Karen Algebra, wasn't that Anita Algebra's daughter?

My mother was always calling up and yabbering away about "Myrt's daughter Susan..." and "Harold Butz son Harry Jr."

"You remember Fat Hopkins, don't you?" she would start.  

No.

"Yes you do.  You met him that Christmas you came down with food poisoning from Taffy's crab dip."

Uncle Stanford (who was nicknamed Taffy by our daffy aunt) made crab dip?

"No!  Cookie.  You remember him, he won that trip to Lake Erie when he delivered the Marion Star. "

And it would go on and on. 

This ad reminded me of those conversations. 

The Husband had the same types of conversations with his mother.

"WELL, you remember my childhood friend Bosco who was killed in WWII?"

You mean the war that started twenty years before I was born?

But back to the ad. 

I know that they meant that the young woman taught "Karen" algebra, but that isn't the way it comes off. 

And I know that in return, Karen told her everything that she needed to know about that initial signal that womanhood was upon her. 

But what was the class that was held during the first period. 

Trust me, the nut doesn't fall far from the tree.

Bullock's Pasadena

So, tonight, on night four of this California adventure that has me trapped inside a major research library, and my hotel, on my drive back to Pasadena, it dawned on me that I have nothing to relax in.  Nothing!

And I have shot a couple thousands images in the past three days.   The project will help the library.  The project will help my career.   But its really intense.  Monday I worked six hours without a break.  No bathroom, no water. Yesterday and today I took enough of a break to get me through a quick pee and a V8.  And today, my mind fried out at 4PM.  It was too late to start a new volume.  So I gave myself permission to leave an hour early so I could head back to the hotel and relax.

But, I needed some "man lingerie".  You know, so I can relax in this room which is unrelaxing.

So I stopped Bullock's Pasadena.  Yes, I know it's "technically" a Macy's store.  But it is my favorite department store and the only Macy's where I will drop a dime.  First, it's not anywhere near a mall.  Secondly, Macy's has left the main floor, the elevators, and the top floor pretty much untouched, and it is lousy with that late 1940s California Glam look. 

You half expect to see Mildred and Veda to waiting for an elevator. 

BUt what shines in this building is the women's cosmetics area - seafoam green walls with banana leaf trees painted in forest green on the walls and the Men's department with its nautical theme and delightfully cool ship models.  Then there is the dark mahogany paneled walls.

This is what shopping used to do to make you feel special.

So I picked up some socks, and I bought a pair of lounge pants.  And I left feeling good. 

Which is surprising because I loathe Macy's, but I adore this store.

Tragic, simply tragic.

Cookie is, this week, on the West Coast working.  I adore being out here.  The palm trees, the vibe.  But getting from the east coast to the west coast is exhausting and expensive.   Exhausting because the time change fucks with you.  Expensive because Cookie flies first class.  Circulation, you know.

So I booked in at the same hotel in Pasadena only to find that its been remodelling, again.

Don't get me wrong - a hotel needs to stay up with the times.  This one was built and opened in 1969, and It probably went through remodels in the the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and the 2000's.

But this time, the remodel results are very HGTV meets boutique hotel and the results are tres tragic. And the look is NOTHING like the pictures online.

First off, the lobby has come full circle.  Built in 1969, the walls have been redone in faux 1969.  Dark, dark wood, laid like a screen, vertically on the walls with white accents. And white, white walls.  And the panel behind the registration desk is uber HGTV texture wall.

The dining room has lost its 2000's comfy chairs, and have been replaced by this faux Danish design chairs paired to white metal tables.

But the rooms are where the whole design thing went off the rails.

Gone are the beds from the Big Plush Bed era, replaced with a stark platform bed, with white duvet and four tiny feather pillows.  On a queen bed they look lost.  On either side are side tables, mounted to the wall, and above them are small sconces with hidden switches.  Each putting out a droplet of light at night.

In the place where the chest of drawers that no one ever used is a wooden wall that holds a huge flat screen tv mounted flat to the wall.

