In which I spend way too much time with a colleague who turns out to be a complete flake

This guy Rolando and I started working for the paper company on the same day in Miami. We were paid the same amount. I know this because he foolishly made a copy of his offer letter and left the original on the copy machine and oh like you wouldn't have looked. Honestly. Of course I looked.

We banded together in defense against some of the other people in the office, one of whom was a sweaty, pale blond guy who spoke no Spanish yet was in charge of Latin America sales and who told me during my interview that he would never live in Miami (he lived in Boca Raton) because he had children.

I was quite puzzled, as there were many people in Miami who also had children, including my next door neighbor Mousson, whose 15 year old son Rudolf overfed my cats when I was out of town, telling me, when I gently suggested that he might have given them too much food, "But zey were 'ongry! Zey were crying!"

Then I realized that Pat was just a big fat racist jerk and that his opinion meant nothing to me.

Rolando and I tried to become friends, but I realized soon that there was no hope. The first sign was the day he saw the book Army of Angels in my briefcase. I rode the train from Miami to Boca, where the office was, 60 miles away, and had a lot of time to read every day. This was in the mid 90s, when people were not expected to work 24 hours a day just because they had laptops and cellphones. I read. I even had time to read The Economist every week. Three hours on a train every day will do that to you.

But Rolando was not a reader. He was not a student of history. I'm not sure what he was.

I don't want to sound like an intellectual snob. I know there are many bright people who have not been exposed to things that you would think everyone is exposed to. The great IT guy who was always so helpful to me in Memphis had never heard of Anne Frank.

He had never heard of Anne Frank.

How do you grow up in the U.S. and not know that?

But he was a product of Memphis City Schools, which, for those of you who do not know about Memphis City Schools, is not the best school system in the world. The county mayor once gave a speech in which he said that every day, when he woke up, he thanked God for Arkansas and Mississippi just so Memphis wouldn't be in last place.

Rolando asked what the book was about.

"Joan of Arc," I answered.

"Who's that?" he asked.

Oh Lord.

Rolando had gone to private school. His dad was a bigwhig with an international company. Rolando had gone to the good schools in Venezuela and Colombia and the U.S. He got his MBA at Northwestern, which did not admit me, not that I'm bitter about that. Actually, I'm not. I still went to a top school and I paid only $5,000 for two years of tuition and fees.

Plus it probably didn't help my chances at Northwestern in my interview when I asked the alum who was interviewing me what made Northwestern ten times better than U.T. that they charged ten times as much tuition. The alum was not amused and sputtered that you couldn't look at just tuition. I shrugged. I was paying for this. I wanted to know. But Northwestern made it easy for me and didn't admit me. Whatever.

But Rolando, who was educated and who had gotten into a school that had not admitted me, did not even know who Joan of Arc was. For dumb.

But that's not what made him so flaky.

One day, when I mentioned that my friend Susan and I were going to the Keys on Saturday morning to go canoeing, he asked to join us. Sure, I told him. Just be at my house at 7:00 a.m. That's when we're leaving.

Susan and I waited. No Rolando. We waited some more. Still no Rolando.

I finally called the phone number he had given me. He was staying with his parents until he found a place and I didn't want to call so early, but I was worried that maybe he'd had an accident between his mom and dad's house and my house and wouldn't you want to know if you were a parent?

His mom answered. "He's still sleeping," she told me.

"Screw him," I told Susan. "We're not waiting."

That's still not the flaky part.

Rolando and I had to go to Cincinnati for two weeks of training. We decided not to fly back to Miami for the weekend in the middle but just to stay up there. "There's some cool state parks in Kentucky," I said. "We could go to the park, stay in the lodge and the company would pay for it."

Our boss said fine. He didn't care. As long as we spent less than tickets back to Miami would have cost.

We checked out of the hotel that Friday before driving to the park. Rolando had a $150 phone charge on his bill. He had called the plant in El Salvador on the hotel phone.

"Why didn't you use the company calling card?" I asked.

He shrugged. "It probably wouldn't save that much money," he answered.

"What!" I said. "You really think that the company wouldn't negotiate a better rate than the hotel charges?"

"Nah," he said.

He had another $40 on his bill for laundry.

"What laundry?" I asked.

"My socks," he said.

"Socks? But why?"

"I didn't bring two weeks worth of socks," he said. "I had to have them washed."

"But you could have washed them in the sink!" I told him. "Or there's a washing machine in the hall! You could have washed them yourself for a dollar!"

"Nope," he said.

I was stunned. Such disregard for company resources! Not that I hold any love in my heart for that place. Just yesterday, LinkedIn sent me the suggestion that I join the paper company alumni group.

"Just as soon as I join the 'All the guys who have ditched me' group," I muttered.

But I was always a good steward of my employer's money. Why would anyone deliberately waste money? Especially when it was not necessary?

We drove to the park in Kentucky. The lodge, unfortunately, had only one room available. We were going to have to share a room for two nights. Ick. Not pleasant, but not un-doable. I would just rather not have that level of familiarity with a co-worker. Fortunately, I had brought my usual frumpy pajamas with me. Not that I think he found me in any way alluring. I had met his girlfriend, who was 15 years younger than he and I were and about 20 sizes smaller than I.

By the time we got there, it was too late to do anything but eat and go to bed. Rolando had a long conversation with his girlfriend - on the room phone - while I read a book and tried not to listen.

The next morning, he got out of bed, wrapping his sheet around him to walk into the bathroom, holding it closed with one hand while he grabbed his clothes with the other.

He had slept nude.

When he left the bathroom, after his shower, the sheet and his towels were on the floor.

Leaving your wet towels on the floor is so damn rude.

I said something to him and he told me that the maid could pick them up.

Yes, he was a spoiled rich kid.

Hotels have signs now saying that they are so conservation minded and they care and they will only change the towels daily if they are left on the floor. Towels left hanging are a sign that the customer wants to re-use them.

I have no problems whatsoever with using the same towel more than one day in a row. It is horribly wasteful to wash them every single day. But it is a bit disingenuous of the hotels to claim that they care so much. They are just counting on most peoples' natural courtesy and good home training to hang up their towels. Still, it's smart marketing and I don't blame them for it. I do wonder, however, about people who can just toss a towel to the floor and leave it there. How were they raised?

After breakfast, we went for a hike.

Rolando hated it.

Trees! And limbs! In his way! Bugs! BUGS!

Oh for pity's sake. I hate hiking and am about as big a whiner as you will ever meet if I have to walk up hills when it's not part of a gym class, but this was not bad at all. It was just pretty mountain countryside with very clearly marked paths. Birds, flowers, trees. Hiking lite.

We trudged back to the lodge and had lunch. Went back to the room, which the maid had cleaned, although I had hung the towels because I just couldn't stand it. Rolando went to look out the third floor window - and jumped back, shrieking.

"What's that? What's that?"

I looked up from my book and squinted. "Oh. A squirrel."

"But it's jumping!"

I looked up from my book again. "Yeah."

"IT COULD JUMP INTO THIS ROOM AND BITE US!"

"I doubt it," I answered dryly.

"IT COULD BE DANGEROUS!"

"No," I said.

"We should leave," he announced. "I don't care if we have another night here. We should leave."

I thought back on the time we had already spent together: nude sleeping, towels on the floor, grouchy hiking and now, irrational fear of squirrels. How much more of this could I take?

I closed my book and stood. "Great idea," I said.

The End.

A request for help

Hello my lovely readers. What would you find to be a satisfactory ending to a completely fictional not based on reality at all novel about a woman with mean in-laws who somehow created the wonderful man who is her husband?

The gist of the story is that in-laws meet prospective daughter in law, don't like her even before they meet her, make no effort to know or like her and never give her lunch when she visits.

They send horrible presents and yell at their grandkids for eating the white meat at Thanksgiving. DIL stands up to FIL (to be) when he is mean to his granddaughter. DIL realizes FIL is just a big bully and she is no longer scared of him. She still thinks he's a jerk, though.

They tell their son two weeks before the wedding that they are not coming. If you've read from the start of this blog, you know all this. Their son says if they don't come, they'll never get to see their grandchild - much to the son's surprise and the future DIL's surprise, she is pregnant. They are OLD, people, so it is a huge surprise. You might as well call them Sarah and Abraham.

In laws grudgingly come to the wedding and eat all of son and DIL's good cheese during their 9 day stay with son and DIL, even though they claim to be lactose intolerant. They get drunk at the wedding supper. Meanwhile, DIL has a miscarriage while they are there.

But son and DIL survive in laws and they leave, never, one hopes, to return. Son tells DIL on their wedding night that his parents will never live with them.

