Just For Fun

According to a survey of "Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions" by the National Retail Federation, 29.6% of Americans are reducing their Halloween spending this year because of the economy. I am not among that 29.6%. The economy hasn't affected my Halloween spending at all. I'm shelling out the same amount I did last year, and the year before, and the year before that. Nothing.

It's not that I'm cheap. Well, actually, I am, but that's not the whole story. It's just that I don't really get Halloween. At least I don't get why it has become such a big deal.

This probably stems from the fact that when I was a kid we didn't pay much attention to Halloween. We never went trick-or-treating. When you live in the country and the closest neighbors are a mile down the road, going door to door isn't exactly practical.

We must have had some sort of Halloween parties at school, because I do have a vague memory of bobbing for apples. With only five kids in the whole school, though, there wasn't much point in dressing up in elaborate costumes. We've have all recognized each other anyway.

When I was in eighth grade, our school did go to another rural school for a Halloween party. I dressed up as a pirate, complete with eye patch, which skewed my vision enough so I kept bumping into things. One of my younger sisters had a long braid bobby-pinned to her own short hair, and the other kids were shocked when she took it off at the end of the party. It was real hair, too. Our grandmother had kept it from the one time years earlier she had cut her own hair short. (I suppose some people might think that keeping a braid of your own hair in your dresser drawer for years was a little spooky in itself.)

Whatever the reasons, I've always found Halloween more annoying than entertaining. Carving pumpkins and dressing up for costume parties can be fun. So is handing out candy to little kids in their parka-covered costumes, even the tiny trick-or-treaters who are a little vague about the whole process. But spooky movies and haunted houses are way too scary. Giving candy to pillowcase-toting kids as tall as I am who don't even bother to say "Thank you" is irritating. And decorating the yard with a bunch of plastic witches, skeletons, and pumpkin-head lights? Forget it.

Then there is always the stressful question of how much candy to buy and what kind. Do you get stuff you like and end up eating way too much of it yourself? Or do you get stuff you don't like and end up tossing the leftovers in the trash? Or should you get candy at all? My adult kids probably still roll their eyes when they remember my Halloween health-food phase of giving out peanuts or little boxes of raisins instead of candy—especially because my non-candy views never kept me from begging a couple of pieces of chocolate out of their bags. 

At any rate, it's a relief now to live on a dead-end street where the houses are scattered on large lots and nobody bothers to come trick-or-treating. I can leave the porch light off and skip the whole thing with a clear conscience. And I don't even have to think about whether my low opinion of Halloween is merely resentment because I never got any trick-or-treat candy when I was a kid.

According to reliable information that I just made up because I didn't find any statistics after five minutes of intensive Internet research, some of the safest drivers are middle-aged women whose kids are grown. Here are the top ten reasons this is true:

10. We're not distracted by eating in the car because we're always trying to lose five pounds.

9. After all those years of preparing family meals, we're not going to do anything that might increase our insurance premiums and reduce the money we have available for eating out.

8. We're not distracted by changing music CDs because all our favorite songs are still on cassette tapes.

7. It's hard to flirt your way out of a ticket when the patrolman is young enough to be your kid.

6. We're not distracted by looking for a radio station because we can easily find by touch the only two stations we listen to: oldies and NPR.

5. We don't touch up our makeup while we're driving because the magnifying mirror won't fit on the dashboard.

4. We never drink and drive because alcohol has too many calories.

3. We're less likely to use our cell phones while we drive. We don't answer the phone because it's buried in the bottom of our purse, so even if we hear it ring we won't be able to find it. We don't make calls because we've never figured out how to use speed dial and we can't see the keypad without our reading glasses.

2. After years of driving while simultaneously feeding Cheerios to toddlers in car seats, answering questions like "Where do babies come from?", and refereeing squabbles about who gets to sit by the window, being alone in the car makes driving a snap.

And the most important reason middle-aged women are the best drivers?

1. We know that, if we do get into an accident, the police report and the newspaper article are going to give our age.

Things that make a logical woman think twice:

Why, as a group of us were working out the other morning at the women-only fitness center, the background music was "Macho, Macho Man."

Why the covers of certain women's magazines always feature both a photo of a mouth-watering dessert (recipe on page 87) and a headline about the latest diet plan (details on page 34). It would seem to make more sense to alternate them, with one month's dessert leading logically to the next month's diet plan.

