What I'm Thankful For This Thanksgiving

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published, November 25, 2024]  ©2024

My long-deceased parents were their own flawed people and certainly products of their times. My mother, a smoker, died at 54 from lung cancer. She never knew her grandchildren which was a huge loss for everyone, including and especially her.

My father, an ad executive in New York City (think "Mad Men"  although not Don Draper) probably would have lived longer were it not for the nightly dry martinis that were the norm in our commuter town as I was growing up. (There was a saying in the neighborhood: "The vermouth is just a formality.")

But as I have gotten older and had children and grandchildren of my own, I have had the opportunity to appreciate some of the incredible gifts my parents gave us. Top among them: they didn't hate. Whatever their prejudices might have been, we never heard them. They never referred to anyone by race or religion, and to this day, when I hear gratuitous (or even flat-out biased) references to people like this, it immediately stands out to me in a very sad way.

My father was a conservative Republican Catholic, my mother a third-generation feminist Protestant and a Democrat. (They met in an Honors Shakespeare class in college.) It made for a lot of lively dinner table conversation. It was up to you to make your case.

Interestingly, I am a fourth-generation feminist and Democrat married to a life-long Republican, although Olof and I have both voted across party lines on many occasions. My husband is still fervently hoping the Republican party will return to what he thinks of as its former glory. I, of course, think it never had one. But conversations are pretty lively at our dinner table too.

Both of my parents were avid community volunteers. My father ran the United Fund campaign in our area and we referred to ourselves as "United Fund orphans"  during the major fundraising season.

My mother s occupations, meanwhile, included teaching convicts at an area penitentiary, substitute teaching junior high (is there a parallel there?) and leading Brownies and Girl Scouts. But the one she was most passionate about was not only teaching ESL (English as a second language) but tutoring, on her own time, many of her students to pass the written driver s exam which in that era had to be taken in English. Given the lack of public transit in our area, a driver's license was essential to getting any kind of good job. Her efforts included teaching them to drive in our car. I think my mother could yell STOP! in eight languages.

Having immigrants regularly in our house meant that we kids got to learn about other cultures, and how differently, for example, other nationalities celebrated even the same holidays that we celebrated, never mind ones that we didn't. As thanks from her students, we were often gifted with delectable food from other lands.

It was largely from this immigrant influence that I was inspired to apply for a student exchange program to spend my senior year of high school in a foreign country which is, in fact, where I met my now-husband, Olof, who was a fellow student on the same program in Brazil.

Both Olof and I married people from different backgrounds the first time around, and while neither of those marriages lasted, he still misses his Indonesian wife s amazing cooking (except for kimchee, a word he doesn't want to hear out loud). I, meanwhile, can counsel people on how to make a Seder dinner for 20 and I still know all the holiday blessings by heart in Hebrew. Many favorite memories are associated with both.

In the early 1950s when my siblings and I were children, the second biggest fear in the U.S. after nuclear war was polio and with good reason. My siblings and I all contracted it in August of 1955, four months after the Salk vaccine was announced. (It took a year for the vaccine to get to our small town.) I can still remember my parents absolute terror during this time, especially after the little boy in the hospital bed next to my sister suddenly ended up in an iron lung. (This is a cylindrical prison that simulates breathing when polio has affected respiratory muscles.) I wish everyone could take a brief trip back in time to the jammed polio wards of that era.

As one who has dealt with the repercussions of polio, I feel entitled to say that if you are an anti-vaxxer, you are a moron. There is no reason for one single child to ever contract polio again.

Even what people now like to think of as normal (in that there was no way to prevent them then) childhood illnesses like measles, mumps, rubella ("German measles") and chicken pox are not without potentially permanent consequences. Like most of my generation, I had all of these illnesses. Even when there aren't long-term effects, these diseases inflict a lot of suffering.

And would it be OK to mention that while my mouth is more fillings than actual teeth, my kids have never had a cavity? My mother ended up with painful dentures, not even having the benefit of all the dentistry I had.

It s going to be a different world going forward. As the song goes, "You can t always get what you want."  The process is the process but I am often reminded of my own parents' philosophy, best summed up as: What you accept, you teach, not just regarding treatment toward yourself but toward the greater world.

So thanks, Mom and Dad. On this Thanksgiving Day, I'm truly grateful to you.

                                    My siblings and I all had polio in the 1950's. 

Iron lungs kept polio patients alive when the virus affected respiratory muscles.

Neighbors From Hell (And Heaven)

["Let Inga Tell You", La Jolla Light, published November 11, 2024] 2024

Every neighborhood seems to have its requisite nutcase. Over the years, I've done informal research on this subject by querying friends if they have at least one problem neighbor. I've never had anyone say no. In fact, I usually get a 20-minute diatribe on the wingnut who is terrorizing their particular block. Increasingly, ADUs and Airbnb party houses are mentioned as sources of conflict.

One of our highest priorities has always been getting along with the people who live around us. Fortunately, we've had nice neighbors over the years with the exception of two that we were really happy to see go. One died (but not soon enough) and the other moved (but not soon enough either). Two bad neighbors over several decades is actually pretty good. But even one difficult neighbor can wreak a lot of havoc. Sometimes it was hard to stick to our inviolable rule: No matter what, do not escalate. But we've entertained some very ugly fantasies about their cat.

The houses in my area are in close proximity so it doesn't take much noise for the entire block to hear it. Still, my husband and I consider most noise to be in the category of the music of life. Dogs, kids, parties, the occasional loud band. We often comment that not hearing these sounds would be the hardest part of ever moving to a retirement home in our old age.

Of course, even the music of life can occasionally get seriously out of tune. Chain saws on weekends. Or drums, ever. We also remind ourselves that for years, we were the noisiest family on the block. We had one of the few pools in the neighborhood then and multiple trees with tree forts, a veritable attractive nuisance. Everybody came to play.

