Vocationally Malodorous

It has recently come to my attention that some people are just not very good at their jobs. And I don't just mean the obvious, like politicians and high school gym teachers. Neither do I mean those well-intended folks who are just plain weird, like the vet who told me my dog's meds tasted like battery acid; nor those who take their jobs way too seriously, like the lady at the school uniform store who not only asked me for my driver's license, but who also, upon my attempted credit card purchase of one (1) Central Florida Leadership Academy polo shirt, double checked the signatures on both the card and the license, then held the driver's license up toward me and peered suspiciously from my photo to my actual person and back a couple of times before finally deciding I was legit. Girlfriend, if I am going to steal somebody’s credit card and have a little fun widdit, you can bet your boots I am not about to waste that opportunity on the purchase of one lowly CFLA polo shirt. I'd be stocking up on ALL KINDS of private- and charter-school apparel and accessories, and maybe even sneak in a medical garb shopping spree, starting with those awesome fake long sleeves you can slide on under your short-sleeved top, “for the two-shirt look without the two-shirt heat”!

No, I’m talking about people who just don’t do their job well, by anyone’s definition. Dental hygienists who gouge your gums; hairdressers who leave one side longer than the other (yes, I am aware that this only applies to me); the people who write the Capital One Credit card commercials; Golden Retrievers who forget to bring the ball back; boy bands; and most distressing of all, editors or proofreaders who miss glaring or gramtical spelling errors. And what about the armies of customer disservice departments who leave you on hold while entire ice ages come and go, or worse still transfer you a dozen times and then accidentally disconnect you?  (Actually that's one is probably a blessing in disguise, so ignore it.)

A classic case of bad jobsmanship was when Emma had to get four molars pulled. Her dentist actually worked up a serious sweat trying to wrench them out, while she was wide awake, mind you, although numb from the novocaine. I can still see him there, lips curled back over his clenched teeth, violently yanking that frightening dental tool back and forth, with his foot rammed against the dental chair for leverage. They probably should have blindfolded her. And her mother as well.

What do we, as a community of concerned citizens, do to prevent future bad business practices? Suggestion number one is that we legislate for higher taxes in order to help keep these individuals unemployed for as long as possible. Suggestion number two is that perhaps they can be retrained, and then we help them find jobs dancing and waving business signs for all-you-can-eat buffets and cell phone companies.

Supporting an increased welfare system is starting to look pretty good, isn’t it?  

Let’s keep this dialogue going! Share a favorite experience, or a share a charitable and family-friendly suggestion to save the world from the incapable, the ineffective, and the inept. Or to save time, just send your tax-free donations to the Barbara Hehl Help Keep the Incompetent Unemployed fund. (Those pseudo sleeves at the uniform store came in a wide variety of eye-catching earth tones.)

I Put the Mess in PMS

“How is your day, ma’am?” When the dude at the fast food counter asked me this question the other day, the first thought that came into my mind was, “Well, it began with a mammogram and hasn’t really gotten much better.”

Today the grocery store clerk asked me a similar question, and not surprisingly I had still not rehearsed a socially acceptable response. “I have this uncomfortable sensation kind of in the middle of my chest, that is the emotional equivalent of having a moderately overweight hairy man standing on me. The pressure feels like my head will burst apart at the temples--or maybe implode, which doesn’t actually make sense but describes it more accurately. And right now I really, really need to vomit tears.”

Instead I lied; a nice, safe, uncomplicated lie. "I'm great, thanks." No one is made to feel awkward. No one needs to summon feigned and fabricated sympathy. But I felt morally compromised in my equivocation. Still, I smiled at the grocery store clerk, and I lied. At least I think it was a smile because I forced my lips to curl back over my teeth. Judging by the startled look on the bag boy’s face, however, I may not have quite hit the mark.

