, I had neglected to bring that copy of “Today’s Dentistry” with me from the waiting room.

After about ten minutes, the dentist finally came back into the room, and gave me another one of those cheery smiles, and promptly got to work on my teeth. He picked up his dental instruments one by one off the little tray. At this point I realized that he must have been absent from Dental School on the day that they discussed “How To Position The Tray That Holds The ‘Instruments Of Torture’ ” (sorry—“Dental Instruments,”) and therefore the tray must have been too far away, since instead of replacing the Instruments on the tray after he used them, he put them on my CHEST, which was in a conveniently horizontal position since he had moved my chair All The Way Back. Every time he needed one of those instruments, he just picked it up off my chest. And since the work was complicated and long, there was a lot of stuff on my chest. Something that looked like a glue gun, with blue stuff in it. Various picks and probes. A metal plate used to hold sticky green stuff for taking an impression of my teeth. And apparently a lot of other stuff that I couldn't see, based on how often he was touching my chest. And a couple of times he was trying to pick up stuff that must have been small and hard to grasp with those rubber gloves on—let’s just say that when I left his office, my mouth wasn't the only part of my body that was sensitive.

By this point, this Dental Experience that had started out like a bad date was beginning to seem more like a sexual assault. It had all the elements of Date Rape—the seduction, the drugs, the intimate setting, the groping, the clumsy fondling—and then there is the fact that he was breathing hard and sweating, which just added to the general atmosphere. And since he was sitting sort of behind me and to the side a little bit and leaning on me, try to imagine what part of his body the top of my head was pressed against. All in all, I was glad to get out of there, and not just because of the actual work being done on my teeth.

I get to go back in 3 weeks for more dental work. Lucky me!

I really, really, really wish I had listened to my mother’s advice when I was a kid: Always Brush Your Teeth.

How to Make Your Grandmother Cry

1. As soon as she leaves the room to make a bottle for the baby, get in a fight with your big brother over the Chutes and Ladders box.

2. When she runs back into the room, holding the baby and trying (unsuccessfully) to screw the top on the bottle, ignore her command to "Let go of that box!"

3. While she is trying to shift the baby to her other arm without spilling the formula all over the baby, bite your big brother on the thumb.

4. Drop the box when he does, and ignore your grandmother's command to "go to your room right now!"

5. Run out of the room, laughing hysterically.

6. Remain out of sight while your grandmother takes your brother into the bathroom and runs cold water over his hand. Do not reappear when she leads him to the couch in the living room and finally gives the baby her bottle and sits your brother down and comforts him but also tells him that he really asked for it by pulling the box out of your hand to begin with.

7. Stay wherever you are very quietly while she wipes the formula off the baby's neck and takes her upstairs and puts her in her crib.

8. Do not respond when your grandmother comes back downstairs and calls you. Do not make a sound while she looks in the den and under the dining room table and in all of the kitchen and bathroom cabinets and behind the boots and the backpacks in the hall closet. Sit really, really quietly while she goes back upstairs and looks in all of the bedrooms and under the beds and behind the shower curtain, and comes back downstairs and then goes right back up again because your brother advises her to check behind the blue chair and in the closet, because "that's where he likes to hide," but you aren't there.

9. Don't giggle when your brother comments, "he must have found a really good hiding place."

10. Stay well hidden while she imagines every unimaginable thing that could have possibly happened to you in the last seven minutes, and checks the doors to make sure they're locked and you haven't gone outside, and sends your brother down the basement to see if you're there, and then goes down the basement herself just to make sure, and then decides that maybe she hasn't really looked behind the couch in the living room, but she's sure you can't be there, because that's where she was sitting with your big brother and there's no way you could have gotten back there without being seen, unless... you managed to sneak in there during the 60 seconds she was in the bathroom with your brother, running cold water over his hand, and she looks behind the couch and there you are, grinning ear to ear.

11. Climb over the back of the couch and sit down next to your grandmother, and just keep grinning your insane little grin while she buries her face in her hands and tries to control herself because she honestly does not know whether she is going to laugh or cry or scream or just grab you and give you a huge hug.

12. Continue to sit next to your grandmother on the couch, beaming in your devilish little way with pride and self-satisfaction, until she recovers her composure, or at least her sanity, and tells you that she doesn't know what she's going to do with you, so it's really a very good thing that you are absolutely the most adorable child on the entire planet.

May the Force Field be With You

One day when Avi came home from work, I told him that I had been vacuuming upstairs, and since his room was clean (no clothes etc. on the floor) I vacuumed it for him. He looked at me with surprise and said, "I didn't know you had to vacuum wood floors." I said, "Where do you think all that dust and dog hair goes?" but he just shrugged his shoulders and said, "Thanks anyway."

Is it just boys who think this way? My daughters never asked this question, but I suppose that might just mean that they were obedient and didn’t really care why they had to vacuum, it’s just one of the things your mom makes you do. But Norman actually does most of the vacuuming, so either it's not a gender-related thing, or else the awareness develops later, like a kind of maturity. (Although to be honest, it could just be that, like the girls, he's just learned that this is something that wives expect husbands to do, even though it's illogical, like putting the toilet seat down.)

I assume that most people realize that the dust and dog hair floating in the air eventually fall to the ground (see "gravity"), and it makes no difference what sort of substance the ground is actually composed of. You would think that a young man who was interested in science and who even studied physics on the college level would be aware of this fact. But not Avi. I don't know where he thought the dust went. He's read a lot of "Star Trek" books; maybe he got reality and science fiction confused, and thought that there was some kind of invisible force field that prevented the dust from settling on the wood floors, and caused it to find its way down the stairs, through the dining room and the kitchen (which also have wood floors),and onto the family room carpet. Presumably, this is similar to the force field that magically washes the dirty dishes that Avi leaves in the sink, and replaces them in the cupboard. And the one that levitates his dirty socks from the family room floor and transports them to the washing machine. And the one that hangs up his coat. And the one that- well this could go on for some time.

Funny, I never thought of myself as a "force field" before. But I do like the sound of it better than "maid."

Feeding the Baby

When our grandson was about eight months old, Shosh asked us to babysit one evening while she went to a meeting. She said she’d bring him over at about 6:00, and asked if we would give him dinner. I decided that if this was going to be a frequent thing, I might as well buy some baby food and keep it in the house so his mother wouldn’t have to bring it every time. So I went to Jewel and bought baby food, and also a package of diapers. (You wouldn’t believe how many different kinds of diapers there are- but more about that later.)

