Introductions

When the future seemed endless, I never even thought about stuff like this.  But, with the possibility of Boy going to boarding school in August, I figured it was time.  I am talking about teaching him about some things he'll need to know when he's living away from home.  Stuff like how to do laundry, where food actually comes from, what a bathroom cleaner is for and how to use it - you get the picture.  So I decided to start by introducing him to the concept of laundry.  It went something like this.  

We stood in front of the washing machine.
ME:  Okay, this is how it works.  You take clothes that you have worn and...
BOY:  How long?
ME:  (confused) How long what?
BOY:  How long have I worn them?
ME:  (still confused) What do you mean 'how long have you worn them'?  What difference does that make? 
BOY:  Well, what constitutes dirty clothes?  What if I put on a pair of pants and only wear them for like, um, 20 minutes?  Are they dirty then?  Do they need to be washed still?
ME:  Why would you put on a pair of pants and then change them after 20 minutes?
BOY:  I don't know.  Maybe I was going to take a shower or something.
ME:  Well, why would you take a shower after you got dressed?  That seems sort of illogical.
BOY:  Well, what if I decided that I really didn't like the way the pants looked on me?  Or maybe I was going to go to sleep.
ME:  Why don't you like the pants?  (raising my voice just a smidgen) You should have told me you didn't like the pants before you cut the tags off them and wore them.
BOY:  (confused) What pants?  Who said I didn't like them? Maybe I just thought another pair of pants would look better with the shirt I was wearing.
ME:  Well, what shirt are you wearing?
BOY:  (looking down at his shirt) I don't know.  This one?
ME:  NOT THE ONE YOU'RE WEARING NOW.  The one that doesn't go with the pants!
BOY: (relieved) Oh.  I don't know.  I'm just saying...
ME:  And it seems REALLY silly to change your pants right before you're going to go to sleep, so just don't do that, okay?  Let's skip over the dirty question for now and go on.  Okay, so you take your DIRTY clothes and you need to decide what water temperature they should be washed in.  Generally, light clothes use warm or hot water and...
BOY:  What do you mean 'light clothes'? 
ME:  Colored.  Light COLORED clothing.  Like white or tan or pink...
BOY:  I don't have anything pink.
ME:  (under my breath)I bet you will soon.  Anyway, you put the clothes in the washing machine.  You don't PACK them in, you have to leave room in there for the water and the soap and for them to move around and everything.  Then you select the water temperature and add the soap and push this button over here and let the machine take it from there.  Now, the machines up at school will be different but that's the general idea. Any questions?
BOY: (looking at me blankly) Yes.  How do the clothes get from the floor of MY room all the way to the LAUNDRY room?
ME: =sigh=

[techy garbage]

My level of frustration is increasing with every passing day.  The older my computer gets, the harder it is to maneuver.  One case in point:  the screamingly SLOW transitions between my e-mail folders.  Now, it is not a complicated task – I simply want to see what has gone into my “deleted mail”  folder.  ‘Why?’ you ask?  Because I somehow made it so that pretty much every e-mail I get winds up there, even those from my preferred senders and approved contacts.  Don’t ask why I did this or how I did this because I don’t have an answer for you.  I have tried to change this – even going as far as to re-create an extensive list of contacts.  Which turned out to not only be unnecessary, but useless as well.  Man even stepped in and helpfully pointed out that my e-mail is behaving badly, but somehow that didn't help the situation.  I changed from my normal e-mail provider to one of those anonymous ones, and created an entirely new account.  This has not helped.  Frustratingly enough, solicitations from Neiman Marcus and others of some interest, like those advertising  potential jobs, still go into the trash file.  After changing from ‘hotmail’ (not so hot) to ‘gmail’ (not so great), I am still having the same issue.  So, I still have to toggle between the inbox and deleted items folders, which because my technology is a little dated, takes a while.  And, to make the situation even worse, I now have four different e-mail accounts which I can’t figure out how to get rid of so my computer really gets cranky and goes even s-l-o-w-e-r.  And then there is the adventure of trying to open an internet connection, which  is comparable to an old lady running and trying to catch up with a freight train. Not gonna happen.   My computer, once the darling of the cyber circuit, wheezes and whirrs and makes a lot of effort and takes a lot of time and runs her fan a great deal but most of the time, such as on days that have the letter “s” in them, will not complete an internet connection.  When this happens, I often scream in frustration and occasionally use swear  words to express my displeasure at its performance.  Which, surprisingly, does nothing.  I have a very low tolerance for non-performance.  I am somewhat ashamed to say I neither know how my computer and phone and iPod and even my television work, and I care even less...my disinterest is even recognized by the normally obtuse Boy, who in a recent e-mail in which he was sending me some software which could potentially fix all the issues I am having, said “this may not work because [ techy garbage ].”  This is now how I will refer to this and others related problems with mechanical things, as it is a perfect expression which describes not only the problem, but my view of it.

