Running the Race

I’m running a marathon. Don’t faint—it’s not the 10K for cancer research. It’s not the 5K for heart disease.  It’s the never-ending race against the relentless dust and grime in my house.

How does it accumulate so fast? It seems as if by the time I’ve finished dusting and vacuuming I could write my name in the new deposits on the coffee table. Is that fair? Shouldn’t I at least get one day’s grace?

I feel so good when I’ve cleaned the whole house that you would think I’d be looking forward to the next time I attack it. You would be wrong. I still curl my upper lip and flare my nostrils at the thought of Windex, Formula 409 and Lysol. At the end of a day of cleaning, I’m sure I need a good detox from inhaling all those fumes.

I guess I like it being done, not so much the act of doing it. I can think of a thousand things I would rather be doing, and so can you. You know how it is: your baseboards need dusting, your windows need washing, your shower has soap scum and if only modern technology hadn’t eradicated waxy yellow buildup, you’d be battling that, too. There are not enough hours in the day, and this is now that I’m retired from ‘work’. And did you notice how I shifted this from my problem to yours? You’re in this, too.

How did this happen? When I worked full-time I was gone fifty to fifty-five hours a week, including the commute. I always fantasized that when I retired my house would be neat as a pin and clean as a whistle. (Why pins and whistles constitute the gold standard for household presentation I cannot explain, but they do.) I imagined that my closets would all be color-coded, hangers lining up like little soldiers—all their heads and shoulders at the same precise angle. My shoes and purses would look like the gorgeous photos in splashy magazine layouts, which are clearly shot just to make us all feel inferior.

I fantasized that my kitchen drawers would all be so neat and tidy that Martha Stewart could drop in at any time and pluck a spatula of just the right size and shape from the second drawer. If Oprah herself had rung the doorbell, I could welcome her in without a mad dash through the house to pick up a stray newspaper or coffee mug. And if Dr. Oz ever dropped by to inspect my medicine chest, I’d be so proud when he opened the door to see my neatly organized and categorized supply of pharmaceuticals, not a single one out-of-date.

Need I tell you that none of this has come to pass?

My closets still look like I frantically ransack them for the perfect item on a twice-daily basis. The house is tidy, but my floors have a protective coating of dust that the Guinness people are coming to measure on Friday. The outsides of my windows make me cringe when the sun shines. I’m a failure.

One of these days I’ll wake up with an uncontrollable urge to clean everything in the house. That will be the day I sign up for the marathon at the Senior Olympics. I’ll just have to find out whether Windex would disqualify me under the doping rules.

That's How We Roll!

What’s the best thing about spending eleven nights in a hotel?

Fresh and ironed sheets every day? No, but that’s certainly in my top five.

New towels hung for you every day? Not really, but still it’s way up there.

Not having to make your bed at all? Definitely a 'plus', but not huge in my book.

Here’s a clue: it relates to something you have to do at home, that your husband NEVER does, that has to be done every couple of days, and that can—at times—create an emergency.

Yes. Changing the toilet paper roll.

Husbands have been proven to be 96.3% incapable of achieving this seemingly simple task. (Some rare events –we’ll call them anecdotal evidence—have been cited elsewhere, but I remain dubious.)

At least when you’re in a hotel, they generally put a fresh roll of toilet paper out each day, and you don’t have to run out, don’t have to seek a replacement roll, and don’t have to make the swap yourself.

I know, I know, this is a tiny task that takes so little time or effort—why do I let it bug me? I think every one of us has a particular chore that simply irks us, whether it makes sense or not.

In part, it’s this: I don’t mind changing the roll; I mind being the only one who changes the roll. Especially since I’m not the only one who’s using the stuff.

So what happened on this particular trip? Don’t ask. Okay—actually, if you don’t ask, there’s no point in this blog post at all, is there? Well, here are a few documented photographs of my experience…

Every time I went into a bathroom, anywhere, it seemed, the roll was empty when I got there. There was always access to a replacement roll, in contrast to the times when you go into a public restroom stall, only to realize just when you need it most, that there is no paper to be found. Those are the times I am grateful that I (nearly) always have Kleenex in my purse or pocket.

