Category: Home Life Page 4 of 5

The Too Big Chill

On July 23, 2010

I got a new refrigerator today. It was a very tight fit in the built in space we had for our old refrigerator. I measured the space front to back and knew I had about 32 inches, and this new one was 31.5 so it was perfect.

I loaded all my food in, and there was plenty – mostly jars. My husband thinks jars are like dollar bills – it’s better to have too many than too few. We have 10 different jars of jelly. Nobody even eats jelly in this house but me – about once a month. There are six jars of horseradish! Eight jars of mustards. Three tubes of wasabi. It took me an eternity to get all that stuff into the new refrigerator because I wiped off all the sticky on the jars. But It sure looked pretty in there when I got done.

This evening, when I went to pull a frying pan out of the drawer, I couldn’t open it because it bumped into the new refrigerator. F-word! So I pulled the refrigerator out and measured it. 31.5” – it should fit. I pushed it back in as far as I could and tried to open the drawer. It hit the refrigerator.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “The refrigerator doesn’t go in deep enough.” My husband pulled it back out and we looked closely. Where the water line comes in, there is a one inch metal protector that added, duh, one inch to the depth. So the refrigerator was actually 32.5” deep. I kind of wish someone had pointed that out in all the stuff I read online during my hours of research.

I called the appliance store and they will take the bohemith back if we pay a 15% re-stocking fee.

There is a very small silver lining in all this, however. When the appliance guys were here, I asked them if they’d move an old freezer out to the driveway because I’d never get my husband to do it. One of them said, “Oh, he’s that kind of guy, huh?” and I said, “Yeah, he’s pretty good with the remote control but he doesn’t want to do too much more than that while he’s home.”

“I’m like that,” the guy says. “I just tell my wife I don’t know how to do something and then she quits asking me.”

“Really?” I said, intrigued.

“Sure, or else I do it wrong and then she thinks I’ll just screw it up if she asks me to do it again.”

“I think that’s EXACTLY what my husband does!” I said. “I ask him to do something and he never manages to do it the way I want him to, even if I give great directions.”

“Yep, he’s doing that on purpose,” he said. “I do it all the time.”

“Do tell,” I said.

“Well, I better not say anything more, I’ve already given away a big guy secret.”

I started thinking about all the times my husband, and for that matter my kids, have whined that they didn’t know how to do something, or say, “But mom, you do it so much better,” and I quit asking them. Now it’s all very clear to me what they’ve been up to.

From now on I’m going to be on the lookout. When somebody around here does a lousy job I’m gong to accept it rather than thinking I need to do it myself next time because I want it “done right.” It’s better to at least get a halfway job than none at all.

I hope I get the same delivery guys when they come to pick up the refrigerator. If I get more insider tips on the conniving behavior of men, I’ll pass them along.

Sad Little Good Memories

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 22, 2010

In Home Life, Kids

Today we got a new refrigerator to replace a refrigerator and separate freezer in our bonus room that are old energy hogs.

I don’t go out to the bonus room much anymore. It’s my daughter’s lair. I swoop in with a vacuum on occasion, so I only look at the carpet. Today as I was rearranging the space for the new refrigerator, I started noticing things that I hadn’t “seen” in a long, long time.

I noticed my son’s snowboard and remembered how my son, daughter, and I used to go up to Skibowl on Fridays when they had cheap night skiing so we could learn to ski. My husband is a good skier, but I learned at the same time my kids did. My daughter was only five years old and had a neon pink one-piece ski suit. Both kids were fearless and zoomed down the hill with me trying to catch up between my constant falls. They looked like cartoons of speeding streaks while I had skis and poles flying through the air. We’d ski until 11:00 at night under sparkling stars, freezing on the excruciatingly slow lifts but having too much fun to go inside.

I saw the skateboard and remembered getting up at 4 am and going to the skate park hauling my son and six of his friends in our old Ford Taurus station wagon. That early, they had the whole place to themselves. My daughter and I would roam around the adjacent pastures with the dog and then fetch French toast sticks at Burger King for everyone. That was before I quit eating there because of their tacky commercials.

I saw my son’s lacrosse stick and remembered tossing that forty pound ball with him, worried that it would miss the tiny little net in my stick and knock me out cold.

