2141 Ashes in the bedroom

A woman wrote Dear Abby (today's Columbus Dispatch) that her widower boyfriend keeps his wife's ashes in his bedroom (which she's obviously using, too). How did I miss that one in my blog about How Not to Marry a Jerk.

Although there's not much chance of marriage here, is there? This guy is such a limp, spineless noodle that he's letting his dead wife give her the message that they have no future together. Maybe he's looking for someone who is smarter?

Some women! Makes me embarrassed. Truly.

2140 Comparing disasters

Perhaps you saw the article in the USAToday (2-10-06) comparing the desire and speed for rebuilding after historic disasters, the Chicago fire (1871), The Galveston hurricane (1900), the San Francisco earthquake (1906), and Katrina (2005). Sometimes I talk back to the TV; sometimes I write the story under the headlines. For this one, I answered before I read it.

It's the government, stupid.

Government aid, dispensed with government incompetency first at the local (mayor Nagin), then state (governor Blanco), then federal level (FEMA), government bureaucracy and red tape at all levels (zillions of pages of laws, rules, regulations, guidelines, codicils, codes, zoning), floating in the muck of a city that should have never been built so low but propped up by government engineers and local levee boards, peopled by a citizenry held hostage through dependency on the government for housing and jobs and medical care, having all their initiative, skills and energy drained dry by the government.

Unintended consequences
Hurricane Katrina
Natural disasters
government policy failures

2139 Don't play with your food

Have you ever said that to your kids? Maybe you're setting a bad example trying to get a free breakfast? I have in front of me a handsome, slick insert from the newspaper that conjoins Holiday Inn, Visa, Home Depot, the lure of a gift card, a coupon, a voucher, four luscious breakfast entrees for "free" and a night in a hotel. And although I haven't figured this part out, the models in the ad would get the worst-dressed retro-1970s award. At least I think that's the last time I saw a guy wearing tight-fitting, brown stripe pants with a lime green floral shirt.

Here's the game plan. In order to get a free breakfast you have to

1) stay at a Holiday Inn--one that is participating in the game, and one that isn't a Holiday-Express

2) you have to book at least one standard room

3) which qualifies you for a coupon redeemable for breakfast (none of which look healthy to me) in the hotel's restaurant

4) but only in the amount of $20.00

5) and only if you've put the room on your VISA card (but that's a bit fuzzy in the wording)

6) and saved a voucher you get only at check-in

7) which is useable if you mail it and the hotel receipt and allow 4-6 weeks for delivery for a $10 gift card to be used at the Home Depot

8) which location must be participating in the bed and breakfast game

9) at which only one of you in that standard room in the non-Express Holiday Inn gets a coupon for breakfast, but the children eat free, if they are under 12 years old

10) and all of which is void where prohibited.

Ohio prisoners may have to do without my Snickerdoodles

Today I decided to bake cookies for the Kairos Ministry for prisoners at the Ross Correctional Institution. The guys going in from the church need 660 dozen cookies. I'll let that sink in. That's probably end-to-end from here to Cleveland in cookies. So I decided on snickerdoodles and found a recipe in my mother-in-law's 1950 Betty Crocker Cookbook. When I was finished mixing I noticed they needed to chill before baking, so I put them in a bowl, and I made a cherry pie for my husband while the dough chilled out.

Later I formed the little balls of dough, rolled them in a sugar/cinnamon mix and put them in the oven. I didn't think I was making them too big, but did only get 25 instead of 5 dozen, like the recipe said. Oh well.

After about 5 minutes I smelled something burning, so I opened the oven, and they were melting! And falling over the side of the cookie sheet, splatting on the bottom of the oven set at 400 degrees. It looked like a disaster of major proportions, so I left them in a few more minutes to firm up a bit and pulled them out, with minimal dough falling on the floor of the kitchen. By this time, I had one huge piece of cookie dough. I kept about 5, and dumped the rest in the trash. They actually taste wonderful, but I would eat every last one. (My husband eats sugar free cookies, and these weren't).

Rechecking the recipe I'll just say I think I didn't notice that last cup of flour. Or it was the ghost of my mother-in-law who really didn't like to cook.

