Welcome to Forgotonia

Chapter 1
Last night I had Christmas with my Little Sister from BB/BS, who I will call J. She’s a 7th grader now, and she and I  were matched in the BB/BS program when she was in 2nd or 3rd grade. When I picked her up at 5:30 as the snow was starting to accumulate,  she was super excited to give me my present. She was like, “Which do you think we should do first–open our presents? Or eat supper.”

So of course I made the right choice.

When we got to my house and I opened my present– a leapoard-print Snuggie– I laughed and told her I’d love it, and of course I had to try it on. (Perhaps I should say here that despite having heard all about this year’s fad and its accompanying commercial, I’ve never actually seen the ad, since I don’t have TV). As I modeled it for her, her face fell for second, and then she looked at me like I had said the moon is made of cheese. “Not like that,” she said, coming over to adjust it. “You’ve got it on backwards.”

Chapter 2
Ashamed, but determined to right myself in her eyes, I then got out the stuff for us to make a “homemade” pizza (the Alison version: pre-made whole-wheat crust, Ragu sauce in a jar, etc.);  and let her pick her activity for the night. She chose making homemade soaps for people in her family.

A bit of explanation: a couple of years ago, I decided–in the spirit of wanting to give people practical Christmas gifts, ones that didn’t cost much, that didn’t use up a ton of resources, and that I actually made with my hands, (vs., you know, something I bought at Miley-Mart that was probably made by a child in a factory), I decided I would look for a way to create some Christmas gifts.

So I found, like, the easiest possible idea out there– buy block of soap, melt chunks of it in microwave, add color and scent, pour into mold, viola!

(But then, of course, in my typical fashion, I began hunting down more and more materials at Hobby Lobbies and Michaels’ and other places I can’t reach without using up lots of gas, and spending a bunch of money on fish- and frog- and turtle-shaped molds for my nephews …)

Chapter 3
Anyway, because I have a galley kitchen with about 2 inches of counter space, we  moved the microwave to the center of the dining room table; cleaned up from supper;  dusted off all the soap-making supplies (yeah yeah, so there may have been a cat hair or two in some of the  molds. What can I say? I’m a busy woman);  and let the crafting commence.

At first I thought we’d make soaps for her to give to her mom and aunt.

But as we got started, J. started making a list of all the people she wanted to make one for, and she began adding cousins and teachers and church people to her list…and even as it got later, and later,  I couldn’t say no.

I have to admit, I had been secretly planning to have her home by no later than 8:30-ish so I could have my own little wind-down night. But she was so in the Christmas spirit, she even wanted to make a soap for a nurse at a local nursing home who helps take care of her grandma.

So we called her mom and got permission to keep going until 10.

But here I was, after having just the day before finished a semester of taking six hours of graduate credit, plus working full-time; house a mess;  Amazon packages and wrapping paper in piles everywhere; cat trying to destroy the curling ribbon; my back starting to hurt and my mind wandering to how nice it would be to have a glass of wine; and J. and I melting, pouring, stirring, melting, pouring, stirring, then wrapping all of her creations–I think we made close to 20 soaps– at 10 o’clock at night.

I was absolutely freaking exhausted. But at the same time– sap alert, sorry– it really made me see the excitement and spirit of Christmas through a kid’s eyes, rather than in my usual Christmas-is-just-a-consumer-event Grinch-yness. When we headed out to my car after 10, everything was blanketed in snow and it was beautifully quiet. It was a wonderful night.

(The only downfall: I got Ragu  on my Snuggie.)

1. Sunday night, I actually cooked. Like, with pots and pans. (Pats on the back now being accepted).

2. Monday morning, how did I start off the work week, you ask?By trying to zip zippers, button buttons, clasp jewelry, fix hair, make and drink coffee, brush teeth, and pack up work bag all with one hand, as I had to hold paper towels and Kleenex to my nose for what was a seemingly un-ending nosebleed.(Which just put me in an even better mood than I normally am in the morning on any day.)

3. Today, I made a little note-to-self and taped it to the front of my computer. I did this because I have to remember to keep the computer on overnight due to some kind of security update. So I wrote DON’T SHUT DOWN.But throughout the workday, I keep looking down and seeing it and interpreting it like, “take a deep breath!” “DON’T LOSE YOUR SH*T!”(Ok, self, jeeze. I won’t.)

Yesterday I took advantage of the nice weather (read: procrastinated on writing a paper) to do something I’ve needed to do for months: I attacked the inside of my car with the dust buster.

When I was down there underneath the driver’s seat reaching for the nooks and crannies, I found enough peanuts, almonds, raisins, cereal flakes, and M&M’s to provide sustenance for a small village.

