A Long Strange Week

What a long strange week it’s been.

On Monday, Hurricane Sandy combined with a Nor’easter to create the perfect storm, although there is nothing perfect about the death and devastation it left in its wake in New Jersey and New York.   We have a lot of family and friends in the affected areas, and thankfully they all came through okay, although some were left without power for several days and some are without power still.

Back in Pittsburgh we were lucky.  While our neighbors to the East were trying to figure out how to begin to recover from the aftermath of Sandy, and areas all around us were hit with snow, the effects of this historic storm on our area was.... rain, and lots of it.  Oh, and it was windy, and there were some downed trees.  In other words, it was a typical southwestern Pennsylvania rainstorm.

That did not keep us from panicking.  Schools were closed on Tuesday, and I don’t fault the authorities for being preventative in their preparations for the storm that could have been much, much worse. I wonder how sheepish they felt when the kids were all home from school because it was raining outside.  And they definitely jumped the gun when townships throughout the area postponed trick or treat from Halloween night (Wednesday) to the following Saturday. 

Then on Tuesday we found out that America inexplicably voted Sabrina Bryan out far too early on Dancing with the Stars- All Stars - again.  In the sixth week, just like the first time she was on the show.  Sabrina was clearly distraught, and so was everyone else on the show.  She broke down completely during her final dance.  Suddenly, as much as I love the show, I could not get so worked up about this.  I mean, really, it’s just a dance show.  Winning it or losing it is not that big a deal.  I mean, does she have an intact home with working electricity? 

Frankly, I’m more interested in America getting it right when they vote this coming Tuesday.  After all it is the fate of the country that hangs in the balance after that vote, not a mirror ball trophy for a celebrity.  Of course, the impending election is taking its toll just as surely as the aftereffects of the hurricane, as is evidenced by a video that was all the rage this week of the little 4-year-old girl crying inconsolably because she was tired of hearing about the candidates.  I think we can all relate.  “Oh, Honey,” her mother comforted her, “don’t worry, the election will be over soon.”  

And then, just when you thought the week couldn't get any wierder, Heidi Klum took off her makeup to encourage women to do the same for some charity fundraiser in the UK, and… she never looked lovelier.  Heidi Klum is absolutely drop-dead gorgeous without her makeup.  No one looks that good without makeup.  I bet if she went to Giant Eagle like that, no one would ask her if she were very tired or sick or something because of the dark circles under her eyes. I bet she never once had to rely on her personality or her smarts or her good sense of humor to get by.  It just isn't fair, I tell you.

The week finally came to an end, and we actually saw a little sun on Saturday.  Here’s to a better week ahead.  Let’s hope that we have a respite from wicked weather, dancers unfairly eliminated from dance shows, and celebrities flaunting their naturally beautiful faces in front of us.  

Of course, I’m sure there will be a few more tears shed over the election before it’s all over.

Rip Aches, Insect Killer

As usual, I’m going about 35 miles an hour on the Information Superhighway.  I recently replaced the stereo in my car (which only had a tape player) with one with a fancy CD player. Now it also came with all kinds of things I don’t understand like Bluetooth and Pandora which I am sure I will get around to figuring out how to use one of these days, a week or so before they become obsolete.  But right now I am just happy to be listening to music of my own choosing and audio-books of titles that I never get around to reading.

Right now, I’m listening to Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.  This novel has an interesting premise – and I hope I’m not giving too much away here – that Abraham Lincoln was driven by a single-minded obsession with hunting and slaying vampires.  The sheer number of vampires who populated America according to this novel is kind of mind-boggling, like all those people who turn out to actually be Wesen on an episode of Grimm.

I kind of relate to Lincoln.  Of course, I have never encountered a vampire, that I know of, but my world has been populated with any number of creepy, crawly, and sometimes flying creatures who must be eliminated.  Yes, I would wager a guess that in real life undesirable insects greatly outnumber both vampires and Wesen. 

Unlike Lincoln I do not hunt insects.  As long as I don’t actually see them, I am more than happy to live and let them live.  I am, in fact, the very picture of laissez-faire when it comes to the unseen insect, or even those seen in the great outdoors.  However, once they show up on my “turf” (i.e. inside my home or office space) they just have to go.  Never mind that some of them are supposedly harmless.  They all multiply, and we simply can’t have that. 

