The Dark Ages of Youth Soccer Team Management

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published March 30, 2026] ©2026

As much as I whine and complain about technology, I have to confess that I am almost berserkly envious of how much easier it has made managing youth sports teams and organizations.

As a divorced working mom, I was always looking for activities to do with my sons since they weren’t all that interested in lunch and shopping never mind getting mani/pedis. Go figure.  Given my work schedule, I wasn’t able to do any volunteer activities during the school day but did manage to put in plenty of hours running Pack 4 Cub Scouts, and managing soccer and basketball teams.

Back in the Paleolithic era of youth activities management, our only sources of communication were phone trees, Thomas Bros maps, and the U.S. Postal service. I’m hard put to decide which of three was the least reliable.

To those who don’t even know what a phone tree was (and lucky you), it can be defined as “an archaic and fundamentally unreliable method of disseminating critical information by purported telephonic communication usually resulting in confusion, blame trading, and players at the wrong field.” 

The way it worked was that the team manager (that would be moi) would call three designated people who would then call their three other designated people. If all went well, the three people I called would have contacted nine more people. 

To say that this rarely worked would be an understatement.  I was often leaving the message on an answering machine without ever knowing if the person got it, or acted on it.  Those poor folks at the bottom of that tree often ended up with communication root rot. 

You remember that old game of “telephone”? The one where people whispered something in the ear of the person next to them, etc. By the time it got to the last person, the message was usually unrecognizable from its origins.  And that, of course, was often the outcome of phone trees.  The recipient of the message had to pass it on accurately which happened pretty much never.

If there was a sudden cancellation or change of field for a game, it was a rare day that everybody got it.  And it goes without saying that they blamed the team manager.

Getting instructions to game fields was another hurdle. I always had the most recent Thomas Bros map book, which for those no more familiar with it than they are with phone trees, was the gold standard of location services.  An early but almost instantly outdated GPS, if you will.  The problem was that our games were often in North County, an area growing so fast at the time that if you only had last years’ Thomas Bros map book, the field wasn’t even there. So saying, “See Thomas Bros page B-65” wasn’t going to help if that page showed a large unincorporated area with a lake and no streets – or field.

Don’t even get me going on the Snack Mom schedule.  Even if I made assignments at the start of the season and passed out a printed schedule, people forgot, or lost the schedule, or were out of town, or traded dates with someone who then forgot. Personally, I think those kids would have survived just fine without orange slices at half time and juice boxes and cookies after the game. But that’s just me. The debate over how healthy the after-game snacks should be was never ending.

This all got yet more complicated for tournaments, especially County Cup, and exponentially more complicated for State Cup, which was invariably in Bakersfield even though there were teams in our bracket playing right up the street at Allen Field.  Please note that Bakersfield is at minimum a five-hour drive from here and requires going through L.A.  I like to think that cuisine has improved up there over the years but I still remember Bakersfield as having the second worst food I have ever eaten. (The worst was at my nephew’s Basic Training graduation in Lawton, Oklahoma. No matter what you ordered, it had chicken gravy on it. The stuff labeled “heart healthy” just had less chicken gravy.) 

Wringing coaching and tournament fees out of player’s parents – checks that I had to deposit at the bank in the teams’ account - was part-time job all on its own, never mind booking hotels.  At the time, Bakersfield’s hotel selections were confined to Abysmal and Really Abysmal.  I’m told they’ve improved.

We did plenty of out-of-town tournaments besides State Cup that also required accommodations.  Some parents wanted more upscale hotels while others wanted the cheapest motel in the area.  But we all needed to stay in the same place. 

I fortunately had access to a photocopier at work (thank you, National Science Foundation!) so I could print off copies of maps and memos, snack Mom assignments, and schedules to hand out at games.  But if a player was not at a game, they didn’t get one. 

Sometimes it all got a little much.  In doing some really really overdue file cleaning, I came across a folder from one of Henry’s soccer teams that I managed that contained a transcript of a recording I put on my phone.  It read:

Hi, this is Inga.

If you are calling to say your son can’t come to County Cup because you will be in Maui, press one now.

If you are calling to complain about State Cup accommodations, press two now.

If you are calling to question March-April coaching fees, press three.

If you can’t find your copy of the Snack Mom schedule but think it might be your week, please press four.

If you are calling to say you can’t host the end of season team party after all, press 5.

If you are calling to ask if we can change the spring soccer practice schedule due to baseball conflicts, do not leave a message because you’re the people who insisted your kid could do both.

If you know where I can get a prescription for Prozac, PLEASE, stay on the line.

(And yes, this was an actual recording that lived on my answering machine for some weeks.)

Interestingly, a lot of people called to listen to that message who weren’t even on our team.  I’d come home from work and see I had 32 calls.  Most people didn’t even leave a message.  Or they’d say, “A friend told me to call this number.  Love it.”  I think there were a lot of other frustrated youth sports managers out there. 

The mere thought that one could manage all of this with MapQuest, group emails, and Zelle accounts is a world I could never have even envisioned.  Had I been able to, I would have foregone being a team manager and made the kids go for lunch and mani-pedis.

 

 

 

There Has To Be A Better Way Than "Lifting Lids"

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 23, 2026] 2026

I'm starting to feel bad about being so critical of our local government. But would they stop giving me so much ammunition?

So what, you ask, am I going to whine about today? (So many choices, so little space.) Lid lifters. Yup, those $70,000-a-year-plus-benefits folks that the city has hired to creep around in the early morning hours before the garbage trucks come and look for miscreants who have put plastic bags in the blue recycling bins or greenery in the black-now-gray trash bins.

