The Bubble Girl responds!

I got a lot of thought-provoking comments on my last post, It's not easy being clean, that I simply must respond to.  Here goes:

*****

Spero Alexio says:  "How about if someone gives you a dirty look?"
-- I figure surely it was meant for someone in my general direction, not me.

SA continues:  "How about having a boyfriend who won't clean up his act?"
-- Been there, done that.  They're long gone.  See my response to DuggleBogey below.

*****

Ray Denzel says:  "hmm, loons in a cute way!"
-- Ray, cute is what I'm all about.  You should see my shoe collection.
 

*****

Angela Perry says: "I go into a meltdown when people put bread directly on the counter to make a sandwich. You and Neil are not loons, you are the norm. :)"
-- Angela, I can only wish we were the norm. Unfortunately, we are rare birds people. Keep smiling!

*****

 
Dawn says:  "When ever the grandkids come over and bring there ipads, I promptly wipe them down because, I can't stand the millions of finger prints all over."
-- If I were queen, Dawn, every kid would be wiped down several times a day; they're walking balls of germs that leave fingerprints on everything. Wait, were you talking about the iPads?

*****

Mike Dennis says:  "Funny post, Linda. Especially the part about the hand towel vs dish towel."
-- Um, that post was totally serious.  What the hell is so funny about wiping slimy old bacon grease from your hands and then using the same towel to dry a pan that you just cooked bacon in?.

MD continues:  "Given the fact that you take great care to avoid germs on hand towels, napkins, food counters, etc, and that most people (myself included) do not take anywhere near that degree of care, why are the rest of us not paying any real consequences?  In other words, we're all presumably risking our health by these less-than-sanitary practices, and yet we live to tell about it. Why is that?"
--  Well, Mike, you're about my age, and I can tell you right now that in 50 years you, in fact, will be dead.  Yup, it will all catch up with you. Who's gonna be wishing he hadn't dried the dishes with a hand towel then? Huh?

*****

Tara Crowley says:  "The things that I adhere to are: bathroom sponges are for bathroom ONLY, dish towels are for dishes ONLY ,and...I think that's it. I even share lip balm (yuck)."
--  I was with you until the lip balm.  God help you.

*****

Meliss says: "i'm sort of the opposite of a germaphobe. i think all the germs build immunities. not that i invite them, but i just don't really pay attention. bread and cookies on counters and tables don't bother me."
-- Meliss, I beg of you, get some help.  And P.S try using the Shift key once in a while.

Meliss continues:  "i am grossed out, however, when people blow their noses and put the tissue on the table. or take food out of their mouths and put it on their plates. olive pits aren't a fave either."
-- maybe there's hope for you after all...

*****

Julie says:  "I don't even think about half that stuff. I unwrap my silverware and set it down on the table, I admit it. It has never dawned on me to worry that someone who cooked a potluck dish in their own kitchen may have petted their dog."
-- I love you, but if you invite me to your house, I guarantee I'll stop at a drive-thru on the way over.  Because I'm sure that anyone working in the kitchen at McDonald's got that job because they passed a comprehensive hygiene test.

Julie continues:  "Don't you worry about whether the guy in the back room has sneezed over your food? Or picked his nose and then handled your burger? Eating out isn't all that different than a potluck!"
-- See my response above.

 *****

Coach says:  " :) "
-- I could say, WTF is that supposed to mean?  But I'll take it that you're smiling because finally somebody said something that made an iota of sense. Finally someone is standing up for germaphobes everywhere shouting, "We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore! The next time you put your silverware right on the filthy table that was just wiped down with the disgusting all-purpose rag, don't be surprised if we stand up and knock your filthy friggin' table over all dramatically like we're in last scene in an episode of Guiding Light."  That's what you meant, right, Coach?

*****

Mimi says: "'creating our sterile eating field'...yup, that's me too and I thought I was the only one in the world!"
-- Thankfully, Mimi, there's at least three of us. 

