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What Are My Commercials Trying to Tell Me

If for some weird reason I didn’t know how old I was, I could tell by the TV shows we watch. More specifically, by the commercials that run during those shows. Mostly they feature folks, either gray-haired or that vague blond color that you can’t tell what color it really is, in knit clothing two sizes too big, blue gray so they blend into the background, walking or playing with the dog, or watching the grandkids run through the sprinkler. Is there some significance in the sprinkler—like is my life quickly spraying away while the young dance around me? These old people are smiling big toothy smiles. And they’re fighting disease, usually diabetes, but cancer is also popular, as is erectile disfunction. That’s how I can tell that what we’re watching is being widely circulated in hospital rooms across the country. Because they’re hoping to get in that last shot at my cash before I check out. What appalls me is who the sponsors think I’m going to identify with. Do I really loo
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Winning Christmas

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This is the year I was going to win Christmas. Our house would be just like my aunt’s house in Mississippi when I was growing up.   The house where you were afraid to touch anything.  That’s what good taste means to me—the ability to make everyone else feel that they’ve done everything wrong.  The feeling that you’re only supposed to whisper.   As a grandparent, thats just what I wanted. Just one year in my life, I wanted our house to be so fancy it made kids scared. With awe.   Except now I realize that the reason I used to decorate the house like crazy is the kids.  After waiting years and years and years to finally get rid of the kids, it turns out they were of some use at Christmas.  I decorated for them.  Basically I didn’t care what the neighbors thought of our house—I cared what the kids thought!  Who Knew?   Unfortunately, decorating is one of those housewife things that I feel competitive about. Just once I wanted to look like a catalogue with an elegant table and
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Just Checking Up

Last January I put on my old lady panties, which are like big girl panties only wrinkled, and went to the doctor for a check-up.  It had been a few years but I felt the same, only smug because I still felt the same.  It was good to know the passing years had had no effect on me.  That way I could be sure I wouldn't die--unlike you, who probably will. And the world caved in.  First it turned out that the oxygen thingie they put on your finger said that my oxygen was a little low.  Next I'm at a pulmonologist's and he's telling me I have asthma and need a sleep test.  If you've ever had one of those sleep tests, you've seen what the downside of the next life is going to be.  They hook you up to all these little stress patches and tell you to sleep normally.  Apparently they had me confused with Gandhi. Then they told me I needed a CPAP (pronounced see-pap which sounds like something that would suckle me but isn't) machine.  The CPAP industry is like the dog
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We accidentally drove to Levan Thursday.  I say accidentally because we didn't know it was there, but we wanted to go on the old highway that parallels I-15 going south.  And like Brigadoon, it rose from the asphalt. And like Brigadoon, there was no one there.   It was 4 in the afternoon and we drove around the whole town and finally saw one old man out on the front porch of a really huge house.  Possibly four of the surrounding houses would have fit into it.  He waved, so we knew he wasn't a prop. Then we found another grumpy old man fooling around in his yard in the time honored manner of grumpy old retired men fooling around everywhere in the garage or the yard.  He decidedly didn't wave.  Clearly the man with the big house was happier with things.   Finally we heard the laughter of children and followed it.  It was like a horror movie where you hear the merry trills of children playing and you search around the empty buildings in a deserted town.  Only it was
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A Hobbit Reveals Herself It’s time for the plant catalogues to start coming in. It didn’t mean much a few years ago but now that gardening is officially a hobby (or in other words, Time Filler) I’m pouring over them like they were scriptures.  If I poured over scriptures like I should.   Which I don’t, but should, since the reality of their central theme is getting closer.   Mom and Dad in the early eighties living the life style that allowed them to wear dress ups.   Here are my hobbies:  cooking, reading, researching heath websites in order to extend my life, exercising sporadically (frankly the health research is taking up some of that time), playing the piano, trying to learn French, calling my kids and planning visits to them, visiting with friends, and last but not least, gardening.   Oh, and I run errands.   I love errands.  Errands can be checked off and stacked up as accomplishments.  But they’re usually not too hard and don’t involve too much thought s
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The Thanksgiving Table

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This is what 20 Thanksgiving dinners will buy you: a wash and wear tablecloth with a wild print you could slaughter the turkey on with no change in the pattern; non-red candles that don't stain when they drip; and a bowl of mini-pumpkins you grew yourself because you saw them at 2 for $5 last year and vowed that would never happen to you again.  Experience counts!
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Halloween

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We drag our fire pit out to the front porch and wait like spiders for small children to come to us.  At least, that's what it feels like at our house for Halloween.   This year Clay helped pick out our Halloween candy.  As many wives of retired husbands find, having dad come with to Walmart is an alien experience.  It's losing control, it's having someone pay attention to something you've had to do most of your life that everyone just assumed you would take care of.  The biggest compliment was from Billy at 15 or so: "Mom, I just noticed we never run out of toilet paper."  So sweet, so thoughtful.   Having a husband with opinions in a grocery store is like meeting someone from a foreign country and finding out you both have a few ideas in common.  Like chocolate being the only real candy choice.  I've always felt a little guilty about picking out only chocolate because it's not the cheapest.  I think I've probably felt guilty about a lot of
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