Getting the Runaround

Adjusting to a new roommate is always tricky business. It doesn’t matter whether that roommate is human, feline or some other species. Every creature in the home has to learn each other’s habits and quirky behavior. Some take longer than others to adjust to new surroundings. When we brought home our cat, Sam, he marched out of his carrier and went straight for the basket of toys. He inspected them and looked back at us with a “this will do,” expression and settled in. When we adopted our cat, Linus, he dove under the nearest blanket the moment he was free from his carrier. We knew that his adjustment period would take a bit longer than Sam’s. With patience and love, Linus has learned that the world on the other side of the blankets isn’t as scary as it had been before he moved in with us.

After a long afternoon of playing, Linus likes to kick back and relax.

When Linus first emerged from his hiding place, he kept a watchful eye on us from a safe distance. We wanted to hug and comfort this frightened kitty, but we let Linus dictate how much interaction he could tolerate. As each day passed, he learned that he was safe and got a bit braver. Within a month of his arrival, he was hopping into our laps for on-demand snuggles. It was then that we noticed a problem. Linus had breath that could peel wallpaper.

It was like his breath was an entity all to itself and it usually entered the room just ahead of him.We were thrilled that he was approaching us and didn’t want to discourage his friendly advances, but now that we were getting up close and personal, there was no way to avoid his horrendous halitosis.To compound the problem, Linus is a talker. He loves to sit in our laps and meow, giving us an earful and a noseful. It is difficult to fully express your love while holding your nose.

We tried to explain away his malodorous breath.  Perhaps his body was adjusting to his new food. Perhaps he needed a date with a dentist. I checked his scant medical records and saw that he had seen a veterinary dentist and had a teeth cleaning shortly before he came to live with us. Breath that bad could be an indicator of a serious health condition. Rather than trying to force feed Tic Tacs to our cat, Oregano and I decided that Linus needed to visit the vet. That’s when our troubles began.

In order to take the cat to the vet, we would need to pick up said cat. While Linus had gotten braver, all of our interactions were on his terms. Whenever we moved towards him, he would run in the opposite direction. Everyone knows the jokes about giving a cat a pill, but little is said about having to catch the cat to go to the vet to get those pills.  We tried using Linus’s favorite toy to lure him into the bathroom and into his waiting carrier. Very quickly, he became suspicious of our behavior and hid from us. Since he was completely unreachable and because we didn’t want to terrorize him, we canceled our vet appointment and rescheduled for another day. Oregano and I formulated a plan and after much meowing and scrambling, we got Linus to the vet.

The vet examined him and said the bad breath and a few other health issues were caused either by allergies or a virus that he was probably exposed to while living in a shelter with 200 other cats. She recommended giving him allergy medication for a week to see if the symptoms cleared up. In addition to the allergy medication, the vet gave us teeny, tiny tranquilizers to give to Linus before we attempted to bring him back for his next visit.

How on Earth were we going to give this cat medication when we couldn’t hold him?  Even under the best circumstances, giving a cat a pill is an exercise in patience, endurance and agility, but a prerequisite to accomplishing that task is actually holding onto the cat. If our experience getting Linus to the vet was any indication, this was not going to be an easy process for any of the participants. A blow dart with a tip laced in medication seemed like the best choice, but that option wasn’t available to us. We tried all sorts of tricks, but nothing was working. After numerous failed attempts, we called the vet for advice. She found us a pharmacy half way across the country that could make the medication into a tuna-flavored treat. Of course, Linus wouldn’t eat the very expensive medicinal treats. When we crushed up the treat and disguised it in the smelliest cat food money could buy, he finally ate it. After a month, we had managed to get a week’s worth of medication into Linus. Now, we just had to catch him to take him back to the vet for his recheck.

Armed with pharmaceutical assistance, Oregano and I were optimistic about our chances of successfully making it to the next vet appointment. As directed by the doctor, 45 minutes before our appointment we crushed up the tranquilizer and hid it in Linus’s favorite stinky food. He was leery of a mid day snack, so he avoided our offering. We walked away thinking that he might come back and eat without us hovering over him. As I left the kitchen, I asked Oregano to keep an eye on the food bowl. When I emerged from the laundry room five minutes later, I saw Sam walking away from the empty bowl licking his lips. Not only did we fail to slow Linus down so that we’d be able to catch him, the wrong cat had eaten the tranquilizer!

