In my last post, I promised to tell you what my family was inflicting on me during the time I was creating the memorial slideshow for my husband's aunt. You'd better grab a drink--this is going to be a long one.
My husband's uncle left us a property in the beautiful mountains of Northeast Pennsylvania and last year, we decided to build a loghouse on it. The plan is to share it with family and friends now, and then retire there in the future. It's about three hours away from where I live now, but only an hour from my hometown, where a lot of my family still lives, so it works out well as a meeting place. The loghouse turned out nicely and is used by family or friends almost every weekend.
A niece that I haven't seen in years was going to be visiting the area with her son and new baby so my sister asked if we could all meet at the loghouse for a few days. It was going to be my sister, her husband, her two daughters, her son, the new baby along with his older brother, the baby's father, and then my husband and me. Ten people in all or nine and a half since the baby is only a few months old.
My sister said she would do all the shopping and cooking since this was basically eighty percent her family, but then two days before the gathering, she called to say that she wasn't feeling well and didn't have a chance to shop. She said she would bring deli meat and rolls for lunches, but left the rest up to me. Meals for ten people for three days--no problem.
I told my sister that I would be arriving on Monday to clean up from the seven adults and seventeen kids who had used the house over the weekend and I would see all of them on Tuesday. No, my sister insisted she wanted to come Monday night. I told her I had to wash sheets and towels and clean and she said she would help. I tried in vain to talk her out of coming Monday so I could have one evening of peace before the crowd arrived. I even called her Monday afternoon to tell her I was just finishing up my errands and hadn't even left town yet so wouldn't be at the loghouse until nine or ten. She said she was already packed up and in the car, ready to go, and would wait for me there. She told me that she would get started on the laundry and I said, "Please don't. I'm anal about the towels because we've had so many pretty ones ruined by being thrown in with dark colors and now they are dingy looking. I'll do them when I get there." (This mostly happened when men "helped" by throwing laundry in the machine. I don't want to stereotype, but the men I associate with have an allergic reaction to sorting dirty laundry. If it can be crammed into the washer with the handle of a broom, it's going in with the rest.)
I arrived after a three hour drive accompanied by one dog who tries to jump into the front seat every couple of miles and another one who whines for the windows to be down for the entire drive, in 30 degree weather, and gets so upset if they aren't that he vomits. I honestly think the one is trying to get in the front seat to get away from the other one.
Anyway, after I unpacked and put the food away, my sister's teenage grandson, who had come with her, asked, "Is it okay if I have a snack or will we be having dinner soon?" Excuse me? It's nine-thirty at night, you left your house after six, so why are you waiting for me to cook you dinner? Also, you've been sitting here for two hours with lunch meat and rolls--can you not make a sandwich? My sister, her husband, and her grandson just stood there waiting for me to answer. I took a deep breath and not wanting to start the visit on a bad note, said, "I have some chicken and steak. I could make fajitas." And so I did.
We ate at about ten o'clock and while I was cleaning up the kitchen afterwards, my sister disappeared for a few minutes. She came back and said, "Well, they probably aren't folded the way you like, but at least they're clean." I asked, "What are you talking about?" She said, "The towels. I washed them for you." I asked, "Did you do the light blue ones or the dark brown ones?" and she answered, "Both. I threw them in together." I was picturing the dinginess spreading over my lovely towels when she added, "There is some sort of red stain all over the light blue ones that didn't come out in the wash." Sure enough, when I checked them, there was red all over them that was now permanently baked in by putting them in the dryer. Why, oh, why couldn't she have helped by cleaning the toilets instead? That would have earned her a hug.
The rest of the guests arrived the next day and I spent the afternoon cooking a large pan of beef, 5 lbs of cod topped with crab stuffing, two strawberry trifles, homemade rolls, fresh green beans, baked potatoes, and rice. We had a nice dinner and I estimated there were enough leftovers that I wouldn't have to cook the next day.
Once the kitchen was clean, we all found seats in the great-room and settled in to chat. Like I said, I haven't seen my niece in a few years. She lives down south now and although we share news on Facebook and through emails, we haven't really talked in awhile.
She told us she is crunchy and most of her friends are as well.
Now, I learned back in college that if you don't know what a word means, you just smile, nod your head, and pretend you do and then look it up later. I learned this the hard way when I had no idea what ninety percent of the punchlines to jokes meant and I thought "papers" meant the kind with the news in them. I was teased unmercifully for my small-town naivete and learned to hide the fact that I had no idea what was being discussed. Now I just fake it and try to figure it out from the context in which the word is used.
She went on to say that she showers only once a week and never uses shampoo or soap.
Well, I thought, no wonder she's crunchy. She's probably crusty, too.
Turns out that "crunchy" in slang means she has adjusted her lifestyle for environmental reasons. Oh. Then not referring to food and body fluids trapped on unwashed skin. Got it.
You have to understand that last year, I had emergency surgery after three days in the hospital with severe abdominal pain and woke up in intensive care because I had the beginning stages of sepsis. The first thing I asked the intensive care nurse was, "Can I get a shower?" She said, "No. You've just had major surgery, you have a catheter, you're hooked up to IV, and you have a tube running up your nose and down into your stomach. You cannot get a shower." A few hours later, they took out the catheter and I pleaded, "Can I get one now? It's been days!" The nurse finally agreed to let me give myself a sponge-bath in the little sink in the room, under her supervision. She brought me a washcloth, towel, and one of those little kits with body wash, shampoo, conditioner, and a toothbrush. She watched to make sure I was steady on my feet while I wiped my face and body clean. Satisfied that I wasn't going to fall over, she left the room and I stuck my head under that little faucet and washed my hair. It felt wonderful! My incision hurt and I was exhausted when I was finished, but my head was no longer itchy. She came back into the room to find me combing my freshly washed locks. She shook her head and said, "I think you can leave Intensive Care now."
So if I am willing to do all that to have clean hair, you can imagine how hard it is for me to fathom someone willingly not using shampoo on her waist-length hair. She said if it feels greasy, she sprinkles some baking soda in it and combs it out. I remember people doing that as an emergency measure when they didn't have time to shampoo, but never as a total replacement for shampoo. As she was telling us this, my scalp starting itching in sympathy for hers.
I recycle. I care about the environment. But please don't ask me to give up my Herbal Essence. I'll fight you to the death.
I understand that different cultures have different hygiene habits. Heck, I watched the movie "Babies" and almost lost consciousness when that mother wiped her child's poop off on her own leg. Maybe if I had been raised somewhere else, I would think it was crazy to shower every day or every other day. But that's what I've been doing for fifty years and that's about all I can stand of my own filth.
My niece also doesn't use disposable diapers. I understand that. Her mother asked her why she had such a large bag of dirty cloth diapers and she said she was staying with friends and didn't feel right about asking them to introduce urine and feces into their washing machine, so she brought them to my house so I could have the pleasure instead.
My husband has this habit when someone says something that bothers him or grosses him out. He will go from slouching to sitting straight up and his eyes get really wide. You almost expect steam to shoot from his ears like it did from Harry Potter's when he ate the candy. Well, I was trying to keep a poker face as she was telling us this (not my strong suit) and my husband shot so straight up that his head was almost brushing the ceiling and his eyes were wide open and staring at me for a reaction. I avoided making eye contact with him until the conversation moved to another topic, but fifteen minutes into the new conversation, he was still ramrod straight and bug-eyed.
I locked myself in my office the next morning and when I came out, Herbie told me that he had made them waffles and eggs, but they had also brought out the leftovers from the night before and mostly polished them off, including the beef that I didn't think crunchies would eat. I spent the afternoon cooking again-three whole chickens, 4 lbs of salmon, two applesauce cakes, and new batches of rolls, potatoes, rice, and green beans. How is this "sustainable" eating? No one could sustain this!
My husband's second piece of bad news that morning had been that his aunt had passed away. So in between hosting family and cooking another big dinner, I was working on the slideshow and searching for the perfect song that no one would end up hearing.
The next day, when I had finished cleaning the house and packing everything up for the three hour drive home, I gave my sister a hug goodbye. She hugged me back and said, "You should take better care of yourself. You look exhausted."
Gee, ya think?
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 28, 2011
It Must Have Smelled Like He Was Dancing With Shamu
There is a sucker born every minute and when I was born, they probably said, "That one counts as two."
I've had some unique encounters in the past two weeks that I thought I would share with you.
It all started two weeks ago when one of my sisters-in-law asked me to make a slide show for the family of an aunt who was in hospice care. Unfortunately, the doctors had done all they could for the aunt and the family was making funeral preparations. They wanted a ten minute slide show for the funeral luncheon, a twenty minute one to show people who stopped by the house, and a thousand slide presentation for each family member as a keepsake.
Two weeks ago was before I made my pledge to start saying "No" when asked for favors. I probably would have still said no since this sister-in law is one of the worst for only calling when in need, but she was calling on behalf of a cousin who has been not only a good relative, but also a great friend, so I was happy to do it for him and his siblings.
They had scanned the slides, but hadn't put them in any order, so I had to guess at the chronological placement. They had songs they liked, but only knew where to find them on youtube, not for purchase. They had artists they liked, but left it up to me to pick which songs (not a responsibility I wanted for someone else's funeral).
I put together the ten minute show, spent a couple hours finding places to buy the particular songs they requested, then a couple more hours adding transitions, putting together a final slide with an appropriate quote, and getting it all to end at the precise same second. The cousin who was approving my work isn't tech savvy at all and she lives a couple hours away, so I uploaded the video to my youtube channel (which I only have to support other people's videos) and sent her the link. I figured she would watch it, tell me what she wanted changed and then I would take it down. Since I don't have anything else on the page, the chances that anyone else would see it were minimal.
