Eating before bed

This morning I told myself, as I have occasionally on other mornings, that I need to stop eating before I go to bed. How else do you explain dreaming about being chased through a large, unknown building by a giant anaconda?

Joe and my sister were also in this dream with me, but they were not being chased by a giant anaconda. They probably did something more sensible before going to bed, such as read a quiet, uneventful book. My sister did have the presence of mind to ask, as I flew past her, what my blood type was, as if that would make any difference if the snake attacked me. But it was thoughtful of her to inquire. No doubt she also wanted to ask if she could have my collection of antiques if the anaconda caught up with me.

Through a combination of luck, fast legs, and my wily intellect, I managed to escape from the snake. But when I woke up I was still in flight mode, and I did a thorough check under the bed, in the closet, in the shower -- evil things are always lurking in showers, at least in the movies -- just to make sure.

Then again, maybe these wild dreams don't have anything to do with what I eat before I go to sleep. Getting out of bed in the morning is something I've never submitted to easily, and it's a fight I engage in every day. Usually, more time in bed wins. I'm beginning to suspect that maybe this is the Lord's way of getting my heinie out of bed and doing something productive. He knows I hate snakes. I wouldn't be surprised if He used a giant anaconda to scare me into getting up.

Adventures in Band-Aids

Because I had nothing better to do one day last week, I sliced through two of my fingernails with a serrated knife. Okay, I was actually supposed to be cutting a loaf of bread, but the fingers on my left hand -- apparently tiring of always having to play a supportive role while those on the right hand get to have all the fun -- got too close to the action.

So now I am waiting for the damaged nails to grow out, which is like waiting for lettuce to grow. In the meantime, I am becoming better acquainted with Band-Aids than ever before. I am not impressed. They do not stay where I put them. They are always coming off at the most inconvenient times, such as when making dinner or hunting through boxes of shoes at Kohl's. In exasperation I went to the store to find a better alternative.

There were sport Band-Aids, waterproof Band-Aids, sport AND waterproof Band-Aids. And then I saw them: 2X Band-Aids that use the same material as duct tape! Band-Aids that "stay on until you want them to come off." Yes! That's what I needed!

I have worn these things for one day. What the box really means by "the Band-Aids stay on until you want them to come off" is "until the Band-Aids have become a vital part of your circulatory system and must be surgically removed." There really is no need to have more than one per box, because you can't get the first one off to put another one on.

I expect that I will live out my days with eight normal fingernails and two stubs ending in flesh-colored duct tape. It will be interesting to see whether the new nail growth will be able to push through the Band-Aid, since I can't get it off. Or, I could attempt to cut bread again and hope that the Band-Aid gets in the way.

Thanksgiving oops

This was expected to be a goof-free Thanksgiving for me. All I had to do was show up at my family's with pumpkin bread, something I have been making since the Pilgrims had their first feast. There would be no turkey to accidentally roast with the giblets still inside. No lumpy mashed potatoes. No lumpy gravy.

I hadn't counted on the cranberry sauce.

It's tough to imagine how one could mess up cranberry sauce, especially when it is canned. But that is exactly what I did.

I was handed a can opener, two cans of cranberry sauce, and a bowl. I applied them to one another, in the order given, but found that the cranberry sauce was dead set against exiting the can. I therefore searched for a spoon to give it some encouragement. My encouraging ministrations were interrupted by a blood-curdling scream, which, had it occurred in the days of the Pilgrims, would surely have put an end to Thanksgiving then and there. The can was yanked out of my hands. A menacing male family member, The Protector of Cranberry Sauce, turned almost as dark as the sauce and began hastily stuffing it back inside the can, as if I had unleashed something malevolent and Armageddon would soon follow. He glared at the spoon in my hand as if it were a creature of evil.

"Bottom!" he finally managed to blurt out. "You're supposed to open the bottom! Then you slice it!"

This did nothing to illuminate the problem for me, and I turned a confused look on The Protector of Cranberry Sauce.

