Get really really hungry?

First let me say that true hunger and starvation is a terrible. I do not want anyone to think I am an insensitive son of a blogger based on the content to follow.

Now with that out of the way, let's be honest. When you say "I am starving" aren't you really usually saying "God I could go for a burger and fries right now. My celery and carrot stick lunch just isn't cutting it". And what parent has not been confronted by a child who says "there is nothing to eat in this house!" about an hour and a half after spending $300 and 2 hours at the grocery store?

I offer for your consideration the observation that in times past people were really really really really hungry in a way that most humans living now can not imaging. I say this not because I have pictures or scary drawings of starving plague ridden masses. No. I say that with confidence because of some of the food that we now consider indulgences which - except for starvation - would never have been consumed by human beings.

Exhibit 1: artichokes.

Examine the above picture of an artichoke. I apologize to Castro ville California, the artichoke capitol of the world but honestly, when you look at that thing does your mouth start to water and you feel the urge to hunt for a pot of boiling water and some melted butter? I think not. Can you imagine how hungry the first human being had to have been who started chewing on one of these things? Why would you ever think to yourself as you traversed the sands of the desert that "Gee, I'm gonna pick me a mess of these things, set up camp, boil the last quart of water that stands between me and dehydration and steam these suckers up. Some day some body's gonna charge a lot of money for these things and sell them at high-end restaurants". No, I tell you. Ancient man was thinking "Damn I am hungry and there's nothing here but these crappy thistle things. I guess I will chew on the leaves for a while. Maybe I wont die.

Don't get me wrong, I like artichokes. But seriously, if you had never been exposed to these and someone invited you over for dinner and plopped a steamed artichoke on your plate, would you really feel like an honored guest or would you think "jeez what a cheap s.o.b. serving me weeds. where's the steak?"

Exhibit 2: snails
Can you think of anything more disgusting? I have had escargot. It was OK. Kinda chewy. How did this thing become food? I am picturing a skin and bones wandering tribe of ancient people savaging for food. They come to a blighted field searching desperately for something to eat. Someone lifts up some decaying leaves and finds... giant snails. They build a fire and bake them on a stone or worse - eat them raw. Are you getting the picture? Sometime later someone adds garlic, onion and butter to hide the taste and convince their family that they are a delicacy in Paris. Because no one has any idea what Paris is, they decide to try them. Eventually someone invents little clampy devices and tiny forks to make it easier to dig the things out of the shell. voila ' an industry is born.

Exhibit 3: mushrooms
We are used to clean white button mushrooms which don't look too nasty but consider all of the other kinds of edible mushrooms like the ones above. Again. how hungry would you have to be? Especially if you didn't have a Food Network saute pan and fresh garlic and onion to cook ' em up with. Also, how did people decide which ones were edible? Did everybody just take turns trying different ones and observe for psychotic behavior and death? "Yep, tell everybody not to eat the red ones with the fuzzy tops. Clem ain't lookin' so good after he ate his".

I know there are other examples but you get the point. I don't think I need to discuss nasturtium seeds (capers) or eel. I am convinced that the price of some of the items today is inversely proportional to how close these things actually come to being intuitively edible. Next time you are really hungry, instead of going to the drive through, go out in your yard and look around for something edible. Maybe you'll find some slugs you can fry up. Not so hungry now, are you?

visit Arizona?

I know Arizona is taking some hits lately and the purpose of this post is not to judge or even comment on the whole immigration thing. My question about Arizona is really more basic.

WHY DO YOU PEOPLE LIVE THERE?

I base this on my personal experience visiting Tempe Arizona over one particular 4th of July weekend.

Let me start at the beginning. My brother and his wonderful wife and beautiful children moved to Arizona for their careers. After hearing about how wonderful it is out there I decided to visit. For reasons that are entirely irrelevant to this discussion, I went out over the 4th of July weekend. BIG mistake.

When I got on the plane in Milwaukee it was 5AM and 68 degrees. When I got off the plane in Arizona it was around noon and 104 degrees. Don't give me that bunk about it being a "dry heat". If the ambient temperature equals a reading on my meat thermometer, people should not be living there. My oven is a dry heat too but I don't curl up in my oven with a book and call it a vacation.

My brother proceeded to take me on a tour. We drove past a development in some foothills of a mountain and he said "Yeah, we looked at a house over here but they have a problem with scorpion infestations and fire ants so we didn't buy there" Good choice. Seriously? There are times when nature gives us messages. Scorpion infestations and fire ants are nature's way of saying

"PEOPLE. you should not be living here. we claimed this spot in the name of insects"(I am not sure scorpions are insects but you get the point).

As we continued to tour, he kept commenting on the wonderful landscaping in some of the areas we were driving through. I am thinking. "That is sand, some rocks and a cactus. That is not landscaping, that is creatively rearranging DESERT" I also noticed that there were homes that were desperately trying to grow lawns. There is nothing about Kentucky Bluegrass or Blue Fescue that cries out to be planted in a desert. Besides which, if you have to get up at 3AM to mow this plot of grass before it gets too hot, you probably should rethink your landscape.

