You know what is dangerous? Bears!
I have no love for bears. And neither does my dog:
We came upon this lovely, albeit random, Christmas scene – gingerbread people, Santa, and a statue of a bear.
The Santa and wire-frame reindeer didn’t flummox her, but she thought the bear was real. She approached it slowly, put her head down, stretched out her neck, froze.
After a minute she gave an all-four-foot jump and a mighty WOOF as if to scare the bear out of its stupor.
I had to kind of drag her away. Otherwise, we would probably still be there, protecting the neighborhood from bears.
Small Business Sneeriness
Saturday was Small Business Saturday, a day promoted by American Express to encourage people to shop at small local stores, something I try to do whenever I can.
HOWEVER I will still take my business elsewhere if you treat me like a jerk. Just because I am fat doesn’t mean I won’t buy anything at your running store…unless you patently ignore me while you lean on the counter, discussing an upcoming race with a friend, then sneer at me when I inquire whether you have a specific product.
Just saying.
Greetings from Where I Live
We had a remarkably low tide, combined with a winter sunset. It was about 75 degrees and everyone was out with kids, dogs, surfboards.
The river runs into the sea at this time of year:
People paddle out from the harbor at sunset to go lobstering:
Someone left this message on the beach:
Someone explain this to me
Bob gets into it about 2:13
People are Hungry
I’m too busy setting things on fire in the kitchen to write a whole post, but please go see Megan at Undomestic Diva’s post on Feeding America. If you contribute, you could win a $25 Starbucks card.
And a little musical inspiration from Keb Mo:
Something is Better Than Nothing
I haven’t posted so long that I am reduced to making a random, numbered list. This is what it has come to. Let us begin in an Andy Rooney frame of mind:
1. Toilet paper. The packages now all claim “Double Rolls! 12 rolls equal 24 regular rolls.” Or, more recently, “Triple Rolls. 12 rolls equal 36 regular rolls.” No, no they do not. Quit lying. They equal the old rolls plus maybe a little more, at twice the price.
2. I’ve been doing great at keeping up on posts at Craftastrophe. In fact, the proudest moment of the past few weeks may be when I pointed Jenny the Bloggess to this big-enough-for-a-human-to-wreak-havoc-in wolf pelt outfit (the wolf died of old age, don’t worry) and she went bananas for it. I think she may actually be in the purchasing process. Do I know my audience or what?
3. My happiest recent moment may have come from discovering that Marcel the Shell with Shoes On has a new video. Ok, so I am weird. But Marcel rocks so hard.
4. I needed to go to the Amtrak station to get a refund on a $14 ticket. I knew even before I went that it would be the kind of errand that would make me think I should have brought Flurrious with me, and Amtrak did not disappoint.
The reason I needed the refund was that the train never showed up. I waited 45 minutes past the scheduled time of arrival. Another irritated would-be traveler called Amtrak and they said not only were they not sure when the train would arrive, they had no idea where the train was. THEY LOST A TRAIN. I know that Amtrak has a very limited budget and tht they are facing a lot of challenges, but I think that keeping account of where all the trains are is sort of, as we say in corporate-speak, a core function.
I ended up driving my car to my destination (along with my two friends and a spare lady traveler, Veronica, who was very nice and entertaining).
I left the ticket in my car for a couple weeks and it got bashed about a bit. The little ticket stub was the most loosely-perforated thing on earth (unlike most perforations, which usually cause me to tear apart whatever I am trying to tear off) and by the time I took the ticket back to the only manned station in the area (which is about 10 miles from me), the stub was hanging on my one…what do you call it? perf? so I secured it together with a paper clip.
Scene: Amtrak station. The players: me and a paunchy, rumpled Amtrak station attendant who had the attitude of someone who has been maddening and disappointing people for years and who considers himself something of an expert at it.
Me: I’d like a refund on this ticket.
Attendant: (takes the ticket and immediately tears the one remaining perf, so it is now in two pieces) Oh, this is going to be a problem. It is in two pieces.
Me: You just tore it in two pieces.
Attendant: No, it was in two pieces.
Me: No, it was barely hanging on. That’s why the paper clip was on it.
Attendant: It doesn’t have your name on it. That’s a problem.
Me: I bought it from a machine at an unmanned station.
(Many, if not most, Amtrak stations are unmanned with machines that do not print your name on the ticket. Additionally, if you buy a ticket on the train, your name would not be on the ticket. So why did he insist it would be a “problem” if my name wasn’t on the ticket? Because, to this guy, everything is a problem.)
Attendant: Why didn’t you take it back where you bought it?
Me: It was an unmanned station, so there was no one there to give me a refund.
Attendant: Why didn’t you use the ticket?
Me: The train never showed up.
Attendant: It says “Ventura-Santa Barbara.” Why didn’t you take it to Santa Barbara for a refund?
Me: If the train to Santa Barbara had shown up, I could have merely USED the ticket, negating the need for a refund, since at that point the ticket would have been actually useful to me.
We continued in this vein for some time, including him getting furious at me for signing on the wrong line on a form full of lines that he held up about 4 feet from me and pointed with his pen and said “Sign here.” The line I signed actually DID say “Sign here” next to it, but it was the wrong “Sign here” line that I filled out, and that was enough for him to yell “NOT THAT LINE. YOU SIGNED ON THE WRONG LINE EVEN AFTER I TOLD YOU WHICH LINE TO SIGN ON.”
Eventually I got my $12.60 (Amtrak has a 10% convenience fee for refunds, of course) and scampered out of there, delighted for having used my cunning and wiles to get a refund on a ticket that was not only ALMOST in two pieces but had NO NAME on it, simply by driving 20 miles round trip and losing $1.40 on the deal. Am I a smooth criminal, or what?
