A New Car Just Wasn't In The Cards

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published Jan. 2, 2014]  © 2014 

Recently, a friend invited me to go with her for a reading by her psychic.  The friend swears by this psychic-cum-tarot-card reader and insists that she would never make a major move in her life without consulting this woman. 

I hesitated.  I have not had the best luck with tarot card readings.  Shortly after my former husband and I split up, I wandered into a psychic fair at Balboa Park one Saturday and on a whim, since this was such a pivotal point in my life, sat down at the table of a tarot card reader.  He had me pick a card.  It was a horrifying-looking thing, like death, and indeed turned out to be, ja, the death card.  The reader, mumbling something about being “still in training,” quickly shoved it back into the deck, shuffled the pile and had me pick again.  Same card.  Even though I really don’t believe this stuff, I could feel the sweat break out on my forehead.  The reader, noticing my pallor, began quickly muttering about how there were all kinds of deaths, like, ah…ah..

“Relationships?”  I said hopefully.

“Yes, relationships,” he enthused.  I don’t remember anything else he said other than that I am still alive a couple decades later.

A few years into my impoverished new single life, I attended a New Year’s Day party at the home of some friends who are not into the occult, but had hired a tarot card reader, just for fun, to do readings for any guests who wanted them.  At first I demurred.  Wasn’t chancing that death card a third time.

That very same weekend, I had been presented with irrefutable evidence that my clunker car had to be replaced.  To actually fix all that was wrong with it was going to cost at least $4,000.  Did I want to sink that kind of money into a 10-year-old vehicle considering  that the side mirror had fallen off, the ceiling fabric hung down on my head as I was driving (very annoying), the car made a funny thunk noise when you put on the brakes, and the engine looked like it had sustained a fire.  Still, it was right after Christmas and I desperately needed to keep it running for at least a few more months. 

At the New Year’s party, this tarot card reader came complete with a crystal ball which I kind of liked.  I asked, “Can you just look into the crystal ball and forget the cards?”  She said she actually used both.  I was asked to concentrate on the questions I wanted answered as I picked five cards and placed them face down.  I should mention that everyone else who had already consulted the reader had insisted they received only “good” news.  So I was more than a little dismayed when she turned over the first card and frowned.  “This is bad news.”  (Why me?  Why me?)  “This indicates you might be having some serious financial problems this year.”  I needed to hear this on January first?  I was a chronically-destitute single parent.  I could feel the familiar sweat on my forehead. 

Um,” I said hopefully, “my car broke down this weekend and I’m going to have to replace it and I really don’t know how I’m going to afford it.  Could this be what this means?”

She saw how anxious I was.  “Yes, that could be it.  Some big expense you weren’t planning on.”  We both breathed a sigh of relief.  Even so, I wasn’t sure I wanted her to go on to the next card.  But this one was of a nice looking young lady (the Queen of Hearts, I think it was called) and the one after that a nice friendly-looking man (the King of Hearts?) which apparently indicated that I would be much cared for by a certain man and that I would return the feeling.  Couldn’t argue with that. The fourth card indicated that I was perhaps not fulfilling the career choice of my dreams. (Duh. Like I needed tarot cards to tell me that.)  The last card (something to do with coins) showed this nice friendly looking guy with a bag of money indicating that my future beloved was financially better off than I (which in that era would have encompassed 99.9% of the U.S. population.)  

I said, “Does this mean he’s going to buy me a car?”

She said she couldn’t say.  But, she beamed, she thought he might marry me. 

 “That’s nice,” I said.  “But what I really need is a car.”

Ironically, the tarot reader was right.  I did find the man of my dreams (Olof) who was indeed better off than I was and he ultimately married me and bought me a car.  But not for a lot of years after that reading.  Meanwhile, I bought my own car.  Those cards need some work on time frames.

I passed on my friend’s offer of a reading with her psychic.  Too old for the stress, I said.    
 