As the time for our appointment neared, we talked about our plan for wrangling an untranquilized Linus. Oregano thought he’d be able to sneak up on Linus and take him into the bathroom where he would eventually walk happily into his carrier. Oregano was sure this would work. I didn’t share his confidence, but I didn’t want to interfere with his game plan. As a furry gray and white blur streaked past me and dove behind the TV, Oregano asked for my assistance.  He thought that if we each surrounded the TV, Linus would run out and one of us would be able to catch him. Let me just say this; it is not a good combination to have a cat that is smart and athletic. Smart and slow-moving is fine. Not too bright and agile also works in our favor, but a cat that is smart and athletic is a recipe for failure on our part. Linus launched himself over me and the chase was on.

Linus ran from room to room with us following in hot pursuit. I ran in one direction. Oregano ran in a different direction. Linus used evasive maneuvers to avoid us. At one point, I’m not sure who was chasing who. It quickly became obvious that two middle-aged humans did not have the speed or reflexes required to capture a very determined four-year old cat. Realizing we’d never be able to catch him on our own, we shifted our strategy. Since lunging and diving wasn’t working, we decided our best option was to continue running around the downstairs with him. Hopefully, we could wear him out so that he would slow down enough for us to get him into his carrier.

Oregano and I were laughing at how ridiculous we must have looked trotting in circles through our house. All that laughing made running even more difficult. Linus would run several laps then dive under the couch. Oregano and I would lift it up and Linus would shoot out from underneath. He ran a few more laps with us on his tail then hid under the couch again. We followed this pattern for 15 minutes. It was quite a thorough workout; cardio and weight lifting.  Eventually, Linus changed the path he was running. I think he was secretly hoping that Oregano and I would crash into each other, but Linus made a tactical error; he jumped onto the kitchen counter and cornered himself behind the mixer. Oregano put the carrier in front of him and he reluctantly surrendered. The house looked like a tornado had blown through it. All the while, Sam slept his peaceful, drug-induced sleep completely undisturbed by our antics.

The three of us were panting and covered in fur, but we made it to the appointment on time.  The allergy medication had not caused a noticeable change in his symptoms. Linus stood still while the vet examined his mouth and recommended that we brush his teeth twice a day every day. I turned and looked at Oregano wondering how we were going to accomplish that feat on a daily basis. As the blood drained from our faces, the vet began to laugh, “Just kidding!” she said then handed us an additive to put in the cats’ drinking water.

Thankfully, now the only thing that announces Linus’s arrival in a room is the jangle of his favorite toy and his sweet meow. Recently, we’ve discovered a new problem. What do you do when you have two lap cats and only one lap?

A Class Act

I never thought I’d have anything in common with an Academy Award winning actress until last week when I saw images of Jennifer Lawrence trip up the stairs on the way to accept her Oscar. Sadly, I am no stranger to falling in front of an audience. Granted, she tripped wearing an expensive, billowy gown while being broadcast on televisions around the world, but that’s why she gets paid the big bucks. Clumsiness is one of the qualities that I reluctantly accept as part of life, but the most public demonstration of my clumsiness occurred in front of my entire high school graduating class.

The morning of my high school graduation the senior class gathered at the football field to rehearse for the big ceremony later that day. The students were seated in the bleachers as the principal explained the procedures through a bullhorn. The graduates would be lined up in ascending height order before proceeding on to the field for the ceremony. Administrators had made the unusual decision to distribute diplomas starting with the shortest student and ending with the tallest. I had the dubious distinction of being the shortest person in my graduating class, so even though I was not the valedictorian, I graduated first in my class.

When our names were called we had to leave the bleachers and go to our assigned seats on the football field. I marched onto the field while the rest of the class waited to be called. When I arrived at my seat in the first row, I noticed a potential problem; there was a manhole cover in front of my seat. There was no way I could maneuver around it without stepping directly on it. It looked sturdy, but as soon as I put my foot down on the manhole cover I knew I had made a critical mistake. The cover slid over and I dropped into the gaping hole. With every member of the senior class over five feet tall watching, the lower half of my body disappeared into this mysterious shaft. To the spectators in the bleachers, I was a torso and head sticking out of a hole in the turf. While I struggled to hoist myself out of this predicament I had a moment to contemplate the need for a manhole on a football field.  As my foot tangled around a hose and wedged under a spigot, I realized this hole was the water source and storage area for the hose they used to maintain the natural grass field. Mystery solved, but I was still trapped.

