COLLEGE SHOCKER: Duke Dancer is a Student

According to the Duke Chronicle, the university's campus newspaper, the woman who was allegedly assaulted by members of the men's lacrosse team is a college student herself.

In this blame the victim world we live in, does her status change for you -- now that we know that she not only dances, but she matriculates at a place of higher learning?  I have the feeling that officials at her university are embarrassed that one of their students has put the spotlight on the school in such an unfortunate way.

But people who were willing to condemn her for stripping and blame her for causing her own sexual assault are perhaps less judgmental, now that they know she was dancing to pay for a degree in say, marketing and communications. Or to pay for room and board in a campus dorm somewhere.

She is reportedly a co-ed at North Carolina Central University, the other school in Durham, NC.  The one you never hear about.  NCCU has over 8,000 undergaduate and graduate students. Duke has around 12,000.

One is predominantly white. The other, predominantly black. If you think diversity has taken hold in this former tobacco town, you would be mistaken.

What is surprising is the restraint the local Durham papers are using to keep the story off their front pages -- at least online. There are those who would like to make this incident a race issue, when it's probably just another example of the historically abusive behavior exhibited by male athletes of any race toward women.

Geraldo at Large, the last show I expected to do anything but sensational reporting about the controversy, interviewed a psychiatrist who specializes in male aggression. He pointed out that the number of assaults, sexual and otherwise, on college students is generally very low among the college population as a whole. But the percentage of those assaults by athletes is very high.

Charlie Rose was in the KA fraternity at Duke. They had a reputation for being an animal house. Maybe he'll interview Duke's president and have some pseudo-intellectual discussion about the role of stupidity in the decision making of spoiled scholarship athletes, when confronted with a person removing her clothes. Then they can compare and contrast pole dancing with dancing around the Maypole. Duke is nothing if not full of itself.

When I was a sophomore, a freshman I knew came to me with a stunning revelation.  She described how two clean cut, well-liked fraternity guys I knew -- one of whom was a baseball player -- had invited her out to a cabin for a picnic and raped her. 

This was before rape kits, rape counseling, DNA testing, or anything was available to help a young woman deal with a sexual attack. Especially by people she knew. I had no idea what to tell her to do. So it went unreported.

That was forty years ago. If there has been only one unreported campus rape per year since then, Duke could be up to forty by now -- and counting. 

Perhaps the Duke lacrosse team can become the poster boys for all the arrogant and unrepentant college males who think that their status on campus gives them permission to forcibly take sexual liberties with a woman, if she won't give them up freely.

However, that won't happen. Scholarship athleties, particularly talented ones on a nationally ranked team live in a protective cocoon. Short of a miracle, or positive DNA tests, no one on the lacrosse team will suffer so much as a hang nail for their inappropriate behavior, which started with hiring a woman to strip. 
That decision alone should be grounds for the whole team to be declared ineligible to play for the rest of the season.

Relax. It won't happen. Trust me. Nothing is going to happen. In fact, even if Duke announces that something is going to happen, it won't happen. Or it will look like it's happening and when the reporters and photographers leave, it will stop happening.

There is too much money and power at Duke between the university officials, parents and alums for this to become anything but an exercise in futility for the young woman who was brave enough to bring charges -- something she did with the tacit blessing of every other victimized college woman who has stayed silent out of fear.

And you thought lacrosse was a sissy sport. 

Insullated

Last night as I was driving home from a class I'm taking, there was a discussion on the radio about Chicago tycoon, Samuel Insull, and his relationship, or lack thereof, with Charles Yerkes, another Chicago tycoon.

Samuel Insull was either one of Chicago's great civic heroes or one of its most notorious robber barons.  It depends on which side of his tracks you were on.

My grandfather was a vice president of one of Insull's many holding companies, which were basically part of a utilities holding company pyramid scheme to create the appearance of financial stability in his power company empire.

Grandpa was making ten thousand dollars a year in the '20's, according to my aunt. Depending on who you consult, in today's money that could be anywhere from $200,000 to $500,000 a year.

Which was all well and good for my dad's family, until 1929, when everything collapsed. And my grandfather was out of a job at thirty-nine. My aunt said they could have papered the bathroom with all the useless stock they held.

Fast forward to the end of the twentieth century when I find myself working at a large multinational advertising agency.  And one of the top executives in my office is someone who went to the same high school I did.

My daughter and his daughter meet in nursery school and become good friends.  

And then one day, out of the blue, there is a discussion about how deep our roots are in Chicago. And it turns out that the guy whose daughter is a friend of my daughter's is a grandson of Samuel Insull, the man whose financial schemes left my grandfather virtually penniless until he died very young, at fifty, not too long after the original Insull himself.

So the man that left my father without any money for college so he had to work his way through one course at a time. . . The man who probably shortened my grandfather's life, along with the cigars he used to smoke. . .The man who left such an indelible impression on my father's psyche that he never invested a dime in the stock market his whole life, which has had its effect on me. . .

That man's great granddaughter was now playing Barbies with my daughter.  I had to admit there was a certain symmetry.

I couldn't leave well enough alone, however. Nope. No stone cold opportunity to say something outrageous could be left unturned.

I looked at him and blurted, "Ah. Your grandfather is the man who destroyed my grandfather."  He just looked at me the way people do when they wish you hadn't just said whatever it was you just said. But he took the high road and said nothing.

He did the right thing, of course. Unlike me. But it wouldn't have been me now, would it?  Then again. my sudden outburst may have just been my grandfather getting in his two cents worth while channeling through his smartass granddaughter.

Amazing how handy tapping into a new age excuse can be.

THANK YOU NICOLE!!!

This is just one of the wonderful photos Nicole found for me. THANKS AGAIN!!!  I'm having trouble creating a link to her new journal so here's her URL for now:

http://journals.aol.com/nikg2005/Howthingschange/

WARNING:  Cute baby alert -- she has four children and the pictures to prove it.

Got Any Pictures of London Architecture?

My younger daughter needs a picture of London architecture for an invitation. Something black and white or a color photo that would look good in black and white. This is a picture I took a couple of years ago from up in THE EYE, the giant ferris wheel on steroids that sits on the edge of the Thames. 

This picture of Parliament and Big Ben has a pointilist quality to it thanks to the gray day and the rain drops on the window of the car we were in. I kind of like it, but I don't know if she does. 

Meanwhile I've scoured Google Images, but nothing yet. And stock photos, but they want your first born to use one of their pictures. 

Any thoughts?

"WINGGIRL NEEDED FOR INTROVERTED GUY IN BARS"

Mrs. Linklater loves to peruse Craigslist.  She found this ad under ETC.  Where was this guy when she was hanging out in those fern places back in the Jurassic era?


Here's the deal: I don't want to date you, have sex with you or even kiss or hug you.

[WHAT EVERY WOMAN WANTS]

I want you to hang out with me at bars and talk me up to other girls so I break the ice with them. Whenever I'm out with platonic girlfriends, random girls feel so much more comfortable in talking to me.

[ARE YOU SURE THEY'RE TALKING TO YOU AND NOT EACH OTHER?]

Ideally I'd like 2 or 3 winggirls. The only requirements are that you are attractive and personable. Age doesn't even matter, so long as you're over 21. I'm 27, 5'9, 135 lb; but even having an attractive confident 40 yr old talking me up would be superb.

["YO, ALL YOU SINGLE BABES, SHORT STUFF HERE IS LOOKING FOR LOVE."]

Total anonymity is guaranteed. I'll give you my cellphone number and home address so you know my details; but I don't need to even know your last name. We'll arrange by email or cellphone to meet in a bar, and at the end of it I'll pay you $45/hr.

