The Junk Drawer

One of life’s greatest indulgences is flying first-class. I had the opportunity to do so in 2002 when my husband Dave and his brother Dan got the idea in their heads that we should leave a freezing cold November in Pennsylvania and take a trip to Las Vegas and splurge by flying there in style.

Here’s how we were punished for wanting to live a little.

If you have never flown first-class, you absolutely must try it once before you die. The entire experience is a ridiculous display of lavishness that only a $1,000 ticket can buy. From the time you set foot on the plane, people are waiting on you. The ratio of flight attendants to passengers is about 1:3. Back in coach, it’s 1:3,000,000. There is a reason the tickets cost so much. You’ve bought yourself a servant.

Seated comfortably in cushy, wide leather seats, you can really kick back, breathe easy, and relax. Since first-classers are seated before anyone else, you have the pleasure of watching all the coach- and business-class people salivate over your seats while they walk back to Sardine Land. You know what they’re thinking as they pass you. "I hate you and if the plane crashes, you’ll die first."

But we soldier on and ignore the stares, grunts and eye rolls from the less fortunate passengers, and prepare to be waited on by one of the five attendants dedicated to us. The first thing they do is take your coats and hang them up in a closet so that you are completely unencumbered by your travel paraphernalia. Next, they put your bags in the overhead compartments for you so that you are not inconvenienced by common folk duties. Up next, real pillows and real blankets. You can put your seat back just about all the way without disturbing the person behind you.

Were we not flying at ten thousand feet and had a remote control for the TVs in the seats ahead of us, we would have thought we were laying on our couches at home in our living rooms. And even there, you don’t get someone asking you every ten minutes if you’re comfortable enough and whether you need anything. They ask you all the time if you’re cozy and how they can make your trip more enjoyable.

Once we’re in the air awhile, we are served the first course of our meals. Yeah, first course. There are more to come. We’re given a selection of cheese and fruit, served on a restaurant-quality plate with real silverware. There is no plastic in first-class.

After we finish our fresh fruit and cheese, we are served our second course of chicken cordon bleu with rice pilaf and warm bread. Again, served on real dinnerware with real knives and forks. The suckers in the back are handed sandwiches with meat-of-questionable-origin in plastic wrap, and if they’re lucky, a pack of crackers. We finish up dinner with an assortment of cheesecake, mousse and more fresh fruit. So this is how the other half lives…..

It’s impossible to be too full on a plane unless you’ve brought your own meals, but here we are, fat and happy in first-class. All this eating has made us a little tired. Propping up our pillows and pulling our blankies up to our chins, we lie back in our virtual beds and take cat naps. You can’t do that in coach unless you take coma-inducing drugs that make you forget exactly where you are — seated millimeters next to smelly, irritated people who, if given the chance, would kick you out in the aisle if it meant they could have five more inches of space.

After a thoroughly enjoyable flight that felt much shorter than it was, we deplane and begin our adventures in The City That Never Sleeps. For the first few days, we win and lose some money here and there. We vary our time between soaking up some sun, hitting the casinos and the pool and strolling up and down the strip taking it all in.

We’re having a great time until …..

Dan hails us a cab from one resort to get us back to our home base and we all pile in. The cab driver is chit-chatting with us about where we’re from and where we’re staying and whether we’re enjoying ourselves. Then he drops the bomb.

He mentions how there are hundreds of travelers scrambling to get flights back home because they just got the news that National Airlines, our airline, has just filed for bankruptcy and they’ve canceled all of their flights.

All together now….. Say WHAT?!?!?!

We go from zero to depressed in two seconds flat. This news means that we’re going to have to make other flight arrangements to get us back home and now we’re not even sure we can leave when we planned. Once back at our hotel, Dan makes a flurry of phone calls and secures us a flight on We’re Not Flying First Class Anymore Airlines. Because we had to take what we could get, we can’t fly back in luxury. We had been given keys to the Emerald City and now they want them back.

After Dave picked me up off the floor, I came to and got all the details. First, there’s the no first-class thing ("Stop telling me that!!!"). Then there’s the problem of seating. We can’t get seats together. Lastly, we have to cut the trip short and leave that night on the red-eye. It is called the red-eye for a reason. If you have been up since 5AM and have to leave town at 11PM, then take a six hour flight, you will have red, bleary, Marty Feldman eyes that will scare small children when it’s all over.

After I recover from this news, I try to make the best of our last day in Vegas by sinking a few bucks into a slot machine. Maybe if I pray hard enough, a first-class ticket will fall out. Later in the day, we sulk as we pack our things and prepare for what would become the worst flight ever.

Just a few days ago, we were secretly laughing at the people who filed past us on their way to coach. Now we were those people, cursing under our breath at the people who were going to get nice soft pillows and blankets, and delicious food served on real dinnerware. All we could think as we walked past them was "If the plane crashes, you’ll die first."

As we approach Sardine Land, we get into position for our separate seating arrangement. Dan got a spot next to a window in one row, while Dave sat in the row behind him in a middle seat. I wind up in the same row, but on the other side of the plane.

I am not a good flier. It is almost a requirement that I be allowed to dig my nails into Dave’s thigh during take-off, the part of the flight that makes me the most anxious. I doubt now that I’ll be able to dig my nails into the thigh of Random Traveler next to me, and now I don’t want to because I find out soon enough that my seatmate is a crazy person.

He is wearing a sleeveless camouflage T-shirt, camouflage pants, combat boots and has no reading material or other things to keep himself occupied for six hours. He begins talking to me immediately about where he’s from and how his girlfriend just dumped him. Sure, take away my first-class status and sit me next to Psychotic Nothing-to-Lose Guy.

Dan and Dave have their own little traumas over on the other side of the plane. Dan has the misfortune of getting seated next to a very large man whose body is spilling over the edges of his seat. I later learn that Dan was just about to reach into his pocket and pull out a wad of hundreds to make an offer to ANY OTHER PASSENGER to give up their seat so he doesn’t have to take the seat with half another person in it. But the lights go dim and he won’t be able to get anyone’s attention.