Why a newly purchased bottle of cosmetic stuff included a warning on the label: "Keep product away from of eyes." It was intended to be reassuring, no doubt, but it wasn't exactly practical. The stuff was eye makeup remover.

Why manufacturers and bra designers (now there's a 14-year-old boy's dream job for you) are so careful to make bras fit smoothly so they don't show under tee-shirts—and then they stick a decorative little ribbon or rosette right in the middle. There are probably entire factories in China dedicated to making these rosettes, which are shipped by the billions to bra-making factories, where hardworking women painstakingly sew them on. The bras are shipped to wholesalers, then distributed to stores, where they are bought by hardworking women who take them home, dig out their seam rippers or fingernail scissors, painstakingly cut off the little rosettes, and toss them into the trash.

Why children will sit at the dinner table and painstakingly separate every bit of fat out of their steak or their pork chop to avoid letting the most microscopic speck of the gross and disgusting stuff pass their delicate little lips—yet at the breakfast table, those same children will lie, cheat, steal, and elbow each other in order to get third and fourth pieces of bacon.

Just wondering. A logical woman would like to know.

One of the many humorous/inspiring/possibly fake/probably plagiarized emails that periodically circulates around the Internet is about "resigning from adulthood." It talks about turning in your driver's license and becoming a kid again.

Are you kidding? Who would ever want to be a kid again? True, adults have more responsibility in the gainful employment and buying your own groceries departments. I'll accept that responsibility any day in return for all the benefits of being an adult, like no algebra homework, no school lunches, and choosing your own bedtime.

Here is my Top Ten list of the reasons it's better to be an adult than a kid:

10. You get to plan your own menus.

9. In the car, you almost always get to sit in the front by a window.

8. You can paint your room whatever color you wish.

7. You can eat watermelon just before bedtime if you want to.

6. You can decide for yourself whether you're cold and should put on a sweater.

5. Nobody says you can only read one more chapter before you go to bed.

4. You can do anything your older siblings get to do.

3. If you want a puppy or a kitten, you don't have to settle for a goldfish.

2. Two words: driver's license.

And the top reason it's better to be an adult than a kid?

1. Grandchildren.

Have you heard the one about the midgets, the professional wrestler, and the kangaroo?

No, it isn't an off-color and politically incorrect joke. It's a love story. Well, a wedding story, at least, from this year's Sturgis Rally. The description of the ceremony made the August 9 Rapid City Journal—in the "nation and world" section rather than "life and style."

The wrestler, here for the Rally in a professional capacity, was the bride. The midgets, both guys who are part of her team of performers, were wedding attendants. (I know, I know, the preferred term is "little people," but the bride called them midgets.) Jack, the kangaroo, escorted the bride down the improvised aisle at the Buffalo Chip campground.

Oh, there was a groom, too. Being neither midget nor marsupial, he rated only a brief mention toward the end of the article.

The bride wore a white leather bikini top trimmed tastefully with fringe. The matching bikini bottom and sheer white overskirt fit just low enough to accent the tattoo across her abdomen. Jack, despite having no visible tattoos, was dapper in his own fur coat and a black leather vest. The rest of the wedding party presumably wore Harley black.

Jack lives at the Roo Ranch near Deadwood, though, as you might expect, he isn't a South Dakota native. He's from Texas. I'm not sure why the Black Hills has a tourist attraction featuring kangaroos and other critters from Down Under instead of native species like the buffalo or the jackalope. Maybe the local tourism market has more of those than it knows what to do with. Or maybe eventually we'll see a new hybrid—the jackaroo, perhaps, or the roo-alope or the buffaroo.

At any rate, Jack, an experienced advertising model, performed his role as the bride's escort with all the dignity appropriate to such a solemn occasion. A good thing, too. Given the bride's profession, she probably would have been able to ensure his cooperation if necessary with a choke hold or a full body slam. She chose a softer method of persuasion, however, coaxing him up to the altar with a handful of his favorite treats. It's amazing the things a guy will do just to get a couple of breath mints.

Each of the bride's previous wedding ceremonies had been, she said, "very traditional. I thought, 'That's not working for me.'"

Apparently not. This was her sixth wedding.

Maybe, this time, everyone involved will live hoppily ever after.

Raccoons have invaded Safeway. It's the only logical explanation.

If you're raising sweet corn, raccoons are not your friends. It wouldn't be so bad if they just helped themselves to a few ears for dinner now and then, but they destroy far more than they eat. A couple of them can ruin whole rows of almost ripe corn in just a few nights.

