Posted on May 21, 2007
My next door neighbor says she doesn’t think her house is clean unless her windows sparkle. Me? I settle for lower standards. I think my house is clean when everything is in its proper place and the bed is made. It’s all right if there’s a layer of dust and the windows have spots.
My neighbor told me she’s already done her windows twice this spring. For a woman with acute arthritis, this is dedication to her standards. This past weekend, Earl and I attempted to meet her criterion. We spent a couple hours on Saturday and again on Sunday washing our fifty-two windows on the outside and the inside. That’s over one hundred surfaces and four bottles of Windex®. We didn’t do it to please my neighbor; rather it’s an annual ritual. We clean our windows once a year whether they need it or not.
I must admit the windows look great, but the first heavy rainfall will blot our work on the outside and make the inside look less clean. No matter, it’s something one does in the spring, as far as I’m concerned; and it’s probably good for the soul as well as the view.
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Posted on May 20, 2007
Earl and I attended an outdoors show at a local arena a few weeks back. It’s one of those shows where boats and fishing are the featured attractions, but other vendors with peripheral interests to the outdoors set up booths. In this case, the particular booth was staffed by a man who claimed he would feed us a fantastic meal in his special cookware if we hung around.
Since Earl is always up for a meal, we hung around. And sure enough, the aforementioned gentleman did produce a meal of chicken, roasted potatoes, corn on the cob, and other vegetables in record time. They were very good too.
But it wasn’t about being philanthropic; rather Ben, the name on his ID tag, represented Kitchen Craft International, a high-end line of cookware that is sold primarily through home parties and trade shows. I’d heard of Kitchen Craft before when a former friend invited me to her house for the same meal cooked on the same cookware. I was just impressed then with the fresh taste of the food, but I was equally aghast at the price of the cookware.
We’re talking thousands of dollars here to outfit one’s kitchen with the appropriate pots, pans, skillets, griddles. I wasn’t tempted because my kitchen is already staffed with more pots and pans than I can ever use at one time. However, Ben demonstrated an electric skillet that did catch my fancy. My current one looks as if I’d mixed tar and feathers in it.
So I broke down and parted with (Be prepared to gasp here. . .) almost four hundred dollars for an electric skillet. Yes, that’s $400! The Liquid Core® Electric Skillet, where you can cook without oil and clean up in an instant, was mine.
Ben had used it in his demonstration and expounded its virtues as he cooked. The thing is that Ben didn’t arrive at my home with the skillet, and I can’t remember all the little tips he offered. So I now have this fancy cookware, but don’t feel up to the challenge of using it. But I’ve added mastering my skillet to the list of things I want to learn. I’ve also admonished myself to stay away from outdoors shows.
See more 10 Minutes in category Dining/Food
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Posted on May 18, 2007
My oldest friend, meaning the friend I’ve known the longest and not necessarily the most aged, just spent two days here. We wined and dined and even shopped a little. But what we did most was talk. We have over five decades of friendship to recall; in fact, next year we will celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation from eighth grade.
One afternoon we tried sitting on our deck, even though the weather was brisk. But we bundled in an old quilt that once belonged to Earl’s mother and turned our backs to the wind to revel in the beauty of late spring and our being together.
We heard the back door creak and Earl came to join us. He was carrying a framed photo Carol had given me about ten years ago. It showed the two of us as children in summer clothing, arms around each other, innocent and smiling. I keep this photo in my kitchen and look at it often.
Earl stood in front of us with the framed photo, looking first at it and then at us. I think I remember him saying, “Nope, you two haven’t changed a bit.” Then he went and got his camera and took an updated photo of Carol and me holding the framed one. I’m eager to see it.
The truth is both of us have changed. We’ve experienced marriage and children and careers and the death of parents together. We’re both retirement age. We’re no longer innocent. But as Earl’s picture will reveal, we still have our arms around each other. And we’re still smiling.
See more 10 Minutes in category Me/Family, Nostalgia
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Posted on May 15, 2007
We have a variety of bird feeders that hang from tree limbs and dot the perimeter of our home, and we are in constant warfare with the squirrels who think we set this food out for them. For the record, we do not. But squirrels are a clever and tenacious species, and they are determined to prove us wrong.
