What I'd Do If I Won The Lottery

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published October 14, 2024] ©2024

Everybody has a fantasy about what they’d do if they won the lottery. I’ve always been clear about mine: hire a live-in masseuse. I’d get a minimum of two massages a day of about four hours each. In fact, some days I wouldn’t even get off the table, especially if I could figure out a way to simultaneously get a straw into a glass of chardonnay.

People have very mixed feelings about massage. Some are creeped out by being rubbed with scented oil by total strangers. This is clearly a birth defect and I feel totally sorry for them.

I have other friends who, like me, absolutely love massage. My preferred masseur, of course, is my husband Olof who generously rubs my back if we’re watching TV together, racking up husband points like you wouldn’t believe. He insists he needs them in case of a sudden husband point conflagration which has occurred from time to time, especially when long-awaited plans were cancelled due to business travel. But he’s retired now so it shouldn’t be too hard to maintain a positive balance.

Not surprisingly, my favorite massagee is also Olof. Not a fan of “stranger” massage, he is only too happy to have a can of whipped cream slathered over—er, too much information. Anyway, as a single working parent for twelve years, I was financially ineligible for massage unless someone gifted me one. So I’m trying to make up for lost time.

My only hesitation at all about massage is that I feel a little bad that the masseuse is getting stuck with my increasingly-decrepit porcine proportions. Was I the fantasy she had when she went to massage school?  I think not.

Of course, we aged oinkers are often the folks with money for massages. Which I’m sure doesn’t keep massage people from hoping for some firmer flesh to manipulate. Several years ago, I went into a spa to get a massage gift certificate for my very athletic younger son. He’d been there before. That massage girl’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when I mentioned his name. I can assure you that nobody’s face lights up when they hear my name, except possibly to recall that I tip well. Considering my body, maybe it’s not well enough.

My extreme fondness for massage has made my husband wonder aloud if I were secretly adopted from a sensory-deprived Romanian orphanage. As a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes, it seemed plausible. Nope, I’m just a massage junkie, plain and simple. 

Sometimes it’s nice to do a massage just focusing on one area. I’ve never actually taken heroin (which probably won’t surprise anyone, especially with the easy availability of chardonnay) but I think head massage must be a similar high. Those endorphins just go crazy. I’d probably have my post-lottery live-in masseuse do at least one head and one foot massage a day too.

Not too long ago, I wandered into an Asian-run massage place whose brochure advertised their treatments as “better for your organ.” I couldn’t argue with such a charming endorsement and signed up for a reflexology foot massage. All our organs are alleged to have nerve endings in the foot so that pressing on certain areas can help diagnose problems elsewhere in the body. Of those 7000 nerve endings, 6,000 of mine seem to be perennially annoyed. The foot masseur pressed on one place that was excruciating painful. I flinched. “Hurt there, kidney no good,” he said. No good?  Maybe they were just having a bad day?  I mean, we’re talking kidneys here.

Noting a really sore spot during a foot massage at another place last year, I asked, “what organ is that?” The masseuse said “sinuses.” Geesh, that’s probably one of the three organs in my whole body that has consistently behaved (along with my kidneys).  So as a diagnostic tool, it may not work that well for me.  I’m thinking that in my case, maybe the pain in my feet might mean “need new shoes” or “lose weight, Lumpy!” Don’t really care. It just feels heavenly.

I guess if you’re going to have an addiction, massage isn’t the worse one you can have. But I really have to start buying lottery tickets.

 

Whine Fest Part II: Readers Weigh In

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published October 7, 2024] 2024

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the many things that annoy me in life, and invited readers to submit theirs for a follow-up column.

Why did I wait 15 years for this topic? I should have been doing it quarterly.

It is not surprising that we all have plenty of things to whine about, particularly our fellow humans. Some topics, not surprisingly, came up repeatedly, particularly parking, dog poop, traffic, and technology. Here s a selection of submissions:

Getting stuck behind a driver who suddenly decides they don't want to be in the lane they're in, but haven't figured out what to do about it.

Veterinary hospitals that don t handle "emergencies."

All the parking taken by people who drove to the gym to work out.

Remote check-in that is still first come first served when you get there.

Using a credit card for takeout food pickup that gives you a screen that starts gratuity level at 15%.

Idiots who can't figure out the traffic circles in Bird Rock!!! Accidents waiting to happen and seriously annoying. Not that difficult to figure out the system.

Companies that talk you into buying their service or product and then later you find out you've subscribed to it every month unless you cancel. You don't find that out until you've been charged for another month or several sessions.

People who don't chip their pets or even put an ID tag on them then post panicked messages on neighborhood social media when the pet gets out.

The drivers who never learned to pull up entirely into the intersection at a traffic light in order to take a left turn and who remain on or behind the white crosswalk for pedestrians, ensuring that when the light turns red they will be able to turn and you, the hapless driver behind them hoping to make the light, will get stuck at it and have to wait for the next light while they drive blithely away. Grrr! Btw, I've been known to honk at them as a gentle reminder to pull forward. A corollary to this are drivers who stop in the middle of the road to check their GPS!

Stores that relentlessly encourage you to use self-serve checkout.

People who leave their dog poop plastic bags in my green recycling bin, in spite of the clear signs, saying NO DOG POOP! with pictures of those baggies I have taped to the lid!

People who basically don't have yards, hiring crews that use only gasoline powered tools to take care of the yard that doesn't exist.

My complaint: those blazing white hot LED headlights that make you want to shield your eyes from oncoming traffic.

People that leave their cart in the middle of the aisle to get a free sample at Costco.

People that leave their trash in the cart after getting the free sample. Really? The trash receptacle is right there people!

Sitting in a turn lane and missing the light when a person in front of you feels their time texting is more important than the rest of the world.

Having a call dropped after waiting online (on hold on a phone call or on a chat) for a long time.

