It isn’t that I don’t strive for perfection.  The moments right before my company arrives for a party, when my perfectly clean, perfectly curated, perfectly scented house looks like it could be featured in a magazine are ones I treasure.  But perhaps the most important word in the previous sentence is ‘moments’. Guests arrive, the party begins and ends, and a familiar mess replaces perfection.
    I read about a hostess named Dana who had finally just thrown in the towel and decided that her brand of entertaining would be marked as Scruffy Hospitality, and I was immediately intrigued, not just by the cool name, but also the idea.
    Her theory- that we were so worried about making our home looked unlived in before we had people over, that we were limiting ourselves from actually sharing our lives together- made a splash on social media. To Dana, Scruffy Hospitality meant it was time to stop worrying about what wasn’t in place and hungering more for good conversation and company. Is Dana who I want to be when I grow up?
     The description of her house rang true to me. Too many things on the too small kitchen counter tops. A stack of books perched on the stairs that need to be carried to the bedroom.  Eight pair of shoes for the three people that live there parked near her front door, casually kicked off and not retrieved. Mismatched deck chairs in use because one broke last season and this season there are no replacements like it available.
   However, Dana has something I don’t…and it isn’t ingredients for delicious salsa or homemade bread in her well-stocked pantry.  It is the ability to just let go.
   I would not call myself a control freak.  My family would call me that.  Maybe my bosses- past and present- would call me that.  But I would not call myself a control freak.
  I do like things to be in their place.  The eight pair of shoes by Dana’s front door?  I would be quizzing my crew about the fastest route to get them put away in a closet or donated.
    The mismatched deck chairs?  I would be scouring Amazon and Marketplace for a full replacement set.
   Dana’s friends sound like perfect fits for her Scruffy Hospitality model as well.  They don’t fret when there is no meal plan or theme for the party. They don’t create a Sign-Up Genius with four slots for appetizers, a list of people’s allergies, and beverage pairings.
    My friends tend to want a little more direction.  Maybe it is because we are primarily educators or coaching wives, and we crave a little order.  We would hate it if two people showed up with sour cream and onion chips and no one thought to bring barbecue chips, or if there were no soft tortillas and only hard taco shells for our tacos.
   Dana also references the impromptu nature of their gatherings as a part of the need for scruffiness. Somebody harvested lettuce from the garden which ‘requires’ a salad be made, so the friends gather, despite the fact that dishes are still in the sink from lunch. Hard boiled eggs, and fresh tomatoes, and homemade croutons appear, and the party is on.  Somebody just happens to have sun tea brewed and enough ice in the freezer for all the cups.
   There is little that is impromptu with our group. My friends and I once celebrated a 25th wedding anniversary exactly 7 months to the day after it happened because it was the first time we could coordinate calendars to all be together. And even then we delayed a day because a funeral crept in to interrupt us.  I remember being glad—not because someone had passed away—but because I had an extra day to clean and organize before guests arrived.
   Perhaps the part of Dana’s Scruffy Hospitality that most intrigues me and yet I most struggle with, is the part where she says we should allow friends to pitch in and help us.  If someone offers to run a cloth over the bathroom to make it company ready or swipe the stool, Dana says okay. I would not be okay.
   A dear friend—and when I say dear friend, I mean one of over 50 years--- arrived early one night, miscalculating her drive time to the house. I was finishing up in the kitchen, and she offered to wipe down the counter. I struggled to let her. That friend?  It was my sister. So, is somebody a little more peripheral wiping down my toilets? Probably not. Reference paragraph five for my supposed control issues.
   I am guessing that I have provided unintentional scruffy hospitality on occasion, when my poor vision missed an area that desperately needed dusting, or the toppings for the baked potato bar were not as promised in my invitation, or a windstorm blew leaves and those gross, crunchy locust shells onto the patio where we were set to gather. And I appreciate the forgiveness I have been shown.
     I am coining a new phrase; I will now be offering Standard Hospitality. It won’t be five star, and it won’t be scruffy. It likely won’t be impeccable, but I promise it won’t be insufficient. And I am guessing it won’t delightful, but probably not delinquent.
     Please stop by…if your schedule allows, and if you were able to access the Sign-Up Genius sheet for what to bring, and you RSVP’d.
 
 

     I am a sucker for a good story with a neatly wrapped and (preferably) happy ending. Truth be told, so are a lot of ya’ll.  Poll a group of hard core Soprano watchers, and they will tell you they truly would like to have known a little more about what happened to good old Tony, and a smaller segment of the group hoped he turned state’s witness and helped the Feds put some of the bad guys away.
   I am along for the ups and downs before the happy ending arrives for sure.  When I watched (and then re-watched and re-watched and re-watched and then taught another generation to watch) The Notebook, I was fully aware that Noah and Allie’s romance was going to have some bumps. The classic story of young kids from different sides of town, a domineering patriarch with big ideas for his baby girl, and societal pressure had to have some curves.
   But I was rooting for those kids, and down deep, I looked for that moment when they would reunite. Spoiler alert: This isn’t really a spoiler alert, because there are plenty of other twists and turns. If you haven’t seen it yet, I am available Sunday afternoons to guide you through all the nuances.
   I have been rooting for happy endings since I was a kid.  I loved it when Veruca Salt, Violet Beauregarde, Augustus Gloop, and Mike Teavee all fell by the wayside as Charlie Bucket convinced Willy Wonka that the chocolate factory should be his. He just had to win, right?
    Over our recent holiday break, I imposed a happy ending moratorium on our binge watching one afternoon after watching enough Marvel stuff to last me a full lifetime. We plowed through about three of the most sugary ending flicks ever created, and the cherry on top was a movie where at the very end it took us into the lives of the characters 10 years out to tell us where they are now.  Perfection. Not a single loose end, and everybody prospered.
   The critics may say, “Well, life isn’t that way! Plenty of people don’t get this pretty story and end up with their true love and live happily ever after or end up with 50 million dollars,” and I agree.  Isn’t that the point? We get to vicariously see somebody else’s neatly wrapped package, even if ours was a ratty old gift bag with re-used tissue paper.
    I am sure our love for the good finish has something to with an endorphin or serotonin or melatonin or some other ‘onin’ rush that is a proven scientific phenomenon. Take for example Reese Witherspoon’s character Melanie from Sweet Home Alabama. 
     When she finally sees her soon to be ex-husband Jake’s beautiful glass sculptures, our heart beats faster, our cheeks get flushed, and our eyes leak a little, because we know she is headed away from her fancy New York fiancé and right back into Jake’s arms. It’s a feel good rush.
   This is not to say we never root for the underdog or wonder what happened to the guy or gal left behind.  I mean, I do feel a little bit sorry for Cal Naughton in Talladega Nights, when he realizes Carly is just after his fame and money. But he and Ricky end up re-united as best buddies, so even then, we get our bow. And if you haven’t seen this movie, I am guessing we can’t be friends.
   This happy ending thing works for all kinds stories, right?  Sports nut?  I offer you Hoosiers, The Longest Yard, Rudy, and Miracle as examples. Comedy? Office Christmas Party and Napoleon Dynamite. Adventure lover? How about Raiders of the Lost Ark?
     This desire for the happy ending results in us pouting on social media when a movie or television character we have become attached to gets dissed, lobbying directors for sequels or even prequels to explain away what we don’t know or like, and creating memes with better outcomes.
    I am already anticipating what will happen at the series’ conclusion of This Is Us if each of the beloved Pearson family doesn’t get just the perfect denouement. Critics will debate if Kevin should have sought out and reunited with Sophie, if Toby ever really loved Kate for who she was, and if Randall could have become President.  I will likely be right there with them.
     I have a theory about my personal desire for a happy ending. The last couple of years of not being able to control a pandemic and feuds over everything from politics to cancel culture have created a need for comfort and predictability. What better place to find it than a movie or television?
     If you’ll excuse me, I am off to watch To Sir With Love, where Sidney Poitier’s Mr. Thackeray will tear up the lucrative engineering contract to stay with his unruly students, and I will smile with satisfaction at this totally expected ending.

    Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 
 
   

​     I am no stranger to Insomnia. I capitalize and personify the word because when you are in the midst of it, he deserves a title, a real name. And Insomnia must be a He, because a She would know that the good women of the world should be sleeping rather than wandering aimlessly through the night, so that we can wake up the next morning and continue our plan for world domination.
    I have read articles about him, talked about him to doctors at annual appointments, and empathized with other sleepy women friends who have also become involved with him. Cut caffeine, stop using electronics by 8:00 p.m., drink a warm beverage an hour before bed time, wear comfortable, loose clothing to bed and one million other suggestions are all ones I have tried and rejected to stop his madness. And yet, he persists.
     Over the years I have taken advantage of Insomnia to finish projects, to decorate Christmas trees (or sometimes the whole house), to organize drawers, and even to clean my pantry. During periods of sleeplessness, I have had some of my best ideas, that I am of course much too tired to execute the next day.
     Those of you on this crazy Insomnia train with me know that an occasional bout is manageable, but weeks of sleeplessness nights results in people suggesting miracle creams for  the circles under your eyes, believing you have a terminal illness, asking you to repeat yourself when you have answered them with some unintelligible mutterings, and shaking their heads in disbelief when you doze in church or a meeting. It isn’t pretty.
    Age and an incredibly busy schedule that just wear me out have squelched most of my relationship with Mr. Insomnia, and I haven’t been in too much hand to hand combat with him the last few months. Until Friday. And his frontal attack was a doozy.
    Sometime between near 1:00 a.m., I was awakened by winds and howling coyotes. I don’t want to brag about my prowess as an outdoorswoman, but my grandparents had a farm, and I know what coyotes sound like. I felt like I was in an episode of Little House on the Prairie…except I live in the ‘burbs, so I spent about an hour ruminating about how to secure my nine pound lap dog from predators instead of sitting with Pa Ingalls by the fireplace with a shotgun across his lap.
     2:00 to 2:20 I spent calculating how much sleep I could still get. Math is not my forte, so this 15 minutes was necessary. Oops, I mean 20 minutes. See? No math.
     2:20 to 2:30, Betty the Bladder woke up and needed to potty. No, it didn’t take that long to tinkle, but I had to go get toilet paper that literally no one else in my house can remember to replace. Said toilet paper wass in garage, which is all the way downstairs, because why would anyone store it under sinks or in convenient places for early a.m. runs? Garages are dark and cold in the wee hours.
     2:30 to 2:45 I spent trying to silently open drawers so as not to wake my husband, looking to find fuzzy socks because my feet were cold from the garage floor. As a side note, I found a treasure trove of scarves and headbands I had been looking for and some saxophone reeds. Go figure.
     2:45 to 3:00, I laid awake listening to my husband’s rhythmic breathing as he slumbered peacefully, unaware of my troubles, as if he was, I am sure he would have offered comfort. The last sentence is the Good Housekeeping version. In reality, he had rolled to his back during my bathroom break absence and was making that 700 car long freight train sound that I know from experience would keep me from sleeping at all the remainder of the night. I headed to the couch.
    By 3:00 the tiny, edible dog had now taken an interest in my night time wandering, and had decided to accompany me to the couch. He believed it was morning and thus scratched at the door and whined until I let him out.
     Fully aware of the coyote infestation, I decided to somehow arm myself before heading out. Weapon of choice? One of my daughter’s shoes that she had left by the front door.
     I figured the worst case scenario was I would throw it at the attacking coyote, and he would make off with it instead of my baby dog, and at the same time my kid would learn a lesson about not leaving her stuff laying around.
   I put on a winter coat from the closet and pulled up the hood. No telling who else would be out at this hour and my hair was a mess, as I had left the head bands (and the reeds) upstairs…turns out someone was out, walking briskly past the house in a vest with lots of reflective tape, at a crazy fast pace, and sporting an annoyingly cheery attitude. “Hello,” she said, like this was a normal time. Who are these people who take exercise so seriously?
   3:3O to 3:45 and back inside the house, I had decided I was too cold to take off the coat, so I stretched out on the couch, in a full blown Nanook of the North parka, with my ‘marked safe from coyotes dog’ still taking up more than his fair share of space, ruminating about that early morning walker.
     Seriously!?! Is her husband also blissfully slumbering, and she has just decided she might as well use the time to exercise if she is awake? What should I be doing? Immediately dismissing any kind of exercise, I wondered if this was finally the time to download the Calm App? Sleepy Time stories? Brew chamomile tea? What is chamomile, anyway?
   I spent from 3:45 to 4:30 in a beautiful mixture of watching Internet pedicure transformation videos and dozing.
    At 4:30, I was awakened by what sounded like a motorcycle backfiring and low murmuring voices that sounded too near to the house. I crept to the window to look out. It didn’t just sound like a motorcycle backfiring and voices… the neighbors across the street were actually full-blown-garage-door-up-trouble-lights-blazing-wrenches-in-hand working on a motorcycle and talking about the weekend. Guessing they are the same ones who mow at 6:00 a.m. on summer Saturday mornings.
    I headed back out on the couch and wondered if my home owners association, which governs lots of things and won’t let me put up a She Shed in my backyard, has any noise ordinance or covenants that I could invoke or if my annual dues cover legal counsel for when I bop across the street and hit the offenders with my daughter’s shoe.
    It was by then nearly 5:30 a.m. Where did that last hour go, inquiring minds want to know? Well, it took a while to type this out, and I had to do a little research on coyotes. They are awful animals, really, but we have been destroying their natural environment, so they have taken to nabbing suburban dogs. 
     Don’t they know they won’t enjoy the gamey taste of a squirrel or small deer when they abscond with a city pup for a midnight snack?  Suburban canines are just full of peanut butter Dream Bones and refrigerated entrees.
     I say all this to say, I am back to dating Mr. Insomnia. The pattern induced by a coyote’s howl is now five days old.  My pantry is clean, I have installed heated garage floors, and I ordered a reflective vest in case I ever decide to join Edna the Early Morning Exerciser, Mr. Insomnia’s mistress, on a walk.
     Oh, I promise, I am ending it with him.  And when I do, please, no one contact me before 2022.  I will be napping in a sound proof room.
 
    Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 

     Belying my current less than athletic appearance, I once reigned as the 12 year old girls tennis champion in Lexington, Kentucky. I was a bit of a tennis junkie, watching every slam and open carried on our pre-cable-console-complete-with-stereo-tv.
     And I looked the part for sure. I had a wooden Slazenger racket and Adidas Stan Smith tennis shoes, and I was rarely without a Billie Jean King looking visor.
     My folks were smart enough to make sure we had summer lessons for activities in which we showed an interest. Since there were no lessons for reading, which is what I spent most of my time doing, I suppose tennis was my only other option.
    We spent mornings on the courts, getting a little parks and rec type instruction, making sure to take lots of water breaks, in a time when nobody had a Yeti, and we waited in line at the fountain, hoping the weak stream of water would be cold. As August approached, we toiled through challenge matches in the southern humidity to earn a bracket spot, and the tournament began.
     There was no magical Wimbledon-like setting, just the old acrylic coated green asphalt courts with nets that had seen better days. I don’t remember every opponent, but I am sure I must have received a forfeit or two along the line, some other pre-teen begging off a match that day, claiming her mouth hurt too much from the previous day’s visit to the orthodontist, really just wanting to stay home and work on her baby oil and iodine tan or ride her bike with friends. 
     The winner got an 8 inch trophy and free entry into the following year’s tournament, which were great prizes for a 12 year old.  The winner also got a healthy dose of self-esteem, a pretty good memory to talk about at Happy Hours and family bragging sessions many years later, and the perfect entry into one of those ‘Three truths and One Lie’ getting to know you games we are forced to play when we are in a new group.
     Literally no one ever guesses I have been a 12 year old tennis champion. Once I listed the tennis championship, my ability to recite Eugene Field’s 32 line poem The Duel from memory, and the fact that I once played the piccolo as my truths, and then listed my skydiving hobby as the big whopper, and they still picked tennis as the lie. Go figure.
     As of late, I have been looking for somewhat smaller victories. For instance, just a couple of weeks ago, on two separate occasions, I finished my morning cup of coffee while it was still warm, without a visit to the microwave to re-heat it. All you fast coffee drinkers, those willing to scald your tongues, will never understand the perfect coffee drinking window, where the beverage is not too hot to swallow, yet not cold enough to offend. Never mind that one of those cups of coffee was actually my husband’s cup that I just thought was mine.
     I am also celebrating the small win of keeping track of my paperback book through the entire four weeks it took me to read it, as my memory about where I have left things is not as good as it once was. I am an avid reader, one who appreciates a variety of genres and authors. But I don’t have a lot of spare time for reading-which is not to say I don’t think I will have the time- so my books become my traveling companions.
     If I drive my daughter to a lesson, a rehearsal, or a practice, I take my paperback because I might have time to read in the car.  If I head to the dentist for yet another crown (trust me, I am full-blown royalty), I pack that novel for a little reading time while the Novocain takes effect.
    And sometimes, that means I can’t quite remember where I have last had my book. Usually I have to check bags, my bedside table, the family room, and the car before I find it. Once I found my book in the laundry hamper, and it wasn’t even a dirty novel. See what I did there?
     Saturday morning, I found I had exactly one hour to myself. I pondered the possibilities.  Continue my advance meal planning? Try to create my Christmas budget? Exercise?  Nah, none of those are any fun. Finish my novel! That’s it!  And lo and behold, I walked right to the shelf where I had placed it for safe-keeping. I will take the win, even if the novel didn’t end exactly the way I had hoped. 
     Other small successes come in the area of biting my tongue. Since sarcasm really is my native, primary language and full scale English comes a little less naturally, I often find myself in situations where my sarcasm would be fitting, but perhaps not appreciated. 
     Here is the short list of places I did not use my sharp tongue just this week: waiting in line inside a Starbucks when the barista called out the name Bambi (Come get your coffee, DEER, I thought); at the gas station where I had to go in to get a receipt because it didn’t print at the pump, and the clerk said, “I guess this didn’t print at the pump?” (No, I just came in because I enjoy the hot dogs on rollers combined with coffee brewing and antiseptic bathroom cleaner smell that convenience stores have, I thought); and at my husband’s football game when the opponent scored and a very vocal critic informed all of us in earshot that we should have tackled that guy before he got into the end zone (I can’t put in a family paper what I thought on this one). Some victories are truly hard earned.
     The final area where I am happy with some miniscule triumphs is in raising a teenager.  Those of you who have completed this arduous journey know it is not for the faint of heart. The Vegas odds makers won’t even make book on a parent’s chance of surviving the teen years unscathed.
   My daughter recently started back to school, a tenuous parenting time.  Should I ask if she would like to find something new to wear on the first day? Is a trip to buy school supplies too babyish? Are really clean white tennis shoes still a thing?
     I decided to play it cool…and to tell a little white lie. I saw a backpack I knew she would really like. I also knew that if we were together and I pointed it out, she would no longer like it. I bought that backpack, took it home, tucked it in the guest room closet on a shelf and began my plan. That night I asked if she would need a new backpack for school.
   “Probably,” she mumbled. At least, I think that is what she said. I was keeping my distance, because sometimes if I breathe or blink too loudly it irritates her.
     “Oh, wait,” I said. “Didn’t we buy one last spring?  Where would we have put that?”  I was Academy Award convincing in my ditzy mom brain search.
    “Maybe,” she said. “But it’s not in my room,” to which I thought, “And with all that mess, I am sure you would know,” but of course I didn’t say it, because as you might remember, I am no longer being sarcastic. 
    “I might have put it in the guest room closet,” I say, as if it is an afterthought, so light, so casual, so airy. She doesn’t move immediately because a part of her teenage persona is to never show excitement in the presence of an adult. But when she finally has to go get her phone charger because something could be happening on Instagram that she will miss and her phone needs some juice, she goes to the bedroom and looks for the backpack.
    “Here it is,” she says, holding it up for examination.  “Yeah, this is the one I picked out last year. This will work fine.” She will never know about my internal high five for my most recent, very underhanded success. 
    She will also never know I have just been topping off the body wash, shampoo, and conditioner in her shower from larger bottles stashed in my bathroom because apparently the stress of having to ask ones parents for toiletries is just too much for a teen.  It’s the small victories that count. No 8 inch trophy needed here.
    
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 

​     There are times in the life of each family that are so earthshaking and consequential that the best and perhaps only way to get through them is with careful planning and quite frankly, prayer. These moments come in waves, and when we crest the wave and can see the top again, we feel a relief that gives us just the energy we need to tackle the next difficult thing that comes our way.
   Recently the days surrounding these times have me wishing for strength. I think back to when I was younger and more resilient and able to handle things better on my own. But I push forward with what resolve remains, and I step in to lead my family.
    Lest you worry too much, and begin to organize a meal train or a Go-Fund me page for the Allies, I need to lessen your anxiety by telling you that the earthshaking and consequential event to which I refer is…rearranging the living room furniture.
     I live in a house which is great for parties, because you can pretty much see all parts of the main floor at one time from a centralized point.  But ill-defined shapes, no walls, and giant ceiling heights make it a furniture staging nightmare. Thus, settees and sofas, tables and trunks, arm chairs and armoires are in constant motion in my home.
    In addition to a weirdly designed house, there are multiple other reasons for moving furniture, despite the fact that many people are content to just set it and forget it.
     First, I cannot buy a new house.  Scooting things around a bit to keep me interested is much cheaper than closing costs. I love to go to real estate open houses, honestly not because I am looking to move, but just to get ideas for furniture arranging.
    Second, It saves wear and tear on the carpet from having the furniture in one place for too long. Yes, we still have some carpeted areas, and I am saving for hard wood floors (maybe that Go Fund me page is not a bad idea after all), but see my first reason as reference: I cannot buy a new house, so I am looking for ways to make this old one seem new.
     Third (and this one is a little cruel), I love to watch the dog the first few days after a furniture move.  He strolls through the living room, looks left and right and finally spots his bed.  It’s like a man in Target.  He has to acclimate himself to where he is going.
    Lastly, I like to challenge myself with new schemas.  Okay, this one is not exactly true.  I think I read it in a Marie Condo book or a bathroom stall. Either way, change is good, right?
     At the very first moment the idea of another way to arrange or place the furniture comes to me, I start my plan of attack.  Multiple days ahead of the proposed move, I make a minor complaint designed to get my movers thinking.
     “Wow! The summer sun kind of glinting through the window makes it hard to see the television from over here,” I might say.  This is the appeal to my daughter, for whom television is a life-blood. I know she will feel bad if someone’s view is impaired.
     Or maybe I will say something like, “Since we scooted the couch over there, it seems like we just sit on that one end. It’s getting really beat up looking.” This is the appeal for my husband, because the one thing he hates worse than moving our current furniture around is shopping for new stuff.
     On that same day, I may just carry around a tape measure and randomly stretch it out across pieces in the room and jot it down on the notepad I have with me. Sometimes they are sitting in the spot I need to measure. I just go right over them, a lady on a mission. This is the visual aspect of my plan, as it foreshadows what may happen in the next few days.
     I leave the sketch for the new layout on the table at breakfast the following morning at my husband’s place. If it has a little scrambled egg or jelly stain on it, I know he is tracking.
     Then I start to follow the weather forecast.  Furniture moving days need a certain kind of weather. Too sunny and it will get hot as we are working, too rainy, and it is better used as a nap day.
   The night before the perfect day, I prepare the family. “Would you guys want to go out to eat lunch after we move the furniture tomorrow?” is met with both excitement and dread, but at least they know they will be fed at the end of the despised event. Death row prisoners would be jealous of some of the meals we have when I am rewarding them after a move.
    My daughter, who was such a willing participant in younger days, references a vague commitment to be somewhere else. I tell her we need her around to check the extension cord and to make sure all the technology is working post move. She agrees after negotiating the suggested lunch at her favorite steak place.
    My husband, who is the single most habitual and patterned man that ever existed, references a need to mow the lawn. I reply by saying we will start early, so that the dew can dry on the grass before he cuts it. He is trapped.
     After I check their feet to make sure they are wearing their gripper, rubber bottomed socks so they have good traction, we assemble to begin the moving. The irony of the earlier measuring tape explanation is that my best guesstimations are done by placing my feet very close together and stepping off lengths.
     I review the layout with my husband like a lawyer practices a witness’ testimony.  This will go here and this will go here and this will go here, I say, pointing with emphasis. Before we move the couch, he asks multiple times if it will fit.
     Smart man to ask! I nod emphatically, but behind my back I cross my fingers for luck. The only thing worse than moving a couch is moving it twice. And I know this because we have done it. Several times. Marriages and several third world countries have crumbled over lesser issues.
    As we move each piece of furniture, we become a cleaning crew at a crime scene, vacuuming away any evidence of where the chair sat, cleaning under and around cushions which somehow have crumbs on them, despite my plea to just eat at the table, and furiously wiping baseboards.
     It is tough being both the supervisor and one of the movers on these days. With a practiced HGTV designer stance, I stand back and look at the angle and placement of a piece we have just hoisted into place. Two or three inches to the right I say, and the exhaled sighs from my own Two Family Members and No Truck crew practically bowl me over.
   I once made the mistake of just leaving instructions for the move. Imagine my horror upon returning to an altered plan. Almost every piece of furniture had to be scooted as much as three or four inches into place! They simply have no vision.
   Once everything is in place, I let them pick their new landing spaces. My husband can’t stand the thought of shaping a new piece of furniture to his backside, so he lands wherever the Dad chair landed and looks for the best footstool.
   My daughter is an equal opportunity lounger, so she finds the best angle for TV watching.  They spend about the first two days griping about what I have personally determined is the perfect arrangement.
    “Okay, okay!” I say.  “Let’s just move it back,” after which the new arrangement also becomes perfect for them, as well, as they would literally rather die than move it again.
     A few weeks ago, we had some friends over to visit.  One of the ladies said, “Oh my gosh!  You moved the furniture since I was here last! Love it!” to which I was about to reply that I really did like it, too. 
     But before I could jump in to accept the Decorator’s Association of America Award, my husband said, “Every once in a while I just like to change it up. I get bored with an arrangement after a time,” with no idea that I stood in the shadow of the recently relocated entertainment center hearing his whole lie.
    I am letting him have the credit this time because I finally got the couch into the  perfect napping alignment, so I won’t be moving it for a very long time. And…I have been secretly sitting in his chair, gradually reshaping it to fit my much more generous backside, which will surely confuse him somewhere in the near future into thinking he is getting womanly hips. The dog and I will laugh.
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
   