2137 I'm not sure I've ever seen one

I took one of those "which sports car are you?" I was a Mazda RX-8--but the photo image was too wide for my space, and there was no way to narrow it, so I took it down.

"You're sporty, yet practical, and you have a style of your own. You like to have fun, and you like to bring friends along for the ride, but when it comes time for everyday chores, you're willing to do your part."

2136 Let's go to a carnival

I don't participate in any of the carnivals, but I do occasionally take a peek, because you can find all of a kind at one site and click and read. Carol, the Median Sib (her whole family blogs) mentioned the Carnival of Education. I'm pretty much out of that loop, but still like to check in on the teacher blogs. When my children were in school, I was a holy terror. Not only did I expect my kids to do their job, I thought the school should too!

Yesterday I had coffee with a friend who retired from teaching last year. Now she teaches every day as a substitute, because she says it's fun. She doesn't have to do the paper work, and can even be choosy about what classes she'll teach. But she still does have to look at them--studs in their noses, lips, eyebrows, tongues and died pink hair. All the research is in--students learn better in schools that require uniforms, and even same sex classrooms, but school administrations don't seem to have a backbone when it comes to improvements in education that by-pass learning theory to get there.

For some reason, yesterday was a school holiday so my friend didn't teach and was free to have coffee like a real retired person. We have a number of friends who are retired, but stay regularly employed in warmer climates as subs while living on their pensions in vacation communities. They've had no education courses, weren't teachers by profession and one probably only had one year of college.

2135 Doctors who become nurses

Drop this one in the "unintended consequences" category. Immigration to the United States for nurses is much simpler than it is for physicians. Consequently, since 2000, more than 3500 Filipino physicians have taken accelerated nursing courses and have left for nursing jobs abroad. More than 4000 physicians are now in nursing school, not just new physicians, but internists, surgeons, anesthesiologists, family practitioners, and subspecialists. Now, the U.S. recruits nurses from abroad, creating crises in those countries, and depresses wages here at home. Sometimes it seems the more laws you make to protect one labor group, the worse you make it for someone else. (Story from New England Journal of Medicine, v. 354:5;529.)

Brain drain
Filipino nurses
Unintended consequences

2134 Thank your fairy blog mother week

While reading Uisce this morning, I learned it was Thank your fairy blog mother week. Like a lot of holidays, it has gotten out of hand. It used to be one day, now it is a whole week, which allows those of us who clicked in late to participate.

My fairy blog mother is PJ, a very talented and pretty professional writer I met on Usenet. It's possible she considers me her out-of-weblink, rather-forget-you bundle of grief whose daddy was the article in the Wall Street Journal which rated five blogging hosts. She's liberal and I'm conservative, and she sends me you did good love pats if I write sweet, endearing memories, but she defintely doesn't like my political/social/cultural take on the day to day things that matter.

Things were getting mighty nasty in the Miscellaneouswritingville (MWville) neighborhood back in 2003 and 2004. Gangs of thugs patrolled the streets. A Brit particularly was harrassing me. I had to block his e-mail--still do. So I tried blogging where I'd have the control, but had a few hitches in my get-along when I started and e-mailed PJ for help. She graciously threw a few hints my way and I was off and running, or blogging. Now I have seven blogs, but this is the one that gets most of my attention.

2133 My public library

has one title (1964) on the Lutheran church, but has The Complete annotated Grateful Dead lyrics. I don't know how many dead heads there are in Upper Arlington, but there are several thousand Lutherans.

