Monthly Archives: January 2015

Random Truths

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Actual words of wisdom and words of lesser wisdom heard and seen in my world:

“You never know how bumpy a road is until you drive on it when you have to pee.”

Work related memo (not mine!) – “The meeting is cancelled. We are sorry for any incontinence this might have caused.”

Actual experience: the office supply store doesn’t stock bookmarks. Nope, not the old fashioned kind that goes in an old fashioned book. I had to go to a school supply store and search through the cutesie ones until I found something suitable for my fifth and sixth graders – something colorful, but not childish.

Meanwhile, I’ll reread Charlotte’s Web to make sure I’m ready to teach it. Bring on the tissue box!

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Newfangled, Old-fashioned, Cooking

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The trend in kitchens has been swinging in this direction for a while, away from mixes and pre-made frozen foods, back into cooking from scratch. Once in a while, when I’m just not capable of cooking (for whatever reason) we’ll go back to the old frozen pizza. Most of the time, though, we make the effort to put something good on the table and into our tummies.

To put supper on the table, sometimes we resort to a fully cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store. For side dishes, we can reach for some frozen corn (frozen last summer when it was fresh), a small container of frozen red and green peppers, and toss all of this into the steamer to cook. Somehow, even as wrecked as we might feel, we manage to put a decent meal on for supper.

Later on, we attack the leftovers. All it takes are the bones from the chicken, the veggie water from the steamer, and a couple pieces of onion to make a chicken broth. I usually have to be in the kitchen making lunch for the next day, so I might as well get a broth simmering.

A broth like this will look and smell thick and tasty. When I’m tired and running almost on empty, sometimes I make the best use of my time. When everything is said and done, I can relax and go to bed knowing I’ve put in a good effort to feed the family and we didn’t even need to resort to frozen pizza – yet.

The more things change, the more they stay the same. This post originated a few years ago after a somewhat wild weekend for Chuck and Amigo. I don’t remember what I was doing, but it led to one of our pantry raids, supplemented by a rotisserie chicken. When life is rough, we manage. 

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Dear Clinic; Communication. What a concept.

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First came the voice mail on the home phone suggesting I call and make an appointment.

Next, I attempted to make an appointment through the messaging system. I hear you laughing already. Here goes:

Me: I received an automated voice mail suggesting that I make an appointment. Is this necessary?

Clinic Messenger: Yes you are due for a annual Physical in July and medication review and renewal then also.

July? It’s now January. Okay, I’ll try to plan ahead. I’ll  fill out the form and ask for a morning in July.

Scheduler: What is the reason for the appointment? Please list any symptoms you are having so we can give the providers some notes to better prepare them for your appointment.

Me: I received a voice mail saying I was due for an appointment and I should call. It turns out the only appointment I’m due for is a physical in July. Perhaps this was an error in the system? No one seems to be expecting my request.

Scheduler: I looked in your chart, and in our auto-matted phone system and it looks like they were calling about your Hyper-tension-HTN, if you are on medication and are going to need new scripts, you may be due for a Medication Check. That is what they were calling for, not the Physical. If you would like to schedule a appointment for the Hyper-tension please let us know a date and time that will work for you and if you fast for your medication checks. Thanks.

Me: ????? 

Dear Clinic That Shall Not Be Named: Your right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. That’s all.

With all due respect,

Daisy

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Trivia! And tradition!

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An encore post from 2010 – really? It’s 2015 now, and the Trivia contest is celebrating its 50th anniversary. I’m listening to Alumni Hour, an hour full of throwback questions and Contest History. Amigo and Chuck are down at the station answering phone. Enjoy the story of this wild and woolly tradition!

Long ago, when I was a teenager, and great woolly mammoths roamed the high school campus, I listened to a radio trivia contest one weekend a year. I enjoyed the crazy music that ranged from bad to worse, the mock advertisements for ridiculous and irreverent products, and of course, the trivial questions. (Who were the fairies in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty? Flora, Fauna, and Meriweather. Come on, ask me a hard one.)

Then I joined a Trivia team. This was still in the prehistoric times; rotary dial phones! We’d use the tip of a pen to dial the numbers so that our fingers wouldn’t get blistered. Really. Books, encyclopedias, and almanacs were our main sources for information that we didn’t already possess in our ever-evolving brains. (The hotel in Psycho? Bates Motel, of course. And Janet Leigh hid the money in a folded up newspaper.)

I played for this team until I transferred schools and began attending classes on the very campus that hosted the contest. By then the phones were push-button types, and the woolly mammoths had moved to less populated areas Up North, but our main information sources were still print books. (Winnie the Pooh lived in the Hundred Acre Wood under what name? Sanders.)

Fast forward several years, through contributions to a few more trivia teams, a marriage, and two kids. We now hosted a team in our home. It was a smaller team, not a top three finisher, but we held our own. Proudly, we invited people to share our home with the bunnies and the books and the new technology: cordless phones and Internet access. We still used a radio boom box, a white board for keeping track of team scores, and a spiral notebook for writing down questions. The woolly mammoths had retreated toward Canada in search of glaciers. (In the movie The Blues Brothers, what is the license plate number of the Bluesmobile? BDR529)

Telephones and radio have changed, but the Trivia contest continues. The radio has gone Internet only, which has actually expanded the contest to people in faraway locations that might still have woolly mammoths. Chuck and I no longer compete for the worthless prizes (the prizes have to be as trivial as the questions), but Amigo plays on his own. He listens to the Internet broadcast, searches for answers online, calls them in on the cordless phone or borrows my cell when the cordless’ batteries go dead. He and Chuck take a shift at the radio station answering phones to take people’s answers — each team that plays finds a way to make a contribution like this to keep the contest running smoothly. (What was the original name of the Popsicle? The Epperson Ice Pop, or the Epsicle)

Trivia (it needs no other qualifying details; all other contests pale in comparison) is a crazy and fun weekend with no equal. Some people take off for warmer climates in January; we’ve always stocked up on knowledge, coffee, hot cocoa, and phones. It keeps us warm. (When Frank Zappa was in ninth grade, he won a Fire Prevention poster contest. What did his poster say? “No picnic. Why? No woods. Prevent forest fires.”)

