I like Candy

Background: My 50-ish friend is a total dog. He is an incorrigible flirt and tries to pick up women wherever he goes. It's like a reflex - he just can't help it.

We are on a trip to Whole Foods and the cashier is this cute Bettie Page-looking girl, if Bettie Page were platinum blonde and had many tats and piercings. Her nametag says "Candice."


My Friend the Dog, in his best deep newscaster voice he uses when he is trying to pick up girls: So, they call you Candy, do they?
Candice: Pardon?
My Friend the Dog: So, they call you Candy, do they?
Candice: Well, nobody except creepy old guys.
Suebob: [howling]
Candice: I mean, I don't mean YOU. I mean, it's just...
Suebob: [howling]
My Friend the Dog: Touché. I guess I deserved that.

I gotta give it to him, he took it pretty well.

New math

Trader Joe's Cashier: That will be $19.41
Suebob: Interestingly, that was also the year I was born.
Trader Joe's Cashier: Neat
Suebob: [waiting for the light to dawn] Yes, a long, long time ago
Trader Joe's Cashier: Since it's your birthday, do you want a lollipop?
Suebob: [still waiting for the light to dawn] Um, no, that's ok. At my age, I really shouldn't.
Trader Joe's Cashier: It's pomegranate flavor.
Suebob: [giving up] Oh, ok - antioxidants! They can help reverse the aging process you know. I eat a lot of pomegranates.
Trader Joe's Cashier: Ok, well, have a good day then.
Suebob: [muttering as I leave] Damn California school system. Damn Proposition 13. Nobody has any math skills anymore. Do I LOOK 68? Wait...don't answer that.

Jumpin' Gyminie

I got a new swimsuit that is perhaps a bit more low-cut than I had anticipated it being.

Because I am a cheap bastard, I bought it from Land's End Overstocks.

I love their swimsuits - they wear really well, come in a zillion styles, and they make a size for people with freakishly long torsos such as myself. The cheap bastard part comes in because I will buy almost anything that is on sale and not entirely hideous.

I exercise in these things, not lay on the pool deck waiting for my mojito, so style is not a big concern.

This suit is cute but, as I said, cut really low for my taste.

But I'm in an aqua aerobics class with all women, so who cares, right?

At the end of class, we put the lane lines back in place for the swimmers. Because our teacher always runs late and because swimmers seem to be compulsively on time, there are often swimmers waiting for us to finish.

There was an older man - maybe 70ish - waiting in my lane as I pulled the lane line in. I had to struggle a bit, twisting and turning as I fought to put the hook in the wall as I pulled the line taut.

"Pardon me," I said to the man as I crossed in front of him.

Looking right down my suit, with eyes boinging out like a cartoon cat, he said "Oh, NO PROBLEM."

Glad I could make his day.

Songs that save your life

Sometimes it is the smallest things. You're beaten, you're down, you're alone, you don't know where to go or what to do.

Then a door cracks open and out spills just a sliver of light and suddenly you can see and you just KNOW that you can reach over and jerk that sucker open and walk through that doorway, out of the darkness and into a new place, a place that is, at the very least, different from where you are.

I don't know why songs are so often the thing that pops the door open. Something in music connects right up to Control Central right down there in the middle without having to travel through the buzzing wiring in our brains. It just gets in there and does what it does and we end up laughing or sobbing or gasping or standing up and shaking parts that we didn't even know we could shake anymore.

So there I was a while ago, driving around. I lived with someone who hated me and who was perpetually unhappy, both about my existence and about everything else in general. I had felt FAIL for so long that I couldn't even imagine what WIN was anymore.

I was getting on the freeway, heading home, feeling like crap. And then "Jump" by Van Halen came on the classic rock station.



I KNOW. Can anything be more silly or ridiculous? It's not great music. It's not gonna be on anyone's top 100 list. But that day, in that place, it GOT me.

Even though I was hearing it on the radio, the thousand times I had seen the video rushed back to life in my head and I was driving along seeing that nutty video play in my head and singing and laughing.

"Might as well jump." Damn right.

Suddenly I knew to the marrow of my bones that I was going to be ok. No matter how much anyone tried to keep me down, I was going to get up, to jump, and the jump was NOT going to be off a building.

I was going to leap through life with goofy, goony joy, the same kind of crazy life force that caused Diamond Dave to put on that wack red net corset-y outfit and parade around the stage like a low-rent Mick Jagger with bigass hair, the same joy that kept Eddie smiling his little elf smile while wearing possibly the most unattractive yellow tiger-striped jacket ever made.

"Might as well jump." From then on, when I was getting looked down upon, I had that song in my head and Eddie's sweet smile in my heart. On the outside, I put on my best blasé face and went through the motions and did what I had to do so I could put my escape plan into motion. But inside, I knew who I was. I was someone who could always jump.

I'm so thankful for that song. It gave me something, you know? Tell me about a song that saved you.

Puzzling Evidence?

I went on a business trip and took the Red Stapler with me because I knew I would be meeting up with some bloggers and I thought it would be great to get some photos.

When I was unpacking upon my return, I found the stapler had suffered in transit:


The following Monday, we found that we were in danger of being laid off.

I started this blog and got the stapler when I first started that job.

Coincidence?