Head in the Sand ... and other unpopular positions

by Linda M Au

  Then it happened again a few days later. Got up at seven-thirty when I could have slept in for another hour and gotten a full eight hours’ sleep. But no, I checked e-mail, fed the guinea pigs, and generally putzed around before I had to shower and get ready to take my daughter out for her standardized tests.

  I just hope it doesn’t turn into a habit. If I suddenly became a morning person, I think I’d have to kill myself. But I wouldn’t do it till at least noon.

  You’re Positively Glowing!

  Did you ever eat lunch at a nuke plant?

  Yeah, me neither—until this week. It wasn’t what I expected—partly because I’m not allowed very far inside the perimeter and stayed in the public areas near the outer edge of the plant. But I did get to drive by all the cooling towers. Cooling towers are those round concave buildings that just scream “China Syndrome!” and “Silkwood!” and “Three Mile Island!” I drove through the tiny town of Shippingport, which boasts these five cooling towers as the main part of its skyline (a term I use loosely in reference to Shippingport).

  I’ve heard a rumor that the town’s residents, in exchange for rearing their children in the shadow of a nuclear power plant, get free cable TV. You know, something worthwhile and comparable to their woes. Something the families with six kids (and twelve heads) can really make use of.

  But I digress. Nobody I saw while meeting my husband for a quick lunch had a second head. Wayne did look suspiciously like an overgrown Mickey Mouse, but that was because he was wearing a white hardhat with gray sound-muffling earphones perched on the sides of the hat. Before then, I’d never pictured Mickey Mouse as six-foot-four, blond, mustachioed, and walking pigeon-toed in a denim work shirt.

  Or eating a foot-long pastrami sandwich from Subway. But, amazingly, there he was. Not glowing, either, which was a relief. Oh, and wearing forty thousand I.D. badges and cards and keys and lanyards around his neck—all of which probably weighed as much as a small Toyota. Bling for the engineering homeboys.

  I kept expecting to hear a siren go off and then to watch everyone hit the deck. You know, like in every movie with a nuke plant in it. Or perhaps I’d see a security guard with a semiautomatic weapon (yes, before you ask, they do, but don’t ask) running up to me and asking to see my forty thousand I.D. badges and lanyards, which of course I don’t have.

  I got out of there unscathed, and the nuke plant continues to make clean, efficient electricity for everyone—including the two-headed residents of Shippingport.

  Another Foot in the Grave

  True story: My younger daughter and I were eating pizza and watching the movie That Thing You Do! on TV. We were watching my favorite scene—where Liv Tyler’s character, Faye, is mailing a letter while wearing a radio earplug, and the Wonders’ new song comes on the radio for the first time. She licks a stamp and then dumps the letter in the mailbox and goes screaming down the street in ecstasy.

  Daughter, to me: “Mom, in that scene she’s licking the postage stamp before she puts it on the letter. Why is she doing that? Wouldn’t you just stick it on the envelope?”

  I just about fell over. Surely within my daughter’s memory and lifetime there have been postage stamps you had to lick, right? Surely she was kidding and she did remember you once had to lick postage stamps? No, she hadn’t a clue that there was a time when you couldn’t just peel a stamp off its backing and stick it to the envelope.

  Meanwhile, I rarely go through a batch of stamps where I don’t fleetingly think, “I’m so glad I don’t have to lick all these stamps like I used to have to do. They always tasted like old cough medicine.”

  In other words, something that still seems new to me (peelable stamps) seems like it’s always been that way to my daughter, who is already taller than I am and is learning to drive.

  Good grief, another foot in the grave. By my count, that’s about six or seven feet so far, though, so, really, I should be glad to be here at all.

  I need to remind myself never to show her a rotary phone. Or a percolator.

  Hook, Line and Sinker

  When I was a teen, my grandmother, Fannie Mae Hockenberry Au, patiently taught me how to crochet. She had tried to teach my mother this skill in years past, but apparently you must carry an actual Hockenberry gene because my mother never quite got the knack if it. As for my own training, after some figurative and literal hand-holding by my eternally patient grandmother, I picked up the basics of crocheting. For a long while the stitches were uneven and ugly, and doing anything but straight lines back and forth was an impossibility. And the term “straight lines” was a compliment my work didn’t deserve.

