The Right Tool For The Job

Ann: I’m running out of time! Hannah and I head north to take her to school tomorrow. Of course she’s packing all her own stuff and the stuff for her dorm room. But I need to get myself packed for the trip.

Pam: That shouldn’t be too tough. The weather’s pretty predictable and it should be all casual right?

Ann: Yeah, but with everything I have left to tie up for work, I’m going to end up just throwing a big pile of clothes from the clean clothes basket into a carry-on and hoping it works out.

Pam: That’s the way I usually end up packing for pleasure trips. It goes fine until the last day or so when I end up having to wear a lime green top with lavender skirt and orange sandals. I figure, if the plane goes down on the way home, at least they’ll spot me in the wreckage right away.

Ann: Gee thanks...comforting thought! It’s not fair. It’s so easy for men to pack. For a casual event like this, all they have to do is throw in a bunch of khaki and navy shorts and a pile of polo shirts and they’re set. Everything matches everything. It’s like a whole suitcase of those kid’s clothes with the animals on the tags that tell them which ones match. Only the suitcase is full of clothes with the same animal on all the tags.

Pam: And the same animal in them! I point that out all the time to the men I travel with on business. They use the same color socks, belt, and shoes every single day. They can even wear the same jacket day after day and no one thinks a thing about it.

Ann: Yeah, a woman could never get away with that.

Pam: When they tease me about my bags, I explain that for every outfit I pack, I have to also pack the right undergarments, jewelry, hair accessories, shade of make up, belt, purse, shoes, scarf and jacket. It adds up pretty quickly.

Ann: I think it’s their hair that lets them get off easy. Woman pack shampoo, conditioner, a shower cap, hair spray, a wet comb, a hair brush, a styling brush, a curling iron or curlers, and sometimes both, hair bands, barrettes, elastics, and Scrunci’s of various colors. When we go to some hotels we even have to pack our own hair dryer. Men pack a comb. They use the tiny bottle of shampoo from the hotel. That’s it…a comb.

Pam: Oh but don’t they always point out the women with the thick, well groomed, beautiful hair? They want it both ways. They want us to look pulled-together and gorgeous, but we’re supposed to do it without the equipment.

Ann: And they’re the ones always down at the home improvement store justifying their latest purchase with ‘You gotta have the right tool for the job!’ Hypocrites!

Pam: I guess we’re supposed to just MacGyver it with our hair. Hang our head out the window of the rent car to dry it. Wrap it in those little bottles from the mini bar and sit in front of the heater to curl it.

Ann: Yeah and then we could use the rubber band off the newspaper to put it up and then slip the housekeeper a buck to get us some starch from the laundry to use for hair spray.

Pam: Finally, we could borrow the curtain tie backs to give us that final decorative touch.

Cruise Where?

Pam: I know I’m getting older just looking at my mail. Lately I’m consistently getting these clothes catalogs aimed at a woman ‘of a certain age’.

Ann: I know the ones you mean. Half of it’s filled with what they call ‘cruise-wear’ which is catalog code for two-piece, elastic-waisted, old lady jogging suits.

Pam: Old ladies jog?

Ann: They don’t jog in them! They sit around the retirement home in them. But these outfits are warm for old bones, easy to get on and off, and are wash and wear…perfect for old ladies.

Pam: So where do the cruises come in?

Ann: You’re not usually this dense! The catalogs just call it cruise-wear to make them feel better about buying the old-lady-sit-around-the-retirement-home clothes.

Pam: Okay, for the record, I am not getting catalogs filled with ‘cruise-wear’. But now I know what I have to look forward to, thank you very much.

Ann: So what kind of catalogs are you getting that make you feel old?

Pam: I was referring to catalogs that don’t have the career clothes and sexy evening stuff I’m used to seeing. Suddenly all the pictures are of women in gardens with big floppy hats and on beaches with big floppy hats. The clothes are all loose fitting and drawstring. Frankly these women look like they’re walking around in their pajamas.

Ann: And big floppy hats. Okay, I get it. And the ‘dressy’ stuff is all tapestry jackets and sequined moccasins?

Pam: Exactly! What the heck?


Ann: You’re getting the ‘near retirement’ stuff. Are you seeing lots of 'mom-jeans' and grandmothers in kitchens making cookies with four-year-olds?

Pam: …in big floppy hats. Yes! That’s them.

Ann: You’re a step below ‘cruise wear’. It’s the matronly stuff. No more close fitting, sexy stuff. Just clothes designed to hide your body.

Pam: Yeah. Not a waistline among them. The models are clearly very fit, slim, older women but these clothes make them look horrible. God, if the models in the catalog look ugly in these clothes, just imagine how a normal person would look!