I saw the boogie boards and remembered going camping at the beach and playing with the kids in the ice-cold Pacific ocean. We would go in an inch at a time and let that part of us get numb before going a little further. The legs weren’t so bad, but when the water got to my waistline it was SO cold on my back. I didn’t want to go any further but they’d splash me until I was wet enough I might as well dive under the waves.

I looked at my son’s drum set and guitar and remembered the garage band practices and how the walls in the house literally shook from the loud vibrations. I saw the wooden blocks that they used to build roadways and ramps. I noticed the two big bins of Legos and remembered the castles and spaceships they worked hours building, and stepping on those tiny pieces barefoot in the night, silently cursing that Legos were always everywhere.

I saw an old blanket and remembered how they’d would gather every blanket in the house and build elaborate multi-roomed forts, and how they’d make me crawl on the floor and go inside.

Holy crap, it was a tidal wave of memories that knocked me down and left little streams of tears rolling down my cheeks.

What happened to those fun little people? They used to always be right by my side. We had new adventures every day – building obstacle courses, doing cartwheels in the back yard, playing hide and seek. They disappeared and left their memories to collect dust in the bonus room as thick as the dust under the old refrigerator.

If you are still with me through this soulful trip down memory lane, I can only say that this one little day of boo-hooing is a very small price to pay for years and years of great memories. My kids may not give me the time of day now, but not so long ago they were like little planets orbiting around me, and I was the light of their lives.

Excuse me, it’s midnight and I hear a car door slam. Let me drop EVERYTHING and greet my baby girl who’s all grown up now.

sigh….

Relatively Clean – In Spite of My Family

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 20, 2010

In Home Life

Recently I wrote about the carpet man moving furniture and discovering multiple messes, and you were probably thinking, “That woman is a pig.” I’m not denying it, but clean IS relative. As the carpet man said, “Your house is immaculate compared to the one I did before I came here.”

He described yellow stains all over the customer’s long white shag carpet, and the guy didn’t have any pets. “When I put the oxidizer on it, urine smell rose up like fog in a swamp. I know pet urine, and that wasn’t no pet urine.”

So I guess I can be proud that my house is not as disgusting as some guy who mistakes a white carpet for a white toilet.

I’d say my house is more neglected than dirty. I like that word – neglected. It sounds like I’ll get around to doing something at some point in the future. A filthy house implies that the place has crusty dishes and Burger King wrappers scattered like confetti.

Speaking of Burger King, I hate those commercials. Have I mentioned that lately? If so, it won’t hurt to touch on it again. If not, I’m WAY past due. That plastic headed King of Burgers is about the dumbest thing on the planet, and he’s got no personality whatsoever. He just appears in a bedroom or stands around waiting for someone to tip him over in a cow pasture, then rolls down the hill through cow pies wearing that stupid grin. I just don’t get those commercials. They had some other commercials before the King that I can’t recall except that they were insulting and/or tacky. I refuse to go to Burger King anymore because of them.

I bet whoever is doing their ads thinks they are luring in a new sector of the population, but surely ads shouldn’t drive existing customers away.

I worked for one day while I was in college at a Burger King. The floor behind the counter was SO greasy. I guess it was because of the “flame-broiled” burgers the sizzled grease must have risen up into the air and drifted back down on the tile floor. The tennis shoes I wore were Keds with flat, slick soles. The first time I walked behind there I felt like I was on black ice. I had to keep gabbing the counters and other employees so I wouldn’t fall and break my coccyx. To move anywhere, I glided my feet across the floor like I was on roller skates. I was forced to abandon my minimum wage service to the King so as not to risk my life.

I realize this has nothing to do with the tidiness of my house, but I could tie them together given enough time. Segue’s are my specialty! Oh, I know. That Burger King I worked at was actually a clean place. They mopped the floor several times a day, but due to a continual influx of customers, the burgers kept spewing grease on the freshly cleaned floor. A vicious cycle.

It’s like that at my house. If no one ever came through the door, it would be spotless. Instead, I’m over my head in laundry with my daughter changing every couple of hours because she’s a TEENAGER. Nobody in this house can butter a piece of toast without getting crumbs everywhere. The dog rolls in fresh-mowed grass and comes in the house to shake, creating a green area rug that gets tracked through the house. My husband uses the dining room chairs as his coat closet. Friends drop brownie chunks on the floor and step on them, leaving little trails of squashed black doughy stuff as they travel from room to room.

