Tracy Beckerman's Blog, page 5

The Sad, Sorry Tale of the Depot Man

“I’ll be right back,” said my husband as he headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” I demanded.  We were in the middle of moving some of our stuff out of storage and putting some other stuff back in. It was a relatively massive job and I was counting on my husband to do all the heavy lifting while I sat, ate bonbons, and pointed.

“I need a few things at the hardware store,” he replied.

 

I groaned.  “I need a few things at the hardware store” and “I’ll be right back” were two sentences that could not realistically be put together. When my husband went to the hardware store, he did not come right back.  If he came back the same day, I considered it a successful outing.  More often than not I would have to wait the requisite twenty-four hours and then file a Missing Persons report.  It was easy to describe him; He’d be the one in a coma in front of the shiny power tools.

Surprisingly, no matter how long he spent at the hardware store, the second he got home he would decide he had the wrong part and have to go back.  I couldn’t imagine how he could spend four hours in the hardware store and come home with the wrong part unless he was rendered temporarily dumbstruck by the site of a mega pack of 128 rechargeable batteries.

 

It was easy to describe him; He’d be the one in a coma in front of the shiny power tools.

The more likely answer was that he purposely bought the wrong part so he would have an excuse to go back and spend more time ogling tools.  Some guys had a mistress. I suspected my husband was having an affair with a leaf blower.

Most of the time I was okay to let him go have his fun. But since I knew we had a lot of work to do, I was hesitant to let him out the door. Once he got enticed back into the store, there was no telling what unnecessary purchase he might be seduced into making.  It didn’t take much for a salesperson to convince my husband that he had the skills to own and operate some piece of heavy.  And then before you could say, “Zero Percent Financing,” we’d have a brand spanking new backhoe and a hole in the house where the garage used to be.

“Tell you what,” I said.  “How about if we finish getting this stuff back in the house first, and then you can go to the hardware store.”

“Sorry Honey, but I really need to go now before they close.”

I sighed.  I really could not understand his obsession. It baffled me. I was at a loss to understand the power it had over him.  But mostly, I was relieved that there was nothing like that in my life that made me go gaga with longing and want to purchase things I didn’t need.

“OK, fine,” I relented. “But as long as you’re going to be out, I going to run out for a bit, too.”

“Where are you going?” he wondered.

I grabbed my bag. “I need a few things at the shoe store.”

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

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Darnit, that’s One Good, Dang Diner

“Hey Mom, I’m hungry, can we stop for something to eat?” inquired one of my offspring. “Sure,” I said, looking out the car window.  “How ‘bout we go to that Dam Diner.”

“TRACY!” yelled my husband.

“What?” I replied, smirking.  “That’s what it’s called: ‘The Dam Diner.’” I pointed out the window to a restaurant coming up on the right.  It was, in fact, called The Dam Diner, and the sign said they served the best Dam food in the state.

The Dam Diner happened to be built on the site of a former dam, hence the name, The Dam Diner. There was also a Dam Laundromat in the same town, but personally, I’d rather spend my time eating some good Dam food, than doing some Dam laundry.  Although they do not have any Dam hotels there, they do have a couple of B&B’s, but they are merely nice, not Dam nice.

From what I’d heard, people flock to the Dam Diner for great Dam food and great Dam service.  According to the owner, they have the best Dam Diner coffee anywhere and their Dam cheesecake is sublime.

People flock to the Dam Diner for great Dam food and great Dam service.  According to the owner, they have the best Dam Diner coffee anywhere and their Dam cheesecake is sublime.

Of course, my kids were most interested in the Dam hamburgers and French fries, although they could also be convinced to have a Dam hot dog if the Dam waitress suggested it.

Several days earlier we’d actually had lunch at The Best Diner.  It was good, but I wouldn’t say it was the best.  It probably should have been called The Pretty Good Diner, but I guess they aspired to be better than they actually were. They were certainly not the Best Dam Diner since there was only one Dam Diner that I knew of which clearly made the Dam Diner the best Dam Diner by virtue of the fact that they were the only Dam Diner.  I have heard of a place called the Best Darn Diner where the food is pretty Darn good, but personally, I’d rather have a great Dam hamburger than a Darn good one.