[WHEN DOES THIS EXCHANGE TAKE PLACE? AT THE BAR? DO I NEED TO PROVIDE AN INVOICE? DO YOU OFFER HEALTH BENEFITS?]

If there's anything I can do to make you more comfortable in doing this, I'm all open to ideas. Obviously I'll pay for all drinks, tips, meals, concert tickets, etc.

[HOW ABOUT HAIR AND MAKE UP AND A COUPLE OF OUTFITS?]

edit: (added Sunday) I've thought more about the compensation, and in addition to the $45 / hour, am adding a bonus. If I meet a girl through you who I end up going on at least 5 dates with, I'll give you $1000.

[HOW  WILL I KNOW YOU'VE BEEN ON FIVE DATES? AFTER YOU'RE ARRESTED FOR STALKING?]

Blogspot Alert

Mrs. Linklater has posted a couple of entries over at her other place, including the Rutabaga Rules.

http://askmrslinklater.blogspot.com/

JUMP START

Maybe what I need to do is to drive around in a sports car with the top down for a week or two.  My hair blowing in the wind, the sunshine on my face. Or I could do Patrick's Saturday Six.  Hmmmm.  It's still a little chilly. How bout the Six?

1. How confrontational are you in real life, and how does your real-life persona compare with your blogging persona? 

In real life I have learned I can be confrontational without meaning to be confrontational. No, really, I didn't mean that you're a total jerk in a bad way. I meant it in a good way. My personality in real life is actually much less edgy than it is here. Here I kick ass and take names.  In real life, I don't take names.

2. Other than the food itself, what makes your favorite restaurant your favorite? 

There's a great breakfast place near a production house I use. The city's 911 center is across the street so there are always lots of cops in there. And the owner is very funny. Once a businessman brought some friends in to enjoy the food. He said hello to the owner, who immediately fell on the floor screaming. While he was on the floor writhing around in an Oscar worthy performance, a bunch of police officers, who were leaving, made a special point of stepping on him as they exited the restaurant.  That's my kinda comedy.

3. You buy an iPod: what's the first tune you're likely to put on it? 

Depends on what genre I'm in the mood for. Maybe I'd upload some of my commercials.  Haaaaaaaa.

4. Take this quiz (if you haven't already!): What's the most important quality of your (ideal) significant other?

Intelligence is most important in a boyfriend/girlfriend. You like to be able to talk about everything that is on your mind, and if your partner can't keep up, well, you know. You are very attracted to someone who can challenge you, and make you see things in a whole new way.

5. If you had to choose one or the other, which would you rather do: hear gossip or be the first to reveal some juicy piece of gossip? 

Hear it. With my luck I'll be sworn to secrecy next.

6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #85 from Barb: If you had a magic feather (my Daddy Do carries several in his pocket) and this magic feather could make you unbelievably attractive OR unbelievably intelligent, which would you choose, and why? 

Being smart. Because the satisfaction that comes from being intelligent is something you can feel inside. How attractive you are is usually someone else's opinion.

 

ENNUI

Is there anyone who doesn't want George-Mason University to win it all? Do you believe in miracles? Do you know what I'm talking about? 

The only one of my Final Four picks that made it was UCLA. And I thought I'd picked Memphis in that bracket. So I was grateful when I discovered otherwise. Haaaaa. Meanwhile, I picked Villanova to take it all. So I'm busted. Now I can root for GMU all the way.

I don't feel like writing much right now -- so here's some of the stuff I wrote for Judith Heartsong's essay contests. That was usually the only time I tried to make sense when I wrote. Needless to say, I really miss those monthly competitions since she went to Blogspot. I'll post one and add them as quickly as I can do the links.

NEW ADDITION: THE ONE THING I WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT ME
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/2154

YOU'VE GOT MALE
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/2094

HOW ART HAS INFLUENCED MY LIFE [My first entry in the contest]
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1241

MY MOST MEMORABLE AUTUMN
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1333

MY BEST CHRISTMAS EVER
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1505

THE ASSIGNMENT FOR THE RUTABAGA RULES -- the essay I won
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1844
THE RUTABAGA RULES
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1845

I BELIEVE
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/2033

This one wasn't done for the contest, but it's still kind of amusing I think
BAG LADY WITH A BABY
http://journals.aol.com/jevanslink/AskMrsLinklater/entries/1576

Pizza Party

Come on over for pizza was the invitation. What does that conjure up in your mind? A seat in front of a huge TV, a coffee table and its enrivons obscured by a gaggle of cardboard boxes, empty beeer bottles standing sentry on the floor, and crumpled up paper napkins stained with tomato sauce?

Well, you haven't been to a pizza party with older women, those rare females who remember when the act of wearing white gloves, a hat and pearls was more than just a Halloween costume.

Despite efforts by a wily Y chromosome to be the fox in the henhouse, the group remained unpenetrated by boy germs throughout the evening. Scissors cuts paper, paper covers rock, testosterone overwhelms estrogen [the two drops left]. The "girls" would have reverted to old behaviors, i.e., flirting, so no boys allowed.

Everyone gathered in the living room prior to game time for conversation and a designer plate of gaily arranged Carr's table water crackers, surrounded by slices of imported brie [which I guess is redundant, but I couldn't help myself], accompanied by a bowl of deliciously seasoned gourmet peanuts and another of sweet grape tomatoes for those with health requirements. And for your beverage of choice, a Waterford or Riedel glass.

How was your day? the hostess inquired. Old habits die hard, or take on an ironic twist. That classic query, asked by a woman who knew what it was like to stay home, raise children, and bring meat, potatoes and a smile to the table at the end of the day, elicited a flood of complaints foreign to most men. 

Changing hair color, getting new hairdos, and caring for an elderly parent topped the charts. Struggling with the vagaries of a digital camera caused one technically challenged senior citiizen [that's also redundant] more than a little consternation.

Enthusiasm for the teams was mixed, with the oldest guest lamenting the loss of the "short shorts" that were replaced by those long and baggy things ushered in during the Michael Jordan era, itself almost a generation ago. A return to those halcyon days of yesteryear and she might consider becoming a real fan once again.

Joining the group before we adjourned to the "game" room were two small dogs, the hallmarks of any older female gathering, providing the entertainment that small children usually offer. Several times the little poochies were scooped up for hugs and loves, while they worked the room like furry dustbusters vacuuming up whatever crumbs might have dropped on the floor.

Preparations for the pizza and a salad to accompany it were underway with the lighting of the oven. The very thought of serving, let alone preparing a salad is an anathema to most pizza party hosts. The hostess excused herself to lay out the buffet, joined by a volunteer sous chef who offered to contribute her culinary skills to insure the success of the fresh greens.

Finding comfortable spots in front of the TV, our feet warmed by the Persian rug, the rest of us chatted merrily about the tournament so far. Finding out that Gonzaga was not the name of a famous Indian chief was a revelation to some. Noting the football player size of the entire Boston College team caused some admiring gasps in others. The more knowledgeable among us explained the intricacies of telling the difference between home and away teams, while the neophytes guessed what the teams' initials meant.

Dinner was served. The mere announcement adds a grace note of decorum don't you think? Okay it was frozen pizza from Costco, but the buffet was pure Martha, with lovely Italian earthenware, cloth napkins, real, not plastic, flatware, a delicious argula salad, and red wine in crystal glasses, so it could breathe properly.

All agreed that the pizza met our standards for a good crispy crust and marvelous cheese. The flavor was no doubt enhanced by having it served on clean plates.

Dessert was passed around by our hostess afterward. She managed the difficult technique of presenting the sweets with one hand while offering us a glass dessert plate simultaneously with the other. A far cry from the food tossing so prevalent at most pizza parties.