Even at my daughter’s house, I went into the hall bathroom on my first day there and found this:

No big deal, of course, but it became funny very quickly. Mostly because if you don’t view it as funny, you will begin to tear your hair out by the fistful. So I took a picture. (My cell phone was in my pocket. –as in, is that a cell phone in your pocket, or are you happy to see me?)

And the problem snowballed. Every time I entered a bathroom, I just expected to see an empty roll where toilet paper should have been… And I was not disappointed. Hilarity ensued.

I somehow lack the joy that my husband and so many others share, of never having to worry about toilet paper. Conversely, I do have the lovely gift of parking karma. I tend to find the first spot in the first row by the door of wherever I’m going. It also works if I’m a passenger in someone else’s car. Certainly there are exceptions, but by and large I get the best parking spaces on a regular basis.

Would I trade parking karma for t.p. roll karma? Hmmm… I suppose not. So I guess I should keep mum about this particular complaint and learn to live with it.

And in case you’re wondering how I know about the 96.3% of toilet paper rolls changed by women, I submit the following evidence.

Some time ago, I discussed this irksome task with my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU.) He innocently professed that it was his belief that he changes the roll with great frequency, and never shirks from his responsibility in this regard. I raised my eyebrows and nodded my head and quietly went about the business of saving the empty rolls instead of discarding them.

first box...

Here are the rolls I replaced.

First pile...

Second pile...

second box

third box

Here are CoTu’s. 

Pathetic, isn't it?

Case closed. By the way, it was really 99.7%, but I scaled it back out of charity. Even though he only changed these because I was out of town.

And as for the best thing about staying eleven nights in a hotel? Trick question. The answer is coming home to sleep in your own bed.

Secrets of a Happy Marriage

I learned a great lesson on how to keep a marriage happy from the French master chef Jacques Pepin. He was on the radio on Thanksgiving Day (on NPR, of course—you know me!) talking about cooking for the holiday with Lynne Rosetto Kasper of The Splendid Table. She does a turkey day program every year called Turkey Confidential. Listeners can call in and ask all manner of questions regarding the preparation, cooking and serving of virtually anything you can imagine. It’s quite informative, and lots of fun to listen to if you happen to be alone in the kitchen on that day!

Lynne Rosetto Kasper

 

One of her guests was the aforementioned Jacques Pepin. He’s very amusing and entertaining, and being a Frenchman of the old school, I must say that he is also charming. In the midst of all the discussion of how to choose your ingredients, how to clean, slice, and dice them, how to safely cook them and how to beautifully serve them, Monsieur Pepin slipped in the most valuable nugget of info of the decade. I will share it with you. Perhaps many, many marriages and other relationships can be saved.

Jacques Pepin

Jacques Pepin noted almost offhandedly that there was a point on which he and his wife disagreed. They therefore did what she wanted, as their plan is that when they differ, they do what she wants. At the same time, when they agree on things, they do what he wants. This, he avers, is completely fair. I agree. It just ain’t never gonna happen in this marriage. You recall that I am married to the Center of the Universe, so we handle things differently.

In our marriage, CoTU handles all the small decisions, and I handle all the big decisions. We’re just so lucky that in all these years we’ve never had to make a big decision.

Hair and There

I have no idea why I spend so much time and energy ironing the backs of my pants. Let’s face it, by the time I drive anywhere, they’re so wrinkled, I might as well have spent that time drinking. Unless I’m dressing to have people over at my own house, I hereby vow to stop wasting time ironing the backs of my pants. Until the guilt gets me. It got me. I’ll iron ‘em, I promise.

But it’s a lot like combing the back of my hair, or more specifically, the hair on the back of my head. I twirl my round brush with one hand, wave the hair dryer over it with the other hand, and then I check it in the hand mirror, to make sure I don’t look like a wacko. Well, at least not like a wacko who doesn’t know enough to fix the back of her hair. Then I get in the car to go where I’m going, and the headrest makes the back of my hair look like Woody Allen. From the front. Seriously, it ends up looking like a matted and misshapen stuffed animal is perched on the back of my head. It’s gross.

This brings me to a question that’s been bothering me for years. Now I’ll bring it up here and it can bother you, too. Or perhaps you’ll have an answer for me, and I can start sleeping through the night.

We –that is my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) and I --will go out on a Saturday night with friends. In preparation, we shower, shampoo, rinse and repeat. I fix my hair, he shaves, we dress, I put on makeup, not necessarily in that order. But close. I frequently iron my pants, his pants, and God knows whatever else happens to need ironing.

