It's In The Bag

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published October 15, 2015] © 2015 

 

Dear grocery store bagger guys:

Could we talk? I mean, this conversation is way overdue. Here’s the problem:  You guys are young and strong. I am not young, and, after having my chest broken by a drunk driver, not strong. It doesn’t matter whether I bring my own re-usable bags or you bag it in the store’s plastic ones, you guys put ALL the heaviest stuff – like both half gallons of milk AND the half gallon of juice – in the same bag. Then instead of putting that bag in the child seat where I might have a fighting chance of wrestling it into the trunk of my car, you stash it under the child seat where I’d need a forklift to haul it out. 

Now, I know the word “heavy” is really subjective. So when I say, “Would you put the heavy bags on top?” I realize that to you, none of them are heavy. Which is why all the heaviest stuff seems to end up in the bottom, or worse, in the rack UNDER the cart.  I really really hate when you do that because I really really can’t get it out of there.

An avid recycler, I initially purchased a bunch of your store’s re-usable bags. But seriously, I could never lift a single one of them by the time you’d finished stuffing the contents of my entire grocery cart into just two of them. Fortunately, I happened to make a donation to the World Wildlife Fund and they sent me four smaller recyclable bags. But it’s still amazing how much stuff you guys can get into even those. Yes, I know you're willing to put the bags into my trunk for me, but I still need to be able to carry them into my house.

I really hate to complain, because you guys are generally adorable. And really trying hard to please. And having to deal with the general public who are going to whine no matter what you do. I’d shoot myself after one day of working in retail. Which is why I’m trying to be really nice about this.

I actually have more sympathy for your job than you know. For two years starting in 2005, my husband and I lived in Sweden. There, you not only bring your own recyclable bags to the supermarket, you bag your groceries yourself.  I didn’t understand that at first, and stood there smiling at the grocery clerk who wasn’t smiling back. Neither was anyone standing in line behind me who were shooting the equivalent of rabid moose darts into the back of my head.

Even after I caught on, I squished a whole lot of groceries in those early weeks.  You really had to be bagging your stuff fast so you wouldn’t hold up the line. Really important not to let the tomatoes get under the laundry detergent. Or the herring either. Really hard to get that herring smell out of your bags. 

But bagging was only the first step. There were still plenty of opportunities to make fruit salad out of your produce before you even got it home. After you bagged, you had to pack it all into your Swedish shopping trolley and wheel it home. Loading your shopping trolley for optimal food survival was an art all in itself.

When we first got to Sweden, I noticed that everyone left their shopping trolleys in the front of the store by the checkout stands while they shopped and but I didn’t want to leave my shiny new one there since I was sure someone would steal it. You just don’t leave anything of value unattended in my neighborhood in La Jolla if you ever want to see it again.

It soon became apparent that the Swedish national ethic frowns on stealing shopping trolleys. I should have known. When we were at a wedding in northern Minnesota (serious Swede country) some time back, Olof and I were aghast to see people leaving expensive fishing gear and bicycles in the parking lot of the motel where we were staying.  Finally we said to the owners of this stuff, “Aren’t you afraid someone will steal it?” And they looked at each other and shrugged, “City folk.” 

But I did become a pro in the field of grocery bagging while we lived in Sweden.  It was a comforting feeling to know that if my boss laid me off while I was gone, I’d be a shoo in to work at Vons.

So I’m way more empathetic to the tribulations of your job than you might realize. So when I ask you to not make any of the bags “too heavy,” I mean no more than one half gallon of any beverage (adult or otherwise) in any bag. And could we spread out the canned goods too?  Maybe give that box of laundry detergent a room, er bag, of its own? 

Or, maybe I should quit whining and bag it myself since I actually know how. Duh.

 

Keeping It Fresh

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published October 8, 2015] © 2015 

When you look at our idea of excitement now, it’s hard to believe that Olof and I met 50 years ago as intrepid 17-year-old adventure junkies spending our senior year of high school in the Amazon.

