COLUMN: Hope

Nothing makes me feel older than sitting around and letting my mind wander back to the good old days. And there's nothing like a pandemic to give you PLENTY of time for mind-wandering. When you're stuck on the same couch for the better part of a calendar year, suddenly good old days start feeling like GREAT old days.

Truth be told, I was fairly miserable for most of my youth, mostly of my own doing. I specialized in being the annoying nerdy kid, desperate to impress friends and fit in at all costs. I've grown up a heck of a lot since then, but I'm sure there's a part of me that still yearns for acceptance and hopes people think I'm cool.

Maybe we're all guilty of it. After all, is there any reason to post on Facebook other than to say, "Look at me, am I cool?" It makes me wonder. I'm a music geek through and through, but do I volunteer to DJ parties because I love music or because I love being in CONTROL of the music? This past weekend, I was wasting an afternoon practicing some DJ mixes, and I'll admit it: I cranked the music a little louder than necessary because I knew my window was open and the neighbor kids were playing outside. 

Am I that desperate for acceptance that I need 8-year-olds to think I'm cool? That's kinda sad. I haven't the slightest clue what impresses 8-year-olds these days, but I'm guessing it's NOT house music or the dorky neighbor playing it louder than he should've.

A friend asked an interesting question last week: Who was my first crush? And we're not talking celebrity crushes, because I prefer to overlook the salacious era of "the Debbie Gibson years." Celebrity crushes are silly and adolescent and that's why I definitely don't own every season of Dawson's Creek or find Katie Holmes to be a goddess (cough.)

I can barely recall all my celebrity crushes -- but I certainly know who my first real world crush was.

When I was growing up, my mom had one close friend. Whenever the two of them would get together, I'd usually be forced to tag along. This wasn't a huge sacrifice for me, because my mom's friend had a daughter my age, Maria. I probably SHOULD have had a crush on Maria, but she intimidated the heck out of me. She was smarter than me, more sarcastic than me, and she was even better at video games than me. My adolescent brain couldn't process anyone that cool. 

But one fateful day, our moms got together for an afternoon and I was along for the ride. But Maria had a friend from out of town visiting for the weekend. Her name was Hope. She was from Chicago. And after one afternoon together, I was positive she was my soulmate.

That afternoon was over 35 years ago, and honestly, I barely remember it. I can't recall Hope's face or a single thing we talked about. But I remember she smelled like strawberries, she laughed at my dumb jokes, and I went all wobbly when she touched my knee. And the best part? I wasn't trying to impress her. I wasn't desperate for her to think I was cool. The three of us just hung out all afternoon and had fun.

Afterwards, I asked Maria for Hope's address, and I wrote her an epic love letter, spilling the depths of my soul with romantic prose, passionate longing, and elegantly-crafted expressions of desire. Or, since I was in 7th grade, it probably consisted of "Do you like me? Check this box." She responded in kind with an equally romantic reply (she checked "YES,") so for a few fleeting days of pre-teenery, I had myself a girlfriend.

I took her letters to school, showed my friends, and spent every waking moment pining for her. Well, for about two weeks. In the short attention span of youth, our love was not meant to be and this stallion needed to roam free. But the simple question of "who was your first crush" brought fond fuzzy memories to mind, and I suddenly had an idea.

I haven't spoken to my friend Maria in over twenty years, but it didn't stop me from messaging her out of the blue to see if she was still in touch with Hope. She wasn't -- but she DID remember her last name and the suburb she lived in, which is more than I could recall about my soulmate of yore. That was good enough for a Google search. How great would it be to find her after all these years, see if she ever had fleeting thoughts of me, and find out how her life turned out? It could make a great column.

And it would have, except my Google search immediately pulled up an obituary for someone matching her name, age, and last known location. Ouch. That's a bummer. For what it's worth, Hope has/had a VERY common last name, and it might not even be her. I sure hope this Hope isn't MY Hope. I definitely didn't want a column about good memories turning into a wistful treatise on the fragility of life.

That was absolutely enough research for me. I'm content leaving her fate a mystery. I'm not telling Maria what I found, either. The only thing more awkward than "Hey, I know we haven't spoken in years, but remember your hot friend?" would be following it up with, "yeah, she might be dead." I'd rather just remember what I can about that perfect weekend and the magic of a hand accidentally brushing against my knee.

Take it from me, don't worry about fitting in or trying to look cool. Some days might seem long, but life is short. Don't waste it. I might never be the cool kid in the room, but after all these years, I'm kinda glad that I'm not. If you stop trying to fit in and start being yourself, you might just find your real passion. You might even find some Hope in this world.      

