Mysteriously Disappearing Dryer Balls

I really like using those bumpy, little blue dryer balls in my dryer. Clothes dry faster and seem softer. I'm not sure they help the longevity of my clothes, but I do appreciate spending less of my limited time on this planet doing laundry.


The other day, one of them disappeared. Since they often fall out of the laundry pile as I'm moving it, I just figured it rolled someplace and would turn up. It hasn't. I heard the remaining ball hit the floor today when I pulled out a load of towels. It was nowhere to be seen when I looked for it. Very mysterious. Then I saw a blur out of the corner of my eye. A blue and blonde blur.


He won't play with tennis balls. He snubs the toys I've slavishly provided in hopes of improving his quality of his life with a sedentary boomer. Now it turns out I could have saved myself a lot of trouble and just given up my beloved dryer balls. I am, to say the least, bemused.

Got to Keep On Moving...

They tell us boomers that we have to "use it or lose it." (Stop sniggering. I know what you're thinking, but that's not what I mean.) Joints stiffen up if we don't make a concentrated effort to get them moving, vitamins are not optional, and spending too much time on the couch quickly results in a body molded to that piece of furniture and not good for much else.

It's daunting. I'm at the age where I'd like to stop running about, but now it's mandatory! I worked out with a trainer at my fitness center yesterday. By the time she made allowances for my stiff parts and my previously injured parts, I was pretty much doing a sitting and standing routine I would have laughed at 20 years ago. And it was hard to do! I'm getting humility the hard way.

Much use of aspirin made it possible for me to sleep last night. I'm going back today. I think the warm therapy pool will be my first stop.

Jay Leno and the Prez

I TiVo'd President Barack Obama's appearance on the Tonight Show. Well, it was historical, wasn't it? It was the first time a sitting President has appeared on the Tonight Show. (Johnny Carson would have grinned so hard his face would have gotten stuck!)

He bantered with Jay Leno, made his points, and said something I thought was funny and endearing but many Americans didn't. The complaints started almost immediately. That's the thing: he was genuine and engaging, and his guard appeared to be down. I felt like I was sitting there with them, hearing a real conversation. I couldn't believe it. I haven't heard anything like that since the famous Bill and Hillary Clinton interviews at the beginning of President Clinton's first term. I don't think they were ever that candid on TV again; they got smacked around in the press a lot for that.

I hope President Obama doesn't get smacked around by his advisors so badly that he stops being so open. It's refreshing to hear real, not canned, reactions from a politician. Besides, he did a great Jack Benny face when Jay Leno asked him a couple of teasing questions. Now, that's something we definitely want to hold on to!

Mystery on my Doorstep

I'm not quite sure why I put the sparkly silver and blue balls on my front steps. Maybe I thought they looked whimsical. Maybe I thought they distracted the eye from the mossy carpeting some crazed person put on the outdoor steps (in the soggy Northwest? Puh-leez). And they reflected the sun on the rare occasions it showed up.

My daughter bequeathed the orbs to me when she moved to Italy. Apparently, they came with her Whidbey Island apartment when she moved in, bequeathed by a previous tenant. We thought they were sort of mysterious (who made them? what did they use them for?) I was pleased with myself for finding such a jaunty use for them. I knew they were vulnerable in my high-density neighborhood, where kids run and laugh and play on the sidewalks after school. I wondered if the sparkly balls would disappear one day.

I felt sad when I arrived home after dark last night and found the sparkly blue ball missing from the lower step. Despite my determination to consider them disposable, I was fond of them. I hoped someone was enjoying it--or at least, enjoying the mystery of contemplating what it could possibly be used for.

When I took Scruffdog out this morning, the early light struck a pile of sparkly blue bits at the bottom of the stairs. Not enough to have been the whole ball, just a few shards trapped in a depression in the concrete. More mystery! What happened? Did someone break it on purpose? Did someone break it accidentally and try to sweep up, but missed these bits? Why can't I use this evidence to figure out what happened, like Monk, the TV detective?

The asymmetry of just one ball on two steps bothers me (I may be more like Monk than I thought.) What to put there? Something to deter future miscreants, like a little skull or a potted cactus? (Lacks the jaunty factor.) Ah, well. One of my new activities, as an accidentally semi-retired/unemployed person, is visiting thrift stores.

It seems that some people leave items for subsequent tenants when they move, and others haul them off to charity. I'm not opposed to replacing a serendipitously bequeathed item with one I have to find myself-- I'll just look around until something cries out to become my new, jaunty, disposable porch decoration.

No Sleep in my Neighborhood Tonight

A couple of police cars seem to be involved in the world's slowest chase outside my window. A siren at the intersection 50 yards from my bedroom window wails for about 15 seconds and flashing blue lights reflect off my blinds. It stops, and a siren about a block away takes up the cry. Just as I think I might be able to sleep, it starts again. What kind of a chase sounds like that? I envision officers driving alongside a suspect, saying "OK, get in the car. Don't make me use my siren!"

