Fun For the Frozen

When you both have the day off, and you've been in sort of a rut, it would seem to be a good thing to say, "Hey! Let's go out today and do something fun!" There are three reasons why this is not true.

1) This is Minnesota
2) It is February
3) I am neither a polar bear nor a Siberian husky

When going anywhere involves donning a coat that is essentially an Everest-rated sleeping bag with sleeves, just so you don't freeze and start dropping appendages in various parking lots, your options are somewhat limited.

Yes, many Minnesotans thrive on winter activities, such as ice-fishing (two problems, ice and fishing), snowmobiling (don't have one, don't want one), cross country skiing (talk about excessive physical exertion), or skijoring (this involves dogs pulling you on skis, and my dogs would take off chasing a squirrel or something and drag me into a river). Plus, I hate to be cold. Between November and April, inside is the only place to be. I am not a Minnesotan, despite my current unfortunate location.

Bowling. This is technically a physical activity, and I avoid those whenever possible. However, it does take place indoors, and there is the possibility of snacks and adult beverages, so I'm occasionally willing to consider it.

Still, there are a couple of problems. Bowling alleys have started to get all militant, at least around here. It's hard to find a place where you can still eat and drink at your lane. They want you to go back behind the rail to the area designated for eating and alcohol consumption. This adds way too much inconvenience (walking), and when combined with the physical exertion inherent to the activity, drops bowling way down my list of desirable "fun day" activities.

It's also hard to find a place that doesn't have league bowling at the one time you want to go. Plus it has to be close to home, because if there is going to be even a small amount of drinking, Tom isn't doing any driving. The bowling alley closest to us isn't there anymore. (Try not to choke on the irony) A few winters ago it got so much snow on the roof that it collapsed. Winter in Minnesota. Sigh.

There is also some expense involved in bowling, since you have to rent shoes and the lane, and there must be eating and drinking involved. If you choose this option, it will burn maybe four hours of your day before your bowling arm is limp with painful exhaustion and you can't drink any more and still get home without a DUI.

The Mall. I am not a recreational shopper. I haven't even set foot in a mall in several years. When I need something, I go to the nearest retail establishment that has it, make the purchase, and come home. Walking around a local mall might kill a few hours, but even if you don't buy anything it will still cost some money, since lunch is a requirement. Otherwise I could have just stayed home and not bought stuff on eBay.

As you are probably aware, Minnesota is the home of the Mall of America. I've lived here for 13 years, and I have been there several times. But no more than necessary, believe me. It's an easy way to kill the better part of the day, if you are so inclined, but there's a lot of walking. Like, Appalachian Trail amounts of walking. And since I don't shop for fun, it would be a lot of totally unrewarded walking, unless I bought something, then it's just expensive. Factor in lunch, and little to no alcohol since the Mall is 45 minutes away, and I'm seeing an outlay of cash that is not providing sufficient amounts of fun. (Oh, and there are people there. Lots of people. Many of them children. Another valid reason to avoid MOA.)

Going Out To Lunch: Simple concept, right? But we have the time/money ratio dilemma again. A nice lunch (because I ain't going to Denny's), with drinks, is going to cost at least $50, maybe as much as $75, depending on whether we have appetizers and the number of beverages consumed. If there are significant drinks (which in my book determines the quality of any lunch date), we have to be close to home. I mean like close enough that we could walk if necessary, which leaves all of maybe 2 options, and "going out" somewhere that you could still see your house from the parking lot is kind of pathetic.

Even the nicest yummy, drink-filled lunch close to home is going to kill perhaps two hours of a long, dull day.

The Casino. On the surface, this would look like a stupid idea. When you don't have a lot of money, why would you want to go out of your way to give it all to a bunch of happy, smiling Ojibwe? Allow me to explain our reasoning.

When Tom asks if I want to go to the casino, I never want to.

Tom: Wanna go to the c---?
Me (cutting him off): No.

He likes to throw this randomly into any conversation or period of silence, just to see if I'm paying attention. I am.

It's about an hour and twenty minutes to the casino, and the drive is boring as hell. The drive home is even more boring, because it's usually dark and I can't read without the map light, and that's just annoying. But after I run the other "day of fun" options through my head, I sometimes give in. He determines how much we can afford to spend, which would otherwise be spent bowling or shopping or lunching or drinking, and we go.