COLUMN: Rachael Ray

Exciting news, all: I have a new BFF.

Sorry, Bruce. You were the first to earn the title of Shane's Best Friend, and I couldn't imagine surviving high school alongside anyone but you. Sorry, Jason. You've been my closest confidant and other-mother brother since fate assigned us adjacent dorm rooms in college. And sorry, Dianna. I know there's one only one person who would come over at 7 a.m. just to help me change the battery in a smoke detector.

You're all amazing people that I couldn't imagine my life without. But you've all been replaced. I have a new bestie... and her name is Rachael Ray.

Some might say I've fallen into a pandemic routine lately. But when you're working from home like I've been for the past few months, there's no such thing as "routine," unless your idea of routine is having to leave a conference call because a cat just vomited in your lap -- which, to the fellow attendees of my Zoom meeting, appeared as if I suddenly and spontaneously glanced down at my crotch, screamed "Ewww!! Gross!!," and disconnected. It wasn't my best moment. 

But as much as I miss my co-workers and annoying them with Belgian house music quietly pumping from my cubicle at 9 a.m., I kinda enjoy working from home. If someone were to walk in here right now, they'd have little clue I'm working. It's me sprawled across the couch like a beached whale as usual. I just have a different laptop in front of me. At 5 p.m., I'm like, "Ahh, quitting time." And all I do is close my work laptop, set it aside, open my personal laptop, and remain in the exact same position. Welcome to my pandemic life.

The only real routine I have these days is waking up an hour before I have to log in. I use this time to saunter into the living room, imbibe caffeine, and catch a few minutes of the "Today" show while my brain boots up. When it's time to work, I simply grab the laptop and hit the mute button on the TV, which stays on throughout the day as my silent work buddy and comforting proof that I'm not the last person alive on Earth. 

But when the Today show ends, it's followed by the smiling Rachael Ray, whose delicious daily dishes are tough to ignore, even when she's muted. I often find myself catching glimpses of fabulous culinary creations, which is hard to take when my fridge contains little more than Lunchables and leftover pizza.

So for the past couple months, I've been taking my lunch hour with my new buddy Rachael. She's been teaching me how to cook, or at least trying her best. Rachael Ray has the amazing ability to make every recipe seem incredibly simple to pull off. At least once a week, she whips up something that makes me think, "I could do that."

As it turns out, sometimes I actually can. I made a decent soup the other day using one of her recipes. Last weekend, I successfully braised short ribs. I recently followed a Rachael Ray Show recipe for sausage & shells that turned out to be single tastiest thing that's ever come out of my kitchen. Am I becoming competent in the kitchen?

Of course, not all attempts are winners. A few weeks back, I attempted a recipe from her website called "Rach's Stupid Good, Silly Easy Sausage and Apple Tray Bake." I opted for a slight variation on the recipe, a creation I renamed "Shane's Stupid Bad Charred Husks of Blackened Things That May or May Not Have Once Been Sausages and Apples But I'm Honestly Not Sure." One minute, things looked fine in the oven. The next, it was culinary cremation.

I'm also starting to think my new bestie isn't entirely honest with her viewing audience. For one, bok choy isn't delicious, it's slimy and gross. And no, Rachael, I can't "add a dollop of Calabrian chili paste" because no one but you has Calabrian chili paste in their pantry.

Last week, Bobby Flay was on, sharing his recipe for Bucatini all'Amatriciana, which I believe is Italian for "spaghetti topped with a buttload of bacon." What's not to love, other than maybe your next cholesterol checkup? Just like Bobby, I carefully added my ingredients to a pot and set it to simmer. Just like Bobby, I checked on it after twenty minutes and added fresh oregano (or maybe oregano from a jar I'm pretty sure I've had since the 1990s, shh!)

But I definitely don't recall any part of Bobby Flay's video where a rogue drop of boiling sauce flies directly into his left eyeball, which was MY experience. And while I was cursing and trying to rinse my eye out with cold water, MORE drops of boiling sauce started flying everywhere around my kitchen. The end result tasted amazing, but it destroyed a perfectly good t-shirt and left behind a Dateline-worthy crime scene in my kitchen. 

Overall, though, Rachael Ray makes a pretty good pandemic pal. I usually can't stomach traditional cooking shows. Nothing makes my eyes roll faster than a studio audience gasping with appreciation at someone adding onion to a pan -- and no show is usually guiltier of fake audience reactions than Rachael Ray. But these are not usual times. Since the pandemic, Rachael and her hubby have been making the show on their own from their mountain home (actually, their GUEST home, but that's a whooole other story my bestie can tell you about.) The homemade DIY format so much better than a glossy studio full of people "ooh"-ing and "ahh"-ing chicken stock as it simmers.