My sister-in-law took my daughters and I on a tour of the Hohokam Indian ruins. It was 114 that day. As we were walking through the ruins reading about this ancient people, one of the signs struck me: "we don't know why the Hohokam people abandoned this site...." Really? you don't? I have a clue... Maybe some native people from a more temperate area were visiting and said "JEEZ it's hot here... why don't you go up in the hills or go down by the gulf or something? You are crazy for living here. Besides, have you SEEN the scorpions over by those hills? It's an INFESTATION."

Almost everyone has a pool and my brother is no exception. Except no one HEATS their pool which means that the water is cold as ice. Given that the air temperature is hotter than the hinges of Hell I guess it evens out. It is quite an adventure to have your toes turn blue at the same time your face is getting blistered. And don't get me started on the dust storms....

I know that in Wisconsin we have bad weather in the winter. However, in defense of our weather, there are only about 4 or 5 days every winter that are really intolerable either because of extreme cold or a lot of snow or both. In Arizona it gets hot in early May and stays hot until November. It you don't believe me check the weather channel. Also, in the winter if I need to go out I can put on layers of clothes, a warm hat, thick gloves,toasty boots and be safe and comfortable. There is only so much you can take off in 114 degree heat and not get arrested. And P.S., Arizona, wearing gloves so you don't burn your hands on your steering wheel is just not right.

So that is my beef with Arizona. Lovely people, questionable climate. At least it is not for me. I like my four seasons and lack of venomous insects. But to all of you who love that climate, more power to you- but don't think you're getting our water.

Forget your password?

So I am new to this blogging game. I haven't posted for a while because I forgot my password. Did you ever forget your password? I may be giving away my secrets but I normally have 3 passwords that I recycle. Since this is my first official blog I decided to get fancy and creative and.... well, it didn't work. I could not remember the brainstorm of letters and symbols, caps and small case combinations that unlocked the secret of my own personal blogasphere.

So I reset it. And wrote it down.

Which brings me to my latest musing.... I know the folks at I.T. security feel strongly that passwords should be STRONG. This, I have learned, is I.T. speak for "unmemorable". Where I work there are- depending upon your particular role- as many as 5 different computer applications that are required to do your job. In times past, employees were allowed to pick their own passwords after the first time logging into an application.

Those were the days when folks would very happily type in "password" or "welcome" or "signon" or even "hello" and be directed to a change password function where you could confidently put in some combination of birthdays, initials, ages, or dates. None of these secret codes were of significant importance to anyone and you could keep them locked in your own little brain. We all knew better than to use something like our birthday or initials so we made it random enough to be not worth the trouble to figure out but easy enough to remember. If, as is often the case, you were required to change it every 6 months, you could reverse the numbers, add a letter or capitalize something to make it different enough to pass go, but still memorable.

Enter I.T. security and assigned passwords. Not only do they have to pass security muster, you must have a different password for each application.

(&3KhgLK20072&^%

GOOD PASSWORD. STRONG PASSWORD. Also a password that I will never remember. (Any resemblance to an actual password is strictly coincidental and not a security breech). So, what happens is that you have to write your passwords down. No longer are they stored securely in the recesses of your gray (grey?) matter never to be revealed except under threat of bodily harm. Not only do you have to write your password(s) down, you have to write them down somewhere that you can find them.

When you need to sign in to the fragendafenberg application, you must do it with efficiency without spending time searching for your password or typing in 5 incorrect passwords only to be locked out and have to call the help desk. Therefore you write it down in a logical place - on a sticker you place on the back of your name tag. I know there are I.T. security professionals out there who may read this and start having palpitations and chest pain but I call 'em as I see 'em.

The ultimate result is that in an effort to achieve ultimate security, there is no security. True of passwords and true of life. Ironic, isn't it?

want to remodel a house?

The first home my husband and I purchased was a 75 year old home full of character that needed new everything. The one thing that it had going for it was a really cool original carved solid wood entry door, an amazing stair case and really cool, very old woodwork.

We bought it from my parents who purchased it in desperation when they put their house on the market and it sold in 3 days. OOPS. They needed a place to live immediately and this charmer was available so they bought it and lived in it for 6 months or so until they could find something a little less charming and a lot more habitable.

We had been married about 3 years and decided that it would be good to build some equity so we got a really good deal on the house and moved in. I was filled with dreams of a Better Homes and Garden's spread entitled "Couple turns rustic charmer into dream home for $5,000 - you can too!" We soon learned that living in a home you are trying to renovate is not fun. Not even close.

To start with, the owners prior to my parents loved olive green. They must have. They painted the walls and the woodwork with it and installed olive green shag carpet throughout. That was OK. The olive green paint distracted from the cracked plaster and the carpet covered up the worn pine floors.

