Lori Borgman

I am married to Mr. Security. We have an entire plastic tub full of timers. The lights in our house never burn brighter than when we are not home.

I typically spend the day before we go out of town packing. He spends the day setting up timers and reminding me what lights I can and can’t turn on.

The lamp in the family room is off limits. It will go off at 3 a.m. when the light by the piano will come on.

When all the lights in the house have been set on timers, I often resort to a flashlight. If I need to work in the kitchen, I open the refrigerator door to see what I am doing.

It’s not hard to dress in the dark—it’s putting on makeup that’s tough. The challenge is getting an equal amount of concealer under both eyes. When home security is in place, I often look like a one-eyed raccoon.

The light on a cell phone is not as helpful as you might think. You can’t really trust it to distinguish black from navy. Home security puts me at a fashion risk.

We have a motion-activated light on the driveway that works year-round. It floods the driveway with penitentiary-grade lighting every morning at 4 a.m. Cue the guard dogs—the carrier just delivered the newspapers. The poor guy. We tip big at Christmas.

It’s not like Mr. Security works alone. I place a stop on the papers. That’s right, plural. We get the local paper and the Wall Street Journal. Two different companies, two different stops.

I also place a stop on the mail. There’s nothing like returning home after a few days away and having the mail carrier back up to the house and dump a half-ton of junk mail in the driveway.

I have suggested if we really want to make it look like we are home, we should leave some of the grands’ ride toys in the front yard and scatter empty juice boxes on the sidewalk.

Mr. Security said that could attract undue attention. As if the entire house flashing like a Super Bowl halftime show won’t attract attention.

My final job is to activate the neighborhood watch—our neighbor Linda. I text Linda that we will be gone for a few days. She texts back that she thought so because she saw all the lights flashing on and off last night.

We are 150 miles out of town when a text arrives saying a package will be delivered tomorrow.

It is from Shutterfly, the company that packages everything in bright orange boxes. So much for going unnoticed.

Thank goodness for Linda.

Whoever first coined the phrase, “It’s nothing big, it’s everything small,” was ahead of the times.

I think about that every time I pause over AI, A1 and Al.

Depending on whether you read that sentence in serif type (letters with slabs on the end of strokes) or sans serif type (no slabs), you may or may not have read it correctly.

The first one is the abbreviation for artificial intelligence, the second one is a steak sauce and the last one is the first name of men with last names of Sharpton, Pacino and Unser Jr.

If you missed all of those, you’re batting 0.

Or are you batting O?

Wait. Are we talking scores or blood type?

Which reminds me: “What did 0 say to 8?”

“That’s a nice belt you have.”

Every time I ask Google a question, the answer that appears is routinely authored by AI. Apparently, some guy named Al now has all the answers.

If I forget a password and have to check my secret hiding place where I wrote them in my sloppy, illegible longhand, I make multiple attempts guessing if the straight lines are letter ls, number 1s or capital Is, and if the circles are letters or numbers. After multiple failed attempts I am blocked from my account.

I accept this as punishment for poor penmanship.

We recently had to get a new license plate for our car. I was hoping we might get a plate with a 0 and an O in it, to keep things interesting.

We did not.

Now I regret not springing for a vanity plate: 00OO0O.

It’s probably already taken. By someone named Al.

Arizona does not use the letters I, O, Q and U due to potential confusion.  Michigan does not use the letter O for the same reason. Florida does not make license plates with the letter O but uses the number 0.

Massachusetts is still in the game swinging, using both letters and numbers. They make the letter O oval and the number zero as a rectangle with rounded corners.

Or is it the other way around?

Living in a state where I and Al and everybody else have vehicles with license plates with capital Os and zeroes, I sometimes wonder about emergencies.

“Hello, 9-1-1? I’d like to report road rage. The license number was —- . Oh, never mind. It was a black car.”

 

It may be time to bring back the “cuss box” parents sometimes kept on kitchen tables or countertops. Kids had to deposit a coin every time they said a bad or ugly word. The present crop of candidates running for president and vice-president could fine themselves and fund their own campaigns.

Coarse language among politicians is nothing new. There is a long and storied history of presidents swearing. Andrew Jackson swore so much that his parrot, Polly, began using profanity, too. A genuine “fowl mouth,” Polly was removed from Jackson’s funeral at The Hermitage, Tennessee, for swearing so loudly it disturbed the mourners.

LBJ was legendary for his swearing. The man could have made Jackson’s parrot blush.

