Just For Fun

Technology is hazardous to your health.

I don’t mean the obvious and well-publicized risks we all hear about, such as driving 75 mph down a busy highway while arguing with your significant other on your cell phone. No, I’m talking about plain, old-fashioned physical danger.

Such as the time a few years ago, when my work included installing and supporting computers and networks, and I developed a persistent pain in my left elbow. The doctor diagnosed it as inflammation but had no idea of the cause. Eventually, I figured out that it was the result of sitting at my desk for long periods of time with the phone to my ear, leaning on my elbow, while I waited for a computer technician. I had "tech support elbow"—the 21st Century equivalent to "housemaid’s knee."

Much more recently, we nearly had a house fire, not from the old-fashioned wood stove or a carelessly placed candle, but from the brand new microwave oven. It seems that someone, who shall remain nameless—confession may be good for the soul, but public humiliation is not—put a frozen breakfast burrito in the microwave, set the time for 3.33 minutes and the power for 25%, and went off to get dressed. Unfortunately, the power button wasn’t pressed firmly enough to register with the microwave’s little electronic brain, so what the oven did was add 25 to 3.33 and come up with a time of 333.25 minutes at full power.

When said anonymous person came back to the kitchen six or seven minutes later, the microwave, filled with black smoke, was still industriously working on the cremains of the burrito. It took a day and a half to air out the house. Now, two weeks later, every time we open the microwave, we get a strong olfactory reminder of re-re-refried beans.

Then there was my near-concussion on the prairies of Wyoming a few weeks ago. Traveling on a cold, windy day, we stopped at a rest area, and I didn’t bother to put on my coat for the quick trip into the building. When I came out, I made a dash for the warm car. Without even slowing down, I clicked the button to unlock the car, yanked the door open—and slammed it into my forehead. I thought seeing stars only happened in cartoons. Not so. I had a tender, greenish-purple lump on my forehead for three days.

You may argue that this was the result more of awkwardness than technology. I disagree. This would not have happened except for the push-button door opener. Without it, I would have had to stop, put the key into the lock, turn it, and then open the door—all of which would have slowed me down sufficiently so I wouldn’t have hit myself with the door. That has to be case; such an embarrassingly clumsy accident certainly couldn’t have been my fault.

The strongest reminder of the dangers of technology, however, was demonstrated last week by an acquaintance who showed up at a meeting with a black eye. It was a classic, unmistakable shiner. And how did he get it? He doesn’t practice martial arts. He didn’t walk into a door in the middle of the night. He hit himself in the eye with his cell phone.

There you have it. Vivid proof, in blue-black and white. Technology is dangerous.

The S-word.

First the weatherman on the local television station used it—on the air. The teenage bagger at the supermarket said it, too. Then I heard it from one of my friends.

The S-word. Snow.

It was in the forecast for the higher hills and possibly for us in the foothills as well.

Snow. In mid-September, for Pete’s sake. I hadn’t even put away my sandals yet. I wasn’t ready for this. Whatever happened to global warming?

Still, faced with the strong likelihood of frost, regardless of the calendar, there was only one thing to do—cover the tomatoes.

Our tomato patch is a raised circular bed with a wire fence around it to keep out tomato-munching deer. To cover them seemed like a simple project: toss a big tarp over the whole thing and tie it down with rope.

We had just such a tarp, too. Unfortunately, it was spread out on the floor of my daughter and son-in-law’s garage, beneath stacks of boxes containing half their worldly possessions that hadn’t yet been moved into their new house. We could have bought another tarp, but that would have been silly, because we were expecting to get ours back any day. Or at least in a couple of weeks. Or next month. Or surely, at least, by next spring.

In the meantime, we had shivering tomato plants to protect. We did have two other tarps. They would just have to do. One of them would cover about half the tomato patch; the other was big enough for about another fourth of it. We scrounged in the garage and found two old blankets. Hey, good enough—we had it covered. Or at least we expected to have it covered soon.

We started pulling the biggest tarp over the top of the enclosure. The wind caught it and pulled it right back off, threatening to sail it halfway to Nebraska. We needed something to hold it temporarily while we got the ropes positioned and tied. I scrounged in the garage some more. Clothespins. Perfect.

