Bertha Butterbean Bytes

The three wedding crashers

2011-02-22T21:37:00.000-08:00

Some of you know that my daughter runs a bed and breakfast/event center in another city. So far they have been able to fend off the attacks against small enterprises, survive the slowdown and stay in business. Thankfully, some people still get married.

She has three sons who are true to their gender stereotypes and stay as far away from weddings and receptions as they reasonably can. However true to type, again, they exhibit a little interest when it comes to food at weddings.

They will typically come out of their boy caves just before an event and saunter next door for long enough to see what they might be serving at the current reception. They have tasted every kind of wedding cake they make and every kind of dessert dish there is. There are usually leftovers at these events. Did you ever wonder what people do with their leftover wedding cake?

In fact, if knowing what they were eating could make these boys chefs, they would have CPC (Certified Personal Chef) credentials by now. How many of you, especially you males, know what chocolate ganache is? These kids even have ganache preferences.

So usually they aren't terribly impressed with most of the reception fare, but occasionally they wish they were actually invited to the wedding next door so they could eat the food.

One summer Friday, they found out beforehand that Cold Stone Ice Cream was catering that night's wedding reception, and they were impressed.

“Mom, can have some of the ice cream at the reception?”

“No, the only way you would be able to get food at that reception is to get dressed in your Sunday clothes. I think they would notice that you were uninvited guests if you showed up dressed in worn out shorts and flip-flops. You haven't even combed your hair today. Don't even think of going over there.”

Remembering what a struggle it was to get her kids dressed for church on Sunday mornings, Mom patted her own back for cleverly and successfully deflecting that request.

Later that evening, Mom was “working the reception,” making sure that everything went smoothly for the wedding party and their guests. She was in the corner visiting with a guest when she looked across the room toward the food tables and saw three nicely dressed boys being served by the caterers. They seemed to have quite an unhealthy assortment of toppings being mixed into their ice cream too.

“Look at those cute little boys over there; I wonder who they belong to?” she idly asked the guest. Then she squinted a bit harder.

“Oh my gosh, those are my boys!”

“No wonder you thought they were cute.”

“I thought it was safe to tell them they couldn't eat Cold Stone unless they got dressed in their Sunday clothes. I certainly didn't think they would do it. You should hear them complain about tight shoes and stiff collars on Sunday morning.”

The boys successfully and happily got away with crashing the party. And just to make it worth getting dressed up for, they went through the line twice.

I am tickled to think that my grandchildren are resourceful, but my other thought is that serving Cold Stone at church could just possibly change the world.

2011-02-22T21:35:00.000-08:00

Dave Barry, who is a hero of mine has said, “If God had wanted us to be concerned for the plight of the toads, he would have made them cute and furry.”

I am assuming that those words are part of some humor column he wrote about endangered species. There are a lot of people who know more than I do about species and such, but worrying about some of them (not the people) is just beyond my realm of concern except for when I accidentally step on one, in which case concern is hardly a strong enough descriptor.

Yes, it's hard to register alarm when we are talking about the possible disappearance of toads, snakes, bats, or anything with rodent or spider in its name, scientific or otherwise.

Getting excited about prairie dogs and desert ragweed is difficult too.

I did a little research and read that many ecosystems are delicately balanced and the endangerment of one species can effect many others in the same environment. In fact the biggest concern is that since humans and wildlife inhabit the same natural environments, it is important that the balance be maintained for the good of humans.

All this time, I thought that environmentalists were altruistic in their desires to protect species and that they were being protected for their own sakes. Silly me.

Although species become extinct as a natural occurrence, we should be concerned when they are helped along by the activities of humans.

Okay, which is it? Are humans the good guys or the bad guys here?

For myself, I am perfectly willing to get along with the grizzly bear, the gray wolf and for that matter, the black-footed ferret. In fact I have a suggestion for preserving their native habitat which I think is somewhere in the mountains. Simply post signs that say, “Caution, grizzly bears live here.” Nine tenths of us would gladly turn around and go home, or at least camp a hundred miles away. The one tenth who persist in hanging around would probably be the kind who leave no trace for one reason or another anyway.

One reason for preserving every species is that they might be useful to us someday. Fifty percent of prescription medications have active ingredients that come from plants or animals. However, by my count, fifty percent of plants are classified as weeds or are the kinds of plants that make us take prescriptions.

In fact, most of the plant species have not been studied sufficiently to determine what they are good for. Similarly, the complete nature of the relationships of most all of the of the species to each other and their habitats is not clearly understood. I suppose a good share of the mitigation programs involve some guesswork.

It's sort of like messing with the economy. Is endangering the housing market going to topple the world's economy? Probably not if we are busy counting fish instead of beans.

Perhaps the next question is whether protecting a fish or a plant is going to endanger a widespread economy? Or does anyone really know?

Valentine's Day according to Bertha

2011-02-22T21:33:00.000-08:00

There may be a slow-down in the economy right now, but I am here to tell you that those who market goods and services to the American public aren't slowing down. In fact they remind me of that car commercial that takes you through the evolution of travel by putting you in the tracks of each stage of that development. The progression from one stage to another picks up speed as it goes along.

Well, of course it does. The whole point of the development of travel is go faster. Right? Well the whole intent of marketers is to get you to spend more money and spend it faster. I have never taken a marketing class in my life so I might be wrong, but I can tell you that I have learned in the school of hard knocks as a consumer that escalation is the name of the game.

I am very resistant. I have also learned in that school that “a fool and his money are soon parted” and to be careful not to “confuse wants with needs,” etc. etc.

The rate of escalation is especially noticeable when it comes to holidays. Take Valentine's Day for instance. Apparently it is an ancient holiday associated with a couple of Saints whose particular deeds have been forgotten. However, in the middle ages Valentine's Day was marked by giving flowers, confections or handwritten notes.

From the mid-19th century in the United States until the mid-20th century, people mainly exchanged valentine cards, either handwritten or manufactured, as an expression of love.

When I was in grade school we bought or made valentines which we traded at school. We put the valentines on the recipients' desk. That was it. We did spend a lot of time deciding which friend should get the biggest valentine (determined by measuring length and width with a ruler and multiplying) and sometimes the verdict was still out until the night before.

Then someone unwittingly invented the candy heart which was a huge leap ahead for retailers and changed Valentine's Day yet again. Ostensibly that happened long before I was born, but they didn't show up on my desk until mid grade-school years. Valentine's Day began to be associated with treats and candy again.

The practice of giving candy hearts at school necessitated the introduction of the Valentine Box. There needed to be a place to deposit those grubby hearts which incidentally were not originally packaged in individual servings. I remember one box made by one of my kids. It was made from a Quaker's oatmeal box to look like a can of Campbell's soup. The label read “Cream of Valentine Soup.”

Candy hearts were soon supplemented with candy bars, sticks of gum, suckers, etc. We did our share of escalating by putting red Jell-o Jigglers on the neighbors' porches and running. Since that time, there has been a huge upgrade in the nature of valentines which are no longer mere valentines but are now “valentine gifts.”

At some point, in the name of correctness, 28 identical valentines were sold in packages instead of a variety. Later valentine boxes were replaced by brown paper bags with hearts and a name colored on them, and valentine cards were replaced with identical packaged treats. Sort of like Halloween or Christmas. Everyone line up and trade candy or gift cards.

But marketers have really targeted the adults among us. No longer does Valentine's Day mean candy and flowers. Be thinking more along the lines of expensive and suggestive. Ignore the old adage which says you can't buy love. Think of diamonds, designer pajamas, dressed teddy bears and “deals” on jewelry like “buy one get one free.” I can only imagine the guy who thinks that is a deal.

The portable power problem

2011-02-22T21:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago I wrote an article about batteries in which I concluded that “if I couldn’t spell, I would think that “battery” is a four-letter word. It seems to me that they are the weak link in the universe.”

My grandson, who is my biggest fan, maybe the only one, wanted me to rewrite this article for one reason. He has the best actual example of the deficiencies of batteries that I have heard of.

Part of the article went like this:

With my cell phone, my iPod and my digital camera, I could possibly be described as a techno minimalist. Since there is a whole array of portable electronic devices such as laptops, notebooks, Bluetooths (or is plural Blueteeth?) Blackberrys (Blackberries?), Iphones and gaming devices that I don’t own or even know precisely what they do, I am not anything like a junkie. It’s a good thing.” (I have since acquired a tablet, only because I can't see much on a smart phone display.)

Do you know how many connectors/chargers it takes to run the few devices that I do have? I would hate to try keeping any more little black wires than I have now untangled and together with their devices. And don’t try to kid me; “wireless” does not mean that a device comes without any.

But worse than that, since all of these devices are portable, they all have batteries that have to be charged using one or more of those little black wires.

Think of it—my iPod could conceivably hold enough music to play non-stop for more than a week, which seems over the top considering I would have to charge it’s battery several times for it to play every piece. Suddenly, the thing is not so portable after all. You can’t get too far away from its home computer or its cradle, not without packing up its contingent of wires.

My daughter’s laptop does amazing things, but it needs to charge for two hours so she can use it for one. That seems upside down to me.

And right here is where my grandson's example fits in: “My dad's laptop was plugged in for 2½ years and went dead in three minutes.” This kid is pretty literal and is uncomfortable with exaggeration.

I am not the only one who recognizes the limitations of current batteries. This same kid was invited to go to a workshop for students who are intellectually gifted. One of the instructors challenged the kids there to come up with a better battery, i.e., batteries are lousy.

And then I went on to say that cell phones are even more dysfunctional than that. (I am not uncomfortable with exaggeration.) However, their batteries are weak (pun). They discharge even when you don’t use them. Did cell phone engineers say to one another, “I know how we can make a portable phone, and if we try really hard, maybe we can make a battery that will stay charged for a couple of days.”? If I were one of those engineers, I would be pushing for a month, minimum.

And if you think that digital cameras are going to be carefree, you are wrong. You have to worry about their batteries. Don’t expect to pick up your camera after a week and find that it will make pictures. It might not even turn on. What good is a pocket-sized camera on vacation if you have to bring along a backpack full of batteries to run it?

Electronics engineers try to get around the battery problem by creating bells, beeps, lights and bars to warn you that your batteries are about to die, but usually, before you can hook up the respirator, they’re dead.

Does anyone besides me want to step on the Energizer Bunny? If someone ever finds a solution for the weak link of the universe and invents a battery with some real lasting power, I hope I am related to him/her. Can you imagine?

The agreement is this: if I rewrite the battery article, my grandson (related to me) has to work on the battery problem.

Won't soon forget that memory foam

2011-02-22T21:29:00.000-08:00

Thankfully I haven't been a patient in the hospital for years. A couple of outpatient visits to a surgical center have been it. Actually most of my hospital stays have been for the express purpose of having babies, so you can figure for yourself that it has been a while since I stayed in one.

Last week, I made a few visits to my daughter who was at the hospital for the same purpose. Three generations of us in the same room.

Well, some things have changed. The nurse was excited to announce that they had redone their recovery rooms and installed new hospital beds which have memory foam mattresses. I guess that is a good thing, but whoever ordered those for the hospital “forgot” that the goal is to turn over those beds.

And still, my daughter couldn't wait to get home even though her bed at home is quite forgetful. She was convinced that the hospital mattress was suffering from total recall and could remember the patients before her better than it could remember her.

Seriously, memory foam is pressure sensitive. The greater the pressure upon it, the greater the indentation in the foam.

As you can imagine new mothers have to sit up in bed a lot—to hold and feed the baby, to eat hospital food (which is not new and different) from a roll-away table, sign birth certificates and social security applications, to visit with her in-laws, and to impress some of the many caregivers who enter her room every five minutes. These people are more apt to let her go home if she is sitting up in bed looking healthy.

All that sitting up means is that there is a pretty hefty column of pressure forming that indentation right underneath the more vertical parts of her body. Add another eight pounds for the baby and you have quite a few psi's, or maybe column inches or whatever, depressing that foam.

I'm not sure what happens when you stand on a memory foam mattress, which would bring even more pressure to bear, but when you sit on one for a while, you get a pretty big depression down under. Pretty soon, mother needs more help getting out of the mattress than grandpa needs getting out of his chair. Gives a whole new meaning to the term “doughnut cushion.”

After a while of sitting in the doughnut hole (not to be confused with when you have to pay for your own prescriptions) the bottom bottoms out, and underneath that memory foam is something a little less resilient. Something with properties similar to rock or concrete.

At the end (pun) the new mother finds that she is wishing for an old-fashioned doughnut cushion made of absent-minded blow-up vinyl.

A couple of old shirt tales

2011-02-22T21:25:00.000-08:00

You high school fashionistas won't believe it, but there was a time (when I had about four kids in junior high/high school) that golf shirts were the fashion item of the year. They came in all colors, solids and stripes, with matching or contrasting collars, and they were worn with jeans by both boys and girls.

The colors were not gender specific, nor were the cuts nor the styles. In fact you could find the exact same shirt in the boys or the girls departments of any store. The coveted ones featured embroidered logos on the front, of which Izod Alligators were the hottest.

We were not above saving little Izod Alligators when their shirts wore out and sewing them onto generic shirts.

The fact that the shirts were worn by both boys and girls meant that we ended up with quite an accumulation of shirts that could correctly be worn by anybody in the family. The Butterbean law on the use and abuse of wearables was, “If it can be worn by anyone, it will be.” But not at the same time.

Mornings in the Butterbean household used to go something like this—the case of your brother or sister wearing your shirt:

“Way to go.” (Said while snarling.)

“What?” (Sweet innocence.)

“Way to wear my shirt without asking.” (Louder snarl.)

“What shirt?” (More innocence.)

“Duh, the one you have on.”

“You weren't here, so I couldn't ask you.”

“So wear it anyway. What if I wanted to wear it?”

“You never wear this shirt.”

“That's because it is always dirty from you wearing it.”

Not bad, huh? I didn't raise politicians, but some of them must have missed their callings.

Then there was the case of the disappearing shirt:

“Mom, have you seen my shirt?”

“What shirt?” (This line appears in every scene.)

“My blue shirt from the GAP.”

“I didn't wear it.” (I was trying to be funny, but shirt-boy didn't laugh.)

“I haven't seen it since my big sister left for college.”

“Why would she take it? She has one just like it.”

“No she doesn't.”

“Yes she does; she was wearing it when she left.”

“That was mine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, she wore it first, before I even had a chance to.”

“Then how should I know whose it is?

“You bought it for me.”

“Does she know that?”

“Of course.”

“Well, I didn't know it wasn't hers.”

“Mom, now what am I supposed to wear?”

Now what was I supposed to say? I was in trouble all the time. But it got worse. Just one more scenario:

“Mom, guess what?”

“What?”

“It's bad. It's getting really bad.”

“How bad is it?”

“Mom, listen to this. It's bad enough when I go down town and see my little sister wearing my shirt, but I just saw her friend wearing my shirt and I thought it was upstairs in my drawer.”

“What shirt?”

How the fish in Western waters got bigger

2011-02-22T21:23:00.000-08:00

Among my family members and acquaintances there are a lot of fisherpersons. At least there are a lot of persons who go through the motions

If buying fishing gear makes a fisherman, they qualify. They buy lures and plugs and vests and boats and motors and rods and finders and cheese.

If spending time makes a fisherman, they qualify. They will take week-long backpacking trips to do nothing but fish. They will stand on a river bank for hours. They will pull a boat for four hours in order to fish for one.

If making the effort constitutes a fisherman, they qualify. They will carry a full pack for miles to reach the best holes. They will plan a fishing trip for weeks.
If sacrifice makes a fisherman, they qualify. They will jeopardize a promising relationship with a significant other if they can just stop and fish “this one more hole.” They will stand out on the ice in hell frozen over until they don't know whether they still have fingers and toes.

The only trouble is, I am not sure that any of them have actually ever catch fish. They never show up with meat for the table. I see not so much as a fish scale to prove that they are actually fisherpersons.

I realize that there has been a revolution in the sport of fishing. I guess I have known about it for years now. Actually, I don't know why they still call it fishing. They should just call it catch-and-releasing. What it all means is that fisherpersons don't have to bring home the evidence anymore. You've heard the story about the really big one that got away…well, now they all get away, and they are all big.

I think that Catch and Release is supposed to be a conservation measure which is applauded by wildlife enthusiasts. I'm not sure I understand the exact objectives of the policy, The only actual firsthand knowledge I have comes from years of laundering Catch and Release tee-shirts. But if the policy is meant to allow the fish in Western waters to grow bigger, it is working. Just ask any fisherperson.

But you can't catch Bertha so easily with that one. I don't fall for those stories hook, line and sinker, you know. As far as I'm concerned, 11-lb. trout don't exist. These people are going to need more than fish stories to convince me.

Oh, I have seen lots of fish on lots of camera phones, but the fishy thing is, they all look like the same fish to me. Or I get to see a part of a fish which doesn't share the frame with anything that could be used for reference since the fisherman has to hold the fish with one hand and click the phone with the other, like when he is doing his phone ID photo.

A real snapshot might carry a little more weight. But 11 lbs. worth, I don't know. If you ask me, it is difficult to document the actual size of a slippery, wiggling fish. Fish just don't hold still and say “cheese” while you do it. They are busy regretting the cheese. Besides that, I know all about Photoshopping.

As with the enactment of many government policies, I think there were unintended consequences with the Catch and Release program. I'll bet conservationists had no idea that the fish in targeted waters would increase in size so rapidly.

Try mid-year resolutions

2011-02-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

When you really think about our customs and traditions associated with the New Year, they are pretty silly. People stay up late, drink too much, gather at Time Square by the millions where they will have no access to bathrooms after the drinking too much, and stand in the cold to wait for a giant glass ball to fall out of the sky.

Those of us lucky enough not to live near Time Square might do things like run outside and bang pans, or shoot guns. (If you think it is silly standing outside at midnight in NYC, try Vernal, Utah. I think the idea is to make noise. Okay.

I am also skeptical of the practice of making New Year's Resolutions. Especially if you resolve to drink less after drinking more the night before.
Mostly, I figure that if you are serious about changing your life, you don't put it off until January 1. You start working on the problem as soon as you identify it.

Waiting for the new year to decide to make some changes wastes a lot of time.
And I don't think there is a day near the end of December when everyone figures out that they need to make some changes, unless there is a balance-the-checkbook-after-Christmas day.

By the way, whoever thought to put Christmas in December, anyway? It is also pay-your- property-taxes month, settle-your-church-contributions month, fill-the-propane-tank month and the month of some other big expenses which I am too tired to think of right now. If you insist on having a legitimate New Year's resolution, you can have that one—figure out how to be prepared for the month of December next year.
I guess you could start whenever you figure it out.

I actually ran across an article online that began this way: “A new year can be a great time for a new beginning. The past is behind you. Start anew. Set some goals you would like to achieve. Making New Year's Resolutions can be the first step to self-improvement this year.” The article's headline was “Making New Year's resolutions is a great way to begin a new year.” (And I thought an article had to be a little bit original.)

So since I have a rebellious streak and don't do New Year's resolutions myself (unless I figure out sometime near the end of December that I have a problem), I thought I could suggest a few for the rest of you. Don't worry, I have had to start on some of these at various times of the year and more than once as well.

1.Lose some weight, but only in the right places.
2.Get out of debt, at least by December.
3.Learn how to use your tablet, especially if you got it for Christmas
4.Recycle, unless you have a problem with it.
5.Shovel someone else's snow. The timing is right.
6.Eat dinner together with the family. You can start over every day.

Okay, that's enough. Let's keeps this manageable. As soon as you have completed one resolution, add another. You will have a head start on all your friends since you don't have to wait until 2012 to begin.

Research

2011-02-22T21:17:00.000-08:00

I was introduced to one of those comprehensive email pass-alongs that included a list of “pithy sayings” by my grandson who read me the whole list while he held me (his audience) captive. We were riding in the car, and I couldn't very easily jump out.

It wasn't the torture that you might think. There were some good aphorisms, and most of them were funny. Of course everything is funny when you are overtired.

Given my propensity for distrusting any statement when it is associated with the word “research,” one of the witticisms caught my attention.

It went like this: “ To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many
is research.”

Since none of the dictums in the list gave due credit, I will simply have to conduct some research and perhaps analyze or organize them if I want to use them. Right? I can do that.

This first group is strategies for dealing with yourself or others when intelligence might be an issue.
-Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience.
-Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
-If I agreed with you we'd both be wrong.
-Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
-Dolphins are so smart that within a few weeks of captivity, they can train people to stand on the very edge of the pool and throw them fish.
While I am organizing, here are some clever sayings for the social/political category:
-War does not determine who is right—only who is left.
-Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing in a garage makes you a car.
-The early bird might get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
-Evening news is where they begin with 'Good evening', and then proceed to tell you why it isn't.
-Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

Here is a category called “The Workplace”
-I thought I wanted a career, turns out I just wanted pay checks.
-A bus station is where a bus stops. A train station is where a train stops. On my desk, I have a work station.

Irony is one of the best kinds of humor:
-How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
-To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.
-Some people hear voices. Some see invisible people. Others have no imagination whatsoever.
-A bus is a vehicle that runs twice as fast when you are after it as when you are in it.
-Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion
stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?

Being treed is a good thing

2011-02-22T21:15:00.000-08:00

You all know that English is a language that is constantly changing. It alters and expands to accommodate new meanings, technologies or practices.

True, your vocabulary has to grow if you are going to stay on top of things, but it's a good thing. We wouldn't want to be calling iPods portable electronic multiple-platform media-playing devices.

Some clever high schoolers in the town where most of my kids grew up developed a practice (at least the practice was new to me) that needed a new word, so one was found. I'm not sure how widespread the practice is. I haven't heard of it being done here, but as you also know, some words are locale specific, although the usage of such words tends to spread as the practice does.

Check your dictionary for an entry of the verb “tree.” Your edition may be missing an important meaning for that word unless it looks something like this:
tree vt (treed, treeing) a. (1700) to drive to or up a tree. (treed by a bull) (dogs treeing game) b. to put someone into a position of extreme disadvantage, corner, esp. to bring to bay c. vi (1990) to haul a large number of used Christmas trees to a domestic property where they are stood upright in the snow, creating an illusion of a healthy evergreen forest (treed by the senior class) (kids treeing their teachers).

Okay, if you are like a lot of other people and don't want to read a whole dictionary entry, let alone look up a word, you can get by with reading only definition c. above. That is the one that may be new to you, and that is the one I want to call to your attention.

Should you awaken one morning soon to find that your front yard looks like an overcrowded tree lot, you will know that you have been treed by means of definition c.

So that you will know how to respond to such a situation, let me remind you that you need not confuse definition c. with definition b. Nor do you need to confuse it with hate mail. It is not the kiss of death nor any other message from the Mafia.

It is most likely just a manifestation of being noticed by a group of high school kids with access to some trees, a pickup truck and time on their hands.

Let me also point out that treeing is in to way dangerous nor destructive unless you find that holes in your snow are particularly perilous.

True, someone will have to clean up those trees, but it's not as bad as you think. Just put them out on the curb on the first garbage day after the New Year, and they will be removed by the local garbage service. (Check dates and times for your area.) You will be doing them a favor. The trees are already gathered, and the refuse technician can pick up the whole neighborhood's trees in one stop instead of forty.

Or run them through the mulcher and scatter them in the flower garden next spring. Saves you lots of money. Or consider them an early start on next year's wood pile.

Or take advantage of having your own national forest and hike among the trees, ski between them, have a winter campout, try snowshoeing, feed the birds…

That is, should you find you have been treed.

To their great credit, I have lately noticed a few high schoolers dropping off trees, one at a time, at people's homes—trees decorated with lights and ornaments. Those recipients have been treed as well, and they will know what the message is.

Bertha's original redneck jokes

2011-02-22T21:13:00.000-08:00

How many redneck jokes are there? As many as flies on roadkill? Somehow or other, they have multiplied like country rabbits until you hear at least one every day. You will also hear a reference to the “redneck” term in speech or read it somewhere at least that often.

All of which is the same as saying that the whole theme is overdone, timeworn, stale. And yet people keep coning up with a different photo, a new joke or another reference.

Okay, I live in the country and have produced my share of roadkill, but I let it lie. Years back I lived in a trailer but couldn't wait to upgrade to something with a cement foundation. And I have heard plenty of redneck jokes, and I don't usually repeat them.

But somehow or other I ran into a couple of stories last week that I wanted to add to the lexicon. These aren't the kind of stories that someone shared with me and I am passing along. We lived these stories. They are original. Feel free to share them, pass them along or post them if you wish, however.

The other day my son announced to the family, “So, I went to see my taxidermist yesterday.” Some of you might not find that funny, but I started laughing out loud as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

You will notice that he didn't say he went to see his tax accountant yesterday. Nor did he visit his dermatologist.

Who has a taxidermist? Does one schedule appointments with him at six-month or six-week intervals? After quizzing my son, I am finding that having your own taxidermist meas more than just having his number on speed dial. It means that one doesn't need to call ahead because one doesn't need an appointment to see him.

So I guess the actual joke goes like this:

“You might be a redneck if…you have your own taxidermist.”

By the way, while we are speaking of taxidermists, here is my very own taxidermist joke:

“What is the definition of a taxidermist? Someone who can help you have your elk and eat it too.”
The second story needs a little background as well. I had occasion (besides wanting to sleep while riding in the car) to need one of those little pillows that are roughly U-shaped and are used to support the head and neck. One of my daughters has one that I intended to borrow, but she had sublet it previously to someone and forgotten who that was. While trying to locate the pillow she texted a friend:

“Have you seen my red neck pillow?”

“Her friend texted back, “What is a red neck pillow? A slice of hay?”

Okay, I just shared a couple of redneck jokes. That may make me a fringe redneck, and I just don't know it. Having a son who has a taxidermist may make me one by relationship. I don't claim to be any closer than fringe though, because I have learned to differentiate between terms like “red neck” and “redneck.” as well as “pickup and “pick up.”

What do I look like?

2011-02-22T21:11:00.000-08:00

Mr. B. grew up in the Sixties. Well, it took a little bit longer than just one decade for him to grow up, but he was a teenager when Elvis, The Beachboys, and the Everly Brothers were all turning out music. You will have to admit that it was pretty good music.

Apparently Sixties music is worth remembering, because Mr. B. remembers it all. He is a walking music encyclopedia, for the Sixties music volume, that is.

Back in those days KVEL radio station gave away movie tickets if you could call in and identify the artist of the song they were playing, or name the number two hit of the week, or tell how many hits the Beatles had on the charts right then. We had to start giving away our movie tickets because we couldn't use them all. (My job was to go to the movies with Mr. B.)

Mr. B. still thinks it is “Name That Tune” time whenever he gets you in the same room or car with a radio or some other music player.

“Hey Bertha, who sings this song?”

“Jay and the Americans.”

“Wrong, guess again.”

Guessing is what it is because my ear isn't good enough to identify the singer by voice and because my memory isn't good enough to remember who recorded it, providing I ever really heard it.

A couple of years ago, the kids decided to give Mr. B. an iPod for Christmas. They agonized over that decision because they were afraid he might not use it very much. Whatever. He could suddenly carry the whole lexicon of 60's music with him wherever he went. He could listen to it whenever he wanted, and again, all of a sudden, he had a reason to become computer literate—to download music.

If we thought he was the king of Sixties pop trivia before, now he could study up everyday all day long. Just another few songs downloaded a day, a few more chances to commit it all to memory.

Hey Sis, who sings this one?”

“The Temptations.”

“Wrong, listen closer.”

“The Supremes.”

“What? Not hardly. Guess again.”

“Dad, do I look like a jukebox?”

“No, thinner—more like an iPod.”

Well, someone got one right answer in this quiz game.

I got an iPod that year as well, and I download audio books. Ask me whether I like Gale or Peeta. Ask me who wrote “Sense and Sensibility.” Ask me who the Herdmans are.

And, no, I don't look like a bookbag.

To Grandmother's house we go

2011-02-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

Down to the airport and into the sky,
To Grandmother's house we go.
We park our sedan and get in the van
Our luggage we do tow.
After lurching about from lot A to Z,
At the concourse we arrive.
We froze our toes as well each nose,
We barely got there alive.

The building is full, and the lines are long
The ticket gates are a-jam
With holiday travelers testing the skies.
All are headed to visit the “fam.”
Our luggage we check, and its fees we all pay
Our passes are in hand.
Now on up the concourse we all head
For more lines in which to stand.

The longer we wait, and the closer we get
To to the gate marked “security.”
The more we do stress and the more confess
That we don't like what we see.
The look of distress on the faces we find
Ahead of us in line
Is the same one I wear—for right up there
Is the choice that must be all mine.

“Show me your luggage” the TSA warns,
“And take off your belts and shoes.
Now full-body scan (show me your tan)
Or a pat-down you may choose.”
I never have had, at least not until now,
A fear of going by plane.
But I am not a fan of a pat nor a scan,
Or am I just insane?

No wonder we long for days gone by.
I'd rather hitch up the horse and sleigh,
And take to the woods than fly through the skies
For to have a Thanksgiving Day.

Students are still passing notes

2011-02-22T21:07:00.000-08:00

Writing about the cell phone explosion and texting takes a bit of courage on my part since I mostly use my cell phone only to call other people. They usually can't call me because I haven't turned it on, or because I haven't charged it in the first place.

I hate being tied to the thing, carrying it around, and remembering to keep it charged. I suppose that out-of-the-loop is an understatement where I am concerned. Perhaps “uninformed” is the better term, but “staying connected” is something that I obviously don't get.

From my perspective, cellphoning or texting puts too much control in hands of the connectee. What I don't want is to call someone who has a cell phone which they do keep glued to their hand or their ear and get screened out. If I want to speak to someone, I want to be spoken to. Totally selfish on my part.

Most of the forms of non-face-to-face communication (faxing, emailling, texting) preclude the knowledge of actual communication. And if my children are driving, which they do almost as much as they communicate, I don't want them talking or texting anyway. What I don't like is not actually communicating when I am communicating, or more precisely, not knowing whether I am actually communicating.

I know, that is just what happened in that last paragraph. But texting is open-ended because you don't know whether your message was actually received. Last weekend my son had to borrow my car to drive to a friend's house to find out whether she received his text message since she didn't reply.
That's high-tech communication for you.

When we were in grade school, we passed notes. We weren't supposed to pass notes, so that was part of the attraction of passing notes. Getting a note to its intended receiver without getting caught was half the satisfaction. It was also a challenge to get the note to its intended without someone else taking the liberty of opening up the little ball of paper and reading it, in which case, again, the intended may or may not actually have gotten it anyway. Reading others' notes was social taboo, but of course some kids didn't follow the rules. If the teacher caught up with the note, it was read in class, (contrary to social protocol) and that curbed the practice for a minute or two.

The coolest notes had check boxes which was shorthand for “decide and pick the best answer.” “Do you like me?” The recipient then made an X” in the appropriate box (yes or no) and passed the note back after crossing out his own name on the outside,and writing the new receiver's name. It was polite to mark the “yes” box.

As near as I can tell, texting is the techno-age equivalent of passing notes. Part of its attraction is that the older generation (teacher) tries to limit it. The similarities don't end there, either. Apparently, like passing notes, it is often done in school or in class, and kids don't often get caught. That part I don't get—how do you compose a text message from inside your pocket?

I guess that a common in-school text message is “BTD” (bored to death). I am not commenting on teaching presentation or skills, just reporting. But the obvious solution here is for the teacher to text-message the day's lesson to the students. Some kids will be sleeping and not get the message, but what else is new? They will at least have the option of getting it later—or deleting it. Again, what else is new?

Deer hunter grammar

2011-02-22T21:04:00.000-08:00

I have recently had the good fortune of hosting a group of hunters in my home. They have been here for a few days and they are still hunting. They like to stay at my house because I don't charge them to stay there, and because when they do they are already twenty minutes closer to the deer and elk playgrounds.

Hunters hunt in the day and at night they sit around the table and tell hunting stories. They swap tips about hunting websites and television shows, and they talk about guns, ammo, camo, taxidermists, and jerky.

