Zia's Fables in Two Tales, or Lessons Learned

On "Trying To Do The Right Thing:"

Yesterday, we finally, finally cleared the last bits of leftover stuff from the basement, remnants of the moving out the renovation, the moving in, the thinning out. Seth loaded them all up in the Jeep so I could take them to Goodwill. A few boxes of books, a box or two of clothes and odd housewares, a lamp, two maple barstools.

It was drizzling when I got to Goodwill. The folks there helped me sort out the boxes into their proper places, and pointed me around the corner where I could take the furniture. I pulled up, and a guy with a not-happy expression looked up at me. "Hi. I have a few pieces of furniture? I have these two barstools..." I pulled them out of the car. Now, the barstools were maple with woven rattan seats, and were in near- perfect condition: not a mar, not a scratch, not broken, not damaged in any way. They had, however, been stored in various spots around the house during the renovation, and there was some dust on them. Seth had wiped some of it off when we loaded them in the car, but yes, they were still a little dusty. The man eyeballed them with a look of disgust and delicately touched the dust on one barstool seat with a finger. I said "It's just some dust. They've been in storage." He said, his voice increasing in volume with each word, "We can't take things like this. I can't believe people bring things like this to us in this kind of condition. It's disrespectful to the people who are going to get it. I don't know if we can take these, I mean, you're lucky we have this truck here (gesturing to a moving van) so maybe I can take them and throw them out. Maybe this one time I can take them, but you can't bring things in this kind of condition. It's disrespectful." I stood there with my mouth open, and finally managed to stammer, "I'm sorry...I didn't know...it's just some dust...I didn't know...." I almost started rooting around in my car for a rag, to take the 30 seconds to wipe off the dust that it would have taken to put the chairs in pristine condition. "And we can't take that lamp," he added. I got in my car, and almost hit a post trying to drive out of the Goodwill lot, because my hands were shaking. I took a wrong exit going home, because my stomach was knotted up and I felt like crying. What had I done wrong? Had I really been disrespectful? I thought of the beat-up furniture I'd gotten in thrift shops and from the newspaper in college and law school, and the elbow grease and paint it had taken to put some of it in usable condition. I'd used some of that furniture for years, before I could afford better. I thought of the dust on the upper floors of some of the "antique" shops on Magazine Street in New Orleans, where you were welcome to hunt through the maze of mismatched bedframes and battered dressers for a prize. I couldn't believe I had just been chastised, belittled, dressed down, for giving something away that was in very good condition.

I have concluded that my mistake was in trying to do something charitable, to give away something in good, usable condition, to just give it away for no money. Next time, I'm braving the nutballs on Craig's List, and having them come to me and give me cold cash for my perfectly good stuff. No good deed goes unpunished.

On "Very Stupid Stupidity and Restoring Faith In Humanity"

This morning, I drove to a local running path along the Potomac for a change of scene. Helene fell asleep on the drive. Trying to be quiet, I got the jogger and all my gear out of the car. I then gently lifted the carseat out and snapped it into place on the jogging stroller. I hit the "lock" button on my car key remote to lock the doors, and started my run, moving smoothly out of the parking lot to keep the baby lulled to sleep.

It was refreshing to run somewhere different, and I passed other jogging stroller moms, regular stroller moms, women running with dogs, cyclists, and whole families out for a walk or a bike ride. It wasn't too hot yet, though the humidity was starting to creep in from the water. I reached my turnaround point, and ran back towards the car. Perhaps half a mile from the parking lot, a fit, middle aged woman with a long blond ponytail and an American bulldog on a leash passed me. I remembered her from the way out, and remembered how the jingle of her dog's tags was as good as a bicycle bell for letting you know someone was passing. She passed me again, and I thought enviously that she was probably a woman who could somehow afford to stay home all the time, since she was out running with her dog at 10:30 am on a Monday.

I got to the parking lot, and realized the car next to me was running, so I approached cautiously, so the driver would see me. To my surprise, he called out to me when I got to the car, "Hey, ma'am, I think you left your door open!" And indeed, the rear driver's side door was wide open. Me: "Oh my gosh, I did. I completely forgot. I'm sorry - let me close it and get it out of your way. I was just thinking about too many things." He said, "I was worried about whoever was in this car, because the door was just open, and I didn't know what happened." Then the woman who'd been running with the dog pulled up in her car, and said "He's been waiting for you to come back, to make sure you were OK." I was almost speechless. "Thank you." I said to the woman. Then the man in the car spoke again. "I could see that you had a baby, because of the carseat. I was worried. I was asking people who came along if they knew whose car it was, if they'd seen someone with a baby. Then that lady back there came along, and she said she'd passed someone with a baby about half a mile back. So I decided to wait for you. She said maybe you just forgot to close your car door." I thanked the man again, profusely, explaining that yes, I had just forgotten to close the door. "Thank you so much. That was so nice of you to wait. I was just thinking about too many things. Thanks."

