What Makes Me Laugh

Yesterday I got an unexpected call from my massage therapist. “Hey, I’m looking for Doug. He hasn’t shown up for his appointment yet and I can’t reach him on his phone. I’m just wondering if he’s lost.”

Lost? In Livingston? This was theoretically possible since it was his first appointment with her, but I thought I had provided adequate directions the night before when he asked me if I knew how to get to her house.

“Oh, she lives just down the street from Mary,” I said, with a wave of my hand as if that wave would fill in the necessary details.

“She said something about turning down an alley,” he muttered.

I should have known then that I needed to be more explicit.

He called me fifteen minutes after his appointment had passed and I asked, “What happened?”

‘”I’ve just spent a half hour driving around a three block area,” he said. I could tell he was frustrated. “I still don’t know where she lives. I finally flagged a woman down in her yard and asked her, ‘Do you know a woman named Allison? She’s petite? Blonde? She gives massages.’”

The woman denied knowing Allison even though they lived next door to each other. “Don’t you get it?” I laughed. ”She probably thought you were a stalker!”

“Especially since I drove around the block slowly for a half hour.”

Anyway, Doug had to reschedule his appointment because he was so late, and he’s certain to have started a neighborhood watch alert in the process, but this is not something that typically happens to him. It typically happens to me.

My sense of direction is literally nonexistent. When I have to guess, it’s almost always the wrong guess. I once got lost during a run where I only made two right turns, and ended up causing my in-laws to be late for their daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner. 

 This happens to me all the time. In fact, I now have to deliberate over whether I should go the other way just because my intuition told me the opposite.

My mother has this problem (so it’s inherited), but she is absolutely sure she’s right when she’s telling you which way to turn while driving. “Right, turn right,” she commands, and you do it, and then you spend 15 minutes trying to get turned around so that you can go left again.

Whereas, my brother inherited my father’s directional gifts including a superhuman talent that enables him to find his way anywhere in any city around the world without a map. He’s like a walking GPS unit.What I could do with this power!

I, on the other hand, struggle to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west. Right now, I am in terror of anyone asking me which way is north in Bozeman. Seriously.

 Combine this lack of direction with the unwillingness to ask for directions (my pride will not suffer such a fall) and you usually have a recipe for disaster. Let’s just say that I have to add in an extra half hour for any appointment at a new place, and I could use a GPS unit in my car. Doug wouldn’t need one if I gave better directions.

My friend Amy posted this on her facebook page and I had to steal it. She says it’s her favorite commercial of all time and I have to agree. This post is dedicated to my father, who is the ultimate cowboy cat herder in our family, especially when my mom is out of town. Truly, I watched it three times and laughed every time. Take a look and have yourself a laugh too.

After a two-week obsession with the Winter Olympics, I’m feeling tired from all that late-night television and a bit cranky with Canada. Honestly, the closing ceremonies put the hoke in the word hockey.

How many different ways can you dress people up as Mounties?  Why ever would you use your national police force as Las Vegas dancers?

Other than Neil Young’s performance (the only redeeming event), it was an evening of sad stereotypes with Bob Costas forced to deliver one-liners like, “We always love a little large inflatable beaver.” Oh Bob, really? Or when he couldn’t identify the electric horses in the middle of a large globe rolling around the stage. “They said there would be horses,” he said, and then finally, ten minutes later. “Oh, there they are!” At any moment I felt like he would announce that we were actually watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Anyway, Canada, we give you the hockey and ice dancing titles, but you lose the ceremonies until you can prove you can do something better.

In the meantime, I’m onto my last week of television watching before we shut it off for the season. Doug and I like to take regular tv breaks, so that we can get bored enough to entertain each other by dancing around the house to Steve Earle songs (you’d have to be there). Seriously, we take a six month break after football season, and would have shut it off on Monday if not for the last episode of Big Love, which airs this Sunday evening. I’m dying to know what secret J.J. is hiding and whether the polygamist clan will come out of the closet, so to speak. You’d have to be a fan of the show to speak this language.  Anyway, I’m happy to return to my regularly scheduled sleeping time and the less dramatic world of life without television. Thanks to all who gently reminded me I was off of my regularly scheduled blogging too.

