In 2. miles, turn...the GPS OFF

This Thanksgiving as I headed to my family's home in my trusty car, I made sure to bring my faithful GPS, which has never steered me wrong because I also always bring along a map of wherever I am going.


I did not need the GPS, of course, to go to my relatives' house, where I have been many times. The GPS was to help me find a new route to avoid the annual Thanksgiving tradition out here in the East, which is to park one's car along a 1,000-mile stretch of Interstate 95 and, every now and then -- about every two hours -- put the car back into drive, drive forward no more than two millimeters, and stop again. This puts one at one's destination just in time for the family holiday dinner at Easter.


This year the Thanksgiving traffic was projected to be even worse, because, by government decree, the toll booths had to undergo major renovations on this, the most heavily trafficked day of the year, and they must begin merging lanes at least 3,500 miles before the toll booth, and they must reduce the usually plentiful number of ticket booths available to somewhere in the negative numbers. Officials were advising drivers to find another route to their destination, preferably one by way of Mexico City. The newspaper printed a handy chart of peak drive times, and suggested that drivers choose a non-peak time to travel the interstate, such as March 6, 2016.


So before I became part of the enormous parking lot I turned off the interstate, and promptly threw the GPS into panic. It insisted that I turn around and get back on the interstate, offering up every street and driveway that could possibly be used to turn around.


In .2 miles, it urged, turn left on Goat Hill Road.


"I am not turning left on Goat Hill Road," I said firmly while passing Goat Hill Road.


It tried again. In .9 miles, turn right on Snake Lane.


"I am not turning right on Snake Lane, either. Get over it," I said. "Tell me something useful, like where a Starbucks is around here."


In .4 miles, turn left into Starbucks, the GPS said. 


"Really?" I said hopefully.


Ha ha ha ha ha! You are 916 kilometers from the nearest Starbucks! 


"Kilometers, kilometers...kilometers are smaller than miles, right? So that's, like, only .3 miles, right? Like, it's close?"


Ha ha ha ha ha! the GPS jeered again.


The GPS continued to vie with the Christmas music station for my attention, certain that what I really wanted was to turn around and drive 900 kilometer-miles back to the interstate. Eventually it gave up on this, and settled for helpfully pointing out nearby points of interest.


You are 3,000 miles away from the nearest Dunkin' Donuts. You are 562 light-years away from the nearest restroom (which is closed). You are...

Oh, if Elvis would only come

It's holiday time, which means it is time for the Princess and Hero to take their annual Christmas Torture Photo, which the Hero looks forward to almost as much as watching Pride and Prejudice. During this annual event the Hero is reminded of our wedding-photo session, which lasted a record nine days and left him with a permanent phobia of cameras.


For the second year in a row, Elvis has failed to appear in our little touristy town on the day we have planned to take our photo, greatly disappointing the Hero. Not only does he feel Elvis would add some interest to the annual photo, more importantly, Elvis would not stand around for 350 pictures, thereby greatly shortening the length of our photo session. 


Lacking Elvis, the Hero attempted to come up with some other masculine-interest photo idea this year. "We could take a picture...with a football," he suggested.


"Please," I said. "I'm a girl."


"Well...we could use a pink football."


"How about we take a picture throwing leaves?" I suggested.


"Hey, we could sit in the leaves."


"Too much contact with nature," I said.


And so, with no clear idea of what we wanted to do for this picture -- which is often the case -- we headed for a nearby trail abounding in nature. Overcome by the beauty around us, I enthusiastically endorsed the idea of sitting in the leaves, whereupon the Hero offered the sobering reminder that Nature was in the leaves.


"There could be spiders in there," he said. "Centipedes. Snakes!" 


A cursory search revealed nothing too nature-y, and our photo session commenced, consisting of several rounds of the following:


1. Sister snaps photo and gives camera to us to view.
2. The Hero gives enthusiastic approval, no matter if we are not looking at the camera, or even if we are not in the picture. Especially if we are not in the picture.
3. The Princess rejects it, usually on the grounds that the Hero looks pained.


The Hero used increasingly wily tactics in an attempt to end his torture, including appealing to the Princess's vanity:


1st picture: "Oh, this one's great."


