People watching

I love watching people. Yes, this includes you. Don’t want anyone feeling left out.

I love watching people park at the gym.

The gym parking lot is always crowded. I mean packed. When they built the place, they didn’t realize the membership was going to surpass the ability to accommodate it.

I know. Success can be a real bother sometimes.

Anyway, I get a kick out of the people who will circle and circle and circle the parking lot, looking for the perfect spot as close to the doors as possible. Keeps them from having to walk far. They will sit in the car and wait for a person to pull out of a space up front, instead of parking in one of the available spots in the back of the lot. Then, after they park, they get out of their car, hop on the treadmill, and run 20 miles. Makes me smile every time.

I love watching the people at the gym watching the TV programs while they exercise.

The sweat/workout room at the gym is huge. And there are about 13 giant, flat-screen TVs hanging way up on the wall and suspended from the ceiling, intended to entertain us couch potatoes and keep us from realizing that we are not home on the couch covered in orange cheese-doodle powder but instead are out among several hundred other couch potatoes who have spent more time than they should with their hands in a bag of deep-fried crunch and are now under the impression that exercising like a fool will somehow remove the deliciousness and desire from potato chips. Or suet.

What I enjoy most about this scenario, outside of the outfits, is the fact that the Food Network is one of the channels to which two of these TVs are tuned, every day.

I find great hilarity in watching a gravitationally challenged Ina Garten and a diabetic Paula Deen serve deep-fried whipped cream and chocolate-covered bacon as they roll around in giant tubs of tapioca while all the exercise machines work overtime on the gym floor directly below them.

See, Ina and Paula should be on this side of the kitchen counter, sweating with those of us who have made them as famous as they are.

One of life’s ironies. Makes me chuckle.

I love holding the door open for a stranger. Especially when they can’t take the time to acknowledge a voluntary act of kindness. (I usually say “You’re welcome” very loudly when I get ignored. I’m a jerk, and proud of it.) I don’t have to hold the door — especially for someone who obviously can’t afford etiquette classes from Emily Post (or a comb, soap or an iron, for that matter) but can afford $10 smokes and a box of ice cream.

I do it because I like reminding others that being nice isn’t going to kill you. Respect for my fellow humans is not beyond me. I especially like sharing kindnesses with those among us too busy frowning and mumbling under their breath about why they can’t find their teeth.

Respect. That’s what I’m all about.

I love watching drivers at the four-way stop when they have no clue how to proceed, whose turn it is, and how, basically, the whole thing works.

And it’s really simple. While you are pulling up to the intersection, you check the other three stops and see who got there first. All the cars, patiently waiting at stop signs, that were there before you, get to go before you.

One exception to the “everyone goes before me” rule that I employ is if the car directly across from me is coming straight across the intersection toward me, and I am also going straight across the intersection toward him. In this instance, I will go at the same time, whether the cars to my left and right have been waiting or not.

Their intersection is going to be blocked by my perpendicular buddy, so it won’t be any skin off their teeth if I go at the same time.

In any case, when it’s your turn to go, you have to go like you mean it. Paying attention is key.

Any hesitation can make one of the other drivers in one of the opposing lanes think they are in the wrong and then they might lurch forward. Lurching is a bad thing when it comes to the four-way stop.

Either sit there and wait your turn or floor it because it is your turn. None of this herky-jerky stuff that makes everyone else wonder if they’ve missed something.

I think this is why drivers from Massachusetts (Massholes) have such a tough time at the four-way. Do you know that there are drivers from Massachusetts (and we all know how they drive — like they’re already late and think they can get there on time) who are incapable of negotiating the four-way stop?

I’m married to a family from eastern Massachusetts, so I am aware of this driving flaw.

They can speed their way through a traffic rotary with their eyes closed (as most of them do) but they can’t figure out whose turn it is at the four-way. One reason is because there is a red hexagon on a post with a foreign word painted upon it in white. They know not what this word means, nor the action it commands.

They are also not accustomed to letting someone else go first. This seems to work on their commonwealth, among their people. Every driver in Massachusetts understands how every other driver is going to act — they all study at “the everybody all goes at once” driving academy and know what to expect.

Which is one reason New York drivers (and by New York drivers, I mean me) get swallowed up whole when they dare to clog a Massachusetts arterial. It is also why I am married to a person who has a brother and they both tell me I drive like an old lady — no lie; this has happened on more than one occasion (and they’re not nice about it when they say it) — even when I am driving near my home in New York state, among other New York state drivers.

“Why did you stop at that oddly shaped red sign? You drive like an old lady.” My family.

Respect. It grows on family trees.

I love watching people who, in general, have no clue how to go first.

I have a theory that I routinely practice. If you and I meet in a situation that involves one of us having to gesture to the other that you should go first, I believe the first person who is told to go first should go first. None of this: “After you;” “no, after you;” “no, after you;” baloney.

If I wave you on, you should go. If you wave me on, I will go. If I wave you on and then you wave me on, you lose. I’m going. You get one shot. Use it. If someone is being polite to you, it is not polite to mimic their gesture. It’s polite to accept their gesture, and then throw a “thank you” wave (using all fingers in unison) as you skirt past.

We’ll all get where we’re going a lot faster and with a lot less lurching if we would just do as we’re told.

You’re welcome.

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Missing snow days

I bet one reason snow is hated so by right-thinking people who agree with me is that, as an adult, the opportunities to play with it are far out-numbered by the amount of time spent just dealing with it.

Not unlike marriage.

When I was a kid, I longed for days like this past Thursday morning: one ear glued to the radio, waiting for those magic words from Don Weeks: “In Columbia County …”

Here it comes …

“Chatham Central schools …”

Where’s my hat with the ear flaps and my mittens with the clip that clips them together and my giant “I can’t put my arms down” snowsuit and my scarf and my boots and my sled and …

“… are running one hour late.”

Aaaaaaaach. One hour late? What is that?

“Mahhhhhhh. It’s only one hour laaaaate.”

“Don’t worry, my sweet darling snow angel, they might still close. There’s time. Mommy loves you.” Mom always had the right thing to say in the midst of the most unfathomable of crises. A one-hour school delay is worthless to a child. It is one hour of time wasted that will never be given back.

Can’t go out and play; gotta get ready for school. Can’t go back to bed; too wired about the snow. So, while mom listened to the radio, the only thing left to do was watch the rest of “Captain Kangaroo.” And pray for Don Weeks to come through.

