My Happy Place

I used to work with a gal who would jokingly say she was going to retreat to her Happy Place. She didn't really describe it but it seemed to make her happy to talk about it.

I've never had a Happy Place although I'd sometimes try to imagine what it would be. It most certainly would not have anything to do with a beach or an island--or a foreign destination. Thoughts of winning the lottery triggered Happy Speculations but not really a place I could retreat to. Nothing concrete would come to mind.

For the past week, I've been fighting a bad cold and coasting through my days trying to regain my energy. Then a few days ago I realized that when I'm on my computer and blogging or checking emails in the morning, I feel pretty good. When I finished and went to have some lunch, however, I'd crash. My energy level would bottom out and I'd have to take a 2-hour nap.

So, it seems that My Happy Place is at the computer! When I am here I'm being productive and interacting (sort of) but most of all I'm comfortable and content. Now, that's what a Happy Place is all about!

SO, TELL ME ABOUT YOUR HAPPY PLACE!

Whatever happened to pretty hankies?

When was it decided that it was a good idea to cut down trees and grind them up to make products to blow our nose in? What the heck is wrong with using hankies?

Now I must admit that I really hate Kleenix. I have a personal aversion to the feel of it--it's like it leeches the moisture right out of your very protoplasm. I have a similar aversion to flannel sheets and several other things. (I have a niece with the same repulsion, so it must be innate.)

But nevertheless, what's wrong with hankies? In suffering through my current cold, I have been using bandanas as hankies, but they aren't really something you want to flaunt in public. Sadly, you never see anybody carrying pretty hankies anymore. Today, everybody carries disgusting little balls of tissue.

I remember when I was a little kid, I carried a little hanky with me to Sunday School. Mom would tie a dime in the corner for Offering, and always with the admonition, "Now don't lose this." Being the bearer of a dime was a big deal and not to be taken lightly.

Mom would sometimes receive birthday cards from her sisters with a pretty hanky inside. Like most little girls, I learned how to iron by starting out with hankies--Dad's big white ones with colored stripes around the borders and the rest with floral prints or embroidery. There was something satisfying about a neatly stacked pile of fresh hankies.

I have my one-and-only real hanky lying here by my computer. It has scalloped edges embroidered in pink and a floral design in one corner. I don't remember where I got it but it's very old. It would have been perfect for tying a dime in the corner.

The Joy of skunks

Tonight on Nature on PBS, they did a documentary about skunks. It was entertaining and enlightening. But the most interesting fact I learned was that I am not the only person in the world who can't smell skunk!

I have always wondered about this strange disability. When I was a kid, my mom always remarked on my good sense of smell. This earned me the privilege of being called upon to smell the milk to see if it had turned. Yet, when we traveled down the road and the rest of the family would suddenly cry, "Pew! Somebody hit a skunk!" I would smell nothing unusual. To this day, I have never had the experience of smelling skunk.

The documentary featured a skunk researcher who is unable smell skunks, and didn't know it till he started working with them. He now has 80 skunks at his facility.

They really are delightful little things. Of course, I'm a sucker for a furry face no matter what the species.

I really have to get out more!

Time out

I'm sick with a cold.

Enough said!

TCF-- the Bamboozle Bank

My daughter gave me a TCF Visa gift card for my birthday in August. I recently read in the paper that sometimes they charge a fee on such cards.

I checked the teeny-tiny print at the bottom of the card and sure enough, the buggers charge $2 a month. Being a thrift-minded gal, I decided to exchange it for cash that I could hoard in a coffee can and spend at will--or, deposit in my savings account--something reasonable like that.

So, I took the card to the cashier at my TCF bank. She was a small Asian girl with a sweet face. Without blinking an eye, she told me there is a $20 fee for turning it into cash!

Arrrrgh! (That's pirate talk for those who aren't into banking.)

This means I have to use the card before they start attaching fees to it, whether I want to or not. I'm nonplussed at this turn of events, not to mention plenty ticked off.

After all the value I've lost on my retirement annuity in past quarters, I'm beginning to think coffee cans are a darn good idea.

Watching TV

I watch a lot of TV--I'm that kinda gal. When I was a kid, the ultimate entertainment was going to a movie. My earliest memories of films were Blondie and Red Skelton in The Fuller Brush Man. I dreamed of living over a movie theater with a little window facing the screen so I could see every single film.

And then came TV!

In 1953, when I was in the 8th grade we got our first TV set. It was a Muntz brand TV. We lived more than 60 miles from the nearest broadcaster, so the picture was snowy and unstable. The set had 13 channel selections but we only got reception on two channels, poorly. We had an electric antenna rotor on top of the TV which turned the antenna up on the roof to pick up the signal whenever we turned the channel. There were buttons on the front of the set for adjusting the vertical hold and horizontal hold; this had to be done frequently.

There was a lot of physical activity involved in watching TV in those days. Every time the picture started to roll, somebody had to jump up and fix it, or, to change the channel, or turn the antenna--especially in windy weather. Rain storms or ice on the antenna or a loose wire could screw it up for days.

My younger brother, Bob, said a kid in his 6th grade class told him that when the picture started to roll, if you extended your arm and vigorously waved your hand from side to side, it would stop rolling. Being new to the television experience, we went along with it. I don't remember how long we kept that nonsense up, but it never worked.

There was a true personal commitment in watching TV in those days. I rushed home from school every day to watch Atom Squad and Topper. No more Nancy Drew books for me!

To this day, I'm devoted to watching the tube. Only now I prefer dramas, documentaries and news programs--and a bunch of other stuff.

When John Lithgow received an Emmy for his show Third Rock from the Sun. He raised it and declared, "God bless television!"

And I say, "Hear, hear!"

The Thing that conquered Angels

I took my age off of my Profile. It bothered me to see it there because my age doesn't define me. I am not really that old in my mind and I don't want you to mistake me for an old lady.


I don't list my astrological sign either since it has never even been close to describing me or my life. It used to bother me; my personal expectations were geared toward what the horoscope said about me. It was always wrong, which made me feel like a putz. I finally decided to stop looking at my horoscope since it was bringing me down. I still sneak a peek at it once in a while, and it's still consistently wrong.

When I was a child, I tried to believe in angels. Hansel and Gretel had angels watch over them while they slept. But, hard as I tried, I could never sense anybody watching over me.

I could have used some angels back in 1951. We had moved to an old farm house way out in the boonies for the summer. The house and abandoned out-buildings were at the end of a long dirt drive and surrounded by a dense grove. It was really primitive--there was electricity but no plumbing.

On Saturday nights, my parents, three siblings and I went into the nearest little town for shopping. While Mom and Dad got groceries and stuff, we would go to a movie. Movies were the ultimate entertainment and I loved them all. When I saw a preview for movie called, The Thing, I begged my mom to let me go to see it. I knew it was a monster movie but thought in my naive 10-year-old mind that it would be a typical "Scooby Doo-type" plot. I was not prepared for the monster to be a "real" alien creature.

I was traumatized by that movie. I spent the entire summer afraid to be alone. I slept flat on my back with the covers pulled up to my chin in terror that the alien's severed hand would come and grab me. I retain a sickening memory of that house and even occasionally dream about it.

I still can't help but wonder why that alien hand was more real to me than the angels.

(Howard Hawk's The Thing from Another World is still available, but the 1982 remake of John Carpenter's The Thing starring Kurt Russell is much better.)