  But over the years since those early lessons I’ve done several projects that were zigzag, or round, or had different patterns. And I’ve found that crocheting fulfills a basic desire to create something—something from (almost) nothing. There’s a sense of satisfaction in completing a project. I’m at the stage now where I hurry to complete one crocheting project just so I can move on to another. There has to be a disorder named after that, doesn’t there? Arts and Crafts A.D.D.?

  However, now I have leftover skeins of yarn from each project. (I always buy too much yarn for a project. There’s nothing worse than getting toward the end of a project and only then finding out your afghan is now going to be the size of a large dish towel because of your poor planning.) I may feel brave enough someday to make an afghan out of all those wacky mismatched leftover skeins. It would still be warm and the stitches would still be even. But where on God’s good earth could I put it? It’d be an eyesore. A nice, comfy eyesore, but still, an eyesore.

  So, if you know me personally and one day you get an afghan of, well, unusual color schemes, for lack of a better term, think of it as recycling. I’m just trying to be eco-friendly.

  During my decades of crocheting—the thousands of hours spent crippling my own fingers with an aluminum hook—I’ve amassed a small amount of needlecraft wisdom I feel compelled to pass along to the neophytes within my readership. So, jot this stuff down; you might need it someday. (Wait, you don’t need to jot it down—you bought this book and here it all is. And if you’re borrowing a friend’s copy, shame on you! Stop reading now and go buy your own copy, you skinflint.)

  • My experience with mismatched skein ends has taught me that this is how the granny square was invented. Which, come to think of it, gives me an idea.

  • If you are a slow crocheter, you should double-check to be sure ponchos will still be in style before you crochet twenty of them for your nieces (and nephews). The same goes for berets. And neckties. And sweater vests. Take a walk through your local thrift store if you don’t believe me.

  • If you don’t have air conditioning, remember to crochet tiny, lacy items in July and big, hefty afghans in December. Nothing sucks worse than having a mammoth ripple afghan draped across your lap when it’s hot enough to melt the linoleum in your kitchen and humid enough to moisten Uncle Earl’s chapped lips.

  • Friends don’t let friends drink and crochet.

  Word Brain Versus Math Brain

  We’ve all heard the expression “Oil and water don’t mix.” And yet, my husband, Wayne, and I are so different in so many ways that I wonder if I ought to check his shirt label to see if he’s a different genus or subspecies from me. Because honestly, most of the time I don’t get how his brain works. To boil it down: I’m a writer and he’s an electrical engineer. That’s fairly far apart along the spectrum of vocational light.

  The simplest way to express our rudimentary difference is that I’m a word brain and he’s a math brain. I think in logical word pictures (okay, not always logical), and he thinks in logical number pictures, mechanical pictures. I love books and papers, and he loves gadgets and objects and things. I think; he does. I’ll theorize; he’ll simonize.

  We’re both collectors—but not very official ones. So, while I stack neverending book purchases on already sagging bookcases and keep reams of 96-bright laserjet-compatible paper in my o
ffice cabinets, Wayne stuffs rolls of ethernet cable, blue plastic electrical outlet boxes, and roofing nails into large plastic totes. I hoard red pens and paper clips; he hoards ratchet sets and blank rewritable CDs.

  There are a few of his “math brain” things lying around the house that perplex me, though—in ways that can’t be easily explained by the word brain/math brain dichotomy. The first is a small cardboard box that reads “Professional Soldering Station.” Don’t misunderstand me: I get why a guy wants—and even needs—a soldering station. I’m cool with the whole “I need to burn stuff but not get arrested or sent to a psych evaluation for it” mentality.

  What puzzles me is the obvious question raised by the wording on the box of the Professional Soldering Station: Is there such a thing as an Amateur Soldering Station? And, given the nature and temperature of soldering, in addition to its close proximity to one’s fingers, would anyone rush out to buy one? Besides Wayne, that is, who placed as first runnerup in the local Mr. Clearance Rack contest three years straight?