The one hour late thing was a mind boggler for a young mind already suffering from an abundance of boggle. I can honestly remember only once in the seemingly endless string of years I was forced to go through that whole “school” thing — where you sit with the same people all facing the same direction day after day, year after year, and do nothing but crack jokes, ignore homework, and somehow skate through by the skin of your teeth — when the school day was delayed by an hour, thanks to the weather.

I think they (the unseen magic people on high who held the fortunes of the entire adolescent snow-worshiping community in the palms of their hands as they decided, yes or no, if it was going to be a school day or a snow day) preferred to close the school instead of figuring out how to slice up the day — which was already rigidly and with loud bells sliced up into specific time quadrants.

If we bring them in an hour later, do we just lop off the first hour of the day and pick up where the schedule would normally land after an hour? Or, do we get out our protractors and figure out how to divide the hour into the number of periods, deduct that amount of time from every class, reset the bell system so that it rings eight minutes earlier for each class, all day and and and …

I bet that’s why school was closed more frequently than it was delayed — the unseen magic people on high couldn’t do the math.

Heck with it. This is too hard. Let’s just close school.

And forget the two-hour delay — which was the delay du jour with this past Thursday’s storm. Seemed like every school district listed on the first scroll across the bottom of the morning news broadcasts had opted for the two-hour delay.

The two-hour delay must really mess with the class schedule and the bell system. By the time the kids get to school it’s time to ship them off to lunch, gym, study hall, and home again.

(“In Emerald City County, Oz Central School, two hours late.” We get up at 12 and go to work at 1. Take an hour for lunch and then at 2 we’re done.)

I am sure there were occasions during my schooling days when classes started two hours late, but I don’t remember them. I only remember the snow days.

“… And in Columbia County, Chatham Central schools are now closed.”

Those magical words that, more than most others, decided the direction of a young, round human being’s entire day.

Today, those words have no effect on me whatsoever. For one reason, Don Weeks retired. And with him, seemingly, went the countless number of hours the radio folks spent reading the list of closings. With the invention of television, and its much hipper cousin, the Internets, the radio seems to have gotten out of the school closings business and passed the work off to technology. We didn’t have technology when I was a kid. We had WGY.

Snow days are there for others to enjoy. I can only sit here, look out my giant window, past the giant shrubbery covered with snow, out toward the stand of trees, the branches upon which are now dancing under the weight of the season’s first memorable accumulation, thinking about sledding and snowmen and snow forts and snow balls and snowshoes.

And getting the snow fort dug out and the snowballs made so we can bombard the snowplow as it goes by. (Playing army in the snow added a whole ’nother dimension to playing army. The plows were the tanks. They didn’t stand a chance.) I digress.

But I’ll not complain, I have told myself, about any of the snow we get this winter. Because we have come this far surrounded by barren, brown, lifeless earth and leafless, dead-looking trees.

We should all be thankful that global warming is just a stupid thing smart people talk about and not something that is really happening. If it was real, it would melt the snow before I had to shovel it.

I could not imagine being a 10-year-old roly-poly snow-loving dweeb, like I once was, and having to deal with the winter we have thus far experienced. What a gyp. On the other hand, I am ecstatic that it wasn’t until Jan. 12 that I had to brush the snow off the car in the morning for the first time.

But then, I probably should have thought to start the snow blower before the middle of January to make sure it would operate when finally needed.

On the other hand, thank goodness the snow was so heavy the snow blower couldn’t move it.

But then, the snow too heavy for the snow blower had to be shoveled. The problem with the shovel is that it works whether or not it’s been tuned up for the season. And there are few things less enjoyable about snow than having to move it when it’s the heavy stuff.

The amount of snow in the driveway Thursday morning was just past the threshold I use to determine if it’s going to be ignored or removed. If the weatherman says we’re only getting a couple of inches before it turns over to rain, that can be a cue to a lazy boy that perhaps it would be best to wait and see what the rain does to the driveway in terms of melting it before spending all that time shoveling. I’m not one to needlessly place an abundance of wear and tear on a shovel if nature’s plan is to lend me a hand.

Especially when there are forts to build and snowballs to make. Never know when the plow might come back through.

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Thoughts, at random

A new year brings with it a couple of random thoughts.

I have to admit I don’t understand the thought process behind people who smoke while pumping gasoline.

This is not a knock against smoking or smokers. If that’s your thing, then whatever. Please keep it away from me because it doesn’t smell very good and it kills people. It didn’t seem to, as much, when I used to do it, but it does now. Funny how that works. One of many smoking oddities.

Note to gentle readers: Please don’t tell me smoking is bad. I know it is. Everyone in the world knows it is. It’s been in all the papers. I am not condoning it. Smoking is stupid. But I am not so far into myself that I believe it’s my duty to tell others they shouldn’t smoke. Of course no one should smoke. Everyone already knows that. But if they do smoke, and they keep it to themselves, then it’s none of my business. (Unless, by way of proximity, it becomes my business.) I will not be publishing letters to the editor saying I shouldn’t have told everyone to go buy lots of cigarettes and smoke them all the time everywhere. Yum yum.

Not gonna do it. Merely setting a stage here.

I was driving home from work the other day when I passed a gasoline-and-junk-food store. Guy got out of his car, which he parked at the gas pumps, and he had a giant lit cigarette hanging from his lips. I use the work “giant” because it wasn’t a stubby little thing about to be tossed to the ground and snuffed under a tattered sneaker.

(Another amazing feature, I have always found, that comes with the practice of smoking is the fact that when smoking is finished, littering statues are suspended for the length of time it takes to flick from a car window or drop to the surface of a parking lot a spit-covered cotton wad of poison, still on fire. Welp, done smoking. Time to litter. Again, this was never an issue when I was guilty of it. It’s only been since then, it seems.)

Anyway, this guy at the gas pumps drew my attention because the cigarette was so long. Which mean he had just lit it, within seconds before getting out of the car. Which means he made a conscious decision to set fire to dried leaves compacted into a paper tube dangling in front of his face mere moments before placing his head — which, I would suggest, could be classified as being “in the danger zone” — within inches of the opening of his gas tank and the nozzle from which he was about to squeeze one of the most flammable liquids we regular humans are allowed to handle.

I need gas. Better light a cigarette.

I’ll be right home, honey. Gotta hold fire in front of my head while surrounding it with gas fumes.

Sometimes the cortex has a mind of its own.

So then I finished driving home because I didn’t want to keep the cat waiting.

It has been so long — more than three decades — since I have had a young cat in my life that I have forgotten just how weird they are.