But even so, our elderly retired school teacher neighbor next door never complained once in her 25 years there. We could never tell whether this was because she was just an incredibly sweet lady (she was) or because she was deaf. Actually, she was fairly deaf but we never wanted to explore whether our kids had contributed to it.

The first of our two terrible neighbors was one we encountered a year after we moved in. All of a sudden we were getting annoyingly regular notices from the La Jolla Town Council that a neighbor had complained we were not "maintaining our property."   We were puzzled as we took great pride in our place. Turns out that an elderly lady down the block felt our trees were blocking the breeze which she maintained her doctor had prescribed for her Raynaud's Syndrome. (My then-husband, a physician, said "WTF?") A minor detail was that we had no common property with this woman. But she felt that all trees from a five-house radius were blocking her breeze and if we wished to be good neighbors, my husband and I would cut down all the beautiful, mature trees on our property.

Anyway, we ultimately all formed a coalition against the nasty old bat, ironically bringing the neighbors together in heretofore unparalleled harmony. Ten years later when she died (see "not soon enough", above) there was a rousing chorus of "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead."

As for the second all-time terrible neighbor, she moved in while Olof and I were doing a two-year work assignment in Europe so we were mostly spared. But by the time we returned, the other neighbors were already trying to vote her off the island. Fortunately, sensing that people were sticking extra-sharp pins up the back sides of little effigies of her, she departed and is now allegedly making a new group of neighbors lives miserable.

I think it is only fair to point out that it is sometimes unclear who the resident lunatic on the block really is. Most of the jury duty cases I've been on involved neighbor disputes that could best be summarized as Lots of Adults Behaving Badly. That's been true on my own street as well, but fortunately with people who don't live on my end of the block.

Most recently, local social media has been commenting on whether it is legal to mount a motion-sensored camera with audio on a pole pointed directly into a neighbor's back yard and master bedroom window. I'm just so glad I don t live next door to the person who would do this. Even the mild-mannered Olof says he'd be tempted to disable this camera by whatever means necessary should someone decide to do this to us. Fortunately, they haven't.

In fact, after several decades in our current house, we are incredibly grateful that we've officially won the neighbor lottery. For many years now, we have been surrounded not only by good neighbors, but stupendously wonderful neighbors, people you can count on day or night who are the epitome of kindness and consideration and who, on top of that, are great friends. When Olof had his heart attack and head injury in 2018, my collective neighbors walked my dog four times a day and left me dinner and a bottle of wine in my fridge for when I came home from the hospital at night. If we wrote the perfect neighbor job description, we couldn't have done any better.

Just so they re clear: none of you should even think of moving.

 

Fighting The Good Fight For Your Itchy Dog

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published November 4, 2024] 2024

Both our beloved and much-missed English bulldog, Winston, and our current bichon-poodle mix, Lily, have battled non-stop allergies and skin issues. A neighbor whose dog suffered similar afflictions reported that when they moved to North County, their dog's constantly itchiness improved dramatically. Of course, they're now dealing with rattle snakes, but you can't have everything.

I wouldn't want to even calculate the hours I have spent dealing with itchy dogs.

Winston, in particular, was constantly fighting infections. The folds in his face, never mind the inside of his silky ears, needed to be cleaned daily. He had to stand in a medicated foot bath for ten minutes a day. I don't know if you (or certainly the vet who prescribed this insane regimen) ever tried this but dogs in general, and bulldogs in particular, are not inclined to stand still in a pool of water for even a tenth of that time.

English bulldogs, of course, are notorious for the myriad health problems that come with them from birth, particularly breathing problems but plenty of allergy problems as well. Our vet at the time said they had a slogan when she was doing her training: Buy a bulldog: Support a vet. For what we spent on Winston's care, we could have bought a whole new dog. Several new dogs, in fact. 

When Winston died suddenly of a heart attack in our living room at the age of eight, we were so bereft that we vowed we'd never get another dog. We made that clear to the rescue agency who begged us to do an emergency foster. One week max, they promised.

"I don't know,"  I said dubiously to the rescue lady on the phone. "How soon would you need us to take this dog?"   She replied: "Actually, I m in front of your house."

Lily had been relinquished to the County shelter ostensibly because of her thoroughly rotten teeth and infected gums. Seriously, this dog's breath was a 9 on the ickter scale. The County s medical in-take report was all of four words: "Nice dog. Terrible teeth."

We also discovered pretty quickly that Lily, like Winston, was allergic to our grass. A 7-year-old bichon-poodle mix, she was what Olof called a "foo-foo"  dog. Olof was absolutely not interested in a pet that required regular professional grooming. A chronically allergic, high-maintenance dog with bad teeth was definitely not the forever dog for us. Of course, we had no plans for another forever dog anyway.

In retrospect, that rescue agency recognized us for the mushballs that we were. We might as well have been wearing T-shirts that read "Will fall in love with any dog no matter how unsuitable."

And sure enough, Lily worked her way into our hearts almost immediately. This is what is known as a "failed foster."   The dog comes for a week and stays forever.

I informed our vet that we were adopting another allergy-afflicted dog that also had serious dental issues, so she could go ahead and put down the deposit on that Mercedes.

Lily's mouth cost us $1,500. She's had both knees replaced. There is no test or procedure for a human that you can't also do for a dog. In this case, minus any insurance. After the first ACL surgery, I looked into pet insurance. But it excluded ACL surgeries and pretty much all of the care she needed.

Like Winston, Lily's most chronic problem is constant itching. We've done all the treatments that have been advised, including Cytopoint shots (an immunological treatment), Apoquel (pricier than heroin), medicated shampoos, chlorhexadrine mousses, anti-flea treatments, pricey special diets at $6 per teeny weeny can, Chinese herbs, and even steroid sprays when she actually breaks the skin. I make all her totally organic food. A groomer gives her a full fluff every two weeks and we bathe her in between.