He looked around wildly for the can opener, turned the second can upside down -- apparently, it was too late to do whatever he wanted to do to the first one -- and stared at it. I stared, also.

"Well," he said. "I guess this bottom doesn't open."

Slowly he deflated. He began to explain, dejectedly, that the idea with canned cranberry sauce was to open both ends -- why, I never did fully understand -- and plop the sauce out into the bowl all in one piece. Then it is sliced.

This seemed very primitive to me. "That's not cranberry sauce," I said. "That's cranberry blob."

The Protector moaned. "Didn't you ever have cranberry sauce?"

No. No, I hadn't. It was the one Thanksgiving food that I studiously avoided, on the basis that it contained no recognizable ingredients.

Resigning himself to the ruin of the cranberry sauce this year, he handed the can back to me and, with a little sigh of regret, instructed me to carry on as I had been.

I didn't have the heart to tell him the Pilgrims never ate canned cranberry sauce.

Post-Thanksgiving

Well, I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. As you've no doubt noticed, urgent matters have kept me away from the blog for several days. I was one of the estimated 147 million people who were busy stimulating the economy post-Thanksgiving (this included 47 million babies and 10 million purse dogs). Never let it be said that I shirk my civil duties!

I also hope you all had a chance to ponder the real reason we celebrate Thanksgiving, which is, of course, to finally get around to cleaning your house. The big question is, if you are hosting the dinner, do you clean before your guests come, or after?

Let me know your thoughts on that weighty issue, and I'll be back tomorrow in regular blog form.

The origins of my ironing

Yesterday I examined the little matter of recalcitrant shirts upon the ironing board. Thinking about my (lack of) ironing skills, I conclude that it is my 10th-grade consumer ed. teacher's fault that they are not better developed. I have forgotten this teacher's name now, but it was something haughty, like Ms. Pisani, or Ms. Pirani, or maybe even Ms. Piranha. In her class, which was filled with an astonishing number of males given the subject matter, we learned important self-sufficiency tasks like balancing a checkbook, planning meals, and ironing shirts. I think we secretly hoped we would also learn how to become millionaires who could hire people to do these things for us, but that never appeared on the course outline.

I evidently looked, to the teacher, as if I had been born knowing how to iron, for she never called on me to demonstrate my skill at ironing in front of the class. This embarrassing procedure she saved for the males in the class, whom she probably assumed did not know an iron from a toaster. Judging from their practice sessions, she was not far off.

The truth was that I myself did not easily distinguish an iron from a toaster, either. I had never been made to iron at home. This probably had something to do with the fact that I was the youngest and therefore, as my siblings are fond of saying, extremely spoiled. I personally did not see what the fuss about ironing was; what did it matter if one's clothes looked as if they'd been trampled by wild boars?

But if I got away with not learning how to iron at home, I did not think I would get off so easily at school. My goal during the ironing unit was to make sure that no one -- no one -- learned of my ignorance of this basic survival skill. Though I knew I should probably pay attention to how it was done, and therefore actually learn something, I was also desperate to avoid being found out. Pretending to doodle, and feigning as much boredom and disinterest as I could muster (which wasn't hard, given my age and the subject matter), I surreptitiously took notes as the teacher instructed some poor boy in the art of subjugating a wrinkled shirt: "Always begin at the neckline. No, not the sleeves! The sleeves we save for last. Now, pull the garment taut with one hand, and firmly -- don't wrestle it as if it were an alligator! -- guide the iron up toward the neck...."

Somehow I made it through Ironing Instruction without ever being called upon to actually pick up an iron. Everything I learned about ironing was acquired through mere observation, which could very well account for my inadequacies.

Or, we could blame it on those ornery shirts.

The behavior of shirts

I recently came to the agonizing yet liberating decision to have Joe's shirts sent out for cleaning and pressing. Did I do this because we have an excess of funds and can't think of anything more interesting to spend them on? No. Did I do this because I am lazy? Partly. But mainly, I did it because dress shirts exhibit supremely frustrating behaviors when I am trying to iron them. Let me illustrate.