I’m giving up watching male figure skating for Lent. It’s really not fair to make fun of them. Honestly, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel (not that I even think shooting fish in a barrel would be that easy, let alone fun to do, but you know what I mean).

But before I purge, I need to binge. Here’s a sample of our in-home commentary watching the Olympic male figure skating competition last night.

Doug says, “It’s hard to believe that’s a triple, huh?”

I say, “It’s hard to believe that’s a man.”

The real commentator says, “That was hot.”

I came of age in the era of Elvis Stojko and Kurt Browning, when male figure skaters still had some sex appeal to women. But sadly, things have changed, and I’m finding it more disturbing than sexy.

Last night I discovered that the new trend in male skating costumes are fancy gloves, the kind your grandmother wore to hide liver spots, not to keep her warm. If this wasn’t bad enough, some skaters wore oversized mittens, as if the skater suffered from chicken pox and needed to wear gloves to keep from scratching himself during the event.

Even the “most masculine” of the United States figure skaters, Evan Lysacek, wore gloves with feathers on them. When he put his hand up to his face he looked like he was holding a feathered fan. It wouldn’t surprise me if he wore a feather boa in the long competition tomorrow night.  

To keep cringeworthiness down, I think at least one judge should be completely dedicated to rating the costumes, and deductions should be given for any costume that inspires you to say things like, “I think he’s wearing a bodice. Is that a bodice?”

Close to the end of the competition, one skater appeared behind the rink to talk with his parents and from what I could see of his top half I thought he might provide some relief. He didn’t have his hair gelled, and his shirt was flannel. What I couldn’t see was the bottom half of his costume, which was meant to look like a carpenter’s overalls, only with one of the suspenders hanging uselessly by his side, making me think he was really going to put on a stripping show on ice.

Despite the temptation, the commentators largely ignored the flamboyant costumes and provided such wise directions to viewers as, “His costume looks overpowering. It almost looks burdensome for him, but look past that.” This was the man who was dressed like a medieval soldier in a ballet. He was wearing skates that looked like leather go-go boots. It’s hard to look past that, let alone at that.

But, one commentator summed up the evening perfectly with this statement,  ”He just rocked the tassle.” Yes, indeed, of that I’m sure.

After we watched the Winter Olympic opening ceremonies last night, I could hear Doug chuckling spontaneously for a couple of hours. He wasn’t laughing about the technical failures of the torch lighting (anyone who has ever had a powerpoint presentation fail on them right before the presentation feels sorry for all involved). He wasn’t laughing about Bob Costas and Matt Lauer’s comments that organizers discovered Canadian talent “at the circus” and “on YouTube” or that so many Canadians seem to be Scottish dancers recently released from prison.

Heck, he wasn’t even laughing about kd Lang, whose body was hidden somewhere in a giant white suit. By the way, just as an aside, if they were going to show someone while they were singing, why couldn’t it have been Joni Mitchell? I’m not sure that Joni was actually there, but I would have put her up on the stage if she was.

Anyway, back to Doug’s chuckles. He was really laughing at the look on Anne Murray and Bobby Orr’s face as a Canadian opera star ruined the Olympic Hymn and scared everyone involved. She looked and sang like a woman on fire. At least her hair looked like it was on fire. And I like Opera!  It was hilarious how uncomfortable all of the special Canadians holding the Olympic flag were. You could see they just wanted to lean over and say to the next person, “Can you believe this shit? I think she’s off her meds!”

I must admit, I cried during “We Are the World,” and the prairie dance to Joni Mitchell, and the moment of silence for the fallen Georgian athlete, but I also cried laughing over that Olympic Hymn. If that was a hymn, it might have scared a few people away from singing at church tomorrow. Wow!