2nd picture: "This one's PERFECT!"


495th picture: "Oh, honey, your hair is perfect in this one."


By this point even the Princess's standards have slipped a little, and eventually a photo is approved that, later, will turn out to be of someone else. Ha! Not really. Although the Hero is not above bribing a complete stranger to take his place in the photo.


But at least for this year he is finished with the torture. And maybe next year, Elvis will be around.

Accidentally speaking

I don't mean to be insensitive, but I have one teeny, tiny suggestion for all the drivers out there who have been getting into accidents lately on my route to and from work: Could they please choose some other road to have an accident on?


Of course when you come upon an accident you are grateful that it is not you in the accident, but once the gratefulness has worn off -- in like a half second -- the next thing you think, if it is a very recent accident, is: Can I get around this accident before all the rescue vehicles get here and block me in?


The answer to that, if you are me, is no. Twice recently the rescue vehicles have roared in just when it was my turn to make my way around the accident site, as if they have some radar that lets them know when I am coming, and they rush to get there before I can escape. One time the fire truck came to rest within two feet of my car, giving me a ringside seat to all the action, which I did not want to see if it included any blood. If there is any blood around, and I see it, they will be putting me on a stretcher:


Rescue person 1 to rescue person 2, carrying stretcher: ANOTHER victim? 


Rescue person 2: Nah, this one just fainted in her car while watching all the action.


Really, my being at an accident scene is just going to cause more work for everyone involved. So to avoid that, let's just not have any accidents on my route, okay? The rescue people will thank you.

The War of Pillows

Today we bring you a short poem composed by the Hero, who, like other men we know, has developed a marked animosity toward couch pillows.

"I do not like these pillows," said he.

"I do not like them in a chair. 

I do not like them in the air."

"They're not in a chair or in the air," I pointed out.

He thought some more.

"I do not like them on the couch

Where feathers can poke through and -- ouch!"

Of course as the principal decorator I take his feelings about such things into account when considering new purchases for the home. For instance, knowing how he feels about decorative pillows, I might buy even more pillows. Because having more pillows is a fundamental right of females.

Unfortunately this right directly interferes with the right of men to an Uncluttered Seating Area, on which they can plop themselves down to sit, nap, roll over and fall off, etc. So men, particularly husbands who feel their personal couch space has been grossly invaded by pillows, want to take away our right to pillows. They are probably this moment forming Guys Against Pillows (GAP) to lobby against having any pillows in the home that do not fulfill a functional purpose, defined as something they can sleep on. 

The Hero certainly equates pillows with sleeping, and is disturbed when a pillow proves unfit for such an activity, such as the couch pillows with their poky feathers. But the feathers are a protective mechanism. Tired of years of abuse from guys plopping down for a nap on their delicate forms, decorative pillows have learned to fight back, sometimes with feathers, sometimes with a stray button or other decoration. With more pillows, it is possible to build up an arsenal of attack, until finally a man will not sit anywhere near the couch as long as there are pillows on it.

Which is, of course, the point of having all those pillows. They are there to be looked at and admired. We females dream of a day when the War of Pillows is won, and we will no longer have to follow behind our men and fluff up the squashed pillows they leave in their wake.

Until then, the fight will continue to inspire us to purchase more pillows, and perhaps inspire more poems.

Mistext

A new study shows that individuals, particularly teens, who text most often -- like, when they are awake, and sometimes also when they are asleep -- are more at risk for engaging in dangerous behaviors. This is sobering news, but the good news is, the Hero and I should be safe!


I say this on the basis of the total number of texts we send, which are limited by our severely incompetent fingers. The fingers express their displeasure at being made to perform an exacting task for which they were never intended -- if they had been, our hands would be about a third of their actual size -- by sabotaging the whole process, with the result that when we are sure we texted


Get bread store


it actually gets sent as


Braid dog more


Once I was at the store attempting to choose just one kind of ice cream to bring home, and I texted the Hero for his input. He responded with


U choose, Locus


This text was quickly followed by an amended text saying


I mean Lovie


"Locus" attempted not to laugh too noticeably, there in the ice cream aisle, where a family of three was also making efforts to choose just one kind of ice cream.


