What Will They Think of Next?

An article in today's paper discussed several people who are using the latest in laundry technology -- solar dryers. Some of you old enough may remember these things. They consist of the sun, a clothesline, and some clothes pins...

I'm intimately acquainted with solar dryers. My mom sprained her ankle pretty badly when I was ten (Let your fingers do the walking) and I was suddenly required to do the dishes and my own laundry. (Shortly thereafter I discovered that if you break enough dishes, they stop making you wash them...) I have a vague feeling that we owned a dryer but that we only used it for "special occasions". That was the deal with the dishwasher at least. We owned one, but used it only at Thanksgiving and Christmas. By this logic, I'm surprised we were allowed to use the oven or the indoor plumbing every day.

The clothesline was attached just outside the back door and was one of those "fancy" ones that had pulleys at each end so we could stand on the back stoop, attach the article of clothing, and send it on its way. There were also these little gizmos you had to add every so often to keep the two opposing lines together so that the clothes didn't cause the bottom line to droop down to the ground. Fascinating stuff, I know, but I still have two weeks of NaBloPoMo to go!

I wasn't a huge fan of the outdoor drying as the clothes always came back erect and scratchy. Down the shore was an entirely different situation. I would gladly dry myself with sandpaper towels today if they smelled of the ocean. And as sick as it sounds, one of my fondest memories was going outside to retrieve my father's crunchy jock strap from the clothesline! Listen, you have your cherished childhood memories, I have mine. He wore an athletic supporter under his bathing suit while bodysurfing. And no, I don't know why, but let's just keep it that way, shall we?

Where was I?

I'm kind of intrigued by the prospect of line drying today. I have the perfect, sunny yard for it, but I'm not sure I could pull it off. I live on a corner and my back yard is wide open. I also have a bunch of teens walking by my place at all hours of the day and night. I'm just assuming I'd be missing some clothes at the end of the day. My other problem is the berry tree. I have a feeling my stuff would be covered in bird berry sh*t more often than not. It's a tough call -- help save the environment and save some money vs. lost clothes and bird sh*t.

Unless I move closer to the ocean, it looks like I may be sticking with the gas dryer...

Wake up, Mrs. Schmidt!

Wow. When I search "Steve Schmidt" in the news now, the first few stories are about random guys in Alabama, Ohio, and Arkansas...

Driving Me Crazy

Ride back from Jersey was pretty uneventful, save for the old woman who nearly drove into Bodhi and me in Maryland and the occasional torrential downpour... Let's review a few things, shall we?

1) The left lane of the highway is for PASSING. It's for passing cars immediately; not because you will eventually pass them or because you don't feel like driving behind anyone. If you're going fast enough that you're actively passing people in the lane to your right, then by all means, stay in the left lane. But if you look in your rear view mirror [sub note: LOOK IN YOUR FREAKING MIRROR OCCASIONALLY!!!] and see what looks like a funeral procession behind you with grimacing, apoplectic drivers, MOVE THE F*CK OVER! There was a white pickup truck on 64 East near Williamsburg who held tens of cars hostage for miles by chilling in the left lane. It's only two lanes there and no one could get around this jackass. Someone {cough} finally got close, beeped, and pointed to the sign on the side of the road that said, "Slower cars keep right". That same someone, after much jockeying, was finally able to squeeze in front of the pickup and taste sweet freedom, approximately 40 seconds before Jackass finally moved into the right lane.

2) I would never have the audacity to accuse someone on a cell phone of not paying attention or slowing well below the speed limit, but don't you think you'd be more comfortable over in the right lane? That way, when you're leaning on your window with your "cell arm" up to your ear, you can block out all the other people on the highway and just concentrate on your call. I'm just thinking of you.

3) If you plant yourself in the left lane, I will give you a chance to redeem yourself but will eventually ride your ass. I will also shake my head in disgust when you finally wake up and get over. You'll note that once I pass you, I will then get over to the middle or right lanes until the next time I have to pass someone. See how easy that is?

I'm sure there are others, but that's it for now. If you have any driving questions, please let me know. If you're lucky, I'll share my "lane ends soon, merge now" dissertation with you down the road. Pun intended.

Hi Mrs. Schmidt! Get the hell over, Mrs. Schmidt. I just know you're one of those people.

