The Cleveland Airport Debacle: Still A Warrant Out For My Arrest?

At a happy hour, some fellow moms and I were contemplating the summer travel season and comparing our worst trips ever with kids. Not surprisingly, I won.

We were traveling back east for a family reunion and had a brief stopover in Cleveland. I walked Rory and Henry (then 11 and 9) around the concourse so they could burn off a little energy as they had both been getting really bored and antsy on the plane despite Game Boys and other distractions. In the most crowded part of the concourse full of summer travelers, the always-looking-for-excitement Rory suddenly falls to the ground and pretends, very convincingly, to be having a grand mal seizure.

At first, I just rolled my eyes with annoyance. This was so Rory. But people were yelling for someone to call 911 (no cell phones yet). I knew the ER would never accept a diagnosis of “kid faking grand mal seizure just to annoy mother” (the correct answer) and just let us go. But social workers would almost certainly be in my future if I refused care for him. My stingy HMO was never going to pay for an ambulance ride and extensive emergency room tests which I could easily see running into the thousands. As a divorced working mom, this trip was already a huge financial stretch. We were going to miss our connection and not be able to get another one; flights were running completely full that time of year. And worst of all, we were going to be stranded in Cleveland.

So I was hissing insistently at Rory to get up and the more upset I got, the more he was enjoying it and the more dramatic the “seizure” became. As I look back on it, we all really stayed in character. I hissed, Rory seized, and nine-year-old Henry stood there rolling his eyes and grumbling his signature line: “Why am I related to these people?”

I was terrified that the paramedics would arrive and whisk Rory away. The whole vacation was evaporating before my eyes. So—and I’m really ashamed to admit this, seriously considered leaving it out—I started kicking him. “GET UP NOW!” I demanded.* You can only imagine how aghast people were. “My god, that woman is kicking that poor child!” Finally, just as quickly as he started, Rory got tired of the whole thing and just stood up and smiled, as in “wasn’t that fun?” I can’t remember: Did he bow? Leaving a cluster of incredulous passengers behind us, I grabbed both kids and ran to our gate insisting that we required a pre-board for medical reasons. Which was technically true. I wanted to beat Rory to death and his life was in danger, which is medical if you think about it. I’ve never been so relieved as when that plane took off. But they probably still have a warrant out for me in Cleveland.

(* You should never kick your child, ever.)

**The Case Of The Rogue Reserves

My older son, a life-long prankster, still has to keep his hand in it even though he's now in his 30's. 

San Diego Public Library

***HOLD PICKUP NOTICE***

The item you requested is available for pickup from the Library above and will be held for 12 days. A $1.00 restock fee will be charged for each item not picked up. Please bring your library card with you when picking up your hold.

1 The book of the penis /

Maggie Paley ; illustrations by Sergio Ruzzier.

Paley, Maggie.
call number:573.656/PALEY copy:1

 From: Mom
To: Rory
Subject: Fw: Library Pickup Notice

Hi Rory - This notice from the public library showed up on my computer tonight. I showed it to Olof and said, "Somebody hacked into my library reserve account. I need to report this to them immediately!" Olof pondered this for a moment and said, "Before you do that, you might want to reflect on who might have been visiting this past weekend." Good point. Why do I think this has your name written all over it? Affectionately, Mom

----- Original Message -----
From: Rory
To:  Mom
Subject: RE: Library Notice

I think someone may have had trouble resisting the temptation of ordering some fun titles, given that the library card # and password were right there on your computer which was just sitting there right in the guest room. 

---- Original Message -----
From: Mom
To: Rory
Subject: Fw: Library Notice

Rory – For the record, my password was not posted on my computer, just the library card number.  But as soon as you type that in, the library aids and abets persons like you by prompting:  “Your password is the last four digits of your phone number.”  Gosh, thanks, public library! I am probably the only person in America who can't leave her14 digit library card number taped to her computer without fear that some malicious pervert houseguest will take liberties with it.  If I don't check it out, it will sit on the reserve shelf just inside the front door with my name on it for 12 days, after which I am subjected to a fine.  There are few things I would wish to do less than dispute a fine for a volume called “The book of the penis” with that lady at the front desk who wears a bun. 

Love (I think),

Mom

----- Original Message -----
From: Mom
To: Rory
Subject: Book report:  The book of the penis

Dear Rory -

My mother, who, alas, you never had the opportunity to know, always said that one should look upon everything, bad and good, as an educational opportunity. I have spent a truly illuminating  weekend reading The Book of the Penis.  (The gardener did a bit of a double take seeing it on the coffee table when he came to pick up his check.)  I have to say, I was pretty impressed that this was written by a woman (who, according to the testimonials on the back “really knows her penises”), and that she had the foreskin, er, foresight to include an eight inch (hah!) ruler – broken down to 1/16ths - along the binding. She clearly knew her audience. I would like to note, however, that it comes in soft cover.

I learned some really neat facts that you would be well to remember the next time you are at a dinner party where the conversation is flagging. Try this: “Did you know that the original purpose of a codpiece – the guy equivalent of a padded bra – wasn’t so much intended to make them look more endowed as to protect expensive clothes from mercury-based syphilis creams?” Now if THAT doesn’t perk the table up, you should just go home.

And did you know that some guys actually get a penis tattoo? (Ow ow ow ow ow.) The tricky part, of course, is to design it so that it has the proper effect in the shall we say power position – definitely a challenge for the tattoo artist since most male members don’t exactly get bigger in the presence of a sharp object. At least that’s been my experience. (Oops – too much information!) The example they give in the book is about a guy who has his girlfriend Wendy’s name tattooed on his penis (what an idiot) only to go to a health club and find another guy, a Jamaican, with the same tattoo. Fearing that Wendy may be making the rounds, he nervously queries the other guy who replied, “No, mon. It says ‘Welcome to Jamaica’.”

