That Awkward Age

I Can't Get No TSA Action

I don't have to fly over Thanksgiving. So I think I'll just go hang out at the airport tomorrow and try to get lucky. Getting an enhanced pat down would be the most action I've had in years.

My two local airports, the Newport News Williamsburg International Airport (known locally as the New Willie) and the Norfolk International Airport, have defensively announced that they don't have the full body scanners that are causing all the ruckus. What a relief! That will save the same people that parade around the beach half-naked for no good reason other than to show off their boobs and butt cheeks from having to endure a body scan for the purpose of keeping them safe from underwear bombers.

Completely overshadowed is the TSA announcement that travelers will not be allowed to carry cranberry sauce, creamy dips and spreads, gravy, jams and jellies, maple syrup, salsa and other gooey substances through security -- they'll have to be checked in baggage or else left at home.

They can, however carry pies and cakes onboard, subject to additional screening to make sure they haven't baked any files or bombs into the pastries. (I don't have to put explosives in my pies for them to bomb.)

But where's the turkey? Is the TSA assuming, just like my adult sons do, that Mom will take care of that? I can hear the phone conversations taking place all over America between adult children and their mothers: "But Mom, the TSA won't let me bring the turkey. Besides -- you do it every year. I wouldn't want to deprive you of that tradition."

So these wayward kids who couldn't want to move away from home to pursue their fortunes as telemarketers pick up a measley pie at Food Lion on the way to the airport and feel like they've done their mothers a favor. Meanwhile, Mom has been up all night brining the turkey and chopping celery and onions for the stuffing.

Then these same adults will all line up with their pies in aluminum pie tins, and when they get selected for additional security, they'll protest that their Fourth Amendment rights are being violated, and that the TSA officer had better not touch "their junk."

That's the same thing my adult sons said about the stuff they left in their rooms when they moved out at varying times over the past 14 years. The TSA should treat those threats the same way that I did -- put their junk in plastic bags and move it out of their way so they can get the job done.

That's what those ungrateful kids get for carrying cheap store-bought pies home to their mothers.

Photo: silas216

Warning: Facebook Can Be Fatal

Last week a medical journal told us what we suspected all along: Facebook can kill you.

The Lancet reported that an 18-year-old boy's asthma was triggered by Facebook. Well, actually it was triggered because his girlfriend broke up with him, unfriended him on Facebook, then began friending other young men. He was able to see all of this activity by creating a nickname (otherwise known as lying about his identity) to set up a new account, getting her to friend him under the bogus account and then lurking on her page while she flirted with new guys.

This caused the poor kid to hyperventilate and "asthma exacerbations," leading The Lancet to issue a warning that asthma and Facebook don't mix.

After reading about this alarming medical finding, I began to realize that I, too, am a victim of the devil Facebook, as -- I would guess -- are you! The list of maladies assignable to Facebook is quite long and disturbing. Here is a partial list:

OSD (Obsessive Statusupdatis Disorder): This uncontrollable urge to post every meal content, cellphone picture and brain fart on your profile leads to swollen fingers from incessant typing and an inflated sense of self-importance.

Likerrhea: Similar to its close cousin, diarrhea, this affliction is just too much of a good thing. It causes you to "like" every suggested Fan Page, knowing full well you're going to get spammed as a result.

Friendyopia: This disease causes your Facebook friends to appear closer than they really are.  It's only when the thumbs are down that you learn who your real friends are.

High cholinksterol: Clogging the news feed with too many links to really bad content.

Appanoia: The fear that enabling new apps will let others access private information leading to them finding out that you're a fan of Dancing With the Stars or The Bachelor. How embarrasing.

Hypercommentation: Excessive commenting on your friends' pages or blogs. Get a life.

Schizofania: The inability to decide whether to start a Fan Page or a Group Page. In some cases, a sufferer will trigger an identity crisis and start both, causing mass confusion.

Warning: Highly communicable! Use protection when connecting with friends if you experience any symptoms of these social diseases. 

 Photo: skippyjon

Why Women Need 18 Pairs of Black Shoes

As I was vacuuming the bedroom around a line-up of four pair of basic black pumps, it occurred to me for the first time to count all my black shoes ... including those in two other closets. Not sure I really wanted to know, I bravely soldiered on.

There are 18. This doesn't include the significant number of un-black shoes, but we won't go there.

Two pair of boots (one mid-calf sporty suede version with fur, one tall leather with three-inch heels).

Four pair of leather pumps of varying height heels and styles.

Two pair of dressy heels, one with a double gold strip around the heels, the other patent leather sling-backs.

Two pair of canvas shoes, one with little pink and teal checks.

Two pair of strappy sandals for summer.

A pair of Espidrilles.

