Our Canadian friends, who for many years were our neighbors here in Mesa, are back in the Valley of the Sun for a month or so. They told us a tale of trouble when describing their drive from Alberta. One of the main border crossings into the United States was taken over by truckers who were protesting masks and other COVID-related mandates. THEY HAVE HAD IT, the truckers exclaim. No mas! they say. (Wait, that’s the other border.) Our friends had to wait literally hours to cross a border that would normally have been a half hour deal.

The protest escalated to other complaints and grievances. Everybody who felt like protesting made their way to the border to cause problems. Sound familiar? Canadians are very nice, but they also learn quickly from their southern neighbors.

I read in a news feed I receive every day that the Canadian president is planning to do something to attempt to put an end to the blockade. Perhaps sending in the Mounties. But it’s perhaps too little too late. The need to protest has expanded to folks in other countries who are sick and tired of wearing masks and working from home.

What to do? What to do? Well, there are probably lots of things being considered, but I think my favorite plan is that of New Zealand. Their solution? They are going to pipe in nonstop annoying music. Their example? Baby Shark. I think that’s a really good choice because once Baby Shark gets into your mind, it doesn’t leave until you are nearly driven to madness. I wonder if they have barbershop quartets performing and are being backed up by bagpipes.

There was a McDonalds on the Sixteenth Street Mall in downtown Denver that drew lots of young people using lots of illegal drugs. Rather than sending in the police, this establishment simply piped classical music out of loudspeakers. It was a fairly effective way of keeping the teens from staying very long.

I got to thinking about what songs I find annoying, and came up with a short list. It seems what most of the songs have in common is that in addition to being annoying, they stick in your brain.

Take It’s a Small World for example. The repetitious tune with its meaningless lyrics gets stuck in your head for the remainder of day. It would be enough to drive me away. Or anyone with ears.

And what about 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall? I’m pretty sure hearing all 99 verses of this horrible drinking song again and again for hour upon hour would make my head explode. I would definitely run for cover after about 30 minutes, trying to run the tune out of my brain.

It wouldn’t even take 30 minutes for me to lose my mind if I’m Too Sexy played more than three times, much less over and over for eight hours. I’d take my big rig and hightail it to Quebec.

I will be eagerly watching the situation, especially in New Zealand.

I wore a cast for four weeks. I’m going on my third week of wearing a boot that replaced the cast, a boot that probably weighs three pounds (25 pounds when I’m tired). My left foot hasn’t born any weight for weeks. I’ve only taken two showers in the past month-and-a-half, and though the doctor gave me permission, he wasn’t happy about it. He is worried about infection. Six weeks of sponge baths. I haven’t been able to wear a normal pair of pants the entire time. I’m living in a pair of wide-legged yoga pants, not because I’m doing yoga, but because they are the only thing I can get over the boot.

For the most part, I’ve been patient and flexible (well, Bill might argue that point a bit), and as dignified as one can be when one hasn’t showered or worn normal clothes for six weeks. But yesterday afternoon, I hit rock bottom.

It was Valentine’s Day, and I had asked Bill what I could make him for our Valentine’s dinner. Bless his little heart, he chose my Mom’s meatloaf. (Well, since my mom died in 1995, I guess he thinks it’s my meatloaf.) I was happy to comply, but I had none of the ingredients. I went to our neighborhood Basha’s to buy ground beef, potatoes, green beans and the necessary herbs and spices (that sounds very fancy when it’s just a package of Lipton onion soup mix). I was rounding the corner to the meat department when I happened to glance down at the ground. Here’s what I saw…..

Yes, Friends. I had hit rock bottom. I had gone to the grocery store wearing my slipper. For years, I have worn nothing but LL Bean moccasins, and honestly, that wouldn’t have been so bad. But to cheer myself up from looking so dreadful, I decided to buy a pair of baby blue chenille slip-on bedroom slippers with fuzzy white trim, and a perky little button. Really, they scream WE ARE COMFORTABLE BEDROOM SLIPPERS. They also scream YOU ARE REALLY A VERY CRAZY WOMAN.