Months later, son stands up to parents when they get upset that he is not planning to go to their house for Christmas, tell him he is "abandoning" them and that he is a "bad son." Son tells parents he is not going to take that kind of talk any more and that they can go to hell. (Or something like that.)

Son and DIL live happily ever after.

That's what I have. Well, I have 224 pages of this story in far greater detail. But I need feedback on the proposed ending. (Son standing up to parents.)

Jen on the Edge and I have already decided that a fiery crash killing in laws would not work.

For those of you who have read the whole Sly and Doris saga from the start, what would you like to happen to wrap this up?

I thank you for your feedback.

In which I learn that logic sometimes just doesn't matter, or, How I grew to love the US Post Office

I didn't realize how amazing the US postal service was until I moved to Chile for two years. Although the post office in Chile is open until 7:00 p.m., which is an innovation I think we could use in the US, in other ways, the service was bad. Things were stolen from the mail all the time - I had friends from the US sending me candy and goodies that never arrived. They thought I was just being rude, not writing a thank you note for the Halloween candy they had sent me, but I had never gotten it. Somewhere, there was a Chilean postal employee (or a Chilean customs employee) eating my candy corn, which ticked me off because I couldn't get candy corn in Chile.

I also could not get chocolate chips - but guess what? you can chop up a candy bar pretty easily, Crisco (substitute lard, which is better than Crisco anyhow), or ziplock bags. Fortunately, when my friend Lenore came to visit, she brought an ample supply of all of those things, along with peanut butter, which was available in Chile but only to the very rich.

Before I moved to Chile, I took for granted that a cheerful, clean, uniformed mail carrier would bring my mail to my house every day.

After I had been living there for a while, I discovered why the Peace Corps told us to have our mail sent to the Peace Corps office in Santiago, whence they would have it sent to us via courier. They knew.

I discovered why when I was living in the house with Mandy, the Scottish undergrad studying Spanish and Portuguese, and Sarah, the American woman getting a PhD in political science and doing her research on the political structures of the Mapuche. Mandy and I became great friends, but Sarah bugged me because she would sit at the supper table, picking her toes and then reaching for food with her fingers. We didn't eat together much.

They got their mail delivered at the house. I never paid any attention because I got my mail at my office, via courier. I would see their mail on the stairs and think nothing of it.

But one day, Mandy and Sarah weren't home. Someone was banging and banging on the door.

Not that I was used to having any peace in that house. In the morning, someone would turn on the three school busses that were parked overnight across the street from us (no, I have no idea why - maybe that's where the drivers lived?) and let them idle for half an hour.

Although that sound is not as annoying as the horrible "I am backing up" beep that equipment in the US is required to make and that causes me to ask if anyone has done a true cost/benefit analysis of the value of that sound, as in, how many Americans are we willing to let die because they are too slow to get out of the way of machinery backing up if it means we can sleep past 7:00 a.m. on a summer morning, the rumble of idling busses is also loud enough to wake a person.

I tried to ignore the banging, but whoever it was would not go away. I finally had to answer. I signed and left my tiny room, which was not even large enough for a mattress and contained just a sleeping bag and my clothes - no door because alcoves don't have doors - and walked very carefully down the very narrow, carpeted, slippery stairs.

Once you have slipped and fallen down the stairs, you never trust them again.

I opened the door. There stood a disheveled, boozy-smelling man holding a few letters. He was wearing old black pants and a brown sweater with holes in it. No hat. No uniform. No insignia.

"I have your mail," he said.

Then why hadn't he just left it on the stoop, as he usually did?

I reached for the letters. He snatched them back and gave me the Latin American finger wave.

You know the Latin American finger wave, don't you? It's when you rock your forefinger from side to side with the hand held parallel to your body. The North American finger wave, or, more accurately, shake, has your hand perpendicular to your body with the finger going from 0 degrees down to about 60 degrees. The Latin American finger wave goes 60 degrees from upright in each direction.

And what it means is, "Absolutely, positively no. Uh uh. No way. Don't even think about it."

If you do the Latin American finger wave at a boy who is pestering you to polish your shoes (which I rarely did, as I would pay any kid who wanted to polish my shoes), he will back away, no questions asked.

The man gave me the LAFW.

"No," he said, as he withdrew the letters. He pointed to the doorframe. "You owe me 170 pesos." (About 50 cents at the time.)

"What are you talking about?"

"Look," he demanded. I looked. There were hash marks on the door frame. "I've delivered all these letters and you haven't paid."

I had no idea what he was talking about. "Ten pesos a letter," he said impatiently.

"Are you nuts?" I asked. "These letters all have stamps!"

"The stamp is just to get it from one post office to another," he said. "But you have to pay for delivery!"

I didn't believe him. The whole idea was crazy. But he wouldn't give me the mail and I knew that this wasn't something I could wait out, plus I was worried he would bang on the door again the next day and I would never have any peace. I gave him the money and threw the letters on the kitchen counter.

The next day, I went to the post office and asked one of the clerks. "The postman told me I have to pay him for delivering stamped letters!" I said in disbelief.

"Well of course," she said. "The stamp just gets it from one post office to another."

I shook my head. "Why doesn't the stamp include delivery?"

She rolled her eyes. It was so obvious. "Because all the houses are different distances from the post office! How do you decide how much to charge for the stamp if you don't know how far from the post office the house is?"

In which I get my purse repaired

On that trip to Morocco where Primo and I both bought rugs and wasn't that a surprise, my first mission was to repair my old purse. Don’t laugh. My accessories are very important to me. I buy secondhand so I can afford to buy quality. A used high quality purse is a far better deal than a new poorly made one. But even high quality items wear out and then we must repair them if possible because we are of The Tribe of We Who Do Not Waste.

And this was the perfect purse. It met all my specs. My sister mocks me and my purse specs, but I know what I want and why should I settle for less? I want a purse with a strap long enough to go over my shoulder and leave my hands free because unlike the queen of England, who apparently carries nothing but a hanky in her purse and has people to do everything for her, I open my own car doors, pay for my own things, and carry my own grocery bags. I do not want to have to put my purse down just to remove my keys. But I also want shorter handles to hold in my hand in case I want to carry the purse that way.

My purse needs to have a flap or an easy snap closure so that when I toss it onto the passenger seat as I am getting into the car, the contents do not spill out.

I need room for things. I have prescription sunglasses and regular glasses, a Swiss army knife, a camera, a smartypants phone, a wallet, aspirin, bandaids, a handkerchief, a comb, a calendar, lip gloss, face powder, a small notepad, pens that no I will not lend you get your own pen, and emergency chocolate in my purse. Tiny little purses do not work for that much stuff.

Plus I want to have my stuff organized, so I want dividers and pockets. But I don’t want bling. I don’t want tacky.

The black snakeskin purse I had bought at a fancy consignment shop in Memphis met all my specs and had served me well for a few years, but now was getting worn on the edges. I had discovered the Rabat leather repair guy when my sandals broke on my first trip to Morocco. The leather guy, whose shop was three blocks from Steve and Megan’s apartment, had fixed them in two hours for about three dollars.

I had tried to have the purse repaired in Memphis, but none of the shoe or leather repair stores could do it. They claimed they didn’t have the equipment. Fine, I thought. I’ll just take this purse to a third-world country where they don’t want me to throw it away and buy a new one instead. I’ll show you.

I took the purse to the leather guy. He had a tiny little storefront with a counter that opened onto the street. When I showed him the purse, he looked back at his equipment and shook his head. “C’est pas posible, madame,” he told me. He did not have the proper equipment.

Crap. I had brought the purse all this way just to fail?

“Try Fez,” Steve suggested. “Fez is known for its leather works.”

Now we had to go to Fez, which wasn’t a hardship, as it is a very neat place and we had planned to visit anyhow. Primo and I took the train there. On the way, we met a young Moroccan man sitting in our train compartment. Ahmet spoke almost flawless English, explaining that he had been to the US for his heart surgery. “I love New York!” he said. “I love U.S.!” His voice dropped. “You know New York Yankees? My favorite!”

He offered to show us around. I told him we had a guide for the next day, but we didn’t have plans for the afternoon. It is necessary to have a guide in Fez to avoid being lost in the labyrinth of the medieval city. From the air, Fez probably looks like a few spiderwebs laid on top of each other. I didn’t have breadcrumbs or a big ball of string, so a human guide was the next best thing.

After we dropped our bags at the hotel, Ahmet gave us a great tour. We saw the water seller in his red costume and big red and yellow hat, holding out his tin cup from which many people would have drunk, which meant we went thirsty. We dodged the medina taxis, which are donkeys, and their leavings. Vendors beckoned to us from their stalls of raw meat, sheepsheads, and spices. Cats sat resolutely in front of the meat stands, looking up at the counter and hoping for a handout.