Yes I have nagged, but no one listens and I don’t enforce with the consistency advised in those “natural consequences” books. My husband and dog ignore me flat out. My daughter will do whatever I ask during each nag session, but later in the day she leaves her dirty dishes in the sink and I have to nag anew.

So my house is like Burger King. The continual flow of “customers” is what causes the “grease” that I have to “mop” all day and night. If I didn’t have that to do, I’d have time to keep up on the deep cleaning like clearing the cobwebs and getting a toothbrush into the cracks and hard-to-reach places I was so embarrassed about when the carpet man was here.

I wonder what he told the next customer after he left my house!

Where’s Your Paradise?

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 20, 2010

In Home Life, Kids, Relationships, Vacations, Weather

I’m thinking the key to life is loving where you are. Where I am, or soon will be, is in the kitchen getting a fistful of chocolate cherry trail mix. Be right back.

It’s gone! I searched everywhere – in the cabinets, on the nightstand, in the bonus room, but it’s disappeared. Doggone it! Thank goodness I found a Ghiradelli semi-sweet chocolate bar the size of a greeting card that hit the spot. No, I didn’t eat it all, I left a couple of squares to the previous owner so they’d know they hadn’t imagined putting it in the cupboard. After all, I’m a considerate person.

Back to paradise. We were visiting friends over in Central Oregon and the sun was shining the whole time with nary a cloud in the sky. It’s hard to complain about warm sunshine after living in Portland during the incredibly cool summer we’re having (to find out why – SHAMELESS PLUG – get the global warming book I helped write called, Footprint, a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Extinction).

One morning we came out of the dark bedroom to be greeted by glowing sunlight through every window, and our host said, “Another day in paradise!”

Didn’t Jimmy Buffet sing a song about that? Somebody did. Anyway, I got to thinking about it and I concluded **** PROFOUND SAYING ALERT***** that:

PARADISE IS WHERE THE HEART IS

This might sound a whole lot like another saying, “Home is where the heart is,” but that one isn’t centered on the page and in all capital letters. I wonder if I can copyright this saying and get royalties when the world starts using it? Because, you know, paradise is sometimes where the money is, too.

Clear skies and warm sunshine might certainly be part of the formula for paradise, but I’ve had a taste of paradise when I’ve been on the side of Mt. Bachelor in the freezing cold and hit a bump on my skies that should have sent me flailing end over end but I miraculously recovered and flew weightless through the air without breaking a leg. It’s exhilarating.

Something else to ponder: Isn’t the world confusing enough without spelling skies and skies the same way?

I’ve also been in paradise when my teenage daughter asks me to go to a movie with her. OMG I will drop anything to spend time with either of my kids because they are scattered like my Uncle Vance’s ashes in the trunk of my cousin Nancy’s car. That’s a funny story I’ll try to remember to tell one day.

My kids rarely light near me any longer than it takes them to say, “Mom, you already asked me that.” I’m not so sure I DID ask, and I certainly don’t remember what they said. They make stuff up to drive me crazy. Even so, I love when they’ll forsake their friends and hang out with me, even when I know it’s because none of their friends can do anything right that minute and also I’ll pay for their movie ticket. Still, to me it’s more of a “paradise” to hang out with them than being in the tropics sipping POG and vodka while swinging in a hammock on the beach. I think.

The point is that paradise is in our heads. If it weren’t, then everyone in warm places would be happy, and everyone else would be miserable. That may pan out in some cases, but I have witnessed many, many cranky shop clerks in those little beach stores in Lahaina. In fact, there are few things crankier than a middle-aged Hawaiian woman in a t-shirt shop packed with tourists unfolding the merchandise during the heat of the Maui summer. I’ve heard them mumble, “I got your paradise RIGHT HERE!” and though I’m not sure what that means, they didn’t sound happy.

So, gentle readers, you probably don’t need to look any further than your own back yard for your little patch of paradise. And if you find some money out there, send me some!