I considered abandoning my cart and clumping out as quickly as my Frankenstein’s monster’s boot would let me go back to my car. But I was already THERE. And I needed some groceries to make Bill’s meatloaf dinner. So I swallowed hard and tried to pretend I was at Walmart where I might actually have looked fancy because the faux fur looked a bit dressy.

I was completely and profoundly mortified. The only thing I could think to do was to start limping even more than necessary, thinking that perhaps people would presume I was so disabled that I couldn’t fit a normal shoe onto my foot.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Aging is a very humbling experience. One good thing is that, having reached rock bottom, there is only one way to go!

Jen’s 8-year-old granddaughter Lilly is ready to go to her elementary school’s Valentine’s Day dance….

Isn’t she so pretty. And if shoes make the outfit, she has it NAILED.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

Have a great weekend.

Thespians
I learned yesterday that three of my grandchildren are involved this semester in their school plays. Thirteen-year-old Magnolia has a part in the play being put on by her middle school — Aladdin. She plays the part of one of Aladdin’s friends. Eleven-year-old Mylee texted me yesterday to tell me she was taking the late bus home because she is part of the tech crew for her middle school’s play, something for which she had to audition. As for Kaiya, she has the role of Medusa in the play, an original screenplay in which they apparently mix ancient Greek storylines with a circus theme. Hmmm. Anyway, I’m very proud of my girls and their self-confidence. I would not have had the nerve to even try our when I was a teenager.

Better Late Than Never
My sister Bec’s birthday was January 30, and we finally got to celebrate yesterday at lunch. We went to one of our favorite restaurants, a Cajun place called Baby Kay’s. The food was delicious, and we had lots of fun. Bill and Bec looked positively spry next to Jen with her cane and me with my clunky walking boot. We covered all of the Cajun bases, with samples of jambalaya, gumbo, etoufee, catfish, crawfish, and pulled pork between the four of us. She got an on-the-house sundae that was as big as her head……

She was unable to eat it all, but she got most of the bourbon sauce!

Go For the Gold
Bill and Jen and I have been watching the Olympics. We were even among the handful of people who watched the opening ceremony. To be fair, it really is Jen and I because Bill just goes with the flow. Last night we slugged through all of the skiing falderol until we finally got to watch the men’s figure skating long program. That required us to stay up past 9 o’clock which is surprisingly late for us. Bill couldn’t have cared less how Nathen Chen did, so he went to bed. My nephew Erik gets up with the birds to watch curling. What can I say? Something for everyone.

1883
I can’t tell you how much I am enjoying 1883, the prequel to Yellowstone. While I want to slap Elsa Dutton nearly every week, I love her voice as she narrates the story. I think I was southern in a former life, because I love her accent. And let’s just face facts, Margaret Dutton — played wonderfully by Faith Hill — simply kicks ass. I would definitely want her on my team, no matter the sport. She rides. She shoots. She mothers. She kicks butt and takes names.

Caio.

A few months ago, I began watching another detective series offered by BritBox. I don’t even remember what it was, but what I do remember is that it took place in Scotland. As far as I’m concerned, Scots speak the English language in a way that is impossible to understand. During that same trip about which I spoke in yesterday’s blog, we visited the Edinburg castle, and as we often do, we were walking in the vicinity of a tour group. We are usually kind of happy when that happens as we can subtly hang around and act like we are looking at our brochures, and listen in for a bit. We learn something on someone else’s dime. Don’t judge. It’s not exactly cheating. Anyway, this time it didn’t matter because we literally couldn’t understand a single word he was saying because he was Scottish. Well, that’s not exactly true. Every once in a while he would use the word England in what appeared to be a joke, and everyone would laugh.

But back to my detective series. I tried to listen carefully for about half of the first episode, and finally threw in the towel. That’s why God invented closed captioning. I had never used it before, so it took me a bit of time to figure out how to master it. But once I did, it was like the angels were singing from the heavens. While I still couldn’t understand what the detective inspector was saying to the man drinking the whiskey, I could read the words. Eureka!

