Christmas Trees Over the Years

 

A decade ago I wrote an essay about un-trimming my Christmas tree. Back then I had a live tree and themed party where my guests actually did trim the tree. There was a Teddy Bears’ Christmas trim, a Scented one, a Cozy Slippers trim and many more.  My chance to appreciate the ornaments was when I took the tree down each year. It was always a time to renew acquaintances with old friends—both ornamental and human.

 

I now have three artificial trees, so I don’t hear that telltale “Plink! Plink!” when the needles start dropping, letting me know it’s time to take them down. That sound used to herald an evening of cherished memories. I no longer have holiday parties, so I can put the trees up in early November and take them down in late February. That timetable makes a lot of sense when you consider it takes me two weeks to do all that trimming on my own and at least that long to take the trees down.

 

You may wonder how I went from one live tree with themed parties to three fake ones and a solitary job of decorating them each year. It’s the inevitable result of retiring and growing old. Once I stopped working, my circle of guests diminished significantly. In an effort to get my husband to slow down, I moved us to a condo-type community about two hours from his store in Providence. At the same time, we reached an age where we simply couldn’t handle the weight of a live tree. Sadly, I switched to an artificial one.

 

That explains half of the transition. But how did I wind up with three trees? That happened in two steps. The first artificial tree was seven feet tall. That seemed to be a good size, but it was dwarfed by the high ceilings in our new living room. The next year, I succumbed to the Balsam Hill commercials on Hallmark’s Rom Com channels. Their nine feet tall tree is perfect. The seven feet tall one was relocated to our enclosed porch.

 

By now you’re probably wondering: “What about that third tree?” And: “How do I decide what ornaments to put on which tree?” The answers to both questions are intertwined and they afford me the opportunity to explain my decorating themes.

 

The third tree goes in our family room. It belongs to our cats, with animals and items a cat would like to see. There are cat ballerinas, angels and fairies and even hobo cats. There are white mice, many in red felt outfits, a fluffy-tailed squirrel and some birds. More unexpected are the tiny knitted socks and mittens and the miniature funky sweaters. Our cats are very senior now, so we don’t worry about them trashing things. They like to curl up under the trees on the quilted skirts that cover the stands. If the ornaments get disturbed, it’s usually by accident.

 

What will you see on the large living room tree? That has a lot of hand made crafts, especially blown glass balls, as well as stained glass and pottery stars and hand-etched gourds. But its real claim to fame is all the funky animals. A diligent guest will find several zebras, ostriches, and a flamingo. There’s also lots of elephants, giraffes and a frog or two. I’m sure I’m forgetting some other exotic animals. Several are playing saxophones, by the way.

 

The tree on the enclosed porch is the stateliest. It’s decorated with white china and metallic ornaments, as well as clear glass and crystal ones. A Coalport china bell and lantern were gifts from my former significant other. He’s no longer with us, but his memory lives on in those two ornaments. I have nine silver snowflakes that my father gave me from the Metropolitan Museum, one for every year from 1976 thru 1984. They ended the Christmas after he died. When I touch those snowflakes, it’s as though I’m still touching a small piece of him, too.

 

As I put each ornament on one of the trees, I think of the person or place it came from. Those memories trigger others, often having nothing to do with Christmas. Not all are happy ones, but all are treasured. When I take the ornaments off the trees and carefully wrap each in tissue, I get to savor them a second time. I miss having my friends help trim the trees, but I’m grateful for all the time I now spend with my Christmas treasures and my many years of wonderful memories.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

On Being Bald

November blog delayed  

On Being Bald

At the same time that COVID first broke out, I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I joined a trial with Yale Medical that included chemotherapy. I didn’t lose my hair and the cancer seemed under control (though not gone) for a few years. I’ve been having regular tests to watch the tumor. Several months ago we discovered the cancer had spread outside my lung. I received additional but different chemotherapy and this time I went bald.

 

It was not my first rodeo. I had breast cancer 34 years ago and I lost my hair then. My wedding photos (second marriage) show my dark hair was growing in like Sinead O’Connor’s. My hair has started growing back in again now, but this time it’s age-appropriate white. With several weeks of growth behind me, my look is more Yahya Sinwar than Sinead. I don’t plan to dye it and I’m still wearing snood hats, so it will be awhile before I know what reaction Yahya will get from friends and family.

 

I got a wig when I lost my hair to chemo in my forties. I hated wearing it and except when I was at work, I often wore scarves from my copious collection instead. I’m retired now and I usually just go around bald at home; I wear the hats when I go out. They’re quite stylish. I bought them from Headcovers.com in several colors with and without embellishments. I got a knit cap that I wear in bed at night to keep my head warm.

