Why John Edwards’s Campaign is Screwed

First of all, I feel for the Edwards family. Cancer is a horrible disease, and watching a loved one go through it wrenches you inside out. I admire Elizabeth’s strength of character (or maybe it’s a distraction) for wanting her husband to soldier on with his campaign.

(This is the part where I’m going to hell. Please, if you don’t want to get singed by any stray lightning bolts, don’t stand that close to me.)

But arranging a press conference and appearing on 60 Minutes? Call me cynical (it’s all right, a lot of people have, and I’m sure that lot of people are, with some embarrassment, singing this same song) but however sincere they might think they’re being, to me it comes off as calculated as the Clinton’s interview early in the 2000 campaign when Bill said he was sorry he’d been bad and Hillary vowed to “stand by her man.”

The Clintons took a calculated risk. He could have bowed out, like Gary Hart, caught red-handed with a chickie-babe on his lap on the good ship “Monkey Business,” (Google it, kids) and made some lame excuse like he wanted to spend more time with his family. But what Bill and Hill did worked, because Bill Clinton, from the extrapolations by his political posse, had a strong enough campaign to weather the fallout. And he had that unusual rapport with the American populace that also got him reelected in a race where the turnout was among the lowest in recorded history. (Also, Bob Dole ran a pathetic campaign)

But John Edwards’s campaign simply isn’t that strong. It wasn’t that strong when he ran in 2004, when he came off as an inexperienced one-note Johnny, talking about his rise from poverty and the “two Americas” and such, and from what I’ve seen so far, he doesn’t seem to have changed. Yes, he talks about health care now, but who isn’t talking about health care? You have to in order to be in this race.

Yet in his 60 Minutes interview, he said that if you are planning to vote for him because his wife has cancer, then he doesn’t want your vote.

I’m having a hard time believing that. I’m not saying that he sat down with Elizabeth and said, “Hey! I know, I’m behind in the polls so let’s tell everyone about your cancer and we’ll get the sympathy vote and win!” But when life hands you lemons – especially if you’re a politician…especially a politician who wants to be President (which I think means something is wrong with you already) – you’d be foolish not to squeeze them dry. Or squirt a couple in your opponents’ eye. (And the deep dark very cynical part of me is wondering, with Hillary looking at a black man on her left and a guy whose wife has cancer on her right, if she’s thinking about urging Bill to pound back a bunch of Big Macs until he needs another bypass.)

Anyhow…the Edwards’s announcement could swing several ways for them. Either people will think: “Oh, how sad that his wife has cancer, and how strong they’re being, Edwards is my man!” Or, “if it were my wife I’d drop out of the campaign and spend time with her; what’s wrong with him?” Or “But if he gets to the White House, won’t he be distracted if her cancer gets worse?”

And with a campaign that’s pretty weak to begin with, I think when all the opinions are put together, it’s going to turn out to be a wash. Also, with the 2004 loss, he’s got that stink of “loser” on him that Americans have grown a disdain for in recent decades. In the past, a candidate could be on the losing ticket then run the next time and maybe win. But when was the last time that happened? Has anyone heard from Mike Dukakis or Lloyd Bentsen or Jack Kemp? And for all their rumblings, doubtful that Al Gore and John Kerry would hit the campaign trail again, except to stump for another guy with a donkey on his chest. Nader is the only one who keeps on going, and nobody but him really knows why. You have to go all the way back to Adlai Stevenson in 1952 and 1956 and Thomas Dewey in 1944 and 1948 to find a losing candidate who chose to run a second time. (which they both lost) Bob Dole also had the dubious honor of running as VP on the 1976 ticket then losing the top spot in 1998. Edwards also has that Senator curse on him, too (as I mentioned in an earlier blog) and doesn’t quite have that star quality to overcome it.

So with new reports coming out that the cancer is worse than originally reported in the press conference, I think the best thing the Edwards’s can do is hunker down and be together for the time that Elizabeth has left.

And good luck to them.

Unsolved TV Mysteries

Last night I felt crummy and flopped in front the television, and I found myself clicking back and forth between ladies’ figure skating (one of my secret pleasures) and American Idol Rewind, which is basically a rerun of old seasons (which is new for those of us who didn’t catch on until last year).

I think it was Season One, and co-hosting with Ryan Seacrest was this droopy looking guy, Brian Dunkleman (who bore a slight resemblance to Dana Carvey), who disappeared some time between Season One and last year when I started watching.

Which led me to think about other mysterious TV disappearances. Such as:

• In the Happy Days’ pilot, Ron Howard’s character had an older brother named Chuck. He apparently attended college and when on camera, seemed always to be holding a basketball. Then he vanished, and for the entire run of the show, no reference to a third Cunningham sibling was ever made again.

• Most TV aficionados know about the twin Darrens in Bewitched and the two Darlenes in Roseanne (and that the actresses were both named Sarah, one of which, Sarah Chalke, went on to star in Scrubs). But also, in Seinfeld’s first season, Jerry had a different character playing his father than in the rest of the episodes. And a good thing, because that guy was grumpy and unlikable versus the “newer” actor, who was grumpy but likeable.

• Gilmore Girls had a couple of characters bloopers in its first season, Laine (Rory’s Korean friend) had a father, who like the mysterious Vera on Cheers and Maris on Frasier, was referred to but never seen. And then he was never referred to again. And in an early episode, the actor who ended up playing Kirk appeared under another name as a cable guy who’d come to install DSL at Lorelai’s house.

And then a few I had to look up, because if you know me, you know what happens once I get curious about something:

• Good Times was a spin-off from Maude. Esther Rolle’s “Florida” was Maude’s maid, and in that show, her husband, played by John Amos, was called “Henry,” yet when the spin-off was spun-off, the writers had changed Amos’s character’s name to James.

• The Dunkleman mystery: He quit AI after Season One to “pursue his acting career.” (In case any of you were wondering) The producers of AI were probably relieved, because they weren’t that thrilled with him. In a 2006 interview, Dunkleman said that the decision had “probably been a mistake” (are you listening, David Caruso?) and that he’s now a stand-up comic. Also, he’d been unable to tolerate the “cruelty” of AI.

• Malcolm In The Middle: We never learn the family’s last name.

Well, that was all I could find, except for, you know, things like Donald Trump's hair or why AfterMASH was ever made. Let me know if you are aware of any others.

Third Party Candidates: Will Any Have An Impact on the 2008 Elections?

Ross Perot did it in 1990 and 1996 with the Reform Party. John Anderson, the media-monikered “College Student’s Candidate” of the National Unity Party was a mere pebble in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 landslide. And you’d have to have been living on another planet not to know the role Independent candidate Ralph Nader played in the 2000 and 2004 elections (although he claims not to have taken any votes away from the Al Gore and John Kerry at all).

They’re the third-party candidates, and while the disenfranchised and passionate have been trying to crack through for the last century or two, none have made it to the White House.

Doesn’t mean they don’t keep on trying.

Here is just a sampling of the rainbow of citizens on a mission, thanks to Ron Gunzburger’s Politics 1 web site:

For the Constitution Party, wrapped in the American flag and waving the Bible:

*Chuck Baldwin (FL) – Baptist pastor, radio talk show host, conservative activist, and 2004 VP nominee
*Jim Clymer (PA) – Party National Chairman, frequent candidate, and attorney
*Jerome Corsi (MA) – Author, journalist and conservative activist.
*Jim Gilchrist (CA) – Minuteman Project Founder, retired accountant and ’05 congressional nominee.
*Alan Keyes (MD) – Former US Ambassador, conservative activist and frequent candidate
P. Dale Thomson (KY) – Businessman and Christian Rock musician

For the Green Party, proudly waving their recycled eco-flags high:

Elaine Brown (GA) – Ex-Black Panther Party Chair, nonprofit group executive and author
*Pat LaMarche (ME) – Businesswoman, National Party Co-Chair, talk show host, 2004 VP nominee, ex-state Rep and Democrat.
*Cynthia McKinney (GA) – Former US Congresswoman, ex-state Rep and Democrat
*Rebecca Rotzler (NY) – New Paltz Deputy Mayor, Party National Co-Chair, businesswoman and community activist.
kat “this is really how you spell my name” swift (TX) State Party Co-Chair, progressive activist and newspaper credit manager.

For the Libertarians, wishing everyone would just leave them the heck alone:

Jim Burns (NV) – Ex-State LP Chair and frequent candidate
Gene Chapman (TX) – Anti-tax activist, lay minister and truck driver
Dave Hollist (CA) – Bus driver and frequent LP Presidential hopeful
Bob Jackson (MI) – Businessman, former Congressional candidate and ex-Republican.
Mike “Jingo” (hey, his nickname, not mine) Jingozian (OR) – Software company founder and former city council candidate.
Steve Kubby (CA) – Businessman, former Governor nominee and (there had to be at least one) marijuana legalization activist.
Alden Link (NY) – Manufacturing executive and Army veteran.
Robert Milnes (NJ) – Progressive activist.
George Phillies (MA) College profressor, writer, LP “Reform” activist and former US Senate nominee.
*Wayne Allyn Root (NV) – Sports handicapper, author and TV show host.
Christine Smith (CO) – Progressive activist and writer.
Doug Stanhope (AZ) – Comedian

For the Prohibition Party, which is kind of an oxymoron, isn’t it?

Gene Amondson (AK) – 2004 Nominee, Temperance lecturer, minister and artist.

