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Bad Chemistry

09/28/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 8 Comments

I will tell you this story, but I want you to promise you won’t call the police or anything, because this all happened in 1981-82, and can’t we all just laugh about how stupid High School Laurie was and move on? I thought so.

If there is an upside of taking a chemistry class it is, of course, the experiments. Some are fairly uninspiring, and some are mildly entertaining. Still others have potential to be truly fascinating.

But I’m not here to talk about any of those. You came for the possible explosions, didn’t you? Of course you did.

The accompanying photo depicts a bunsen burner. All you really need to know about a bunsen burner is that it provides a constant heat source for chemistry experiments, it gets HOT, and it burns natural gas, which comes from below the special chemistry cabinets that serve as the lab tabletops. A rubber hose connects the burner to a gas valve on the side of the cabinet, and the gas is turned on.

In theory.

In reality, if you are a juvenile delinquent I’ll call Guy, you hook the rubber hose to the gas source, then put the other end of the hose not onto the bunsen burner, but rather stuffed into a hole in the gas cabinet. If you are Guy you then turn on the gas and walk away, alerting several of your brain-dead classmates to your folly as the cabinet slowly fills with loose methane gas. If you are a brain-dead classmate such as Yours Truly, you allow this to go on for, oh, say 45 minutes.

At which time a match is lit.

I had heard about flames shooting out of enclosed spaces, but I had never until that day actually seen it happen. I don’t remember any accompanying sound. I just remember the flames shooting out of the keyholes and air vents of the safety cabinet for several seconds.

And then it was over. No explosion, no early grave. No firefighters or police officers or ATF agents. Just a miffed — yes, I do believe miffed is a good way to describe her that day — chemistry teacher, no more competent than a day earlier. She was one step closer to the end of her chemistry teaching career at our school, a career which did not end for her that day, regardless of incompetence or shooting flames.

I think Guy may have been suspended for his prank, but I’m not sure. It was around this time that we stopped seeing a whole lot of Guy in school, as he had bigger ideas for his life. I saw him a few years ago at a class reunion, though I didn’t talk to him, because I didn’t recognize him. He looked really good. He’s been out of prison for a few years now, and trying to stay that way, I hear, so I don’t imagine he’ll be taking any chemistry classes any time soon.

No one was injured during this appalling experiment, unless you count the irreparable harm done to my faith in my own teenage judgement.

More stories about trying to get the chemistry teacher fired await you at Laurie’s blog Fooleryland

Filed Under: Humor, MISC Tagged With: , , , ,

Hailey Haiku

07/22/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 7 Comments

by Brian Fairlee with a preface by Laurie LaGrone

I opened Facebook one recent morning to a message from my lifelong friend Brian Fairlee. Would I read his collection of haiku written to mark the passing of his beagle Hailey? Of course I would. “I am not a poet of any kind,” wrote Brian, “Or a wordsmith, but I wanted to share my raw feelings as close as possible to her passing.

“Time is both a blessing and a curse. It soothes the pain of loss, but also eats away at precious memory. The moment she was gone, I took two deep sniffs in the nape of her neck because I wanted to remember the smell of unconditional friendship. I want to believe I can still smell it, but like the bell in the book The Polar Express, the details are fading already.”

Brian wrote over 40 haiku as a way of getting through the very difficult loss of his family’s beloved pet. Here are some of the best, arranged to tell Hailey’s story.

An ad from the trash.

A trip after church to see.

Feels like fate to me.

Tattoo on her ear.

She must have been a lab dog.

Come live with us, girl.

Scheduled to be killed.

Pet Adoption Fund saved you.

Now you are my dog.

Silence in the car.

Who is this new passenger?

I hope this works out.

First day – a seizure.

This dog must be a lemon.

Lemons need love, too.

Speckly legs, soft ears.

Gentle hand licks and that NOSE!

Beautiful beagle.

The Wonder Beagle!

If dogs had super powers,

Hailey’s was sniffing.

Want to go in the car?

Do you? …DO YOU? GORK!… GORK!… GORK!

Well then, we should go.

We walk to Petsmart.

You find every loose kibble.

Let’s go see the cats.

You found toast two times

And countless other foodstuffs.

We could eat like kings.

A rough day at work.

Your twenty-one gun salute.

Yeah, I missed you too.

GORK! (rattle) GORK! GORK!

(rattle) GORK! GORK! (rattle) GORK!

All right, already!

Hot dogs, mac and cheese.

Chicken patties and pizza.

Carrot? No thank you.

You got nasty breath.

You got a hole in yer tail.

Good thing I like you.

Rotten teeth, seizures.

Too big a heart, face warts.

You’re perfect to me.

You wouldn’t do tricks.

All I wanted was to shake.

Undignified, huh?

Flip. Rub belly. Stop.

I wait… I ask, “More?” (wiggle)

Rub belly. Repeat.

Click clack of toenails.

Bathroom door opens. Hi, nose.

You always found me.

You shiver in pain.

You cry out at every touch.

Why can’t I fix you?

I whispered to her…

I love you so much, Hailey.

And then she was gone.

Hey, are you okay?

Sorry about your dog, man.

Thank you everyone.

I sit here and write.

As if you are still with me.

I miss you so much.

Brian Fairlee talks for a living, but he writes too, and we should encourage him to write more for Smartly.

Filed Under: MISC Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

She Held On

07/11/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 14 Comments

Please come on your lunch hour, she asked. I need you to sing harmony on Three Jolly Coachmen. She chuckled, but I knew she was serious. I went.

Arriving at the convalescent hospital I saw her waiting outside for me. A break, a needed break from four days of vigil. Her cigarette was new; another needed break. We went inside together.

He was there, and not there, in the bed in Room 66. Somewhere in that bed was the man who had taught two girls the cleanest parts of La Cucaracha all those years ago, over the dinner he had cooked for us. Somewhere there, and not there. The opioid curtain separating him from us lifted slightly as he gripped the hand once again offered to him. He held on, and breathed.

Voices hushed, we chatted about everything and nothing. A man came in to administer more pain meds. A brother came in and quietly sat in the available chair. The nurse left. It was time.

She reached for his hand once again, and he held on. One two and three jolly coachmen sat in an English ta-a-vern, she started, for him, for her, singing just loud enough to be heard above the machine at the foot of his bed. Three jolly coachmen sat in an English ta-a-vern, I joined, and we sang in thirds to the end. Immediately she launched into Merry Minuet, which left us giggling. A pause as we searched our memories for more songs from our past, and his.

La cucaracha, que desea macha
Ya no puede caminar
Porque no tiene, porque le falta
Marijuana que fumar
Ay!

Our bad Spanish didn’t matter. He’s squeezing my hand, she said. For a moment, he was there. She held on.

