If The Karate Kid Is Not At Home

There is an incredible range of arthropod-ian courage among the average human: My husband, for example, thinks nothing of flattening smallish insects with his bare hand (be still my heart), but can barely bring himself to confront the butterfly’s homely cousin, the moth. Another game of valor and daring he likes to play is to catch a fly in his hand (Karate Kid for beginners), shake it up in his closed fist, and then toss it outside. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum are the folks that have my most sincere empathy, the arachnophobic or entomophobic. A phobia is no laughing matter; my arachnophobia used to be paralyzing. If I ever came across a spider unexpectedly (Hint: it’s always unexpectedly), I would require emergency transportation to my room, where I hid under the covers, with a flashlight, some holy water, a can of Raid, and a stash of chocolate, until someone came in to reassure me that the offending spider or bug had been squished into oblivion and its remains flushed down the neighbor’s toilet. Pretty similar to what the sight of Winter does to me today, minus the can of Raid. Although somewhere in my little brain, Reason (or my mother) said that I was much larger than the spider, therefore it should be afraid of me; somehow Intuition told me that if turned my back on even the tiniest spider, it would bite and poison me, tie me up with its nasty floss, and drag me back to its lair to slowly feed to its young.

Many years ago when my own brave knight was working and going to school, I discovered late one evening a huge, hulking, gargantuan, hairy, creepy, disgusting spider sitting (or standing, it’s hard to tell) in the middle of my kitchen floor. At that point in my life, about all I had in the way of grit and valor was the ability to shoo away a fairly small ladybug. And my three year old was asleep, otherwise I would have asked him. I knew I was in trouble. All I had available in my emotional arsenal was either to faint, or to run away screaming and crying, like Lord Denethor in his famous scene from “The Return of the King”: “FLEE! FLEE FOR YOUR LIVES!!!!” But as my two preschoolers were in bed, I decided on Plan C: Have someone else’s fearless husband come over and kill it for me...at 10:00 p.m.

I called my nearest neighbor and, in my most pitiful and forlorn voice, explained my terrifying situation. I asked if her husband could come help. She hesitated just a moment before replying, “Sure. I’ll send him over.” When the poor man arrived, he looked appreciably uncomfortable. I wondered if he had been on his way to bed and was tired, or if he thought it was questionable for a married man to come to my house late at night. I showed him where the beast was, just chilling in the middle of the floor, as though it owned the place. At this point, my poor neighbor who, in his discomfort, could barely set foot in my kitchen confessed his pain. “Spiders terrify me,” he whispered hoarsely.  We stood there, transfixed by the monster. While I was trying to figure out an appropriate sentiment of encouragement and confidence, I am pretty sure he was trying to figure out how to slip out unnoticed. Instead this brilliant and stouthearted man dropped a very large phonebook on the offending and offensive creature; after which he very gingerly stepped on the phonebook, for good measure.

Nowadays, after years of therapy and the consumption of much chocolate, I have come to grips with my phobias. Rather than turning into human jello water at the sight of any arthropod larger than a grain of coarse sea salt, I am able to take a deep breath, stick out my chin, and weep silently.

Share your stories! But wait until I get back from the store with my dark chocolate and D batteries.

You Can Step On the Mean Ones

What is there about chasing after a slimy, saliva-covered, squeaky ball that holds such fascination for my Golden Retriever? Exhaustion is never a reason to stop, nor is the pain and bleeding from having ripped up the pads on the bottom of her paws. On occasions too numerous to count, she has been so laser-locked on retrieving a ball, that she has run head first into walls, cement columns, and the occasional Mack truck--hard enough that lesser beings would have been knocked out cold for days;  but she just shakes her little head and continues on, grabbing the ball, and bringing it back for more, while trotting on temporarily wobbly legs. We’ve even joked that if Comet were dead and buried two weeks, and someone walked over to her grave and squeaked one of her favorite balls, she’d find a way back just so she could run it down one more time. One thing my dog is not, is self-aware. What on earth would drive anyone to continue zooming around well beyond the point of pain? She needs to learn how to pace herself and enjoy life a little.