Using them as temporary anchors, we got the first tarp positioned and tied in place. I burrowed under its edges on one side, then the other, to fasten the blankets to the fence with more clothespins. It would have been easier to put the blankets on first. Never mind—at least they were in place.

We positioned and tied the second tarp. It flapped furiously where its edge, facing the wind, overlapped the first tarp. It would have been better to do the overlap in the other direction. Never mind—at least everything was covered. Except for the little gap on that side, and the opening on this side, and the place over here where the tarps didn’t quite meet. Never mind—it was close enough. And at least we knew the knots would hold. Once a Boy Scout, after all, always a Boy Scout.

It’s amazing what a couple of college-educated adults can do with two tarps, two blankets, a couple dozen clothespins, yards of yellow string, and fifty feet of nylon rope—even, in this case, without using a single piece of duct tape.

Now, in the middle of the front yard squats a bulky blue/brown/yellow structure. It resembles a tent put up by a one-armed six-year-old completely lacking in construction skills. Every gust of wind seems likely to send the whole mess sailing into the air like an obese Mary Poppins, minus the umbrella.

Sure, it looks funny. Still, the objective here is not architecture but agriculture. The shelter, makeshift and lopsided as it might be, should still provide enough protection so the tomatoes live to ripen another day. If nothing else, they might turn red out of sheer embarrassment.

Great news this week from the world of fashion! For women, anyway, and possibly for men as well. The headline in last Sunday’s paper said it all: "Big on top and skinny on bottom hot for fall."

Don’t we all wish.

Actually, the article, by AP fashion writer Samantha Critchell, was about the latest style for fall. Apparently this new look is leggings worn under loose tops. I know, some of us remember back to the 80s, the last time leggings were the newest thing. It’s a completely different look this time, though. I know that, because Sally Singer, fashion news director for Vogue, said so. According to her, "This season is a fundamental change in how you’re going to get dressed in the morning."

Wow. I think. I don’t know if I’m ready for that. For years now, I’ve been putting on my pants one leg at a time, right leg first. I’m not sure I’m prepared to change that in a fundamental way. Maybe I could manage putting the left leg in first, though I’m sure it would take a month or so before the new approach became a habit. Any change more fundamental than that might be a problem. Such as sitting on the floor. Or putting on my pants while lying on my back on the bed with my legs in the air. When I was 20, maybe. At this stage in my life, I’m not sure such a method would be advisable, attractive, or worth the struggle.

The whole leggings look, however, must be worth embracing. After all, it’s slimming for women of all sizes, "particularly bigger women." This is the word from Stephanie Solomon, who, as fashion director for Bloomingdale’s, certainly ought to know. She says a "sweater layered over a tank top, layered over a short skirt, layered over leggings . . . makes a woman look taller and thinner." Especially if you add a wide belt to "help define your shape."

I’d be willing to bet cold, hard cash that Stephanie is a size four.

Which does not mean we should disregard her final bit of advice about the finishing touch for this new look. That is—in her own words—to "add a boot or chunky shoe, the same color as your bottom."

She isn’t specific about how exactly one is supposed to select that color. Though I haven’t tried it personally, it seems to me it would be difficult to see all the necessary color-matching parts at the same time in those little floor-level mirrors in the shoe department. Nor does Stephanie have any advice on how to explain, when the person from store security shows up, that you were just doing some crucial color-coordinating.

Still, these are incidental difficulties. I’m sure they can be overcome. Then each of us can be satisfied that, when it comes to this latest look, we aren’t going to fall behind.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

Apparently, to get to the church on time.

The other day there was an item in our paper about a wedding where one of the "bridesmaids" was—I am not making this up—a chicken. I hasten to point out that the wedding was not local. It took place in North Dakota. The vast majority of the residents of that sensible state are down-to-earth types who consider chickens to be sources of food rather than companionship. Apparently, however, there are always exceptions.

The hen in question was carried down the aisle by the fowler—oops, make that flower—girl. The same lucky child got to hold the chicken during the ceremony. Apparently she (the hen, not the flower girl) spent the time trying to eat her corsage. Which brings up the question of where, exactly, one pins a corsage on a chicken. Somewhere on the white meat, presumably. Unfortunately, our newspaper published no pictures, so we may never know.

The article didn’t mention what kind of meat was served at the reception or whether guests did the traditional chicken dance. The groom (no spring chicken himself, since the flower girl was his granddaughter) was quoted as saying that the hen was a pet and had to be included because she was "just like one of the kids."