Today’s tsunami of hormones left me feeling self-destructive, too. Rather than simply wallow in my misery, I’d throw myself in head first.  When the hormones hit this morning, I could have chosen to suck down the pint of chocolate brownie gelato in the freezer-- no one else was home to stop me, to question me, or even to look at me condescendingly. Instead I deliberately turned my back on sweet and comforting frozen goodness, and ate a bagel chip. When I got back into the car after shopping, I willfully did not put on the radio to cheer myself up with some tunes. Instead I allowed the grocery store muzak to continue its incessant loop in my brain (“Sad eyes, turn the other way. I don’t wanna see you cry [cry, cry, cry]. Sad eyes, you knew there’d come a day [hey-ey] when we would have to say good-bye….”) until it dug a pit in my brain that would take years of intense psychotherapy to heal. When the dryer signal went off for about the 20th time, I just stood in the laundry room doorway and absorbed it, letting its high-pitched chirrup pierce my brain...like a bunch of very sharp objects. And just to rub a little dirt in my mood, I later switched on NPR, hoping to find a replay of the piece about what life might be like after humans become extinct and rats take over the world (which they played twice today already), or the program about the controversial topic of fragrance-free workplace policies. However, had I really been intent on harming myself, I would have simply bought that box of donuts across from the dairy aisle. Raised glazed, jelly-filled, or sprinkled--it wouldn’t matter. The only things more nauseating are Circus Peanuts. Or pork rinds. Or Bazooka bubblegum.

A friend of mine recently suggested that we start a support group called hormones anonymous. I suggested a 12-Step program: Steps 1-11 would involve the indiscriminate and wanton consumption of chocolate; Step 12 would involve activities which one might find on personal injury attorneys’ Top 5 lists. Instead I sit here writing. Perhaps writing will make me feel better. But if it does, I can always dip into some banana flavored marshmallow candy and listen to Robert John. And then lie about it all.

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN

It feels like there is something going on in the cosmos lately (although upon reflection there could quite conceivably be more than one thing going on in the cosmos lately). But I am referring to a cosmic condemnation kind of thing. Yesterday for example, I rode around a small vacation resort in a golf cart with a sweet little octogenarian, who seemed to have absolutely no sense whatsoever for the weight of her foot on the accelerator. As we jerked our way around the resort, I wondered if this was somehow divine recompense for an incident which occurred many years ago when I was learning to drive.  A college-aged friend of mine was more or less patiently trying to teaching me how to drive stick shift in her Mazda. After several minutes of lurching down the streets of my neighborhood, looking unquestionably sloshed, schnockered, and three sheets to the wind, and by the way, feeling completely humiliated, I simply opened the door of the car, after killing the engine for the umpteenth time, got out, and fecklessly, if not recklessly, sauntered back down the street to my house. I’m pretty sure I did not even close the door. My friend jumped out and started yelling at me, “What the heck are you doing?!? Get back here! You can’t just leave a car in the middle of the road!” But I did. And although at the time, I avoided any actual repercussions, this morning the cosmos spoke. And I did my penance--with Myrtle.

I am on my way to a “New Parent” orientation at my daughter’s new school. (I’m not entirely sure what to expect at a “new parent” orientation, but it sounds like something that would have come in handy 26 years ago, when Ken and I were trying to figure out how to sponge bathe a newborn without damaging that little brown twiggy thingy stuck to his belly button.)  Despite having left early enough to arrive five minutes early, I choose the wrong route--curse you Google Maps-- which causes me to sit through three changes of lights in the after school pick up traffic for another nearby school. Fine. I have lost five minutes, but I should still be there right on time by ducking in behind the speedy drivers on the freeway. However, I have not driven this route frequently nor recently enough to be confident of the directions, so I am still naively and inadvisedly relying on Google Maps. As I zip  down the road, listening to a riveting report on NPR about the variety of hums and thrums made by leafhopper insects, I miss a critical direction stealthily whispered by Google Maps. Suddenly aware of an upcoming fork in the road, I have no time to think, but a consequential choice to make: northbound or southbound turnpike? Milliseconds before Google Maps repeats the specific direction at the fork, I choose poorly. But instead of a swift, albeit inopportune, time-lapse sequence wherein I age a few hundred years and then turn into a pile of bones and ashes which mysteriously and ominously blow away, stage right, I am consigned the agonizing, arduous, and awful fate of driving northbound on Florida’s turnpike.  I am now unavoidably cursed to arrive at the parents’ meeting unpunctually.

