Month: June 2024

It was a shock to learn the family may be in step with a growing fashion trend. The new look is called “effortless.” It is a look that says, “I randomly grabbed a few things on my way out the door.”

We have two granddaughters who showcase effortless by combining shorts with unicorn T-shirts, fluffy tutus and rain boots. They wear the look well – but they are age 6.

Do you know who else does effortless well? Boys between five- and 14-years-old. Many in that demographic consider soap and shampoo a violation of their civil rights. And they will protest. Loudly. We have two grandsons in this category.

Frustrated, one of their parents will say, “Go ahead, smell his head. Just smell it.”

I’m not going to smell it. I know what it smells like. The boys’ heads smell like their dad’s head when he was their age. I would order him to shower, hear the water running and could tell he was slapping a wet washcloth against the tile wall.

He would emerge 45 seconds later. I would feel the back of his neck and his hair, which were bone dry, then say, “Get back in there and shower.”

A group way out in front with the effortless trend are the kids at the middle school and high school bus stops. For two years, they have been wearing flannel pajama bottoms that look like they were slept in the night before.

That said, I do a version of effortless every morning when I roll out of bed. Half of my hair is smashed to my head and the other half stands straight up. The bags under the eyes are the piece de resistance.

My personal stylist for effortless is Mother Nature. Her rates are good, but the finished look can be brutal.

The effortless hair that celebrities want looks tousled, not tangled. It’s like you did your hair, then stood in front of a large window fan on high speed.

That’ll be $300, please.

Celebrities who hire stylists to help create the effortless vibe, wind up with a sophistication that looks like they dressed in the dark.

Of course, jeans are mandatory for the look—faded jeans that look big enough for two and have a huge rip at the knee. Why is it that all the high-fashion people have mean cats with sharp claws?

Some of us come by the effortless look naturally; for others it takes a lot of time, money and effort.

Nothing smells quite as wonderful as the outdoors after it’s been through the gentle rinse cycle. Rain is such a pleasant fragrance that makers of perfumes, body oils, lotions, and even household cleaners, all try to replicate it. But nobody can. Not fully.

Try as they may, it always ends up smelling ever-so-faintly like the inside of an old purse once carried by a woman fond of loose face powder.

I had an uncle who claimed he could smell “rain was coming.” Skeptical at an early age, I wondered how that could be. Maybe he could smell rain coming. Or maybe he’d been rummaging through somebody’s old purse.

A high-end hotel chain boasts that their rooms smell like fresh rain. They even sell it in a bottle. Their rain fragrance comes with “notes of jasmine and grapefruit.”

When was the last time you stepped outside after a good rain and said, “I think I smell grapefruit.”?

As the man hawking the Veg-O-Matic on late night television used to say,” But wait! There’s more!”

Rain comes in a variety of fragrances. There’s fresh rain, clean rain, spring rain, November rain and soothing rain. I imagine soothing rain is the opposite of non-soothing rain that comes with tornado warning sirens. The last thing you’d want to do is mix up your rain fragrances.

The scientific name for the smell of rain is petrichor. As I understand it—and I could be soaking wet on this—petrichor forms when bacteria in the soil and on plants is hit with water droplets, releasing a pleasant scent.

The process sounds remarkably similar to when kids dig a hole in the dirt and then flood it with the garden hose. I’ve done that laundry, and it does not smell like rain. Not even faintly.

It’s not always easy to explain the things you cannot see.

I can explain why the sponge on the kitchen sink smells like mildew, why clothes reek after a workout and why antique shops smell like expired Chanel No. 5, but the scent of rain is clouded in mystery.

The best way to ruin something beautiful is to beat it with the club of over-explanation. So just do this—the next time it starts raining, don’t try to explain it, don’t try to understand it, just open the door and breathe deep.

You might catch a whiff of jasmine.

You may not remember William Safire, but I lived in fear of him. He was a nationally syndicated columnist who wrote about other writers’ writing gaffes. Every Sunday, I would rip open the paper, read his column and exhale to find I had lived to see another misplaced modifier—as if Safire ever read family humor.

That was the effect the man had on me. Or maybe it was affect. Probably both.

Scribe Safire, who loved alliteration, died in 2009 but his spirit lives.

Several readers let me know I committed some flagrant fouls recently. Not wanting to accelerate the ongoing deconstruction of the English language, I would like to own my mistakes. You just heard the creak of the door to the confessional.

Forgive me, Safire, for I have sinned.

After my column on Memorial Day ran, a veteran wrote to inform me that taps is not “played.” Taps is also never “performed.” Play and perform indicate entertainment and a bugle call is never for entertainment. Taps is “sounded.”

He was right. The Associated Press Stylebook and Pentagon back him up. “Sounded” is the correct verb to use with taps. Sounded may not sound right, but it is.

The thing that bothers me most is that taps is not capitalized.

After a column that referenced golf was published, a reader wrote to inform me that one does not “golf”—one “plays golf.”

Runners run, swimmers swim and skiers ski, but golfers do not golf—they play golf. Nor do they “go golfing.” At least not the serious-minded ones.