But especially to look for discarded batteries that have caused some 25 trash truck fires in the last year alone. This is a really big deal. Those trash trucks are expensive.

Lithium-ion and other rechargeable batteries can ignite when crushed or punctured inside collection trucks which can ignite sparks and fire, potentially destroying the entire truck, never mind jeopardizing the safety of the driver.

While regular single-use batteries (those Cs, D s, AA s etc.) aren't designated hazards in some cities, they are considered hazardous waste in San Diego and not permitted in the black-now-gray bins. They can apparently still spark if mishandled, especially lithium types.

A trash truck in San Diego typically costs $350,000-$450,000, but the exact price depends on the type of truck (side-loaded, rear-loaded, front-loader) capacity.

Whether the truck is rendered irreparable by the fire or can be fixed and returned to service is obviously costing the city a bunch of money if we re multiplying by 25 trucks. And that's just in the last year alone.

So I can see why the city would really want to prioritize doing something about this. But paying people $70,000 a year to see if people have left used batteries sitting atop plastic trash bags (they won't actually open your bags) seems an inefficient way to do it. Especially since the goal is to have everyone's trash examined only once per year. You'd just have to get really lucky that that's the week the battery scofflaws chose to discard those AAs in plain sight.

Even if they re not going to open my trash bags, people - I would be one of them - find it very creepy to have strangers rooting through my black-now-gray trash bins. And given the hour, how would we tell them apart from homeless people?

The city maintains that the lid lifters, besides trolling for batteries and propane tanks, are part of an education program to help the city residents understand their totally insane trash sorting rules.

Should they see an item in an inappropriate bin, they will put an "oops" tag on the bin, alerting you where you've gone wrong. If they catch you putting something dangerous - a propane tank, for example - they will put a "do not collect"  tag on it for the trash folks, and you'll have to remediate the problem then call to get your trash picked up another time. (And good luck with that.)

I would like to mention here that once bins are on street, residents have no control over what other people put in them. The public has access to our black-now-gray and green bins all the time since the bins are too big to fit through our back gate. People putting dog poop bags in our green bins (or even the recycle bins if on the street) makes me nuts.

But they could be putting batteries, paint cans or other hazard waste in our bins and, if appropriately disguised, we'd never know.

I have to say that if I were in charge of trying to save the city the cost of repairing or replacing 25 pricey trash trucks per year by discouraging people from putting batteries in the trash, I'd take the Swedish approach which can be summed up in three words: make it easy.

Clean air, clean water, and recycling are all very central to the Swedish ethos. When we lived there, our apartment complex of 32 units had exactly three 30-gallonish bins which were serviced perhaps once a week. That was because every few blocks, there would be an entire bank of big green recycling bins for every type of recycling you can imagine: clear glass, colored glass, every type of paper and plastic, and yes, one just for batteries.

Such is the Swedish priority for recycling that when an American friend decided to try to sneak a few empty wine bottles into her building's trash bins, she found the bag outside her apartment door the next morning with a note full of Swedish umbrage. Swedes can smell recyclables in a trash bin from 30 yards.

My friend sent an email to the rest of us warning us not to attempt this. But if we did, she lamented, be sure not to include mail with your address on it.

Now compare this to San Diego's battery recycling program.

Batteries can be recycled at the City of San Diego Household Hazardous Waste Transfer Facility at the Miramar Landfill on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. The service is free for City residents but requires an appointment [italics mine] and proof of residency [italics mine again]. All types of home-use (alkaline, rechargeable) and automotive batteries are accepted. 

An appointment? Proof of residency? How many people are realistically going to do that? They're going to dump them in a trash bag in their black-now-gray bin knowing the lid lifters won't see them.

Now, there are other ways to recycle batteries in San Diego besides the city dump. How much time have you got?

There are various recycling events around the county during the year but none that tend to be near here.

As far as anything that might be even remotely convenient to anyone in our area, Staples stores accept rechargeable and single-use (alkaline) batteries.

O'Reilly Auto Parts at 1501 East Garnet Avenue in Pacific Beach accepts used car, marine, lawn care and motorcycle batteries for recycling but NOT household, non-rechargeable flashlight batteries (like alkaline), i.e. the type Staples accepts.

A little farther afield, Dream E-Waste in the Sports Arena area (4009 Hicock St., suite D) accepts all household, rechargeable, and specialty batteries.

Got all that?

Frankly, if I had $10,000,000 (25 x $400,000) of trash trucks at stake each year, I d be working hard to make sure it was really really easy for people to dispose of anything that would potentially destroy them.

Having a six-hour window by appointment-only one day a week that people have to drive to seems, well, lacking. While the Swedes strive to make recycling so easy you'd be embarrassed not to do it, our local government seems to ask, "How can we make this incredibly complicated, expensive, annoying, and largely ineffective?"  (Balboa Park parking fees, anyone?)

Because if we want to keep batteries out of the city's trash, the lid lifters aren't it.

 

Why Losing A Pet Can Be Harder Than Losing People

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 16, 2026] 2026

Recently a news story appeared about Olympic Alpine skier Lindsay Vonn who had hoped to compete again this year in Milan but suffered a career-ending compound tibial fracture during her first run. The headline read "Tragedy strikes Lindsey Vonn."   But the tragedy the article described? Her dog Leo died. Forget the leg.