That comparison may seem insulting. Of course, without having met the family, it’s hard to know. It does seem clear that one or the other of the two species involved in this wedding may have been the victim of a fowl slander.

There’s an old joke about the elderly woman who lost her glasses and couldn’t look for them until she found them. I never have found that joke to be very funny. It’s much too true.

Like everyone else in my immediate family, I have myopia. That’s Latin for "if it’s more than six inches from our noses, it’s a blur." Without corrective lenses we can’t recognize our own faces in the mirror. As my sister put it in a recent email: "What do members of this family do without their glasses? Nothing!"

I remember the evening when, at age six or seven, I announced at the supper table that I couldn’t see the numbers on the kitchen clock across the room. I remember driving home from town the first day I got glasses, noticing trees along the horizon that I had never known were there. Whenever I got new glasses, it was always frustrating to choose frames because I couldn’t tell what they looked like on my face until I got the finished pair with the lenses in. Then, if I didn’t like them, it was too late to change my mind.

I remember having kids with normal vision try on my thick glasses and say, "Geez Louise! How can you see through those things?" and trying to point out without actually using the word "dumb" that the real question was how could I see without those things. I remember as a teenager having to lean so close to the mirror to apply mascara that the handle of the applicator would bump against the glass. I remember the day I was riding Rusty at a lope and he fell. I hit the ground first, was incredibly lucky not to have half a ton of horse land on top of me—and my first emotion as I scrambled to my feet was relief that my glasses weren’t broken.

When I was a senior in high school, I became a beneficiary of one of the greatest technological advances of the 20th Century—contact lenses. For the first time in years, I had peripheral vision. I could stand at a normal distance from the sink and apply mascara. I could wear sunglasses. My first pair, a gift from the eye doctor when I bought my contact lenses, were large, round, and glamorous. They made me look like Jackie Kennedy. I loved those sunglasses, and I was crushed along with them the day I left them on the seat of the car and my mother sat on them. I’ve been looking vainly (yes, the double meaning is intentional) for a pair just like them ever since.

Then came adulthood, which led to middle age, which led to a new vision problem—presbyopia. It’s otherwise known as SAS (short arm syndrome). It can transform a woman from "cool chick" to "old biddy" faster than you can say, "reading glasses on a chain around your neck."

Actually, I wasn’t dreading presbyopia at all. In fact, I was looking forward to it, because I had a theory. It was a matter of simple logic. A: I was nearsighted. B: when you reach middle age you become farsighted. Ergo, C: the presbyopia would balance out the myopia, and I’d have normal vision.

Nice try, the eye doctor told me. It would happen just that way, too. Eventually. At say, about my 195th or 200th birthday.

In the meantime, he suggested trying a prescription of one contact lens for distance and one for close viewing. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me. So I’ve resigned myself. I now step back from the mirror to put on mascara. I’ve mastered the art of signing a debit card receipt on a line I cannot see. I’ve begun to collect reading glasses. With my office glasses, my purse glasses, my living-room glasses, and my bathroom glasses, most of the time, I can find at least one pair.

I refuse, however, to wear reading glasses on a chain. I may be myopic, presbyopic, and middle-aged, but I still have my standards.

I made a mistake yesterday. I took my visiting grandson to Hill City.

Let me hasten to explain that going to Hill City is not ordinarily a mistake. It’s a pleasant and lively town with several don’t-miss tourist attractions, including the 1880 Train and one of the best places to eat in the Black Hills. The Black Hills Institute, the objective of our visit yesterday, has an incredible display of fossils and dinosaur skeletons and is a perfect place to take a grandkid.

It wasn’t our destination that was in error. It was our timing. It’s Rally Week—that time every August when the more xenophobic residents of the Black Hills either leave town or else stock up on groceries and stay off the roads. The bikers are here. And there. And everywhere.

Let me hasten to explain again that I have nothing against motorcyclists per se. Half a dozen of my closest friends are bikers—or at least people who ride motorcycles. (Why, by the way, do you suppose people who ride motorcycles are called "bikers" while people who ride bicycles are called "cyclists?")

What I have a problem with is crowds. My reaction to the bikers is the same one I would have if they were all cowboys or quilters or Congressmen—all of which some of the bikers undoubtedly are. I’m sure they are great people. There are just too dang many of them in one place.

