Suspension of Disbelief

The term suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief has been defined as a willingness to suspend one's critical faculties and believe the unbelievable and sacrifice realism and logic for the sake of enjoyment. 

Most days I'm willing to do this while watching films. Absolutely essential if you want to enjoy the movie. I'm willing to believe that there was a battle between good and evil that lasted for generations long, long, ago in a galaxy far, far away. But every now and again, a movie crosses the line. That's what happened with Allied.

There were just too many things that were unbelievable. For instance,London hospitals did not move people outside during air raids. But if they'd stopped with a child being born outside in the middle of an air raid, I might have been able to continue my suspension of disbelief. But they didn't stop there. They wanted me to believe that people in WWII London opened the curtains at night when they put their children to bed. They wanted me to believe that people were having parties in their gardens at night during the Blitz. They wanted me to believe that if they suspected an officer's wife of espionage that they would actually inform that officer and let him in on the "test" they were going to run. And did they think I'd believe that if the spouse was found guilty that the officer would have to execute her himself? Nope. Too much to take in. And then Mark pointed out that the cars of those days had a more complex start up routine than just turning the key. I don't remember the name of the guy in the credits who was in charge or research, but I think he must have been sleeping on the job. I'd have been too embarrassed to allow them to use my name. 

On the positive side, the costumes were fabulous. Especially the outfits worn by the heroine in Casablanca. I'm specific here because once the story line moved to London, the heroine's wardrobe turned a bit frumpy. Not sure why - but it sure was noticeable. 

And on top of all that, the ending wasn't especially happy. Unless you're really into costumes or you just really like to watch Brad Pitt make out with somebody, there's really not a good reason to go see this one. 

$300 Later

When we got home the day after Thanksgiving the weather in Texas was gorgeous. We were having lunch on the patio when we noticed that there was a pool of water by the porch. Mark went to investigate. He made sure no water was turned on inside the house and then he went to look at the meter. The water meter was spinning at a fairly high rate of speed. Having a party. He calculated it to be putting out just under three gallons per minute.

We needed to turn off the water and call a plumber.

Have you ever tried to get a plumber on the Friday after Thanksgiving? After getting no answer and leaving a message with the two plumbers I knew, I decided to check out Angie's list. I looked up the A-rated plumbers that serviced my area and phoned the top four. I left messages for three and made an appointment with the fourth one for the following day.

One of the three I'd left messages for called back on Saturday but I didn't make an appointment because I had a Saturday appointment with the first one who answered. The appointment wasn't until 4 PM, but that was okay. Two of them never called back at all.

In the meantime we were leaving the water shut off. We turned it on from time to time to take showers, flush toilets and clean up the kitchen. A bit of a pain, but by that time we'd cleared the closet under the stairs and the closet in the downstairs bathroom so we could access the crawl space. It was wet. Muddy. A complete mess. But after a day of the water being shut off, a good bit of it had drained off.

At 4 PM on Saturday plumber number 1 showed up. A nice kid. Very personable, but not the master plumber and unable to find the source of the leak. He was all set to charge us zero since he wasn't able to help us but when he called the office to find out what to do next, he was ordered to charge us for a service call. I was sort of okay with that but then I found out what the next step was - it was wait until the following Friday for the boss (the master plumber) to come out with some high-tech and no doubt very expensive equipment to "listen" and pinpoint the location of the leak.

We weren't happy that they were suggesting that we wait almost an entire week. And it bothered me that they were only going to "locate" the problem and no mention was made of when they might get around to fixing it. But by this time it was after 5 PM on a Saturday. It wasn't like I had a lot of choices.

By Sunday, Mark had pinpointed the problem. About 10 feet of original (66 year old) galvanized steel pipe fresh water supply line that he calculated had split. We figured there was no need to pinpoint the location. It would all have to be replaced. I called the plumber who was supposed to come to locate the problem to let him know that it didn't need to be located because it all just needed to be replaced. We wanted to know if the job could be started sooner. Bottom line - he never called back - at least not until Friday morning when he wanted to confirm the appointment and by that time I no longer needed him.

Next step was to ask my Facebook friends if they knew any plumbers. One friend sent me two names. Both called back. One came out that same (Monday) afternoon and the other one told me he had no availability for at least a week. I suspect the one that did come didn't really want to do it because the quote he gave me was quite high. About $3000 more than the company we ended up going with. And of course, he couldn't start on the job for two weeks, but I still owed him a $75 service call. He knew before he came that I had limited access to water. Why did he bother to come at all knowing he couldn't do the job for two weeks?

But by then it was late Monday afternoon, I still had no water (for the most part) and I still needed a plumber. Next step was to login to HomeAdvisor. If you've never used it, you just enter your address and the nature of your "project" and it puts you in touch with three contractors. Two of the three phoned me. I explained the problem and made appointments for the following day. So on Tuesday I got to pay out another $150 in service calls but at least one of the companies was able to start on it the very next day.