I am usually absent when the hunters start telling stories, so in the interest of finding a little more ammunition for an article about hunting, I visited a couple of those websites myself. The blogs are the best because hunters post stories and in their own words and using their own hunting jargon.

I hate to stereotype anyone, but to put it nicely, the blogs I visited led me to believe that a smattering of contemporary hunters were dreaming of six-point elk when they should have been paying attention in English class. The following paragraphs were cut and pasted from a few representative sources:

“Humorous Stories, antedotes, and jokes about our favorite sport

“I slowly turned, raised my 30.06 and fired…..CLICK! My rifle misfired, so i quickly rechambered my bolt action, raised my rifle and ClICK!…Another misfire. This happened 2 more times, before I had to completely reload my rifle. Surprising, the Deer didn’t even noticed me. It continued to slowly walk, it’s nose to the earth, completely oblivious to my frantic attempts to get my damn gun to fire…

“DeerBeards.com spokesman Chet Norris said the video games were expected to be released last Wednesday, but he game no details regarding the delays. The games, including Big Bucks Revenge 2, were handed over for release at 10.51 p.m. last evening, said Norris.

“I shot my first Deer in November of 2004. We were hunting private land in Pine County, MN and it was freezing outside. Swede and I were stand hunting and after sitting for about 2 hours in 12 degree weather, I was frozen. I hadn’t seen nor heard a thing except for the farmers donkey, when i heard that ” Snap”. I looked behind me and there was a nice 9pt just walking along, smelling the rut, without a care in the world.

And finally, “One day Gaston and Bubba were Deer Hunting, and they got lost. Gaston tells Bubba "wait, don't panic I learned what to do in case this happens. Your supposed to shoot up into the air three times and someone will here you and come with help,"

“Okay" said Bubba. So he shoots three times into the air. They both wait an hour and no one shows up. So they shoot three times again and still no one shows up. Bewildered they try this again and again for the next couple of hours. Gaston starts to look a little worried, then he shouts "It better work this time, were down to our last three arrows!"

I know a few hunting widows who would like to know some hunting antedotes themselves.
Actually I have one. When I sat down at the computer to write my article, I noticed that someone had typed “How to hunt elk” into the search line of my internet home page.

Band-aids and the good life

2011-02-22T21:03:00.000-08:00

There seems to be a hole in my education, and right now I don't have time to get on line and try to fill it. So if I perpetuate any heresies herewith, feel free to call and correct me.

I am not sure about what characteristics qualify a country for the status of third-world, second-world, first-world, etc. I think even in geography settings, the terms are more than a bit fuzzy in meaning. I am also quite sure that they don't necessarily mean what they used to.

But for the sake of launching this column, I am going to assume that our country is a first-world country, and I am also assuming that the abundance of laptops, cellphones, hospitals, antibiotics, celebrities and food are what keep us in that category.

I would like to add a few little items of my own to that list—necessities for civilized living which must certainly help to qualify a country for a first-world label.

In my estimation, a few developments worth mentioning are the digital camera, the I-Pod, Velcro, and last but not least, adhesive bandage strips, hereafter called band-aids. Band-aids have been around longer than the rest of the items I mentioned, thank goodness, because without band-aids to assist parents in raising children, life as we know it would cease to exist. Without penicillin and band-aids, most children wouldn't live beyond the age of five. At least that is how I remember it, and I am certainly glad that I was able to raise my kids in the age of band-aids.

A band-aid can cure a child who is dying of a hangnail, a bump on the head, a mosquito bite, a broken fingernail, chicken pox, a stomach ache, a sprain, a blister, road rash, and what else but a small laceration. Band-aids are especially beneficial when blood is in evidence. So it is not hard to gauge the contributions of the band-aid to the good life—or any life at all for that matter.

But dying children are not the only ones to benefit from the miracles worked by band-aids. Speaking of developments, my kids were pioneers in the area of new and innovative uses for band-aids. They discovered that they can be used for hanging pictures, wrapping packages, padding shoes, decorating mirrors, sealing diaries, splicing wires, and further, some obsolete uses such as mending cassette tape decks.

We should have been paid for our developments. Johnson and Johnson could launch a whole new advertising campaign based on our groundbreaking work.

The problem was that whenever someone cut a finger, there was never a band-aid in the medicine cabinet. We had to take them off the mirror, or the wall, or the tape decks before we could staunch the flow of blood and tears. (If you can get the tears stopped, you can live with the rest.) And some kids were particular enough to want a new one, fresh out of the wrapper.

So, put band-aids on another list—that list of things you have to hide if you ever want to have any. Things like chocolate chips, cellophane tape, scissors and glue.

One thing I have a problem with though: if band-aids are so wonderful, for injuries that is, why can't a kid ever leave one on for more than five minutes?

How to eat Halloween candy

2011-02-22T21:00:00.000-08:00

I have dressed up kids and sent them out to beg for candy on Halloween night for something like 22 years. That is probably close to a Guiness record. And so now I dress up the grandkids. (One of them wants to buy some candy ahead of time and practice trick-or-treating. He says he doesn’t want to do it wrong.) But whether I hold a record or not, I know I I have done it long enough to be something of an expert, so I am speaking out.

Similarly, the National Safety Council offers all kinds of seasonal advice from what color costumes are safest to what to do so the kids won’t get lost. But nobody tells them what to do with all of that candy.

The secret to surviving Halloween candy is to let the kids eat up all of it right when they get home from collecting it. In fact, encourage them to eat it right when they get it if they can get it open. (If they are busy eating, they will have less time for amassing.) Hopefully they will have eaten a good share of it by the time they get home. Don’t let them sort or count what is left; just keep them eating. It’s easy.

Whatever you do, don’t put it on top of the fridge or try to hide it. You will just have to fight them for every piece, and do you really want kids snooping around in cupboards and closets this close to Christmas?

I know this strategy goes against every natural instinct for protecting your kids, but read on. You have yourself to consider also, you know.

There are several pitfalls that you can avoid by getting rid of that candy immediately. The first is a three-week sugar high. Granted, the one-night high will be monumental, but it will be over with by morning. You will only have to live with juiced-up kids for one night. They may have a hangover when morning comes, but at least they won’t be able to eat more candy and start the binge all over again.

You will also not have to deal with candy wrappers all over the house for more than one day. Since all of that candy has to be wrapped according to NSC standards, which means it has to be tightly wrapped, it has to be shredded in order to be removed from the candy. The pieces of wrapper will be multiplying in quantity whenever you are not looking.

I’m warning you—you will find bits of tinfoil, paper, cellophane, and sucker sticks under the beds, beneath the sofa cushions, in front of the TV, in the dryer, and you will never be through with the wrappers until Christmas when you will have to start all over again. Just finish it off, clean up the mess the next morning and be done with it.

My dentist will back me up on this. It is better for their teeth to get twenty pounds of sugar all at once and then get ruthlessly brushed than it is to keep them bathed in sugar at the rate of an ounce per hour for the next three weeks.

Don’t worry about the kids getting sick. I never had one do it on Halloween candy. But if they do, maybe they will feel like going to bed early, in spite of the sugar coursing through their veins.

2011-02-22T20:58:00.000-08:00

Some of my grandkids want to become rich and famous. They just might make it. I don't think they will be doing anything from the middle of the road when they do though. More like from somewhere off the beaten path.

For example, my grandson who is the Lego afficionado also does LegoMotion which involves making an animation video using Legos. (There are some of those videos on YouTube in case you want to see what I am writing about.) I am not sure whether he is responding to a YouTube trend or whether there was some kind of challenge on the box of his latest set of Legos.

Actually he already has one uploaded on Youtube as well. And tonight he made another one. I know what this one was in response to. There is a product out there in drugstores called NeilMed Sinus Rinse. (I didn't make that up. It can actually be found in drugstores near you.)

I will explain what it has to do with being rich and famous here if I can. So the product's manufacturer, Neil, I guess, is sponsoring a contest. Entrants need to make a video about the product and enter it into their contest.

I can only imagine what some of the sinus rinse videos are going to look like. They might be able to be picked up by ???????????????? Anyway, the winner gets $15,000. I don't know where the announcement about the contest can be found in case you are interested in making a video of your own. I searched NeilMed and only came up with a coupon for $9.

Maybe the announcement was on the box of his aunt's latest bottle of NeilMed.

So LegoBoy thinks he will become rich by making a LegoMotion for his contest entry. He thinks he will become famous by getting his grandmother to put a link of it on her blog, and by publishing it here. Of course winning the contest won't hurt his name recognition either. Never mind that if he uploads it to YouTube it is likely to become their intellectual property, and believe me this is intellectual.

Nevertheless, here is his video link, and I will be tallying hits: Neil Med Vid.wmv

If your computer, modem, server, or whatever is experiencing technical difficulties which is likely to be the case, I will describe for you the NeilMed LegoMotion contest entry.

The scene opens and Lego's Indiana Jones character is standing on a green Lego platform. He is artistically placed right of center and in the foreground. There is something like a Tinkertoy in the background, He has a large white “bottle” in one hand and a whip in the other. Indiana Jones (voiceovers by Elliot Michaelson) says, “Hi, I am Indiana Jones and I use NeilMed because it is clinically proven to be more effective.”

Indiana then lifts the bottle to his nose, or somewhere near there, and the voiceover issues a juicy sniff. It could be worse. Indiana moves the bottle away from his noise and the voiceover says, “Ah, I feel better already.” Ostensibly Indiana needs the product after being drug for miles behind a 1940s truck along a dirt road.

At one point Indiana's alter-image with his Fedora and vest appears momentarily in the background—I think to signify that he will be his old self as soon as the sinus wash does its stuff.

I think he should use Darth Vader for his next NeilMed promo. We all know what kind of mess his sinuses are in.

How should I figure the studies?

2011-02-22T20:56:00.000-08:00

I have a problem with scientific studies. Or maybe it's just the science part that is the problem. I know that every research center has a bank of computers stuffed with all kinds of RAM and other acronyms, but with the widespread use of computers with data processing capabilities, processing data seems to be what everyone does.

I wonder how the studies get engineered these days. Is the data driving the study, or is the need to know something driving the gathering of data? Does some researcher surf the sites until he comes across a data bank with statistics about a population and a substance and then start running numbers? I am just asking questions here.

The reason I was wondering is that there seem to be more studies on the efficacy of tomatoes, wine and coffee that all the other studies combined. Perhaps a requirement in Research Studies 101 is for students to find out something good about coffee. If students do real well, they can go to work for the Institute for Coffee Studies when they enter the wonderful world of work which may mean that they get to sit around all day and drink coffee. No wonder coffee drinkers have less stress and fewer headaches. (I didn't make up that part about the Institute.)

I will be the first to admit that when I was in school, a computer was a picture in my science book of a huge structure that filled a whole room. There were only a few of them, and researchers had to wait in line to use them. There were probably protocols for establishing priorities for computer use. Researchers probably didn't get to use the computers for finding out why people don't ride their bikes to work. (That is like trying to figure out why people eat doughnuts.)

Even now, I can't imagine that information on coffee consumption is in the need-to-know-now category, but for some reason, it seems to be the study of the day. Coffee consumption can't be very interesting either, but apparently there are more studies done on coffee than there are on cancer.

Speaking of which: “A cup or more daily (of coffee) may cut your risk of some types of head and neck cancers says an analysis of nine studies. Decaf doesn't seem to do the trick, neither does tea.” That was it.

I just read that in the health section of a widely circulated national magazine. If anyone needs to know which one, give me a call. I hesitate to embarrass the magazine given that the only bit of specific information in the whole discussion is the number “nine.” Perhaps somewhere in a computer or an obscure magazine article, there are some more details. Maybe not. The rest of the article was about expensive drugs, eating fish, keeping journals and, yes, sitting around.

Can anyone tell me what I just read in that magazine? Does it mean that if I am afraid of head and neck cancers I should drink more coffee? What if I don't drink any coffee? What if I am afraid of bathrooms? Or what if only stomach and liver cancers are prevalent in my family tree? Can I spend less time in bathrooms?

Should I search the web until I find a study about stomach and liver cancers? Should I begin a habit this late in my life that ties me to the coffeemaker, the bathroom and another aisle in the grocery store on the outside chance that I might develop “some type” of head or neck cancer? And who exactly pays pays for this research, and how are the conclusions reached?

And then, how do they control these types of studies? Does someone (outside of at the Institute for Coffee Studies) eat or drink nothing but coffee for six years? Otherwise how can researchers rule out the effects of other “contributing factors” like, for instance, the reluctance of members of the study group to ride a bike to work, which really could be linked to how many cups of coffee they need before they start out for work and how many bathrooms there are along the way.

The mountain valley softball game

2011-02-22T20:54:00.000-08:00

Members of the Butterbean family spent part of the last weekend visiting Jackson and Teton National Park. We hiked, saw the sights, hunted for wildlife, and remembered times from a few years back when two of our daughters worked there in the resorts.

There are a few stories worth telling of their experiences there. Some of them I had forgotten about until we revisited the area and recalled them. Hearing the elk bugle on the mountains from the hiking trail we were on reminded us of the of the story of the elk and the softball game.

My girls went to Jackson back then with some fairly good softball skills and their mitts. When the various lodges in the area organized softball teams into a Park league, they were excited to play. The teams played against each other in the evenings at a grassy field near Moran Junction. Sometimes their games were delayed while various small animals were chased off the field.

One night the teams met for their weekly games, and it looked like rain. There was a roll of thunder in the distance and dark clouds building around the mountaintops. They quickly got their game underway, hoping to get in a few innings before they were rained out.

Soon the cloud cover was thick, dark, and low, obscuring the mountains and all but the nearer views. The wildlife seemed to be restless and on the move. The was an eerie ominous feeling settling over the alpine meadow.

Off to the left of first base, higher up in the trees, they heard an elk bugle. His call was answered from the other side of the field by another bugle. They first elk replied and the second countered.

The hitting team huddled up and chatted around the “dugout” telling stories of elk they had seen and heard. The fielders tried to concentrate on the game as they heard the two elk bugling again and again, and all the while their calls were getting closer and closer and sounding angrier and angrier.

By the bottom of the fifth inning, the bulls were obviously nearby and converging on the baseball diamond. The first bull burst out of the trees and into the meadow followed hesitantly by his milling cows. He announced his arrival with an eerie screech accompanied by a clap of thunder.

“Strike one.” The second “granddaddy” arrived on the scene with an answering call and his harem.

“Strike two.” The fielders were relieved to be able to gather up around home, and the hitters were hesitant to take the field.

The two bulls began to size each other up and trot closer toward one another. They circled around, and snorted and challenged. It looked as if they might be going to hold their own contest somewhere between center field and second base.

“Strike one.” The outfielders were keeping one eye on each elk and that didn't leave them any eyes left to keep on the ball. They just prayed for a swing and a miss. And with all of the thunder, wind and bugling, they weren't going to be able to hear anything like the crack of the bat.

The bulls drew closer together, apparently oblivious to the game in progress and the human players on the field. Finally the humans gave way, backing or scampering quietly towards the benches and their parked vehicles.

And the bulls began sparring in the midst of a darkening thunderstorm. They first clashed in the outfield just beyond second base. Some of the ball players stayed for the whole competition. Others, including my daughters, were content to clear out and leave the whole spooky ball park to the big boys.

Elk hunters walk for days hoping to find a cow or a bull within range of their binoculars. Our softball players were driven off by a couple of them who completely took over the field. It may have been the first and only game ever called on account of sparring in the outfield.

The ever-present little white trailer

2011-02-22T20:52:00.000-08:00

Does anyone besides me get annoyed every time they drive through the intersection at 500 North and 1500 West (the canal road and the Maeser highway)?

I know, some of you probably never have reason to go that way, but since it is half a country block away from the high school, and otherwise a main artery to the west end of the valley, a lot of people do.

I am one of them, and I usually drive through it twice a day on weekdays. Both times I find myself feeling cramped, facing restricted vision, and becoming increasingly grumpy.

A year or so ago, whichever entity is responsible for road maintenance there put in a new stoplight, widened the roads a bit and made it easier to see adjacent traffic and safely travel through the intersection. Mind you, the project took a while. I was overjoyed when it was completed so I could execute my daily commute with one less hazard.

My happiness was short-lived though. One day I “noticed” an unmarked. little white, enclosed trailer parked there, just barely off the road. Like six inches beyond the white outside line. Three safety cones were set beside it, and that was it. I didn't give it much thought then. Surely it would be gone the next day. It wasn't.

I idly wondered for a few days after that what the heck that trailer was doing there. One day I imagined that it was a horse trailer for a short horse that might have broken down there. Another day I thought it might be a camp trailer for the water master who had to keep a close eye on the farmers. Then I thought it must have been abandoned by someone trafficking in something illegal like body parts.

A few days later I began to seriously wonder just how a little white trailer could be parked beside a main road, a few feet from a stop-lighted intersection, and not be hauled off, impounded, or moved by some law enforcement cadre, or better yet, side-swiped by some texter. Believe me, there has been plenty of time for either to happen.

By the way, it took only two days for the law to track down some of my high-school kids when their unregistered clunker really did break down by the roadside—far away from any intersection, on a back-country lane, and well off the shoulder besides. They were nearly written up for abandoning a vehicle, which was completely untrue. They hadn't abandoned it, they just didn't know how or when they were going to move it.

I began to ask questions. I asked Mr. B. I asked some other family members. Whenever I remembered, I asked all of the trailer-savvy people I met what the little trailer was and why it was there. A complete mystery.

Finally after days and days, I asked the right person—someone in a position to know the answer. He does know who and what, but the why there and for how long he doesn't know.

When I tell you, you will think my imaginations about the purpose of the little white trailer weren't too farfetched at all. Actually they sound downright plausible in the face of the reality.

As a matter of fact, you wouldn't believe me if I told you, so just pick one—short horse trailer, water master camper, or dead body parts. Any one is as good as the real story.

I am half tempted to attach a sign that says something like “trailer for sale, call 555-5555.”

I am hereby telling you kids who are test-driving your fixer-uppers to make sure and break down on a busy road near an intersection. Just carry three safety cones in the trunk, if there is one, and put them out before you leave the scene. Then just get on with your life.

Capitalism at work

2011-02-22T20:49:00.000-08:00

A year or so ago, I wrote one of these articles about the world's oldest profession—selling lemonade by the roadside. I said that lemonade stands had been around for a long time considering no one ever made any money at them.

Well, one set of my grandkids from another town in Utah have forced me to rethink my position. In fact, they have proved me wrong. Of course they live across the street from where certain events like marathons, charity walk/runs, long bike rides and artist's walks, etc., are held in their town. Sometimes the events end there and sometimes they begin there. Sometimes they are just on the way.

Those events attract a lot of people from all over Utah and beyond. In fact, sometimes there are hundreds of participants. So the kids are fortunate enough to have a good location for their proprietorship, which, as you know, makes all the difference.

And they have a good recipe. They don't make yellow Kool-aid. In fact they have perfected a recipe for an easy-to-make, but high-end, Brazilian lemonade. I would pass it on if I knew it, but it is a secret and there are proprietary laws after all. They do offer an additional menu item—an economy lemonade which is more like your basic lemon-sugar-and-water recipe.

A local restauranteur tasted their wares, finished his glass, and then came back for more. Ostensibly. He really came back to quiz them about their recipe. Before they realized who he was, they had spilled the lemons. They are pretty sure that he will have their drink on his menu next time they go to his restaurant, but they don't think he will be letting out trade secrets either. They still refer to that incident as the “great lemonade recipe heist.”

So the kids can sell quite a bit of lemonade when the runners end a marathon at their location.The same is true for bike competitions. And artist-walkers love to sip and saunter.

So, the other day they had everything—a hot Saturday, a marathon, and an artist's walk all at once. They really had to scramble to keep the lemonade coming.

Their next door neighbor, who only sells bikes, came by for a glass and wondered what the kids were going to do with their profits. He thought perhaps they were doing some kind of benefit like coming over to buy a new bike tire, or donating their proceeds like the artists were doing. The 12-year-old assured him that all of the proceeds were of a capitalistic nature and would be used either to buy more lemons or more Legos.

“All of the money we make will be going to the 'ade' of lemons.' Get it?” the 9-year-old put in tartly. And they did have to send Dad on a lemon run sometime during the afternoon.

So finally they ran out of customers and lemonade, and they moved inside to count their money and pay Dad for the production materials. After all the bills were paid, they were left with profits in the amount of $119.30.

They probably netted more than the bike retailer did that day, considering that a lot a marathoners and not many bikers were milling around.

Is there a cellphone agent?

2011-02-22T20:47:00.000-08:00

I wouldn't want it to be too generally known, but my cellphone contract expires here in a couple of months. I have spent almost two years complaining about the service that I have now.

Oh-oh, she's going to complain about it once again, you think. Well, I could, but actually the thought of replacing the old cell phone and service is what has me worried. And that's what I want to complain about.

Just considering the options that I have before me (which really aren't that many compared to real metropolitan areas) gives me a headache and makes my palms sweat. First I will have to choose a service and that represents a bigger commitment than some marriages. Then I will have to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of the various plans. Then I will have pick a phone since the old one (which doesn't show a bit of wear and is a nice color) will be locked, and then I will have to purchase all new accessories since none of them are interchangeable.

I calculate that I have approximately 210 different choices to consider. Most of them I don't want to consider at all.

So what I am doing here is searching for a cell phone agent. I don't want one of those cellphone agents whose real name is cellphone salesperson and they all sell cellphones down by the seashore. And on the dot coms and on Ebay and at the cellphone store and at the box stores and department stores.

That is not the kind of agent I am looking for. I want one that is completely independent. Someone who can connect me with the best phone and service for me at the best price. If I could get all of that in one package, I wouldn't mind signing on for two years or even more.

But with the knowledge in my possession right now, I would be reduced to picking my new cellphone by color.

Owning a cell phone is a big investment as well as a long-term commitment. During these past two years I have spent over $1200 on mobile phone service. Unlike choosing a husband, though, I am not allowed to date a cellphone or try a service plan to find out whether it is right for me. Most of the phone models are chained to the counter. You can only pick them up and hold them for a minute. You can read about them, but the literature only tells you what they can do, not what they can't do. And yes, I am ending the comparison right there.

I know, I could ask my kids which phone or service to buy, but they don't know any more about it than I do. In fact, they are willing to get the right color, along with texting, at any price. They do know how to use their phones though. They use them for all sorts of things. However, I still think their main function is similar to that of a GPS device (which by the way they could buy for a low one-time price). They mostly want to know where each other is and where they will meet up. They may have to move to a new position to get service though. That we all find a little bit annoying.

Take me, on the other hand. I think we all have “Friends-and-Family” so I can call family and tell one of them to bring home a loaf of bread.

“Yes,” you are thinking, “she does need a cellphone agent—someone to tell her that she doesn't need a cellphone at all and to just find a bigger shopping cart instead.”

Real men eat what?

2011-02-22T20:45:00.000-08:00

In the Butterbean family, the measure of a man has nothing to do with quiche. Instead, real men eat sandwiches. And the more you can put on your sandwich and still get a mouth on it, the better man you are. Dagwood is a family idol, but Mr. Butterbean is quite heroic as well.

Mr. B. says to me, “You had a busy day. Let’s have something simple for dinner.” What he means is, “Let’s have sandwiches,”—that simplest of foods! To have one we only need (minimum) bread, butter, mayo, meat, salt and pepper, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, onions, more meat, more cheese, and a space large enough to set it all out on. Beyond all of that we still might need to include things like hot peppers, vinegar and oil, cilantro, lemon pepper, sprouts, mushrooms—and the list goes on.

I am here to tell you that there is no simple or efficient way to make a sandwich in a kitchen. The first assembly line was probably not invented by Henry Ford; but instead, envisioned by the little old neighborhood deli-man in his pastrami-ridden brain while searching for a stress-free way to build a sandwich. A factory assembly line might work, (in fact it does at Subway) but the modern kitchen isn’t set up for it.

The main problem is that all of the components for a sandwich are kept in different places. The bread is in the drawer, the knives are in another drawer, the meat and butter is in the fridge, the pickles are on the shelf. Some things are not in the cupboard or the frig, but are still at the store instead. By the time you get everything gathered up, used, and put away, you need a nap.

The sandwich-maker (me) begins to think that it takes more macho to build this thing than it does to eat it. But the most fearless person of all is the one who asks for another sandwich just after you get all of the ingredients put away.

Now, I’m not sure I trust people who like to mix too many different foods together, and I am not of the opinion that anything tastes good on a slice of bread. I’m the odd one in the family. (I happen to like plain bread, and not just because making a sandwich is so much work.) I happen to think there are some exceptions to the “everything-tastes better-on-bread” dictum. Interestingly, those things are of that class of foods that are usually associated with bread and mayonnaise—for instance, a nice juicy slice of roast turkey or a home-grown tomato.

And back to bread—what tastes better than freshly baked bread? I expect that French chefs cringe when they see people desecrating croissants with even the best of meat and cheese. Croissants were not made to be covered with anything. They stand on their own, or should. So do a few other kinds of bread.

It’s like my brother once quipped when I announced that I had dinner under control because I had just baked bread and bought baloney (he’s a real wimp who only puts butter on his sandwiches): “Sounds like a waste of a perfectly good piece of bread to me.”

I'm not sure whether that was an assessment of the bread or the baloney, but now, there's one thing that does taste better on bread.

A few good things

2011-02-22T20:41:00.000-08:00

Okay, I have reached the age where guys don't whistle at me anymore. Well, possibly they never did that much, but reaching that numerical stature is still a tough pill to swallow along with my Tylenol Arthritis and my glucosamine.

My once-attractive eyes are now peering out from behind trifocals, and they don't help me see a whole lot better. And any physical activity I try to engage in is now done in one vertical plane (flat on the ground) and at one speed—slow.

You know the list. You've heard over and over about all of the disadvantages of growing older.

Just in case you are my age and your stomach hurts, you can't sleep at night, and you don't look as good as you used to, I have a little list to help you get over it.

Good things about being an older lady, little or not (besides getting senior prices at restaurants):
-Someone will always get the door for you.
-People don't swear at you when you cut them off—not out loud at least.
-No one expects your makeup to be on straight.
-No one crowds in front of you at the grocery store.
-You aren't expected to wear high heels.
-People would be surprised if you were “in style.”
-The bank is more apt to forgive you if you bounce a check.
-There doesn't have to be method to your madness.
-You don't have to be technologically savvy.
-Your clothes don't have to match particularly well.
-You can be excused for forgetting birthdays.
-And randomly, teenagers don't throw you overboard when you go rafting.

If you are not sure whether you are technically due some of the advantages of older age, you can tell you are in the perked-up age bracket if you can remember 78RPM records, Black Jack chewing gum, mimeographed paper, S&H Green Stamps, roller skate keys, and soda pop machines that dispensed bottles.

Remembering these aforementioned perks can make being an older woman is a little easier. You understand, of course, that being an older woman is not the same as being a little old lady. I am industriously working on not becoming one of those. If I have to learn to accept that fate, it will be later on—much later on.

In the meantime, this nice young man is going to help me across the street.

Cut-and-paste in 101

2011-02-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

There is a fine and fuzzy line between original writing and plagiarism. Since I am a writer (by my own definition) I should know. I have to try to do this once a week and do it all by myself—which I do, by the way, I think. Most of you know by now that what happens in my family and in my head just couldn't be happening anywhere else.

But we live in the cut-and-paste age, and it is easier than ever before to borrow words and ideas.

This little story which I am carefully referencing here is from the Sept. 2010 issue of the Reader's Digest, p. 60, and was submitted for publication by one Bob Wheeler. It is the perfect case in point:

At a planning meeting at my college, I congratulated a colleague on producing some superb student-guidance notes explaining how to combat plagiarism.

“How long did it take you to write that?” I asked.

“Not long,” he said. “I copied them from another university's website.”

It is interesting that either the original author, the colleague who borrowed, or the submitter sees the need to “combat” plagiarism as if it were a campus terrorist group or the H1N1 virus. Perhaps in the gilded halls of academia, it is possible to get all three abominations confused, at least in terms of their severity.

So, what I want to know is what those guidance notes said. Since they were student notes, they were presumably written to help students fight the dreaded plague, not to aid professors and administrators in their battle against it. But just so you know, most students don't really care. it's the latter's war.

Maybe rule number one said, “Never read your textbook or any other author. You will only be tempted to learn, understand and possibly at some point, repeat what you learned.

And perhaps rule number two: remember that even if your term paper is graded on clarity, you will have to resort to your own phrases and labels, however ambiguous or second-rate they may be. In fact, once you hear a perfectly turned phrase, you will never be satisfied with another, but the tendency to repeat it must be aggressively withstood. No wonder America's students are lagging behind.

I know, you are thinking that America's students should be having their own ideas, and be concisely stating them in their own words. Well, there are only so many of those to go around and most of them are already taken. Not only that, they are sure to be circulated out there somewhere in cut-and-paste land.

My solution to the problem is for more students to skip the liberal arts and focus on math and sciences. In those disciplines, the learner is encouraged to use the exact same methods for solving problems as the teacher or textbook author presents.

In fact copying is the standard mode of demonstrating what you have learned, and no ambiguity is tolerated, nor is original thinking. You don't have to be trying to think up new ways to solve math problems or trying to produce a different answer than the textbook has. Takes off all the pressure.

Okay, all of you English and literature teachers, relax. I am just trying to express an original idea or two about plagiarism, and I don't expect to inspire any cut-and-paste rebellions.

Learning a new language

2010-10-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

It used to be that alarms went off only in my head, and that was bad enough.

“Did I turn off the iron?”

“Oh no, I forgot to put out the garbage.”

And listening to those alarms go off in my head would have caused me to have something like a panic attack. Maybe two on a scale of one to ten. But nevertheless, those alarms kept me from sleepwalking through life.

But now days, there is an alarm going off every five minutes or so and most of them aren't in my head.

I was making a list of the things that beep, buzz, whistle, bong, sing, or ring at you and me. There are cell phones, Ipods, all kinds of proprietary machinery, washers, dryers, irons, toasters, ovens, alarm clocks, cars, computers, printers, GPS devices, timers, cameras, cash registers, gas pumps, fish finders… Many of those devices issue a variety of sounds in succession, in rhythm or in a pattern. Some of them play music and some of them blink at you too.

Every beep has a different message for you. “Almost empty, my battery is dying, you pushed the wrong button, add toner, cycle done, you've got mail, don't burn the cookies, don't burn the house down, out of focus, out of oil, use the flash, and on and on.

The trouble is I don't speak Droid very well. In fact I am usually looking around for a Droid interpreter. If I get myself in a room with a bunch of Droid-speaking devices and they all start beeping at once, there will be trouble. What happens is that when multiple alarms go off and I can't take care of all of them at once, the stresses start to add up and soon I am in a ten-out-of-ten condition. I start to suffer from deep beep overload which I demonstrate by two-stepping jerkily from one device to another while I try to understand which is saying what and how urgent the various messages are.

Sitting down to take a deep breath doesn't help much either. What is that other squeak-squeek” sound I hear? I can't tell where it is coming from. Wait, that's my desk chair creaking.

Driving out on the road presents a possibility of running into beep overload as well. Try interpreting and processing in a split second more than one beeping sound while driving through the turnabout.

“Eeeek! (You will notice that I have begun to utter droid-like sounds, but that doesn't mean I am fluent.) Should I answer the cell phone, study the dashboard, or get out of that Volkswagen's way?”

Perhaps some people could do all three, but not I. First I would have to find my cell phone which goes to show you what beep overload can do to me.

One of the most unhappy devices ever to speak Droid is the desktop computer. Some days it will issue complaining noises at a rate of every twenty keystrokes. What ensues is a condition closely related to beep overload in some ways.

However, this condition is characterized by an outburst of actual, spoken, English words—words words like -bleep-bleep-bleep-.

Just some of the hazards

2010-10-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

I hate to have to tell you this, but living is hazardous to your health. The National Safety Council published findings showing that most accidents occur at home, at work or at play. If you think about it, that doesn't leave a whole lot of safe time or space left over.

I can think of church. You are probably safe from auto accidents, skiing fatalities, and drownings in church, although you could get thoroughly wet at a baptism. I think I heard once, though, of someone who died of a heart attack in church.