If there is one thing I learned from this book, it is that guys do some really weird things with their apparati. The chapter on Penis Art was kind of neat (you can have a plaster cast made for posterity), Uses of the Foreskin not so much. Penis Piercing – see ow, ow, ow, ow, above.

My one complaint about this book is that it claimed to be illustrated. Maybe some other hapless woman whose pervert of a son reserved this book for her cut them out all as souvenirs, but as illustrations go, these sucked. OK, maybe bad choice of word there. I could go on at some length (so to speak), but if you want to know more, you’ll just have to check it out yourself.

Love,

Mom

----- Original Message -----
From: Mom
To: Rory
Subject: MORE Library Notices

Dear Rory –

OK, so your mother is a slow learner. But I have now learned to check my library account for rogue reserves. And in the process have cancelled Coping with Your Colitis, Hemorrhoids and Related Disorders; The whole lesbian sex book : a passionate guide for all of us; and The Rear View : A Brief and Elegant History of Bottoms Through the Ages. I have also changed my password. 

Signed (not love),

Mom

 

 

**A Hairy Experience in Washington, D.C.

Who knew it was so hard to get your hair done in downtown DC?  As soon as we learned we were coming to town for a wedding in April, I set about finding a place to have my hair styled for the event.  It seemed easy enough:  MapQuest allows you to search all sorts of services near your hotel, including hair salons.  I was rather hoping that either our hotel or a surrounding one had their own salon but calls to their concierges quickly shot down that idea. 

Fortunately, MapQuest provided two salon names within a few blocks of our hotel.  I called both and surprisingly got the same answers.  Yes, they did women’s hair.  And no, they did not do blow dries.  This did not seem possible.  Were they using a different term?  Blow jobs?  (Hopefully not.)  DC was a truly cosmopolitan area.  I reverted to my tried and true Sweden technique for overcoming language barriers:  simplify and describe.

“So,” I proceeded, “what I am looking for is someone to shampoo my hair and then take a hair dryer and a brush and dry my hair.  Do you have this service?”

“No,” came the reply.  “We only do wet sets.” 

Wet sets?  No clue.

“Well,” I said optimistically (they really were close to the hotel), “that might work.  Could you explain exactly what that is?”

The woman on the other end couldn’t imagine she was dealing with such an idiot. 

“We wash your hair, we set it in rollers, we sit you under a hair dryer, we let it dry,” she explained with some annoyance.  “Then we comb it out.” 

Uh-oh.  She had just described what for me would be the Helmet Hair Coif of Death.  My head would measure two feet across when they were done, teased into a lacquered mass that moved in a solid unit with my head and could also serve as a bullet proof cranial shield should I walk into a situation of inner city unrest. 

“So,” I persisted, “if someone wanted their hair dried with just a nice round brush that they brought themselves, would you consider doing that?” 

“Nope.”

The third place was already starting to be a good hike from the hotel, but still do-able.  I don’t know DC at all but if I did, I might have realized that I was heading into the ‘hood.  But yes, they said, they did do women’s hair, and yes, they did do blow dries.  I explained that my hairstyle was very simple, just a “classic bob”.  I probably should have been worried that this was met with total silence.  But they didn’t say anything about wet sets.  So I booked an appointment for the day of the wedding.  If living in Sweden taught me anything, it was flexibility.  It’s just hair, I reminded myself, and it can ultimately be fixed.  There was no cut or color involved, so it wasn’t like I was daring them.

Our first morning in DC, I suggested that on our way to the Smithsonian that we might take a detour so I could check out my hair place for Saturday.  We did notice immediately that one direction from our hotel was fairly upscale and the other direction – that in which my salon was located – deteriorated rapidly.  By the time we got to the right street, it was hard not to notice that the buildings, which could be described as graffiti-esque, all had bars – some several sets of iron bars – on the windows.  My “salon” was no different. 

We stood outside looking at it. 

“This is not looking promising,” I said.  “But let’s go in and see.”

“Who’s ‘we’?” said my husband. “I’m staying here.”

As soon as I walked in – to the genuine surprise of the clientele, I might add – it was obvious that I was booked to have my hair done at a black inner city barber shop.  But they did have a sink in the corner where they did women’s hair.  I explained who I was and that I was hoping to see the stylist.  The barber, who was very nice by the way, explained that Sheneesha wasn’t in but he would tell her I came by.

It was clear I needed a different place.  But even the hotel had no good recommendations that weren’t several metro stops away.  And we were going to have limited time on Saturday with other plans before the wedding.  There definitely weren’t many (any?) basic services in the area of DC we were staying.  We’d tried to buy wine and flowers to bring to friends who were hosting us for dinner and there were no markets, drug stores, wine shops, or anything of the sort anywhere near us.   I briefly considered doing my own hair but those wimpy hotel hair dryers are no match for my hair which needs at least six hours to air dry and more than an hour with an industrial strength hair dryer, which I didn’t have.  And we were going to be out late every night and up early every day.  So I started making a list of what I should tell Sheneesha NOT to do.  No products.  Nothing oily.  NO TEASING.  No hair spray. 

The day before the appointment, I realized I needed to change the time slightly due to a change in our  plans.  So I called and when the barber answered, I asked to speak to Sheneesha.  Seconds later, an incredibly hostile voice came on the line.

“WAH YOU CALLIN’ MAH PHONE, BITCH?” 

If I’ve ever wanted to hang up on someone in my life, this might have been it. 

“Um,” I said, totally taken aback, “I need to change my appointment time for tomorrow.  Um, if that would be OK.”

The apologies were instantaneous and profuse.  She was so sorry, she said.  She thought I was a relative who was not supposed to “cawl me at mah work.”  And yes, she was happy to change the time.

Given that it was a Saturday, the place was fairly busy when I got there, with people waiting for one of the four barber chairs.   But Sheneesha, to her credit, was waiting for me.  No mention of her calling me a canine pejorative the day before, which was probably just as well.  We discussed what I wanted – low concept, I said:  Shampoo, blow dry, ends curled under.  It was important, I emphasized, that when we were done, my hair moved independently of my head.

