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Sunday, October 16, 2005
Not For The Weak
Recently a new arrival to our neighborhood complained on the local e-network that her young son was treated badly at the nearest McDonalds, the Riverview/Granby McDonalds of Norfolk, Virginia. I thought about that yesterday, October 15, 1:00 P.M., when my little grandson and I stopped there as usual for his favorite fries and ice cream cone and my favorite fast food.
The ear-phoned and therefore extremely-loud order-taker asked what I wanted. I answered, "A large order of fries, an ice cream cone and a number 3 meal."
She correctly repeated my order. After I paid, she handed out a diet Coke and nothing else, but seeing me still at the window, she thundered, "Ma'am, you have been served. You may leave!"
I demurred, "But I didn't get my order yet."
She conferred with her side-kick and handed out an ice cream cone that had been smashed upside down into a drinking glass.
I gave it back and asked for a plain ice cream cone, not one upside down in a glass. She argued and insisted that I'd already received a cone, even one with the added bonus of a GLASS, an extra item.
No, I just wanted a normal cone, one that the little boy in the back seat could hold and eat. She huffed and then said, as though explaining to a moron, "You see, ma'am, we're taking care of you. We're doing your order. You just need to show a little patience."
Ahhh. Here came the cone. I took it and still did not leave the drive-through window.
"Ma'am. PLEASE leave the window. You have been served."
"What about the fries? What about the lunch number three?."
"I gave you that."
"No, not yet."
Now the side-kick stuck her face out the window and tried to straighten me out, "WE ARE TAKING CARE OF THIS. PERFECTLY. Your order is coming up. Please!"
Girl number one, however, stuck to her story, "I did give you your order. I even gave you a different cone."
Me: "The fries. The number three lunch."
Girl number one, exasperated; "YOU GOT IT!!! I gave you a Coke."
Me: "What's that in your hand?"
Girl: "Oh." It was a sack containing fries and also the items in a number three lunch.
You know, like everyone else on Planet Earth, we love McDonalds food. Benny adores the ice cream and fries. I am willing to tough it out at the window of my local McDonalds in order to get the little guy his usual treat. However, the behavior I have here quoted verbatim...this kind of stuff...uh, it got very, very old a very, very long time ago. Maybe given the level of pay, maybe given that McDonalds workers are entry-level workers, the local manager feels he/she is getting a fair response from his/her team. I don't agree.
Friday, October 14, 2005
I Suppose This Is Good News
I have been getting madder at the Republican Party the longer this Iraqi debacle drags onward and downward. So even before the president got hit by the charge that his Emergency Management Mechanism is a rusty wreck, even before then I was feddy uppy. I wanted to get Mr. Bush on the phone and yell, "Go stand in the corner until you're sorry!" I steamed. I stewed.
Then today, with interest, I read on the MSNBC website that the president has hit the proverbial banana peel on the floor with his heel and is moving rapidly forward in a downward arc. Supposedly, a recent poll shows that if the next election were now, voters would send Alfred E. Neuman to Washington because he could not do worse than present leadership. Well, that's good. It makes me feel better. It seems that I am not the last angry citizen. My misery has company.
Another thing...the administration that has had a great time romping over the concept of human rights and the basic idea of the rule of law...now a bunch of them are worried that their rights may not adequately be represented in legal procedings focused on the way they have been acting like the law was a weapon for them to use on those who disagreed with them. My, my. I do not rejoice in their pain. However, I am tired of them. Bunch of hypocritical weasels. In a way it is not good news that so many prominent Republicans are in deep political schmoo. But in a way, it is.
My favorite statistic is this one...as of today, 2% of black people support the present administration. That is impressive. Now, if all those angry black people would go out and register to vote in the next election...and then if they'd actually VOTE when the time came, we could get some new people down in Washington for me to be mad at. Of course Republicans don't give a rat's little behind what black people think because most black people don't vote. I vote, though, and two years from now, I'm not going to forget about all the lousy management that has our great country looking like a fire drill in a chicken coop.
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Motivation
I am a Weight Watcher, paid up and even attending meetings occasionally. There, the lecturer does what she can to promote weight loss in the ensuing week. She's not particularly eloquent. To encourage herself, ordinarily she holds up a visual aid of some description; a chart or a book of recipes, a paper of "BRAVO" stickers, a sack of snacks approved by the head honchos of Weight Watchers. She invites audience participation, asks questions to get people talking, finishes up right on time and scampers out the door to her next location. Lecturers are like priests apparently...nobody wants to be one. Not enough to go around. Meanwhile her side-kick weighs everyone, records the current tonnage, handles sales of this and that book or snack item. Fifteen individuals show up for the average meeting, sometimes a few more, sometimes less. Meetings. If you desperately needed a shot of motivation, a Weight Watcher meeting would be your last destination.
