Suebob's Red Stapler

I realized last night how little I know about music.

My friend Jim sang a song at karaoke and he asked “Was I out of tune?” and I said “How would I know?”

I wouldn’t. All I know is some music sounds ok to me and some music doesn’t.

I don’t know what an octave is and why there are more than one of them. Sure, I know an octave has 8 notes (“oct” duh), but I don’t know why those same 8 notes repeat over and over and sound different and you call them the same things. And why 8 and not 10 or 7?

I don’t know what a key is or sharp or a flat or a time signature is or anything. I missed out, ok? I was busy reading Misty of Chinconteague and I grew up in a house where the radio was never on and we only had 3 Herb Alpert records and an unplayed copy of Brigadoon. I just never caught up.

So last night CC and Jim wanted to go to karaoke and I went. I knew I wasn’t going to sing, because the world is in sad enough shape already. It surely does not need that. I’ll sing along in church in a big crowd, but how much damage can you do to “This Little Light of Mine” with 200 people singing? It’s not like belting out “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong” in front of a room of unsuspecting strangers. Though karaoke is suspecting strangers, I suppose.

Karaoke is held every night of the week at Golden China, a large multi-level restaurant with two bar areas, shabby 90s decor and a strong odor of stale sesame oil.

The “KJ” (which I must assume stands for “karaoke jockey”) was a bald 30-something guy in khakis and a polo shirt who was pretty obviously only there to sing as much as he could. I thought he’d have a rapport with the audience, some kind of karaoke patter, but he stuck to just calling the next person, then disappearing into his little karaoke booth.

The karaoke screen was suspended above the stage, a little too high, so that it gave the singers the unfortunate effect of looking slightly demented because their eyes were rolled up in their heads to see the lyrics. It’s a karaoke fact that, even if you know all the words to a song, you are legally required to read them off the screen every single time. So everyone looked demented.

Of course, some of the singers were demented. Jim says every karaoke bar has its oddball denizens, but this was all new to me. It must be like City Council meetings, where there are always those three lunatics who attend.

Greggy was Golden China’s resident loon – a wall-eyed, close-to-tipping-over drunk who bobbed and weaved his way up to the stage, then screamed out lyrics with the intensity and tunefulness of a large hooved mammal during mating season. You have to hand it to Greggy though – he had passion. He gave it his all, every time.

Jim sang a few and was good, giving slightly somber, steady performances of “Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay” and “Pump it Up” where he managed to get both the words and melody right, something that eluded many of the singers.

CC was overwhelmed by the 3-inch thick binder of songs and spent the hour and a half we were there pondering all the possibilities. She finally decided and was writing her selection on the entry form when I left to go to the bathroom. It was midnight and I figured it would be four or five songs until they got to her, but I was game, even though my joie de vivre had left me at least an hour before.

My epitaph is probably going to read “Not a night person.”

Sitting on the toilet, I fell into one of those weird microsleeps, where you start dreaming even though you don’t know you have started sleeping, then you jerk out of it going “Huh?” and looking around to see if anyone heard you.

When I got back to the table, CC still hadn’t finished writing the form, and something snapped. “I’m FINISHED,” I blurted. “Going home now!”

I felt like I was having a bossy out-of-body experience, but I was tired and cold and sick of stale sesame oil. I am the least fun person ever, I know.

So that was karaoke. Maybe I should put on that Brigadoon album and try to sing along.

Oh, I love onion rings. I love them so much that I used to limit myself to eating them once per quarter, so I wouldn’t eat them all the time. I figured once every three months was good, because if I cheated, I’d still only be eating onion rings twice in a 90-day period. If my goal was monthly and I cheated, I’d be eating them every two weeks, which, when you come to something that has 900 calories and 50 fat grams, is a lot.

Now I eat them about once every six months and spend the other 5 months and 29 days convincing myself that they aren’t that great, anyway.

I found something that makes me miss onion rings considerably less. They’re almost as addictive and far less caloric.

Leek Rings.

Laura would have said the instructions begin “First, you take a leek…” (read it aloud). BadaBUM.

Take three or four leeks. Cut off the roots and most of the green, depending on how much you can stand to waste. Cut the remaining part into round slices about 1/4 inch thick.

Put these all in a bowl or the basket of your salad spinner, fill with water, and separate the leek rings my pushing the middles up until all the rings come apart (don’t worry about the tiny ones in the middle, those can stay together).

Drain the rings, dry them a bit with a dishtowel. Toss with olive oil or mild-flavored veg oil. Spread them out in one layer on a baking sheet and stick them in the oven at 250 degrees. Stir them every 10 minutes or so. They’re done when they’re light brown and crispy.