When I call Comet’s behavior an addiction, unlike most other things I write, this is not exaggeration.  A friend of ours who is a psychologist said it’s like chocolate for you or me (mostly me). But frankly, I don’t think I’d come back from the grave for anything less than Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate With Chili--or maybe a good Godiva truffle...or Ghirardelli’s Dark and Sea Salt Caramel bar, and maybe the Limited Edition Dark Peppermint Bark Bar...and in a pinch, I’d settle for Junior Mints, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, or a Snicker bar...but not M&Ms because there is nowhere near enough chocolate in that pitiful little candy shell, nor a Tootsie Roll (I don’t even know whether that is supposed to BE chocolate, but it is brown and it has sugar in it)--because if there’s any drive stronger in my little brain than the Lindt Excellence Dark Chocolate With Chili Drive, it’s the Nap Drive, and death does seem like the ultimate excuse for a good nap. My will specifies that I am to be buried with a moderate assortment of Lindt bars and Godiva truffles, because I am way too lazy to come back and haunt anyone just to get some chocolate.

Which, by the way, is why I run--the part about chocolate that is, not the part about coming back from the dead. But truth be told, I also run because I enjoy it. No, really. I love being outside running in the warm, fresh air and sunshine, even when it’s rainy, cloudy, dark, or bitterly cold. I’ve run in rain, snow, sleet, and hail, with temps as low as the teens, although since moving to Florida, I’ve decided to draw the line at running in anything colder than about 64 degrees. There really is so much to love about running, including many well-documented benefits (meaning I saw them in print somewhere):
1. It’s great for your overall mental health, and it helps you feel good about yourself (except when people twice my age blitz past me like I was walking...backwards).
2. It burns fat and improves many other aspects of physical health: it’s good for your heart, helps with blood pressure, lessens the effects of asthma, and increases bone density, cures male pattern baldness and warts, decreases the buildup of earwax, and is a good substitute for flossing.

So what if running leaves me a little tired and sore sometimes?  Bursitis is no reason to cry--most of the time. Jogging with that air cast after I broke my foot was a little inconvenient, but as I’ve said, I crave the outdoors. I’ve only occasionally been chased by dogs, and that really mean one was in a stroller anyway. And what does it matter if I had to wear dark purple nail polish on my toes for 12 months straight because it was the only thing dark enough to cover the bruises...and later, the slightly unsightly look of the old dead nails growing out and sometimes falling off? Midnight Plum is lovely. And it’s really no big deal that I can now no longer sit for more than 11 or 12 minutes in a row without sharp stabbing pains exploding like lightning through my legs and butt.  Once I get going on a good run, having popped three or four Advil, the pain more or less subsides. And then my Nap Drive kicks in. Life doesn’t get much better than this! Eat a pound or two of chocolate, pop a few Advil, run a few miles, and take a big fat nap. If only Comet was a little more self-aware, like me....

On Cutting Employees and Other Nefarious Behavior

Being the civic-minded do-gooder that I am by nature, I felt impelled to brief both of my readers (in a not-so-brief fashion) on the latest health-law mandate update. I know that in the past I have gone to great lengths (meaning I have trouble with succinctness as a general rule) to reassure potential readers that my blogs have absolutely no resemblance to anything educational, helpful, beneficial, valuable, worthwhile, or instructive--and rarely to anything based in Reality.  However, I have decided that the following article fits those guidelines quite nicely, and may in fact severely impede brain function in the reader, or readers. What I lack in originality and clarity, I make up for in plagiarism.