So he sits down in the little room he has left and curses National Airlines for hitting the skids. One of the only ways that Dan can get enough room is if he holds and bends his left arm over his head and scoots over so that he’s plastered to the wall. Dave is seated directly behind Very Large Man. I cannot count the ways that this will make for a bad flight.

In the air for a few hours now, I reflect on the fact that we’ve all been awake for over twenty hours now and are beginning to get Marty Feldman eyes. At some point, I glance out the window past Nothing-to-Lose Guy and see the sun coming up on the horizon. I’m in such a no-sleep stupor that I forget where I am for a minute. Am I dead?

I glance over at Dan and Dave and notice the interesting contortions they’ve been forced into because of Very Large Man. Dan is still stuck with his arm over his head. I can’t tell if he’s sleeping, but if he is, when he wakes up he will probably not realize that the arm is his own and will come out swinging.

Very Large Man has, of course, reclined his chair and appears to be resting comfortably. With the reclined chair four inches from his head, Dave decided to make the most of things by planting his forehead into the back of the seat and sleeping on his face.

When I see these twisted configurations and consider that neither of them are good travelers to begin with, I laugh inappropriately loudly, which unfortunately wakes up Nothing-to-Lose Guy. I look at him and explain that we flew to Vegas first-class and I’m supposed to be up there with all the lucky people and instead I’m sitting here! He shrugs his shoulders and goes back to thinking of all the ways he can get revenge on the girl who dumped him.

Another hour in flight, I’m counting down the minutes until I can get on the ground, get in a car and get in my bed. All told, by the time we fell asleep at home, we’d been up for 27 hours. We looked like we felt and it took two days before we got our normal eyes back.

The lesson of the story is that if you do manage to fly first-class, check out the financial situation of your airline and make sure they’re solvent. We were reimbursed the cost of the return ticket, but it hardly mattered. I’m left wishing I’d never flown first-class.

Because having it ripped out from under you is worse than not having had it at all.

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My 11-yr-old niece loves to read stories in this blog about when her mother, my sister Ann, was a kid herself. She loves to hear about what she was like when she was her age and the silly or stupid things she did.

One such story involves a bike, a serious misjudgment and a pair of Drake’s Devil Dogs.

Here’s the thing about Devil Dogs. It was Ann’s favorite snack food back then and the first thing she’d spend her allowance money on. And she could get them just about any time she wanted. We were lucky to have not one, but two, corner stores near our house growing up. One was called The Apple Shack, which was owned by a woman named — I kid you not — Candy Apple.

The other one was called Verna’s, run by a little old lady and her husband. Located about three blocks from home, it was the quintessential Mom and Pop store. Sure, they sold incidentals like milk and bread for adults, but we kids knew it only as Junk Food Central.

Among other things, Verna sold ice cream, popsicles, homemade cupcakes and shoe-fly pie and giant lollipops bigger than our heads. She had a large wooden, glass-front case where we could peer inside at the array of penny candy and ask Verna to put together a little brown bag full of sugary confections. You could score a pound of goodies for about a buck if you chose wisely.

I always liked to get red licorice shoelaces, Flying Saucers, Tootsie Roll Midgies and Chick-0-Sticks, the latter being something of a cross between a less-sweet version of Butterfingers and pretzel sticks. You had to chisel half of it off your teeth, that is, if you had any left after eating them. Chick-o-Sticks and mortar. Same difference.

Then there’s Ann. Ever the discerning snack connoisseur, she had just one favorite — the Drake’s Devil Dog, a devil’s food cream sandwich whose wafers were shaped somewhat like a hot dog bun, hence the name. She’d eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner if our mother let her.

One Saturday afternoon in 1975, after getting our allowances, we decided to go on a candy and Devil Dog run to Verna’s. We hopped on our banana-seat bikes, pedaled hard up a two block hill, rounded the corner, dropped our bikes in front of the store, and had Verna throw some stuff together. Me with my grab bag, and Ann with her two Devil Dogs.

When we got outside and prepared to bike back home, Ann realized she should have gotten a bag for her things but didn’t feel like running back inside for one. Standing there, straddling her bike, she maneuvered the handlebars with just the palms of her hands, while she held the Devil Dogs with the tips of her fingers so as not to smoosh them.

I told her, "You’re not gonna be able to ride right if you hold ‘em that way."

"Yes I can!" she shot back.

I seriously doubted it, and sure enough, she would soon pay dearly for this error in judgment.

We set off for home, proud that we still had a few bucks left of our allowance and happy to have enough snacks to spoil our dinner. As we approached the hill we biked up on, we prepared to set sail downward. It was always great to pick up speed and catch the wind in our hair. We’d blast through the stop sign at the bottom of the hill, then race each other home in the last block.

But this ride was like no ride before, because somebody cared more about the welfare of her Devil Dogs than getting home in one piece. We’d gotten about halfway down the hill and picked up considerable speed when Ann hit a patch of stones in the road and it was all over in a flash. Because her hands were gripping the Devil Dogs instead of the handlebars, any chance of controlling the bike went right out the window. It was a hopeless situation.

When she braked to try to stop the slide, she was thrust head first over the handlebars and got herself caught in them so that she and the bike crashed to the ground in a twisted metal ‘n legs pretzel. Together they slid for about ten feet. And all along the way, gravel and other road debris became embedded in what were now ripples and ripples of scraped-up skin.

Had her dismount been part of an Olympic event, the judges would have leapt to their feet and pronounced it a "10" because not only did she damage herself quite badly, she also rendered her bike un-rideable. It was a perfectly-orchestrated knockout and both of them were down for the count.

The first thing I did, of course, was run to her aid and see if she could stand up. Crying and moaning, she gingerly rose to her feet and insisted she could walk home. I helped her over to the curb and urged her to sit back down and get her bearings first. I turned around to assess the damage. Looking in the street at her mangled bike, handlebars all askew, I spotted the reason Ann found herself battered and bloodied.

Amid the mangled mess of her bike lie two perfectly rounded, fully-formed, light and fluffy Devil Dogs, still in their micro-thin plastic wrap. The only visible damage was that some of the cream had oozed out the sides, but the wrap hadn’t burst. And they hadn’t been squashed. Ann’s dribbling blood all down her leg, but by God, her Devil Dogs were safe. And wasn’t that the point of all this?