They dug the trenches on Wednesday, replaced the pipe on Thursday, and filled in the trenches on Friday. Put it all back together and you can't even tell they were there. Fabulous!

It Was Real

It's been a month since we left Texas to go to Florida. It seems so long ago and almost like it wasn't real. While we were at the inspection conference we never went outside the hotel unless they were serving dinner in the courtyard, which they did two nights. We left the conference with a 32 item to-do list, so even after we got to Fort Pierce, it wasn't all fun and games. In fact, it was almost no fun and games except for my birthday. On my birthday we played golf early in the morning, walked around the town and the pier, and had lunch and dinner overlooking the water.

Even though we spent most of our time working, it was good to have a change of scenery and nice weather - even though Texas weather wasn't particularly bad. But it's that 32-item to-do list that's kept me from posting until now. And no, I haven't completed all 32 items, but I needed a break from them.

We took some photos, so I guess it was real:

You Don't Forget

All of you folks who find it amazing, peculiar, funny, odd, (choose your own word) that a bunch of women got groped decades ago and "just now remembered" - this is for you.

Those women didn't "just now remember". They NEVER forgot. They got past it and got on with their lives. In most cases the damage wasn't irreparable. By irreparable, I  mean they didn't develop a deep-seated fear and mistrust of men in general.

How do I know? I was groped. Abused. Harassed. By the man who signed my paychecks. Not rich and powerful on the scale of a Donald Trump, but in comparison to me, yes he was rich and powerful.  Did I go to the police? No. I didn't. I went to my mother. His business partner was also aware of the situation because I often called him to ask him to come in to the office so I wouldn't be left alone in the office with my abuser.

I thought about filing a sexual harassment suit, but this was in the late 70s and my mother (a wise and sensible woman) advised against it. The reason was that if I did file the suit, I would be dragged through the mud. She also pointed out how difficult it would be for me to find another job. Indeed, it would have been hard to remain anonymous in Lorain County, Ohio.

So I kept my mouth shut and got on with my life. In fact, I moved far away to Texas and never looked back. But I NEVER forgot. EVER. And let me tell you, if I heard that SOB was running for office, I would be talking to the media and it would not matter to me that it happened over 35 years ago.

The Highbrow Eyebrow

After having my eyelids burned by the people in the nail salons, I decided never to let them near my eyes with hot wax ever again.

Instead, I now go to the Benefit Brow Bar. I'm not sure if they have one everywhere they sell Benefit Cosmetics, but they have one at the Ulta store where I have my hair cut these days.

They charge a bit more than the nail salon, but it's worth a little extra money not to have your eyelids burned.

Let me tell you, those gals at Benefit are well-trained. They have sticks they use to measure from the edge of your nose to the edge of your eyebrow. Then they measure from the edge of your nose to determine where your eyebrow is supposed to start. There's another measurement for the arch. Very much like this drawing. (Courtesy of Cosmopolitan.)

When they are all done measuring, they have essentially drawn in where your eyebrows are "supposed" to be. One day, after drawing them in, the young lady announced to me that she would only be waxing "outside" the lines. I almost laughed. That just wasn't going to do. There wasn't anything to wax outside those lines. I pointed that out and she told me that those lines were where my eyebrows were "supposed" to be.

"It doesn't matter where they are supposed to be, we should work with what we have."

I really don't want to draw them on, no matter how popular that seems at the moment. (Had a gal at a cosmetics counter in Macy's decide that my lips were too thin once and so she drew them on where she thought they should be. Sorry, you're not fooling anyone and I couldn't wait to get into the lady's room to wash it off.)

In fact, drawing them on and filling them in where they are "supposed" to be has become quite popular. I see cashiers, waitresses, and all sorts of people drawing on eyebrows. There was even a guy working at one of the campgrounds where we stayed who had drawn on eyebrows. Add a red nose and he'd have been a very menacing clown - which was a shame because he seemed like a genuinely nice guy and not scary at all.

That aside, I don't know how my eyebrows got "thin". Maybe I over-tweezed as a teenager. Very thin eyebrows were popular then. Maybe they thinned out as I got older. Who knows? All I can tell you is that I don't have those really thick eyebrows that are quite the rage these days. I may have had them as a kid, although I doubt it. But I don't have them now and it's not likely I ever will. And I don't think they'll ever be any thicker than this. And that's okay.

One Thing at a Time

Lately I've been seeing an advert on Facebook for a tee shirt that says "Everything Hurts and I'm Dying." I laughed. I realize it's intended for people who seriously work out - not for people who are suffering the onset of "older" age. But it seemed appropriate, at least until I thought about it.

After some thought, I've come to the conclusion that it just isn't true. Can't be true. Only one thing can hurt at a time. Before we left for Kentucky, my knee hurt. It hurt enough to get me to go to three doctors and get an MRI. But once my tooth started hurting, my knee was fine.