(Photo detail from a Colin McSweeney photograph via)


Laurie isn’t usually so serious at her blog Fooleryland


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Cat Ranch

06/08/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 8 Comments

Here in the country we have pretty much everything we need. We could use more money, more regular filling of pot holes, and more reliable cell phone reception, but otherwise, we’re doing fine.

We don’t need any more cats, thanks.

I can imagine the scenario. You have a female indoor cat who gets out one night, lured by the serenading male cats out on your lawn (who were, of course, lured there by her feline feminine cycle in the first place). A few weeks later – and it is way too late tonight to Google the gestation period of the common house cat, sorry – you’ve got kittens. What to do?

You could sit outside of Safeway with a box of wriggling, adorable kittens; sit there all week until every Safeway patron in town has snubbed you, twice. You could take them to the Humane Society, but that would just be an admission of owning an unspayed cat, and who needs that kind of grief on a Tuesday? Not me – not you, either, apparently.

So, you do the logical thing, and drive way out to the country to dump them beside the road in the dark . . . next to a dairy or farm. “Hey,” you reason, “Dairies have mice and rats, so they need cats!”

There are several problems with this thinking. First, we have cats. If the cats we have weren’t feral, we would consider driving all 4000 of them over to YOUR place to dump them. We hear you’ve got a female in heat . . . Also, cats are not born knowing how to hunt. They are trained by their mothers to hunt, just as lions are. If their mother should die before they learn to hunt, the wild kittens aren’t likely to survive, unless they find a doorstep where they can lurk to do their hunting. In the human world we call this begging.

The cruel reality is that the feral cat population is kept in check in four ways. One, the survival of the fittest, otherwise known as starvation. It isn’t pretty. Two, gang warfare, in which the biggest and toughest survivors throw their weight around. It isn’t pretty. Three, overpopulation, which always leads to disease. Feline distemper scourges the property periodically, systematically thinning the cat population and leaving a few ragged survivors, more desperate than ever. It isn’t pretty.

Finally, four: crowd control. This is the human – and humane – solution to what’s left of the cat problem that Nature couldn’t quite wipe out. This is best accomplished with a .22 rifle and a beer chaser. I have never done it (I’m way too soft, and that’s no compliment), but I tip my hat to those who take up the grim task every now and then when the cat population is out of control.

For several years we had three indoor-outdoor pet cats (all now in Kitty Heaven), two of which had been dumped here. Outside we feed more cats than I can count. When we can catch them and have money to spare we get the females spayed, but it’s a losing battle. Mom feeds at least three over at her house. Not feeding these cats is not an option. We tried that, and the bolder ones ended up trying to get into our house, fighting with our cats, and generally making us all miserable.

So while I know that YOU would never dump an animal out in the country (dogs are dumped almost as often, with even sadder results, usually), there are people out there who will. I hope they know that they do no one – especially not the cats – any favors. Please spay and neuter your pets.

Laurie blogs about life on the ranch and more at her blog Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

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We’re All Gonna Die

05/04/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 6 Comments

“Wait, who is this guy?” I asked Rob, but he didn’t know. All we knew was that we’d been invited for a boat ride with a stranger, whom we hadn’t met.

Well, of course we had to go. That’s what you do when you’re in your 20s.

We were in Puerta Vallarta, Mexico. My brother Rob, who was in the Navy, flew there separately. His seatmate on the plane was a friendly man named Eddie, who invited Rob for a Sunday boat ride and “bring the family.” The boat, however, belonged to Eddie’s friend, who offered a standing invitation to strangers to come aboard on Sundays.

We laughed about it all week, picturing a leaky two-man sailboat, piloted by a toothless old drunk, futilely polishing his anchor while waiting to take hapless victims to sea to drown them. So of course, we went.

Sunday morning dawned, and my two brothers and I headed to the harbor to meet Eddie. Hmmm, Eddie. Clearly a man of means, he owned a house perched on a cliff above the marina, overlooking rows of boats on one side, ocean on the other. It was an impressive home, complete with a cupola. How he fell in with the indigent sailor we couldn’t imagine.

Eddie took us down to the marina, but wouldn’t be sailing that day. Could you blame him? We figured we’d be swimming home. How far to the leaky sailboats? These boats keep getting bigger. Do they really let him keep a junker near these beautiful –

“Here we are!” chirped Eddie, stopping in front of . . . holy crap, this is not a leaky sailboat.

This was the Sonrisa, a yacht with teak decks, full electronic capabilities for the era, and probably golden toilets. This can’t belong to an indigent sailor. But who . . .

Sitting in a deck chair on the stern was an elderly man with an outrageous tan, wearing giant sunglasses that announced his wealth. He was dressed all in white, jacket unzipped to reveal a hairy chest and a thick gold chain. Next to him was his carbon copy: a man of the same description, down to the jewelry. And what hung from HIS gold chain was the key to all of this:

A solid gold garbage can. As we took it in, Eddie explained who our host was.

“Marshall owns the garbage concession for Los Angeles. His friend there owns the garbage service for San Diego.” That’s when I noticed the other guests hovering around Marshall like, well, flies. And while there were a couple of dozen people aboard, counting me, there were only two women. The men who so nervously bowed and scraped seemed to know something that I didn’t. Something sinister, I imagined. I peeked at Marshall, serenely holding court on the stern of his boat. Yacht.

I whispered to my brother Bocci, “We’re gonna die.” Yes, my capacity for overstatement and melodrama were extraordinary in my 20s, but I really felt we’d been set up. What was in it for this man to invite us for a day trip on his luxurious yacht — this man, surrounded by men trying SO hard not to kiss his ring? Garbage business, that meant two things to me: flies, and mafia. Was this unfair? Undoubtedly. Will I change my story to accommodate my more mature, reflective elder self? Nope.

Meanwhile, Rob, a.k.a. The Guy Who Got Us Into This, was oblivious to my histrionics and psyched for a good time. Because Rob was a Navy man he was especially welcome to Marshall, who had also been a Navy man. Rob got to drive the boat, as we non-Navy types are fond of saying. Rob stayed up on the bridge chatting with Marshall for quite a while on our way to a popular beach village, which was accessible almost exclusively by boat. Would Rob ever return? I wondered.

We zoomed past the large, slow boats bound for the same beach, bearing tourists. Getting there first, we were set up with the best beach chairs, the best of everything. “Order anything you like; it’s on Marshall,” we were told. Really. Being timid and skeptical, we didn’t take advantage, instead nibbling delicately on small portions, like meek little mice. Ever the planner, I simply didn’t want to throw up lots of food when they planted my feet in cement shoes and killed me slowly.

