Sometimes there’s a need to be very, very specific.

She’s 7, and in the Me-centric world of a person who’s only inhabited space on this earth for a few years, she believes that everything she perceives is exactly what everyone else perceives. This is one of the purest definitions of the innocence of childhood; touching while it’s present and sad when it’s lost to reality.

She’s having a sick day at home on the living room couch. She maybe has a fever, and definitely the tummy is iffy. She wants the sheet on, then off, then on but with her feet out.

I’m a visiting, volunteer brow-soother. I change the cool cloth on her forehead, and since her mom is at work, she feels the need to explain to me exactly how this will go. Her comments are phrased in the form of questions, but she delivers them in a weary, oh-brother-here-we-go-again tone.

“You know how when you feel sick sometimes it starts in your head? But sometimes it starts in your tummy? Then you can feel it coming up from here?”

She pats her tummy.

“And then you start to cry? And then you throw up.”

The “you start to cry” part gets me.

She watches intently, to make sure I haven’t missed a step. She wants to know that her particular brand of sick is the one understood by anyone in charge, and since I’m not her mom, she’s careful to be specific, assuring herself I’ll do everything right.

“And then, will you please call mom at work and ask her if I can have some Canada Dry?’

This, she evidently believes, is a magic potion that makes the tummy stop what it’s doing. No sense reminding her that she’s keeping nothing down at the moment, so I assure her I’ll call her mom at work soon.

She flips over onto her side, curling up, turning her back to SpongeBob on T.V., clutching her tummy, struggling with the inevitability of the sequence she’s just described.

We dash to the bathroom and minutes later, with the washcloth refreshed on her forehead, I sit in a chair near her, paging through magazines, hoping she’ll get some rest. She asks,

“Did you know you can make a really cool tent with your feet? I’ll show you. You put your feet up like this.”

She’s got one foot in the air, propping up the sheet, but then the leg comes down again and she says,

“I’ll show you how later.”

Tummy calmed, within minutes she’s asleep. I’ll stay in this chair for a while, because when she wakes up, I’m sure there’ll be more specific instructions to come.

Here come the Naked Ladies.

By Anita Garner

People say Naked Ladies are practically indestructible, but I assumed I’d lost mine. Earlier this year in my yard, a tree had to be removed right next to where the Naked Ladies bloomed last summer, and everything around the tree got uprooted.

I like it best when Naked Ladies show up in unlikely places. At the edge of town there’s a strip of land alongside the road and that patch of earth, unlike the rest of this mostly manicured area  (Mill Valley is a very well kept little village) remains inexplicably overrun with weeds. Last summer, a gorgeous line-up of feisty Naked Ladies popped up in the midst of the weeds. I wonder how they got there. Hope they’re back this year.

Driving in Sonoma County to visit friends in Sebastopol, I turned off the freeway to take a parallel road through the beautiful countryside and Naked Ladies nodded at me all along my route. I arrived at the driveway of my Sebastopol friends and admired the profusion of Naked Ladies along their fence. My friend, the only person I’ve ever heard say a discouraging word about a perfectly harmless pink flower, said, “I don’t like them. Never have.” I asked what does he have against Naked Ladies and he said, “They make me sad. They have no leaves and that’s no way for a flower to be.”

I, on the other hand, applaud their fortitude. Within the last week, the Naked Ladies have started marching all over town, so just now I checked the bare spot in my front yard and sure enough, four of them are poking through. Soon, these little shoots will once again resemble the grownup Ladies in the picture above.

******

Kid walks into a greeting card store…

We are looking for a card for her mommy. She used to draw her own cards and they were filled to the edges with hearts and flowers and xxxxoooo, but since she learned to read, she prefers to pick one herself from the selection at Target.

When I’m in her town, we shop together. It turns out many of the cards on the bottom rows – the only part of the rack she can reach – are the ones featuring bad puns and broad humor. She’s loving this. I reach up to show her several cards with sweet sayings.

Me: “Look, they have other kinds of cards here too.”

She’s 7. She loves princesses and pink, but is equally fond of gross, and, I quickly learn, she’s a very independent shopper. Her sense of humor involves all things icky and yucky, and when rude sounds can be incorporated, all the better. If memory serves, her Mother’s Day card featured a monkey. For Easter, she chose a card with two cartoon rabbits teasing each other.

She: “This is hilarious!”

Me: “Or, here’s another pretty one.”

She: (offended) “Mom will like this one.”

And she was right, of course.

Until she gets taller, the sentiment is circumstantial, and based on what I’ve seen of the bottom row, her mom can expect lots of animal jokes and things that pop out when she opens her cards. Mom may someday receive more hearts and flowers, but she’ll have to wait ‘til her kid can reach the next rows up.

© Anita Garner 2012

Movies without popcorn?

Every time I think about the recently released actual calorie/fat content of movie popcorn, it ruins the prospect of seeing a new movie. I’m incapable of sitting in a movie theatre without the popcorn. In fact, theatre popcorn is one of the main reasons for going out to see a movie.