*****

DuggleBogey says:  "Did the guy who ate the cookie live to tell the tale?  If so, you have your answer..."
-- Yes, my old boyfriend who placed a cookie on a filthy patio table that birds walk all over did, in fact, live to tell the tale. And he tells it often.  And he's Irish, so every time he tells it, it gets a little more colorful.  But guess what?  He also had to have his hip replaced. Who's the one who had to spend a two days in the hospital?  Huh?  Not me!  Draw your own conclusions, DuggleBogey.

It's not easy being clean

My friend Neil was one of the first people I met when I moved to Las Vegas 10 years ago.  Both of us had forced ourselves to go to a stupid networking event on the Strip; I was hoping to make some contacts that would eventually lead to a job (oh, what a terrible time I had finding a job here) and Neil had been dragged there by a friend.  In my book I describe how our eyes met as we "winced in unison as a man rifled through a bowl of mixed nuts right after he coughed in his hand, and then the two of us talked for twenty minutes about how we'd rather starve than eat bar nuts left open to mass contamination." Neil and I are both germaphobes and I'm the first to admit we're as nutty as the day is long.

Neil moved up to Portland, Oregon, several years ago but was in town last week so we got together for lunch at Sean Patrick's Irish Pub on West Flamingo, which immediately earned our seal of approval.  "Look at this, Linda," Neil said, pleased to see the utensils wrapped in a napkin and then placed on a second napkin. "We can unwrap our knives and forks and then safely put them on the other napkin."

I nodded. "How about those people who put their silverware right on the table?" 

"The table that's just been gone over with the 'all-purpose rag...'" he added. We both shuddered.

Although the restaurant had done a great job creating our sterile eating field, Neil asked the waitress for a few more napkins, which he used to pick up the ketchup for his potatoes, totally a la What About Bob?

Neil and I hadn't seen each other in ages and had a ton of catching up to do. And by "catching up," I mean we had a full agenda, sharing our pet peeves (for the umpteenth time in our 10-year friendship) and every single unsanitary practice we'd witnessed since we last got together.

The other day I went through the drive-through at Jack-in-the-Box and the guy was really nice, but when he gave me my food, the nail on his pinky finger was really long.  Like he was growing it out. It was disgusting. The only way I could eat my food was to think that he never touched it.  Only the people in the back. People who had just washed their hands...

"Pot luck." Are there any words more horrifying? I can't eat from just anybody's kitchen. What if they have cats that walk around their kitchen counters?  What if they have a dog and pet it and then touch the food they're making? No, if I have to go to a pot luck, I eat only what I brought. Or something that I'm sure is from a store...

How about people who blow their nose in their napkin and then put it right on the table?  Or even on their plate, so now the waitress has to deal with that...

How about people who make a sandwich and place the bread right on the counter? Not on a plate, not on a cutting board, not on a napkin or paper towel...

"I once saw someone put a cookie down right on the table," Neil said, "and then eat it."

I one upped him. "That's nothing, I once dated a guy who put a cookie on an outside patio table and then eat it. An outside patio table that birds could walk on.  I saw with my own eyes. Needless to say, we didn't last."

Then I told Neil how I periodically catch Mike drying a pan with a hand towel. "A hand towel!  It's like he doesn't even know there's a difference between a hand towel and a dish towel. You can't dry dishes with a hand towel that everyone's been wiping their hands on."

Neil shook his head.  "That's grounds for divorce."

Oh, we went on and on. And then yesterday I got an email from Neil telling me he was at a  celebration where the birthday girl kept licking her fingers as she cut the cake, contaminating the adjoining pieces. "Linda, we were sitting right in front of the serving table and this was happening blatantly right up in my face to the point that I had to get up, go away and watch from afar," he wrote.