The desk is now a small table sitting on two crossed legs perside, much like a picnic table.  But this is finished in faux Danish Walnut.  This is mated to a side chair, better suited to a dining room table, that is non adjustable.  Said chair looks like it came from Target, and is too short for the height of the desk, so if your laptop is on the desk, then your wrists are up in the air near your nipples.

In lieu of an occasional chair is a chaise lounge that has more in common with a corner booth at a restaurant.   And NONE of the seating areas has a place for you to put your arms.  Everything is armless.

The chaise is sitting about a foot from the wall because it would otherwise block the HVAC system.

The corner torchere is a tripod of plain round brown metal legs, and a center pole.  Connecting them is a cup with a plug, and a switch and a USB hub.  This is crowned by a drum shade and holds a 40 watt equivalent bulb.   This is another thing - the room, at night with every light on is dark, dramatic and impractical.

But the final indignity is that bathroom.  Everything is lovely, right down to the TV Cart inspired sink base and the concrete countertop.  But there is no hook in the bathroom.   How does one have a bathroom without a hook on the wall?  And why is the toilet paper hidden by the trash container?  Why is the soap dish shaped like an egg cup, with the bar of soap standing erect?  Why is the bar of used soap sitting in a pool of slimey soapy water in the the egg cup?

And the sink has no faucet, but a tube.  To regulate the water, you use foot pedals, like the wash up sink at the dentist office.  How is this ADA compliant?

The room does come with a low hearing guest doorbell.  You flip a switch inside and then push the button out and you are assaulted with a noise that sounds like the fire alarm in your office building.

When I asked at the front desk, I was told that their marketing people at Namebrand Hotel Chain have found that today's traveller prefers to hang out in the lobby and socialize.  And they love working in a coffee shop atmosphere.  "We put a great deal of emphasis on the lobby and lounge seating."

Nice, if you suffer from Hipsteritis.  But I am paying for a room designed to be stark, alienating .  I can go and sit in a hotel lobby for free.

So I fear that this may be my last time staying with my old friend.  It seems to have forgotten that some people travel and expect substance over style.  The idea of a hotel should allow you to relax, not make you feel like like an $300 a night unwanted guest.

I'm not crazy, the dogs say so

Since we moved to Baltimore, one thing that the husband I have missed is being missed by others.  It gives you a lot of time to think about stuff, and it is incredibly lonely.  You try and you hope, but in Baltimore, the social convention is not to accept an invitation from someone you just met in the last five years.  You have to know them a good ten years before things jell.

At some point, the dogs start talking to you, and I know this for a fact.  No, they aren't replying to your own personal mutterings.  They are asking questions, and sometimes you think you can hear them plotting, sotto voce of course on how to get treats and different ploys to try and get you to feed them treats for the slightest movement that looks like a behavior that should be rewarded.

Sometimes the up and start barking for no reason, tear down the stairs and you swear the little one (who is part Jack Russell) say barking "SOMEWHERE OUT THERE SOMETHING JUST HAPPENED!"

And our other dog, who is just as protective but not as intent will answer back "ARE WE DOING THIS, AGAIN?"

Just as I imagine they are talking to each other, I imagine that the reason why we're so isolated in the middle of a big city could be the people who live here, or us.

Both the Husband and I are introverts at heart, and neither of us is great attracting new friends.  And we're Midwesterners, and we seem to pose a social problem because, as one of the neighbors said when we threw a cocktail party that brought people together from two different neighborhoods, the reaction was like "You mean Upper Scunthorpe and those Lower Scunthorpe people?  Together? In the same house? Is this a Midwestern thing?" never mind that all of the people lived on the same road, but there was this imaginary line that simply couldn't be crossed. 

So we threw the party and people seemed to have a lovely time.  And we were having a lovely time until a woman named Sandra from Lower Thorpe was preparing to leave and mentally girding her loins to cross the impenetrable imaginary divide, stopped and said - rather cattily - "who would have thought that a Midwestern person would move here just to upset the social apple cart."

I really hope she got her twaddle all caught up in that impenetrable imaginary line in the middle of the road.