So, the two armchairs that are new-to-us have been claimed by the cats. We had envisioned long winter nights reading next to the one air vent that blows hot air in our living room, but have been vanquished to the cold part of the living room by two animals that simply rule by cuteness. How could anyone disturb this?

My mom called me a week before we left for Phoenix to remind me not to take our luggage into my grandmother’s house.

“If there is anything black on your luggage, or if it’s dirty, or if it could leave a black mark, just leave it in the garage and carry your stuff into the house. She has a lot of drawers in the guest bedroom.”

I’m surprised she didn’t just tell me to leave my suitcases in the trunk and pack in each item into the house separately. You could eat off my grandma’s garage floor. It’s just as clean as the white and cream carpet and furnishings inside and neither should be soiled by my black marks.

“You know, she can’t see that well anymore, so she won’t notice the black marks,” my mom continued. This was where I was thinking my mom would say not to worry about it, but I should have known better. “So I just get a wet rag and wipe them up if I see one.” Uh huh.

My mother’s warning says a lot about me and my grandmother. She knows that I am a.) an incurable slob who doesn’t mind leaving my bed unmade for the day; b.) incapable of living in a white house and not leaving a mark. It’s just one of those things that goes with my DNA.

She knows that my grandmother, despite being blind in one eye and nearly blind in the other, would mind if I left a mark.

At age 87, with only the help of a walker to get around, my grandmother’s home is cleaner and better organized than mine. I admit, this is a little embarrassing. In comparison to most people I would call myself clean, but not neat. I never iron, and the last time I dusted might have been months ago, but I always hand scrub my floors. In comparison to my grandmother, I’m living in a demolition zone.

My grandmother is also an incredible cook. Despite her physical limitations, she baked oatmeal cookies, pecan pie, coconut cream pie, two coffee cakes, and cinnamon rolls (all by scratch) before we even arrived. No wonder I came back a few pounds heavier! Her kitchen and freezers are perfectly arranged so that she can reach everything, and labeled (case in point, all of her tea bags are in glass jars with an empty tea packet taped to the top so that you can tell what you’re getting). It was easy to clean up after dinner.

I thought about storing our clothes in her dresser drawers, but I seemed to be constitutionally unable. Instead I used the closet to my advantage, piling stuff up on the floor, rifling through clothing as I needed it. She never said anything, but I’m pretty sure she knew what was going on. You can’t hide anything from my grandmother — that’s why I love her.

I used to say things like, “I could never live anywhere that didn’t have the four seasons.” Meaning snow, of course. The older I get, the more I hope to never say never, because right now I feel like I could live somewhere without the four seasons, very easily.

Yes, I ski. Yes, I get out during the winter. Yes, I do think snow is pretty, especially on the mountains on a clear day. But I have to say, the dark that comes with the cold around here makes me irritable, and the cold can be painful for someone with as poor of circulation as I apparently have. My hands double as ice cubes for most of the winter. I don’t even need to get an ice pack for an injury. I just put my hands on my neck or my knee, and get immediate relief. I wonder if that’s what they call a healer?

Unfortunately for Doug, I sometimes try and warm my hands or feet on his body, and he yelps like an animal in pain every time. I just don’t know why. Huh.

As I’ve noted before, amnesia sets in around here once the weather starts to warm up a bit, and you forget that you ever had thoughts about living in the South Pacific because summers are so perfect. But right now I wish I was a snow bird, and could fly until I felt the sun on my face and heard waves crashing from an ocean nearby. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

I can’t even type the word “tradition” now without hearing the song from Fiddler on the Roof  and wanting to follow the first with another, louder, “Tradition!”

Last weekend I traveled to Canada for the second annual mother-daughter get-together over the Martin Luther King Jr. long weekend. This year’s entertainment highlight was an Off-Broadway production of Fiddler in Calgary.  I’ve been humming, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match! Find me a find!” ever since. It’s really hard to get those songs out of your head and I’m not kidding.

