The Receptionist's Oath

Each time I go to a doctor's office, I am struck by how unsmiling, unfriendly, and generally grumpy the receptionists are. Their job must be harder than I realize, because they look worse than the patients. Morticians are cheerier than your average receptionist.

Receptionists are like this solid front of thunder clouds, impenetrable, and likely to break any minute on some unsuspecting patient. They must have some code, some oath akin to the physician's Hippocratic Oath, that makes them promise to "never smile or offer a kindly word to those in distress, never to undertake any action that might be construed as comforting, to willfully view each patient as a thorn in one's side, to mutter under one's breath, and to make the office atmosphere generally so unpleasant as to make patients wish they were rather in a morgue."

Receptionists at dentists' offices, on the other hand, are much more cheerful. This is probably due to the fact that they know that every single person who comes in that office is more miserable than they are, and this makes the receptionists happy in a morbid sort of way. They know that torture awaits the patients in the back, which causes them to rub their hands gleefully and make an awful chuckling sound. They can afford to be kind out front, for they know what awaits the patients once they step through that door. They are especially cheerful when the receptionists from doctors' offices come in. Aha! they say. You think you're so smug because you have that oath. Well, we have our own Hypocritical Oath! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Working at home

When we had a winter storm recently, my husband stayed home to work. I braced myself for all the disruptions I was sure this would bring to my own work. But he sat down at his computer promptly at 6:30 and started right in. (I only know this because he told me later; I was still under the covers, studiously avoiding any thought of getting up and starting work.) He didn't read me any e-mail jokes. Since he didn't have to get out of his pajamas, I didn't have to act as clothing consultant. I did not have to pack his lunch.

I ate breakfast slowly, reluctant to start working since he was only going to interrupt me. I wandered to my computer and started to read my e-mail, which is how I generally begin my work day even though it has nothing to do with my work. I was getting ready to check out a new book on Amazon when my husband said, "It's only 10:00 and I've worked over 3 hours already!"

10:00? I quickly opened my file for Ch. 5 -- or was I still on Ch. 4? -- and got to work.

Every now and then he would talk to himself, saying things like "have to update the K factor" and "a definite integral of the delta function." But none of these utterances seemed aimed at starting a conversation with me, and I went back to work.

The newspaper beckoned me, having been delivered rather late because of the storm, but before I could go read it my husband said, "It's only 11:30 and I've already worked five hours! I could be done with my eight hours by 2:30!" I resolutely sat back down and kept working.

A while later I went downstairs to take the clothes out of the dryer, anticipating a nice long lunch together -- perhaps we could write it off as a business lunch, since we were, technically, both working -- but by the time I came back up he had already scarfed down his sandwich and was back at the computer. I looked longingly at the still-unread newspaper on the kitchen table, heated up some soup in the microwave, and sat down to eat it at my desk.

Every so often I commented on the goings-on of the neighbors and various pets outside the window, which he could not see from where he sat. "I can't believe how many people let their dogs run around loose," I said.
Humph, he grunted.
"That guy is trying to get his dog on the leash, but the dog keeps running away from him and hiding between the cars."
"Hmmm," my husband said.
"And now a deer and a fox have joined in the game of hide and seek," I said. "And a bear!"
"Really," he said.
I sighed. "No, not really. But it could happen, you know."
He didn't seem interested in anything that was happening or could happen outside his four feet of space.

Around 2:00 I said enthusiastically, "Hey, honey, how about a coffee break?"
"You don't drink coffee," he said.
"I know, but I could have some hot chocolate while you have your coffee."
"I don't think so," he said. "I've only got about an hour to go on this and I want to get it done."
So of course I did not have a coffee break, either.

"Hey," he said, near the end of the day. "You got dressed today."
"Of course I got dressed," I said in a haughty tone. "I'm a serious at-home worker."

The next morning I lay in bed, listening to the sound of his car backing out of the parking area. I smiled and went back to sleep. No distractions today.

Manual for kids

There are all kinds of manuals for parents on how to understand and raise their kids, but I imagine if there were manuals for kids on how to understand grownups, they would be quite different. Here's what one might look like, written by kids for kids.

KIDS' MANUAL OF ADULTS' MIXED MESSAGES

The first thing you should know about adults is that they can never make up their mind. They will spend enormous amounts of energy trying to get us to do things, and then when we do, they spend even more energy getting us to not do them. For instance, for the first twelve months of your life your parents will say "doggy" to you about a trazillion times, trying to get you to say it too. And then when they take you to church and it is very quiet and the minister is getting ready to speak, and you look in your picture book and see a doggy and say "Doggy!" very loudly, you look at them expectantly, knowing that they will be so pleased at these fruits of their efforts, but instead they put a finger over your mouth and tell you, rather harshly, "Shhh!" And that is the end of picture books in church.

