Sad Sock

Well, I feel stupid.  

And when I feel stupid, I do what any normal human being would do—I expose my stupidity in public, which is why I’m telling you what happened instead of focusing on what I should be doing—packing my suitcase for my trip next week. Mainly, I’m procrastinating.

I’m flying to my destination. I don’t usually fly because . . . I don’t like to get arrested. Freedom of speech isn’t allowed in airports anymore, and my mouth is always wanting to get me in trouble with the TSA.  (Fun fact: when read backwards, TSA stands for American Security Theater.) If freedom from unreasonable search and seizure was still a protected right, the TSA and I would have a better relationship. But it’s not, and I worry that if I stand up for freedom, I’ll live to regret it.

However. Sometimes flying is a necessity, so I’m leaving my trusty truck at home and zipping my mouth. Here’s the thing. I’m at the age where any travel, especially flying, is more comfy if I wear compression socks. I’d hate to admit that if not for the fact that they make my legs feel good, and feeling good, like happiness, is worth the pursuit.

I needed some new socks and usually I order them online. Here’s another fun fact. I don’t like shopping anymore, especially in stores. The internet and the pandemic have both made it a lot easier to let my fingers do the walking and the mailman do the delivering (although we both know how risky that one is), so I wander around the worldwide web a lot, hoping for a new mailman.

Sometimes that’s a really stupid idea.

I thought I was being smart. I looked at a couple of sites and read the reviews. People seemed genuinely happy with the version I settled on. People lied. When the socks finally arrived and I put them on, they weren’t as compressive as promised, especially in the feet which was my main concern anyway.

How do I say this? While the socks covered my legs as expected, the feet were apparently designed to fit a platypus. I kid you not. I put them on my hands, stretched out my fingers as wide as a piano octave, and there was still loose sock left over.

Who has feet shaped like this?

And these socks weren’t cheap. I was careful when I pulled them out of the package so if I needed to return them I could. I needed to. But that’s when my fatal mistake surfaced—I didn’t order them through Amazon with its stellar customer service and easy return policy. I didn’t know where this brand came from and had to dig through my emails to find contact info. I sent off an email explaining that the socks didn’t fit (shocker) and I’d like to know how to return them.

I got an answer this morning.

From a platypus.

 

Dear customer,
Sorry for the unsatisfied purchase.

We understand the inconvenience and harassment that get unsatisfied item.

 

Hoo boy. Right away I realized where these socks came from. I just didn’t know their feet are shaped like this over there.

 

We offer no-hassle returns. You may return most items (unused) in their original packaging. Please note the cost of return shipping is not included. Shipping costs and additional service charges are non-refundable.

 

Shipping costs were one quarter of the entire price. My profit margin was shrinking right before my eyes. Boy, did they ever see me coming.

 

Note: Please do not send the item back until we authorize the return with the return address in the email. The address on the package is not our return address. Do never send the package to that address, or we will not be responsible for the loss.

 

It’s hard to believe that after all my years on planet earth, I can still be taken in by sheisters. But I can. Why are they using a return address that doesn’t belong to them? I could make a pretty good guess. Not only that, and this is really hard to admit, but this is the second sock company who sent me socks that weren’t worth sending back, not even for a complicated refund. Also, doesn’t anyone believe in relying on a good editor anymore?

From now on, I will “do never” do business with Facebook companies again. 

 

If you would like to keep this product after knowing the return policy, we will refund you $5 as compensation, which we appreciate.

 

And this is the point where I laughed out loud. Even they don’t like their socks. In fact, they would appreciate it if I keep them. It’s worth five bucks to them if I do. So, I clicked on the button at the end of their email, “I accept your offer,” (which was one of three buttons, all agreeing to make their life easier by throwing their socks away myself.) Soon I’ll find out if my refund will arrive with Honest Abe’s face on it or if it will sport a picture of Penelope Platypus instead.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this experience may cause and ask for your understanding.

 

Oh, I understand completely. There’s a sucker born every minute and my minute was about six decades ago.

I think I’ve learned my lesson. Don’t put too much stock in sock reviews and only order through Amazon. I understand, Platypus Sock Company, and in all sincerity I accept your apology. Thank you for your creative version of support hose and entertaining return instructions. 

May I suggest, though, that in the future you find a good editor and refrain from weaving support socks for marine mammals?

