Best Use of a Brick

I think it's spring, but I'm not sure. The calendar says it is. Here in Seattle, sunshine is a rare and welcome visitor, even at this time of year. If only there was some concrete way of knowing for sure--daily sunshine, perhaps?--or a maybe brick, like the one in West Danville, Vermont.

Those Vermonters figured out a way to entertain themselves in the dark of winter and find out for sure when that dark winter is officially over. They tie a 65-pound cinder block to a wooden pallet, place the pallet on the frozen surface of Joe's Pond, and bet $1 to guess when it will fall through. More than 12,000 people made bets this year, demonstrating our human need for definitive answers--and proving that people will bet on anything, especially in the dead of winter.

It fell through at 5:25 PM on April 25th this year. Hooray! It's spring in West Danville, Vermont. Now, if I can just figure out if the Seattle sky is a brighter gray a little longer each day... but that would just be deductive reasoning. A brick falling through ice--now that's concrete proof!

Squeaky Epiphany

Every week she visited, and every week Little Black Dog brought his Squeaky toy for her to throw. Every week, she ignored him. But Little Black dog is nothing if not persistent (the word "obsessed" comes to mind.) He believes an empty human hand has one purpose--to throw Squeaky for him to chase. This guest had an opposable thumb and she wasn't using it to his benefit--a doggie sacrilege. The fact that Baby Girl was only six months old did not deter him.

He finally got his hallelujiah moment after perservering for a year and a half. She threw Squeaky, then she laughed a contagious two-year old's laugh and hugged herself with with glee when he chased it--over and over again. It was synchronized hilarity--and I didn't have to throw anything, chase anyone, or bend over to pick anything up. Heaven.

A panting Little black dog finally crawled into my lap and a sweaty Baby Girl cuddled up next to me. That's when I had my epiphany. They were limp with exertion, and I was neither sweaty nor tired. I thought I heard angels singing. I wonder if I could have taught her to do this when she was still crawling? Al Gore is a great guy and all, but this is the kind of energy conservation I can really get behind!

Bestest Sick Day Buddies

I am home from work today, with one of those headaches that demands closed blinds and very little movement, especially of the head. That last part is unfortunate, because it makes TV my bestest sick day buddy. Man, there's some weird stuff on daytime TV! I applaud all my active retired friends who refuse turn it on at all during the day.

I am a sucker for a good sales pitch (or even a mediocre one, delivered with enthusiasm). It's a good thing I can barely move today, or there would be a pile of boxes on the front porch in the next week. I usually hate that guy with the black beard who yells at us and practically demands we buy his weird household products, but today my distended brain thought he made sense. And I would have called Jack LaLane "right now, to get this special juicer offer," if it didn't involve turning on a light and looking at small numbers on a credit card. Fortunately, one of the little dogs stepped on the remote and turned off the TV.

Dogs often have more sense than we do.

What a Weird Night

It's April 18. Why the !@#$ is it snowing? have I errands to run, people to see, and places to go. But here I sit, glaring out the window. Enough winter, already! Young Geezer is walking through the house singing, "Chestnuts roasting on an open fire," and telling me what nice November night it is. Someday, he's going to push me just a little too far.

Everyone up here in the Pacific Northwest is really weary of this. Can't Mother Nature read a calendar? It's officially Spring--she needs to get with the program! Flowering trees are tenaciously holding on to their blossoms and rhondodendrums don't seem intimidated by the freezing white stuff, but the tulips were a little shy, and didn't make it out in time for the annual tulip festival.

It's spring, but it's snowing--heavily. Daylight savings time came early and my computer just can't get the time right, despite the fact that I manually changed the time no less than three times. I don't know if it's 8:37 or 9:37. A lunatic is walking around my house singing Christmas songs.

What a weird night.

Pope-in-a-Box

The lunchroom TVs are tuned to CNN with the sound turned off, showing the Popemobile on the streets of Washington, D.C. It occurred to me that in past centuries, dragging a religious leader through the streets in a box would have had whole different meaning.

Brain-Trance

After a hellacious day at the office, some of us use high-calorie carbohydrates to put our brains in a restful trance. It's like our hands are robots, dipping into the bag of cookies or chips over and over, levering them into the mouth with no conscious thought--until the action stops and the lethargic brain realizes it has no idea how the bag became empty.

On the pro side, this behavior generally does not include being in a bar, picking fights with huge drunk people, or crashing the car. On the con side, fat usually ensues (the brain also doesn't know how that happened.)

Either I am doing this at night, or some sloppy people have parties in my living room while I'm in a trance in front of my TV. They leave wrappers and crumbs, even sprinkling them liberally on my chest to make me think I did it myself. I don't know whether to be worried that I'm a total weirdo freak, or to consider it normal for a sleep-deprived, working American boomer. (I'm going with normal, for now.)