Having recently lost our beloved 16-year-old bichon-poodle mix, Lily, we understood this well. Her predecessor, our much-adored English bulldog, Winston, died on his own terms of a sudden heart attack. We hadn't had to euthanize a pet before Lily. My husband and I both admit that we are not doing well without her.

I wrote about Lily in my February 5 column and was fortunate to get many wonderfully compassionate responses. Losing a cherished fur family member is, alas, an all-too-common experience.

All of the comments were lovely but there were three that especially touched me.

One was a ten-hanky poem concluding I have left paw prints on your heart. Yes, Lily did indeed do just that.

Another reader noted, "Winston was surely there in heaven to greet Lily when she arrived."   I'm not particularly religious but this image truly cheers me.

And finally, a very kind man noted after his own experience losing a beloved pet: There is no better friend and few harder losses, adding, They say time heals all wounds. There may be exceptions to that rule. 

I couldn't agree more. Definitely feeling that exception.

I've had plenty of time recently to ponder why the loss of a pet is often so much harder than losing a person even people we've loved very much. 

It's well known that animals' pure unconditional love creates an incredibly strong emotional bond. They are the companions who shape your home's routines and rhythms. They love you - and you them - with a steady uncomplicated devotion.

And then, all of sudden, it's really quiet. The silence is literally deafening.

You don't realize until after your beloved fur child is gone how much she's affected every one of your senses. The sound of her paws on the floor, the weight of her on your lap, the pure joy of her silly expressions, the sound of her bark when the mail man breaches the front porch, the softness of her wooly head, and yes, even the ever-present doggy breath. (If there was one way I failed Lily, it was not brushing her teeth enough. But we both really hated it.)

But worst of all, the quiet.

She was a presence who was woven into every corner of my day. When I was outside watering the plants, she was right nearby, chasing rivulets of water down the patio. She provided guard dog duties when I took out the trash at night, and supervised unloading of groceries from the car. As I made dinner at night, she sat rapt while I ran column ideas by her. (She wasn't too pleased with the City Council either.)

Assisting with laundry was one of her favorite activities. Once all the clean clothes were in neat stacks on the bed, she liked to pounce on them like a lioness in the Serengeti, flinging underwear and socks into the air with happy abandon. She especially loved burrowing into a pile of laundry still warm from the dryer, luxuriating in this toasty cocoon. If people ever thought we smelled like dog, that was probably why.

Who would have thought such a little dog could have so much stuff? It wasn't just the custom ramps in every room that we had made to help her get up on beds and furniture after her two knee replacements. She had beds next to my reading chair and another next to my desk. A substantial section of kitchen countertop was dedicated to her arsenal of medications, non-refrigerated cuisine, shampoos, and anti-itch mousses. A whole shelf in the fridge housed her homemade foods. There were water dishes (she drank like a camel) in almost every room. She had a selection of soft fuzzy blankets for snuggles on the sofa or on laps, and for lining her two dog beds. The table by the front door was entirely usurped by leashes, harnesses, collars, assorted car seat belts and of course, poop bags. The hooks in the laundry room stored her puffer jackets (as she got thinner, she got cold more) and her much-hated rain coat. (Fortunately it doesn't rain much here.) We had foam blocks to raise her food and water dishes higher as she got older. It was too painful to look at all this after she was gone but its absence makes the house feel utterly barren. It's like we just gained 1,000 square feet of living space that we absolutely don't want.

One item that I am so glad I saved was Squeaky Pup. Early on, I got Lily a set of six squeaker balls, but she glommed on to one of them and eschewed the rest. Because she treated it like her child - licking it, cradling it tenderly with her paws - it became known as Squeaky Pup. She would not go to bed at night without Squeaky Pup in bed with us. You couldn't fool her by trying to swap one of the same color. She knew Real Squeaky Pup from the imposters.

Our bedtime routine after "final pee" and taking off her collar for the night was to locate Squeaky Pup to bring to bed. It had sometimes rolled under furniture or gotten lost under a blanket during the day. We'd carefully search every room, both of us looking under desks and behind doors. She loved this ritual. The funny thing was that she often knew exactly where it was but just enjoyed the sport of hunting for it. If I truly couldn't find it, I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "Lily, are you sure you don't know where it is?" And then, a minute later, she'd appear with it.

Squeaky Pup now resides on my desk. I'd give anything to be searching for Squeaky Pup with Lily again. It was a nightly conversation, a shared game, a cherished rite, her sense of humor in action.

She's been gone for some weeks now but the entire day still feels wrong. I think one of the hardest parts I feel is not being greeted with a white bundle of ecstatic wiggles when I come through the front door. My husband, although always glad to see me, just isn't an ecstatic wiggles kind of guy.

The empty floor spaces where Lily's beds were just haunt me as well. I was able to move things around the kitchen counters and in the refrigerator but there is nothing to be done about the bare spaces on the floor where Lily would be sleeping nearby when I was reading or writing.

She made everyday tasks seem warm and connected. Now they just seem like chores. How am I supposed to do those things alone?

She and Olof shared many rituals as well, especially their daily walks. They also watched a lot of sports together. She was much better at feigning interest than I was.

Even her doggie friends miss her. They stick their noses through our gate and wait for her. They seem puzzled when she doesn't come.

Sometimes the smallest stuff really gets me. Last week I found a can of organic pumpkin - a chief ingredient of Lily s homemade food - tucked into a corner of the counter. I just completely lost it. Ditto picking up her ashes, and the plaster cast of her paw print.

Olof has often remarked in recent weeks that a light has gone out in this house. And so much joy with it. We're just so profoundly sad.

