Messy Memories

Sometimes people remember with startling clarity events that seem totally trivial (or completely unmemorable ) to another person. Perspective can etch an event or comment permanently in the mind, or wipe it out completely.

This was clearly demonstrated to me a lifetime or two ago (and countless times since). On that day, Mary, my brother's girlfriend of the time, asked if we remembered the time that I threw the hissy fit. While the singular 30-second snippet of life was stamped indelibly in her mind, I had no recollection of what she was talking about until she shared her tale.

Part of the problem was, hissy fits and temper tantrums (often involving flying objects) were a regular event in my world, and I had a room full of broken (and reglued) stuff to prove it. Some of the explosions most memorable for me occurred when I was alone. Unfortunately, other people remembered the displays outside my bedroom.

In junior high, we had an after school ski program at one of the nearby ski mountains. My parents left early to get to their jobs and we kids walked to school. One week on ski day, having forgotten to leave my books at school the day before, I was schlepping skis, boots and books to school over the wintery, messy sidewalks. The load was heavy and awkward, and approximately every five paces, something dropped -- a ski, the boots, a book.

In total frustration at having made it barely a third of the way to school, the reality of arriving late due to slow progress, and the ridiculous difficulty of the normally simple task of walking, I totally lost it right there on Pine Street. I hurled one of my books into the street (probably with a profanity for effect). I was mad to have forgotten about skiing and taking home homework the day before. Mad that my parents left early for work, leaving me to walk to school loaded like a pack mule with skis and boots. Mad we didn't live a couple streets away so that the bus would at least be a transportation option. Basically, I was mad about everything. After retrieving the book and reassembling the load, I continued to school, still dropping stuff all the way, but feeling slightly better from the exertion of the book toss and recognition of the silliness of my outburst.

In high school, after one of many fights with my Dad, I stomped upstairs to my room (as usual), took off one of my wood-soled clogs, and slammed it toe-first into the floor so hard the bottom of the shoe split. Oops. That wasn't something fixable with the Elmer's Glue.

When I was attending the state college in town, my brother worked the overnight shift in the boiler room at the local sunglass factory and we both lived at home. This one day, my brother, his girlfriend, Mary, and I were at the house. Apparently, there was some difficulty opening the jar of peanut butter. Allegedly, I slammed the jar down onto the kitchen table. The impact of the bottom of the jar left a ridged ring in the wooden tabletop and a clear memory for Mary.

While I didn't remember the specific incident when the story was being told, it sounded like something I would do. There was a bit of a tendency to get all pissy when inanimate objects failed to operate as expected. What was surprising (and embarrassing) to me was how vividly Mary remembered it. Years later, she was recounting the event in detail like it had happened earlier that same day. Evidently, what was normal at our house was quite memorable for visitors.

Fortunately, I have matured and mellowed with age. Now things are broken by accident and rarely in a fury. This may be because I know what things cost now, and I'm more interested in studying why things don't work than flying off the handle and sailing them acrosss the room when they don't. And the lesson of Mary's memory has not been forgotten.

Flashbacks in a Box

Tonight I made Rice-A-Roni (the San Francisco Treat!) for the first time in ages, with "ages" defined as quite possibly not since junior high or high school when I'd get the occasional phone call from my Mom (who was at work) saying to start dinner, usually Hamburger Helper or Rice-A-Roni.

After graduating college and setting up my own kitchen and independent life, I rebelled against boxed supper kits and baking mixes. I didn't see that they save much time and it's less expensive to stock the components separately because they always have a multitude of uses.

Months ago, on a whim, I bought a box of Rice-A-Roni that was on clearance. It sat in the pantry, bypassed meal after meal as pasta, ramen and the ingredients for homemade soup were chosen instead. That poor box of rice dinner was living my public school gym class experience for my entire K-12 academic career.

One Sunday, I debated the merits of grocery shopping, a trip to PetSmart to exchange Winston's new harness that is too small, and a trip to Goodwill for "new" cardigans for work, against a strong desire to not spend any more money in a weekend that already included two nights out and a hair salon visit. The stay home to not spend more money options included glamorous chores like raking more leaves (ultimately overruled by high winds) and multitasking TV movies by using the commercial breaks for trips to the basement to deal with laundry and schlepp up boxes still unpacked from one or more previous residential moves and quite possibly not needed for yet another move.

The Publix flyer had already been studied and the grocery list made, but going to the store would have meant laying out money and defying my no-spending day. Even worse, I would've missed half of "Shall We Dance?" starring Jennifer Lopez, Susan Sarandon and Richard Gere. Consequently, the list was set aside, and operaton "Possibly Pandora's Box" was launched.

