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Patience Pays. Sometimes

10/31/2024

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Patience Pays. Sometimes

Last week I was in Los Angeles where I was baking pastries for a large celebration being put on by my L.A. hosts.
The pastries:

Chocolate chip cookies,

Rosette mini-cupcakes,

Cherry kinffles,

Lemon squares,

Brownies

Several days into my visit it became clear that I really needed to rent a car for the rest of the trip. Not being that familiar with the vast Los Angeles roadscape and also not wanting to take any more time than necessary away from my baking, I looked for a rental company as close as possible to the place I was staying, which was in the Manhattan Beach area.

I found online an Enterprise office a few miles away in the suburb of Lawndale,

...and so from this office I ordered a car, which I arranged to pick up at noon the following day.
When I arrived at noon at the Enterprise office, which was smallish but nonetheless spiffily decked out for Halloween,

...there were two customers ahead of me not counting this guy in the corner,

...whose demeanor was considerably calmer than those of his human counterparts.
One of the customers was at the desk where they appeared to be giving the desk clerk an earful. The other customer sat waiting, perched forward in their chair impatiently tapping a foot and looking likewise ready to pounce on the desk clerk at the first opportunity. Me, I took a seat next to Mr. Skellington, as I would name him after we'd spent more time together.

When my turn rolled around the desk clerk informed me that my car would be arriving on the lot soon and asked me to take a seat for a few moments, which I did. After a while another clerk arrived on the scene, pow wowed briefly with my clerk, then informed me that actually my car was waiting at the Enterprise lot in Inglewood, but not to worry, a shuttle would soon be arriving to take me to Inglewood, where I could pick up my car.
"Um, where's Inglewood?" I said.
"Oh, not far," replied my clerk.
"Yeah, not far," repeated the other clerk. "Just about twenty or so minutes away. Out past the airport."
Now, I could just see me trying to negotiate the L.A. highways and byways and finding my way back from someplace out past the airport. I asked the clerks if somebody couldn't please bring the car here to me. To my great relief, they said okay. And I went back to my seat to wait.
After about an hour of waiting one of the clerks thanked my for my patience. But, though I smiled at the beleaguered clerk, the truth is that I wasn't really feeling patient. The truth is, I was feeling as if I were about to jump out of my skin. I needed to get home and get back to my baking, having apportioned so much time each day to each task. I feared I was now falling behind. But though I was a hot mess of anxiety and impatience just beneath my skin, I kept it all zipped up and sat quietly next to Mr. Skellington while I roamed around on my phone.
A few minutes before 2 pm the clerk brought me the good news that my car had arrived and again thanked me, this time profusely, for my patience, to which I pulled up the effort to reply that it wasn't their fault and after all, it wasn't like they were trying to make people wait.
"Oh," the clerk sighed, "that's not what other people were saying to us today."
I know, I answered to myself.
The clerk then handed me the paperwork to sign. I prepared for the usual car rental sales pitch that would push me to buy supplementary insurance and the most costly gasoline option. To my surprise the clerk said, "You don't need insurance, right?"
"Right," I replied in wonderment.
"And just fill up the tank before you return it."
"Sure," I said in relief.
"And, you know what?" said the clerk. "You've been so patient, I'm going to take one day of rental off your bill."
"Wow," I said in disbelief.
"I mean," said the clerk, "You've been really patient."
"Aw," I said, "it was nothing."

Happy Halloween!

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Beware the 737!

10/29/2024

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Beware the 737!

I used to love flying. I loved being on a plane, the feeling of being neither here nor there, in no real place or time, with no demands to be met or decisions to be made except whether to have a water or a diet Coke, pretzels or a cookie. It was liberating.
I could think better while flying, write better while flying, feel better while flying.
I didn't need to converse with my flight mates, and I avoided all but the necessary social interactions. And though as a rule I'm a terrible sleeper in a clean, warm, comfortable bed in a dark, quiet bedroom, sit me in an airplane seat and I would immediately conk out. I didn't even need to tilt back the seat and annoy the person behind me, I could sleep with my seat back upright while the seat in front of me was tilted into my lap. Go figure.
And so what if the seats were too small and too close together? I'd just get into my own zone and it was all good. Until the day it wasn't.
That day, the day that flying turned bad for me, was Friday, October 19, on an American Airlines flight from Columbus, Ohio, to Los Angeles with a stopover in Phoenix.
It was the seats. Yes, I stated above that I didn't mind seats that were too small. But on this particular flight the seats weren't too small; they were too, too, too, too small. The seats crossed over from the realm of snug but tolerable to borderline strangulating.
This situation became apparent as soon as I arrived at my assigned seat and tried to settle in but could not. I was seated in the middle seat and the seat arms squeezed my elbows. My arms and hands were too cramped for me to type on my laptop,

...which I couldn't open all the way, anyway, because there wasn't enough room.

