I’m going to rant for just a moment (well, just for THIS moment). I’ve just come back from the gym, and for the thousandth time, I’m wondering where the people who design clothing have left their brains. What I’m referring to is this issue of shorts.

It is a medical fact (depressing, but true) that women have cellulite, and that it’s pretty much impossible to NOT have, or get rid of, especially as time marches on. So explain to me why women’s shorts ACROSS THE BOARD tend to be short. And men, who have ZERO cellulite on their legs to speak of, have shorts that go down to their knees. WTH?

This isn’t even just workout clothing — this is everywhere. There’s nothing a woman likes more than a bathing suit — really shows off all that cottage cheese nicely, don’t you think? And men, who (at least in MY opinion) have quite a bit more real estate that is pleasant to look at, wear swim shorts so long that they can actually cover their knees.

Does this make ANY sense?

No. No, it doesn’t.

I have to say it — I don’t think guys who ride scooters are sexy at all. Not that they’re riding in order to be sexy, but it goes so solidly in the wrong direction that I don’t even know what to say. I know they do it all over Europe, and it’s starting to catch on here, but there’s something so WRONG about some guy with his knees up around his chin, driving something with a motor that technically could be used for a lawn mower. I know all about carbon footprints, and easy parking and blah, blah, blah, and yes, this is based solely on how it looks, and if you had buckets of confidence, you could ride anything you wanted, but from a pure “sexy” point of view? Doesn’t work. I don’t care if you’re riding something big enough that you’re in the left lane passing cars — the minute I see it’s a scooter, coolness points are lost. The smaller the scooter, the more points lost. I don’t care if it’s freakin’ Edward Cullen himself — he’s not getting a date with me. Even if I WAS single ;-)

I’m not overly keen on Harleys either, but not because they’re not cool, but because those people seem stupid for not wearing helmets. Points are lost for idiocy well ;-) Sport bikes, though? I swear those jackets just make those guys look even better than they probably look in real life. I see Will on our Ninja, wearing his padded jacket with the big shoulders and his butt firmly planted on the seat and it’s like I’m 17 again — it’s almost embarrassing. You know those studies they do where they release pheromones into the air and people remember that they have hormones and want to act accordingly? It’s like that.

This rant came about because today I saw this 6’2″ guy all squished onto a pink (PINK!) scooter (I had to actually turn my head to take another look to confirm the color), no helmet, of course, doing 20 mph down the street. He might have had the looks of (fill in your favorite studly movie star here) but I couldn’t drag my eyes away from the absurdity of it all. I’m actually really clear that I’m just going to have to suck it up because the trend is not reversing, by any means, but it just makes me sigh in disappointment and what could have been, had he been on a Ducati.

My mother always said that my mouth would get me in trouble. This became quite apparent in the public realm when, as a waitress at the age of 23, I told my manager at the Ruby Tuesday’s “F*** you!” for deciding arbitrarily to withdraw my vacation the day before I was supposed to leave (he didn’t like my attitude, imagine that). It seemed appropriate to swear at him, and not surprisingly, he fired me. But I could then go on my vacation, so I guess it worked out ;-)

My mom was actually super-strict about bad words — we got yelled at if we called each other “stupid”. When my mother swore, it was in German, and (translated) meant “thunder weather” or “thunder and lightening”. Not very hardcore. So imagine my surprise when, at age 12, the dog had an accident and my mom took one look at it and said, “Sh**!” I gaped at my mom in shock, and she looked at my face and said, “Well, that’s what it is, isn’t it?”. Not that we were allowed to say anything like that afterward, but that could have been the start of my decline. (hi mom!)

I have, since then, enjoyed an enthusiastic relationship with swearing, possibly encouraged by my growing up in NYC. I suspect that riding a bicycle for a couple of decades across stupidly long distances might have also contributed somewhat — I entered into a contest one day, while riding across the U.S., in, I’m pretty sure, Minnesota, about who could say the f-word the most. The man I was swearing with turned out to be a minister — when he told me, I told him he was full of sh**. Apparently it was true (the fact that he was a minister, not that he was full of sh**). He still swears quite freely when we chat on the phone. There’s something blissfully satisfying about being able to curse freely when uncomfortable, physically OR mentally.

And certain things are, of course, said at certain times. My cell phone dropping a call gets it’s own vehement “G**DAMMIT” which doesn’t get said anywhere else, and a particularly bad stubbing of the toe gets a very fervent “M*****f***er. The toe isn’t getting better all that much faster, but I DO feel (somewhat) better.