When I asked Shosh what kind of baby food to buy, she told me to get strained fruits and vegetables. It turns out that strained vegetables come in only two varieties: green and orange. The green ones are “Peas” and “Green Beans.” They’re exactly the same color, sort of a darkish, unappetizing, grayish green. It’s the sort of color and texture that you sometimes find inside a plastic bag that you find in the very bottom of the crisper drawer when you haven’t cleaned the refrigerator in about 3 months. You know that once upon a time, in the distant past, it used to be something edible, but now it’s been liquefied and is virtually unrecognizable as food.

I don’t really know how they make baby food, but I hope that isn’t the way.

The orange ones say “Carrots” or “Sweet Potatoes” or “Butternut Squash,” but I strongly suspect that they are all the same. First of all, they are all the same color and they all smell the same and have the same texture (strained.) That should be proof enough. But just to be sure, I decided to taste them. (I know, it’s gross, but I am a very curious person, and curiosity accounts for a lot of things that an otherwise sane and normal person might do. Besides, it seemed sort of hypocritical, and even mean, to feed something to my own grandson if I thought it was too gross to even taste.)

Not surprisingly, they all tasted pretty much the same. Which is to say, awful. Okay, maybe not awful, but definitely bland and tasteless. I can’t believe that babies really like this stuff. Maybe it’s just that they’ve never tasted real food, so they don’t realize how they are being hoodwinked into eating this orange goop. I’ll bet that’s what’s really behind the “Terrible Twos:” this is when the kid figures it out. He’s sitting in the highchair, dutifully swallowing spoonful upon spoonful of Strained Mixed Vegetables, and gradually he notices that everyone else is eating something different. Maybe it’s Curried Chicken Kabobs, perhaps a Rib Roast Braised in Wine, or even just a simple hot dog on a toasted bun. But whatever it is, it sure beats Strained Mixed Vegetables, day after day after day. Now that the kid realizes he’s been duped, he’s mad as hell, and he’s not gonna take it any more!

So, getting back to our meal with the baby: when he arrived, he was hungry, so I took out a jar of Strained Mixed Vegetables, and we went outside on the deck and sat at the patio table, and Norman and I prepared to feed him. Since we hadn’t bought a high chair yet, Norman held the baby on his lap, and I tried to spoon Strained Mixed Vegetables (orange goop) into the baby’s mouth. He had an interesting habit of putting his hand in his mouth after every spoonful of food, and then taking his hand out and rubbing his head or his eyes or pretty much anything else within reach. So of course, much of the Strained Mixed Vegetables went onto his hair and in his ears and on Norman. The dog, who wasn’t stupid and figured out the very first time that the baby ate a meal at our house that this would be a good meal for her as well, helpfully licked off the stuff that was on the baby's legs and feet, which of course tickled and was completely engrossing, so it took the better part of an hour for him to finish just that one little jar of Strained Mixed Vegetables.

I also gave him some plain spaghetti, which he grabbed off the plate with his fist and tried to stuff into his mouth, but he hasn't quite got the part about opening his fist while the food is actually in his mouth, so he just put his fist in there and then took it out again and THEN opened it, so he smeared the spaghetti, now tastefully garnished with a delicious sauce of Strained Mixed Vegetables (orange goop), all over his face and his head and Norman’s shirt, and dropped most of it on his feet and the ground. He kept craning his neck and squirming around on Norman’s lap to try to see the dog, who was walking around under the table looking for more food, and each time he twisted around, he grabbed onto Norman’s shirt or his arm or even his neck for balance, so by the time he was done eating, both he and Norman could have used a bath. It was entertaining, though, and the dog was very happy.

Just as the baby was finished and I had wiped him off, our son-in-law showed up on his way home from work, and I handed the baby to him, and the baby promptly spit up partly-digested Strained Mixed Vegetables (now also mixed with spaghetti) all over his father’s shirt. (It might have had something to do with the fact that his father was throwing him in the air. But I could be wrong about this.)

Great Moments in Cooking, Vol. 1

Great Moments in Cooking

Moment #1

I was making matza meal rolls from my mother-in-law's recipe. First you boil water with a little oil in it, then you add matza meal and eggs. It says "let cool" and "form into balls," but I was in a hurry, and not thinking, so I stupidly ignored the “let cool” part and stuck both my hands into the mixture and it was HOT! I yanked them out instantly but one little piece of dough stuck to my finger and now it's burned.

Moment #2

I took a roast out of the oven, and a half-hour or so later I took it downstairs to put it in the chest freezer. I opened the top and started to put the pan in—and the pan tipped and the gravy spilled all over the inside of the freezer and all over the other food. I had to take everything out, set it down on the basement floor (if we didn't have bugs down there before, we will now!), and wipe out the inside of the freezer with a sponge and a roll of paper towels.

By the time I had found a sponge and some paper towels, the gravy that had dripped onto the bottom and sides of the freezer had frozen into, basically, beef-flavored slush. So I had to use an ice scraper. The freezer is about 2-1/2 feet tall, and I had to lean in really far and my toes were barely touching the floor, and I almost fell into the beef-flavored slush trying to reach the bottom.

Moment #3

While I was busy scraping the beef-flavored slush, I forgot that I had had left other things cooking in the oven, and I only remembered when something dripped onto the floor of the oven and burned, and the smoke alarm went off, and when I ran upstairs, the kitchen was full of smoke and I had to put on the fan and open the windows, even though it was only 55 degrees outside.

Moment #4

So the chicken that was in the oven is now slightly burned; there’s no gravy for the roast; but I could serve beef sherbet for dessert!

Why I Hate Shopping for Shoes

One day a couple of summers ago, I did something I had never, ever my whole life.

I bought four pairs of shoes. In one day.

Here is what happened:

I took my daughter, Ilana, to a store called Parade of Shoes (which would be a really interesting parade, don’t you think? Hundreds of pairs of shoes, stepping down the street in orderly rows, all by themselves…) in the mall to buy shoes. (For her, not for me.) While we were there I saw a pair of sandals which I sort of liked, but I didn't try them on, at least not at first. I'm not entirely sure why. I think it was because I hadn't planned on buying sandals at all, but I was anxious and restless in the store (I know- you are shocked to hear that I was anxious and restless while shopping, but it's true.)

I left Ilana in the store and went downstairs to the American Greetings store to try to buy a Father's Day card for my son-in-law. But since I am chronically late with greeting cards, Father's Day was over, so there were, of course, no Father's Day cards left. So I went back upstairs to the shoe store, hoping that Ilana would have picked out her shoes and I could just pay for them and then GET OUT OF THE MALL AND GO HOME! But, no such luck. She was still looking around and trying on shoes.