So how do I keep myself earnestly trying? I don't. No one would claim that I do a good job of this. For example, right now I'm drinking coffee into which I poured a good big blop of heavy cream. And I just ate peanut butter toast. So far though, at weigh-in, I've been down a pound and a half each time. I lose a tiny fragment of weight each week...knock on wood...today is weigh-in day. Nearly all of my fellow meeting attendees are in the same boat...a pound to a pound and a half/week. Lots of grousing and grumbling at weigh-in time. "For this I didn't eat a piece of my own birthday cake?"
Last week the lecturer's theme was that we should cherish our diminished expectations. No, we aren't losing weight fast enough to make us happy. We're all fed up. However, think about it folks...if you lose a pound and a half per week, by this time next year, you will have lost seventy-eight pounds!!!! And since the loss has occured so slowly it will be more easily sustained because you retrain yourself during that year, you get new food habits, you teach yourself how to say NO and how to accept the NO you've said. That was the gist. Not motivational at all in my case. Woohoo. A year from now. I could be dead. I'm old. What would be the point of living my remaining months in deprivation if the only result were a slightly less corpulent corpse? No point at all.
Clearly, when it comes to motivation, I'm on my own. So I am in the process of arranging prizes for myself. The first is quite glorious. When I have lost twenty pounds, officially lost those pounds at meeting weigh-in, I can wear my fabulous new shoes. Oh, yes, they are too glorious to believe. The leather was treated to make it look like rusty copper. OY!!! I have those shoes up on the mantel. Lydia, seeing them declared, "Oh, that is YOU. Wear them this Sunday." No can do. The magic number is twenty. Twenty pounds. I'll be lucky to have lost anything this week let alone twenty pounds. I can see those shoes, however, and I want them.
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
Sick
Night before last I knew that I was getting sick, so I got up, took antihistamine, drank a lot of fruit juice, took a vitamin , and went back to bed. Yesterday I felt too punk to do anything much. Bad antihistamine hangover. I went early to bed without taking any meds. Woke up late this A.M. after a terrible night of nightmares...and I had such a vile headache, it was worse than the proverbial sharp stick in the eye. No rest for the wicked; I had to take Susanna to work. Once up and dressed, I decided that no matter how I felt, I was going to do my workout at the Y after dropping Susanna. Did that. Went back to pick her up. Delivered her to her destination. Went straight home and walked Porque. Then I took antihistamine and three Excedrins, put on my flannel night gown, got a fresh bottle of Mountain Dew, and curled up under a quilt in front of the dining room TV. My head hurt so much I felt nauseated. I shut my eyes. After a while I woke up, feeling both hot and cold. My elbows and knees hurt. My head felt cold inside but the skin on my face seemed too hot to touch. I took aspirin. Went back to sleep. Woke up to find the Jerry Springer Show in progress, seemed like an extension of last night's bad dream. Two women fought like lunatics over a short, stupid, fat man who claimed to love neither of them. Then some other feeble-minded soul came out and soon everyone was fighting everyone else. I had no idea what it was all about, but at least it kept me from thinking about my head and my temperature. What temperature you say? I don't know. No thermometer. It just felt like I had a temp. After a while I had to take Porque out again. While out...looking like a freak, my hair wild, wearing my denim duster over the nightgown...I noticed that the construction crew next door at the Jordans is finishing up. I asked the supervisor if tomorrow he'd give me an estimate on doing the gutters and fixing the bad stretch of roof over the laundry in the back of my crazy house. He said he'd check the situation tomorrow...looking at me like, "Goodness gracious, this is one outrageously insane old lady coming outside looking like she does." Not that I cared enough to do anything different. Then after Porque and I got back indoors, Lydia called to say that I don't need to watch Benny during her karate lesson. She feels too punk to do her lesson. Uh-oh. Another one bites the dust! This all started last week with Benny. On Wednesday P.M. he kept saying at karate that he was too tired to participate, and he coughed a lot. Generous little sweetheart that he is, he shared the germs with everyone else. When I heard him a week ago telling Mr. Odom, "I can't, I'm too tired," I thought, "Here we go. Whatever he has, he's going to shake it down and pass it around." So when Lydia called a little while ago to say that she's not going to do her karate lesson tonight, I mentally took inventory. Yes, I do have fresh chicken in the fridge and tomorrow I'd better make chicken soup. When you get as old as I am, nobody makes soup for you. Nope. I'm the local soup source and tomorrow I'll make some for me and whoever else needs a life saved from this miserable germ.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Civic League Meeting
It's raining tonight. I have a sore throat. My joints all hurt a little bit. I don't want to take another bath and get nicely dressed. I don't want to go out and drive to the Stuart Center, listen to political candidates tell how they are better than each other. Blecch. I feel as though I should do it,however. Maybe my duty. Oh, rats. I don't want to.