Greetings from the Shore

I'm still in Jersey, still pretty sleepy, and not feeling terribly creative, so I'm just going to fill you in on my day. Mom and I did a little damage at a department store and a Bass outlet. Since the economy's in the sh*tter, the stores are having some crazy sales. I spent about 300 bucks and walked away with 2 sweaters, 2 shirts, a pair of jeans, 2 pairs of shoes (including a new pair of my 'hipster' loafers!), 9 pairs of socks, and a pea coat. Not too shabby...

Whenever in Jersey I feel I must return to one of the motherships -- a diner. We hit the OB Diner in Point Pleasant. This particular diner had a spiral bound menu and offered the usual 400 items. But as usual, I limited my choice to my top three diner meals: a pork roll, egg, & cheese sandwich on a hard roll, a tuna melt, or a Happy Waitress. For those of you not in the know, a Happy Waitress is: 1) surprisingly NOT an oxymoron in a Jersey diner and 2) an open faced grilled cheese, bacon, and tomato sandwich. Perfect! That's what I went with. I was tempted to get "disco fries" -- french fries drenched in brown gravy and covered in melted mozzarella cheese, but decided my waistline didn't really need them. (But I may have to break down at Christmas and get some because my mouth won't stop watering just thinking about them!)

Our path from the diner to my mom's house brought us down my favorite road of all time -- Route 35 from Point Pleasant, through Bay Head, Mantoloking, Normandy, and eventually to my beloved Lavallette. Many of the homes and businesses have changed, but many others have blessedly stayed the same. As we drove by, I daydreamed about living in the huge, cedar shingled homes of Bay Head and Mantoloking just like I did as a kid. In Lavallette, I took a detour past the bungalow we used to rent and drove up to "say Hi" to the ocean as we did whenever we first arrived on our vacation and as we left at its conclusion. If only the folks in charge would knock down the darn mountainous dunes they started cultivating in the late 80s so I could see the ocean from the boardwalk again!

Well, I guess that's about it for now. Time for me to enjoy mom's meatloaf. That's what we do here -- eat, shop, and reminisce!

To be continued...

Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

On the Good Ship, Sugar-Is-Crack

One two-year-old child plus one gigantic Shirley Temple drink (her first) at 6 pm equals...? One chatty, hopped up two-year-old child who's WIDE-THE-FREAK-AWAKE until 1 am. Yes, you read that correctly. My eyes were completely bloodshot and I was so tired I was about to vomit, but dammit I was not going to let this wide eyed little person outlast me! We even made her watch old episodes of The Facts of Life (which sent her father to bed) and Fantasy Island (how did I never notice that dead squirrel atop Ricardo Montalban's head??) to no avail. I was ready to grab some ether and a handkerchief, but Lauren wouldn't play along.

Consequently, someone (me) was ready to return to bed this morning about 30 minutes after rising. Lauren's cake biz (Gobblin' Cakes) is taking off and we had to run to the store for more buttermilk so she could finish a triple layer creation. Berit (the beautiful, blond, blue-eyed creature of the night from above) crashed in the car on the way to the store and that's how I found myself sitting in an Acme parking lot once again. I was in the wrong town, but it still illicited some childhood memories. I phoned my mother and said, "And so I find myself in yet another Acme parking lot while a mom is shopping." Acme was my small home town's grocery store and I spent nearly every afternoon of my childhood in the car while my mother ran inside for a "few things." Yeah, a few things and hours of conversation. But that's a blog for another day.

Lauren wasn't gone terribly long, but she returned to the car empty-handed. I asked if she had been mugged and she started fussing and fuming about the Acme, much as my mother did on many occasions. Apparently, as she was about to pay, the carton of buttermilk exploded. It was the last carton of buttermilk and the primary reason for our trip to the store (the other being a standard issue New Jersey Survival Kit: Taylor pork roll, eggs, cheese, and hard rolls), hence Lauren's frustration. So off we went to another grocery store.

I again found myself in the parking lot with napping Berit. Lauren returned to the car with full grocery bags in hand this time. "I just wiped out," she said as she entered the car. "What??" She had a scraped knee to prove it. It had been raining all day and the bottom of her jeans were wet and hanging under her shoes a little bit. She was having trouble getting past some store workers in an aisle and when she brushed aside them in frustration, karma knocked her on her ass -- or more literally, her right knee. I curse the heavens for having missed it!! She said I would have sh*t my pants and then pissed myself. Man! It was so bad it illicited shocked "Oh!"s from the other shoppers and a couple people offered to help her up although in true embarrassed New Jerseyan style, she wouldn't let them. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?

March of the Penguin

Crazy, right?