Anyway, when you throw or attend a party, you'll see the people who attract other people. These are the extroverts.  They thrive in that type of environment.  "Vonda!  I have seen in forever!  Let's do a lunch.  Let me grab a drink and I'll come back and we'll just catch up.  Oh, Marty, over here with Vonda.  You too don't know each other?  You must meet her and you two will become the best of friends!"

Being busy, going out, bringing people together and attending shows and exhibits and sporting events really energize the extrovert.  Speaking in front of a thousand people? Awesome! Go out for dinner and dancing that night, "count me in!" 

An introvert can speak in front of a thousand people and be totally dynamic, but its preceded by a countdown of worries and dread, and immediately afterward, you have to go into seclusion to recover and get re-centered. 

But at a party, find the extroverts.  Either they are at ease in a crowd and know how to send off a vibe that says "Well step right over here and let's get to know one and other," or that have some invisible magnetic energy that just draws strangers to them. 

If they aren't that type of extrovert, but they home in on you and develop an instant rapport, you have either found a friend and/or acquired a sociopath.  If its a friend, you, the introvert is set. 

But if it's not, and it’s the kind of person that just bonds with you too easily, seems to know everywhere you 've ever visited, tells fabulously funny ("Then I got off the ship in Tierra del Feugo in Chile, of all places, and said 'how much do I owe you for going out of your way?'") stories that don't have a shred of honesty and even the "A's" and the "the's" are lies as well.  The type that just loves that Limoges finger bowl that your great-grandmother left you.  Really loves it. And keeps talking about how pretty it is.  

About a month after the party, you notice that the place where you kept that bowl – that you only have because it’s a family piece – is empty. 

Eventually, you find the little Limoges finger bowl, right where the sociopath put it, and it's sitting on their coffee table.  You get a phone call that starts out "Hi, Vonda.  You know how you were telling me that you misplaced that little piece of china from your mother's house?  Well, I was just over and she has one just like it.  She said she picked it up someplace.  Isn't that strange? You lose one and she finds one..." 

You either have to confront them or, when they leave the room to get more ice you poke it into your pocket and either dash out the door or you sit there - continuing the visit as if something never happened. 

If you are lucky, it really is your piece of Limoges and you know better than to ever let that person back in your house.  If you find your great grandmother's Limoges bowl in a place where you could have poked it had you not been so damn drunk at your own party, now you have a real problem.  You have stolen something from some else's house makes you a thief, and how do you return the stolen goods without being found out.

You decide that it has to go back where it belongs because you aren't the type of person who would corner the market on Limoges finger bowls, that would be crazy, right?

Of course your fingerprints and DNA are going to be on that box so you run to the store in Pennsylvania to buy a box, and a box of latex gloves so the security camera at the store that is near your home like someone who is not as cunning as you are, doesn't get your face that can be used as evidence.  That way you can pack the box in a sterile environment, but it will make the post office employees in Washington, D.C. look at you strangely like "Why is that oddball wearing gloves and what is in that box?" to which to their co-worker will say "maybe they are freaks about germs." 

For a return address, what to do, what to do? You could choose something local, but they could look that up on Zillow and look through the listing and say "God, no wonder they stole this." Or, you chose something from that night - one of the lies that they told you.  I mean who goes to Tierra del Fuego, you say to yourself, and then it's on the box, "That'll teach 'um."  You are too witty you say out loud under your breath, and the dogs, who are looking right at you, agree by pawing at your legs.  This is their way of showing approval you think.  Or it could be their way of saying "No, really; I have to go out, now."

Relieved that you got the box in the mail, you are driven crazy by the idea that you can't check the tracking on the package because then someone will have evidence of your ISP and looking at where the package is.  So you start walking your dogs around the block when you see the postal truck in the neighborhood and start cruising by the neighbor's house waiting for the box to be delivered, but you have to be cool about it.  There are those older people on the block that keep watch on what is going on in the neighborhood.  When they are break-ins on the block, everyone is grateful for these people because they see everything.  But now, its paranoia and pain that won't go away. 

