Humor

Wishing you Excessive Greeting Disorder for the Holidays

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I love my bunny toy.

Marie is distracted with the passing of her parents, so I, Buddy the Goldendoodle Wonder Dog, am writing this guest post. I usually write a post for the holidays. This year, it’s just a bit earlier than usual.

Mistress Marie suggested that I write about two things she’s discovered about me over the years. I am seven now, so you would think she could have written about these things herself earlier. But no, she didn’t, so now I have to.

She claims I have Excessive Greeting Disorder (EGD). I get super-excited whenever somebody comes to our house, especially if they are somebody I know. I run (Marie uses the term “gallop”) through the first floor of the house, back and forth, from the window to the back door whenever somebody knocks.

I don’t think I have EGD because I do not jump up on the person when they come into our home. I am well-behaved. I just sniff them a lot and turn around in circles, wagging my tail and knocking over anything it hits. Sometimes I even smile. However, if the person doesn’t know me, they might think I am baring my teeth. Really, it’s a smile, not a snarl.

Marie also thinks I have EGD because whenever she leaves the house, even if it’s just to walk to the mailbox, and then she comes back inside, I always greet her. Not as enthusiastically as I would a friend or stranger, but still, I am happy to see her even if she’s only been gone for two minutes. This makes her laugh.

I think her ridicule of me for greeting her after a walk to the mailbox is misplaced. I am only trying to make her happy. And besides, I really do miss her for the whole 120 seconds she’s gone. It gives me time to wonder if she’ll ever return. It gives me time to fear that something happened to her on her trip to the bottom of our driveway. All sorts of catastrophes are possible. A bird could poop on her. A car could swerve over too far and crash into her while she’s standing at the mailbox. Another dog could come along and steal her away from me. I am so relieved and happy when she comes back! I would like to know what is wrong with that.

The other thing she wanted me to write about is my Life Motto. She claims that it’s: When in doubt, act like a goofball. She says it’s my motto because whenever I am uncertain or in a new situation, like seeing something strange in our yard (such as a snowman), or the first snow of the year, or meeting a neighbor who is holding some sort of tool I have never seen before, my first reaction is to run around in circles, with my legs bent at incredibly awkward angles.

I would like to explain that this is an entirely reasonable response to a first snow. What could be more fun than tearing around in circles in new snow?? And in terms of seeing snowmen or neighbors who are holding tools – these are threatening things and if I act like a goofball, that takes the threat away because it distracts everyone.

Since this is my holiday posting, I need to work that into the topic somehow. My holiday wish for you is that you greet your friends and relatives like you have EGD. We could all use more excessive greetings in our lives. And I encourage you not to fear acting like a goofball. It will make everyone laugh. And everyone needs more of that, too.

Thinking Outside the Blue Jeans Gender Box: A Quest for Pants that Fit

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It happens every few years. All my jeans wear out at once – holes show up above the knees, growing larger with each washing.

It’s hard for me to find jeans that fit. This periodic quest ranks right up there with swimsuit shopping. I have narrow hips, a muscular butt, and legs shaped by regular dog walks, yoga, biking, and cross-country skiing. So when I do find some I like, I buy several pairs at a time. I am lucky to have a job with a casual dress code, so I wear jeans almost every day.

Of course, because I buy my jeans at the same time, they all start to wear out at the same time. Inevitably, when I search for “my” jeans at the store where I bought them, the store has either changed their styles or no longer carries the brand.

As I set out for jeans shopping this weekend, I realized I haven’t been truly enthused about a brand of jeans since my college days, when I inherited a pair of button-fly 501 Levis from my sister. I used to buy them regularly until the stores stopped carrying them for women. Then I switched to Lees for a bit, then other types of Levis, then Old Navy. But Old Navy kept changing their styles too often. The last time I bought jeans there, what looked okay in the store ended up having too much extra fabric in the hips, and was too tight in the calves. I tried shopping online, but that was an even bigger disaster. Besides, I hate paying extra for the shipping.

So I decided to try a new store this time – one known for local, Duluthy-type clothing made from durable fabrics like firehose canvas. You’d think that a store made for active Duluthians would work for me, right? Nope.

So I headed for the mall at the top of the hill, where selection is more plentiful. With my college jean happiness in the back of my mind, I searched the last store where I bought Levis. They no longer carried Levis in the women’s section, but they still had them in the men’s section. They even had the 501 button-fly version.

I quickly scanned the clientele in the area. All men. Would it look weird if I bought men’s jeans for myself? How would the clerks or clientele know they were for me? But I would need to try them on. I couldn’t use the men’s fitting room.

In agitation, I picked at a hangnail on my thumb. I put the jeans down and walked back to the women’s section. It wasn’t far away. Why not just bring the men’s jeans into the women’s fitting room? Dare I?