One prevailing notion holds that if you are accident prone or feeling like you are overdue, you should stay in bed; but as one of my favorite fictional characters said when his wife tried to put him to bed to get over pneumonia, “I ain't thet big a fool… Ain't you ever noticed? Folks die in bed.”

So I can't recommend bed or church without reservation.

You don't want to be caught in an automobile, bus, airplane, or storm with or without a seat belt. You want to stay away from smoking sections in restaurants—if they have those anymore—especially if they serve food.

And don't be poor. Poverty is associated with increased risk of fire death. Stay away from football games; there were three football fatalities in 2009.

Just in case you were wondering what it is about skiing that is dangerous, I will tell you that is is “excess speed and loss of control, especially if they are complicated by contact with stationary objects such as trees, or rocks, or lift towers.”

You have the NSC to thank for such documented factual knowledge.

Well, back to our dilemma. Where or when is it safe? As for when, it's not August. Don't be around in August. September is better.

Show up then. Where? Not at a rock concert, not at a water attraction, not at an educational institution. (Good luck with the educational institution part unless you are well over eighteen.) And don't frequent banks; bank robbers tend to do the same thing.

Stay away from hospitals and senior citizens' centers. They are too much like staying in bed. Don't be caught in the proximity of washing machines, ironing boards, electricity or bears. And sweaters, you could accidentally hang yourself with your sweater.

Those are just some of the common everyday things. You also have to be aware of the exotic hazards like chemical wastes, nondisposable substances, dirt and germs. There used to be a concern about acid rain. Perhaps rain is more alkaline, lately—I haven't heard—but that can't be good either. Anyway, those things tend to jump on you or fall on you.

It is just my personal opinion, but I think that treadmills and haunted houses are also dangerous.

And now, don't let any of those things cause undue stress; that's also dangerous.

You may as well just relax and enjoy life. Another statistic I once heard: you have a one hundred percent chance that something will get you sooner or later.

Creative Taxes

2010-10-25T05:47:00.001-07:00

Creative tax plans are ingenious

Our government has been getting pretty creative lately with finding new ways to impose taxes —only they don't call them that. (I did an article a few weeks ago pointing out that whether you call a cat a “cat” or a “feline,” it is still the same animal. It meows and eats cat food. It has baby cats and may or may not catch mice. But changing the name does not change the nature of the animal.)

So any method of collecting money from you or me and transferring it to a government entity is probably a tax. Whether it is called something else like “cap-and-trade” or a “medical device surcharge,” by my definition, it is a tax. So when congress passes a law which costs money but is going to be paid for from “other revenues,” you might smell a rat—not a cat—a rat.

And this may look like an article complaining about taxes, but it's not. It's an article complaining about tribute monies. By the way, you may have heard that people who complain about taxes can be divided into two classes: men and women.

The tax czar has my respect. There are some innovative plans being talked about, and those backdoor plans have to be tricky.

For instance, someone developed this idea and called it healthcare reform: Congress will tax health care to subsidize people to buy health care that new taxes and regulation will make more expensive. Whoever dreamed up that plan certainly has my admiration. I don't like it, but it is creative. I could think for a year and not come up with that.

My grandkids think I am creative. They think I can make anything. Well I ran into a brick wall when I tried to think of some tax programs that could equal that one in ingenuity. I tried not to disappoint my fans though.

By using the same logic, I came up with the short list of my own. (There never was a long list.) I assume that what happens in Vernal stays in Vernal and will not end up on the tax czar's list of Possibles. He doesn't need encouragement.
1. Impose a crop tax on sagebrush growers to help pay for zerascape projects.
2. Increase the use fees at national parks to pay for visit-your-national-parks advertising campaigns.
3. Collect a consumption tax on milk to pay for the cost of methane gas reduction research.
4. Tax cosmetic surgeries to help pay for Congressional health care insurance.
5. Collect revenues from pet owners to help pay for homeless animal shelters.
6. Tax automobile manufacturers to fund the down payments for new car buyers. Wait. Someone already thought of that.

Okay, I don't have what it takes. I wish I could say that that is because everything has already been thought of, but I expect to see innovations in the kinds and quantities of tribute monies increase at roughly the same rate as the national debt.

The problem is that I don't dream up tax schemes for a living. I just spend my living on tax schemes.

A view of Bertha's logic

2010-07-12T22:04:00.000-07:00

Premise number One: Hello! Old people take medicine. Just walk up and down the medications aisle in the grocery store. Just read Part D on a Medicare application.
Just watch an old-people show like Lawrence Welk on television and check out the commercials. No, you don't have to watch the whole show. You can click away from the commercials too if you want to, but just check me out. They advertise Boneva, and Centrum (sounds like “century”) and Celebrex on those shows for a reason which is: old people take medicine.

Premise number Two: Old people can't see. Just hang out at the optometrist's like I do, Just watch the old people shows like I do when I finally get my glasses adjusted. They advertise eye surgeries, eyedrops, and eyeglasses. Yes, the models for eyeglasses are all under the age of ten, but don't worry, they are just faking blindness. They also advertise Centrum for Eyes on those shows.

For some reason those advertisers actually think that their audience can see the commercials. Wait, that is why they also blast the sound on the same commercials—to make sure they can be heard if not seen. (For kids it is “seen and not heard.” For old people it is the other way around.)

Premise number Three: Old ladies cook. The generation of people to the left of center on a pedigree chart does not cook. They occasionally make cake from a box, and soup from a can. That is because their eyes are good enough that they can read the instructions. If it were as much trouble for them to read the labels as it is for old people, they wouldn't do it at all.

Conclusion: Don't you worry, those big companies know their markets well enough to sell their products. Notice that the company designer logo is plenty big enough for anyone to read. But once they get you to buy the medicine or the container of food, they are done with you. When it comes to figuring out how to use your Boneva or your cake mix, you are on your own because the industry standards for labels requires the use of microscopic type.

There must be some directive coming from the Consumer Protection Agency that reads like this: “Whenever designing labels that include instructions for use, drug facts, product ingredients, or nutrition information, do not waste container space by using a typeface that is larger than five points. The average consumer is comfortable with a font of that size or smaller, and lightface is sufficient.”

Okay, if they are selling Legos, or X-box games, maybe. Old people don't use those products anyway unless their grandkids force them to, in which case the kids have to be in the same room to show them how or they couldn't make them anyway.

Once one of my grandkids tried to make me play X-box. (He was in the same room.) Maybe it was War Games. I couldn't even maneuver my guy onto the battlefield. I ended up somewhere in a DMZ where there were high cliffs from which I fell and killed myself all by myself.

But if I walk into the kitchen with the intent of cooking something that requires me to read the instructions on the back of the product, all the grandkids will be gone. They have no desire to help me read the back of a bottle of aspirin either. They think that if I am careless enough to get sick that I will just have to take my medicine.

Well, I have news for the kids. It takes more brains to make cake when you can't read the recipe than it does to play X-box when you can see the controller buttons.

And I have advice for those who market medications and foods that have to be prepared. Discrimination against old people is punishable by law isn't it? I might have read that somewhere, but then the type was awfully small.

It was a grand Fourth of July

2010-07-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

How often does the Fourth of July come on a Sunday? Every six years? You may have noticed that the fact that the Fourth was in the middle of the holiday weekend made it possible for a body to celebrate it more than once.

First let me say that at least half of my family members think that Independence Day is the best holiday of the year. They love fireworks, fly-bys, and parades. They love barbecues, car shows and warm weather. And they love this country, so they were happy to celebrate all they could. Imagine that.

This year, the celebrations were all over the weekend. Some towns and cities had their fireworks on Friday, some on Saturday and some on Sunday. It was the same with parades and rodeos and all the rest of it.

By traveling between a couple of different cities and a few other destinations, one of our family members saw fireworks twice, took in a couple of barbecues and a roast beef dinner, golfed, shopped, went fishing, saw a car show, and caught a couple of parades. He wasn't quite fast enough to see the fly-by more than once though.
We all had some good times—some laughs, some proud moments, lots of oohs and aahs, good food, tired kids and family fun.

The city where I spent my weekend doesn't have a traditional parade. Instead they have a huge car show; and after it is over, the cars line up and they all cruise up and down Main Street for as long as they want to. They rev their engines, squeal their tires, honk their horns, and show off their cars in the sense of doing a lot more than just parking them at the fairgrounds.

Everyone else lines the streets and cheers and waves and picks their favorites. (What is more American than a Chevy or a Ford?)

Some of the vehicles are still “peeling out” on the city streets two days later. On Monday afternoon, we were visiting and enjoying the weather outside in the backyard when someone who was still celebrating the car show staged a five-second “burn-out” on the street out front. Even after two days of hearing rumbling engines and screeching tires, we all looked toward the street.

We couldn't see the car from where we were standing, but I pictured a red Pontiac GTX with yellow flames and wide mag wheels. Immediately after the screeching stopped, my ten-year-old grandson came flying around the corner of the house on his foot-powered scooter announcing loudly, “That wasn't me.”

On a more serious note, I have been reading some commentary about the genius of the Declaration of Independence and the incomparable foresight of the men who wrote it, as well as the courage of those who adopted it and signed it. The Constitution of the United States rests in the same category. There has probably been nothing to compare with it in all of history.

What I have concluded is that it was no accident that that many great minds were gathered together in one place and in one time—men of great mental capacity who also had the will, the ability, the tenacity and the courage to craft such a framework for governing a people.

And it doesn't seem as if there has been such a concentration of great minds anywhere in the world since, at least not in government. In some arenas there is just no point in trying to reinvent the wheel. The best legislators are probably those who are smart enough to realize “that wasn't me” and then get over it.

The Basin mosquito surge

2010-07-12T22:01:00.000-07:00

Luckily I am one of those people who is usually left unbitten by mosquitoes, so I may be out of line in asking; but there seems to be an over-abundance of them this year, doesn't there?

I have heard an inordinate number of complaints about them, seen an increase of puffy red welts on arms, legs and faces, and noticed that the repellent shelf in the drug store was nearly empty. I know, Sherlock Holmes and all that.

Being receptionist at the mosquito abatement office this week has probably been a challenge. You know we expect to have all of our problems solved and solved quickly in this day and age. Not only that, we expect a government agency to solve them too.

However, I don't know too many people who have a real solution for controlling those pesky (gross understatement) insects. I can't think of any overstatements since mosquitoes are at the top of the dangerous-animal chart and seeing as how they cause, (or is it spread?) deadly diseases. Deadly as in dead.

It's like plugging the hole in the Gulf. No one knows how to do it, and for sure things have been tried.

Repellent isn't much of a solution. Wearing extra clothing doesn't help much if a mosquito really wants to bite you. Citronella candles, Skin So Soft, and eating bananas just makes them more determined. As for mosquito netting, I have never seen any to buy, but I wouldn't want to show up at a barbecue wearing it.

There are instructions for a mosquito trap on line, but I am sure that for every one you trap there are fifty more waiting to take its place. It's not like they have staked out their own backyards and once you clear that area you are safe. They just fly around in a random pattern (nonspecific searching behavior) until they find someone to bite.

There are breakthroughs on the mosquito front though, Apparently what it is that makes the mosquito abort the random pattern and hone in on a certain target is the presence of that much-maligned, of late, carbon dioxide gas.

The carbon dioxide that is exhaled during the normal life processes of a human being and the animals is what attracts the female mosquito who is looking for a shot of blood which will develop the eggs she is getting ready to lay. The males are benign and only eat nectar and plant juices.

The mosquito isn't fussy about which kind of blood she gets. Animal blood is as good as human blood, but a lot of animals are protected by a coat of hair which is too dense for the mosquito's “stinger” to penetrate. Most humans aren't that well protected.

Mr. B. is one of those people who is especially attractive to mosquitoes. He does have a lot of hair on his arms, enough to protect them even though they are usually exposed at this time of year. The hair doesn't extend to his elbows or his knuckles though, which explains the red, raised, dot-matrix pattern on those two parts of his anatomy. He's learning to cover up better though.

People in other areas of the country complain about their mosquitoes, asserting that they are getting bigger and louder every year. Mr. B. complains that this year's mosquitoes are smaller and that he can't hear them coming. That may have something to do with his advancing age, but I might have noticed the same thing.

Birthdays—everybody has one

2010-07-12T22:00:00.000-07:00

Perhaps I have already written on the subject that I am going to write about. I'm not sure. If I have and can't remember, I can be fairly sure that you can't either.
There are only so many things that I am qualified or unqualified to write about anyway. Maybe this is one of them.

One of life's greatest mysteries to me, right up there with how do bumblebees fly and where are all the lost socks, is this: why do we make so much fuss over birthdays?

First of all, the individual had nothing to do with getting a birthday. He didn't earn it, buy it, rent it, or study for it. He does nothing and he gets a party. He can't even remember the day he got it. Perhaps it all started with the parents having a party to celebrate a birth. Now they did something to earn a party. Maybe it was so much fun that they kept it up and pretty soon the honor transferred to the birthdayee.

Secondly, everybody has a birthday. We don't usually celebrate or take note of something so common as to be had by everyone. It's like having a foot. Do we celebrate having a foot? No everybody has one or two.
“Ha,” you say, “look at Joe. He lost his foot in the war.” Okay, Joe is different. He doesn't have a foot. Even then he doesn't call for a party—never mind that he most definitely did earn it.

But where's the distinction in having a birthday?

A retirement party I can understand. You worked for 35 years to earn it.
I can live with a housewarming party. You spent megabucks on that celebration.
A funeral I can handle. You probably got gray hair and wrinkles producing relatives to attend it.

A graduation party you suffered and studied hard for.
But you do nothing and you get a birthday party. And people bring presents. Sometimes they sing to you or put your picture in the newspaper.

Find me a guy who doesn't have a birthday, and I will throw him a party. I will send gifts. I will invite the neighbors.

Well, wait a minute. I just happened to remember that some people are shorted in the birthday department. Like my son, for instance. He is like Joe. Well, he has a foot, but he only has a birthday every four years. Now that is a distinction.

I think we may have thrown him a party every year that he didn't have a birthday. On the leap years we might have had a little celebration too. As for the future, we'll see about next leap year when it gets here.

In the meantime, anybody who wants to forget my birthday is perfectly welcome. I keep trying to forget it myself.

Political correctness is a fairy tale

2010-07-12T21:57:00.000-07:00

I once read a book of politically correct fairy tales.

Actually I just now found a site that sells the volume on line. The author is James Finn Garner and the title of the book is Politically Correct Bedtime Stories. I know I have the right one because I remember the cover, however I don't remember all of the stories. If I am borrowing from Mr. Garner, I hereby give him credit.

I do think he updated Little Red Riding Hood, being careful not to call the wolf “bad” or any other derogatory names even though it intended to eat a little girl who was clearly on a humanitarian mission. I believe he decided further that he couldn't even call the animal “wolf” as that word has meanings other than that of a big gray carnivorous animal that lives in the forest.

I think he upgraded The Three Little Pigs also, being careful not to cast aspersions on their size or their eating habits.

The Three Bears was probably one of the stories Mr. Garner retold, but Goldilocks already had herself firmly planted in her politically correct feminist role, not being afraid to fight against the establishment for what she thought she deserved.

Mr. Garner's goal in retelling the stories seems to have been to point out that we, whoever we is (and I hope I don't qualify), have gone a bit overboard in our quest to be sensitive above all else—even forsaking clarity in the process. Perhaps that is why the legislation coming out of Washington lately is incomprehensible and over-inflated, as is most of the rhetoric also.

To illustrate my point, consider this example: The Chronologically Advanced Female Person Who Lived in an Unlikely Dwelling for the Extremely Monetarily Challenged. One has to think much harder to decipher the intended meanings, and really The Old Lady Who Lived in a Shoe is a lot fewer words. I don't even want to think about politically cleaning up the part about she had so many children she didn't know what to do, or what she gave them for supper, not to mention the spankings.

The Duckling That Was Judged on Its Physical Appearance Instead of its Personal Merits is another case in point. Perhaps you can amuse yourself with your own corrected versions of well-known tales. Maybe try fixing Rapunzel.

I would like to point out that no matter what an object is called, it still retains its latent characteristics. Whether you call a dwarf a “dwarf” or a “little person,” he remains the same in height, weight and person. Changing his name does not change him and therefore the label he is given sooner or later acquires the same meaning as the original object and is again no kinder or fairer that the original label. It is usually longer, fuzzier and harder to remember though.

Whether you label someone “lazy” or “motivationally challenged,” it means the same thing, so why not stick with something that is shorter to type?

I wish to point out also, that no matter how many ways you don't keep score at a soccer game, you will have to change the game if there are to be no losers. Maybe everyone could show up at the field (which could be much smaller) with their own ball and then just kick it all the way home. There would be no winners and no losers. There would be no goalies and no forwards. Everyone would feel good, and just think of the fun everyone would have.

There is one bedtime story that I don't remember our author rewriting. Perhaps the reason is that The Grasshopper and the Ants already is flush with liberal correctness and doesn't need much unimprovement.

The day the microwave died

2010-07-12T21:55:00.000-07:00

There are a couple of things without which I cannot function. One of them is the microwave oven.

Garrison Keillor tells about a Lake Wobegone housewife who kept her microwave oven in the carton under the bed. (She must have had on old-fashioned four-poster into which she climbed with a step stool after putting on her bed jacket and nightcap at sundown.)

My mother-in-law kept hers in the carton in the back room on top of the dryer/
I have had a hard time adjusting to some kinds of new technology, like texting and Facebooking, but when the microwave oven appeared in stores, I was one of the first in line. Microwave energy and I are totally compatible. I have warmed everything from playdough to ear drops in the microwave. Nothing that was still alive though.

We would have died of hypothermia last winter without those rice bags and hot drinks we warmed in the MO.

I was forced to try out deprivation once when our microwave oven died of overuse. Thirty times a day I opened the broken microwave's door, put something inside, and closed it. Not until I tried to set the time and temperature did I remember that this dead oven could not cook no matter how much I believed in resurrection.

After removing the item which would still be in one of several stages of cold, I had to go through a complex readjustment process:

“Okay, this is stupid. How many times am I going to put food in this broken microwave before I finally remember not to?”

After that reprimand, I still had to try to think of some alternate method to thaw, heat or cook the meal.

“Okay, dinner is going to be a little late today.” (Anything after 9:30 p.m. is considered late.)

I had to call up mental pictures of my mother or grandmother cooking certain dishes before I could go on with dinner.

“Now would grandmother have put this in the oven, in a pot on the stove, eaten it raw or just gone out for dinner?”

“Scratch that last option. They never went out for dinner…oh yes, I remember, they ate bread-and-milk on nights like this.”

“Well, scratch that too. No one under the age of 33 has ever heard of bread-and-milk. You could get reported for child abuse.”

Well, I turned into a mediocre cook overnight. There aren't many foods that you can cook on a range when they are frozen solid. And the rest of them take some planning ahead.

I think we mostly ate cold cereal during the three days that it took us to find, buy and set up the new microwave. (We didn't waste too much time deliberating.)
If you think that I was upset at the loss of our main method of cooking, you should have seen the six-year-old when he realized that the microwave could do nothing more than act as a temporary storage unit.

He sank down to the floor and began to cry.

“Now we can't make hot chocolate”

I was trying to think. “Now how did grandmother do that?”

What isn't getting spread around?

2010-07-12T21:53:00.000-07:00

Well, I have figured out why there are 7,000 political writers/bloggers out there waxing daily on every imaginable issue or non-issue. If there isn’t an issue, they will manufacture one. All they have to do is hear about some event, pertinent or not, decide which side of it they want to come down on and start writing. Some political issues are good for six or eight articles or more. Some of them provide never-ending “fodder.”

I don’t seem to have that luxury—without entering the political arena, that is. I run out of themes for columns. Weekly I have to dig so deep to think of a subject that I sometimes end up trapped in a hole or, just as bad, wearing a subject out. However I don’t know why I should worry much about that given the examples that are out there in the media.

Oh-oh, you are thinking, Bertha is going to add her two-cent’s worth to the pile of material written about the Gulf oil spill, or the BP Oil Leak as it has come to be called. What little I have to say about that comes from a Uintah Basin perspective which may not have been addressed yet.

If that well had been drilled on land—say somewhere out south of Ouray—everyone would be hoping mightily for an oil leak. And if there were one, they would just drive up the trucks, load them up and drive them off again. They wouldn’t need a giant concrete bell, panty hose, or a series of pipes. Any amount of oil spilling on dry land really is a non-issue since without the addition of a large body of water to the equation, there isn’t a medium capable of spreading that oil around for miles and miles (as in south of Ouray).

The same thing cannot be said for all of the “information” and “opinion” circulating about it though. It gets a little oily in that medium, too.

Sometimes there is an issue that even I, agreeable Bertha, cannot resist commenting on. Another one of those issues would be one aspect of the Arizona Emigration Law fracas.

First, if Arizonans need to protect their borders and no one else is going to, they should be allowed to try some things, Second, I thought we were the United States, which should mean that we hang together when things are tough.

I think the best comeback on any level or in any arena that I have evcr heard is the one that the State of Arizona had for the city of Los Angeles in response to its boycott against them. It was just a pointed reminder in the form of a letter to the city council reminding them about the large quantities of electric power that their state provides to Los Angeles in the amount of 25% of their total usage. I also seem to remember that that city is particularly susceptible to rolling brownouts, grayouts or some color of outage.

In addition, if if I am not mistaken, a huge amount of water passes through Arizona on its way to somewhere in southern California as well.

Whether or not Arizona could in actuality turn off the lights, doesn’t matter a whole lot right now But it does matter that someone points out that the two states are a bit codependent and that Los Angeles might not want to be too quick to forget that.

Well, if by now you think that Bertha doesn’t know what she is talking about or she has fallen into a deep hole, you may be right; but you can be sure that she is in company with a whole lot of other writers/bloggers just like her.

Waiting for spring—oh well

2010-07-12T21:51:00.000-07:00

You may have noticed that Bertha has shown remarkable restraint this “spring” by avoiding all mention of the weather. Weather is usually a safe subject anyway, at least conversationally, but I am not sure that anyone can talk or write about the weather this spring without getting a little hot under the collar, which is a good thing for the neck.

Well, I stood it as long as I could. Last weekend made me give it up. I am now ready to launch an attack upon the weather, which is sure to do some good.

Yes, I know we need “the moisture.” It isn't the moisture that I mind. Moisture is just water. It's when it presents itself in the form of snow, ice or hail that I get cross. And actually I don't have a problem with snow or ice either if it shows up during winter—you know, that three-month period between the middle of November and the middle of February.

One of the myths that is taught and perpetuated in schools and elsewhere is that there are four seasons of equal length I and that they march rhythmically on through the year without missing a beat. There are graphics around, on calendars and on the web and such, that romanticize each of the four seasons. Snowflakes for winter, colored leaves for fall, beach umbrellas for summer and flowers for spring, as if one for each season could organize things.

But we are getting swindled. We now see green grass and tulips, but they have snow on them. I don't have to tell you that snow is associated with freezing temperatures. Again, that would be okay in “winter” when people actually have their winter clothes and boots in the front of their closets and they prepare for bouts of cold weather. It just isn't any fun at soccer games, campouts and family reunions.

Up until now, I have been able to deal with the cold and over-extended winter weather because I sm an “oh, well,” kind of person. As in “oh well, at least I am not getting sunburned today.” I have been hard-pressed to find enough “oh wells” to improve my attitude this time. In case you want to know what I have been telling myself, and in hopes that it might help someone else cope with wind and cold, I have herewith written the Bertha Butterbean Oh-Well List for Long Winters. Oh well…

1.I look better in winter clothes.

2.The bugs are all gone somewhere else. So are the snakes and lizards.

3. No one has to wonder whether the lawnmower will start.

4. Basketball supplants baseball.

5. Turning on the air conditioner is out of the question.

6. Politicians give the global warming issue a rest.

7.I feel good about owning an SUV.

8.I can make soup for dinner every night.

9.Spring is sure to come sometime.

I thought I could come up with a traditional list of ten “oh wells.” I'm sorry, but I just couldn't finish it. To tell the truth, I was reaching for the last two or three.

You may also have noticed that until number 6. above, I refrained from making any sort of reference to global warming. Personally I was sad to see its demise and am looking forward to its retuurn, provided that can happen without it becoming a political controversy.

I have my own definition of climate change. The seasons have shifted around to later in the calendar year. Winter starts later and ends later than it used to. Someday we may have to use little snowflake graphics to denote spring. Oh well…
Totally not by the way, I read this joke online the other day:

First cave man to second cave man: "I don't care what you say. We never had such unusual weather before they started using bows and arrows."

I don't know how long this joke has been around, but to me it sounds like commentary on the climate-change issue.

Camping and the gender gap

2010-07-12T21:48:00.000-07:00

From time to time the topics of Bertha's articles have had something to do with the gender gap—the differences between the sexes—especially in terms of their approach to various activities and problem solving.

I remember writing about the differences in the way men and women orient themselves on this planet. Most men use north, south, east and west. Most women use landmarks.
Then there is the issue of the thermostat. According to my extensive polling data, men turn it down. Women turn it up. Of course, traditional clothing styles contribute to gender temperature disparity. At certain events, men are required to wear suits, some of them consisting of three pieces layered over a shirt or two. Those are the same events at which women wear strapless, sleeveless, backless, and other abbreviated clothing. What is up with that?

Well, those issues are weak when it comes to this one: how did girls and guys get to be so far apart on the proper way of getting in touch with nature? As we make plans for yet another girls' camp experience, I find myself wondering about that once more.
As you know, guys tend not to plan their outdoor experiences. They throw some food and gear into the truck and head for the great outdoors where they seem to feel comfortable wearing wet shoes and sleeping with bears.

Girls, on the other hand, bring along everything required to make the experience not only comfortable but also healthy, enlightening, civilized, educational, worthwhile and memorable. So they need (minimum) the correct food and equipment to cook it, field books, showers, journals, cameras, three changes of clothes per day, shoes to complement all of the above outfits, toilet paper, soap, towels, electronic devices such as cell phones and hair dryers, and table centerpieces.

Once when I conscripted my 18-year-old son into bringing his pickup truck to carry a load of gear home from girls camp, his patient nature was taxed when he had to help me carry many loads of stuff from the campsite to his truck. Even I, a girl, was embarrassed.

“What do girls do with all of this stuff?” he grumbled. I had a hard time explaining it myself.

However, only a girl would leave her hiking boots home and go on a five-mile trail hike in strappy sandals. And only a girl would bring the scallions and leave the matches home.

Camping has been described as something we all did before we discovered houses. And then there are girls like my sister who see absolutely no point in regression, individually or collectively, which attitude may explain the need for girls to make the outdoor experience as much like being at home as possible.

It was probably women tired of camping who invented houses. Then men feeling the need to go far and wide in search of game invented tents, and camping became a recreational sport rather than a way of living. Then someone remembered that the wheel had been invented and put those on little houses and almost everyone was happier.

But when youth groups go camping, they don't go in camp trailers. So we're back to square one. Girls just need more in the out-of-doors to make them happy than boys do.
This little story illustrates my point about the gender gap:

My outdoor-enthusiast son went through the process of bringing three offspring into the world without getting a son of his own. (I know, there is a bit of a gender gap in that whole process as well.) After waiting for about eight years to get a son to take into the wilderness with him, he gave up and invited his oldest daughter.
“Hey Sis. let's you and I go camping and fishing this weekend.”

She had an immediate response.
“Why?”

Kids on the move

2010-07-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have to reach way back into the past to come up with a topic for a Butterbean article. Our days are usually a lot calmer than they used to be. Writing about everyday life now could potentially put anyone to sleep.
So this story comes from several years back when I had all sorts of kids at home, and life was anything but calm:

"Last night my eight-year-old son had the nerve to tell me to quit wiggling. I was sitting quietly enough on the couch listening to him read a story, only it was a bad story so I was trying to get relief by watching a worse television commercial. Hence the slight rhythmic jiggling of my foot.

But my son didn't say, “Will you please stop wiggling?” Instead he took the oblique approach.

“Do you have to go to the bathroom?”

This impertinence from the kid who is directly related to Tigger. He has springs in his feet, He swims in his sleep. He jumps hurdles at church.

For the past eight years he has been hopping, running, squirming, kicking, dancing, skipping, double-timing through my life, and he has the nerve to fault a little jiggling of my foot?

I suppose the average family has a blanket rule for conduct indoors. Something like “no running in the house” probably covers most of the eventualities. But that just won't cut it in the Butterbean family. Not inclusive enough, or I guess the right word be “exclusive,”

So here is the list of rules for behavior regulating motion in the Butterbean household: (They do kind of date us, but you only have to take a look at us and we are automatically dated anyway.

1. No break-dancing in the kitchen.

2. No sporting events in the house. (Covers sprinting, hurdling, high-jumping, long-jumping, pole-vaulting and throwing anything. Also covers dribbling, slam-dunking, sliding, serving, spiking, etc.
)
3. No Michael Jordan or Greg Loughannes impressions.

4. No karate.

5. No super friends impersonations. (Covers Spiderman, Aquaman, Superman, Batman, Tarzan and Geraldo.)

6. No sugar.

7. I reserve the right to enact new rules without prior notice and upon the discovery of hitherto unknown-or-thought-of anti-inertia forces.
At one time I advised this kid that his body would be less abused if he didn't run everywhere he went. I meant to imply that walking into door jambs is safer than running into them. He thought about that for a few seconds and then replied, “But Mom, running is my main thing.”

Just for your peace of mind, I didn't let the kid get away with checking on my bathroom habits. I invoked my right to administer punishment without prior warning. He had to run around the house twenty times. That would be the outside of the house.
He loved every minute of it. Oh well.

Looking back now, I am wondering how Running Boy and I ever happened to be sitting on the couch reading a book in the first place. I must have had more backbone and determination than I thought I did.

Looking back now, I am wondering how Running Boy and I ever happened to be sitting on the couch reading a book in the first place. I must have had more backbone and determination than I thought I did.

I can't park here?

2010-07-12T21:38:00.000-07:00

You will probably never believe that I am old enough to have a grandson in college. Okay, maybe you can. But the thing is he doesn't drive, so his parents have to take him to and from his classes. That is usually okay. It isn't far away, and he can arrange his schedule with classes one after the other so that driving isn't usually a hardship.

At least that is the case when his parents are dropping him off. They just drive up to the area in question and let him out the door. Picking him up is a different story, however, because they might have to park and wait for him to emerge from whichever building he is in.

This is a long-established university which means that when it was built years ago, there was no need for multiple parking spaces. I don't know whether there were any cars back then. Students probably lived on campus and could walk to all their classes.

That is no longer the case. You probably have heard more than one campus-parking horror story. Their main theme of them is that there isn't any—campus parking that is.

So the other night, my grandson was driven up to the campus by a friend, and his parents didn't know exactly where to meet him to pick him up. To make matters worse, the power was out and dad's cell phone was down.

Consequently, both dad and mom were at the college in separate cars trying to find and pick up their student without out the aid of phones or street lighting. It was the week before finals and the engineering building was full of students completing semester projects. Every one of those students had brought a car on campus, and every parking space was full. Unbeknownst to each other, both parents are circling the building trying to find a place to park so they can retrieve their son.

While my son-in-law was still circling in the Pontiac, in desperation my daughter drove her SUV onto the sidewalk. You have heard of speed traps? This was a parking trap. When there are absolutely no places to park, the parking patrol comes out. So the minute she stopped her car, a campus policeman drove up behind her and parked his vehicle in a red zone.

He got out of his patrol car and approached my daughter.

“Do you know that you are parked on the sidewalk?”

Do you know how many different and equally damaging replies there could be to that question?

Do you know how tempting it would be to utter one of them? My daughter is a comic and she had to pinch her lips to keep from giving voice to one of these:
“Oh, was that the curb I just ran over?”
“Well, I did notice that I wasn't in line with the other cars, but it is kind of dark out here.”

“Do you know you are parked in a red zone?”

After it was established that she knew she was parked on the sidewalk, the officer had another question for her.