I’m pretty sure the other couple we’re going out with goes through the same rigmarole. Except for one thing. At least half the time, we see other adult men in a restaurant or at the theatre who, while nicely dressed, and driving nice cars, don’t seem to own a comb or a hairbrush. Or if they do, they don’t know what it’s supposed to be used for.

Now I understand that men of a certain age (though I’m uncertain as to what the ‘certain’ actually means here) are no longer trying to attract a mate, having already accomplished that feat. Same thing can be said for women. But I never see women who go out (except on the way home from the gym) without at least trying to make their hair look decent. Women may not always curl, straighten, flat iron, or spray their hair, but I’ve yet to see a woman on a Saturday night at a restaurant who hadn’t at least COMBED her hair. Men? –not so much. I’ve seen hair that looked as if it hadn’t even been combed when the barber cut it. It’s scary.

Again, I can even comprehend that it slips a guy’s mind, and he’s more interested in who won the Big 12 game that afternoon, and what dinner’s going to cost him. The real mystery is how his wife doesn’t pleasantly suggest that he comb his hair before they leave home. You know, a simple, “Mortimer, your hair looked so nice when you combed it last month. Would you like to try that again tonight?” Unless his name isn’t Mortimer, and then it just wouldn’t make any sense at all.

Maybe she was busy ironing her pants.

Leaves, Snow, Pollen, Moles: The Four Seasons

Thanksgiving is behind us, and if the first snow has not fallen where you are by the time you read this, it cannot be far behind. We had a flurry here Monday morning. Happily, it didn’t amount to anything. We can only hope that we get the last of the leaves raked up and hauled away before the white stuff really descends.

I think it’s a sign of old age that we have begun to view the change of seasons only as they relate to dreaded household chores.

We have not yet put the leaf rakes and yes, I admit it, power leaf blower into that bleak section of the garage known as ‘off-season storage’, and we’ve begun to bemoan the prospect of winter and snow shoveling. As winter ends, we’ll start fretting about the spring pollen that clogs our screens and fills our deck. Just as that’s clearing away, we’ll be worrying about the lawn and the moles and the carpenter bees. And then, of course, we’re back to the leaves. Perhaps we’re ‘glass half-empty’ kind of people.

Now this would not be such a bad thing, but it does keep us from what life coaches and zen masters call ‘living in the moment’.

Today we should be enjoying the comfy temperatures that enable us to walk the neighborhood in just a sweater, instead of the heavy coats and caps that are soon to come. We should be enjoying the fact that it’s not yet dark at 4:30, as it surely will be a month from now. We should be enjoying the relative beauty of the brilliant reds still clinging to the row of burning bush shrubs that line our driveway, and the wonderful crunch of the dried leaves under our feet on the paths in Babler State Park. Are we doing this? Not so much. We’re changing furnace filters, fighting the woodpeckers opening knots in our cedar siding, and lamenting the impending ice age that is sure to come.

Have we learned nothing from the sixty-something winters we have survived? It’s as if we are embarking on new and unseen territory as fearsome and threatening as the surface of Jupiter. Is this why so many clear-thinking seniors have become ‘snowbirds’ and spend the harsh winter months in the balmy and temperate southern states?

Last year we spent Thanksgiving with our son and daughter-in-law in Washington, D.C. From there we drove to Englewood, Florida at the generous invitation of friends. We spent five delightful days there, but I believe that in some deep-seated way it altered my ability to experience winter.

We ran into some very cold and blustery weather en route home, and it was as if I had no winter coat and gloves. I believe that somehow my body had decided that Florida was right, and anything else was wrong. And while I’m not a Florida person in general, by the time we returned to St. Louis on December 8^th, my body was inexorably altered. I endured last winter with incredible disdain for the cold and damp. Every 30° day felt like a 20° day; twenty felt like ten, and I pretty much felt like Sam McGee who needed to be ‘cremated’ just to defrost. I survived, without Sam McGee’s incineration, but my suffering was intensified by my newfound world view.

This year it will be different. We’re not visiting Florida till February, at which time it should feel like Paradise. By the time we come home, it will be time to put the snow shovels into dry dock and welcome the pollen. Meanwhile, I’m putting on a sweater and going out for a walk.

