Amazon Adventures

I lost the Five Crowns championship to Tim last night, and I’m not happy about it.

The only thing different about being in my Third Third is that I’m still a sore loser, but I’m a self-aware sore loser. I know that it was “just a game” and that it was more a matter of chance rather than skill. I know that I still love my husband and that I’ll probably play games with him again. I know that playing games is way more fun than doing dishes, shoveling the driveway, or sitting and moping…

But maybe it’s time to retire Five Crowns for a while and pull out the Rummikub [pronounced rummy-cube] again. I’d never heard of Rummikub, but I read an interview with someone famous, and she said her family played endless games of it. Then I received newsletters with stories about Rummikub and its Jewish origins. Suddenly, Rummikub was everywhere. Rummikub may have been the top-selling U.S. game in 1977 – there are international Rummikub championships! – but I’d never heard of it.

I had to check it out on Amazon.

The thing about Amazon is The Choice. It brings out the worst in my Conscientious Consumer self. I have to read every description for every variety, every review. If I am about to make consider a Purchase, it has to be the Right One. Do I want the Original Version, the Deluxe Version, or the Classic Version???

I am not alone. Rummikub’s Amazon Q&A are filled by people like me. There are more than 3,114 Rummikub customer reviews!

Reading the reviews on Amazon is only a bit like reading the online comments on newspaper articles. No, they’re not evil-spirited – people are trying to help you make the best purchase – but yes, they give you an insight into the reviewer’s personality.

So what would you say about this reviewer:

I’ve been playing Rummikub for 30 years with my grandmother’s (now mother’s) beloved set of what feel like (but isn’t) solid ivory tiles, with engraved numbers, heavy, easy to maneuver and pick up. [This one is] absolute junk. … I was looking for another heirloom set – I am so disappointed every time we play that it is almost ruining the game for me.

And despite what you may think about that reviewer, would you still want to buy that version of the game?

The big deal apparently has to do with the tiles. Are they substantial? Can you distinguish the colors? Do the numbers last? One Rummikub has red and orange numbered tiles and it’s hard to tell them apart. Another has blue and green numbered tiles and it’s hard to tell them apart. One version doesn’t have recessed numbers on the tiles so they rub off, and one makes it hard to tell 6s from 9s.

Oh, no! This is the harbinger of hours and hours of product reviews. If sets become “beloved” and “heirlooms” to pass down to the next generation, it has to have the right numbers!

Or does it? This reviewer won’t let anything ruin the game for her:

My elderly mother and her neighbors couldn’t distinguish the yellow tiles very well so they painted over the yellow with a green magic marker – probably a Sharpie. Lasted for years. If the colors start chipping on yours, just keep painting with Sharpie or magic marker.

When my siblings “ruined” a Scrabble game because someone noticed that one of the Ds was dark (D Dark), we just put all the pieces in a bag and had to draw them blind. That same paper bag has been in the box for 50 years. It’s an heirloom.

Ultimately, I checked out the Rummikub LARGE Numbers Edition. They corrected the orange problem, the flimsy racks problem, the wouldn’t-it-be-smart-to-have-a-tile-bag problem, but it’s the LARGE numbers on LARGE tiles that scored the hit:

“Nice large tiles – you don’t have to search for reading glasses when you play.”

“It’s easy to learn and convenient to handle (unlike cards which many seniors cannot shuffle or deal out).” Who knew?

Baby Boomer market influence! I bought it, I love it! I’ll challenge Tim to a game tonight.

Barbara vs. the Machines (Round 3)

Victory!

Victory over technology! I fought the scanner and I won! (It just took a few rounds, but I’m back.)

There are three things that can cause stress and anxiety in my life, and the last two weeks have been the perfect storm of all three:

• Logistics (as in flight arrangements, tickets, and lodging)
• Income Taxes and other Bureaucratic Forms
• Inexplicable Technological Failures

All three conspired to make blogging difficult, but it was the last that made it impossible. The first made me a basket case, the second amplified the hysteria, and the last left me vibrating.

The Logistics Nightmare
       I scored Hamilton tickets on Broadway. Through an elaborate process of being designated a Ticketmaster “verified fan” (meaning I don’t scalp tickets), receiving a secret code at 4 a.m. Alaska time, and getting online with a bazillion others; I scored Hamilton tickets. I was going to take another month in Manhattan.

Which, of course, meant Logistics. I began with Airbnb, which meant hours of looking at other people’s apartments. I had never used Airbnb before and I was haunted by things like this:

Less than three days’ notice! Yikes, yikes, yikes! So after I found a lovely spot, I emailed back and forth with the host, seeking reassurance that she’d never do anything like that. She promised.