My legs and feet were none too comfortable, either.

In no way could I get into my zone. And the thing is, I’m not even an especially big person.
Not that I was overly mindful of how uncomfortable my more sizable fellow passengers must have been in these excruciatingly cramped quarters; I was too focused on how uncomfortable I was. And I let my dissatisfaction be known. I whined about the seat size to my mate Tom, who sat to the left of me,

...and to the young lady who sat to the right of me and who was probably about twice my size and therefore probably about twice as uncomfortable as I was (though she had the aisle seat, which might have mitigated her misery). I whined and whined. Instead of the happy flyer that I usually am, I was a flying whiner.
At one point in my whine-a-thon, Tom, probably for the sake of silencing me for ten seconds, pointed to the info card stuck in the seat which indicated that this was a 737 model plane that we were on.

“The 737’s must be smaller than the standard 747’s.” he said. Yes, I agreed, they must be. And this knowledge gave me a new subject to whine about.
At last our plane landed at our stopover in Phoenix and we were released from our in-flight bondage, though I was more than dreading the next leg of our flight to L.A.
However, to my great relief (and probably to the greater relief of my mate and fellow travelers), the next plane we boarded was not a flying torture chamber (one of the descriptives I’d been using during our previous flight) but a slightly roomier 321.

The difference in the seat sizes between the two models, I would learn after some post-flight research, was only 1.9 inches, but, oh, what a difference 1.9 inches makes! For that last hour and a half journey I was back to my old up-in-the-air contentment.
What I've learned is that, while the 321 seat is 18" wide, the 737 seat is a weency 16.1" wide. In what universe is it right to make human beings (or at least 21st century American human beings) sit for hours in a seat only 16.1" wide?
I may never learn the answer, but here’s one thing I know for sure: as God is my witness, I'll never sit in a 16.1” seat again!

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Good-bye, Dori

10/25/2024

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Good-bye, Dori

Last Saturday, October 19, our kitty Dori went over the rainbow bridge.

Dori was the last member of the assortment cats and bunnies who over the years just seemed to wander into our life:
There were our odd-eyed cats Pansy,

...and and Pansy's twin Tansy (here with one of our house bunnies, Daisy),

...Daisy,

...our other house bunny Buddy,

...and our other kitty Lucy.

And, as was the case with all those other animals who became part of our family, we found Dori without looking.
Or, that is to say, my daughter Theresa found Dori one frigid January night sixteen years ago during her senior year of college when she was walking home from campus and came upon a little grey cat with an intense gaze lying in a pile of icy slush. The cat was scrawny and had a bent ear and bald patches on her ragged coat.
Theresa picked up the cat from the ice and carried it to the off-campus house where she lived. A few days later she called me and asked if I could come over and take this foundling kitty, whom she named Dori, to a no-kill shelter.
So I drove the hour from Columbus to my daughter's college house with the intention of retrieving the cat and bringing it to a shelter. However when I picked up the kitty and set her on my lap she settled so comfortably there and gazed up at me so trustingly that I knew that the shelter I'd be taking her to would be the shelter of our home.
Dori was a wounded-looking little sack of skin and scruffy fur when I carted her to the veterinarian’s office several days later. What the vet surmised about Dori was that she was a two-year-old feral cat (which I suppose explained why she never got along with Lucy, our other cat at that time).

The vet also told me that Dori's bent ear was likely injured in a fight and the bald patches on her fur were from “mowing,” or excessive licking, possibly due to stress.
I could understand how life on the street could be stressful, even for a cat.
However several trial-and-error tests later revealed that Dori’s mowing was due not to stress but to an allergic condition that required a special (and especially expensive) diet. A thousand dollars (yes, a thousand dollars!) worth of special food, medical care and medicines later, and Dori had gone from a skinny, scrofulous street urchin, to a well-fed, well-cared for, well-loved family pet with a beautiful fluffy coat.

Though Dori would always belong first and foremost to my daughter Theresa who rescued her and called her Dori Bear,

…she was happy to lay claim to any empty lap,

…or the closest available spot to the nearest available human.

At first I thought that Dori was just a particularly affectionate cat. But after a while it occurred to me that it was less that Dori loved us than that she wanted to own us. She wanted to hold on to her humans,

...keep her eye on us,

...and keep us close by.

