Inga And Olof Audition For An IKEA commercial

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 14, 2026] 2026

My husband and I had only recently arrived in Stockholm for a two-year work assignment when I saw a casting call announcement seeking several different profiles for IKEA ads posted on the American Women's Club website by a local ad agency. Among the profiles: White couple in mid-50s with American accents (i.e. white male, mid 50s; and white female, mid 50s).  Casting director has expressed an interest in blond woman.

I mean, did this have our names on it or what? (Please note it said nothing about thin.)

Now Olof and I might have consumed a bottle of wine at dinner that night before we decided to apply. At the time, I was feeling like I had spent much of the last 20 years not seizing the day. In fact, usually the days had seized me. I had too often felt like I was just rehearsing for death. More and more, I kept wondering, what happened to the fearless girl who, forty years ago, on two weeks'  notice, didn't think twice about heading off to the equator in Brazil for a year without knowing a word of Portuguese.

While still legally under the influence, we forwarded our photos and bios to the agency.

We pretty much forgot about the ad until a week later when a casting lady from the ad agency asked us to come in that weekend to audition. I started to really worry. Did all the other blond Americans in Stockholm know something we didn't know? Was this one of those ads where they make fun of you? I called the lady back. "It's not a TV ad,"  she explained, "it's for a DVD that will be shown in our kitchen remodeling departments."   I emphasized that neither I nor Olof had even the remotest acting experience. "Not a problem,"  the casting lady said, "we're looking more for type. The script is about a couple who can't agree on what they want in their kitchen remodel."

"Golly,"  I said to Olof, recalling the nightmare that was our kitchen upgrade several years back, "I 'm not sure we could identify with that."

So, wearing attire that any mid-fifty-ish couple would wear if they were going to go fight about counter tops at IKEA, we took the subway to the casting office, signed all manner of forms in Swedish, indicated our vital statistics (I lied), indicated that we would not require vegetarian catering at the shoot (if selected), would allow them to cut and restyle our hair (if selected), agreed to the salary (if selected), and were handed our scripts and profiles. The profiles were to help us get "in character." My profile was a Boston woman, age 56, grown son and daughter, who worked as a secretary for a large insurance company. I longed to live in the country but my husband didn't want the commute, so instead I was trying to give my urban home the warm cozy look I fantasized it would have outside the city. I was very, very particular about things, but also a relaxed person. ("We're dead already,"  whispered Olof, reading the "relaxed" part. My profile character was an avid reader of Jane Austen novels. My profile photo looked far older than I thought I did at the time, but then, if I were my correct weight, I'd have looked 90.

Olof, meanwhile, was my 55-year-old husband (why was he younger???) who managed a company that installed alarms for construction companies. But when he got home from work, he loved to relax by cooking ("Now we re really dead," I whispered to Olof, whose cooking skills consisted of boil-a-bags and deli take-out.) Olof s character also loved to read nature magazines and could expound for hours on butterflies. ("Pretend it's computers,"  I whispered.) Alas, I feared I had sat next to Olof's character at more than one dinner party in La Jolla.

The scripts and profiles were clearly written by Swedes. I took one look at my script and began re-writing it. I don't know anyone who says, "I want generous counter tops, big enough to bake on anyway."   Olof refused to rehearse with me, wanting to be spontaneous. Or, simply refusing to have to say his treacly dialogue one more time than he needed to.

We were summoned into the audition room and had head shots and profile shots and middle-distance shots taken of ourselves (you can suck in stomachs but not, alas, chins.) Then we each had to talk into the camera and say who we were, our age, what we did for a living etc. Then we rehearsed.

The casting lady (who was extremely nice, by the way) told me to slow down. "No one really talks that fast,"  she said. Olof stifled a smirk. Inga did not stifle a quick kick to Olof's ankle. Then we shot several takes, looking at each other, or at the camera. The script, as it was written, read:

Woman (inspired): I want it to be spacious and light. Only genuine materials, preferably oak,   even covering the washing machine! [WTF?] Generous counter tops, big enough to bake on anyway, cupboards with inside lighting.

Husband (looking a bit surprised): I prefer stainless steel. It's practical and modern. And good looking too. Why must we always be so traditional? (Husband continues dreaming:) In contrast to that, we could have some fresh colours? [sic]

Woman: But it has to be cozy! I would love to have a large dining table placed in the center of the kitchen.

Husband: No, no, a kitchen island! We've definitely got to have a kitchen island!

Woman (dejected): All right, you can have your kitchen island as long as you do the cooking!

Husband: No problem!

By the third take, we had taken considerable license with the script trying to make it sound like two actual human beings instead of Robo-woman and Chewbacca. Actually, Olof did really well in my opinion. I did far less well in my opinion. But we both had fun and it was not every day we got to do this. Could there be anything more Swedish than being in an IKEA commercial?

And no, we didn't get the parts. But I concluded I definitely had a future as an IKEA ad writer.

 The flagship IKEA store in Kungens Kurva near Stockholm

Being Thwarted by Swedish Appliances: Part 2

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 7, 2026] 2026

Last week I wrote about our first week of a two-year work assignment in Stockholm where we found ourselves completely stymied by both our stove and the apartment's bedding. But the real challenges were to come with laundry. 

Like most Stockholm apartment buildings, ours had a laundry room in the basement. The important concept was that one doesn't just show up in the laundry room and start stuffing one's clothes into a machine. Unlike most U.S. apartment laundry rooms, which tend to be free-for-alls, the ever-organized Swedes have this down to their usual egalitarian science: you sign up for laundry time. During that time, the laundry room is yours, and yours alone, and should someone be so callous and depraved to dare to do their laundry in someone else's time slot, the building's residents are legally entitled to take him (and it would be a him) out to the woods and feed him to the bears. Well, maybe not legally entitled, but the polis would not only look the other way, but would probably be out rounding up the bears. 