The man finally pulled out, waving at me. I couldn't believe I'd been so stupid, so preoccupied as to leave the car door open. I even locked the car with the remote with the door standing open. Oh well - if someone really wanted my diaper bag (containing diapers, nursing cover, pink onesie, Desitin and hand sanitizer), a canvas shopping bag, a yoga mat, some jumper cables, or a bungie cord, they were all set. But amazingly, no one had taken anything from the car. I had been gone for forty minutes. I don't know how long that man sat there, waiting, watching. I don't know where else he had to be today. I just know I am grateful and surprised and amazed and delighted at how people can do the right thing when you least expect it.

Technical Difficulties

I know, I know, there's nothing new on here. It's not really my fault. I swear.

Sometime after we got our beloved Mac PowerBook a couple of years ago, we started calling it "The Baby." As in: "Where's The Baby?" "Is The Baby charged up?" "Can I play with The Baby?" "Are we bringing The Baby on vacation?" You are probably relieved to know that we have mostly stopped doing that, since there is an actual, human, in-utero baby on her way. We do occasionally now call the PowerBook "The First Baby."

Sadly, our First Baby (the sleek, white plastic one with the embossed Apple on its forehead) is in the Apple Infirmary. Two trips to the Genius Bar, one replaced battery, and one replaced logic board did not solve the mysterious fan-running-loud-and-overtime, overheating, rapid battery-draining, and screen freezing that's been going on for a couple of weeks. So, our preshus laptop has been shipped off for more serious repairs. We're all worried, let me tell you. We do have a hard drive, with all our data backed up. Except that I wake up in the middle of the night with neurotic thoughts that something is wrong with the hard drive too! Which are not rational, of course, but probably just an excuse to worry about something other than the bigger things like, say uh, BABY and HOUSE RENOVATION.

So, we've been sans Mac for many long days now. We also had an internet service outage a couple of weeks ago, caused by a lightning-zapped dead modem. The modem is up and running. Just no Mac. Sigh. We've also suspended our DirectTV service during the renovations, so we are pretty disconnected with the civilized world. I get a little panicky when I think about all the new Deadliest Catch and Daily Show episodes I'm missing. At least the Olympics are on network TV right now, a media form which I'd quite forgotten about since being introduced to the wonders of satellite and Tivo. Between our new HDTV adaptor and antenna and our BlackBerries, we're managing to survive. So don't worry about us. Except that there are a lot of evenings ahead of huddling in our bedroom (the only habitable part of the house) with take-out burritos and new episodes of The Biggest Loser. So if you do happen to have the complete DVD set of Buffy The Vampire Slayer to loan out, I wouldn't turn it down.

Woolworths Merchandising Geniuses Evidently Didn't Take Many Literature Courses

Thanks to the power women at Broadsheet for finding this one.

In England, the Woolworths department stores recently withdrew a line of bedroom furniture for little girls named (wait for it) LOLITA.

Yes, really.

The Woolworths staff were "baffled by the fuss." "A spokesman for the company told The [London] Times: 'What seems to have happened is the staff who run the website had never heard of Lolita, and to be honest no one else here had either. We had to look it up on Wikipedia. But we certainly know who she is now.'"

A mother who had been browsing the Woolworths website commented on a parenting website: “Am I being particularly sensitive, or does anyone else out there think it’s bad taste for Woolies to have a kiddy bed range named ‘Lolita’?.”

The London Times goes on to explain (in perfect, understated snark): "For the benefit of any other Woolworths staff, Lolita was the 12-year-old girl who became the object of her middle-aged stepfather’s sexual obsession in the literary classic of the same name. Thanks to the novel the name has come to represent sexual precociousness in young girls."

Call me an ivory tower dweller, elitist literati, whatever, but I'm pretty appalled that not one person at Woolworths got the "Lolita" reference. I'll chalk this one up as one more sign of the decline of modern civilization (along with the fact that "The Bachelor" is still airing new episodes).