On Time Would Be Good
Last Wednesday I said to my yardworker, "William, the grass looks nappy. Let's get this all cut and trimmed today, OK?" By "let's" I meant him.
He smiled cheerfuly and said, "That right. It suppose to rain tomorrow so I get here then and do it all up right." Huh?
Well, no sense in arguing with him; he marches to the beat of his own obscure instrumentation. All the rest of that day and all of the next when it did not yet rain, William roosted on a neighbor's porch, smoking, sipping Colt 45, calling out greetings to passers-by, cackling at imagined bits of comedy, yipping out his high, barking laugh in tones that carried for at least a block. Apparently he had not run out of money. This would take time.
So the weekend rolled around and the grass was longer. Rain began in a small way that soon became a deluge. By Saturday at 3:00 P.M. in a neighbor's low-standing back yard, flood water rose up over the back of his pick-up truck. The back yard next to me was completely under water. My sump pump ran constantly. Then Sunday A.M. and clouds hung around, very dark and gray. All day drizzle came and went. Porque Choppe refused to step down off our porch.
Now it's Monday. The yard that was nappy last Wednesday is a soggy, wet hay field today. Quite likely William is somewhere with all four paws in the air, sleeping off a heavy dose of his favorite brand of anti-depressant. Dang. When you rely on "local" help, you're at the mercy of all their peculiarities. I wonder when my yard will once again look trimmed and spruce. If William had cut the grass when I asked, I might be able to take little chihuahua out without losing her in long green weeds.
Saturday, October 8, 2005
A Slooooooow Diet
When I signed up for Weight Watchers, I thought things would move along more briskly because I remember being a Weight Watcher when I was young, losing three or more pounds/week and getting really skinny in a few months. Now I'm old and it all goes more slowly due, I hear, to my decrepit metabolism. Possibly this could be fixed, with a major effort. On Thursday I sat next to a woman nearly my age who lost three and a half pounds over the last week. She, unlike me, had done an hour of hard, sweaty, heart-pounding aerobics every single day. What a hero. She deserved her success.
It's amazing, really, that I lose any weight at all. I'm not a good dieter. Yes, I sit there at meetings. Yes, I read the material they hand out. No, I don't try to remember any of it. I pretty much make it up as I go along in deference to my most recent whim. For example at breakfast today I ate roast beef and am having strong coffee with heavy cream. Seemed like a good idea because in a few minutes I'm going to be on my knees scrubbing all the way from the front door, down the hall, through the kitchen and powder room, and back to the laundry. This is my day to make the floor gleam dazzling white or get black and blue knees trying, a goal which might be more happily realized by a person who fueled up first. Also, it's pouring buckets of rain outside and will continue all day. Moldy, flea-bitten weather! Seemed like a morning for a lip-smacking good breakfast. See, that's how my diet goes.
Am I losing any weight? Sort of. A pound and a half/week. At that rate, I tell myself, by this time next year, I will have lost seventy-eight pounds and my bones will stick out, my skin will struggle to cover those bones, I'll be a walking Halloween decoration. A good thing, in fact, since statistics show that at least in a lab environment, starved rats live longer than their plumper kin. The problem is that long range view. I'm one of those people with a two-second attention span. Can I do this?
Friday, October 7, 2005
Good Dog
Have I mentioned lately that I love my small Chihuahua? Well, I do. This is a very dear little dog person. Wherever I sit or take a nap, Porque Choppe is there on my lap. She hops up and settles down as though that's her job, sitting on me. She does it conscientiously. If I go upstairs, Porque is beside me. She goes with me from room to room watching my face, trying to anticipate what I'll do next. Sometimes she makes numerous false starts down the stairs supposing that my back and forth from this and that room mean that I'm going down. She eventually goes all the way down, watching over her shoulder to see that I'm also really headed for the first floor.
I know when she wants to go out because she'll stand on her back legs beside me, put a paw on my leg and pat, pat, pat; power-staring, and not jumping up to sit-lap. Some dogs scratch the door. Some dogs bark at the door. Porque quietly and politely hints.