One standard feature of salons is that they have scented shampoos, usually some nice botanical blend.  This shampoo, I’m afraid, smelled like undiluted Pine-Sol, obviously an in-house-brewed mix.  Honestly, the smell was so overwhelming I thought I would have an asthma attack.  Which would be amazing, since I don’t have asthma.  After she did the second shampoo with it, I started to get worried that my hair was going to smell like a toxic forest incident even after it was dry.  I would have my own Pine-Sol force field around me for the rest of the trip as people moved a safe distance from my head.  The problem, of course, was that I wouldn’t be able to move a safe distance from my head.  I asked Sheneesha if I could have an extra rinse.  Maybe two extra rinses, just to be safe.  My hair is very, um, shampoo-inhalant, I explained. 

Those extra rinses, however, came at a price.  Sheneesha didn’t have fingernails so much as she had talons of the type generally associated with deadly predators.  Those were some seriously long fingernails, the ends of which I would swear were filed into razor points.  The scabs on my head will heal eventually, of course, but asking for extra rinses definitely was a tradeoff, although she did try to respond to my requests to be a little more  gentle.  Because she was shredding my scalp from my skull. 

But on to the blow dry.  I have to say that everyone was very friendly to me, after an initial double take at seeing this very blond person walk in.  But they had a sense of humor.  When one the barber asked one new arrival what he wanted and he pointed to me and said, “Same as her.”  I was fascinated by the cuts the guys were getting – lots of shaved “cut outs” on the backs of their heads.  It’s pretty rare that I’m the only white person in a room and can only imagine what it is like for blacks to be the only black person in a room full of whites.  I started to have a certain warm fuzzy feeling that I used to have in Stockholm when I found myself in situations that I would never have the opportunity to experience in San Diego.  Like, for example, hang around a black inner city barber shop on a Saturday morning.  So I have to say, that part was genuinely fun.

Now, I have more hair than any three people ought to have so I’m used to having blow dries take a while.  But this took AN HOUR AND A HALF.   Once I take off my glasses, I have no idea what a stylist is doing which always makes me nervous if it’s a new stylist.  From time to time, I’d reach my hand up and feel that my hair was flipping up at the bottom in the back instead of curling under.  I mentioned this to Sheneesha who shrugged, “S’what it wants to do.”  Um, OK, but what I was hoping for was someone to persuade it to do what it DOESN’T want to do.  But at this point, if it’s clean and doesn’t smell like Pine-Sol, I can live with that.  

And in the end, that’s pretty much what I got – clean hair that didn’t smell like Pine-Sol and kind of flipped up in the back and curled under in the front.  Knowing what I know now, I would have lugged the industrial strength hair dryer and the jumbo hot rollers across the country but what I got was an adventure, or at least an adventure-let.  That’s what travel is all about.    At the wedding, my hair had a somewhat sticky feeling that I couldn’t quite figure out since I really thought we’d agreed on no post-shampoo products.  Probably just a little pine sap residue.

 

 

A Case for Courtesy

This piece appeared in The Foghorn, the newsletter of the San Diego Press Club.

The Case for Courtesy

I used to lament to friends that I could wallpaper my home in rejections slips. 

Come back, rejection slips.  All is forgiven.

Now, of course, I just want a reply, any sign from the ether that my submission was indeed considered even if it doesn’t meet their present needs.

Some publications avoid the reply issue by saying that if you haven’t heard in X days, they’re not interested.  They’ll insist all submissions are read.   Not that we believe that for a nanosecond.

We who write fear in our hearts that at the other end of the Send button is a minimum wage recent journalism school graduate who spends his or her latte-fueled day on Facebook and hits Select All and Delete on the submission in-basket on a pretty much hourly basis.  

The guest column I submitted per the guidelines to Editor & Publisher went ignored until a writer friend gave me the private email of an editor there who bought it within an hour.  Ditto a piece for San Diego Magazine.

A timely humor piece went to our local daily last year that I felt was perfect for them.  I submitted it weekly for eight weeks, including follow-ups to the editor who was supposed to get it, and resubmissions to editors who weren’t.  Not a word.  On the eighth week, I got a call from None of the Above saying he’d just received my wonderfully timely very funny piece and was running it that weekend. 

 

“Just out of curiosity,” I said, “do you remember seeing this piece before?”

“No,” he says.  “Why?”

I really try to target my work to specific publications.  So I wouldn’t mind my piece being rejected (oh, all right, yes I would) if a sentient editorial human really thought it wasn’t right for them.

My technogeek husband maintains that the excuse about their being so swamped with submissions as to be unable to reply individually is nonsense.  For the same amount of energy our entry-level ennuied Instant Messager expends hitting Delete before heading for the Mojitos, he could be hitting Control N, as in No, and sending an automated message of regret.  It would at least give the illusion of courtesy.   

Fortunately, I now have a column in the La Jolla Light which has largely removed me from marketing.  It’s a sure sell every time, well, except maybe for my April 8 column called “I was a mistress of both Tiger AND Jesse” which was deemed unsuitable for a family newspaper although I swear it was totally G-rated.  (In retrospect, it was probably a mistake to submit it Easter week when there was a lot of coverage of chicks and bunnies.) 

But the freelance work and my book project are uphill.  My completed book manuscript sits ready for adulation while queries to prospective agents go unanswered or at best get a snooty “We only deal with authors who have published at least ten best sellers even though you’ve never heard of a single title on our list.”  Last time I published a book, in aught five the year of the big snow, it really wasn’t hard to get an agent.  Now I think you need an agent to get an agent.

I don’t think any of my fellow writers would argue that we deserve better.  But above all, we deserve an answer. 

**La Jolla's Furry Little Secret

[This article about La Jolla's rat problem won the $500 first prize in a local San Diego writing contest. It is rumored that the La Jolla Real Estate Broker's Association still has a contract out on me. Alas, seasonal rat offensives are still a too-regular part of my life.] © 2009


Several years ago, as part of a kitchen remodel, we opted to add skylights around the house as a way of reducing the mildew that appears to be the karmic revenge toward those who live near the ocean. As soon as construction began, however, the contractor pointed out that we had termites. So we got the termite guy out who wanted to tent us, except that first, he said, we had to get rid of the rats.