Imagining Amazon Delivery Drones In La Jolla

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published December 19, 2013] © 2013 

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos recently announced that within four to five years, Amazon packages weighing five pounds or less and being delivered less than ten miles from a distribution center could be delivered aerially by drones, all within 30 minutes of ordering.  Even Bezos conceded that there were definitely kinks to work out with the new vehicles, like making sure they didn’t land on someone’s head. 

I was intrigued by the demonstration video, and given that the US Postal Service hasn’t been able to find my house even after 66 years, enthusiastic.  But I also think La Jolla would have some unique difficulties with this technology. 

First, our community consists of a four mile strip of land running along the coast where there is already some pretty crowded low-flying air traffic in the form of INS, police, and local military base helicopters, not to mention the occasional golf tournament blimp. 

But the real competition for delivery drone air space would, of course, be sea birds.  Hundreds of pelicans endlessly cruise the coastal air currents over our homes, never mind the ever-present sea gulls who are always on the lookout for picnic leftovers.  How happy would they be with a perceived competitor for pizza crusts?  And who would prevail in a gull-drone encounter of the worst kind? Would the drone (with assorted gull parts) come crashing through someone’s roof?  Would the affected homeowner at least get to keep the Amazon item?  These are details Amazon may not have thought through.   But unlike the birds, at least the drone wouldn’t poop on people’s patios. 

Another issue that Amazon may encounter in La Jolla is that the locals are very big on security.  Think of all the La Jolla bastions with gated entrances which require delivery people to be buzzed in.  How do you buzz in a drone?   It had better not even THINK of landing its four little legs inside the gate unannounced. 

Even in less fortress-y homes, La Jollans are nothing if not picky about delivery instructions.  Amazon would be well advised to seek guidance from the long-suffering newspaper delivery folks or risk the wrath of messages like this:  “Your drone dropped my package in the driveway where my wife ran over it with the Lexus.  Please re-send asap and this time leave it on the second step of the front porch AWAY from the sprinklers and NOT on the driveway or in the azaleas!  I think we made this VERY clear!” 
 
Will the drone be trained to avoid the ubiquitous swimming pools of La Jolla homes?  Having to fish your Amazon delivery out of the eight-foot end would be annoying indeed no matter how waterproof those boxes might be. 

Then there’s the issue of dogs.  I think the first time, Winston would run terrified from it. The second time, recognizing a postal carrier in disguise, he’d be trying to tear its little droney legs off.  That drop-off time needs to be two nano-seconds or better.

But I see a far worse threat to delivery drones than birds and dogs:  Kids.  There’s even a historical local precedent for it.  From 1942-45, the U.S. Navy trained some 300,000 gunners at the Anti-Aircraft Gunnery School on the cliffs of Bird Rock.  Among the four types of targets used in training were radio-controlled drone planes made of wood and fabric which, if not shot down, would be brought down by parachute, hopefully landing inside the base. But they often didn’t, and the local kids, standing by with bikes, were on them in a flash, usually stripping the chute, engine, radio gear and even the wings before the Navy guys could show up to retrieve its now-skeletal remains.  It was part sport, part education (some of the kids were trying to acquire enough parts to build their own), and part status, as a shirt made of silk parachute material had a definite cachet at La Jolla High School in 1943. 

It may be 70 years later but teenage boys haven’t changed.  I can already see an eBay market in Amazon drone peripherals.  Competitive teams in Amazon delivery drone captures.  Whole websites devoted to co-opted Amazon drone components.  Best of all, it would be a sport you could do in the privacy of your own home, er, yard, even while grounded for previous drone part  purloinings.  Whatever Mr. Bezos sees as the chief threat to delivery drones, think again.  He’s thirteen years old, and his Mom just ordered from Amazon.

