Category Archives: It’s Funny Because It’s True!

Why We Only Have One Child

By Vicki Hughes Posted April 3, 2013

When you choose to be a one child family, you are going to have to explain yourself. Probably not as much as you would have to explain being a no-child family, but still, it comes up.

For those of us who do not live in China, a one child policy seems to raise eyebrows. People with lots of kids seem especially suspicious. A friend with four kids once asked John, “How come you only have one kid, and I had to have four?” Without missing a beat he replied, “Because we’re smart.”

Actually, if I had left it up to John we would have several cats, no dogs, and we would have used our disposable income to travel the world going to great surfing destinations, giving him drag racing lessons, and buying me ice skater outfits, which I assure you I would NOT wear, instead of buying braces for perfectly good teeth, and buying sushi for hoards of Chelsey’s teenaged friends, and forcing her to take family vacations that were lame, and not up to her thirteen year old standards.

Obviously, I did not leave it up to him. Instead, I contracted Baby Fever, from sniffing my friend Judy’s eighteen month old, and letting the little rat wrap her chubby fingers around my pinkie, begging me to dip the “fwench fwy” in the ketchup again. My biological clock went into overdrive, and all John’s objections to reproducing were out the window. He is the oldest of four, and I have no siblings. He knew more about the implications than I did.

To sway him, I used a similar approach I’d used with great success, to get puppies and kittens as a child. “You will never even know it’s here, I will feed it, and walk it, and I will love you forever….pleeeeease??” He said if I would shut up about it, and move out from between him and TV while The Winston Cup was on, we could get one. I thought he sounded a little stingy, but I figured we would jump off that bridge when we came to it.

Except I lied. He soon knew she was here, he was forced into feeding, and walking her, and quite a bit of wiping as well. I tried to keep him distracted with good food, batting my eyelashes, and making sure he got to watch the women’s ice skating during the winter Olympics. It’s called negotiating, people.

Having learned nothing from all those puppies and kittens, I was strangely shocked, and got really annoyed when she interfered with my sleep, and with all the poop I was expected to clean up. I discovered this was way more of a commitment than I’d realized. I’m flighty that way. Thankfully, John is a commitment kind of guy.

He was simply made to be Chelsey’s Dad. I can tell you with all sincerity, no other man on this planet could have done a better job. They “get” each other in their own eclectic way, seemingly passing cosmic notes, and nodding at each other like spies in the park. He voluntarily took the reins on many occasions, back before she morphed into the lovely adult I completely enjoy today, and kept me from selling her to the Professional Eye Rolling Association, to earn her own sushi money as their mascot.

Eventually, after I realized what I’d signed us up for, I grudgingly admitted, he was right, one was enough.

Mornings, I’m Not a Fan

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 26, 2013

I am not a morning person. Actually I’m a leave-me-alone-in-the-morning person. Firstly, I don’t have the verbal skills or the listening skills prior to a minimum of two cups of coffee to carry on any appreciable conversation. If it’s pre-dawn morning we’re talking about, and we are not leaving on a very exciting vacation, I sound like a grunting grizzly she-bear. It’s best to give me time.

I do most of my writing in the morning, which may seem strange, but I started the habit and I think it works well because I can tap into that creative right-brain more easily when I start out semi-conscious. It’s sort of like how you can figure out how to end world hunger and balance the national budget just as you’re falling asleep, but can never remember in the morning. My semi-conscious brain can get a lot done when I get out of the way. Mornings, in my mind, are very personal. I’m not fit for public display, conversation or anything much, other than shooing the dogs out of my chair as I return from getting a coffee refill.

I’m definitely not a breakfast person. I think it comes from my childhood school anxiety days. I’d wake up, freaked out about going to school, eat a well balanced breakfast, and puke it up at the bus stop. After that became a reliable trend, I was encouraged to have a Carnation Instant Breakfast shake, which I have to admit is much easier to throw up on people’s Keds while waiting for the bus, but won’t win you many friends. Barfing to the smell of school bus diesel fumes is no way to start your day. Momma always worried that I wasn’t getting a nutritious breakfast. But I was, I just couldn’t hold onto it.

