As you can plainly see, her main talent is sleeping… usually about 23.5 hours a day (+/- 30 minutes). On Christmas Day, however, she decided to hit the road – probably due to the 35 house guests we had, although perhaps she just got tired of being chased by our foster puppy. She’s an indoor cat, but she does make occasional forays into the great outdoors, usually in the spring (she’s an avid bird watcher). But on Xmas day, it was colder than a polar bear’s toenails. She didn’t come back that night, or the next, or the next… She was outdoors in single digit temperatures, completely MIA, for nearly two weeks. I kept looking for her, to no avail, and was convinced that she was a goner – no house cat could survive that Arctic blast. This past Friday, my wife saw a dead black cat on the busy street near our house – we feared the worst for Coco Bear. But on Saturday evening, she showed up – looking a bit gaunt but seemingly none the worse for wear.
If cat’s have nine lives, I think Coco is down to seven. Unless she managed to build a kitty shelter in the woods out of twigs and leaves, and capture her own food. If that’s the case, we should change her name to Coco Bear Grylls.
Behold the mighty Black & Decker® Flavor Scenter Handy Steamer™
My wife and I got it eons ago, probably as a wedding gift (no Tiffany & Co. silver spoons for us!), so it’s easily more than 20 years old. We used it for a while back in the day, then it was relegated to the Shelf of Misfit Appliances in the basement, along with those other products that you don’t use often enough to justify granting them precious storage space in the kitchen (looking your way, Cocomotion™ and Jelly Belly Snow Cone Machine – we’re running hot and cold on you).
So there the Black & Decker® Flavor Scenter Handy Steamer™ sat, collecting dust, dryer lint and cat hairballs, until our son Peter went on his health kick. He hits the gym more often than he hits the books, and he eats the same lunch and dinner every day: baked chicken with brown rice, and baked salmon with brown rice, respectively. So we needed to step up our rice production in a major way. The Black & Decker® Flavor Scenter Handy Steamer™ to the rescue! It went from overlooked to overworked. It never left our kitchen counter, because we could barely keep up with Peter’s 16-year-old-weight-lifter consumption. As soon as we made one batch of brown rice, we needed to start on another. And heaven forbid if we forgot to make the rice, because then Peter would claim we were “stealing his gains” (i.e. messing up his meticulous weightlifting/eating regimen).
We also had to resort to buying brown rice in bulk:
This will last us about two weeks.
I’m sure the B&D® FSHS™ (we’re tight, so I call it by its nickname) was loving all the attention, and reveling in being needed once again after decades of neglect. It was having its Sally Field Oscars moment:
Then Christmas came… and Peter’s grandmother got him this:
A brand-spanking-new 16 cup rice cooker.
So sorry, B&D® FSHS™… hope you enjoyed your moment in the sun, but it’s back to the dark dungeon for you.
I’m not a car guy. Never have been. It’s genetic. My father lived in Jersey City, NJ, where you could get by without a vehicle – subways, streetcars, buses and trains worked just fine. He didn’t get his license until he got married in his late 20s. His first car was given to him by a friend of his who decided to become a monk. (I think it was a Studebaker, but I’m not sure. Let’s go with Studebaker because it’s fun to say. Studebaker!)
When we moved to rural Arkansas after my mom died, going car-less wasn’t an option. School and church were 10 miles away from our hillbilly home. But cash was always tight, so we never had a nice car, just a never-ending procession of $500 autos… a conga line of clunkers. Typically we had a couple at any given time – when Junker A needed repairs, we’d switch to Junker B. If the repairs cost too much, we’d pull the plug — my dad was the Jack Kevorkian of the auto industry — and buy another hooptie from W.G. Pickett’s used car lot (their sign said “we tote the note” – meaning my dad could pay in installments).
(This shot is from an ad campaign I worked on long ago – if you do an image search for “used car salesman” it shows up!)
A few years ago, just for kicks, my brother and I tried to name every car we owned while we were growing up in Arkansas. We were able to name more than 30, in a 12-year period. We owned every AMC model except the Pacer (Ambassadors and Matadors and Hornets, oh my!). We had a yellow Ford Maverick (“The Big Banana”) and an orange one (“The Great Pumpkin”) and a purple Ford Torino (“The Purple Cow”). We actually bought the “convent car” – the Ford LTD sedan that the nuns who taught at our grade school drove. They upgraded, and we got their castoff. It was pure white, of course. Can you imagine how embarrassing it was to get dropped off at grade school in the old nun-mobile?