After a little internal pep talk, yes, I dared to think outside the blue jeans gender box.

Now I have two pairs of jeans I am truly enthused about. And to think, I COULD HAVE BEEN DOING THIS THE WHOLE TIME. The wasted time over the years and jeans angst makes me sort of sick. But now I know.

However, with my luck, Levis will go out of business by the time I need jeans again.

A Short Thought on the Election Results

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Alec Baldwin as Donald Trump. Image credit: Vanity Fair.

In trying to find something positive to think of regarding the U.S. presidential results, all I could come up with is, “At least Alec Baldwin’s got it made.” He can play Donald Trump for the next four years on Saturday Night Live.

That is, unless Donald Trump gets him fired . . . .

The Soccer Meat Fundraiser that Wouldn’t Die

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Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. By Flixtey (own work).

Ah dear blog readers, you may recall my plight as a reluctant inductee into a leadership role in my son’s high school soccer team booster club. The committee is made up of myself and two other soccer moms whose boys are all co-captains (tri-captains?) of the soccer team.

Why is the committee composed of just the moms and not the dads, too? Very good question. The dads came to the first meeting but disappeared quickly thereafter. My guess is they took one look at what was involved and they got out while the gettin’ was good.

Soccer season is in full swing. We’re actually on a downward slide to playoffs now. Our little committee of three has cut its teeth on several tasks. Although our styles differ drastically, we’ve been able to collect club fees from about 40 families, organize volunteers, hold a BBQ, collect raffle tickets and payments, and host a frozen meat fundraiser. We did a lot of other things, too, but they are too boring to list here.

I am proud to report that I fulfilled my non-elected political platform promise to insert reason into the activities by reducing the number of team spaghetti dinners from five to three. I mean, the boys can only eat so much spaghetti and there are plenty of other activities for which parents can volunteer. Unlike my fears in my previous post about this, my action did not incite riots or revolt. Other than that, I’ve been working as the club treasurer and raffle coordinator. It’s been kind of fun writing checks with someone else’s money.

But the frozen meat fundraiser seemed never to end. Unlike what the title of this post may imply, we are not selling meat made out of soccer players (soccer meat). It’s just frozen animal meat. But it’s a fundraiser for the soccer team.

Anyway, another soccer mom coordinated this task (thank goodness!) But people seemed unable to turn their money in on time, so their checks came to me in fits and starts over several weeks. And some people sent the wrong amounts, so we needed to ask them for more money or to issue refunds.

Thus, the fundraiser seemed to go on forever. BUT I am happy to report that I have received the last payment from a parent, so I think it’s finally all done. I had my doubts for a while.

Another thing that’s been difficult is that I was doing all this and my son wasn’t even playing soccer for half the season. A torn knee ligament required him to sit out for several weeks. It was a bummer to put in all this effort for the team when I couldn’t even watch my son play in the games.

But when my son did come back into play, he came back with a vengeance. Despite the best efforts of the other team to lame him up again, my boy scored the most beautiful soccer goal I have ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot). He was right in front of the net and his teammate passed him the ball at shoulder height. My son headed the goal right past the goalie and squarely into the net.

Everyone on our side of the stands stood up and cheered. Even me, the reluctant, whiney, booster club officer.

Shunned by the World’s Largest Rubber Duckie

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The World’s Largest Rubber Duck turns its back on me.

Duluth is hosting a Tall Ships Festival this weekend. A newcomer to the event is the “World’s Largest Rubber Duck.” I put that in quotes because equally large or larger rubber ducks exist in the world overseas. It’s just that the U.S. creator (who happens to be a Duluthian, too) of this particular duck trademarked the phrase.

Even so, I was intrigued to view this giant yellow floating bathtub toy – in part to see if it could nudge me out of my doldrums following my father’s death – but also just because it’s novel. Like others who have attended these festivals over the years, I’ve seen plenty of tall ships, but never a sci-fi movie-sized duck. Also, I needed to attend the festival for work, to deliver some keys to a co-worker who was on one of the tall ships (the Denis Sullivan).

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A crew member barks orders on the Denis Sullivan.

The duck was participating in the opening ceremony for the festival, called the Parade of Sail. For this spectacle, all of the ships sail into the Duluth-Superior Harbor through the ship canal and under Duluth’s iconic Aerial Lift Bridge.

I left in what I thought was enough time to catch the parade. But I didn’t anticipate the number of other people who also wanted to attend. I expected a lot of people, and planned my travel route to the festival via a back way, but there were not just a lot of people. There were HORDES.

After being turned away from one event parking lot because I didn’t pre-pay a parking ticket, I ended up waiting in line for 40-something minutes for another lot.

I knew I was going to miss the beginning of the parade, so enterprising me got out of line to bribe a local business to let me park in their lot. They weren’t open to my bribe (or perhaps it was not large enough!), so I got back in line, even father back.