“Here, try this.” I was handed a shot of clear liquid. I assumed it was tequila, but no, we were told it was resilla, or recia — I’ve never found a spelling, a definition, or anyone who’s ever heard of it. “Careful, though — it’s more like hallucinogens than alcohol. It’ll make you see things.” Don’t need to tell ME twice. The three of us shared one shot. I was tempted to spit mine in the sand, but I was afraid that would make them mad. So I swallowed it. Hmmmm. Not dead. Well, wait for your throat to close up.

Nothing.

Okay, let’s explore a little. Beer me, Marge.

We were set upon, soon after arriving, by a robust senior citizen wearing the silliest beachwear ever: no shirt, and an unzipped safari vest with too many zippers. He had white hair with matching beard and chest hair. But suddenly I needed another drink: he was wearing a Speedo. Old guys in grape smugglers make me shudder. And he took a shine to me, throwing his arm around my shoulders and giving me a full appreciation of his alcoholic binge. In this man’s life-long quest for a wide-eyed, gullible audience, he got me that day. I was chosen because I was the first female to arrive on the beach. I secretly dubbed him SpeedoMan.

SpeedoMan insisted we accompany him up the hill to his beach house. I can’t believe we did, but then I also thought we were marked for death at the hands of sanitation engineers, so my judgement is suspect at best. Built into the cliffs above the beach, the ocean-facing house front was entirely open to the sea breeze. A landing halfway up the brick staircase also served as the threshold of a one-bedroom bungalow, a guest cottage for the main house. It was breathtaking.

Once inside his home, I wanted to take in the view. But SpeedoMan insisted we look at hundreds of photos of him with famous people, and newspaper clippings presumably about him, all papering the walls. This was no home; this was a shrine. He explained that he was a Hollywood ghost writer, and many of these people had been his clients. A soundtrack played my head: “Yipee yi-aaay, yipee yi-ohhhh! Ghost writer in disguise . . .”

After sufficient worshiping at his alter, we left SpeedoMan there, probably pouring his next drink.
The rest of the day was uneventful as we basked in the sun, the hospitality, and the beauty of the bay. When we reboarded the Sonrisa, all guests were given blue t-shirts emblazoned with an image of the boat, then delivered safely back to the marina, full as ticks and a bit bewildered. Why weren’t we sleeping with the fishes? I wondered. Perhaps I’d been a little overdramatic. Marshall was just a generous man in his sunset years who enjoyed sharing his yacht with complete strangers. Nothing wrong with that.
And he had decided not to kill us, so that was a bonus.
Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

The Dinner Party

04/27/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 12 Comments

We had a dinner party.

We were feeling so grown up, my college roommates and me. Table linens, matching plates, and red wine. One of the boyfriends grilled some inexpensive meat. I made apple crisp for dessert, probably — one of my two dessert success stories in those days. David Sanborn squawked softly in the background. Good food, good friends, a notch above a typical evening for would-be sophisticates at Chico State in 1986.

We retired to the living room, about four feet from the dinner table, to lounge around and drink more wine and coffee. The music switched to something a bit more upbeat; probably Prince or Madness or Cyndi Lauper. The conversation was lively, our guests were having a good time, and we roommates were happy and smugly self-satisfied.

And then, the cat walked in.

Gerry was a stray female cat that we took in, and I can honestly say, as a cat lover, I hated that cat.  She had two modes: EAT and BITCH, and she did both quite a bit. As soon as she moved in she flopped out a load of kittens, which had to be given away. We tried to like Gerry, but the chips were stacked against us. But Gerry had one redeeming quality, and that was that she drove rabbits WILD.

Our roommate Jules had a French Lop rabbit named Scooter, whom we loved. After Scooter ate, Scooter pooped, and after Scooter pooped, Scooter was allowed to run around the apartment for a while. When Gerry moved in, Scooter thought we’d brought him a girlfriend. After all, with all of Gerry’s kitty hormones raging, she must have smelled like a French brothel to Scooter. We discovered, to our great amusement, that Gerry would let Scooter chase her a little, but not catch her. The cat would flop down like Manet’s Olympia, stretch out luxuriously, look back over her shoulder at the rabbit, and twitch her tail in a come-hither manner. Scooter would wait until he couldn’t stand it anymore, and then make a headlong rush toward the big tease, who always bolted at the last possible second. This went on for as long as we let it.

So into our oh-so-adult dinner party afterglow strode Gerry. “Oh, I didn’t know you had a cat,” said one guest. “What happened to the rabbit?” At which point, of course, the promise of a new Stupid Pet Trick was too much to resist, and Scooter was brought forth from his cage in his closet, where he had been happily gnawing the wall board in solitude.

Scooter looked around the room. People. All looking at him. Expecting something. Why are they bringing me out at night? Hmmmm — Gerry! Ohhhhhhh, she looks hot tonight. Little minx. I’m gonna get me some –

And the rabbit rushed the cat, who, very likely full from dinner party leftovers, mistimed her escape.

Pounce.

Have you ever heard a cat scream? It’s kind of  like Cyndi Lauper’s singing, only a LOT louder. Audible gasps from the assembled hipsters. They looked at Scooter, who was no longer a virgin. They looked at us, gaping mouths, every one. They looked at Gerry, who was never a virgin, but had now crossed into species-bending territory. They looked back at us in horror.

“THAT’S NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE!” we sputtered all at once. “WE SWEAR! The rabbit has NEVER won!”

Scooter, a new-found look of satisfaction on his little French face, was quickly deposited back in his cage sans ceremony. A pall had been cast over our party, as our friends were each considering whether to report us to the SPCA or to PETA. Gerry looked shell-shocked. Goodnights were said in short order.

Gerry never played tag with Scooter again, though Scooter tried whenever he could. I think that was our last dinner party, too.

You can read more of Laurie’s embarrassing moments at her blog Fooleryland

(Illustration via this site)

Filed Under: Humor, MISC Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

The Christmas I Was Lucky to Survive

03/31/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 17 Comments

When I was about 23, my brothers and I were home from college for Christmas. Christmas Day found us just sitting around burping a lot, and we were bored. Three stir crazy college students and a golden retriever wanted something to do, so we hopped into my brother Bocci’s Bronco II, put Bucky the dog in the back, and drove off in search of snow. “Just be home in time for Christmas dinner,” were our mother’s parting words.

The family homestead lies in the center of northern California’s Sacramento Valley, and in 15 minutes one can be in the foothills of the Coast Range to the west, or the Sierra-Cascades to the east. Without a word Bocci turned the Bronco east. It seems we all had the same unspoken, idiotic idea: we were going to try to get to the slopes of Mt. Lassen, where our Uncle Mal and Aunt Shirley were snowed into their cabin home. They had planned to have Christmas with us, but weren’t able to get out, even with a 4-wheel drive. “Let’s just get to the snow, and see how close we can get to the cabin,” one of us said, once it became apparent that we were all thinking the same thing.

