Like the Automated Postal Center at your Post Office? Fuhgeddahboudit!

When I mailed a package at the post office today, I asked the clerk a question about the Automated Postal Center (APC) in the lobby. I love those things. They're so handy. But now I wish I hadn't asked.

The clerk said the APCs will soon be torn out of all post offices. Not because they don't work, but because they work too well. My chatty clerk said, "They want customers to come in and see us." When I wondered why, he said, "So we can keep our jobs--the Post Office is laying off 40,000 people." He said that's why they removed the lobby stamp machines (you did notice they were gone, didn't you?)

"But you aren't here at 8 o'clock at night when I need to mail a package!" I said. He just looked at me. It was clear that he had already weighed my need to mail packages after hours with his need for a job, and my need was found sadly lacking. I was defeated. I left, shaking my head. De-automation just seems so wrong. Am I missing something here?

Struggling companies all over America are trying to keep us away from their customer service reps. They direct us to the internet and trap us in telephone trees so complex we never get to talk to a human. But the Post Office, our government in action, wants to give us real live people to deal with--not during hours that are convenient to us, of course--but still, real live people! In fact, they are so intent on giving us those people, they're willing to take away all our non-people options.

It's like watching a film running backward very fast. I think I feel vertigo coming on.

There Never Used to be Anything Cool About Coachella

My mom grew up in border towns in the Coachella and Imperial Valleys. Cool people didn't live there. Nobody lived there who didn't have to. It was really not cool in summer, when the field workers sucked on saltiditos--dried plums coated in salt--to keep from passing out in the heat.

Rich people went to Palm Springs, just over the mountains from Southern California, in the winter. The road from Palm Springs to Indio was long, lonely, and really hot in summer--even at night. What a difference 60 years and air conditioning makes! From Palm Springs to Indio is now one long string of housing devlopments. People live there year-round. My aunt and uncle do, and they love it. My uncle must not remember what it was like when he was a kid. Or maybe he does, but it doesn't matter now, because he has a pool and A/C.

And I hear that Coachella now has a cool music festival that cool people love to go to. I wonder what the saltidito-sucking field workers would think? Maybe they'd get out their guitars and join in. My mom says they mostly sang off-key, like her dad. I'd like to see that.

Truly Desperate Housewives

You wouldn't think there would be a big market for smuggled soap in America, would you? (Shows what you know.)

"Spokane's Soap Smugglers Make Clean Getaways," says the cutesy headline in the Seattle Times. It seems we now have a new breed of criminals--people who want clean dishes so badly they'll drive across the Idaho state line to get phosphate-laden soap for their automatic dishwashers.

The article explains: "Spokane County in July adopted a near-total ban on sales of water-softening phosphates in dishwasher detergent — the first in the nation — in an attempt to slow the flood of pollutants that is sucking oxygen out of the endangered Spokane River, smothering its fish."

Seems like a noble endeavor. Problem is, the soap industry isn't ready with a low-phosphate substitute that actually cleans dishes. It may purport to do so, but it just makes them slippery and leaves a greasy film. We have to wait until 2010, when the manufacturers think they may have a low-phosphate dish washing soap that doesn't evoke cries of "Ewww!" from people as they unload their dishwashers. Fastidious Spokane housekeepers are aghast. They're also driving 45 minutes out of their way to get to another county (and in this case, another state) to buy the good old-fashioned stuff that makes fish die horrible, gasping deaths.

[Interesting note: only automatic dish washing soap requires phosphates to dislodge food and grease. Hand washing dish detergent contains no phosphates, because you provide the food-dislodging power when you scrub.]

My county has no phosphate ban (yet). Maybe I can adopt a Spokane housewife--the way we adopt needy children in other countries--and send her a monthly package of contraband dish soap.

Like having Yoda on My Chest

By virtue of the fact that I am a short-statured person, I see most movies and presentations with about 1/6 of the screen obscured by the backs of people's heads. When I drive my small Japanese sedan, I lose a big chunk of my forward visibility to SUVs. I've kinda gotten used to it.

Scruffdog has kinda gotten used to sitting on my chest when I sit on the couch. It was fine when he was recovering from injuries and was a little limp dog with his head on my shoulder. Now that he's healthier, he doesn't want to miss anything. He puts his rear end on my shoulder and faces forward. All well and good, except that he has extraordinarily large ears for such a tiny dog.