She and her bike had seen better days. I did manage to bend back the front wheel to align it straight enough so she could push it. It squeaked a sad little squeak with each step we took on the slow walk home. After Ann limped through the door, our mother treated and disinfected her wounds and bandaged her hands and leg.

"How in the world did this happen?" Mom asked.

"I was…. sniffle …. trying to …. sniffle …. save the Devil Dogs," Ann whimpered.

"Well I hope you know that’s not a good enough reason."

Mom’s always right, but to Ann, it felt like reason enough. She did what she set out to do and saved the Dogs. And, as a bonus, was excused from having to go to church that night. To this day, despite the mayhem and carnage of that Saturday afternoon, she might even tell you it was worth it.

Tell us, Ann, was it?

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StumbleUpon is one of the best ways to discover blogs and websites you would have never found otherwise. It’s how I came upon an entry at Kavefish.com that showcases the freakish artwork of Ron Mueck, an Australian-born, hyper-realist sculptor working in the UK.

If you are intrigued by this disembodied head, then click over to Kavefish and really get an eyeful. Halloween feels like an appropriate time to share stuff like this. Enjoy!

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Question: What’s the safest way to carve a pumpkin?

Answer: Let your husband do it.

I am not good with knives. I don’t know who’s looking out for me, but I have thrice dropped knives on the floor mere inches from bare feet. My luck may not last forever. I see a missing toe in my future.

The last time I held a slasher-movie-sized knife was Easter Sunday circa 1981. I was hand-washing dishes after our holiday meal and I was cleaning a 10" long serrated knife. I somehow let go of the dishcloth while I was wiping the smooth edge of the knife, and the cloth slipped out of my hand.

The knife kept right on going. And so did my hand. Slicing through your fingers in warm water feels exactly like nothing. It wasn’t until I looked into pinkified water that I wondered what happened. Quite a bloodfest.

Because I cut my right index finger in an unfortunate place, right where the top section of the finger bends, I needed several stitches. Living so close to a hospital, I got sewn up in no time at all.

Since Dave and I don’t live across from a hospital, I leave all the knife work to him. He has his own issues with injuries, but he seems to have slicing and cutting under control. Yea! It means we get to enjoy at least one Mr. Happy Face Pumpkin Head for the season.

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You wouldn’t know it to look at me, but I possess two amazing superpowers. First, for as long as I can remember, I’ve had bionic hearing. Even before Lindsey Wagner (pictured left) acquired hers. You know, the Bionic Woman, now world-famous spokeswoman for Sleep Number Beds. (I bet she never saw that coming.) My husband, Dave likes to call my special ability "dog hearing." Woof.

I don’t know of any other superhuman entity who can hear as well as I can. Someone should wire me up to a machine and study me. I would find it extremely gratifying to be listed as a freak in a medical journal. It may be the only way I ever get published.

Listen up. Here’s how my ears work.

I can tell if a television is on in the next room, even if it’s muted.

I can hear the ever-so-slight noise a VCR makes when it records a program, so much so that I made Dave go with me to Circuit City to buy not one, not two, but three different VCRs until I found one that taped quietly enough. The man is a saint.

Once while working alongside a technician in the computer repair shop where I work, I repeatedly asked "What’s that noise? I hear a noise." The technician kept looking around trying to find its source and he had a lot of trouble since he couldn’t hear it himself. After flipping random switches and turning assorted knobs, he found the machine that was causing the noise and turned it off. I breathed a sigh of relief. He looked at me, cocked his head slightly and then splashed holy water on me because he thought I was the anti-Christ.

I hear my DVR machine recording. A DVR is able to freeze-frame and play back live broadcasts because it’s always taping the current channel. I hear it doing its job, but nobody else can.

I once had a very unusual problem in my car where when I made hard turns, I could hear fluid sloshing around in the dashboard innards. I’ve had four people in my car at various times when this noise made itself known. Nobody but me could hear it. They asked if I was on medication.

I now know better than to ask people "Do you hear that noise?" because the answer will always be "What noise?" I haven’t figured out how I can put my special powers to good use. I know the Bionic Woman would always pull her hair back and point her souped up ear toward bad guys who were up to no good. Then she’d save the day because she overheard secret information and then used it against them. Yeah, I wanna do that. But I don’t know how to work that into my non-espionage life.

My other superpower is one that I have not perfected yet, though it has served me well when it’s worked. I can mentally cancel meetings I don’t want to attend. I do not always want to skip meetings, so I only pull this skill out when I really need it. My record stands at 8 out of 12 meetings successfully killed. And, yes, I’m keeping track.

Before you ask me if I can help you get out of meetings, don’t bother. The talent is non-transferable. I’ve tried, but it only works when I’m the one who doesn’t want to go. It’s a shame, because imagine the money I could make if I could stop one of the world’s biggest time-wasters on behalf of others. I’d be a millionaire.

Sure, there are other superhero women out there with special abilities, but can they hear inaudible sounds without bionic help and cancel meetings at will? I’m certain there is a place where these skills would come in handy.

If you can figure out how I can put these two talents together to save the world or something, drop me a line. I’ll get back to you if I’m not in a meeting. I’d like to hear about it.

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Warning: This is yet another post about stuff that goes on at my grocery store. You might think I’m there everyday. You’d be almost right. See, our grocery store is just two blocks from my house, which makes running in for a few items on the way home from work too easy. I promise I’ll get back to non-grocery store posts as soon as annoying things stop happening there.

So I run over to get some cat food since we’re almost out. I’ve been given very specific flavor requirements by Dave, who thinks the cats can actually tell the difference between generic slop and Diet Ocean Whitefish Supreme. Um, they lick their butts clean every day. Do you think they have a flavor preference in the food they eat?

Before I head in the store, I remember to grab my cloth "environmentally-friendly" shopping bag out of the back seat of my car. I don’t use it enough as I should, but this time I remember to bring it. I’m trying to do my part to minimize plastic consumption in our household.