 

I learned that there are quite a few reasons why it’s good to be bald. You save a lot on shampoo, conditioner and other hair care products—dye, in my case. You also save time washing it and styling it. I used to brush mine 100 strokes every morning even when I kept it short. When I had longer hair, my mother was always nagging me to get it cut or wear it differently. There’s only one option when you’re bald. I also need just one towel when I shower and it takes no time to dry my head.

 

When I had long hair, my toes were forever getting tangled in stray hair that had collected on the bathroom rug. And sometimes in bed at night, it was difficult to tell where my head ended and the cat’s fur began. That’s never a problem when I’m bald.

 

I’m not sure how long I‘ll let my hair grow eventually. I have what is called a widow’s peak and even with that feature, longer hair was always dragging in my eyes. So I might keep it really short. I’ve seen magazine ads of white-haired older women with very short hair. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull that off, but I might give it a try.

 

There’s room for an exotic tattoo. That’s probably something only younger folks would be interested in and it will be covered over when the hair grows back. People of all ages will be glad to be done with dandruff flakes. I always loved long, dangly earrings, but they didn’t hang right with my short neck. Once I lost my hair, this was not an issue. Baldness also helps you tell if your ears are off-center, but there’s nothing you can do about that.

 

If you’re stressed about going bald, consider some famous bald figures in history and entertainment.  We had Gandhi, Churchill, Yul Brynner and Kojak. More recently we have Samuel L. Jackson, Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel. And Patrick Stewart, Stanley Tucci and James Carville. All the bald women who turn up on searches have shaved heads; I don’t think they should count. I earned my bald head with chemo; shaving it seems like cheating.

 

Being bald has been a different experience this round, but I won’t complain. I spend most of my time at home and we don’t have many visitors. I could probably wear my Little Orphan Annie wig and no one would notice, especially because it’s grayish, not red.  Once my hair grows back, I’m willing to loan out my headgear. If you’d like to add your name to a list of borrowers, let me know. Those on chemo will have priority.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

Pumpkin Season

 

Belated October post

 

Fall is here so it’s officially pumpkin season. Everywhere you turn there’s something in pumpkin flavor or scent. The New Yorker even ran a cartoon at the end of September that featured gasoline pumps with Regular, Super, Diesel and Pumpkin. I was already planning on having October’s column be on unexpected products that are pumpkin flavored or scented, so it made sense to start it off with gasoline. You can blame The New Yorker for this.

 

A household item that’s available in some unusual varieties that could add pumpkin is mattresses. They already come in charcoal-infused bamboo and there’s an Avocado brand. I’m not sure if that’s scented or just green. Ditto for the Purple brand that features eggplant mattress covers.  I don’t know what color or fragrance the Nectar, Mango and Apricot brands are (and yes, they all exist.) One thing is certain: a Pumpkin brand mattress would be orange.

 

In a household with two senior indoor cats, I’d welcome cat litter in pumpkin scent. I’m not sure my girls would agree, but I’d be willing to give it a try. Even with pee soaked in, I expect it would smell better than the name brands we’ve used. A lot of the time, my cats’ aim shoots over the edge of the litter pan and much of their pee lands on the newspaper spread outside the pan. I’m not sure if newsprint comes in a pumpkin-scented option, but I’ve been known to write letters to editors for causes I believe in. This could be one of them.

 

We generally use lemon-scented cleaning products in the litter room and the kitchen. It would be a welcome change to have pumpkin dish liquid, scouring pads and cleanser. I haven’t seen any of those in the grocery stores, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see pumpkin Fabuloso dish liquid at some point this month. Fabuloso comes in about eight fragrances already. How difficult would it be to add pumpkin?

 

Before any of my readers panic, I’m not recommending pumpkin scented or flavored personal care products. No pumpkin deodorant; no pumpkin toothpaste; no pumpkin shampoo. I’d probably regret this, but I’d welcome the addition of pumpkin flavor to the Zero Water electrolyte juice that we drink every morning. Right now there are three flavors that we like. Having a fourth could provide a welcome change of pace.

 

I’d take a chance on pumpkin flavored vitamins, starting with a multi whose RDAs of each vitamin in it would be competitive with the market leading multi vitamins. Plus I’d suggest adding separate vitamin A and betacarotene pills. I’d wait to see how much interest there is in those first letters before I’d invest in separate supplements of the rest of the alphabet.

 

A brand that has ads all over TV these days gave me another idea. Let’s see some pumpkin scented Skechers Slip-ins! If it’s too much trouble to do the entire shoe in pumpkin, then just give us pumpkin-scented Dr. Scholl's shoe inserts. Howie Mandel could be the spokesperson to announce the launch.

