The Junk Drawer

Warning:  If you only watch public television or if don’t even own a TV, go away now or this post will make your over-cultured head explode. I mean it.

What we have today is my list of TV guilty pleasures. By definition, they are:

Shows that you wouldn’t admit to watching in mixed company.

Shows with little, if any, redeeming value.

Shows that you’re terribly embarrassed you enjoy.

I’ll link to some informational web sites about these shows so that non-U.S. readers, who may have never heard of them, can get a better sense of why I can’t be trusted with the remote control.

Here we go.

1. The Brady Bunch — (in syndication) I have seen every episode of The Brady Bunch more than a dozen times. I grew up on this show in the 70s and it’s got kitsch written all over it. Forty-something women have no excuse for knowing the dialogue word-for-word from any show that has been lampooned so brutally in theatre and movies. Bonus: I bought this book and thoroughly enjoyed it.

2. The Price is Right (current) — This is a long-running daytime game show featuring price-guessing games, played by people who look like they were pulled off the street five minutes before taping. It’s the kind of show most people wouldn’t watch, even if they were home sick with the flu. I have watched it when I’m home sick because there’s no greater remedy for what ails me than watching someone fall to the floor because they overspun the gigantic money wheel trying to get a spot in the Showcase Showdown.

3.  America’s Next Top Model (current) — This is a show for 13-year-old girls to learn how to damage their self-esteem even further than it already is. It has no redeeming value, yet I have been known to blow most of a Saturday watching marathon airings of previous seasons I’ve already seen. I hang my non-model-y head in shame.

4.  The Anna Nicole (Smith) Show (2002 – 2004) — Two words: Train Wreck. RIP, by the way.

5.  Family Feud (current) — “Survey Says!” this is a stupid show, but I love it anyway. The questions are as silly as they come, the contestants insist on clapping for every answer they give, no matter how dumb, and I hate the noise the answer board makes when correct answers are revealed. Yeah. What’s not to love?

6.  Supermarket Sweep (1990-1995) — The grand daddy of all TV guilty pleasures, and oh, how I miss it. After a series of grocery-related questions that earn contestants shopping spree time, they fire up their carts and run around the store trying to collect the most expensive items. The contestants whose carts are tallied and cost the most get to move onto the bonus round.

What makes this the all-time most embarrassing admission for me is that I used to TAPE THE SHOW and watch it after work every day. My sister Ann loves to mock me whenever the subject comes up and I absolutely deserve it. Here’s a clip of the best part of the show, where contestants run around the store collecting their items. Fast-forward to the 1:30 mark if you can’t stand the suspense.

Now, here’s the part where you embarrass yourselves. If you dare, drop a comment in the drawer and let me know your TV guilty pleasures. Remember, the embarrassment level is key here. The more you’re mortified, the better!

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No one at Humor-Blogs.com will let me have the remote.

Fear keeps me from doing a lot of things in my life and I hate that. I think that’s part of the reason I read a lot of non-fiction books about people who’ve faced incredible challenges and go on to do amazing things. I live through their bravery and maybe — just maybe — it’ll teach me I can do more than I think I can.

Here’s a sampling of the things I’d never have the guts to do:

1.  Sing in public. I have no singing voice to speak of. Once, Dave heard me singing along to a song in the car and he quickly turned down the radio to hear me. I got so embarrassed, although he said the little bit he heard was so nice and I should do it more.

2.  Sky dive. The thought of it makes me ill, but the desire to say I’ve done something so insane looms large.

3.  Join my local writer’s group. I’ve toyed with the idea of attending a meeting of my local writer’s group, just to hear what real writers talk about. I want to learn what it takes to publish a book, but I’m afraid I’ll overhear “Who let the blogger in?”

4.  Take a trip on a plane all by myself. I’ve never done it (or had to do it, thank God). I’m directionally-challenged in the worst way. I’m afraid I’d get lost in an airport, lose my ticket, get on the wrong plane, or de-plane at the wrong city. If I ever had to do it for some reason, I’d need one of those airline babysitters whose job it is to see that small children traveling alone get where they’re going. Not kidding.