For the Independents, wearing whatever the heck they want to

Stephen P. "Steve" Adams (Independent-Kentucky)
Terry "Tee" Barkdull (New American Party-Nevada)
John Taylor Bowles (NSM/American Nazi Party-South Carolina)
Orion Karl Daley (Balanced Party-New York)
Cris Ericson (Marijuana Party-Vermont)
Vinnie Ferrari (Indepenent-DC)
Alex Hammer (Independent-Maine)
Bob W. Hargis (Independent-Oklahoma)
Dan Imperato (Reform/Independent-Florida)
Frank McEnulty (Independent-California)
*Ralph Nader (Independent-Connecticut)
Arthur J. Regan (Independent-Massachusetts)
"Average Joe" Schriner (Independent-Ohio)
Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey (Vampire, Witches & Pagan Party-New Jersey)
Ben Thompson (Independent-Minnesota)
Lanakila Washington (Humanist Party-New York)
Rick Williams (Independent-Tennessee)

* = not yet declared

Here are my picks for who’s going to ultimately end up on the ballot (sadly, below the Democrats and Republicans, as always):

Constitution Party: I’m betting we’ll wind up with Alan Keyes (because of his experience and financial backers) and Chuck Baldwin (ditto.). But just for the heck of it, check out P. Dale Thompson’s web site. He’d be the first Christian Rocker in the White House. Free concerts in the Rose Garden!

Green Party: I think this party has the best chance of making it to the top of the heap. Look for Pat LaMarche and Rebecca Rotzler to wind up in a primary. While Cynthia McKinney is a big name, her clear anti-Semetic bias is going to be a problem in this party that stands for diversity. I would have liked to see Jason West (Rebecca Rotzler’s boss, the mayor of New Paltz who performed a slew of gay marriages a couple years back) get into the race, but perhaps he’s been too busy dodging lawsuits and trying to get the village to give him a raise (a perennial local brouhaha.)

Libertarians: From a scan of their web sites, and what I’m hearing around cyber-land, it looks like Jim Burns, Bob Jackson or George Phillies will get the nod. Although a comedian would certainly make the State of the Union messages less of a snoozer. And I love this quote from Gene Chapman’s web site: “Your only Non-Communist Third Party Slave Freedom Alliance candidate for President of The United States, seeking the Libertarian, Constitution, Southern, Goldwater-Reagan Conservative, Independent, Reform and Boston Tea Party nominations.”

Prohibition Party: Only one choice here! Although I’m surprised it still exists. Can you really make a living as a Temperance Lecturer anymore, outside of Utah and the Middle East?

Independents: I love the Independents. This is where you get the wackiest extremes in the spectrum, from John Taylor Bowles of the American Nazi Party to Cris Ericson of the Marijuana Party (now that would be a party) to Jonathon “The Impaler” Sharkey from the Vampire, Witches and Pagans Party, whose first act as President would be to blow Mecca to kingdom come.

Other than vowing to impale your enemies on a stake, this party is where politics can really get interesting. Yes, the big question on everyone’s minds is, “Will Ralph run again?” So far, he’s made no commitment. Although if he did, I’d peg him, Steve Adams and Ben Thompson as the strongest candidates.

I know the 2008 elections are a long way off (light years away, as far as America’s attention span is concerned) but if I had to make a call now, I’d say that while third party candidates will add their usual color to the bottom of the ballot, and some may even fight their way into the debates, I doubt that they will make much of a difference when it comes to who will be putting their hand on the Bible in January, 2009. After eight years of Bush, I have a hunch the populace will want to go with a known-quantity Dem.

It'll be interesting to see which.

American Short-Term Memory

Is it me or am I just too old to get these things?

OK, it’s Wednesday and for all of you non-American-Idol fans, that means that the remaining number of contestants have performed last night, and tonight will be the Results Show (which Husband has coined the Rejects Show).

And I know some of you may not like it, but even though this is merely a reality show, I’m rather brain dead by about eight o’clock at night so I’ve become a reluctant fan. And with my overinflated sense of justice, I feel a need to report on the judges’s treatment of each performance, and, following tonight, on how “America” voted.

If you don’t care for reality shows, you may just skip past these parts (I promise you, except in extreme cases of injustice, that these rants will not be long) and continue on to the rest of the day’s RFG commentary.

First: Is it just me or did Ryan cut off Simon before he had a chance to say anything negative about Sanjaya? Did they all take a vote beforehand and decide to stop torturing this untalented but sweet young man and wait out the moment (please, let it come quickly) when America will finally come to its senses and figure out that no matter how many times he changes his hair, no matter how much he pretends to be the next Donny Osmond (Google it, kids), he simply does not have the chops to compete with the rest of the gang?

Honest to God, put him out of his misery already.

And second: Why is it OK to chastise Gina (the punker of the crew) about choosing style over substance (I think she did a rather fine cover of the Stones’ “Paint it Black.”) when Sanjaya did exactly the same, (wriggling and screeching through a Kinks song when he couldn’t even lace up Ray Davies’ pointy-toed boots) and nothing was mentioned? Or was Paula simply too overwhelmed with lust to think straight?

Now on to the rest of our broadcast day.

Who Wants To Be President, Part 2

I know it’s as impossible to keep track of current presidential candidates as it is to understand Federal tax law, and the election is a long way off, but here’s an update of who’s still got their hat in the proverbial ring: (leaving out the unofficials like Al Gore and Fred Thompson)

For the Democrats, wearing blue shorts and an air of entitlement:

Hillary “It’s My Turn” Clinton, Senator from New York
Barack “Not If I Have Anything To Say About It” Obama, Senator from Illinois
Christopher “I’m Sorry” Dodd, Senator from Connecticut
Dennis “Why Am I Doing This To Myself Again?” Kucinch, Rep from Idaho
Joseph “Yawn” Biden, Senator from Delaware
John “Pretty Boy” Edwards, former VP candidate
Bill “I Speak More Spanish Than Bush” Richardson, Governor of New Mexico
Mike “Who Am I?” Gravel, no discernable job whatsoever

And in the Republican corner, wearing red shorts and with a look that would stop an incoming SCUD missile:

Rudy “Make My Day” Guiliani, formerly “American’s Mayor”
John “The Backstabber” McCain, Senator from Arizona
Sam “Brokeback” Brownback, Senator from Kansas
Mitt “Mormon Matinee Idol” Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
Mike “The Other Man From Hope” Huckabee
Tommy “Used To Be Somebody” Thompson, former HHS and Governor of Wisconsin
Jim Gilmore, Advisor of some sort
Tom “Comb Over” Tancredo, Rep from Colorado*
Duncan “Huh?” Hunter, Rep, California
Ron Paul, Rep, Texas*

*Undeclared but have formed exploratory committees

First of all, we can eliminate a whole bunch of candidates right off the bat. Face it, with the megabucks required to run for office and the way state primaries might start stacking one atop another, very few of these contenders will be able to stick around for very long. Especially the ones who have not yet made a commitment. So that leaves us with:

For the Dems
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
John Edwards
Bill Richardson (my pick for Dark Horse)
Al Gore (should he choose to run)

For the GOP
Rudy Guiliani
John McCain
Christopher Dodd
Joe Biden
Mitt Romney
Newt Gingrich (a long shot, should he declare his candidacy)

Now, the second round of eliminations. With very few exceptions (John Kennedy being one of them, and Gerald Ford, under duress, and Richard Nixon, only because he'd been VP), not too many presidents of late have gone across the mall from Congress to the White House. The reason being that while those in Congress are good campaigners, they don’t actually run anything. If you take a spin back through the past few decades, the majority of presidents have been Governors. Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Bush II…all governors and none of them from the Northeast. (Bush I, while from the Northeast, rode to the top on Reagan’s coattails) Which leaves Mitt Romney in the cold right away. Ditto Joe Biden, John McCain (he’s got the double whammy of having ticked too many people off), Christopher Dodd and John Edwards (sorry, Charlie, why don’t you find some nice teaching job somewhere or go on a speaking tour…or make a documentary). Al Gore, while a liberal wet dream of revisionist history, simply doesn’t (and didn’t) have enough of what Idol judge Randy Jackson calls the “yo!” factor to make it to the top. Sorry, Al. We appreciate what you’ve done for us, but here’s your gold watch and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. And congrats on the Oscar. Maybe you can hook up with Michael Moore and do something. I hear he needs his credibility shored up.

So now we’re down to our finalists:

Dems: Hillary Clinton vs. Barack Obama (yes, both senators, but yes, both have that certain curb appeal that outweighs the Congressional Curse) And possibly, Bill Richardson.

GOP: Rudy Guiliani and (maybe) Newt Gingrich or John McCain

There. I’ve saved everybody a whole lot of money and time. Those not selected, you may take your parting gifts (a seat on the corporate board of your choice) and go home. Thanks for playing.

Everyone else…you’re going to Hollywood, man!

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Next installment: Third Party Candidates – who’s in, who’s not, and who you hope will find something else to do instead of screw everything up like the last two elections.

Winter's Last Laugh

Winter’s last laugh was on us, apparently.

I went to writing group last night. It had been a long time since I’d been able to make the trek (it’s a 40 minute drive with traffic and a 32 minute one without) and I needed their camaraderie and a chance to laugh and get my mind out of my body and into my writing. Snow was forecast but only a dusting, the weather report claimed. The roads had been cleared since the big storm, our driveway was navigable, and even if there was a little wet snow, the temps were hovering slightly above freezing so I didn’t worry about any of it sticking to the roads.

But my usual weather forecasters, the most reliable ones I’d had experience with, were wrong. As I started driving, the skies turned from flecked with the occasional flurry to a more persistent snow shower. Yet still the roads remained merely wet, my outdoor temp monitor continued to read 32, and I felt that reassuring crackle as salt pellets rattled around my wheel wells. (those of us in the north know that this means the sander trucks have been by, reducing our chances of going slideways off the roads) Which was very important to me, because with the mild winter I hadn’t bothered to put on my snow tires.