My main goal these days is trying to channel grief into gratitude. I'm heartbroken that I'll never again have her snoozing in my lap making soft coo-ey noises as I stroke her head. But I'm grateful I had so many opportunities to do so because the pleasure was most definitely just as much mine.

So yes, Lindsey Vonn, your fellow pet owners get it. Shattered leg? Bad news. Loss of the beloved Leo? Absolutely tragic.

                                                                                  Lily

                                                Lily and the much-hated rain coat

                                                Lily and Squeaky Pup

                                                Paw print - heart breaking

 

 

You've Got To Stop This, Bobby!

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published March 2, 2026] 2026

On January 7, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his side kick Dr. Mehmet Oz released new dietary guidelines. They ve once again flipped the whole food pyramid on its pointy head.

If I didn't have a character limit, this column would be 10,000 words and titled Totally absolutely never going to believe anything medical science says again and this time I really mean it! 

In 1973, Woody Allen presciently released the movie Sleeper about a health food store owner whose body was accidentally cryogenically frozen and who wakes up 200 years later in 2173 to find that the real health foods are tobacco and red meat. The doctors who unfreeze him are dismayed to learn that he consumed the likes of wheat germ and organic honey. "What?"  they exclaim. "No deep fat, no steak, no cream pies, no hot fudge?"  subsequently observing that "these were thought to be unhealthy [in 1973] - precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true."

Guess what, folks. It's 2173. We just got there 149 years early.

If you've been alive for a while, you ve endured flipflops between the health benefits (or lack thereof) of margarine vs. butter, eggs, shrimp, carbs, saturated fats vs polyunsaturated fats vs monounsaturated fats etc.

But for most of my life, saturated fats were always the bad guy. I put extra virgin olive oil on my salads, and if I fried anything, it was with a heart-healthy canola oil. Eggs were limited to two a week, and shrimp to, like, never. When I think about all the guilt I felt eating even the smallest amount of butter which, by the way tastes so much better than margarine - I feel pure dietary rage.

So I was frankly astonished a decade ago with the sudden popularity of coconut oil. I started seeing it more and more frequently as an ingredient in recipes, and even Dr. Oz was flogging it as a health food that allegedly fights illness-causing viruses and bacteria, aids in thyroid and blood sugar control, improves digestion, and improbably as it sounds to me, increases the good HDL cholesterol despite its 12 grams of saturated fat per tablespoon. Surely even a bacon cheeseburger dipped in a hot fudge sundae can't have 12 grams of saturated fat per bite?

I've never had a primary care doctor who didn't caution that artery-clogging saturated fat puts you on the fast track to counting worms. Still, since a whole display case of coconut oil had magically appeared in my local supermarket, and Dr. Oz said it was OK, I decided to add a jar to my basket. But I only got five steps before the chest pains started and I put it back. It's like Mao waking up one morning and exhorting the Chinese to embrace democracy. I just didn't think I had enough life expectancy left to embrace coconut oil as a health food.

But it has just gotten a whole lot worse. Now our new Secretary of Health and Human Services is telling us to jettison all those formerly-healthy seed oils (canola, corn, sunflower, safflower, etc.) and substitute beef tallow. Wasn't it considered a huge breakthrough for public health when all the fast-food restaurants were persuaded to dump beef tallow for polyunsaturated oils? We could order the large fries and think of it as a vegetable.

Beef tallow, by the way, is the fat that surrounds a cow's kidney. Yum-mo! It can be used as an ingredient in cosmetics as well as in cooking and in products like soap and biodiesel. I'm not sure any of these things is exactly whetting my appetite or making me want to slather it on my body.

In a post that seems eerily right out of the Woody Allen movie, Robert Kennedy Jr. wrote on social media several months ago: 'Did you know that McDonald's used to use beef tallow to make their fries from 1940 until phasing it out in favor of seed oils in 1990? This switch was made because saturated animal fats were thought to be unhealthy, but we have since discovered that seed oils are one of the driving causes of the obesity epidemic.'

Sorry folks, I have been so indoctrinated in my life against beef tallow (and coconut oil) that there is no way I am ingesting either. I'd probably end up dying from a reverse placebo effect: in my heart (literally and figuratively), I believe it will kill me.

Now alcohol is under attack. As in any alcohol at all. What happened to all those heart-healthy polyphenols in red wine that help protect the lining of blood vessels in the heart? The tide has turned and it's about to put Happy Hour under water.

Indulging in alcohol in moderation was once considered harmless, and, as noted above, possibly healthy, and may have well been why my kids survived to adulthood. That divorced working mom gig was a bear. I m definitely glad they didn't come up with this anti-alcohol news while I was in college as it would definitely have impacted my college experience. The night finals were over we were going to go out for iced tea?

But now alcohol is toxic. Any amount. However, I was happy to see Dr. Mehmet Oz who stood with RFK Jr. at the announcement of the new dietary recommendations in January say that alcohol is a social lubricant that "brings people together"  and that it "can give people an excuse to bond and socialize." Yup, it sure can!

The new recommendation that made me burst out laughing was that children not start eating added sugars until they're ten. Ten? So what are they going to serve at a birthday party? Broccoli? With candles stuck in it? Did these guys ever spend any time with their own kids?

So what are we weary health-oriented consumers to think?

As a senior citizen, here's my conclusion: Eat whatever you want because it'll come back into favor again sooner or later. I promise. And not to put too fine a point on it, but you've got to die of something.

So bring on the Krispy Kremes (which, by the way, are cooked in seed oils.) And thank you, Woody.