In the seventies, California public schools started offering breakfast to kids before school. After scrambled eggs and toast, and Carnation Instant Breakfasts had failed, we tried this new approach. The logic was, maybe I was eating too early. Maybe postponing food till later in the morning, after I got to school would be the solution.

if you have a breakfast-averse stomach, guess what you don’t want to smell on an institutional scale, upon arrival to school, which gives you anxiety? Breakfast. No. Just no.

Looking back, I wish I’d had the foresight to invest all the breakfast money my folks gave me, into something with some decent compound interest. Maybe a nice mutual fund. Unfortunately, I blew it all on Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers, K-Tel Records and candy necklaces at the ball fields on weekends. You live and learn.

I learned not to eat breakfast, or anything more solid than coffee until at least eleven a.m. I barely have the stomach for toothpaste before then, but I power through for you. Coffee breath has to be dealt with. If you and I ever go on a trip together, and we are choosing a hotel, the free Continental breakfast will not sway me. However, you can get my attention with some complimentary wine in the evenings. Just so you know.

Asshat Thinking-How To Avoid It

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 24, 2013

There is something I like to think of as Asshat Thinking, which we all have to guard against. If we aren’t paying attention, and start participating in Asshat Thinking, we begin to lose our grip on our happy groove. Happy grooves are the sweet spot where we want to spend most of our time, and Asshat Thinking is what drags us away from our happy groove, making us want to either inflict bodily harm on the woman at the drycleaners, or buy a one way ticket to Aruba and leave no forwarding address. Which brings us to Magical Thinking, and I simply can’t go there right now, or I won’t finish this post.

Today, let’s talk about the choreographer of Asshat Thinking: Exaggeration. Out of exaggeration comes an entire flock of Asshat Ideas. Allow me to demonstrate.

Exaggeration is sneaky. It will often start when we are stressed, or tired, sick, and especially when we are running late. It weasels it’s way into our brain, and it usually starts with such innocent sounding banter such as, “Great! I was going to wear these pants today, I’m already late, and they’re covered in dog hair!” Naturally, this leads to, “Dogs have no respect…where is the friggin’ lint roller…somebody has hidden it from me…this day is PISSING ME OFF!” Asshat Thinking has a tiny flair for the dramatic. It needs some Elton John glasses and a feather boa. It tries madly to get and hold our attention.

It will leap from one, small, inconvenient fact (there is dog hair all over the pants I want to wear) and it will catapult it, like digusting, infected body parts, over the castle walls hoping to contaminate all of the castle occupants. I told you, it’s dramatic. As soon as I allow the hairy pants to translate into, “This day is pissing me off!” my bus is now careening over to Asshat Central.

Here’s our dilemma. You like to be right. I like to be right. Everyone likes to be right. Entire wars have been, and continue to be waged, over this one glaringly obvious fact. We all love being right. So what will our brains do for us once we focus on the day pissing us off? It begins scanning the rest of our day for facts to prove us right. The really scary part is, it will also filter out and prevent us from seeing evidence to the contrary.

Suddenly we have our Asshat Glasses on (these do not make us look fabulous, by the way) and all we can see with them are the things that prove our earlier declaration right: Traffic? Sucks! My muffin? Cold and hard. My coffee? Spilled! My job? Impossible! People? Idiots. My life? Stinks.

Did I just manage to create a shit storm of boo frickin’ hoo over pants with dog hair on them? Really? Asshat Thinking is so dramatic, it should have an entry at the Sundance Film Festival. Our brains love Asshat Thinking because it’s nearly effortless, and has a huge following.

It takes a little thoughtful effort to have a different conversation with ourselves in frustrating situations. Deep breath. “Yes, my pants look more like an Angora sweater, but at least they didn’t split at the seams while I was loading a thirty pound bag of dog food in my buggy at the Piggly Wiggly.” To make it up to ourselves, we can make a quick mental list of five things that don’t suck, or if we’re still cranky, just stop and get a frappucinno. Sweet, legally addictive stimulants have improved many a day. Yes, I know I’m not a dog, and shouldn’t reward myself with food, but let’s face facts, I do!

