Sally Breslin: My Life

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Tuesday, April 16, 2024

I'M HOOKED ON WITTY MESSAGE T-SHIRTS

I recently was tempted to buy a T-shirt I saw in a catalog. It said on the front, "I Thought Getting Old Would Take Longer." I mean, it's a profound statement just about everyone in their "golden years" can relate to, right?

For some reason, I've always loved T-shirts with witty sayings on them, so I've amassed quite a collection over the years. When I first got married, I also wanted my husband to start his own collection, so we could become the couple whose shirts made people smile. But he never was very enthusiastic about the idea. For one thing, he always was shy, so I suppose drawing attention to himself by wearing humorous T-shirts wasn't exactly at the top of his priority list.

Still, every Christmas or birthday, I would buy him a T-shirt with a funny statement on it, hoping I could change his mind and entice him to wear one.

And one time, I thought I'd finally hit the jackpot. His favorite expression (in an incredibly bored tone) whenever we went somewhere always was, "Are we having fun yet?" So I leapt at the opportunity to buy him a T-shirt with that saying on it, figuring he would love it.

Let's just say moths ended up wearing it before he ever did.

But one day, to my utter shock, my husband (I still suspect solely out of revenge) actually bought a witty T-shirt for himself.

He'd just had his annual physical where the doctor had lectured him about the inches he'd gained around his waistline and told him to lose at least 15 pounds to keep his BMI down. So my husband, while still muttering about the doctor, happened to see a T-shirt that said, "I'm not fat, I'm pregnant!" and bought it. And then he wore it...everywhere. He didn't care that the T-shirt actually had been designed for pregnant women to wear. He loved it. And so did most of the people who chuckled at him whenever we went anywhere.

I hated that shirt. But I wasn't about to tell him that...because then I'm pretty sure he'd have worn it even more often, just to spite me.

I learned the hard way, however, not all people get a kick out of funny T-shirts the way I do. I was in Market Basket one day and was wearing a T-shirt that said, “In Training to be Tall and Blonde,” on the front. A lot of people read it and smiled as they walked past me, and I felt happy they were enjoying it. But then, in the checkout line, the woman behind me kept giving me a look – the kind of look that someone who’d just sucked on a lemon might have – every time I turned around to remove the items from my cart.

Finally, she snapped at me, “Why on earth do you want to draw attention to your chest? Most women are offended when people stare at them there…unless they’re exhibitionists!”

To say I was stunned is an understatement. The woman made me want to immediately go buy a box of industrial-sized trash bags, cut a hole in one of them for my head and wear it over my body.

It took a long while after that before I wore a message T-shirt again. It was a Christmas gift from a friend and said, "Be careful or I'll put you in my next novel." I loved it. So I just had to wear it!

But I must confess, even at my ripe old age, I’m still tempted to splurge on a few of the new message shirts I recently saw in some online catalogs. So I guess that makes me an exhibitionist?

My current top contenders include:

“I go the extra mile…usually because I’m lost!”

“Why do I have to press ‘one’ for English when I'm just going to be transferred to someone I can’t understand anyway?”

“What was the best thing BEFORE sliced bread?”

“Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother comes out.”

“Whenever birds mess on my car, I sit out on my front porch and eat a plate of scrambled eggs…just to show them what I’m capable of.”

“I am cautiously pessimistic.”

“I don’t need anger management. I just need people to stop ticking me off!”

“At my age, happy hour is any hour spent still above ground.”

“I’m not lazy. I just really enjoy doing nothing.”

“I took nude photos of myself with all of the lights off. You’re welcome.”

“You can tell a lot about a woman’s mood by her hands. If they’re around your throat, she’s probably angry.”

“Am I getting old, or is the supermarket suddenly playing great music?”

“I am visualizing duct tape over your mouth.”

So far, I have resisted purchasing any new shirts, so I'm very proud of myself.

But just this morning I saw a T-shirt online that made my resolve immediately weaken. I really, REALLY want it! I have to have it! I mean, it's kismet!

It's also on sale.

Lord, give me strength!

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Tuesday, April 9, 2024

MY VERSION OF "LOST IN TRANSLATION"

One of my friends called me the other day to tell me she’d just bought a new swimsuit for her upcoming trip to Florida and was upset with her husband because when she'd modeled it for him, his comment had been, “Not bad!”

All I can say is the poor man sure has a lot to learn about women. He probably thought he was giving his wife a compliment, but let’s face it, we women hardly ever hear things the way men want us to hear them.

As my friend explained to me, “When he said ‘not bad,’ I took it to mean ‘not good, either!’ So now I feel like burning that swimsuit.”

Personally, I would have taken his comment the same way.

Her phone call made me recall the many times my husband also had made statements I’d interpreted to mean something entirely different.

To illustrate my point, consider the following examples:

HE’D SAY: “Is this a new recipe for pot roast? It tastes different tonight.”

I’D HEAR: “Why the heck did you have to mess around with the pot roast? I liked it just the way it was!”

HE’D SAY: “Looks like you have a little zit there, popping out on your forehead.”

I’D HEAR: “That ‘thing’ erupting on your forehead looks like a third eyeball! If I were you, I’d cut my hair into bangs to hide it!”

HE’D SAY: “Thank you for the shirt, sweetheart. It’s too nice to wear to work, though, so I’m going to save it only for special occasions.”

I’D HEAR: “That’s the ugliest shirt I’ve ever seen. And if I have my way, the special occasion will be my funeral!”

HE’D SAY: “Is that new makeup you’re wearing?”

I’D HEAR: “You have so much paint on your face, it’s a wonder people on the street aren’t stopping to ask you if the circus is in town.”

HE’D SAY: “Have you had the oil in your car checked lately?”