I had fun at group, which I always do, and had a chance to read a piece of my current novel in eternal progress, and see a DVD of one of our member’s comedy act, and then I ducked out early, since I have less confidence in my driving ability as the night gets later.

But I had a good couple of inches of heavy, wet snow to clean off of my car first, and it was now coming down hard. I took a deep breath, settled into my seat and started home. The side roads were lightly dusted, and the main roads wet with a bit of slush, but when I crossed the bridge and continued heading north, it got worse. I didn’t have the confidence to go over 45 even though it seemed like other people (with better tires) were going faster. Steady but surely, I kept driving. Then I had to turn onto the side road that eventually would lead to my neighborhood. That good couple of inches were down on that road, and it looked like nothing resembling a municipal sander or plow had been by. This is an area fraught with dips and twists, one particularly evil one where you’re heading steadily downhill and into a curve. I made it through that but started to notice that I was having a little problem making it up hills. Like a marathoner running out of steam. I took another deep breath, prayed that the force be with me, and kept on going. Finally, I got to the place in the road – a greenhouse – that always was my signal that I’d made it, that one short little quarter-mile or so and I’d be in my neighborhood.

Well, thank something, I thought, when I pulled off and discovered that our neighborhood was maintained better than the town roads.

But I still had to climb the big hill to my house. And as I climbed, the snow got deeper, and I was having more and more trouble. I couldn’t get purchase, I’d give it more gas, I went into a lower gear and that helped, and I fishtailed a little around the big curve at the top, and finally, finally I passed our house and got to the neighbor’s, where I could turn around. See there’s a trick to our driveway. I might have mentioned this before, that it hooks backward from the road and in bad weather, you have to turn around in the neighbor’s driveway and approach our drive from a better angle, and gun the engine so you can make it up the hill and around the curve of death, as I’ve lovingly grown to call it.

But last night the problem lay in the turning around part. In low gear, going forward, I was getting enough traction to make it through. In reverse, I had no purchase at all, and just spun my wheels. After a few attempts and turning, I ended up sliding my front tires over the lip of the pavement and landing with my nose in a snow bank.

Fortunately, the neighbor whose house I’d wedged myself in front of were the hardy sort, even owned towing gear and a Bobcat. Cursing at my stupidity and condition of my tires (oh, why hadn’t I put on my snows, oh, why, oh why????????), I trudged up their driveway. And I do mean “up.” This place ain’t called the hill for nothing. And the last time I walked up a steep hill I paid for it. But I wasn’t thinking about my back at the time. My mind was afroth concocting Plan A, then Plan B, then Plan C.

Neighborette answered my plaintive knock, in her beddy-bye gear, and I felt guilty as hell. I hadn’t woken her, she said, but she and hubby were about to settle into bed and watch “Dancing With The Stars.” (which reassured me that we weren’t the only ones who enjoyed the guilty pleasure of dumb reality shows) But still, I felt bad. She got hubby up and they got dressed and followed me down their walk and then the driveway (she, shoveling a clear path in front of me, bless her) and pushed me free. I thanked them with all of my heart, then put my heart back in my chest when I thought, “I still have to get up my #$*%@($& driveway.”

But at least I was pointed in the right direction.

I hit the gas. Not too hard, because that would send me sliding, but just enough to try to gather enough momentum to get up the hill.

Apparently, though, I hadn’t. Because I got stuck on the straight run up that leads into the curve of death, and all the gas I gave it couldn’t do more than make my tires spin and create that awful burning rubber smell. I feared backing down and trying to gun it up again, but I had no traction in reverse and would only slide all the way down to the road, if I ended up in the road at all.

So I did what any independent, post-feminist babe would do. I yanked on the emergency brake and trudged up the rest of the drive to get my husband.

I knew he wouldn’t be happy. Yes, he’d be happy that I made it home in one piece, because he warned me that he’d seen a weather forecast that said we’d be getting 1-3 inches (and when those Alberta Clippers come by, normally we get another inch or two on the hill) and I left blithely telling him I wasn’t concerned, because my source, my most reliable source, called for only a dusting.

But he wouldn’t be happy if he had to dig me out of some snow bank, because he’d pulled a muscle in his back a few days ago and didn’t want to strain it again. I didn’t want him to do that either, and thought he’d have the guts I lacked to ease the car down the hill, get back up the road and channel Tony Stewart to gas it up and make it to the top of the driveway and into the garage.

Which wouldn’t strain his back at all.

He was gone for a long time, which made me worry. At least I didn’t hear any tire-spinning. Or hadn’t gotten any calls from a neighbor telling me my husband was ass-up in a ditch. Then, when I couldn’t stand it any longer, I poked my snoot out door to the garage. And my car comes rolling in. Husband gets out, triumphant. And retrieves our snow shovel from the back sheet.

Oh, crap.

He explained how he had to shovel a little from the front and from the back to get the car going with any kind of control, and backed down, then did the Tony Stewart thing, yadda, yadda, yadda. “And,” he said, “I pulled my back again!”

Oh, crap.

“But I got your car up the driveway,” he says.

I explained to him that people are worth more than cars, but I had a sense that I was just wasting my breath. I thanked him for saving me and rubbed some magic healing ointment on his back.

He’s not a happy camper today, nor am I (the hill I hiked up bit me in the butt shortly after I woke up this morning), and I'm feeling very guilty about dragging him out into the snow, but I think he’ll be OK. And so will I.

The sun has gotten to the driveway and I can see from the upstairs window that the place where I got stuck is now clear down to blacktop, as is the road below.

And I am pretty sure that this will be the last of the snow. (I said that last time, too, I believe)

But if I’m going out at night again in the next few weeks, I might do well to take a survey of weather forecasts. Because it seems too late to put on the snows.

Resuming the Résumé

Since in recent days I’ve gotten a few writing leads that look promising, I spent a couple of hours updating my resume. Yes, for some reason, even if you’re up for a freelance job these days, some people still want to see a resume. I guess it’s proof that you’re not an illegal alien or didn’t just get sprung from twenty or thirty years in maximum security for mowing down your former coworkers.

Anyway…I dusted it off, polished it up…added that weak little line at the top that sums up what I’ve been doing professionally for the past two years (actually more like eight months) - writing for the web and that’s about it…and took a good hard look at the page.

Damn. Whoever that person was before that weak little first line at the top, I wish I could hire her. She’s a whiz-bang go-getter, that one, skilled in juggling multiple priorities and executing this and managing that. Proficient in a world of software programs and competent in—

Wait a minute, I thought. I’m still that same person. I didn’t undergo a personality transplant. I still have all relevant lobes of my brain intact. All right, my memory isn’t what it used to be and some of my chops have gone a little slack, and after having survived my twelve-step program (for recovering workaholics) I’m no longer willing to stress myself out to the point of bodily harm to make a deadline, but I’m still that same basic person.

And I’m proud of what I’ve done.

There have been a few zigs and a couple of zags as the volatile field of commercial design evolved, but I did what I could to stay marketable and make a living. Too bad it doesn’t say what happened between those pumped up verbs. That at some jobs I used to have fun. I liked some of my coworkers and even a couple of bosses. That even in my early thirties, laid off from a job, I saw that my psyche needed a break from the field in order to spend more time and energy at my fledgling avocation - writing fiction – so I took a position that was less challenging but left me brain space to write. And then, when I grew bored with that (actually I was growing bored with it about the same time as the company went belly-up) I went back to something more challenging.

And challenged myself right into disability.

But every one of those entries – even the empty spaces and the weak lines - has a novel or two (or three) in it.

And I’m glad I waited until my thirties to start writing them. Perhaps if I knew I wanted to be a writer earlier, and got my degree in writing in college, and went to those fancy seminars like Iowa or Breadloaf, I wouldn’t be the same person who’d made the same mistakes and took the same risks and had the same joys and sorrows. In short, the stuff that makes good writing.

And now my weak little top line is looking stronger. Or at least it will once I fix the typo. Damn. The whiz-bang manager-coordinator-executor-software-operator would have found that one.

But it doesn’t matter as much as it used to.

Kid Stories

For some reason Sundays remind me of my childhood and one little leap beyond that came a couple of memories of some of the conversations I've had with other people's children over the years. Hey, just because I don't have any kids doesn't mean I don't get to tell stories. Feel free to add your own. (Don't worry, nephews, there's nothing embarrassing about you guys here. Unless you want to share something.)

Rebecca
Rebecca is the eldest child of the couple who owned the house next to ours when we lived in town. The houses were literally so close together we could pass each other the ketchup over the alley. Sometimes I'd look out the window and see Rebecca watching our television from her living room (she was not permitted to watch television) Anyhow, she was all of about four when this happened. I was going out to dinner with my mother and grandmother (who was up from Florida for a visit). We'd agreed that they would swing by and pick me up, as the restaurant we'd chosen was fairly close to my house. Since it was a nice day, I was waiting for them on our front steps, and since I was running a little late, I stuck what few cosmetics I used in my bag and planned on finishing up my "toilette" al fresco. I pulled out my pressed powder compact (MAC, ivory, in case anyone's interested) and started patting the sponge over my face. Rebecca had been playing in the side yard and came over. She asked what I was doing. I said I was making myself beautiful. She took a long look at my face. Then said, "It's not working."

The Girl Up The Hill (name withheld to protect the innocent)
Our neighbors here on the hill are wonderful. One family, knowing we don't usually do anything for Christmas dinner, often invited us over. They are very religious, and we're not, which is not a problem, but the traditions are very different for me. They say grace before meals, and there's a lot of talk about God. They're great people and I always feel honored that they'd share their holidays with us. Anyhow...one Christmas we'd said grace, the food was passed, we'd started to eat. I don't know how the conversation took this turn, but it seems like it came out of nowhere. Their little innocent daughter looked up at me and asked, "How many men did you go through before you found your husband?"