A font so small you can't read the directions on an important medication the volume you need to take at any time, how frequently, with what, and contraindications.

Software companies that tell you they have updated their (very long in legalese) privacy policy but don't tell you what has changed.

An app that won't let you in until you say that you've forgotten your password when they know you have put in the correct password but they just want you to change it to a new one.

When did it become legal to take pets into places that sell any type of food? Restaurant patios with pets kept on floor are legal thanks to Gov Brown tweaking the law for his dog.

Apps that ask you to create a password and THEN tell you the requirements, one by one, after you've met each requirement stated.

Microsoft reboots your computer without permission and then gives you two copies of all the Word files you had open which you then have to open and compare to decide which to keep.

People who leave their trash & recycling bins in plain sight. Makes for a trashy looking neighborhood - pun intended!

Advertisements for medications that have more disclaimers or reasons not to take it than there are ingredients especially the medications that read this long list as fast as possible with a final side effect, death 

Security questions that require you to click on all the pictures with buses, motorcycles, etc. AND THEN require you to repeat the process with three more sheets of other photos. QUIT wasting my time with kindergarten activities!

People who decorate their houses with Porch Propaganda, Lawn Litter, and Balcony Baloney !  I know you said no politics, Inga, but do people really think others care about how they are voting??? One wackadoodle neighbor with all their signs is definitely an indication of how not to vote!!!! La Jolla is so beautiful with the restriction on real estate signs and billboards, all this other stuff is such an eyesore!!!

People who use leaf blowers to blow all the debris down the storm drains!

When you try to close a Microsoft (Excel, I m looking at you) file, and you get the question: Do you want to save your changes? even though you didn't make any changes.

So bring it on, folks. Keep the whining coming!

 

 

 

Social Change At Warp Speed

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 30, 2024] 

We have a number of friends who are taking their high school seniors on college tours this fall. It really is important to let a student actually see a campus and imagine themselves there. That gut feeling is everything.

My older son, Rory, was convinced he wanted to go to the University of Hawaii but after the tour, he announced he just couldn't see himself on this campus. He couldn't explain why.

His bottom choice had been UC-Santa Cruz but after the tour, the school rose to the top of his list. The campus "spoke"  to him. His only misgiving, he said at the time, was that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to school in a "cold" climate. Spoken like a true Southern California kid.

Suffice to say, he has never lived this comment down. And by the way, he did go to Santa Cruz, met his wife, and is still there 29 "cold"  years later.

I had a similar experience looking at colleges. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and even my older brother had all attended the same New England university. But the school, despite the incredibly legacy, didn't excite me at all.

Fortuitously, I signed up for a tour sponsored by my high school for a different school and fell instantly in love with the beautiful campus, the strong feminist history, and the small size (900 students).

The school, one of the first women s colleges in the country, had been founded by a successful brewer in 1861 on an idyllic piece of New York State land. The founder designated pink and gray as the school's colors symbolizing "the rosy dawn on the gray matter of a woman s mind."   Nauseatingly poetic, but OK. Everything in the school bookstore was either pink with gray lettering, or gray with pink lettering.

As women s education was only for the wealthy initially, some of the dorm rooms had a small attached room for one's maid, should a student choose to bring one.

While the student body had become more diversified, both ethnically and economically, by the time I got there, the school still held on to long-standing traditions like demitasse in the parlors (the dorms had actual parlors) after dinner. I loved the bucolic campus.

Some of the traditions, admittedly, were definitely behind the times. You had to live on campus in one of the eight dorms. If you were pregnant or married, you were gone the next day.

There was room inspection every other week to make sure you'd cleaned your room. We had to wear a skirt to dinner in the dining room (each dorm had their own) and should you have a male guest for dinner, he had to be wearing a jacket and tie. Since dates had often not expected to have to dress up, a selection of abandoned (probably purposefully given their innate hideousness) jackets and ties were available. Of course, they never fit the poor guy who sat there in embarrassed misery eager to escape.

For us to leave the campus in the vehicle of a male person, we had to sign a leave card with the guy s name and license plate number of car. Curfew was 12:30 on weekends.

Boys could only be in our rooms at very specific hours. Doors couldn't be fully closed, and a certain number of collective feet had to be on the floor. These were known as "parietals"  (regulations governing the visiting privileges of the opposite sex in college dormitories). Mine was certainly not the only college in that era that had them.

In one throwback tradition leftover from the second World War when kitchen help was scarce, the school had continued a tradition requiring each student to do Scrape Duty once every 2 weeks, standing at the end of the kitchen conveyor belt and scraping plates into massive trash receptacles.

I never had a single class taught by a TA. All my professors knew me by name, or at least my last name as we were addressed as Miss [last name]. "Ms"  hadn't quite come into common use yet.

It's amazing how fast social change can occur. In the middle of my junior year, in a decision to go co-ed, the first 70 guys, all transfers from other schools, joined our campus and moved into my dorm.

In two weeks, 100 years of rules and traditions evaporated. The guys laughed at room inspection, were not about to restrict who could come into their rooms, and balked at a school store full of pink and gray apparel. Scrape Duty? Not happening.

As for the leave cards, they no longer made any sense.

The guys were unwilling to dress for dinner (having not had to at their previous institutions) and often showed up for breakfast in ratty pajamas. We stopped wearing skirts at dinner and began showing up in pjs at breakfast too. Our dorm dining room started looking like a co-ed pajama party.

All the parietal rules basically vanished overnight. And no one missed them.

Well, one set of parents did, claiming breach of contract and alleging that the college was promoting fornication. Um, yeah! Bring on the fornication! Biggest improvement in the school in 100 years!

The law suit was ultimately settled by providing one corridor on campus where all the old parietal rules were still in effect. Suffice to say, no one volunteered and those rooms were assigned by a lottery that no one wanted to win.

