Happy Birthday, America!

          I kind of love the Fourth of July. 

          I do not love the loud firecrackers just yards away, that scare my pets to the point of distraction and make me run through the house to find them before they leave surprises under my bed, which I wrote about here, nor do I love the sweltering heat that manages to engulf my town this time of year.

          But I love the Star Spangled Banner.  It’s my very favorite song and I cry every single time I hear it. I love the story of how it came to be written and I love the way strangers stand together with their hands over their hearts whenever it is played. 

          I love the Declaration of Independence, paintings of our Founding Fathers, Old Glory, and every veteran who ever served to protect freedom.  Anywhere.

          I love a flag raising, a free pancake breakfast like the one my church is serving today, outdoor barbecues and picnics (with pie!), little kids pedaling decorated tricycles, brass bands in a gazebo, and sparkly fireworks blooming against a starry sky.  I love seeing elderly people dressed up in all the red-white-and-blue they can find, and wish young people did the same.

          And so today I salute every person who came to America for freedom, every descendant of the same, and everyone who stands with us for liberty and justice for all.  

          Now go sing the Star Spangled Banner, all four verses. Out loud. Be grateful for those who made your life possible. If you live in another country, come visit me and we'll sing it, then join me for a slice of pie.

And take a look-see at my youtube videos here, where you’ll learn all kinds of life skills that will make you enjoy this lucky life of yours even more.

         

The Patience Patient

          I have a patience problem.  I’ve had it my whole life, as pointed out by my first grade teacher when she wrote on my report card, “Joanie has a hard time being patient with her peers.”

          I changed the spelling to Joni as soon as I realized it would save time.  Sigh. 

          Just today I called my doctor’s office and heard the recording say, “If you’re impatient, press One.”  Are you kidding me?  A doctor’s office is finally learning to streamline the callers and get us right through before we shoot somebody?  Wow!  I pressed one immediately.

          Turns out the recording said, “If you’re a patient.”  Oh, good grief. Think how much better life would be if you could select the personality traits causing you problems.  If you’re impatient, press One to get right through.  If you’re insecure, press Two for compliments. If you’re angry, press Three for some calming spa music.  If you’re a tightwad, Press Four to hear about local bargains.

          I did some research and it turns out there’s a name for what I have.  It’s called Hurry Up Syndrome.  I thought, “Wait—that’s a thing?”  Yes, apparently some of us feel pressed to rush through life at breakneck pace, which explains my driving, my inability to watch a parade, and my sprinkling Miracle Gro directly on my plants.

         There’s plenty of expert online advice for folks who have this.  Slow down.  Nap.  Take deep breaths.  Ha!  You can tell the experts don’t have this disorder because all their suggestions only exacerbate the situation, making us feel we have to run even faster to make up for the “helper” who tried to slow us down.

And anyway, why can’t we stay revved up and productive?  So what if we’re predisposed to push ourselves?  If you can make stress work in your favor, then why tinker with a good thing?  Maybe the articles should be offering advice to others about how they can get a move on.

Or we just need to marry people with a sense of humor.  When I told St. Bob about an infuriating phone recording that said, “You must wait ten seconds,” he said, “You just heard them wrong.  It probably said, ‘You’re a ten and you’re sexy.’”  Okay, for that I will stop and listen.

Hurry on up to the “subscribe” box on this page, and make sure you get these posts twice a week.  Or, do it at your leisure.  Who am I to say?

Yet Another Career I’ll Never Have

          I think we can all agree that some jobs take more than training; they take innate ability.  For example, you could train to be a surgeon, but if you’re squeamish, you’ll faint and bomb out of that career.

          If you like to sing, but you simply don’t have the pipes, you will probably not become a recording artist.  (You might, however, get your 15 minutes of fame on a TV talent show.)

          Hence, someone with ADD should probably reconsider burglary as a profession. 

          Yesterday I read in the news that a burglar was caught after he broke into someone’s house, used their computer to visit his Facebook page, and then forgot to log out.  Ah, yes—no one ever said this was a job for geniuses only.

          I would imagine burglary might require a skill set I do not possess, not least of which is remembering to log out, should I suddenly decide to scroll through social media postings while I am at work (can’t you get fired for that?)  Picking locks and carrying heavy loot are also talents I lack, not to mention being willing to climb through spidery bushes.

         I would also have a tough time briskly walking past a kitchen table with a domed cake plate in the center of it.  What could be under there?  Could it be chocolate? And where do they keep the forks?

