by Linda M Au
RULE: If you’re a tourist, you must always wear shorts, Birkenstock knock-offs, and T-shirts everywhere you go.
REASON: Even though it’s 40 degrees at night, friends back home are being tortured by snowdrifts, so you’re determined to get pictures of yourself near the ocean in shorts, Birkenstock knock-offs, and a T-shirt.
RULE: The only roadkill your tourist friends will ever see this far south is a dead armadillo.
REASON: The alligators eat all the other wildlife.
RULE: When taking walks, you’re permitted to experience a small hill, but only if you’re on a golf course.
REASON: Florida is really just Kansas with a lot more water. And fewer tornadoes. But more hurricanes.
Three Sheets to the Wind
I just finished folding bedsheets fresh from the dryer. There is a knack to folding elasticized, fitted queen-sized sheets so they’ll lay flat in a drawer and take up less space (and get less wrinkled till you use them). My mother taught me how to do this when I was a young girl—
patiently (or not so patiently, depending on my perspective at age ten or age forty-nine) and with a precision that I can still duplicate in just a minute or two to this very day. I can do it properly even with my eyes closed. It scares me a little.
It’s one of those housekeeping skills I shied away from learning as a girl but can now appreciate as a middle-aged adult. It’s beyond my own limited comprehension of physics to understand why the same sheet takes up far more space in the linen closet if I just give up and stuff it in there balled up in frustration rather than carefully folding it and placing it flat on the shelf alongside its peers. Isn’t it the same sheet with the same square footage, the same amount of molecules? So why does it take up more space if I don’t fold it first? I have always striven against menial chores that take up more brain space than they should, but in my house, the closet space is more limited than my brain space (and that’s saying something). So, I grudgingly (but efficiently) fold the sheets and put them away. And, they fit.
Let me be clear, though: This is a skill that came from my mother. On my own, I would never have thought to neatly fold square pieces of cloth with cinched elastic that go onto a piece of furniture that’s used in a private room of my house while I am essentially unconscious—pieces of cloth that are always hidden under other pieces of cloth that I spread over the sheets every morning precisely to cover them up. There is no logic to such a folding exercise, and I’d never have thought it up on my own, the physics of my small closets notwithstanding.
Of all the things I could have inherited from my Type-A personality mother, God chose the ability to both fold sheets properly and to wash dishes by hand within an inch of their lives. (I get my hair and eye color from my dad’s side of the family, in case you were wondering.) My mother also squeegees her shower every time someone breathes on it, removes pieces of trash from the bathroom trash can throughout the day so that it’s always empty, and hates her kitchen floor because it has microscopic grooves in the tiles where two or three atoms of dirt taunt her on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays when she scrubs the floor with industrial-strength chemicals that require a gas mask and could eat the skin off an elephant in five seconds flat.
This is the woman who raised me. Honestly, I didn’t stand a chance.
This may be my heritage—this may be the mother from whence I came—but it is not the mother I have become. But I wouldn’t call it rebellion to say that I can look at a dirty baseboard in fascination for months before it begins to bother me—and even then it’s usually because my mother is stopping by, and even then it’s not enough for me to actually do anything about it. Not rebellion, really. More like confusion with a dash of inertia thrown in.
If I hadn’t seen with my own eyes the birth certificate with both our names on it and the hospital photos and heard the stories of the million-hour labor, I’m not sure I’d believe she and I share the same DNA. Can all the genes from one’s mother be 100% recessive? Because that would explain a lot.
Then again, I’m looking at those folded bedsheets right now, and they look damn good. There might be something to this science stuff after all.
What Happened in Vegas: A Diary: Part One
October 11, 2000
We’re here in sunny Las Vegas—my husband, Wayne, nine-year-old Grace, and me—with blue skies overhead, the soft, gentle ping-pinging of slot machines everywhere (even in the Laundromats and Walmarts), and of course, the rough rumble-rumble of backhoes digging up my parents’ entire street, down a foot and a half into the ground. In fact, the road we came in on from our hotel this morning is now closed this afternoon, and when we came back from our buffet lunch (see below), my parents’ driveway was closed. No wonder my mom says the state bird of Nevada is the “crane.”