We never take money we can't afford to spend, so it's usually around $100. A typical day goes something like this. One of us does well in the morning, cashing out machines for more than we put in. The other one can't hit anything to save their life. We consume many free Diet Pepsis, then we break for the buffet lunch, for which we have a coupon for a free or discounted meal thanks to the players' card.

After lunch, our fortunes usually change. The person whose luck was good in the morning is suddenly swearing at machines or wandering around muttering, looking for a machine that seems like it would like to give us a bunch of money. The other one is now on a roll, making up the deficit. At some point, we go, "Oh, hell, the dogs have got to be starving by now." Then we cash out and go home with almost the same amount of money we had when we got there.

True, sometimes we end up spending everything we brought, but not usually. It tends to be a break-even day, and we've killed 8-10 hours, and had lunch. No drinks, though, because the casino is on Ojibwe land and is dry. Unless you're staying the night and keep a bottle in your room. Which we've done. But not recently. Since we have such a long drive home, though, day-trips to the casino can't be a drink-fest, so the whole "dry" thing is fine. I can always drink when I get home.

This past Saturday, our casino trip started out as usual. Tom had a good morning, cashing out several large tickets, which somehow kept ahead of how much I was losing. Lunch. After lunch, he was flat, then losing a bit, but I started winning. This was good, because up till then I wasn't having much fun. (Losing = Not Fun)

Then we started talking about going home, even or slightly ahead for the day, but Tom wanted to play one more game. He sat at one, and I sat at one two machines down. I forget what it was called, but it was a pirate-themed game. It also had the feature that when you're in the bonus games, if you line up five of one symbol (a treasure chest) you win the minor progressive jackpot shown above your machine. If you line up a different symbol (a skull and crossbones), you win the major progressive jackpot. The minor is generally a few hundred, and the major is maybe $500-800, depending on how long it's been since someone hit it.

I started getting all sorts of bonus games. And then I hit a minor progressive jackpot for $278. Even after I played a few more minutes and we cashed out all our tickets and factored in what we'd spent, we had $340. We'd only gone in the door with $120. We called that a good day, came home, and made up for the day's alcohol deprivation.

I don't care what you say. You never, ever leave the mall with more than you had with you when you got there, unless you have a gun and a ski mask and a competent get-away driver. Since I have none of those, and the whole "running away" part is too much physical activity, I'll stick with the casino.

2010, We Need To Talk

(Note: I wrote this last night, after a very, very, very bad day. Re-reading it today, I have to say I'm definitely feeling better, so crisis intervention is unnecessary. I thought about discarding this post, but what the hell. I wrote it, which is a minor miracle given how broken my writing brain has been, so I figure I'll put it out there. Everything will work out. Eventually.)

An open letter to the year 2010, full of bile and vitriol, with a bitter, snarky aside to the state of Minnesota, because I'm not very happy with either of them right now.

Not-So-Dear 2010,

Remember about six weeks ago when we said good riddance to 2009 and kicked its ass to the curb? You promised to be better. Well, lots of people wished me a "happy new year," and that would be you, and you didn't say you wouldn't be a happy new year, so I took this as tacit agreement with the sentiment. Well, so far you are not upholding this promise. In fact, you're sucking. Big-time.

That huge, festering cesspit that's been sucking me to my doom has only gotten deeper. And more festery. True, 2009 ended with a glimmer of hope, a potential lifeline that is supposed to come to fruition on your watch, but it's still terribly far away. You know, like if you were on Titanic, and you were just about to go in the water, and you caught a glimpse of the Carpathia on the horizon, but you knew it will take it at least an hour to get there, but your life expectancy was about eight minutes? Yeah, it's just like that.

You know what the problem is? No accountability. In ten and a half months, you get to retire and go hang out with all the other old years, not giving a shit about whatever carnage you left in your wake.