Within a month, burgundy and navy apparel had appeared in the school store.

Now, of course, the school is fully co-ed and twice its original student body. There s a central dining hall. The campus is as idyllic as ever.

Was the brewer-founder turning over in his grave as all this was happening? Maybe. It's probably just as well that he didn't live to see it. But I'd want him to know that I m grateful for all that rosy dawning over my gray matter when I attended. I have every faith it is dawning over the gray matter of the male populace too. Rosy dawning is equal opportunity.

Just tell me they haven't done away with demitasse.

 Me on Scrape Duty with Giuseppe, our dorm kitchen manager

On gorgeous campus

                                                            In front of my dorm

 

Mastering Spoken Coffee

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published September16, 2024] ©2024

This year I’ve made it my goal to master CSL – Coffee as a Second Language. 

I don’t have to tell you what a social disadvantage it has been to live in a place with so many good coffee houses and not speak Coffee.  

Of course, the main reason I haven’t learned it is that I don’t drink coffee. I love the taste and aroma but the family caffeine sensitivity has my hands shaking before I’ve taken a second sip.   However, as I am often reminded, you can get decaf versions of pretty much everything on the menu.  Although a triple shot espresso decaf would probably defeat the purpose.

While I certainly agree with my friends that coffee houses are an ideal place to meet, I’ve never frequented them enough to really master spoken Coffee.   That’s because the menu scares the daylights out of me.  The French may not be very tolerant of people who massacre their language but they sound like Barney the happy dinosaur compared to coffee drinkers stuck in line behind someone who does not speak Coffee.  The caffeine fiends are ten minutes past needing a fix, the tremors have set in, and anyone who holds them up is in critical danger of being fed into the bean grinder. 

Would that I was kidding.

Attempting to avoid becoming a new instant coffee drink if the clientele behind me seems unusually hostile, I tend to smile brightly at the barista and chirp, “I’ll have what that person just had in a decaf.” 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep them from asking you more questions. Lots more questions.  The milk options alone are terrifying.  In fact, I think that if you factored all the possible combinations and permutations of coffee drinks, the number would be in the bazillions. 

But the problem with spoken Coffee is that it is a language with an unbelievable number of dialects.  For example, there’s the Frappuccino-Macchiato dialect from the Sucrose region of Italy.  Only serious linguists and/or pre-diabetics really understand it.

And just when Coffee was already an incredibly complicated language, they’ve thrown in Fair Trade, i.e. that the farmers who grew the beans were paid a fair price.  Was I born yesterday? I’m sure there are standards for this but the cynic in me still wants to see sworn testimonials from the farmers.  Better yet, can I call them in person? 

And of course, we now have the option of “organic.”  I kind of hate it when they bring up that word because it immediately raises the specter of what’s in the non-organic.  Should we be thinking salmonella outbreaks in egg farms in Iowa?  One thing is clear:  if it’s fair traded and organic, we’re going to pay more for it. So I’d just like to know for sure those South American coffee farmers have 401ks and I’m not drinking chicken doots.

But just when you think you’ve miraculously gotten out of the ordering process alive, you discover that when your drink is ready, they sometimes don’t call you by name but by what you ordered.  The short hand name of what you ordered.  I have no idea what I ordered.  I just hope it really IS decaf.  And preferably has whipped cream on it.  I have let my coffee order get stone cold for fear of taking someone else’s drink by mistake.  Because if you think coffee drinkers are cranky being in line behind a non-Coffee speaker, don’t even think what would happen if you accidentally took their vente grande small cap no foam dolce.

I have to confess that I do truly envy people who can drink coffee, especially as a way to wake up quickly in the morning, or revive themselves at 4 p.m. as they’re about to slump over in a meeting-induced coma.  I don’t usually achieve sentience until about ten in the morning under the best of circumstances, and as for those work-day afternoons, I’ve often nearly severed my tongue biting it to keep awake.  Fortunately, I am now retired and can be as perpetually foggy as I want at 4 p.m. Or better yet, just take a nap.  Being awake can be really over-rated. 

My friend Amy’s mother, Toni, has been lobbying her local Starbucks to introduce a new drink, the mocha valium vodka latte.  Now this is a drink I could get my head around.  I wouldn’t even need this drink in a decaf.  A nice simultaneous upper and downer, it just falls off your tongue when you say it.  Of course, you might fall on your head after you drink it.  But it has the added advantage that within minutes, you don’t care if you speak Coffee or not.

 

 

 

Habits Of Annoying People

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 9, 2024] 2024

Hi folks - for the first time in 530 columns, I'm inviting the readership to join me for a Whine and Cheez Fest. Get your lists ready! So much to complain about, so little time!

Of course, I've always been a world-class whiner. (Everybody has to have a skill.) And some of the items on my list (below) of Habits of Annoying Fellow Humans have been the subject of entire columns already. But then it occurred to me: why shouldn't my readers, who don t have the luxury of a public forum, be able to whine too?

I confess that this particular column was inspired by one of my all-time top annoyances: the Reply-All option on email invitations. Even I, Technomoron to the Stars, figured out pretty quickly that even though all 75 invitees are listed, you should really only reply to the host.

Of course, many group invitations now are sent as blind cc's or otherwise hide the guest list. But alas, not all.

Maybe the host wanted you to know, as a courtesy, who else was invited. Or maybe they are as big a technomoron as me. But if they do that, they should probably note: "Please reply only to sender."

The invitation of which I speak went to 75 guests and resulted in some 43 Reply-All replies. So you're probably surmising - correctly - that this was an older crowd. But still, a number of the replies qualified as over-sharing. "Sorry, I can t come. I have to prep for my colonoscopy that night."   Or even some pretty personal chat about the responder's life (their kid was finishing rehab and they were very hopeful.)