 

 

Speculating How I Came To Be Shaped Like A T-Rex

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published February 23, 2026] 2026

Packing up some grandchildren books to donate to the library, I came across one on dinosaurs. The T-Rex on the cover seemed somehow familiar to me. And then it struck me. "It's me! That's my body!

No joke, virtually all my body proportions are the same.

OK, I may be exaggerating a teeny bit. But let me make my case.

It may not be obvious when you look at me, but, like my reptilian antecedent, I have a really big head. I mean way up there in the percentile of large craniums. Hats have always been problematical, and even pony tails. You'll never find a picture of me with either. Fortunately for T-Rexes, this wasn't a big issue but they would have found it as much of a pain as I do.

Then there's the overbite. OK, mine isn't as bad as the T-Rex in the picture but if I were a child now, I d definitely be sending an orthodontist's child to Bishops. Perfect teeth just weren't as big a deal in my youth as they are now. A little (or lot) of overbite? Meh.

Like the T-Rex, I'm also missing a waist. My proportions are very...disproportionate. As in heavily weighted on the bottom. This is why I never wear dresses, only separates when you can buy the components in different sizes.

And then there's my tiny little T-Rexy arms. Seriously, my arms are waaay short. It's like they took all those percentiles off my arms and added them to my head. Even buying long-sleeved blouses in a petite size (I am most definitely not a petite person), the sleeve length will be too long.

By the way, just looking at the T-Rex s feet, I'm betting they had plantar fasciitis too. And good luck finding orthotics in the Mesozoic era.

Of course, the one proportion the T-Rex has that I don't is a long neck. It's not like my head sits right on top of my shoulders but let's just say I stopped buying choker necklaces decades ago.

Women's clothes are measured on fit models who are assumed to have standard parts. They are not designed for those of us with my configuration. Which I think we'll all agree is good news. But it makes acquiring apparel a significant problem.

I have long been aware that I seem to be composed of multiple different body parts that don't belong together proportionally on the same person.

How did this happen? One theory, of course, is that back when my mother was pregnant with me, women could drink and smoke as much as they wanted. And probably did. 

Of course now, a single drink during pregnancy will get Social Services at your door. If you ever watched the show "Mad Men"  which took place in the 1960s, pregnant women were actively knocking back alcoholic beverages, never mind smoking. This was certainly the case in my suburban neighborhood growing up. There were no restrictions whatsoever.

Maybe my Mom was hitting the cocktails pretty hard at certain points of my development. That margarita week must have been quite a party. It's certainly one explanation for the tiny little arms.

There s obviously another explanation. It could all be DNA run amok.

I should note that my oddly configured body wasn't as obvious back when I was thin. (I can hear people who have known me for a while saying, "You were ever thin?"  Get lost, OK?) I always wore a size 4, which in today's deflationary size market is probably a 2, or even a 0. (Personally, I think size 0 is what you should be after you've been dead a while.) But after my first marriage ended, I packed on 40 pounds eating the Post-Divorce Mrs. Fields Cookie and Chardonnay Depression Diet. Alas, I've been heifering, er, hovering around a size 16 ever since.

Alas, this added weight only seemed to exaggerate my unusual proportions. It quickly became apparent to me that for any reasonable clothing selection, I would be relegated to catalogs from the Talbots Butterball Collection or Lands End-Porcine. Logging on to Lands End in search of attire for the adiposely-amplified, I was happy to discover a feature called Virtual Model. You type in your assorted measurements, hair color, age, and voila, there is a virtual you standing there in your undies ready to try on clothes.

You can fine-tune the virtual you to a certain extent, but I did notice that "modify My Model" did not include such accuracy-enhancing features as add cellulite or increase sag . In fact, the My Model of me with my alleged weight and measurements wasn't half bad because of course, I had the flabless thighs of an Olympic speed skater. Given this, I enjoyed trying on bikinis and even making myself different races.

Alas, clothes that looked great on the virtual me rarely looked good on the real me because it didn't really create a facsimile of me that accurately reflected the data I gave them. I'm guessing the algorithm thought, "No way. If these were her measurements, she'd be built like a T-Rex."   So it fudged them a bit (more than a bit) knowing I wouldn't buy any clothes otherwise.

Fortunately, at this point I know exactly what size black slacks and white tops fit me on Lands End. My older granddaughter has observed that I dress like a barista from a lesser trattoria.

She, of course, has the svelte perfectly-proportioned figure of her mother. I hope her daughter inherits this body type as well. Hence, I have been too polite to mention the word "genetics."  Because somewhere in there, lurking where she least suspects it, could be dinosaur DNA.

Leave Balboa Park Alone

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published February 16, 2026] 2026

With the risk of sounding like an irascible curmudgeon, how soon can we evict the idiots on the San Diego City Council?

I am actually a life-long Democrat and I voted for those idiots. But I am despairing that they can make any good decisions anymore, especially where parking is concerned. Our City Council persons have excelled at conjuring up new and creative ways to make a dire parking situation in San Diego even worse and more expensive. It's clearly a gift.

I'm especially referring to you, Joe LaCava. I've been (past tense) a fan for decades. The La Jolla Light keeps editing out my comments about him. I'm allowed to say that I wish he could be relegated to a desert island, but not what I hope happens when he gets there. Joe, we expected so much more from you!

Back in 2021, the City Council took what they deemed the "bold"  step of wiping out requirements for businesses in areas near mass transit to have any parking spaces.

Were they also wiping out any requirements for business?