 

One of my final suggestions for pumpkin based products could be a risky one and that’s   vaccination shots. This certainly seems like a logical pairing. After all, flu shots are the most common vaccination and they’re usually given during pumpkin season. Also, pumpkin fragrance could make COVID shots more appealing, helping to prevent a seasonal pandemic. I wouldn’t recommend these for babies and toddlers, but they would be worth the R&D expense if they significantly increased the percentage of adults who get vaccinated during flu season.

 

Lastly—this is really an after thought—is a plea directed at a specific company. Those of you who are fans of Marshmallow Peeps should appreciate this. I’d like to see pumpkin flavored Peeps at this time of year. You’ll find lots of options for pumpkins on the packaging, but the Peeps inside are all classic vanilla marshmallow. Join me in lobbying Just Born Quality Confections, the manufacturer, in “birthing” them in pumpkin!

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

Hairballs and Dingleberries

September Post (belated) 

A Canadian friend on Facebook blogs about her rescue cat. Recently a neighbor in her condominium complained about the cat’s hairballs and dingleberries. I’m not sure how the neighbor would even know about these, as the cat stays inside or on the balcony. The neighbor must be a nosy balcony peeper with a dangling microphone. Anyone who has ever had cat knows that a hairball gives plenty of notice as the cat hacks one up. But on a balcony, I would think the sound would be muffled by the wind.

 

I’ve often wondered why some people call them hairballs and others call them fur balls. This is what my brief research determined. Technically the term fur is used with mammals with thick body hair (and therefore cats) while it’s still attached.

 

Hairballs describe the fur that cats swallow and then hack up. If the fur is sparse, as with humans, we generally call it hair even while it’s still attached. If you’d like more detail on this distinction, visit: https://www.thesprucepets.com/cat-fur-vs-hair-554813. We call it hair once it’s fallen out onto our clothes or our furniture and we’re trying to brush it off.

 

Dingleberries were new to me. It turns out they collect around the exit hatch at the cat’s rear, especially on those with long hair. They require constant, fastidious grooming to prevent blockage. The balcony peeper might have observed that, especially if she uses binoculars. I imagine a persistent peeper would. They’d undoubtedly have a kit with all their peeping tools in it. And a notepad to keep track of their findings by date and time to report to the condo board.

 

The dingleberry name reminded me of one of those silly jokes from decades ago. “What do you call red crepe paper that hangs from the ceiling? A dingle dangle. What do you call green crepe paper that hangs from the ceiling? Crepe paper. Dingle dangles only come in red.” I warned you that it was silly.

 

Getting back to the dingleberries at a cat’s exit hatch—this could get gross. I’ve had nine cats in about forty years. None were long hair and all of the females were spayed. I never noticed any dingleberries. What I did notice was that when some of my girls got older, their lower bellies began to droop and they flopped when they walked. The hair at their back belly also got longer. I referred to it all as their fuzzy baggies.

 

I came up with that name from a commercial on the radio for Fazi Battaglia Verdicchio wine. A man was in a liquor store wanting to order it but couldn’t pronounce it. One of his attempts was Fuzzy Baggies. He finally settled on Fizzy What’s It, as I recall.

 

Stella Periwinkle, one of my current girls, now has fuzzy baggies. Kallie Jasmine is more petite and is still svelte. Once I had dingleberries on my radar, I decided to inspect Stella’s exit hatch. What I found shocked me. Dingleberries galore, some larger ones almost blocking that out ramp. I pulled one or two off for her, taking some fur along with it. She was not pleased so I stopped.

 

There must have been at least four to six of those buggers still there. I decided to make this a multi-day project with regular inspections once I had her completely de-dingleberried. Don’t even ask where that project stands.

 

Just to be safe, I also checked Kallie’s rear end. No dingleberries there; no surprise because her fur is not very long. However, she seems to be more prone to hacking up hairballs than Stella is. Her pre-hack meow is so pitiful that I usually have plenty of time to find her and catch the blob in a tissue as it comes up. I say usually because there are occasions that I don’t get there on time. Cleaning throw up on carpeting is not pleasant.

 

Neither is stepping on a dried up hairball days after it was deposited. I imagine that happens when I’m out on errands. Once those dry, they blend in with the Oriental rugs and it can be weeks before I happen upon them.

 

It took a friend’s Facebook post on hairballs and dingleberries to get me thinking about all of this. I hope my column has you searching your rugs and examining your pet’s exit ramps, too.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

X Appeal

 This is the August post;

The other day I noticed that a message was addressed to me as Mx. Decker. I assumed it was because the sender couldn’t decide whether I was a Miss or a Mrs. I thought that problem was solved with the use of Ms. Apparently it’s more complicated than that. With the increasing frequency of transgender and androgynous members in our society, it’s not just ones marital status that could be in question. It’s also ones sexual orientation. The use of the letter X has become a common way to circumvent all sorts of societal unknowns.