How times change. This summer, the celebrations we had for both our 20^th wedding anniversary and Olof’s 68^th birthday caused our younger son Henry to drily observe: “Now don’t get too crazy.” 

Henry had tried to talk us into doing something special for our 20^th anniversary. Maybe a trip to Europe, he said. Actually, our celebration stayed a little closer to home. We sat outside in our Adirondack chairs drinking a really nice bottle of champagne, watching the sunset, and reviewing all those betters and worses that we so naively agreed to two decades ago. Then we had an extra-large anchovy pizza delivered to the front yard. It was the best anniversary ever.

The evening satisfied all of our current criteria for a successful celebration:  (1) we didn’t have to get dressed up (2) we didn’t get in the car, and (3) somebody else cooked it. We’re SO easy to please.

Not that this celebration did take at least a little planning. Annoyingly, fewer and fewer places make anchovy pizza anymore. Half the time, it comes with artichokes instead because they didn’t really believe you really wanted what is uncharitably referred to as a “bait pizza.”

Anchovies get no respect. People won’t even let you have anchovies on your half of a pizza, insisting the anchovies will contaminate theirs.  When we order Caesar salad at a restaurant, the waitress will ask if we want anchovies, already noting “no” when we respond “heck yes!” (Somebody has to eat up all those dusty cans of fish that restaurants keep around just in case.) Finding – and even better, marrying – a fellow anchovy lover has been one more plus in a long list of compatibilities.

A few weeks after our anniversary was Olof’s 68th birthday.  When asked what he wanted to do for the occasion, he replied "bake a cake,” something that has been on his bucket list for a while. Mostly I think he wanted to haul out the Lamborghini of stand mixers (it even grinds meat!) he bought to make cookies for my book launch last December. Olof has baked exactly twice in his life: the first time two years ago to try to recreate his family’s Christmas cookie recipes from his childhood, and the second time to make cookies for my book event.

The Christmas cookies resulted in a column called “How an engineer makes cookies” that won a first place at the Press Club awards. Olof baking has to be seen to be believed. The spreadsheets! The flow charts! A re-formulation of the recipe into engineer-speak with headings like “Integration of Components.”  Who knew a degree in nuclear physics could have such practical applications?

Of course, his other motivation in baking a cake was that he wanted a chocolate cake that included raisins – impossible to find unless you bake it yourself. My dear friend Susan perfectly expressed my sentiments about raisins in chocolate cake:

As much as I am a "live and let live", freewheeling kind of gal, I'm afraid I too must draw the line at chocolate cake with raisins.  My position is that the raisins are taking up valuable real estate better served by, say, more chocolate.  Replace the raisins with chocolate chips and we've got a date.  

After considerable research, Olof modified an Ina Garten recipe to his specifications which in this case included the addition of TWO CUPS of raisins. I thought it came out beautifully (if seriously raisin-y).  I always take a photo of Olof holding his birthday cake that indicates how old he is. This year, just to add a little hilarity, we switched the candles around for some of the photos to say 86 instead of 68. We’re such cut-ups. Laughed ourselves silly. This is where the kids start rolling their eyes. Sorry kids: fun is where you find it.  We all have to keep it fresh in whatever pathetic ways we can.

Amazingly, Olof made this first-ever cake totally on his own with only a couple of minor assists from me, like How to Turn On The Oven. Nuclear reactors are a cinch compared to the controls on our massively-nonintuitive stove. The only person who can figure it is our tiny granddaughter, who turned off the Thanksgiving turkey two Thanksgivings in a row. 

It’s still a few months until my 68^th birthday where we’ll probably have a celebration of a similar type. Maybe go wild and crazy and order in Chinese food. But as far as our anniversary and Olof’s birthday celebrations are concerned, for the moment we’ve had all the excitement we can stand.

Seriously raisin-y cake



You're Not The Dalai Lama

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 24, 2015] © 2015 

I was hugely dismayed to walk into a local doctor’s office recently and see the following sign:

Please be advised that your waiting time could be extensive. If you are unable to continue your wait, please let the receptionist know and she will reschedule your appointment. Thank you for your understanding and patience as the doctor takes the time to provide excellent medical care to all.

