But Sometimes it IS Cold

It’s layoff season over here at Acme Shovels, Grommets, and Rope (A Worldwide Octopi Corporation, Pty, LTD, M-O-U-S-E) and the bell?

For whom does she toll?

The bell tolls for Jerry.

A 26-year veteran of these carpeted halls, Jerry got the ol’ corporate heave-ho yesterday. 

I like Jerry.  He once walked blocks out of his way on a bitterly windy January night to ensure I got to the bus stop free of the unwieldy encumbrances of the city, ie., panhandlers, skeeves, and earnestly entitled executives. 

He confesses that he has lost the ability to feel cold, something I have never heard of.

“What do you mean, you don’t feel the cold?”

He shrugs.  “I was working in the barn one night –“

“Wait,” I say.  “The barn?”

“I have a place in South Dakota.”

“Ah.”

“And it was, I don’t know, January?  February?  Super cold.  I mean, I knew it was cold?  But I wasn’t.  I stood in the barn in just a tee shirt and long pants and threw hay for a good two hours before I felt even remotely cold…”  He trails off.  “That can’t be right, can it?”

“Well,” I say, “you were doing physical labor.”

“No,” he says.  “Come on.  Ten degrees.  And that barn’s not heated.” 

We cross Marquette at the lights and I notice that while it is probably 10 degrees right now, he’s not wearing a coat.

We’ve been walking for several blocks, and he isn’t shivering.  I reach out, pull a glove off, and lay my hand on his bare arm. 

Warm.

There's a crowd as he leaves.  It is no longer winter, and yet there's a nip in the air at the elevator banks.  The same man who once called me "honey" in a meeting ("It's what I call my girlfriend.  I'm so sorry!  Please don't call HR!") waves good-bye.  

"I hope you feel cold some day!" I say.

And the others in the office turn to stare.

A Morning on the Bus with My Peeps

The woman on the bus is taking up some space. 

She sits across the seats as if stretched out in the back of my old Ford LTD.   Her feet extend into the aisle, and those of us boarding – a term also used in the air transportation business, I believe – clear her boots gingerly.

She is rough looking, perhaps she has slept outside.  Her age is difficult to guess, her skin sun damaged, her eyes hard. 

I grumble internally, briefly, as I ponder the hubris.  The bus is full, as I have taken the second to the last seat.  If anyone wants to sit, they will have to ask her to move; and this being Minnesota, I’m guessing only one out of 20 would.

We don’t like confrontation.

But we will grumble to ourselves.

I judge her for a minute or two.  In the end I decide that perhaps this is all she has, the imperious demand for not one but two seats.  She’s only going to pay for one, dagnabbit, but she’s taking two.

I shrug, internally.  So have two.

There is a clatter at the front of the bus, and I watch a smiling, dimpled man in a suit, a recent immigrant from India, chase a water bottle.  For the next 30 seconds I watch as the thermos rolls, just ahead of his outstretched hands.  Out of his bag, it rolls under his seat, across the aisle, under two more seats to where it finally rests next to the duffel bag that Two Seats has on the floor.

He straightens up.  He smiles, says something I cannot hear and leans in to pick up the bottle, whereupon he returns to his seat.

And she smiles, slowly, pulls a phone out of her pocket and begins texting.

It Was Either That or A Tote Bag

Every now and then, we here at Acme Gravel and Sprockets take a quiet moment to reflect that, hey, there are worse jobs.

Delivering food on roller skates, for example.  Or crime-scene sanitation. 

Or working where Margaret does.

“Don’t,” she says, “Tell anyone where this came from, but this is a gen-u-wine email from our VP.  Oh, and don’t tell them I work at Global Stickers.”

Sure, I say.  That’s safe with me, Miss Margaret Olson, 5248 Lefse Boulevard.

Random Capitalization and Punctuation included for your Pleasure.

Team,

Recently I noted on the company bulletin board that the TPS reduction goal for 2016 was met!  This was a great accomplishment.  We here at Global Stickers had committed to providing a Pizza Party to the Company in the event we reached our Goal, and since we did, Global Stickers is excited to be providing that Pizza Party. 

Organizing the Pizza's for your team will be the responsibility of the Manager and supervisor. You will have this party on April 1.  Two pieces of pizza per person will be purchased.  Drinks will not be provided.  Multiply the number of people by 2 and divide by 8 to get the number of large Pizza's to order.   Pizza’s must be cheese, pepperoni, or sausage. 

You may order from anywhere in town as long as it is Domino’s, Costco, or Pizza Hut.  No other’s allowed! I would order them in the morning or even the day before to give them time to fill the order.  I have a script if anyone need’s it.