Or at least make a trail mix as a kind of “repurposed” holiday gift. Y’know, preserve resources and all that. Mmm, will you be the lucky recipient???

What was up with the K-9 sniffers all along 67 on Friday afternoon/evening?

I came up on the ominous-looking barricade as

I was exiting Macomb on my way to Davenport to see C-Nor.

As I approached, I got all prepared for them to stop me. I practiced a little speech in my mind, trying to think of phrases “civil liberties” or something else indignant-sounding.

I also made sure to lean over and reach down to the area where a passenger’s feet are supposed to go, and gathered up some of the filth and stuffed it in an empty Hy-Vee bag, in an effort make it look a little less like a homeless person sleeps in my vehicle.

So then when I drove past and the cops and their dogs gave me a nary a blink, I was almost a little…miffed.

What, me and my little Honda Civic don’t look fringe enough?

Was the tilt of my head, the knittedness of my eyebrows, a telltale

“listening to ‘All Things Considered” giveaway?

I felt like rolling down a window and hollering at one of the cops whose suspicion I failed to spark, “You better not even ask me what I was up to in college,

boys. Haha!”
(And then I re-cranked-up the NPR and sped away.)

Here’s me remembering the goat named after The Gloved One, if ya wanna read/ take a listen.

Check out some of my other radio essays here.

First of all, before you read this entry, could you please just remember this very basic but oft-denied fact of life?:

Okay. Now that we have that out of the way:

Thing that can really suck about being from a small town, #149

When you call a plumber to come over because

A) your toilet is clogged again, since freezing temperatures and toilet-flushing-function are apparently somehow related, and your efforts at plunging seem to be making things worse,

B) your washer has water in the bottom and won’t seem to drain out or let you start a new load,

and when the very young and somehow-strangely-familiar-seeming plumber comes over and is standing right in front of you and you look down on the basement floor and see that somehow your washer has come unplugged,

and you realize in that moment that you, effectively, called the plumber to come over and discover that you are totally blond,

and immediately after THAT, when he checks out the toilet and tells you that, [and I quote]:

“It was just a soft plug, that’s all,”

and you realize that “soft plug” is very likely a euphamism,

and he leaves the house and drives away in his white van and you are already reeling from how this 10-minute episode has caused you so much embarrasxment that you are going to need a year’s worth of therapy,

at THAT moment, it dawns on you that the plumber dude, in retrospect, looks a LOT like a kid you once babysat.

That is thing #149.

1) every year when the temperature drops down to these booger-freezing cold days, my front door (not the actual wooden door, but the plastic-y screen door type one, what do you call those?), which is old and warped and half-broken, starts to swing back and forth in the wind.

Like apparently, even though it’s half-broken and warped, it can still stay shut all the rest of the year, but the booger-freezing cold makes it say, “Ok, screw you if you think I’m gonna function properly during this.”

The sound of the wind causing the screen door to screech and squeak and then bang against the house every other second drives me just a tad insane.

So last night at like 10 o’clock at night I got mad and, exiting through another door, went outside in my pajamas and bedroom slippers (yes) and pulled the plastic green lawn-furniture table [which I've been meaning to take down to the basement since, um, early October] in front of the broken door.

It worked.

But now I’m sitting here working on my computer listening to the door bang against the plastic table and then right back against the house, over and over and over again. So pleasant!

Go away, booger-freezing cold.

2) there was some frozen-pipe-related bathroom drama yesterday.

Actually, the drama is still ongoing, and will be until I can muster the courage to go wipe out the, um, STUFF that is currently gathered in my bathtub.

The plumbers had to come over yesterday morning because the toilet wouldn’t flush right (I mean like it would flush, but then instead of taking its presents away and making me never have to see them again, like it’s supposed to, it would just make more water come up and up and up toward the brim until I would cry out and scream at my toilet, “Stop it! Go down go down go down please please please stop!”

Then I discovered that the bathtub drain was also not functioning.

I called the plumbers at 8 a.m. When I drove home at noon, assuming everything had been taken care of, I was alarmed to see the plumbing van in my driveway, the back open and scary-looking pipes or tubes coming out of it, so I promptly pulled back out of my driveway and went to Wendy’s.

After work, my landlord called to say that the toilet’s clogged-up-ed-ness had caused the bathtub drain pipe to freeze? Or something like that?

So, when I got home from dinner at my friend’s house [where some wine was consumed], I had to rig up a space heater on an extension cord (safe!) and drag it down to this weird hole in my closet wall that I didn’t know existed, and leave it there overnight (safe!) to thaw out the frozen bathtub pipe.