So, I wandered around anxiously and aimlessly in the store for a few minutes, but after several minutes the teenage clerks started eyeing me suspiciously, and also it's a very small store, with only two aisles, and there were several other people shopping in there, and I kept passing the same people over and over again as I wandered up and down the aisles (all two of them) and it was embarrassing to have to keep saying "Excuse me" to the same people, when clearly I was just being annoying and had no valid reason for repeatedly getting in their way; after all, I wasn't even trying on any shoes, or even looking at them, for that matter, and if I just wanted to walk, they were undoubtedly thinking, why there was an entire MALL right outside the door, for Pete's sake, so why didn't I just walk there????

Anyway, I'm sure that's what they were thinking. So I decided to sit down on one of those little benches they have for people who are trying on shoes, but it wasn't at all comfortable, and there were piles of shoe boxes in the way, and all of the benches (all two of them—one for each aisle, naturally) faced large mirrors, so when I sat down I couldn't avoid looking at my reflection, and if there's one thing I hate (besides shopping, of course), it's looking at myself in the mirror. Especially when there are a lot of other people around and most of them are younger and thinner and more attractive (and better dressed—that goes without saying) than I am.

So I got up and started to wander around the store again. But by now I was feeling even more conspicuous, so I finally just decided to try on those sandals, partly because it was easy: I was already wearing sandals so I didn't have any socks to take off or laces to untie, and the sandal on display happened to be a size 6, which is my size. So I tried it on. (And no, I didn’t put on one of those little footies they have in little boxes on top of the shelves—don’t tell anyone!)

The sandals were pretty comfortable, and Ilana (my Personal Fashion Advisor) said they were cute. But that doesn’t mean I was ready to buy them, since for me, actually buying something in a mall is only the culmination of a rather lengthy process of psychological preparation, and I hadn't done that. I had only prepared myself to buy shoes for Ilana. In fact, I started feeling anxious as we were driving down the highway, before we even got to the mall. By the time I parked the car, I was already calculating how quickly I would be able to leave. So, getting back to the story, by this time, Ilana had picked out her shoes, so I paid for them and we left, without sandals.

But I wasn’t going to get out of shoe shopping so easily, because I actually did need sneakers—the ones I’d been wearing had holes in the soles and the toes. I had been psychologically preparing myself for this for several months, ever since the morning a friend commented, during our daily walk, “Wow, your shoes are getting really raggedy. I’ve had three new pairs since you bought those.”

During the previous few days, I had planned the details. I decided to go to a particular department store which generally has a good selection and reasonable prices. So, Tuesday morning, my other daughter, Shosh, came over with her baby and she and Ilana and I (and the baby, but he didn't care where we went shopping) went to the store. I went right to the shoe section- but it wasn't there. They had moved it. Now it's upstairs. That meant I would be spending a few more minutes in the store than I had planned, since now I had to find the escalator and then go all the way upstairs and also I had always liked this store’s shoe department because it was right near the door, and I could get out of there in a hurry if I needed to. (I'm not kidding- this is actually true, this is how neurotic I am about shopping.) But since I had shlepped both daughters (and the baby, but like I said, he didn't care where we went shopping) all the way out to the mall so I could buy sneakers, I figured it wasn't fair to change my mind and tell them we had to leave just because the shoe department had been moved upstairs.

So I went to find the escalator. I found it with no trouble. But it was broken. So I walked up.

When I got to the top, the shoe department was nowhere to be seen. With a sinking feeling, I realized that it must be all the way on the other side of the store, on the opposite side from the escalator. I stood there for a moment, hoping I would be able to tell which way it might be, so I could choose the shorter path, but there were no clues- all I could see were "Boys' Wear" and "Girls' Wear". (And no, they didn't have the apostrophes in the right places on the signs. I don't think they had apostrophes at all.) So I walked around to the right, and thank G-D, there was the shoe department.

I perused the shoes for about 10 minutes, but every time I found a pair I liked at a reasonable price, they didn't have it in my size. Finally I found a pair of white Nikes and tried them on. They weren't all that comfortable. I was about to give up and go back downstairs when my daughters (and the baby, but he didn't... well, you know) showed up—they had been looking at clothes downstairs, and had come up in the elevator with the stroller. The girls took one look at my feet and said, "Mom, you can't buy those. They're white." What's wrong with white sneakers, I wondered? So I was told: they're dorky. They went out of style before my kids were born. They're for old ladies.

So I basically turned the task over to the girls, and in a few moments they brought me a pair of white sneakers, but with some blue trim on them, and I tried them on and they fit so I decided to buy them.

That was pair # 1.

As I was putting my old shoes back on, prior to going to find the cashier, Ilana brought me another pair of shoes from the clearance rack. "You should try these on, Mom,'" she told me. "They're really cool." I thought they looked exactly like bowling shoes, and I told her so. "I know, that's what's in style now," she said. And since everything I know about style could fit in a thimble (after all, I had almost bought white sneakers!), I tried them on, and they fit, and they cost $7, and both of my daughters said I should buy them. So I did.

That was pair #2.

But I still think they look like bowling shoes.

We found the cashier without much trouble, and left the store. When we got out to the car, Shosh said, "How far are we from Nordstrom Rack?" Immediately my whole body tensed up. I hadn't counted on this- going to ANOTHER store? But I just said, "About 15 minutes." She didn't say anything, so against my better judgment I said, "Do you want to go?" even though my brain was screaming NO NO NO NO NO!!!!!
But fortunately she sighed and said, "No, I'm tired. Let's just go home."

So I took Shosh and the baby home, and Ilana and I went home, and after dinner Ilana wanted to go to Target and Barnes and Noble. So we went to Target, and Ilana bought socks and a hat and looked for another pair of shoes, but she didn't find any she liked. I looked briefly at the sandals while I was waiting for her, but the shoe display was hopelessly disorganized, and after about 30 seconds I had had all I could take, so I went and got in line. The lines were really long—there were only 3 checkout lanes open, and at least 6 people were waiting in each line. I always find it really irritating, that most stores won’t open up another lane when it’s obvious that they should. They probably make most of their profit on the gum and candy bars and batteries and trashy magazines that line the checkout lanes.

As often happens in situations like this, I started having an anxiety attack, and I was on the verge of leaving the cart and walking out of the store, but then I knew I'd just have to come back another time because Ilana needed socks for camp. But fortuitously, the two people in line in front of me suddenly left the line. One of them, it appeared, was with another person who was standing in the adjacent line, and that one was moving slightly faster, so he went over there. The other guy just walked through an empty lane and out of the store. He was holding a small white paper bag. I don't know if he was shoplifting, or if he just had a sandwich in the bag. (But then why was he waiting in line at the checkout?)

So I paid for the socks and the other stuff, and we left the store, and Ilana said, "I still need shoes." Apparently she needed another pair, in addition to the pair I'd bought her on Monday.