Even the lifeline that 2009 dangled before me seems an awful lot like the Carpathia. Too far away. And if it does manage to get here before I self-destruct, it now seems like it will probably pull me up to the edge of the festering cesspit, where I can just peer over the edge, maybe grab a fortuitously placed vine or branch, and maybe... maybe drag my ass out of the muck. Or it could all go balls-up like pretty much everything else in my life.

I am 45. I'm more than halfway through my expected lifespan. (For me, probably more like three-fourths) Yet I'm nowhere near where I want to be, and I have not accomplished much of anything that I want to do. Everything I try to do eventually turns to crap. And you're not helping, 2010. It's hard to get ahead when years like you keep making that pit deeper and deeper and deeper.

And Minnesota, you're not helping, either. Maybe I could cheer up a little if you didn't have eight-month winters and limited options. I've been here since 1996, and you have not lived up to your promises. I tried, I trusted you, and you let me down.

2010, you can expect more complaints, because it's not just me. For example, you're dumping all over my bestest bud, which is going to affect me, too, both personally and professionally. We'd really appreciate it if you could cut us a little slack.

I'm depressed. You have sucked the enthusiasm, motivation, and energy from my entire being. That wasn't very nice. I want to crawl under the covers and not come out till some more cooperative year comes along. I can't think, I can't plan, I can't give a damn, I can't find anything to look forward to.

Sure, you probably think I should be grateful. I have a wonderful husband, who has put up with my lazy, high-maintenance ass for 28 years. I have a happy, healthy, successful, well-established, non-felonious son. I have three healthy dogs, though one of them is now missing a spleen. We have a (crappy) house (for now), and are fairly healthy (which is good, since we have no insurance). So is it wrong for me to whine and go all "why me, my life sucks?" Should I be chastised for looking around and saying, "Shouldn't there be... something more???" Is it wrong to ask for a little hope? For something to turn out not to be ten times harder and more complicated than it was supposed to be?

We work hard. Tom works really hard at his job, in an industry he could do without... but he gives all he has, and is great at what he does. I work moderately hard in an industry that means a lot to me, and I try to do what my soul demands I do... write... yet here we are. Wallowing. Isn't a quarter century of hard work supposed to get you... somewhere?

I'm mentally, emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, and physically exhausted. Why are you making this so difficult? It's not like we squander opportunities or good fortune. We try. We try every day. But nothing ever changes. If it does, it is always the small, slow, incessant slide backward. Why do we bother? Why does anybody bother?

I'm tired of it. I'm just so terribly, terribly tired.

Long Ago And Far Away

This past Saturday marked the 28th anniversary of my first date with Tom... which calls for a story, I'm thinking. Join me now in the Wayback Machine, and set your dials accordingly.

The Time: February 1982

The Place: Bishop Donahue High School in McMechen, West Virginia, home of girls in hideous dark green polyester pants and white blouses, with assorted gold, green, and/or white sweaters. Sometimes the pants would be swapped out for pleated green herringbone skirts which were hemmed much shorter than was permissible according to the uniform code. Home also of boys in equally hideous polyester pants, shirts and ties, except theirs didn't have to be any particular color, which was kind of not fair, though the ties did occasionally come in handy for tying freshmen to their lockers.

The Backstory: Tom was a senior and I was a junior. I was "without boyfriend," since the guy I'd been dating at the start of the year dumped me shortly before Homecoming, and I'd ditched my Slime-Bucket Rebound Boyfriend a few weeks earlier. (At 17, Slime-Bucket already had a baby with some 13-year-old neighbor girl, which should've been my first clue, but I was all heartbroken from the previous boyfriend. Plus I was 17 and stupid. The fact that he always made me duck down in the seat whenever we'd drive by the baby-mama's house on the way to his house should've been my second clue. I mentioned I was stupid, right?)

I told my friend Susie, who was also Tom's friend, that I'd like to go out with him. We'd been sitting together with a group of friends at basketball games lately, and he was so cute and fun and sweet... a big change from Slime-Bucket, and it's possible that I was starting to grow some sense at this point.

Tom and two of his friends were traveling with the girls' volleyball team. Technically, they were "statisticians" or "equipment managers," but mostly they were there because his friend's girlfriend played volleyball, and this friend felt it was his controlling, possessive, Neanderthal duty to make sure no guys at other schools so much as glanced at her legs.