We turned off of Highway 36 at Dale’s Station in brilliant sunshine, smug in our collective lunacy. Winding uphill toward the tiny hamlet of Manton, not a patch of snow in sight, we must have doubted the reports of impassable roads at 4000 feet, where our destination lay. We zipped through Manton, up Schoolhouse Road, and beyond the PG&E substation that marks the end of paved road and civilization. We were in logging country now.

By this time there was snow on the ground, then in the trees. Soon we were in a winter wonderland. It was beautiful, and there were still tire tracks to follow. No problem, right? We can definitely do this.

Until the tires started losing traction. “Okay,” said Bocci, “I guess this is where we should turn around. He stopped and executed a three-point turn . . . which ended in a ditch. Well, not really a ditch, because who needs ditches in the heart of Roseburg Lumber country? No one, that’s who, and that’s exactly who was around to witness one of our wheels spinning in the air: No one.

We pushed. We rocked. We sat on the hood and gunned the engine and pushed some more. Almost . . . almost . . . nope. It was mid-afternoon by this point, and we could walk the 5-10 miles back toward people, hopefully, or the short distance forward toward a warm fire. We went forward.

At first it was easy going on the packed snow. Bucky bounded along and didn’t mind his cold paws. Soon we came to the tiny marker that identifies G-Line, which is as close to a street name as you find on company-owned, dirt logging roads. We turned . . . and our hearts sunk. Fresh powder. No more packed tire tracks.

By the time we got to the turn-off to the cabin, it was heavy dusk. We knew the way well, so we weren’t worried about getting lost, but we should have been. People get stranded in these snowy mountains every year, and not always with happy endings. Bucky was very tired from bounding through the deep snow, which was up to mid-thigh. We were cold.

Inside the cabin, Aunt Shirley was talking on the phone. Their dog kept barking at the window, so she went to see what on earth — people! People walking into the yard! “Gotta go,” she told the caller. “Someone just WALKED up to the house.”

I have never been so embarrassed and yet so happy to be alive to face the shame in all my life. It seemed as if Aunt Shirley had known we were coming, because she had prepared a feast: Beef Wellington, Yorkshire pudding, and all the trimmings. Somehow they fed three starving college students and a 100 pound dog with no trouble on a moment’s notice. We bunked upstairs in the loft, and I got the bed closest to the little window, from which I could see the bright moonlight on the frozen white world outside.

The next day my uncle fired up the tractor and we rode down to our car. The guys winched the Bronco out of the gully, which wasn’t easy, even with a come-along. When Uncle Mal saw where we had beached the Bronco, he remarked, “You guys hiked in three miles, you know.” We felt like the Donner Party, only full.

Our adventure was over, and we had had a fabulous time and a very rare white Christmas. The hard part was going home to our parents and grandfather, whose Christmas had been ruined — first with worry, then with disappointment. We have not to date tried something that dumb again, but there’s still time.

Originally published at Laurie’s personal blog, Fooleryland

(Original photo by Lars Falkdalen Lindahl at Wikimedia Commons)

Filed Under: MISC, Nostalgia Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Underreported Perils of Feeding Hay

03/22/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 12 Comments

Feeding beef cows is not rocket science. They graze all day on green pasture, and, depending on the time of year, you supplement their diet with hay. Alfalfa hay is the best, and a favorite of the cows.

Feeding hay is a pretty big job in the winter, when they need so much more food energy than only grass can provide. In the late spring they need almost no hay at all, and in fact prefer the tender green grass to hay. But in late summer as the grass toughens, the cows again start looking for hay.

When my parents go somewhere overnight, or for weeks at a time, we take care of their animals, the most important of these being the Limousins, their beautiful red beef cows. Dad’s instructions are usually vague, with lots of wiggle room: “Feed them enough. If they don’t clean it up by the next feeding, cut them way back.” But sometimes Dad gets oddly specific: “Give the cows on the north side 27 flakes, and the south cows none. Unless, of course, the south cows are standing there, in which case, give them four flakes.” Um, okay.

One recent Saturday morning I was up on the stack tossing alfalfa hay flakes down into the concrete and iron manger below me. Done it a million times, nothing new, can almost do it in my sleep — until. Until I looked down and saw that I had inadvertently dropped a piece of baling twine down into the manger. Darn. When this happens, it’s important to retrieve it, because some cow could possibly eat the twine. Cows are not known for their brains or discriminating taste.

Back when I was a little kid, hay bales were secured with three wires, made of metal. Dropping one of THOSE into the manger was a crisis. I know it sounds crazy, but cows really did ingest the wires, and then you had a real problem. A cow with a wire in her belly was a cow in trouble. The wire, or any scrap metal that dumb cows might eat, lodges in the honeycombed walls of the reticulum, one of the cow’s four stomach chambers. Inflammation results, and the cow fails to gain weight, or, if she’s a milking cow, her milk production drops.

The wire solution was surprisingly elegant and simple: all heifers were given cow magnets before they entered the milking herd. No, not those colorful refrigerator decorations, but 4-inch stainless steel magnetic cylinders which the cows were forced to ingest as if they were big vitamin tablets. The magnets were preventive medicine against stray wires in the cows’ stomachs, because all metal simply adhered itself to the magnets and stayed put nicely.

But, since hay bales are now wrapped with twine instead of wire, there should be no danger, right?

Wrong.

That Saturday morning as I watched a stray twine slither into the manger below me, I was horrified (and annoyed, let’s face it) to see a cow already eating the darned thing. Stupid cow. Time to climb down and save her from herself.

The minefield that is the haystack includes such dangers as sharp alfalfa stems, black widows, unnoticed gaps between bales into which your entire leg disappears, cut bales that collapse under your weight, wobbly bales that teeter under your feet, and feral kittens. Feral kittens are dangerous because you’ll soon be feeding them and calling them Fluffy.

It is rare, but also possible, for poorly-stacked bales to collapse under your weight; it happened to my brother Rob once. He was standing on the corner of a stack when it gave way beneath him. Luckily for him he was inside a pole barn, and near an iron support post for the barn. He grabbed the post and hung on as the stack crumbled out from under him, and survived with sore muscles instead of a broken neck.

But my least favorite hay hazard is caused by feeding hay into the wind. You find yourself suddenly in a cloud of swirling alfalfa dust and flakes, blinking and sneezing and shaking out your t-shirt. Wearing a bra full of hay particles is about as miserable as it gets, but there are no advisories for such things, and no one writes cowboy songs about that.