We replaced most of the plaster with dry wall, stripped and stained the wood work and recarpeted and tiled. Our young son was so used to just knocking down walls that one night he took a hammer to the newly drywalled dining room wall. He was just "fissin" it. Note to anyone considering this level of demolition: tearing down lath and plaster is dusty. Very dusty. And there will be stuff in the walls that falls on you. Wear a hat.

The kitchen was particularly grotesque and had a very interesting door into the basement that opened at about the 4th step so the old saying "watch the first step, it's a doozy" took on a whole new meaning. As far as we could tell, it was the orignal and only interior door to the basement. I would find myself wondering the conversations that went into putting those stairs and that door in. "Yep, Clem, I think we should put the stairs here. It'll be a little dangerous but that'll keep out the rif-raf."

We moved the door and gutted and redesigned the kitchen. It turned out pretty nice but it took months and months of living with just a microwave and a refrigerator with the only source of water being the one bathroom. Upstairs.

Then there were the bats. One night we were lying in bed and heard this wierd scratching and squeaking noise. In the wall at the head of our bed. BATS. I know they are fellow mammals and eat their weight in mosquitos but they need to know their place and that place is not in my walls.

One night two of the little devils found their way into the house. I won't go into details but suffice it to say that you haven't lived until you have seen your 6ft 2in husband standing in the middle of the bed swinging at a flying bat with a pillow. We had the house treated and got rid of the infestation. The experience made quite an impression on our son, however. He was 3 when we moved from there into our current home. He wanted to know why the walls in his new house were so quiet.

The experience was both wonderful and awful. We really learned a lot and made a few $$ when we sold it. My parents were incredibly helpful and spent many hours helping us do the work, I am really good at drywall and staining woodwork. I can talk about nob and tube wiring and why it isn't good. I can also spot dry rot a mile away. Mostly we learned that we never want to do it again. Ever.

I had a recurring dream for a few months after we sold the house. In my dream I returned for a tour and found that they had painted olive green latex over my beautifully stained wood work. They ripped out all of the really expensive carpet and tile and replaced it with the olive green shag. I was furious. In my dream the new owners returned soon after I began my tour. I chased them around the house with a broom and when I caught them I beat the crap out of them. I am not a violent person but there is only so much a person can take.....

think you need two sinks?

One of my favorite shows is House Hunters on HGTV. I was amazed that people could make a decision about spending the equivalent of a small city's budget after just looking at 3 houses until I found out that the show is edited. Gasp! Apparently they look at a lot of houses and just edit the show down to 3. Color me befuddled.

The show is a fascinating study in what people think is important and my daughter and I make bets on what house the buyer's will ultimately choose. If you watch carefully you get really good at it but sometimes there are surprises.

There are several consistent themes to this show that strike me. First. EVERYONE on this show entertains!! They are always commenting about how the kitchen is too small to entertain or the dining room is just the right size for entertaining or the deck / patio is a fantastic outdoor space to entertain. Do no introverts buy homes? I would love to see an agorophobic, introverted couple on the show who comment that the kitchen is tiny and there is no dining room and the backyard is microscopic but that is FINE because they never go out and have no friends. I just want some balance.

Second. what is it with the two sinks in the bathroom? "Oh, honey, the bathroom has a marble spa tub, the shower is the size of my parent's first house and the bedroom is 1200 square feet but there is only one sink in the master bathroom. Even though it is priced $50,000 below the assessed value I guess we will have to pass". Really?

Now I have been married for over 30 years and I can tell you that if I am in the bathroom using the sink, my husband / children can just wait. I don't need company in there. I don't want to watch you shaving anything or combing anything or washing anything. Maybe I am a wierdo but there are rules. Besides that, if you really need to get ready for work or whatever at the exact same moments that I am in the bathroom, use the other bathroom. Or wait. It'll be Ok, really.

Finally. is it just me or are people generally superficial? "I don't like the orange and green living room. I really prefer beige and purple". Someone painted it those ugly colors, you can cover it up with your ugly colors. After 25 years of home ownership, here is my advice to them. Don't look at the things that are easy to fix. Ask about the stuff that is going to cost you big $$. Here are some suggestions: how old is the furnace / air conditioner / water heater; how old are the windows; is the attic insulated; how old is the roof? These are things that matter but they probably arent good TV.

If you have never watched the show, I highly recommend it. It is fascinating to see what passes for affordable in different parts of the country and it is fun to see what some of the folks do with their newly purchased piece of the American Dream.

want to start a blog?

My husband has a blog and spends a lot of time on it. It used to tick me off but now I figure it keeps him out of the bars and at least he isn't into internet gambling. Could be worse. I even got to the point of suggesting things for his blog but he never posts them. Evidently he doesn't share my sense of humor or my ideas of what constitutes interesting facts.

So, I decided to toot my own internet horn so to speak. I find myself pondering things and wonder if anyone else looks at the world the way I do. I love irony in whatever form it takes and connecting seemingly unconnectable dots.

I hope this blog will be amusing and maybe thought provoking. I don't intend it to be controversial but I suppose it could be. I don't know how often I will post; there is no way to schedule flashes of the absurd or insightful.

Here's to our future "conversations".....