  The second item of confusion is really two items. He currently owns two shop-vacs: one that really sucks (which means it works), and one that really, really sucks (which means it doesn’t work). That second one seems redundant, if nothing else.

  The third item that baffles me is really about twenty items, and they’re all currently residing in Wayne’s office. They’re all the computer cases and CPUs from every computer each of us has owned since the mid-nineties. (For you word brains out there, that’s over fifteen years ago—last century, last millennium. Get a calculator. I already double-checked the math on this one.) I’m not sure what his plans are, but I’m guessing one of two things: Either he’s going to open a technology museum in the back of our house, or he’s planning to take over the world with his own private bank of computer servers able to run multiple heavy-duty software applications and hack into government mainframes the world over.

  All that intrigue sounds mildly fascinating, as long as I conveniently forget that most of those old computers are missing power supplies, hard drives or motherboards and the software loaded onto the remaining servers is stuff like free online poker games and shareware programs that change photos of people you don’t like and stretch them into funny shapes. But, hey, I could do that stretchy thing back in the 1970s with a hunk of Silly Putty and a newspaper.

  So, while Wayne is busy taking over the world one royal flush at a time, I’ll be recataloguing my books, promising myself to get rid of some of them, and then tossing out Wayne’s old college textbooks instead.

  In the perpetual war of the word brain versus the math brain, the word brain wins another battle—but perhaps not the war. There is still that shop-vac to contend with.

  “I Need You to Trust Me on This”

  I’m trying to catch up to everyone else in the world who’s been watching 24. God bless Netflix for allowing me to catch up on TV series. (First Lost, now this.) I just finished Season 3 today. Watching the episodes back to back to back to back, I’m noticing patterns—and I’m guessing the patterns hold throughout the rest of the series’ history. Here’s my list so far:

  • Always have a mole inside CTU. It makes for extra excitement just when things are going right everywhere else.

  • Have Jack Bauer shoot someone under iffy circumstances at least twice per season. More, if you can get away with it. And you can always get away with it.

  • Everybody has to talk in a really raspy voice and sound breathless at all times.

  • Have Jack go renegade every other episode, so that people back at CTU can pair off in groups of “helping Jack” versus “totally out of the loop with Jack.”

  • Each actor in the series gets fifteen minutes of total self-righteous overacting every season (cue raspy breathless voices here). It’s in their contracts.

  • Viruses and bombs get released/detonated but then are revealed as false alarms, so that they can be released/detonated again—at least three times in that single twenty-four-hour day.

  • Apparently technology has invented a cell phone model that never needs its battery recharged, and CTU bought them all.

  • No one ever eats or goes to the bathroom during the entire twenty-four-hour period. And with all that takeout coffee they drink, that’s quite a feat. Evidently they all wear Depends or something. I still want to see an episode with Jack Bauer careening that SUV through a Jack-in-the-Box drive-thru and ordering some large fries and a root beer.

  • People at CTU who get wounded in the early part of the day (shot, stabbed, preferably both) can get by with very small amounts of medical attention before going straight back to work for another eighteen-plus hours. They’re then given another fifteen minutes of self-righteous overacting (with raspy breathless voices) to compensate for the really bad day they’re having.

  • “Brrrrrrr-dee-dee-doop!” Those phones in CTU are really going to drive me crazy by the time I work my way up to Season 35.

  • Why doesn’t anyone ever say to Jack, “Have a nice day”?

  • Someone at CTU will be charged with treason at least once per season—and then turn out to be the most patriotic person on the show.

  • This is supposed to be the most high-tech place on the planet, but yet, whenever it’s convenient, even low-level employees can find a way to do something untraceable or go offline and off-grid and not get caught. Oh, and they’re always the ones who work right in the middle of the main floor where everyone can see them. Doesn’t this place have better security cameras? Two words, people: browser history.

  • Why doesn’t that place have proper lighting, even in the middle of the day? It’s like watching a crime scene workover from CSI with all that cool high-tech mood lighting everywhere. Three words, people: hundred-watt bulbs!