But it got me thinking about all the other things that annoy me about the world I live in besides Reply-All replies. So here's a list that immediately comes to mind:

People in front of you in line at Gelsons salad bar who take one teeny item from all 50+ bins.

Family members, including the dog, who suddenly change their food preferences after you've stocked up on what they liked before (which, by definition, was not available at the place you usually shop). (We're talking about you and that particular brand of Cinnamon-Raisin English muffins, Olof.)

Miscreants who park in the middle of two spaces in grocery store or other parking lots. It's always the spaces up close.

Technology. All of it.

TV ads that admonish: "Do not take this drug if you are allergic to it."

Phone calls selling solar. (I thought of changing our phone message to "Hi, you've reached Inga and Olof. And no, we don't want solar.")

The new typeface in the San Diego Union-Tribune and La Jolla Light. Feels like a 3-point font!

People who say they can text without anyone at the table knowing. (Um, no you can t.)

People who take non-emergency calls during restaurant lunch dates. (There's this great invention called "voice mail." )

People who, right before they take that non-emergency call, say, "I ve got to take this."   (Um, no, you really don't.)

Not being able to find a seat at a coffee shop because they're all taken by people with laptops who aren't drinking coffee.

Not being able to figure out which small white fluffy dog is yours at the groomer's holding pen when they all want to go home with you.

Drivers who do not signal. (I mean, seriously folks, it's not that hard.)

Intermittent technical problems which by definition will not manifest themselves when anyone with the power to fix them is present.

Upselling from dentists, vets, dermatologists, and pretty much everyone. It seems have become the national pastime. 

Parents who tell their kids to get a ride home from soccer practice. (Special place in hell for them.) The kid never lives near you but you can't just leave him at the field (however tempting). 

Having to change passwords every 90 days particularly on sites you only use maybe once a year and for which you truly don't care if your information on it is accessed.

Passwords that have a number 1 or letter l, or zero or letter 0 in them. (Should be outlawed.)

People who don't respond to invitations.

People who respond to invitations that they re coming and then cancel at the last minute for what is usually a really flaky excuse. 

People who respond to an invitation with "I'll try to stop by."   (No, please don t.)

Toilets at other people s homes that I can't figure out how to flush.

People who drop their t's when talking ( "Alana"  for Atlanta, or "imporen" for important). Amazingly, even newscasters do this. 

Wordle - you have four of the five letters but the 5^th letter could be one of six options and you only have two more tries. 

Smoke alarm batteries that start beeping that they need to be replaced at 3 a.m. (Are they programmed to do this?)

Idiots with clear death wishes who walk behind cars that are backing up. (Not everyone has those beeper things!) Or is this natural selection at work?

And finally (and this one really annoys the heck out of me): Your husband getting the Saran wrap roll messed up.

So now, let s hear yours. (No politics please.) I think we d all agree that the world is an incredibly annoying place. I'll be happy to run the responses (anonymously, of course).

 

The Foods You Will Never Eat Again

[ Let Inga Tell You, La Jolla Light, published September 2, 2024] 2024

Probably everyone has associations with certain foods that they will never eat again after having a negative experience with them.

In my parents'  case, it was lots of experiences. After the Second World War, they lived in Boston while my father got an MBA, our family of four living on $91 a month on the GI Bill and subsisting by necessity on mackerel and baked beans - two foods banned from our household in perpetuity thereafter.

I have similar feelings about broiled chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, and cottage cheese the default diet foods of my teenage years. Cottage cheese seems to have made a comeback, given all the TV ads I see these days, where they actually try to make it look like a food one would choose to eat for any other reason that it's allegedly low calorie. Sure, they dress it up and make it look pretty but I can t be fooled. Underneath it all, it's cottage cheese and it is vile and should be banned from existence. Even though I haven't eaten it in decades, I can still hear it screaming "you are being deprived!"

Of course, one reason people would shun a particular food is if they've ever gotten sick on it. It doesn't even matter if it was the actual food's fault or some other affliction - a stomach flu, for example. Your gag reflex remembers forever. It s probably a good evolutionary adaption if you think about it.

My first husband, a New Jersey boy, had a particularly sad saga in this regard. Growing up, he'd practically lived on the submarine sandwiches (also known as heroes or hoagies ) which were pretty much the state food of New Jersey. But by the time I met him, however, he had suffered a severe submarine sandwich trauma the likes of which precluded his ever consuming another one again.

As he told the story, it all started back when he was a young college student just being initiated into the ways of the world. Kind of a nerd in high school, he hadn't seen a lot of what might be called "action." So he was delighted to make the acquaintance of a coed who had a reputation for loose morals and indiscriminate taste. To his surprise and delight, he was able to procure a date with the lady for "dinner and a show"  which at that stage of his economic life meant an Italian sandwich at the diner around the corner from the movie theater.

He ordered a submarine sandwich and his date a salad, after which they adjourned to the movie theater where he sat with agonizing late-adolescent anticipation waiting for the show to end and the entertainment to begin.

He doesn't remember quite when the queasiness started but somewhere towards the end of the movie, he excused himself and made it just out of view of his lady friend before throwing up all over the cigarette machine outside the men s room.

And yes, you used to be able to smoke in movie theaters, sometimes to the point you could barely see the screen. Honestly, that should have been enough to make you throw up, never mind the sandwich.

Despite his limited savoir faire, he knew enough to stop at the candy counter for some breath mints, on the theory that even a young lady of loose morals and indiscriminate taste might draw the line at a kiss that tasted like mortadella marinated in hydrochloric acid.

He felt better briefly, but by the time the movie ended, he had the terrible feeling that the second wave of gastric instability was not far away, and he rapidly felt compelled to change his priorities from trying to "score" to trying to get his date home without being sick on her.