I think I kind of stuttered something about not really going through men, but...

Then she said, "Because my mom went through seventeen guys before she married my dad."

That's two...

I warned you guys before.

Don't make me come down there.

Now We Know...

So Khalid Sheik Muhammed has confessed to masterminding the 9/11 plot, the previous WTC bombing, various other bombings, and plots to destroy US landmarks and assassinate several former US presidents. But our RFG spies have found out (don’t ask us how we found out or we’d have to kill you) that he also claimed responsibility for a number of other events previously unreported by any other media.

For instance:

• He was the lone gunman on the grassy knoll
• He fathered Anna Nicole’s baby
• He killed Marilyn Monroe
• He developed New Coke
• He secretly bankrolled Ralph Nader’s ’00 and ’04 presidential campaigns
• About a dozen years ago, he convinced Mark Burnett that producing a reality show in America would be a “really great idea”
• He was behind Betamax
• He wrote the screenplays for “Ishtar,” “Waterworld,” and “Heaven’s Gate.”
• He killed Jimmy Hoffa
• He got Milli Vanilli a grammy
• He was responsible for Hurricane Katrina and the tsunami in Indonesia
• He rigged “just a couple” of voting districts in Florida and Ohio
• He told Michael Jackson that he really ought to marry Lisa Marie. Oh, and that his nose could use some work
• He coined the phrase “it is what it is”
• He bankrolled the Ugandan Space Program
• He was the one who really invented the Internet
• He advised Monica to keep the blue dress
• He started wearing his jeans down below his boxers before anybody else
• He made a few “revisions” to Skylab’s specs before it was built
• He convinced Korea to export cars to America
• He was responsible for artificial turf and the designated hitter rule
• He rigs the “American Idol” vote every week to keep Sanjay around so he can see what hairstyle he’ll choose next
• He told Britney Spears, “You know, I think you’d make a really great mother.”
• He invented Olestra
• He sent the first chain e-mail (don’t delete this!!)
• He thought the captain of the Exxon Valdiz looked nervous, and suggested he have a belt or two before taking to sea
• He designed Janet Jackson’s halftime-show outfit
• One word: “Barney”
• He suggested that maybe OJ ought to try on the gloves in court
• He is the mastermind behind global warming

How Green Are Your Lungs?

Husband has asthma, and has been using a rescue inhaler for years. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen one of these jobbies, but they are constructed by inserting a little metal albuterol (or other drug) canister into a plastic sleeve. This plastic sleeve acts as a mouthpiece and a pump so that he can spray the medication into his lungs during an asthma attack, and, one would hope, breathe.

With his last refill came notice that rescue inhalers are going green. Here’s the text of the message:

HFA – an environmentally friendly alternative to CFCs

CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) are chemicals that are often used as propellants in spray cans. Most rescue inhalers, including this one, use CFCs to deliver medication to your lungs. CFCs hurt the environment and damage the ozone layer that protects the earth from the sun’s rays.

The US has agreed to stop using CFCs by Dec 31, 2008. They have already been removed from products like hair spray and deodorant. Hydrofluoroalkane, or HFA, is an environmentally friendly alternative to CFCs for delivering the medication to rescue inhalers. HFA inhalers are CFC-free. HFA is safer for the environment.

HFA inhalers are currently available. The HFA rescue inhalers contain the same active ingredient that is found in CFC rescue inhalers and they are just as effective as CFC inhalers.

Well, yippee. Practically every other product on the shelf has been CFC-free for years, some for decades. Finally, someone in the bloated, wasteful pharmaceutical industry is going green.

But despite what this might do to reduce the average asthmatic’s carbon footprint, I have other concerns.

First, kudos on the industry that the propellant used in inhalers is now going to be environmentally correct. But there’s a bigger problem afoot. Every time you order a refill, you get both the plastic mouthpiece/pump and the metal canister, even though the mouthpiece is technically reusable (currently it is against FDA regulations to simply supply the canister alone). So when the container is empty, you have to dispose of both the spent metal cartridge and the plastic sleeve. A call to my pharmacist confirmed my suspicions that neither part is recyclable. So they’ll end up in some landfill, with the dregs of the albuterol leaching into the water table and the plastic lasting until the ozone layer – along with the rest of our atmosphere - completely disappears and the sun melts us into oblivion. Good job, guys.

Second, if the propellant is so bad for the environment that it can burn through ozone like nobody’s business, then why the heck have we been letting people spray this into their lungs? I don’t know if you’ve seen the statistics lately, but for the last two years, the numbers of children (especially African-American children) being diagnosed with asthma has increased. Yet for decades, the pharmaceutical industry has allowed these products to go unchanged. Yes, I imagine they were required to have some degree of testing done so that whatever propellant they substituted would not be dangerous. But in the time the FDA spent developing and approving drugs like Viagra, for God’s sake, they could have come up with a substance that would propel asthma drugs into children’s lungs safely and effectively. And there are many other populations that use inhalers, for asthma as well as other breathing difficulties.

Believe me, I’m all for doing what we can to keep our ozone layer intact. It gives me a nice and secure feeling having it up there, knowing that a step out of my house to get the mail isn’t going to give me skin cancer. But come on. Let’s use our heads about this. Or we could end up making our environment worse.

This Is No Idol Threat...

What the...how...but he...and he...how could....HOW COULD THIS HAVE HAPPENED?

OK. Everyone who voted for Sanjaya on Tuesday. Yes, you. Until you can show me that you can use your cell phones responsibly, your privileges will be recinded (that means "taken away") and all of your Justin Timberlake downloads will be removed from your iPods.

And I'm not kidding this time.

Just try me.

An Amendment to the Previous Rant...

OK, I did more research and found out that the argument behind the "income taxes are illegal" stems from the fact that some think that the 16th Amendment (whereby income taxes were established) was never legally ratified. Read more about this here.

Duck Season…Rabbit Season…Tax Season

Well, it’s a week into March, and I’ve got my feathers in a ruffle once again about the insanity that has become the United States tax system.

Forget the dance of finding all the receipts that are lying around the house. Forget the downloading of the necessary forms (for it’s been years since we merely needed the ones that came in the book) and taking the time to parse through the directions and fill them out and assemble them in the correct order and…

How many of you actually read the beginning pages of those tax books? You know, where they communicate what is new for this past tax year, and what is to come?

Let alone the intro letter from the Commissioner, that begins, “Paying taxes is a unifying experience fundamental to democracy and the rule of law…”

I want whoever constructed this sentence tied to a chair and slapped very hard, repeatedly.

OK, I can get behind democracy. Sometimes, it’s a good idea. It’s definitely better than some other forms of government, where they take half your income and piss all over your civil liberties and…OK, never mind. But “unifying experience?” A plane crash, a funeral, surviving a natural disaster…these are also unifying experiences yet I have no wish to experience them every year with my fellow Americans, let alone pay the government for the privilege.

And let’s talk about “the rule of law.” There are some who say that there is no federal law that requires income taxes to be paid. That it is only considered a “voluntary contribution” and that the laws set up by the government protecting themselves are corrupt. There’s a very small but vociferous movement out there (I’d tell you more about them but the government demanded they take down their web site) touting this, and once in a while someone (like Wesley Snipes, most recently) tests it by not paying their taxes, only causing the government to come down on them as hard as whoever that woman was who wore a “Bush Sucks” t-shirt to the Republican National Convention. So they the IRS does little coercive things like plant stories in newspapers and on the web about people who get arrested for tax evasion…coincidentally, these pop up just before the filing deadline.

So if you flip to page 11 of your tax form booklets, class, you will see an item that reads, “Personal exemption and itemized deduction phaseouts reduced. Taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes above a certain amount may lose part of their deduction…”

One: “Phaseout?” Are these exemptions and deductions being “phased out??” If so, when is this happening and why did nobody tell us? This is HUGE. Unless they are about to tell me that they are being phased out and into a flat tax, what’s going on here?

Two (and I know I’m going to start a large argument here): Why is it that people get their panties in a bunch when ANY kind of tax increases are announced (although apparently this is OK with the populace at large, as people seem to be shrugging and opening their wallets nonetheless) but tax increases for the rich (actually for the AGI limit the IRS has set, this includes also the not-so-rich), there seems to be a tacit agreement that this is their obligation. The US is supposed to be the “land of opportunity” where immigrants can come over with a few hundred dollars in their pockets and parlay it into a fortune if they work hard, but hard work is punished with additional tax burdens. And don’t give me that “tax loophole” argument. There are just as many tax loopholes and goodies and deductions for lower-income people. They are also eligible for free tax help and if they have children, can take the Earned Income Credit. The ones who really get screwed are the middle classes and the married couples with no children.

Damn, I knew I should have had a few of those.

Another item on page 11: “Expired” tax benefits include tuition. What are we telling people now? That education beyond the 12th grade is no longer a priority for this government? That we’re supposed to be unqualified for the increasingly technical jobs this country needs, yet not supposed to make enough money to pay for the tuition ourselves?

No wonder all the good jobs are moving overseas.

A Few Idol Thoughts…

When someone mentions Barry White, I’m willing to bet that you don’t immediately think “overweight man.” You probably think first about his sonorous, sexy voice. (And, maybe that he’s dead, but that’s not what this post is about.)

When someone mentions Ruben Studdard, you might remember that he won American Idol a few seasons back and has a terrific voice. I’m willing to bet that you don’t immediately think “overweight man” (even though he went on that Subway diet).

But I’m willing to bet that Lakisha Jones, who is probably the best singer in this season’s crop of Idol hopefuls, (with Melinda Doolittle a close second) won’t make it to the final vote.