There have been a total of five cats in my life. Growing up, my sister had a cat named Morgan, who was young when I was young and by the time I started remembering things, he was all grown up and had already developed his beliefs and strategies. I wasn’t yet using my entire brain when he was a kitten, performing kitten responsibilities, and I have no recollection of what he did after growing to full size while still being young.

What I remember of Morgan was the delight my grandfather used to achieve by hand-wrestling with the cat and afterward showing us all the blood and scratches on his hand when he was done. Gramp would laugh like heck as the cat tore the flesh from the back of his hand.

Oh, what fun.

Morgan was also responsible for introducing me to the small dead animal and nature’s pecking order. He was an indoor cat during the day but did his business outside. And at night, he was sent outside to fend for himself while the rest of us took shelter under blankets in warm bedrooms.

In the morning, when Morgan was allowed back in to defrost, eat real cat food, then carve his name in the back of Gramp’s other hand, on the mat on the front porch we would find a mouse or bird carcass. Taking seriously — and literally — his role on the graveyard shift.

My Morgan memories are of a cat all grown up and holding down a successful career.

Cat No. 2 was Woodstock, who was never friendly to anyone and possessed no redeeming qualities.

Cat No. 3 was cool. She came into my life as a barn kitten, survived the birth of two children, the end of a marriage, a subsequent courtship and beginning of a final — I mean second — marriage, and turned out to be a pretty great friend.

I remember her favorite toy being a wadded up piece of paper thrown behind a chair and her favorite game being fetch that paper wad. I also remember her toppling the Christmas tree. And tearing the heck out of the furniture with the claws.

Never dawned on me to save Gramp’s hand.

I have already spoken lovingly and at great length about the cat we just buried in August — cat No. 4 — so, we don’t need to go there again.

But this new cat — No. 5, Karen’s birthday present cat — has added a whole new layer to the cat experience. Perhaps it’s because I’m older now and paying more attention to things as they happen because I know that very soon I will forget them, but this little guy — whom we have been told is about 1 year old — is bringing the funny.

And the affection. Never known a cat to be this interested in being on you or next to you or in your face. Should have named him goiter.

Walking through the house has become somewhat of a challenge, with him constantly between the feet. He’ll run ahead and flop over sideways right in your path. Wants his belly rubbed (can’t blame him there). But then he won’t move. He stays until you’re forced to step over him, which is when he gets up and positions himself right under foot. There’s a lot of stumbling and sidestepping and accidental cat kicking involved in the once simple task of getting from the living room to the fridge and back. It’s like walking with a third sneaker tied to my ankle.

And forget trying to maneuver through the house in the pitch dark before the sun comes up. Between the cat toys, which magically position themselves into the passing lanes while we sleep, and the actual living cat, it’s an obstacle course.

And a problem I wouldn’t trade for the world. Between his playfulness and love for us both, No. 5 (whose real name is Martin and whose namesake’s birthday we celebrate this month) has been one of the best ideas I ever had. And I can count them all.

He also keeps us on our toes. Literally.

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Counting down 2011’s Top 10s

If there is one thing the end of the year is good for, besides calendar sales, it’s lists.

Also, dips. So many end-of-the-year foods are accompanied by the dips into which they are supposed to be plunged. Meat, fish, vegetables, cheese, fruit, bread, your entire snack group — they all have dips. What a glorious thing, dip.

Dip may very well be my No. 1 favorite unnecessary food.

Which brings me back to the original point.

Being a news dork — well, a dork in general, but a news dork specifically — few things grab my attention and hold it longer than the lists that start popping up at the end of a year.

Top 10 news stories, top 10 songs, top 10 famous deaths, top 10 sports stories, top 10 celebrity breakups. If someone out there has an opinion and can express it in the form of a numbered list, like a moth to a porch light, I will probably slam into it hundreds of times before realizing this accomplishes nothing.

But it sure is fun.

When I was a kid, I was even more of a dork than I am now. Every Sunday, I would sit next to the radio while Casey Kasem counted down the American Top 40 and I would write down each song and artist and what number they were that week because that was interesting to me. I have no idea what I did with those lists because they would be old news and highly useless as soon as the ink was dry.

And at the end of the year, when Casey counted down the Top 100, that’s when I broke out the color Bic Banana ink crayons and really went to town. I think WTRY used to have a contest for us dorks who did the best and prettiest job of charting the year’s Top 100. I never won, but not because I didn’t try.

Today, the list of top songs contains words I can’t comprehend, words spelled incorrectly because it’s funny and cute to be stupid, singers with names that make no earthly sense whatsoever, and song titles and band names that use backward numbers and other things that aren’t letters in place of letters. I’m still stuck on the classic rock, so the majority of popular music is just a bunch of stuff bouncing off my ear drums and shattering on the floor. Some of it is listenable; most of it is foreign to me.

According to Billboard, the only source needed for the most important information, the year’s Top 10 songs were:

1. Rolling in the Deep — Adele (This young woman is one of the good ones. No complaints here.)

2. Party Rock Anthem — LMFAO featuring Lauren Bennett and GoonRock (See what I mean?)

3. Firework — Katy Perry

4. E.T. — Katy Perry

5. Give Me Everything — Pitbull, featuring Ne-Yo, AfroJack and Nayer (See what I’m saying? AfroJack? Is that a cheese? Is there dip?)

6. Grenade — Bruno Mars

7. (Forget You) — Cee Lo Green (This song actually has a different name, but you’ll not be learning it here.)

8. Super Bass — Nicki Manaj

9. Moves Like Jagger — Maroon 5 featuring Christina Aguilera

10. Just Can’t Get Enough — The Black Eyed Peas

According to Nielsen, the only source for important television lists, the Top 10 prime time TV programs were:

1. American Idol, Wednesday

2. American Idol, Thursday

3. NBC Sunday Night Football

4. Dancing with the Stars

5. Dancing with the Stars results

6. Sunday Night NFL pre-kick

7. NCIS

8. NFL regular reason (ESPN)

9. The OT (again, football)

10. NCIS: Los Angeles

What a yawner. I can remember decades ago when real TV shows like “Gunskmoke” and “All in the Family” and “M*A*S*H” made this list. Now it’s dominated by reality stuff that doesn’t come with a script or a single brain cell.