Meanwhile, every time I read about new legislation that reduces or eliminates parking requirements for new residential or commercial construction, I want to tear my hair out. Also the hair of the City Council persons who voted for it.

The two-part message from our governing bodies seems to be: (1) By eliminating parking, people will use public transit. (2) By "people,"  they mean persons other than themselves.

I've written about this before, but I wish that every single person on the City Council and their families were required to use only public transit for an entire month. That means going to work, getting the kids to school and sport practices, the dog to the vet, making medical appointments on time, etc. etc. I'm a huge fan of public transit (we never had a car when we lived in Sweden) but this city isn't set up for it. Expecting people to walk a half mile from a transit station to home with kids and groceries is a non-starter.

Meanwhile, the "daylighting" law that went into effect January 1, 2025 prohibits parking within twenty feet of an intersection with the aim of boosting visibility for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists. This applies even if the curb is not marked or in the absence of No Parking signs. The tickets are a whopping $117. The law defacto removed hundreds of parking places in hard-to-park areas. Months into 2025, only 400 of the city s affected 16,000 intersections had had the curbs painted red. Which is how the city managed to issue 6,133 tickets and generate over $660,000 in revenue just between March 1, 2025 (when the new law became enforced) and the end of May of that year. The city, of course, is gleefully happy at this fortuitous windfall which is a testament to how truly unclear the law is and how difficult it is on many blocks to estimate the exact twenty feet. Meanwhile some 6,133 people returned to their cars from an eight-hour work shift or a nice lunch to find themselves $117 poorer.

But the new parking fees at Balboa Park are a whole new level of stupid. Anyone - well, except for City Council persons - could have predicted that charging for parking in Balboa Park would severely impact the museums, restaurants, Old Globe Theater, club meetings, dog walkers, and just general picnickers. And surprise! That's exactly what happened.

The outcry was so predictable. Balboa Park is a cherished San Diego institution, a sacred cow, if you will. Do not mess with the cow, er, park!

Every effort the City Council has made to backtrack/ameliorate the situation has just made it worse. First of all, those ticket machines where you pay are apparently seriously user-hostile. That alone would keep me from ever going there again. I have the techno frustration tolerance of a gnat.

By the time this column sees print, the new parking fee rules will probably have changed yet again. The most recent placating revision is going to give a discount to residents of the city but you have to apply on-line (sorry poor people without a computer!), pay a one-time fee of $5 to verify your residency (which requires a driver's license, vehicle registration, or utility bill) and also enter your vehicle's license plate number. Um, what if your residence has multiple vehicles?

This process takes up to two days, and the San Diego Union-Tribune (2/7/26) says you have to choose the day of your visit in advance. It's unclear how, even after you have paid that fee, you get a discount in future visits when you come to the park and are confronted with the ticket machines. Inquiring minds, even if they are never intending to come to the park again, would like to know.

Are these ticket machines programmed to know who are verified residents?

Just to make sure no one understands the system, the various parking lots have been designated Level 1 (i.e. nearest to anything you'd actually want to go to), Level 2, and Level 3 (a.k.a Siberia) with different rates for both residents and non-residents at each.

Level 1 rates are $8/day or $5 for four hours for verified residents, and $16/day or $10 for four hours for non-residents. Level 2 rates are $5/day for verified residents and $10/day for non-residents. Level 3 rates are first 3 hours free and then $5 for verified residents, and first three hours free then $10/day for non-residents.

In response to push-back from the citizenry, the City Council has managed to change the enforcement period to end at 6 p.m. (from the original 8 p.m.) to accommodate theater and restaurant go-ers. It should never have been 8 p.m. They have also, allegedly, backed off from paid beach parking. At least for the time being.

My parents taught me when I was approximately five that if you've made a mistake, admit it and try to fix it. If it were up to me, the City Council would be enjoined from making any regulations whatsoever regarding parking because whatever they decide is guaranteed to be a total goat f--k, er, epic fail. There s enough going on in this country that we shouldn't have to be spending our energy fighting our own local government.

City Council: admit that you blew this one. Repeal it.

 

Lily: In Memoriam: October, 2009-January, 2026

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published February 2, 2026] 2026

Despite months of heroic effort, our beloved 16-year-old bichon poodle mix, Lily, has had to leave us. Both Olof and I are inconsolable. It feels like the air has been sucked out of our house.

Lily came to us as an "emergency foster"  in July of 2016, several months after our adored English bulldog Winston died of a heart attack in our living room. We were still bereft, not looking to be dog owners again. "One week max,"  the rescue agency promised me.

Those rescue people saw us for the mushballs that we were. Three days in, we were totally in love with Lily.

We think Lily might have been a breeder since she hadn't been spayed at almost eight. The first thing we noticed, besides her terrible teeth, was that she had no idea what dog toys were. How to play fetch. How to play tug. In fact, how to play anything.

We'd throw a small ball for her and she'd merely look at us like, "Am I supposed to be doing something with that? If so, I'm not interested."

Finally, I found her some small round rubber squeaky balls that did pique her interest but not as toys. She would gather them up protectively in a group close to her chest, her paws around them, and lick them affectionately as if they were her pups.

From time-to-time visitors to the house, not realizing that these squeaky balls were offspring and not play things, would pick one up and throw it for her. Lily would be enraged, chasing after it but immediately returning it to the rest of her litter and glowering at the guest.

"You just threw her child," we'd explain to them. "She's very sensitive about it." They were always hugely apologetic.

