dropsinthewell

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I have to admit that I am not the best-informed sports fan you would ever encounter. What I know about most sports is that I don’t know much about them. But over the years as a teacher, I learned to pay attention because what’s important to the students is eventually going to be important to the teacher.

While I have watched most football games through my fingers, praying that the guy at the bottom of the pile stood up—usually because he was set to perform with my drama team, and wrestling always makes me twist my program, coat, gloves, whatever I have, into knots just trying to watch, I pride myself on having figured out high school volleyball and basketball—sort of.

The older I get, however, the harder it is to be comfortable sitting on those hard plastic bleachers and so I have worked to become more at ease with little creature comforts.

I learned how important it was to get there early, so you could get a seat at the top and lean against the wall. Those are the prized seats, so they are difficult to get and as the years have gone on, I find my knees don’t care for the climb to the top, anyway.

Then came the innovation of stadium seats. At first, they were simply a canvas bag with a seat and a back—that was helpful. However, I discovered that a quick shift to the side in response to the game would frequently find me upended on the outraged feet of the person behind me as my seat slid off the slippery plastic bleacher. Besides, a bit of canvas between me and the hard, plastic bench was not much of an improvement.

Now I have a fancy, padded seat so I have no contact with the plastic bench and it is pretty good at staying in place and holding up my back, so I don’t need to crawl to the top of the bleachers anymore. That was handy, since I always have to crawl back down for the bathroom and the concession stand.

Watching the games has been a path of discovery for me. The people sitting around me probably get sick of my company since every time a ref blows the whistle, I immediately begin parroting, “Why did they do that? What did they do? What’s going on?” I never could understand the niceties of the rules of the sports, and I have not developed a good relationship with the officials of the games because—well, they are obviously picking on my team!

And that brings me to the giant sewing bag I always carry with me. It has multiple purposes. First, I really like to sew plastic canvas. It’s relatively simple—so I can manage it, and it is just plain fun to do.

Second, because I like plastic canvas, I am frequently working on projects for my drama department as “mementos”. I can spend a lot of the time I am at a game working on those projects and thus, I am doing what the experts say is “multi-tasking.”

And now for the real reason I carry sewing with me to the games. In the past, athletes and students in the stands have politely intimated that I am a little…loud when I am watching the games and having the sewing in my hands tends to keep me calmer…and more polite.

I left the bag at home during a recent basketball contest and found myself making suggestions to the refs—at the top of my lungs. Just minor stuff, like, “Hey ref, are we watching the same game or did your new glasses prescription not get here yet?” Or, “Oh, are you SURE you want to call a foul on the other team? It’s the first time you’ve done it all night!”

So, the sewing is excellent for multiple reasons, but most importantly, it helps me to avoid getting a technical foul on the home team!

All of my teams have completed their seasons, and track is “fast” approaching, so I can probably retire the sewing bag and the stadium seat pretty soon. But it has been a wonderful season, and I would like to thank the athletes of Wolsey-Wessington and Miller for a fine and highly satisfying time—I will have my stadium seat and sewing bag stored and ready for next year!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I recently had a gentleman ask me a question about my columns that made me stop and think. “Are all those things you write about true?”

The plain answer is that everything I write about is stimulated by something I see, hear, smell, touch or taste during the week. Do I embellish the story for entertainment value? I’d have to say yes—so what I write about is “based on a true story,” as they say in the movies. And, like the movies, I spice it up to make it as entertaining as possible.

I was a very uncertain child, but I learned early that I could tell a story like no other. While sometimes I write fiction for my own entertainment and I have for years written fanciful plays and reader’s theater scripts for my students, most of what I write about here has truth to it.

When I was young, however, I used those story-telling techniques to explain the things I experienced and that happened around me. And if I could find the humor in it, other people were entertained. I had an aunt who told me, “Search for the joy. Things that are not much fun will happen, but if you can find humor, you will find the joy.”

She was right. And to this day, when I slam my fingers in a door or burn the steaks on the grill, or drop a bucket of paint on the steps, I immediately begin thinking, “How can I make this funny and maybe entertain someone else with it?”

