Category: Uncategorized Page 8 of 10

It’s Easier to Ignore than Fix It

On January 28, 2010

I’m so happy there’s another thing I can cross off my “Big Scary Problem” list.

I read an article in the paper entitled, “Urban Sprawl? There’s plenty of room.” I now know that urban sprawl is not something I need to worry about. The author looked out his airplane window on a cross-country trip, saw a whole lot of nothing down there, and decided that urban sprawl isn’t a big deal.

He compares urban sprawl to the rain forests. He says even if we’re burning up thousands of acres of rain forest each day, there are billions left. He figures that could just a blip on the global devastation radar, especially when you consider the technology that future generations will develop.

In other words, it’s a big ol’ planet, and what we’re destroying right now is only a drop in the bucket. If it gets out of hand, the next generation will figure out how to fix it.

I like the guys who pat us on the shoulder and tell us things aren’t really as bad as they seem. All those scientists talking about global warming and the ozone layer and everything – it’s just plain scary! I worry about my children.

But now these other people are saying that global warming may not even exist, and if it does, it’s not that bad. Because the warmer climate might help us grow more crops.

I happened to be downtown when Al Gore came to Portland to talk, and there were angry crowds gathered all around with signs saying he was full of hot air. I wondered who the people were. They obviously think scientists are making this stuff up. I hope they’re right. Because the things scientists keep telling us about climate change seem to be coming true, which is disconcerting to say the least.

All in all, I don’t know who to believe. Recently I flew cross country myself, from Portland to Boston. What I saw out my airplane window was a lot of checkerboards. In fact, there wasn’t one piece of earth in that whole twenty-five hundred miles that wasn’t being utilized in some way – mile after mile of land broken into large rectangles. The only place I didn’t see them was in the mountain ranges.

At the time, it was a little depressing thinking that just over a hundred and fifty years ago there were forests and grasslands and elk, deer, bears, wolves, and buffalo – millions of buffalo – meandering freely. But, you know, there’s progress to consider, and besides, it takes a lot of checkerboards to feed everyone in the urban sprawls.

When I read another article in the newspaper that same day, about the horrible life children of meth users endure, I applied the first guy’s logic and felt a lot better. He would have said something like, “Even if there are wretched children living in meth houses, there are billions of children who haven’t been exposed to meth. Besides, factoring in social advances over the next few decades, that number is actually a minuscule blip on the proverbial global children’s suffering radar.”

So I’ll scratch “Meth Children” off my “Big Scary Problem” list, too. I’ve got enough to worry about as it is.

Here’s to Dreams

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 28, 2010

In Uncategorized

My daughter was running a fever tonight, and it’s always been my tradition to let my kids lie on the sofa when they’re sick so I can sit with them and keep an eye on their condition. When they fall asleep, I sneak away and try to get some things done.

The TV was on and the movie “Field of Dreams” came on. I’ve seen that movie at least ten times, and read the book it’s based on, Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella. I didn’t know if I was up for it again, but my daughter was just on the verge of falling asleep with her feverish feet in my lap, so I didn’t want to disturb her by getting up. Plus there wasn’t anything else to watch.

I got sucked into the movie after the first few minutes. It’s about the reasons people’s lives get off track of their dreams, and the movie gives some baseball players a chance to live out their dreams long after they’ve died.

During commercials, my mind drifted to some of my dreams. When I was five I wanted to be a singer. I could make up songs in my head and sing them without missing a beat. They weren’t bad – all of them rhymed, and they all had an original melody. I never could remember them after I sang one, and never wrote them down, so they may have been really awful, but I don’t think so. My friend, Carole, and I used to take turns making up songs and singing them when we were about 8 or 9. I sang constantly, loved harmonizing, and dreamed of being on stage.

It didn’t pan out, though. I was shy. I wasn’t driven. I got a boyfriend. Lots of things stood in the way. And now I’m thankful, because I would have been just the kind of singer that breaks guitars on stage and trashes motel rooms and hangs out with other rock stars doing all the bad things you hear about them doing. I would have been miserable. Still, if I had to do it over again….

I also had a dream to be a veterinarian, but had to give that up when partying interfered with studying. I haven’t regretted the loss of that dream, because I can’t stand to see anything hurt. I pick up worms on the sidewalk after it rains to keep them from being squished. I would not have survived dissections.