My doom thus sealed, I invest several minutes, and far too much emotional energy, yelling at Google Maps for not notifying me sooner. And when I am completely spent-- emotionally, physically, intellectually, spiritually, grammatically, and vocabularily --in the now quiet of my silver tomb of tardiness, I realize that maybe it is not truly Google Maps’ fault at all. Maybe, as insanely improbable as this might sound, it is my own fault. From somewhere in the celestial realms, really large words come to my mind. MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN: I have been weighed in the heavenly scales and have been found wanting. This, too, is punishment...for something. Scenes of myself running dozens of yellow lights, neglecting to use my turn signal just because there were no other cars on the road, and willfully ignoring my “time to change your oil” stickers-- for an extra 6,000 miles or so-- flash before my eyes. How could I have ever been sufficiently deluded to think that I could with impunity perpetrate such egregious atrocities?

Speaking of punishment, let’s talk for just a minute about Nebraska and Kansas, which are technically the same thing; North and South Boring-- despite what you might have been led to believe upon viewing billboards along I-70 for the World’s Largest Ball of Twine, or  World’s Largest Prairie Dog Village. For the record, I am reasonably confident that all maps of the United States are incorrect and that these two states alone actually take up about 70-74% of the country. Somehow I feel that reparations, or at least redress and remuneration, are in order for all of us who have suffered significant brain atrophy from driving through these states. But I don't even know how to end this blog, let alone how to lodge a formal complaint about the misleading nature of U.S maps or how to turn that into personal financial gain.

Blame the Beetle

A friend is telling a you story and it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and you kind of lose the thread and then when you come to, you realize that you have no idea what is going on in this conversation, and you suddenly suspect that perhaps your fourth grade teacher’s comments on your report card were right: You really aren’t very good at choosing friends.

Which reminds me of a story:

I’m jogging down the sidewalk (or maybe it is up the sidewalk--I’m not really sure how that is determined) and at the last second I notice a large, fat, very crunchable black beetle in my path, which I deftly side-step. It is laying, squirming really, on its back, and its crawly and hairy little legs are scrabbling madly at the air in an apparent attempt to right itself. Karma. This word unexpectedly hits my brain as I am landing on the other side of this unpleasant little coleoptera. I suppose because I only woke up two hours previously and I’m still not thinking clearly, I stop mid-stride, turn around, and ever so gently nudge the small, shuddersome beast upright with the toe of my sneaker. Stuck somewhere between smiling and cringing, I watch as it takes its first step of freedom...and promptly flips back over onto its creepy back again, spiny legs and claws cycling hysterically in the air once more. But is it truly frenzied and terror-stricken, or are there darker motivations behind its torturous twitching? As I turn and jog away, my hopes for beetle-borne blessings fading away like a wisp of Raid on a morning breeze, I wonder if in reality the little bugger is writhing with laughter, having so easily snatched propitious providence from this giant, pale biped.

Think of all the insects in this world that we deliberately or *accidentally* fold, bend, spindle, and/or mutilate. Whether or not those bugs are willing participants is irrelevant-- that is a heck of a lot of bad karma, and it explains A LOT:

Toasters that toast only on one side (all toasters).

Clogged drains.

Ring around the collar.

Political rants on Facebook.

Brussel sprouts.

Apps that close out with no warning.

Rap music.

Grumpy people.

Plastic wrap that sticks only to itself.

Weeds.

Frozen, muddy, salty, icy, sludge in April--or really any month.

Tootsie Rolls.

Cable network news anchors.

Little pieces of popcorn kernel that get stuck between your molars.

Socks that disappear in the laundry.