“Why are you parked on the sidewalk?

Again, do you know how tempting it would be to give a smart-aleck answer such as:

“Do you really want me to answer that question?”

“I couldn't help it, my car is one of those that parallel parks itself and it insisted on this spot.”

“ I didn't have a quarter for the parking meter—oh wait, there aren't any parking meters without cars next to them within three blocks.”

Meanwhile her husband, on his next drive-by, noticed that she had been pulled over, so to speak. He quickly parked in a handicapped space and came running over to rescue his wife. When he asked what the problem was, he was greeted with, “Do you know that you are parked in a handicapped zone?” Presumably the officer noticed that my son-in-law was pretty fast on his feet and didn't seem to be handicapped, at least physically.

He answered the officer's question in a direct and respectful manner. “Yes, I do. I was just checking on my wife.”

“You need to move that car immediately, or I will give both of you a ticket.”
Reasoning that one ticket was better than two, he ran back to his car and drove away before the officer had time to open his citation book.

My daughter did try to explain her situation, but she doubted whether the policeman believed any of it. After all, she is pretty sure that she doesn't look old enough to have a son in college.

Watching kids' soccer is winning

2010-07-12T21:36:00.000-07:00

In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of soccer. The balls come out of the closet and the kids, boys and girls, start to kick them around; they bring home the notes for soccer sign-up and before you know it, the soccer moms and their families are huddled up in the cold and wind watching kids in shorts running around trying to keep warm. Of course the parents are only able to sit and shiver helplessly.

That is just part of the fun of soccer. When weather isn't a deterrent, it can be quite entertaining. I will hereby recount a few of the more amusing incidents I have seen and heard of lately.

The story of this last week was about the game where one of the 8-year-old teams was short a few players and the other team had more than they needed when it came time to play. So the coaches put their heads together and evened things out by sending a couple of the players from the red team onto the blue team so everyone could have fun. The blue team must have been missing their goalie that morning because they put a transplant player into the goal.

It took three kicks on goal before anyone realized that the goalie didn't make a move when there was a goal kick. And it took a few more plays before anyone older than ten realized why. Sometimes the kids are smarter than the adults who just might be a few sides short of a pentagram, that is on any given day.

The week before that my grandson had the dubious honor of playing goalie in his game. He took one for the team when he fearlessly blocked a short goal kick with his face. Well, actually he didn't have time to get out of the way. His injuries included a looser tooth, a bloody nose, and a puffy face.

It turned out to be all for the good though since the loose tooth was one that had been hanging in that mouth too long anyway. Later that evening our movie, Sherlock Holmes, was interrupted in the middle of the “London Bridge” scene in order for us to hear a dramatic announcement.

The kid comes running into the room yelling excitedly, “pause the movie, pause the movie.”

“No, it's almost over.”

“But this is important.” He is now jumping up and down and waving his arms more energetically than he ever did in the soccer goal. We paused the movie.
“What is it?”

“I pulled my tooth.” The benefits of soccer.
Then there is the story of the goalie who caught a goal kick and duly trotted out to the front of the goal box. She faced the field and quickly dropkicked the ball. It was a pretty good kick if you discount the direction it took. It arched neatly up and over her head and rolled straight into her own goal behind her.
Finally, my daughter told me about a game which was refereed by young teenagers, two boys and a girl. One of the player's fathers thought he could make a difference in the score of the game, which wasn't scored anyway, by bleep-bleeping the referees and the other team's players.

The obnoxious father had been warned to clean up his language and be quiet, but he continued to blaspheme the name of referees everywhere. Finally the girl walked over to the mouthy dad and told him he had to leave. He refused and got a little louder. The two boy referees decided she might need a little help and came along to back her up.

“If you do not leave, I will call this game.”

“Yeah. What she said,” piped up the boys.

The father left. He didn't just walk away however. He ambled from his position in one corner of the field, across it to the opposite corner, before he was finally gone. The game continued peacefully for about two minutes until Soccer Man returned with his mother, who must have been the one who taught him to talk, and his wife. Three against three. So the ruckus escalated.

Miss Referee had put up with enough. She strode over to the three and told them she was going to call the game. The grandmother in turn called her a name, which is not fit to print, and said that furthermore she couldn't talk to her like that.
So, game over. The two teams cheered each other, and everyone went home; and that is where some people should stay.

Bertha gets her feet wet

2010-07-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

It seems that I made a little ripple in the Facebook pond last weekend when I surprised my kids, who are now my friends, by setting up an account. They thought I would never take the plunge. I wasn't holding out because I had any issues, moral or otherwise, with Facebooking. It was just that I didn't see the point. Anything I wanted to say to someone could be typed into an email, and the recipient could then be called on the phone and told to read his/her email.

Signing up was a pretty slick process. Only took a couple of minutes and cost nothing other than what I send to my internet provider monthly plus the cost of a computer and a modem, a monitor, keyboard, mouse, camera, etc. etc. So nearly free; but since I am paying or have paid for all that stuff anyway, I reasoned that I didn't have much to lose.

I have never heard of it happening, but I suppose I could always get myself off Facebook pretty quickly also. However, I wouldn't recommend even five minutes of it for anyone in the government witness program.

After the quick initial setup , I found a perfectly nondescript boring picture of myself which I had to crop out of a group shot using a fairly cheap program—Photoshop, which I also did have anyway.

In the time it took me to do that, I had 41 new friends with messages from two of them which was amazing considering it was 11 p.m., Mountain Standard Time, and 1 a.m. where one of them originated.

They both said that they didn't think I would ever do it, and that they just about fell off their office furniture when they saw me on Facebook. If I were still waffling at that point, I gave it up when message number two informed me that if I had any doubts, I could let them go because being on Facebook was the best way to check up on my kids. It could be true. For the duration that I am “on” Facebook, my kids are my friends.

Well, to tell the truth, there actually was one small issue that kept me from getting my feet wet sooner. I didn't want to set any records for “least amount of friends on Facebook” or anything. My daughter had 431 friends as of Friday, and that is quite a bit of pressure there. However I have a big family and I could probably twist some arms if it got too embarrassing. But when I found I could collect 41 friends in fifteen minutes, I began to rest easier and enjoy the experience. Right now I have friends that I have never even heard of.

Wait, I do remember stories about people being defriended, hidden or blocked. I think that my other daughter was friends with someone for exactly two hours and four minutes when she was defriended. That is another record I might have to worry about setting.

So, I mentioned that my photo was unoriginal. I have some pressure in that area, too. One daughter has a cute cartoon for her profile picture and another one uses a photo of her laying on the pavement inside of one of those outlines that crime investigators paint around dead bodies. She was in New York City at the time. By the way, have I mentioned any sons yet? No? I didn't think so.

So the gauntlet has been thrown in the photo department. I do have an old photo of me on top of the Middle Teton. Yes, it's real. I already said it was old. Hey, some people put their baby pictures on there don't they? I can't think of anything else remarkable that I have photos of—well actually that I don't have photos of either, for that matter. Lately I have been more apt to stay out of photos when I can.

So when I get my wall page spiffed up and get my friends lined up, I will be all set. I will be all set to…to do what, I'm not sure. This is where “I don't get the point” comes in. If I post my status a few times, people will begin to understand why I went so long without Facebook. If I post too many photos of me in a rocking chair, they will know for sure.

And, I can only check up on my kids so many times in one day.

The return of, ahem, Frankenstein

2010-07-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

I hate to admit it to the younger readers in my audience, if I have any, but I have lived long enough to witness the rise and fall of more than a few different items from cultural grace—some of them more than once.

One example that comes to mind is bell-bottom pants. Lest any generation try to take too much credit for them, I believe they were first worn by navy sailors. Which navy and how long ago, I couldn't say, but they did not just appear on the scene in the Sixties because Pierre Cardin had a light bulb moment.

It was the counter-culture Hippies who wore them first. First after the sailors, that is. They sometimes made their own by inserting triangles of colorful fabrics into the outside seams of jeans below the knees. So their pedigree (the bell bottoms') is a tiny bit tainted anyway. Don't worry. I wore them, because they soon made their way into mainstream fashion.

Before they left that scene, though, they had morphed into polyester bells, and then into the polyester leisure suit. Since polyester could be and was made in any wild color or pattern imaginable, it caught on in a hurry in that nonconformist
atmosphere. Too big a hurry. And it was cheap. Too cheap. All of that accounts for the sleazy connotation that goes along with polyester itself. I wore it too. It was a great invention—you didn't have to iron it. But by the late 70's only used car salesmen and great-grannies wore polyester anything.

The contemporary trend of “how low can you go,” low-riding pants may seem like a recent phenomena, but they are nothing more than over-the-top (yeah right) versions of the hip-hugger bell-bottom pants that were popular in the 60's and 70's.

And I was supposed to be excited about their return? And the polyester, too? Not only was the style stale for anyone over fifty, but I looked much better in it the first time around.

Colors schemes in dress and decoration are also wicked in their ability to date an outfit or a home. One that has come and gone is the mauve and gray color combo of the 80's. If there was ever any color combo that dated a living room, it is that one.

I am so glad that we didn't build a house in the 80's because I would have done that then, and had I done so, unfortunately I would still probably have mauve carpet today. I have noticed that it is making a comeback in some venues. Even so, I won't be getting mauve carpet. Everyone who has already lived through the 80's won't be that impressed.

I am not a fashion guru; I know that. Some of the fashions I see I don't even have a name for, and a few of the reruns weren't gone long enough for me to notice. But that makes them really old by now, doesn't it?

Lately, at least, designers have had the grace to put the word “retro” in their narrative somewhere instead of trying to take credit for a rerun.

My kids wonder why I don't get very excited about this or that fashion, or color, or new idea while they act like they invented the latest thing themselves. “I was the first one in Utah to have them; I know it.” (My daughter who lived in the “granola years” actually said that about her first pair of Birkenstocks.)

Whatever. That would be me. I had them the first time they came around, not the second or third. Only they were Dr. Scholl's exercise sandals.

How to execute our modern roundabout

2010-04-10T15:13:00.000-07:00

Who says Vernal is so far away from population centers that it is behind the times? Well, I may have said that myself once or twice. Actually it's not being remote from population that bothers me, it's being away from the centers. Shopping centers.

The list of things you can't buy in Vernal or anywhere else in the Basin is long and growing. I hesitate to itemize here because as soon as I do, an obscure place to buy those items will be brought to my attention. Wait. That would probably be a good thing.

But back to my original point—Vernal is definitely catching up with somewhere because we now have, right here in “River City,” a modern roundabout. And according to Wikipedia, what we have here is indeed a modern roundabout, which is not the same as circular intersections or spaghetti bowls, both of which have been around for a while.

The first modern roundabout in the U. S. was built in that model city of modernity, Summerlin, Nevada, in 1990. The world's modern roundabouts are particularly common in the United Kingdom, but over half of them are in France which has over 30,000 as of 2008. We have not only caught up with Summerlin, Nevada, but France as well. Sounds like pretty good company to me.

The modern roundabout is safer than the “what's-out” circular intersection because “steps are taken to reduce the speed of traffic, such as adding additional curves on the approaches.” (Wikipedia again.)

In case you have missed Vernal's own roundabout, it is out there in the field behind the new UBATC building. I think it serves to intersect the streets of Main and 2000 West. If you like curves, and who doesn't, you will want to try it out. Just head out south on the new road next to the college.

As you pull up to the intersection, your first visual impression will not be one of curves, but rather of road signs all over the place. Good look with figuring out which ones apply to you. After all, there have to be entrance, exit, roundabout, yield, and street signs times four, plus some speed limit signs which you will want to observe because you do have to make a tight right before you can begin to circle left.

For those of you who missed France, you just keep circling until you find the right place to get off. Of course “drivers may become confused and use roundabouts improperly, especially in areas where roundabouts are uncommon.” You can, however, go around, until you think you know where you want to get off. At some turn it becomes illegal to go round and round the roundabout. I know this because a friend of mine…

If you happen to exit onto Main when you wanted 2000 West, you are on your own. You may have to drive an additional couple of miles to get your car pointed in the right direction.

There are apparently some rules of etiquette that apply to driving in roundabouts, something about which lane to drive in if you are exiting in the first half of the roundabout which is not the same lane you want to be in if you are exiting in the last half of the roundabout.

The rules I did understand are: slow down and use your turn signal when you leave the roundabout. Or I guess it can't hurt too much to drive the way most of us from Utah usually do. Just remember—what goes around, comes around.

Guys are channeled in to run the remote

2010-04-10T15:10:00.000-07:00

My daughter keeps telling me that men can't multitask. Of course she can do about seven things at once and do them all well, while her husband is the kind of guy who wants to finish one thing before he moves on to the next.

Usually, I am inclined to agree with her.. After all she can do more things at one time than I can, which makes her an expert of some kind. She could probably run the IRS which is now saddled with more than one task and Medicare besides.

But I want to know how many guys out there are just topting out? Perhaps they insist that they can't watch the cookies in the oven and watch the kids at the same time because they don't want to. One thing I have noticed—and I'm not alone here—is that they are capable of watching more than they admit to.

To prove it, I need only hand a guy the television remote control. Suddenly he can watch up to twenty channels of television at one time. If managing that many programs at once requires two or even three remotes, he is still up to the task. A remote control in the hands of a man is actually quite something to behold.

Men mullti-channel-watch by changing the channel the instant something boring happens, like for instance, two people start to converse. Women on the other hand are tuned in to conversations. They can pick up across a crowded room what a man couldn't hear said on his own TV with the volume at ----19----, simply because they are moving up the channel list faster than the actress can say “I've been meaning to tell you something….” They can punch channel numbers faster than a good stenographer can type “all goo
d men.”

Not only do all women like to hear a good conversation, they want to tune in to only one of them at a time. (Guys, that is what they make DVR for—so o you can record the channels you aren't watching at present, and thereby allow the rest of the family to have a television experience as well.)

Of course the guys in charge of the remotes are over-the-top remote-adept because they practice a lot. In fact there isn't a prayer that another member of the family, regardless of age or gender, will ever catch up in remote skills until he has “control” of his own television. “Control” is the operative word here.

A man with a remote in his hand is a control-freak. However, give him credit; perhaps he doesn't think about control in the sense that he thinks he knows what the rest of us should watch on TV. Instead, I think he has mental images of those twenty channel's incoming signals all zinging toward him at once, and he with his little brown box is able to sort, organize and manage all of them at once, something like catching bullets with his bare hands—no, more like a Ninja fighter brandishing his sword, uh, his clicker.

Women are not wired to produce those sorts of mental images, so they surrender the remote to whomever gets the biggest kick out of controlling it, which is why they themselves never learn to use it.

My problem is that once in a great while, my remote controlling guy is out of range, which leaves me alone with a panoply of remotes that I haven't the faintest how to use. I am working on it though. I bought my own “simple-to-use, big-numbers, glow-in-the-dark universal remote. I have been trying to program it for over a week though.

So, sisters out there, in order to get the guys to watch the cookies and the kids, you are going to need two more remotes. One for the oven and one for the kids. If any of you find a way to get them programmed, remember whose idea it was.

Who wrote that note?

2010-04-10T15:08:00.000-07:00

No matter how advanced the world of communications has become, there seems to be a constant. The school note, at least for grade schools, is still the principal method of sharing information between teachers and parents.

I am all for written information, but the school note has its drawbacks, the main one being that there is no way for the teacher to know whether the parent actually saw the school note. In fact, there is no way for the parent to know that there actually was a note.

Do you know how many ways there are for a child to lose a note on the way home from school, or even between the classroom and the car? Do you think that a child can even remember whether there was a note?

I remember when notes were pinned to the child's shirt or jacket. That was okay if the child didn't climb any trees on the way home, or take off his jacket, or find a large dog to pet. (Dogs have an affinity for school papers whether they are on their way to school or from it.)

The preferred method of transporting notes these days, I think, is to put notes in the child's backpack or folder, which may be slightly more effective than using carrier pigeon. Who knows?

Not only is there a communication gap when notes don't get from school to home and back again, but there is also a gap when one or the other of the parties doesn't write what they mean or has forgotten what they learned in school, including how to spell, thereby leaving some notes open to multiple translations.

Here are a few of the kind that children bring to school that I have read online. You can decide for yourself whether they were written by a parent of a student.

“Please excuse Roland from P.E. for a few days. Yesterday he fell out of a tree and misplaced his hip. “

“Please excuse Pedro from being absent yesterday. He had (diahre) (dyrea) (direathe) the runs.” At least this parent knows what he doesn't know.

“Dear School: Please exscuse John being absent on Jan. 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, and also 33.”

Speaking of excuses, sometimes the notes coming home from school have some issues with spelling and grammar as well. which is to say the least, inexcusable. And then, there is the content of some of the notes themselves which leads parents to wonder “who is thinking what at that school?”

A friend of my daughter's got a note from school last week informing her that this last Wednesday was school picture day and that the photographer's backdrop for the pictures was going to be green, so the children should wear any color but green for their pictures. My friend's little girl cried for two days because she wasn't going to be able to wear green on St. Patrick's Day.

Now I'll be the first to admit that St. Patrick's Day is about the biggest non-holiday there is, but there aren't any other appreciable holidays in the month of March, and who knows what holiday a kid is going to appreciate.

Another mother I know was presented with a two-paragraph note from school that went something like this:

“There have been a few cases of head lice among some students at our school. Please carefully observe patterns of cleanliness at home and don't allow your children to share personal items so that we may be able to minimize the chances of an outbreak at our school.”

The second paragraph of the same note reminded parents that the following day was “pillow and pajama day” and that the children could participate by wearing their pajamas and bringing their pillows to school.

March Madness with Bertha

2010-04-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

Back when I was in junior high school, right here in Vernal, Utah, before the feminist movement and the passage of Title IX, girls played a game of basketball that was supposed to be consistent with their abilities, or lack thereof.

In case I am the only one who remembers that now-retired (thankfully) period in sports history, I am going to tell you how that game worked. The premise was that girls weren't strong or durable enough to play a game that required them to run the full length of a basketball court for 18 minutes without keeling over. At least, that is what my coach told me.

So they came up with a sort of half-court game where the players were either forwards or they were guards and neither of them could cross the half court line. The guards played defense They weren't allowed to score, not even if they had a good half-court shot. They had to pass the ball to the forwards who did all of the scoring.

It wasn't going to be very fair for there to be three forwards and only two guards (you know like “they got numbers”) all the time. Nor was it going to work for there to be three guards and only two forwards (sort of like never-ending double-teaming). So they added another player to the team so there could be three of each, which made it all warm and fuzzy for all the girls all the time.

I just about choked when my coach told me that we were going to play “girls' “ basketball. I grew up in a family of mostly boys who played the real game of basketball. Then when she told me I was going to be a guard, I had my first argument with a coach. I didn't really want to play a game of basketball and never shoot the ball.

You think I am making this up, don't you? No, I'm not; I played that game. I was a guard. I even traveled to other schools to play games against other girls. They were low-scoring affairs. But that was okay. The score of the first collegiate basketball game for girls was 5-4. True, each basket was worth one point, but still…. That game was played was in 1896. (No I didn't play in that game.)

In an effort to preserve goodwill, minimize competition and prevent any one player from taking over a game, (in other words to make it more suitable for what was the prevailing notion of girls' constitutions) the court was divided into three zones, and a team consisted of nine girls, three girls per team per zone. All of the girls had to stay in their zones and no one could dribble more than three times. (Like they would have room to dribble any more than that.)

So sixty years later when I played, the game hadn't changed much. We still played in zones, and we still had dribbling limits. Our games were low-scoring—not because we were girls and were unable to shoot, jump, run or pass the ball, but because they wouldn't let us do any of those things too much. Playing three-on-three basketball with only three dribbles before passing doesn't generate much offense. Besides, we were busy counting. And, oh yeah, also because they put all of the tall, long-armed girls on defense.

I don't know how the rest of the female world played that game, but it didn't take us too long to realize that the best strategy was to control the half-court line. We played a sort of 2-1 zone defense. One guard protected the basket, and the other two just held position on the line and didn't let the ball cross it.

We just patrolled the border, so to speak, and batted the ball back to the other end of the court whenever it came within reach. All we had to do was outreach the forwards. Any kind of a pass up and over the 2-guards could usually be controlled by a taller 1-guard. This strategy also maximized the importance of the guards which we thought was only fair.

No wonder the scores resembled those of soccer games and the play was more like keep-away. In case you haven't noticed, there is no equivalent to the NBA in keep-away. They just wouldn't have the fan-base.

I'm not sure when they began to allow women to play the same game men do. Probably some time just shortly after my illustrious career as line guard ended. And maybe they were playing that game in the rest of the world; I have never figured that out.

But, you know the game's inventors were partly right in their assessment of women and basketball. I just watched a girls' college playoff game, and you know what? Women can't jump. I think they are inclined to apologize when they foul an opponent, too.

Oscars make us happy

2010-04-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

It's a good thing they have the Academy Awards every year. I think that just that one event probably is a huge shot in the arm for the economy, at least in California where they could use the whole battery of shots.

Just think of what a venture in capitalism the production is. Aside from the actual movie industry which is a fairly good example of supply-and-demand economics and generates a lot of capital which goes who knows where, there is the actual event which puts a whole panoply of businesses to work.

I don't know whether they realize it, but the Hollywood libs are heavily involved in big business which makes them very rich, in spite of their share-the-wealth mentalities. They just want to qualify who is doing the sharing—anyone but them. Did you ever notice who they actually target when they do a save-the-world fund raiser for whomever in the world? They give their time, of which they have little to spare; we give our money which is scarce also. So it all works out, right? Fairness all around.

Okay, that is as political as I get, but just think of all the businesses who have a stake in the Oscars. There are the news media, the designers and manufacturers of everything from sets to clothing, producers, the food providers, the lodging and transportation sectors, the accessories designers and retailers and the florists, the speech and script writers, the hair stylists and the makeup artists, and the surgeons, not to mention the people who actually make the Oscar statue itself.

I have not intended to leave anyone out, but I have a very narrow perspective on the whole event, not having watched an entire broadcast ever and only going to the movies about once a year. I know, I am not really qualified to express an opinion, which is not the same as not having one.

But without the Academy Awards, how would we know what to wear for the rest of the year, how to do our hair and makeup, and which movies to avoid?

You have to give credit to the Motion Picture Industry for being a bit traditional (non-progressive) in the format of their awards presentations. I know it seems like it during the ceremonies, but they really don't give Oscars to everyone who competes. Just to the winners. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see participation certificates handed out all around, which would be a good way of injecting peace and harmony into all of that excessive and raw competition.

The whole event is all about competition. Who looks the best? Who has the most famous escort? Who paid the most for a dress? Who has most expensive jewelry? Who gave the best speech? It's no wonder all of the players need therapists and pharmaceuticals.

So my sister asked me who I was dressed as. Well, not Oscar and not the Mad Hatter. At the moment, it is something like Little Orphan Annie, or Little House on the Prairie at bedtime.

Pinewood Derby—chapter two

2010-04-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

In case you didn't remember or didn't care, Bertha wrote about the experience of making a Pinewood Derby car a couple of weeks ago. Well, she is going to get a little more “mileage” out of the subject. It got better as it went along.

I started on my car early enough, but it still took two weeks to get it finished, and we were doing the last minute things the day of the race. It is kind of like an art project. You never know when it is finished. But it got “finished” just in time to race it.

The delay was caused in part by the fact that my real car, the Grocery Getter, was experiencing some difficulties of its own while we were building the race car. It couldn't seem to make it up the hill to home without sputtering, and missing, and I do live quite a long way up the hill.

Mr. B. began to give the problem due recognition when it was his turn to drive the car over the weekend. He came home with renewed interest in fixing it. Since I had already been driving the car for a few weeks with the same problem, I gave it no more attention than I usually did. Consequently, the Grocery Getter with its problems was on Mr. B.'s mind while the Pinewood Derby car was on mine.

So with that background given and that stage set, here are a couple of our more interesting exchanges:

Me: Are you going to work on my car today?

Mr. B. I don't know what I'm going to do with it. I hope I don't have to put a catalytic converter on it.

Me: I don't think it needs anything that fancy. Just a rusty air cleaner is all it needs, other than one of those flashing lights on the top. (I was trying to build a quasi-faithful replica of Tow Mater)

Mr. B.: What are you talking about? It already has an air cleaner which I already checked once. That isn't what it needs.

Me: Well where is the catalytic converter going to go? And what will it do? Take the place of the weights?

We finally established that Tow Mater did indeed need a rusty air cleaner, but we were still wondering about the needs of the Grocery Getter.

A couple of days later, Mr. B. switched roles on me. He sent me to the box store to find some parts for my car.

“You're sending me to buy a winch? I thought you didn't like to buy parts there. You usually make me go to the parts store to get them.

“I don't think you are going to find a winch at the parts store.”

“Well, what do we need that for anyway? I don't think I can find one at the box store.”

“Yes you can. Just go in the toy department and look for a little tow truck. We'll use the winch from it.”

The word “toy” was what finally got us looking for the same part in the same parts manual.

On the day of the big race, there were still some finishing touches to apply to Tow Mater. Mr. B. was going to add the flashers and the lead weights for me. So early in the morning, I woke my son up and asked for his help.

“Will you bring my car down to me when you come to town? Dad still has to drill the holes in it.”

“What? What is he drilling holes for?”

Now my son and his dad don't always agree on the proper methods for reapiring an ailing vehicle. In fact, quite often they each wonder what on earth the other is doing. But it certainly got my son's attention when he thought that his dad might, at that very moment, be trying to find his drill and his bits in order to drill holes somewhere in the Grocery Getter.

Putting money where the mouth is

2010-04-10T15:00:00.000-07:00

One advantage to being my age is that I have already passed through most of the phases of life that people have to go through.

Childhood diseases, my own and my kids', are behind me. I have lived through the sleepless years, when I had babies. And I have lived through the teenage years. My own were not nearly so hard on me as my kids' were.

Altogether, I have launched seven children into their teenage years, prepared or otherwise. They all made their first trip to the DMV. They all went to prom once or twice. They all went to a few concerts. And we have been to see the orthodontist approximately 353 times.

The concerts and prom I could handle, and I could cope with most of the other milestones associated with the teenage years. I still clench my teeth when I think about the orthodontics chapter of my life, though.

This is what kind of luck I had: the first three kids all had too many teeth for their mouths, or more precisely, teeth too big to fit in there. (Grandma called those kind of teeth butter paddles.)

When the fourth child came, I thought I had it made. She had actual spaces between her baby teeth. For her first six years, I thought I was going to get $2,500 ahead in life thanks to this child's big mouth. Not a chance. Her permanent teeth were tiny little chiclets which didn't begin to fill up all that space. Grandma didn't know what to call them. Besides that, some of them were missing. Just not there and never were.

In those days my car could find it's own way to the orthodontist's office. I knew which magazines he subscribed to and how often he redecorated. His receptionist was on a first-name basis with my dog, the only member of the family with straight teeth.

I think we missed something like twenty appointments during my time in the the orthodontic years, but my percentages were pretty good. And the orthodontist didn't complain. We were his bread and butter. In fact he probably had me to thank for that boat in his garage, and when he saw mouths five through seven he probably saw luxury cars and European vacations. Cruise tickets traded for tin grins.

For the privilege of living with teenagers who wouldn't smile, wouldn't eat in public and avoided half of the foods available for human consumption, I paid that kind of money. And those are only some of the disadvantages.

After the patient passes through the brace phase, he moves into the retainer phase of orthodontic treatment. Retainers are something designed to help keep teeth straight when the braces come off. You pay a lot for them and then keep them on the bathroom counter where they function as room decor, except for when you keep them in a pocket or on the floor beside the bed. The last two places serve to keep the retainer new as it will have to be replaced if it is sat upon, washed in the washing machine, or stepped upon. Furthermore, you simply cannot display a broken retainer on the bathroom counter.

I know where you should keep a retainer, but who am I? I only paid for them. Should I have taken the retainers to work or school or wherever the mouth in question was? Well, I couldn't tell whose was whose. How could I give a retainer to a teenager who already had one in his mouth? But don't doubt my commitment. I have been known to beg the school lunch ladies for permission to go through the garbage in hopes of finding a retainer that might have been scraped off a tray.

I used to wish that the Granola movement would gain enough ground that naturally occurring teeth placement would be more desirable than artificial alignment. But no, the movement got a little bit lost when it came to physical appearances.

I'm not sure I would want to be launching teenagers these days. Too many things could be out of alignment. However, if I were to be text messaging my kids about the location of their retainers, my reminders might look like this: :-)$$) ?

It's Pinewood Derby time!

2010-04-10T14:58:00.000-07:00

Once in a while, someone comes up with an activity that is so good that it is simply repeated until it becomes a classic. When it is that good, sooner or later it is going to spread to other platforms. Next week I get to compete in one of those great all-American cultural events, the Pinewood Derby. By the way, the first Pinewood Derby was held in 1953.

I have a box of Derby parts right here on the counter. I suppose it will take some creative force to turn those wheels, axles, and block of wood into a racing machine. I further suppose that creativity is one ingredient. However, the main element is speed.

If you have built more than one Pinewood Derby car, you have begun to realize that there is more involved than sanding, painting and pressing on the wheels. To get the picture, you have to understand that this event usually involves men, boys and wheels, a combination that is going to produce a compulsion to engineer the fastest car—on earth.

Boys are born with the ability to run, chase one another, ride bikes, scooters and skate boards and they never tire of doing it. When they become men, they find that running and bike-riding are a bit tiring after all, so they turn to buying or building cars that will accomplish the same thing with less effort. Sort of.

I suspect that Detroit has a complement of engineers who were Cub Scouts in their youth because they would then have been exposed early on to the kind of grit and determination that is required to compete in the world of building cars, of whatever kind.

At any rate, this is serious business. A reading of the Pinewood Derby Times (I'm not kidding), along with some other high-tech websites, can keep one up on the “sport.” I had already heard about the innovation of digital electronic tracks. I just recently learned about the latest remake of the wheels.

I don't know whether they were designed for maximum velocity or increased gas mileage, but their arrival on the racing scene apparently made quite a stir. In fact, when they were released, they could be purchased separately in case buyers were unable to find a car kit with the newer wheel package. The word on the street is that an axle change is in the works as well.

There is a thriving after-market parts business as well. In fact you can buy kits with a finished body. You just apply the wheels. However, you could do that with the standard issue BSA kit and do just as well, I understand from The Times. Apparently aerodynamics has little to do with it. It is the polishing of the axles and weighting of the cars that gives them the competitive edge.

Unveiling your own revolutionary and successful model car depends on planning and secrecy. If you have the design of the decade, you don't want someone else having it as well. So men and boys plan and scheme in cluttered shops. They melt lead ingots in tuna fish cans, weigh their cars on postage scales, mix paints on plastic lids and dream of trophies. (I honestly don't know how these cars pass EPA standards what with lead and paint in the same sentence.)

When they meet on the streets, men casually ask one another, “So how's your car coming? You got a good model this year? “

“Naw, I don't think the wheels will stay on.” This is derby talk for what the engineer really means which is something like “Just you wait. We are going to kick your trash this year. You will eat our dust.”

I tried to think of a funny story about Pinewood Derby racing, but there aren't any. I may have one or two to tell after the girls, moms and grandmoms compete in a couple of weeks; but like I said, this is serious business. A lost race can only be remedied by doing better the next year. But a whole year of ignominy is hard to bear. It's a good thing that Mr. B. and I are in this together. If the wheels fall off, we can console one another while we wait for the next Derby.