I have discovered that this is better mental therapy than hours on a psychiatrist’s couch. There’s something about telling the story of what happened when I washed the red towel with the underwear, so now it’s all pink, that takes away a lot of the sting—for me; Roy didn’t much care for the pink underwear!

I have some guidelines for my writing. I can put what Roy’s already thinking anyway into actual words and that doesn’t bother me. However, I don’t always have to convert his thoughts, he expresses himself very well. For a long time, though, he locked himself into the bathroom to read my column, but years of experience have lessened the stress for him.  Or maybe he’s just resigned himself to his fate!

 Even my grandsons come in for their share. The eldest was reading a column about something he and I had done together, and he looked up a time or two, puzzled, and said, “I don’t think I said it quite like that.” Too bad, kid, your thoughts and actions are fodder for your grandmother’s humor. I go a little easier on my daughters, because someday I will need them to take care of me!

I never write about students. As a teacher, I felt it was not right to use their words and actions in such a way. There should be a level of privacy, and I have tried, over the years, to respect that. They have enough to deal with in putting up with my scripts.

When I started writing for the public, I determined that I was not going to write about politics or religion. It isn’t that I have no opinions on those things, but they are my opinions and, in most cases, not terribly humorous. Besides, I figure the news is scary enough most days, I don’t need to carry it over here when my purpose is to entertain.

And that is my purpose. If I can use something happening in my week as a humorous anecdote and someone who may not be having that great a day, reads it and gets a smile or a scoff or even a laugh, then I am satisfied that I have done what I intended.

I have been writing steadily on a weekly basis since I was 34 years old. To give you a context, my youngest daughter being born was one of the first things I wrote about, and she’s been married and on her own for more than ten years. I’ve written for the Mobridge Tribune, the Aberdeen American News and the Miller Press. I also put this article on a weekly blog. I’m not sure I would know how to function without getting up on Monday morning and thinking, “What shall I write about this week?”

And that brings me to a question I get asked often, “How do you come up with subjects?” I admit to people watching and eavesdropping on conversations in public places. People are fun and fascinating, and they give me great ideas. I carry a notebook all the time to write down those great ideas, because when I tell you I have a terrible memory, I’m not kidding—unfortunately, it has always been so! Suffice it to say, I am seldom without an idea for a column!

Everybody has a gift, and I believe God intends us to use them for any good purpose we can. My gift is the ability to tell a story. And in order to make it more entertaining for people, I definitely spice it up. However, you may be sure that what I am writing is always “based on a true story!”

Jackie Wells-Fauth

When I was a child—back in the cave days—Twister was a popular game. You can still find Twister today, but whenever I see those brightly colored dots and their evil little spinning dial, I break out into a cold sweat.

Obviously, Twister brings back some very bad memories. For those who have never had the privilege, Twister is a game where you are instructed to put various appendages of the body on various colored dots on a floor mat, according to the sadistic instructions on the spinning dial. Of course, the real problem is that you have others on the same mat trying to do the same thing. Hence, the name “Twister.”

Even as a child, when I was at my most limber, I could not manage that game. “Put your left foot on a yellow dot,” came the instructions. I was, at that point, hovering over the other side of the mat (of course), like a drunken crab who had flipped clumsily over on its back. I had another person’s elbow in my eye and a knee shoved in the middle of my back (I prayed the knee wasn’t mine).

Left foot on yellow, huh? Giving a mighty heave, I picked up one foot, shoved it in someone’s mouth to get them out of my way and slapped the foot on a dot. “There,” I declared triumphantly, “left foot on yellow.”

“That’s your right foot and it’s on green,” I was quickly informed.

“Maybe I’m color-blind and I don’t know my right from my left (that at least is true, ask Roy)” I snapped back. “You should make allowances for my handicaps.”

It was at this point that the inverted crab lost all sense of balance and fell to the mat, taking everyone with me. It’s a fact that I didn’t get asked to play Twister very often and this was okay with me. The few times I did play still give me nightmares.