Of course, none of this will matter on Christmas Eve, ironically the busiest night of the year for last minute shoppers, when Amazon will be compelled to ground its entire aerial fleet rather than risk a collision with the ultimate low flier, Santa.  There’d be no recovering from the PR disaster when millions of kids around the globe didn’t get their toys because an Amazon drone took out Rudolph.

 

Two La Jolla youths show off a "found" drone parachute, Bird Rock, 1943

Looking A Gift Grapefruit In The Mouth

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published December 12, 2013] © 2013 

I don’t think anyone would argue with me when I say that the gift-giving season can get totally out of hand.   For years now, I have required the kids and spouses to submit gift preferences for themselves and the grandchildren by EOT (End of Thanksgiving).  I figure that if I’m going to spend all that money and all that time to buy and wrap, it should be something the recipient actually wants.  I go off-list from time to time if it’s something I really think they’d like or if not, can easily return.

My first husband and I used to argue about this as he felt that buying from a list provided by the recipient showed absolutely no imagination and he simply wasn’t going to shop from it.  He is apparently not alone in this philosophy.  Unfortunately, his idea of imagination included tickets to football games, a sport he imagined I’d come to love if I just gave it a friggin’ chance.  (Like THAT happened.)  Never a quick learner, I realized years later that I should have put Chargers tickets on my gift list and made no mention whatsoever of Belgian chocolates.  Dumb, dumb, dumb.

But I have to confess that I’ve given some blooper gifts myself.  When I was eight, my mother, encouraging both creativity and thrift, suggested that I and my siblings (seven and nine) might make craft gifts that year for which she supplied copious quantities of construction paper, fabric scraps, pipe cleaners, ribbon, Elmer’s glue and assorted frills.  The sibs stuck with the program, but I eschewed all this and cleverly made my mother a “stamp book” containing 200 new first class stamps intended for Christmas mailings which I’d found in her desk drawer and which I painstakingly licked with my own pink tongue and pasted on typing paper in fetching patterns.  Ten pages worth.  My mother actually cried when she opened it, but not for any of the reasons I imagined. 

The same year, I made blank scrap books for the relative using two reams of my mother’s expensive rag bond paper, ineptly stapled together, and the words “Scrap book” written on the cover in purple crayon.  You can imagine how thrilled they all were.

After that, Mom, in terror of my creativity, put a padlock on her desk and instead took us to Woolworths, handing us each a red basket, and letting us fill them with gift selections of our own questionable taste.  It was way cheaper than letting me make my own.  I know homemade gifts should be preferable to store-bought ones but I don’t think there was anyone who wasn’t happier with cheapo snow globes than the stuff I made them. 

As an adult, I used to find that sending the aunts and uncles food gifts from Harry and David or Omaha Steaks was usually a pretty safe bet.  I’ve always liked receiving food packages myself.  None of these people were easy to buy for, and they seemed appreciative of my efforts.  All except my retired biology professor maiden aunt in Ohio, an ardent conservationist.  I’ve still got the “thank you” letter I received from her for the package of grapefruits I sent.

Dear Inga:

In our society, why is sex discussable but not Christmas gifts?  Because you are intelligent and mean well, I am rushing off a letter about so-called “food” Christmas gift packages.

 

During the present domination of the Christmas packaging industry by the plastic packaging industry, I object to the use of scarce organic materials for excessive, useless fancy packaging. Again this year, I was inundated with “food” packages.  Your brother’s so-called petit fours were so well packaged that they were not damaged in shipping; paraffin provides great resilience to chocolate.  Your parents generously sent me several packages of fruit.  The apples were very large, uniformly bright red, each individually wrapped and then each in its own compartment in a plastic-formed tray and then rewrapped and well boxed.  They were quite tasteless but looked well in a dish.  The grapefruit you sent were very large and equally well packaged which was not necessary since the skins were so thick that they could have sustained a drop from a considerable height without injury.  Anyhow the seeds were so numerous that the grapefruit were inedible.  A former student sent me a collection labeled exotic fruit jellies.  Each fancy-shaped tiny jar must have contained at least a tablespoonful.  Each little jar was in its own container that was inside another box that was inside its outer wrappings.  All arrived unbroken and all tasted exactly alike, but like what I never could decide.  And another former student…but no, I’ll stop here.  I do appreciate the thought behind it but it seems wasteful in these times.  Would you please remove my name from your list for all future Christmas food packages?