If I take the hint, get up and walk toward the coat rack where I keep her harness, she cries out loud, somewhere between a bark and a crying noise. Sort of a little tiny, "YOOOOORP!!! YORP!" And she frisks happily which makes it hard to get the harness over her little head.
If Porque has been hoping that I'd go out with her, but hasn't needed to go so much that she had to pat and hint, sometimes, I'll go outside just because I've guessed that she wants me to. On those occasions, she doesn't want to seem pushy, but does hope to see me getting down the harness, so she peeks out around the corner of the living room entrance, just a bit of nose and one eye. Then when the harness comes off the hook, she YORPS! joyfully and rushes to the door.
At night she burrows under the covers and then turns around until just her head sticks out onto the next pillow. Her paws fold over the top of the sheet. She snores itty bitty chihuahua snores. Occasionally she re-burrows down until her head is almost by my feet. Little wild Chihuahuas in ancient Mexico must have been like rabbits and prairie dogs, digging homes for themselves underground. She may play rabbitt for a while but always ends up back with her head on a pillow and her paws folded over the top of the sheet.
Porque doesn't do any tricks. She's just there, her big dark eyes soulfully watching me, trying to anticipate me. I am her only job and her only hobby. The other day someone asked how many times/day I have to walk the dog. I had to admit that I go out at least five times. The questioner clearly thought this was a high price to pay. Seems reasonable to me.
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
A NAP!!!!!!!
Today I was up, walking Porque Choppe a bit later than usual...6:15A.M. Then I got busy baking treats for the reception to follow Benny's recital this evening. He has finished Suzuki Book I and that means that he has to give a concert. I've heard him play his pieces and he's doing just great. Big improvement. Another little boy is finishing Book III...he's nearly 10, so we aren't jealous. For Benny to finish Book I at age 5 is just fine.
Lydia and the other little boy's mother agreed to do a Halloween themed reception after the recital. The other lady is doing drinks. Lydia said she'd do treats and decorations. So since Lydia has already got way too much to do, I took on the reception prep. Lydia did cupcakes anyway.
So there I was sweating away in the kitchen this morning right from the crack of dawn. First I made chocolate chip cookies with little pumpkins and ghosts on top. Then I made cookies that have a pumpkin smiling up from the center. Next were sugar cookies in bat, hat, pumpkin, and ghost shapes and I decorated those with colorful icing. Next I made brownies in the shape of pumpkins and ghosts and decorated those, also, with icing. Finally I made meringue and piped it onto parchment in the shape of bones. Those are in the oven at the moment. My back is "killing me". TIRED. Nonstop work since before the sun came up. Right now is the first time I've been seated all morning.
Lydia just popped in the deliver my pans that were at her house. When she arrived, I was upstairs looking for fall fabric. Got it somewhere...with colored leaves etc. Pretty. Benny knocked on the door and it took me a while to get downstairs. I apologized for taking so long to get the door open and said that I'd been upstairs. Lydia asked brightly, "Taking a nap?" :-)strong>
Monday, October 3, 2005
Cessation Of Hibernation
I have now spent a year NOT driving around to do errands. When necessary for me to go hither and yon, Lydia has done the driving.
This morning was the first of the new era when I get a life and start to drive around for myself. Here's how that came about. Susanna, Lydia's Hurricane Katrina surviver friend, is getting settled into her new apartment. Also, she's settling into her new employment as substitute teacher at Old Dominion University. Today was her first time on the job. She teaches on Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings. Lydia has been driving her to appointments and places to get needed supplies, appointments, whatnot. Of course, Lydia has continued to chauffeur her children to all of their usual activities as well...in addition to the errands she needs to run for Dan. By last Thursday, Lydia was looking down and out, frazzled, confused. She was perfectly willing to continue her super-full schedule, but I thought it was time for me to get into the game. After all, I'm retired. I could easily do some of Lydia's running around. So I volunteered to chauffeur Susanna to her job and other places on Monday/Wednesday/Friday mornings. On those days, too, I'm going to start...as of today...picking up Benny and taking him to karate, feeding him during Lydia's karate lesson, and then dropping him back at home in time for bed. Each of those days, I'm going to drop off dinner when I pick up Benny, so I'll have cooking to do three times/week.
This may sound like some serious scampering around, but not really. For example today. Susanna needed to stop at the hardware store. Well, I had errands there, too. Also, taking her to work is only slightly out of my way because I go to the YMCA to my Fitlinxx workout at that time on those days. Susanna's apartment and her job are each less than a mile from my house. Same with karate and Benny's house. No big deal.
Quite likely this schedule will not persist through the winter. If it does, though, that's OK. Time for me to get about and about. After hibernating for a year, I should waddle out of the cave and look around.
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