Yep, birthday parties can be a nightmare, especially the whole blowing out the candles bit.  I was brought up right. On her birthday, my grandmother would extinguish the candles by waving a paper plate over the cake, a practice adopted by my entire family. Yes, you can come to a birthday of anyone in my family and not have to worry about drops of saliva in the frosting. I try to get other people to do the same when it's their birthday; some will humor me. Others won't. And that is when I pass on the cake.

I should say that my grandmother used to keep her vacuum cleaner in a plastic bag so it wouldn't get dirty.  She was my hero.

What do you think? Are Neil and I loons or what?  Are you a germ freak, too? 

FREE download this weekend!

I'll be back with a proper post later, but in the meantime go download my book, Bastard Husband: A Love Story, for FREE!  The promotion starts today and runs through Sunday.  These promos always translate to real sales for me, so don't feel bad about getting it for free. And if you haven't read it yet, what the hell are you waiting for?  It's brilliant!

What am I missing?

Sorry if you already saw this on my Facebook post yesterday.  This is a real live ad that was in the Kohl's flyer in yesterday's newspaper.

Warning, kids:  Never accept mustache rides from strangers.

I live with an 8-year-old girl half the time and I swear she's never once asked for a T-shirt proclaiming her love for mustaches. Yet, when I showed her the Kohl's ad, she laughed and said, "That's so cool!"

HUH?

I have a feeling that in 50 years when she's post-menopausal, she's not gonna be loving mustaches too much...

All work and no play is making me dull as hell

I hate, hate, hate that I haven't posted in over a week.  I can see on my Statcounter app that you're all still checking in, and I can't tell you how much I appreciate that.  The truth is, I've had no time to post and I'm not doing anything interesting enough to write about. 

Well, that's not quite true.  I have a couple of posts in my head that I've love to share, but there are just some things you can't put in writing for all the world to see without it someday coming back to bite you in the ass.  But I can say that Mike and I saw two shows this week; one was fun as hell and the other was just... awful.

The good one I can talk about.  Wednesday night we saw The Rising, a Bruce Springsteen tribute band, at the House of Blues in Mandalay Bay. You know me and tribute bands.  Maybe you think they're queer and goofy, but unless I'm actually at a Springsteen show, where else am I gonna hear "Thunder Road" live?  It was so much fun.  At one time I caught myself literally jumping for joy. I wish I had taken a picture of the cute outfit I wore that night--my sexy biker jeans that are cut peek-a-boo style down the side with an authentic black and white tie-dye T-shirt.  From Kohl's. I could have posted that photo on Facebook and even those of you in friggin' Edmonton and Maple Ridge up in Canada could have heard my kids' groans of embarrassment. Yes, jumping for joy in that outfit.  Too bad you missed it.

For reasons of diplomacy--which has never been my strong suit--I can't really go into the other show we saw. Look, I'm the first to admit that no one knocks it out of the park every night, but this was a seasoned performer who should have had, um, an act. It was like he was thinking, "I'm so well-known and beloved that just being in the same room as me, enjoying my presence in the flesh, should be entertainment enough. Therefore, I'm going to deliver a rambling stream of consciousness while you sink along with me in the realization that you've just wasted two hours of your life you can never get back."  Enough said.

What else have I been up to? Not a whole lot.  Just working my ass off, but I can't complain--I love my job and every one of my clients. I've also been working on another book that will be called something like Love Your Stinkin' Job... or Find Another One.  I don't have a real title yet.  It will be a humorous guide to framing your current job in a way that will make you happy or getting the hell out and finding a job that you will be happy in.  I see it as a blend of funny, work-related anecdotes and other crap from my brain as well as practical advice on topics related to the workplace and conducting a job search.  It's gonna be cool.

Also, I've been putting together a "leading with laughter" type of workshop and another one that uses humor as a way to build teams.  "Leading with laughter" is a phrase that's already overused and there are a bunch of other companies out there offering that type of program, but not like what I have in mind. I went to a session once with a "humor expert" who just dissected the hell out of humor to the point where nothing was funny anymore.  Believe me, my program will be fun and funny.

