CAUTIONS, WARNINGS

CAUTIONS, WARNINGS

I just purchased a bottle of tarnish remover for sterling silver. I hate it when my earrings start to lose their shine. I am now at the table reading the terrifying label for this product. The warning on the label reads: “Warning: This product contains thiourea, a chemical know to the state of California to cause cancer.”

This statement brings so many questions to mind. Do other states know? I feel pretty sure that if it causes cancer in California it will also cause cancer in Oklahoma. Why define a carcinogen so strangely? Is there something unique about California cancers?

Where do we go to discuss the idiocy of the labeling process?

To my knowledge cancer does not know geography. This product is distributed by a company based in Skokie, IL. Does it cause cancer in Illinois from where it is shipped? Who is regulating the information on this label? I would like to think that some inspector somewhere is looking out for the safety of the consumer who goes to buy silver polish or tarnish remover, but I am afraid that is not the case. Just look at the label.

RAISIN SEASON

RAISIN SEASON

I spent thirty years in the South training for the rest of the world. The South has its own perspective on things. Everything is seasonal, forget the scripture about planting and sowing, I am talking about lawn mowers and children’s toys.

I moved to the South with a child of two who had a birthday in July during lawn mower season. Not a toy to be had in a small southern town before the days of the huge box stores. You bought your housewares in spring around Mother’s Day. Forget wanting to purchase a broom in November, that’s holiday season, toys and ornaments.

I learned about this phenomenon the hard way. I wanted to make raisin bread in June. I gathered the ingredients. No raisins. Can’t make raisin bread without raisins, what would be the point. I went to the store and looked in the baking aisle, I looked in the fruit aisle, and I asked the manager of the store.

“Do you have any raisins?”

“Lady, ya have to buy your raisins during raisin season.”

“When is raisin season? I thought they dried them so I could have them year round.”

“Raisin season is in the fall when everyone does their holiday baking.”

There you go. Enjoy raisin season. It is coming upon us.

DYING

I know my time on earth is limited. It is a condition of being human. We are all dying. The only time I worry about leaving this existence is in a Walmart line waiting to check out. Standing next to the tabloid of the alien baby with a head like a goat. All of my neighbors decided to come to Walmart at the same time. Here we are at our glorious best. I have eliminated the tee shirts from my closet that are even vaguely hostile, so I am standing in my tee shirt with the marinara sauce stains on the front.

What if I die waiting in line at Walmart? How would I explain it to St Peter?

“They had a bargain on bananas. I wanted to stock up for baking so I was standing in the line glancing at the tabloid headlines. Dropping my bananas is the last thing I remember.”

Is he going to commiserate with me or laugh? “You were doing what, trying to save .10 a pound? Waaa ha ha ha”

I resolve in the future to spend as little time in line as I possibly can. Look how many things that will automatically take out of my life. Amusement parks, autograph gathering, and possibly big box stores. Doing without standing in line will streamline my errands. I will have to plan for the extra time I’ll have in my life. More time to bundle sticks in my yard or gather the walnuts from my native walnut tree. I’ll be happier, anxiety free.

SURVIVAL

SURVIVAL

Everyone needs to know how to cook. It is a basic survival skill, and everyone eats. The important thing is not to be discouraged by failure. If you cook, you have failures, it’s simple fact. I’ve had splendid failures in my time at the stove. I’ve made greens so bitter, my husband swore ‘a Jew wouldn’t eat these standing with his hat on at Passover.’ It might be slander implying Jews with their hats on will eat almost anything green as a bitter weed. It took many pots of greens before I learned how to cook them.

After you practice on the basics, mastering some of the cooking skills essential to life, you will want to do something fancy like doubling the recipe. It sounds so simple, doubling. Take everything and just times 2.

During one of my early efforts at doubling, I made a pot of chicken and dumplings. Recipe said it served six. Since it didn’t seem like very much, I doubled it, math calculations and all. Imagine my surprise when my husband was over at the stove scrapping the bottom of the pot during supper.

“How can you still be hungry?” I asked him. “I doubled the recipe, it served six before I doubled it. The pot of dumplings should have served twelve in theory.”

My husband just looked at me and said, “twelve midgets on a diet.”