With my arms at my sides, I was helpless to extract myself. A hush fell over the crowd of chatty seniors as people started to notice me submerged, squirming and calling out for help. Unlike Jennifer Lawrence, Hugh Jackman did not chivalrously rush to my rescue, but the second shortest student in our class did. He began to hoist me out of the hole and yelled to a nearby guidance counselor for assistance. Once I was successfully and gracelessly dislodged, there was a collective cheer from the onlookers. I was mortified and seriously considered crawling back into the hole.

Thankfully, I wasn’t bleeding and it seemed like only my dignity was injured. As we continued the rehearsal my leg and ankle began to throb.  I didn’t want to draw any more attention to myself so I hobbled through graduation rehearsal. When the other seniors left to go to lunch then home to decorate their cars, my friends took me to the nearest medical clinic for an x-ray. Luckily, I hadn’t broken any bones, but I did have an angry purple bruise the length of my shin.

Jennifer Lawrence and I both fell in front of a large crowd, but that’s where the extent of our similarity ends. After my fall, I got a diploma; she got an Oscar. What makes her really lucky is that her Dior Haute Couture gown was long enough to cover any bruises she had.

** And now a word from our sponsor**

I may not have won an Academy Award, but thanks to one of my readers, Good Humored has been named as one of the Top 25 Humor Blogs according to the website Skinny Scoop. Thanks for the nomination, Melanie and thanks to those of you who voted. I’m so glad this was a virtual award. I won’t need to wear a gown and try to negotiate steps to receive it.

My Greasy Valentine

Valentine’s Day has gotten out of control. It is no longer a day to tell the people you love how you feel about them. It’s a day to drop a wad of cash on a grand gesture to show them how you feel about them. Clearly, the less you spend on your valentine, the less you love them. That is the message advertisers are sending. The cost of anything remotely romantic becomes unreasonably expensive.  With traditional gifts like flowers or jewelry, you may want to offer your heart, but it will cost an arm and a leg to do so.

Candy is a perennial Valentine’s Day treat. The wonderful thing about giving candy is the wide range of price points at which it is available. Just about every type of candy on the market comes festively wrapped in pink or red this time of year. If you are a true romantic and a traditionalist, there is always the heart-shaped box of chocolates you can grab at the drugstore on the way to pick up your date. However, if your valentine has a more discerning palate, you’ll have to spring for the gourmet chocolates.

If your sweetheart has a sweet tooth, but you feel that a box of store-bought confections is just too impersonal there is a solution to that problem. With some creativity and a few clicks of a mouse, you can customize M&Ms for your loved one. You can select the blend of colors and they will print any image or message you can cram onto their crunchy candy coating. Does your valentine prefer those disgustingly chalky conversation hearts? There is a website that will allow you to capture the essence of your relationship and stamp it on those hearts as long as it can be summed up in 2 lines of text with no more than 9 characters per line.  Be sure to proofread. At $45 a pound, you don’t want a spelling mistake to send the wrong message to your beloved.

But what if your Valentine sweetie prefers salty treats? Don’t worry. Your options are more limited, but purveyors of traditionally non-romantic items want a cut of Cupid’s cash flow. If an item can be made into the shape of a heart, it can be a symbol of your undying love. There are now heart-shaped pizzas, donuts and bagels. What could express feelings of love better than heart-shaped dough fried in oil?

With economic times being tough your heart might be bigger than your budget. The most sincere valentines are the ones you make yourself. Gone are the days when we would sit down with red construction paper, glitter, glue and paper doilies to create a homemade valentine, but with some rudimentary culinary skills you can create a unique Valentine’s Day gift that won’t soon be forgotten: a bacon bouquet.

bacon roses…who knew?

Before you scoff at the idea of this greasy valentine consider this; the price of bacon doesn’t skyrocket as February 14^th approaches. A quick trip to the grocery store and some patience in the kitchen is all you’ll need to whip up a truly original gift guaranteed to surprise even the most jaded valentine. Imagine how easy it would be to woo your beloved when they arrive home to a house filled with the intoxicating aroma of bacon. Don’t think bacon is sexy? Just watch this clip from Seinfeld. George Costanza thinks the salted, cured meats are quite the aphrodisiac and he’s not alone.