He didn’t take us to an expensive restaurant and then abandon us as the guide had done when Steve and I had gone to Fez during my August visit and he didn’t even take us to a carpet store, which seems to be standard operating procedure for Moroccan guides. You think used car salesmen are bad? Try a Moroccan carpet dealer. They are pros and we are amateurs, as Primo and I learned later.

I asked Ahmet to take me to a leather guy and showed him my purse.

“I take for you!” he said eagerly.

I was reluctant to entrust my precious snakeskin purse to him and demurred, but Primo said, “I think it will be fine.”

I hugged the purse to my chest. Was it safe? Would I be abandoning my purse to an uncertain fate? Even when I was employed and had money, I had an unnatural attachment to my shoes and purses, probably because they are the only items of bodily adornment whose size is constant regardless of if my size is constant. No matter what, I always take an 8.5 shoe and purses have no size limits.

Now that I had no income – and with every dollar Primo spent on me, I was even more painfully aware that I needed to rectify that situation – I was really concerned about my accessories. I didn’t want to lose them because I could not afford to replace them.

“No, really, I take,” Ahmet insisted.

“How much?” I asked.

“Not very much,” he promised. “I bring back after supper.”

I reluctantly handed my purse to him and gave him 100 dirhams, which is about $12. If the purse couldn’t be repaired, it was worthless to me anyhow, and if Ahmet absconded with the $12 – well, we had gotten that much at least out of our tour with him.

We walked around the hotel and watched the sunset from a hill overlooking the city. The fields were a mixture of green and brown and were dotted with sheep. Three little boys unsuccessfully tried to herd one group of sheep. The stone walls of the city glowed golden as the rays hit them as the sun descended, then fell into shadow.

Where was my purse?

Primo and I found a small café where we got real Coke, the kind with cane sugar, and these fabulous sandwiches of ground lamb and onions fried on a griddle with an egg cracked on top at the last minute and then piled onto a fresh baguette. The only time we got sick from eating the food in Morocco was when Primo had salad at the American club. None of the other food bothered us.

I fretted that my purse and money were gone, never to return, but Primo assured me that Ahmet was trustworthy.

As we walked back to the hotel, ready to surrender for the night, two hours after I had given my purse to Ahmet, we saw a figure running toward us and waving. It was Ahmet. And he had my purse.

“I go in hotel to find you but you were not there!” he said. “Here!” He thrust the purse at me. “And it cost only 50 dirhams. Here is the money.” He handed me the change.

I looked at the purse. It looked brand new. Ahmet’s guy had repaired it perfectly. And in two hours.

I had been wrong to doubt him. My purse was perfect.

I opened my wallet and looked at Primo. He nodded. “Keep that change,” I told Ahmet. “And here’s some more for your great guide services.” I handed him another 100 dirhams.” I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing – he hadn’t asked for any money – but he had shared his knowledge and time with us and hadn’t tried to cheat us. It was worth it.

In which Primo and I both buy Moroccan rugs and spend way more than we should have

There is almost nothing worse than regretting a purchase not made. You can almost always find a use for something you buy that you end up not wanting – if you can’t return it, you can eBay it or give it as a wedding present, but if you don’t buy that great rug in Morocco, you will regret it maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and then for the rest of your life.

Such was my thinking when I did the research on oriental carpets before Primo and I went to Morocco. I had been through Crazy Hassan’s sales pitch the first time I went, but had resisted. I didn’t need a rug, didn’t want one, saw nothing that moved me. But I decided that should I fall in love with something, I wanted to be prepared – have some numbers in my head.

This despite the fact that I was unemployed. My desire for consumer goods was stronger than my desire for long-term survival. If I was going to be a bag lady, I would be a bag lady with a great Moroccan rug.

Yes, you are allowed to laugh at my stupidity.

I did my internet research, then Megan took us to a government-run co-op with fixed prices in Rabat. We took photos and notes – by gosh, Primo and I are both engineers at heart and he’s one in real life and we were going to approach this scientifically. “You can look in Fez,” Megan warned us, “but don’t buy a rug there. Everything they have there, you can find in Rabat and it’s a lot cheaper in Rabat. Do not buy a rug in Fez!”

Of course, we forgot everything she said when our guide (not Ahmet, but the one we had reserved for a full day) took us into that Fez carpet shop. Just to look. “We don’t want to buy a rug,” I told the guide.

“Oh is OK. This is rug museum,” he told me, as he held the door open and waved us in.

That’s when we discovered that buying a rug is like buying a car – you check Consumer Reports, write down your specs – and then fall in love with the way the car feels, its sound system and its color.

Primo, who truly had no intention of buying a rug, saw one he liked. He just liked it. The same way he had liked the bowl at the pottery place earlier in the evening. As a matter of fact, he had done something I had never seen him do before. He said, “I want this.” And he paid what I considered to be a rather high price for a piece of pottery. But when you like a piece of art, you like it. And it’s a lovely bowl.*

The same thing happened with the rug. He liked it. It is gorgeous. And unique – not antique – apparently, by definition in the rug world, it must be older than 100 years. This one is not over 100, but it is old.

“Let me handle this,” I muttered to Primo. “I’ve done this kind of thing before.” I was shrewd. I had bargained my way through South America, telling taxi drivers in Quito and La Paz that I was not going to pay the gringo tax so they better give me a better price. It didn’t always work. Sometimes I ended up walking, but I didn’t pay more than I should.

But I had never tried to buy a rug from a Moroccan rug salesman.

First, I denied any interest. “No, we are not interested in buying a rug. Yes, that’s lovely. But we are curious. How much would a rug like that cost?” I waved casually at the rug Primo liked.

“For you, I make good price,” Mohammed, the rug salesman, told me.

“And what would that price be?” I pressed him.

“Would you like some tea?” Mohammed asked. He clapped his hands and spoke sharply to one of the assistants who were unfurling rug after rug on the floor.

Then I rejected the hospitality that would inspire in me a compulsion to reciprocate. “No,” I told him. “No tea.” I don’t like regular tea, but the Moroccan tea of boiling water poured over a glassful of crushed mint leaves and then garnished with four tablespoons of sugar is pretty good. Still, I didn’t want us getting involved in a long social visit. I just wanted to know how much the darn rug cost. “What does the rug cost?”

Mohammed ignored me. I don’t know if that’s how he treats all customers or if that’s how he treats women. I supposed it didn’t matter. Either way, he continued to show us more rugs. They were all gorgeous. They were all without a price.

I saw one I liked. “How much would this rug cost for someone who was interested in buying a rug?”

Mohammed snapped his fingers at his assistant, who unrolled more rugs. “Look at this one.”

And we continued. Me asking how much the rug cost, Mohammed unfurling rug after rug. Finally, after what seemed like hours but was probably only 15 minutes, Mohammed answered the question. I pointed to the rug Primo liked and asked again. “How much would a rug like this cost?”

“Five thousand dollars,” he answered.

I gasped. Primo gasped. “We cannot pay that price,” he said.

I knew in the US that Oriental rug prices can be five thousand dollars and more, but I also knew that in Morocco, they were not getting that kind of money.

“Don’t buy a rug in Fez,” Megan had warned. “But if you do, offer them 25% of what they ask.” Twenty five percent of $5,000 seemed so low. Typical amateur mistake – we let the salesman set the reference price.

“Our price would be an insult to you,” I told him politely.

“Please. Just tell me. I give you a number, now you give me a number.”

“OK. One thousand dollars.” There. That should shut him up.

It didn’t.

“Four thousand five hundred,” he countered.

“One thousand.”

“I must sell a rug. Look, today I get the bill from my son´s school.” He showed us a fax from the University of Pennsylvania – a tuition bill. Not my problem.

“One thousand.”

“Four thousand.”

I was tired and hungry and annoyed that we had wasted half an hour or two hours or however long it had been looking at rugs we had no intention of buying and certainly could not afford. We turned to leave. “Goodbye,” I said. The willingness to walk away. That is the secret to any negotiation.

“OK, OK. Twelve hundred dollars. That is my best offer.”

I looked at Primo. He shrugged. I threw out my response. “And one thousand for the other one.”

“OK,” Mohammed answered.

OK? Crap! I had just spent one thousand dollars and Primo had spent more than that on rugs we had never planned to buy. How had that happened?