I’D HEAR: “If I didn’t remind you to get your oil checked, you would wait until it looked like black molasses and the engine burst into flames before you realized something was wrong…because you know absolutely nothing about cars.”

HE’D SAY: “There’s nothing good on TV tonight.”

I’D HEAR: “There are no shows that contain half-naked women, bloodshed, zombies, superheroes or car chases, and I would rather have all of my chest hairs plucked out with tweezers than be forced to watch one of those corny Hallmark movies you like so much.”

HE’D SAY: “I don’t know if I’ll be able to go with you to Linda’s party this Friday night because I’ll probably have to work overtime.”

I’D HEAR: “I will volunteer to do every job at work that night, even if it means scrubbing urinals, just to get out of going to another one of your friends’ boring parties.”

HE’D SAY: “Well, I had my heart set on us renting a cabin by a lake in the mountains for our vacation this year, because I’ve had a lot of stress at work and just want to relax (insert a heavy sigh here). But if you really just want to take day trips instead and visit the doll museum, the flower show and the craft fair, then I guess that’s what we’ll do.”

I’D HEAR: “To heck with the cabin in the mountains! I REALLY want to go to the doll museum, the flower show and the craft fair!”

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Monday, April 1, 2024

A FIVE-GALLON BUCKET OF SNOW WON'T FLUSH YOUR TOILET

As I’m sitting here in 60-degree weather, I’m watching the evening weather report that’s telling me a storm is heading this way that will linger for about three days, dump over a foot of snow…and likely cause power outages.

Unfortunately, I live in a neighborhood that invented the words “power outages.” Those of us who live here don’t even dare sneeze when we walk by a power line because we’re afraid we’ll lose power. A bird landing on one of the lines also causes us to hold our collective breaths and pray. And anything stronger than a slight breeze is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.

So the wisest investment I ever made was a full-house automatic generator-system. Thirty seconds after the power goes out, it pops on and continues to run the essentials. The only problem I’ve had with it is my own fault. You see, when the generator was installed, I was allowed to choose only 10 items to connect to it.

It took me endless hours of debating before I decided which items to connect. Of course, there were the obvious ones (at least to me, they were): the refrigerator, the furnace, the artesian-well pump, the water heater, the automatic garage doors, and my two satellite dishes – one for the TV and the other for the Internet. But choosing the last three was what caused me to lose sleep.

Did I need the washer and dryer? Nah, the laundry could wait. Did I need a light in the hallway bathroom or only in the master bathroom? And how about the porch light out back so the dogs could see where to do their duties after dark? Or maybe the light over the gas range so I’d be able to distinguish what I was burning for dinner?

I finally made my last three selections (the porch light, the master bathroom and the range light) and everything was hooked up to the generator.

But not until after the next power failure struck did I learn just how weird my house was.

For example, the range and the refrigerator are right next to each other but are on different circuits. Yet the range and the outlet in the kitchen island share the same one. So when the range light was hooked to the generator, I also was able to use the island outlet.

That turned out to be the only outlet out of the 10 in my kitchen I could use. And not one of the nine overhead lights, other than the one directly above the range, worked. So although I could see what I was cooking, I had to go prepare the food in the laundry room first, where, for some reason, the ceiling lights (but not the washer and dryer) were on the same circuit as the refrigerator out in the kitchen.

Even crazier, although the master bathroom had lights, the bedroom had no power at all, not even a nightlight.

It took a lot of getting used to, but now during power outages, I’m no longer flipping switches in rooms not hooked up to the generator system, nor am I trying to turn on the microwave that’s plugged into one of the 10 dead kitchen-outlets.

But the bathrooms actually were what originally convinced me to make the decision to spend a good chunk of my life’s savings on the generator system.

It was the year before my husband passed away, when a huge snowstorm blew in and promptly knocked out the power. The moment we were thrust into darkness, we knew there also would be no water because our well’s pump is electric. That meant we had only one flush left in each of our two toilets.

So we vowed to save those two flushes until the need to use them became absolutely necessary. In other words, anything liquid didn’t warrant a flush. And believe me, because my husband was on prescription diuretics, there was a constant flow of liquid going into those toilets.

The first night of that power outage, I was in the living room, struggling to do some intricate craftwork by candlelight without much success. In fact, I made so many errors, I prayed that when I displayed my crafts at the church’s annual Christmas fair the next weekend, only people with severe cataracts would attend.

Suddenly I heard my husband’s agonized cry come from the bathroom. I rushed down the hall and shouted through the door, “Are you OK?”

“Nooooo!” came a wail from the other side. “I accidentally flushed! I am stupid, stupid, stupid! I wasted a perfectly good flush! I could kick myself!”

The way he was carrying on, you would think he’d accidentally flushed a roll of $100 bills.

I must point out that prior to this, every time I headed toward the bathroom, he would shout, sounding like a trained parrot, “Remember! Don’t flush!” until I was ready to stuff him into the toilet and use my one good flush to make him disappear.

So my first reaction in response to his agony over the fateful flush was to burst out laughing.

“Don’t worry about it,” I finally said. “I’ll go fill up a bucket with snow and melt it and we’ll have some water for flushing in no time.”

I soon discovered that a five-gallon bucket of snow melted down to a whopping half-inch of water. A person could have died of constipation before I'd have been able to melt enough snow for a decent flush.

Two days later, we still had no power and hadn’t even been plowed out yet. So I was trapped in the house and forced to listen to my husband still lamenting over the precious flush he’d wasted.

It was torture, sheer torture. So I vowed at that moment that if I survived the power failure without winding up in prison for attempted murder, I would save every penny for a generator system.

And until I did, I also vowed to keep at least one bathtub full of water at all times…just in case there ever was another sudden need for emergency flushing.

But mostly it was for the sake of my sanity.

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