I never needed any special weapons like Lincoln required with his vampires.  I just basically smash the bugs with whatever is nearby.  Then those pesky stink bugs made their unsightly appearance.  You can’t just kill these bugs because they emit a ghastly odor if you do that will only attract more of them.  Hmm, getting rid of these little critters required a vacuum cleaner or a toilet, but I adapted.

Fearlessly, I continue to deal with the critters who come my way.

Wait, I think I hear my husband yelling something like, “What do you mean, ‘fearlessly’?”  He is undoubtedly referring to that one singular incident, not long after we married, when the large bug scurried out from under my toothbrush when I was getting ready to brush my teeth.  I audibly expressed my shock, because it startled me.  I may have “screamed,” as my husband alleges.

He came rushing to the bathroom to see what was wrong, clearly envisioning that I was in some kind of imminent peril.

“What’s the matter?”  he asked, breathlessly.
  

“Oh, it was a bug,” I said, disgusted.
  

“A bug??!!”  he said, in disbelief.

“Well, it jumped out at me,” I explained.  “I was startled.”

My husband was clearly trying to calm his beating heart from the fright I had given him.

“Did the bug have a gun?”, he asked incredulously.

By this time, my son had casually wandered out of his bedroom, and had assessed the situation.

“Oh, that was nothing,” he told my husband, “You should have heard her the time the bird got in the house at Canonsburg.”

Well, I said I wasn’t afraid of bugs.  Birds and rodents are another story entirely.

Rip's Choice

My husband and I were on our way out of the Tanger Outlets and I was excitingly sharing the story of my very successful visit to the Easy Spirit Store with him. 

I have such hard-to-fit feet that it is rare that I can take advantage of any of their promotions that involve buying more than one pair of shoes at a time.  I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve left the store in defeat with just one pair of shoes, unable to find a second pair that fit that I would have been able to buy for half price.

Well, this time Easy Spirit had really thrown down the gauntlet with their Buy Two Pairs, Get One Free promotion.  I found my first pair pretty easily – they were a style I had been eyeing up on line for some time.  After some searching I found a second pair - black loafers- that also fit.  Wow, I actually found two pair of shoes that fit in one shopping trip – talk about impossible dreams.

So now the challenge was on.  If I could, improbably, find a third pair of shoes that day, they would be free.   I searched high. I searched low.  Then my eye fell upon the blue sticker on a shoebox that indicated the shoe inside was a double wide width.  I looked closer.  Eureka!  I had found that most elusive podiatric treasure -a 7 WW shoe.  My actual size.   The shoe fit, and I would wear it.  For free!

So I was sharing this happy story with my husband, who, suddenly, out of the blue, asked me a meaningful question.

“If you could only have one, which would you choose,” he asked, “shoes that fit or World Peace?”

What kind of a question was that???

God forgive me, but my knee jerk response was “Shoes that fit, of course.”  In my defense, he caught me off guard, and I was just coming off a successful shoe-shopping trip.  Just the minute it was out of my mouth, I was struck by that Old Catholic Guilt, and thought perhaps that was the wrong answer.

Maybe I was being selfish.  It’s not all about me, and my ability to walk without pain or stress on my knees.  Maybe I haven’t spent enough time sacrificing my own needs to save the world, although goodness knows that I have spent considerable time and effort trying to keep the peace in my own little corner of the world.

So, which would it be?  Walk the world in peace, or have peace in the world?  This is a harder choice than you might imagine.  Sure, World Peace seems unachievable but believe me, finding comfortable shoes to fit my feet has proved nearly as elusive.

Hey, I’ve got it!  Maybe if everyone in the world had shoes that fit, they would be so much happier and more comfortable that they wouldn’t even feel like fighting anymore, and – voila- we would have World Peace. Maybe I wouldn’t have to make a choice at all.  Maybe shoes that fit are the KEY to World Peace. 

We could have our shoes and wear them, too.

The Chairs of Canonsburg

From the time I moved there in 1988, I could tell that Canonsburg was a small town with a big personality.  Kind of a microcosm of old ethnic Southwestern Pennsylvania, it is a town proud of its traditions, cultural origins, and residents. It is a little town that thinks it can, and so it does.