Another night I had been stuck in traffic on Interstate 70, and in an effort to spare the Hero the same fate, I texted him Don't come home 70. At least, that's what I thought I texted. My traitorous fingers rearranged my text to say


Don't come Jo


and then, with absolutely no authorization from me, they pushed "send."


I tried again, this time sending, prematurely,


Don't come ho


At this point I considered just calling, but the time it would take to dial, ring, him to pick up, etc., was...hmmm, substantially less time than to send another text.

Occasionally the problem is not fingers that act on their own authority, but the delay in receiving texts sent to or from home, where there is a notoriously weak signal. Our texts, instead of being instantaneous, rival the post office for time delays:

Me (upon Hero's arrival home with a large supply of leeks): "Why did you buy leeks?"

Hero: "You texted me to get some."

Me: "No, that was last week. And it was cheese, not leeks."

And so we forge on with our texting, thankful that world security does not rest on such text communications as

Home late -- couch needs engine painted

Today's blog brought to you by Locus and Jo

We encounter a problem

As you are no doubt aware, we here at Indecision Inc. have been attempting to choose a sofa, and by the looks of things space exploration will be well advanced by the time we actually do. Other Earthlings will be choosing furnishings for their second home on Mars, and we will still be debating the merits of the Little Bunny Foo-Foo fabric for our present home.


But now a terrifying new thought has suddenly hit us: What if the sofa that we THINK we want doesn't fit through the door?


We are well acquainted with things not fitting into our house, which was apparently built at a time when all household furnishings could just be rolled up and fit through a crack in the outside wall. When the moving men attempted to fit our antique typewriter desk through the front door, they told us gravely that they would have to amputate one of its legs, or leave it out on the sidewalk. Without even the benefit of anesthesia -- for me -- they whacked off one of the legs near the middle of the desk, and the desk managed to squeeze through. We never even bothered to put the leg back on, and the desk has adjusted to its handicap courageously and with great dignity.


But to cut off one leg of a sofa might present more difficulties, such as that those who are sitting on it would all be piled up at the lower end. Or we could decide to shorten all the legs equally, and make a Sofa for Vertically Challenged People. This could have some advantages, the chief one being that my feet could actually touch the floor when I sit in it.


But the Hero would prefer to keep the sofa intact, and so he made a prototype of a very convincing sofa-like object to see if we could simulate the sofa fitting through the doorway. This prototype consisted of two sticks arranged in a T-shape, somewhat like a divining rod, and after much measuring and maneuvering the sticks through the doorway in a manner resembling the movements of tai chi, we came to the very definite, scientific conclusion that a) the sofa might fit or b) it might not.


Then, deciding to assume that the actual result would be option a), we tested the prototype IN the room to see how it might fit with the existing furniture. Even with our crude device, it was apparent that the only other thing that would fit in the room with this sofa would be: a plant. On the windowsill.


"Maybe we should just get matching footstools," the Hero suggested.


So as we begin the process of choosing an item of seating all over again, we console ourselves with the thought that perhaps we don't have to give up entirely on this sofa. It might look nice in our second home on Mars someday.

The glass ceiling may be electric

Despite all the gains women have made regarding equality with men, it was demonstrated recently at my workplace that there remains at least one frontier on which women have not yet achieved parity with the opposite sex: operating electric can openers.


Normally operating such a machine is something I, as a technically and mechanically challenged person, avoid anyway. But, having a can of tuna fish for my lunch one day, and unable to locate the low-tech version of the can opener that usually resides in our office cafe, and having been too lazy to open my can of tuna fish at home, I had no choice but to face the Intimidator. It mocked my ineptitude by whirring and turning around and around, but refusing to make actual contact with the tuna fish can.


I finally broke down and asked for help, which as a woman I am fortunately allowed to do, or I long ago would have perished in our high-tech world. We women like to do things in groups, and to support each other and have many consultations with each other, so we eventually had five women working on the electric can opener, including one expert who warned that this particular machine was "temperamental." At one point the can opener quit making any noise at all, having tired of mocking us, and we concluded that it had permanently died. My tuna fish can was not even dented.


