Unpopular Opinions

"All progress resulted from people who took unpopular positions."

---Adlai Stevenson

Since so many of us have been homebound lately, social media is becoming a way to share jokes, memes, Netflix suggestions and other, well, nonsense. I'm annoying people with too many pictures of my pug, but again, I don't accept the premise that there can be too many pictures of a pug. 

Man, I need to get out of the house. 

Anyway, unpopular opinions are a hot topic if you're sick of everything being about the C-word (Corona, that is).  While chatting with a few people, via social media distancing, of course, here are a few opinions that are not popular, but are fiercely held by some of my friends.

·      More than a few women I know do not like pedicures. While a pedi is usually seen as a lovely, pampering indulgence, and, by some, an absolute necessity, I have friends who'd rather have a root canal than a pedicure. From the time it takes, the price, and the squick factor, to the spa environment and experience, these women are not having it. One of my friends finally realized she disliked it so much she felt she was essentially paying someone to torture her. 

·      Travis (not his real name) is a sexy beast. He claims his wife agrees, but she had no comment. In his experience, he hasn't found that a lot of people share this opinion, but he's convinced of it. Points for confidence, you have to give him that. You go, Travis.

·      Going to a trade school is a better choice than going to a traditional four-year college. Better? Well, that is highly dependent on the kid, but my friend was right when she talked about the attitude that vocational education is for the "dumb" kids or the delinquents. All the labor statistics, career projections, and financial concerns over college debt prove that trade school is a phenomenal option. Still, there is a general feeling among many that it's somehow, "lesser than" or inferior to, a four-year college path. I have a kid in trade school; unpopular or not, her high school experience has been nothing short of amazing. She's also headed for another unpopular option, community college. Oh, the shame! 

·      Leashes on toddlers are a good option. Sure, some parents cringe when they see a kid on a safety lead, but think about it. Suppose you have an active toddler, and a newborn and the stroller/backpack/death grip isn't cutting it. Then what? If you're at a fair, or near a busy street, a rambunctious little one could dart right away from you. Try not to judge a parent using a harness or lead. One of my kids was a runner, and no amount of threats, discipline or whatever else the "experts" advised was working. I regret not using one a few times; it would have made some outings much less stressful.

·      Nothing smells as good as a horse. What? This is insanity! Hot cinnamon rolls, buttered popcorn, bacon frying, ocean waves, French fries, the list of wonderful smells is longer than your arm, and nowhere does it say, "horse." I love horses, there's never been a police horse that didn't get a pat on the nose from me if I come across one, but that doesn't mean smelling like Mr. Ed is an option. A nice whiff of a barn and some hay? Sure. Saddle sweat? Not so much.

Obviously, everyone's definition of popular or unpopular will vary, but that's the good part, right? What if we couldn't while away some of this downtime arguing the merits of pineapple on pizza, wine in plastic cups, or the proper way to put toilet paper (if you can find it) on the roll? We'd be even more bored, and we wouldn't learn anything new about our friends and neighbors. Now that I know one friend thinks mashed potatoes are an abomination, I can work on changing her appalling lack of culinary knowledge. Stay well, people. Summer is coming.

It's Not Just For Pandemics: Working From Home

"The main advantage of working at home is that you get to find out what cats really do all day."

---Lynne Truss

We don't have a cat at our house, but we have a tiny pug, Miss Penny, and she leads a pretty nice little life. Her schedule is well organized from what I can tell. She sleeps late, barks at passersby from her spot by the window for most of the morning, begs for snacks, takes a nap, and then starts the routine all over again. Pugs excel at three things: snacking, sneezing, and snoring. We've grown used to each other's habits though, and she's a pretty good work from home office mate. Sometimes.

The stay at home advisory has more people than ever all of a sudden working from home, and for some, it's been an adjustment. Not me though. Welcome to my world, won't you come on in? I'll be the one at the dining room table, wearing a lovely silk blouse, a scarf, and my Betty Boop pajama pants. That's so when the next Zoom video meeting starts, I'm camera-ready, from the neck up anyway.  I'm also barefoot most of the time, and just out of the frame is a kitchen with dirty dishes in the sink and leftover pizza in the microwave.

There is a way to make working from home efficient and productive, and the reason I know this is because I've been working at home for most of the last ten years, and I've made all the mistakes. Finally, though, I have a system down. Here's what works, for me anyway.