In the vein of traditions, Doug and I stopped at my parent’s ranch before heading north. A night at the ranch means a.) the early morning wakeup call from the rooster and chickens; b.) the real wakeup call from KSEN, the local radio station my parents listen to over breakfast. I woke up during the middle of the Swap-n-Bulletin board.

“This is Sharon, and we’d like to sell our dishwasher. It runs pretty good, but it has a little problem with the soap tray staying open — shouldn’t be too hard to fix. We’re asking $50 or your best offer.”

I put my pillow over my head. I’m not a morning person.

KSEN has always had an entertaining morning radio show, complete with a police report, a discussion with the local used car dealer, and a daily polka that my mother delighted dancing to just as the school bus pulled up in front of our picture window.  Talk about embarrassing!

Anyway, it woke me up in time for us to cross the border at a little border station manned by my least favorite border guard. This guard loves to come up with paranoid theories. Even though he has seen me a thousand times (okay, maybe not a thousand, but a lot) in past crossings he has rerouted me to a different border because he thought that my nephew wasn’t really my nephew, but a man I had married to help me declare Canadian citizenship after crossing the border (Real Story: My nephew was going home from college with a lot of stuff and I was going to a conference). He also detained Doug and I because he thought he had kidnapped me because our last names are not the same.  He took Doug inside to interrogate him and asked, “Who’s the girl?” in a threatening voice. Real Story: Doug and I were just married, without passports (no need for them yet) and on our way to a Bob Dylan concert.

Once we reached Cochrane, Alberta (our final destination) we melted off our border anxieties with a trip to the salon for a mother-daughter pedicure/manicure.

I was good and relaxed before the all-female let’s-help-our-friend-get-through-her-divorce party where we sampled (I’m not kidding) drinks called Sour Pusses. Did you know they have napkins for this kind of party? Awesome!

Canadian women are lovely, but I spent a good chunk of the party either getting attacked by the hostess’s cat (I thought the cat was purring when I petted it because I couldn’t hear over all the loud female voices, but it was actually growling at me), or trying to avoid talking to a Birther conspiracist about Barack Obama  (this was my sole contribution to MLK day).

Between the early morning chickens, KSEN, the Birther theories, and the Sour Pusses I ended up so exhausted that I had to lie down on the hostess’s couch to put my feet up, hoping that I could either fall asleep or convince the rest of my party that 10:00 wasn’t too early to go home.

On Sunday, Laura and I headed to Hot Yoga for a sweaty session of stretching (if you’re curious, hot yoga is like going to a yoga session conducted at a military boot camp in Florida in August but somehow relaxing). Then we all took quick showers before Fiddler, which was awesome (thank you Mom!), and finished the day up with a fried turkey dinner cooked up by the men in our life (and no, I’m not kidding about this either).

What else would you expect from my travels?

Peaches is currently unhappy with me. I’ve been traveling a lot. Out of town for a wedding, for work, and now for a family get-together, she’s been lucky to get any quality time out of me this month. Doug has had to fill in, waving cat toys in front of her and Cocoa uselessly, getting the grooming brush swatted out of his hand, and opening the door for the special meow that means, “I want out! Now!”

After two nights away she starts to wander far afield from our house, looking for me. I feel guilty, especially when I get back and I get the old “Do I know you?” routine from her. Cocoa is more forgiving. She purrs and purrs and during the night she’ll lie on my chest as if to say, “Don’t ever leave again, ok?” It takes a few days for Peaches to come around. When we left today she was wrapped in a ball in a corner, obviously upset at the thought of prolonged absence from her two favorite slaves. But, we have a great cat sitter, and she can sleep all day in the clothes hamper if she wants. And a few days after we arrive home she’ll decide that I’m back in her good graces and will climb on my side while I’m sleeping and stretch out like the Sphinx to make sure I know that I was missed.