Befriending the Pig

 

 

Befriending the Pig

 October 2022

Some of my closest relationships are with appliances.

I mingle more with mixers, dishwashers and dryers than I do with my books and my computer. Oh wait. That’s another appliance. I guess it’s fair to say a large chunk of my day is spent with the steely looks of the Plug-In Gang. Hard to call them friends when the only words between us are my annoyances when they don’t cooperate. Except for the icemaker. I adore my icemaker. He happily fills my cold drink demands all day long.

I get along with the stove pretty well, although I’ve had words with his brother, the oven. And the refrigerator better hang in there. He was an emergency overnight replacement for an older cousin who sadly died before his time, at age 12.

And then there’s the garbage disposal. In an early suburban apartment, I had my first dishwasher, first icemaker, and first garbage disposal. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven – for just a year and a half. Then we bought our first house, in the Connecticut countryside. The pretty house had been well tended, and sported both an icemaker and a new dishwasher. But it also had a septic system. And as I learned more about country living, septic systems and garbage disposals do not share happy relationships.

We finally had a house, and being spoiled, I felt like I’d gone backwards. Cantaloupe guts, potato peelings, and fur-bearing leftovers had to be handled… in garbage bags that rapidly smelled in spring, summer, and early fall days. I was young. Wasn’t it bad enough that we had Pampers to deal with?

When we moved again, it was into a dream house with every kitchen amenity – except a garbage disposal. Another country septic system. And then we moved to Warren.

Our “new” house was old – 1868. The 1941 kitchen had to go. When planning its replacement, the icemaker and the “sink pig” hovered around the top of my list.

And so, I moved into a permanent relationship with the long-awaited disposal. Frankly, it’s been a bit rocky. But to give it its due, I was at fault in most of our skirmishes. I had read that they don’t like potato or carrot peels, pasta, rice, shrimp shells, eggshells or coffee grounds. I began to wonder if it’s that fussy, what’s the point? I skipped the shrimp shells.

At first, I filled it every night with scraps from dinner preparations. A little reading indicated that grinding up lemon rinds freshened the house, and a bowl of ice cubes helps to keep the blades sharpened. (See how great it is to have an icemaker?) I was on top of this. I didn’t send down bones, corn cobs or celery. I ignored those dire warning about carrot peels, eggs, and coffee grounds. And when the first backup came, I was devastated. I learned that plumbers don’t much like disposals – neither the under-sink venue nor the narrow opening.

Clogging happened 3 or 4 times in that house – over 27 years. We had a double sink so when there was a backup, it was in both sinks. Two major clogs were on days before Thanksgiving when washing dishes in the powder room was not an option.

And I learned a little more. When one neighbor moved, she threw most of a container of cornmeal down her the disposal and ran very little water. It turned to yellow cement and all the plumbing in the kitchen had to be replaced. I learned not to put in grease and I began to hear more warnings about eggshells and coffee grounds.

In the 17 years in this house, I’ve only had to call the plumber once about the sink pig. Until last week.

I had just finished a cooking afternoon and the disposal ran just fine. As I restored sparkle to the kitchen. I found a lemon past its warranty and tossed it down. The water backed up a bit, but I didn’t notice it was in the main sink also. I turned the disposal back on, only to have a 3-foot-high geyser explode out of both sinks. It probably took two seconds to fly to the switch, but during that time the window, the nearby cabinets, the counter appliances, the floor, and the top half of me became covered in coffee grounds and ¼” eggshell shrapnel.

My two-plunger, do-it-yourself method failed. A call to the plumber, another long cleanup, and a shower were the final cost of not listening to the experts.

I’m now a believer. Our eggshells and coffee grounds are heading for the garden in a new compost crock.

And I speak sweet nothings to Little Piggy. I am feeding him organic lettuce trimmings. It’s time to solidify our friendship.

 

 

 

 

Happiness is a lifetime investment

 Happiness is a lifetime investment

Last weekend, CBS Sunday Morning’s feature about “Happiness” was not a total surprise.  What could be a better subject for television’s second happiest show, second only to Sesame Street?

