Like a Boss

So, here’s the scenario: it’s a dark and stormy night, you are two hours away from home. You need to find directions to your overnight accommodations, confirm dinner plans, and pick up a loved one at the airport early the next morning. You may or may not remember exactly when they are expected to land, or the flight number. You do remember the airline.

Here’s the complication: you have no cell phone. Totally expected plot twist—it is completely your fault. Also, it’s snowing but I’m pretty sure that’s not your fault.

So, what are you going to do? Problem solve like a BOSS, that’s what you’re going to do. And when I say problem solve like a boss, I mean like a mob boss. Specifically, Walter White. Actually, your game plan for problem solving like a boss looks like a combination of Breaking Bad meets Six Degrees of Separation.

Step One: go to Target, channel your inner WW, and buy a burner phone. Pretend you are researching how easy this is to do. Spoiler alert: super easy. However, I forgot to pay cash, so not really good at this Mob Boss thing, but I digress. It is less than $40, much cheaper/faster than a four-hour round trip to retrieve own phone.

Step Two: after the kind person at Target has set up the phone for you—because hello, Mob Boss here, not I.T. guy—call the one person whose number you know by heart. Yes, it is a landline.

Step Three: leave message, because of course they aren’t going to pick up a number they don’t recognize, who does that?

Step Four: call them back, hoping they’ve listened to the message and will now accept your call. They do, thankfully. You explain how pretty you are. They are aware.

Step Five: ask them for your son’s cell phone number. I would mention their car’s impending warranty expiration, but now does not seem like an ideal time.

Steps Six thru Eight—Repeating Step Three as necessary: get all the numbers you need to solve your dinner, accommodations, and airport pick up problem.

Step Nine: congratulate yourself on not letting “Pretty” be your only defining characteristic. “Problem Solver” is a good antidote to “Pretty.”

Step Ten: still manage to be an hour late for airport pickup because A) no map app, B) no traffic alerts, and C) PRETTY.

Moral of the Story: Memorize at least one phone number of someone who knows Your People. And pay cash. If you’re going to be a Pretty Mob Boss, might as well be an untraceable one. Because yes, I totally entered my name as Walter White on the burner phone.

Probably because I've left my keys somewhere...

Game of Telephones

Actually, this is a game about telephone numbers. How many telephone numbers do you have committed to memory? And of those numbers you have memorized—how many are still valid? And how many of the numbers you have memorized belong to cell phones? Give your self one point for each valid number and three points for each cell phone number. Now subtract all the non-cell phone number points. Subtract three points for counting your own cell phone number. Seriously—that’s cheating. Subtract all the points you gave yourself for people whose cell phone number and former land line number are very similar or the same.

Anybody have more that 6 points? Because you are my hero.

I still remember my childhood home phone number, my best friend’s home number, the cute boy from high school’s home number, and my neighborhood party-line calling numbers--- but I can’t say I know ANYBODY’S cell phone number, because my cellphone knows all that. Knowing numbers is no longer my job. I have outsourced that to Siri.

Old school phone books--collect the whole set!

Which is a fine plan---until you decide to top off the battery on your cell phone before leaving for an overnight trip that culminates in an early morning airport pick up. Of course, you—and by you, I mean me—you leave your phone on the charger and it’s not until you’re two hours away from home and need to type in a directions request into your absent phone’s map app that you realize just how deep the doo-doo is. 

No phone, no directions to your overnight accommodations, no way to let your dinner companion know there’s a hiccup in the timing, no way to receive updates on your friend’s flight. Spoiler alert: the doo-doo is a least elbow deep.

Also—it is threatening to snow, did I mention that? The LAST thing you want to do is drive back home for two hours so you can start again...What to do, what to do? To be without a cell phone/crutch is like being a babe, lost in the woods. “Pretty,” helpless, and probably going to die before sunup.

Fortunately, this is not the first time I’ve ever done something “pretty,” so I’ve learned to think creatively. I’m pretty, but I can problem solve like a boss. 

Let's Talk Turkey, Shall We?

 

You may have seen those reminders making their way around the internet the last two weeks or so; handy little charts that tell you that if your turkey is “X” pounds you need to get it out of the freezer and into the fridge “Y” number of days ahead of time so that it can sufficiently defrost before The Big Day. I never have to worry about all that X/Y math/science stuff, because I buy a fresh turkey and just keep it in the fridge to begin with, as our forefathers intended.

...Except for that one year when my house fridge was too crowded for a 20 lb. turkey and I had to use the small former-dorm-room-now-turned-garage-fridge...