I just sighed.

To make a long story short (OK, I realize it’s already too late for that, but bear with me,) we ended up at Parade of Shoes again. But it was already 8:40, and the mall closes at 9:00, so I figured I could hold myself together for 20 minutes. We went into the store and Ilana tried on more shoes and I wandered aimlessly through the aisles (all two of them,) and when she was done we passed by the sandals on the way to the cashier and Ilana said, "Mom, you should buy those sandals you liked, they're really cute." And since I had already tried them on, I figured, well, OK, they were only $15, so I picked up the box and took it, and Ilana's shoes, to the checkout counter. The clerk said to me, "The sandals are buy one pair, get the second pair for 1/2 price. Did you want to pick out another pair?"

Well, no, not really. But if I didn’t, I’d be throwing away $7.50. So I told Ilana to go pick out some sandals for herself, but, incredibly, she said she already had enough sandals. (Must have been the heat.) The store was closing in 3 minutes. They already had the metal grating pulled halfway down from the ceiling. So I was about to just leave and forget about the $7.50 when Ilana said, "Come on, Mom, you should get yourself another pair." I allowed her to lead me down the aisles (all two of them) until we found a pair of sandals that Ilana said were "nice", not "cool", but "nice", and I tried them on and they fit and they didn't look like bowling shoes and they only cost $7.50. So I bought them.

That was pair # 4.
When we got home, I was putting all of my new shoes away in the closet, and I had several pairs of shoes that I never wear. Some of them are just old and falling apart, and others are worn and shlumpy-looking. So I took them out of the closet and put them in a plastic bag to give away. There were a couple of pairs that I wasn't sure about, so I asked Ilana. She looked at the shoes I was holding, and asked, "When did you buy those, Mom?"
I was ashamed to admit that at least one of those pairs dated back to my college years. But I admitted it anyway.
"Wow, that's so cool," Ilana said.
"Should I get rid of these?" I asked her, holding up a pair of dusty brown shoes. Ilana studied them for a moment. "Congratulations, Mom," she said, smiling. "You've kept your old shoes so long that now some of them are actually coming back into style."
That was really wonderful news: that, along with the four new pairs, makes it likely that I won't have to go shopping for shoes again for a very long time.

Which is good, because I hate shopping.

Breakdown

One day a couple of months ago I was at work, minding my own business, when I got a call from the Police Department. The officer said, "We have a Chevy van registered to you, it's disabled and it's blocking traffic at …” and she gave an address that’s about a block from my house.

Norman had my van that day, and right away I got worried—what had happened to my van, and why wasn't Norman there? Was he in an accident? So I told the officer that I'd call Norman on his cell phone. She said, "No, I'll call him, what's the number?" So I gave her the number and hung up. Then I thought about it, and started wondering: how did the police call me at work? They’d have my home address, and presumably could get my home phone number, from my car registration. But why would they have my work number? How would they even know where I work?

A minute later, while I was still pondering this mystery, the phone rang again. It was Norman.

"What's going on?" he demanded."Why are the police calling me? I'm at home. Your van is in the garage."

I said, "But they said my van was blocking traffic..."

"Not your van, your company’s van!" he said. "You have a Chrysler, not a Chevy!"

In the words of Gilda Radner, AKA Emily Litella: "Oh. That's different. Never mind!"

Now, first of all, I don't actually know the difference between a Chrysler and Chevy.

Secondly, they both start with C.

Third, when the policewoman said "We have a van registered to you," I thought she meant you, as in me.

And fourth, I didn't even know my company owned a van. So I called the boss, and asked her if we owned a van, and she said we did. I told her it was blocking traffic, and she told me to page the maintenance man, since he had gone somewhere with the van.

So I paged him.

He didn't call back.

I called the Skokie Police and started to explain that it wasn't my van, it was the company’s van...but the policewoman cut me off and said, "We know all about that, the van's been towed." So I got the name and address and phone number of the place it had been towed to and hung up and called the towing company to find out what we had to do to get the van back. They said we needed to fax them a release form and proof of ownership and bring in a check for $135.

About 20 minutes later, the maintenance man showed up in my office. He was all sweaty and red-faced and out of breath and looked angry, and when I told him the van had been towed, he said, "I'm not walking another six miles." I couldn't figure out what he meant; another six miles? Where had he been? Between his anger and his accent, it was really hard to understand what he was saying, but eventually I pieced together the story:

A few hours earlier, he had picked up the van from a nearby repair shop, and went to do an errand.

The van broke down on a busy street in front of a Walgreens. He left the van in the street, blocking traffic, because he couldn’t move it.

But why wasn’t he there when the police came? "Where did you go?" I asked him.

"Well, I needed a few things--some batteries, some light bulbs--so I went into Walgreens."

Evidently he was angry that the van had broken down because the mechanic had just assured him that it was fixed. So when it broke down, he called the mechanic to come and get it. But then he went shopping, leaving the van blocking traffic. And when he came out of the store, the van was gone--so he just left.

He didn’t call anyone. Not the police. Not us. He walked back to work.

Hence the six miles.

It took him an hour and a half.

I spent the rest of the afternoon finding the title and insurance papers for the van, and getting the bookkeeper to write a check for $135, and getting the boss to sign it and filling out the release form the towing company faxed me.

Next time I am not answering my phone.

Not funny

A couple of days ago I was listening to the news on the car radio, and there was a report about a demonstration going on in downtown Chicago. In the background you could hear people chanting, and as I pictured the people walking in circles in the sidewalk with their picket signs, I tried to hear what they were saying, but I couldn't quite make it out. As I listened to the reporter, it became clear: they were protesting the fact the Marshall Field's is now Macy's.

Seriously.

Are they kidding? This is worth protesting? I can't think of a single more shallow, self-centered, insensitive, spoiled-rich-person issue in the world. Literally blocks away from the downtown Macy's store, where the protest was taking place, there are homeless people sleeping in cardboard boxes on Lower Wacker Drive. Walk around downtown at any time, day or night, winter or summer, and you can't avoid encountering people who are victims of real injustices: poverty, racism, no health insurance, all sorts of critical needs due to the fact that the Bush administration decided the rich people in America were paying too much in taxes so they cut programs that used to help people who were truly helpless.

This demonstration is more than an outrage and an example of extreme insensitivity and greed: it's also an insult to those of us who demonstrated, and in some cases risked our lives, in the 1960's and 1970's on behalf of the poor and underprivileged in this great country of ours.