So that's what I've been up to.  Couldn't be more boring, right?

Giving thanks on the Fourth of July

The deaths of the 19 firefighters killed while battling the Yarnell wildfires outside of Prescott, Arizona, have left us all with a heavy heart. Of these 19 heroes, 14 of them were in their 20s.

I can't help but think of my 19-year-old nephew, Cameron, my sister Lori's son.  He's following in his father's footsteps; my brother-in-law Russ has been a volunteer fireman for many years now and is the assistant chief in his district. 

Cameron belongs a neighboring district that allowed him to join a year earlier, when he was only 15, though he provides assistance in his father's district as well. When Cam turned 18, he was so happy to finally be interior qualified, meaning he was able to do fire attack from inside burning buildings.  He's now a lieutenant.

Here is with upon his return from Long Beach, NY, after a 72-hour tour to help out with hurricane relief downstate.

Every time I go back to Albany, I stay at Lori and Russ' house.  At least a couple of times during my visit, I'll hear the sirens go off in the middle of the night.  While my sleep will be disrupted for just a moment, Russ, Cameron, or both of them will spring from their warm beds and head to the firehouse--regardless of how cold and snowy or rainy it is--and sometimes they'll be out for hours at a time.  And then they'll go to work or school the next day on half a night's sleep.

Look at this kid's face.

Nineteen men--most of whom were just a few years older than Cameron--lost their lives this week protecting the lives and property of others.  These are true heroes, serving the public along with teachers, nurses, policemen (yes, even the bloody ticket-happy Henderson police), aides in the nursing homes, workers in group homes for disabled people and court-placed youth, our soldiers, and other service-oriented professions.  And let's not forget every volunteer on earth.  

I know it's the Fourth of July, but today I give thanks.

Confirmed: Craziness runs in our family

Is it Thursday already?  I haven't yet told you about my incredible weekend and now it's almost time for another one? Where does the time go?

Oh, last weekend was so much FUN!  My sister Lori flew into town last Thursday night and then Friday afternoon we hit the road for LA to meet up with our second cousin Laurie and her 26-year-old daughter, Melissa.  Our dad and Laurie's mother were first cousins. When we were kids, Lori and I used to see Laurie and her siblings a couple of times each summer at our grandmothers' family camp at Reichard's Lake, outside of Albany, NY.  We hadn't seen each other since we were teenagers in the early 1970s and reconnected a couple of years ago when Laurie found us on Facebook.

Laurie married a Kiwi and has been living in New Zealand for about 7 years now.  A couple of years ago, she became a flight attendant with Air New Zealand so she gets to fly for super cheap. After she booked this trip to the States to see her kids, we made it a point for us to all get together.  Lori booked her flight from Albany and I booked us a couple of rooms at The Cadillac Hotel on Venice Beach.

Charlie Chapman once spent the summer here.

View from the rooftop

 Now, when you're seeing someone for the first time in about 40 years, you can't really know what to expect.  Laurie was AWESOME!  Funny as hell and totally nuts. 

Melissa and Laurie

And as for Melissa, the acorn doesn't fall far from the tree. That kid is hilarious. She told us how she went to the bank to open an account wearing a costume (I think it was a superhero costume) just to see people's reactions and no one said a word.  She likes to sew and made the dress she wore to her brother's wedding out of a shower curtain from Target.  Plus she told us this joke:

Q. What's worse than finding a worm in your apple?
A.  The Holocaust.

Oh, she is a sick one, and in the greatest way possible.  I adore her.

Here's a pic of Lori and Laurie and me.

Cousins!

As you can no doubt tell, my cousin Laurie has the most incredible rack. That was the first thing I wanted to say when I first saw her, but I thought I'd better be polite so I waited like 10 minutes and then said, "You have the most incredible rack!" It's true--she does!