President Nixon will forever be remembered by the tape transcripts peppered with “expletive deleted.”

But once upon a time, politicians confined crude language to the private sphere. Vulgarities and profanities were deemed beneath the dignity of the office.

Former President Donald Trump recently spoke about receiving an email from Franklin Graham, the son of evangelist Billy Graham, urging him to refrain from using foul language in his speeches. He laughed it off.

The Washington Post recently ran a story headlined, “Kamala Harris rallies are edgy with four-letter words.”

I received an email from a candidate so rip-roaring mad that he said he was, well, having urinary tract issues, only in cruder terms.

Pennsylvania Governor Shapiro brags that his state motto is “Get Stuff Done,” only he frequently, and proudly, substitutes a different word for stuff.

In accepting the vice-president slot on the Democrat ticket, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz gave a shout-out of thanks to the crowd chanting, “Mind your own d— business.”

The current challenge for both political parties is seeing how many times candidates can call each other weird and weirdo.

I’m sorry, what are you, like third grade?

I apologize to all third-graders.

The uptick in crude is not by chance. These are not slips of the tongue. The coarseness is intentional and purposeful. Strategists think this is how you reach average people and win votes.

Whether this is or isn’t how average people talk is irrelevant.

When you are running for the highest office in one of the most powerful nations in the world, you carry yourself with class and dignity. You respect yourself and respect those you represent.

If you want to be a leader, talk like a leader.

In these days when grocery budgets are stretched thin, we somehow find ourselves flush with cash. It’s embarrassing.

A friend stopped by and had to clear a pile of 100s on the sofa before she could sit down.

We are rolling in the dough. Literally. This morning, I found a $500 bill in the dryer. I didn’t even know they made 500s.

Bills of every denomination are scattered under the dining room table. I just discovered $10,000 and $50,000 bills sitting on my desk. And I thought the 500 was a shock.

Naturally, I stuff my purse and yell, “I’m going shopping!” Just kidding.

It’s doubtful the orange, yellow, green and blue bills could get past a cashier or bank teller. You could always try, but you’d definitely need a “Get Out of Jail Free” card.

I also have in my possession a small bill labeled Homeowner’s Insurance that says, “This Policy Protects Your Home From Damage and Theft.”

Too bad it doesn’t cover small scale vandalism from grandchildren.

Three times today I have found “Salary Cards” scattered throughout the house. Two were for $80,000 and one was for $60,000. I wonder what my new profession is – it’s clearly no longer a columnist.

The big bills I can manage; it’s the coins that do me in. Someone (the usual suspect also known as “The Fun One”) brought home a large bag of play coins. They are replicas of the real McCoy but made of plastic and slightly smaller. At a glance, they can easily be mistaken for the real thing.

I am constantly stooping for coins to determine if they are real. If Fitbit counted deep knee bends in addition to steps, I’d be at the top of the leaderboard.

The sudden surge in wealth is amusing, although I know when I go to the game shelf that Life, Monopoly and Dogopoly will have been trashed.

All the loose coins on the floor, under the furniture and between sofa cushions grow annoying. They are on a par with wedding invitations that come with glitter in the envelopes and graduation announcements that come with confetti. (Don’t make me sweep the floor if you want me to come to your party.)

And know this—if you want Grandma’s homemade cookies—put the play money back where you found it.

Sometimes you just have to get tough. It only makes cents.

My small charge brought her rain boots with her, per my request. A heavy rain fell last night. Humidity is sliding down the windowpanes and the morning grass is so wet it squishes.

I pull on my rain boots, the ones with unicorns that she and her sisters gave me for my birthday last year. She pulls on her Pepto Bismol pink boots and we head outside.

The young miss is interested in growing things. She keeps a small bouquet of fresh flowers on her desk at home every day.

You could easily miss the bouquet amid her many other treasures piled high—early-reader books, construction paper creations, small stuffed animals, shriveled markers without caps, scissors, old birthday cards and fossilized Halloween candy. But amid her carefully curated collection routinely stands a small Ball jar holding cosmos and zinnias. She and her momma plant them in galvanized tubs where they bloom and bloom ‘til frost.

You’re off to a good start in life when hand-picked bouquets are part of your everyday.

Today she is making rounds in our backyard.

First stop is the fairy garden, a bowl-shaped clay pot with white impatiens sheltering an aging miniature fairy with no nose and a clipped wing. She repositions the fairy closer to the miniature yellow duck in the miniature birdbath.

Satisfied, we move on to the herb bed. She eyes a big leafy green plant that routinely bullies the other herbs.

