Pulling Weed = Needing Pot

Don’t tell my mom but…

How many times have I started a blog with that line? I should go back and look.

Okay, so let me start again. Don’t tell my mom but, I’m using pot. Neti Pot, that is. For those of you who’ve never heard of a neti pot, it’s a cheap, at-home, saline irrigation system that cleans out all of the crap in your nasal passages. Just heat up 6 ounces of water, dissolve in 1 ½ teaspoons of salt (preferably sea salt or kosher salt harvested directly from Lake Wobegon or Lake Michigan if you can get it) and let it cool down to lukewarm - but NOT matthew, mark or johnwarm. Then pour it into your neti pot. This is where the fun begins. Stick the open end of the neti pot into one of your nostrils, tilt your head and pour half of the solution into one nostril and watch in shock and awe as it comes out the other nostril. Then repeat on the other side with the remaining half of the mixture. Seriously. I’m not kidding. It’s sort of like laughing and having milk come out of your nose but this is on purpose.

April is pollen season in the south and this year, it came early and is overstaying its welcome. I love being in the yard when the temps are good, like right now, but this is getting a bit ridiculous. The neti pot is getting a work out that almost warrants a gym membership. I’m also washing way too many bandanas, and not because they contain “working in the yard” sweat. I’ll leave the “what I’m washing off of them” to your imagination and your own personal nostrils.

I’m off work today. As is always the case when I’m home alone without anyone to talk to but the cat, my mind wanders (or as they say in disability applications when they are trying to get approved for cognitive issues, my mind “wonders.”). Today I was home from work for a specific reason that caused my mind to “wonder” about words that weren’t in my vocabulary until my adult life. Take for example, “Sub-Zero”. This new word is the reason I’m home today; I’m waiting on Seth, the refrigerator diagnostician. You know what that means? It means that I’m going to pay for a service call today and I’m only going to find out what’s wrong with the fridge. Then I’ll have to take another day off work, and pay more money, so that the repair technician can come out and fix it. So here we go in Jeopardy speak: “a large stainless steel chilling apparatus that looks really cool for ten years but ultimately repair costs are the same as a brand new Kenmore. What is Sub-Zero?

In the meantime, at least the beer is a bit colder than lukewarm (who would have thought one could use the word lukewarm twice in just a few short paragraphs?). And since the freezer section is working just fine, there’s plenty of ice for frozen drinks. So while I wait for Seth, I might as well get outside on this blue-sky Atlanta day and pull weeds – even if it means filling my nose with pollen, such that I once again need pot…neti pot…yet another new adult word.

So back we are, full circle, to the net pot. Well, almost. Just one more thing.

Mom hated it when we kids came in from the sandbox and washed our dirty hands in the kitchen sink. In fact she wouldn’t allow it. I’m guessing it’s because it would interfere with the plastic sandwich baggies she had washed and was drying so that they could be used again? Or maybe it was just that she was a home economics major and this was part of her training? Either way we had to go to the bathroom to scrub our grimy mitts. Or if we were at Grandma and Grandpa O’s, we could use the sink in the entry room, where there was always some really cool abrasive soap – the kind that could scrub off tractor engine, chainsaw, cherry picker and snowmobile grease AND I bet could even be added to the laundry to freshen up a well-worn Carhartt jacket.

So if mom hated those dirty paws in the kitchen sink, imagine what she might say if she saw me employing the services of a neti pot over the kitchen sink? There’s no handed down from generation to generation protocol for where to use a neti pot. Maybe next time she’s in town, I’ll give her a demonstration and let her determine the guidelines. Or maybe I’ll just keep pulling weed and using (neti) pot in the kitchen sink.

When are you coming to visit again mom?

For those of you in the Atlanta area – see you at the Inman Park Festival this weekend?

What I Need

I'm 45 now...I don't need anyone telling me what I need. Yet at every turn, I'm being bombarded with just that. But you know what, my parents don't even tell me what I need anymore. They just support me in what I choose to need - and in the end, isn't that all we care about, what our parents think? Well, let's be truthful here, what our moms think?

I've been saving the below Wachovia letter for the perfect blog entry but I was just too pissed to write anything related to it. I had to wait for the anger to pass before I could attach any logical words. Whether or not the following is logical will have to be decided by my dear readers (or my dear reader, my mom, and that's okay since all that matters is what she thinks).

So I've gone ahead and let the straws build up on the camel's back. And now my ramblings are being book-ended by Wachovia and the Jehovah Witnesses... or is it Witnessea? (I never did get my Latin right, but I sure loved my Latin teacher). Either way, you can always count on either of these two organizations to drive you to blog...or consider forging narcotic pain medication prescriptions. Thankfully the former came first.

Wachovia had the nerve to tell me that they know what I need “in times like these.” And by “in times like these” did they mean “when another department within our company decides to reduce your home equity line to zilch”? Because that’s exactly what they had just done not two days prior.

Yup, that’s right. Just as we were about to sign on the dotted line to have a screened porch added to the back of our house, Wachovia decided that our casa was worth nada. And while our house was worth nothing and therefore had no equity, they could still offer us a credit card with a “generous credit line,” no annual fee and 0% APR. No thanks. We’ll just save up our own cash and reduce our need to use Wachovia as much as possible.

So when the below pamphlet fell out of the front door jam today, the need thing just blew up again. You see, the Jehovah Witnesses know how families can really be happy and they think you need to know.