We paid – Mohammed took American Express and Visa – while the assistants were sewing the rugs tightly into woven plastic bags. “I have these delivered to hotel for you,” Mohammed assured us. “No charge.” I would think not, after the profitable evening he had had, although I worried that maybe he was lying and we would never see the rugs again.

No, I am not a trusting person at all, but then, I’ve never lost money in a Ponzi scheme or to a con man.

The rugs were waiting when we returned to the hotel. We took them back to Steve and Megan’s. The next day, Megan took us back to the Rabat rug co-op, where all the products have price tags.

“Look!” I said. “That´s like the rug we got.”

Primo walked over to the rug to examine it. “Stop!” he said. “Don't come any closer.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“You really, really do not want to see the price tag. Just trust me on this.”

“Oh no!” I said. “How bad is it?”

He quickly assured me. “Oh, it’s not that bad! Don’t worry about it.”

Except he was not being exactly truthful. We returned to Morocco again after we got married and got a third rug. In Rabat. With the coaching of a friend of Megan’s who had been a Peace Corps volunteer with a Moroccan textile co-op and who knew rugs.

We paid $400 for our third rug.

---

* Which shattered into pieces during shipping back to the US, all of which he painstakingly glued back together.

In which we open the door to the asylum and slam it closed again

It's been a while since I posted anything about Sly and Doris. It has been pretty calm because I have had almost no interaction with them for the past two years. Primo's Christmas presents to me have been that I do not have to go with him to visit them, which works out well for all of us except Primo, who has to suffer alone.

I did send Doris an email for her birthday, which was the day after their refrigerator broke and the same day as Sly had surgery. I wrote this:

I'm sorry to hear that this day has been so difficult for you but am glad to know that the surgery went well. I'm really sorry to hear about your refrigerator! What a mess. It seems as if life can never go smoothly. I hope you were able to rescue most of your perishables and that this is the last of the drama for a while.

Doris responded:

Dear Golddigger,It meant a great deal to me that you would send a message regarding our extra stress at this time. The guy who delivered the new fridge arrived a little past nine--he was alone and extremely competent in measuring just what had to be moved to facilitate bringing the new fridge in and old one out. He helped enormously by emptying the old and assisting in filling the new. He left just 10 minutes before we left for the hospital. The cats were three hours past their suppertime--such meowing.Thanks for thinking of us, Doris

I answered,

I'm so glad the delivery man was helpful. That timing sure was tight.Our cats are not happy when their supper is delayed, either. They will let us know.I've been meaning to tell you: I love those grocery bags you gave me. I use them all the time. They are perfect for groceries and library books. We took them to Germany and to France - it was great to be able to tuck something small into my purse in case we found something we wanted to buy. I used to carry a backpack just in case, but much prefer these bags. They are so convenient and pretty.

Which inspired this note to Primo, who shared it with me (of course - I am his wife):

Dear Primo,
I decided not to send this message to Golddigger without your clearance. Let me know what you think.

Dear Golddigger,
I hope that someday you will welcome my wish to say, Love,Doris. It has hurt so much not to be able to narrow our ideological gaps. You and my son love each another. I want to love you as well. Enough said tonight, I'm not all together.

You might want to tell Primo that throughout his day not one health care worker, including docs, RNs, and subordinate personnel knew enough to say "lie" vs. lay. When we saw Maria for a brief time on Sunday, we asked how things were going at college, and she enthusiastically responded "good," instead of well. We didn't correct her. I remember how you chided us at the dinner table at Stephanie's house when Dad mentioned/corrected Maria about "these ones." One is either fur or agin maintaining English usage standards. The most egregious example I ran into recently was a quotation by billionaire, Mayor Michael Bloomburg of NYC wherein he talked about young people "graduating college."

I stormed upstairs as soon as I read this. I was so furious I could hardly breathe.

"Does your mother really think it is ideology that separates us? I couldn't care less about her political beliefs! She's the one who doesn't like what I think! But you and I don't agree and I'M MARRIED TO YOU. Obviously, political ideology is not as important to me as it is to her."

I stopped to draw a big breath.

"And the thing with Maria WAS NOT ABOUT SAYING 'THESE ONES'! I wouldn't have jumped on your dad for correcting an actual error that she'd made, even though I think he is mean about it and it's inappropriate. I stood up for her because she had not made a mistake. She had said "lemon EXtract" and your dad said she had said "lemon exTRACT" and was jumping all over her for it!"

"I know," Primo said. "I was there."

"So they've twisted it so that I am the villain here! Your dad couldn't possibly have made a mistake! Oh, this makes me SO MAD!"

Primo was laughing. I guess he was right - what can you do with this stuff but laugh? We're dealing with crazy people.

"I already told my mother not to send this to you."

"She better not," I stormed, "Or I will have to set her straight."

"And I told her that that incident was about lemon extract."

"Did you tell her that it is crazy to be obsessed with language when you are in the hospital and people are cutting you up? That perhaps what's more important is are they doing a good job on the medical stuff?"

He shook his head. "No point."

In which my glasses are stolen in Honduras

I think I have told you guys I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile and that when I completed my two year stint (it's two years, people, TWO years - you authors whose characters join the Peace Corps and come home again after a year or decide month by month whether to stay longer - you have it all wrong. Please. A tiny little bit of research - peacecorps.gov - will give you the basics), I came back to the US over land.

One hundred forty nine hours on buses, trains and a few planes, including the 22-hour ride from Salta to Formosa (Argentina) - the ride with the guy who threw up and no air conditioning.

This was also the ride where the little kid in the seat in front of me had one of those noisy toy guns. It made a squealing, whirring sound every time the kid pulled the trigger, which was about every four seconds. At the beginning of this ride, before I realized that the ticket seller had lied to me and it was a 22-hour trip and not an 11-hour one, I thought 11 hours of a kid making that kind of noise was not a good prospect.

I looked around at the other passengers. Nobody else seemed to be bothered. This does seem to be a Latin American trait - they are pretty easygoing when it comes to kids.

Even though I had already lived in Latin America for two years and had become far less Type A than I used to be, I had not adopted that "que sera que sera" attitude when it came to children. As in, I did not think it was fine for the person next to me on the bus to have a seven year old in her lap when that meant that said child was pushing into my space. I didn't think it was OK for kids to run up and down the aisle of the bus, screaming.

But I was the stranger. It wasn't my country. I had to suck it up. When in Rome, etc, etc.

But 11 hours? With that noise?

No.

I stood, leaned over the seat, got the kid's attention, and asked him to hand me the toy.

He did.

Sucker.

I sat down and opened my book.

The kid watched me, stunned. Then his mother finally turned around, distracted, no doubt, by the peace and quiet that had descended upon us.

I handed the toy back to her and said sweetly, "Please don't let him play with this on the bus. The noise is very disturbing to the other passengers."

The mom was so shocked - perhaps that anyone would be bothered by her kid and yes I know parents, of necessity, become deaf to the constant racket that seems to accompany children - that she did as I asked.

Wait. That's not the main story. The story I want to tell is about when someone stole my glasses out of my backpack while I was wearing my backpack.

I had taken the bus to San Pedro Sula, which is a pit in the middle of Honduras. How can a country that has the lovely city of Tegucigalpa also have La Ceiba (pit) and San Pedro Sula?

The buses in Latin America vary from the very nice ejecutivo buses in Chile, Argentina and Mexico, with comfortable cushioned and reclining seats, a toilet, a TV and bingo. Blackout bingo. Not five in a line bingo. You don't want to shout "Bingo!" when you have only five. We played bingo on the plane in Peru. Don't have a movie? Or don't have time for a movie? There's always bingo.

Vary from nice buses to the old Duchess County ISD school buses that are no longer suitable for transporting American schoolchildren but are now perfect for Latin American adults, their children, their chickens, and their pirated cassette tapes. Three to a seat on the school buses. People and chickens in the aisles.

The bus to San Pedro Sula was probably one of the old school buses. Very crowded. As I got off the bus, my big backpack on my back and my small daypack clutched in front of me, I heard someone whisper, "They're robbing you."

To which I paid no attention because I was trying, in the crush, to get out of the bus.

It wasn't until I opened the pocket on my backpack that I discovered my glasses were missing.

My glasses! Who would steal glasses?!

I whirled around, looking for someone wearing my glasses. Only, because I didn't have my glasses on, I couldn't see very well. I began to cry tears of rage. I was DONE with Honduras. I had already been robbed in Tegucigalpa and then been cheated by a cabbie in La Ceiba.

My hat had been stolen from my head in Tegucigalpa. I was standing on a street corner, minding my own business, when I felt a "whoosh" on top of my head. I put my hand up to check and discovered that the hideous $2 baseball cap I had bought in Paraguay was gone.