I had other dreams like living in a log cabin in Alaska. What a joke! I had read a book about living off the fat of the land – shooting a moose and storing roots and berries – and it seemed like heaven. Don’t I sound like the typical hippie? I now realize that I would have rather starve than blast a moose. I’m not nearly the cold-hearted huntsman that Sarah Palin is. Imagine little me hacking up moose hind-quarters and livers and such to store for the winter. What was I thinking?

One by one my dreams woke up to reality. I did end up getting to Alaska on a cruise ship, and exploring in the woods around Sitka gave me a satisfying taste of what that dream could have been like. I did some recitals in college and enjoyed being on the stage. And I’ve had a kindred spirit with animals and nursed many back to health. So in a way I realized my dreams on a small scale.

So I say, if you build it, they will come. Whatever your dream is, I think you have to be crazy to make it a reality, just like in the movie. Here’s wishing that each of you reading this is just crazy enough to pull yours off.

Catching Crabs in Chesapeake Bay

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 26, 2010

In Uncategorized

When I was in 9^th grade, I was lucky enough to get invited to go with my girlfriend, Carole, to Baltimore to visit her family.

That was when people threw a mattress in the back of a station wagon so the kids could wallow around and be comfortable for a long trip. It was about an 8-hour road drive from Tennessee, and there were 9 of us in the car – Carole’s parents, their six kids and me. I could write about that alone, except I want to get to the good stuff.

When we got there, she and I went to Uncle Bill’s, and the rest of them went somewhere else. Uncle Bill and his wife, Aunt Edna, lived on the Chesapeake Bay. Literally – we walked out their back door and crossed over twenty yards of grass to the edge of the water, which was about two feet down from the bank. They had a small, partially covered dock with an aluminum boat hanging in the middle of it.

Uncle Bill took us out the next morning to catch crabs. He tied a chunk of fish to a string and tossed it into the water. Pretty soon a crab must have grabbed hold of the fish and took off with it, because the string started moving away from the dock. “We got one,” Uncle Bill said. Then he started pulling the string in slowly through the murky water, and soon you could see the crab coming into view. “If you pull gently, the crab will hold on almost up to the surface.” He told Carole to grab the long pole with a net at the end. “When you see the crab coming up to the top, swoop the net under him,” he said.

From the moment the hazy image of the crab came into view about a foot or two below the surface, Carole and I started screaming and jumping around like we’d seen a tarantula. The crab let go and fell out of sight.

“You girls try it this time, and don’t scare him off.” We fought over who was going to tie the disgusting bait on the string and who got to do the net. Finally we decided to take turns. I pulled the next crab in gently, and Carole swooped the net under him. We screamed again with him crawling around in the net, but Uncle Bill just laughed and told us to dump him in the boat behind us. Soon we were catching enough crabs by ourselves to keep us entertained for hours.

Over the course of a week, we were together 24/7, and were starting to get on each other’s nerves. Plus, it appeared that Uncle Bill favored me – I joked and teased with him because he reminded me of my grandfather – and I think he found me amusing. Whatever the reason, Carole and I ended up getting into an argument about who was going to do the net. Neither wanted to tie bait. “Well, it’s my uncle’s house so I should get to do the net,” she said. “Well, he likes me best, so I should get to do it.” I snapped back. These statements pissed us both off, and we started scuffling on the narrow dock. With the pushing and shoving, we lost our balance and fell arm in arm into the water.

We surfaced and screamed bloody murder, because these were brown, murky, crab-infested waters that stretched as far as the eye could see. Plus it shocked us – it was salt water, which I’d never experienced before. We scrambled back onto the dock and started laughing. Uncle Bill came out and told us it was completely safe to swim in there, and we could touch bottom. “Your screeching and thrashing scared off all the crabs in a hundred miles,” he assured us.

We jumped back in with our shorts and t-shirts, screaming and splashing around to make certain the crabs stayed away. When Uncle Bill went back in the house, we decided to be naughty and go skinny-dipping. You couldn’t see into the water at all, and it wasn’t like a beach where there were people around. This was literally in the backyard of many cottage-type houses, and no one else was ever around. So we flopped our clothes up on the dock and took turns doing daring stuff like touching a foot on the squishy bottom. We got braver after awhile and decided to touch a hand on the bottom, which meant we had to do a surface dive, which meant our bare bottoms were exposed to view for a few seconds.