With a bacon bouquet you’ll certainly capture your valentine’s heart. Let’s just hope all that bacon doesn’t clog up its arteries.

Tempted? Want the recipe for a bacon bouquet? Click here.

Social Insecurity – A Cat’s Tale

We knew we were living on borrowed time. We’d known it for years. Our cat, Scooter, had used up most of his nine lives and on December 1, 2012, he used up his last one. We had to say our final goodbye to our beloved cat after nearly 17 years of snuggles and companionship. We were grateful to have shared our lives with Scooter for so long, but anyone who has ever loved a pet knows that it’s never long enough. Trying to lighten our mood, Oregano turned to mathematical calculations for comfort. He determined that we had been lucky enough to have nearly 6,000 wonderful days with Scooter and only 1 really bad day. That one bad day was a doozy though.

The loss left us with an empty space in our hearts and a lot less cat hair on our furniture. Having never been an only cat, Sam seemed to miss Scooter, too. After a week of all three of us moping around the house, Oregano and I visited Tabby’s Place, a cat sanctuary where he has been volunteering for the past 3 years. We weren’t ready to bring home a new feline family member, but we needed to reassure ourselves that, while we couldn’t replace Scooter, we’d be able to fall in love again.

When we arrived at Tabby’s Place, one of the staff members greeted us. We explained that we were looking for an easy-going, adult cat, preferably one that would live forever. Discounting our immortality requirement, she gave it some thought. The first cat she had in mind was a very shy, gray and white, middle-aged gentleman named Bolaris. The name seemed odd for a cat and the surprise must have been obvious on our faces. The staff member explained that this cat came to Tabby’s Place during the week of Hurricane Sandy, so they named him Bolaris after the TV weatherman from Philadelphia.

After she explained the origin behind his unusual name, the staff member pointed to a crate that appeared to be empty. When we peered inside, we saw one white paw sticking out from under a blanket. Oregano reached in to find the rest of the owner of that paw as the staff member explained that Bolaris is painfully shy and prefers to pretend he is invisible by hiding under a blanket.  He purred and flopped from side to side letting us pet him until the blanket fell off and he bolted across the room. We visited a few other kitties and then we went home to think it over. We weren’t ready yet.

Even though he was the first cat we saw that day, Bolaris stuck in our hearts and we talked about him over the next few weeks. He was the definition of a scaredy cat. Everything and everyone spooked him.  We prefer our cats to be on our laps not under our bedding so we were hesitant to adopt Bolaris. Still undecided, we went back to visit him again, but he was even more skittish than before. We tried to rationalize his behavior. He came from a shelter in New York that had closed and he had only been living at Tabby’s Place for 6 weeks. He was in the largest suite and one of his roommates camped out beside his crate waiting to pounce on him. Each of those reasons by itself was enough cause for blanket-burrowing anxiety.

This was a tough decision that only a consultation with a crystal ball would have made easier. I was unsure of taking a risk on such a timid cat, but Oregano wasn’t. Because Bolaris would be buried under a blanket, he would literally be overlooked by many potential adopters. Oregano convinced me that a younger, more outgoing cat would be able to charm his way into a forever home, but Bolaris wouldn’t. We hoped that once he was in a quiet, loving environment he’d come out of his blanket-wrapped shell. It was a gamble, but his golden eyes, sweet face and little gray soul patch convinced us that he was worth taking a chance on.

Now that he had a new home, he definitely needed a new name. Since he had only been Bolaris for a few weeks, we figured he wasn’t attached to his name. We brainstormed our options and even considered giving him a spice name, but none of those seemed right. We thought about his personality and realized that he reminded us of a smart, blanket-loving character from the Peanuts comic strip; Linus. It was a perfect fit!  We had a new name for our sweet, shy boy.

The original Linus from the Peanuts comic strip -the inspiration for our Linus.

Knowing how shy he is we wanted to give him time to adapt to the sounds and smells in his new home. We set up our guest room for him and in addition to the usual necessities and deluxe model scratching post, we sprinkled blankets everywhere. During those first few days we frequently went into the room, saw the Linus-shaped lump under the comforter and talked to him so that he would get used to hearing our voices.