Laurie is truly a fascinating person.  She grew up in a 7-bedroom house and they had a maid. A maid! But don't hate her--her family was as dysfunctional as the next one and Laurie is the most unpretentious person on earth.

Laurie traveled and lived all over the world with her first husband and kids, and they even lived in Kuwait for a while.  A few years after they were divorced, she met her Kiwi husband online and a few months later flew off to New Zealand to meet him. "Fortunately, my dad had just died and left me some money," she deadpanned.  Soon after her return, she told Husband #1, "You'd better reconnect with the kids; I'm moving to New Zealand!" and she's been there ever since.

Oh, and on Saturday she told us that in college she spent some time in Eastern Europe on a music tour and one of her roommates was Sheryl Crow. They even recorded an album. My sister Lori was like, "Really? You were roommates with Sheryl Crow and you're just now telling us?  On Day 2?  I totally would have led with that."

It was so wonderful to laugh at our lives and our families and reminisce about all our mutual dead relatives.  And it was surprising how much we had in common. 

• We both grew up with parents screaming their heads off at each other, and I think Laurie's parents got along even worse than ours. When Laurie's father died, there was a downpour when they all arrived at the cemetery.  Not wanting to go out into the elements, her mother barked, "Let's just go to Olive Garden!" and that was the end of that period of mourning.
• We both married Kiwis.  (She's already had a much higher success rate than I did.)
• Our whole families LOVE Pee Wee Herman and can recite practically the entire dialogue from Pee Wee's Big Adventure.  "It's like you're unraveling a cable knit sweater that someone keeps knitting, and knitting, and knitting..."
• We're not animal people.  We're still lovely people; we just don't connect with the animal world and sure as hell don't want them sniffing or breathing on us.  I told Laurie I have a rule:  Any animal that wants to sniff my crotch has to buy me dinner first. 
• We love Ross Dress-for-Less and spent God knows how much time in the one in LA across from The Grove.

Lori and I hit two more of these on the way back to Vegas

What a fantastic weekend. And to think we all came together through Facebook.  Say what you will about it, but this little segment of our family is pretty damn grateful.  I have lots more to share about our time in LA.  Next post!

Loud talkers at the movies -- I don't care WHO you are!

I'm practically famous for my intolerance of bad manners in movie theaters (see Pet peeve #437: LOUD talkers at the movies). Well, it seems I'm not the only one, and the practice of people acting in public like they're being entertained from their sofa is not limited to movie houses.  The New York Observer recently reported that "Broadway audiences are behaving badly, and someone is going to get hurt."

According to this article,

The fight broke out during the first act of Glengarry Glen Ross.

As Al Pacino and Bobby Cannavale circled each other on the boards, a well-dressed woman in the audience was noisily working her way through a cellophane package of Twizzlers. When a man in the next seat shushed her, the woman’s thuggish husband loudly intervened.

The exchange became more heated until the husband—who could have passed for a second-tier personal injury attorney from Planet of the Apes—challenged his adversary to “take it outside.” The pace may have been a little slow on stage, but those of us in the mezzanine were riveted by the imminent possibility of actual violence.

Take it outside over a noisy package of Twizzlers?  Hmmm... fair enough. I go bonkers if my film experience is interrupted during a $7.50 matinee; imagine if I paid $150 for a theater ticket?

Evidently these confrontations are on the rise. (And I have to ask, who in their right mind would want to piss off a New York audience?) The article goes on to say that theater goers' "sense of entitlement, and the pushback it provokes from touchy fellow audience members, has resulted in an increasing number of aggressive confrontations, which have now joined more commonplace theater annoyances like texting or a ringing cell phone."

Grrrr....  Reminds me a scene from Bobcat Goldthwait's God Bless America, where the protagonist goes ballistic on the rude audience members. If you haven't yet seen it, I don't know what you're waiting for. 

