Nagging: A Female Force for Good

When I was a younger woman, I lived on hope and change and nagging. I used to hope that nagging worked and could change the speed at which the world moved.

When I say ‘the world,’ I mean men; okay, really I mean one man—my man.

 It took me a while to figure out that nagging was like all other expulsions of internal body gases—frequent, noisy, and rank.  Turning the most sympathetic of individuals into an unattractive nagging shrew surrounded by a cloud of toxic whining methane, not unlike a tent full of Boy Scouts farting the alphabet.

I can nag the alphabet. I’m that good.

I had a lot of raw material to work with in my husband, Sherwood the Great—Procrastinator. As a kid, he attended one Boy Scout meeting where they tried to make him pound a nail with a hammer. He never went back.  He decided he didn’t have to learn to pound a nail right that very minute. It could wait. He could learn to pound a nail with a hammer, later, much, much later. Like sometime, the last day of how about not right now! You know, later.

 When one of the heating coils burned out in the hot water heater that kept me in the steaming bath water to which I had become both accustomed and addicted, I grew determined to show the world and my critics (generally people who share my propensity for freckles) that I could make a reasonable request for repair work without a nag in sight.

I could do it. I could live nag free. I could quit anytime.

“Babe, I can only fill my bathtub halfway up with hot water. Then ice water pours out of the faucet, and even if I lay down flat on my back the water does not cover all my girl parts. Some stuff always sticks out.  It makes me sad and goose bumpy.”

 Rubbing his manly jaw he looked intrigued.  “One of the heater coil’s has probably burned out.”

“Should I call the hot water burned out coil man?” I crossed my arms over my chapped girl parts, hoping against hope that my husband’s monkey-man-brain had not snapped into stones-as-tools-me-fix-it mode.

Too late.

“Nope! Nothing to it,” he declared. “I’ll fix it.” 

“Dear, you should know I have made a solemn oath, covenant, and New Year’s resolution not to nag you on this critical repair work. I will not mention my unhappiness to you again about having to submerge my anatomy in a barely there tub of tepid water, in any way, shape, form, or language—domestic or foreign. So help me goose bumps.

I will not nag you about this.  I will not. I cannot nag you for I have oath-ed an oath.”

“Heater coil . . . got it.”

“No, I mean it. I’m on the nagging wagon.”

He looked skeptical and started making vague hammering motions with his hands. He appeared to be cracking invisible coconuts with an invisible boulder shaped tool.

“I mean it, Sherwood, I will not mention this to you again, and I will not fix it myself or employ anyone else to do so; why you may ask, because I’m a stubborn piece of work. That’s why. Consider it a psychological study in the socio-ramifications of motivating men with repetitive words of infinite negativity to get stuff done.”

He cracked more invisible coconuts.

“I’m serious; this is my last nag on the subject.” And it was.

A month passed.

I tried sponge bathing out of a bucket of steaming hot water. It was messy.

Two months passed. 

I gave a full body rotation method a try—first I’d lay on my back (front bits exposed), then I’d flop onto my front (back bits exposed), then I’d roll side to side (all kinds of stuff freezing off), and then back to my back. By the time I got back to my back, I was usually crying.

Three, four, and then seven months swirled away like the soapy water down the drain at the end of a luxurious soak, and still I nagged not.

I tried showering with my much taller husband but got smacked in the eye with his elbow so many times, I worried about retina damage, and besides he hogged the hot water.

Nine and then ten months passed away like the dew from Heaven. I remained a goose bumpy nag-less wonder: no request, reminder, or repetitive phrase passed my blue tinged lips.

Time continued to pass. He made no effort to bang on the hot water heater with tools or rocks or clenched fists.

How long did it take for my stones-as-tools-man to replace the hot water heater coil without the stimulus or benefit of my nagging you ask.

 I’ll tell you.

ONE YEAR! One frigid bone aching year, that’s how long.

Then when he FINALLY did change out the hot water heater coil he stabbed himself in the knuckle with a screwdriver, down to the tendons and sinew. He tried holding the gaping flesh together with a My Little Pony bandage. No go. It took six stitches to finally cover that knuckle tendon up.

Let’s recap. It took twelve months, six stitches, and the development of a goose flesh phobia on my part, that’s how long.

Abandoning my nag free experiment, I have since honed my harping to a fine and delicate art, surpassed only by my liberal use of satiric and scathing one-liners. I can nag in my sleep. I can nag in reverse. Sometimes I nag using only my eyes and a well-timed twitch. I can’t say that my husband moves any faster, but at least I can make my contribution feel like a sharp stick in the eye of any foot dragging male procrastination.  