Once in the cat food aisle, I peruse the selections. I cannot find the diet version of ocean whitefish, so I grab a ton of cans of regular ocean whitefish. We’re all gaining weight in the house, so the cats can join in the insanity. A family that eats together gets fat together. I also grab a ton of salmon-flavored and then a bunch of cans that have pretty-colored labels. By the way, that’s also how I root for football teams. If I like your uniforms, you’re in!

A few more incidentals later, I queue up to the self-checkout line, cloth bag in hand. No sooner do I start scanning my items does a bagger from another aisle come over to start loading my items in a plastic bag. I quickly warn her "I have my own. Thanks." She retreats.

I scan some more items and a different store employee comes over and asks "Paper or plastic?" I reply, "Neither. I have my own bag. See?" He leaves to go bag someone else’s stuff.

I’m almost done scanning now, but I can see a cashier leave his now-empty checkout lane and approach my bagging area. By now I look like Medusa with snakes writhing out of my head and fire balls rocketing out my eyes.

I HAVE MY OWN BAG!!! I’m sure he thought I was demented. Or, perhaps by the appearance of my thirty cans of cat food and little else, I was just one of those Crazy Cat Ladies. No matter. He left my aisle and walked away with a story to tell his teenaged friends about the woman who went all postal on him for trying to be helpful. I’m sure they’ll call me something colorful. Bag Lady Bitch has a nice ring.

I’m hoping before I die, it will be commonplace to walk in a store with our own shopping bags and we’ll look back and ask ourselves how we could have been so wasteful "back in the day." Until then, I’ll keep fighting the "paper or plastic" question. But I’ll try to be a little nicer to those who ask. Besides, I’m sure I’ll find myself back in the store tomorrow to get something I forgot today, and I don’t want them running away when they see me coming. With my bag.

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Today I’m giving a hearty shout-out to one of my favorite blogs, The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks. The blog’s brainchild, Bethany Keeley, documents the needless double quote marks that wind up transforming an everyday phrase into a seemingly disingenuous one. One example shows an East India Tea & Coffee LTD bag labeled Old Fashioned Sassafras Herbal "Tea." It may be tea, or it may not be tea. Inquiring minds want to know.

It took about a month, but I was able to find a sign with unnecessary quotes, take a snapshot and send it in. It’s from a catering business near the Allentown (Pa.) Fairgrounds. She posted it on Saturday.

If you want to see more like it, check out her blog. It’s a really "enjoyable" read. Wink wink.

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Recently I wrote about what I perceive to be a shopping club card scam. My local grocery store suddenly pulled a switcheroo on what kind of rewards they were giving to customers who use their club cards.

In the past, it was always a monetary discount, up to 20% off your total bill, depending on your point accumulation. The last time they ran the points redemption period, they gave my husband, Dave and me useless bakeware instead. I gave all three pieces to my sisters, by the way.

Today we got revenge.

Dave ran over to the store for some dinner items: hamburger, ice cream, and macaroni and cheese from the deli counter. When he got home, he announced "That lady at the deli must have the hots for me. She did it again."

What’s "it," you ask?

"It" is undercharging for a pound of macaroni and cheese. "Again" means it’s the second time the same lady did this to him. The first time it happened, we got a good chuckle out of it. Now we just think she’s smitten with him.

Dave didn’t realize this had happened again until he got to the register and self-scanned his items. When the macaroni and cheese rang up, the polite-sounding lady who lives inside the machine said in her best monotone voice, "Five cents."

Yeah, a nickel for a whole pound. See for yourself. Note: I’m blocking out the store name because Dave is actually afraid someone from the store might read my blog (????) and then fire the woman who is repeatedly weighing his stuff in this way.

I asked him what he did when the machine lady reported the surprising discount — loudly, I might add. Everybody in the store knows the cost of everything you’re buying because the audio is jacked up so high. Frankly, I can’t understand how the store employees can listen to the scanner voices all day without wanting to commit hara-kiri.

He said he looked around figuring some store employee would look up and say "Nothing costs a nickel! The machines are malfunctioning! Tech support in Aisle 2! Stat!"

But no one blinked and he wasn’t about to return it to the deli, as half his items had already merrily rolled down the conveyor belt. We’ve decided this makes us even for the club card scam. Karma works like that.

In case you’re thinking it’s immoral for him to not have corrected their mistake, he was punished, in a way.

When Dave started frying up the burgers, he realized he forgot to buy mayonnaise, a staple in his diet and an absolute requirement for cheeseburgers. He had a very unhappy meal tonight. Karma works like that.

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If you’ve ever made the mistake of leaving the house wearing two different shoes, you don’t want to run into me. I will mock you mercilessly. I did just that to a co-worker once, in the form of this PowerPoint tutorial, titled "Shoe Lessons." Once there, click View Published Presentation in a New Window. Page through the slides at the bottom of the screen.

My victim took it well when I sent it to her originally. And she’s been matching her shoes properly ever since.

The slideshow had the added benefit of making my mother laugh for the one and only time during her excruciatingly painful bout with shingles. And, by the way, I would rather have two broken legs, an intestinal parasite and a flaming case of poison ivy — all at once — than suffer through shingles. I managed to get my mother skin patch narcotics you slap right on the pain points and even that wasn’t enough. It’s a truly horrible condition.

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Last month I wrote about my new, awesome Sony Bravia HDTV. Dave and I have been enjoying the Sunrise Earth program on the Discovery HD Theater channel a couple times a week. Stunning is the only way to describe it.

Evidently cats can enjoy it too! It’s been reported that cats have some trouble distinguishing between real objects and those projected on an HDTV set. Here is Shadow enjoying penguins from a recent episode of Sunrise Earth. Her head moved back and forth, following them as they waddled across the screen.

She sat like this for almost ten minutes. If you have cats, you’ll know they can barely sit still for any length of time unless they’re sleeping. Easily distracted, they’ll respond to the slightest movement. I was able to go upstairs, prep the camera, and take a few shots without her budging from this spot. She sat there for another five minutes afterwards, enthralled by the penguins.