5.  Be a waitress. Not that I would ever need to be, since I’m gainfully employed at the moment. However, I consider waitressing to be such a ridiculously difficult job that I’m an obscenely generous tipper. I can’t understand how a person can take multiple orders, with special requests, write it all down and get it all correct, all while waiting on six other tables. One time I watched a server take a lengthy, specialized order from my husband and me IN HIS HEAD. I remarked for a couple minutes at how impressed I was with his talent. I thought “Uh oh. I’m making him forget our order.” He didn’t. Blew. My. Mind.

6.  Wear open-toed shoes. I wish I could, but I just can’t. If you saw my feet, you’d understand. Picture five gnarly, baby potatoes attached to each foot.

7.  Fire a gun. Come to think of it, I can barely look at a real gun. I don’t know why. Maybe I’ve seen too many crime movies. Guns scare the crap out of me.

8. Ride a horse. Aside from my fear that I’m too heavy for a horse to support me, I have visions of being thrown and landing in a back-breaking, never-walk-again kind of way.

9.  Drive in New York City. I live only 75 minutes from the city. I imagine all the weekend getaways I’m missing because I can’t dream of driving there or getting around in my own car. Yes, there are buses and taxis, but it would be nice to hop in my car at a moment’s notice and be able to get there and tool around town on my own.

10. Be a parent. I’ve no doubt it’s the hardest job in the world. I’ve always said I could easily get through a pregnancy and childbirth with flying colors. It’s everything that comes after that has me shakin’ in my shoes. Hats off to all the parents out there. I’m in total awe of you. 

Now it’s your turn. Anything you’d love to try in your lifetime, but don’t have the guts for? Have you ever tried something and regretted it?

Today scientists uncovered what Poindexter would have looked like if he was a girl. Fact: If I was a boy, I would have been beat up a LOT.

I think I argued that I actually wanted those glasses when my mother objected. I insisted that brown went with my eyes.

It’s all about the shoes: I remember these shoes as the most fabulous pair that existed in 1973. Why? Because you could remove the blue dots snap-on thing that went over the toe and wear red ones if you were feeling a little “night on the town.” I recall having great difficulty choosing between blue and red for my Holy Communion. You know, because all the church-going paparazzi were going to be there.

What’s the verdict? Cute or scary?

One would reasonably expect that if you entered a restroom at work that your private activities would be between only you and the toilet bowl. Not in our building.

A couple of months ago our restrooms were outfitted with the Kimberley-Clark Professional Toilet Paper Dispenser. It’s a fine toilet paper dispenser. Except for one thing.

Every time someone pulls paper from the rolls, something inside the dispenser shakes and shimmies so loudly, it sounds like machine-gun fire. How do we know? Our suite is located on the other side of the wall and the walls are paper thin.

What does this mean for us? Well, we get to hear every single time someone is about to …. er …. take care of the cleaning end of business. Once or twice a day wouldn’t bother me and my office mates, but our office is located next to a very popular, conveniently-located bathroom. Everybody uses it.

Yesterday I counted how many times we got to hear someone …. er …. get spring fresh. Thirty one times.

If you’re a regular reader here, you know I have issues with annoying noises and this is no different.  In fact, it’s worse than any of the other annoying noises because those aren’t attached to a private bodily function.

We’ve considered hanging a sign on the dispenser that reads: “Please pull paper gently. We can hear you.” But that will only serve to freak people out and we’re not that cruel. I decided the best thing to do is ask our Facilities Services staff to send someone over to either remove it and replace it with a quieter model.

Here’s the request I submitted:

The mens (Rm336) and ladies restroom (Rm334) toilet paper dispensers are incredibly loud. Everyone in our suite can hear whenever someone is in there. We never heard anything with the old type dispenser. It’s embarrassing to hear it all day, and so loud it disturbs our work. Hanging a sign “Please be quiet. We can hear you.” is not an option. Can they be removed, or fixed to be silenced? Thanks.

What happened today? A service repairman showed up in my office and asked “You the woman who reported a loud toilet paper dispenser?” Responding the only way I knew how to the most ridiculous question ever uttered in the English language, I said “Um. Yeah. Sorry.”

He and I then proceeded to discuss the problem at hand. I made him walk over to the kitchenette which is opposite the restrooms. I told him if he stood there for five minutes, he was sure to hear it. Every single time someone is in the bathroom, without fail, we get the noise.