Overheard at 30,000 feet

Ah yes, the airplane trip: a dependable source of frustration, humor and shared germs. Squished carry-ons, people who won’t turn off their cell phones, talkers who want to yak in your ear, and the incessant coughing that turns the aircraft into a flying petri dish. Yet it gets us where we want to go, and by and large, it’s all just fine. Every safe landing is a happy landing, I like to say.

None of which keeps me from laughing about some of the escapades we experience or witness in flight.

On a recent trip home from Sacramento, I changed planes in Phoenix. After most of us were in our seats, our intrepid and unflappable flight attendant, Shonda, brought a young boy of 9 or 10 aboard. She seated him in the aisle seat in the row across from me. As a result, I was treated to the following overheard conversation.

Wait—I got ahead of myself. I was seated on the aisle, too, and the young boy shared his row with an older couple; the wife was at the window, and the husband was in the center seat. Now, back to the eavesdropping  entertainment.

Boy: My last name’s a color. Guess it.

Man: Green.

Boy: Nope.

Man: White.

Boy: Yep.

Man: My last name’s a position—guess it.

Boy: Pitcher.

Man: (Chuckling) No. What’s the opposite of right?

Boy: Left.

Man: Right.

Boy: Do you live in Phoenix? We live in Mesa.

Man: I live on the opposite side of Phoenix in Sun City.

Boy: Sin City?

Man: No, Sun City, like the sun shines in the sky.

Boy: I thought you said ‘sin’ and sin is bad.

[Oh great—this poor man’s in for a 3 ½ hour lecture on original sin and the evil nature of man from a 9-year old, proving once again that no good deed goes unpunished.]

It got real quiet in their row after that.

Break-In or Break-Out?

The day started off innocently enough. We had slept soundly. Everything looked and felt normal. There were no overt signs or sounds of a break-in…

I got up, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and dressed for the gym. I grabbed an armload of laundry and headed downstairs to toss it all into the washing machine, where I had casually dumped a couple of towels and cleaning rags the previous morning. The plan was to fill the load today and run the thing at capacity. But then…

I opened the lid, and found it empty.

What?

Where are the things I had left inside? I looked around the laundry room. Nothing on the floor. Nothing on top of the dryer… Then I looked inside the dryer.

Omigosh, omigosh, omigosh—scare me to death—the missing laundry was in the dryer, clean and dry! There was only one conclusion: a burglar had gotten into the house and done this tiny load of laundry!

I struggled to get my breathing under control, and reached for the phone to call 911. Then I realized I should tell my husband, the Center of the Universe (CoTU) first. I wouldn’t want the sirens to be his first awareness of this.

I found him upstairs at his computer, and broke the news as gently as I could. “Honey—I’m sorry, but there’s a problem downstairs. It looks like we’ve had an intruder, and I’m not talking about another squirrel.”

Of course, he jumped up and freaked out. “What? Where—what happened?”

“Calm down,” I said, there doesn’t appear to be any real damage, just a load of laundry done.”

He sank back down in his chair, and attempted to wither me into shame with an icy glare.

No explanation was forthcoming.

“Hello???” I prodded. “You know, some things are givens. The sun will rise in the east, the Mississippi flows south, highway 40 will jam at the 141 overpass, and you do not touch the washing machine. These are not facts because I wish them to be so, they seem to be forces of nature. Well, at least the first two. The others I have come to believe because of so many years of observation and experience. I open the washer and expect to see what I left there the day before. It has always been so. You can’t do something so unexpected and out-of-character and think I’m not going to be stunned. I need an explanation.”

“Ummm… it’s really no big deal… I wanted to clean my new lens cloths, and you were in that all-day workshop, so I stuck them in the washer and did it.  Dried ‘em, too.”

“But,” I struggled to say with aplomb, “it seems that there’s always been a force field in the laundry room that repelled you from the washer and dryer. Remember the time I was away on Father’s Day and left your card and gift inside the dryer, knowing full well you would never run across it accidentally? I had to call you and tell you to get it out and open it. That space has always been sacrosanct—what’s next? You’ll be rinsing dishes and putting them into the dishwasher? Please—where’s my real husband, and who are you really?”

He turned back to his computer with a smug smile. “CoTU, here. Where ya gonna hide my next present?”

I’m not worried. There’s still the vacuum cleaner closet.