It’s gonna cost you a lot of five-dollar bills if you don’t.

Objects seen above contain actual foot-age. If you're a platypus.

Neither . . . Heat Nor Gloom of Night

There’s this sign I bought when I was at my lowest point and thought I might never survive what life had thrown at me:

If cauliflower can somehow become pizza . . .

You, my friend, can do anything.

It’s still on my desk making me smile, giving me hope. Think about it. If you can take a tasteless, colorless, unloved vegetable like a head of cauliflower and, after steaming it into submission and pulverizing it into compliance, blend what's left with Italian ingredients and turn out a respectable pizza pie, you have performed a miracle. The transformation of a humble cauliflower into an unlikely hero means that this must also be true:

I can do anything.

That’s what hope does, right? It takes the mangled parts of our life and turns them into something new and amazing. Like a collage of photographs which, when they’re laid out in just the right pattern, make an entirely new image of someone else. There’s a young woman on YouTube who loves to take thrift store pillowcases and re-use the fabric to make clothing. Or how about a mosaic made with broken pieces of china? Finally, as in the case of our mailman, with enough determination you can even transform letters and packages into origami.

I just don’t think that’s what Japanese culture had in mind when they came up with the shapeshifting art of paper folding. 

I’ll admit, now that I share an address with my daughter and her family, there is a little more mail taking up space in their average-sized mailbox. Like, an extra two or three envelopes a day and maybe twice a year a small package, at birthdays and Christmas. Even a mail order clothing delivery might find its way into the hands of our crafty mail person. The problem is that what goes in may not look the same way when it comes out again.

Case in point. A dear friend painted a watercolor of my beloved dog, Brody (who lives with Jesus and chases balls for Rob now) and mailed it to me for my birthday. She framed it with a cardboard matting and backed it with more cardboard and sent it to me in a large, padded envelope. Seems like a reasonable amount of protection to me.  The problem was that it’s shaped like most pictures are—flat. But our mailbox is shaped like—a mailbox. It was a predicament, for sure. How on earth does one convince a stiff item in a padded envelope to submit to a representative of the United States Postal Service and behave itself inside a mailbox?

Our clever mailtech solved that little disconnect and now my handpainted watercolor has the same shape as our mailbox. I guess that way I can use it to cover the mailbox instead of my wall and everyone in the neighborhood can enjoy seeing Brody and remembering what a good boy he was the way I wanted to.

You might be surprised to learn that the next day I hand carried this reimagined piece of art into our local post office, stood in line for thirty minutes to speak with a supervisor, only to discover supervisors take Saturday mornings off. I was promised he would call me personally the next week, which was two weeks ago. I bet that comes as a surprise to you, too. I thought I’d give him some time to reach out, since I know the post office is so busy that even their mailmen don’t have time to walk up a driveway and leave a padded envelope outside a homeowner’s door when it won’t fit inside a mailbox.

But perhaps I’m not giving the supervisor enough credit for caring about my feelings, or the feelings of the artist whose watercolor now sports folds and creases that weren’t originally part of Brody. Last week, my son-in-law, Dan, stopped by with some more mail for me and dropped it on my kitchen counter.

“Don’t shoot the messenger,” he said, as I stood over the crumpled mess that included a birthday card from my mother-in-law. What is it about my birthday gifts that has this mailman so irate? Is he against birthdays? Growing old? Women? Or does he just hate me or my name personally? It wasn’t the last one.

“Our mail was crumpled up, too,” Dan added.

Now I’m afraid to go back to the post office on a weekday and ask to speak to a supervisor. I’m afraid he already spoke to our mailman. It’s not like I can be anonymous about this complaint. The guy knows where we live. What if his fuse is even shorter than I think and he goes postal on us?

Today I went to Katy and Dan’s for lunch and when I left there were a couple of letters for me lying on their fireplace hearth. That’s usually where they put my mail until we connect, but I wasn’t sure it was mine at first. There wasn’t a crease in it anywhere.

Maybe the mailman was just having a bad day when he took his anger out on my birthday present. Or a bad month. Maybe he’s a frustrated artist who rides around in an un-airconditioned truck on hundred-degree days and hates his job. I know I would. Maybe his home life is in tatters and his wife just texted him to stop at the store when he gets off work because she wants to turn a cauliflower into pizza.

And He.Just.Couldn’t.Take.It.Anymore.