I was really glad that one of my office mates, Jason, showed up to confirm to the nice man that indeed we are subjected to loud toilet paper rolling. We both explained that not only were we jarred by this loud noise, but that I could actually feel the vibrations from it under my feet if I stood near the shared wall.

That’s when he looked at us and said “It’s highly doubtful it’s the TP dispenser then.” Though it did just occur to us that it would be beyond bizarre to actually feel its vibration through the floor, we insisted we test our theory about the dispenser and MAKE it make the noise.

So off Jason went to the men’s room. “I’ll go nuts on the thing and I know you’ll hear it.”  The serviceman and I stood and waited as I grew increasingly embarrassed at having drug this guy over to our office to listen to our bathroom noise. I asked him if this was the stupidest job he ever got assigned and he said “Yeah, pretty much.”

Jason did like he said and went ballistic on the dispenser. The only problem was it didn’t sound like the noise we’ve been hearing. He ran back over and reported that it wasn’t the right noise. So I suggested it was the ladies room dispenser. Off I went to “fake pee” and do a number on the toilet paper. What I fast realized is it cannot possibly be this dispenser because you can barely get two good sheets out of the thing, much less pull down real hard so that the rollers shake and shimmy. I returned to the office deflated. “That’s not it!”

The serviceman who’d been humoring us all this time gave his assessment: “I think there’s air in the water lines. I’ll take a look.” He suspected that every time someone turned on the faucet to wash their hands, water and air ran through the lines and caused the noise. Just as we were getting over our embarrassment, we all heard THE noise. “Yep. It’s your water lines.” He rooted around in the maintenance closet, while I returned to my office with my tail between my legs. Whatever he worked on silenced the noise.

So it turns out our co-workers are not violent toilet paper grabbers after all, and we are the stupidest people on the planet. Thank God I never hung that note.

——-

Other humor bloggers are way smarter than me.

After digging through box after box of old photos, I finally found both of my high school prom pictures. So can everyone stop harassing me now? The funny thing about these pictures is that I’m not prepared to say that I look like the Bride of Frankenstein. I actually think I look fairly hot, in a trampy, Little House on the Prairie kind of way. I don’t know. You be the judge.

Note: I have blacked out my date’s eyes, you know, to avoid getting sued and all that. He’s an oral surgeon now and could probably buy me ten times over. Please God, don’t let him find my blog.

First up, the junior prom (click to enlarge)

This is the gown that my Dad didn’t want me leaving the house in. Why? Because under that tiny tulle shawl covered an embarrassing amount of cleavage. Without the shawl, the gown looked and felt like lingerie from Fredericks of Hollywood and now, as a mature woman, I can understand why my Dad was having a coronary. Sorry, Dad.

Memorable moment: When some jerk slam-danced onto my toe and made it bleed. I got blood on my gown and when I told my date what happened, he went over to they guy’s table and had a few words. A few loud words. There may have been a punch involved. Not sure. Then he made him come over and apologize to me. The poor guy didn’t mean it, but he never spoke to me again as long as I was still hooked up with my prom date. Ahhh, fear. The Great Motivator.

Next up, the senior prom. The pendulum clearly swung in the other direction a year later because I zipped myself up so good, only my hands and face were exposed, and just barely. This gown says “Don’t look at me. Don’t touch me. And where’d I put my butter churner?” I don’t recall lace being so “in” that year. I might have just been trying to undo my hooker look from the year before.

Memorable moment: I don’t actually remember anything from this prom, since my brain cells were being fried up in the heat of this gown. Despite its being lacy, there were layers and layers of it, all conspiring to envelope me in a sauna of my own doing. The day was hot. The day was humid. I couldn’t breathe and I’m pretty sure I ripped this thing off and stuffed it in the garbage when the night was over.

So what’s the consensus, people? Bride of Frankenstein or hot, hot hottie? Go ahead. I can take it.

It is amazing to me what I’ll stick up on this blog for a laugh. Those of you who have been expecting my prom pictures will be disappointed. I can locate only one of them. I found two, but they’re both of my junior prom. The senior one is nowhere to be found, though I promise to keep looking.

For now, you can have this.

It’s my 7th grade school picture and if it isn’t obvious enough, this is what NOT to do if you have very curly hair. I did not walk around with a book on my head all day. I did not sleep upside down. I fought the curl and this is the result.

