Recycle and reuse, yes but reduce as well?

I’m a preservationist. Not so much when it comes to the environment and recycling which, in Oregon is serious business and something Linda points out I’m not fit for. “You can’t just go around throwing everything in the recycling bin, mister,” she’ll say.

“Why not?” I ask. “It’s made of plastic.” It’s a legitimate question that, in turn, Linda responds to with a little quiz.

“Do you see the recycling symbol somewhere on that?”

“Uh, no. But,” and she’ll cut me off.

“That’s because you can’t recycle plastic wrappers.”

Still, I try. It’s in my nature, which is why just the other day we had a similar conversation. I was unpacking my winter clothes from storage and re-packing summer weather items in their place when Linda mentioned her surprise at how many clothes I had. “I can’t believe you have so many clothes you actually have to keep half of them in the storage room,” she said.

“Not half.”

“Well pretty close to it. All my clothes fit in the closet all year round,” she pointed out. And while technically this is true, it might have something to do with the fact that Linda occupies three closets in our house while I have just the one. But the real reason for the packing and unpacking twice yearly is that I never get rid of any of my clothes. It’s a trait I inherited from my father. As kids growing up he regularly wore items from his college wardrobe then strutted around boasting. “Check out these babies,” he’d say referring to the most threadbare corduroys you’ve ever seen. “Not bad for 20 plus years, huh.”

This past weekend, while I was digging through a pair of large rubber made bins, I asked Linda for some advice on what to break out and what to save for another season. I had two piles going, one marked for the upcoming season and the other slated for long-term storage. This turned into a family activity and I soon found myself trying things on in front of five very vocal ladies. “Yeah, keep that dad,” or “I remember that, I love that,” they cried. And this is when things turned ugly. Working in the apparel industry gives me the chance to get a free sample here and there; mostly workout clothes or an occasional jacket. A few summers ago, though, I got my hands on a charcoal grey lambs wool sweater. It zips at the neck and has a black stripe across the chest but since it was July, I squirreled it away in one of my seasonal bins. I’ve never actually worn it and each year I contemplate breaking it out. It was this sweater I was trying on when Margaret came clean, “Uh, dad? That makes you look fat.”

“OK, shows over,” I announced, then I decided to turn over a new leaf and started a new pile marked Goodwill.

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Busy, busy, busy.

I’ve been horribly busy the past two weeks and on top of that, I’ve been sick. But who isn’t busy? Linda has had her hands full with four sick girls, all down with the swine flu. And let’s be honest after the first day of having children home from school the charm wears off and it’s work, work, work.

My five year old, Gabrielle, got a mild case and was only home from school a few days the week before last. She’s small for her age but has this inner confidence, which comes out occasionally in the form of shouted demands. “I don’t want to go to bed right now. I want to eat,” or “I’m working on something special, leave me alone!” And then she’ll follow it with a little stomp. For effect. She’s like a pint-sized general, really, which is what I call her sometimes. Just for fun, which in turn makes her mad and stomp again. “Don’t call me that, Dad. I’m not a general.”

On the afternoon of her return to school she insisted Linda walk her in to her kindergarten class. Normally Gabrielle is independent preferring to walk in from the parking lot on her own but it seems there’d been a homework assignment given while she was out. Writing the letter “N” a few times on a page or something or other. She’d worked hard to get it done and wanted Linda to walk in to be sure she got credit for her work.

So sure, I’ve been busy and even a bit sick, but so has my five year old. Sorry I’ve been away.

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Well, it's just a theory

I have this theory about not getting sick. It stems from my college years when money was tight and food a premium. This was what my brother Trevor referred to as my ‘camel period,’ a time when, in my mind, I convinced myself that should I feel even the slightest of symptoms, a big heavy meal was all it took to sidestep any real illness. Call me crazy or chalk it up to wives tale medicine but it’s a practice I still live by.

Besides, it’s really not that different than the idea that drinking a certain beverage while flying will keep the plane aloft, which is what my friend Dave thinks. He revealed this eight or so years ago while on our way to Germany for work. “I’ll take a ginger ale, please. And can I have the whole can?” he added then turned to me revealing his theory. “It’s not that I actually believe we’ll crash if I don’t drink ginger ale, it’s just, well, you know, we’ve never crashed while I do drink it.” I smiled then turned a popped another mentos in my mouth wondering if his ginger ale and my mentos would do the trick. It was, after all, a long flight.