“Pinch off a leaf and bruise it,” I say. Her entire life she’s been told not to hit, kick or punch and now here’s Grandma telling her to bruise something.

“When you bruise a leaf, you gently rub it between your fingers so it will produce a smell,” I explain.

She rubs the green leaf with her chubby fingers and lifts the leaf to her nose.

“What does it smell like?”

“Lemon.”

“Correct. It’s lemon balm. What is it?”

“Lemon bomb.”

“No, lemon balm.”

“That’s what I said.”

Moving along, she pulls a chive in bloom, lifts it to her nose and sniffs.

“What does that smell like?”

“Onion.”

“Close enough,” I say.

She then breaks off a low-growing herb with tiny leaves shaped like mouse ears.

“That’s thyme,” I say. “Smell it.”

She’s not repulsed, but she’s not terribly impressed either. “I know how to spell that one,” she says. “T, I, M.”

“Well done!”

We move to oregano with even bigger mouse ear leaves. She bruises the leaves, sniffs, and shoots me a look that says, “Did you really think this one would be hard?”

“Spaghetti,” she deadpans.

I pinch off a leaf of sage for her. She sniffs it, says, “YUCK!” and tosses it.

Just like that – there goes Thanksgiving.

We cut a small bouquet for her to take home, adding stems of lavender and rosemary to the collection. Regrettably, we both forget about it when she leaves.

I do the only thing I should do, and the only thing I can do— set the bouquet on my very cluttered desk.

Christmas is only five months away. I was hoping to be the first to alert you, but Hobby Lobby beat me by a month.

We had not yet marked Flag Day or the first day of summer when the Christmas creep commenced.

While we were breaking out the shorts, merchants were breaking out artificial trees dusted with artificial snow.

While we were searching for our flip flops, Santa was searching for his boots.

While we were firing up the grill, burning burgers and singeing our eyebrows, Santa was firing up the sleigh.

Turns out the most wonderful time of the year is now a full half of the year.

Ho, ho, ho and pa rum pum pum pum.

It’s topping 90 today. The grass is brittle, the hanging ferns are begging for water and rabbits that ravage the garden are knocking at the back door, panting with their little tongues hanging out.

Who wants to light a Christmas spice candle?

How ‘bout giving that winter wonderland snow globe a good shake? Harder. Harder. That’s it! Ooops.

Please excuse my inner Scrooge. I’ve never liked being rushed. I can move fast, talk fast, make chocolate chip cookies fast, throw sheets a kid got sick on in the wash fast, pack a suitcase fast and exit the house fast—but I can’t stand being told to go faster.I’m going to take my time. I’m going to savor the final scorch of summer and the last bark of the dog days of summer.

I’m going to leisurely stroll through the trashed school supply aisles at the store, throw my arms in the air and yell, “Thank you, Lord, those days are behind us!” I’m going to watch the neighbor kids shuffle to the corner bus stop.

I’m going to observe Labor Day by doing no labor whatsoever.

I’m going to watch the maples, birch and oak turn yellow, orange and crimson. I’m going to relish nights that grow chilly and savor the goodness of a heavy sweater. I’m going to drive on back roads at dusk and hope to see deer.

We’re going to rake enormous piles of leaves in the backyard of this old house, then call our grands who live in a new subdivision with tiny trees you can snap in two with your bare hands and tell them the fun is waiting.

I’m going to make a big deal about turning on the heat. We’ll both rail about the cost of utilities and the monopoly of the gas company. Tradition.

We’re going to enjoy apples, pumpkins, squash and endless zucchini and, come November, I’m going to win another wrestling match with a turkey.

I’m going to watch the very last leaf drop and the very first snowflake fall. Then . . . and only then.

Don’t rush me.

 

“Let’s Scare Grandma” is a major source of entertainment for the grandkids. If someone jumps out from behind the sofa or from inside the hall closet, I simultaneously scream and jump like a WNBA player going for three.

But lately, I’ve lost my bounce. I just don’t scare like I used to.

There was a time when kids spent the night and one of them, dressed like a pirate and brandishing a plastic sword, slithered onto the bed in the early morning dark, I would bolt upright and scream.

These days I open one eye, roll over and say, “Cereal is in the cupboard. Make your own breakfast.”

Another favorite has been waiting until I’m doing dishes at the kitchen sink. Someone creeps outside, climbs on top of the hose box below the kitchen window, jumps up and yells, “SURPRISE!”

