What's worse than an old person driving...

Years ago, my Mother’s husband, God rest his soul, would go to the YMCA for a work out, maybe a swim, a sauna, or a friendly game of racket ball. He always stopped off at his favorite watering hole on the way home, lest he dehydrate from such a strenuous workout. ‘Round about 6:00 o’clock, Joe would come home, drunk. My sister and I loved to do our comedy spiel…
“Hey, Margaret, what’s worse than an old person driving?”
“I don’t know, Liz, what?”
“A drunk old person driving.”
One day, while Joe was playing racket ball, he was hit in the eye. It was serious enough to need a pirate patch, and he eventually lost the sight in that eye. Margaret and I, being the sick little puppies that we are, added to our comedy routine. The punch line is – an old, blind, drunk driver.
Today, I was invited to lunch with my friends, Franz and Trixie. Franz is 83. Or is he 84? Well, anyway, I remember about a year ago I drove with Franz, and SWORE I would never drive with him again. Ever. He floors the gas, and PUMPS the power breaks. Brakes haven’t needed to be pumped on any model of car after 1952. Full gas, brake, brake, brake. Full gas, brake, brake, brake. Alas, today Franz drove. I made Trixie sit in back so I could make it there without puking. But she was very firm with Franz. “Now, Lovie,” she said, “Lizzy gets car sick, so take it easy.” And he did. He drove nice and slow, and didn’t gun it or pump the brakes. Our lunch was delish. They both ordered trout, and except for the fact that the decapitated fish heads were staring at me from the bone plate, it was great. Franz ordered a small beer, Trix and I had soda. After lunch, the waiter offered us a schnapps “on the house.” Well, by all means! After a beer and a schnapps, Franz started to go back to 1940-something. As I listened, I was thinking what nice eyes he has. They’re a baby blue. They’re milky baby blue. They’re – holy shit, they are old-man-cataract-blue. It was then I remembered our joke. In all fairness, Franz was not drunk. Not even tipsy. Old German men have a tolerance of about – Oh I don’t know – six beers, four shots of 60% pure grain, and a few glasses of red wine. So, Franz was fine to drive. HOWEVER… He was thumb driving. I CANNOT stress to you how much I hate thumb drivers. My husband thumb drives, and looks out every window of the car except the one IN FRONT of him. Ten o’clock, and two o’clock. That’s where your hands should be on the steering wheel. Not your left thumb at seven o’clock. I knew if I said something he would, without hesitation, ask me if I wanted to drive. And not in his nice voice. And while asking me, he would look at me, (and not the road). So I kept staring at his thumb, which wasn’t even on the wheel half the time. It must have been too tiring, because he kept resting his hand on his lap. In my head I kept screaming like a crazy person… “We’re all going to die! Do you hear me, Thumby, we’re ALL GOING TO DIE!!”
We didn’t die, because here I am writing about it. What’s worse than an old, drunk, blind, thumb driver? Nothing, that’s what.

Dude, where's my car?

Last week I left the grocery store, and wheeled the shopping cart down the sidewalk to my car. I felt like a bag lady, but I had bought too much to carry. I pushed all the way down to the end of the sidewalk and realized I must have passed my car. Getting more embarrassing by the minute. I turned the cart around, and began pushing back the way I came. By the way, it was snowing, and really hard to maneuver. Now I am back at the entrance to the store - full cart and all. My first thought, is anyone watching me? Where the fuck is my car? I pretended to be fumbling for my car keys. Once again, I pushed the cart down the sidewalk. Slowly, slowly... There are only 12 cars parked in front of the store. I stopped, and once again pretended to be looking for my car keys. Because losing the keys is feasible. Losing your car is not. Then I remembered I had taken Alexander’s little purple car that day, and not my silver mini-van that I was searching for.