 
    
 

​     We love summer, don’t we?  In about May, people start asking each other about summer plans. We launch our annual bathing suit diet (and yes, I typed that with a straight face...) Breweries begin advertising their fruity summer offerings. Baseball standings grace the paper’s front page.  Our neighborhood pools become the daily hangout.
     Dinners just naturally get served later, as the day light extends. Supper at 8:00? Sure, why not? The Europeans do it, we think. Let’s eat on the patio! Fireworks tents pop up everywhere, and the neighborhood bombers build up their stash. Self-tanners replace winter dry skin potions on drugstore shelves.
     Convertible owners make their annual attempt to make the rest of us peasants jealous, as they roll those tops down, don cute, sporty hats, and play their music just loud enough at stop lights to makes us take a second glance.
     Large family reunions start giving t-shirt printers all the business they need, as the Jones, and the Smiths, and the Roberts families gather generations together to lie and swap stories and mourn those who are gone. Rock salt disappears off store shelves to be used in the slushy ice mix on the outside of a hand cranked ice cream maker, and I don’t mind telling you how sorry I feel for those of you who never got to have my Nanny’s burnt sugar ice cream straight from her White Mountain freezer.
     Even musical artists get in on the action, right?  Every generation has a song or two that make them think of summer.  While Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” might not have been your jam, I can still sing most of the lyrics. Maybe the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” makes you think of the ocean. They wish they all could be California girls?  What about us Missouri chicks with Iodine and baby oil farmer’s tans?
      Or if you are old school, can’t you just imagine George Gershwin penning “Summertime” on the fire escape of his stylish New York apartment in the stifling heat, thinking he better write another song to pay for that stylish New York apartment?  Old George had us thinking about easy summer living and catfish practically jumping from the water onto our line.
   I truly am a sucker for the sights and sounds of summer. You can find my nose jammed into a bottle of Coppertone’s original suntan lotion, the stuff we wore before we knew we were supposed to block the sun, inhaling the scent of that tropical concoction.
     I am pretty sure fresh peaches is what Heaven will smell like, and I don’t even have the words to describe the smell of a rain shower on a summer day except to say I just love it—earthy, damp, promising. I even like the powdery yet medicinal smell of the calamine lotion we used as kids to cover the tops of the mosquito bites we had scratched open.
     And the sounds that accompany summer are pretty good, too.  Early morning lawnmowers and weed whackers that bother some folks don’t disrupt my sleep at all. The thwunk of a paper hitting the driveway reminds me of fair-haired boys I once crushed on, making a little bit of money on their paper routes.
     Kids with grass stuck all over their bare legs, shrieking in the sprinklers, with their pffft pffft pffft pffft noise. Concerts of crickets and cicadas as the sun sets. For those of us of an age, the scratchy sound of a drive in movie coming through a rusty speaker attached to a car door is a great summer memory.
    Maybe for you it is the hiss of a well-seasoned steak hitting the glowing grill or the neighbor’s wind chimes, which irritate you during all the other seasons, but during the summer seem just about right. And the hssssst a pop top makes when somebody reaches into a cold cooler and opens a soda can is something we all know. 
    A creamy orange push pop or a dipped cone costs a lot more than it used to, but it is the perfect treat through lots of generations, and kids love the tinkly, tinny sound of the ice cream truck music as it rumbles through the neighborhood, like a siren’s call hearkening sailors.
     When you are a mom or a spouse, the sounds of summer might take on a little different twist. At my house this year, those sounds have just about put me over the edge, and the typical daily playlist rings a little more domestic. 
     It starts with a slamming screen door, because who would want to gently close it as you go out to the deck to have your coffee, when if you let it slam it might wake up everybody in the house? 
     Maybe it is the squeak the cabinet makes when someone opens it to get our ANOTHER glass  which they will eventually leave on a table somewhere to make another dewy water ring. The breaking of the seal on the refrigerator door as it opens to the food- seeker, one who stands looking for just the right FIRST snack of the day, is never pleasant to a mom’s ears.
    This summer, I have heard the air conditioner constantly laboring, as a certain 15 year old decides she is hot from “lurching” around the neighborhood, and lowers the temp to cool down. But I can just barely hear the air conditioner over the television left running in another room since early morning.
    At my house, the background music is always a running washing machine, chugging its way through yet another load of the clothes my family has worn for four minutes and then discarded in the hamper, nestled right next to the damp towel they used for the third shower that day; or maybe its companion the dishwasher, running another half-full load so no one has to fill a sink with hot soapy water for the good old hand washed look.
    One of my least favorite soundtracks is the groan that comes when I wake my teen before noon, followed by the loud protest that it is still early. It just barely beats out the rushed requests at the window of the car as I head out to the grocery to please buy more ice cream, frozen lemonade, and grapes. If you read that with a whine, you are right on track.
     Driving to work today, I hit on a radio station running a marathon of summer songs:  “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”, possibly one the longest but most fun song titles ever; “Under the Boardwalk”, which somehow seems more ominous to me now; and “Summer Lovin’” from Grease, filled with all its innuendo. By the time “Summer Breeze”, a song from my era came on, I was singing along, oblivious to the less exciting soundtrack playing at home.      
     Happy summer, ya’ll. I hope today you eat a piece of fresh fruit, catch of whiff of chlorine from the pool, or think of an old summer love.  I know I will!
    Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 

