They Say Wisdom Comes With Age

I turned 50 last year which I thought was a pretty big milestone.  I began to question my life, the decisions I've made, what it was all about and the "bigger picture."  Here are some of the profound things I realized about my life and times and some of the questions I considered:

In all my life, I've never found any denomination of money larger than a quarter.

If you put your blinker on and nobody sees you, do you still have to turn?

What will happen if I don't seal a bag of croutons.  Will they get stale?

Did Rock Hudson have siblings named Paper and Scissors?

Was the group called Queen because Freddie Mercury was gay or was that just a happy coincidence?

Do people really iron their sheets?  I don't even make my bed.  Not even for company.

I'll Have What She's Having

Do Japanese restaurants really expect us to believe that the Hibachi guy preparing my food’s real name is Jerry?  Have you seen this phenomenon or is it only on the East Coast?  The entire non English-speaking staff is walking around with name tags that say, Donny, Taffy, Jimmy, and Bambi.  Isn’t that a riot? 

I understand why they're doing it, trust me.  They're trying to Americanize the place.  Same reason they serve salad.  Have you ever seen a picture of a Japanese persone eating lettuce with chopsticks?  Of course not.  It's not a staple of their diet.  But they serve it in restaurants because we American folk expect it with our meal.  So I guess I'll have to put up with the funny name tags as well. 

If you want to find out your server's real names try this:  drop forks and knives on the floor and see who says ‘Can I help you?’ 

I Guess You Have to be From Jersey

My brother, who has lived in Rhode Island for about 30 years now, said he saw a very clever bumper sticker that read “I MAY BE SLOW, BUT AT LEAST I’M AHEAD OF YOU.”  Problem was it was on the front bumper of the car.

If you don't get that joke, all I can say is you’re probably from Rhode Island. 

OK, I'll give you a hint.  He saw it by looking in his rear view mirror.  

That's the only hint I'm gonna give you. 

The Name Game

When I got my first dog, a Black Lab mix, I named him Stymie after the little black kid on The Little Rascals TV show.  Stymie, my dog, was a Black Lab/Beagle mix.  Now that I think about it, with all of the designer breeds popping up out there, I guess Stymie was really either a Beagrador or a Leagle. 

At first his name was really clever until a black man moved in next door.  Then it was just plain racist. 

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears?

I have heard about this bit of lunacy on talk radio a few times and every time I hear it I still can’t believe my ears. 

We have a law in New Jersey that makes it illegal to talk on your cell phone while driving, which makes sense to me because I think it's dangerous.  But it seems that there are some people out there with an overly inflated sense of self that complain because cops are allowed to talk on their cell phones while they’re driving.  These nincompoops feel that if the cops can do it, they should be allowed to too.

You know what I think?  I think they're absolutely right.  I think they should be allowed to do everything the cops get to do.

So the next time a national landmarked is hit by a plane, a bank is robbed or there's a riot, these cry babies should be the first ones rushing inside to save everyone else. 

I think that's fair.

Let's Give 'Em Something to Worry About

Does the Center for Disease Control scare us on purpose?  I read a fascinating article in a magazine that said that people have to have a crisis to worry about, like global warming, or we're not happy.  It went on to say that even though the problems seem insurmountable, there really isn't anything to worry about since subsequent generations can and usually do figure out an invention or a solution that will take care of it.  

For instance, before cars were invented, the fine citizens of New York City rode around on horses which apparently created quite an issue because of the large amount of manure they were “depositing” on the streets.  Sort of like the garbage strike a few years back only not quite as smelly.  Anyway, the New Yorkers didn’t know what to do with all of the manure and it created quite an epidemic, which people worried about.  So you would think that the solution was that the automobile was invented, right?  Nope, that wasn’t for a few years yet.  Instead, they incorporated New Jersey and shipped everything South.  See how things take care of themselves?   

So why do we always have to have a disease or crisis to worry about?  A few years back it was West Nile Virus and I think a total of 8 people died in New York City.  But it was all the media ever talked about. 