So rigid was the laundry system when we were there that we were advised that "it's my laundry time" was a nationally-accepted excuse to get out of pretty much anything.

But we were fortunate - or so we thought - that our apartment came with small (very small) stackable washer and dryer units. Would that we could make any sense of them at all.

The directions on the laundry soap box said that for a "three to five kilogram load" (um, okay) to put in sixty milliliters of detergent. We had no clue how much sixty milliliters was. A cup? Half a cup? Half the box? Fortunately I'd brought a dual American-metric measuring cup from San Diego which I d intended for cooking. Turns out sixty milliliters is only about a quarter of a cup, which I duly measured out and poured in. You definitely don't want to dare a front-loading machine.

 Our Oko-Lavamat 62600 must have been the Ferrari of mini-machines. On the far left side was a dial whose options were: Blötläggn, Tömning, Förtvätt, Fläckar, Huvudtvätt, Snabbtvätt, Sköljning, Mjuksköljn, and Centrifug (must be spin?)

The next set of controls we figured had to be the temperature setting, as I knew kallt meant cold. We set it to 70 (Farenheit? Celsius?)

The third set of controls were labeled: Vittvätt, Kulortvätt (must be something about colored and white (vitt) stuff) but which?), Strykfritt, Fintvätt (maybe fine washables?) and Ylle (no clue whatever)

The FOURTH set of controls said: 1200, 1000, 700, 400, Sköljstopp. 

And (sob!) the last set is labeled: 12h, 8h, 4h, 2h.  Surely we can t be talking HOURS?

And finally a Till/Fran button which must (I hoped) be On/Off? 

My Swedish dictionary, which seemed to be missing half the words in the Swedish language, was no help. I randomly selected Huvudtvätt, pushed the Till/Fran and lo and behold, it began filling with water.

I should mention that we lived in Sweden in 2005 and 2006 when translation software was in its infancy. Now, of course, I could probably just take a photo of all these options and submit it to Chatgpt, which would not only translate and explain all the options, but recommend a setting. Maybe even fold the clothes afterwards. 

But if I thought the washer was a challenge, it was the dryer that totally undid us. While the washer had tons of word options, the dryer had almost no words on it at all, just lots of symbols. The first set was divided into two sections the first of which looks like a flower? Underneath it was a series of little rectangles notched in different ways with numbers next to them, then one that looked like an iron and another that looks like a teardrop. Next to it is a symbol of what? A water pitcher? Some more little notched rectangles were under that symbol too. The next panel has a Start button (oh, thank you! thank you!) but next to it were three more buttons with symbols: A sun setting behind clouds. A letter R. A bell (or maybe it's a nose?). This machine should be a graduate school entrance exam. Of course, I wouldn't get in.

Knowing that if all else failed, I could do timed dry, I plunked the laundry into the dryer and opted for the flower and one of the rectangles and hit Start. It started right up, but I noticed a short time later that it had stopped and the laundry was still wet.

No matter how many times I ran the dryer on any settings, the clothes remained soaking wet and about 500 degrees. Seriously, you could sustain serious burns just touching your own laundry. I longed for Permanent Press but all I could make my dryer do was timed fry.

I was finally able to accost a woman in our building to help me decode my dryer. I should note that our Swedish neighbors in the building were initially wary of us, Americans having a reputation of showing up at your door with muffins and intruding on your personal space. She kept asking me if I was emptying the "reservoir."   What reservoir? It turns out that the dryer could not be vented on the exterior because of its location in the apartment and hence had a small water tank which collected water from one's apparel as it dried it. But once it was full, nothing was going to dry any further until you emptied it. Which, by the way, you had to do a LOT. You couldn't just go out to lunch and leave the thing or you'd come back to wet radioactive socks. 

Thor forbid there should be any label on the machine indicating it was concealing a water tank inside the front panel. Accessing this reservoir was reminiscent of the hidden compartments of Nancy Drew books of my youth; you just had to know it was there. And when you pressed the magic (invisible) spot, voilà, the door popped open and you could remove the water tank and empty it in the sink.

But for the first week, we were drying all our clothes on a bunk bed ladder in our apartment and trying to avoid third degree burns.

Mastering the laundry facilities in our apartment was a huge boon to our quality of life. But we had no idea how much more we still had to learn.

Stay tuned for Sweden Stories Part 3 next week.

 

The hidden reservoir was finally discovered

But you had to empty it A LOT

Meanwhile, we were air drying our clothes

Our washing machine controls were a total mystery

Being Thwarted By Swedish Appliances: Part 1

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published August 31, 2026] ©2026

One of the benefits of living abroad is that one has the opportunity to experience how people in other cultures live.  Also to be thwarted by their appliances.

Olof and I met when we were 17 spending our senior year of high school as exchange students in Brazil, a life-changing experience for both of us.  Exactly 40 years later, we arrived in Stockholm for what we dubbed our second “Senior(s) Year Abroad”.  It was meant to be an eight- month work assignment but turned into two years. Fortunately for me, the Swedes aren’t exactly balls of fire when it comes to deadlines.  I was delighted; it was the best two years of my life.

What we weren’t prepared for when we arrived, however, was being stymied by the appliances in our apartment.  It’s not like we were in a third world country.  We’d been operating stoves and washers and dryers all our adult lives.  But our first week was characterized by cold food (we couldn’t work the stove) and 500-degree wet socks.  (More on the latter next week.)

When we first arrived in Stockholm in the dead of winter, our “fully furnished” apartment didn’t even have so much as a roll of toilet paper or even a shaker of salt, all of which we had to acquire on foot at the closest market. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff we needed right away was pretty heavy or bulky:  laundry soap, dishwasher soap, milk, toilet paper never mind coffee, cereal, and actual food.  One thing we concluded is that it is amazing how much stuff you’re willing to do without when you have to lug it home a considerable distance on the perilously icy sidewalks. We would make a list every day prioritizing what we needed most.