Because, like Mandisa from last season (who didn’t make it), she’s an overweight woman.

The rules aren’t the same for women.

That’s how I know she’s not going to become the next American Idol - because this is the way the world works. The world of entertainment is visual, and this is leaking into so many areas of public and private life (with women of a certain age shooting themselves with Botox to compete with younger players on the job, the little girls starving themselves to look like Tara or Ashley or whoever is thin and popular at the moment).

It doesn’t mean I have to like it.

But often it feels like I’m the sole dissenting voice in the universe. And speaking of voice, this is supposed to be a singing competition, isn’t it (as Simon constantly reminds us)?

So I’m casting my vote to eliminate the “America Votes” part of American Idol. Because apparently the American public doesn’t know good from gravlax. (I mean, come on. Taylor Hicks?) Yes, let the cell phone owners of America call and cast a vote for who they WANT to win. But I want the judges – who actually know singing talent and probably would have wanted Mandisa (and Jennifer Holliday, for that matter) to win – to make the final call.

“What’s in that vial?” or The Unmarked Container Law

Earlier this week we received a dinner invitation from some friends who live just short of an hour north of here. It had been so long since we were out on a Saturday night, and longer since we’d seen them. It’s a bit challenging for me to travel even that short a distance sometimes, but worth it to get out to see friends for a night of fun.

We stayed later than I’d expected – after a leisurely (and very good) dinner we went back to our friends’ apartment for dessert (excellent rum cake) and to look at some photos of the property where they will be building their dream house – and Husband drove home, with me close to comatose in the passenger seat. One of the last things we joked about before we parted was that if we should get pulled over, we could set off a Breathalyzer from that cake. And if so, we should offer the nice officer a serving (from the section of the cake we were sent home with).

Anyhow, halfway through our trip, I needed to get out of the car and stretch my legs. That may sound odd, as I was nearly too exhausted to move, but it had been a long evening of not too much moving and a lot of sitting – in the car on the way up, in the restaurant, in the apartment - and now sitting again in the car, I was stiffening up again (The “usual” fibro care recommendation is to get up and move around every half hour or so).

We were driving through an area where most things were closed and it was very cold outside and I was thinking about what supermarkets might be on the way where I could walk inside. And as I was thinking about this, Husband said there was a cop behind us.

And then his lights started flashing.

Husband (good boy) pulled over immediately.

“I did take that last turn a little fast,” Husband said to me. “Damn, we’re going to get a ticket, I just know it.”

We waited.

Husband, most politely, greeted the officer (good boy), as the flashlight blared into our car.

After the usual questions about if we’d been drinking and where we’d come from (to determine if we were actually drunk, I imagine) he said, “I stopped you because you have no front license plate.” he said.

I said a few swear words to myself for my negligence. The car had been my mother’s. The car used to live in Florida. I’d changed the registration, the title, got an inspection, replaced the back license plate but (as Florida does not require a front license plate, and New York does) had not gotten around to having the other plate mounted on the front of the car. That plate was (and still is) bouncing around somewhere in the back of my car, because it kept falling off of the dashboard.

Husband explained the situation to him. But apparently this wasn’t enough. State Troopers are tougher than the local cops. He pointed the flashlight into the back.

“What’s in that drug vial back there?” he said.

“What drug vial?” I said, totally flummoxed.

Husband rummaged around on the floor behind me. “This one?” he said, and handed it to the officer.

The officer took it and held it up for my view. It was one of those plastic amber vials prescription drugs come in. Minus all the labeling. “What’s this?” he asked.

I squinted to see it better. “I think that’s my Skelaxin.” My stomach tightened. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember why that was on the floor of my car. I took Skelaxin a while back, and often if I were going out for an afternoon, I’d take whatever drugs I might need along in an empty drug vial (I routinely peel the labels off the vials and save them for this purpose, or just recycle them). But I don’t remember ever just leaving one in the car. Yes, I’d carry them in my purse, and maybe once a vial had fallen out. I am not the most diligent person about cleaning my car.

“What’s that?” the officer said.

“It’s a muscle relaxant,” I said, and Husband stepped in to explain that his wife had fibromyalgia.

The officer continued to examine it. “Is it a controlled substance?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. Thank God it didn’t contain two of my other drugs, which are controlled substances, which I take legally, of course.

He asked why the container had no labels. I explained about the vials, as I mentioned to you before. And that when I recycle them, I wouldn’t want anyone to get my personal information.

Then he asked Husband for his license and registration and disappeared with my Skelaxin.

Husband said a few swear words. “We’re going to get a ticket, I know it,” he said once more.

It was a long wait. We said little. The window was still open, the car was off, and we were getting cold.

After what seemed like forever, the officer came back.

He told us to get the license plate on. And he told us to keep our drugs in their original bottles. “If I wanted to, I could take you in on this,” he said, holding up the vial. “According to Public Health Law, you can’t carry prescription drugs in unlabelled containers.”

I apologized. I told him I had no idea. Which was the truth. Who knew this could land me in jail? Doesn’t everybody do it? It seemed ridiculous. To get thrown into the slammer for packin’ Skelaxin.

“Why don’t you carry the original container?” he asked.

I explained that it was too big. Which was true. Skelaxin is dispensed in big-ass bottles almost as tall as a drinking glass, and if I’m going out and think I might need a half a pill (which is about all I can tolerate of the stuff), I don’t want to load up my purse with the ginormous drug vial.

“Do you have a doctor’s prescription for this?”

“Yes,” I said.

And he let us go with a warning.

And we slowly drove away. And Husband reminded me at least three times before we got to Kingston not to take the pills out of the house in unmarked containers. OK. I get it.

I’m just glad my purse was in the trunk. Because if he’d searched that he’d find a unlabelled drug vial with half a Trileptal (one of the cocktail of drugs I take for the fibro), another with about half a dozen Tylenol, a baggie with about a dozen Motrin, a Lidoderm patch (gasp) outside of it’s prescription-labeled box (I mean, come one, the patches come in a box as big as a John Irving novel. I’m supposed to keep this in my purse?) and God knows what else.

And I’m going to clean out my car today. If I get around to it.

Anyway, let that be a lesson to you. Even if I think it’s a stupid law, it’s still the law. Though if I get caught with a Tylenol in a Ziploc, I hope some judge would have the good sense to send me home. But with our current luck, I’d get that guy from the Anna Nicole trial.

RFG FAQs

I’m a little late with some kind of acknowledgement of the one-year anniversary of my adventures in blogsville, but I’m finally getting to it. I’d planned to post answers to questions many of you (OK, a couple of you) have been asking about me, and the blog, and how everything is going here on the hill.

Q: Who the heck is Gargamel and why are you rooting for him?

A: Those of a certain age might remember the Smurfs, a Saturday morning cartoon from the late 70s that featured some very irritating little blue characters, called, oddly enough, Smurfs. A bunch of guy Smurfs lived in their little Smurf village with one Smurfette, which people though was kind of…well, a bit unfortunate and not really fair at best, and kind of sick at worst. Their arch enemy was Gargamel, this twisted guy who looked like a monk on the wrong medication, and he was continually plotting ways to get the Smurfs. I don’t remember why (perhaps he merely thought them too irritating to live), but å la the Coyote and the Roadrunner, Gargamel’s complex plots were always thwarted. I (and many people I know) secretly rooted for Gargamel to squish all the Smurfs into little blue road pizzas. Hence the name.I was also psyched on a Google search to find out that "Gargamel" is also the name of an American rock band and a Norwegian "progrock" band.

Q: What’s with the penguins?

A: I was (still am, when I can find it, or what it morphed into) a big fan of the comic strip Bloom County. Particularly Opus P. Penguin. Op starting showing up as a stuffed toy in the stores in the mid 80s, and Gladys (a frequent commenter to RFG) bought me my first. He became my “buddy” when I lived in Boston (remember “The Velveteen Rabbit?”), and soon, more followed. Once, as a Christmas present for a couple of Husband’s friends (this was about the time of the Jamaican Bobsled Team), we bought two plain small Ops and converted them, with yarn dreadlocks, little Hawaiian shirts, and sunglasses, into Rasta Ops, and packaged them in burlap sacks stenciled “Jamaica” on them. Don’t know what happened to them over time, but we’ve got a good dozen or so of the little guys (and some not so little) scattered throughout the house. They get a little demanding when it comes to fish and Pop Tarts, but other than that, they’re easy to keep.

Q: What’s fibromyalgia and how are you doing with it?

A: For a full explanation of what fibro is, check out this article I wrote for AC. I have good stretches and bad, and right now I’m just gritting my teeth and waiting for spring (fibro doesn’t like the cold). Fortunately, there’s getting to be a lot more good information out there (books and on the web) and I’m working on an article about what to do when you first learn you have it. Thanks for asking.

Q: You talk about this Husband guy but we never hear from him. What’s the deal with that?

A: He reads some of my posts, and has commented one or two times, but says he “lives” each blog entry so therefore doesn’t feel he needs to read or respond to each one. But check out his own rantings at The Happy In Hell Radio Show. Leave a comment. He likes to feel needed. ;)

Q: Whatever happened with that sleep study?

A: This question refers to an entry I posted about going through a sleep study (All Hail The Borg Queen). Not much was revealed. I don’t have sleep apnea or any kind of nocturnal arrhythmias, which I guess are the big kahunas they’re looking for. It also speculated that I shouldn’t eat too close to bedtime. (then why the heck do they call them “bedtime snacks?”) So basically, it was a night connected to an oxygen sensor and a lot of electrodes with a camera inserted into my sleep mask and a microphone in my mouth. Which here at the Playhouse we call “Tuesday.”