Here’s the translation:

We make absolutely no effort to schedule in any meaningful way or to respect the time and comfort of our patients. Be prepared to sit here all afternoon because we have egos the size of Connecticut and think the sun rises and sets on our board certified tushies. Should you get so fed up that you leave, our hostile office staff will assure you that the same thing will happen the next time so you might as well suck it up and stay since you’ve already paid for parking.  Regardless, we’re keeping your co-pay.

They weren’t joking about the “extensive.” Sorry, guys: this is ridiculously bad management disguised as dedicated health care. All medical offices – in fact, anyone in a field that books appointments – has to figure out appropriate scheduling. Failing to even try is just rude and disrespectful. What part of the word “appointment” do you not get?

A glutton for punishment, I confess I had actually had contact with this group once before in 2012. My then-primary care doctor had referred me there for a consult but merely achieving a human to schedule an appointment took some 14 phone calls over three days. 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 hadn’t been at least two weeks, don’t bother leaving a message.

On my first appointment there in 2012, I waited a little over two hours in a waiting room that was so packed that people – elderly people – were standing. When I came back to review my test results, I waited an hour and forty minutes. I refused to come back a third time.

 

So what possessed me to go back there again? My new primary care doctor wanted me to have another consult with a different doctor in this group. Please note that there are no lack of doctors in this specialty in La Jolla. (These folks must throw one helluva Christmas party.) When I called, sure enough, I got voice mail. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. But in fairness, I would like to note that their voice mail now sports a less cranky troll who notes that if has been less than 14 days for an authorization, “please be patient.” They still don’t want you to leave a message, but the delivery is a ton better.  Sometimes that all you can hope for in a doctor’s office, that they’re less rude than they used to be.

Having decided that I would call these people only once, I was about to search out a different specialist the next morning when an actual human returned my call from the day before. The prompter response gave me hope that they had changed in the last three years. But then I arrived and saw the sign.

Now one might think that the right approach would be to come at least an hour late. Don’t even think it. They are clear that they expect you on time even if they aren’t.

I had the prior week’s New York Times crossword puzzles in my purse in case I had to wait. I checked in and filled out all the usual insurance and medical history forms clearly indicating why I was there. Before they called my name, I still had time to do the Saturday crossword which, I may say, is usually a bear.

I was encouraged when I was taken to an examining room and told that the doctor would be “right in.” “Right in” in their world turns out to be a half hour and I had done the Friday puzzle and started on the Thursday.

When the doctor arrived, he asked me why I was there (um, it’s on those forms I filled out) and when I told him, he handed me a brief questionnaire asking me to check which of the following 10 symptoms I had. I quickly checked off the five that applied to me and handed it back.  “No,” he says, “I want you to really look at it.  I’ll be right back.”

“Right back” meant going to see another patient. In the meantime, I managed to finish the Thursday puzzle and even start on the Wednesday.

The doctor reappeared and we reviewed my case. Then he stands (bad sign) and heads for the door. “Let’s have you take off your shoes and socks,” he says. My shoes were slip-ons.  “Ready!” I chirped, hoping to forestall his exit.  But he’s already gone to see another patient.

Unfortunately, the earlier-in-the-week puzzles are a lot easier and I finished both Wednesday and Tuesday, now finding myself staring at the walls.  That’s when I noticed the sign on the cabinet:

If you have ANY medical problems after your appointment or if your condition worsens, call immediately and make an appointment to see the doctor. 

Of course, the worsening of your health was probably caused by the 200 point increase in your blood pressure from sitting in their waiting room all afternoon.  I love the idea that you’re supposed to call. Except, of course, that they don’t answer their phones. By the time  they responded, you’d already be embalmed and on display at your local mortuary.

In fairness, did I feel I got a good, if installment-driven, medical consult? Check. Was he nice? Double check. Go back again? Not on your life. Because no routine doctor’s appointment should take five puzzles.