The supervisor or manager should pay for the Pizza's and expect to be reimbursed.   Write clearly, using black or blue ink.  Be sure to include the name of your department, if anyone took more than two pieces, and the exact start and end time of your celebration.  I will review. 

Thanks for the determination you’ve shown this last year, and I look forward to posting this coming year’s next initiative.  Fingers crossed for next year’s reward:  tee-shirt’s from last year’s Inventory Lock-In!

Best regards,

Snidely W. Lash, PhD, OCD, SOB

If You Look at it Sideways, It’s a Diet

I’m on a new diet.

It’s called “There’s leftover food in the break room!” 

All the kids are doing it.

Left wallet-battered and now the proud owner of plumbing that works and shiny fixtures extolling my dedication to beauty and cleanliness, I’ve turned a cynical eye toward my expenses.

In other words, I am broke until payday. 

And this is how I came to eat a sandwich I wouldn’t necessarily have chosen had I paid for it, a bag of gratis chips, and two freakishly large cookies on Tuesday.

How could the execs not have wanted these cookies?  Huddled at my desk, cheeks bulging, eyes furtively glancing right, left, right, left, I give myself a pat on the back.

Saved a couple bucks there.

Fast-forward to Tuesday night, when I discover both tuna and Tuna Helper in my pantry.  Heaven help us, who bought this, and why do they hate me?  What could I have possibly done...

But that’s the price you pay when you want a flushing toilet and dripless spigots.

It’s at this point I’d like to say that I have been pleasantly surprised, that Tuna Helper is rather tasty.

But that would be lying.  It’s dreadful. 

Luckily, there are only two more big bowls of it to eat before I can move on to fried potatoes.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not complaining, not really.  After all, I paid cash for them thar plumbin’s.

And with Tuna Helper as leftovers, I won’t be tempted to raid the fridge later this evening. 

See? 

Diet. 

Do What You Can; or Breaking it Down to Its Most Manageable Bits

I have painted my nails a dark red.  Short nails at the end of fingers on a small hand, I stare at them.

The boiler in a rental unit has died.  The fascia and soffit on the garage has gone soft and splintered in the misguided rain.  A stained glass window is broken and must be replaced.

And I am getting a divorce.

In preparation of the upcoming move, I have been packing my life away. 

The house has never been cleaner.

I rise from the couch and head to the porch, where I put my earbuds in.  There is a man and a dog in the park across the street, and I watch as master hurls ball and loyal sidekick chases.

I light a cigarette.

When I finish, I go through all my books, wipe them off and separate them into “take” and “donate”. 

I am both impressed and horrified by the collection. 

Over the next three hours, I work.  One thing begets another: stacks of books are moved from the three-season porch, the shelves, from piles on the hardwood floor and then into boxes.  I break the vacuum down to the wand, suck up whorls of dusty clouds, then, dissatisfied, pull the bucket from under the kitchen sink and scrub on my hands and knees.  The house smells of PineSol.

Suddenly, I am tired. 

As if from a dream, I look down.  My nails are chipped; and in two cases, broken.  I have a shallow cut on the inside of an index finger.

And after a moment of staring, I go back to the couch, reach for the lotion, the clippers and the polish.

This, I can fix. 

Wherein Pearl Enjoys a Good, All-Day Fright

These people look really put together.

I back out of the room, check the signage. 

It’s the right room.  I slowly re-enter and take a set at one end of a long table. 

Welcome, my friends, to eight hours of corporate learning, where an innocuously titled course on “Communications” reveals itself, in dizzying, slow-motion horror, to be the stuff of nightmares.

All that was missing was my entering naked and forgetting my locker combination on the Day of the Big Test.

I turn to the woman next to me.  “Why am I here?” I whisper.

She grins, and I like her immediately.  “Because someone loves you very, very much.”

And we burst into laughter.

It is close to the truth.  My boss, a lovely woman who now owes me an adult beverage the size of a day-long lesson in humility, had hoped only to enroll me in a course that would help me resist the urge to send e-mails with the salutation “Dear Inconsiderate Boob”.

In actuality, however, I have been thrust amongst people who speak for a living, the course being designed to teach them how to move across a stage effectively, how to gesture without appearing to have T-Rex arms, how to make eye contact without frightening the audience.

Now why don’t you come to the front of the room – hold on, we’ll be videotaping you several times to go over in your one-on-one coaching sessions – and give us a couple minutes on, oh, let’s see.  How about the rodeo?