The good news: this morning, bathtub clog appears to be gone; pipe apparently unfrozen. Thanks, space heater.

The bad news:

There is, um, a deposit of some STUFF in the tub, and seriously every time I go in there to clean it I started to puke a little bit.

I really, really, really really really don’t want to touch it. I don’t care if it might be STUFF that came out of my own body. Or if it’s not even anything bodily-function related.

I don’t want to touch it.

Oh God I’m gagging right now a little bit.

Some pleeeeeeeeaaaaaase come over and clean it out for me!!!!!

Two extremely important truths

#1:

Wearing a pedometer or a step-counter really does work when it comes to motivating me to exercise. I mean, getting points for doing something you normally do anyway? That’s my kind of exercise, you know wham sayin?

There’s just something about seeing the numbers add up as you go through your day. The nice visual reminder to move more–it prompts me to sneak in a long route to the ladies’ room, or push myself to take the stairs instead of the elevator.

I asked for, and received, the step counter for Christmas, and it was the perfect gift because it goes along with my New Year’s Resolution–or New Year’s Mantra, if you will: baby steps.

You see, I have a habit of setting expectations too high for myself, then beating myself up when I don’t reach them.

What usually happens is, I get too overwhelmed by the very thought of all the things I need to do, so I freeze up and don’t do any of them. You know. “Analysis Paralysis.”

(Simultaneous fear of failure and fear of success–ah, what a dynamic duo!)

So this year, I’m setting the lowest expectations possible. This way, I will free myself up from getting paralyzed like that–to just make the eencie-weenciest steps toward what I want and need.

The step-counter shows me that I can sneak exercise into my day, and that I do have the resources to exercise–i.e., the Titanically long Sherman Hall hallway, a lunch hour, an iPod, and a pair of tennies–and I don’t have to pay the Rec Center or YMCA fees, which I can’t afford; I don’t have to freak out over the fact that with grad school, work, and everything else, I can’t seem to find time for a yoga class or spinning or yadda yadda yadda women have way too much pressure on them about their bodies by the way.

So: yay, step counter!

#2

Step counters and pedometers are pieces of crap!

Or, in other words, why, why, why, step counter manufacturers, can’t you design your merchandise with a clip that actually stays on the belt????

Is it that hard?

Has NO ONE EVER in the history of the Pedometer and Step Counter Company spoken up during a strategy meeting:

“Gee, you know, this might seem radical–forgive me if I’m way out there–but has anyone ever suggested, you know, adding a piece of elastic and a second clip so the thing doesn’t fall off all the time? I’m just saying…but, you know, I’m new here…”

On the first day back to work after the New Year, I happily attached my brand-new step counter to my waistband, armed and ready to burn off some of the 8 million calories I ingested between Halloween and New Year’s thanks a lot Sherman Hall employees, thanks a lot.

However, by 9 a.m., I had already knocked the the thing to the ground twice–first just by brushing my arm against my waist somehow, and second, as I was de-pants-ing while visiting the loo.

(Sorry for the TMI, but context is important here.)

In the above episode, the step counter hit the floor with a clatter, and I was shocked to find that the thing was still working. But still, frustrated, I chastised myself for not having planned ahead for this.

After all, I’ve owned at least 3 of these before. The same thing has happened every time. They’ve crashed to the ground, shattered, and, subsequently, tossed into the garbage.

(Also, perhaps it is not necessary to mention this, but: I happen to be one of the spazziest, most un-graceful klutzes of all time.)

Still, it seems there are surely even graceful people out there who, because they are human, also need to de-pants while they are in the loo.

And what about those insane people who run? Doesn’t the bouncing up and down necessitate a back-up clip for sure?

Well, okay, even if not, all I know is, every time I bend over to tie my shoe or pick up something I dropped which is, like, about once every quarter-hour, I knock the thing off my belt.

So I decided I would have to take matters into my own hands.

I would have to MacGyver it.

Inspired by some of the organizing and de-cluttering experiences I’ve had lately thanks to following the “New Uses for Old Things” advice from RealSimple.com, I thought I should search around my house for parts that would help me keep this thing attached to my pants.

I thought I was pretty brilliant when I figured it out: I cut a small strip of elastic, tied one end to the clip and the other end to a safety pin, and viola!

Man did I feel useful.

But the next day at work, the elastic came untied within an hour. The safety pin kept jabbing me in the side. By 10 a.m., it had already fallen off twice.

By this point I was so frustrated I was ready to throw the step counter into the toilet (and not even get to count the steps to the bathroom. Grr.)