Did I mention we were treated to baklava, which she had spent considerable time choosing just for us, along with the wine and salad, all of which, like the pizza, were bought at Costco.

Times have changed. Women work like men. Men finally figured out that wasn't such a bad deal. Marriage is on the wane. Partners are on the rise. Furniture can be rented. Meals have been outsourced. Dishes aren't washed, they're thrown away. Placemats are plastic. So are the utensils. Silver and china languish in their packing boxes, waitiing for the kind of parties that may now be virtually extinct.

But like the early Christians who celebrated the gospel in secret, there are women who still remember what it means to bring out the good stuff for their friends. 

BLOND RECAP

BC loses to NOVA

Oh those wacky Canadians. BRITISH COLUMBIA was sent into the Bay of Fundy without a paddle last night as NOVA SCOTIA took the Orcas by surprise in the end. After baiting the big fish with one of four shooting in this low scoring affair, the ARCADIANS finally awoke from their somnabulance and put something into their net besides bricks, forcing the ORCAS into overtime, where they flailed around like beached whales before snatching defeat from the jaws of vicctory.

GMU TAKES IT TO WICH

Someone tried to tell GENERAL MOTORS that Cinderella couldn't stay at the Big Dance, until last night when they drove a hole through the GREENWICH defense big enough to park a Chevy Tahoe. The TRUCKS led wire to wire, while the COMMUTERS struggled like debutantes trying to zip up their dresses for the cotillion. When the dust settled, this was a blue collar town.

Does anyone know how The G-STRINGS did against the FLAN?
And how did the WASH come out? 

CRUISE SHIPS -- YOU CAN'T PAY ME TO GET ON ONE

          GET READY
     for ADVENTURE with
  ROYAL CARIBBEAN!!!
        HOT DEALS!!!

Yes, those are the enticing headlines posted tonight on an internet ad for one of the many cruise lines soon to be departing from a port near you.

Somewhat ironic considering that half a cruise ship just burned to a crisp thanks to someone's allegedly careless smoking on board.  Of course, given the age of most people who take cruises, smoking was probably just a cover up for an unfortunate oxygen tank malfunction --  which does not have nearly the cache of passing out drunk while sucking on a Marlboro.

Word has it the crew couldn't have been more helpful, however. A welcome change from previous disasters on board, many of which are only now coming to light thanks to the movie Titanic.

Sadly, one passenger had a heart attack and died.  But it's not like he was mugged in a violent urban setting. He died knowing that he'd just had a delicious steak, potato and Caesar salad with complimentary garlic bread.

There will already be those who believe the fire was just an effort to divert attention away from the growing number of people who mysteriously disappear without a trace while cruising on these ships. For example, no one has seen that Smith guy or any number of passengers who continue to vanish overboard with disconcerting regularity.

One theory. only recently debunked, blames these disappearances on the Norwalk Virus, the ubiquitous intestinal illness which has plagued cruise ship passengers since these party boats began stopping in third world countries.  Previously, many people were believed lost while leaning over the railing to vomit, while simultaneously expelling the methane gas produced during the course of the infection.

A cruise line spokesperson denies the link, claiming that the gas only becomes a propellant when lit, no doubt a welcome relief to family members who are still waiting patiently for their missing relatives.

Fires, projectile vomiting, explosive diarrhea, death and disappearance.  Welcome to the wonderful world of cruising.

I'm Not Getting Up Today

This has not been a good last four days. It started on the weekend when I agreed to drive a friend to meet his brother in Michigan -- the reason isn't important but my friend has three lockers full of antiquities [junk] and Big Bro was going to start selling stuff on eBay. 

My friend's family won't let him drive anymore. This former college athlete no longer has the use of his legs, which makes hitting the accelerator and the brake together and/or separately a somewhat dicey proposition. He has other problems that I won't include here. The real problem is that his brain is hardwired for his old healthy self and his reality is in denial about how handicapped he has become.

I arrived at his house at 9:30 in the morning. So I could help load up HIS CAR with our stuff and leave by eleven. We loaded up by 11:30.  And the car wouldn't start. 

Here is where I made my biggest mistake. I said we could take my car. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. So we -- me, his son and his wife -- unloaded his vehicle and loaded mine. You may ask why his family wasn't taking him on this trip. Because they didn't want to.

We finally left at 2:00.  His brother had planned to meet him at one.

His son had also told me that my friend's older brother would have to help him get back into my car over in Michigan, because he knew I sure wouldn't be able to. Having to help him into the car was something new from the last time we went anywhere. 

After going through the lockers, big brother was supposed to spend the weekend at my friend's new summer house on a lake.  But he announced that he had to get home. Huh? At this point, we should have turned around and headed back to Chicago, but we didn't.

We still went to the summer house. First, the little scooter he uses to get around inside the house, which was supposed to be charged and ready, had a dead battery. Luckily, while it charged, he could use his wheelchair, which had been loaded into my car.  I could get it out, but without his brother, who was going to put it back in?

Then after unloading his stuff out of my Jeep, the wayback door wasn't shut properly and the next morning my battery was dead.  I'm not pointing fingers, but IT WASN'T ME who went back and opened up the car after I went to sleep.  

Luckily his next door neighbor was around the next day to provide some juice for me, as well as load him into the car. And that's the short version.

Unfortunately, the neighbor wasn't contacted until three in the afternoon. The reasons for that remain obscure.

I had originally planned to go out with friends to see Steven Wright on Sunday night in Chicago. Because I THOUGHT I would be home by three in the afternoon. 

Finally at five, with help from the neighbor to charge my battery and a two by four to load up my friend, we got on the road. Heading for the highway, I thought.

But for some inexplicable reason we took a one hour jaunt around the countryside that I mistook for some kind of shortcut to the highway. Until we ended up in the exact same place where we started. And I learned that the side trip was just for fun.

Then there was a stop for dinner in the car, followed by his lo-o-o-o-o-ng emergency sojourn in the men's room of a restaurant that was already closed. The good news is they had a huge guy who could lift people into cars.

In the end, because there's other stuff to tell, a 2.5 hour ride back to Chicago took SIX HOURS. Oh, and the car heat had to be on full blast because his body's thermostat doesn't work very well.  Every time we stopped to pay a toll, I opened up my window and the moonroof to suck in some cold air and wake up. Speaking of paying for stuff, his wallet was glued shut most of the trip.

I have no memory of Monday. 

Tuesday however, was voting day. I went to my polling place and discovered that my signature was no longer on file, even though I vote early and often. So I had to sign my name multiple times on multiple pieces of official paper before I could vote.

Ever willing to go where no one has gone before, I asked to use their new touch screen voting system. Try as he would, the elderly man in charge of the machine [who will soon be gone to the great polling place in the sky] couldn't get it to work for me.  The machine kept making odd noises and flashing, TRY AGAIN TRY AGAIN. I finally said to stop trying. The guy ahead of me got on with no problems.. So did the guy behind me. Just not me.  So I had to fill out my ballot by hand. Putting X's in a circle with a pen. So retro.

But the best was yet to come. After getting home in the late afternoon followiing a day that somehow passed without incident, I used some tissue to blow my nose, tossed it into the toilet and flushed.  Little did I know that that was the last of the water in my house. A couple of hours later, when nature called, I pressed the handle again only to discover, to my chagrin, that there was NO WATER for flushing.  F*ckin A.

Earlier in the day when I was leaving to vote, I had noticed a bunch of sewer company employees looking down into a hole they'd made in the street. Just staring down into it. I now know that is not a good sign.

At 6:00 PM, apparently the village finally had their people climbing down in the hole trying to fix a broken main caused by the workers I saw earlier in the day. That's what the police told me when I called them to ask WTF was going on.