I still kind of miss the mammoths.

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The rest is just details.

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An encore post that stays relevant, not surprisingly, in the NFL or here at home.

A coach from a nearby NFL team talked about three ways to face adversity. He suggested that most people react in one of these ways:

  • Remain oblivious
  • Crumble
  • Embrace it

This philosophy applies to public school teaching as well.

1. I once worked with a principal who remained oblivious to adversity. When faced with challenges, she would spout her buzzwords of “differentiate” and “test scores” without ever answering the questions we raised. She thought she understood, but she was clueless. Simply clueless. And everyone around her knew it.
2. It’s far too easy to crumble as my workload grows and the pay doesn’t, while public support continues to fade. I may react initially with a feeling of failure and hopelessness, but eventually I manage to keep up and cope.
3. I work with a group of teachers who embrace challenges. The pressure wears on us daily, but we hold each other up and look for ways to meet the challenges.

With a week off between Christmas and the New Year (my equivalent of a Bye week), I rested and got myself psyched for going back to school. I brought home a little work, but not a lot. I decided to be realistic and not overload my schoolbag. I’ll log in and grade tests and quizzes, but I’ll leave the time-consuming portfolio assessments for my return to my desk.

Minor injuries? In teaching, that’s more likely to be illness. I had my flu shot, and so did Amigo. It’s the season for keeping hand sanitizer on my desk and water bottle  with filter by my side for hydration.

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Wisdom and Laundry – a slightly revised encore

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The original post aired in December of 2008. The philosophy still fits, and the details needed only a few minor updates. Enjoy.

Green washing of Jeans: wash first, dry last. Hang to air dry in between.
This saves time and energy by air drying the wettest of the jeans. They’ll shrink less, too, as they can now dry for a minimal time on the delicate cycle.

20 Mule Team Borax is a good invention.
It smells better than bleach, doesn’t spill (well, I don’t spill it as easily), and takes out stains well. It doesn’t cost as much as commercial detergent boosters, and the paper box is recyclable. I’ve used it to kill weeds, too. Hm. This might mean a little more research is necessary.

Detergent makers usually recommend at least double the amount that’s really needed to wash a load well.
Of course! They want me to buy twice as much of their product. Ha, ha, ha. I’m wise to this trick! My usual detergent is heavily concentrated, too; it works as well as the HE (High Efficiency) detergents in my front loading machine.

Dryers eat socks. Sometimes they spit them out later. I keep an Orphan Sock Box in the closet for socks waiting reconciliation.
This also works if one sock in a pair spouts a hole. When another pair from the same package suffers the same loss, there’s a new mate waiting. If a sock really, really doesn’t have a mate, well, I’m still working on that. Cleaning rags, perhaps.

Just because I do this chore efficiently doesn’t mean I like it.
I’ve learned enough tricks to get the family laundry done quickly and efficiently, get the stains out (mostly), and get all the clothes back in the closets and drawers by the time school and workweeks start Monday morning. It’s a necessity, family, not a pleasure. I’m glad Amigo now handles his own laundry.

Clothes must be washed, no matter what the other plans are. Fit it in.
See above. If we’re going away for part of the weekend, I’ll start sorting and washing ahead of time. If report cards are due, I’ll start a wash load, work on math grades, throw the wash in the dryer, work on reading grades, yada yada yada,

Each and every family member needs to own at least two weeks worth of underwear.
See above. If no one runs out of underwear, laundry can wait a week in a pinch. Maybe. So there’s the wisdom; make sure everyone has drawers in their drawers, and the livin’ is easy.

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Shop Small: Not just Once a Year

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Shop Small, and Shop Local!

Shop Small, and Shop Local!

There’s more to this picture than just a reminder to shop small and use my own bag. The bag (cute, with polka dotted back) was free at a small downtown shop on Small Business Saturday, the day after Black Friday. If you look closely, you’ll see that also hanging on the kitchen chair is a large plastic bag from Kohl’s. Oops. So much for using my own bag, right?

Well, not exactly. Kohl’s is a Wisconsin company. Its headquarters are near Milwaukee. I shop there carefully to get the most for my frugal dollar. Between discounts and a gift card (earned through a wellness program) and sale racks, I got my money’s worth when I filled this bag.

As for the bag, it’s big. The reusable bags in my purse were not big enough to handle this order (mainly the hiking boots and their box). To make the most of the one-use plastic bag, I’ll make sure it sees at least another day as a wastebasket liner or a container for thrift store donations. I’m green, but I’m not perfect. Sometimes I have to make the best of a less than optimal situation.

So the moral of the story, the resolution to this tale, is this: shop small businesses, shop locally, be green whenever possible and use tools to shop frugally at those local and small businesses. Sound good? Readers, I value your input. Comments are welcome – consider adding your two cents about shopping small and shopping locally.

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