And yet, still she chews. Her feet and haunches are particularly favorite targets. Or maybe that's just because she can reach them.

Obviously, the summer season is worst when the warm humid air allows skin afflictions to flourish.

I bought special booties for her with Velcro ties but she manages to pull them off within minutes.

Making her wear a cone is a non-starter. She just goes berserk, even with the cloth ones.

Most recently, we heard about what are called "recovery suits:  for dogs that have just had surgery, or are constantly chewing on themselves, in lieu of the dreaded cones. Since we have already purchased everything else known to the doggy allergy world, we decided to try one. The one we got doesn't help with her feet but does cover the parts of her legs that she chews on. 

Hers is like a baby onesie, and in fact, when she's wearing it, you think you re looking at a baby with a dog's head. I don't dare let her be seen with it in public. You could just hear the whispers: "Do these people not realize that's a dog?" The suit is just one more desperate treatment in our anti-itch arsenal. There's only so much chlorhexadrine mousse you can put on a dog in one day.

Hopefully now that it's fall, her itching will abate somewhat. For our sakes as much as hers.

Lily manages to pull her booties off within minutes

Her expression says "I am totally embarrassed wearing this outfit!"

 

A Horror Story Of A Different Sort

[ Let Inga Tell You, La Jolla Light, published October 28, 2024] 2024

We have two manhole covers on the street on either side of our house. We have a lot of history with them, none of it good.

One of them tends to flood, as in fill up with water, which is puzzling when it hasn't rained in six months. It's yet more of the poltergeist that afflicts our address, along with our streetlight that doesn't exist, and the fact that our house and the two on either side of it have three different street names. Even GPS can't figure it out.

Alas, one of these manholes, in a design that to we non-technical types defies logic, contains the electrical circuits that power both our home and many of the neighbors. So when the manhole fills up with water, the circuits short out (duh), and a whole bunch of SD G&E trucks show up to pump it out and then re-wire. In the interim, there's no power.

Meanwhile, prior to Proposition 13's passage in 1976, city sewer lines received regular maintenance. But one of the budget cuts that occurred afterwards was that this line item was dropped from the city's budget.

Even we weren't aware of this until the morning of January 7, 1981. It was 7 a.m. and I was still in my nightgown, feeding 10-month-old Henry breakfast. My then-husband was off playing tennis. (Men are never home when you need them.) Rory, aged 3, was feeding Cheerios to the slugs on the patio. (Slugs really like Cheerios.) All of a sudden I felt an earthquake-like rumble followed by geysers of black gunge spewing from all the drains in the house -  toilets, sinks, showers, bathtub. They truly could make a horror movie out of this. Under the best of circumstances, I am not a morning person.

I raced outside to turn off the main water supply to the house, but nothing happened. Within minutes, water was several inches up the walls and overflowing the house. When the emergency plumber showed up, the first thing he said was, "I've already called the city. There's nothing I can do."

Through no fault of ours, there had been a trunk line block of the sewer line in front of our house. The force was so great that it had blown the manhole cover part way off. Since we were the last house before the blockage, the entire neighborhood's sewage came up through our house for almost two hours before the city emergency crews could clear it. The sheer force of the water ruptured our plumbing, and the flooding shorted out our telephone and electrical outlets. The city work crews (regular fixtures at our house for many weeks) put all the furniture up on blocks and came in with huge, noisy industrial fans to dry the place out. We all had to get gamma globulin shots against hepatitis. We found toilet paper in colors we never used. 

We were not the only people in San Diego to suffer this unfortunate turn of events, and suffice to say, routine sewer maintenance made it back into the budget. This, however, has been a mixed bag.

About six years ago, a neighbor (Neighbor A) developed a serious roach problem. The city had put some irrigation pipes on the set-back on their property which somehow seemed to have created a massive creepy underground colony of roaches who were regularly invading their home. The city finally came out and decided to clear the sewer lines (and hopefully the roaches) by blasting water at very high velocity from the manhole (the one without the electrical circuits) in front of the neighbor (Neighbor B) across the street from us.

It was an epic fail. Fortunately, no one was sitting on a commode in Neighbor B's house when a geyser of high-pressure water blew through their toilets all the way up to the ceiling creating, besides utter life-altering terror in the residents, a giant sewer-eal mess. It would have been the ultimate reverse bidet. The city was very nice about cleaning it all up but we're all pretty wary of those sewer maintenance trucks now.

We, fortunately, had never had any problems with sewage backflows when the sewer maintenance folks come out. Until now. When I saw them show up recently, I immediately texted my neighbors across the street to make sure their toilet seats were down. 

But the next morning, we were noticing a really bad smell coming from our guest bathroom, and quickly found the source: The bottom of our shower was filled with what looked (and smelled) like raw sewage. We got the emergency drain cleaner people out but they said the P-trap was totally impacted and we'd need real plumbers to replace it. 

Meanwhile, I was noticing on NextDoor that other people were posting frantic messages about similar occurrences. Three such messages: 

This morning we awoke to a loud noise and the water in all five of our toilets exploded . Fortunately, it was just clean water, but it was all over the floors and parts of the walls. Did this happen to anyone else?

And: This has happened to us twice when the city has come and cleaned a main drain. They happened to start the work in a manhole near our house so it was possible to figure it out.

And: This happened to us some years ago, but our toilets exploded with sewage, resulting in us having to move out of our house and have the hazmat people come in and clean up the mess [No, this wasn't even us!]

What could possibly be causing water or sewage to be spewing from toilets or drains?

Answer: You are almost certainly closest to the manholes where the crews were working. Your tax dollars at work, folks! (If we ever sell, would we be required to disclose these manhole covers, along with the phantom streetlight and the GPS-inaccessible address?)

As annoying (and expensive) as this all was, compared to the months-long renovation of our home back in January 1981, I'm just happy that they're coming out and maintaining these lines.

