It's Leather

So I have this burgundy (sort of) suede jacket. It somehow got a spot on the front of itself. I don't think I did it.

Anyway, I took the jacket to Comet Cleaners today. All I need is the spot removed. You know?

Yes, we do clean leather. It takes about 30 days, which means, I'm sure, that they're like the other cleaning establishment I visited. They send the leather to Washington state for cleaning.

Well, I thought, okay. I can live without it for that long. Then he said, "It will cost, oh, about . . ." and turned to the woman working there who was behind me, "what? about . . ." and nodded.

"It will cost about $39 or $40."

I picked up the jacket and said, "I didn't pay that much for it to begin with." Which is true. I may have said wow or something like it, as well. I pretty much thought wow. But honestly, I was smiling and the tone of my voice was not accusative or harsh. Truly. I was being pleasant.

He said, kind of huffy about it, truly he was huffy, "Well, that's what it costs."

I left, smiling, of course, being the nice person I am trying to be a lot.

So I'm about to go upstairs and see if I still have that little bottle of leather cleaner, which would be about 35 years old, and give it a try myself. If I can find it.

I could pay it, but I won't.

After all . . .

Axel

The picture on the right is Axel in his house. He's not quite 1. I think.

On the left he's in my house, and he's a year and a half. About.



I put him here now because Andrew has just come over to help
me put pictures in my blog using this new computer of mine that isn't very new any more but is still a bit of a puzzle to me.

Axel is a cute boy.

Well!

Here is a copy of a letter I sent. You can see to whom and when.

January 7, 2007

Ocean Spray Consumer Affairs

Ocean Spray Cranberries, Inc.

One Ocean Spray Drive

Lakeville-Middleboro, MA 02349

To Whom It May Concern:

When I was a child in Southern California, we had cranberry sauce with our Thanksgiving dinner. We could also buy cranberry juice. We liked it. Unless I’m mistaken it was Ocean Spray brand. And unless I’m mistaken again—and I’m sure I’m not—it contained no high fructose corn syrup. I’m also pretty sure your products back then (a long time ago) tasted good without hfcs. Yet today I cannot find any Ocean Spray cranberry product without that substance.

Sometimes my mother bought whole cranberries and made her own sauce. Sometimes I do the same. My mother did not add high fructose corn syrup and, of course, neither do I.

I am sure you can anticipate my questions. Why do you add it? Do you not know that hfcs is far from beneficial to the human body? Do you not know it is harder on the body than sugar? Yes, I know, we all are trying to cut down on our sugar intake, but replacing sugar or augmenting it with hfcs is not a help. Simply put, high fructose corn syrup is not good for people. I suggest you update your research on hfcs and the processes involved in its manufacture.

I’d like to buy your products again but, as things stand now, I just can’t, and although I’m only one, I am confident I’m not the only one in this country who wants to eliminate hfcs from her diet. I have found one brand of cranberry juice—not your brand, unfortunately—containing no hfcs. Thank goodness for that.

I would appreciate a response.

Thank you,

Carol Schiess

And I included my address.

I got a response, saying I was wrong about high fructose corn syrup and asking if I'd like a coupon for their products.

I said no.

Now I see that Ocean Spray has taken hfcs out of their cranberry juice. Finally. Good for them.

But they have not sent me a letter or in any public way acknowledged my help in their decision.

Hmph.

Thank goodness for WikiHow

How to Make Fertilizer from Banana Peels

Yeah, right. Here's how:

Break apart the banana peels, lay them carefully--skin side down --on a cookie sheet. Skin side down so they won't stick to the cookie sheet.

Bake them in the oven--while you're baking something else, of course, so as not to waste energy and so that your enchiladas or brownies or whatever will have that nice banana-peel taste.

When they're done and crispy,

Break them up and store the pieces in an air-tight container. I do have one of those.

I mean, isn't this just compost? Wouldn't the sun and the great outdoors eliminate most of these steps for me?

Obviously, I am not "green" enough. I say it because I do not intend to use my banana peels in this way.

This way, maybe:
How to Treat Acne With Banana Peels

Thoughts

The coming of Spring can make us thoughtful, hopeful. We watch for it, look for signs, like the red-shafted flicker returning to my chimney. He sits up there like a king and drills on the metal cap and then calls out to let me and everyone else know that this is his place. That I think it is my place is irrelevant to him.

He's quite annoying, and yet I'm glad to see him.

Like the neighbor's tulips already pushing up, like the local stores putting out their trays of flowers and racks of seed packets.

What a miracle it is that there is life in a bulb, life in a tiny seed. What a miracle that the seed needs to be buried deep in dirt before it can live.

This year I have been impatient for Spring, more than usual, I think. The winter has seemed long and many days of it dreary. Today we had rain in the morning, and I feared the weather people might be right in their predictions of rain all day.

But we have sun in the afternoon. Oh joy! And I know I am not alone in being cheered by sunshine and blue sky.

Spring heals many ills. Soothes some of those nameless longings. Gives us the sense of things being right.

But can it heal Japan? Its 8.9 earthquake and subsequent tsunami has destroyed Sendai and other cities, leaving hundreds of thousands of people without a home, without anything. No one knows yet how many are dead. No one knows where the dead are.

Can it ease middle east rebellions and heavy-handed government responses? Egypt, Tunisia, Lybia, and now Bahrain. Who's next? What's next?

We're asking a lot of Spring this year.

Nothing to do but wait for it and remain grateful for what I have. And hopeful.

Mistakes I Have Made

Well, I haven't time to list them all, but here are a few.