Being in the news biz, as I am (we never call it “the biz,” by the way), I always find most intriguing The Associated Press’s annual list of the year’s top news stories, as voted upon by us industry dorks. This year’s list, all of which is arguably accurate but with which I don’t entirely agree, is:

1. The killing of Osama bin Laden

2. Japan’s earthquake/tsunami/nuclear crisis

3. Arab Spring

4. European Union’s fiscal crisis

5. U.S. economy

6. Penn State sex abuse scandal

7. The toppling and death of Moammar Gadhafi

8. Fiscal showdowns in Congress

9. Occupy Wall Street protests

10. Gabriel Giffords shot

If I was making my own news list, I would swap numbers 1 and 2. Not trying to down play the importance of popping Osama, but it was less of a surprise to me, personally, than the horrific mess that slammed Japan.

Also, I would have tried to find room on the list for the weather. A lot of people were wiped out by Mother Nature this year, in all facets of her charms.

I am always amazed at how many famous people die in a year. Being famous must be a lot more dangerous than most people realize. Every year, they drop like flies.

Even more amazing to me is how many of them I reacted to when they died and a few short months later have completely forgotten about. My reaction is most often: “He died? Oh, yeah.” Second most frequent personal celebrity death reaction: “He wasn’t already dead?”

Here are the year’s most popular dead people, categorized for your convenience:

Newsmakers: Osama bin Laden, Steve Jobs, Moammar Gadhafi, Kim Jong Il, Vaclav Havel, Jack Kevorkian, Jack LaLanne.

Politics: Geraldine Ferraro, Lawrence Eagelberger, Warren Christopher, Sargent Shriver, Betty Ford.

Sports: Joe Frazier, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Al Davis, Grete Waitz, Duke Snider, Harmon Killebrew, Matty Alou, Bubba Smith.

Music: Nick Ashford, Clarence Clemons, Heavy D, Gerry Rafferty, Dobie Gray, Phoebe Snow, Roger Williams, Amy Winehouse, Teena Marie, Don Kirschner.

TV/Film: Elizabeth Taylor, Harry Morgan, James Arness, Jackie Cooper, Susannah York, Michael Sarrazin, Peter Falk, Anne Francis, Dolores Hope, David Nelson, Pete Postlethwaite, Cliff Robertson, Andy Rooney, Jane Russell.

Arts and literature: Bil Keane (Family Circus), Tom Wilson (Ziggy).

And finally, of equal, if not substantially greater, interest, to me, anyway, and not solely because I have obviously found the comma button, “Facebook” was the term most frequently searched for by American Internet users in 2011, according to a random report from an Internet search I happened upon, which gives the following total credibility.

The full list looks like this:

1. facebook

2. youtube

3. facebook login

4. craigslist

5. facebook.com

6. yahoo

7. ebay

8. http://www.facebook.com

9. mapquest

10. yahoo.com

11. mattisonsavenue

I added that last one there. Didn’t want you to think I was giving you the biz.

Happy new year, all.

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Holiday wishes

Couple things to clear up as we speed toward Christmas.

First, I wish everyone happy holidays. I have done it every year for as many years as I can remember. Ironically, as the years pile up, I seem to be remembering fewer of them, even though more of them are coming and going. This is not a good sign.

I wish people “happy holidays” because it’s all-inclusive. Humans, in their finite wisdom, when building the calendar and inventing greeting cards, went ahead and lumped many of the largest holidays onto one end of the calendar.

It’s as if they were bee-bopping along, inventing months and days and assigning numbers, and got through the first 10 and a half months and realized: Oh, shucks, we’ve forgotten Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s Day. We’d better cram them all in at the end here. The inventors of the calendar have been a rant topic in this space on previous occasions. I would rather not go down that road again. (https://mattisonsavenue.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/making-sense-of-the-calendar/)

They know how I feel about them.

So when I say “happy holidays” it is meant to cover everything that is coming up. I might not see you before all the holidays have passed, so by blanketing my good tidings, I feel as though I have all of my bases covered.

My intent is sincere, my aim is true, and my God, why are so many people losing their minds about “happy holidays?”

As if humanity’s collective sphincter was not clenched quite tightly enough, those of us who dare to say “happy holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” have been under assault in recent years because our words have somehow taken the Christ out of Christmas, placing Santa Claus — that evil-doer — on a higher rung than Jesus.

Poverty, hunger and disease aren’t occupying enough of our time? We have to invent crap like this to sling at people who are guilty of nothing more than spreading a positive message?

Far too many of us are assigning to words a higher level of power than they actually carry. Words, on many occasions, are just words. Thoughts and actions still do account for something.

How about factoring them in. Like we used to. Remember? Probably not.

Very disappointing.

And more than a little ignorant.

We are socially networking, politically correcting and over-thinking ourselves past the point of common sense, good reason and happy fun.

Remember happy fun? It used to culminate during the holidays.

Back when they were happier.

Back when using those two words adjacent to one another in the same sentence was not akin to blasphemy.

Back when it wasn’t wrong to celebrate the holidays as each of us sees fit.

Another thing I wish is that we could agree on our choices of holiday music. (I would call it Christmas music, but not all of the music played only at Christmastime mentions the word Christmas. “Jingle Bells,” “Deck the Halls,” “Let it Snow,” “Frosty the Snowman” and “Sleigh Ride” among the blasphemous lot.)

Can we agree that there are a lot of really really bad, tired, over-played songs that really really need to be burned in a pile? I was reminded of this Friday morning when I heard “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree.”

For the bazillionth time. Good grief.

“Jingle Bell Rock,” “Grandma Got Run Over …,” “Blue Christmas,” “Feliz Navidad,” “Santa Baby,” “Little Saint Nick,” “Wonderful Christmastime.” Done with all of these. There are more; I am sure of it. But with all the good holiday songs that are available, why is it we still waste the lives of our ear drums on this drivel?

As far as pop musicians are concerned, many, if not all, have tried to invent a standard that, more often than not, has either failed miserably or run its course.

One that hasn’t, and never will, is John Lennon’s “Happy Xmas (War is Over).” The rest can’t hold a candle.

Also, is it OK to be done with “The 12 Days of Christmas” and the countless unfunny parodies that have sprung from it? Please? In general, I should add, all Christmas song parodies have run out their string. Just not funny.

Let’s do this: Let’s agree that the only holiday music we really need is the soundtrack from “Charlie Brown’s Christmas”?

If we need to add a few more, then maybe a little “Silent Night,” sung by a church choir at midnight Christmas Eve. And any Christmas carol. And songs with lyrics like “rum-pa-pum-pum.” Or other drummy sound effects.

And “Ring Christmas Bells.” (It has that while overlapping thing going on that is quite addictive.)