First, there is mortal animosity between my iron and a dress shirt. For its part, the iron shows this animosity by hissing at the shirt -- or at me, as the agent of its maneuvering -- and the shirt responds by stubbornly refusing to give up any of its wrinkles. Or, in another of its favorite tricks, the shirt yields up one wrinkle, only to form another in some other part when I am not looking. When I get all the way around the shirt, it looks like I have not even started. Shirts frequently exit my ironing process with more wrinkles than when they entered it.

Further, all the parts of a shirt do not stay on the board at one time. A sleeve, or the neckline, or the hem is going to be dragging on the floor at any given moment; almost always it is a part that I have just ironed. This not only tends to restore any wrinkles I may, by sheer luck, have removed, it also tends to make the shirt dirty again.

The sleeves, in particular, are ornery to the extreme. I always start on the back of a sleeve, with the expectation that any mistakes (and there will be mistakes) can be ironed out on the front, where it really matters. But the sleeve simply refuses to lie flat. I stretch and press and smooth it out, only to find when I turn it over that there is an enormous new crease cutting diagonally across the sleeve. If I try to iron out that crease, a new one is inevitably created on the back of the sleeve. At this point I generally give up altogether.

So at the end of a long, arduous ironing process, with a hot iron hissing at me in unexpected bursts, I am rewarded with a dirty, wrinkled shirt -- which is precisely what I had before I washed and ironed the shirt. So the idea of ironing is what, exactly? To make me certifiably crazy? Multiply these frustrations by about 12 shirts -- I usually put the task off as long as I possibly can, until the only thing Joe has left to wear to work is his pajamas -- and you will understand that I have come perilously close to insanity.

The situation is helped none by using wrinkle-free shirts. Upon entering our home, such shirts are immediately corrupted by the non-wrinkle-free shirts, with the result that any shirts that are "Guaranteed to Not Wrinkle!" are certain to be just the opposite.

I confided my dilemma and solution for it to a family member, who declared that she has always sent her husband's shirts out, stating most emphatically that "I wouldn't know what to do with them." Incidentally, this is also basically Joe's argument for why he does not iron his shirts.

After two years of wrestling with misbehaving shirts, I have come to the conclusion that I don't know what to do with them, either. What they need, I decided, is Boot Camp. And the dry cleaning lady is just the one to run it. If anyone can subdue those wrinkle-prone shirts, it is her. One look from her and they won't even think of wrinkling. They will stand at attention, as crisp as if they'd been starched. I'm hoping that someday, after they've been in Boot Camp long enough, all I will have to do is just threaten to send them back there, and they'll shape up.

Art the lazy way

My recent painting project brought to mind pleasant memories from my college art class, which I begged to get out of due to zero talent -- I was never in demand on Pictionary teams -- but to no avail. This was a course for teachers, and no matter that I was specializing in preschool special education, I needed to study the great masters of art! I have always believed a course in refrigerator art would have been more relevant, but no one asked my opinion, and no one offered such a course.

After we had studied several different art styles and the artists who exemplified them, we were given an assignment to produce some original works in these different styles. We did what college students do when faced with a challenging, thought-provoking assignment such as this: We looked for the easy way out.

We found that easy way out in the artist Jackson Pollack. If you know as much about art as I did back then (and still do), you might not be familiar with Mr. Pollack. His paintings consisted of brightly colored paint plopped and flicked onto enormously large canvases in random fashion. (The refrigerators of preschool parents are filled with mini-Jackson Pollack type paintings. Little do they realize that with just a bit of encouragement, their darling children could become starving artists!)

Compared with the great masters of other styles we had studied, such as Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Seurat, Mr. Clean, etc., we all thought Jackson Pollack was a bit lazy. This was something we admired enormously and were eager to emulate, at least artwise, and especially for this assignment. How hard could it be to flick paint on paper? This could even be fun!

Our hopes for an easy grade, however, were dashed almost immediately when the instructor informed us that under no circumstances would a Pollack style be accepted. The whole aspect that set Pollack apart -- other than his apparent laziness -- was the enormous scale on which he worked. It would be impossible, the instructor explained, for us to imitate it. Flicking paint onto a 14" x 17" canvas -- or even a 24" x 48" -- just wasn't the same.