She watched it, liked it, and didn't want anything changed. I went to work on the twenty minute one and forgot about taking the one off youtube. A couple of days later, I got an email saying that a comment had been left on my channel. I checked and someone had left a "Woo hoo!" under the memorial tribute. Not only that, but there had been sixty-nine views. Huh?
When I asked around, I found out that the cousin I sent the link to had forwarded it to her siblings to get their input and some of them had pasted it to their Facebook pages. A memorial video for their mother who hadn't passed away yet. Again-huh?
Unfortunately, a week later, their mother did pass, and I was contacted because they decided they weren't comfortable with the second song. They wanted something else, but didn't know what, and could I pick something and change it. Seriously? Raise your hand if you want to be responsible for picking a song for someone else's mother's funeral with zero guidance as to why the last song wasn't what they wanted? Anyone? Anyone?
After many hours of searching and stressing, I picked an instrumental of "Time To Say Goodbye" that was lovely. I had to spend more hours fitting it in to the video since it wasn't the same length as the original song, but I finished it late the night before the funeral.
Herbie and I attended the funeral the next day. At the luncheon, we sat at a table with seven members of his family. It was a sad day and especially hard to watch the family saying goodbye to their mother and grandmother, but there were distractions to take our mind off the grief.
One of Herbie's brothers ate his whole salad with his hands even though there were three forks next to his plate. His wife refused to eat anything, just allowing the waitstaff to put it in front of her and then take it away again untouched. She never eats at public places unless there are five stars next to the restaurant's name, but she never tells the waitstaff no thank you either. She just lets them serve it and then throw it away. Mind-boggling. Two others were displeased with the chicken entree the family had decided to serve and told the server to bring them a pasta dish instead. They aren't vegetarians. They just wanted something better than the chicken dish. Did I accidentally stumble into a food tasting instead of a funeral luncheon?
The fussy eater spent the whole luncheon trying to get the manager to come to the table because the server had dripped a couple of drops of something on her scarf. I'm not sure if she was trying to get a new scarf or just dry-cleaning out of the deal. I had to look away. I once went to a fancy dinner/dance with my hair in an up-do and wearing a black lace gown. Someone bumped the waiter and a full plate of flounder stuffed with crabmeat fell on my head. I smelled like the docks for the rest of the night, and had clumps of fish peeking out of the lace, but I never asked for something free in exchange. Accidents happen and I don't want some poor waiter or waitress getting fired or docked pay over something so insignificant. Besides, it's hard to share it as a funny story later on if the punchline is, "And so they fired the guy."
But my favorite was the sister-in-law at our table who made the original request for me to do the slideshow. She spent ten minutes telling me what religious shrines to visit on an upcoming trip, where to attend Mass, where to find the second largest collection of religious relics, etc. and then asked her niece to pass her the salad sitting at the empty seat next to me. Not, "Does anyone else want that salad?" but "Hand me that salad." I commented that more people had shown up than the family expected and people were still trying to find seats, so maybe we should leave the salad until we knew if someone was going to be sitting there for the meal. To which she displayed her holiness by answering, "Well, if someone comes, we'll just tell them there wasn't any salad." And she ate it. But she said grace first, so it's all good.
Once everyone had finished eating, family members of the deceased got up and said a few words and then it was time for the part I was dreading--the slideshow. What if they hated the song I'd chosen? What if it had some meaning for them that I wasn't aware of and it made things worse? All those hours I'd spent agonizing over finding the perfect song and fitting it into the show and they could hate it!
Not to worry. They forgot to turn the volume up and no one heard a note of the songs I'd spent so much time working into the memorial. I wasn't going to leap from my seat like a Hollywood director and yell, "CUT! Start the pictures of the deceased over again and this time cue the sentimental music!" I just quietly gathered my things and slipped out the door.
Experiencing that is going to make it so much easier to keep my vow to say no when asked for favors. I'll just make myself remember sitting in front of my laptop at four a.m. listening to the Itunes hotlist for funerals, desperate to find the right song.
In my next post, I'll tell you what was going on with my side of the family in the middle of all this. As one of my daughters says, "I see this stuff, and I still don't believe it."
I've had some unique encounters in the past two weeks that I thought I would share with you.
It all started two weeks ago when one of my sisters-in-law asked me to make a slide show for the family of an aunt who was in hospice care. Unfortunately, the doctors had done all they could for the aunt and the family was making funeral preparations. They wanted a ten minute slide show for the funeral luncheon, a twenty minute one to show people who stopped by the house, and a thousand slide presentation for each family member as a keepsake.
Two weeks ago was before I made my pledge to start saying "No" when asked for favors. I probably would have still said no since this sister-in law is one of the worst for only calling when in need, but she was calling on behalf of a cousin who has been not only a good relative, but also a great friend, so I was happy to do it for him and his siblings.
They had scanned the slides, but hadn't put them in any order, so I had to guess at the chronological placement. They had songs they liked, but only knew where to find them on youtube, not for purchase. They had artists they liked, but left it up to me to pick which songs (not a responsibility I wanted for someone else's funeral).
I put together the ten minute show, spent a couple hours finding places to buy the particular songs they requested, then a couple more hours adding transitions, putting together a final slide with an appropriate quote, and getting it all to end at the precise same second. The cousin who was approving my work isn't tech savvy at all and she lives a couple hours away, so I uploaded the video to my youtube channel (which I only have to support other people's videos) and sent her the link. I figured she would watch it, tell me what she wanted changed and then I would take it down. Since I don't have anything else on the page, the chances that anyone else would see it were minimal.
She watched it, liked it, and didn't want anything changed. I went to work on the twenty minute one and forgot about taking the one off youtube. A couple of days later, I got an email saying that a comment had been left on my channel. I checked and someone had left a "Woo hoo!" under the memorial tribute. Not only that, but there had been sixty-nine views. Huh?
When I asked around, I found out that the cousin I sent the link to had forwarded it to her siblings to get their input and some of them had pasted it to their Facebook pages. A memorial video for their mother who hadn't passed away yet. Again-huh?
Unfortunately, a week later, their mother did pass, and I was contacted because they decided they weren't comfortable with the second song. They wanted something else, but didn't know what, and could I pick something and change it. Seriously? Raise your hand if you want to be responsible for picking a song for someone else's mother's funeral with zero guidance as to why the last song wasn't what they wanted? Anyone? Anyone?
After many hours of searching and stressing, I picked an instrumental of "Time To Say Goodbye" that was lovely. I had to spend more hours fitting it in to the video since it wasn't the same length as the original song, but I finished it late the night before the funeral.
Herbie and I attended the funeral the next day. At the luncheon, we sat at a table with seven members of his family. It was a sad day and especially hard to watch the family saying goodbye to their mother and grandmother, but there were distractions to take our mind off the grief.
One of Herbie's brothers ate his whole salad with his hands even though there were three forks next to his plate. His wife refused to eat anything, just allowing the waitstaff to put it in front of her and then take it away again untouched. She never eats at public places unless there are five stars next to the restaurant's name, but she never tells the waitstaff no thank you either. She just lets them serve it and then throw it away. Mind-boggling. Two others were displeased with the chicken entree the family had decided to serve and told the server to bring them a pasta dish instead. They aren't vegetarians. They just wanted something better than the chicken dish. Did I accidentally stumble into a food tasting instead of a funeral luncheon?
The fussy eater spent the whole luncheon trying to get the manager to come to the table because the server had dripped a couple of drops of something on her scarf. I'm not sure if she was trying to get a new scarf or just dry-cleaning out of the deal. I had to look away. I once went to a fancy dinner/dance with my hair in an up-do and wearing a black lace gown. Someone bumped the waiter and a full plate of flounder stuffed with crabmeat fell on my head. I smelled like the docks for the rest of the night, and had clumps of fish peeking out of the lace, but I never asked for something free in exchange. Accidents happen and I don't want some poor waiter or waitress getting fired or docked pay over something so insignificant. Besides, it's hard to share it as a funny story later on if the punchline is, "And so they fired the guy."
But my favorite was the sister-in-law at our table who made the original request for me to do the slideshow. She spent ten minutes telling me what religious shrines to visit on an upcoming trip, where to attend Mass, where to find the second largest collection of religious relics, etc. and then asked her niece to pass her the salad sitting at the empty seat next to me. Not, "Does anyone else want that salad?" but "Hand me that salad." I commented that more people had shown up than the family expected and people were still trying to find seats, so maybe we should leave the salad until we knew if someone was going to be sitting there for the meal. To which she displayed her holiness by answering, "Well, if someone comes, we'll just tell them there wasn't any salad." And she ate it. But she said grace first, so it's all good.
Once everyone had finished eating, family members of the deceased got up and said a few words and then it was time for the part I was dreading--the slideshow. What if they hated the song I'd chosen? What if it had some meaning for them that I wasn't aware of and it made things worse? All those hours I'd spent agonizing over finding the perfect song and fitting it into the show and they could hate it!
Not to worry. They forgot to turn the volume up and no one heard a note of the songs I'd spent so much time working into the memorial. I wasn't going to leap from my seat like a Hollywood director and yell, "CUT! Start the pictures of the deceased over again and this time cue the sentimental music!" I just quietly gathered my things and slipped out the door.
Experiencing that is going to make it so much easier to keep my vow to say no when asked for favors. I'll just make myself remember sitting in front of my laptop at four a.m. listening to the Itunes hotlist for funerals, desperate to find the right song.
In my next post, I'll tell you what was going on with my side of the family in the middle of all this. As one of my daughters says, "I see this stuff, and I still don't believe it."
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
"Sure, I'll Take A Cookie, But Could I Please Have The Dog Spit On The Side? Thanks!"
