Animal Crackers

Posted on January 15, 2014 by Pamela

I can’t find the photo that goes with the story I want to tell so I have to tell a different story.

Over the summer my Dad told me that he’s lost his taste for sweets — or rather that sweet things tasted too sweet. Something like that. Anyway, I brought this barrel of Trader Joe’s Animal Crackers for him, thinking it would be a little treat but not too sweet. I left the barrel when I went home.

Later he told me he really liked them.

When I went back to visit in October, I brought another barrel of Trader Joe’s crackers and when I went into the house, I found this mega-barrel of Costco Animal Crackers already sitting there. Dad said I’d really started something.

There were plenty of animal crackers for all.

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Posted on January 5, 2014 by Pamela

I hope nothing terrible ever happens to me and CSI comes to our house with their little blood finding wand. The first thing they’re going to do is ask Bob why his wife’s blood is all over the kitchen and bathroom. He’s going to tell them that his wife likes sharp knives but is also very clumsy and rarely a week goes by when she doesn’t give herself a big gash. Then she wanders around with a little folded paper towel around it while she tries to finish whatever it is she’s making. They’re going to say, yeah right, and book him.

I did it again last night. And I just poked it and now there are red smears around my desk.

Major announcement: this morning I cleaned my oven.

If you are like me and have an ancient oven that you never clean you probably think that it’s hopeless and no amount of elbow grease and careful attention is going to save your oven. You might be wrong. I used this method and while I wouldn’t say it was easy, it got the job done. I took apart the stove top and scrubbed all those bits and pieces, too. I didn’t do an A+ job but I did a B+ job and once you turn 50, a B+ = an A+. Look it up.

At first I wished I’d done a before photo so I could show before and after. But then I realized I would be putting a photo of my gross oven online so I’m glad I didn’t think to take one.

Normally this would earn me the right to sit on the couch with a bottle of champagne and a box of See’s Candy for the rest of the day but unfortunately, I waited until the very last minute to put away the Christmas stuff. Meaning I still haven’t done it and there are boxes sitting in the living room waiting for my attention.

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Don’t Fear the Alligator Farm

Posted on January 2, 2014 by Pamela

Did you ever have this thing happen where you look at your watch and realize you have a little extra time so you decide, “Hey, I’m going to run and drop off my dry cleaning.”

But on the way over you run into this giant construction project and you have to wait for an earth-mover and finally you get going again and you decide to try this other way that will probably be easier. Except then you get behind a school bus that stops every 25 feet to drop off some more kids. Then you finally get to the dry cleaners but the two short term parking spots out front are taken so you have to drive around the block to find a spot. Then you have to dig around in the bottom of your purse for some change.

Then you finally get into the dry cleaners and Sister Beatrice Mabel Elizabeth is there, dropping off 30 wimples and she needs a separate receipt for each of the sisters. And by now you’re all lathered up because, what the hell? You were just running out to do one simple errand.

But then the opposite of this is when you get a letter from the IRS and for some reason the IRS thinks you owe 10 years of back taxes on an alligator farm in Gainesville, Florida when in real life you owe no taxes, you own no farm, no alligators and you’ve never been to Gainesville, Florida. You spend several days losing sleep and unable to keep food down while googling “Help, IRS.” You ask the question on reddit and then spend hours going through screen after screen of responses that are some iteration of: you’re screwed. You finally start collecting everything you think of that might prove your case and ask around about tax lawyers.

But then, just for kicks you phone the IRS on the off chance there is a painless way to solve this and after three minutes on hold, the person you talk to says, “Clerical error. Your account is fine. Have a nice day.” Then you wonder why you didn’t just do that first.

I had not one but TWO alligator farms today. Everything worked out fine.

Moral of the story: if you find yourself in an alligator farm situation, don’t be afraid to try the easiest thing first. And be super polite.

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I’m FIFTY!