Women are very good at rallying around the wounded and offering balm and solace and, in this case, peanut butter and cheese from their own private stashes. But sometimes you just have to forge your own solutions in the world, and I decided my solution this time was to go to McDonald's.


Much later in the afternoon a male in the office heard of our humiliation at the hands of the can opener, and he declared that he uses it all the time and never has a problem. The can of tuna fish was duly handed to him, and we went in to witness what we supposed would be his humiliation at the hands of the can opener.


"It's probably not plugged in," he said, whereupon we scoffed, because of course we had checked that. Who did he think we were, females? 


As we watched, the traitorous can opener purred and neatly sliced open the tuna fish.


Being women, we proceeded to dissect this turn of events and put forth various hypotheses for the outcome, finally deciding that he had some secret of can opener operation that he was not sharing. This he vigorously denied, although he looked very smug.


Despite our humiliation, I determined to learn from this situation. Namely, I would henceforth open my tuna fish cans at home, in private, with my trusty low-tech, hand-operated can opener. At least, until it gets old and rusty and I can't turn it anymore and I have to ask the Hero for help...

Little Bunny Foo-Foo reprise

I'm sure you are all waiting breathlessly to find out which fabric we have chosen for our new sofa. Well, we are still waiting too.


In a turn of events unpredicted by the usual laws of male and female behavior -- particularly that law that says women can never make up their minds on such issues -- I have made a firm decision on which fabric I like, while the Hero, grasping the importance of such a decision, finds himself unable to quite commit to one choice or another.


The Hero is somewhat attached to the fabric that my sister calls the Little Bunny Foo-Foo fabric, which just shows that he is wholly unacquainted with the real character of Little Bunny Foo-Foo. Little Bunny Foo-Foo, who as mentioned in a previous post features prominently in a child's rhyme, is an individual not to be emulated, who displays a wanton disregard for authority and who delights in destructive behavior. In other words, an individual that kids can really like.


Little Bunny Foo-Foo, for reasons best known to himself, roams the forest looking for field mice that he can, as the rhyme indicates, "bop on the head." He is told thrice by a fairy godmother to cease this behavior, or dire consequences will occur. Although he makes some halfhearted attempts to follow this advice, he just cannot seem to avoid that little inner voice that says "Bop the field mice!" In the end Little Bunny Foo-Foo, yielding to this inner voice, comes to a very sad, yet somehow deserving fate: He is turned, by the fairy godmother, into a goon.


I had no idea, when I was young, what a goon was, but I knew that I would not want to be turned into one.


But to the Hero, the Little Bunny Foo-Foo fabric represents none of this sordid tale, and he appreciates the fabric's soothing pastoral qualities: trees, animals, grass, bunnies, field mice, no fairy godmother, etc. He does think it a little strange that there are strings of numbers and letters also woven into the design, but he is willing to overlook this.


On the other hand, he has objections to the design on the fabric I like, mainly because amid stately red vases, flowers, and vines, It also says, in random places, the year 1806.


"Why does it say 1806 on it?" he demanded. "Our house wasn't built in 1806. The sofa wasn't built then. Why should we sit on something that says 1806?"


"Maybe 1806 was an eventful year in the fabric industry," I suggested. We searched for events of note in 1806 but found none pertaining directly to fabric. We did learn that Andrew Jackson, who would later become president, killed a man in a duel in 1806 over Jackson's wife.


Probably the man had criticized the wife's taste in fabric. And Jackson bopped him on the head.

Cleanliness is next to...last on the list

Let us have a brief moment of silence for our departed maple tree, which was carried away last week by Tree Men with saws, and for the surrounding plants and flowers, which were trampled by the Tree Men, AND for our neighbor's plants, which were not able to escape the onslaught either despite holding up little signs saying "Please don't hurt us." And let us also remember our decorative wooden ladder, which thanks to the Tree Men ended the day in more pieces than when it began.


Both yards, covered with tree shavings, now appear as if they have suffered through a severe sand storm. Our yard seems to be cursed with such sand storms, having experienced one when our new drywall and subflooring sat on the patio for a while, just long enough to leave a fine covering of shavings on all the plants.