A specific basement box containing computer stuff was chosen and carried up to the main living area without injury, which, halfway up the stairs, seemed almost impossible. The box contained home office stuff including disks (yes, pre CD square disks) full of my writing from three long-abandoned computers and as many as 15 years ago. I need to take the disks to work to transfer the documents to a more user friendly medium. The long bypassed, kitchen box of Rice-A-Roni memories was chosen from the Lazy Susan cabinet because, as long as I was going through the contents of an old box from a previous chunk of life, it might be fun to layer on a sauteed rice flashback.

I remember this costume, but not this version of me.

As the smells of family suppers long ago began to waft from the kitchen, next door in the living room, the basement box of mysterious computer stuff was opened. A treasure trove of visual memories was pulled out when I found two photo albums underneath the computer disks.

One album had been made by my Mom for my birthday years ago. It contained a lot of ephemera of my young life, including the hospital bill from when I was born, the birth record for baby "Girl Simonds" with my tiny baby footprints and birth time and weight, the birth notice in the newspaper and dozens of photos and report cards from kindergarten through sixth grade, plus some from high school. It even had my baptism and Sunday School promotion certificates.

I thought the movie about dressed up people dancing made me cry? HA! I obviously didn't know the water works would be on full force from looking at photos from birthday parties and ballet recitals. It kills me that I don't remember being that quiet looking little girl in all those images. All I can do now is wonder who the heck she was, why she's wearing all my cute little outfits, and how I ended up so far from home, sitting on a couch all alone eating Rice-A-Roni.

Changing Times

The annual “Fall Back” with the clocks has come and gone, and one week into it, life is slightly altered. On the bright side, I no longer need to slap the crap out of the snooze button every nine minutes for nearly an hour before dragging myself out of bed. It’s already getting light outside at the new 6:00 that used to be 7:00, and I am able to leap out of bed like Baryshnikov at the first bleat of the clock. In my mind, it's like that anyway. It's not an actual leap, but I'm pretty sure I at least stumble out of bed with a modicum of grace.

There is plenty of time to get dressed, sometimes multiple times, depending upon how the wardrobe choices and weight are matching up. There is plenty of time to feed, water and walk the dogs without feeling like we are running sprints. And bonus -- I’ve been able to drive to work without screaming at too many other drivers and still arriving early every day for a week. It’s great!

Well, it’s great until 5:00 rolls around, and I’m leaving work in darkness that feels like the middle of the night. That part is horrid. Thank goodness for my thrift store living room floor lamp plugged into my IKEA timer, or I’d never be able to fumble my way into the house. The now five-year-old outside solar lights stopped lighting my way months ago, and I haven’t yet managed to check if it’s something that can be easily fixed or if I should just buy new ones, but I need to figure it out quickly, before I bust my head coming up the walk in the dark.

Once home, the evening routine kicks into gear -- TV goes on to Judge Judy for my 5:30 class with the CDE Channel 13 Law School Independent Study program. The fur babies are fed, and then it’s time for our evening walk. The dogs are attached to leashes, I grab a couple poop pick-up bags and a flashlight and out we go. And that is where it comes to a stop. Winston heads down the walk, but without his morning exuberance, and Moose won’t step off the porch. I call to him to “Come!” and he looks at me and plants himself by digging in his paws. If I return to the porch to try and cajole him off, he stares me down like I am his adversary in a duel, which is what it is beginning to feel like.

A couple times, I’ve managed to get Moose off the porch and onto the walkway, where he stops, digs in and holds his ground again. On high alert, he is the perfect example of “head on a swivel” as he looks all around, nose sniffing the air and eyes darting in every possible direction.

If (and it’s a might big “IF”) I can get the dogs to accompany me to the end of the driveway, it feels like a victory. Then it’s an effort to drag Moose down the street while Winston ignores me and busies himself sniffing the decaying leaves on the side of the road. We may get three houses away, with my crappy flashlight cutting a feeble yellow beam through the darkness and a full-on battle of wills taking place.

When I finally concede defeat and give the usual end of our walk command, “Let's go back,” Winston and Moose execute a perfectly choreographed 180 degree turn, pick up the pace and head back towards the house. And by “pick up the pace,” I mean that they are now dragging me down the street, and with my still weak, broken one-year-ago leg, I am not match for their speed or strength. I drop the leashes, and tell them to “Go Home” and in a display matching that of a pack of sled dogs in The Iditarod, they are back on the safety of the porch, waiting for me still in the dark street. Thanks for the protection and company, guys.