A Naturally Happy Day

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 19, 2010

In Exercise, Home Life, Vacations

Yesterday I had a naturally happy day. By natural I mean a day that was happy on its own merit and not one I have to cajole myself into believing was happy.

I’ll give you an example. When it’s raining and cold and I’m freezing to my bones I can say, “At least I’m cozy inside and not out in a leaky tent with no bathroom.”

Or I can say, “I’ve got a sore tooth but I at least I have teeth, unlike my cousin in Tennessee who drank Coca-Cola out of a baby bottle.”

These things are designed to make me feel better. If I imagine myself in more pitiful circumstances, then I’ll feel better and can even give my situation a “silver-lining” up a couple of notches on the happiness scale.

This method of happiness works, but every now and then things go so well I’m not forced to look at the miserable side of life to get pumped up, and yesterday was one of those.

First, I found a swimsuit that doesn’t make me look fatter than I am, and it was ON SALE! Next, I found a couple of tops that don’t make me look fatter than I am, and they were ON SALE too!

This in itself would have been enough to make for a pretty stellar day, but I also went hiking in a wilderness area at the base of Three Finger Jack, a central Oregon mountain with jagged peaks that look way more like a bunch of jagged peaks than three fingers. I’ve seen that mountain from every angle and still can’t find the fingers, but this did not make me unhappy because it was gorgeous up there, with snow-fed streams and wildflowers blooming in every direction. We hiked for four hours, which wore me out and therefore must have burned a lot of calories. Lucky for me because I had a bag of chocolate cherry trail mix that geniuses invented. They stuck some peanuts in there to make it an “official” trail mix food, but for the most part it was chocolate and more chocolate. Could a wilderness hike be any better?

Then I dozed all the way home while my husband drove which was great because I was unconscious as he passed extra-long RV’s on curves, and risked our lives in other creative ways that usually give me a heart attack.

But the real happiness came when I got home and read my emails. Not only did I have several new site members (thanks and welcome!), but also the book I helped to write about global warming got an endorsement from James E. Hansen, the world’s foremost authority on global warming. HOW EXCITING!

Hansen is a NASA scientist who has written a couple of books about global warming as well as teaching at Columbia University and being called to testify before Congress. He is no slouch. So having his endorsement is such a wonderful thing even though you, personally, have never heard of him.

You can see the endorsement on the website www.TheBookFootprint.com and/or order the book on amazon.com.

Riding on the high of all this, my daughter’s boyfriend had left the movie, “Big Fish” at our house and I watched it. What a delight! Tim Burton is a very interesting director, and I was sucked into that movie like a lollipop into my toothless cousin’s mouth. By the time I went to bed I was feeling bubbly. A wonderful day never hurt anyone.

The Carpet Man Wore Me Out

By Suzanne Olsen

On July 15, 2010

In Home Life

I had a carpet man come today to clean my carpets and he wore me out.

First thing he said to me was, “I could also do your kitchen tile after I clean the carpet.” I looked down to see if the kitchen tile needed cleaning and – GASP – it was atrocious. “See the difference between the grout under your cabinet here and the rest of the floor?” he said.

See the difference? It was black and white. Literally. Under the cabinet, where no one but the spiders go, the grout was a nice pale grey. Two inches out into the real world, it was a rusty black – the color of dirt ground into grease. All that fried food my husband loves is bad for our arteries, I know that, but it’s even worse for grout.

I was embarrassed to crimson. “Well,” I stuttered, “I used to get down on my hands and knees with a toothbrush every year after we first moved in, but I’ve been busy the last decade.” It came out in a pitiful, “I’m such a bad maker of homes” voice.

“I can do this and the front hallway for $400,” he said.

“Or I could get down on my hands and knees and do it in a couple hours,” I said, shocked at the price.

“But isn’t your time worth something?” he asked.

“It’s worth about $200 an hour, apparently,” I said. “I think I’ll hold off on the kitchen floor until I win the lottery or have two extra hours, whichever comes first.”

We have the good fortune of living in a house surrounded by leafy trees so it’s somewhat dark in the summer, even with all the windows. A dark house hides many horrors. He started going through the house turning on every single light. With all those spotlights the rug looked like it was covered with giant polka dots of stains.