Use some creative distraction, re-focus on something, anything positive or funny. Look at the pants and tell them, “Let’s pretend this didn’t happen.” You give the orders to your brain, so tell it what to look for. Re-decide what you want on your radar, and tell your brain what you want it to keep an eye out for, and get ready, because it will show up.

One Asprin, or Two?

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 22, 2013

Did you know that women are more prone to lie about their height than their weight? I’m not sure it’s intentional, I think it may be due to shrinkage. Maybe we have our height measured at age 21, get our top score, and then gravity slowly begins to screw us over. I mean, really, once they measure you at your high score, you never really think about it again because you don’t expect it to change. It’s like arms. You have two, and you don’t concern yourself with counting them every day to see if you have new ones sprouting. Our height seems to be static, but it’s all a lie!

Unlike our weight, which I am sorry to say has nearly unlimited potential, our height peaks and then begins to decline. For most of my life I have believed I was 5’10”. I’m tall. I’ve always been tall. I am the person who other people expect to change lightbulbs and hand them things off of high shelves. I’m not Women’s NBA tall, but among the women I know, there are very few who make me feel short.

Recently I went in for an annual checkup, which is more like my five year checkup, since I’m a procrastinator. I’ve been on Weight Watchers a little over a year and hovering within five pounds of my goal weight, so for the first time in a long while, the nurse asking me to step on the scale didn’t feel like a mini-execution.

She weighed me and I smiled in quiet smugness. Then she measured my height and said, “Five foot seven and a half.” I thought to myself, “Oh, you are? I’m five-foot-ten.” But then I realized she was writing it in my permanent record! Wait! I‘m not five-foot-seven-and-a-half!

If I am five-foot-seven-and-a-half, that is very bad news for my mom, who peaked at 5’2” sometime in the 1960’s. If gravity is having it’s evil way with her, as it is with me, she’s currently bordering somewhere between pixie and gnome territory.

I have been thinking she looks small to me. Or small-er. She has the metabolism of a hummingbird. When I get a headache, if I ask her for some aspirin, she always asks me, “Do you want one or two?” This prompts me to roll my eyes as I patiently reply, “Two.”

Never has any headache of mine been anything other than amused by one aspirin. I might as well swallow a button for all the relief I’d get from one aspirin.

Newsflash! People who are barely big enough to be allowed in the front seat of a vehicle can take one aspirin, and get relief! It does make sense. I’m sure linebackers for the Green Bay Packers need more than two to get the job done.

Excuse me, I need to get on www.Zappos.com now and buy some heels.

Stupid Brain Tricks

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 21, 2013

My brain seems to be having a few issues. Perhaps it feels a little bit like my outdated laptop when I ask it to do way too many things at one time. It just sort of hiccups and misfires and needs a reboot. (Not Responding)

Last week I noticed it several times while I was showering. I wanted to cool the water off because it was too hot, so I immediately felt compelled to turn the cold water down, thereby scalding myself. Bad hand! I meant colder, not hotter. Do what I mean, not what I say.

A couple nights ago I was trying to communicate with the fan in our bedroom. The spring weather in L.A. (Lower Alabama) means that one day you’re running the heat, and the next day you’re sweltering without the a/c on. I wasn’t about to go to bed without my trusty fan working it’s magic on a warm spring evening.

First, let me tell you, my fan has too many buttons. One turns it on and off, one adjusts the speed from Gnat’s Breath all the way to Hurricane Force, another tells it to oscillate or stand it’s ground, and yet another is a timer. I’ve never used the timer. That button is is dead to me. All I wanted to do was tell the fan to come on, and blow steadily on my glistening self, at a medium speed. I feel that is a reasonable request.

Except my brain kept telling my fingers, “On and oscillate. Nooooo. Wait. Don’t oscillate! Crap. Off. No! I mean ON. Oscillate. Are you kidding me?! You know I meant steady. Wait! What the hell am I doing?! ON. STEADY! STAY RIGHT THERE! Jeeze Louise, it’s hot in here!”

They need therapy for women who talk to electrical components. I can be their leader.