Lutherans
Grateful Dead
Upper Arlington, Ohio
Librarianship

Thirteen magazine subscriptions you’ll find in NORMA’s house for which we have to find shelf space and/or a disposal route, usually our local Friends of the Library book sale. This isn’t all of them, but these are either worth passing on for a second look by someone else, or they are the keepers. 1. Home--stuff. 2. Metropolitan Home--more stuff. 3. Architectural Digest--over the top decorating, houses and places you’ll never visit and people you probably wouldn‘t feel comfortable with. I save the Hollywood issues, the ones that show REAL glamour from the 1930s and 1940s. The March 2006 is fabulous. 4. Residential architect--often features a regional, residential architect who does fine work but you’ve never heard of him. 5. This Old House--Few magazines retain their original format and style over the years, but this one has stayed with its roots. Why change success? 6. Fine Homebuilding--really fine. A real pleasure to look at. 7. Preservation--sometimes the “what not to do” photos are the best. After Steve Jobs (Apple) got permission to tear down his 80 year old house, a judge retracted the order. . . 8. Renovation Style--I look at this if there’s nothing else around. 9. Wired--probably the best buy out there--$10 for 12 issues, and always fascinating. 10. American Artist--we’ve subscribed for years--it began as a “bread and butter” thank you gift. 11. American Artist Watercolor--a spin-off; if owning a magazine could make me a better painter, this one should do it. Breath taking. 12. Columbus Bar Briefs--this came with another publication which has recently gone to e-mail, so I probably won’t see it anymore, but it is very interesting. No advertising, and odd bits of law you’ve never heard of without all the legal jargon. 13. Mind (Scientific American)--a quarterly, probably not worth the cost. I didn’t resubscribe. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! 1. Carol is first. 2. Nicole 3. Uisce 4. Killired 5. Matthew 6. Kelly 7. Lazy Daisy 8. Leesa, 9. Mar in Spain, 10.Nancy, 11. Janne, mother of 9, 12. Rough draft, 13. Courtney, 14. Colleen 15. Renee 16. Lindsey 17. Frog Legs 18. Jane 19. Joe Norman who loves musicals 20. Valbee 21. Ma 22. D. Visit my magazine blog to find out why I collect them.

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2131 It's no wonder Americans don't save money for retirement

The government makes it very difficult. My daughter called me yesterday about her plans for a Roth IRA for 2005 and 2006. She's read all the instructions three times and talked to her accountant, and still won't know until she has a professional do her taxes, whether she can do the entire $4,000. I picked up a tax preparation book at the library and leafed through to the IRA section. It was impossible to understand.

In 1995 the total pages of federal tax rules were 40,500; in 2004, 60,044.

In 2000 the number of IRS tax forms were 475; in 2004 they were 529.

In 1994 there were 16 loopholes for education and training; in 2004 that had risen to 28.

In 1995, 50% of taxpayers used paid tax preparers; in 2003, 62%.

In 1995 Americans spent 5.3 billion hours filling out tax forms; in 2004, 6.5 billion.

In 1995 there were 84 pages in the 1040 instruction book; in 2003 there were 131.

To complete the 1040, A,B, and D schedules in 1995, it required 21.2 hours; in 2003 it took 28.5. [figures from CATO Handbook on Policy, p. 120]

Roth IRA
Federal tax reform
Savings accounts

2130 The writing class assignment

This week for our writing group, our topic "tickler" is a memory evoked by a Norman Rockwell magazine cover or that of another famous illustrator. Those of you familiar only with today's run of the mill, same-face-of-the-day covers (Brad or Jen or Angelina or mix and match on five different covers), might wonder why a magazine cover would evoke a memory. Yet for the first 60-70 years of the 20th century artists competed to be on the cover of business, current events, fiction and general interest magazines, particularly, Collier's, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies' Home Journal, Redbook, Ford Times, Country Gentleman, Boys' Life, and Literary Digest, to name a few. And Norman Rockwell was one of the best and the most famous, and probably the richest, if commissions tell the tale.

However, by the time I was a young adult, snobbery had set in, and because of his success, his topics, or the building war in Asia which made us question and doubt anything pro-American it became popular to turn up your nose and sniff at Rockwell's populist and cliched paintings. If you look at his composition, his use of light and value, his humor, his pathos, his occasional caricature or pulling the viewer's nose, and his technique, he really is in a class with the painters of the Renaissance. (Look at one of his April Fool paintings in the 1940s; is it a joke or isn't it?)