I began slowly, using closed captioning only if the program was filmed in Scotland or Australia. It didn’t take long, however, before I began using closed captioning for all of my British programs. There are very many accents and dialects and unfamiliar choices of words in Great Britain, (did you know that there are parts of the British Isles where they say cheers instead of hello and goodbye?) so I would find myself understanding some of the actors but not others.

My entire adult life, I have said that I can’t watch movies with subtitles because I’m too busy reading the subtitles to watch the film. That’s no longer true, thanks to my new love affair with closed captioning.

I had another eureka moment about a week ago. Bill is hard of hearing, and so he sometimes requires that television set to be really loud so that he can hear what’s being said. Because we are now sharing the house with our co-owner, my sister Jen, the loud television seemed rude.

“Hey Bill,” I said one day. “Would you find closed captioning to be annoying or helpful?”

“Very helpful,” he quickly answered.

So, we have now added closed captioning to our escalating number of senior citizen habits. Thus far, we haven’t started buying tennis shoes with velcro straps, but it’s imminent.

By the way, do you remember how I always said I should get a job as an editor for the scam emails we get that ALL have misspellings or grammar errors? I have added a potential new client: closed captioners. It’s FRAUD, people, not FRUAD.

I didn’t grow up with a yearning to travel. My sister Bec was different. From the time she was a teenager, she knew she wanted to experience life outside of our town of 10,000 or so citizens. Not me. I was content to be at home.

Having said that, I think that I have had one of the richest travel lives an ordinary, middle-class person could have. I have been to 46 of our 50 United States (though it’s true that a couple I mostly drove through, perhaps stopping at the Phillips 66 to use the ladies’ room). The exceptions are Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, and Ohio. How did I ever miss North Dakota? I could practically walk there from Nebraska.

I’ve also traveled in most of western Europe, and have dipped a toe into Mexico and Canada. We hit most of our European country visits during our three-month adventure back in 2008. The furthest east I’ve been in Europe is Strasburg, Austria. Our travel plans to Budapest didn’t pan out.

I received my first passport in 1993, when Bill and I traveled to Great Britain. We traveled with three of our four children and a future daughter-in-law. We were novices, believe you me. Well, I should say Bill and I were novices. By that time, two of our four kids had traveled in Europe and knew a thing or two. The fact that we were amateurs was evidenced by the fact that we took two gigantic rolling duffel bags that contained so much food and “essentials” that you would think England was a third world country. We were certain everything we bought would be unavailable. Who knew London had showers? Most of it was never used, not once. We learned our lesson, and our next trip included backpacks only.

One of my favorite things about foreign travel is learning the customs of the country in which you’re traveling. Of course, Great Britain is much like us (or am I supposed to say we are much like Great Britain) in many ways. They drive on the other side of the road and have a queen. That’s about it for the differences.

Oh, and they have tea. Tea was one of my favorite things about traveling in Great Britain. That’s odd, because I’m not even a tea drinker. But every afternoon, no matter where we were, we would stop and order tea and treats. It was entirely civilized and pleasant. I swore I would continue the practice when we returned to the U.S. I didn’t, of course, not even once.

It’s really too bad, too, because if my British mysteries are to be believed (and would Inspector Morse lie?), tea is the go-to under most any circumstance. If you have a brush with death, you fix yourself a strong cup of tea. If the detective inspector arrives at your home and tells you with a solemn face that your twin sister has been brutally murdered, your detective constable quickly goes to the kitchen to turn on the kettle for tea.

However, I have noticed that if you are the murderer, and that same detective inspector comes to interview you, you make a quick move to the glass decanter for a pour of whiskey. It doesn’t matter if it’s nine o’clock in the morning. A slug of whiskey is in order. It’s a tell to which I think Detective Inspectors Lynley, Morse, Foyle, and Stanhope should pay attention.