Author Archives: kzmclain

Thursday Thoughts

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Vroom
The other day, I managed to drag Bill away from yard work long enough to get my scooter started for the summer. He has the knack. My precious vehicle has 7,100 miles, all mine-mine-mine. I used to drive it to work downtown. Now I use it mostly to putz around the neighborhood. Yesterday I took it over to Southmoor Elementary and then to the grocery store. I never am on my scooter on a nice sunny day when I don’t realize that riding my scooter is about as much fun as I can ever have. I love it…..

Squirt
The reason I went to Southmoor Elementary on my scooter (did I mention that I love my scooter?) is because not only was it Maggie Faith’s birthday yesterday, but her school was having their annual Field Day. For whatever reason, Southmoor’s Field Day is more of a Water Day than actual field events like tug-of-war or foot races. That’s ok, because the kids seem to love it. The weather was warm and sunny, and it was a great day to get wet. Which they did…..

 Tiiiiiimberrrrrr
Last autumn, Bill and I were quietly sitting in our family room watching television, when we heard a loud boom in our backyard. Upon further review, we saw that a small aspen tree that we knew was dead and had planned on cutting down had made up its own mind and came down without our help. Luckily, it landed mostly on our patio rather than our neighbor’s roof. We did lose a few roof tiles, but it could have been far worse. That’s why Bill has been very nervous about another dead aspen tree in the back of our yard. Yesterday afternoon, Alastair dropped by, and Bill put him to work. Bill tied the tree to another tree…..

…..and then used what he calls a come along tool to urge the tree down. So while Bill chopped, Alastair cranked the come along tool. My job? I sat on the patio and prayed. We were all successful…..

Shortly after this shot was taken, Alastair came in looking for a bandage for his blister! It was well earned.

Ciao.

It’s a Mystery

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In my trademark cat-chasing-a-sunbeam manner, in looking for something completely different, I stumbled upon an article from late last year about a South Carolina man who, following a night out with his friends, decided to hit the neighborhood Waffle House for an early morning meal. It was around 3 o’clock in the morning. According to his story, he walked into the Waffle House and sat at the counter for about 10 minutes waiting for someone to take his order. When no one appeared, he did a bit of reconnoitering, and discovered the one-and-only employee sound asleep in the back room.

Now, this fellow had enjoyed a number of adult beverages, so he proceeded to do something he claims is quite uncharacteristic of him. He stepped behind the counter and prepared himself an entire meal. He ate the meal, cleaned up after himself, and headed home. The employee never budged. Later in the day, he returned to pay for the meal, at which time the manager apologized, thanked him profusely, and offered him a mystery shopper job. I’m guessing said employee was free to spend his remaining nights in his own bed, perhaps after spending the day looking for a new job.

While the story made me laugh, my real takeaway from his tale was that I want to be a mystery shopper. I would be a good mystery shopper. Well, except for the fact that I really don’t like shopping. But other than that, I am generally friendly, but could easily be crabby if that’s what the job entailed. Just ask Bill; he will concur that I do crabby quite well.

I don’t know if it’s still true, because I rarely shop at Safeway, being a faithful Kroger customer. But years ago, when my brother worked for that company, they used to have mystery shoppers visit stores regularly. Any time you would ask a Safeway employee something like where do you keep your Velveeta cheese, that employee was obligated to walk you directly to the Velveeta cheese, even if it was all the way across the store. While that is a very nice gesture, it seems somewhat inefficient. But even if you told them you didn’t need an escort, they walked with you because you could be a mystery shopper. And if you were – then he or she was BUSTED!

Only somewhat relatedly, I have a very good friend who – many years ago – was employed by the Creighton University Medical School as a mystery patient. When she would get to her job, the powers-that-be would give her a list of symptoms about which she should complain to the medical student. She was instructed to be a cooperative patient, a complainer, or maybe an obnoxious Chatty Cathy. She knew what her diagnosis SHOULD have been, and afterwards, would give feedback on how the medical student did and how successful he/she was at making the correct diagnosis. That might even be better than being a mystery shopper. While I don’t like being a patient any more than I like shopping, I certainly have plenty of experience.