Ann: Hey, you always wanted to look like the models in the catalog. Here’s your chance.

Pam: God forbid! But seriously, I worry that I’ll slowly get used to seeing this stuff and then I’ll start ordering it without realizing I’m building a matronly wardrobe. How can I be sure I’m buying clothes that are appropriate for my age?

Ann: That’s easy. You can always tell if you’re looking at a catalog geared at an older audience by the adjectives they use to describe the clothes. When you start seeing words like ‘jazzy, fabulous, festive, snappy, and breezy’ you know you’ve crossed over into the older woman’s stuff.

Pam: I don’t even know what some of these clothes are by the description. This catalog today had a center pull-out section. It was clearance stuff from earlier in the year. There were no pictures, just descriptions of what was on sale. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what they were selling.

Ann: Give me a for instance.

Pam: Okay, just a sec….I have the catalog here….For example, what the heck is a “Crisply-cropped, kimono type, embroidered inset, faux wrap, travel knit, effortless, paisley bordered duster”?

Ann: You got me. But my mom used to call her summer housecoat a duster.

Pam: See, my grandmother used to call the lightweight overcoat she wore a duster.

Ann: You should order it just to see what the heck it is.

Pam: How would I even know if I got the right thing? I actually scared myself today as I flipped through this thing and caught myself thinking, “Well, a crinkled reversible skirt in a garden floral print would be great for travel”.

Ann: Have you booked your cruise yet?

Pam: You mean our cruise, we’ve got adjoining accommodations.

You Can't Fix Stupid

Ann: I’ve had it with stupid people! My internet was out all morning and I called the customer service line. It said, “If your high speed internet is down, press one.” So I did and the recording I got said that the wait time was currently 48 minutes and that for faster service I should visit their web page.

Pam: That’s like that special address the government has where people can write if they want help with their illiteracy.

Ann: I don’t know what it is…some say the planet is getting warmer; I say it’s getting dumber. When I took the kids to Carlsbad Caverns, Troy actually heard a guy ask the Park Ranger, “How much of the cave is underground?”

Pam: Wow. What is it about tourists? When Bret and I were in Mexico visiting Tulum we were with a group from the cruise ship checking out the Mayan ruins. One of the people asked the tour guide, “Do you know of any undiscovered ruins?”

Ann: How on earth did the tour guide respond to such a stupid question?

Pam: Actually he was pretty quick on his feet. He said, “You’re incredibly fortunate. As a matter of fact, this very site was a previously undiscovered ruin!”

Ann: I assume from the level of intellect demonstrated in his question that the tourist bought it.

Pam: He was very impressed. It’s sort of scary.


Ann: You’re telling me! But you’re right, it is something about tourists. I was in San Antonio and was standing in front of the Alamo with my camera, waiting for people to step out of my shot. I swear I heard a guy in all seriousness say, “Why the heck did they build the Alamo right in the middle of downtown?

Pam: You’ve got to be kidding me!

Ann: Wait it gets better. The woman he was with said, “Yeah, they should have planned better. There’s no parking here!”

Pam: Yeah, what was Davy Crocket thinking?! My all time favorite is when I was interviewing a young man for a job. He showed up at my office a little late and apologized saying that there was construction along the way on a certain road.

Ann: Was it just a lame excuse?

Pam: Not at all. I was familiar with the area he was talking about and I mentioned to him that they were working on building a tunnel under the runway of the small corporate airport just to the east of us. With a very straight face he actually said, “Why didn’t they just build a bridge?”

Ann: He had to be kidding!

Pam: He wasn’t. I kept waiting for the smile to indicate it was an attempt at humor but it never came. When I pointed out the drawbacks of having a bridge over a runway, at least he had the good sense to be embarrassed.

Ann: Sounds like executive material.

Gone Bananas

Pam: Dottie was telling me about taking her mother to Hawaii last week.

Ann: I’m so jealous. Did they have a good time?

Pam: The trip was fine. But Dottie’s mom is such a tightwad it made Dottie nuts.

Ann: I thought this trip was Dottie’s Mother’s Day gift to her mom.

Pam: It was. But Dottie’s mom is even tighter with Dottie’s money than she is with her own.

Ann: My mom can be the same way.

Pam: They were shopping for souvenirs and Dottie was considering buying some painted ceramic hibiscus flowers for her friends. Her mom actually suggested she buy the broken ones off the clearance table and then have the store ship them so that people would just figure they were broken in the mail.

Ann: That’s certainly thrifty and pretty clever. Except wouldn’t they notice that the broken pieces were missing?