I’d never skinny dipped before. It had never occurred to me to do it. So it was quite exhilarating. We touched the bottom with our hands over and over, going at the same time so we didn’t expose ourselves to each other. People couldn’t see us from their houses, or at least we couldn’t see them because of the bank. We felt we had our own private bay. Boats passed on occasion out in the distance, but far enough away they couldn’t see us. What a fun time we had – and we didn’t fight again after that. We were sisters in scandal.

Months later, when we were back home, I overhead my mom and dad get into a tiff because he had Playboy magazines. “I only get them for the articles,” he explained. Of course this aroused my curiosity, because I didn’t even know what a Playboy magazine was. I found a copy hidden under a pile of stuff in their bedroom and was shocked to see the foldout and other pictures. But what caught my eye the most was a letter to the editor with a grainy, zoomed in picture of two creamy white butt cheeks poking out of murky brown water. The caption read, “Great White Spotted in Chesapeake Bay!”

I just KNOW that was me!

Girls Night Out

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 23, 2010

In Uncategorized

I had a girls night out tonight. What that entails, for any men reading, is women getting together and talking about (a) our children, and (b) our bodies.

The children topic covers how funny our kids are (when they’re little) or how exasperating they are (when they’re teens). Tonight we were all the parents of teens. The amazing thing is that each of us moms knows some inside dirt about the other mom’s kids that we can’t tell. So we’re listening to one of the other moms bragging about her kid and we know that her little angle has recently been naked on Facebook.

This is the awful thing about singing the praises of your own child. Someone else has volunteered at school and seen this same child hawking loogies across the sidewalk or making out with the toothless girl in the sophomore class. It’s a very dangerous thing to brag about you child to other mothers.

The second topic of conversation was the changes our bodies were going through. I know my breasts are heading south and my waistline is heading north. Others talked about hot flashes, weight gain in the spare tire area, the husbands getting diabetes, and so forth. We talked about a book called, “The Female Brain,” that one person praised at length because her book group had discussed it but she hadn’t actually read it because she kept falling asleep whenever she tried to. She highly recommended it to us, though, based on what everyone else said.

We drank a lot of wine, or some of us did, and we laughed, and my ears are ringing like I went to a rock concert because eight different conversations were going on at once even though there were only eight of us there. It’s a law of physics that women can talk out of both sides of their heads. We also talked at length about hair color, which is a given among women of my age except for me who is too cheap to dye my hair. Besides, I used to ask my kids, “Does my platinum hair make me look old?” They were sweet and always said no. Finally, I asked the question again, trying to figure out whether I should dye my hair or continue to keep it natural. My son put me straight once and for all. “It’s not your hair that makes you look old, mom,” he said, “it’s the wrinkles.”

Gotta love those kids. And thank goodness for girls nights out so that I learn from other moms that their kids are brutally honest too. And no matter what happens, if you’re losing your hair, losing your husband, or losing your mind, you’ve got the sisterhood of other women who will hold your hand through it, as long as they’ve got a glass of wine and homemade pizza in front of them. And it never hurts to have a platter full of mocha brownies, either.

Crashing a Guy’s Football Party

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 22, 2010

In Uncategorized

Saturday night we were invited to watch a football game at one of my husband’s fraternity brothers’ house. When we got there, I scouted around to see what the other women were wearing. I found out the other women were wearing nothing.

Got your attention, didn’t I? You’re thinking what could be better at a football party? Beer? Chips? Naked women? Get your heads out of the gutter.

There were no women. Just me! It was a bachelor, or stag, or guys’ football party. But nobody told my husband.

I made an announcement right off because I knew from experience when girls all get together and one of them brings a husband, it changes the dynamic, no matter how nice he is. “Okay, so I’m the token girl here? I want you to feel free to pass gas and scratch and say the f-word. I don’t want to ruin anyone’s fun.”

The guys were all polite. “Oh no, we’re okay, we won’t do any of that.” Then one proceeded to scratch himself and plunge the same hand into the potato chip bowl.

For you gals who haven’t had the privilege of going to one of these all guy parties, here’s what you’re missing Menu items: chicken, meat balls, ribs, hot dogs, potato chips. Not one veggie or bowl of grapes, or nice little crackers with flavored creme cheese in the shape of footballs. And not a fork, knife, or napkin anywhere to be found. This lovely fare was served on saucers with the little indentation in them to hold a cup.

