What Were They Thinking?

If you're looking for an engrossing nonfiction book, you can't beat 'Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition' by Daniel Okrent. I've been curious about how the 18th Amendment came into being. Changing the Constitution is a huge undertaking and Prohibition was more than 50 years in the making yet unwound itself in fourteen years when the 18th Amendment was repealed.

My biggest surprise is how my home state of Ohio was the mothership for the 'dry' movement. The first organized protest against alcohol took place in southern Ohio. The Anti-Saloon League was the major lobby organization with its headquarters in Westerville, Ohio, a Columbus suburb. If this ASL was so influential in early 20th century politics, then why had I never heard of it? Three things came about because of the prohibition movement:

1) Women's suffrage

2) The income tax

3) Anti-German sentiment surrounding World War I

Interested? So is Ken Burns who is doing his own PBS documentary on the topic this fall.

2 Stupid 2 Own A House II

Once again we visit our favorite, clueless homeowners, Linda and Hubby. This week the duo has a list of home problems they do not know how to fix:

• The toilet keeps running (and running, and running)


• The roadside mailbox was plowed down during a blizzard and is now held together with bunge cords


• The still mysterious bathtub does not have a water source they can find (see here for the story)

What will our heros do? Can they ever rise to the simple maintenance challenges of home ownership? Hell, no! The good news is that they haven't learned a damn thing. In fact they are calling The Justice League for the super hero that will save them from disrepair: The Amazing Handyman! And they will pay handsomely for his services.

Hail the handyman! Home morons rejoice.

Home Alone

I was going to use the Macaulay Culkin picture that everyone associates with this flick. But I think John Hughes was really recreating this famous painting by Edvard Munch. So why was I striking this particular pose? Hubby is back home after three weeks on the road. And that requires an adjustment on my part.

Gone are the days of the after-work nap which was just before the popcorn and cereal dinner. Dishes were left in the kitchen sink, sometimes for days. The cat box didn't get cleaned regularly (but regularly enough that the cat didn't move out). The mail piled up. In other words, I lived like a guy. It was glorious and now it is over.

The art you see above is my reaction as the garage door went up and my less-than-stellar lifestyle ended. I'm not home alone anymore. Now we play by the rules of marriage where everyone picks up after themselves and no one behaves like a savage. Ugh. I don't want to be a slob every day, but I really do enjoy being the ugly homeowner every now and then.

Now it's over. Now I have to behave again.

March Sadness

Pitt lost and blew up my Southeast bracket. I didn't see the brilliance of Vandy and Louisville losing in the first (well, officially second) round. It was odd to see Rick Patino as a TV pundit so early in the tournament. In fact I couldn't fathom why he was spouting basketballisms on my TV. Oh, right. Morehead State. Sorry 'bout that.

Every year we do brackets in my department at work. I submit two entries: me and the cat. The cat is currently beating me (and a number of my colleagues).

There is no science to how we choose our teams. This year I did mine before a meeting and kept interrupting to ask for opinions. "Duke or Texas?" "Xavier or Marquette? It's like a battle of the Jesuit Catholic colleges." Fortunately they ignored me, which is nothing new if you've been to our meetings.

The cat decided that the NCAA selection committee was omniscient. He picked by seed and the results have been decent. In prior years he picked by mascot, focusing on bird and cat mascots. That didn't go so well but thinking about the birds had him salivating. He didn't pick Richmond either, mostly because their mascot is a spider. (Not as delicious as a bird.)

Last year the person in our department who knew the least about basketball won it all. Another year someone chose the winning bracket using strictly school colors. "Let's see. You can't have two blue and whites playing for the final. Let's put a red and white in there." This confirms that basketball knowledge has nothing to do with bracketology. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. And that's what makes it fun. Until my Southeast bracket blows up and that makes me grumpy.

Trip to the Vet

Cat in carrier, the one with the jail-like bars over the door, on the way to vet.

MJ the Cat: meowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeowmeow

Translation: I'm being repressed! This is an outrage! I will poop in your shoes as soon as we get home! How dare you confine me in such a way! I have PETA on speed dial!

Once at the vet MJ goes silent.

What he says: nothing.

Translation: Hey, I'm kinda liking this little cottage. The wire door is adorable. Just gonna cozy up back in the corner here. You can't see me if I can't see you, right? No need for me to get out. Forget what I was saying before.

It takes two humans to extract one cat out of the now comfortable abode.

Lesson learned: None. It happens all over again, verbatum, on a subsequent trip to the vet three days later.

Don't get me started on what it took to adminster his medicine. Scarring (mine) was the result.

Le Walk, Le Trip, Le Splat

I’m told that the French find Americans annoying. Not all Americans, I reckon. Just those other Americans: the white tennis shoe-wearing, loud talking, McDonalds-loving Yanks who give the rest of us a bad name.