I also like to leave myself cryptic notes, both on scraps of paper, and on my phone calendar. “Get the drfl from C.” I look at it and think…”Drfl, drfl. Dog’s right front leg? Disgusting rat fink letters? Is C for Chelsey or Cyndi at work? Dare I call them and ask them if they know what a drfl is? No. It’s too risky. WHATEVER. If it’s important, someone will yell at me, and I will find a way to survive. Damned drfls.

I have been a little frustrated through the winter, over the disruption to my walking schedule, which I am slowly getting back to. However, I have soothed my guilty conscience with the fact that I walk several miles every day, going into rooms, only to realize I have no idea what I am doing in there. I get a workout huffing it back to wherever I started, hoping I have left myself some hieroglyphics about where I was headed before twelve things happened to interrupt my train of thought.

Check BB. Hey, I know that one. Bank balance. Yesssssss! Fist pump. Now if I can just remember to log on and pay that bill before a squirrel runs by and screws me over completely. Hey….where’s my pen?

Toilet Paper Overwhelms Me

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 19, 2013

I’m beginning to think that I should buy toilet paper in extreme bulk, someplace like Sam’s Club, where they only have five or six varieties. Anytime I have to pick up toilet paper, and have the bad luck to find myself in a grocery store, I immediately begin to lose all decision making skills. I become frantic trying to decide which criteria to use to make a wise choice.

Single roll? Double roll? Two-ply is not up for discussion. That one-ply fooled me once, but never again! Jumbo roll? Tyrannosaurus Rex roll? With aloe? Without? What is this, sushi? Brand name with cute bears, or generic store brand, that looks suspiciously identical? On sale? Buy three, get a free roll of paper towels? I just stand there, shifting my weight from foot to foot, like a kid trying to pick a cookie in a bakery.

And don’t even get me started on paper towels! I have a favorite.They’re nearly indestructible, and you could probably make clothes out of them. But they’re pricey, and the rolls are noticeably smaller than their miserly competition. I nearly always put them back and go cheap, only to regret it when my wimpy paper towels just smear stuff around the countertops.

When I do buy a roll of those 1000 thread count paper towels, I’m like a miser. I set them towards the back of the cabinet under the kitchen sink, hoping nobody but me can find them. Using them is almost a holy experience, they’re so absorbant, it’s like watching water turn into wine. A person really could spend a small fortune at the grocery store shopping just for paper and plastic products. Let’s see, I have trash bags, ziplocks, foil, and plastic wrap, and twenty-seven dollars later, I still don’t have eggs or coffee. What the hell?

John despises plastic wrap, regardless of the brand. He does not speak it’s language at all. Anytime he makes an attempt to use it, there will me the muttering of four letter words, guaranteed. I’ve tried, and failed, to demonstrate my fool-proof method for dispensing it. He’s not having any of it. When plastic wrap requires dispensing in our home, it will fall squarely on my shoulders. Since spider executions are his sworn duty, I will carry on with a smile, wrapping sandwiches and leftovers with a good attitude.

I read somewhere that one thing we can all be thankful for is that spiders can’t fly. If you have a hard time thinking of things to be thankful for, you could just start there! I’m sure there is a bug expert out there somewhere who can find us a flying spider, but I personally intend to remain ignorant of any facts proving it.

Ignorance of certain subjects is very important to my sanity and happiness, and one of my most valuable tips for staying positive! I also keep myself deliberately in the dark about dust mites, bedbugs, and the quickie-cleaning methods of hotel maids. Some things you are just better off not knowing. Anytime these subjects come up, some helpful soul usually tries to enlighten me. That’s when I stop them mid-sentence and say, “Oh, I don’t want to know,” which they usually interpret as, “Please, tell me more!” This is when I am forced to poke my fingers in my ears and begin humming God Bless America.

What do you enjoy knowing nothing about?

How I Get So Much Done: Six Tips You Can Use This Week!

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 13, 2013

People sometimes wonder how I get it all done. I work a full time job, I cook (mostly) healthy dinners, I make sea glass jewelry, I adjust my undies, I walk by the bay and snap pictures, I administer several Facebook pages, and as you may have noticed, I blog.

The key to getting it all done is ignoring things. Some people might call it lazy, I call it priorities! Here are a few of the most obvious things I must ignore in order to get some stuff done.