The Islamic State.

Yellow-gray pit stains.

Brain freeze.

Violently aggressive small dogs with bulging eyes.

Fourth grade report cards.

_________________________________________________________________________

(Was that really the end? Or did you miss something? Maybe your teacher was right.)

Saving the Earth, One Cricket At A Time

A couple of months ago, I found myself inexplicably curious about food trends. Okay. Truth be told, there was a measure of explicability regarding my curiosity: I had recently discovered the yum factor of a handful foods which previously I had difficulty even pronouncing, such as quinoa, falafel, couscous, and chipotle...or is that chipoltay? (I still have no idea what to do with acai or sriracha, and regularly slaughter bruschetta, but if you so much as think the word sherBERT in my presence, you will be immediately and soundly slapped -- in an obviously passive voice.)

As a side note, cleverly disguised as a paragraph, a couple of years ago, I overheard some friends discussing ways to prepare something called keen-wah. In the following months, I heard about it more often and wondered what it was, and what accounted the sudden celebrity of this funky, unpronounceable little grain? So in a moment of weakness, I looked it up. Wikipedia describes quinoa as “a species of goosefoot...a grain crop grown primarily for its edible seeds. It is a pseudocereal rather than a true cereal.” Ahhhh! A "pseudocereal”! Okay, I totally get that -- like Cap'n Crunch's Sprinkled Donut Crunch or Post’s Poppin’ Pebbles (“Fizzes in your mouth with burstin’ berry flavor!”) Suddenly quinoa's meteoric rise to fame began to make sense.

One evening last January, I spent far too much time sipping a strong mug of milk chocolate Swiss Miss, because sometimes January requires comfort food, and learning about some pretty amazing food trends, as well as some downright batty foodies. I discovered the Good -- the rise of fats, savory waffles, and the “new” burger (I love the kind with a cooked egg, bacon, and maple syrup on it); the Bad -- seaweed, fermented foods, and savory ice creams; and the Unconscionably Weird -- parsnip cakes, cucumber sorbet, and beet flourless chocolate cake. And then I nearly choked on my mini marshmallows: “insect powered food”. Call your broker now and divest yourself of all your stock in Raid because there is a much more eco-friendly way to handle those household pests. And don’t even think about siccing Fluffy or Boots on them anymore; round ‘em all up yourself (the bugs, not the cats) and fire up the grill.

This from a chilling article in Time.com: “Insects are protein powerhouses; grasshoppers, for instance, have about the same protein content as a chicken breast. Full-bodied insects won’t appear in your Safeway this year; get ready for them to arrive in processed form, especially protein-packed power bars... [And expect] insects, processed as flour, to soon become a popular protein sources for bakery and cereal products. Full-bodied insects — tentacles and all? Further off, but coming.”

But in all seriousness, when you think about it, it makes total sense to make a switch: Per pound of usable beef, we use twenty-five pounds of feed and two thousand gallons of water! By contrast, a pound of cricket meat only requires two pounds of feed and a gallon of water. The other obvious solution here is to skip the crickets entirely and just eat the cricket feed instead. If I remember my pioneer history, I kind of think crickets feed on our crops. So to save the earth, we just go ahead and eat the quinoa or Sprinkled Donut Crunch after all. I'm ready to do my part.

Exhaling Pop Rocks

I'm dying. It's that simple. And honestly it is a relief to finally come to terms with my impending and inevitable expiration.

I check my temperature, for the third time in 10 minutes: holding steady at 98.6. To the casual observer, 98.6 may sound "normal"...or "average"...or "ordinary"...or "typical". But I take great pride in being an informed participant in my own physical and mental health, and I happen to know that according to this thermometer, "normal" for my unsick body is actually 96.8! Therefore, at 98.6 I am feverish, febrile, fiery, and flushed, and rambling more or less directly down the slippery slope to death's door.