I've been accused of being a germaphobe and I guess that's probably pretty much on target. I don't like germs. I wash my hands so often that they are usually red and crackly. I don't have to use a new bar of soap every time I wash them like Jack Nicholson in "As Good As It Gets" but I do prefer bars that don't have hairs curled around them. I'm funny that way.
I don't like to share drinks or silverware with people, although I'll gladly pour you your own glass or give you something off my plate. I just find it hard to work up a good thirst when handed a bottle or cup with five other people's backwash in it. I'm funny that way, too. Even as a child on a family trip, I would rather go without than drink from the communal cup. I took a lot of teasing for that.
When I'm cooking, I use a clean spoon to scoop a taste out of the pot and then throw the spoon in the sink. I don't take tastes from the spoon I'm stirring the food with and then add my saliva back into the pot like it's a required ingredient. Requests that others do the same while in my kitchen sampling my cooking have been met with eye-rolls and derision. I can live with that easier than I can live with your germs swimming in my stew.
I know I take germ avoidance farther than most of the people with whom I associate, but what boggles me is how many rules for cleanliness I think are elementary but other people find ridiculously overzealous. I'll share with you a couple of examples I witnessed recently:
Rule 1.) Don't take the cloth I wash dishes with and use it to wipe your two-year-old's nose, then turn and wipe down my counter with it. When I questioned the logic of this, I was surprised to find that other people don't mind a few toddler boogies mixed in with their main course and my objections were misplaced. Who knew?
Rule 2.) When you're in your own home, touch anything you want with anything you want, but when you are at a public event, sitting at a table with other diners, and you want more ice in your water, don't stick your hand in the pitcher on the table and scoop a few out with your fingers. Apparently, you know where your fingers have been, but I don't, and to be honest, I don't want to know. I also now don't want any water from that pitcher.
Rule 3.) If you are going to be an angel and help unload my dishwasher, please wash your hands. I appreciate the assistance, really I do, but if I've just watched you change your baby's diaper or scratch my dog's belly, anything you put away is going right back into the dishwasher the moment you aren't looking. I love your baby and I love my dog, but I don't want to lick either one.
Rule 4.) Turning on the water and wiggling the tips of your fingers under it for ten seconds is not washing your hands. This does not scare the germs between your fingers and on your palms into jumping off into the sink.
Rule 5.) The trash can is for holding trash. It has held poopy diapers, dog vomit, used tissues, moldy food, and a myriad of other substances that have been put there precisely because they are garbage. Please don't use the trash can as a place to rest my pillow while you change the sheets, or move food items from the counter onto the trash can to get them out of the way. As much as I enjoy falling asleep with the smell of garbage nestled against my cheek, I can't help but wonder if it's a good idea.
Rule 6.) If you are eating a meal in my house and I've inadvertently neglected to put a serving spoon into one of the dishes, please ask for one instead of thrusting your hand into the salad to grab your helping, shaking off the bits you don't want. Nobody else wants those bits now either.
Now that you know some of my basic rules, you can see that I'm definitely a headcase. These are all real life examples that I witnessed and in most cases, said nothing since I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I'm not a total and complete germaphobe. If I was, my house would be cleaner, and I definitely wouldn't have all the pets I have, especially the two dogs who have never met a stink they didn't want to roll in, yet sleep next to me on my bed. They probably smell worse than the pillow that sat on the garbage can.
I've totally ruined my husband. I took a man who used to buy lunch from the back of the food vendors' trucks in the city and gobble down the sandwiches with his grimy fingerprints visible on the bread, and turned him into a man who carries wet wipes in his truck and knows how to use Purell! He even regals me with tales of the gross things his co-workers on the construction sites do, things he wouldn't have even noticed ten years ago and probably was doing himself. It took about a decade, but I've dragged him to the dark side, the side where food dropped on the ground must be thrown away even if it only lay there for three seconds and where pocket lint is no longer a garnish.
My germaphobe world is a mostly quiet world. I have converted my husband and made some progress with my daughters, but it's hard to tactfully tell people outside your immediate family that you find what they just did disgusting. I usually try to find a way to rectify the situation--wipe it down with Lysol when you turn your back or discreetly empty it in the trash and make a fresh batch--but if I can't, I just say, "No, thanks," when you offer me soup that I saw your forehead sweat drip into or pass me a cookie with the same hand your pitbull just licked.
I know I'm not alone in my world. There are other silent freaks like me out there bypassing the end of the buffet that a fellow guest just sneezed on and awkwardly waving instead of shaking the hand of the guy you just witnessed leaving the bathroom without stopping at the sink.
Those of us who yearn for basic standards of cleanliness in our everyday lives need to unite, to form an alliance, to reach out to each other.
Well, please don't literally reach out to me. I have no idea where your hands have been either.
I don't like to share drinks or silverware with people, although I'll gladly pour you your own glass or give you something off my plate. I just find it hard to work up a good thirst when handed a bottle or cup with five other people's backwash in it. I'm funny that way, too. Even as a child on a family trip, I would rather go without than drink from the communal cup. I took a lot of teasing for that.
When I'm cooking, I use a clean spoon to scoop a taste out of the pot and then throw the spoon in the sink. I don't take tastes from the spoon I'm stirring the food with and then add my saliva back into the pot like it's a required ingredient. Requests that others do the same while in my kitchen sampling my cooking have been met with eye-rolls and derision. I can live with that easier than I can live with your germs swimming in my stew.
I know I take germ avoidance farther than most of the people with whom I associate, but what boggles me is how many rules for cleanliness I think are elementary but other people find ridiculously overzealous. I'll share with you a couple of examples I witnessed recently:
Rule 1.) Don't take the cloth I wash dishes with and use it to wipe your two-year-old's nose, then turn and wipe down my counter with it. When I questioned the logic of this, I was surprised to find that other people don't mind a few toddler boogies mixed in with their main course and my objections were misplaced. Who knew?
Rule 2.) When you're in your own home, touch anything you want with anything you want, but when you are at a public event, sitting at a table with other diners, and you want more ice in your water, don't stick your hand in the pitcher on the table and scoop a few out with your fingers. Apparently, you know where your fingers have been, but I don't, and to be honest, I don't want to know. I also now don't want any water from that pitcher.
Rule 3.) If you are going to be an angel and help unload my dishwasher, please wash your hands. I appreciate the assistance, really I do, but if I've just watched you change your baby's diaper or scratch my dog's belly, anything you put away is going right back into the dishwasher the moment you aren't looking. I love your baby and I love my dog, but I don't want to lick either one.
Rule 4.) Turning on the water and wiggling the tips of your fingers under it for ten seconds is not washing your hands. This does not scare the germs between your fingers and on your palms into jumping off into the sink.
Rule 5.) The trash can is for holding trash. It has held poopy diapers, dog vomit, used tissues, moldy food, and a myriad of other substances that have been put there precisely because they are garbage. Please don't use the trash can as a place to rest my pillow while you change the sheets, or move food items from the counter onto the trash can to get them out of the way. As much as I enjoy falling asleep with the smell of garbage nestled against my cheek, I can't help but wonder if it's a good idea.
Rule 6.) If you are eating a meal in my house and I've inadvertently neglected to put a serving spoon into one of the dishes, please ask for one instead of thrusting your hand into the salad to grab your helping, shaking off the bits you don't want. Nobody else wants those bits now either.
Now that you know some of my basic rules, you can see that I'm definitely a headcase. These are all real life examples that I witnessed and in most cases, said nothing since I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable. I'm not a total and complete germaphobe. If I was, my house would be cleaner, and I definitely wouldn't have all the pets I have, especially the two dogs who have never met a stink they didn't want to roll in, yet sleep next to me on my bed. They probably smell worse than the pillow that sat on the garbage can.
I've totally ruined my husband. I took a man who used to buy lunch from the back of the food vendors' trucks in the city and gobble down the sandwiches with his grimy fingerprints visible on the bread, and turned him into a man who carries wet wipes in his truck and knows how to use Purell! He even regals me with tales of the gross things his co-workers on the construction sites do, things he wouldn't have even noticed ten years ago and probably was doing himself. It took about a decade, but I've dragged him to the dark side, the side where food dropped on the ground must be thrown away even if it only lay there for three seconds and where pocket lint is no longer a garnish.
My germaphobe world is a mostly quiet world. I have converted my husband and made some progress with my daughters, but it's hard to tactfully tell people outside your immediate family that you find what they just did disgusting. I usually try to find a way to rectify the situation--wipe it down with Lysol when you turn your back or discreetly empty it in the trash and make a fresh batch--but if I can't, I just say, "No, thanks," when you offer me soup that I saw your forehead sweat drip into or pass me a cookie with the same hand your pitbull just licked.
I know I'm not alone in my world. There are other silent freaks like me out there bypassing the end of the buffet that a fellow guest just sneezed on and awkwardly waving instead of shaking the hand of the guy you just witnessed leaving the bathroom without stopping at the sink.
Those of us who yearn for basic standards of cleanliness in our everyday lives need to unite, to form an alliance, to reach out to each other.
Well, please don't literally reach out to me. I have no idea where your hands have been either.
Monday, March 21, 2011
I'm Just A Girl Who Can't Say No
I wonder if there is a 12-step program for people like me. We could call it Over-Committors Anonymous. OCA--I like it. We could decide as a group what our posters should look like and the first step in our recovery would be NOT volunteering to make them.
I have a serious problem with this. First of all, I should have had my daughters teach me to say, "NO" when they were two years old and so good at it. I can't seem to make my mouth form that little one syllable word. Everyone from loan officers to sales clerks have no difficulty saying it to me, but the only time I seem to be able to say it is if the question starts, "Would you mind..."
