Just For Fun

The first words I heard when I answered the phone were, “Don’t be alarmed!”

Funny, until that very moment I had no idea there was anything to be alarmed about. Though, in fact, I wasn’t alarmed, because I recognized the caller’s voice. It was Rachel.

Rachel has called us perhaps two dozen times over the past year, quite concerned about the warranties on our cars. She would be instantly recognizable even if she didn’t identify herself by name. Her voice is nasal and, though she speaks unaccented English, she sounds vaguely European.

Rachel has two messages: One starts with, “Allo, this is Rachel,” and the other with, “Don’t be alarmed.” In the latter, she says, “This is your final notice.” This confuses me; if it’s really the final notice, why does she keep calling?

Come to think of it, why does she keep calling at all? We have our number listed with the Do Not Call registry. I would tell Rachel this, except that it wouldn’t do any good, because she is a recording. At least I can hang up on her without feeling guilty.

It’s not as easy to get rid of the fundraisers who are calling to solicit donations to charitable organizations. Unfortunately, these calls aren’t covered by the Do Not Call registry. What I hate are the callers who have been trained to ask me how I am, comment on the weather, and in general chat me up as if they’ve been waiting for years to have me as their new best friend.

I already have plenty of friends. I don’t want to discuss the weather with hired money solicitors from New Jersey or Puerto Rico or Indonesia. I don’t want to tell them how I am. I don’t care how they are. And if I wanted to donate money to their charities, I would do it directly instead of going through a fundraising firm that keeps most of the money.

My partner’s pet peeve with telemarketers is those who, trying to be his best pal, call him by his first name in every other sentence. He tells them he never does business with people who use his first name with such familiarity even though they’ve never met. What is most interesting about this is the number of callers who simply don’t get it. The whole concept of addressing someone as “Mr.” is foreign to them. Some of them try to calm his annoyance by getting even chummier, which of course means using his name even more often. They don’t seem to understand why this doesn’t work.

One of my sisters is a master at dealing with telemarketers. One of her most outstanding performances was her response to the caller who wanted to sell her some sort of wonder additive to keep the septic tank functioning properly. She went off on a rant about toxic chemicals and environmental toxins and polluting the groundwater, complete, thanks to her chemistry degree, with plenty of five-dollar words. The poor man tried to respond at first, stumbling and sputtering, but he grew increasingly agitated and confused. Finally he hung up on her.

I’ve never gotten rid of a telemarketer with quite such flair, but I have hope. I’ve also stopped feeling obligated to be polite to them. True, when it comes to dream jobs, telemarketing has to be right down there with cleaning hog confinement facilities or being O. J. Simpson’s publicist. But if enough people get fed up and quit, maybe there won’t be so many of them calling me.

In the meantime, here’s my simple message for Rachel and her ilk. Don’t call me. If I’m interested in what you’re selling—or if Hell freezes over, whichever happens first—I’ll call you.

(If you haven’t ever had a call from Rachel, and you’d like to keep it that way by listing your number with the Do Not Call registry, go to http://www.donotcall.gov or call 888-382-1222.)

Why do we still call it a “glove compartment?” Do you keep gloves in yours? Do you know anyone who does? Does anybody even wear gloves while they’re driving any more?

Even in South Dakota in January, even those of us with chronically cold hands only keep our gloves on for the first few minutes, until the car warms up. Then we toss them—not into the glove compartment, of course, but onto the seat beside us, along with the ice scraper, our extra scarf, two overdue library books, and yesterday’s junk mail. After all, wearing gloves while you’re driving makes it hard to use your cell phone, and texting is nearly impossible.

Speaking of cell phones, why do we still say we “dial” them? Probably 75 percent of the cell phone users in the world have never even seen, much less used, a dial phone. I’m not sure it’s a good idea to admit this, but we still have a dial phone in our basement. It’s a heavy salmon-pink thing that probably was put in when the house was moved to its current location in 1973 or 1974, and it was going out of fashion even then. It still works, and it’s useful to have around, because neither of our modern phones with their built-in answering systems will function if we have a blizzard and the power goes out.