The TV’s, one in every room, were turned up so loud vases were inching their way off the mantle. The guys watched just enough to yell how indignant they were at the TV when someone fumbled or got sacked, but they didn’t seem to be all that into it. In fact, during halftime they went in the kitchen to refill beers and dip into a big vat of lil’ smokies, and didn’t even bother to rush back in time to watch the second half kickoff. They were talking guy stuff, which seemed to be more about electronics than anything manly or rugged you’d think guys would talk about to other guys. No one talked about the size of their appendages or flexed their muscles, which was what I’d expect to see. Maybe they were holding back because I was there.

I had fun, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a lot like those lil’ smokies – great on occasion but I wouldn’t want to make a regular diet of them. And Lord only knows what the guys said about me. “Who brought the gash?” “Yeah, she put a damper on everything.” “Good thing we had the lil’ smokies or the party would have been completely ruined.” “Yeah, and she didn’t even have big ‘uns.” Yeah, how worthless can you get.”

Because this is how guys talk when women aren’t around, I’m just sure of it.

Making Me Laugh

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 21, 2010

In Uncategorized

When the kids aren’t around, which is most of the time, my husband and I watch TV while we eat dinner. We used to watch Seinfeld, but for some reason the networks, in their quest to drive me crazy, put another show in that time slot that I’m not nuts about, so we have nothing to watch.

He spins through the channels and finds a show he likes, but I don’t. Sometimes we’ll watch it, but then I have to eat fast. Other times we’ll watch reruns of America’s Funniest Videos, which I love but he doesn’t. He thinks it’s all stupid and looks set up, but he sits there and laughs the whole time anyway.

When it comes to humor, I like the lowest forms. Some doofus slipping on a banana peel makes me laugh. One of the funniest scenes in a movie I ever saw was the first Home Alone when the kid sets up all those boobie traps and the bad guys fall for them. These were so creative I’m laughing at them right now. One thing happens to the bad guys after another. One falls down stairs on ice and then grabs a door handle that’s been heated so it burns a door-handle shaped brand on the palm of his hand. His partner tries to sneak in the basement door, but the steps are covered in tar so he ends up walking out of his shoes and has to step really hard to get his feet out of the tar each step, and he’s barefoot, but he’s determined to get up the rest of the stairs. The camera zooms in on a nail sticking up one of the stairs, then zooms to his tender, bare foot heading straight for it, and he’s bearing down hard and deliberately with his feet and the camera zooms in at the time of impact, and he lets out a high pitched, girly scream that has to be the best one ever made in a movie. I love it every time I hear it, which is pretty often. Both guys step barefoot on broken Christmas ornaments and tacks; and one, or maybe both, get clobbered right between the eyes with a bucket of paint swinging from a long rope. Now that’s just funny.

Some of those America’s Funniest videos don’t live up to the name, though. I’m not so sure what entertainment value there is watching an eight year old kid with a loogie hanging out of his nose that’s six inches long and growing. All of the snot videos should be culled as far as I’m concerned.

But I love the hungover brides, the crashing snowsleds, the fat women falling off docks, geese chasing screaming women, jackasses chasing screaming men, and babies giggling, over and over, for no reason.

I used to love the Three Stooges because of slapstick. Moe smacking everyone on the head, then hitting them in the stomach – that was funny, but my favorite was when he’d take his two fingers and jab somebody in the eyes. Except that Larry got wise to him and started putting a hand up so Moe’s finger’s wouldn’t reach. He’d say, “nya, nya, nya,” which got Moe pretty riled up. There was a take on this in the movie Something About Mary when Ben Stiller is fighting with Mary’s little dog, and he’s wrestling with it around the room, and the dog’s biting him wherever he can sink his teeth, and finally Ben Still rares his arm back and you see those two fingers going at the dog’s eyes, which made me about wet my pants, and then the dog puts his paw up to block the jab. That’s exceptionally funny.

Well, I have to say I’ve made myself laugh typing this, so that does it for me.

Cleaning for the Maid

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 20, 2010

In Uncategorized

I don’t have maid service, but I have friends who do, and they always clean their house before the maid gets there. Does this make sense?

How about going to the dentist? Do you brush your teeth extra well just before the appointment? And floss. Thoroughly floss between those teeth until you taste that faint metallic flavor that let’s you know you should not have waited until the day of your appointment, in spite of the fact that you hate flossing so much you’d rather pull your own teeth one by one than floss them? Like the dentist isn’t going to look in there and guess that your teeth spaces haven’t seen a strand of floss since the morning of your last appointment.

