And the Alternative Is...

All Ye Who Don't Shop Often:

Bringing you up to speed, at Walmart they have taken down the signs that said "Do the Math," when they really meant, add and subtract (that's Doing the Arithmetic). Anyway, whatever euphemism you wish to use, I was there recently because they sell Purina dogfood in the 18 pound package $1 cheaper than they do at Safeway. (Now the signs read SAVE, or did last weekend, which they can rest their cases on. But there is more to Walmart than just SAVE.)

Where else can you buy blue jeans, ladies' underwear, dogfood, craft supplies, carrots and celery for tomorrow's soup (not soup du jour, but soup de manana if you will) all well as fill your prescriptions, get a hotdog, get lost, and have experiences you never planned ahead for???

There may be quality control opportunities in a few central Florida Garden Centers, but they could easily be alleviated if only a few mongooses were let loose overnight for patrol purposes (see "Man Sues After Bitten By Snake at Walmart", AP newswire).

The last time I was in Walmart in Arizona, I was gandering about and kind of looking for my lost or misplaced husband, who gets lost every time we go into a big store, despite the fact that he can drive from here to downtown New York City without ever consulting a road map because he knows, he just senses, which way is north without looking to see which side of the trees the moss grows upon. It is an inborn talent, which I do appreciate (trying to overlook the time spent looking for him and concentrating instead on his good qualities.)

ANYWAYS, I looked down the main aisle about 50 feet (just a short distance inside of that really big building) and there was this slender man with a little black mustache and slicked back wavy hair. Beside him was his silhouette that looked as if someone had taken a sharp pair of scissors and cut out the outline of a person. (Strange, but there were no insides to this person; this gentleman and his void of three dimensions that moved along next to him were headed my way.) Three things occurred to me:

1. Now I knew I really needed new glasses.


2. I've got to stop watching those paranormal TV programs.


3. Take Cover!

So I ducked behind a display, and hidden behind my shopping cart loaded with 18# of Purina's best, I waited. They finally came into view, and bless gracious, that void was a beautiful black lady dressed in a very stylish black outfit. From a distance I couldn't tell where the lady stopped and the outfit began. She smiled at me. All was right with the world again.

Another thing. I was passing by one of those $4 per DVD kiosks, and my arm just reached out on its own and snagged a Matthew Broderick "The Producers" classic. I don't know how that happened, but what a bargain! $4 for a Broadway show! I placed it in the cart. Things were now really rolling -- $ave, dogfood, pretty lady, entertainment tonight ... what next? Where IS my husband?

I passed a couple speaking a foreign language, and lots of teenagers in those long crotch shorts that you can't help but wonder how they run with them on??? And once I caught a glimpse of an old lady pushing a shopping cart with an unusual expression on her face... and I wondered about her ... until I realized I had encountered a mirror in the ladies' department ... I don't look into mirrors anymore. It took a while to recognize me, but the dogfood in the cart did it.

My husband did finally turn up, and we paid the bill and began to exit the building, and then it hit me. You know how sometimes a riddle, a joke, an old saying, a pun, or a paraphrase will jump uninvited into your mind? I recalled a poem we had to memorize back in the 6th grade:

"Let me live in a house by the side of the road, where the race of men go by..."

But what came to me was:

"Give me a house close to Walmart, where the race of men go buy..."

and I thought of all the criticism that Walmart generates (because of jealousy I suppose) when I know they hire employees who aren't trained for Microsoft duty (or who have been laid off from Microsoft) but they have a J O B, and I thought of the rest of the poem which also seemed appropriate:

"So why should I sit in the mourner's seat, or hurl the cynics' ban?

Let me shop at the store called Walmart, and be a friend to man..."

P.S. Dear Wally: The bill's in the mail...

Aw, Shucks...

Once I worked for a progressive company that headquartered in Minnesota, that mother of the giant Mississippi, the land of the 40° F. below zero, Scandinavians, Betty Crocker, the twin cities, and 3M. They would regularly send around experts to advise us in the management of the business and I really looked forward to the visit, in order to show off the facility.

There was the time that one of them and I were considering a solution to a problem/opportunity/crisis and the options we had seemed marginal, improbable, and unlikely to result in anything favorable, even. She uttered a word. “Uf dah,” with a heavy sigh.

The word sounded like she had been struck in the solar plexis with a hard line drive baseball. It kind of explained itself. I asked her what kind of language Uf dah was. She said it was Swedish. I asked her what did it mean? She replied, “I don’t know.”