Through no fault of his own, he became a target of art critics and art history teachers who couldn't agree on the value of realism, or whether art should tell a story, but were quite pious about their own favorites in modern and abstract art. Snooty, snooty, snooty. And a lot of us fell for it, even me. We learned to love (or at least hype) the ugly and profane. Middlebrow all the way. That was me. Afraid to say the emporer had no clothes.

This will be my topic for the class, never to see the light of day, of course.

Norman Rockwell
writing topics
American artists

2129 Has anyone heard from David?

Sometimes a blogger drops out of site and you wonder what has happened to him or her. David Durrant, the Heretical Librarian, is not exactly in that category, but his blog is quiet for now. One of the few conservative librarians in the blogosphere, he took off his sensible shoes and traded them in for army boots (well, National Guard, actually). He had a brief moment of fame in September when he had an article published in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

"Much has been made of the left's domination of college and university faculties. Yet in terms of political composition, the library profession makes your typical Ivy League faculty look like the Heritage Foundation. Had the 2004 election been confined to librarians, I firmly believe that the presidential race would not have been between Kerry and Bush, but between Kerry and Nader.

When David Brooks did some research into political donations by profession for his September 11, 2004, column in The New York Times, he found that for librarians "the ratio of Kerry to Bush donations was a whopping 223 to 1." By contrast, the corresponding ratio for academics was 11 to 1. As one of those rarest of beasts, a conservative librarian, I can attest firsthand to the stifling left-wing orthodoxy of modern American librarianship." The loneliness of a Conservative Librarian

In October he began his North Carolina National Guard training, and in January 2006 left for basic. He says he will blog again later--possibly April with some great stories we hope.

librarianship
David Brooks
political donations

2128 Judging a book by its cover

You've heard the old saying, "You can't judge a book by its cover." This book has a nice cover, interesting content, and it is very personal, like scrapbooking with a purpose. Sarah's Daughter tells about a type of "hope chest" for today's young woman, a 3 ring binder with articles, ideas and tips for the time her daughter leaves home. But Mom has made a nice cover for it. She wrote, "I printed some articles from the internet about purity, modesty, and godly girlhood. I was a bit disappointed, since there wasn’t much that was appropriate for a thirteen year old." Yes, mommy, the internet is not a good source for these topics--not even your public library will yield much. There are wonderful sources on the internet--the craft sites just amaze me, but its biggest money maker unfortunately is pornography. If just the Christians stopped using porn and its accouterments today, the industry would be in trouble tomorrow.

HT Mrs. Happy Housewife who says she's not desperate. Also at her site I read about Randi's on-line quilting class.

If you had a daughter about to leave the nest, what tip would you add? Or would she know it all by then?

2127 Coffee and cream to the extreme

Many years ago I'd order a scoop of vanilla ice cream with my coffee and I'd take a teaspoon or two of the ice cream and stir it into the coffee. That's actually how I started drinking coffee with cream, because before that I always drank it black. After awhile, it just didn't taste right black.

But this is a bit over the top, no pun intended.

2126 The Food Pantry

Today I volunteered at the Food Pantry, and frankly, I'm bushed. Almost too tired to blog. Almost. Standing, walking, stocking, and helping clients for five hours on concrete floors is sort of tiring--I don't feel old until I have to do something physical I don't usually do.

I haven't quite figured out the schedule, but I think our church takes responsibility for one week, staffs with volunteers, and then others fill in as needed. For instance, I was working with a lovely Baptist lady who lives in the area and just walked in and asked if she could volunteer. It's extremely well run by a former business executive, and is set up differently than when I volunteered a few times in the late 80s. There are several types of food--government surplus, grocery store surplus and past due date items, items purchased by the pantry in quantity, and donated food from local churches.

Everything that comes in has to be sorted, stored and shelved, or put in the coolers to keep them fresh. Fresh items vary. Today, for instance, everyone got 10 lbs. of potatoes and 5 lbs. of apples and as much bread as they wanted. At one point, volunteers from various churches who had picked up surplus and day-old items at bakeries around town arrived in their vans, so we all went outside with palettes and grocery carts and unloaded the vans. Then everything was repacked in boxes so they could be stored, with things that wouldn't keep well--birthday cakes, pecan and fruit pies, tortes, etc. going immediately to the shelves. When we had a lull, we'd sort and fold sacks, or break down boxes, or restock shelves. Sixty nine families were served at this location today.