Originally posted at Laurie’s blog Reasonably Educated Bumpkins

Filed Under: Humor, MISC

I Leaf Japanese Language Wo Learning Tight to Think.

03/09/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 10 Comments

The tiny room was stuffy. No breeze stirred the late afternoon air, heavy with humidity and pollen and expectations — for the weekend, two days away; for finals, just around the corner. The converted laundry room on the back of the shabby Victorian house had no air conditioning, no fans, no insulation. A half-hearted attempt at a college classroom, it abutted a campus parking lot, and waves of heat rising from the asphalt outside pulsed through the room.

Shoichi-san, a grad student, guided the four students through the lesson as they fought sleep, or restlessness, or both. Each took his or her turn reading the romanized text aloud; it looked sort of like English but, if pronounced correctly, it sounded sort of like Japanese.

Watashi wa toshokan ni irasshaimasu. I go to the library.

Janet read a few tortuous sentences until Shoichi-san was satisfied. Paula plodded through her assigned paragraph. Laurie approached the words dully, as if trying to read underwater. The stagnant air was getting to her; she cracked a smile and tried not to giggle.

Enpitsu ga arimasu ka? Do you have a pencil?

Joe’s turn. Joe’s learning curve was flatter than those of his classmates. Japanese did not come easily to Joe, and the warm room and fidgety girls around him didn’t make it any easier.

Joe looked at the page. The words swam before his eyes. Joe struggled through the sentence, syllable by syllable.

” . . . shi . . . ma . . . SHIT.”

Shta. Joe had wanted to say shta, but it was too late. The word hung in the poisonous air with ponderous finality, daring any of the students to say a word. No words were needed.

I don’t remember which of us started giggling first, but Janet and I were goners after that. Shoichi-san blinked at us through innocent eyes — and ears.  “Eez ever’teeng . . . okayyy?” he asked. We assured him that we were just tired and punchy, that was all. Poor Joe was turning six shades of red and cursing the day he ever chose Japanese as an elective.

Class dismissed.

Laurie blogs in English, sort of, at her blog Fooleryland

Filed Under: Humor, MISC, Nostalgia Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Carl Ed

02/21/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 10 Comments

 In high school two or three decades ago, who’s counting, a student could choose from among a few educational paths. Most of my immediate circle of friends were college prep students, but there were other paths, including vocational ed and a smattering of business-related courses.

And then there was the Carl Ed path.

Carl was an unusual guy. I don’t know the specific affliction under which Carl labored, but if I had to guess (I guessed at the time) I’d say it was a healthy dose of marijuana.

Probably many doses throughout the day.

In any case, Carl’s high school career consisted of various student aid, office aid, and library aid opportunities. In my junior year I saw Carl most often in the first 10-15 minutes of my chemistry class, when he was going from room to room collecting the attendance slips which were clipped just inside each classroom door. Now, Carl was nothing if not considerate, and, not wanting to disturb the class, he opened the door just a crack, stuck his long, thin arm through the crack, and felt around for the attendance slip.

Carl’s approach would have been masterful, but for two things: 1) the door was at the front of the classroom, and we bored, frustrated, under-challenged and over-challenged students were all facing that door each day when Carl’s arm appeared and began the grope for the attendance slip; and 2) the attendance slip clip was placed quite far inside the door, and Carl couldn’t seem to retain this crucial piece of information. Again, marijuana, probably.

Grope, grope, grope.

It became a game for us. Every day we watched for Carl’s stick arm, and paid little attention to the completely incompetent efforts of a very new teacher to teach chemistry to a roomful of smart alecks.

Grope, grope, grope. Slap, slap, slap. Woosha woosha slap-slap, grope.

And then, to our delight, Carl would usually give up with a sigh, throw open the door, stick his head through in great annoyance, retrieve the attendance slip, and slip back out through the door. So much for keeping a low profile. All in all, Carl was very entertaining and far more interesting than chemistry.

Which is really not why I called you all here today; I told you that so I could tell you this:

I got to be in a TV commercial today! Well, my arm got to, anyway. The part my arm played was very complex, demanding superb acting skills and wide-ranging emotions.

 

I had to open a door a crack, stick my arm through the door and grope for a light switch for something like eight seconds, which is a very long time to grope for a light switch without actually looking. I was fortunate to have been able to draw from my memories of Carl. I would like to thank the members of the Academy . . .

Grope, grope, grope.

Originally posted on Laurie’s blog, Fooleryland

Original photo by by Chmee2 via Wikimedia Commons

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Classroom Noise

01/25/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 10 Comments

My cousin stopped by recently for a rare visit. The last time she broke bread with my family she was an elementary school teacher. Over breakfast we talked about her life in those days, and how it has changed. My father, who is one of the more direct and outspoken people I have ever known, brought up a time when my parents stopped by her classroom when they were in her part of the world.

“I hated your classroom,” Dad told my cousin. As I mentioned, Dad is direct and holds little back. “It’s not just your classroom — all elementary school classrooms seem to be like that,” he went on.

“What was wrong with it?” my cousin wanted to know.

“There was so much stuff all over the walls that you couldn’t even see the walls!” Dad answered. “It’s the same in Laurie’s kids’ classrooms,” he went on. “When I’ve gone there for Grandparents’ Day, every inch of space is covered in the kids’ projects, art, charts, posters — it’s too much. It wasn’t like that when I was in school,” he finished. “There was a blackboard and a calendar, and that was about it.”

I’ve been mulling this over for a few days. So much has been written about ever-increasing stimuli vying for our kids’ attention: video games; loud, bright and fast TV commercials and programs (and movies); electronic distractions of all kinds — even our cultural habit of multitasking. What about all of the bright stuff hanging on the walls of my daughters’ school classroom? Does it distract them from their lessons?

When I imagine a place where I can be my most intellectually productive, where it’s easy to focus my concentration, I picture muted colors, no clutter and minimal distractions. No windows, no media, no loud sounds. It seems I’m picturing a library. And yet, the ambiance of an American elementary school classroom is exactly the opposite that of a library. I wonder if we have gone down the wrong path.

I realize that I am an adult and my ideal learning environment may be very different from that of a child. Today’s classroom environments strive to inspire, stimulate, promote creative expression, and make learning fun, and it’s safe to say the environments do those things. But look at the two photos at the top of this essay and compare: the one on the left is a Japanese elementary school classroom, and the one on the right is American. The Japanese classroom reminds me of a library, and the American classroom feels like a carnival. Since I haven’t heard of anyone decrying the state of the Japanese education system, it does make me wonder.

I wonder if classrooms are not not just stimulating but truly overstimulating our kids’ senses.

Laurie spends an exorbitant amount of time at Fooleryland, her blog.