I know I’m taking a long time to get to my point. It is not “never play Twister.” However, I have been painfully reminded of Twister by a little experience optimistically known as “stretching exercises.” With advancing age, I have learned that exercise is more and more necessary. As a very wise physical therapist told me, “You either use it, or you lose it.”

It’s while doing some of these stretching exercises that I am unpleasantly echoing those childhood days of making myself into a pretzel. I am trying to use muscles that I wasn’t even aware that I possessed, and I have discovered that I am much too old to do the inverted crab without a great deal to drink and a long stay in the hospital!

I was attempting to do one of the more complicated feats one evening when Roy came into the room.

“What in the world are you trying to do to that broomstick?” was his obvious question.

“I’m doing an exercise for my hips,” I answered, struggling to hold the broomstick in place, “you just wrap one leg around the broomstick and twist the other way. I found this one on Facebook.”

“I suggest you put the broomstick back on the broom and stop consulting Facebook for your general exercise health,” was his recommendation. I took his advice but only because I tripped myself up on the broomstick and fell on the floor. Now, I have a few bruised muscles as well!

I keep trying, though. It’s got to be easier to touch your hand to the space between your shoulder blades, than it was to put my left foot on yellow, am I right? Except as my face gets red from the effort and my fingertips are nowhere near my shoulder blades, I begin to suspect that I’m no better at this than I was at that cursed game.

Very well, I decided to strengthen my core on my treadmill. Anyone can walk, right? However, it seemed I needed to speed it up (I heard about this on Facebook). The difference between one speed and the next was rather more than I expected and forced me to exert myself–a lot. After an eternity at the higher speed, I checked the time—I had been walking at the higher speed for exactly a minute and a half. But it was a core-strengthening minute and a half, I comforted myself.

“So, how long did you make it on your treadmill,” Roy asked as I staggered into the room.

“Oh, only 15 minutes or so,” I lied casually, while gasping for breath. “I expect I will get better as I go along.”

Or maybe I should just go back to Twister.

Jackie Wells-Fauth

It’s not a matter of getting old. Of course, I know I’m not old. I’m sure I’m not! I do all the things I can to try and salvage what is left of my body after years of neglect and I do brain teasers and crosswords and read copiously to keep up with my…what’s that term? Oh yes! My mental health, that’s what I’m keeping up!

So, as you can see, I am not old. That’s why it’s so curious (that took a minute—I had to look up how to spell that one) that so many things occur that might give a person the idea that I might just be headed around the proverbial bend from middle age into some sort of, possibly—older age; that’s the expression I’m looking for!

Where was I? Oh yes, those pesky, unpleasant little things that might be aging me. There’s not a person in the world who hasn’t walked in a room and asked herself (himself) “Why did I come in here again?” Unfortunately, I have graduated to doing it several times for the same item.

“You’ve come in here and left three times already,” Roy said one evening, “What are you doing?”

“I wish I knew,” I answered in exasperation, “I hate when that hap—MY PHONE!” I suddenly screamed, causing Roy to flinch back in shock, “I came in here to get my phone, I remember!”

“Except your phone is in the bedroom, remember? That’s where you put it,” he replied.

“I think you put it there, and you’re just trying to gaslight me,” I said as I headed for the bedroom.

“Whatever makes you feel good,” he replied.

I stomped into the bedroom and stopped abruptly at the door. “What did I come in here for?”

It’s even worse when I involve Roy in my “age-itis”. The other day, I took the refrigerator shelves apart to give them a good cleaning.

“Can you help me put them back?” I asked Roy. “It’s hard for me to reach down to the bottom shelf.” (Not because I’m old!)

I positioned the bottom shelf for him, and he struggled for five minutes, and it just wouldn’t snap into place.

“I can’t make it fit this way,” he complained, “are you sure this is how it goes in?”

“Of course it is,” I replied, “I just took it out, do you think I wouldn’t remember…oh, wait a minute.” I turned my head to look at it upside down (hard to do when you are old.) “Maybe it does go in the other way.”

He flipped the shelf around, slipped it into place and snapped it down. Then he just sat there and looked at me.