When I was in England a couple of weeks ago visiting my friend, I was helping her clean and we had to lift this ridiculously heavy radiator. After shifting it about an inch, she exhaled and said (in very proper English), “Bloody hell.” I commented that I usually added the f-word in the middle of that, and she laughed and said she usually did, too, but didn’t want to possibly offend. You never know, right? And yet, some people are up front about it, like the patient who asked me as she interviewed me on the phone, whether I’d have a problem with her saying the f-word. I knew we’d be friends after that.

While I try to rein it in in the presence of children, I have been known to occasionally forget that a 14-year old isn’t an adult, but pointing out that the “child” has probably heard these words before on their iPod doesn’t really cut it with the parents. Nor does thinking that a 1-year old doesn’t understand what I’m saying.

Far more interestingly, though, is wondering what expression people will have, when the 80-year old that I’ll be is freely expressing herself in no uncertain terms.

It’s been quiet here in blog-land because I went to England and Spain for a couple of weeks (all along the top coast to the top left corner of Spain) and decided it should be a REAL vacation that didn’t involve posting stuff for other people. Nothing personal ;-) ) Of course, it was a completely great time with a very great friend and her family and there were some very interesting observations to be had.

I went with my English pen pal who I’ve known since I was 11 years old (that’s a whole other story, but yes, we wrote real letters to each other and then finally met a few years later, and have been friends ever since) and since I’d never been to Spain before, the whole thing was quite an adventure.

For starters, we took a 24-hour ferry from the UK which was like a mini-cruise — little cabins, restaurants, bars, movie theater, etc. I was really wanting to see some whales and dolphins, but they must have all been on vacation as well. Driving off the ferry was when I had my first observation:

Which do you think is harder: (a) driving an English car on the right side of the road (Spain is like the U.S.) or (b) learning how to drive an English car on (what is for you) the correct side of the road? I’m thinking (a) but since we didn’t get into any accidents and I didn’t drive at all, it’s hard to say.

Anyway, we went right to the Guggenheim Bilbao museum, which was the one thing I had on my list to do while in Spain (leaving out, of course, eating, drinking Spanish wine, and laying in the sun). I grew up in NYC and went to all the big museums and got a little burned out as a kid, so museums are usually not the first place I seek out when I’m on vacation. But this on in particular had always seemed fascinating — for starters, there’s not a single flat surface except for the floor:

and it’s outside is made completely of glass, titanium (!) and limestone. In the front, it has a huge (like 50 feet high) puppy made out of flowers:

Anish Kapoor was one of the 3 artists showing there and he’s the one responsible for the Millenium Arch in Chicago:

And while he had some of his cool mirror exhibits there, he had a bunch of other interesting stuff, including a cannon that hurled red wax once an hour into the corner of a very white room:

and a few optical illusions, like this one where it simply looks like a huge painting of a ring of different yellows (in fact, the 11-year old with us said it looked like someone had simply set a giant coffee cup down and left a stain):

Which, if you move to the side of it, apparently is sunken in by several feet:

All in all, very cool. I felt pleasantly disoriented when I left ;-)

Then we simply visited small fishing villages, ate seafood, and explored the coast for a week. It was marvelous.

Spain has some fascination with Square Bob Spongepants, I noticed (although I was constantly saying Spongebob Squarepants, which IS technically accurate, actually, despite everyone correcting me):

One thing I noticed, though, was that it sounded like everyone had a lisp when they were speaking. They said “Grathias” and it made me laugh. Then yesterday, a friend who had gone to “Barthelona” told me that on a tour, a guide had told the group that the reason for the lisp was because as some point, there was a Spanish ruler with a lisp, and while the people mocked him by imitating him, he’s apparently gotten the last laugh.

Aside from occasional salted and cooked “pimientos”, there were no vegetables to be seen in a restaurant ANYWHERE. How these people came to be the world dominating force in cycling, tennis, soccer and Formula 1 this year without eating any vegetables is beyond me. But the seafood was unbelievable, since we were right on the coast.

This picture has everyone completely jealous of my trip, and I’ll make them all feel better by pointing out that you can’t see the 20 mph wind, and that the water is on the NORTH coast of Spain, and therefore VERY CHILLY. I went in anyway (because you can’t go to the coast of Spain and then not get in the water!) but soon after that, I had long pants and a sweatshirt on ;-)

And Spain wasn’t the only highlight! After we returned to the UK, we went hot-air ballooning, which is something I’ve had on my list of things to do in my lifetime for years. I’ve tried several times, but the weather never cooperated. But this time it did. I’m posting a video that I made and the reason this is so cool is because I did the whole thing on my new iPhone — the filming AND the editing. Added titles; my own music, still photos… all with the $5 iMovie app. Holy cow, technology still stuns me. In fact, all my pictures were taken with my iPhone and most were great; pretty much the same ratio of good pics to bad pics as if I had used my camera…

You’re welcome to tell me how great the video is — I’m inordinately proud of it ;-)

The other day, Facebook informed me that I had seven friends who “liked” Sarah Palin. Naturally, I first checked to see who they were (no surprises there) and then I posted this:

Marlene Merritt is slightly alarmed to see FB say that seven of my friends “like” Sarah Palin. Does this mean they “like” her as a personality? or as someone making important political decisions? Because those are two VERY DIFFERENT THINGS.