That we might have attic occupants of the rodent persuasion was no surprise. It wasn’t long after we moved here that I learned that while the little furry fauna are prevalent all over our county (like the rest of us, they came for the weather), they are happiest to eschew the slimmer pickings of less landscaped areas of the city for the dense protective foliage and abundant food supply in places like La Jolla. Our personal rat population prefers to summer in close proximity to our orange tree, inconsiderately leaving orange rinds on the grass, but worse, having the poor manners to skitter across the patio just as we and our guests are sitting down to an elegant outdoor dinner. One can only glare at them and hiss, Do you mind????? We’re trying to have a classy meal here! (Lobbing a few cans of Rat-Be-Gone into the ivy in retaliation the next morning is not unheard of.)

Rats fortunately don’t want to come into the living quarters of your house (well, most of the time, anyway), but once the harsh California winter temperatures plummet into the 60’s, a rat family – Mom, Dad, the kids – moves in to winter in one’s toasty attic making comfy nests out of your insulation and dining on escargot (a.k.a the snails that feed on your daisies). The La Jolla Chamber of Commerce never ever mentions the “R” word.

Even the county of San Diego carefully disguises its e-rat-ication campaign on your tax bill under the heading of Vector Control. Of course, the vectors are disease vectors - in the case of rodentia, typhus and bubonic plague and most recently, hantavirus. Nothing you want to get. Let us be clear that the county isn’t going to come out and bag them for you. But they excel at showing you how you can smite the little furballs yourself.

In fairness, and in anticipation of becoming a persona non rat-a with my fellow La Jollans, let me state that while virtually all homes in La Jolla have at least a modest exterior rat presence, some houses are more prone to be rat havens than others. My 1947 built-by-the-lowest-bidder-after-the-war cottage is one of them. And some years are much worse rat years than others for reasons I’ve never been able to ascertain. One such year, in my single parent days, I heard the familiar scurrying in my attic and worse, the gnawing. If there’s one sound I hate, it’s gnawing. Lying awake at 3 a.m., I was consumed with curiosity. “What are they eating up there?” Of course, what I feared was that it was my wiring but it definitely had more of a beam-ish sound. Maybe it was actually the termites having a giant orgy? (In addition to being a rat Xanadu, my tiny cedar house with its ancient wood shake roof is the termite equivalent of Islam’s 72 virgins.) But that winter, listening to the relentless overhead chewing that I feared was devouring the investment I had sold myself into perpetual penury to buy during my divorce, I decided it was time to bring in the professionals.

A very nice gentlemen from a local pest control firm duly arrived at my home the next afternoon and installed live-capture traps throughout my attic, and in the abundant foliage around the house, with promises that he would be back daily to check on them. It was all very humane, he explained.

“So what do you do with them after you catch them?” I asked, immediately regretting the question.

“Oh,” he said, “we drive them out to the country and let them go.” He actually said this with a straight face. Unfortunately, he looked like he’d had a supporting role in The Terminator and that the back of his truck was filled with devices I didn’t want to know about. I was starting to feel bad for the rats.

Well, until about five of them were captured in the yard in four days, never mind a few in the attic. I had to be home every day for the pest control guy to get into my attic crawl space which wasn’t easy with work and carpool schedules. Plus, daily rat service was seriously costing me. Being newly re-entered to the work force and earning just above minimum wage, it became clear this was going to have to be a Kill-It-Yourself project.

There wasn’t much internet to speak of eighteen years ago when my local hardware gave me a hot tip about the county Vector Control program. But, happy to see My Tax Dollars at Work, I gave them a call, expecting some big burly rodent-hating club-wielding guy to show up. So you can imagine my surprise when this sweet young very petite long-blond-haired thing named Liz appeared at my door. A more fearless human I have never met. Climbing up her ladder to the cover of my attic crawl space, she gave the cover several sharp knocks. “I always like to alert them I’m coming in” she smiled.“Simple courtesy.” Adding, “I also don’t like rats falling on my head.” This was a concept on which we could agree. We systematically walked around my house, she showing me all the places that rats could get in and ways I could thwart them. An Amazing But True Rat Fact is that they can squish their little bodies through a half-inch high space.

Outside, Liz explained that my wood pile and the dense ivy over my fence were Ratopias, my prolific orange tree a veritable rat Whole Foods. She instructed me to go to the hardware and get them to cut a number of pieces of 3-4 inch diameter PVC pipe into 18-24 inch lengths into the middle of which I would insert rat poison so it would not be accessible to any neighborhood cats. These were duly placed around the property.

But the tricky part was the attic. I didn’t really want to trap live rats since I had no idea what I’d then do with them. (Well, there was that one neighbor…) I didn’t really want to trap dead rats either but that appeared to be the only other alternative. For those who’ve never seen a rat trap, think mouse trap on steroids. And with a snap bar that will easily break every one of your fingers. My livelihood as a clerical at the time was dependent on those fingers. Liz suggested that I bait the traps and set the springs in the hallway bathroom below and then tiptoe up my rickety ladder ever so carefully and set them very very gently just inside my attic crawl space. Trust me, I would never have attempted this without her cheerleader support.

For the record, a rat’s cuisine of choice is not cheese, as one might suspect, but peanut butter - a little known fact that you might use the next time you’re at a dinner party and the conversation lags. In fact, for years after Liz’s visit, our refrigerator featured two jars of peanut butter, one labeled “For Kids” and the other “For Rats”. Normally I wouldn’t confess that there were times I was so irked at the kids for one transgression or another that I was tempted to put the rat trap knife in their jar. But the statute of limitations is passed. Anyway, by the time Liz was done, I was, as my engineer second husband would say, “fully rat capable”.

Ultimately, however, I wearied of climbing up and down my ladder with my peanut butter-baited traps, and even more so, of removing dead rat carci before breakfast. (It’s actually no better after breakfast.) There is just nothing worse than starting your day off with a dead rat, other than the knowledge that it is guaranteed to get better. But the second husband wasn’t on the scene yet (where are men when you need them????), so what to do? I had always remembered the words of the pest control guy that one should never put rat poison in the attic; should a rat may die up there, one’s home would soon be wafting of Eau de Rodent Morte. I was lamenting this with my cleaning-fanatic neighbor Karen who has always been openly, if affectionately, critical of my housekeeping skills. “But in your house,” she reasoned, “who could tell?”

She was just funning, of course. But by nightfall, the spring-loaded rat traps were in the trash, and liberal quantities of rat poison packets had found their way into my attic crawl space. I never smelled anything amiss, but when a roofing guy was up there not long ago, he mentioned that he had come upon not one but two rat skeletons. I should mention that we were on a foreign work assignment in 2005-2006 and I can only assume that the aforementioned decedents had succumbed during our absence. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

I know that there are going to be folks who will blast me as a heartless rodent slayer with no regard for the pain and suffering I have caused countless small furry animals who, like the rest of us, are just trying to make a living. And I will admit that I have had moments of actual compassion for the little guys, most notably while watching the film Ratatouille on an airline flight. At one point there’s a scene where the old woman, annoyed at the scurrying of little feet above, bangs on her ceiling with a broom handle only to have a rodent colony the size of Leisure World come crashing down into her kitchen. I realized at that moment why I have never dared bang on my ceilings. Clearly the Rats Rights League was involved in this film as there were no scenes of the adorable protagonist chewing on computer cables or leaving droppings on the guest bed pillow. Our rats are grievously ignorant of boundary issues.

Now, of course, much of the info my fellow afflictees here in Ratopolis er, La Jolla, would need for successful containment of their rodent guests can be done from the privacy of their own homes via www.DIEFILTHYRODENTS.com, er, no, http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/deh/pests/rat.html. They even have Rat Control Starter Kits and a Rat Control CD, which I genuinely recommend. But in my heart of hearts, I’m glad I had Liz.

**When Editing Comes In Handy

[This was a guest column in Editor & Publisher, the trade journal of the editing and publishing industries.]

My local newspaper recently ran the obituary of an obviously much-beloved woman who “spent her formidable years in Providence.” Like most large city dailies, my paper has long since jettisoned staff-written obituaries in favor of paid announcements written by the family of the deceased, charged at the not-inconsequential rate of $53 to $65 dollars per column inch. Although the paper’s web site maintains that letting families submit their own unedited text leaves them “in control”, I wonder if they are instead left in the lurch.

My on-line dictionary defines “formidable” as: “1: causing fear, dread, or apprehension 2: having qualities that discourage approach or attack 3: ending to inspire awe or wonder i.e. impressive.” One could engage in considerable speculation as to how any of these might have described this era of the deceased’s life, but one couldn’t help but have the niggling suspicion that this is not what they intended to say.

Few of us are skilled obituary writers (fortunately) yet we all mis-use words. Most obituaries are written on short notice, and certainly under emotional circumstances. But these kinds of slips are distractions from the purpose of an obituary.which is to announce the passing of, and pay tribute to, a much-adored and sorely missed loved one. I am fascinated by these reviews of people’s lives and at nearly 60, am, alas, finding more and more people that I know among the reviewees. Many of these accounts have made me cry (and not just from the errors). I read about a lot of people that I wish I had known but feel I know a little from their obituaries. How can one not feel warmly toward someone who “never did anything without thinking about how it would affect other people, and any animals that might be nearby”?

But given the cost and the emotional value of obituaries, I wonder if newspaper staffs might consider supplying a little editorial help under several headings:

Spelling Actually Matters: More than once I have thought back to the somber pronouncement in a local obit that grandma “has gone to live with the angles.”

Punctuation Perils: A judicious use of semi-colons might have prevented one writer from suggesting that the deceased’s husband and children were going to be cremated along with her.

Felony quotation abuse: as in: Mary graduated from “West Side High School” and the “City College of Nursing”. And its corollary, Baffling Capitalization Practices: “A graduate of NEBRASKA STATE UNIVERSITY, she belonged to THE HEART ASSOCIATION and the DAR.”

Hyper Hyperbole: Mom may have been a wonderful painter but were her talents really of “Renaissance proportions”? (And while we’re on this subject, what IS a Renaissance proportion?) As to the pronouncement that “All heaven is rejoicing at her arrival”, I’ll admit I’m just jealous because there’s not a snowball’s chance my loved ones will ever say this about me.

And I think it wouldn’t hurt newspapers to offer a few general guidelines as well. For example:

It’s probably better to mention the spouse before the cats.

Every family has its own lore, but sometimes that lore is best left in the family and out of the newspaper. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to mention that mom was aggressively wooed by a notorious mobster – and probably why the obit was run again the next day minus the reference.

Playing fast and loose with history: Grandma was undoubtedly a marvelous story teller, and the adoring grandkids (her chroniclers) a rapt audience - but maybe a tad vague on world events. Because if grandma were born in 1936, it was probably not likely she was a leader of the French Resistance.

Genealogy: One decedent’s obit claimed his ancestry could be traced back to the Vikings. (Honest mistake; I got suckered by that web site too.) Another claimed to be a descendant of George Washington - not good news to Martha, as she and George had no children.

I’m ambivalent about this request, frankly. The appeal of paid obits is that they aren’t professionally written, and without the filter of a staff obituary writer, express a palpable grief and heart-warming affection. I’d hate to tamper with what is often their guileless charm. But it just seems the price tag ought to come with a phone call asking if perhaps they meant to say “formative” (as in early developing) instead of “formidable” years? Which would still give them the option to say, “Hell no! We were scared to death of her!” But at least everyone is clear.

*Airlines As Terrorists

[This piece was written in the Alaska Airlines terminal in Seattle and subsequently printed as an Op-Ed by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.]


Somewhere in our fourth hour as hostages of a major airline at SeaTac, I couldn’t help but reflect that if our captors were terrorists, there would at least be someone negotiating for our release.

The terrorists, if they were the Old School type more interested in airplanes as a negotiating ploy than airborne missiles, would even demand food. And unlike passengers, they would get it. They might even let the elderly go free. We hope we would qualify.

My 59 year old husband and I are so old we remember back to the halcyon days when a flight delayed even a half hour was cause for mass apologies and free champagne, and airlines happily accepted their delayed competitor’s tickets, creating a powerful incentive to get one’s plane back in the air before passengers were flying someone else’s friendly skies. Even more fondly, we remember when airlines had a customer service model other than lying.

Lured into a false sense of security by an actual aircraft at the gate last week, we were dismayed when, forty-five minutes prior to flight time, the On Time status suddenly flashed Delayed. Yes, they announced soon after, the plane was here but the crew was temporarily stranded by a maintenance problem in Sacramento – two hours flying time away. It didn't take much in the way of math skills to realize that long before the official status changed, they knew.

My business traveler husband, the Airplane Whisperer, barely looked up from his 30 pound copy of Professional Asp.Net 2.0, a tome ideally suited for today’s not-going-anywhere-soon flier. “Won’t matter,” he said. “They’ll be out of flight time by then.” He has a 100% accuracy rate for predicting when flights aren’t going to go.

As the hours wore on and the departure time continued to be pushed back, the cheery blond gate agent updated our status with practiced perfidy: the crew is in the air and will land at 6:17. But as each new departure time approached, more bad news: We aren’t going to board quite yet as we’d hate for you sit on the ground. Then, oops! The crew is now in Portland. But they’re still on their way! And finally (my husband only smiled): alas, the crew is out of flight time for the day. We’ll have to find a new crew.

Just to be clear, we realize this isn’t the gate agents’ personal faults. Like prison guards everywhere, they’re just following orders. And they probably deserve combat pay since I can’t imagine what possesses anyone to take a job as the ground interface with the flying public. Travel benefits, presumably, but anymore that’s like working for a radiologist for the free barium enemas. No, they’re just the hapless front men for the management grinches who don’t have to look into the faces of vacationers whose $500 a night Caribbean hotel room is sitting empty, or the distraught daughter who is going to miss Dad’s funeral.

Sadly, we don’t think it’s going to be getting any better. In fact, my husband continues to be grateful that no terrorist has yet been caught trying to board a plane with booby trapped underwear, triggering the inevitable next level of personal degradation.

In the meantime, however, a free glass of champagne would be really nice.

Going Down In The La Jolla Triangle

[This piece was published in San Diego Magazine.]


When I tell people I live in the La Jolla Triangle they usually think I’m referring to the Golden Triangle area encompassing the University Towne Center mall and surrounding business complex. No, the Triangle where I’ve lived for thirty-five years is more of the Bermuda variety where, as my friend Barbara says, “ships, planes and municipal services mysteriously disappear”.

We got our first inkling that there were some anomalies with our location soon after my former husband and I moved in and called 911 to report an accident in front of our house. The police dispatcher called back ten minutes later to clarify the information as, she said, “there is no such address”.

As it turned out, four of our neighbors’ homes were AWOL as well. Most of our street of 4-digit addresses meanders along on the west side of La Jolla Boulevard but inexplicably skips some 5100 numbers when it crosses, marooning five houses with 3-digit addresses on the east side.

It wasn’t only the fire department that was a little hazy on the whereabouts of these 1947-era homes. The regular mail carriers knew where we were but the substitutes would routinely return any three digit-numbered mail to sender as undeliverable, resulting in unpaid bills, DMV fines for expired registrations, shredded bank statements, and unanswered invitations. (Our mortgager expressed dismay when their communications to us were returned with the address stamped “nonexistent”.) Calls to the post office would only temporarily sort it out; in that era, the La Jolla Postmaster position seemed to have a higher turnover than the swing shift at Burger King.

Our own problems were further compounded by the fact that there was an unoccupied vacation home on the west side of La Jolla Boulevard which contained our three digits in the same sequence. Both the postal carriers and UPS (at the time, even less able to find our home than their public counterpart) were notorious for writing a fourth digit in front of our house number and abandoning our mail at the vacation home whose owners would kindly return it to us once a year. It was like Christmas in July.

When my husband and I divorced after ten years in the house, I had to ask myself: Did he just want his mail?

It didn’t help, of course, that the house across the street from us, built at the same time and whose front door and driveway faced ours, is deemed to be on a different street, as is the one kitty corner to us. How some houses on our street came to be assigned to one street and others seemingly randomly to another remains, in my view, one of the Great Unsolved Address Mysteries of all time.

Episodes of lost mail might still be occurring except for the fact after a two year spate with only substitute carriers on our route, my second husband received a Final Notice from the fund company handling his IRA that since their three previous communications had been returned as undeliverable, his retirement account was being turned over to the state as abandoned. The sheer force of ballistic energy from our house could have fueled a missile to Mars – or more likely, a direct hit into our postal substation. Less than a week later, the Regional Postmaster had changed our route to connect it with the west side, and promised us a regular mail carrier, a really terrific guy who we’ve now had for some years.

But would that it were just the mail. Neither SD G&E nor the city of San Diego will lay claim to the street light in front of our house. Eerily, both insist that there IS no street light in front of our house. (Cue Twilight Zone music here.) Fortunately, it only goes out every few years.