Lily was my little shadow, following me around the house, always waiting eagerly by the front door when I came home. Unlike my kids, she was always so deliriously happy to see me. When I did my yoga exercises on the floor, she created a new pose, Cat and Cow Over Dog. She slept snuggled up between Olof and me at night, and napped with me every afternoon. There wasn't a household chore that either Olof or I did that she didn't cheerfully oversee.

If the bathroom door were not closed tightly, Lily would nose it open and join the often-startled occupant. For her, bathroom activities were very much a communal activity. In fact, she was fairly annoyed if you excluded her and would park herself just outside the door where you could easily trip over her and do a face plant into the armoire which would serve you right for being so anti-social.

If the bathroom occupant were Olof, she would join him at the commode, assessing the proceedings with the laser focus of an Olympic Figure Skating judge. Artistic presentation? Meh. But given the added difficulty elements inherent in Olof s age, she was more than willing to bump up the score for technical merit.

While Lily became fast friends with our pool guy, she regarded our lawn maintenance man as her mortal enemy. The second he showed up on Wednesdays, 17 pounds of furious white fluff was hurling itself at our French doors. "He's stealing our grass! Again! And you let him!" She was eager to sink her three remaining teeth into the side of his mower.

As Lily got older, her need for sudden trips outside in the middle of the night became more frequent, a concept her aging owners could identify with. Lily would suddenly leap off the bed and run for the front door. I wouldn't even have time to step into slip-on shoes, as I raced to the door behind her, hoping to get it open before there was a "clean up on aisle five." It used to be that I'd stand on the front porch and keep an eye on her while she performed, but with the increasing preponderance of coyotes in our neighborhood, I'd grab the flashlight by the front door and rush out after her.

Our newspaper guy generally delivers our newspaper between three and four a.m. On multiple occasions, he would pull up to see me running around my front yard in my nightgown and bare feet waving a flashlight in my hand. I'm not sure he ever realized there was a dog involved. Fortunately, I tip well at Christmas.

In the time we had her, we funded multiple dental procedures, two new knees, and thousands of dollars worth of digestive diagnostics, meds, and special diets. The pet insurance companies we looked into wouldn't pay for most of this, especially the new knees. We called her our 401-Canine. She was worth every penny.

By the time she passed away, Lily was on her 15^th life. Really. Her initial brushes with death occurred in late 2022 when she suddenly and explicably stopped eating and had difficulty walking. We amassed a two-inch thick file of evaluations. Just when we truly thought it was the end, we were referred to a retired integrative veterinarian (as in practicing both eastern and western approaches), who, in the first two minutes of examining her, announced, "Well, the first thing I'm noticing is that her jaw is dislocated. No wonder she's not eating."  Feeling down her spine, he noted that her sacroiliac joint was out of place too. He adjusted both, did some acupuncture, and thirty minutes later when I brought her home, Lily scampered up the front steps and wolfed down three plates of food.

Had she fallen off our bed? Been dropped at the groomer? We'll never know. But she was cured. Even if a western-trained vet had diagnosed these issues, they wouldn't have been able to treat them. Having three more years with Lily was a gift beyond measure. And we gained a profound new respect for the power of alternate approaches to veterinary care.

Last August, however, Lily suddenly stopped eating again. Definitely not her jaw this time. We ran up yet another $3,600 in vet bills in three weeks but no source of this malady could be determined by tests. Once again, it looked like the end. One vet wanted us to have her admitted to a veterinary hospital for four days of feeding with a nasogastric tube. We could not do this to a 16-year-old dog who would be incredibly traumatized. I cried buckets. I think what finally helped was Lily looking at me one day and saying, "OK, I'll eat if you'll just stop crying."   As mysteriously she had stopped eating, she started eating again.

Well, mostly. Unfortunately, she wasn't eating enough most days to sustain her weight, and certainly not to regain the weight she'd lost. While she seemed like her same happy Lily self, we watched her weight slide from her normal 17.5 pounds down to 12 in January despite every digestive medication and prescription diet imaginable. She looked thin and frail. While labs in September hadn't shown anything definitive, now her labs were showing significant kidney disease and high levels of phosphorus. If we were to have any hope of prolonging her life - no guarantees - we were advised that we needed to have her admitted to a veterinary hospital for several days of IV fluids under sedation.

Like the nasogastric tube, we couldn't bear to do that to this poor little dog. But we were able to arrange outpatient subcutaneous fluids and administered phosphate binders to reduce her phosphorus levels.

Sadly, it wasn't enough. For the last five months, my happiness level could be quantified on how much my dog ate that day. I just wanted her not to die at Christmas, and she obligingly didn't. Her labs continued to deteriorate. And ultimately we had to make the heartbreaking decision to put her down.

Millions of people go through this profound level of grief every year. Our beloved animals count on us to take care of them when it's time. I get it, but I still feel like my heart has been ripped out of my body. Making the euthanasia appointment was the worst call of my life.

Lily's passing has just flattened us. She was just so much of a part of our minute-by-minute retiree lives and we can t help but be reminded of her dozens of times a day. For two people who never went looking for a dog, that sneaky little girl totally took us hostage. The profound ache we feel just won't go away nor, maybe, should it completely. Any creature - human or animal - who makes such an in-road into one's heart deserves a place there forever.

Let me say that there is nothing better when you're having a bad day than a small dog snuggled up in your lap. It also works when you're having a good day. The unconditional love of an animal has to be one of the most powerfully positive emotions ever. Which makes the loss of it so devastating.