Believe me, it was strictly magazine subscriptions after that.

 

Wishing You A World Of Holiday Cheer

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published Dec. 5, 2013] © 2013 

One problem with being a multi-ethnic household this time of year is that I’m always afraid the Menorah will set fire to the Nativity scene. 

Actually, the even more flammable risk on our mantle is our Swedish julbock, or Yule goat, a straw-constructed figure of pagan origins who was credited with bringing gifts to sleeping children before getting the boot from Santa.   Still a universal symbol of Christmas in Scandinavian countries, life-size or even mega-sized straw julbockar are erected in the town squares of many communities in Sweden.  The town of Gavle, unwisely boasting the tallest one (41 feet), has inspired a quaint Swedish tradition involving attempts by neighboring towns to torch the Gavle Yule goat in the dead of night.  They’ve been successful some 28 times.

Over time, the holiday season in our house has evolved into a multi-cultural multi-belief food fest that has incorporated the Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and other inclinations of the extended assemblage.  For a while, one family member embraced Festivus, the Seinfeld-inspired alternate holiday celebrated on December 23 that rebels against the commercialism of the holiday season and features a plain aluminum "Festivus pole.”  According to Wikipedia, the holiday also features “the labeling of easily explainable events as ‘Festivus miracles’."  I have to say, you do a lot less wrapping.

Multi-cultural holiday celebrations were always a part of my upbringing, and not just because my own parents were of different religions.  My mother taught ESL (English as a Second Language) so we always had a house full of recently-arrived immigrants who my mother was tutoring on her own time, helping them get better jobs, driver’s licenses etc.  She would also teach her students to drive in our car.  I swear she could yell “STOP!” in 15 languages.

In gratitude, her students often bought us wonderful dishes from their native countries, particularly at Christmas, along with tales of their country’s Yule traditions.  I was fascinated from an early age at the variety of ways that people of different lands celebrated the same holiday.  But I was equally fascinated by holidays that weren’t celebrated in my house at all. 

Fortunately, I was able to be included in some of those holidays as I got older.   Jumping at the chance to spend my senior year of high school as an exchange student in Brazil, I was surprised to find a far different and more relaxed version of Catholicism than I’d been exposed to in the States. Stuff you went straight to hell for in my home town was given a free pass in my host country, a serious dilemma given the six-week turnaround time on mail (no international phone service), leaving me to grapple on my own as to whether sin was location-related.  I also took part in Brazil’s decadent pre-Lenten Carnaval extravaganza and even attended a few macumbas (black magic festivals) out in the jungle.  Definitely not in Kansas anymore, Toto, I said to myself at the latter. 

In my first marriage, I had the opportunity to experience the rich oral history of Judaism in which stories are passed down from generation to generation, always accompanied by lots of good food.  I learned to make rugelach, kugel, tzimmes, knishes, latkes, and brisket, and for many years cooked a Seder (Passover) dinner for 20. At my first one, I temporarily forgot why only unleavened bread (matzo) is served and put out a basket of rolls.  (Rookie goy mistake.) 

Olof’s first wife, meanwhile, was foreign-born and exposed him to exotic foods and traditions that he’d never experienced before either.  Olof also had the opportunity to fly around the world as an Air Force pilot and visit many locales large and small (Kwajalein, anyone?).  While our first marriages ended, we look back on the intercultural parts with great fondness and have continued to incorporate those traditions into our current holiday celebrations.  If you can cook it, we’ll eat it.