Finally, the box arrives. But no one takes it in. What in the world are they doing?  What's wrong with them, you wonder.  So, being the take charge kind of person that you are, you walk down to their house, backbone rigid, and pick up the box and carry it back to your house.  Now you decide to write a note, one that says "Hi, I noticed that the post office dropped the box off and with all the funny stuff going on with people taking packages I thought better safe than sorry.  Call me at 555-1212 when you get home and I'll bring it over."

Then you wait and wait and wait, and wait some more and FINALLY, the sociopath show up at your door and say "I got a box?  I wasn't expecting anything and of course, you have to play dumb because you are in this too deep for anything to go wrong.   So what do you do?

You panic, of course, and invite this person into your house for a Nespresso, because you were always taught to let someone in; if you didn't that would be rude.  I mean they're the crazy one, not you.  They come in and they set the box down your kitchen island and say "This has got me bamboozled.  I don't know this address, why would anyone at that address send me anything?"

You set the hot coffee cup down for them and look at the return address and it says "Tierra del Fuego, Argentina."  You say "Wow that has really traveled quite a distance."  And the sociopath says "Well I did a stopover in Tierra del Fuego, but it was on the Chile side, I never crossed into Argentina..."

OK, shit!  Who in the world knows that they are two countries laying claim to neighboring tiny dots of land on a map?  Fuck, now it's all going wrong! 

Inside you are panicking but strangely, on the outside, you are calm and controlled.  Because “they” are the crazy ones, not you. No, if you were insane then they would have figured it out.  Oh, no. But you have to get that person out-of-your-house, like now, because they cannot open that box in your home.

"Well," says you, "I hate to rush and I love talking to you, but I have to go to the grocery store.  Dinner, you know."  And they ask if you would mind their tagging along and you say "NO!" because you go to a special market up in Bel Air.

"Bel Air? What's in Bel Air at this time of the day?"

Fuck, it's like five of five and driving 20 miles to Bel Air, Maryland, to grab a dinner is a three-hour proposition like a cruise on the S.S. Minnow! All that crosstown traffic and then I-95 will be a parking lot.

So you think about what odd thing you can only get in Bel Air and it's "Goat.  We love goat and I have a farmer just outside of Bel Air that raises goat and it is low fat, tastes just like chicken."

By this point, you may have crossed a line.  Sure, Nathalie Dupree has a recipe of goat in the cookbook on the shelf you are looking at, but who eats goat?

So you get the crazy person out of your house and now you have to disappear for three hours and your husband is going to wonder where you are and what if he goes to the sociopath's house and asks where you are and they say you "went to Bel Air to buy you goat because you love it so much and he says well yeah, I love baby goats and they say "but you're having it for dinner," and he says "NO!" because the idea of eating an adorable baby goat is beyond his comprehension. 

"I love baby goat yoga where the crawl all over you, not to eat them" and they look at each other like what the fuck.

And that's exactly why it's so hard for us to meet new people and make friends when you are an introvert.  When you're an introvert, all that is simply exhausting.  Frankly, I don't know how they do it.  I'd rather just stay home and play Scrabble where your words all have to be in the dictionary or an agreed on, like a subset - like all the words have to be onomatopoeia or words that all begin with a vowel or something.

As for Vonda, on the other hand, she's getting help.  Poor dear. Seems that she has some sticky finger problem and her second personality most likely stole that piece of china from a resale shop up in Happy Valley, after seeing it and it brought back memories at how much that person admired it. So she took it and then gave it to the Vagabond Woman as a house-warming present.   Her main personality turned herself in.  Never would have thought it was Vonda in a million years.

Trust me when I say this, but sometimes, I just rather be alone. 

Answered: Things my mother would have said, Episode 1

Oh, no Mike. I hope it's not a case of the "She Gots"

In yesterday's post, I asked which the following, all, some or none would my mother have said in reference to the clips on the screen.  The possible answers were:

1) "Someone looks like she just wants attention."

2) "Missy there looks like she has ants in her pants."