And “Christmas in America” by Melissa Etheridge. (Not the one by Pat Benatar; different song entirely.) Coming out of left field with this one, but if you haven’t heard it, you might be pleasantly surprised. It has a whole “bring my soldier-relative home” thing going on.

And anything sung by Perry Como, Nat King Cole, Johnny Mathis, and the Ray Conniff singers. People who were born with Christmas music voices. Their songs are still OK. (I have kept Burl Ives and Bing Crosby from this list because everything I hear from them sounds the same.)

I know. More blasphemy.

Happy holidays.

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In protest of fir

There has always been something mystical, charming and alluring about the uncontrollable excitement (and runaway common sense) in which spouses are drenched when Thanksgiving (and the leftovers) have finally passed, the turkey carcass — boiled to smithereens and smelling like soup — has been transported to the landfill, and the delight, thrill and immeasurable joy of this most magical of all the seasons becomes the one true unbending focus (or it had at least better be mister) of everyone in the household (just help me get this box of decorations out of the attic right now or I swear to God I’ll lose it) always, forever (or else).

How each one of us enjoys and shares the holiday spirit is a very personal thing. Some of us like to lose our minds and decorate everything in sight. I have no problem with this at all. (Some of us never take our decorations down. I have no problem with this either, but it looks kinda goofy.)

I like to drive around at night and see all the Griswold houses in their festive finest. We have a couple of homes in our neighborhood that would make a person come thisclose to driving right off the road — they are that impressive.

I also like to see how others decorate the insides of their homes. I have to drive slower to do this, but sometimes it pays off. I suppose I could introduce myself, become friends, and get invited inside these places. But that seems like waaaay too much effort.

If I personally choose to take a more muted approach to holiday decorating it is only because, and this goes for just about everything, I am incredibly lazy. If there is a choice between watching “Decorate Your Head Off” on HGTV or actually getting out of the chair and hanging a red bow on the banister, I would prefer not to move.

Also, I would put it in the wrong place, forcing Karen to rehang it, using, instead of tape, a heavy sigh. So, to save her the extra step, I stay out of it as much as possible. Just doing my part.

Karen does a wonderful job of decorating the house for the holidays. She has everything neatly packed away in a giant box in the attic, which is conveniently located on the other side of a very small door in the back of a closet through which I can in no way ever fit, so, I’m pretty much excused from the get-go.

The picture frames get wrapped like presents and hang on the wall. All the little tchotchkes, small toys, gewgaws, knickknacks, lagniappes, trinkets, kitsch, baubles, bangles and beads fill all the nooks and crannies and shelves and every barren inch of every flat surface in every corner of the house so there is no place to toss a crinkled, festive candy wrapper that should instead go in the trash barrel which is all the way in the kitchen and that’s just too far away right now.

Seeing how many hidden candy wrappers make it all the way through the holiday season until undecorating day is one way a spouse can find joy and personal entertainment in the holiday season.

Mind you, I have never done this. I would have, but I didn’t think of it until just now. Mixing new traditions in with the old ones is an acceptable way to keep the holidays fresh and exciting. This is how I invented The Kitty’s Tail Needs a Bell.

The kitty, actually, is the reason the holidays and the decorating were mentioned the other day. This year, for the first time in a long time, we don’t have a kitty to keep us warm and fill the litter box in the upstairs closet with aromas unimagined.

I have used the kitty excuse — with 100 percent success — as the reason we don’t need to go, each year, through the gigantic Paul Bunyan-sized hassle of wrangling a Christmas tree. The cat would have the thing pulled over and torn apart while our backs were turned, I successfully convinced the love of my life, and wouldn’t it be a shame if she injured herself while doing it? How would you feel if the cat got glass in her paw because you needed to drag a forest into the living room? Besides, as Charlie Brown taught us, it’s not all about the tree.

Also, adults sound like trombones. But I digress.

See, to me, there are three Christmas tree arguments: Real tree; artificial tree; no tree.

I thought I had put the issue to bed for good last year after bringing home a Charlie Brown Christmas tree I received as a gift at work. We used that as our tree last year and, if I have any say in the matter, we’ll be using it this year and for all the years to come. It’s a wonderful thing and truly speaks the meaning of the holiday. Plus, it’s easy.

Personally, I don’t need a tree. But if I did, I would prefer it be artificial. Keep it in the foreign land of the attic, pull it out of a box once a year, stare at it for a couple of weeks, stuff it back in the box, and hide it away. No muss, no fuss.

I am married, however, to a charming individual who believes the tree — if we are going to have one and why can’t we this year because the cat is no longer a threat and I would like to have one but it has to be real — has to be real. What I don’t like about this idea is pretty much everything.

Needles everywhere — trunk of the car, the path through the house, the place in front of the window where it sits. Then, when it’s even more dead and needly, it gets dragged back through the house and sits on top of the snowbank until April.

The needles in the trunk of the car don’t go away until the car gets traded in. No matter how many times it’s vacuumed. I’ll be bringing groceries in in July and the needles that are stuck to the bags will get all over the kitchen.

The tree never sits straight in the little green and red three-legged tree holder stand. I’m supposed to keep water in this thing to keep the dead tree from dropping its needles or spontaneously combusting. The water idea is nice in principle but not in reality. And not only because someone has to pile presents around the base of the tree, making it impossible to reach the little water pan. But also because it plain doesn’t work. Cutting the tree off at ground level and dragging it into a structure warmed by furnace and fireplace pretty much puts the kibosh on keeping the needles in place.

Rearrange the furniture to accommodate this dead, molting fire hazard, make sure there’s a pan of water below it, then — now here’s an inspired proposal — wrap it with electrical cords covered in lights that have spent the summer in a giant knotted bundle under the intense boiler room heat of the attic.

Insecure electrical connections dangling over a pan of water, wrapped around a drying pine tree, below which sit boxes wrapped with tissue paper, adjacent to holiday candles.

Or, let’s get a fake tree. The same result without all the Paul Bunyan tomfoolery and the shattering of every fire code ever invented.

Or, better yet, let’s just get another cat.

Never pass up an opportunity to fight fir with fur.

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A new leaf turns

I can’t tell you the level of disappointment I felt when I walked outside Thursday morning to start my car and discovered everything was covered with leaves.

Even though, for the next few minutes, I’ll be doing just that.

Every year, on the day that mid-summer plunges into mid-winter — the day the leaves all fall from the trees, the grass goes dormant, the wife’s car moves itself into the garage, and the ground freezes solid — my morning routine increases by one chore.