If you're going to steal, at least steal something nice.

I ran in the direction I thought the thief had gone, trying to remember the Spanish word for "thief." "Ladron, ladron!" I shouted.

The crowd parted way.

I couldn't run well because 1. I can never run fast or well because I am a lazy, slow person and 2. I had my big backpack on my back.

I demanded of an onlooker: "Did you see who stole my hat?"

Yes, he told me, but he didn't stop the thief because what if he'd had a gun?

Oh for pity's sake.

In La Ceiba, the cabbie I asked told me that the only ferry out to the Bay Islands was in 20 minutes so yes, I had to go with him. He careened over the dirt road to the port, took my money, and left me at the isolated terminal, "terminal" meaning "a bench on the beach with no place to buy anything to eat or drink and no place to pee."

It took me half an hour to realize that no, the ferry was not leaving in 20 minutes and it took me another four hours to realize that the ferry was leaving in five hours.

My Honduras experiences had not been so good.

When I discovered I had been robbed again, just a few days later, but this time of something far more difficult and expensive to replace, I reached my limit. I started to cry. I flagged down a cab and gave him the address of my hotel.

(I use the word "hotel" loosely. I was staying at the South and Central America Handbook's "F" and "G" lodgings, which was the class of room with a shared bathroom and maybe windows. Maybe not. I paid between $4 and $10 a night. The $10 places weren't necessarily fancy - they were just in Argentina and Costa Rica, which are expensive compared to the rest of Latin America.)

I told the cabbie what had happened.

"Well, it is getting close to Christmas, you know," he told me.

So the thieves were getting their shopping done early by stealing my glasses?

He continued, "Don't worry! I know all the thieves around here! I know where they will take your glasses to sell. We can get them back."

I guess there is a big market for used prescription glasses in Honduras.

Then he drove ten blocks to get to my hotel, which was actually two blocks from the bus station.

Thief, meet thief.

He did, however, say that he would bring my glasses back to me and leave them with the clerk.

Liar.

I checked into my "G" lodgings, dragged my backpack up to the cinderblock room with one tiny window up in the corner, a single bed with what I hoped was clean sheets - sometimes it is better not have one's glasses - and a cement floor that also did not bear too close a look, dropped my things, and returned to the desk to talk to the clerk about my glasses. He did not offer much hope, but I kept thinking, "Who would want my glasses? They won't do anyone else any good!"

I left the hotel in search of food. I couldn't find a cab that wasn't going to charge me the Gringo Tax. Frustrated, I started to walk. Then I heard a kid say something in English. His parents were naturalized US citizens from Honduras and he had been born in New Orleans, where they now lived. They were in town visiting family. The mom asked if they could give me a ride.

Thrilled to find someone who was actually being nice to me, I accepted.

If this were a different kind of blog, this would be where I told you that they kidnapped me and tortured me and I barely escaped with my life, but this is a rainbows and butterflies blog, where everyone lives happily ever after (mostly), so guess what? They took me to Wendy's and bought my supper and were appalled that my glasses had been stolen. Then they took me back to the hotel. Where the clerk looked at me as if I was crazy when I asked if the cabbie had brought back my glasses.

I spent the rest of the trip either squinting when I was inside or trying to see through the dark lenses of my prescription sunglasses. I can tell you that the experience of watching the movie "Clueless" in a Mexico City cinema is not enhanced by watching it with sunglasses.

In which our basement floods

Have I told you guys about our Annual Basement Flood? I think I have mentioned it in passing in other stories, but I have not told you the Flood Story in its entirety.

We have an old house.

We have an old house with old plumbing in a city where the city officials are reluctant to release the overfull storm sewers into the lake because of some stupid reason like the storm sewers are combined with the regular sewers (really good planning a few decades ago, hey?) and they don't want to put poop in the lake. I say, put the poop in the lake rather than in my basement.

But we discovered ten days after we closed on the house but three weeks before we moved in that the sewer drain in the basement backs up when it floods outside. Not enough to fill the basement, thank goodness, but enough to wander over to the rec room, the 20% of the basement that is finished, with a carpet, and soak the carpet.

The cement floor remains dry.

How lucky are we?

So. Flood Number One.

We had closed on the house and were moving in gradually from Primo's apartment. My stuff was in storage. On a Saturday early in June, we had horrible rain. Primo was out of town for the entire week. I went to the house on Monday to take a load of breakables and to continue cleaning the house, which looked clean to the naked eye but to the eye with glasses, it was gross. We bought the house from a bachelor who 1. never covered his food when he warmed it in the microwave and 2. removed his shirt to sit in bed with his back against the wall instead of the headboard. I would also guess that cleaning the baseboards and the tub had not been a priority for him.

When I walked down the stairs into the basement, I heard one of those sounds that you really never want to hear in your life: what carpet sounds like when it has been wet for two days in 90 degree heat.

The good part about all this was that Primo and I had hated the basement carpet when we looked at the house, but didn't think replacing a perfectly good, one year old carpet just because we thought it was ugly was a prudent use of our limited resources. We were going to be Very Brave and endure the ugly carpet. Such are the burdens we bear but such is our nobility that we bore them with nothing but a sigh.

The carpet was unsalvageable. Such is usually the case with hot, wet carpet.

So I called the insurance company (I had gotten the sewer backup rider just three weeks before oh I am brilliant) and I had the contractor who was already doing some minor things for us take the carpet out of the basement. I started calling carpet stores to get estimates on the red plaid carpet Primo and I had really liked in another house.

Then I called Primo.

Who freaked out.

Because that's what Primo does in a crisis.

Well, in a crisis that does not have to be addressed immediately. If it is a RIGHT NOW crisis, he is perfect. There was that afternoon last month when he casually strolled into the kitchen and asked for the fire extinguisher.

But why? I asked.

Oh because the gas grill was on fire and he needed to put it out before the garage caught on fire or before the grill melted.

Those were some of the best steaks we've ever had. Sear your steak on a grill that's literally flaming hot and you get a darn good steak.

But in a crisis that can be handled in steps, he goes into full freakout. Freakout + Distance = Extra Freakout and I had to remind him that I had run my own life and had owned my own house quite well before he and I ever crossed paths and I thought I could handle arranging to have a destroyed carpet removed from the basement.

We had the particle wood (don't be so cheap when you are remodeling a house) door frames replaced with oak, which was very wise because oak will expand and then shrink back when it floods. Particle board will not. This is very important if you are going to have a flood every year, as we do. We got a new red plaid carpet that we love and is heavy-duty industrial, made for commercial bar use, which means that it, too, is perfect for an annual flood. And I refinished the basement stairs, which are maple, rather than covering them with carpet. It is a crime, people, a crime to cover beautiful wood floors and stairs with carpet.

The next year, again in June, Primo came home at about 2 a.m. one night and woke me up, which he is usually very careful not to do. It was time for Flood Number Two.

"Get up," he announced flatly. "The basement is flooding."

Flooding on nasty carpet before we moved in was one thing. But flooding on our almost-new carpet that had a stereo, a TV, and a sofa on it was something else. I ran downstairs to survey the situation. Ran back upstairs and grabbed all our bath towels, then threw them on the carpet to blot up the water, which again, was not flowing to the bare cement but onto the carpeted section. The small carpeted section.

"What are you doing?" Primo shouted. "Those are the Good Towels!"

I replied that it was easier to wash and/or replace towels than it was to replace a carpet.

We sopped up the water as best we could, left the towels in the laundry room sink, and went to bed. First thing in the morning, I called the insurance company and an adjuster was there in three hours. I love you, USAA.

He looked at our basement, looked at the rug, the drywall, the doorframes, and told us that he could get some big fans to dry the carpet or we could do it ourselves.

As we had just filed a $2,500 claim 12 months prior, and as the cost of the fans would just reach our deductible, and as the customer service person at USAA assured me that if we did get black mold in our drywall or under the carpet later that that would be covered, and as the adjuster pointed out that he had a call to make at a warehouse where the roof had fallen in from the rain and there was about $2 million of water damage, we decided we could do this ourselves.

As instructed, we got a carpet cleaner from the hardware store, two fans, and a bunch of plastic sheeting and duct tape.

By the time we picked all that stuff up, my mom had arrived for her annual visit.

Oh yes - part of the Annual Basement Flood is that it must coincide with moving, company, or an out of town trip.

My mother blessherheart spent three hours sucking water up from that carpet. Primo also used the opportunity to buy himself a wet vac because you know there are so many times when you need one and then you don't have one so why not just buy one? Primo used the wetvac. Once we had sucked about five gallons of dirty water out of the carpet - how can a carpet that is vacuumed weekly get so dirty in just one year? - Primo used his crack engineering skills to create an airtight room that he then populated with two dehumidifiers and two fans.