Baseboards: That’s right. I can’t get bogged down dusting them or wiping them with a fuzzy yellow cloth.They got nailed to the wall in order to create a framework for my collection of dust bunnies and floating islands of doghair.The baseboards are on their own.

Keeping My E-mail In-Box Clear: Seriously? I have no idea who has time like this to spare. I’ve apparently done entirely too much online shopping, because I get a bazillion e-mails from places I can’t even remember shopping with. I see them in my In-box so much, they feel like long term relationships. Please don’t suggest that I unsubscribe. I HAVE! They just keep ‘em coming. If you want me to actually read an important email, your subject line better have FREE MARTINIS in it.

Washing My Car: We don’t have a garage, but what we do have, is a very busy oak tree over the driveway. I also work about two minutes from the house, and there are no car-washes in between. I can go a week on twenty dollars in gas! To say I don’t give my car a lot of my attention would be a fair statement. I should get a golf cart.

Putting Things Away: Attending to this activity would deprive me of much needed time to do all the many things I am accomplishing. I let things form into little piles that become communities of crap and then, when I get caught up (generally once per fiscal quarter,) I spend an afternoon rummaging through them, feeling nostalgic, “There you are! I’ve missed you!”

Cleaning The Refrigerator: In my case, this is a huge time saver. This is not even an issue anymore because my Momma has it covered since she moved in. She keeps the fridge totally organized and finds a way to keep all the very important things close at hand so I don’t cry: martini olives, canned whipped cream, string cheese. Before she moved in, our fridge was a Twilight Zone episode.

When Chelsey was fifteen, I was cooking mac and cheese from scratch. As teenagers do, she went to the fridge to scope out a snack. I heard her suck in her breath through her teeth. She was hunched over, peering into the deepest recesses of the bottom shelf. “Is that the cookie dough from sixth grade?” she asked, nostrils flared. I wasn’t sure if she was deeply disturbed or about to get a spoon.

I glanced over my shoulder at her and said, “Maybe……”

Priorities, people! Do you want me to excavate the fridge or make you some Garlic Aioli bread?! I’m not a machine! I need to sleep sometime!

Getting all the laundry done: I know many of you dabble in this time saving practice. I am a complete seat-of-my-pants laundry person. I have no set day, and I can’t even fathom having underwear with the days of the week on them. If my underwear had captions stitched on them, they would say:

Too small
Elastic shot
Why did I buy these??
Oh, hell no!
Let’s hope I don’t have an accident
Scratchy
Sends the wrong message, I’m tired

Much like my earlier tip on ignoring fridge cleaning, the ignoring of laundry can yield some great historical artifacts.

When we moved to a new house in 1999, I found one of Chelsey’s baby socks at the bottom of my hamper. She was ten years old, and had size-eight Nike’s, crusted with mud, sitting on our front porch. Her baby sock days were behind us. I sat in my bedroom and got a little teary-eyed over that mildewed sock, a smelly little time capsule to remind me of her babyhood.

There! My secret is out. Now you have six, practical ways to carve out more time each week! If you really want to be productive…learn what to ignore. Who knows what you will get accomplished!

Undie Adjustment

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 12, 2013

To say that my husband has a thing for my butt would be like saying mice have a thing for cheese or moth’s for flames, or fat kids for cake. He simply cannot help himself. In nearly every photo or video he has produced in the twenty-eight years we’ve been together, you may rest assured my hind quarters will be included at some point.

Now that he has an iPhone I’ve grown increasingly paranoid. It’s just too easy to snap a candid photo. My only saving grace is that he is still very muddy about this fad they call the Internet and that wacky Facebook. If he ever gets a clue, I will need an app called “Remove My Ass” to put on his phone (he’d never know!)

I bring all this up to discuss one of my quirks, which is Undie Adjustment. When I get into bed at night, I like to sleep in either a light t-shirt or a nightie and my undies. He’s a commando guy. For the last twenty-eight years he has attempted to persuade me to do likewise, usually with a thinly veiled concern for my comfort, “You’d be so much cooler!” Uh huh.