For your first birthday party there will no doubt be large numbers of people gathered to celebrate, which to adults means "watch the baby stick his hands in the cake and smear it all over his face." If you are hesitant about this, they will stand around and mime what you are to do with the cake and cheer you on until you finally comply. They will capture this on camera, video, and maybe even save some frosting for your baby journal. But if you should attempt this on any other occasion, you will be severely chastised for "playing in your food."

Adults will also do crazy and, admittedly, embarrassing antics to get you to do what they call tricks -- as if we are pets -- like smiling, waving, saying bye-bye, taking out the garbage, etc. When you finally learn to do any of these things, they are in seventh heaven. "That's my widdle funny baby-waby!" they croon. But at the grocery store, this behavior is frowned upon when initiating contact with "strangers." Your adult will quickly move between you and the "stranger" with whom you are attempting eye contact and will admonish you to not talk to strangers, which is confusing because you can't even talk yet.

Another thing about which adults are confused is our behavior toward pets. Put a large furry animal in front of us, and naturally our first inclination is to touch it and see what it's made of. And indeed, most adults will encourage you to "pet the doggy!" "Pet," however, apparently has different meanings for most adults than for kids. They will quickly remove you from the doggy if you attempt to pet it in certain places, such as the eyes or mouth. "Pet," to them, means using one finger to delicately touch a single hair in the middle of the doggy's back, and then quickly retrieving your finger before any actual contact can be made. This is better described as "air petting."

Your only hope of getting through childhood without becoming hopelessly confused is to be so stinking cute that your adults will forgive your occasional lapse of understanding. Oh, and don't forget to read your manual.

Winding up your article

(Last in a series that starts on 3/16) A point I neglected to mention earlier about writing a how-to article has to do with confusing your readers. This point is: Don't do it. For instance, each step in the process you are describing should contain only one direction. Don't make readers do two things at once, and certainly do not direct them to do something illogical or impossible, unless English is not your first language, in which case it is perfectly acceptable to say something like "Use only outdoors or indoors" or "Not to be used for the other use."

Now you are ready to finish your article. Since it started off with a bang, it must end with a bang (here again, those bullets we talked about come in handy). You want to leave your readers with the feeling that, if they diligently follow your instructions, they will need enormous amounts of Tylenol.

One way to end your article is in the time-honored tradition: "And they procrastinated happily ever after." If you are a more modern sort of person, you might opt for what publishing people like to call "bringing the article full circle" -- that is, mentioning something you talked about at the beginning (in case readers were not paying attention the first time -- publishing people believe that even adult readers have the attention span and understanding of clay pigeons). You might end with "Now you know everything I know about writing a how-to article, and since I'm an expert, you're now one, too."

And now it is time for me to bring this series to a close. Despite being an expert, I have no idea how to end it. Maybe I'll think of something next week.

The nuts and bolts of procrastination

Today we come to the fun part of writing your how-to article: writing 1000 words for it. 1000 is just a round figure, of course; it could be 10,000.

After yesterday's insightful lesson, you should have several points you could make about how to procrastinate. If you haven't thought of any, well, you can always do this part tomorrow.

Depending on your subject, you might need to use a "do this step first, then this step" format ("First put the cat in the dryer, then turn the dryer on"). For a subject like procrastination, however, you might choose instead to give random instructions about how to excel at it. Here are some tips you might want to give your readers (in the preferred bullet format):

• Since big jobs can seem overwhelming when looked at as a whole, be sure to do this. Tell yourself, "I have to gut, rewire, rebuild, and furnish this entire dilapidated old house in period style today." This will so overwhelm you that even if you are the most hardy and experienced of renovators, you will put off the work until the house slowly starts to fall in on itself, termites reduce it to rubble, and birds make off with the rest, removing the need for you to do anything about the house.
  
• Look for large blocks of open, uninterrupted time in which to complete your projects, such as a decade. This will ensure that you never even get started on your endeavors, let alone finish them.
  