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The chart room, below decks in the Denis Sullivan.

As I was waiting, and gazing out my car window through a fence and a tangle of tansy weed, I saw the head of a large yellow duck gliding past in the nearby harbor. I was missing the duck!

Alas, failed bribery attempt already past, there was nothing more I could do to improve my situation. I could only hope the duck would still be around once I made my way to the event grounds.

By the time I got to the parking lot entrance, the attendants were only letting cars in once other cars came out. After another 15 minutes or so, I finally got to park my car in a swampy spot and hoof it to the harbor.

The duck apparently did not like that I was late, and would not show its face to me. It was far away by this time, across the harbor at its docking site — its back turned in disapproval at my lack of strategic event attendance planning skills. Sigh.

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A crew member climbs the rigging on the Denis Sullivan as it sails under Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge. Image courtesy of Kathy Kline, Wisconsin Sea Grant.

But my spirits lifted when I ended up getting a free tour of the Denis Sullivan. I found my co-worker among the hordes and she let me aboard. The Sullivan’s home port is Milwaukee, and the ship is used for educational purposes. My co-worker had just completed a five-day sail with about a dozen Great Lakes teachers, instructing them on lake ecology and maritime history.

Enjoy the photos!

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What the duck looked like to everyone else. Image courtesy of WDSE-TV.

The Clueless and Apologetic American: Adventures in Scotland, Part 11 – the Grand Finale

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Aer Lingus, the airline that makes you pay for water (on short flights, anyway).

I should have listened to the birds.

When I left Kelso in the wee hours of the morning to drive to Edinburgh Airport to catch my flight home, at least five birds flung themselves from the hedgerows in front of my car. This included one huge pheasant I had to swerve to avoid.

It was like the birds didn’t want me to leave, or they were warning me, but I didn’t realize it at the time. I awoke at 4:30 a.m. – too early for breakfast at my B&B, but with only an hour’s drive to Edinburgh — plenty of time to catch my 8:30 a.m. flight.

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A highland “coo” from a happier day in Scotland.

My B&B host had given me excellent written directions to the airport (plus I had looked it up online), so I felt confident in my ability to find my way.

Everything went fine until I got closer to the airport and had to rely on traffic signs. The signs had all read “Edinburgh International Airport” (this way). But when I got to a huge roundabout three miles from the airport, suddenly the sign just said “Airport” with the name of a town below it that started with an “I.”

Now, in Minnesota, our airport has two terminals – one for domestic flights and one for international flights. Clueless Minnesotan that I am, I thought maybe I missed a sign for the international airport. So I decided to go around the roundabout again to make sure I didn’t miss a sign. That’s what roundabouts are for, right? You can just keep driving around in circles until you find your correct exit.

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A pony from yet another happier day in Scotland at Delgatie Castle.

The problem was, I was so intent on reading the signs that I neglected to notice the freakin’ stop lights INSIDE the roundabout.

I had been in roundabouts that had stop lights for entering the roundabout, but I had never in my life been in one that had stoplights inside it. I didn’t even know that was possible! Whose bright idea was it to put stoplights inside a roundabout??????

Needless to say, I ran a few red lights and had a crash. Two cars entering the roundabout on a green light weren’t expecting a clueless American not to obey the traffic signals and crashed into me.

After some yelling (one driver was really pissed, the other not so much) we were able to limp our cars over to a safe spot and wait for the police. That took about an hour. During that time, I was able to overcome my clueless shock and figure out what happened. My mouth was so dry! I also spoke with the not-so-mad driver and asked him which exit to take for the airport. (Which was the one that just said “Airport,” duh.)

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Haggis, neaps and tatties. Oh, and BACON.

The police officer was courteous and interviewed me first since I had a plane to catch. Luckily, my car was still drivable, so I was able to climb back inside and continue on my slow, cautious way for the last three miles. Once I returned the car to the rental agency, got done with apologizing for wrecking it, and filled out the required reports, I had an hour before my flight left.

I trotted from the rental car agency to the Aer Lingus ticketing desk, worried that they would not allow me on my connecting flight to Dublin with such a short time window. A bit of my Kelso Luck must have still been left because they said I could still catch it. By the time I made it through security, it was time to board my plane. I sprinted to the gate number printed on my ticket, but the gate was empty. Deserted. Nada.

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Urquhart Castle on Loch Ness.

I stood there, panting and sweating. Over the loudspeakers, I heard my name being called. The voice said the doors to my flight would be closing in a few minutes. I didn’t catch the gate number, though, and ran around in circles looking for a flight directory sign. I found one, but couldn’t find my flight number on it. So I ran back to the original wrong gate and looked around. It seemed like there were people a few gates down, so I ran there. It was the right gate!