There are really two cats in this picture.

We are patient, but we never had such a shy cat before and had no idea when, if ever, he’d feel comfortable enough to venture out from under his blanket. Much to our surprise, it wasn’t long before he would slide out of his hiding place when he heard us enter the room. We sat nearly motionless on the floor since even a slight movement would send him diving back under the nearest blanket. He tentatively started making wide circles around us. With each lap he got closer. Eventually, he began purring loudly and was close enough to head-butt us for pets. It was fun to watch him learn to trust us.

When we were home to supervise, we left the door to Linus’s room open so that he could begin to explore the house, if he dared.  By the end of the first week, he was brave enough to come all the way downstairs. He wandered slowly through the house, his loud, squeaky meow acting as a tracking device for us. Once he began making regular forays through the house, we started to notice some signs that made us think that he has not been in a home for a while. The sound of the toilet flushing or the heat coming on makes him freeze in his tracks. Windows and televisions fascinate him. He climbs into an open dishwasher or refrigerator thinking it is just one more, much smaller, room to explore. He also hasn’t yet learned that the other gray and white cat he is afraid of is just his reflection in the mirror.

Each day he is gaining confidence. Now he loves to be in the room with us and has realized that he has an unlimited, lifetime supply of snuggles at his disposal. He loves to chase the red dot from the laser pointer and anything with a feather on it. When he is in the mood to play, he will drag his toy throughout the house until he finds us.

Sam didn’t exactly roll out the welcome mat for Linus, but as a rescue cat himself, he gave Linus the space he needed to adjust to his new family. Of course, there was some half-hearted hissing on Sam’s part during their first few encounters, but Linus got Sam’s message loud and clear and walked away. Sam, being the gentleman that he is, didn’t chase after Linus. Now they have started eating and playing together. They have each claimed a couch cushion and nap there regularly. They are well on their way to becoming good buddies and Oregano and I are well on our way to accepting the fact that it is only a matter of time before we’ll be banished to the floor while the two of them are comfortably napping on our couch.

The comedian George Carlin used to say that when you get a pet you know it is going to end badly. It is inevitable; every pet is a small tragedy waiting to happen. I suppose on some level he is right, but hopefully it will be many years until that day. In the meantime, it is so worth it.

Linus is making himself comfortable in his new home.

A Family Secret Revealed

Childhood is a time to learn skills we’ll need for the rest of our lives. Sharing, turn-taking and responsibility come to mind first, but did you realize that giving a child a designated bedtime provides that child with the opportunity to develop negotiating skills? Bargaining to be able to stay up past that bedtime is a rite of passage.  As a child, I learned and exploited variables that affected my negotiations. It was important to know my audience. Cajoling a babysitter or grandparent to let me stay up late was always easier than my parents. My negotiating tactics were more effective during vacations than on school nights. The most difficult bedtime negotiations were trying to convince my parents to let me stay up until midnight on New Year’s Eve. I had a persuasive argument – it wasn’t a school night and everyone else in the world was doing it.

When I was in elementary school, New Year’s Eve looked like so much fun. There were party hats, noise makers, confetti and hors d’oeuvres, all at a time of day I rarely got to experience. It was magical! When winter break from school began so too did my negotiations to stay up until midnight. I was on my best behavior, offered to do all sorts of chores for no additional money in my allowance and was nice to my younger brother. After an exhausting week of stellar behavior, the negotiations began in earnest. To my great surprise, my parents agreed to let my brother and I stay up until midnight as long as we promised to be in bed by 12:30 a.m. It was a deal. We were so excited! My mom got us party hats, really loud noise makers and even bought a box of frozen, “fancy” hors d’oeuvres: pigs in blankets.

Nothing says happy new year quite like a pig in a blanket.

In the 1970s, before every appliance in the house had a digital clock, we had a grandfather clock in the living room. It was a huge clock that chimed the hours of the day. No matter where you were in the house you could hear it. When December 31^st arrived we listened to the grandfather clock tick away the hours until midnight. Our excitement grew. Our mouths watered at the idea of eating tiny hot dogs wrapped in buttery dough at a time when we would have been asleep.  When the clock finally struck twelve, we all shouted “Happy New Year,” waved our noisemakers around and stuffed our faces with greasy snacks. At 12:30, we went to our rooms without argument and fell asleep like all good children do.