We ultimately managed to acquire a Swedish shopping trolley with which all of our shopping was done for the next two years.  It’s amazing how the smallest things can make such a huge improvement in your life.

Given our lack of groceries, our first at-home Stockholm meal had, by necessity, to be really simple.  I decided to poach some salmon in water with salt and pepper (my entire spice collection at the time.  It was so exciting when Italian seasoning made our shopping list cut.) Only I couldn’t turn on the stove top.  Our La Jolla stove had been fondly dubbed the Star Ship Enterprise for its complicated control panel. But the Swedish stove top stymied both Olof and me in its simplicity. I should mention that my husband has a degree in nuclear physics from Cal Tech. He was very clear he was not going to be thwarted by a mere appliance.  Until he was.

The Swedish stove top had only four symbols – a plus sign, a key symbol, a vertical line and a horizontal line.  We pushed them all repeatedly and nothing happened.  Surely the landlords would have told us if the cook top didn’t work?  A very hungry hour later, for reasons unclear to both of us, the next time I touched the vertical line symbol, some red lights began blinking.  Must be all in the wrist?  We were then able to make the burners heat up with the plus symbol. But we were not sure we could ever replicate this experiment.

But ultimately, my Swedish stove top and I reached an understanding. It really was all in the wrist. The Star Ship Enterprise, our digital stove in San Diego, required one to press fairly firmly on its display or it wouldn’t respond.  In fact, there were times when I tapped the Start button on the stove only to come back a half hour later and discovered that it hadn’t come on at all.  My Swedish cook top display, however, was the polar opposite: a high-strung prima donna with pretensions of being a sound system.   Press its little buttons with any conviction and it had a complete snit and wouldn’t perform. It wanted the faintest possible tactile connection.  In fact, I think it preferred that you just wave your finger tip vaguely in the area of the control you wanted and your aura would communicate with its aura. But if that’s what it wanted, that’s what it got. If there’s nothing else we learned there, you don’t argue with a Swedish appliance.

Another thing that initially puzzled us was the bedding in our fully-furnished apartment.  All we could find in the apartment were small single-bed blankets for our king-sized bed. Clearly an oversight.  I went in search of a king-sized comforter at the various Stockholm department stores and was surprised when I couldn’t any.  I finally queried the bedding department lady at Åhléns who was genuinely puzzled as to why I would want a blanket that big.

Couples, the bedding lady explained to me, should each have their own separate top sheets and duvets. So nobody is fighting for the covers, she added, as if this were obvious.  So nobody is snuggling either, I thought at the time, thinking I finally understood Sweden’s negative birth rate. The sales person and I stared at each other across the counter each thinking the same thing: “Their system is completely screwy.”  But as Olof and I traveled through Scandinavia some months later, we got our own separate duvets all the way through Norway too. 

Stay tuned next week for Swedish Appliances Part II: “Laundry Times” and fried socks.

Email Overload - The Peril Of An Election Year

[ "Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published August 17, 2026] 2026

I've written before about my husband Olof's and my different political persuasions. It's been the source of a lot of lively discussion at our dinner table over the years. It's also a familiar dynamic for me as my mother was a liberal feminist Democrat and my father a conservative Republican. I was fortunate to have the experience of a lot of spirited but respectful debate.

But Olof and I are now facing a different problem. We both hate our political parties. And I mean profoundly. Olof, a lifelong Republican, hasn't voted for or contributed to his party in a long time. He is still holding out for the Republicans to return to what he thinks of their former glory.

I, of course, think they never had one.

Unfortunately, however, he refuses to change his official voting status to "Declined to state"  as I did with the Democrats some years back solely for self-defense. Having two political parties in the same household was resulting in some 25 or more political robocalls to our landline every day in the months before elections.

I should also note that even changing my voting affiliation, it only reduced the robocalls by 25%. The Republicans were the major perps.

Of course, most people have solved this problem by doing away with landlines. But even though 95% of the calls that come in on it these days are announced as "spam risk," I m attached to the concept of a landline even though I almost exclusively use my cell phone these days.

In previous election years, I used to love to play with all the relentless Republican fundraisers who thought they were calling a friendly number only to get me. "Do you think that marriage should be between one man and one woman?"  they'd query when I picked up the phone. "HELL NO!" I'd yell before summarily disconnecting.

Unfortunately, disconnecting modern phones isn't nearly as much fun as it used to be. There was always something so inherently satisfying about being able to slam down a telephone receiver. Clicking an Off button or worse, tapping some wussy touch screen does not give one the emotional release that the solid connection of a plastic receiver on a telephone base could ever give. No wonder the whole country is so full of pent-up anger. For that reason, until recently, we still kept one wall-mounted landline with traditional receiver in our home for use during election seasons.

But lately I've made contributions to several Democratic candidates not realizing that my email in-box would become buried in emails. It's even worse than all those robo-calls. "Unsubscribe"  can't keep up with it. Can't I just contribute to persons whom I support without my email address, and apparently my soul, being sold to sites I never signed up for?

I'm starting to feel hostile about it.

OK, I was already feeling hostile even before. I voted for our current San Diego mayor and City Council member for my district. And have lived to regret it. In my view, they seem to have been kidnapped by aliens. How else to explain one incredibly stupid decision after another? The trash fee debacle. Balboa Park parking fee fiasco. Removing requirements for parking in new construction. And the piece de resistance: closing restrooms in the height of summer in our most populated public parks.

Seriously, the mayor and City Council ought to be relegated to porta-potties for which they have to pay a fee on user-hostile machines. Or maybe even no porta-potties at all. Their reserved parking spots should be turned into bike racks.