     Several years ago, I began commuting to work. It is not my favorite thing to do.  But I like the familiarity of the drive, and I am always at work honing my powers of observation, like all ladies of an age should.
    On my drive I pass a house that sits on a slight hill, a bit back from the road and has a long gravel drive winding up to it.  In years when we have had snow, I have felt both sorry for the owners that didn’t have a smoother surface that could be scraped or snow blown, but also somewhat envious, as they were undisturbed by the outside world, no SUV or truck tracks marring the snow covered drive.
   One Friday early this spring, there were trucks at the end of the drive, temporarily blocking that lane of my commute.  As I got closer, I realized one of them was churning cement.  Were they pouring a driveway?
   On Monday I craned my neck in the rearview mirror after passing the house, and to my surprise, it looked like only one fairly small section of driveway, right at the base of the hill, had been poured.
    I looked forward to the end of work that day—ahh, who am I kidding, I always look forward to the end of my work day.  But that day, I wanted to take a look to verify the tiny driveway they had poured. 
     Sure enough, as I slowed down to rubberneck, only one section of concrete was curing, surrounded on the other two sides by all that gravel.  What in the world?  Why wouldn’t you pour the whole thing?
    When my husband got home, I shared the exciting, albeit puzzling details.  Or at least I attempted to.
    As my opener, I said, “I saw the weirdest thing today.”
    Somewhat intrigued, because likely he thought I had seen someone with a third eye or a 50 something year old with a really good mullet, he inclined an ear toward me, a sure invitation for me to continue.
    “Yeah, you know that house that sits sort of on the hill on the right, just before our turn, with the gravel driveway?”
     “No,” he said, without even trying to access the route in his mind, “I guess I never saw it.”
     “Well, of course you saw it,” I said, suddenly desperate to cement a reference in his mind for this fabulous story I was getting ready to tell. “You drive past it all the time.”
     “I just can’t picture it,” he said, “but go ahead with the story.” 
     In that moment, I had a choice to pout about him not noticing the same things I do or to have at least a smidgen of a viable dinner conversation topic, so like Lewis and Clark, I pushed bravely forward.
     “Well, they have a gravel drive, but…” I started, when he interrupted and said, “Yeah, that’s what you said.”
    “That’s not the whole story!” I whined. 
     “Oh, well that is weird or at least kind of unusual to have a gravel drive in the suburbs, so I just thought that is what you meant,” he said, now fully engaged. “There’s more?”
     Setting his threshold of weird aside, I told him about the cement truck and the resulting single section of driveway it had poured.
   “Okay, go ahead,” he said.
    “Well, that’s it. I mean who pours one section of driveway?  That is just weird.”
     Maybe it was my tone or the volume at which I emphasized the word weird, but he paused for just long enough to make me think he was thinking about what I had said and considering the level of weirdness.
     “Hmmm. I have a question,” he said. “Do you want possible explanations, a rating from 1 to 10 of how weird that is or isn’t, or would you just be satisfied with my initial hmmm?”
    I wanted a discussion, which was not one of his options.  Before he could offer me his list, I offered mine.
     “I know that sometimes concrete companies will schedule a driveway when they know they will have extra concrete mixed from a big job, and it saves the homeowner money.  Maybe that’s it.  Or maybe the grader they were using to level the gravel threw craps, and they couldn’t level the other sections. Or maybe they got to pouring it, and it was too thick or too thin. Or maybe some of the workers were sick with COVID, ” I said breathlessly.
     When he didn’t bite on one of those explanations, I ruminated further.
     “I think they poured it Friday, and wasn’t it supposed to rain over the weekend?  Maybe they just thought the weather wouldn’t cooperate for it to cure correctly. Or maybe…nah, this is too crazy…maybe the wife commissioned the driveway and the husband didn’t really want it and he just stopped the work! Or maybe the crew got there with the invoice, looking for payment and the amount was way more than they anticipated, and they could just afford a section!”
     He smiled like he does when he knows more than me. I should tell you it isn’t his best look.
     “Maybe they just decided to do it piece by piece,” he mumbled under his breath.
     Mind blown at his simplistic explanation and lack of willingness to gnaw that bone right down to the marrow, I said, “Well, that’s just dumb,” mimicking Ricky Bobby, one of my most favorite cinematic characters of all time.
     To my husband, that was not at all dumb. He started a Perry Mason like defense of all the things that were better done piece by piece.
     He talked about some dessert that you start one day that gets refrigerated, and then you complete it the next day, like in two pieces.  I countered with the idea that recipes were done in steps. He countered with puzzles. He meandered his way into quilt making and mosaic art. I teased him about his love for crafts.  
    He said he thought there was maybe even an ACDC song with the name Piece by Piece, and I resisted the urge to tell him it was Kelly Clarkson who sang it and question his very manhood. ACDC, pshawwww.
     We ate the rest of our dinner in silent contemplation about pieces, until our daughter interrupted just long enough to share her desire to have curtain bangs cut into her beautiful all one length hair, and the shock of her announcement sort of pulled me out of the debate.
    About an hour later, my husband said, “Do you remember a TV show called Piece by Piece?”
    I didn’t bite. 
    “I can’t remember if we watched it together or I just watched it. It was about graffiti artists in California,” he said.
    “You Googled piece by piece, didn’t you?” I said.
    Unphased, he said, “Pizza. Pizza is a piece by piece thing.”  No argument there, most of us do eat it piece by piece. 
    I know why he understands the single driveway panel. He is a piecer, and yes, I just made that word up, according to my grammar checker.
    He pieces together outfits, ones that incorporate lots of patterns and lots of colors, none of which the rest of us would match. The results are dazzling.
    He pieces together long, often rambling prayers at family dinners, praising God for everything from good steaks to temperate weather and implores him for help with everything from slowing down golf cart drivers in our neighborhood to good boyfriends for our girl to real things like curing cancer.
    He manicures our shrubbery in pieces, working until he tires, and then attacking it again another day.  My Edward Scissorhands likes to piece away the branch which results in a sort of late 80’s asymmetrical bob on our boxwoods.
    Under pressure from our maid (me), he cleans off his dresser top piece by piece, examining each item like it belongs in a gallery, whereas I would just rake my forearm across the whole mess the night before trash day and sneak it out.
     In the months since the tiny drive was poured, I have romanticized that concrete, thinking about it on my daily commute. Perhaps they wanted to see the color of the concrete once it was cured, kind of like trying to find the right blue paint for a bedroom wall with little swatches. They probably just gazed out their picture window at it each day.
    The deeply sentimental part of me imagined a little grandson who would be so enamored by a concrete truck, that they postponed until he could be there with them to see it poured. I assumed he lived in either Portland, where it rains so much it is hard to pour concrete or in Mississippi, where it is so muddy that the concrete just sinks in. Concrete is a big deal to little boys.
   The patriotic part of me just knew their son has been serving in the military in an overseas occupation, had finally gotten word of his discharge, and they wanted to afford him one last view of his boyhood gravel drive, and thus had halted the work while he made his way home, perhaps not arriving until months and months from now.
     A few friends with the same commute also noticed the drive, and it was a good topic of discussion. We assumed they had committed to the ‘soul patch’ look.
   Then one day, as spring turned to summer, the concrete truck re-appeared. A friend texted me the news. Talk about exciting! The driveway would be finished!  The grandson had come to visit!  The son had said a tearful goodbye to the gravel!
     I mentioned at dinner having seen the truck at the house again, and my husband patted my hand and said he was glad I wouldn’t have to worry about the driveway anymore. He didn’t hear me when I mumbled that I would give him something to worry about.
    I looked forward to my commute, maybe even catching a glimpse of the chubby-cheeked grandson, holding the granddad’s hand, just standing there admiring the magnificent new driveway. I planned my neighborly wave, which would turn into a thumbs up, acknowledging their patience and the beautiful new addition, complete with the anchoring initial piece.
     Why was I surprised when I saw they had just poured only one more single section, adjacent to the original piece?  They truly are piecers, my husband’s kindred spirits.
    I promise you I will not be bringing it up at dinner.
​
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 