From the time I was a little kid, my mother took us to all kinds of protest meetings and demonstrations. In the 1950's, she mobilized a group of local residents and took me along to a town government meeting to force our town in New Jersey to integrate the town swimming pool. In the 1960's, she and my father became active in the Fair Housing Council, which worked to eliminate racism in real-estate sales in the town. For the Fourth of July one year, when I was about 10, the Council had a float in the parade. The float's theme was, "Would you sell your house to a red-white, and blue family?" There were about 8 of us kids on the float, along with a few adults, and we all had our faces painted red, white, and blue.
Mostly there was silence from the crowd as the float passed by, but a few people booed us.

Later, when I was in high school, I attended anti-war demonstrations, and rallies in support of providing better education for the kids in Paterson, a nearby city with a large low-income black and Hispanic population. Kids in my WASP-y, upper-middle-class high school shunned me and my friends and made nasty remarks as we passed them in the halls.

I remember spending 18 hours on a Greyhound Bus going from Milwaukee, where I had just started college, to Washington, D.C. in November, 1969, to join 250,000 other citizens in the March on Washington to show support for our soldiers and end the Vietnam War. And at other demonstrations in Milwaukee, and in Madison, WI, people (including Norman, who I hadn't met yet) had rocks and bricks thrown at them.
But these were mild incidents, compared to the fate of the people who died in the last 50 years because they cared about their fellow human beings: Martin Luther King; Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman, the three civil rights activists who were tortured and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964; and many others.

I now work for a non-profit agency that provides free food, shelter, and medical care to poor people. If I'd been downtown on the day of the protest in front of Macy's, I'd have gone up to the protesters and asked them if they'd like to come to work with me and see people who are facing real hardships--such as having to sleep in a cardboard box, or eating out of the Dumpster behind a restaurant, or not owning a coat in Chicago in January--as opposed to the unbearable experience these protesters might be complaining about--of having the label in their $300 cashmere cardigan say "Macy's" instead of "Marshall Field's."

If these people have the energy and the time to stand on the sidewalk and yell, I'd really relish the opportunity to show them something really worth yelling about.

Why I hate Shopping at Target

The other day I went to Target. It's a nicer store than Wal-Mart, but it doesn't have as much stuff. But it's definitely cleaner.

Actually, as shopping experiences go, this one was better than some. The store wasn't crowded (it was 8:30 AM), and I didn't need to try anything on. But even though none of the individual items I bought cost more than 5 or 6 dollars, it still added up to $90.

This is what I bought:

tissues
toilet paper
paper towels
laundry detergent
shampoo
conditioner
soap
contact lens solution
toothpaste
mouthwash
bathroom cleaner
red licorice
granola bars

I can think of a WHOLE lot of things I would rather have spent $90 on. But I suppose that not having toilet paper would be a lot more annoying than not having a new outfit or even several new books.

Speaking of toilet paper, though, I realize that there are some significant gaps in my consumer knowledge. Why is it that everyone in the entire English-speaking world calls it '"toilet paper" and yet every ad on TV calls it "bathroom tissue?" If that's "bathroom tissue," what are we supposed to call the box of tissues that we keep in the bathroom? And when they advertise toilet bowl cleanser, they always talk about cleaning the "bowl," rather than the "toilet." But do you know anyone who calls it a "bowl?" I sure don't. A bowl is what you mix cookie dough in, or serve salad in. A toilet is a toilet, not a bowl. You never hear anyone say to their dog, "Don't drink out of the bowl!" Or to their male children, "Don't forget to put the lid of the bowl down when you're done." And just think of the possible complications that could arise if we did call the toilet a “bowl”—imagine saying to one of your kids, “Don’t eat the popcorn right out of the bag—your hands will get all greasy. Put it in the bowl before you eat it.”

OK, I think we have settled that issue: It's a toilet, not a "bathroom bowl." Strange- it's OK to say words like "b---ch" and "a---ole" on TV, but you can't say "toilet.”

Anyway, getting back to my lack of consumer knowledge, toilet-paper-wise: what's really annoying is trying to figure out which package of toilet paper/tissues/paper towels to buy. It's completely impossible to do any comparison shopping. There is no standardization between brands, or even within the same brand. There are nearly as many different sizes as there are brands of toilet paper (notice I didn't say "bathroom tissue"). There are "single rolls" and "double rolls," which don't look as if they are twice as big as single rolls, but there is no way to compare the prices, partly because, at least on this day at Target, several of the price tags on the shelf were missing.

And some of the labels are in Spanish.

Paper towels are even worse. Some are measured in feet; some in inches; some in yards; and some in meters; and sometimes in "square" feet or inches or yards or meters. And then others are measured by the number of sheets per roll.

And then there are the tissues, which at least seem to come in standard measurement- the number of sheets per box. But the boxes come in such odd sizes- 144 sheets, 230 sheets, 180 sheets- that again, it's impossible to figure out the best value unless you happen to be Raymond, the character played by Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man,” or unless you bring a calculator to the store and stand there blocking the aisle and spending time figuring out how to save fourteen cents.

So, faced with this hopeless task, I used my usual technique: I made a token attempt (without assistance from a calculator or an incredibly but selectively gifted autistic man) to figure out which size or brand of paper towels was the best value (Bounty, 15 rolls, $11.99) and I put a couple of those in my cart. This cleared my conscience by allowing me to pretend that I had really gotten the best deal possible, at least on the paper towels, and then I didn't even think about the prices of the toilet paper or the tissues.

I went to the checkout.

The clerk who rang up my purchases gave me a gift receipt.

I wonder which of those items he thought was a gift?

Babies R Definitely NOT Us

One of the teachers from my school had had a baby, and another teacher was expecting. I volunteered to collect money from all of the other teachers to buy baby gifts (I know, that was my first mistake.) But the last time we did this, when two other teachers got married, it was easy- I just collected the money, ordered the gifts online from the gift registries, and had them shipped.)

But this time, I had to go to the store, because one of the teachers wanted a certain car seat, and for the one who is expecting we decided to get a gift certificate to "Babies R Us" (which, by the way, doesn't even come CLOSE to being grammatically correct. And besides that, it doesn't even make sense. I mean, THEY aren't babies- how could babies run a store?)

So, as for the car seat- I didn't know exactly which one the teacher wanted, and she hadn't been back at school since she just had the baby, but the principal said she would find out. But she is busy enough to be three separate people, so when I called her, she hadn't done it, but she promised to find out and then call me that afternoon so I could go out and buy the car seat.

Well, like I said, she is busy enough to be three people, so GUESS WHAT- she didn't call. At 8 PM I finally called her, and her husband said she wasn't home.

And we were supposed to give out the gifts at the teachers' luncheon the next day.

Rats.