I'm beginning to wonder if candidates for public office should have to pass a common sense test. Public restrooms should be an inalienable right, probably only left out of the Declaration of Independence for lack of invention yet of the flush toilet. Otherwise, I have every confidence it would have been included. Voting to close them down for budget reasons should be an automatic exit from office.

I've mentioned before that both Olof and I have voted across party lines on many occasions over the years. Plenty of Republican candidates have had my vote, and certainly lots of Democrats have had Olof's, especially in recent years.

But what happens when you think your party, with the exception of specific candidates, has totally failed you? Where is the "None of the Above" party? The "Anybody but you guys"  party? The "If you re an incumbent I would vote for a homeless guy before you" party?

Instead we've got the Parties of Pusillanimity. Both Olof and I often wonder out loud what our fathers, who fought in World War II (Olof s father was a Navy pilot in combat in the Pacific) would have to say about all this. We're pretty sure we know.

I realize I'm sounding like everyone's crabby curmudgeon relative they're afraid to invite to Thanksgiving dinner. But I'm desperately hoping that this new party can show up by 2028. You've already got my vote.

But in the meantime, please, please please, leave my email alone.

Please Stop Beeping

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published August 10, 2026] ©2026

I’m trying to decide when our lives became controlled by beeps. When I was growing up, I don’t remember anything that beeped. Now I can’t think of anything that doesn’t. I’m frankly feeling over-alerted. 

An all-too-popular game in our home between my husband and me is: Name That Beep.  Is it coming from inside the house?  Or is it a trash truck or city vehicle backing up outside?  If it’s inside, did somebody (he knows who he is) forget their coffee cup in the microwave?  Or did I set a timer on the stove for some reason? And, of course, that’s becoming part of the problem.  What reason? Not only figuring out which appliance is beeping, or, if it’s the oven timer, but why I set it in the first place. 

If you’ve got a Smart phone, you know the difference between the email message beep and the text message beep and the “loved your text message reply” beep.  My computer alerts me to new emails as well.

When my husband Olof does the dishes and wipes the digital panel on our stove, it will often start beeping. As an engineer (and, more to the point, a guy), he isn’t about to admit that he has no idea why. While smashing it with a hammer after it had been going off for a half hour seems like a perfectly sane option, he will finally wander into the bedroom and announce, “There’s an incoming message from the Planet Klingon.  I think it’s for you.” 

This range, I should mention, was the only one west of the Mississippi that would fit into our space when our former KitchenAid range crumped during the pandemic.  One of its many negative features is that it is really easy to knock into the burner control knobs when cleaning up after dinner dispersing gas into the air for an entire night.  After the first time that this happened, I invested in a gas detection meter which mysteriously goes off on occasion even when we are just cooking something on low heat on the stove.  Probably unwisely, we’ve learned to ignore it.

Fortunately, our carbon monoxide sensor is much better behaved.  And we would definitely not ignore it.

An increasingly common beep is the low battery signal on the handset of our ancient answering machine. Definitely time to get rid of that thing.

We’ve had to replace most of our appliances in the last five years, and frankly, are not impressed with the alert features that seem to be standard now.  Our refrigerator beeps if the door is left open more than a minute while you’re unloading groceries into it.  Somehow, I managed to go 23 years with the last fridge without that feature and never leave the door open even once.

Our new microwave, alas, just won’t shut up.  It will beep into the next millennium until you remove whatever it was you put into it.  It will not be ignored.

Despite the fact that I have tried to disable as many beeps as possible, I have still managed to add a few.  After the fires in January 2025, my granddaughter, whose LA home came perilously close to burning down, installed Watch Duty on my phone which I think informs me of fires even in Los Angeles.  It goes off multiple times per day. Fortunately, it’s a distinctive sound so I can ignore it with, “OK, just a fire.” 

I feel bad about it, but I’ve disabled the Amber Alert from my phone.  That alert scares the bejesus out of me.  Could they turn that thing down a few hundred decibels?

I also signed up for the Shake Alert which alleges to give one 20 seconds notice of a quake with a magnitude of 4 or greater.  What’s confusing is that we already have this in the form of our aviary birds who give us pretty much the same amount of warning.  Of course, with them, you’re never sure it’s not just a hawk. 

My car beeps when the door isn’t shut tight and seat belts aren’t fastened. One beep I actually don’t mind is the after-market backup sensors I had installed on my 2005 Corolla that beep at me when people with a clear death wish walk behind my car at Gelsons as I am backing up.

There are two beeps that make me truly crazy. One is the beep that your ceiling smoke detectors make when the batteries are running low. Smoke detectors have been scientifically programmed so that those batteries only start failing at 3 a.m. It’s like the faucet drip torture only ten times worse. You want to stand underneath it and scream, “Stop it!  Stop it RIGHT NOW! I’ll get the ladder and change your battery in the morning!” But no, it maliciously beeps on.

To make matters worse, our hallway smoke detector can even be set off by steam from the shower in the adjacent bathroom.  It is disconcerting that it can’t tell the difference between fire and water.

Have we become a country of people who cannot remember anything if it doesn’t beep at us?  Um, yup!  How did we ever survive before? One answer: we obviously didn’t used to have so many gadgets.

Fortunately, some appliances will let you disable the beep alerts. But more often than not, you need an engineering degree and/or a soldering iron. YouTube abounds with videos on this topic.

Should we be relying on beeps less, just to make those ever-aging synapses keep firing? When you look at all those mental gymnastics exercises advocated for older folks, maybe going beeperless should be one of them.  Well, except maybe the ones like smoke alarms that would prevent the house from burning down. 

In the average kitchen, the beeping options are pretty much endless. With so many appliances beeping, will new ones have to start announcing themselves, like “coffee’s ready”?