YUM. Tiny baby non-deep-fried onion rings. Eat them today, with Beano so you don’t blow the roof off the house. They’re addictive and crunchy. You can also put them on top of your green bean casserole or on salad or what have you.

Enjoy.

These are a tiny bit overdone. Still good though.

These were my office scissors. They were some special kind of scissors which are impossible to cut or poke yourself with, which shows what management thought of our abilities.

When people find out I work from home, they often say “Oh, I could never do that. I would get too distracted.”

I admit that I do get distracted while I work from home. I do go throw in the occasional load of laundry, or stand in front of the fridge looking for snacks.

But what I don’t have to do is:

• Listen to my co-worker tell me her wedding plans down to the napkin color, shape and size
• Talk my co-worker down because that guy from accounting has parked in “her” parking place again even though we don’t have assigned parking places but he should know because she always parks there
• Spend 40 minutes reading lunch menus and arguing whether we should have Chinese food or go to the Thai place even though their food isn’t as good as it used to be and the fish tank hasn’t been cleaned in so long it makes everyone feel kind of bad to look at it
• Hit traffic on the way to work and be half an hour late, though technically early enough since I got there 3 minutes before the boss
• Walk back and forth to the bathroom, which is about 7 football fields away from my desk
• Walk the long way back from the bathroom (which, did I mention, is about 7 football fields away) to avoid that one creepy security guard who likes to talk about how the government is building camps in the desert for dissenters
• Spend multiple minutes trying to get an old paperclip stuck out of a crack in my desk
• Read all the signs in the kitchen area from people who have had their lunch stolen (again) or who are mad about the dishes in the sink
• Rig up an elaborate antenna system to try to get radio reception even though the building is apparently in some kind of electronic black hole
• Avoid the IT guy that I borrowed that cable from one time and never returned
• Check my teeth for spinach bits after lunch (at home, no one cares)
• Return my lunch back to the cafeteria after I find the ghostly white finger from a latex glove in the salad

See why it doesn’t bother me to get distracted at home? I still get 3 more hours out of every day. Honest, boss, I do. 

Photo by Norm Copeland. Used under a Creative Commons license.

I have some Life Lists here on my blog (though I see they need to be reformatted). Things I have done, things I have done and never want to do again (the Raven Life List, because “Nevermore”) and museums I have visited.

How about Things I Never Want to Do? An “Out of the Bucket” List.

1. See above: Spend the night in an ice hotel. It is pretty, isn’t it? But make no mistake: THAT IS ICE. Or at least compressed snow. I do not care about the difference, because frozen is frozen in my book, and I do not want to be frozen.
2. Eat a sea urchin. The look on my sister’s face after she tried Uni was enough to convince me that I did not need to.
3. Go to a rave. I love to dance and I love to do it in a crowd, but I fall asleep by 10 pm and I need earplugs at Zumba, so, no.
4. Go on a cruise. I’m a germaphobe, I don’t like buffets, and I like to spend more time in each destination. Plus? Two words: Poop cruise.
5. Have another cat. Been there, done that, woke up with them batting my nose one too many times. They’re cute. They’re furry. They belong somewhere not at my house.
6. Wear high heels. I fell off my foot wearing athletic shoes in Zumba yesterday. High heels I need like I need a loaded and cocked revolver in my purse.
7. Get anything below my chin waxed. You already know how I feel about this from the early days of blogging, remember?
8. Skydiving. Don’t jump out of a perfectly good airplane is advice I have heard and heeded.
9. Ride a motorcycle. Been there, done that, too old. I like having a hunk of metal and plastic between me and the road.
10. Shop on Black Friday. Shopping is painful under the best of circumstances. I’m a get in and get the heck out kind of girl. There’s nothing fun about that stuff to me. I’ll be eating leftovers and watching Netflix. Happy Holidays to you, too. (Now Cyber Monday – that’s a different thing altogether).

What about you? What is off the list?

I prayed for rain this morning, and this afternoon it rained.

Do you need anything?

Dark begins to creep down around 2:30. I’m trying to resist falling in. 5:15 pm and it is black outside.

This time of year has me doing math: 18 means 12 plus 21.

33 days until winter solstice. More than a month until the days start getting longer.

Holding my breath. Waiting.

I was reading some articles on the psychology of mass murderers, trying to get my brain around the recent “random” shootings which seem to be happening more and more frequently.