By the way, the Waffle House story made me laugh, because it made me think about a story that my brother-in-law told about Waffle House. He and a number of his friends were out one night, and just like the story above, decided to venture into a Waffle House to eat an after-theater meal. They were all dressed nicely, and sat at the counter to eat. When the server brought their food, one of the men politely pointed out that he had requested no hash browns, but there were hash browns on his plate. Without skipping a beat, the server/cook took the plate from the man, scraped the hash browns into the garbage can, and handed him back the plate. “There,” he told the man. “No hash browns.”

But at least he was awake! And he should be grateful that the man wasn’t a mystery shopper.

Here and Gone

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Having lived in Colorado for the majority of my life, you would think that the sudden weather changes in the spring wouldn’t catch me off guard. There are probably meteorological reasons for the crazy weather. Downdrafts from the Rockies to the west. Barometric pressure that results from the dry air of the Colorado plains meeting the chinook winds of the foothills. I’m making up stuff (and not very learnedly). But I know that Springtime in the Rockies is more than just a 1937 Bette Grable movie. Even so, yesterday’s crazy weather took me by surprise.

It rained Sunday night. A nice steady downfall for a period of time for which I cannot vouch because I ended up putting ear plugs in my ears because the person lying next to me was himself emulating thunder. When I awoke in the morning, the temperature was pretty chilly, but not chilly enough to have bothered my plants. The skies were partly cloudy.

Bill left home early to do that thing called work. Somewhere around 8:30, the temperatures began to rise, and I decided it would be a good day to buy some more flowers. It was after Mothers’ Day, after all. It was safe to plant. I was, in fact, at the garden center when Court texted and offered to come over and do some work in our yard. I was thrilled to accept his offer. Keeping Bill from doing work around the house and/or yard is a constant challenge, but one I embrace in my never-ending effort to save his back. Any work done by Court – or anyone else, for that matter – is work that Bill doesn’t do.

Now, here is some important information: May and June are typically months where you can expect to see violent weather in Colorado. There are thunderstorms with strong lightning, tornadoes, high winds, hail ranging from pebbles to golf balls. But that did not stop me from planting my petunias in my front garden box. Nope. I carefully placed 12 purple and white petunias into the dirt that Court had just poured into the flower box.

The weather forecasters had predicted rain for the afternoon. Sure enough, sometime around 11 o’clock, the clouds started pouring in…..

Did the dark and swirly clouds make me nervous? Nope. I suggested we go to lunch. Bill arrived home just in time to join us.

By time we finished lunch, the sky was black and it almost looked like evening had fallen. Raindrops began falling, lightly at first. Court and Bill began scrambling to get the garbage bags full of yard debris to the curb since today was a scheduled “extra bag day.” Those are the designated days when you can have up to 10 extra bags of garbage hauled away. In the spring, you don’t want to miss a single opportunity.

By time they finished dragging the garbage bags to the curb, it was raining hard. And within minutes, it was a virtual downpour. Almost on cue, the hail began…..

And I began dodging hailstones while pulling all of my potted plants under our covered patio. It is because of God’s good grace that I had the sense to have already covered my garden plants the night before in anticipation of severe storms.

It rained like Noah’s flood – for about 15 minutes, just long enough to create a little river running down our street…..

And then, just as quickly as it had come, it was over…..

When all was said and done, I lucked out. The hailstones were no bigger than pieces of gravel. My petunias survived the deluge…..

…..as did my columbine…..

All that remained to prove that a storm had passed through were several piles of hail…..

I brought my plants out from their shelter and uncovered the others. Until later today, when we’re supposed to get more severe weather.

Springtime in the Rockies…..

 

Celebrate Good Times

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Being a mother is probably the best — if most difficult — job a woman undertakes in her life. The pay stinks. The work is often difficult. Sometimes the rewards are hard to see until much later. Still, it is satisfying beyond words.

The woman who is responsible for Mothers’ Day being a national holiday was named Anna Jarvis. Sometime in the early 1900s, she decided that mothers everywhere — and her mother in particular — should be honored. She started lobbying, locally at first, and then built up steam. Her efforts were rewarded a number of years later when President Woodrow Wilson signed legislation in 1914 that made Mothers’ Day a national holiday. Greeting card companies and florists around the globe cheered. The truth is, however, that she later regretted her efforts because she felt the holiday got too commercialized.