“Isn’t the refrigerator looking good? I worked hard on it this afternoon,” I said. He was not distracted.

“You’re sure it was this afternoon?”

Even the dog (Roy’s dog) has joined the chorus of reminding me how old I am. The other day, I was jamming to the 70s on the radio, really dancing up a storm. Well, as much of a storm as I can create with bad knees, cranky ankles and poor balance. But I was having fun.

I twirled around once and happened to catch a look at the dog. She was sitting quietly, watching me, judging me. She looked so sorry for me that I could almost hear her say, “Your dancing days are over, Jammin’ Jackie. Hang it up and find your cane.”

So, maybe I am older than I think, but I don’t think I’m any older than I was when I graduated from high school. I think I should still be able to remember everything I did back then. That’s why I do the brain teasers and the crosswords and read copiously. It’s so that I will always…what was my point again?

Jackie Wells-Fauth

It was the last pill in my prescription bottle and I was in a hurry to get on the road in my oh-so-busy life. I had decided I could wait until tomorrow to renew the prescription, because I still had that one pill. I took it in my hand as I headed down the steps for the car because, of course, it must be taken with food. I had decided that instead of just grabbing some toast at home to take the pill with, I would grab a doughnut on the way.

The problem was—what to do with the pill while I drove to the doughnut store? No problem; I simply laid it on the top of my coffee mug. It would be fine there on the lid of the coffee container for a few minutes. Except as soon as I took off, the pill slid through the opening in the coffee mug lid and sank to the murky bottom of the cup!

My last pill…no more for another day until I could get back and get a refill. Now what? Yes, indeed, you guessed it.  I sucked down that whole giant cup of coffee so I could get at the grainy remains of the pill at the bottom. Causing me to then need to stop in the nearest town on the road to relieve myself of the swiftly drunk coffee!

It seemed like such a good idea at the time. And it ended as all things do that I try because “it’s a good idea at the time;”  in disaster.  I was forced to lick the final granules of my final pill from the bottom of a very deep coffee mug!

I once backed my brand new husband’s fancy car into a stop sign. It seemed like a good idea at the time to keep backing up so I could see what I’d hit, thus putting a scratch all along the car and eventually flattening the stop sign. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I suspect that the only reason I remained married after that was because my husband didn’t want to go through the expense of hiring a divorce lawyer (or a defense attorney) that early in the relationship!

I could avoid these kinds of problems—large and small—if I just thought it through a little better, but I have a tendency to make snap decisions and then repent at leisure, wondering what in the world made me think that was a good idea. Of course, it always seems like a good idea at the time and it always ends up dissolved in the bottom of my coffee mug!

It is an impulse that actually runs in my family. My sister once crawled under a grainery and then couldn’t get out because, of all things, her head got stuck! I scoffed for months, wondering what made her think that was a good idea. Then, mid-summer, I ran barefoot through a mud puddle to prove that I could avoid stepping on whatever broken glass was sticking out of the center of the pool. I couldn’t. After that, I understood my sister better and I understood as I was getting a foot full of stitches that we both tended to think something was a good idea at the time when it really wasn’t!

I also plan good ideas that don’t work out that well. I have yet in my life to plan a surprise party where the surprise didn’t end up being on me. The worst was when I decided to give Roy a surprise fortieth birthday party. We were planning on quite a few people and we were going to hold it in my sister’s garage.

I spent all of two days preparing food, which wasn’t easy when Roy came home at night. I had two young girls at home and keeping them quiet was also a chore. But, up until the final afternoon, I had managed to plan a surprise party. It seemed like a good idea at the time….

I was in mid-afternoon cooking mode. I had banana, strawberries, peaches, pears and every other kind of fruit possible for a salad chopped up and spilling over the counters. I was browning mounds and mounds of hamburger for barbeques. I had chips and buns stacked on the counter ready to be stashed away before Roy got home. But I had two hours, plenty of time.

Then the dog got loose and I had to go find her. I had a major blowout with the electric fryer, so it slowed the browning of hamburger to one not too large skillet. I cut my fingers on the fruit and had to clean myself up and then pick out any blood-stained fruit. And lastly, I piled the buns in their cartons on the floor by the back door to get them out swiftly and the dog sat on one.