I got 21 comments and I think someone unfriended me ;-)  But I was serious — those ARE two very disparate things, and I’m completely unclear as to into which camp my friends fall. Because if they’re thinking she’s good with international policy (remember the “I can practically see Russia from my house” comment?) or that basically she’s good at anything except relating to people, I WILL SERIOUSLY QUESTION THE NUMBER OF BRAIN CELLS THEY HAVE.

Remember this? Oh, there were so many pictures of Palin disasters to choose from!

Of course, one of my friends who likes her AND has a brain, jumped to the conclusion that I was criticizing other people’s point of view (what else is the First Amendment for? just kidding) and wrote:

But you clearly comment on seven of your friends “liking” her and proceed to question how and why they could possibly like her, which is a different thing entirely. It comes off a bit like an ideological “purity test.” Are you really committed to having your friends not be able to have a political viewpoint different than yours without feeling that you will call them out over it? Is your friendship and good opinion of someone dependent on their political beliefs?

Wow. That’s an awful lot to get out of a short FB post — where exactly did he get all that? And what happened to the days when people could have a political discussion? Is that what it has devolved into nowadays? That if you even mention that you might possibly not agree with someone’s opinion, that’s “calling them out” on it? I remember my dad (total Republican) and a family friend (who had emigrated from East Germany and was a staunch Communist) getting into at dinner parties, but they were still friends at the end of the evening. These days, you risk entire relationships if you mention you might not agree with them politically.

All I was checking on was to see where my friends were coming from (alas, only one replied — the one who wrote that comment. Although you could probably count the one who unfriended me <smirk>) — do they like her because she’s a hot MILF? Do they find her easily relatable? Or do they think she’d make a great president? (Really? Please say not. Please.) It’s the thinking I’m more interested in — I know people who vote a certain way because their parents always have, and not because they’re actually doing their own thinking (like my gay UPS driver, when she decided to vote for the first time at the age of 47 in the last election. Her small-town Texan mom’s choices might not be the same ones she’d want ;-) Just a guess. )

I know less than the fingers on one hand, people who think politically differently than me with whom I can have a civil conversation about politics. By “less”, I mean 2-3. By “conversation”, I mean some back-and-forth where we can actually agree on some things, and disagree on others, and there’s actual thinking and reflection involved, and not knee-jerk “I’ve always voted _________”  or “The _________s are driving this country into the ground” generalized responses.

Ugh, this is making me feel old.

The only way I could get my mother to agree to get a cell phone a few years ago was to tack her onto our family plan. So now she’s in New York City with an Austin area code and doesn’t use the phone that much, except when picking people up from JFK airport, which is a zoo. So when Will and I decided to fork it over for the new iPhones, we were just going to give my mother some new flip phone, which she didn’t really know how to use in the first place because it IS a complete pain in the ass to enter a name with those stupid menus (tap, tap, tap “c”. Grrr). So she never entered my name and then always seemed surprised to hear it was me when I called.

Then it occurred to me — Mom’s no technological slouch by any means. She took a full Photoshop class when she was 70, uses a big SLR camera, and has had two Apple computers. So what-the-hell, we decided to give her one of the older iPhones, because a 3GS is now $99 . (At least for us with new plans and contracts ;-) )

I told her to text me when she got it (good practice for new thumbs) and then didn’t hear a peep out of her for HOURS. When I finally called her to see what was up, she told me that she HAD sent me a text, and (this is where we assume that it’s obvious) she had sent it to our landline.

I thought that was just the cutest thing. That, and the absolute GLEE she’s having with it. She was giggling like a little kid. Awesome.

I was going to post a video from Ren and Stimpy (those of you who watched that in the’90′s know who you are) and their Happy Happy Joy Joy song, but I got distracted by all the other shows I hadn’t seen in nearly 20 years, so now I’m going to skip it. Probably no point, for those of you who are still wondering what in the hell I’m talking about.