(Japanese classroom photo via ajari on Wikimedia Commons)

Filed Under: Opinion Tagged With: , , , , ,

Think About Baseball

01/07/2011 By Laurie LaGrone 22 Comments

I was not an art major; I was a graphic design major. The best way I can describe the difference between art and design is that art asks the viewer to interpret it however he will, with no right answer and with infinite possible interpretations. Design’s goal is ONE interpretation, ONE right answer. If you do your job as a designer correctly, you guide the viewer’s eye where you want it to go, and there is no room for ambiguity. That’s because design is usually trying to impart information, or to persuade, or even to sell something.

That said, there is an obvious overlap between the two disciplines, and so I had to take a few art classes. Color theory was one, basic figure drawing was another. And this story took place in a second floor classroom in Ayers Hall, the funky old building on the Chico State campus that housed most of the art classes.

This class was the first and only figure drawing class I have ever taken. If you’ve ever seen such a class depicted on a lame TV show, the show usually gets it right: all the students are arranged in an oval facing the center of the room. There is some sort of platform in the center of this oval upon which motionless models stand as the students sketch their image with charcoal or pencil. Several of the students themselves took short turns striking poses for quick studies (we had maybe a minute to get the essence of the pose down on paper before the pose was changed). This was good exercise for our hand dexterity and for our ability to see the important elements of a subject.

After several sessions drawing each other, it was time to draw the professionals. Again, calling upon your experience watching decades of cheesy sitcoms, I’m sure you remember the moment: college guy sits smirking behind his easel as beautiful model drops her robe and gives him a full-frontal naked pose which he is supposed to draw without comment (or giggling, or wolf whistles, or inappropriate propositions, or embarrassing physical reactions). And that’s about how it was, except that the students were mostly college girls, and our first model was a tiny woman with long hair reaching past her tushie, and no one felt moved to any of the aforementioned inappropriate reactions. She reclined, we sketched. After our first model we felt pretty comfortable with the whole scene.

A knot of girls who sat near me were supremely confident young women who, before class got started, discussed their boyfriends and dates and parties and so forth, at a volume level which almost made me feel I was welcome to comment (I didn’t). These were upper case College Women, whereas I was a lower case college freshman (read: dork). Day after day they’d chatter away until the model du jour dropped her robe and it was time to sketch. Until one day, when there was no lady lounging around in a robe. Class was a bit late getting started, so the girl talk among the College Women was loud and lively.

The door opened, and in walked a scruffy guy in his mid-40s. He mumbled an apology to the instructor, then headed for the dressing room. I looked at the College Women to gauge their reactions. Wide eyes. Darting glances. Sitcom smirks. Oh, goody. We’ll be drawing a MAN today. This is new. I may need more charcoal.

Out of the dressing room walked the model, naked as a jay bird; he was walking away from me and I could see that his hiney completely lacked tan lines. A nudist, probably. He was completely comfortable, I was not. So I looked again at the College Women, and their mouths were agape, eyebrows frozen somewhere up near their hairlines. I looked back at the model, who had turned toward me, and

HOLY

FREAKING

MY GOODNESS GRACIOUS PATOOTIE

WOW

no wonder he’s so comfortable! I’m going to need a LOT more charcoal for this one, I decided.

For the first time all semester the College Women were speechless.

Originally published at Laurie’s personal blog, Fooleryland.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , , , ,

What’ll I do with my GUN RACK?!

11/17/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 12 Comments

It’s fall.

I know it’s fall because of the deluge of clothing catalogs clogging my mail box. All the models in these catalogs are dressed in harvest colors, yet I’m sure few of them have any idea what, exactly, a harvest is.

If you live in a rural part of the country, as I do here in California’s great north valley, you are acutely aware of the changing of the seasons. Not so much winter, spring, summer and fall — we’ve been accused here in California of not having these seasons — but steelhead, salmon, dove, deer, pheasant, back to dove, wild boar (which is year-round), and so on. But October marks the beginning of my favorite season, one which crosses state lines, requires no badges or special gear, and one for which no skinny models are employed.

I’m talking about, of course, Candy Season.

Candy season has no fixed start date; it begins as soon as the grape leaves begin to turn colors, and usually while the temperature outside is still hazardous to delicate chocolates. You round the corner with your supermarket shopping cart, and there they are, easy pickin’s: row after row of ripe, fat candy morsels, holiday-sized and begging to be bagged.

There are several ways to approach Candy Season. Some candy hunters like to hunt weekly, others will wait until peak season and bag ‘em all at once, and still others will wait until after peak season and pick over the remainders, taking advantage of clearance prices and fully intending to freeze the candy for next year. Uh-huh. I see a couple of problems with this last tactic.

But October is just the start. There’s a lull until mid-November, when the season gets rocking and rolling again. After New Years those after-peak hunters really have a field day, but I ask you: how well does the “freeze it for next year” plan jibe with your annual New Year’s resolution to lose 147 pounds? And how good are frozen Dum Dums, anyway?

Candy Season’s peaks and following lulls continue through mid-February (a major peak, and an especially good time for top-shelf chocolate hunters), to late March/early April (when the rare Peeps and chocolate rabbits can be found). Sadly, by late spring the season all but peters out, with only a half-hearted rally in early May. May hunters are usually last-minute men in a big hurry on the way to Sunday brunch with Mom.

So happy hunting, and remember: plan your attack, pace yourself, and, if you’re among the fooling-yourselves-after-peak-bargain-hunter types, first clean out your freezer, make a dentist appointment, and throw away your bathroom scale.  Here’s to a six-month season with NO LIMITS!

Originally posted on Laurie’s blog, Fooleryland

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , ,

Be-Bop-a-Re-Bop, Rhubarb Pie

10/01/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 10 Comments

When trying to get suspicious toddlers to eat something new, it helps to have a very, very short list of “no way will I eat it’s” of your own. Thankfully, my list is really, really short.

I can eat angel food cake, marshmallows, trout, pickled beets, and Texas squash if I want to, though not mixed together, but I choose not to. The deal-breakers for me are Sunkist Fruit Chews — SHUDDER — and rhubarb.

I have vivid memories of being a very young child bopping around Mom’s kitchen when she was boiling some poor innocent vegetable to death. The smell of rhubarb was enticing: sweet, but mostly sour, and I’m a sucker for both. But the taste — well, yikes. Talk about being taken in by the sirens’ song; the taste is in no way related to the delicious sour-sweet smell which permeated the kitchen those decades ago. Blechh.

My brother Bocci has an interesting deal-breaker food: tomatoes. The fact that he is a chef makes this even more difficult to work around. I understand that he has made peace with this particular fruit, though he will never pick one off the vine and devour it, as I will. But as a teenager (and a large, hungry teenager he was) he would sooner have eaten dung.