No matter how busy my schedule is, no matter how many things I'm trying to juggle, no matter how much I don't want to do the chore, I end up agreeing because I don't want to disappoint anyone in my life. Teachers, neighbors, family, and friends, all know that all they have to do is ask. And the sickest part is, there are people in my life who only call when they need something. The same person who is now asking me to spend two weeks on a slide presentation couldn't find five minutes in their schedule to call after my surgery or the death of one of my loved ones, but I still find myself saying, "Sure. Great. When do you need it by?" I'm thinking of having SUCKER tattooed on my forehead since I'm a strong believer in truth in advertising.
But that's only the first part of the problem. Once I've said yes, whatever I've agreed to do has to be the biggest, best, most amazing version they've ever seen or at least I'll practically kill myself trying to make it that good. Ask me for centerpieces with balloons and ribbons and I'll give you centerpieces with not only balloons and ribbons, but also glitter, flashing lights, and hand-painted bases that play your favorite song. Ask me to put some photos into a brief slideshow and those slides will have opening credits, closing credits, fade to blacks, cropping, transitions, and emotionally-charged music to accompany their progress across the screen. If asked to come up with a gift for someone, I can't just pick a gift card or a nice pair of gloves--I have to scour the internet and the local malls for the be-all, end-all gift that will make the recipient laugh, cry, and refuse all future gifts so as not to tarnish the memory of this gift.
I really should be medicated.
The people who suffer the most because of my affliction are my husband and children. Besides the lack of clean laundry and hot meals during my focus on a project, there comes a point when I have reached the sheer panic stage of the process and realize that now that I've hand-painted an inscription on 150 fire truck ornaments, there is no way I'm going to get all of them boxed and then wrapped in the two shades of paper I've carefully chosen (with hand-curled co-ordinating ribbon to finish them off) in time for the event. That's when I drag my loved ones into the assembly line armed with scissors and rolls of tape. Trust me when I tell you that three hours before the favors need to be on the tables at the party, I am not forgiving of sloppy work or bathroom breaks, and your cell phone had better be turned off. It's a miracle that my children still speak to me. It's an even bigger miracle that they haven't taken me to court over child labor laws.
Once the project is one hundred percent finished, whether it is favors, centerpieces, baked goods, or floral arrangements, my husband steps in to do his part of the job--load them into the car while I take a five minute shower and attempt to look presentable for the event. This is where the real miracle comes in because if miracles didn't exist, we would have gotten divorced over this long ago. I can spend hours on baked goods, days on centerpieces, weeks on favors, obsessing over getting each and every one to look exactly the way I want them to look, and then my husband, not wanting to waste time making extra trips, piles them all on top of each other and tripping over pets and bumping into doorways, dumps them into the back of the car. I mean I can see his point--it would take five more precious minutes to put the objects I've spent months making for his family into the car carefully and who has five minutes to spare these days? You know I love him because I haven't killed him. Yet.
I am like the alcoholic who wakes up in a strange bed after a particularly bad night of boozing, wearing nothing but a dog collar, and having no idea how he got there or if he owns a dog. He swears he will never touch alcohol again and he honestly has good intentions, but a few days later, he finds himself trying to figure out why he has woken up with Justin Bieber's face tattooed on his backside. Every time I get in over my head on one of these projects, I promise myself and my family that I will stop agreeing to do them, and yet . . . the phone rings, someone makes a request, and I tell myself, "Just this one last time," or "I can't say no to her after all these years of friendship," or "This can't even be considered a real project since it'll only take a week or two," and I've fallen off the wagon. Again.
The people I do these things for are always very grateful and complimentary. I've been told I should be a caterer, a party planner, a chef, an interior decorator, and a full-time artist. That's sweet to hear, but what I want to be is a writer, and it's inconvenient, but in order to be a writer, one must find time to actually--write. So I need a support group to teach me how to say very clearly and often, "I'm sorry. I would love to help you out, but I just don't have time right now. I'm at a critical point in my plot, my characters lack the depth I'm striving for, and the pacing drags around chapter four. I also need to send queries on my finished manuscript and that involves networking and research. But perhaps we could make a trade--I'll make your favors for you and you do my shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning during the two weeks I'm working on the favors. That way, I'll have some time left over for working on what's important to me--my writing." I can imagine the response to that--"Um, uh, never mind, I'll, um, uh, find someone else." Someday, I'm going to actually say it instead of just imagining it.
It took time to get to this stage of over-committment and it's going to take time to change my habits. I tried to go cold turkey once, saying no to every request made of me, but I got the shakes and started having hallucinations of favor boxes with improperly curled ribbon sitting on banquet tables all over the world, so I took on enough new projects to stop the withdrawal symptoms.
I can do this, though, I know I can. I'll go through my house room by room, craft drawer by craft drawer and pour all the glue, paint, and dye down the drain. I'll box up all my ribbon and bows and give them to charity. I won't allow myself to even drive by a craft store for the next six months. I'll focus on positive visualization of my home without piles of some other person's slides, without tables covered in tulle and ribbon, without drips of hot glue hardened on the floor, and with hot meals, clean laundry, and yes, a completed manuscript.
I've admitted I have a problem. On to Step Two.
I have a serious problem with this. First of all, I should have had my daughters teach me to say, "NO" when they were two years old and so good at it. I can't seem to make my mouth form that little one syllable word. Everyone from loan officers to sales clerks have no difficulty saying it to me, but the only time I seem to be able to say it is if the question starts, "Would you mind..."
No matter how busy my schedule is, no matter how many things I'm trying to juggle, no matter how much I don't want to do the chore, I end up agreeing because I don't want to disappoint anyone in my life. Teachers, neighbors, family, and friends, all know that all they have to do is ask. And the sickest part is, there are people in my life who only call when they need something. The same person who is now asking me to spend two weeks on a slide presentation couldn't find five minutes in their schedule to call after my surgery or the death of one of my loved ones, but I still find myself saying, "Sure. Great. When do you need it by?" I'm thinking of having SUCKER tattooed on my forehead since I'm a strong believer in truth in advertising.
But that's only the first part of the problem. Once I've said yes, whatever I've agreed to do has to be the biggest, best, most amazing version they've ever seen or at least I'll practically kill myself trying to make it that good. Ask me for centerpieces with balloons and ribbons and I'll give you centerpieces with not only balloons and ribbons, but also glitter, flashing lights, and hand-painted bases that play your favorite song. Ask me to put some photos into a brief slideshow and those slides will have opening credits, closing credits, fade to blacks, cropping, transitions, and emotionally-charged music to accompany their progress across the screen. If asked to come up with a gift for someone, I can't just pick a gift card or a nice pair of gloves--I have to scour the internet and the local malls for the be-all, end-all gift that will make the recipient laugh, cry, and refuse all future gifts so as not to tarnish the memory of this gift.
I really should be medicated.
The people who suffer the most because of my affliction are my husband and children. Besides the lack of clean laundry and hot meals during my focus on a project, there comes a point when I have reached the sheer panic stage of the process and realize that now that I've hand-painted an inscription on 150 fire truck ornaments, there is no way I'm going to get all of them boxed and then wrapped in the two shades of paper I've carefully chosen (with hand-curled co-ordinating ribbon to finish them off) in time for the event. That's when I drag my loved ones into the assembly line armed with scissors and rolls of tape. Trust me when I tell you that three hours before the favors need to be on the tables at the party, I am not forgiving of sloppy work or bathroom breaks, and your cell phone had better be turned off. It's a miracle that my children still speak to me. It's an even bigger miracle that they haven't taken me to court over child labor laws.
Once the project is one hundred percent finished, whether it is favors, centerpieces, baked goods, or floral arrangements, my husband steps in to do his part of the job--load them into the car while I take a five minute shower and attempt to look presentable for the event. This is where the real miracle comes in because if miracles didn't exist, we would have gotten divorced over this long ago. I can spend hours on baked goods, days on centerpieces, weeks on favors, obsessing over getting each and every one to look exactly the way I want them to look, and then my husband, not wanting to waste time making extra trips, piles them all on top of each other and tripping over pets and bumping into doorways, dumps them into the back of the car. I mean I can see his point--it would take five more precious minutes to put the objects I've spent months making for his family into the car carefully and who has five minutes to spare these days? You know I love him because I haven't killed him. Yet.
I am like the alcoholic who wakes up in a strange bed after a particularly bad night of boozing, wearing nothing but a dog collar, and having no idea how he got there or if he owns a dog. He swears he will never touch alcohol again and he honestly has good intentions, but a few days later, he finds himself trying to figure out why he has woken up with Justin Bieber's face tattooed on his backside. Every time I get in over my head on one of these projects, I promise myself and my family that I will stop agreeing to do them, and yet . . . the phone rings, someone makes a request, and I tell myself, "Just this one last time," or "I can't say no to her after all these years of friendship," or "This can't even be considered a real project since it'll only take a week or two," and I've fallen off the wagon. Again.
The people I do these things for are always very grateful and complimentary. I've been told I should be a caterer, a party planner, a chef, an interior decorator, and a full-time artist. That's sweet to hear, but what I want to be is a writer, and it's inconvenient, but in order to be a writer, one must find time to actually--write. So I need a support group to teach me how to say very clearly and often, "I'm sorry. I would love to help you out, but I just don't have time right now. I'm at a critical point in my plot, my characters lack the depth I'm striving for, and the pacing drags around chapter four. I also need to send queries on my finished manuscript and that involves networking and research. But perhaps we could make a trade--I'll make your favors for you and you do my shopping, cooking, laundry, and cleaning during the two weeks I'm working on the favors. That way, I'll have some time left over for working on what's important to me--my writing." I can imagine the response to that--"Um, uh, never mind, I'll, um, uh, find someone else." Someday, I'm going to actually say it instead of just imagining it.