It's a new experience in view-obstruction. Instead of rounded people heads and box-shaped SUVs, my view is obscured by a Yoda head. A Yoda head that shakes vigorously every few minutes and beats my face with said ears. I'd take action to ameliorate the situation, but it turns out I don't have to. Along with Scruffdog's increased health has come increased weight. He begins the slow slide down the front of me within a couple of minutes of parking on my shoulder, and winds up on my lap without any help from me. He always looks surprised.

"Don't look at me, Buddy," I say, "I didn't do anything." Except feed him, of course. But he doesn't make that connection. He is, after all, just a dog.

We Gotta "Cut to the Bone"

Oprah sets such a high bar for excellence on her show that I can only watch it occasionally. I get tired just thinking about doing all those energy-sucking self-improvement projects, so I generally flip to MASH reruns.

I did watch the segment with Suze Orman last week, about surviving the recession. A beautiful couple in Southern California revealed how quickly their carefully-planned financial life fell to pieces. They did everything right, and they represent the people I admire (yes, and sometimes envy) for the prosperity they earned through hard work and self-discipline. It was a revelation to me that people who "did everything right" are hurting just as badly as those of us who are never quite sure we're doing anything right.

Those of us who aren't sure we're doing anything right aren't surprised our plans aren't working out. We're used to it. We're lying low, waiting for a new inspiration (that hopefully doesn't involve serving french fries.) Those poor, stunned people who did everything right, but got slammed by the economy anyway, have to overcome a huge shock before they can move forward. I feel for them, and I hope french fries won't be part of their new reality, either.

Suze Orman told everyone to "cut to the bone"--figure out how to live on half of what you've been spending--and stop looking back at what you had so you can figure out how to work with what you have. She was more directive than Ben Stein on CBS Sunday Morning News, whose recession-survival advice was, "Get a dog."

For once, I feel like part of the clever and accomplished crowd. I cut to the bone months ago (OK, so it wasn't by choice,) and I got a dog. Survival feels like excellence in these circumstances! Maybe Oprah will ask me to share my secrets on her show.

We Only Thought We Came a Long Way, Baby

"No Traces of Women's Faces," reads the headline. Next to it are two pictures of Israel's new Cabinet--one showing the two women who are cabinet members, one without them. In fact, men have been photoshopped into their places. I gasped. I thought Israel, for whom we daily risk the ire of the Arab world, was a little more like us.

It turns out that the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish sects think it is immodest to print images of women. Just like their Islamic brethren--from whom they consider themselves to be so different--they think women should be singled out for second-class citizenship. Oy!

To be fair, the altered photos apparently appeared in only two newspapers, the ones aimed at the Ultra-Orthodox sects. Some other Israeli papers printed both pictures, with the caption, "Find the Lady." OH-KAAAY, then. I am relieved. There are differences of opinions--just like there are here--and good-humored acceptance of those differences (which we sometimes have here).

OK, President Obama. I've stopped gasping. You can keep sending my tax money to our ally in the Mideast. (And maybe go get the "Find the Lady" journalist for your public relations staff!)

Confessions of a Light-Deprived Northwesterner

It snowed here today--on April-fricking-first! The weather is making us all a little nuts here. Be gentle with us about our mass caffeine addiction; it's the only thing keeping us upright at this point.

A friend told me on the phone that she thinks one of the reasons she watches CSI Miami is because of all the sunshine. Coincidentally, while she told me this I had a Merchant Ivory DVD paused on my TV. The movie was filmed in India and drips with color--and sunshine. In it, people are trapped by their destinies, lives are ruined, and there is much haunted staring at the camera. But I callously zipped over all that; I wanted those sunny backgrounds, no matter how much misery I had to ignore to get them. My friend and I are after the same thing--we want the assurance that sunshine still exists somewhere in the world.

I know all of you in other areas of the country are buying cotton summer clothing. I envy you. I, on the other hand, just bought a wool Filson "Packer" hat at David Morgan. It's divine. It stops the buckets of ice water from going down the back of my neck while I wait at my end of the leash for Scruffdog to do his bizness. And I think it's stiff enough to double as a helmet should I fall over while trying to retrieve said bizness from the inaccessible places he prefers. I love my new hat. I'm going to wear it every day until the weather gets too warm. Don't worry; I'll get plenty of wear out of it, because that won't happen for about three-and-a-half months (this is Seattle we're talking about.)

Meanwhile, I've reluctantly put dreams of diaphanous cotton dresses and sandals on hold. No, I don't want to hear about your heat wave, or that you've had to turn on your A/C--unless the complaint is accompanied by an airline ticket for me to join you in your "misery"!