The rest of the day was pretty mellow as I faded more and more. That was always our thing though. Lauren would stay up until the crack of dawn watching movies while I tended to crash after the first one. It was great seeing Lauren, Cormac (her hubby), and Berit again as I don't see them nearly often enough. I always miss Lauren, but now I'm missing her daughter's childhood as well...

At least the kid let out one great belch for me to enjoy after her Shirley Temple last night. My hope is to see her often enough that I can still be a bad influence!

And now, in all fairness, a nice Daily Moment of Schmidt:

From an email from another high school friend: "I had NO IDEA that the Steve Schmidt who worked on the McCain/Palin campaign was THAT Steve Schmidt. His career choice aside, I did want to share one positive thing I could think of about him…. Ready? Here it is: I would never have graduated high school if he hadn’t helped me pass Sincavage’s history class. See? He is not 100% evil, despite outward appearances."

Feel better, Mrs. Schmidt?

Surprise!!!

What I failed to tell you earlier, dear readers, is that part of the reason my weekend of illness threw everything off is because I was driving up to New Jersey on Tuesday (yesterday) to surprise my bff on her 40th birthday. I had a TON of things to do on Sunday to prepare for the trip but spent the day on my couch instead. I played hooky from work on Monday and got most of my errands done. I drove up to the Jersey Shore yesterday morning, stayed with my mom overnight, and then headed up to Lauren's today. So after a couple days of ulcer, ovarian cyst, and crushed career ambition, it was all worthwhile when Lauren opened the door and said, "Are you f*cking kidding me???"

My original plan was to bust out some AJ/Lauren stories of yesteryear in celebration of her birthday, but I'm sitting in her dining room right now and should probably cut this short and socialize with her and her hubby [author of the new book you should purchase, The Forgotten History of America: Little-Known Conflicts of Lasting Importance from the Earliest Colonists to the Eve of the Revolution].

So I bid you goodnight with this little Daily Moment of Schmidt:

I received this email from an old friend: "I always will remember the time Mike B. spat a mouthful of Cheetos into Steve's face during lunch one day because Mike was sick of listening to Steve drone on about something. (Mike had an odd way of dealing with people he didn't like sometimes.) Steve sat there stunned and then literally shivered in disgust/horror and ran off without saying anything."

Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

Don't Mess With An Only Child's Food!

I started my illustrious college career at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. I spent a year there and acquired a best friend and acne. Both are still with me twenty years later. I was paired with a sophomore roommate who belonged to some godforsaken sorority. I thought it was curious that she was a sophomore and a sorority member, yet was without a roommate and had to take on an incoming freshman. I soon found out why. Missy was something special all right. Among her treats for me that year was her constant rotation of boyfriends who shared our 9 X 4' cell. Most of her boyfriends had later classes and she would shush me if I woke them getting ready in the morning. I'd come back from class (on the few occasions I attended) and would find them still fast asleep in my dark dorm room. If I awakened them, I'd hear about it from my whiny roommate later.

My mother visited sometime in the fall and brought me several goodies from home (because I wasn't gaining enough weight from the constant beer and late night pizzas) including a pumpkin pie from Geiger's. I put it in the fridge and foolishly thought Missy would recognize it as mine and not eat it. I came back to our room and discovered not only had she eaten it, but she'd called several of her sorority sisters over to share it as well. They ate the whole blasted thing.

A month or so later I was doing terribly in school. I had strep the first week of classes, missed most of them and never really recovered. Around finals of the fall semester, I stole my dissected lab rat from the bio lab in an effort to cram back in my dorm room. When I was done with it for the day, I wrapped it up a couple times in plastic and then in aluminum foil and laughed when I realized it looked like half a sub sandwich. I put it in our fridge and as I was leaving the room, Missy arrived. I offhandedly said, "I have half a sub in the fridge, please don't eat it" and she assured me she wouldn't.

I came back a couple hours later and found Missy crying on her side of the room and my rat splayed out on my desk!

I believe that was the last time she tried to eat my food.

Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

I Went to an Interview and All I Got Was This Lousy Ulcer!

I was still in a bit of pain this morning and decided (after seeing one friend's warning about a gall bladder problem on myspace -- yes, I get all my medical advice from myspace...) it was time to see a doctor, just in case. Getting in to see my internist on short notice isn't usually an option, so I headed out to the Doc-in-a-Box. The parking lot was packed and I nearly turned around, but I had so many errands to run today that I figured I should just suck it up and get in there. They checked me in at the front desk and before I could sit down in the comfy seats and watch some TV, they whisked me off to the dreaded scale. Fortunately, I had on a jacket which contained my phone, wallet, and keys and that explained the additional 20 pounds that registered on the scale.