This jumped out at me from an interview of Dr. Park Dietz:

The biggest issue to overcome is the reluctance that so many people have to make judgments about the behavior of other people. We have been teaching our young people for decades now and hence we have a generation of adults who have the mistaken notion that you shouldn’t judge other people. In their effort to accept people as they are, they often overlook behaviors that amount to bullying, harassment, discrimination, intimidation, or psychotic behaviors. Any of which when not dealt with properly can lead to violence, but all of which when handled properly can be managed. This idea of not judging and tolerating are one of several factors that lead people to ignore inappropriate behaviors in the workplace.

“Don’t judge,” we say. “You can’t judge me for my beliefs.”

I guess the time has come to ask “Why not?”

If your beliefs are turning you into a murderous psychopath, a rage-filled abuser, or even just an unpleasant little bitch, shouldn’t someone call you on them?

I don’t mean get all up in someone’s face and yell, but what about a gentle approach, like Glennon at Momastery did? She got her point across by telling her truth without creating more animosity.

I know that isn’t always possible. I know some people are so deep into their story that they can’t find the string to follow the path back out no matter what you say or do.

Loving each other is hard, especially now, when everyone seems so quick to take offense. But learning to judge, to discern better ideas from less good ones, and then being able to discuss those things with one another in a productive, adult way is a crucial skill to learn, lest we all end up killing one another.

This is my 3rd or 4th grade class photo. Looking at it makes me think several things:

1. I hated to comb my hair back then and I still hate to comb it
2. That was before hair conditioner. Yes, I said BEFORE HAIR CONDITIONER. I remember rat’s nests of unusual size at the back of my neck.
3. I can still remember the itchy lace of that dress collar
4. I’m glad I grew into my teeth

What led me to look at school photos is something more serious. After I read this article about teachers acting as equals (well worth reading), I started thinking about how bad school was for me. I went back to look at photos to see if I could see that in my eyes.

I think that would surprise most people who knew me back then, because I was an excellent student. I was an early reader and had good school skills, so I always got by with mostly A and B grades. Because I could easily keep up with school work and did well, I learned the wrong things at school.

I learned that I could get by with doing the minimum. An “A” was the most you could get, so why go above and beyond? I felt like good grades were a simple trick.

I also learned to not be too good. All it bought you was the scorn of your fellow students. I learned early to walk the fine line between doing enough but not shining so much that the other students hated you. Having my parents and teachers be proud of me wasn’t enough to risk losing the affection of my peers, with whom I always felt on shaky footing, anyway.

I was a rebellious kid – I have always felt some kind of inner drive to question the status quo, that not fitting in was better than trying to be one of the crowd.

That same spirit of rebellion made me feel like my teachers weren’t on my team. I felt like they were holding onto information and only doling it out at their own pace. It was so frustrating. Those were the days before you could look everything up on the internet. I spent a lot of time at the library and a lot of time reading, trying to get the knowledge I wanted.

I found children’s textbooks infuriating. I always wanted so much more than they could give me. I would read the same chapters over and over, looking at the pictures, trying to force more knowledge out of those smudged pages.

The thing is, my educational experience wasn’t bad. I went to good schools in good neighborhoods at a time when there were plenty of tax dollars to support the schools. Teachers were generally respected and education was highly thought of. And yet I feel I failed at school and school failed me.

The biggest failure, I think, was not giving me the idea that I had a stake in the world. I feel like the education I got was so fragmented. “Here’s your English, here’s your math, here’s your social studies.”

Now I work for a brilliant executive. I admire so many things about her, but the thing I treasure most is that she keeps her eyes on the prize – she constantly reinforces the big picture in everything she does.

Every day she isn’t just building systems and solving problems. She comes to work and tries to make our customer’s lives better. She’s serious about that, and if she weren’t, I don’t know if she could work as hard as she does, 16+ hours, 7 days a week.

THAT is what I wish school would have done for me. I wish that there was a Big Picture being taught. I wish they had said, every day, “Hey, kids, you need to be part of a team called humanity. As a team and as an individual, you have a responsibility to create the world you want. That’s what all this learning is for – to make a world worth living in.”

But in a hierarchical system with teacher as ruler of the classroom, that’s a hard sell because they can’t tell kids they’re responsible for creating the world, then say “But follow all my rules or else.”

I had a few teachers who tried to act as equals as much as they were allowed within the structure (Hey, Mrs. Gosfield! Hi, Mr. Bishop!) and I do remember those classes as much more exciting and interesting than others.

My friend Brian teaches graphic arts at the university level and says he has given up on everything but project-based grading. No tests, no quizzes. Students show what they have learned by creating something. He says he is happier and they are happier and they learn more, too.

I was lucky to have decent parents, so I grew up with the idea of doing right for its own sake. But learning that I was creating the world – I learned that on my own, and it took a long time. I don’t know why it wasn’t obvious from the start, but there are some subjects in which I am a little slow.