They can frequently be found hanging upside down from a tree branch, hanging on by their hind claws while their front claws are grabbing seeds left and right from a feeder.
This past weekend they found the mother lode with no problem at all. Here’s how.
One of Earl’s pricier feeders was clogged, so that neither bird nor beast was getting any food. So we decided to return it to the store where we’d bought it and take advantage of the product’s lifetime guarantee. But first Earl emptied the contents onto our deck.
Enter Porky the Squirrel.
There was probably a pint of good bird food on our deck, and it wasn’t long before a brown squirrel arrived to sample it. Not only did he sample, but he stayed. He stayed for two days eating every little seed and nut while fending off other squirrels who might want a bite of the buffet. Hence, we named him Porky and were sure we saw him grow fatter in real time. We wondered if he’d explode.
The interesting thing was that, while Porky refused to allow other squirrels to partake in the birdseed buffet, he shrank when approached by two bluebirds who wanted their due. It was fascinating to watch bird and beast accommodate each other, dancing around the food feast and keeping a wary eye.
Today, however, Earl blew the deck clear of debris in anticipation of our houseguest who arrives tomorrow. In essence, the buffet was closed. Gone were the seeds and nuts, as they were blown into the grass. Gone too was Porky, although I suspect we’ll see him rummaging in the green blades for more food. It makes me wonder if squirrels are more like humans at Thanksgiving than we acknowledge.
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Posted on May 13, 2007
I’m often the first to complain about AT&T and its customer service. I whine that it takes forever to wend one’s way through the automated telephone system, when a telephone company is supposed to be all about communication. I moan about the difficulty of changing one’s services too. But in all fairness, AT&T came through for me this weekend.
On Friday the man who mows our lawn accidentally cut the telephone wires that extend from a pole by the road to our house. I learned this later; at the time, all I knew was that I had no dial tone. So I dug my dusty cell phone from the drawer where it lives and called AT&T. (I suppose I should acknowledge the value of cell phones while I’m at it.)
After pushing all those buttons in the automated system, I finally reached Ellen, probably in customer service, who maintained her calm as I complained about my phone. The short of it was that she promised that I would have everything back in working order no later than 7 PM tonight. Visions of having to use a cell phone for an entire weekend swarmed in my head, but there seemed to be no alternative.
To my delight, however, the phone was back in working order within several hours. Even though this was on a weekend, a repairman came to the house and discovered that the wires had been cut. I had gone to do some errands, and when I returned there was a note from Peter the Repairman documenting the problem and what he did to fix it. He also left his business card, the business card of his supervisor, and the equivalent of a corporate thank you note for being a loyal customer.
To say the least I was impressed and wondered if the telephone company was trying to be more communicative. In fact, I was so impressed that I called Peter’s supervisor and told her via voicemail that I would publicly compliment him and the AT&T team that enabled me to be ready to hear from my two sons on Mother’s Day. So thanks, Peter. And Kevin, Keith and Chris, the lines are open.
See more 10 Minutes in category Special Events, Technology
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Posted on May 11, 2007
My life is becoming dominated with user names and passwords, security questions and secret clues. It’s making me grumpy.
Just in the past two days I’ve redeemed airline miles, signed up for commercial-free radio, and bought some items online. Each of these transactions requires that I register on the site involved. This, in turn, means creating a user name and a password and also revealing my email address so that the company involved can email me a congratulatory note for joining their “family.”
The truth is I don’t want to register at a site to be able to purchase something from it. I don’t want the vendor to remember me and what I’ve bought in the past. (Amazon is famous for this.) And I don’t want unsolicited emails telling me about upcoming sales or reminding me that Mother’s Day is the next holiday for which I should be purchasing gifts.
Many of these emails do have an “unsubscribe” feature, which enables the user to opt out of any future communication. But this feature is frequently difficult to find and implement. It takes time too.