But could you maybe tone down the velocity on those hoses just a little?

January 7, 1981: Remembering the day in pictures

September 25, 2024:  Uh-oh

 

What I'd Do If I Won The Lottery

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published October 14, 2024] ©2024

Everybody has a fantasy about what they’d do if they won the lottery. I’ve always been clear about mine: hire a live-in masseuse. I’d get a minimum of two massages a day of about four hours each. In fact, some days I wouldn’t even get off the table, especially if I could figure out a way to simultaneously get a straw into a glass of chardonnay.

People have very mixed feelings about massage. Some are creeped out by being rubbed with scented oil by total strangers. This is clearly a birth defect and I feel totally sorry for them.

I have other friends who, like me, absolutely love massage. My preferred masseur, of course, is my husband Olof who generously rubs my back if we’re watching TV together, racking up husband points like you wouldn’t believe. He insists he needs them in case of a sudden husband point conflagration which has occurred from time to time, especially when long-awaited plans were cancelled due to business travel. But he’s retired now so it shouldn’t be too hard to maintain a positive balance.

Not surprisingly, my favorite massagee is also Olof. Not a fan of “stranger” massage, he is only too happy to have a can of whipped cream slathered over—er, too much information. Anyway, as a single working parent for twelve years, I was financially ineligible for massage unless someone gifted me one. So I’m trying to make up for lost time.

My only hesitation at all about massage is that I feel a little bad that the masseuse is getting stuck with my increasingly-decrepit porcine proportions. Was I the fantasy she had when she went to massage school?  I think not.

Of course, we aged oinkers are often the folks with money for massages. Which I’m sure doesn’t keep massage people from hoping for some firmer flesh to manipulate. Several years ago, I went into a spa to get a massage gift certificate for my very athletic younger son. He’d been there before. That massage girl’s face lit up like a Christmas tree when I mentioned his name. I can assure you that nobody’s face lights up when they hear my name, except possibly to recall that I tip well. Considering my body, maybe it’s not well enough.

My extreme fondness for massage has made my husband wonder aloud if I were secretly adopted from a sensory-deprived Romanian orphanage. As a blue-eyed blond in a family of brown-eyed brunettes, it seemed plausible. Nope, I’m just a massage junkie, plain and simple. 

Sometimes it’s nice to do a massage just focusing on one area. I’ve never actually taken heroin (which probably won’t surprise anyone, especially with the easy availability of chardonnay) but I think head massage must be a similar high. Those endorphins just go crazy. I’d probably have my post-lottery live-in masseuse do at least one head and one foot massage a day too.

Not too long ago, I wandered into an Asian-run massage place whose brochure advertised their treatments as “better for your organ.” I couldn’t argue with such a charming endorsement and signed up for a reflexology foot massage. All our organs are alleged to have nerve endings in the foot so that pressing on certain areas can help diagnose problems elsewhere in the body. Of those 7000 nerve endings, 6,000 of mine seem to be perennially annoyed. The foot masseur pressed on one place that was excruciating painful. I flinched. “Hurt there, kidney no good,” he said. No good?  Maybe they were just having a bad day?  I mean, we’re talking kidneys here.

Noting a really sore spot during a foot massage at another place last year, I asked, “what organ is that?” The masseuse said “sinuses.” Geesh, that’s probably one of the three organs in my whole body that has consistently behaved (along with my kidneys).  So as a diagnostic tool, it may not work that well for me.  I’m thinking that in my case, maybe the pain in my feet might mean “need new shoes” or “lose weight, Lumpy!” Don’t really care. It just feels heavenly.

I guess if you’re going to have an addiction, massage isn’t the worse one you can have. But I really have to start buying lottery tickets.

 

Whine Fest Part II: Readers Weigh In

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published October 7, 2024] 2024

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the many things that annoy me in life, and invited readers to submit theirs for a follow-up column.

Why did I wait 15 years for this topic? I should have been doing it quarterly.

It is not surprising that we all have plenty of things to whine about, particularly our fellow humans. Some topics, not surprisingly, came up repeatedly, particularly parking, dog poop, traffic, and technology. Here s a selection of submissions:

Getting stuck behind a driver who suddenly decides they don't want to be in the lane they're in, but haven't figured out what to do about it.

Veterinary hospitals that don t handle "emergencies."

All the parking taken by people who drove to the gym to work out.

Remote check-in that is still first come first served when you get there.

Using a credit card for takeout food pickup that gives you a screen that starts gratuity level at 15%.

Idiots who can't figure out the traffic circles in Bird Rock!!! Accidents waiting to happen and seriously annoying. Not that difficult to figure out the system.

Companies that talk you into buying their service or product and then later you find out you've subscribed to it every month unless you cancel. You don't find that out until you've been charged for another month or several sessions.

People who don't chip their pets or even put an ID tag on them then post panicked messages on neighborhood social media when the pet gets out.

The drivers who never learned to pull up entirely into the intersection at a traffic light in order to take a left turn and who remain on or behind the white crosswalk for pedestrians, ensuring that when the light turns red they will be able to turn and you, the hapless driver behind them hoping to make the light, will get stuck at it and have to wait for the next light while they drive blithely away. Grrr! Btw, I've been known to honk at them as a gentle reminder to pull forward. A corollary to this are drivers who stop in the middle of the road to check their GPS!

Stores that relentlessly encourage you to use self-serve checkout.

People who leave their dog poop plastic bags in my green recycling bin, in spite of the clear signs, saying NO DOG POOP! with pictures of those baggies I have taped to the lid!

People who basically don't have yards, hiring crews that use only gasoline powered tools to take care of the yard that doesn't exist.

My complaint: those blazing white hot LED headlights that make you want to shield your eyes from oncoming traffic.

People that leave their cart in the middle of the aisle to get a free sample at Costco.