Pam: Leave it to you to think of the technicalities. What bugged Dottie the most was her mom kept waking her up early everyday so they wouldn’t sleep through the free continental breakfast. She told her she’d have gladly paid for breakfast for another hour’s sleep. But her mom wouldn’t think of it.

Ann: I think I’d have had to drug my mother if I was Dottie.

Pam: It probably crossed her mind. By the end of the week, she was pretty glad to be headed home. When they finally got to the airport, they went to that special area to mail some fresh pineapple she’d bought for some friends back home.

Ann: Yeah, they’re really strict about bringing fruit and vegetation back to the mainland. I couldn’t even bring my lei home.

Pam: Yep. So Dottie stopped to ship these pineapples, while her mom sat nearby. When she finished up, her mom had disappeared. She finally caught up to her at the security check point on the way to the gate. She was being finger printed in a glass office next to the x-ray machines!

Ann: Finger printed! As in being arrested? What on earth did she do?

Pam: She tried to go through security with a banana in her pocket.

Ann: That's quite a crime alright. Armed and dangerous.

Pam: When they found the banana in her pocket, the guards told her to go back out to the lobby area and either eat it or throw it away. When Dottie got there, they told her they had made it very clear to her mother that it was against the law to take the banana past the security check point.

Ann: So what had she done with it?

Pam: Believe it or not, she had walked back towards the ticket counter, stopped in plain sight of the guards, put the banana in her other pocket, and tried to get through security again.

Ann: You’re kidding. Is she a little... forgive me, 'bananas'?

Pam: Apparently they were pretty annoyed with her and told her again that it was not a game and that she was to get rid of the banana one way or another before she attempted to pass through security again.

Ann: So how’d she get arrested?

Pam: She walked back towards the ticket counter, out of the sight of the security check point this time, put the banana in the hood of her jacket, and for a third time tried to pass through security with the stupid banana.

Ann: That’s hysterical! What was she thinking?

Pam: That’s what Dottie asked her. She said, “What is your problem Mom? It’s not as though that thing is stuffed with diamonds!” Dottie told me she was going to say cocaine but figured they were in enough trouble.

Ann: So what was so important about that banana?

Pam: Apparently Dottie’s mom picked it up at the hotel’s free continental breakfast. She told Dottie, “It’s not really free you know. You’re paying for it in the price of the room. If you don’t take the food you’re getting ripped off!”

Ann: She’s right but I’d say that’s frugal to the extreme.

Pam: Well Dottie explained to the guards that her mother was on medication and apologized profusely for loosing track of her. She neglected to explain she was only on blood pressure medicine.

Ann: So they let her go?

Pam: They released her but wrote some sort of ticket. Dottie says that that “free banana” so far has cost her a fifteen hundred dollar retainer for the lawyer, with more to come.

Ann: Hopefully she’ll win on ‘appeal’.

Pam: Groan

What The Heck Is Smart Casual?

Pam: I’ve really had some good laughs with the emails that were flying around at work last week. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Ann: Some of those jokes that get forwarded to everyone?

Pam: No. One of our vendors offered six of the guys in the office an all expense paid trip to the Indy 500 this past weekend. It was for transportation, hotels, meals, parties, golf, limos, and a luxury suite at the race…the whole works.

Ann: Talk about a real guy’s getaway!

Pam: Actually the week before they left I was beginning to wonder whether it was a guy’s getaway or a ‘ladies retreat’. I was the point of contact for the vendor so I forwarded all the guys the detailed agenda for the trip. There was a cocktail reception on the evening they arrived, a welcome breakfast the next day, then golf, followed by an authentic Moroccan dinner, and then on the final day, the race itself.

Ann: Wow. Sounds like fun.

Pam: Since the information came to me, I was on the email distribution list and saw everything that went back and forth between all the guys at my office. It was hysterical.

Ann: What? Let me guess…they were coordinating what to wear each day.

Pam: You’re kidding, but that’s exactly what was going on! I intentionally stayed out of the discussion simply for the entertainment the whole thing was providing. Can you imagine six grown men trying to decide what the heck they were supposed to wear when the invitation said, “Dress for Saturday night is ‘smart casual’ but we encourage you to have fun with the Moroccan theme as you select your attire”.

Ann: Heck, I’m not sure I know what that means.


Pam: They went back and forth about what exactly constitutes ‘smart casual’ and they had opinions from “casual means jeans” to “we’ll be sitting on pillows on the floor so we should wear our stretchy sweats”. One guy even said, “They mean dress like a professor.”

Ann: That’s too funny! Just like a man not to ask for directions.

Pam: They finally did email the vendor’s rep to get clarification but they were told that the attire for that evening had been changed from ‘smart casual’ to ‘business casual’. Then they went back and forth as to whether that was a step up or a step down.