My parents went away for a weekend one time, leaving Bocci, who was the last to leave the nest, to fend for himself. At the time my maternal grandparents, Mormor and Papa (it’s a Swedish thing) were living across town from us. Mormor, bless her heart, was not very well in those days, but insisted upon cooking dinner for Bocci that Saturday night. Mom said okay, but with reservations because of how fragile Mormor was. “Just don’t give Bocci any tomatoes,” she warned Mormor. “He’ll eat anything, but he won’t touch tomatoes.”

Now the following could explain the profound stubborn streak which threads through my family bloodlines on my mother’s side. It came from Mormor.

When Bocci sat down to eat the dinner Mormor proudly served, he nearly gagged. It was “tomatoes on parade.” Tamale pie, rife with tomatoes. Green salad chock full of tomatoes. And, worst of all, tomato aspic, a revolting gelatinous mass prettily disguised by the copper pan it was molded in. It looked like blood Jell-O.

Bocci refused to eat. I guess Mormor was sure he’d be so hungry he’d cave in, decide he DID like tomatoes, tell her how wise she was, and be forever in her debt for expanding his culinary horizons. Nope. I think he just went home and ate a box of cold cereal out of a Big Gulp cup.

But what about the rhubarb, you ask? A few years later after Bocci had gone off to school, our brother Rob came home on leave from the Navy. Mormor invited the two of us over for dinner. We joked on the drive over about Bocci’s tomato nightmare, but since we both liked tomatoes we weren’t worried (I was worried about her boiling technique, which reduced broccoli to pablum). She made her pineapple chicken, and all was well (other than the broccoli-like substance, anyway) UNTIL . . .

Dessert. Mormor had, in her younger days, been known for fabulous apple pies. Making a pie from scratch is a challenge even to the healthiest individual, and she was quite limited by this time, so I was not surprised to notice that she had bought a pie instead. As she busied herself in the kitchen, Papa asked over his shoulder, “What kind of pie is it, Esther?”

“Oh, I bought it at Holiday Market today. It looked pretty good.”

“Is it apple?” Papa asked, a little annoyed at her for evading his question. I sensed something was up, and shot Rob a glance.

“They have good pies there,” Mormor continued, again dodging the question. One or two more evasions and Papa was cranky.

Mormor put a generous slice in front of Papa. I could see the pie’s pink filling oozing from the cut. OH NO – RHUBARB! I shot Rob another look, and kicked him under the table. This last move was very risky on my part, as Rob is famous for turning to people who kick him under the table and barking, “WHY ARE YOU KICKING ME UNDER THE TABLE?!” But I think he was just as horrified as I – NOT apple. Rhubarb.

“This doesn’t look like apple, Esther,” said Papa, prolonging my agony as the shrieking violins from the Psycho shower scene rang in my ears.

“It’s rhubarb,” Mormor finally admitted.”

“Just a tiny sliver for me, please, Mormor?” I choked it down. Never did learn why Mormor was being so furtive about the pie, though I know how much Papa loved apple pie, and how much Mormor didn’t like disappointing Papa. I suspect that even Papa heard horror flick music in his head at the thought of rhubarb pie.

Mormor died a few short months after that dinner. I’d like to blame the rhubarb, but the truth is her heart had just had enough. But I will always believe that she had been tipped off that I didn’t like rhubarb, and she was gonna make me learn to like it, by golly. I can hold out a long time, however; I got my stubbornness from Mormor.

Photo via

Foolery’s most recent abominations are found at her personal site.

Filed Under: Humor Tagged With: , ,

Green Eggs and Ham deconstructed

08/24/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 16 Comments

Sparky’s favorite book, hands down, is Green Eggs and Ham.  This Dr. Seuss classic from 1960 is one everyone knows and loves, yet I have learned that it is possible to tire of the clever rhyme.  Especially when Sparky comes running every single night with that orange book in hand.

Lately I have been a bit uneasy about the underlying theme of Green Eggs and Ham.

Consider the first spoken words of our nameless behatted grumpy main character, whom I shall call You:

“That Sam-I-am!
That Sam-I-am!
I do not like
that Sam-I-am!”

We are supposed to pooh-pooh these words as those of a loony.  You seems a bit crabby today.  Then Sam-I-am proceeds to offer You something that You rejects out of hand.  Sam-I-am is oblivious to You’s protestations, cheerfully offering up endless options.

“Could you, would you, with a goat?”

“Would you, could you, on a boat?”

Sam-I-am is relentless.  You is a close-minded, boorish oaf who won’t even give it a try.  We cheer Sam-I-am.  We ridicule You.

It may seem obvious to others, as it does to me, that a much better tack You could have taken than simply saying “I don’ wanna” would’ve been to call the health department on Sam-I-am’s ass for pushing spoiled food, but then I like to go postal and ask questions later.

Well, you know the story.  Sam-I-am eventually wears You down.  You is out of options.  You is at the point of tears.

“Sam!
If you will let me be,
I will try them.
You will see.”

No problem, right?  You tries them. You likes them. You is enlightened. You is happy. You is presumably introduced to a taste sensation which will become a life-long favorite.

But — thinking like the deranged parent I am — what if we were to substitute for the words GREEN EGGS AND HAM, the words SEX, DRUGS AND BOOZE?

Really changes the way you read the whole goat thing, especially, doesn’t it?

NOW who’s a crabby social reject?  Not You — we’re pulling for You.  Resist!  Resist!  Just say no, You!  That Sam-I-am, that Sam-I-am — I wish they’d lock up Sam-I-am!

“I do so like
sex, drugs and booze!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am!”

Next week I plan to take on The Pokey Little Puppy.  Stay tuned.

To read more from Foolery, visit her personal site here.

Photo via Wikipedia

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Yet another relationship killed by television

08/16/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 6 Comments

I once dated a guy whom I adored, but who was more a buddy than a boyfriend. We had so much fun together. Parties at his house were kind of like the movie “Diner”: lots of guys, lots of beer, lots of sports. He was very tight with his family, this guy I dated — not only his siblings but his mom, too. They came to a lot of his parties and were as much or more fun than most of the inner circle of friends.

His last name was Hill. Ordinarily I would be cagier than that with my information, but it’s kind of important to the story.

At one football party (or a get-together for some other sporting world behemoth) we were all nursing our current beers and watching the clock run out. As often happens after big testosterone festivals of this kind, the television stayed on, volume pegged, while we all talked over it the best we could. It was a wall of sound, until the network sucked all the money it could out of the post-game interviews, and the screen went dark for a moment. The mood in the room became instantly expectant, quiet. And then the new ABC show debuted, and the titles came up on screen.

laurie hill

There he sat, that guy I was dating, named _____ Hill. There sat his mother, also named Hill. And there I sat, named Laurie. Not Hill, just Laurie. I wanted to run out of the room screaming. The tension was palpable, or was it only my tension? Was I the only one who noticed? No one else even flinched, but inside I was squirming like a weasel.