I was the last one on the plane before the doors closed. I apologized to the flight attendant, but he said it was okay, I hadn’t delayed the flight. I found my seat and heaved a relieved sigh. It looked like I would be making it home to America today, after all. But I was uncomfortable, what with all the sweat and a huge thirst.

I asked if I could have some water, but the attendant said I would have to pay for it. (The flight to Dublin was so short, they figure people don’t really need water, I guess.) I didn’t feel like telling him my car crash sob story, and it pissed me off that I had to pay for water, so I just told him to forget it.

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Leanach Cottage on the Culloden Battlefield on a somber evening in Scotland.

I endured, thirsty, hungry and de-stressing until my flight reached the Dublin Airport – home to drinking water fountains and breakfast. By now it was 11:30 a.m. I drank a lot.

Eventually, I reached Minnesota – glad to be alive, and even gladder that my son was picking me up from the airport so that I wouldn’t have to drive.

I was a little worried that my crash would make me skittish of driving in America. But when I drove myself to work the next day, it was just like riding a bike (you never forget how). So easy! And OMG, the roads in America are so wide! The drivers so (relatively) courteous! The signs so easy to interpret! If anything, I’ve had to guard against having another crash because I am too complacent.

I began this series of postings by apologizing to all Scottish drivers for the rough start my friend and I had driving in their country (see Cruising in the Crawler Lane). And I shall end the series with the same apology.

I am sorry, Scotland, that my lack of U.K. driving savvy endangered your citizens. I am relieved that only cars got hurt, not people. I would love to visit your country again. But the next time, I’ll let somebody else do the driving. 🙂

I should have listened to those birds.

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Mermaid Cottage, Crovie.

Trail Cam in the Office

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TrailCam

True story. This happened in my office last week.

 

We’re caught
inside the camouflaged box that’s mounted on a pole
in our office.
Eyes wide, coffee cups in hand
we walk down the hallway
feeling like someone is watching.

What strange natural rituals
will the camera catch —
Mating habits of the white-collar worker?
Dominance displays of the office alpha female?
A furtive mail boy stealing candy from a desk?
The shy engineer emerging from a conference call?

I suspect all the mother wolves who have had their birth dens invaded,
all the nesting birds who just want to feed their young in peace
would enjoy the sweet revenge
of these photos.

©2016  Marie Zhuikov

In Which I Become a Reluctant Heir Apparent

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Unbeknownst to me, I have been inducted into a hereditary monarchy committee.

What land do we rule? A local high school boys’ soccer team.

Why do we rule? Because our kids are the new team captains — so it’s more of a backwards hereditary monarchy. Instead of the crown being passed from parent to child, the parents are crowned because their children are good soccer team leaders.

We soccer monarchs had our first meeting last night and learned all the responsibilities our rule entails. This includes organizing a soccer team captains’ meeting, handling bank accounts and budgets, collecting soccer fees, cooking a pre-season BBQ, holding five team spaghetti dinners and a team social potluck, ordering clothing, signing up volunteer helpers, finding kids to catch stray balls at games, coordinating fundraising events, organizing an overnight team-building activity at a hotel during away games, arranging for a traditional Mongolian dinner during an away game, ordering team photos, producing a team memory book and a slide show to be given at the end-of-the-season banquet, hosting said banquet, ordering a special gift for the team seniors, and oh, if we have time, doing a charity project.

The length of our reign? About six months. The number of rulers? Five-and-a half (I say this because one person is out of town a lot.)

I know I should be honored to rule, but I didn’t ask for it. As a single mom with a full-time job, a second career as a teller of tales, active on the board of a writing group, handling affairs for my aging parents, and entertaining my dog, I already have a full plate.

However, it seems, other than disowning my son, I have no choice. If I would have known the consequences, I would have encouraged my son to be more of an average soccer player.

Just kidding. I’m proud my son is a team captain and I shall accept and support the result. However, the amount of activities does seem excessive. Since I’ve been elected without a vote, I’ve decided my platform will be to insert reason into the process and try not to get overwhelmed.

Already there’s been talk on the committee about things being done due to “tradition.” Part of me wonders if they are traditions from when there were more stay-at-home parents on the committee who had time on their hands. I mean, do we really need five spaghetti dinners? I don’t think so.

Hopefully, this approach will not induce a revolt or anarchy. Even if it does, it’s not like they can kick me off the committee. After all, I’m a soccer monarch by divine genetic right.

Dude Wipes

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Dude Wipes

I was just in the grocery store, which seems to be my main form of socializing lately. I saw a display in the Kleenex aisle that caused a double take. “Dude Wipes.” Not baby wipes, or feminine hygiene wipes. Dude Wipes: flushable wipes guaranteed to combat stank and put you back on your game wherever and whenever nature calls.

With Vitamin E and soothing aloe, this product will give the user magical cool dude powers. And better yet, ten percent of the proceeds are donated to The Colon Club Charity.

O.M.G.