• This step is similar to the one above: Fool yourself into believing that you can do more than is humanly possible. If you are inexperienced enough in procrastinating to break down your project into several smaller steps, rather than planning to complete it in one fell swoop as recommended above, be unrealistic about the amount of time each step will take you. For instance, you might plan to write a truly moving poem the size of the U.S. Constitution while you drive to the drugstore. You may get started on it, but you will never get to step 2, which, remember, is part of your goal: procrastinating.
• Busy yourself with lots of trivial tasks. For instance, if your goal is to clean the closet, become distracted by finding several pairs of shoes you had forgotten about, and proceed to try them all on with various outfits. Then notice all those old records you used to love, and go to some antique stores in search of a turntable so you can play them again. (Then again, music may motivate you to clean, so maybe you should distract yourself with something else. Always keep your ultimate goal in mind: putting off a task as long as possible.) The more important the project you're working on, the more interruptions you should have.
  
• If your project has a deadline, leave yourself basically no time to get it done before then. True procrastinators view deadlines as the time to start their projects. If this seems too drastic a step for you at first, practice waiting until the night before your big presentation to start researching how to save your company, then on subsequent projects (assuming you still have a job), gradually work your way up to waiting until the deadline to start. Kids do it all the time, and look how much fun they have!
• Be a perfectionist. Perfectionists make great procrastinators! If you wait until the perfect time to start something, or you have the perfect idea for a craft, or when you can do something more perfect than anyone else on the planet -- including Martha Stewart -- you will be dead, without having accomplished anything. For a procrastinator, this is the ultimate reward.

There are many other tips you could give readers on how to procrastinate, such as to constantly berate themselves as they put off a given task so as to kill any motivation they might have to start it. But you want to avoid overwhelming readers with the amount of information you give them. Remember that you are acting as a teacher in this endeavor, which means that you must assign term papers. But here's the good news! You can put off reading them.

How-to articles, Step 2

See, yesterday's title piqued your curiosity to read more, didn't it? This is how a "killer" title works. Now, moving past the title to get to your article. You often hear that taking the initial step in an endeavor like this -- just coming up with an idea -- is the hardest part. This is just someone trying to make you feel better about the process. You have the whole article to write now! This alone might be incentive to put it off for another day. Then you could go have that fun promised in our title.

But we shall practice some discipline, however difficult and contradictory to our article's premise. How-to experts advise choosing a method for your process that readers will find simple and practical. One particular expert also advises that it also be free of hazards (which leaves out 99% of home improvement projects). However, you can get around this by putting a disclaimer at the end of your article if you are worried that readers will take you seriously and actually attempt to follow your directions. If this really worries you, you might put the disclaimer at the beginning of your article: DO NOT ATTEMPT TO READ THIS ARTICLE ABOUT PROCRASTINATION. SEVERE LETHARGY, MORAL LAZINESS, AND EVEN BANKRUPTCY MAY RESULT. Or, you could make the disclaimer your title: HOW TO SAVE YOURSELF TIME AND TROUBLE BY PROCRASTINATING ABOUT READING THIS ARTICLE.

Now, what are the points you want to make in your article, besides your strong belief that broccoli should be outlawed? Preferably your points should have something to do with your subject, such as "Procrastination is great." Your wording should be direct and, as one expert (not me) advises, arranged into "small sentences" that are easily digested by readers. Since our subject, procrastination, is itself longer than the average sentence of some primitive languages (such as Toddlerese), the sample point above might best be rendered thus: "Pro. Cras. Ti. Nation. Is. Great."

True as it may be that "procrastination is great," you will nonetheless need more than one point for your article. Your readers need step-by-step instructions so that they also can arrive at this conclusion. It is sometimes helpful to present your steps in bullet format, as in

• "Follow these steps or I will shoot you with this bullet."

However, though your language should be firm, as one expert advises, you do not want to be too commanding. The earlier sentence might therefore be better worded as

• "Please follow these steps or I will shoot you with this bullet."

This establishes a friendly tone that your readers will no doubt warm to, after they have been fanned back to consciousness.

One of the most important points that you will want to communicate to your readers about procrastination is that it takes a great amount of practice to perfect. To help you see what I mean, we will now take a break so I can put off writing the rest of this step. Our next installment will be: Procrastination, Step by Slow Step.

How-to articles, continued

Here continues our lesson on how to write a how-to article. (If you missed the first lesson, please report to the office for a detention. Just kidding. Please read the first installment below.)

The title: Okay, we talked about beginning your title with "How to." What should come next? What comes next -- and you don't need me to tell you this -- should be the subject of your how-to. For illustration purposes, our working title would be "How to Procrastinate." Great! you say. Now we can move on to Step 2, which hopefully will not take two days to discuss...