Many years later, when I was a newlywed, I told Oregano the story of my New Year’s Eve negotiation triumph and I made us pigs in blankets. The next day I called my parents to wish them a happy new year and they asked what Oregano and I had done to celebrate. I told them that we had a quiet New Year’s Eve at home with the traditional pigs in blankets.

“Traditional pigs in blankets?” my dad asked.

“Yes. Don’t you remember? In elementary school you let us stay up past our bedtime on New Year’s Eve. We always had pigs in blankets around midnight. It’s one of my favorite childhood memories.”

“We have something to tell you,” he said tentatively.  “You definitely had pigs in blankets, but you didn’t really stay up until midnight.”

“What do you mean? I distinctly remember the big clock chiming 12 times. I remember sitting on the floor in front of it waiting for the two hands to reach the twelve.” I was confused.

“The clock did strike 12. We knew you could tell time so we couldn’t lie to you about what time was on the clock. While you were busy playing during the day, we turned the clock back two hours. It was really 10 o’clock,” he said while laughing.

“So all those years I thought I was ringing in the new year I was really celebrating the final 2 hours of the old year?” I was stunned at this news. My confidence in my negotiating skills had been shattered.

“Yes,” he said without a shred of remorse.

“You only did this the first time you let us stay up, right?” I asked, but was afraid of the response.

“No, it worked so well we did this until you were almost a teenager.” He sounded quite pleased with himself.

“Years?! You perpetrated this fraud on your own child for years?! And, you’re just telling me now!” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was bad enough to think I had been fooled once, but to learn that I had been bamboozled until 1983 was astounding.  “Don’t you feel even a little bit guilty for tricking me for all those years?”

There was a long pause.

“Nope, I don’t feel guilty at all. In fact, I think it was quite clever. You thought you were staying up late so we didn’t have to listen to any bargaining or whining and we got to have a peaceful New Year’s Eve. It was a win-win situation.”

I could just imagine the impish grin he had on his face while finally revealing this family secret. Now that I am older,  I have reached the age when staying up until midnight to ring in the new year is not a novelty. In fact, some years we’ve even fallen asleep before midnight, but it was always with a tummy full of pigs in blankets.

**Whether you stay up until midnight or just believe you have stayed up until midnight to ring in 2013, I hope the upcoming year is filled with health, happiness and laughter. ** 

Happy New Year!

Putting the Temper in Temperature

Choosing clothes to wear during the transitional seasons is always a challenge. Frosty mornings give way to sunny, warm afternoons. Wearing layers is really the best option. I start my day wearing a jacket or sweater that I can peel off in the heat of the afternoon. I am prepared for this type of weather during the autumn and spring, but my mistake is that I expect that type of weather when I am outdoors, not inside my office.

On any given work day, I can experience three seasons in eight hours. It is nearly impossible to dress for a 30 degree swing in temperature. I wear multiple layers and stash a small wardrobe in my file cabinet: short sleeve t-shirt, sweatshirt and gloves. I am prepared for any temperature the HVAC system can throw at me, at least I thought I was.

There is a thermostat on the wall in my office. It looks like it works. There is a dial with temperature markings.  It makes a clicking sound when I roll the dial. Psychologically that makes me feel better, but recently I’ve come to realize that it doesn’t do anything other than make that clicking sound.  I called our maintenance department who confirmed my suspicions when they told me that the temperature is actually controlled by a company in Pennsylvania. Why is the temperature in my office in New Jersey controlled by a computer in Pennsylvania? Apparently it is more cost-effective to have them monitor the temperature than to have us fiddling with the thermostat. I’m considering putting a lovely frame around the thermostat in my office now that I know it is merely decorative.

There seems to be a glitch in having my office temperature controlled remotely from the neighboring state.  When I entered my office on a recent Monday morning the temperature was 77 degrees, I peeled off my top layer and worked in relative comfort. Tuesday’s indoor high temperature climbed to toasty 83 degrees. I don’t have access to a window so I turned on a fan and removed several layers of my clothing, but I was still uncomfortable. It was like having a perpetual hot flash. I scavenged the office for a second fan and eventually, changed into my emergency short-sleeved t-shirt. During my lunch break, I decided to amuse myself by searching weather.com to find cities elsewhere in the world that were as warm as my office. If I was going to sit there with sweat running down the backs of my legs, I would at least like to be able to visualize being someplace tropical or exotic.