The two flights in (for those of you who are still snickering at my panicky fear of flying) were as uneventful as I could have asked for. And trust me, I asked. The first leg (Pittsburgh to Charlotte, North Carolina) was over before Gracie could really get into it, although I personally could have done without her gawking out the window and gasping, “Wow, you should see how much the plane is tilted, Mom! I bet if I had my Coke here now, it’d spill out of the cup! Cool!” (Yeah, yeah, that’s nice, Gracie, now here’s a pillow. It’s fun to sleep on a plane too.)
The second leg, to Las Vegas, was 4.75 hours long (or should I say, 4.75 long hours?), but not bad (“not bad” being a relative term). Reading several books and magazines helped, as did my portable CD player with Santana cranked up loud. (Factoid of the Day: Did you know that it is impossible to turn up a personal CD player loud enough to drown out engine noise without going clinically deaf?)
We were served dinner on this leg: a rather mediocre roast beef-type substance with something akin to rice and corn, an adorably teeny saladette, some dark brown, square thing that I think was a brownie at one time, a slice of cheese, crackers, and a dinner roll with Land O’Lakes butter. (Remind me to tell you Wayne’s story of the legend of the Land O’Lakes girl. On second thought, don’t.)
My enthusiasm for this meal was surpassed only by Gracie’s, who eagerly commented on everything on her tray as if she’d never had such a sumptuous feast in her life. (“Look, Mom, a salad! Wow, crackers!” If only she were this easy to please at home.) When we caught her eating her brownie with her spoon after the meal, we asked why she hadn’t just used her fork instead. She replied, “I just want to use everything!”
The only downer so far has been that Wayne spent the morning we left Pittsburgh in the local hospital instead of at work for half a day. Why? Seems he’s developed some sort of odd infected bursitis in his right elbow, which had swollen up and been very uncomfortable. So, he’s currently sitting in my dad’s recliner across the room from me, doped up on several types of medication, suffering from jet lag, and aching from having had to squeeze his 6’4” frame into a 2’x2’ plane seat for 4.75 long hours. (You do the math. You’ll need a calculator. And yes, you can use scrap paper.) Good thing he looks cute with his knees up around his chin.
Picture this: We gave him the aisle seat, thinking that he could then prop his sore elbow up on a pillow hanging out into the aisle.
Rethink this: Don’t try this if you are sitting at the back of the plane right around the only two restrooms on board. Before we lost count, his elbow had been bumped, jammed, and poked forty-seven times per hour (all time zones included) by folks sprinting down the aisle toward the stalls.
Gracie is staying with my parents in their spare room. Well, actually it’s their cat’s room. Yes, their cat (named Joker—how appropriate for a cat in Las Vegas) has his own room. He has a daybed (complete with trundle) for when he has guest kitties over, a closet and drawers to keep all his stuff in, a clothes hamper (unsure what this is for), a Health Rider exercise machine (apparently he’s afraid of developing love handles), a phone jack (for when he gets his own laptop and wants to get online), and a litter box.
Anyway, Gracie said
when she moved her hands in the night, the cat jumped her and attacked her fingers. It seems he’s tickled pink that Grandma and Pappy have given him his own personal cat-toy to keep in his room.
Today we toured Caesar’s Palace, which has a huge FAO Schwarz store complete with a three-story moving Trojan Horse (everything has that Greco-Roman theme in Caesar’s Palace, including the Warnerius Fraternius Storius, a.k.a. The Warner Brothers Store). You can go inside the belly of the horse itself, where you can be lured into buying all sorts of overpriced Trojan Horse keychains and hats, plus a one-of-three-in-the-world Trojan rocking horse for your child, as long as you have $12,500 you don’t know what to do with. Yes, you read that right: Four times what I paid for my used Corsica last year.
Caesar’s Palace has an hourly show at the fountains, which involve animatronic robots reenacting the fall of Atlantis, complete with actual fire storms, ice storms, and a gargoyle who signals the fall of Atlantis at Zeus’ bidding. (Zeus is really just a hologram video on the domed ceiling, but don’t tell the animatronic statues. It’ll be our secret.)