Actually, I hadn’t had a good Dam hamburger in a long time, and I was looking forward to the opportunity to dig into one.  My husband is not generally a diner person, though, and he said he wasn’t hungry, so even though this was supposed to be a great Dam Diner, he was not sure he wanted any Dam food.

The kids were always hungry for some Dam food, though, and this seemed like a great opportunity to stop to get a Dam snack.

“I don’t think there is another restaurant on the road for a long time,” I said to my husband.  “Is it OK with you if we stop at that Dam Diner?

He looked at me and shrugged.

“Frankly my dear, I don’t give a Dam.”

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

 

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What Goes Down Must Come Out!

“Everything looks great,” exclaimed my internist at my annual check up. “But there’s one more thing,”

“What?” I wondered.

“Well, now that you’re in your fifties you get an extra special gift.”

I was so excited.  I never had a doctor give me a gift before.  As far as I knew none of my friends ever got a gift from their doctor.  I felt really special, and also like, “Heck yeah, I deserve a gift for being in my fifties!”

“What is it,” I asked excitedly.  “Jewelry? A handbag?  a pretty scarf?”  Those all seemed like excellent age appropriate gifts for someone who was in excellent shape.

“Actually, now that you are in your fifties,  you have to get a colonoscopy.”

I blinked and let the news sink in. A colonoscopy? That wasn’t a gift.  That wasn’t even a cleanse. That was a complete overhaul of my personal indoor plumbing. Expecting it couldn’t get any worse, I called my gastroenterologist to set it up.

I was so excited.  I never had a doctor give me a gift before.  As far as I knew none of my friends ever got a gift from their doctor.  I felt really special, and also like, “Heck yeah, I deserve a gift for being in my fifties!”

“Hmmm,” he hmmmed. “I see on your chart that you haven’t had an endoscopy for 5 years,” he murmured.  “Might as well kill two birds with one stone.”

“First of all, can we please not use the word kill?”  I requested.  “And secondly, please tell me you do this under anesthesia and also, the prep is not as bad as everyone tells me it will be.”

“Yes, you will be under anesthesia and yes, the prep is as bad everyone tells you it is,” he said cheerfully.  “But hundreds of people have it everyday and it’ll be over before you know it.”

“Yeah, that’s what they said about childbirth,” I replied.

Three days later I got my next gift in the mail – my colonoscopy/endoscopy prep kit.  I’ve never wanted to return a gift so bad in my entire life.  I’m not saying this thing has a bad reputation, but when I gave the script to the pharmacist, he shuddered and skittered away without looking back at me.  Then I went home and told my husband he should get a hotel room because things were going to get ugly and he really didn’t want to be within 5 miles of it.

Now I’ve given birth to two children, house trained two dogs, and lived though a week of my entire family having the flu at the same time.  But nothing prepared me for the joy of the next twelve hours.  It was like the bathroom was possessed.  It was almost like a Wes Craven movie and all I had were three rolls of Extra Soft Charmin to get me through the horror of it all. As I sat on the throne, I wondered why they called it a cleanse.  To me it seemed more like a complete evacuation of an entire village. Mt. Vesuvious had nothing on me.

At that moment I regretted not buying more stock in toilet paper.  I also regretted not leaving the country when I turned 5fifty But who knew?  Although everyone goes through it, no one warns you.  It’s the best kept crappy secret on the planet.

Finally after about twelve hours, things seemed to slow down and I declared my insides pristine as a NASA decontamination unit.  Which was a good thing, considering I was about to show my doctors a full moon.

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

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Where Do Your Eggs Come From? I’m Not Eggsactly Sure

Years ago when I was a kid, eggs in the supermarket came in two colors: white and brown. Because I perceived the brown eggs as being slightly bigger, I suspected that they did not actually come from chickens at all, but something bigger like ducks or geese, or possibly an emu. 

