Column

I was one of the first to complete the family NCAA Final Four bracket this year. There’s not a chance I’ll win and I’m good with that.

Our son-in-law started the family bracket challenge, which includes his side of the family and our side, 15 years ago.

His side of the family loves sports. His dad even refereed for years.

When you love sports, you make intelligent bracket picks. When you simply like sports, making picks is like throwing pasta against the wall to see what sticks.

I throw pasta. Spaghetti, rotini, lasagna, all of it.

Here’s the kicker—I’ve somehow won the bracket twice.

I’m not sure how I won, although my husband follows a lot of sports and maybe I unconsciously gleaned a few things from him. Sure, blame the husband.

Once again, I have been reviewing my methods for guiding picks.

The Color Method involves pulling up a bracket list of the teams and selecting winners based on school colors. I choose according to color seasons—this is a palette of colors every woman knows she wears well. Summer and spring colors contain a lot yellows. I cannot wear yellow. I am a winter: black, white, jade, ruby, sapphire—all the gemstones. Teams with yellow are out.

Another strategy is the Vacation Pick. If I’ve been to the team’s state and had an enjoyable time, the team advances. Michigan and Tennessee are frequent picks.

There’s also the Our Kids and Our Money tactic. If any of our kids attended a school in the playoffs, the school automatically advances.

The Home Sweet Home method tips the ball to a team if any member of our family has ever lived there. This puts Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Oregon, Ohio, Indiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and New Jersey in the pool.

Perhaps the most popular method is the Stuffie Pick. Teams are chosen based on whether a mascot would make a cuddly stuffie. We still have grands clinging to stuffies. The College of William and Mary’s griffin, a mythical creature with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion, is an obvious no. Nor do bird mascots with sharp beaks have a high cuddly quotient. Go ahead, call “fowl” but it’s true. On the other hand, South Dakota’s Jack the Jackrabbit with big floppy ears is a slam dunk.

This year, I picked Louisville to go all the way to the Final Four. We were there recently with my brother and his wife. We stayed at the Brown Hotel, wandered through an architectural salvage place that spanned two blocks, ate breakfast at a hole-in-the-wall diner frequented by jockeys and took an amazing distillery tour. My gut told me Louisville was a win.

Louisville was out in the first round.

Oh, the madness of it all.

I can’t call heads or tails on whether we should stop minting the penny. There are two sides to every coin, right?

Zinc and copper used to make a penny are worth almost four times the value of the coin. Bottom line: the penny is not cost-efficient. I empathize. Some days I’m not terribly cost-efficient either.

It’s hard to imagine life without pennies. Stale mints and wadded up receipts in the bottom of my purse all alone with no pennies? Ketchup packets, napkins and insurance cards crammed in the glove box with no pennies?

What about the children? What about all the piggy banks and penny banks? Then again, most of those children probably already have Venmo accounts.

Penny gumball machines faded into the past long ago. They were simple fun—dropping in a penny, turning the knob and hearing a gumball rattle down the chute.

A long time ago, a shiny penny was a decent bribe for a kid. I suppose now it would take something along the lines of a ten or twenty.

Not to carbon date myself, but I put pennies in my penny loafers as a girl. You can’t size up to a nickel in a penny loafer, you’d have to size down. The term “dime loafers” has no ring to it whatsoever.

Ask Canada (if they’re still speaking to us) what happens to prices when pennies are discontinued. Most prices were rounded up when our neighbors to the north discontinued pennies more than a decade ago. Without pennies, the cost of everything must end in a five or a zero. So much for “every penny counts.”

Would a “penny for your thoughts” retain any value? Would it remain a question of endearment or become an insult?

What happens to all the penny pinchers? Do they become plain old misers?

If the penny goes, will all the penny riddles grandkids lob our way disappear as well?

What is a penny’s favorite ice cream? Mint.

In the final analysis, we tilt pro-penny as evidenced by the vintage 5-gallon glass jar in the entryway that has accumulated pennies for years.

Nearly every child that has passed through has loved dropping pennies in, hearing the clink and seeing where they fall.

Estimates on how many pennies are in circulation in the U.S. range from 100 billion to 200 billion or more. The humble penny will not disappear anytime soon.

Maybe it is time for change.

Now, for the really bad news: It costs nearly 14 cents to make a nickel.

I came home the other day and my hubby was not home. His car was here, so I figured he had gone for a walk.

He didn’t come home and didn’t come home, so I was concerned he was collapsed on a sidewalk somewhere.

He has never collapsed on a sidewalk before, but when you reach a certain age, and have an active imagination, the possibilities are endless.

I called his cell. He answered. “Where are you?” I asked.

“I went for a walk.”

“You’ve been gone a long time. I was worried.”

“Did you see that big, downed tree when you came home?”

“You mean the huge maple that fell from the front yard of the corner house, covered their entire yard and most of the street? Yes, I saw it.”

“That’s where I am now.”

“Why?”

“I’m watching to see what will happen. Six Department of Public Works trucks have pulled up. Six trucks and at least eight workers! Can you believe it would take that many trucks and workers to clear the street?”