A pair of soft, velvet ballet slippers with Chrismas poinsettias embroidered on the top. Worn every year at least once.

Two pair of slides, one with wedge heels, and the other flats -- cute-as-a-button with black-and-white checks and rounded toes.

One pair of leather clogs with fur inside (LOVE these with socks).

And one pair of podiatry boots from foot surgery 18 months ago. (What do people do with these afterwards?)

This, after having just recently purged my shoes, throwing out those with scuffs, run-down heels and those I was sure I would never wear again because they hurt too much and I never should have bought them in the first place.

My first reaction was guilt. I have 18 pair of black shoes, and many people over the world have none. Black or otherwise. Then I realized it was the voice of my mother telling me to eat everything on my plate because there were starving children in Africa.

That's how I became a fat kid.

And that didn't help a single starving person. So now I send money to Africa and try not to clean my plate.

My second reaction was, OMG, Bob is going to find out. He's going to fuss because I've spent money on 18 pair of black shoes instead of putting it in my IRA where good, solid people put their money, and why did ANYONE need 18 pair of black shoes?

Well, too late to worry about that now. It'll be just my luck that he'll decide to read my blog for once and the (black) cat will be out of the bag.

Then it hit me. Women need a wardrobe of black shoes. I have a relationship with each of  my pair of black shoes.

The pumps make me feel business-like and in charge. Ready to take on the world. Bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan.

The boots with heels make me feel a little naughty, like I might have a whip hidden around here somewhere, and you don't want to mess with me, you bad boy!

The boots and clogs with fur make me feel cozy and protected ... well cared for.

The dressy slingbacks make me feel like kicking up my heels and dancing. The sandals, Espidrilles and canvas shoes make me feel breezy and casual. Ready to have lunch with a friend or walk on the beach.

The podiatry boots remind me that I'm going to have to get something done about my growing bunions, and I'll probably need the stupid ugly things again at some point.

I look at every pair and fall in love with them again, just as I can recall falling in love (or at least "in like") with various men in my distant past. There was the one I loved because he made me feel special and sexy, the practical one who could fix my car, the buddy who was great to hang out with on Saturday afternoons.

And then it hit me.

Women need 18 pair of black shoes the way men need lots of sex! Variety ... immediate availability ... and never an occassion that isn't made better by having just the right kind.

The nice thing about the shoes, though, is that you don't need a shower afterwards.

Next week I think I'll be brave again and count my purses. Wonder what Freud would make of them.

 Top photo: ellasdad

Right photo: robad0b's photostream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With Steroids and Spanx, I Can Rule the Free World!

After six hours' sleep last night, I had a full day of meetings and work, cooked and served a four-course dinner (and cleaned up), then ran three miles at my personal best time of 44:53.

(Finally cracked the 15-minute mile! Woot! Tomorrow I take on the Kenyans!)

Now, at 11:38 p.m., I'm ready to get down to writing. My memoirs. Your memoirs, too, if you like. Or I may clean the oven -- haven't decided for sure.

This abundance of energy and self confidence is from my (legal) prescription of prednisone, which I periodically take to interrupt migraine cycles that catch up with me every couple of months. While the migraines suck, knowing that a 10-day dose pack is available when nothing else works is almost worth it.

During my 'roid rush, I can leap tall buildings with a single bound. Eat nuts, chocolate, aged cheese and oranges with wild abandon without getting a barfing-sick headache. And I'm so much more witty and charming ... at least from where I sit.

Bob tells me I get motor-mouthed when I'm on prednisone, spilling my guts at inappropriate times and being extra pushy (he has another word for it) at home. I admit to a certain propensity for 'roid rage when stuck behind a slow car, but, hey, I say if grandma can't keep up with traffic, she needs to stay home. Or hang out in Wal-Mart. Just get out of my way.

Yeah, I know that prednisone -- long-term -- is bad for you. It has lots of nasty side effects, such as death. And I would be in real trouble if I were a basebal player trying to break the home run record. Or a former Mr. World trying to get elected governor of California. My urine would never pass the smell test on that one.

But I don't want to hear about the downside. At this point in my life, my best days are behind me. Except when I'm cranked up on prednisone.

Bob had a West Highland Terrier when we were dating that got cancer. Opting not to treat the cancer, he'd take the dog to the vet every couple of weeks for shots of steroids to make him feel better. In no time that old, sick dog was a puppy again -- chasing balls and wagging his tail. Gradually he'd slow down like a wind-up toy until he was old, sick and incontinent again.

This week I'm the puppy. Next week I'll go back to my old, sick and incontinent ways.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking about signing up for the Tour de France.

 

 

Watching Paint Dry Isn’t What it’s Cracked Up to Be.