My husband is learning to bake cookies. His approach is to turn on an opera, Marriage of Figaro for example, loud so you can get every note and syllable. Then gather ingredients and bake.

So here is the lesson for you. Don’t be discouraged by failure. Try again, don’t give up. Find out if you are feeding hungry people or twelve midgets on a diet. Everyone needs to know how to cook.

 

THE SEAT OF POWER

THE SEAT OF POWER

I just met with a friend who was telling me about her four inch high heels. She felt powerful wearing these shoes, in control, demanding attention.  Many women have this mistaken impression that wearing four inch heels puts them in a powerful position. Not true, power does not come from the shoes. This is a myth of four inch heel makers.

A woman’s power comes from her MAGNETIC TITS. Yes, it is true. Those breasts draw things to you sure as a compass points true north. Treat them with respect. The tricky thing is to learn how to screen your causes as they adhere to your chest. Everyone is called to work on a certain number of things in this world, and each one of us must learn which ones belong to us.

I am not sure that I have discovered my causes. A writer likes to explore all things, walking around them getting the view in stereoscope. Many causes are not mine but I admire and support those who are called to work on them. Troubled children…Food for the hungry…Literacy…Mental Health. All great things to buttress and sustain. My contribution to the things I support comes through in my writing. I don’t suppose it takes a reader long to pick out what these things might be.

I try not to be obvious about what I believe. I hope I am not anyway, since I believe that a writer must strive to address beliefs with a little subtly. But rest assured I do the best I can, bringing my story to you, serving it up with my limits and possibilities.

MY MAILBOX

MY MAILBOX

I don’t know why my mailbox is a target. I suppose it is a metaphor for communicating with the outside world. Every yard  on my street has a mailbox. My neighbors host a variety of mailboxes. Some of them are the utility ones made by rubber maid. Severe aggressive plastic tubes sticking up to receive the family’s correspondence. Just try to do damage to me, they dare you. They come in green and utility gray, putty, or whatever.

At the left end of my street resides a wonderful old fashioned mail box, like the one I used to have. Every season it is decorated with different covers to celebrate the holidays. Just like clockwork, the mailbox sits there bright and cheerful proclaiming the season. It doesn’t seem to have sustained the damage mine has endured, and I hope it stays that way.

To the right of my house down the street are several no nonsense brick columns that hold mail receptacles. They mean business. They have never received damage and probably never will. There has to be some happy medium from having a damaged old metal box and a brick bunker for your mail. I could pave a walkway with the bricks required to make such a house for mail.

I am looking around for a new mailbox. Maybe something in the shape of a flamingo, or a giant gnome would be good. But I don’t want to encourage the vandals by providing them with a temptation. Perhaps there should be a season on mailboxes. They should only be hunted during a short period of the year, so then we could budget for their replacement as a homeowner expense. We could declare a season such as: Only odd numbered houses on the Wednesdays after the new moon. If we set a different season every month, we might be able to distribute the damage fairly to everyone.

MY CHAIR

MY CHAIR

I am pretty sure that I have the only recliner in town that requires a tool box as standard operating equipment. Reclining in this chair can be compared to bronc riding. It is very rough. It operates on friction, hah, as if there were some physics principle at work in this chair.

In the first place, it is a king size chair with a seat so big and wide that I just rattle around in it. Safety standards board would probably require a seat belt if they knew how it truly worked. On a good day when I approach the seat and cautiously slide my bum across the bottom, my feet are flung up to sky. Just try going from 180 degrees to 90 and measure the Gforces at work.

In the second place, it squeaks and gronks like the Inquisitioner’s rack. The squeaking and gronking are the bolts shearing off. Eventually they are cut by the actions of the chair and have to be replaced. Hence the toolbox. It holds the tools and bolts necessary to fix the monster. I always know when the bolts go because then the foot rest flings out and hits me in the bum when I am trying to stand and walk away from it.

For now I must sit in the chair and plot its replacement. I will eventually replace it. I will have to find another chair and negotiate the removal of this beast in the sales process. Then I can stop practicing the moving dismount that I currently list among my skills, and recline in peace.

Today my husband complained that the chair practically knocked him down when he tried to get up from it. You have to do a fast dismount from the chair. “Move faster,” that’s my advice to him. Not in my budget to replace this chair yet, but I am plotting and planning. The replacement day will come.