I hope not. Bad enough that they’re all beeping at me. When they start talking to me, I’m done.  Because I fear I’d start answering.

 

Library Math 101: When You're Too Old To Ever Get Your Book On The Holds Queue

[“Let Inga Tell You”, La Jolla Light, published August 3, 2026] 2026

Ever since I retired, the La Jolla Public Library has become my second home. My library reserve queue is always maxed out and I generally read three books a week. The front seat of my car has library books being transported to and from the library pretty much at all times. 

Being able to read so many books is definitely a corrective emotional experience from my twelve years as a divorced working mom when I read exactly no books a year. I mean, zee-ro. I didn’t even bother with a library card since they unreasonably wouldn’t let you keep a book out for a decade. There used to be library fines and mine would have looked like the defense budget.

My engineer husband Olof reads both e-books and physical books. He likes novels on his e-reader but thinks the graphics are better in those massive 1,200-page techno-tomes he inexplicably considers pleasure reading. As for me, I just like the tactile feel of an actual book in my lap, the soothing susurrus when you turn the pages. 

I have seen first-hand that I am not the only physical book aficionado out there.  Never was this illustrated more obviously than on March 14, 2020 when the Covid epidemic hit and the library announced it would be closing the next day until further notice.  The Riford library on Draper looked like a literary Luddite Fall of Saigon. The librarians were frantically dispensing plastic grocery bags and allowing patrons to check out up to 40 books although I don’t think anyone was actually counting.  Like everyone else, I was dumping books wholesale into my bags according to two criteria: (1) it had a cover and (2) there were words inside.  

One would think that the lack of availability of physical books for so many months in 2020 would have inspired some of us to embrace technology.  But you would be wrong.   Covid generated a new DSM-5 category: People Who Will Just Not Use E-Readers No Matter What.  (There is no vaccine for this.) 

From time to time, we techno-hostile people actually prevail.  Olof and I like to sit outside on summer evenings and read, he on his iPad or e-reader, and me with a library book.  Not infrequently, Olof will have to go in early because the iPad’s low battery sensor is flashing. I try to look sympathetic but it’s all I can do to stifle a snicker.  I never have to worry about the battery on my library book getting too low. 

Now that I’m able to read so much, I’ve had to engage in Library Math.  As in, do I have the life expectancy to get some of the books I want given the number of holds versus the number of copies?  There’s some serious competition out there for the best sellers.

For every book I have on hold, I have 13 days to pick it up after my hold number comes up, then 30 days to read it.  If others are waiting for it, there are no renewals.  So I have to allow that each person in the hold queue ahead of me could take 43 days.

Now, one hopes that they will pick it up sooner and read it faster, and therefore return it faster.  But they might have been on vacation when the book became available.  Or they might not even have returned it after the 30 days.  Now that there are no more library fines there are actually evil low-life reprobates who keep them past due even knowing there are people with limited life expectancy who might be waiting. 

The other skewing factor is “transit time.”  I find that even after my queue number has come up, it can easily take two weeks for the book to actually arrive on the Holds shelf at the La Jolla Library with my name on it. I’m guessing this is a budget cuts issue. This could easily add 14 days to the potential 43 days, or 57 days per hold. 

But removing the transit time from the equation for simplicity’s sake, when I recently put a hold on a best seller I really wanted to read, there were 1211 holds ahead of me on 12 copies.  Those 1211 holds x 43 days per hold came to 52,073 hold days divided by 12 copies which came to 4339 hold days or… 11.8 years. 

This brings up two moot points, the first of which is that holds are only good for one year after which they are cancelled. (The other is that I’ll likely be dead.)

I queried one of the librarians about how rigid the one year hold time is. Will the library computer system automatically cancel a hold after that time as their site says? This person said that they usually recommend that if a person thinks they want to read a certain book, they get on the hold list early. So no definitive answer there.

The library does seem, in their defense, to buy more copies of the most popular books.

But this doesn’t always solve the problem.  Another book I wanted had 1335 holds but given its popularity, the library now had 108 copies.  But 1335 x 43 comes to 57,405 hold days (not even factoring in that pesky transit time) and even divided by 108 copies still comes to 532 days or more than the maximum one year allowable hold time.

E-books are not unlimited but do seem a little faster.  One of the books I wanted had 375 e-book holds x 43 days per holder came out to 16,125.  One of those 58 copies would come up by day 278.  If, of course, I was willing to read e-books. 

So increasingly, I’m finding myself calculating:  do I have a reasonable life expectancy to get a particular book?

If not, maybe it’s time to just buy the damn book then donate it to the library after I’ve read it, increasing the number of available copies for my fellow anti-e-book Luddite compatriots?  I’m hoping they’ll actually put it in circulation.  

On more than a few occasions lately, I’ve done just that. Not only do I get the book a lot sooner, but I consider it my contribution to the local tree-killing physical book community.  (You’re welcome.)

 

Parking Creeps (You Know Who You Are)

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published July 20, 2026] 2026

A question often arises: who, either by law or etiquette, controls the street space right in front of one's home?

Well, the law is clear: unless signage indicates otherwise, anyone can park on the street in front of your house for up to 72 hours after which the vehicle must be moved at least half a mile to avoid towing or citation.

You would think that this would largely resolve parking issues.

But you would be wrong.

As parking gets tighter and tighter in La Jolla, the etiquette part of the equation gets increasingly problematical. It's not helping that neither residential and commercial new builds are required to provide parking.

Virtually all of us who live in the "flats"  in La Jolla (i.e. not up in the Muirlands or by the university) are going to be in proximity of a beach or retail, or both. There's no beach access near me, but plenty of demand for parking next to my house by employees of local businesses, dog walkers, lunchers, Amazon, the US Postal Service, my lawn and pool services, and visitors to our home. So long as the two spaces in front of my gate have been vacated by the end of the day, I'm good.