The young lady was meanwhile oblivious to his difficulties, suggesting a moonlit drive in the Silver Streak (his Rambler with the reclining seats) and was dumbfounded when her date (sobbing quietly to himself) instead suggested taking her home.

After a hasty kiss on her front porch, she slipped quietly into the house, whereupon he turned around and threw up in her bushes.

She told him later that he was "weird"  and refused to go out with him again. And he never had a submarine sandwich again, despite Jersey Mikes literally opening up right in downtown La Jolla which at one point in his life would have been absolute nirvana.

Of course, sometimes you can overcome negative associations with food. When my siblings and I were quarantined with polio during the summer of 1955, the family ate a lot of canned food since we couldn't grocery shop. I'm not even sure we could have gotten Uber Eats to deliver if they had existed at the time. People were terrified - justifiably - of polio.

I remember eating canned Chun King chow mein and chop suey - or trying to eat them, anyway. I found that stuff so slimy and inedible that I assumed for many years afterwards that I simply didn't like Chinese food. It was only after my first husband, a medical student in New York City, - and yes, the submarine sandwich guy - finally persuaded me to go to China Town and eat actual Chinese food which I instantly fell in love with.

Of course, there was no version of either mackerel or baked beans (even homemade) that would ever have changed my parents'  minds. Sometimes, aversion just can t be overcome. Especially when it s compounded, as my first husband experienced, by profound social trauma. There are some things the body just can t forget.

 

Trying To Out Wit The Long Term Care Insurance Lady

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published August 19, 2024] 

It’s really easy to put your head in the sand about getting old and decrepit until you start hearing about friends’ parents, and even the friends themselves, requiring 24-hour care.  As in forever. 

So Olof and I decided that maybe we should look into long-term care insurance.  Let me sum up the concept: they hope you pay exorbitant premiums for 20 years then die of a heart attack. 

Olof was out of town when the long-term care people called in response to my application and said they were sending a nurse out for a physical exam, including a cognitive evaluation. 

Uh-oh. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day (except Monday; too easy) and read three books a week. But I’m clear that my mind is not as sharp as it once was.  The Light will testify that my proofreading skills have gone to hell.  I mis-use words a lot more.  When I’m writing, I’ll ask myself, “Do I mean ‘propitious’ or “prophetic’?”  I’m not so sure of spelling anymore.  I have to look up grammar rules regularly. 

As we get older, Olof and I are hoping that together, we can maintain one complete brain and one functioning body between us.  Especially one semi-complete long-term memory bank.  We’re always asking each other: What was the name of the actor in… 

What’s scary, however, is that I sometimes temporarily lose a really basic word. 

Inga: “Olof, what’s the word for those things you put on your feet inside your shoes?”

Olof: “Socks?” 

Inga: “Yes! Thanks!”

There was a time when one of us querying the other as to whether they’d remembered to take out the dog or turn down the heat before bed would have suggested a mildly insulting lack of faith in the other’s mental prowess.  But now we’re in total agreement that we have no faith in either our own or the other’s mental prowess.  We’re just trying to keep the dog from peeing on the carpet and the heating bill under control.  We’re grateful for the reminder. 

The problem will be when neither of us remembers to either ask or do it.  Or remembers that we even have a dog. Or heat.

Fortunately, that day is not here yet. 

But having the long-term health care insurance evaluator come out unnerved me.  I knew I could chug an extra blood pressure pill a few hours before she got there, but what was a “cognitive evaluation” going to actually entail?  If they asked me to count back by 7’s or do a level one (easiest) Sudoku puzzle, I’d be toast. 

I decided to do a little home staging before she came, carelessly strewing around collections of New York Times Saturday crossword puzzles (the really hard ones, NOT the Sunday), a few books in Swedish, an assortment of green teas. I wanted to create a subconscious impression of someone who dwells among the cognitive-scenti, the kind of person for whom an evaluator would say, “Oh, we obviously don’t need to be testing YOU.”

But she didn’t buy it. The cognitive exam, alas, was even worse than I expected. She told me she was going to tell me ten words and ask me to repeat back as many as I could remember a half hour later.  (Would two be enough?) I explained to the nice lady that I am afflicted with Auditory Processing Disorder (really) and learn better visually. Could I see the words instead? Nope. 

Um, doesn’t this violate the Americans with Disabilities Act?  If people can get more time on their SATs, shouldn’t I be entitled to accommodations on a dementia exam?

After she told me the words, giving me as much time as I needed to try to process them, she chatted it up with me about my current health and level of functioning.  (Inquiring minds want to know: Since when did “toileting” become a verb? Actually, when did it become a word?)

And by the way, didn’t Trump only have to remember five words on his dementia exam (person, woman, man, camera, TV)?  And the first three are practically the same word.  Even the last two are both electronics.  How come I had to do ten?  Well, I guess long-term care insurance automatically comes with Trump’s former job. 

The evaluator (closer?) had been deliberately vague about the costs of the insurance, noting that it would greatly depend on what type of coverage I might choose, and for how long I might want it.  Apparently, long term care can be pretty short term.  When I balked at the cost, she handed me a price sheet showing all the local memory care facilities costing anywhere from $10,000-$14,000 a MONTH.  And no, Medicare doesn’t pay. 

Against all odds, I actually was able to come up with nine of the ten words after the required 30-minute lag. Years ago, I learned that if I can’t write something down, I project it up on a pretend screen in front of me so I can see it. 

By the way, the words were chimney, salt, button, train, harp, meadow, finger, flower, book, and rug.  (The one I couldn’t remember was meadow.) 

Write these down.  You may get the same lady. 

 

 

Confessions Of a Cruciverbalist Lexophile Bibliotherapist

[ Let Inga Tell You, La Jolla Light, published August 12, 2024] 2024

It's only in recent years that I learned that I was a cruciverbalist lexophile engaging in daily bibliotherapy.