My friend got a gift certificate for a pedicure for her birthday. She can’t use it, though, because she’s embarrassed that her heels are all dry and cracked, and she doesn’t have time to rasp all that tough, dead skin away. Of course she knows that it’s part of the pedicure to get that poor, abused foot to look good as new, but she wouldn’t think of taking those feet in there and having someone see them up close. And the longer she waits, the worse the heels get so it’s a viscous cycle.

I never go to the hairdresser without washing my hair first. I know she’s going to stand behind me and fluff my hair up while she’s asking me what I want to do this time, and I don’t want to be looking at myself in that gigantic mirror with bed-head hair pressed in weird patterns or sticking out like fake fur. So I shower, wash my hair, condition it, blow it dry, style it and spray it, then go to my stylist so she can wash it two more times, condition it, blow it dry and style it, then put on tons of hair spray. After saying my thank you’s and I love it’s, I dash home and jump in the shower to shampoo out all that hairspray (all hairdressers are heavy handed with hairspray), condition it, blow it dry, style It, and spray it lightly the way I like it.

When I go to the doctor, I take an extra careful shower, then take a washcloth and scrub really well behind my ears. This is carry-over from childhood. I remember my dad doing random ear testing. Just out of the blue you’d be walking from the living room to the dining room and he’d spring out of nowhere and grab you by the ear and flip it forward to expose that white, protected skin that somehow always managed to attract dirt like dust to a TV. No matter what, the outcome of these sneak inspections was me marching to the bathroom for a good scrubbing, followed by another inspection. Just like my dad, doctors seem to always want to poke around your ears even if you came to them because your big toe is throbbing. I’m not ever going to fail another ear inspection, especially one I know about in advance.

I can understand on a purely intellectual level why we shower before getting into a hot tub or swimming pool. The public health might be compromised by the gazillions of bacteria and microscopic vermin that infest each and every one of us. But wouldn’t a hot tub kill them all? It about kills me after ten minutes. I’m boiled clean. That’s not the same as a pool, I suppose, but still, what’s the point of taking a shower when I slather on half a bottle of the greasiest sunscreen I can find just before I jump in the water? The oil slick around me reflects the sun and nearly blinds everyone. The floating bumblebees that are always in pools don’t fare too well if they drift into my wake. Surely bacteria can’t live through that.

Another thing people do is comb their dog out before taking him to the groomers. They’ll take the brush and tug away at those mats to try and make it look like they actually have been brushing the dog daily. As all those clumps of hair form a ring on the floor, the poor beast yelps like a coyote that didn’t crouch low enough when he went under an electric fence. I guess these people think they can convince the groomer into thinking that they actually followed through on the promise they made at the last grooming.

Are we just fooling ourselves? You bet we are. And thank goodness the pedicurist doesn’t comment on the fresh layer of raw, pink skin where the calluses used to be. But does the maid keep quiet about our efforts to hide our messy habits? It probably depends on the tip, and the dirt we didn’t have time to get to because we were too busy scrubbing behind our ears and flossing.

This Is What Poetry Should Be

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 18, 2010

In Uncategorized

I just thought of a poem I read when I was in high school and spending the night at my grandmother’s house out in the country. Gramps, we called her. It was in a coffee-table book of collected poems, most of them boring, meaningless, confusing, and of no value whatsoever to a freshman in high school. I hope you don’t think I still feel that way about all poetry. I’ve since come to appreciate three other poems, one of them you may have head of that starts out, “There once was a hermit named Dave.”

This particular poem was about sleeping at the foot of the bed. It’s written by a kid whose big family always has a ton of out-of-town company. When the aunts and uncles and cousins arrive, he’s the youngest so he knows he’ll have to sleep with what sounds like 4 or 5 brothers and sisters and cousins, and since you can’t get that many side by side in a bed, he ends up sleeping with his head at the foot.

I don’t know how I discovered the poem – I must have been immensely bored, but when I read it I laughed out loud. My grandmother, who loved a good joke, heard me and wanted in on it. When she read it she threw her head back and laughed so hard she started sliding out of the rocking chair. All five of her chins jiggled. She raised a meaty arm and covered her mouth with sausage fingers the way some people do when they laugh really hard. Her’s was a laugh that came from down in her belly and wheezed it’s way up her throat until she lost her breath and started coughing. Tears welled up in her eyes and she swabbed them away with the back of her hand. This went on forever, with her changing arms and pushing with her feet to try and stay in the rocker. Her ample bosom pumped with each laugh, rising and falling rapidly over her barrel of a belly.