Like people, raccoons want their corn on the cob to be just right. They'll go along a row, pulling down ear after ear of corn with their clever little hands and stripping the husks from the top to see whether the corn is ripe. It if isn't perfect, they go on to the next one, leaving the rejected ear to dry out and die.

Apparently, also like people, raccoons have discovered that it can be more convenient to buy sweet corn at the store than to pick it yourself. The bin of corn at Safeway has their handprints all over it. Sometimes half the ears have a wide strip of husk peeled down from the top. Rejected as not quite perfect, the ears have been tossed back into the bin. They lie there, drying out and becoming increasing unappealing to subsequent shoppers, until eventually the produce manager decides it's time to throw them out.

Surely people wouldn't do this. Not responsible, local-produce-buying, reusable-bag-carrying grocery shoppers. They surely would know that a solid, even ear without obvious signs of bugs will probably be perfectly good. Or they would have figured out that you can check an ear of corn for ripeness without ruining it; you just make a small slit with your fingernail in one side of the husk to peek at the kernels. Above all, people would certainly realize that wasting so much corn means the store has to charge more for it.

Nope, all those annoying corn vandals have to be raccoons. Admittedly, I've never actually seen a raccoon pushing a shopping cart through the produce section at Safeway. But then, I wouldn't necessarily recognize one if I did see it. After all, it would have been wearing a mask.

The subject line of the email was "erase wrinkles while you sleep." I assumed it was an ad for some miracle face cream made with yak butter, a newly discovered rejuvenating supplement, or a newly rediscovered ancient secret ingredient harvested from deep in the rain forest.

Ordinarily I would have sent it straight to the trash with the rest of the spam. I'd have missed this opportunity to look younger, just as I regularly spurn opportunities to find free government grants, buy cheaper car insurance, order upside-down tomato planters, and of course gain millions by sending my bank account information to someone from Nigeria.

But my computer was slow that morning. While I was waiting for it to finish thinking, I had time to read the wrinkle-erasing ad. It wasn't selling a cream, a supplement, or a new form of Botox. It was selling a pillowcase. Only $19.95, plus $7.95 shipping and handling—and order now to get a second one absolutely free except for additional shipping and handling.

These pillowcases, described as "the world's best kept beauty secret," are made from silk charmeuse, which sounds as if it comes from French-speaking silkworms. According to the ad, this silk contains natural protein. It also hydrates your skin.

I'm not sure the idea of a skin-hydrating pillowcase is all that appealing. It sounds too much like trying to go to sleep on one of those hot, muggy summer nights when everything feels clammy and you keep turning your pillow over just in case the underside might be a little bit cooler.

Then there is the minor technical detail that, in order to take advantage of the wonderful proteins and skin-hydrators in your silk charmeuse pillowcase, you would presumably need to sleep with your face mashed into the fabric. If you sleep on your side, you'd have to be sure to turn over in the middle of the night in order to avoid waking up with one side of your face looking younger than the other. If you sleep on your back, you'd apparently just be out of luck.

What I found most fascinating, however, was the refreshing truth in advertising of this email. My guess is that one of these pillowcases would work exactly as specified.

Nowhere in the careful wording of its two paragraphs was it stated that this beauty secret would eliminate wrinkles in your skin. You might indeed wake up in the morning and find fewer wrinkles than usual. Not in your face, though. In your pillowcase.

It's probably not worth $19.95, plus shipping and handling, to find out for sure.

Last week one of my relatives had abdominal surgery (which went well, thank you for asking, and he's recovering nicely). When all the cutting and stitching was finished, he was left without his belly button.

This led me to contemplate something I'd never considered before: the navel. On the inside.

We all know about the outside of the navel. It marks the place where the umbilical cord attaches to bring in all the oxygen and nutrients the developing fetus needs. After we emerge from the womb to become air-breathing little mammals, the cord dries up and drops off, leaving a neat little innie or outie behind to collect lint and help us locate our waists.

But obviously, all the good stuff traveling through the cord has to get somewhere inside the unborn baby's body. So exactly does it connect to in there, and how? And after we're born, is it still attached to anything? Or is it just there, like a bricked-over doorway that's no longer needed?

This required research. I asked one R.N., two veterinarians, and several mothers. Then I Googled "umbilicus." I do love the Internet; there was stuff online about the belly button that I never even knew I wanted to know.

First, briefly, the biology. In the fetus, the umbilical cord includes one vein and two arteries. It connects to the liver and the heart. I think it connects to other places as well, but finding out exactly where involved more multi-syllabic words than I wanted to look up.