Oddly, these are the same two dogs who, until very recently (as in, one week ago),  would bolt out of the yard in the dark and go exploring in the woods and neighboring yards for 15 to 30 minutes. I trust their ability and awareness of things I can’t see or detect, and I don’t take their reluctance lightly. I’m not that keen on walking around after dark in our neighborhood either. There are no sidewalks and barely one street light every 10 houses.

It has me wondering what they know that I don’t. What creepy predator might be lurking in the woods behind the house with the deer, turkey and owl? I read enough Stephen King novels in high school and college to have slept with the light on for several years. I hear the mysterious beast in the neighborhood that emits the chilling howl that wakes us up after midnight every few nights. I’m trusting the dogs on this -- if they don’t want to go walking after dark, we don’t have to. We'll stay inside and grow fat and happy together.

Headline News

Every day, multiple times a day, I scan the headlines on Yahoo. I don't always read the articles, because sometimes the headlines alone are plenty of entertainment. In with the legitimate, hard (read: usually depressing) news is the soft news -- heavy on the Hollywood "Who really cares?" variety, that offsets the gloom of everything else. Without the fluff news, it's possible we'd all be sobbing raw nerves in need of therapy. Those who read the news, anyway.

Every once in a while, my selective attention plucks out a series of headlines in a day or a series of days that send me over the top. It happened again this week.

On the heels of the national election that dominated the news for what felt like forever, these are some of the real Yahoo headlines that caught my eye from  amongst the hard news of weather disasters, stock market drops, the near-daily gunfights in the 'Ville,  and 8,000 year old bones in an ancient well:

"Worst celeb tattoos"
"Party schools that pay off"
"In Hollywood, I’m obese"
"Middleton rocks same dress"
"Michelle Obama recycles Michael Kors dress"
"Sasha Obama election night skirt was first worn by Malia"

Seriously?

It’s "news" that Michelle Obama, First Lady of the United States, and Kate Middleton, the wife of Prince William, recently wore dresses they had already worn before? And Sasha Obama wore a hand-me-down skirt on election night? OH MY GAWD!!!  Public figures behave like everyone else and presidential children have to suffer with hand-me-downs?

And this is newsworthy?!?!?

Perhaps, since the election, these are slow news days (until the breaking news about David Petraus resigning from the CIA, anyway). Maybe it’s the work of publicists attempting to illustrate that Royals and First Ladies with access to top designers and money that most people can only dream of, are just like the rest us (at least in a tight economy). Sure they live in palatial residences with cooks and staff, but look -- they wear their designer clothes more than once!

On the bright side, parents everywhere can now say, (with full journalistic backing), that "If hand-me-downs are good enough for the president's kid, they are good enough for you, [fill in first, middle and last name of whining child protesting wearing clothes of older sibling]."  

Imagine if this was "news" for normal people -- all of us non-royal, non-presidential, working-stiff  types. I can see the shocking headlines now:

"School teacher wears same cardigan over five year period"
"Office worker wears same suit to three different client meetings in one month"
"Utility worker wears same five uniforms in rotation throughout 15 year career"

If wearing clothes more than once is a newsworthy event, then most of us probably deserve a medal. Or a new outfit.

Macaroni Love

Sometimes things get stuck in your cranium. Well, mine anyway. The things vary --it might be a passage of music or snippet of lyrics, odd phrase, snatch of fragrance from a passing co-worker that lodges in my sinuses, a memory of a flavor or food texture -- pleasant or otherwise.

It can strike with sudden ferociousness, like when I'm at my desk pushing around papers with lots of headache-inducing banking regulatory language and suddenly it pops into my head that I need mashed potatoes, which will be stuck in my mind for as long as it takes to either procure and devour mashed potatoes or forget that I wanted them. Sometimes, it's more subtle -- overhearing someone talk about ice cream on Monday, seeing an ice cream ad Tuesday, then slipping into a full-blown ice cream craving on Wednesday, even though dairy is not always my friend and stuffs up my sinuses.

Many a morning I have  awoken with a song stuck in my head -- the past few weeks it's been Barenaked Ladies crooning the theme music from Big Bang Theory. Lately, I drift off to sleep to and endless loop "Heart and Soul" from the new iPad Mini commercial.