People that leave their trash in the cart after getting the free sample. Really? The trash receptacle is right there people!

Sitting in a turn lane and missing the light when a person in front of you feels their time texting is more important than the rest of the world.

Having a call dropped after waiting online (on hold on a phone call or on a chat) for a long time.

A font so small you can't read the directions on an important medication the volume you need to take at any time, how frequently, with what, and contraindications.

Software companies that tell you they have updated their (very long in legalese) privacy policy but don't tell you what has changed.

An app that won't let you in until you say that you've forgotten your password when they know you have put in the correct password but they just want you to change it to a new one.

When did it become legal to take pets into places that sell any type of food? Restaurant patios with pets kept on floor are legal thanks to Gov Brown tweaking the law for his dog.

Apps that ask you to create a password and THEN tell you the requirements, one by one, after you've met each requirement stated.

Microsoft reboots your computer without permission and then gives you two copies of all the Word files you had open which you then have to open and compare to decide which to keep.

People who leave their trash & recycling bins in plain sight. Makes for a trashy looking neighborhood - pun intended!

Advertisements for medications that have more disclaimers or reasons not to take it than there are ingredients especially the medications that read this long list as fast as possible with a final side effect, death 

Security questions that require you to click on all the pictures with buses, motorcycles, etc. AND THEN require you to repeat the process with three more sheets of other photos. QUIT wasting my time with kindergarten activities!

People who decorate their houses with Porch Propaganda, Lawn Litter, and Balcony Baloney !  I know you said no politics, Inga, but do people really think others care about how they are voting??? One wackadoodle neighbor with all their signs is definitely an indication of how not to vote!!!! La Jolla is so beautiful with the restriction on real estate signs and billboards, all this other stuff is such an eyesore!!!

People who use leaf blowers to blow all the debris down the storm drains!

When you try to close a Microsoft (Excel, I m looking at you) file, and you get the question: Do you want to save your changes? even though you didn't make any changes.

So bring it on, folks. Keep the whining coming!

 

 

 

Social Change At Warp Speed

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published September 30, 2024] 

We have a number of friends who are taking their high school seniors on college tours this fall. It really is important to let a student actually see a campus and imagine themselves there. That gut feeling is everything.

My older son, Rory, was convinced he wanted to go to the University of Hawaii but after the tour, he announced he just couldn't see himself on this campus. He couldn't explain why.

His bottom choice had been UC-Santa Cruz but after the tour, the school rose to the top of his list. The campus "spoke"  to him. His only misgiving, he said at the time, was that he wasn't sure he wanted to go to school in a "cold" climate. Spoken like a true Southern California kid.

Suffice to say, he has never lived this comment down. And by the way, he did go to Santa Cruz, met his wife, and is still there 29 "cold"  years later.

I had a similar experience looking at colleges. My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and even my older brother had all attended the same New England university. But the school, despite the incredibly legacy, didn't excite me at all.

Fortuitously, I signed up for a tour sponsored by my high school for a different school and fell instantly in love with the beautiful campus, the strong feminist history, and the small size (900 students).

The school, one of the first women s colleges in the country, had been founded by a successful brewer in 1861 on an idyllic piece of New York State land. The founder designated pink and gray as the school's colors symbolizing "the rosy dawn on the gray matter of a woman s mind."   Nauseatingly poetic, but OK. Everything in the school bookstore was either pink with gray lettering, or gray with pink lettering.

As women s education was only for the wealthy initially, some of the dorm rooms had a small attached room for one's maid, should a student choose to bring one.

While the student body had become more diversified, both ethnically and economically, by the time I got there, the school still held on to long-standing traditions like demitasse in the parlors (the dorms had actual parlors) after dinner. I loved the bucolic campus.

Some of the traditions, admittedly, were definitely behind the times. You had to live on campus in one of the eight dorms. If you were pregnant or married, you were gone the next day.

There was room inspection every other week to make sure you'd cleaned your room. We had to wear a skirt to dinner in the dining room (each dorm had their own) and should you have a male guest for dinner, he had to be wearing a jacket and tie. Since dates had often not expected to have to dress up, a selection of abandoned (probably purposefully given their innate hideousness) jackets and ties were available. Of course, they never fit the poor guy who sat there in embarrassed misery eager to escape.

For us to leave the campus in the vehicle of a male person, we had to sign a leave card with the guy s name and license plate number of car. Curfew was 12:30 on weekends.

Boys could only be in our rooms at very specific hours. Doors couldn't be fully closed, and a certain number of collective feet had to be on the floor. These were known as "parietals"  (regulations governing the visiting privileges of the opposite sex in college dormitories). Mine was certainly not the only college in that era that had them.

In one throwback tradition leftover from the second World War when kitchen help was scarce, the school had continued a tradition requiring each student to do Scrape Duty once every 2 weeks, standing at the end of the kitchen conveyor belt and scraping plates into massive trash receptacles.

I never had a single class taught by a TA. All my professors knew me by name, or at least my last name as we were addressed as Miss [last name]. "Ms"  hadn't quite come into common use yet.

It's amazing how fast social change can occur. In the middle of my junior year, in a decision to go co-ed, the first 70 guys, all transfers from other schools, joined our campus and moved into my dorm.

In two weeks, 100 years of rules and traditions evaporated. The guys laughed at room inspection, were not about to restrict who could come into their rooms, and balked at a school store full of pink and gray apparel. Scrape Duty? Not happening.

As for the leave cards, they no longer made any sense.

The guys were unwilling to dress for dinner (having not had to at their previous institutions) and often showed up for breakfast in ratty pajamas. We stopped wearing skirts at dinner and began showing up in pjs at breakfast too. Our dorm dining room started looking like a co-ed pajama party.

All the parietal rules basically vanished overnight. And no one missed them.

Well, one set of parents did, claiming breach of contract and alleging that the college was promoting fornication. Um, yeah! Bring on the fornication! Biggest improvement in the school in 100 years!