Posted on December 30, 2013 by Pamela

Doing whatever I want today. So far: working on a new story, exercise, and playing with Photoshop. Still to come: hot chocolate and an episode of Scandal, reading my book (The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, sheesh this is a long ass book) and going to a fancy steak dinner.

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Media Social

Posted on December 29, 2013 by Pamela

I quit Facebook almost 2 years ago. I never miss it. One time a friend had some photos and she insisted I use Bob’s account to sign in if I wanted to see them. I was logged in about 30 seconds before I remembered why I hate it.

Another time an acquaintance that moved out of the country was in town and I would have missed her except a mutual friend made sure I knew she was around.

Otherwise, I am happily not on Facebook.

However, at Xmas family members were talking about keeping up with the kids on Facebook and they had little in-jokes concerning photos, etc.

And for 15 minutes I strongly considered reactivating my account.

“I could just login for short time once a week to see what the kids are up to.”

Except I know a short time would become an every day habit and pretty soon people who I like would start to annoy me with their photos of the coffee they just bought or their Helen Keller quotes. So I’m not doing it.

On the way home, the minute we got back into cell range, the phone started bleeping because one of my Twitter accounts was hacked and I spent 15 minutes strongly considering deleting both my accounts. Or at least my pamrentz one because I hardly ever tweet. The idea is that I can get the word out when I publish something (Why yes, there are a few things coming down the pipeline. More info when I have it.) except I have hardly any followers and most of them are other random writers I don’t know who followed me for what reason I do not know.

So I can follow them back and then get their 100 tweets a day promoting their writing? Do plumbers go on Twitter and search for other plumbers to follow and hope to get a follow-back so they can all promote their plumbing to each other? Maybe they do. I don’t spend enough time on Twitter to know.

I have a second Twitter account that is only for soccer and Timbers. If you’re not soccer or Timbers, I will not follow you back. I had a couple of non-soccer/Timbers friends in there and during the draft they were tweeting and interrupting my draft timeline which was not working for me. (I am now a person who follows a sports draft. Amazing.)

I need my Timbers twitter. That’s how I get all my breaking soccer news and tweets from the players that say things like “we have the greatest fans” which, duh. Also that’s where I announce when I’ve arrived at a match. If you feel like you’re missing out, right here.

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Meat From A Van

Posted on December 28, 2013 by Pamela

Did I mention I bought new glasses? I’m trying to give myself time to adapt but I am very sad that I’m not liking them. I’ve never taken glasses back before. I don’t know what’s going on but it seems like there’s only a tiny focused part in the middle of the lens and I have to keep moving my head around to see. This is not going to help with my neck pain. Or poor eyesight.

A fun problem to deal with after the new year.

I’m back from the holidays. I had a stupendously wonderful time. I ate and drank in heroic volumes so it was nice to go 24 hours (yesterday) and eat nothing but soup and fruit so I would be ready for a second round (starting today.)

Did I ever mention that guy who came by with the box of meat? This was actually awhile ago but I was thinking about it the other day. When I searched my archives I came up with this truck full of meat story from 2001.

I think it was the end of the summer and this guy who looked pretty rough around the edges rang the doorbell and when I opened the door he was standing in the yard next door. He hollered that he had this box of meat for me and to just hang on while he carried it over. When he arrived at my doorstep he told me that he would be putting it just inside my door.

“No you’re not,” I said.

“I’m not supposed to put it down without an overhang.”

“I didn’t even ask you to bring it over here,” I said.

He then waved over his shoulder and told me that my neighbors had already taken advantage of this incredible offer. You know what? Almost every sales person who has ever shown up at my front door and told me that my neighbor (non-specific wave over the shoulder) has already taken advantage of this incredible offer.

He had boxes of chicken and boxes of beef. The van door was open and there was no refrigeration that I could see. He also had a flier about their great company wandering neighborhoods with incredible boxes of meat.

What I wanted to say was, “If I go in the house and google ‘meat from a van,’ am I going to get a whole bunch hits that say, ‘Best offer ever’?”