A friend confided that she found (gasp!) candy wrappers under her husband's pillow and bags of chips in his nightstand. "He's got stuff just stashed there!" she said, her face scrunched up in disbelief. I was struck by the ingenuity of the man, arranging his brain-trance so he could just fall asleep without having to get up from the couch.

I think I was supposed to say something like, "Oh, that is weird!" But all I said was, "What kind of candy?" Judging from the look on her face, I think I may have claimed "normal" a bit too hastily.

Me Check? No, YOU check!

I generally avoid the self-check aisles at the grocery store. I was feeling cocky tonight because I finally remembered to bring one of the 10 re-usable bags scattered in my trunk and on my back seat. Why not conquer the intimidating U-Check line, too?

Things didn't go well from the beginning. The mechanized voice was sure I was trying to steal something when I put my re-usable bag in the bag dispenser. "Please scan the item before you put it in the bag," it said. "It is a bag!" I told it. The people behind me averted their eyes. "Please scan the item BEFORE you put it in the bag!" demanded the voice. I was trying to scan my little container of Hagen Daz ice cream by then, but it would have none of it. It kept ordering me to scan my first item. The clerk who is supposed to be keeping an eye on the U-Check circus was impatiently listening to a man explain why he didn't do it that way when he was sure the machine wanted it the other way the last time he was in.

I waited as patiently as I could (which, people who know me will tell you, means I was practically jumping up and down.) When she turned to me, I said, "It's telling me to scan my item, but it's my re-usable bag from home..." She nodded, nearly as impatient as I. "That's because it's a scale," she explained. "Oh-kaay," I said, "so what do I do about my bag from home?" "There, I fixed it, she said."

The voice calmed down while I scanned my small items, but when I tried to put the bag in my cart and drag a 1-gallon bottle of water up to the scanner, it got downright cranky. "Put the item in the bag!" "Leave the item in the bag!" It tried several commands, the way you do with a puppy to see which it responds to. "The bag is full!" I told it. The people behind me were ready to jump in and take over just to get me out of their way. I frantically slid my ATM card down the slot. "Please wait for cashier," it said. The cashier was getting ready to use one of those handy plastic bags to suffocate the man who was still trying to tell his interminable story.

"Excuse me," I said, "it won't let me pay." I have never seen anyone roll their eyes so completely back in their sockets without an exorcist standing by. She stomped over to my terminal and jabbed the big red "Pay now" button that I had missed, in my frazzled state. Now I was the one averting my eyes."Oh. Sorry." I said.

As I started to roll my cart away, the automated voice said, "Thank you for shopping with us; please come again!" Muttering like the lunatic everyone already assumed I was, I snarled, "Nope, not me. Not EVER again!"

I think I need to update my shopping skills one step at a time. I'll work on remembeering to bring in parts of my re-usable bag collection each time I shop. But I'm going to stand in line and read trashy magazines while waiting for the real live cashier--who actually knows how to operate the check-out machine. U-Check can wait. Maybe forever.

Teeth is Good

When my body and I were all shiny and new, I had no idea that living a long life involved spending lots of time and money on maintenance. I thought I would always leap nimbly out of bed in the morning, my hair would always be thick and full, and my teeth would only require perfunctory semi-annual visits to the dentist. Oh, if only!

I'm going to the dentist today for lots of injections and drilling that will eventually result in a new crown. It's not my favorite thing, but true to my boomer status, I'll do almost anything that lets me stay in denial about the gradual decline of the organism. I'm grateful for my mouthful of crowns and fillings, and well aware that without them, I'd look like one of those little dolls with dried apple faces.

My current dentist is a tiny woman from Hong Kong. Her skilled hands fit in my small mouth and she works quickly and nearly painlessly. She told me schools were too competitive in Hong Kong, so she had to go to her second choice--Harvard. I love that.

She also made me aware that you can outlive your fillings. What? Did I miss that section in the Human Body Owner's Manual? She's right, though--mine are abandoning me at an alarming rate. She said fillings and crowns only have a life expectancy of 10-15 years. My jaw would have dropped if my mouth hadn't already been propped open.

I'm aghast. Fillings and crowns age faster than we do--and MediCare doesn't have dental coverage! No wonder my Godmother worked until she was over 70. (That, and her strong desire not to be stuck at home with her stone-deaf husband, who refuses to get a hearing aid.)

I'm definitely going to have to figure out a plan to take care of my choppers when retirement rolls around in a half a decade or so. Until then, I'll just stay focused on gratitude--for teeth, for dental insurance, and for a body that can still get itself to the dentist's office!