Sometimes, a food craving can be triggered by actually eating it. The most recent addiction was instigated during a Satruday lunch at the Old Chicago pizza bar. I've known OF the lunchtime pizza bar for years, but ordered it only once, a couple years ago. About ten minutes into raking leaves, my mind was wandering and I started thinking about lunch. After checking in with a friend and considering Korean food (our usual) we made plans to shake things up and meet at Old Chicago for the lunch pizza bar.

I'm not sure if the pizza bar has the same things all the time, but that particular day there were pepperoni, vegetarian, and ham and pineapple pizzas set out, plus garlic bread sticks and marinara. And macaroni and cheese. I was there for the pizza, but the macaroni intrigued me -- pale, long, loose curls of macaroni in a creamy sauce. I took a small scoop. It was good. It tasted like more. I went back. The mac and cheese bowl had been replaced with another pizza. Sad face.

Immediately upon leaving Old Chicago, I was already thinking about having the macaroni and cheese again. On Sunday, I was still thinking about it. Based on my obsessive food history, I figured the best way to handle it was to tackle it head on. I hit the recipe box and visited the pasta reserves in the pantry, where there is almost always an array of pasta shapes and sizes suitable for capturing sauces, swimming in soups and baking in casseroles.

The recipe I used is good, but nowhere as tasty as the other one I have that calls for five types of cheese, nor as creamy as the stuff at Old Chicago. I didn't have five types of cheeses (only two) and was too lazy to look up a creamy recipe. Because I live alone, that 8-inch square baking dish of my dense mac and cheese has fed me for five days now. Lunch tomorrow should (thankfully) finish it off and I suspect it will be a while before I'll be loving macaroni and cheese again. I hope.

Packing Right

Packing for a trip is one of the most challenging tasks of which I know, with "challenging" being positive-speak for "colossal pain in the arse." I love to visit other places, but the idea of gathering clothes and being separated from my closet for any length of time is frightening. I rarely plan clothes in advance and feel disloyal choosing “favorite” outfits. Any time I've tried to plan clothes ahead, I wake up in the wrong mood or the wrong weight, and it's back to square one anyway.

Once upon a time, I was really, really good at packing. A blissful stretch of time in Massachusetts in the 1980s and 90s involved frequent weekend trips to Maine, Cape Cod and New York, and grand vacations on cruise ships and to Caribbean Islands. Back then, life was a Travel Channel adventure and "What if..." was the guiding mantra. What if we went into Manhattan?  What if we went to the theatre or a nice restaurant? What if there was a great new dance club? What if ... I could pack blindfolded and knew exactly what to cram into a bag or two or three to provide critical and varied wardrobe options to cover all potential scenarios.

Overpacking to cover any and all foreseeable social situations resulted in a sense of obligation to change outfits for each activity -- as many as three or four times a day.  It was part of the fun of stepping outside regular life and being someplace else. A single day in "real life" rarely included shopping and a picnic and a trip to the beach and a nightclub and ice cream stand and a restaurant, but those were the norm on a weekend or vacation trip.

"Real life" featured endless hours trapped in the same spot at work, interrupted only by trips to the restroom and maybe outside the building for lunch, followed by a car ride home or to the grocery store. The only times outfits were changed during a "normal" day was if catastrophe struck -- like a coffee spill or the unfortunate explosion of a critical seam in the back of one’s skirt or pants.

A wardrobe evolution to predominantly black made packing even easier. Mostly black equals instant coordination and clothes for a week-long visit to Paris in November 1999 fit into one suitcase that technically qualified as a carry-on – and even included an extra coat. It was the epitome of coordination and efficiency which has never yet been replicated.

Since moving to Tennessee, my travel schedule has declined from regular, interesting and frequent to once or twice a year, at best. Sorely out of practice, there are semiannual panicked tailspins at the horrific idea of packing for a holiday visit home.

One of the difficulties (of course I mean "challenges") is the abundance of activities that may be proposed while 1,000 miles away from the comfort of the closet. Past travel has included sledding, ice skating, hiking, swimming, night clubs, fine restaurants, casinos and midnight swims in the ocean immediately after leaving a nightclub -- most of it spontaneous. Toes were frozen, snowsuits borrowed, clothing items destroyed by chlorine or salt water. Sometimes, activities were declined due to the absence of proper footwear or a swimsuit.

A recently cultivated nuance to packing involves forgetting some ordinary, yet critical, everyday item.  I’ll arrive with a suitcase stuffed with 50 pounds of clothing and shoes and still need an emergency trip to WalMart or Target for pajamas, sweatpants, a toothbrush, contact lens supplies or underwear.