          I would also be a terrible police detective.  A stakeout in a parked car after about 10 pm would be out of the question—I’d fall asleep.  And I would no more walk down a dark alley after midnight than hit myself in the head with a hammer.  Criminals hang out in scary places where I have absolutely no interest in going.

          Unless I’m solving a crime in somebody’s home.  And then, of course, I’d check their computer and their cake plate.  Those are magnets for people who can’t stay on task.  Trust me.

Even if you’re “borrowing” someone else’s computer, you can subscribe to this bi-weekly blog of brilliance.  Do it today, and don’t miss a single post!

Where Tortilla Roll-Ups Originated

           You’ve seen them, you’ve eaten them.  They’re practically a staple at every potluck and wingding, right?  Layers of meat, cheese, and lettuce rolled up tightly in a tortilla, then cut to reveal a pretty pinwheel design.  But do you remember when these burst onto the culinary scene?

          I shall tell you. It was a cold and rainy day.  I take that back.  It was a hot and sultry day. We were living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and the wasps were out.  But these were not the wasps I was used to, that build nests high up under the eaves.  These were sneakier ones.  Digger wasps.  They had built nests in the ground by our sidewalk!  Every evening, just as neighbors were strolling by, they would come zooming out in their yellow-and-black bomber jackets and terrorize the public. We tried every safe method we could think of to eradicate them.

          And then the phone rang.  When I answered, I thought I heard a woman say, “Hello, this is Shirley Pennington from the Iowa Bee Council.”

          Oh, no!  We’re being sued!  And fined!  Someone got stung and reported us!

          It took a few minutes of “Who’s on First” conversation for me to learn that Shirley wasn’t from the Bee Council; she was from the BEEF Council.  Well, that’s a cow of a different color entirely.

          Turns out I was a finalist in the state’s Beef Cookoff!  And my creation?  Savory Beef and Cheese Rollups.  

           I had just started entering cooking contests and was thrilled.  My buddy, Deniece Schofield, drove with me to Des Moines where I won, then I was selected to go to Arkansas for the National Beef Cookoff.

           This time St. Bob was available to come along. 

           Neither of us expected my little sandwich to do very well, since it isn’t the same as cooking an elaborate entry.  But I took 3^rd place!  And, I dare say, my little sandwich stepped into history that day.  Here's an article about it.

          You can see the recipe here. It was 1995, and I’ll betcha you never had a tortilla roll-up before then. 

          This is just infinitely better than getting sued for wasp stings.   

Although I can even help you with bug bites, if you check out my short YouTube Mom videos here.

         

People Training 101

            I am a dog person.  I am also a cat person, a horse person, and an everything-but-spiders person.  This means I am a sucker for big eyes and cave in on the rules when it comes to cuteness.

            But I have lately decided to teach tricks to my Taco Terrier.  Mickey (so named because she has a Mickey Mouse–shaped spot on her back) is half Chihuahua and half miniature Fox Terrier.  Her brain is the size of a grape, so I am not expecting much.

            I begin with the world’s tiniest treats, to reward her for piddling outside.  This has escalated into a ticker tape parade with her racing around the coffee table every time she comes back in, to get multiple treats as if she has invented a time machine or something.  She has not.  She is, in fact, getting paid for breathing.  Okay, breathing and piddling.  Here she is, hiding under a blanket and giving a raspberry to the family:

            From housebreaking I have moved up to costume wearing.  Here she is at Christmas:

            And this is her Halloween costume:  

She was not cooperative in either instance and is the canine equivalent of Mr. Scrooge, actually.  She is also unable to catch a ball, and hides from it.

So I am taking a tip from the animal trainers at Sea World, and using behaviors she already exhibits, to make it look like I have trained her to do something amazing.  For example, she stretches out on the carpet every morning at which point I say, “Do your yoga, Mickey!”  And then I reward her. But she doesn’t fall down and stretch when I say it any other time of day.  So she has basically trained me to reward her for waking up and stretching. 

My latest plan is to shout, “Do nothing, Mickey!  ‘Atta girl, just ignore me!  Pay no attention to what I’m saying!”  She has this one down, already.  I just need to be quicker with the treats.

Dog training is not one of my YouTube videos, but tons of other life skills are—check them out here, and amaze your friends.

Two Guys, One Surprise

            It started out to be a lovely weekend.  Not only was it Father’s Day, but on Saturday our son, Richie (yes, the one you’ve read about here who blew up the kitchen and is making a death ray out of our TV) graduated from UC Davis with a B.S. in Geology and a B.A. in Philosophy.  This means he can argue about rocks all day long.