On her last day, I sat outside in the sun with Lily wrapped in her blanket. We listened to the birds and I rubbed her soft wooly head. I thanked her over and over for all the love she had brought not only to us, but to our friends and the rest of the family as well. She licked my hand. The next morning, she took her final breaths in Olof's arms.

Rest in peace, Lily. You were pure joy. I know you are in a better place. We most definitely are not.

 

 

I Can't Believe My Eyes

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published January 26, 2026] 2026

I can't believe my eyes. No, I really can t. My ears either. Or frankly any of my senses. And this absolutely terrifies me.

Seriously, the number of scams that come my way on a daily basis make me want to cancel internet and phone service, and keep my money in cash in a safety deposit box at my local bank. I agree it would be a tad isolating but far less anxiety-provoking.

My sell-by date has definitely expired. I'm terrified of waking up one morning and finding that every dime of our retirement funds is now in Nigeria.

Daily, I receive multiple notifications, some of which look fairly authentic, that my Amazon Prime Membership has expired. That my Spectrum account has been flagged. That there is a fraud alert on our USAA account. That a critical bill was not paid and our health insurance has been cancelled. That we need to verify account information. That my email account has been suspended.

"Amazon"  calls and wants me to verify that I made a certain purchase. Text messages regularly inform me that Fed Ex is unable to deliver my package and to please click here to update delivery instructions. The alleged-IRS claimed that my end of the year statement was ready which was puzzling since it was still November. Or that I failed to pay for road tolls. Of course, one time we did forget to pay toll fees on a rental car in the Bay area and the penalties were staggering.

It goes on and on. They all want me to click on this link to resolve it. (I know better than to click on those links.) Sometimes they demand I change my password. Of course, sites like the Franchise Tax Board do make you change your password every 90 days or your account locks.

But here s the thing: recently Spectrum actually did update ancient accounts such as ours that actually did require new passwords. But I also got numerous emails from allegedly-Spectrum on the same subject that were scams. I finally called Spectrum and read them each of the emails and asked, did you send me this? Two were real, the rest weren't. But they all sounded legitimate.

Back in 2015, we checked into a hotel on Christmas Eve, after which I turned off my phone. The next morning, there were multiple missed calls from USAA. I called back the number and learned that within 30 minutes of our checking in, $3,000 worth of X-boxes had been purchased in two different Walmarts in Pennsylvania. Not being able to reach me, they had just cut off the card. Now, of course, I'd call the USAA fraud line, not the call back number they left, even though in that case, it was an actual call from USAA.

I'm too old for this. And way too techno-challenged to figure out what s real and what isn't.

Speaking of old, I got a great column out of being called by a would-be Grandma scammer some years ago who was purporting to be my grandson who'd been in an accident in Mexico and who needed money wired to him for his hospital bill. This one was easy: my oldest grandson at the time was seven. I strung the kid along for a half hour pretending to be too much of an idiot to understand the instructions for wiring him the money.

Eerily AI (more on that anon) can duplicate your voice, and with some data easily mined from the internet, make you actually believe the Grandma scam.

Now, of course, if I thought there was the slightest chance it really was one of my grandsons, I'd ask questions that only he would know the answer to. But more likely, just hang up. Note to grandsons: if you are in an accident in Tijuana, do not call here.

What I was most curious about with the grandma scam was: how did he target me? Has someone hacked the AARP mailing list? Or do they just call randomly until they get someone who sounds old. (I do not sound old, you little creep!)

A close friend almost went for a scam from Wells Fargo telling her that her account had been compromised and she needed to temporarily transfer $40,000 from her account to keep it safe from the scammers. She nearly went for it. These people are getting wilier and wilier.

Even sending someone a check has been fraught with peril as scammers fish checks out of post office boxes, wash the checks, and write in new numbers. I try to make most payments on my bank s website but if I do need to send a check, I use the hopefully-not-washable new ink pens and mail it from a box inside the post office. It's a total pain.

Apparently another scam has a caller asking "Can you hear me?"  and if you answer "yes", it can then capture your voice saying yes to commit all kinds of other fraud on your accounts. Or is this story itself even a scam?

It probably doesn't help that I write under a porn star name. Those guys in Riga just won't let up.

The AI stuff can look terrifying real. Should I believe my own senses? At first I was stunned that celebrities like Tom Hanks and Oprah were hawking such sketchy products until I realized they weren't. But anyone's likeness can be duplicated by AI and you can be made to be doing pretty much anything. AI can create a video of you with only a photo of your face.

Discerning actual news videos from AI-generated ones are only determined by the fact that if the AI version had really happened, it would have made the actual evening news.

Then there's the physical crime: the scourge known as porch pirates. The perfect crime. Doesn't seem to matter if your face or even the license plate of your car is captured on a Ring camera. No one ever seems to be prosecuted.

How do you even fight back on all this?

Should you unsubscribe to phishing emails? Or have you just confirmed your address?

Of course, some of these scams are easy to spot. When Amazon calls me to inquire if I made what they think is a suspicious purchase, it's easy enough to just go on my account and see if any such purchase was actually made. (It never has been.) It's also suspicious if the callback number is 619.

I don t even dare click on cute animal videos that friends send me, or even digital greeting cards. I don t want to click on anything.

For the first time, I didn't even dare order checks from my own bank's website (which sends you to a different site). There were too many new options, including suggesting a $42 shipping fee to make sure those checks actually got to you. (I went into the bank personally, another total pain.)

Do I get more than most people because I'm old? Probably. We boomers come from a more trusting era. 

But here's something AI needs to come up with: a clairvoyance feature. A digital "spidey sense."   That's one option I d click on.