Office Snark

It's been a snarky day in the office. But you cannot make this crazy shit up, people.

The Magical Disappearing Kitchen
9:30 a.m. - One of our administrative assistants (let's call her Shirley) apparently gets lost trying to find the kitchen. We have only been in this building for three and a half months. I can see how finding the kitchen might still be hard, especially when it is that long 25 feet from your cubicle. Shirley also has a habit of wandering around the office talking to herself at high volume, which is how my colleague ANW collected these gems:

E-mail from ANW:

“I need some coffee!!!”
“Oooh, where AM I?”
“WHERE’S the kitchen???!” (I could hear her voice coming from the end of my little hallway, right next to the door to the kitchen!)
She then walked by my office, coffee pot in hand, and declared “I just get so lost in this place!!”

Eve (another admin. assistant): "Shirley, I hear you."

Shirley: "Eve, I'm over here!"


Eve (walking towards Shirley and “finding” her somewhere near the mailboxes, which are about 15 feet from the kitchen): “Why are you taking the long way home?”
Shirley: “I just get so lost!!"

******

A Turkey. Really. A Real Turkey.

Next, I get an e-mail from a colleague in Boston about how the local "pet" wild turkey, "Mr. Gobbles" has traded his Volpe Center residence on Broadway in Cambridge (we believe he was attending MIT) for the quieter life of the suburbs after getting clipped by a car.

"For the past five years, Gobbles had taken up residence at the Volpe Transportation Center, mostly looking at his reflection in pick-up trucks parked in the center's parking lot, chasing squirrels, and pecking at whatever he felt like."

But that's not all. There is a VIDEO TRIBUTE to Mr. Gobbles, put together by one of the Volpe employees. It's....um....touching. Or something.

***

And back to the kitchen......

Do people in the kitchen not realize that if they sing while in the kitchen WE CAN HEAR IT?

Just being in the kitchen does not render you (a) invisible or (b) silent, even if it is a Magical Disappearing Kitchen.

And, in case you were wondering, the kitchen acoustics do not (c) make you a good singer.

(I just have a thing against singing in the office - I just don't think you should. At all. Ever. Inappropriate. I think I was scarred by a previous work experience where the person who sat in the next cube would sing gospel and hymns kinda loud and kinda a lot, plus some pretty fervent loud praying of the -I'm-going-to-swoon-in-the-church-aisle-and-fall-down-twitching-because-the-spirit-has-MOVED-me type. Which made me want to fall down twitching from sheer discomfort. And Believer cooties - ewww! Gack!)

Fantastic Headline

"'Gilligan's' Mary Ann Caught With Dope"

Nice job, NY Times. Just the right mix of sleazy tabloid and pop culture reference to more innocent times. I just knew the Professor was making meth in coconut shells. That's why they could never manage to get off of the island - they were all too high and drinking too much of Mr. Howell's bathtub gin to turn their talents to something more useful like a raft. Poor Mary Ann just never kicked the drug habit, and has used it to comfort her all these years about never getting the Professor.

Update: A friend of mine just called to tell me he found one that said "Mary Ann and Mary Jane." Brilliant.

Stupid Muggles

By now, you've probably heard about the killjoy dimwit who apparently photographed every single page of the soon-to-be-released final Harry Potter book, "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," and posted it on the internet. A few more idiots then re-posted it elsewhere, and Scholastic is trying its best to get all the posts removed before the book is released at midnight on July 21.

All I have to say is that the person who originally photographed the book really, really, really needs to get a life. Come on - how long do you think that took? HOURS. At 700+ pages, even if you photograph two at once, that's over 350 photos. Then uploading, etc. If you can't think of anything better to do with your time than spoil the fun for everyone else, wow....it's on par with the morality and motivation of Kreacher the house elf. {I don't want to talk to you no more, you empty headed animal food trough wiper! I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!)

And if you were in China, well, OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!

As for me, I will indeed be lining up with all the 12-year olds at midnight on Friday to get two copies of this long-awaited book - one for me, one for my husband, so we won't fight over it. I'm so conflicted - I can't wait to find out what happens, but I don't want it to end either.

How to tell if your dog is fat

Because you can't tell if your little hairy knockwurst with legs is fat by just looking at him. So guess what - there's a gadget! From Japan, of course.

Thanks to The Machinist for finding this gem.