Even though our language is changing all the time, it still doesn’t keep up with the changes in our world. We keep on using expressions and idioms even though we don’t really know what they mean any more. Because we don’t have any context, sometimes the expressions come out just a little crooked.

I remember reading a magazine profile of a young actress. She was talking about a well-known actor she had recently worked with, and how she had learned interesting things from his down-to-earth manner. She quoted a saying she had learned from him, about staying out of other people’s disagreements because “I don’t have a dog in the sights.”

That made no sense whatsoever until I figured out that what the actor must have said was, “I don’t have a dog in this fight.”

Then there’s one of my pet peeves that I see misused in print more and more: having something or someone “on a loose reign.” Someone who’s never been around horses won’t necessarily have any idea what a “loose rein” is. They’ve heard the expression, they know it means not controlling things too firmly, and perhaps they have a vague idea that it has something to do with a king or queen ruling leniently. Hence “loose reign” instead of “loose rein.”

This used to show up in our local newspaper regularly, until I wrote them a letter about it some time ago, and they don’t seem to use that expression these days. I can imagine the editor issuing a memo: “Don’t use ‘loose rein’ at all, because if you get it wrong that annoying nitpicky woman will write us another sarcastic letter.”

My all-time favorite mangled expression, though, may be the infamous “baited breath.” This actually appeared in our paper some years ago, used by a young intern in a column about anticipating her upcoming wedding. I wrote a letter inquiring whether “baited breath” was what young women used to capture unsuspecting bridegrooms.

Years later I was talking with a former reporter for the paper, and somehow that letter came up in our conversation. He said, “You wrote the ‘baited breath’ letter? That was a great letter; it was up on the bulletin board in the newsroom for years.”

It was one of my proudest moments.

It all started with Thanksgiving dinner. I took sweet potatoes to the family dinner and got a bit carried away with the quantity, so my sister ended up with a generous amount of leftover yams in her refrigerator.

A few days later, she emailed all of us a recipe for sweet potato biscuits. They were good, she said, and a great way to use up leftovers. Being fond of both biscuits and sweet potatoes, I printed the recipe with every intention of trying it.

But since I do like sweet potatoes so much, what I do with the leftovers is heat them up in the microwave and eat them. The biscuit recipe sat on my counter for weeks, and I never managed to save enough extra yams to try it out.

This week, needing to take something to a potluck, I had an inspiration. Why not try the recipe with pumpkin instead?

Usually, for me, the words “inspiration” and “cooking” should not be used in the same sentence. At the end of my life, I may be remembered fondly, but it certainly won’t be for my culinary skills.

This time, though, I figured I was on safe ground. Sweet potatoes, pumpkin—what’s the difference, really? They’re both vegetables that are good for you. (Or is pumpkin a vegetable? Can something still count as a vegetable if you use it primarily in pie?) Anyway, once cooked, they look a lot alike—a squishy orange ingredient is a squishy orange ingredient, after all.

Except for that one little substitution, I followed the recipe exactly—more or less. I did add some salt, and some sugar, and I used pumpkin pie spice instead of nutmeg because I didn’t have any nutmeg. But otherwise I put in everything pretty much as called for. I was so confident that I even doubled the recipe.

I sampled a biscuit as soon as they came out of the oven, needing to know whether we had to allow time for a stop at the Safeway deli on the way to the potluck. It was good, even if it had a bit of an identity crisis—not quite a dinner roll, yet not quite sweet enough to pass itself off as dessert.

I took the biscuits to the potluck, not exactly going out of my way to announce that I had made them, but prepared to claim responsibility if challenged.

And a remarkable thing happened. After the meal, a woman came up to me and asked what those biscuits were. Pumpkin, I admitted warily.