He had to leave a tiny little space at the edge of both sealed doors so the cats had a way to get to their litter box. Then we had to teach the cats how to push the flap of plastic sheeting away from the wall and go on through to the furnace room where the litter box resides.

I don't know why we just didn't move the litter box upstairs. Maybe we thought it would be easier to teach the cats how to go through plastic sheeting than to learn a new location for the box.

The Pretty Cat, however, is not taking to this pushing through the plastic sheeting stuff. She doesn't like it at all. Primo has to pick her up and force her through as she ducks her head and claws at him. Noooooo!

The Smart Cat breezes through.

What finally convinces the Pretty Cat is when Primo turns on the dehumidifier by the furnace room door. Pretty Cat looooves noise. When I turn on the vacuum cleaner, she runs into the room to supervise. When the guys came to clean out the laterals to the main sewer with their noisy machine, she sat right next to the machine and purred. Pretty Cat loves noise so much she would marry it. The noise of the dehumidifier lured her through the flap. She sat next to that dehumidifier for hours. It was her kitty sauna.

We left the fans and the dehumidifier for three days. Everything dried. Done, we thought, as we mentally dusted our hands together.

We didn't want this to happen again. We called the sewer cleaning guys - the ones with the noisy machine - and had them run the line through the pipe. I asked them how frequently this should be done.

Me: When should we have our lines cleaned again?

Plumber: You're going to hate me for sayin' dis, but ya know, it could be two years, it could be five years. Da best ting to do is to wait until it floods again and den ya know how long ya need to go before ya clean.

Me: I think I'll have you guys come back in three years.

That was 2009. Then came Flood Number Three.

Last summer, we made it through June without a flood. We thought Yay! Our flooding days are over and the Hundred-Year Floods that we've had two years in a row are going to go back to being once every hundred years and we'll be dead before the next one.

In late July, two nights before we were going to the lake cottage and on the night that Primo's best friend from high school, Tyler, and his family were at our house for supper, as we were giving them a house tour and were on the second floor, we heard the Flood Frog beeping.

The Flood Frog is a little gizmo that Primo bought on woot.com that I thought was just another stupid waste of money but I guess I was wrong. The Flood Frog is a little plastic frog that has a sensor embedded in the bottom that beeps if it gets wet. We have it resting right next to the sewer drain in the furnace room. If water starts to back up from the drain, we know immediately.

Knowing doesn't help prevent the problem, but it does give you more time to worry about it.

It had been raining for the past several days, so we had prepared. The city engineer had told us about a device that blocked the sewer drain, an idea that was great in theory but ignores the fact that water is more determined than cement. Because of all the corrosion and dirt in our drain, we couldn't find a device to fit, so we improvised and stuffed rags down the opening.

DO NOT DO THIS.

Do not do this unless you want to find the tiny cracks in your basement floor, most of which are underneath the carpet, and which serve as the egress for the water that cannot get out of the sewer drain.

We heard the Flood Frog beep and ran to the basement, Tyler, his wife, and their three small kids behind us.

Not only did we have wet carpet right by the door to the furnace room, we also had wet carpet at the far end of the rec room.

Primo started cursing a blue streak. I always think of that line from A Christmas Story, where the narrator talks about how his father wove a tapestry of profanity that hovers over Lake Erie to this day. Primo was weaving his own tapestry.

1. Third year in a darn row that our basement floods.

2. In our attempt to prevent such flooding, we have made it worse.

3. We are leaving town in two days.

He had reason, I think.

Tyler drew himself up and said that he would appreciate it if Primo would not cuss around the kids.

Primo glared at him.

My opinion on this sort of thing is perhaps you could just remove your children from the situation. That's just me. Or maybe teach them that sometimes grownups say things that children are not supposed to say. I don't have kids, so I don't have a dog in this fight, but I would think it would be more rational to prepare children to live in the real world than to expect any adult who comes into contact with your children to walk on eggshells.

Primo and I have this down to a science by now. I have the hardware store on speed dial. I called them immediately and reserved the last available water sucking carpet cleaner. Primo got out the wet vac while I went to pick up the carpet cleaner. Primo directed Tyler to help him move the sofa. I got back and we started sucking water. One of the kids even helped. He thought it was fun. I was glad to have his help.

Once we had sucked up all the water we could, Primo set up the dehumidifiers and the fans and taped the plastic over the doors.

And then we ate supper.

Very late.

There was much wine involved.

In which Primo and I argue about whose parents have the right attitude about money

This is why pre-marital counseling is important. Because they make you TALK ABOUT THE MONEY. When you don't talk about the money, you marry someone and then find out that she hasn't filed a tax return for years. Or that she has never gotten a social security number for her younger daughter. Who is ten. Or that she really doesn't make any money at her allegedly fancy job. But now it's too late. You're married and you're stuck with her, even though if you had known these things, you might not have married her.

I'm not talking about Primo and me, by the way.

But you probably figured that out.

Well anyway. I don't remember exactly when this happened, but Sly and Doris' CD player breaks. Fortunately, for them, we have an abundance of CD/DVD players at our house. More CD/DVD players than we have TVs or stereos (but not as many as we have remotes) so Primo mails the extra player to them.

"Are they going to pay for the shipping?" I ask.

"Why does it matter?" Primo responds.

"Because it cost twenty dollars to send that thing."

"That's nothing," he says.

"It's not nothing to me," I say. I, who paid for my own college through scholarships, loans, and working 60 hours a week in the summer and 20 hours a week during the school year because my parents did not have the money. I, who took my lunch to work most of my career because spending $5 or $7 or $10 to go out was wasteful when I could spend $1 to make my own.

Primo says I was poor when I was a kid, but I disagree. We lived just fine, but just didn't have luxuries, like going out to eat. His parents had the money to pay for his college. He worked, but he worked for beer money.

Consequently, we have very different ideas about money.

When my mom and Dr J were here for our wedding, Dr J forgot some clothes in the guest room closet. My mom asked me to send them to her house. When she sent me money for my birthday a month later, she included $6.73 to cover the shipping for Dr J's stuff.

"That's just silly," Primo said.

"Perhaps," I answered, "but my mother would never presume to spend our money."

My mother is the not penniless but needs to be careful widow on a very fixed income and Sly and Doris are the comfortable pensioned retirees who can afford cable, a gardener, a maid, booze*, frequent eating out, and the private school tuition** for one of their grandchildren.

It is my mother to whom it occurs that perhaps Primo and I are not made of money.

And it is Sly and Doris who assume that of course we have money to throw at them.

Which we do not.

And even if we did, that is not how I would want to spend my money.



* A lot.

** OK, they are helping with the tuition.

In which Sly and Doris say the same old same old

Primo: Your mom sent us money for our anniversary. She didn't need to do that!

Me: I know.

Primo: She really didn't need to do that. She doesn't have that much.

Me: I know! I have had this conversation with her more than once. She insists.

Primo: My parents didn't even acknowledge it.

Me: [That's better than getting cheap Chinese pressed wood nesting tables with hummingbirds and hibiscus painted on them.]

Primo: That's their way of letting me know I made a mistake in marrying you.

Me: No it isn't. Their way of letting you know you made a mistake is to tell you that you made a mistake.*

* Which is what they did yesterday in their conversation with Primo when they opened the Complaint Vault and reiterated that

1. I should have figured out that they didn't like me and earned their approval and liking, although

2. there really isn't anything I could have done to change their opinion of me and it's too late now anyhow,

3. Doris has "reached out" to me on many occasions and I have rejected her, even though neither Primo nor I can think of a single example of such rejection, as I have answered every (seven) email she has ever sent to me and she has never called me on the phone,

4. they cannot believe I have a friendship with Stephanie because she and I are not intellectual equals because as everyone knows, intellect is the only important thing in a relationship, not niceness or common interests and

5. Primo made a mistake marrying me and he only thinks he's happy, but he's not really happy.

In which I kiss a married man but I didn't know he was married the entire time we were flirting over the phone at work

Before grad school, I worked in Austin for this company. This was back in the olden days when to conduct business with someone, you actually had to speak to that person instead of emailing him. As my company was an international company and even the domestic operations were wide flung, I found myself needing to talk to company employees in other locations about our mutual interests.