So I had to move out of my house last night or pretend I was camping and use my backyard for waste management in the thirty degree weather. 

We have a system in my town that makes automatic calls to everyone to warn of tsunamis, cyclones, tornados, stranger danger and unauthorized solicitors. 

But they couldn't let me know that there was a broken water main and the water would be off for a few hours. So I might want to find an alternative toilet.

Maybe I will teepee the Village Hall tonight. 

The Illinois Primary

Today when I go to my polling place I will be reminded that voting is a very old tradition in our country. I don't just mean the 230-year-old tradition of voting to secure our lives, liberties, and pursuits of happiness. I'm speaking literally. The people who staff our polling places are very old. One broken hip away from a nursing home old. Assisted living old. Addicted to Wheel of Fortune old.

It's not like these people have grown old with the job either. The five or six septugenarians who appear at my polling place on voting days are never the same. There's a new batch of old people every time I vote. 

I figure that can only mean the effort of pointing to the voting machine and stuffing my ballot into a box is so great that they die. Why else would anyone give up such a cush job? You can't beat work that only requires showing up three or four times a year, while providing unlimited danish and free coffee the entire time you're there.

I also can't imagine that the old folks leave for better opportunities. Posting their polling place resumes on Monster.com with the hope of finding advancement in the field seems far fetched. Okay, maybe working in New York has its appeal, but who wants the hassle of finding cheap c-pap replacement parts?

The conspiracy theorist in me is concerned that our government may be enticing the elderly into running the polling places as a way of keeping the population down. That whole dying from the effort thing. I don't know what they're promising them, but it's clearly taking a toll on the number of senior citizens of my town. They work the polling place and disappear.

While I'm mystified and justifably concerned about the amount of turnover, there may be another important reason for needing to raid the senior centers for enough old people to command the polling places. After all, I'm sure there are plenty of slacker youths around to handle the stress of pointing a finger and putting a ballot through a slot in a box four days a year.

Frankly, and this will shock you, young people cannot cope with the technology.

Here again, it's important to remember that voting is an old tradition. Sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Ageing Jack Daniels in oak still works. Bringing Cuban cigars into the country through Canada is now in it's sixth decade.

So you can appreciate how our government might take pride in continuing to let us receive our ballots only after using those time honored tools from the past -- paper and pen. Young people are all about computers and keyboards, Offering them a paper and pen is like sitting down to a meal together -- not going to happen.

Old people, on the other hand, know how to shake the pen and get the ink down to the tip, so you can sign your name and verify you are who you are. And they know how to turn pages in a binder without ripping the holes, an art that will soon be lost to posterity.

Recently there has been some discussion about modernizing our voting process. Like that's going to happen. The most recent effort has been the installation of voting screens which allow people to use their fingers to cast their votes. And just who is going to wipe the screens after all those sticky digits have been touching them? EEEEEWWWWW. 

The upside is that the whole country will gain a new appreciation for OCD.  Howie Mandel will become their spokesperson. Soap, water, and sinks will be provided next to every voting booth.

You laugh. This is America. These things can happen.

Before you get too smug, count all the old people at your polling place and tell me I'm wrong about that.
 

Good bye Ninja

A wonderful dog has died. Ninja belonged to close friends of mine in California. She was sixteen. Pretty old for a lab mix.

After months of trying to keep her alive by shear force of will, Ninja's owners finally realized that nothing else could be done. You could look in her eyes and see that her heart still wanted to bark at dolphins from the bow of a kayak. Or chase a ball into the ocean all day long. Or keep the coyotes at bay from her spot on the front deck.  But her body finally gave up.  Handfeeding her when she couldn't eat, cleaning up her moments of incontinence, and carrying her up stairs were no longer enough.  Today, after her family said their good byes the vet put her down. 

I wrote a eulogy of sorts for her over a year ago after a visit. It was clear that she was declining then and it made me sad to think what it would be like without her to greet me like a long lost friend anymore.

Today the phone call came.

Morning Ruminations

If I go to bed before midnight I wake up around five in the morning. Five in the morning is early. Too early. When my kids were growing up I needed to get to bed before midnight because I had to have my sleep to stay healthy. And I slept until seven or eight.

Then I started getting older. Started?  I'm way deep into it now. I noticed -- eventually -- that for a long time I would wake up at exactly 4:30 if I went to bed at 10:30.  In the summertime that was when the baby birds started to chirp. Like clockwork. So maybe they were waking me up. I don't know.

Unfortunately, if I got up with the baby birds, then I needed a nap at an inopportune time, usually when I was driving somewhere or stuck in a meeting later that day. 

Then I realized I could sleep later if I went to bed later. It was some kind of a math problem. So I began to stay up until midnight so I would wake up at six. At first, I was afraid I would be tired later if I did that, but I wasn't. I became my own scientific experiment. 

Of course sometimes I still fall asleep before midnight and wake up just before dawn. If it's the weekend, I've driven to the beach so I can watch the sun come up.  Or I'll take my camera and shoot pictures in and around the forest preserve because the light is so good.

But usually I just get up, get on my computer, turn on the TV and spend about half  an hour to an hour doing enough stuff to tire out my brain. Then I used to go back to sleep until seven or eight when the crows began their daily cacaphony. Except for the last couple of years there have been no crows. The West Nile Virus decimated them. So other things wake me up.

The other morning after I fell sleep again I dreamed I had colorectal cancer. This wasn't a dream where I knew I was dreaming.  This was a dream that was so real, I woke up completely distressed until I realized that Katie Couric was doing a whole segment about the disease on the Today Show. She was interviewing someone who had the disease. So I'd picked up on the narrative of the woman who was talking and made it part of my dream. Sheesh.

Remind me to turn off the TV when I want to go back to sleep.

This morning, Saturday, I woke up early again, so I turned on the TV, but decided to stay in bed. That meant I got to watch an entire infomercial on ATV's. I now know more about torque, suspension, traction, and dual quads, which seems to be about tires not engines, than I did last night. You watch, it'll come in handy within the next forty-eight hours.

For some reason Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice also decided to buy several time slots in this crack of dawn period. Somebody must have given them a major discount on pre-dawn ads. Or they know there are people like me who are half asleep with the TV on and therefore very suggestible to anything two guys standing hip deep in cranberries have to say. I only remember something about Ninjas, which seemed odd. I do like the Ocean Spray tagline, "Straight from the bog."  Not for any intelligent reason.  It's just that BOG is such a great word. 

I wouldn't want anyone to think I was affected by my Katie Couric dream or anything, but I did call my doctor to get a screening for colon cancer.

My Six Pack

AOL's Journal Editor Joe put out a call for Six Packs -- six journals we each recommend.

I think I'll do a themed Six Pack -- Moms. Five of these women are wallowing in children and family. The sixth isn't technically a mom [no kids], but she seems to have reversed roles with her own mother, so I figured she qualified. 

Luckily they all have plenty of humor and medication to help them through their days. Two of my favorite moms I couldn't include because they have gone private, but the ones here offer a combination of amusement, philosophy and from time to time, some jaw dropping reading that's as good as watching a train wreck. I'll let you decide who does which. 

In no particular order:
 
Livin La Vida Mommy

The Peach Pages

Adventures of a Desperately Fat Housewife

DUST BUNNY CLUB OF NORTH AMERICA

Bonanza Jellybean

Anna's Crazy World

TERRIBLE TWOS

My journal is two years old tomorrow, Friday March 17th,  Woo-hoo. No celebrating though. I don't go out on National Lampoon's Biggest Holiday. The IQ of the population drops too low for me. And most bars aren't serving my drink of choice -- Peach Snapple. Plus there's another reason for staying indoors.