Passwords do deny access

2010-04-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

If you think that a password is something Gandalf or forty thieves speak to the face of a stone wall in an effort to open up secret doors to mysterious caverns, you are having serious reality issues.
If you think that a password is a series of letters/numbers which when typed into the password space on an internet site will result in the immediate opening of websites for your use and entertainment, you are probably full-on schizophrenic. To your credit, if you are thinking in those terms, you may be allowed to use your name and “geek” in the same paragraph, but being geeky has nothing to do with it.
Typing any combination of letters/numbers invariably returns the same message, “the password you entered is incorrect,” followed by the line (in happy blue type), “forget your password?” You will also be reminded that your password is case sensitive which means that you will have to be in tight control of your caps lock key.
“Who me? Of course I didn't forget my password.” A second more carefully typed entry will return the same message 99 percent of the time. Occasionally, if you hold your mouth right, the Entry Nazi will let you in.
A third try works about half the time. If by the third try you are still on the outside, you may have to concede that you did forget your password. To remedy that situation, you probably begin to sift through all of your password possibilities.
Entering passwords in not only a test of your memory, but your persistence also. “Let's see, for internet shopping sites, I always use the name and age of my third grandchild. Or wait, was it my shoe size, or my hat size? Was that backward or forward? I'll try my hat size, 7-&-3-4.”
“No, I didn't think so. Okay I'll look it up.”
At this point you consult your cryptic sticky note collection which is inconveniently stuck to the bottom of your keyboard. Unfortunately the note you need is a little too cryptic or msising. The rest are the kind of notes that any kindergartner could use to rob your bank account and buy you a couple of high-tech Lego sets. Under your keyboard will be the second place he will look for your passwords, too.
If you are trying to get innto one of those high profile, high-security websites, like a bank site, by guessing the password, you are going to be in trouble. Three strikes and you are out on those sites. You will be getting a phone call to warn you that someone is trying to hack into your bank account. You will be feeling incredibly silly when you have to admit that it was only you.
If you think that using your own passwords is tricky, just wait until someone e-mails you a locked text file, which feat he will be able to accomplish without any real intent on his part. Try figuring out someone else's passwords. Maybe it's the name of his dog.
“S-P-O-T. T-R-E-Y. Okay, I'll call him.” Joe, this file is locked. What's the password?”
“What password? You need a password? How come you need a password? Try S-P-O-T.”
How do I know all this? I listen a lot. And I forget my passwords a lot. And no, they are not stuck to the bottom of my keyboard. They are stuck in the first place my grandkids would look.
One thing is in our favor though. Most people are too busy trying to remember their own passwords to want to work on ours.

We're not lost. There’s a 7-11

2010-02-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

One of the tasks that guys are inherently incapable of performing is asking for directions. There seems to be only one reason for this incapacity which is a fear of admitting to being lost. Never mind that they are lost; that is irrelevant.
Why "lost" is such a problem for men is unknown. Even guys don’t know why they can’t admit to being lost.

But the unnatural phenomenon explains why men have such a fascination with Google Earth, GPSs and maps in general. It doesn’t explain why they are occasionally lost, however.

Guys don’t even want a girl who is with them to ask for directions. They will wander in circles. driving both counter- and -clockwise, past the same neighborhood convenience store several times and refuse to stop and let her walk inside to ask for directions.

Maybe they have heard women use that query as a pickup line a few too many times to let their spouse or girlfriend use it for locating an actual destination. I don’t know.

Also, I suspect that sometimes the guy doesn’t actually want to find the spot in question—like when it is the location of Great Aunt Polly’s 80th birthday celebration or the handbag store.

Nevertheless, men tackle the problem of being lost by driving around in circles, while women ask for directions. Of course women will want to know the answer in terms of landmarks, not in terms of GPS coordinates or compass points. Say "over by that Maverik station," not "west on 500 South."

So as I was looking for reasons for the behavior in question, I checked some online references and found the following news story:
BALTIMORE -- Baltimore City police arrested a Virginia couple over the weekend after they asked an officer for directions. WBAL-TV 11 News I-Team reporter David Collins said Joshua Kelly and Llara Brook, of Chantilly, Va., got lost leaving an Orioles game on Saturday. Collins reported a city officer arrested them for trespassing on a public street while they were asking for directions…

Collins said somehow they ended up in the Cherry Hill section of south Baltimore. Hopelessly lost, relief melted away concerns after they spotted a police vehicle.
"I said, ‘Thank goodness, could you please get us to 95?" Kelly said.

"The first thing that she said to us was no -- you just ran that stop sign, pull over," Brook said. "It wasn’t a big deal. We’ll pay the stop sign violation, but can we have directions?"

"What she said was ‘You found your own way in here, you can find your own way out.’" Kelly said.
Collins said the couple spotted another police vehicle and flagged that officer down for directions. But Officer Natalie Preston, a six-year veteran of the force, intervened.

"…the officer screeched up behind us and got out of the car and asked me to step out. I obeyed," Kelly said. "I obeyed everything -- stepped out of the car, put my hands behind my back, and the next thing I know, I was getting arrested for trespassing."
"By this time, I was completely in tears," Brook said. "I said, ‘Ma’am, you know, we just need your help. We are not trying to cause you any trouble. I’m not leaving him here.’ What she did was walk over to my side of the car and said, ‘Ok, we are taking you downtown, too.’"

Okay, alright. Maybe I will have to rethink my strategy for finding places. Maybe the fear men have of asking for directions has a completely sensible underlying rationale: what they really fear is spending a night in jaul, with or without their wives or girlfriends. I can’t fault that.

Cooling heels in the well house

2010-02-04T21:11:00.000-08:00

I have a friend who was widowed a year and a half ago. She has always been a pretty capable person. She can sing and dance, act, and play a musical instrument and do several other things that are above and beyond the call of duty. Additionally, she can cook and clean, and pay the bills on time. She is literally a soccer mom and she manages a household of mostly girls.

So since she has started checking a different marital status box on her medical and banking records, she has had to learn to do a little bit different set of chores around the house. Things like hang the Christmas lights, and run the snow blower.

To say the least I am proud of her self-sufficiency. She uses the snow blower to clean the driveway, and the tractor to hang the lights, and not the other way around. In fact she uses that tractor for all kinds of chores. Hey, she could teach tractor classes.

So the other day she went out to change the filter on the pump in her well house. I am impressed. Some of you out there don’t know whether you have a well house, let alone where it is. Well, she does and she has learned to change the filter.
But when her late husband built the well house, he didn’t have his wife’s capabilities in mind.

First, it is a huge stretch of the imagination to call this structure a well house—about the same stretch we use in calling the old outdoor toilet an outhouse. There isn’t much “house” about this well house. I don’t think it even has four walls. It is circular in shape, and I know it doesn’t have a roof.

I haven’t actually seen this well house. Unlike the visible portion of the outhouse, it is about six feet underground. And it can’t be seen from the road, the sidewalk, or the driveway
Well, in order to keep anyone from accidentally falling into the well house, my friend’s husband made a heavy round lid for the top of it. He made it so heavy that no mischievous child would be able up and edge and put a firecracker under it either. (I am picturing an extra heavy-duty manhole cover here.) Needless to say, it is too heavy for my friend, as well as eighty percent of the rest of the world’s population to lift.

And so a neighborhood handyman modified the lid so that with her tractor and a chain, my friend can lift the lid with the tractor’s bucket and then do whatever it is people do in well houses, in this case, change the filter.

So on the day in question, she got one end of the chain on the tractor and the other end on the lid which she raised with the bucket. Then she climbed the ladder down into the well house. She had barely put one foot on the well house floor when she heard the rattle of the chain slipping followed by the clang of the lid falling right into its appointed place.

That was when my friend departed from her normal self-sufficient character and did what women usually do when there is danger near. First she began to scream. Second she began to hyperventilate and scream which caused her heart rate to be a consideration.

Next she thought “My gosh, what am I doing? I have to quit screaming and hyperventilating, I am using up all of the oxygen. I am going to die down here if I don’t scream, but I am going to die sooner if I do.”
I am glad to say that her self-sufficient nature began to reassert itself in a short time and she was beginning to have a rational thought or two by the time help arrived, which was quickly.

But in the event that you think you might react the same way in this situation, assuming that you have an underground well house and you need to change your filter, just understand that her initial primitive reaction was very helpful.

Her screams woke one daughter and the clang of the “trap door” alerted the other. The one with skills of her own flew out the door, and after upending in a snow bank in her hurry, reattached the chain and raised the bucket in time to narrowly avert the occurrence of death by whatever means imaginable.

Show business and the Butterbeans

2010-02-04T21:10:00.000-08:00

As far back as I am able to learn from Butterbean family history, there has never been anyone who was able to make a career of being on stage.

There might have been a few musicians in the amateur sense. Maybe a couple of us could be allowed on the dance floor if the crowd was not too particular. But for the most part, the world is better off if we stay clear away from stages.

No Butterbean has ever been known to break a leg while performing on stage. In fact, those times when we or our offspring got too close to one usually resulted in disasters involving other anatomical members.

Just last week my grandson came home from cub scouts and announced that he had a pretty good time at den meeting because he didn’t get hit in the face with the dodge ball ball. However, he reported that he fell off the stage. Of course the stage would not be an ideal place to hold a dodge ball sporting event, especially if Butterbean kinfolk were involved.

Apparently, the reason that the dodge-ball athlete didn’t sustain a concussion was that he didn’t plunge clear to the floor in one continuous motion. Initially he fell onto the table and from that level he continued his descent to the floor. The table must have kept him from joining the company of family players who have made the trip to the ER for X-rays after making one from the stage to the floor.

One granddaughter took the legendary flying leap off the stage thinking that I had morphed from a graceless grandmother into the ballerina’s opposite—the dancer who catches her before she hits the floor. Only I didn’t. I was holding her shoes. She flew clear over the top of me, maintaining an adequate swan-dive position all the way to the floor. I have suffered from stage fright ever since.

Maybe she should try moving from the stage to the field, performing future high-jumping feats with the benefit of a sand pit to catch her fall.

Another grandson simply tried to overcome the effects of gravity and calmly stepped off the edge of the stage. He probably had watched way too many cartoons during the period of his life that is between taking first steps and developing depth awareness.
Be that as it may though, there is one little family member who has something that might equate to stage presence. He can impersonate the whole star Wars cast, do whole scenes from Harry Potter, imitate Old Man Jenkins with precision, and conscript the graceless grandma into sewing Indiana Jones costumes.

And, he seems to have the knack for holding a stage. In other words, so far he has been able to negotiate a left entrance and a right exit without falling off the platform or otherwise injuring himself while on it.

I think he has a little trouble with his lines from time to time though. During a recent family birthday party, he was doing an impromptu song-and-dance routine that finished with a sprint and a slide toward stage front while singing at the top of his lungs, “C-A-K-E spells snack.”

Being as he was able to hold the stage, we all applauded.

The Butterbeans’ winter weekend

2010-02-04T21:07:00.000-08:00

Since everyone who has any kind of media outlet whatsoever is busy reviewing the past year or decade or whatever, I thought I would dredge up an old story and review it. Actually this audience hasn’t read it before, so it is older than a year by a bit. It does hail from sometime in the last century; I have forgotten when.

Here it is just as I remember it:
In case you haven’t realized it by now, Butterbean is synonymous with Griswold—you know, those people in European Vacation, Christmas Vacation and various other screen idiocies.

I can say that and get away with it because it is impossible for the Butterbeans to look down their noses at the Griswolds.

So for your amusement, I thought I would show you a few scenes from the The Butterbeans’ Winter Weekend. (If anyone is interested, I will sign for the movie rights.)

The Winter Weekend is a road trip made by the Butterbeans, or part of them, in the legendary VW Bus, alternately called The Pop Can, The Tylenol, The Peace Wagon and as of late, The Ice Box.

(They announced in church last month that someone with a white VW bus had left their headlights on. In unison, everyone in the congregation turned and looked at us. Would we leave our headlights on? Well okay, but our bus was at home in the driveway with a burned up alternator.)

The bus has two problems. Well, okay again, it has more than that, but these two are the most obvious during a mountain road trip made in January.
One is that you will never get a speeding ticket in it. (I have learned to appreciate problems like that.) In fact, we have been pulled over for obstructing traffic. The good news is that they don’t ticket you for driving too slowly if you can’t help it.

The other problem with the bus is that you will never be warm in it in winter. In fact, without taking precautionary measures, you could become an incident.

The first time we stopped for gas and hot chocolate which was after a long time and a few miles, I was embarrassed to get out of the bus dressed in boots, thermals, polar fleece, gloves, ear warmers and a sleeping bag. I relaxed a little when I noticed another vehicle full of skiers who were dressed a little like us.

Hey we look like we are going skiing! Let’s all talk loudly about lifts, powder, Park City, etc. Before I realized that we could be confused with skiers, I was afraid that we might be identified as transient, homeless or both.

The Bus does have a heater. At least it has levers that you switch to the “on” position, and even one down by your feet that you pull up to turn on the defrosters. I think that the problem is that the engine is in the back of the bus and the heater vents are in the front.

By the time the warm air reaches the outlets, it is no longer warm. But then, it is several degrees centigrade warmer than it is when it reaches the back of the bus again. The air that blows around back there is positively Arctic.

I had the best seat in the house. It was my job to plug up the wind tunnel—the vortex between the two front seats on the x-axis, and between the front and the back of the bus on the y-axis. It felt a little bit like sitting in front of a campfire. The front of me was a little warmer than the back.

The rest of the occupants crawled into sleeping bags and went to sleep, which didn’t really represent comfort but blessed oblivion. When I looked back to check on them, I could count the still-breathing; it looked like a stove full of teakettles back there.

The other option for keeping warm is was to sit very close to the heater vents. When five of us were sitting in two bucket seats, I began to feel less like a skier and more like the dispossessed again.

There were a couple of upsides to the trip. I am proud to say that while going uphill, we passed one other vehicle on our trip. (We all cheered.) It was a three-trailer tractor rig possibly loaded with shotgun shells. Going downhill, we passed two.

At one point we asked the kids to get out and push, but they said it was too cold.

Phone number

2010-02-04T21:05:00.000-08:00

I can’t tell you how handicapped I have been this week. The problem is that I jammed my finger while playing my sport. Not the Wii or the internet game, or watching a sport on television, but an actual physical exercise sport with a real ball with real air in it that I play with sometimes.

It, the ball, felt real when it bounced off the end of the large finger of my right hand. I have a real bruise, a real ache and a real splint. Too bad it wasn’t a virtual sprain—“you have been sidelined with an injury. Try again.”
Unfortunately it is all of my virtual (electronic) devices that I am unable to use very well with an injury to my finger. Like any of those keyboard, button or touch devices that require the use of the fingertips to operate them.

I am not at the moment dictating this article to someone. There isn’t anyone. Mr. B. can’t type with or without a keyboard and/or fingertips. He can text a little better than I can, though, since he is all thumbs. When typing, however, he is all index fingers.

Yes, I know I have nine other fingers, but the ones on my left hand are practically useless. Their main purpose it to help the other hand perform actions such as holding a sandwich, putting on a sock, or contributing to body balance—activities which don’t require a high degree of dexterity and so can be performed by a set of digits that are only loosely connected to a brain.

So that leaves me four other useful fingers, and one of those is a thumb. Not a whole lot left to work with.

For want of a finger, these are some of the activities that have been considerably curtailed during the past few days.

1.Shopping. The internet has more stores than Vernal has, however you need a keyboard or a smart phone to access them, both of which require a set of fingers to help run it . I could accidentally buy twelve of something with a right hand like this.

2.Sleeping. My number-one sleep aid is my Ipod. By the time I try to navigate to the right tune or chapter from a prone position and with earbuds cords wrapped around my neck, I have rejammed the finger and am fully awake.

3.Working. Like a lot of you, I work at the computer where I get paid for performing tasks that require me to interface with that computer via something besides my just my index fingers.

4.Communicating. I have a hard time dialing the right phone number with a set of fully functioning fingers and thumbs.

5.Thinking. I have been accused of having a brain that resides in other body parts than my head. I suppose that may be true, but until this week I thought those other parts were not my finger. I have had to reevaluate that assumptions however since my injury induced a condition of being unable to think at all. ll.

6.Procuring food and water and eating and drinking it are more difficult.

7.Driving.

By now, you have either determined that I am a whiner of monumental proportions, or that I am truly handicapped by just one more little disadvantage I promise, it doesn’t take much.

At this point, my son’s new Droid phone is looking pretty useful. I watched him speak the name of a restaurant chain into it and up came a list of choices. You may call this store, find the nearest location…

I am sorry, Yellow Pages, but we are on the verge of not even having to have our fingers do the walking.

Time out! What year is it?

2010-02-04T21:02:00.000-08:00

I read once that an optimist is someone who stays up until midnight to see the new year in. A pessimist, on the other hand, stays up to make sure the old year leaves. That sounds about right. Think of the people you know. You can probably peg most of them right off.

There may be a few people crossing the aisles this year though. “Optimistic” might have to be reserved for those who think they will not be consigning most of their assets to someone else this year.

Whoever made that observation, however, forgot to categorize the rest of us—the ones who go to bed at 10 p.m. as usual. Something like the nonplayers or the bed-is-better-yet set.

I’m usually one of those people. I might have a drink of sparkling apple juice before retiring, but watching the ball fall down on Time Square is overrated. By the way, I do not get the significance of dropping a ball to bring in the new year. If anyone does, let me know. I guess they can’t drop a baby, but why drop anything?

I pay a price for not staying up to witness the last calendar page of the old year come off the wall though. I apparently need that and any other assistance I can get to help my mind register the fact that we have crossed the great time divide and that it is time to switch years..

Getting my time-warped brain to leave the old year behind is a struggle. Not only will I write “2009” on every date line I fill out for at least six months, but I will write “December” or “12” on everything for at least two weeks. Getting the month switched over is easier. It was only December for a month, and I only used “December” for half of it anyway.

I will spend a while longer trying to figure out “2010.” When a person makes a mistake in writing numbers, he can sometimes save all by altering them—a three to an eight, a one to a seven or a four, maybe even a five to an eight, but it is pretty difficult to change “09” to “10.” You end up with hieroglyphics.

Last year I could start out writing “08” on my check, and if I came to before I got the second digit written or even if it were half done, it could still be changed into a respectable “09.”

But this January, I will have to wake up before I start writing or I will be stuck with something like calligraphy for “dum-dum” instead of “2010.” The term “Chinese New Year” could take on a whole new meaning.

And typing the new year, “10” instead of” 09”, will probably be quite a stumbler. I was typing “09” for a whole year, too (well, not strictly.) Typing the new year is going to require using both hands instead of one. That will take some getting used to and will probably reduce the wpm considerably, especially if I have to think what year it is and then think how to type it right after I think what month it is. Three thoughts in a row without a pause could constitute a total breakdown

Maybe this New Year’s Eve I should try to wait up, bang a few pans, tear off the calendar page, and make sure the old year leaves and takes all of his symbols with him.

What’s wrong with plastic gifting?

2010-02-04T20:58:00.000-08:00

Just so you know, I think that the gift card, when used to replace real Christmas gifts, is an abomination. Well, maybe not quite as bad as that, but close. I have been known to give them myself when I was pressured into it by the men in my life or by the constraints of time, but I didn’t like it.

Mainly, gift cards are boring. I don’t care if they come in a singing card holder, there is only one thing you can do with a gift card after you listen to it, and that is look at it. I am of the opinion that gifts, especially when they are given to children and just about everyone else should be able to be used, worn, played, driven, ridden, of played with the instant they are opened.

If it is new clothes, let’s put them on all at once. If it’s a new bike or four-wheeler, let’s ride it now. If it s a drum set, start drumming. What are we saving these games for? Christmas is supposed to be exciting and fun and have absolutely nothing to do with delayed gratification.

I am simply and mortally afraid that someone I am related to will be having a Christmas like this when he calls his friends on Christmas day:

“Hey James. What are you doing?”

“I just came in from riding my new bike in the snow. It is so awesome. It has front brakes and ten gears. What are you doing?

“Well, I am looking at my gift cards right now. I have taken them out of the box and put them back in a few times, but that’s about it. I think that next I will organize them from most money to least, and then I suppose I could do the opposite. After that I will arrange them by color. That should take a little while.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. I could let you ride my bike if you are careful with it. Maybe we could clothespin your cards to the spokes.”

Well, at least they could be generating some instant fun.

So the whole gift-giving process has degenerated into doing the easiest possible thing—ordering a gift card online and having it drop-shipped to the recipient. Couldn’t be more efficient or more impersonal.

So true story: my son called last week and told us to watch for our Christmas gift cards. They were coming by mail from the internet clearing house. One for me and one for Mr. B., each for $50. Well, happily, all in the same phone call we were able to instruct him to watch for his gift cards, one for him and one for his wife, each in the amount of $50. Our sets of cards will be singing to each other as they pass in the mail.

Now what is the point of that? We should just have a conference call with the whole family and decide on what amount we will all want to keep in our bank accounts. Then we could all sing a couple of verses of “Jingle Bells” and call it Christmas.

There is one more reason to choose goods over gift cards. With the value of the dollar deteriorating at its present rate, your gift card will likely be worth a good deal less by the time you are able to get it spent.

.

Help-wanted section

2010-02-04T20:55:00.000-08:00

I never read the Help Wanted section of the newspaper. Actually I’m not sure they have a section like that anymore. A year ago—maybe. To tell the truth, I never read any of the classifieds since I already have a couple of jobs. If I want to buy anything, I go to Ebay or some other scary cavern of the cybershopping network.

One of those couple of jobs I have is your basic wife-and-mother type of job. You know—I am all of those things that most wives and mothers are—baker, laundress, cook, maid. You’ve read the job descriptions. They tend to be lengthy.

A few things I don’t do. Fixing flats and mowing lawns are two that you may have already read about here. I also don’t do windows, plumb, or feed the dog. Those things are in someone else’s job description, I think.

I have been known to do a few extra-curricular chores such as reupholstering VW buses, making Clone Trooper Halloween costumes, and building furniture.

All of this I do and get paid $0.00 per hour for it. I have feelings of ambivalence about the benefits too.

Back in the day, the wife-and-mother occupation was my only job.
At any rate, there used to be a section in the newspaper that advertised available jobs. Several years ago, when typing was something you did on a typewriter, almost every job listed in the jobs section required the job applicant to take a timed typing test. Do they still do that?

So, I was glad to have my pay-nothing job and not be out looking for the other kind. Those job-available classified ads were intimidating to say the least.

I remember that there was an ad in the jobs section of our hometown (not this hometown) paper that was a full seven inches long, all seven inches devoted to the list of minimum qualifications necessary for a certain managerial position. Hey, the President doesn’t have the qualifications for that job.

Anyway, the applicant needed a specific college degree, specific progressively responsible experience, special computer skills, and of course, had to be able to pass the 60wpm timed test. For all of that, the candidate could start at a salary of $7.83 per hour. Even twenty years ago that was a sad salary. I think that job listing may have been published during one of our other economic recessions.

At that time, you had to be able to type 60 wpm per minute to mow lawns. Job Service didn’t want your name in their files if you were typing-challenged. You might be able to manage a whole floor of typists who could turn out reams of perfect documents, but it didn’t count unless you could type 60 wpm yourself.

Have you heard the story of Phillip John who went into Job Service looking for a position?

“I am an experienced plumber. (Just so you know, I have a lot of respect for plumbers, Joe included.) I need a plumbing job.”

“Can you type 60 wpm?”

“No, but I can unclog a drain in five minutes flat.”

“I’m sorry sir, but all of our plumbers type 60 wpm.”

“What for?”

“It looks good on their resumes.”
“Any plumber who can type 60 wpm must spend a lot of time typing.”

“That’s right.”

Hey Phil, I know of a challenging job with a lengthy description that you can have with only 30 wpm. Of course, the pay is none, and the benefits are questionable.

Making jokes while the sun shines

2010-02-04T20:51:00.000-08:00

The trouble with kids is that they never eat when they have the chance. The better the opportunity, they less they eat. There is something about an abundance of good food that makes their appetites shut down. The example that comes to mind is Thanksgiving dinner.

Kids celebrate this particular holiday by putting a lot of food on their plates and then telling riddles or original jokes. Sometimes they fling peas or make turkey mustaches. The greatest joy of the festivities, though, is show-and-tell.

If you have had the distinct advantage of sitting furthest away from the kid table, you may have missed out on the “entertainment.”

It goes something like this, “I bet you can’t wiggle your ears.” In juvenile language that means, “Watch while I wiggle my ears.”

“Okay, but you can’t shut one eye.” (Like the Thin Man, in case you remember who that is.) “No, it’s not the same thing as winking.”

“Well look what I can do; I’m double-jointed in all my fingers.”

“So can you touch your nose with your tongue?”

“No. Neither can you!”

“I know, but my grandma can.”

“So, who has the biggest muscles?” (Out come all the arms, and up go all the sleeves, knocking over three drinks in the process.)

“You should see my mom’s biceps. They are about this high.” (Apparently Mom comes from the same gene pool as Hulk Hogan.)

Show-and-tell soon degenerates into innovative raw humor.

“Knock-knock.”

“Who’s there…”

“Window.”

“Window who?”

“Window Pane.”

You would think that so much mental exercise would create an energy deficit that would have to be corrected by the consumption of food. But sitting in front of a plate of food while telling tall tales seems to generate feelings of contentment, or maybe it’s self-satisfaction, without the actual ingestion of food.

After they joke truck has run out of gas, they will begin to declare the exact opposite about themselves.
“Mom, I’m full.”

“So am I.”

“Me too.” Superlatives aren’t even necessary anymore. They are full, and full is full.
No amount of reason, like threatening no dessert or no food until the next meal will change the condition of their stomachs. You can’t win. Just try to prove that they aren’t full.

You would think that as many times as their mothers run out of bread and milk, that the budding humorists would have the foresight to take advantage of a good thing. They won’t see that much food again for another year. They should know better than to take their chances.

There is only one thing that will get their appetites functioning again. Just clear the table and put all the food.
Suddenly life isn’t so funny anymore. The absence of nourishment in plain sight becomes a real stressful situation. No child is willing to gamble on there ever being any again.

They don’t realize what the real gamble is; so one of them will saunter into the room where the cooks have just sat down for the first time in three days and ask for a bowl of cereal.

In their hunger, they seem to have forgotten about the existence of gene pools and what kind of traits they just might carry.

I may need a tree to be out of

2010-02-04T20:49:00.000-08:00

I am just as concerned about the environment as the next person. I have to be. I am stuck between a couple of generations of ecologists.

My mother never throws anything away. She could give Green Peacers lessons on conservation. She reuses paper napkins. She can shower in about a quart of water.
When she was younger and gardening at her best, she was the green-growers counterpart to the Native Americans who used every part of their bagged game. She used every part of everything she grew and she grew everything. We used some things that came up on their own too.

She was ecology when ecology wasn’t cool. Only it wasn’t called ecology. It was just a simple matter of “waste not, want not.”

So then, the generation after me is the recycling generation, although no one of them can hold a candle to my mother. And they should not waste candles trying. Most of them waste a pound to save a pinch, to make use of another old cliché.

Anyway, I don’t have much chance of wasting or polluting my way through life. I will hear about it from one direction or the other.

But from the rest of the world, I just get a lot of mixed messages. The department store sends goods home in paper bags which will biodegrade and not pollute the local city dump. But the grocery store uses plastic so we can save a tree, while the education establishment thinks that paper grows on trees. I remember times when our stack of school papers was as high as the newspaper pile.

So which is it? I can tell you that I haven’t felt enough of the generational squeeze to motivate me to bring my own bags anywhere. Besides, carrying those things around in my car could cause me to use more gasoline and be crazy.

When I graduated from shopping in the “baby needs” aisle at the grocery store, I was able to eliminate one of life’s dilemmas. And should you parents of the diaper set be tree-conscious enough to use cloth diapers, do you really think you should be using all of that water for washing them?

As for recycling, if I am going to sort and recycle garbage, I am going to need more space for all of those bins. That means a new house which means using several trees I guess. Even if I keep the sorting bins in the middle of the garage and put the car outside, I am going to have to rinse out all of the glass and plastic. That means more water.

And keeping the car outside means more gasoline to warm it up and more water to keep it clean.

So just as ecological studies consider the relationships between systems and point out how one action leads to another, the same is also true with the application of certain practices designed to alleviate or minimize those actions. Saving a tree is well and good, but using plastic instead may contribute to the immortality of landfills.

I know all this because I have many times seen the same principle in action when I buy a new dress. It follows that now I need new shoes. And I may need a new bag as well. To my relief, I can choose something other than paper or plastic. Choosing leather ought to help out, right?

So I muddle along. Some days I use paper. Some days I use plastic. Some days I stay out of the stores, but I haven’t been able to do it for any extended period.
But the more I think of it, using plastic might be more to my good than I care to admit.

I'll show you a hitch

2010-02-04T20:46:00.000-08:00

When my fifth child was born, an event from the dim and distant past, my first two children, both boys, were in the process of earning their Eagle Scout awards. So when I was introduced to my fifth child, a third boy, did I think of blue buntings, bicycles and basketballs?

No. All I could think was, “In eight short years this person is going to grow up to be a cub scout.”

Don’t misunderstand me. Scouting is great, at least in theory. It turns boys into men and all that. It also turns mothers into maniacs. If it weren’t so wonderful, it couldn’t inspire so much anxiety and guilt in mothers who are anxiously waiting for their sons to grow into men. They just hope they live to see the men.

The years between Bobcat and Eagle are interminable. The words “merit badge” are able to strike sheer terror into the hearts of otherwise fearless matriarchs. You say “pack meeting” and a mother panics. “When was it—when is it—did we miss that again?”

Just so you know, a fourteen-year-old boy is inert. He has no engine, gears or starter. He eats, sleeps and sits and that makes him tired. So it is up to his mother to figure out how to make him want to take five-mile hikes, tie knots, cook his own food or call a merit badge counselor.

The only rank a boy scout ever brought home on his own came with his socks after a week at scout camp, and I’ll bet he couldn’t get home with any of his gear without the help of his scout master.

I personally know a scout who came home without his sleeping bag. I also know one who came home with all his clothes and they were clean! He left his change of clothes in his backpack all week and came home in the clothes he went in. At least he didn’t lose them.

Well, I learned a few things with my first scout who finally got his Eagle at the age of 18. Before that, all I could think to do to motivate him was to get involved. Somewhere between his registration and graduation, I learned how to tie every knot, build a fire without matches, pitch a tent, and find merit badge books in the library.

So with my second son, I was not only prepared, I was a lot smarter. He got his Eagle by age 15. There are quite a few friendly, courteous, and kind mothers out there and they passed on their secrets. (I don’t know where they were when I was a tenderfoot. But all of those secrets come under the umbrella of threats, bribery or blackmail, and resorting to any one of those categories is more practical that becoming a scout yourself.

The most effective motivational tool is used like thin: “You don’t get your driver’s license until you get your Eagle.” Very simple.
I guess that is blackmail, but there is some wisdom in using it. Since 14-year-old boys are inert, and 16-year-old boys would rather drive and chase girls than run the Snake River, let alone do a conservation project, you are justified in using strong-arm tactics.

You have to get tough while they are still sitting on the couch being tired. At least they are around. If they are too tired to be concerned about driving when they turn sixteen, you can use a gentler method like bribery during the interim: “I will feed you after you pass off home repairs.”

As I said, I was presented with a third boy. By the time he turned eight, neither of us could remember when they held den meeting let alone where they kept the merit badge books. I didn’t want to start over again, even armed with threats, bribery and blackmail

The holidays

2010-02-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

Bertha Butterbean
The holidays

Well, I guess now that Halloween is over we have entered that season known as The Holidays. Or maybe the holidays begin a week sooner and include Halloween. Either way it is pretty much all uphill from here, because the holidays come in such swift succession that I am still thinking about the first one when the second one arrives.

By the way, I gained an hour of sleep Saturday/Sunday when we turned the clocks back, but I lost it again the following night.

In spite of the fact that I am chronically behind during the holidays, I am happy to be in them and noting their significance. I happen to be of a political and religious bent that allows me to celebrate all of the holidays with enthusiasm.

Take Thanksgiving for instance. If you happen to believe that Thanksgiving is about giving thanks to God for blessings, then that holiday is worth noting and celebrating. If you don’t, then I guess you just talk turkey.

And take the Fourth of July for another instance. If you are celebrating our country, its constitution and those who sacrificed much for its creation, then you can put your whole heart into its commemoration. If you don’t then I guess it’s just about fireworks.

And for the third instance, take Christmas. If you believe that it is for celebrating the birth of the Savior of mankind, then have a joyous one. If you don’t, then it is about presents.