Of course, the brown eggs were exactly the same as the white eggs, but being a kid, I didn’t want to take a chance that I might make some mama emu mad, so I chose to stick with the standard white variety.

Some time later I found out that the difference between the brown and white eggs we eat don’t in fact have to do with the variety of the bird, but with the color of the hen’s earlobe.  To me, this was so incredibly bizarre, because, truthfully, who even knew that chickens had earlobes, or even ears for earlobes, that I almost gave up eating eggs altogether, and it also gave me pause about saying disparaging things around chickens when they were in earshot of me.

Who even knew that chickens had earlobes, or even ears for earlobes?

Just as I was coming to terms with the whole brown earlobed/white earlobed chicken/egg relationship, I was shocked to learn that some chickens lay blue eggs.  I was assured that this situation had nothing to do with earlobes or emus, or anything of that sort. I assumed those chickens were just trying to get a jump on the whole Easter egg-dying thing.

Anyway, I finally got used to the egg color conundrum and felt I could just focus on whether I wanted them scrambled, poached, or over easy, when a whole new category of eggs came of age.  Suddenly, it was not okay to have just a plain old white (or brown) egg.  Now you had to decide if you wanted an egg that came from a chicken that was free-range, cage-free, organic, or pasture-raised.  You could get eggs from a chicken that was raised in a comfort coop (which I suspected was a chicken’s version of a Tempurpedic mattress) or nest-laid (as opposed to one that maybe was laid in someone’s sock drawer?).  You could also choose to get an egg from a chicken that is vegetarian fed (Although I have never seen a hen tuck into a nice t-bone steak) or one that is enriched with Omega-3, which comes from hens that are fed flax seed (and also probably wear hemp booties and do yoga).

Eventually I realized I had to stop pondering all the egg choices and just choose something eggstemporaneously. As I stood in the supermarket trying to make up my mind, I noticed a new addition to the egg selection going on in the cold case.  In section of organic, free-range, and cage-free eggs, there was a new contender on the block.  These were called Ethical Eggs.

 

I wondered, what makes an egg ethical?  Is it about how the chicken is treated?  Is it about how the egg is treated?  Or is it about how I’m supposed to treat the eggs? It was bad enough that I had a moral dilemma choosing my eggs. Now I had an ethical one? This was really just becoming way too difficult for someone who just likes an occasional omelette, and after some thought, I finally turned to the eggs and said what I really thought.

“Cluck it.”

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

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Tracy and the Chocolate Factory

Every so often I get an email of doom that has been sent to me along with everyone else on the planet. The latest one I received warned that we are on the verge of a severe Global Chocolate Shortage.  

The alleged cause is a combination of high demand and some alienesque choco-viruses that are attacking our beloved cocoa beans. Of course since people forward me this kind of email Armageddon all the time, I immediately had my doubts. But since this was chocolate they were talking about, and I have a love for chocolate that rivals my love for my children, you can imagine my total, utter, complete dismay bordering on hysteria when I got this email predicting the coming of a Chocapocalypse.

The truth is, I have never been a vanilla person. As a kid, I hated vanilla ice cream, thought vanilla wafers were a waste of time, and refused to eat yellow cake.  As an adult, I became more tolerant of vanilla, but my one true love has and always and will continue to be chocolate.  The chocolatey-er the better.  Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, mint chocolate, peanut butter and chocolate, I am down for basically anything made with, filled with, or covered with chocolate with perhaps the only exception being chocolate covered bugs…. But the bugs are not necessarily a deal breaker.

Fortunately, according to the email, the CRC (Cocoa Research Center) is on the case, working on new strains of super cocoa beans that can stop these choco-viruses in their tracks.  Their motto is, “To Chocolate Infinity and Beyond,” and they will stop at nothing to not only make more chocolate, but to make it better tasting as well.  Sounds like a sweet plan to me.

However, I’m not betting that things will turn around that quickly, so like any smart chocoholic facing a Chocapocalypse, I started hoarding Kit Kats and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups.  Could I, myself, be contributing to the shortage?  Maybe.  But I also have to put my family’s well being first and I know that once a month, if there is no chocolate in the house, things could get ugly.