I’m happy to be a mother, but I will admit to not being a particular fan of Mothers’ Day. In this already stressful world, it seems darnright mean to make people try to figure out what to give to their mother/grandmother/mother-of-their-children when they likely don’t need a single thing. Only Hallmark and Godiva and Proflowers.com truly like Mothers’ Day. Every year at Mass, the priests ask the mothers to stand for a blessing. I am proud to do so, but I never fail to feel sad for the women who don’t have children for any number of reasons. Miscarriages, deaths, estrangement, never married, or even choice.

This year, however, we went to church with Dave and Jll and the kids, because Adelaide was being confirmed. I’m happy to say that at Wellshire Presbyterian Church, while we prayed for all mothers during the prayers for the people, mothers were not asked to stand up. Well played, my friends, well played.

Now, if being a mother is a satisfying job, being a grandmother is the Gig of a Lifetime. All the satisfaction without any of the responsibilities. God’s reward for getting through the years with your own teenagers and beyond. (Let’s face it, motherhood and its responsibilities don’t stop when the child turns 18.)

I was proud beyond words to watch Addie be called to the front of the church to proclaim her love for God and to be confirmed in her faith. Now that’s a Mothers’ Day gift for this Nana.

Following church, we gathered at Dave and Jll’s house, not only to honor Addie, but to celebrate Jll and her mother and Dave’s mother and me surrounded by some of the people we love most. What’s more, Maggie Faith turns 10 this week, and we celebrated early because yesterday afternoon, her father and his mother left for the airport, where they are going to fly to Poland for a two week visit. The Uber driver was quite taken aback when he saw the crowd sending them off! Allen and Heather will join Dave and his mother in a few days.

In this age of technology, while Heather and Lauren and the boys are far, far away in Vermont, they were still able to celebrate with us via FaceTime…..

They even joined us in singing Happy Birthday to the almost-10-year-old…..

Then there were the presents…..

So, one more Mothers’ Day behind me, and years of joyful Nana-ing ahead.

These girls…..

Saturday Smile: I’m Movin’ On Up

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Our 5-year old grandson Micah has shared a room with his older brother Joseph since he was born. They have bunk beds, but much of the time they snuggle up together in one bed, or at least used to. We FaceTimed this week and found out that Micah made an executive decision early one morning this past week that changed things a bit. By time the rest of the family woke up, he had moved all of his toys, books and other items important to a 5-year old into the room next door which had been the toy room. He also had made up a little bed. He declared that he wanted to have his own room.

Well, okay then. The room formerly known as the Toy Room has officially been named Micah’s Bedroom, and a real bed is on order.

Mark my words, in 25 years, Micah will be an big time executive known and respected for his decision-making ability…..

This boy makes me smile.

Friday Book Whimsy: The Other Daughter

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Author Lauren Willig is perhaps best known for her Pink Carnation series, of which I’ve read exactly none. But given that I’ve liked her writing in other stand-alone books, I decided to give The Other Daughter a try.

Rachel Woodly has been tutored, loved, and taught genteel manners by her hard-working mother after her father doesn’t return from a trip. Rachel was told that he died, and because he died so far away (and it was the 1920s), he was buried where he passed away.

She takes a job as a governess for a wealthy society family. She is traveling with the family in France when her mother takes ill. Rachel doesn’t receive word of her mother’s illness until it’s too late. By time she gets home, her mother has passed away.

While cleaning up her mother’s house, she comes across a newspaper clipping that shows a recent photo of her father – not dead, but instead, quite alive, and an Earl with an entire separate family. Rachel is unable to come to grips with this shocking information, and decides to pass herself off as a society woman with the help of a wealthy acquaintance in order to confront her father.

Her plan works, but she unexpectedly grows to like the woman who is her half-sister. Drama ensues as Rachel learns the truth about what happened between her mother and father, and why he has a whole new life. The story is quite compelling.