The show lasted six weeks. Our relationship outlived it by three months.

Damned network.

photo via takkk

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Gil, last summer

08/05/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 60 Comments

“Do you remember me?” he asked, filling the doorway of my office. I did.

“Of course! I exclaimed, truly surprised to see him. “How are you? You look great!” He did look great, though I had seen him only once before, last summer, when he had brought his video camera tape to be transferred to DVD. Other conversations with him had been via telephone and were necessarily brief, as his energy was too low to sustain a conversation for more than a minute. But that had been last summer. Now he looked like the Marlboro Man might have looked in retirement.

“I’m supposed to be dead,” he said sardonically. Last year he had been given two or three months to live, and that summer day I met him he was tying up loose ends before checking into the hospital for the last time. Would I be willing to mail the finished product to him? Could he mail me a check? Witnessing a stranger attend to the minutiae of life in preparation for death was unexpectedly heartbreaking.

More painful still, he had asked a special favor of me. “I don’t know you, but you seem like someone I can trust,” he had started. Story of my life. “Do you . . . watch these videos when you copy them?”

“Well, just enough to make sure we’re on the right track,” I’d answered. I don’t do the video duplication, anyway; I just manage the office. But this was not about me.

“Would you be willing to watch the first few minutes of the video, and see if I . . .” His voice had trailed. “. . . see if I made a damned fool of myself? I let my emotions get the best of me, and I’m thinking maybe I should just have you cut that part off.”

I then agreed to call him later that day with my assessment of his performance on the video.

The fuzzy lines on the TV screen lurched and rolled and Gil’s extended arm filled the screen. The camera’s dispassionate eye watched him pull away from the video camera and sit down heavily in an easy chair. “Son,” he began, his voice constricted with love and pain and regret. It was raw, honest, bittersweet and absolutely lovely. I turned the volume down and walked away as the DVD recorder copied away.

“Gil?” I asked after the hoarse hello came through the phone. I reminded him why I was calling. “It was perfect,” I said. “Don’t erase it. Don’t change a thing.” After hanging up I typed up his invoice and packaged his order, sure I would never hear of or from Gil again.

But today, a year later, here he was, tall and rangy, looking like a rancher come down from the hills, down to town on business. He related how he had walked out of his cancer treatments only a third of the way through. We chatted for a few minutes. Then he pushed a tape across the counter.

“Just need one copy,” he said. “Will you mail it to me again?”

The VCR and DVD burner hummed as I walked by them. I looked up at the monitor. There was Gil, settling back into his arm chair. “Son,” he began.

Filed Under: MISC Tagged With: , , ,

Humbled

07/27/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 13 Comments

Tramp, tramp, tramp.

Man, it’s hot. Wonder how far the parking garage is. Still have the drive to Baltimore, and I’m so tired . . .

“Mama, I’m sooooooooooo tired. Can’t we just get a taxi?” whined the 9-year-old.

“Sure,” I answered dryly. “Any one you can grab here on the mall. Just keep walking.”

“Mama, it’s gonna rain!” she howled. “Can’t we . . .”

If it’s gonna rain I wish it would hurry up. I’m so thirsty I might drink the rain.

The 7-year-old lagged behind. “Come on, honey,” I called back, annoyed. Just a little farther. My feet hurt too, you know.” Really hurt.

But it was more than a little farther and I knew it. We weren’t even in the shadow of the Washington Monument yet, and then we had to go several blocks past the Smithsonian to get to our rental car. The heat was oppressive. The sweat stung my eyes. Tramp, tramp, tramp.

The sidewalk led through a small grove of trees. Dozens of well-dressed Japanese tourists streamed from large air-conditioned coaches, parted the liquid air and flowed down the mall toward the Lincoln Memorial. We swam against their current. Tour guides called out to their groups, some headed the way we were trudging. But wait, that wasn’t Japanese; that was Korean. Huh. I’m not used to seeing Korean tourists . . .

And then I saw them, up ahead. Soldiers.

Dressed in ponchos, hunchbacked from the heavy gear under those ponchos. Some on radios, one barking orders, all carrying rifles and looking wary. Even through the thick, sticky air, the soldier statues appeared cold and miserable, frozen in stainless steel and grim determination. I hesitated, caught my breath. The Korean War Veterans Memorial.

My family waded on through the crowds without me for the moment.

I had to stop. Gazed at the ghostly images on the polished black granite wall. Looked at the heavy government-issued boots, slogging through imaginary mud. I looked down at my sandals and my sore feet and felt so ashamed. Wiped a tear away with the sweat.

Tramp, tramp, tramp. Another tear. The skies finally opened up, just in time.

Filed Under: MISC Tagged With: , , , ,

Real Housewives of the OCD

07/09/2010 By Laurie LaGrone 18 Comments

I expect perfection from no one, and certainly not from myself — with one exception:

I strive for perfection in my housekeeping.

(Those of you who know me may now take a five-minute break to regain your composure, or perhaps consciousness should you have hit your head and blacked out during your laughing fit.)

What makes my cleaning perfectionism problematic is that I don’t have time for it, of course — few among us do — and so I must hyper-focus on particular activities. Vacuuming, for example. I so insist upon a thoroughly-vacuumed floor that I will opt not to vacuum at all if I don’t have time to do it right, using the time instead for some painstaking detailing of my piano keys, perhaps. I’ve taken a good hard look into my rationale, and the best I can come up with is my hope that any visitors to my home may forgive the stacks of crap on the coffee tables and the shoes on the un-vacuumed floor when they get an eyeful of my super-clean piano keys.

“Did you see how shiny the black keys were?” they’ll whisper to each other. “I can overlook the rope-like cobwebs because no REAL slob would have such sparkly sharps and flats!”

I suppose, too, that this would make more sense if I played the piano more than twice a year.

I consider the dining room presentable for public viewing when the table is oiled and the candlesticks are perfectly aligned, but I usually start by completely emptying the china cabinet. A thorough dusting and oiling and — hey, when was the last time I polished the silver bowls? When I do finally get around to polishing the table I will work my way around and around it with the rags, buffing and polishing and straightening no matter how many times I have to step on Sparky’s monkey slippers.

The kitchen floor looks awful; it definitely needs a good mopping. I’ll go you one better — pass me the vinegar, I’m stripping this old linoleum, right now.

There is so much more I could write, but I need to get my cleaning rags; I can see from way over here that I totally missed Middle C.

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