 

 

 

The Perfect Teacher

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 17, 2015]  © 2015 

I don’t think there is a parent out there who wouldn’t agree that if there’s a good teacher-child fit, the school year flies by. A bad fit and it’s a long year indeed.

I should probably interject that there might not be anything wrong with the teacher other than that she doesn’t like your kid. As hard as it is to accept, your child may be a total pain.

You try to work with the teacher, of course. But at what point do you decide that it’s time to try to change classrooms, or even schools? A friend’s free-spirited child pretty much had his tushie firmly affixed to The Bench at his tightly-wound local private school. In fact, we heard so much about that time-out bench that it became incorporated into our lives as well. (“Olof,” I’d say to my husband, “do that one more time and you’re going to The Bench!”)  Ultimately, she moved him to public school where he thrived.  

It’s a fine line between trying to make everything perfect for your child versus concluding that the kid is just going to have to suck it up.

And that doesn’t change after elementary school.

My older son, Rory, was either adored or hated by his teachers. He had a teacher one year named Mr. Munzer who truly brought out the best in him, made him excited about learning, or even more, about behaving. At the time, I would have liked to have cloned Mr. Munzer and had him teach Rory for life. But that’s just not the way life works and it’s probably for the best. Rory would have missed a lot of life lessons along the way. Like, for example, what happens when you drive to berserkness someone who has power over your grades.

I’ve written quite a bit about Rory who could best be described as a parental terrorist in training. There was nothing he enjoyed better than getting an adult – parent or teacher – totally wound up.

When Rory was in eighth grade, all the kids were required as part of their PE class to run around the track within a certain time limit. Rory never quite made the grade (but not for any lack of physical ability). The PE teacher, whom Rory decided to target, decided she would make Rory her personal project, working with him every day after school.  As she told me at the time, she wanted every child to succeed.

Okay, maybe not this one. About three weeks into this endeavor, I picked up my phone at work to hear a woman screaming “I HATE your child! I have NEVER hated ANY child as much as I HATE your child!!!” I was hoping it was a wrong number but alas, I knew just which child she was referring to. It had taken her that long to realize that Rory, in collaboration with his digital watch, was running around the track precisely two seconds slower every day just to annoy her. You could be a quadriplegic and get an A in PE at this school. But she threatened to give Rory the first F in the school’s history.

I know some parents feel that their child’s teacher has it in for the kid, but I’ve always felt that if a teacher called me at home or the office, it wasn’t because they didn’t have anything else to do.

 I rarely heard from a teacher about my younger son, Henry, who was always a dedicated student and athlete. But in the spring semester of Henry’s senior year of high school, I got a call from the AP Physiology teacher who reported that she didn’t like his attitude. Actually, I didn’t like his attitude either. In fact, I didn’t much like HIM at the time. That spring, his spirit had already left for college but his body had to remain behind. I don’t know who suffered more.

Now, Henry had logged ten AP classes during high school and captained two sports teams so nobody could accuse him of being a slacker. Discussing the situation with him that night, he complained that the teacher was terrible; she had them coloring in diagrams of organs. Total waste of time, he protested. OK, sounded totally lame to me too. 

I had logged a lot of hours in the employment world by that time, 12 of them as a single working mom after my divorce from the kids’ father. I told Henry to think of this course not as the study of physiology but as an exercise in getting along in the real world. If he could master this, his future work life would go much smoother. You only have to deal with a teacher for an hour a day for nine months, I noted. In the work world, your boss might be having you do idiotic assignments for years at a time. You only have two more months with this lady until you graduate. Unless, of course, she gets so annoyed that she fails you in which case you won’t. Then you’ll be here for another year or until one of us kills the other. So figure out a way to do what she asks so that she’s not calling me again which I told her to do if you don’t shape up fast. 

I think it might have been the most important course he took in high school. 
 