Willig is a very good writer, and her story kept me turning pages. The Other Daughter is one of her few attempts at writing a novel with a single perspective instead of the back-and-forth-in-time perspectives that have become so popular. I think that was one of the things I liked best about this book.

I enthusiastically recommend The Other Daughter.

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

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Countdown
I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was awaiting a package from Amazon, and I got a notice that they were six stops away from delivering my package. I was able to track their delivery to me. I thought it was just an AZ thing, since there are Amazon warehouses in our vicinity. But no, because as I awaited delivery of a package here in Denver on Tuesday, VOILA! I was alerted that my delivery was eight stops away. I guess that must be their new practice. Another new practice by Amazon is giving the purchaser the option of having their package delivered to a locker located away from your home. When the package is delivered to that locker, the buyer is sent a email with a scanning code. You just position your phone so that it can be read by the computer, and your box pops open. It’s quite cool. I use it here in Denver because one of the locker locations is the Whole Foods store that is only a couple of blocks from my house. I’m tellin’ ya. What will Amazon think of next?

You Don’t Scare Me
A while back, I bought a spray bottle into which I put some bleach mixed with water. The purpose is to use on cutting boards or my counter tops when I am cooking with chicken or pork. I wanted to make sure that no one accidentally saw the bottle and thought it was simply water and sprayed it on something that could be easily ruined by bleach. So I drew a picture on the bottle indicating the danger of the contents. I pulled it out the other day to clean my cutting board, and laughed when I saw my drawing…..

It looks like Mr. Potato Head with sharp teeth. The art gene passed me by, I’m afraid.

Tomato/Tomahto
I was looking at garden plants the other day when I heard a familiar voice talking to someone standing near me. I looked over and spotted a friend I hadn’t seen for a while. This led to that, and we began talking about garden plants. She began excitedly telling me about something she used last summer for her tomatoes. It’s designed for growing vegetables on your patio, and makes watering them easy and more efficient. The idea is that you can’t overwater. I bit, and bought one for myself. It’s success is yet to be seen, but I’m telling you that she could advertise for them. She claims that her tomato plants were taller than she, and full of healthy tomatoes. No tomato rot on the bottom. We’ll see.

Music for the Soul
I got an email from Jll the other day telling me about all of her kids’ remaining activities for the school year. Last night was a band concert for two of their kids. Unfortunately, the concerts are at two different schools. Dagny’s concert is at her middle school, where she will play her saxophone. In the meantime, Maggie Faith will be performing in her concert at her elementary school. Which one should we attend, we asked ourselves. Jll had the easy answer: Go to Maggie’s. It’s shorter and closer. Done and done. She claims to only have gotten her music Tuesday afternoon, so I’m not sure how stellar her clarinet playing will be. I told her just move her fingers and pretend to blow. Is that cheating?…..

Maggie and her fellow clarinetists. She is third from left.

Ciao.

The B Side

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I got a text message yesterday from my brother. It said: You took me to buy my first 45 record. I just heard it and it made me think of that day. Do you remember what song it was?

I didn’t, and I asked him for a hint, specifically the year the record was released. He told me 1967. I quickly looked up the top 100 hits of 1967, and tried to guess from the list. If I was an 8-year-old boy, on what hit song would I be willing to spend my hard-earned money? While I was still considering the list, he texted me another hint: It’s a very girly song.

Frankly, that didn’t narrow it down a lot. It seems like most of the musicians recording top 100 hits weren’t trying to reach the teenaged boy demographic. There was To Sir With Love, Happy Together, Groovin’, and others. So I took a stab: Was it Incense and Peppermints by Strawberry Alarm Clock? That, at least had a nice beat that might appeal to a prepubescent boy.

Nope. It was Windy, by the Association. I wouldn’t have guessed that in a million years. But I like that song. I know every word. In fact, I know every word to nearly every song ever released in the 1960s and early 1970s. Yep, all those lyrics taking up space in my brain that could instead be used to remember such things as where I put my passport.

Baby boomers, you undoubtedly remember 45 records. I have absolutely no idea why they were called 45s. Probably something to do with revolutions per minute? But I used to put the little insert…..

…..into the middle of the little 45 record…..

…..and then I would stack about 10 or 12 records on top of each other. When one record was finished, the next one would drop down and the record player would commence playing the next recording.