After kissing the sound effects machine that commands the warm and squishy corner of my heart (as well as most of the covers and all the pure oxygen), I make my way down the stairs, grab the coat, slide the flip-flops over the white socks, and waddle out to the driveway to start the car.

Yep. Still bringing sexy back.

Because it’s already the dead of winter, I learned long ago (must have been well into my 30s) that it’s smarter to warm the car instead of just hopping in and driving away. And not just because the frost on the windows makes it difficult, if not impossible, to see the edges of the driveway, the garbage carts, most of the road, all the mailboxes, and the cat that is not supposed to be crossing from the neighbor’s yard into mine.

But also because the defroster blows frigid cold air when it first starts up. The minutes it takes the blowing air to get warm enough to stop the teeth from chattering, the glasses from fogging, and the windshield wipers from making that scrape-scrape sound on the ice can seem like hours.

Thawing the car, I have learned in my years of experience being alive, melts the frost off the windows. This keeps me from having to pop the trunk, bend slightly, reach in, grab the ice scraper, and exert myself.

I’m a suburbanite. Finding the lazy way out is a requirement of membership.

As evidence, I offer the button that pops open the trunk, the garage door opener, the snow blower, the automatic sprinklers, the solar-powered sidewalk lights. The lawn service, the Maids, the Home Shopping Network. The Internet. Robots.

All examples of laziness.

I digress.

The other morning, I was caught by surprise. And disappointment.

I walked outside to start the car Thursday and it was warm out. There was no frost.

I put on my flip-flops for nothing?

Then I noticed the leaves. They were everywhere. By the billions. All over the car, the driveway, the yard.

Our house and trees are situated in a way that never results in leaves landing on the car. Let alone staying there for any length of time. It was the weirdest thing.

What upset me about it was the fact that I had spent the entire day Sunday getting all of the leaves into piles, off the yard, and out to the road for handy pickup. And by all day Sunday, I am not exaggerating.

I got up early, saw how wet and white the grass was, decided to wait until it started to thaw and dry, made a cup of coffee, and watched a couple of hours of home and garden television. (Suburbanite porn.) After waiting a sufficient amount of time for the sun to prep the yard, I got out there and stayed busy — until kickoff time for the early football games.

Gotta respect the sabbath.

At 1 p.m., he rested. With a malt beverage.

But there was a good two hours in there during which I worked like a mad man on those leaves. I’m amazed I don’t have blisters.

That leaf blower can wreak havoc on tender skin.

Another great invention that has contributed to the laziness of suburban life is the electric rake. A marvel of modern ingenuity with the capability of both blowing and sucking.

Not unlike the Mets.

Makes more noise than the lawn mower, can be heard coming from every corner of the neighborhood at all hours of the weekend (because all the neighbors have one), and takes twice as long to get its work done.

How did we live without it.

But, by golly, standing there with the slack of the lead cord in one hand and a cool-looking gun-like reverse vacuum (which the neighbor cat really hates) in the other, swinging the arm back and forth while chasing each stubborn leaf from the shrub bed across the yard into the pile with all of its buddies, in the long run, is one of the great privileges of owning a mortgage.

Well, that and the thrill of blowing the neighbor’s cat poop back into the neighbor’s yard.

The leaf blower’s purpose on earth is to keep the operator from having to move a muscle.

Twenty years ago, I learned this is also the husband’s purpose on earth.

I hope that wasn’t out loud.

If a leaf is stuck in the weeds or in a bush or frozen to the ground or for some other reason too darn stubborn to move by conventional means (and by conventional means, I mean by pointing this contraption at it for several minutes until the grass around it is matted like a crop circle) — even after being prodded several times by the long snout of the wind machine or, in severe cases, kicked by a grass-stained yard sneaker — it’s an obvious example of something that was not meant to be.

If a leaf can’t be blown out of the way, that’s no reason to bend over and nudge it with a finger. Or pick it up.

There is no sense getting worked into a lather, I reassure myself; if it’s stuck, it’s stuck. The mulcher attachment on the lawn mower (invented to spare us lazy-bones from having to rake grass clippings) will grind it to smithereens. Next spring.

No sense cutting the grass in November; it’s not like it’s gonna grow.

After two long hours of slaving under a crisp autumn sky last weekend, the majority of the leaves had been reassigned. My work here was done.

Thursday morning, there was no evidence that I had even lifted a finger. Which is an accurate description of just how much effort I did exert.

There were leaves everywhere.

Now I have to get out there again before the snow flies (and the Giants’ game), drag the extension cord out to the far-reaches of the postage-stamp lawn I am fortunate enough to tend with as little effort as I can muster, and coax this latest batch of rogue oak leaves out to the street.

Where they can blow away and become tomorrow’s problem for some other poor suburban slob.

But that’s what he gets for letting his cat use my lawn as a litter box.

 

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Her cheating heart

The way I interpreted it:

In the side yard — a narrow flagstone path between the privacy fence and the side of the house, where the outdoor kitchen stadium will one day arise from its present-day ashes (and weeds) — is a large dumpster’s worth of entrails harvested from Chez Mattison’s original kitchen, as well as from every other nook and cranny in the house and adjacent out-building.

Old cabinetry; boxes and odd-shaped Styrofoam chunks that once cuddled new appliances; various bags of dirt and bottles of spray stuff and rusted cans of unrecognizable wall color and random important pieces of wood and countless other representatives of merchandise once thought vital to sustaining life in our little corner of the world have been collected with abandon and piled in this once proud and vibrant alley.

It is here, after work on Wednesday, where I would find myself, I was certain, rooting around for the boxes that once contained the Roman shades that, for a brief time, occupied (with magnificent — if not surprising — laser-like plumb) one of the kitchen windows.

The boxes would be easy enough to find, although pawing across the top of the garbage heap was guaranteed to prove a bit more of a challenge. It was the packing materials, like the bags that once held the screws, the instructions, the paper insert that described the contents, and the various other things stuffed into a typical carton of merchandise, that would be more difficult to wrangle. I was sure of it.

I threw them away late Tuesday because I didn’t realize that once the shades were hanging in the window and working properly, they would have to be taken down, returned to the store, and swapped for shades that are 1 inch wider.

One inch wider. That’s “one.” With a “wuh.”

All that work to get them in the window, space them evenly, carry the ladder back into the garage, locate the remote, and get back to the ninth viewing of The Sopranos, Season 1 — all for nothing.