One of the more common uses that have been popular for ,a while now is LatinX. That’s the gender-neutral alternative to Latina or Latino. But I blame the explosion of the use of X today on Elon Musk for renaming Twitter X. It started with his SpaceX rockets. He even titled his artificial intelligence company xAI and created a special logo for it. Lord only knows what he’ll christen with X in the future.

To be fair, X has been around in many forms for a while now. The X Games, a semi-annual ESPN extreme sports competition, began in 1995 in Rhode Island as the Extreme Games. I don’t know when it was shortened to just X. The Xbox gaming console has been available in the U.S. since 2001.

I’m not sure what drives this X appeal, but it’s all around us. X has always symbolized something unknown and often mysterious. Simply thinking in terms of it having four points, we can group it with other similar symbols. The four-leaf clover is considered lucky, perhaps because it’s so rare (unlike X). When we find one, we usually preserve it in plastic and put it in our wallets.

Old fashioned Dutch-style windmills that were used to mill grain or pump water have four blades, though modern wind turbines usually have three. Railroad crossing signs are always an X. I still remember the scene in the movie Two For the Road with Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn. They’re hitchhiking and she gets a ride, leaving him behind. Farther up the road, she’s on foot again and has been hiding behind a railroad crossing sign; she’s so thin you can barely see her. When he gets within sight, she pops out, flapping her arms like the crossing sign. It was a great movie.

There are dozens of areas where X marks the spot. Take clothing sizes for instance. We have XL, 1X, 2X, 3X etc. in women’s. It gets even crazier for men, with XXL and XXXL. In mathematics, X is always the horizontal axis. In science, X-rays have countless uses, but Y-rays and Z-rays are virtually unheard of.

In popular culture, we had the X-Files science fiction TV series back in the nineties. Remember Scully and Mulder? There’s yet another remake of that in progress. We still have the X-Men team of mutant superheroes from Marvel Comics. Just the thought of Nightcrawler or Wolverine can send a frisson up ones spine! On the opposite end of the spectrum, in the Greek alphabet, X represents the letter chi. Many devoted Christians use chi to refer to Christ, especially when combined with the Greek rho to make the first letters of His name.

The uses for X keep proliferating. It’s prominent in company and brand names, like Xfinity, introduced in 2010, while that stalwart workhorse Xerox was founded 1906. Tesla has several models, but its Model X is the most popular. If you text a lot, you no doubt enjoy receiving XOXO kisses and hugs from your friends.

All this having been said, I still blame Elon Musk for the ubiquitousness of X in our lives today. Anywhere we go, there it is. With a name like Musk, you’d think he’d overwhelm us with sex appeal. But no, thanks to Elon and his rebranding of Twitter as X, we’re all drowning in X appeal.

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

Gardens of Time

 This is a delayed posting of my July column;

April showers bring May Flowers;

Weddings in June bring Bouquet tunes.

But July is when Gardens fully bloom!

 

This year’s Met Gala, The Garden of Time, based on a short story, inspired today’s column. I’m celebrating gardens from mythology to imaginary ones to historical examples to those we can still visit today.  There are many categories of gardens. Often we think of those with myriads of colorful flowers, growing informally around our homes. Public gardens are likely to be formal, with hedges and paths and even topiary, usually found around museums and estates, both public and private.

 

Gardens are where life begins anew each year, where love can be secretly nourished and passions kindled. They can provide places to relax and meditate, places to recharge emotional batteries. We can enjoy them in solitude or with friends and family. You could have a bucket list with nothing but wonderful gardens still extant to visit.

 

Our retrospective begins with the Garden of Eden, the garden of God, from where both Adam and Eve were expelled after Eve gave Adam that apple. In Greek Mythology, The Garden of the Hesperides, aka Hera's Orchard, was the sacred garden of Hera from where the gods got their immortality. Heracles (the Roman Hercules), had to retrieve golden apples from the tree in the center of the garden as part of his twelve labors. Also in Greek mythology, the Elysian Fields are the final resting place of the souls of the heroic and the virtuous. Obviously, none of these gardens can be visited today.

 

Other historical gardens no longer bucket list options are the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. They’ve been described as marvels of agricultural engineering, filled with flowers, fruit, exotic foliage, and impressive waterfalls. Similarly, literary gardens are wish-list only, the Garden of the Finzi Contini, for instance. And you can’t spend midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Do we even know where The Secret Garden is?

 

Another summer garden is the Elizabeth Park Rose Garden, in Hartford, CT a walkers' haven, with several gardens along its wildflower trail, a lovely pond and sports and concert facilities It’s best known for its magnificent rose gardens, with 800 varieties of roses.

 

Some gardens celebrated in paintings and literature can still be visited. Monet’s Gardens in Giverny should be on your list. Mercifully, The Garden of Earthly Delights depicted by Hieronymus Bosch was imaginary. You’d be certifiable to want to visit it. On the other hand, somewhere in England and well worth searching for must be that Host of Golden Daffodils that inspired Wordsworth when he wandered lonely as a cloud.