I peer out my balcony door and see bathrobe-clad neighbors standing in rectangles of light on their decks. It's clear there will be no sleep for us until the cops "get their man" (or woman). Go, cops! With such a large contingent of grumpy, sleepless people at their command, the police should just send us out with assorted truncheons and baseball bats. Desperate as we are for sleep, I bet we'd get 'em in no time. But then, we might hurt ourselves in the process.

I know I have some earplugs around here somewhere. It speaks well for the usual quietness of the neighborhood that I don't really know where to look. When I find them, I think I'll just put them in, pull the covers over my head, and and feel gratitude that my city's finest are keeping me safe--though awake--in the wee hours.

My Sleep Number Bed

Have you ever wondered what's inside one of those much-advertised "Sleep Number Beds"? Well, here you have it. The guts of my beloved bed. It cradles me, supports me, and is my haven( for about 10 years now). I really like my bed; I miss it when I travel. It's the bed you long for at 2 am—you can make it softer or firmer with just a touch of a button.

The last couple of months haven't been so great. I sleep fitfully and my back is sore when I wake up. I hit the inflate button, but I don't feel more support. I pondered the problem while in bed the night before last, and wondered in horror if one of the air chambers failed. The next morning, I removed the pillow top and peered inside. It did seem a bit flat. I lay down on the middle and pushed the inflate button. Whoosh. Support. Everywhere. I climbed off and pressed on various chambers. All were functional.

Since I do my best problem solving while prone, I laid down again, in the middle. It felt fine. Scruffdog joined me, and as he has done every night since he came to live with me a couple of months ago, glued himself to my left side. I automatically moved to the right side to give him room.

"Scruffdog." "A couple of months." "To the right side". Uh, oh. I think I see a pattern here.

As you can see, there's not much inflatable support near the edge. In fact, that gray stuff is foam—no inflation there. And apparently, the edge is where I've been sleeping while Scruffdog got the nice, plump middle chambers. Well, he was pretty badly injured when he got here. I wanted to be sure he slept well and didn't get bumped during the night. It worked! He's a feistly little healed-up booger now. I'd better reclaim the middle of the bed, before I become the one who needs special, injured-dog sleeping arrangements.

Just Tell Me What to Think

Along with my breakfast, I'm digesting my daily dose of gloom and doom from the the newspaper. A headline says 4.4M people are affected by cutbacks, unemployment is at 8%, and the sky is falling. (OK, I just threw in the bit about the sky to see if you were paying attention.)

Right next to that is a teaser for an article on page B3: "Irrational Pessimism in the country." The outrageous happenings of the past few months have burned out my double-take response, so I just stared dully. Let's see. Gloom and Doom all around us...pessimism irrational. Oh-kaay. To be fair, the article on B3 was referring to Alan Greenspan's warnings in the late 90s about "irrational exhuberance" for stock when prices were being driven up. It also points out that stocks are about the same as they were then, before the bubble. It's just not as attractive on the way down, I guess.

I think the media is telling me to think all is lost--but maybe not, really. Is someone going to tell me what to think, please?

Meanwhile, I see my friends and family helping neighbors and friends and volunteering in community programs. I see helping hands offered and compassion given--in stark contrast to the way the captains of industry treated all of us over the last decade or so. This is quietly miraclulous. Can a country made up of such people fall into such a deep hole it will never get out? I may be irrationally optimistic, but I think not.

Never mind, don't tell me what to think. I think I'll believe my eyes and my heart.

Scruffdog-Zilla

My dog-whispering friend told me it would happen. I knew something would happen. But now that it's happened, I don't want to believe it. Sweet little Scruffdog has turned into Scruffdog-Zilla! He snapped at Little Black Dog yesterday, then he grabbed the groomer's finger in his mouth (didn't bite, just held it), and today he got downright cranky with the retired guide dog who lives in the neighborhood. Who is this dog?

You know a rescue dog is going to get feistier when he realizes you're not going to send him away. And this lil' guy was so badly injured and medicated when I got him that I knew one day he'd start acting like a dog instead of a stuffed animal. He's still totally focused on, and deferential to, me. (He's not stupid.)

Maybe it's a Sampson effect. The groomer cut off the curly white hair (evidence of a poodle in the family tree) that was adorably growing through shorter brown stuff. Maybe that's where all his cutie-sweetness resided. Maybe it will come back in a couple of months when the hair grows back. Wishful thinking. I know it's now time to find a trainer, which would be OK if he was the only one getting trained. But as any trainer will tell you, the biggest part of training is making sure the owner "gets it" and is consistent. Let's see; the last time I was consistent was...um, never.

He's started whining constantly in the car as some dogs do (other people's dogs) , and right now he is trying to kill his skunk squeaky toy, over and over again. I couldn't even get him to be still long enough for a picture. He's Scruffdog-zilla, stomping through the house looking for things to destroy. Maybe it's the vitamins. Yes, that's it. I'm sure it's the vitamins.