A twenty-pound turkey will pretty much max out the capacity of a small former-dorm-room-now-turned-garage-fridge—and by “max-out” I mean I had to remove all the interior shelves and stand the bird on his, or her, tail. It took a bit of wiggling and finessing but I managed to get the fresh, never frozen fowl into the mini fridge. I was all set for Thanksgiving morning, no need to cross reference the weight of the turkey with the days on the calendar. Easy peasy.

On Thanksgiving morning, I went out to the garage to get my fresh bird to begin the day’s preparations only to find a frosty 20 lb. bird in its place. I am told that the sight of me dragging a frozen turkey into the house has left an indelible mark in the memory of all those who witnessed it—well, that and the colorful language. 

Needless to say, dinner was a bit later that Thanksgiving. Fortunately, my good friend Betty had a helpful tip about tightly wrapping the (thawed) bird in foil and then setting your oven to “Cremate.” This technique cuts the 5 to 6-hour cooking time down to a more acceptable three hours. And if you distract your friends and family with emergency appetizers, preferably something very rich and filling ---

—I used a block of cream cheese, softened in the microwave on a plate. Pour on a small jar of cocktail sauce, top with small shrimp, and serve with a boatload of crackers. Serve with a few rounds cranberry martinis—they won’t mind too much that Thanksgiving Day Dinner has become Thanksgiving Night Dinner.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Pretty is as Pretty Does

 It’s 5:00, on a Tuesday afternoon in August, and I am in the trunk of my car in the parking lot of Costco, wearing a black sundress with white polka dots. Just to be clear—I am the one wearing the sundress, not the car-- or the parking lot. I am very, very pretty.

I can explain. I am in the trunk because my keys are locked in the front seat of my car. Along with my cell phone and credit cards. And the iced coffee that precipitated this whole kerfuffle; coffee that was purchased to avoid just this kind of scenario: I tend to overbook myself; I’ve been up since 4:30 a.m., and I’m pretty (!) sure I’m going to need the caffeine to make my brain function properly. I have an open trunk, a cartload of Costco goodness, and am climbing into the trunk to see if I can reach thru the 6”x 12” armrest opening and unlatch the backseat. If I can do that, I can crawl through, unlock the car from the INSIDE and no one would be the wiser that—in an attempt not to spill my iced coffee—I instead dropped my keys into the seat next to the coffee. There’s also the part where I pushed the lock button instead of the unlock button—twice—but it takes too long to fully explain. You wouldn’t be reading about how pretty I am; you would instead be making a mental note to lock your car as you read how much zucchini I’ve inadvertently grown. Hopefully, your mental note would also include the caveat to avoid locking your keys in your car. Especially with your cell phone. Because it is very, very difficult to discretely summon assistance without it.

Did I mention I was wearing a sundress? Because I am. Decorum requires that I climb all the way into the trunk and curl my legs inside because-- dress reasons. As I am lying curled up in the back of my trunk in a busy parking lot it occurs to me that the only thing that could make this ridiculous story even better is if some well-meaning passers-by shut the lid of my trunk. I begin to giggle. I also note that I should probably vacuum my trunk more often.

Eventually, I accept the reality that my arm is too short to reach the seat latch and I’m going to have to exit the trunk-- as though it were a perfectly normal place to exit a vehicle-- and ask the kind people at Costco to Google “locksmiths near me,” and call said locksmith.

I do, they do. One hour and $154 later I am reunited with my coffee. I was right—I really, really needed it.

All Things to All People

I have a weakness.

My weakness is there’s some small part of me that is convinced that I am a Super Shero, that I can be All Things to All People, and that if I just organize my day properly I can Do! All! the Things! Spoiler alert: this is often not the case. Still, my belief in myself remains unflagging.

Take a random Tuesday in August; I have promised my neighbor to go exercise with her first thing in the a.m.. I have also made tentative plans to go see my cousin Jill and her daughter Gracie when they arrive from out of state to settle Gracie in for her final semester at Lewis and Clark College. Maybe we’ll have lunch, maybe dinner, who knows, but it’s a plan.

 Planish. 

Plan adjacent. We’ll figure it out.

Gracie, Jill and I--we figured it out. 

On my way to Portland, I might as well swing north to Napavine—I mean, it’s RIGHT THERE—kiss my grandkids, and deliver fair tickets to my kiddos—why do I have fair tickets, you might ask? It’s a long story, no need to digress. Let’s just keep focused on how many birds I am menacing with this single stone.

The other bird is that Mark is suddenly dispatched to California—sudden as in Sunday he got the call—to help oversee the safety and quality assurance of a railroad bridge that was destroyed in the Dixie fire in what once was Greenville, California. Since I’m going to be in Portland anyway, I might as well swing by, drop him off at the airport, kiss-kiss, be careful, and be on my way. Then a quick stop at Costco for—well, for whatever random goodness appeals, to be honest.