Well, I thought, didn’t I just recently marry a gentleman who was proud of his Swedish ancestry? Didn’t his name (mine now) end with -son just like the Oles, the Swans, the Johns, the Hendricks, the Anders, the Eriks, the Peters, the Alberts and all of those other migrants from das Fatherland? I determined to get to the bottom of it as soon as I got home. Of course, I forgot all about it until 3 am, when I shook him awake. As I was still a bride, this action did not bring down the house as you might expect, but he mumbled, "What?" And I said to him, proudly, “I learned a Swedish word today!” “What word is that?” He asked. I brought it out: “Uf dah!”

“That’s not Swedish, that’s Norwegian,” he said, and promptly went back to sleep.

I shook him awake again. “What does it mean?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied, and went back to sleep again, this time with finality.

I don’t like to admit defeat easily, so the next day I called 1-411 and got the telephone number for the Norwegian Consulate in Denver, and a nice lady answered the call. I explained that I was calling for a definition of a Norwegian word, and she asked what word is that? And I said, “Uf dah.”

She answered, “I don’t know.”

But then she explained that it is an expression of exasperation, like if you were taking out your garbage and the bag broke and it spilled all over your living room floor, you would exclaim, “Uf dah.” She added, that if the garbage spilled all over your priceless Persian rug, you would say “Fe dah!” At the time I didn’t think to ask if Fe dah was similar to other F words in the English language, but I just let the garbage lay there on the Persian rug and quit while I was ahead. So I thanked her and adopted the word into my own personal vocabulary, right along with Oi Vey because it conveys the same idea. It turns out I use it frequently when no other word expresses your disappointment and dismay, like when you open your tax notice and find your house has been reevaluated upwards when you can’t sell it for half that appraisal, or you learn that you make too much money to stand in line for the free Department of Agriculture commodity giveaways for Seniors, or you do spill the garbage on your living room rug.

My advice is, take the garbage out through the back door and take everything else in stride with an Uf dah. Uf dah is Norway’s gift to us, no charge, help yourself, it's free.

Make Way!

What follows may be considered indelicate in some quarters, almost like some of the Ole-Lena jokes, such as:

When Ole and Lena got married, they drove to Minneapolis for their honeymoon. En route, Ole put his hand on Lena’s knee and she blushed and said, “Ole, we are married now, you can go farther than that.” So he drove to Duluth.


There is a saying I’m sure you’ve heard, “Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas,” but have you ever considered how the dogs may feel about the situation? My dog Molly follows me everywhere about the house, and if I happen to take a nap during the day, she hops up on the bed also, plopping her muscular 60 pound, 104°F. body snugly up against mine. I don’t attempt to stop this because it is as good as having a sturdy, furry hot pad that relieves the pain of the arthritis that goes all the way down the spine and is present even in the body’s prone position.

Here comes the indelicate part, so don’t read any farther, like going to Duluth. (I was in Duluth once and what I remember about it was there was a lot of water on one side of the road, called Lake Superior, and a hill on the other side, and it might be a lot like being between a rock and a hard place, but enough about Duluth…)

…our digestive system being what it is, fermentation by definition causes some gas, and gas, well, it rises, or escapes through the line of least resistance, or it is expelled, like those burning oil field flares. You know what is coming…it is usually accompanied by the noise of explosion or release, which may vary from a quiet sneaky sound, hardly discernable, identified in some quarters as breaking wind, or an explosion equivalent to detonation of a formidable amount of TNT, enough to cause considerable damage to the Hoover Dam.

Getting back to how dogs feel about lying down with masters:

“Lie down with masters, get outta there when the bombardment starts…there are no atheists in foxholes…don’t stick around for whatever Act II has in store.”

So, here’s the picture: I’m napping, dreaming of looking like Penelope Cruz.
Molly is napping, dreaming of chasing rabbits.

The indelicate episode happens, produced by the human condition. Immediately, not a nanosecond later, Molly jumps straight up in the air, coming down on all fours, five feet from the bed, wondering what happened? Hackles raised, all instincts en guard, looking around to see what is gaining on her, and ready to man the barricades as it were.

I can’t help but laugh. Who cares that any resemblance to Penelope Cruz breaks down to we are both the same gender and that is where it stops? Who cares that you just lost a bundle on the sale of some real estate? Who cares that your chances of seeing the winter solstice in the year 2012 is an improbable dream?

Your dog still has perfect reflexes, at least for the moment. And if you read this far, you may as well have made that trip to Duluth…

Molly the Collie

When I decided there was a void in my life that could only be filled by having another dog, those dear to me had the disheartening thought, "She's getting senile." Maybe so, but it was an experience I hadn't had for 15 years, and I didn't want to leave this life without having the experience again. Never mind that the dog would probably outlive me.