The bigger problem, however, is when people decide to store a vehicles - cars, RVs, trailers  - for weeks on end in front of someone else s home despite the 72-hour rule. My assorted neighbors have increasingly had to deal with this issue. The houses on my block are close together and the parking right in front of each house is really limited - usually two spaces at best. I fortunately have a corner lot so there is usually ample room for people to park on the cross street. Which, alas, hasn't kept them from taking up long term residence right in front of my front gate.

There are people who know how to game the system. A homeowner can report a vehicle that has overstayed its welcome on Get It Done but this is not a quick process. The city has to come out and put a notice on the vehicle and mark its tire location on the street, then come back a few weeks later and tow it if it hasn't moved.

I've always preferred cordial human contact in parking resolution wherever possible. No anonymous notes for me. In the many conversations I've had over the years with RV, boat, and trailer owners, the two reasons they all cite as to why they are storing a vehicle in front of or alongside my house are these:

(1) They don't want to use up their own home or business parking.

(2) Their neighbors have complained that the vehicle is an eyesore.

Amazingly, they cite these reasons totally straight-faced. I usually just stand there for a minute hoping against hope for the "Aha!"  moment. "Oh, I get it! You don t want my eyesore vehicle taking up your parking either!"  In my fantasy, he (it's always a he) jumps in his RV and drives off with a jaunty wave and a "I've seen the light! It'll never happen again!"

Years back, I had a totally decrepit 30-foot-long camper take up residence in front of my house for almost a year, the owner citing both inalienable rights and also the desire not to use up his business parking. Determined to thwart the system, he moved his RV precisely every seventy-one hours and fifty-eight minutes in a circuit around my home and the nearby neighbors. (You used to only have to move it a tenth of a mile rather than the half mile now required.) Some months later, Ugly RV s clueless owner approached me and said, "Would you believe, people are vandalizing my RV!"

Since I'd long since asked him nicely to move this vehicle back to his nearby business, it was all I could do not to say "Actually, I'm just curbing my overwhelming urge to put plastique in your tailpipe. I've just been hoping that if I take the high road, you will too. And by 'high road', I m really hoping that you will take this vehicle on a road, any road, that is not in our neighborhood."

In a stroke of divine intervention, his business went under and he disappeared. God really does work in mysterious ways.

More recently, a close friend and neighbor had a high-end vehicle parked for weeks right in front of her house making parking impossible for her family members. It became obvious it was either (a) a stolen and abandoned vehicle or (b) the product of Classic Clueless Guy Syndrome. Queries to other neighbors suggested (b), that it might belong to one of four guys who were renting a house further down the block. As a long-time pro in parking resolution, I knocked on their door and in my signature shy and retiring way, inquired if any of them knew the provenance of this car. One of them acknowledged that yes it was his and yes, he was storing it there since he usually rode his motorcycle (which was parked in front). 

I explained the 72-hour rule and the risk of towing which he quickly dismissed saying that the city wouldn't tow a vehicle that was "registered to this street."   Since part of my parking resolution shtick is to offer solutions, I recommended that he move the vehicle down to my corner where the cross street tended to have a lot of free spots. But he'd still have to move it every 72 hours. I was totally nice about it. He, meanwhile, was just so annoyed. (Also, I think, really hungover because it was the day after July 4.)

But the idea that long-term storage of his vehicle in front of someone else's house was thoughtless obviously didn't register with him at all.

Sometimes you just need the read the room. Or in this case, the neighborhood. News flash: Would you like someone storing their vehicle in one of the two spots in front of your house? Especially if the vehicle is parked right in the middle of the two spots, as this guy was, so no one else can park there at all?

Hopefully he'll clue in the other roommates into (a) local laws and (b) basic etiquette.

But I'm not betting on it.

 

                This RV pretty much lived in front of my house for an entire year.

OK, So I May Actually Be A Hoarder

 ["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published July 13, 2026] 2026

I've always prided myself that I am the only one in my generation on my mother's side of the family who is not a hoarder. But given that I have made my 2026 project going through decades of file cabinet accumulations, I may have to modify that claim ever so slightly.

The good news (besides dispensing with tons of paper) is that I've gotten a number of columns out of these anthropological digs. I did a series of three columns from a folder of memos to team parents when I managed my younger son Henry's traveling soccer team. I recently quoted from a whole file of witty comments my husband Olof has made over the years. Another recent column was about my skills as a documenter of such comments.

In the interests of transparency, I will confess that my sons consider my formerly 67-now-36 albums of family photos to be hoarding. I myself think of photos as "artistic curation."

The kids had long been threatening to cremate me after my untimely death with the photo albums that I had amassed over the years. It would be a two-fer; get rid of Mom and the albums all at once.

But at least my hoard was confined to one (very large) bookcase. OK, and seven file cabinets.

So maybe there's some of that hoarder gene in me too. I may have to cop to being a file hoarder. And those 36 photo albums don't count the 2,000+ digital images on my computer.

Like me, my sibs are specialist hoarders. My (late) sister hoarded books. As in three deep on the book cases that covered every available bit of wall space. The person who bought her home after she passed away was probably thrilled to find that the home actually came with a fire place which was not at all apparent.

My engineer brother boards electronics. Lots and lot of electronics. He built many of them himself. But do not even think of staying at his four-bedroom home because three of those bedrooms are occupied by things with blinky lights.

The cousins, however, are equal opportunity hoarders. Freelancers, if you will. Their houses could probably qualify for one of those hoarder TV shows. One of my cousins says that he is paying more than $8,000 a year in off-site hoarding, er, storage since their home is at capacity.

For me, it helps that we don t have a garage (it was converted in one of the most ill-considered remodels in the history of remodels long before we bought the house). No attic or basement either, and only tiny 1947 closets back when people apparently only owned three sets of clothing. But it does keep one from over-accumulating. We have a hard-core rule that if we buy something, we give something else away.