Perry Como, Bobby Vinton and the Four Coins were all Canonsburg natives, a fact that the town has never forgotten and continues to celebrate.  You can’t forget it either when you drive through the town on  Perry Como Avenue, Bobby Vinton Boulevard, or Four Coins Drive.  In 1999, they erected a statue of Como in the middle of town, and now they are working on opening the Pop Music Hall of Fame in town because, well, why shouldn’t they, with that kind of musical legacy?

While it doesn’t exactly ruin my day when I have to fill my car with gas, I often yearn for a simpler, more civilized time so I very much appreciated Russo’s Sunoco Station in Canonsburg.  This full service gas station has competitive prices and helpful, friendly employees, many of whom I knew by name.

I really do have some sort of inexplicable aversion to visiting a mega-size supermarket to just pick up a carton of milk, so I was a big fan and regular customer of The Tiny Store, so named because it is a really small grocery store.  Of course.  Can you think of a better name?  

No discussion of Canonsburg’s unique character would be complete without a shout out to Sarris Candies.  Not only does it produce some of the best chocolate candy you would ever have the privilege of having melt in your mouth, the Sarris family are just plain "good people" who are particularly generous in their support of local non-profits.

The Sarris family was the epitome of grace under fire (pun fully intended) when their old fashioned ice cream parlor actually caught on fire earlier several months ago.  With a “thank God no one was hurt” they set about repairing the parlor, cleaning up and replacing the store’s inventory and recreating their famed Chocolate Castle.  They continued to produce and sell their candy during the period when the store was closed, and at their Grand Reopening a few months later, the family presented the Canonsburg Volunteer Fire Department with a generous check as a thanks for all their help.

The Canonsburg townspeople are also practically giddy with self-satisfaction over their Fourth of July Parade, the second largest in the state.  It really is an absolute extravaganza and the definitive parade, if you like that sort of thing.

It is also the hottest ticket in town.  The first July I lived in Canonsburg, I observed a strange phenomenon. Lawn chairs started appearing along the main thoroughfare in town a day or two before the Fourth of July Parade.  It turns out that people were saving their seats along the parade route in advance.  I thought that this was a little extreme, but it was a tradition the Canonsburg people held dear.  Over the years I lived there the chairs were placed out earlier and earlier, sometimes up to week ahead of time.   I thought things had gotten out of hand, but clearly I was just an outsider who didn’t understand the native ways for the 15-year period that I lived in Canonsburg-Land.

This year, though, people started putting out their chairs as early as June 22^nd, and some folks were also using yellow police tape and chains and ropes to hold their groups of chairs together.  It had become a nuisance and an occasional danger, with chairs being blown  into the streets and such. The town officials had had enough (it was about time, people).  They proposed an ordinance prohibiting the placement of chairs before 6 a.m. on the day of the parade.

Well, the townspeople didn't take this infringement of their time-honored practice sitting down.  There was an outpouring of angst-ridden outrage at this idea, which even an ex-patriot outsider like I knew was not going to fly.  6 a.m. the day of the parade?  What kind of traffic jams and possible rioting in the streets would that cause?  Why, you might as well just bring your lawn chair with you to the parade and not be able to save a spot at all, like, oh I don't know, people in other towns.
 

In response to  public pressure, the town council (in a split decision) voted that residents would be able to place their chairs (and only their chairs) out no sooner than 48 hours before the parade. (http://www.observer-reporter.com/or/story11/10-09-canonsburg-chairs).

Now that was a nice compromise, I thought, and more than fair.  Canonsburg gets to be Canonsburg, within reason.

Have You Ever Really Loved a (Plus Size) Woman?

It is hard to imagine what possessed Kenneth Krause to write the hurtful, presumptuous e-mail taking Wisconsin TV anchorwoman Jennifer Livingston to task for her weight, calling her a bad role model for the community’s young people, especially the girls.  I don’t know what sort of response he expected, but I am pretty sure that he did not anticipate what happened next.

You see, Mike Thompson, Livingston’s husband and also an anchor at the same news station, was pretty upset at what he considered an inappropriate attack on his wife.  He posted the e-mail on his Facebook page, generating an outpouring of support for Jennifer.  This prompted her to offer a 4-minute editorial on the news, addressing Krause’s e-mail, calling him a bully and saying that to call her an unfit role model for the community solely based on her appearance was unacceptable.  It’s all gone viral, and has sparked a national debate on the subject.