A few weeks ago I was at an AARP conference (if I had a dime for every time I started a sentence with that...) and saw a pre-release screening of The Internship, the new comedy with Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson. I thought it was really cute. 

Anyway, I got there early (as I always do) to get a seat as close to the screen as I can stand, so as to minimize the likelihood of being infuriated by the light of some idiot's cell phone screen. So before the show starts, I'm sitting there thinking how great it is to be among all these mature, vibrant folks with such a zest for enjoying life and I decide to do a Facebook post.  As I'm finishing it up, the lights go down, and in a nanosecond the woman next to me snaps, "Cell phones off!"

Channeling Robert DeNiro:  Are you tawkin' to ME?

Oh. my. God. Forget the, "Aren't old people wonderful?" crap. I sat there positively seething, thinking, "You cranky old bitch. I am so gonna trip you on the way out."

Later that afternoon I had the best film experience of my life at the screening of Jerry Lewis' new movie Max Rose, which at that point had been shown only at Cannes a couple of weeks before. It's not a comedy, though there are some funny moments. Jerry Lewis plays a one-hit wonder jazz musician who makes an unsettling discovery following the death of his beloved wife.  It's a serious role, and he's fabulous in it.  And this is coming from someone who, although I certainly respected him, was never really a big fan.
 Right before showtime, they announced that Jerry Lewis would be watching the film along with us. Wow! The 87-year-old icon walked out from the left side of the screen and down the aisle and sat literally four rows directly behind me.

The film is fantastic. I'm always struck by how well comedians do in serious roles and it was almost surreal to watch Jerry Lewis' giant face on screen knowing the guy in real life is sitting right behind me.  Jerry Freakin' Lewis!  A comedy legend!  Then I was like, "I don't care who he is. He'd better not make a peep."

After the screening, he and writer/director Daniel Noah sat up front and treated the audience to a Q&A.  Most people gushed over him, saying how they've been a big fan since 1952... blah, blah... whatever happened between you and Dean Martin... blah, blah... and he was not only very gracious in handling their inanity, but hysterically funny and sharp. So cool.

Max Rose is expected to be released in the fall, so be on the lookout.  It's a beautiful movie.

About a half hour after the theater cleared out I ran into Daniel Noah and did my own share of gushing.  A lady nearby heard me and rushed over to say, "This is my son!" which I thought was totally adorable.  I know exactly how she feels--I could burst when my kids perform. Daniel was just so nice; it was a real thrill to meet him.  His sweet mother took this picture of us.

 Oy. That is not a flattering one of me.  My boobs are so not that saggy in real life.  But I was at an AARP conference...

So tomorrow I'm traveling again.  Two weekends ago I was frolicking on the Atlantic in Maine; tomorrow my sister Lori and I will be partying on the Pacific in Venice Beach.  We're meeting our long-lost cousin Laurie from New Zealand, who we haven't seen in 40 years, and her daughter, Melissa.  Oh, this will be an adventure...
  

Some Father's Day words of wisdom

"Why do I need clean underwear? If I get in an accident, I'll shit my pants anyway." -- Dad

Better to hide a key under a rock

Remember last summer when Mike locked me out of the house not once, not twice, but three times while I was relaxing out at the pool? Well, according to yesterday's Las Vegas Review Journal, a man locked out of his house climbed onto the roof and into the chimney of his one-story home in an effort to gain entry.  Problem was, he got stuck about 5 feet down and had to be rescued by a fire crew.

Now, this is the part I don't get: Fire officials said the chimney's opening was only about 12 inches wide. How the HELL does anyone look into a 12-inch opening and think, "Yeah, I could totally fit into that"?

This is alarming because for years my mother has been warning me to check the back seat of my car before getting into it.  "My little Scion is the size of a coffee table," I tell her. "The only people who can fit back there would be a dwarf or a lost 2-year-old, and I'm pretty sure I can take either of them."

But now... maybe I should worry about chimney man.

 Have a great weekend!