I basically had an afro growing up. You cannot straighten my kind of hair because it’ll get really mad at you for going against the natural flow of things, revolt in the worst way, and come out looking like this.

In my earlier years, my poor mother would try to make me look presentable for school and have to contend with the kind of curls that don’t like to be bothered in any way, shape or form. Every hair on my head was anti-comb.

She would often use a detangling product called Johnson & Johnson No More Tears. It was a lie. There were many tears. "Mom!!! You’re killing me! Stop it!" You can’t get a brush or comb through an afro, and no spritzing from the J&J bottle was going to help.

She resorted many times to the only thing that got rid of tangles and my general rat’s nest. She cut the angriest curls out. Wouldn’t you like to see a picture of what that looked like? Let me keep looking….

——

I bet the people over at humor-blogs have good hair.

In this season of giving, I present you with Blue on Blue — the worst picture in the history of picture-taking.

I once told someone I would only post this to the blog if I was drunk. But upon further reflection, I decided I can’t keep this to myself. Seeing it might actually make someone feel better about themselves.

This is a 12-year-old me taking part in a benefit walk for MS research.  For the record, I am not color-blind. I thought this ensemble matched perfectly because most of the pieces had blue in them, some shade of blue. I can’t explain away anything about this picture: the white belt, the short shorts, the tube socks, the hair. Oh, the hair! It’s just so wrong from head to toe.

Enjoy this snapshot because there will never be another one like it. It is the single worst picture that exists of me outside my prom pictures, which are a whole different matter. For my junior year prom, I wore what looks like lingerie. In the senior prom picture, I look like Ma from Little House on the Prairie in a pink, lacy, bustled number that goes all the way up to my chin. If someone wants me to post them, you’re going to have to pay me. That, or I’ll need to be drunk.

Last week my husband Dave and I called for a plumber to fix a problem in our powder room. The toilet had minor issues, but we worried somehow it would turn major and we’d have a flood on our hands. For the record, we specialize in flooding basements, not bathrooms.

Nice plumber man shows up at our house bright and early and gives us the good news that it’s not a major problem. It costs $300 to fix a minor problem. I can’t help but wonder how much a major problem would cost. I’m clearly in the wrong business.

So he gets to work on our toilet and after about ten minutes realizes he needs more tools for the job and leaves to grab something out of his truck.

Because cats have a sense of humor, my cat Shadow, the one with occasional intestinal issues, decides now would be the right time to have some fun with everybody.

She got up off the couch, walked past my feet and stopped. And then she went pfffftttt. I thought "Oh, Shadow. No. Not today. Not now. We have company!" Well, plumber company. But still, company.

When Shadow passes gas, you know it instantly. She can pollute a whole room quicker than you can say "Where’s my gas mask?"

In all fairness, we were well-warned of her Silent But Deadly propensities by the foster parent who cared for her before we adopted her. The day we picked her up we were given one warning before we put her in the car.

"Shadow sometimes poops when she’s nervous. She doesn’t like cars much."

We thought how funny this was until Shadow let us know just how nervous she was only two miles out from the foster mom’s house. We were still twenty miles from home when it happened.

"Oh. My. God. She pooped. What are we going to do? Open a window! No! Don’t do that! It circulates up front! Air! I need air!!!"

We figured that the lesser of two evils was, believe it or not, to keep the windows closed. So now we were only 90% sure one of us would vomit. And then we hit construction.

We quickly pulled over and I tried to remove the offending deposit, but Shadow freaked out so bad in the carrier, I couldn’t get near it. So we were left with the poop and left with the gag-inducing odor.

The smell in the car for the entire ride home was criminally bad. It would have smelled sweeter if we had worn fully-loaded diapers on our heads and then submerged ourselves in a vat of sewage. The girl has a problem.

So back to the pfffftttt. After Shadow dropped the grenade and pulled the pin, she walked right into the powder room and began inspecting the plumber’s work so far. It almost didn’t matter that she walked in there with the cloud following her. The whole downstairs area was already a hot zone.

The one thing that came to mind as I pinched my nose was "What will the plumber think when he comes back into the house? He’s going to think it was me!"

When he arrived back to the work area, I looked up and said "Brian? It’s Brian, right?"

"Yeah."