And then she did it. After I’d already matched my flights to her dates.

Okay, that’s worth some tension. That’s worth about five more hours on the Internet and more emails with prospective hosts, seeking reassurance (in a situation that offers no reassurance). The most I could achieve – until I show up in Manhattan and get a key for an actual apartment – is temporary relief. So we move on to:

Income Taxes and other Bureaucratic Forms (such as Medicare enrollment)
       I went to an information session, I ordered explanatory booklets, I talked to friends. I was ready. I signed up.

And then the bill came: $402 dollars when everyone else is only paying $134! $402 a month is $4,824 a year. That is more than I’ve ever paid for health care. My budget is blown!

I phone friends, I Google things. I freak out (because, of course, I’m already in the midst of the Logistics Nightmare). Only much later do I see that the bill is quarterly.

But then assorted IRS documents show up in the mail. In my efforts to declutter financial accounts, I now have to research things like “basis” and “automatic reinvestment” and the inches-thick file I have on an account I’ve had since I was 23.

I haven’t even faced this problem. At this point, I’m so notched up – didn’t I just return from vacation?!? – that it’s even interfering with my ability to avoid, to zone out with Netflix.

Inexplicable Technological Failures
       But our Internet has suddenly become so slow that a single Netflix show is buffered 17 times. Watch for a minute, wait for a minute. Watch for a minute, wait for a minute. The Internet Service Provider says nothing has changed; they continue to deny reality. They change our password.

Now the HP printer-scanner won’t scan. It needs the new password, but it tells me:

What does that mean?!? I turn to the HP Support Forums … again. If I were to make my contribution to the world, I would re-do Support Forums. This is how they work: random person has a problem, random person poses a question, not-so-random people pose solutions. Many, many people have my same problem, and they all post the question so there are zillions of the identical question. The not-so-random people who answer only answer the one they see, so you end up with zillions of potential solutions which are hidden like needles in a haystack.

Let’s say my problem shows up 57 times. Answerer #28 answers Questioner #47 and Questioner #47 says it works. Hooray! Except that Answerer #28’s answer is buried underneath Problems #1-57, and those other Answerers were wrong, communicated in Klingon, or missed the point. But you have to look at ALL of them, try ALL of them until you happen to stumble upon Questioner #47. Where you discover that you must have been given a WPA2 security protocol with a WPA2 password … and your printer-scanner was manufactured before they invented WPA2! The Internet guy says, “Whoa, your scanner is OLD!”

No, it’s just in its Third Third.

Time for Nothing

At first, I panicked.

Tim and I had just arrived in Caye Caulker in Belize by water taxi. The roads are dirt, and there is very little town. But there is also very little beach. In fact, there is no beach, no surf. You access the water off docks.

I leave Alaska desperate for daylight and warmth, and the second I actually arrive in sun and warmth, I realize sun and warmth is usually too sunny and too hot and that’s why I live in Alaska. Where will I hide from the sun? How will I get in the water?

I had three library books, four crossword puzzles, and a pack of Five Crowns (the card game). I had no laptop and two whole weeks.

This is the stuff of terror. The terror of … Nothing. Capital-N Nothing. No body-surfing, few little shops to explore, oh-my-god, I should have brought more books! What would I DO?!?

I realize it is hard to feel sympathy for a person who’s facing two weeks in Belize, but Caye Caulker seemed so EMPTY compared to our last time in Belize on the mainland. There are only three roads, no cars, and 14 days just LOOMED in front of me. (One week would have been enough; why did we decide on TWO?!)

And then it rained. The wind roared, slamming rain against all the windows. Thank goodness we were in a lovely guest house with a living room or we would have felt trapped in a cell. No one ventured out. We were all confined to quarters.

Well, at least the rain meant I didn’t have to worry about the sun.

Little by little, we discovered … activities. We kayaked around the island, bicycled, snorkeled, tossed bean bags into holes. We discovered the little bakery and went there every day for the cookie with the jam spot (me) and the cookie with the chocolate spot (Tim). The lunch special at Happy Lobster restaurant – stewed chicken with dirty rice, cole slaw, and plantains – was so good, I could have it every day. Most days, I did.

We would sit on the porch of Happy Lobster and spend hours on our Coke Zeros, people-watching, and playing Five Crowns. There is NO LIMIT to the number of Five Crowns games you can play when you’re sitting at the Happy Lobster and just … sitting.

