Car-zaganza

            Confession: I like cars.  St. Bob likes to tell the story about how impressed he was when I first saw his Mustang and said, “Nice wheels.”  But I am nowhere near the level of car appreciation that he and our boys are.

            Hence Bob’s visit this last week, to the Detroit Auto Show, celebrating its Silver Anniversary, and luring car-o-philes there despite frigid temperatures hovering just above zero.  Bob went with his brother, Ken (also a car nut—and former car dealer), and the two of them were like kids in a candy shop.

            Here are a few of the confections Bob salivated over, and the photos he took-- a white Porsche Spider, a yellow racing Corvette, a blue Audi, and a red Jaguar:

 

 But most of what he saw were concept cars.  The concept behind concepts is that you put one of these goodies on display and then gauge customer reaction.  But it never, ever gets made as you see it on the show floor.  Now, I ask you, is this not the height of false advertising?  I’ve been to a couple of car shows, and never once has anyone asked for my opinion.  They don’t need to.  They can see everyone drooling and nudging each other and gasping at how fantastic these cars are.  Nobody thinks they’re too extreme.  Everyone’s knees go weak.

            And then they tuck them away, never to be seen again.  Here’s another luscious lump you will never see on the highway.  It's a Kia-- can you believe it?

            This one's a Nissan:

              And check out this red Toyota:

            Car makers have no intention of offering these treats for sale.  They are simply there to torment you and let you dream of what might have been.  Like a sadistic babysitter dangling a lollipop before a toddler and then whisking it away just as the baby reaches for it.

            Check out this sweet ride-- it's a white Lexus:

            And this one-- a white Honda:

           Here's a Toyota motorcycle:

 

           And a plug-in hybrid BMW:

Why don’t they just hire a guy to stand there and say, “Like it? Can’t have it.  Like it?  Can’t have it” over and over.

            I’m telling you, if you went into a bakery or a pie shop, and someone rolled a cart of heavenly creations by and then sang out, “Sorry, hee, hee—you can’t have these” you would be, okay I would be, peeved at the very least.  But, then again, if those same desserts cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, I guess I’d simply stare and them and sigh.

            Just like the guys at the car show.

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Witless Protection

            Twice in my life I have wanted to be in the Witness Protection Program. Today I’ll tell you about one of them, and the other one will be next week.

            St. Bob, the four kids, and I were living in Cedar Rapids, Iowa (another story for another time), and took a drive to Nauvoo, Illinois, two hours away.  It’s like Williamsburg of the Midwest, with free tours of a printing shop, blacksmith, gun shop, bakery—all kinds of authentic old timey stuff that’s both educational and fantastic for the kiddies.  Plus it’s an early Mormon settlement (bigger than Chicago in its day), and since we’re LDS, we couldn’t wait to see it.

            Nauvoo wasn’t the problem.  Driving back and stopping in Fort Madison was the problem.  We pulled into a gas station with a convenience store, and Bob and I both got in a long line to use the restroom.   Bob was nice enough to let me stand ahead of him in line. By the time we got to the restroom door I knew Bob would wait patiently for his turn, rather than risk getting back into the lengthening line.  So I went in, found it in dire need of cleaning, but peeled my jumpsuit down anyway, and hurried along.

            No sooner had I seated myself, with my jumpsuit around my ankles, remember, than a TOTALLY STRANGE MAN came bursting in.  I gasped, probably screamed, who can remember?  My brain began sputtering and sparking, waves of amnesia rolling in to protect me from permanent scarring as I sat there in my underwear, in front of a complete stranger.  He quickly beat a retreat and slammed the door.

            Needless to say, I was mortified.  And furious!  How could Bob let some man come waltzing in like that?  I’m sure my eyes were still bugging out when I dashed from the restroom.  I found Bob over at the Snapple case, AND HE DOESN’T EVEN LIKE SNAPPLE!  

            “How could you do this to me?” I hissed.  “A man just walked in on me!  Why weren’t you guarding the door?”