So, here’s the rundown of national holidays: New Year’s Day, Msrtin Luther King Jr’s birthday, President’s Day, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Add to that the list of holidays on which you still have to go to work like Halloween, Valentine’s, April Fool’s and St. Patrick’s days.

Now you go figure.

If you aren’t a little bit patriotic, religious, or conservative (PR&C), you don’t have a whole lot to celebrate in a year. Let’s see, by my count, of the 11 national holidays there are eight patriotic holidays, two religious holidays, and the rest (one) are up for grabs.
If you depend on your holidays to define you, and you aren’t a little bit PR&C, let’s see, you are left with New Year’s, Halloween, April Fool’s and Valentine’s—throw in Boss’ Day, Clean Up Your Room Day (May 10) and Thomas Crapper Day (Jan. 27) if you wish—and you are going to have a really great year.

Remember, if those are your holidays, you will have to schedule time off if you want to celebrate them in any traditional sense of the word. Traditional is sounding more fun all the time.

And if you are not PR&C, you really should not celebrate PR&C holidays anyway, or you run the risk of looking hypocritical.
With that said, may I wish all of you a wonderful holiday season, and I hope that you find meaning, joy, and happiness in your families as you celebrate all of them.

The tale of my haunted house

2009-10-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

The frost is definitely on the pumpkin. It’s the time of year when Linus starts to think about the patron squash of Halloween while the other kids and some adults, including me, begin to wonder about hauntings, witches’ brews, buying trick-or-treat candy, and graveyards.

Apparently it’s also the time when certain species of the animal kingdom start to feel a fascination with the macabre as well. The variety of mice that populate the Butterbean neighborhood seem to be especially fascinated with finding a place to die, and they seem tothink that inside my house is the place to do it.

I understand why mice would begin to come inside at this time of year if they are trying to keep warm. Considering the frost on the gardens, etc, and the fact that they can apparently squirm through an opening the size of a gum wrapper, I would be surprised not to find them inside. But if they were coming inside to get warm, you should be finding them arranged around the space heater like I am.

But I think that there is something else going on.

Maybe mice and elephants have more in common than just a mutual mortal fear. Maybe mice are also compelled by instinct to find the communal graveyard of the rodent world and make a strange pilgrimage there every fall.

Or perhaps there is a mouse version of the Ghost in the Graveyard game and they double-mouse-dare each other to see whether they can enter the graveyard and return. These mice tell scary stories to their children which proclaim that no mouse has ever come back, and well they should, because they never do.

If you think that I am luring mice into something as commonplace as old fashioned mousetraps, you are wrong. I do have a few of those, but I don’t catch many mice. There probably aren’t ghostly mouse legends about the Butterbeans’ mousetraps.

But the graveyard from which no mice ever return happens to be in a deep and dark crevasse into which they mysteriously seem to be compelled to jump or fall without the encouragement of any kind of mouse bait. Somehow they have found a way to die a dramatic death inside of the west wall in my kitchen. I promise that I haven’t lured any of them into that wall with amontillado, or beer or cheese or cake or anything else for that matter. What their fascination with the graveyard is I don’t know, but mice tread the trail of no return year after year, never to see their families again. Apparently there is no way for a mouse to climb out of the “pit” once he is in it.

Believe me, I don’t want dead mice a-moldering away inside of the wall. I prefer not to have the smells of rotting carcasses, no matter how small, emanating from behind the telephone. Nor do I want trapped live mice inside of the wall either. They get hungry and they aren’t able to survive on insulation, electrical wiring and plasterboard. Besides they are afraid of the dark, so they try to scratch and chew themselves out of the wall all the while making highly disturbing noises.

One almost succeeded. I was a little disconcerted to walk into the kitchen one morning and see a snuffling pink nose protruding from a hole at the top of the baseboard. Thankfully the hole was only half the size of a gum wrapper. I’m sorry, but we had to plaster up that hole with little Fortunato trapped inside. It was an evil deed for sure, but I would be very happy if he had not gotten himself into the wall to begin with.

After a few days, when we were pretty sure he was dead and the Halloween games were over, we (we here means Mr. Butterbean) decided to open up the wall to see whether we could find a way to discourage the mice from enacting their death throes inside of it. I am sorry to say that we didn’t and that we removed eighteen little skeletons from inside the wall, all of those from between only two studs.

It’s one of the mysteries of the animal kingdom, but I’m not going to tear down this wall to try to solve it.

The cost of turning out the lights

2009-10-19T09:44:00.000-07:00

Mr. Butterbean is the light-switch Nazi.

What I am saying is that when it comes to the light switches in our house, he is waging a battle against “on” and is determined that light switches should be flipped to the “off” position; and he has an assortment of weapons in his arsenal to enforce “off.”

At nighttime we live in a world of semi-darkness because at some time during his journey to moral maturity, Mr. B.’s compass got pointed in that direction. In plain language (which I should use more often) leaving on more lights than we need to wastes electricity which in turn costs money. How much? I am about to find out…

Okay, this is the deal: according to someone named “billruss” on the ask.yahoo website, “your 75 watt bulb, if it burns for an hour, will use 75 watt-hours of electricity. Typical cost for electricity (check your bill) is 10¢ (around here it’s a little less) per kW-hr or per 1000 watt-hours. So in one hour your bulb uses 75/1000 x 10¢ or 0.75¢.”

According to Bill’s formula and my calculations, I can burn that light bulb for the whole evening which therefore costs about three cents a day, providing I turn it off when I go to bed or leave the house. I can burn it all year for about $10.00. That is less than Mr. B. has tosses into his quart-sized penny jar in a month. That is less than I find in the washer in a couple of months.

Beyond all that, I understand that the cost for using the new-and-improved, energy-efficient kryptonite light bulbs is even less, provided you can scrape together the necessary down payment to buy some. That kind of money can’t be found in the washer or under the couch cushions.

Yes, I am all for saving money. The more I save on light, the more I can spend on other higher-energy-usage electronic devices. So I can probably buy a new computer with the money I save turning off lights in about twenty years.

My problem with semi-darkness is this: I see at about 75% efficiency during daylight hours. When the lights are low, it drops to somewhere around .75%. Things like stairs, tables, closet doors, stools, and chair legs begin to blend into other things like walls, and floors. I suppose that the same thing happens to the rest of you when the amount of light decreases to a certain threshold, whatever wattage that may be your household.

Now then, compare the penny-per-hour cost of electricity to the cost of band-aids and first-aid cream per incidence of stubbed toes, $12.75, or to the cost of ibuprofen for bruised shins and elbows per year, $27.95. Then factor in the cost of stitches to the forehead, one time only, $480 (plus more bandages and ibuprofen), which cost applies only if your laceration is not referred to a plastic surgeon, when it may cost three month’s wages plus whatever dollar amount you want to put on pain and suffering.

As you can see, even figuring conservatively which means excluding the possibility that I might fall down the stairs, turning off the lights may not be cost effective. Apparently the Light Nazi and Blind Bertha are just not a good combination.
Should the current administration of the federal government need a light czar to work under the energy cazr to promote walking around in the dark, and I predict that they will, I know just the man for the job. And he has no ties to the Chicago mob, pays his taxes, and loves apple pie.

Mr. B. can think of hundreds of ways to get you to turn off the lights. Most of them involve the application of that great motivational tool—guilt. The rest of them are “turn out the light,” which is uttered as soon as you stand up from your chair or start for the exit of a particular room. That you are coming back in thirty seconds doesn’t count.

Should we ever have a light czar, no matter who it is, I may have to show up at a light-tea party. I already know what my handmade placard will read: “SAVE OUR SHINS!"

The chronicles of cold cereal

2009-10-19T09:43:00.000-07:00

Bertha is not necessarily well-known for her inclination to discuss the weightier matters. In fact that word you have been hearing so much lately—frivolous—is probably more on the mark.

One of those charming and frivolous products that deserves discussion though, is that breakfast food known as cold cereal which is so characteristic of the American cultural scene, which scene by the way is disappearing rapidly and needs to be preserved.

So, Cheerios, Wheaties and Corn Flakes are older than I am. They were the breakfast of everyone, champions or losers, back in the in the 40s when I was part of the cereal generation.

Excluding oatmeal, I suppose, Corn Flakes is arguably the mother of them all and was “discovered” by John Harvey Kellogg when he was busy making bland food for the patients at his health spa. He hoped the bland food would have a calming effect on some of his patients.. He accidentally overcooked a batch of corn “stuff” which turned it into flakes instead of sheets. (I can only imagine sheets.) Not wanting to throw them out, he served them to the patients, who, interestingly, preferred flakes to sheets. And that was the last time that cereal was thought to have a calming effect on anyone. So cereal came to have historical, if not nutritional or intrinsic value.

Fast forward a couple hundred years from now, though, to when archaeologists excavate certain buildings belonging to this decade. They will no doubt proclaim that little round “O’s (are there any other kind?) must have had religious significance and therefore intrinsic value back then, uh now.

During the 70s when I was raising kids, cereal was the quintessential junk food. There was a national uproar over the lack of food value in something that was used to feed seventy percent of the country’s kids who were just on their way out the door to catch the school bus; in spite of the fact that cold cereal was single-handedly responsible for helping all of those children not miss the bus and therefore morning arithmetic.

But wait, that was back when this country was way ahead of the rest of the world in all of the smart indices. Do you suppose there is a direct correlation between eating junk food and intellect? Well, maybe not. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what tastes better.

Well, that decade may have been the beginning of the socialization of cereal. Someone made the manufacturers put all of the natural nutrients and fibers back into the cereal and take the sugar out. And thus the dumbing down of American school children had begun.

Thanks to some good PR, cereal’s reputation is of late considerably improved. The PR blitzes began way before this however. The industry long ago began to market their product to kids. There are the leprechaun/elf-based marketing strategies which are some of the oldest due to the fact that fairies are immortal. And there are the animal mascot approaches, some of which feature kid-friendly tigers, rabbits and roosters which are septuagenarians. And there are the all-American athlete angles. Willie Mays used to grace a box of Wheaties back in the day.

And alternatively then and now there are the mothers who are desperately trying to maintain control over the contents of the shopping cart. As early as the 70’s cereal had become a method of advancing one’s social status. Children wanted the flashy, colorful, expensively packaged kinds which they ate while they wore their Calvin Klein or Jordache jeans. Cereal boxes and jeans are alike that way sometimes. What goes into them is sometimes worth less than the packaging.

As for me and Mr. B. we have arrived at the age, in this decade, where the only cereals under consideration reside on the top row of the cereal aisle. That makes sense if your marketing target is kids. However, we grew out of our jeans and flashy cereals some time ago. But it is unfortunate that we practically have to get a chair to view the top row of cereal boxes through our bifocals. And we can barely read the nutrition facts at all.

While sitting at the kitchen table reading the cereal box the other day though, I was amused to see, in big letters, that I had bought “Granola—without raisins.”

Where the body meets the car

2009-10-19T09:39:00.000-07:00

I am fearful that in the quest to control our driving habits, some car czar in the upper echelons of the motor vehicle industry, lately the federal government, will be trying to annihilate every semblance of comfort in a car on the grounds that if you get too comfortable in those things, you will become impaired enough to run over a lizard or a rabbit or something.

Now I know that when it comes to vehicle performance, roughly half of you are more concerned with where the rubber meets the road. But if cars become smaller and more Spartan, surely they will become less comfortable in that area where the body meets the car—the car seat.

Speaking of car seats, look at what they have done to our under-60-lbs. population where their little backsides meet the car. Child car-seat engineers ought to be required to drive for at least three hours straight with a couple of rear-facing, strapped-in kids who will be screaming because they are rear-facing and strapped-in.

I’m sorry, but those conditions don’t enhance safety much since two screaming kids are more of a distraction to the driver than a diaper bag full of cell phones all receiving text messages at once. Besides who doesn’t drive more carefully when his payload isn’t strapped down?

In addition to the distraction issue. there is the bodily injury issue. I’m not talking about the collision-induced kind. Did you ever try to put a pacifier into a baby’s back-seat rear-facing mouth from the front-seat forward-facing driver’s seat? An Olympic gymnast couldn’t do it. After a couple of shoulder dislocations, you will soon learn that you need to pull over for that one. By the way, speaking of Olympic athletes, do you know how fast and how far an eleven-month-old can throw a pacifier? Try moving quickly enough to catch one when you are buckled up.

But I digress. Back to the issue of driver/passenger comfort. I will have to admit that I haven’t test-driven a whole lot of cars. A few Fords, a few Chevys, middle-of-the-road types of vehicles. But I think they are getting more uncomfortable lately. There are more leather seats around, at least within my frame of reference.
Are leather seats practical? Not from the cow’s point of view.
Are leather seats really leather? If they are, I can’t imagine why PETA isn’t all over that one.

Are leather seats comfortable? No, and I don’t know what kinds of positives they are supposed to deliver either. They are cold in winter and hot in summer. During all seasons they are slippery and you tend to slide forward in them until you are in danger of taking a seat on the floor. Everything you set on them—your purse, your mail, your groceries reacts the same way.

I’m sorry, I’m not buckling in my accessories. It is bad enough to be told by an unforgiving beeper that I have to buckle myself in. Not that I wouldn’t want a seat belt in place if I ever needed one, but I just want to be the one to decide to place it.

Then there is the headrest which is a misnomer and should be called a pain in the neck. Whether it is really designed to be a whiplash preventer but was then given the misleading name of headrest to prevent our emotional unrest, I am not sure, but don’t plan on resting your head on that thing. I question its ability to prevent whiplash since whiplash could easily occur somewhere in the huge gulf between the head and the “headrest.”

Okay, just so you don’t think that all I do is complain, here is a great big thumbs-up, high-five, A-okay, whatever is good, to the inventor of the seat heater, alternately called the heat seater. Somebody got that one right. It is actually warm in winter. It warms almost half your body while it gently relaxes your shoulders which were probably previously hunched against the cold or dislocated from reaching the baby or strained from trying to lay your head back onto the whiplash preventer.

How to negotiate a four-way stop intersection

2009-10-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

We have acquired a some new low-volume, high-stress (four-way stop) intersections in our town lately. Until now they have been few and far between. Drivers could still get where they wanted to go by detouring occasionally so as to avoid them.
Suddenly, it is nearly inevitable that you will have to use one of those intersections unless you want to go somewhere by way of Colorado.

One of the problems with four-way stops is that too many of us took Driver’s Ed. too long ago. The other problem is that some of us weren’t paying attention during the four-way stop chapter anyway.

Just so you know, I happen to fall into the first group, not the second. So I got online and looked up the four-way-stop rules in an effort to get up to speed on this one, which is the only reason I am qualified to write about it. So unless you like going to Colorado, here is the missing chapter.

The basic rule of the four-way stop is to pay attention as you approach the intersection because the vehicles go through the intersection in the order they stopped at it. By the way, four-way stop does not mean that you have to wait for three more cars to stop before you can move through the intersection. It’s not rocket science; however, there are a few contingencies which might make it akin to computer programming.

First, the definition of “stop” is: none of your wheels are turning. (“Rolling stop” is an oxymoron that has no place in the lexicon of driving terminology.) That contingency might make it necessary for you to keep one eye on your rearview mirror in case the driver behind you thinks that “rolling stop” is a legitimate maneuver. This condition makes you realize a whole new meaning to the dictum “I got your back,” which in turn makes it difficult to recall which cars arrived at the intersection in which order.

Second, if you see that one of the drivers at the intersection is using a cell phone, you may have to assume that he/she doesn’t know who got to the intersection first either. In that case you may resort to hand-waving which may solve the problem of who goes first. Please note: you may be the type of person who opens the door for football players, but polite isn’t relative here. Do not wait for all of the other cars to go first unless you are sure that you got there last.

Fourth, one or more cars may actually arrive at the intersection at the same time. This isn’t the same as not knowing who arrived when. However, your perceptions of “the same time” may not be the same as someone else’s. You may be at the intersection with a Nascar driver wannabe who doesn’t comprehend second or third. If you suspect that you are at the intersection with one of those people, just pretend that you came in second or third, in spite of the usual regulation which prescribes that the car on the right goes first.

Fifth, in rare instances four cars might actually arrive at the intersection at the same time, which results in maneuvers similar to performing the Hokey-Pokey, or maybe it’s a square dancing routine that I am thinking of. I am sorry, but none of the rules apply since everyone is on someone’s right and since taking turns is going to require more than just holding up one, two, three, or four fingers. The way I see it everyone will be signaling “we’re number one.” You won’t see a peace sign anywhere.

For this contingency, I recommend carrying an empty pop bottle under your back seat, or brushing up on your Rock, Paper, Scissors skills. Another strategy is to make sure that you and three other cars are not arriving at the intersection simultaneously. The safest way to do that is to get there last. It’s not first, but it’s a strategy that gives you control over the situation. No one will try to beat you out of that position, and hey, believe it or not, the object is to get through the intersection without a bent fender.

The State of Utah Driver’s Handbook is mysteriously silent on the subject of four-way stops. Perhaps Utah drivers weren’t sleeping through four-way stop classes. Maybe there weren’t any, which might explain the general confusion at four-way stops. I did find this instruction on a website which describes some method for maneuvering a crowded four-way stop: “The alternating directions take turns. In other words, north and south go, then west and east. Those turning left yeild (original spelling maintained) to the car coming the opposite direction, just like with a green light.” I think that the instructions contained in the Utah Handbook are more helpful.

For your information, though, there are two pages of instructions in that handbook devoted to the maneuver of parallel parking. Now there is something that you can still manage to avoid without detouring through Colorado.

How to cope with medical shortfalls

2009-10-19T09:34:00.000-07:00

The appearance of the first “medicine person” in the Butterbean family may have occurred back in the days when the Butterbeans’ immediate ancestors moved out to a ranch 15 miles away from the real doctor and when cars weren’t so dependable.
To get to the doctor’s office back then, you had to drive a car that had to be push-started, was liable to get a flat tire on the way there, and was usually out of gas. (My, how times have changed in the Butterbean family.)

After the car was up and on its way, someone had to drive over roads that were either sandy, muddy or washed out. (Walking through snow was reserved for children going to school—three miles uphill both ways.)

Then as now, our family had an impeccable history of becoming sick or maimed only on weekends when doctors go into hiding and it does you no good to drive to town anyway.

Since those days, there has always been at lest one bona fide, bone-wearing shaman among the generations of the Butterbean tribe. Come to think of it, it’s a wonder there isn’t a real doctor in the family. There is no shortage of aspirants.

Through the years, we have been known to consult the family shaman in cases of loose teeth, split fingernails, floor burns, road rashes, sprains, lacerations, nosebleeds, hay fever, dog bites, tick bites, and numerous other accidentally self-inflicted wounds—a fact which has made top executives of our medical insurance companies ever grateful.

Common treatments involved vitamin C, salt water, soap and water, rest in bed, band-aids when they could be located, fishing line, sport tape and elastic wraps.
Which brings us to the question of why do-it-yourself medicine is still practiced in the Butterbean family: neither I nor the insurance company can afford the real kind.
Somewhere between those days when it was impractical to drive to the doctor’s office and now when you will have a hard time paying for the service when you get there, were the days when it did you no good if you did go there.

If you are in my age bracket (usually the highest one), you will remember those days of general antibiotic hysteria when the only way you could get a prescription for an antibiotic was to show proof, be you living or dead, that you had “strep.” No other illness warranted the use of antibiotics. The only way to rule out all other strains of sore throat was to show up at the doctor’s for a throat culture. If it was positive, you were rewarded with antibiotics. If not, you were sent home with an aspirin in your hand.

My friend, who raised her children during the Great American Antibiotic Freeze, took her daughter to the doctor twice, two weeks running, with a sore throat. Each time she was charged the going rate and sent home with a handshake: “Congratulations, your daughter has the non-strep variety of sore throat.”

But my friend was getting smarter. The next time her daughter had a sore throat, she used her own strategy. No, she didn’t visit the family shaman. Instead of making an appointment, then driving to the doctor’s office and waiting in line, she telephoned him and reported that her daughter again had a sore throat and would he please add the usual $35 to her bill while she gave her daughter an aspirin.

In case you were wondering what the family shaman needed fishing line for (besides fishing of course); he has been known to suture his own lacerations for two reasons. He didn’t have strep, and he couldn’t find a band-aid.

Just a little off base

2009-10-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked me why I didn’t say something about this or the other thing in last week’s article about baseball caps. Well, it was getting a little too long and a little too late as it was.

But I was tempted to say that, great American past time notwithstanding, the best thing to come out of baseball may be the baseball cap.
Of course, we don’t live in a city or even a state that has a team in either big league so we are probably a little too far removed from all the action if there is any.

My son who lives further east than we do follows big-league baseball, but he lives within a couple of hours traveling time of four teams’ home ball parks. In addition to that, there is the Toledo Mud Hens also within that range, which team I was lucky enough to watch play.

But as sports go, baseball is one of them. A couple of my kids played baseball, so I have been to the park a few hundred times to watch the games. At least the games are held in the summer, as opposed to football and soccer, which sports aren’t perfect either as their games are on one end or the other of winter.

If your kid is the pitcher, watching baseball is an okay activity, unless he walks nine in a row. If he’s the right fielder, you are better off bringing along a supplementary amusement like a history book or a math assignment for the bottom halves of the innings in case things get a little slow.

Since we don’t really have any geographical ties to baseball, my kids were all over the ballpark when it came to picking a major league team to cheer for. They tended to pick their own baseball team fan caps based on color more than anything else, i.e. “I like blue, and I look good in blue; I’ll root for Boston. Besides that, my name starts with ‘B’.”

“Well, I’ll get a Yankees hat, even though, thank goodness, my name doesn’t start with ‘Y.’ Their hats just look the best.”

Similarly, I think my friend’s son was playing baseball, and not soccer, because “the boys just look so cute in their baseball suits.” I think that Bertha has already written about the pros and cons of baseball uniforms versus soccer gear. Baseball requires way too much equipment.

I don’t know whether it is baseball that has changed or whether I have. I used to follow the sport and at least watch the World Series along with everybody else. And, truth to tell, I don’t know whether one can truly be an American patriot and not like baseball.

American culture and social history would have a huge holes in it without baseball, its Hall of Fame, and the stories, movies, music and food associated with it—not to mention the influence of baseball on the English language.

Do you realize how many baseball idioms there are? You might have noticed a couple already in this article. But I’ll bet you could think of at least twenty once you got out of the dugout and started swinging.

When was the last time you didn’t go through a day (that would be a Yogiism right there) without “striking out” or “dropping the ball?” We can certainly hope for a few more “homeruns and “grand slams” than instances of “being caught off base” in that day though.

And if you think that this particular column is a swing and a miss, how would you like to pinch hit sometime?

Thankfully, it’s over when it’s over.

“Do you like my hat?”

2009-10-19T09:29:00.000-07:00

I suppose there was a time when baseball caps were worn only for playing baseball. I should like to hear the complete and unabridged history of the invention and popularization of the baseball cap.

Just in case you feel the same way, let me tell you it isn’t in the encyclopedia. However if you google baseball cap history, you will return about 1,300.000 entries, which is a lot of history. The first and second sites disagreed on which baseball team first wore them, so history, schmistory, I made one up and here it is.

One hot summer day, at the height of baseball season, Ty Cobb (probably the earliest baseball players that I know of) complained to his manager that the sun got in his eyes when he stood in centerfield (if he played centerfield), and he needed something to shade his eyes. The manager took the problem to his wife who borrowed her son’s beanie and sewed a bill on it.

Ty was a pioneer who wasn’t afraid to show up in never-before-seen headgear, so he tried it out the next game, and it worked pretty well. The seamstress had the foresight to make it in the team’s colors, and the skill to put a block letter on the front of it.

Soon the left fielder and the second baseman wanted one too. And the catcher, who had been looking for something to keep his hair clean when he replaced his mask after throwing it in the dirt around home plate, asked for one too. It didn’t take him long to realize that wearing it backwards was about the only way he was going to be able to wear it at all. (Credit catchers with being first to wear baseball caps backwards.)

Fans and fishermen were probably the first to wear baseball caps off the playing field. Fans wanted to look just like Ty, and fishermen wanted a place to put their flies. From there it snowballed. Truck drivers began to wear them, as did farmers and bald men. Cowboys discovered that a baseball cap fit into the cab of a pickup truck better than a Stetson did, so baseball caps crossed over into the rigid realm of cowboy attire.

Sometime during the 70s it was discovered that the sun got into the eyes of women also, and so the baseball cap crossed another line—the gender line. About that same time denim pants crossed the same line, and one just followed the other.

Baseball caps began to appear in more types of social settings, and they began to be worn to make a fashion statement as well as a literal statement.
Which just about brings us up to the present. Everyone needs a few baseball caps in his or her wardrobe. One to wear to the mall, one to wear jogging, one for visiting friends, one for camp, one to wear to school outside of class, one to wear to work, and oh yes, one to wear to the ballgame.

You can say just about anything with your baseball cap, as well. But pay attention. Make sure that the cap you wear and the way you wear it, i.e. frontward, sideways, backward, inside out, makes the correct statement about your political preferences, your lifestyle, your socio-economic attachments, etc. If you think a baseball cap is neutral, you are mistaken. It can cross the gender line, but be careful about taking it across any other lines. It sits up there on top of your head like a billboard. It isn’t like a wallet that hides in your pocket. Make sure it makes the correct statement.

Well, not a bad reconstruction of history given the evidence in the closet, right? It was easy. Someone needed a sunshade in centerfield and the hat scene is changed for ever after.

I was thinking I could take this history thing a step further and tackle that more useless part of the baseball uniform—the stirrup—but I am having a hard time with it. Which baseball player walked up to his manager and said, “Hey Joe, now my socks don’t match my cap.”?

Dreams do have meaning, but only one

2009-10-19T09:27:00.000-07:00

Half of the modern novels I’ve read have some chapter or scene where the hero has an intricate and convoluted dream which the author describes in great detail. They are usually about the character being in a large grassy field with mists or fog. I guess the reader is supposed to interpret the dream and understand what is going to happen next in the story line or what character traits the heroine has buried under layers of consciousness. I never get it. Even by the end of the book, I never get it.

Should I ever write a novel (not to worry) the dreams will have only one theme, which as near as I can tell from my real-life research and my personal observation is the only theme dreams ever come in. (Those novelists are up in the night.)

As you will notice, this is a timely as well as controversial subject, but as far as I am concerned, all dreams are about one thing—being late for class and not being able to get your locker open. Either you have forgotten the combination or it doesn’t work.

Don’t ever let anyone tell you that your school years are unimportant. You will literally be dreaming about them for the rest of your life.
Okay, there are variations on the theme, but they are all the same thing. You can’t get where you need to be (class or school) with all of your stuff and on time to save yourself.

One variation is the “I can’t remember my schedule” dream in which you keep trying to find clues to help you get where you need to be, but you can’t. You keep slogging around trying different classrooms or halls to see if any of them ring a bell, but they don’t. You can’t even find the principal’s office in order to ask someone what your schedule is. Or if during the odd dream you miraculously find it, they can’t find your schedule either.

Then there is the “I can’t get ready for school” dream in which you can’t find the right clothes or shoes, or you get to school and discover that you forgot the most important article of clothing—your pants (or when I went to school, your skirt).
There is also the “I forgot basketball tryouts” dream in which your friends find you after the fact and ask you why you weren’t at tryouts running multiple ladders like they were.

One more variant of the school dream is the one where you find, when you finally get to your class, that there is a 100-question test for which you are totally unprepared.

I guess fairly recent dream research (not similar to the kind I have done) has shown that people need to get the right kind of sleep so they can dream which in turn makes them well-adjusted and psychologically healthy. Well, either I am not getting the right kind of sleep or not dreaming the right kind of dreams because after one of the locked-locker dreams, I wake up in the middle of an anxiety attack. And that hardly feels healthy.

I have read that anxiety dreams are telling us about current behavior patterns or psychological imbalances that need to be corrected and also that they are present in people who are diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. What does all of this tell you about high school?

Well, I am not a psychologist, but it’s not that hard. High school is pure raw trauma—an experience from which you will probably never recover no matter how many times you dream about it which explains why you dream about it.
Your only hope is to have a subsequent traumatic experience which will eclipse the high school one and “graduate” your psychological imbalances so that you dream that you can never get to work on time with your trousers on.

How to make good use of commercial messages

2009-10-19T09:25:00.000-07:00

I am sure that the world’s advertising agencies go to great trouble to make commercials that will make us all sit right up and pay attention for thirty seconds, a minute, or however long it is that ads run. I don’t suppose they are as long as they seem. If they were, there wouldn’t be any time left for regular programming because there are at least eight of them during a half-hour television show.

None of that is anything you didn’t already know, but even if the ads are only thirty seconds long, they are long enough to put me to sleep. When regular programming is on, I can stay awake. When an ad comes on, my eyes fall shut.

Ironically, the worst kind are the ones that promote sleep aids. The background music is restful; they feature people lying in comfortable-looking beds; even the colors and images are calming. Add all of that calmness to the fact that this same commercial has already aired six times during the last half hour and ended the same way every time—with the subject falling asleep—and hmmm, I have direct access to the thirty-second power nap.

And I don’t have to worry about missing any of my program because I always wake up at the end of the commercial during the enumeration of the product’s side effects. Now that part of the promotion is a little jarring to the nerves. Especially when they say, “in rare instances, this product may cause heart attack or stroke.”
That’s enough to wake me up and get me thinking about the possibility of having a stroke, and I further think that if I were going to have a stroke, I wouldn’t want to have it during a pharmaceutically-induced sleep session. I might miss “my program.”

After a few of those kind of commercials, I have resolved that I don’t want to take that kind of product ever, which is also ironic.

Who needs to take anything? You could just record a couple of commercials to play when you get in bed, making sure to edit out the parts about the side effects.
So, after a good night’s sleep plus or minus a few power naps, I might be found in my car going here and there. When I am driving, I listen to talk radio. Believe me, it has it’s share of commercial messages as well. Given the effect that television commercials have on me, I need to be careful about listening to radio commercials while I am driving—power naps and all notwithstanding. So far, my radio station is judicious enough to refrain from advertising sleep aids.

On the contrary, they often air “paid announcements” that serve to wake me right up. One of those is paid for some entity called “Save Our National Parks Foundation” or something like that. Obviously this commercial has failed to drive home to me what the name of the organization is, but their message I got: our national parks are in disrepair because they are underfunded, so please send money to improve them.

So, this is a little jarring to the nerves, and I think that commercials like this might give me a stroke. When Bertha, who is not well-known for her rationality but sometimes has a lucid thought, analyzes this commercial message, it comes out like this:
Say you own a really nice house. Someone more important that you are comes along and takes over the care and upkeep of your house because you might not know how to do that. Their rationale is that they have more resources and can do that better than you can. They pretend that you still own your house, but you don’t; in fact, you will have to get in line to visit it, and you will have to pay a fee to use it, You will have to pay not to use it also. Besides that you will have to pay for upkeep and expenses on it. But the party soon gets tired of spending the money that you give him on his house, and he wants to buy jet airplanes with it instead.

Consequently the repairs and maintenance have fallen behind. He implores a third party to beg you to send more money to fix up the house you don’t own so you can pay more money to visit or not visit a house that you don’t own that this time we are going to fix up. Promise.

And by the way, some of the money will be used to pay for this commercial message which you can record and play back whenever you need a non-pharmaceutical jolt to keep you awake.

Who knew I was a morning person?

2009-10-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid, everyone was a “morning person.” Night people were social outcasts. Well, at least our parents let us know that “early to bed, early to rise” described the expected norm.

When I got old enough, I was permitted to stay up only until the TV news was over at which time even the high school seniors went to bed. Next morning, breakfast was served at seven. Everyone came to breakfast. Everyone ate the same food, and everyone began his day thereafter.

Then someone shattered family life as we knew it by getting a grant and discovering that there are “morning people” and there are “night people.” Morning people like things the way they always were. They like to get up early, plan their day, then get their day’s work done, watch the news, and go to bed afterwards.