I think I may have to get rid of my little sign and go back to eating gluten-filled pizza crusts again. I'm feeling a lot less courageous after all this excitement. I still think hope is a strong core value, though, and that within limits I can do anything I set my mind to.

Right now, I’m setting my mind on getting a bigger mailbox.

With apologies to Brody, whose watercolor can be viewed above, for the unkind way he was handled, and also to the artist, Sheila, who may have to re-think mailing gifts to me. I'd stand up for all our rights, but right now I'm afraid of the mailman.

Service For One

Someone ratted me out. 

I watched the black sedan slide into my driveway with a sinister air and immediately felt my heart palpitations kick into action. Two doors opened and a man and woman, each dressed in black and wearing dark shades, set off my Ring alert as they headed to the front door.

When the doorbell rang, I opened the door instead of pretending I wasn’t home. Because I’m an idiot.

“Mrs. McCloyd?” the short one asked.

“McCloud,” I corrected phonetically.

“May we come in Mrs. McCloyd?”

If my dog, Brody, was still alive, he’d have told them no, but I’m on my own here in the house with a blue door and no address, so I let them both in.

“What’s this about?” I said, my forehead scrunching in confusion.

The tall one with the pointy nose aimed it toward my long kitchen island like he was measuring it with laser accuracy. “We’ll ask the questions,” he told me. “We have it on good authority that you aren't preparing food at home anymore. When was the last time you fileted a mignon?” he asked, running a bony finger down the granite and grimacing.

My voice shook. “Well, I don’t like steak. Wait. Don’t mignons come that way?”

The short one snorted and shoved her sunglasses back on the bridge of her nose. “I told you this wouldn’t take long,” she told her companion. They both tittered at their private joke. Rude, I thought.

“Are you sure you’re at the right house?” I asked, making a move to open the front door. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

The tall one ignored me and walked into the narrow space between the island and the appliances. He opened the oven door and peered inside. “Just as I thought,” he said, while the short one scribbled furiously on the notebook she held. “This oven is in non-compliance mode.”

“It’s what?” I asked. “I mean, it’s supposed to be an air fryer and a convection oven as well as a standard, but they never gave me instructions for those features. Were they supposed to? They were supposed to, right? I knew it! This oven is defective. Are you here to replace it?”

The tall one slammed the oven’s door shut and spun around. “This oven is NOT defective.” He slid a hand along its polished surface like he was caressing a Jaguar convertible. “It’s pristine. Undefiled. Underutilized. Basically, unnecessary in its environment.”

I bristled, taking umbrage at a couple of the words I understood. “Well, it’s not exactly pristine. A frozen pot pie bubbled over in there a few weeks ago.”

He slammed his hand down on the granite counter between us. “Exactly!” he exploded. “A frozen pot pie!”

The woman in dark glasses with hair pulled back in a tight ponytail let out a gasp. “Sir,” she implored. “Your blood pressure.”

“I. Don’t. Care.” He emphasized the words with a growl. “This is supposed to be a chef’s kitchen.” He opened the double doors of the island, scanned the slide-out shelves filled with pots and pans, cheese graters, rolling pins and pie pans, and closed them with reverence before facing me again. He removed his glasses and pointed a finger at me.

“You have not been cooking.” He waved a hand at the doors he’d just closed. “These implements are here under false pretenses.”

I felt color rise up my neck until it filled my cheeks. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” I said in a quivery voice. Dang, woman, I thought. Stand up for yourself. “Is this about how much weight I’ve gained recently?”

Ignoring me, he walked back around the eight-foot island to open the doors of an upper cabinet. “Aha!” he said, snatching out a Magnolia cookbook and flipping through it. “Not a single splash of tomato sauce on these pages. No egg whites in the binding, either.” He turned to speak to his assistant. “Not even a corner of a page bent out of position. Make a note of that.”

“Got it,” she muttered, scribbling.

I raised up to my full, shorter than I used to be, height and squared my shoulders. “Well, sometimes I cook breakfast for myself.”

Without hesitation, he yanked open the freezer on my French-door refrigerator and pulled out a box of Jimmy Dean sausage biscuits, rattling them in my face. “Then how do you explain these?” he accused. The short one put a hand over her mouth and looked away, repulsed.