During the installation process, I didn’t realize the wind beneath my wings had brought home the wrong size shades. They fit. They kept out the daylight. What. One chore checked off the list; 12 more remaining … to be ignored for the time being.

I didn’t realize this because for one brief moment on Tuesday — when those shades were no longer wedged uncomfortably yet securely up my to-do list — it slipped my mind that no matter how difficult or effortless the project, I remain, until death do I part, severely married.

A main difference between a wedding and a funeral (I rarely, if ever, believe with all my heart) is that at one of them, the guest of honor gets to eat.

Also, the Hokey Pokey. But that’s about it.

See, I think one of the roadblocks in the whole marriage thing stems from the eventual realization that there will always be someone else in your space, under your feet, messing with your head, hiding your stuff, driving you to the edge, and making you do hard things twice (or more than twice), and griping about how you handle all of it.

I should have thoroughly read the instructions before installing the wedding ring. I was young and foolish. I mean smitten. Also, hungry.

But that doesn’t explain everything.

I have been going through the marriage handbook — skimming through the remaining pages and paragraphs that have not been entirely blacked out by a magic marker — trying to find where it says the wife has the right to make the husband repaint the living room a slightly different shade of green, even though he just finished painting it the shade of green the wife had previously approved.

Or why the husband has to hang the laundry room shelves more than once, even though the first time he hung them he did so in wife-approved locations.

Or why, as we fast-forward to today, the Roman shades have to come out of the window, back into the box, and off to their place of origin because someone in the marriage who is not me brought home the wrong thing.

It does not pay to complete tasks while the wind beneath my wings is off at work and I am home, on a day off from work, doing things I much prefer to do by myself so as to cut down on the number of times I am required to be reminded that the way I am doing it makes no sense. And I’m stupid.

When word came down on Wednesday that yet another chore had to be torn apart and redone, the first thing that went through my mind was: If I had a nickel for the number of times I have had to suffer through this inexcusable process, I’d have about 15 cents, if memory served. So that was immediately discarded as a weapon.

The second thing I thought of was pouting. Nothing beats a sustained, spousal pout when trying to convince a slight inconvenience that it would serve a greater purpose if it could more closely resemble a tectonic shift. I also spent some time alone in my office practicing my heavy sigh.

The way it really happened:

I didn’t have to climb through the garbage pile. By the time I got home, Karen had already grabbed the shades’ cartons, which I had tossed neatly on top of the stack, and placed them in the garage, with the accompanying packaging materials neatly stuffed inside. This immediately rendered moot my hours of sighing practice. So that very kind gesture on her part threw me off a little.

It originally took me about 30 minutes on Tuesday to hang the two Roman shades in the double-wide kitchen window. I’ve become quite adept at the task, thanks to the intuition of the well-paid engineers who sit at giant drafting tables with t-squares and protractors and sharp pencils who are constantly inventing easier ways for challenged do-it-yourselfers with their flexing muscles oozing from sleeveless t-shirts trying hard as they might to impress their blushing brides with their nesting abilities — me included, although not so much with the oozing muscles and the underwear.

It actually took longer to get the stuff out of the box, figure out what all the pieces do, determine if I am indeed supposed to have extra pieces (because there are always extra pieces) and figure which end of the shade faces front and which end is up. (Learned that one the hard way.) Securing the brackets and hanging the shade was nothing.

So replacing the wrong shades was a piece of cake. Snap out the old one; snap in the new one. Done. I even used the old hardware. Stuffed the new hardware back in the old cartons, unopened. Genius.

But none of this is the point.

The point is it’s a lot harder — down right impossible — to fake anger and earn sympathy if the source of all things evil and wrong tries her hardest to make my life ridiculously easy.

She cheats. Best thing for a marriage.

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Conquered gripes

I know I shouldn’t complain, because it will do me no good. But to ignore an opportunity to do so would tear at the very core of my professional being.

Also, I’ve heard it feels good.

Chez Mattison is a two-story jobbie that sits on a cement slab. A high water table did not permit us the option for a basement when she was being constructed lo those 19 or so years ago. So our utility room — featuring the furnace and water heater, a broken water softener, an erector set nightmare of copper and plastic tubes and pipes going every which where, several colonies of spider units, rusted cans of long-forgotten wall colors, and the screen door we never use because the air conditioning seeps through its tiny mesh — sits on the ground floor of the house, in a closet accessed through the garage.

This is where the gas lines connect to the house. It is also where, for approximately 19 or so years, I have smelled what has always to me smelled like gas. Not the matrimonial kind; the kind used for heat and hot water. Every time I’d open the utility room door, it would hit me right in the nose.

The gas smell; not the door.

About a decade and a half ago, I called our utility provider (not being one to name names, I’ll refer to them here as Schniagara Schmohawk) and had someone come out, inspect the place, and tell me all was OK.

I must have been smelling things.

Being as gullible as I am, and also thinking people who know more than I do are smarter than I am, I took the word of the guy from SchniSchmo and went about my life.

Mind you, it has been a good 15 years since I first smelled the gas … and have smelled it every time I have gone into the utility room to marvel at the big appliances and wonder what they do and how they work. Also, to change the furnace filter once a year — whether it needed it or not.

A couple of weeks ago, when our best good house flipper friends were over unhooking our plumbing and tearing out our old kitchen on Weekend I of Kitchen Reno 2011, friend Mike opened the utility room door and asked me if I had noticed the gas smell.

Struggling mightily to shoulder past the opportunity for fourth-grade humor, I told him the whole SchniSchmo story and he suggested I call the utility company again, because the smell was noticeable and blah blah blah …

Something about danger. …

I was too busy thinking about the fourth-grade gas jokes I was passing up.

But it eventually clicked that Mike smelled it too. Maybe I wasn’t crazy; I wasn’t just smelling things.

So on Wednesday morning of this week, bright and early, I called the utility company. And that’s when my day began to spin right into the weeds.

It amazes me that a company as big and powerful as the utility company I presently employ (which is no longer SchniSchmo) does not hire people who possess the ability to receive instruction, pass it to an appropriate party, and then progress with their lives.

Especially when it comes to the smell of natural gas. This company’s protocol, I was informed, is to drop everything and run to the scene as soon as a potential gas leak is reported.

“We will be there within the hour and if no one is home, we will be forced to gain entrance by our own means,” I was told.

So I made sure the person on the other end of the phone understood in no uncertain terms that one of our doors would be unlocked because no one was going to be home.