You can’t watch a spectacle like that and not laugh yourself, which just feeds the other person’s laughter, which feeds yours, and it could go on until infinity except that one of you gets exhausted or has to go to the bathroom. Then you both take some deep breaths to calm down, and say that was the funniest thing you ever read, then one of you, against your better judgment, looks back at the book and laughs all over again, which sets the other one off.

If you’ve not had this experience, you’ve missed out on one of the greatest highs of life.

Like I said, I just thought of the poem, so I Googled to see if I could find it. Sure enough, the all-knowing Googled delivered. I read it through again, and I laughed all over, except not as heartily. It’s like in the movies when there’s a funny scene and no one else laughs. It’s just as funny, but it doesn’t seem as funny if you’re the only one laughing.

The reason this poem is funny is because I can picture this kid down in the bed with somebody’s gross old toenails in his face and the covers over his head, and people kicking him in the chin when they change position, and bristly legs rubbing against his arms. I’ve actually slept at the foot of a bed. I loved those slumber parties with a bunch of girls and everyone wanted a piece of the mattress so you had to alternate in the bed to accommodate as many as possible. My daughter has had sleepovers and I’ve done a late-night headcount and found five of them on the hide-a-bed: three up and two down.

If you’ve never slept like this, you’ve missed out on one of the greatest indignities of life.

Finally, this poem is so funny because there are creative little rhymes. I’m not a big fan of intellectual poetry, even though I had to read a gob of it to earn my English degree. Shakespeare I like, but only the comedies. Most of those other guys I can easily do without, especially the ones who don’t even have the decency to make their poems rhyme. I like ‘em rhyming cleverly or not at all, and they need to tell a story. Which I guess is why I like the foot of the bed poem so much.

I’ll recommend it, but If you read it, you may not find it as funny as I did. When someone describes something as hilarious and goes on and on, by the time I read it I’m not that impressed. Like those emails that say this is the funniest thing you’ll ever read. It never is. Mostly it’s some stupid, worn out thing that’s way too long and you can know the punch line by the second sentence into it. But I hope if you read this poem you’ll get a laugh. It may help if you find a big, jolly grandma to read it with.

I found the poem in The Best Loved Poems of the American People by Hazel Felleman. It’s called “Sleepin’ at the Foot O’ the Bed, by Luther Patrick. If you copy this very long link into your browser, it will take you to the book and the poem is on pages 525 and 526. http://books.google.com/books?id=puxcAQOneC8C&pg=PA526&lpg=PA526&dq=poem+-+sleeping+at+the+foot+of+the+bed&source=bl&ots=9IShNucvWv&sig=xqSMDBS5erYt79VsOSYyvEofCKo&hl=en&ei=qKxTS-qNF4ngtgOim82GCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=2&ved=0CAoQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The Church Lady

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 17, 2010

In Uncategorized

First a disclaimer. Just about everything I write is more or less not true. I exaggerate, change things, and make stuff up. Sure, you may find an ounce of truth buried here and there, but mostly it’s all a pack of lies.

Now that that’s out of the way, I went to Mass today, which is the truth. As usual at our Catholic service a lot of people were traipsing back and forth up to the altar. We had a couple of guest speakers trying to persuade us that the church building needs many, many very expensive improvements. They had a nice slideshow to demonstrate what things would look like after all the work is done, and though it was hard to tell the difference between the old and proposed new, I took their word for it.

I guess I noticed what people were wearing when one of the speakers walked all around the front of the altar to get to the podium, which took about fifteen minutes. She was a younger woman and very attractive. I liked her outfit because she was thin and her fitted black turtleneck didn’t show any cleavage. She had on a subdued wool skirt, tights, and boots – it was a classy look and something I’d wear if I looked like her, which I’m working on with my newest diet.

Then along came the ladies who serve Communion, and they were a diverse group with one thing in common. All of them liked to eat, and none of them owned a mirror.

One in particular stood out. I’ve seen her many Sundays, and she always looks like your normal, standard, middle-aged Catholic woman attending a casual suburban church. Matronly might be the best word to use here, which is a synonym for dumpy. But today she was going for a different look. She had on a top that bared quite a bit of cleavage. Since she liked to eat, the cleavage had migrated south, but this top gave a good chase and ended up about midway down the slope.