Why, yes, you ARE wrecking your kids
One of the wrecked kids, back when she was a little peanut.
Erin (Queen of Spain) wrote a post about getting criticized for letting her children dress themselves for school picture day:
This is important Erin, every family member will have these photos on their mantle or fridge. Don’t you want them to look…you know…normal?
I hate to tell Erin this, but those critics are right. She is wrecking her kids by letting them behave however they like.
We want them to express themselves and know they should feel pride for picking out what makes them…THEM. Not some watered down, matching, scratchy, uncomfy, looked like they stepped out of some catalog version of them their own parents wouldn’t even recognize.
Wrong, wrong, wrong. Erin, you’re doing your kids a disservice. They’re never going to fit in to decent society if you let your kids think that their individuality is important. Take a look around. Why do people absolutely freak out if a house is painted orange or purple or bright blue? Because those people don’t FIT IN.
Your primary job as a mother should be to train your children to go along and get along. Then they can make a good amount of money, not cause trouble and be admired by many. They won’t be kicked out of school or march in the streets or ask questions that will get them in trouble with authorities.
When I lived over in the Conejo Valley, I observed the phenomenon of executive wives and thought a lot about those people. These were stay-at-home wives of rich and powerful men, and they were remarkably uniform.
They had a style that was completely artificial, but had to appear natural. It also required huge amounts of time, energy and money to upkeep. First, no matter what their age or body type, they had to be thin. Bodacious curvacaceous women need not apply. They had to actually be very thin, the kind of thin that requires constant work and maintenance, and constant dietary restriction.
They had colored hair if they were at an age where grey might appear, but it had to look natural, not platinum blonde or copper red. Likewise with their makeup – it had to be perfect, but not look “done.”
And their clothing was the most restrictive, uncomfortable uniform ever. No flowy fabrics or obnoxiously bright prints. Everything had to be tailored, tight without being sexy, clean and pressed enough to look like it had never been used before, and expensive. Definitely high heels. No comfortable footwear.
At times, it felt a little eerie, a little Stepford-ish. I remember asking one of them a question as a reporter. She was gorgeous, in that way. Her teeth were blinding white, her hair a honeyed blonde, blown out to perfect smooth straightness. Her recently acquired breasts perched on her chest like perky, oversized cupcakes.
But when I asked her a question, panic flickered across her eyes. It was an simple opinion question about how traffic was around her kid’s school (terrible, by the way). She stammered, “I don’t…I can’t…” You see, having opinions was not part of her gig.
These executive wives have an agreement, and that goes like this – I will provide my husband with a picture-perfect partner. I will not stand out in any way. Any touches of individuality I have will be within a certain carefully defined framework. I will choose my look, my activities, my whole life, from a small selection of what is appropriate for someone of my station. I will never rock the boat. And for that, I will be richly rewarded with a lovely home, all of my material needs met, opportunities to educate my children, travel, club memberships – and if my husband tires of me, I will get a good divorce settlement.
Everything about her is an advertisement for the fact that she’s not going to be a speck of trouble to anyone. This is marketable. This is desirable. This is what most of the world wants and requires.
Meanwhile, her husband has made the same kind of agreements. He can wear plain or striped shirts, but not bold stripes or rainbow stripes or even plaid. He can advertise his commitment to fitting in by spending a huge pile of money on an expensive watch that performs exactly the same function as something that costs $19 at the corner chain pharmacy.
“Look how much I want to be one of you all – I could have spent that $6000 on something I actually wanted and that would be fun, but I dropped it on a status symbol, see – that’s how important this status is! You can be sure I won’t do anything to damage that. Please keep letting me be one of you.”
And it’s not just wealthy people. We all carve out our niches, have our “drag,” whether it is teacher drag or truck driver drag or biker drag. (Have you seen “Paris is Burning”? One of the most brilliant exposés of costuming and fitting in ever.)
We telegraph our status by our choices and when people don’t play by cultural norms, it can be very disturbing and threatening to others – witness the outrage when someone paints their house purple or lets their little boy wear nail polish.
So Erin, it’s true. I believe you are warping your kids. If you let them do what they want now, they will never learn the importance of hammering their malleable little selves into society’s molds so they can fit in.
If you aren’t careful, they’re going to become artists, question-askers, musicians, dreamers. And who wants THAT?
Photo
In all my years in California, I had never, ever seen the ocean as calm as it was yesterday.
One of my favorite people, LaurieWrites and I had about two hours together in Venice. We lunched like ladies and walked out on Venice pier.
Dreamland
You know what is a bad way to wake up? Jerking awake because you are dreaming that you fell asleep during a really boring conference call and the leader is calling your name to make a report…WAY too realistic.
Adventures in Cuisine with Mom
Mom needed nutmeg and I needed cinnamon, so I placed a Penzey’s order. If you like to cook and you don’t know Penzey’s, you NEED to. They have the best, tastiest, freshest spices at really reasonable prices.
No, they are not paying me.
ANYWAY – Penzey’s sent me some free stuff in the order, including some salt-free spice mix. I gave it to Mom and she said it sounded delicious and that she could not WAIT to try it.
Cut to the next day.
Now is where I should perhaps mention that my mother is a terrible cook. I don’t know how she does it, but she has the culinary equivalent of tone deafness.
So. She says “Do you want to taste the carrots I cooked with the new spices?”
Sure, I say. I take a taste and LIKE TO DIE.
Mom didn’t use the salt-free spice blend. She used the cinnamon and nutmeg. She threw in some honey for good measure. What on earth, people.
“Gack!” I spewed.
“You don’t like it?” she said.
I don’t know how she does it. It’s horrible. It’s like me trying to sing or something. It just should not be done.
Photo from Flickr by Funadium (Marco Bernardini). Used under a Creative Commons license.
Suebob's Red Stapler 