The law suit was ultimately settled by providing one corridor on campus where all the old parietal rules were still in effect. Suffice to say, no one volunteered and those rooms were assigned by a lottery that no one wanted to win.

Within a month, burgundy and navy apparel had appeared in the school store.

Now, of course, the school is fully co-ed and twice its original student body. There s a central dining hall. The campus is as idyllic as ever.

Was the brewer-founder turning over in his grave as all this was happening? Maybe. It's probably just as well that he didn't live to see it. But I'd want him to know that I m grateful for all that rosy dawning over my gray matter when I attended. I have every faith it is dawning over the gray matter of the male populace too. Rosy dawning is equal opportunity.

Just tell me they haven't done away with demitasse.

 Me on Scrape Duty with Giuseppe, our dorm kitchen manager

On gorgeous campus

                                                            In front of my dorm

 

Mastering Spoken Coffee

[“Let Inga Tell You,” La Jolla Light, published September16, 2024] ©2024

This year I’ve made it my goal to master CSL – Coffee as a Second Language. 

I don’t have to tell you what a social disadvantage it has been to live in a place with so many good coffee houses and not speak Coffee.  

Of course, the main reason I haven’t learned it is that I don’t drink coffee. I love the taste and aroma but the family caffeine sensitivity has my hands shaking before I’ve taken a second sip.   However, as I am often reminded, you can get decaf versions of pretty much everything on the menu.  Although a triple shot espresso decaf would probably defeat the purpose.

While I certainly agree with my friends that coffee houses are an ideal place to meet, I’ve never frequented them enough to really master spoken Coffee.   That’s because the menu scares the daylights out of me.  The French may not be very tolerant of people who massacre their language but they sound like Barney the happy dinosaur compared to coffee drinkers stuck in line behind someone who does not speak Coffee.  The caffeine fiends are ten minutes past needing a fix, the tremors have set in, and anyone who holds them up is in critical danger of being fed into the bean grinder. 

Would that I was kidding.

Attempting to avoid becoming a new instant coffee drink if the clientele behind me seems unusually hostile, I tend to smile brightly at the barista and chirp, “I’ll have what that person just had in a decaf.” 

Unfortunately, this doesn’t keep them from asking you more questions. Lots more questions.  The milk options alone are terrifying.  In fact, I think that if you factored all the possible combinations and permutations of coffee drinks, the number would be in the bazillions. 

But the problem with spoken Coffee is that it is a language with an unbelievable number of dialects.  For example, there’s the Frappuccino-Macchiato dialect from the Sucrose region of Italy.  Only serious linguists and/or pre-diabetics really understand it.

And just when Coffee was already an incredibly complicated language, they’ve thrown in Fair Trade, i.e. that the farmers who grew the beans were paid a fair price.  Was I born yesterday? I’m sure there are standards for this but the cynic in me still wants to see sworn testimonials from the farmers.  Better yet, can I call them in person? 

And of course, we now have the option of “organic.”  I kind of hate it when they bring up that word because it immediately raises the specter of what’s in the non-organic.  Should we be thinking salmonella outbreaks in egg farms in Iowa?  One thing is clear:  if it’s fair traded and organic, we’re going to pay more for it. So I’d just like to know for sure those South American coffee farmers have 401ks and I’m not drinking chicken doots.

But just when you think you’ve miraculously gotten out of the ordering process alive, you discover that when your drink is ready, they sometimes don’t call you by name but by what you ordered.  The short hand name of what you ordered.  I have no idea what I ordered.  I just hope it really IS decaf.  And preferably has whipped cream on it.  I have let my coffee order get stone cold for fear of taking someone else’s drink by mistake.  Because if you think coffee drinkers are cranky being in line behind a non-Coffee speaker, don’t even think what would happen if you accidentally took their vente grande small cap no foam dolce.

I have to confess that I do truly envy people who can drink coffee, especially as a way to wake up quickly in the morning, or revive themselves at 4 p.m. as they’re about to slump over in a meeting-induced coma.  I don’t usually achieve sentience until about ten in the morning under the best of circumstances, and as for those work-day afternoons, I’ve often nearly severed my tongue biting it to keep awake.  Fortunately, I am now retired and can be as perpetually foggy as I want at 4 p.m. Or better yet, just take a nap.  Being awake can be really over-rated. 

My friend Amy’s mother, Toni, has been lobbying her local Starbucks to introduce a new drink, the mocha valium vodka latte.  Now this is a drink I could get my head around.  I wouldn’t even need this drink in a decaf.  A nice simultaneous upper and downer, it just falls off your tongue when you say it.  Of course, you might fall on your head after you drink it.  But it has the added advantage that within minutes, you don’t care if you speak Coffee or not.

 

 

 

Habits Of Annoying People

["Let Inga Tell You,"  La Jolla Light, published September 9, 2024] 2024

Hi folks - for the first time in 530 columns, I'm inviting the readership to join me for a Whine and Cheez Fest. Get your lists ready! So much to complain about, so little time!

Of course, I've always been a world-class whiner. (Everybody has to have a skill.) And some of the items on my list (below) of Habits of Annoying Fellow Humans have been the subject of entire columns already. But then it occurred to me: why shouldn't my readers, who don t have the luxury of a public forum, be able to whine too?

I confess that this particular column was inspired by one of my all-time top annoyances: the Reply-All option on email invitations. Even I, Technomoron to the Stars, figured out pretty quickly that even though all 75 invitees are listed, you should really only reply to the host.

Of course, many group invitations now are sent as blind cc's or otherwise hide the guest list. But alas, not all.

Maybe the host wanted you to know, as a courtesy, who else was invited. Or maybe they are as big a technomoron as me. But if they do that, they should probably note: "Please reply only to sender."