Anyhow…thanks for reading, and thank you for your support. Especially to Highlander for getting me started. It’s been a great year. Especially for penguins.

But not so much for Gargamel.

The Decline and Fall Continues

Enough, already.

I’m growing more and more appalled at the attention the Anna Nicole Smith trial is getting in the media. We are surely past the apex of our civilization when someone thinks it would be entertaining to televise – let alone bring into a court of law – a suit arguing who gets custody of a freakin’ corpse. No wonder the rest of the world thinks so badly of us. And surely this is another argument for the removal of cameras in the courtroom. We didn’t learn our lesson from the Simpson trial, so now we are only left to reap what we have sewn, lay in our own beds, pick the cliché of your choice.

Now they’re arguing not who the father is, but what district has the jurisdiction to argue paternity.

And, for those people who can’t be glued to their TVs, you can get the trial in streaming video on your computer.

I am growing closer and closer to running over my television in the driveway.

And as I’m down a little tire tread from a previous incident (see yesterday’s blog), perhaps now would be a good time. Since I may have to replace them anyway.

Husband just made a good point. That if we, as a culture, have nothing better to do than obsess about this trial, then we can’t be doing so badly.

But I say that we aren’t doing as well as he surmises, and this trial is merely serving as a convenient distraction. Perhaps a plot by the Bush administration? Hmm. Could W be the father?

Here’s an idea: Apparently there are not enough people being blown up to get our populace sufficiently riled and for the politicians to take action. So tell Al Qaeda to forget about the suicide bombers and IEDs. Figure out a way to take out our television networks. Particularly Fox. Imagine the weight of public outcry when they can’t watch “American Idol.” Then hit our Internet access. Start with “My Space,” “YouTube,” and then, if that’s not enough, go after the porn.

Then you’ll get people taking to the streets with pitchforks.

Hey, I’m just one citizen trying to make a difference.

And here at the Playhouse, the electronics whammy lives on. I woke up to no heat. Not upstairs, or down. OK, I could accept it if the downstairs furnace was on the fritz, since that one was original issue when we bought the house nine years ago (Cripes, has it already been nine years???), but the upstairs one is only two years old and was recently serviced. Husband checked the propane tank and we’re almost down to the red line, and none of the pilot lights (both furnaces and the water heater) are lit.

Propane is on the way as I write this. Let’s hope that’s the only problem.

Or at least pray that the next whammy takes out the satellite feed from the trial. Maybe if we pray hard enough together, it just might happen.

There’s stuck and then there’s…STUCK

I heard this morning that despite the Valentine’s Day storm, this winter Boston has received merely 14% of its usual snowfall totals. A welcome respite for many of its denizens, as last year was a back-breaking record-buster.

Here, too, in the Valley, we haven’t been faring much better this season. Well, of course, if you’re not a big fan of the white stuff, you’ve been in hog-heaven. I’m not a skier, nor especially wild about winter driving, but I’d hoped to try snow-shoeing, and I guess I’m going to have to wait until next year to give it a whirl. But I do like that feeling of being snugly snowed in, with food and cable and electricity, while the world becomes a snow-globe.

Somehow being trapped in the house is fine when there’s a snowstorm. It’s fate. There’s nothing I can do, so I might as well look out the window at the snow piling up and make another cup of hot tea and get out the journal or a DVD or the book I’ve been meaning to delve into.

But getting stuck in the house is different when the roads are passable.

This happened last week.

We had a spate of bad household karma. Mercury must have been in retrograde, the gods of things mechanical were not smiling on us, or it was just one giant coincidence, but one after another, things malfunctioned or broke.

• As Fred the Plowman left the run-up to our driveway a mess (For those of you who have not had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with our driveway, it hooks backward from the road, goes uphill rather steeply and around a curve into a circular drive which (finally) is flat. The "winter strategy" is to pass the house, turn around in the neighbor's driveway, then gun it up ours so you don't get stuck.) I spun out halfway up, tried to back down, got stuck in a snowbank and had to be rescued by Husband. He wailed on the tires for a while, trying to get out of the snowpack, then managed to back up all the way down, turned around in the neighbor's drive, then summoned the spirit of his favorite NASCAR driver and pedaled-to-the-metal all the way up. It was a bit embarrassing for me, and fortunately, the car is no worse for wear, although minus a little tire rubber.

• My bad luck with hot beverages continued when a full mug of tea (a mixture of ginger and detox) accidentally tipped over into the keyboard, shorting it out and confusing the computer to the point where Husband had to drag it to Mac repair-land. (for the sake of brevity, I’m leaving out the sequence of events that lead up to the vein on Husband’s forehead throbbing) Fortunately, the computer was only confused to the point where it didn’t cost too much money to make it right again. And the keyboard, once Husband took it apart and dried it, was fine.

• My treadmill started rumbling like a magnitude 6.2 when I reached my usual walking speed. But it only needed a minor adjustment and a good cleaning and I was off and…er…walking again.

But right between these two problems came the largest. My automatic garage door broke. Not merely broke, but both wires snapped and the door could not even be opened manually (like we have to do when we have a power failure). And, we found out later, what sounded like a loud THUMP and shook the house on Saturday night was actually the sound of the main garage door spring giving way from metal fatigue. God knows where the remains wound up. But a very good thing neither of us were in the garage at the time.

Of course this happened on a Sunday, when the outfit that “fixed it” a few months before wasn’t open.

I hadn’t planned on going out that day at all. I’d had a relatively busy week, and was looking forward to a day just resting and puttering around the house and not driving.

But just knowing that I COULDN’T leave the house made me want to escape as if I were a caged animal. I could have clawed the walls down. It took me back to the days when my back hurt so badly I couldn’t get out and would just stare out doors and windows with my fingertips against the glass, feeling oddly like a dog waiting for its owner to return.

But with some deep breathing and meditation, somehow I made it through.

And the next day we got the repair guy to come and rescue me.

And I thought again about how, in this age of having everything you want right away, how dependant we are on our electronic whos-its and gizmos. (while I type this on one computer, transfer it electronically to my laptop, then post it on the web…) That the world comes to a halt when the computer goes away for a while. And like I secretly enjoy the silence of blackouts, I kind of like when there’s no computer, too. (as long as I know it’s not out having hundreds of dollars of repairs and it will be back soon) It forces us to remember what it was like not having this electronic umbilicus we plug into each day. Not that I don’t enjoy the benefits of instant communications, (I’m rather fond of this blog, and like the idea of monitoring my page hits on AC and making a few dollars writing some article or whatever while looking out the window at some beautiful scenery) but sometimes it takes a few deep breaths away to appreciate them.

And read a book. And actually…talk to each other.

And no, I didn’t spill the tea into the keyboard on purpose.

You Can’t Make This Stuff Up…OK, Maybe You Can…

This morning’s news was too ridiculous to let pass without some serious mocking.

They’ve got medication for that

The headline, before the commercial, was that a man who works for IBM was fired for cruising adult chat room sites on the web during working hours.

When that’s all I knew, I thought it was absurd. A while back, an IBM employee had sex with his secretary on a desk and wasn’t even fired. In fact, he was promoted. (for a time in IBM’s history, kicking someone upstairs was akin to kicking someone out)

Then the details were revealed. James Pacenza, 58, is suing IBM for five million dollars for wrongful termination, because, according to his lawyers, the man has post traumatic stress disorder from Vietnam, and is addicted to sex and the internet for self-medication. He is also citing protection under the Americans With Disabilities Act. He also claims that IBM “encouraged” him to use the internet at work to “self-medicate.” And his lawyer is also hinting that the firing could have been a case of age discrimination.

Now, come on. First, anyone with this many problems might benefit from Zoloft and a therapist. Then, they should either be out on full disability or working part-time, and definitely not working on any projects that might be a part of anything that might potentially fail and kill me or my loved ones because he was too busy getting off to check that, say, the measurement between the ventilation ports was in inches, not centimeters.

And why does such a large, international, web-savvy company such as IBM not have something as simple as a utility that blocks access to these sites? I worked for a company of 150 and they had one. It was even so sophisticated that it would only allow access to certain sites (such as those where you could pick up your personal e-mail) during lunch or break times.

IBM countered by saying that the ADA does not cover sexual behavior disorders.

Otherwise half of Congress would be claiming ADA protection.

They’ve got medication for that, too

Didn’t we prove with the death of Princess Diana that too much media attention can kill? (Or at the very least, drive someone mad, the public included) Yes, the jury is still out whether or not people who need this attention gravitate to the spotlight or whether it’s the spotlight that does it. So Britney Spears is having a little…shall we say, tantrum at the moment. She’s getting divorced, has a couple of kids at home. Isn’t she kind of due for an outburst like this? What woman hasn’t had the urge to shave her head and get a tattoo after a difficult breakup? And she’s doing it all with a camera in her face. The shame of this, though, is not as much with the paparazzi as with the media coverage. Let people who “care” about Britney (or like watching train wrecks) tune into MTV or the entertainment networks and tabloids to check on the latest status of what she drank while she was getting inked or how she sheared herself when the stylist refused. Let them bid for her locks on e-Bay. But to see this played out in the national networks? The “news” channels? To watch Meredith Vieira interview a psychologist to get her insights on whether Britney is having a “true” nervous breakdown? Please. Stop. Now. Isn’t there a hiker stuck on Mt. Hood or a suicide bomber blowing himself up or something more important you should be covering? It really, truly, makes me want to put my television in the driveway and run over it several times.

And don’t make me do that. I can’t afford new tires.

Hey, maybe I could sue NBC for that. Say that I was driven over the brink by their coverage of not just Spears’ potential breakdown but speculation over the paternity of Anna Nicole’s daughter. That now I have PTSD and am addicted to NPR and internet crossword puzzles (as long as none of their clues is “Britney.”)