I understand this is illogical, and that if too many other people felt this way, it would be bad for the movie industry. Fortunately, most people are willing to engage their rational minds at the theatre, but for me, considerations of whether I go to a theatre for the film or for the popcorn are moot, because I know I’m not going to have one without the other.

At home, I don’t make popcorn every time I watch a movie. I subscribe to Netflix and pay for just about every premium cable channel, so there are plenty of movie-watching choices here. But at the theatre, I must have it. Of course there’s no fair comparison, because nothing we make at home is exactly like the golden/fragrant/caloric pile of pure bliss that’s scooped into those bags and handed over the counter.

Shall I go now, or wait ‘til the movie’s released on dvd and save my hips the punishment? Those aren’t the only options, you say? Well, of course not, but mature choices don’t play a role in this decision.

Armed with this knowledge about the nutritional damage I’m inflicting on myself at the theatre (I’m including a link, below, to one of the many stories about this) I now have reached the same point as the over-stimulated, overwrought, pouting child, when the adult in charge, frustrated from trying to broker an agreement, asks, “Well, then if that’s the way you feel, would you rather have none?”

I guess it’ll be none for me, until I really, really want to see a movie so badly (before the dvd release) that I will go ahead and wade into another grease-smeared bag of guilt.

Popcorn story from web.md:

http://www.webmd.com/food-recipes/news/20091119/movie-theater-popcorn-a-calorie-bomb

Coffee Culture

 

I like the concept of a coffee culture. Caffeine is my vice of choice and Starbucks is most often the place where I imbibe.  We have a couple of small, family-run restaurants left, but we didn’t really have a meet-me-for-coffee place until Starbucks built several.

Of the four Starbucks locations close to me, one is so popular that my only complaint is it’s tough to find a seat. I love the idea of being comfortable hanging around with your latte for as long as you want, until the concept means I can’t find a table. One location in my small town has become a satellite office, with every surface covered with laptops, simultaneous cell phone conversations, and meetings large enough to occupy several tables pushed together.

So now I avoid peak times. Early mornings and mid-afternoons are best. That’s when my favorite Starbucks resembles exactly the kind of coffee-shop-as-small-town-microcosm their critics claim they eroded. At one of the long wooden tables there’s a moms’ group with strollers tucked into a nearby corner. Another couple of tables hosts knitters. Knitters who chat. Very early in the morning, a phalanx of uniformed peace officers waits to order. Arriving mid-afternoon, with walkers and canes, here come the rabble-rousing residents of the senior community across the road.

There’s moaning about Starbucks being such a chain operation. I’m personally comforted by the consistency of their look and feel, the clean restrooms, and even the music they play. Critics scoff at the “pretension” of their coffee language – completely made up to impart the aura of a never-did-exist European coffee experience. Clever marketing, I say.

But I’m not objective, because I have a small entrepreneurial crush on Howard Schultz, who put a group together to buy out the originators of the Starbucks brand in Seattle and personally became involved (some say too involved) in every aspect of every cup of coffee sold. Everything about the building of the company interests me, its ups and downs and adjustments, and Schultz’ buck-stops-here recent comeback after closing many stores.

If you have a welcoming, independent local coffee shop that serves all your needs, you’re lucky, and I will never demean the efficiency of a roadside McDonald’s for coffee and a baked apple pie, but for everyday caffeine ingestion in pleasant circumstances, Starbucks is just fine.

The silly side of aging

Age Gain Now Empathy Suit
Jokes about getting old begin in childhood and continue for decades until – gasp – one actually shows signs of age. It’s another case of it’s funny ‘til it’s not. Even when the joke’s on me, I get it, I really do. We joke because what else are we gonna do?

Hooray for Baby Boomers, whose aging numbers are now so great that their wants and needs can’t be ignored. ’Bout damn time.

As we recognize each new twinge and wonder why we keep forgetting things, scientists are busy studying ways to simulate these conditions, illustrating for a younger crowd exactly how bodies feel as we adjust to increasing years.

Enter AGNES, the pretend-you’re-old suit developed at MIT.

http://agelab.mit.edu/agnes-age-gain-now-empathy-system
AGNES is an experimental piece of wardrobe that duplicates symptoms of aging so that no matter who’s wearing it (her) the facts of life are right there.

This is not for completely altruistic reasons, of course. Marketers want to appeal to the buying side of this burgeoning population. Research can help them make labels easier to read and help designers insure easier navigation of steps and walkways. All kinds of entrances and exits and hardware are being examined right this minute.

For instance – would you like to get into and out of the next new car you buy much more easily than before (without the appearance of actually being older?) The answers are coming right up.

We who are just ahead of Baby Boomers would have gladly told the researchers these things for free. In fact we tried; we’ve been vocal about aging for a while now, but until the marketing opportunities aimed at millions of older Boomers appeared, not many wanted to listen. So thanks, Boomers, for moving into the land of “Have you seen my keys?”