The invitation of which I speak went to 75 guests and resulted in some 43 Reply-All replies. So you're probably surmising - correctly - that this was an older crowd. But still, a number of the replies qualified as over-sharing. "Sorry, I can t come. I have to prep for my colonoscopy that night."   Or even some pretty personal chat about the responder's life (their kid was finishing rehab and they were very hopeful.)

But it got me thinking about all the other things that annoy me about the world I live in besides Reply-All replies. So here's a list that immediately comes to mind:

People in front of you in line at Gelsons salad bar who take one teeny item from all 50+ bins.

Family members, including the dog, who suddenly change their food preferences after you've stocked up on what they liked before (which, by definition, was not available at the place you usually shop). (We're talking about you and that particular brand of Cinnamon-Raisin English muffins, Olof.)

Miscreants who park in the middle of two spaces in grocery store or other parking lots. It's always the spaces up close.

Technology. All of it.

TV ads that admonish: "Do not take this drug if you are allergic to it."

Phone calls selling solar. (I thought of changing our phone message to "Hi, you've reached Inga and Olof. And no, we don't want solar.")

The new typeface in the San Diego Union-Tribune and La Jolla Light. Feels like a 3-point font!

People who say they can text without anyone at the table knowing. (Um, no you can t.)

People who take non-emergency calls during restaurant lunch dates. (There's this great invention called "voice mail." )

People who, right before they take that non-emergency call, say, "I ve got to take this."   (Um, no, you really don't.)

Not being able to find a seat at a coffee shop because they're all taken by people with laptops who aren't drinking coffee.

Not being able to figure out which small white fluffy dog is yours at the groomer's holding pen when they all want to go home with you.

Drivers who do not signal. (I mean, seriously folks, it's not that hard.)

Intermittent technical problems which by definition will not manifest themselves when anyone with the power to fix them is present.

Upselling from dentists, vets, dermatologists, and pretty much everyone. It seems have become the national pastime. 

Parents who tell their kids to get a ride home from soccer practice. (Special place in hell for them.) The kid never lives near you but you can't just leave him at the field (however tempting). 

Having to change passwords every 90 days particularly on sites you only use maybe once a year and for which you truly don't care if your information on it is accessed.

Passwords that have a number 1 or letter l, or zero or letter 0 in them. (Should be outlawed.)

People who don't respond to invitations.

People who respond to invitations that they re coming and then cancel at the last minute for what is usually a really flaky excuse. 

People who respond to an invitation with "I'll try to stop by."   (No, please don t.)

Toilets at other people s homes that I can't figure out how to flush.

People who drop their t's when talking ( "Alana"  for Atlanta, or "imporen" for important). Amazingly, even newscasters do this. 

Wordle - you have four of the five letters but the 5^th letter could be one of six options and you only have two more tries. 

Smoke alarm batteries that start beeping that they need to be replaced at 3 a.m. (Are they programmed to do this?)

Idiots with clear death wishes who walk behind cars that are backing up. (Not everyone has those beeper things!) Or is this natural selection at work?

And finally (and this one really annoys the heck out of me): Your husband getting the Saran wrap roll messed up.

So now, let s hear yours. (No politics please.) I think we d all agree that the world is an incredibly annoying place. I'll be happy to run the responses (anonymously, of course).

 

The Foods You Will Never Eat Again

[ Let Inga Tell You, La Jolla Light, published September 2, 2024] 2024

Probably everyone has associations with certain foods that they will never eat again after having a negative experience with them.

In my parents'  case, it was lots of experiences. After the Second World War, they lived in Boston while my father got an MBA, our family of four living on $91 a month on the GI Bill and subsisting by necessity on mackerel and baked beans - two foods banned from our household in perpetuity thereafter.

I have similar feelings about broiled chicken breasts, steamed broccoli, and cottage cheese the default diet foods of my teenage years. Cottage cheese seems to have made a comeback, given all the TV ads I see these days, where they actually try to make it look like a food one would choose to eat for any other reason that it's allegedly low calorie. Sure, they dress it up and make it look pretty but I can t be fooled. Underneath it all, it's cottage cheese and it is vile and should be banned from existence. Even though I haven't eaten it in decades, I can still hear it screaming "you are being deprived!"

Of course, one reason people would shun a particular food is if they've ever gotten sick on it. It doesn't even matter if it was the actual food's fault or some other affliction - a stomach flu, for example. Your gag reflex remembers forever. It s probably a good evolutionary adaption if you think about it.

My first husband, a New Jersey boy, had a particularly sad saga in this regard. Growing up, he'd practically lived on the submarine sandwiches (also known as heroes or hoagies ) which were pretty much the state food of New Jersey. But by the time I met him, however, he had suffered a severe submarine sandwich trauma the likes of which precluded his ever consuming another one again.

As he told the story, it all started back when he was a young college student just being initiated into the ways of the world. Kind of a nerd in high school, he hadn't seen a lot of what might be called "action." So he was delighted to make the acquaintance of a coed who had a reputation for loose morals and indiscriminate taste. To his surprise and delight, he was able to procure a date with the lady for "dinner and a show"  which at that stage of his economic life meant an Italian sandwich at the diner around the corner from the movie theater.

He ordered a submarine sandwich and his date a salad, after which they adjourned to the movie theater where he sat with agonizing late-adolescent anticipation waiting for the show to end and the entertainment to begin.

He doesn't remember quite when the queasiness started but somewhere towards the end of the movie, he excused himself and made it just out of view of his lady friend before throwing up all over the cigarette machine outside the men s room.

And yes, you used to be able to smoke in movie theaters, sometimes to the point you could barely see the screen. Honestly, that should have been enough to make you throw up, never mind the sandwich.

Despite his limited savoir faire, he knew enough to stop at the candy counter for some breath mints, on the theory that even a young lady of loose morals and indiscriminate taste might draw the line at a kiss that tasted like mortadella marinated in hydrochloric acid.