Until her final days.
A few weeks ago Dori suddenly lost her interest in her humans and wished only sit by herself in a patch of mulch beside the back porch steps,

...or to stay curled in a spot on the kitchen floor.

Last Saturday morning I was out of town when I received a tearful call from Theresa. "Dori can't stand up," she said. "I think she's dying."
That was Dori's last day.
Theresa was allowed to hold Dori in her arms while the veterinarian at our local animal hospital administered the drug that brought about the last beat of Dori's heart.
And so Dori left her life held in the same arms that brough her into ours.

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Signs

10/15/2024

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Signs

If my neighborhood was the whole U.S.A., and if signs were votes, Kamala Harris would have the election sewn up.
In my 'hood it's signs, signs, everywhere-a signs. And most of them say Harris/Walz.

Though there are a few Trump signs scattered about, as well.

In the loop I walk each morning I've counted seventeen signs for Harris and five for Trump.
But then, of course, it's different once one ventures outside of one's own little neighborhood bubble, as I did last Friday, October 11, when hubby Tom and I drove from our town of Gahanna in Central Ohio to the town of Amherst in Northeastern Ohio for a really nice get-together with family members, some of whom we hadn't seen in quite a while.

The two-and-a-half hour trip from Gahanna to Amherst was a lovely drive over country roads,

...rolling hills,

...past bucolic farms,

...acres of fields.

...and mile after mile after mile of Trump signs.

Along State Route 58, the main road we took, I counted - before I stopped counting - 51 signs for Trump, five for Harris,

...and one for Jesus.

And also one rude bumper sticker.

I suppose all these signs serve as a form of political self-expression and to hearten the supporters of the candidates and issues endorsed on the signs: I like seeing mine, you like seeing yours. Also, mayhaps an abundance of visible signs gives the politically as yet unattached the idea that there's a band wagon to be jumped on.
But I think in this case the signs I saw are underscoring a truth that we already hold to be self-evident: Kamala Harris may win some neighborhoods like mine here and there. But Donald Trump is gonna take Ohio.

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Kamala And Me

10/10/2024

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Kamala And Me

Okay, guess what Kamala Harris and I have in common?
You're right! We both worked at McDonald's!
Not only that, we both worked there during college. Kamala worked between her freshman and sophomore years in the 1980's at a newly-built McD's in Alameda, California. I worked between my sophomore and junior years at the McDonald's that still stands over half a century later at the corner of Bustleton Avenue and Red Lion Road near where I grew up in Northeast Philadelphia:

The previous summer I had worked as a waitress at Krispy Kreme donuts, which I liked pretty well,

...but not nearly as much as I liked working at McDonald's.
In fact, and this is the Lord's honest truth: Of all the different jobs I've ever had - and I've had a variety - I enjoyed that summer job at McDonald's more than I've enjoyed any other job. And I'm not talking just about my summers jobs. I'm talking about all my jobs. (Including teaching piano, which comes in at a close second behind working at McDonald's).

I especially liked the job after I was switched from the 11 am - 7 pm shift to the 4 pm - midnight shift. In fact, when I switched to the night shift, I asked if I could work that shift seven days a week. I told my manager I wanted the extra hours for the money - in the fall I'd be leaving for Paris to spend my junior year abroad - but the truth is that I just really liked working there. And it gave me somewhere to go and something to do every night, social stick-in-the-mud (unless it involved something arty or French-y) that I tended to be during that time of my youth.
Back then - the summer of 1971 - McDonald's was a considerably smaller - though no less popular - organism than it is today, and probably smaller than it was ten years later when Kamala worked there. Ours was a come-up-to-the-window-and-order operation, the come-in-and-sit-down restaurant concept not having yet arrived, though on the patio in front of our store there were several picnic tables.
Our menu was also quite basic: At our location we served hamburgers, cheeseburgers, fries, fountain drinks, shakes, hot apple pies, and, the newest wildly popular addition, the Big Mac. As for the prices, back then I believe a burger was around a quarter, a cheeseburger a few cents more, fries a few cents less. I do remember our biggest advertised draw was that one could buy a Big Mac, fries and a shake and receive change for a dollar.
As for why I liked working at McDonald's so well...I don't know, I guess I liked my managers, a good-cop, bad-cop duo, though I liked the bad-cop manager as much as the good cop one. The bad-cop guy was actually stricter and more of a stickler for the rules and regulations, which I appreciated, being myself someone who preferred order in the workplace. (Except for one incident involving me and the French fries fryer, which I'll get to in a bit).
I recall that I also liked my co-workers, an economically and racially diverse group of high school kids, middle class-to-affluent college kids like myself working for some extra spending money, and adults for whom, as Kamala Harris noted when contrasting her reason for working at McDonald's with some of her coworkers' reasons, this McDonald's job was necessary to support their families.
One of my day shift coworkers was my neighbor, the funny, good-hearted Italian lady who lived across the street from me, mother of my childhood playmates and my mother's good friend. I was aware that, unlike myself, my neighbor was working not as I was for fun and disposable income to spend in France, but to put food on the table for those of her seven children who were still young and dependent.
Was working at McDonald's a life lesson for me in economic disparity or, as Kamala has pointed out, the needs of many American working families? Nah. I grew up in one of those old city neighborhoods of yesteryear where a doctor, as my father was, could, as we did, live across the street from a factory worker and next door to another factory worker who lived next to an undertaker who lived next to a plumber who lived next to an aeronautical engineer, around the corner from a house painter who lived next door to a milk man who lived across the street from a teacher. That was my neighborhood.
The view of our street from our house:

By the time I was working at McDonald's I knew, as I knew when I went off to college while other neighborhood kids went off to work or to work their way through college, that I was what the nuns at my Catholic grade school would have called a Privileged Character.
But let me give a shout out or two to the McDonald's where I worked: Though it was a small, rather cramped space, it was a cheerful ambiance, thanks to our good-cop, bad-cop managers who I always assumed must be products of the McDonald's corporate culture. Or else they were just both good managers and good guys.
After my summer stint at McDonald's I never had any concerns about food safety issues at their restaurants. Cleanliness (of the facility and the workers) and food safety were top priorities, with food temperatures always being monitored and recorded, and an hourly bacteria - or, hopefully, lack of bacteria - count done on the milkshake machine.
Kamala Harris stated that when she worked at McDonald's she did the fries and worked the cash register. While I could work that cash register like ringing a bell, I was not permitted to work the French French fries fryer after one time when, instead of using the timer, I decided to just eyeball the fries and pull them up when they looked golden brown to my liking. Unfortunately my idea of golden brown was considered burned by my manager and the whole batch was thrown out, and I was fortunate not to be thrown out with them. ( I also got caught over-filling the soda cups. I had a tendency to over-do things back then. Alas, I still do).

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What If JD Vance Had A Debate Epiphany?

10/7/2024

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I once read somewhere that action often precedes the feeling. That is, if you act as if you feel a certain way, you may find yourself actually feeling the way you acted.
For example, if you want to be a kind person, but don't have kind feelings, make yourself act kind, even you aren't feeling kind, and acting kind will make you feel kind, which in the future will cause you act kind because now you feel kind.
I was thinking about this theory last week after watching the thankfully civil debate between Tim Walz and JD Vance, in which Vance shocked the nation by coming across, not as the nasty, misogynistic, cold-blooded nematode that had been his persona up until that point, but as an empathetic, sympathetic, agreeable Midwestern mensch.
JD Vance did not go for Tim Walz's jugular, but rather he agreed with his opponent's view on several issues and even offered kind sympathy upon hearing that Walz's son had witnessed a school shooting. Vance was more cordial than hostile, almost out-Tim Walzing Tim Walz, the purported king of nice.

Of course there were those moments during the debate when Vance lied, bald-facedly and through his teeth, as when he claimed that he never opposed a national abortion ban (he did), or that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act (Trump tried, but failed multiple times, to demolish the ACA), or that when Trump left office there was a peaceful transfer of power. (Did Vance really Wite-Out the national trauma of 5 people killed, 140 police officers assaulted, and $1.5 million in damage done to the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021? Indeed, he did).
But even while he was lying JD Vance spoke with such sincerity that one could almost believe, if not that he believed what he was saying, that he believed that what he was saying was the right thing: That women should have agency over their own bodies and healthcare; that the Affordable Health Care Act should be saved and improved upon; the there should be a peaceful transfer of power after our Presidential elections.
Which brings me back to where I started and to my point, which is this:
What if the behavior that JD Vance exhibited during the debate caused him to have an epiphany of feelings? What if behaving as if he were respectful towards and understanding of people on the other political side made him feel respectful and understanding of them? What if having behaved as if he were a person who believed in women's reproductive rights, affordable health care, and a peaceful transference of power after the next election turned him into the person he was pretending to be up on that stage, and actually made him believe in the things he said he believed in? What if what was a lie on the stage became true for him?
What if the dramatic change in public opinion that JD Vance received after his debate performance - from deeply negative to positive - was so rewarding for him that it made him want to be the person that he pretended to be during the debate?
And what if JD did become the person he pretended to be?