Adventures In Babysitting

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 10, 2015] © 2015 
 

Recently, we spent four days in L.A. babysitting our grandchildren – 5, 4, and 14 months – paroling our son and daughter-in-law for a much-needed get-away.  Overall it went well. There were, however, three heart-stopping episodes but fortunately nothing that could not be resolved by either (1) acetone (2) phenobarbital or (3) the realization that the house wasn’t on fire after all.  

Fortunately, we were provided the assistance of a babysitter as Olof and I were clear that we were not up to the task on our own. Each of those kids has more energy than Olof and I have combined. Further, the 14-month-old, like all of his ilk, is positively drunk with happiness at his new mobility and makes a break for the nearest object of peril the second you take your eyes off him. He needed one-on-one.

And so we arrived in L.A. with our dog Winston. Now, you may remember that Winston is actually their dog but he has spent so much time at our house that in January we took official ownership of him. Our son and daughter-in-law adore Winston – he was their wedding gift to each other eight years ago – but like most English bulldogs of his age, Winston has developed increasingly serious and time-consuming medical problems. 

Concurrent to Winston’s health woes, my daughter-in-law and two friends started a YouTube channel for moms with young kids that has been so successful that it has been featured on Good Morning America and the Today show; their thrice-weekly video site has 15 million views a month. They are delighted, of course, but my daughter-in-law’s overstretched life could no longer accommodate urgent veterinary appointments with three tots in tow. 

Now, normally the older kids would have had summer activities for part of the day but these had mostly ended. So we arrived with plenty of projects planned. We made homemade slime (borax, Elmer’s glue), planted herbs in little pots, read tons of stories, watched all manner of endearing theatrical performances, mediated the usual number of “He’s being mean to me!” altercations, tried to explain that in checkers you either have to use the red squares or the black squares but not both, and otherwise enjoyed our time with them. 

At 5 a.m. the second morning we were there, however, there was a sudden loud blast from the smoke alarm in the hallway right outside the kids’ bedrooms. Let me tell you, that will get your adrenaline going. Fortunately, the blast stopped as quickly as it started. There was no smell of smoke, and we recalled that our smoke alarms had occasionally, maliciously, done this as well. It’s like smoke alarms get bored and decide to toy with you.  (It’s not the same noise as the low battery indicator water-faucet-torture beep that smoke alarms make - also maliciously - at night.) But anyway, false alarm – but no coffee needed THAT morning. We were seriously awake. 

The second night we were there, after everyone had gone to bed, I was horrified to find Winston having a seizure. Fortunately, my arsenal of Winston medications included some doggie phenobarbital that my daughter-in-law had bequeathed me. Since Winston has only ever had a seizure at his L.A. home and not ours, he had obviously become sensitized to something at their house during the last two years while he was mostly living at ours. 

Now, Olof and I had to concede that a seizure for either human or canine was not an altogether inappropriate response after a day with three kids five and under. But the kids are incredibly gentle with Winston and there are plenty of places in the house he can escape. My theory? The L.A. folks eat mostly organic and use all green cleaning products. Maybe it’s too much of a shock for Winston’s aged immune system to go from our house where we don’t eat organic and the cleaning products are toxic. Definitely a puzzle. 

On the third day, the two older kids were giving me a mani-pedi while Olof was on toddler-stalker duty. Granddaughter accidentally knocked over the whole bottle of Mommy’s special bright red nail polish on the light colored kitchen floor. When the sitter tried to clean it up, it only succeeded in expanding it onto a nine inch diameter red blob which was impervious to kitchen cleaning products. We Googled “nearest hardware store” and dispatched Olof to acquire acetone and Magic Erasers which fortunately did the trick. Whew! That one was going to be hard to explain to Mommy! And if she asks if I’ve seen her red nail polish, I’m going to plead the fifth.

So: Mom and Dad are back home, we and Winston are back home, everyone survived, and a good, if exhausting, time was had by all. Now Olof and I are thinking of our own four day retreat. We’ve earned it. 