But that’s not all. She had on a pair of stretchy pants made of a clingy brown fabric that left nothing to the imagination. Because she liked to eat, onlookers got a full view of what looked like golf balls peppered underneath the thin fabric in her thigh and rump areas.

She topped her ensemble with a pretty taupe colored sweater that I’m sure she thought extended over her hips and bottom, but it gave up about halfway down in the back. In fact, it curved up toward her waist, but that was probably because she kept pulling the front sides down which created the arc in the back.

Call me old fashioned, but I’m not sure this is the best look for church. The young girls wear their low-neck tank tops, but that’s all they own and if you scold them, like I do my daughter, they’ll use their long hair as a cover up. And yes, they wear skintight jeans, but the fabric is thick and so tight it doesn’t reveal anything. Plus they top it all off with long, hooded sweatshirts that make them appear slouchy and kid-like.

Middle-aged women, on the other hand, must have closets full of frumpy clothes that would be so much more appropriate for church. Which brings me full circle to my original comment that these women must not own mirrors.

Now I know I’m going to wake up tomorrow and have regrets about what could be misconstrued as catty remarks, especially involving women at church. But in my defense I’m only reporting what I saw, and in my defense, if that woman didn’t want to end up on this page, she could have dressed in a gunny sack and we’d all sleep guilt-free tonight. So in a manner of speaking, it’s her fault she’s here.

And like I said at the beginning, it could all be a pack of lies anyway. As the humorist Lewis Grizzard once said, “My mother believes that men landing on the moon is fake and professional wrestling is real.”

I Have Regrets

By Suzanne Olsen

On January 16, 2010

In Uncategorized

I have regrets. I hate this about myself. One day I’m all gung ho and do or say something, like write a blog post about my son, and the next day I think of all the reasons I shouldn’t have done it.

I don’t want my son to leave my home. Heavens no. I love him so. I hope none of you got the wrong impression yesterday or read between the lines that he’s driving me crazy because HE’S NOT. Sure, who wouldn’t want someone to pitch in from time to time, or arrive home before 2 am, or get up before 2 pm, or stick around for more than 2 minutes in his waking hours? Still, he’s a fine young man and I’d punch you right in the nose if you ever said different.

As for the blog about taxes a couple of days ago, I did not mean to imply that rich folks don’t contribute enough to our country. I like hanging on to my own money, too. Not that I mind paying a little extra in taxes to help out the needy, but I’m more comfortable than many people, so who am I to point fingers at the wealthy? You know, Warren Buffet said he pays less taxes than his secretary, and I find that fascinating. But if I’ve in any way implied that the wealthy don’t contribute their fair share because they can afford the very best advice from their tax accountants, shame on me.

I go through the day talking to myself about what I ought to have done. “Why don’t you start a load of wash?” I’ll ask. Then I head for the laundry room and see that the sofa cushions could use fluffing, and since it will only take a second, I stop to do it. I see a dishtowel stuffed in the crack think, “I wonder how that got there?” then pull it out and take it to the kitchen, where I find dishes my darling sweet children have lovingly left on the counter because they must worry I don’t have enough to do. I load those in the dishwasher, then put the toaster my daughter abandoned once her toast popped up back into the appliance garage. Which reminds me I need to run out to the garage and get the pair of new shoes hiding in my car so I can sneak them in while my husband is at work. While I’m out there I grab a light bulb to put in the bathroom, and after I’ve screwed it in, I kick my daughter’s thong like it’s a soccer ball from the bathroom floor into her bedroom, just in case someone drops by.

Eventually I recall the laundry. “You should have done it earlier, then you could be putting it in the dryer by now,” I scold myself. “Why did you get so distracted?”

And by the way, my husband is not a cheapskate. I hope I didn’t give anyone that impression. He loves to go on golf trips with his friends, and likes wearing nice things. What man wouldn’t? It just upsets him a tiny little bit when I bring bags of new wardrobe items in the house. He thinks I’ve got plenty of clothes, and of course I do. I love those sweaters I got back in the 90’s. And I know good and well if I just hold on, my shoes will come back in style again soon, and polishing and buffing them is helping my arms stay in shape. No one would know I was wearing them when I went into labor with my son. I do sneak in my fair share of clothes, don’t you worry about that.

Well, I hope I haven’t offended anyone new today. I do try so hard to be pleasant and kind. Although I do have my moods where I can get just a tad bit cranky, and I aways regret it. Honest I do.