"Um, that … um… smell you’re smelling? I have to apologize for my cat. She did it. I’m terribly sorry. You have to work in that small space and it’s horrible. I’m really sorry."

He looked at me point blank and said "I’m a plumber. You think I haven’t smelled anything worse than that? Don’t worry, I can take it."

I could have been no happier to write a check for $300 after forcing a complete stranger to stick his head near my toilet and smell my cat’s ass for the rest of the job. Plumbers are worth their weight in gold.

As for Shadow, she got a bowl of Beano for dinner and I may make her wear a diaper the next time we have visitors.

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.

So I just had a very embarrassing time of things at the grocery store. While waiting in line for postage stamps at the courtesy counter, a guy behind me says "I know you."

Uh-oh. I don’t know him.

He says "You live on my street, don’t you? Two doors down."

I’m not recognizing him in the least. I think I should know him if he lives only two doors away.

I give him my street name and he says "Yeah, we’re neighbors. You know Martha, two doors the other way."

Oh my God. He knows me and he knows who I talk to and who the hell is Martha? I try to get my bearings, but because I’m directionally-challenged and "two doors down" is not specific enough for me, I ask him "If I walk out my front door, which way is your house?"

"To your left." Nothing’s registering. "I’m the one whose red Jeep never leaves the driveway." That doesn’t help either.

"Which way is Martha?"

"She’s two doors to your right." Still nothing. I’m sure by now he can see light streaming straight through my ears, because clearly there’s no brain matter in there.

I’m so mortified and flustered by now and the cashier is trying to hand me my change and I don’t know who he is and he must think I’m a total moron. I try to salvage this go-nowhere conversation by at least asking his name, since it seems the neighborly thing to do.

He says "Andrew." We shake hands and he says in all seriousness, "Nice to meet you." How can I have been nice to meet? I’m a total clod. I wouldn’t know any of my neighbors if they sat on me.

I drive home and begin looking around for a red Jeep that never leaves the driveway, but realize he’s probably driving it home himself right now. God, just let me pull in the garage quick so I don’t have to see him again.

Still unsure who this guy is, I jump on my county’s tax records website and punch in my street name. Up comes all my neighbors’ house records and right there it is — an Andrew who lives two doors to the left. According to the records, he’s been living there 12 years. We’ve been in our house for ten. He’s been my neighbor for a decade and I didn’t know it.

I gotta get out more.

My husband is a klutz. I know it. He knows it. We’ve come to accept that about once a year he’s going to do something stupid to injure himself that requires a road trip to the ER. We’ve been there four times in the last five years. I was thinking he was overdue, until I got the call today.

"I hurt myself again."

"What now?"

"Pulled a hamstring and it’s painful to walk."

"How’d you do it?"

"I tripped."

"Good one."

Since he could drive himself there, I just said "Call me when you get home" and let it go at that. I know he’s in good hands, the hands of all the ER doctors who know him by name.

Here’s a rundown of his visits over the years:

• Poked himself in the eye with an arm of his glasses. Putting them on his face. His face has always been where it is now and I’m not sure how he could get it wrong that time. "Honey, look. The directions say they go on your nose, not in your eye."

• Scratched his cornea while washing his face. Again with the face. Stuck his finger in his eye and then it blew up all freak like.

• Fell off a 4-inch step and sprained his ankle. I don’t let him climb ladders. Or step stools.

• Broke his thumb carrying a TV. His brother dropped his end and Dave’s thumb got in the way.
  

While I’m somewhat sympathetic to his propensity for injury, all I could think of today was "Great. Now how are we going to move the old couch and chair outside to make room for the new furniture coming tomorrow?" He can barely walk.

I ignored all the moaning and groaning while we not-so-carefully shoved both pieces out onto the patio. We’re going to throw money at the delivery guys tomorrow to move the pieces to the curb for trash pickup on Thursday. Only problem with that is they’re coming very early in the morning.

So this is what all my neighbors will be seeing in my driveway ALL DAY LONG. We were hoping to schlep it out there in the dark of night so we don’t look too much like The Beverly Hillbillies. Hey, at least it’s not on the front porch, where all good hillbillies park their furniture.

p.s. The cats are completely stunned at this point. With nothing but cushions and tables in the living room, they either think we’re moving again or we’ve gone the bachelor pad route. As one reader pointed out to me after reading what Lucky did to the new coffee table, the cats believe the house is theirs and they’re not too keen on what we’re doing to it.