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

Nothing means that a visit to the bakery, a walk down to the Split to jump in the water, maybe buying some bananas from the fruit lady, maybe having a conversation with folks who turn out to be from the place you used to live in New Jersey, fills your whole day. And then you take a shower which is beyond pleasurable because you are hot and sticky, and cleanliness is so totally delicious you revel in it like it’s heaven. Showers are a wonder of the world; showers are worth swooning over.

The days are filled with less and less but are filled more and more. A big excursion is to find the place where seahorses hang out. That can take hours … and it’s only a five-minute walk away. No wonder the motto of Caye Caulker is “Go Slow.”

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

It rains every day, but you realize that as long as you’re in a bathing suit, it doesn’t matter. It is perfectly easy to swim in the rain, even to get caught in a downpour in a bathing suit.

And when you made a mistake and left the umbrella at the ice cream lady, your to-do list the next day is only “walk down to ice cream lady.” If she’s not there till 4, somehow your day moves along till 4. Maybe you were watching seahorses or pelicans or wondering why the mud on that one road is green, and next thing you knew, it was 4:00.

Because Nothing expands to fill the time available.

Now that I’m back in the land of This Thing and That Thing and Too Many Other Things, I appreciate the true value of Nothing. I need to keep it in my life.

Her and I can't be friends.

Her and I can’t be friends.

Oh, there are so many reasons why! First of all, her can never be the subject of a sentence. That’s reserved for she. Her can only be an object, as in “I’m not friends with her.” Secondly, her and I can’t do things together. They can’t appear in a sentence together like that. Ever.

If there’s her, then her friend has to be me. “Mary went to the store with her and me.” Both objects.

Only “she and I can be friends.” Subjects together. Happily.

I promised here, once before, that I do NOT correct other people’s grammar. But this is a story about being in my Third Third and suddenly confronting a revolution in the English language.

It’s everywhere! In movies, on radio, on TV: “Her and I went on vacation.” “Him and I missed the bus.” But this is the real horror: I shared this discovery with my daughter, who prides herself on her grammar, too. And she said, “I say that, too. I’d never use it in writing, but I do use it in spoken English. Sometimes I even say, ‘Me and her went out to eat.’”

Aiiiieeee! Me and her can’t do that!

Am I failing to evolve?

Why am I suddenly feeling like the supports of civilization are crumbling? I could handle it when Mick Jagger cried, “I can’t get no satisfaction!” No part of me wanted to counter, “Mick, it should be ‘I can’t get any satisfaction.’” It was a song lyric; it wasn’t spoken English. It’s to dance to, not to talk like. It’s not role-model English.

But role-model English appears to be right up there with walking to school and penmanship.

Am I showing my Third Third-ism?

I have another one: explainer. “Explainer” made its appearance and rapidly multiplied like rabbits. Even on NPR, they introduce “explainers” to clarify something that’s in the news. The explainer is not a person; the explainer is the explanation. See? There was a perfectly good word – explanation. If you don’t understand gravitational waves, then you just need an explanation, not some new-fangled explainer.

Listen to me! Soon I’m going to be talking about the length of skirts.

Speaking of which, didn’t women learn that miniskirts were a restrictive, restraining hassle requiring too much squirming and readjusting – why did they come back again? But I digress….

I know that we don’t say “thee” and “thou” in regular old English anymore. I know that languages change over time. I know Shakespeare invented a ton of words, and Lewis and Clark misspelled mosquito a dozen different ways. I have no problem with changes to their English, but this is my English. Am I upholding standards … or failing to evolve?

Some of my supposedly good English could be wrong. Like how I spent almost my whole lifetime thinking that dilemma was spelled dilemna, with an “n” like condemn. I shudder to think of places I must have used that. I bet I even argued with someone about it. I bet I even taught someone else my version!

A few years back, I started noticing the word woken in books, when I thought the only right way to say it was awakened. Who would ever say “You have woken the patient” rather than “You have awakened the patient”?

Turns out there are really four different verbs about opening your eyes after sleeping: awake, wake, awaken, and waken. When things go into origins in Old English, ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ verbs, transitive and intransitive, my eyes glaze over. I have my grammar limits. Ultimately, they advise going with what sounds right. Like, for instance, only woken or woke can go with up. One person suggested he “would go with ‘I was done woke up by that there alarm clock.’”

I laughed at that because it’s a joke. Because it’s funny.

Me and him might have the same sense of humor.

A Royal Scandal

Looking at the world doesn’t take too much consciousness. You look, you see, you move on to some other view. Unless it’s spectacular or very detailed or you have some other reason to inspect it. Maybe you’re looking for a splinter in your toe.