Linda (Rub a Dub-Dub) Zern

Stalking the Wild Suitcase

I like my husband more than I hate traveling.

It’s a bold statement in this ‘men are dogs’ world of ours—I know. But it’s true. He’s a bunch of fun to be with, except when he isn’t.

And he isn’t fun to be with when he’s waiting at the bottom of the baggage return in the Sidney, Australia airport, because then he’s a hyena, waiting for the lions to gut a water buffalo. Retrieving luggage for him is primal. Waiting. Watching. Tensing. And . . . then the pounce, knocking other hyenas (i.e. passengers) out of his way without regard to their advanced age or bone density. He’s a maniac about “catching” the suitcase before it slips past him.

In the background a person might be able to hear the faint sounds of me yelling, “But, honey, it goes in a circle. The suitcase comes back. It really does.”

And then me apologizing, “I’m so sorry. He doesn’t mean to be a mad dog. It just comes on him in spurts.”

When it comes to nature, I’m an evolutionist, of sorts. I totally believe that creatures adapt and change. I’m just not convinced it takes twenty trillion years. It only took my husband a couple of trips to the Far East to grow a giant backpack hump across his shoulders. It’s filled with all manner of defensive weapons, useful in knocking down competitors at the baggage return. His backpack hump contains two computers, cordage cables, adaptor stuff, plugger things, power jumpers, downloader catchers, our garage door opener, and possibly attack spines. When he swings to the side, his backpack extends thirteen feet into the hyena crowd. The crowd parts or it goes down.

Then it’s me again in the background calling out, “Babe, careful there. You just knocked down that nice old lady with your enormous backpack hump. She has daggers for eyes.”

He says, “Hunh? What? Which?  Er . . . got to go. I’ve spotted our suitcase. It’s getting away.”

Adaptation is a wonderful process. His backpack hump doesn’t slow him down one bit as he leaps over small children and races next to the endless migration of the stampeding luggage. He’s a wonder of evolution and change, single minded in his instinctual need to chase, catch and claim. He is king of the carousel and no suitcase is safe when he is on the hunt.

As his mate, I find that watching him plow through a herd of passengers after a fourteen-hour flight across an endless ocean makes me long for my own evolutionary adaptations. I want a set of wings for early disembarking and chameleon skin that allows me to fade into carpet. With wings I’d be able to jump off the airplane any old time I wanted, and chameleon skin would allow me to fade into the airport carpet after my husband had maimed or injured someone. But I ain’t got twenty trillion years.

So I’ll just stay home and work on pretending that I adore sitting still for fourteen endless flying hours. I have a hard time sitting all the way through church. I must really love that man—hump and all.


Linda (Are we there yet?) Zern

 














      

I Hear What I'm Saying

“YaYa, why you talk you self all time?” Zoe’s four-year old forehead attempted to form wrinkles as she pondered one of the great curiosities of her young life—adult insanity.

“What makes you think I’m by myself?” I said, distracting her with a bright, shiny lollipop. 

Talking to myself is a way of life for me, providing a multitude of benefits and advantages. I cannot help it if society is still suspicious of the diversity that constitutes “talking to one’s own self” in a manner resembling Sally Fields playing Sybil.

Society is a stuck up girl wearing chipped nail polish.

I talk to myself because I’m the best listener I know, and I’m smart enough to understand what I’m saying.

Sometimes when I’m talking to those people who come and eat my poorly prepared hamburger meat on the weekends, I can’t even finish a sentence. I’m not even near the verb in the sentence before they’re jumping all over what I’m saying with both feet and throwing their opinions around like people planning a revolution while standing next to a guillotine. It finally got so nutty I had to institute the Zern family conch shell policy.

It’s simple. If you’re holding the conch shell, you can talk. It’s a kind of “Lord of the Flies” deal. If you’re holding the conch shell everybody else has to zip it and listen. My husband brought the Queen Conch shell back from a diving trip to the Bahamas when he was a teenager, and it was still legal to rape the oceans. That’s how old we are, so talking to myself is probably not as big or weird of a deal as one might think. 

      

Sometimes I give speeches and then give myself a standing ovation. It’s very gratifying.

Sometimes I practice what I would say on David Letterman should I ever go on David Letterman, but don’t tell anybody.

A couple of times I’ve been able to say to myself what I wished I’d said that time, if I’d had a minute to think about what I was saying before I actually said it. You know what I’m saying?