I wanted a Standard Poodle, but my husband had enjoyed a Border Collie mix before and if I wanted a dog, that was the kind of dog I would get if I were smart. He started reading the puppy ads in the newspaper. Once, he said, "Look, border collie, blue heeler mix pups, $20" and I stopped him cold and told him we definitely did not want blue heeler in the mix because they are bred to nip at heels even if the heels were attached to people, not cows. "Oh," he said, and he continued to read the ads.

Then he found an ad that said, "Border Collie mix puppies, FREE to good homes." We made the telephone call. Yes, they had one female left. We got the address and presented ourselves to the puppy owner. He placed this seven pound, six week old, black and white ball of fur in my arms. She was making those little puppy grunts; she was adorable.

"What breed is the mix?" my husband asked. From far away, as if from a troubled speaker system, I heard: "She is part blue heeler."

I looked into the pup's eyes. She looked into mine. I didn't acknowledge hearing anything but the normal ringing in my ears. I had my puppy and I was oblivious to anything else. "Thank the man, and let's go home," I said, and Dick slipped him a ten spot for dog food, and we left with our new dog.

So we took Molly the Collie home and right away we had our hands full. She had been part of a 13 puppy litter and their mother had abandoned them when they were only 5 weeks old. Poor thing! I knew the feeling. Molly had already been weaned and was eating moistened puppy food, but she had not been taught the things mother dogs teach ...such as No Mouthing. She had never disciplined the puppies with her teeth on the back of their heads like the Dog Whisperer does. (You could try that ad infinitum on Molly; it didn't even get her attention.)

She was just one stubborn pup, so I bought a book on Blue Heelers to see if there was any wisdom that I could latch on to that would help. What I did learn was that Blue Heelers were bred for the outback situation in Australia. The Smithfield Collies that the cattlemen brought over from England couldn't take the conditions encountered down under. So they bred them to the wild dog, the dingo. In order to instill more order, they then bred those pups to Bull Terriers and then back to the dingos again.

This resulted in more nipping at the cattle's heels as well as the horses, so the breeders reasoned they should impart some Dalmation blood. Then back again to the dingoes, then the final round to the Highland Blue Rough Collie. Whew. So we have a multi-breed dog here, fit for the United Nations.

One bit of wisdom the book implanted was that you couldn't civilize an adult dingo, but that puppies would respond nicely. Since our dog was only 1/4th Blue Heeler, I felt we had a fighting chance.

Of course, she was bred to be a working dog, a dog with a JOB, and we are in our 80s and have a very small back yard. She fought the leash and so the walking exercise would not work for her. She plainly had been mis-placed. I was bombarded with family members saying, Put her up for adoption. And for a while, both Dick and I had bites on our arms -- well, not bites, exactly, but with thin skin and her sharp puppy teeth, just grabbing us made us bleed. It was a low time.



Slowly, though, as she aged, the nipping at the heels stopped (I told you so!) At 16 months, the mouthing has (almost) stopped. She hasn't knocked me over for 6 months. She finally has been house broken. Now I can ask her, "Outside, pee pee?" and if she needs to go, she trots to the door, proceeds outside, and squats and pees and is back inside the house again in about two minutes flat. She knows 35 words and phrases and her mental aptitude is about equivalent to that of a three year old child (I am told by those who know about such things.) I am working on stringing three ideas together, such as Go Find -- Mr. Treat -- and Bring Him to Me. She almost has the hang of that one.

She can differentiate between her toys. Go Find Mr. Bone makes her snap around, smell the air, and locate Mr. Bone. Not Squeaky, not Ball, not Mr. Lion, but Mr. Bone. She understands that even if an object is hidden, it is still there.

She is a handsome dog, but hard to identify as to breed (duh?) Her back looks as though a black pelt has been thrown over her white body. She has the long legs and white spotted face with the black ears of a Dalmation, framed by the fluffy white ruff of the Collie. The black fur on her back is rather stiff, shiny, and oily, and curly on the rump. The tip of her tail curls over her back, Collie style, and is white. She has three cowlicks, one on the middle of her chest and one on each front leg. She has a Playboy bunny emblazoned on the top of her head.


But what is unusual ... as if all of the above is not enough ... is that she seems to have a lot of the instincts of the wild dog of the outback. Sometimes she looks at me as if she is trying to deliberately understand what I am saying, and she does know those 35 words, with the appropriate hand signals to accompany them. The first time she heard thunder she ran right over to me, looked me straight in the eyes and seemed to be asking a question: Should I be afraid? I told her no, it is just a loud noise; she returned to her doggy day, but not after she looked out of the window for reassurance.

I am sorry I don't have a sheep ranch. She is sorry, too. But she likes the food and I hope she is making allowances for her family. We have certainly made a lot of allowances for her -- but like Marley of current dog fame, there isn't another dog like her in the world for me.

(For more about Molly, read "Molly's Lament" and "How Dog Evolved, Part II".)