Oh, I could have told Kenneth that he really never wants to mess with a guy in love with a plus sized woman.  He probably didn’t realize that it was possible for obese women to have men who loved them and who actually thought they were beautiful just exactly the way they were.  Trust me it is, and these guys are fiercely protective of their ample ladies.  Ever hear of “more to love,” Kenneth?

Thin was never really “in” with my husband, who actively and vocally appreciated what he likes to refer to as my “curves” from the very beginning of our relationship.  He really did call me one day shortly after we started dating to let me know that he would love me even if I was skinny.  He did not want me to think that he was attracted to me just for my body.

So it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when he shared with me how he told off the salesladies at Victoria’s Secret in the Ross Park Mall when shopping for my birthday one year.  He innocently inquired whether they carried larger sizes.  According to him it was the condescending and snobby manner of their response that prompted him to proclaim, “The problem with you people is that you don’t realize that big women can be sexy, too!” before storming out of the store.  Isn’t that cute?  How I wished I could have been a bug on the wall of that store to see their faces.

Yes, Kenneth, you might have gotten away with messing with Jennifer but you didn’t count on Mike’s response, whose anger with you after reading your e-mail was as palpable and evident as his passionate love for his wife was.

For the record, Jennifer Livingston is exactly the kind of role model I would like to see for the children of my community.  She is a professional woman who has been working in her high-profile job for 15 years while maintaining a healthy relationship and starting a family.  None of this has anything to do with her weight, which should no more be a factor in her professional life than her race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation.  Furthermore, she took the opportunity in her articulate editorial to caution parents to watch what they say around their children because cruelty is learned and told kids that it is never okay to be a bully or to be bullied.  Role model?  Heck, right about now she’s my hero.

By the way, as long as we’re debating this nationally now, where will the infringement on our personal freedom in this country end?  Since when did it become a crime to be big, or even unhealthy?  In the past 18 months, I have been eating right and exercising and managing my arthritis.  I am feeling pretty darn healthy these days.  Despite losing more than 40 pounds in the process, I am still “obese” according to the arbitrary health and weight charts that do not take into account that larger people can be healthy, too.

I am sure there are people out there who presume to judge me. But my husband still loves me just exactly the way I am, and he always will.

Rules for the Road

We were on the Turnpike again this past weekend, traveling over rivers and through woods across the great commonwealth of Pennsylvania to get to New Jersey, to visit with my husband’s family. 

Now we do this drive at least twice a year, so you’d think that we’d have the routine down.  For the most part we do, but we are constantly refining the process to put together the most stress-free trip possible.

The fact that we were driving instead of flying was a very good start, if for no other reason than I could throw three jackets in the car without a second thought to accommodate varying weather conditions.  But there are other measures you can take to ease on down that road.

1)      Never sip your coffee when you are driving over a speed bump.

My husband actually came up with this rule as we were leaving the McDonald’s in Cranberry, Egg McMuffins in tow, on our way to the Turnpike.  You certainly want to get a few good swigs of the coffee down before you hit the road, preferably while parked at a red light. This reduces the incident of spillage when you hit rough patches in the road, which you invariably will on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

2)      Travel on a non-holiday weekend.

We always travel to New Jersey for Thanksgiving, and often the second time we visit is also around a holiday- either Memorial Day or the Fourth of July.  This time, we were going the last weekend in September. My husband’s cousin invited the whole extended family to a party to celebrate her mother’s birthday and the fact that her parents would be in town from Florida, and her brothers would be in town from Seattle and France, respectively.

This would have been worth traveling for under any circumstances, even in holiday weekend traffic, but how lovely it was to drive the less-traveled turnpike road, without the usual level of traffic or the inevitable bottle-neck as you travel through (over?) Philadelphia.  When we got to the New Jersey highway that leads to my in-laws’ house, we wondered for a minute if we were on the right road, until we realized that it just looks a lot different without all the cars flocking to the shore for the weekend, making it a veritable parking lot.

3)      Check the toilet seat before sitting.

Pardon me if I venture into a slightly indelicate area here – i.e. the Ladies Room at the Rest Stops.   A mishap in there can truly put a damper on your whole trip (no pun intended).    Ladies, check the seat before you sit down.  This has always been important for obvious reasons, but nowadays it is even more essential because the automatic flush feature you now find on so many toilets will sometimes spray outside the toilet and leave a fine mist on the seat.  This is clean water, but it is, nonetheless, still wet, as water usually is.  I imagine that is somewhat reminiscent of the bidet, but I wouldn’t know of course because I’ve never traveled outside continental North America.