This morning Linda and I woke to the fourth and last of our girls down with a fever and I smiled. Looks like a big fattening lunch is in order.

What odd little secret theories do you live by?

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Back to School

It’s been over a month since Linda and I attended back-to-school night at the junior high where our daughter Gretchen attends. I’m not horribly good at keeping track of time so in my mind it might have been last week as easily as three months ago. I know it’s the middle of October and I can do the math but this requires me to, well, do the math. I have a fine grasp of minutes and hours and even days but somehow my mind grew up neglecting to keep track of weeks and years. So there we were attending back to school night for our thirteen year-old, which left me wondering, “How did I end up with a thirteen year old?” And then I asked Linda, “Do we really have to attend back to school night for a thirteen year old? I mean is there anything they’re actually going to tell us that we don’t already know?”

“Of course we’re going. This is important so you’d better pay attention too,” Linda replied.

As it turns out it wasn’t really important and after the first presentation the next six were pretty much identical. It wasn’t until our fifth stop, math I think, that I perked up a bit. This teacher was lanky and reminded me of a stork as she paced back and forth between the projector and her desk and I swear her knees even bent the wrong way. For the fifth time I listened as she explained the process of checking our children’s grades via the online tool, then moved on with a fictitious example just as the other teachers before her had. These were perfect examples of students with perfect grades. “C’mon,” I whispered. “Where’s the example of a bad student? Someone more realistic.” And then I spent the next few minutes entertaining myself with the thought of the stork breaking tradition and giving the parents a demonstration of the online component using an ‘F’ student.


I tuned back in just in time to catch her add, “I’d like to talk about the type of calculator your children will need for this class.” Now I’m a bit of a gadget geek and decided I’d better listen on the off chance we’d need to buy a new calculator. “A regular one is fine but it might be nice for them to have one with some extra buttons,” she said.

It’s been years since I’ve been asked to calculate the sine or cosine of anything but I vaguely remember having a calculator that could handle such a task. I do not, however, remember my math teacher suggesting we pick up a calculator, “with some of those extra buttons,” and wonder what kind of instruction Gretchen will be getting. My mind wandered again imagining the P.E. coach suggesting, “Each of your students will need a lock for his or her locker. I’d suggest one with some of those line thingies around the edges.”

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Richard Simmons?

My wife Linda has me on this ridiculous schedule of waking up between 5:00 am and 5:30 am to go to the gym. Should there be a class she plans on attending then the alarm chimes closer to 5:00 am, and it it’s simple a regular morning we’re blessed with an extra 30 minutes. She kicked this new lifestyle plan to better health well over a year ago and, to be fair, I should mention my attendance is spotty at best - maybe 50%. OK, 25% if I’m being completely honest.

This morning marked an early departure schedule and while these are generally extra miserable, today was different. After spending 30 minutes on a new elliptical - stair machine combination contraption I walked to the far water fountain. It’s down the only hallway in the gym across from the racquetball courts and situated in close proximity to the gyms 3 classrooms. It’s a bit further from the main water fountain but worth the walk because there’s never a line-up and the water is always colder. And it was here, near the water fountain, that I noticed a new instructor. He was like a train wreck and I couldn’t help but stare.

Best described as the Asian equivalent of Richard Simmons, his body was tubby complete with man boobs and thick trunky legs. He was wearing a long oversized t-shirt that hung down to mid-thigh revealing just a sliver view of bright pink shorts. At first I mistook the new instructor for a woman and who wouldn’t? Solid white Reebok aerobic shoes and tall bulky socks pushed down revealing the smoothest calves I’ve ever seen on a man. He was working the class into a frenzy, up and down the step platform in a grace generally reserved for ballet. “Arms out people, arms out and make it look beautiful. And one, and two, and three,” he called in a lilting voice. I just couldn’t look away as his upper body swung back and forth on what could only be described as hips. The guy had hips.

As he turned to face the class I noticed a small black microphone protruding from the big loopy curls that framed his round face and still, I couldn’t look away and his perm took on a life of it’s own. Bouncing with the beat of the music it was mesmerizing. Our eyes met and piped out without missing a beat, “C’mon come join us.”

The spell was broken and I ran, smiling with the thought I was pretty sure I’d just met Mr. Simmons doppelganger.

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What's Real?