Ann: Certainly they know what business casual means.

Pam: They used to. But they had confused themselves so thoroughly at this point they didn’t know their own names. One email actually said, “So if we were going smart casual and then downgraded, does that mean we're dressing ‘dumb casual’ now?”


Ann: So what’d they do? Rent hand-embroidered sheik’s robes for each of them?

Pam: I think they would have if they thought it would solve the dilemma.

Ann: Seriously, what’d they do?

Pam: The final email I saw came from the guy in our office who arranged the flights and stuff. It had the subject line of ‘Indy trip attire revisited (again—well actually—still)’. It said:

Travel Friday: Whatever! Just no flip flops or cargo pants. We’ll change at the hotel. (I know we’re getting up at three in the morning but shower anyway because I’m sitting next to you guys on the plane!)

Friday night reception: Button shirt, sport coat, slacks, dress shoes and belt. (Bob, do not wear a tie and make us all look bad. We don’t care what your wife says!)

Saturday golf: Nice golf clothes—shorts if hot and pants if cold. (Joe, DO NOT wear your brother’s shirt from our vendor’s big competitor. It’s not funny to insult our hosts.)

Saturday night Moroccan dinner: This is the final, final word! We are wearing nice, dark colored polo shirts and khaki pants with brown shoes and belts. (Jeff, you stole that Pizza Hut table cloth for nothing because we gave up the whole sheik thing while you were out sick.)

Sunday (Race Day): We all agree it’s a car race after all. But we’re being entertained in the luxury suite. So we’re thinking we should look really good but not like we’re trying. So try to look like a really rich guy on his day off.

Ann: I wonder how the heck they interpreted that one.

Pam: Hey, it was the last day of the trip. I figured they’d just wear whatever they found in the bottom of their suitcase that was relatively clean.

Ann: So what did they wear?

Pam: Every last one of them showed up wearing the promotional stuff that the host vendor gave them on their first day there.

Ann: Well at least they looked like a team!

Technophobia Or Techno-apathy

Ann: I don’t understand why some people refuse to learn anything at all about technology. Being a technophobe these days can be a real handicap.

Pam: Since I still can’t get the internet to work on my laptop, I have to assume that comment is directed at me.

Ann: Not entirely. At least you can find your way around email, cell phones, text messages, and digital cameras. I’m talking about people who truly fear this stuff. You don’t qualify as having technophobia.

Pam: That’s true. But I think there needs to be a new term. I don’t fear technology. I just have a passionate disinterest in it. I guess you’d call it techno-apathy.

Ann: Well you’d think you’d at least learn the basics through osmosis. You’re surrounded by it all the time.

Pam: This is going to make you nuts, but I actually find myself making an effort to resist a lot of that stuff. When someone mentions routers, servers, or operating systems I stick my fingers in my ears and mutter loudly, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you!”

Ann: But why expend energy to intentionally not learn something useful? Just don’t resist it and you’d get a good basic knowledge of it all.

Pam: Look we’re a couple of smart cookies here. We’re capable of learning anything we’d like. Isn’t there some subject that you could learn about easily but for some reason you just don’t want to.


Ann: Yeah...finance. “I don’t care” doesn’t begin to describe it. I find myself going out of my way to avoid anything to do with it. At our age, whenever you get a group together, especially if some of them are men, the talk inevitably turns to 401K plans, IRA’s, rollovers, mutual funds, and the dreaded retirement options.

Pam: That stuff’s not so bad—certainly not to a “fingers-in-the-ears la, la, la” level.

Ann: Well at least I can put my financial plans in motion and then just pretty much forget them for a year. Technology is something you have to deal with every day.

Pam: The operative words being “deal with”. It seems to me that technology creates as many headaches as it solves.

Ann: You just remember the times when it made you nuts and forget when it worked smoothly.

Pam: When did it ever work smoothly?! Sometimes the simplest way is the best. For example, I was driving to Wichita with two male coworkers this week. They were in the front seats with all their gadgets, pulling their hair out trying to get the portable satellite radio they brought along to work through the rental car’s speakers.


Ann: Well that’s not technology’s fault. Obviously they were doing something wrong.

Pam: Sure, but the result’s the same. They were totally aggravated. Then when they realized they weren’t going to be able to listen to several hundred miles of Blue Collar Comedy, much to my relief, they decided to listen to an iPod one of them had. So for another fifty miles they fought with power cords and the iTrip transmitter and never did get it going.

Ann: Again, it was operator error. You can’t blame the tools.