Night people are the ones who begin to come alive around nine p.m. They clean their rooms well after sundown. They call fellow night people to come over and make cookies after the news is over. They go shopping at midnight—to the stores that are open, which are only the video stores and the grocery stores, but that is enough to outfit a party.

I know all this because there are people of both kinds in my family. When they all lived at home, the night people stayed up at night, and the morning people got up in the morning. Guess who lost sleep on both ends?

I myself have been known to go to bed before the news begins. Now don’t start jumping to conclusions about my psychological makeup. If I don’t know what kind of person I am, neither does anyone else. I have also been known to stay up late with a good book. However, I do remember that back in the day I didn’t get much sleep when the night people were phoning or when Saturday Night Live was playing. Sometimes I just got up and ate cookies and read yearbooks with everyone else.

On the other hand, I didn’t sleep too well with morning piano practicing or the sounds of someone fixing breakfast. So I usually got out of bed and poured milk on the cereal before someone else poured it on the floor.
What could I say? The morning people had tradition on their side, and the night people had the studies in the medical journals on theirs. (Trying to turn a night person into a morning person can have long-term negative psychological effects, just as trying to turn a left-handed child into a right-handed one can.) And which is worse, a very sleepy mom or a bunch of neurotic kids?

I may have finally overcome the social pressures exerted by the night and morning people in my life who did their level best to turn me into a person of their own order. Perhaps I have blossomed into the kind of person I was meant to be—originally.

For a while there, after most of the kids left home, I rebounded and became an afternoon person—someone who goes to bed early and gets up late. It seemed that I should take advantage of the opportunity to get extra sleep whenever I could, just in case everyone moved back home again.

As for now, in case anyone cares, I seem to be a traditional morning person At least I find myself awake early most mornings trying to get a plan for the day, and ready for bed by the time the news comes on.

Speaking of which, I hear the ten o’clock news winding down right now. It must be time for me to be done here and to be going off to bed.

They do what with clunkers?

2009-08-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

I am just dying to stroll into Scary Harry’s Used Car Emporium and say, “Boy, have I got a clunker for you!” Wouldn’t that just about give the “what-goes-around-comes-around axiom a whole new meaning?

Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.

If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.

It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.

But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.

I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.

Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.

One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.

We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.

Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.

A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.

It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.

Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.

There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.

So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.

Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.

Oh, what a ride!

2009-08-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

After a long respite from going “up to the lake” to engage in that variety of water sports that requires a boat and a tow rope, I found myself doing just that today. The sky was clear, the sun was merciless, and getting wet didn’t seem like such an improbability after all, at least not for everyone else.

Those tube toys which resemble tire inner tubes, and which are pulled behind a ski boat were probably invented so that more people could have more fun. You don’t have to be able to balance on a slalom ski, or two skis, or get up on the wake board to be able to ride behind a boat on something. You just have to be able to get on and hang on.

All kinds of people are able to enjoy the sensation of air travel, even if they have no physical prowess whatsoever.

However, I think that when the tube gets loaded up and pulled along, the people who have the most fun are the observers who get to watch the riders from inside the boat. The tubes that are made for two riders seem to offer the most entertainment.

I watched two skinny twelve- or thirteen-year old boys get the ride of their lives today. I, in turn, had a laugh worth driving all the way up to the lake for. Two skinny boys don’t weigh the tube down much so it sits up high in the water. They sit a little higher yet, even though they try to spread out like syrup on a pancake.

The driver of the boat eases them into the ride gradually building up speed, and just when the “tubers” think they have mastered the sport and can let go of the handles and stand up or something, the skipper rises to the challenge and begins to take them down a notch or two.

Incidentally, he considers it his responsibility to thoroughly dunk the boys, so he executes a few high-speed loop-the-loops and S-curves embellished by sudden variations in speed in order to give them a good ride before he does. Pretty soon the boys are bouncing around like popping corn, with arms and legs flailing and projecting out of the pile in all directions.

They start out side by side, but soon aligning themselves properly becomes impossible. Boy 1 bounces on top of Boy 2 who is flailing a free arm behind his head trying to clear him off. In a second, Boy 2 is on top of Boy 1 who is trying to extricate himself from a wicked Half Nelson while struggling to keep his legs on the mat and hang onto the grips.

Then the boat’s “slingshot” maneuver has them both clinging to the uphill side of the tube with their legs fishtailing out behind them. A sudden change in speed and direction leaves it terribly off-centered, and its empty side bobs up out of the water.

The tubers execute a disjointed uphill crabwalk as soon as they feel the boat turn the other way, but not in time to stabilize the tube, which rises out of the water and flips over. Boy 1 is launched over the top of Boy 2 who is ejected at a lower altitude and is slowed by rhythmic skipping over the water like a flat rock, getting introduced to the phenomenon of surface tension outside of science class.

It was a good ride, with the boys trading places on the tube a total of three times.

Just as comical is watching the tube loaded up with a much bigger rider on one side and a light-weight on the other. (It’s kind of like me sleeping in bed with Mr. B.) The lighter rider has all kinds of trouble keeping to his side of the tube. It is largely irrelevant though because soon the tube will be tipped over anyway.

What a tough bunch of kids! Might as well put them through the wringer. All of those dunked doughnuts remind me of why I wasn’t sure about getting in the water in the first place.

Safe haven for all God's creatures

2009-08-13T20:02:00.000-07:00

Safe haven for all God’s creatures

Knowing how we in this part of the country are all partial to keeping animals—horses, dogs, cats, mice, etc. I thought I would tell you the story of our one and only cat. We were able to keep that cat for about a day and a half.

Needless to say, we have plenty of mice out here in the hinterlands, and we needed a cat—or better mousetraps. Unfortunately our dog Steve was pretty sure that we didn’t need a cat. Actually he was pretty sure we didn’t need any animals on the place except for him. He kept the deer, the wild turkeys and the neighbors at bay whenever they passed too close to what he considered the boundaries of our, or maybe his, domain.

In spite of Steve’s antipathy toward extraneous animals (except of course for mice), when an estranged neighbor offered to give us an offspring of her mama cat which was an excellent mouser, it took only a small bribe to get us to take the little thing.

I must further explain that we happily negotiated on the amount of the bribe because we had just spent a rugged couple of weeks characterized by elevated mouse-in-the-house sightings with me passing a good part of that time standing on a chair. Where was Steve when mice were prowling around the perimeter?

Steve also neglected to keep the other natural rodent predators, besides cats, out of the house. Yes, I could be found standing on the dining table when a pretentious snake came inside, ostensibly looking for dinner. (He probably thought he had found the sushi bar.) That is another story, but we came down considerably from our asking price when I came down from the table.

True to form, Steve didn’t take to the cat. One or the other of them had to be penned up, and Steve knew he had seniority. Whenever we tried to encourage the two natural enemies to be friends, somebody got scratched or bit. Usually me. The cat soon learned to stay away from the dog. At least she could run inside the proverbial mouse hole when Steve happened to notice her.

We didn’t see her much that Saturday. She came down from a tree or from under the car when she got hungry.

The next day being Sunday with church on the docket, no one paid much attention to either the cat or the dog. Everyone was too busy finding his shoes or ironing his clothes to worry about a couple of animals that were outside and therefore out of mind.

When Mr. B. said the car was leaving, with or without all of us, we piled in and off we went down the canyon to the church, 15 miles away.
As usual, we arrived at the church with negative three minutes to spare so we hustled inside. Back at home after church, someone, namely me, wondered where the cat had gone. No one had seen her all day. We called her and coaxed her. We shut Steve in his doghouse to see whether that would precipitate her appearance, but she had seemingly vanished.

We got the family together and held a conference. Where was the last place the cat had been seen? And the last time?
“The last time I saw her, she was jumping down from on top of the spare tire under the car.--“

“Is that where she was hiding when she went under the car? Someone see if that’s where she is now.”

No cat.

Youngest child: “I saw a cat that looked like her down at the church.”

“What?”

Child two: “So did I. ”

Ding-a ling-a-ling.

“Why didn’t you say so? Where at the church?”

“She was running fast toward the field next to the parking lot. Oh-oh.”
---We went back to try to find her, but no cat. I just hope the neighbor who gave her to us didn’t find her there.

Naming the family cars just got a little harder

2009-06-15T19:55:00.000-07:00

What’s in a name? I assume that the naming of people, animals, boats, etc. became necessary when there came to be more than one of the same kind in a person’s domain.

If there were two girls in the family, something more specific than Girl was required if you were going to want to refer to just one of them. If a man had two horses, he had to name them if he were going to talk about them or to them.
There came a time in the history of the world, also, when it became expedient for man to name his cars. In the old days you said, “ I am going for a ride in the car,” as opposed to the bicycle, the scooter or the washing machine. There was only one car.

But when households accumulated more than one vehicle, it became necessary to differentiate between them. You could say you were going for a ride in the Ford unless you had two of them. Or you could say you were going for a ride in the white car unless you were partial to white vehicles. Or you could even be more specific and say you were going for a ride in the sports car.

But it is just more personal, creative and practical to give your vehicle an appropriate name. Then you are able to announce precisely, and to no one’s confusion, just exactly in which car you are going to ride.

It prevents annoying problems like running off in the car that someone else wants to use, or running off with someone else’s wallet, planner, lunch or lunch money that have been left in “the car.” (In the Butterbean family, car-hopping has nothing to do with Dairy Queens.)

The best names are clever, descriptive and concise. You can probably pass the naming duties along to the teen-agers in your family if you have been remiss or aren’t quite up to the task. They are clever. Just ask them.

If you are lacking in imagination, I am herewith passing on a list of witty car names along with a basic description so you get the idea. You should be able to take inspiration from this collection:

The Iguana is long and green with scales. The Pickle is also long and green, but with bumps. (Old, long and green is particularly stimulating to teenagers.)

The Gadget Mobile is equipped with every available option. The Rammer is one long, low muscle car. The Green Goose is a nearly-extinct Datsun hatchback. The Gray Ghost is back from the land of the dead.

The Rice Rocket is small and white and made in Japan. Orange Crush is a long-bed, heavy-haul pickup truck which is the perfect color for deer-hunting. The Dumpster has a dump-bed and is usually full of trash. The Twinkie is a yellow VW bus. The Marijuana Mobile is a van that is used to deliver flowers.

The Banana Boat is a yellow maxivan, and The Batmobile is the scariest car in town. The 8-1 refers to the truck with an 8.1 liter engine. You can see the advantage in not having to announce that you are going to drive “the truck with the 8.1 liter engine.”

You should be duly supplied with some inspiration now. Get naming while you have the chance. The spectrum of cars available for naming is rapidly getting narrower. There will be fewer kinds, fewer sizes, and fewer colors. What do you expect from government-issue?

You can forget names like Big Red, Black Beauty and Fast Eddy or anything else reminiscent of power, speed, or a dependence on gasoline.

But wait a minute, there would be greater challenge in naming cars when they are all carbon copies. Actually, I am getting into it already. What about The Sun Chip, or The Two-seater or Bioshock, or Bellybutton…no, I was not thinking of The Green Machine and neither were you.

My socks are one of a kind

2009-06-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

Being as I wrote about shoes last week, I thought that I would move on up and report on the subject of socks. You may remember my fairly recent story about battling with the washing machine as well.

Although my washing machine didn’t quite eat one of my children, it does manage to regularly eat my socks. Fortunately, in recent years, it has not had to compete with a whole family of sock destructionists, which means that hanging on to socks is easier than it used to be.

You probably thought that socks were to be worn under shoes to keep feet warm and comfortable, didn’t you? My kids were quite inventive and devised a great number of alternative uses for socks which partly accounted for their disappearance, although they usually blamed the washer.

Socks can be used for grenades, footballs, baseballs, slippers, floor polishers, galoshes, skis, accessories for the backyard, sleeping bags for GI Joes, chewing materials for the dog, flyswatters, shoe trees, truce flags, kite tails and marble bags.

Fortunately some of those uses don’t necessarily require a complete pair of socks. However, when a kid needs a sock for a science experiment, he is not likely to look in the unmated sock basket. He is going to look in his sock drawer, and if he needs one sock, so be it.

Of course socks will come to sad ends that have nothing to do with being worn out under shoes when they are subjected to nuclear testing. And then the ones that aren’t blown up, chewed up, or dissolved, are just simply lost.
Lost! I am conducting my own personal investigation, and what I want to know is whether anyone has ever lost both socks of a pair. If you have I want to know about it.

Whose washer eats socks by the pair? My washer likes to consume one of this and one of that. The Butterbean demolition society operates that way as well. I never did see two GI Joes lying side by side in matching sleeping bags. It was rare that I saw real mates worn side by side on one kid’s two feet. Usually they wore the kind that “no one will notice they don’t match.”

Sometimes they wore the kind you would have to be colorblind not to notice they were mismatched. I used to select my kid’s school teachers based on their inability to distinguish colors. If there was one who was color blind, that was the one I wanted.

One of the dilemmas of life is deciding whether to throw away the remaining sock after the first one is lost, The alternative is to keep it, hoping the other one will turn up when the snow melts. But should you throw it out, its mate will turn up within the week.

By the same token, both socks of a pair do not wear out together. One day you will put your foot in one end and out the other of a sock. Close inspection of its mate, providing you can find it, will reveal a sock without a single blemish or a broken thread.

I fail to see how the “use it up or wear it out” adage applies here since it is kind of hard to use one sock of a pair at all in spite of what my grade schoolers used to do. So I tend to follow my own adage which is “throw it out and buy a new one (or two).” It took me a few years of squirreling away unmated socks to come around to that attitude though. I finally found that by the time I found the lost one I couldn’t find the found one.

One of my kids used to leave a pair of socks in his snow boots every time he took them off. I guess they just slid off more easily that way. One day he wondered why he couldn’t get his foot back in. That was when he pulled five socks out of one boot and four out of the other. He should try that with rabbits sometime.
So you see why there were never neat little rows of mated socks in their drawers—the washer did it.

If there ever were pairs in their drawers, those were the ones they wore outside in the rain or used to polish their shoes, which partly explained their range of color. My kids got to wear white socks once for each new pair. After that they could be any color.

Need a simple character reference?

2009-06-11T06:16:00.000-07:00

My kids think that they can tell all about a person by the shoes he/she wears. I think that someone once said that you have to walk a few miles in some of those shoes in order to understand that much, but I will allow that they are on the right track. Track.

They fully understand the importance of the right shoe to one’s social standing and relative well-being. I know because I have been shopping with them. Well, at the very least, shoes are indicative of one’s taste and style, not to mention one’s preferences in sports and exercise.

The shoe industry has certainly kept pace (pun) with every other segment of the fashion industry in terms of what it has to offer and to whom.

When I was a kid, we had two pair of shoes, one for church and one for everything else. If you had school shoes, they were just borrowed from one of those two categories and renamed.

Not anymore. Name a sport, and they make a shoe for it; which is good, I guess, if you have big closets and wallets. In fact, I challenge you to think of any activity for which they don’t make some kind of footgear. You might have to resort to catalogs or the internet to get them, but they are out there in abundance.

The name of your game is just one factor in choosing a shoe, however. You also have your image to consider. Say you need court shoes so you can sit around and watch TV.

Just what image do you want to adopt for TV watching? Something Kobe Bryant-ish; or maybe something a little more Tiger Woods, off the course that is, because golf shoes really wouldn’t be appropriate for taking in an “American Idol” segment.

Or say you need a pair for walking around in the mall. A comfortable pair of skater hightops would be just the thing. After all, you wouldn’t want to be sending out confusing messages. How my kids think they can tell so much about a person by his shoes is a mystery to me. Of course, I am rather uninformed and image-challenged.

At an outdoor theatrical production a few years ago, my daughters staked out positions right next to the flow of foot traffic so they could play their shoe game.

They lay on blankets on their front sides, and kicked off their own shoes. With their chins in their hands, they watched the feet go by. The object of the game was to see whether they can guess what kind of people have their feet in the shoes on review. Their whispered conversation went something like this:
“Oh look, this guy must be really cool. I saw his shoes in “GQ” (I don’t know why they read “GQ”), and they are so awesome. I wonder where he got them. Not around here for sure.” They all surreptitiously check out the wearer of the shoes.

“See, I told you he was cool.”

“And check these out. This guy must play basketball for U-state. They have their shoes specially-made, and no one has them just like that.” (I don’t know where she read that, maybe in “UQ.”) By craning their necks hard, they are able to take the guy in, clear up to his Adam’s apple.

“Whoa! I have to be right; he has to play for someone.”

“Hey look, this person is pretty cool. She has shoes just like mine” There was a tinge of disappointment registered in that announcement.

“Wait! They are mine!”

In stead of looking up to see who was wearing the shoes in question, she whipped her head around to see whether her own new sandals were still in the pile. They weren’t.
My daughter’s adult chaperone had quietly sneaked around behind the girls, put on her shoes, even though they fit like heck, and got in the line of traffic. All she had to do was keep on walking until she passed the gamers. (By then she was feeling really cool herself.)

My daughter was convinced that she was the first and only one in the Intermountain West to have sandals just like the ones she saw parading in front of her. For one bleak second she thought that someone else had found them too.

But that was only for a second. After she was satisfied that the wearer of the coolest sandals ever was not a usurper or the Intermountain Shoe Burglar in person, she steadied her breathing and was able to resume her position as “the coolest of all,” with her dignity and image mostly intact.

Negotiating the “security” gauntlet

2009-05-19T17:59:00.000-07:00

There is no such thing as a non-stop flight anymore. What that does to the flying population is introduce them all to the inside of an ever-increasing number of airport terminals.

I don’t think that they will ever get overly familiar with them though. During our trip last week, the PA announcer requested that if there were anyone in the airport who spoke Spanish, they were needed at the southwest baggage service area. Well, I don’t speak much Spanish, but conjugating the verb “volar” would be easier than telling which direction was southwest.

It also means that whenever they book a destination, they are going to have to take off and land more than once. That part of the experience gives many people ascent/descent disease which is characterized by white knuckles, sweaty palms, and anxiety.

But all that is nothing to compare with the experience of negotiating airline security which causes the onset of hysteria. Thankfully travelers only have to do that once per destination.

I wouldn’t want to discourage you, but in case you haven’t flown in the last ten years, this is how it goes.

First you stand in one of the lines which they try to make you think is short. They do that by guiding you through a narrow maze of ninety degree turns like the ordering line at Wendy’s. By the time you have arrived at checkpoint A, you have already traveled 50 feet in detours which is a good ten feet as the crow flies. At Wendy’s, however, you get a juicy hamburger at the end of the line.

At airport security they tempt you with this delectable treat: you are abandoned barefoot and standing at the tail end of a high-speed conveyor belt with your driver’s license between your teeth, your hat on sideways and your belongings piling up on your unprotected toes.

When you finally gather up all of your clothing and other necessities, it is your job to get dressed while hopping quickly away from the unloading area which is a bleak, uncarpeted, and chairless space where spectators watch you try to dress using no available extremities, with or without opposable thumbs, while hopping around on one foot.

Believe it or not, emerging on the other side of “security” with half of your clothes in your hand means that the worst part of the ordeal is over. If you were still in there somewhere--in the uncharted reaches of “security”--someone would be trying on your underwear, weighing your bag of Barbie toiletries, and confiscating (recycling) your nail clippers and your key chain while the agent at your gate half a mile away is boarding rows ten and higher.

Entering “security” is about the same as leaving, only you are apt to drop your picture ID three times while trying to trap it against your slippery toiletries bag with your opposable thumb while removing everything from the pocket on the opposing side of your body with your opposable thumb stuck on the outside.
Last week when we were obliged to go through airport security, every time I turned around, literally, Mr. B.’s driver’s license was on the floor. Mine, incidentally, was behind my ear.

So the Columbus Airport (CMH) has one of the worst areas that I have ever had the misfortune to emerge from security into. Right out of the X-ray machine and just past the conveyor belt you are faced with an escalator. People ahead of me were in various stages of undress all the way up it and around the corners toward the gates where airport personnel in charge of customer satisfaction had most conveniently placed some chairs. Remember you are shoeless, dragging a bag or two which you have not had time to properly close, and holding your pants up like a hip-hopper.

So naturally I complained to Mr. B. that I was afraid that my sagging socks were going to get caught in the escalator.

“Do you want me to carry you?” he asked.

I checked the availability of his opposable thumbs, rolled my eyes and replied, “Not with the way you drop things.”

Learn safety by accident?

2009-05-19T17:58:00.001-07:00

After last week’s article on the perverseness of machinery, I thought it might be helpful to follow up with one on the subject of safety—for my own good.

I did a little research on the topic and found out two things. First, there are lots of people who are approximately at the same level of safety consciousness that I am; and, second, that there is a long list of organizations, agencies, and departments whose job it is no keep us all safe.

Owing to the fact that there is an internet (which itself has some safety issues) there are literally at my fingertips, and yours, thousands of sites to help educate us on the subject of safety. Reading some of them could cause you to fall asleep and hit your face on your keyboard. Others might cause you to fall down due to excessive laughter.

Some of the fall-down-laughing sites are the ones with titles like “Funny Insurance Claims.” Apparently the writing skills of the claimants directly correlate to their proneness to accidents. Ostensibly that factor doesn’t apply in my case.

Here are a few vehicle accident descriptions from the “Swap Meet Dave” website that I simply have to pass on:
1. The gentleman behind me struck me on the backside. He then went to rest in a bush with just his rear end showing.
2. As I approached an intersection a sign suddenly appeared in a place where no stop sign had ever appeared before. I was unable to stop in time to avoid the accident.
3. The accident occurred when I was attempting to bring my car out of a skid by steering it into the other vehicle.
4. I was backing my car out of the driveway in the usual manner, when it was struck by the other car in the same place it had been struck several times before.
5. I left for work this morning at 7 a.m. as usual when I collided straight into a bus. The bus was 5 minutes early.

I once read a consumer safety article which reported that most accidents happen either at work or at home or at play. I assume that this groundbreaking bit of information is available to the realm of human knowledge only because there was a study or two done to confirm it. I look at it this way: there isn’t much else besides the activity of sleeping and not too many people are using knives or machinery while they sleep.

I guess it is the work dimension of our lives that produces some of the most intensive programs for enhancing our safety. Maybe there is no such thing as an accident—only careless, and thoughtless behavior of which there must be plenty even outside of the Butterbean household. Safety engineers try to help us overcome those deficits by thinking and caring. To that end they devise checklists, forms, tips, disclaimers and reminders and slogans to keep us all safe and keep manufacturers out of court. .

These slogans were meant to get you thinking: “Crushed hands or missing fingers may affect your golf swing.”-- and “Protect your hands, you need them to pick up your paycheck.” I am adding “Don’t deserve a ‘break’ today.”

At my other job, I saw a six-page safety checklist for construction workers beginning a job which required a truck. I think the whole ideas of the lengthy form was to keep construction workers in the office filling out forms where injuries could be reduced to the kind for which they might not have to fill out the ten-page worker’s compensation claim form—injuries like paper cuts, writer’s cramp, bruises inflicted by keyboards, and headaches.

Watch out for mulish machinery

2009-04-27T05:49:00.000-07:00

I realize that the effectiveness of any mechanical or electrical tool is largely a function of the operator—that any machine is only a good as the “nut behind the wheel,” but I have come across some dangerous appliances in my life.

Not to worry too much. I don’t touch the really menacing ones like chainsaws or lawnmowers so I haven’t yet been hospitalized by anything from the machine shop; but my calling in life requires me to occasionally use washers, dryers, toasters, and irons, all of which can be spiteful.

And just so you don’t think that I am mechanically disabled and that to keep me safe members of my family have to operate all of the equipment for me, I am going to share a story on one of them as well as one on myself.

Everybody in my family cooks—not necessarily well, but they all get into the act. My teenaged daughter once literally got tangled up with the mixer. (No, this is not a story about mechanically braiding hair.) I believe it began with a rubber scraper in the left hand and a mixer in the right hand, and one too many samplings of the chocolate cake batter while mixing.

When the scraper got a little too close to the beaters, they jumped out and sucked the scraper right into the whirlpool, and the hand in charge got spun right in with it. From the other side of the room, there was little I could do to help. Actually, I was quite mesmerized by the whole chain of events and just stood staring.

I watched as she got the mixer stopped and her hand out of the maelstrom. I don’t usually express any other sentiment than fear, anxiety, or “losing it” when my kids have an accident, but this time I have to admit that my reaction was skewed, but not as much as her hand. When she held it up, there were fingers pointing in every direction and an unnatural backward declination in the middle of it all.

I am sorry to say that I burst out laughing and didn’t stop for quite some time, a blunder for which I have never been forgiven. I should have stuck with losing it. Happily the awry digits all eventually resumed their former positions, except for the index finger which has been pointed at me ever since.

As you can see, when they want to be, mechanical devices are diabolical. The following story is something of a family secret, and I have recounted it only once or twice. I think the seven-year statute of limitation has long since run out, so I can tell it without fear of being hauled off to jail. Only the passage of much time and some distance allow me to tell it now.

You mothers know what kind of schemes you resort to in order to get some work accomplished when you have a baby in tow and his preferred method being towed is on your hip. Entertaining baby becomes a rather desperate occupation sometimes.
Well, this particular baby was spellbound by the water swishing around in the washing machine. (Sort of like television except with the water element added.) So while I filled it, I let him sit on the adjacent mechanical device, the dryer. Mind you, I didn’t walk into the next room, nor was I distracted by the phone or anything else. My two feet were right in front of the dryer the whole time.

I bent down to pick up the next piece of laundry, and when I stood up, baby had vanished! I think it was like that scene in Lord of the Rings when Frodo stares into the water and keeps leaning toward it until he tips into the pool with the grateful dead or whatever they were called.

Well, you guessed it. What I saw of my baby was his two feet periscoped above the wash water, and they were agitating back and forth just like the towels were. At least there were two of something to grab which I quickly did and heaved. A spluttering, drenched, baby was hauled safely away from the depths of the beguiling and voracious washing machine. Luckily, Baby only sustained a few knots on the head and one tiny cut, but on a permanent basis he seems to be none the worse for wash-and-wear.

Nevertheless, this diatribe comes with the following warning:
Given its perversity, never operate mechanical equipment while under the influence of chocolate or while in any quantitative state of mental distraction or loss of mind.

Bertha's best friend

2009-04-20T18:37:00.000-07:00

I would be the first to admit that I am not a social butterfly; in fact a grub may be more like it. I go home at night and stay there. But in case you think I don’t have any friends, I’m here to tell you that I have one who calls me at least once every day. Her first name is Warranty (her mother was probably a movie star) and her last name is Department.

There are a host of adjectives that could be used to describe my good friend--—words like loyal, reliable, constant, persistent…

Warranty doesn’t mind a bit if I forget to hold up my end of the friendship or the conversation; she just keeps calling no matter how neglectful I am. In fact, I have hung up on her more times than I can count, but she is never discouraged.

She is a little featherbrained, though. One evening she calls to tell me this is my third and final call before my warranty expires, and the next night she calls me to alert me about my second and last warning. She has got it wrong in both cases. Actually my warranties have all expired some time ago. (There may be more truth in that statement than a first reading will reveal.)

I have never actually gotten far enough into a conversation with Warranty to find out how her product works and how much these things cost. Surely the cost is not more than the car is worth. Maybe one of these days I’ll let her sell me a warranty on the Butterbean pickup truck which is old enough never to have had a warranty in the first place, a fact that I have been careful not to communicate to Warranty at this point. But if I do, when Warranty calls to say that my warranty is about to expire, I can truthfully say “What warranty? I don’t have a warranty; I never had a warranty.”

Perhaps the pickup ought to have one in its lifetime since it apparently would be committing vehicular suicide to omit it—just ask Warranty. A few spare parts could help it grow ancient gracefully. I read online that most warranty plans detail “a lot of covered parts, but most of the parts on the list are not applicable for the cars on the road today.” It sounds like those parts should be suitable for my truck since it is a miracle that it is on the road today and probably uses most of those non-applicable parts. Buying a warranty on a vehicle like that ought to serve one or the other of us right.

In case you or my brothers think I am not kidding about warranting our pickup, I will herewith put all minds at ease. I watched a lady photocopy one of those extended warranty contracts the other day. The document itself was twenty-one pages long, and the collection included three exclusion pages.
I was tempted to read over her shoulder, but she would have had to stand still for an awful long time. Besides I would really rather park the old truck than read twenty-one pages of legalese covering non-applicable parts. But here are a few of the provisions as I imagined them:

1. This warranty not valid unless vehicle is currently warranted by vehicle’s manufacturer.

2. Exclusions include: all parts deemed not to be stationary or unneedful.

3. Warranty does cover: cracked steering wheel; radio antenna providing such is not embedded in vehicle’s windshield; seatbelt anchor bolts; oil-testing tube cap but does not cover loss of such, directional turn signal fluid/windshield wiper fluid, exhaust muffler bearings, and Johnson maniform rods.

4. Warranty will be rendered null and void upon installation of non-proprietary after-market parts including but not limited to additional cup holders, CD storage systems, or facial tissue dispensers.

Excuse me now—the phone is ringing. It’s probably my friend Warranty..

Easter and eggs, picnics, candy and such

2009-04-20T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are several myths associated with the Easter holiday. Interestingly, they all involve the secular aspects of the festivities rather than the religious ones.
One is that a there is a tradition where you pack a lunch and go the park or the woods and have an Easter picnic. Well, okay you can try it; but if it means spreading a tablecloth on the green grass and enjoying the warm sunshine, I don’t remember it ever happening. All of the Easter picnics I have attended were accompanied by wind, rain or snow, and freezing temperatures. Come to think of it, so are most other holidays around here.
I guess the key figure associated with Easter is the Easter bunny/beagle whose primary responsibility is to bring/hide the Easter eggs/candy, however I don’t think that there is much consistency in his methods of operation. He and the tooth fairy are first cousins and both of them were invented by greedy children who were smarter than their parents which isn’t necessarily saying much.
The Easter bonnet must be a holdover from the horse and buggy days, because I don’t think that the bonnet trade is too brisk now no matter which holiday you are shopping for.
I remember that when I was a child, my friends went to dance class where they danced to a song called The Easter Parade. Since I didn’t get to go to dance class and wished I did and didn’t have an Easter bonnet and wished I had, I have since harbored unforgiving feelings toward Easter bonnets and wouldn’t wear one if it were the prevailing social custom to wear them to Wal-Mart. These feelings are a holdover from my early days, which fortunately date only back to the Nash Rambler era.
There is also a myth that Marshmallow Peeps are a variety of Easter candy. I guess people must buy them. I don’t think they eat them though, in fact I don’t think they are edible. In many cases they seem to be holdovers from last year. They are more suitably used for art projects, pets, ball games, packing, trouble toys, science projects, and to make political statements.
Another myth, as far as I am concerned, is the Easter dress. I never remember about the custom of getting a new spring dress until I sit down in church on Easter Sunday and begin to look around. That is probably because it is rarely spring when Easter comes.
Last but not least is the Easter egg. Coloring eggs is an activity where happy children make colorful artistic creations without ever cracking an egg. Myth.
Actually coloring eggs is when grabby-handed mad-scientists stand on chairs around the kitchen island and mix different colors of dye. They don’t remember from one year to the next that all of the colors of dye mixed together result in eggs that are similar to that other proverbial spheroid, the lead balloon. The same holds true for the trendy “natural/organic” dyes.
This is also a time to redecorate the surface of the countertops, as well as various articles of clothing, the chair legs, the front porch and themselves in the same dingy color with time out needed for crying when the eggs roll off the counter in various directions.
Look at it this way: you can boast that you had a gray Easter. What could be more natural than that? Just look at the sky; and I hope I didn’t just lay an egg here.

Understanding Ebay shopping

2009-04-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

You can buy anything on Ebay--the great bazaar in the sky, or more precisely in cyberspace which realm equates to heaven in many minds. I guess the operative assumption of online auctions is that someone somewhere will buy something, anything, sight unseen at that; and I am here to prove it since I myself and an Ebay shopper. More about that later.