[Sidebar: It will forever amaze me how people whose jobs require them to access your house (cable guy, countertop measuring guy, etc.) during the middle of your inconveniently scheduled work day always assume you don’t have a job and when they schedule a time to come to your house they sound incredulous when you tell them you can’t be there because you work. “What do you mean you can’t be there? You work? But I’m the cable guy. How dare you?”]

I’m over it.

I told the woman on the phone that the person responding was to use the unlocked door, and not break into my house. I spent a good 10 minutes explaining how to access this door. I received assurances that everything would be OK. I could expect a call in about an hour or two, letting me know what was found and what course of action was being taken.

Use the unlocked door, I said; no one will be home. No problem, I was told.

Well, I never received a call about my predicament, which made me as nervous as a wet hen for the rest of the work day. Upon arriving home, I did find an official note on the front door, telling me they could not get in to check out the gas smell because no one was home.

So they did what they could: They turned off the gas. (A maneuver that angered me somewhat but I was eventually able to rationalize.) What I couldn’t figure out was how the guy found the gas shutoff but could not find the unlocked door — which was right next to it. Right next to it.

I called the utility again, complaining about the door thing, the fact that the gas smell was still not identified, and to get my gas turned back on. I was assured by a different person on the phone that someone would be at my house within the hour (because gas smells are considered serious emergencies).

A couple of hours later, I called back to learn my request was not handled as an emergency because all I had requested was my gas to be turned back on. That’s not an emergency, I was told.

So I was forced to go through this entire story a third time. This time, the guy on the other end of the phone was yelling back at me just as loudly as I was yelling at him. Eventually, I was assured someone would be at my house in an hour to look at my problem. When I asked this third knucklehead why the first two knuckleheads failed so miserably at their jobs, he told me he couldn’t say because we were talking on a phone line reserved solely for emergencies. So we yelled about that for a while.

I then called a fourth time — this time for customer service (to bitch about the three knuckleheads) — and spoke to a refreshingly nice young lady who soothed the savage beast. She double checked to see that a person was indeed on his way, she checked her computer and learned that during my original phone call very early Wednesday morning my “the door will be unlocked” instructions were never given to the field crew. She also apologized up and down for the way I had been treated.

Turns out, I did have a gas leak. Oh, yeah. It was repaired on the spot by the friendly utility employee who came to my house after 9 p.m. and tightened a couple of joints. It was just that easy.

And inexplicably made so difficult.

But it does feel good to complain. I get it now.

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Honey, it’s nuthin’

Bit of a disclaimer is warranted, I believe.

The wind beneath my wings and myself have been immersed in a complete kitchen renovation project for the better part of … oh … 15 years now.

And after a decade and a half of discussion, the actual work began a couple of months ago, when the talking became planning, and then purchasing, followed by the scheduling of deliveries, the installation of the hard parts by trained professionals, and the undertaking (appropriate word, right there) of the easier stuff by we watchers of cable TV home improvement shows who, thanks to the magic of television, have learned everything we need to know when it comes to complete kitchen renovation because we know how to sit on our ample derrieres and yell every time a house hunter complains about wall color. (“Paint It, You Moron” should be the name of a show on HGTV.)

On a serious note: I have delayed discussion of this topic out of respect for the families who have lost so much in the recent flooding. Sitting here making jokes about voluntarily renovating a kitchen seemed (and, to some, may still seem, for that matter) out of place while so many among us have been forced into a much more dire situation through no fault of their own. Karen and I had been planning this work for years and its timing couldn’t have been more unfortunate, in this regard. The hope here today is that those who have suffered great loss have been able to set themselves on a course of recovery and that they understand the intent is not to make light of their situation. The intent here, more often than not, is to ridicule the institution of marriage. Well, mine, anyway. Also, chores. And my husbandly abilities.

So, on a less serious note, with apologies to Dire Straits (and lyricists in general):

 

 

Now look at them homeowners — 

That’s the way you do it;

It looks so easy on HGTV.

That ain’t work, no; that’s the way they sell it.

I say: Honey, it’s nuthin’; I’ll do this for free.

•

Ain’t hard work? (Yeah.) That’s the way they tell it.

Lemme tell ya, them guys are dumb.

Wanna see the blisters on … all my fingers?

Dropped a box of tile on my thumb.

 •

I’ve never installed a microwave oven.

Custom kitchen — deliver me-e-e-e.

Still got to move the refrigerator.

Thanks very much, HGTV-e-e-e.

(Move-a; move-a.)

•

The chubby hubby with the muffin top and D-cup

(Yeah, buddy, that’s his mans-iere);

The chubby hubby can’t hang up a pic frame,

And now he’s s’posed to plumb a Frigidaire?

 •

Still trying to hang the microwave oven. 

Custom kitchen, I’m hating thee-e-e-e.

Book says I must first … hang up a template;

Drill holes through A, B, C and D-e-e-e.

(Drill-a; drill-a.)

•

I’ve grown to loathe this microwave oven;

Instructions making … no sense to me-e-e-e.

I’m scared to move that refrigerator — 

Afraid I’ll catch a her-ny-e-e-e.

(Ooo-a; ooo-a.)

 •

Now looky here; looky here:

I should-a learned to play the possum;

Just admit … I’m way too dumb.

Look at that mama/she nailed it/on the TV camera:

Man. She makes it look so fun.

But who’s out there? What’s that?

My crying noises. They echo through the kitchen: Please deliver me.

But that ain’t nuthin’; I am quite used to it.

You say: Honey, it’s nuthin’? Please don’t lie to me.

 •

About to toss this microwave oven

Through the wall of/your pant-ery-y-y-y.

And you can take that refrigerator

And stuff it where you cannot see-e-e-e-e.

 •

Now listen here:

Look at this yo-yo; no clue how to do it.

I can’t learn nuthin’ from HGTV.

Now this ain’t workin’; ain’t no way around it.

Honey, it’s nuthin’? I must disagree.

 •

OK, you win, you microwave oven.

Proved you can get the best of me-e-e-e.

Oh wait a second; this book’s in Spanish.

For English, see Page 23-e-e-e-e?

(Dumb-a; dumb-a.)

•

OK, honey, it’s nuthin’ … Wrong page, you see?

Honey, it’s nuthin’ … don’t dee-vorce me.

Can’t watch my …

Can’t watch my …

Can’t watch HGTV.

I said, honey it’s nuthin’ … I did paint, you see?

I’ll watch my …

I’ll watch my … 

I’ll watch HGTV. … 

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