One of my motivations for dealing with both the filing cabinets and photo albums is that on two occasions in my life, I have been tasked with cleaning out the home of a hoarder relative.

One of them was my aunt's home in Hard-To-Get-There Ohio. We filled up a 35-foot dumpster the first day. My aunt (never married, no kids) literally had magazines dating back to the late 1800s. And yes, the infinitely-hoardable National Geographics. (Why, why, why do people never throw away National Geographics???) The house had been in our family since 1860s. It's amazing how much stuff you can acquire in 150 years.

The second house was fortunately local. For the record, most of the organizations that pick up donations will only take 25 boxes at a time. It took eight months of twice weekly pickups.

So I really don't want to do this to my kids. 

A while back, the New York Times had an article about death cleaning, i.e., going through your possessions long before your demise so that your relatives are not burdened with the truly onerous task of separating the wheat from the trash. One of the subsequent Letters to the Editor really caught my eye. The writer, after noting that she wasn't planning to spend a single moment of her precious time culling her abundance of possessions, including 15 years of New Yorker magazines (the evil twin of National Geographics) rationalized it like this:

Isn't it enough, she queries, that my children will receive whatever is left? Gosh, there's some pretty good stuff in that mess. And isn't it possible that inching their way through it will prove to be an interesting and rewarding treasure hunt? And won't this exercise tell them things about me that could not be learned any other way, adding mortar to their memory, and perhaps even their regard for me?

Note to her kids: MOVE NOW AND LEAVE NO FORWARDING ADDRESS!

Let me assure you, Letter Writer, their regard for you will be in the dumpster (along with most of your stuff) by the time they're done inching through your lifetime's collection of detritus.

"Interesting"  and "rewarding" are not two adjectives I'd ever use in cleaning out the home of a hoarder. It's true that my aunt's house in Ohio produced some wonderful treasures, like stereopticons, gorgeous oil lamps, and some ornate ewers - intermixed, alas, with multiple cases of 40-year-old Jell-O, cartons of ratty underwear preserved in 1952 newspaper (she was a child of the Depression), and a huge freezer that was a veritable biohazard. (I remember showing my (hoarder) cousin a freezer container labeled "raspberries, 1968". (It was 2004.) She said, "Maybe they re still good?")

So, please. Do not do this to your poor children! For every treasure they might find after your demise, there will be 200 moments of fervent praying, "Please don't let this be hereditary."

And now a hot tip: My dear friend Eleanor maintains that she found a cure for her husband s hoarding. "I put my husband s stuff that he wouldn't get rid of in storage, then stopped paying the bill after three months."  This is brilliant in its simplicity.

But in the meantime: only three more filing cabinets to go.

 

These photos from my aunt's attic in 2004 still fill me with despair

The City Makes A Giant Mess Of It Once Again

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published July 6, 2026] 2026

I swore I wasn't going to write about trash fees again but the City just can't seem to stop making a mess of this, which as a writer, I feel compelled to point out. So here is a few feature: Ask Inga: As the trash fee debacle turns.

Dear Inga: So what finally happened with that law suit about the new trash fees?

Answer: Trash fees will be rolled back to $38.75 a month starting in July, 2027 (when they were scheduled to increase to $55) but not rolled back to the $23-$29 range the constituents had been duped into voting for in Measure B ( Bait and Switch ). Of course, if you ordered extra bins, your cost will be higher than $38.75.

Dear Inga: So we should be getting a refund of the inflated fees we were already charged on our property tax bills, right?

Answer: What a sweet question. Of course not.

Dear Inga: As part of Measure B, we were promised that recycling would become weekly instead of bi-weekly, so when we ordered our new sensored pay-in-perpetuity bins, many of us ordered a much smaller recycle bin than we had before or only one recycle bin when we used to have two. But even though the new bins have (mostly) been delivered, recycling is still bi-weekly. So when is the weekly recycling going to start?

Answer: It is one of the best kept secrets in San Diego.

Dear Inga: Surely someone knows the answer to this? Like the Environmental Services (ES) people?

Answer: Sure! Their (human) reply was:

Thank you for contacting the City of San Diego Environmental Services Department.

In the City of San Diego, recycling pickup is still on a bi‑weekly (every other week) schedule. While weekly recycling service had been planned in the past, city officials decided to defer that rollout to a later date. As a result, the every‑other‑week schedule remains in effect for now.

I know this can be inconvenient, especially for households that generate more recycling, but at this time the city has not implemented weekly pickup.

Dear Inga: But isn't this yet another bait and switch?

Answer: Sure sounds like it!

Dear Inga: But it was part of what we voted for and made bin choices on the basis of it! Surely the City Council knows when weekly recycling will start since they were the ones who made the decision to resolve the lawsuit by reducing the fees?

Answer: (Thank you for prompt response from assistant at Joe LaCava s office):

The City approved a settlement that will reduce the waste collection fee in the City to approximately $39 effective July 1st 2027, in one year. My understanding is that to reduce the City's cost of delivering waste collection, options like maintaining the bi-weekly recycling pickup are being explored.

Dear Inga: Uh-oh. Those passive voice replies from both ES and Joe LaCava's office are always suspicious. For example, active voice is: "We made mistakes."   Passive voice: "Mistakes were made."   Seems like a good grammatical ploy not to answer a question.

Answer: Yup!

Dear Inga: Does this mean that the promised curbside bulky item pickup program is going by the wayside too?

Answer (from assistant at Joe LaCava s office): Yes, my understanding is that bulky item pickup is also under consideration not to be implemented.

Dear Inga: Yowsers. That dang passive voice again. So if Joe LaCava's office and ES were to answer in the active voice, what would that sound like?