On Monday the Treasury Department, in regulations outlining the Affordable Health Care Act, said many things which do not make any sense whatsoever. However, in an attempt at Appeasement Though Mathematics, they did say that companies with more workers than the companies with fewer could avoid some of the penalties in 2015 if they showed they were offering 70% of the coverage that 70% of the full-time employees, who were not employed by the companies with fewer than 70% of the uncovered insur-ees, would or should have been enrolled in if and when they understand, or understood this sentence, its grammar, its syntax, or its punctuation?

This carefully worded, not to say poetic, move came after employers pressured the Obama administration to peel back the law’s insurance requirements which, under the original 2010 law, stated mathematically, if not scientifically, that employers with the “equivalent of at least 50 full-time workers” had to either offer coverage to the equivalent person or persons or pay a penalty starting at $2,000 per worker, whether or not they were considered a person or simply the equivalent thereof, and ending somewhere after the completion of this sentence or the equivalent thereof.

To understand the economic and bureaucratic impact, it behooves us to list and/or enumerate more numbers, numerals, figures, and integers.  To put it simply, if not gnomically (which may or may not even make sense in this context), the new rules for companies with 50 to 99 workers would cover about 2% of all U.S. businesses, which include 28% of workers (although what 28% of a worker looks like, I shudder to imagine), or 7.9 million people according to 2011 Census figures and numerals, and companies with 100 or more workers representing a further 2% of businesses, which employ more than 74 million people, adding up to a whopping 81.9 million, which one then divides by 2% and then a further 2%, unless the rule of multiplicative inverse applies, in which case, many employers would begin trimming employees to the equivalent of 30%.

I believe that Neal Troutwinner, a vice president and lobbyist for the National Retail Foundation, expressed it best when he said, “I’m pretty....”

Finally it is noteworthy to note that Unidentified Senior Treasury Officials from the Department of Capitalized Titles stated emphatically that all firms should “consider the number of hours their employees worked, and whether they should be cutting them”! I would like to go on record as stating vigorously and vehemently that neither math nor politics nor poor grammar is no reason to injure persons, even if they are uninsured. 

If you care to join my rant, I invite you to do so, but only if you promise to have almost no idea what you are talking about, nor how to express what little you do with anything but unfeigned verbosity.

Do Ewoks Have Earwax?

The other day, as I sat with my Golden Retriever in a headlock, doggedly digging out her earwax, I confess that the thought crossed my mind, “How much could I get for this dog?” Okay, not really. That is usually the thought reserved for the many times I’m standing outside at 10:00 p.m. in the freezing cold (read: “anything colder than 59 degrees”), waiting for her to remember the meaning of the command, “For Pete’s sake!  Hurry up and go already! I’m freezing to death!” Which, of course, is followed by my turning a little green plastic baggy inside out over my hand so that I can retrieve what the retriever left behind. The things we do in the name of being responsible pet owners! By contrast, we briefly owned the dog from H-E-Double Hockey Sticks, Boomer. After standing outside with Boomer in the rain, sleet, and/or snow of a dark, bleak, dreary, miserable Indiana winter’s night, begging him to do his business, I would eventually give up and bring him inside. At which point he would hop right up onto the sofa and relieve himself there! 

My ambivalent feelings toward Comet are sad really, when you think about what a loyal and happy little thing she is. Which is why I try not to. I have even forgotten on occasion that I own a dog. In my defense (possibly), there was a time when my second child was a baby that I started to walk out of the house with a group of family and friends, and one person helpfully asked, “Aren’t you taking Spencer?” Oh! That’s right! I have another child! 

Now where was I? Oh yeah. Dog. Some would say it is a sign of Comet’s devoted love and affection that the thing she wants most in the Whole Wide World: is a garlic crouton...followed in a close second by an eternal game of fetch...and somewhere in the back forty is just to be near us. Ha ha ha, just kidding! The eternal game of fetch comes first. I commonly wake up from a nap, face to face with a slimy, saliva-covered dog ball perched on my belly or by my shoulder, and a pair of big brown eyes peering up over the side of the bed, or the sofa, or the hammock, waiting for any sign of life. I have more than once backed up in the kitchen and nearly killed myself falling over the dog, who is quietly and meekly licking the OUTSIDE of the dishwasher door (“I can tell you’ve touched this--after holding a crouton.”) And once, as I sat on the steps with my hands in my lap, Comet came over and pushed her nose between my arm and my side, and steadily inched her way forward until she had succeeded in draping my arm around her as though we were old friends. Um, I mean, “because we are old friends.”