“Call Elon Musk,” I say.

The husband doesn’t hear me because he’s focused on the excessive manpower and still narrating unfolding events.

I hung up. Worried sick one minute, not interested the next. Oh, the fickle human heart.

He texted a few pictures to me, our adult children, and their spouses, of the downed tree from different angles and other people standing around surveying the scene.

It is sometimes difficult to realize that the things that may interest us may not be of interest to others.

Later that night, our son sent a link to the Italian word, “Umarell.”

Umarell: men of retirement age who spend their time watching construction sites, especially roadworks, stereotypically with hands clasped behind their backs and offering unwanted advice to the workers.

My husband qualifies. He may be an umarell extraordinaire. He isn’t just a construction umarell, he is often an umarell to my gardening projects. And painting projects. Many evenings he is an umarell in the kitchen.

Our daughter-in-law says her dad is an umarell, as well. When the county installed new culverts in their rural area, he walked to the construction site with his dog every day saying he was going to give the crew instructions. He was soon on a first name basis with them.

A few years ago, San Lazzaro di Savena in northern Italy, a town in which a lot of older men are apparently fond of standing around watching construction projects, began awarding an annual “Umarell Prize.”

I’d like to know where to send my nominations.

Parents and grandparents sometimes debate which musical instrument is the most painful in the hands of a beginner.

Our nomination for first place is the violin, with drums coming in a distant second. Sure, drums can rattle the windows, but only a violin can peel paint from the walls.

The xylophone, also under our roof years ago, was the instrument least likely to make me consider spiking the gravy.

Neighbors contend that a beginner on a clarinet can strip hair from your ears. Others claim the oboe takes first place.

My personal stint in music was at the piano. I took lessons at a conservatory and was in a recital with more advanced students when I was quite young. My piece was “The Lost Bear,” which had a repeat in it. I was nervous in front of all those people and kept taking the repeat.

I wondered if I would ever get Lost Bear home, or if Miss Wanda Casey, the most patient teacher ever, would be compelled to walk on stage and close the piano lid on my fingers, which would have been applauded by the audience. Lost Bear finally made it home and I never played in another recital.

A friend who is an excellent musician says that a French horn produces some of the most beautiful sounds on earth.

Our twin granddaughters took up the French horn last fall and sometimes bring them to the house because what’s a little more noise at Grandma’s?

Their grandma on their daddy’s side attended college on a music scholarship and plays French horn in community orchestras. Their daddy’s side has a deep bench of musical talent.

When our side joins their musical side for birthday parties and they sing “Happy Birthday” (we are smart enough to not sing but just mouth the words) their harmonies are so beautiful it can bring you to tears.

If our side were to sing, it would bring their side to tears. But for entirely different reasons.

The sounds coming from the French horns in our family room sound like a momma cow delivering an extremely large calf that is breech.
Just when you think it can’t get any (choosing my words carefully here) louder, another granddaughter acquired a French horn as well.

And now there are three. Three cows delivering calves in breech position.

Nearly every instrument is painful in the beginning. I’m not criticizing; I’m just learning endurance.

The three French horns were here again recently, practicing the song they began learning several months ago. Even wearing my bright orange headphones for ear protection, I recognized a few stanzas that sounded positively lovely.

The road from beginner to beautiful may not be as long as I thought. If all goes well, the calf should be delivered soon and their musical piece performance-worthy.

True confession and this is embarrassing considering the times we live in, but I can’t take good selfies.

There, I said it. That’s a load off.

I think it’s because I’m short and short people have short arms and long people have long arms. You need long arms for good selfies. Good skin without age-defining wrinkles helps, too.

It is always a struggle to get the camera exactly where I want it. When I do get everything and everybody in the frame, it then becomes a lengthy process of elimination. Is that beige blob covering most of the image my thumb or my hand? Do I switch hands or turn the phone?

After lengthy experimentation, moving the camera higher, lower, sideways, to my left hand, my right hand, then back to my left, everything is finally in position. No blob is present. I take the picture, accidentally squeezing buttons on both sides of my phone, thereby turning the phone off.

Maybe Apple is trying to tell me something.

I try again, now laughing so hard at my own inabilities that my body shakes as I take the picture, subsequently capturing an image of my nostrils in front of a gorgeous waterfall.

And I wonder why the fam runs when I offer to show them vacation pictures.

Look, this is my left arm and shoulder at the Pacific Coast.

Here’s my forehead in front of the Capitol.

Sometimes a stranger sees me struggling and kindly asks, “May I take that picture for you?” Translation: “Woman, let me take that picture for you before you hurt yourself.”

And, no, I don’t want a selfie stick because I just end up whacking people in the head with it—most often myself.

Selfies have become a mainstay of popular culture and personal history. I came, I saw, I selfied. It’s wonderful to document the places you visit. But these days it’s hard to know if people are visiting to see the sights, or just there for a selfie against a good backdrop.