During World War II, the British had a saying about the American soldiers in England: the only thing wrong with the Yanks was that they were "overpaid, oversexed, and over here." That’s the way I feel about all the visitors this week. The only thing wrong with the bikers is that they’re out in force, out to party, and out here.

For a woman, one clear sign that you’re getting older is when you start noticing admiring glances from young men—at your daughters.

As the mom and stepmom of three very pretty girls, I got used to this one some time ago. It doesn’t bother me. I may be a mature woman of a certain age, but I’m not anywhere close to being over the hill. I know how to handle encounters of my own.

Such as one that happened several years ago. My late husband’s construction company was working on a job in Minnesota. They needed a new pickup, and my husband found a used Dodge in Illinois that met his specifications. He flew me there and dropped me off to drive the pickup back to the jobsite.

It was a beautiful truck, only a year old, without a scratch or dent anywhere—one sleek ton of gleaming black and gray powered by a rumbling Cummins diesel engine. The seller had cleaned and polished it inside and out until it sparkled. It even smelled new.

The financial details taken care of, I climbed in, adjusted the seat as far forward as it would go, and roared off toward the Interstate. With the power I had under the hood, the six-hour trip across Wisconsin and half of Minnesota was a piece of cake. It was late afternoon when I pulled into the parking lot of our motel, shut off the ignition, and let the truck rumble into silence.

As I got out and stretched, I noticed several young guys across the parking lot, obviously construction workers just getting off for the day. They were looking in my direction, with admiration, longing, and more than a touch of desire. I wasn’t shocked; I wasn’t offended. Instead, my reaction was smug satisfaction. I thought, Don’t even think about it, guys. What I have here is way out of your league.

As a woman of experience, it was obvious to me what they wanted.

I knew they were looking at my truck.

It’s the middle of the day, and I’m sitting in the recliner in my office. The window is open and the light is on. I haven’t had a single glass of ice water today. I’m seriously considering having something other than straight watermelon for lunch. You have no idea how exciting this is.

Okay, so I lead a boring life. But the reason I’m so excited is that the weather has changed. It’s only 76 degrees today, cloudy, with a cool breeze setting the wind chimes ringing out on the deck, and when I went up to get the mail there were actual rain drops on the sidewalk. After more than a week of daytime temperatures ranging from a low of 91 degrees to a high of 111, this is delightful.

I work at home. After a recent career change, my partner does, too. Usually, that’s not a problem. My office is upstairs and his is downstairs, so there’s plenty of room for both of us to think, pace, and mutter to ourselves without disturbing one another.

Except when the upstairs temperature starts creeping close to the three-digit mark. When having the window closed to keep out the hot wind means the room is a mere 97 degrees instead of the 104 that it is outside, but it’s closed up and stifling. When it’s too hot to wear jeans, but wearing shorts means that my fabric-covered chair is scratchy and imprints funny designs on the backs of my thighs. When I can feel beads of perspiration popping out on my forehead even though I’m doing nothing more strenuous than sitting at the computer trying to keep the mouse from sliding out of my sweaty fingers. When the light is off because it creates heat, so I have to squint at the screen or else cope with my reading glasses sliding down my sweat-slippery nose. When drinking ice water helps for a few minutes, except that all those trips to the bathroom are just extra activity that generates even more heat.

The obvious solution is to work down in the basement, where the temperature is a mere 85 degrees. Except that my partner is already working down there, and he talks to himself while he works and so do I, so his map editing tends to get confused with my book editing. And the extra chair in his office is an ancient recliner whose manufacturer must have cut corners by skipping extraneous components like padding. And I know it’s called a "laptop," but having the computer balanced precariously on my knees with the keyboard wobbling every time I take a breath just doesn’t work for me.

All in all, for the last week I have been displaced, unproductive, uncomfortable, and out of sorts. Today is a cool, refreshing change which I appreciate beyond words—and which my long-suffering partner quite likely appreciates even more.

And some people wonder why we talk about the weather in South Dakota.

A few years ago my extended family compiled a cookbook. It has some wonderful recipes in it. None of them are mine.

It isn’t that I didn’t want to participate. I did. I fully intended to include my recipe for whole wheat bread, which is my sole claim to any type of culinary fame.

