Author: Suzanne Olsen Page 13 of 45

Aging Gracelessly

On October 25, 2011

As we age, our bodies go through changes. Some are good – like when I was pregnant and my hair got thick – and some are bad – like aches and pains and wrinkles.

But there’s one change I’ve recently encountered that is working out just fine. For some crazy, inexplicable reason, I no longer pass gas – I burp instead.

Please do not think I’m trying to be crude or indelicate. There are many people who emit gas but won’t admit it. I’m just relating the simple facts. I used to pass gas on a fairly consistent basis, i.e. whenever I was awake. I could even pass gas on demand, something I used in order to punctuate social interactions with my brother, such as:

My brother: “How do you like this shirt?”

Me: “Pffffffft.”

Or:

My brother: “What did you think of my speech?”

Me: “Pfffffff ffffff ffffff fffff ffffft.”

As welcome as this communication tool was, it sometimes became a problem. Being gassy by nature was bad enough, but when I ate legumes (beans), which was every chance I got, it became nearly unbearable for my loved ones to be on the same street with me. I have emptied cars full of people when legume-propelled emissions erupted accidentally without warning, completely out of my control.

I’ll admit I enjoyed, to some extent, the leverage my gastrointestinal proclivities afforded me. Such as:

My brother: “I’m not moving.”

Me: “You better or I’ll fart.”

Recently, however, I have been burping, rather loudly, from the very depths of my internal areas. These things are audible from three rooms away, but they lack the persuasive qualities of gas. On the other hand, they don’t cause me nearly as much misery, especially after eating legumes, so I am not complaining. This is one thing Mother Nature got right.

The Boomerang Backpack

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 25, 2011

In Uncategorized

When my son was in high school, I got a call from someone who said, “Do you have a son named Chris?”

“Yes,” I said slowly, worried that he was either injured, or more likely, in trouble.

“Does he have a backpack?”

“Yeah,” I said, even more slowly. “Why?”

“I found it in a ditch and thought he might like it back.”

“In a ditch? Where?”

“On Armond Street.”

“Well, sure, he’d like it back, I’ll come right over and get it.”

A few minutes later I’m looking at this threadbare backpack with odds and ends of junk in it. Someone must have stolen it and swiped the good stuff before they tossed it.

When Chris got home later, I held the backpack up and said, “Look what I found.”

His mouth dropped open and his eyes got wide. “Where the heck did that come from?”

“Somebody discovered it on Armond Street in a ditch.”

“Oh my gosh,” he said.

“Was it stolen or what?”

“Uh, no. It’s just a piece of junk. I wasn’t using it anymore.”

“Then how did it get in the ditch?”

“Uh, well, I threw it out the window.”

“You WHAT!?”

“I didn’t need it anymore and it was just cluttering up my car, so I tossed it out the window.”

“You don’t just toss something out the window. Why didn’t you bring it home and throw it in the garbage?”

“I don’t know. What kind of person picks up a ratty old backpack in a ditch?”

“What kind of person THROWS a backpack in a ditch?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t need it anymore. Are there any cookies left?”

“You know better than to litter, for crying out loud. Some stranger has to call me because my son throws a backpack out the window.” I paused for a few moments to show my utter dismay about the situation. “They’re on the counter.”

This is a mini-commentary on what happens to kids when they get to be teenagers. You hound them for years and years, trying to teach them to be good citizens, making sure they give you every tiny wrapper in the car because it’s wrong to litter, and they turn into teenagers with a car and end up throwing everything you’ve taught them out the window like an old backpack.

If you’re lucky, as a parent, some of it will start to come back to them when they get older and aren’t striving to be the exact antithesis of that good little child you worked so hard to mold. And hopefully, those life lessons will come back around and start to make sense – just like that old backpack. (Well, I don’t know if the backpack made sense, but it seemed like a profound way to end this, don’t you agree?)

Even Idiots Get Miracles Sometimes

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 23, 2011

In Uncategorized

I’m just so crazy busy right now (cue the violin). I went to work and slogged through the pile in my inbox that just keeps growing even as I get things done. I kept thinking, “I’ve got to leave here by 3:45 at the latest to get to the permit office on time.”

Phone calls and crises distracted me until it was 3:20 – on a Friday afternoon with horrendous rush hour traffic. I snatched up my Mac and rushed out the door, cursing myself for waiting so long.

I started praying that the traffic would part like the Red Sea and I could somehow get all the way across town in time.