I actually spent several days pondering this problem and feeling really frustrated about it.

Then, yesterday, just before it was about time to go take my walk, a co-worker handed me a pile of papers to proofread– a pile of papers held together with a binder clip! ENTER MACGYVER MUSIC HERE

That night at home, I fished around until I found a snippet of black ribbon. Then I tied one end of it tightly to the step counter, and clipped the other end to my waistband.

It worked! A couple times when I knocked it off my waistband, it dangled safely from its back-up ribbon, instead of clanging to the ground.

I have officially triumphed over the dysfunctional step-counter-clip for now! Yessss!

Now I need to get up and go walk.

(…and use the time to think up a way to safe-proof my poor, battered iPod. . . )

scare the crap out of people with my remote start!

Picture it:

A parking lot, nearly empty. It’s 5:30 or 6-ish p.m.

It’s dark. A young guy, head ducked, hands stuffed into pockets, shuffles through the lot alone.

There’s no one around, just a couple cars at opposite ends of the lot; most people on this area of campus have left for the day. The only sounds are the wind and the quiet but constant rumble from the giant smokestacks.

A few hundred feet away, still inside the doorway of her building, a woman, cold and hungry and ready to head home for the day, presses a button on the keychain in her coat pocket. She is thankful for the small convenience of being able to step from the wind into an already-warmed-up car.

A little light goes off on her keychain. Her car comes alive. And the young man, passing through the lot at that exact moment, shakes all over, then looks rapidly back and forth from left to right as if he has been caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be.

Hee hee, the woman says under her breath, sorry dude!

End scene.

Guess where I was yesterday when the really bad storm hit?

Standing out in the middle of the open prairie without a shred of coverage or shelter.
To be exact, I was taking a walk in the Oakwood Cemetery just near my house.
(Okay, so, not quite open prairie, but still.)

I am seriously lucky I didn’t get struck my lightning.

Of course, anyone who saw the sky right before this thing hit would know not to venture outside.

But in my defense, when I left my house about an hour beforehand, it was a perfectly pleasant June afternoon.

And as I did laps around Glenwood Park, people were pulling up at the pool and paying, going inside, the whole time I was walking. So all seemed to be perfectly peaceful. (In other words, I was not the only one who didn’t sense this baby coming.)

After I’d been walking about 45 minutes, I decided to cross over to Oakwood Cemetery across the street and run a lap. (Yeah, I know, “me” and “run” in same sentence. Don’t laugh.)

So, for the length of time it took to get to the end of the cemetery, which wasn’t very long, I had my back to the west.

As soon as I turned back west to head home, I had no more looked up at the green sky and thought, “oh crap,” then WHOOSH, this huge blast of wind and rain unleashed and a bunch of flowers and other grave-decorations left over from Memorial Day lifted up in the air as if by a giant vacuum.

If there had been thunder serving as a warning, I hadn’t heard it because I was rocking out with the ‘pod.

There was no sprinkling, my friends.

There was not a single drop of “hey, it’s coming, you might want to find shelter” kind of rain.

It was just instant inundation—and I was trapped. All at once I tried to wrap up my iPod and stick it the waistband of my shorts and dart to someplace, anyplace where I’d be protected.

I ran to the east entrance of the cemetery , panting and frantically trying all the doors of the shed and outbuildings, but all were locked. With about every other step, I jumped and yelped as lightning flashed.

I couldn’t decide which was more safe / more stupid: to stand there trying unsuccessfully to find shelter, or to try to run back home, because in either scenario I was like a lightning magnet.
(Damn underwire bra.)

Finally I decided it was too far to run home, so I ran toward the mausoleum. I guess I would rather spend a few minutes potentially being haunted by ghosts, I figured, than getting fried. But it, too, was locked. So I tucked myself in the teeny-tiny bit of coverage that its entryway afforded me, and watched as Memorial Day decorations whipped through the sky. I was so drenched my shoes were full of water. My clothes were so drenched they were heavy.

After it seemed to have calmed down a little I decided to make a run for home.

But as soon as I was out of the mausoleum doorway and out onto the street, I realized it was still lightning- ing.

All the way up the hill to my house, with each squishy step that pounded the pavement, I prayed “pleaseGoddon’tletmegetstruckbylightningPleaseGoddon’tletmegetstruckbylightningPleaseGodPleaseGod” etc. etc etc.

(The moral of this story?

Never exercise.)

–
Later, I talked to my parents, who said Carthage had bit hard; most businesses didn’t have power and my parents’ phone was out. They lost several shingles off the roof, too. The storm did this to a friend of mine’s house in Bushnell: