*Why Daughters Are (Generally) Preferable to Sons

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 8, 2011]  © 2011

On Mother’s Day, one of my daughters-in-law sent me a box of divinely scented candles and a hand-made card reading “Happy Mother’s Day!  These are the most luxurious candles, so we hope you’ll indulge and remember what a wonderful mother you are every time you smell them.”  I actually cried.  Neither of my sons would ever have written a message like that.  Which has only confirmed my long term suspicion that where communication is concerned, daughters are definitely preferable to sons.

My adult life has included two husbands (I’m still married to one of them), two sons, two nephews, and a dog named Boris.  Nary a girl in sight until two lovely young women deigned to marry my sons (truthfully, we thought the ladies could do better) and have now produced two tiny granddaughters as well. 

When my sons were in college, friends would tell me that they heard from their daughters daily.  Sometimes three times daily.  Contrast this to Henri’s sophomore year when we hadn’t heard a word from him in two months.  Trying not to be an overbearing Mom, but rather hoping to have some acknowledgment that he hadn’t quit school and joined a grunge band, I finally called him mid-April mentioning that I hadn’t heard from him in a bit and hoping all was well.  In a line that has become immortalized in our family since, Henri replied with barely disguised annoyance, “Mom, I just talked to you in February!”

My older son, Rory, didn’t do much better.  You’d think in an era of email that it would be easy for a child to just check in with his folks once a week.  Olof and I went to college at a time when you had to actually write a letter, put a stamp on it and mail it.  (Long distance calls were prohibitively expensive in the Mesozoic era.) After months of radio silence, I finally sent Rory an email saying that no more money was going to be forthcoming until we received a missive of at least three lines stating how things were going.  In another now-immortalized communication, Rory replied: 

Hi,

Fine.

Ror

Communicators my sons were not.  I assumed this would all change once they got a little older and indeed our phone conversations – often initiated by them - now spontaneously end with a genuinely felt “loveyoumom”.  As my 60^th birthday approached, both sons wanted to know what I might like.  Seizing the opportunity, I said that what would make me happiest would be if they would each write a short letter relating three happy memories they had of me.  I hated to beg, but I wasn’t getting any younger.  Rory, predictably, quickly negotiated down to one.  For his part, Henri replied, “Can’t I just buy you something?”

But ultimately, they both came through and their touching replies were genuinely the best gift I could have received.  I still read them often.  Heroically, Rory even ratcheted up to four happy memories.  Well, five if you include this:  “In addition to these things, thank you for adopting me.  Without which I would be writing to someone else.” 

My friends with daughters beg to insist that theirs can be a rocky road as well.  Recently I lunched with a friend who told me that she and her adult daughter had gone to the Gay Pride parade in July, in support of their many friends who were gay.  My friend related that she noticed some people taking pictures of the two at the parade and whispered with amusement to the daughter, “I think they think we’re a couple.”   The daughter’s happy mood suddenly turned dark and didn’t improve for the rest of the day when she finally confessed the source of her distress:  “They thought YOU were as good as I could do????”

OK, so maybe this daughter thing has its moments too.

My Life As A Deadbeat

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published Aug. 25, 2011]  © 2011

As a Social Security-collecting 63-year-old, I really thought it was not too much to hope for that I could finish my life without ever being classified as a deadbeat.  

But that dream was crushed on July 5 when the City of San Diego Water Department changed to a new billing service incongruously called Customer Care Solutions.  Cleverly employing a no-cost non-tech system of Do-It-Yourself Data Conversion, they required customers paying on-line to re-enter all of their billing information (including bank account data) and be assigned new account numbers. 

I feared there could be problems when after some three hours over as many days, I was only able to create my new account by ignoring their instructions.  I’ve paid all my bills on-line for years and paid my first water bill on the new system on July 14, printing a confirmation.  Much to my dismay, some  two weeks later I received a non-payment notice in the mail adding that my water service was about to be histoire.  This was especially disconcerting given that it was now August.  We may not be much on hygiene, but we do care about landscaping.

Checking my new water services account on-line, I couldn’t immediately ascertain the problem as it only shows the last four digits of my checking account, all of which were correct.   My bank account had twenty times the amount needed to pay the bill plus overdraft protection.  I could only assume I had somehow, for the first time ever, dropped a digit in the account number.  But then, I am old.

When I dialed the customer service number the next morning at the precise time they opened, wait time was already thirty minutes.  But eventually I was connected to a customer service rep whom I’ll call Cranky Troll (not her real name) who confirmed that not only had I been charged a $25 penalty but as with all water scofflaws, only payment in cash or money order would now be accepted at one of their regional payment centers; no over-the-phone credit card payments allowed.  I even appealed to Cranky Troll’s supervisor, saying that surely thirty-eight years of meticulously on-time payments from the same address should count for something?

In a word:  no. 

In fact, she warned, should I ever “bounce another check” to them, I’ll need to post a significant deposit to continue to get water services.  I now have Official Deadbeat Status.

In that case, I said, since I have no idea why this payment didn’t go through, I’d like to revert to paper bills.  Sorry, she says, she’s not authorized to do that.  She is only authorized to annoy the bejesus out of customers.  OK, that second line is mine.

A wad of cash in hand, I headed to my regional payment center, a Payday Loan place, only to find a sign on the door saying, “Back in 30 minutes.”  But this allowed me to visit with the person ahead of me in line, a fellow  water reprobate clutching the same blue slip and having an identical story: account was a bear to set up, couldn’t figure out why payment didn’t go through.  She had tried calling  at noon only to get a recording saying “don’t even bother holding.” 

Now one might think that once one had handed over money at the authorized payment center, the water gods would be appeased.  But one would be wrong.  You have not paid until you call them back and tell them you have paid.  No call, no payment.  One marvels at the sheer brilliance of such exquisite inefficiency.  However by the time I got home, the (Anti)Customer (Un)Caring (Non)Solutions line only rang busy – for the rest of the day.  And the next.  Ultimately, I got through to a report-your-payment recording, but while I was waiting on my land line, I entertained myself on my cell phone repeat-dialing their Customer Service Survey number (619-515-3515) cheerfully giving the customer service reps the lowest grade of  1 (minus ten wasn’t available).  I’m hoping they won’t realize that 240 of their rock bottom ratings are mine.

Meanwhile, the Payday Loan lady, while happy to see so many new faces and for the boon to her business (she charged me to pay the bill beside the $25 fine) commented that if it were her water bill, she’d revert to paper bills and pay by check.  That so sounds like a plan. 

Hoarding The Desire to Hold On To Stuff

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published August 11, 2011]  © 2011

Every once in a while, I channel surf into one of the hoarder shows.  My first response is always to wonder how people can ever let this happen.  Until I remember that not only have I seen this in person, but that the hoarder gene is alive and well in me.

As I’ve visited various relatives over the years, it’s become clear to me that the tendency to accumulate what could politely be referred to as an excessive number of possessions – particularly  books and National Geographics - clearly runs in the family.  Books I understand but what is it about National Geographics that make people hang on to them forever?   I know people even outside my family who have moved twelve times and while the dining room set or even the kids don’t always make the cut, the National Geographics invariably end up on the truck.  I know sets of National Geographics that have seen more of the U.S. than most campaign buses. 

Although it has some serious competition, the most egregious example of mass accumulation in my own genetic network is the ancestral home in Hard-To-Get-There, Ohio, which has been continuously in the family since 1865.  Let me just say that you can acquire a lot of stuff in 140 years.  The last surviving occupant, my favorite aunt, died five years ago.  My aunt encompassed the Hoarder Big 3:  child of the Depression, ardent conservationist, and OCD packrat (maybe that’s four).  It was a hoarder perfect storm.  The place was an absolute treasure trove of wonderful old stuff – Ladies Home Journals from the 1880s, gorgeous oil lamps, ornate ewers - intermixed, alas, with multiple cases of 40 year old Jell-O, cartons of ratty underwear preserved in 1962 newspaper, and a huge freezer that was a veritable biohazard. Then there were the 10,000+ books, three deep in the bookcases.   Every letter I ever received from my aunt was written on the back of a piece of recycled junk mail.

I have to confess that when I went to visit her, the first thing I did was to check the latch on the upstairs bedroom window to make sure I could get out onto the roof and jump in case of fire.  Because with the piles of old newspapers (which she intended to use for mulch for her gardens) and magazines (you can guess which kind) stacked up in every hallway, I figured I’d have approximately seven seconds to hurl myself out the window.  I simply refused to have my Cause of Death be listed as “National Geographics.”

Little did I know what a fire trap the place really was.  After my aunt died, we ordered up several 35 foot dumpsters and started dumping all the flattened cardboard boxes that had been on the back veranda in ever-increasing piles for as long as anyone could remember.  I suddenly saw the color drain out of my husband’s face.  Underneath it all was coal.  Eight hundred pounds of coal.  The old coal burning stove, unused for decades, was still in the living room.  I suddenly realized that the seven seconds of escape time I always thought I’d had was actually two.

My tiny garage-less cottage could fit in the living rooms of a lot of La Jolla homes so I try to keep it as uncluttered as possible.  Recently, I did a major clean-out and packed up twelve big bags of stuff for Goodwill.  Loading them into the car, I suddenly broke out in a cold sweat.  Maybe something valuable had gotten in there by mistake.  I unpacked it all and rechecked it.  And then a third time.  “You don’t need any of this stuff,” I repeated over and over all the way over to Goodwill.  As the attendant helped me unload, my hands shook with a paralyzing anxiety.  “You okay?” he asked.  After I drove off, I had an overwhelming urge to loop back, throw myself on their unloading dock dumpster and scream, “Give me back my stuff!”  I didn’t, but all the way home, I thought I’d throw up.

A few nights later I channel surfed into a hoarder show.  I was just about to shake my head in wonder at how they let the place get so bad when I had to admit:  I know.  I really know.

Fishing For Sanity In Taco Land

["Let Inga Tell You", La Jolla Light, published July 28, 2011]  © 2011

Forget mandatory military service.  Everyone should be required to work two years in retail.

I actually did a fair amount of retail in my high school and college years - waitressing, sales jobs in clothing stores etc.  But I’ve realized I couldn’t do it anymore.  I’d just scream at the patrons and get fired, probably on the first day.

During my years working up near the University, I developed a love affair with a fast food Mexican Grill which I have successfully continued in my retirement courtesy of their multitude of locations.    If they’d only had a Frequent Eater stock option program, I’d be a majority shareholder by now.  Several times a week I can still be found plunking my $6.23 on the counter and walking away with two Health-Mex chicken tacos.

I’ve spent a lot of time listening to people place orders while I’m waiting for mine and I can’t fathom  how cashiers in fast food places maintain their sanity.  But they are always relentlessly nice.  And patient.  And smiling.   I’m not privy to what these poor folks do when they go home but if it were me, I’d start out by screaming in my car at 150 decibels.  (I concede that this would not work as well on a bus.)  Imagine a day of orders like this:

Customer:  What’s in the Fish Taco Especial?

Cashier (pointing to the large-print menu board which specifically states what it contains):  Beer-battered fish, guacamole, cheese, and cilantro, on your choice of corn or flour tortilla. 

Customer:  Is it good?

Cashier:  Very good.  It’s one of our signature menu items.

Customer:  So what does es-special mean?

Cashier:  That’s Spanish for “special”.

Customer:  Oh.  What kind of cheese is in it?

Cashier:  Cheddar and Jack.

Customer:  Could I have Swiss instead?

Cashier:  We don’t actually have Swiss but we could leave out the cheese if you prefer.

Customer:  If I get a hamburger, can I get Swiss?

Cashier (amazingly, still smiling):  This is a Mexican restaurant so we don’t have hamburgers.  May I recommend our Grilled Steak Taco instead?

Customer:  What’s in that?

Cashier (pointing to the menu board again):  Grilled steak, guacamole, cheese, lettuce, and salsa on your choice of tortilla.  You can have it as a two-taco plate with tortilla chips and pinto beans, or rice or black beans.  I highly recommend the pinto beans.

Customer:  Could I get just one taco with chips and no cheese and could you wrap it in lettuce instead of a tortilla?  I’m kind of doing this low carb thing.

Casher:  Well, let me ask the manager but I think we could do that.

Customer:  Is the salsa spicy?  I don’t really like spicy. 

Cashier:  No, not real spicy.  But I might recommend that you add your own salsa from our excellent salsa bar right over there. It has everything from mild to ‘picante’ which means really spicy.

Customer:  Well, maybe I’ll get that.  I’d like the steak well done.  I don’t want any of that Mad Cow stuff.

Cashier:  Um, okay.  So, one Grilled Steak Taco, well done, with guacamole, no cheese, wrapped in a lettuce leaf, no salsa, with chips.  Would you like a drink with that?

Customer:  I’ll have a chocolate milkshake.

Cashier:  I’m sorry we don’t have milkshakes but we have great Mexican beer plus a variety of soft drinks.

Customer:  Oh.  Just water then.  (Cell phone rings. To cashier:)  Hold on, I’ve got a call coming in.  (To caller:)  I’m trying to order lunch and they can’t seem to get my order straight.

Cashier:  That will be $3.85.

Customer:  Darn. I think I left my wallet in my other purse. 

Here’s how this would have gone down if I were the cashier:

Inga:  Look at the menu board!  If you want a burger, go to Jack in the Box!  Leave!  Come back when you actually want to order!  You are so friggin’ ANNOYING!

Which is probably why I don’t have to worry about being hired in the fast food biz any time soon.

**Giving Lip Service To Dumping Plastic Water Bottles

["Let Inga Tell You", La Jolla Light, published July 14, 2011] © 2011

I recently saw a beautiful choker necklace in a catalog and knew I had to have it.  But when it arrived, I discovered that the model had one thing I didn’t have:  a neck.  It isn’t really a weight issue (although no one has accused me to being thin for a very long time) so much as anatomy.  Unlike the swan-throated model, my head seems to sit directly on my shoulders making choker wearing problematical at best. 

As it turns out, I’m also missing a waist.  Of course, I make up for it by having multiples of other parts, like chins.  And thighs.  Women’s clothes are measured on fit models who are assumed to have standard parts.  They are not designed for those of us with three thighs and boobs that graze one’s belly button.  Which I think we’ll all agree is good news.  But it makes acquiring apparel a significant problem. 

Of course, one could consider having clothes custom made.  But I fear they would actually fit.   No one with no neck and no waist and three thighs really wants to emphasize those things.  We’re looking for the clothes that disguise our anatomical failings.

Actually, I’m puzzled as to where this body shape came from.  It’s definitely not the norm in my family, although I’m not the norm in my family in any other way either.  I’m a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes.  It was always my theory that someone out there is a family of blond hunchbacks who wonder why they have a normal-shaped brunette child. 

But for women, if it’s not one thing, it’s another. And if one lives in La Jolla, there is really no need for any imperfections whatsoever here in Cosmetic Surgery Mecca.

I have a slender exquisitely beautiful friend who has the precise right number of body parts in the perfect proportions but is obsessed about the wrinkle lines around her mouth.  Personally I’ve never noticed the wrinkle lines around her mouth and if I could trade one of my chins for mouth wrinkles, I’d do it in an upper arm wobble er, heartbeat.  Not long ago my friend found herself distressed enough about it to actually undergo a full face laser peel. It sounded totally miserable.  She referred to herself as Franken Face, refused all social contact and only ventured out to walk the dog in darkness.  Even her own children had limited access. 

But here’s the clincher on this one:  she is convinced that the wrinkles around her lips were caused by drinking from plastic water bottles.  You know, the ubiquitous bottles that everyone seems to have in hand or in purse at all times.  They’re more than a fashion accessory; they’re like another limb.  But one worth amputating if it would avoid wrinkles.  She’s asked me to put out the word:  don’t let this happen to you.  Dump the water bottles.

 A little research showed that lip-area wrinkles are also called smoker’s lip or whistler’s lip, since, of course, those activities have a similar pucker to water bottle consumption.  But then you start thinking of all the myriad lip puckering activities you actually engage in, like, for example, kissing.  And things that kissing could lead to.  In such an appearance-oriented place as La Jolla, this could put the kabolix on all manner of more intimate activities.   Although I think most guys in La Jolla would say that they should be so lucky that any puckering activities they’re interested in would be habitual.  Still, this water bottle/lip wrinkle thing gets too much play and pretty soon La Jolla guys are getting even less of what they say they weren’t getting anyway.  We’re talking major consequences here.

But not for me.  Zapping the lines around my lips won’t give me a waist or a neck or take away even a single thigh.   So bring on the Evian.  If I can’t be well-proportioned, I can at least be hydrated.

*Time To Have More Time

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published June 30, 2011] © 2011

I’ve spent considerable time over the years pondering the mysteries of the universe, but the one I truly can’t solve is why it takes four La Jolla women eighty emails to find a mutually-agreed upon date for lunch. 

Of course, that also applies to movie groups, book clubs, bridge dates, and pretty much any activity where more than three women are attempting to congregate.

I know there are digital applications where everyone can post her available dates.  But it doesn’t matter.  By the time everyone does, someone is already not available.   How is it that we can be this busy?

A friend belongs to a theoretically-weekly bridge foursome that only ends up meeting about ten times a year.  Hoping to improve that, they enacted policy about requiring a replacement to be provided should one not be able to attend.  That lasted until four subs showed up to play.

Now, I’ve never belonged to either a bridge club (can’t count cards to save my life) or a book club, but I have belonged to a number of movie groups.  One that I belonged to had eight members.  Deciding on a movie was complicated enough, so to keep the logistics down, we decided we would always meet on the second Thursday of the month.  We saw lots of movies over time but the one date on which we never saw one was the second Thursday of the month.  Because as soon as the long-suffering movie group organizer sent out a query as to what we wanted to see, someone invariably responded that she wouldn’t be available on that night but would be available on these nights.  And then we were off and running.  Eighty emails to find a new date would have been optimistic.

The organizer of that group, who valiantly hung in there for years and for whom I have nothing but admiration, is now rumored to be in a home for the organizationally frustrated, sipping umbrella drinks on a bucolic lawn and being tended by white-coated professionals.  

Because even when we finally agreed upon a new date (which curiously always seemed to be a Monday even though we’d all decided earlier that we shouldn’t meet on Mondays since it was a bad day for everyone), we had to pick a movie.  (A corollary of the Eighty Emails To Find a Date Rule seems to be Forty Emails to Agree on Anything Else.)  Now, these were women who liked movies (and hence why they joined such a group) and some of them belonged to film societies as well.  So we couldn’t see any of the film society picks, or anything that was being reserved to see with a husband, or even that anyone had already seen with someone else.  One of our members would only see “important” movies, defined as being well reviewed by the New York Times film critic and thus having socially-redeeming value.  I myself am a “fluffy” movie person (think Herbie: Fully Loaded) but movie groups are not generally fluffy movie crowds. In fact, we did not see movies; we saw “films”.   The end result was that our selections were often three-hour black and white graphically-violent war dramas in Hungarian with subtitles  depicting (way too successfully, in my view) the misery of the human condition.  But no one had already seen it.  (I think that statement may apply globally.)  I spent many of these with my jacket over my head.   However, I totally adored the other women in the group and we always had dinner afterwards, often with enough wine to blot out memories of the movie which usually caused me screaming nightmares for weeks. 

I would also mention that the person who threw out the first volley about changing the date usually cancelled at the last minute.  And don’t even ask how many emails it was to decide where to go to dinner.

But getting back to my topic (and somewhere back there, I think I had one):  what is it that we’re all doing that scheduling anything is so impossible?  For most of my friends, our car pool days are over, but we seem to have filled that time with endless other activities.  I have to say that one of my favorite excuses for being unavailable came a few months ago from a long-time extremely dear friend who had volunteered to make the communion wafers for church, a full day affair.  (Well, at least that way you know they didn’t from China.)  Even her son said, “So Mom, is holycommunionwafers.com out of the question?”  That one gets a pass for pure originality.

But otherwise, I’m kind of hoping that the pendulum can swing the other way on this frantic over-scheduling of our lives.  Because this eighty emails thing?   We have better things to do with our time.

Taking the Igloos for a Spin

["Let Inga Tell You",La Jolla Light, published June 16, 2011] © 2011

Now that all the local high schools have graduated, I can safely tell the saga of a friend’s teenage daughter who has a serious future in spin.  In fact, if I were a political organization, I’d be signing her up now.

I happened to be visiting her mother when the daughter arrived home in a panic at five o’clock after a sports practice to announce that a project she thought was due in “a few months” was in fact due the next day.  The assignment was to make either a diorama or a flat board depiction of “my ideal life”.  But Daughter also had a “super important” history test the next day. Please, Mom, she says, can you help me?  Both parties were clear what “help” meant. 

Let me interject here that there is not a mom in America who has not been put in this position in some form or another, even if it’s the 10 p.m. announcement that three dozen cookies are required for the school bake sale the next day.  Fortunately, my friend was a pro at school projects, to the envy (and abject jealousy) of all her friends, including me.  The Plaster of Paris topography map of central Asia was to scale, the science fair board sparkled in glitter paper wonder, the Christmas diorama sported a battery-operated fireplace and a yuletide sound track, and the oral report on Colonial America was delivered via two hand-made museum-quality puppets of George and Martha Washington.  Fortuitously, she had a virtual warehouse of her kids’ former projects carefully stored in the garage. A local gallery should do a retrospective.

Surveying the arsenal of possibilities, she asked her daughter a question that in my mind should be immortalized:   “So, do you care what your ideal life looks like?”  And Daughter says “nope”.  Mom pulls out a board that one of her sons did in the second grade, exact topic no longer obvious.  But it had a bunch of Styrofoam igloos glued to a board with a lot of white snow around them.  Hard to imagine that a La Jolla born-and-bred child’s ideal life would include living in an igloo and eating whale blubber with no Burger Lounge in sight.  Daughter has to admit that the accompanying paragraph – yes! they did actually have to create prose! - was going to be a tough sell.  So she suggested that Mom could maybe scrape off the snow in one corner and add some sand for a beach.  She ponders this a bit more and adds brightly, “I could say that I like contrasts!  My ideal life is about contrasts!”  As I said, the young lady definitely has a future in politics.

While Daughter went upstairs to wax poetic about contrasts, Mom dutifully set about making little palm trees out of pipe cleaners and green construction paper to stick into the sand to make it look appropriately beachy.  Et voilà!  Or not.

Just in time, Mom notices that in large block letters on the bottom of the board is the name of her older son and the notation “Grade 2”.  Mom set a land speed record to get a can of black spray paint at Meanley’s in the ten minutes before they closed.   One could always have made the argument that one was re-using just the wooden board from a long ago project but I like to think that any teacher worth her salt would have been a tad suspicious about the remarkable coincidence of the “second grade” ID on the bottom in combination with the igloos.  At least I hope she would.  But then, this is a teacher who assigned dioramas as a term project for a high school Advanced English class. 

Ironically, the project they ended up doing would have made an excellent assignment:  Take a previous project and give it an entirely different conclusion.  Anymore, we live in a world of spin.  Never too early to develop the skill. 

By the way:  grade on this project?  B+.  One of the highest grades in the class.  The teacher also gave her an excellent recommendation for college.  Where, I’m hoping, the diorama and flat board projects are in the daughter’s academic past.  But if not, have I got a garage for her.