The good Lord did his best to get people out of my way, but it was still slow going. I developed a headache, and the nasty tongue lashing I was giving myself escalated to what a stupid idiot I was for not leaving earlier and what the hell was I thinking – I know traffic is much worse on Friday afternoons, I don’t know why, maybe everyone’s headed out of town or going out to dinner, but I know good and well it’s always like that and what the eff was I thinking and why can’t I ever get anywhere on freaking time????

A journey that should have taken an hour took exactly 39 minutes – it was 4:59 when I pulled into the permit office parking lot, grabbed my purse, slammed the car door, breathlessly dashed to the counter and said, “I need to pick up a permit.”

The lady behind the counter said, “We close for permits at 4:30 – didn’t they tell you that when they called to say the permit was ready?”

I buried my head in my hands, partly because I had that splitting headache, and partly because I couldn’t believe I had waited so long to leave the office, and I had driven like a maniac, knowing my crew needed that permit on Monday and the permit office was closed Monday and what in the name of everything holy was I going to do? I stayed there with my head buried in my hands running all this through my mind like a drowning person who sees her life flash before her eyes until finally I let out a huge sigh and looked up at the lady. She looked at me like I was the most pitiful human being on the face of the planet. She said, “Let’s just look at this for a second and see.”

She proceeded to click on the computer and look at the paperwork and click some more and look some more and click and look, and then said, “Do you know if you owe any money on this?” I handed her the check, and she printed out the permit.

I’ve learned a lesson about faith, hope, and love. I saw all of them compressed in that little bit of time. I was praying like a condemned person every time I came up on the bumper of a slow moving car; every time I could see a bunch of red taillights on the freeway which meant that the cars in front of me were slowing down or stopping; every time I came to a stop light. Even my GPS said there wasn’t enough time, but I also knew that God has the ability to make things happen when it doesn’t really seem like it’s possible. So I had faith that he would somehow get me there. I also hoped it would happen, and I hoped that I wouldn’t get turned away by some technicality, which is common in permit offices.

But when I got there and learned I was too late, even though I walked in the door with a full 30 seconds to spare, it ended up being love that softened the clerk into giving me that permit when she wasn’t supposed to – to have mercy on my wretched, headachy soul and rationalize to herself, “this poor woman, do I really have the heart to send her home empty-handed and make her come back?”

When I walked out and got in my car I started crying. I don’t know if they were tears of joy or incredible tears of relief but it was just this magnificent release of overwhelming emotion and the feeling of God’s hand resting on my shoulder and realizing he’d done me a humongous favor.

It’s still hard to believe that God and that nice permit lady had compassion for an idiot like me.

The Magnificient Spit

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 22, 2011

In People

Today I was behind a car waiting at a stoplight, and I noticed it was a single guy in the driver’s seat with his arm on the back of the passenger seat. Why I was looking at him I don’t know, but just at that second I saw two white masses, side by side, come sailing out of the passenger window, fly over the grassy strip on the side of the road, and hit a bush a good fifteen feet away.

They had to have been spit or loogies hocked by a mouth that could have launched a satellite. I was utterly amazed. You don’t see freaks of nature like this every day. In fact, I’ve never seen a loogie hurled that far.

That’s probably why he had his arm on the passenger seat – to hold him steady.

My daughter won a watermelon spitting contest in kindergarten. I was quite the proud little momma. She beat everyone by several feet. That child’s mouth was lethal – even to this day you should never EVER get near her teeth if she’s mad at you. You risk coming away with a missing hunk of forearm. But even she could not have launched spit that far.

What was so amazing is that he was so accurate. He had the opening of a window to get through, and you might not think that’s difficult but it is. Not that I’ve ever spit out the passenger side – I’m not brave enough for that and besides I don’t spit. Never have, except if a bug flies in my mouth or something. But on occasion I will eat an apple and find myself holding a sticky core and nowhere to put it. I start thinking about the little birdies or rodents that would be delighted to munch on that core, and why should I deprive them?

But you can’t throw it out the driver’s side – you’d end up with the core in the road, and then some little furry thing eating it would get squashed flatter than a tortilla. So I throw them out the passenger window. And I have to thrust really really to get it into the bushes completely off the shoulder so the little creatures feasting on it will be safe.

I cock my elbow and bring the hand holding the apple all the way in front of my face to get more leverage, and then I fling the arm toward the passenger window as hard as I can.

Nine times out of ten it hits the inside door and leaves a wet, mushy spot before landing on the passenger seat and rolling onto the floor, going front to back on the hairy carpet like some golf course lawn mower, leaving a trail of apple juice over every fuzzy inch.

