Kicking It

This year I decided to kick winter. Right in the snowballs.

It has (finally) become obvious that complaining about it, denying it, or remaining indoors because of it doesn’t change winter. That crap has gotten old and is making me feel prematurely old. It’s clearly time for a new approach.

Snow-filled winter 2014-2015 in central Massachusetts began with pre-Thanksgiving Day snowfall and the sideways slide of my Honda CRV off a steep driveway that felt like the marriage of an amusement park ride and a nightmare. The Thanksgiving hell ride illuminated the need for new tires, the purchase of which I was convinced would insure cancellation of all winter weather for the remainder of the season and possibly until said tires were bald. As an added precaution, I bought a new winter coat that would look lovely hanging in the closet during our cancelled winter.

The notion of my purchases killing winter is based on a lengthy track record. Items I like and TV shows I love are usually discontinued at a speed commensurate with my affection for them. Call it Puritan guilt, but I feel personally responsible for the demise of countless shows including “My So Called Life,” “Freaks and Geeks,” “Joan of Arcadia,”  “Chuck,” “Pushing Daisies,” as well as the entire AZN television network which shut down in 2008, four months after I discovered it. And y’all can thank me for ignoring your beloved “Sons of Anarchy” and “Walking Dead.”

Although the “tires and coat purchased to cancel winter” strategy failed and we’ve had about 897 feet of snow so far with another month to go before spring, I am not giving up (credit my Finnish stubbornness). Under a new approach modeled after the rapid retreat of boys I liked in high school and college, I’m chasing winter with open arms.

I have skied. I have viewed it as a workout and cheerfully shoveled, swept, and pushed snow more than times than I can count (and still fewer times than I could have). I even attended two outdoor winter festivals in the space of a few weeks, something I would have avoided in the past by barricading myself in the house under a quilt while whining “it’s too cold!”

At the first festival, which I managed to convince my sister, nieces, and friends to attend, I tossed a cross country ski boot (poorly) in a contest. Later the same afternoon, I participated in a Finnish-tradition wife carrying contest with a university exchange student introduced to me only minutes before the race. We finished second place, just one second behind the winning, long-married couple.  It was invigorating. All of it. The snow, the bonfire, the outdoor activities, the indoor dancing.

At the second festival, attended with my adventurous niece with whom I have climbed two mountains in warm weather, we snow shoed for the first time. Yes, it was cold, but once we were moving and on a trail sheltered by trees, it felt less so. Or maybe we were too focused on not falling over to think about the weather. We rewarded our efforts with New England Clam Chowder. And it was fun!

The snow shoe expedition was so successful, the following week was spent obsessively trolling the Internet in search of snow shoes. Success arrived in the form of an online retailer in Minnesota offering a package of two (new!) pairs of women’s snow shoes for less than the price of one pair elsewhere. This purchase will drive two possible outcomes -- either it will never snow in Massachusetts again, or I will have a new way in which to meet winter head on. On my terms and at my own leisure. Feels like a win-win to me. Take THAT, winter!


Originally published on February 10, 2015 on unite4women.tumblr.com.

RamYUM Part 1

If you know me offline, you probably know that I like ramen. OK, I love ramen, but only certain ramen. It's a good thing I like it, because often it was the only food in the house.  I like the game where I delay going to the grocery store as long as possible.

Here is one of my favorite ramen "recipes" which fits into my "give me three ingredients and I will throw down some food" bragging.

Creamy Vegetable Ramen

Ingredients:
Creamy chicken ramen (break up the brick before you open the package)
Frozen mixed vegetables
Milk, half-and-half, and/or water

Put some milk and water, or all milk, or half-and-half and water in a saucepan. Use the liquid measure for "soup" on the directions on the packet (if you like. I usually wing it). If you don't have milk or half-and-half, just go with water like the instructions say. But seriously, it's good with milk.

Add the flavor packet and stir it in.

Toss in a handful of frozen mixed vegetables.

Add the ramen.

Heat until simmering and the ramen is a texture you like. Be careful you don't scald the milk, because that's gross.

Eat and enjoy.

The Edge

When I lived in Tennessee I missed being near the edge of the country. Tennessee boasts some fine geography including the Smoky Mountains, Reelfoot Lake, and several rivers, but eight hours to the nearest beach is just too far for me. 

Living in New England, my friends and I could make a quick decision and in an hour or so be at either the ocean or the mountains. With proximity like that, it is possible to wake up, look outside at the weather, and depart on an adventure.

That’s what happened today. Gal pal Nancy and I had soft plans for her next to last day in town -- we planned to do something, but hadn’t determined what. A few days earlier, we considered shopping, but I lucked out and she went on Sunday while I was deep in the excitement of getting new tires, which left Monday wide open for entertainment.

In the morning we confirmed we were still both available and interested in doing something. We just needed to figure out what. The potential ideas included shopping, a museum, tattoos or psychic readings (for which we lacked appointments). Or the beach.

Yes, the beach. In December. In New England.