"They were just delicious," she said. "I ate two. Next month, could you bring the recipe?” 

Managing to maintain my composure, I told her I’d be delighted to share the recipe. And I was delighted. This was a momentous occasion. It was only the second time in my life that anyone had asked me for a recipe.

I’d better hurry and write it down before I forget what I did.

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New Year’s Eve: parties, dancing, champagne, noisemakers, kisses at the stroke of midnight, excitement, and celebrations.

Or not.

Looking back on Auld Lang Syne, I can’t remember many spectacular and exciting New Year’s Eve celebrations. And no, that’s not for the reason you might think. I’ve never been the type to party so heartily as to be uncertain the next morning whether or not I had a good time.

Instead, my inability to remember exciting celebrations is because I haven’t participated in many exciting celebrations. Being more of a lark than a night owl, I’ve never found it easy to stay awake long enough to party into the wee hours. Dancing? Absolutely. Dancing till dawn? Not so much.

Oh, there are a few New Year’s parties I remember. The year my then-husband and I shuttled between two dances 15 miles apart in two different small towns. The New Year’s kiss from the guy at the North Star Saloon, whose name I have forgotten but whose surprisingly soft mustache I still remember. The at-home party where several friends and a couple of guitar players spent most of the evening piecing together the words to the Kenny Rogers song “The Gambler.”

Then there was the year the kids decided it was essential to bring in the New Year in proper fashion. To them—or at least to the 13-year-old party planner extraordinaire who was the leader of the project—this meant confetti. We said okay, as long as they promised to clean up the mess. Armed with scissors and paper punches, they spent days and days deconstructing a ream or more of construction paper. By New Year’s Eve the younger ones were complaining of sore fingers and starting to rebel, but they had a trash bag full of confetti.

When midnight came, they blew noisemakers, shouted “Happy New Year!”, and threw their confetti all over each other and the downstairs family room. It probably took them 45 seconds. The next morning they spent at least an hour vacuuming up the colorful bits of paper. Oddly enough, they never felt the same need for confetti at future celebrations.

This New Year’s Eve, we were in a town famous throughout southern New Mexico for its annual street celebration, complete with well-known bands, food, and fireworks. The party was only a few blocks away. We could easily have walked there and back. But after a poor night’s sleep the previous night and a five-mile hike earlier in the day, we were tired.

I went to bed at 8:30. The New Year, as far as I can tell, managed to show up perfectly well without me.

Whether you partied or not, stayed up late or not, or had to clean up your own confetti, I hope your New Year’s Eve was a happy one. Even more, I hope 2009 proves to be a year filled with joy, serenity, and many blessings.

Happy New Year to all—and to all a good night's sleep.

When you hike with a geologist, you get used to picking up rocks. Or, at least, to watching the geologist pick up rocks. A wise hiking companion learns early on to enforce a fundamental rule: “If you want to haul it home, you carry it yourself.”

Last weekend I had a chance to apply this excellent rule to a different branch of science. A group of us went for a hike in the Black Hills. It’s recently been hunting season in the national forest for both deer and pronghorn antelope, and along the way we found the remains of several semi-fresh carcasses.

One member of our group is a biologist who teaches at a small college with a small budget. She wanted the pronghorn skull we found to add to her collection of specimens for her comparative anatomy class. Her initial plan was to leave the carcass by the trail and come back later, armed with the proper tools, to remove the skull.

But another of the hikers always carries a small pack that, like Mary Poppins’s carpetbag, has room for any number of amazing and useful things. She just happened to have a large plastic bag and a sizable Swiss Army knife with a saw blade. She volunteered to help with the decapitation.

The biologist’s paleontologist husband was willing to assist, as well, even though the corpses he usually works with tend to be less fresh than this one by several million years. The dog would have been happy to help, too. Her volunteer efforts were politely declined.

