Are you SERIOUS, Hammacher Schlemmer?

So we just got their holiday catalogue today. Thought I’d share some strange finds with you, just in case you’re stumped seeking a holiday gift for that special canine.

First, the barking deterrent disguised as a bird house…because most dogs are so smart that if the high frequency-emitting device came in a “regular” container, it totally wouldn’t work. They’d be on to it in seconds. They’ll never figure out the birdhouse.

Second, here is a gift for people who (a) are lazy and (b) have no freaking clue that dogs love to fetch because people who talk like happy babies are at the other end of that stick. (Well, except maybe the legendary yellow lab of my youth, Jerome, who sometimes needed some “alone time” to process all of his deep thoughts.) It’s the Automatic Canine Fetch Machine. Isn’t that sweet? This gift allows you to completely ignore your best friend.

It should come with a t-shirt for your dog too: “I defend this house and all I get is this automatic fetching machine.”

And finally, the Canine Treadmill. For people who are just too freaking lazy to walk their dogs. I can't even bring myself to post the photo here. Might get the blog shut down by PETA.

Redheads Will One Day Rule the World

Here’s a Gropius family car conversation from a couple weekends ago:

• D-Man: “Did you know there are only 2 million redheads in the entire world? They’re disappearing.”
  
• Husband: “I heard that one day redheads will be bred out of the human species.”
  
• Gropius [in head]: “Nice. Trying to get rid of me the old fashioned way: genetically. And P.S., this whole conversation is just a little scary for more than one reason.”
  

So I did a little follow up online and can report through secret Internet sources that there are more like 65 million of us globally, with the largest redhead percentage in the populations of Scotland, Ireland and Wales, respectively. Hm. What a surprise.

And bad news, fam, redheads will not die out unless we simply stop breeding with people who carry that recessive trait. I did find some interesting thought processes going on in blogs and forums re: the “Will redheads die out” question—no doubt one of the most stirring dialogues of our time. Some of them include:

“Ginger kids scare me.” Reply: As they should. We’ll get you. And one day, we’ll take over.

“Does God hate me because I’m a redhead?” Answer: Look, I’d love to answer, but I’ll defer to the Redhead Upstairs.

“Redhead girls are the hottest…after Asian girls” Answer: SECOND hottest? Must be a blonde talking.

BTW, I'll dedicate this post to you, PLRH, one of my fellow redheads. Congrats on your blog award!!!!

The Haircut

When I came home on Tuesday night after getting my hair hacked off a good 10 inches, this was the response I received:

Husband: "Oh. I like it. I like it. Yeah, I like it." (trying to convince himself) and then..."It's like I get to sleep with a different woman tonight!"

D-man: "You look like Willie Wonka."

Needless to say, I felt so reassured after these lovely interactions.

On Veteran's Day, Don't Change the Channel

The day I found out my college graduate brother from our non-military family signed up with the Marines, my perspective started to change. The Iraq war had begun. Things were bad. I knew that for every bit of fear I held about it, my mother held more fear as only a mother could.

The next few years would be difficult, as we all grasped to visualize what he was seeing, hearing, doing. Communication was often extremely scattered, short and uninforming. When the reports came in on radio and television, it was a struggle to stay positive and keep from wondering if he was there when "it" happened--whatever that "it" was.

And you hear it almost every day still. You know the voices on NPR and ABC. And you can predict the arrangement of words in the announcements. "Today in Anbar Province, three more troops were killed in combat."

What happens when you hear that? Do you physically or mentally change the channel? True, it's hard to internalize after years of this. And anyway, what can you do about it? But I ask you not to blur it out. We don't see their faces. But we know they're men and women--many of them very young--with the best of intentions. And they're gone. In a strange place with giant camel spiders, heat that you would not believe and loved ones connected to them with faded pictures in their pockets, they're gone.

Years later, after my brother has served twice in Iraq and is now working elsewhere under the Department of Homeland Security, I realize that I can't blur the armed services and any associated combat into an amorphous mass of "why?" It's no longer easy to pass off as something with which I can't identify or understand.

Despite your politics, the bottom line is that for every veteran that returns, he or she has experienced things you can't imagine. Many of them are positive, like rebuilding schools or sewer systems. But most likely, there are also people he left behind with uncertain dates of return, people who he knew who died in an irretrievable instant, and people he knew who will return with one less limb or with an unseen but severe emotional wound that impacts daily life in perpetuity.

My request is simple: just carve out a few moments in your heart today and everyday to remember those who have come home to us and those who haven't.

The Nonquestioner

The nonquestioner (n). A person who attends a seminar or presentation and stands up to ask a question, only it is not a question. It is a rambling statement that goes on and on and has no apparent end or interest to anyone in the audience but the same annoying, rude person talking.


So yesterday I attended an event at USF about deforestation in the Amazon. At the end of three presentations, it was time for questions. That’s right, QUESTIONS. Of course a nonquestioner had to be part of the line up. Usually, a nonquestioner can fall into one of 3 subcategories:

1. Secretly resents not being asked to be part of the presentation and decides to fulfill that role during the nonquestion.
2. Wants to impress the presenters/audience with some obscure fact that might not even be a fact.
3. Overtly transforms the nonquestion into a heated preaching moment to a choir that is already converted. (As in “And the rainforest is disappearing! And damn it, we need to do something about it!”)

As you might have guessed, this nonquestioner was all three and was annoying as hell. Even better, the moderator tried to boot him on 2 separate occasions by politely asking him to get to the question. She finally succeeded on the third, more forceful try. What was the question? Obviously, there wasn’t one.

Inspiration from the Lower Food Chain

Knowing that even the lowest organisms on the food chain possess beauty, I am inspired to keep searching for it in the people who toy with my ability to keep profanity from morphing into an outer dialogue.

(lichen growing on cypress tree)


(another type of lichen growning on fence post)

Don't Pimp My Ride

We do have a real live tween in the house, far more--challenging--shall we say, than a young white ibis. Sometimes there's a fine line between arguing over something of principle and arguing over something of preference. Wearing non-wrinkled shirts that don't create the appearance you slept under a bridge, brushing your hair for the same reason and avoiding certain non-words like "oma! oma!oma!" before every sentence are just some of those parental preferences. But the scuffs over different tastes in cars is hovering on the edge.

He's fixated with souped up cars. I'm talking the cheap hooptie mobiles with the iridescent paint jobs and $30, 000 rims. To wind up our 4 hours in the car today, driving to and from Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, this conversation took place. And it's not one that's new.

• Tween: "Oma! Dude, that car is JACKED UP. Look at those RIMS."
• Husband: "When you're spending more on the rims than the car itself, you know it's not a wise choice."
• Tween: "No man, that's called being green. They're taking something really old and reusing it."
• Husband: "No, that's called being stupid."

There, there. It would seem that the tween has a point. Not that I see four expensive rims held together by crap and an engine that's ten days older than water as a Sweet 16 present or anything, but I'm happy to hear the word "green." Something I'm saying is getting through.