Before I could start rationalizing about the kids and the dog, he said, “Looks like all the Scotchgard has worn off so even if you clean every spill up right away it’s probably going to leave a little discoloration. I can add Scotchgard for an extra $75.”

Finally he offered his hefty price. I was in no position to turn it down because I couldn’t imagine having to go through this humiliation with another carpet cleaning guy. “That’s way more than I’ve paid before,” I said, hoping to talk him down. He started ranting about all his magnificent equipment and how many horsepower his German-made vacuum cleaner had and the torque of his suction thingy and I finally held up my hand and said, “Oh. Okay, well that sounds great! Let’s get started.”

He moved a chair and it was FILTHY under there. Candy wrappers featuring the first Star War movie were cocooned in wool carpet lint. “Those darn kids,” I laughed, cursing them under my breath. I scurried in front of him to move other things before he could get there and find a feminine hygiene product or something worse.

While he was cleaning, I had nowhere to go but the kitchen. I started looking at the cabinets and couldn’t remember when the last time I’d really cleaned them. When I was a stay-home mom, I’d soap and rinse and dry and polish them while the kids were playing with Flubber or doing art projects at the kitchen table – hanging out but being productive. Since I’ve been working, I spend as little time in that kitchen as possible. My husband likes to cook, but he’s sloppy. At that very moment, the sun streaming through the skylights reflected off long streaks of shiny stuff not visible any other time of the year except about a month during the summer when the sun is high overhead and finds a peek-hole through the tree branches. Would my humiliation never end? I got out the cleaning stuff and went to work on the cabinets. When I got to the microwave I noticed years of dust in the little space between it and the built-in cabinet. Continuing on, I found similar nooks and crannies harboring grease and grime that I’d never noticed before.

One thing led to another, and I was covered in suds and dirt and grime when I wrote the check out to the carpet man. You are all invited to my house today because it is sparkling clean. This is only today, though, because that mess will be right back tomorrow, which is why I don’t fret about cleaning like I used to. The dirt will always return, whether I clean today or not. That’s my new philosophy, and it works for me, except when the carpet guy comes. Thank goodness I won’t have to go through that for another decade!

Happiness Is a Good Night’s Sleep

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 22, 2010

In Home Life

I mentioned the happiness book I’d been listening to on my iPod yesterday, and the author started talking about studies that had been done showing happy people get enough sleep, i.e. 8 hours a night.

DUH!

I’m not trying to be sarcastic, well, yeah I am, because this seems like common sense to me. Everybody gets cranky when they don’t get enough sleep, but nobody’s doing it on purpose. If you’re not sleeping enough it’s probably because you have (1) too much work, (2) too many babies (3) too many bed bugs, or (d) too many troubles. Oh, and I forgot to add (f) teenagers.

I have a teenage daughter who spends her every waking minute giving me causes to fret. What are her and her boyfriend doing when they’re supposed to be at a movie? What are her and her boyfriend doing out in the bonus room, and should I go in and pretend to be looking for something again? When we added that bonus room it was to get our noisy kids and their friends away from us. Now it’s way, WAY too quiet in there. Is her boyfriend causing her to study less? Is she spending too much time with her boyfriend and not enough with her girlfriends? Does the boyfriend ever eat at home?

She has a midnight curfew, and I feel I need to be awake to make sure she comes home on time, and alone. It’s not that I don’t trust her, it’s just that I was her age once….and I’m not going to say anything else on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.

So if I hop in bed at 12:01, and the crows start squawking at 5 a.m., which means I’m going to lose about 3 hours worth of happiness. I believe this explains why I am cranky and try to pick fights with my family, friends, grocery clerks, and the dog. If none of them are around, I argue with myself, out loud. Sometimes I snarl and bite. I’ll show you the teeth marks if you don’t believe me.

Sometimes I’d like to switch places with my dog. She lies around all day except when someone goes in the kitchen, where she’ll come from the ends of the earth hoping for a dollop of butter. I sling it off the knife onto the floor but sometimes it hits her. What a mess. Butter splats right between the eyes, and her tongue not nearly long enough to reach it even when she curls it out the sides of her mouth. This is torture for her, so I’m not sure why I nearly roll on the floor laughing when it happens. I invite the whole house in to watch. Then I have to clean off the butter and give her a dab as a consolation, which I’m sure she thinks is not nearly enough for what I’ve put her through and the public humiliation.