Since its beginning over 40 years ago, I’ve happily watched this TV magazine offer features of everyone from the band U2 to chef Ina Garten, and everything from migrating monarch butterflies to Ferrari manufacturing in Italy. It’s always new knowledge, perfect for a Nosy Nellie like me, curious about everything. Last week’s lead story was Happiness, and even academia weighed in.

 Harvard has been studying Adult Development for 84 years (even JFK was a participant). One of the study’s important subjects is happiness. Turns out that happiness comes not from money, looks, or fame, but from meaningful relationships at every level.

Lifelong happiness is a life filled with friendship. It begins with Sharing, and moves through stages: Comfort, Security, and Intimacy – no, not THAT Intimacy. Sharing your deepest feelings in the relationship is the final step.

I started thinking about my friends and our individual relationships to each other; they grew from different times, places and experiences. My best friend, Ginger, in New York City and I go back to the beginning of our work lives in the Big Apple. We were wide-eyed newbies, thrown together in training at American Airlines. We became roommates first, then friends. Then good friends. Then best friends. It all began with sharing.

We shared more than a crummy one-bedroom apartment, utility bills, and Oreos. We shared everyday chitchat about the job: crew members, turbulence, celebrities, heartwarming experiences and lecherous passengers. We became comfortable with each other. Gradually, we began to share our beliefs, our opinions, and our personal histories. By then we were sharing cold spaghetti for breakfast. And mostly we laughed. That was important. Not everyone we knew laughed – or cried – at the same things we did.

Genuine caring easily followed as our friendship grew and extended to each other’s wedding parties and continued into our lives with anniversaries, Godparenthood, weekends, illnesses, family funerals. We still remember each other’s original wedding day, although we lost both those men. Years after, we still reach out on our deceased husbands’ birthdays. That’s Intimacy. I know she hurts on that heart-memory day, just as much as I do on mine.

 Security in a relationship is when we know that we can absolutely, positively depend on the other person – for anything. Bail money? Wire cutters? Well, not exactly. But if I did have those needs … Ginger would find a way.

 A few years ago, during a January blizzard in Boston, I was trying to fly back to Buffalo. After 16 hours of delays, cancellations, and rerouting, Ginger picked me up in New York (!) at 3 A.M. and drove me straight to her guest room. Six hours later, she delivered me back to the airport for my new flight with a warm breakfast in my tummy and enough good sleep to drive from Buffalo to home. We should all have at least one person to call at 3:00 A.M. Even Harvard’s study agreed.

Regular readers know that I talk to people – strangers – and sometimes they become acquaintances. Most are just passers-by, but 99% of the time, that short chat brightens my day. Friendships take time, and truth be told, a bit of work. But a meaningful relationship is worth the investment.

One of the Sunday Morning experts offered a formula for creating relationships: 50 hours to make a comfortable acquaintance. Then, 90 hours to make a good friend, and 200 hours to make a best friend. Personally, I would say those are minimums. Being a person of the elderly persuasion, I’ve had some friends for many moons. I count my time investment in decades.

The friends from w-a-a-a-y back include my hometown bestie of 70 years, and the aforementioned Ginger, 60 years. Over time, wonderful women have come into my life in other jobs, towns, churches, clubs, volunteering and across the card table. I’ve been enriched by their friendships, learned from all of them, and can honestly say I have come to love them.

 I’ve even made a new dear friend through this column who lives in another state. She is sharing, caring, and comfortable, all the basics for a meaningful relationship. And I’ve been blessed with a handful of men whose friendships I treasure.

We all want to be happy. Maybe, as Americans, we think happiness is our birthright. Fuggedaboudit. The founding fathers only wrote about the PURSUIT of happiness. Finding that happiness is up to us.

Today, I’m going to tell a friend I love her. She is part of my happiness, the very best dividend of investing in friendship.

 

 

 

 

 

A passion for the hog

 

A Hell’s Angel wouldn’t be my first choice in a life partner, but I never met one I didn’t like. I think I have figured out why. They’re happy. They are doing what a lot of us wish we could – put our cares away, hop on our Harley Davidsons … and GO! Noisy wanderlust.