This is why I was so amazed that the guy got those loogies out the passenger window today. And that they flew so far. It really was truly amazing. Wish you could have seen it.

The Ides of March Part 2

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 9, 2011

In Uncategorized

First I feel a little guilty about disparaging George Clooney’s movie last night. But not guilty enough that I’m going to keep quiet because I’ve been thinking more about it. The movie was called Ides of March, about a good politician with good ideas who would probably have done very good things for the country except that he made a mistake and in order to cover that mistake, he had to compromise his values or lose the election.

That part was pretty good, because you often wonder if politicians start out being slimeballs, but this movie shows you they can be regular people wanting to save the world except they have this fatal flaw (generally located between their legs) that causes their downfall or at least becomes their main focus in life – not the ideals for which they entered into politics in the first place.

That part was eye opening and gave me a more sympathetic perspective on the life of politicians. But there was a part of the plot that just didn’t add up, and it distracted from everything. In fact, it made the whole movie seem ludicrous.

However, I can’t talk about it or it will spoil the movie if you decide to see it. But I will say this. It was like someone said, “We need to show that this politician was a good guy but people forced him to compromise against his will because if he didn’t, his mistake would be exposed and he’d lose the election and then he wouldn’t be able to do all the good things he set out to do when he first got into politics. So what could that be? Think. Think really hard. What is something a politician could do that would put him in a compromised position. Come on, we’ve got to think of something. Mmmm, how about a good looking intern?”

That’s how it seemed like the plot got put together. And it just didn’t add up. You can have great actors and great filming and wonderful settings, but if the story seems contrived, the whole thing crumbles.

Enough of that movie – it was irritating but I have to get on with my life. I’m changing the subject.

Better still, I’m going to bed. Besides, I have the TV on in the background and I can’t concentrate. The remote is too far away, and I’m trying to focus but I’ve re-typed things because I kept getting distracted. And now there’s another Cialis commercial on and I can’t take it anymore. I’m sick of erectile dysfunction. I HAVE to get up and turn off that TV. When historians look back on these days and try to analyze why television went extinct, they will trace it to the outlandish proliferation of ED commercials. Someone needs to warn the Networks – a “Beware the Ides of March” soothsayer should tell them that they are chasing away people like me with those commercials. I can’t take it anymore. I’m getting up, turning the confounded thing off and going to bed. Goodnight.

Beware the Ides of March

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 8, 2011

In Uncategorized

We just got home from the movie, “The Ides of March.” For those of you who didn’t take Latin somewhere along the line, the “Ides” is the 15th of the month. When Julius Ceaser was out walking around Rome, a soothsayer (or sightseer) said to him, “Beware the Ides of March.”

And beware he should have, because on the Ides of March he got stabbed 23 times, led by an esteemed group of his colleagues and his good friend Brutus to whom he said these famous words, “E tu Brute?” which, roughly translated, means, “What the %$*@?”

George Clooney decided to make a film about this for modern times – about political betrayal and so forth – and by giving it this old Latin name he was evoking the similarities between ancient Rome and modern America.

The movie seemed like an obvious remake of Bill Clinton’s dalliance with an intern, and even though he had noble ideas, he let his little head do the thinking and ended up committing political suicide.

I, for one, didn’t need to watch a fake politician do all the sordid stuff people do to get elected. I think everyone on earth knows that politics turns people into back scratching, blackmailing extortionists. I don’t know why I have to spend my Saturday night watching a predictable movie play out the same old story.

Every leading character in this movie either compromised their integrity, blackmailed someone, played dirty tricks, lied, betrayed their friends, or had sex with someone they shouldn’t have. It was business as usual for these stereotypical politicians cynically depicted as visionaries without the backbone to do the right thing if it meant they would lose the election.

Not much different than what old Julius Caesar was up to a couple thousand years ago. He should have stayed home, and I should have too.

The Drive to the Airport

By Suzanne Olsen

On October 7, 2011

In Uncategorized

I took my coworker and her husband to the airport this morning. I hadn’t met her husband yet, and I wanted to make a good impression. I knew I was taking my little dog with me, and she often smells like a goat. The beast rolls in everything. She cannot go outside without flopping on her back and wiggling from side to side, all four legs in the air, grinding herself into some foul smelling dead thing. I’ve seen her roll on a squished earthworm – any creature that has departed this world she will sniff out and have her back smeared in it in nanoseconds. She has to do it quick because I’ll see her through the window and yell at her to stop. She pretends she can’t hear me long enough to get coated in the stench, then jumps up and looks at me like, “You talkin’ to me?”