Both readers who emailed corrections were pleasant in tone. Whether the matter under discussion is writing, plumbing, cooking or learning computer code, correction is always easier to receive when it comes with a measure of kindness as opposed to a hard smack.

I think fast, write fast and edit fast. It is the last one that nips at my heels.

I learned early in my career that a good copy editor is a writer’s best friend, because a good copy editor makes you look smarter than you really are.

In a college news writing class, we were advised to “write short.” I am 5’ 2” so it has worked out well. Sorry. I couldn’t help myself. Truthfully, I think we were admonished to write short because it minimizes opportunities for errors.

I’m reading “The Unexpected Abigail Adams,” a book that heavily excerpts from the 2,000 letters she wrote. Her letters are sprinkled with randomly capitalized words, creative spelling, contractions without apostrophes and a heavy smattering of semi-colons and commas used to create run-on sentences.

If you spot any errors in this column, no need to email me – just imagine that I am channeling Abigail Adams.

Our youngest was the ripe age of nine when she tacked a brochure, which she had pulled off a display rack at our neighborhood pharmacy, to her bulletin board. It pictured a smiling white-haired couple beside a headline that read: “Retirement: The Golden Years.”

When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, for months and months, possibly years, perhaps even on her college applications, she would answer, “Retired.”

Naturally, this was disconcerting not to mention somewhat embarrassing. Silly us, we had numerous ideas for her immediate future, none of which included walking hand-in-hand on the beach at sunset with an elderly white-haired man in need of a hip replacement.

The brochure painted a rosy—extremely rosy—picture of retirement that focused heavily on the social aspects, primarily the togetherness of a couple enjoying one another’s company, traveling together, playing golf together, sailing together, bicycling together, dining in vineyards together, climbing Mt. Everest together, sitting on a dock dangling their feet in the water together and enjoying hot air balloon rides together.

Clearly, the couple on the brochure had invested well.

There was no mention of how navigating doctor appointments, cholesterol levels, blood pressure diaries, reading glasses, hair loss, joint pain, fallen arches, cardiac stress tests, health insurance, finances and taxes, all become tantamount to an extremely frustrating part-time job.

In part, the brochure was correct: The upside of retirement is that couples can spend more time together. What the brochure neglected to say was that the upside can also have a downside.

Several years ago, a friend called and said, “I’m at the grocery store. Alone.”

“So?” I said.

“So?” she snapped. “It’s the first time I’ve been to the grocery alone in six months since my husband retired.”

Another woman said her recently retired husband was driving her nuts. Asked how, she said, “With all that clicking he does on his computer keyboard.”

Some have a lower tolerance for pain than others.

The old saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder” may have been written by a retiree.

Years ago, an older gentleman who was retired told me that he was a night owl who slept in every morning and that his wife was a morning person awake at the crack of dawn. “It’s the secret to our happy marriage in retirement,” he said.

How much togetherness is too much togetherness?

I couldn’t tell you. Every couple must figure that out for themselves.

What I can tell you is that it is 10 a.m. and my better half is still sleeping.

Once again, we find ourselves at that time of year when we commence our annual tradition of cultivating $64 tomatoes, $20 garlic bulbs, $50 red potatoes and assorted herbs that run in the $20-$30 range.

This habit of growing produce at an exorbitant cost is a practice we cannot shake despite living within a two-mile radius of four grocery stores selling the same things we grow, at a fraction of the cost.

Presently, our main garden concern is not plants but rabbits.

Mopsy and Topsy have returned. Every morning the dynamic duo runs the perimeter of the backyard patrolling for invading forces, completely unaware that they are the invading forces. And every morning one of us flies out the back door chasing them, yelling at them and flapping our arms like wounded waterfowl.

They have nibbled all the hostas to the ground and eye every tender, green shoot, which is to say everything we planted. Their appetite is boundless. They enjoy sweet potatoes, Bibb lettuce, romaine, zinnias, peas, cucumbers and beans.

We have been using a humane live trap with hopes of relocating the rabbits. We baited the live trap for eight days and rabbits scored the win 8-0.

We have offered romaine, green leaf, red leaf, apple slices, cilantro and parsley. I’ve even added a small tumbler of apple cider of which rabbits are said to be fond.

Every morning the food has been gone, the trap door has been closed, but the cage has been empty. We suspect the rabbits partnered with a resident raccoon that reaches its clever paw beneath the trap and pockets the bait.

True story: Mopsy just came up to the French door beside the desk where I write and peered inside the house. Maybe she wants brussels sprouts. Maybe she is checking to see if we’ve given up and vacated the place so that they might move inside.

“We’re still here, Mopsy! Still here!”

Even our neighbors’ two yapping dogs do not deter them. The rabbits are fearless. They taunt the dogs with their puffy white tails.

Mopsy and Topsy have grown flopsy in recent days. They waddle when they leap. Their center of gravity shifts as they move. They have grown larger, rounder and fuller.

Our backyard will soon be a bunny maternity ward. Rabbits can have between five and eight bunnies per litter.

The score soon could be: Rabbits 18, Humans 0.

Rabbits can become pregnant again within hours of delivery.

Maybe we’ll open a petting zoo.

We already have a plan for next year – we’ll plant hostas directly inside the trap.