Joy to the World

Yes, I have been away...so much to say and catch up on, but I am going to start at the present.  But first, a huge thank you to you all who have continued to check back and request that I write something -  I am giving you this small offering, with the promise of more and better to come.  

So I have survived another Thanksgiving holiday with minimal pain and angst.  Only one of my guests drank entirely TOO much and sort of slept through dinner and then needed to leave before dessert.  In her last moments of semi-lucidity, she regaled us with maudlin stories about her cat whom she had euthanized the previous day.   We hurriedly tried to ship her off at that point in the evening - luckily she is a petite woman, and so we were able to sort of sling her up and around and stuff her into the car.  Other than that, the day was a reasonable success.  Boy overdosed on sugar, and Man, turkey.  As for me, I lustily and uninhibitedly imbibed in all the delights the day had to offer, effectively saying "go to hell"  to my usual healthful diet.   All in all a lovely day!  

A portmanteau of the words "Spiced" and "Ham"...

So, this blog post is for Boy. He specifically requested that I write about Spam. Not electronic spam, because he knows I know nothing about that, but the other one. Much to his surprise, I know nothing about the other kind, either. I was 50 years old and had never tasted Spam. I had never even held a can of Spam in my hand. So because he is a teenager and gets obsessed with things like this and believes it is his mission to expand his parents horizons, the other day Boy coerced Man into buying a can of Spam at the grocery store, insisting that it tastes good. Man was doubtful (he was a Spam virgin, too) but relented and home came the tin of Spam. Spam is evidently an cultural icon. There is an actual Spam museum in Austin, Minnesota (Spam Town USA) which is the Spam capital of the world. And, there are about twelve different varieties of Spam, including (I am not kidding) Honey Spam and Hot & Spicy Spam with Tabasco flavor. Spam is so popular in Hawaii that Burger King added it to it's menu in 2007. In South Korea, Spam is such a delicacy and so desirable that it is often presented as a gift to one's host. There are restaurants that serve nothing BUT Spam, and Spamarama Festivals. Spam Cook-Offs and Spam Parades. The list goes on. So, when Man asked Boy what he wanted for lunch the next day, Boy decided he wanted a Spam sandwich out came the little blue can, and Boy had a Spam sandwich with mustard on whole wheat. Boy proclaimed his lunch as "Delicious". The next day, I was making eggs on English muffins, and Boy suggested that he would like some cooked Spam on his. Cooked Spam? Were you supposed to cook it? What would happen to it when it got hot? And more importantly, how was I to cook it - grill it? roast it in the oven? fry it? I decided to mush it up with the back of a spoon into a paste and sauteed it like a pancake and put it on Boy's egg sandwich. It also rated a "Delicious. You should try it". But I did not. The next day (for such a small can, we sure got a lot of miles out of it) Boy thought it might be a good lunch if I made it like a stir fry - his reasoning was that I really love vegetables, and so I might be tempted to try it. So I diligently cubed the Spam and stir fried it with broccoli and celery and onions and carrots and some garlic and ginger and soy sauce. I was thinking at this point it might actually be like firm tofu and I was pretty interested in tasting it now. So I did. And all I can say is I don't like Spam.

Cluck

So, I want a chicken. A real live clucking pecking egg bearing chicken to keep in the backyard of my suburban home. I don't really know why I want a chicken but in my mind, I picture myself, in a Zsa Zsa Gabor-like ensemble gracefully traipsing through the grass, beneficently dropping feed for my new pet as it adoringly follows me through the yard. I can envision the perfectly constructed and charming coop which the chicken, after a long day of cavorting and frolicking, will return to at night so that she can rest soundly for her adventures the next day...In the dewy morning hours (in my fantasy, I actually awake before noon) with a porcelain egg basket on my arm, I quietly and gently remove the numerous eggs she has so generously bestowed upon me. I tenderly pick her up (I think her name might be Eugenia or maybe Portia, I can't decide) and remove her from the coop and place her in the green grass. As I wander down to the pond she follows happily, and the two of us spend the day enjoying the warm spring day, me daydreaming in the sun and she...well, doing what chickens do. Man however, unequivocally does NOT want a chicken. He can not appreciate and share my vision, but instead regales me with tales of how the four vicious and territorial cats that share our home will torture and eventually mangle the poor thing to death and how the coop will smell really disgusting unless it is cleaned all the time and how chickens really don't frolic but rather cluck incessantly and peck at the ground and eat bugs and all manner of disgusting things. He has also provided edification regarding the egg bearing habits of chickens, in that despite being named Eugenia or Portia they will only lay, at the most, one egg a day and only then, when they feel like it. So in order to provide just our family with sufficient eggs one or two times a week, one chicken will not do. Man says we would need probably six or maybe even more chickens to get the job done, at the rate Boy eats. And SIX chickens would be even noisier and smellier and even more entertainment for the cats. And then, he dealt the final death knell to my fantasy: with all those chickens, when I strolled languorously through the grass, I would likely get chicken poop on the hem of my dress.