25 Years

Today is my 25^th wedding anniversary. By coincidence, it’s also my husband’s. It’s like we planned it or something.

By tradition, 25 years of wedded bliss is celebrated as the “Silver Anniversary.” Neither one of us is very romantic — we have a much more practical bent plus we’re lazy. So very lazy. But this year I thought I’d try to surprise him with something different so I hopped online to find some ways to celebrate.

These are some of the ideas I found:

• Use sparkly silver glitter on flowers, cards, centerpieces, gift wrap, balloons, etc. Set the table with a paper silver tablecloth, rent china and crystal with a silver or chrome trim, use silver looking votive candles, place flowers in silver colored vases.

…. Or I could sprinkle glitter on the four-day-old pile of newspapers that has become our centerpiece. Maybe lighting them on fire would add a cozy, romantic touch.

• Toast one another with Champagne.

…. We already do this one. A lot. But mostly just when we toss another beer bottle in the trashcan, causing a lovely clinking sensation. Or is that when an angel gets its wings?

• Plan a picnic with paper silver-colored plates and cups.

…. Maybe, but neither one of us actually wants to go on a picnic in November in Colorado. But I’ll certainly consider planning one. The gift, I suppose, would be when I laid out the plans, saw his horrified face, then told him he didn’t have to go. Priceless.

• Purchase tickets for a movie, sports event, concert, theatre, etc. and wrap with a silver ribbon or place in a silver box.

…. We do this all the time. We tend to wrap them up in credit card receipts, though.

• Plan a trip to Silver Springs in Maryland or Florida, Silverstrand Beach in California or Ireland, or to a Silver Mine.

…. Or we could find everything on Netflix with Ron Silver, Sarah Silverman, Alicia Silverstone and Phil Silvers and have a marathon.

• Put together a CD with songs from the era of the marriage date.

…. Um … that’s pretty much all the music we have.

• Assemble a memory photo album with pictures highlighting 25 years together. Include the wedding, children, grandchildren, friends, trips taken together, homes lived in, etc. A nice addition is to include stories from children and friends.

…. Feeling smug about this one as we’ve been making photo albums for more than 25 years. We never look at them, however, because if you disturb the dust you sneeze for a month. (And really? People need to be told what to put in a photo album??)

• Create a poem, write it in silver ink, and display it in a silver colored frame.

…. I tried this one, but I’m not sure —

There once was a couple from Denver

Who loved to watch Netflix like “Ben Hur”

They secured a good date

But the mailman’s too late

And they couldn’t quite find a new vendor

• Put together a family quilt comprised of each square done by a family member or close friends.

…. Okay, just let me get started. Probably won’t take too long. I have a couple hours till dinner.

• Make a wish tree. You can use a big branch that you paint silver and decorate with silver ribbons, ornaments etc. Fill the branches with pictures of major events in your life, people who love and cherish you as well as tickets for a trip, travelers checks, gift certificates for different events and restaurants you could use on a trip, etc.

…. This one baffles me. What exactly would you be wishing for? That your life was different and didn’t have all these icky events and people who love you? That your anniversary was closer to Christmas so you wouldn’t have to haul yet another big tree into your house? That you could actually spend the travelers checks and gift certificates instead of impaling them on a dead branch in your living room? Pass.

None of these really speak to me as the best way to celebrate our 25 official years together.

Instead, I think I’ll find a shiny quarter — so simple, yet so symbolic — and we’ll flip it.

Heads does the laundry, tails cleans the kitchen.

Bonus photos!

This photo doesn’t do it justice, but see this enormous train and veil? It weighed at least 75 pounds and took 14 festively dressed Guatemalan children to wrestle it into place. But it segues nicely into the next photo, one of my favorites ….

That’s me and my dad trying to squeeze through the church doors without wrecking the dress or any of the Guatemalan children. Our hearts weren’t bursting with love for the photographer just then. It makes me laugh every time I remember it. I’m just glad the music was loud enough to cover our cursing.