Answer: There is no way on God s green earth you will ever see weekly recycling or curbside bulky item pickup.

Dear Inga: The City has hired lid lifters at $70,000 a year to open people's trash/greenery/recycle bins to make sure they are not putting the wrong stuff in each bin. They will leave a notice, or even potentially issue a fine. But now ES customers may be forced to put a weeks worth of recyclables in their gray trash bin every week since there is still only bi-weekly recycling.

Answer: Yes, that math would be correct.

Dear Inga: So what are people supposed to do with all the recycling they can't fit into their new smaller bin?

Answer: People on Next Door suggest querying your neighbors to see if they have extra space in their also-now-too-small bin.

Dear Inga: You're kidding, right? I hate my neighbors.

Answer: Life is hard, and then you die.

Dear Inga - It sounds like weekly recycling isn't likely to ever be implemented so there will be a number of people who will need a second (or bigger) recycling bin.  How would they do that? 

Answer: both Joe LaCavas office (6/22/26) and ES say you can call ES at 858-694-7000 or go to this website.

https://wasteportal.sandiego.gov/

Dear Inga: What are the scanner tags on the new bins?

Answer: According to the ES website, these are scannable reader tags known as RFID technology which identify the bins assigned to your household. This prevents your dirtbag neighbors from stealing your bins so they don't have to pay for their own.

Dear Inga: While we're on the subject of Best Kept Secrets, what exactly is happening with the at-least 750,000 plastic bins that were replaced at a cost of $65 million with the new trash and recycle bins? Do we really want to know?

Answer: The official story is: San Diego s retired trash bins are being chipped, cleaned, and repurposed into new bins and other plastic products.

Dear Inga: Do we believe this?

Answer: Not sure. But better than being sent on a slow boat to China. Or incinerated in a distant location with less pricey zip codes and already-bad air quality.

Dear Inga: Should we believe anything the City of San Diego puts on a ballot ever again?

Answer: Inga only answers legitimate questions.

 

Words Of Wisdom From Olof

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published June 22, 2026] 2026

I may be the alleged writer in the family but many people don't know that the real talent in the family is Olof. Despite being a nuclear-physics-trained engineer and former Air Force pilot, Olof has always been a fabulous letter writer. It was, in fact, how we kept in touch for 23 years from the time we spent our senior year in high school in Brazil as exchange students (how we met) until serendipity (and both of our divorces) brought us back together decades later.

One of my regrets is that I don't have many of his letters to me during those two-plus decades. Of course, we were either writing by hand on lined paper or right off the typewriter, always unedited. Both of us liked to find the humor in mundane and often not funny at the time events that were happening in our lives that day. For example, the saga of my first husband's and my attempt to save $125 by acid washing our pool ourselves. (The burn scars are mostly healed.) Olof regularly regaled me with Air Force moments gone awry. My column is basically letters to a wider audience.

But in the decades we've been together since our divorces, I fortunately saved favorite documents of Olof s creation, including all the contracts he had for Nintendo game loans (at interest!) with my younger son, Henry. (Neither my ex nor I thought Henry was a good credit risk.) Henry, even at eight, was clear that this money would be paid back, and his allowance never had to be garnished (a term of the contract) a single time. Not surprisingly, Henry wrote his essay for MBA programs on learning business ethics from Olof.

Over the years, I've jotted down favorite Olof-isms. On being asked on Thursday mornings if he was likely to be working that weekend, he'd reply, "Probably. Thursday is Crisis Discovery Day."  After rescuing a project threatening to implode, he'd note, "I think we got the shiny side back up."   Pulling into the driveway after an excursion, he was fond of cheerily announcing, "Cheated death again!" 

On his aggregate of four years in Saudi Arabia, the ever-optimistic Olof opined: "It's only a desert if you think of it that way.  I prefer to think of it as a very large beach, with surf breaking on both sides."

When asked how he was able to successfully fix an item that had been considered irretrievably broken, he is likely to smile and reply, "just a mindless application of force."

Always asked for technical support from family and friends, he often can't help adding personal commentary. Explaining a new mouse to my sister some years ago, he wrote: "This is an optical, versus mechanical, mouse. Optical mice have no balls. Comparisons to the Democratic leadership in Congress are gratuitous."

Describing something as really inconsequential, he will reference the testicular attributes of rodents: "It's mouse nuts when you look at it."

I had twelve really lean (destitute?) years between marriages. Commenting on both my housekeeping skills and the kids'  assessment that they'd grown up poor, Olof couldn't help opining to my son Henry, "You didn't grow up in poverty. But you did grow up in squalor."

He's now adored by the five grandchildren whom he affectionately referred to in their early years alternately as "the plague carriers"  and "the destroyers of peace."  In play with our grandsons who had named themselves after various superheroes, Olof dubbed himself Hummingbird Man.

From time to time I get to see his messages in cards we send to the kids. On Henry's birthday one year, Olof noted: "Henry -   It's not hard to get older. It's getting wiser that's hard. With three kids, a busy wife and a demanding job, you've gotten lots of opportunities. Enjoy them. Love, Olof."

Responding to Bastille Day birthday wishes on his July 14 birthday, he noted: "Thanks for the good wishes.  So far my barricades have withstood the assault of time better than those of Louis XVI. But time is the great equalizer."

He was experimenting with cooking one year while I took an evening class. When I returned one night, there was a note taped on the stove hood pointing to a pan below:

"Inga - See what you think about this. Good news: If you don't like it, I can't really remember what I put in it. Bad news: If you do like it - see above."

He recently responded to one of a college roommates with his time-tested "Three-Step Retiree Program :

1. Does it appear that there is some activity upcoming?
2. Could that activity be construed as work?
3. If yes to both of the above: Pay someone else to do it.

So thanks, Olof. You are truly this household's ray of sunshine. And fortunately you don't want to write a column of your own.