Every one of those bearded dudes I have talked to is kind, fun, and unfailingly polite. Must be that white-haired ladies tame their beast. Frankly, I’m just plain jealous of their rides.

Getting out of my car last week in the supermarket parking lot, I stopped in my tracks. A motorcycle was parked next to me, but not just any motorcycle. The shimmering black Harley Davidson was showroom shiny and tricked out with more chrome than my eyes could handle on a bright sunny day. The Hog sparkled like an 8-foot black diamond.  

While I stood checking out the Harley, two tweenage girls were walking toward me heading for the store. Wearing cut-off short shorts and small halter tops, they bopped along to their earpod music, sipping sodas. They glanced at me checking out the bike’s details, and I saw one roll her eyes. They jabbed elbows at each other and laughed their way into the store. I could read their thoughts as if they were clouds over their heads: “What’s that old lady doing checking out a motorcycle? Whadda joke! Yah, ‘magine her riding one of those things.”

Little did they know that I was reminiscing back to my handful of Harley experiences. I could almost feel the summer wind in my face thinking about one college summer on Cape Cod. That year, my bicycle sat on the porch. Between restaurant shifts, I straddled the back seat while hugging my Harley driver to and from the beach, work and home. I never got to drive it, but I didn’t have to in order to love the bike’s throaty voice and its daring angled turns. Well over 50 years ago, we didn’t wear helmets or leather jackets, but we were riding the Cape’s country roads, not interstates. At the end of that summer, the bike’s owner took his gorgeous Harley and his almost-gorgeous self, back to Oberlin College and I never saw either of them again. Ah, summer.

About twenty years ago, my BFF invited me to her family’s annual beach gathering at the Outer Banks. My son, a Marine lieutenant, was in the process of moving to a North Carolina beach town about 250 miles south of the Outer Banks. He also received an invitation to the house party and was waiting when we arrived. After big hugs, I said, “Where’s your car? I didn’t see it” He grinned.

“I left it home and rode up on my new toy,” he said. And then he proceeded to tell me how he’d always wanted a Harley Davidson. (I never knew that). He had received some extra money on his previous assignment and thought, “Hey, I’m 26, single, and I can manage it – if not now, when?” He reassured me that he had taken lessons and passed the state licensing requirements. We went down to the yard to check it out – a blue Harley Softail Heritage Classic. A beauty. Then came the kicker. “Mom, everybody knew – everyone but you.”

“W-H-A-T?” I said. I was offended.

“Well, I knew you’d be upset about it and I didn’t want you to worry.”

I remember smirking and glaring at him all at the same time. “Worry? WORRY? You fly cobra attack helicopters carrying missiles, rockets and canons while snipers shoot at you from rooftops. And you think I’m going to worry about a stupid motorcycle?” He shrugged, but he was still grinning.

“Oh, and who is everyone who knows except me?” His Dad, sister, all the O’Brien cousins, and all his friends were sworn to secrecy. Everyone knew but moi. I added, “I guess you never noticed the scar on my right calf from a manifold burn, huh?”  It was his turn to squirm.

I said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll forgive you this time, but only if you give me a ride on it.”

“Mom, I only have one helmet.”

“Well,” I smiled, “you’ll have to solve that problem.” He did, the next morning.

The 40-minute ride was everything I remembered. He had good skills, I was comfortable, and that ocean breeze – that same ocean that laps at Cape Cod – was divine.

I think I have one more ride in me, despite what those teeny-boppers think they know. My son sold his Harley years ago. Dear Richard would love one, but THAT’S not going to happen. I guess if I ever want to sit astride a putt-putting Hog again, I have to ask a Hell’s Angel. Next time they come through town, I might just do that.

 

 

 

Build a better mousetrap

Build a Better Mousetrap

Column 9-7-19

 
            The washing machine bit the dust a few days ago.  Actually it was more like it choked, drowned and broke the dam.  I knew there was something different about the laundry room almost immediately after stepping into the inch of water.  I'm a quick study.

  To be honest, it had leaked a few other times, but this was the Big Kahuna of leaks.  This was a room with a melted ice skating rink.  Hoo boy.