It took time to get to this stage of over-committment and it's going to take time to change my habits. I tried to go cold turkey once, saying no to every request made of me, but I got the shakes and started having hallucinations of favor boxes with improperly curled ribbon sitting on banquet tables all over the world, so I took on enough new projects to stop the withdrawal symptoms.
I can do this, though, I know I can. I'll go through my house room by room, craft drawer by craft drawer and pour all the glue, paint, and dye down the drain. I'll box up all my ribbon and bows and give them to charity. I won't allow myself to even drive by a craft store for the next six months. I'll focus on positive visualization of my home without piles of some other person's slides, without tables covered in tulle and ribbon, without drips of hot glue hardened on the floor, and with hot meals, clean laundry, and yes, a completed manuscript.
I've admitted I have a problem. On to Step Two.
Sunday, March 20, 2011
It Helps To Take The Bread Out Of The Wrapper Before You Toast It
God gave me a beauty of a nose.
Now when I say beauty, I don't mean that anyone would look at it and say, "Wow, that's one stunning schnozzola." It's too big for my face and a lot of women would've had it nipped and tucked if it was theirs. I often hear that I resemble Meryl Streep and let's face it, she has quite a long, yet charming, nose. If I step out into the sun for more than a couple of minutes, it's a sure bet that I'll come back in with a nose redder than Rudolph's because nothing else sticks out far enough to shade this proboscis.
No, the beauty of my nose is that it's more than just a kickstand for my glasses--it has power! I smell things long before anyone else in the room does and I smell things too faint for anyone else to smell. Sometimes that's a curse, as you can imagine--being on an elevator when a woman drenched in perfume steps in, being around my dogs on a rainy day, and being around anyone who has eaten anything with garlic or onion--all times I wish I could turn down my nose's power.
Once, my daughter and I were trapped in a compact car with my female dog who was having a bit of tummy trouble. Even before Bella would look up at me with that guilty look dogs get when they let one fly, I was already gagging. It was so bad, I was ready to run red lights, confident that any police officer who pulled me over would sympathize. It made for quite a trip--my daughter and I alternating between holding our noses, yelling at drivers who slowed our progress, and uncontrollably laughing every time Bella gave us the "Oops, I did it again" look. Talk about finding humor in the "stinky bits" of life!
So having a heightened sense of smell can be a definite curse. But a lot of the time, it's a blessing.
I am the official sniffer in our household. If there is a suspicious odor and we don't know where it's coming from, I am the bloodhound hot on it's trail. I have sniffed my way around carpets, into cupboards and even up chimneys.
Not sure if an item from the refrigerator has gone bad? Bring it on. I can tell you the freshness no matter if it swam, clucked, mooed, or oinked.
I was the first one to smell smoke when the floorboards of our truck caught on fire as we drove down the turnpike. Luckily, we were able to pull over before the actual flames burst through. I'd done a lot of fake fire drills with my friends when we first got our licenses--you know, the kind where you all pile out of the car at a red light and run around it for no apparent reason until the light changes to green and then you jump back in and drive away. This was the first time the car fire drill was for real and I had little kids buckled into those car seats that are almost impossible for adults to unbuckle, but somehow easy for toddlers to climb out of while you're driving. It made for a few moments of panic, but thanks to my nasal early warning system, we were all safe.
Another time, I kept telling my family there was an unpleasant odor coming from something near the fireplace in our family room. Everybody made suggestions, but nobody took my complaints seriously enough to investigate. If they had, maybe we could have used a shovel instead of a Shop Vac to get the dead raccoon out of the chimney. Seriously. We had to pay a guy to Shop Vac it out of the chimney. It was beyond disgusting. Is there some sort of trade school where you take a course in how to Shop Vac dead animals out of chimneys? Some manual with a chapter on "Choosing the appropriate tools based on level of wildlife decomposition"?
Having a strong sense of smell has come in handy quite a few times over the years and it saved us again this past week. I had been out of town for a few days and when I returned home, my husband Herbie was sweet enough to help me unpack the food that I had brought back. A little while later, I smelled burning. The main oven was off, but my daughter was cooking a ham steak in the little convection oven on the counter. She checked it and it was fine, but I still smelled smoke. We took the ham out and checked inside the oven, but the smell wasn't as strong for me there. I continued to sniff around the kitchen and then they started to smell it, too.
I might have caught the scent first, but my daughter spotted the problem first--my husband had unpacked some bakery items onto one of the counters in a big pile and smoke was curling up from the area. It seems one of the loaves of bread had been placed in exactly the right position to push down the handle of the toaster and hold it down while other items had fallen on top of the toaster and well, you can imagine. The top and sides of the toaster are now coated in melted plastic, but that's nothing compared to the globs that dripped inside.
If God hadn't given me my beauty of a nose, we might have left the area without knowing there was a problem and who knows how much it could have spread by the time we walked back into the kitchen. The smoke alarm didn't go off. My husband installed it and I guess he has it programmed to only go off if I've left his favorite chocolatey chip cookies in the oven ten seconds too long, but not if he's turning the toaster into an objet d'art.
Next time, I'll tell you how a patch of dry skin on my elbow saved us from a tornado.
Now when I say beauty, I don't mean that anyone would look at it and say, "Wow, that's one stunning schnozzola." It's too big for my face and a lot of women would've had it nipped and tucked if it was theirs. I often hear that I resemble Meryl Streep and let's face it, she has quite a long, yet charming, nose. If I step out into the sun for more than a couple of minutes, it's a sure bet that I'll come back in with a nose redder than Rudolph's because nothing else sticks out far enough to shade this proboscis.
No, the beauty of my nose is that it's more than just a kickstand for my glasses--it has power! I smell things long before anyone else in the room does and I smell things too faint for anyone else to smell. Sometimes that's a curse, as you can imagine--being on an elevator when a woman drenched in perfume steps in, being around my dogs on a rainy day, and being around anyone who has eaten anything with garlic or onion--all times I wish I could turn down my nose's power.
Once, my daughter and I were trapped in a compact car with my female dog who was having a bit of tummy trouble. Even before Bella would look up at me with that guilty look dogs get when they let one fly, I was already gagging. It was so bad, I was ready to run red lights, confident that any police officer who pulled me over would sympathize. It made for quite a trip--my daughter and I alternating between holding our noses, yelling at drivers who slowed our progress, and uncontrollably laughing every time Bella gave us the "Oops, I did it again" look. Talk about finding humor in the "stinky bits" of life!
So having a heightened sense of smell can be a definite curse. But a lot of the time, it's a blessing.
I am the official sniffer in our household. If there is a suspicious odor and we don't know where it's coming from, I am the bloodhound hot on it's trail. I have sniffed my way around carpets, into cupboards and even up chimneys.
Not sure if an item from the refrigerator has gone bad? Bring it on. I can tell you the freshness no matter if it swam, clucked, mooed, or oinked.
I was the first one to smell smoke when the floorboards of our truck caught on fire as we drove down the turnpike. Luckily, we were able to pull over before the actual flames burst through. I'd done a lot of fake fire drills with my friends when we first got our licenses--you know, the kind where you all pile out of the car at a red light and run around it for no apparent reason until the light changes to green and then you jump back in and drive away. This was the first time the car fire drill was for real and I had little kids buckled into those car seats that are almost impossible for adults to unbuckle, but somehow easy for toddlers to climb out of while you're driving. It made for a few moments of panic, but thanks to my nasal early warning system, we were all safe.
Another time, I kept telling my family there was an unpleasant odor coming from something near the fireplace in our family room. Everybody made suggestions, but nobody took my complaints seriously enough to investigate. If they had, maybe we could have used a shovel instead of a Shop Vac to get the dead raccoon out of the chimney. Seriously. We had to pay a guy to Shop Vac it out of the chimney. It was beyond disgusting. Is there some sort of trade school where you take a course in how to Shop Vac dead animals out of chimneys? Some manual with a chapter on "Choosing the appropriate tools based on level of wildlife decomposition"?
Having a strong sense of smell has come in handy quite a few times over the years and it saved us again this past week. I had been out of town for a few days and when I returned home, my husband Herbie was sweet enough to help me unpack the food that I had brought back. A little while later, I smelled burning. The main oven was off, but my daughter was cooking a ham steak in the little convection oven on the counter. She checked it and it was fine, but I still smelled smoke. We took the ham out and checked inside the oven, but the smell wasn't as strong for me there. I continued to sniff around the kitchen and then they started to smell it, too.
I might have caught the scent first, but my daughter spotted the problem first--my husband had unpacked some bakery items onto one of the counters in a big pile and smoke was curling up from the area. It seems one of the loaves of bread had been placed in exactly the right position to push down the handle of the toaster and hold it down while other items had fallen on top of the toaster and well, you can imagine. The top and sides of the toaster are now coated in melted plastic, but that's nothing compared to the globs that dripped inside.
If God hadn't given me my beauty of a nose, we might have left the area without knowing there was a problem and who knows how much it could have spread by the time we walked back into the kitchen. The smoke alarm didn't go off. My husband installed it and I guess he has it programmed to only go off if I've left his favorite chocolatey chip cookies in the oven ten seconds too long, but not if he's turning the toaster into an objet d'art.
Next time, I'll tell you how a patch of dry skin on my elbow saved us from a tornado.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
When There Is No Funny To Be Found
As I wrote in my profile, I try to take the stinky bits of life and find the humor in them. Sometimes you just gotta laugh to keep from crying. And sometimes, something so horrific happens that it's impossible to find any humor.