Before I knew it, Roy walked in the door, his mouth dropping open at the heaps of food, decorations everywhere,  the cake which had just been delivered, and me, covered in bandaids and berating the dog.

“It’s your 40^th birthday,” I snarled at him, “Surprise.”

So probably, putting a pill on top of my coffee mug and watching it slide in and dissolve, isn’t the worst idea I’ve had, it’s just the latest experience where I thought something was a good idea at the time.

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I have come to the conclusion that I am watching too much television. This is because along with the constant barrage of commercials about the latest miracle drug that will make you young again, I have become tired of what I like to call the “app” commercials.

“You no longer have to wait for payday, you can have up to $500 today!” promises the voice on the television. “Just type in a few words on this app and you, too, can be in debt forever!”

Okay, maybe they don’t say the last part, but they do make it pretty easy to get yourself in a pile of debt, especially if you can use their app!

Of course the next commercial will be one in which you can use an app to apply for help getting you out of your massive debt. As long as you have a “smart phone”, you can do just about anything.

We took a driving vacation the last two years and both times, we encountered parking lots which required you to use your cell phone to get into their app. You simply took a picture of a design on the billboard that looked like something on Star Trek. If you could make your phone do that, you got into an app which recorded your car license and payment option so that you could park in the parking lot. Gone are parking attendants;  we now have an app!

It frequently worries me what will happen if our phones fail us. These things can do everything from get you on an airplane to paying bills, to shopping for just about anything. Frequently it’s hard to remember that their stated purpose is to call people. We are a long way from the machine hanging on the wall that did nothing more than ring and connect us with one other person! Phone lines went down occasionally in the old days and we just coped. Today, a loss of our phones would stop our lives cold.

As long as everything is being done with an app, I have a few suggestions for some apps that they should add. After all, there doesn’t seem to be much that these smart phones can’t do if they have the proper app.

I would like an app that would do the cooking at my house. I don’t even want it to clean up afterwards, I just want to be able to scan some code on the stove with my phone and have the meal appear, done with much more skill than I have. I would even be willing to add some of those videos from Youtube on how to fix the perfect meal.

Laundry is another thing I’d like to see an app for. Most washing machines today are computers anyway, why couldn’t we have an app that would not only load the washer and dryer, but would also decipher all of those options on the controls. An app would be able to talk to the machine and tell it what to do far better than I can anymore! I’m being told as I write this, that there is such an app—you can actually handle the laundry while you are enjoying an evening out—paid for by an app, of course!

I was grousing about paying my bills and keeping track of expenses the other day. “Why doesn’t anyone come up with an app for that?” I asked no one in particular, but the television answered.

“Are you tired of paying for things you don’t use? Do you want to cease the worry over late fees for bills you forget to pay?”

“Yes!” I answered, forgetting that the television can’t really hold a conversation with me. “That is exactly my problem. What can I do, that doesn’t involve me doing the actual work?”

“Just try our system,” the television continued. “It will keep track of all your bills, pay things on time and get rid of anything you don’t need.”

“Sounds a little mind-controlling, but I’m desperate. Who do I call?” I say, taking out paper and pencil to write down the number.

“Just use our app for paying bills and keeping track of your subscriptions. Never pay for a thing you don’t need again. Hold your phone up to the symbol on the corner of your television screen—you know, the one that looks like a Martian is trying to make contact– and you will have our app.”

I might have known. Another app I can get to make my life “easier”. Which makes me wonder: Is there an app out there to handle all of these apps? That’s the one I really need!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

“Yes, I’m calling to speak to Mr. Smith; it’s a matter of some urgency,” I say to the polite young woman who answered the phone.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Smith is busy right now; can I connect you with his voicemail?”

Now, I understand we live in a world of automation, but I am highly reluctant to discuss my business into the vacant air, invited  by a mysterious, robotic voice which bids me to, “Leave a message, after the to…” at which point it disconnects me and I’m leaving a different, somewhat heated message into the literal dial tone.