Blogger’s note: I did get a greenlight from all mortified parties here to post this picture. I offered to block out our eyes, but then you wouldn’t get the full effect of how stunning we think we look.

I present from the Embarrassing Picture files …. Polyester on Parade!

The scene: Aunt Sybilla’s house
The year: Circa 1970
The style: Early Partridge Family

Let’s break it down:

1. The socks: Not quite a match, eh? You might not have had the pleasure of seeing the socks had we figured out how to sit properly without our pants pulled up to our crotches.

2. The frilly pink tie thing on me. And a belt. And I’m missing a whole chunk of front teeth.

3. The pointy-collared, multi-directionally striped blouse on Ann. You’re gonna poke someone’s eyes out with those things!

4. Michael. Poor, brother Michael, looking like a cross between a young Ringo Starr and Woody from Toy Story. "Yer my favorite deputy!"

5. Are those brown shoes with purple socks, green socks, lavender pants and blue pants? I guess I should be glad we’re not wearing purple and green shoes. I could have so easily happened, you know.

And didn’t anyone think to comb our hair? Cripes. We look like the kids from Oliver Twist, only much more pathetic.

"Please, sir, may we have some other clothes?"

I admit it. I am directionally-challenged and it’s embarrassing. When someone starts giving me directions somewhere, I can only remember the first one or two instructions. After that, I need a picture. Better yet, a chauffeur. MapQuest doesn’t cut it because then I have to take my eyes off the road. And trust me, nobody wants that.

You might figure I’d have the most trouble finding my way around over long distances. You’d be right, and wrong. It’s possible for me to have trouble no matter how far I’m driving. Here’s how I got lost two tenths of a mile from my house.

It was October last year, the day my township was queuing floats on the street behind my house for a Halloween parade taking place nearby.

I drove up to an intersection just two blocks from home. A cop explained that I wasn’t allowed to get through until the parade got underway.

"How long will it be?"

"About 20 minutes."

"But I have ice cream in my car." Surely, melting ice cream qualifies as an emergency and aren’t cops supposed to assist with emergencies?

"You can drive down one block and loop back to Maria Lane."

Simple enough, I think. And then I remember. I’m a dunce. I begin to worry immediately that I’ll get lost in my own neighborhood and I might find myself still driving around by dinner time, and all I’ll have to show for it is melted ice cream and a massive headache. ‘Course, I could eat the ice cream, but then I might do it so fast that I get an ice cream headache. Either way, I’m going to have a headache.

I continue down to the next block and enter what I like to call Suburban Planners Toying with Me. I imagined them all sitting around a big table, then asking a 4-year-old with a box of crayons to draw some figure eights and squiggly lines. "Looks good. Now dump the houses here." There are more roundabouts and cul de sacs than through-streets. I drive through all of them. Twice. "Hi. Me again." Wave real nice. "Just ignore me."

As God is my witness, you cannot traverse this ridiculous maze of suburban streets to save your life, and thank God I have food in the car because I might actually have to save it.

I have a cell phone, but Dave’s at work, so it won’t do me any good. But there might be a series of answering machine messages that go like this:

"Dave. I’m lost. Come get me when you get home. I’m a block away."

Beep.

"Dave. I’m scared. Little kids are pointing and laughing at me because they know I’m lost."

Beep.

"Dave. People think I’m casing their houses. I keep driving past them over and over."

Beep.

"Dave. Tell the cats I said good-bye. I’m never getting home. I ate all the food."

After fifteen $%*@# minutes of driving around in Dante’s seventh circle of development hell, I finally found the cross street I needed to get me home. When I got there, I screamed a colorful expletive I only bring out for special occasions such as this, and gunned it. Look out! There’s a gallon of chocolate chip cookie dough with my name on it.

While trying to get to Lauter’s Furniture store in Easton on Sunday, Dave and I got sidetracked by numerous road closings due to what I later learned was the Via Lehigh River Relay Marathon. We tried every conceivable way to get to our destination, but kept getting redirected elsewhere by policemen.

