Too Nice Nellie spoils the fun again

I find them very amusing, but how are people brave enough to take cell phone pictures of goofy-looking strangers in public places?

We saw a guy with a champion comb-over in Walmart this week. The hard-working hairs started at a point in the back of his head below this ears. It was a delightful combination of denial and engineering. I SO wanted to share it with you, but couldn't make myself do it. I kept thinking: How would I feel if I caught someone giggling while taking a picture of me??

If I'm going to get serious about making fun of people in an anonymous public forum, I'm going to have to leave my Too Nice Nellie side at home.

Feeling large

In a bizarre fit of bad decision-making, I decided to go to the mall today. Three weeks before Christmas and I go to the mall on a Saturday afternoon. Too much sugar, clearly.

I was walking past the escalator in Penneys when an older woman with a stroller fell as she was disembarking. Unable to do anything else, the four women behind her fell as well, landing right on top of her.

Arms and legs were flailing and everyone was calling, "Help!" Because I'm a stellar citizen, I dropped my purse and ran to help pull the women up and untangle themselves from the stroller and the first layer, who had apparently hurt her ankle.
When everyone was up and the saleswoman was phoning for help, I went to find my purse.

There it was on the floor, exactly where I'd dropped it, now surrounded by spectacle onlookers. (What? You never saw a heap of Hispanic women screaming at the foot of an escalator before? Sheesh! Get a life!

That could SO have turned out the other way: purse gone.

Helping the ladies in distress and having my purse unstolen made me feel large, very large.

As I left the mall, I said, "Excuse me" when I walked in front of a old man who was looking his parked car. Perhaps he had been lamenting the death of manners in America and I restored his faith. I was that large. I'd just helped a pile of ladies and no one stole my purse.

In the parking lot, I grinned confidently at a trio of scary-looking guys with tattoos and earrings - surely gang members. Perhaps they'd been looking for a car to steal and my "you're a worthwhile person" smile changed their lives forever. Right now they're talking about joining the Peace Corps. I was feeling that large.

I'd just helped a heap of frightened senoras, restored faith in America and had an unstolen purse.

Let's get this friendship started!

My new best friend isn’t calling me. To be strictly accurate, she has never called me.

Clay and I were walking in the neighborhood one morning this summer when an SUV pulled up beside us and the window came down.

“That’s what I should be doing!” chirped a blonde woman about my age. “All summer I’ve watched you walk by and I keep telling myself that I should be out here, too!”

We chatted pleasantly about exercising and the never-ending battle to lose weight. She asked where we live and said she knows our neighbor.

I liked her. Having her stop to chat and satisfy her curiosity about the new gal in the neighborhood made my day. That was just the sort of fun and friendly person I would like to spend time with. That woman could be my friend.

But, do I know her name? Does she know mine? Do I know where she lives? No! Seriously, can you believe it? All that sunny chatting and no names were exchanged. I could kick myself clear downtown and back.

But she knows where I live, so the onus is on her. Clearly, she has not yet realized there is a hole in her social life with my name on it. Clearly, she hasn't considered that I might have her penciled in for a series of wildly fun craft fairs, wine tastings and holiday programs.

Let's get this friendship started! We have places to go and things to do!

Maybe I'll take a chair to the place where we met and hope she drives by again. If she doesn't show signs of slowing down, I'll throw myself in front of her SUV. We'd have to exchange contact info, then, right?

“Hello, Beatrice? This is Krista. Remember, the gal you ran over last month? Well, I got my cast off today and wondered whether you'd like to go to the Holiday Fair with me on Saturday?"

Dutch Bros. Rocks!

I've been to the Dutch Bros on Clearwater Ave here in Kennewick maybe 4 times all summer. AND YET, I drove to the window today and a cute little gal inside said, "Hi! You like the Oregon-style mocha iced, right?"
Made. My. Day.
I bet she has me filed in her hip haircut head under, "grayish blonde lady - heavyset, friendly smile, great taste in purses, good tipper."

Openings available for busy friends with low expectations

I’ve always been sort of a crummy friend.

Because I’m pretty content with my own company, I don’t call to chat about nothing in particular, I don’t want to schedule play dates every weekend and I don’t drop in just because I’m in the neighborhood. For the most part, it’s fine with me if we conduct much of our socializing via e-mail. We can have loads of fun road-tripping to a concert, geocaching in the woods and taking a Tai Chi class together, but let’s not overdo the togetherness, OK?