I’ll have to admit that there were a few tough holiday seasons in there, especially after my first husband and I divorced.  The kids were little and honestly not interested in a lot of exotic holiday fare.  Since it was just the three of us, I let them choose the menu for our holiday meal which for several years consisted, in its entirety, of chocolate mousse and bacon.  By the third one, I determined that cabernet went better with the bacon but chardonnay was definitely preferable with the mousse. 

This year Hanukkah was early (November 27-December 5) in the holiday season, encompassing Thanksgiving.  Our Christmas decorations aren’t even up yet.  But the straw julbock lives on our mantle year round (we’re just fond of him).  Lighting up the Yule goat is one Swedish tradition we have no desire to emulate as it would likely burn our house down as well.  So he’s just going to stay on his side of the mantle.  Waaay on his side of the mantle.
 

**Ruining The Family Recipes

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published November 21,2013] © 2013 

I have plenty of talents and I’m really not a bad cook so I’m not sure why I’ve never mastered baking.  Maybe I gave up too easily when my pies ended up with the lattice crust floating like flotsam on a soupy apple sea.   For years, I did everyone a favor by ordering pies from a local bakery at Thanksgiving until my younger son fortuitously married The Crust Whisperer. 

One of the things I have loved most about my sons’ marriages is being able to incorporate traditions from the daughters-in-law’s families into our own.  My younger son’s wife is from the East Coast so she has spent virtually every Thanksgiving with us even when she and my son were dating.  She is a first-rate cook and baker and her pies have become an essential part of our holiday. 

My mother was a wonderful baker too but died long before I had the opportunity to really watch what she did.  So I was delighted when my daughter-in-law offered to teach me her family’s treasured pie recipes.  I sat in the kitchen and took copious notes as she made the crusts and fillings.  She told me which apples to use, and crust tips like making sure the Crisco and the butter were really cold. 

So the next year, I was deeply honored when she asked if I could make the apple and pumpkin pies from her recipes since she was busy with an infant.  I intended to do her proud.  Just as I go nuts if an editor mangles text that is under my by-line, I knew that these pies represented her family.  If your name is associated with it, you want – nay, demand – that it live up to your standards. 

In retrospect, having my older son, Rory, help me was not the best idea.  While successful in his career, Rory has always had learning disabilities in math which could be problematical in cooking.  It doesn’t help that he tends to confuse the one cup measure for the two cup measure since they are both, after all, glass containers and end in “cup.” 

We didn’t have dry measuring cups.  Now, I was prepared to argue this as a cup is a cup as far as volume is concerned.  Not necessarily in baking, explained the daughter-in-law after the fact.  (She has to be the sweetest, most diplomatic person on the planet.)  They are indeed the same measurement. It is just easier to get an accurate measure of dry ingredients in a dry measuring cup which you fill to the top and level off with a straight edge.  Even small differences can change the outcome of a recipe, especially, she noted, pointedly, in baking.

I still can’t figure out what happened with the crusts.  We genuinely tried.   Rory and I chilled our dough thoroughly, as instructed, before rolling it out.  We dusted the countertop and the rolling pin liberally with flour.  But the crusts would disintegrate when we tried to pick them up, and after repeated re-roll-out attempts – each one less successful than the last – they ultimately Super Glued themselves to the counter surface.  In desperation, we finally just scraped the dough blobs off the counter and pressed them into the pan.  Alas, there wasn’t really enough visible at the top to do any crimping.  In fact, there wasn’t much dough peeking up at all.

The pumpkin pie, meanwhile, inexplicably listed to one side so that the filling was spilling out on one side but not high enough on the other. 

We couldn’t help but notice that there was nothing about our pies that looked anything like her beautiful Sunset Magazinesque versions.  Not to place blame anywhere, especially considering all my own previous failures with pie crusts, but I do think that cup thing was a factor. 