The details of the skull removal, like the way the outer sheaths of the horns separated from the underlying bases, were actually quite interesting. Still, several of us decided not to watch the whole process but to walk on a little farther down the trail. Like anonymous donors to a dubious political cause, we supported the operation in principle but felt a need to distance ourselves from the smell.

There’s nothing like a little hands-on biology to increase one’s appreciation of a good, odor-neutral rock.

As the mother of the groom, your primary role at the wedding is supposedly to “show up, shut up, and wear beige.” This advice presumably applies even more strongly to the stepmother of the groom.

Okay, the “showing up and shutting up” part is no problem. It’s great to be able to enjoy the festivities without having to worry about the details like whether the candles match the tablecloths exactly, and whether technical glitches will mar the slide show of embarrassing childhood photos of the happy couple, and whether it’s safe to seat Aunt Margaret and Uncle Leonard at the same table with Cousin Betty or whether they’re still feuding over that little incident from the last family wedding.

But wearing beige? No way. There’s the elegant red suit that will be perfect for the rehearsal dinner. There’s the slinky black velvet skirt that will be just right for the wedding. And, of course, if the stepmother of the groom wants to be able to wear either of those things and breathe at the same time, there’s the extra five pounds that she really ought to lose.

Two months before the wedding: It’s only five pounds. Eat a little less, exercise a little more, lose a pound a week. No problem.

One month before the wedding: Okay, so losing four pounds will be close enough. Eat a little less, exercise a little more, lose a pound a week. No problem.

Two weeks before the wedding: A couple of pounds one way or another won’t really make much difference. Maybe if I just don’t eat much the day before the wedding?

Two days before the wedding: The answer is so obvious, I can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. It’s the instant, no-diet slimming solution. Control-top panty hose.

Not, of course, in beige.

It was a beautiful morning, a perfect day to be outside enjoying the crisp air, the deep blue skies, and the fall colors. Taking deep breaths, we could savor the aromas of October in the Black Hills: charred wood, gasoline, and sawdust.

The deep breaths were a necessity, because we were working hard. With propane prices around two bucks a gallon, we needed wood to keep the Fischer stove in the basement going all winter. Some friends needed to get rid of fire-killed trees on their property. In an attempt to meet both of these needs at once, we were out in the woods like a quartet of Paul Bunyan wannabes.

At least the two of us (male) who were using chainsaws might have been trying to be Paul Bunyan. The two of us (female) who were hauling 12-foot logs to the trailer felt more like Babe the Blue Ox.

Not sexism, just a matter of relative experience and upper body strength. Besides, I wasn’t complaining. I’m perfectly happy to keep my fingers—all ten of them, perfectly intact, thank you—away from tools that are capable of taking off human appendages in one swipe.

So I was fine being half of the log-carrying team, despite the fact that the only place level enough to park the trailer was at the top of the hill. This meant lugging most of the logs uphill, huffing and puffing under their weight like the Little Engine That Wasn’t Quite Sure It Could.

Handling charred wood isn’t the cleanest of tasks, so we were all outfitted in old clothes, boots, and leather gloves. I had on a pair of hand-me-down camouflage coveralls originally worn by my tallest brother-in-law. They fit well enough, except where the crotch was a little baggy around my knees.

In addition to keeping most of the dirt on the outside, the coveralls served as some protection from the tall, spiky weeds that were creating their own miniature forest among the burned trees. Based on my extensive research (looking in two “flowers of North America” guidebooks and spending 7 minutes on the Internet), I think they were common mullein.

On one website, I found them under the heading, “Least Wanted.” After tromping for several hours through mulleins standing higher than my head, I quite agree.

Each woody spike was topped with scores of seeds eager to attach themselves to the clothes of any woodcutter who came too close. Think watermelon seeds covered with Velcro. In case anyone should ever need to know, straddling a mullein plant while carrying a heavy log uphill is an effective but slightly uncomfortable way to strip off a whole lot of seeds at once.