Did I mention that lunch is on the I-5 side, and the airport is on the 205 side, and traffic at anytime of day is the stuff of nightmares? Also, I might have been up since 4:30 a.m. working out the logistics?

All of the aforementioned explains why—at 5 p.m. on a random Tuesday-- I am climbing into the trunk of my car in the Vancouver parking lot of Costco. 

I lay down. 

I really, really need caffeine. 

So Very Pretty

In the Sume Family, if one of us does something bone-headed—some might call it “stupid”—we just look at them with understanding and say kindly, “It’s ok, you’re very pretty.”

If I am the receiving end of this comment, I often respond “Thank you.” Usually followed by 

“Hey!” as the meaning behind the perceived compliment slowly sinks in.

Last Sunday---and please don’t think I’m bragging here— I was extra-special pretty. Industrial strength pretty. Capital P Pretty. I was so pretty I even self-identified as pretty.

It’s a long story, and kind of impossible to explain—one of those you had to be there stories--- but thank heavens no one was there to witness it. I won’t try to explain exactly what happened, but I will give you the pivotal pieces of the story and let your imagination do the heavy lifting.

I was hurrying to visit my grandson---a visit that would entail two of my favorite things: holding the baby and watching football. I parked, got out of the car. I was wearing sunglasses that I decided to toss on the dash just as I was closing the door. The sunglasses fell back out of the car, missed being crushed by the closing door and dropped on the grass, unscathed. Pretty lucky, right?

Anyway—some time between congratulating myself on my good luck and successfully securing the sunglasses back inside the car I managed to close the side of my face—specifically my left eye—in the car door.

That’s right. I shut the door—not on my sunglasses—I shut the door ON. MY. FACE.

Who shuts the car door on their face? I mean, how would you even DO that?

The answers to those questions are “me” and “I truly have no idea.”

I was standing there, cupping my eye, leaning my head on the car roof, thinking “Boy, that really HURTS,” trying to decide if I was going to cry or if I should just suck it up and go hold my grandbaby when I became aware that the falling rain was warmer than one would expect in October. As I might have mentioned---I’m very pretty. And pretty bloody. I was quite the sight to see, and my son was dispatched to the drugstore for medical supplies.

Not me, not my eyebrow, not even close.

By the time he returned, I had bleeding under control. As he carefully applied the liquid bandaid to my brow, he very gently broke it to me that my career as an eyebrow model was probably a thing of the past, but--no worries!—I was still VERY PRETTY. 

And, clearly, I am. So very Pretty.

To Bee or Not

I am Pro Bee.

 I’m very active in the Bee Community, I support Bee Causes, I live a Bee Friendly--mostly insecticide-free-- Lifestyle. I even wrote away for my free packet of wildflower seeds from the lovely people at HoneyNut Cheerios. I am a Bee Ally.

"You never can tell, with Bees..."

All my fine activism was called into question a week or so ago when I was stung by a bee. On my toe. If we were playing “this lil piggy went to market,” the toe in question would have rather stayed home. There I was, minding my own bizzzzness, dragging 200 feet of garden house through clover infested grass while wearing flip-flops...what could go wrong? As the philosopher Pooh once famously said, “You never can tell, with bees.”

True, flip-flops are not ideal garden footwear, but it was hot, and I wasn’t planning on staying outside for long, and---STOP BLAMING THE VICTIM!! Why is it every time there is a bee sting incident it usually comes down to blaming the victim? “What were you wearing? Did you eat too much honey? Did you tease the bees in any way?” (Flip-flops, no honey, and of course not. Now can we get back to talking about HOW MUCH my toe hurts?)

So, there I was, hose, flip-flops, clover, dragging. I was also apparently dragging my feet because at some point I scooped up a bee in my shoe, felt something crawling on my toe and looked down in time to see the little bugger giving his all for his cause. Couldn’t he tell I was a Bee Ally?

I’d forgotten just how MUCH a bee sting HURTS.

There was yelping, and hopping, and perhaps some colorful and creative use of language—be glad you’re not my neighbor. I dropped the hose and made a beeline for the house where I mixed up my mother’s bee sting cure: baking soda and water. As I sat there, with my foot elevated, my toe slathered in the drippy, gritty paste, my lower lip only slightly atremble---now I remember why as a child I used to cry when I stepped on a bee—I realized that my elixir was missing the magic ingredient: a mother’s kiss.

To make a long story only slightly shorter I will say that my bee stung toe itched for three days. Right up until I jammed my “this little piggy cried wee-wee-wee, all the way home” toe into an immovable object in the middle of the night and (possibly) broke it.

 I don’t recommend the cure.