What do you think makes for a worthy 25^th Anniversary celebration?

How To Be 78 Years Old

I recently had the opportunity to spend both quality and quantity time with my mother while she recovered from surgery. Her recovery took about eight seconds — for which I’m very thankful — but then I got snowed in at her house.

Here’s a photo of her bedquarters. [Get it?? Like headquarters?? Oh, I crack me up.]

From this command center she was able to direct and supervise all activities. Like me clearing two feet of snow off my car.

Spending this much time in her home was illuminating because I hadn’t lived with my mother since about 1982. Also because for about that same amount of time, I’ve been the oldest person I’ve lived with.

My mother has taught me many valuable lessons over the years, some of which I’ll share.

• Don’t giggle and fidget in church, but if you can’t help yourself, scoot over near another family so as not to shame us.

• Red wine vinegar is not the same as red wine.

• When arriving home after a long car trip, no one uses the bathroom until the car is unpacked.

• If you pay a kid a quarter for every tick they find on themselves after camping, they’re likelier to inspect their nooks and crannies more diligently. Plus, they’ll also check the dog.

As you can see, she’s a wise and wonderful woman.

And now she’s taught me something else … how to be a 78-year-old.

If you would like to act 78 years old, this will get you started…

1. Get up at 4 a.m., make a pot of coffee and read for three hours. Then go back to bed, making it seem like you get up early AND sleep late simultaneously.
2. Upon waking, immediately turn on the TV and make a full pot of coffee.
3. Eat constantly, but only tiny dabs of this or that.
4. Coffee, coffee and more coffee.
5. Watch TV but only for about 90 seconds at a time because everything reminds you of a story … or something you need to remember … or a question you’ve been wondering about for several years. Glance wistfully at your computer, knowing all answers live there, but also knowing said answers prefer to hide from you.
6. Turn the coffeepot off.
7. Two minutes later, brew a cup of tea.
8. Make sure you are — this appears to be of the utmost importance — make sure you are AT ALL TIMES within three feet of a box of Kleenex. If you think you’ll breach that perimeter, pluck a couple and shove them into your pocket or your sleeve or between two buttons on your shirt.
9. If you don’t bathe by noon, just take a “PTA Bath” reminding yourself that the mailman doesn’t care how you look. [Hint: The A stands for armpits, but the P and the T are not words an elderly woman with a proper upbringing should say. Except to her daughter. Who will crack up and tell all her friends what a hoot it is when old ladies lose their inhibitions.]
10. More coffee.
11. Even though you’ve cooked two-and-a-half million chickens for Sunday dinner in the last 50+ years, confess you never really liked to eat fried chicken. This makes your daughter feel guilty. Especially after she buys fried chicken to stock the fridge during your recovery.
12. When recovering from surgery, eschew stairs, Scrabble and salt. But not sherry.

My mom rocks.

What will you do when you are 78 years old?

The Zen of Stupidity

Normally I’d waste this space with my self-described hilarious blog antics but I’ve decided to try something different this time. I’m going to waste this space with a hilarious story about my extreme stupidity.

Lest you worry about my self-esteem, rest assured I am intact. Gorged and oozing, in fact, with self-esteem. I shouldn’t be, but there it is. One of life’s many mysteries.

I did something recently that is quite possibly the dumbest thing I’ve ever done, as long as we agree to overlook the 10^th grade perm and the red pleather coat I begged my mother to buy me. (That’s when I learned that despite its delightfully shiny redness, pleather coats consistently fail to keep the Wyoming chill from blowing right through a skinny girl. At least I was smart enough not to complain to my mother who was itching to launch a well-deserved told you so.)

The perm and the coat don’t rise to the top of my Stupidity Scale, though, because I didn’t know any better. But I do know that hard drives crash and one should obsessively back up all computer data.

Duh. I know that. Third graders know that. Heck, even the squirrel on my deck knows that. Why else would he be twitching his tail in that holier-than-thou manner?