Manicure by four-year-old

 Winston as a gift pup (6 weeks old)

Technodespondence

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published August 27, 2015] © 2015 

There are infinite numbers of things that can go wrong with your computer. And Microsoft thinks of new ones every day.

I have a personal hate-hate relationship with all things technical which includes computers, software, cell phones, and the entire workforce of Time Warner Cable. I am suffering from serious technodespondence.

I really don’t do anything that weird.  I’m very careful about what emails I open, have good virus protection, rarely sext, don’t do social media or download videos.  So it is truly unfair that I’m dealing with as many techno problems as I am.

 

Even ten years ago, if your computer was working fine on one day and you didn’t mess with it, it would be working fine the next day too.  Not anymore. 

Unsolicited updates (that would be you, Microsoft) and undesired upgrades (Internet Explorer anyone?) are the curse of the modern world. They guarantee that whatever worked before will never work again.

 

For example, all of a sudden these red circles with white exclamation points started appearing on my desktop files.  Not a good sign. Many aggravating hours later, it turned out that I needed to go to McAfee, my virus protection software, and select Disable Icon Overlays in Windows Explorer.  But I never enabled them in the first place!  Turns out to be some stupid McAfee upgrade that I didn’t ask for that alerts you that this file is not backed up. Like, I need to be tortured by my own virus software?

 

On my iPhone, I accidentally upgraded to iOS7. I began to notice that I was missing most of my calls – it often wasn’t ringing even when I was holding the phone in my hands.  My daughter-in-law finally explained that iOS7 had activated “Do not disturb,” as an “upgrade” (hah!  HAH!) that keeps your phone from ringing if you’re in “sleep mode” (which apparently happens after you haven’t used the phone for about seven seconds).  Of course, I didn’t actually activate it because I had never heard of it, wouldn’t know how to activate it and didn’t want it in the first place.  Because it was eating all my calls!  Worse, it kept coming back! A stealth app.  Gaaahhh!

 

On-line “Help”, alas, doesn’t speak English.  (Actually, human help usually doesn’t either.) You have to know what you did to undo it.  (See “icon overlays,” above.)

 

For most new software, there IS no tech support (we’re talking about you, Google), other than “community groups” for which you are depending on the kindness of totally inept strangers. My experience with community groups is: 

(1) nobody answers your question

(2) lots of people answer your question but none of the solutions help

(3) I can’t understand any of the solutions

(4) the solutions will mess up my computer to the point that the original problem will seem insignificant.

 

Change one little thing on your computer and it’s like the butterfly in Australia that flaps its wings and causes tornados in Kansas.  Trying to fix it changes enough things to add monsoons in Asia. 

I have a mug that says “The chief cause of problems is solutions.”  I believe it fundamentally.

Error messages, meanwhile, are a cruel psychological test. The one thing you can be assured of is that whatever it says is NOT the actual problem.

It goes without saying that if Olof crumps before I do, I’m going to have to throw myself on top of his coffin and let them pile dirt on top of me. This is my worst fear, being left alone with my electronics. Every new appliance we get is more terrifying than the last.  In my nightmare Olof-less world, the grandtots mess up the remote and I never watch TV again.  Because who do you get to fix that stuff?  Messed Up Remotes R’ Us?  THIS, unemployed twenty somethings, is the career of the future. 

 

I just can’t keep up.  I don’t WANT to keep up.  I just want everyone to leave my electronics alone.  I don’t want those 22 Microsoft “Updates” to automatically upload (download?) on my machine when I go to turn it off. I know for a fact that there are evil forces contained in them.

 

And I want to opt out of all cloud-related activities.  Sunshine only!  I want messages that go from here to there without stopping on some intermediary planet. 

 

If I were president, I would make it a law that no software can be released that isn’t supported by actual humans who:

 (1) answer within 15 minutes

(2) can speak English understandable by 95% of native English speakers (meaning no one from either India or Alabama)

(3) actually understand the product.

 

If software should be introduced without tech support:

First offense: $1,000
Second offense: eight billion dollars
Third offense:  hanging

I’m serious.