There was this guy in Oregon who was working on an account with me. He was very funny and we played off well against each other. (Are you sensing a pattern here? If a man is funny, I am willing.) We flirted and flirted and flirted because over the phone, everyone is good looking and everyone is interesting and these were the days when there was time to goof off at work because you spent half your time waiting for your secretary to type your darn letters already and wouldn't it be better if there were just a way to do it yourself so you weren't caught in this ridiculous loop of editing typewritten after typewritten draft as you struggled for the best way to tell someone your company was raising their premiums like 17%, which is a ton of money and nobody, I mean NOBODY wants to deliver that letter because most people don't like being the bearers of bad news. Unless someone is a heartless jerk, I promise you that he is not enjoying telling you about a price increase.

Back to - let's call him Sancho. Back to Sancho. We flirted and talked about our lives and where we had gone to college and what we liked to do for fun.

The one thing Sancho neglected to mention was that one of the things he liked to do for fun was to hang out with his wife.

Every year, my company held a big sales conference. If your sales were high enough, then you got to go and hang out with the other stellar sales people at a resort in Palm Springs where I thought my $15 per diem breakfast allowance would let me eat like a queen, but then I discovered that in Palm Springs, $15 buys you a bowl of oatmeal and leaves you just a tiny bit of change.

One year, my sales were high enough. Even though Austin was the smallest market in my division, I was in the top 30% of sales, not that I'm bragging or anything, but I was a pretty good salesperson considering I am one of the least salesy people you will ever meet. My boss, who is still my friend, could sell ice to Eskimos, but me? I was all about the facts, laid out objectively, along with the pros and cons and an explanation of how I would handle the cons because let's face it, no matter what, your company is going to screw up and your customer is going to be upset, so when that happens, how are you going to fix it and return your customer to her deserved state of happiness? Don't ever believe someone who tells you that his product or service will never have any problems. Everyone has problems. Will they fix them is the question.

Sancho attended the same conference. I didn't know what to look for, as I had not seen a photo, but I was eager to meet him. I found him that first day by searching nametags. My first words to him, after I 1. looked at his nametag and 2. looked at his left hand, were a blurted, "But you didn't tell me you were married!"

He mumbled.

There were parties every night. The first night, a bunch of us, including Sancho, were at the resort disco, dancing, drinking (this was back when I still thought tequila was my friend, which it is not) and having fun. My division's VP, Bart, was there, dancing to "Wild Thing." I thought he was too old to dance - he must have been in his mid 40s. Had he no dignity?

Bart complained of a headache. In my constant attempt to advance my career by sucking up to the higher-ups, I told him I had some aspirin in my room. I could get it for him.

"I'll come with you," he said.

I stopped, stymied. Bart had a reputation. He was known as a ladies' man. He was handsome, in that old man, mid-40's way, with his gray hair, periwinkle blue eyes and his old, mid-40s face. Sha. Like anyone that age still had sex? Gross.

He scared me. I didn't want to fool around with him and I didn't want to be put in a situation where my own reputation might be compromised. Remember this.

But he insisted on accompanying me to the room. We arrived. After I put the key in the lock, I turned to him.

"Stay here," I instructed him. I didn't want him coming into the room with me! What would people say? He had a reputation.

He stayed in the hall. I fetched his aspirin. Gave it to him. We returned to the disco, incident free.

There was Sancho.

Did I mention I had been taking tequila shots with my friend Elise? And that my judgment was impaired?

Actually, it's not judgment that gets impaired when you drink, is it? You still know right from wrong, but avoiding wrong just doesn't seem so important. It's like being on a diet and knowing that eating that second piece of pie is a bad, bad idea but it's a bad idea for the future and overall but right now it seems like a really good idea. So the judgment is intact but the desire to act based on good judgment is not.

Sancho. Tequila. He had been drinking as well. For some reason, we left the disco and ended up in a stairwell, where we started kissing. Even tequila'd up, I knew better than to take him back to the room.

"I shouldn't be doing this," he said.

Which was absolutely true and I hope that this one incident shamed him so much that he never strayed again. But in the meantime, we kept kissing and I am ashamed to say that it took a hotel security guard telling us to take it elsewhere to make us stop. If we went elsewhere, we would really be choosing to do wrong. An incidental kiss in the stairwell? Hmmm. But making a decision to continue the kissing elsewhere? No way to excuse that. Not even any way to excuse the stairwell kiss.

He avoided me the rest of the conference. And we didn't speak on the phone anymore. It was done.

In which Sly criticizes Paul McCartney's singing

Sly is a singer. Or used to be. We asked Sly and Doris if they would sing at our wedding and they declined. Oh, they were out of practice. Right. But I didn't really care. The request was about making them feel included, not because I really wanted them to sing.

I wanted to elope. If I had to have a wedding, it was going to be as no-frills or at least as no-Sly and Doris as possible. No music, no flowers, a simple red and white dress that I have worn again.

Sly considers himself quite the expert on singing and singers and he may well be. Well, he does know about singing. Classical singing. And classical music. Primo says there was no pop music in his house when he was a kid. Just classical. All the time.

Which might explain why Primo is such a pop music fan now. He even likes Britney Spears. How do I know that? Because early in our relationship, he played a Britney Spears CD. And he wasn't even doing it ironically. He really likes her. Our conversation went like this:

“Is that Britney Spears?” I asked in horror.

“Uh huh,” he answered absently.

Not even a trace of shame in his voice. Not one drop.

“You have a Britney Spears song on your CD?”

“Well, I didn’t make this CD,” he explained. “But I do like this song.”

“You like Britney Spears? You are admitting to this?”

“I like pop music,” he shrugged. “I have some Britney Spears CDs at home. Yes, I like her.”

“You know this means I have to break up with you, right?”

Rolled eyes. “It could be worse. I could like some headbanger band, like Crocus or, or, or….”

He couldn’t think of anything worse.

But at least Primo acknowledges that Britney can sing. His taste might be suspect (See: Primo and his flowered shirts) but he does not apologize for it and he does not try to diminish the talent of those who make a living singing.

Sly, on the other hand, cannot bear to see anyone be better than he. Or be considered better than he. He refuses to acknowledge that someone, somewhere else might have talent. What do you expect? He can't even take talent in his own son.

So when Paul McCartney came up in conversation one day, his dismissive comment was, "If only he could sing."

Right.

In which we try to figure out what Sly and Doris have planned for their cats

March 2010 At Sam's dad's memorial service, we discover that one of the issues Sam and his brother faced was what to do with their father's dog. Mr SD died. His dog did not. Fortunately, Sam's brother and sister in law decided to keep the dog. They already have two. What's one more? That attitude works when you are talking about nice pets.

Primo and I have been working on our wills. My big concern that my hard-earned money not go to Sly and Doris, which might happen if Primo and I die at the same time and we do not have a will. Well, I have had a will since I was 25, but Primo didn't have one.

One of the first things I put into some special instructions to my sister (our executor) was what to do about the cats.* And this was before Sam's dad died. You can't abandon your pets and you shouldn't make your executor find a new place for them to live. There are enough other things to deal with.

But when I read Sly and Doris' will, I saw no provision for their cats.

Primo is the executor of their will. They think it's a privilege. I think it will be a pain in the neck, given how much crap they have, although even if Primo weren't the executor, he would still probably be stuck cleaning out that house.

Their cats are awful. Well, one of them is. Medea, aka as "Puff" in another post, is a bitch. She bites and scratches and attacks. Snow, the other one, is just boring. They are both longhairs, which means lots and lots of shedding.

We already have two cats. Two gently, sweet cats who are half the size of Medea and Snow. Two cats who don't know how to fight. When they play fight each other, their claws are always retracted.

Medea would have them for breakfast.

We are not taking those cats.

I will give them to a shelter before I will have them in my house.

I ask Primo to ask his mom and dad what provisions they have made for the cats. "Make sure they know that we are not taking them!" I say.

Six months later, Sly asks Primo if we will take their cats. Now.

Primo says No way Jose.




* Give them back to the purebred cat rescue place where we got them along with $2,000.

In which I find out that Ted was kicked out of seminary for having an affair

You guys! I thought I had published all the Ted stories. But I just found a draft of another part of the saga. What a jerk he was. Sheesh.

If you don't remember him, click on the "Ted" label below to refresh your memory. If you don't feel like reading all that, then here is a summary:

Very charming guy I met at an alumni event. Clergyman in a denomination where dating and marriage are allowed, hence trustworthy, right?

He charmed me. We slept together once. And then he ditched me, very cruelly.

So here's what happened after he ditched me (other than my discovering he had been dating the woman he married a year later all along):

I make a list of all the things I never liked about Ted anyhow. He has bad taste in movies: he thought Runaway Bride and The Matrix were great. I thought Bride was stupid and I walked out of Matrix halfway through. He has bad taste in music. The radio stations he listens to play the worst of the worst.