In simpler terms, I am a word-loving crossword puzzle enthusiast who indulges in therapeutic reading with a medicinal glass of wine. I don t think the wine is strictly part of the bibliotherapy definition but if you're going for therapeutic, you might as well go all the way.

I wasn't always a book person even though I grew up in a family of voracious readers. There were always at least three trips a week to the Pleasantville Public Library where my mother and sibs stocked up on new reading material. I did too, but I read one book to their five. 

Somehow the family speed reading gene seemed to have missed me. I was the middle child, a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes, the creamy blond filling in the family Oreo. (OK, so I think we're mixing some metaphors here.) I liked reading but I read slowly, with my lips.

While my siblings tested into the stratosphere on IQ tests, the school's guidance counselor informed my mother that two out of three ain't bad. Mom was advised to (waaay) lower her expectations where I was concerned. Vocational school could be a good fit, or perhaps one of the less demanding state schools.

My Ivy League-educated parents (they met in an Honors Shakespeare class at Brown) were having none of this. They refused to believe I was as dumb as I tested. But I think there was some unstated concern that babies had been switched at birth. Somewhere out there was a family of blond dodos who inexplicably ended up with a brunette genius.

Ironically, I was always a much better student than either of my siblings, grade-wise. It's amazing what dogged determination will do for you. In fact, it was my signature "pathological persistence"  (my husband's term) that finally got our streetlight fixed last year after more than 100 hours and a year of effort. 

As the blond sheep of the family, I was sometimes the target of my siblings touting their superior reading-acquired vocabulary. (And yes, you do acquire an amazing vocabulary if you read a lot.) Our dog was misbehaving one day, and I announced, "Josephine, you are a recalcitrant animal!"  ("Recalcitrant" being one of the vocabulary words in English class that week.)

Everyone looked up from their books. "Whoa! Inga said a big word!"   (Then they went right back to reading.)

I was never a crossword person (cruciverbalist) until my sister and multiple locale friends kept calling me asking for foreign language answers that frequently show up on the New York Times puzzle. While I m not fluent in anything (anymore), I've studied French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin, Italian, and Swedish. So when the clue was Portuguese for "she,"  I could say, "ela."

Now, of course, you could just Google it but that wasn't true then.

As a matter of self-defense, given all the answers I was providing, I started doing the New York Times puzzle myself which I confess is kind of an addiction at this point.

It didn't hurt that studies had indicated that doing crossword puzzles every day made the aging brain stay agile. But then the Wall Street Journal published a study a few years back that all that crossword puzzles do for your brain is make you better at crossword puzzles. Such a buzz kill, those WSJ folks. But by this time, I liked them for their own sake. Although if the NYT could publish a sports-less version, I would not be unhappy.

Never a patient person, I have found that bringing the prior week's New York Times crossword puzzles to a doctor s office is the perfect way to keep my annoyance in check in case I have to wait. (OK, in this day and age, you always have to wait.) There is a neurologist, who shall remain nameless, whose wait times are always so onerous that I get through five days of puzzles, even the Saturday crossword which, I will say, is usually a bear.

For the 12 years that I was a single working parent, I read literally not one book. Probably not even a full page of one book. I obviously couldn't use the public library at that stage of my life as they not unreasonably want their books back sooner than a decade. So I would buy a book that looked interesting to me at Warwicks, and it would languish on my bedside table with the book mark still on the first page. Most nights in that era, I was falling asleep on top of the clean laundry piled on the bed at midnight.

But now I m retired, and get to read at least three books a week. The public library has become my second home. My husband has gone the Kindle route but I still like the tactile experience of an actual book in my lap, and turning pages. Sometimes turning pages really fast if the book is a total snorer. But that's the beauty of the public library: don't like the book and back it goes. My book queue is always full.

I'm loving my late-found identity as a cruciverbalist lexophile bibliotherapist. It feels positively recalcitrant.

 

 

A Saga That Might Make You Never Want To Fly Again

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published August 5, 2024] ©2024

This is a story that will make you never want to travel again.  Unfortunately, it was probably replayed tens of thousands of times over the weekend of July 19 when the CrowdStrike security glitch cancelled planes throughout the U.S. and Europe. 

My friend, “Catherine” and her husband had just enjoyed an idyllic family reunion in the Ozarks and were due to fly back to San Diego at 6 a.m. on Saturday, June 20 from Springfield, MO to San Diego on Delta. The saga of their three-day effort to get home would fill five times the space I’m allotted for this column. 

As soon as they were alerted on Friday night that their Delta flights were cancelled, they tried to rebook, to no avail, on Delta’s website.  So Catherine’s husband queued up on Delta’s help chat app while Catherine waited on hold on Delta’s customer service line, hoping to double their chances of connecting with the required human.    

Dismayingly, every 20 minutes, the help chat line would refresh with wait times that got longer rather than shorter.  At one point, they were notified that “The estimated wait time to message with our next available specialists [sic] is 663 minutes.”  For those with limited math skills, that’s eleven hours. 

When they did finally reach a Delta representative, many hours later, the best the Delta rep could offer them was a flight out of St. Louis, a three-hour drive away, on Sunday night.  They took it.

In true irony, as soon as the call ended, a message from Delta popped up on Catherine’s phone asking her to rate her experience with Delta on a scale of 1 to 5.  Unfortunately, minus 400 wasn’t an option.

One (they thought minor) hitch with the St. Louis flights was that they had a rental car – an electric vehicle (EV) – that was supposed to be turned in at the Springfield airport. They called the rental car company to see what it might cost to turn it in in St. Louis instead.  One rep told them $300, another $495, and yet another a deal-breaking $1,500.  And you also had to get permission from a manager who didn’t reply to any of the multiple messages they left him.

Ultimately, they decided to just drive the EV to the Springfield airport to see what could be worked out. Maybe swap it for a gas-fueled car they could take to St. Louis. 