Off I went to my exam cell where I knew I'd be sitting TV-less for upwards of an hour. I was prepared and brought a book, at least. My phone rang about half-an-hour in and my work number appeared. I assumed it was my friend Anne checking in on me. Nope, it was our Lab Director. Telling me that they had decided on the new Group Supervisor position in our section and that they had given it to...my friend Anne. Groovy. I think they ultimately made the right decision, but not for the reasons they probably did...

And so I waited some more. Got my blood drawn. Eventually the doc arrived. I told her my symptoms, she scolded me for not coming in on Saturday, and then she palpated my belly. Ow! Well, that's new. That's not really where the pain is. 1-2-3, we're done here: "It's your ulcer [I have some history with a duodenal ulcer] and you have an ovarian cyst." ???? Well, that was news to me!

I have to make a follow-up appointment with my internist and they'll do an ultrasound to confirm. I don't know the first thing about ovarian cysts and I have a lot to do this week, so don't tell me. The doc also gave me a prescription for Prevacid for the ulcer. I had to go to Costco anyway and decided to take a look at their selection of antacids to see if the OTC Prevacid was the same concentration. Well, guess what? There is no OTC Prevacid.

I ran a couple more errands and trotted over to Walgreen's to drop off the scrip. It was then I saw the doctor's name: Farah Khan. Awesome. She wasn't wearing a little bowtie though or singing calypso. [Look it up]. They phoned about an hour later to tell me there was a problem with my insurance. Apparently, the insurance company requires prior authorization from the doctor before they will approve payment for Prevacid. Maybe I should have just gone to the insurance company for the exam... I spoke with the pharmacist and they said it usually took about 24-48 hours before the approval would go through. Now I've had a handful of ulcer attacks since I was 18 and I've never taken any meds for it. I have to assume that by the time they get this medication approved, I WON'T NEED IT ANYMORE!!!!

Breathe, breathe...

Oh! I forgot the best part of the day! When I left the Doc-in-the-Box, I phoned my mother to fill her in. I was driving down a particularly busy road in Virginia Beach when my car just stopped in the middle of the street! I looked and the fuel gauge was below E! No, this can't be happening, I thought. I knew I had half a tank in there when I left this morning. I thought someone must have siphoned it out while I was at the doctor, but that's just insane. Well, turns out it was insane. I turned the car off and started it again and everything was fine. My mother said she thought the car had a vapor lock, which sounded impressive until I asked her what it was and she couldn't explain. :) Love you, Moo.

So here I am. Belly with a slight ache, heart with a slight ache, ego with a moderate dent. All will be fine. All will definitely be fine faster than I get my damn prescription!!

Hello, Mrs. Schmidt. I'm sure you're just loving this, aren't you?? You think I brought this on myself karmically, don't you?? Don't you??? Well, if you think what I've done has brought this on, then I really fear for your son! hahahahaha

Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

Still sick...

Not much to report. I found some anti-spasmodics from when I had similar symptoms with the flu a year or so ago, took those, and am in less pain. Since I'm guessing the meds have expired, it may just be a coincidence. Less pain, but still pain. It doesn't hurt to sit or lie down as much, but lying on my side or walking is very uncomfortable. So I've spent much of the day on a heating pad on the couch. And Bodhi, my dog, has only landed on top of my painful belly once today, so that's good. I'm hoping to feel even better tomorrow and thank you for your patience with my blog. :)

Hi Mrs. Schmidt.

Ugh, I'm Sick!

We had our kickball tourney in the rain this morning and when we were eliminated (after two games) I realized my usually dormant ulcer seemed to have awakened. My abdomen was in a ton of pain, so I packed up and left. Well, that was almost five hours ago and it's just getting worse. The last time I felt like this, I actually had some weird strain of the flu. So I'm wondering if this is that stomach virus that's been going around and not the ulcer. All I know is that I'm in a great deal of pain and the chills have started to kick in. Oh joy!

Hi Mrs. Schmidt.

Mon Dieu!

It's early on a Friday evening, but I'm fading fast. I have to rise and shine early tomorrow for our end-of-season kickball tournament and I have a feeling I'll be zonked out on the couch shortly. But as you all know, it's NaBloPoMo and I've got to come up with a blog. And when nothing springs immediately to mind, I turn to that bottomless well of inspiration: the humiliations of my youth... Oh, goody!!

Picture it, Sicily 1937... No wait, that's not right.