“They’re,” I stuttered, grabbing the box out of his hand and tossing it back in its hiding place, “they’re for my . . . grandchildren.” I crossed my arms over my body and looked at the floor.

The tall and short ones made brief eye contact and nodded at one another. “I guess that wraps it up,” the tall one said.

“Yes sir,” his toady replied.

“You know what to do.”

She nodded. Walking over to a kitchen drawer, she slid it open, pulled out my favorite whisk, and slid it into her leather purse. She closed her notebook with a loud snap and returned to stand by my front door, waiting for whatever came next. I stood frozen with my mouth open looking like a trout caught on a line.

"What do you think you're doing?!" I finally exploded. "You can't just come in here and take away my cooking tools!"

“We can and we will," the tall one said. "Mrs. McCloyd, you are charged with dereliction of duty. Failure of food fare. And fast-food gluttony of gastronomical proportions.”

I sucked in my gut and swallowed hard. Man, these two were hardcore.

He continued. “You are hereby relieved of your epicurean duties.”

I squinted and interrupted. “My epicenter of what?”

He rolled his eyes and joined the short one who had opened the front door. “You are in violation as a home cook and we are hereby revoking your license to poach. We’ll send someone out in the morning to confiscate the rest of your cutlery.” He turned to walk out the door.

“Wait,” I called out. The two stopped, turning in tandem to stare back at me. “This is a first offense! Don’t you guys give out warnings before you shut somebody down?”

The short one walked up within inches of me and poked me in the arm. “This is your warning,” she snarled, with a backward glance at my dusty living room. “You’d better get your act together around here or we’ll be coming next to take away your vacuum.” She turned on her heel and was barely inside the car again before it roared away up the street.

I stepped back inside the house and quietly closed the door, a big smile on my face. I'm not really an idiot.

That was the best anonymous phone call I ever made. 

With thanks to Cpl. Han Samuel for permission to use the delicious photo seen above. The original can be viewed at the link below.

Fusion Restaurant offers Yongsan delectable delights | Flickr

Even If

"Guilt is the unwanted companion of Grief."

David Kessler wrote that, a man who is an authority on grief. I don’t think as a little boy that he grew up thinking that’s what he wanted to be someday, but life is unpredictable. I’m learning that.

I’ve written a lot about sorrow and loss. Sometimes I do a deep dive and bring up the depths of guilt I feel over your death, Baby, but it’s a tangled mess of murky thoughts and rotting feelings. It smells bad and looks worse and I don’t know what to do with it once I bring it to the surface. Will I be judged by others the way I judge myself for my failures in your final days? Quickly, it becomes a heavy load and I release it back to the depths and hope it will fade away somehow.

But that’s not how we get free from dead weight, is it? Shame keeps it tethered to my ankles and no matter how hard I try to kick it away, it just hangs on. We have to bring our fears into the light. Speak them out loud. Take a look at them and see if they’re telling us the truth about ourselves.

They’re not.

I joined an online support group for widows, did I tell you that? I'm still finding my way. I know it’s been three years since you left us, but it’s hard for me to believe that. You still look so alive in your pictures. I still listen to your voice mails. I still sleep with your shirt at night. It helps me to meet with this international group of women via Zoom to sort out all the tangled debris left behind when our husbands died. We’re an Ambush of Widows, a Widow’s Army, Warrior Widows. We each know how much courage it takes to walk through this. We understand one another’s broken hearts.

Our fearless leader led us through the complex problem of guilt today. Why it burdens us even though we did the best we could with the information we had at the time. It comes down to this: we would rather feel guilt about not saving our beloveds than face the fact that we have no control over life and death.

It’s easy to look back with 20/20 vision and see where I could have done some things differently. But here’s what I learned today. Rather than view those desperate circumstances with the thought, “If only I had . . .” and be weighed down with a mountain of regret, the truth looks more like this: “Even if I had . . .”

Even if you and I had secluded ourselves away from every other person on the planet -
Even if I had realized we had contracted covid when we'd dodged it for a year -
Even if I had sought help for us sooner -
Even if I had beaten down the doors of that hospital and demanded they let me be with you still–

Even then I still might have lost you.

I have been punishing myself for what I didn’t know and for what I could not control. Now I know why I do that. Now I know it was not my fault, though I will have to keep telling myself the truth until I no longer question it. Now I know life and death are not in my hands.

Now I know - I just didn’t want to let you go.