But, I figured, I could still get the gift certificate for "Babies R US" for the other teacher. Earlier that afternoon I had called the store to see how late they were open, because it was Memorial Day (designated by Congress in 1993 to commemorate Exceptional Retail Sales) and I thought they might have different hours. They said they were open until 9:00. That was good, because it was a beautiful day and I was planting flowers and I really didn't want to go into a store while it was so nice outside. So I thought I would go later, after dinner. So at 8:15, I went to "Babies R US", and GUESS WHAT?

It was closed.

Did I ever mention that I HATE SHOPPING?

A Fish Story

It was “free week” at all of the local museums. Shosh thought it might be fun to take Kivi to the Aquarium, since at his age (7 months) he liked to stare at things, and just about everything in the world was still new and interesting (including fish.)

We planned to leave at about noon, but we didn’t actually leave until after 1:00 because Kivi was sleeping, and we waited for Ilana to get done with her exam so she could go with us, and finally Ilana came but then we couldn’t find Kivi’s pacifier and as we all know you can’t POSSIBLY go anywhere without it (The Pacifier: Don’t Leave Home Without It.)

But finally we found the pacifier and collected the car seat and the stroller and the diaper bag and the sippy cup and the diapers and the wipes and the change of clothing and the baby toys and the jar of Strained Butternut Squash and the bib and the tuna sandwiches (on bagels) for the 3 of us who don’t like Strained Butternut Squash, and 3 purses and the car keys, and oh yes, the baby, and we clumsily made our way down the 3 flights of stairs out of Shosh’s apartment and across the street and into the car.

We drove down to the museum campus, but we had to park really far away, because since it was free week at the museums there were a ton of cars. But parking only cost $6—a bargain, I thought, for downtown—and we planned to take the free trolley from the parking lot to the Aquarium. So we parked the car and packed up the pacifier and collected the stroller and the diaper bag and the sippy cup and the diapers and the wipes and the change of clothing and the baby toys and the jar of Strained Butternut Squash and the bib and the tuna sandwiches (on bagels) for the 3 of us who don’t like Strained Butternut Squash, and 3 purses and the car keys, and oh yes, the baby, and walked all the way back to the entrance to the parking lot where people were waiting for the trolley.

Just as we approached the trolley stop, we saw the trolley approaching, and we congratulated ourselves on our luck. But then we noticed a man a uniform shouting something, and when we got closer, we could hear him announcing that there was an hour-long wait to get into the History Museum, and an hour-and-a-half wait to get into the Aquarium, but no wait at the Planetarium. Well, we thought, since Kivi didn’t know the difference and would be just as happy staring at Martians as he would at fish, we would just go to the Planetarium. So we started to fold up the stroller to get on the trolley.

But then the man in the uniform announced that this particular trolley wasn’t going to the Planetarium.

Well, OK, we thought, we’d just wait for the Other Trolley, the one that did go to the Planetarium. But the uniformed man informed us that the Other Trolley had broken down.

So, we walked. The path to the Planetarium goes right along the lake, so ordinarily it would have been a nice walk. But it was so chilly and windy and foggy that we couldn’t even see the lake, even though we were standing practically right next to it. And it was the middle of JUNE, for crying out loud! We were definitely being cheated out of a large portion of our summer.

But I digress.

We finally got to the Planetarium, and admission was, indeed, free, and we went in and walked around. There wasn’t really anything in the exhibits that would be of particular interest to a 7-month-old. Mostly there were pictures of galaxies and computer simulations of supernovas and so on, and lots of signs to read. (And, brilliant though he is, he was not reading yet at seven months.)

So we sat down in the snack bar to eat our tuna sandwiches, and Kivi ate his Strained Butternut Squash. Shosh had forgotten to bring a spoon, so I got a plastic spoon from the snack bar, but all they had was soup spoons, and they were too big for Kivi’s mouth, so most of the Strained Butternut Squash went on his cheeks and his nose and his chin instead of in his mouth. But I think that babies actually can absorb nutrients through their skin. That’s why they smear the food all over themselves when they eat. In fact, that’s why mothers instinctively take their babies’ shirts off when the babies are eating spaghetti or yogurt. I’ll bet you thought it was so their shirts wouldn’t get dirty, but you would be wrong. It’s actually to provide more surface area on the skin for the nutrients from the food to be absorbed directly into the bloodstream.

After Kivi was done eating, Shosh put him down on the floor (which was carpeted) and he rolled around and practiced crawling. He hadn’t quite figured it out, though. He got up on his hands and knees, and then picked his knees up so he was on his hands and toes, and then he put the top of his head down on the floor. He hadn’t got the crawling part yet, but he could almost do a headstand.

There was a railing around the area where the tables were, and a few little kids with their parents were watching Kivi from the other side of the railing and making faces at him to make him laugh. He was apparently more interesting than a lot of the other exhibits.

At about 4:00, we decided to check the status of the lines at the Aquarium, so we walked over there, and Kivi fell asleep in the stroller. When we got there, there was only a short line, so we went in and looked at the fish, and after a while Kivi woke up and Shosh took him out of the stroller. He looked a little dazed. Not surprising, when you consider that he went to sleep in outer space, and when he woke up less than an hour later, he was under the sea. It must be very disconcerting to find yourself in a completely different place every time you wake up. I think I’d be afraid to go to sleep. Maybe that’s why babies scream and cry when you try to get them to go to sleep—they know that as soon as they close their eyes, the whole universe could change completely, and they might wake up to find everything completely changed and unfamiliar.

At one point, we were standing in front of a huge tank that went all the way from the floor to the ceiling, watching enormous sharks and tuna swim by. Shosh remarked that it was probably a good thing that we had eaten our tuna sandwiches at the Planetarium. We wondered if the restaurant in the Aquarium building served fish—would that be an ethical problem? We went downstairs to the restaurant to see if they had fish on the menu. But the restaurant was closed. We squinted through the glass and tried to see if there was a menu posted somewhere, but we couldn’t see one. There was an information desk just a few feet away, though, so I went over there and asked the woman at the desk, “Do they serve fish in the restaurant?”

She just said, “I don’t know. The restaurant’s not open.”

She didn’t get it.

We went back upstairs and looked at the fish for a few more minutes, but Kivi was getting cranky so we left the Aquarium and went outside to see if the line for the trolley was reasonably short (it wasn’t) so we walked back to the car and drove home at 2 miles per hour in rush hour traffic. (I wonder why it’s called “rush hour.” No one was rushing, as far as I could tell. It wasn’t possible to rush, there were too many cars. They really should call it something like “crawl hour” instead.)