I was going to suggest she’s in this trance-like state because she has a little brain. But that’s pretty much how I look when I’m watching Sunrise Earth. So let’s just say I must have the smartest cat in the world, shall we?

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You read that right. I have been accused of plagiarism, but not as a blogger. I have plenty of juice left. In fact, I’m just getting started. I have no interest in copying others, mostly because there’s no fun in that. And, oh yeah. It’s illegal.

But since I do wonder if anyone is plagiarizing me, I use a site called Copyscape, where you submit your blog URL and it crawls the web for places where your work has been duplicated. Stolen, actually. I did find one site that took my entire The Day I Didn’t Die post and translated it into German. It’s a junk site plastered with ads. Evidently, they lift posts to drive you to their site and try to get you to buy garbage when you get there.

After discovering Copyscape, I was reminded of the one time in my life that I was officially accused of plagiarism. I was a sophomore in high school and in danger of failing music class. I don’t understand music theory, I can’t read sheet music since the symbols look cartoony to me, and of course, I can’t carry a tune to save my life. I was failing on all cylinders.

My teacher offered me an opportunity for extra credit so I could pull myself up to a passing grade. I gladly took her up on it. She gave me a few options and I chose to listen to a piece of classical music, then write a story about what I thought the music was trying to say.

I can’t remember what piece I wrote about, but I do know I listened to it over and over in the living room one weekend and knocked out not a story, but a poem, about what it meant.

The piece began with a very peaceful melody, then gradually progressed into a cacophony of what sounded like every instrument in the orchestra, later relaxing and making a soothing exit. I thought it sounded like a storm rolling into a valley, shaking things up, and then rolling out. That’s what my poem was about and I was pretty happy with what I’d written.

And then I turned it in.

While we were taking our final exam, I noticed her reading it at her desk. When the class was over, she called me up and asked me point blank "Did you write this?"

I told her "Yes, this weekend."

"It doesn’t sound like you wrote it. It sounds like you copied it," she protested.

"But I did write it. I listened to the piece all weekend and that’s what I thought it said to me."

"Did anyone see you write it?"

"Yes, my parents did. You can ask them."

"I will."

Now, you might think I should have been insulted and horrified to be accused of plagiarizing someone else’s work. But I wasn’t. It was the most flattering thing I’d ever heard since my English teacher suggested I go to a creative arts camp the summer before. It was the first time in my life that I thought I might have a talent for writing. I left the class on Cloud 9, when other students might have left in tears.

My teacher did get confirmation from my parents that I wrote the poem myself. She might have felt bad afterwards for accusing me of stealing, but she was only doing her job. The accusation left a marked impression on me. If she thought my work was so good it couldn’t have been my own, maybe — just maybe — someday I could call myself a writer.

Someday is today.

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My friend Jason showed me a ridiculous item in a cheapo catalog he got in the mail a couple weeks ago. It illustrates just how fat our country has gotten.

I give you The Easy-Fit Waistband Stretcher

From the Heartland America website,

If you’ve added on some winter weight, your favorite pants have shrunk after washing, or you’ve had a temporary weight gain, don’t go out and buy new clothes. Easy-fit waistband stretcher to the rescue! Gently widen your snug jeans, skirts and shorts by putting the device inside the waistband and adjusting until you find the most comfortable size. Works on waist sizes 21-50. 1-year limited warranty.

Don’t go out and buy new clothes?!?!? What? That’s too humiliating? It’s any better to stick this stretching machinery into your jeans, thinking they’ll fit properly? I imagine when you’re done using this device, your pants will be the perfect size and shape to fit Homer Simpson. Not a flattering look.

Oh, and if this works on "waist sizes 21-50," you have bigger problems. You do NOT need to make your pants larger. You need to make your gut smaller.

I haven’t heard of such an idiotic device since the FloBee. You know, the vacuum cleaner that happens to also cut hair. I’d like to say I can’t believe there’s a market for pants stretchers, but I absolutely can believe it. Our country would rather jam our sausage bodies into too-tight pants than get on a treadmill every once in a while.

If nothing else, this discovery makes me more motivated to get out and exercise. I may not get down to my "skinny jeans" weight again, but you can be sure I won’t be ruining any of my clothes to make them fit. Homer Pants aren’t a good look for me.

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Today I hit my first roadblock in an effort to lose weight. Not because I snacked on candy (I didn’t). Not because I didn’t take the stairs enough (I have). And not because I’ve lost my will already (no chance). Hell, even I can keep a resolution for at least one day.

So why am I having so much trouble today? I smell like cookies and now I want to eat a whole package of cookie dough. Raw. Right out of the package.

I know you’re probably thinking "Oh, poor Kathy. I realize she’s struggling to lose weight and I wish there was something I could do for her to encourage her to stay motivated."

Or maybe you’re just thinking "Why does she smell like cookies?"

Lemme ’splain. I was working on a client’s PC fixing a problem one day and my work was lasting longer than I expected. I was supposed to have lunch with my sister and it was looking like I wouldn’t make it since I was stuck with this PC problem.

I called her to let her know we’d probably have to postpone, and while talking with her, I noticed my client had a bottle of Bath and Body Works hand lotion on her desk. I picked it up to smell what kind it was. The "flavor" was Warm Vanilla Sugar and it smelled exactly like sugar cookies.

I told my sister what I’d just done and how much I loved the aroma of fresh baked cookies. In a hand lotion! She made a mental note of this and gave me a bottle of it for my birthday shortly after.

What I didn’t realize is that if you use cookie-scented hand lotion, like I did today, it makes you hungry. Very hungry. Eat your fingers right off your hand hungry. This is not helpful.

I know there are freak scientists in the world whose job it is to make chemicals smell like food. I watched a rather disgusting movie this weekend, Fast Food Nation, in which a chemist whips up an additive that is used to make a barbecue burger smell like a barbecue burger. Believe me, you don’t want to eat anything off a Micky D’s menu if you watch that movie. What you think is burger is more like something that only smells like burger. Well, maybe there is some meat in there, but you can’t be too sure. They can make anything smell like anything they want. Eat at your own risk.