 

By now you should be looking for good examples for your bucket list. I’ll start with one that you’ll want to visit next spring; lt's past it's prime in summer. It's the Keukenhof Tulip Gardens in The Netherlands. Pique your interest by looking at some photos on line. They’re glorious.

 

There are two fabulous botanical gardens to include, one on each side of the pond. The first are the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew Gardens in Richmond (Southwest London). It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Centre. There are both formal and informal gardens to explore and various houses to visit, especially the Great Pagoda.

 

The second is the New York Botanical Garden, located in Bronx Park. It contains fifty different gardens and plant collections, and even a cascade waterfall. Throughout the year there are exhibitions, immersive botanical experiences, art and music. It’s well worth an extended visit.

 

For those wanting to add some formal gardens to their bucket lists, you can do no better than visiting the Gardens of the Palace of Versailles, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre outside Paris. The gardens of Versailles contain some 400 statues, making them the world’s largest open-air sculpture museum. Go for the palace, but allow plenty of time for the gardens.

 

For a similar experience, travel to Vienna to see the Palace and Gardens of Schönbrunn, an impressive and well-preserved Baroque property. The gardens form an organic extension of the palace, so plan to visit the entire complex. It, too, is a UNESCO World Heritage Centre.

 

A very different option would be the formal Gardens of the Taj Mahal in Agra, India. It’s another UNESCO World Heritage Centre. The focus of the gardens is the white marble mausoleum, built by the emperor Shah Jahan in memory of his favorite wife. Forewarned: depending on when you visit, it can be a challenge to fight the crowds.

 

We’ve barely scratched the surface of gardens worth seeing. The sooner you build your own bucket list, the sooner you can plan trips to visit them. Start looking for comfortable walking shoes now!

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

Polyamory and Other Polys

This is a delayed posting of my June column.

Lately I’ve been seeing the term “polyamory” in the media quite often. I know that “poly” means many or several. And I know that “amor” means love in Latin and Spanish. So I assumed that polyamory is a strong affection for several people. Hardly anything to merit media coverage unless there’s more to the story. I decided to research the term.

 

It turns out that polyamorous people have romantic relationships with more than one partner at the same time, and all the partners involved agree to this. It’s also defined as consensual nonmonogamy. You might think I’d want to travel down that road in more detail for this column, but you’d be wrong. I did wonder how many people would be needed for a relationship to be polyamorous (vs. just a love triangle). But what really piqued my interest was other uses for the compounded “poly.”

 

The notion of polyamorous relationships did call to mind Pollyanna, whose irrepressible optimism finds good in everything. But I want to explore “poly” with a single “l”. An obvious word to include here is polygamy. It doesn’t seem as sexy as polyamory, and it’s more structured, usually with one husband having multiple wives. Technically one wife could have multiple husbands. Either way the practice of polygamy is now illegal in the U.S.

 

As a lover of language, I quickly thought of polyglot, someone who knows and uses several languages. To be considered more than bilingual or trilingual, a polyglot can usually communicate in at least four languages. This is different from someone who prides herself on speaking polysyllabically. Using a lot of multi-syllable words does not a polyglot make. It just makes someone a long-winded sesquipedalian.

 

The most commonly known poly word is probably polygon. This one-l poly word shouldn’t be confused with the two-l “Polly gone,” meaning your pet parrot has flown the coop. Sorry. I couldn’t resist some silliness. A polygon is a multi-sided geometric figure with a certain number of sides and angles. First the triangle (3 sides), then the quadrilateral (4), and then they morph into the “gon” series: pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, octagon, nonagon, decagon, and so on.

 

A word that sounds like it could be related to polygons is polymath. Its actual meaning has nothing to do with mathematics; it’s someone who knows a lot about many different subjects. Leonardo DaVinci is probably the most famous polymath; Thomas Jefferson is another celebrated one. Elon Musk’s name appears on some lists. Polymaths are usually great solvers of complex problems.

 

Mathematics does have special meaning for polytechnic universities. They specialize in providing hands-on, practical, and applied education in STEM fields. These are increasingly popular and important fields, specifically science, technology, engineering and math. Some schools that are not polytechnics incorporate art into the mix and use the acronym STEAM. Brown University and RISD (Rhode Island School of Design) have had STEAM collaborations.

 

Far less interesting are poly words that come from science, especially the many types of polymers. First of these is polyester, the easy-care fiber for all seasons. Then there are the PVC and PET bottles (polyvinylchloride and polyethylene terephthalate) that we’re encouraged to recycle. We coat our outdoor furniture with polyurethane. I see your eyes glazing over the way the furniture does, so I’ll move on from science.