Once, I told the IRS off, but I don’t want to talk about it.

Finally, I got tired of telling myself clever anecdotes, which are short accounts of some interesting or humorous incident, and started to write them down, making me an anecdotist and not some crazy lady who wanders around her house wearing a raggedy jeans vest, rubber barn shoes, and mumbling to herself.

Linda (Vests Have Handy Pockets) Zern

LESSONS I'VE LEARNED IN THE CHICKEN COOP

Don’t Get Fooled By a Slick Talking Rooster Type: 

Chicken sex is part of the ambiance and romance of having a hobby farm. It’s random. It’s funny. It’s constant.

Our Mac daddy Americanus rooster, Roadie, is a gorgeous example of why hens just can’t say no. Mostly because they have brains the size of peas (thus the term pea brained) and really short memories.

Roadie is a lover-boy. His favorite seal-the-deal strategy is to fake finding a juicy worm or chubby grub and then make lovely clucky noises that being interpreted mean, come over hear you darling plump hens and share this lovely chubby grub with me. Cluckity, cluck, bock, bock, yum . . .

And those hens come running—every single time—twenty times a day. While they’ve got their heads down expecting to find a crisp cricket dinner, he jumps them. Twenty. Times. A. Day.

Seriously?  Sometimes I want to yell at my hens, “He’s lying to you. He’s a liar. There’s no grub, worm, or cricket. He just wants in your pants. AGAIN!”

They never learn, but then again they’re chickens with peas for brains.

Side Note: If the fake cricket scam doesn’t work he stretches one wing to the ground and prances like a court jester. The hens dazzled by his magnificence forget what they were doing. Then he jumps them.

When I was a kid we had a pair of roosters that used to tag team the hens. One would pin the poor gal’s head to the ground while the other one well . . . jumped her, and then they would switch. It was like having a pair of serial rapists running amok in the barn. Then there was the hen that was blind in one eye and how they used to sneak up on her bad side. Eagles murdered those nasty roosters, reducing them to two piles of bloody feathers. It was hard to feel bad.

Moral of the story:  Get the cricket up front.

Hens Squabbling With Other Hens Does Not Pay:

Our hens squabble. They want to lay their eggs in the same nest at the same time so they sit on each other. Some pecking may be involved. Or they occasionally argue over a lovely bit of greenery in the yard. Bok. Bok. Cluckity. Step off, you clucking piece of . . . Bok!

Roadie the Mac Daddy Rooster hears them fighting, knows they’re distracted, races over, and then jumps on one or all.

Sigh.

The Moral of the Story:  Folks who want us to believe that we are no different than the animals in my chicken coop should spend some time in my chicken coop.

Here’s the truth of it. I only need one rooster for a whole flock of ditzy hens. Heads up gentlemen.

Linda (Henny Penny) Zern   

  

  

        

PILLOWS BY SHERWOOD (MY BELOVED HUSBAND)

My husband is a remarkably intelligent man. He can compute, upload, download, code, flowchart, and speak acronym. But for thirty years he's been pretending to botch putting the pillows on the bed. It's a dodge. It's a ploy. It's the hope that I'll get tired of trying to get him to place the pillows nicely on the bed. It's a game where he tries to act so stupid that I'll give up and put the pillows on the fetching bed myself.

I won't.  Give up that is.

Well played Sherwood Zern. Well played.

And happy Father's Day.    

STILL LICKING THE FLAPS

The cell phone in my hand grew dank with hand sweat as I talked to Staff Sergeant Aric Zern who was calling from somewhere, just outside of Kirkuk, Iraq.

 “. . . so then Conner-Boy asked Zoe, ‘Why is the sky blue?' and then Zoe Baye said, ‘Because, Conner, Heavenly Father knows that blue is your favorite color and he made the whole sky just for you.’"

And then I said . . . oh, wait before that they did the funniest thing . . . ”

Rattling on, I talked happy talk to absolutely no one for approximately three additional minutes. I did not pause, breathe, or hesitate. I kept right on talking and talking and talking until the black hole of silence on the other end of the line tipped me off—my signal had been dropped from the dark side of some nifty space probe or satellite saucer or something else spacey.

  

“Aric, can you hear me?” I yelled into the phone.  “Come in, anyone. Anyone—Roger, Roger.”

The phone beeped cheerfully with an incoming call from a war zone in Iraq.

It was Aric, laughing. “I always know you’re still talking to absolutely no one when we get cut off, and then I call back, and it’s still busy.”