One would think that I, personally-renowned writer loved by absolutely tens of people, would have quite the stage presence.  And you’d be right – as long as I am at a podium and reading. 

But this?  Suddenly, I cannot tell a story and walk.  I have forgotten how to blink, I am rocking on my heels, I am holding my arms out as if to play an invisible piano. 

The word “um” comes to my lips and stays.

The room is supportive and generous, the applause genuine.

I have wandered into a room holding a kazoo, and I have been taken in by the violin section.

And I am looking forward to the drink that is surely in my immediate future. 

Well It WAS Called a HoJo...

“I’m starting to have feelings about this gal,” I say.

Mary leans over the railing and peers into the dark of a heavy Florida night.  She jerks her chin toward the woman lurching through the parking lot.  That one?   

I nod. 

“What kind of feelings,” she says, straightening.  “Deep-rooted feelings?  Feelings of longing and/or despair?”

Mary’s been a little keyed up since the flight.

“Feelings of nausea and fascination,” I say. 

We watch as the woman, a tall angular female clad in less than a yard of black fabric, walks through the lot.  The five-, maybe six-inch heels she is wearing give her the perplexing, jerky grace of a spider one shot of vodka past sobriety.  Pale and, well, lunar, somehow, she knocks sharply on a door several down and one floor below us. 

The door opens, and she slips through it.

Mary turns to me.  “What are ya thinkin’?”

“It’s not pizzas she’s delivering.”

“A hooker?"  Mary leans over the railing again, cranes her neck toward the door on the ground floor.  "So suspicious,” she says.  She straightens up, holds out a piece of fruit.  “Meth-addict orange?”

I take it.  The woman who had approached us at the convenience store a couple blocks down had had the hood of her jacket stuffed with them.  “Mmm,” I say.  “Meth-addict oranges are the juiciest.”

Mary nods.  “Nothing says Sunshine State like a parking-lot fruit deal."

We sit down, peel our oranges, drop the skins into the ash can outside our room.

"Ima giver 10 minutes."  Said from around a mouth full of orange.

"That's just rude," I say.  I spit out a seed.  "Terms and conditions are a good three minutes alone."

"You know everything," Mary says.

I shrug nonchalantly.  "I read," I say.

We laugh, eat another orange.

"What did we pay for these again?"

"Three bucks."  Mary pops another segment into her mouth, stands up, and leans over the railing again.  "Door opening!"

I stand in time to see her leave.  Mary hands me a piece of orange, and we watch her adjust a strap or two as she heads back to parking lot.

People never look up.

We watch as she walks from one side of the parking lot to the next,  She pulls a phone out, texts something.  She puts her phone in her purse, then disappears behind a parked car.

Mary tugs at my sleeve.  "Is she doing what I think she's doing?"

I shrug, grimace a bit.  But she is.  The woman is peeing behind a parked car.

"We should stay here more often,"I say.

"Both inexpensive and scenic," Mary offers.  She puts a piece of orange peel in her mouth, gives me a grin.  "What-say we find a new place to stay tomorrow?"

After a few moments, the woman stands, adjusts her clothing and checks her phone.  Another quick text, and she walks through the parking lot and toward another door just a few doors from the first one.

And we watch as she knocks again.  

Crocheting: More on Your Hands Than Just Time

I spent a good deal of time Sunday sitting on the couch, a cat-abused ball of increasingly kinked yarn on the floor, a J crochet hook clutched in my right hand.

You know, there was a time when I sat on the couch without such accoutrement, naked in my lack of time-occupying detritus.  Why, in my youth I was capable of sitting, for absolute hours, with nothing but a blank look on my face and the willingness to do nothing at all.

You shoulda seed me. 

If only it were still so.

But no.  No.  As has so many times been pointed out by folks wiser than I, we are not a do-nothing people.  Raised by a mother who cut our hair, made her own candles, canned our food, and regularly constructed Halloween costumes with nothing but her wits and an old bed sheet, I find myself increasingly astounded by my own sloth-like tendencies.

And so I decided to do something about it.

Hence the clutching.

My mother taught me to crochet as a child.  Having last made an afghan – not an Afghani, no matter what you’ve heard! – in the early 90s, I was surprised by my ability to recall the various stitches.

I should learn some more, thought I. 

And this is where the blank look comes in.  Because try as I might, and as much as “ch 5 sl st foll rd dbl ch in next 5” seems like a perfectly rsnbl req to mk on a Sund aft, I cannot complete a square.

Considering that I will need, oh, a hundred or so, to complete what I want to complete, this is a roadblock.

I rip it out, read the directions, and start from the beginning.