I worked with a very talented marketing woman named Donna who also played second base on the same all star softball team with me. She was a dynamic, take charge, I don't care if you call me a bitch type person. She was also at the center of a huge scandal involving a young woman who left the guy she had just married to move in with her. That was back before you could be a lesbian proudly in public.

Our clients all loved her creative thinking. She had a lot to do with shifting the focus in cereals from nothing but taste and crunch to the healthy benefits of fiber. Americans eat more All Bran and poop way more often thanks to her.

But she had a fatal flaw. No matter how much we nagged her, she wouldn't wear a seatbelt. 

Every time we drove to a client meeting in Michigan from Chicago, she absolutely refused to buckle up. When we got into a car with her, there was usually a discussion and she would always laugh it off. Time after time we told her her she was making a mistake. But she was who she was, which included being pigheaded, and she wouldn't put her seat belt on.

One St. Patrick's Day night she was a passenger in a friend's car, driving on Lake Shore Drive. Out of nowhere some drunk crossed the median at 55 mph and hit them head on. Naturally, she wasn't wearing her seat belt. The impact not only caused her to go through her own windshield, but propelled her through the windshield of the other car.  After almost a week in the hospital with not much hope of living her life as anything more than a vegetable, she died. 

Her friend, on the other hand, walked away from the crash, unscathed. Thanks to her seatbelt.

So I celebrate St. Patrick's Day with a hot corned beef sandwich on rye for lunch. No excessive beer drinking or random coupling with people wearing those little green hats. Or with little green people either.

Not the Tuesday Two or Friday Five, but the Saturday Six

I have always thought of Oprah and Dr. Phil as my TV parents. Well, maybe not parents exactly, since Oprah only accepts unconditional love and she's always got to be right and Dr. Phil is the master of intimidation and he's always got to be right, too. Plus both of them are self absorbed to the point of distraction -- mine.

But it was with great sadness that I read about their growing tiff. Awww. Not Oprah and the good doc. Finally there are cracks and their fine-tuned personas. Sounds like Dr. Phil is biting the hand that feeds him and starting to behave, shall we say, inappropriately? Making disparaging remarks about how much money Oprah takes out of his show -- now that he's so BIG. And calling her fiftieth birthday party self-indulgent. Ooo, the pot calling the kettle, uh, black. 

I guess Oprah hasn't been coming up to the house for any of Robin and Dr. Phil's get togethers lately either. I smell SMACKDOWN!!! They could take a lesson from The Donald and Martha. That one got smoothed over faster than you can say home monitoring bracelet.

Here's the Six. You can link over there in Other Journals to Patrick's Place if you want to play, because I'm too damn lazy to make a link here. Or just steal my Six, the way I stole La Vida Mommy's [yeah she's in Other Journals, also.] I almost posted her answers too.  That would have been interesting.


1. If you could trade places with one person in your family for a week, who would you choose? And would you want to trade as they are now, or sometime in the past (or future)?

I'd swap with either one of my daughters right now. For reasons too numerous to mention. But you could start with YOUNG. Add beautiful. Throw in smart. Funny. Hey, they're MY daughters..

2. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #80 from De: What were you doing 1 year ago this month, and are you more or less satisfied with your life today?

I was doing what I always do in March, agonizing over my taxes in an avoidance kinda way. I guess I'm more or less satisfied with my life today. Sometimes more.  Sometimes less.

3. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #81 from Lisa: Do you prefer watching television over surfing the internet?

What's to prefer?  I do both at the same time. There's a TV next to my computer.  Sometimes I'm on the phone too. I have learned how to read the closed captioning while Italk. Try it sometime. 

4. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #82 from Antonette: Outside of the U.S., where would you live and why?

I'd move to London. Because if I did, it would mean I was rich that's why.

5. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #83 from Elton: When you leave your home, do you ever feel paranoid that you've left something behind?

I never feel paranoid -- actually, shouldn't it be anxious -- because I know I will always leave something behind. It's just a matter of what. I once left my driveway, drove to the end of the street, remembered something I forgot, drove around the block back into my driveway, retrieved the forgotten item, left my driveway, drove to the end of the street, remembered something else I forgot, and so on until I had circled around three times. If I get farther than the end of the street, I just stop and buy whatever it is I don't have. Or I go to the meeting and say, "I forgot the entire presentation. Is that a problem?"

 
6. READER'S CHOICE QUESTION #84 from Laura: What song or songs would you want played at your own funeral and why?

A friend of mine and I drove to his summer home a few years ago to open it up for the year. After years of being a superjock he was on a heart transplant list thanks to a misdiagnosis. Sitting on the porch in the evening listening to the sounds of the woods around us, he began to talk about dying, since that was one of his options.  So I said let's plan your funeral. It seemed like a good idea at the time. To get him started, I told him I always wanted to have the Edwin Hawkins singers come and perform their arrangement of Oh Happy Day, which is one of my favorite gospel songs. I wanted the whole service to be rousing with everybody up and clapping. No sorrowful hymns for me, please. Okay, trying to get white people to clap and sing gospel in the suburban Episcopal church I grew up in might be a little difficult, but it would be worth a try. The best thing is that, ultimately, my friend didn't have to plan for a funeral after all, since he lived long enough to get a new heart. But I remind him from time to time not to forget what I want played at my funeral.

Very Funny, L'il Bro

If you're enjoying contemplating Danube steamship company captains or the absurdity of modern regulation, you might also want to consider "Rinderkennzeichnungs

- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz."  The "cattle marking and beef labeling supervision duties delegation law" from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.  The name of the law was eventually changed to "Gesetz zur Übertragung der Aufgaben für die Überwachung der Rinderkennzeichnung und Rindfleischetikettierung."  See http://mv.juris.de/mv/RkReUeAUeG_MV_rahmen.htm. Perhaps the government lawyer could retool as a Mecklenburger Cattle Marking and Beef Labeling Supervision Duties Delegation Lawyer.  Or, more colloquially, ein "Mecklenbourgischerinderkennzeichnungs- und Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetzrechtsanwalt?"



One of my brothers left this comment after reading the long German word I used in my post on Schadenfreude. Needless to say he's an attorney. I should have known he could top me. By the way, the word was donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän which means Danish Captain of a German U-Boat That Is Going Down The River As Soon As You Get Your Big Fat Butt Moving. Okay it means what ever my brother said.

I KNEW IT!!!

In the previous post I had a concern about about the lawyer who breached the rules of conduct during the trial of the only 9-11 hijacker.  My concern was whether or not she was blond.

*SIGH* 

She's blond.

Schadenfreude

For some reason it seems like SCHADENFREUDE, the German word for "Joy at someone else's misfortune" has been on the tip of a lot of tongues lately. Who better than the Germans to create a word that gives dimension to NA NA NA NA NA. However, while there are those who think that only the Germans could come up with a word to describe the thrill of watching Donald Trump declare bankruptcy again, it turns out that even Scandanavian countries have words for the same thing, according to Wikipedia. On the other hand, only a Teutonic mind could wrap itself around donaudampfschiffahrtsgesellschaftskapitän.

A local paper here devoted an entire humor column to the subject of SCHADENFREUDE. What I found most amusing is that anyone could possibly think that SCHADENFREUDE might make an appropriate topic for humor. It feels like laughing during a funeral service to me.

But perhaps I reacted prematurely. This morning we learn that a government lawyer in the only case against a 9-11 hijacker -- since the rest are dead -- has committed an egregious act of stupidity. Apparently she improperly coached witnesses by emailing opening statements and trial testimony to them. She did this even after strict instructions from the judge against it.

