Ruth Yunker's Blog, page 4

SoCal Waves

Big Waves at the Wedge, CA

FIVE THINGS to remember before frolicking in the water at this beach:

NEVER turn your back on the waves.  They are big. They will suck you under, and laugh while doing so.  And unless you've been raised on this beach from age two, re-consider getting in the water here at all.

If sucked under, which in all likelihood will happen, while spinning down down down, throw your arms around  your head.  Eventually this will become an automatic reflex.

Don't underestimate how frigidly cold the Pacific is.  It is not anything like lukewarm.  It is not kind.  It is not the Atlantic Ocean south of Maryland.  It is cold in the highest order.  The temperature of the water, even in the middle of August, will knock the breath right out of you.

If you're Catholic, and heck, even if you're not, this is one time when making the sign of the cross using the ocean for holy water, will make you look smart.

Wear a one piece swimming suit if you're female.  Wear a jock strap under your swimming suit if you're male.  It is all too easy to lose said swimsuit if it is small, insubstantial or only one layer deep.  If this is just too much swimsuit for you, have a friend with towel on the beach whose sole purpose is to keep an eye on you.

Finally, if you are bound and determined to enter the water, absolutely do so in front of a lifeguard stand on a green flag day.  Yes, it will be crowded right around the lifeguard stands, and down the beach will be nice and empty, but trust me on this one.

So, there you are.  Do have a swell time!

 

Prius and Co, Move Over

slow lane sunflowers

Har har!!!  At last the carpool lanes return to what God originally intended them for–persons in LA actually driving on the freeway with someone else in the car with them.

Because on July 1, all those Prius holier-than-thous will no longer be allowed in the carpool lane unless they too have another actual human in the car with them.

Ahh it's sweet.  Sooooo sweet!  I know this doesn't speak well of my soul's health, but there it is.  It made me choke on my green tea every time a Prius, occupied by a sole driver, sailed by me in that lovely carpool lane.  The carpool lane had not been created with them in mind.  The carpool lane had been created to encourage people here in Southern California to…gasp shriek…carpool, thereby reducing the number of cars on the freeways.

But then someone high up in sales-challenged Prius began sleeping with someone high up in the Sierra Club.  So the two put their heads together for something besides fornication, and voila!  If you could talk your snobbish soul into actually purchasing one of those hatch back runts, fast and free sailing in the carpool lane, all alone in your car, was yours to have and enjoy.

It worked.   People rushed out and bought those  hideous, ecology friendly cars.   I even have a friend who did.  She claims she loves loves loves the car. Let's see if she keeps that car now that it nets her zilch out there on the freeways.

July 1 it all ends, and the little creeps-I-mean-hybrids have to move back into the real world of freeway rush hour traffic just like all the rest of us who were too proud to take a bribe.

Bridesmaids

Wedding Mannequin

So I rushed out to see "Bridesmaids".  Billed as the great female version of "The Hangover" band of males, an ode to women being hilarious enough for men to take seriously, and for women to at last have their own sophisticated Judd Apatow(ish) movie, I sat down in my seat, male companion sitting next to me, eagerly opened my box of Sweet Tarts–

And was treated to the weakest, most childishly self-involved, immature victim of a woman I've seen in a movie since…I don't remember when.  Didn't Kristen Wiig have any say in the material?  Surely she didn't think her character should be that kind of nightmare human who always throws a fit, has a meltdown and in general ruins whatever occasion she's attending.  The kind who never can speak up in time, so heaves her yellow bellied spleen around like a four year old throwing tantrums, blaming the rest of the world for her self-induced troubles.

This is what we got as we watched Kristen Wiig's matron-of-honor have melt down after meltdown simply because there was a strong-willed bitch of a bridesmaid in the crew of wacky bridesmaids, who successfully moves in on her best friend, the distracted bride, and takes over Wiig's matron of honor responsibilities.  Got that?

Okay, I did laugh at the scenes individually.  The scene in the wedding gown shop after an iffy meal at an iffy restaurant was screamingly outrageous.  Omigod, yes!  Or the one where Wiig tried to get her good cop/swain to give her a ticket.  But I spent the rest of the movie waiting for Wiig to shape up, sharpen up, and bring the bad bridesmaid down, for godsake.  I mean, how hard could it have been.  One harsh word I'm telling you, one harsh word.  That's all it would have taken.  And we would have had a different movie.  One where Wiig's Chronic Victim learns how unattractive this attitude is, and learns to stand up for herself.  But no.  Wiig whined and moped until the bitter end.

So it disappoints me that this movie is being touted as God's gift to women.  Is this how men see us?  Whiny, dependent, baby/women?  Who can't even stand up to our own kind?  Especially when our pride is on the line?