So this morning I gave her a couple of squirts of some cheap flowery smelling stuff of my daughter’s. My husband is allergic to scents so I don’t have any of my own perfumes.

When I squirted that fine mist of smell over the dog, she was so insulted. She took off running like I’d poured hot water on her and started rubbing against the walls, trying to get the smell off. She nosed down into the carpet and pressed one side of her face and shoulder then the other into the rug in a pitiful attempt to try and scrape the scent off.

I’m not sure why a dog can’t stand to smell good. Not this one, anyway. If I let her outside after a bath, she streaks to the grass and starts rolling to get the smell of dirt on her. She comes back in with half the back yard clinging to her long wet hair. You can’t comb it off, it’s woven in and half the time it’s sticky – why I don’t know. But as she walks through the house it drops all over the floor like autumn leaves. It looks like someone’s scattered brown and green confetti all over every floor in the house.

Laws of physics that state: a 10 pound, 12 inch tall dog with long black hair will collect 30 times the squared surface area of its body in yard debris consisting of tiny sticks, brown grass, and little maple helicopters. Double the formula if the place where the dog rolls is under a sappy fir tree like the ones covering our back yard.

So when I left the house to pick up my coworker, this dog that normally smells like a goat because it’s not practical to give her a bath every five minutes – this dog smelled like a cheap tramp. When we got in the car, the whole place filled with the sweet smell of Eau de Trollop. I discovered I didn’t have any gum and I hadn’t brushed my teeth for fear of being late. Then I put on some “unscented” lotion (yeah, right!) that added an acrid element to the mix.

When my passengers got in the car, the husband, who I just met, immediately rolled down his window, even though it was raining. The dog, who loves fresh air, jumped into the backseat to sit on his lap, coating his jeans in that perfumed hussy goat smell that probably lingered throughout their whole 15 hour flight to Brazil.

I’m not sure we made a good impression.

Lamenting the Foulness of Life

By Suzanne Olsen

On September 19, 2011

In Pets

My dog’s stomach is growling. She had a batch o’ rib bones and now I can expect puddles of barbecued barf in my bed tonight. Disgusting, huh? But wait, there’s more.

This ten pound dog is by my side night and day. She’s lying snugged up next to me on the couch while I type, right in the path of the 340º heat blowing out of my laptop. She’s a heating pad strapped to my leg.

I generally like heat – love my car’s seat warmers. One of my relatives likes to drive my car when we go anywhere because it’s nicer, and in the winter I’ve got the seat warmer on. He’ll be sitting there in the driver’s seat, talking about his latest BM. Don’t ask me why.

“You should have seen what came out of me this morning.”

“I do NOT need to hear this,” I say.

“Black as coal and all of 12 inches, coiled up like a cobra, part of it floating like it was ready to strike.”

“STOP!”

“It was remarkable,” he’ll say. “Never seen anything like it. I got a picture of it here on my phone – take a look, you won’t believe it. Here, see? Owww, why is it so friggin’ hot? My nuts are roastin’!”

He says it every time we’re in the car – like the seat has launched a sneak attack against his scrotum.

As bad as his bodily function stories are, my dog barfing in the car while she’s sitting on my lap is worse. I hear this little burbing noise and a nano-second later she heaves, and there’s a puddle the size of a spilled glass of milk on my thigh – slimy and the color of the last nauseating thing she ate. Sometimes it’s grass in a clear slime like a sickening version of lemongrass soup. Other times it’s brown and lumpy.

The awful part is that you can’t do anything about it. I’ll be on the freeway going 65 mph when she Ralphs on me. I hear the sound, and I try to get her off my lap but I’m never fast enough. About the time I get my hands on her waist and snatch her up, I feel the warmth on my thigh, then the wetness.

Anyone who’s had bad timing snuggling a baby knows what that feeling is like. The baby’s happy and coochie cooing one minute, and the next minute you’ve got this foul wet vomity-smelling ooze heading south down your shirt.

At least the dog barf doesn’t smell so bad. Usually.

Oh my gosh. You talk about smells, I went into the ladies bathroom at the permit office the other day. Mercy! Women’s bathrooms, just after their morning coffee break, are worse than paper mills. Woo-whee! Brings tears to the eyes.

I don’t know what’s made me write about these things. Oh yeah, it was the dog’s growling belly, which led to this lament of the unwelcome bodily functions we all encounter daily, of which I seem to experience more than my fair share.

What’s Up with Democrats?