There is a lesson here. If you’re going to go on a diet, do not use a product on yourself that smells like an item you’ve just crossed off your acceptable foods list. It’ll drive you insane. Dieting is hard enough without wanting to eat your own fingers.

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I just got a copy of the pictures taken of me at Dorney Park last weekend. It’s glaringly evident that the time has come for me to get serious about losing some weight. So here I am again, trying to get mentally prepared to do a workout several times a week. I figure if I write about trying to exercise, I’ll be held accountable somehow. I’m taking all forms of encouragement, guys. And to those who work with me, throw bricks at my head if you see me at the candy dish. Aim high and don’t miss.

One of the few things that keeps me pumped up while working out is listening to music and only one kind will do — late 80s and early 90s funk and dance. Contrary to popular belief, a 40-something woman can get down and get funky. You may not want to see it, but it does happen and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. Look away if you must.

Here’s my Top 10 List of Best Workout Music:

1. It Takes Two — Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock
2. The Power — Snap!
3. Word Up - -Cameo
4. Get on the Good Foot — James Brown
5. The Glamorous Life — Sheila E
6. You Dropped a Bomb on Me — The Gap Band
7. Gonna Make You Sweat — C & C Music Factory
8. Bust a Move — Young MC
9. Everybody Everybody — Black Box
10. Push it –Salt ‘n Pepa

I’m off to do a workout. Funk out.

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Dave and I have been struggling with the layout of our living room since getting the new furniture. Our challenges are many:

1. We want to keep the couch and chair as far away from each other as possible to create an open flow.
2. The coffee table is getting butchered by the cats. Since the first scratch, two more have gone on. And one is nearly a foot long. We decided to put the TV on it to keep it from getting damaged further.
   
3. Moving the coffee table from the middle of the room really opened things up, but now it’s too open. The carpets are also looking dingy from years of spills and cat accidents.
4. I put down this oriental rug to minimize the open space, cover stains and create a visual bridge between the chair and couch.

Now — we can buy another rug, but don’t know what color scheme would work well with the furniture. We don’t want to overdo blue. This rug is 10 years old and has been in storage since our now deceased cat, Calvin, started clawing at it. For now, it’ll do, and we almost don’t care if the cats destroy it. At least we can enjoy its beauty for the first time in a decade. Better to be on the floor than in a closet.

We really want some opinions now. If you’ve never commented on my blog before, now is the time to go nuts. The future of our living room depends on it.

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There are a few pretty cool things you can do as a kid, and one of them is breaking a bone. All the better if you get a cast for your efforts. See that innocent looking swing set in the picture? It’s the reason I broke my left wrist when I was 10 years old. Why was it a good thing? Because it could have been my head.

The accident took place one Friday night when my parents were out grocery shopping. It’s the one time of the week they could get away from us kids for an hour or so. All they had to do was let an older sibling take charge and make sure nothing bad happened while they were gone.

As soon as they left, something bad happened.

It was wintertime and a blanket of snow covered the backyard hill. An excellent place to take the sleds out for a spin. We never settled for sledding on mere snow. We insisted the best way to experience high-octane thrills was to throw buckets of water down the hill to form a nice sheen and add 30 mph to our speed. Kids, don’t try this at home.

Sister Ann and I prepped the death slope with about six or seven good bucket tosses and waited until it froze up good. We grabbed our sleds and set off to fly down the hill with the greatest of ease. Until….

I sat down on my trusty wooden Flexible Flyer at the precipice of our freshly-made, glassy goodness and gave myself a mighty heave-ho. Heading straight down the middle, I must have leaned too far to the right and began to veer directly toward the left legs of the swing set. In a flash, I’m thinking I either stay put and crack my skull open when I hit that thing, or make quick work of leaning the other way to shoot toward the middle of the hill.

There is a 10 foot open swath between the swing set and an old rusty laundry pole. I’m shooting for left of the swing set, but overcompensate and now I’m heading straight for the pole. I’m back to square one in the skull-saving, decision-making department. Do I split my noggin on the pole? Or do I try and brace myself with my arm and break that instead?

I opted to save the skull and stick my arm out to protect my face and head. My hand hit the pole and snapped all the way back as the rest of my body followed behind and landed in a rumpled heap at the bottom of the hill. I saved the skull, but my wrist doesn’t feel too good. Not good at all.

I can’t remember who came running first or how I got back up to the house. I’m sure I was blubbering like an idiot and screaming how "Mom and Dad are going to kill me!!!" They apparently can’t go anywhere without some trauma befalling us kids. But at least we never set fire to anything.

Once in the house, I’m sobbing on the couch and my brainiac brother Michael is yelling at me.

"It’s not broken if you can move it. Here. Let me see."

He flops my hand back and forth, over and over.

"Oww!! OWW!! Oh my God, OWWWWW!!!"

"OK. Yeah, it might be broken."

"Idiot."

So we wait until Mom and Dad come home from the store and then promptly announce that now they have to take me to the hospital. The one thing that made our accidents so much more bearable was that the hospital was located only a block away. I wonder of Mom and Dad, knowing they’d someday have a houseful of imbecilic kids, told their real estate agent "We need a house next to a state-of-the-art hospital with a band of qualified ER doctors. We’re going to be spending some time there. Can you do that?"

As we trek over to the hospital, I’m getting really angry. Not because I broke my wrist. And not because I got in trouble for sledding in the dark on an ice-encrusted hill. It’s because now I was going to miss the Brady Bunch. Back in the day before VCRs and DVRs, you absolutely needed to be planted in front of the TV when your favorite show came on or you would miss it forever.

As I sat in the ER waiting room, I watched as it approached 8:00 and then 8:30 and then 9:00. I mourned the loss of getting to watch the fanciful antics of my beloved Brady Bunch kids. The only bright spot was knowing that none of the Bradys ever broke a bone and they don’t get a cast and they can’t show it off to their friends at school. So there, take that!

Here’s a lesson for the kiddies — if you have a choice between breaking your skull and breaking a bone, go for the bone. Brain is so much more worth keeping in good working order. Besides, having a cast on your head is just not as attractive.