Tom's volleyball bus conversation with Susie went something like this:

Susie: Lori wants to go out with you.
Tom: Nuh-uh.
Susie: Yes she does.
Tom: Nuh-uh.
Susie: Really. You should ask her out.
Tom: Nuh-uh.

At this point she may have whacked him on the head with a water bottle. Or a beer bottle... this was a Catholic school after all, and Catholic school kids take to underage drinking like you would not believe. At any rate, she somehow convinced him that she was serious.

He then began planning his approach. He kept getting crossed up, though, because I never seemed to be alone. I always had a couple of friends with me between classes, and if he was going to get shot down, he preferred that it take place without witnesses. Conveniently, being February, the school's Valentine Dance was coming up, and I did not have a date.

Tom finally found me alone at my locker, and we had the following deep, profound conversation:

Tom: Do you want to go to the Valentine Dance with me?
Me: Sure. We'll have fun.

Is it any wonder we've been together 28 years?

After the date was secured, he probably went and threw up. He might've thrown up before, too, because he threw up before every football game, and this was way more important than a football game. Or maybe not. He always did take football very seriously. Anyway, nervous tummy. Endearing, but also gross.

As the date for the dance approached, things started unraveling. Not enough tickets were sold, so the dance was canceled. We decided we'd still go out, doubling with Neanderthal Friend and Girlfriend. I was a bit panicked when he told me we would go to Calovini's, a restaurant that was way, way nicer than - for example - Pizza Inn or McDonald's. What to wear, what to wear???

The Date: The Big Night finally arrived. I wore light brown pleated dress pants, a short sleeve brown and cream plaid blouse, an off-white corduroy blazer, and my mom's diamond cluster ring which I burgled from her jewelry box and smuggled out of the house. I have no idea what Tom wore. Neither does he. Not important. But it was probably some chenille-velour-type sweater and slacks. It was 1982.

Tom and the other couple picked me up, and we proceeded to the Farm Fresh store, because no first date is complete without a bottle of super cheap, super weak, super sweet Riunite wine. (Don't act surprised. I already told you about Catholic school kids and underage drinking.) That obtained, Tom gave me a Valentine. It was highly out of character for sweet, shy, innocent Tom. It had Ziggy on the front, and said "To a girl with an hour glass figure." Inside, it said, "Can I play in the sand???" Naughty, naughty little Catholic school boy! He also gave me a 16-inch tall stuffed Smurf. (Shut up... it was 1982. Do I have to keep reminding you of that? And I thought it was nice.) I still have the card and Smurf.

I should also remind you that this was in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. We went across the river into Ohio to the restaurant. However, crossing the river didn't make the dining choices any more sophisticated. Sure, Calovini's was all fancy-pants to us at the time, but could not in any way be considered classy.

How do I know this? Because the entertainment at Calovini's that night was... a belly dancer. (Scheherazade, I shit you not.) She wiggled and jiggled and shimmied and finger-cymbaled her way between tables all evening. I was pretty much "Eh, whatever" about it, being too busy trying to cut my steak without collapsing the wobbly table at which we were seated. But apparently Girlfriend thought that Neanderthal looked at her too much. This led to an argument in which he committed the cardinal sin of mentioning Slutty Ex-Girlfriend. Current Girlfriend threw a fit and locked herself in the car. (Something similar tended to happen every single time we ever went anywhere with those two.) (Until the night several years later when he called me fat, I slugged him, and we ordered them out of the car and left them on the side of the road. Ah, good times.)

I'm kind of fuzzy regarding how Tom and I ended up alone at my house. Where did Neanderthal and Girlfriend go? In retrospect, I'd guess probably back to the end of my dead end road to have sex. But the evening did end with some nice first-date-smooches on my couch, so that was good. There was none of that naughty Ziggy "playing in the sand" stuff. Not for another week or two, anyway. (This was my version of self-restraint. Seriously, I deserved some sort of commendation.)

The "Ever-After" Part: The next weekend, Tom gave me his class key and class ring. We still have the ring, but I managed to lose the key one day when we were out at my family's camp skinnydipping having sex enjoying a nature walk. So if you're ever out strolling the banks of Fish Creek and find a green and gold class key with the initials CTW, it's ours, and we'd like it back.