You know how people say they’d rather watch paint dry than do some other odious task? Well, it’s likely not the truth. ‘Cause I’ve done it.

Last Sunday evening I watched paint dry.  Well, not literally paint, but polyurethane, which turns out to be just as boring as paint. Maybe even more so, since it takes longer to dry than paint, which could be water-based and quick drying. Polyurethane, by its very nature, can’t be water-based as far as I know, but then, what do I know?

I’ve said for years that I’d rather watch paint dry than lots of stuff, such as watching football or golf. Or just about any sport involving a bunch of adults hitting, kicking or otherwise abusing a ball in the name of fun. I’ve also said I’d rather watch paint dry than to clean out the lint filter on the clothes dryer. Or to attend a PTA meeting.

Or to pill the dog.

Perhaps some people enjoy cramming a pill down an animal’s throat while trying not to get bitten while getting dog slobber up to their elbows, not to mention what happens when the dog keeps spitting the pill out, which makes it sticky and impossible to flick off your finger during subsequent attempts. But, hey, that’s just not my thing.

Regardless, I have learned that watching paint and/or polyurethane dry is not the thing to say I’d rather do, after having spent an evening doing it. My son Jordan found himself unemployed for a week between jobs, so I offered to pay him to refinish some old bedroom furniture that still has great lines and is quite solid, but the finish had become marred with use and age. (Kind of like me, come to think of it.)

He worked for several days stripping and scraping the finish off, then over the weekend, we rented an air compressor. He finally began spraying at dark-thirty as the neighborhood kids hit the doorbell to do trick-or-treating. Having been the recent victims – along with several neighbors – of a car egging, I was reluctant to leave my freshly stripped and sprayed furniture outside on the driveway unattended, especially on Halloween.

My now-mild-mannered Parkinsonian husband has told me way too many tales of his and his hoodlum buddies’ adventures on All Hallow’s Eve. Things like pushing outhouses down the side of mountains, just to hear them make the loud clanging noise (this was back in the pre-plumbing era), and putting parked cars into neutral and steering them from the owner’s driveway into the neighbor’s driveway.

So I got a book, my computer and my iPhone, pulled out a lawn chair in the garage, opened the garage door for good visibility, and set up my paint drying watch station. I was set. For about 15 minutes until I got cold and became a late dinner entreé for all Newport News mosquitoes.

How is that possible? Aren’t mosquitoes supposed to be dead or hibernating or snowbirding in Florida when it’s cold outside? They were those little bitty kind of mosquitoes that make that whiney, dental drill sound in your ear before they vampire bite your neck.

So there I was – cold, buggy and uncomfortable – with the front doorbell intermittently ringing from late trick-or-treaters. Since Bob is so very slow due to Parkinson’s, I popped up and ran through the house to throw candy at the kids, then dashed back to my garage chair to guard my furniture from the neighborhood misanthropes. Occasionally Bob attempted to beat me to the front door, but I would catch him giving out too much candy to each kid, causing me to fear that we’d run out before the evening was over, and we’d get marked as vandalism victims. Thus, I continued my Whack-a-Mole routine from the garage to the front door to the garage.

Bob eventually came out to the garage/driveway to check on the drying progress, and announced – after checking the weather on his cell phone/mobile device – that the dew point would hit in about an hour. It was 9 p.m. and the furniture was still wet and sticky as a bank teller lollipop. He calculated that we needed to increase the temperature around the furniture by four degrees to keep dew from messing up the newly stained and polyurethaned surfaces.

“How are we going to warm the entire outdoors by four degrees?” I conjure.

“We don’t have to warm the entire outdoors by four degrees – just the air around the furniture,” Bob responded, as if that were the most ridiculous question I’d asked all day. He found two space heaters from the bowels of the garage, stretched two industrial-strength drop cords and hooked them up on either side of my furniture, which, with all the drawers stood on end like bowling pins, covered about half of the double driveway.

“And how does the air around the furniture that we’re heating know to stay put rather than, say, fly around to the front yard?” I got the husband eye roll, as if that were some kind of secret society knowledge that only men were privy to. As in, when I ask him how he knows how to do some particular manly thing such as changing a light bulb, and he grabs his privates in body-language response.

While we set up the space heaters, I noticed that the aforementioned mosquitoes had begun practice landings on the sticky surfaces. Little black freckly bumps were turning my furniture into mosquito tar pits. Some day it could be hacked into tiny shards and molded into amber jewelry, with tiny bug wings forever encased in petrified varnish.

Shivering and full-up on fun for the evening, I suggested that we give up on the paint drying and gingerly carry the furniture into the garage.

“Too wet,” he judges. “Just leave it and come into the house. It’ll be OK.”