I happened to be awake, writing, with the TV muted in the background, when the initial news of the earthquake in Japan broke. I watched for hours as more and more terrifying images played on the screen. When they showed the wave of water washing over that town like a soup thick with houses, cars, boats, and debris, I was yelling, "Dear God, no!" at my TV. It was impossible to believe something so devastating was really happening and not just a special effect in an action movie.
The news and images have kept coming over the past few days and as the media have been able to reach more areas, the images are even more heartbreaking. An aerial view of what used to be a town and is now just a patchwork of stone foundations missing the homes they anchored. Parents calmly holding out their small children to be screened for radiation from damaged nuclear plants. People walking for miles and miles because either their train isn't running, their car was destroyed, or the road is so buckled that no cars can travel it, but walking despite their shock and exhaustion because they are determined to reach a home and family they hope will still be there.
There have been glimmers of hope and humanity amidst all the destruction--a friend wrote a blog telling about a woman in Japan who gathered up nineteen strangers from a train station and took them to her home where she gave them food and a warm place to rest, and hopefully a chance to feel safe for a few hours. A man was found alive, ten miles out in the ocean, clinging to a piece of the roof from his house. Offers of help and donations have poured into Japan from all around the world, proving that the citizens of earth aren't as far gone down the path of selfishness and heartlessness that a lot of media sources, books, studies, and research papers would have us all believe. We do still care about our fellow man and our heart breaks to see him suffer.
So I'm taking time off from the funny today to offer my prayers, thoughts, sympathies, and yes, money to our global neighbors in Japan. I weep for your losses and pray for miracles. You have a long, overwhelming road to recovery ahead of you and I hope you will take the hands that are being offered in friendship to help with your burden. And in the coming weeks, may you start to find some little things that make you smile, and even laugh, again.
I happened to be awake, writing, with the TV muted in the background, when the initial news of the earthquake in Japan broke. I watched for hours as more and more terrifying images played on the screen. When they showed the wave of water washing over that town like a soup thick with houses, cars, boats, and debris, I was yelling, "Dear God, no!" at my TV. It was impossible to believe something so devastating was really happening and not just a special effect in an action movie.
The news and images have kept coming over the past few days and as the media have been able to reach more areas, the images are even more heartbreaking. An aerial view of what used to be a town and is now just a patchwork of stone foundations missing the homes they anchored. Parents calmly holding out their small children to be screened for radiation from damaged nuclear plants. People walking for miles and miles because either their train isn't running, their car was destroyed, or the road is so buckled that no cars can travel it, but walking despite their shock and exhaustion because they are determined to reach a home and family they hope will still be there.
There have been glimmers of hope and humanity amidst all the destruction--a friend wrote a blog telling about a woman in Japan who gathered up nineteen strangers from a train station and took them to her home where she gave them food and a warm place to rest, and hopefully a chance to feel safe for a few hours. A man was found alive, ten miles out in the ocean, clinging to a piece of the roof from his house. Offers of help and donations have poured into Japan from all around the world, proving that the citizens of earth aren't as far gone down the path of selfishness and heartlessness that a lot of media sources, books, studies, and research papers would have us all believe. We do still care about our fellow man and our heart breaks to see him suffer.
So I'm taking time off from the funny today to offer my prayers, thoughts, sympathies, and yes, money to our global neighbors in Japan. I weep for your losses and pray for miracles. You have a long, overwhelming road to recovery ahead of you and I hope you will take the hands that are being offered in friendship to help with your burden. And in the coming weeks, may you start to find some little things that make you smile, and even laugh, again.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
"Just tell me what the ink blot looks like to you and then we can go for coffee."
I once had a "friend" who always had to be angry at someone.
That sounds weird, as though I should say, "a friend who was always angry at someone," but "had to be angry at someone" is more accurate. If she didn't have a legitimate reason to be mad at someone, she created one. She needed to have that one person to focus her anger on or she was miserable to everyone.
I'm not talking about the "mildly annoyed" feelings we all have and swallow when someone in our lives upsets us. I'm talking about the queen of all grudge-holders. She once became upset with her mother over a comment and refused to let her see her grandchildren for more than two years. Everyone in her life took turns being the one on the outs. It could last from a few weeks to years and you never knew when your turn would come or what small thing would set her off. It was the Russian Roulette of friendships.
After a few years of friendship, she got angry at me for something so insignificant that I can't even remember what it was now, and just like that, I was cut out of her life. Our husbands remained friends, but we didn't speak for months. We had friends in common, which meant that we ended up at the same parties on occasion, and eventually, a few polite exchanges led to a renewed friendship (translation-she had moved on to shutting someone else out of her life, so it was time to let me back in). I picked up the gun, hoped my chamber was empty, and started playing the game again.
Our husbands had hung around together since grade school and our kids were best friends, so it was easy to go back to having coffee together three or four times a week, talking on the phone at least once a day, and our two families found something to do together almost every Friday and Saturday night. Then, without any warning that it was my turn, I found a letter from her in my mailbox. Thirteen pages, front and back, listing every grievance she'd had against me, small and large, since the beginning of our friendship. She now felt free to tell me how wrong I was about everything in life, even issues on which she had strongly agreed with me in previous conversations. She shared with me all her family and friends' opinions of things I thought I was telling her in private. Even knowing her history of turning on people, the betrayal was devastating and had me doubting my own character.
My God, what kind of monster was I to make someone angry enough to write that many pages of pure bile? Were all my other friends just putting up with me while secretly hating my guts? I had tried to be a good friend to her, not perfect, but good. I'd babysat her kids, helped her after her C-sections, threw parties in her honor, packed my small kids into the car and drove to her house anytime she called in a panic over a bee that needed to be killed, and in general, just tried to be a supportive, fun friend.
This letter was so cold-hearted and despicable that my husband ended his friendship with her husband and we tried to explain to our kids why they wouldn't be seeing their best buddies anymore. I felt such guilt that my failures were responsible for ending their friendships.
Two weeks went by and then I found another letter from her in my mailbox. This one was an invitation to a party she was throwing. A note on the bottom said that she meant everything in her previous letter, but she was willing to put it behind her because her party just wouldn't be the same without me there.
Huh?
According to her first letter, the one she still stood by, I was one step above a serial killer. Why would you want that person at any party you were having? Why would you want a person like that anywhere in your life or around your children?
You wouldn't. Unless you're a psycho.
It seems she had been so proud of what she'd written that she'd shared the letter with a lot of our mutual friends before sending it and told others about it afterward, and they didn't see things quite the way she saw them. She'd not only lost us as friends over the letter, but had lost the friendship of people she had shown the letter to as well. Even some of her husband's family members stood up for me and told her what a good friend I had been to her. So now that she was in hot water and her party guests were about to be no-shows, she wanted to be able to say, "See, it all blew over and everything is fine with the world again." Of course, she wanted to be able to say that without ever apologizing to me.
How exhausting it must be to be so angry all the time! To always have someone in your life that you are single-mindedly furious with to the point that more than half your conversations are complaints about them. Sometimes, early in the day, my husband does something that makes my blood absolutely boil, but keeping that level of anger until he comes home from work is just too much effort for me and by the time we're actually alone together, the boil has become a soft simmer and I have to decide if I would rather fight with him, watch a good movie, or read a book. The movie almost always wins. The book always does.
I would never have the energy to stay that angry for months or years. I would also have trouble keeping it all straight. I'd have to carry a little notebook around with me reminding me why I was mad at each one and if I'd decided to forgive them or not. I'd have to be like Santa with a naughty and nice list or I might do the unthinkable and let a family member on the naughty list speak to my child and then the whole house of cards would tumble down.
I've heard news of my ex-friend over the years and know that she and her husband have very few people who are still involved in their lives. Most, like me, learned a hard lesson and moved on. I was sad about the loss of friendship for a couple of months, but one day, it dawned on me how much easier my life was without her in it--no more walking on eggshells, no more worrying what was going to set her off and when it would be my turn in the doghouse, no more snide comments (just kidding, ha, ha) about my house, or marriage, or parenting, or appearance. More time with my husband and kids and real friends. I see her out and about once in awhile, but she's just another stranger on the street to me now.
But I do have to thank her for being such a psycho. Her actions made me realize that I don't have the time or desire to have people in my life who are only there to judge me. I know my faults and I try to work on them, but if you want to be my friend, you'd better be prepared to accept the fact that I'm impatient, my house is messy but fun, I have the world's worst poker face, I'm over-protective, and while my baked goods taste yummy, they don't always look like the picture in the cookbook.
She also made me place an even greater value on the friends who stood by me when the bullet was in my chamber. And she made me appreciate the new friends whom I've accepted into my life in the years since then--
Once they passed the required psychiatric evaluation, of course. :)
That sounds weird, as though I should say, "a friend who was always angry at someone," but "had to be angry at someone" is more accurate. If she didn't have a legitimate reason to be mad at someone, she created one. She needed to have that one person to focus her anger on or she was miserable to everyone.
I'm not talking about the "mildly annoyed" feelings we all have and swallow when someone in our lives upsets us. I'm talking about the queen of all grudge-holders. She once became upset with her mother over a comment and refused to let her see her grandchildren for more than two years. Everyone in her life took turns being the one on the outs. It could last from a few weeks to years and you never knew when your turn would come or what small thing would set her off. It was the Russian Roulette of friendships.
After a few years of friendship, she got angry at me for something so insignificant that I can't even remember what it was now, and just like that, I was cut out of her life. Our husbands remained friends, but we didn't speak for months. We had friends in common, which meant that we ended up at the same parties on occasion, and eventually, a few polite exchanges led to a renewed friendship (translation-she had moved on to shutting someone else out of her life, so it was time to let me back in). I picked up the gun, hoped my chamber was empty, and started playing the game again.