1. I took Clayton to Wendy's today for a hamburger and a frosty. The mistake was that I ordered something for me. A fish sandwich. By the way, the sign at the drive-thru said "Our own fish and chips . . . " and so on. So I asked if the sandwich came with chips. "No. It dosn't come with chips. We don't have any chips here. You can get a side of blah, blah, blah, or fries." I said, "Fries, yes that's what I meant by chips." She said, "I don't know what they mean by chips because we don't have any." I said, "Just the sandwich, please." Even so, it was all a big mistake. Not good food.
   
2. At the mall yesterday, in Macy's, I allowed the young woman dressed in black to spray Guilty by Gucci on my right wrist. By the way, I asked--in my ever clever way--"Guilty of what?" She said, "Guilty by Gucci." Oh well, so much for clever. And, you may know already, I soon learned Guilty by Gucci was not my fragrance. Mistake I had to wear throughout the mall.
   
3. Around the corner another woman in black offered Thiery Mugler's Angel, a sample I could take home. Okay I thought. Then, like a dope, I allowed her to rub a little of that fragrance's body lotion into the back of my left hand. Mistake. Big mistake. Now I had two smells that were not "me," and neither one was subtle.

Funny, I usually resist all those people, certainly can say no to the Dead Sea Spa people whose aim, I am sure, is to trap innocent shoppers and not let them go until they buy.

So why did I let this happen? I don't know, but I've heard that we all make mistakes.

Good News

There's hope for me.

Researchers have concluded that worrying will not shorten life. It may lengthen it, in fact.

This after speaking to really old people, like the two 100-year-old women, who said they have worried--not overly, they both said, but some--all of their lives.

Besides, say these researchers, a perennial positive attitude might be harmful to you.

So far, I'm okay.

I think they said regular exercise was good but not vital. I'm hard pressed to remember what they said about eating. These women were thin, though.

Well, thin I'm not quite. Two out of three. Or something like that.

Watching the Sky

It's a cold, clear night here. I have just come in and my fingers are cold, hard to type. But I have seen something historic.

The International Space Station and the Discovery Space Shuttle passed over at 8:03. This is Discovery's end. That's the historic part. When it goes down this time, they won't be sending it up again. And I'm not sure why that makes me sad.

By the way, do they put those things in moth balls?

My neighbors Ron and Jan stood with me on my driveway to watch, expecting to see the ISS and Discovery still joined together, but they had already separated. Still quite thrilling to see.

Actually, I knew to go out because Jan called me earlier. So I bundled up in Andrew's big yellow coat, wrapped a scarf around my neck, pulled on some gloves and went out.

And while the two--very bright they were--passed right over our little Idaho neighborhood, another satellite, going the other direction, passed by also. Quite thrilling. I said that.

I wonder how many people are up there in space.

This is not the only night it will pass over us. We have it for two more nights. But this is the only night of the three we can see it because it's the only cloudless night. (I wonder if we'll have snow again tomorrow.)

Small adventure. Right? Depends on your perspective, I guess. Kind of a big deal for me, certainly worth going out to see.

Two bullets, one of which is long

• I like Kathy Bates, as an actor (PC of me), and so I have tried to watch her new hit tv show, Harry's Law. She's Harry, short for Harriet--a name I also happen to like.

Among the reasons I have for watching tv at all is this: to be entertained. Funny huh.

On Harry's Law there are moments of entertainment. She can deliver a line really well, and there have been some good ones. I have chuckled now and then. Also, the show has some good characters. And good actors.

But

I do not call it entertainment when I am beaten over the head with somebody's a)political views, b)apparent hatred for America, c)disdain for the entire American legal system, that is, court system.

This is, apparently, the purpose of the show: to get all that across to us, the quite stupid viewing public, because we might not know stuff if David E. Kelley--writer/producer--didn't beat us over the head with stuff, that is, his take on stuff.

I'm not talking one time. I'm talking in all of the three episodes I have watched. Ugh.

It's tiresome, far from subtle, very tiresome, not entertaining, and it is insulting.

I don't know if I'd approve or feel entertained if the political views matched my own more closely. And that's the truth. I just don't know, because I think entertainment means something that may have little to do with politics.

As to Harry's abilities, she is good. She gets people off mostly.

Like the old, poor, black woman who took a gun, held it to the head of a storekeeper, and demanded all his money. This woman got off because she was a)old, b)poor, c)black, d)because there would be something terribly wrong with a justice system that would convict her of the crime she committed, and e)there's already so much wrong with this country that we can hardly get it all said in an hour tv show.

I put myself in the old black woman's place, because I am old, not poor but not rich. But I am white. There is that.

If I put a gun to the head of the guy over here at the Maverick store and took all the money . . . well, you get it.

Of course, I wouldn't do it--for many reasons, only one of which is that first I would have to buy a gun. They never mentioned where the woman got the money to buy the gun.

Yes, I know my choices. Watch and shut up or stop watching. I have to choose the latter.

• You know those ribbons people stick on their cars, like the yellow one for supporting the troops and the pink one supporting research for a breast cancer cure. I'm wanting one that is the color of duct tape. It will be in support of gagging Charlie Sheen.
  

Musings

It was raining last night as I fell asleep, and there was something comforting about it. Perhaps because I was in bed with blankets around me. But it seemed more profound than that. (Carol, the philosopher again.)

The rain stopped some time in the night.

But the morning driveway and sidewalks had those tell-tale wet places as I rolled the garbage can out to the street. I stayed by the street a moment and looked around to enjoy the feel of the air, the faint blue sky showing through the clouds.

Oh yes, I know it could rain again today and certainly will rain many more times in the grand scheme of weather and things.

But this rain was a good one. This rain felt like a real washing.