Not content with improper coaching, this renegade also offered up her own opinions of the case, including harsh criticism of the government's position and theory of the prosecution. She went so far as to convey her considered opinion on how and what she would have said differently in the opening statements.

Now the government will probably have to settle for life in prison without parole and no longer have the option of exercising the death penalty, much to the chagrin of vengeance minded relatives of 9-11 victims. Sorry, I meant to say CLOSURE.

The lawyer involved, whose resignation will be requested shortly, I imagine, will soon discover that her career path has been diverted if not brought to an end. Like the neophyte female attorney who dissed the job offer she received from a partner at a law firm and foundher rude email correspondence to him posted across the country, if not the world, by her disgruntled suitor. No doubt ending her career before she had one.

The question becomes, how would SCHADENFEUDE apply here? I'm sure there are members of Al Quaeda who think it would apply across the board as far as the government's misfortune is concerned.

But for me personally, on closer inspection, the government is merely collateral damage. The SCHADENFREUDE, if appplicable, belongs to the lawyer who must have assumed she was operating in a vacuum of sorts, protected from the consequences of her actions. I work for the government; you can't touch me! is how her business card reads, I believe.

The unbridled arrogance of what she did should therefore make her upcoming misfortune all the more joyful. The government's embarrassment is just the unfortunate fallout from her behavior.

But having firmly affixed the blame so that SCHADENFREUDE can be used correctly in a sentence, I still can't fully embrace it even for that idiotic attorney. It makes me uncomfortable. I guess I don't like gloating at someone's fall from grace. Even if it seems like they absolutely positively deserve it. Perhaps, because I have often felt like I was teetering on a similar precipice myself. Or could it be that so often the fall isn't as catstrophic as we might like, but cushioned by infusions of cash and connections. For instance, I would seek death for the Enron guys. With that off the table, anything else pales by comparison.

So I do not practice SCHADENFREUDE. In fact, my very first concern for that unfortunate woman, when I heard what a hinky maneuver she pulled, was whether or not she was blond.

Lightning Bugs and Mice

Unlike most women and not a few men, I am not afraid of spiders and mice. Maybe it's because, as a single parent, I couldn't yell for anyone to come get the spider that was in the bathtub, I had to do it myself. So I made peace with bugs and those cute widdle field micey wicey.

Usually when a spider is spotted in the bathtub, it can't negotiate the slippery sides and turning on the water will just wash it away. But that seems unnecessarily cruel to me, so I learned to take a long piece of teepee and let the little arachnid climb on for a free ride out the back door.

I open the window for flies, too. And there was a huge thing with a million long, segmented legs and furry antennae that I called the Stud.  If he was out and about, I just said Howdy Do and walked in the other direction.

When the cats were around, they constantly brought me field mice through the cat window. They would come in, making a distinctive sound I began to recognize as "Yo, I caught dinner." To their credit, the mouse was already dead and they would just eat it all up, so there was never anything for me to clean.

Well, except that one time when one of them got a baby rabbit. And left one foot. Yuck.

Another time one of the cats brought in a live creature and dropped it on my chest. While I was sleeping. Not being dead and not wanting to stick around,  it scurried down the length of my abdomen, exiting on the right leg express in a final attempt to run for safety. My reaction? Oh, great, a live mouse. Now I have to get up and save it. I didn't even flinch. I just knew I had to find it or it would be cat food. 

The poor thing managed to find refuge on a bookshelf, but when I reached out to get the terrified animal, it defied all laws of gravityand leaped over my shoulder, landed on my back and ran down my leg again. Somehow I managed to catch it and put it outside in a bag with some paper so it could have a hiding place and catch its breath after its near death experience.

Despite my courage around mice and bugs, I realized last night that there is something that really does scare me.  Lightning. It began years ago when I was a softball pitcher standing on the mound.  Ominous clouds would be forming and lightning would start.  Looking around I realized I was the tallest person on the field, we were using aluminum bats, and our caps had a metal button on top.  I used to call the game before the umpire had a chance and race for my car.

Now that my playing days are over, lightning still comes calling. For some reason I seem to live in a lightning flight path.  I can't tell you the number of times the transformer at the back of my yard has been hit. Along with the tree that hangs over my driveway. You know it's close when you hear it crack at the same time the thunder hits. The noise shakes the house.  

It's only about five feet from my back door to my car door, but I've had more than one of those pre-lightning buzzes with the car door open as I was lifting up my foot to get in.  It feels like a little shock from a wall plug. But I know I better move fast or they'll be serving marmalade with my toast.

Last night when I got home I was too chicken to get out of the car.  I like to think of it as being respectful of Mother Nature, that bi-yotch. The lightning was flashing all around and I saw a really bright cloud to ground bolt in the reflection of one of the bedroom windows. The eye of the storm was getting closer. Luckily I had a full tank of gas so I could keep warm, my cell phone had its charger, and I had just bought a bag of FOOD.  So I listened to the radio drank some Snapple and waited for the electrical assault to move on. About forty five minutes later I was able to make a break for cover.

That five foot dash was hell.

Cat Tales Part Deux

When I got home close to midnight there were no lights on.  And no cat to greet me at the door. I turned on the kitchen light and started calling for him. I checked the bedrooms and then the living room. I caught the glint of an eye picked up by the light from the kitchen. There he was lying on his side on the sofa. 

I thought he was dead, until I went over to him and he tried to lift his head. I gently started to run my hands down the length of his old, tired body. Sure enough his bladder was dangerously swollen. The vet had already told me his kidneys were giving out and he was throwing clots, which would continue to block his urethra so he couldn't pee. I'd just rushed hiim to the hospital two days before and here he was again in worse condition.

There was no happy solution for this problem. Eventually his bladder would burst and kill him or I could put him to sleep. So I prepared his carrier with a soft, clean towel, and laid him inside it. He knew where he was going, a place he hated, and managed to me-yowl in protest.

The emergency vets were for the visits after regular vet hours.  The nighttime facility was down the road from the daytime place. Everything about it was extremely institutional, all cinder block and business. No cute pictures of pets hanging on the walls in the waiting room. No friendly assistants to chat with you and make you feel better about your sick animal.  Anybody bringing in a pet late at night had a real problem. And a huge bill.

The dour woman at the front desk made me sign papers assuring them that no matter what it cost -- and it doubles at night -- I would be responsible for the payment. Here take everything, what do you want?

I was put into an examining room. A young, redhaired, unsmiling vet came in to examine my cat and get a history. He looked harmless enough until he spoke. Allo, I am DOKTOR Death. Not his real name, but close enough. I said I had come to put my cat to sleep, but before we did thatI wanted them to release the pressure on his bladder so he could be comfortable at least. 

Ve cannot do zat came the reply. What do you mean you can't do that -- his regular vet just did it the other day. No, zat requires surgery and ve cannot do zat. Could you ask around to see if anyone else might know what I'm talking about. PLEASE.

He left, taking Hardy with him. He was gone for fifteen minutes. I took that as a good sign.

I waited and DOKTOR Death returned carrying Hardy. He almost looked like his old self, albeit it with a prep for an IV taped to his leg.  He me-yowled a greeting when he saw me, clearly relieved that he didn't have to pee anymore. I assumed that was a cat version of thank you.

He had several different me-yowls: Hi, good-bye, get up, feed me, is there an animal outside, where have you been, I can't find you, sit down so I can climb on your lap, what are you doing -- the list was long.

Any time I had to leave him overnight at his regular vet's they always remarked about his constant talking. Okay, complaining. When I would come pick him up from an overnight stay, I could hear him making a racket in the back, clearly not happy being handled by people who smelled of medicine and things that hurt.  But as soon as he heard my voice calling his name, the screeching would stop dead. And he would change his voice, me-owling much more softly, as if to say, Thank God you're here, these people were tryiing to kill me!!!