But wait! Is a title like this enough to distinguish your excellent article from all those others out there? What benefit will readers get from your information? Basically, why should they care? Why shouldn't they thumb up their noses at your article, throw it on the floor, and go out to play some golf? Because this is what they will do, if you don't give them, right off the bat, a good reason to read further. After all, not everyone will realize, unless you tell them, why they need to learn to procrastinate. And others will already be as expert as you at it, so they might not see a need to read about something they already know.

So the second part of the title must give them some sort of incentive to keep reading. This is generally done by promising something so fantastic that they can't not read on, such as "How to Make Millions While Doing Nothing." The basic structure would be something like this: "How to ______ to ______" or "How ________ can ______." For our subject of procrastination, you would think to yourself, what benefits could readers derive from learning how to procrastinate? (If you can't think of any answers to this, you should go back to the first part of Step 1, learning about your subject.)

So, plugging one of these reasons into the formula above, we might come up with something like this: "How Procrastination Can Make You a Millionaire" or "How to Procrastinate and Grow More Hair." Thought these are fine titles, there is one trick to using them (I knew it! you say. There is always a trick to everything.): Your article must actually deliver on your title's promise. If you have a proven method of growing hair or money by procrastinating, then by all means use one of these titles. If not, however, you should choose a more doable one, such as "How to Procrastinate and Have More Fun."

Tomorrow: How to Procrastinate and Have More Fun

You can write a how-to article!

After reading my previous blog about how-to articles, in which I lamented that I had no skills or knowledge to pass along to other people, my husband encouraged me to write a how-to article anyway. He said there are probably lots of people out there who know even less than I do. No, actually what he said was "You know how to do lots of things," although when pressed for specifics, he merely said, "You'll think of something." My husband has great faith in me, but he never says why.

But luckily for me, it turns out that you really don't need to know much of anything about a subject to write a how-to article about it. This startling news comes from something I read on the Web that tells you -- step by step, just like a real how-to article -- how to write a how-to. According to this source, which I am not at liberty to reveal, with the proliferation of the Internet one can learn about anything one does not have actual knowledge of, and become an instant expert.

So, bolstered by that encouragement, I did some more research on writing a how-to article and have now become an expert on it. The fact that this is my very first one in no way diminishes my expertness. So I am now going to lay out the process of writing such an article and, in keeping with good instructional techniques, illustrate the process with some actual how-to knowledge. Please keep in mind, however, that results may vary, and I am not liable for any mishaps that may occur as a result of readers following my advice.

Step 1 in writing a how-to article is to choose a topic and then write a title that will "hook" readers. Though this sounds painful, it is really nothing to worry about, unless you are a fish. As I mentioned, you don't necessarily have to have firsthand knowledge about the topic you choose. (The article I mentioned above assured would-be how-to writers that "If you don't know how to do it, don't despair.") Despite these instructions, I did despair when I considered writing about something I know nothing about, because it would take too much work to learn about it and write about how to do it. Therefore, I have chosen a topic with which I am very familiar, having practiced this particular skill since early childhood. My topic, for the purpose of illustrating how to write a how-to article, is:

HOW TO PROCRASTINATE

Now, a word about the title of your article. The writing guidelines suggest, surprisingly enough, starting your title with "How to." Though this might seem obvious, you do not want to mislead your readers into thinking, for instance, that you are going to tell them how great Tahiti is. Be clear that this article is going to tell them how to do something. If they are not in the mood for being told how to do something, they can quickly pass over your article to something more interesting, such as what to wear in Tahiti.

But wait! You do not want your readers to pass over your article. This is why constructing a "killer title" is so important. And tomorrow, or as soon as I feel in the mood to continue this lesson, we will learn how to do this.

Why thin people are thin

People always wonder how some people -- usually not themselves -- can be so thin. There are two basic reasons some people are naturally thin (Motto: "Don't hate me"). These reasons have nothing to do with discipline, good genes (though they certainly help), or the influence of Barbie dolls. The real reasons some of us are thin are
1. We are picky.
2. We cannot make decisions.

Reason #1 keeps us from eating fattening things we don't really like, such as rhubarb pie, or chocolate that has lots of other stuff in it, like coconut, cherries, nuts, spinach, gorgonzola, etc. So, for instance, we're dining at a friend's home, out comes the dessert, and it has things in it we cannot identify. Or it looks too healthy (No chocolate? No, thank you). And so we decline, running the risk of hurting the host's feelings, but reasoning that this would be more kind than to accept a piece and mutilate it in an effort to look as though we tried to eat some of it.