I have long believed that Alexander Graham Bell was an evil genius who presented the telephone to an unsuspecting world as a product of Satan. I know, I know, I’m probably being too harsh, but my battles with the telephone have been extensive, bitter and sometimes downright bloody (I once banged the receiver against my forehead in frustration and cut myself.)

The early phones might have been convenient and fine. “Oh look, Martha, we don’t have to run down the hill to talk to the neighbors, we can just ring them on the telephone,” says George in delight.

“That’s good, since the neighbors don’t live down the hill; they live across the street, and I’m pretty sure they listen in on our calls,” Martha retorts bitterly, “I hate party lines.”

Personal phone use has never been the biggest issue for me, though. We all know the relief of getting to talk to an actual person when we make business calls. That, however, doesn’t happen much in the business world where AI has taken charge of reception duties. And AI systems serving as receptionists have all the telephone charm and etiquette of the warden of a maximum-security prison.

“Listen to the following list of options,” intones the warden, “Press 1 for a manager, press 2 for accounting, press 3 for Maintenance and for Complaints, please hang up and dial 1-800-wedontcare. You have not responded by pressing a number as instructed. We will repeat the options…”

“No, wait! I want maintenance; just give me maintenance,” I say as I frantically try to figure out where the keyboard has disappeared on my cell phone.

“Since you have not responded with a number, you will be disconnected; have a nice day.” And just like that, the warden is gone—off to torture another telephone inmate.

“Wait! Warden! I need maintenance! I forgot the number thingy, play the options again!” I say desperately as the dial tone sounds in my ear.

My favorite telephone antic of all of course, is the “Hold button,” which I am convinced came from the seventh circle of Dante’s Inferno.

“Your call will be answered in order of receipt. You call is number 52 and we are presently working for the next hour on caller 3. But your call is important to us, so we will put you on hold and play music they wouldn’t inflict on prisoners of war, but don’t worry, we will break in every so often to repeat that your call is important to us.”

In the meantime, I have called Mr. Smith on my urgent business ten times and have sent that many voicemails into the abyss, never to be heard again. But I’ll try one more time.

“Hello, I’d like to speak to Mr. Smith, please,” I say, bracing for voicemail.

“This is Mr. Smith,” says an actual person with an actual voice, “How may I help you?”

I’m delilghted…I’m astounded…I…have completely forgotten why I called him….Dialtone time!

Jackie Wells-Fauth

Okay, everyone who contemplated moving to the tropics this week, raise your hand. (Give me a moment while I raise mine.) For those of you who didn’t, you’re just not thinking creatively…you must be too cold!

I know that into every winter, a little cold must fall, but this week, it has verged on the ridiculous. I do love living in South Dakota, but I admit I don’t handle the ultra-cold too well. It disrupts everything and I can’t wear my short-sleeved shirts. This is a tragedy!

I am poorly equipped to handle all this cold. I had to switch from my afternoon iced tea to hot tea and I absolutely cannot face eating cold cuts in weather like this. It makes me want to curl up in a blanket and eat comfort foods like chocolate and doughnuts. Cold weather is bad for the body mass, but on the bright side, I’ve heard that the higher the body mass, the warmer I’ll stay!

Fortunately, we have the capability to have fires in our basement stove. Unfortunately, I’ve never been any good at starting fires. Roy does it well, but if I try, it never works. I’m reminded of the Jack London story “To Build a Fire.” The poor man was freezing and trying to get a fire going. When he finally succeeded, the snow from a tree overhead dropped and put it out. You just knew he was going to freeze to death then. I would not have taken as long to succumb to the weather!

I never have the luck to get a fire to start. I have tried everything from kindling sticks to all types of paper and I never even get an ember flickering, but I do get a lot of cold air coming down the pipe! So much for the comfort of a crackling fire—the furnace is on its own.

I try the mind over matter trick. It’s ten below outside, so I make sure to read the epic novel “Hawaii” and I eat pineapple while wearing a lei. I draw the line at doing the hula, however; the last time I tried, I put a hip out! Mind over matter didn’t work; I was still freezing.