The nice thing about 45 records is that you didn’t have to buy the entire album just to get the one song you really wanted to sing with and dance to. I will admit that I am a very happy person now that iTunes allows me to do that very same thing. Of course, now each song costs $1.29 instead of the 59 cents a single 45 used to cost. Which isn’t that bad when you consider that each 45 record had a B side. Remember the B side?

I noticed as I was researching my brother’s purchase that Wikipedia also provides what song was on the B side of the 45. I will frankly admit that there were 45s I owned where a needle never touched the B side. I was interested only in the song that played on my crappy transistor radio from which I could listen to WLS Chicago’s top 40 at night if the weather was perfectly clear and the stars were in complete alignment.

When I start researching these types of things, my mind becomes like a cat chasing a sunbeam. I flit. So I began wondering if any of our kids or grandkids would know what I meant if I used the phrase “on the B side.” Using fancy researching methods, I texted my 37-year-old son and my 15-year-old granddaughter. Do you know what I would mean if I said something was on the B side?

My son answered first: Yes. Artists would release their big hit as a single cassette tape, and there was always a second song on the other side of the tape – the B side.

Well, hell! I didn’t know there was such a thing as a single tape which had a B side. Or if I did, it has been pushed out of my mind by the lyrics to Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.

My granddaughter Addie was completely stumped. Her guess was it referred to a Type A or Type B person.

And my research didn’t stop there. I then became curious to know what – if any – B side songs became greater hits than the A side. Yep. God Only Knows, Unchained Melody, I Am the Walrus, Gloria, and Hound Dog are all hits that were on the B side.

By the way, not only do I remember the words to old songs, I can usually recall what the label on the 45 record looked like. Now, I wonder where I put my insurance card….

One is the Loneliest Number

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I don’t know how these things come to my attention. It doesn’t matter, really. Somehow I came across a report from National Public Radio about a research study conducted by Cigna that indicates that Americans are extremely lonely, and furthermore, that young people – the so-called Generation Z – are the loneliest of us all.

Apparently the president and CEO of Cigna was shocked – SHOCKED, I tell you – that these young people (you know, the ones who stare at their cell phones for literally hours out of each day) – say they always feel alone or left out, or at least do sometimes.

First of all, I want to state unequivocally that I am not making light of loneliness. Profound loneliness leads to all sort of mental and physical health issues, not the least being suicide. I simply think that if we start measuring loneliness by including people who say they sometimes feel lonely, we are short-changing those who actually experience serious loneliness.

Having said this, I will also tell you that I sometimes feel lonely. Right now, even as I write this post, Bill and his best friend are out in our back yard flying their drones. Seriously, the buzzing is so loud that I’m expecting either a swarm of bees to come check it out, or the police to screech up to our door where they will find two senior citizens looking up to the sky at their drones, having a blast and not feeling lonely. In the meantime, I am here in the house feeling left out of the fun because I don’t have a drone. Take that, Mr. Cigna CEO. I’m feeling lonely.

Using the UCLA Loneliness Scale – and I can’t believe I get astonished that there are such things as loneliness scales, the bill for which is likely footed by unbelievably high tuition payments from a bunch of really lonely UCLA students – it was determined that 54 percent of us sometimes feel no one really knows us. Furthermore, 56 percent of us sometimes feel like people are around us, but not necessarily with us.  Two out of five of us sometimes feel isolated from others and that our relationships aren’t meaningful.

Quite frankly, given that they are using the word “sometimes”, I’m shocked that the number isn’t closer to 95 percent. Are there really people who can say they never feel like someone wasn’t paying attention to them. Those that claim absolutely no loneliness never had a teenager. And speaking of teenagers, apparently Generation Z-ers (born between the mid 1990s and the early 2000s) are the loneliest of the lot, followed closely by millennials (who are just a bit older).

The article goes on to cite another study conducted by San Diego State University on loneliness that indicates that the more time spent looking at some kind of screen, the lonelier you are. People with more face-to-face interaction (you know, with people) are likely to be less lonely. Again, I hope the students who attend San Diego State University don’t mind paying for studies with results that could have been predicted by a few 5-year-olds playing tag on the playground. Playing together and not feeling lonely.