Still, I’ m smart enough to realize that like many things I read on the Internet, this rumor might not actually be true.  So, I checked the online authority on internet hearsay, Snopes.com, who proclaimed the Chocapocalypse to be mostly false, and predicted more of a likelihood of rising prices, than lack of chocolate.

I am down for basically anything made with, filled with, or covered with chocolate with perhaps the only exception being chocolate covered bugs…. But the bugs are not necessarily a deal breaker.

Relieved that I was less likely to run out of chocolate than be notified by an Arabian prince that I am the sole beneficiary of 160 million dollar inheritance and a herd of camels as long as I forward my social security number and the code to my bank account, I decided let go of my Chocapocalypse  concerns and stop worrying that we will have to endure a Halloween comprised solely of Dum Dums.

… Not to be confused with the Dum Dum in my house who believed there was a Chocapocalypse coming.

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

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If Your Cup is Half Full, You Probably Need a Different Bra

My philosophy has always been, when you find something that works, stick with it. 

This was true for my preferred brand of peanut butter, my husband, and my bras.  Although some people may find it boring to stick with the same style of bra for years and years, for those of us who are a tough fit, finding a good bra can be as important as finding a good husband, but generally with more support.

Shopping for replacement bras, therefore, is not usually a big deal.  I go to the department store, show the saleslady my bra, tell her my size and she comes back with brand new versions of the same thing.

But then one day I went to the store, asked for my bra, and the saleslady shook her head.

“We don’t carry those anymore.”

I blinked at her in disbelief. I suddenly felt woozy and the room began to swim. Her words sounded very far away as she added, “They discontinued that style.”

“Huh?” I replied stupidly. “They distinguished the fire?”

“No,” she repeated slowly. “THEY DISCONTINUED THAT STYLE!”

In my peripheral vision the bras began to blur. I turned and saw the racks of lingerie around me begin to sway and the ground start to tremble.  There would be no more perfect bras for me. The brapocalypse had arrived.

There would be no more perfect bras for me.

The brapocalypse had arrived.

Somewhere in the distance I could hear someone screaming. It was moments later that I realized it was me.

“What?  NO!! They can’t have,” I bellowed. “Why?  WHY?? Why would they do such a thing?  It was the ideal bra.”

“There, there,” said the saleslady, patting me gently on the shoulder.  “They have some new styles that are even more comfortable and have much better support.  Come, I’ll show you.”

She guided me to the racks where my former bras used to hang and I choked back a sob.

Instead of my tried and true bras, they now had these lacy padded things which anyone with large ladies know will make you look like you have four sets of cleavage. Then she showed me another style that smushed everything together to create the dreaded uniboob. Finally, she introduced me to a third style with some improved technology that supposedly gave you support without an underwire, but in reality had your ladies resting on your knees.

“None of these will work for me,” I sighed.

“Here, just try this one,” she said, handing me one of the lacy imposters.

I went into the dressing room and put it on.  While it was not as low cut as it looked on the hanger, it had another glaring problem. It sat much higher on my chest than it’s intended occupants. Clearly it was made for someone much younger than me who still used the word “perky” to describe her assets and didn’t need to scoop them up with a crane to get them into the bra.

Disappointed and dejected, I went home to see if I could find the bra online, but the only ones I could find were for hundreds of dollars in the Netherlands.

Suddenly It occurred to me; my bra had become a collector’s item.  My spirits soared as I realized my bra problem was still an issue, but because of it, a new opportunity had just presented itself.

“Hey honey,” I yelled to my husband gleefully. “I just found out if I sell my bras online in the Netherlands I can make hundreds of dollars!”

“Great!” he replied.  “See what you can get for my underwear.”

 

©2020, Beckerman. All rights reserved. Follow Tracy on her Facebook Fan page at Facebook.com/LostinSuburbiaFanPage,  join the Lost in Midlife group at facebook.com/groups/lostinmidlife/ and follow on Instagram @TracyinMidlife

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