When my daughter-in-law arrived on Thanksgiving morning and surveyed our work, she heroically disguised her dismay. That her name – nay, her family’s name – should be associated with these fruity fiascoes must have cut her to the quick.  But in her inimitable fashion, she thanked us for baking, even gamely downed a piecelet of each that night.  My personal theory is that after dinner, she got in her car, rolled up the windows, and screamed for 40 miles. 

There hasn’t been any mention of my making the pies since then, even though she is now encumbered with two tiny kids. I’m sure she still wrings her hands at the memory and wonders, how can people not follow simple instructions?  Rather than unleash the Crust Killer and the Math Mangler on her recipes again, I think she’d make those pies with the kids strapped to her body, and peel the apples with her teeth.  Even I would have to agree:  if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

Just for the record, I got a set of dry measuring cups for Christmas that year. 

 

Don't Call Us, We Might Call You

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published November 14, 2013] © 2013 

In one of my favorite wishful fantasies, every doctor in La Jolla cold-calls his office and experiences the response a patient gets from his staff.  He’d have to disguise his voice, of course, otherwise they’d be uncharacteristically helpful. 

OK, I realize this is an unfair slam of all medical offices.  In fact, we have been under the care of physicians who actually invite you to contact them by email – and even more incredibly, answer.  We have dealt with doctors’ offices who, when you request a copy of the labs, actually send them.  The first time!  We have interacted with office help who don’t act like your sole purpose in calling is to annoy them and who even get back to you if they say they will.  And to all of these people, we are so grateful we almost cry. No, we DO cry.

With two exceptions, we’ve been lucky to have excellent medical care over the years and the practices we deal with are all busy.  So why do some medical offices work so well and others so abysmally? 

Now, I realize that one of the purposes of front office staff is to run interference for the doctor.  One presumes, in fact, that they are following his or her instructions.  It also seems equally clear in some cases that he has sent them to the Mean Girls School of Medical Office Management where they are taught Surliness 110, Stonewalling 220, Terminal Ennui 330, and How to Frustrate Patients to the Point of Coronary Thrombosis 440.    

A friend of mine uses the wonderfully descriptive term “deafed out” to refer to office staff who, after she had a serious reaction to a newly prescribed drug, failed to ever pass on her messages to the doctor.  They just kept telling her not to worry about it. She finally ended up in the ER. She says she has long suspected that this office works on the premise that if you ignore patients’ calls long enough, they’ll die and stop bothering you. 

Given how often our insurance, and therefore doctors, have changed over the years, we always request a copy of every lab or test result for our records.  Some offices cheerfully hand them over (or post them on a portal).  Others just try to tell you that if you didn’t hear from the doctor, everything must be OK. Um, fine, but I still want a copy.  Others treat lab results like national secrets that pretty much any other person on the planet can see but you. They insist that the doctor has to OK it before they will (never) send it to you.  I’ve spent weeks wringing lab results out of some medical offices.

I think the All-Stars of the We Dare You to Contact Us contest goes to an office at Scripps Memorial.  My primary care doctor referred me there for a consult where merely achieving a human to schedule an appointment took the better part of three days.  Whether the office was open or closed, their line had (count ‘em) eight options, none of which were ever answered by a person.  In fact, even during business hours, I kept getting a message to “please call back during business hours.” 

On the third day, I systematically tried every one of the eight options but got a recording on all of them (even the one for doctors which I confess gave me a certain perverse pleasure).  On Option 6, the authorizations line, a truly crabby troll chastised people for taking up her time by calling,  admonishing them that if it hasn’t been at least two weeks, don’t bother leaving a message.   Good thing I didn’t need an authorization!

Of course, complaining to a doctor about his or her front office staff is fraught with peril. In fact, it’s a total loser.   You thought they were uncooperative before?  I always fear they keep a running list tacked to their phones of patients who will never ever get their lab results even if they call posthumously.  Instead I’ve tried to just praise the heck out of the ones who are helpful – both to them personally and to the doctor.  But it also makes me a little nervous.  You’re worried the doctor is thinking, “Hmmm, Debbie didn’t make these people work nearly hard enough to get in here. Back to the Mean Girls School of Front Office Management for her!”