3) "You know my friend Nevelyn?  Yes, you do - you went to school with her granddaughter Tammy. How would I know what Tammy's last name is - you went to school with her. Well, Nevelyn has a friend who had a sister who went down this exact same route and ended up in White Slavery. Said she was going to on Broadway.  She got the "broad" part down, she was running with a fast crowd and then one day - not a peep!  When she stopped writing her folks hired a detective to find the girl.  They found her on a boat in some place overseas; this what she had to do on the boat to keep the help happy.  Then when they got her back her she found Jesus like he was lost or something, and now she has a show on Public Access in Columbus where she paints and yabbers away. She claims that she still has Jesus, but that, she still likes to dance around like this at the Courtesy Inn after a few beers in praise of "Him."  I think she's full of shit.  Jesus would never set foot in that joint."

4) "I used to have a body like that."

5) "Bet she got plenty hot when she got done."

6) "Can you go in the kitchen and get me some of that cheese in a can, and some Trisket's?  No, bring the can, I can squeeze my own cheese onto the crackers..."

The correct answer(s) would be:

Drumroll, please,

2) "Missy there looks like she has ants in her pants."  (Mother loved the phrase "ant in your pants." She always giggled when she said it.)

3) "You know my friend Nevelyn?  Yes, you do - you went to school with her granddaughter Tammy. How would I know what Tammy's last name is - you went to school with her. Well, Nevelyn has a friend who had a sister who went down this exact same route and ended up in White Slavery. Said she was going to on Broadway.  She got the "broad" part down, she was running with a fast crowd and then one day - not a peep!  When she stopped writing her folks hired a detective to find the girl.  They found her on a boat in some place overseas; this what she had to do on the boat to keep the help happy.  Then when they got her back her she found Jesus like he was lost or something, and now she has a show on Public Access in Columbus where she paints and yabbers away. She claims that she still has Jesus, but that, she still likes to dance around like this at the Courtesy Inn after a few beers in praise of "Him."  I think she's full of shit.  Jesus would never set foot in that joint."  (Mother would see something, be bored with it, and then find a way to divert your attention by making it the springboard for a silly story - LIKE THIS ONE, which the husband and I always laugh about it because we never believed for a second that there was a woman named Nevelyn, until she showed up at the funeral home when Mom died.)

6) "Can you go in the kitchen and get me some of that cheese in a can, and some Trisket's?  No, bring the can, I can squeeze my own cheese onto the crackers..." (Mother loved canned cheese, to a point. When she was dying I brought her some in the hospital and she said: "You'll kill me with that stuff..."  She died about six hours later of her own accord.)

Why not the others?

She wanted the attention, all of it. So she wouldn't recognize it in others. 

She never thought she had a good body, even though she was fashionably built, made anything look like a million dollars, and thin in the right ways. 

Mom HATED the "gots".  Like "He got," and "She got," - it made her want to scream. "Cookie, it just sounds like you were raised in a barn and educated in the wallow."

Thank you for playing and see you again on "Things my mother would have said". 

Things my mother would have said, Episode 1

Underneath the pictures are comments that my mother would, and wouldn't say.  Or she would say all of them.  Maybe she'd just say nothing. Which one(s) would Cookie's mother say if she were alive and saw the following?

1) "Someone looks like she just wants attention."

2) "Missy there looks like she has ants in her pants."

3) "You know my friend Nevelyn?  Yes, you do - you went to school with her granddaughter Tammy. How would I know what Tammy's last name is - you went to school with her. Well, Nevelyn has a friend who had a sister who went down this exact same route and ended up in White Slavery. Said she was going to on Broadway.  She got the "broad" part down, she was running with a fast crowd and then one day - not a peep!  When she stopped writing her folks hired a detective to find the girl.  They found her on a boat in some place overseas; this what she had to do on the boat to keep the help happy.  Then when they got her back her she found Jesus, like he was lost or something, and now she has a show on Public Access in Columbus where she paints and yabbers away. She claims that she still has Jesus, but that, she still likes to dance around like this at the Courtesy Inn after a few beers in praise of "Him."  I think she's full of shit.  Jesus would never set foot in that joint."

4) "I used to have a body like that."

5) "Bet she got plenty hot when she got done."

6) "Can you go in the kitchen and get me some of that cheese in a can, and some Trisket's?  No, bring the can, I can squeeze my own cheese onto the crackers..."