Rats!

But no.  No wait–

I'm sure I'm wrong, and in the future, the fabulous Kristen Wiig will insist on directing herself.  Because quite obviously, she didn't get to where she is today by being anything like the woman she played in this disappointing movie.

 

Grocery Store vs Internet

Into everyone's life the grocery store must come, and it's usually upon moving into one's first home away from home.  That first trip to the grocery store is indeed a wondrous event.  Mine was as a young (way too young) bride, and I found buying flour, sugar, toilet paper and paper towels to be an amazing event.

Moving forward to now, at least forty years of grocery shopping later, the bloom is off.  In fact, stepping into a grocery store is climbing the ladder to the gallows.  I could scream.  I could cry.  I want to sweep up and down those stupid aisles, throwing a lifetime of shopping cart fillings onto the floor.

Now I have another problem with grocery stores, a more serious problem than simple dislike.  And that is, after forty years of carrying the very precise brand of whatever I've used all these years, grocery stores are discovering hip, and starting to rebel.  They are starting to fall sway to the siren of the younger shopper, the shopper who still has five thousand kids at home, and therefore needs to enter the grocery store at least three times a week and fill her cart sky high with organic Oreo cookies and organic lemonade.  They are catering to her demands, and by that I mean they have started to move on from my old tried and trues, my favorite brand of dishwasher soap or refried beans, for instance, and delete them, without so much as a word to me.  They have started installing on those loathsome shelves new brands, wet behind the ears brands, organic and green brands, stupid brands, okay?

At first I coped by hunting down my product in a different chain of grocery store.  Luckily I live in the land of multiple breeds of grocery stores, so at first this tack worked.  But soon, every item I needed that the powers-that-be had decided I could live without, couldn't be found anywhere, not even three towns over.

Pacquins hand cream was the one that finally opened the door.  I couldn't find Pacquins hand cream.  I needed Pacquins hand cream.  It was the only one that would do.  I'm sure you understand.  One day a beautiful stranger, catching sight of my tragedy stricken face slumped in despair in front of the hand creams at Pavilion, my hands by now sandpaper, whispered to me "Have you tried the Internet?"

Omigod!  A blaze of brilliant light burst forth and I saw the road to Nirvana.  I ran to the Internet, and there it was.  Pacquin's handcream.  Boatloads if I wanted.  There was Handiwipes.  There was the Cascade that still had in it the (evil) stuff that actually cleans the dishes.

I've slept like I'm on a cruise ship ever since!  No more fear of the Grocery Store dictating which shade of green I should buy.  And the angst?  Although not gone, it has has weakened, because now there is the threat of total desertion to the Internet hanging over Grocery Store's head…and so?  Just last week, out of nowhere, handiwipes suddenly showed up again.

Yes, Sebastian, there really is a God.

Irritable Yoga

Laughing Buddha and duck

I went to yoga this morning for the first time in two weeks.   So I was stiff, self-conscious and irritable.  I also had a band-aid on my right big toe…which is irritating in itself because I desperately need a pedicure, which will now have to be postponed.  Which isn't good, because I desperately needed a pedicure a week ago.

I had to shoo two girls around a bit to make a spot, never a good way to start a class.  But they had given themselves way too much room, and I was senior enough to be pushy about it all.  They moved, but definitely harbored resentments because of what occurred later.

So, on my mat, I tried to focus on myself.  But that would have meant noticing that I could barely move.  One (recent) airplane trip too many had frozen my knees, my hamstrings, my lower back and every place else.  Yoga teacher had us shift one foot to the center and raise the other foot high into the sky for a nice thigh opener.  But she worded the instructions in a new way, and the girl next to me got it all wrong.  I noticed this.  The instructor did not.  Now we moved to our other leg.  The girl did the same thing wrong.  I so wanted to butt in and correct her.  For her own sake, see.  I used to teach yoga.  I'd know how to word it correctly, with a minimum of confusion.  But, I kept my mouth shut.  I kept to my own space on my own mat, like I was supposed to be doing.

We moved into another pose.  Now the girl in front of me was doing it all wrong.  This was driving me crazy.  This was annoying the hell out of me.  Were these beginners in this class?  I mean, what was up with such ineptitude?  Why on earth couldn't they get a simple posture right, I was thinking–

When suddenly yoga teacher was right by me, firmly poking me into the proper alignment.  Poking me into the proper alignment that I should have been in in the first place.  Poking me into an alignment that I first started getting right twelve years ago.  Have I mentioned I've also taught yoga?

I was so taken aback I, god forbid, fell over.  I fell right into the mat next to me.  Damn.

But so, I pulled myself together.  I hauled serenity and peace with my surroundings out of the hat, and continued with the rest of the class…ego-less…I hope.