It may not sound like it, but I actually have sympathy for doctors’ point of view since in my youth, I was married to a physician, and lived through the medical school years, internship, three years of residency, two years of Berry Plan military duty, National Boards Parts I, II, and III, specialty boards, and not a single holiday together until we’d been married five years.
 
It’s a really tough gig.  I know. But it would be really nice if someone just answered your phone.

 

   

Snaking One's Way Through the Marital Mine Field

"Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published November 7, 2013  © 2013 

When my husband, Olof, asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I didn’t hesitate to request a top-of-the-line sewer auger.

Now, this might suggest that the romance has gone out of the relationship or worse, could be considered a dismal metaphorical condemnation of our union.

But no, I really really wanted my very own sewer auger.

We live in a house that was built by the lowest bidder after the war with all non-square corners and apparently without benefit of building materials that had become scarce during The Conflict.  It is our only explanation for the shoddy construction.  An abundance of pipe-invading trees and shrubs, not to mention a decade or so of Lego-flushing kids, kept us on speed dial to our local plumber. 

But often the problem was our kitchen sink which could be cleared ourselves (that’s the royal “ourselves”) with a good sewer auger, which just happened to belong to our neighbors.  They were very nice about lending it to us as needed but after a certain point, I began to fantasize about the luxury of having our own.

You’d think Olof (the “ourselves” mentioned above) would have been deliriously happy with this idea but was instead horrified.  He did not feel that a birthday auger augured well for our marriage. 

“Not a snowball’s chance,” he replied. “Besides, aren’t you the one who complained that your first husband got you stuff for your birthday that was really for him?” he said.

“Yup,” I said, “Skis, and box seats to a Charger’s games.”

“And what happened?” he continued.

“I’m now married to you,” I said.

“Exactly.  It is against the Code of Husbands to get a wife a sewer auger for her birthday,” he maintained. 

“But not if that’s what I want,” I said.  “I didn’t ski, didn’t want to ski, and I hated football.”

“I don’t know,” he said, shaking his head.  “This wife birthday thing is fraught with peril.  There’s nothing more terrifying to a guy except Valentine’s Day.”

“But I’m serious,” I said.  “It would warm my heart the next time the sink backs up on a Saturday night” – it’s always a Saturday night – “that ‘we’ could just wheel in our Ferrari-of-sewer-augers and have at it.”

“This is a second marriage for both of us,” Olof reminded me.  “I like to think I’ve learned something.  Buying a wife a sewer auger for her birthday would be a classic rookie husband mistake.  I once bought my first wife a really expensive vacuum cleaner for her birthday.”

“And what happened?” I said.

“I’m now married to you.”

“Well, I’d consider a vacuum cleaner grounds for divorce too.”

 “OK,” said Olof, “I’m willing to buy you the sewer auger of your dreams but you can’t have it within even two months of your birthday.  So you’re going to have to think of something else.”

 “I also really want a hose caddy.” I suggested.  “The kind that’s mounted on the house that I can just crank up.  The hose on the patio is making me crazy.”

“Inga,” he said, exasperated.  “I can’t get you a hose caddy for your birthday any more than I can get you a sewer auger.”

“Well, I really do need a new salad spinner too. “

“No! NOTHING PRACTICAL!  It’s your birthday!  I have no desire to be married a third time.”

“The hose caddy could be for Christmas,” I suggested.  “Remember, it includes installation.”

“Surely there is something totally frivolous with no practical value that you want?” he implored. 

And that’s how I got a two-pound box of Godiva chocolates for my birthday.  And magically, a deluxe sewer auger, a hose caddy, and a salad spinner appeared from an anonymous donor a few weeks later. 

So bring it on, kitchen sink.  Clog up to your pipe’s content.  We’re ready!