 

I love the next two poly words because they have creative connections. Polyphonic instruments are capable of producing many sounds simultaneously, like my mother’s baby grand on which I took piano lessons in elementary school. Polyphonic choral pieces are written for many voices (but not mine). Polychromatic artworks use multiple colors vs. monochromatic ones. I majored in art in college and always liked polychromes.

 

One of my favorite “poly” words is polydactyl. We see this most often when describing cats that have extra toes. They’re always so adorable with the cutest little mitten paws! Not so common are polydactyl babies, those born with extra fingers. I don’t know anyone who has a baby with this condition but I’ve seen many polydactyl cats. I’m sure I’ve adopted one or two, though it’s not something I paid a lot of attention to. I think I’ll go count my cats’ toes right now.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

Cruise Ship Specialties

When most of you think of cruise ships, you probably imagine destination cruises to places like Caribbean islands, Nordic fjords or European rivers. Today you’ll learn about specialized cruises where the ship sails into international waters and drops anchor. Each deck features a different activity; the cruisers sign up in advance and usually stay on that deck for the duration of the cruise.

This idea came to me after seeing an article in the New York Times revealing that some cruise ships now have jails and morgues. Imagine sharing a cruise with a boatload of imprisoned felons. Or exploring the ship and happening upon a door labeled “Morgue.” On the other hand, selecting your trip based on some activity you love and being able to spend a week doing it on the bounding main with others who also love it could have strong appeal. Herewith are my suggestions for specialty cruises.

There will of course be a deck dedicated to yoga, but there will be no goats. Each type of yoga will have its own section of the deck with mats color-coded so that participants don’t accidentally plop their butts in the wrong section. Imagine if a kundalini adherent wound up on a vinyasa mat!

The increasingly popular discipline of wall climbing will also be represented. “Rock” placement will begin with an easy section toward the stern of the ship and become increasingly more difficult as the wall progresses toward the bow. Climbing shoes will be available for rent for those who neglected to bring their own. And no, you can’t show off by climbing barefoot.

An obvious deck will be one devoted to Mahjong. Just imagine rows and rows of tables with perfectly coiffed ladies in gold lamé dresses and sequined ballet slippers! A cruise made in heaven for women who don’t know what deck their husbands are on and don’t care. The men, on the other hand, may very well be on one of the upper decks enjoying the cigar bar and perhaps visiting the tattoo parlor. The cigars won’t pollute the rest of the decks; the smoke will waft out the portals and drift upward.

We expect the deck that is dedicated to line dancing to be over-subscribed, so if that’s one that interests you, be sure to book early. That will also enable you to request your preferred dances. The Electric Slide and the Cowboy Cha Cha will be included even if no one requests them. The Cupid Shuffle will help beginners get into this predictable wedding activity. Rest assured you won’t be subjected to the Macarena or the YMCA.

 

Not surprisingly, there will be a deck dedicated to sun bathing. It will have normal cabins, but a considerable portion will be open to the sky. A secluded section will be reserved for those who want to stretch out in the altogether. In the evening this deck will feature celestial navigation. That secluded section will still be available for nude “relaxation.” If these turn out to be in demand, there will be a sign up sheet for reservations. Please don’t use aliases for this sheet.

 

You might expect to find decks for card games and board games but there won’t be. Those are far too pedestrian. Not to mention how difficult it would be to decide which ones to include and which ones to eliminate. So no poker; no bridge; no canasta; no checkers; no Monopoly; no Clue. Likewise, you can forget jigsaw puzzles and book clubs. Also, we have no interest in competing with other cruise lines, so we won’t have a casino or a pickle ball court.

 

Our final deck is what I call the participation deck. Cruisers who sign up plan either to participate in the entertainment activity or to enthusiastically heckle the performers. This is a shared deck. The stern hosts the stand-up comedy performances. Wannabe comics test their chops here. The bow hosts the poetry slam, where aspiring poets try out their own material. Hecklers can wander between the two areas.

 

Including the prison and morgue, there will be nine decks on these specialty cruises. (The cigar bar and tattoo parlor will share a deck.) You’ll have plenty of choices, but book your passage early to be sure to get the deck with your favorite activity.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

The Enduring Appeal of Stuffies

The usual style of my columns is snarky sarcasm or social satire. This month’s essay is more whimsical. As with many of my others, it was inspired by items in the news and then acquired a life of its own.

 

Many local libraries are hosting fun events for children in their communities: sleepovers for their cherished stuffed animals. The child brings the stuffy to the library and leaves it overnight. The library takes pictures of all the toys together and when they’re picked up by their owners the next day, they go home with a photo documenting their adventure. No word on whether they have to arrive with pajamas.