Anyway, I decided to take this 10-week seminar called Creating Happiness (mostly because a bunch of my friends were in it as well and who couldn’t use more happiness?) and immediately got confronted by the first week’s homework. We were supposed to notice when we were happy, and when we were not, and look at what our default experience was. Plus a couple of other things, but I was too busy dealing with this.

Now, let me be straight — while I’ve got a reasonable amount of crap I have to deal with on a regular basis, I am by no means suffering compared to 99% of the people in the world. So I’m not complaining about anything. And even with that, it’s interesting for me to see that I wouldn’t necessarily describe myself as “happy”. “Busy”, yes, and “thoughtful” (as in, doing a lot of thinking), and “cheerful”, but “happy” is not springing to mind.

In fact, I had to look the word up in the dictionary, and then immediately I disagreed with it : feeling or showing pleasure or contentment. Contentment? Hell, I’m content if my food is warm and I get a full night’s sleep. That seems like an understatement. “Joy” seemed a bit closer, but, to be honest, completely unattainable on a regular basis, so in my semi-pessimistic state, I thought I’d shoot for something a bit easier. What that is, I’m not sure yet.

I spent the week trying to figure out if I was happy with a good glass of wine, (“enjoying” is accurate, but happy didn’t seem to apply), or some great dish I was eating (ditto), or if I finish a big project (“relieved” didn’t strike me like it applied either ;-) ), or achieved something big (was I happy when I finished riding across the US? Probably, but how long does that last?). What exactly does it look like when I’m happy? It seems like a stupid question, but I’ll bet it’s not that easy for you to answer either.

When it came down to it, I realized that my default experience really could be best described as “not unhappy”. Wow, that’s pathetic. And the double negative doesn’t cancel out and create “happy”; it simply means exactly that:  I’m not unhappy. Like when Will asks if I’m cold and the best I can answer is that I’m not warm. I couldn’t figure out any other good way to describe it.

It’s a good thing that there are 9 more sessions to go. Geez.

But yesterday we got invited out to a friend’s lakehouse and bam! bam! I immediately found a couple of occasions where I was truly happy. I don’t know why I’m surprised (probably because it seems like it’s been years since I’ve had this happen), but they took their speedboat out on the lake, and sitting in the front as we started to pick up speed, I instantly started laughing hysterically like a 5-year old, even more so when we bounced over the waves. I cracked myself up, I was laughing so hard, and my face was so tired from the grin plastered to it. Um, THAT’S what happy looks like.

And then when they had the huge firework display right over our heads that evening, the same thing happened (although I wasn’t laughing quite so outrageously ;-) ) — I forgot how much I love fireworks, and I just grinned all the way through it.

Ah, there’s a theme here, I’m realizing. When I thought about it, I realized that my other favorite things are to ride my motorcycle and do crazy descending on my bike — speed. And things of great beauty — that’s the other.

Photo credit to Greg Bartlett, who takes the best pictures ever.

Knowing that only partially helps, since the other trick, I suspect, is to newly find happiness in day-to-day life. Would having fresh flower around make me happy? Or do they become just the “background wallpaper” at some point? More vacations? Getting a boat? (just kidding, Will!)

And you? Do you have this figured out? What’s your default?

I was just in Rochester, N.Y., to give a lecture at the New York Chiropractic College on nutrition. I was flown up there, all expenses paid (just lovely, let me tell you, coming from someone self-employed for the last 20 years) and since I was in charge of the arrangements, I made them to suit me.

Which meant that I stayed in a Bed & Breakfast in the historic part of town, complete with big trees and ginormous houses. As I was checking in, the nice chatty lady said to me,

“Are you here to pick up a child?”

It really takes something to leave me speechless. My mind goes a mile a minute (although with a little wine, maybe a half a mile) so to leave me THAT nonplussed — well, let’s just say that we stared at each other for a bit. Mostly, the overwhelming thought was, “Rochester is some hotbed for adoption? Really?”

The nice lady figured out after a minute that I was totally confused, and clarified that lots of people “come to pick up their child from one of the universities in town.” That didn’t help either, since immediately my brain was screaming,

“BUT I’M NOT OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE A KID IN COLLEGE!!!”

Ah, grasshopper, but you are.

How depressing.

Ten years ago, my dad died a bit suddenly. By suddenly, I mean that the day before, he was at the cardiologist’s, and they gave him a monitor to wear for 24 hours, because he had some history of heart stuff, and he died before he could return the monitor. So it was a bit of a surprise to everyone, evidently.

Unfortunately, the last conversation I had with my dad was an argument, caused by several misunderstandings he had, fueled along by his current wife. Which we got mostly straightened out at the last minute, but left a not-so-good taste in my mouth. My recommendation? Do WHATEVER YOU NEED TO DO, when you walk out the door, to make sure that things are good with the people in your life, in case you fell off the earth. Just sayin’.

