The Art of Lashing…Now We Be Ready To Sail

I know I promised  you all the adventure of driving somewhere unfamiliar and shopping in a store that had labels in another language. It still sounds like a good exercise to fight Brain Drain and help me sleep.  (By the way, I’m not having those work-all-night dreams anymore,  but I still wake long before sunrise.)

I began my groggy day by building a stupendous Powerpoint presentation using only my left hand on the mouse (like I promised).  Well….maybe it’s not so fantastic-looking because  I’m convinced there is no connection between my brain and the fingers on my left hand. It was taking  ten to twenty minutes to custom build each slide when it should have only taken 3-5 minutes. I believe those new synapses must have been trying to drill through cement in in my gray matter.

So you can understand that when Scout stuck his head in the door and shouted, “We need your help hauling  poles!”  I ran away from the computer like a woman escaping a diet farm.

That’s how I ended up learning how to build a 30 foot flag pole this afternoon. I learned clove hitches and how lash a tripod.  I’m a bit insulted that Scout declared my frapping too loose.  (Think of rows of rope woven and coiled around the tops of 3 logs. I was supposed to haul on each wrap with my full body weight–but I was a slacker).  Scout made me take it apart and do it again along with the  Tenderfoots.

I grumbled. The rope had already abraded my fingertips until they were smooth and grooveless.  I threw my body into the next attempt. Feet against the poles, I heaved until the wood screamed. They tested my couplings by having a Chuck-Norris-type-guy  thump, kick and hang off my tripod.  I passed.

I’m not sure if learning to frap and lash stimulated my brain as much as the wicked left-handed mouse, but I figure that if I’m ever a cast away with Tom Hanks on an island, I’ll be able to do my share.  And if the mast on your sailing vessel breaks…give me a call;  I can lash it, if you can hold it together.

The guys proclaimed my skills were sufficient enough to work on their trebuchet next, but I can’t…I’ve got a free Salsa class tomorrow.

No Hope in Reusable Grocery Bags

I know some of you come here for your zen moment. And I apologize in advance that it’s not going to happen with this posting.  If you need a positive moment, maybe you should go over to Laid Off Now What? Les is the most upbeat guy I know in the face of unemployment, but even the subject of reusable bags might knock him down.

Now I admit,  reusable bags save a lot of plastic trees and real trees too. I have 7 fiber bags and one nice plastic-coated one that I won at a “Sustainable Environment” show at the convention center.  I won it by knowing how much compost a pound of worms  could process in a day.  (Don’t hold your breath waiting for me to tell you, because I forgot. It was multiple choice and I happened to guess correctly.)  But the point is….I’m interested in doing my environmental share in case you were thinking  that I’m a complete eco-slob.

The problem with those dratted reusable bags is that they make my blood pressure spike.  My shopping trips begin as pleasant strolls through the aisles matching coupons to things that I need. Then I reach the check out and wait in line, and just when it’s MY turn. I remember those STOOOPID bags are still in the car.

“Paper or plastic?” the checker asks. Oooooh the guilt. Then then the irritation. What is this….the 50th time I’ve forgotten those bags?

“Just throw it all back in the cart. I’ll bag it standing at my trunk,” I reply.

Well, that was a lousy idea. Besides standing in the rain, getting wet, most of the people in the parking lot thought that I’d probably stolen a basket of groceries and wheeled it directly to my car.

I used to lament loudly over my bag-dementia. Folks with me  in the check-out line had lots of suggestions. Like a frantic victim looking for a cure. I’ve tried most of them:

• put them in your purse. (They’re huge. This only works if I’m carrying a gym bag as a purse.)
• put them in the front seat with you. (Nope. They blend in with all my other front seat essentials: Kleenex, Chapstick, mints, notebook, pens)
• set them on your dashboard. (I’m not a race car driver, but not even a hula doll with a suction cup will stay on my dashboard.)
• “I sit on them,” one overly eco-confident shopper bragged to me. (Well sitting on those scratchy little buggers would tick me off even more. I’m already kicking the pens, notebooks and sliding hula doll back into the car so I can close the door, now  I have to  fight with bags, too?

No way. Those bags have more evasive moves than Chuck Norris. They know when to collapse and go limp so you can’t stuff anything in them. They know when to take a dive and roll their contents under seats. They lure you with their roominess and then laugh when you can’t tote them with 18 pounds of kittly litter in them. Those bags are clever adversaries.

So I resolved there’s no hope for this situation—until last week. Last Tuesday,  I ambled across the parking lot and a sign over one of the cart “corrals” read: DID YOU REMEMBER YOUR BAGS?

Hot dog! Now that’s what I call a public service announcement.  I grabbed a bag out of the front-seat rubble and shopped with the smugness that sustainability experts  must experience—until I arrived at the check stand.

Somewhere in my aisle meanderings, I’d laid my bag down.

Who knows where?

I hate those bags.

Hope is Chuck Norris

Okay,

It’s time for a smile or two. I recently conducted a survey among my Scout Troop, asking the boys the following question:

In a fight between Jack Bauer and Walker, Texas Ranger who would win?

99% went with Chuck.

Impressive that the younger generation thinks a good roundhouse kick will beat all of Jack’s  techno widgety-whatchits.

Since this blog is about HOPE, My hope is that Chuck will return to Oklahoma, his birthplace, and forget all that Texas flapdoodle.

Until then, here’s a few things to make you smile during the dark hours of the night.

• Chuck Norris does not sleep; he waits.
• When the Boogey man goes to sleep everynight, he checks his closet for Chuck Norris
• China once bordered the U.S. until Chuck Norris rounhouse kicked it through the earth
• When Chuck Norris had surgery, the anesthesia was applied to the doctors
• Chuck Norris got a perfect score on his SAT by writing “Chuck Norris” for every answer.
• Chuck Norris sleeps with a night light, not because he’s afraid of the dark; because the dark is afraid of Chuck Norris
• If Chuck Norris had carried the RING to Mordor, then instead of saying “friend” to open the door to the Mines or Moria, Gandalf could have just said, “Chuck Norris.”