I can tell you one thing, though, I don’t lose any sleep worrying about accidently buttering my dog on occasion. I’ve got plenty of other things robbing me of my rest and happiness, including writing this blog very late at night. I get tickled and that makes me wide awake. I just wish you could see that dog trying to get at that butter.

So I will bid you all sweet dreams and hope the crows decide to take a vacation so I can sleep in until maybe even 6 o’clock. Ah, that it would be so….

How a Morning at Starbucks Defined the Dictionary Part 2

By Suzanne Olsen

On June 1, 2010

In Home Life

(In our last episode we left Merriam returning from the bathroom with extraordinarily sweet smelling hands, while Webster was sitting at the table with a mouthful of spoon bread and a maddingly obsessive tickle in his throat.)

…Webster tried to grin. At this very second the tickle brought out the big guns.

It called on the mouth to send reinforcements in the form of saliva. The mouth was more than happy to assist, ordering the saliva to migrate slowly over the tickle like a glacier. Webster, feeling the trickle sliding over the tickle, was defeated by the onslaught and coughed with a mighty roar just as Merriam settled himself into the booth.

The spray from the cough hit Merriam like a shower without one of those flow restrictors on it that you find in old motels. It slammed his head back against the booth with such force that the woman on the other side thought it was an earthquake and ran screaming from into the street where she spotted another Starbucks and went inside to order a replacement latte.

Luckily no one was injured. Courteous Starbucks employees ran over with fresh white towels and wiped Merriam down. He sat wide-eyed, apparently in shock, as they buffed him up like he was at a car wash.

Webster took a long drink of scalding coffee, which laid the tickle to rest – until next time. “As I was saying, we will have the dictionary set up so that words like “winterize” will not have to be defined other than saying something like, ‘making ready for winter.’ If that’s not enough to satisfy them, they can go to the dictionary again and look up winter which we could define as “the season between autumn and spring comprising in the northern hemisphere usually the months of December, January, and February or as reckoned astronomically extending from the December solstice to the March equinox.”

Merriam came out of his trance, buffed up spiffy as a chrome bumper, and said, “Hot damn, word man, you’re brilliant!” He’d forgotten all about the saliva and pumpkin bread shower he’d just been subjected to. “Why, they won’t know what equinox means, and they’ll have to look that up, too.”

“Yes! Yes!” exclaimed Webster, “Now you understand! They’ll have their noses in our dictionary all day long. It will be like a wonderful scavenger hunt, with words as the only clues!”

“We must get on this right away, before someone steals our idea.” Merriam said. “There’s just one thing that I’m confused about.”

“What is it, man, speak up!” said Webster, anxious to get started.

“What does ‘wintercation’ mean?”

“Oh, I’m very excited about that word. Very excited. It’s one I heard in a commercial just yesterday. It combines two words – winter and vacation – into one. Don’t you see the possibilities? We can have these words listed individually, and then we can combine them and people will have to look up both root words!”

“Yes, yes, I see,” said Merriam. “We could combine any number of words and create new words. Let me see if I can come up with one….Here’s one: ‘frenemy.’”

“What’s that?”

“It’s a word I saw on a website – it means a friend who is, at the same time, an enemy,” Merriam said. “They also used the word ‘complisult’ which is giving an compliment which is also an insult.”

“Use it in a sentence,” Webster said.

“You have a nice face except for all the wrinkles,” Merriam said.

“Who-a,” Webster said. “Do you think it’s okay to just take any two words and smash them together like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“Why not?” Merriam said gleefully. His happy disposition accounted for the ‘Merri’ part of his name.

“By George, you’re right! Why not? Especially since they’ll be paying us by the word!”

So blog readers, you now have the true** story of how to pad out a blog when you’ve run out of ideas. You’ll notice that I turned the word “spunky” into a two-day blog, and for that I give myself credit.

For those of you curious as to the definition of spunky, I will again consult Merriam and Webster, who are hunched over a drawing table playing a game of tic-tac-toe. They say that spunk is “a woody tinder…any of various fungi used to make tinder.” They also said I could look up the words: mettle, pluck, spirit, and liveliness, but I’m okay with that first definition.