Anyway, at the reading of the will (which was a Word doc that my dad had typed up which we printed out in his office as we all stood there — don’t do that either), it turns out that his current wife had “lost” the hand-painted picture that my mom had given my dad, which my dad wanted me to have. Nope, couldn’t find it, hadn’t seen it, couldn’t help me. Um, OK. And my dad was a geologist, and had an amazing collection of rocks, which, somewhat understandably, she didn’t want us going through at the time. She and I arranged for me to come and get some of the items, three months later, while I was on a trip to Oregon, where they lived, and then “forgot” that I was arriving, and so we never got together.

And that was that. We never spoke again, and I spent a good amount of energy reminding myself over the years that it’s just stuff, and it won’t bring my dad back, and it’s just stuff, right? Just stuff.

Until a couple of weeks ago, when I learned that his wife had passed away. She hadn’t stayed in touch with my sister either, or anyone from my dad’s family, so apparently it wasn’t just me. And all of a sudden, I realized that I could get some of my dad back. It was like a tiny ember just flared up that I didn’t even realize I had.

I have very, very little of my dad’s. I don’t even have any of his ashes, don’t even know if he was buried (I heard some crazy thing like he wanted to be shot into space), no marker, no nothing. I worked hard at letting go of that stupid argument, and am mostly at peace about it. Most of the time.

But it sure would be nice to see a few of the rocks he’d bring to my grade school classes for show-and-tell.

And I’m appropriately posting this on Father’s Day, 10 years past his death. I miss you, Dad — it sure would be nice to see something of yours again.

I finished reading this book for the second time while I was on my last trip, and when I say I read it a second time, I mean it was so fascinating that when it was done, I turned right around and read it again. It’s City Of Thieves, by David Benioff and it’s about Leningrad during the siege of the Germans in WWII when the Germans were invading Russia. The main character, a 17-year old kid, has stayed behind while his family was evacuated, and gets arrested, which typically means an instant bullet in the head. But instead, he’s paired up with a 20-year old army deserter and given the job to find a dozen eggs for a general in 6 days. In a country that is under siege and where most of the people are starving, and if they don’t, they won’t get their ration cards back, and then they’ll die as well…

Despite the book being highly rated, I expected something totally different before I read it. I couldn’t figure out if it was fiction or not, since the author talks about interviewing his grandfather for this book and they have the same last name (I can never tell with these things). And I had already decided that I wasn’t going to like the characters, since they had done something illegal enough to get arrested. Ah, grasshopper, live and learn.

The reason it impacted me so much, I suspect, is because my grandmother took my mom and her 2 other kids as refugees to Czechoslovakia, where first the Russian soldiers occupied the area, and then the German soldiers (or maybe it was the other way around). So when I was reading the descriptions of how people scrounged for food, how exactly the two of them had come to be arrested, how much danger people were in from the nightly bombing — it really brought home what they had to go through. In the book, the people of Leningrad (and elsewhere as well, certainly) ran out of fuel and it was winter in Russia, so there were no trees, no fences, no park benches — all had been taken to be burned for heat. There were no pets, since who could feed a pet? and it could feed you instead, and the rats would have run amok without the cats, except there was nothing in the garbage for them to eat either. It was argued that people already skinny before the siege were better equipped for the shortage of food, since their bodies were used to doing with very little, but it was hard to argue with the fact that a couple of days without food wouldn’t turn a fat person into a skeleton.

The descriptions of hunger… let’s just say that none of us have EVER felt that. Which is why I have always corrected people when they say, “I’m STARVING!” — um, no, you’re just hungry.

Then I look around me. We’re in the longest war the U.S. has ever been in, but can you tell? Is anyone suffering besides the soldiers and the families of the soldiers? No, we have no invader on our shores, and God knows we are not short of food (perhaps THAT would solve our obesity problem!). There’s no rationing of anything and we march along, quite clear in the fact that this war is involving only the soldiers/government, and those ungrateful countries over there that are making us look bad in our efforts. Memorial Day just means a 3-day weekend, and whatever weak outrage we had about invading Iraq has now been directed towards the BP oil spill. Until we get tired of that as well…

It’s not that I think one has to have experienced hardship to be strong, but I suspect that there IS something to the maxim “A little suffering is good for the soul”. Kind of like hiking in the rain — a little is a good reminder to appreciate your bed with clean sheets and a roof, but too much of it is simply misery. Reading books about REAL suffering just points out to me again and again how insulated we are…