We finished the day with a late-lunch buffet at Boulder Station Casino. (No one over fifty eats dinner after three p.m. here. It’s against the law.) None of us will be hungry again until November.
The weather today has turned out to be about five degrees cooler than it is in Pittsburgh. My mother insists we brought the weather with us. I think anyone who owns an outdoor Jacuzzi in a gazebo and can wear shorts and a tank top on Christmas has no right to complain.
Since I have a husband tagging along on this trip for the first time, and my parents have a small house, Wayne and I are staying in a hotel a few miles away. We also have a rental car, which means I’ve now driven the Las Vegas Strip myself and lived to tell about it. It’s not for the faint of heart, because sixty percent of the vehicles on the eight-lane road are taxicab minivans sporting huge signs of scantily-clad showgirls (which is why I don’t want to let Wayne drive, lest he inadvertently become distracted and crash the car into the MGM Grand).
The rest of the day will be spent visiting my folks, lounging around their house, taking over their computer, annoying their cat, eating their food, and changing the channels on their TV when they leave the room for a minute. Life is good.
Upcoming events for the week include: Hoover Dam (otherwise known as “That Dam Tour”), the Treasure Island pirate battle, the Mirage volcano, the Excalibur casino where we will get a caricature done for Gracie (which I also had done for her brothers when they accompanied me here), and—late in the evenings when we leave Gracie here with my folks and head back to the hotel in the rental car—more quiet, peaceful time alone than Wayne and I have had in a long time.
Well, in a town like Las Vegas, in a hotel that doubles as a casino 24/7, I suppose saying “quiet, peaceful time alone” is really a relative term. But sometimes, being “alone” with hundreds of strangers banging on slot machines and collecting clanking quarters in metal containers can be quieter than time at home with six kids.
But, that’s another adventure …
See you all later with more updates. And don’t forget the big surprise for Wayne: Oct. 17, 2:30 Pacific Time … when we renew our wedding vows with Elvis himself live on the Web!
Continued …
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cement, But Were Afraid to Ask
My husband is sitting here in the living room in his own personal Electronic Geek Heaven: He’s become one with the La-Z-Boy recliner, feet up, new laptop on his, well, lap while it whirrs and hot-syncs to his teeny tiny PDA, the television remote control just inches away from his quivering right hand.
His eyes are focused on some generic show on the History Channel, or the Discovery Channel, or possibly the Learning Channel. Frankly, I can’t tell them apart anymore now that they’ve melded into pretty much the same channel. They all air the same shows but with different titles.
On any given night, after I say the four stupidest words in the history of womankind (“Watch whatever you want”), I find myself knee-deep in either an hour-long documentary on the history of concrete, or a biker-building series where a bunch of men with greasy T-shirts and handlebar mustaches reconstruct motorcycles out of old Budweiser cans and toilet seats from outhouses they patronize somewhere on the outskirts of town.
I can hear that nasal twang emanating from the television even now … .
“Well, golly, we’re behind schedule on Joe-Bob’s commode-o-cycle, and we’ll have to take shortcuts in order to get it done in time for the big contest in three days. So, I’m a-weldin’ the seat lid to the carburetor and hopin’ for the best. Meanwhile, Billy-John has gone and run a nail gun up through his nose … again … and we’ll have to lose another two hours taking him to the Urgi-Care in Buckland County to have his sideburns sewed back on straight.”
Now, I ask you: How many times do I want to watch the series Modern Marvels broadcast a show on why a suspension bridge works without everyone falling off, or a two-hour special on the story of a submarine that got lost at sea and killed everyone on board when one tiny part busted off, all because no one had bothered to watch the show on the history of concrete? What kind of man watches a show called Major Engineering Disasters? On purpose, I mean. What kind of woman marries such a man? On purpose, I mean.
Those were rhetorical questions. Do not answer them. There are no correct answers.