When Christmas 1982 rolled around, Tom gave me a teeny-tiny pre-engagement ring, which I lost sometime around 1988. I'm terrible with jewelry. You should never give me any that costs more than about $7.50 including tax.

And when Summer 1983 rolled around, shortly after I graduated, we got another "ring," which was the positive result in the bottom of the pregnancy-test test tube, leading to even more rings (of the wedding variety), a whole bunch of stretch marks (for me), a pretty cool son (for both of us)... and here we are, still together. Believe it or not.

Calovini's burned down a long time ago, and Scheherazade is probably playing Wii Canasta in a retirement home somewhere, recovering from double hip replacement surgery. We managed to raise The Boy without damaging him too much, haven't killed each other (though sometimes not for lack of trying), and have made it into our mid-40s. Together.

But he's still that cute, blonde 17-year-old guy I fell in love with, and always will be.

What's In A Name?

I've got plenty of excuses for not posting more often this winter. Work-related chaos and stress, one dental disaster after another, a dog with cancer and major surgery (it was benign, thankfully, so we're hopeful), the doldrums of my fourteenth (but hopefully final) miserable Minnesota winter, the frustration of waiting for the financial windfall that we won't actually get till later this year, watching friends struggle with personal, medical, and financial troubles...

Yeah, it's been that kind of winter. It's shut down my writing brain. Which puts me in a whole different category of insanity. But let's see if we can jump-start things.

How many of you have worked in customer service? Show of hands. Lots of you, right? Whether it's reception, retail sales, restaurant work, service providers, bank tellers... whatever. Most of us agree it sucks. A lot. And most of us are taught that you're always supposed to give your customers/clients/patrons your name, because that makes them all happy and friendly and stuff. Maybe you have to wear a cheery-looking name tag.

I disagree with this practice, as both an employee and a customer. It annoys the living shit out of me.

Back in the late 80s or early 90s, when I worked for the Indianapolis public library system, the Powers That Be decided that we had to start wearing name tags, and I almost quit over it. I was working the front desk not because I adore the book-reading (or, in many cases, book-stealing or book-damaging or just plain moronic) public, but because I love books and am very good at clerical and administrative work.

I had lots of reasons for not wanting to wear my name prominently displayed over my left boob. The least significant one was that I get creeped out when total strangers peer at my chest and then get all familiar by calling me by name. The main one, though, is that my last name is very unusual, and even back then - in those dark, dismal, empty, pre-internet days - it wasn't hard to find people with very little personal information. There were the inevitable pissed-off patrons, but the most disturbing were the way-too-friendly ones.

There was one guy who appeared to be from somewhere in South America, and he was far too focused on me. I felt like he was practicing his American bar pick-up lines. He would bring cookbooks up to the desk, after waiting for me to come out of hiding in the work room, and ask my opinion on various things, and then offer to cook me dinner. Despite the wedding ring clearly visible on my left hand.

I should also mention this was my "cute year." After I lost a bunch of weight, and before I regained it all. It was the year of the pretty stretch-cotton floral print dresses, short sleeved and fitted to a slightly dropped waist, flaring into a full skirt. Think a 50s-era silhouette without a bunch of petticoats. It was also a good hair year, in general. I was about 25. I suppose he can't be blamed for being intrigued. But he was way too persistent, and had beady, shifty, "I'm totally up to something, and if I cooked you dinner you would definitely wake up in pieces in a dumpster" eyes.

I did not want to wear a name tag.

Besides our job title, our tag would read, for example, "Mrs. Brown." If your name was Brown, which mine was not. If my name had been Smith or Brown or Johnson or Clark, it wouldn't have been so bad. There were undoubtedly dozens, if not hundreds, of Mrs. Browns in Indianapolis. Not so many Mrs. Whitwams, making it far too easy to find out where I lived, if you were so inclined. I guess some others voiced concerns, because the Board decided it would be okay if we misspelled our last names, to help protect our privacy. So, I became "Mrs. Whitham." (I still have the tag somewhere. It's freakin' hilarious.)