So for the time being, I have a new best buddy, and it's just like most friendships. Sometimes she acts like she's better than me. Sometimes she tells me I need to cut back on my salt intake. We get along great, but sometimes we disagree. A couple weeks back, I said to myself, "Okay, this weekend I'm making whatever Rachael makes today." And then she said, "Welcome to the show! Today we're going to make Onion & Brussels Sprout Pasta," at which point I decided that maybe I needed a different best friend, so I changed the channel and met some exciting new people on CBS. I don't know much about them, but they seem quite young and restless. Wish me luck.     

COLUMN: Vaccinated

I may have been on this planet for some five decades now, but nothing seems more preposterous than the idea of some young person turning to ME for sagely wisdom about life. Frankly, I'm just not real good at this "existence" business. I will never pretend to be better than you, because I know I'm not. I don't even know HOW to get on a high horse.

But yesterday? For one brief second, I got to play the hero. I was brave, and I did a good thing: I got stabbed in the arm. If all goes well, in a matter of weeks, I will be an invincible superhero -- or at least able to shop for groceries within six feet of another human being, and that's close enough.

You should do it, too.

I'm not here to pick a fight with you anti-vaxxers. Nobody wins. Some people are afraid the vaccine isn't safe. Well, fine, I guess. Whatever. I'll put my faith in scienc-y people, because I sat next to some of them in high school and they seemed really smart. For me, it's a risk I was willing to take. "Could I suffer a side effect?" vs. "Do I ever want to attend a concert again?" Concerts won out.

Then there are people out there -- we all have that ONE uncle on Facebook -- who think the vaccine is part of a sinister plot to subjugate us all to the nefarious plans of, I dunno, I guess Dolly Parton and Dr. Fauci. Or the vaccine contains secret tracking chips so Bill Gates can spy on us.

I hate to break it to your over-inflated sense of self-importance, but Bill Gates most likely does NOT care about what you're having for dinner tonight. A similar rumor hits social media every year without fail. You know, the one that claims Facebook is going to claim ownership of all your social media content unless you post something that says, "No, Mark Zuckerberg! You may NOT have my photos!"

Mark Zuckerberg owns approximately eleventy kajillion dollars. He does not need the selfie of you in the red dress at the club. With just the spending money in his wallet, he could probably buy the club, the dress, and pay Kim Kardashian to wear it there. Honestly, if Mark Zuckerberg wants the 18 photos of my cats that adorn my Facebook page, he's welcome to them. 

Are there creepy violations of our privacy happening online? You bet. Do some websites track where we go online? Sure -- but they're mostly doing it in order to serve us ads based on our interests. Websites need to sell ads to make money. And if those sites are going to shove ads in my face, I'd rather they be for products I might actually care about. If Bill Gates really DID just put a tracking chip in my arm, he's welcome to spy on my exciting life ("My God, he's STILL on the couch. It's been ten hours. Do you think he's dead?")

The only fear I had to overcome when it came to getting the vaccine wasn't the vaccine. It was the "getting" part.

I'm terrified of needles. I remember the last time I got a vaccine. It was a booster shot I needed in grade school. I remember the nurse telling me "it's just like a little bee sting." I'm allergic to little bee stings. Little bee stings can kill me. I screamed so loud, I broke all the blood vessels in my face and walked around purple for a week.

But yesterday I did the unthinkable. Of my own free will, I went up to a nice lady and said, "Hello, I'm here for my injection, please." If you go out today, please be mindful -- the forecast calls for freezing hell and flying pigs. 

The down side? I may have caught COVID-19 from the dude next to me in the vaccine line. Mine took place at the grocery store, where there's a helpful smile in every aisle -- and a woman who stabs people with needles. Afterwards, they ask you to stick around for a few minutes, which is admittedly less than resassuring. "The vaccine is perfectly safe, but go wait here for fifteen minutes to make sure you don't die."

Worse yet, the guy ahead of me appeared to already have COVID-27 or 28. The entire time, he was coughing up a lung -- and with each cough, he thoughtfully reached up and pulled DOWN his mask to hack open-mouthed into the air. I was supposed to wait fifteen minutes, but I snuck out after five. I'd rather die of an allergic reaction on MY terms than catch grocery store cooties before the vaccine has a chance to do its trick.

It's trick, by the way, is to make your arm hurt so bad that you forget all about COVID. It's already much better now, but yesterday was unpleasant. I went to pick up a cat last night and about screamed. But it goes away. 

With any luck -- and a lot of needles -- so will COVID. 