   I have a new friend.  Men who are reading this are thinking, ”So?”  Women who are reading this are thinking, “How?  How did you do it? Is this some sort of trickery?”
     For women, particularly of an age, making friends is not that easy. The old Camp Fire Girl song lyrics, “Make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver and the other is gold” were some fine encouragement for us growing up.  But dang, both parts of that are hard.
    Let me work in reverse here and explain. Old friends really are gold, and keeping old friends seems like it would be easy. You have been friends a long time, right?  But life happens.
     Your kids have activities four days a week and by the time you get home and eat and argue about homework and think about calling, you realize it is 9:00, and because you are old friends, you know the friend you wanted to call binges all her sitcoms on that night, and you don’t want to interrupt.
     When you finally touch base with one another, she tells you she was going to stop by Wednesday after work, but since you are old friends, she knew it was your mom’s birthday and you would be out to eat, so she waited for another day. 
     And as you talk, there is so much to catch up on that you both feel like you really missed out. You promise to not let as much time go before you talk, and the pattern starts again.
    Not that old friends don’t come with some baggage. Reminiscing about your high school penchant for a tall skinny bass drummer is fun the first few times you get together for girls night, but it quickly loses its shine. Listening to your friend describe her ex-husband’s latest girlfriend’s tattoo holds a bit of prurient interest, but it isn’t very life giving.
     Likewise, though, old friends are also the ones you can pick up the phone or message, who will automatically connect with what you are saying.  Just this week I texted a friend with a picture of a new neighbor and said, “Who does this remind you of?” 
    Without hesitation, she answered, “Roseanne Rosannadana,” and we were both instantly transported back to sleepovers and watching Saturday Night Live skits.  There’s that gold.
      The new friend thing is a challenge because there are so many things to consider.  Women’s friendships are complex, or as my daughter would say,”It’s deep.”
       If the new friend candidate is too young, she might make you look old. If she is too fashionable, you might look shabby in comparison.
     She can’t be too smart, because maybe she will think you are dumb. If she has traveled to France and loves fancy cheeses, will she be repulsed that you like your grilled cheese made from Kraft singles, a much less cosmopolitan choice?
     Us girls talk to another mom at a school program, and we silently size her up.  Does she have any stains on her shirt from a rushed dinner to get the kid backstage in time?  Does she have a spot right in the crown on the back her head where it looks like she propped herself up for a nap and forgot to smooth out the matted hair evidence? 
     I am immediately suspicious of a really well-groomed mom.  Perfectly manicured nails?  Well, lucky you, to have time for a manicure when I have been playing taxi all day.  Her kid looks perfect?  She will take one look at the safety pins holding together my daughter’s shirt and dismiss me, no doubt.
     If it is a new co-worker, we have another whole set of challenges. Do we want to mix work and play?  Has she brought anything super smelly to heat up for lunch, or is she grabbing the half banana and pre-packaged chips and sticking them in her purse like I do?  Does she have to re-heat her coffee?  If not, is she too efficient, getting the coffee all slurped down while it is still hot? 
     When I met someone at work that I mentioned liking to my husband, he said I should see if she wanted to have coffee sometime. “Ahhh, I dunno,” I mumbled, and listed my concerns.  If it was him, he would have rolled the dice and would maybe already be planning a trip together.
    The very way we approach acquiring a new friend is just different than men. Guys just want somebody to have a beer with. Women want someone to empathize with them when their husband stays out too late having that beer.
      Guys want somebody to watch a game with. Women want someone to plan the outing, tell them what they are wearing, invite the right additional friends, and make sure there are both salty and sweet snacks present.
     Guys want somebody who likes the same kind of cigars they do.  Women want someone to tell them the story of finding the perfect cigar, invite them to a tasting party, find shareable discount codes for cigars, and then connect them with other cigar smokers.  Not really, for the most part we don’t even like cigars.
     The reality of it is, lots of things separate women instead of unite us.  There is no more of the “Hey, you wanna’ be my friend?” from our playground days.
     Our interests and experiences are at the top of the list of separators, but other things present barriers, too. It’s hard for a childless friend to connect with the lady with a house full of kids. 
     “I am going to a yoga retreat this weekend while Doug is on his float trip. Wanna’ come with me?” she asks.  The mom of four has to reply that she is interested in yoga, meaning she has worn the same yoga pants for four days straight, but she cannot go because of the kids.  It’s a deal-breaker.
    And the length of time it takes to curate a friendship in this immediate gratification society is a little overwhelming for some of us.  We need two family size daily calendars to mark off the many months it may take us to slowly reveal small parts of ourselves to test the water to see how much our new friend can handle.
    “I cut my own bangs sometimes,” I revealed to a potential friend once.  I told her because it looked, in fact, like she too had cut her own.  “Wow,” she replied. 
     It was not the “OMG you are so brave, tell me how you did it Wow,” but just “Wow.”  We didn’t really stay friends, and when I saw her at the store, she immediately glanced at my forehead to see if I was still cutting my own bangs. 
     We have to consider how a new friend fits in with our other friends.  Sometime when we have a Happy Hour at our house, we encounter this dilemma, and I have to take a long hard look at how the various friends will mingle.   
     I don’t want it to be like a Brady Bunch episode where I draw a line down the middle of my family room and friends made before 1990 are on this side, with newer ones relegated to the other side. My husband and I have a permanent A List of people we love and are always welcome, and we have built a pretty decent B List of good, relatively non-offensive minglers.
   I once had two friends who met at one of my fabulous parties, and they became friends outside me.  Not going to lie, it still smarts a little.  They are both now on the C List.
   And finding a best friend is another matter entirely.  One of my very favorite friends once had a best friend contest when her teaching partner retired. They had worked together a long time, and she knew she was going to miss her pal dearly.
    I still think it was really just a ploy to get a lot of gifts and perks as we competed for the coveted best friend role, but it became a full blown, knock down drag out contest.  Turns out a whole bunch of people were looking for a best friend.
     The winner actually wrote her a song, and sang and played it on the guitar for her class.  Who can compete with that?
    My new friend checks a lot of the boxes for a friendship with me, so I have great hope. When she and her family came over to eat, she brought a brownie cookie that made me cry it was so good, and she insisted on cutting it with a special knife because she baked it in her good pan and she didn’t want it scratched.  She has good pans? Me, too!   
     Right before we ate, I started to set the table, and she made me put away the real dishes and use paper plates so we didn’t have as much clean up and would have more time to talk. Without prompting, she plopped herself down in the chairs by our fireplace that I had been begging my family to sit in to just talk. 
    “This is an awesome, cozy conversation space,” she said.  I know, I thought, and tossed her a fuzzy throw to put over her legs. 
      When I texted her a picture of a Christmas tree I was putting up early November because it was COVID and we needed a pick me up, she replied with a picture of her already decorated mantle.  “Girl, I feel ya’,” it said.
     She sends me videos of her son’s steaming pile of laundry so that I know I am not alone in the teen angst phase. She lives out on some acreage with both a pool and a pond for a trashy or not so trashy swim. It’s also great to go out to her place if I need an escape or to bury a body. Kidding, Not kidding.
    She recently sent me screenshots of a conversation she was having with the owner of a place she had rented for a family getaway weekend. The water from all the taps ran brown, and she was requesting help and/or a refund. 
    The first few polite texts she had sent made me so proud of her adult attitude about the whole thing.  When she wasn’t getting a response, and she intensified her requests for help with a few spicy words, I was just as indignant from a distance as she was. 
    When she texted pictures of an empty Gatorade bottle pyramid they had constructed and then eventually a pic of a dwindling bottle of tequila they had resorted to drinking, I felt her desperation and wished I was there. The hilarity of it all would have broken the Internet if published. 
      She has perfected the art of sarcasm, a skill I totally respect. She manages a full time job and a family, and occasionally takes a mental health day.  I can relate.
     Don’t ask to meet her. I am afraid she might like you better. The next time she and I meet up, I am going to try to discern if she is the kind of friend who might later ask me for a kidney.  If not, she is  headed for the A List.
 
 
Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.
 