The need to shop online ensues from the condition of living in a small town in the outback. That is how it begins anyway. Then after that it becomes a quest to see whether you can ever be the last bidder and win an item that many other people want. I usually only win when I am the only one bidding. And I still lose sometimes. I lost a hairdryer hanging rack when I was sure I was the only one in the world who wanted one.

Since the quantity of items for sale on Ebay is roughly comparable to the amount of the national debt, I thought I could help you make some sense of it all by categorizing some of those things for you. I know Ebay has it’s own system—a list of items you can click on, such as electronics, guns, cameras, etc. My list is a bit more to the point of your sensibilities.

First there are the nothing-for-something deals. You can buy a quart jar of Ozark air, a snowball from the Colorado Rockies, and a square inch of real estate in Hawaii. You will be happy to know that you can also buy a insulting email delivered direct to your inbox. I am wondering why anyone would pay for one of those. I always thought they came free. Isn’t that sort of like spending good money for houseflies?
Second, there is the unique/antique (anything old or scarce) market. I saw an 1850s prosthetic leg made of wood and steel for sale the other day. (I didn’t just type in prosthetic leg and up it came. I was looking for my special kind of socks.) Just so you know, you can’t sell any human remains on Ebay. Prosthetics are okay though.

Then thirdly, there is the collector’s exchange. You might find the last penny for your set of consecutive pennies from 1900 to present on Ebay. One seller found a penny on the ground and with his sales earnings was able to buy a VW bus and drive all the way from wherever to the Jay Leno show. Wow!

Next there is a category I have named the holy food group. You might want to watch your potato chips, cereal, and pretzels more carefully. You may have already eaten a trip to Disneyland or something. There is a current Ebay sale of a pretzel shaped like Mary holding Baby Jesus which last time I checked had a high bid of $3,150. Yes, dollars. Incidentally, someone had contacted the seller to see how many salt crystals were baked on the pretzel since that number might be significant of something—I can’t think what.

Then there is the hard-to-find division. It includes some of those things that are useful but uncommon. I am not an electronic geek by any means, but even I can tell when my old phone charger won’t charge my new phone because the little plug-in thing is the wrong size. Buying a new charger is sometimes impossible, as well as expensive. Where is the government electronics recycle agency when I need it? Well Ebay is it, only free-market capitalism created it. For $2.10 I found on Ebay an adapter the size of a half a pencil that made me the proud owner of a phone charger that I can use and which I might otherwise have had to sell on Ebay.

Finally, there is the you-are-about-to-be-had category which is similar to the first one, only in number one, you are about to be had and you know about it. One of the first things I ever bought on Ebay was a used (red flag) overedge hemmer. Well, it’s a sewing machine, and it could belong to the hard-to-find category, except that about-to-be-had takes precedence.

Well, the used overedge hemmer might have hemmed when the seller shipped it, but there was not a chance that it could by the time I got it. As you know, sewing machines are not round like a ball nor soft like a pillow. You would not play catch with one nor sleep on it. They have spindles, hinges, corners and edges, moistly made of metal or hard plastic.

My machine came shipped in an oversized cardboard box into which it and its parts had been dumped with not even a square of bubble wrap or a piece of popcorn or newspaper for padding. What I got was a Swiss cheese box and the proverbial bucket of bolts but only the pieces that were too big to fall through the holes. To add to the pain, the operating instructions were written in Chinese and the pictures were drawn in Swahili.

To sit and not faint

2009-04-04T18:30:00.000-07:00

There is one thing I have never been able to understand. How is it that children can be sitting quietly on a chair when it seems that suddenly a gravitational anomaly grabs them and they are suddenly on the floor? Whump! One second they are on a chair, and the next they are on the floor in a heap?

I am not talking about kids who only have one cheek on the chair to begin with; nor am I talking about kids on unstable or broken chairs. I do not refer to kids on rolling office chairs----just ordinary four-legged chairs. I am not even talking about kids who have that leaning-back-on-the-chair syndrome which is otherwise known as deacon’s disease.

The fallen children think they are the victims of some sort of trickery, be it gravity, rubber chair legs or whatever, as well. They usually howl like they have been pushed from their chairs. I have seen at least one of them get up and kick the chair. I have also seen them look around for some supposed human culprit.

I am sorry, but I have been known to laugh right out loud and hard when it happens. The “fallen” get up and want to punish me if not the chair.

I don’t get how you fall off a chair. Do you momentarily fall asleep? Do you temporarily forget how to hold yourself upright?

Sometimes when my children who are now mothers and fathers complain about their kids falling off chairs, I explain to them about genetics and how they did it too. However, I never remember falling off a chair myself and neither does Mr. B., so either it is a case of spontaneous gene alteration or they are going to have to blame the other side of their families. But since all of those kids had at least one parent who was unsteady on their seat, they are going to have a hard time getting away with it. But if they are raising a generation of chair-floppers, they are not blaming me for that one.

I was listing toward the gene-alteration theory until just the other day when I witnessed one of my kids’ in-laws do the unthinkable. That’s right! The person in question fell off the bench!

I don’t think this person went to sleep; we were at a sporting event watching our mutual grandkids who seem to run better than they sit. Forgetting how to sit upright would be a little more plausible. My generation is at the age where we forget all kinds of things. Or perhaps the distraction index was a little too high.

So, again, I don’t quite get it, but the kids in that family haven’t got a chance because they have inherited chair-flopping from more than one source.

Before you start counting up my kids and deciding who their in-laws are, I will make it easy for you. The person who lost her seating is a teacher who says her kindergartners fall off their chairs all the time.

Someone probably needs to get a research grant and spend some time and money studying the affliction of spontaneous unseating. Sooner or later someone is going to get hurt.

The madness that is March

2009-04-04T18:26:00.000-07:00

March seems to be the month for all kinds of craziness. For instance, look at what Congress is doing. And then there is the NCAA and what it is doing.

To tell the truth, March Madness is a phenomenon that I totally understand and am involved in, at least from a local, as in Utah, perspective. I am as mad as the rest of them. But, you can only blame part of mankind’s erratic early spring behavior on basketball. The March-hare metaphor was in use long before the game of basketball was invented.

Some of the madness of March is due to anxiety over the fact that tax time is just around the corner; and if you put off filing until basketball is over, it will be too late. Then there is the return to daylight savings time which makes everyone all the more cranky, The other factor contributing to the madness is that we are only barely coming out on the other end of a long winter, which, by the way, would be intolerable without basketball.

The most popular winter sports, I once read, are ice skating, skiing, and jumping up and yelling, "That was a foul, you idiot." I participate in only one of them.
Well, I used to actually play basketball, and I raised four boys and three girls who all played basketball at one level or another, from church ball to high school state championship. It was bound to happen. Between cold weather and basketball exposure (pun), it was a given that I would sit in front of the TV under a comforter and watch the games.

Just in case you are interested, basketball is the only non-contact sport where the injured list is longer than the bench. Broken noses, permanent shin splints, sprained ankles, and bruised egos are among the injuries we have worked through or lived with in our family.

A backyard or a basketball court full of snow didn’t stop them from “practicing” their sports. My kids have tried to set up an indoor version of every ball game invented. They have erected goal posts using wrapping paper rolls, tape and string. They have set up basketball hoops under the open stairs—both fixed and breakaway kinds. They have strung volleyball nets from the bunk beds, and they have mounted the water balloon launcher on the handrail. They should have been so imaginative with math or English or anything cerebral.

They always started out playing a mild version of every game. Nerf balls or rolled-up socks were- allowable, barely, but escalation of the game was as natural as playing it. The football passes started out as mere pitches but soon turned into long bombs. The fingertip sets soon became vicious spikes. The slam dunks got harder and the basket got higher.

I invariably became one of those “idiots” who can’t see fouls, and I always had to throw everyone out of the game or at least bench them until the end of March. They always tried to get me to reverse my calls too.

So back to the current March--I may have to go into coaching now that I don’t have to referee so much anymore. I have paid enough attention to know that the top talking point in any discussion about the Jazz is whether they can win on the road. Every coach and sports commentator has posed the question. Some of them have answers. Most of them just talk around in a circle and come right back to square one (I’m practicing being a sports commentator, too):

Q: Are the Jazz going to find a way to win on the road?
Well, I have thought it over at some length myself, and I have it…

A: In order to make on-the-road feel like home, they need to bring their own basketballs, their own ball boys, their own sweat towels, and their own “idiots.”

Just a lilttle scam

2009-04-04T18:23:00.000-07:00

My mother called me the other day to tell me that she had a letter from someone who wanted to send her $500. She had the notice. She had already won. She didn’t have to pay taxes on her winnings, and all she had to do was to fill out her acceptance form and send it somewhere overseas.

“You know,” she said, “I kind of worry when I have to send it overseas.”
Ding, ding, ding, ding! (Alarms going off in my head.) If any of you don’t know how old I am, you haven’t been paying attention. If you have, stop here and figure out how old my mother is. If you think “preying on the elderly” might apply here, you must have passed fifth grade math; and you are right.

I begin yelling at my mother over the phone. “Don’t send anyone anything. Where overseas? Was is Brisbane or Nigeria?”

“Well, let me see now, where was it? Oh yes, somewhere in Australia.” (Oh, my gosh! I frantically begin to go over my options. Whew, it’s after five o’clock; she can’t mail it today. I still have time to get hold of that letter before it disappears somewhere into the clutches of the United States Postal Service, which never loses scammer correspondence, only important social announcements and mortgage payments.)

“Did they tell you that they need some money so they can recover their family’s rightful throne and fortune?”

“No, they just said I won the prize.”

“Did they tell you you’ve won the lottery but they need to know where to deposit the money?”

“Well, no, I just have to say I want the money.” (Do birds fly?)

“Did they ask for your bank account number?”

“No, they just asked me to fill in my name and address.”

“They already have that,” I remind her through clenched teeth. “Did they ask you for your social security number?” (They probably already have that too.)

“No, I can’t remember it anyway.”

“Did they say they need some money so they can fly to Switzerland to unfreeze their assets?”

“No.”
“Well, you just hang onto that correspondence until I can look at it. It’s probably a scam.”

“A what?”

“You know, someone is trying to cheat you out of your money.”

“Oh, they wouldn’t do that.”
Next day I “drop in” to check on “the mail.”

“Okay, let me see that letter about the money you won.”

“Well, I am too going to send that in. It says I have already won $5,000, and it’s tax free.” (Do pigs fly?)

“Five thousand! You said five hundred.”

“I knew it was five-something. (Close.) Anyway, they probably want to reward me. Why, I’m their best customer."

“What?”

“I have been taking the Reader’s Digest ever since I can remember, and what’s more I read it. And my mother before me took it all her life, and Dad and I got it for all you kids for all these years. Who deserves their prize money more than I do?”
Good question. I guess Reader’s Digest is outsourcing these days.
I’ll let you know.

We need collapsible hang gliders

2009-02-26T05:38:00.000-08:00

When I was a kid the only French word I knew was “alibi.” That’s because I had to think up so many of them. These days kids are a little more cosmopolitan. There isn’t a kid alive who doesn’t know the word “rappel,” not to mention “climbing rope” (English), “carabiner” (German), and “Gramicci” (Italian).

My kids, who didn’t grow up here, are still impressed by the sandstone cliffs where we live now in Dry Fork Canyon. One Butterbean child observed a few years ago while we were hiking in the Canyon, “You could just stop anywhere around here and rappel.

Just look at all of these cliffs!”

“Ya,” I reply. (I did grow up around here.)

“In fact you could hang glide off that cliff we just were climbing on.”

“Oh yeah, and how are you going to get a hang glider up there? In your pocket?” (I should encourage pursuits like this?)

“They should make collapsible hang gliders.”

“They should, but they don’t.”

“They could fold up and fit in your backpack. Maybe I’ll invent one.”

“Who’s going to be your test pilot?”

“I’ll find someone so drunk he’ll be willing to try it.” (Ever the practical one.)

“Oh, and how are you going to get a drunk up there? You better find a suicide candidate instead.”

“Yeah, I was just going to say that.”

“How are you going to find one of those? Go around and ask people if they are depressed?”

I was not trying to discourage the kid from developing innovative ideas, but I was trying to point out the extreme difficulties and dangers inherent in an occupation of that kind. He already had a non-working (whew!) ultralight sitting way down below in the back yard that he was working on, and I could still remember my brother’s experiments with flying machines when he was about that age.

So, I think the would-be inventor is beginning to get the point, but he can wisecrack as long as I can.

“I could just put an ad in the paper (presumably this paper): ‘Wanted. Suicide candidates. Position temporary. No guarantees. No benefits.’”

“That might work, but then why don’t you just simply scale that cliff or rappel from it.? Those are two perfectly good ways to address a cliff.”

“Okay, I’m up with that. Let’s go buy me some climbing shoes.” (Just who is in control of this conversation anyway?)

In order to reassert myself there, I informed him that my brothers and I used to climb that same cliff without the benefit of ropes, carabiners, climbing shoes, or even a pair of tennis shoes. If our leather soles were too slick, we took off our shoes and tied them around our necks or threw them down to the ground. We didn’t practice on a climbing wall first either.

I didn’t tell him, that lots of times I had to use my French connection when my mother wanted to know if I had sand in my shoes because I was out climbing on those rocks again.

“Who me? No, I was just out in the sand pile (our term for a natural deposit of fine sand that washed down from the hills during a cloudburst) using my shoes for buckets.”

To catch a thief

2009-02-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

I remember when (oh-oh, here it comes) all of my kids were still at home. Since our family was large even by the standards of 25 years ago, there were shortages. There never seemed to be enough of some things to go around. Like dessert. Like lunch money. Like clean socks.

One shortage I was never able to overcome, was the pillow (yes, pillow) shortage. No matter how many pillows I bought, at bedtime there always seemed to be one less pillow than there were people in the house. Maybe the issue was not the quantity but the condition of the pillows. (Pancakes were in the same food group as parsnips.)

Whatever the precise problem, the result was that I lived with a whole family of pillow-snatchers. At almost any time of the day or night, a pillow switch was in progress in one bedroom or another.

You have probably heard of musical beds—well, who couldn’t keep their beds straight? It was the pillows, not the sleepers, that never seemed to stay in their beds.

The art of pillow-pilfering was nearly perfected in the Butterbean household, so just in case you get caught without a pillow one of these nights, I am passing these tips along for your comfort. But there are several ways to go about it, so pay attention.

In the light of day, the most successful way to get rid of a lumpy pillow and acquire one with some loft, is to sneak into the next bedroom and switch pillows and pillow cases. The victim thinks his pillow is still his until he lies down on it. This method delays the right-of-ownership dispute at least until bedtime, maybe even until the next morning, with any luck.

If planning ahead doesn’t reward the pillow plunderer with a soft pillow for the night, he or she can always wait until someone else goes to sleep and simply jerk his pillow from under his head and run. Sound sleepers don’t miss their pillows until they wake up next morning with stiff necks.

If the pillow is under the head of a light sleeper, the pirate has to snatch and then hit the deck until the victim gives up groping groggily around on the bed for the missing pillow and goes back to sleep.

Another trick of the trade works like this: you hide the pillow you really want and the one you have. Then if your big sister comes stomping out of her room demanding to know who took her pillow, you can plead innocence on the grounds that you don’t have a pillow either. She can just check your bed and see.

Pillow punks with less finesse simply wait until no one is looking and go to the next bed and swipe a pillow. They don’t even bother to cover their tracks. They do pick on people who come in late at night though. Those people aren’t about to raise a family ruckus when their arrival is timed dangerously close to curfew. Besides they could be too tired to care what they sleep on anyway.

I tried to insist that everyone leave everyone else’s pillows on their beds where they belonged so we could get by without holding justice court every night, but who was I? About all I could do was sit by clutching my pillow and hoping that all the thieves would reap their just rewards—the sooner the better.

I got to witness the justice-for-all precept come into play just once though. That was the time my teenaged daughter with the long shiny hair ca-me in late at night to a bed devoid of any pillow—lumpy, pancake or otherwise. She used the snatch-from-the-soundest sleeper method to obtain a pillow under cover of darkness.

What went around finally came around. The next morning she woke up with bubble gum in her hair.

Waterworks--you think so?

2009-02-16T18:58:00.000-08:00

Out there in the world somewhere—maybe in Wonderland (I wonder why they do that?), or maybe it is Neverland (They never get it right), there must be an underground brotherhood of Water-delivery Engineers who dictate the standards for plumbers everywhere. I don’t think they operate under any sort of public scrutiny or things would be different.

And they must distribute a closely guarded handbook which holds secret information for plumbers, professional and do-it-yourselfers alike. How the probably ancient tome is dispersed without people like me knowing about it is a mystery. But how else could every residence that I have ever known of have the same dysfunctional plumbing system?

You notice that I am not blaming plumbers themselves for the wreckage, I am blaming the water engineers so as not to alienate any plumbers who, after all, only build the systems according to specification. Plumbers do get water to strategic points—like the bathroom faucets. That is a good thing. I just question the water’s routing.

Below you will find page 4-11 from the infamous Handbook. No, I didn’t find Mr. B.’s “plumber’s helper” under the seat of the plumbing truck under his monkey wrenches and pipe dope, or at the bottom of his tool chest under a false floor. I didn’t find it anywhere; but if I had, I know there is a page in it somewhere that looks like this:

(Graphic of water heater on right with shower head on left. Cold water goes straight to shower head. Hot water takes an exaggerated circuitous route to get there.)

I have only one explanation for a system like this: liability issues. Water engineers are afraid that impulsive types will jump into the shower first and turn on the hot water second, thereby scalding various body parts. But I tell you, they have got their body parts covered.

Bad weather warning

2009-02-05T06:21:00.000-08:00

You remember that cold spell we had week before last? Yeah, how could you forget? When the thermometer dips that far, you begin to worry about things.

“I hope I buried that water line deep enough…I hope that driving over it all winter hasn’t caused a frost penetration zone…I hope we drained the sprinkler lines well enough… I hope that the main water line that goes along the north wall doesn’t freeze and break…I hope the truck will start in the morning.” You know.

Well, during one of those days when -12 was the daytime high, We started hearing a funny noise. The first time we heard it, we thought that a pile of snow fell on the deck or something, but it hadn’t. We soon forgot all about it.

Half an hour later, we heard it again, a definite “whoosh-sh-sh.” The cold-weather worries began to set in this time. Mr. B. thought it might be water gushing out of a pipe. But it only lasted for a second or two and it was gone.

Nevertheless, he got on his coat and boots and went outside. He checked all of the hose bibs, he walked through the garage, he listened to the well pump. He came back inside and checked the pressure tank and the water heaters and the water softener and the washer and dryer.

Then we heard the phantom noise again, even louder at that end of the house. Maybe the waterline to the washer was getting kinked. Maybe a large family of bats moved into the crawl space.

The neighbors came over to visit about the weather. We were just getting “warmed up” with our coldest-day-of-the-year stories, when we all heard the “pshooosh.”
“What was that?” Fred hollered, jumping out of his chair. “It doesn’t sound good, whatever it is.” “Did a tree branch fall on the roof or something?”

“We can’t figure it out. We keep hearing it, and it is driving us crazy. What does it sound like to you?” Well, we waited and waited for another eruption, but it never came and finally the neighbors left. Gratefully, nothing had blown up. We didn’t know whether our homeowner’s insurance covered the roof falling in on top of the neighbors.

Mr. B. was starting to sweat now though. He took off a layer of clothing and began to pace and fret. “All I need is for the pressure tank to blow up or something,” he mutters.

He sits down and tries to watch the basketball game, but he’s back up again looking out the windows, listening to the walls.

I decide it is going to be best to keep out of his way, so I hole up in the office and start a computer project. I remember a phone call I need to make, so I am sitting there chatting when the ghost explosion erupts right in my left ear.

I jump a foot, drop the cordless, and commence yelling. I thought I had been shot at and hit. And there sits the computer, monitor, speakers and all, as impassive and unconcerned as only a pile of nuts, bolts and circuit boards can be.

I scramble to pick up the phone from the floor and compose myself. My heart rate is dangerously high, and I am starting to flush for all sorts of reasons.
“What was that,” Julia on the other end of the line keeps repeating. “Are you all right?”

Mr. B. comes running in to see what hit me.

“It was what?” Julia can’t quite grasp what I’m babbling about and neither can Mr. B.
“It was the Weather Channel on my desktop. It thinks a storm is coming, so it is thundering.”

“Does it think that the perfect storm is in a funnel cloud right above our house? Or does it think we are deaf? Either way, it is wrong as usual.”

“Well, when I was trying to listen to that video clip that D.J. e-mailed me, I couldn’t hear the audio, so I turned up the volume. I didn’t know that the Weather Channel was going to override everything else I had going on, and since I hadn’t heard a thunderstorm warning for several months now. I forgot how it sounds.

I don’t think one was necessary the other day either. So, how should a cold snap sound?

Speak to me, Ford Explorer

2009-01-19T19:48:00.000-08:00

The auto industry has been taking a lot of flack lately. I guess they deserve some of it. They just can’t seem to get it right.

The current price of gasoline runs their whole “engine.” Prices go up and they take notice, but the “vehicle” is so slow and lumbering that by the time fuel-efficient vehicles start coming off the line, prices are down and no one wants low-power, low-appeal cars anymore. Detroit is really good at giving John Q. what he wanted last year, but not this year.

I guess it is a little more complicated than that though, since John Q. is not the only one driving the markets. Your big brother Uncle Sam tries to steer the bus too. (I know, my metaphors right there are kind of like government spending.)

The auto-makers get some things right though, things like heated seats and dual temperature controls. The closer my car comes to having the intelligence, real of artificial, of KITT on Knight Rider, the better I am going to like it.

In case you were not around in the 80s, KITT (according to Wikipedia) is the “acronymic descriptor for the fictional TV adventure series Knight Rider character… an artificial intelligence microprocessor installed in a 1982 Pontiac Firebird Transam.” (The acronym stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand.)

KITT was a wonder, catching all kinds of criminals— a Superman on wheels. The automotive industry is doing it’s best to catch up. However, I am waiting for the day when the car that does it all and then communicates in modern English can be parked in my garage. I hope I don’t make a critical mistake if ever it is.

My car thinks (psuedo-intelligence only) that R2D2 language is sufficient for relaying information. Hence “ding-ding-ding,” which translated is “buckle your seat belt,” and “beep-beep-beep” meaning “your headlights are still on, idiot,” and “ding-ding, ding-ding” a little louder this time, “hey you, driver, the key is still in the ignition. Do you really want to lock yourself out?” (And you think your wife and kids nag.) That is about the extent of my bilingual abilities in the language of Microchip.

I think that some cars have GPS systems that do tell you where to go in English. I just don’t have one of those yet.

Meanwhile, I am happy for the messages written in English that appear on my dashboard in red or green LCD or LED lights (I don’t know the difference). It is very kind of Mr. Computer to tell me when one of the doors is open so I won’t lose my groceries out the back, or when I need to put gasoline in the tank. It would be good if he could tell me when I have left the gas pump nozzle hanging from
the side of my car though. I wonder what kind of stupid he would call me if I did.

He could have saved me a headache or two by warning me when I have gotten out of the car without using my parking gear. If he figures that out, in English it will probably sound like this, “Eeek, are you crazy? Get back here now and put this car in PARK or prepare to call your body-fender man.”

My car’s psyche seems to understand the level of attention I am willing to pay when he whines. Don’t think that he is going to sit by while I ignore him though. At least not on certain points. He gets most touchy about the question of an oil change. His first notification is respectful words on the dash that say, “Change oil.” If I ignore that request for a few days, he gets a little more strident, “Oil change required.” Then if I try to pretend I didn’t notice that warning, he starts in with “Change oil NOW.”

So I have always gotten the oil changed when “brain-behind-the-dash” (BBTD) puts it that way. I keep wondering what he would say if I pushed him one step further on the oil-change argument. Probably something like, “You’ve done it now. Your engine just seized up. I tried to tell you, but, no, you wouldn’t listen.”

Butterbean economics: how to come out behind

2009-01-19T19:45:00.000-08:00

Okay, something you need to know about the Butterbean family. We could give the Griswolds the biggest run for their money, yes money.

Not that we decorate for Christmas or anything. We wouldn’t even drag the family pet behind the car. But I’ll give you a couple of examples here.

So we went to Macey’s on a Saturday night at 11 o’clock to buy groceries for breakfast the next morning. We had to hurry since Macey’s is closed on Sundays.

Breakfast the next morning was for 27 people. So we took six adults and a Grocery Getter along to accomplish the task. Well actually we couldn’t get anyone to stay home from what promised to be the social event of the season—grocery shopping at Macey’s.

They bring me along, not because they value my judgment when selecting sausages, but because I have a generous heart and a debit card with actual money backing it up.

On our way down the first aisle, my daughter brings up the question of the day. “Okay, who is going to pay for this meal, cause I don’t think I can afford this much food.” What she means is, “Shall I buy the gourmet bacon because Mom is paying for it, or shall I buy the ‘pork parts’ because I am paying for it?” It’s a grown-up version of trying to sneak goodies into the cart without Mom seeing you.

All six of the socialites promptly promise to chip in their share. We crisscrossed the unfamiliar store, Keystone Cops style, while trying to locate cheese, eggs, milk, orange juice, asparagus and Peanut M&M’s with six shoppers, three cell phones and only one of us who knows what we need but has no list and can’t remember everything either.

So at the checkout lane, I surrender my debit card to the daughter “in charge” and the conscientious daughter-in-law gives me $40 for her share of the groceries.

In the time it took my daughter to swipe my card and key in my password which is conveniently one of the only things she has ever memorized, she forgot that it was my card and began to key in “cash back” so she could pay me for her share of the groceries.

She remembered just in time that it was my card she was cashing out on. And I almost fell for it. Of course, I didn’t have too much time to think that one through.

This next story involves a transaction that must have taken a little more time. When our second son got ready to move on to college, he had gotten good grades, and had a plan, so we bought him a used truck to take to college so that he could get to class, etc.

So he drove the truck for the time it took for him to move on in the world and get ready to buy a new vehicle. I think his new wife wanted to drive something other than a ten-year old short-bed Chevy with a lift-kit and no credible suspension. It was beginning to suffer from multiple worn and broken parts. I think it barely ran, to tell the truth.

So Mr. B. who is a sucker for a Chevy truck no matter how old it is was first in line to buy his own truck back from his son who paid nothing for it in the first place. Isn’t that sort of like paying for it twice and not getting to drive it once?

What could Mr. B. expect from a son from his own loins? He taught him all he knows about getting the most for his money—what his grandson calls the fine art of cheap-skatery. What it amounts to is this: Mr. B. and men in general usually try to sell something for a price that has no correlation whatsoever with what they would pay for it.

Bathtub philosophizing

2009-01-05T20:47:00.000-08:00

There are only two good things about winter—basketball and hot showers. And since we are speaking of twos here, there are two ways to look at the activity of bathing. Some people consider it a chore and other people regard it as an opportunity to contemplate all of the world’s and their own problems.

According to tradition, kids hate to take a bath, but I never met one who did. They hate baths about as much as they hate swimming. However, unlike some adults, they don’t think of anything more in the shower than they usually do. They just like to play in the water.

What could be more fun than turning the tub into a slip-and-slide, or splashing water on the ceiling? We used to have more toys in the bathroom than we did upstairs.

You can easily identify adults who approach bathing as a practical task. They are the people who take a six-minute shower and have those awful water-saving devices hooked onto the shower heads. And they use the step-by-step method of washing. I’m not sure I trust those kind of bathers.

And then there are the rest of us. A bath is a chance for a few minutes of idyllic relaxation, soulful introspection and just plain peace in a warm room with the door locked against trivialities.

No one expects you to come out of the bathroom to answer the phone or the door. Even your kids don’t expect you to get out of the bathtub for unimportant things once they get old enough to realize that dripping, shivering mothers are likely to be dangerous.

So, there are those who enjoy bathing and those who just wash.
Since we are talking about twos here again, there are two other types of bathers—those who shower and those who fill the tub.
I can only see one advantage to filling the tub. You get to sit down. I won’t argue the finer points. I have never yet convinced tub-filler that showering was the superior method.
Some days in the shower I indulge my imagination and pretend that I have enough money and space to build the perfect shower. (Talk about weighty matters.)
The consummate shower would have at least four shower heads. One for front, one for back, one for shampooing the hair and one for the legs. It would have a seat in the middle so that you could rest with your chin in your hand while you pondered the meaning of life, and since the primary purpose of time spent in the shower is the weighing of thoughts, the shower should be able to do all the work.

It should run water heated to precisely the right temperature for a few minutes, and then it should
begin to add soap—you know, like those carwash sprayers. Then after soap, shampoo would be nice for a few minutes, and then more water.

Finally it could mix a little bath oil into the final rinse and most importantlythe quintessential shower would never run out of hot water.

I suppose it would take a computer to customize each individual’s shower by time, temperature and type of soap, but that shouldn’t be a problem technically. Who of the great thinkers would count the cost?

I have seen some high-tech showers in those high-end-house magazines. The more introspective of their owners must already have installed the “think-tank.”

If a few more of us were acquainted with the real purpose for showering, just imagine how much we could all learn and understand. We just need a few more people to understand the real reason for bathing. We could just possibly overcome the brain drain.

Cell phone wonder

2009-01-05T20:43:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know, I am not a complete technological idiot. After all, I am typing this on my very own laptop. I can use more than one of the programs on it, too. I can save and retrieve files, send e-mail, install programs, and I know the difference between RAM and RGB.

I am not so literate with cell phones though. I have had one for a while which I have used when I have the need tocall other people. That doesn’t necessarily mean that they can call me, since I usually keep its battery in various near-death stages when I haven’t let it expire entirely. Of course it takes a lot of work to keep it alive. You already know how Bertha feels about batteries.

So for Christmas Father B. and I got new cell phones. They do a little more than just dial up friends and family. Father B. can take a fuzzy picture of his index finger with his, and I can record family arguments without even trying.

One upgrade we both have that we didn’t before is “text messaging.” It means that if we get into the right menu on our phones, we can send a little message that we type out on our keypad. If we do it right, the person we designate can read our little messages. If you are under the age of thirty, you can stop laughing anytime now.

I am supposed to be the one in charge of laughing here. So my first “text” was sent to Mr. B.’s phone. (He was sitting on the other end of the couch.) It said, “Hi gag.”

A few minutes later I get a reply that says, “Hi dufis. Who is gag?”

Okay, we are handicapped whether we have a cell phone in our hands or not. I can’t see very well, but those little letters beside the keys on my phone are about 4-point type in blue on gray. You realize, of course, that if I had been on the “3” key instead of the “4,” that I would have spelled “Hi dad.”

I can’t be expected to recite three letters for every number on the keypad every time I need a new letter, can I? Besides that, Mr. B. can’t spell.

Earlier I had tried to do something on that phone, and was told that I had to activate my Voice Mail. So I “press TALK to dial Voice Mailbox.” I get Voice Mailbox who seems to be female in gender. She tells me to enter my temporary password which I dimly remember was “9999.” So I key in “9-9-9-9.” Now what? Do I press the “#” key or “OK” after that? I tried both. She didn’t like either one.

“Please try again.” So I tried again, possibly pressing the keys in the same order, or possibly not, how would I know? Anyway my finger might have slipped off the “9” key and hit the “#” key prematurely, so I hit the “BACK” key four times and tried again, this time pressing the “OK” key.

Nothing happened, so I pressed the “#” key instead. I put the phone to my ear just in time to hear Miz Smarter Than Thou say to me, “You seem to be having a problem activating your Voice Mailbox. Please call our Help Hotline for information regarding your problem.” I detected a note of patronization (is that a word?) in her voice, too.

“Yes, and what is Help Hotline’s IQ?”

So the new phones are smaller than the old ones. I am not sure that smaller is better, Yes they fit into any pocket—not just one pocket. When I start to ring, I do the regular pat-down trying to locate the correct pocket. I come up with some change, a cough drop, a used tissue, a flash drive, a library card, and one glove, but no cell phone. After a couple more ring tones, other people are helping out. Miami Vice may as well be practicing on me.

Next thing I need to do with this technological wonder is input my circle of ten friends. I am working on that. So far I have thought of four.