In fact the more my tooth throbbed, the better my knee felt. When anyone asked me what the outcome of the knee specialist visit was it was very easy to say "He said I needed a knee replacement. Can you believe it?  Am I walking around like someone with a bad knee?" And the truth was that it seemed fine and it didn't hurt. The more that tooth throbbed, the better that knee felt.

But the antibiotics finally started kicking in and now I've had the root canal and the crown has been placed and I've recovered from that accidental kick to the jaw (a story best left untold) and now my knee hurts. Again.

Except when I'm distracted by the fact that it's time to get my hair cut...

A Near CATastrophe!

Since we decided to take our cats camping with us, we've always been aware that we could lose one, or both. We've done our best to make sure that doesn't happen. We've probably erred on the side of caution and kept them more confined than we should have.

They are family and we love them. We have two. Heidi has been with us for 11 years - before we got married. She turned up in our garage giving birth to Hefner - my baby and animal soul mate who blessed us with his presence for eight years before we lost him to cancer. Harry has been with us for two years. We rescued him to ease the pain of losing Heffie. Bottom line, they are both our babies and we can't bear to lose either of them.

However, Heidi presents unique challenges. She is fiercely independent. Perhaps defiant. Definitely clever. I fuss at Mark about keeping the RV door closed. "She's not even making a move toward the door."

"Not now. But she will." And she does. At least once per trip. She escapes the confines of the RV to go outside exploring. So does Harry. The primary difference is that when you tell Harry to go back inside, he goes. Try telling it to Heidi. She doesn't care what you say. I don't know what her life was like before she turned up in our garage hissing at us - but I'm pretty sure it didn't involve much interaction with people. And if it did, I suspect the people may not have been nice to her.

Past aside. I'm pretty good at keeping an eye on them. I make sure that I'm aware of where they are and that the door is secure. Sometimes they take advantage of me being a bit slow and faltering while carrying stuff on the stairs. They get out. Harry goes back in. Heidi tries my patience. I've worried that she'll get us thrown out of a campground because she's been outside whining all night.

But not this last time. We didn't even know they'd gone out. I went to sleep sometime around 11:30 PM and everyone was inside. Mark woke up sometime around 3:00 AM and both Heidi and Harry had gone outside. We can't even imagine how they got the door open. We suspect that it may have been jarred out of place by some horrible road conditions and that while we thought it was closed, it actually wasn't. We really don't know. We only know that at 3:00 AM in North Little Rock, Arkansas - Heidi and Harry were outside the camper. The difference between the two was that Harry was sitting outside the door and came back in when told to and Heidi was nowhere to be found.

Mark got me up at 3:00 AM and we started our search for Heidi. Always in the past when we called to her, she would answer. Not this time. And since we hadn't seen her go, we had no idea where to look for her. While we couldn't call too loudly at 3:00 AM, we called softly and kept vigil inside and out waiting for her to return. We'd wanted to leave around 8:00 AM. That didn't happen. We continued to search for her until we were forced to leave.

Let me tell you, it broke our hearts to leave her. Even little Harry was devastated. I wavered between heartbreak and anger. I just knew that she was hiding and watching and refusing to come out for reasons known only to Heidi. She is not a reasonable cat.

In the end, we headed for home without her. We were both concerned. But we needed to get a payroll out and the direct debit hadn't been set up yet. In addition, we both had doctor and dentists appointments that needed to be tended to. We printed out a poster offering a monetary reward for her safe return and hoped for the best because we both knew that we could stay there waiting for three weeks or more and she may or may not have turned up.

Her picture flooded social media. PawBoost sent her info to about 65 shelters and vets in the immediate area. I called our vet to get her chip number so that could be added to the alert. My daughter-in-law took charge of the media effort and really helped get the word out that Heidi was missing.

I called the campground every day to see if anyone had spotted her. The answer was always the same. No. Until Wednesday morning. When I called on Wednesday morning to say that we were on our way back and we wanted site B1, the same spot we'd been in on Friday, I was told that she'd been seen the night before.

I was always optimistic that we'd get her back. But I was elated at that news. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when we arrived and she didn't come flying into my arms. We both called to her as we set up camp. We were prepared to stay for a month, if need be to find her and bring her home.

My faith and optimism were rewarded! After a few hours of being at the campsite, we heard her. She was hungry and while she was playing hard to get, it wasn't that hard to get her. She wanted the food that I was offering but she wanted the cuddles Mark always gives her. I think he grabbed the scruff of her neck on her third pass by his legs.

We had our baby back. The following day we took her to a local vet to make sure she didn't need extra help rehydrating. She didn't. While she'd lost a couple of pounds, they did seem surprised when we said she was 11. Apparently she looks pretty good for her age! (I like to think she takes after me....)

We hung out there in Little Rock for another day just because we didn't want to get there, turn around and drive back home.

We are all back home now. Mark and I are happy to have her home. Harry is back to being himself - he missed her terribly. And most of all, Heidi seems happy to be home. We know we were extremely fortunate to get her back unharmed.

Phew!