Do you see where this is going?

Did I obsessively back up all my files? No. No, I did not. Most of them, but not all of them. I have — and use — an FTP site … I have a million little USB drives … I email things to myself.

I know better, but I’ve never — in the 20+ years I’ve been computing — had a computer problem. I became complacent.

Here’s a weird karmic twist to the tale, befitting a BeckyLand story. My husband recently bought me an external hard drive so I could start using Time Machine which automatically backs up stuff every eighteen seconds. If the Broncos would have played at 2:00 instead of 11:00 that fateful Sunday, then I might have dodged a bullet. We would have set it up in the morning instead of waiting until after the game.

Guess when it crashed.

The stages of grief whooshed through my psyche at warp speed, so I was fairly calm by Monday morning. Waiting to talk to the Geniuses at the Apple Store was nerve-racking, until they told me it was hopeless and sent me home with a new computer for free. (Note to self: Apple Care ROCKS!) They even gave me my old hard drive and the name of a local data recovery place, Datatech Labs.

I visited them on Monday to tell them my sad story, one I’m sure they’ve heard a million times. Clearly, these are people who’ve been extensively trained in grief counseling. They spoke softly. They made no sudden movements. They even offered butterscotch candy and hugs …. Wait. I might be thinking of my grandmother. But they were very soothing. Never once did they mock or jeer or snicker behind my back.

My new best friend, Stephan, took my broken and battered hard drive into his softly cupped palms and carried it lovingly to the clean room to check it out. When he came out, he was smiling. “Looks like we can recover all the data.”

But then the bad news. $300 to repair the hard drive enough that they can get the data, then another $1700 to recover it. But only if they recover it. No recovery charge if they can’t get it.

[Despite the cost — and my ultimate decision not to pay for the recovery — if you ever find yourself in a similar pickle, you’d do well to call Datatech. They come highly recommended and they won’t mock you. They’d probably even give you a hug if you looked like you needed one.]

I’m not really into self-flagellation, but I do think I need to be punished. If you simply throw money at a problem, then you won’t really learn anything, right? That might be how Wall Street works, but we’re better than that, kids.

Realistically, nobody died, the sun keeps coming up every day, and I didn’t lose anything irreplaceable. I am much more fortunate than others. Everything I lost I can recreate, should I accept that challenge. It will be time-consuming, but not impossible. Some of the stuff I’ll probably never need again. As I tried to list everything I knew I lost, I’m sure I didn’t remember half of it. It was there because I had the space for it. So it seems like a good time for a purge.

Less like a tragic house fire, and more like a healthy, ruthless cleaning of my closets.

But the lesson is important … back up obsessively in several different ways because thumb drives can fail, large external drives can fail, software can fail. And always — always — blame the Broncos.

How do you back up your work?

Going Rouge

This was in my Publisher’s Lunch newsletter yesterday. (If you don’t already subscribe, you should. Tons of interesting publishing insider info.)

OR Books Goes Rogue with Initial Release

The direct-sale start-up OR Books, founded by John Oakes and Colin Robinson, announced their inaugural title yesterday–which just happens to share some striking similarities with another prominent forthcoming release. OR Books is issuing GOING ROUGE: Sarah Palin, An American Nightmare on November 17, the same day when HarperCollins publishes GOING ROGUE: An American Life by Sarah Palin. Comprising essays assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, it promises “progressive perspectives on Sarah Palin’s political career” by writers including Naomi Klein, Jane Mayer, Katha Pollitt, Jim Hightower, Christopher Hayes, Gloria Steinem, Joe Conason, and Tom Frank.