These are the moments which make me long for the days of tin cans, string, and rotary dials. I understood string. I understood cans. I understood numbers in a circle. Tin cans circling the earth, which get a big kick out of hearing me talk to myself, I don’t get.

On the subject of technology, did you know that when you submit a blog entry online, people can leave comments at the end of your submission? There’s these conveniently placed boxes where people can respond to what you’ve written; I had no idea. I just figured it out.  It’s exciting to write words and then have people write words about your words. The possibilities remain endless, as endless as the far reaches of the space circling around our fair planet where large metal cans are waiting to drop your calls or record your every thinking moment.

However, I continue to feel a deep shame and unremitting dopiness over my inability to play a movie on the X-box or cheat in school on my cell phone.

In response to my complaining loudly about my endless struggles with the mysteries of the foreign language known as algebra and a looming math test, a young fellow classmate (we’ll call him Nimrod) whipped a cell phone from his pants pocket.

Nimrod, displaying the lighted panel of his excellent mobile phone said, “I always cheat. It’s easy.” 

He began to punch a series of numbers resembling a sequence from the Dresden Mayan Codex. I squinted, trying to follow his dancing fingers.

He continued to text message mysterious numbers and letters. The phone beeped and then chirped. He waved it overhead.

“Just keep your phone in your sock during the test. See?!”

I smiled benignly and patted his boney shoulder. 

“Nimrod, sweetheart, first of all, you’re assuming I know how to text message, and second of all, you probably don’t realize arthritis makes it difficult for me to do anything with a phone while it’s in my sock.”

He smiled sadly, his disappointment visible.

I added, “Besides the fact, I wouldn’t feel comfortable cheating and thereby selling my soul for a lousy grade in a lousy math class.” 

I could tell that in Nimrod’s worldview, I had ceased to exist as a sentient being.

It’s hard not to feel that the world has passed me by when my fifteen-month old grandson can operate the DVD player better than I can, and crib notes are now downloaded to a student’s sock via a satellite orbiting somewhere over Kirkuk, Iraq. 

I weep with shame. Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but I still use stamps and send real letters—in envelopes, through the mail, via the United States Post Office, after I lick the glue on the flaps, with my tongue.

Linda (Happy Talker) Zern 

The After Life

My husband died at the dentist today. Not for long and not for serious. But he was dead for a bit. It’s not the first time.

He walked into our bedroom after his dental appointment, looking chagrined.  Chagrined is a pretty word that means, “It’s possible that I threw up or passed out in the office of a health care provider and made a spectacle of myself.” You know, chagrined.  

“How did it go? Did you ralph?” It’s a fair question; there is a certain historical precedent.

“Not this time,” he mumbled around a mouth full of Novocain and then he sighed around a mouth full of Novocain.

The sigh tipped me off.

“Oh no! What did you do?”

“Ummmm,” he said, followed by some mumbling and then more mumbling and then, “I sort of . . . lost all my blood pressure.”

This got my attention. I perked up like a Cocker Spaniel on crack.

“Define lost.”

“Well, first I got the shots. Then I got clammy. Then I got nauseas. Then my blood pressure went away and they started talking about me like I wasn’t in the room. You know, ‘I can’t get a reading,’ and ‘There’s been two beats in sixty seconds.’ Stuff like that.”

“You died.” I pressed my hands to my steadily beating heart.

“I didn’t die. I kept telling them that I was fine, but they didn’t seem to hear me. And then they gave me oxygen.”

“Because you died. Was there a bright light?”

“Sure. And it was shining right in my eyes. It was the exam light. I didn’t die. “

“Not the way I’m going to tell it. The way I’m going to tell it is that you did die, saw a bright light, started toward it, thought about how much you adore and worship me, and then turned around to spend the rest of the next hundred or so years loving on me. Okay.”

He walked over and gave me a droopy, Novocain laced kiss on the forehead.  He reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

“You tell it anyway you want. They did tell me that they had 911 on speed dial.”

I reached up and squeezed the hand squeezing me.

“I’m glad you didn’t die for serious.”

He smiled. His mouth only looked a little bit goofy. My heart skipped a beat . . . or two.

Linda (Heart Smart) Zern

  

The Parable of the Jazz Shoes

Or Everything I Learned About Human Nature I Learned From Shoes

Once there was and once there wasn’t a young girl who loved to dance and her name was Heather. Every year her parents scrimped, plotted, saved, and planned to pay for Heather’s great heaping pile of dance shoes, which Heather required for her countless dance classes.  She always needed a boatload of dance shoes, and they ‘aint cheap.