And in 2009, you couldn't turn on the radio or TV without hearing about the Swine Flu.  The population of New Jersey was 8,791,894 and in 8 months that year less than 50 people had died from Swine Flu.  Less than 50 people out of 8,791,894!  And we were supposed to be upset about this?  I don’t know about you, but I think my odds are pretty good.  You know when I’ll worry?  When the death toll hits 4,372,739.  And even then there will be so much less traffic, that even if I do catch it, I’ll die happily speeding down the Garden State Parkway at 5 pm on a Friday afternoon during the summer on my way to the beach.

Until then, I’m not going to wash my hands and I’m going to touch my face. 

My Dogs In The Workplace

My priorities are very well defined by the pictures in my cubicle. 

To my immediate right is a two-picture frame which contains one picture of my greyhounds Kira and Miranda sunning themselves on my pool cover. They are sweet little girls.  The other picture is of my other greyhound Ben sleeping on the couch.  Ben is a really handsome guy and is very cute when he sleeps. 

The second frame contains a picture of Cooper, also a greyhound, sitting on my husband’s lap licking a Popsicle stick.  Except for his hand, my husband is completely obscured from view. No matter though, the main point is that Cooper likes to eat Popsicles.  

Frame number 3 is also a two picture frame which contains one picture of Kira lying on the couch.  She is very photogenic.  The other picture is of Miranda sunning herself (again) beside the pool.  Miranda is my favorite but I try not to let the other dogs know that.  But she is.

Down my side counter is a large four picture frame which contains the following pictures:  Cooper lying on the pool deck (Cooper is from Florida and really likes the warm weather).  Next is Kira in her sandbox.  My husband made the sandbox just for her.  The third is Miranda also lying in the sandbox.   The last one is of Ben on a lawn chair.  Ben loves to lie on the lawn chair.  He is really cute there too. 

In front of that is a picture of Tiger (can you guess what kind of dog he is?) on the back steps hanging out.  There's also another one of him with a pink tennis ball in his mouth.  He is a really silly dog and looks adorable with the pink tennis ball in his mouth.

On a shelf in the back behind two plastic baboons is one picture of my husband and another of my daughter from her high school prom 11 years ago.   

No Flea is a Good Flea

My daughter comes over to my house on the weekends and helps me clean.  I don’t pay her; I usually take it out in trade.  Like I’ll buy her stuff she needs for her apartment.  Or post her bail. 

We divide and conquer the housework.  Generally I clean the master bathroom located off my bedroom while my daughter cleans the "spare" bathroom located down the hall.  

One morning she appeared in my bathroom with a perplexed look on her face.  She wanted to know why her dad was not showering in the master bathroom but rather using the bathroom down the hall.  I assured her that her father always showered in his master bath and what the heck gave her the idea that he wasn’t? 

She told me that the last time she cleaned the tub there was nearly a full bottle of shampoo but that now the bottle was more than half empty.  I thought about it and told her that it was probably just her stepbrother who was using it when he came down for the weekend.    

She asked me if it bothered me that my stepson was using that shampoo and asked if she should perhaps move it under the sink so he couldn’t find it.  I told her I would never be so inhospitable to my stepson.  I also told her that she didn’t need to be so interested in my shampoo consumption and that she should mind her own business.  That's when she told me it was dog shampoo.         

On the up side, at least I know my stepson doesn’t have any fleas.  He also has a very shiny coat.  As for the shampoo, it’s still in the bathroom. 

A Rose By Any Other Name

Has everyone on the planet gone mad? 

In 2008, there were between 35,000 and 40,000 “mutts” at humane societies across the nation that were put down because no one wanted them.  In 2012 there are countless rescue groups trying desperately to place pretty much any pedigree you can think of, because no one wants them.  There’s Husky Rescue, Great Dane Rescue, Basset Hound Rescue, etc.  If you're looking for a pedigree that doesn't have it's own rescue group, you're sure to find someone on PetFinder with one of these terrific dogs they can no longer care for.  And they're all out there for a fraction of what crazy people used to pay for these dogs in an effort to impress the rest of us.    

So what have breeders done to counteract this?  They've created “Designer” dogs so that the same people who so desperately tried to impress us with their $1,000 Pug can now impress us with their $1,000 " Chihuachshund."