Anyone know a good lawyer?

New Words for 2007

As I'm working on other projects today, I leave you these "New Words for 2007." which a friend e-mailed to me. I wish I knew the source. Some of them are pretty clever.

1. BLAMESTORMING : Sitting around in a group, discussing why a deadline was missed or a project failed, and who was responsible.
2. SEAGULL MANAGER: A manager, who flies in, makes a lot of noise, craps on everything, and then leaves.
3. ASSMOSIS: The process by which some people seem to absorb success and advancement by kissing up to the boss rather than working hard
4. SALMON DAY : The experience of spending an entire day swimming upstream only to get screwed and die in the end.
5. CUBE FARM : An office filled with cubicles.
6. PRAIRIE DOGGING : When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm, and people's heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on.
7. MOUSE POTATO : The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
8. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What Yuppies get into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids.
9. STRESS PUPPY : A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whiny.
10. SWIPEOUT: An ATM or credit card that has been rendered usel ess because magnetic strip is worn away from extensive use.
11. XEROX SUBSIDY : Euphemism for swiping free photocopies from one's workplace.
12. IRRITAINMENT: Entertainment and media spectacles that are Annoying but you find yourself unable to stop watching them.
13. PERCUSSIVE MAINTENANCE : The fine art of whacking the crap out of an electronic device to get it to work again. Often feel like doing this to my computer------
14. ADMINISPHERE : The rarefied organizational layers beginning just above the rank and file. Decisions that fall from the adminisphere are often profoundly inappropriate or irrelevant to the problems they were designed to solve.
15. 404 : Someone who's clueless. From the World! Wide Web error Message "404 Not Found," meaning that the requested si te could not be located.
16. GENERICA : Features of the American landscape that are exactly the same no matter where one is, such as fast food joints, strip malls, and subdivisions.
17. OHNOSECOND : That minuscule fraction of time in which you realize that you've just made a BIG mistake. (Like after hitting send on an email by mistake).
18. WOOFS : Well-Off Older Folks.
19. CROP DUSTING : Surreptitiously passing gas while passing through a Cube Farm.
- Author Unknown

Ice, Ice, Baby

As we are being pelted with ice this Valentine’s Day (and before we lose power), I want to share a memory of another Valentine’s Day, many years ago, when Husband and I were not yet married.

In fact we hadn’t been living together very long at all, since I’d moved back from Boston only a year or so past. At long last I’d landed a full time job I liked, in an advertising agency in Rhinebeck, down the highway a tad and across the river from Saugerties, where we lived with his mother and his dog and (for a time) his sister.

And I didn’t know it yet, but Husband-to-be had a surprise in store for me that Valentine’s Day. He’d made dinner reservations and booked a room at the beautiful, historic (and romantic) Beekman Arms, which was just around the corner from where I worked. He said he wanted to take me to dinner in Rhinebeck and he’d pick me up at the office (VD was plum-smack in the middle of the work-week that year). When he arrived, not only did he tell me what he’d done but also surprised me further having packed up a complete business-appropriate outfit for the next day (well, the blouse didn’t quite go with the pants, and the shoes…heck, I just give the guy props for thinking ahead). Not only would this be perfectly wonderfully romantic, he’d thought, but probably thought also that we could sleep in the next morning since the agency was literally a hop, skip and a jump away.

There was one thing he didn’t plan for. (Actually, two, but I’ll get to the other one later.) Since the ad agency was very tiny and on a very tight budget, there were no bucks in the coffers for things like couriers and overnight packages when items being delivered fell within driving distance of an employee’s normal commute. And earlier that afternoon, I’d promised my co-worker that I would pick up some film she needed from our photographer in Kingston on my way in the next morning. And now, since Husband and I would be waking up just a hop, skip and jump away from the agency, I’d have to wake up even earlier in order to hop, skip and jump over the river and through the woods to the photographer’s house we go and back again in time for Janette to make the printer’s deadline on her project.

OK, I let that go. We still had a romantic dinner ahead of us, and an actual night in an actual inn all to ourselves, and I didn’t want to ruin it by thinking of the next morning.

And it was nice. Dinner was served beside a roaring fireplace, then we retired to our room (in a private little annex building in back of the inn). Except I remember at one point waking up in the wee hours, Husband sleeping soundly next to me, and hearing the sound of ice pelting the roof of the inn.

Which was another thing he didn’t plan for. An ice storm. A navigatable bit of snow was in the forecast, nothing to sweat about, but this was one of those February surprises. I went back to sleep, hoping it was just a dream, but when I woke again, I saw it was true. A good half-inch of ice had coated the world. The inn. The roads. And both of our cars.

But I was not yet a recovering workaholic at the time, and gol’ darn it, I was going to chip out my car and drive to Kingston and pick up that film and drive it back to Rhinebeck.

Fortunately, I didn’t hit anything, but the drive was dicey. And I made it to work, film in glove, albeit a little late, but boy, I would like that morning back. I’d have called Janette at home, said that going anywhere would be completely ridiculous, suggest she arrange a courier and expense it under “acts of God,” and then I’d snuggle back under the covers beside my future husband. And when we got up, we’d call room service for breakfast. And when we were good and ready (or checkout time, whichever came first), we’d say our goodbyes, and hopefully by then the road crews would have worked their magic.

And twenty years later we have another ice storm. On this Valentine’s Day, Husband wakes up, shuffles into my computer room to grumble “Happy VD.” He’s grumpy. The ice on the roof kept waking him up. I sleep with earplugs, so I can afford the charity to like the sound now. It makes me feel safe and protected, snuggled dry and warm into my house with hot tea and heat, with no cars to chip out and nowhere to go. I’m missing a massage appointment, which annoys me mildly, but I’ll reschedule it for another day.

He’s gone downstairs to start the coffee IV. And I’m upstairs, remembering another storm, another time, a time with surprises that were good and sweet instead of the bad kind that hit you like bricks in the face. Remembering fireside dinners, and when being iced in alone together in a romantic hotel room would have been enough.

But we have a different kind of warmth and safety now. In knowing that every morning he’ll come into my room to say hello, and be just downstairs.

In any kind of weather.

Let's Hear It For The Boy!

I’m pleased to announce that at long last, Husband is taking his bloviations to the world of blogination!

Check out his blog, The Happy In Hell Radio Show, and let him know what you think!

(Note: The opinions expressed on The Happy In Hell Radio Show do not necessarily reflect those of Opus P. Penguin or any of her parent companies.)

Where to start, where to start…

Pelosi One

You might have heard this one already, but the current administration originally agreed to give Nancy Pelosi access to an Air Force jet and services “to the equivalent of” what was used by her predecessor, Dennis Hastert. Hastert used a small Air Force commuter-sized jet to get from Washington to his district in Illinois.

But apparently this was not good enough for the current speaker. Or, shall I say, big enough to provide room for her staff, delegation, family members and various hangers-on to be shuttled back and forth non-stop from San Francisco to Washington or wherever else she would like to take them at the taxpayer’s expense. But the type of military jet she wants not only seats 120 and has a conference facility, an entertainment system and luxury sleeping accommodations for the primary passenger, but Air Force models that can fly from Washington to San Francisco non-stop are in short supply, as most of them currently carry various things back and forth from Iraq.

Even though Rep. John P. Murtha, chairman of House Appropriations subcommittee on defense, urged those Pentagon officials who grant such requests to give House Speaker Pelosi what she wanted, Pelosi’s office immediately accused them of sexism for not granting it soon enough.

Republican critics say she’s abusing the perks of her power, and have also called this request, if granted, “a flying Lincoln Bedroom.” And that it would be the equivalent of the same type of Air Force jet service that the president and vice-president are provided, essentially making this craft “Pelosi One,” said republican Rep. Patrick McHenry

And sources say that it’s likely that she’ll get it.

And I don’t know why she shouldn’t. Hastert only had to fly to Illinois. California is a heck of a lot farther away. Even though Bill Clinton might have been able to get away with touching down on tarmac to get a haircut, Pelosi would never get away with such a stunt.

So why make her stop to refuel?

Anyway…the media ought to leave this story alone and get on to more important news, like…

Enough already! You'd think she was a Kennedy!

Anna Nicole Smith’s whole life has been a tragedy. The media have been falling all over themselves to get dirt, to get autopsy results…the crowd of microphones waiting for the coroner was so dense I wondered who was covering the war.

The real tragedy is a child now bereft of a mother, a step-brother, and with her paternity a question mark.

My opinion is that Zsa Zsa’s husband is claiming parentage only because she needs the money. And it’s been too long since she’s punched out a cop, so she also needs the attention.

And it’s only going to get uglier.

Speaking of not having to stop to refuel…or love means never having to pepper-spray your rivals

John Glenn was the first astronaut to orbit the earth. Neil Armstrong was the first astronaut to land on the moon. Sally Ride was the first woman astronaut in space. But Lisa Nowick has the honor of becoming the first astronaut to be charged with a major crime. As well as the first astronaut, as far as the media knows, to drive from Houston to Orlando wearing a trench coat, wig and a diapers (so she wouldn’t have to stop for restroom breaks) so she could apparently do bodily harm to a romantic rival with a BB gun, pepper spray, a steel mallet, a knife, rubber tubing and large plastic garbage bags. And that’s only what they caught her with.

According to police, Nowak saw Claire Shipman as a rival for the affections of fellow astronaut William Oefelein. Nowak, a divorced mother of three, trained with the unmarried Oefelein but claimed not to have a romantic relationship with him. But, she claimed, they were more than friends. And, when arrested, was armed with e-mails between Oefelein and Shipman and a love letter Nowak wrote to Oefelein. And Nowak claimed she’d only driven that distance to “talk” to Shipman.