            “Why didn’t you lock it?” Bob asked.

            “Because it was filthy and I didn’t want to touch it!” My voice was half whisper, half screech.  “Plus I knew you were waiting for your turn and wouldn’t leave the line!” 

            Meanwhile, my now-crimson head was whipping around to see where the intruder guy was, and I dashed from the store in humiliation.  Bob and the kids soon joined me in the mini-van.

            “We’ve got to list the house and move,” I said.  “Out of state.  I can’t risk ever seeing that man again.”  I was ready to have my name changed, all records of my trip through Fort Madison expunged or whatever they do, and for Bob to get a completely new career. 

            He kept trying to blame me for not locking the door, which only made me madder and I fumed the entire way home.  I refused to speak to him as we put the kids to bed, got ready for bed ourselves, and got into bed.  I was still simmering as I turned away, bouncing on the mattress and yanking the covers with a grand sigh of exasperation.

            Finally Bob said, “I know you’re still mad.  But I just want to say one thing.”

            I listened; what choice did I have?

            “I just want to say that if this whole situation had been reversed, and some woman had walked in on me, you would still be laughing.”

            Well, now I was trapped.  He had planted that image in my head and I fought hard not to smile.  I imagined the scene and tried not to giggle.  He was absolutely right: We women think our husband’s embarrassing mishaps are the very definition of hilarity, and if some woman had seen Bob sitting on a toilet, I would still be howling. After half an hour of uncontrolled laughter, I rolled over and apologized.  And that’s one more reason why he gets Saint status.

As the YouTube Mom I have all kinds of videos that teach you life skills and tips, but I probably won’t do one about how to handle a surprise visitor in a restroom.

Do You Have a Favorite Word?

            I love words.  But it’s not just because I’m a writer, or because I score higher on verbal tests than I do on math tests.  And I’m betting you love words, too, for the same reason: It’s how they sound.

            But before I share my favorites, let’s also acknowledge that we all have words that creep us out, words that evoke ugly or negative images, unwelcome words that clomp into our minds and leave mud everywhere.  I know a woman who gets physically ill if she even hears the word “vomit.”  So I guess that’s her least favorite word.

            St. Bob’s least favorite word is “obligate.”  He just doesn’t like the sound of it.  But it’s hard to detach the meanings and only listen for the sounds, which is why so many people hate the words “taxes,” “bankrupt,” “crash,” “excruciating” and other words we’d like to avoid.

            I have several least favorites, mostly because they’re gross, or at least they sound gross.  See if you dislike these as well: belch, bulbous, curdle, dank, goiter, gullet, infarction, magma, mucus, ointment, phlegm, pustule, rickets, scab, spittle, and undulations.  Eww, right?

            And then we have our favorites.  If you could compile a list of the words you like most, they paint a sort of portrait of who we are.  Bob’s are intricate, fun, energetic, and have great flourishes here and there—kind of like Bob himself.  He likes panache, flabbergasted, hummingbird, chameleon, surreptitious, conundrum, escapade, esplanade, bungalow, epiphany, insouciance, lagniappe, mellifluous, buttermilk, and triskaidekaphobia.  He even likes the sound of nemesis and sigmoidoscopy, even though nobody wants either of those.  You could almost guess the kind of music he likes, and the ring tones he’d pick on his cell phone, after reading that list. 

            My list of favorites are soothing and romantic, the sort of perfumey, feminine words a little girl would compile.  I like frosting, shimmer, snowfall, chantilly, halcyon, effervescent, chimes, serendipity, luminous, lyrical, ethereal, heavenly, gossamer, onomatopoeia, and chrysalis.  But my list also includes words that amuse me, like pollywog, funnybone, hullabaloo, hoopla, and skedaddle.  Even “fiasco”  and “curmudgeon” are fun words, despite their meanings. And, sure enough, I have harp music for my ring tone, and my favorite music includes both sweeping symphonies, dreamy vibes, and the bouncy theme songs of several cartoon shows.