On the upside:

1. She seems to genuinely enjoy our company...when she wants something. (Oh wait. I’m thinking about cats. Never mind.) And generally speaking, she does not argue, whine, or talk back.
2. Dogs are good for your self-esteem, meaning I feel slightly better about my morning breath when she’s around. But whether that is by contrast to hers, or whether that is because she seems to dig it, you, gentle reader, may decide for yourself.
3. We can always tell when it’s time to vacuum. (Hint: Every Day, multiple times a day.)

I like to tell myself that Comet is glad for certain aspects of our relationship: that we don’t dress her up as a dinosaur, a clown, or an Ewok for Halloween; that we don’t include her in family photos by the Christmas tree; and that we almost never carry her around in a small handbag. On the other hand, Emma has been known to try out some of her clothes on the long-suffering Comet--t-shirts (with a little knot tied in the side so Comet doesn’t trip over it--at least I think it’s about safety rather than fashion), polkadot knee socks, her green bathrobe, and a cute little paisley two-piece swimsuit with a ruffle skirt. If we occasionally have mixed feeling about the dog, I’m pretty sure Comet occasionally has mixed feeling about us. 

Gluteal Vibrations and Other Games

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; 

drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: 

there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, 

and drinking largely sobers us again.” --Alexander Pope

Nowhere is this concept of a little learning being dangerous more evident than in the world of technology, and by that I mean “in the world of anyone over the age of 29 trying to correctly utilize technology”.  A Technologically Intoxicated Brain is the only explanation for the events depicted in the following True Story. Over the course of a few weeks, I had exchanged several texts with an unnamed and unidentified individual. Although he/she stubbornly refused to reveal his/her name, it became apparent that this was not one of my friends yanking my chain, as I had initially supposed. One day in frustration, he/she divulged a little information and the tumblers began to slide into place:

Me: “Okay, hang on. You are trying to get a hold of your daughter, ‘Barbara’, right? THIS IS Barbara. Is this Bill Couch? If so, why didn't you answer when I asked who it was?”

Dad: “I had one number wrong.” [Narrator:  A word to the wise--Technology is occasionally touchy about things like that.] “I'll correct that, and once the dust settles we should be able to text back and forth without any more trouble. The other person in this triangle is a Barbara, too. So when her text came through with ‘Barbara’ at top of the screen it added to the confusion. So let's text away.”

Me, realizing it really WAS my dad: “Ha ha! That is too funny! I never got a reply to any of the three times I asked who it was that had texted me.”

Dad: “But Barbara, I still don't know if I'm texting you or my daughter.” 

I would just like to pause a moment to let this sink in.

Me--or maybe the other Barbara (I still get us mixed up): “Okay. This is Barbara Hehl currently living in Orlando Florida, daughter of Bill Couch and Doreen Edwards. Do I win?”

Dad--and I am truly NOT making this up; I am not that funny: “That's great but after my last text, the other Barbara answered it and was quite amused. So I still don't know if you or she is getting them.”

Me, or someone a lot like me: “Dad that WAS me! And I am still amused!”

Dad: “OK you win! At least I feel like it, and that you are receiving my stuff. Maybe the other person doesn't exist.” [Narrator: Just maybe.] “I don't get why you didn't know it was me.”

Lest I give the impression that I might be laughing at my dad, let me just state for the record that I am definitely laughing at my dad. “Shallow draughts intoxicate the brain.” At times very little imagination is required to visualize the impact of a very little learning. 