A girl I worked with paid $1,000 for a Jug.  Can you imagine?  $1,000.  And was bragging about it!  For those of you who don't know what a Jug is, it’s a cross between a Jack Russel and a Pug.  Isn’t that clever? 

I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid, we used to call that a mutt.

As Ron White Would Say...

...You Can't Fix Stupid

True Story:

In the late 1990’s I worked as a Buyer for a major pharmaceutical company.  One week we had a temp filling in for our administrative assistant.  She was a young girl, couldn’t have been more than 20 or so and seemed pleasant enough.  On the second day she was working for us, I approached her and handed her the business card of a vendor I did business with and asked her if she would make up a Fedex envelope for me.  She said OK.

About 15 minutes later I went back to her desk with the paperwork I wanted overnighted to the vendor and asked her where the Fedex envelope was.  She told me she had already mailed it for me.  She seemed quite pleased with herself and her obvious efficiency.  I asked her what on earth she put in the envelope.  Her response?  The business card. 

I stood there for a few minutes, nodded my head, thanked her and walked away.

There are some things in life you just can’t make up.

It's Family, No Matter How You Slice It

My mother was the envy of our neighborhood.

She was the first one to have a state of the art dicer/slicer, circa 1973 that my dad bought for her for Christmas.  I suppose that would be on the order of getting a vacuum cleaner for your birthday, but when you’re married a long time, I guess it comes along with the territory. 

The dicer/slicer was made entirely of plastic and had a lot of compartments to accommodate different dicing and slicing requirements.  My mother used to love her dicer/slicer, circa 1973 and used it for all her dicing and slicing needs.  The only problem was that because of all the compartments, clean up was not easy.  She would have to wash it real well, in all its little nooks and crannies and then dry it, which she had a heck of a time doing. 

One day my mother, who was the envy of the neighborhood, came up with an idea to make her dicer/slicer, circa 1973 dry faster.  Now for those of you who aren’t real familiar with plastic, let me just tell you that generally speaking, it doesn’t hold up real well in extreme heat.  So when she put it in the oven to dry, well, her little dicer/slicer melted into a plastic blob, circa 1973. 

My father took the poor little dicer/slicer and hung it on the wall in the living room.  He told everyone it was Modern Art.  He was such a funny guy.

Poor Mother; she became the butt of a lot of jokes around town, circa 1973 to1976. 

A Tiger in the Woods

I will watch pretty much any sport on TV. 

I turned on the Greenbriar Golf Classic yesterday but when I realized that Tiger Woods didn't make the cut on Friday I turned it off.  Let's face it, the guy is good for the game because he always has the potential to win.  It's why everyone jumps on the Yankee bandwagon in November; everyone loves a winner.  

I started to think about what happened to Tiger a few years ago and I thought:  why does anybody really care what he did or with whom?  I certainly don't.  We as a nation are obsessed with the goings on of celebrities, sports figures and politicians.  As far as I know Tiger isn't concerned with the state of my marriage so why should I care about what he does in his spare time (which would be a very funny joke if he was a championship bowler).  I like to watch the guy play golf.  End of story.  What he does when he puts away one club and takes out the other is strictly his business.  But because we sensationalize it, all those women he was fooling around with will probably make millions off of it.  Hey wait, does anybody know if he likes Fat and 51?  I'll throw my hat in the ring.

If I were Tiger's Public Relations advisor I would have told him to come out the day after they removed the golf ball from his ear and say 'Hey America, I like to have sex with women.  All kinds of women.  And I'm gonna have as much sex with as many women as I possibly can cram into one lifetime.  And I'm gonna play golf too because I'm the best there is at it.  And if you don't like it, you don't have to watch me.  I'm not apologizing to any of you people for what I did.' 

Then he should have posed for Playgirl.

Yup, that's what I would have told him.

My Daughter, My Child, A Quiet Evening

My husband Jack and I were invited to my daughter Kelly’s apartment one Friday night for dinner and conversation.  And when I say invited for dinner I mean we were invited to look at her take-out menus and decide what my husband would ultimately pick up and pay for.  