Privately, we thought this wasn't such an obstacle, a there were plenty of buildings on campus that could use some sprucing up. They were big, just what we needed. No sooner had we thought it, though, than the instructor warned, "And no graffiti!" in his most solemn tones. No doubt some class before us had already thought of this solution, tried it, and failed, making things harder for the rest of us.

We briefly considered painting our living rooms in the Jackson Pollack style, but we couldn't get past the problem of how to bring the finished product to class. Anyway, I wouldn't recommend painting your living room in this style. For one thing, all the furniture would end up Pollack-looking, too, no mater how well you covered it.

I have long forgotten what I ended up doing for that assignment. But the class left me with one overarching impression about art: The Pollack family must have had one enormous refrigerator.

I dream of...

Dreams are often amusing and entertaining, especially when they are your spouse's. Occasionally I get a privileged glimpse into one of Joe's dreams, such as when he mutters something profound and deeply moving, like "getting water from the water tower." Unfortunately, when he wakes up and is informed about these interesting details and asked for more, he is unable to recall anything further.

Once in a while Joe makes a foray into my dreams. The results of this are often not good. The other night I dreamed that we were in this sort of retreat place, with a bunch of other people, but somehow the lower level turned into our new house. Joe was restoring the stone fireplace -- something he has often talked about doing in real life (although ours is probably brick, not stone), if only it didn't promise to be so messy.

In my dream, I stood beholding his handiwork. Instead of the admiration this might be expected to arouse, I was conscious only of a rising anger. Though he had done a beautiful job on the stone, he wasn't content with its natural beauty. He was painting it. More than that, he was painting it pink. Pink!

You know how weird dreams are. You do things you would probably never even think to do in real life. In this case, however, I did exactly what I probably would have done if this had actually happened. I said, "Honey, let's talk about this. WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU'RE DOING??"

In my dream it had no effect on him. He merely told me he wasn't going to change his mind on this and there was no use trying (as I said, in dreams you often do things out of character). No matter that he had no good reason for painting our beautiful stone fireplace pink. I spent the rest of the dream stomping around and muttering (not so out of character). I was still mad at him when I woke up.

Later that morning, when we were both fully awake, he asked me why I seemed so out of sorts.

"You painted the fireplace pink!" I said, brandishing a fork at him and getting mad all over again. "And you wouldn't even listen to me when I tried to talk about it!"

And now, dear Loves to Laugh and other readers, you know why I am the one who wields the paintbrush in our house. Who knows WHAT colors we might end up with.

What color is your castle?

I am considering officially giving up the Pursuit of the Perfect Paint Color. Somewhere out in the vast land of paint colors, I have been convinced lives a color so right, so perfect, it could just make you weep. So far, this color has eluded me, but not the weeping part.

Last year I painted our bathroom "Sailcloth," which I had thought meant "Rich Taupe" but which actually turned out to mean "Boring Beige." From the moment I rolled it on the walls, I hated this color. For a year, I have muttered against it. Everything in that room was boring beige -- the walls, the ceiling, the vanity, the tile, even the shower curtain -- and it wore on me until I couldn't stand it anymore. So I did the unthinkable. I painted it again.

Maybe this doesn't seem so strange to some of you. Consider, however, that for me, painting ranks right up there with such favored activities as removing nail fungus, and you will get a sense of how much I disliked this color to paint the room all over again.

Actually, I tried my best to find a solution that would not involve painting it again. I bought five or six new shower curtains to see if they would liven the room up. But the boring beige just sucked all the life out of every one of them. Short of, perhaps, a shower curtain filled with happy little ducks, I gradually came to the realization that a new one would not help.