I assure him, I am comfortable. The reason I’m comfortable is, I like my undies adjusted “just so,” where the elastic in the back is assigned a very particular spot in the hemisphere of my butt and I want them no higher and no lower. Like I said, it’s a quirk. So after I crawl in bed and wiggle around to appreciate the softness of the sheets and the fact that I have survived the day and been rewarded yet again with getting horizontal, I adjust my undies. I get them “just so” and for that moment in time, all is right with my world.

Which brings us back to mice and cheese and moths to flames. My husband and my ass. He is compelled to grope and examine it as soon as he gets in bed, and as you may have already guessed, this completely ruins my Undie Adjustment. The calibration becomes all caddy wompus and I lay there feeling like a jigsaw puzzle with three missing pieces. To his credit, he often tries to re-adjust them for me. But let’s face facts. Nobody else can adjust your undies for you. That might be the worst part of having no arms; never really getting your undies to your liking.

So we do the Undie Adjustment Dance almost nightly. I used to get mad. I’d say, “WHY do you have to DO that!?” Why indeed. Have you ever met a mouse? A moth perhaps? Mice have an uncontrollable urge for cheese, even when it is perched upon a steel trap. Moths beat themselves silly against hot lightbulbs and singe their wings in candle flames. It’s what they do. There’s really no point in getting mad about it.

I’ve learned to adapt. I let him have his nightly fun re-arranging my undies and then when the festivities are over I put everything back where it belongs. That’s how love works. I happen to know there are parts of his world that I have, on rare occasions, disrupted. Of course I only do it because it makes perfect sense to me.

I have a thing for putting his water glasses in the dishwasher. He drinks a lot of water. I find his glasses all over, and I assume (wrongly) that he is done with them. I put them in the dishwasher, where they belong, and then he gets parched searching for the glass he was sipping from only moments before I “hid” it in the dishwasher. This is somehow annoying to him, in spite of how obviously helpful it is.

We torment each other in these amazingly predictable and odd ways, and it’s somehow become the weird glue that’s made us stick. Occasionally one of us has a bad day and freaks out over the undies or the water glasses in life, demanding that the other one reform immediately. But then we laugh at the same jokes, recite the same lines from a favorite movie, or roll our eyes in ecstasy over really good blue cheese, and we decide to cut each other the tiniest bit of slack. The fact is, we aren’t going to change each other. Of course it doesn’t stop us from launching a try now and then, but really, twenty eight years is long enough to conclude that a track record has been established . You shrug, you kiss, you move on.

Pants Are a Scourge

“Clearly, I’ m Not In Charge.”

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 10, 2013

Pants. They drastically increase a person’s responsibility in life. I’m considering starting a revolution of people who are all very tired of being responsible, who, rather than flip out, just stop wearing pants. In the 60’s, women liberated themselves from social expectations by burning their bras. Maybe we could begin with a nice bonfire of pants.

It begins at a frighteningly young age. We start out wearing Onesies, where our chubby, Michelin- Man thighs can be squeezed at will, or in those soft, fleecy sleeping bags with arms and bunnies embroidered on the lapel…but somewhere around age two, someone puts you in pants, and as soon as that happens, suddenly here come the expectations. Now they want you to use the potty and stop spitting out your strained peas and for Pete’s sake, they insist that you share things. Back before those stupid pants, this was never an issue.

Pants are complicated. The question, “Who wears the pants in this family?” is still code for, “Who’s in charge?” seventy years after women quit wearing skirts every day.

Did you know that if you are wearing an attractive skirt, people will actually do things for you that they would not do if you were wearing jeans or slacks? That’s right. Stand next to a car with a flat tire in a skirt and see. Men, you are excused from this experiment. Seriously, people will hold more doors, pick up fallen change, carry more of your parcels and basically act like better human beings when you shun pants.

Pants are a scourge.

Pants are anathema to all true relaxation. They don’t belong at the beach, in a massage or any place tropical where you might sip a margarita. Pants equal full adult responsibility. Put on your pants and you are sending Life a text that says, “Bring it on, I’m ready.” Other than Scottsmen, who are in several weird categories all by themselves, such as being completely unintelligible, people don’t charge into battle without their pants on.

Pants baffle me further. Why is it called a pair of pants. It’s one article of clothing. It’s pants, not a pair. A pair is two. Pants refuse to comply with the laws of mathematics, they are so bossy.