A Cingular Tale: Close Encounters of The Cellular Kind

Chapter 1: The First Call

Customer Service Representative: This is Bob, may I help you?
Me: I just got a new cell phone about a week ago, and I’m having trouble with it.
Bob: May I have your mobile phone number, please?
Me: (I give him the number)
Bob: Okay, I have your account information here. What kind of problems are you experiencing?
Me: A lot of my calls get disconnected in the middle of the call. And sometimes I can’t make a call at all because my phone doesn’t have any service.
Bob: That might happen in some areas. Sometimes if you live in a rural area the coverage isn’t good.
Me: I live in the city. It’s not rural.
Bob: Oh. Well, maybe it’s your phone. What kind of a phone do you have?
Me: (I tell him.)
Bob: Your phone has an internal antenna, and sometimes they don’t work as well. You might want to switch to a phone with an external antenna.
Me: But this is the phone they gave me at the store. Why would they give me a phone that doesn’t work?
Bob: I don’t know, Ma’am.
Me: How do I get a new phone?
Bob: You can just go back to the store where you bought it, and they should exchange it for you.
Me: Well, OK, I guess I’ll try that.

Chapter 2: It’s All In Your Head

SC (Store Clerk): Hi, can I help you?
Me: Well, I hope so. (I place my phone on the counter.) I’ve been having trouble with my phone, and Customer Service told me I should come in and exchange it for a phone with an external antenna.
SC: Do you have your receipt?
Me: (I show her the receipt; she examines it.)
SC: You got the phone more than 15 days ago, so we can’t do anything now.
Me: What does 15 days have to do with it?
SC: It says in your contact that you have 15 days to cancel the service if you aren’t happy with it.
Me: I don’t want to cancel the service, I just want to exchange my phone.
SC: (Looks doubtful) Why do you want to exchange your phone?
Me: Because this one doesn’t work. I called Customer Service and they told me to come in here and exchange it.
SC: Oh- the phone doesn’t work?
Me: That’s what I said.
SC: Oh- well, OK, I guess we can exchange it, then. Do you just want another phone of the same model?
Me: No, I just told you that Customer Service said I should get one with an external antenna. This one has an internal antenna.
SC: (Examines the phone) I don’t know if we have any phones that have an external antenna.
Me: Well- can you look?
SC: Um-I guess so. (I follow her over to the display of phones.) I’m not sure which ones have external antennas.
Me: Can’t you just look at them? I mean, if the antenna is “external,” you should be able to see it.
SC: I don’t know- (calls over another clerk). Do we have any phones with external antennas?
SC #2: Just these 3. (He indicates 3 models. They range in price from $19.99 to $149.99.)
Me: But the phone I have was free with my plan. Don’t you have any free phones with external antennas?
SC #2: No.
Me: But this one doesn’t work. Customer Service told me you would exchange it for one that has an external antenna.
SC #2: Well, you’ll have to call them and talk to them about it. I can’t give you a free phone.
Me: So my choices are keeping a free phone that doesn’t work, or paying for one that might work?
SC #2: Yes.
Me: (I decide, reluctantly, to return my current phone and buy the $19.99 phone.) What happens to this phone that I’m returning? I already stored all of my personal phone numbers in it.
SC#: We’ll send it back to the factory, and they’ll erase everything.

Chapter 3: Round and Round We Go…

CSR: Hello, my name is David, how may I help you?
Me: I’m having trouble with my cell phone.
David: May I have your mobile phone number, please?
Me: (I give him the number)
David: Okay, I have your account information here. What kind of problems are you experiencing?
Me: A lot of my calls get disconnected in the middle of the call. And sometimes I can’t make a call at all because my phone doesn’t have any service. I called a few days ago, and one of your colleagues told me it was probably my phone, because it had an internal antenna, so I went back to the store and paid $19.99 for a new phone with an external antenna, and it still doesn’t work.
David: The phone doesn’t work at all?
Me: Not reliably- my calls keep getting dropped. Even when I'm standing in one spot, the little bars on the display that indicate the strength of the signal keep changing every few seconds- there might be five bars, then two seconds later there might be only one, or none.
David: If you're driving, the signal strength can vary as you move from one area to another.
Me: I’m not driving. I’m I my house. There’s no reason for the signal strength to vary, since I’m not moving. I'm standing in my house right now, and I literally have my nose pressed up against my glass patio door. There is nothing between my phone and the outside except a pane of glass. Okay, I'll even GO outside. Okay, now I am standing outside in my yard. There isn't anything that should interfere with the signal, but it keeps changing. I'm not in my car, I'm not moving, the phone isn't moving.
David: Yes, I understand—
Me: And I assume that the towers where the signal comes from are not moving.
David: Well, Ma'am, I wouldn't know about that.
Me: (Speechless.)

I'll keep you posted on the situation (but not by phone.)

Chapter 4: Why It’s Called A “Mobile” Phone

CSR: Hello, my name is Dan, how may I help you?
Me: I’m having problems with my phone (I recounted the entire story.)
Dan: Where do you generally use your phone?
Me: Well, obviously I mostly use it when I’m not home, but sometimes I use it from home, especially for long distance calls, since they’re free.
Dan: Well, you really should only be using your phone when you’re out.
Me: When I’m out? What if someone calls me when I’m home? Shouldn’t I be able to talk to them?
Dan: It IS a Mobile Phone…
Me: But how does the phone know whether I’m “home?” It doesn’t know where I live, does it?
Dan: Yes, the company knows where you live.
Me: That sounds kind of ominous. But of course you have my address so you can send me a bill. But is there something inside the phone that tells it that’s where I live, and that it should work everyplace else EXCEPT there?
Dan: No, of course not.
Me: Then why doesn’t it work at my daughter’s apartment either? After all, that's not MY home—she lives 4 miles away. And what if I moved? Would the phone know that I had a new home? And then, if this wasn’t my home any more, could I come over here and knock on the door and ask the new owners if I could please come in and use my cell phone to make a call from their living room, and the phone would work?
Dan: Ummm—I’m really not sure…
Me: That’s because you’re an idiot. (OK, I didn’t really say that. I just said “Thank you” and hung up.)

Chapter 5: Not an Idiot

CSR: Hello, this is Kim, May I help you?
Me: (Once again, I went through the entire story. Kim laughed and/or gasped at what I considered to be appropriate places in the tale, which I took to be a hopeful sign.)
Kim: I understand your problem. You’re right, the phone should work from everywhere in your coverage area, including your house.
Me: You’re the first person I've talked to who isn’t an idiot.
Kim: (laughing): Well, I’m older.

Chapter 6: Out With The Old…

I have to look at some other phones they have that still use the Old Technology but will work with the New Technology. They're called GAIT phones. (Perhaps that refers to the "gait" you use when you are walking to the place you were trying to call but couldn't get on your phone.)