I don’t hate technology. Heck, I write a blog every day, using technology I don’t even understand. But it never fails to surprise me – astound me, really – when I look around a restaurant and see two people sitting at a table, each looking at their phones. Or, even worse, one looking at his or her phone and the other staring off into the distance, likely feeling lonely.

I’m pretty sure if some sociology Ph.D. students could round up enough money to finance research on boredom, they would find that most of us sometimes feel bored as well as lonely.

My takeaway from reading the article is that we should all buy drones and spend lovely spring afternoons flying them with our best friends. Oh, and that if we SOMETIMES feel some sort of anything, don’t mention it if you are participating in a research study. They take it very seriously.

Spring is Bustin’ Out

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March went out like a lion
Awakin’ up the water in the bay;
Then April cried and stepped aside,
And along came pretty little May! – Rogers and Hammerstein, from Carousel

I have lived in Colorado since 1973, and in Denver since 1975. I have seen countless snowstorms in May, one as recently as last year. The snows are generally very wet and not the kind that paralyze the city. The next day the snow is mostly melted and the green grass is peeking through what’s left. But the nighttime temperatures – even when it doesn’t snow – often get down near freezing. However, it’s the daytime temperatures that get me every time.

The rule of thumb is NO PLANTING BEFORE MOTHERS’ DAY. It’s fine to put in your carrot or radish seeds. Lettuce seeds can withstand cold soil. But don’t be lulled into thinking this time – THIS TIME – it will be different. Even if the temperature is 75 degrees and the sky is blue.

I’ve learned the lesson the hard way. I have spent several hundred dollars on garden plants and put them in the ground on a lovely May afternoon, pre-Mothers’ Day, only to watch a cold snap take them all. So, while I’ve learned my lesson, I still find myself jonesing to put some plants in the ground when the weather is as nice as it’s been the past few days.

After Mass yesterday, Bill stopped at an Ace Hardware near our church. It so happens that this particular Ace Hardware has a fantastic plant nursery attached to it. I told Bill I would wander around the nursery while he got his tool.

Next thing I knew, somehow my cart contained a grape tomato plant, a Roma tomato plant, some Swiss chard, a jalapeno plant, a beautiful basil plant, some radish and carrot seeds, and a partridge in a pear tree. Well, not the partridge (though it looks like our pear tree will bear fruit this year), but the rest is true.

Bill gave me the eye when he caught up with me a bit later. I’m not going to put these in the ground yet, I assured him. Which, of course, will mean that I have to nurture the little devils through the next week or so by taking them out in the morning and bringing them back at night. I think it is safe for me to plant the radishes and the carrots, but the rest will have to wait…..

“I simply can’t not buy garden plants in the spring when the weather gets nice,” I told him. His response? I think that’s a double negative, Miss Smarty Grammar Pants. Well, he didn’t exactly call me Miss Smarty Grammar Pants, and he was, in fact, right. What I meant was I’m incapable of deferring purchase of garden plants until a more appropriate time when the weather is screaming SPRING.

But the other things that I hear screaming are the weeds in our yard. We are back in Denver a bit earlier this year than we have the past couple of years. As a result, while we are not completely ahead of the weeds, we are definitely in a better position than in years past. So I spent Friday pulling weeds, weeds, and more weeds. The disheartening fact of the matter, however, is that when it comes to weeds, there are always more weeds. Despite a morning of weeding and cleaning up last summer’s perennials, the yard still looks, well, weedy……

But perhaps it’s nothing that a little mulch can’t help. And we dangled the idea of paying cash money in front of our grandson Alastair in exchange for a little help next week. He agreed to help his papa buy bags and bags of bark that he will then spread onto our fountain garden and Papa will supervise. Grandkids = Cheap Labor…..

But I did take some time off from outdoor cleanup to watch the Kentucky Derby on Saturday. While I didn’t drink a mint julip, I did have a couple of fingers of a nice bourbon while cheering on my chosen horse, Vino Rosso. I’m glad I didn’t bet our entire fortune as I’m pretty sure he came in dead last….

Happy Spring!