For Christmas 2011, it felt like I had a pretty good idea of what to pack. The Christmas itinerary was planned and weather forecasts called for not too cold and not snowy. Basic standard needs were something to wear for Christmas and to church, something in case I went out with friends, pajamas, and sweats or jeans for relaxing time spent at the table annihilating family members in Scrabble (my favorite game on the planet). Seemed simple enough.

The Parisian wardrobe packing model was followed with everything charcoal gray or black mix-and-match with punches of color in the purple Christmas jacket, a teal jersey and a bright green cashmere sweater. If a garment didn't work in at least two outfit combinations or coordinate with the pearly pink cane supporting me and my compound fractured leg, it stayed home.

In a crazy, whimsical moment of fantasy, a "Let's pretend I go out on a date or have a job interview" cream-colored lace shirt was tossed into the mix, to be worn with a cardigan or the purple jacket and either the black skirt or jeans or pinstripe pants (multiple combinations!). It was crazy, because there had been exactly three dates in the previous 18 months and it is questionable that one was an actual date. There were also no interviews scheduled, but I am a little bit of a Boy Scout (Be Prepared!). 

While no dates or job interviews materialized during the week, a much grander invitation was extended -- to be a guest on a TV talk show. That launched a wave of total panic over the paralyzing wonderment of what to wear on a show taping in two days. Of all the varied activities that ever flitted through the imagined realm of possibility, "being on TV" was NEVER once considered when packing for a trip. Now that it’s happened, I guess it can go on the list.

Election Reflection

Some people I know (or have known) can recollect with amazing clarity every ballot cast in their voting histories. I am not one of those people. Granted, some of them are decades younger than I am, with briefer, fresher voting legacies than my own, and that might help. Others are much older and their ability to remember such things makes me feel like an amnesia patient.

Legal voting age (and at the time, drinking age) greeted me right before starting freshman year of college, but it was a couple years for the next presidential election. My first and perhaps only “political activism” (the term is used loosely here) took place in college when my wardrobe was rich in flannel shirts and Wrangler jeans. Basically, I dressed a lot like the guys I had crushes on, and that is the type of outfit worn to at least one anti-nuclear themed keg party held in the woods. Our beer drinking was punctuated by the occasional fist-pumping chants of “Hell no, we won’t glow!” to remind us why we were there as we shivered in the dark. That is the type of stuff I remember. If you can tell me what I was wearing, I can probably tell you what we were doing.

I have no idea how we thought a cluster of a dozen college kids drinking in the woods in the dark would change anything related to the debate over nuclear power, but I’m sure it made sense at the time.

As for the candidates in my first national election? Well, I’d be one fresh corpse if my next breath depended upon recalling which name I marked in that first major election (or many of those to follow).

My grandmother, who could relate with amazing detail stories from her youth during the Roaring 20s and the Great Depression, could list every candidate she ever voted for and the reasons why. On the approach to Election Day, she would proudly declare that she was officially registered as an Independent voter and never voted a straight party ticket. She believed it was bad for one political group to hold all the power, and balanced her choices amongst affiliations, focusing on individuals in whom she felt she could place her trust.

I share my grandmother’s philosophy about parties and candidates, but, unlike she could, I can’t reel off my choices in most past elections. This is not especially alarming to me, as many days I can’t recall what I ate for breakfast. Perhaps if I was involved and passionate about politics (or had a voting outfit designated for the occasion) it all might have a more permanent impression.

The political impression I do hold is that it’s a personal responsibility as a U.S. citizen to vote. I’m hugely offended by people who piss and moan about elected officials and/or candidates campaigning for office, and who haven’t voted in the past and have no intention to vote at present. One friend, in advance of the contentious 2000 Presidential Election, complained about candidates and issues the entire election season, then confessed that at the age of 30, had never registered and voted. Ever. Seriously? That’s the same year I deliberately scheduled an international trip and wedding plans for after Election Day to ensure nothing hindered my ability to vote.

While not the most politically involved citizen (I don’t campaign for candidates or post political displays of affection in my yard or on my vehicle), I take voting seriously. Before heading to the voting machine, I almost always review a sample ballot for my own comfort level – a lesson learned after at least one head-splitting election featuring complicated referendum questions that read like the deliberately confusing word problems on a standardized test. As tough as some choices may seem, I can’t even imagine living in a place where people can’t help shape their society with a vote.

My bottom line (for what it's worth) – please vote. It doesn’t matter to me for whom you cast your ballot, just be part of the process. And if you choose to not vote, please keep your mouth shut for the next four years.