We have had a lot of work done on our house and yard lately, and this work can generally be broken down into three distinct phases:


1. People come to our house to make some alleged improvement. (duration: 1 day to 16 weeks)
2. I clean up after their improvements. (duration: the life of the house mortgage)
3. (Repeat step 1.)


The one exception to this cycle was the contractor who worked on our family room, whom we will refer to as "Dale," that being his actual name, or at least the name we wrote the check out to. By some magical process unknown to most contractors -- called "cleaning" -- Dale never left behind a mess after his work day. We would come home, look around, and, based on the fact that nothing was dirty or out of place, decide that maybe Dale had not been there that day. Then we would notice something small, such as that a brick wall had been completely covered over in new drywall, and we would realize that perhaps Dale had been there after all, and had waved some magic wand to make all the mess go away. 


I have to wonder whether Dale is that tidy in his own home. I hinted broadly to someone who lives in our house that this habit of cleaning up after one's project was a thing to be emulated, but I was conveniently ignored. Whenever he undertakes a project, there are also three distinct phases involved:


1. The Hero hauls out a great number of tools and materials, and proceeds to cover as large an area as possible with them.
2. The Princess sees the mess and faints.
3. The Hero and Princess call Dale.


Ha! Of course we do not call Dale after we make a mess. But -- sigh -- it might be nice.

A new cat in town

Last year when we visited family for Christmas, my brother's new cat kept us all entertained with cries and scratchings, mostly during the night, as she was convinced that behind the closed doors of our bedrooms a handsome male cat awaited her, and she wanted in. Fortunately this behavior abruptly stopped after a little visit to the vet, although after that little visit Piper not only did not want anything more to do with male cats, she did not want anything to do with any of us.


This year when we visit there will be a new male cat in residence, although Piper will now have considerably less interest in him for his male qualities than as a general playmate. The friendship should prove an interesting one, as Piper is about the size of a chipmunk, and the new cat, of the Savannah breed, will grow to be roughly the size of a small elephant.


Okay, more like the size of a dog. In fact, Savannahs mimic many dog-like actions, such as walking contentedly on a leash, rolling over on command, fetching the newspaper, chasing neighborhood cars, getting into friendly scraps with other neighborhood dogs, visiting the vet after getting into friendly scraps, etc. Owners of both a Savannah and a dog may at times be confused over which is which:


"Honey, where's the cat? I haven't seen it for a couple of days now."


"It's sitting on your lap."


(pause) "Well, then where's the dog?"


The new cat's name will be Kuda, not to be confused with the seahorse of that name, which is distinguished from the cat by the fact that it generally does not have spots (although scientific evidence suggests that early models may have had spots). But Kuda will likely enjoy water as much as a seahorse, and given how smart Savannahs can be, will probably figure out in his first hours in the home how to open every toilet lid in the house and, under the guise of "play and exploration," completely empty the bowls of their contents.


Curiosity leads Savannahs to thoroughly explore their environment, which includes the tops of high cabinets and Christmas trees, and possibly also the inside of refrigerators, microwaves, car engines, etc. Savannahs are also known for engaging freely in "head-butts," or an unexpected pouncing upon someone, which is an affectionate greeting that conveys the animal's happiness to see you as well as a curiosity about whether you are food. 


The cat may also hiss, which is nothing new for a cat, but the sound has been described as more of a snake hiss than a cat hiss. According to Wikipedia, this may alarm people unaccustomed to it. Um, maybe, yeah. Especially if it happens in the middle of the night.

Keeping our heinies happy

Now that our family room renovations are finally complete, we are endeavoring to decorate the room in somewhat of a colonial period manner. The two most important criteria for creating this look are, of course: a) very little furniture, and b) very uncomfortable furniture.


So far we are succeeding spectacularly in both a) and b). Right now the room consists entirely of a few pieces made of the hardest wood one can imagine, unless you count our coats and jackets strewn across them. One of these pieces is a red garden bench, which looked very cute in the antique store but which was never meant for one to actually sit on, being decidedly unfriendly to one's heinie. When we watch TV we sit ramrod straight on this bench, getting up periodically -- like every 10 seconds -- to restore some feeling. 


