Sometimes I wonder, as I use up the last of the old shampoo bottle and mix in the first of the new, if the shampoo company changed its formula between bottles. And if the combination is explosive.
All posts by Iris
Bucking old habits
Growing up, when any of my family were sick we didn’t stay in bed; we took our pillow out to the couch. When more than one of us were sick, we pulled out the hide-a-bed in the couch. And one time I remember there being 3 of us in the hide-a-bed, one on the love seat, and one on a bed on the living room floor made out of the unused couch cushions. In fact, I only remember one bought of the flu when I spent most of my time in bed, and that was because we had guests staying with us. That’s the bought of the flu where my temperature spiked to 105 a couple of times and when I read David Copperfield. That was a memorable flu in so many unpleasant ways… I’m pretty sure I don’t like that book just on its own merits, but it’s entirely possible that I don’t like it for some fever-related reasons, too.
Anyway, this “going to bed” when you’re sick was something we’d heard about from books, TV, and friends, but we couldn’t really see the point. There wasn’t much about spending a day in bed that sounded appealing. Our bedrooms weren’t interesting, and there was really no call for them to be interesting. They were just for sleeping in at night. There was no TV there (and for the earliest part of my life, TV was a kind of magical thing that only appeared during the Olympics or when we were sick). There were no books or toys there. And why go out to get those and come back when all you had to do was go out to the daytime areas of the house and rest there? No, being in bed was boring. The couch was the place to be.
Even now, with Netflix and the entire internet on my laptop, I generally move dutifully out to the couch when I’m home sick. I can count on one hand the times I’ve decided to stay in bed. Bedrooms are for night time — everywhere else is for daytime, and old habits die hard.
Today, though, not moving out to the couch freed me from the default of turning on the TV, or facing the book I didn’t want to read anyway. Today I just wanted lie there and feel the cat snuggling against the backs of my knees and play Settlers of Catan on my iPod or listen to Wait Wait Don’t Tell me or watch the breeze flutter the curtain. Today I stayed in bed.
RIP Kiddieland
“Over 30 Rides and Attractions” will now be a Costco, or so said NPR as it was coaxing me into wakefulness this morning.
I don’t normally wake up to news of places I haunted as a kid, so it took me a minute to realize that they really did mean my Kiddieland from the days when I lived in a Chicago suburb. This is the Kiddieland where, one rainy day, all the rides but the log ride were closed and all the other park visitors had gone home, so my siblings and friends and I road that log ride on continuous loop for what felt like hours. By the time we’d had enough, we were best friends with the ride operator.
Looking back, I wonder if he resented not being able to go home, kept there by a bunch of kids giddy with the idea of having the park to themselves.
I wonder if they’ll put a log ride into the Costco. The Mall of America could give them some pointers.
Sonar
My cat is a talkative guy. It’s a good thing he’s got a relatively soft voice because he uses it all the time. When he’s not in the same room as me, or if he’s uncertain about things, he often narrates his explorations in the form of short quiet meows that my family has dubbed “sonar.” He’s clearly talking to me, and he seems to like it if I occasionally respond with a “hi buddy” so he knows I’m still around. (Yes, I confess: I talk to my cat.)
This sonaring seems irresistible. He even does it when silence would be by far the preferable action. For example, while exploring the downstairs of my parents’ house — the portion of the house where the dog is — the dog that would dearly love to see if cat really is as tasty as she thinks it must be. If the cat would just go silently, he’d get a lot more time in exploring before the dog realized what was up and gave chase. But no. Sonar is apparently required.
It really got him into trouble last weekend. I was packing up and getting ready to leave my parents’ house, and the cat knew exactly what was up and predicted with great accuracy the impending stuffing-in-cat-carrier and riding-in-car that was coming up. So, like any good cat, he hid. And usually I can find him really easily because I know the places he hides, but this time I couldn’t locate him. I checked behind the bed, under the bed (three times), in the closet, under the dresser, in the linen closet, back to the bedroom closet, behind the bed again… and apparently the cat got more and more worried as he saw all this from his vantage point under the bed (remember, I’d checked there! Sigh.).
And as he got more and more worried, he did as he always does when he’s worried: he activated his sonar mechanism.
At first it was so quiet that I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, but I answered him, so he sonared again, so I answered him. And little by little, I honed in on the under-the-bed region, and there he was.
He looked so unhappy that I’d found him.
Dear State of Illinois
Dear State of Illinois,
I know you’ve got a lot going on right now and that taking suggestions from outsiders is probably low on the list of priorities. Even so, I thought I’d offer you an idea that could save you angst and money in the future.
Since it seems that putting governors in prison is becoming somewhat of a hobby over there, I thought you might want to alter the kinds of compensation you offer incoming governors, specifically their retirement benefits. Prison is an expensive place to stay, and it seems like making some provision for those expenses before the end of the governor’s term would really streamline the process. So it makes sense to have a gubernatorial retirement package that can either be paid out as usual, or paid to the state should incarceration become necessary. If there were also a gubenatorial wing on the prison, then governors could work through their terms of office knowing that they’d be put to pasture with like-minded individuals.
Not only would there be a ready-made fund to draw on when each new governor is found guilty, but the state could rest easier knowing that it has its bases covered, and the governors could get farther in their post-incarceration therapy sessions knowing that they were, in fact, paying for their actions.
Think of it as a pre-nup, but for governors.
Best of luck with your current trial, and I hope the weather is nice there this summer.
Love,
Iris