Picture it, the first day of seventh grade, 1981... We all trotted into French class for the first time and claimed a desk. We had more students than desks and by the time the teacher got there, a good many kids were lined up along the walls of the classroom. My friend Heather and I were sitting in the front row (my sitting in the front row should immediately indicate how sparse seats were. Chuckleheads like myself always head for the back of the room!) Miss Moro arrived and realized we didn't have enough desks. She appealed to the boys in the class to offer their seats to the girls who were without. "Would all the gentlemen please stand up and let the ladies sit down?"

Of course, the guys thought this was stupid, but a couple begrudgingly stood. There still weren't enough seats and some girls remained standing. "Would all the gentlemen please stand up and let the ladies sit down?" A few more guys got up and that was it; there were no more boys seated.

"Would ALL the GENTLEMEN PLEASE stand up and let the LADIES sit down??" came the voice from the front of the room. I'm thinking, "What the hell is wrong with this woman, all the guys are standing..."

I'm looking around the room trying to find the wayward boy and then I hear right in front of me, "WOULD ALL THE GENTLEMEN PLEASE STAND UP AND LET THE LADIES SIT DOWN??" Just as I began to realize, with all due measure of appropriate horror, that she was speaking directly to ME, my friend Heather leaned over and said quietly, "Miss Moro, she's a GIRL."




{Insert lifetime scarring here}






I blushed, Miss Moro got all flustered, and Heather managed to stifle what must have been a GIGANTIC laugh out of pure empathy and compassion on her part. I don't really remember much after that. I believe I got home that night and demanded to get my ears pierced. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I got my ears pierced a total of 3 times within the next month or so. Of course, it didn't help. When the yearbook came out that year, I discovered I had been listed as my cousin. My MALE cousin, Patrick. In the wrong class. Above the picture of the boy I had a crush on.

Really, does it get much worse than this???

I believe I cried for 4 days straight. And I can only imagine how thrilled my cousin was as well.

But I have to say, I made a damn cute boy!


And now, your Daily Moment of Schmidt:

Flashback, Oct. 25th: "These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves"

A "McCain aide," who we can now reasonably conclude is the fired Randy Scheunemann, predicted precisely this.

He names names. Schmidt and Wallace.

Are they behind this? I don't know. But he predicted they'd do this. And now it's been done:

"Even as John McCain and Sarah Palin scramble to close the gap in the final days of the 2008 election, stirrings of a Palin insurgency are complicating the campaign's already-tense internal dynamics.
Four Republicans close to Palin said she has decided increasingly to disregard the advice of the former Bush aides tasked to handle her, creating occasionally tense situations as she travels the country with them. Those Palin supporters, inside the campaign and out, said Palin blames her handlers for a botched rollout and a tarnished public image — even as others in McCain's camp blame the pick of the relatively inexperienced Alaska governor, and her public performance, for McCain's decline.

"She's lost confidence in most of the people on the plane," said a senior Republican who speaks to Palin, referring to her campaign jet. He said Palin had begun to "go rogue" in some of her public pronouncements and decisions.

"I think she'd like to go more rogue," he said.

The emergence of a Palin faction comes as Republicans gird for a battle over the future of their party: Some see her as a charismatic, hawkish conservative leader with the potential, still unrealized, to cross over to attract moderate voters. Anger among Republicans who see Palin as a star and as a potential future leader has boiled over because, they say, they see other senior McCain aides preparing to blame her in the event he is defeated.

"These people are going to try and shred her after the campaign to divert blame from themselves," a McCain insider said, referring to McCain's chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, and to Nicolle Wallace, a former Bush aide who has taken a lead role in Palin's campaign. Palin's partisans blame Wallace, in particular, for Palin's avoiding of the media for days and then giving a high-stakes interview to CBS News' Katie Couric, the sometimes painful content of which the campaign allowed to be parceled out over a week.

"A number of Gov. Palin's staff have not had her best interests at heart, and they have not had the campaign's best interests at heart," the McCain insider fumed, noting that Wallace left an executive job at CBS to join the campaign." ~Ace of Spades HQ.


Me again. Gosh, are they implying that Steve Schmidt is not an honorable person? No, that can't be...

Hi Mrs. Schmidt!

(She'll probably be happy to know I'm running out of DMOS. He's just not in the news much these days. But I'm sure he's going to write a book out of all of this, right after he weasels himself out of turning McCain into a dishonorable curmudgeon and inflicting Wasilla Barbie on the lower 48. So hopefully he won't be gone for too long.)