Category: life

Use ’em or lose ’em

Everyone has certain skills that exist within them like muscle memory. You know how to do a thing like the back of your hand, or more appropriately, like riding a bike.

You know, executed perfectly, without thinking.

And then there are some skills that you gotta keep using or your abilities will diminish.

Last week in New Mexico, I was faced with this problem.

Yes, I was disheartened to see my dexterity and skill in one particular area has deteriorated.

Here’s the story:

I had occasion to be down in Las Cruces to visit my best friend and my two goddaughters (and goddog and godcat too…I love those fuzzies!).

So Friday, we decided to go stay at the home of my best friend’s parents in El Paso. They are my adopted folks, and I love them like crazy, so I was thrilled to get to spend some time.

I had a rental car, and my best friend loaded her own car with her two kids and we caravanned along I-25 to I-10 and then, because it’s so much easier and quicker, we took the Anthony Gap to get over into El Paso.

Sure, easy peasy. Taken it a bunch of times. No problem. So off I went, following my best friend off the interstate and onto two-lane state road.

Two lanes. Just two. Yes.

Living in New Mexico, it’s not terribly hard to find two-lane roads. And on two lane roads, it’s not terribly hard to find someone driving slower than you’d like to go.

Which means you gotta either give up, or you gotta zip over into the oncoming lane and pass that other car.

And this is where I met my Californian laziness square in the eye.

As we approached a slow moving work truck, my friend, just ahead of me, drifted over slightly, assessed the scene, changed lanes, hit the gas and passed with ease.

You know, back in the day, I was *really* good at passing on two-lane roads. It was like an art and a challenge to me. I LOVED it because I was so g’darn good at it.

But on Friday…I balked. Yes, it’s true. I hesitated.

And then, mad at my hesitation, I just went for it, clumsily changing lanes, not stepping on the gas smoothly enough. The automatic transmission in my rental car scrambled to find an appropriate gear. It finally kicked in, gave me some speed and I made it, but not before I was staring down the headlights on an oncoming vehicle, trying to calculate how long until impact.

Ok, fine I made it safely, but passing didn’t feel as smooth and easy as it used to. I overthought it. I felt like a scaredy cat.

This is not me! I’m the girl who would careen down the two-lane road between El Paso and Carlsbad in a beat up ’79 Bobcat, passing people like they were standing still!

Ok, to be fair, the manual transmission in the Bobcat did help in that whole passing thang, but still.

Is it that I’ve been living in the Bay Area too long? Or that I’m getting old and tentative?

I don’t know. But it makes me wanna take the Jeep out on Highway 1 and pass every car I see, just because I can!

Squeaky Sphincter

Yeah, ok, I get uptight about stuff. I try, oh I try to “live and let live”…and in a lot of ways, I do.

One of my employees recently said she admired my, “Zenlike attitude about everything” which I took as a huge compliment.

Only, I’m not exactly Zenlike about *everything*. No, there are a few things that get my knickers in a bunch, falling squarely into Dr. Freud’s line of studies.

Oh I’m anal, baby, but really only about certain things.

So, what’s got my chones in a gather today?

Well, because I’m traveling on a plane, I made sure I went to the library and stocked up on good reading materials. Stuff to keep me engaged as the Sierra Nevadas, the desert floor of Arizona and, finally, the Sandias pass underfoot.

This is a fairly new book, copyrighted last year. It appears by the librarian’s diligent date mark on the front page that it was put onto my local shelves about a year ago. A year. And I’ll be damned if this thing isn’t already dog-eared.

Of course, by dog-eared, I mean SOMEONE HAS FOLDED DOWN THE CORNERS OF THE PAGES TO MARK THEIR PLACE.

I believe there is a special level of hell for someone who folds the corners of a library book.

Look, if it is your book, you own it, bought and paid for, fine. Live and let live. C’est la vie. Vaya con Dios and go for it. Fold those pages with reckless abandon! Crack the binding and drop a forkful of lasagna on the denouement. Smudge the ink with your greasy thumbs and have yourself a careless ol’ time.

But if it’s a book that belongs to the local library, meaning people OTHER THAN YOU will be borrowing and reading it, do us all a favor, and try to keep it nice, ok?

Also, look, I’m sure that smoking and reading is a real pleasure. At heart, I don’t really care if you smoke, when you smoke, how much you smoke. That’s your deal. If you are reading your own book, blow the smoke deep into all the pages. It’s your book, knock yourself out.

But it’s really not all that fun to open a library book and get blasted with your odor. There is no airing those things out, you know.

And finally…if you have the temerity to MARK in a library book with a pencil or heaven freaking forbid, a ballpoint PEN, I will hold a deep and abiding grudge against you for life. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never know it was you who did it…I’ll hold a grudge anyway.

