Blurbs and Orts

What's with the title of this post? Why blurbs and orts? Well, from time to time I leave some business unfinished on this site. I talk about a subject, but never go back to say, "Oh, yes, I guess Boy#2 did make his plane after all." Or someone asks for a recipe and I forget to leave a link.

An ort is a bit of leftover food, and we all know what a blurb is, right? Wrong! Unless you are among a tiny percentage of English-speakers, you do not know exactly what a blurb is. A blurb, technically, is the gushing endorsement a fellow author writes for the back of a book cover, or the "I laughed! I cried!" description that shows up in trailers for a movie. Even though I like to think I have a fairly good grasp of vocabulary, I have used "blurb" to mean any short paragraph of information. A story-let, shall we say. In fact, that's what I intended with this title, but since I now know better, I'm using this word just because it's fun to say.

Blurb. Blurb. Blurb.

So here are a few orts:

1. This morning I opened my e-mail to find that The Reading Site is refunding yesterday's ill-advised investment. I'll be darned. The message says to expect to see the money back in my PayPal account within five days, and I'm saving my wahoo until then, but I was surprised my indignant e-mail demanding a refund got a response at all.

2. Several of my Faithful Readers have asked how my friend S is doing, and I shake my head in amazement as I report that she's nothing short of a walking miracle. This week, a little more than two weeks after she was shot in the face, she is in Boston nanny-ing her delightful granddaughter. She faces some dental reconstruction down the road, but has been released by all of her doctors. She told her story to her church family Sunday and gave credit where credit is due: God is good.

3. Speaking of violence, if you want a sobering but empowering read, I strongly recommend this. And Boys, please do read the article. It's not advice I ever would have given, but it makes so much sense. Have a plan.

And on that happy note, enough orts for today, and here's a blurb:

I laughed! I cried!

D'oh

Back in the day, when I was a just out of college and working as a cub reporter on a newspaper, I wrote a weekly column. It was kind of like this blog, mostly stream of consciousness and oversharing and wildly uneven in terms of quality.

The column was important to me because I loved to write, but it also gave a purpose to life's irritations. Lost a contact? Good for a column. Someone backed into my fender? I could make an amusing anecdote out of it.

I flashed back on those days this morning when I did something so utterly naive that right now I can't believe I'm allowed out and about without a keeper: I responded to an e-mail that sounded too good to be true.

I know! How many times and in how many ways have I told the Boys  "There's no such thing as free," and "A fool and his money are soon parted," and "You won't get something for nothing, especially on the internet"?

Many times, and in every way I could possibly think of.

But this morning when I got the e-mail from The Reading Site, my Spidey senses must have been on break. The pitch seemed legitimate enough--download books, including recent best-sellers, and pay only one subscription price. And today (woohoo!) through a special offer, the subscription price is half off! That sounded great to me, since I love my Barnes&Noble Nook but hate paying for e-books.

You cannot imagine my chagrin as I re-read that last paragraph and realize what a sucker I am. I had a couple of bucks of birthday money, so I signed up for The Reading Site and thereby got access to a whole lot of books in the public domain that are free to download in any number of places, plus links to e-books that can be purchased through major bookstores. Those, of course, are the recent best-sellers, for sale at the same price as at Barnes&Noble but without the advantage of the free cloud storage.

There are two faint silver linings to the giant cloud of despair The Reading Site has put over my day. I used PayPal so my credit card information isn't in danger, and I've now used The Reading Site's name as many times as I can in this post in hopes it will rise to the top of Google searches when people try (as I did) to investigate its legitimacy.

The Reading Site is a scam.

The Reading Site is a scam.

The Reading Site is a scam.

The Reading Site is a scam, and I'm an idiot.

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

No, this is not the part of the sky that is falling. These are leaves that are collecting in a cushiony pile right beside the back door, and are so beautiful that I can't bring myself to rake them away.

The part of the sky that is falling is the part of the sky that is INSIDE THE EARTH.

Yes, folks, we in the humble little corner of the Midwest that never experiences earthquakes have felt the ground shake at least twice in the past four days. Because I am such a naturally sanguine person who takes unexpected occurrences in stride, I sat quietly last night when I noticed my chair shaking, and calmly watched the lampshade shake for a few seconds.

Hahahahaha!

Of course I didn't. Just like every single person with an internet connection and a laptop, I jumped online and posted "Hey! I just felt an earthquake!" on every social medium outlet to which I have a password. This prompted me to wonder: How did the cavemen know when an earthquake was happening?

Oooka: Ground shake? Gods of underworld angry?
Mooka: Not know. Facebook down.
Ooka: Facebook? 

The whole experience reminded me once again that extraordinary is defined by the ordinary. During my Peace Corps years I lived in a country where the ground is practically dirt-colored Jell-O. We didn't even notice tremors; unless pictures started falling off the walls it was just another day in paradise. But the people with whom I lived and worked were terrified by the idea of tornadoes.

"Why?" I remember asking someone. "Earthquakes are much scarier--with tornadoes you have warnings, and can get to the basement. A big quake means the earth SWALLOWS YOU WHOLE." 

Earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, killer bees--when it comes to natural disasters, just pick your poison. Then read about it on Facebook.

Here's Your List, Honey

This is not a blurry photo. The camera is shivering.

Boo-yah!

Oh, I'm sorry. Did that seem a little hypercompetitive? Would you still think so if I told you the right team won the game 48-7? And that as a result Husband will be doing the grocery shopping for the next month?*

Yes, the boys in black made me proud Saturday night as they pretty much clobbered Husband's alma mater. That wasn't the story of the evening, though. The real story was the weather.