I'll keep you posted. (But not by phone.)

Epilogue

In spite of Kim not being an idiot, things never improved. After several more months, I gave up and cancelled my contract and signed up with Verizon. So far, so good…

Why I Hate Shopping, Part 1

Call me crazy, call me abnormal, call me whatever you like—but I have to admit it: I HATE shopping. It’s not just that everything costs so much these days, although that’s certainly a part of it. And it’s not that it’s inconvenient—there’s a store or a mall of some sort on practically every corner in the entire metropolitan area. No, there are other reasons why I hate shopping. A recent trip to Wal-Mart is a perfect example.

One evening several years ago, against my better judgment, I went to Wal-mart with Ilana, my then-teenage daughter, because we were out of Kleenex and napkins and Cheerios and a shower curtain liner and other stuff. I knew it was a mistake the minute we walked in, because there were no shopping carts near the door, and I had to go and wait near the checkout counters for someone to be done with a cart. (I briefly considered wrestling one away from a little old lady, but I decided against it.) The store was crowded and messy (it’s getting to be as bad as K-Mart.) Finally I got a cart and I started in on my list, but right away I got really aggravated because I was looking for peanut butter and I couldn’t find any, so I asked a clerk and he said, “I know we have some; it’s in the food section, but I don’t know where.”

Well, duh. Of course it should be in the food section, but I checked every aisle three times and I couldn’t find any. So I gave up and went to look for an electric hair straightener that Ilana wanted. It wasn’t with the shampoo and the electric shavers, where you would think it should be, so I asked at the pharmacy window. I was clever enough to ask for “hair dryers” and not “hair straighteners,” since I figured I needed to make it as simple as possible for these people. The pharmacy clerk said, “It’s in ‘Hardware.’” Hardware? Really? But, OK, whatever.
We went to Hardware, and the hair straighteners were actually there, and Ilana picked out the one she wanted. Meanwhile, I went and did the rest of my shopping, and when I was all done I went to the little Customer Service desk they have right by the checkout, and I asked the woman working there, “Do you have peanut butter?” She looked me right in the eye and said, “I don’t know.” I thought of several possible replies at that point (the most mild of which was, “Excuse me, but isn’t that your JOB?”) but the sarcastic ones would have gone over her head, and the serious ones would have got me arrested.

So I just sighed and walked away and stood in the line at the checkout counter for 20 minutes and then paid $117 for the privilege of shopping at Wal-Mart. When I got out to the car, I remembered that my windshield wiper had broken just as I was driving to the store, and I was going to buy a new one while I was there, but I didn’t write it on my list, so of course by the time I got into the store I forgot all about it.

And it’s supposed to rain all week.

Speaking of windshield wipers--a couple of months ago my husband asked me to buy new wipers for my car, so I did. But when I got home, he said, “Why did you only buy one?” I had just assumed that there were two of them in the package. Shouldn’t they come in pairs? Why would you buy just one windshield wiper? Isn’t that sort of like buying one shoe?

Anyway, getting back to Wal-mart--the real reason I went there at all was because, at the time this happened (2003), I was a kindergarten teacher, and I needed clear plastic cups for an art project for my class. If I didn’t need them right away, I would have put off buying the Cheerios and the napkins and the shower curtain liner as long as possible, maybe for weeks or even months. One can live without Cheerios or napkins, and the shower curtain liner has been moldy and disgusting since last summer, so what’s the rush? But I really needed those plastic cups, so just because of that I went to the store and spent an hour and $117.

And GUESS WHAT? Wal-mart was out of them.

So I had to go to Party City to get the cups, and it was already 8:30, and I had promised Ilana that we would be home by 9:00 so that she could watch NYPD Blue on TV with her father, because this was their little Tuesday night father-daughter bonding ritual, and she still had 3 math problems to do for homework and she had stayed up until 1:45 AM the previous night reading Huckleberry Finn, because Mrs. Rosenwald was giving a test the next day. And even though she had just had a whole week off from school, she left it until the last possible moment so I knew she wouldn’t be awake for long after the TV show was over but I really needed the cups because I had promised the other kindergarten teacher that I would get them SO I WAS FEELING A LOT OF STRESS.

While I was at Party City, I decided to get some paper plates and napkins, but they only had a couple of colors of the kind of plates I like and they weren’t on sale. And the price had gone up since the last time I bought them. But finally I picked some out and took them, and the clear plastic cups (which they actually did have!) to the checkout counter. There was only one clerk, and she was waiting on someone else, but she was just standing there, she wasn’t doing anything, she was obviously waiting for somebody to check a price or something. I started at her until she noticed me, and then she said to me, “Can you wait for a few minutes?” Normally I’d be my usually wimpy self and say “OK,” but let’s not forget that I had just been through the Wal-Mart experience, so I said, “No, I really can’t. Are you the ONLY person working in the store?” She picked up the phone and paged “David,” and after a minute or two he came and opened up another register. When he rang up the plates, I saw that for some reason the purple plates cost a dollar more than the others, so I told him I didn’t want them. He took them out of the bag and deducted the charge, and I paid, and then we left the store and came home. It was raining and I couldn’t see out of the right side of the windshield because my wiper was flapping around helplessly like a dying fish.

When we got home (at 8:56), Ilana helped me carry all of the bags into the house, and while she watched NYPD with her father, I unpacked them.

THE CUPS WERE NOT IN THE BAG.

I asked Ilana if there was another bag from Party City, because I couldn’t find the cups. She said no, there was just one. But she thought she remembered that “David” had taken the cups out of the bag when he was removing the purple plates that I didn’t want because they cost more than the other ones, and that he had put the package of cups on the counter, and she thought that he probably hadn’t put it back in the bag.

I went out to the garage and looked in the car to see if the cups were in there.

They weren’t.

I came back inside and called the store and asked to talk to “David.” When he came on the line, I started explaining the problem, but I was holding the phone with my shoulder since I was unpacking the Wal-Mart bags at the same time, and by accident I pressed the “OFF” button with my chin and disconnected the call, so of course I felt like an idiot. I called back and explained the problem again, and “David” said he didn’t see the cups anywhere, but if I came back in he would give me a refund (or, preferably, the cups). But by this time it was 9:15, and the store closes at 9:30, and I did not have an ounce of emotional energy left to go out and drive in the rain with one wiper and deal with traffic and red lights and worry if I would get there in time, so I said I would come in the next day.

So, basically, I spent almost two hours doing something I hate anyway, and it was all for NOTHING, since I only went out in the first place to get the STUPID CUPS and I didn’t even have them!!!!!!

That’s why I hate shopping. In case you wanted to know.