By mid-afternoon, we were worn out. One of the saws had gone through two chains and was out of action. We were coated with enough charcoal to grill a hamburger and enough mullein seeds to plant a quarter section. We were also beginning to realize that our shaky knees and battered biceps probably felt a lot better than they were going to feel the next morning.

But we had a load of logs securely strapped to the trailer. Two more loads were stacked and ready to be hauled. None of the trees had fallen on us, the fence, the cars, the trailer, or the dog. We still had all 80 of the fingers and toes we had started out with. We'd had fun. All in all, a successful day.

There’s an old saying that wood is fuel that warms you twice, once when you cut it and once when you burn it. I’ve never fully appreciated that statement until now.

How much was that propane price again?

It was an exciting Saturday night in Rapid City. We indulged in one of those rare, once-every-few-years experiences.

We cleaned the oven.

Just to be clear—I have cleaned ovens before. Several times, in fact. Maybe up to a dozen times. After all, I have moved a lot during my lifetime, and sometimes a clean oven counts toward getting your deposit back.

But I’ve lived in this house for four years now, without ever cleaning the oven. My partner has lived in this house for 30 years, some 20 of those as a single guy. He refused comment on whether the oven had been cleaned during this period, confining himself to a noncommittal statement about “eating out a lot.”

At any rate—and with no blame implied—it was obvious that the oven hadn’t been cleaned in a long time. It was impossible to see through the window. The sides were a deep brown. There were enough layers of baked-on black gunk on the bottom to keep archeologists busy for years analyzing the various periods of occupation.

Clearly, drastic action was called for. We rose to the challenge, one step at a time.

Step One: Buy oven cleaner. I was surprised but pleased to find some lemon-scented stuff that promised “no fumes.”

Step Two. Scrape off the loose top layers of charred material from the bottom of the oven. Never mind that this destroyed the potential for several Master’s degrees in archeology.

Step Three: Read the directions on the oven cleaner. This can had two sets of detailed instructions, one for “two-hour” cleaning and one for “overnight” cleaning. They were identical in their requirements about using it only on a cold oven, their advice about wiping off the softened gunk with a wet sponge, and their cautions about ventilation and not spraying oneself in the face. The only difference was that one version specified leaving the cleaner to work for two hours, while the other specified leaving it overnight. Why not simply say, “leave cleaner for two to ten hours?” Unless, of course, you’re being paid by the word.

Step Four: Begin spraying the oven. This step was a reminder not to believe everything you read. “No fumes,” my asphyxiation. True, the stuff did have a faint undertone of lemon. But the top notes consisted of classic oven-cleaner aroma in all its caustic glory.

Step Five: Open windows and set up a fan. Finish spraying, covering mouth and nose whenever possible and trying to keep one’s head out of the oven.

Step Six: Wait two hours, and start wiping the gross brown gunk out of the oven. Use lots of water. Change water often. Keep fan running. Remember why cleaning the oven, like having a tax audit or a colonoscopy, is one of those things not to do any more often than absolutely necessary.

Step Seven: Do a second application of oven cleaner on several resistant black spots.

Step Eight: Wait two hours. Try to wipe off resistant black spots. Decide said spots have archeological significance and should be left undisturbed.

Step Nine: Cover newly cleaned bottom of the oven with aluminum foil.

Step Ten: Discover that it’s possible to see through clean window in oven door. (Or, at least, it would be if the light worked.) Open door and admire gleaming oven—from a slight distance, to avoid the lingering traces of the “no-fumes” cleaner.

Step Eleven. Decide to go out for Sunday dinner. After all, when you have an oven this clean, you don’t want to mess it up by cooking in it.

Step Twelve: Bask in the glow of your achievement. Savor the sense of having triumphed over adversity. People who clean their ovens every few weeks will never know this feeling of accomplishment.

All right. We’re on a roll here. Next Saturday night, maybe we’ll clean the garage, organize a couple of closets, or recaulk the bathtub.

Or maybe we could just go to a movie.