So began the quest for the Perfect Paint Color, one that would guarantee my happiness and complete fulfillment, causing me to look with rapturous glow upon our wonderful little bathroom. This quest, the details of which I shall have to save for another day (or two or three or ....), was agonizingly drawn out. It was compounded by the fact that I wanted a color that could accommodate our entire towel color scheme, which at last count included five different colors. So you can see that it was a tall order. And I was sick of light colors. I wanted something deep and rich, like caramel, perhaps, or butterscotch. At last I hit upon "Tawny," which promised, from the minuscule paint chip I carried everywhere with me, to fulfill all my hopes and dreams.

I did have a twinge of doubt when I had the paint mixed up; the tiny sample dot on the top of the paint can looked awfully orange, but I shored up my courage by telling myself that anything would be better than Boring Beige.

The man at the paint store warned me that darker colors go on very light and gradually darken as they dry, so I should not, he said, um...he paused, looking for just the right words of comfort and advice.

"I shouldn't freak out?" I supplied.

"Basically, yeah," he agreed.

I didn't bother telling him that I was almost guaranteed to freak out, no matter what the color ended up looking like; that is just my nature when it comes to painting. It is a scary process of faith when one undertakes to change an entire room's look. I once took an hour to paint a register, safe in the knowledge that if I goofed up no one would see it, before feeling comfortable enough to move on to the rest of the wall. Even then, I felt a lingering conviction that I would ruin everything.

My spirits lifted when I poured the rich paint into the tray. It was a rich butterscotch color. Not quite caramel, but possibly even better.

After the first coat, Joe asked me how it was going.

"It's...orange," I told him, in a somewhat strangled voice.

He assured me, in the confident tones of one who does not have much painting experience, that it would look completely different -- presumably better -- after the second coat.

After the second coat he asked me how I liked it.

"It's not beige anymore," I said, trying to sound cheerful. "Isn't that the most important thing?"

"Well, how is it?" he asked again.

"Well, it's not exactly caramel, and it's not exactly butterscotch..." I said. "It's more, well, butternut squash. If you use your imagination a little, I suppose it could pass for pumpkin, or even cinnamon..."

But even though "Tawny" came out a little different than expected, I really do like it. I like it so much that it has fired my motivation to take up the Pursuit of the Perfect Paint Color again for the basement, which is even More Boring White. I'm thinking maybe a deep, rich, chocolate color...

Dumb or dumber?

So I was having a pity party. I even invited my husband, which I thought was generous of me, but he declined. In very strong words. The only "whine" he wanted in our house, he said, was the kind that goes in your mouth, not out of it.

I had been trying to do an assignment for an online class I'm taking, Research Methods for Writers. I thought it would be fun. I thought it would be interesting. I thought it would be informative. It's been informative, all right. It's informed me that I am not even as smart as a second grader. During a seemingly simple search of the Library of Congress Web site, I could not find anything even remotely related to the search terms I entered. If I put in "humorous quotes," it gave me something about a priest leading a St. Patrick's Day parade. If I put in "talk show hosts," I got several entries about Catherine the Great.

After about a half hour of this, the pity party began. "What am I doing wrong??" I whined. Yes, whined.

Joe did take great pity on me, even though he allowed me none for myself. "Think how else you could enter the terms," he urged. "This is forcing you to be creative." And he was right. It did force me to be creative, if by "creative" he meant "go crazy."

Later I was searching the Web site of an elementary school curriculum and randomly picked the second-grade curriculum to browse. Do you know what 7-year-olds are learning these days? In addition to "express ideas in original compositions" and "study time, money, temperature, and capacity," there were technology goals, including learning to use spreadsheets and databases.

"Forget continuing ed classes," I said to Joe. "I need to go back to second grade!" Just before my pity party, I'd been asking him to please explain databases in language I could understand. No doubt these 7-year-olds could have told me.

In social studies, the kids were expected to learn about "old-world figures," by which they probably meant Tony Blair. I brightened considerably when I read the science objectives. The kids would learn about rocks! Surely I know everything there is to know about rocks. They're hard. Gray. And would really, really hurt if they hit you in the head.

Maybe I'm not so dumb after all.