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My sister Marlene treated her daughter, Amy, and me to an afternoon at Dorney Amusement Park on Saturday. Every year her company gives its employees free passes, plus two for their guests. Excellent deal, since tickets normally go for something like 30 bucks. I know I’ll still pay a fortune on food, drink and at least one impulse purchase. But since I’m not starting out $30 in the hole, it’s all good. Plus, the park hosts "Halloweekends" in October, where they decorate every square inch for the fall holiday. Even if you don’t go on rides, it’s really nice to just stroll around and get into the Halloween spirit.

But I do go on rides. At least the ones I think I won’t die on.

We meet at my house and pile in one car. For the next half an hour, we complain about the extra weight we’ve put on, how we hate exercise and that we’re doomed until we get serious about weight loss. We get to the park, walk through the entrance, look around and the first thing out of our mouths is "Where do we want to eat?" What did we JUST SAY people???

We head down a pathway that leads to one of the park’s many Dippin’ Dots carts. Dippin’ Dots is (are?) ice cream molded into the shape of tiny beads. Strangest ice cream I’ve ever had, and difficult to maneuver, since half of those little buggers tend to escape and roll away with every spoonful. Whatever. We each pay $5 for a small cup. And I do mean small. I’m done with it in 2.5 minutes, but that could also be because half of the beads have jumped the cup and are now bouncing happily away.

We decide it’s time to consider going on rides. When I say "we" should go on rides, I really mean just Amy. I’ve appointed her the ride inspector and the "oh-come-on-you’ll-be-OK" motivator. It works this way — She picks out a ride she likes, or thinks I’ll like, gets on the ride and then reports back to me about how violent said ride felt. Then I decide whether I can handle it. She gives me the blow-by-blow account of each one, and then we determine how much I would cry and how embarrassing a scene I would make.

While discussing whether I’m going on any rides, Marlene whips out her digital camera and begins taking the first of several hundred pictures in the park. We shall refer to her now as The Sisterazzi. Nobody’s safe. "Look over here! Amy! Kathy! Stand in front of this! Over here! Just one more picture! Oh, wait! Come over here!"

We tolerate this because she loves taking pictures. But we have requirements. Our hair can’t look like any of the scarecrows dotting the park. Above-the-waist shots only. No rear shots. We think Sisterazzi complies, but I haven’t seen the pictures yet. It was too sunny to make them out on the tiny screen.

We head over to the one ride I’ll consider, Talon. It’s one of the best in the park due to its smoothness. Steel tracks are the best. Wooden ones will cause teeth to fall out of your head and you’ll be a bruised and battered mess when it’s over, assuming you survive at all. We wait for Amy to go on Talon once, alone. She’ll report back about how long the line is and whether the teenaged ride attendants look responsible enough to trust our lives with.

Sisterazzi is busy taking pictures of other people on other rides, while I’m getting my stomach in knots just thinking about going on Talon. What freaks me out most is not the ride itself. The ride is awesome. It’s having to walk the stairs to the platform where you queue up for seats. I have real trouble standing still in high places. I have no problem hurdling to the earth at breakneck speeds (possibly literally break neck speeds), but I can’t handle waiting in line up really high, long enough to realize that the ground is way down there and I’m way up here.

Amy returns from her quick trip on Talon and begins her motivational speech. She assures me she’ll talk me through the ascent and that I’ll love it as much as all the other times I’ve been on it. And, no doubt, we’ll ride in the front row. If you ride a coaster, the only good seat is the front seat. Totally clear view of the ground coming up fast at you. There’s no better thrill, except maybe bungee jumping or skydiving. Those I won’t do, because I can’t hang my life on a string. But I will fly through the sky if I’m nailed to a seat.

We decide around now it’s time to eat a real meal and head off to a pizza place. The line is very long, so we briefly contemplate going over to a Subway instead. None of us wants to eat healthy, despite our complaints about wanting to lose weight, so we remain in the long line and then pay a small fortune for a slice of pizza and bottled water, $10. Extortion pizza.

As soon as we sit down at a table in the shade, Sisterazzi is at it again. This time, taking pictures of Amy and me with stringy cheese hanging out of our mouths. Thanks for that. We feel better now that we’ve had food and gotten out of the sun. But it’s a record-breaking 85 degrees on this October day, and we’re suffering a bit from meaty paw syndrome. Amy suggests we could cool off more if we go on Talon and I’m back to stressing about whether to go on it.

We slowly walk up the hill toward the ride and I remind myself that the reason I want to do it is for the exhilaration of flying through the air for little over a minute. There are four inversions: a vertical loop, a zero-gravity roll, an Immelmann loop (whatever the hell that is), and a corkscrew.

Two things happen in this environment. You briefly cannot breathe (wheeee!) and your hair winds up looking like this. At least mine does.

I decide I’m ready for the climb up the stairs and onto the platform. Fortunately, the line is short and I don’t have to spend time standing still on the stairs. But I do need some encouragement from Amy. She distracts me from the reality of my situation by discussing a very boring topic. Routers and wireless access points.

She goes into a long discussion about what kind of network she has at work and talks about getting a wireless router for home. I ignore where I am for a moment and talk about a new laptop and wireless router I’m thinking of buying so I can blog anywhere in the house. I’m hearing all kinds of screaming from passengers already on the ride, but I ignore this. Amy also directs me to look at a spot on the platform full of people and that doesn’t overlook the ground below. I pretend I’m anywhere but there.

We are soon led like cattle into the front row chute. We are shocked that they’re sending the ride out without a full front row. What’s wrong with these people? The front row is the BEST seat in the house. I’m all cocky about it — until it’s my turn to get in the seat.

Blogger’s note: I’ve begun to sweat just writing this. The memory of front row seat lockdown is fresh in my mind and I’m very tense right now. My keyboard has asked me to stop pressing so hard.

So we are led to our seats and we get nailed in. I’m thankful that the ride operator clicks the metal harness into my lap even lower than I got it to go myself. This makes me happy for two reasons: 1) It tells me that my stomach is not as huge as I thought it was, and 2) I’m 100% bolted in. I no longer worry that I’ll somehow slip out of my chair and die a horrible, screaming, bloody death. Wheeeee!!!!