COLUMN: Weekend From Hell, Pt. 2

Last week, I selfishly used this column as therapy. I just wanted to whine about my terrible, horrible, no good, very bad weekend. What started as an earnest attempt to organize my kitchen turned into an all-nighter of clutter and chaos. Then I was awakened the next morning after three hours sleep by a malfunctioning smoke detector. 

Little did I know, the fun was just getting started.

After convincing myself that the house was not, in fact, on fire, I spent Saturday organizing music files on my computer, because I am nothing if not a party animal.

But at 8 p.m., I got the chills. Remember the health problems I had earlier this winter? It all started with a kidney infection and me getting the chills. "Swell," I thought while grabbing a sweater and some cranberry juice. That's when my eye happened to catch the living room thermostat. It read 64 degrees. I had the chills, alright -- my heat was out.

I have no idea why, but I headed to the basement like I knew what I was doing. "Yep, that's a furnace," I said to myself, which is pretty much the extent of my HVAC knowledge. It wasn't on fire, so yay for that. I executed the only troubleshooting maneuver I was qualified to do: I turned it off and back on. No dice.

I called a couple 24-hour HVAC places, who were happy to come diagnose the problem for roughly 18% of my annual salary. I knew after-hours prices were steep, but man. If those poor Texans on the news could tough it out, I could, too. I bundled up and went to bed.

Sunday morning, I woke up to a 52 degree interior. Even the cats were looking at me like, "Ummm...?" Ergo, I did what you're NOT supposed to do -- I made a beeline for the kitchen, opened the (electric) oven, and set it to broil. In fact, as long as I was standing there monitoring it, I figured it'd be safe to turn on the stove burners, too.

I had made the beeline for the kitchen before making the morning pilgrimage to the bathroom, so I was standing in the kitchen doing a little jig that was half for warmth and half because I had to pee, so I hustled to the bathroom for a quick second.

The morning prior, I had indulged in a bowl of cereal. What I didn't know is that somewhere in the cereal-pouring process, a rogue Frosted Flake had absconded from my bowl and landed in the well of one of those stove burners. By the time I returned from the bathroom, the aforementioned Frosted Flake was on frosted fire. It was not "grrrrrreat." 

It burned out in seconds, but not before setting off EVERY smoke detector in the house, including the dreaded one in my bedroom. Whoever installed that smoke detector is a sadist. I have vaulted ceilings, and it's on the weeee tippy top. Shutting it off involves an aerial escapade on a telescoping ladder that requires teamwork and a degree in physics just to open, let alone climb. 

I only have one friend who I knew would be awake, and it's the same friend who helped with my kitchen not 24 hours earlier. If you know Dianna Saelens, give her a socially distant high-five and tell her how awesome she is. She arrived with space heaters, batteries, and the willingness to scale a two-story ladder without vomiting. I contributed the best way I knew how: bacon. I handled breakfast duty.

At one point, I noticed one of my poor cats scared out of her mind, heading behind the couch in a space she shouldn't be in. That's when the morning went from bad to worse to... indescribable.

I have three cats. Two are the geriatric sisters I've had for years. The third is the young feral I took in last year. It is NOT one big happy family. Bez, my grandma kitty with bad hips and bad kidneys, has long been the alpha of the house. She is NOT a fan of our young new tenant. But lately, things had been better. The new cat keeps to the basement, Bez patrols the main floor, and there's been less conflict.

When I pulled out the couch, I discovered why. I spend most of my time, especially this past year, camped out on the couch. Whether it's watching TV, working from home, or writing this column, it all happens here on this couch. Yet somehow, I've been sitting here completely oblivious that Granny Bez has been going behind the couch and using it as her own personal litterbox. For what appeared to be weeks.

I get paid to write, and I have no words. How it didn't make an unholy smell is beyond me. How my house wasn't declared a HAZMAT violation is beyond me. The noise I made upon discovering the hidden cache is beyond me. Why I'm even telling you all this is beyond me.  

Two days later, it's all hopefully ancient history. The smoke detector got reset. Space heaters got fired up. My carpet got cleaned. On Monday, I paid a man $260 to walk downstairs, open my furnace, and push a button. My house has heat again. Thankfully, he showed me how to push said button next time it happens, so I'm counting that as PERSONAL GROWTH, people. There is no longer a path to get behind the couch and there are ample litterboxes on every floor.

Who knows, maybe there's a moral in here somewhere. Cats are terrible, except when they're not? Smoke detectors are terrible, except when they're not? Never barbecue breakfast cereal? Or the REAL moral, which is "everyone needs a Dianna." Were it not for her, I might be writing this column from a hotel room.

If there's a better moral hiding in all this, I'll let you find it. I'm going to bed.