They knew they didn’t have enough charge on the car to get to the Springfield Airport but fortunately, they had a map of locations of charging stations.  So they get to the first one but to their dismay, none of the four chargers are working.  They’re told by the gas station attendant, “Oh, they’ve haven’t worked in years.  Nobody around here [rural Missouri] drives them things anyway.”

Fortunately, the next place, a used car dealership 23 miles down the road, did indeed have a working (albeit decrepit) charger.  While waiting for an absolutely glacial charge, they passed the time test driving used vehicles on the lot. The sales guy told them that they could buy a used car for cheap and drive it home to San Diego and probably get there faster.  It was seriously tempting.  And, ironically, he was right! But they still needed to turn in the EV in Springfield.

Condensing the next part of this saga, the rental car company folks will not let them drop off a car – any car, EV or not - in St. Louis. So Catherine and hubby find themselves back at the Delta counter begging for a flight from Springfield since they can’t get to St. Louis.

There are plenty of flights on other airlines but Delta claims they “only have a ticketing agreement with them for certain booking codes” which can’t be overridden.  Best that Delta can offer is a flight out on Tuesday.  But ultimately, Delta is persuaded (Catherine can be very persuasive when pushed several orders of magnitude beyond her last nerve) to book them on an American flight with a connection through Dallas for Sunday night.  They take it.

Alas, when they get to the airport Sunday night, the American flight is leaving an hour late.  They might not make their Dallas connection.

But they are deeply religious people.  They decided to pray that the connection in Dallas would be delayed as well.  Even though the end game is eternal salvation, would it be too much to ask that some divine intervention might come their way while they’re still on earth?

As Catherine later noted, “We prayed too hard.”  When they got to Dallas, their connection there was delayed three hours, now scheduled to leave at 1:40 a.m. for San Diego.  But they notice that there were two other (much delayed) flights to San Diego, one leaving slightly earlier.  So they get in yet another line, and are able to get two seats on the one that leaves at 1:04 a.m. (originally scheduled for 4:55 p.m..)  

The American agent confides that the other two flights have timed-out crews.  She thinks both are likely to be cancelled.  And yup!  They are!

But ultimately, luck sort of finally finding them, they are on the one flight that actually leaves – at 2:20 a.m., delayed by cleanup after a presumably excessively-partying (or vindictive?) passenger on the incoming flight from Las Vegas had created what I think is now euphemistically called a “biohazard” on the plane.

 They arrive in San Diego at 4:30 a.m.  But are any of their four bags there too?  Nope! 

Standing in yet another line, having been up all night, they are informed by the baggage office that their bags will be delivered to them if or when they are ever found.  They were finally repatriated with them at 7 p.m. Monday night. 

By the way: Delta was making no promises about reimbursements for the extra hotel and rental car costs they incurred.  Catherine was advised to send her hotel and car receipts to Delta.com - and pray. 

So what are the take-aways here, beside one should never rent an EV in Missouri?  Like most people, I had never even heard of CrowdStrike.  It is frankly terrifying that a security (!) software glitch could have had this level of disruption not only to air travel, but hospitals, emergency services, banks, retail stores around the world.  Like pilot strikes, storms, overbooking, and IT glitches aren’t enough?  Like we world-class worriers don’t have enough to torment ourselves about already?

Travel is starting to feel like a giant game of roulette. And one thing is clear: you are totally on your own when things go awry.  Airlines can apologize for “any inconvenience it might have caused you” (a phrase that should be outlawed) all they want, but in the end, this kind of saga is becoming all too common.  (Southwest two Christmases ago, anyone?) 

It’s too bad the “beam me up” technology is in its infancy.  Elon Musk: are you listening?

 Wait times for Delta human just keep getting longer rather than shorter:

8:34 p.m.:  537 minutes estimated wait time

8:53 p.m.:  581 minutes

9:14 p.m.: 602 minutes

10:30:  663 minutes (11 hours!)

 

Love Languages

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 22, 2024] ©2024

There was a book that came out some time ago about the five “love languages” people have in relationships and the problems couples get into when they don’t speak the same ones.  The five languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, receiving of gifts, acts of service, and physical touch. 

For example, some people feel most adored by being lavished with gifts, while others feel most loved when hearing positive words (affirmations) from a spouse.  Honestly, it would seem like having some of all five in a relationship would be a good thing, although frankly, neither my husband nor I care about gifts.

Olof and I are mostly in sync on the love languages, except for the ones that neither of us speak at all.  Now that we’re retired, we get to spend lots of quality time together, a huge improvement from all those 80-hour weeks Olof worked when he would literally fall asleep at the dinner table.  It’s very hard to have a conversation with someone face down in their linguine. 

And while he himself isn’t big on massage, he gives the greatest back rub ever. 

I’m very good at giving words of affirmation.  However, I don’t get as many back as I might like.  Is this a guy thing?  An engineer thing?  Olof’s view of communication is that couples should be able to talk to each other about anything. So long, he adds, as you never actually do it. 

He will never offer an opinion about anything personal unless asked.  Nay, begged.  No, implored.  Actions, he maintains, speak louder than words.

OK, but as I’ve pointed out to him on more than a few occasions, sometimes words would come in really handy.

For me, the acts of service are really high on my list. One such example:  Olof has taken over cleaning our outdoor aviary, a job I had for two decades but am physically unable to do anymore. And it’s not the type of job you can hire out.  The aviary cage is built into our back porch and requires a whole lot of shoveling bird poop and seed hulls, then laying down fresh newspaper which will be coated with more bird poop and more seed pretty much instantly.

After he retired, Olof graciously also took over the dishes although I think it might have been more self-defense than an act of love.  I’m not the worst housekeeper in the world although it has been suggested I’m a contender. (Was he a single working carpooling Cub Scout-leading parent for 12 years??? I think not.) 