By Suzanne Olsen

On September 12, 2011

In Uncategorized

I just finished trashing Republicans, which was pretty easy, but for this to be bi-partisan, so as not to alienate half the country, I am obliged to also take a poke at Democrats. That’s pretty easy too.

Democrats believe that everyone deserves help – even the lowlifes who get pregnant to increase their welfare stipend. Actually, I’m not sure if that goes on anymore – surely even the most fertile dimwit knows that a child costs more in the long run than you’ll ever get from the government. But just in case there are people still doing this for a living, the Democrats should at least ask for a return on their handout.

Once you start giving people money for nothing, how many are going to want to go back to plucking chickens? I say give these able-bodied people money, but only in exchange for useful work. Make the welfare moms work in day cares. This would give them a belly full of children, in a productive sense. Make them work in grocery stores so they can see how obnoxious the people getting food stamps can be. Let them deal with those hearty eating, loud mouthed mothers in checkout lines with their carts full of cigarettes and assorted fried potato products, arrogant and entitled, chips on their shoulders – trying to sneak stuff by and arguing indignantly when they get caught.

These are the people the Democrats insist we American taxpayers ought to pony up and help. We taxpayers don’t mind helping those people who are temporarily down on their luck by circumstances beyond their control. We are sympathetic to the man trying to support his family after he’s had a job yanked out from under him, but we’re sick of those who milk us because they’re lazy and no account. They’re almost as bad as rich Republicans who milk us because they’ve figured out how to avoid paying even a penny in taxes.

Democrats want better health care for everyone. If you want healthy people, make them get off their couches and walk somewhere besides the refrigerator. Make food stamp people weigh in, or prove they’re buying vegetables for their children instead of marshmallow pies. Give them books on healthy living and test them once a week before they get our tax dollars. Force them to be healthy in exchange for their money so they won’t need doctors to treat the diet and inactivity related ailments that plague them and their innocent offspring.

Democrats want to help everyone without any accountability, so that people feel entitled, and Republicans want to help themselves get richer so that people feel entitled. In both cases, the general public becomes bitter.

Doesn’t anyone see this but me?

What’s Up with Republicans?

By Suzanne Olsen

On September 8, 2011

In Uncategorized

I know I should not talk about politics. It’s a total waste of time – you can’t convert anyone – you’re either preaching to the choir or talking to a brick wall.

Nonetheless, I have to ask, what is freaking up with Republicans? The ones I know are either wealthy and don’t want the government to take any of their money, or they’re dirt poor and fiercely prejudiced. They despise everyone who isn’t like them.

It’s funny to listen to fat cat Republicans fretting about taxes. The ones I know have two houses, drive Lexus’s, send their kids to private schools, take several vacations a year to Hawaii and Mexico, and so forth.

Yet they get very angry when anyone talks about raising taxes. They don’t want riff-raff sucking away all their hard earned money. I can almost understand the rich guys – at least they’re sensible. They’re trying to protect what they’ve earned.

It’s the poor Republicans I don’t get. They resent everyone and feel they’re superior because (insert some dumb reason, like they are white, or drive a pickup, or have more than 50 percent of their teeth). They are perfectly contented to send their kids to crumbling schools and packed classrooms because they think education is a waste of time anyway. After all, it never got them anywhere. They’re not worried about the condition of roads because their beaters rattle the same whether the pavement’s smooth or potholed.

As long as they’ve got a cold beer after a sweaty day at work, and something to complain about, they’re pretty satisfied. They don’t want to help anyone else because, dammit, let the freeloaders fend for themselves.

If the rich Republicans paid fair taxes, then the poor Republicans could have better schools, roads, parks, libraries, police protection, early education for their children, health care, etc. But the rich ones want to stay rich – they don’t need public schools or libraries, or even protection, they can buy what they need – and the poor ones don’t care about these things. They wear their lack of ambition like a badge of honor.

These two groups have nothing in common, but they rely on each other to fight the battle against those who want a to raise the standards for everyone. When Republicans control things, the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Therefore it’s hard to understand why poor Republicans are so hell-bent on being worse off. And rich Republicans have no remorse about hoarding their wealth and living the good life when they could share some of their blessings and make things better for everyone.

Dictators and wicked kings always gather the money to themselves. But in a country where people are free to choose, we ought to have better sense. However, the poor will spite their own selves rather than helping others, and the rich, understanding this, will egg the poor on and rile them up against illegal aliens or welfare or whatever notion they despise at this point in history. Then the rich laugh all the way to the bank. This, my friends, is why I don’t get Republicans.

I also don’t get Democrats, and I’ll explain why later.