Another example: One day in my bathroom I heard my (more or less) silenced phone buzzing. As the sound came from behind me, I turned around and looked on the opposite counter. No phone. It buzzed again, somewhere behind me. I turned a little bit more. No sign of it. After a couple more buzzes, I realized I had done a complete 360--twice--and looked on every possible counter, ledge, shelf, projection, protrusion, overhang, ridge, and/or prominence. Paying very close attention one more time, I perceived a previously unnoticed gluteal vibration. Oh, right. Back pocket. 

As a final example of impaired brain- and, in this case social-, function, I present exhibit C. Not too long ago, a group of middle-aged ladies, plus myself (ahem), sat together discussing the needs and concerns of the women in our church congregation. As we discussed assignments, one of the women, a rather substantially endowed figure, began inexplicably to pat her bosom, as though searching for something--at least I hoped that was what she was doing. Trying not to stare in complete bewilderment, I instead looked away in feigned nonchalance, suddenly interested in the various plants around the room. After a few moments, she dug deeply into her purse [whew] and retrieved her cell phone, tucking it neatly into the edge of her brassiere when she had finished taking notes. That was a first. I’m not sure that I could tuck anything larger or less secure than a fastened safety pin into the edge of my brassiere without worrying that it would fall straight to the ground, as though greased. But even if I could, somehow I can’t quite get my brain to embrace the social mores necessary to try that trick out, except for possibly behind closed and locked doors. 

Unbelievable befuddlement, chasing one’s butt around in circles, and trying out the storage capacity of various bodily compartments--here’s to shallow draughts of learning!

If You Run Out of Chocolate, There's Always The Bottom Layer of The Inversion

The English language is often a such a barrier to effective communication. When people learned that we were moving to Florida, they said, “Oh--you’ll miss the winter!” Or, “You’ll miss the snow!”

“Miss”? I am convinced that there must be an alternate meaning to this word with which I am unfamiliar, because the most common definition simply makes no sense. What on earth would I miss about bitter, bone-chilling, physical pain; or miserable, oppressive, emotional numbness? That's like saying, "You'll miss your root canal pain when that Vicodin kicks in." Or maybe, "When you're financially solvent again, you'll miss the grinding misery of debt." Does anyone really enjoy the relentless deluge of brain-numbing gray skies and lifeless landscapes? Or losing the feeling in your appendages? On the other hand, No Feeling At All may actually be preferable to the stinging and stabbing pain of cold. Maybe they think that they would miss road salt eating away at the bottom of their car? Or how about missing the fear of traveling on icy roadways? Maybe they mean specifically missing face-planting on icy parking lots or sidewalks and knocking out a few superfluous teeth?  Missing locks freezing on their car doors? Frostbite? Drippy noses? Chapped lips? Or how about sucking in the gritty bottom layer of a good old-fashioned inversion? 

"White Christmas", they cry! People only wish for a white Christmas because anything is better than the dull, dreary gray that saturates their view the rest of the winter. Is it truly worth the inconvenience, aggravation, botheration (I know right?), exasperation, frustration, hassle, headache, annoyance, irritation, nuisance, trial, or vexation of the rest of Winter?

Winter is the season that used to make me wish for spontaneous human combustion--mostly for myself. In the Winter, I would wear my Mickey Mouse ankle socks every day, and my bright yellow sneakers--like sunshiny talismans. Winter often found me standing in front of the linen closet, sniffing the SPF 50 Banana Boat; or sitting by my fake fireplace, guzzling hot chocolate, reciting affirmations, and shorting out my fake sunlight lamp with my tears. And in Utah, Winter lasts for somewhere in the neighborhood of 8 months a year. Some days there is simply not enough chocolate in the world--or Prozac (which doesn’t taste nearly as soothing as chocolate)--and most of these days occur in Winter...and late Autumn...and a good chunk of Spring. When Bill Murray's character Phil, in Groundhog Day, said, "I'll give you a winter prediction: it's gonna be cold; it's gonna be grey; and it's gonna last you the rest of your life,"-- well, frankly that terrified me more than any of Johnny Mathis's scary ghost Christmas stories. 