I read an article saying if your boyfriend won’t pose for selfies with you, you should dump him and red flag him on dating apps. It also said if your guy refuses to take hours of Instagram-worthy photos of you, that is a sure sign he is a narcissist.

Yep, the man won’t take 2,000 pictures of you frolicking in the surf until you are waterlogged, but he’s the one with the problem. The writer suggested trading him in for a dog.

I hate to point out the obvious, but dogs can’t maneuver cell phones.

Well, at least not as well as I can.

Then again, maybe they can.

In case you hadn’t heard, the Pantone color of the year is Mocha Mousse. Mocha Mousse is a scrumptious light milk chocolate. I’m not sure I could have it on the walls and resist a deep dive into my dessert cookbooks.

Mocha Mousse is encouraging because, for years, the chosen colors primarily have been neutrals. There was Drift of Mist (gray), Gale Force Winds (gray) and Snowbound (snow sprayed with automobile exhaust). Then there is the entire fog category: Nantucket Fog, London Fog, Ice Fog, Morning Fog, Pacific Fog, Coastal Fog and Foggy Day.We can’t seem to shake the bad weather.

Sometimes we think of downsizing, but before we could sell our house we’d have to replace all the original solid oak hardwoods with gray manufactured wood-byproduct flooring and slather all the walls in assorted colors of fog. I depress myself just envisioning it. 

When our youngest daughter and her husband moved into their first house a decade ago, she asked me to stop by and help choose paint colors. She had 200 paint chips taped to the walls. “They’re all gray,“ I said. “They all look alike.” 

“No, they’re not alike,” she said. “Some are gray with blue undertones and some are gray with yellow undertones.” 

I only saw gray, grayer and grayest. They ended up choosing Agreeable Gray, a very popular color at the time.

They painted the entire downstairs Agreeable Gray. They found it disagreeable.  

They repainted the entire downstairs. A different shade of gray.

She paired it all with dark blue and white accents and it truly snaps. Plus, gray doesn’t make you think of fattening desserts like chocolate mousse and is wonderful for camouflaging children’s grimy handprints.

I’ve often wondered who comes up with all the clever paint names. A press release said the names are chosen in “one long, continuously flowing conversation among a group of colour-attuned people.”

If they are colour-attuned, why can’t they spell it correctly?

Our front room has more windows than any other room in the house and is painted a bright, cheerful yellow. It is the color of rich, creamy Irish butter. When sunshine streams in through all the windows, it is like lounging in a very large comfy croissant.

The press release announcing new colors said that coming up with color names is a rigorous process involving specialists, marketing pros and lawyers.

You know who they’re missing, right? Cooks. Cooks and chefs.

We need more butter.

We blew out all the stops to celebrate the husband’s birthday with a last-minute meet-up at McDonald’s. Do we know how to party or what?

Three carloads. Five adults. Six kids, all girls.

If we squeeze six into the bench against the wall that spans two tables, and grab extra chairs, we can make it work.

Kids squirrel around as adults take food orders. Somebody shouts there are discounts on the phone app.

Phones come out, kids finish shouting their orders and the birthday boy says he’ll take a burger, fries and a frozen coffee caramel-laced drink, which the menu board says has 590 calories. I suggest he share the drink if he wants to see another birthday.

Orders are complete and the phone apps won’t link to the store.

Someone approaches a worker. She disappears, reappears, disappears, reappears and the connection issue is eventually fixed.

After a very lengthy wait, the food arrives. They got the french fries and iced coffee right, but everything else is wrong. Chaos ensues at the tables. Fries are involved. And ketchup.

The husband passes his frappe down the line to me. I take a slurp and a 6-year-old across the table wants a taste. She likes it and refuses to relinquish it. I rat her out to her mother, who says, “Oh, caffeine doesn’t bother her,” and goes back to a conversation with her sister.

Well, I’d like it to bother me, but it’s gone now.

Someone says the recently remodeled restrooms are really cool. Six girls peel off to check it out. We are in the farthest corner of the store but can see the door to the ladies room swing open and hear someone scream, “WHOA!”

They don’t come back and don’t come back. I check on them and the restroom is, well, a nothing burger. They return to the table.

A hush falls as Grandpa opens his cards. There’s not a Hallmark in the bunch.

The last card he opens is from the one who finished off his frappe, the kindergartener with round cheeks, big eyes, legs swinging under the table, the one who screamed “WHOA!” opening the door to the ladies room.

The group is stunned to see money in her card. It is a green bill rolled tight and taped next to a self-portrait of her and Grandpa.

No one wants to ask the denomination of the greenback, and it would be rude to rip the bill off the card.

We wonder where she got the idea. Maybe she got it from her aunts and uncles who give nephews and nieces a quarter for every year old they are.

Thank goodness she didn’t try to give grandpa a bill for every year old he is.

She sits quietly, either uncomfortable with the attention or still thinking about that hand dryer with the roar of a jet engine in the ladies room.

The silence passes, everyone gathers their things and their people and says goodbye.

When we get home, Grandpa carefully unrolls the bill. It is a one. One to be remembered.