I also find it frustrating that when I revisit a site to make another purchase on a different day I must remember my user ID and password before proceeding. Maybe this is a way of tracking a customer’s loyalty or frequency of buying, but it strikes me as also making the process more difficult. I don’t always record that information; but, never fear, the site has a solution for this too. You click on “Forgot my password” and, Voila!, the invisible company resends it to you via your email, of course.
I’m thinking the old fashioned way of physically going to a store and paying cold cash for an item is the easiest. It’s the most anonymous too.
See more 10 Minutes in category Annoyances, Technology
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Posted on May 10, 2007
Today I heard a commercial on the radio for a restaurant that billed itself as “casually elegant.” It struck a wrong note.
I mean, either you are a casual restaurant or an elegant restaurant; but I do not believe you can be a casually elegant restaurant. The two adjectives cancel each other. Elegant by definition is not casual; it’s carefully orchestrated, carefully conducted. So I made the assumption that the restaurant is trying to appeal to a broad range of diners, trying to entice those who want to wear shorts with those who want to wear ties and jackets. It’s not a good idea.
On the other hand, can a restaurant offer elegantly casual dining? I think so. And herein is the issue. Two adjectives attached to a noun need to be in a certain order to be believable. Casually elegant doesn’t work; elegantly casual does. I haven’t done enough grammatical research to see if this hold in every instance, but from a sample of one I’ve deduced this rule: “The fancier adjective must precede the less fancy one.”
Let’s try it in other situations: Simple complexity is a phrase that could describe wine; in a way it has the same issue as casually elegant, with the less flattering adjective being first. Yet, when you switch it around complex simplicity doesn’t mean anything at all. So scratch my theory here.
What about everyday designer clothing? The simpler adjective is first, the fancier adjective second. It makes for a believable phrase. But if we turn it around to read designer everyday clothing, it’s still acceptable; since designers could create a line of everyday clothing.
Maybe casually elegant vs. elegantly casual is a linguistic aberration. I don’t know. I do know, however, that our language is beginning to languish as we accept words and phrases without questioning them.
See more 10 Minutes in category Things to Ponder, Writing
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Posted on May 9, 2007
Early yesterday morning Earl and a couple buddies went fishing in Lake Michigan. He arrived home mid-afternoon with three fish as the result of his efforts, so of course we had one for dinner.
It reminded me of the time a couple years ago that we ordered fresh lobsters from Maine. When they arrived we proceeded to not only let them crawl around the kitchen floor but also to name them before dropping them into a large pot filled with boiling water. Louie and Lilly Lobster went to their final reward, while I pushed back feelings of guilt as we dined on them. That experience taught me never to get personal with my food.
By the time Earl came home yesterday, the fish had already been filleted, so I didn’t have any attachment to them as living, breathing (as much as fish breathe) creatures. But I did think of Louie and Lilly as I prepared our salmon and decided that when I want fresh lobster in the future, I’ll order it in a restaurant and let the chef send it to its watery grave.
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Posted on May 3, 2007
Today I’m spreading mulch, twelve cubic yards of deep red mulch, around the base of the trees on our property. That’s the equivalent of two truck loads. It’s an annual spring ritual for which some of my friends have declared me crazy behind my back.
Mike, our lawn care man, and I have done this together for the past few years. Sometimes, if pressured, Earl joins in; but I can tell he’s only making a guest appearance.
I don’t know what it is about spreading mulch, but I enjoy it. Maybe I am crazy, because I enjoy weeding too; while Mike tends to the more difficult planting, trimming, mowing, and fertilizing. Earl contributes most by writing checks.
When the mulch mucking is done, the trees look dressed and the redness of the mulch offsets the green of the grass. It’s rather dramatic. The red was Earl’s idea; he likes a lot of color. I wanted to settle for something more subtle, but Earl doesn’t do subtle. So two years ago I agreed we’d cover over the dark brown mulch that was my preference for the flag red mulch that is his. I’ve gotten used to it since then. I can even say I like it.
Which is a good thing because at the end of the day the red dye from the mulch is everywhere. That’s why I wear old boots, torn sweats, and rubber gloves. I look like a bag lady but the trees look elegant. Photos to come tomorrow.
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