Put your answer in the comments.

Tastes Better: Says so on the box

Norma, having one of his *manstrel* cramps

So the temperature outside if frightening for us soft-bellied Marylanders, and I am offended that after five years my stout-hearted Midwestern blood has become accustomed to easy winters.

In the midst of this, Cookie caught a cold.

And then the cold turned out to be the flu.

Honestly, its the first time I have puked because I was coughing so hard.  Nasty business.  And I had the flu shot, too.

Today, I ventured out for more cough syrup because the husband called from work with an "I tink I got," sniff, "wud you have," hack, hack, hack.

So now we both are down with it.   And when we get sick, its a bit of schizo thing because we both get man flu-ish, but we both turn into bears that just want to be left alone.  The "Honey...I need a box of tissues!" is joined with "I just want to be alone," upon delivery of said tissues.

Dinner is reduced to whatever soup you can make for yourself and walking the dogs in the afternoon becomes a thing that both of us wants to do, but only because it means that someone else has to walk them in the morning.  And that person isn't the one who walked them in the afternoon when it was light outside and not nearly as bitter cold.

Anyhow, since I have been ingesting the legacy meds from last cold and flu season, I went out in search of cough syrup because the husband is going to need something.  And I needed to get out of the house and get the stink blown off of me.

So I went to a big, Big, BIG national chain store that is adored by the bourgeoisie, and as I am walking down the aisles of syrups and tonics for mitigating what Americans call the "crud", one of their helpful employees asked if they could help, and I said no.  And yet she persevered and asked if I had considered their store brand "which is just as good as the national brands we carry."

God love that simple child.  Store brands are never the same.  You may think so, but you are wrong.

You can buy Busch Beer, and know what you are getting, or you can buy generic beer in a white can with black lettering and wonder what you are getting.  When I am getting ripped off, I want to know who is ripping me off.

Besides, that "Robitussin" on the box makes me feel confident and reminds me that I can still afford name brands.

So she hands me their version of the type of cough syrup they carry, in a box that kinda of looks like the leading brand, but just different enough that you know its the copycat brand and I notice that it has one of those "Getcha Attention" graphics that they use to draw your attention away from the smaller size that they charge you just as much for, or announces that the product is in some way improved (and it never really is) which reads:

"Tastes Better!"

Better than what?   I mean I get "Better Tasting", which means it tastes better than it used to, but "Tastes Better" kind of opens up the door of ambiguity.

Are you old enough to remember this crap?

The coal tar taste that Vicks Formula 44 used to taste like?

Having a bar of Life Bouy soap in your mouth?

Analingus? (Note: Cookie is not a crack snacker)

So I ask the sweet young help one, staring at me, pride welling up in heart for her employers brand and asked: "Just what does this taste better than?"

"The other stuff."

Well, duh.

I had that coming.

And had I been in a non-flulike stupor I would never ask such a stupid question.   How would this sweet young thing know what ass tasted like?

Anyhow, I thanked her, she said "no problem" (and don't get me started on that) watched her bop away, feeling accomplished, then put that store brand crap back and bought the named brand crap that tastes like medicine only to come home and find my husband - home from work, with a red nose from cheap office supply store brand facial tissue - and he looks at what I have hunted and gathered and says: "Why didn't you just get the liqui-gels?"

"They have it in a pill form?"

Well, fuck for fuck sake.

Anyhow, if this "flu" I am on runs its expected course, expect temperatures in the 100-degree range for another day or so and then a recovery by the weekend.

Till then I will have watery eyes, a productive cough and drink plenty of fluids.  I doubt that at this point I will have high fever and hallucinations.  They always make for good copy.

Gene and Mayrene would just like to wish you...

...a Happy New Year.

And Cookie would like to remind you that 2018 is a Mid Term Election year and that in the first week of November, we have the ability to change both houses of Congress Blue.  So get your tails in gear and get out and support a qualified candidate for your House or Senate Senate seat and end this one-party rule that the Ogre in the White House enjoys.  Remember - we WANT a very happy 2019 and 2020.