Roy is not nearly as bothered by the cold. He was watching a football game this weekend where the football players were playing in the snow. They were slipping and sliding, and they had bare hands and arms in a snowstorm so thick that it was hard to see if the ball went between the goal posts in a field goal!

“How can you watch that stuff?” I asked, pulling my coat closer around my body as the snow changed to sleet and clanged off the helmets of the players. “It’s positively freezing my blood.”

“Well, I’m not there,” he replied, “and sometimes a game is more exciting when you don’t know from one minute to the next if they are going to go sliding into the goal line.”

After three hours of watching the blizzard of Philadelphia, I was relieved to have it over. Probably the LA Rams were too—I can’t imagine that’s their usual climate for play. They undoubtedly went back to their hotel rooms to thaw out and I removed one layer of my many layers of clothes.

Then, just like that, another game came on and guess what? More snow! I don’t enjoy football all that much anyway; I really don’t want to increase the misery by freezing while I watch the game.

“Can’t we watch something else,” I whined as I put on another pair of socks—over my hands. “I am freezing and it’s obvious Buffalo is going to win.”

“You never know, anything can happen and that’s especially true when they are playing the game in the Arctic.”

Monday morning proved that football games in the snow are not the worst thing about cold. I did not set a single foot outside and I was still frozen, just looking at the thermometer. I kept waiting for it to get above zero, and it never did.

The dog went to the door and looked back as if to say, “I would like to go out now.”

“You don’t want to go out, trust me,” I told her.

She didn’t trust me, so I let her out and she made a complete about face and had her head back in the door before I could close it. Turns out that dog and I have something in common. Neither one of us enjoys the cold.

“Don’t worry, if I find a tropical island to go to…” I began, looking at her, “I’ll be sure to send you a postcard with something warm on it.”

Stay warm all of you—spring must come sometime!

Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen

Jackie Wells-Fauth

Yes, indeed this is another rant about my cooking. But I’ve finally decided what my culinary technique reminds me of. There is a program on television called “Hell’s Kitchen.” I see it advertised, but I don’t watch it because cooking programs just depress me. And that program appears to consist of a man yelling at people for poor cooking. I can get examples of poor cooking anytime I want!

What I don’t usually have is people yelling at me for it. Fortunately, the one person in my household who hates cooking more than I do is Roy, so he’s careful about how he comments on what I cook. Since we met when he, as an Aberdeen fireman, showed up to put out my burning supper, he can’t even tell you that he didn’t know what he was getting into!

So, he has eaten many a meal that wasn’t exactly up to cooking show standards and he’s pretty mellow about it. He can eat burned bacon, undercooked pancakes and warm orange juice, without too much complaint. “The bacon has less burned spots this time,” he will say and I feel like Julia Child because I take that as the greatest compliment in the world. Take that, Hell’s Kitchen!

There are some critiques occasionally for my cooking, however. I mismanaged a piece of fried chicken one day and divided it between the dog and the cat. The dog, not the most discerning of cuisine artists, gobbled down her share, but when I offered the other part to the cat, she looked down her nose as if to say, “I don’t take failed cooking projects, thank you.”

I occasionally make pastry items when my grandsons come. Years of experience have taught the older two to be cautious about what they put in their mouths, but the four-year-old not as well-educated in my cooking yet, crammed an entire bar in his mouth, looked thoughtful for a minute, and then spit it back out. That pretty much says it all!

The biggest critic in the house, of course, is the smoke alarm. My sister once gave me a set of napkins which said, “Supper’s ready when the smoke alarm goes off.” I would be offended by that if it weren’t for the fact that the smoke alarm and I are on very close terms. I slightly overcook something and the smoke alarm announces it to everyone. “Shut up or you’re next!” is my favorite response, but the smoke alarm is usually unmoved. It also doesn’t respond to shoes thrown at it, brooms taking a swing or any curse word I can come up with.

That would have been bad enough if not for the recent addition of an air purifier. I thought this was a great idea until I realized that the only time the air purifier gets excited is when I cook. Now I have two robotic critics of my cooking, and people want to make this an AI world? I don’t think so!