“Gabrielle, you need to eat some real food.” This was what Linda said to our youngest last night as she lay on the floor crying, “I don’t want chili and I don’t want yogurt either.” Yogurt is our go to offer should one of our children decide they’re hungry before bedtime.

To a visitor this scene might have prompted the question, “Real food? I didn’t notice the child gnawing on a piece of plastic fruit. What do you mean, ‘Real Food?’ I’m not a visitor though, and have long since begun compiling clues into the mystery of Linda’s claim for real food.

The very first clue came early on in our relationship while on a road trip from Utah to California to visit my family. It’s a thirteen-hour drive meaning we would eat along the way. Several times. The logical answer to food while road tripping is fast food - it’s cheap and, well, fast. And while I can comfortably eat fast food every day of my life, Linda prefers it only occasionally. In fact, I can eat the same identical fast food meal from the same fast food chain for weeks on end without skipping a beat, while for Linda, occasionally actually means not really very often at all. It was on this, our first road trip that I heard Linda’s plea for the first time, “I need some real food.” This was ground zero, the beginning, clue numero uno - “Real Food” is not fast food and cannot be found on the road. Especially from the comfort and convenience of the driver’s seat.

Years later it was my brother-in-law Dave who asked the question, “What is it with the ‘Real Food’ thing? What do you call this?” It was a legitimate question, posed between bites of a Krispy Kreme donut. Our two families were vacationing together in Florida which, frankly, begged the plea, “I need ‘Real’ anything.” We were on a whirlwind trip with a single week to cover Disneyland, The Epcot Center, Cape Canaveral, Sea World and Krispy Kreme Donuts for the third breakfast in a row. At this point even one of my daughters chimed in, whining, “Dad we need real food.” Clue #67 - Real Food is not donuts for breakfast, at least not more than once a week.

So last night, while Gabrielle lay on her back on the kitchen floor spinning circles and crying, “I want a granola bar, I want chips, but I don’t want yogurt,” clue #394 fell into place. Real Food is not chips and a granola bar for dinner.

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Sephora and the Movies

Linda and I wanted to catch a movie this weekend but settled on running a couple of errands instead. At some point along our route we found ourselves in Sephora, which is the make-up equivalent of a child’s candy store. Candy apple red nail polish line the shelves aside bubble gum pink lip-gloss and smoky shades of eye shadow. Banks of scrubs, blushes, powders and balms are enough to keep even the most disinterested housewife spinning at top RPM’s.

On the right side of the store, running the entire length is a wall dedicated to the shiny silver tools associated with cosmetic upkeep. Since face powders and potions hold little interest for me I generally congregate in front of these mechanical wonders along with the rest of the men in the store, where we share unspoken gestures suggesting, “You too? Yeah, but check out this really cool precision ground pair of clippers fabricated from surgical steel,” as we do our best to keep from getting bored.

While Linda looked for a new face scrub at the back of the store I noticed what I originally took to be a small elderly man hovering around the perfume counter. His grey hair was cropped short then slicked back tight against his head. He had a severe part down the left and wore what looked to me like the boy’s version of a men’s crisp white oxford dress shirt. It was un-tucked, hanging down over a pair of tight but ill-fitting jeans.

At first I imagined he was shopping for a gift, possibly for someone special in his life but what really caught my attention his quick side -o-side glances as though he were casing the joint. “Looks like we’ve got a shoplifter on our hands. Something’s going down and I’ve got a front row seat,” I thought as I moved in for a better view. “This is turning out better than the movies.”

When my little inmate transitioned from smelling and glancing, smelling and glancing to vigorously pumping the perfume into a cloud that engulfed his entire body from head to toe I decided I needed to move back a bit and maybe seek a better angle. It was at this point I realized the person in question was not actually a tiny thieving man but rather, an oddly coifed middle-aged woman. My movement must have startled her, our eyes briefly met as she took one last glance in both directions then pumped a dozen or so sprays into her crotch and bolted from the store.

Much better than the movies

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There, I fixed it - or - Finally my chance to use my new words

I'm not generally a huge fan of the forwarded email but yesterday when a friend from work sent me an email titled, "There, I fixed it," I was overjoyed. Finally here was a chance to use the new lingo I've been practicing since my last post.

VERY 'WT'. Here are just a few:

My favorite one is of the two guys in the pool with the floating power strip. Which one is your favorite?

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