It was sunny and 60 degrees out (just a few days after six inches of snow), and dammit, it was possible. We drove to Hampton Beach, New Hampshire, even though there are many other options. Hampton is the default when we say “the beach.” Any other beaches are specified by name.

We took the longer, back roads route through some quaint New England towns and landed at the beach on a blue sky day. In December, there is plenty of parking at the beach and the pay stations were wrapped and covered for the off-season.

We drove down some of the side streets packed side by side with rental beach houses, trying to remember which rentals we and our friends stayed in during a very eventful beach week many moons ago, right after we’d graduated from high school. Then we parked the car in one of the gazillion empty parking places and walked on the beach. It was low tide and there were lots of shells.There were a few people on the beach with metal detectors and a few dogs and mostly it was beautifully deserted and quiet.

While we were walking, I said, “I want to find a sand dollar.” As a kid, I had a sea shell collection including many sand dollars found at York Beach, Maine in high school and my 20s. Unfortunately, it was a casualty of a divorce in my 30s when I moved and forgot the jar full of shells on a shelf. In decades of going to Hampton, I’d never found a sand dollar there. And wouldn’t you know it, not two minutes after my declaration, there was a sand dollar laying in the sand. Talk about asking and receiving.

We took pictures of us in the wind. There is a photo from thirty-odd years ago on the same beach, on what we had desperately wanted to be a “lay on the beach” day. That day was cold and windy and in the photo we’re bundled up in sweat shirts and beach towels with no hope of gaining any sort of tan.

And after an hour at Hampton Beach, we left. We had visited, seen, reminisced, and taken photos.

Our next quest was lunch. That proved tricky. The only open place at Hampton was an independent  take-out pizza place with no seating. We agreed on no chain restaurants, and a preference for burgers, pizza, seafood, or Korean food. Nancy knew of a Korean restaurant in Ayer, and as we approached the parking lot I kidded, “Watch it be closed on Mondays.” Sure enough, it was. I was starting to feel a little bit psychic. But there is a pizza and greek food restaurant up the street from the Korean place, where we had gyros and Tri Sum chips.

It was a great day to be at the edge of the country -- weird warm New England weather, the beach, a sand dollar, a locally-owned lunch spot with local chips, and a longtime friend.

Customer Service Tips

As a public service to shoppers and stores associates alike, I present a few helpful tips for your holiday shopping excursions. Even better, these nuggets are gifts that keep on giving -- you can use them all year long, and adapt them to many other life events.

Although these are not actual laws, it might be nice if they were, with violations subject to reprimands, fines, or even incarceration. But, as America is still a free country, you are still free to be an ass to your fellow humans should you so choose.

Returns
If you need to return a purchase, even if the store doesn’t require it, the process is a lot faster if you have your receipt with you. A receipt will really speed things up if you removed and threw away all the tags and packaging. Unless, of course, your entertainment for the day includes spending chunks of time leaning on a counter while a clerk attempts to research the product number for an item which may or may not be available on the shelf. If you don’t have a receipt and paid cash, please don’t be upset when the only refund option is a merchandise credit at the lowest sale price in 13 weeks. With no receipt there is no way to verify what was paid, and with the retail custom of sales, discounts and coupons, it probably wasn’t the sticker price.

Payments
When you are coming to the customer service to make a charge account payment, perhaps you could write the check out in advance, say, at the comfort of your kitchen table. That way you could avoid fumbling through your things, locating your checkbook, and writing out the check at the counter while the line of people behind you bores holes into the back of your head with their angry eyes.

Questions
If you have “just a quick question,” maybe you could ask a floor clerk, instead of cutting in front of any and all customers standing in a register line or queue at the customer service desk, and interrupting the clerk in the middle of a transaction. It’s just a guess, but highly likely that any clerk in the store can tell you where the socks are.

Phone Etiquette
When calling the store with a question, please get to the point. Quickly. The person answering the phone is probably responsible for other activities, like waiting on the line of people at the customer service desk, and may even be in the middle of a transaction. There probably isn’t a person on staff dedicated solely to taking phone calls and just sitting there waiting for the phone to ring. We don’t need the history of your shopping habits, we just need to know your question in order to provide the answer, direct your inquiry to the correct department, and get back to the task at hand. 

Attitude
Newsflash! People often mirror the attitude projected by others. This means, when you approach a service counter or cashier in a confrontational (even hostile!) manner, the person on the other side is picking up on that attitude and is already bracing for a battle.   When you are reasonably pleasant, those around you will be more eager to help.

Anti-social Life

Once a routine hits,  it's hard to break out. Kind of like prison. And right now I'm well into a self-imposed prison sentence/rut.

In Tennessee, I had a social life. I was in art groups (and a roller derby team) with meetings and events to attend. I was out as much as my wallet and sleep needs could tolerate.

That successful social life didn't just happen. It took months to bust out of the cycle of going home after work and doing nothing much, and it was broken largely because my gal pal Stacy dragged me out regularly until socializing became the habit.