This is the cool part. Within a week or so after a baby is born, the internal umbilical blood vessels become ligaments. There are six of these that connect our belly buttons to various places, including the liver and the bladder. I don't know just how important those ligaments are in holding everything together in there. Still, we probably ought to stand up straight and suck in our bellies; they probably appreciate the help.

Of course, the Internet being the Internet, my search results didn't stop at the physiology of the navel. I found a rhyming dictionary site with a bunch of words that rhyme with "umbilicus." These included Bacchus, hibiscus, circus, and hocus-pocus; feel free to create your own poem.

I also found a site with detailed descriptions, complete with photographs, of ways to enhance the appearance of one's belly button through plastic surgery. I'd never considered umbilical reshaping as one of life's necessities—or even one of life's luxuries—but I suppose if one were considering a career as a swim suit model it might be helpful.

Or my relative could always consult a plastic surgeon to rebuild his missing navel. I doubt that he will, though. Through the miracles of modern medicine, with a little help from his family, he already has a prosthetic umbilicus. On the front of his hospital gown, someone has pinned a bright yellow button.

We went for a walk today right after breakfast. The sun was shining. The air was mild. The neighborhood turkeys (that's the birds, not the people who live down the block) were out and about. It was a delightful morning.

Okay, that may sound boring to you. To us, it's about the most exciting thing that's happened for a couple of weeks. It's June in the Black Hills: gardens are planted, schools are out, and tourists are arriving. And it's been raining. We've had one cold, gray, drizzly day after another, and we've almost forgotten what the sun looks like.

True, the grass is lush and green, though it is beginning to exhibit a rather sickly yellowish tone. The tomato plants seem smaller than they were when they were planted, huddled into themselves with their leaves curled in what appears to be a vain attempt to keep warm. The mother robin on her nest under the deck has been sitting stoically under the incessant drips coming through the space between the boards above her head. At least she's eating well; there are earthworms all over the yard, presumably driven aboveground by flooding.

It's so wet here that Rapid City is beginning to feel like Seattle or Portland. We don't want to live in Seattle or Portland. If we did, we would move there.

South Dakota used to be the Sunshine State until the tourism marketing people decided to change its official nickname to the Mount Rushmore State. No doubt that makes a certain amount of sense. After all, other places, like Florida and Arizona, have plenty of sunshine, but there is only one Mount Rushmore.

Yet, nickname change or not, we still feel like the Sunshine State. Our winter days are invigorating, our autumn days are crisp, our spring days are mild, and our summer days are long—because they're blessed with ample sunshine. Day after day of gray moisture just isn't what we're used to here in western South Dakota.

It's not that we don't appreciate the rain. In this generally dry area, moisture is sometimes surprising and almost always welcome. But after a while, all the humidity, all the green, and the constant gray skies simply don't feel normal. Lush just isn't us. We're more accustomed to complaining about the rain we "sure could use" than enjoying the rain we "sure are getting."

Yes, moisture is a blessing, but we've been blessed enough for now, thank you. We're ready for some sunshine.

Of all the many differences between men and women, this one puzzles me the most. Why are men perfectly content to walk around in public with the size displayed on the outside of their pants?

No woman would ever do this. Okay, if she had been dieting until she got down to, say, a size four, she would certainly be tempted to advertise that fact by "accidentally" letting a label flip over to the outside where other women might see it. She wouldn't actually do so, of course. Instead, she would go buy a colorful belt or scarf to emphasize her newly trimmed waistline.

Any woman who wears a size larger than about eight is certainly not going to share that information with the whole world. If she stands up straight, tightens her abdominal muscles, and wears a loose jacket over those pants that are just ever so slightly too tight, people might think she's a size or two smaller than the actual labels safely out of sight on the inside of her clothes.

A guy, on the other hand, will put on his jeans and head out the door, not caring about the label on the back that tells the whole world he wears a 42 waist and a 32 inseam.

I don't know whether this means that men have more self-confidence than women, that men care less about their appearance than women do, or that most men simply don't notice such minor details as clothing sizes.

Maybe guys understand better than women do that what people notice is your body size rather than your clothing size. After all, both size four and size 3XXX pretty much speak for themselves.

Or maybe, for a guy, it's okay to advertise that he wears size 42 pants because he knows that his actual waist is closer to 46. That measurement just happens to be a little bit higher than the top of his pants and several inches out in front of his belt buckle.