Reason #2 keeps us thin people from eating when there are too many choices. When faced with 365 flavors of ice cream, for instance, we would rather go without than have to narrow our choices down to one. There is, after all, always the risk that we will choose the wrong one. And this we cannot tolerate. Moreover, if our favorite, tried-and-tested flavor we always get when we go for ice cream is not available, our ability to choose a substitute shuts down. "Oh, that's okay," we say. "I wasn't really in the mood for ice cream anyway."

And so it looks to non-thin people as if thin people are exercising great control, and they admire this, when really we thin people are dying for some ice cream and wishing on our lucky ice cream flavor that we could make decisions as blithely as non-thin people. That we could fool ourselves into believing that all our future success does not depend on whether we choose the right ice cream. What if, we reason to ourselves, we were to pick black cherry, but we should have picked chocolate chip instead -- what would that do to our chances of getting into Yale? It's just too much risk for a thin person with even thinner decision-making skills to ponder.

I think it is no coincidence that thinness is disappearing from society at the same time we are teaching kids better decision-making skills. There has to be a connection.

I am an American!

I read that Canadians and South Americans are "sensitive" to the word America being used to refer specifically to the U.S. Presumably this also means they object to our being called Americans. Excuse me? Why do other groups get to choose what they would like to be called -- I'm thinking here of First Nations in Canada, African Americans, Native Americans, Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Bolshevik Americans, Little People, etc. -- and we don't?

I realize that we are not the only country in North America, but we are the only ones to have been referred to as Americans. What else would we be called, if not Americans? It would be absurd to be called a "U.S.an" or a "Statesian." Is anyone on the globe confused about who is meant when you talk about America or Americans? No. In fact, these days no one wants to be thought an American, unless they do something stupid overseas and are assumed to be dumb Americans, and then they don't correct the person. "Yeah, let them think we're dumb Americans," Canadians say to themselves.

Everywhere I went in Greece and Turkey people said, "You're American, aren't you." They didn't mean I was from Canada, or Brazil, or Cuba. They didn't say, just so there was no misunderstanding, "You're from that country between Canada and Mexico, right?"

Where will this nonsense end? Are we going to have to call ourselves North American Non-Canadian Americans? Will we someday have to say "I'm from the country formerly known as America?"

How not to...teach others how to do something

I've become intrigued lately with different types of articles and thinking about whether I could write them for publication. Take how-to articles, for instance. Pick up any publication and there's bound to be one, or nine, articles informing readers how to do something. How to pick out a cut of meat. How to pick lottery numbers. How to pick your nose. Even how to write a how-to article.

So I've studied some of these articles (including the how to write a how-to article), and they seem pretty easy to write. You don't really need any special degrees or training in anything, just some know-how in a particular area. Women's magazines are full of these articles. Well, I think. I'm a woman. I know how to do lots of things. (My sister says I do things on the computer she has never seen anyone else do.) Maybe I should write a how-to article.

So I think about what I know how to do, and what out of this vast store of knowledge I am willing to share with other people. Ahh, therein lies the difficulty. Would you really want to tell people how to cure hemorrhoids using your self-developed remedy? Or how to scrape a dead spider off a shoe? Me neither. Some knowledge is just better kept to oneself (though I'd suggest just throwing the shoe out). So my list of how-to subjects that I can write about for the public narrows considerably.

Then I run through a typical day in my mind, thinking of something I do in the course of a day that would be helpful for others to know about. And I am dismayed to realize that I cannot think of a single thing. So I go through each room of my house in my mind, searching for, perhaps, some housekeeping or decorating tips that I could pass along. Still nothing. All I can come up with are things like how to waste time. How to procrastinate. How to kill plants. And I sit there, stunned, and think, maybe I should run away and join a circus.

No, what I'm really thinking is, how could I have attained an age of maturity and not have any skills that are worth passing along? At least, any that people don't already know about. I feel like a side show at the circus: "SEE THE WOMAN WITHOUT ANY UNIQUE SKILLS."

I mean, who doesn't know how to make money from your home without even trying? Surely everyone -- what's that? You want to know how to do that? Well, pull up a chair....

Joe does laundry

One day my thoughtful husband offered to do the laundry for me -- take a load off me, so to speak. Since he hasn't done any laundry in the almost two years we've been married, I felt that some training was necessary, and so we headed to the basement.

"This is the washer," I said, pointing to the appliance on the left.

He peered at it. "It doesn't say 'washer' anywhere."

"It says 'water' in several places. That's close enough. And the dryer" -- I motioned toward the appliance on the right -- "says 'dry' in several places."

He glanced from one to the other, then pointed to the washer. "So that's where the clothes go first?"