Shitty Curry

I Sautéed up 4 chicken breasts for lunch. Wasn’t sure what it would be. I pillaged the fridge. (My motto: When in doubt, make refrigerator surprise.)The chopped spring onion from Sunday’s homemade pizza party looked useable. (“looked useable” = not green and fuzzy) The chopped mushrooms, not so useable. The three carrots – possibly from 2011 – were fine. (Oh all right, I peeled them “real good” as my mom used to say.) So… smelling pretty good. There was one problem. Julia would have a fit if she saw the onion in it. I removed the chicken, and pureed the carrots, onions and broth with my immersion mixer. It looked fantastic. I thought about adding a dash of half and half (That’s a lie, it’s heavy whipping cream) and serving carrot soup. Julia likes that. I tasted it, and… can you say Gerber. Yup. Carrot baby food. No matter. My friend Trixie swears you can fix anything with curry. (Even the not so useable stuff from the back of the fridge.) I Poured the Gerber into the pan and added curry powder, cumin, hot and sweet paprika, and garlic powder. Taste test, Curried baby food. I remembered the can of coconut milk in the cupboard. (oops, I forgot to add cheap. Cheap coconut milk.) I opened the can, and it was solid. There was a little bit of liquid at the bottom, but for the most part it was like sour cream, or maybe like Crisco. Oh well, in it went. Taste test number three – suntan lotion. Not even curried suntan lotion, nope. Just Coppertone SPF 0. I am not one to give up. I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I really can cook. (Just not today.) More curry – About seventeen and a half tablespoons. Taste test. Some salt and another Taste test. Decided fresh ground pepper would be good – certainly it couldn’t hurt. (Oh those famous last words…) The pepper corn after being ground smelled like horse poop. (Now WHY would I make that up.) Organic, my friends, is not always tasty. Earthy, yes. Tasty, no.
So… Now I have Coppertone flavored Gerber strained carrots with a hint of horse shit.
I left everything on the stove – All in separate pans. Rice, chicken and curry sauce. A “help yourself” lunch. Julia ate it up and liked it. Alex added soy sauce – but Alex has a wicked cold and can’t taste anything. Me, well I’m full from all the tasting. Guten Appetit.

I totally forgot... After adding the coconut milk, I pulled the cinnamon out of the spice cupboard instead of the curry and dumped in a good four tablespoons. Spooned out what I could into a dish. So, Julia, that answers your question of the "nasty brown shit" in the bowl.

maggots, hairspray, and duck tape

I wanted to throw something in my compost garbage can yesterday, and thought my kids had actually done something without being asked. A short-lived fantasie, I assure you. What I thought was the old spaghatti in the garbage, wasn't. I knew this because Spaghetti doesn't wiggle. (although, if we leave it a little longer in the back of the fridge...) Anyway, every inch of the garbage can, from top to bottom, was a squirming mass of maggots. This explaind the fly epidemic in my kitchen, as the garbage can is close to the open window. But, I'll get back to that part of the story...
The maggot fester called for immediate and drastic attention. And drastic I was. I didn't have any sort of Raid bug killer. I thought for a moment, and decided to blast them with a can of extra hold Syoss hair spray. I thought I could freeze the little bastards in mid-squirm. I was wrong. They were a bit stiffer, but still very much alive. Next I tried Scrubbing Bubbles Bathroom Cleaner. Anything that can wipe out soap scum can certinaly kill maggots. On the contrary. All it did was wash the hair spray off of them. I decided to scan the garage... Tomatoe fertilizer? No, that would probably make them grow. How about the spray that was suppossed to keep the cats from shitting in my garden, but didn't. Why not. More spraying. I could only stand to keep the lid open for a few seconds, it is, after all, a compost full of rotting food, and, well, the maggots. Every time I closed the lid, I would SLAM it shut. I was trying to get the ones all over the inside of the lid to fall off. Spray, gag, slam. Spray, gag, slam. It was then I realised I was in view of about seven neighbors. In a country where recycling is important enough to color code four different garbage cans, poisoning the compost that will be used to renourish Mother Earth didn't seem like something I should do...(at least not when the neighbors can see me) I stopped spraying. Actually, there was a toxic mushroom cloud forming above the garbage can, so it was time anyway. The maggots didn't die. I think it was a case of "what doesn't kill you, makes you stronger." They say a cockroach can survive a nuclear war. I believe maggots can too.
Defeated by the maggots, I decided to tackle the flies. I thought about those fly strips you hang from the ceiling. I figured I could make my own with double sided duck tape. Duck tape is a personal favorite of mine. I use it for small home repairs, cracked car bumpers, and various sewing projects. I thought it was genius to catch flies with it. I hung two strips of it from the kitchen cupboard doors and smeared them, front and back, with honey and molasses.
Then I waited. And waited. After two hours, I had caught no flies. I believe it attracted several more into my kitchen, but none of them landed on my tape. The honey and molasses, by the way, ran down the tape and dripped everywhere.
So that's my story. I figure I have tainted the magots to the point of producing two headed, three winged flies that have stylish hair, are resistant to soap scum, and repel cats.