I admit that my husband and I both have somewhat plebeian tastes when it comes to watching television. Like any decent Pittsburgh blue-collar male, I too enjoy a good Steelers game, a filthy grub-eating contest on Survivor, and even the occasional mobster series on HBO. My husband loves these shows even more than I do, but he always comes back to those “build-something-from-aluminum-foil-and-toothpicks” shows. It’s only a matter of time before he starts taking notes during one of those foil-and-toothpick shows. I swear, if he ever leaves the confines of that La-Z-Boy and heads off to Home Depot while mumbling something about remodeling the bathroom with Reynold’s Wrap, I’m outta here.
And I’m taking the remote control with me.
Oh no … I just remembered that we have ten spare universal remotes in a drawer of the coffee table, all programmed to work with the TV in case the other nine break at the same time.
Curses. Foiled again
Buster’s Last Stand
The generation gap stops here. I’m cashing in on the video game craze with a game my kids can master with skills they already have. They grew up blowing into Nintendo game cartridges to get them to work, so this stuff is second nature to them. And since they’re already experts, they’ll enjoy mastering the game in record time. Here’s my concept of how the game would play out on the screen:
LEVEL 1: “Are These Your Shorts, Young Man?”
Crazy, cute animal game character Buster tosses T-shirts, pants, and bunched-up boxers toward the hamper. If any laundry ends up in the hamper, deduct 10 points and game play moves to the laundry room. Level ends by climbing inside the dryer and locating the Missing Left Sock.
LEVEL 2: “Your Eyes Will Freeze That Way”
Buster makes goofy faces at dinner without being spotted by Mother. Ten points per face. Buster gets Bonus Star if Sister tattles on him and Mother doesn’t believe her. Extra points if Sister hoists peas at him. Deduct points if peas hit Mother. Deduct 20 points if Buster is sent to his room without dinner. Add 20 points if he hates peas.
LEVEL 3: “Isn’t That Homework Done Yet?”
Buster hides behind a stack of schoolbooks. Mother pops up intermittently outside the doorway, trying to catch Buster downloading MP3s instead of doing homework. Extra points for paper shuffling and pencil sharpening. Deduct 100 points if Buster completes any homework before dinner.
LEVEL 4: “Were You Born In A Barn?”
Buster avoids getting bopped in the backside by the screen door on his way in and out of the house. Five points for every insect that gets into the house, and 25 points for every slam th
at elicits a shriek from Mother. If she makes him go back out and come in quietly, he returns to the beginning of the level.
LEVEL 5: “Take Out That Trash!”
Buster stacks as much garbage as possible in the trash without actually taking it out. “Ctrl-G” picks up paper, banana peels, and spaghetti strands encrusted around old meatballs, and the spacebar drops it all on top of the heap. If it topples over and Mother makes him take out the trash, the game is over.
Why will kids play my game instead of Sonic Mario Bandicoot Somethingorother? Because I said so, young man. And just wait until your father gets home!
What Happened in Vegas: A Diary: Part Two
October 12, 2000
Every Vegas update from me contains a food section. It’s impossible to go to Las Vegas and not comment on the food. Well, maybe Calista Flockhart could pull it off, but certainly not me. (And that’s all I have to say about that.)
Today’s food experience was a place in northeast Las Vegas called Timber’s. It’s a burger joint. Doesn’t sound very exciting yet, does it? What if I tell you that it has a burger called the Hoss Burger? Impressed yet? What if I tell you that the Hoss Burger is $8.95 and includes a huge basket of fries? Still not excited? Okay, how’s this: The thing weighs 2½ to 3 pounds, sits on a huge bun, and takes up an entire nine-inch dinner plate. It’s covered with cheese, lettuce, bacon, tomato, onion, ketchup, mayo—the works. They serve it on a huge plate, with a steak knife sticking up out of the middle of it. Apparently the knife is to perform crude emergency quadruple-bypass surgery once you finish eating the burger.
Normally, people buy the Hoss Burger and share it in groups. Everyone gets a smaller plate, and they use the knife to divide it up for everyone like an apple pie.
However …
There is this contest.
The Hoss Challenge.
It comes with four options.
OPTION 1: You (alone) finish an entire Hoss Burger. You get your name on their Hoss Burger Hall of Fame board.