I’m sure you’ll be quite busy being the greeting committee in hell for all those page folders.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to pull my pantalones out of my behind, smooth and straighten my clothes, and walk down to my gate. It appears my flight is boarding.

Don’t EVEN get me started on people who use their roller bags to block my egress while in line to get on the plane. These “open seating” flights bring out the very worst in people……..

Conundrum

So, while drifting about the internets recently, I came across a blogger who dedicated an entire post to the fact that she *never* gives people gifts off their wedding/baby gift registry.

She said “never” and she meant it.

She said that she wanted to give people a gift that was “more thoughtful” (her words).

Uh. Ok, I may be weird, but not giving people something that they want and giving them instead something that YOU want…doesn’t seem very thoughtful to me.

It seems very…uh…well very selfish, actually.

I suppose my knickers may be laced a little too tight on this one, but having recently been through the whole experience of choosing items for a gift registry (a harder job that I’d expected it would be) I can recognize how much folks appreciate getting what they planned for and asked for.

Because, let’s be honest, all those super duper off-the-list “thoughtful” gifts people give? Well, they get returned at the earliest convenience. I’m certain of that.

Unless you get wedding gifts much like my best friend did. Hand made items. I swear to goodness they must have gotten like six different hand-hewn cheese cutters. They were all beautiful, hand crafted, beautiful wood, truly almost art objects.

But in the end, who needs that many cheese cutters? Unfortunately, the handmade cheese cutters don’t go back to Target so easily!

And we won’t even speak about the handpainted saw blade they also received. To be fair, it was really well done, again, truly an art object. But not really off the ol’ list.

The exception to this could be a side deal that you cut with the recipients. For example, my mom wanted to give us a really special wedding gift, and plates and cake pans weren’t lighting her up. So she checked in on this, and I appreciated her asking.

Together we figured out a really special, meaningful something that I cherish and always will.

Asking first, fine. Just dropping a hand bent roofing nail crafted surprise…well…may or may not be cool. At least not at a “big” event like a wedding or baby. Surprise birthday gift? Yes! White elephant holiday present? Sure!

There is a time and a place, you know?

Any bride and groom with good sense and class will be honestly grateful for any present you bring, but really, being thoughtful means giving up what YOU want, and considering what someone else wants instead.

Harder to do than it sounds, apparently.

(C’mon, any of ya’ll from the country have either given, received, or know someone who has received a soldered nail windmill. Am I right?)

An ode to my truck

Finally, an idea from the blog idea generator that I can sink my teeth into.

“Write a rhyming poem about your car.”

Okay!

: clears throat, ready to recite :

_____________

Oooooh my Jeep, so shiny and black
At ninety three thousand miles, you still got my back.

When I slide you into wheels that drive four
Your engine drops an octave, more menacing than a roar.

You’ve got one blown speaker in the stereo
AM radio baseball. Homerun! “There we go!”

Your tires are getting a skosh toward worn
But your beautiful gray cloth seating, none of it torn.

Some parking lot craphead put a dent in your side
But your boxy lines, classic looks, no way they can slide.

You’ve always been my trusty steed on the road
I never worry that I can get where I need to go.

Together we’ve lasted almost ten years
I spent a little extra on you, despite all my fears.

Back in 2001, who would have thunk it
That in 2009 you’d narrowly escape being a cash for clunk it?

_____________

Yeah, I think that the word “craphead” makes this a classic bit of verse, don’t you?

Happy Friday! Have a great weekend!

There but for the grace of…

Every once in a while, you hear about a car accident where someone has managed to get onto a highway going the wrong way.

Generally, the driver is drunk and the consequences are pretty bad.

I’ve always wondered, honestly, how in the hell that could happen? I mean, even drunk, how could you take the wrong ramp for the highway? Isn’t it very, very obvious?

So, I’ve been a bit harsh on this topic. That is, until today.

Today, distracted, but perfectly sober, in broad daylight, I managed to swing onto the wrong side of an onramp/offramp for an expressway.

I’m still not exactly sure how I managed to do this. It is a weird intersection, but that is no excuse.

I’ve driven this intersection plenty of times. I’ve always navigated it fine, but today, I swung the left turn, picked the wrong side of the road, and found myself facing traffic coming head on.

Thankfully, I was able to take quick evasive action and no one was hurt, no accident happened, and I escaped shaken but fine.

But my mind is totally blown by this little event.

So maybe it’s not so hard to get going the wrong way on a major highway.

I’m not excusing the devastation caused by the people who were driving drunk and managed to cause a lot of injury by making this mistake.

But maybe I understand it a little better now.