Doctor visit

My trip to the doctor the other day was eerily reminiscent of my recent trip to the mechanic with my badly misbehaving car. Describing your symptoms to a medical professional is often as fun as describing your car's noises to an auto professional. And almost as costly.

Doctor: So, what seems to be the problem?
Patient: Well, our furnace quit working, and I think the refrigerator--
Doctor: I meant with your health.
Patient: Oh. Well, I have this pain.
Doctor: And where is this pain?
Patient, pointing vaguely to her middle section: Here.
Doctor: I see. Can you be more specific?
Patient, huffily: I don't know the medical term for it.
Doctor, soothingly: Of course not. Just tell me what the pain feels like.
Patient: Well, it hurts. A lot.
Doctor, sighing heavily: I'm sure it does. How, exactly, are you hurting? Is it a burning? A sharp jab of pain when you move? Dull throb?
Patient, relieved to have something to choose from: Um, no, it's more constant. Sort of like an elephant is sitting on me.
Doctor, scribbling: I see. And this elephant, it never leaves?
Patient: Nooo, not really. Not that I've ever asked it to.
Doctor: I see. [NOTE: This means, in plain, nonmedical language, that the doctor has no idea what is wrong with you, other than that an elephant is possibly sitting on you.]
Patient: But sometimes, it feels like the elephant is joined by a monkey.
Doctor: I see.

And on it goes. By the time you are finished telling the doctor what's wrong with you, you have developed five more symptoms. And as you walk out the door after your visit, you will have three more. But it is too late.

Of course the doctor -- and other assorted health professionals -- has to ask you a lot of questions. One of them is "How are you today?" You get asked this not once, but at least five times before you even see the doctor. Lest you think this is an attempt at politeness or to put you at ease, I will clue you in: They want to take you off guard to see how really sick you are.

Think about it. If you answer this question with the usual "fine" or "good," as you might in everyday, non-sick-people contexts, the health care watchdogs might refuse to let you see the doctor. "Well, if you're so 'fine,' " the nurse might say, "you do not need to be taking up space in our waiting room. There are very sick people here! Shame on you. Come back when you feel so awful you have to crawl in here."

On the other hand, the question of "how are you doing" is not an invitation for you to pour out your litany of complaints to the nurse or receptionist. That is what the doctor gets paid for. Therefore I have determined that it is best not to answer the question at all, at least with words, but just to make some sort of grunting noise. This lets them know that yes, there really is something wrong with you, and if they care about not infecting the whole rest of the office they will get you in to see the doctor pronto.

Besides, you'll need to save your words for telling the doctor what's wrong with you.

Amazing librarians

The other day I wrote about the Librarian Action Figure with AMAZING Shushing Action. Some of you probably thought I was making this up. As Nosy Neighbor can tell you, I most certainly was not. It is an actual toy.

We first came across the Shushing Librarian when we were house hunting. In a house we loved, we were admiring the owner's impressive wall of bookcases and interesting book contents. Tucked amongst Shakespeare and Michener was the Librarian, still encased in her original packaging. She embodied just about every stereotype of librarians you could think of, including the requisite spectacles. A little stack of plastic books was even thoughtfully included. And when you pushed a button in her back, she raised her finger to her lips. No shushing noise accompanied this action, but none was needed. The action said it all.

For some reason this librarian really struck a chord in us. Our agent, who was trying to show us the possibilities in the loft upstairs, came over to see what was so amusing. "This is great!" we said. "We need this librarian." Don't ask me why. It was just one of those things you know you need when you see it, though you can think of no good reason.

We asked our agent, only half-joking, whether the Shushing Librarian came with the house. Our agent, totally joking, said he would ask.

We were very disappointed when we didn't get the house, OR the Shushing Librarian. Our pain was eased with the thought that maybe she DIDN'T come with the house, and so maybe the new owner didn't get all that great a deal. As we resumed our house hunt, we kept an eye out for the toy. We found other similar action figures -- Rosie the Riveter and Nico the Espresso Stand Barista come to mind -- but no Shushing Librarian. One store owner tried to cheer us up by offering us a Sigmund Freud doll. We politely declined.