 

Most of us assume that sleeping with a favorite teddy bear must end once we become “grown ups.” It turns out science has a different opinion about this. Recent studies suggest that adults would actually benefit by cuddling with a stuffed toy in bed at night. Apparently, this helps you relax. I’d try it, but I already have two cats that sleep with me. I doubt they’d move out of the way to make room for a stuffed animal. My husband has learned to give way to the cats. I think he’d draw the line at a stuffy.

 

This reminds me that I never had a teddy bear as a child. Now I have a collection, and one of my cats steals them when she “hunts” at night. I had a few dolls, just no bears. I also had two large stuffed donkeys when I was in high school. I have no recollection of how they came into my possession. I do remember taking pictures of them to put in the school newspaper to promote a special event. Our faculty played our seniors in donkey basketball. You read that correctly: donkey basketball. I don’t remember who won.

 

Some grade schools have students send stuffed mascots to family and friends, asking them to document the mascot’s travels. The goal is to have it go around the world. My brother Rick’s daughter Jennifer sent me the owl Pueo from her Punahou School in Hawaii. I took pictures of it in front of the Rhode Island State House. My husband had one of his relatives bring it on a visit home to India. I’m quite sure that owl traveled farther than most stuffies. Recently a teddy bear was left on a plane. The pilot took him into the cockpit until his owner was located. I doubt that bear made it beyond Europe.

 

A favorite childhood stuffed toy that I do remember was Zippy the Chimp. He was a live chimpanzee on the Howdy Doody Show in the 1950’s. He even appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show several times. I received him from Santa Claus and I loved him. Zippy eventually found his way to live with my nephew Barry in Vermont. Barry had visited my parents’ home in New Jersey and refused to part with the chimp when it was time to go home. I was in college by that then and was happy to have Zippy start a new life. It turned out to be quite an eventful one in Vermont.

 

Barry dragged Zippy everywhere, to the point where his clothes were in tatters. I remember my sister Barbara telling me that she finally took Zippy to a local department store to buy him new overalls in the toddlers department. She received some strange looks from other shoppers as she held each pair up to the worn out stuffed chimp to see if they would fit him. They were all too long; Zippy had stubby legs. But she just rolled the pants up a few times and pronounced the shopping trip a success. Barry was thrilled, because they were bright red, just like his original pants.

 

Barbara might have been tasked with Zippy’s clothing replacement, but her husband Bob was required to handle his medical work. Bob was an ophthalmologist who often performed eye surgery. Poor Zippy was dragged around so much that one of his plastic hands eventually started to separate from his fabric arm. One day Barry brought him to his father to have surgery to repair him. Bob originally planned to use regular sewing thread but Barry would have none of that. Zippy’s surgery had to be done with medical grade suture thread. And so it was. The things we do for love!

 

Indeed, love is what best explains the enduring appeal of stuffies. I hope this essay has stirred up some memories of your own favorite stuffed toys!

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

Euphemisms and Idioms

A recent TV program on political scandals reminded me of a euphemism that was popular during one of those scandals. Former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford had gone to Argentina to spend time with his mistress. Their relationship had been a secret up until then. He told his staff that he would be hiking the Appalachian Trail. When his affair came to light, the phrase: “Hiking the Appalachian Trail” became a euphemism for having an extramarital affair.

I love that expression! It’s a civil way to say something critical. It set me to wondering what other clever euphemisms and idioms I had forgotten about or never known. (Idioms also aren’t direct, but they’re not always nice.) A few are political, but not all. We have Southern culture to thank for many of these colorful colloquialisms, a lot of which feature farm animals.

Here are some of my favorites. This one was used recently by a member of Congress to criticize a budget proposal. He said it was a “Pig’s Breakfast.” That was new to me. I looked it up. It’s a Southernism for an unappealing mixture, a mess.

A crossword puzzle answer that was also new to me was “Goat Rodeo.” It describes something that has gone totally wrong, an ultimate SNAFU. I immediately pictured said rodeo and it was easy to imagine it going totally wrong, no mater how cute the little goatees were. I’m waiting to hear a member of Congress describe a session of that august body as a goat rodeo. There will likely be many opportunities. “That dog won’t hunt” was also in a recent puzzle, meaning that an idea or approach is destined to fail. If that phrase hasn’t been used yet in Congress, you can bet it will be eventually.

Another of my favorites is “The Full Monty.” It first came across my radar via a movie of that title. The expression originated as the shortened version of the “Full Montgomery,” the big English breakfast favored by British General Bernard Montgomery. By the time of the movie in 1997, it had come to be a euphemism for “total nudity.” Today it’s used broadly to mean the most that you can have or achieve, or more simply: the works.

We can thank Texas for a refined way to say someone brags shamelessly about his non-existent wealth or assets. “He’s all hat and no cattle” is a phrase you’ve probably heard. Credit to the late Roger Moore in a Hallmark movie for the female equivalent: “All fur coat and no knickers.”