As happy as I am not to be doing dishes after all these years, he runs the dishwasher practically empty.  It makes me nuts.

 “Inga,” I have to say to myself.  “Step AWAY from the dishwasher!  The man is DOING THE DISHES.  If he wants to run it with two friggin’ forks, let him!” 

So I’d like to amend the “acts of service” love language to say “providing acts of service as the previous servicee would have done them.” Is this too much to ask?

There is no question that Olof and I have very different styles of doing things.  My biggest love language is action.   If I see something that needs attention, or it is pointed out to me by my husband, I’m on it.  No time like the present!

It is definitely not Olof’s idea of a love language, however. Olof has a different word for this love language: “nagging.”  If I point out something to him that he needs to take care of that I can’t do myself, it goes on a list where it generally languishes until it dies of old age (or I hire the handyman to do it).  

Olof is clear that he hates being nagged worse than about anything. 

I have tried to explain over the years that there is an amazingly simple solution to nagging.  Just do what you were asked to do!  Maybe even this week! You’re retired! You have time! 

I confess I’ve had malevolent moments when he’s asked me to make copies of some financial documents for him (the printer-copier is on my desk) and I’m tempted to let them languish instead of making the copies right away.  If he should ask, my fantasy is I would smile brightly, and announce, “It’s on my list!” 

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, escalation of hostilities is never a good approach to problem resolution. 

I guess the ultimate love language might just be accepting the person you’re married to with all their quirks, including running an empty dishwasher that wastes a ton of water and reduces the life of the machine by a decade.   

But every week, when I see him out there mucking out the bird cage, I feel loved.  Really, really loved. 

Olof mucks out the bird cage while Lily supervises

Some residents of our outdoor aviary

Tempting The Fates: Covid Finally Gets Us

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published July 15, 2024] ©2024

Nature abhors a confident person.

I truly thought that both my husband, Olof, and I were immune to Covid, having managed to escape this affliction in spite of many, many up-close-and-personal exposures.  I was even contemplating volunteering us for one of those studies for people who had not contracted it, such was our seeming Teflon protection against this scourge.  We were feeling downright smug. 

Since the pandemic began in March, 2020, I have been used to getting calls from people who I’d just seen in the last few days who’d announce, “You’re not going to believe this!”

“Oh,” I’d say.  “You have Covid.”

And they’d said, “Huh?  How did you know?”

And I’d say, “Because I get this call at least once a week.” 

Of the 25 of us who regularly descend on my younger son’s home in L.A. at Christmas, Olof and I were the only ones who had not had Covid, despite my sitting on the living room couch for an entire afternoon next to my daughter-in-law’s parents who the next day tested positive for Covid.

At Thanksgiving the month before, I’d been leaning in to my friend’s daughter for several hours as we chatted through a lengthy meal in a closed-in environment.  Two days later, she was diagnosed with Covid.  Ditto a holiday dinner with some neighbors.

There were people who would insist that Olof and I had clearly had Covid and just not realized it.  But every time we were exposed, I tested diligently for a least a week after.  No symptoms, negative test.  This would have had to have been the most subclinical case of Covid in the history of virology.

At first I was assuming that all those shots we were getting must be having a protective effect.  Olof and I had had all seven Covid vaccines and boosters recommended for seniors.  Not to mention, an RSV shot, 2 shingles, 1 pneumonia, and a flu shot.  Honestly, it was a miracle we could even raise our arms. 

But all the friends who ultimately ended up contracting Covid had had all those shots too. 

We did have our own personal theory about our immunity:  the rest of those people just don’t drink enough.  Olof, especially, was convinced of the microbially-protective effects of a Scotch (or two), which he ingests strictly for medicinal purposes on a nightly basis.  And it worked!  No Covid!

I myself am not a Scotch drinker but have been known to imbibe medically-therapeutic doses of white wine, also on pretty much of a nightly basis. 

Frankly, I’d stopped even worrying about Covid. So imagine my astonishment when I woke up one morning with a sore throat and the routine just-in-case Covid test I took came up positive. How could this be?

Ironically, I’m almost sure I contracted Covid in a packed medical waiting room where I’d gone for a routine test that, ironically, came back normal.  This waiting room was a super-spreader event if there ever was one. Forty people sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in a small space.

I couldn’t believe how sick I got how fast. I had a fever of 101.5, and just felt completely terrible.  Within 24 hours, my throat felt like I was trying to swallow shards of glass. I honestly felt like I was choking to death. 

After what was one of the worst nights I’ve ever spent, I texted a friend and asked him to take me to the ER.  I would have called him except that my throat was so swollen, I couldn’t speak.  You might wonder why my husband, Olof, couldn’t perform this duty but did I mention that two days after I tested positive, so did he?  Definitely the downside of sharing air space with another person.

I honestly wasn’t sure what, if anything, they could do for me in the ER. What I was really hoping for was a lethal shot of morphine, administered as quickly as possible.  What they did do, however, was give me a hefty dose of prednisone to reduce the swelling and inflammation in my throat.  Wouldn’t help the Covid, obviously, and I still had a sore throat.  But I didn’t feel like I was choking to death anymore. 

And let me say a few words about the Barbey Family ER and Trauma Center over in the Prebys Cardiovascular Center at Scripps Memorial.  This facility opened up in 2016 and is orders of magnitude better than other *ahem* nearby ER which is always a guaranteed multi-hour, if not all-day, wait.  At Barbey, I was treated and out the door in an hour.

Fortunately, Olof didn’t get nearly as sick as I did.  But he continued to test positive for what seemed like forever.  I began to fear we were going to cancel an entire summer’s social life.

I recognize now what we did wrong: we tempted the fates.  We bragged that we had never had Covid. 

Never do this. They hear you.