            Turns out there’s a new custom—the grads are all decorating their mortar board caps.  It probably started a few years ago when a student put a star or something on his cap, so his parents could find him from their seats in the bleachers.  Like everything else, it escalated and today some of them put sparkles around the edges, and one had lettering that said, “I don’t even go here.”

            So all the geology graduates decided to follow suit.  But Richie didn’t just scatter some rocks on there.  He made an ACTIVE VOLCANO.  First he sculpted the cone from papier mache, then painted it, then filled it with flashing red lights and dry ice that poured smoke over the top. The whole thing was held on the cap with super strong magnets. You couldn’t miss him, and it was the unqualified hit of the entire assemblage.

            Afterwards his friends, including Clare, Kayla, Derek, Mara, and others threw him a fabulous barbecue party, and then the very next day we motored back out to Davis for a delicious Father’s Day dinner he made for St. Bob.  In all, a joyous weekend of celebration, right up until we were saying goodbye.

            And then, for no reason any sane person can think of, Richie happens to say, “You know our society is selectively breeding rattle snakes that don’t rattle.”

            What?  I pictured mad scientists in a lab creating future mayhem for the entire population of the world.  “Who’s doing this?”

            “We are.  Because we’re killing the ones that rattle,” he said.

            OH MY GOSH.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

            And now I’m scared to walk to the car, scared to get in it, scared out of my wits.  So now anywhere we go there could be a silent rattle snake, coiled up and ready to strike.

            My eyes are the size of fried eggs the entire way home.  And then St. Bob says, “Hey, did you see that dead snake in the road?”  and I laugh because I am 100 per cent certain he is just kidding.  Only he’s not. 

            He makes a U-Turn and there is a THREE FOOT SNAKE in the street right by our house!!!  One exclamation point for every foot of snake. 

            I don’t know if it’s a rattler—it’s not a diamond back, at least—but there has never been a dead snake in the road in all the 11 years we’ve lived here.  I hate creepy coincidences.

            So how was your weekend?

All the more reason to stay inside with a nice, quiet book.  I recommend the literary novel, Pinholes Into Heaven, or the hilarious chick-lit novel, Sisters in the Mix, or the romantic adventure, Jungle.  Although there is a snake in that last one.

Thinking ON the Box

            To quote the Music Man, “Ya got trouble, folks!  Right here in River City.

Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Packaging!”

            Okay, I took some liberties with that last word.  But stay with me.  There’s a whole sub culture swirling around us that most of us don’t even notice. It’s the world of packaging. 

Everything we buy is presented to us in some way that makes us want to grab it and shell out money for it.  People study this in college, people work at it in full time careers, and we fall victim to it every day.

   Like commercials, colorful packages beckon to us.  Buy me, buy me! they say.  There are even conventions and award ceremonies to celebrate innovative holders for things innovative people convince us to buy.

   So you would think they would triple check everything on the package, right?  No typos, here, no Sir!  No untrue claims, no silly phrases.

            And a big company like Kellogg’s—you’d think their packages would have the best descriptions of all, right?  Well, it turns out that St. Bob likes to eat their Raisin Bran Crunch for breakfast now and then.  

           This morning I was sitting beside him munching on a breakfast that’s none of your business—okay, FINE!  A LEMON BAR— when I happened to see the back of the box. And there, in tiny white lettering on a red background, it says, “Kellogg’s cereal with ½ Cup  milk plus an 8 oz. glass of milk is a good source of protein and gives you the calcium, Vitamin D and potassium your body needs.”

 Huh?  Read that again.  You need half a cup of milk with the cereal, and then another whole glass of milk to get the right nutrients?  Does the cereal count for nothing?  And who drinks a glass of milk when they’re having cereal with milk?

If it were me, and I couldn’t promise my product met the minimum daily requirements, I wouldn’t even bring it up.  Right?  Just show healthy, energetic people who look like they’ve never had a tastier thing in their life.  Focus on those two amazing scoops of raisins and call it a day.

Does this mean that the glass of milk I had with my lemon bar turned the entire thing into a fitness fiesta?

Not long ago I bought a paint remover that boasted, “Semi-odorless!” on the label.  What?  There’s a smell?  Hey, if you can’t say “odorless,” why bring the matter up?  Something tells me there are two products that won’t be sweeping the packaging awards this year.

No fancy packaging, just fabulous books await you at Kindle and in hard copies at CreateSpace, when you order my latest three novels-- Jungle, Sisters in the Mix, and Pinholes Into Heaven.