Bossy Pants. Nobody ever uses the phrase bossy shorts or bossy skirts or bossy boxer shorts do they? Why? Because you can’t really pull off bossy behavior without your pants on. I mean, you’re welcome to try putting on your short-shorts and then address the Board of Directors if you’re feeling brave, but don’t blame me if the acquisition goes poorly. I warned you. We only want to be bossed around by people in pants. Bossing people around in skirts pretty much went out with Margaret Thatcher. After that, pants won.

Should life ever become all too much, and should you need to send a smoke signal out that says that you are no longer the person in charge, and all complaints need to be directed elsewhere…just take off your pants.

I guarantee, if the pilot of an airplane came out of the cockpit without his pants on, somebody else would be asked to land the plane. Someone in pants. Taking them off is a very clear signal that says, “I’m not in charge right now.”

Are your teenagers bugging the hell out of you, clamoring for you to arrange this and arrange that, take them here and pay for that? Off with the pants, watch them scatter!

The big difference between doctors and patients in hospitals? Pants. The ones still in pants are in charge and the ones in sketchy gowns are not. It’s all perfectly clear. As soon as they hand you the gown, you know immediately, there’s been a power shift. That’s why dentists and chiropractors will never get the same respect as an M.D. They can’t get you to take your pants off. At the end of a long week, I consider it the height of relaxation to remove my Bossy Pants and put on shorts or a swim suit or even a cotton sundress to simply send the world a signal that says, “Today I will not be making any further Big Decisions. Direct all inquiries elsewhere.

Talk to the Pants.

Confessions of a Condiment Whore

This is just sad.

By Vicki Hughes Posted March 9, 2013

There’s nothing like packing up and moving your household to bring you face to face with your hoarding tendencies and housekeeping inadequacies. This past fall, in what I can only describe as The Bermuda Triangle of Bad Timing, I decided to move for the second time in two years, go on vacation, help our daughter move into the house we were vacating, and go out of state to get my mom to move her from Tennessee to Alabama, into the mother-in-law suite at our new house. It’s not stress that I like, it’s excessive stress.

All of this moving made me very aware of my foibles, quirks and assorted mental illnesses. I was faced with the damning reality that since 1986 I’d managed to transport a nearly empty tin of Safeway Allspice all over the United States, and not because I’m fond of kitchen antiques, but because I’m a Condiment Whore. In fact I’m a complete nutcase when it comes to spices, condiments, and anything pickled. I squirrel them away as if preparing for the coming Apocalypse of Seasonings.

This recent move once again confronted me with a can of hearts of palm that I can never seem to bring myself to add to a salad, “My God, what year did I buy that!?” I’m clearly incapable of throwing it away. Do you know what they want for hearts of palm? Using it is to risk ptomaine poisoning, but tossing it gives me the shivers. I have issues.

Our new house has a gorgeous stainless steel refrigerator, which is lovely to look at, but is significantly smaller than the typical requirements of a Condiment Whore. Would you like to guess from which side I inherited my food hoarding genes? Yes, from my mother…and we are now sharing a Barbie doll refrigerator. Yesterday we made the mistake of going grocery shopping together. We came out of the Piggly Wiggly as if we were each personally responsible for feeding the Pittsburg Steelers. What were we thinking? As we were loading things into the trunk I kept eyeballing her bags of groceries quietly thinking, “There better be room in that fridge for my Bud Light Chelada’s or her sour cream is getting the ax!”

A recently discovered challenge of having two women in the same house is that we both move things, but one of us moves the other’s stuff more. She KEEPS MOVING MY SHIT! I’ve nearly had a couple of breakdowns looking for, in no particular order: empty plastic shopping bags for dog poop duty, a wet Swiffer, maraschino cherries, horseradish, a plastic container for leftovers, tealights, and, God help me, my martini shaker.

After some very sweet quizzing on my part, I was taken to their maddeningly logical locations. Their new homes made perfect sense, but they were simply not where I saw them last. Coffee filters in the cabinet above the coffee maker? I thought they were fine sitting on the counter…Oh no. No, no, no. Logical.