It was a James Bond kind of car. The kind of car you notice, even if, like me, you can’t tell a Lexus from a BMW and never have understood the fascination of the ’59 Chevy.

This racy two-seater convertible, though, I couldn’t help but notice as I pulled into the space beside it in the Safeway parking lot and got out. My own baby SUV, normally a petite and dainty lady compared to its usual associates of full-sized sedans, pickups, and SUVs, suddenly seemed tall and clumsy, as if it might trip over its own tires.

With its top down, the sports car—red, of course—scarcely came up past my knees. Its seats were real leather. Its dashboard was real wood. It reeked of expensive, understated elegance. Thanks to the discreet Union Jack on one fender and the word “Triumph” across the back, I recognized it instantly as a British Triumph.

I was surprised to see it in the Safeway parking lot. Not because there aren’t people in Rapid City who could afford such a car. Not because sports cars are all that unusual here, even if this is four-wheel drive country. It just seemed odd to me that anyone would go to the grocery store in a car that had no room in it for the groceries.

When I came out of the store 20 minutes later with my own groceries, the Triumph was still parked beside my Honda. As I unlocked my car to unload my grocery cart, I saw a middle-aged man walking purposefully toward the convertible. He was one of the store managers, still in his apron.

Could the convertible be his car? It was possible, certainly—mild-mannered produce department manager by day, playboy by night. I hoped, though, he would at least take off the apron before he drove off. Somehow, I just couldn’t appreciate the glamour of seeing him driving down the highway with the top down, his apron strings fluttering in the breeze.

Then I noticed a second man behind him. As they approached the Triumph, it became clear that this man had gone in to get the store manager because he had noticed something wrong with the car.

As I put my groceries into my back seat—funny, I had never noticed just how roomy it was—the manger was writing down the Triumph’s license plate. Then he pulled out the keys that the convertible’s driver had left hanging from the trunk. “Thanks for telling me about this,” he said. “We’ll make an announcement on the intercom.”

Anyone happening by who had an uncontrollable longing to own a sports car could have taken the keys, driven away, and been halfway to Nebraska before the owner came out of the store. I’m sure, in many places, that’s exactly what someone would have done.

Apparently, I live in a town full of honest citizens. Or maybe no one with larcenous intent had noticed the keys. Maybe there aren’t a lot of car thieves prowling the parking lot at Safeway late on a Sunday afternoon.

Or maybe the real answer is more practical than ethical. Maybe no one coming out of the grocery store was interested in taking a car that had no place to put the groceries.

As a follow-up to last week’s discussion of ankle-threatening Chihuahuas, here’s a dramatic, touching, and perhaps even heart-warming story. It began with the following ad in the local paper:

“Two lost Chihuahuas, last seen Sunday, Sep. 21. One light tan, tall and skinny, goes by the name of Pancho, the other short and fat, mostly brown with some white, wearing an orange Harley Davidson collar, goes by the name of Cisco. Reward offered for safe return.”

I’m not sure just what size a Chihuahua has to be to be considered “tall.” Nor do I quite see the point of describing the other one as “short.” Of course he’s short—he’s a Chihuahua, for Pete’s sake.

It’s the Harley Davidson collar, though, that explains everything. There was a motorcycle rally in this area last week. It attracted some 30,000 bikers, according to an informant in leathers who was sitting on the porch of a coffee shop in a small tourist town.

So it’s a pretty good guess that Pancho and Cisco took off for the rally. In that crowd, nobody’s going to notice a couple more guys in their Harley gear.

But what really made the story intriguing was the second ad, right below the first one: “Lost last Sunday. White Poodle.”

Obviously, for a sheltered and pampered lady, the prospect of an escapade with two cool biker dudes was too much to resist. She just couldn’t pass up the chance to be seen on the back of a bike with these guys.

And who wouldn’t want to go along? Anyone, at least, who is a fan of old Western movies. Mount up, everyone—Pancho and The Cisco Kid are riding again.