OK. I realize that I am defining "bad taste" as "stuff I don't like," but isn't that how everyone does it?

I remember that he was rude to his mother the time I met her. She was asking him what I thought was a perfectly innocent question and he told her curtly to drop it. This is not a nice attitude toward women. Even if your mom is a jerk, at least be nice to her in front of other people.

Mary Linda called me one night shortly after Ted stopped calling. She said, "I'm not sure I should tell you this. I asked Mary Ann what she thought and we decided you need to know."

I braced myself.

"I was talking to someone who is a family friend of [Ted's parents]. She told me that the reason Ted was kicked out of seminary was that he had had an affair. Her comment was that he leaves women in far worse condition than he found them. And that nothing is ever his fault."

I was stunned. I didn't believe it. He didn't tell me he was kicked out. He implied he had chosen to transfer to the local seminary.

He had made a big deal of the fact that he considered honesty to be the most important factor in a relationship. His whole reason for breaking things off with me was that I had been "dishonest" with him. I decided I would ask him about it and let him tell his side of the story. But he didn't call.

The coup de grace is when I find out he owns a house. I surmise that he and his ex-wife bought it and that he has it rented out now. (It's amazing what you can learn on the internet.) I drive past the house to check it out.

It is in horrible condition in a neighborhood that is obviously all rentals. I know what he paid for it and am shocked at his poor financial judgment. There are a lot of things I can forgive, but mismanaging money is not one of them. Not only did he pay a lot for an ugly house in a run down neighborhood, but the house is in disrepair, so he is not even taking care of his investment.

Hmm. Could I really have spent a lifetime with someone like that? No, nein, nyet.

In which I get my bellybutton pierced so I will have a flat tummy but it doesn't work and all I do is pass out

Have I ever told you guys about the time I got my bellybutton pierced?

I was 39, I think, and saw my youth flashing before my very nearsighted, astigmatic eyes. I also saw photos of young women with pierced bellybuttons and flat, smooth bellies.

Obviously, the piercing caused the flat, smooth belly. I didn't get an A in probability and statistics for nothing. Correlation and causation are the same thing, right?

But I am not big on getting shots or being stuck. Almost every time I have ever had blood taken, I have passed out. This might have something to do with the fact that at the blood drive during my freshman year of college, which was the first (and the last) time that I gave blood voluntarily, I ignored the blood peoples' warning to eat breakfast before I had a pint of my precious bodily fluid withdrawn from me.

Oh that! I thought. They mean other people! I'm special. My blood sugar doesn't work the way everyone else's blood sugar does.

I merrily lay down, extended my arm, and then watched and felt as my O- blood passed through the tube lying on my forearm.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

That was the pulse of the warm blood. Passing out of me. Over me. Away from me.

I am getting a little lightheaded just writing about it. And this happened in 1982. Which, for those of you who are bad at math, was a long time ago.

I passed out.

When I came to, I looked up, panicked. I didn't recognize any of the faces. I didn't know what had happened. But even as the words left my mouth - "Where am I? What happened?" I thought, Don't say it! It's a cliche'!

That's exactly how I felt. Maybe that's how clichés get started: because they describe how something really is.

Ever since then, my body has reacted the same way almost every time, even with just a tiny amount of blood to be taken.

Blood goes out, so do I.

When I had blood drawn as part of my Peace Corps physical, I didn't pass out until 15 minutes later, as I was walking down the hall to the next exam. I stopped, leaned against the wall, then slid all the way down to the floor, my head falling down between my legs.

OK, not really because I am have no flexibility at all. I am hoping my yoga class will take me to the point where I can actually touch my toes without bending my knees. My head rolled down and I was slumped over, but I didn't look like a rag doll. I probably looked like a wooden puppet - bent over in some places but no graceful, elegant, flexible fainting.

I had a minor thingy done in my doc's office a few years ago. No blood involved, but cutting and scraping. I warned him I might faint.

I did faint.

He told me I had a very good vaso-vagal response.

I was quite proud.

I also fainted when I had my eye exam and they did the part where the machine touched my eyeball, but you can understand that: A MACHINE TOUCHED MY EYEBALL! Now I refuse that part of the test.

I faint. I am not squeamish about blood in or on someone else - if there is an accident, you want me around because I am the one who will perform CPR or call 911 or keep the motorcyclist with the head injury from wandering out in traffic.

That happened once: my boyfriend and I were stuck in traffic on Lamar in Austin and I noticed that the guy on the motorcycle next to us had just been knocked over. I jumped out of the car, ran to the guy, got people to help me lift the bike off him, yelled at someone to call 911, and then kept the guy from wandering off. I snapped at my boyfriend to do something and help me because the biker outweighed me by 80 pounds.

Do what? my boyfriend asked.

You're a doctor, I said.

I'm an optometrist, he answered. What should I do? Check his eyes?

Back to the bellybutton.

I had a little fainting problem.

But there would be no blood here! And the bellybutton was before the doc's office and the eye exam. I had no evidence that non-blood related pokings could cause loss of consciousness.

And the truly important thing was that I wanted a flat tummy that could be shown in public without fear of ridicule. If I got a belly button ring, my belly would be flat. It would not be slightly fluffy as it is now and was then. Flat, maybe even with some rippling abs.

A girl can dream, can't she?

My friends Leigh and Ilene accompanied me to the tattoo/piercing salon a mile from my house. The parlor was in an old Queen Anne in Cooper Young. Black light posters. Black lights. Tattoo designs hanging from the wall. Knick knacks on the mantel. Purple doors and trim. Not my taste, but not my house.

Leigh drove. Ilene provided the medical expertise, evaluating the cleanliness of the operation and giving me her doctor opinion of it. She and the piercer discussed piercings in places I had never heard of being pierced and really did not want to think about but ouch. Really? REALLY?

The piercer prepped. Washed his hands, put on gloves, got the needle and the ring out of the autoclave. I hope there was an autoclave. I don't think Ilene would have let me proceed with unsterilized equipment.

I lay down on the stainless steel exam table, lifted my shirt. He pierced. It hurt a little. But I was fine - on my back, looking at the black light posters on the ceiling. If such posters weren't there, then they should have been. Why don't docs put something interesting on the ceiling to read? Patients do spend some time on their backs and a little bit of distraction would be nice, although in my current doc's defense, he is pretty good at the small talk and launches straight into the Packers as his hands are messing around with my hoo-hah. I'd rather talk about football or any kind of sport than keep a "I'm not really noticing that a man who is not my husband has his hand up my hoo-hah" silence.

I sat on the piercing table for a while. Ilene and Leigh looked at tattoo patterns and talked to the piercer. I decided I was OK so we left. Got into Leigh's car. Three minutes and three blocks from the parlor, I fainted. Almost fainted.

"I think I'm going to pass out," is what I said.

Leigh stopped the car. Doctor Ilene jumped out of the front seat and opened the back door so she could see me. Did her doctor stuff and revived me.

Later told me she had never dealt with a fainting before. She's a pediatrician and I guess sick kids don't pass out so much.

Ilene insisted I take the front seat so I could recline. She got into the back seat. Leigh started the car again. Two minutes and two blocks after that, Leigh said, "I'm getting television."

"Tunnel vision," I corrected her. Didactic and a pain in the ass, even post almost fainting. Don't you love being around people who correct your grammar and word choice? Even when they know what you meant? But just want to point out that you made a mistake? Yeah me too. My only defense is that I was still a little woozy. I usually make corrections only in my head, not out loud. I have been working on it for years and am a lot better than I used to be. I'm surprised nobody ever slapped me before.

"Stop the car!" Ilene said.

Ilene can see the big picture.

"No, I'm fine," Leigh answered slowly as she waved Ilene away.

I thought about what Leigh had just said - the television/tunnel vision part - and realized what was going on.

"Stop the car!" I said.

"Yes, stop the car!" Ilene yelled.

Leigh stopped.

"I can make it home," she insisted. "I'm just a little dizzy."

Leigh was having a sympathy faint with me.

Ilene did her doctor magic and then threw Leigh into the back seat. "I'm driving," she announced.

Two fainters, one doctor. Pathetic.

The bad news - other than my inability to stay conscious - was that the piercing wouldn't heal. The waistband of my skirts rubbed against it. Every time I hugged my boyfriend, the ring hurt. I couldn't hug him close.

The baddest news is that my belly did not get flat, taut and smooth.

It stayed fluffy.

All that effort to no avail.

After six months, I climbed up to the attic where I kept my toolbox, found a needle-nosed pliers, and pulled the ring out.

I still have a fluffy tummy.