And then I moved back home to Massachusetts. 

I returned to my homeland with no job and no prospects. The temporary stay at my Mom's is now approaching its two-year anniversary, and I still don't have an employment situation that will cover rent.

I've been stuck back on square one too long, and feel like a failure on all the major battle fronts -- career, social, residential. I'm embarrassed about my life most days, except for the days when depression manages to crowd it out and fill the space with nothingness.

Because I'm broke, embarrassed, and proud, I avoid social settings. I can slip in and out of the gym anonymously, where only one other member ever says hello to me, and that's OK, because I don't want to have to play the getting to know you game with anyone yet. Maybe after I get some things settled, but not now. Not yet.

The perfect anti-social life is nearly complete. I go to my part-time, it's all I can get right now job and then go home. My paycheck disappears on dogfood and gas. Even though there have been a few social events to attend, there is always a reason to bail, usually financial, nearly always psychological. 

And it's getting old.

Black Friday

Black Friday has come and gone. The store opened at 1:00 a.m. with special prices that ran until 1:00 p.m. I worked from 10 a.m. until 7 p.m.

The best part of Black Friday is the food. Last year it was subs. 

This year, in the morning it was breads and muffins. At lunch it was salad, ziti and meatballs. My first break was scheduled at 12:15 and the lunch arriving at 12, so I was in luck. I had ziti and meatballs and it was good. My 30 minute break was at 3:30 and I had salad, and more ziti and meatballs. And it was still good.  After I clocked out, I had another meatball and it was good all over again. 

After my final meatball, I ran for the door. I'd had my fill of retail for the day. I couldn't get out of there fast enough. In that regard, it was like most other days, but with better, free food.

Thanks

Sometimes it’s the small things for which we can be most thankful. This Thanksgiving, in addition to being thankful for my family, I was specifically thankful for specific family members with better driving skills and more patience than I have. And alcohol.

When my family overruled my first choice activity for the Day of the Turkey, which was to spend it at home with my two dogs and Netflix, I was forced to choose between two options. I could go with Mom and Butch to dinner at Butch’s sister’s house in nearby Westminster, or I could go to my sister’s in-laws’ across town.

The alternatives were fine, I just didn’t feel like being around people, which were a feature at both houses. This was one of those supremely rare times when I wished I had a boyfriend or a husband, because I’d have someone to blame for my non-attendance.

I chose the destination starring my sister and my nieces and headed “up the hill,” which might be more of a descriptor if most of the 28.1 square miles of the city of Fitchburg wasn’t hills. Heck, even some of our streets have “hill” in the name -- Oak Hill Road, Westminster Hill Road, Ashburnham Hill Road, Pearl Hill Road.

The view on the way up the mountain to dinner.

Having visited the dinner location only once, maybe 10 years ago, I knew only that it was “up the hill, about a mile, on the right” from my sister’s house. The views were lovely on the way up the mountain, and everything was fine until I arrived at the house. When houses are built on hills, the driveways can be a bit, um challenging.

This house was on a hill, yet down a hill, and it was not a  leisurely turn into a relatively level driveway. Oh, hell no. It looked like the ideal location for a cog railway to be  installed. I have skied flatter trails than this driveway. Did I mention the six inches of heavy, wet, snow the night before?

It occurred to me to keep driving and head back home. But I didn’t.

My sister’s van was parked in front of the house, facing up the driveway, nose toward the road. There was a clearing at the bottom of the most terrifying driveway in the world, which was more like a cliff cleverly disguised as a driveway. If I focused, I could turn around between the trucks, wood pile, sheds, and sloping terrain, and park behind my sister. Maybe.

I inched down the steep, plowed driveway. At the clearing, I got my CRV mostly turned around, and suddenly it wouldn’t budge. Not forward. Not backward. I couldn’t go very far forward anyway, as the woodpile was in front of me. 

Meanwhile, my sister was standing at the doorway to the house, up the driveway, flagging me to the right and forward. I yelled out the window that I couldn’t move forward or backward. I tried to back up again and slid sideways. Yes, sideways, down a slope in this hellhole of a yard.

I put the car in park, turned it off, got out, hiked the mountainside to the house, and asked for the valet parking. As I handed my keys to my brother-in-law, my sister (a brilliant woman) handed me a glass of limoncello.  My brother-in-law, his brother, and the brother's teenaged son headed down the driveway to fix my mess. It was kind of comical. I guess. I’m pretty sure if this had happened to anyone else, I’d have been laughing until I puked. Instead, I hugged my sister and nieces hello and sipped my limoncello, which is a lovely liqueur I look forward to enjoying again.

The guys got my car situated -- back onto the most terrifying driveway in town, and parked behind my sister’s van. When they came back into the house, they mentioned that my progress had been impeded by a stray piece of wood from the woodpile that wedged under my bumper. Oh, and that my tires are practically bald.

Looks like new tires are in my immediate future. Thank goodness for credit cards. And for family members who are great at hugging, cooking things, fixing things, and pouring a lovely liqueur.