We have a house we love even better now, but still no Librarian. But, there's always Christmas...

Chuka-chuka boom BOOM

In these days of global communication, it's important to know at least a smattering of a foreign language. You never know, for instance, when you will have to take a day off work to sit in the cramped office of your local mechanic, explaining the noise your car has been making. I, personally, would far rather have to drag myself into the emergency room, bleeding profusely from deep bear gashes in my side and head, than to attempt to describe to a mechanic the sound my car is making.

Here is a typical exchange between me and a car mechanic:

Mechanic: So, what kind of sound is the car making?
Me: Um, I'm not sure.
Mechanic: You said it's making a noise, right?
Me: Yes. Yes, it's definitely making a noise. And it's not a good one.
Mechanic: Can you be more specific?
Me: Um, maybe if this was a multiple-choice type of thing, I could tell you better.
Mechanic: What?
Me: Well, multiple-choice tests are always easier than open-ended essay questions, don't you think?
Mechanic: Ma'am, this isn't a test...
Me: If you could just give me a list of sounds to choose from, I'm sure I could pick it out.
Mechanic, sighing: How about if I ask you questions about the sound?
Me, looking dubious: Okay, I'll try, but I'm not very good at oral tests, either.
Mechanic, settling back: Is the car making a grinding noise?
Me: Um, what would that sound like?
Mechanic: Geerogherrrrr.
Me: Nope, that's not quite it.
Mechanic: Okay, how about whining?
Me: You want me to whine? My husband says I can do a pretty good--
Mechanic: I'm asking if your car is making a whining noise.
Me: What does it have to whine about? Sure, we don't have a garage for it, but--
Mechanic, hastily: What about squeaking? Is the car squeaking? Or squealing?
Me, frowning in concentration: I don't think so.
Mechanic: Would you say it's a high-pitched noise?
Me: No, I'd say it's more middle-C.
Mechanic, reaching for Tums: How about this: tuckaTHUCKtuckaTHUCKtucka?
Me: No, but that's kinda close...more like...chuka-chuka-chuka.
Mechanic: Chuka-chuka-chuka?
Me: Yeah, you know, like a bike changing gears!
Mechanic: A bike changing gears.
Me: Yeah!
Mechanic: So, a ratcheting sound?
Me, uncertainly: I guess so. But there's something else...
Mechanic: Something else along with the ratcheting?
Me: Yeah...could you give some more choices?
Mechanic, sighing heavily: Grrrgulagrrgul vum wum wum...
Me, considering: Hmmm, I kinda like that one. Could you make it again?
Mechanic, reaching for aspirin: How about puhVROOpuhHOOpuhVROOpuhHOO, or floovb floovb floovb vwomp vwomp vwomp, or nnYinn nnYinn nnnyonggg nnnyonggg, or--
Me, jumping up and knocking over chair: That's it!
Mechanic, spilling aspirin all over desk: What's it?
Me: That floovb vwomp sound you said!
Mechanic: Floovb floovb floovb vwomp vwomp vwomp?
Me: Yes!
Mechanic: So let's see if I've got this straight. Your car sounds like chuka-chuka-chuka floovb floovb floovb vwomp vwomp vwomp?
Me: Yes! Yes! That's it!
Mechanic, beaming: Congratulations, ma'am, your car is in labor!

Surveys, prizes, etc.

Congratulations to Nosy and Nostalgic Neighbor, who so far is the only reader to have responded to our polite request for stories of favorite (or hated) childhood toys. For her willingness to share, we are pleased to award her the Librarian Action Figure with Amazing Shushing Action, which we introduced in that same blog entry (not that we want to shush our good Neighbor, we just think it 's a cool toy). To those of you who read the polite request but did NOT respond, we are forced to conclude that either you did not HAVE any toys as a child -- in which case we award you the Poor Pitiful Pearl doll, so fondly remembered by Nostalgic Neighbor, to remind you that things could be worse -- or else that you can't be bothered with responding to our little survey, in which case we award you the Annoying Choking Chicken. We'll even throw in a babushka.