Staying with farm animals and Southernisms, I like the polite way to let a man know his fly is down. “The barn door’s open and the mule’s trying to run.” It was new to me, and I’ll be on the lookout for an opportunity to use it. Also likely from the South, here’s a colorful way to say someone is cheap. “He’ll squeeze a nickel till the buffalo screams” is much more evocative than calling someone a “penny-pincher.”

Instead of saying someone looks tired, say he looks like he has “one wheel down and the axle dragging.” It’s very likely Southern, but I can’t say for certain. Ditto for using “the green apple two-step” as a euphemism for diarrhea. The last in this trio sounds very Southern to me, as a way to say there’s a problem. “A yellow jacket in the outhouse” is certainly something a person doing the green apple two-step would rather not hear!

 There are dozens of idioms for saying someone is not very smart. You’ve probably heard most of them; I had, but new to me was: “She’s one bubble off plumb.” Not new to me, the following: “One brick short of a load.” “Not playing with a full deck.” “Two tacos short of a combination platter.” “Doesn’t have both oars in the water.” “The elevator doesn’t go all the way to the top floor.” “The lights are on but nobody’s home.” In the South, it’s “The porch lights are on…” There are many more ways to say someone isn’t smart, but this list should more than meet your needs.

Euphemisms and idioms are all around us. As soon as I put this essay to bed, I’m sure I’ll come across several more I would have wanted to include. Start your own collection!

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited

Pedicure Guidelines for Seniors

 As we get older, it becomes more and more difficult to do our own pedicures. I’ve put together some guidelines especially for seniors. I’m also including some information to help you allocate time for the job.

 

The first thing you’ll want to do is to collect all the tools you’ll need for your pedicure. You don’t want to have to stop part way into the process to search for something essential. If you’re a senior, here’s what you should gather up.

·      3.5 or 4.0 magnifier reading glasses

·      Nail clipper for arthritic hands

·      Nail file or emery board

·      Cotton balls

·      Peroxide or antibiotic salve

·      Extra-wide foot rasp or number 60 or 80-grit sand paper

·      Miracle skin softener lotion

Once you have all of these items collected, you’re ready to attack your feet.

 

The Basic Procedure

 

Getting started on your pedicure is one of the most difficult parts of the process for a senior. You’ll probably want to sit down for this. Stretching to reach your feet may well be the most time-consuming step in the job. Once you can reach them, take inventory of your toes to be sure you can locate all ten.

 

If you happen to be one of the folks who have a hammer toe, be sure to include that odd little sucker in your count. I dated someone with a hammer toe in college, and it was strange to look at. His was the pinky toe and it rested on top of the piggy who didn’t have any roast beef. Stranger still, he wound up marrying a woman who also had a hammer toe. Perhaps even stranger, I know this because I was one of her bridesmaids. You’ll probably need to allow extra time to trim and file a hammer toenail.

 

Once you’re sure that you’ve located ten toes, you can begin clipping your nails. The special clippers for arthritic hands are a blessing and worth the investment. Focus on the center of each toenail. Don’t clip too close to the sides or you could wind up with ingrown nails down the line. Use the nail file or emery board to finish off the sides of the nail and smooth any rough edges. I usually start with my big toe and work my way down to the pinky toe. You can do the reverse if you prefer. It doesn’t really matter, as long as you proceed in sequence.

 

Once you’ve finished the basics, it’s time to get back up. Don’t forget that you have two feet to trim, so check them both before you consider the job done! If you’re reasonably fit, it should take less time to get up than it did to stretch to reach your toes. Now it’s time for your post-pedicure clean up and polishing.

 

How Long Each Step Will Take

·      Stretching to reach your toes                     40%

·      Taking inventory of your toes                    10%

·      Clipping your nails                                        20%

·      Filing the rough edges that remain          14%

·      Getting back up when you’re done           16%

 

Post-Pedicure Clean up and Polishing

 

If you have any bleeding from your efforts, treat the toe with the peroxide on a cotton ball or dab some antibiotic salve on it. When you’ve completed your basic pedicure and any post-pedicure treatment, you should really buff your heels with the foot rasp or sand paper that you have in your tools. Then cream your feet. 

 

 

 

Your feet should now look so beautiful that you’ll want to go out and buy some new sandals. But please don’t take pictures of your feet to post on Facebook or Instagram, especially if you’re planning to do before-and-after shots. Some of you might want to polish your toenails. I never do that. My hands are no longer agile enough for that. I’m also clueless as to what colors are trendy. I’m just happy to have the job in my rearview. If you want to polish yours go for it! You’ve earned it.

 

Copyright 2024 Business Theatre Unlimited