In a related tip, always check to make sure there is toilet paper in the stall before sitting.  Just for extra insurance, carry some Kleenex in your purse.

4)      Carry a small strap-on hands-free purse with you.

You can put this with all your most essential items (wallet, keys, cell phone, and that all-important Kleenex) inside a larger handbag or tote, so that you can travel through the rest stop with all your most important items strapped to your body leaving your hands free for eating, etc.  Most importantly of all, your belongings never have to leave your body, to be hung from the toilet stall door or sitting next to you while you eat your Whopper Junior, because you never know when some unsavory character will try to steal your belongings.

I was brought up to have a healthy paranoid suspicion of all strangers and taught that no one, but no one, should ever be trusted.  That’s why I was shocked when I heard about the young couple who had all their wedding presents stolen when they left them unattended in an outdoor reception area while they slept in a building nearby.  I was not shocked that the presents were stolen, only that the couple was foolish enough to leave them unattended.  Let me tell you those presents would have been in the wedding bed with my new groom and me. 

Of course the most important tip of all, at least for me, is to have my laptop with me, so I could have this blog finished in time for my self-imposed Monday deadline.   

(Published on Monday, October 1, at 6:57 p.m.)

Crossing to the Other Side

Something wasn’t quite right about the top I was trying on at Dress Barn Woman.  I couldn’t put my finger on it exactly.  It was a 14/16, my “new” size.  Maybe it was just the way it was made. 

I tried on the second shirt I brought into the dressing room. It was nice, and it fit, but it was, I don’t know, maybe just a little…loose?  I stared at myself in the mirror for a full minute or two letting that sink in. Yes, it was true – the blouse wasn’t TOO loose, but definitely a LITTLE loose. 

Now I was confused.   What was I going to do about buying tops?  A 14/16 or a 1X was the smallest size that Dress Barn Woman carried.  Then I remembered that Dress Barn had Another Side.

The Other Side is called “Dress Barn Misses” and carries clothes of some alternative size for female people unlike me.  According to Dress Barn, I have always been a “Woman” (aka a plus size gal).  I had never really been on that Other Side of the store before, although I knew it existed. 

I walked out of the dressing room and looked in the direction of the Other Side.  Should I just take a look over there?  I debated with myself.  Oh, what would be the point, I thought.  After all, that blouse was only a LITTLE loose; surely an Extra Large would still be too small.  Well, I told myself, that red winterish jacket I bought and love so much is just an Extra Large.  Yes, but I found that on the 85% off rack, and it had arms long enough to fit an orangutan.   It was clearly mislabeled.

I finally talked some sense into myself.  For heaven’s sake, the Other Side of the store was just a few feet away, and it wouldn’t hurt just to look.  Slowly I walked in the direction of that side of the store, past the cash register, through the jewelry and scarves and belts that separate the two sides, to the edge of the Other Side.

I stopped for a moment, and just looked into the sea of clothes made for “regular” people.  Finally, I took a breath, closed my eyes, and stepped in.

Hey, the clothes over there were just like the clothes on the “Woman” side, only smaller!  It was gratifying to know that Dress Barn made the same clothes for all sizes of women, and did not presume that all plus-sized women only wanted shapeless muu-muus or drop waist dresses.  Hmm, they were also less expensive than their plus size counterparts, as much as $4.00 cheaper for a casual top, in clear discrimination against larger people.  But don’t get me started.

I saw the same top I had first tried on that didn’t seem quite right.  For the first time it dawned on me that maybe it might just have been too big.  No, that couldn’t be it, could it?  It seems that I couldn’t stop arguing with myself that day.  I decided to try it on, and…it fit perfectly!  In an Extra Large, everything sat right where it needed to be.

So that’s the story of the day I bought an Extra Large top at Dress Barn Misses (not Woman).  Of course, I will not be able to buy all my clothes on the “regular” side of the store, because of my very irregular body-  my top half has begun to flirt with regularity, but my bottom half is still very much a “womanly” plus size. 

Once a pear shape always a pear shape, but it is a much smaller pear these days.