As to the original topic of this blog, I noticed that I am more like my mother than I previously thought, and the flaw that I have imitated (unbeknownst to me) was the flaw of being too lenient and trusting. One of my adolescents got into some mischief, and even though adolescents will be adolescents, as they say, it might not have happened if I’d been more suspicious and ruled with an iron fist.

So it is with a mouthful of pumpkin bread (it’s really is good) that I apologize to those people whom I said were lazy. Even us woody tinders fall into the bad habits of our parents, which is not to say we will give up the struggle. We just have to ground ourselves, much like the way I’ve grounded my child for the aforementioned shenanigans, and hope we all learn something from it. **And FYI, none of this is true except, or including, the grounding.

Little Clones

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 30, 2010

In Home Life

Have you ever noticed how some people are carbon copies of their parents? I’m not talking about looks, but the way they act. I have a theory about this.

If you are an observant person, and I know that you are, then you can look at what your parents are doing and make judgment calls. I noted, for instance, that my mom spent a lot of time sitting around without really having too much ambition. I also noticed that, when I got older, I wanted to sit around. I loved many, many things about my mother, but sitting around wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I decided to lay around instead, which I considered a change for the better.

Same with my dad. He was old school with the attitude, “Do it because I said so.” Normal kids don’t want to do things they’re ordered to do because it’s usually something unsavory like cleaning your room or kissing your Aunt Jane. If the person would explain why, like: “Clean your room so that the Boogie Man won’t want to move in under your bed because he only hangs out in dirty rooms,” then I’d be in there swooshing through the sticky jawbreakers on the dresser and crusty socks splayed all over like some kind of wild thing until my room was completely sanitized. But it’s no fun being on the receiving end of an authoritarian who won’t bother explaining, so even though it was tiresome, I tried to always explain things to my kids.

“Mom, why do I have to brush my teeth?”

“Because I said, err, because if you don’t spiders will crawl in your mouth at night because they love foul smells.”

The reason I thought about this is that someone I’ve known for years is turning out just like her father. He was always overweight and in his last years he didn’t have the energy to get out of a chair. She’s getting to be the same way. She says she’s “depressed,” but I think she’s just following the family tradition.

My theory is that all people are programmed as infants to be like their parents. The spunky ones take everything in, imitate the good things and fight the bad. The reason it takes a spunky person to do this is because climbing out of the mold takes a lot of energy. You keep sliding back down into that earlier learned behavior.

For example, my mom was an accomplished overeater, and so was her mom before her. I would watch the two of them shoveling food like they were trying to fill up a deep well, and decided that I did not want to be that way. I have their same appetite and I love eating almost better than anything in the world, besides writing this blog for you, my loyal readers, but I refuse to eat so much I get big.

If I were a lazy person, I would just give in to it. In fact, it wouldn’t occur to me to fight it. I wouldn’t even know there was a battle. I’d be glued to some trashy shows on TV and never notice anything except that the bag of pork rinds was almost empty and who could I get to bring me another one. That’s as far as my powers of observation would extend.

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being like your parents. My mother was the best momma in the world. I do many things just like her on purpose. She had this fantastic laugh that I try to imitate. Hers was deep and throaty, like a hyena with a bullfrog’s voice. My dad had many good points too. I’m just saying that it wouldn’t hurt you to take a look at what your parents were like and see if the things you’re doing now are imitating their bad points. If that’s the case, then get off your lazy kiester and get your own pork rinds, and bring me a bag, too.

Growing Up Happy

By Suzanne Olsen

On May 29, 2010

In Home Life

I’m more in the mood to walk down memory lane than to do comedy, so if you feel like a little trip to the past, come join me. When I was a kid, we had the advantage of living in a working class neighborhood, which meant that no one really had much money. I don’t ever remember being jealous of anyone as a kid. When someone got something new, we didn’t want one ourselves, we all just sponged off of them.

Lisa Cain had an outside, under-the-carport ping pong table so there were always five to ten kids (or more) playing ping pong. The Armbrusters had a croquet set, so we’d all migrate en masse to their big back yard whenever that was set up. At our house we had a pole vault and high jump pit, and a homemade ping pong table out in the back yard, so we always had kids hanging around.