I politely greet French people with a “Bonjour” and thank them with a “Merci.” I understand their currency (the Euro); I don’t expect them all to know English. Most of all, I don’t want to bring bad attention to myself as an American. If I act like an idiot, I might bring (more) disgrace on my country. This is my thought pattern when I travel abroad: Be respectful. Don’t act like it’s the first time you’ve crossed the Atlantic. And, for God’s sake, don’t give the French another reason to laugh at us.

With that in mind, let me share a moment from my vacation to Nice, France last month.

Scene: My sister, Donna, and I are crossing an intersection on the way back to our hotel.

The action: We are walking past the midpoint of the intersection where there is a minor (very minor) elevation in the pavement.

The result: I fall with a loud splat into the geometric center of the intersection. (Did I mention that the pavement is in pristine condition?) To my left is a handful of French motorists that are either (1) surprised they are getting a comedy show or (2) feeling pretty righteous about all that’s wrong with America. After taking a few seconds to comprehend what I had just done, my sister helps me up and we make our way to the other side of the street.

Did they really know I was American? Maybe not. But the spectacle I made obviously pegged me as someone who was not French. No self-respecting French person would go splat like that.

Splat [noun]. The act of falling on hands and knees in a comedic fashion. See Three Stooges, Jerry Lewis.

The good news was that I didn’t break any bones. But, once back at the hotel, I saw that my knees were badly scraped and bruised. This resulted in a trip to the pharmacy where I asked for ‘le Bactine.’

More than six weeks later the scrapes have not fully healed, nor has my pride. I still wonder how I managed to trip (and fall) over what was no more than a couple extra molecules of pavement. I can only chalk it up to the thrill of being in the South of France. I'm just pleased I could entertain the French on that beautiful January day.

The Vortex of Unconsciousness

See our couch. This is the nicest, priciest piece of furniture we own. We bought it a little more than a year ago to provide a sense of class (and leather) to our living room. The leather is supple and much nicer than we deserve. The only problem was that we didn’t envision the couch with us (and the cat) camped out on it. Night after night. When you think of the aesthetics of furniture, you don’t often picture how you look littered in that image. Look at the blankets and pillows. This is a lived-in couch. Which is part of the problem.

The beautiful sofa of our dreams is also a vehicle that transports us to the land of dreams night after night. By that I mean we can’t stay awake on the thing.

Take Friday night. By 9:00 pm Hubby, me and the cat are lined up in a display of stupor. Much like the victims of Pompeii, we’re almost frozen in time. Hubby is upright, head leaning back with the remote in his right hand. I am wrapped in two blankets and leaning toward him for warmth. MJ the cat is the only one who appeared ready to spend a good, long time camped out on the leather magic carpet, all curled up and cozy like felines do.

Around midnight I stir because my neck hurts. Hubby opens his eyes and gasps that three hours have slipped by. “How did that happen?” he asks. We are astonished that we were so thoroughly knocked out; our slumber so deep that we thought we were tucked in our own bed. Yes, this is an indication that we have no control over our impulse to fall asleep, as if we’ve been drugged (or have a carbon monoxide problem in our house).

Except the exact same thing happened the previous night.

“We have a problem,” I sighed. “We’re in a rut.”

It’s true. After an early evening of dinner and work chat, there isn’t much reason to maintain any sense of alertness. If you can’t fall asleep with your spouse, what’s the purpose, right? Nothing on TV captures our fancy these days. The sky still darkens early. And the power of the couch yet again drains us of all remaining energy. The cat joins in because he long ago got over the fact that one needs to be productive in the evenings.

Daylight savings time begins in a couple weeks. Will we be less likely to slip into the ether? Until the weather warms up I doubt it. So the Rip Van Winkle family carries on. And let me say that I have a better appreciation of that story than I did as a child. The man was a genius. He understood that there are certain periods in life (winter) when it’s best to sleep away time.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does

My IQ has plummeted. Consider the following over the past few days:

• Got a speeding ticket (in a speed trap!) because I was thinking and driving at the same time
• The next day, took Hubby to dinner and cluelessly drove past exit
• At restaurant, got up to use bathroom and walked, with gusto, into the men's room!

"I think I had a mini-stroke," I told Hubby, returning from my restroom adventures.

"I think we should get the check and remove you from public view," Hubby replied. He has not stopped teasing me about the men's room incident. I'm amazed he isn't more concerned about his wife becoming a turnip before his very eyes.

Why am I having these episodes?

A piece of advice. Do not type 'memory loss' into WebMD. Alzheimer's and dementia come up right away followed by 'brain.' WebMD is an amazing tool but can cause a stress-related aneursym if you enter vague symptoms. Instead I used what little brain power I had left to sort through more realistic reasons why my brain was resembling a bag of rocks. (See this link for details about my ongoing problems with antihistimes.)

It's entirely possible that I took one too many Allegra pills. Plus I had allergy shots about the same time. Maybe the combination of a slight antihistimine overdose and the infusion of death-causing allergens was just too much for the noggin. Anyway, I slept it off, skipped the morning Allegra and started to move from amoeba-ness back to human thought patterns.

But Hubby's men's room jokes continue. I see an Allegra-laced cocktail in his future.