On cue, I would shriek and send suds and dirty dishwater cascading down the window.

These days? Nothing. Nada. I just motion for the kid to get back inside and help clear the table.

I wonder out loud if maybe I’ve mellowed – to which the husband emphatically says, “No.”

I recently accompanied an 8-year-old to an old wooden trailer in the woods where she has been catching mice. She lowers a PVC pipe with food in it and when a mouse goes for the bait, she tips the other end of the PVC pipe into a cage.

I don’t do mice. I’ve never done mice. But there I was, standing beside her looking for mice, breathing normally, trying to think of an endearing name for a small disgusting rodent.

Maybe I should see a doctor.

The real fright was when all 11 of them recently spent the night.

There were kids everywhere—on beds, under beds, on the floor, the sofa bed, and maybe even one or two on top of the piano. I can’t remember. It was a long day. The house was finally quiet, the kids were all sleeping, or pretending to be sleeping.

I tiptoed into our bedroom using only the light from the hallway. I took a pillow sham from the bed and saw something in the shadows that looked like it might be a ribbon or long piece of lace.

I picked it up and gently pulled it through my fingers. It didn’t feel like ribbon or lace, so I turned on the lamp.

It was a 4-foot snakeskin that previously belonged to a black rat snake.

Here’s the scary part: I didn’t jump. I didn’t scream. I didn’t hyperventilate. I gently tossed the snakeskin into the corner, crawled into bed and slept like a baby.

I must be losing it.

The next morning, I cornered two boys and asked which one put the snakeskin on my pillow. They pleaded not guilty and said they had heard their 6-year-old sister say she was bringing something fun to Grandma’s.

I feel terrible. The poor little thing was so disappointed.

Some people are drawn to social media apps—I’m drawn to weather apps.

I check weather apps more frequently than I check news apps. Weather apps tend to be less alarming than the news apps. Especially during a presidential election year.

I don’t mean to brag, but I know the predicted highs, lows and percentage possibilities for rain for the next five days in three different states. It’s my version of low-cost travel.

Earlier this morning I was lingering along the rocky coast of Maine where it was 65 with partial sun. I refilled my coffee then dropped in on Charleston, S.C., sweltering by mid-afternoon. From there I scrolled on over to the boundary waters of northern Minnesota. Jacket weather.

I check the weather app every night before I go to bed. I like to know if a storm is coming so I can crack a window to hear the rain drumming, the wind blowing and the thunder rolling.

I check the weather app every morning to see what I should wear and what kind of hair day it will be.

If my husband wants to know our local three-day outlook, he consults me, not his phone. I can tell him what the temperature was, is, will be, and if he might want to water the garden.

When I was a kid, if you wanted to know about the weather, you called the bank. Almost every town had a bank with a recorded line that gave the time and temp. To my knowledge, nobody checked it 30 times a day.

Years ago, if someone in a family was serious about the weather, they had a large instrument called a barometer hanging on a wall, often above the television. Back in the day, talking about weather qualified as entertainment. It was before Netflix and Disney+.

A barometer was like a crystal ball. People who knew how to interpret it could tell a storm was coming even before the storm knew it was coming. Those people later got together and founded the Weather Channel.

One of the best things about summer is the colorful language used to describe it. You can sweat bullets, sweat buckets or sweat like a pig, even though pigs don’t sweat. You can also roast, fry, sizzle, melt, wilt and bake. Summer is a culinary wonder.

On extremely humid days, my father-in-law used to say, “It’s close today.”

Initially, I wondered what he felt was closing in on him. After spending a week one summer in the family’s 100-year-old home, with only window fans for cooling, I figured out what he meant.

It was his version of, “It’s not the heat—it’s the humidity.”

A phrase that should be banned for all time, on penalty of having your weather app disabled, is: “Is it hot enough for ya?”

If you have to ask the question, you already know the answer.

When it’s so sweltering outside that even your weather app is melting, remember this—winter will be back before you know it.

We’ve been trying to sell our nearly 20-year-old SUV. Like most sellers, there are things we say about a used vehicle and things we don’t say.

When an interested buyer asked about mileage, I said, “It has 221,500 miles on it.”

What I didn’t say was that I helped put a lot of those early miles on it with my dad when he bought the Ford Explorer, Eddie Bauer edition, two years after Mom died.

One fall, Dad and I drove Eddie to see his remaining brothers in Nebraska. Our last stop was Beaver City, a small bend in the road where his older brother had been town sheriff before retiring. After a good visit and a lot of strong coffee, we left early the next morning heading south on a two-lane that would lead us into Kansas on our way back to Missouri.