Before I even opened the door to my office on Wednesday morning there was an ominous sign; the metal doorknob was hot. I peered in the window. There was no smoke or flames so the room wasn’t on fire. This could only mean that my office must be sweltering. A hot breeze assaulted me when I opened the door. This had to be a new indoor high temperature record. I checked the thermometer – 93 degrees!

I am usually mild-mannered and good-humored, but those character traits diminish in direct relation to an increase in temperature. My heat-activated bitch switch was triggered and I became a crazy woman. I commandeered fans from other offices and turned them on full blast hoping to direct some of the hot air from my office back to the molten core of the Earth from whence it came. I removed all the layers it was acceptable to remove in public and ripped the socks and shoes off my feet. Still I was sweating profusely and found it hard to concentrate. I mustered all the strength I had so that I could hold the hot telephone to my ear and be calm and polite when I called maintenance to report the scorching temperature.

While I worked, sweated and waited for maintenance to make contact with the computer in Pennsylvania to lower the temperature, colleagues entered my office. Why is it that when someone walks into a hot room they feel the need to comment on the temperature? Do they think the person sitting in the room is completely unaware of the temperature? Weren’t my flushed cheeks, fan blown hair and bare feet enough clues to them that I was painfully aware of the heat?

Since my bitch switch had been flipped, I had no patience for being reminded about how hot I was.  It got to the point that when someone stepped into the doorway of my office I could see their eyes widen when the wave of heat enveloped them. As the words were forming on their lips, I glared at them and said, “Don’t say it!” By the end of the day, my temper had moderated along with the temperature.

Having spent the rest of that week in relative comfort, I was lulled into the false sense that the computer in Pennsylvania had been properly calibrated. That hope was shattered the following Monday when I opened the door to my office. The temperature? 61 degrees!

From Darkness Comes Enlightenment

Every experience in life is an opportunity to learn something new. Sometimes what you learn is interesting. Other times what you learn is that you never want to have that experience again. Following Hurricane Sandy, we lost our electricity for 8 nights. While widespread, the power loss seemed random. Luckily there were pockets of the area that still had electricity. I spent a week roaming the county as a nomad in search of an electrical outlet. Evenings were long, dark and cold. As I sat shivering in my home under piles of blankets, I contemplated the irony of being so cold as a result of a tropical storm and the lessons I had learned from this experience.

• Smartphones are the Swiss army knives of the 21^st century.
• Using a power strip when charging multiple devices at a public outlet is proper power outage etiquette.
• Thoroughly scrubbing the refrigerator and freezer is much easier to do when it’s empty because we’ve had to throw out all of our food.
• Thanks to the cold, I’ve had the opportunity to do a complete inventory of every blanket in our home.
• It takes approximately 4 days without power to stop trying to turn on light switches.
• Sleeping with a hat on gives me a wicked combination of bed-head and hat hair. Yikes!
• Darkness can be a blessing. There is no fashionable way to wear so many layers. I would have been horrified to catch a glimpse of myself in a mirror.
• I don’t need light to shower; I know where all the necessary body parts are.
• Toothpaste and toilet seats get very, very cold.
• Ziploc bags filled with hot water and laundry detergent are a great way to wash underwear, but  it will take days for them to dry since there is no heat in the house.
• I’ve memorized my car’s license plate because I needed to know if I could get gas on even or odd days while it was being rationed.
• Always, always, always get a full tank of gas before a storm.  (see above)
• If I owned the company that makes orange traffic cones, I’d be rich.
• Using a hand cranked radio is a great way to keep warm and burn calories.
  

  Using a hand cranked radio keeps Oregano warm and informed.

• A candlelight dinner is not nearly as romantic when I’ve actually had to cook that dinner by candlelight.
• When I go to bed when it gets dark at 6:30 p.m., I wake up at 2:00 a.m. and it is still dark.
• I don’t have what it takes to be Amish.

One of the most important lessons I learned is that I have caring, generous friends who opened their warm homes, refrigerators and washing machines for us.

Oregano and I were very fortunate that our home only sustained minor damage. Others were not so fortunate. If you want to help the people deeply affected by Hurricane Sandy, you can donate to the Red Cross.