Harper had no comment on the OR Books cover, so we asked Ned Himmelrich, head of the intellectual property department at law firm Gordon Feinblatt, for an assessment of whether the cheeky new cover crosses legal lines. “Although the first instinct is to believe that the “Nightmare” book has to be infringing” the publishers “may have found a seam in Palin’s protection.” He added: “Titles of books cannot be protected as trademarks (a clear rule); trademark protection does not accrue until the mark is used (no sales yet); both books would be “in use” on the first day (Palin cannot claim first use); “Trade dress” does not exist unless the graphics are inherently distinctive (doubtful) or well recognized (too soon); and the “Nightmare” title may even be a valid parody (a good defense). Each of these theories has a countervailing argument, but on each, the legal arguments might be a nightmare for Palin.”

I thought it was extremely clever of the editors of Going Rogue. What do you think?

Changed My Mind

I decided not to move my blog so just ignore the indecisive blogger waving her arms like a madwoman behind the curtain there. It wasn’t because it was too difficult … well, it might have been, but I didn’t get that far. I’m starting up a new enterprise which you’ll hear about in due course and I thought it would make sense to move this blog to practice with all the bells and whistles at the new place.

Not so much.

So I’ll just wait and start up the new one in the new place.

Curious about my traffic while I wasn’t posting, I checked my stats. Imagine my surprise that I get just as many readers when I post as when I don’t. About 100/day.

What might that mean?

One Moment, Please …

Just a heads up to all my loyal readers. And to you not-so-loyal ones, too.

I’m switching this blog over from wordpress.com to wordpress.org for a variety of reasons I won’t bore you with today. I have absolutely no clue as to how to accomplish this lofty goal, however, so I might be floating around the bloggy heavens for ten minutes or ten days.

I hope it’s closer to ten minutes, but that’s probably not quite realistic as I’m going to eat lunch now. I don’t work through my lunch. I sometimes lunch through my work, but never the reverse.

I guess all I can do is guarantee I’ll see ya’ll somewhere on the flip side. For those of you who subscribe or visit BeckyLand on an RSS feed, if there is anything you need to do to continue your daily fix of The Becky, I’ll be sure to let you know.

Wish me luck!

Common Sense Advice

Sometimes common sense is the best sense to steal from the internet.  Sorry about the shouting caps, but I am so very lazy I really wanted to avoid the re-typing thang. But I did think this was funny enough to share. Hope you agree.

1.  AVOID CUTTING YOURSELF WHEN SLICING VEGETABLES BY GETTING SOMEONE ELSE TO HOLD THE VEGETABLES WHILE YOU CHOP.

2.  AVOID ARGUMENTS WITH THE FEMALES ABOUT LIFTING THE TOILET SEAT BY USING THE SINK.

3.  FOR HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE SUFFERERS ~ SIMPLY CUT YOURSELF AND BLEED FOR A FEW MINUTES, THUS REDUCING THE PRESSURE ON YOUR VEINS. REMEMBER TO USE A TIMER.

4.  A MOUSE TRAP PLACED ON TOP OF YOUR ALARM CLOCK WILL PREVENT YOU FROM ROLLING OVER AND GOING BACK TO SLEEP AFTER YOU HIT THE SNOOZE BUTTON.

5.  IF YOU HAVE A BAD COUGH, TAKE A LARGE DOSE OF LAXATIVES.  THEN YOU’LL BE AFRAID TO COUGH.

6.  YOU ONLY NEED TWO TOOLS IN LIFE — WD-40 AND DUCT TAPE.  IF IT DOESN’T MOVE AND SHOULD, USE THE WD-40.  IF IT SHOULDN’T MOVE AND DOES, USE THE DUCT TAPE.

7.  IF YOU CAN’T FIX IT WITH A HAMMER, YOU’VE GOT AN ELECTRICAL PROBLEM.

DAILY THOUGHT:

SOME PEOPLE ARE LIKE SLINKIES – NOT REALLY GOOD FOR ANYTHING BUT THEY BRING A SMILE TO YOUR FACE WHEN PUSHED DOWN THE STAIRS.

Do you have any common sense advice?