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What A Difference Some Merch Makes

10/1/2024

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What A Difference Some Merch Makes

I canvassed for Obama in 2008 and 2012,

...and I canvassed for Hilary in 2016.

I didn't canvass for Biden in 2020. Because we all remember how it was in 2020.

But it was well into September of 2024, and for weeks I'd been telling myself that I really needed to think about getting out there and hitting the sidewalks for Kamala.

And then I'd think about it.
Until one afternoon when I was taking a stroll around my neighborhood and I happened to run into a neighbor from a few streets over who was likewise taking an afternoon stroll around the 'hood and who said she'd been thinking about contacting me because she saw the signs in my yard,

...and was wondering if I could snag some yard signs for her. I told that indeed I could, as I had a guy.
I got a hold of my sign guy, but it so happened that he was out of town, and so he directed me to his associate sign guy, Ross, who, I learned, is the vice president of the Gahanna Democrats and Friends,

...and whose address, as it turned out, I had no problem locating.

Ross gave me some signs for my neighbor then asked me if I might want to think about canvassing for the Democratic candidates. I replied that indeed I might want to. Think about it, that is. He told me that if I wanted to join them the canvassers would be meeting at his house on Saturday at 10 am.
So I thought about it some more then decided enough thinking already, and the following Saturday, September 21, I headed back to Ross's house, where the place was humming with canvassers, organizers,

...and, of course, boxes of the requisite campaign donuts.

It did my heart good to see so many young people involved,

...fired up,

...and ready to go.

I learned that the canvassing modus operandi had changed from the last time I'd done it. Instead of schlepping around with piles of campaign literature and sheaves of papers with addresses, maps, and squares on which to check off our progress, now all we needed to schlep were our phones, on which we downloaded a canvassing app, and our lit.

And so I set out, phone and literature in hand, to my assigned neighborhood, finally to to canvass for Kamala and the Dems.

I'd been assigned to knock on doors in an apartment complex called Christopher Wren,

...a pleasant, tree-lined place where the streets had charming names like Milk Street, Bread Street, Bird Street, and Page Street,

...and where nobody opened their door when I rang bell of their Ring security camera.
That is, almost nobody did. Out of the 34 doors I hit, only 4 were answered by humans. A few of the Ring bells invited me to leave a message. One of them invited me to go away, which was a little, well, hurtful to be so treated by a Ring bell.
In any case, after my hours of canvassing I felt a weence discouraged to have made so little connection, and figured I probably wouldn't bother canvassing anymore, as I couldn't see the point, even though one of the canvassing leaders assured me that four doors opened was still pretty good.
A few days later I was relating my tale of canvassing woe to a friend who said, "Well, a canvasser came to my door the other day and I wasn't going to open it until I saw that she was wearing a Kamala hat and some buttons, so then I opened the door to her."
The light bulb flipped on in my brain: I need me some Kamala merch!
I immediately went to Amazon and ordered a six-pack of buttons,

(Get it?)

...and two hats, because I couldn't decide between the two.

The following Saturday morning I set out once more, this time all merched-up, and, just for good measure, carrying a clip board for no real purpose except to make me look bona fide.

(Though I did eventually come up with the good idea of clipping my campaign lit to my clipboard).
This time when I arrived at canvassing headquarters one of our candidates, Beryl Brown Piccolantonio, who is running for Ohio State Representative, was there to cheer us on,

...and give us some buttons, which I likewise pinned to my shirt.

This time I was assigned a pastoral neighborhood of lovely homes and yards called Harrison Pond.

Flashing my candidates' merch, my clipboard in hand, I began ringing Ring camera bells. This time did the residents open their doors to me?
Indeed they did. And they smiled at me. And chatted with me. And thanked me for my service. Once some folks in a car called out encouragement to me.* It was quite miraculous. According to my final stats, in this neighborhood I rung 49 Ring bells, 41% of which opened for me.
I suppose in truth I can't know how much difference my canvassing will make in this election. But I have hope, and I'll keep doing what I can.
And I'll do it decked out in my merch.

*Needless to say, this was a pretty Democratic neighborhood. But then, so, supposedly, had been the previous week's neighborhood.

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Patience Pays. Sometimes

​Patience Pays. Sometimes

Beware the 737!

​​Beware the 737!

Good-bye, Dori

​Good-bye, Dori

Signs

​​Signs

Kamala And Me

​​Kamala And Me

What If JD Vance Had A Debate Epiphany?

What A Difference Some Merch Makes

​What A Difference Some Merch Makes

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Patience Pays. Sometimes

Beware the 737!

Good-bye, Dori

Signs

Kamala And Me

What A Difference Some Merch Makes