Lights Out for Buzzwinkle

Alas, Buzzwinkle--Anchorage's ancient, crab-apple- eating, Christmas-light-wearing moose--is no more. He was 13 years old, three years older than most wild moose ever get to be. His old body just couldn't move any more, so last week wildlife biologist Rick Sinnott ushered him humanely into the great moose meadow in the sky.

Residents and wildlife biologists apparently regarded Buzzwinkle as one of their own, and treated him as kindly as they would anyone's drunk old uncle stumbling about. In November, he got tangled in a rope swing in someone's yard, then went to Town Square Park and snagged his antlers on Christmas lights. With Christmas lights still dangling, the mellow moose ambled over to Bernie's Bungalow Lounge and ate a pile of fermented crab apples he found in the courtyard. Then he "assumed a disoriented pose as he began snorting steam and staring off into the distance, apparently drunk," according to the Anchorage Daily News. That's when people started calling him "Buzzwinkle", a title Sinnot affectionately called the "most embarrassing nickname ever given to a moose."

But Buzzwinkle might have had something there. Christmas in Anchorage is very dark and cold. What better way to pass the time than by decorating your head and snorting steam?

You say Goldfish, I say Garibaldi

As a Boomer, I find myself on a precipice over which I really don't want to fall. We boomers might consider ourselves kind of old sometimes, but we like to distinguish ourselves from the truly elderly by thinking we are still somehow "cool." The quickest way to be uncool is to constantly tell stories about the cool stuff you did when you were young. The uncoolness solidifies when you wind up telling the same stories over and over--to the same people!

One of the coolest things I did when I was young in California was to become a SCUBA diver at the age of 15 and continue diving until I left the state 25 years later. I love the underwater world, and I love the kelp forest of southern California and its denizens. I try not to expound on that too much to unsuspecting young friends, because it is in the past--and a hallmark of the truly elderly is that they don't see any new adventure in their futures, so they just talk about the past over and over (well, that's how it seems in the world of the Bemused Boomer.)

I do keep little mementoes and pictures about that remind me of past joy. I try not to point them out to people and expound at length (but its' a struggle!) When I'm feeling nostalgic, sometimes I search the internet for pictures of things I remember (because we all know how reliable the human memory is--especially boomer memory!) I hit pay dirt when I happened onto Divesitedirectory.co.uk. while searching for pictures of Garibaldi, the bright orange perch that play in the kelp and swim right up to divers. (They know they are safe; there has been a moratorium on spearing them since about the 1940s.) I loved playing with the Garibaldi.

I have this photo on the wall of my dark little cube at work. It was recently taken in waters off of Catalina Island, California, by a British diver named Carina Hall (Divesitedirectory put me in touch with her and she sold me a print.) At first glance, you probably see the same thing my co-workers see : a couple of goldfish. I see the glorious blue water of Southern California, the constantly moving golden kelp in a forest that is a nursery for all types critters, and two Garibaldi, who like to nip at divers' masks then dart away. I feel the cool water and hear the crackling shrimp. I feel the freedom of being bouyant in a 3-dimensional world that allowed me to swan dive to the bottom of a cliff to look into a cave and almost effortlessy kick my way back up, spying on thousands of little creatures in their rock homes as I did (it was fun for me; probably a little terrifying for them.)

I suppose that at some point the picture will become such a part of the background I won't notice it much. I've had it up for several months now, though, and I still get that same rush of joy I felt when I was underwater. They say visualizing and remembering great experiences activates the same areas of the brain as the actual experience. I hope so. I need something to hold me over until I go out and create some new adventures!

I Thought I was His One and Only

The first time I met him, he snuggled close and gazed at me adoringly with his dark eyes. "You're my One and Only," those eyes said. Of course, he's a tiny little black poodle, and this was the crucial meeting that determined if we would adopt him and his brother. What else were those eyes going to say (besides "Take me home, spoil me, feed me, make me the center of your universe!")

He curled up on my chest, directly over my heart, gave a big sigh, and relaxed. I was in love. It's been three years and he still makes a beeline for me when I come home, clambers up to my heart, and parks there. It feels very special.

Sometimes Young Geezer takes the dogs with him when he and my brother and sister-in-law go visiting up north for the day. "How does the little black dog do in the car?" I asked. "Oh, just fine," he answered, "He climbs up on my sister-in-law and sits on her chest, just like he does on you."

"Why, that little player!" I exclaimed, "I thought I was his One and Only!" Young Geezer and I had a good laugh. Little black dog knows how to get exactly what he needs--and makes no apology. What a great way to live!