The other day, I decided that instead of burning bacon in the frying pan, I would char it on the broiler. Someone told me this made less of an atmospheric impact. No, I don’t know what that means, but it sounded good!

Of course, the bacon singed on all the edges and the smoke alarm joyfully started its usual routine. “I know, I know, I don’t need you to tell me the bacon burned,” I shouted at an inanimate object. “Nobody else cares, why do you?”

At just that moment, the air purifier kicked in. This machine, normally completely silent in its operation, suddenly kicked into a gear I didn’t know it possessed, frantically trying to clear the air of my cooking. It revved like a racecar engine, and for a few minutes, I thought its insides were going to come bursting out with the effort.

“Et tu, Brute?” I asked, my eyes stinging with smoke. “I don’t already have one machine giving my cooking an F, you have to add your opinion??????”

By the way, even the dog wouldn’t eat the bacon. Welcome to Hell’s Kitchen.

Jackie Wells-Fauth

I was out for dinner last week when I overheard a conversation that really resonated with me.

“My New Year’s Resolution this year is to lose weight,” came the determined declaration of a young lady at a neighboring table. “After all, God loves a healthy girl.”

“So, the same resolution  as last year,” drawled her companion cheerfully, “And the year before that, and…”

This cynical observation was interrupted by a sharp rap on the shoulder from the young lady setting her resolutions, but the fact that everyone, including her, laughed, told me this was probably a correct assessment.

But I can truly relate to this resolution and I don’t think it’s too chancy of me to say I’m not alone. How many people, every year, including me, set losing weight as their New Year’s Resolution, only to have their good intentions blasted out of the water by a January filled with lots of calories?

It is, however, a legitimate choice for a new start. After eating the fatted cow all through the holiday season, I wager we are all finding the waistband on our trousers a little tight. The merchandizers of the world long ago caught on: After pushing every candy and snack possible at Christmas, January’s ads are all about exercise equipment and diet deals.

And while I do try to clean up my eating habits after abusing them horribly during the criminal holidays, I stopped calling it a diet some time ago. And this philosophy, although rocky at times, serves me pretty well. I simply resolve not to resolve to lose weight. Simple, right?

“I thought you weren’t dieting any more,” a friend will say after I have selected the sugar-free beverage (with obvious reluctance).

“Oh, I’m not dieting,” I say, with false cheerfulness, “I really like this diet soda…it has a delightful aftertaste.”

“It tastes like the inside of an oil can,” my friend answers, “admit it, you’re on a diet.”

“I’m not on a diet; I’m just exploring new and nasty tastes,” I insist, but we both know the truth: Resolution or not,  I am counting calories in the new year and I’m reminded of it everywhere.

Choosing a muffin over a frosted roll is a major dilemma.

“You know, it is a proven fact that in order to lose weight and keep it off, you have to give up high calorie things for good,” the television dietician states positively.

How sad that makes me, but I know it is probably true. That does not, however, mean that I don’t cheat on my marriage to high fiber muffins by stepping out with a roll slathered in frosting once in a while. After all, I have not made a new year’s resolution to diet. I just try to keep the sugary activities to a minimum. But I’m not dieting. My resolution is to not diet.

Which brings me to my greatest enemy…the bathroom scale. None of this non-dieting thing works if the scale doesn’t cooperate. I regard my scale with all the affection that Elmer Fudd had for Bugs Bunny. And occasionally, as I watch the dial spin higher and higher, I fantasize about shooting it.

When I first began my “non-diet,” I wouldn’t step on the scale if Roy was in the house.

“It won’t change just because I’m here or not here, you know,” he pointed out, the first time I demanded he vacate the premises during the morning weigh-in.

“I know, but if it’s too high, I want to keep my screaming to myself, without any witnesses,” I explained.

“And if it’s nice and low?”

“Then you’ll have to come back into the house sometime and I can brag about it then,” I concluded.

So far, my resolution to not diet has worked out pretty well. And if I don’t maintain the weight I want, I won’t worry too much. After all, God loves a chubby girl, too!