Following in my father’s footsteps, I too was late to the car game. I bought my first car just before I graduated from college in 1986. My friend Paul was selling a 1976 Datsun B-210. It had been rear-ended so the trunk wouldn’t close, it had to be held semi-shut with a coat hanger. The car had been sitting in a campus parking lot for a few months, so Paul said he’d take 50 bucks for it. My friend LJ and I went halfsies on it… $25 each. It was a stick shift and neither of us knew how to drive a manual. After graduation, I’d get rides to Xavier and practice driving in the deserted parking lot. One day I finally got up the courage to actually drive it home. Other than mistaking first gear for third gear once and screeching through an intersection, the ride was uneventful.
coat hanger sold separately
Nowadays, I take the bus to work 95% of the time. So to me, cars are just a bucket of bolts, a way to sometimes get from Point A to Point B. I don’t give a tinker’s damn about particular makes, models and styles. With one exception – the car we just got rid of.
Behold the mighty 2010 VW Jetta Sportwagen TDI. My first true car love. Smooth. Sleek. Fast. Up for whatever. Oh, and easy to put my kayak on top without hurting my back. It got great gas mileage too… over the seven years we owned it, we averaged 35 mpg, doing mostly city driving. For six of those seven years, we thought we were saving gas and being kind to the environment, because it was billed as a “clean diesel.” Turns out Volkswagen was duping us the entire time – they programmed their cars to cheat their way through the emissions tests. So our class-action-approved options were to turn it in or get the exhaust system fixed. I didn’t trust the fix, and because most owners are turning in their cars, getting parts and repairs would likely be a nightmare a few years from now. So we cashed it in – VW is paying well above book value as penance for their sins.
I never thought I’d get attached to a car, but darned if I don’t miss it. I finally understand how other folks can “ooh” and “aah” over particular cars. Maybe I’ll have to use the cash we got from VW to buy a nice Studebaker…
UPDATE – adding a comment from my older sister:
Damo you forgot to mention the recalled Ford Pinto. Recalled because it was found that if it was rear ended, basically the whole car would explode. This was discovered after we used it for thousands of miles going back and forth to high school (120 miles round trip per day). Of the three of us you always rode in the back because you jimmy rigged some kind of antennae for your radio reception and it needed to be extended through a crack in the back window. You owe your big sis for being such a good driver while applying a full face of makeup I wasn’t allowed to wear leaving the house. Those were the days.
My kids are on winter break and it’s easy for them to fall into the trap of staring at a screen for hours on end. But yesterday my daughter Leah foraged for art supplies in our basement, and wound up creating this:
Picasso had his Blue Period, and now Leah is following suit (mainly because we only had blue and white paints in the basement).
I should mention that she was staring at a screen during the creation of this masterpiece – she was watching a Bob Ross video.
Good old Bob and his happy trees and happy accidents.
Bob and his amazing hair left us in 1995, but he’s gotten a second wind of late. It’s not just the fun hairstyle and the soothing voice… it’s because he clearly loved what he did. And a lot of his art instructions were really life instructions. Here are a couple of Bob-isms to ponder:
“I think there’s an artist hidden at the bottom of every single one of us.”
“Talent is a pursued interest. Anything that you’re willing to practice, you can do.”
I’m thrilled that my daughter is watching those old shows. Her work may never end up in the Louvre, but her life has a better chance of being a masterpiece. Thanks Bob, for continuing to make the world a happy place.
When I think of plastic hair helmets, I think of the band Devo. (Don’t we all?)
But the old codgers who exercise at the same rec center that I do always insist on having one of the TVs in the fitness room tuned to Fox News (a.k.a. Faux News). It’s actually good for my health, because I get so worked up about the tripe spewing from the talking-heads-with-trumped-up-talking-points that my heart rate is elevated before I even start my workout.
Having (unwillingly) seen many hours of these broadcasts, I realized that Fox anchors have Devo-style hair helmets too:
And if you peel back the onion, and study a bit about Devo, and what they are all about…
The name Devo comes from their concept of ‘de-evolution‘—the idea that instead of continuing to evolve, mankind has actually begun to regress, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society.”[8]
Kevin Sullivan on Life advice from a man who lived it: “A good one Damian. Bring our lens into focus after the long weekend or our long life journey.” Jul 7, 09:38
You done said…