In frustration we turned around and headed west up Northampton St. and as we approached 7th St., I shouted "Let’s stop at Easton Baking!" At least the trip wouldn’t be a total loss. Easton Baking is a fixture in town, been there forever. Located on a tiny residential street, there’s nowhere to park, but nobody cares. You just throw your car in park wherever you want and run inside. The neighbors must love this.

I dart into the store and get in a very long line. I’m not worried about the wait, since it’s moving quickly. Almost too quickly. I wanted time to peruse the selections, but the line moves so fast, I couldn’t get a very good look. It was all just a sugary blur.

I see immediately they have a system here and everyone but me knows how to work it. You get in line at the right, announce your order, have your money in hand and pay on the left. Absolutely no deviation is allowed. If you’re familiar with the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" episode, this is the bakery version of that. I get the sense if you don’t do it right, an angry mob will chase you out the door and beat you senseless with fresh and crispy baguettes. "No bread for YOU!"

My anxiety is made worse knowing I haven’t a clue what to buy. When it came my turn, I blurted out "Just grab a big box and I’ll point at stuff I want!" I figured this was the fastest way to go about it and would ensure that others behind me wouldn’t punish me for not being prepared. I managed to fill the box with an assortment of stuff I may or may not have wanted.

While waiting to pay, I met eyes with a guy who’d been staring at me a while. I thought for sure he was going to say "You don’t have a clue, do you lady? You silly, stupid woman." What he did say weirded me out a little:

"Has anyone ever told you that you look like Cher?"

"Um, no. That’s a first. Thanks…. I think."

Maybe it’s the longish curly hair, maybe it’s the nose, maybe I looked all drag queen at 11AM in the morning. For the record, I don’t see the resemblance, and neither does Dave.

But it got me thinking of other women people have told me I looked like. Here goes:

Stacy London of TLC’s makeover show "What Not to Wear."
I think we have the same nose, and I can’t say I’m happy about it.

Justine Bateman of "Family Ties" fame. Back when I wore my hair straight. And again with the nose.

Amy Winehouse, who has a popular song out now called Rehab, with a running lyric "They tried to make me go to rehab, but I said no, no, no." She’s in rehab now.

Madolyn Smith Osborne, the actress who played opposite Chevy Chase in 1988’s Funny Farm.

So what do you think? Do I look like any of these women? You can leave a comment, but if you stick one Cher song title, one Cher reference, one Cher anything in there, you’re banned for life.

Yesterday was my birthday and I’m feeling older than my age. I’m not at all close to AARP membership eligibility, but my out-of-shape body tells me otherwise. To add insult to injury, this week I saw a report about a 40-year-old American swimmer, Dara Torres, who’s gunning for her fifth Olympics. If she makes the team, she’ll be the oldest female Olympic swimmer at the age of 41. If this isn’t crazy enough, she had a baby a mere 15 months ago and yet has freakish washboard abs. It’s just not human. It disgusts me that she’s doing all this at about the same age as me, while I’m getting winded walking two flights of steps.

Today I felt aging pains quite literally as I began the process known as “Chunky Girl Gets Dressed for a Wedding.” Control top pantyhose should be a girl’s best friend, but they’re really not. They make all types of hose, but a woman my age always goes for the control-top variety. Control top, put another way, means “cram all the fat in one neat little package so nothing wobbles around too much and hurts anybody.” They should put that right on the box. I estimate I burned a hundred calories getting them on, so that’s a plus. But once you’re in them and the elastic band takes hold above the midsection, there is nowhere for an expanding, after-dinner stomach to go but straight out. Lovely.

I managed to get into my ensemble without too much difficulty, but what worried me was the shoes I’d be wearing. Four inch high-heel stilettos that should only be sold to 20-year-olds who consider flavored water a food group. I just can’t walk in these things anymore. I know it, yet I keep wearing them. My only other choice was near-flat shoes that make my legs look like tree stumps. I chose the painful ones because they look better. They make my feet swell up like sausages, but they look nice. And nice is the goal. Pain is a necessary evil. Dave was given pre-event instructions to not walk too fast in front of me, as I can’t keep up in these things. I teeter-tottered my way from the car to the church and marveled that I almost fell only once. During various parts of the ceremony, when most of the congregation listened to the minister extol the virtues of married life, blah, blah, blah, all I was thinking was when can I sit down and take a load off? I took every opportunity to remove my cruel shoes – in the church, in the car, and even later at the reception dinner table.