"Yes," I said. "First, though, we put the water and the detergent in."

"Wait!" he said. He trotted off and came back with a notepad and pen. "TOWELS -- WASHING" he wrote across the top of the pad. "Okay, can you start over?"

This was going to be a long process. Did I have time for this?

"This is a large load of towels, and the dial is already set for large," I began.

"How do I know how much is a large load?" he asked.

"Usually about one Moses basket of clothes is a large load," I said. The Moses basket is what we use for a laundry basket. Our stairwells are too narrow to allow passage of both a person and an average-size laundry basket at the same time, whereas the Moses basket, with its slim profile, easily fits. Plus, it looks better in the bedroom.

"What if I pack the towels down in the basket? Is that okay?" he wanted to know.

"No, you don't pack them in. That will be too many and they won't be able to move around and get clean."

"ONE LOOSELY LEVEL MOSES BASKET," he wrote.

"Can I put the towels in now?" he asked.

"No, first we have to put the water in. Here is where you set the water temperature," I said, and pointed to the dial.

"Why are there two temperatures together?" he demanded. " 'Hot/cold, warm/cold, cold/cold.' "

The first temperature is for washing; the second is for rinsing," I explained. "For towels we use the warm setting."

"W.T. -- W/C" he wrote.

"Are you going to remember what that means?" I said.

"Sure. 'Water temperature -- warm/cold,' " he rattled off.

"I mean will you remember the next time you look at these directions?"

He scribbled out "W/C" and wrote "WARM/COLD."

"Now," I said, "there are two main settings. Normal, and permanent press. For towels we use the normal setting."

"TOWELS NORMAL," he wrote.

"To start the water," I said, "you pull out the dial after you set it to normal."

He jotted this down. "Do we put the towels in yet?" he asked.

"First the detergent." I took it down from the shelf and let him get a good look at it.

"Where do I fill it to?" he asked as he peered in the small scoop.

I pointed to the first line. "Right here for an average load."

"CHEER UP TO LEVEL 1," he wrote.

I made a mental note to only buy Cheer.

"Now do we put the towels in?" he said.

"Yes, now."

He reached for the basket and then went back to his notepad. "PUT TOWELS IN WASHER," he wrote, then added, "(1 LEVEL MOSES BASKET)" in case he would forget to look at his earlier note.

I showed him how to arrange the towels evenly throughout the washer so they didn't get packed down. "This is so much work," he sighed.

"Tell me about it," I said.

Since our washer doesn't have a timer, I told him to set the timer upstairs for 35 minutes. "35, right on the nose? Not 34, or 38?" he asked.

We'll save the drying instructions for another day.

The art of folding sheets

I have come to accept that there are some things in life at which I will never be adept. Folding bedsheets is one of them.

It's not like defective sheet folding runs in my family. My mom and aunt, for instance, would do the army proud with their folded sheets. But no matter how much they tried to show me, and I tried to do what they were showing me, I could never get it quite right. I would even study diagrams in home magazines of how to fold sheets, but they only confused me more. The directions never seemed to go with the illustrations, and I needed about 50 more illustrations ("take one corner between thumb and forefinger, now take another corner between thumb and forefinger, now take another..."). The illustrations they gave were sort of like how-to-draw-a-clown-in-four-easy-strokes, where the first three illustrations have one simple stroke each: "Draw an egg shape. Now draw a stick coming down out of the egg shape. Now add two more sticks coming out of the first stick." And from that, you are supposed to get the complete clown shown in the fourth illustration, with a red nose and multicolored hair and enormous, sad lips. In the case of sheets, from a tumbled mass of cotton lying on the bed you are supposed to get a crisp, tightly folded set of sheets no more than an inch and a half high. Mine came out looking like cottage cheese with stripes.

Mostly I have avoided the problem altogether by putting the same sheets back on the bed every time I wash them. I have 11 sets of sheets I haven't used since the first printing of Heloise's Household Hints. Even my husband, who doesn't usually notice such domestic trivialities, will sometimes ask whether we have any other sheets. I am always vague in my answer. "Define have," I say.

I just assumed this was a problem most women have. After all, if magazines have to run little how-to's on the subject, complete with illustrations, then clearly this must be a difficult thing to achieve. I wondered, too, whether the fact that they never included decent illustrations meant that even the magazine people didn't know how to fold them. I decided I could lower my standards a bit.

Until one day I found a set of sheets that a friend of mine had folded after washing them for the first time. They were perfect. "I can't believe this!" I told her. "They look like they just came out of the bag! How do you do that?" Before she could answer, the obvious dawned on me.