As I glanced around her eclectic apartment I realized that I had bought her the dinner plates we were going to eat off of as well as the living room couch and coffee table; the black leather love seat was from my set of furniture that we have in our basement and most of the things hanging on her walls were mine at some point.  Then I discovered that she still had Season One from my Seinfeld collection and my DVD of the movie “Overboard” that she shrieked she 'had to watch one more time.'  But she did give me back my umbrella to take with us when we left since it was raining and where the heck was I going with this?  Oh yes, we ate dinner at my daughter’s apartment one Friday night with her chopsticks. 

Kelly has a very well behaved little Pekinese/Pomeranian mix named Sookie.  She rescued her from certain death at a shelter only days before she was to be euthanized.  Sookie, as I have been told, is my “grandchild” which is fine by me. 

As we ate and chatted, Sookie laid by the sliding glass doors most of the evening, quietly staring at the outside world.  I commented on what a well behaved little girl my grandchild was and complimented my daughter on her training skills.  I was informed that Sookie had been subject to some very progressive behavioral modification techniques.  They go like this:  My daughter yells ‘BUG OFF RETARD’ and the little dog heads over to the door. 

No wonder the dog was staring out the sliders.  Probably wishing she was back at the shelter.

Beauty Is In the Eye of...Just Who Exactly?

The 50 women who represent their states in the Miss America pageant beat out other women in prior pageants to get to the Miss America pageant, right?  Like, Miss Texas wasn’t crowned "Miss Texas" because she had the biggest gun or because she was the first to sign up was she?   

If it’s the "Miss Montana" pageant, the winner has to beat a lot of other contestants doesn't she, in order to earn the right to represent her state in the Miss America pagent?  Like maybe say at least 10 other woman and possibly an elk in a Tiara? 

Or is all of this done by some random lottery?  For instance, am I gonna be checking my mail some day and get a letter saying "you may already be a beauty contestant..."

I hate to admit why I'm asking these questions, but here it is:  As I watched the Miss America pageant I realized that there were some really homely girls wearing their state sash.  And I asked myself ‘if the winner is homely, what the heck did the girls in the prior pageant look like that she beat?’ I know they say it's not a "beauty" pageant, but who are we kidding?   

I confess I had no answer for myself.  

I think about the same thing when I look at kid’s high school yearbook pictures or when I see an ugly couple pictured in the newspaper announcing their engagement.  You know they had at least 10 other pictures to choose from and the really ugly one you’re looking at is the best of the lot.     

How Convenient For Me

I once saw in very small type the following, which was printed on the bottom of my restaurant bill:  For your convenience a 20% gratuity has been added to your bill.  Can somebody explain how that is convenient for me?  What if the waitress had bad breath and stuck her thumb in my soup and I only wanted to leave her 10%?  What if I found a band aid in my cole slaw and didn’t want to leave anything?  How about if the restaurant paid the workers minimum wage instead of $2 an hour?  Then I wouldn’t have to tip them at all and not feel bad about it.  Now that would be convenient. 

Actually, if you want to talk real convenience I have a suggestion:  The restaurant should send the chef to my house with the raw ingredients so he can prepare the meal in my kitchen.  And he has to clean up the mess too.  Then he can set me up behind a tray in front of  the TV show “Wings” so I can watch vintage 1993 Tim Daly; fix me a drink, cut my meat and let my dogs in from the yard.  Now that's real conveniece. 

Oh, and on his way out he can grab my Netflix movie off the kitchen counter and drop it in the mailbox. 

Working in Retail

Many years ago when I was in college I worked in a shoe store.  All I have to say is: everyone on the planet should have to work in retail for 6 months.  Then they’d know what they’re like to deal with as customers. 

You'd be surprised what you see working in a shoe store.  Men trying on ladies shoes, buying them, then walking down the mall wearing them.  It was fun to watch. 

Something I never could understand though, (and still can't) is the warning manufacturers put on that little packet that they stuff in a shoe box that says “Silicagel.  Do Not Eat.”  Now first of all, the only people that might be inclined to put something wantonly in their mouth is probably too young to read what the packet says.  And other than those little people, why on earth would it be someone’s first inclination to eat something they found in a shoe box?