It was cold. So, so cold.

We had run the air conditioning on the three-hour trip to my hometown and my phone said the temperature was 57degrees--refreshingly brisk, it described the conditions. I put a decently-heavy coat over my patriotic garb (orange t-shirt and black sweater vest, as close as I could come to my high school pep club uniform) and laughed (Ha! Ha!) because silly me hadn't brought hat or gloves.

As it turns out, "refreshingly brisk" must mean something different on the north end of the state than it does in the sunny south. Adding a 20 mph wind to the mix made it feel arctic. After a summer during which I complained about the heat, oh, 112 times per day, I felt as if I'd been dropped off the end of the Titanic into the ocean and was waiting to slowly freeze to death. I found myself envying the second stringers on the sidelines who may not have been part of the glorious win but who had wonderfully warm-looking parkas.

At halftime Husband took pity on my chattering teeth and blue lips and suggested we listen to the rest of the game on the radio. Forty years ago I would have lost my left foot to frostbite rather than leave before the final gun but by that point on Saturday, even though the teams played another half, the game was over and I'm a lot smarter than I was 40 years ago.

Plus, I needed to get started on my shopping list.

*Husband claims the terms of the bet are invalid since (because I was too insecure about my team's talents) I designated both his and my antes. Hrmph.

As We March on to Victory...

A friend once asked me whether the Boys had inherited their competitive natures from Husband or from me. I just looked at her. Had she even met either one of us?

Husband and I have been married almost 28 years, and we realized 27 years and 11 months ago that we should not play board games against each other. If I lost I pouted. If he lost he got really, really quiet. Either way, it made for an unpleasant aftermath.

Fortunately, we've mellowed with time. We've reached a point where we can play board games, as long as they're not card games (which I always lose) or Scrabble (which I always win).

Tonight our high school alma maters are playing each other in a state football play-off, and much more than just advancement in the championships is riding on the outcome--if the right team wins, someone else will be grocery shopping for a month, and if the wrong team wins, I'll be doing laundry for the same amount of time.

I feel fairly safe in making this bet because I can still sing my high school's entire fight song (with simulated cymbal crashes) and Husband can only remember the first line of his. Also, my school is the home team and we will be in attendance, the first time I've been in that stadium since, well, probably since they gave up the leather helmets. I just can't imagine the good guys will let me down.

BHS! BHS! The orange and the black forevvvvvvver!

Stay tuned for updates. Or pouting.

The Little Tree That Could

A couple of summers ago a fairly significant storm blew through Small Town. It wasn't a tornado, but in about four minutes half the trees in the backyard of the House on the Corner decided they'd had enough of that whole standing upright nonsense. The resulting bloodbath (sapbath?) of lumber meant we carted out the tree that had provided shade to most of the back of the house, and I wept sweaty tears.

Obviously we wanted to replace the tree, so we called our local landscaping guy and told him what we wanted: A tree that would be beautiful in both spring and fall, one that didn't shed a lot of trash (we already have a sweetgum back there, and holy cow, if there were a market for sweetgum pods we would be millionaires), and one that would grow fairly fast. Oh, and we didn't want to spend much money.

Local landscaping guy had just the thing--a young maple that had been hanging around for a while, so he could give it to us half price. It would be a year ahead of the others we were planting, and soon would provide shade for the whole back yard, he enthused!

Now, after two years, we know we bought the remedial maple. It's charming and likeable, but those few red leaves you see above? That's the whole crop.

By contrast the trees in the next door neighbor's yard that are the same age are in the gifted class. See?

But because we are tenderhearted and generally root for the underdog, we're giving our well-meaning-but-inept maple another year before we decide to put it out of its misery. It may be lousy for shade, but at least we don't have to rake many leaves.

We're Moved!

Hey! We're moved!

Our nine-month stay in (insert air quotes) temporary (close air quotes) quarters ended yesterday when we moved back into our permanent offices. As I mentioned, this gave me a chance to weed out a cartload of papers, the likes of which would be enough to double the size of the Redwoods National Forest if we had the capability to make paper return to its native state. It was a good opportunity to pare down, throw away, clean the slate, make a fresh start.

Shown above, for example, is the corsage Helen Thomas wore as I shepherded her from place to place during her visit to campus in 1999. Oh, yes, I am serious. These are 12-year-old flowers, worn by someone to whom I'm not even related.

But it was HELEN THOMAS, the real-life Brenda Starr. And in case you were wondering, she was delightful. Charming and approachable and kind of like your much-more-famous grandmother, with the exception of the moment when Husband impishly asked her on the way back to the airport if she ever read Cal Thomas. For the record, she rather emphatically does not.

At that point in our lives the Boys were young whippersnappers and Boy#1 was absolutely smitten with the political process. We told the lovely Helen that we were thinking about visiting our nation's capital and she insisted on giving us this:

Yes! It's Helen Thomas's home and office telephone numbers, and her home address, written in her own handwriting, and only slightly the worse for wear for having hung on my office bulletin board for 14 years. (It's in slightly better shape than this indicates; I blurred the numbers because I was afraid some Helen Thomas groupie would see this blog and track her down at home. I didn't realize how truly horrendously this scan would reproduce online, and forgot that I am possibly the only living Helen Thomas groupie.)

Anyway, we're moved, and glad to be back. Would you like to see what I've been sharing my office with for, oh, who knows how many years? I'll scroll down a little, in case you'd rather not look.



Are you looking?



Okay, here it is:

I'm just glad I wasn't the one who pulled the cabinet away from the wall to discover the sticky trap. Helen Thomas might have heard my shriek and taken back her invitation.