          I’ll tell you who will have the best lists—people who speak more than one language.  Now they can choose from two or three times the list I have.  Our daughter, who’s serving a mission in Norway, tells me her favorite Norwegian word is Udødelighet, which means immortality.  But it sounds sort of like “Oh doodley het” and you’ve gotta love anything with “doodley” in it.

          Try my theory, and see if your list of favorite words jibes with your list of favorite music.  We simply like certain sounds.

Did I mention that one of my favorite sounds is my pen, scraping the back of a check as I endorse it for deposit?  Yep, and you can create that sound from wherever you are in the world, just by purchasing my books here.  Wow.

Schlepping for Dollars

            Have you ever seen someone demonstrating new products on a morning TV talk show?  People think this sounds like a glamorous, easy job, right?  Guess what?  I do this, folks, and those three minutes on camera are the only easy part of the entire job.  

The second the segment ends, the work begins.  You pack up your props, grab a cab, head to the airport, fly to a new city, get another cab, check into a hotel, eat, sleep, grab a cab to the TV station, and start all over again.  You visit 10 cities in 10 days (zig-zagging across the country, usually), often hauling giant crates of props that can’t be checked into standard luggage.  You are, basically, a mule with makeup.  And you usually have seven or eight sponsors to please in that short bit of time, so you must memorize all the talking points, yet be flexible enough to chat with the show hosts. 

Airlines lose luggage, sometimes you have to demo food that must be purchased at 4:00 in the morning, and you take taxis around town to find a supermarket open at that hour, so you can get to the TV studio by 5:30.  And you do all this with makeup and hairdo intact.

You are on Eastern time in the morning, and Pacific time that evening.  Then Eastern time again the next day.

You get searched at every airport because none of these flights are round trips—aha!  Just like a terrorist would book flights!  You see a sign in Phoenix that says, “Terminal Baggage Claim,” and you think, yes, that is exactly right. 

         You speak mostly with cab drivers for a week and a half.  Most of them are from countries that do not like America, so you get a history lesson about what is wrong with us as well.  You try to be friendly and ask one of them if he has always lived in New York and he tells you you’re in Orlando.  Oh.

You wait for a Southwest flight in Dallas or Chicago, who can remember, and realize they have sign that says, “Checkin.”  As a word person, this irritates you.   You decide that they can say check in, or check-in, but not just checkin.  It looks like chicken, misspelled.  It looks lazy and sloppy with total disregard for accuracy, and those are not qualities you want in an airline.

“Most people don’t think twice about it,” a fool behind the counter says.  Well of course not.  If someone can’t think once, how are they going to think twice?

You check into a hotel in Atlanta and you see a sign that says, “WELCOME PRO-HEALTH DOCTORS” and you think, “You mean there’s another kind?”  This is where you’ll probably have a fire drill and the halls will fill with boobs who are attending that convention and find nothing wrong with its title.

In Washington D.C. you are booked into a hotel called “Rouge,” where everything is red and I am not joking.  The walls, the beds, all of it: Red.  Okay, the carpet is leopard print.  But the ink in the pens is red.  The mini-bar in each room contains red wax lips.  Naked statues are out front.  And you’re supposed to climb into this bed where God only knows what’s gone on before you got there.

In Los Angeles you see a live dog in the X-ray as a bag is going through.  No one says a word.  Somehow an entire animal goes unnoticed, and these people are worried about manicure scissors.   

At baggage claim a man lifts a gigantic SNAKE from his bag and happily presents it to his delighted boys.  Again, a writhing, 3-foot skeletal system was not detected on the x-ray screen, and then people wonder how movies like “Snakes On a Plane” get made.

But I love this job.  I live for those glorious three minutes.

Portions of this post appear in Sisters in the Mix, a chic-lit comedy about a woman with two things:  OCD and a cooking show.  Available at Amazon and Createspace.