"Ooooh" I said. "You're Inspector #32, aren't you?"

Making the switch

I never thought I'd see the day...I switched to fat-free milk.

I grew up on whole milk, basically because that was the choice back then. Now, of course, the very thought makes me want to gag. I don't remember transitioning to 2%, so it must not have been too painful. I was faithful to 2% for a long, long time. I felt virtuous for not having the whole stuff, and the 2% tasted great.

Then I got married. Since I bought the groceries, I still bought 2%. I started to feel a twinge of guilt that maybe I wasn't doing the best thing for us, but after all, it wasn't like it was whole milk. Then one day my husband accidentally brought home 1%. I looked at it through narrowed eyes, wondering how to handle this invader of our home. What if I drank it and hated it? Worse, what if I drank it and liked it? Would I turn into one of those lowfat people, always looking at labels? Would I become obsessed with converting all my favorite recipes into zero-fat, tasteless cardboard? Maybe I could just wait until Joe finished off that gallon of 1%, and I could go back to the real stuff.

My curiosity and thirst prevailed, and I drank the 1%. I didn't hate it, and I didn't become obsessed with ridding our house of fat.

When we moved, the new grocery store carried 1/2%. Wow! I thought. This incremental fat thing is really something. What's next? .33%? A half of one percent?

A curious thing happened. Once I got used to the 1/2%, when Joe would accidentally buy the 1%, instead of thinking it was a yummy treat, I would think...I used to drink this? Willingly? Ugh.

I imagined living out the rest of my days contentedly drinking 1/2%. There halted my gradual descent in milk fat. I would never go lower. That blue stuff? I would never touch that. That isn't even really milk, it's...I don't know what it is, but it's not milk. Milk is white, and thick. Not runny. Not blue. Not so thin you can see the bottom of your cereal bowl through it.

But one day, lacking suitable reading material to keep me entertained while I ate my cereal, I happened to look at the label on the milk. Splots of milk landed on the table when I dropped my spoon into the bowl. What?? Even a teeny tiny, half percent of milk fat has saturated fat?? And not such a teeny tiny amount of it, either. I thought milk was supposed to be good for you!

Now I had a real dilemma. My conscience would no longer let me continue bringing that milk into our home now that I was enlightened as to the real nature of what I'd assumed was a healthy food. But could I do the blue stuff? And what would Joe say? In general he eats and drinks so fast that he doesn't really taste what he's consuming, but this was such a drastic move, I knew I had to consult him. I approached the subject with all the solemnity of bringing up a change in family status, and braced myself for a storm of protest.

"Honey, what would you think about switching to fat-free milk?"

He looked at me. "That's all I used to drink before we got married."

Another blow. Here I had thought he had always been in the fat camp with me, and now I realized I had dragged him down. No more excuses now.

The next time I went to the store for milk, I paused in front of the dairy case, feeling the significance of the occasion. I looked apologetically at the 1/2% and reached for the skim. I had expected it to somehow feel foreign, but it fit well in my hand. The other groceries welcomed it into the cart, as if they had been waiting for it for a very long time. But some were a little nervous. The cheese, the sour cream, the cottage cheese -- all sensed that they might be the next to be, well, down-fatted.

Grocery store woes

I was pleased to find that my new grocery store offered carts in two sizes. I often didn't need the large one, and the smaller one felt like driving a sports car instead of a behemoth van. I could zip around corners in the bakery faster, without tipping over the displays, and I could beat out the behemoths to the frozen section before the last gallon of ultra-rich Edy's ice cream on sale disappeared. But one day, when they were all out of smaller carts and I had to settle for the behemoth, I discovered another reason for preferring the smaller ones: the larger ones do not fit through the check-out lanes.

They must have built the lanes first, cramming a bunch of them in (I don't know why, since all 40 are never open at the same time anyway), and then realized that the carts didn't fit. Instead of tearing out the lanes and making them wider, they ordered new carts in a smaller size. "But if we only offer the small carts," they thought, "our customers won't buy as much and we won't be able to pay for all these new carts. We'd better keep the large carts, too."

So you squeeze. The oversized cart budges a little. You squeeze some more. It budges some more. You take a deep breath, grit your teeth, and concentrate. You strain at the cart and it ever so slowly grinds and screeches through the lane, shaking the displays on either side. Candy and magazines spill onto the belt, the floor, your cart. You need one final push. You back up and run with all your might at the cart, shoving it through until it finally emerges at the other end, like a difficult birth, and other shoppers begin clapping. And when the cashier asks if you need help taking your groceries to the car, you gratefully load them in the waiting carrier's arms, climb in the cart, and wait for him to push you to your car.