Speaking of dinner, we were having a wonderful time of things until Dave was joined by a few little visitors — ants. Oh, how nice. Makes the meal so appetizing, all those little black specks walking around. I won’t identify where the reception was held, but let’s just say it was a country club somewhere in the Lehigh Valley. Dave showed me the first one when it made its appearance clinging to a straw. “Kath. What’s this? That an ant?” “Um, yeah. That’s gross. Just toss it aside and eat your meal.” Ten minutes later while working through his crab cakes, he gets another visitor. This one’s doing laps around his dinner plate. I discreetly smash it into oblivion with a napkin and vow right then to blog about how it is a $10,000 membership fee country club can serve up ants for dinner. Lehigh Valley Country Club, do you know you have ants in your kitchen? Oops, did I just say that?

Following coffee and dessert, a photographer friend insisted she get a picture of Dave and me outside. I resisted the attempt, as I knew as soon as I stood up, the belly bulge was going make me look like I was pregnant somewhere in the range of 5-7 months and begged her to please restrict her pictures to head shots. I also had to consider that my shoes were choking my feet and making me walk in a way that twisted my back into a new configuration that was going to take my chiropractor weeks to undo.

But we were coaxed into going out anyway, where the photographer asks us to pose real nice and smile pretty. I realize the only way she’s not going to get a grimace out of me is if I kick off my heels, which I gleefully do since the spikes are sinking into the ground anyway. But the problem with removing shoes from your sausage feet is that sausage feet take the opportunity to swell five times bigger when they’re free from their constraints. I’m just hoping no one is looking at my big bulbous clown feet and wondering how it is I’ll get the shoes back on without a shoehorn, a pulley and three assistants.

The photographer mercifully obliges me by taking above-the-waist-only pictures, keeping my faux pregnancy gut horror from public display. I vow that tomorrow I’ll start exercising and lose a hundred pounds. If Dara Torres can keep her shape and kick the asses of swimmers half her age, the least I can do is get a little serious about dropping some baggage and stop having to squeeze myself into control top pantyhose. And I might someday want to wear those stilettos again. Until then, they’re back in the closet where they belong….until the next time, because as you can tell by now, I’m a glutton for punishment.

Dipping into the Embarrassing Picture files, I present for your ridicule more thinking-I’m-stylin’ clothes from the 70s. Here, my sister Ann and brother Mike are striking a pose holding what was known back in the day as "real milk." Not 2%, not 1%, not fat-free, and certainly not that scary skim, oddly-blue milk. Real, fattening, practically-a-milkshake milk.

Observe carefully. Our attire might have been described back then as nouveau Austrian chic, or now upon further reflection, more likely answered the question ‘How can we make an outfit with all these leftover scraps of mismatched fabric?’

I actually didn’t mind being clothed in things that matched my sister’s outfits. We are only two years apart, so we were often dressed like twins (same style, different colors). But did they have to be THIS hideous? I don’t even remember having this outfit. I may have been so traumatized that it was stricken from my memory. I’m curious if these were dresses or if there were pants that went with the tops. Best left to the imagination….. or not.

Reader survey: Our mother took us clothes shopping in downtown Easton at a place called The Surprise Shop, aptly-named, since apparently what we bought was quite a surprise. Does anyone remember this store? I have faint recollections of it being a long and narrow shop with creaky wood-plank flooring. It was located a block or two west of the old Woolworth’s on Northampton Street.

I was talking to my student assistant yesterday about some really bad pictures of me as a kid. It happens I had some particularly embarrassing ones floating around on my website and showed him this. The poor kid. Didn’t know WHAT to say.

Christmas, 1970. There is so much scary stuff in this picture. I think I’m wearing a smock-thing made of really bad fabric probably not meant for clothes. What is Ann wearing? Those pants!!! What is with the pants?!?! And just what is Dad doing? Is that part of a bike? A balloon animal in the making? Bert and Ernie are hanging out behind us. Ernie still had his hair. He later lost it in the "Scissor Incident of 1971," perpetrated by me.

Stay tuned to this channel for more of the same. The best (or should I say the worst?) pictures are not surprisingly from the 1970s.