1)    The first word in "Work from home" is? WORK. It's not a day off, it's not a half-day, it's not playtime. Setting a schedule is helpful because otherwise, the day has no structure, and before you know it it's dinner time, and you're still staring at a half-finished Excel spreadsheet, and your project is yet another day late. People think that working from home means you can just decide what to do and when to do it, and if a chance comes up to hit the beach or have lunch with a friend, you just go. No, that's not it all, sadly. While there's more flexibility being at home, the work still has to get done and here's a pro tip: You can't work at the beach or the pool. Don't even try it, it won't happen. BTDT and all I got was sand in my hard drive. Soccer games, the carpool lane, and the parking lot at school are also not conducive to cranking out the work.

2)    Get childcare. Seriously, if you have young children around, and you're sitting there on the computer, they're going to think you're playing Minecraft and you won't have a minute's peace. You can't plop kids in front of a TV for 8 hours either, so get some help. Maybe trade kids with other work at home parents, or split the day up between work hours, and kid hours. It might have been funny on the BBC when a cute little girl came strolling in on her dad's live interview, but your clients won't think it's funny when a batch of slime or a round of Nerf gun bullets goes whizzing by your head during a video conference call.

Meme via @with_love_becca

3)    Make a land grab. Find a spot in the house that's (relatively) quiet, has room for your gear, is comfortable, and is just yours. Plant a flag, surround it with caution tape, do whatever it takes, but own your space. If you're constantly wandering around with your laptop and a notepad, with a pencil, stuck behind your ear, you're lost before you've begun. Let everyone who lives with you know where the work zone is, and that interfering with it is a felony.

Working from home just might become the new normal, even when the pandemic has passed. It's not always easy, but it has some real benefits as far as reducing commuting time, making companies more profitable because they save on office rent, and helping employees strike a better work/life balance. Good luck, and make sure to reward your family now and then for putting up with all those important, yet mostly unproductive, video team report status check-in update meetings.

HEY MA! What's for SUPPAH?

"There is one thing more exasperating than a wife who can cook and

won't, and that's a wife who can't cook and will."  ~Robert Frost

Ok, if I could, I'd edit out the "wife" part of this. But who am I to correct Robert Frost? I am an English major, and he remains my poetry icon in good times and bad. "Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a favorite, and, if I'm honest, that poem contains words to live by. We are almost done with summer; that's proof that these golden days are limited.  While the fall and back to school is the best part of the year for me, this summer has been fantastic. Hot days, beach waves, happy kids, scooter adventures, paddling at Riverhead and so much else. It's been a treat. Lazy days also mean less work in the kitchen.  

Sandwiches, hot dogs, a rare lobster roll treat at Little Harbor and of course burgers on the grill whenever possible. Soon though, that will not be an option, and the daily dinner debate will begin. Friends of mine know that I am not a cook. I can assemble a sandwich, boil some pasta, and, on rare occasions, make some beast, usually some poor unsuspecting chicken or doomed cow, into a holiday meal. That's the extent of my foodie prowess. I'm lucky my children are still alive, but I guess I owe that to Cheerios, Velveeta, and Chef Boyardee.

Sure, there are technological advances and microwaves and all sorts of delivery options. But then I'd have to deal with the shame of "OMG, you can't even figure out dinner? What kind of mother are you?" Well, that's a question for another day. Right now, I'm trying to answer another question, the perennial, "Mum! What's for suppah?" I've reconciled myself to the fact that "How the hell should I know" is not the answer my kids want. They are picky; in food choices and in every other way possible, and I'm left wondering how this became my job.  Sure, OK, my kids, my responsibility, but they are almost full-size humans now. There's only one left living at home, but the older boys come by on a regular basis. I'd like to think it's because they love me and miss me, but no. It's because I usually have cold cuts, bread, chips, Oreos and milk on hand and now that they are fully "adulting" they realize how much food costs. Who's your Mommy now boys? You might have flown the nest, but you're like bats; you can sense where the food is.

That's OK though, any day that includes my kids around a table is a good day. I simply must get better at this planning thing. Especially since I have started making my own dog food. Perhaps it's a function of having two kids out on their own, that I've turned my focus to Penny, the Smug Pug, but she's having some issues. Allergies, as it turns out, so now I'm making her food. Literally, I am scouring the internet for recipes that won't exacerbate her skin issues, but still sound yummy. This irony is not lost on my children. "Really Mum? I'm making my own Ramen noodles, but the dog has a custom, portion-controlled meal?" Yes, dear, that's precisely it. Because the dog doesn't give me any back talk.

So feeding these wandering offspring is my job, sure, no problem. It's not like I haven't been at it for decades. Still, I wonder why, after all these years, I still don't have it down. What gene am I missing? Why is it so hard to figure out food? Well, guilt is probably part of it. Back in the day, when my mother was in charge of keeping us fed, I do not ever remember getting takeout. A ride to Bianchi's Pizza in Revere was a rare treat, but most nights it was flank steak, mac and cheese, or "sketti and meatballs." The ever-present, "Finnan Haddie" made an appearance every Friday night,  because…Catholic. While I am grateful to my mother for many things, I suspect that my culinary frustration comes from her. She could not pass on her kitchen secrets, because none of them were food related. Yes, I learned from her the importance of having a cash stash in what should have been a cookie jar. Yes, she taught me how to put out a grease fire, but other than that, nada. No secret recipes, no helpful hints. I'm on my own here.