I don’t look at my clothes too closely unless I’m looking for a stain. I don’t look at my dishes unless I’m checking if the dishwasher cleaned them okay. I look at the clock, but I don’t examine the clock. I barely notice the clock.

Have you looked at a deck of cards lately?

Last month’s challenge for my Bricolage group was “playing cards.” I was going to turn rectangular rocks into playing cards, and I did.

But first I had to copy from a playing card. I pulled out the box I keep the decks of cards in. Wow, I had no idea how many I’d thrown in over time! My family used to play Spit, and each person needed their own identifiable deck so the played cards could be counted. Back then, the airlines used to give out decks during flights. I had 21 decks of cards, and that didn’t even count the Go Fish and Old Maid decks! I have Northwest Orient, Delta, Alaska, United, and Hawaiian Airlines decks. I have Carnival Cruise, FedEx, and British Air, too. I even have Peter Dunlap-Shohl’s White House of Cards and Idaho Authors (and no idea where that last came from).

Yes, I’m decluttering. Cannibalizing, too.

I pulled out the face cards, the Jack, the Queen, and the Kings. This time, in order to paint them, I had to examine them. If you’re a regular old face card, you are bored to tears if not clinically depressed. Your face is SO SAD. Your clothes are bright and colorful, but your eyebrows are sad and there are bags under your eyes. Your eyes are … blank.

But I was looking closely, and that’s when I saw that a Jack isn’t a Jack isn’t a Jack. Two of them have mustaches, and two don’t! Jack of Hearts is holding a feather, and Jack of Spades is holding some sort of wand (or scepter or rattle). And they’re not looking in the same direction: Jack of Hearts looks hard right, Jack of Spades looks hard left, and the two others sort of lean to the sides.

Now for the big discovery: all the queens look to the right except the Queen of Spades. She looks left. Her husband, the King of Spades looks left, too. So they can never look at each other! Meanwhile, the King of Diamonds can only look hard right, so he and his queen can never look at each other, either.

The only queen’s eyes the King of Diamonds can look into are in the face of the Queen of Spades.

Do you see the scandal brewing?

The King of Diamonds is the only king extending his hand. Is he reaching for the Queen of Spades???

There’s trouble in the royal court! (And all this boldface type shows just how excited I got.)

Now, while all the royalty look the same from deck to deck, the jokers are entirely different. Some are clowns, and some are harlequins. Some are in disguise, some are on bicycles, and one is an Asian juggler. All these jokers, and the royals still look so exceedingly glum.

There’s a story there, and I couldn’t resist telling it. I made it into a book.

Things just get more interesting when they’re noticed. All sorts of things.

Do you know which king is the only one without a mustache?

Contentment Lurks

Let me introduce myself. A therapist once told me I was an Enneagram 4. She said 4s look at a room and say it would be beautiful with a chair over in that corner, and that’s absolutely true as 4s add creativity, but 4s tend to focus on what’s missing. That’s all I know about enneagrams and 4s. I also know I’m a Pisces/Aries cusp, for whatever that’s worth. I also know I’m bipolar. And it’s dark outside.

So mostly, I live in a world of lots of unlimited possibilities that feel impossible. I collide with things and events, try inadequately, do them wrong, and mostly don’t fit. I can find my way into a profound depression at the drop of a hat and spend most of my time working my way out of one. With tiny bursts of elation in between. My glass is often half empty … unless it’s overflowing.

But every now and then,

once in a while,

just occasionally,

simple contentment settles in me.

Sophie, the adult daughter, was in town. She’d raved about a book, and I put a hold on it at the library. When it came in, she said, “Let’s go to the library, get the book. Now.” We did. It’s a 700-page book! (Who reads a 700 page book?!? Oh, no. Another insurmountable chore...)

We came home. She went into the living room.

I did laundry.

“Where are you?”

“I’m putting things away.”

“Where are you now?”

“Just washing up.”

“Where are you NOW??? Come into the living room and read with me.”

I did.

“What page are you on? Don’t you like it?”

I did! We sat in the living room and read.

The next day we had friends over. We had LOTS of friends over. (4ish Barbara said, “Oh, no, there won’t be enough food.” Judith, my role model who looks at life through the prism of abundance, said, “There’ll be enough food. Friends will bring.” Judith is a miracle of non-4.)

Long after our friends left and Tim and I were putting away LOTS of food, the twenty-somethings were still playing and laughing in the living room. Laughter rocked the house. Sophie turned to us and said, “This was a great party!” It was. I am part of a community, and that community was in our house (even though I wasn’t a very good hostess because I was distracted a lot of the time).