The absurdity of this did not escape me. Well over half of the female employees - and some of the males - were wearing fraudulent name tags, ranging from the sly to the ludicrous. Sort of defeated the purpose of identifying ourselves to the patrons.

In my many years of reception work, I inwardly cringed every time I had to answer the phone with some variation of "This is Lori, how may I help you?" because then callers would start calling me Lori, and that feels way too familiar for someone I don't know - and am not even seeing face to face. Plus, whether or not I would feel inclined to help remained to be seen, so making the offer at that point felt a teensy bit dishonest. I'm not one of those people who uses names fifty times in a conversation, unless you are across the room not paying attention to me and I need to tell you something or ask if you have any chocolate.

I also don't do "eye contact," but that's a whole 'nother quirk.

It's not just about my identity, though. 99% of the time, I do not need to know the name of my cashier, dinner-server, drink-bringer, or convenience store clerk. Do not need to know, and could not possibly care less. I'm not going to say, "Morning, Vito. Ring me up on pump 2," or "Hey, Horatio, pour me another glass of merlot." I'm just not.

I've been thinking about this every time I go through the drive-through at my bank to deposit my paycheck. Starting a few months ago, the tellers have been greeting me with, "Hi, this is Frieda, and I'll be helping you today." Really??? Why do I need to know that? First of all, I'm in the drive-through. You could be Mickey Mouse, or an albino cyclops with seaweed hair, and I wouldn't know. Or care. Do not speak. Just take the little plastic cylinder when it plops down in front of you, process my deposit, and shoot the receipt back through the high-pressure air tube thingy. Discussion is not necessary.

I use the drive-through for two reasons. 1) I am way too lazy to get out of the car and walk across the parking lot when a perfectly good alternative exists, and 2) I want to keep the number of humans with which I must interact to an absolute minimum.

If I had a transaction that required conversation or explanation, I would come inside. If I were so starved for human contact that I needed to see you up close and personal, I would come inside. But I did not. I am in the drive-through. If your corporate leadership is saying you have to tell me your name in the interest of customer service, they are asshats and don't know anything about anti-social people who prefer drive-throughs to over-the-counter service.

Oddly, I've recently found one exception to this iron-clad personal rule. Dental assistants. Or dental technicians. Or whatever the currently correct title is. I've spent a lot of time in the torture chair this winter, and the tech I've had at every appointment is quite nice, but has never introduced herself. I think the doctor may have referred to her by name once or twice, so I might know what it is, but she's never said, and they don't wear name tags there. And at some point I crossed the threshold in which I decided if someone's fingers are going to spend that much time in my mouth, and if I'm going to spend several hours staring up into her perfectly-made-up blue eyes through the "don't spit on me" plastic shield, I might care - a little bit, though not enough to ask - what her name is.

At least I hope the plastic shield is for spit. Because if they're expecting me to spurt blood or tooth bits far enough to endanger their eyes, I need to find another dentist.

That, however, has been the only exception. I suppose if I wanted to bitch to management about an employee, it would be handy to know his or her name. But I'm not typically much of a complainer, so it's not really relevant. We did once name a drink-bringer at a club, but we made it up. Pippi The Bar Wench. Because she had braids and brought me many many drinks. I'm pretty sure Pippi was not her real name, but it totally should have been.

I'm encouraged, though, that society might, in some small way, be coming around to my way of thinking. Sure, the service people are still going to have to share their names, verbally or via name tag... but there are more ways to avoid having to deal with them. Oh how I adore self-checkouts at the grocery store and the library. You know, on the rare occasions I go to the grocery store, or the theoretical time I might have to go to the library again now that I have George-the-Kindle. I resisted self-serve gas stations until about 1992, but now they're the only option, and I've decided I'm okay with that. Pay at the pump, zero human interaction... score!

If I need to know who you are, I'll ask. Otherwise, it's totally unnecessary information. And it smacks of insincerity. Because most of you don't care who I am any more than I care who you are, so who are we fooling?

And I leave you with this thought... Whoever invented those "Hello! My Name Is..." adhesive name tags that sadistic management types make you wear at meetings and conferences and (shudder) team-building events should be guillotined. Or drawn and quartered, but that's way messier and a lot more work. But, your choice.