So what though? Have my children starved to death? Nope, not even close. Anyone who knows me can tell I haven't missed a meal in a while. So, is it a big fat hairy deal that I'm not passing out platters of food every night? As we head into fall, dinner will be served, eventually, and no one will die from hunger. They will just act like it. It's all good though. It's been a great summer, and now that it's almost (but not entirely) over, I supposed I will figure it out. I'd ask you all over for dinner, but there's a reason I only throw cocktail parties.

 

Pug Problems

"If the kindest souls were rewarded with the longest lives, dogs would outlive us all."

---Unknown

If you're not a dog fan, stop reading. If you are, you'll get it. I've always loved dogs. We could not have one growing up because of my father's allergies, but we had neighborhood dogs that we would play with and pretend were ours. The first dog I had of my own was a flatulent yellow lab we named Flash, short for "Jumping Jack Flash" because he was, quite literally, a "gas, gas, gas." Still, he was adorable and fun. Eventually. When he was a puppy, he was a pain in the neck, but he was our pain in the neck. When my oldest was a baby and tooling around the house in a wheeled walker contraption and upended himself under the dining room table, Flash went right over and tried to right the walker and pull Andy to safety. Good dog.

After Flash, we adopted Dingle, another yellow lab, a female this time and older. She was fat and slow and smart as a whip. She loved to swim, well, OK, she mostly floated, and you could put a bone on her nose, and she'd balance it, then pop it up in the air and catch it. I miss her.

When she died, we were dogless for a while, and it was awful. That's when I became what is known as a "crazy pug person." While every breed has their fans, pug people are a particular kind of cuckoo. Think about it. Pugs are often overweight and smelly. They breathe so loud you'd think a Harley was in your kitchen and some people believe they are ugly. Those people are stupid.

Pugs are not really dogs. They are magical creatures that you'd think would be repugnant (har har) but are truly delightful. Do you see the crazy yet? Oscar came along as a rescue pug, and the die was cast. Someone once asked me, "Does that mean he can save people?" Well, he saved me, so yes, I guess he was a life saver, in a way. He knew when someone wasn't feeling well and he'd sit with them, resting his chin on their lap and letting them know, through snorty breaths and big yawns that he was there, no matter what. Losing him was one of the saddest days of my life. After a time though, there needed to be a dog in the house again, so of course, we found another pug. Miss Penny, all eleven pounds of her, makes me laugh every day. She also makes a mess of some kind every day, from ripping open and eating an entire loaf of bread once, to shredding a pillow into thousands of bits of fluff all over the living room.

Lately, Penny has had herself a bit of a struggle. She has chronically infected ears. They are oozing and have sores, and it's been miserable. This is where a pug parent goes into full-blown lunacy. Vet visits, of course. Multiple medicines. New food. It sounds simple enough, but it's not. Pug ears are like little pockets of velvet, but not Penny's. Hers are swollen and painful, and it's making this pug mama go to new lengths. I don't usually cook that much. I don't enjoy it, and I'm not that good at it. However, to lessen the allergy triggers that are causing poor Penny's trouble, I made dog food. I cooked beef, selected veggies, added fish oil capsules and concocted a mixture of custom nutrition. After an afternoon of chopping and simmering and roasting, I had 14 snack food containers filled with precise portions of pug pate. I have refused to make a child a sandwich, but that dog? She gets cooked to order specialty dinners.

Medications are involved too. Ever chase a dog around the house, hold her down and try to shove a nozzle into her ear, that squirts out gooey foam that smells like rotten eggs? Try it sometime; it's wicked fun. Her pills have to be wrapped in chevre goat cheese because she won't eat them any other way. She's supposed to be wearing a cone of shame, but I can't bring myself to do it, it's so sad and pathetic looking on her. She's agreed not to scratch her ears if we skip the cone.

All this nonsense for a dog? Yes. Because dogs love you unconditionally. If you have a dog that has made you their person, that's everything. Of course, you'd go to extremes. Dogs don't live as long as people, but they love more than most and give more too. Make the food, buy the cheese, and get them a new toy while you're at it. Where else can you find a warm bundle of love and loyalty? Penny will be on the mend soon, but in the meantime, she's getting anything she wants. Told you pug people were nuts. In the best way possible though.