But instead I told him I didn’t want any meat and to have a nice day. To save you the trouble, if you google meat from a van, you will get numerous sad tales, many from elderly people, who bought crap meat from a van and there was no way to get their money back.

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Happy Holidays 2013

Posted on December 21, 2013 by Pamela

No holiday letter this year. No holiday photo. No holiday story.

I’ve been working on another story and I didn’t want to set it aside to write something for the holidays.

I was going to do some sort of wrap up, but I’m not even up for that. There’s nothing major to wrap up.

Hope you have a wonderful time wherever you are and whatever you do. That’s what I’m going to be doing.

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I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Pamela

Remember when I said I would never go to a concert again? I told Bob, “Don’t even ask.”

I lied.

We saw that X and The Blasters were coming into town over xmas. We were both off. Bob said there were reserved seats in the balcony. So I agreed.

And it was really fun! I have seen X one other time, New Years Eve 1985.

Sometimes when I do stuff like this I get depressed like, “How did we all get so old?”

But last night it was really cool. The crowd was about 99% our age and everyone was all old and gray and fat and wearing glasses.

And we’re all still here! And we’re out getting crazy and having fun on a school night. And everybody wasn’t holding up their dumb phones to record the whole time. Yay, olds.

Since we were above we could see the crowd on the floor. You could see the memory of moshing (Did people mosh at X?) which took the form of pockets of shoving that eventually had to be broken up by security.

The bands were awesome. Phil Alvin was terrifc. His bio says he’s 60!

Exene is still a goddess. Billy Zoom was amazing. His bio says he’s 65! He looked like a character out of a Coen brothers movie. John Doe was all over the place. DJ Bonebrake was still there, too. These guys have been together forever.

Great night. I’m glad we went.

I’m going to try to muster the energy for a brief holiday wrap-up post tomorrow. But if I don’t make it, Merry Christmas. Please eat lots of Christmas cookies. The world is depending on it.

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Happy Bowl is Finished

Posted on December 11, 2013 by Pamela

I have a piece of exercise equipment that failed in exactly the way they have a lifetime guarantee that it won’t fail.

This exercise equipment has different pieces and this particular piece I could easily live without but you know, principle of the thing. I went online to see how this lifetime guarantee thing works.

They have one of those webpages that you scroll down forever and the text alternates black, red and blue and in different sizes. Lots of act now for a special offer and when you click away a window pops up asking: Are you sure you want to leave this page? I swear there’s a marketing template of this somewhere because I’ve seen the same style on a huge variety of products. The lifetime guarantee is cited numerous times.

I found a link that said it would tell me more about the lifetime guarantee and I clicked away and there it was all spelled out how the lifetime guarantee works. I didn’t even have to send my piece back, I just had to pay for shipping and they’d replace it for me. For more information on how this works, click here.

And that link took me back to the page with the first link. And I clicked until I did the circle again before I said, Wait a minute.

So there very clearly is a lifetime guarantee but how make it work for you is going to take some digging.

And I could dig. There is a phone number but how much is my time and energy worth?

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Do Not Wake the Sleeping Bear

Posted on December 8, 2013 by Pamela

I had a dream last night where I was mean to Bob and I knew I hurt his feelings but I could tell he was pretending I didn’t.

When I woke up I felt terrible and I couldn’t get back to sleep.

Finally, Bob rolled over and I could see that his eyes were open. “Are you awake?”

Him: Yes.

Me: I was mean to you in my dream. I feel so bad. I am so sorry.

Him: hmpft

He got up to go to the bathroom and then came back and scratched and cleared his throat.

Then he started telling me all about his evening and where he went and who he met and what they talked about. Then he got up again and got something in the other room to show me. This was 4 o’clock in the morning.

I figured I was forgiven and didn’t feel so bad. I rolled over.

He kept talking and talking and talking.

He’s so cute.

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