  This machine didn’t owe me anything, though.  It was only the second one I ever owned.

We had been married four and a half years before we bought our first washer and dryer in 1971.  They were installed in the basement of our Marblehead, Massachusetts rental, just a week before the arrival of the world’s most perfect child.

 Frankly, it wasn’t until the installers left that I thought, well, that’s it.  I am finally and truly married.  This long date is over.  We own a washer/dryer. 

One might have thought that being nine months pregnant, with a baby who eventually made her entrance at well over nine pounds, might have given me a sense of the permanence that I’d signed on for.  But nope, I finally became domesticated the afternoon the Sears guys delivered my work partners.

 I had decided that to be the perfect mother meant that I wasn’t going to buy any of those new-fangled, packaged, pretend diapers.  MY CHILD was going to wear cloth diapers, perfectly washed in gentle Ivory Snow.  My new machines were certainly up to the task of a load of baby clothes and diapers every day, all pre-rinsed, of course. 

When I went back to work five months later, I bought my first box of those pretend diapers.  The old-fashioned baby sitter wanted only new-fangled diapers. Within a week I was cutting Pampers coupons and the washer/dryer worked only every other day. And then also for the next 24 years.

Both kids were well out of college before I bought our second washer/dryer combo.  And since the original set was Sears Kenmore, made by Whirlpool, why wouldn’t I buy the same ones again?  The only difference is that they were not 1970’s Harvest Gold, they were late 1990’s Bright Almond.  The gold set had had one washer repair, the almond set, until the recent flood, had received a new dryer timer about 12 years ago.  48 years, four machines, two repairs. Jeesh.

The machines were like members of the family except they didn’t require second helpings, dessert or emotional support. I just loved them – reliably willing to work any day.  Unfortunately, this illness was terminal.

I had been looking at washers for a few years, trying to wrap my head around all the electronics that operate them.  These babies are no longer mechanical, they’re micro-chipped like everything else in our beep-beep world. 

I’d seen pairs that sold in excess of $4,000.  When Dear Richard and I went to search for real it was with a great deal of trepidation, armed with info from the latest Consumer Guide.

Our final decision took the bulk of an evening.  We arranged payment, order time, and delivery.  Then they offered the warranty for purchase.  The saleswomen had been helpful throughout the process but before we weighed the warranty decision, we asked what the life expectancy was.  We received a shrug with the answer that it could be six or eight years, maybe even ten.  WHAT?  What happened to my 24-year work partners? 

Last year we had to buy a replacement refrigerator in an emergency.  The expensive, stainless, French-door beauty died two days before we were expecting a houseful of company for a long weekend.  The repairman sensibly told us that he’d be happy to replace our compressor but in the end we’d have spent many hundreds and still have a 13-year old fridge.  He actually thought that the fact we got 13 years out of it was great!

 The salesman who sold us the new refrigerator speculated that ten years would probably be a good run.  How did we come to this?  How did we go from a country that makes 24-year appliances to only eight or ten?  At first I thought it’s because most new appliances are imported.  That is true.

Wait a minute. It seems that these electronically run machines require a lot of repair.  But the auto industry figured it out.  Cars now last for a couple hundred thousand miles.  And car companies don’t offer 10-year warranties with purchase if they couldn’t stand behind it. Oh, and the warranty comes with the car, it’s not a separate purchase.

So logic tells us that we should have Toyota and Honda making washers and dryers.  After all, they taught the reliable car-making gig to the American auto industry.  Now, finally, most new cars do much better than they used to.

It was Longfellow, the dead poet, who is attributed to saying “Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.” The appliance section needs a better mousetrap builder.

If a washing machine company builds a better model with a FREE warranty and the possibility of a reasonably long life, they’ll corner the market. 

I don’t know why we have to tolerate this planned obsolescence.  Have we become such a throw-away society that we are going to happily toss washers, dryers, refrigerators, dishwashers, et al, on the ever-burgeoning trash pile?

Dear Honda,

            We need you to manufacture washing machines.  And we need you to improve the current mileage estimates.  Please.  We’ll beat a path to your door.

Hugs and Kisses, 

Your American Consumer.