He felt better briefly, but by the time the movie ended, he had the terrible feeling that the second wave of gastric instability was not far away, and he rapidly felt compelled to change his priorities from trying to "score" to trying to get his date home without being sick on her.

The young lady was meanwhile oblivious to his difficulties, suggesting a moonlit drive in the Silver Streak (his Rambler with the reclining seats) and was dumbfounded when her date (sobbing quietly to himself) instead suggested taking her home.

After a hasty kiss on her front porch, she slipped quietly into the house, whereupon he turned around and threw up in her bushes.

She told him later that he was "weird"  and refused to go out with him again. And he never had a submarine sandwich again, despite Jersey Mikes literally opening up right in downtown La Jolla which at one point in his life would have been absolute nirvana.

Of course, sometimes you can overcome negative associations with food. When my siblings and I were quarantined with polio during the summer of 1955, the family ate a lot of canned food since we couldn't grocery shop. I'm not even sure we could have gotten Uber Eats to deliver if they had existed at the time. People were terrified - justifiably - of polio.

I remember eating canned Chun King chow mein and chop suey - or trying to eat them, anyway. I found that stuff so slimy and inedible that I assumed for many years afterwards that I simply didn't like Chinese food. It was only after my first husband, a medical student in New York City, - and yes, the submarine sandwich guy - finally persuaded me to go to China Town and eat actual Chinese food which I instantly fell in love with.

Of course, there was no version of either mackerel or baked beans (even homemade) that would ever have changed my parents'  minds. Sometimes, aversion just can t be overcome. Especially when it s compounded, as my first husband experienced, by profound social trauma. There are some things the body just can t forget.

 

Trying To Out Wit The Long Term Care Insurance Lady

["Let Inga Tell You," La Jolla Light, published August 19, 2024] 

It’s really easy to put your head in the sand about getting old and decrepit until you start hearing about friends’ parents, and even the friends themselves, requiring 24-hour care.  As in forever. 

So Olof and I decided that maybe we should look into long-term care insurance.  Let me sum up the concept: they hope you pay exorbitant premiums for 20 years then die of a heart attack. 

Olof was out of town when the long-term care people called in response to my application and said they were sending a nurse out for a physical exam, including a cognitive evaluation. 

Uh-oh. I do the New York Times crossword puzzle every day (except Monday; too easy) and read three books a week. But I’m clear that my mind is not as sharp as it once was.  The Light will testify that my proofreading skills have gone to hell.  I mis-use words a lot more.  When I’m writing, I’ll ask myself, “Do I mean ‘propitious’ or “prophetic’?”  I’m not so sure of spelling anymore.  I have to look up grammar rules regularly. 

As we get older, Olof and I are hoping that together, we can maintain one complete brain and one functioning body between us.  Especially one semi-complete long-term memory bank.  We’re always asking each other: What was the name of the actor in… 

What’s scary, however, is that I sometimes temporarily lose a really basic word. 

Inga: “Olof, what’s the word for those things you put on your feet inside your shoes?”

Olof: “Socks?” 

Inga: “Yes! Thanks!”

There was a time when one of us querying the other as to whether they’d remembered to take out the dog or turn down the heat before bed would have suggested a mildly insulting lack of faith in the other’s mental prowess.  But now we’re in total agreement that we have no faith in either our own or the other’s mental prowess.  We’re just trying to keep the dog from peeing on the carpet and the heating bill under control.  We’re grateful for the reminder. 

The problem will be when neither of us remembers to either ask or do it.  Or remembers that we even have a dog. Or heat.

Fortunately, that day is not here yet. 

But having the long-term health care insurance evaluator come out unnerved me.  I knew I could chug an extra blood pressure pill a few hours before she got there, but what was a “cognitive evaluation” going to actually entail?  If they asked me to count back by 7’s or do a level one (easiest) Sudoku puzzle, I’d be toast. 

I decided to do a little home staging before she came, carelessly strewing around collections of New York Times Saturday crossword puzzles (the really hard ones, NOT the Sunday), a few books in Swedish, an assortment of green teas. I wanted to create a subconscious impression of someone who dwells among the cognitive-scenti, the kind of person for whom an evaluator would say, “Oh, we obviously don’t need to be testing YOU.”

But she didn’t buy it. The cognitive exam, alas, was even worse than I expected. She told me she was going to tell me ten words and ask me to repeat back as many as I could remember a half hour later.  (Would two be enough?) I explained to the nice lady that I am afflicted with Auditory Processing Disorder (really) and learn better visually. Could I see the words instead? Nope. 

Um, doesn’t this violate the Americans with Disabilities Act?  If people can get more time on their SATs, shouldn’t I be entitled to accommodations on a dementia exam?

After she told me the words, giving me as much time as I needed to try to process them, she chatted it up with me about my current health and level of functioning.  (Inquiring minds want to know: Since when did “toileting” become a verb? Actually, when did it become a word?)

And by the way, didn’t Trump only have to remember five words on his dementia exam (person, woman, man, camera, TV)?  And the first three are practically the same word.  Even the last two are both electronics.  How come I had to do ten?  Well, I guess long-term care insurance automatically comes with Trump’s former job. 

The evaluator (closer?) had been deliberately vague about the costs of the insurance, noting that it would greatly depend on what type of coverage I might choose, and for how long I might want it.  Apparently, long term care can be pretty short term.  When I balked at the cost, she handed me a price sheet showing all the local memory care facilities costing anywhere from $10,000-$14,000 a MONTH.  And no, Medicare doesn’t pay. 

Against all odds, I actually was able to come up with nine of the ten words after the required 30-minute lag. Years ago, I learned that if I can’t write something down, I project it up on a pretend screen in front of me so I can see it. 

By the way, the words were chimney, salt, button, train, harp, meadow, finger, flower, book, and rug.  (The one I couldn’t remember was meadow.) 

Write these down.  You may get the same lady.