In the interest of fair and balanced coverage, I will now relate Three Things I Like About Winter:

1. when it’s over.

It is tempting to stop there. Anything else feels artificial and insincere--because it is.

2. It makes great material for Facebook posts.

3. It’s a great excuse to drink hot chocolate and chocolate milk (TIP: I’ve learned it’s best to stop drinking when you run out of liquid because it's challenging to drink powder), or to eat chocolate anything, including chocolate milk powder right out of the canister (meaning it would be best to ignore the previous parenthetical comment). It’s no coincidence that I lost almost 30 lbs after moving to Florida.

I miss Winter like I'd miss lumbago, small pox, or a punch in the nose. Okay, I've never actually had lumbago. Mostly, I’m just relieved that I don’t have to figure out how to spontaneously burst into flame.

Feel free to join in the conversation, but only if you agree with me. Don’t waste your breath on any fruitless or banal arguments: Some of my readers (mostly my husband) will only think less of you. 

Confessions of a Mental Black Hole

The great thing about getting senile is that life is full of surprises! My husband has found that he has a far greater number of amazing ideas now that he’s approaching 50 than he did just 10 years ago. Of course he’s had most of them previously--some more than once. But he seems so proud of himself--such a happy little smile on his face--that it’s hard to burst his bubble. Which is why I do it on my blog for a public audience. 

Assuming one has a sense of humor, the process of becoming feebleminded can be downright hysterical (and you can take that any way you want). We’ve all experienced the adventure of walking into a room, with great purpose in our stride, only to pull up short when we realize we have truly no idea why we looking into an empty dryer, or why we find ourselves staring a bar of soap, or what our garage has to do with making a Caesar salad. One Sunday I strode briskly and deliberately right up to my Golden Retriever...with my nine-year old’s tights. Oh. Wrong child.

Lately I have taken to telling my kids, by way of explanation for my not-quite-constant state of confusion, “It’s not my fault; I’m just getting old.” But my older daughter called me out on this. “Um, you’ve pretty much always been this way.” Where does being scatterbrained end and getting senile begin?  To tell the truth, I can’t remember. At times I feel that my mental vacuum is so intense that I am actually sucking reasonable or sound thinking out of the air for miles around me. 

My mother called me up one morning from her doctor’s office. She explained that she had locked her keys in her car and asked if I could drive her over to her apartment to get her spare set. Stopping in the middle of my morning routine, I jumped into my car and hurried down to pick her up from the doctor’s office and run her home. Upon pulling up to the curb outside her apartment, she thanked me again, and I replied that it was no problem. I courteously watched while she walked up the stairs to her apartment, and once she was safely (???) inside, I immediately drove off, reworking my morning schedule in my little pea brain. Moments later, my cell phone rang. It was my mother--what now? 

“Hey there--what’s up?” 

“Um, where did you go?” she asked.

“I’m on my way home,” I replied, trying to keep the tone of “duh” out of my voice.

“So...I need a ride back to the doctor’s office to get my car,” she politely reminded me.

Needless to say, we had a great laugh about that one! Laughed ourselves silly over it in fact--I laughed as I drove back to her apartment; we both laughed as she got in; we continued laughing as we drove back to the doctor’s office; and laughed further still...right up to the moment when she realized she had not locked her keys in her car at all, but had in fact left them in the doctor’s office.

All the bulbs burnt out in our family a long time ago....

Going senile has its downsides, for sure: Looking foolish; wasting time trying to remember things--or driving around Utah Valley for no reason; draining energy from the refrigerator while you stare vacantly into it, wondering if you even have a reason to have the door open (hint: there’s ALWAYS a reason to have the fridge door open). But as I think about it, there are some upsides, too. I just realized that the great thing about getting senile is that life is full of surprises! I love a happy ending!