Pam: At one point one of them looked over his shoulder into the back seat to apologize for the lack of entertainment. I told him, “Don’t worry about it. My book is working just fine!”

Ann: Obviously it wasn’t an e-book, huh?

Pam: Wait, it gets better….So we have a flat and we stop by the side of the road to put the spare on. But they’re having all kinds of trouble seeing underneath the back end of the car where you’re supposed to use this little tool to lower the spare down.

Ann: This is about technology?

Pam: Yeah…since they couldn’t get their heads in the space under the car to see where to attach the tool to crank down the spare, they pulled out their phones and tried to take pictures of the mechanism.

Ann: Pretty creative if you ask me.

Pam: Except they couldn’t get enough light and they couldn’t figure out how to turn on the flash. Then when they finally figured the flash out, they couldn’t get the angle right and kept taking pictures of the wrong place.


Ann: So how’d they get it?

Pam: After listening to them squabble about how to do it, I finally reached in my purse and pulled out a compact from my make up bag. I flipped it open and used the mirror to slip the tool right into place and lowered the spare.

Ann: Well aren’t you a regular Mrs. MacGyver. So if they locked the keys in the car, would you pull out a bobby pin and pick the lock?

Pam: If I was Mrs. MacGyver, I’d use a tube sock and a garlic press to get my darn internet to work on my laptop.

Ann: If you’d just check your proxy settings like I told you then…

Pam: La, la, la. I can’t hear you!

Forced To Travel Light

Pam: How was your trip?

Ann: Fine except I nearly pulled a hamstring jumping through all the hoops. That TSA is really something. It wasn’t too bad though. The guy sitting next to me on the plane was a pilot. He was headed home from delivering a corporate jet to be repainted. He had some pretty interesting stories about flying after September 11th.

Pam: I’m sure that was a crazy time for anyone in aviation.

Ann: Actually he’d flown into Washington, DC on September 10th and he watched the Pentagon burn from his hotel balcony. He said they shut down Reagan International Airport in DC for about a week so he had to hang around to get his jet out of there.

Pam: What a mess. What about his passengers?

Ann: Once the commercial airlines were flying again he sent them home but he waited around until the FAA finally allowed private jets to leave.

He arranged to fly the jet back single-pilot and without passengers. In other words, he would be the only one on the airplane. But the TSA escorted him out onto the ramp and inspected the private jet for weapons. Then they confiscated his nail clippers, the tweezers from the first aid kit, and even the spoons from the galley!

Pam: Okay, that’s over the top!

Ann: He told the guy, “Listen, do you get that I will be absolutely alone on this aircraft? It never occurred to me to hijack myself with a spoon!”

Pam: I guess there’s no place for common sense in the regulations. I had something happen to me at that same airport. But instead of being too strict the TSA was actually way too lenient. I’m glad they let me through, but looking back, it’s pretty scary.

Ann: So they let you fly but confiscated your flask? That would be scary.

Pam: Very funny…So we were heading home and when we got to the airport I realized that somehow I lost my driver’s license. Bret was able to get my boarding pass using a credit card in the self-serve kiosk but I knew I would need a government issued ID to get through security.

Ann: What? (Laughing) Were your top secret CIA credentials with your driver’s license?

Pam: I was working undercover on this trip so no, I didn’t have them. So, anyway, I go to the first TSA agent at the entrance to security, you know the one who checks boarding passes and compares them to the ID, and I explain my problem. She asks if I have anything at all with a photo on it and I tell her all I have is my Costco card.

Ann: No way.

Pam: Yeah. So she says that will do but that I’ll have to undergo further screening and she marks my boarding pass accordingly. So Bret and I put our stuff on the conveyor belt…briefcase, laptop, carry-on suitcase, jacket, purse, shoes, the works.

Ann: They practically strip search you these days. You'd think they could make that more fun…

Pam: And so I walk through the metal detector and as expected I’m pulled aside for a closer look. Meanwhile Bret collects ALL our belongings and gets himself re-dressed. Since he’s loaded down pretty good, he motions to me that he’ll go ahead to the gate and I nod to him.

Then I have my intensive search. They “wand” my arms, legs, and bare feet, they pat down my sides and do the prayerful chopping hands thing down the center of my chest to check my bra. Finally they tell me that they'll also have to search my belongings and ask me to point them out among the items at the end of the conveyor belt.

Ann: But I thought Bret already gathered everything and went to the gate.

Pam: He did. So I tell them I don’t have anything and they say, “Okay then. You can go.” And they watch me walk to the gate with no suitcase, no purse, no jacket, and no belt. I was empty handed and barefoot as I left security and they thought nothing of it!

Ann: Maybe they figured you were going to the beach.