Dad was raised on a farm and forever loved open prairies, lone cottonwoods and hot summer days. There wasn’t another soul or vehicle in sight on that straight-line road. The sun inched over the horizon and spread a peach glow across endless fields.

It was so beautiful that neither of us spoke. We just soaked it in—the morning, the beauty and the silence.

“You’ve sure had this vehicle a long time,” the prospective buyer said.

“We have,” I said.

What I didn’t say is that we tried selling it a while back. We were on our way to a dealership to use it as a trade-in on a new car, but I got all weepy, so my better half turned around and we drove back home.

“How many owners?” the interested party asked.

“Just two. My dad and us,” I said. “He took good care of it and so did we.”

What I didn’t say is that when Dad was recovering from surgery for pancreatic cancer, he mentioned he had started driving again. I said, “Dad, are you sure you’re strong enough to hit those brakes hard if you need to?”

“You should see the skid marks I laid yesterday!” he said with a roar of laughter. He didn’t really lay skid marks, but he thoroughly enjoyed saying he did.

“How’s the sound system?” our potential buyer asked.

“Good,” I said. “The radio works and so does the 6-slot CD player.”

What I didn’t say is that Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys are in slot No. 6 where Dad always kept them. I’ve never taken them out. Won’t somebody be surprised to hit play and hear a lot of whoopin’ and yee-hawin’ and “Bubbles in My Beer.”

The prospective buyer was growing increasingly interested, so I said, “It leaks oil.”

Silence.

Then I said, “Sometimes it sounds like it doesn’t want to shift out of first.”

More silence.

I said, “When it rains hard, water drips through the sunroof down into the beverage cup holders.”

The potential buyer needed time to think about it.

“No hurry,” I said. “We might not even sell it!”

Our son called that night. We’d offered him the vehicle a few days earlier. He said he and his wife would take it.

What our son didn’t say was that he couldn’t stand to see the last remnants of Grandpa disappear either.

“I assume it’s the standard model that comes with country CDs,” he said.

“Check slot No. 6,” I said.

 

I made my first loaf of sourdough last week. It took less time to give birth to our first child than it took to make that one loaf of bread.

Why did I make sourdough? Because I’m weak. I succumbed to peer pressure. We have granddaughters making sourdough. They nudged and prodded and threw flour in the air until I agreed to give it a try.

The first thing you do to make sourdough is spend hours and hours on the internet reading about why one method is superior to another. Eventually, your eyes cross, your head bobs for the fourth time, then crashes onto your computer keyboard.

Step two is making starter. This is a slurry of flour and water you mix in a bowl, (preferably in a rustic crock suitable for photographs) covered with a tea towel (also suitable for photographs).

You leave this on the counter for five or six days. When have you ever left food sitting at room temperature on the kitchen counter for days on end and trusted it was safe to eat?

Nevertheless, each day you check the mixture, talk nice to it, remove a portion of it and add a fresh measure of flour and water. This is called “feeding the starter.”

Put “feed the starter” on your to-do list or you will forget about it and be caught in an endless cycle of restarting the starter.

On perhaps the fifth or sixth day of feeding the starter, you give it a stir and bubbles appear. This is fermentation. Congratulations! You are now ready to make bread.

For beginners, the most common question is, “What time do I start making the bread?” People ask because the process can take anywhere from six or eight hours to two days.

To prep dough for baking, you mix, rest, fold, turn, fold, turn, circle left, clap, clap, shuffle, shuffle. It’s line dancing for people who love sourdough.

I’m not saying the process is time-consuming, but it’s been a week since I made a decent sit-down dinner for the two of us, days since I answered emails or texts, and now I hear they miss me at the gym and are tossing about words like slacker and uncommitted.

Who kneads them? I’ll roll with it. I’ll rise to the occasion.

The dough is finally ready and into the oven it goes—on approximately day 59, give or take a month.

I wait, worry, pace the floor and watch the clock. I monitor progress through the dirty oven glass. I send text updates to fellow bread makers.

The timer sounds. The bread is finished. I ooh and aah. I take pictures of the bread alone, me cradling the bread in my arms and the bowl and dish towel that made it all possible.

In the morning, I send out bread announcements.

Was it worth all the time? Ab-sh-loot-ley. Sorry, my mouth was full.

But should I ever again buy sourdough bread at a grocery or bakery, I will never, ever, ever, ever complain about the cost.