​     The dream sequence in every movie either ends with something so sickly sweet it gives us a cavity when we watch it or so terrifying it causes nightmares.  The sleeping character awakes either with a dreamy smile or having sweated through the sheets in sheer terror.
    I am a dreamer. Not the pleasant kind, like a daydreamer, or one who dreams of a perfect future. But I dream all the time. I know this because my husband tells me the conversations I am having with someone when I talk out in the night, and also because sometimes when I wake up, I can remember what I dreamed.
     Some days I wake with just the vague idea that I was in the middle of a big adventure, and even if I fall back asleep, I can rarely get back into my dream.  Other days I can remember the whole thing, and I am primed for a re-telling.
     “You won’t believe what I dreamed,” I say to my husband.  That’s his cue to immediately stop whatever he is doing and listen intently to whatever long-winded thing I have to tell. And generally he is rewarded with something pretty good.
     My dreams have included things like the time I was leading a hiking expedition up to a very snowy mountain top.  My group of about 20 had very expensive backpacks, healthy pink cheeks, and can-do attitudes. 
     Here’s the thing.  I don’t like to hike. At all. I don’t even really like to walk and have to carry anything. There is no way I am hiking to a mountain top, and surely no way anyone is following me there.
     When I told my husband that dream, he said it probably meant I was looking for something to lead or maybe already getting ready to take on a leadership role.  His practicality in interpreting my dream left me wanting more.
     Who were all the people?  Where was that mountain?  How much did the gear weigh and how did I know what to pack?  Why were we dressed in shorts when we were hiking to the top of a snowy mountain? I spent about two cups of coffee drinking time ruminating about it and decided he was probably right.
     I mentioned it at work that day, and a co-worker said, “Did you eat popcorn last night?” Turns out some foods make us dream a little more than others.  She shared that popcorn, cheese, smoked meat, pizza, spicy foods, candy and sweets, milk, and pickles also create more intense dreams.
     “I don’t think you have to eat them all at once,” she said.  Thank goodness. But could my pickle and candy milkshake could have been the culprit?
     I have a friend who has put a lot more time and effort into collecting and interpreting her dreams than I have. She placed a tape recorder by her bed in case she woke up and wanted to record a dream she had. 
     She bought pretty notebooks to chronicle her dreams. She gave great thought to where she was sleeping when she had her best and worst dreams and what kind of pillow she had used.
    She bought books, attended a kind of shady seminar held in a hotel ballroom, where she was the only one not wearing a turban or weird hat of some kind on her head, and she even did a little online research to formulate her own dream database.
   She came up with some pretty good stuff. When she dreamed she was falling off a cliff, the shady seminar lady told her it meant she was afraid of failure and that the average person has at least five falling dreams in his or her lifetime. As is per usual, I am below average, as I cannot remember one falling dream.
     When my friend dreamed she was pregnant, although far past child-birthing years and with no one around with whom to conceive a baby, one of her books told her that meant she was just searching for what kind of legacy she could leave.
     When she dreamed about driving really fast and recklessly in her car, she saw online that it meant she was headed off track in her life and needed to slow down.  
     I shared my mountain climbing expedition dream with her ,and she became very animated.  “That’s on the list of top 100 dreams,” she said.  “It’s number 64!”  Sure enough, other people were dreaming about mountain climbing as well.
     “It means that you have an obstacle in front of you. If you are leading the climb, it says you are feeling confident you will overcome the obstacle,” she said.  I tried to tell her I don’t know anything about climbing.
     “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The mountain is just a symbol.” She spent about ten minutes telling me the symbolic meaning of everything from elephants to grapes in dreams. She urged me to tell her more of my dreams.
     I shared with her another dream about being in Europe with my whole extended family and losing our passports.  Fear of closed doors and missed opportunities in your life, she replied.
     What about a cake falling apart?  She thumbed through her resources.
    “Was the icing slipping off or did the cake just crumble?” she asked. 
     “It just crumbled,” I said, frantically trying to remember the status of the icing.
    “Oh, bummer” she said. “If it was just the icing, it means you can repair or smooth out the problem, but crumbling means you are struggling trying to pick up a bunch of pieces and can’t get ahold of them all.”  She sighed heavily, either for effect or with genuine dismay at my crumbling life.
     Three of four more dream scenarios, and three or more pat answers. I was beginning to think I was a very pedestrian dreamer.  Was everybody dreaming the same things as me?  There were already books and lists about my boring dreams?
    My friend said hearing about my dreams just made her think I was a normal person, with normal thoughts that translated into normal nighttime visions. Those of you who are regular readers know by now that I have been called a lot of things, and normal is not one of them. 
    And maybe in that moment I didn’t want to be so normal. I opened up and spilled out something that might change her mind. She wants a dream to interpret? How about this one?
     I detailed for her the dream about the day when my former administrative assistant, then in her late 50’s, asked for time off to be in a beauty pageant, during what was an incredibly busy time in our five person office.
     Carmen was a great assistant. She was creative, good with the public, good with budgets, not at all scared of technology.  Basically the yin to my yang.
    I had given her great job reviews complimenting her on her skill sets.  Efficient. Fast worker. Paid attention to detail. Good project manager. But never once had I commented on the fact that she would do well in a pageant.
     In the dream, she asked to see me in my office, and reserved about a half hour to do so.  In the dream I was scared to death she was going to quit. FYI: I would also have been scared in real life.
     After what seemed like an eternity, with her first telling me about a cute thing her granddaughter had done, sharing a recipe for sweet potatoes cooked in olive oil she had found, she got around to the point.
     She needed some time off, she said, to pursue something that had been a lifetime goal of hers. She knew the time to get this done was running short, and she had found a small window of opportunity. She wanted to enter a local beauty pageant, and she needed time to train and practice.
    I need to supplement the narrative at this time by saying that Carmen might have done pretty well in a pageant. She was a good conversationalist, so the interview question was a cinch.  She was in shape, so the bathing suit competition wouldn’t scare her off. Friendly as all get out, just hand her Miss Congeniality. And Carmen was pretty. Very pretty.
    But what happened next in my dream is the most bizarre part.  Instead of saying, “Well, let’s see if your leave request fits within our policies and start from there,” like a smart boss would have, I said, ”Yes! Of course! But what will you do for your talent?”
     Within minutes in my dream, our whole office was buzzing around Carmen like something between a cross from Cinderella and the beauty shop scene from Grease. People were pulling dresses and wraps out of desk drawers for her to try on. Someone had created a fundraising flier for her that would guarantee her travel funds if she won and needed to go to the next level. The phones were blowing up with congratulations. John was snapping black and white head shots, with Danielle and Phyllis holding fans to blow Carmen’s hair back for a sexy, tousled effect.
     I determined the best talent would be for her recite a poem from memory, accompanied by interpretive dance moves, and she agreed. We began vocal lessons in earnest, and she used silky lilac -colored scarves to emote. Her arms waved furiously, and I corrected her and demonstrated what the move should actually look like. She was a natural.
     The day of the pageant came, and I had rented a charter bus to take us to the auditorium, where we all snuck back stage and delivered flowers to her. Her husband had saved a block of seats for us.
     Her sister had come from California, but was leaving on her oversized sunglasses and a scarf for fear of being recognized. How did I not know Carmen had a famous sister?
    Her granddaughters were dressed alike, beaming at their competitive grandma killing it on stage. In fact, we all cheered each of her appearances on stage, the loudest contingent present.      
     When the emcee asked her, “What would be even better than world peace?”, we applauded her cleverness when she said, “Flavored coffee creamers at every work place.” Genius.
    My dream goes right up to the point where they announce the winner.  Carmen is a finalist, one of five. I am already planning the purchase of a file cabinet where she can lock her tiara during the day. And then… the dream stops.
    In all the technicolor detail I could remember, nearly crying when I reached the part where there is no resolution, I finished my tale. Had Carmen won?  I would never know, despite repeated attempts to reconstruct the dream for the finish.
    “What do you think it all means? Isn’t it crazy? ” I said breathlessly.
     My friend didn’t frantically type into her dream database.  She didn’t immediately go to a special chapter in one of her dream books. She didn’t phone-a-friend her shady dream seminar lady with whom she had become quite close. 
    “Aren’t you going to look it up?”  I practically screamed.  Had I gone too far, and my friend thought I was a nut?
     “I don’t have to look it up.  I myself have had this dream.  Lots of women have had this dream. It could mean you are questioning your own self-esteem if you were the contestant, or you would rather see someone elevated above you if you dream it about a friend,” she said. 
    Relieved to be a humanitarian, placing others above me, I decided to save my dream about waking up being able to speak fluent Chinese and Russian interchangeably for another day. It’s probably normal.  Probably.
  
Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.

​     It likely began in the air over Los Angeles, when the first smartly dressed TWA flight attendant asked the traveler, “Coffee? Tea? Water?  What would you prefer?”
     The beloved pre-school teacher’s mantra, “You get what you get and you don’t throw a fit” got thrown right out the proverbial window, in this case at about 42,000 feet, with that very first mention of a preference.
     The restaurant industry followed shortly, really aiming to please their customers by allowing almost every preference to be met. Booth or table? Lemon in your ice water? Loaded or plain baked potato?  Salad dressing on the side? You say you would like sweetener for your tea?  Which of these three kinds would you prefer?
     Then it was a short leap from restaurants to our own homes. I follow the blog of a really creative mom with three young kids. Luckily none of them are allergic to peanut butter, a lunch staple, but get this: all three kids each prefer a different kind of peanut butter.      
     Never satisfying my curiosity and the very obvious question about how they even knew there were multiple kinds, blogger mom honors their preference. “They are just expressing their individuality,“ she writes. The adults in my life must have gotten individuality confused with being picky brats, which is what they would have called us if we had complained about the peanut butter.
     Luckily my mom was a good cook, but let me assure you, she wasn’t much interested in our preferences. Maybe the spaghetti had meatballs, maybe it had meat sauce. Sometimes the lima beans had corn mixed in with them, and sometimes they didn’t (which frankly didn’t matter because we didn’t want to eat them anyway).
      Our sandwiches were cut in rectangular halves, no trimmed crusts and no fancy triangles or star shaped cut outs.  If it was baloney day, she chose the cheese, and the only choice we had was mustard or mayo. 
    She didn’t poll us for our preferences on how our egg was going to be cooked at breakfast each morning. If one of us had scrambled eggs (which for some reason still taste better out of Mom’s skillet), all of us had scrambled eggs. I am guessing I would have liked an occasional Ritz cracker rather than a saltine, but we weren’t busy making sure our preferences were known. And we survived quite nicely.
   Some preferences are naturally easier to honor. When you bake a pan of brownies, somebody usually prefers the crispier edge pieces and somebody prefers the gooier center pieces. It is still all coming from one pan of brownies, and no, I was not tempted to buy the recently advertised all crispy tunnel looking brownie pan. 
    It’s okay for people to have a preference when you are passing a platter of turkey because dark meat and white meat are right there available for the taking. I also support steak houses asking our preference on how done we want our steaks because it is an expensive cut of meat that we are treating ourselves to. 
     My preference for a medium steak probably came from my dad slaving over a charcoal grill and finally giving up, plating it, telling us that is how it was supposed to look, and not asking us to cut into it in case we wanted it cooked a little more.
    The rumors of people out there who like their steak moo’ing and some who like it charred are surely true.  While I personally prefer a medium warm center, I have seen these mavericks in restaurants, sending back their steaks, like Goldilocks rejecting one chair or bed or porridge after another until one is just right.
     As I age, some of the choices we are offered in the name of honoring preferences kind of wear me out. Case in point, every once in a while the hubs and I pretend we are young and hit up the local site of a nationwide breakfast chain.
    We always do this on a day we know we can go home and nap off our food coma afterward; and by the way, I prefer the couch with a quilt for a quick nap, and an actual bed with a cotton blanket for anything much over an hour.
     We get our coffee from the gum snapping waitress, and we each order the house special, which will be likely be delivered on a variety of not so clean looking plates, despite our preference for spotless plates and utensils.
    Last time we went, I felt a little like I did when Mr. Hile would randomly call on me in Geometry class.  “Quadrilateral? “ I would guess, and he would just shake his head, while I silently made plans to go home with Carla to copy her homework again.
   Back to the greasy spoon. Did I want my hash browns crispy or soft? Bacon, sausage patty, sausage links, or ham?  Grits or toast?  Eggs over-easy, hard, or scrambled?  Waffle or toast?  Toast you say?  Sourdough, wheat, or white? Real butter or margarine? I was so scared to make a mistake, to one of the questions I just meekly answered, “Yes.” 
    The Flo wannabe stared at me, uncomprehending, then finally looked over at my husband and said, “Do YOU know what she wants?”  Luckily, he does, and if it wasn’t what I wanted when it arrives, he will just give me his breakfast and suck it up.  Now there’s a guy that was raised not to have a preference, someone to truly love. I guess I should be grateful he preferred me over his other dates.
    When we married, I knew he was darn near perfect, because he truly didn’t have any discernable preferences at all. He let me choose the side of the bed, which cabinets the plates and glasses went into, even our china pattern. I got to park my car on the right because it was easier to back out of the garage on that side. 
     Then came the day when he unpacked groceries to put them away. How could I have missed this crucial preference of his?  Apparently he preferred jamming the cans onto the shelves all willy nilly and unreadable without a lot of effort or any organizational strategy at all.
     Who doesn’t put soups together? Why were the beans all divided by short condensed milk cans? He has since changed his preference for can arrangement, likely due to my excellent tutelage and example.
    At least I don’t have something as pedestrian as a dishwasher loading preference. I am so happy when anybody else mentions they will help with dishes, they can load them any darned way they want to.
    But my friend’s preference about how her dishes go into her dishwasher has caused her a bunch of razzing. One night at a party she was hosting, two of us offered to clean up for her. She finally accepted and just told us to put as much as we could into the dishwasher.
     She walked into the kitchen when we were about halfway finished with our mission. She froze in her tracks, and we could tell from her look we had somehow gone astray.  “Oh…they actually go this way,” she said, and adjusted the plates on the dishwasher’s bottom rack.
     I started to reorganize the remainder of them, but my co-loader intervened, wanting to know why the other way wouldn’t work. What ensued was a bunch of half-hearted explanations that finally ended with the hostess friend mumbling about the original manufacturer‘s instructions having diagrams of proper loading. In truth, it was just her preference.
    Through somewhat incoherent cursing, my pal began to rearrange, but as soon as the hostess left the room, she quickly flipped them back.  I cannot remember her exact words, but I think she said, “The sun will come up tomorrow whichever way they are loaded, “ or maybe it was, “That’s a load of something…”
    Sure, there are some preferences that really are important, like high heels or flats, who we spend time with, No. 1 or No. 2 pencils, the type of car we drive, crushed or cubed ice, where we live and work, shaken or stirred, toothpaste flavors.
    I bet some people think Coke or Pepsi is an important preference. Those of us who have experienced a perfect soda suicide mix know that it doesn’t really matter at all.
     Preferences should also not be confused with highly distinguished favorites like the month of August, dark rinse jeans, and praline-flavored anything, which have risen to the top after years of testing out other options. They are not simply preferences. They are a way of life.
    Heading into my landing, let’s circle down the runway back to the airlines, where this whole preference thing started, and where I recently booked some travel for my boss.
     I selected the carrier, got to note his preference for the flight’s departure and arrival times, where and how much space he would have to stash his carry on, the amount of leg room, and an aisle, center, or window seat. Is this where the joke about you can pick your friends and pick your seat but you shouldn’t pick your friend’s seat goes? 
   When my boss came back from travel, I asked about his flight.
     “I had great seats both ways, plenty of room to stretch out, and my bag was actually right above me for a change,” he said. 
    I smiled, but inside I was irritated; not with him, but with myself. My boss may not like his trip so much the next time; when I finished my purchase and went to pay, I forgot to save his darned preferences.
 
     Cathy is a retired public school English teacher and Public Information Officer.