That night, I couldn’t sleep. Sophie had gone out and hadn’t come home. I worried. I thought of that nightmare that always peeks around the corner.

In the morning, she said she’d gotten in earlier. I hadn’t heard her.

Tim and I took her to the airport. She’s off to her own New Year’s Eve party. We’ll see her in March.

I lay down on the couch. The couch that Deena had noticed at the party and said it must be heaven to lie on that couch and read. It is my spot. I pulled out the book. (I’m on page 300 now.)

I looked around at the living room and didn’t see the plants that need trimming, the old videos that need culling, the pillow that needs repair. I didn’t fret that I should be exercising or out in the air, that I hadn’t written or painted in a while.

I looked at my living room, and it looked like home. A home with scraggly plants, old videos, and a torn pillow. (And although I thought about all the refugees without homes, I didn’t WORRY about them right then and there.)

I let contentment in.

I lay there – with that book – in the right place for me in that moment. The universe was good, I was in it, and I fit.

Tomorrow I won’t fit, but today, I remember that I did.

Happy New Year.

Adventures in Guy-land

It all started with a broken rivet for the strap on my Crocs.

Apparently, Croc used to mail out replacement rivets for free, but not any more. Maybe I’d just have to glue the strap in place. But then I found this nice guy on YouTube.

He said I just had “to go down to my home improvement center and buy a bag of … Chicago bolts.” I asked Tim (the holder of countless little plastic boxes of nuts and bolts and screws) if he had Chicago bolts. He looked it up on Google and said, “Oh, sex bolts.” Well, I guess so. One end does screw into the other end. No, he didn’t have them.

So off I went to Home Depot. Where I confronted the hardware aisle with its zillion little bags and drawers of nuts and bolts and screws (Oh, my!). [Aside: when Eagle Hardware first came to Anchorage, Tim walked in, spotted the hardware zone, and dubbed the place “Doodad Heaven.”] I had no idea where to begin searching this Doodad Heaven.

One guy looked like he knew his nuts and bolts and screws. I asked, and he pointed me to some drawers. When that proved fruitless, he recommended Fire and Fastener. Another guy, down the aisle, called out, “Yeah, Fire and Fastener.” So did a third, a Home Depot employee. I didn’t even understand what they were saying: Did I have to fire something? Did he say First or Near? They were in the hardware aisle; they mumbled.

Finally, they clarified. Fire and Fastener was a store on International Airport Road. I’d never heard of it. They named stores it was near, but I’d never heard of them either. So off I went to … Guy-land!

Guy-land – that stretch of International Airport Road – is full of stores where most women never cross their threshold. (Of course, that’s where The Bush Company is.) I had to stop in at Young’s Gear Driveshaft Specialists (past Motion Industries and Alaska Bearing) to ask where Fire and Fastener was. Entering a Guy-land business is like entering a magical, foreign world.

Last year, I’d needed a replacement washer for my backpack. At a Guy-land little shop, the guy at the counter found one, took off my bent one, struggled to get the new one on, and said, “No charge.” This is what happens in Guy-land. Guy-land is a world of solutions! There are doodads to solve every problem and guys who know their doodads.

John in Fire and Fastener was no different. He pointed me to the exact little plastic bins with Chicago bolts (one for the screw and one for the home, the “male” and “female”): #128 and #134 (in case your Crocs have a broken rivet, too). He got a screwdriver and helped me screw it in. It was a little wobbly.

Randy, behind the counter, said, “Washer, John,” and John ran in the back room to come back with an OSP. It fit the Croc indent perfectly. They were very proud of themselves. Randy said, “Y’know, we call this a sex bolt.” “I know,” I said. “My husband taught me that.”

“How much?” I asked. “No charge,” they said. How does a place like that stay in business? These guys gave me personalized attention for a long time. John even took me on a tour of their Guy-land wonders. There was a whole wall of carabiners and springs and pulleys, spools of wires of all different colors. Multicolored plastic tubes of all sizes.

I was gushing about some of my favorite Guy-land stores – Alaska Rubber is a total treat, especially their remnants – and I wanted to mention the store that saved my backpack, but I couldn’t remember its name. I could describe the layout perfectly. I searched the Yellow Pages, went in and out of stores that might be it, but no luck. Finally, I checked my diary. Last year, on June 1, I got my washer at … Fire and Fastener.

I would worry – really worry – about my memory, but I think it was the magic of Guy-land. When you enter an alternate reality, you don’t come all the way back.