  C ‘mon, CTU! I shouldn’t have to keep telling you people this stuff. Aren’t you supposed to be the smartest people on the planet? Or is that only on some other day we never get to see?

  Definition of a Bad Day

  I’m checking all the international dateline stuff all over the world, just to make sure yesterday is officially over … everywhere.

  Here’s the quick-and-dirty of what went down yesterday that made it so, uh, memorable:

  • Late morning to mid-afternoon: My elder son and I stand in the scorching heat in gravel parking lots looking at used cars. The noon news has declared this an official “ozone action day.” I have no idea what this means. I want to do as little action as possible, and I’m sure the ozone agrees with me.

  • Mid-afternoon: Son signs 2.7 million pieces of paper and makes several phone calls to the insurance company to set up proper paperwork to drive a 1990 Buick Century off the lot. One owner. Primo condition. Nicer than any car I’ve ever owned. Which is sad. We are all pleased, and I secretly hope to get the gecko’s autograph.

  • Early evening: Hubby comes home from work, hobbling on his bad knee. He has had to climb ladders this week, his first week back after being on crutches for aforementioned bad knee. I feed him and son hamburgers and hot dogs (which I grill outside on the sidewalk to save money on propane), and waffle fries. (Despite the name “waffle fries,” I refrain from putting syrup on the table. Evidently a misnomer.) We all have a special bonding time talking about first cars and the excitement of new apartments and new lives. I sniffle. Son rolls his eyes.

  • 7:30 p.m.: Son packs up car and heads off so that he can work in the morning and start moving into new apartment.

  • 7:45 p.m.: Son calls on cell phone from three miles down the street to say the battery light has come on. Hubby tells him to turn around and come back.

  • 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.: Local auto parts store assures them alternator is good, so it must be the four-year-old battery. Son buys new battery. Naturally, they don’t have any of the low-cost batteries in stock, only the “Titanium” ones.

  • 8:30 p.m.: The three-block trip back to the house to pick up his stuff reveals that the battery light is still on. Hubby de
termines with one of his electrical-engineer-magical-gadgets that it is indeed the alternator causing the problems. His knee is screaming a third chorus of “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in some Scandinavian language, so he bows out of changing alternator in the dark. I sniffle. Son rolls his eyes.

  • 8:45 p.m.: Son gives up on getting back to his place for the night, and makes twenty-seven necessary phone calls to rearrange his schedule.

  • 10 p.m.: Depressed, son decides to make a bag of microwave popcorn in our new microwave, not noticing the button marked “Popcorn” and instead setting it for four minutes on high … and goes upstairs to do something while waiting. Waiting? Apparently four minutes is an eternity to his generation.

  • 10:03:45 p.m.: I naively say to no one in particular, “Is something burning?” and realize I still hear the microwave humming in the kitchen, although the popping sound has long since stopped.

  • 10:04 p.m.: The inside of the microwave now has a brownish yellow film permanently burned onto its inside walls, and the smell of burnt popcorn permeates the neighboring counties.

  • 11 p.m.: I am weary and cranky and I feel like a bad mother. So I do the only natural thing: I go to bed early and hide.

  • 9 a.m.: I wake up early to call the local mechanic to ask about taking an alternator we buy elsewhere and quick-changing it for us on the fly. He agrees. I make a mental note to add him to our Christmas card list.

  • 9:01 a.m.: I go upstairs to alert son. Well, okay, to wake him out of a dead sleep. Clearly, “alert” is a relative term. Son sniffles. I roll my eyes.

  • 9:02 a.m.: I decide to slip into my office across the hall and check mail and get back to the real world … a place I’ve forgotten over the past two days. I see a note near my computer from one of the other kids: “Mom, last night I threw up because of the burnt popcorn smell. It was around 4 a.m. and I didn’t want to wake you or Chris up. I don’t know the first thing about cleaning up throw-up, so I left it by the side of my bed.”

  Is it tomorrow yet?

  It’s now noon, and son left again this morning, after mechanic did a flawless quick-change of old dirty alternator to new shiny alternator for very little money. Son left around eleven o’clock, so I should be hearing from him soon at the other end of his trip.