I talked him into parallel parking one of the cars across the foot of the driveway as camouflage. Oh, that looked natural. Nobody, outside of a drunk, would park their car cross-wise in their driveway. Plus, since we have a light with a motion detector over the driveway, any would-be thugs could easily achieve full illumination to carry out their dastardly deeds.

After nervously watching TV in the family room and checking on my furniture every 15 minutes, I finally hit the sack around 1. At 1:15 I got up, put on my fluffy bedroom slippers, went out to the driveway and dragged my still-wet furniture into the garage.

By myself. In my PJ's.

Leaving snail-like trails of polyurethane on the driveway, drag marks on the furniture feet and fingerprints on every surface.

It’s nearly a week later, and it’s STILL tacky. Tomorrow, Jordan comes over to pick out the bugs and spray on the second coat.

I think I’d rather watch golf.

Photo: napfisk

Everything I Needed to Know in Life I Learned By Running My First 10K*

(Dedicated to my mother, who would have been 83 years old today. I ran/walked the Blue Moon Wicked 10K on 10/30/10 in her memory.)

• Between the excitement of the starting line and the finishing line is a whole bunch of little steps.
• Around every corner . . . is another corner.
• Finish lines may appear closer than they really are.
• Slow is a speed.
• The longest run begins with the first step.
• One small step for a woman . . . one giant leap for an old fat woman.
• Don’t count out the moms pulling kids in wagons.
• You may finish 6,014 out of 6,132, but that’s ahead of the 6,878,199,882 people in the world who didn’t show up.
• Seventy percent of life – and running – is just showing up. But the other 30 percent is the really hard part.
• Just because something is simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.
• For every person who drops dead while running, there are thousands who die from sitting on the sofa.
• To call yourself a runner (or a writer), you merely have to run (or write).
• The longest distance in a race is between your ears.
• If you wait until you’re good enough at something to do it, you’ll run out of time.
• You can run alone, but it’s more fun with a buddy.
• If you wear a funny costume, you won’t know when they’re laughing at your running form.
• If it doesn’t hurt afterwards you weren’t trying hard enough.
• Having the right shoes won’t make you a winner, but having the wrong shoes will make you a miserable loser.
• Nothing is better insurance that you’ll get out of bed for the race than to announce on Facebook you’ve signed up.
• It’s just gravity. Suck it up.
• It’s not fat. It’s fuel. (Bought a t-shirt with this on it at check-in.)
• Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is optional (But only if you're under 40.)
• I’d rather be running than giving birth. But not by much.
• Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt. (And the plastic medal they give everyone who pays their $25-registration fee.)
• Life and running go better with music. And prayer.
• You’re not racing against other runners. You’re racing against the little voice in your head that tells you you’re an idiot.

Running quotes by others …

• "The only reason I would take up jogging is so that I could hear heavy breathing again." - Erma Bombeck
• "I don't think jogging is healthy, especially morning jogging. If morning joggers knew how tempting they looked to morning motorists, they would stay home and do sit-ups." - Rita Rudner
• "It's unnatural for people to run around the city streets unless they are thieves or victims. It makes people nervous to see someone running. I know that when I see someone running on my street, my instincts tell me to let the dog go after him." 
- Mike Royko 
• "We can't all be heroes because someone has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." 
- Will Rogers
• "I run so my goals in life will continue to get bigger instead of my belly." 
- Bill Kirby
• "Running is a mental sport...and we're all insane!" 
- Author unknown
• "Life is short... running makes it seem longer." 
- Baron Hansen
• "Start slow, then taper off." 
-- Walt Stack
• "Remember, the second most important thing to choosing the right shoe, is choosing the left one." 
-- High school coach to his runners
• "The trouble with jogging is that the ice falls out of your glass." 
--Martin Mull
• "Jogging is very beneficial. It's good for your legs and your feet. It's also very good for the ground. It makes it feel needed." 
--Charles Schulz, "Peanuts"
• "Long distance running is 90% mental and the other half is physical." 
-- Rich Davis
"
• My doctor told me that jogging could add years to my life. I think he was right. I feel ten years older already." 
--Milton Berle
• "To a runner, a side stitch is like a car alarm. It signifies something is wrong, but you ignore it until it goes away." 
-- Anonymous
• "It's a hill. Get over it."-- Anonymous
• “It’s not sweat. It’s your fat cells crying.”-- Anonymous
 (Seen on the back of a runner's t-shirt)
• "The trouble with jogging is that by the time you realize you're not in shape for it, it's too far to walk back." 
--Franklin P. Jones
• "If the hill has its own name, then it's probably a pretty tough hill." 
--Marty Stern
• "My other legs are Kenyan." 
--Seen on a bumper sticker

*Or from my mom.

Photo: My friend Barbara Adams and me after the race.