I started writing it down. The list of ingredients wasn’t so bad. But then I felt the need to explain. If you choose, you can omit the salt. You can leave out the sugar, which surprisingly makes the bread rise more evenly. Then it’s even better for you than regular whole wheat bread, at least if you ignore the inconvenient fact that you’ll need to put twice as much jelly on it. If you have some leftover mashed potatoes handy, you can throw those in. You can make cinnamon rolls or cheese bread or French loaves or buns. You can set the oven temperature at 350 or 400 degrees, depending on how you prefer your bread crust.

By the time I had discussed half the possible alternatives, I was up to several pages and had written more than 600 words. I decided the world just wasn’t ready for cooking instructions from me.

This effort wasn’t a total failure. It helped me understand why I rarely use recipes. It isn’t that I don’t cook. I’ve put regular family meals on the table for years. Complaints have been minimal, and nobody has died yet. For most of those years, though, my recipe books have sat patiently in the cupboard, their pages crisp and unstained.

On the rare occasions when I do consult a recipe, I almost never follow it precisely. I would like to believe this shows my creativity and ingenuity. In truth, though, the more likely cause is simply that I hate being told what to do. There are those who consider recipes to be straightforward sets of instructions. I tend to regard them as mere suggestions.

To some, this approach might seem like laziness, sloppiness, or just being contrary. I prefer to think of it as Intuitive Cooking. This approach is filled with alternatives. To me, at least, these are always perfectly logical options. You don’t have any nutmeg for the zucchini bread? Cinnamon will do, or maybe cloves. Or dump in a little bit of leftover cranberry sauce. There’s no celery in the fridge for the chicken salad? Use green pepper instead, or snow peas, or cucumber slices. Green and crunchy is green and crunchy, after all.

Measuring is useful in many cases—and it’s always wise to distinguish your tsps from your Tbsps—but there’s no need to get compulsive about it. A little salt poured into your cupped palm or a glug of vanilla is close enough to a teaspoonful; a cup of sugar doesn’t have to be smoothed off on the top; and if the recipe calls for a cup of milk and you only have half a cup, fill it up with water and pretend it’s skim milk. In defense of such approximating, I simply point out that it’s impossible to precisely measure an egg.

Does this laid-back cooking style work? Certainly. Well, almost always. Okay, most of the time. After a few years of practice, it’s only occasionally necessary to fall back on the Intuitive Cook’s all-purpose explanation: "Maybe it looks a little funny, but it’ll taste good."

I was at a fast food restaurant yesterday and encountered something almost too horrible to write about.

On the menu were three different salads. Signs on the counter listed their ingredients—in large print, right out there for everyone to read, even small children. Two of those salads featured "chopped chicken fingers!"

It’s not that I’m a chicken lover, by any means. I don’t even like chickens (as a species, I mean; they’re perfectly acceptable when broiled, roasted, fried, or fricasseed). In my opinion, they’re both mean and stupid, and I’ve neither forgotten nor forgiven all the times as a child that I was pecked on my scrawny little arms when I was trying to gather eggs.

But be that as it may, this kind of brutality is too much, even for chickens. Just imagine those poor birds, squawking in helpless terror while their little fingers are chopped right off. It isn’t just the immediate pain of that experience, either. What kinds of lives can they possibly have afterward? They can’t type, or play the piano, or use their cell phones, or even tie their own shoes. Most of them wouldn’t be able to work, of course. Think about the cost to society of supporting all those fingerless chickens.

Wendy’s was sued for millions by a couple of wannabe con artists merely pretending to have found a chopped human finger in their chili. Yet this other restaurant can get by, not only with using chopped chicken fingers on a regular basis, but with blatantly advertising the fact.

Where is the outrage? Why isn’t anybody doing anything about this horrific abuse? Where are the PETA protesters when you need them?

It’s a harsh world we live in, where innocent birds can be tortured in this way, and no one seems to care. The compassion for these poor victims seems to be as scarce as—well, as hen’s teeth.

"Scarce as hen’s teeth," by the way, is a really old expression that comes from the fact that hens don’t have any teeth. They swallow their food whole and grind it up in their gizzards. That’s because they’re birds, of course. With feathers. And two feet. And wings—instead of arms, and hands, and, um, fingers.
Oh.

Never mind.