The old friends I can count on two fingers know all this about me, and they’ve wisely collected a lot of other friends to fill in the blanks and satisfy their socializing needs.

About a year ago, I moved away from the longtime friends I can count on two fingers and now live in a town roughly 100 times larger than my old home.

Surprisingly enough, I must have managed to sneak into town without notice. The people looking for a crummy friend like me apparently don’t even know I’m here, yet. Obviously, they’re as crummy at friend-making as they are at friend-keeping – a quality I understand completely.

How do I go about finding these women who won’t want to do a bunch of stuff and won’t be phoning me all the time?

How can I get them to surface, these gals who will be content having lunch every 6 months and spending an occasional afternoon visiting antique shops or seeing a chick flick? How can I show them that I, too, might feel smothered if we see each other two days in a row?

OPENINGS AVAILABLE: busy new friends with low expectations.

Mama's got her eyebrows on

A wonderful aspect of growing older is that your hair starts growing more slowly in some areas, like your legs and under your arms. Unfortunately, it also stops growing in your eyebrows – not your chin, mind you; that area has taken on a new vigor, but that’s another story.

In my new house, I have a lovely vanity counter and cute chair in the master bathroom. It just called for a makeup mirror. One morning I was gazing at the magnified and well-lit version of myself and noticed my eyebrows were starting to dwindle away to nothing on the ends and the brave hairs left were sad and pale. I used my eyeliner pencil to sketch in the sparse areas.

Better. They weren’t the right color, but they still looked better. In fact, did I look younger?

A light bulb flashed and I had one of those Ah Ha Moments. Although my mother doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, when she puts on her face, she looks younger, brighter and more polished. I had finally discovered her secret: eyebrows.

Just as the women’s magazines have been telling us, eyebrows frame the eyes and finish the face.

Although I was delighted with the beauty discovery, I was also bummed. I had reached an entirely new plateau of womanhood and joined the millions of WWPBs (Women with Penciled Brows).

Who hasn’t observed the trial and error period in which women search for the perfect brow – sort of an initiation to the WWPB. Take a stroll through Wal-Mart and you’ll see WWPB initiates with brows too heavy, too thin, cartoonishly straight and stark, or, alternately, arched and surprised. A blonde is sporting orange brows, and a woman with white hair looks as though she’s being attacked by a couple of fat bats. They’re all searching for the perfect brow and it’s pretty clear that many women are giving up too soon.

So, the next time you see me and my expression suggests that I have a fascinating story to tell or I just ate a lemon, don’t get excited. It’s just my eyebrows talking. Until I get this penciling thing down, they might be saying all sorts of things.




One thing they’re saying loud and clear: “Welcome to Upper Middle Age, girlfriend.”

No one knows you're naked

You're giving a presentation before a group of peers, mingling at a party or standing in front of a classroom when, all of a sudden, you realize you're buck naked. Not a stitch. And, funny thing, no one seems to notice. How long before someone points a finger and everyone's attention is drawn to the fact that you're wearing nothing but a pencil?

This is my recurring dream. In the dream I try to bluff along -- buff bluff? -- acting as though nothing's amiss. If I don't act embarassed, my secret will be safe.

Dream interpreters claim this is a common dream with a classic foundation. Dreaming you're naked in a public place means you are afraid of being exposed, essentially. Maybe you're not quite as prepared for the presentation as you should be or are in a job for which you're unqualified. Maybe you're trying to be something you're not. Maybe you just don't think you're good enough.

The naked-in-public dream contains an important and often overlooked element: no one notices the nakeditity. Interpreters tell us that means our fears are unfounded. No one notices our shortcomings but us, and we should get over it.

Recently, I was browsing around an antique store and came across this print, "Luncheon in the Grass," by Edouard Manet. For reasons I didn't understand at the time, I had to buy it.

Sitting among her cast-off clothes, a woman is having a picnic with two nattily-dressed gentlemen. They're ignoring the presence of her exposed delicates and seem to be discussing current events or whether it's time for cake.