And like a springy, home-spun lesson in life, I get just one step ahead of the last tear-out only to find myself cross-eyed and fumbling again. 

Wt the hl? 

How do some people make it all look so easy?

And His Shoes Make Him Run Faster and Jump Higher, Too

You remember my friend T, right? The man who believes almost every woman he sees is beautiful? The man whose sudden and pert-near evangelical love of his lawn (The Book of Scotts Turf Builder) has changed his brown weedy yard to a lush, green carpet?

He now has furniture concerns.

To wit, he believes his dresser drawers are up to no good.

“Everything I put in there comes out smaller,” he says. “My t-shirts are all tight in the middle. They didn’t used to be!”

That’s right. The dresser in T’s bedroom is shrinking his clothes.

I’ve seen T’s dresser. It’s a battered blonde wood piece of furniture with missing drawer pulls – and while I’ve always stood four-square against this very type of dresser, it does not appear to be any more a clothing-shrinker than my own.

And none of my shirts are, uh, too small.

None! I don’t care what you’ve heard!

Of course, T may claim that it is faulty furniture that has caused his t-shirts to reduce in size, there is also the fact that cotton t-shirts and hot dryers are natural enemies.

There’s also something to be said of his love of the all-you-can-eat banquet.

For now, however, I will play along with his dresser drawer theory. Why not? It makes as much sense as his belief that there are beautiful women everywhere he goes; and maybe I’ll get a free t-shirt out of the deal.

Mary and Pearl go to Florida; or Mr. Frampton Appears to Have Fallen on Hard Times

A continuation of yesterday's story, which was a continuation of Monday's and Tuesday's.  Catch up, won't you?  I'll wait right here.  Ooooh, maybe I should pick up some Danish...


The bar could be anywhere. 

Mary digs an elbow into my ribs.  “Whaddaya think?  Think we’re the prettiest gals here?”

We laugh.  “By way of having all our teeth,” I say.

“And hair.”

“And,” I say, quietly, “by being among a handful that don’t appear to have a meth problem.”

She nods.  “All situations should be judged thusly,” she says.  I give her a look.

“What?” she says.  “You aren’t the only one who gets to say stuff like that!”

And we laugh again.  Because we are funny.

It’s early evening.  The bar is three quarters full, Wheel of Fortune is on the TV in the corner, and a song about somebody sic’ing something on a chicken is on the juke box.

But like stepping into the shower with your socks on, something seems wrong. What is it? What's that -- Hey!  What’s that smell?

Ah.  Cigarette smoke.

“Smoking in a bar,” Mary says.  Suitably, she sounds almost breathless.

“That’s crazy.”  I say.  “Remember when that was allowed?”

“Pew,” she says, wrinkling her nose.  “We’re gonna stink.”

“You’re gonna stink,” I say.

“No, you,” she counters.

And we laugh some more.

“Hey.”

I turn around.  A man best visualized as an aging Peter Frampton is standing there.

This is not lost on Mary, who starts to hum “Do You Feel Like We Do” under her breath. 

He is thin, and, somehow grubby, although it’s hard to pinpoint why.  Perhaps because he has spent far too much time in the sun.  Perhaps he just needs a good moisturizer. 

“Do you play pool?” he says.

I shake my head.  “Haven’t played in years,” I say.  “Anyway, I’m here with my friend.”

“Yeah,” he says, “but you could still play pool.”

“I could,” I say, “but I’m not.”

Mary starts to laugh, and Mr. Frampton finds this reassuring.

“But you could,” he says.  “Please?  Please play pool with me?”

And just like that – just like that! – I resolve that I will not play pool with him.  “No,” I say.  “Thank you anyway, but we’re on vacation and –“

He breaks in.  “Somewhere north, am I right?”

Mary, a woman most accurately described as having a current skin tone closely resembling her original, fresh-out-of-the-box color – that is to say, alabaster – laughs.  “We got ourselves a live one!” she hollers.  The guys at the bar turn around, give us the once-over, and return to the Wheel of Fortune.

“Come on.  Please,” he says.  “Just play pool with me.”

“Why?” I say.  “Ask someone else.”

“You’re the prettiest gal in here.”

I turn to Mary, our eyes lock, and our jaws drop in mock indignation.  “I’ll have you know, sir,” Mary says, puffing her chest, “that I’ve won a number –“

“—a number!” I shout.

“—of competitions based solely on my looks!”

“And your ability to hold your liquor,” I add.

“And your liquor,” she concedes.

But Peter Frampton is not dissuaded.  “Please,” he says.  “It’ll be an easy game.  No showboating, no pressure.  A friendly game.  I just want to play pool with you.”