"If you were just going to talk to someone, I don't know that you would need a wig, a trench coat, an air cartridge BB gun and pepper spray," according to Orlando police sergeant Beth Jones.

Hey, maybe if she had Nancy Pelosi’s jet, she wouldn’t have needed the diapers.

Why I'm Really, Really Sick of Tom Cruise

Apparently I’m one of the few people in this world who don’t give a rat’s rump if Tom Cruise is gay, straight, a Scientologist, married, divorced, jumping on people’s couches, or whatever. Forget about rumors of his marrying Nicole Kidman as a dodge to cover his sexual preference. I think it’s just a dodge to cover up the fact that he can’t act his way out of a paper bag. Even if said paper bag were on fire.

And the thing is, he knows it. Which is how he’s made a boatload of money and become an uber-celeb: by choosing roles that keep him within his very limited range.

Because Tom Cruise – entourage in tow, photographed more often than Britney Spears or any member of the British royal family, his star (and teeth) so big and bright that he can be seen with the naked eye from other planets, so “wonderful” that either the National Enquirer or People Magazine would be awash in material if they were to do a special issue on his “greatness” – reached his acting peak playing a teenager dancing in his underwear in Risky Business .

OK, maybe again, fully clothed, in Rain Man.

But ever since then, the most successful roles that Tom Cruise has had was when he was playing…Tom Cruise. You know the guy. That flashy guy with the swagger on the outside who eventually caves – to an autistic brother, to a child, to a woman, or, you know, morality – and becomes “a better man.” And that’s what made films like Top Gun, Jerry McGuire, The Color of Money, and Rain Man so successful - because Cruise was acting within his limitations. Writer and critic Dorothy Parker could have been talking about Cruise when she commented (in another context) that his range “ran the gamut from A to B.”

Also, any generic action hero could have starred in Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, the Last Samurai or Mission: Impossible and all of its sequels. Stick Keanu Reeves or Vin Diesel in there and nobody would have noticed. And Cocktail was essentially Risky Business set in a bar.

When Cruise has chosen roles that require him to stretch beyond his safety net, he’s fallen flat on his pretty face. I didn’t buy him for a second as the vampire Lestat in Interview With The Vampire (despite author Anne Rice’s full-page apology for doubting his talents). Nicole Kidman carried him in Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut. Maybe this is why she decided to divorce him, and stop carrying him for good. And in The Firm, and Born on the Fourth of July. he just looked like he was trying too hard.

Yes, critics were whispering “Oscar” for Magnolia, and Cruise won some minor awards for Best Supporting Actor, but this was just another instance of Cruise playing Cruise, which is why he came off smelling like a rose.

It’s a cliché that all actors secretly want to direct or produce or write. And now that Cruise is going to run United Artists Film Studio, he has his own chance to be behind the camera.

I’d vote that he stay there, and let the paparazzi chase someone with real talent. Or, you know, Paris Hilton.

Spare Parts

I was sitting in yet another chiropractor’s office this afternoon. Clipped to the light box on the wall were x-rays of my lower spine, taken earlier this fall to see if I’d fractured or otherwise injured anything when I took that short attempt at flight at the acupuncturist’s.

At the time they came back negative.

But now, someone who knows spines pointed out a little bit of bone just above my sacrum. And I’m wondering how I could have gotten to a certain age, with all the doctors of every stripe who have looked at me inside and out, without somebody telling me that I have six lumbar vertebrae instead of the usual five.

Yes, it’s true. I have extra parts. Excess baggage, a spare for when I have a blowout and need a replacement. Does AAA cover that, I wonder? (The answer is yes, but you don’t want to know where they keep the jack.)

Many moons ago, when I first sprained my back, the x-ray came back with this on the report: “transverse vertebrae within the range of normal.”

Apparently, this little bonus was what that line partially referred to, but as it was being reviewed by an HMO, then ignored when the MRI came around, showing what it showed, nobody thought anything of a useless little x-ray.

Now this guy is telling me that it isn’t exactly normal. And could be the source of a great deal of the physical misery that’s been plaguing me since the summer. The transverse flange on one side of the vertebrae is larger than the other. The larger side is too tight against the sacrum, and the smaller side is stretched too much and has become too loose.

Apparently this spare part needs some mechanical attention.

The first step of which is why I’m wearing this gunslinger-like apparatus around my hips. It’s called a sacroiliac belt. And it’s so freaking weird. For one, the idea of wearing something hospital-white strapped around that part of my anatomy with Velcro makes me feel like I’m ready for Geritol and something to make my dentures feel minty fresh. For two, it presses into my achy parts when I sit, and since I’m just wearing the chiro’s trial belt and he wants me to wear it outside my clothes, I have to take it off every time I have to attend to certain biological needs. Which is probably too much information but part of why this thing is so strange.

But it’s a good thing. Like I said before, it’s a trial. If I try it for a couple days, and it helps, then we’ve diagnosed that a possible source of the problem is the left transverse flange, and we can proceed from there (which means that I buy the thing, wear it inside my clothes, and wear it until the inflammation subsides and the muscles supporting the SI joint get stronger.

And if it doesn’t work, the right side of the flange might be the culprit, and we’ll proceed with a manual adjustment.

Either way, I’m trying to look at this positively.

Maybe we’re finally onto something.

Yeah. That’s it.

Meanwhile I hitch up my supportive device and smile. Maybe if I have to buy my own, I could decorate it. Dye it purple, sew in seed pearls and write dirty graffiti across the back.

Because I’m not ready for Geritol and dentures.

Not yet.

Not Quite A Jellyfish Day

My friend Linda sent me an email the other day about some guy’s unfortunate encounter with a jellyfish (which I suspect was made up). I deleted it, but basically it was a letter from a brother to a sister, and he was trying to console her for something lousy she’d been going through. The guy wrote about his day at work. He worked underwater, and to make a long and rambling story short, it ended with a jellyfish being sucked into one of his intake tubes and landing…well, in an unfortunate place.

While my day yesterday was not quite like having a jellyfish in my butt, I’d put it up there close.

I’d been having this weird new back pain for days. (On top of the usual pain.) It was bilateral, just above the belt line, hurt when I stood up and sat down, hurt when I got in and out of my car, and when I was sitting still or lying down, didn’t hurt at all.

I took it to the PT on Tuesday, he snapped a couple of things, stretched me around a bit, and when I got up onto his treadmill, it had started to feel better.

Until the next afternoon, when it came back stronger. Now it was only on the right side, but all the way up and down my spine and into my sacroiliac joint. It was not the usual post-manipulation soreness. This was bad.

As he’d told me I could call Thursday if it wasn’t better, I called. He was busy, so I talked to Linda, his assistant (the same Linda of jellyfish fame, above). While Tom didn’t have any appointment slots, Linda said he’d squeeze me in if I showed up that afternoon.

Then she told me that was having her own almost-jellyfish day – her car was in the shop and the only ride she could get dropped her at work at 7:30 AM. She hadn’t brought her breakfast. And she also couldn’t get out for lunch. I asked her if I could bring her anything and she said she’d LOVE a cup of coffee, since Tom’s wife had taken their coffee maker home to clean, since it wasn’t working right. No problem, I told her, and remembered the coffee bar on my way to the clinic.

I not only bought her a cup but an extra for Tom, since he was being so nice to get me in without an appointment. I puzzled about how I was going to handle getting two cups of coffee in and out of my car, since I need both hands to get into the driver’s seat.

Somehow I got them in, using one of those handy cardboard drink holder thingies. Then, when I was installed into the driver’s seat, I moved them into the drink holder.

No problem on the drive over, except a few drops of spillage. No problem with the bumps in the road and the hills and the sharp turn in the clinic’s driveway.

Then I pulled into the parking lot. I debated putting the cups back into the holder, putting the filled holder back on the passenger’s seat, then leaning over to pick them up once I was out of the car. I wondered if this would hurt my back even more, so I went for my usual beverage removal system – when I open my door, put the cup (or water bottle, if the case may be) on top of the car, then retrieve it when I get out.

I lifted the first cup out. Put it on top of the car, fumbling around with the positioning so the car antennae wouldn’t knock it over. I put it down and thought I had a safe landing but – and these things always happen in slow motion – it started to fall, cascading me with hot coffee (with cream and sugar). Fortunately, by then it was no long so hot. And But it was just as wet. And fortunately, very little of it landed in the car. Most of it soaked my left leg (I was wearing heavy knit pants (black, fortunately) and long underwear underneath.) and the two sweatshirts I was wearing. I remember not yelling out something unladylike but in my mind just mentally shrugging my shoulders, like these kinds of things happen to me every time (which they don’t). I also remember the coffee going from lukewarm to chilled very quickly.

At least I like the smell of coffee.

Amazingly, about a quarter of what was left of Linda’s java was sitting upright, in its cup, on the ground. I salvaged that, plus the other cup (which I got out of the car by sticking it back into the beverage holder and picking it up from the passenger’s side (no pain, of course).

Then went inside to report the bad news to Linda.

Her face registered shock, and asked if I was all right.

“Just wet,” I said. “Here’s what’s left of your coffee.”

“Just as well,” she said. “I just needed a little buzz anyway.”

After she took me into the locker room and blow-dried the worst of the saturation away, I went back into the clinic. Did whatever exercise I could before the pain was too bad to try anymore. Meanwhile Tom kept saying he’d get right to me in a little while, just be patient.

I didn’t see him for two and a half hours.

The good news was that by the time he worked on me, the coffee was dry.

The bad news was that the one little snap he got out of my back did very little and I still had the worst of the sacroiliac pain.

But I guess it beats having a jellyfish on your butt.