Our husbands had hung around together since grade school and our kids were best friends, so it was easy to go back to having coffee together three or four times a week, talking on the phone at least once a day, and our two families found something to do together almost every Friday and Saturday night. Then, without any warning that it was my turn, I found a letter from her in my mailbox. Thirteen pages, front and back, listing every grievance she'd had against me, small and large, since the beginning of our friendship. She now felt free to tell me how wrong I was about everything in life, even issues on which she had strongly agreed with me in previous conversations. She shared with me all her family and friends' opinions of things I thought I was telling her in private. Even knowing her history of turning on people, the betrayal was devastating and had me doubting my own character.
My God, what kind of monster was I to make someone angry enough to write that many pages of pure bile? Were all my other friends just putting up with me while secretly hating my guts? I had tried to be a good friend to her, not perfect, but good. I'd babysat her kids, helped her after her C-sections, threw parties in her honor, packed my small kids into the car and drove to her house anytime she called in a panic over a bee that needed to be killed, and in general, just tried to be a supportive, fun friend.
This letter was so cold-hearted and despicable that my husband ended his friendship with her husband and we tried to explain to our kids why they wouldn't be seeing their best buddies anymore. I felt such guilt that my failures were responsible for ending their friendships.
Two weeks went by and then I found another letter from her in my mailbox. This one was an invitation to a party she was throwing. A note on the bottom said that she meant everything in her previous letter, but she was willing to put it behind her because her party just wouldn't be the same without me there.
Huh?
According to her first letter, the one she still stood by, I was one step above a serial killer. Why would you want that person at any party you were having? Why would you want a person like that anywhere in your life or around your children?
You wouldn't. Unless you're a psycho.
It seems she had been so proud of what she'd written that she'd shared the letter with a lot of our mutual friends before sending it and told others about it afterward, and they didn't see things quite the way she saw them. She'd not only lost us as friends over the letter, but had lost the friendship of people she had shown the letter to as well. Even some of her husband's family members stood up for me and told her what a good friend I had been to her. So now that she was in hot water and her party guests were about to be no-shows, she wanted to be able to say, "See, it all blew over and everything is fine with the world again." Of course, she wanted to be able to say that without ever apologizing to me.
How exhausting it must be to be so angry all the time! To always have someone in your life that you are single-mindedly furious with to the point that more than half your conversations are complaints about them. Sometimes, early in the day, my husband does something that makes my blood absolutely boil, but keeping that level of anger until he comes home from work is just too much effort for me and by the time we're actually alone together, the boil has become a soft simmer and I have to decide if I would rather fight with him, watch a good movie, or read a book. The movie almost always wins. The book always does.
I would never have the energy to stay that angry for months or years. I would also have trouble keeping it all straight. I'd have to carry a little notebook around with me reminding me why I was mad at each one and if I'd decided to forgive them or not. I'd have to be like Santa with a naughty and nice list or I might do the unthinkable and let a family member on the naughty list speak to my child and then the whole house of cards would tumble down.
I've heard news of my ex-friend over the years and know that she and her husband have very few people who are still involved in their lives. Most, like me, learned a hard lesson and moved on. I was sad about the loss of friendship for a couple of months, but one day, it dawned on me how much easier my life was without her in it--no more walking on eggshells, no more worrying what was going to set her off and when it would be my turn in the doghouse, no more snide comments (just kidding, ha, ha) about my house, or marriage, or parenting, or appearance. More time with my husband and kids and real friends. I see her out and about once in awhile, but she's just another stranger on the street to me now.
But I do have to thank her for being such a psycho. Her actions made me realize that I don't have the time or desire to have people in my life who are only there to judge me. I know my faults and I try to work on them, but if you want to be my friend, you'd better be prepared to accept the fact that I'm impatient, my house is messy but fun, I have the world's worst poker face, I'm over-protective, and while my baked goods taste yummy, they don't always look like the picture in the cookbook.
She also made me place an even greater value on the friends who stood by me when the bullet was in my chamber. And she made me appreciate the new friends whom I've accepted into my life in the years since then--
Once they passed the required psychiatric evaluation, of course. :)
Monday, March 7, 2011
Victoria Should Keep Some Things A Secret
I think I'm ready.
I've made sure to eat carbs and fully hydrate. My muscles are stretched. Everything I think that I might need is packed and I'm wearing running shoes.
No, I'm not entering a marathon or going hiking. I'm not sky-diving or bungie-jumping. Those pursuits are nice if you're easily rattled. I'm preparing for an activity that's so intense it can't be shown on The X Games.
I'm taking my teenage daughter shopping for a prom dress.
You might laugh, but this is serious business. Every teenage girl in that store has built her expectations of prom so high that she is near hysteria over the thought of not finding her dream dress and every mother is ready with jabbing elbows or an "accidental" trip to make sure her baby gets what she wants. There are no refs here to blow the whistle over obvious personal fouls. No one is going to save you from a vicious cross-check or put anyone in the penalty box for hooking you with a hanger as you both reach for the same size-4 red sequined halter dress.
There are woman who will have scars for the rest of their lives just because they made the mistake of reaching for a dress on the "Marked Down" rack.
If you are in the unfortunate position of needing to shop for a prom dress, you have to have a strategy. Do not go in there with the attitude of spending a nice afternoon bonding with your daughter or they will eat you alive. Then you'll have to spend the dress money on some mother/daughter therapy sessions.
No one can really prepare you for what you're about to experience, but I can share a few tips that might help you plan ahead:
1. Never go alone. Prom dress shopping is definitely a team sport. You need the teenage girl to try on the dresses and someone in the fitting room with her to help with all the zippers, hooks, buttons, and laced-up backs they put on those things. The minute you walk in the store, you need a person who can get in line for a fitting room because there will always be fifteen to twenty people waiting for one of the four tiny rooms the store provides. The mother can't be any of those people. She has her own job. The mother has to fight for the last dress in her daughter's size in every available style. Her daughter will only be allowed to take five dresses into the fitting room at a time, so the mother has to grab five different dresses, push past everyone in the line and tell the attendant that her daughter asked for a smaller size in the dresses she already took in with her. That way, the daughter can try on ten dresses while everyone else stands waiting for their turn.
2. Never, ever head straight for a dress you have your eye on. If you see a dress you like and it's twenty feet away, stroll casually toward it in a roundabout fashion, touching other dresses as you pass them, making faces as though nothing in this store is worth trying on. Even when you take the dress off the rack, act as though it's barely worth considering. Other shoppers will be watching your face, just waiting to see which dresses are the most sought after and if they get a hint that you want a particular dress, they'll strip every available size of it off the rack like hyenas cleaning a carcass before you take more than three steps in that direction. They'll even take the dresses on either side of it, just in case you were actually admiring those.
3. Tell your daughter to never leave her fitting room to use the three-way mirror down the hall or to show family and friends how she looks in the dress. She can take a picture on her cell phone and text it to them. I've heard stories about girls who left their rooms and when they got back, all the other dresses they'd brought in to try on were gone. All that was left was their sad little jeans and tee shirt balled up on the floor. Your daughter wouldn't leave a child or a Rembrandt unattended--tell her not to leave her possible dream dress hanging defenseless, especially since getting that dress off the rack and into the fitting room means her mother either took an elbow or threw one.
4. If she does have someone with her in the fitting room to guard her dresses and she does step out into the hall to show you or her friends, make sure she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings, "La, la, la," until she is safely at your side. She'll have to walk through a gauntlet of desperate mothers who will say anything to get her to put that dress back on the rack so their precious darling can try it on. She'll hear that it's not really the right color for her skin-tone, it would be pretty if it wasn't so tight around her hips, it's amazing that a dress can make her bust disappear like that, the dress would be great for an older woman, and they didn't know that this store sold maternity prom dresses. Remember--"La, la, la." Loudly.
5. And lastly, make sure your daughter takes undergarments with her that pull in what needs to be pulled in and push out the things that need to be pushed out so you can see what the dress looks like with the right foundation. In the store when she's wearing a sports bra and boy shorts, it's a fairy princess dress; coming down the stairs on prom night, covering undergarments performing miracles with water and foam, that same dress goes from fairy princess to desperate housewife. And will make her father put down the camera and pick up a shotgun.
That's all the help I can give you; the rest you'll have to figure out on your own. But if you do decide to risk it and you make it out alive, stop back by here--we still have hair, jewelry, shoes, nails, and makeup to talk about.
Remember, it's not just prom night, it's prom season. We have weeks and weeks of this ahead of us. Oh, joy.
I've made sure to eat carbs and fully hydrate. My muscles are stretched. Everything I think that I might need is packed and I'm wearing running shoes.
No, I'm not entering a marathon or going hiking. I'm not sky-diving or bungie-jumping. Those pursuits are nice if you're easily rattled. I'm preparing for an activity that's so intense it can't be shown on The X Games.
I'm taking my teenage daughter shopping for a prom dress.
You might laugh, but this is serious business. Every teenage girl in that store has built her expectations of prom so high that she is near hysteria over the thought of not finding her dream dress and every mother is ready with jabbing elbows or an "accidental" trip to make sure her baby gets what she wants. There are no refs here to blow the whistle over obvious personal fouls. No one is going to save you from a vicious cross-check or put anyone in the penalty box for hooking you with a hanger as you both reach for the same size-4 red sequined halter dress.
There are woman who will have scars for the rest of their lives just because they made the mistake of reaching for a dress on the "Marked Down" rack.
If you are in the unfortunate position of needing to shop for a prom dress, you have to have a strategy. Do not go in there with the attitude of spending a nice afternoon bonding with your daughter or they will eat you alive. Then you'll have to spend the dress money on some mother/daughter therapy sessions.