Making friends

I read that you don't really make many new friends after you turn 40. The ones you have before then are pretty much it for the rest of your life.

"We'd better get busy," I said to my husband. "We don't have much time to find some new friends."

"I have more time than you," he said. "Three years more, in fact."

I ignored this.

"You made a friend down the street already this year," he reminded me.

"That's one friend," I said. "I'll need a lot more than that to get me through retirement, if I'm not going to make any new friends after I'm 40."

"Well, how did you meet her?" he asked.

"At that neighborhood barbecue last fall."

"Well, there you go. We'll have another barbecue, you can meet another new person, and presto! you'll double your number of new friends."

"You can't have a barbecue in February," I pointed out.

"So, plan one for the summer," he said logically. He always has something logical to say.

"But summer will be too late!" I wailed. "I'll be 40 by then! No one new will want to sit by me or talk to me. 'Well, she had her chance,' they'll say. 'Too bad she had to have a birthday.' "

I had a new thought. "You won't be 40 for a while yet. How about if you make friends with a nice guy who has a nice wife, and I can be friends with her."

"But I don't like meeting new people," he said.

"It's not like you have to like the guy. It's the wife we're interested in here. And make sure she's under 40. If we're both over, it won't work."

Morning people

My husband's family are Morning People. When we stay with my in-laws, the phone begins ringing at 5:30 every morning. One by one, the siblings call to inquire how everyone slept, who snored, and whether there is anything new since 9:00 the night before, when they last called. As one sibling is talking with my in-laws, the others are all calling each other to talk about what my in-laws said to them, and so they all have to call back again to talk about what the others all discussed. With four siblings, this can go on all morning.

One morning my husband's parents were trying to get us up for breakfast. They tried everything. A juicy description of the food. Pleadings. The smell of fresh coffee. Threats that they were going to eat everything and there wouldn't be any for us. Then it was quiet for a few minutes, and I thought they had given up. But they had just gone for fresh ammunition.

"Are they playing maracas?" I said.

We collapsed in laughter, then yelled that we were coming.

"Never mind now," my father-in-law said. "It's almost time for lunch."

Why I have poor memory

I have found a scapegoat for my poor memory. According to researchers in psychology, a person’s working memory consists of several components, all of which may not be located in the same country. No, actually, these components are called a central executive and three “slave systems.”

Which perfectly explains why I so often forget things. My slaves are disobeying the central executive!

"Working memory" is the new term for what we used to call short-term memory. "Working memory" is an oxymoron for me, as my memory works about as often as it doesn't. But the new term is shorter and therefore easier to remember, and that way it puts less stress on the central executive, which has a hard enough time trying to corral those three slaves and get some decent work out of them.

Now where was I? Oh, yes.

Each slave supposedly has its own area to take care of. One rehearses verbal information in a continual loop, for instance when you are at the grocery store and you were too proud of your memory to write down what you needed to get, so you keep repeating your list of items to yourself: "Bananas, lunchmeat, milk...bananas, lunchmeat, milk...bananas...." Another slave is supposed to help you with visual or spatial tasks, like remembering the color and make of the car that just hit yours in the parking lot or judging how fast another grocery cart aiming toward the meat counter is moving and whether you can make it there faster. This slave system also plans spatial movements. In my brain, this slave frequently disobeys orders. For instance, say my body heads toward the kitchen for a snack. The central executive will order this slave to remember that the body is heading toward a healthy snack, say, carrots, but the slave will reinterpret this and whisper something else entirely to the body -- say, a brownie. And of course, the body, which has no short-term/working memory of its own, moves toward the last thing ordered. So you can see how insidious these slave systems can be.

The third slave system, which was "discovered" much more recently than the first two -- which makes you wonder how much work it really does if no one knew it was there -- supposedly coordinates the functioning of the other two. This is beginning to sound like a junior manager to me. It also takes care of chronological ordering, like helping you remember to put the soup in the pan AFTER you open the can.

And the poor central executive is left with the task of making sure everyone else performs their tasks, and it is also supposed to make sure the slaves pay attention to important information and forget irrelevant information. Clearly this process has broken down somewhere along the line in my own brain. I remember the birthdays of people I went to elementary school with -- which means this information passed the slave gatekeepers and entered my long-term memory a long time ago -- but I cannot remember my point here, or how I was going to end this article. Maybe I'll go have some carrots.