If someone was home, we went to their house and started playing with whatever they had to offer in their yard. Sometimes the kids didn’t even come out. The whole neighborhood belonged to us, and we played outside every day the weather allowed. Since this was Tennessee, most days were outdoor days, even during the school year – until it got dark.

In the summer, we played under the streetlight at the intersection of two streets. One street butted into the other – it wasn’t a thru street so you had to either turn right or left. If you went right, it was a dead end, so no one really drove on our two streets except the people living there, which made the intersection perfect for playing softball in the summer. A manhole cover served as home plate. 1^st and 3^rd were storm drains, and 2^nd base was the intersection of two cracks in the concrete. The only down side to this was when the ball rolled into the 3^rd base storm drain. A strong, older kid would have to remove the grate and a little kid would jump in and retrieve the ball. They were only about 3 feet deep and never had any water in them, so it was never anything more than an inconvenience. I got to be the little kid who jumped in and grabbed the ball sometimes, which made me a 5 second hero. Then Phippy Sams pulled me out like I was no heavier than a doll, which was as fun as a carnival ride.

A couple of summers Sandra Mead got together the older kids and put on a variety show. She and the other stars draped blankets over clotheslines to make a long curtain. All the parents attended and we were treated to corny skits and off-key singing that delighted us because most of us had never seen “live” entertainment.

I had one best friend in the neighborhood, Christine, and I spent most of my time with her, but we spent most of our time hanging out with all the other kids. The Gallagher’s yard had a chin-up bar in back that we’d have contests to see who could do the most pull-ups. The Gallagher’s kids were already grown and gone but Mr. Gallagher, who we called Poppy, liked to taunt us to do more by saying, “pull, pull, pull, you can do it!” My older brother could do a bunch of them, and when we’d all finished Poppy would grab the bar and the muscles in his lean, tanned arms would flex into hard balls as we counted off his pull-ups. He’d do about 50, maybe more, and the girls would get bored and drift away. Poppy and his wife lived on the corner by 3^rd base, so everyone hung out in their front yard when we weren’t chin upping in the back. We did handstands and cartwheels for hours, and sometimes brought a blanket to lie on and have a picnic.

My family was the poorest on the street, I suppose, but that made us creative. My brother made the pole vault pit by digging holes in the ground and putting in 4 x 4’s with nails hammered into them at one-inch intervals to hold the crossbar. He worked delivering newspapers on a bicycle to buy the fiberglass pole, and boys from miles around came to use it. They didn’t go much higher than 9 or 10 feet because the poles didn’t bend in those days. They’d land in a pile of sawdust. Girls came, too, but we high jumped.

He also made the ping pong table out of a 4 x 8 piece of plywood that he painted green and put on two sawhorses. It worked pretty well except there were a couple of knotholes that disrupted the ball and sent it in odd directions, but that just increased the challenge. If people wanted a real table, they could walk over to Lisa Cain’s. That’s where we held the ping pong tournaments.

Rocky and Stone Maddox (names we thought were silly but would fit right in today) had a big area to play basketball in their gravel driveway. Kids and younger fathers got up lively games there all the time. The Sams’ who lived a couple of doors down had a tetherball and we’d get tired of basketball and go over there. Sometimes there were upwards of 20 kids and adults hanging out at any given time.

Well now, we’ve come to the end of our journey and wasn’t that a fun little stroll into the past? I don’t know if anyone else had a magical neighborhood like we had with all the adults accommodating the kids in yards with no fences, and everyone with plenty of time on their hands. It wasn’t all perfect, and there was some crazy crap going on here and there, but we had everything we needed to enjoy our childhood. Did I mention the gigantic, outdoor pool about half a mile away, and the grocery store a block down the street with a glass candy case full of every sweet a kid could ever want? Oh, and I have to mention the carnival that came for two weeks every summer and was about a seven minute walk away. I never thought about it until just now, buy my childhood was at the vortex of the universe when it came to opportunities for a good time. There was a park about eight minutes away with tennis courts, and, best of all, we got to go anywhere we wanted without having to check in or even say where we were heading.

All things considered, it was a virtual. Wish you could have been there.