No one can blame people in colonial times for having uncomfortable furniture, as they had more important things to worry about, such as how not to let their heinies freeze while using the privy in the winter. Plus many of them endeavored to follow the good Puritan standard of discomfort is next to godliness, which no doubt carried over to their choice of furniture.


But one does wish that they would have the foresight to invent sofas, which of course they could not because their doorways were too small to allow a sofa to fit through. Our own home, though it does not quite hark back to colonial days, nevertheless also has small doors and doorways. Colonists would have felt right at home with our doorways:


"Ah, thou hast a goodly doorway here! Mine buxom wife will but feebly fit through it!"


As it is, people have had to invent sofas that resemble what we imagine a sofa would have looked like back then, if they had had them. We have been endeavoring to choose one of these sofas for our family room, although they are called a settle rather than a sofa, because it sounds more authentic and because once you have settled in one you cannot get back out of it.


After painstaking research and deliberations, which involved, at one point, using the eeny-meeny-miny-moe method, we have finally chosen a particular settle and fabric. Well, we have chosen three fabric samples. The final choice will require, of course, further deliberations, consultations with every female I am acquainted with, and perhaps more rounds of eeny-meeny-miny-moe.


My sister has already weighed in on the three samples, giving her opinion that the one labeled Virginia Sampler, which consists of various trees and animals, reminds her of -- and I quote -- "Little Bunny Foo-Foo." Little Bunny Foo-Foo features prominently in a rhyme from my childhood, a rhyme valued chiefly for its ability to annoy adults with its constant repetition. I personally would never have associated the Virginia Sampler fabric with Little Bunny Foo-Foo. Clearly, consultation with others who have a deeper understanding of these things is already paying off.


The Hero, being unacquainted with Little Bunny Foo-Foo, likes all three fabric samples. Actually, he would like any of them. Okay, so he would like me to just choose one already so we can watch more than 10 seconds of TV at a time.

Trick-or-Kit-Kat

This year we took to heart the traditional Halloween motto: Be prepared. It's a good thing, too, because we ended up with a record number of trick-or-treaters: 4.


In preparation, I had bought a bag of candy I personally liked, so that in the likely event we had no trick-or-treaters the candy would not go to waste. It's possible that I was hoping we would have no trick-or treaters, because when the first knock sounded the bag of candy wasn't even open.


Superman knocked rather forcefully, and we went into action. I frantically tried to open the bag of Kit Kats, failed, and threw it to Joe and yelled "Open!" while I lunged for the door.


Joe, mistaking "Open!" for a directive to also open the door, collided with the Kit Kats midair. Luckily it was not a giant bag of Kit Kats, or our Halloween might have been spent at the emergency clinic, where medical personnel would have filled out the following report:


Nature of injury: Bruise to left ear
Cause of injury: Giant heat-seeking Kit Kat missile  


The Kit Kat bag appears to have been sealed by someone with a healthy eating agenda, determined that if people are going to eat this junk they may as well work off some calories while opening the bag. Joe frantically struggled to open it, leaving me to entertain Superman and Spider-Man for several seconds, which consisted alternately of them saying "Trick-or-treat!" and me saying, "Aren't you cute!" and whispering fiercely to Joe, "Is it open yet!"


Joe finally plunged a pair of scissors into the bag, which reluctantly yielded up its contents, and in relief I almost threw all the candy at Superman and Spider-Man.


Superman peered at his take closely, and approved it by saying "Awwright! Kit Kat!" This sounded to Joe like a different expression involving "Kick" and another term for donkey, and he was a bit taken aback at Superman's vocabulary until I set him right. We did not get Spider-Man's assessment, as he was already off to the next house, which fortunately for him was just two Spider-Man steps away.


The next group we almost missed, as we were in the basement having family therapy with our furnace, which periodically refuses to work. But Joe got to the door in time to give some Kit Kats to a fairy and another indeterminate girl character, and that proved to be the end of the Halloween action for us. 


The furnace, likewise, saw no further action. Maybe we should give it some Kit Kats.