I look at Mary, who shrugs.  “Go ahead,” she says.  “I’ll just sit at the bar and talk to—“  she leans over, taps the shoulder of a Korean War vet, from the looks of his jacket, “—what’s your name?”

“Ken,” he says. 

“I’m gonna talk to Ken here,” she says.  She sits down on the stool next to Ken.  “Go on.  Have fun, kids.”

Is there more?  Honey, we’re almost up to 600 words already, and you know there’s more!

Mary Be Squeezy

Neatly coiffed, hands clasped behind our backs, Mary and I rock gently on our heels, striving for a look that says both “I’m here to serve” and “Please don’t ask me for anything”.

We are standing in the banquet hall, just outside the swinging kitchen doors.

Church service over, a 30-minute bar/reception follows.

Christmas dinner is right around the corner.

“You look nice,” I say.

“No, you look nice,” Mary says.

Ice waters filled to a three-quarters height, butter pats and creams center-table, silverware inspected, we await the storm that will be the next four hours.

“Oy vey,” Mary says.

A man in a suit, comfortably nestled between “old” and “elderly”, is approaching with a surprisingly sturdy gait.

“Mary!” he shouts.

My head swivels to the right, where I watch a blush creep up Mary’s neck.

“You know this guy?” I say out of the side of my mouth.

“Everybody knows me,” she mutters.

The man in the suit wraps an arm around Mary’s shoulders, rubs her upper arm vigorously. “How’re ya, sweetheart? Say, I’m wondering what a guy’s gotta do around here to get a glass of ice water. Can you do that for me, sweetheart?”

Mary, ever the sweetheart, can indeed get this guy a glass of ice water.

I follow her into the back. “No, seriously,” I say, “How does he know your name?”

She shakes her head. “When I was setting up that table just outside the double doors, he was out there.”

“Did he hug you then, too?”

“I’m irresistible to the old guys,” she says, wide-eyed. “They want to squeeze me.”

It’s true. “You’ll probably get a proposal out of the evening.”

“Shaddap,” she says pleasantly.

Thirty minutes later, and Mary comes flying into the back kitchen. “Ack!” We’d just finished serving the salads: huge, glass-bowled affairs passed around tables of eight, family-style. I hold out a piece of fresh fruit to calm her nerves.

“That’s not going to help,” she says, popping it into her mouth. “Mmmm,” she says, “pineapple.”

“So what’s going on?”

She dabs at her lips, checks her lipstick in the polished steel of the hand-towel dispenser. “Do I look like I want to be hugged to you?”

“I personally find you almost indescribably attractive,” I say.

She narrows her eyes at me. “Why I oughta…”

“Why you little…”

We laugh.

“You busy? Come with me. Watch this.”

I follow her out to the floor, where she is engulfed by old- to elderly men. “Mary!” they shout.

“You gotta meet Pearl,” she says, grinning. She pushes me forward.

“Pearl!” they shout.

One of them throws an arm around Mary, rubs her on the back. “You’re nice people, you know that? You’re just nice people.”

And we smile at each other.

Because, darn it. We’re just nice people.

Nice, huggable people.

Every Season is Special; or, I’m – Sob! – Cold!

I stood at the bus stop this morning, a chill in the air and a suspiciously autumnal look to the sky and thought to myself, ‘Now where’s my mittens?’

Wait.   Mittens?

It’s a full 30 degrees colder this morning than it was just two weeks ago.

Oh, September, you sly little thing you.

Ladies and Gentlemen of the jury, I stand before you, a woman covered fore to aft in layers upon layers of thick, weather-defiant clothing. 

In September.

The Farmer’s Almanac, always disturbingly accurate, predicts another dreadful winter, much like last year’s dreadful winter, only with more snow.

I have cousins online comparing SAD light boxes. 

“This is the first year,” my son says, “that I’m not looking forward to winter.”

“Me, too,” I say.

“There just wasn’t enough summer,” he says.  “I’m not sick of it yet.”

And ain’t that the truth.

Of course, it goes against the code, living in Minnesota, to face an upcoming season in this manner.  We’re a hardy people, dammit, and buck up, won’t you?  Why, our great-grandmothers hung wash that froze on the line!  They subsisted on animals they butchered themselves and root vegetables they kept in a root cellar!

They wrested a living out of the land – frozen and unfrozen – with nothing but steely determination; large, well-muscled sons; and the knowledge that there was nothing they could do about it!

It was 42 degrees at the bus stop this morning. 

If you need me, I shall be in a hot bath until spring.