No one can really prepare you for what you're about to experience, but I can share a few tips that might help you plan ahead:
1. Never go alone. Prom dress shopping is definitely a team sport. You need the teenage girl to try on the dresses and someone in the fitting room with her to help with all the zippers, hooks, buttons, and laced-up backs they put on those things. The minute you walk in the store, you need a person who can get in line for a fitting room because there will always be fifteen to twenty people waiting for one of the four tiny rooms the store provides. The mother can't be any of those people. She has her own job. The mother has to fight for the last dress in her daughter's size in every available style. Her daughter will only be allowed to take five dresses into the fitting room at a time, so the mother has to grab five different dresses, push past everyone in the line and tell the attendant that her daughter asked for a smaller size in the dresses she already took in with her. That way, the daughter can try on ten dresses while everyone else stands waiting for their turn.
2. Never, ever head straight for a dress you have your eye on. If you see a dress you like and it's twenty feet away, stroll casually toward it in a roundabout fashion, touching other dresses as you pass them, making faces as though nothing in this store is worth trying on. Even when you take the dress off the rack, act as though it's barely worth considering. Other shoppers will be watching your face, just waiting to see which dresses are the most sought after and if they get a hint that you want a particular dress, they'll strip every available size of it off the rack like hyenas cleaning a carcass before you take more than three steps in that direction. They'll even take the dresses on either side of it, just in case you were actually admiring those.
3. Tell your daughter to never leave her fitting room to use the three-way mirror down the hall or to show family and friends how she looks in the dress. She can take a picture on her cell phone and text it to them. I've heard stories about girls who left their rooms and when they got back, all the other dresses they'd brought in to try on were gone. All that was left was their sad little jeans and tee shirt balled up on the floor. Your daughter wouldn't leave a child or a Rembrandt unattended--tell her not to leave her possible dream dress hanging defenseless, especially since getting that dress off the rack and into the fitting room means her mother either took an elbow or threw one.
4. If she does have someone with her in the fitting room to guard her dresses and she does step out into the hall to show you or her friends, make sure she sticks her fingers in her ears and sings, "La, la, la," until she is safely at your side. She'll have to walk through a gauntlet of desperate mothers who will say anything to get her to put that dress back on the rack so their precious darling can try it on. She'll hear that it's not really the right color for her skin-tone, it would be pretty if it wasn't so tight around her hips, it's amazing that a dress can make her bust disappear like that, the dress would be great for an older woman, and they didn't know that this store sold maternity prom dresses. Remember--"La, la, la." Loudly.
5. And lastly, make sure your daughter takes undergarments with her that pull in what needs to be pulled in and push out the things that need to be pushed out so you can see what the dress looks like with the right foundation. In the store when she's wearing a sports bra and boy shorts, it's a fairy princess dress; coming down the stairs on prom night, covering undergarments performing miracles with water and foam, that same dress goes from fairy princess to desperate housewife. And will make her father put down the camera and pick up a shotgun.
That's all the help I can give you; the rest you'll have to figure out on your own. But if you do decide to risk it and you make it out alive, stop back by here--we still have hair, jewelry, shoes, nails, and makeup to talk about.
Remember, it's not just prom night, it's prom season. We have weeks and weeks of this ahead of us. Oh, joy.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Do Those People Know Bernie Is Dead?
Anybody out there a fan of "The Big Bang Theory" on TV? If you aren't, there is a character on the show named Sheldon who is completely humorless. He rarely, if ever, gets the joke everyone else is laughing at and his own jokes are enjoyed by him alone. He's very gifted at sucking the life out of conversations, parties, trips, and relationships with his single-minded, humorless monologues. Which makes him very funny on a TV show when he's doing it to someone else, but when you are dealing with people like that in your own life--not as funny.
I ran into a few Sheldons in my forays this week--humorless people who wander through life never seeing the lighter side of things. You know who I'm talking about--when you're standing around the water cooler at work and someone says, "If the boss makes us work any more weekends, I'm going to sell my condo and just move in here," and everyone laughs except one guy who says with a straight face, "The boss is probably making us work extra hours because the country is in a recession and he is trying to keep the company competitive so we don't all lose our jobs." Hear that noise? It's the joy being sucked out of the room.
We all know why we are working extra hours and we all know the shape the country is in, but why does that one guy have to remind us when we are sharing a chuckle? Just because it's true doesn't mean it's the right time and place to talk about it. It's like leaning over a little kid's shoulder as he's blowing out the candles on his birthday cake and saying, "You know, someday you're going to die." Also true, but kind of a buzz kill for the birthday boy.
When I do run into someone who seems to have no measurable sense of humor, I wonder how they cope with life's little unpleasant surprises. If I couldn't laugh at and make fun of the irritations and complications of life, I would most likely step in front of a moving bus. I'm not one for exploring the deeper meaning of why my dog gets so excited about riding in the car that he throws up every time--I would much rather make a funny story out of it and remember, as I scrape the recycled Kibbles and Bits off the floor mat, the belly laugh that shook my husband when I told it to him.
Obviously, not everything in life is a joke and not everyone finds the same things funny, but imagine watching the original Death at a Funeral and thinking, "Oh, that poor man. He was only trying to help and he got poop all over his hand," instead of laughing horrified laughter until tears stream down your face. Or imagine watching The Hangover and turning to your spouse to say, "That naked man must have been hot in that car trunk. Do you have any idea what the median temperature is in Nevada?" while your spouse can't hear you because he is pounding the table to punctuate his laughter. It must be a lonely feeling.
Sometimes, it isn't a lack of humor. Sometimes, the person normally enjoys a good laugh, but they didn't take your words in the manner that you intended them or they misunderstood what you were trying to say. That's especially true on the internet where even a million smilies can't convey your tone and facial expression as well as you'd like. It's easy for your intentions to be misconstrued. That has started thousands of online arguments that probably wouldn't have happened if the two people were talking face-to-face and could read each other's body language.
So for everyone who's ever read anything I've written :) I'm :) sorry :) if :) I :) offended :) you :). Please :) rest :) assured :) that :) I :) was :) merely :) joking :) and :) trying :) to :) give :) others :) a :) laugh :) or :) two:). It :) wasn't :) meant :) to :) offend:). This :) applies :) to :) all :) future :) blog :) posts :), as :) well :). (If I'm trying to offend you, I'll be sure to tell you outright.)
In the meantime, your sense of humor needs exercise as much as your muscles do, so call a friend who "gets" you and you "get" or watch a movie that makes you laugh so hard your stomach aches or read a book that tickles your funny bone. Or if you can't find anything else that makes you laugh, just picture me scrubbing that dog puke off my car upholstery while behind me, the guilty canine lifts his leg on the tire.
I ran into a few Sheldons in my forays this week--humorless people who wander through life never seeing the lighter side of things. You know who I'm talking about--when you're standing around the water cooler at work and someone says, "If the boss makes us work any more weekends, I'm going to sell my condo and just move in here," and everyone laughs except one guy who says with a straight face, "The boss is probably making us work extra hours because the country is in a recession and he is trying to keep the company competitive so we don't all lose our jobs." Hear that noise? It's the joy being sucked out of the room.
We all know why we are working extra hours and we all know the shape the country is in, but why does that one guy have to remind us when we are sharing a chuckle? Just because it's true doesn't mean it's the right time and place to talk about it. It's like leaning over a little kid's shoulder as he's blowing out the candles on his birthday cake and saying, "You know, someday you're going to die." Also true, but kind of a buzz kill for the birthday boy.
When I do run into someone who seems to have no measurable sense of humor, I wonder how they cope with life's little unpleasant surprises. If I couldn't laugh at and make fun of the irritations and complications of life, I would most likely step in front of a moving bus. I'm not one for exploring the deeper meaning of why my dog gets so excited about riding in the car that he throws up every time--I would much rather make a funny story out of it and remember, as I scrape the recycled Kibbles and Bits off the floor mat, the belly laugh that shook my husband when I told it to him.
Obviously, not everything in life is a joke and not everyone finds the same things funny, but imagine watching the original Death at a Funeral and thinking, "Oh, that poor man. He was only trying to help and he got poop all over his hand," instead of laughing horrified laughter until tears stream down your face. Or imagine watching The Hangover and turning to your spouse to say, "That naked man must have been hot in that car trunk. Do you have any idea what the median temperature is in Nevada?" while your spouse can't hear you because he is pounding the table to punctuate his laughter. It must be a lonely feeling.
Sometimes, it isn't a lack of humor. Sometimes, the person normally enjoys a good laugh, but they didn't take your words in the manner that you intended them or they misunderstood what you were trying to say. That's especially true on the internet where even a million smilies can't convey your tone and facial expression as well as you'd like. It's easy for your intentions to be misconstrued. That has started thousands of online arguments that probably wouldn't have happened if the two people were talking face-to-face and could read each other's body language.
So for everyone who's ever read anything I've written :) I'm :) sorry :) if :) I :) offended :) you :). Please :) rest :) assured :) that :) I :) was :) merely :) joking :) and :) trying :) to :) give :) others :) a :) laugh :) or :) two:). It :) wasn't :) meant :) to :) offend:). This :) applies :) to :) all :) future :) blog :) posts :), as :) well :). (If I'm trying to offend you, I'll be sure to tell you outright.)
In the meantime, your sense of humor needs exercise as much as your muscles do, so call a friend who "gets" you and you "get" or watch a movie that makes you laugh so hard your stomach aches or read a book that tickles your funny bone. Or if you can't find anything else that makes you laugh, just picture me scrubbing that dog puke off my car upholstery while behind me, the guilty canine lifts his leg on the tire.
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