2125 Ray Nagin vs. Pat Robertson

in the battle to say dumb things about God, who's winning? Here's a funny from The Sacred Sandwich

via Know Tea, whose site was just redone by SmockLady.

2124 Opening first class mail

"Leahy asked Gonzales if intelligence officers had the authority to open first-class mail, and Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California asked if the Bush administration had other secret programs. Gonzales said he couldn't comment on hypothetical questions." Gonzales testimony

Today on Rush's show a caller mentioned that his 92 year old mother's job during WWII was opening first class mail. She brought down a 7 member German spy ring. Now, I can't verify this story--maybe he's talking through his baseball cap. But opening first class mail by government order 60 years ago did happen and may be the reason you're reading this today. Or maybe you're reading this because of more recent surveillance which stopped something.

2123 The Super Bowl Ads, My Take

I thought the Burger King commercial was the most disgusting, anti-woman piece of trash I've ever seen on TV, billboards or magazines combined. Whopperettes? Women dressed like 50s models in 50s type make-up being thrown into sandwish buns to create a Whopper? The leering old King? If this was a parody, a 1950s style lynching in a commercial would be a parody.

Ah, and the Rolling Stones. I left my computer and sat down in the living room to watch this one.
"Who are these guys?" my husband asked.
"Those are the Rolling Stones, they are about our age," I informed him, "See that black haired guy? I think he's deaf."
"They sound just awful, let's change the channel," he said.
"No, honey this stuff is history--Mick's been prancing like that at least 40 years--it's Super Bowl XL, you know."
"Why are they cheering this nonsense," he grumbled.
"Because it's a boomer thing, I think," I said.

How not to marry a jerk

There was a radio discussion of an upcoming book as I clicked through this morning that had a title something like this. So I thought I'd make up my own list. Mind you, I've never been married to a jerk, but I know a few people who have, and the signs were like billboards down that road to the church.

He might be a jerk and you should be cautious if

• either one of you were not legally, morally or emotionally free to date
  
• he bought your ring at a pawn shop
  
• he expects you to pay for the honeymoon
  
• he cares more about you than his kids
  
• you've met his parents and his dad is a jerk
  
• you've met his parents and he's a mama's boy
  
• he's had several jobs in the last year and it's always someone else's fault that it didn't work out
  
• he wants to move in with you before marriage, "to save money"
  
• he spends more time in front of the mirror than you do
  
• he has no hobbies--you're it
  
• he has a bad credit rating and a lot of credit card debt
  
• he doesn't like your kids and thinks they're spoiled and you spend too much time with them
  

He's definitely a jerk if

• he's never introduced you to his family and has told you nothing about his background
  
• he lies about missed appointments, income, friends, employment
  
• he exaggerates his importance, his skills, his talent, his abilities, his grades, his job reviews, the important people he knows
  
• he's unemployed and not looking or training for something else
  
• he's always borrowing money from you or his other friends, or is "just a little short this month" and expects you to pick up the tab
  
• he talks about the importance of his faith and values, but never goes to church with you, or invites you to his
  
• he suffers from road rage over minor infractions of other drivers
  
• you're embarrassed to play golf or tennis or cards with him because of his temper tantrums and poor sportsmanship
  
• he expects you to change your religion even though he isn't observant in his own
  

He's beyond jerk-dom and you need to run the other way and get some counseling if

• he's ever been physically abusive or takes pleasure in ridiculing you or making you the object of his "just kidding" stories
  
• he has a prison record or was in prison when you met (i.e., he was needy and you were the savior)
  
• he has a drug or alcohol problem he's not addressing with regular meetings and a support group
  
• he never sees his kids or is behind in his child support
  
• he has no friends, or won't introduce you to those he does have
  
• he's cruel to animals or abandons his pets
  

Do you have other suggestions to add to this list?

Women give signals too, but I'm not as familiar with those. Will take suggestions.

marriage advice