Getting Stupider

We played Trivial Pursuit on Family Game Night last week and I’ve come to the disturbing conclusion I’m getting stupider.

Granted, it’s trivia. Outdated trivia at that. “What city has the tallest building outside the U.S?”  Um, pretty sure it’s not Toronto anymore.

But some of it falls under the category Stuff I Used To Know. Like geography. And who won the first Super Bowl. And the name of Carole Lombard’s husband. I did, however, know Ms Lombard died in a plane crash, but no, she wasn’t married to Cary Grant.

My struggle for the answer reminded me of one of my favorite jokes…

An elderly couple goes to their friends’ house for dinner. After they finish eating, the men go in the living room to chat while the ladies go into the kitchen to clean up.

The first man says, “We went to a really good restaurant yesterday. I’d recommend it to anyone.”

The second man asks, “What’s the name of the restaurant?”

The first man thinks and thinks and finally says, “What’s that flower that has thorns and you give to someone you love?”

The second man says, “A rose?”

The first man says, “Yes, that’s it! A rose!” He turns his head toward the kitchen and says, “Rose? What’s the name of that restaurant we went to yesterday?”

Yeah. That’s me.

“Let’s see … Carole Lombard was in ‘My Man Godfrey’ and ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’ … married to William Powell, the Thin Man … he had that skinny moustache … so did this guy … “Hey, honey, who was that guy, in a bunch of movies, married to Carole Lombard?”

“You mean the answer to the question?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean the one for the wedge?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean Cary Grant?”

“Yeah. Cary Grant.”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yeah.”

“Wrong. It was Clark Gable.”

“%$#%^&.”

So I was happy when I saw this article in Prevention Magazine. I’m going to start tricking my brain into making me smarter instead of dopier.

This is my favorite game so far …

You say out loud the color each word is printed in—not the word itself.

If I play it enough, I’m going to reward myself with a trip to Toronto to see the world’s tallest building. Then I’m going to watch The Thin Man starring Cary Grant.

What’s your favorite way to get smarter?

The Marshmallow Test

This is a fascinating experiment. Such a simple thing to ask yet so difficult to accomplish.

There are many times I wonder if I’m in some sort of hidden camera experiment and people are watching to see what I’ll do.

Like the other day at the grocery store. Were they ignoring me at the seafood counter on purpose to see how long I’d wait while they went about their business which didn’t seem to include selling me salmon?

Or are there cameras hidden around my house so my family can have a great big guffaw watching me sneak olives out of a tall jar with my short fingers? It probably wouldn’t even make them giggle since they’ve seen worse. Much worse. And if they did giggle? I’d just say, “What are you giggling at?” with my mouth crammed full of olives. Of course, it would come out, “Mrphhpwicka?” but still, it would show ‘em.

So watch The Marshmallow Test and try to picture what you would have done when you were 5. I particularly love the kid who kisses his marshmallow.

What would be a good hidden camera experiment for adults?

Okinawa Time

For a smart person, I’m kinda dumb about some things.

Like, for instance, the way time changes depending on where you are.

I blame it on my dad.

He lives in Arizona which sometimes uses the same clock I do here in Colorado. But the other half of the year, they follow Star Date Time, or something. When it’s 2 pm on a Saturday at my house, apparently at his it’s 317 years in the future. And Tuesday.

At one point my daughter lived in Oregon and my son in Illinois. Not a day went by when I knew which one was waking up and which one was tying his shoes.

When my son moved from Chicago to Japan, I simply gave up.

Then my husband came to my rescue. He told me if I add three hours to whatever time it is at my house, then flip the a.m. and p.m., that’s Okinawa time.

Even though I don’t hear from my son as much as I’d like, I find it quite comforting to check the time and know it’s 3 a.m. and he’s safely tucked in. (Shut up. I do too know that! Safely. Tucked. In.) Or that it’s 10:30 a.m. and he’s busily working.

But I still haven’t caught up with my dad. I don’t know where he is on Tuesdays in the future.