And just when I thought that after thirty-five years and the advent of GPS locators our sixty-one year old house could finally acquire its rightful place on a map, our trash pickup suddenly ceased this summer. Just ours, not any of the neighbors. Unlike most of the blocks in our neighborhood which come in nice rectangular shapes, the end of our block is rounded with our house on the tip and – count ‘em – five thoroughfares coming together at the end of location our driveway. Backing out on a foggy morning has always been a leap of faith, but that’s another article. After the fourth missed pickup, my new best friend, the La Jolla sanitation supervisor, revealed that routes in our area had been reconfigured and that somehow, given our quirky address and our at the hub of so many streets, we’d dropped off the grid. But even the truck he’d sent back out to pick up our trash several days later returned empty handed. “Where ARE you?” he queried into my voice mail.

So at this point, we’re very (very) clear why the previous owners moved. But what about us: if we ever sell, do we have to disclose that our mail service is iffy, trash pickup sporadic, the streetlight a phantom, and pizza delivery a mere wishful fantasy? Does real estate law have a “Black Hole Rule”? And since half our neighbors are deemed to be on a different street anyway, could the new folks choose?

In the meantime, we suggest that low flying aircraft steer clear.

A Terminal Case of Ambiguity Fatigue

[This was published in the San Diego Union-Tribune]


My sister and I were having our weekly lunch at Rock Bottom (she eating Atkins, and I the Syndrome X diet), and discussing all the flip-flops in medical wisdom that have occurred in our 50-something years. We concluded at the end that our biggest health problem may not be high cholesterol but “ambiguity fatigue”. It seems that everything we thought we “knew” is now wrong.

When our sons were infants, babies had to sleep on their stomachs to avoid crib death; now they have to be on their backs. Our friends with ulcers who spent 30 years avoiding spicy foods are now being treated for a bacterial infection. Brushing your hair 100 strokes a night was said to make it shiny and healthy (but now gives it split ends). People with diverticulosis were once relegated to soft diets; now they’re filling up on roughage. My sister and I have dutifully switched back and forth from butter to margarine several times in the last 30 years (but frankly preferred the butter years); now we can’t figure out whether the saturated fat or the trans fats are more likely to get us. Cholesterol may not matter; artery inflammation measured by C-Reactive Protein may be the better measure. At my health club the other day, a fellow treadmiller was overheard to say that her doctor says to stop drinking 8 glasses of water a day - too hard on the kidneys.

Is nothing sacred?

Of course, my sister and I agree that the two that have truly broken our spirits are the HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and carbs versus fat debates. I spent twenty years limiting myself to two eggs a week and now suddenly eggs are OK again? I demand a cholesterol refund! Our genuinely beloved Primary Care Physician, nobly adhering to prevailing medical wisdom, is trying to get her patients off the hormones and onto the statins that she hopes will add a few years to our otherwise decrepit middle-aged bodies. But we’ve become a hard sell. Ambiguity fatigue has taken its toll. In our heart of hearts, we’re beginning to think of medical researchers, albeit unfairly, as the Enron executives of health care. What happened to all those studies showing HRT was good? If those studies were all flawed, how do we know the new ones aren’t too? Before I completely change my life again, they’re going to have to convince me.

Then there’s the issue of all these statistics. By my calculations, I do at least 20 things that are purported to reduce my risk of heart disease by 50%. – like eating fish twice a week. At what point does my heart owe me? When do I get a hot fudge sundae risk free? (I am hoping that someone who paid more attention to college statistics will write in and tell me.)

As my sister looked longingly at the whole wheat bun on my turkey burger, and I salivated over her high-fat plain hamburger, we concluded there is only one real health care question:

Does anybody really know?

All you can really do, we decided, is weigh up the evidence and go with what feels right, knowing that whatever you’re doing is bound to come back into favor again at some point. It’s kind of like riding out a down market. In fact, I like to think of it in terms of medical research ``futures”: I personally plan to go short on Lipitor (my pick as the next pariah of health care) and go long – very long – on chocolate. A person, after all, has to live.

Cell-fishly Annoying The General Public

[This was published in the San Diego Union-Tribune]


Walking along the board walk at Pacific Beach last week, I was suddenly confronted with the sight of a 20-something guy with shoulder length hair striding toward me, gesticulating wildly with his arms and talking loudly to no one in particular. There was a time when this would have been a no-brainer; I would have given him a wide berth and hoped that he would get back on his medication some time soon.

But then I thought I saw the tell-tale signs of a little wire hanging down from his ear, and it occurred to me that what I was seeing was a new and troubling sociological dilemma: how to tell the dangerously deranged from the cell phone head set user. (A friend claims there is actually not much difference.)

Certainly the proliferation of cell phones have spawned no end of debate from legal issues (talking while driving) to those of simple courtesy. A sign in The Cheese Shop in La Jolla informs customers that their sandwich preferences will be happily noted once the orderer is off his cell phone. It is virtually impossible to go through a supermarket line without being treated to the inanities of someone's cell phone conversation. At Blockbuster Video, there is invariably the blockhead who is painstakingly moving along the racks reading every single title to (presumably) Mrs. Blockhead at home.

But the hands-free head sets are a different problem altogether. This is potentially a serious public safety issue. Before cell phone headsets, a person's behavior was a reasonable clue to their state of mind, and more specifically, to their threat to you. But no more.

As always, the perps will probably not see themselves. If in doubt, it might not hurt to take this little quiz. When you talk on your head set cell phone, do people:

(1) Pull out their own cell phones, dial 911 and point in your direction?

(2) Look at you with fear in their eyes as they edge nervously away?

(3) Pull their little children protectively toward them?

(4) Scream "I have a weapon and I'm not afraid to use it"?

If so, it is because YOU LOOK LIKE A LUNATIC.

Sometimes, of course, you think they're talking to you - not unreasonable since a quick survey indicates there isn't anyone else around - and, not wishing to be rude, you feel obligated to reply. "Um, no, I didn't actually think George had a hot body. But then, I don't know anyone named George" The cell phone user then turns her (or his) back on you, eyes rolling, and can be heard to mutter, "Just some old lady who thought I was talking to her. As if!!" Then she continues on her monologue looking like she's talking to little people who live in her hair.