Apparently, if you are a white heterosexual (assumedly) male, all you need in order to enjoy family life is a boy in queen-looking white overalls (preferably made by Oshkosh B’Gosh), a girl in a toile jumper, two white dogs, a cockatiel, a blue button-up shirt and a wife who likes to wear hoop earrings and sundresses while sitting at your feet and looking directly at your belt.

By the way, there is also a key to happiness needs assessment for black males and Asian males included in this publication. However, I thought that would be not only overkill but excessive advertising material for the JW’s if I were to post it here. However, feel free to drop by and review this publication yourself. It will be in a stack on the coffee table in the love pit, right between copies of the Yoga Sutras and Vegetarian Times right next to my edition of The Torah and my friend’s girlfriend’s recent book entitled Sin, Sex and Democracy.

Okay, so I don’t own a copy of The Torah...but I’ve always wanted to so just go with me on this one and pretend. Afterall, we all need to pretend now and again don't we?

The Ridiculous Things

Now that I'm sober for the first time in 72 hours (no, not really mom), I can finally sit back and reflect on my first three days of vacationing all by my little, middle-aged, self. I started off with wonderful visions of reading, writing, sleeping in, exercising, basking in the sun, eating well, drinking low calorie beer during the day, drinking wine at night and just plain pampering myself. Most of those things have in fact been done, and even overdone, but this is my first time sitting down to write. And I'm only doing it because I thought the movie (Sunshine Cleaners) was at 4:30 - but when I got there I found out it started at 4:00 and they were already beyond the previews. Well, it's not that I haven't done ANY writing, I made a few notes in the very cool "reverse book" Doc. B. got me as a bon voyage gift but I hadn't done anything with the notes or written anything substantial.


Truth is, I've spent way too much time trying to get onto the internet. It's really almost sick. According to my statistical measurements, I can only get onto the web once every 18th attempt. Yeah, I'd say that qualifies as moderate to severe obsessive compulsive disorder complicated by generlized anxiety disorder and resulting in a major depressive disorder. It's again almost sick - the elated feeling I get when I am able to get onto the web. So this time, I decided I had to at least do something with all of the notes I'd made on the pages of my going away gift.


Interestingly, the notes had a common theme - ridiculous things. It all started because of the early Saturday Farmer's (Morningside) Market trip I made with Doc. B. before heading off on my vacation. I witnessed something I'd never seen before at a farmer's market - haggling. Doc. B. was chatting it up with one of the vendors about how to cook fiddlehead ferns while another customer was holding up a bag of beautiful field greens that were clearly marked $4.00. The customer had the nerve to say "Will you take $3.00 for these?" I looked at the vendor intently wondering what his response would be but instead I witnessed him become speechless. After a pause, the vendor said, "I guess so?" But then, the even more ridiculous thing was that the customer handed the vendor a ten dollar bill, collected his $7.00 in change and walked off with his chest high in air. I couldn't resist, I had to ask the vendor if he had ever experienced a bargaining customer before - he had to admit that he had not. But he brushed it off saying that he had 50 more of those bags in his truck and that he was hopeful that he'd sell them all that day. I just couldn't get past the fact that these are farmers who truck in their goods every weekend and may or may not make a decent living - depending on knowledge, mother nature, God, luck, or whatever/whomever they rely on to bring them a good crop. And of course, I didn't know anything about the customer, maybe he had just lost his job or was down on his luck - but come on, to haggle a farmer's market vendor out of a dollar? Ridiculous.



So here are more ridiculous things that I found in my notes::


That in 1983, a police officer tried to give me a speeding ticket for going 70 in a 55. At least he let me go when I said "Sir, I'm in a Ford Pinto, I don't think it even goes 55 let alone 70." I think I heard him chuckle as he was walking back to the cruiser. I guess he figured I might actually have a leg to stand on in court.



That it only took me 5 minutes of sitting down by the beachside pool to overhear the codes to every access gate in our complex, Sea Pines and Shipyard.



Reading a Nora Roberts book in your book club. Come on! Yes, I spent a joyous time down on the deck listening to the conversation of three women from Ohio and this was just one of the comments that made me almost want to laugh out loud. But I didn't because I wanted to keep eavesdropping - it was like watching a movie.



Talking louder to deaf people or foreign language speakers - like that's going to help. There were some French speakers in line in front of me at Subway and every time the sandwich maker didn't get a quick answer, she said it louder..."DO YOU WANT YOUR SANDWICH TOASTED?" If English were not my native language, I might know the words for subway toppings but I don't know if I would know the word for toasted?



That during my drive to Hilton Head, I listened to the entire length of a country song called "Tequila Makes her Clothes Fall off."



That Tiger Woods has to explain his losses to the media. Could you imagine if you had to justify your workday failures to the media?



Jogging in a Michigan State University t-shirt and saying good morning to two chatting walkers in UNC t-shirts and they don't even acknowledge me - sore winners!



That some old gas passing, cigar smoking, loud snoring man decided to sit on a beach chair right next to me when there were several other vacant options.



The beach deck chorus of the aforementioned snoring combined with cell phones ringing, messages texting, loud tallking, and bad singing (to whatever 80's song was playing on the iPod stuck in one woman's ear).




Thank goodness for the ocean breezes, the tree leaves blowing, the waves crashing and the kites flying! I hope you all are enjoying days filled with ridiculous things - like no power at our house in Atlanta :(