Believe it.

The year that Heather went “on point” she required: point shoes, ballet slippers, tap shoes, and character shoes. Her parents scrimped, plotted, saved, and planned to give their daughter the required shoes. The first week of dance classes Heather’s parents were informed that she would require—in addition—to her point shoes, ballet slippers, tap shoes, and character shoes, a pair of tan jazz shoes.

The well was dry. The money was gone. The budget blown.  Heather’s parents sadly but firmly informed her that there would be no more shoes provided by the family largesse.

Heather’s parents said, “Work, save, buy! It’s up to you.”

“Do I have to?” Heather asked.

“Yes!” They chorused.

She did, buying the last lonely pair of jazz shoes with her own hard earned, scrimped for, plotted to get, saved up, and well planned for money.

Then something mysterious and wondrous occurred.

The shoes provided to Heather by her parents went to dance class in a huge jumble, in a dance bag reeking of foot sweat and calluses, slung over her shoulder with cavalier indifference.

The tan jazz shoes—purchased by Heather with her own money—went to dance class in their original shoe box wrapped lovingly in their original tissue paper, carried tightly under her arm—with a pride of ownership and a tender awareness of their worth.

When Heather put the jazz shoes on she began to dance and dance, faster and faster and faster, until she turned into butter.

(“No! That didn’t happen. That’s just silly)

What did happen is that Heather’s parents learned an important lesson about children, grownups, shoes, responsibility, human nature, welfare, generosity, dancing, and charity.  Shoes you sacrifice and work hard for never get left out in the rain—by accident—ever.

Linda (Time to Pony Up) Zern

        

QUICK QUOTE OF THE WEEK

 Conner-Boy (7) said, "Poppy, I think I pulled a muscle." His Poppy reassured, "Conner, you've got to have muscles before you can pull a muscle."

ASSET MONGER

Add one free moth eaten horse . . . 

Due to recent world events I was forced to block several of my closest most intimate social media acquaintances of a certain philosophical stripe. It wasn’t personal. It was political. I couldn’t take the risk that my social media stranger-friends were spies for the IRS.

I mean I’ve reached the height of success as defined by my society. I don’t have to work. Someone else pays for my health insurance, and I get to travel to other places that are not in my zip code and look at things.  I am a kept woman with a hobby farm and chickens. That kind of success can let loose the dogs of envy and paranoia—also the queens of cat fighting.

So I blocked the buggers.

Besides, they scared me.

List of reasons I had to cover my assets:

Number One -- I have assets. There’s a goat and a free horse. The free horse has muck itch in her mane and thrush in her back hooves and is a little moth eaten, but not everyone in America has a goat and a horse, and that’s just not fair. And fair is very important to my recently blocked Facebook stranger-friends. So either get everyone a horse or they want me to shoot mine. That about sums it up.

Number Two – I have used the word tea party and patriot in a sentence. In fact, for several years I had an actual tea bag in my purse, which is wildly suspicious because I don’t drink tea.

Number Three – I married my high school sweetheart. We’ve been married to the same ‘each other’ for thirty plus years. I don’t hate him. I don’t hate his male genitals. I don’t envy his male genitals. I don’t hate or envy others of his genital persuasion or facial hairiness. I like the idea of boys and girls and babies organized into functioning units called families. It’s behind the times and stuffy, but it works for us. I recognize that this is a wildly controversial worldview and smacks of the year in which I was born—also conservatism. 

Number Four –When it all goes to yuck, I don’t want the IRS coming to eat my goat. And it will go to yuck (according to six thousand years of documented historical precedent.) I’ve spent the last twenty years preparing for yuck: World War Next, Charlie the Hurricane, Great Wall of China collapse, barbarian horde attack, Detroit, zombie squirrel apocalypse. Yuck. And it’s only one goat.

Number Five – I have no interest in keeping my neighbors from shooting off their guns or their mouths. However, I also have absolutely no interest in paying long distance for the consequences of them shooting off things—like their own big toes. I like to help people face to face and not through the slightly less personal avenue of the IRS tax code.

It’s sheep and goats time—literally.

Lines are being drawn, sides chosen, like minds located, tribal tattoos debated. The folks who managed to cross wild oceans, open new scary lands, leave junky European hometowns, and tame the wilderness of Detroit are making plans, and they’re not going to be telling the folks that spy for the IRS. They’re just going to get up and go with their goat and their free horse.

Big, whiney babies need not apply.

Linda (Lady Patriot) Zern