Cleaning out the closet

I believe all women have their closets arranged in sections: thin, medium, large, and holy shit. I’ve decided it’s time to clean mine out.
Deep in the abyss, the section I’ll never be again but thus far haven’t been able to part with, is my thin section. There are size 10 clothes that are actually back in style, but would look ridiculous on a middle-aged woman, even if I were thin again. I ask myself, is it the clothes I want to save, or the memories attached to them? And if I really think about it, do I want to keep clinging to those memories? Way back then I always thought I could patch up people like I patched my skinny jeans. I was a seamstress for ripped, torn, suicidal people. I was sure I could help and heal them all.
Pushing the clothes down the memory lane pole in my closet, I come to the medium-sized section. That was the time where I discovered that life is too short to waste on Boon’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine when there is plenty of merlot out there. And although I was eventually able to differentiate between good and bad wine, I still hadn’t learned to do that with friends. My patchwork circle of friends stuck to me like an iron-on that couldn’t be shaken off.
My life and my clothing size turned large without warning. But the clothing industry, God bless them, was merciful. A fourteen is the new twelve. And age forty is the new thirty. I discover everything is sooo much better when you take your time, enjoy it , and do it right the first time instead of jumping right into the deep fryer. I also learned there is red wine beyond merlot , and that the “T” is silent unless you live in the boondocks - in which case you drink Boon’s Farm Strawberry Hill Merlott. Life can be light like a pinot bianco, or heavy like a French burgundy. And if you make the right choices, you won’t wake up with a nasty headache. The same – I was slowly learning – goes for friends. If someone told me their entire medical history within the first half hour of meeting them, I knew not to give them my (real) telephone number.
I am presently clothing myself from the Holy Shit section of my closet. I have learned, but more importantly have accepted, that a size 16-18 is just that. Period. End of story. Don’t misunderstand me. This doesn’t mean I am downing Ben and Jerry’s by the pint. It simply means I am smart enough to know I will never be a size 10-12 again. And I am wise enough to know it is time to throw out those other sections. Time to weed out those memory-laden clothes weighing down the pole and cluttering up my sanity.
Who would have thought cleaning out my closet could be so therapeutic? Life is short. Stop clinging to all that old shit. Throw it away, for God’s sake. Don’t wear clothes that aren’t comfortable. The same rule applies for friendship. Keep that one favorite sweater that fits you no matter what size you are. Keep that one best friend that loves you no matter what.

Spring Cleaning and Couch Rash

Spring cleaning, to me, means springing up from the couch, turning off Farmville and quickly cleaning the house because my husband is coming home soon. Yesterday, however, the cleaning bug grabbed me by the seat of my pants. I ripped the house apart and sucked up a vacuum bag full of dust. Moving the couch away from the wall is always an adventure. A few pine needles, a pen, and even the match to a sock that has been in laundry room for a month. While on my hands and knees picking up what my mother always called “crippy-crappies” I noticed the side of our black leather couch was spotted. Looking over at the love seat and chair, they too had the same rash. I got a rag and some leather cleaner, and went to work. Hummm… Is the leather pitted? No, that’s an optical illusion. Whatever it is, it’s not coming off. Did my husband splatter something while renovating? Cement maybe? No, that can’t be it. I finally decided it was glue. Strong glue. Damn kids must have been doing arts and crafts on the furniture. Probably happened at Christmas time when they were making the window decorations. The leather cleaner wasn’t doing shit to get it off. I got my other rag wet with Meister Proper (Febreze scent) . Scrub, scrub. It still wasn’t coming off, but it was getting loose. I finally had to scrape off the glue with my thumb nail. That worked well. Scrape, scrape. After a while, my thumb nail was getting full. I scraped the glue out from under the nail, and balled it up. I wanted to drop it, as I hadn’t yet vacuumed. No luck, it was stuck. I wiped it on my pants, but every time I wiped my hands on them thereafter, it re-stuck. WTF. It wasn’t until I FLICKED the ball off my finger that I realized it wasn’t glue. There is only one thing that gets flicked, and that, my friends, is a booger. I was reminded of a joke I heard when I was about ten years old.
Two men are sitting on a park bench. One man’s head keeps twitching, as if to signal – come here. He is approached by a stranger. “Excuse me, sir. Were you telling me to come over?” “No, I’m sorry,” he replied. “I was injured in the war, and ever since then I’ve had this twitch.” The stranger looked at the other man on the park bench and asked if he was also injured in the war. “Oh no,” he said, flicking his finger. “I just have a booger of my finger and I can’t get it off.”

A boo-boo on her hoo hoo?

Second on my list of “Things I really hate”, - no toilet paper in a public toilet. (Public toilets being number one.) If you’re lucky, you have a tissue in your pocket or purse. Such was the luck of “Gertrude” (fictitious name to protect her embarrassment) last week.
Gertrude arrived home and felt something was dreadfully wrong down there. Yes, there. Compact mirror in hand she investigated. “GOOD LORD!” exclaimed Gertrude. “ I’ve got a tumor on my hoo-hoo!” Reaching down to investigate further, she realized, (pardon my pun) her lips were sealed. Further probing revealed a sticky mass covering not only her hoochie, but her fingers now too. It was then Gertrude remembered wiping herself in the public toilet with the tissue from her pocket. The same tissue she had spit her gum into.
Alternative titles for this blog: Wrigley's Wax job, and Bubble Gum Brazilial.