Because I am generally given neither to hyperbole nor to embellishment -- I'll admit to occasional verbal aggrandizement but that's different-- it must be acknowledged that I am in a very serious situation. It is 2:00 in the morning and I am alone. Ken and Emma are comfortably and healthily wrapped in their cocoons of silent and selfish slumber, while I eke out the last minutes of my short life, alone on the futon, fighting my delirium in order to play my next few turns on Words with Friends.

I cautiously inhale and it feels as though I've just sucked up an entire hill full of ants. I attempt to exhale and I gasp and choke and splutter and..um...well...cough. It is a packet of Pop Rocks powder in my lungs. My eyes bulge from the effort and veins stand out on the side of my head, and yes, I did bring a small pocket size mirror into the den with me, so I know. It is important to chronicle all details for the future use of the Emergency Room staff. When the next round hits, I attempt to hold my breath rather than exhale. I really have no explanation for this tactic. Blame it on the fever. This stratagem ends in the near disastrous result of my head exploding: body fluids bursting out of cranial orifices like too much fizz in a bottle of pop.

Exhausted from the effort of coughing, debilitated from the effort of not coughing, I quickly finish my BuzzFeed quiz (Rapunzel, and I should live in Hawaii) and feebly fold in half over my pillow. I whip out the mirror again and notice that my eyelids are getting heavy. I cough and I wheeze and I splutter and I gasp and I even choke, for good measure, as I gradually drift into syncope, having narrowly avoided The End this once. But who knows if my luck will hold out the next time my allergies flare up. I recommend that you send chocolate, or more chocolate (flowers aren't edible), sooner rather than later -- just in case.

I Recommend the Umber Jodhpurs

After a brief sabbatical of eight months or so (yes, it was a very nice nap) I have decided to take up the pen again, so to speak, in defense of the much maligned fashion trend of Guy Capris, or as my brother descriptively refers to them, “France Pants”. In an article dated April 1, 2015  (yeah-- what about it?) the NBA announced that the Utah Jazz, “once again at the forefront of NBA fashion”, will be wearing Three-Quarter Court Pants. You may have noticed that Three-Quarter Court Pants is a much more macho and manly name than “capris”, which are named for the Italian island of Capri and which is literally translated as “girly girl clothes” (not to be confused with the islands of Bikini, Bermuda, or Gaucho.) Predictably, the ensuing online chaos, clamor, and commotion among fans could be summarized as, "Yikes, what a stupid idea."

The question as to whether or not this article is simply a hoax is in my mind quite irrelevant. What is at stake here is of far greater significance than whether or not this is an April Fools Day joke: This is about accouterment equality. Think about it. For years, Guys have had two (2, II) entire appellations for the length of their britches—Pants or Shorts. In the meantime, Women have had, in no particular order: pants, crops, capris, gauchos, pedal pushers, clam diggers, skimmers, Bermudas, walking shorts, the superfluously and redundantly named short-shorts, the confusingly named hot pants, and Daisy Dukes—named for an icon of American red-necked flooziness. For decades Guys have been stuck with just two boring trouser lengths. I say we let them enjoy their France Pants, and quit giving them such grief about it.

Guys need to be able to have a little fun with life, too.  Think about their occasionally dull and deprived existence: They don’t even have a decent color name vocabulary. Once you get them past the 8-count Crayola pack, they got nothing.  Several years ago my husband and I participated in a game where participants answered questions to show how well they knew their spouse or other family members. I was asked the color of my toothbrush to see whether or not Ken remembered it correctly. I quickly replied, “Coral”.  The ensuing uproar among the male participants and audience members was frantic, frenzied, and furious! Certain that I had chosen a color word which they could no more verify than chartreuse, ecru, or tourmaline, it took several patient, persistent, and very muscular women to point out that “coral” cannot be fairly nor accurately substituted with either red, pink, scarlet, vermillion, strawberry, or salmon.

Perhaps if Guys were able to add a little fashion fun and frippery to their wardrobes, without all the chauvinistic and narrow-minded badinage and persiflage, we would be one happy step closer to understanding this sentence.