Art history enthusiasts will have other ideas about what this painting means and can tell you about the scandalous stir it caused in its day, but it speaks to me. The naked woman looks at me, outside the dreamlike scene, and says, "See? No one even notices."

And it's true. No matter what my subconscious mind is trying to tell me with the public nudity dream, one thing is reassuring: so far, no one has noticed I'm naked.

Get a bag ready. You're not as perfect as you think you are.

Some of just aren't as symmetrical as others and some of us are practically deformed. If you've run out of ways to waste time and are getting a bit big for your britches, do a little experiment to find out whether or not you should just put a bag over your head. I took a straight-on picture of myself, cut it in half and then copied and turned each half inside-out. Oh my. Where's my bag????

Ballet at the scale

The hubs and I are doing Weight Watchers with delightful success so far. We each have more than 50 pounds to lose and seem to be losing at the same rate, which is fortunate for him. If he was losing faster than I was, my nose would be out of joint, big time, and might require gifts of jewelry and fine leather goods to get straightened out again.

With only the two of us in the house, meals and snacks are easy. No one is slobbering down a big bowl of Bunny Tracks ice cream while I’m having a handful of baby carrots. When we go out to eat, we’re both interested in going someplace listed in our “Dining Out Guide” and we keep each other from super-sizing. It’s all good.

I commented the other day that I was looking forward to getting thin enough to be able to read the scale without contorting myself around my belly and boobs.

He said he doesn’t bother with contortions. He just hops off real fast and reads the screen before the numbers fade.

Chubby naked dude leaps nimbly from scale, bends quickly to peer at vanishing display.

If you knew that sort of activity was going on in your bathroom, wouldn’t you have to see it? I’m thinking it’s worth the disgusted look I’ll receive when I’m caught spying. It's even worth the jewelry and fine leather goods it might take to get his nose straightened out.

The Gurgle Pot

When my best friend came for her first visit to my new home in Kennewick, she brought a wonderful housewarming gift. The Gurgle Pot is shaped like a fish - a whimsical, yet classic design. But wait; there’s more. A distinct, giggle-inducing gurgle rises from deep within the pitcher as you pour. How neat is that?

Glug, glug, glug!

Developed by a man here in the state of Washington, the Gurgle Pot comes in many colors, from brights to pastels. Mine is soft mustard yellow, which is lovely in my kitchen.

Each morning, I fill my funny fish with water and leave it on the counter to remind myself to drink the recommend 48 ounces. I smile every time I pour a glassful.

Glug, glug, glug!

Read about the Gurgle Pot at http://www.gurglepot.com/ and listen to the bubbly gurgle yourself!

Glug, glug, glug!

I love my bags, baby

I can't explain why, but my new grocery bags are exceedingly pleasing to me. Maybe I'm just appreciating the simple things in life. Maybe I've become embarrassingly easy to please.

I like leaving the store with one or two attractive bags instead of 10 flimsy, throwaway ones that sometimes don't make it to the car without bursting a seam. I like setting these bags on the car seat and knowing that's where they'll be when I get home. No more apples rolling around on the floor and jumping out when I open the door.(One summer day I found a 3-day old package of chicken breasts under the seat. Yummy.)

With these cute, sturdy bags, the process of unloading groceries at home is a breeze. No more schlepping bags of groceries into the house, trying to carry as many as possible. These reusable bags hold a lot of groceries and the handles make them easy to carry. Once inside, instead of a heap of bulging plastic bags, these well-mannered marvels stand politely on the counter while you retrieve your purchases.

Finally, the tantalizing design has inspired me to put more fresh fruits and vegetables into my cart at the store. Thank heavens I didn't buy the M&Ms design!

AND, they were only $4 each!

Red sweatpants

My best friend was here visiting this weekend and told me a story about her nephew that I have to share. (The names have been changed because I forgot the real ones.)

His first season in tiny tot soccer had young Jack bubbling at home about his new teammates, especially one named Brad. He talked about Brad incessantly - Brad said this, Brad did that. Brad was his new best friend.
Jack's mother asked him which kid on the team was Brad.
"What does he look like?" she asked.
"He's the one with red sweatpants," Jack told her.
At the next soccer game, she made a point to watch for the amazing Brad and sure enough, there was a kid in red sweatpants - the only African-American child on the team.

Don't you love it?