Given the seriousness of this dilemma for the general public, I foresee legislation mandating signs in public places that read: "Visible cell phone required" with the implied "or we throw a net over you." In the meantime, when confronted with an individual displaying erratic symptoms who may or may not be talking on a cell phone head set, I think it would be reasonable to shoot them with a tranquilizer dart while you're sorting it out. Better safe than sorry.

Thinking Outside the Hose

[This was published in the San Diego Union-Tribune just before mandatory water rationing went into effect in the spring of 2009.]

With an 11,000 sq. ft. lawn-afflicted lot and only a 1600 sq. ft. home, my husband and I are plagued by nightmares of San Diego’s newly-created Water Police showing up in the dead of night. Our only question is: will they be coming for us or the azaleas?

For those of us who have already been conserving water for years, who have only turned on sprinklers as needed, and who dutifully empty even the ice from drinks into our brick planter, mandatory water use reduction along with staggering rate increases are scary thoughts indeed. We’re definitely going to have to think outside the hose.

For the record, succulents prefer Johnny Walker ice to Diet Pepsi ice. One of many solutions that have occurred to us is that to keep our border plants alive, we may have to drink more.

But no, this is serious. Barring a forty-day rain (we’d actually need several), San Diego is entering an era where water usage is going to be an issue as never before. Could the mortgage crisis pass only to be replaced by an epidemic of water bill foreclosures?

With the looming threat of rationing, my husband and I have spent many an hour surveying our property to make decisions about what we’d save and what, worst case, we might have to let die. The Sophie’s Choice of horticulture, as it were. Already we think we can hear our plants pleading with us: “Save me!” “No, save ME!” “Screw her – I bloom more!” “But I’m more drought resistant!” “Don’t believe him – he’s an annual!”

Of course, we’ve thought of all the usual solutions but with toddler grandchildren and a granddog, we’d really prefer not to have a total desert landscape. Not to mention that the estimate to convert our large corner lot to cactus and pebbles was a whopping ten grand; Astroturf would be even more. That could pay for a lot of water. Or, considering the specter of $1,000 monthly water bills, maybe not. I’ll confess that I’ve cruised the fake fern department at Michael’s. They’re looking more realistic than I remember.

We’ve also considered converting our front yard to one huge vegetable garden, or preferably, since we’re old, turning it over to sharecroppers for a cut of the produce. Of course, there’d have to be a Zucchini Clause. But it still wouldn’t reduce our water usage to the degree we’d require in the long term.

Letting the lawn be taken over by drought-friendly ivy would leave us with a becoming sea of green. Also a rat sanctuary.

Our younger son suggested the obvious solution was to reduce our waterable land with a modest remodel, cleverly subsidized by the prospective water bill reduction. He proposes a nice wide (very wide) covered veranda around the house. We could sit out on it in our rockers, he said. Watching our grass die.

Ironically, we have lots of perfectly good (if chlorinated) water in our now-rarely-used backyard pool. Empty the pool and it cracks. Stop filling the pool and you have created an 18,000 gallon spawning ground for West Nile Virus. I don’t want to ruin a potential patent, but my engineer husband is working on some ingenious laundry solutions that involve the pool, our small outdoor rinse-cycle fountain, and the nice warm concrete pool deck. Oops, I think I’ve already said too much.

But what we’ve really concluded is that Southern Californians, including ourselves, are simply going to have to embrace what we have dubbed Creative Moisture Multi-Tasking ©. Basically, all water use must perform at least four simultaneous functions. For example, we see ourselves showering au naturel in our front yard under the lawn sprinklers, while sudsing up with an organic fertilizer-based shampoo. Whoever finishes first rinses the breakfast dishes while the other scrubs vegetables for dinner. Et voilà! In one miserly ten minute watering slot, four water-requisite tasks were achieved (five if you count fertilizing.) The toilet app, we have to confess, is problematical. But frankly, if they’re really serious about conserving water, it’s only a matter of time before flush toilets are banned. Those low-flow things never worked anyway.

So that’s our plan. No question about it: water rationing is going to change life as we know it. But we’re also hoping that the prospect of naked seniors cavorting under the sprinklers in their front yards will be all the impetus the local Water Board needs to ramp up the Carlsbad desalinization project. ASAP.

Vons Parking Lot: Scariest Place In America

[This was published in the La Jolla Light as an opinion piece before I began writing my own column.]

I know that everyone has to die of something. I, for example, am more than willing to die from chocolate. What I’m not willing to have as the cause of my demise is Death By Vons Parking Lot. People roar down the aisles of that lot like Bobby Unser on the Indianapolis Speedway. Except, of course, that when Bobby took the curve in the final stretch, he wasn’t talking on his cell phone.

Don’t get me wrong: I love the downtown La Jolla store itself. Great selection, wonderful management, terrific specialty departments, friendly staff, efficient pharmacy.

And it’s not that the parking spaces aren’t roomy. But the back-out space is tight and for those of us in little cars trying to back out between two SUVs, it’s totally blind. The folks channeling their inner NASCAR driver are peril enough in that situation, but it’s the pedestrians that are just plain baffling. Short of a deep-seated death wish (and the knowledge that those Beemer and Lexus drivers are well insured and will amply compensate your loved ones), I can’t for the life of me imagine what sort of brain activity, if any, is being registered by the wing nuts who are obliviously texting as they walk right behind backing cars. One can only sigh wistfully and wish this lot were in the Serengeti, where natural selection could take its course.

There is no good will toward man in the Vons lot on Christmas Eve day. Or during any of the peak shopping hours. Or even Sunday mornings. I’d like to think that Love Thy Neighbor included not running him over.

Of course, the lot is not without its entertainments. Hardly a week goes by when I don’t witness two black SUVs (always black, always SUVs) backing out of their spaces at 30 miles per hour right into each other. I think I can say with some authority that people who own black SUVs know some really bad words.

Sorry, Vons. I’ve lost my nerve. I’ll come to visit from time to time for old time’s sake. But as much as I like your store, I’m too old for this many near-death experiences. I’ve opted for the chocolate.