We begin our ascent up the 100+ foot hill and Amy’s still talkin’ about routers. I have my eyes closed because I hate the ascent. She asks me if I want to know when we get to the top, and I reply "No, I’ll know it when we’re about to fall off the face of the earth. Thankyouverymuch."

The ride is exceptional. Smooth, fast and breathless — exactly as I remember it. Since it’s hard to scream when you can’t breathe, I opt for the silent descent. I just smile a toothy smile the whole way through.

Without further ado, here’s how the ride went. It’s my one impulse purchase. The park used to offer still shots of riders screaming their heads off, but now they offer DVDs of riders screaming their heads off. That’ll be me on the left, and Amy on the right. We appear 30 seconds into it.

Amy wanted a picture of me when we got off because I looked like I’d just been electrocuted (sign of a great ride!). We don’t have a camera, but of course Sisterazzi does. She gets the shot and now we can relax a little because I don’t have to stress anymore about doing this ride. I’ve done the deed.

We stroll around the park for another hour or so, jump on a train that chugs throughout the park and decide we’ve had our fill and start thinkin’ about what to eat again. Everything we do begins and ends with food. Will we never learn?

So Saturday was the day I didn’t die on a ride. I’ll have to pencil this in again for next year and, with Amy as my co-pilot, I’ll do just fine.

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Last month I wrote about 10 Things That Annoy Me. If you follow my blog, you know there can’t be only ten things. There can’t be only a hundred, really. So keep checking back for more lists.

Let’s get on with the show!

10 More Things That Annoy Me:

1. People who get on their cell phones as soon as they put their cars into gear. What? You couldn’t have had that conversation before you pulled out onto the open road where you will pay zero attention to other drivers while you order take-out?

2. My nose runs when I eat. Doesn’t matter whether I’m eating hot or cold food. I just finished a snack bag of Doritos and had to blow my nose. A co-worker saw me do it and asked if I had a cold. I lied and said "Yes, but I’m fine." That’s better than explaining the issue with my nose. No one understands. It doesn’t have a cool medical name. It garners no sympathy. It just runs.

3. Giada De Laurentis, host of Everyday Italian on the Food Network. She speaks perfect English without the slightest trace of an Italian accent. But when she says any word of Italian origin, suddenly she’s Sophia Loren. "Now we’ll add our ree-GAUGH-ta cheese and Rrrr-egiano parmi-GEE-ano…." Oh my God. I just want to punch her.

4. Two of my cats do not understand how to use their water dish. One won’t drink water unless it’s coming right out of the faucet. And the other picks up his food with his claws, while hovering over the bowl. He lets the morsels drop into the water and then promptly gets P.O.’d that there are chunks of food floating around in it. So he tips the bowl over and drinks off the floor. Guess which cat.

5. I’m physically unable to burp. The closest I get is a gurgle, which sounds like a sink backing up. It’s not only annoying, it’s painful. Please do NOT suggest I guzzle a carbonated beverage. No burp will come of that. It only backs up the pipes more.

6. Kazoos, bugles and bagpipes. They’re not instruments. They’re noise-makers. I used to work in the same office with someone who played a CD of nothing but bagpipe "tunes," if you can believe someone made a CD of only bagpipe music. I was tortured slowly for a few months, for no good reason.

7. My answering machine. It takes the stupid lady forever to GET TO THE FREAKING MESSAGE ALREADY! Have a listen.

8. Toyota, for not understanding that a sun visor has to be big enough to, you know, BLOCK THE SUN. Both Toyatas Dave’s owned never had long enough visors, so when I’m riding in the car, I have try to keep really straight and tall, squint, and wear sunglasses.

9. Starbucks, for making it impossible to order a cup of coffee without a PhD. Coffee used to be so simple. A friend of mine who has a PhD helped me out by writing this on a store business card. The front reads: "Please help this woman." On the back: "Mocha. Extra shot. Dark choc. Whip." Works for me.

10. Saran wrap. Tear off a sheet of cling wrap, and it does exactly that. It clings to itself and then you have to ball it up, throw it out and try again. I would never use this stuff if not for the need to see which of my leftovers is turning into penicillin in the refrigerator. What someone needs to invent is clear tin foil! Anyone? Anyone?

I’m throwing in a bonus 11th annoyance — this one from my husband, who wants to get in on The Annoying List action. He’s not a very annoyed person by nature, which is why we’re a perfect match. If we were both as annoyed as I am, we couldn’t live in the same house. But apparently some things do bother the man.

Here’s what annoys Dave: People who put slashes through 7’s and 0’s. His rant goes thusly: "And it’s always the ones who have perfect penmanship!!! It’s the slobs who need it, but they never do it, and the ones who do are probably the same people who write xx’s in place of zeros on their checks. You’re supposed to write 00/100!!!! Numbers go on checks! An ‘x’ is not a zero you half-wit!

Oh-kaaaaay.

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About three times a year, I have a nightmare about a plane crashing. This is because my house is located directly under the flight path of an airport three miles west of me. Since they say most crashes occur during takoff and landing, my odds of being involved in a crash are greater than if I were a passenger on a plane itself.

In the ten years I’ve lived here, I’ve gotten used to the noise, but I never stop wondering if some day an injured plane won’t make it to the airport and instead will crash into my neighborhood. The only good thing about these nightmares is that when the planes crash, they never hit my house. They hit other people’s houses all around me, though. My subconscious keeping me safe, I guess.

Last night’s nightmare went like this:

I was a passenger on a 747 getting ready for takeoff. Not at the airport, but instead on a highway near me. We begin to accelerate down the highway, passing cars on either side of us. I’m not sure how it is our plane fits on the highway, but it’s a dream, so anything is possible.

We approach a hill in the road that will be used to get us up in the air. Nevermind engine thrust and the laws of physics; in my dream it’s the tiny 4 foot incline that’ll give us lift and get us airborne. As we get to the hill, the pilot announces "Uh-oh, there’s an aircraft with trouble ahead." As it passes over us, I glance out the back window (I’m inexplicably in a car at this point) and see the troubled plane trying to make it back to the airport.

Our pilot slams on the brakes and we come to a stop o