Not only does she have a flair for putting things in logical order (spices, alphabetized “loosely” from left to right!) She is very neat. My husband and I are a bit neat-challenged. Or maybe I should say we have a higher threshold for the non-neat than she does. Either way, it’s a bit of an adjustment.

I have discovered things I truly didn’t know. The unsightly must be camouflaged. Electrical cords are the crazy relative in a Victorian novel, discretely kept out of sight. Everyone knows you have them, but nobody must ever see them. The plastic trashbag that lines the pedal-operated trashcan? It should be neatly folded over, into the can, in a tiny little cuff that can only be seen with a very high powered microscope. It matters not that my husband and I create a very American amount of trash every 24 hours, and this cuff-folding ritual will become a part time job for someone. Not me! I truly do not give a rat’s ass if the trashcan liner is visible on a trashcan. I’m pretty sure everyone knows there’s a trashbag in there. Why are our trashbags in the Witness Protection Program?

I kidded her the other day, saying I think she’s part squirrel, and everything is a nut to be hidden to her. I had no idea that daily living could have so many rules. Holy shit. For instance, did you know that used coffee filters and their grounds are to be thrown away before you leave the house, rather than the next morning when you’re ready to make more coffee? Me neither. File that away, you’re going to need it later.

The cushions for patio chairs need to be brought in nightly to protect them from the dew. This relentless attention to cushion maintenance may sound a bit extreme, but it also explains why the cushions she bought in 1994, when our daughter was five years old, look like brand new. I’ve bought a new set every year. You could safely perform open heart surgery on my Mom’s patio chair cushions. After a full summer of use, mine usually look like the reject pile after a trailer park yardsale. Sadly, I’m comfortable with my sloppy cushion behavior. I also admit that it’s oddly comforting when our now twenty-three year old daughter is sitting there on those same pristine cushions, sipping a mimosa on a Sunday afternoon. Comforting, and a little weird, like time travel to the nineties.

Adapting.That’s what we’re all doing. We’re learning to adjust to having three grown adults living with four dogs, and how we will manage to love and respect each other in spite of all our individual persnikitiness.

She whispers to me out of the side of her mouth, “I don’t know if you want to say anything to John, but MOST people wear shirts when they cook.”

Um, no. Actually I don’t think I will say a word, since he’s cooking in his own house. But your revulsion is duly noted! Dear God. I’m just thankful that he’s wearing shorts! When you’ve been married nearly thirty years to an Australian/Californian/Redneck carpenter, you have to expect a few etiquette adjustments. What he lacks in proper attire, I promise he makes up for in amazing BBQ chicken. It’s probably the mixture of marinades and dripping sweat that makes it special.

My Mom always compliments me on how easy going I am. I’m now starting to wonder if easy going is code for “sketchy low standards,” but I’m okay with it. My Mom is amazing. She is beyond accommodating, she wants everyone to be happy all the time, she offers to help me, and keeps the wheels of progress turning, preventing our new household from spiraling off into complete chaos.

When the adjustment period is all said and done, I may have to teach her the art of the perfect dirty martini. I’m sure she could make James Bond shed tears over the perfection of her martinis if only someone showed her the ropes. Then, when she asked me, “Is there anything I can do to help you?” I could say, “Shake it, Sister!” That’s help I need.

I know she’s intrigued with the whole martini thing. About a week after she moved in, we were in the kitchen together, and I’d mixed my nightly adult beverage. I poured it with a flourish into a blue martini glass. The frosty chilled edges just said, “This is wonderfulness in a glass.”

She looked furtively at me and asked quietly, “Do you mind if I taste it?” I smiled my evil genius smile and said, “Why, no. Go right ahead, but prepare yourself. I like booze in my booze. It’s boozy.” She took a tiny squirrel-sip and then coughed like Doris Day in a Rock Hudson movie. That will teach her to mess with my gin. I may have her condiment hoarding genes, but I got my Daddy’s drinking genes. I do not require my alcohol to taste like iced tea, a peppermint patty or a Snicker’s Bar. I eat my food, and I drink my drinks. But I am not opposed to a tiny snack in my drink, I mean, olives are condiments, and that’s how I roll.

Hellbent On Happy

Staying Positive and grateful in an imperfect world laced with random asshats