At last we got to shavasana.  I slowly sank into relaxation.  And that's when it happened.  Both women, the one on the right, and the one on the left, the ones who way back at the beginning of the class, had been forced to make room for me, both of these women, sneezed.  Fulsome sneezes.  Hearty happy sneezes.

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm…

Kentucky Derby Is Family

My Favorite Guy

It's the Kentucky Derby today.  My parents grew up in Louisville, KY, and so the Kentucky Derby is as important as Christmas…okay, not that important.  But it is alive and well here in So Cal…in theory.  Even as I sit here tapping away (really to give WordPress to see things my way), one of my sisters and my dear Pa are even now ensconced in front of the television watching the pre-race show.  It's a big screen, so it can be said they are actually right there among the crowd.

Lunch was first.  We didn't have mint juleps.  Apparently one year they were served and things went terribly wrong.  But fried chicken was.  Kentucky Fried Chicken, in fact.  My sister brought it.  This is not the day to quibble about the arteries and other non-Southern things like that.  We had lemonade in our Kentucky Derby glasses, and for dessert there was much talk about all our relatives in Louisville–

I think one cousin owns a share in a horse who ran in some races once.  We don't think the horse won much money, but somewhere we think we heard they broke even.

One set of cousins is still reeling because they found out that upon the death of their father they no longer had their box seats at Churchill Downs, so we dissected why it is they hadn't known there would be issues like that to be resolved before Uncle Charles breathed his last.

My sister and I counted, while Dad calmly ate his chicken and biscuits and honey.  We have thirty-seven first cousins there in Louisville, which becomes frightening when we start adding up their children, and er…the children of those children.  There are triplets in there somewhere, girls, who grew up, and went into the army.  All three.  We are almost sure about that last detail.

So now, Sis and Pop are waiting for the race of races to start.  They tried to lure me–

But I watched "Secretariat" the other night.  That will just have to do.

 

Weekends R Clothes

Last weekend went from the sublime to the…how shall I say it?…um…successful.  Will and Kate were married.  I approved of her dress.  And Osama Bin Laden was finally removed from this earth.  : ))

I don't have the kind of plans for this week-end that could possibly equal the a-list happenings of last week-end.  Not even in my choices for home viewing.

But there is one notable happening.  I am going to see a friend perform his very first public  stand-up comedy routine.  Since I wish I had the gumption to do stand-up, I will being dying of envy.  I am going to have to work very hard to see the best in my friend's debut.  I am going to have to work very hard to be open to his punch lines and encouraging enough to laugh.  And I mean loud, often, and in all the right places.   I know he's worried sick.  It seems he's already tried to back out.  But his wife said no.

It's not all bad for him though, because he's not the sort to be worried sick about what he's going to wear.  In fact special clothing for their shows doesn't seem to be an issue for male comics…except for the fabulous Eddie Izzard!  May he be kept in blue glitter for as long as his inner comic should live.

Back to my friend's outfit, which will be jeans and a shirt, sleeves rolled up, I would be totally sick over the issue of what to wear for my debut.  Just as I'm sure Kate Middleton was about her wedding gown.  Although, she may have been as cool as a cucumber, sure in the taste of her designer, during the hours and weeks and days and nights and endless minutes of fitting sessions.

Aah, week-ends and clothes, though.  Given it was Sunday, Bin Laden was probably lounging around in old sweats.  He didn't have a chance to change into something more appropriate in which to meet his maker.  Not even a quick moment to straighten his beard.  He may have pulled at it unconsciously as he was going down, but all and all, he was spared the agony of the clothes issue.

Kitty Wants In

This is me staring at my mother as she dropped me off at the new school.  New kid again…

Well actually, what this is, see, is my new blog.  I'll love it, I know, when I figure out this WordPress format.  I'll do it…because how hard can it be, right?  And because the powers that be have insisted Word Press, which I currently hate with a passion, is the only way to go.  Maybe.  But in the meantime, I'm in mourning for TypePad, and my old blog Pearls and Amber.  Just so you know.

Sooooo, WordPress?   All I can say is: what I had to go through to upload this one little picture.  I don't know what I actually did right, in the end.  A fearsome "crunching" thing kept announcing, no matter what combination of sequences I tried, with the triumphant finality of a malevolent bureaucrat, that there had been a fatal error.  Fatal error?  What?  Fatal?  Three year olds write this program?

Breeeeeeeathe!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyway,  finally Zaeria's impatient face showed up, and there you have it.   Impatient kitty photo, and me, sitting here with no clue as to what I intended to write.  All I can report is that Zaeris was let in, and is now sound asleep on the couch over there.  Which is a blessing.  Because her meow could wake the dead.  Fatal, indeed.