Now, in the examining room with the expressionless German-accented creep who had brought Hardy back to me, I said, dripping with sarcasm, "So, you found someone who could do the procedure, I notice." Careful Mrs. L, this guy has all the warmth and charm of a mad scientist, you may not want to go there.

I almost decided to take Hardy home because he seemed normal, but I knew his bladder was going to fill up again and we'd be right back. Instead, I asked the vet to leave me alone with my cat so I could say goodbye. He lay down on the examining table which had been covered with a towel. I petted him for awhile and told him what a great cat he'd been and how sorry I was that I had to let him go. Mostly I just stood and stroked him while he purred.

Cats come with all kinds of bells and whistles. Some meow but don't purr. Others purr, but don't meow. Hardy got the whole package. A meow that could break glass and his motor was always humming. He used to start purring in anticipation of getting some nice pats. Now that his bladder was empty and he was feeling better, he was relaxed and almost seemed to be enjoying himself.  

The vet stuck his head in the door. Iz it time for Ki-Tee? Which was code for I'm ready to terminate your cat, what are we  waiting for?

Not yet.

The next time he came back I said okay, it's time. DOKTOR Death quickly administered the poison that killed my pet. One second I was stroking a purring, breathiing, living being and literally, in a heartbeat, everything stopped. Like a switch had been thrown.  Death was so instantaneous. In his stillness I realized how animated he was in life.  

You vant me to take ki-TEE now?  

I could have said, No I want you go to away and never come back.   

But I told the vet that I wanted to be alone with my cat again now that he was dead. I kept petting him expecting him to start purring once more. That's what struck me most. The stillness.  

Two minutes later what's his face returned.

Time to take ki-TEE?  

No, I need more time. Maybe I'll stay all night I thought, just to annoy YOU.

Two minutes later he was back again. I just shook my head and said, Two more minutes please. It wasn't easy to have those last moments with this bizarre person interrupting my meditation.

Deciding not to wait for the death vet to return one more time, I left my cat on the table after holding his face for a kiss and went home.  

A few weeks later I got a call that I could come pick up his ashes. There inside a small cardboard box was a tiny little metal urn that had a colorful etched lid -- covering all that was left of the last pet I had.

I took him home with me again. This time for good.
 

Cat Tales

Tina, of  RIDE ALONG WITH ME -- just posted a heartwarming entry about her Denver Bronco orange colored cat named Elway.

Until now, I don't believe I've written about any of the pets I've had.

Did I hear a collective gasp of disbelief?  Or was that collective gas? 

But the dearth of kitty tales is over. Dogs, gerbils and fish, on the other hand, will just have to wait. Tonight I will tell one about cats that will push the AAAWWWW meter into the red zone. Or not.

I've had a bunch of cats, but the smartest and friendliest were two half Siamese kittens, a brother and a sister, that I got for my children through friends. As I recall we were invited over to play with the little cats and the next thing I knew we were taking two of them home. It was a trick.

These former friends of mine had a place about a half hour from where I live, in what passes for horse country around here. He was a print broker, one of the most obscenely easy ways a person can make a boatload of money without much of an education. It was so lucrative for my friend that he basically had a license to print money.  So they bought a huge place with sufficient acreage and pasture to put up a horse barn, build an Olympic sized indoor dressage ring and feed dozens of warmbloods [a type of dressage horse]. 

Needless to say if you've got a barn, you've got cats. And that's where Laura and Hardy [not their real names] came from. He was all dark gray and gangly, like his father, no doubt, with claws that wouldn't retract.  She was petite and pretty with the classic bluepoint coloring of her mother. They didn't look related. In fact, Hardy's only Siamese trait was his distinctive meow, which was more of a yowl. Laura, on the other hand, looked Siamese, but sounded like a sweet little kitty kitty with a teeny tiny me-you.

One of the perks of working in an ad agency is that I learned how to meow like a kitten thanks to an art director I knew. He taught me how to make my kitty sounds in the back of an elevator so I could have the pleasure of watching people look around trying to find the poor creature. But I digress.

We got the kitties when they were eight weeks old and from the beginning I noticed that they would call to one another and seek each other out. Never far apart, they always slept together, usually entwined, but sometimes curled up in two circles side by side.

When they were about twelve weeks old, not quite half grown, and still pretty small, Hardy went outdoors for some fresh air. He'd been out been many times before, never wandering very far, so I wasn't worried about him. But just like a kid, the bigger an animal gets, the more mischief they can get into.
 
Shortly after he went out, I began to hear some very loud and distinctive me-yowling. HELP ME, HELP ME, HELP ME!!!!!  In a heartbeat, Laura was at the door begging to go outside. She'd have to wait.

First I had to see where Hardy was, since I knew he was the source of all the whining and complaining. A quick search of my tiny front yard and I was soon looking skyward at the pathetic cries coming from the top of our evergreen tree. It's almost four stories high. And guess who was at the top, unable to get back down?

Going up is always easy for cats, especially in this particular tree, because the branches are like stairs. Coming down should have been easy, but it wasn't. Maybe he was afraid of heights.

So I sent my younger daughter up the tree to get him. She had climbed the tree a lot and made her way to the top rather quickly, only to discover that she couldn't reach up far enough to grab him. And no amount of coaxing would get him to budge.

Meanwhile, the me-yowling never stopped. HELP ME HELP ME HELP ME!!!  His sister continued pacing around by the front door me-youing in response.

My brother's in trouble, I have to help. Please please let me go out. Hmmmmm. Should I let her out or not? She was comically tiny still and would remain half her brother's size for the rest of her life. I figured she'd just become part of the problem.

All I needed was for two kittens to get stuck up at the top of the tree. Then we'd have to call the fire department, assuming they would bother to come. Or get another kid to climb up the tree and be sued when he or she fell. Luckily, I was pretty sure my own kids wouldn't sue. I couldn't go up myself because as big as the tree was, the individual branches weren't strong enough for the weight of an adult.

Finally, against my better judgment, I let Hardy's sister out the door. She headed straight for the tree and started climbing. I then proceeded to watch in amazement as that tiny cat negotiated her way up to the top branches, never hesitating once. She greeted her brother by touching noses, turned around and began to show him the way back down. Sheesh, you big dummy, do I have to bail you out every time?

She literally turned around and started down the tree, one branch after another, with him right behind her. 

Had she been up the tree before?  I don't know. All I know is that some kind of communication took place between them and he was no longer a scaredy cat when she got up to where he was.

Several years later she disappeared the night my younger daughter graduated from high school. We live near a forest preserve and coyotes like to cruise the neighborhoods for easy pickins. But she disappeared before we realized that we had to keep our pets in at night.

Every spring we used to see signs posted all over town for missing cats. It wasn't until the night I actually saw a coyote ambling down the sidewalk around the corner from my house that I understood why our little cat was gone. Along with all the other ones.

When she didn't return, her brother wandered around aimlessly, me-yowling at me for days. He seemed puzzled, like he was asking where the heck his sister was. I told him I didn't know and I was sorry she was gone. Hey, women over fifty talk to cats. Everybody knows that.

A few weeks later I noticed that he had latched on to me more than ever. Both kids were off to college. It got so I couldn't take a walk without him following me like a dog down the sidewalk. He would greet me at the door each night, sit on my chest in the morning to wake me up, and me-yowl nonstop when I had been gone away on business. In fact, after trips, I had to pick him up and hold him for a good half hour while he chatted with me about everything that happened while I was out of town.

I realized that self feeding and self watering dishes weren't such good company when I was gone. So I started asking my parents to come over to visit Hardy because he really loved company. They were a little skeptical about visiting with a cat, but he soon put them at their ease, sitting between them every time they stopped by. He would put one paw on my stepmother's lap, then switch and put his other paw on my father's lap. And me-yowl away.

He was close to eighteen years old when I came home one night and he wasn't there to greet me. For the first time ever he wasn't at the door. I found him lying on the sofa too weak to raise his head, his bladder full to bursting. He had just been to the vet two days before for the same problem. So that night I decided I had to put him down.

NEXT: The story of his demise and the strange German DOKTOR at the emergency vet center.

Pimp the Watron

What the hell by jeffcomedy hasn't had a post since November. [You can link over at Other Journals.] He was our resident watron, the server who wrote funny stuff about his so-called life taking orders and bringing food to people who eat at one of the gazillion Chili's restaurants across the country.

Well, finally, Mrs. L has found someone with an outside blog who can fill the void left by Jeff.  A Wiscosin guy named Dan included a link to a NY waiter-who-rants on his list of Six Pack Picks.  [The link to Dan's journal is in one of my other recent pimps as well as New Journal Discoveries]. Here's the link to the waiter:

http://www.waiterrant.net/

By the way, Mrs. Linklater prefers the term, WATRON instead of SERVER. Both are gender free. Both have only two syllables.  But WATRON sounds way more out there than SERVER.  Anyone can be a SERVER.  It takes someone special to be a WATRON.

BLAMO Part II

I didn't mention this in the last post, but something else happened after the black Mercedes hit the BMW. I had pulled over to wait while the two drivers swapped information. They ambled over to find out why I was there, found out I was a witness, then the guy who caused the accident called the police.

They went off to check out their damaged cars, while I stayed in mine and waited for the cops.

Suddenly the lady was back knocking on the window of the passenger side of my car. "Do I know you?" She said.  "I don't think so. Who are you?" I asked.  "Do you work at the hospital?" "No."  "Because you look just like someone I know." 

Once again someone thought I was someone they knew. A recurring theme in this journal. Since kindergarten I've been hearing that I could be someone else. A cousin, a friend, an ex, you name it. Or that I look like some celebrity.

In various decades I've been told I looked like Paula Prentiss, Annie Hall [she's not even a real person], Elizabeth Taylor, Bette Midler, and Glenn Close's character in Fatal Attraction. I no longer expect to look like any other celebrities because of my more advanced age, unless Bea Arthur gets another gig. 

It doesn't matter whether my hair is straight, curly, auburn, blond, short, or long, I continue to look like Sheila from the beach, someone from your healthclub or I sat next to you in Engish, a concert, or a high school basketball game.

I continue to take the mistaken identity as a compliment except for one time when I was hospitalized for food poisoning and someone said I looked like Death warmed over. Death was not amused.

Just for once it would be nice to hear someone say, "You look just like Mrs. Linklater." Then I could say that people tell me that all the time. I would enjoy just looking like myself.  Whatever that is. Ultimately do we really know what we look like unless we have a comparison?

A more sensitive person might start to suffer a crisis of identity after being told they look like so many different people. Who am I?  Why am I here?  All the existential questions we seek answers to would be obfuscated when one is constantly confused with others all the time. 

Am I who I am only because I am a copy of someone else?

Is that really so bad? So much has been written about helping identical twins develop individual identities. Why bother? I'd love to be able to look at another person and know they're an exact copy of me. It would be so reassuring. For some reason I think having a twin would just affirm who I am by seeing a replica of myself. Having kids is the next best thing I guess.

To throw a wrench into all this, I keep changing how I look, so who I look like at any given time changes too. Celebrity or otherwise.

I realized how much I change when I told somebody that people thought I looked like Annie Hall. That was who I looked like in the sixties. [Along with Suzy Parker and Greta Garbo, but they're dead.] This was the eighties. And the resemblance between me and the Diane Keaton character was long gone. But it wasn't until I saw the look of disbelief on the person's face that I knew that my Annie Hall time had passed.

Same thing at a party this New Year's Eve -- one of the guests turned out to be a woman I was confused with for several years when we worked at the same ad agency. We're both tall. We both used to have naturally curly hair that was the same color. Now her hair is dark, short and curly. Mine is longer, blond and straight. When we told people at the party how often we had been confused for one another we got nothing but blank, puzzled stares looking back at us. 

In reality, looking like other people doesn't matter one way or the other. I do continue to be amused that it keeps happening no matter how old I get. 

New Tires Come In Handy

While my recent flat tire episode may guarantee a punched ticket to the Blond Hair Hall of Fame, sometimes I manage to function on all my cylinders and yesterday was a good example of that.

I was returning from downtown, enjoying the smooth ride on my new Goodyear Wrangler treads. In fact, I was almost home and stopped at a light in the right lane on a four lane road. You know, two going this way, two going that way.

The light changed and I moved forward, not with my foot on the floor like the guy in the new black Mercedes driving next to me on my left, but in a kinder, gentler MOM DRIVE FASTER way. 

One nano second later, I noticed the following:  There were three cars stopped in the left lane a few yards ahead. Very few. The first car in the line was waiting to turn into a driveway, sitting there until the oncoming traffic subsided. The other two were waiting for the first one to turn.  All had their brake lights on.

Meanwhile, the guy in the left lane next to me in the Mercedes was accelerating like Shirley Muldowney. I slowed way down, enjoying the excellent traction afforded by my pretty new tires, because I could see the guy was going to drive smack dab into the stopped cars. Apparently they hadn't heard him yelling, "GET OUT OF MY WAY!!!"

Wisely, I didn't want to become part of the crash that was about to occur. 

BLAMO. The Mercedes guy didn't attempt to brake until he was a mere three feet from the BMW SUV which took the full brunt without blinking.  Hit from behind by a Mercedes sedan that was going nearly forty miles an hour and the BMW absorbed the blow so completely, it never budged. Not even touching the bumper of the car stopped in front of it. 

I pulled over to offer myself as a witness. Sure enough both drivers came over to see if I'd been hurt or something.  You should have seen the face of the guy who'd been driving the Mercedes when I told them NOPE, I was a witness.  He'd already told the driver of the car he'd hit that she had turned in front of him or something equally absurd.

No sir, you left the intersection like a bat out of Hell and slammed right into her. I got to see it all from the right lane, just behind you.

Later the BMW driver told me the Mercedes guy was in a brand new car on his way to a doctor's appointment because he had high blood pressure.

I think he was on a cell phone myself.  But I wasn't looking at him. I was watching his car speeding into an immoveable object from the comfort of my Jeep. 

When the cop came over to take my name and address, I asked if he minded answering a question for me. Sure, what do you want to know?

Do you like my new tires? 

The Zen of Using Express Mail

A couple of folks have written about their fears lately. 

http://journals.aol.com/dornbrau/DUSTBUNNYCLUBOFNORTHAMERICA/
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/

Dornbrau wrote about her fear of spiders.  Dpoem wrote about several things he fears, but being afraid of Buicks made me laugh the most.

I have a fear. I always fear that USPS, which stands for UnSusPected Stupidity, will find yet another way to make sure the Express Mail envelope I entrusted to their care is somehow NOT delivered within the time frame promised. Or, as it turns out, even the DAY it was promised.

AGAIN.

That fear was realized yesterday when I tried to track my envelope through normal channels, i.e., over the phone and online.  After it reached the USPS distribution center at 6:00 AM, in plenty of time to arrive at its destination by noon, said envelope cannot be accounted for.

So I must assume the Zen position, which feels like over a barrel, and let go of all need to control this uncontrollable situation.

Until I can find the IDIOT who f*cked this up! 

Meanwhile, I am at peace.